Don't Pinch Me: If I am Dreaming I Don't want to Wake Up!

This morning I woke up afraid the inauguration had all just been a wonderful dream. It wasn't until I heard the DJ on my morning radio show mention the inauguration that I breathed a sigh of relief. But I can't relax. I still hold my breath every time I see Obama in public, afraid he will be shot. I still worry that someone will find a way to take it all away, to render his election illegitimate somehow. I am still not sure this is really happening.

Its not my fault. Nothing in my 40 years of life on this planet has prepared me for this. Nothing in my experience as a black/red/brown woman in the United States has ever suggested that this was possible. If I don't know how to act for awhile, people are going to have to cut me some slack.

Am I sporting a goofy grin during what ought to be a serious discussion? Cut me some slack. Am I teary-eyed every time I watch the news? Cut me some slack. Am I bumping into walls while walking about in a dreamy state? Cut me some slack, people.

When I was a wee girl all my teachers told me I was supersmart. My parents tended to agree with them. Given all the praise I was getting from the big people- who ought to know-I had no reason to think it unreasonable for me to decide that I was going to grow up to be president of the United States. The adults were too nice to burst my bubble. They never discouraged me but oddly didn't encourage me much either. Looking back on it now, I suspect that just hearing me say that was what I wanted may have broken their hearts a little bit.

When I was older- around 10 or 11 I was reading an encyclopedia (something I enjoyed doing for fun, being a nerdy type of child) and I came across a section on the presidency. The book had a photo gallery with photographs (or in some cases drawings) of all the presidents who served in the history of the country. I looked through all the pictures, page after page, and I was struck by two oddities: there were no women and there were no brown faces.

By that age I had  been made aware of the great number of white people who thought Black people weren't real people like them and I had met my share of men who believed that we lived in "a man's world" where women were just their helpmates, their ornaments, their entertainment. But I didn't put it all together until I saw all those old white men lined up in that book. I didn't know until then that when they said any American citizen over the age of 35 could be president that the term "American citizen" did not include me, despite my being Indigenous to this country on one side of my family and a 3rd generation American on the other.

So if I you find me stumbling through my day in a dreamy state, don't pinch me. I don't want to wake up from this wonderful dream! I hope I never do.

Smiling ad Crying for Obama

I am sitting in front of the television watching the Kenyan Boy's Choir dancing for Obama and I can't help crying. I have been to Africa, I have known Kenyans. I have danced with Tanzanians, Nigerians, Kenyans, and Zanzabaris in the streets on the continent. But I had to travel so long and so far to meet my sisters and brothers.  

We as African Americans have never danced with our cousins in the streets of the United States. And when we as African Americans have danced in our own streets, we have always had to keep one eye open for the brutality of our state's police forces who were ready to stop our dancing with guns. We have never seen our African cousins on the dais at distinguished national events. And before Obama, we have never seen our faces so well represented in so many places. We have never had this chance to be this proud.

This is our moment. It is also our country's moment. It is our moment of healing: this inauguration. This is America's chance to begin to undo a history of  shame and injustice. It is our chance finally to undo the damage done by our ancestors, to heal the wounds inflicted on our ancestors. It is our chance to remember and to heal a past marked by slavery, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. It is our chance to replace hate with love.

Kenyans are so happy. We African Americans are so happy. But I can't help crying too. We have waited for so long.  African Americans have waited so long. Africans have waited for so long. America has waited for too long.

Will we now, finally, have the chance as peoples to dance in our own streets? Will we be treated with dignity and respect now? To believe that another world is possible makes us smile; to remember the lives we have been forced to live for centuries makes us cry. 

No matter what Obama does as a president, his election has given us this moment, this moment of hope. For the first time we are able to imagine that another world is possible.

Thank You Kenya, for sending us your son; thank you Kansas for sending us your son. Thank you America for pursuing King's dream. We shall overcome.

Good News: Oscar Grant's Killer in Jail

The white cop who shot the unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, at an Oakland BART station has finally been arrested and put behind bars after two weeks of protesting in the city of Oakland by outraged residents. The officer was apprehended in Nevada and returned to California where he was booked on murder charges the night before a second big rally by Bay Area activists asking for justice

Numerous  cell phone videos have surfaced over the last week. None of them show any reason why the cop should have shot the man in the back while he lay face down on the ground. The other young men who were forced to witness the brutal murder at close range while also being detained by police are said to be suffering from trauma after the event.

