The following is a guest blog by Simon Owens. Simon works with CARE, an international organization that fights global poverty. Today is Blog Action Day 09 and nearly 10,000 bloggers around the world are using their blogs, today, to talk about climate change. Check back here later today for my own blog on this topic.
Climate Change: The Human Cost
by Simon Owens
Climate change is not only about melting ice caps and polar bears. Climate change is about people.
Swinging weather patterns are creating disasters on a scale that human civilization has never before witnessed. For the world’s poorest people – the ones least equipped to deal with its effects – climate change is devastating their crops, livelihoods and communities.
"Climate change is worsening the plight of those hundreds of millions of men, women and children who already live in extreme poverty – and it threatens to push hundreds of millions more people into similar destitution," says CARE International’s Secretary General Robert Glasser. "A concerted international response to this unprecedented challenge is required if we are to avoid catastrophic human suffering."
CARE is working toward a world where poor people can create opportunity out of crises like climate change. But the current reality is that climate change makes poor people even more vulnerable.
For instance, agricultural production will likely decline in the poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Less reliable rainfall will likely affect planting seasons, crop growth and livestock health – and lead to increased malnutrition. In other parts of the developing world, flooding will likely further diminish the quality of already-marginal soil and could cause outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
Climate change also is hurling many poor families into “Catch-22” situations. For example, they may select crops that are less sensitive to rainfall variation, but also less profitable. As incomes decline and people are not able to eke out a living, children are forced to leave school, assets are sold off to afford essentials, malnutrition rates increase and large-scale migration ensues. The end result? Deepening poverty for tens of millions of people around the world.
What Must Be Done?
At the international level, negotiations to develop a new treaty to guide global efforts to address climate change will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in just a couple weeks. The United States must help lead those efforts, and forge a strong agreement that caps emissions, stops global warming and responds to the effects already in motion. We must do this for the sake of all of humanity.
What can I do to help?
First, you can make a tax-deductible donation to CARE to help poor families access the tools and education they need to adapt to the effects of climate change, make efficient use of their existing resources and overcome poverty for good.
Second, if you live in the Unites States, you can write your senators and urge them to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a critical step toward U.S. leadership in tackling climate change. U.S. leadership is critical to making the Copenhagen negotiations a success.
Third, you can join the CARE mailing list to be kept up to date on CARE’s activities and other ways you can take action in the days counting down to Copenhagen.
To donate, take action and join our e-mail list, please visit www.care.org/climate
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Queer Kids of Queer Parents Against Gay Marriage
I read this today, and I fell instantly in love with the authors. This takes some of the things that I discussed in some of my previous posts and further develops similar thoughts and ideas. Please check out the original posting at Resist the Gay Marriage Agenda!
Resist the Gay Marriage Agenda!
By queerkidssaynomarriage
It’s hard for us to believe what we’re hearing these days. Thousands are losing their homes, and gays want a day named after Harvey Milk. The U.S. military is continuing its path of destruction, and gays want to be allowed to fight. Cops are still killing unarmed black men and bashing queers, and gays want more policing. More and more Americans are suffering and dying because they can’t get decent health care, and gays want weddings. What happened to us? Where have our communities gone? Did gays really sell out that easily?
As young queer people raised in queer families and communities, we reject the liberal gay agenda that gives top priority to the fight for marriage equality. The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality. This agenda fractures our communities, pits us against natural allies, supports unequal power structures, obscures urgent queer concerns, abandons struggle for mutual sustainability inside queer communities and disregards our awesomely fabulous queer history.
Children of queers have a serious stake in this. The media sure thinks so, anyway. The photographs circulated after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2004 decision to marry gay couples at City Hall show men exchanging rings with young children strapped to their chests and toddlers holding their moms’ hands as city officials lead them through vows. As Newsom runs for governor these images of children and their newly married gay parents travel with him, supposedly expressing how deeply Newsom cares about families: keeping them together, ensuring their safety, meeting their needs. These photos, however, obscure very real aspects of his political record that have torn families apart: his disregard for affordable housing, his attacks on welfare, his support for increased policing and incarceration that separate parents from children and his new practice of deporting minors accused – not convicted – of crimes. As young people with queer parents we are not proud of the “family values” politic put forth by these images and the marriage equality campaign. We don’t want gay marriage activism conducted in our name – we realize that it’s hurting us, not helping us.
We think long-term monogamous partnerships are valid and beautiful ways of structuring and experiencing family, but we don’t see them as any more inherently valuable or legitimate than the many other family structures. We believe in each individual and family’s right to live their queer identity however they find meaningful or necessary, including when that means getting married. However, the consequences of the fight for legal inclusion in the marriage structure are terrifying. We’re seeing queer communities fractured as one model of family is being hailed and accepted as the norm, and we are seeing queer families and communities ignore and effectively work against groups who we see as natural allies, such as immigrant families, poor families, and families suffering from booming incarceration rates. We reject the idea that any relationship based on love should have to register with the state. Marriage is an institution used primarily consolidate privilege, and we think real change will only come from getting rid of a system that continually doles out privilege to a few more, rather than trying to reform it. We know that most families, straight or gay, don’t fit in with the standards for marriage, and see many straight families being penalized for not conforming to the standard the government has set: single moms trying to get on welfare, extended family members trying to gain custody, friends kept from being each other’s legal representatives. We have far more in common with those straight families than we do with the kinds of gay families that would benefit from marriage. We are seeing a gay political agenda become single-issue to focus on marriage and leave behind many very serious issues such as social, economic, and racial justice.
How the marriage agenda is leaving behind awesome queer history.
We’re seeing the marriage equality agenda turn its back on a tradition of queer activism that began with Stonewall and other fierce queer revolts and that continued through the AIDS crisis. Equality California keeps on sending us videos of big, happy, gay families, and they’re making us sick: gay parents pushing kids on swings, gay parents making their kids’ lunches, the whole gay family safe inside the walls of their own homes. Wait a second, is it true? It’s as if they’ve found some sort of magical formula: once you have children, your life instantly transforms into a scene of domestic bliss, straight out of a 1950’s movie. The message is clear. Instead of dancing, instead of having casual sex, instead of rioting, all of the “responsible” gays have gone and had children. And now that they’ve had children, they won’t be bothering you at all anymore. There’s an implicit promise that once gays get their rights, they’ll disappear again. Once they can be at home with the kids, there’s no reason for them to be political, after all!
Listening to this promise, we’re a bit stunned. Whoever said domesticity wasn’t political? Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the feminists taught us that the personal is political? That cooking, cleaning, raising children and putting in countless hours of physical, emotional, and intellectual labor should not mean withdrawing from the public sphere or surrendering your political voice? After all, we were raised by queers who created domestic lives that were always politically engaged, who raised kids and raised hell at the same time. What makes Equality California think that an official marriage certificate is going to make us any less loud and queer? Oh wait. We remember. It’s that sneaky thing about late liberal capitalism: its promise of formal rights over real restructuring, of citizenship for those who can participate in the state’s economic plan over economic justice for all. Once you have your formal rights (like a marriage license), you can participate in the market economy and no longer need a political voice. Looking around at the world we live in, we’re unconvinced.
We’re also seeing another alarming story surface: If gays are ready to get married and have children, the AIDS crisis must be over! Gay men shaped up after AIDS hit, or at least the smart ones did. Those responsible enough to survive realized that they wanted children, and promptly settled down into relationships that were monogamous and that, presumably, carried no risk of HIV contraction. Come on. We reject all the moralizing about parenthood, responsibility, and sexual practice that goes on in this story. Besides the obvious fact that the AIDS crisis is not over, in the US or abroad, we realize that parenthood and non-monogamy aren’t mutually exclusive. The gay marriage movement wants us to believe that you need a sperm donor or an adoption agency to have children, but we know that there are more ways to make queer families than any of us can imagine. We refuse the packaged and groomed history that writes out the many HIV+ individuals in our lives and communities who are living healthily, loving in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships and raising children. We challenge our queer communities to remember our awesomely radical history of building families and raising children in highly political, inventive, and non-traditional ways.
How marriage equality fractures our community and pits us against our strongest allies.
We believe that the argument for gay marriage obscures the many structural, social, and economic forces that break families apart and take people away from their loved ones. Just for starters, there’s the explosion in incarceration levels, national and international migration for economic survival, deportation, unaffordable housing, and lack of access to drug rehabilitation services. The argument for gay marriage also ignores the economic changes and cuts to social services that make it nearly impossible for families to stay together and survive: welfare cuts, fewer after school programs, less public housing, worse medical care, not enough social workers, failing schools, the economic crisis in general.
We choose solidarity with immigrant families whom the state denies legal recognition and families targeted by prisons, wars, and horrible jobs. We reject the state violence that separates children from parents and decides where families begin and end, drawing lines of illegality through relationships. We see this as part of a larger effort on the part of the state to control our families and relationships in order to preserve a system that relies on creating an underclass deprived of security in order to ensure power for a few. We know that everyone has a complex identity, and that many queer families face separation due to one or more of the causes mentioned here, now or in the future. We would like to see our queer community recognize marriage rights as a short-term solution to the larger problem of the government’s disregard for the many family structures that exist. As queers, we need to take an active role in exposing and fighting the deeper sources of this problem. We won’t let the government decide what does and does not constitute a family.
The way that the marriage agenda phrases its argument about healthcare shows just how blind it is to the needs of the queer community. It has adopted marriage as a single-issue agenda, making it seem like the queer community’s only interest in healthcare is in the inclusion of some members of two person partnerships in the already exclusive healthcare system. Health care is a basic human right to which everyone is entitled, not one that should be extended through certain kinds of individual partnerships. We know this from queer history, and if we forget it, we will continue to let our community live in danger. The question of universal healthcare is urgent to queers because large groups of people inside our communities face incredible difficulty and violence receiving medical care, such as trans people who seek hormone treatment or surgery, people who are HIV positive, and queer and trans youth who are forced to live on the street. Instead of equalizing access to health care, marriage rights would allow a small group of people who have partnered themselves in monogamous configurations to receive care. If we accept the marriage agenda’s so-called solution, we’ll leave out most of our community.
Perhaps because the gay marriage movement has forgotten about the plurality and diversity of queer communities and queer activism, it has tried to gloss over its shortcomings by appropriating the struggles of other communities. We reject the notion that “gay is the new black,” that the fight for marriage equality is parallel to the fight for civil rights, that queer rights and rights for people of color are mutually exclusive. We don’t believe that fighting for inclusion in marriage is the same as fighting to end segregation. Drawing that parallel erases queer people of color and makes light of the structural racism that the civil rights movement fought against. The comparison is made as if communities of color, and black communities in particular, now enjoy structural equality. We know that’s not true. We would like to see a queer community that, rather than appropriating the narrative of the civil rights movement for its marriage equality campaign, takes an active role in exposing and protesting structural inequality and structural racism.
Rather than choosing to fight the things that keep structural racism intact, the liberal gay agenda has chosen to promote them. The gay agenda continually fights for increased hate crimes legislation that would incarcerate and execute perpetrators of hate crimes. We believe that incarceration destroys communities and families, and does not address why queer bashings happen. Increased hate crimes legislation would only lock more people up. In a country where entire communities are ravaged by how many of their members get sent to jail, where prisons are profit-driven institutions, where incarceration only creates more violence, we won’t accept anything that promotes prison as a solution. Our communities are already preyed upon by prisons – trans people, sex workers, and street kids live with the constant threat of incarceration. We believe that real, long-term solutions are found in models of restorative and transformative justice, and in building communities that can positively and profoundly deal with violence. We challenge our queer communities to confront what we are afraid of rather than locking it up, and to join members of our community and natural allies in opposing anything that would expand prisons.
The gay marriage agenda also supports the expansion of the army, seemingly forgetting about all of the ways that the army creates and maintains violence and power. The gay marriage agenda fights to abolish the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, promoting the military’s policy and seeking inclusion. We’ve thought long and hard about this, and we can’t remember liking anything that the US military has done in a really long time. What we do remember is how the military mines places where poor people and people of color live, taking advantage of the lack of opportunities that exist for kids in those communities and convincing them to join the army. We think it’s time that queers fight the army and the wars it is engaged in instead of asking for permission to enter.
Marriage doesn’t promise real security.
As the economy collapses, as the number of Americans without a job, without healthcare, without savings, without any kind of social security net increases, it’s easy to understand how marriage has become an instant cure-all for some. Recognizing that many in our community have lived through strained or broken relationships with their biological families, through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, through self-doubt about and stigmatization of their relationships, we understand where the desire for the security promised by marriage comes from. However, we see the promotion of gay marriage as something that tries to put a band-aid over deeper sources of insecurity, both social and economic. With marriage, the state is able to absolve itself of responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, as evidenced by the HRC’s argument that with gay marriage, the state could kick more people off of welfare. If the HRC got its way, the queers who do not want, or are not eligible for, marriage would be even less secure than before. We’re frightened by the way the marriage agenda wants to break up our community in this way, and we’re committed to fighting any kind of politics that demonizes poor people and welfare recipients. We challenge our queer communities to build a politics that promotes wealth redistribution. What if, rather than donating to the HRC campaign, we pooled our wealth to create a community emergency fund for members of our community who face foreclosure, need expensive medical care or find themselves in any other economic emergency? As queers, we need to take our anger, our fear, and our hope and recognize the wealth of resources that we already have, in order to build alternative structures. We don’t need to assimilate when we have each other.
We’re not like everyone else.
