between granite and rainbow

Earlier today, ICE detained an estimated 70 to 90 people at El Balazo restaurants around the Bay Area. For folks who need legal services, call the United Way hotline at (415) 808-4444, who will put folks in touch with immigration attorneys.

I’m participating in the Youth Media Blogathon today, organized around the topic of violence. I’ll share thoughts in two parts, paired with a few related upcoming events and actions:

1. Five years have passed now since the U.S. invaded Iraq. While it’s been a few years since I’ve actively been engaged in strategies to challenge the occupation, and militarism and recruitment more broadly, I’m headed into SF this morning to join a snake march through the financial district downtown.

I was 19 on March 19 — and 17 on September 11. I can clearly recall sitting in high school physics class, watching the breaking news via a classroom TV monitor usually reserved for midi-tracked science videos that teachers screened and taught as modules in isolation from current events. I also recall — the summer prior, I’d interned with Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s district office via a Chinese-American youth political leadership program — before 9/11, my high school peers and relatives didn’t have much of a clue why I’d chosen to be placed in her office, or that she repped our district, but that afterwards — when she took a lone stance against authorizing Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” as a response t0 9/11 — I gained notoriety reinforced in coming high school years when in civics class, I partnered up with the few other radical kids in economics and civics class in anti-capitalist fashion and formation for exercises like a mock development/planning project and State Assembly session.

Now, 9/11 and March 19 seem simultaneously distant and lasting, enduringly influential. Definitely a marker along my journey as someone engaged with how power is organized and in the task of social transformation. Now looking back, new, or reemerging, questions come to mind:

• How has the violence enacted by the U.S. military industrial complex (invasion and occupation of Iraq, aid to Israeli occupation of Palestine, and beyond) influenced my generation’s emotional, spiritual, creative, political lives? our capacity to negotiate the creative political work we need to do, interpersonally and structurally, from a place of collectivity, trust, and compassion, rather than out of fear, aggression, and domination?
• What have we learned about tactics and strategies, both from those before us and from this decade, and in the context of emerging and urgent questioning about the fact that so much of our movement work today exists in nonprofit formation? How has this impacted our collective power, resilience, and political imaginations?

2. It’s International Women’s Month. Compared to where I was at four or five years ago, I’m much less attached to the identity category of “woman”, and much more wary of the violence this identity category has and can enact, including for trans women and female-bodied folks who don’t ID as women, whether via exclusion and/or assumptive labeling. As I’ve grown individually and collectively with people and institutions and networks over the last few years while exploring and experiencing the relationships amongst patriarchy, a gender binary system, and heteronormativity, I’ve moved from a place where in the past I’d found it hard to imagine abolishing the gender binary (”if we don’t have the labels of “men” and “women”, how will we challenge, and ultimately, end patriarchy?”) — even while being able to imagine a world without prisons — to a place where I see abolishing the binary gender system as intimately and vitally connected with my work to abolish the prison industrial complex: the two work together to help maintain a social order organized around transphobia, heteronormativity, and patriarchy, particularly for people of color and our families and communities. It’s inspiring to say the least to have in recent past participated in forming the beginnings of vital new alliances amongst trans and gender non-conforming people and non-trans women of color in challenging the violences our networks and communities face (*see U.S. Women of Color Demand Our Human Rights and Transforming Justice).

My political positioning and strategic choices in challenging sites of violence have evolved over the last five to seven years, since 2001 and 2003, from involvement from a congressional district office doing casework for im/migrants and people in military detention and engaging in solidarity work opposing U.S. occupation abroad to a more local focus, partnering with folks outside of the state to challenge imprisonment — via a variety of strategies, including decarceration, i.e. reducing imprisonment; facilitating a shift in resources from prisons to support community-led formations; and fostering non-harmful, i.e. non-policing, non-imprisonment, responses to interpersonal violence, be it child sexual abuse and intimate partner and/or transphobic, homophobic, and racist or other hate violence. Whereas seven years ago, the summer prior to 9/11, while interning with Barbara Lee’s, I’d had correspondence with people locked up in military detention centers, I understood the role of the imprisonment industrial complex on different terms than I do today: that policing and imprisonment today are fundamental pillars in maintaining oppression, and that a long string of attempts to “reform” the U.S. criminal legal system has ultimately expanded the reach of imprisonment and its harms onto communities of color, and onto growing targets, particularly in a post 1996 IRA-IRA and 9/11 context, and as the movement to end imprisonment has forced proponents of prison expansion into a place where expansion proposals are beginning to take on identities of “gender responsive” and “community-based alternatives.”

