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.

where ive been

hey there

you may have wondered why i havent been posting as frequently lately. well, as i had stated before i was cocooning.

and in the interim i thought you might want to be alerted to some things going on in our lil world.

like:

#i have been guest blogging at flip flopping joy for the past week.  and will be doing so for at least another week or so.  so if you want to check out the posts…

messy but necessary

1. one of the things i have learned in community building is that communities are not monolithic.  now this may seem to be an obvious point.  but one of the principles of my community work has been that we must follow the leadership of the oppressed marginalized excluded.

and in theory.  on paper.  on screen.  that looks really ethical.

in practice.  on the ground.  off line.  these clear lines get much messier.

some posts about the iranian protests

non-violence, palestine, and land

after years of thought and work, i have stopped referring to myself as non-violent.  non-violence to me is a series of tactics that one uses in order to achieve a more just world.  non-violence is a tactic.  not a goal.  in the non-violent org i used to work for (the same one that joy worked for in palestine) we used to joke: non-violence is the answer.  non-violence is the answer.  non-violence is the answer.  now what was the question?

fluency and coalition

1. We as a society give so much more credit to a white person who is fluent in a third world or people of color language, cultural style and lifestyle than we give to a person of color or third world person who learns intimately a white person’s language and cultural style.

For the white person who masters the others language he or she is made into a ‘master’ of that language and culture. And of Language and Culture in general.

In a person of color such parallel mastery of white folks language or another poc or third world communities language is considered to be ‘par for the course’. In other words it is to be expected of a poc with any ambition to be able to mimic the language and cultural norms of white folks. I am not sure why this is exactly.

i am also also blogging at raven’s eye.  and have altered some what the format of the blog.  you can check it out here.

also i just posted an article here at vegans of color:

survival foods

random stories

1. there is so much to do in this world.  and these days i feel so small about it all.  and so i have to slow down and deal with what life brings me.  piece by piece.  day by day. it is cliched but it works.

2.  the raven eye blog will be up soon.  i had to change hosts and shit.  get used to the time difference between here and there.  business hours are a bitch.

3. in the mean time i have been reading blogs galore.  oh my god.  woc and tpoc y’all are amazing.  there are all these beautiful blogging experiments out there.   exquisite writing.  art experiments.

i am especially digging:

isolation, communities, and international womens day

1.  i am really excited about the fact that folks are interested in this lil blog dream.  i had kinda thought that no one be interested.  and people would be annoyed that i asked them in the first place.  and i put it out there because i had this dream and then another one and another one and it became obvious that the universe was not going  to let me get a good night sleep until i did.

2. i am hoping to have it up and basically running for international women’s day: march 8th.  but i may not reach that deadline.  there is alot going on in my world right now and i dont want to half-ass any of the projects i am working on.  including the whole being a mother-thing that i do.

3.  this morning i woke up with mary j blige’s version of ‘im going down’ running through my head…

it all started with survival

it kind of all started when the progressive organization i was working with, christian peacemaker teams told me that i could no longer work with them full time because i was going to be a mother.  that if i did work with them part time my healthcare and other benefits would be dropped.

i started to miscarry a couple of days later.

a couple of weeks after that i put in my resignation.

i realized that the reason that i was not of high value as a global activist worker when i chose to become a mother was because in the communities in which we worked, the mothers, especially the mothers of young children were not considered to be very important by global activists.

even though  in that organization, we had claimed to solidarity organizing, stand with the oppressed, and accompaniment of communities under the threat of violence, we focused primarily on the work and leadership of men in the community.  now, most of the local men with whom we worked were fathers of multiple children, often young children.  we barely looked at the leadership of women in the community, not to mention mothers, not to mention mothers of young children.  the assumption was that those mothers would be too busy to deal with issues ‘outside of the home’.  as if the war zone was in the streets, didnt cross the threshold, as if ‘womens work’, the work of caretaking, sustaining lives and community, were less threatened by violence and war than ‘mens work’ and mens lives.