Everywhere we turn, it seems like someone wants us to support gay marriage. From enthusiastic canvassers on the street to liberal professors in the academy, from gay lawyers to straight soccer moms, there’s someone smiling at us, eager to let us know how strongly they support our “right to marry,” waiting for what should be our easy affirmation. And there seems to be no space for us to resist the agenda that has been imposed upon us. We’re fed up with the way that the gay marriage movement has tried to assimilate us, to swallow up our families, our lives, and our lovers into its clean-cut standards for what queer love, responsibility, and commitment should look like. We reject the idea that we should strive to see straight family configurations reflected in our families. We’re offended by the idea that white, middle-class gays – rather than genderqueers, poor people, single moms, prisoners, people of color, immigrants without papers, or anyone whose life falls outside of the norm that the state has set – should be our “natural” allies. We refuse to feel indebted or grateful to those who have decided it’s time for us to be pulled out from the fringe and into the status quo. We know that there are more of us on the outside than on the inside, and we realize our power.
We write this feeling as if we have to grab our community back from the clutches of the gay marriage movement. We’re frightened by its path and its incessant desire to assimilate. Believe it or not, we felt incredibly safe, happy, taken care of, and fulfilled with the many queer biological and chosen parents who raised us without the right to marry. Having grown up in queer families and communities we strongly believe that queers are not like everyone else. Queers are sexy, resourceful, creative, and brave enough to challenge an oppressive system with their lifestyle. In the ways that our families might resemble nuclear, straight families, it is accidental and coincidental, something that lies at the surface. We do not believe that queer relationships are the mere derivatives of straight relationships. We can play house without wanting to be straight. Our families are tangled, messy and beautiful – just like so many straight families who don’t fit into the official version of family. We want to build communities of all kinds of families, families that can exist – that do exist – without the recognition of the state. We don’t believe that parenting is cause for an end to political participation. We believe that nurturing the growth, voice and imagination of children as a parent, a family and a community is a profoundly radical act. We want to build networks of accountability and dependence that lie outside the bounds of the government, the kinds of networks that we grew up in, the kinds of networks that we know support single-parent families, immigrant families, families who have members in the military or in prison, and all kinds of chosen families. These families, our families, work through our collective resources, strengths, commitments, and desires, and we wouldn’t change them for anything.
Resist the Gay Marriage Agenda!
By queerkidssaynomarriage
It’s hard for us to believe what we’re hearing these days. Thousands are losing their homes, and gays want a day named after Harvey Milk. The U.S. military is continuing its path of destruction, and gays want to be allowed to fight. Cops are still killing unarmed black men and bashing queers, and gays want more policing. More and more Americans are suffering and dying because they can’t get decent health care, and gays want weddings. What happened to us? Where have our communities gone? Did gays really sell out that easily?
As young queer people raised in queer families and communities, we reject the liberal gay agenda that gives top priority to the fight for marriage equality. The queer families and communities we are proud to have been raised in are nothing like the ones transformed by marriage equality. This agenda fractures our communities, pits us against natural allies, supports unequal power structures, obscures urgent queer concerns, abandons struggle for mutual sustainability inside queer communities and disregards our awesomely fabulous queer history.
Children of queers have a serious stake in this. The media sure thinks so, anyway. The photographs circulated after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2004 decision to marry gay couples at City Hall show men exchanging rings with young children strapped to their chests and toddlers holding their moms’ hands as city officials lead them through vows. As Newsom runs for governor these images of children and their newly married gay parents travel with him, supposedly expressing how deeply Newsom cares about families: keeping them together, ensuring their safety, meeting their needs. These photos, however, obscure very real aspects of his political record that have torn families apart: his disregard for affordable housing, his attacks on welfare, his support for increased policing and incarceration that separate parents from children and his new practice of deporting minors accused – not convicted – of crimes. As young people with queer parents we are not proud of the “family values” politic put forth by these images and the marriage equality campaign. We don’t want gay marriage activism conducted in our name – we realize that it’s hurting us, not helping us.
We think long-term monogamous partnerships are valid and beautiful ways of structuring and experiencing family, but we don’t see them as any more inherently valuable or legitimate than the many other family structures. We believe in each individual and family’s right to live their queer identity however they find meaningful or necessary, including when that means getting married. However, the consequences of the fight for legal inclusion in the marriage structure are terrifying. We’re seeing queer communities fractured as one model of family is being hailed and accepted as the norm, and we are seeing queer families and communities ignore and effectively work against groups who we see as natural allies, such as immigrant families, poor families, and families suffering from booming incarceration rates. We reject the idea that any relationship based on love should have to register with the state. Marriage is an institution used primarily consolidate privilege, and we think real change will only come from getting rid of a system that continually doles out privilege to a few more, rather than trying to reform it. We know that most families, straight or gay, don’t fit in with the standards for marriage, and see many straight families being penalized for not conforming to the standard the government has set: single moms trying to get on welfare, extended family members trying to gain custody, friends kept from being each other’s legal representatives. We have far more in common with those straight families than we do with the kinds of gay families that would benefit from marriage. We are seeing a gay political agenda become single-issue to focus on marriage and leave behind many very serious issues such as social, economic, and racial justice.
How the marriage agenda is leaving behind awesome queer history.
We’re seeing the marriage equality agenda turn its back on a tradition of queer activism that began with Stonewall and other fierce queer revolts and that continued through the AIDS crisis. Equality California keeps on sending us videos of big, happy, gay families, and they’re making us sick: gay parents pushing kids on swings, gay parents making their kids’ lunches, the whole gay family safe inside the walls of their own homes. Wait a second, is it true? It’s as if they’ve found some sort of magical formula: once you have children, your life instantly transforms into a scene of domestic bliss, straight out of a 1950’s movie. The message is clear. Instead of dancing, instead of having casual sex, instead of rioting, all of the “responsible” gays have gone and had children. And now that they’ve had children, they won’t be bothering you at all anymore. There’s an implicit promise that once gays get their rights, they’ll disappear again. Once they can be at home with the kids, there’s no reason for them to be political, after all!
Listening to this promise, we’re a bit stunned. Whoever said domesticity wasn’t political? Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the feminists taught us that the personal is political? That cooking, cleaning, raising children and putting in countless hours of physical, emotional, and intellectual labor should not mean withdrawing from the public sphere or surrendering your political voice? After all, we were raised by queers who created domestic lives that were always politically engaged, who raised kids and raised hell at the same time. What makes Equality California think that an official marriage certificate is going to make us any less loud and queer? Oh wait. We remember. It’s that sneaky thing about late liberal capitalism: its promise of formal rights over real restructuring, of citizenship for those who can participate in the state’s economic plan over economic justice for all. Once you have your formal rights (like a marriage license), you can participate in the market economy and no longer need a political voice. Looking around at the world we live in, we’re unconvinced.
We’re also seeing another alarming story surface: If gays are ready to get married and have children, the AIDS crisis must be over! Gay men shaped up after AIDS hit, or at least the smart ones did. Those responsible enough to survive realized that they wanted children, and promptly settled down into relationships that were monogamous and that, presumably, carried no risk of HIV contraction. Come on. We reject all the moralizing about parenthood, responsibility, and sexual practice that goes on in this story. Besides the obvious fact that the AIDS crisis is not over, in the US or abroad, we realize that parenthood and non-monogamy aren’t mutually exclusive. The gay marriage movement wants us to believe that you need a sperm donor or an adoption agency to have children, but we know that there are more ways to make queer families than any of us can imagine. We refuse the packaged and groomed history that writes out the many HIV+ individuals in our lives and communities who are living healthily, loving in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships and raising children. We challenge our queer communities to remember our awesomely radical history of building families and raising children in highly political, inventive, and non-traditional ways.
How marriage equality fractures our community and pits us against our strongest allies.
We believe that the argument for gay marriage obscures the many structural, social, and economic forces that break families apart and take people away from their loved ones. Just for starters, there’s the explosion in incarceration levels, national and international migration for economic survival, deportation, unaffordable housing, and lack of access to drug rehabilitation services. The argument for gay marriage also ignores the economic changes and cuts to social services that make it nearly impossible for families to stay together and survive: welfare cuts, fewer after school programs, less public housing, worse medical care, not enough social workers, failing schools, the economic crisis in general.
We choose solidarity with immigrant families whom the state denies legal recognition and families targeted by prisons, wars, and horrible jobs. We reject the state violence that separates children from parents and decides where families begin and end, drawing lines of illegality through relationships. We see this as part of a larger effort on the part of the state to control our families and relationships in order to preserve a system that relies on creating an underclass deprived of security in order to ensure power for a few. We know that everyone has a complex identity, and that many queer families face separation due to one or more of the causes mentioned here, now or in the future. We would like to see our queer community recognize marriage rights as a short-term solution to the larger problem of the government’s disregard for the many family structures that exist. As queers, we need to take an active role in exposing and fighting the deeper sources of this problem. We won’t let the government decide what does and does not constitute a family.
The way that the marriage agenda phrases its argument about healthcare shows just how blind it is to the needs of the queer community. It has adopted marriage as a single-issue agenda, making it seem like the queer community’s only interest in healthcare is in the inclusion of some members of two person partnerships in the already exclusive healthcare system. Health care is a basic human right to which everyone is entitled, not one that should be extended through certain kinds of individual partnerships. We know this from queer history, and if we forget it, we will continue to let our community live in danger. The question of universal healthcare is urgent to queers because large groups of people inside our communities face incredible difficulty and violence receiving medical care, such as trans people who seek hormone treatment or surgery, people who are HIV positive, and queer and trans youth who are forced to live on the street. Instead of equalizing access to health care, marriage rights would allow a small group of people who have partnered themselves in monogamous configurations to receive care. If we accept the marriage agenda’s so-called solution, we’ll leave out most of our community.
Perhaps because the gay marriage movement has forgotten about the plurality and diversity of queer communities and queer activism, it has tried to gloss over its shortcomings by appropriating the struggles of other communities. We reject the notion that “gay is the new black,” that the fight for marriage equality is parallel to the fight for civil rights, that queer rights and rights for people of color are mutually exclusive. We don’t believe that fighting for inclusion in marriage is the same as fighting to end segregation. Drawing that parallel erases queer people of color and makes light of the structural racism that the civil rights movement fought against. The comparison is made as if communities of color, and black communities in particular, now enjoy structural equality. We know that’s not true. We would like to see a queer community that, rather than appropriating the narrative of the civil rights movement for its marriage equality campaign, takes an active role in exposing and protesting structural inequality and structural racism.
Rather than choosing to fight the things that keep structural racism intact, the liberal gay agenda has chosen to promote them. The gay agenda continually fights for increased hate crimes legislation that would incarcerate and execute perpetrators of hate crimes. We believe that incarceration destroys communities and families, and does not address why queer bashings happen. Increased hate crimes legislation would only lock more people up. In a country where entire communities are ravaged by how many of their members get sent to jail, where prisons are profit-driven institutions, where incarceration only creates more violence, we won’t accept anything that promotes prison as a solution. Our communities are already preyed upon by prisons – trans people, sex workers, and street kids live with the constant threat of incarceration. We believe that real, long-term solutions are found in models of restorative and transformative justice, and in building communities that can positively and profoundly deal with violence. We challenge our queer communities to confront what we are afraid of rather than locking it up, and to join members of our community and natural allies in opposing anything that would expand prisons.
The gay marriage agenda also supports the expansion of the army, seemingly forgetting about all of the ways that the army creates and maintains violence and power. The gay marriage agenda fights to abolish the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, promoting the military’s policy and seeking inclusion. We’ve thought long and hard about this, and we can’t remember liking anything that the US military has done in a really long time. What we do remember is how the military mines places where poor people and people of color live, taking advantage of the lack of opportunities that exist for kids in those communities and convincing them to join the army. We think it’s time that queers fight the army and the wars it is engaged in instead of asking for permission to enter.
Marriage doesn’t promise real security.
As the economy collapses, as the number of Americans without a job, without healthcare, without savings, without any kind of social security net increases, it’s easy to understand how marriage has become an instant cure-all for some. Recognizing that many in our community have lived through strained or broken relationships with their biological families, through the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, through self-doubt about and stigmatization of their relationships, we understand where the desire for the security promised by marriage comes from. However, we see the promotion of gay marriage as something that tries to put a band-aid over deeper sources of insecurity, both social and economic. With marriage, the state is able to absolve itself of responsibility for the well-being of its citizens, as evidenced by the HRC’s argument that with gay marriage, the state could kick more people off of welfare. If the HRC got its way, the queers who do not want, or are not eligible for, marriage would be even less secure than before. We’re frightened by the way the marriage agenda wants to break up our community in this way, and we’re committed to fighting any kind of politics that demonizes poor people and welfare recipients. We challenge our queer communities to build a politics that promotes wealth redistribution. What if, rather than donating to the HRC campaign, we pooled our wealth to create a community emergency fund for members of our community who face foreclosure, need expensive medical care or find themselves in any other economic emergency? As queers, we need to take our anger, our fear, and our hope and recognize the wealth of resources that we already have, in order to build alternative structures. We don’t need to assimilate when we have each other.
We’re not like everyone else.
Everywhere we turn, it seems like someone wants us to support gay marriage. From enthusiastic canvassers on the street to liberal professors in the academy, from gay lawyers to straight soccer moms, there’s someone smiling at us, eager to let us know how strongly they support our “right to marry,” waiting for what should be our easy affirmation. And there seems to be no space for us to resist the agenda that has been imposed upon us. We’re fed up with the way that the gay marriage movement has tried to assimilate us, to swallow up our families, our lives, and our lovers into its clean-cut standards for what queer love, responsibility, and commitment should look like. We reject the idea that we should strive to see straight family configurations reflected in our families. We’re offended by the idea that white, middle-class gays – rather than genderqueers, poor people, single moms, prisoners, people of color, immigrants without papers, or anyone whose life falls outside of the norm that the state has set – should be our “natural” allies. We refuse to feel indebted or grateful to those who have decided it’s time for us to be pulled out from the fringe and into the status quo. We know that there are more of us on the outside than on the inside, and we realize our power.