*Upcoming: This Friday 3/21, several local anti-trans violence and allied orgs are calling us to gather at 6 pm at the 24th and Mission BART station, in remembrance of Ruby Ordenana and all others we’ve lost to anti-trans violence, discrimination, and abuse. We’ll be demanding that the SF Board of Supervisors and Gavin Newsom that they reject proposed cuts to the Center for Special Problems (CSP) — which has provided mental health care for the trans community for decades — with and instead increase funding for programs like CSP that support the trans community.

Also, upcoming on Tuesday 4/1, All of Us or None and Critical Resistance are calling us to gather and speak out to ban the box from city jobs from 4 to 6 pm in front of the Oakland City Hall at the Frank Ogawa Plaza at 14th and Broadway. While Mayor Ron Dellums promised to remove the question about past convictions from apps for city jobs, the city has yet to implement such policy.

pray ting ai fly is screening next weekend in Santa Cruz:

the UCSC Women of Color in Conflict and Collaboration Research Cluster is excited to present:

The 14th Annual Women of Color Film and Video Festival

bodies in flight: migration and transit

a space for films, videos, spoken word, music, dialogue, and activist vision

Friday March 14th and Saturday March 15th
@ the Kresge College Town Hall

Join us as we bring together cultural productions by U.S.-based women of color and women internationally that speak to issues of migration, dislocation, and displacement. Featured filmmakers include: Sonali Gulati, Jolie Harris, Nanobah Becker, Claudia Mercado, Dee Rees, yaya raiz, Dolissa Medina, monica enriquez-enriquez, Vanessa Huang, Nao Bustamante, Elissa Moon, Emiliana Reynoso, Veronica Majano, Osa Hidalgo de la Riva and Mujeres y Cultura Subterranea from Mexico City. Plus one program curated by the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project based in San Francisco.

with music by: Erica Nalani and from La Havana, Cuba, Las Krudas Cubensi a Hip Hop and Spoken Word three women collective. Friday March 14th at the Hide Gallery 9pm.

spoken word by: UCSC spoken word collectives SIN and FLOW, Oakland youth spoken word troupe IGO, and Bay Area performance artist Aimee Suzara. MCs Angela Carroll, Tannia Esparza, Miki Foster and Laila Shereen Sakr. Saturday March 15th at 6pm.

I’m sitting in my friend J’s bedroom in an ex-squatted house project in Mitte. Looking out the window, currently decorated by raindrops, are the other wings of the house. J’s floor and the floor above in this wing are a frauen/lesben/trans project (there are many such self-organized spaces and projects in general here). The two floors below are inhabited by Polish folks. The three floors in this wing share a doorbell, which visitors ring once, twice, three, or four times to let folks know who’s being called. In other wings include a Latina project and a gay project.

This is one of the projects in the house struggle where residents negotiated contracts with returning owners and obtained rent control for 10 years out (there should be five years remaining). One of the other house projects J is connected with is currently going through more interactions with the house managers…

J, her housemate C, and I just shared breakfast in the kitchen, talking more about politics within the radical/left scene, and about anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in particular here. How most folks who are anti-Zionist here are in fact anti-Semitic — something that’s hard for those of us from the U.S. to grasp (while riding the U-ban last night on the way to another house project/bar, J explained she didn’t sit down because the guy where she’d been thinking to sit was a neo-Nazi). I ask them if they think these will ever be able to be separated here in Germany, and they respond in the negative. When I ask J if there are Palestinians in the radical/left scene, she explains that most of these discourses are taking place amongst non-Jewish and non-Arab white folks; that there is an anti-Zionist Palestinian and Arab community, or scene, but disconnected from the radical/left scene, and small. Sounds like Friday there will be an anti-Fascist demonstration, that we may be going to, in commemoration of Kristallnacht.

Like my housing situation at home in Oakland, J lives with five other people. When I first arrived in town yesterday afternoon, and after we got home, ate, I took a two hour nap here in this room. My dreams were vivid and very much present here in Berlin. There was a distinct sense of intentional, collective living, in these WGs (”living communities”). On the one hand, there are similarities. My block/corner in Oakland is also about building community, at least overall, with the other “wings” or units. We invite one another over to eat, we garden together, we share space in the patio and make music. We share events and projects.

But on the spectrum of intentional/unintentional, we are definitely not as intentional. This feels more common here: the self-organized, collective living, not only within a house project or unit, but across projects and units in the same buildings and blocks. At least in my networks in the Bay; there’s more of a similar feeling and practices amongst people I’m connected to in Providence.