sympathy and suffering

1. i found this article via no snow here about susan sontag…and the quote that no snow here highlighted i love so much that i am posting it:

“So far as we feel sympathy,” Sontag writes, “we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence. To that extent, it can be (for all our good intentions) an impertinent–if not an inappropriate–response. To set aside the sympathy we extend to others beset by war and murderous politics for a consideration of how our privileges are located on the same map as their suffering, and may – in ways that we prefer not to imagine–be linked to their suffering, as the wealth of some may imply the destitution of others, is a task for which the painful, stirring images supply only the initial spark.”

2. for the past week i have been trying to get my head together.  in this new country.  trying to find my place inside this crazy adrenaline-filled city named cairo.  i have a whole new dialect of arabic to learn.  and there are some significant differences between palestinian arabic and egyptian.  enough differences that it is intimidating and my ear is just beginning to turn toward the language rather than away from it.  arabic is a funny language…there are so many colloquial dialects between countries and within countries.  and then there is modern standard arabic which is a very different form of arabic that is used among academics, journalists, and in writing…speaking my lil palestinian arabic makes me feel like a country bumpkin in comparison to all these big city cairene speakers…eh da?

3. i have been re-reading ted kooser’s the poetry home repair manual and in it he quotes sven birkerts who says:

reading…is not simply an inscribing of the author’s personal subjectivity upon a reader’ receptivity.  rather, it is the collaborative bringing forth of an entire world, a world complete with a meaning structure.  for hearing completes itself in listening, and listening happens only where there is some subjective basis for recognition.  the work is not merely the bridge between author and reader; it is an enabling entity.  the text is a pretext…the writer needs the idea of audition–of readers–in order to begin the creative process that gets him beyond the immediate, daily perception of things.  in this one sense, the writer does not bring forth the work so much as the work, the idea of it, brings the writer to imaginative readiness.

first days in cairo

1. we arrived saturday night.  as we were riding in the taxi to the hotel, aza was getting cranky and so i said to her: welcome to africa.  and she quieted down relaxed her mouth and opened her eyes wider to take in the nightscape of cars zooming passed.

2.

saw this on aljazeera yesterday

3.  cairo is busy full of people ancient egypt kitsch, buildings that are never finished being built.  dusty. car horns and construction tools.  warm weather.  i had missed the third world badly.  the elegant chaos.  the burgeoning

4.  we are staying with friends with whom we hung out in jerusalem.  they are working with east african refugees in cairo.  their apartment is cute.  reminds me of my mothers interior decorating in the 80s.  stylish, afro-centric, colorful.   perhaps i can convince my mother to visit egypt.

5.

saw this on aljazeera today…

6.  i am learning how to negotiate a stroller through crazy traffic, sidewalks that glide into no sidewalks.  i find myself directing traffic with one hand while guiding the stroller…

7. watched mtv arabia last night.  i think that mtv arabia thinks that all hip hop songs should have a minimum amount of deleted words and if there arent enough ‘bad words’ in the song to be deleted they should just start deleting random words.  words in hip hop songs that were deleted last night: feather, star, bring it…

8.  even though i wasnt allowed into israel/palestine, i am really excited about the future.  although i miss the west bank.  next time i go to palestine, fuck israel, i will go on a boat to gaza.  `

9. its the lunar new year!  the annular solar eclipse!  new moon in aquarius! last year was a roller coaster.  crazy rat.

tracing out invisible maps

last night we hung out with my brother and his girlfriend and watched a stoner movie: pineapple express.  aza was asleep upstairs.  the movie was decent, a comedic noir.  in the middle of the movie we somehow got on the topic of my lil family’s impending trip to palestine.  and the fact that the border guards kinda dont trust me.  we ended up stopping the movie and i found myself drawing invisible maps of the middle east on my mother’s leather stool explaining the nakba, the 1967 war, the occupation.