Racism Kills - OSCAR GRANT murder (TRAIN VIEW)

Young black man killed execution style by white police officer.

Oscar Grant, the 22-year old killed, had no guns, posed no threat, was not engaged in any crime and had his hands in the air when they tackled him, as this video clearly shows. He was a black man killed at random by a white cop who perceives black men as inherently dangerous even when handcuffed and restrained by two cops. Oakland residents have been protesting for days demanding that charges be made against the officer who  killed the handcuffed father of two.

This is what racism looks like. Racism kills.

New Year's Day: The Day of Killing Children

Today Israel is still bombing Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians killed, over 2,000 wounded. Many children wounded today.

Sadly Israel and their allies continue to try to portray this as a war. The Israeli's have lost 4 people, they say. Four? Are they serious? Four compared to four hundred? A city that has no water, limited electricity, insufficient medical supplies, and no modern military weapons, no weapons of mass destruction is being compared with the modern city of Israel, a city-state which has one of most well-stocked arsenals in the world?

According to the group, Physicans for Human Rights, "Palestinian doctors are performing surgeries without surgical gloves, local or general anesthetics, gauze, sterilized equipment or sufficient oxygen for patients. All together, there are only 1,500 hospital beds available in Gaza’s 13 publicly run hospitals."

Israel is the only state in the entire region that has nuclear weapons. It is the fourth-largest recipient of weapons from the U.S.  Since 1986, it has received a U.S. allotment of $1.8 to 3 billion per year in foreign military funding. No other country in the world, whether member of the United Nations or non-member, has been as frequently condemned by the United Nations as has Israel for its occupations, wars, attacks, and massacres in the Middleeast. It currently stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions.

(Hoffman and Lieberman, Reporter's Notebook)

Meanwhile, no Arab State has ever been condemned by any organ of the United Nations for military attacks upon Israel.

So if you don't believe me, listen to the United Nations. This is not a just war, it is not even properly described as a war. It is a military attack by a super military power on an ethic organization designed to suppress and intimidate. It is an act of terror.

The blood of Palestinan children running through the streets of Gaza testifies to this.

Israel starts Another War: We in the West do Not Support it

Israel is bombing the Palestinian people in  Gaza City for the third straight day amid worldwide protests. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, a group within Gaza that they have labeled terrorist.

Meanwhile, France, Britain, China, Japan, and Russia have all called for an end to the assault which has taken the lives of over 300 and has wounded 1500, including women and children. This air assault also targeted a university. Universities are not military targets in any understanding of warfare, nor are children. The Director General of the United Nations has called for an end to the violence and protests against the carnage are being held throughout the world

Israel is justifying the murder of hundreds by pointing to the death of one Israeli at the hands of Hamas and President Bush is supporting the Israeli attacks. Israel is mobilizing 6500 troops for a possible ground offensive against Gaza.

But both Israeli and Western citizens are critical of the Israeli offensive. Israeli newspapers are critical of the new war and Europeans and Americans have held protests throughout the West.

According to one Israeli reporter citing a Palestinian on the ground, "This assault is not against Hamas. It's against all of us, the entire nation. And no Palestinian will consent to having his [or her] people and homeland destroyed in this way."

According to another Israeli reporter from Haaretz newspaper, the recent bombing is motivated by a Zionist desire to "teach Palestinians a lesson." The reporter explains, "Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders." The reporter reminds  Israeli readers of the error of such an approach given history,"This assumption has proven wrong over and over." It has never worked.

But more importantly such an approach is morally wrong.  

Why is our country supporting such a war? We the American people do not support the bombing of civilians even if our leaders do. We did not support the bombing of innocents in Afghanistan, we protested the bombing of civilians in Iraq, we decried the bombing of civilians in Lebanon and we will protest this most recent outrage.

The Heroes We Wish They Were: Obama, Warren, and Homophobia

I haven't been happy with all of Obama's cabinet picks but this week I was basking in the afterglow of having finally finished his first memoir, Dreams From My Father, and I was full of hope for our new president. He is an impressive writer and speaker, and his book is full of inspirational and reflective prose. He is brilliant, insightful, well-educated, and progressive on many issues. He may be the smartest president we have ever had and he certainly appears to be the most loving and peaceful leader we have had in a very long time. I was so busy patting myself on the back for campaigning for this remarkable man, I never saw Rick Warren coming.

