outside the system

and…one of my all time favorite posts on licensed midwifery.  not just because she uses my drawing for outlaw midwife in the post.  but because i have not really heard analysis on the canadian systems of health care and midwifery.

ok a couple of years ago i was in chiapas talking to this california midwife at the midwifery clinic in san cris.  and i was telling her how making midwifery more professional, licensed, certified would lead not be helpful to empowering women in birth.  and she told me i was wrong.  didnt know what i was talking about.  and i kept trying to tell her that in minneapolis where i gave birth and is one of the most midwifery friendly cities in the states, midwives are afraid of losing their insurance and so risk out a lot of their patients way too soon.

anyways.

Wanting to be respected and admired is only human. As midwifery strengthens its professional framework, this respect will naturally emerge. Midwifery needs strong, outspoken, autonomous women to articulate a vision of birth with dignity for all women. Unfortunately, such voices tend to belong to women who are “outside the system.” Once women are in a legalized system, they are silenced. They can be coerced to give unnecessary pharmaceuticals to women and babies (oxytocin, erythromicin, vitamin K) and they become good corporate citizens. The real respect and admiration that comes from knowing that you are true to yourself is missing. This can be a terrible price to pay for a piece of paper and a guaranteed pay cheque.

…

Since women can give birth by themselves, the right of each woman to choose where, when and with whom she gives birth is the fundamental principle on which any healthy midwifery model is built. Thwarting the growth of the midwifery movement by making it more and more difficult for new midwives to get training and to launch their practices is ridiculous. Instead of constantly knocking the woman off the ladder on the rung below us, we need to reach down and give her a hand up. Training of the new generation is one of the strong suits of the medical profession and midwives would be wise to emulate that desire to multiply colleagues. The future of midwifery rests in the young women who are now working as doulas. This educated group of women is emerging as the midwives of tomorrow and they need all the support and nurturing that practicing midwives can give them so they can be ready to take up the challenge. When midwives focus their time and energy on training the next generation and quit trying to join the dinosaurs that are on their way to extinction, we will find power, respect and joy in our work.

conflict and love

here’s the problem.  in a lot of chosen families/liberatory communities. we dont have a way of dealing with conflict.  we just have to assume that we all agree.  and we dont.  i dont.  i wont.  i am standing at a slightly different angle.  i have a different perspective.  especially when we come from different cultures and communicating styles.

but.  communities go in flames often after the honey moon period.  because any conflict doesn’t feel safe.  we haven’t agreed on ways to disagree.

so people shut the fuck up.

i was talking to a friend and she reminded me that there are communities that have been doing what we dream of doing.  supporting each other.  re creating the world.  loving each other.  for centuries.   those communities dont outlive their purpose.

maybe it is so easy for us to leave a community that there is little will to stay and struggle.

maybe the staying and struggling seem so impossible because we havent agreed upon how we will talk to each other.  how we will argue.  how we will make decisions.

i am thinking about bfp’s new commenting policy. what i love about it is that it exists.  it tells us how we are to argue with one another.  hash things out.  critique another’s words.  with respect and love.

i still believe in radical love.  probably more now than ever.  this summer i focused on loving myself, my body, my past, my future.  and i realized to love myself means that i must be vulnerable to myself.  that if i am to be whole.  i must first gather the discarded and forgotten parts of myself.  my stories.  my visions.  my people.

we need to assume that we are going to disagree.  passionately.  and we must decide what is a good way to do so.  that i what i learned.  that all the parts of myself dont agree with each other.  i live with contradictory visions and conflicting folks.

my critique of single mamis…and encuentros…

i am having a lot of issues around access, communication,
expectations, and trans national community building.  so i want to
bring those to the table.

i have been really dealing with this for the past couple of months.
but honestly felt insecure about bringing these to the table.

ok so a few weeks ago i was in this conversation by email.  and i was kind of taken a back by the responses in this email.  mainly because i was speaking about issues i was having accessing communication technology and folks in the us.  you know how so much of our media work is us centered, hell us exclusive, and that marginalizes and excludes me.  since i dont live in the us.  pretty simple right.

the responses were… um… special.  one, silence.  two, hesitation.  three, defensiveness.

