looking back, looking forward

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.

berlin

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.

poemas clandestinos

It’s official. My housemates L and T have moved downstairs to one of the studio apartments behind the house. The house feels different already, even with O moving back in (L and T switched with O, who used to live upstairs with us). This means we’ve been growing into familia up in here the last half year! In many ways the six of us upstairs and our downstairs neighbors are all familia, and the switch is minor: we barbecue on the patio together, have house parties together, are starting to garden in the front and side yard together, and split the Internet.

One noticable difference of habit, aside from seeing O instead of L and T when I get home, is the (dis)appearance of certain books and reading materials in the smaller of our two bathrooms, which acts as a mini library of sorts. Here, the six of us share pieces of ourselves with one another (I’ve been on-and-off perusing El Libro del Origen de Las Palabras, The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need, Instead of Prisons, Charlotte Ryan’s Prime Time Activism, and proceso magazine). Since L and T’s move out and O’s move back this weekend, the Spanish language lit L used to leave (was perusing Poemas Clandestinos and a children’s picture book on La Declaracion Universal de Los Derechos Humanos) have been replaced by Kitchen Sink magazine issues 11, 12, and 13, and an issue of Adbusters magazine.

I didn’t know about Roque Dalton before Poemas Clandestinos, and even then had but read a few of his poems. It wasn’t until going through my emails today that I stumbled upon two writings posted on CounterPunch today, both in response to The Nation publishing work by Dalton’s assassin. So, linked here to share with you: Nina Serrano’s memories of Dalton and Jack Hirschman, who translated Poemas Clandestinos into English, calling out The Nation.

the power of erotic childbirth

Just back from Chicago for a repro justice conference hosted by Sistersong: Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective: “Let’s Talk about Sex.” I thought about taking time to go into the city and checking out the block my mother lived on for 10 months in the late 70s, but ended up staying right by the airport for four days.

Birth has been a consistent theme/metaphor in my life as of late, what with people in my life thinking about birthing, people engaging with having birthed children, organizing against sterilization abuse and other state-imposed challenges to people in prison ability to birth/create; recently having started a creative collaboration with Melissa Koh structured around the idea of rebirth (in relation to transforming relationships with loved ones in times of illness); working through (re)birth as metaphor in my life in relation to the work I’m doing around my resistance to dependency on others and others’ dependency on me; and the incremental acknowledgment that for the first time in my life, the idea of birthing (simultaneously with the idea of getting a tattoo) no longer feels too painful, but an opening of possibility.

The most powerful workshop I went to this weekend was offered by Lisa Lucero from Denver, Colorado: “The Power of Erotic Childbirth.” Deeply influenced by Audre Lorde’s essay, “Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power,” Lisa shared the idea that every oppression must corrupt or distort those sources of power that can provide energy for change, an erotic childbirth is possible and can change the world. Among the kinds of ideas Lisa identified as corrupting or distorting the erotic power of childbirth was the idea that simply having information about the risks of childbirth means access to real choices, as this focuses on fear constructs. This conversation opened space and offered guidance towards future reflection on the internal work I’ve been doing to the last two years to let go of fear, etc…

Feeling present, grateful, creative, open.

personal universe deck

I recently joined an online poetry group for APIs. This week’s prompt was to create a “personal universe deck”: a deck of 100 cards each containing words that have meaning and sound good to you, and that are specific. 16 of the words should evoke taste for you; 16 touch; 16 hearing; 16 smell; and 16 sight. 10 evoke motion; three are abstract words; and the last seven, anything else.

In listing out words for my deck, touch, sight, and motion words came more easily to me, and found myself reaching for words conveying smell and taste. Also hearing somewhat. Also had trouble narrowing down to 100 words, so instead made two personal universe decks.

Now to play with the decks…

i wear my sunglasses at night

Apparently this Sacramento craziness is in my stars:

Daily Career for March 12, 2007

Provided by Astrology.com

If you feel as if you’re working in a Lewis Carroll dream world of madness, with distracting apparitions appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire cat, pull out your sunglasses to disguise your wide-eyed and alarmed gaze.

recommitment

Feeling reinspired to commit to writing and my creative process. Just came back from several days’ time off from work where I made time to read and write, and this weekend got to take a film and novel writing workshop with Elisha Miranda from Chica Luna Productions in NYC.

Today I opened up my cello case and flirted with her for the first time in at least a year (it’s been several years since I’ve called myself a cellist and owned it). A friend and classmate from high school, also fellow cellist in Oakland Youth Orchestra, passed away two weeks ago. I went to his memorial service yesterday morning. My finger pads felt soft and weak playing cello today — it’ll take a while to build them up again.