It’s remarkable the difference in organizing within and outside of the nonprofit industrial complex. Most of the queer women and trans only spaces I participate in back home operate within nonprofit/institutional support and structure, outside of social networks and my gender/queer writing group. Here, as I alluded to earlier, claiming women/lesben/trans spaces is the norm within the radical/left scene. Another difference is the QTPOC specific resources and support I’ve been able to tap into in the Bay Area; here, there are few if any women/lesben/trans people of color specific projects or spaces (J tells me a queer Arab event she went to the other day was the first time she was in a space that was majority POC).

More reflection to come; I’m off to send some poems to an upcoming KSW Press chapbook.

I should be drafting a concept proposal for a film by a friend I’m going to help edit, but wanted to take the time to post this open call, which I recently received via the listserv for the Queer Asian Pacific-Islander Coalition of New England. East coast-based photographer Emmanuela de León is looking to increase documentation of the Asian and Pacific Islander community in their ongoing project, “Claiming Masculinity: Narratives from Bodies of Difference,” which has evolved from their work photographing “nontraditionally maculine individuals”: masculine-identified folks along the spectrum of “butch, stud, AG, boi, transperson, gender queer, gender freak, or other who identifies as primarily masculine.”

Projects like this are so vital, especially in light of the last weeks’ controversy over trans exclusion from ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act). As Donna Rose writes in a public statement announcing her resignation from the Human Rights Campaign for its stance on ENDA,

Transgender is not simply the ‘T’ in GLBT. It is people who, for one reason or another, may not express their gender in ways that conform to traditional gender norms or expectations. That covers everyone from transsexuals, to queer youth, to feminine acting men, to masculine appearing women. It is a broad label that cannot be confined to a specific silo of people. It is anyone who chooses to live authentically…In a very real way, the T is anyone who expresses themselves differently. To some it is about gender. To me, it is about freedom.

For some of us, following our instincts to express ourselves freely in a world where individuals and structures police a gender binary can be just that: freeing. But for many others of us, not passing can have severe consequences — especially if we’re of color, have disabilities, are queer, are poor or working-class — that begin from policing by peers and employers and lead to policing at the hands of the state.

I’m proud to have been part of a process over the last year and a half building with people here in the Bay Area and across the country towards the first-ever convening of the LGBTSTQ community to begin developing a national strategy to end the criminalization and imprisonment of transgender and gender non-conforming communities: Transforming Justice. We’re bringing together a range of people and organizations involved in the LGBTSTQ justice , anti-prison, prisoner rights, anti-violence movements. While the gathering is less than three days away (October 13-14), it’s still open to any LGBTSTQ person who’s experienced poverty, policing, and imprisonment. We’re also encouraging allies to participate by volunteering to support the weekend, and join us Saturday night to celebrate and raise funds for follow-up post-this weekend, from 8-11:30 pm at the Y. Flunder Community Center at 30 Harriet Street at Howard in SOMA.

From an SRLP member:

THEY’RE OUT! No charges being pressed  Reggie and Ileana have just been released from police custody!  The DA declined prosecution, which means that no charges are being pressed. They are free and clear, and are now getting the support they need from their community - in person.

We are all thrilled by this result, the only truly just outcome after a long night and day of injustice.  Thank you to everyone who has helped out and expressed support, including all of the allied organizations, fellow activists, community members and councilpeople  who stepped up to support us.

Although they have thankfully been released, our work around this incident is not finished.  Now it is time to hold the police accountable for the unnecessary force and community targeting that  occurred last night, and work so that no more incidents like this happen again to our community.  We will keep you all posted as to our next steps and ways to plug in.

From Critical Resistance New York:

Reggie Gossett and Ileana Mendez-Peñate were arrested earlier tonight at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project Fundraiser Afterparty.

There are two things you can do to support Ily & Reggie and show the cops that we won’t stand by silently when they attack us.

1) Starting at 8 in the morning (Thursday), call the District Attorney’s office (212.335.9000), ask for the early complaint assessment bureau, and ask that all charges against Reggie & Ily be dropped (obstruction of governmental administration, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct).

2) Show up 9:30a (Thursday) to the arraignment court room at 100 Centre St (Directions: No. 4 or 5 train to Brooklyn Bridge Station; No. 6 train, N, R or C train to Canal Street; No. 1 train to Franklin Street; M1, M6 and M15 bus lines are nearby. 100 Centre Street is one block north of Worth Street, three blocks south of Canal Street.)

More info:

At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project’s after-party following its fifth anniversary celebration last night, two members of the community were violently arrested and others were pepper sprayed by police without warning or cause. The two folks who were arrested remain in police custody and should be arraigned tomorrow. (More details of the incident can be found below in the press release.)

