Four Years

In a couple days it will be four years since my aunt was murdered.  It has been almost four years since I wrote this post.   FOUR.   YEARS.

Her accused murderer sits in a jail cell awaiting trial.  A trial I am quite sure he knows damn well he is unlikely win.  For a crime I am quite sure he is still running from, still blaming her for and still refusing to feel any responsibility about.

Four years of limbo, waiting for this thing to finally be over.  Four years of waiting for a "justice system" I don't even believe in to do its thing, so I can finally move on.  Four years of moving on only to be yanked back every six months to be told there is yet another delay, that he has fired his lawyer again, that he has taken us right to the edge and pulled us back and there's nothing the courts will do about it.

Four years of being reminded how little my aunt's life matters to the state.

To the court system.

To the DA.

And to her murderer.

Four years of knowing the trial won't bring me any closure.  Four years of this PROCESS of the trial preventing my closure.  Four years of wondering if this time will be different.

Four years of missing my aunt.

Three Mother's Days where I want to just celebrate my mom.  My grandmas.  My great grandmas.  My Ancestors.  My mother friends.  Three Mother's Days where I pretend that is all I'm doing.  Three Mother's Days of hiding the pain searing through me as wounds barely healed are ripped back open.

Four years of watching my family age faster in those four years than we did in the preceding ten.

Myself included.

I found my first grey hair last night.  It isn't grey so much as silver.  Bright.  Shining.  Almost glittery.  I'm not yet 30 but I don't mind that hair.  I think it's beautiful, actually.  But it is also, I think, a by-product of that aging.  An aging that has happened so quickly.  An aging brought on by pain and loss and no closure and the seemingly endless limbo of the USian court system.

Will we get to five? Six? Seven?

Will it ever be over?

Will it even mean anything in the end?

I am a prison abolitionist.  I know this system is broken.  I know it doesn't work.  As surely as I know that if he is not locked up that he will hurt more women.  Like all the other women he hurt in the past.  But because I am a prison abolitionist, I know there will be no resolution in putting him on trial. Because I am a feminist/anti-racist I have no faith my aunt's life will be treated with respect in that court room.  And I have no real faith he will be found guilty of what he did.  I have no faith that even such a conviction would mean anything to him.  I have no faith that JUSTICE means anything here.

But I stand witness to the process, because it is the last thing I can do for her.  I couldn't help her.  I couldn't save her.  I couldn't even help her cat.  And I can't rehabilitate him.  I can't make him accept what he's done.  I can't make him accountable to us or use the rest of his life trying to make sure other men don't do what he did.  All I can do is stand witness.  Face him in the only provided framework sanctioned by the state and not let him forget that we know what he did.

And I will do that.  For whatever it is worth.

And I will remember her.  Often.  I will light the candles on my altar for her.  I will remember her when the veil is thin and the dead come back to visit us.  I will remember her on Mother's Day.

I will try and live the lessons that she taught me.

It's all I can do.

A Day of Thanksgiving: Challenging Colonialist Myth

Thanksgiving in the United States is wrapped in colonialist/nationalist myth that most of us learn from pre-school/day care and on.  I don't think most of us are ever taught the realities of "Thanksgiving;" why the holiday exists, what cultural narratives it perpetuates, what present realities it obscures.  In an annual effort to challenge the fucked up colonial underpinnings of this holiday, I give you the debunking of myths most of us probably learned growing up.


Myth #1: “The First Thanksgiving” occurred in 1621.

Fact: No one knows when the “first” thanksgiving occurred. People have been giving thanks for as long as people have existed. Indigenous nations all over the world have celebrations of the harvest that come from very old traditions; for Native peoples, thanksgiving comes not once a year, but every day, for all the gifts of life. To refer to the harvest feast of 1621 as “The First Thanksgiving” disappears Indian peoples in the eyes of non-Native children.

Myth #2: The people who came across the ocean on the Mayflower were called Pilgrims.

Fact: The Plimoth settlers did not refer to themselves as “Pilgrims.” Pilgrims are people who travel for religious reasons, such as Muslims who make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Most of those who arrived here from England were religious dissidents who had broken away from the Church of England. They called themselves “Saints”; others called them “Separatists.” Some of the settlers were “Puritans,” dissidents but not separatists who wanted to “purify” the Church. It wasn’t until around the time of the American Revolution that the name “Pilgrims” came to be associated with the Plimoth settlers, and the “Pilgrims” became the symbol of American morality and Christian faith, fortitude, and family.

