thoughts after an interview

I wrote this way back in 2020 after interviewing for an HR role with a big Bay Area nonprofit.  And in re-reading it, still seems relevant.  So I thought I'd post it after all. 

She says... 

"The culture in nonprofits and the payscale is very different than in tech companies"

"Culture isn't as big of a part of what we do"

Ok but here's the thing "culture" happens anytime more than two humans get together. It's just the name for the norms we establish in groups. Whether you purposefully work on it or not, it's there.

So a good question to ask is why are you ignoring it? Do you not know this? Does organic culture just appeal to you, because putting conscious work into it feels contrived?

Or, is it because in the face of the capitalism and the very real harm and oppression faced by your clients, this seems like a luxury to pay attention to? Are you too focused on surviving to put energy towards thriving?

This goes to the pay scale thing too. Because it's expensive as fuck to live here. We all know this. Why wouldn't you pay a living wage? Isn't that part of the justice you're working towards also?

This all links together. We live our mission through our work, aka what we do with our time and energy and bodies and minds. Our work includes the space within which it's done.

White supremacist capitalist patriarchy makes that seem impossible. But it can't be. We're doing the impossible all the time, aren't we? For our clients? Why not ourselves too? Not instead of...but ALSO.

Yeah I know well the culture of nonprofits. Self-sacrifice, overwork, scraping by, inevitable burnout.... why are we continuing to accept this?

Also, I know SOME of y'all have Directors making $$$. So.... 

Shoe string budgets doing vital work....I get it. But we've got to figure out a better way.  We're perpetuating suffering while trying to stamp out suffering...it doesn't make sense!

say her name

A drawn color image of Breonna Taylor with flowers in the background.  The words "SAY HER NAME, BREONNA TAYLOR" are at the bottom.

In Memory of Stacey

In loving memory of a real one who I know I quoted multiple times on this blog over the years.  Stacey Park Milbern left us on her 33rd birthday, and none of us were ready.  But she left us a huge legacy.

The #StaceyTaughtUs Syllabus

[caption: a picture of Stacey in her chair, smiling and holding a sign that reads "cherished"]

Social Justice and Reactivity; Reflections on a conversation between Joe Rogan and Jamie Kilstein

Who'd have thunk THIS is what I'd feel the need to write about after such an absence...

In 2016, I was really invested in the podcast Citizen Radio and it's hosts.  And when accusations of predatory behavior came out about Jamie Kilstein, I was honestly devastated.  This was someone who I had promoted, supported monetarily, given his music album as gifts to loved ones... And then other people I was invested in said he had acted in a predatory manner towards them, aggressively enough that they ended their friendship with him.

When he disappeared in the face of these accusations, and even in the midst of my grief and upset, I honestly wished the best for him.  I hoped that he would take time off to reckon with and heal the damage we all knew he had.  That he had TOLD us he had.  I hoped he wouldn't hurt or kill himself.  I hoped that the consequences of his actions wouldn't suffocate him.  I hoped we wouldn't hear from him for years.

Well, in just the past couple of days I learned that he re-emerged.  And today I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan podcast.  When it was over, I simply let silence enter the car as I sorted through really, really mixed feelings.  Their conversation brought up SO MUCH stuff for me.

Joe and Jamie talked a lot about what I would call the "reactive" culture we currently live in.  They spoke about the way that people simply react to things, instead of taking time with them.  They spoke about the way in which folks will be labeled as a "traitor" to the cause and excommunicated from social justice circles.  The spoke about the way in which people are immersed in communities that go from one outrage to another without rest or reflection.

And I have to agree with them on this point -- our society is highly reactive.  People on all parts of the political spectrum do this.  And this manifests differently from group to group, but there are certainly a lot of shared characteristics.

Jamie spoke about how being forced to take a step back from the way he was living his life has made it so that he is so much more healthy now.  And this reflects my own journey, and that of close friends of mine during this year.  It reflects things I've heard discussed on other podcasts, like The Friend Zone, where being "selfish" and disconnecting from the internet and taking time to meditate and read books is needed healing in our reactive world.  This made me happy.  I wanted such healing for him.

Jamie and Joe both spoke about how taking time with things is important.  They both talked about how this reactivity is a negative thing.

And then they played a clip from a confrontation between protesters and the President of a college.  And as this woman spoke with pain, and anger, and years of trauma in her voice -- they laughed.

After talking about how he has reflected on what brought him to the dire point he was in last year, as he spoke about how much he did not like the person he had become and how many issues there were to reckon with there -- Jamie also denounced the idea that his behavior had ever been predatory, and denied that there was anything he needed to learn on that front.

When discussing the very concept of predatory behavior in men, Joe characterized it as "just how men act" when they are seeking sex.

Then he went on to deny rape culture exists.

Beneath the anger I felt listening to this, I felt so sad, and so tired. 

They'd both utterly missed the point.

-------------

I remember a year or so ago I was having a conversation with one of my best friends about a guy I was into at the time.  I was telling them that this guy sometimes says things that are kinda racist, and it bothers me.  I was wondering if I should give up on him.  I'll never forget what my friend, a queer Afro-Latino Caribbean man, said to me: "well that depends on whether you want to let him be human."

I was stunned into silence.  I felt keenly embarrassed.  This is someone who knows me well, who knows my heart and mind as well as anyone alive.  Someone who is not afraid to call out racism, not afraid to call out homophobia, to tell someone who cut us off in the supermarket exactly how and why she's rude.  Not some shrinking violet who will accept challenges to his humanity without a fight.

But here he was, telling me it's ok to let someone be human.  Meaning, to be flawed.  Meaning, to have room to grow.

That's not an easy thing.

But it is a necessary thing.

I remember when he and I were living together while I was in college, when I was most immersed in the social justice circles of the Bay Area, when I was at my most unforgiving and reactive.  I remember being introduced to the idea of Transformative Justice through INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and feeling immediately how important such work is, I embracing it.  If you went by their words, most of my cohort embraced it too. But if you went by actions...many of them were also incredibly intolerant of the humanity of others.  I found this over and over again.  Perfection was demanded, or you were out.  I would even call the way some were treated as straight up abusive.  Tearing people down when they fucked up -- when fucking up is human.

So when Joe and Jamie were talking about this thing that happens on the left, I knew what they meant.  Yes, it's real.

But here's the thing that gets me when I talk or listen to white cis men like Jamie and Joe have these conversations -- they will say all this against reactivity and have all this analysis of how it effected them and constrained or hurt them -- and then will turn around and laugh and have no patience for those expressing their hurt and pain in ways they don't understand or agree with.  And that's where they lose me.