We ask that people show up tomorrow, Thursday, starting at 9:30am and continuing throughout the day to call for the immediate release of and the dropping of charges against the people who were arrested. The arraignment court rooms are at 100 Centre St (Directions: No. 4 or 5 train to Brooklyn Bridge Station; No. 6 train, N, R or C train to Canal Street; No. 1 train to Franklin Street; M1, M6 and M15 bus lines are nearby. 100 Centre Street is one block north of Worth Street, three blocks south of Canal Street.) Ask for directions to the arraignment rooms at the info desk when you enter.

For more information or to receive updates via email or text message, comment on Jack’s blog (http://www.angrybrownbutch.com), who should be at court and have email access throughout the day.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Police Brutality Strikes Fifth Anniversary of Sylvia Rivera Law Project

NEW YORK - On the night of Wednesday, September 26, officers from the 9th Precinct of the New York Police Department attacked without provocation members of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and of its community. Two of our community members were violently arrested, and others were pepper sprayed in the face without warning or cause.

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (www.srlp.org) is an organization that works on behalf of low-income people of color who are transgender, gender non-conforming, or intersex, providing free legal services and advocacy among many other initiatives. On Wednesday night, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project was celebrating its fifth anniversary with a celebration and fundraising event at a bar in the East Village.

A group of our community members, consisting largely of queer and transgender people of color, witnessed two officers attempting to detain a young Black man outside of the bar. Several of our community members asked the officers why they were making the arrest and using excessive force. Despite the fact that our community was on the sidewalk, gathered peacefully and not obstructing foot traffic, the NYPD chose to forcefully grab two people and arrested them. Without warning, an officer then sprayed pepper spray across the group in a wide arc, temporarily blinding many and causing vomiting and intense pain.

“This is the sort of all-too-common police violence and overreaction towards people of color that happens all the time,” said Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. “It’s ironic that we were celebrating the work of an organization that specifically opposes state violence against marginalized communities, and we experienced a police attack at our celebration.”

“We are outraged, and demand that our community members be released and the police be held accountable for unnecessary use of excessive force and falsely arresting people,” Spade continued.

Damaris Reyes is executive director of GOLES, an organization working to preserve the Lower East Side. She commented, “I’m extremely concerned and disappointed by the 9th Precinct’s response to the situation and how it escalated into violence. This kind of aggressive behavior doesn’t do them any good in community-police relations.”

Supporters will be gathering at 100 Centre Street tomorrow, where the two community members will be arraigned. The community calls for charges to be dropped and to demand the immediate release of those arrested.

- END -

Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007, 7 - 9pm
Bunsen Burnt: KSW Press Reading & Chapbook Release
The Actors Center of San Francisco
180 Capp St. @17th St., 2nd floor
$10-20 sliding scale ($8-$20 for KSW members) Join us for an evening of literary readings and the launch of a new chapbook, Bunsen Burnt, from KSW Press. Featuring readings by Neelanjana Banerjee, Susanna Kwan, Vanessa Huang, Sita K. Bhaumik, and others.

Neelanjana Banerjee
Oscar Bermeo
Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik
Vanessa Huang
Susanna Kwan
Margaret Rhee

View artist bios

Buy Tickets at manja.org

Thursday, September 27, 2007, 8pm
Film and Video Night
Victoria Theatre
2961 16th Street, San Francisco
$10-20 sliding scale ($8-$20 for KSW members)
Featured Film Artist: Emiko Omori

Join us for an evening of film and video screenings by Bay Area API filmmakers, including featured artist Emiko Omori, at the Victoria Theatre.

John Fong, Since You’ve Been Ong
Yasmine Gomez, Consumed
Vanessa Huang, pray ting ai fly
Jeffrey Lei, Dick Ho: Asian Male Porn Star
Minette Mangahas, Kiss My Hyphen
Nooshin Navidi, Young Republic
Danilo Parra, music video for Odessa Chen’s Kill the lights
Melanie Veloria, My Bad by Kapakahi
Wilson Wong, My Dad the Hairstylist

View artist bios

Buy Tickets at manja.org

Word from Providence’s that the Steelyard hired an Olneyville metal artist to create trash cans that speak to the the neighborhood’s heritage, etc, then decided not to install the cans she made, and is organizing a forum without actively seeking community presence. Sounds poquito como que pasó aquí en la Misión, no?

Excerpts from the artist’s text, which defines colonization, gentrification, and exploitation, follows.