it was post-midnight, we were a couple of drinks in, and his girlfriend keeps asking me questions.  so i keep tracing out a history of genocide and survival into the air.

when i would return from palestine on break, those of us in the organization with which i worked, were expected to to speak to groups of people, to share our experiences with folks in the states.  the organization encouraged us to speak infront of middle class liberal churches who saw us as a ‘voice for the voiceless’ and you know, we as americans have a ‘louder’ voice than the palestinians with whom we worked so we should use that voice to explain the situation in palestine.

i hated doing this.  resisted doing this.  the last thing i needed to do was use my privileged voice to be the palestine ‘expert’ simply because i had spent a smidgen of time in the region.

what i did was spent alot of time hanging out with my friends and my especially my brother’s friends who congregate at our house.  the boys and girls i had grown up with.  kids who had a high school education (if not the diploma), kids who worked shit jobs and hustled in rag tag cars.  i am like the big sister who made it out of our suburban neighborhood.

i really like talking to these kids.  they understand that the media doesnt tell the truth.  that you cant just stay neutral in a fight.  that the us government is shady.  i tell them: people think its muslims vs jews, but its not really, its just that palestinians have territory that israel wants.  so they are trying to get rid of the palestinian people.  and they nod their heads: yeah, thats real.

i tell them: its like living in the ghetto.  you hear someone got shot down the street.  you cant stay in your house all the time living in fear.  you got to get your kids ready for school.  you probably walk with them because you dont want them walking alone when the streets are hot.  so you keep living your life.  you got to go to work, buy groceries.  you probably dont have as much money as you need.  you probably have more family members living with you than you would like.  you dont think like, im living in the ghetto and its dangerous.  you think, what do i got to do today?  when the cops roll by you stay out of the way.  life is life is life.  thats what its like.

imagine me trying to explain this liberal church folks who think hip hop is too violent but really want to see peace in the middle east.

anyways, after his girlfriend exclaimed: hey i get why israel doesnt like you! and we all get another drink, we turn back on the movie and watch a couple of stoners kill a whole bunch of people.  we go to bed.  and i sleep better than i have in weeks.

baptism and funerals

lets jump in…

i guess i could feign surprise.  but i am not surprised.  this is what israel does.

i guess i could pretend to see both sides of the issue, and weigh them, but i dont see both sides.  i dont give a fuck about israeli justification for this shit. and fuck the arab governments as well.  you use palestine as an exclamation point in useless speeches and then sign off on palestinian genocide.

i am betting that the death toll will end up between 400-500 gazans.  they are still pulling bodies out of rubble.  and the hospitals are turning folks away because they are over run by the dead and the dying.

i dont want to look at it from the perspective of a mother today.  if you have a child you can understand why.  its easier to be a political scientist, a socio-economic analyst, a brain and not a soul.

the day after christmas we went to a sweet baptism of my nephew in a vintage americana barn.  the phrase that keeps reverberating in my head: we arent saved by what we do, we are saved because of what we do.  in other words: we are not saved by works alone, but we ask for gods salvation because of all of the things we have done in the past.

but i dont believe that one is saved by works or faith.  i dont believe that jesus has anything to do with this.  or this. or this.  if there is anything worth believing in it is the fact that gazans that palestinians that all those who have suffered still reach for life.

today anyone who believes in god has to admit that god is not as compassionate as many human beings.  if there is a god today we have to admit that he has become powerless and she has become barren.

what the fuck does it matter if when you die you will go to heaven or hell, when today is hell?  what the fuck will works or faith save you from?

one day i was watching a baptism, the next day funerals.

i am not a superhero.  it is difficult to be packing up my apartment to leave for palestine as i listen in the background to the news of israeli massacre of palestinians in gaza.  i have never been to gaza.  in the west bank, what happens in gaza i watch on al jazeera and the bbc just like everyone else.  it feels like another part of the world, even though it is less than a 100 miles away.

today i pray for the mothers in gaza.  and their children.