Because as far as I can see, the thing that will bring us away from reactivity isn't self-justification of our own actions and perspective -- it's COMPASSION.

Compassion.

Compassion is the thing I found lacking in my experiences with some people and activist groups, and is also the thing I FOUND among those with whom I'm still connected and learning; compassion is the thing that allows us to be human, to speak to pain someone else caused kindly but honestly, to reclaim what is ours to work on and let go what is not.  What allows us to be soft and feel the feelings underneath our triggers and egos and speak our truth and have healthy boundaries and also allows the people around us to still be human.

Compassion for OURSELVES and others.

I wish I had a grand ending thought to close on, but that's it, and that's what I've been working on for myself.  None of this is easy, but it's so important and so painful and so needed.  And although it took me a year to finish this, here it is and I hope someone else gets something out of it. 

(Trans)Misogyny on BBC Woman's Hour

Hi guys, it's been a while.  There have been things that I have wanted to write about here and there, but I haven't really had the time to do it.  The continuing genocide in Gaza.  The fifth anniversary of my Aunt's death (and still no trial for her killer).  Police violence.  Changes in how I think about my gender.  Wrinkles.  Sadly in the job I'm in now I don't really have the opportunity to scribble in my notebook as I once did when confronted with thoughts/moments I want to hold on to.  But this week I am here, because I heard something so upsetting that I really couldn't let it go.

I clean houses these days.  For an eco focused company who pays me decent.  It's not a bad gig.  We're allowed to listen to stuff with headphones while we work, and podcasts have been the perfect thing for me.  If I tune out for a second, unlike with an audiobook, I don't really lose my place.  And I don't have the temptation to sing along, like with music (we're not allowed to).  So I've been devouring podcasts!  Mostly these are BBC podcasts, as I find them largely more enjoyable than ones here from the US.  I like hearing perspectives on things from outside my own culture, and the accents, and feeling like I'm learning about another culture sometimes.

The one I've listened to the longest, in fact, for many years now off and on, is "Woman's Hour" on BBC Radio 4.  I looked for USian takes on this idea and really didn't find much.  But this is basically a one hour show, five days a week, that takes a feminist look at current events, primarily in the UK but they do draw stories from around the world.  The topics are as diverse as anyone who has spent time in Women's Studies or the like might expect.

From my perspective this show is not perfect, but it's often interesting.  Much like NPR in the States, Radio 4 seems to be a moderately left-leaning liberal type of environment, and Woman's Hour generally takes a similarly liberal feminist or old school radical feminist perspective on most things.  So, obviously, coming from an anti-kyriarchal feminist perspective I often want to respond with "yeah...but" to their segments.  From the way FGM and hijab are addressed, or the way they interview sex workers and trans women I can tell there is a deep discomfort with things I take for granted as obvious (like that sex work is work and trans women are women, full stop). I don't love this, but I can live with it most days.  Honestly it's often a good reminder about what big F Feminism looks like and values, and clarifies my fundamental differences with them.

But the episode I listened to on Friday was a whole new level.  I actually started crying while I cleaned I was so upset and angry, and I had to turn it off at one point.  Once the episode was over I cleaned in silence for a while just to clear my head.

As soon as I had read the episode description that morning I knew it wasn't going to be good.  "The politics of transgenderism" was the title of one of the segments.  OMG, "transgenderism???"  It was a huge red flag.  That wording is only used by two groups of people: transphobic Radical Feminists, and those who are largely ignorant of what it means to be a trans person and don't know any better yet.  After being in the feminist broadcasting business for a long time (decades, I've gathered) I doubted the latter could be the case here.  I wasn't wrong.  The episode started up and I heard who they had on to discuss their new book during this segment: Sheila Jeffreys.  If you're not familiar with her, like Janice Raymond and Germaine Greer, she is a well known feminist whose work has stigmatized, attacked, denigrated and dehumanized trans people (particularly trans women).

But it was worse than I feared, as the host (Jenni Murray) not only let Jeffreys speak at length without interruption even when she was saying incredibly transphobic things, but then repeatedly interrupted Zowie Davy* when she was finally given the chance to reply.  It was horrible.  It was violent.  And while Natacha at UnCommon Sense has already done an incredible job with her article A detailed response to Sheila Jeffreys on Woman’s Hour, I also feel the need to respond with my thoughts to a few things.  Thank you also to Melissa Tsang who transcribed the segment, which I have used here.

First of all, Jeffreys attacks trans women who, as they begin to express their gender identity, sometimes rely on stereotypical or hyper-feminine expressions of femininity.  Jenni Murray reworded that "accusation" thusly: "Long nails, very painted, long hair, flicked, beautifully made-up. Why is there often an apparent need to become a stereotype of a very feminine woman or a very masculine man?"  I've seen this kind of accusation a lot from feminists.  And I can't remember who said this, though I think perhaps it was Julia Serano, but the concept of a "trans girlhood" seems very relevant here.  It was the simple act of pointing out that when cis** girls begin to mature into women, they begin experimenting with gender roles and different kinds of gender expression.  Usually, we start playing with the images of womanhood that we see around us.  "Around us" can mean in our families, larger communities, or in media (for a few examples).  At some point, at least once or twice, most of us will "try on" a hyper feminine gender presentation: copious makeup, high heels, painted nails, long hair and yes, maybe we will even "flick" it.  As children, this is considered perfectly normal.  We're trying to figure out how what we feel inside corresponds with how we dress and adorn ourselves on the outside.  Trying to figure out the responses we get to different expressions of ourselves and how that makes us feel.  Trying to figure out what we're comfortable with.***  And yet, when a trans woman does this very same thing, she is somehow pathological.

Maybe it is because when many trans women come to this girlhood stage, they are adults.  But tomorrow, I turn 30 years old, and I'm STILL messing with my gender identity!  So why the hell would we assume that a trans woman who has just started expressing her femininity outwardly would have it all figure out right off the bat?  Why wouldn't she do many of the very same things that cis girls do?  From personally knowing, reading about and listening to trans women, it doesn't seem like this stage lasts very long (again, just like with most cis girls).  In fact most, if not all, of the trans women I have known express a very toned down version of outward femininity.  The most hyper feminine women I know in real life are all cis women!  That Jenni Murray and Sheila Jeffreys both seem to believe that trans women stay statically in this place of hyper feminine expression suggests a real ignorance of lived trans womanhood.