We write this feeling as if we have to grab our community back from the clutches of the gay marriage movement. We’re frightened by its path and its incessant desire to assimilate. Believe it or not, we felt incredibly safe, happy, taken care of, and fulfilled with the many queer biological and chosen parents who raised us without the right to marry. Having grown up in queer families and communities we strongly believe that queers are not like everyone else. Queers are sexy, resourceful, creative, and brave enough to challenge an oppressive system with their lifestyle. In the ways that our families might resemble nuclear, straight families, it is accidental and coincidental, something that lies at the surface. We do not believe that queer relationships are the mere derivatives of straight relationships. We can play house without wanting to be straight. Our families are tangled, messy and beautiful – just like so many straight families who don’t fit into the official version of family. We want to build communities of all kinds of families, families that can exist – that do exist – without the recognition of the state. We don’t believe that parenting is cause for an end to political participation. We believe that nurturing the growth, voice and imagination of children as a parent, a family and a community is a profoundly radical act. We want to build networks of accountability and dependence that lie outside the bounds of the government, the kinds of networks that we grew up in, the kinds of networks that we know support single-parent families, immigrant families, families who have members in the military or in prison, and all kinds of chosen families. These families, our families, work through our collective resources, strengths, commitments, and desires, and we wouldn’t change them for anything.
More Advanced Praise for "It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt"
Bao Phi is one of the fiercest and best known spoken word artists practicing the art in the United States. He is the curator of the Equilibrium Spoken Word series at the Loft Literary Center (www.loft.org), which is the largest literary center in the United States. Bao has won numerous awards and has been featured on HBO's Def Poetry Jam. He has toured these United States and brought his love and truth to thousands of people in hundreds of audiences.
He is also a friend. Bao's poetry can be heard from HBO to light rail stops in Minneapolis (no lie, next time you are in Minneapolis at one of the stops, press or crank one of the levers that says push here, and you will hear Bao's poetry). Here is a Wikipedia entry for my main Vietnamese man.
And to check out Bao's poetry, click here to listen to "You Bring Out the Vietnamese In Me," one of my favorite Bao Phi specials.
Thank you, Bao, for taking the time to read my manuscript and for loving up on Juliana Pegues, another one of my favorite people and poets. Your love and support over the last almost decade has been much appreciated.
Here is Bao Phi's advanced review of my book, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, due out from Summerfolk Press in Spring 2010.
"Brandon Lacy Campos is an important poet that doesn't cut corners and doesn't compromise. His work is vivid, jagged, and it takes up space in the most beautiful way. To invest time in getting familiar with his poetry is to invest in vitality. I hope this is just the first shout to announce the arrival of his chorus." -Bao Phi.
Thanks Bao. Your support helped bring out the poet in me.
He is also a friend. Bao's poetry can be heard from HBO to light rail stops in Minneapolis (no lie, next time you are in Minneapolis at one of the stops, press or crank one of the levers that says push here, and you will hear Bao's poetry). Here is a Wikipedia entry for my main Vietnamese man.
And to check out Bao's poetry, click here to listen to "You Bring Out the Vietnamese In Me," one of my favorite Bao Phi specials.
Thank you, Bao, for taking the time to read my manuscript and for loving up on Juliana Pegues, another one of my favorite people and poets. Your love and support over the last almost decade has been much appreciated.
Here is Bao Phi's advanced review of my book, It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, due out from Summerfolk Press in Spring 2010.
"Brandon Lacy Campos is an important poet that doesn't cut corners and doesn't compromise. His work is vivid, jagged, and it takes up space in the most beautiful way. To invest time in getting familiar with his poetry is to invest in vitality. I hope this is just the first shout to announce the arrival of his chorus." -Bao Phi.
Thanks Bao. Your support helped bring out the poet in me.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Equality March. Now What?
So, I have had a number of people, both in the U.S. and Canada, ask me my thoughts on the Equality March. I was pretty much bombarded in the last 24 hours asking my opinion on the event. Last night I was firm in asking my loving community to give me the night to think about the event, read more of the articles concerning the event, and formulate my opinion.
Here it is.
Let me begin by saying that I did not attend the march for the reasons that I outlined previously. I continue to stand by those reasons.
I will not go so far as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) who said in an article that he thought the march was a waste of time and effort. For the tens of thousands of people that attended the event, it was an empowering experience and was an energizing moment in their lives. Many people that I care deeply about attended the event, and one of the women that I love and admire, Penelope Williams, was selected as a speaker from the bisexual community. For those people, the event was an important exercise in visibility. I support their participation, and I believe that they got what they needed from the march. Penelope, btw, was invited to speak after intense lobbying by bisexual organizers that, in the last days leading up to the event, found that there was only one speaker from the bisexual community scheduled to address the crowd. You'd think by 2009 the marginalization of bisexual members of our community would be a thing of the past. Whoops.
Unfortunately the community at large and the movement specifically will find that the march was not productive in the least in terms of pushing forward a policy agenda. Obama is dead on right that the economy, the two wars, and health care are much more important issues than the rights of queer folks to openly serve as a part of the U.S. war machine, the marriage battle, or any number of narrow issues that are very important but nowhere near as important as ending war, rebuilding the economy, and establishing a national right to affordable (should be free) healthcare. The reality of politics is that the President has only so much political capital to expend at any one time. The more deft politically Obama is now the more room he has to push a more progressive agenda later. A bevy of polls in recent days have shown that his popularity is climbing again, topping 56%, and he has managed to not only contain but also turn around the spin of the massive conservative publicity machine.
Giving the Right base mobilizing, religious fervor fodder right now would not only retard the movement forward with healthcare and the economy, it would gut any real progress on LGBT liberation in the future. No one is asking our community to wait our turn...what is being asked is that we recognize that ending war, rebuilding the economy, and healthcare reform ARE OUR ISSUES AS WELL!
We are not separate from or outside of those issues and for queers that are progressive, we understand that those issues are at the top of our queer political agenda as they should be. What good is the right to marry if I can't afford a wedding? What good is the right to serve in the military if, after being awarded for service by life long mental health damage, I can't afford to go to the ER (and don't get me started on VA Medical services)? It is time for our community to grow up and learn some political sophistication.
If Obama wins on healthcare, the economy, and successfully gets us out of Iraq...his popularity will skyrocket, and members of Congress will not have the political will to oppose him on issues that, right now, would paralyze the political process and end up setting our justice movement backwards.
And let's talk about justice versus equality. Another failure of the march was the name: Equality. I am not interested in equality. I have no interest in being equal to a cultural system that awards racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism (which, incidentally, are truly at the core of our community's marginalization). I have no interest in joining a system of exploitation in exchange for the right to marry, be sent to war and die for oil, or bring my houseboy in the country legally through narrow immigration reform.
I am interested in liberation ad justice, which necessitates us dismantling systems based in oppression and replacing them with agreements that respect the inherent dignities of each person without creating a new hierarchical system of oppression and privilege in order to maintain those new rights. That means tearing apart the institution of marriage and replacing it with a system of legal union that is not based in centuries of sexism and case law that favors the wealthy over the poor, men over women, or in the case of child custody, women over men. It means looking at the military industrial complex and making a decision to create laws that stringently outline when a President can order troops to war, ends war for financial gain, restricts war time profiteering, and abolishes the poverty and racial draft once and for all. It means health care reform that ends in single payer universal health care.
Unfortunately, we have been trained from the gate and through the non-profit industrial complex to accept crumbs instead of a slice of the pie. Guess what? We deserve the whole damn pie. Until we get it, we need to fight for the biggest pieces first, the ones that will feed the most, sustain the most, support the most and will feed us and strengthen us to make further charges, and harder fights, possible and winnable.
Here it is.
Let me begin by saying that I did not attend the march for the reasons that I outlined previously. I continue to stand by those reasons.
I will not go so far as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) who said in an article that he thought the march was a waste of time and effort. For the tens of thousands of people that attended the event, it was an empowering experience and was an energizing moment in their lives. Many people that I care deeply about attended the event, and one of the women that I love and admire, Penelope Williams, was selected as a speaker from the bisexual community. For those people, the event was an important exercise in visibility. I support their participation, and I believe that they got what they needed from the march. Penelope, btw, was invited to speak after intense lobbying by bisexual organizers that, in the last days leading up to the event, found that there was only one speaker from the bisexual community scheduled to address the crowd. You'd think by 2009 the marginalization of bisexual members of our community would be a thing of the past. Whoops.
Unfortunately the community at large and the movement specifically will find that the march was not productive in the least in terms of pushing forward a policy agenda. Obama is dead on right that the economy, the two wars, and health care are much more important issues than the rights of queer folks to openly serve as a part of the U.S. war machine, the marriage battle, or any number of narrow issues that are very important but nowhere near as important as ending war, rebuilding the economy, and establishing a national right to affordable (should be free) healthcare. The reality of politics is that the President has only so much political capital to expend at any one time. The more deft politically Obama is now the more room he has to push a more progressive agenda later. A bevy of polls in recent days have shown that his popularity is climbing again, topping 56%, and he has managed to not only contain but also turn around the spin of the massive conservative publicity machine.
Giving the Right base mobilizing, religious fervor fodder right now would not only retard the movement forward with healthcare and the economy, it would gut any real progress on LGBT liberation in the future. No one is asking our community to wait our turn...what is being asked is that we recognize that ending war, rebuilding the economy, and healthcare reform ARE OUR ISSUES AS WELL!
We are not separate from or outside of those issues and for queers that are progressive, we understand that those issues are at the top of our queer political agenda as they should be. What good is the right to marry if I can't afford a wedding? What good is the right to serve in the military if, after being awarded for service by life long mental health damage, I can't afford to go to the ER (and don't get me started on VA Medical services)? It is time for our community to grow up and learn some political sophistication.
If Obama wins on healthcare, the economy, and successfully gets us out of Iraq...his popularity will skyrocket, and members of Congress will not have the political will to oppose him on issues that, right now, would paralyze the political process and end up setting our justice movement backwards.
And let's talk about justice versus equality. Another failure of the march was the name: Equality. I am not interested in equality. I have no interest in being equal to a cultural system that awards racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism (which, incidentally, are truly at the core of our community's marginalization). I have no interest in joining a system of exploitation in exchange for the right to marry, be sent to war and die for oil, or bring my houseboy in the country legally through narrow immigration reform.
I am interested in liberation ad justice, which necessitates us dismantling systems based in oppression and replacing them with agreements that respect the inherent dignities of each person without creating a new hierarchical system of oppression and privilege in order to maintain those new rights. That means tearing apart the institution of marriage and replacing it with a system of legal union that is not based in centuries of sexism and case law that favors the wealthy over the poor, men over women, or in the case of child custody, women over men. It means looking at the military industrial complex and making a decision to create laws that stringently outline when a President can order troops to war, ends war for financial gain, restricts war time profiteering, and abolishes the poverty and racial draft once and for all. It means health care reform that ends in single payer universal health care.
Unfortunately, we have been trained from the gate and through the non-profit industrial complex to accept crumbs instead of a slice of the pie. Guess what? We deserve the whole damn pie. Until we get it, we need to fight for the biggest pieces first, the ones that will feed the most, sustain the most, support the most and will feed us and strengthen us to make further charges, and harder fights, possible and winnable.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Everyday Heroes: Shante "Paradigm" Smalls
It's been a while since I shared with you one of my everyday heroes. Tonight, I had the honor of sitting next to one of my heroes. She's a woman that I learned to love more than a decade ago. She bounced into my life, high energy kicking up sparks from the carpeted halls of the Oakland Convention Center. That night, she kicked up some sparks from my best friend and roommate's coochy, and from that day to this one she has been a light in my life.
Her name is Shante Smalls, some of you know her as Paradgim from the homohop duo B.Q.E. I know her as my sister from another mother. But shoot, you know how slavery worked, we could be cousins. Shit, as crazy as we both are, we are probably half-siblings.
This woman is amazing. I remember walking into Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis one day (the oldest feminist bookstore in continuous operation in the United States...word!). I was thumbing through the magazines, and who should I see leaping on the cover, dreadlocks flying this and that way, but Miss Smalls herself. She had been chosen Girlfriend of the Month, and let me tell you, she deserved the honor.
Whether she is organizing PeaceOut East, the International LGBT Queer Hip Hop Festival, cutting a new record, working for human rights as a Bunche Fellow with Amnesty International or working on her dissertation for her PhD in Performance Studies from the NYU Tisch School, this woman has committed her life and her art to the community. She is brilliant, she is sexy, and she is single...so word up hit me up if you want a crack at that. I will be vetting all comers, cuz I just can't have my girl with just any old body.
But truly, Shante is an inspiration. She keeps me laughing, and she keeps me real. She is a devoted Buddhist and lives the life that she talks about in her art and scholarship. She is a survivor of many kinds and a thriver of the first degree. I had no idea that when I met her, myself fresh from an airplane from Puerto Rico and she fresh from BK, that she and I would create a friendship that would stretch for a decade, cross art and activism, and be firmly rooted in love and mutual respect.
I love you Shante Smalls. Thank you for creating community with me. It's been an honor and a laugh. Now where's my fried chicken?
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Working It Out/Writing It Out
So, I am in the midst of writing my first novel. It will be my second book, when and if it gets published, my first book being It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, due out from Summerfolk Press this coming spring.
So this book, so far, is about a little kid, growing up in an abusive household, that all of a sudden finds himself wielding tremendous power. The first thing he does with the power is kill his abusive step-father.
Ain't that a bitch.