Myth #3: The colonists came seeking freedom of religion in a new land.

Fact: The colonists were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. By 1620, hundreds of Native people had already been to England and back, most as captives; so the Plimoth colonists knew full well that the land they were settling on was inhabited. Nevertheless, their belief system taught them that any land that was “unimproved” was “wild” and theirs for the taking; that the people who lived there were roving heathens with no right to the land. Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plimoth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves.

Myth #4: When the “Pilgrims” landed, they first stepped foot on “Plymouth Rock.”

Fact: When the colonists landed, they sought out a sandy inlet in which to beach the little shallop that carried them from the Mayflower to the mainland. This shallop would have been smashed to smithereens had they docked at a rock, especially a Rock. Although the Plimoth settlers built their homes just up the hill from the Rock, William Bradford in Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, does not even mention the Rock; writing only that they “unshipped our shallop and drew her on land.” The actual “rock” is a slab of Dedham granodiorite placed there by a receding glacier some 20,000 years ago. It was first referred to in a town surveying record in 1715, almost 100 years after the landing. Since then, the Rock has been moved, cracked in two, pasted together, carved up, chipped apart by tourists, cracked again, and now rests as a memorial to something that never happened.

It’s quite possible that the myth about the “Pilgrims” landing on a “Rock” originated as a reference to the New Testament of the Christian bible, in which Jesus says to Peter, “And I say also unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church and the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) The appeal to these scriptures gives credence to the sanctity of colonization and the divine destiny of the dominant culture. Although the colonists were not dominant then, they behaved as though they were.

Myth #5: The Pilgrims found corn.

Fact: Just a few days after landing, a party of about 16 settlers led by Captain Myles Standish followed a Nauset trail and came upon an iron kettle and a cache of Indian corn buried in the sand. They made off with the corn and returned a few days later with reinforcements. This larger group “found” a larger store of corn, about ten bushels, and took it. They also “found” several graves, and, according to Mourt’s Relation, “brought sundry of the prettiest things away” from a child’s grave and then covered up the corpse. They also “found” two Indian dwellings and “some of the best things we took away with us.”  There is no record that restitution was ever made for the stolen corn, and the Wampanoag did not soon forget the colonists’ ransacking of Indian graves.

Myth #6: Samoset appeared out of nowhere, and along with Squanto became friends with the Pilgrims. Squanto helped the Pilgrims survive and joined them at “The First Thanksgiving.”

Fact: Samoset, an eastern Abenaki chief, was the first to contact the Plimoth colonists. He was investigating the settlement to gather information and report to Massasoit, the head sachem in the Wampanoag territory. In his hand, Samoset carried two arrows: one blunt and one pointed. The question to the settlers was: are you friend or foe? Samoset brought Tisquantum (Squanto), one of the few survivors of the original Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet, to meet the English and keep an eye on them. Tisquantum had been taken captive by English captains several years earlier, and both he and Samoset spoke English. Tisquantum agreed to live among the colonists and serve as a translator. Massasoit also sent Hobbamock and his family to live near the colony to keep an eye on the settlement and also to watch Tisquantum, whom Massasoit did not trust. The Wampanoag oral tradition says that Massasoit ordered Tisquantum killed after he tried to stir up the English against the Wampanoag. Massasoit himself lost face after his years of dealing with the English only led to warfare and land grabs. Tisquantum is viewed by Wampanoag people as a traitor, for his scheming against other Native people for his own gain. Massasoit is viewed as a wise and generous leader whose affection for the English may have led him to be too tolerant of their ways.

Myth #7: The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate the First Thanksgiving.

Fact: According to oral accounts from the Wampanoag people, when the Native people nearby first heard the gunshots of the hunting colonists, they thought that the colonists were preparing for war and that Massasoit needed to be informed. When Massasoit showed up with 90 men and no women or children, it can be assumed that he was being cautious. When he saw there was a party going on, his men then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys.

In addition, both the Wampanoag and the English settlers were long familiar with harvest celebrations. Long before the Europeans set foot on these shores, Native peoples gave thanks every day for all the gifts of life, and held thanksgiving celebrations and giveaways at certain times of the year. The Europeans also had days of thanksgiving, marked by religious services. So the coming together of two peoples to share food and company was not entirely a foreign thing for either. But the visit that by all accounts lasted three days was most likely one of a series of political meetings to discuss and secure a military alliance. Neither side totally trusted the other: The Europeans considered the Wampanoag soulless heathens and instruments of the devil, and the Wampanoag had seen the Europeans steal their seed corn and rob their graves. In any event, neither the Wampanoag nor the Europeans referred to this feast/meeting as “Thanksgiving.” 