Directly after this part of the discussion, Zowie Davy responds brilliantly to this accusation of hyper-femininity by pointing out two things that Murray ignores altogether.  1) That this focusing on "stereotypical" femininity "assumes that femininity is somehow bad" and 2) that it is GENDER CLINICS, aka the gatekeepers of trans people's access to vitally important medications, that absolutely demand very normative gender presentation to take trans people seriously.  This second point has been talked about by trans people in many places; it is the violence of the medical industry on gender variant people, and a real enactment of patriarchal understandings of gender by systems of power.  These are the exact same dynamics that harm cis women in incredibly violent ways within medicine.  Honestly, even the most basic RadFem should take this point very, very seriously because it's the exact kind of patriarchal power over women that they regularly debunk.  And similarly, the first point is one that also falls precisely within the RadFem wheelhouse, reclamation of "the feminine" is something I first came across in radical feminist writing!  Further, the denigration of practices, work and people designated feminine is exactly something Woman's Hour regularly fights against.

Just not when it comes to trans women, apparently.

Finally, the segment ends with the tired, played out fear mongering of "men dressed as women going into toilets and raping (cis) women!"  Look, this is a horrible, violent, demeaning accusation, and one which is totally baseless.  Not because some version of it has never happened, but because people like Jeffreys pretend that trans women are exceptionally apt to raping people, and because this accusation is largely a roundabout kind of victim blaming.  So, first of all, sexual assault happens amongst all genders.  This is a fact.  Queer and straight, cis and trans, women, men and all people in between; sexual assault happens, and the victim and abuser come from every group.  Yes, we know some kinds of violence are gendered, and that those gendered masculine are more often the abuser.  But, and this goes to my second point as well, trans women are THE MOST LIKELY TO BE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED.  Like, statistically, this is a thing we know.  And specifically, trans women of color with a disability are the most likely people to be assaulted.  Because they are on the lowest end of the social hierarchy, the most dehumanized, the most looked down upon.  To turn around and say that trans women, a group that is most likely to be abused, are the ones going around doing all this abusive behavior, is some of the most sick and twisted kind of victim blaming I've seen.  And Jenni Murray not only let this (and all the rest of this abusive tripe) slide, but posed it back to Zowie Davy as though it was some compelling kind of question.

It might be a while before I can bring myself to listen to Woman's Hour again.




* The sacrificial trans woman who was seemingly only asked on so Woman's Hour could claim the segment was "balanced" [which is a BBC requirement for most political stories, I gather].

** I'm going to use the simple binary of cis and trans in this piece, to mean people who ~roughly~ adhere to their assigned gender at birth (cis) and people who don't (trans), but the reality is there is quite a spectrum.

*** Total sidenote but this process is probably a FAR superior example of performativity than the one Butler actually used of drag performance....

The Baby Veronica Case IS a Feminist Issue

"Dusten Brown, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation has been fighting to stop a white couple from South Carolina from taking away his child, Veronica, who is also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Because a father is involved in the custody battle, it may appear this is not a feminist issue. However, this case is about more than just these individuals, it is about protecting indigenous nations in general for the wholesale trafficking of Native children and protecting the reproductive autonomy of Indigenous women. Thus, this struggle is a feminist issue.

Indigenous women, who are surviving 521 years of occupation, uphold sovereignty as central to the survival of indigenous communities. But where are the white feminist allies for our little sister Veronica Brown? The current silence is deafening. It is the responsibility of feminists to not only support this struggle but to educate and engage the larger public about why the protection of the Indian Child Welfare Act is critical to the well-being of Indigenous peoples in general and Indigenous women in particular.

This isn’t about just one little girl, or one couple, this case exists within the historical context of thousands of stolen children, familial lines broken, and culture lost because our children were not there to carry it forth. For so many reasons, this case should be of concern to all feminists."

Read the rest at: Some talking points on why the struggle around Baby Veronica is a feminist issue.

Vijay Prashad: Deaths of children that don’t make news

Link to GazetteNet

Reprinted in full below, because Prashad says it better than I tried to do on Facebook a few days ago and it's really worth reading.

NORTHAMPTON — No community easily suffers the death of children. Accidents, violent crimes and illness: the cause is immaterial. 

No death of a child is for a reason. All such deaths are senseless. 

In his emotional address shortly after news came of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama pointed to the frequency of such mass crimes and nudged the country to widen our field of vision: “Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago — these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children.” 

The contrary nudge came in his last destination, the “street corner in Chicago.” 

When a singular mass killing occurs in mainly affluent suburbs, it shocks the nation — and rightly so. But it might be a shock to some to know that this year alone 117 children died from handgun violence in Chicago. These deaths do not get discussed, let alone memorialized in the national conversation of tragedy. 

There are at least two reasons for this. First, these deaths do not happen in a spectacular fashion. They take place in ones and twos, often in the lonely hours of the night when bullets depart from their targets and settle in the soft tissue of children asleep in their homes, or in the afternoon as they play on the sidewalk. 

Take the case of April 12. One-year-old Jayliah Allen was shot while she slept in her bed, the bullet entering the window. Seven-year-old Derrick Robeteau was shot in the leg while playing outside his grandfather’s home and a 7-year-old girl was shot as she stood outside her home. Three children hit by handguns in one day, but in an unspectacular form. 

Second, old racist habits linger. These are African-American and Latino kids, whose neighborhoods are considered dangerous. Which is why when Jayliah and Derrick were killed no one called their neighborhoods bucolic or thought that this violence was senseless. There is a hardness that has entered our consciousness, allowing us to avoid the sealed fates of these kids. 

No memorials exist as well for the 178 children killed by U.S. drone strikes in the borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Noor Aziz, 8, Talha, 8, Najibullah, 13, Adnan, 16, Hizbullah, 10, Wilayat Khan, 11, Asadullah, 9, Sohail, 7: these are some of the names of children killed by the drones. News reports frequently say “three militants killed,” and then a few days later, in the Pakistani press, one hears that amongst the dead were children with no association with the militants. Unlike the street shootings in Chicago, there have been mass killings by drones, which have received only minimal attention. On Oct. 30, 2006, a U.S. drone struck a school in Bajaur, Pakistan, killing 83 people. The New York Times story ran Nov. 10 with the headline, “American Strike in January Missed Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 By a Few Hours.” 

The Times noted in the story that the drone hit “a madrasa, or religious school,” but left it at that. It did not mention that only three of those killed were older than 20. The rest were between the ages of 7 and 17. 

There was no apology for this strike, authorized by the White House, no call to put an end to this kind of tragedy. One of the more unseemly coincidences of the Newtown massacre is that just down the road from the elementary school is Forecast International, a military intelligence firm that has been bullish on drones. 