Thanks to Elisha, I’ve committed to a new writing schedule beginning tomorrow: setting aside two hour chunks of time twice a week for writing, and recommitting to daily morning pages which I’ve been neglecting.

the white electric

Back in Providence for a visit. Feels nice, like returning to an old lover. Both familiar and changing: same streets, blocks, and corners, same friends behind the counter at the tea place and video store, comfort in fall briskness and the company of old friends; new campaigns emerging and growth in old ones, people moving around town, and old friends back in town.

the drive back

Feeling pulled into blogging practice. Starting to actually use Bloglines. Reading through a friend’s recent posts from New Orleans this past month, I was inspired to read through some posts I’d copied and pasted from an earlier incarnation of this blog I never really got into and eventually took down.

My first post was from 3.29.06, my last night in a visit to New Orleans, just about a year since I was there for the INCITE! conference:

The flight over this time was different. There was a general consciousness of the fact that we were all traveling to New Orleans, after Katrina and Rita. People were asking each other if they’d been “back since the storm,” sharing information about the condition of specific buildings on Esplanade Avenue. I found myself wondering why people were going. Were they returning home? Visiting as journalists and documentarians? What were those long tubes they were holding? urban planners? land-grabbers? developers? Tourists? disaster tourists? seasonal tourists returning to the Big Easy before the next hurricane season starts up again?

I spent today visiting members of the Pointe-au-Chien Indian community two hours south of New Orleans in Southern Louisiana. Lunise, who I later find out has lived in the same turquoise-colored house for 60 years, waves as I drive by. I end up spending the better part of my afternoon chatting with her and her family members on her porch. As we talk, she continues to wave to neighbors and others driving by in vehicles, and we watch kids ride along on bicycles and fisherman and crabbers float along the bayou. Lunise points across the bayou, telling me that the blue house and the two to its left now serve as weekend houses for sport fishers, who have also come back. Chuckie, the tribe’s chairman told me there were about 400 residents in Pointe-au-Chien, mostly Indians and some whites who have moved in within the last 10 or 15 years.

Pointe-au-Chien stayed dry after Katrina but suffered “a lot of wind damage” with roofs, shingles, siding, and windows blowing in, Chuckie told me. One person lost his trailer from the wind. There were lots of fallen trees. But Rita brought between one and four or five feet of water for people living on the marsh. “That’s when it really hurt,” Chuckie told me. Lunise showed me a picture her neighbors took when she and her husband left during Rita. The water came up to their door knob. When they returned, they didn’t have a bed to sleep in. Their kitchen counters and table tops were wet. People returned to mud and debris from the marsh and “flipped-over sofas.”

Federal money to rebuild took its time getting to Pointe-au-Chien. Some received funds after three or four months. Others are still waiting for insurance and FEMA. Some were refused altogether. But people came back, helping each other clean up “the best they could”. Chuckie told me they’d rather live in their own home than somewhere else. Storms have come and gone “all through history,” he explained, sharing his grandmother’s story of a storm in the 1920s and others in the 1800s and 1906. Those who stayed through after those storms are the people here today, the ones “that just hung it out.”

It’s been six months now. I still don’t quite know how I feel about my going and listening without writing or reporting. Part of me wonders if I didn’t fulfill an obligation, part of me wonders if writing would have played into sensationalization or into the story folks outside of the Gulf Coast wanted to be read and heard. The acknowledgement of generational story, that maybe I didn’t put on my journalist hat for reasons I’ll never be able or want to say in words, that maybe it’s good sometimes to just listen.

What I remember now from that visit are the turquoise of Lunise and her partner’s home. Their porch, their neighbors, a cat, some birds. The coffee and conversation we shared.

I remember the drive there, a car with a radio, a radio that played sappy country heartbreak songs leaving me crying as I passed the green of trees, the hum of the highway as I navigated my chicken-scratch notes from Mapquest.

Roadside mailboxes as I neared Pointe-au-Chien. Two journalism students from California pulling up with the same rental car at Chuckie’s house as I was leaving. That they gave me their business cards.

Wondering why, if the Spanish colonized the area after the French, the elders all still spoke French.

I remember the sun that day, the drive back to the city, the return to a familiar block with a few pink lobsters laying on a blue news rack.

i haven’t rtfm, but here goes…

Last weekend: rather than sit down and work on two deadlines coming up next weekend, I went out to see Red Doors with my mother opening night in SF, stressed over video equipment, exercised, and eventually hopped onto BART to get to SF again. I’d signed up for a blogging workshop with Min Jung Kim as part of APAture, and was recently reinspired to get a bra fitting (they do them for free at Nordstrom).

I’m glad I went.

And not just because I now know my bra size (according to this story I googled today, most folks go through life wearing the wrong size, or in my case not having worn any size, since I had it wrong).

Thanks to Min Jung, the folks at Kearny Street, and Alex of Read the F* Manual…Please and Glenda of Agendacide.com who came out to support and share, I also was inspired to set up this blog and see what happens.

Tonight: after riding the bus home from work, I walked over to the local cafe to work some on one of my deadlines, then came home, and here I am writing the first post to this blog.

Welcome!

For now, what’s coming up at APAture: I missed Saturday’s film night, but will try to make it out to Wednesday’s Performance, Literary, and Film/Video event. There’s also a comedy night Friday and an open mic Saturday.