I am about 52 type written pages into the book or roughly 19,000 words. I know where the book is going next, and I am pretty sure I know where this book ends (though I think there may be some sequels to it). It is part autobiography and part exorcism, and writing it is like channeling an alternative mini-me with the power to see auras, summon spirits, and tear abusive stepfathers a new asshole.
Amen.
It is an interesting exercise writing this book, as I am following the old maxim "write what you know." The book, for the first six chapters, is set in my hometown of Duluth, MN. Much of it is set in an apartment building that I lived in briefly as a child that was actually an old convent. Next, the kid is going to be hauled off to the hometown of my birth Father in the southern mountains of West Virginia. I need to go and visit Ronceverete, anyway, to visit my Great Aunt Sis. But, also, I want to visit the place to make it more real in my memory, since the last time I was there was 18 years ago. This town is the same town in which my family were held as slaves, so there is some serious history in this place. There has been a member of my family in the county since at least the mid-18th century, and since 1709 we have been in the Virginia Colony. So, I am feeling the pull of the homestead, so I can capture the spirit of place.
It also helps that in my Great-Grandma's backyard is a century+ old tombstone, tumbled over, and the maiden name of the woman on the tombstone is one that is shared by my Great-Grandmother, who, incidentally, swore that this woman was of no relation.
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
Don't think that isn't going to end up in this book.
In the end, writing a novel is both similar and wildly different than writing a poem. Poetry seems to capture a single moment in time and reflect it back with some analysis but mostly raw emotion. A novel seems to take broad swaths of time and delve into the woulda, coulda, shouldas in a way that is both cathartic and crazy making.
Hold on to your diaphragms ladies...this is going to be a hell of a ride.
So this book, so far, is about a little kid, growing up in an abusive household, that all of a sudden finds himself wielding tremendous power. The first thing he does with the power is kill his abusive step-father.
Ain't that a bitch.
I am about 52 type written pages into the book or roughly 19,000 words. I know where the book is going next, and I am pretty sure I know where this book ends (though I think there may be some sequels to it). It is part autobiography and part exorcism, and writing it is like channeling an alternative mini-me with the power to see auras, summon spirits, and tear abusive stepfathers a new asshole.
Amen.
It is an interesting exercise writing this book, as I am following the old maxim "write what you know." The book, for the first six chapters, is set in my hometown of Duluth, MN. Much of it is set in an apartment building that I lived in briefly as a child that was actually an old convent. Next, the kid is going to be hauled off to the hometown of my birth Father in the southern mountains of West Virginia. I need to go and visit Ronceverete, anyway, to visit my Great Aunt Sis. But, also, I want to visit the place to make it more real in my memory, since the last time I was there was 18 years ago. This town is the same town in which my family were held as slaves, so there is some serious history in this place. There has been a member of my family in the county since at least the mid-18th century, and since 1709 we have been in the Virginia Colony. So, I am feeling the pull of the homestead, so I can capture the spirit of place.
It also helps that in my Great-Grandma's backyard is a century+ old tombstone, tumbled over, and the maiden name of the woman on the tombstone is one that is shared by my Great-Grandmother, who, incidentally, swore that this woman was of no relation.
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
Don't think that isn't going to end up in this book.
In the end, writing a novel is both similar and wildly different than writing a poem. Poetry seems to capture a single moment in time and reflect it back with some analysis but mostly raw emotion. A novel seems to take broad swaths of time and delve into the woulda, coulda, shouldas in a way that is both cathartic and crazy making.
Hold on to your diaphragms ladies...this is going to be a hell of a ride.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Play Is the Thing: An Interview with Mark Snyder
One of the greatest compliments I have been paid in the last few months has been the gift of being approached by amazing local artists that are interested in sharing their work with me and with my readers. From Charlie Vazquez to Yamaneika Saunders, I have been tickled to interview some amazing human beings that are doing so much, through their individual artistic forms, to bring a new, deeper, and broader understanding of life to the world.
My editor at Summerfolk Press once told me that artists take experiences outside of time and bring them into a temporal state in order to help those around us see everyday things in a different way, and Mark Snyder, is doing that through his play Lila Cante. I plan on seeing this play myself this weekend, but I had the opportunity to interview this gifted man for My Feet Only Walk Forward.
I haven't yet had the honor of meeting Mr. Snyder in person, though we have many connections. Plus, he loves Minneapolis, which makes me adore him without even having met him.
It also doesn't hurt that he is scrumptiously adorable.
Here's my interview with Mark. Do yourself a favor, and go and check out his play.
Tell me about Lila Cante, what is the story about? LILA CANTE is a dark and sexy play about two siblings - both trying to pursue their artistic inclinations - who must come together and battle over their elusive mother’s legacy with the corporate music industry. It is also a funny and dangerous play about loneliness and forging new connections in spite of ourselves. I think our production burns from a white-hot center of love and compassion.
Who is Lila Cante, and why this play important at this particular moment?
Lila Cante is a reclusive singer-songwriter who produced one masterpiece solo album in the pre-grunge early 1990s, just before bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Liz Phair were entering the mainstream media. She releases one album of ten songs, followed by almost twenty years of silence (though she raises her two kids while touring the country and performing). The play is as much about how her choices and behaviors have impacted her children as it is about what they will do about her.
The play examines the backlash of the relationship between art and commerce, and about how those two entities are now trying to feed on each other in order to survive. It’s a play that uses modern culture (blogs, file-sharing, downloads, etc) as forms of communication. It is interesting, because I first started working on this play in 2001, and now the music industry’s total descent into irrelevance has really been the play’s blessing! It’s almost like the play caught up with the rest of the world and is ready to engage with it.
As a queer playwright, how does your sexuality influence what you bring to the stage? I grapple with the label game all the time, because I don’t really appreciate being ghettoized, just like everyone else. I think my queerness certainly provides a filter through which I experience the world and tell the stories I want to tell. Without being conscious of it, queer is a given circumstance. As a writer, being more emphatic and less black-and-white about human nature and our motivations to do good and bad deeds is directly-connected to my sexuality and the world I inhabit in my plays. I work very hard to remain open and available to all kinds of experiences, without judgment, and then processing them later - via the plays.
What is it you hope to achieve through your production?
At Hand Theatre approached me about doing a staged reading and subsequent production late last winter; I’ve been working on new drafts and rewrites up through the day of first preview (where I gave one of our actors two new lines!). I think the play is in the best possible shape, and I feel like the months of workshops and rehearsals with some fantastic and sensitive actors was instrumental in transforming LILA CANTE into its current form. Our director Sara Sahin has given the play such a vibrancy and sensitivity that I think really gives the writing its true pulse. The audiences have been quite enthusiastic and jazzed by the play - the highest compliments I receive are when people ask me if Lila’s album is still in print and if they can purchase it at their local record store!
I’ve been very wishy-washy about getting a full-length play of mine onto a New York stage for some time now; this production, with these actors, and with this company is about as good as the “debut” could get. I’m very proud of it.
If folks leave the theater with one thought, idea, or notion, what would you like it to be?
True human connection is difficult to trust and hard to sustain, but we must continue attempting it in order to stay alive.
Also, I would love for people to appreciate the world of indie rock and how hard it is to forge a living making music - perhaps they would hesitate more before they click the “free download” button on their computers.
Why playwriting? Why not write a novel or compose free verse that you can shout in Union Square?
I started writing and staging plays when I was five years old; my personality is hard-wired towards the dramatic. Just last night I saw the new revival of “The Royal Family” on Broadway and I nearly burst into tears over this family’s sheer love and the thirst for the stage. I am a creature of the theater, pure and simple. It’s my language and my instincts.
Working with a director and actors and designers also creates a tribe-mentality that I find very stimulating and inspiring. I relish nothing more than sitting down to work knowing that a bunch of other artists are waiting for the new pages so they can give them life. It helps the writing process quite a bit. You’re not so lonely as if I were writing a novel or poems. And I save my voice by sitting in a chair taking notes during a performance instead of shouting in a square!
What does the vehicle of the theater give you that other literary forms do not?
Being a playwright is the best of both worlds - I get to indulge my literary impulses while at the same time being engaged directly with the public during performance. Conversing with the director, the designers, and those marvelous actors about the play as I’m continuing to write it. Returning to the play in performance, and learning from each of the different audiences. Theater is alive and vibrant and never truly finished - because the play will be done again, in a different city with a different cast for different people. It’s ever-changing and forces you to remain in the “now” of it (to get all Eckhart Tolle on you, Brandon!).
Finally, if folks want to catch Lila Cante or find out more about the super sexy Mark Snyder, how can they do that?
For tickets to LILA CANTE (through October 18, with a just-added matinee performance on Saturday, October 17!):
https://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?EID=&showCode=LIL8&GUID
At Hand Theatre’s website is:
www.athandtheatre.com
I can be found at:
www.facebook.com/markbsnyder
Thank you, Brandon - this was fun!!
Thank you Mark, for letting me promote your work on my little corner of the web.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Why I Am Not Marching This Weekend
This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the first national LGBT march for LGBT Liberation. In 1979, a national network of grassroots committees was formed that developed local platforms and identified local issues of importance to LGBT communities. Those networks elected representatives to regional groupings that debated and discussed issue of pertinence to LGBT communities in those regions, and then those regions, after coming to consensus on the issues that they felt most pressing to bring to a national stage, elected representatives to a national steering committee that put together the final agenda for the march.
This model ensured that the march was not only a visibility event but reflected the issues and concerns of grassroots communities and reflected grassroots leadership. People of color and women were represented in this process. And the process was used again for the next two marches.
In 2000, that all changed. In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign severed its last links with reality and with grassroots communities. It most definitely burned the only, thin, rickety lonely bridge it had with people of color communities. It created a national steering committee representing a narrow set of ideas, a narrow site of ideologies and a whole lot of white people. There was an entire movement by queer people of color to work with and hold accountable the national march in 2000, which, largely, failed. Elizabeth Birch had the money and the influence, and she used both oppressively and shadily. The march happened and, as progressive suggested, was wildly ineffective and had almost no impact on the movement. Why? Because it had NO connection to the issues and areas where on the ground activists were organizing.
Now here comes Millenium March Part II, conceived of by Cleve Jones and his backers at the HRC. Jesus Christ do we never learn.
The agenda for this march looks much like the last one. They threw "immigration" issues in there as a bone to people of color communities, but the march is still focused on marriage, it is still focused on a gays in the military, and it is still focused on issues that appeal largely to a middle class white LGBT movement and does not reflect in anyway the racial, economic, anti-war and gender justice issues that are at the core of most grassroots queer organizing in the United States.
The march is a farce, it is going to be ineffective, it was poorly organized, poorly planned, and it will be a failure. As a matter of fact, it has already failed. Any march that is not organized in the way that the first three marches were organizing (and, incidentally was the same system used by Bayard Rustin to organize the 1963 March on Washington), is a failure. National organizations DO NOT OWN OR SET the movement agenda. The movement agenda is set by, worked for, and guided by folks on the ground that put their lives and their energy on the line for this work. Joe Solomnese and Evan Wolfson and the rest of the rancid right of the LGBT movement (and damn them to hell if they believe that they aren't the right reactionary wing of our movement) are hurting our movement more than they have ever done to support it let alone MOVE it forward.
Don't get me wrong, I support the queer folks that will spend their time, money, and energy to march this weekend. I have a number of friends that will be going to the march. But, at this point, the march needs to be a success in numbers or it will do so much damage to our credibility as a movement that it will allow the Democrats the space to openly sideline our REAL issues and concerns as opposed to the lip service they pay to it now while ignoring us in the halls of Congress.
This model ensured that the march was not only a visibility event but reflected the issues and concerns of grassroots communities and reflected grassroots leadership. People of color and women were represented in this process. And the process was used again for the next two marches.
In 2000, that all changed. In 2000, the Human Rights Campaign severed its last links with reality and with grassroots communities. It most definitely burned the only, thin, rickety lonely bridge it had with people of color communities. It created a national steering committee representing a narrow set of ideas, a narrow site of ideologies and a whole lot of white people. There was an entire movement by queer people of color to work with and hold accountable the national march in 2000, which, largely, failed. Elizabeth Birch had the money and the influence, and she used both oppressively and shadily. The march happened and, as progressive suggested, was wildly ineffective and had almost no impact on the movement. Why? Because it had NO connection to the issues and areas where on the ground activists were organizing.
Now here comes Millenium March Part II, conceived of by Cleve Jones and his backers at the HRC. Jesus Christ do we never learn.
The agenda for this march looks much like the last one. They threw "immigration" issues in there as a bone to people of color communities, but the march is still focused on marriage, it is still focused on a gays in the military, and it is still focused on issues that appeal largely to a middle class white LGBT movement and does not reflect in anyway the racial, economic, anti-war and gender justice issues that are at the core of most grassroots queer organizing in the United States.
The march is a farce, it is going to be ineffective, it was poorly organized, poorly planned, and it will be a failure. As a matter of fact, it has already failed. Any march that is not organized in the way that the first three marches were organizing (and, incidentally was the same system used by Bayard Rustin to organize the 1963 March on Washington), is a failure. National organizations DO NOT OWN OR SET the movement agenda. The movement agenda is set by, worked for, and guided by folks on the ground that put their lives and their energy on the line for this work. Joe Solomnese and Evan Wolfson and the rest of the rancid right of the LGBT movement (and damn them to hell if they believe that they aren't the right reactionary wing of our movement) are hurting our movement more than they have ever done to support it let alone MOVE it forward.
Don't get me wrong, I support the queer folks that will spend their time, money, and energy to march this weekend. I have a number of friends that will be going to the march. But, at this point, the march needs to be a success in numbers or it will do so much damage to our credibility as a movement that it will allow the Democrats the space to openly sideline our REAL issues and concerns as opposed to the lip service they pay to it now while ignoring us in the halls of Congress.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Lila Cante a new play by Mark Snyder
Next Friday a new show hits the scene in NYC by playwright Mark Snyder. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Mark en vivo yet, but we know lots of the same cool cats, and he loves Minneapolis, so he is a neato keen groovy dude in my joy book. And as is my pleasure, I am very happy to share information about the works of kick ass artists keeping creativity alive.