On Oct. 23, Time’s Joe Klein was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Host Joe Scarborough spoke passionately against the use of drones, saying “it seems so antiseptic and yet you have 4-year-old girls being blown to bits because we have a policy that now says, ‘You know what? Instead of trying to go in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb, we’re just going to blow up everyone around them.’ ” 

Klein, a defender of the Obama record, answered emotionlessly, “The bottom line in the end is — whose 4-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.” 

Such a callous calculation is not Klein’s alone; it is reflected in the general lack of concern for what is being carried out in our name. 

No human beings can tolerate to see their children killed. No human beings, not anywhere.


Vijay Prashad, who lives in Northampton, is the author of “Arab Spring, Libyan Winter” (AK Press).

Musings: on black bloc and property destruction and violence

This is something I've been thinking about and trying to figure out for a while.  I'm also extremely nervous posting about it, for a lot of reasons, but I am interested in your thoughts so please feel free to respond (as always I reserve the right to moderate your comment if you just act like a jerk).

So I've finally put together why property destruction in demonstrations coupled with black bloc bothers me so much on a personal/emotional/psychic level.

I'm constantly afraid that destructiveness is going to turn on me.  

It's related to the feeling I get when cat-called or when someone I'm arguing with starts to take that anger out physically (hit a wall, etc.) - that as a woman I am NOT safe in this situation.  That I am a target of this aggressive behavior.  

And not just generally as a woman but also individually as someone whose experiences with violent/hypermasculine behavior has been in the context of people wielding power over me; whether teachers, cops or bullies.  Without knowing/trusting the people in the bloc and fully understanding/knowing beforehand what property they are destroying and why, I experience those moments as an unleashing of destructive feeling/emotion/impulse that I KNOW can turn on me and people like me and people not like me but who are also targeted by hatred/violence/aggressive/hypermasculine/-phobic behavior.

As someone who knows intimately the catharsis of slamming a door or punching a wall, as someone who knows well the symbolic power of smashing/burning/destroying something, it's not the theory of the tactic I really have a problem with, but with the experience of it that I've had over the last year in marches, with people I don't know suddenly performing acts around me that I experience as violence (and the looming police threat around us only magnifies that feeling, at times when they haven't been around I have been noticeably less frightened by these actions).  

Black bloc contributes to this because the masks don't just prevent surveillance by cops but by our ability to see each other.  Most of the time, I don't know if I know these people, much less if I trust them.  And I'm just not naive enough to trust on faith that if they're there in this march with me it actually means we're on the "same side."  

I also don't think I'm the only one having a reaction like this in these crowds, which may contribute to why some others also label these actions "violent."  

And PLEASE don't misconstrue this: on a theoretical and even practical level I don't have any problem with BofA having its windows smashed, they and all others like them have practiced violence on many communities, and the cathartic and symbolic power and the message of those smashed windows is, in my view, potentially really valuable.  

But I would also say that I don't think my reaction to these situations is just "a personal problem" or something like that, and that the way I, and others who have experienced destructive impulses/actions that target us, should be taken into account when these things are planned.  Obviously sometimes the smashing of a window is spontaneous and there is only so much you can do about spontaneous actions, but sometimes it's not.  And in those times shouldn't we know and consent to being in this situation BEFORE it starts happening all around us and we're caught in the middle?  If we are all comrades, aren't those of us for whom that might be triggering owed some sort of warning?  

Or do we just deal with it, or not show up?  Because not showing up is almost where I'm at with anti-capitalist marches because of these experiences, and that sucks, because I am anti-capitalist.  

Obviously, it's quite fashionable right now to hate on black bloc* and property destruction, particularly here in the Bay where those tactics have led to some pretty damned divisive conversations...and I don't really want to add to that? (Which is why I've sat on this piece for weeks, actually).  But once I FINALLY figured this out, I also really, really, wanted to write it out and share it and maybe get others thinking about it too, because it seemed important.

*Obviously not all black blocs practice property destruction and not all property destruction is done by a black bloc, this is simply the context in which I have experienced these moments.  The exception being the black bloc on Move-In Day for Occupy Oakland, which I found really inspiring because they took a really awesome militantly defensive tactic of having shields and protecting people by standing between them and the cops and serving as a kind of wall so medics could get to injured people more easily, etc.  That was great.  I would love to see more of that.

DECOLONIZE THE NEW WORLD - COLUMBUS DAY WEEKEND

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Decolonize the New World Blog

Important Shit I Have Been Reading: Some Reflections on Creating Fragrance-Free Space

Also file under: "stuff I haven't talked about that much but should."

Read it all, the author talks about not just the challenges of this issue of accessibility and large gatherings (excerpted here) but also methods of implementation and the point of the whole thing.  If you don't know much about fragrance accessibility, this is a great post for learning a whole lot in a short amount of time.  It's something I've been working on for the past few years, negotiating and figuring out what things are most important to get fragrance free, and where/when fragrance can still be in my life.  It's a process, and it takes time, but I do think it's pretty important.

via Tape Flags and First Thoughts

The first challenge is that many people don't know that they are making a choice about fragrance. It is so ubiquitous in the products we use that it comes to seem a natural part of our environment; the proverbial water the fish are swimming in. Why would people who don't have sensitivities think about this on their own? You'd be astonished if they did. So it's necessary to, first, let people know that there's a problem.

This leads directly to the second challenge: a lot of people--perhaps most people hearing about this for the first time, if my experience is any indication--don't believe there's a problem even once they're told about it. I don't, in general, blame people for this. If they've never known anyone who was affected, they probably have no idea how bad it can be. I have sometimes been tempted to tap someone on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, I need to leave now, but I wanted to let you know before I go that your decision to wear perfume to this event not only excludes me from it but means that I will probably be sick until next Thursday." But hardly anyone has ever received that shoulder tap, from me or anyone else. So they've never enountered a sufferer in the wild.

Even if they believe there's a problem, and that for some people it can be quite bad, they're inclined to assume that these folks are very rare. The first time I brought up the issue of fragrance at the summer gathering, many years ago, the person I spoke to assumed that I was the only one affected, and that the problem of one person was not sufficient to merit asking 1500 people to change their behavior. In other words, the problem might be real, but it's the job of the sufferers to manage it.

One friend told me that she met a woman at the gathering two years ago who was ranting about the FF policy. She thought it was just another pointless PC thing. My friend told her about me, about how hard gatherings had always been for me, and how much my experience had improved since the FF policy had started to get some traction. The woman was surprised and moved. She'd had no idea this actually mattered to anybody.

