Tucson school district bans books by Chicano and Native authors

On Doctor King Day, how about another edition of "shit that makes whatsername's blood boil," care of the narcosphere:

The decision to ban books follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the Tucson Unified School District board to succumb to the State of Arizona, and forbid Mexican American Studies, rather than fight the state decision.

Students said the banned books were seized from their classrooms and out of their hands, after Tucson schools banned Mexican American Studies, including a book of photos of Mexico. Crying, students said it was like Nazi Germany, and they were unable to sleep since it happened.

[...]

"the last time a book of mine was outlawed was during the state of emergency in apartheid South Africa in 1986, when the regime there banned the curriculum I’d written, Strangers in Their Own Country, likely because it included excerpts from a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Confronting massive opposition at home and abroad, the white minority government feared for its life in 1986. It’s worth asking what the school authorities in Arizona fear today."

Indeed [emphasis mine].

Banned books include:
Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years
The Tempest (yes, the Shakespeare play)
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Occupied America: A History of Chicanos
The House on Mango Street
Black Mesa Poems

Ceremony
The Devil’s Highway
Like Water for Chocolate
Ten Little Indians
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven
Ocean Power, Poems from the Desert
...And many more, apparently.

Instructors from the former Mexican American studies courses have also been told "to stay away from any class units where "race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes.""

Yeah.

Can't have the youth thinking about oppression, gods forbid, they might decide to work against it!

Despite knowing that book banning is NOT new to America, it still makes my blood boil (or at least it feels like it's boiling...).

I mean, really, when has banning books EVER led to or been a part of anything good? Isn't "our freedom" why we've been told "the terrorists hate us"? How can the same people who spout that line not see how fucking un-free actions like this are?

Oh, that's right, because they are hypocritical "Libertarian" assholes who think everything is ok as long as it's the US doing it... We're special fucking snow flakes that way.

Help Raise Funds for "Ajijaak" Ojibwe Storybook!

I got word about this project from the lovely Cecelia!  Check out her blog if you haven't already:  Anishinaabekwe.  From the project's Kickstarter page:

The making of the Storybook "Ajijaak!"
FOUR Colours Productions is an aboriginal and non aboriginal collaboration of artists, language teachers, designers, elders, storytellers and more who come together to create Ojibwe Language storybooks and Cd's for sale in the community. The thing we have in common is an inherent interest in preserving creativity, culture and the arts in community- especially for the little ones!

Our Goal!
The intent is to assist populating the libraries, book shops, children's homes and schools with more Ojibwe language materials- the more the merrier. We reach a diverse audience from families on the rez to urban kids with awesome parents who want their kids to learn about all kinds of cultures. There can never be enough books, Cd's, videos, immersion classes and more. We feel we are a very small part of a large community trying to help save the language.The main thing we like about our process is that it allows us to do that- ''DO'' being the key word.

Please help if you can!

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.

American History: The Brown Berets and the Word "Chicano"

(via nezua, vampisol and intifada on Tumblr):

…At the same time, East LA was at the heart of the Chicano rights movement in the 1960s. El Movimiento began in the 1940s, when “chicano” was still considered derogatory. By the 1960s, chicanismo was embraced as a symbol of ethnic pride and chicano rock, literature, theatre and art flourished in East LA and other Mexican communities. In 1966, a group of East LA high school students formed the Young Citizens for Community Action. In 1967, they founded East LA’s Piranya Coffee House and changed their name to the Brown Berets. In 1969, they began distributing their own newspaper, La Causa. That same year, Wayne Alaniz Healy, David Rivas Botello, Jose Luis Gonzalez and Juan Gonzalez started the first Chicano art studio, the still extant Goez Art Studio.

Structural Racism in Fashion, in Action on Project Runway

So for some reason the last couple days I decided I wanted to watch Project Runway so I’ve been going through last season. And boy oh boy if it doesn’t just hurt my head sometimes.

There is this one designer, Jay, I think he is probably Pinoy, and his clothes tend to emphasize a woman’s curves, especially her ass. Personally, I like this, as I have always been proud of my wide hips and my favorite part of carrying a little “extra” weight as I sometimes do is how my butt fills out to match them a little better. Well… the judges are constantly picking at him for this. The last episode I watched was especially bad, with the one judge guy going on about “no woman wants to look wider than she is; she doesn’t exist!” referring to the way Jay’s outfit made his model’s hips and ass look “bigger” (which is barely did). And all the judges joined in on this refrain of course (with guest judge Jessica Alba pointing out with some shame or embarrassment or self consciousness that since having a child her hips are wider and she’s “still trying to hide it”).

Fuck that.

I know I’m not the first person to notice this, in fact it made me think about a post I saw on Tumblr some time back about wishing that fashion would do the opposite of what it does: instead of trying to figure out how to make us all look similar, that it would emphasize what makes us look different from each other (i.e. someone has broad shoulders? emphasize that! instead of trying to make them look “proportional” which is just fashion speak for “normal” which really just means "white").

It also drove home a way in which (Western) fashion is, well, racist. Here we have this man of color who clearly (and he basically says as much) enjoys working with a very different notion of beauty than the Eurocentric one that is the foundation of Western fashion. And I know I’m not the first one to make this connection either, but it was just one of those moments where I saw this exchange unfolding and I’m going, oh shit, this whole conversation is predicated on a really specific understanding of Beauty…and it would be so easy to see that concept of Beauty as “neutral” you know, like I could just feel the words they were using trying to massage my brain into not seeing just how coded they are, but they are, they really, really are.