Myth #8: The Pilgrims provided the food for their Indian friends.

Fact: It is known that when Massasoit showed up with 90 men and saw there was a party going on, they then went out and brought back five deer and lots of turkeys. Though the details of this event have become clouded in secular mythology, judging by the inability of the settlers to provide for themselves at this time and Edward Winslow’s letter of 1622, it is most likely that Massasoit and his people provided most of the food for this “historic” meal.

Myth #9: The Pilgrims and Indians feasted on turkey, potatoes, berries, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and popcorn.

Fact: Both written and oral evidence show that what was actually consumed at the harvest festival in 1621 included venison (since Massasoit and his people brought five deer), wild fowl, and quite possibly nasaump—dried corn pounded and boiled into a thick porridge, and pompion—cooked, mashed pumpkin. Among the other food that would have been available, fresh fruits such as plums, grapes, berries and melons would have been out of season. It would have been too cold to dig for clams or fish for eels or small fish. There were no boats to fish for lobsters in rough water that was about 60 fathoms deep. There was not enough of the barley crop to make a batch of beer, nor was there a wheat crop. Potatoes and sweet potatoes didn’t get from the south up to New England until the 18th century, nor did sweet corn. Cranberries would have been too tart to eat without sugar to sweeten them, and that’s probably why they wouldn’t have had pumpkin pie, either. Since the corn of the time could not be successfully popped, there was no popcorn.

Myth #10: The Pilgrims and Indians became great friends.

Fact: A mere generation later, the balance of power had shifted so enormously and the theft of land by the European settlers had become so egregious that the Wampanoag were forced into battle. In 1637, English soldiers massacred some 700 Pequot men, women and children at Mystic Fort, burning many of them alive in their homes and shooting those who fled. The colony of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of thanksgiving commemorating the massacre. By 1675, there were some 50,000 colonists in the place they had named “New England.” That year, Metacom, a son of Massasoit, one of the first whose generosity had saved the lives of the starving settlers, led a rebellion against them. By the end of the conflict known as “King Philip’s War,” most of the Indian peoples of the Northeast region had been either completely wiped out, sold into slavery, or had fled for safety into Canada. Shortly after Metacom’s death, Plimoth Colony declared a day of thanksgiving for the English victory over the Indians.

Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.

Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.

Source

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. A time set aside to acknowledge/mourn those we have lost because their bodies and lives as trans people are still so hated in our societies.

Light a candle, say a prayer, take a moment of silence, whatever it is you do.

And don't forget.

♥

The names of those we have lost this year can be read here:  http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializing-2012

Brandy Martell

Location: Oakland, California

Cause of Death: Gunshot

Date of Death: April 29th, 2012

Brandy was 37 years old.

Rest in Peace.

Rest in Power.

Dia de los Muertos

Dia de los Muertos. 

Samhain.

All Souls Day.

So much love to the Ancestors. 

So much love to those I have known who reside on the other side of the Veil. 

I miss you on a regular basis. 

I hope I make you proud.

And thank you for your guidance.

On Columbus Day, Indigenous Activists Urge Celebration of Native Culture & Teaching of the Americas’ Genocide

From Democracy Now:



Let's celebrate a history worth celebrating: resistance.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Retire Columbus Day - Day of Indigenous Resistance SF

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DECOLONIZE THE NEW WORLD - COLUMBUS DAY WEEKEND

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Decolonize the New World Blog

Something to Share on Mabon

Today I found this a very worthwhile read: SouLar Bliss – Autumn Equinox Recipes, Remedies and Rituals.  Here is a sample:

The arrival of the Autumn Equinox on Saturday, September 22nd, opens up a new season in our lives and within the Earth. In the Northern Hemisphere, the Equinox welcomes the newness of Autumn and the birth of Libra season. We witness the continued beautiful metamorphosis of nature shedding its summer layers and walking into its Fall. Our ancestors used this time to give thanks for the abundance from the year and gather the resources they needed to prepare for the darker and colder months This shedding process we witness in nature is a powerful keynote for us to listen to. A call to action to bring more awareness into the different layers of our lives and our communities. What will we choose to sustain? What will we choose to shed?