I also suspect that many of us progressive types suffer from issue fatigue. We've gotten on board with "Column A: The Essential Social Issues." However imperfectly, we've embraced racial justice; gender equality; the gay and lesbian rights movement; physical accessibility for people who use wheelchairs, scooters, canes, and walkers. In addition, each of us has probably also chosen to prioritize some or all of the "optional" social issues in Column B as well: factory farming, a struggling educational system, the dismantling of voter rights, conditions for workers in overseas factories, animal rights, over-reliance on petroleum fuels, global warming, the environment, the existence of bisexuals, the bottled water industry, invasive species, and whatever else I can't think of off the top of my head.

It can be very frustrating when you try to introduce the fragrance issue to the very people you think will be most open to it, and instead they resist. But I do think that resistance often comes from folks feeling like they have enough on their plate and they don't have the energy to take on one more thing.

I also wonder if some of the resistance might come from a desire not to seem even more like whacked-out troublemakers than we already do. I can imagine--and this is entirely my imagination, not anything I have any knowledge of--but I can imagine the person whose job it is to talk to universities or retreat centers about our needs ranting, "I already have to tell their cafeteria staff that they have to learn to cook vegan food, turn off the ice cream machines at Wednesday's lunch, and get us re-usable cups instead of the paper ones they usually have at the beverage station. And I need to tell the facilities people that we need some of the bathrooms re-designated from Male and Female to Gender-Neutral. Now I'm supposed to tell them, what? That we want them to switch out all the bathroom soap for fragrance-free, and that they can't use their usual cleaning products in the bedrooms? Well, I sure look forward to that conversation!"

Even once people decide they'd like to make some personal changes to help with this problem, there are challenges. They might not know where to find FF products for instance--though this has gotten much easier in recent years. I used to be able to use only Clinique makeup, for instance--$15 for a lipstick!--but a few years ago, when I needed to buy makeup for the first time in years for a choir concert, I was able to get cheap FF lipstick, blush, foundation, eyeshadow, and mascara at my corner Rite Aid.

But people who haven't looked before may not know that somewhere in that wall of shaving cream is one brand whose "extra sensitive" product is fragrance-free, or that Common Brand Of Lotion makes a FF moisturizer you just have to read the fine print to find. It can be disorienting and overwhelming.

People might also be concerned that FF products won't work as well as what they're used to. And that might indeed happen. Sometimes that's a trade-off people should just resign themselves to making (are your perfect hair and blinding-white gym socks really that important?), and sometimes it's a trade-off they can't make. I had some things to say about this previously in a post called The Hierarchy of Harm.

Important Shit I Have Been Reading: Pollution, Poverty, People of Color: The factory on the hill

via Environmental Health News:

"While most coastal cities breathe ocean breezes mixed with traffic exhaust, people in north and central Richmond are exposed to a greater array of contaminants, many of them at higher concentrations. Included are benzene, mercury and other hazardous air pollutants that have been linked to cancer, reproductive problems and neurological effects. People can’t escape the fumes indoors, either. One study showed that some of the industrial pollutants are inside Richmond homes. 

It's the triple whammy of race, poverty and environment converging nationwide to create communities near pollution sources where nobody else wants to live. Black leaders from the Civil Rights Movement called the phenomenon environmental racism, and beginning in the early 1980s, they documented the pattern at North Carolina's Warren County PCBs landfill, Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," Tennessee's Dickson County, Chicago's South Side, Houston's Sunnyside garbage dump and other places across the country. 

About 56 percent of the nine million Americans who live in neighborhoods within three kilometers of large commercial hazardous waste facilities are people of color, according to a landmark, 2007 environmental justice report by the United Church of Christ. In California, it’s 81 percent. Poverty rates in these neighborhoods are 1.5 times higher than elsewhere. 

Those numbers, however, reflect a miniscule portion of the threats faced by nonwhite and low-income families. Thousands of additional towns are near other major sources of pollution, including refineries, chemical plants, freeways and ports. 

Richmond is one of these beleaguered towns, on the forefront of the nation's environmental justice struggle, waging a fight that began a century ago."

As you've probably heard, the Chevron refinery in Richmond had a fire a couple of days ago.  This fire left huge toxic clouds which are now going to make their way around the bay area (in fact, currently, in my direction).  Environmental racism is a deathly real thing, and I think it's very important that we understand that it's part of a long pattern of behavior.  This is not simply "an accident," it is part of a historical trajectory that says low income people, people of color, and Native people (in particular) are fair game to be slowly poisoned and their lives risked for the profit of an upper crust of normative White people.  This article does some of that work, and so I share it with you.

Good Shit I Have Been Reading: Defining Muslim Feminist Politics through Indigenous Solidarity Activism

It's been a long time since I did a round up of good pieces I have read recently, and to be honest over the last two years in particular I just haven't kept up my reading as I once did.  But I am doing a bit more of it lately and I felt particularly moved to share this piece by Shaista Patel with you.  Do go read it all at The Feminist Wire....

Defining Muslim Feminist Politics through Indigenous Solidarity Activism:

"While we may share some histories, it is critical for us Muslims and other non-Indigenous people here to not fall into the trap of equating the struggles of Muslims with that of Indigenous peoples in white settler colonies, where Indigenous people who have been living here since time immemorial have now been outnumbered by whites through illegal land grab, dispossession, and outright genocide. Under settler-colonialism, as Patrick Wolfe asserts, “the dominant feature is not exploitation [of Indigenous peoples’ labor] but replacement” of Indigenous people by white people.[iv] Our connection as racialized people to this land is not the same as that of its Indigenous peoples, and we have to remember that they are not just a “minority” group here, like we are. In “Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy,” scholar Andrea Smith explains how the logic of the genocide of Indigenous peoples and slavery, and continual treatment of Black people as property under capitalism, interrelate and work with the Orientalist logic of seeing Muslims and Arabs as inferior, which legitimizes constant war on their lands and bodies.[v] It is important, therefore, to understand the different but interrelated ways in which white supremacy affects and implicates us. My Muslim feminist praxis asks me not to leave this recognition of living on stolen land as rhetoric, as a mere admission, but rather to make my complicity into an urgent political and personal task. 