then i kind of just dropped the convo because the convo itself was marginalizing and excluding me.  and it was getting pretty exhausting. or more accurately i was having a hard time convincing myself to take the whole convo seriously.  i think it just came to a point.  the point when i was told that i was critical of single mamis.  that i just laughed.  and laughed.  and was like ok.  and trying to think of what to say that wasnt snarky, lol lol, or otherwise pushing up the dada absurdity of the conversation.  like.  yeah, i hate single mamis.  i hate my mother.  i hate all mothers.  whatever.

but the thing about this convo.  is that it was such a classic well intentioned pile on.  like there was one of me.  and then other folks responding to me.  supporting each others vision of what i had said.  misquoting me and then repeating the misquotation.  and me responding to the folk in increasingly long emails- because increasingly more people are coming into the convo each their slightly dift perspective on what is ‘going on’.  and me, trying to explain, why, and how, they have misconstrued my vision through their own lenses.

and in the moment in that convo. it all seems so logical.  that this is the way the convo happens.  no matter how absurd it gets.

resistance behind bars

the thing is that i write about people and their experiences even though i have not experienced that myself.

i am thinking about this after reading vikki law’s book on prison women’s resistance.

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women

it is an incredible book.  i had to put it down several times because i was crying.  the stories in there speak to a word that i have just learned to re posses.  bravery.  and courage.  and solidarity.

but also it speaks to me of what an amazing gift it is to be able to organize, build community, speak up for ourselves and our loved ones.  whenever whereever we are able to do this is a celebration of our being ness.

vikki writes with such grace about women prisoners.

i am thinking about this because honestly i spend a lot of time writing about my experiences with people who are not me.  frankly i think that this is what story telling is.  the very human act of telling stories about people.  i mean i dont want to tell stories where i am the only character.  i get so deathly bored of myself.

so the question is not if we should write stories about other people. but how do we do so.

and that is what i love about vikki’s book.  not just the stories that she tells.  but how she tells them.  i got to communicate with her a bit as she was writing the book.  and i loved hearing about her process.

vikki’s book is not only a book about the resistance of women’s prisoners.  it is also a model for how we tell stories.  and how she in the writing of this book and for years before encourages other women, mainly imprisoned women but not only, to write their stories.

please pick this book up.  these are stories that so many of us need to hear.

also she has a great resource catalogue in the back of the book for how to work in solidarity with women prisoners.

balcony culture and community art

i invite all of you who read this blog to particiate in this lil piece of community art.  by sending me pics and photos.  and words.  and whatever you want to digitally.  and i will print them out and incorporate them into this balconey art.

so i have been thinking a lot about community, art, and borders for the past few months.

one of the things that i have realized is that making art seems to stress me the fuck out.  i get knotted up about the art piece being good enough.  or whatever.  so i started sketching in an art journal.  just trying to loosen up.  and searching for my vision of the world.  i started taking photographs of the world around me.  loving the digital camera that lets me just snap. snap. snap. and then run home and see what i saw.

and these practices definitely helped.  to open myself to my own vision.  but the notebook started to feel too small and confining.  and i love taking pictures.  but i still wasnt feeling myself as free.  i was still caught up on perfectionism and meaning.

so habibi bought this 6 foot piece of canvass and i have been painting for the past couple of days.

at the same time in talking to lex about porch culture in the south and stoop culture in the north and i was saying: man, i miss having a porch.  and then i said.  oh but we have balconeys here in cairo.  and realizing that there is a very definite balconey culture here because everyone lives in an apt.  and even cheap apts have at least one balconey.  and that i want to make our balconeys a site for urban street art and contributing to a culture of balconeys in abdeen, cairo, egypt. i also wanted to do an art project with aza.  and so she will be painting and drawing

so i am painting this latest piece and i when it is completed.  i will hang it on our balconey.

and i want to invite all of you who read this blog to particiate in this lil piece of community art.  by sending me pics and photos.  and words.  and whatever you want to digitally.  and i will print them out and incorporate them into this balconey art.