This is a ripe moment to uncover the patterns that make up our foundation and breath new light into them. Another opportunity to recalibrate and reflect back to ourselves what we are grateful for, what needs to shift and where we need to grow. Here we can find new compasses or fix old ones, with an intention to specify and affirm the direction we want our lives to move in. We can choose to act in ways that either accept or disrupt self depricating programming, either sourced from us or from the oppressive factors around us that beg to silence us.

Two Things on this Beltane May Day

Happy May Day!  And happy Beltane!  What a perfect combination.


1)  Today, I hope to see you out in the streets.  I'll be going, at the very least, to the immigrant rights/workers rights/anti-racismo march out of Fruitvale in Oakland at 3pm.  You'll also find what I think is a comprehensive list of the Bay area actions for tomorrow below.  Whatever you do, do something!  All labor is work, no human beings are illegal, and we've got to come together in struggle.

2) I met with my thesis committee today, who told me that, yes, in fact, I have a final draft of my thesis!!!  A few typos and some grammar to clean up here and there but hardly anything really.  I am beyond relieved and starting to get really excited.  Because of this, and because the project went through quite a few drafts, I will be taking down the earlier drafts I posted here and posting my sections in different increments over the next month.  Hope you enjoy it!


Occupy (Decolonize) Oakland's Schedule of Events:


6AM: Support Golden Gate bridge & Transit Workers pickets
Meet at 19th & Telegraph to reinforce pickets throughout SF. Buses will be available.

8:30AM – NOON: morning strike actions
Decentralized actions leaving from 3 points on the edge of downtown at 8:30am. These actions can take the form of "strike enforcement brigades" such as pickets, blockades, snake marches etc. Strike stations will be set up at each of these locations starting at 8am with coffee, snacks, water, propaganda etc.

Station 1  anti-capitalist: Snow Park – flying pickets to shut down banks and the Chamber of Commerce
Station 2  anti-patriarchy: 1st & Broadway – occupy Child Protective Services, called for by OOP
Station 3  anti-gentrification: 22nd & Telegraph – flying pickets to shut down Uptown & Downtown Business Associations

NOON – 1PM: Everyone Converge on Downtown
Mass rally from noon to 1pm at 14th & Broadway including speakers, food, music activities, etc.

NOON: Occupy Oakland poets will begin continuous readings at Oscar Grant plaza.

1PM – 3PM: Themed Actions & Marches Around Downtown
After the rally, those in attendance have the opportunity to stay downtown or join one of the autonomous actions that will be departing from 14th & Broadway to continue shutting down various capitalist institutions in the downtown area.

1PM: No Borders! No Stay Away Orders! Anti-repression Crew picket at Oakland City Hall/ Oscar Grant Plaza.

3PM: March for Dignity and Resistance
All are encouraged to join the march starting at Fruitvale BART station at 3pm, marching to San Antonio Park and Oscar Grant Plaza (14th and Broadway).
From Mujeres Unidas y Activas:
Oakland Sin Fronteras 2012 DEMANDS: 
LEGALIZATION FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS
SUPPORT WORKERS RIGHTS
STOP THE DEPORTATION OF ALL IMMIGRANTS
STOP THE CRIMINALIZATION OF IMMIGRANTS BY FEDERAL AND LOCAL POLICE
END U.S. MILITARY AGGRESSION & OTHER POLICIES THAT DISPLACE COMMUNITIES GLOBALLY
DEFEND AND EXPAND ETHNIC STUDIES 

6PM – 7PM: Reconvergence downtown to coincide with the march arrival
Everyone back downtown to rally and celebrate together as the March for Dignity and Resistance arrives. Convene and rally at 14th and Broadway. In the event of police interference meet at 19th and Telegraph.

Additional info here!!

STRIKE

Link

On This Day in 1890: Learn What Happened at Wounded Knee

The Massacre at Wounded Knee 1890 - YouTube:

Happy Solstice!

For my area of the world the winter solstice is tonight, according to my Google-fu at 9:30 pm PST.  The candles are lit and the house is about to be swept.  So Happy Yule, everyone!  If the light returns after tonight then it will do so earlier and earlier from now on.  Stand watch, and welcome the Sun!!