Later this week, you will have the chance to read an interview of Mark done by yours truly for the good readers here at My Feet Only Walk Forward.
Do yourself a favor: support local artists. If you don't usually get out to see a show where the actors are actually in the room with you instead of on the screen in a far away place at some point in the past, try this one out. Why? Cuz it's what your Mama would want you to do.
LILA CANTE by Mark Snyder
LILA CANTE is a thrilling new play by emerging playwright Mark Snyder. Set during the turbulent era of file-sharing and torrent downloads, the play examines two siblings who, after their legendary mother's sudden death, must deal with her legacy and the demons that may plague each of them as they try to create in the shadow of a single rock album that changed the world. LILA CANTE is about music and art, connection and isolation, power and commerce, and the ever-changing landscape of what it means to be a family today.
LILA CANTE is being produced by At Hand Theater, a NYC non-profit company that produces original work using sustainable means (www.athandtheatre.com).
Later this week, you will have the chance to read an interview of Mark done by yours truly for the good readers here at My Feet Only Walk Forward.
Do yourself a favor: support local artists. If you don't usually get out to see a show where the actors are actually in the room with you instead of on the screen in a far away place at some point in the past, try this one out. Why? Cuz it's what your Mama would want you to do.
LILA CANTE by Mark Snyder
LILA CANTE is a thrilling new play by emerging playwright Mark Snyder. Set during the turbulent era of file-sharing and torrent downloads, the play examines two siblings who, after their legendary mother's sudden death, must deal with her legacy and the demons that may plague each of them as they try to create in the shadow of a single rock album that changed the world. LILA CANTE is about music and art, connection and isolation, power and commerce, and the ever-changing landscape of what it means to be a family today.
LILA CANTE is being produced by At Hand Theater, a NYC non-profit company that produces original work using sustainable means (www.athandtheatre.com).
Thursday, September 24, 2009
First Efficacious HIV Vaccine Found!
Let the joyous news be spread the Red Ribbon Witch May One Day Be Dead!
Even though the study found that the vaccine only reduces the risk by 31% (which is way fucking better than 0%).
Even though the study was only done in Thailand with the strain of HIV most prevalent in Asia.
Even though the U.S. Army was the main funder of the vaccine trial.
I am still tickled red by this news.
Never before has any HIV vaccine been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of the infection. But some brilliant doctor in Thailand combined two previously ineffective vaccines and came up with a vaccine that, in fact, prevented, completely, HIV infection in a number of patients. It works. Dear God it works.
Now, before anyone starts screaming cure, the truth remains that it doesn't always work. As a matter of fact, 32% reduction in transmission still means 69% transmission. But before every single vaccine that came along was like a shot in the genetic viral RNA dark. Now there is something to build upon. It will take years before any vaccine is perfected, and there is still the question of whether or not it will be effective against the strains prevalent in Africa or the one in North and South America, but this discovery, ladies and gentlemen, has just won someone a Noble Prize (don't EVEN doubt it) and will, one day, be hailed with the vaccines for Small Pox, Polio, and most likely the discovery of penicillin.
And let's not minimize the importance of this for the region even if it turns out the vaccine is not effective against the African and American strains of the virus. HIV infection rates are through the roof in India and in China, the world's two most populous nations. Stopping the tide of HIV infection rates or lowering them significantly in those two nations will, intrinsically, reduce the overall infection rates across the region. Since most research shows that super infections are not only rare but most likely improbably, as the stronger of two strains tends to crowd out the other strain, it means that, perhaps, we can cut off the HIV explosion in Asia, which, almost uniformly, is developing with less than stellar health care and high rates of AIDS mortality.
I am excited.
Now, don't get me wrong, though I play a blond on TV, I actually have a decent grasp of the basics of scientific research. I moonlight, what can I say. I understand that the experiment has to be replicated. I understand that there needs to be further study and refining. I understand that if the pharmaceutical companies get their hands on this it is going to be priced out of the reach of the poor of Asia.. I understand the U.S. Army doesn't do shit squat number one out of the goodness of its heart. There is something related to biological warfare or may I turn into a fucking Power Ranger over night. I understand that this could be as good as it gets.
But what if it isn't?
A vaccine is not a cure. Lord knows I know that. There has to be continued studied for folks like me to be free of the disease that already have it. But for the vast majority of the people in the world that never need to get it, for the rape victims in Africa and the US prison system, for the AIDS babies and the transgender sex workers, this could mean the difference between life and slow death.
So do not begrudge me my joy. I understand the limitations and boundaries of that joy, but hope breeds faith, and faith has been known to change the world if we let it.
For more information on the discovery turn on the goddamn television set or click this link.
Even though the study found that the vaccine only reduces the risk by 31% (which is way fucking better than 0%).
Even though the study was only done in Thailand with the strain of HIV most prevalent in Asia.
Even though the U.S. Army was the main funder of the vaccine trial.
I am still tickled red by this news.
Never before has any HIV vaccine been proven to be effective in preventing the spread of the infection. But some brilliant doctor in Thailand combined two previously ineffective vaccines and came up with a vaccine that, in fact, prevented, completely, HIV infection in a number of patients. It works. Dear God it works.
Now, before anyone starts screaming cure, the truth remains that it doesn't always work. As a matter of fact, 32% reduction in transmission still means 69% transmission. But before every single vaccine that came along was like a shot in the genetic viral RNA dark. Now there is something to build upon. It will take years before any vaccine is perfected, and there is still the question of whether or not it will be effective against the strains prevalent in Africa or the one in North and South America, but this discovery, ladies and gentlemen, has just won someone a Noble Prize (don't EVEN doubt it) and will, one day, be hailed with the vaccines for Small Pox, Polio, and most likely the discovery of penicillin.
And let's not minimize the importance of this for the region even if it turns out the vaccine is not effective against the African and American strains of the virus. HIV infection rates are through the roof in India and in China, the world's two most populous nations. Stopping the tide of HIV infection rates or lowering them significantly in those two nations will, intrinsically, reduce the overall infection rates across the region. Since most research shows that super infections are not only rare but most likely improbably, as the stronger of two strains tends to crowd out the other strain, it means that, perhaps, we can cut off the HIV explosion in Asia, which, almost uniformly, is developing with less than stellar health care and high rates of AIDS mortality.
I am excited.
Now, don't get me wrong, though I play a blond on TV, I actually have a decent grasp of the basics of scientific research. I moonlight, what can I say. I understand that the experiment has to be replicated. I understand that there needs to be further study and refining. I understand that if the pharmaceutical companies get their hands on this it is going to be priced out of the reach of the poor of Asia.. I understand the U.S. Army doesn't do shit squat number one out of the goodness of its heart. There is something related to biological warfare or may I turn into a fucking Power Ranger over night. I understand that this could be as good as it gets.
But what if it isn't?
A vaccine is not a cure. Lord knows I know that. There has to be continued studied for folks like me to be free of the disease that already have it. But for the vast majority of the people in the world that never need to get it, for the rape victims in Africa and the US prison system, for the AIDS babies and the transgender sex workers, this could mean the difference between life and slow death.
So do not begrudge me my joy. I understand the limitations and boundaries of that joy, but hope breeds faith, and faith has been known to change the world if we let it.
For more information on the discovery turn on the goddamn television set or click this link.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sarah Palin Goes to China and Gets Dumber
Lord have mercy somebody PLEASE take away Sarah Palin's passport. The snow heifer will not miss it considering she didn't even have one until 2007. Let her continue to stare at some barren Russian islands out of her foyer window and create soccer Mom foreign policy while fingering wild Alaskan salmon.
Good grief.
So, Sarah Palin aka The Woman That Made Tina Fey A Saint, was in Hong Kong giving a speech to a group of investors and bankers. Hello? Has anyone checked out the economy in Alaska. It's in the shitters. That would be like CapitalOne paying me to give credit card advice to shopaholics. The only outcome would be that I would make a fool out of myself and the people in the audience would have instant garnishments levied against them.
I mean, come on. There has to be some sort of law on the books that says the Village Idiot is not allowed to leave the country unsupervised! I am going to write my legislators and ask them to install one of those microchips that they implant in domestic pets. It is in the best interest of U.S. National Security that we know where Sarah Palin is at all times.
Right next to the red phone and the "button" in the White House, Obama should have a remote control that allows him to activate the microchip in Palin's neck and taser her via satellite any place on planet Earth. If they put THAT into the Patriot Act, I would vote for it myself. Habeas Corpus be damned!
I mean, there are laws against severely mentally ill people making decisions for themselves. And if Palin believes that she has a snow balls chance in Paris Hilton's pussy of being President of the United States, then that is evidence enough for any court in the land to judge her mentally unfit to make her own decisions. She should be put under house arrest in a gulag in Siberia and made to watch her interview with Katie Couric on repeat until she expires from an overdose of her own stupidity.
And since she couldn't convince the majority of Americans that Obama is to blame for the collapse of Wall Street and the financial crisis, she thought she would try and convince the Chinese. Of course, they can't vote, and the Chinese basically invented the calendar, and since Lehmann Brothers collapsed in September 2008 and Obama took office in January 2009, it doesn't take a whiz on an abacus to determine that the meltdown happened during the Bush administration.
Forget a Spin Doctor, she needs a brain surgeon. Lobotomies all around!
The best thing that Sarah Palin ever did was let her daughter get knocked up my Levi Johnston. The kid is dumb as shit and about half a swastika away from being a member of the Michigan Militia, but he is hot as fuck and his shirtless pictures almost make up for his almost-mother-in-laws political career and complete embarrassment of the United States on the world stage.
You know you are basically a rat bastard when Kim Jong Il is more likely to get elected to the White House than you are. Mrs. Palin, have you thought about a career as a North Korean Dictator?
In the end, I look forward to more public appearances by Sarah Palin. And I pray to God Almighty that she runs for the presidency in 2012 just for Saturday Night Live bonanza that will entail.
God Bless Tina Fey.
Monday, September 21, 2009
A Limerick from a Reader
Today, I received my first limerick from a fan ;-). Well, she is also a friend and a person that I think is so hilarious that I pee myself every time I read something she tweets. As a matter of fact, she is a former One Liner of the Week Award winner and a very pithy mother of two.
I opened my Twitter account today and discovered a gift that brought out a broad smile and my crazy clown laughter. Thank you Vikki (find her at www.twitter.com/uppoppedafox)! Next time I am in Minneapolis, it's all about gin and tonics on the veranda (or if it's Winter, it'll be gin and tonics in long underwear and a parka in front of the boiler).
Here's Vikki's limerick:
There once was a guy named Brandon
who wrote with wanton abandon
he was funny and gay
and brightened the day
of all who were part of his fandom.
Vikki ROCKS. Thanks love.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
People with Disabilities are PEOPLE
I had heard horror stories in the news about West Indian nurses and caretakers that take on jobs looking after people with mental and physical disabilities. I chalked up the stories to racism, xenophobia, and generalizations. While I will not play the game of generalizing the behavior of one person out to the an entire group of people, today I came face to face with a black West Indian woman that I wanted to grind into the ground.
I am no saint. God in Heaven knows I have made fucked up jokes about people with disabilities. I have laughed at times when I knew laughing was wrong and in fact reinforced ableism. I knew full well what I did participating in those moments was no less wrong and evil than when white folks tell nigger jokes amongst themselves or make comments about spics and gooks when they think no one from those communities are listening or watching. There is no excuse for it. I live with a permanent disability, so I should know better, but my disability is invisible, so I don't have to outwardly carry the burden of it on a day to day basis. I commit myself today to being a better person and intervening in those moments and spaces when ableism is brought to play.
Today, I participated as a volunteer with the Oxfam Human Countdown in Central Park. Members of the community were gathered to take part in a mass action around global warming. More than 2,000 people showed up today to form the shape of the Earth inside of a giant hour glass. In a choreographed moment the Earth trickled through the hour glass like grains of sand and settled in the bottom to spell the words TCK TCK TCK. I was in the park for more than eight hours and for most of that time I was amazed at the people that took so much time out of their day to participate. Check your local news listings and the Internet, there were participants and media from around the globe present.
There was one moment when I noticed a woman with a disability in the wheel chair being brought down the ramp. She was being pushed by her caretaker. The sun was brilliant and hot. More than one person had asked to sit in the shade or for sunscreen. But this woman in the wheel chair, Carol, wanted to be in the sun. She wanted to participate in the event. Her caretaker did not.
Her caretaker, from the moment she arrived, complained loudly to anyone that would hear that she had no interest in being in the sun. She could care less what Carol wanted. Her caretaker bitched and moaned and hollered finally leaving Carol in the sun to go and sit some 100 to 200 yards away where she continued her bitching to anyone that would listen.
So I decided to talk to Carol. Turns out that though Carol's body was not under her control (I was to find out later that she is fighting a disease that is hardening all her bones and joints), Carol's mind was sharp and her eyes were bright. She introduced herself to me with difficulty. I shook her hand, and she started to cry. I asked her if she needed anything, and she said no, just to sit in the sun and that she wanted to participate. I asked her if she wanted me to get her caretaker, and to that she had an emphatic no.
Her caretaker ultimately returned and at one point, as Carol attempted to move herself slightly closer to the area where the performers were practicing the moves for the event, her caretaker smiled at us, the volunteers, and laughed at Carol's attempts to participate on her own.