So anyway, despite knowing this is not a unique revelation (and probably old news since this is LAST season), it was just one of those moments of seeing this dynamic I knew existed in action, and I wanted to write it out.

The post in which I talk about CLOTHES (gee maybe I am femme after all?)

Today as I was driving home from Costco I drove past a park I've driven past many times before. In this park where a bunch of twenty and thirty-somethings in comfortable clothes, yoga pants, tanks tops, you know, neo-hippie gear and I thought to myself; "I bet husband and I would like those people".

And from there I started thinking about: clothes. Clothes are an interesting personal item I'd never given a whole helluva lot of thought to before. Certainly never much critical thought. But there I was sitting in my car and considering how I'd summed that group of people up and I thought: clothes are our adornment, our peacock feathers or brightly colored scales. They tell a tale about us, whether we're conscious of it or not. They communicate values.

It's like the exercise to identify class values in Acupuncture is Like Noodles. What clothes we choose testify somewhat to what we value. This group, in their comfortable, clean and clearly not new clothes communicated to me that they were more interested in being comfortable than being fashionable, though their choices in yoga pants and tank tops suggested some sense of fashion and that they were willing to spend money on clothes, though the obviously not brand newness of them said they weren't willing to do this all the time. The particular combination of clothes was that neo-hippie look I think many people expect all of northern California to dress like, communicating to me that they were comfortable being identified this way and therefore probably held similar values to me: progressivism, social justice, anti-capitalist(ish?)...etc.

These are all variable attributes to me, and so I drove past with the automatic assumption in my head that probably I a) had something in common with these folks and b) would enjoy spending time with them.

It made me wonder what other people see as they drive past this park with these folks hanging out in it. Do they see "degenerates"? Do they see air heads? Druggies?

How effective are our peacock feathers, and how easy to they make it for others to pigeonhole us or write us off?

Hey guess what? I'm STILL cisgender!

Last year I made a post that wasn't particularly eloquent or revolutionary to my mind. But it appears it bears repeating given the events at Pam's House Blend (discussed here: A Point About Cis).

Yes. I am a cissexual woman. Cisgender even, for the most part.

To use these words and to acknowledge my status is not an attack on cisgender people.

To have a label instead of just being "default" is infinitely preferable to me.

Being ok with positioning yourself as "default" (which is exactly what only ascribing labels to "those other people" is) is not the work of an ally. Nope, not even a little bit. And justifying that behavior in others, enabling that behavior, not so cool either, to be perfectly honest.

And if you're coming across this word for the first time, that's ok! It's ok to be ignorant, just so long as when you discover you are, you take steps to become not so. Google is your friend!

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"

This quote is total bullshit, and I hate it, and have always hated it.

Usually it's said by parents or teachers, to children. Children. I guess they're hoping kids will somehow learn through this how to shrug words off? How?! The entire way the quote is phrased says it's talking about a current, existing, reality. But seriously, words don't hurt? I would challenge anyone reading to find no time when they have been hurt by words.

Words DO hurt, they can hurt very, very, badly.

That's not to say we should tell our children "the world should be nice to you." Or lead them to believe that the world is a nice place, that you don't need to deal with hurtful words, or that you should let them bring you down for long. The world ISN'T nice, part of growing up is learning to deal with things that hurt, picking yourself up from it and continuing on.

But when someone comes to you, hurt by words, quoting this saying at them trivializes the way they are feeling. It disregards the pain they're feeling, telling them to "suck it up." That's not how you teach them to actually deal with what they're feeling, that's how you get them to bury their pain even deeper inside. And that never ends well, not to mention that it's entirely counter productive to helping them to grow.

Engage the fucking material people. Don't trivialize. Don't minimize. Don't disregard. Engage their pain, do your best to empathize even if those words wouldn't have hurt you, do your best to help them learn to pick themselves back up.

Def Jams

I fucking love def jams. Just like modern art (which I also love) def jams can be spectacular or they can blow, but I love that they exist. Here is a sampling of my favorites so far...

Stacyann Chin - Feminist or Womanist?

Ishle Park - Pussy

Kendra Urdang - To Every Man Who Never Called Himself a Feminist


And more:

Suheir Hammad - We Spent The 4th Of July In Bed

Cameron Bartolini, Ullses Dorantes, Isaac Miller - This is For You

Lisa Arnold - I'm Not Anti-Feminism

Shihan - Sick and Tired

Frenchie - Fuckin' Ain't Conscious

Andrea Gibson - Blue Blanket

Erykah Badu - Friends, fans and artists must meet, which one are you and which one are me?

Dave Chappelle - Fuck Ashton Kutcher and How I Got the Lead on Jeapordy

Vajayjay

Apparently this word is sweeping the nation! (I heard it started on Grey's Anatomy?)

So here's my thing with this word, and really, other pet names.

I don't have a problem with nick- or pet names for things on principle. I have nicknames for things. Even my own vagina (I go with "vaj").

Here's my thing with "vajayjay" though. Isn't it rather infantalizing?

The only reason I can see to use it, is to make the vagina seem less "scary." Like when you're a kid and these medical terms seem intimidating, or the bits and pieces you're talking about are "naughty." I've been there, I tried to find a euphemism I liked for quite a while. Until I realized the function of euphemisms. Should I, a grown woman, be intimidated by my own cunt? Do I think my vagina is naughty? Or something to be embarrassed by or ashamed of?

No.

And so, I can't get behind these "cute" names for our vulvas/vaginas. It creates a protective barrier against knowledge, against grokking, of our parts. That's just not something I can support.

Decision Time

I have resolved to integrate the word "grok" into my vocabulary. Oh I recognize it when others use it. But I want to use it! Regularly if possible.