Like many of his supporters, I am still reeling from Obama's decision to have an explicitly anti-gay pastor perform the invocation at his inauguration. 

Mr Obama, how did this happen?

I like the idea of a "team of rivals."  As a mixed person, I understand his desire to bring people together across difference. As a scholar, artist, and activist who has devoted my life and my career to teaching people to respect one another and to see shared humanity where  in the past they have only seen difference, I can well appreciate the challenges involved in trying to bring people of dissimilar views into dialogue. But I don't think hate is something we can agree to disagree on. 

Rick Warren has spoken out openly against gay marriage. Nothing spectacular about that. Everyone seems to be jumping on the anti-gay marriage bandwagon these days, but Warren actually compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest. That constitutes more than a mere difference of opinion. It is bigotry. 

I think we need to draw a line when it comes to bigoted language. Why would Obama want such a person to represent him? I thought his message was all about hope and love and peace?

If Bush picked such a pastor gay people would not be up in arms about it. But it breaks our hearts when the candidate we thought was running on a platform of social justice decides to align himself with a person who speaks in dehumanizing ways about gay people.

Of course our sense of betrayal is bigger than Obama. It has to do with the expectations we tend to have for the rare political leader who seems to be ahead of his or her times. We think if a leader is enlightened on one issue then she ought to be enlightened on all the important issues. It shocks our sensibilities when we discover that they sympathize with oppressors of any kind. It eats away at our hope and adds to our mounting despair when we must consider the possibility that despite our patience, our struggle, and our suffering, we still cannot count on even the most forward-thinking of our leaders to stand up on our behalf, to cry injustice, to protect us from the hate-mongers as part of their larger campaigns to fight injustice.

We want Obama to be our King, our Kennedy, our Gandhi,.. our hero perhaps. We want him to fight for us, to recognize our rights, to include us finally in the panoply of humanity. Do we want too much?

After all, Gandhi was not the hero we thought he was when it came to women. He fought for the rights of men, not of humans. He treated his male servants better than he treated his wife and other women in his household. He argued in his autobiography that Hindu women were  made for serving men, that they had no objections to devoting their lives to the desires and care of men. He did not include women in his arguments for the rights of workers. His work against injustice did not include the injustices suffered by women.

Such revelations disappoint us when we discover them because great people like Gandhi, like King, like Obama perhaps, represent to us the existence, how ever rare, of leaders who can see beyond their times, men or women who are always somehow on the right side of history, who manage to choose always what is right over what is popular or expedient.

When Loving vs. Virginia was decided by the Supreme Court in 1967, 70% of the population of the United States were opposed to the legalization of interracial marriage (20% still do) but legalizing it was the right thing to do. In 1863, when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation the vast majority of the US population was opposed to freeing the slaves but it was the right thing to do.  In the 19th century when numerous women were granted the right to own property for the first time, it was done by judges in courts all over the country while the majority of US voters (suffrage was limited to men) were opposed to an expansion of rights for women. It was not popular but it was the right thing to do.

It is just a matter of time before gay Americans are granted all the same rights of citizenship that non-gay Americans currently enjoy. Heterosexuals engage in sex acts and romantic alliances that are currently more popular than queer relationships  but that doesn't make them more right. 

Homophobia is not right and history will redeem us.  But in the mean time, it is disappointing in the extreme that the man we elected to be our president does not yet recognize our rights. It is unfortunate  to discover that he fights bigotry in all its other forms but supports bigotry when it is aimed at gays and lesbians.

Gay and Lesbian Americans do not simply have a different view than homophobes. We do not, as Obama, has recommended, need to "agree to disagree" with anti-gay activists like Warren. Gay people and anti-gay people do not have a difference of opinion. They have a difference of power. The oppressed never just disagree with their oppressors. They are victimized by their oppressor's views.  And we know that Frederick Douglas was right when he proclaimed so many years ago that, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." We are demanding an end to heterosexist oppression.

Those who claim to fight for justice cannot draw the line at gay rights, claiming to support the rights of workers, poor people, women, people of color, the disabled,  old people, and immigrants, but still refusing to fight for the rights of queers. As King put it, "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Mr Obama, as MY president, I hope you realize this sooner rather than later.