I wanted to harm that able bodied black woman. Even after I spoke with her and found out that she is a recent breast cancer survivor and had a legitimate reason to want to rest, I still wanted to scream at her. Her job was her job and she spent all of her time complaining. She had just beaten a horrible disease but the woman she was being paid to caretake was going to, eventually, die from hers. All Carol wanted was to be a part of the group. She cared about Global Warming. SHE CAME TO THE EVENT TO PARTICIPATE, and yet her paid caretaker could do nothing but moan.
So I spoke to her. Calmly and gently. I said that I could see clearly that Carol was going to be heart broken if she had to leave. We, as volunteers, could not take her into the crowd as there was no liability insurance for us. I explained that. I also explained that if the caretaker was not going to help Carol participate then she was going to have to remove her from the walkway, as it was not going to be safe for Carol there with thousands of people moving back and forth around her. The caretaker continued to try and make excuses, and I was kind but firm.
Indeed a participant standing by said that I was very compassionate and very skilled in dealing with the woman. If she knew how angry I was or if she could have read my thoughts, she would have been less inclined to praise my calmness. The only reason I didn't scream at the caretaker was that I was unsure of how it would affect Carol.
I walked away from the caretaker and brought Carol a cup of water. She thanked me, and I thanked her for being there. She smiled and shook my hand again.
In the end kindness won.
Not only did the caretaker take Carol out into the performance piece, she stayed there with her until almost the very end (which means that Carol was filmed by no less than nine different media outlets as part of the event).
I am so not a perfect person. I have done some fucked up shit in my life. But this was one of those obvious moments. This was not a morally grey situation. This was one where the right and just thing to do was to be legs for the woman that could not walk. It was right to help her participate in something she could not do for herself. God help me for judging the caretaker, as I know what it is like to be judged and judged harshly. But today I failed at being greater than my shortcomings. I judged and I judged hard.
But I can only hope that her reason, in the end, for taking Carol out in the crowd was that no one around her, none of the other volunteers or the people with whom she was attempting to bond, were willing to laugh at her inappropriateness or keep silent when they saw that a person with a disability was being treated poorly.
I am no saint. God in Heaven knows I have made fucked up jokes about people with disabilities. I have laughed at times when I knew laughing was wrong and in fact reinforced ableism. I knew full well what I did participating in those moments was no less wrong and evil than when white folks tell nigger jokes amongst themselves or make comments about spics and gooks when they think no one from those communities are listening or watching. There is no excuse for it. I live with a permanent disability, so I should know better, but my disability is invisible, so I don't have to outwardly carry the burden of it on a day to day basis. I commit myself today to being a better person and intervening in those moments and spaces when ableism is brought to play.
Today, I participated as a volunteer with the Oxfam Human Countdown in Central Park. Members of the community were gathered to take part in a mass action around global warming. More than 2,000 people showed up today to form the shape of the Earth inside of a giant hour glass. In a choreographed moment the Earth trickled through the hour glass like grains of sand and settled in the bottom to spell the words TCK TCK TCK. I was in the park for more than eight hours and for most of that time I was amazed at the people that took so much time out of their day to participate. Check your local news listings and the Internet, there were participants and media from around the globe present.
There was one moment when I noticed a woman with a disability in the wheel chair being brought down the ramp. She was being pushed by her caretaker. The sun was brilliant and hot. More than one person had asked to sit in the shade or for sunscreen. But this woman in the wheel chair, Carol, wanted to be in the sun. She wanted to participate in the event. Her caretaker did not.
Her caretaker, from the moment she arrived, complained loudly to anyone that would hear that she had no interest in being in the sun. She could care less what Carol wanted. Her caretaker bitched and moaned and hollered finally leaving Carol in the sun to go and sit some 100 to 200 yards away where she continued her bitching to anyone that would listen.
So I decided to talk to Carol. Turns out that though Carol's body was not under her control (I was to find out later that she is fighting a disease that is hardening all her bones and joints), Carol's mind was sharp and her eyes were bright. She introduced herself to me with difficulty. I shook her hand, and she started to cry. I asked her if she needed anything, and she said no, just to sit in the sun and that she wanted to participate. I asked her if she wanted me to get her caretaker, and to that she had an emphatic no.
Her caretaker ultimately returned and at one point, as Carol attempted to move herself slightly closer to the area where the performers were practicing the moves for the event, her caretaker smiled at us, the volunteers, and laughed at Carol's attempts to participate on her own.
I wanted to harm that able bodied black woman. Even after I spoke with her and found out that she is a recent breast cancer survivor and had a legitimate reason to want to rest, I still wanted to scream at her. Her job was her job and she spent all of her time complaining. She had just beaten a horrible disease but the woman she was being paid to caretake was going to, eventually, die from hers. All Carol wanted was to be a part of the group. She cared about Global Warming. SHE CAME TO THE EVENT TO PARTICIPATE, and yet her paid caretaker could do nothing but moan.
So I spoke to her. Calmly and gently. I said that I could see clearly that Carol was going to be heart broken if she had to leave. We, as volunteers, could not take her into the crowd as there was no liability insurance for us. I explained that. I also explained that if the caretaker was not going to help Carol participate then she was going to have to remove her from the walkway, as it was not going to be safe for Carol there with thousands of people moving back and forth around her. The caretaker continued to try and make excuses, and I was kind but firm.
Indeed a participant standing by said that I was very compassionate and very skilled in dealing with the woman. If she knew how angry I was or if she could have read my thoughts, she would have been less inclined to praise my calmness. The only reason I didn't scream at the caretaker was that I was unsure of how it would affect Carol.
I walked away from the caretaker and brought Carol a cup of water. She thanked me, and I thanked her for being there. She smiled and shook my hand again.
In the end kindness won.
Not only did the caretaker take Carol out into the performance piece, she stayed there with her until almost the very end (which means that Carol was filmed by no less than nine different media outlets as part of the event).
I am so not a perfect person. I have done some fucked up shit in my life. But this was one of those obvious moments. This was not a morally grey situation. This was one where the right and just thing to do was to be legs for the woman that could not walk. It was right to help her participate in something she could not do for herself. God help me for judging the caretaker, as I know what it is like to be judged and judged harshly. But today I failed at being greater than my shortcomings. I judged and I judged hard.
But I can only hope that her reason, in the end, for taking Carol out in the crowd was that no one around her, none of the other volunteers or the people with whom she was attempting to bond, were willing to laugh at her inappropriateness or keep silent when they saw that a person with a disability was being treated poorly.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Risk and Death
One year ago today, I lost my cousin to leukemia. In less than three months, my little sister will be shipped back to Iraq for her fourth tour of duty. Last spring, I lost a friend and mentor, Mona Harris, to cancer. My little brother recently returned from Afghanistan, and with that war showing no signs of ending, it is almost a surety that he will also be sent back into harms way.
I am sick and tired of death and the risk of death.
At the age of 32, I should rarely have to think of death. If I do, it should come in the form of elders that have lived long and fulfilled lives, individuals that die surrounded by the people that love them knowing that they are loved.
How fucking naive is that statement.
Unfortunately, I know that because I am not white and most of the people around me are not white, they will die younger than they should. I know because I have had one family member die from cancer that now it is more likely that others will also pass along.
And then there is war.
When a country enters into a war it enters into a compact with death. It promises to the Reaper the certainty of soul collection in order to achieve some goal. Some wars are fought because they must be fought. Though the impetus for the United States to enter the Second World War had little to do with justice and everything to do with empire, entering World War II was just. Hitler was an evil man with evil ambitions that caused great and destructive harm.
No war since then that has been fought by the United States has been right or just, they have simply been the United States trying to protect or enforce a particular corporatized political ideology or protect our own selfish and self-destructive political and economic interests.
The rest of the world and the families that sacrifice their children on the altar of false patriotism be damned.
The death of my cousin and Mrs. Harris and the risk of death of my little brother and sister are connected.
We spend BILLIONS of dollars each month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget Korea, forget Vietnam, forget the silent invasions of Grenada, Panama, Somalia and the first Gulf War. Just calculate the amount of money that we have spent in the last six years in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now imagine if even ten percent of that money had been spent on cancer research and treatment.
My cousin almost survived leukemia.
He had an experimental bone marrow transplant, and for months the doctors at the University of Illinois-Chicago were calling him the miracle guy. Except the cancer came back and took him down quickly.
Afterwards they examined the data and thought perhaps they had done the transplant to soon, too quickly, they hadn't given his own immune system enough time to resist the cancerous blood cells. What if they had been granted a billion dollars to do their research? One billion dollars is LESS than we spend on war in one month. YET imagine what it would mean to research labs across the country. A year ago, perhaps the researchers would have known what they WILL know five years from now. If only they had the staff, equipment, lab space, and materials to move forward. If ONLY Bush hadn't restricted stem cell research during his eight years in office. If only we cared more about preserving life than we did about preserving the bottom line of corporations and shareholder profits.
If only.
But we don't. Instead, I am sitting here nearly a year after my cousin's death. I am remembering that I couldn't afford to fly from California to Minnesota to be with my family. To this day the guilt of that sits in my stomach. I saw my Aunt in June for the first time since my cousins death. All I could think of was that I was my cousin's closest family member outside of his Mom, Dad, and two brothers. I WAS the cousin that made sure to see him when he was in the hospital. I was the cousin that his wife loved. I was the cousin that went to see him when he got back from Korea. I was his friend.
And there is a good chance that if we spent more on life than on death that he would still be alive today, and I would still get to see him at family reunions and on holidays. I would have gotten to be at his wedding, and I would, perhaps, be with him right now.
Instead I am wondering how his nephew, the son of his twin brother, will ever know how amazing his uncle was. Instead, I wonder if my Aunty Susie, a woman that treated me like one of her own children, a woman that I love and look up to, a woman that understood me when I didn't really understand myself...I wonder if she will ever be the same aunty that I have known and loved my entire life.
And all because of a stupid disease that we could cure, except that we are too busy spending our money on war. And I am too busy worrying if I am going to lose my brother and sister too soon as well.
One Liner of the Week Award: Renee Humphries
Lo and behold! There were many moons between the previous One Liner of the Week Award (given to the brilliant Yuval Sheer) and the one previous to that. Perhaps levity had suffered its own Mercury in retrograde, perhaps the ban on travel to Cuba had been extended, secretly, to smart-assery. It is one of the great mysteries of the Universe...like the origin of life and the purpose of bologna.
Yet, a wonder of wonders has occurred, Renee Humphries has dazzled mine funny bone with her quip yestereve.
We were having a lively Perez Hilton bashing session. After a particularly vibrant slam down of Perez by yours truly, dearest Renee expressed her appreciation saying,
"Brandon, you make my day almost daily. I just adore you."
That was very sweet of her. Then she continued,
"Too bad you're up in the trees with the fruit and not down here in the pond with the fishes."
Oh. My. God.
And that, my dears is how you win the One Liner of the Week Award. Congratulations Lady Humphries.
Yet, a wonder of wonders has occurred, Renee Humphries has dazzled mine funny bone with her quip yestereve.
We were having a lively Perez Hilton bashing session. After a particularly vibrant slam down of Perez by yours truly, dearest Renee expressed her appreciation saying,
"Brandon, you make my day almost daily. I just adore you."
That was very sweet of her. Then she continued,
"Too bad you're up in the trees with the fruit and not down here in the pond with the fishes."
Oh. My. God.
And that, my dears is how you win the One Liner of the Week Award. Congratulations Lady Humphries.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Tell The Damn Truth
I am not sure if you all have noticed, but the Republicans are doing every damn thing they can possibly do, short of drawing a pentagram in virgin blood and opening the Hell-Mouth, to stop health care reform from happening.
Joe Wilson of South Carolina is a member of the Sons of Confederacy, tried like Hell to keep the Confederate Flag flying on TOP of the South Carolina State Capitol building, and his sons are all shocked and awed because Jimmy Carter told the damn truth and said that Rep. Wilson is a racist sommamabitch.
John Boehner, House Republic leader, perpetually lives with his head up his ass and hasn't come up with one viable or original piece of legislation since Big Daddy Bush left office. He basically spends his time jacking off on the hopper whenever a Democrat executes the duties of his office and proposes legislation. Hooked on phonics didn't work for him. I am not even sure the man can read English, though I am sure he has portions of Mein Kempf set to memory.
Sarah Palin is off somewhere in the wilds of Alaska plotting her next round of public crazy.
Dennis Kucinich voted AGAINST censuring crazy ass Joe Wilson's YOU LIE outburst at the joint session of Congress. What the HELL has he been smoking in Ohio. I know the man is about as Green as a Democrat can get, but he needs to lay off that Humboldt County shit while Congress is in session.
Serena Williams lost her damn mind at the U.S. Open, cussed out a line ref and then half-assed apologized for it (in her defense, it was a shitty call, but she didn't have to go all ape shit booga booga over it...she still walked away with $350,000).
And don't EVEN get me started on Kanye West's crazy ass. OBVIOUSLY, he and Dennis Kucinich were hanging out mainlining Draino or something cuz his Prime Time Ass Showing Extravaganza at the VMA's was a historic low in Black History.
And lord I am trying to be a saint today, but I just heard that Perez Hilton is producing a music tour and is launching his own label...what's it going to be called? Here's a title suggestion, "I'm A Fat Disgusting Ignorant No Talent White Boy Wanna Be With Bad Hair and Horse Teeth Records."
This here country has me so riled up that I am announcing the launch of my own damn weekly VBlog called Brandon Tells The Damn Truth.
Every Friday, I will be releasing a 20 minute or so video show via our friends at YouTube where I review the news of the week, active the Bullshit-o-meter and tell you the damn truth behind the headlines.
Watch out America...I am like Opera but broke and Wendy Williams with class....this is going to be some live shit.