Colonización: Ocupación de un territorio para explotarlo y dominarlo administrativa, militar o económicamente. Cuando los colonos blancos llegaron a Woonasquatucket (actualmente llamado Olneyville), era un centro de intercambio para los Narragansett y los Wompanoag, la gente indígena de la area. Woonasquatucket significa “hasta el agua salada sube,” una referencia a los corrientes de sal de la Bahia de Narragansett.

Colonization: Settlement of an area by force or conquest, often resulting in the physical displacement and cultural destruction of groups of people native to the area. When white settlers arrived in Woonasquatucket (now known as Olneyville), it was a center of trade for the Narragansett and Wompanoag people native to this area. Woonasquatucket means as far as salt water flows, a reference to the tidal currents of Narragansett Bay.

Aburguesamiento: Un proceso de convertir una zona urbana para que conforme a los gustos y intereses de la clase media. Cuando una zona está aburguesamado, los impuestos de propiedad y rentas suben y obligan a las familias de la clase obrera y los dueños de negocios pequeños a salir de su barrio. Al principio del siglo 21, con el apoyo financial y político de la Ciudad de Providence, promotores privados compró mucho de la propriedad industrial de Olneyville, providiendo viviendas lujosas en el barrio más pobre de la ciudad. ¿ Como enderezamos esta injusticia?

Gentrification: The process of converting an urban area to meet the interests of the middle class. When an area is gentrifying, the property taxes and rent go up and force working class families and small business owners out of the neighborhood. At the turn of the 21st century, with the financial and political backing from the City of Providence, private developers bought much of the industrial properties in Olneyville, creating luxurious homes in the poorest neighborhood of the city. How do we endure this injustice?

Exploitación: El acto de usar el trabajo de otra person sin pagandolo adecuadamente. Al principio del siglo 20, ocho mil personas, sobre todo inmigrantes irlandeses, fueron empleados por los cinco molinos en Olneyville. Por anos, el barrio tenía una reputación para el radicalismo de trabajo. Los trabajadores llamativos ganaron condiciones mejoradas y los salarios de fabricación más altos del área.

Exploitation: The act of using another person’s labor without offering them an adequate compensation. At the turn of the 20th century, eight thousand people, mostly Irish immigrants, were employed by the five mills in Olneyville. For years, the neighborhood had a reputation for labor radicalism. Striking workers won improved conditions and the highest manufacturing wages in the area.

My sister’s work is in a show next weekend:

REVOLUTIONARY ART:
New work from the SF Print Collective with presentation and book
signing with artist Emory Douglas

ONE DAY ONLY - Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Exhibit 4 - 7 pm, Emory Douglas @ 5 pm
Located at the Center for Political Education, 522 Valencia Street at 16th St.

An exhibition of posters from the San Francisco Print Collective’s
Silkscreen Postermaking workshop.

We will feature a talk, slideshow and Q&A with former minister of
culture for the Black Panther Party Emory Douglas, signing his new
book, Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas. This
event will also raise funds to Free the San Francisco-8, eight former
Black Panthers and community leaders arrested in January on 36-year
old charges, based on confessions extracted by torture.
http://www.freethesf8.org/

As a primer for public artists, SFPC’s Silkscreen Postermaking
workshop teaches students how to use the mass media for activist
organizing with a focus on guerrilla art, graphic design, and legal
defense. Participating artists include: Fiona Glas, Allison Lum,
Davis DeBard, Arla Ertz, Ellen Frances, Ly Mai Hoang, Serena Huang,
Stacy Kono, Harris Kornstein, John Lewis, Fernando Marti, Gabe
Martinez, Jennifer Miller, Nicole Rivera, Suzanne Shaffer, Melanie
Ann Tom, Amy Vanderwarker, Debra Walker, and David Shih-chun Wu.

$5-$100, sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Sangria, beer and non-alcoholic drinks and snacks!

Sponsored by the Center for Political Education and the SF Print
Collective. This space is not wheelchair accessible.

For more information, contact sfprintcollective [at] gmail.com or
center [at] politicaleducation.org
_______________________________________________________________________________

The SFPC is a printmaking collective that uses graphic art to support
social justice organizing. We make public art to challenge the mass
media and broadcast progressive politics directly to the
streets. For more info. or to get involved in the next silkscreen
postermaking class, contact sfpcprintclass [at] gmail.com or
http://www.sfprintcollective.com

Please support these brothers by sending a donation. Make checks payable to
CDHR/Agape and mail to the address below or donate on line:

http://www.freethesf8.org/donate.html

Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR)
PO Box 90221
Pasadena, CA 91109
(415) 226-1120
FreetheSF8 [at] riseup.net