send it to me at primitivedragonfly at yahoo dot com or leave a link in the comment section…

as to the type of art i am looking for.  i am pretty open about it.  take a walk through your neighborhood and take pictures or sketches.  a poem.  questions.  a story that you want to share.  photos of you or your family friends community.  art.  posters.  your ordinary heroes/heroines.  a piece of art/painting/writing created by someone else that you want to bring forth.  the possibilities are endless.

i am really excited that this piece will:

1. contribute to the visual community of the neighborhood

2. mean that aza gets to paint

3. will act as a bridge between my online communities and my offline communities

4. will bring forth a more complex picture of middle east africa for those who do not live here and a more complex picture of europe and the americas for those who do not live there. and show the interconnections between these multiple sites of expression and communication

5. find another way to break through the censorship, imprisonment, and torture of bloggers in egypt

shackling of women during birth in prisons

h/t radical doula

from rh reality check

check out this article on giving birth in shackles.

Last month, a former Washington inmate sued the state for shackling during her birthing process and high-risk pregnancy, treatment that included a leg iron and a metal chain across her stomach.

Also last month, former inmates of Cook County jail filed a federal lawsuit in Illinois challenging the facility’s shackling practice. Illinois was the first state to have legislation that prohibited shackling; it remains one of four states that make shackling explicitly illegal.

“I had no idea women were treated like that anywhere,” said Tina Reynolds, who was shackled during labor and the birth of her son fifteen years ago.

“Shackling is a brutal and inherently unjust practice, so blatantly draconian,” said Malika Saada Saar, executive director of The Rebecca Project (and contributor to RH Reality Check).

“The problem is that policies for incarcerated men are extended to women without adapting to distinct circumstances,” Saada Saar added.

i am really glad to hear that the activists around this issue are framing it as a human rights violation.  that this is cruel and unusual punishment.  and that it is torture.

because that is what it is.  it is a practices that causes physical and psychological trauma to the mother as well as child.  someone in the article described it as ‘draconian’ and i kept imagining these medieval torture chambers.

what i have a hard time imagining is the justification for this practice.  really?  so that the woman doesnt escape incarceration.  something tells me that this was said by someone who has not gotten to experience the glorious miracle of labor.  ummm….in the middle of labor is the woman really going to have the energy to break out of prison?

Leaders in the anti-shackling movement credit the campaign’s momentum to centering the experiences of women who were shackled. Their stories are featured at press conferences, in letters, in briefs, and other campaign vehicles. Many are collected through Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH), an association of formerly incarcerated women founded by Reynolds.

“It may be possible to resist changes (to the practice of shackling), but when you’re confronted with the reality of women who’ve had to endure this, that’s a hard position to maintain,” said Rhoad.

i was thinking earlier that we dont center the voices and experiences of the marginalized simply because it makes us look good.  no, we (as community builders) do so not only because it is ethical but also because it is effective.

when it aint a fair trade

just a thought on this conversation over at vegans of color:

…if you are vegan because you reject animal exploitation this wouldn’t even be an argument because no craving would stand in the way of your moral obligations as a compassionate person .

veganism is the practical expression of anti speciesism. and more specifically against the enslavement or murder of innocent sentient beings. and for this reason vegans boycott animal products, including leather and fur. then are also as stringently to boycott products made by human slave labor. since human beings are sentient beings too. and what if we cannot boycott products made by slave labor. (for instance i have no idea how i would buy clothes or most things that were not made by slave labor here in egypt…there is not much ‘fair trade’ market here) and thus i still wear and use products made from the enslavement and murder of human beings…does this mean that i cannot call myself vegan according to this standards set by certain members of this convo at vegans of color blog?
i am not asking that as a tongue in cheek question. i seriously want to know. to what extent are we truly dedicated vegans? to what extent are we against the enslavement and murder of the innocent?
or do we figure hey i am really against the enslavement of human beings so i try my best to not purchase slave products…but you know simply because where i am in my life and within the structural realities of the socio-economic system sometimes i do have to buy slave labor products. and it sucks. and i do it.
i mean if you are going to call yourself vegan…then you need to walk the talk.

the list

from Inanities

Today is Mubarak’s 81^st birthday. To mark this, and to mark the fact that he’s been in power for 28 years – 1/3^rd of his lifetime – here’s a list of 28 of the wonderful things which have happened under his beneficent and wise reign rule.