How does this sense of complicity translate into an everyday feminist praxis? As a Muslim feminist, fighting racism, sexism, and homophobia has been at the forefront of my agenda.  However, an understanding of ongoing colonial relations between Canadians and Indigenous peoples here makes it necessary to remember that, as several Indigenous women have patiently pointed out again and again, colonization happened precisely through patriarchal gendered violence against Indigenous women. As Smith explains in her ground-breaking work,Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide:

[I]n order to colonize a people whose society was not hierarchical, colonizers must first naturalize hierarchy through instituting patriarchy.[vi]

Drawing on these insights, I recognize that my struggles against gender violence will fail if articulated in isolation from confronting colonial patriarchal relations that continue to strengthen sexual and other forms of violence against Indigenous women, women of color, and white women. I cannot fight against the invasion of my body if my politics do not account for the ways in which Indigenous women have been constantly marked for death and disappearance. If I am angry about Mark Steyn’s anti-Muslim vitriolic cry that the “future belongs to Islam” because Muslim women are reproducing “speedily” while the Western (white) population is declining,[vii] I have to remember that Indigenous women are still seen as “better dead than pregnant”.[viii] The “Stolen Sisters” report by Amnesty International (Canada) states that a 1996 Canadian government statistic reveals that Indigenous women between the ages of 25 and 44, with status under the Indian Act, were five times more likely than all other women of the same age to die as the result of violence.[ix] Native Women’s Association of Canada reports the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women at 582 since 1980,[x] while several other Indigenous men and women report the number to be much higher, which is not surprising given the fact that colonialism works precisely through targeting Indigenous women’s bodies. If Indigenous women’s bodies are disposable and a site of everyday violence, what integrity can my body demand here?"

'via Blog this'

Once More into the Spuffy Breach, Dear Friends, Or; My Evolving and Complicated Relationship with Spike

There was a day when I was a teenager, probably 15 or 16, when I saw the sex scene from "Smashed" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if you didn't already know from the post title) on television.  It was completely out of context.  I literally clicked the remote onto the channel right at the moment where Buffy and Spike were making out, tearing down a house, and fucking.  And my jaw dropped.  And I was like, "holy shit, is this seriously on TV right now?"  And then I was simply very aware of how turned on I was by the whole scene.

Cut to... At least seven years later and I still haven't really watched Buffy cuz honestly I didn't care that much about the show, but friends of mine are STILL raving about it so I finally give in and decide to watch it - also there's that sex scene at some point to see again and I'll be honest: I was looking forward to it.  So I watch the series, and I get really invested in Spike as a character.  Yeah, he is really stalkery, but that's ok (it's not really [and I'm over-simplifying my reaction, I wasn't ok with it then either but I also chose to sort of let it go]), and he doesn't know how to take no for an answer (not cute IRL in any way).  BUT WHO CARES LOOK AT HIM OMG (no really though you should care, but I didn't).

But despite this, when I got to that sex scene again... It didn't affect me the way it did that first time.  I suspect because, in part, I knew the story that went along with it.  Truthfully the kiss at the end of "Once More, With Feeling" affected me more (IN MY PANTS) than that sex scene did.  But I still have lots of feelings about that sex scene because of what it meant to me the first time I saw it, and I felt I should continue having those feelings for it.  I certainly was still attracted to Spike, hugely so, so I just accepted that perhaps part of the fun of that first viewing was that it came out of nowhere and caught me by surprise - along with that sense of (in my parents living room sort of late at night) "I should NOT be watching this right now!"  But still, that it didn't affect me the same way bothered me.  And has continued to bother me.

Cut to lots of years later and Mark of Mark Watches getting to season six of Buffy, getting to this episode and his reaction...could not be more different than mine was over ten years ago now and I'm just like "WHAT?" because you see I'm still really invested in this scene and this character.  But along with that "WHAT?" reaction is the same nagging little voice that bothered me the last time I watched this scene, the one that's like, "you're not turned on, why is that?"  The very non-reaction of my body to this scene is in itself a reaction and it's one that I don't know how to process.  Hell it's been processing for years at this point and I still don't know how to express what I feel and why it matters even as I know it does matter to me.

The best I can figure is that this matters to me now because I understand something about the politics of desire - that what we desire is as imbued with political meaning as everything else.  I started exploring that in my posts about how it bothered me when I realized my "hottest guys" list was populated exclusively by white men.  I have over the years consciously forced awareness of these things onto myself, in an effort to decolonize my mind in this arena to the best of my ability (with noticeable positive results).  And it was roughly during this period that I watched Buffy all the way through for the first time.  I was subconsciously already processing these issues when I watched the series, though I wouldn't be able to write about (or articulate) them until much later (obviously).  Although, if you look back, my very first posts on this blog were reposts from livejournal about...what else?  Spuffy. (P.S. those posts have major spoilers so if you're watching for the first time don't go looking for them, also if you do go looking for them please excuse my ableist language. Good gods that is some old writing...)

Quite frankly I don't know if I'm ready to dissect my attraction to Spike.  I am certain that is a very loaded piece of my psyche, maybe that doesn't NEED to be totally unpacked? (I waffle on this).  But here's what I do know.  I do know that what Mark wrote in his reactions to these scenes and this relationship hit me in the gut.  I do know that I had a hot mess of conflicted feelings reacting to what he wrote; some of which are very personal feelings about whether or not I am in fact a fucked up person (in ways I didn't already know about/am not ready/don't want to deal with).  And I do know that I've been putting off going back and rewatching that episode; that I'm wary of what I might find this time around.  I also know that, given the clusterfuck of a reaction the fandom has given Mark as a result of his writing on that episode (now dubbed the Great Spuffy Meltdown of 2012 by Mark himself), I am getting indications that maybe my reactions to these scenes and this relationship are ones I SHOULD analyze more than I have.

And for once I don't really have a conclusion here, I'm just kind of laying out the things I've been thinking about.  I keep thinking about these things off and on as I read Mark's reviews, and revisiting feelings that have lain dormant for YEARS as it goes along.  I know there are Buffy fans who read my stuff, what do you think about all this?  What were/have been your feelings watching this relationship evolve?  Where is consent in their sexual relationship, if it's there at all?  I remember brownfemipower having some interesting thoughts about the sort of BDSM type nature of the Spuffy relationship and its being a rare instance of that sort of relationship being OK on mainstream television and agreeing with her interpretation, but I haven't been able to find those posts again on tumblr.  Does something along those lines ring true for you?  Or am I just way out in left field?

Review: Shadoweyes, Volume One

Shadoweyes, Volume One by Ross Campbell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this graphic novel, the content was interesting, the story was intriguing and the characters were amazing. Not to do any spoilers but this text deals with several social issues and oppressed identities in ways I rarely see and I was impressed. Yes, the story was quick, but it seemed kinda par for the course with comics to me, and totally met my expectations. Can't wait to read Vol. 2!