Joe Wilson of South Carolina is a member of the Sons of Confederacy, tried like Hell to keep the Confederate Flag flying on TOP of the South Carolina State Capitol building, and his sons are all shocked and awed because Jimmy Carter told the damn truth and said that Rep. Wilson is a racist sommamabitch.
John Boehner, House Republic leader, perpetually lives with his head up his ass and hasn't come up with one viable or original piece of legislation since Big Daddy Bush left office. He basically spends his time jacking off on the hopper whenever a Democrat executes the duties of his office and proposes legislation. Hooked on phonics didn't work for him. I am not even sure the man can read English, though I am sure he has portions of Mein Kempf set to memory.
Sarah Palin is off somewhere in the wilds of Alaska plotting her next round of public crazy.
Dennis Kucinich voted AGAINST censuring crazy ass Joe Wilson's YOU LIE outburst at the joint session of Congress. What the HELL has he been smoking in Ohio. I know the man is about as Green as a Democrat can get, but he needs to lay off that Humboldt County shit while Congress is in session.
Serena Williams lost her damn mind at the U.S. Open, cussed out a line ref and then half-assed apologized for it (in her defense, it was a shitty call, but she didn't have to go all ape shit booga booga over it...she still walked away with $350,000).
And don't EVEN get me started on Kanye West's crazy ass. OBVIOUSLY, he and Dennis Kucinich were hanging out mainlining Draino or something cuz his Prime Time Ass Showing Extravaganza at the VMA's was a historic low in Black History.
And lord I am trying to be a saint today, but I just heard that Perez Hilton is producing a music tour and is launching his own label...what's it going to be called? Here's a title suggestion, "I'm A Fat Disgusting Ignorant No Talent White Boy Wanna Be With Bad Hair and Horse Teeth Records."
This here country has me so riled up that I am announcing the launch of my own damn weekly VBlog called Brandon Tells The Damn Truth.
Every Friday, I will be releasing a 20 minute or so video show via our friends at YouTube where I review the news of the week, active the Bullshit-o-meter and tell you the damn truth behind the headlines.
Watch out America...I am like Opera but broke and Wendy Williams with class....this is going to be some live shit.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Interview with Two Sexy Beasts: April Donato and Sam Lawrence
If you have spent any time on my blog, you know quite well that I love sex. I have spent years working to understand my own sexuality and my desires, and how those two things interact with and are acted upon by socialization, history, queerness, religion, and gender. I believe that a human being has the capability to love more than one person at the same time, I believe that having sex with someone that is not your partner does not take away from your relationship, and I have struggled to align my beliefs with the overwhelming feelings of jealousy and fear that have surfaced when I have tried to buck my socialization and live life according to my own mores. I have led workshops and training sessions on the realities, complications, and joys of living a non-monogamous/polyamorous life.
In the end, I believe that people enter my life for a reason, and I want to be free to know, understand, and explore those reasons without having to fit myself into a social convention framework that dictates my possibilities and the limits of my connection with another human being. I have a partner that I love, but I don't own him nor does he own me. If our capacity to love outpaces our ability to quantify that capacity, then perhaps setting up artificial boundaries on love's capabilities is not only a disservice to oneself perhaps it is a non-dogmatic blasphemy. If one chooses monogamy because that is the right path for an individual that has thought carefully about it and made a choice based on his or her own feelings and beliefs, I can stand behind it. If one is monogamous because God, the Koran, Billy Graham, or his Sunday School teacher told him that is what he must be, then I heartily reject it and encourage that he make choices for himself instead of following outdated conventions by rote. You are your best and greatest moral compass. If your choice harms no one, celebrates life, and creates peace with you, then that is a better guide for decision making than a celibate priest or a book written two millennium ago.
I am not anti-religious or anti-faith. Quite the contrary. But, I also happen to believe that The Ethical Slut, one of the leading discourses on non-monogamy and polyamory, should be added right after Genesis in the Bible.
A few months back, April Donato contacted me on Twitter to let me know about a new social networking site that she was working to set up that celebrates sexuality and sexual openness. She invited me to check out a magical place where queer folks and straight folks, kinky folks and vanilla folks, trannies and bio kids of all shapes, sizes, sexualities and distinctions could build an intentional community where sex is an integrated and healthy part of the connections between human beings. That magical word is the Blackbox Republic.
I joined the site as a Founding Member, and I am proud to support its work and mission. I asked Sam, another co-founder, and April if they would be willing to do an interview for My Feet Only Walk Forward. They gladly agreed.
I encourage you all to check out Blackbox Republic. When it goes live, I encourage you to join up. The interview follows.
Interview with Two Sexy Beasts: April Donato and Sam Lawrence
Sam and April...talk to me a wee bit about how you two came to know each other/work together?
Sam and April: We peripherally knew each other when we both had totally different lives. Sam was an exec at a software company, I owned a boutique and we shared some social circles. Everything really came together at Burning Man 2008. That's when we came up with the idea for Blackbox Republic.
April, you write a sex positive blog that I love love love. Talk to me about your experience as a sex positive woman...in a world that still believes that a woman that owns and controls her sexuality is a slut (with a pejorative meaning)...how do you own your sexuality and put the positivity into a framework that says powerful, sex positive, brilliant women are here and need no stamp of approval or to make any apologies.
April: I make no apologies for who I am. Everyday is an intersection, everyday is a choice. Probably like everyone, there are some days I feel sleek, a bit sexier, and spunky. I have assertive, submissive and kid-like days. I guess I never got the memo that women can't have the power to control their own lives--emotional lives, spiritual lives and sex lives. I'm inspired by other women that strut their stuff and own who they are. There's nothing more attractive than that.
Tell me a little bit about how BlackBox Republic came to be...how does this jive with the way you move through the world?
Sam: April and I looked around and realized how sexpositive people are hard to find. I mean, could there be more fake profiles on the Internet? Between dating sites, hookup sites, and the harsh public spotlight of social networks, our personal lives are stifled. Even with all those profiles, we're still in neutral. We just want the freedom to be ourselves, whatever that is right now, and with other people who are real. That's not something you can do on eHarmony, Facebook, or Twitter. 140 characters, a photo album and a chemistry test won't get you there. The journey is just not that simple. We need a different melting pot. A label-free place to be the real you. Social networking revolutionized lives for millions. And that revolution has remixed dating, love and sex life. And the next generation of sexpositive people has emerged. Blackbox Republic is a place to let go. No matter where we are or what we're doing, we can instantly discover what we need today. Whether it be sex, dates, friends or a hot party. This is our scene and it grows with us. Sure. Sex will happen. It matters how you get there.
What is the mission of BlackBox...how is it different from every other hook up site out there in the world? How do you hope that BlackBox will change the fundamental dialogue that is available via the Internet about sex, love, friendship and how those things intersects.
April and Sam: Blackbox Republic is a new kind of online community that fuses dating, sex, and friends so that sexpositive people can get whatever they want whenever they want.
Let's talk about sex positivity in a time/world/place where HIV/AIDS is still very real and very present. And let's frame this way...in a world where sex positivity is looked on as dangerous promiscuity and HIV+ people are desexualized and sexually shunned in many circles, how does BlackBox Republic challenged those frameworks?
April and Sam: The big thing that Blackbox Republic does is bring people together who may not have mixed before. It unites people and phases of their personal life into a single home. From couples, multiples, singles, LGBT, straight, kink, poly, swinger, HIV/AIDS positive-- all these people will find a home. This new melting pot will reframe many things for many people and provide a dialog for these very things. Opening up the lines of communication between us, is the biggest thing we can do.
If a person wants to find out more about BlackBox Republic and your work, how can they best do that?
April and Sam: They should visit blackboxrepublic.com. We will be open for business in just a couple of months. In the meantime, they can add their name to the long list of people excited to get started. :)
Thank you Sam and April for doing this work and creating a sex positive place on the web for folks that are looking to make multi-layered connections with their fellow wo(men).
In the end, I believe that people enter my life for a reason, and I want to be free to know, understand, and explore those reasons without having to fit myself into a social convention framework that dictates my possibilities and the limits of my connection with another human being. I have a partner that I love, but I don't own him nor does he own me. If our capacity to love outpaces our ability to quantify that capacity, then perhaps setting up artificial boundaries on love's capabilities is not only a disservice to oneself perhaps it is a non-dogmatic blasphemy. If one chooses monogamy because that is the right path for an individual that has thought carefully about it and made a choice based on his or her own feelings and beliefs, I can stand behind it. If one is monogamous because God, the Koran, Billy Graham, or his Sunday School teacher told him that is what he must be, then I heartily reject it and encourage that he make choices for himself instead of following outdated conventions by rote. You are your best and greatest moral compass. If your choice harms no one, celebrates life, and creates peace with you, then that is a better guide for decision making than a celibate priest or a book written two millennium ago.
I am not anti-religious or anti-faith. Quite the contrary. But, I also happen to believe that The Ethical Slut, one of the leading discourses on non-monogamy and polyamory, should be added right after Genesis in the Bible.
A few months back, April Donato contacted me on Twitter to let me know about a new social networking site that she was working to set up that celebrates sexuality and sexual openness. She invited me to check out a magical place where queer folks and straight folks, kinky folks and vanilla folks, trannies and bio kids of all shapes, sizes, sexualities and distinctions could build an intentional community where sex is an integrated and healthy part of the connections between human beings. That magical word is the Blackbox Republic.
I joined the site as a Founding Member, and I am proud to support its work and mission. I asked Sam, another co-founder, and April if they would be willing to do an interview for My Feet Only Walk Forward. They gladly agreed.
I encourage you all to check out Blackbox Republic. When it goes live, I encourage you to join up. The interview follows.
Interview with Two Sexy Beasts: April Donato and Sam LawrenceSam and April...talk to me a wee bit about how you two came to know each other/work together?
Sam and April: We peripherally knew each other when we both had totally different lives. Sam was an exec at a software company, I owned a boutique and we shared some social circles. Everything really came together at Burning Man 2008. That's when we came up with the idea for Blackbox Republic.
April, you write a sex positive blog that I love love love. Talk to me about your experience as a sex positive woman...in a world that still believes that a woman that owns and controls her sexuality is a slut (with a pejorative meaning)...how do you own your sexuality and put the positivity into a framework that says powerful, sex positive, brilliant women are here and need no stamp of approval or to make any apologies.
April: I make no apologies for who I am. Everyday is an intersection, everyday is a choice. Probably like everyone, there are some days I feel sleek, a bit sexier, and spunky. I have assertive, submissive and kid-like days. I guess I never got the memo that women can't have the power to control their own lives--emotional lives, spiritual lives and sex lives. I'm inspired by other women that strut their stuff and own who they are. There's nothing more attractive than that.
Tell me a little bit about how BlackBox Republic came to be...how does this jive with the way you move through the world?
Sam: April and I looked around and realized how sexpositive people are hard to find. I mean, could there be more fake profiles on the Internet? Between dating sites, hookup sites, and the harsh public spotlight of social networks, our personal lives are stifled. Even with all those profiles, we're still in neutral. We just want the freedom to be ourselves, whatever that is right now, and with other people who are real. That's not something you can do on eHarmony, Facebook, or Twitter. 140 characters, a photo album and a chemistry test won't get you there. The journey is just not that simple. We need a different melting pot. A label-free place to be the real you. Social networking revolutionized lives for millions. And that revolution has remixed dating, love and sex life. And the next generation of sexpositive people has emerged. Blackbox Republic is a place to let go. No matter where we are or what we're doing, we can instantly discover what we need today. Whether it be sex, dates, friends or a hot party. This is our scene and it grows with us. Sure. Sex will happen. It matters how you get there.
What is the mission of BlackBox...how is it different from every other hook up site out there in the world? How do you hope that BlackBox will change the fundamental dialogue that is available via the Internet about sex, love, friendship and how those things intersects.
April and Sam: Blackbox Republic is a new kind of online community that fuses dating, sex, and friends so that sexpositive people can get whatever they want whenever they want.
Let's talk about sex positivity in a time/world/place where HIV/AIDS is still very real and very present. And let's frame this way...in a world where sex positivity is looked on as dangerous promiscuity and HIV+ people are desexualized and sexually shunned in many circles, how does BlackBox Republic challenged those frameworks?
April and Sam: The big thing that Blackbox Republic does is bring people together who may not have mixed before. It unites people and phases of their personal life into a single home. From couples, multiples, singles, LGBT, straight, kink, poly, swinger, HIV/AIDS positive-- all these people will find a home. This new melting pot will reframe many things for many people and provide a dialog for these very things. Opening up the lines of communication between us, is the biggest thing we can do.
If a person wants to find out more about BlackBox Republic and your work, how can they best do that?
April and Sam: They should visit blackboxrepublic.com. We will be open for business in just a couple of months. In the meantime, they can add their name to the long list of people excited to get started. :)
Thank you Sam and April for doing this work and creating a sex positive place on the web for folks that are looking to make multi-layered connections with their fellow wo(men).
Monday, September 14, 2009
Human Countdown: A Climate Wake Up Call
Julio Dantes is a fierce activist that I have known for more than a decade. We met as student organizers when he was a staff member at the United States Student Association, and I was elected to it's Executive Board of Directors and as co-chair of the National Queer Student Coalition (which, contrary to the claims of my friends at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is actually the oldest national LGBT rights organization in the United States). Since 1997, our lives and paths have intersected in the best and most interesting ways.
This important event in Central Park needs YOUR help. Already roughly 1.000 people have signed up to participate next Sunday, but we need 1,500 more to make this a true success. If you are in New York or will be in New York on September 20th, come out, join us, and let's demonstrate to President Obama and the world that the United States is ready to share in the responsibility for reversing climate change...before it's too late.