The list

1. Seventy killed in the Moqattam Hill rockslide in 1993.
2. 37% of Egypt’s urban population live in informal housing
3. Three years imprisonment for Kareem Amer
4. Four years imprisonment for Ayman Nour
5. A five-year battle by Bahais for the right not to have to lie about their faith.
6. April 6th 2008: the death of three people in Mahalla killed by the police has not been investigated.
7. 85% of rural female household heads are illiterate
8. 8.7% unemployment rate
9. Laila Haddad and her two kids detained in Cairo Airport for around 30 hours. Because Laila is Palestinian
10. Egypt has the highest prevalence of Hepatitis C in the world (roughly 11% of the population)
11. 12 – 15 million people live in slum housing
12. 45% of Egypt’s female population over 15 can not read
13. $50 billion in US aid received since 1979
14. 60% of steel market share owned by Ahmed Ezz with government support.
15. Between 16,000 – 20,000 people in administrative detention
16. Seventeen people die after being tortured in 2005 (The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights www.eohr.org)
17. Activists detained for 45 days after 2006 peaceful protests against constitutional amendments.
18. A 19th century palace, house of the upper house of parliament catches fire on August 18th 2008. A month later on September 27th, a downtown theatre catches fire, the same month as the Beni Suef theatre fire which killed 45 people in 2005.
19. February 20th 2002: 370 die in train blaze.
20. 20% of population below poverty line
21. Twenty-two people convicted in the widely-criticised Mahalla trial. Sentenced to between 3 and 5 years imprisonment.
22. Thirty Sudanese asylum-seekers and refugees killed when police violently break up the Mostafa Mahmoud sit-in.
23. 35% illiteracy rates
24. 12,000 people live in graveyards in Egypt
25. 2,000,000 cars on the streets of Cairo. 60% over ten years old.
26. Seventy-nine cars in Mubarak’s flotilla
27. Twenty eight years of emergency rule.

for little light

i think.  i think we are building a philosophy of radical love.  it is here. it is there. it is in and out.

we are writing a new bible of love and war.

how could i have forgotten this for a second.  of course of course i have read this.

it is this:

Here’s what they’re on about: they live in a world where we are monsters. They live in a world that trembles daily, because we snake our faultlines through its foundations and each time we move more crumbles and falls over the yawning edge of the flattened sea. In their world, once near us, their children can be lost to them, and just seeing us represented fills them with the rage of people struck in the face and deprived of their birthrights.
That world needs to end, and we know it. That world will end, and they know it.

There’s a war on. Either we succeed, and their world ends; or they succeed, and ours does. Does it matter that we want them to go on living in our world, that our world has room for them to build cities and parks and futures? Not really. The very act of not getting to define everything for the rest of us is the end, for them. The fact that none of them would actually die, that their children would be fine and their blood unshed, is irrelevant. We can abhor and condemn violence and torture, and this too is an act of war. We can love them depthlessly as people and wish them no harm, but we cannot avoid the implications. If we are considered equals, their world is over. Our lives are the explosives that end it.

that’s it isnt it little light?  it is not just our lives but it is that we refuse to let them define us.  that is an act of war.  that is the rhetoric that matters to them.  and if they can’t define us they cant own us.  if they cant own us they cant control us.  and if they cant control us then they cant make us monstrous slaves in their system.  and if they dont have slaves to work for their benefit, then the whole system collapses.

accountability and war

Do you know the PROBLEMS you raise with that baby girl.

When you say that their is no concept BIG ENOUGH,no institution GREAT ENOUGH to sacrifice the well being of one person. That if it hurts ANYONE in anyway that it can not be accountable for . It should be STOPPED.

DO you know what people think of you when you say you are worthy of being that person.

Did you EARN it ? Did you earn the right to believe you could live the way you wanted and SAY OUT LOUD

What do you do when you point out that we don’t earn it.

1. I have read this post several times.  i couldnt take it in.  i couldnt understand why i couldnt take it in.

cognitive dissonance.

this statement goes against everything that i have ever been told in my life.

also, this statement is true.