View all my reviews

People, Not Places

Invincible feat. Abeer & Suhell Nafar (DAM)

People Not Places (Detroit, New York, Palestine, 12 min)
Directed by Iqaa The Olivetone
Score by Vaughan T (LABTECHS)
Produced by EMERGENCE and Palestine Education Project

EMERGENCEtravel.net
EMERGENCEmedia.org
MP3: tinyurl.com/​696jl9
lyrics & notes: emergencetravel.net/​lyrics#people_not_places

This docu-music-video is based on the song of the same name by Invincible featuring Abeer and Suhell Nafar (DAM). Invincible plays two characters in the video: a Birthright Israel tour recruiter, styled as a used car salesman; and herself, subverting the recruiter’s mission by exposing the buried Palestinian significance of each location in the tour.

Invincible exposes the process of historic and continued colonization of Palestine as being even deeper than land seizure and ethnic cleansing, but one that attempts to erase the indigenous language, culture, and memory of Palestinians.

Intertwined with the music video are interviews that expose how Zionist claims to a Jewish “birthright” to Palestine have come at the expense of the Palestinian Right of Return to their indigenous land. These interviews show how the Right of Return of Palestinians is interconnected with the resistance of occupied and displaced refugee communities globally, from Turtle Island to Puerto Rico and beyond.

Please watch.

Stuff I'm reading: "For America to Live, Europe Must Die"

I detest writing.:

"Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to 'redistribute' the results - the money, maybe - of this industrialization to a wider section of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass it around; but in order to do so, Marxism must maintain the industrial system. Once again, the power relations with European society will have to be altered, but once again the effects upon American Indian peoples here and non-Europeans elsewhere will remain the same."

A small piece of a speech from the '80's by Russel Means, an American Indian activist.  Go check it out, stuff to think about.

Stuff I think about differently now; children, feminism and more

You know... there's lots of things I don't talk about here... More than I ever originally intended.   But you know, gotta protect the ego, don't want to start spouting off "half-cocked" on things I am just sorting out for myself, and you know, it's not terribly safe to share vulnerabilities on the internets either.  And most importantly, don't want to cause harm to anyone through shit I'm still ignorant about. But I have actually changed quite a bit, evolved for the better, I hope, in the last few years.

You can see some of the change in the numbers on my tags... Once upon a time posts on feminism way out numbered any others. Now, quite a few other categories have grown while that one has stayed relatively the same.

Oh, I still self-identify as a feminist. It's just... not that important to me anymore. And by "it" I mean, not feminisms or doing stuff I would classify as feminist but the label itself. Like the trying to convince people about how they *really are* feminists? I just don't care about that at all anymore. Far too many women who have rejected Feminism as a label do too much good work for womankind for me to ignore, and far too many Feminists have done too much goddamn harm for me to ignore that either. And that makes me... apathetic about the label (though I still use it for simplicity's sake as a general rule).

And that's not all! Once upon a time not that long ago really, I didn't give much thought to my own ableism, internalized misogyny, cissexism, accepted tropes of violence in media, or, as started my thinking about all this: my own bigotry towards children. Yep, I'm that asshole who was totally willing to side eye your kid for having a fit, like kids sometimes do, and consequently probably make that fit worse.

Reading mai'a's and bfp's and other's work on kids and mamihood were pivotal to changing that (even when, as a currently child free person half the time I didn't/don't entirely get what they're talking about). Also pivotal, and probably my real "click" moment in this particular evolution of thought was this post by Arwyn.  (And in continued evolution, most recently I'm starting to try and really figure out how to think of things like motherhood and mamihood in a way that is not so cis-centric as most discussions I've seen are and as my own understanding of these concepts is, being cis myself).

And so, basically, like, now I think this shit is so unbelievably important, way more important than Feminism (long dedicated to figuring out how to give women like *me* a way out of motherhood and housewifery) tends to give it credit for. As others have said (though I can't remember who right now, share in comments if you know) if we center the needs of children, we'll be working on the needs of everyone, and working at the root of a lot of the trauma and violence most of us have experienced in our own lives. If you center the needs of all children you have to figure out early on how to help children with disabilities, trans children, gender queer children, children of color, immigrant children...  (Just like how, imo, if we center the needs of trans women, we will in fact be working most effectively towards the needs of all women...)

And to change the oppressed nature of children, as a class, would mean rethinking totally the way we relate to each other, the kind of power relations between people that we accept in general, I think.  Because, if you think about it, when do we learn that others have power over us? As children. When do we learn to accept that some people are allowed to compromise our bodily autonomy? As children.  When do we learn to accept authoritarian relationships between people as normal?  As children...

I remember a post from a long time ago that Renee at Womanist Musings wrote about her sons and the way we assume we can just hug a child or ruffle their hair without permission, and how she always asks first if they wanted a hug, or to be touched at all, because this is one of those ways we reinforce the notion that some people don't have the right to controlling what happens to their body, and that's not a message she ever wants them to receive from her as a parent.

Thing is, that notion then gets transferred to all other people who do not have as much power in our society (like children... which is in part why/how children are an oppressed class, which apparently is news to many). The less a person is valued, socially, the more people seem to believe they have access to those person's bodies. Which is why trans women still are writing posts like this.  And why disabled people are still having to tell us TAB people not to just grab their wheelchairs without permission, etc.  (When really, this should be obvious, shouldn't it?!?!)

So anyway, these are things that I have learned in the last couple years.  Things I'm not super firm in, things I'm not sure I'm the best person to even talk about them!  But things that have been a part of my evolution and that I have never written about here before...which I want to do more.

Google-Verizon Pact Works Against a Free and Open Internet

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 9, 2010 4:41 PM

CONTACT: Free Press Liz Rose, Communications Director, 202-265-1490 x 32 Jenn Ettinger, Media Coordinator, 202-265-1490 x35

Google-Verizon Pact Worse than Feared

WASHINGTON - August 9 - In response to Google and Verizon's "policy framework" unveiled today, MoveOn.Org Civic Action, Credo Action, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, ColorofChange.org and Free Press, all members of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition, issued the following joint statement:
"The Google-Verizon pact isn't just as bad as we feared - it's much worse. They are attacking the Internet while claiming to preserve it. Google users won't be fooled.
"They are promising Net Neutrality only for a certain part of the Internet, one that they'll likely stop investing in. But they are also paving the way for a new 'Internet' via fiber and wireless phones where Net Neutrality will not apply and corporations can pick and choose which sites people can easily view on their phones or any other Internet device using these networks.
"It would open the door to outright blocking of applications, just as Comcast did with BitTorrent, or the blocking of content, just as Verizon did with text messages from NARAL Pro-choice America. It would divide the information superhighway, creating new private fast lanes for the big players while leaving the little guy stranded on a winding dirt road.
"Worse still, this pact would turn the Federal Communications Commission into a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing complaints and unable to make rules of its own.
"This is not real Net Neutrality. And this pact would harm the millions of Americans who have pleaded with our leaders in Washington to defend the free and open Internet. President Obama, Congress and the FCC should reject this deal, restore the authority of the agency that's supposed to protect Internet users, and safeguard Net Neutrality once and for all."