The HUMAN COUNTDOWN: A Climate Wake Up Call
On Sunday September 20, people of all walks of life will come together in New York’s Central Park for a bold creative action to tell world leaders that the TIME TO ACT is RUNNING OUT.
More than 2,000 people will form a moving human sculpture of our world in a race against time – a massive, living Earth and Hourglass to be picked up by the media worldwide.
Our unique call to action occurs as world leaders, including President Obama, prepare to attend the UN climate summit in New York. Our Human Countdown will urgently call for a fair, ambitious, and binding new climate treaty, and launch global actions for the Tck Tck Tck Global Climate Wake Up Call and Climate Week NYC.
We will assemble in two groups. The first group forms the living Earth and convenes at 9am in the morning to rehearse the movements. All others come at 1pm to form the Hourglass. We will perform the Human Countdown together at mid-afternoon, hear from notable national and international speakers, and conclude by 4pm.
We need a global climate treaty. This is the time, this is the place to make history – we need YOU to join the HUMAN Countdown!
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE EVENT!
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:
Climate change is happening right now. While least responsible for causing climate change, the world’s poorest bear the brunt of the impacts. It is imperative that world leaders agree on a global climate deal that is fair, ambitious and binding in December 2009 in Copenhagen.
The Human Countdown is the flagship event kick starting the Climate Wake Up Call, a series of coordinated events happening around the world.
Organized by a broad global coalition fighting climate change as part of the TckTckTck Campaign, it will frame events during Climate Week New York City.
More Information:
Oxfam America Climate Change Campaign:Campaign information and updates.
Climate Week NYC: The Calendar of Events and background about the week.
Tck Tck Campaign: Information on key issues and the road to Copenhagen.
Questions? Contact Júlio Dantas ‐ jdantas@oxfamamerica.org
This important event in Central Park needs YOUR help. Already roughly 1.000 people have signed up to participate next Sunday, but we need 1,500 more to make this a true success. If you are in New York or will be in New York on September 20th, come out, join us, and let's demonstrate to President Obama and the world that the United States is ready to share in the responsibility for reversing climate change...before it's too late.
The HUMAN COUNTDOWN: A Climate Wake Up CallOn Sunday September 20, people of all walks of life will come together in New York’s Central Park for a bold creative action to tell world leaders that the TIME TO ACT is RUNNING OUT.
More than 2,000 people will form a moving human sculpture of our world in a race against time – a massive, living Earth and Hourglass to be picked up by the media worldwide.
Our unique call to action occurs as world leaders, including President Obama, prepare to attend the UN climate summit in New York. Our Human Countdown will urgently call for a fair, ambitious, and binding new climate treaty, and launch global actions for the Tck Tck Tck Global Climate Wake Up Call and Climate Week NYC.
We will assemble in two groups. The first group forms the living Earth and convenes at 9am in the morning to rehearse the movements. All others come at 1pm to form the Hourglass. We will perform the Human Countdown together at mid-afternoon, hear from notable national and international speakers, and conclude by 4pm.
We need a global climate treaty. This is the time, this is the place to make history – we need YOU to join the HUMAN Countdown!
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE EVENT!
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:
Climate change is happening right now. While least responsible for causing climate change, the world’s poorest bear the brunt of the impacts. It is imperative that world leaders agree on a global climate deal that is fair, ambitious and binding in December 2009 in Copenhagen.
The Human Countdown is the flagship event kick starting the Climate Wake Up Call, a series of coordinated events happening around the world.
Organized by a broad global coalition fighting climate change as part of the TckTckTck Campaign, it will frame events during Climate Week New York City.
More Information:
Oxfam America Climate Change Campaign:Campaign information and updates.
Climate Week NYC: The Calendar of Events and background about the week.
Tck Tck Campaign: Information on key issues and the road to Copenhagen.
Questions? Contact Júlio Dantas ‐ jdantas@oxfamamerica.org
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Ganymede #5
There is a hot new queer literary journal that has been getting the best reviews and has published some of the top names in art and literature from the gay world.
I have the honor of having a poem that has been accepted for issue #6. My poetry was also published, recently, in Ganymede Poetry Anthology One.
Below is a release for Ganymede Issue #5, now available. Watch for issue #6 in January.
GANYMEDE #5 ISSUE RELEASED
Our biggest ever--a whopping 344 pages!
Gay men¹s lit/art print quarterly published quarterly in New York
as a paperback book.
Table of contents and readable sample pages:
http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Purchase (print or download) at
http://www.ganymedenyc.com
--EDMUND WHITE on writing gay
--OSCAR WILDE's delicious 1889 dialogue on art, ³The Decay of Lying²
--GLENWAY WESCOTT's rare 1928 story of a little boy going to a ball in drag
--BERGDORF BOYS by Scott Hess: first of four parts serializing a complete
novel, both witty and dark, about gay party boys in New York
--TEN gay poets in 36 pages--the finest survey of gay poetry in print today
--EIGHT cutting-edge gay visual artists from around the world
--SUSAN GLASPELL's 1917 story ³A Jury of Her Peers,² now a discovered text
in feminist lit
--INDIE EYE returns with tips on obscure movies to rent, including the first
gay Bollywood flick!
--The Paris of Our Dreams: the 19th-century transformation of Paris
coincided with the birth of photography, and the rise of archival
photographers who snapped parts of the city either rising or falling. Our
portfolio shows these precious images.
"When I pulled Ganymede #5 out of its box, I held a spine nearly an inch
thick, healthy for an annual but unheard-of for a quarterly. And when I
reached the end of its 344 pages, my head was spinning. Nothing remotely
like Ganymede has been seen in the gay community in my lifetime. After
crucial essays by Edmund White and Oscar Wilde, each section, presented with
style and snap, leads you deep into gay male experiences of genuine interest
and pungency. Ganymede has already been praised for its textual importance
and visual splendor, but with this issue, it rises to real historic
grandeur. No literate gay man can afford to miss it."
--Erik Mitchell in AssociatedContent.com
"Ganymede is gaining momentum and is definitely a journal to watch."
--CHROMA, Britain's top gay lit/art journal
I have the honor of having a poem that has been accepted for issue #6. My poetry was also published, recently, in Ganymede Poetry Anthology One.
Below is a release for Ganymede Issue #5, now available. Watch for issue #6 in January.
GANYMEDE #5 ISSUE RELEASED
Our biggest ever--a whopping 344 pages!
Gay men¹s lit/art print quarterly published quarterly in New York
as a paperback book.
Table of contents and readable sample pages:
http://www.ganymedenyc.com/
Purchase (print or download) at
http://www.ganymedenyc.com
--EDMUND WHITE on writing gay
--OSCAR WILDE's delicious 1889 dialogue on art, ³The Decay of Lying²
--GLENWAY WESCOTT's rare 1928 story of a little boy going to a ball in drag
--BERGDORF BOYS by Scott Hess: first of four parts serializing a complete
novel, both witty and dark, about gay party boys in New York
--TEN gay poets in 36 pages--the finest survey of gay poetry in print today
--EIGHT cutting-edge gay visual artists from around the world
--SUSAN GLASPELL's 1917 story ³A Jury of Her Peers,² now a discovered text
in feminist lit
--INDIE EYE returns with tips on obscure movies to rent, including the first
gay Bollywood flick!
--The Paris of Our Dreams: the 19th-century transformation of Paris
coincided with the birth of photography, and the rise of archival
photographers who snapped parts of the city either rising or falling. Our
portfolio shows these precious images.
"When I pulled Ganymede #5 out of its box, I held a spine nearly an inch
thick, healthy for an annual but unheard-of for a quarterly. And when I
reached the end of its 344 pages, my head was spinning. Nothing remotely
like Ganymede has been seen in the gay community in my lifetime. After
crucial essays by Edmund White and Oscar Wilde, each section, presented with
style and snap, leads you deep into gay male experiences of genuine interest
and pungency. Ganymede has already been praised for its textual importance
and visual splendor, but with this issue, it rises to real historic
grandeur. No literate gay man can afford to miss it."
--Erik Mitchell in AssociatedContent.com
"Ganymede is gaining momentum and is definitely a journal to watch."
--CHROMA, Britain's top gay lit/art journal
Friday, September 11, 2009
A Moment of Silence for 9/11
I am copying and pasting here a post that I got from my friend Emanuel Ortiz on Facebook. I met Emanuel 12 years ago when I transferred to the University of Minnesota. He was the first person to invite me to read my spoken word in public, at the release of his first chapbook back in 2002 or 2003.
The poem that you find below was written seven years ago on the 1st anniversary of 9/11. I was there the first time it was read in public. It says everything that I need to say and communicates everything I feel about that tragic day, it's meaning, and it's limitations. Emanuel captures it perfectly. Much love to you Manny. May we continue to walk together down this long road for another decade.
Dear friends and fam-
On this, the 8th anniversary of what we commonly call "9/11", many of us are reflecting back on that day, and the days proceeding the incidents of that day. I hope that we can also reflect upon the days (years, decades) that led up to 9/11. I hope that we, as a nation, as a people, as a planet, are learning lessons from what has happens and continues to happen.
As usually happens at this time of year, I've been getting a number of notes and requests regarding a poem I wrote and released on the 1st anniversary of 9/11, which over the years has certainly made its rounds on the internet & taken on a life of its own (most recently, I have received e-mails from India and Bangladesh seeking permission to translate the poem, just in the past month). I continue to be humbled and amazed at the life of this poem, and at the same time, I cannot help but acknowledge that perhaps it speaks to a sentiment many of us around the world feel, but don't have the voice to say (or, perhaps more accurately, the audience to be heard). I think the attention the poem has received speaks far more to the significance of its message, the experiences and sentiments of the world's marginalized majority, especially in the wake of the U.S. governemnet's responses to 9/11, than it does to this writer's skills.
Given the requests I have gotten, I have decided to post the poem here, on this date - a date the gov't has tried to put a ridiculously insulting spin on by calling it "Patriots' Day" - as food for thought, a call for reflection that shakes loose the political & historical amnesia of an imperialist, racist agenda. I might add that a change in administrations in the U.S. has not changed much on the global front - we still pursue wars of occupation and domination. We still target, attack & discriminate against "Illegal" immigrants - even in the effort to push for health care reform! We continue to operate as an Empire.
Therefore, this poem, this message (and many others like it,***** will remain relevant.
I hope something in this poem touches you, moves you, changes you. Please feel free to share it.
And for you "patriots" out there, spare me the hate mail, I've heard it all before.
In struggle,
Emmanuel Ortiz
(PLEASE see Suheir Hammad's "First Writing Since - http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ac/shammad.html and Arundhati Roy's speech "Come September" - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=945405493000735497# for shining examples of brilliant exampls of poetry and speeches in the wake of 9/11 that give voice to resistance, struggle, affirmation...)
*also, see this - the poem put to dance/percussion by Restless Natives, performed in front of the US Capitol Building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGoBlrYNwHo
****************
A Moment of Silence
by Emmanuel Ortiz
Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.
…And now, the drums of war beat again.
Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country
Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.
25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…
From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.
A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.
…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.
And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
So if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.
9/11/02
The poem that you find below was written seven years ago on the 1st anniversary of 9/11. I was there the first time it was read in public. It says everything that I need to say and communicates everything I feel about that tragic day, it's meaning, and it's limitations. Emanuel captures it perfectly. Much love to you Manny. May we continue to walk together down this long road for another decade.
Dear friends and fam-
On this, the 8th anniversary of what we commonly call "9/11", many of us are reflecting back on that day, and the days proceeding the incidents of that day. I hope that we can also reflect upon the days (years, decades) that led up to 9/11. I hope that we, as a nation, as a people, as a planet, are learning lessons from what has happens and continues to happen.
As usually happens at this time of year, I've been getting a number of notes and requests regarding a poem I wrote and released on the 1st anniversary of 9/11, which over the years has certainly made its rounds on the internet & taken on a life of its own (most recently, I have received e-mails from India and Bangladesh seeking permission to translate the poem, just in the past month). I continue to be humbled and amazed at the life of this poem, and at the same time, I cannot help but acknowledge that perhaps it speaks to a sentiment many of us around the world feel, but don't have the voice to say (or, perhaps more accurately, the audience to be heard). I think the attention the poem has received speaks far more to the significance of its message, the experiences and sentiments of the world's marginalized majority, especially in the wake of the U.S. governemnet's responses to 9/11, than it does to this writer's skills.
Given the requests I have gotten, I have decided to post the poem here, on this date - a date the gov't has tried to put a ridiculously insulting spin on by calling it "Patriots' Day" - as food for thought, a call for reflection that shakes loose the political & historical amnesia of an imperialist, racist agenda. I might add that a change in administrations in the U.S. has not changed much on the global front - we still pursue wars of occupation and domination. We still target, attack & discriminate against "Illegal" immigrants - even in the effort to push for health care reform! We continue to operate as an Empire.
Therefore, this poem, this message (and many others like it,***** will remain relevant.
I hope something in this poem touches you, moves you, changes you. Please feel free to share it.
And for you "patriots" out there, spare me the hate mail, I've heard it all before.
In struggle,
Emmanuel Ortiz
(PLEASE see Suheir Hammad's "First Writing Since - http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/ac/shammad.html and Arundhati Roy's speech "Come September" - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=945405493000735497# for shining examples of brilliant exampls of poetry and speeches in the wake of 9/11 that give voice to resistance, struggle, affirmation...)
*also, see this - the poem put to dance/percussion by Restless Natives, performed in front of the US Capitol Building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGoBlrYNwHo
****************
A Moment of Silence
by Emmanuel Ortiz
Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.
Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.
…And now, the drums of war beat again.
Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country
Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.
A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.
Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.
25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.
100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…
From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.
A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.
…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.
And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.
And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.
So if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.
If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.
You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.
And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.
9/11/02
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