Recommended Reading on Thanksgiving

Full disclosure: yes, my family gets together on this holiday and does the turkey dinner, and we thank Spirit for what we have been given that year and wish blessings on our own and the world in the coming days.  This has never been about the Pilgrims or in ignorance of the genocide that has built this country, but it does mimic the traditions passed down in the historical mythology of this settler colonial nation, and while I love this day for seeing family I don't get to see often and eating good food with them I am increasingly ambivalent about the holiday, even in the form we "celebrate" it.  At the very least I think that while we are giving thanks, it is a good time to also meditate on the things in our nation and communities that need to change, the destructive and violent cycles that need to end and that (in the national mythology) we trace to this event of The First Thanksgiving.

In that spirit I share this piece, please click the link to read the full essay: Original Occupation: Native Blood & the Myth of Thanksgiving

Intro to that first occupation

We are talking widely among ourselves about “occupying” Wall Street — taking the center of an empire back for the people of the world. We are talking about “Occupy Everything” — sharing our dreams of taking all society away from banks, police, and the heartless authority of money. We hope this moment marks a beginning of the end for them.

And yet, just such a moment cannot be understood without remembering that other occupation — the one that marked the beginning of their beginning.

Arrogant invaders occupied a land using the most naked forms of genocide. They invented new forms of slavery, slave trade and profit making. They arrived with their high-tech arms and bibles. They declared all was theirs by divine right, while they took it all with raw force.

Put another way:  That first occupation was a sweeping nightmare that starts with Columbus. It has continued for 500 years. For the Native peoples of today (and therefore for us too) it remains an ongoing story of domination and removal. The nation-state who today labels millions of indigenous descendants “illegal aliens” arrived in boats with only royal decrees and their holy book as documents of legitimacy.

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England.

Here is the true story of that Thanksgiving  — a story of murder and theft, of the first “corporations” invented on North American soil, of religious fundamentalism and relentless mania for money. It is a story of the birth of capitalism.

This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time.

Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

(If anyone knows who took this photo I would love to know, a friend posted it on Facebook but they didn't know where it came from originally)

The list of the dead

Candles are lit for you tonight, sisters.

Fuck Columbus

This is probably my least favorite holiday. I can't think of one I dislike more anyway. On the flip side if all goes according to plan I will be joining up with the Occupy Oakland demonstration (in solidarity/conjunction with Indigenous Resistance Day) after class tonight so please send good thoughts our way.

Happy Earth Day!

[Image description: A young white woman with brown hair (this blog's author) 
wearing white and blue swimming shorts, flip flops and a blue t-shirt 
hugs a large redwood tree and smiles broadly with her eyes closed. 
Small round specks sort of like bubbles dot the photo 
where a light mist had covered the camera lens.]

Hug a tree, it's good for you! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here's hoping 2011 totally owns 2010 eh?

Cheers!

[image description: a sandy beach has 2010 written into the sand above a similar 2011
a wave is washing away the 2010, picture via your hue]

Poetry just keeps coming out when I sit down to write this paper

So here's some more (also because Cecelia said I should. <3).
Tentatively titled "Samhain de los Muertos".

Dia de los Muertos

Also Samhain to me

Days that the Veil between the worlds grows thin

As so many cultures knew

As the Ancestors demand we remember

If we can hear them

If we listen

The smell of sage floats through the air

Candles flickering

Illuminating so much more than their small flames should

Like stars in the sky

Fotos, food, and flowers

Holiday(s) you never taught me to celebrate

A day I honor you anyway

And the ever increasing others on your side of the veil

“Be thankful you weren’t a Native American in the 1600s..."

"...This is the real story of Thanksgiving not the school textbook “Disney” version, which is an insult to all Native-Americans today."



(via the Colorlines Tumblr)

An online Remembrance Ritual for Samhain from The Jaded Hippy

As the witching hour draws close here on the West coast I just want to wish everyone a happy Samhain and a happy Halloween. I hope you all had a lovely day and kept yourselves safe.

Welcome to the Ancestors.  Welcome to the Spirits of the Honored Dead.  Welcome to those we have Lost; we think of you often.  Walk amongst us once again.   An offering of incense and brightly burning candles welcome you home, even if just for a visit.

We remember you.

And in that remembrance you live always.

Jonathan

Gloria

Robin

Neioma

Rena

Marilou

And those who went before, whose names I never knew, whose blood flows in my veins or spirit flows through my family, my life.

I remember.

Image: Two wick flames in the dark burn in a twisting, melting candle of red.