###

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net

A free and open internet is incredibly important for bloggers like me and SO MANY other voices that just would not be prioritized by some "tiered" system. I really can't stress this enough, we've got to fight this y'all, there are way too many spaces already which privilege corporations over actual people; especially marginalized people!  As many class issues as there are with access to the internet, it is, as best I can figure, our last real refuge for the free exchange of information for everyone in this country and that needs to be protected.

Call for Submissions: Occupied Bodies

Landed in my email via Cecelia of Anishinaabekwe:

Tasha Fierce is putting together an anthology folks, if you have something to say about WOC and body image sit up and pay attention. 

I am soliciting essays for an anthology on women of color’s self-image/body image as shaped by family, friends, media, society, history, lived experiences, etc. I’m looking for smart, accessible, and snappy personal narratives that also offer nuanced analysis of the underlying constructs that affect how we perceive ourselves. Exploring intersectionality of identities is extremely important. I particularly want the voices of women of color that are not often heard to be represented, such as trans* WOC, disabled WOC, queer WOC, WOC outside the U.S., WOC with eating disorders, working class/poor WOC and fat WOC. Of course, all the varied perspectives any woman of color can offer are welcome. This is an exciting project, as this topic has not been explored in depth and including such a diverse collection of viewpoints before. The final manuscript will be submitted to relevant independent publishers.
——
Some possible jumping off points include, but are not limited to:

• What images of yourself were instilled in you by your parents/guardians/other family members when you were a young child? What positive or negative encounters with adults as a child helped shape that image?
• If you were born in a country other than the U.S. and then immigrated to the U.S., how did the society in which you were born play a role in your developing self-image, and what contrasts did you find difficult to navigate between the two societies?
• How did the media you consumed as a child/teen shape your body/self image today? How does it complicate it? How does the media you consume NOW affect your body/self image?
• How did pressure from family and friends affect the way you perceived yourself after you were old enough to take care of yourself?
• How did you feel about societal beauty and body standards as a teen? Did you rebel, or conform by any means necessary to avoid confrontation?
• How has the globalization and dissemination of the Western beauty ideal affected you and women of color worldwide?
• Debunk this: “in some cultures they ______”, – deconstructing a commonly held belief about an ethnic group’s relation to body (such as the black community supposedly being OK with fat).
• If you’re queer, how has being a queer woman of color affected your self-image and how you desire your partner to look? If you’ve had partners who were also women of color, did/do you gaze upon them with the same critical eye you reserve for yourself? Why or why not?
• If you’re a trans* WOC, how was your perception of your gender identity shaped? How has your self/body image changed over the years and have there been any other shifts in your thinking about your self/body image? How does being a WOC interact with your trans* identity? How does it affect how other people perceive you and your gender?
• How has being a disabled WOC affected your body/self image? Do you feel it’s a detriment or a positive part of your person? How did you come to terms with your disability, or has it never been problematic for you?
• As a fat WOC, has weight shaped your self/body image your whole life? Have you developed an eating disorder? Was it exacerbated by there being virtually no resources for women of color, especially for fat WOC?
• Are you a sexual assault/rape survivor? How did that trauma affect your view of yourself?

——-
If your experiences overlap on any of the suggested jumping off points, PLEASE feel free to explore that.
Guidelines:

• Deadline for submissions is October 15, 2010;
• Submissions should be saved in Word format or Rich Text, double spaced, size 12 Arial or Times New Roman;
• 500 to 5,000 words;
• Include RELIABLE contact information and a brief biography;
• Only e-mail submissions will be accepted, however, if you can’t arrange that please contact me and we’ll work something out.
• Send submissions to: occupiedbodies@gmail.com;
• Again, the deadline for submissions is October 15, 2010.

Who I Am:
The woman spearheading this project is Tasha Fierce, a freelance writer who also happens to be a fat, queer, disabled woman of color. I’ve written about race politics, fat acceptance, disability and feminism in several zines, including Evolution of a Race Riot and the zine I edited from 1998-2001, Bitchcore. I have contributed to Jezebel several times, the fat acceptance blog Shapely Prose, the race & pop culture blog Racialicious, and the feminist disability activism blogFWD/Forward. My work has also been featured in The Huffington Post. I live, love and write in Los Angeles, California. You can regularly read me at my own blog, Red Vinyl Shoes (http://redvinylshoes.com/blog) and on Twitter as @redvinylshoes.

Johannes Mehserle Trial - Jury Has Begun Deliberating

The jury began deliberating today on the fate of former BART cop Johannes Meherle for his killing of Oscar Grant a year and a half ago.

This is something I have posted on more than a few times.

In that year and a half my opinion of the case has changed.  As I have lived longer in Oakland, and seen more of the relationship between cops and people of color here and elsewhere.  As I have learned more of the history of this city.

I no longer see Mehserle's look of shock after shooting Oscar Grant in the back as evidence that "he didn't mean to do it," but more probably surprise that he actually had done what he wanted to do.

I have no proof of that, but given his lies ("I thought he had a gun!") since then, and that his other piece of defense ("I meant to tase him!") contradicts that claim (you don't stand up over someone and tase them if you think they are about to roll over and shoot you with a gun); I simply don't find Johannes Mehserle to be credible on any level.

I don't think he is a cold blooded killer who feels no remorse for what he did either.

But I do think that the cop culture in this city (as in many cities and towns everywhere) is rooted in an atmosphere that is highly racist, highly classist; that dehumanizes people of color to the degree that violence perpetrated against them is not seen as "as big of a deal" as against white people.  And I think, in that mindset, in that atmosphere, it is easy for a dominant part of someone to pull out their gun and shoot an unarmed man in the back, while another part of you is shocked at your own hate and it's actions.

And I don't think someone like that should be out in free society.

I don't think they should necessarily be in prison either (see: my prison abolitionist views) but they need to be out of society somehow, and right now, prison is all we've got.

Anyway, that is my opinion.

And I am ready to take to the streets if he is acquitted, with the rest of "the animals in Oakland".

But for now, we wait, so that those who have heard all the evidence, and who are in an even better position to judge than I, can weigh the facts and come to a conclusion.

I just pray that decision will be something akin to justice.

For play by play updates see: OscarGrantTrial on Twitter.