Arizona Goddamn!

Yesterday I had to send a prayer up to my beloved Nina Simone and let her know that to Mississippi Goddamn...we now have to add Arizona.

First the Arizona legislature lost their goddamn minds by coming up with this heinous bill that actually makes it illegal to be an undocumented immigrant in Arizona (and, despite Supreme Court rulings to the contrary, basically directs the Arizona law enforcement officers to engage in blatant racial--and clothing--profiling). Secondly, facing an election year, Republican Jan Brewer, waiting until the last possible minute, steeled up her bright red ovaries and signed the bill into the law.

I expect legislators, especially white racist legislators in territory that legally belongs to Mexico and that has consistently violated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, to try and pull some fucked up shenanigans, but the fault for this bill becoming law lies squarely in the lap of that blocked headed creature of darkness called Jan Brewer.

Not only did she signed the damn bill, with a straight face, she said as she signed it, and I quote, "I will NOT tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling in Arizona." (Emphasis is HERS and is included in the full text of her speech--the link to the full text is in the box at the bottom of the page).

I almost never ever use the following word in reference to a woman but...excuse me, bitch?

Jan Brewer just signed a law that explicitly makes being an undocumented immigrant in Arizona illegal. Already, we have heard about advice to police from California Rep. Bilbray suggesting that an undocumented immigrant can be identified by his or her clothes (read sombrero y chancletas). And, frankly, there are reams and reams of research that shows exactly that racial profiling is the ONLY way that law enforcement has used, outside of raids into particularly employers, to track and arrest undocumented immigrants. Again. Excuse me. Bitch.

And let me clarify my use of language. When you decide to demonize, demoralize, and establish laws to make a human being illegal (up to this point they were undocumented, now, in Arizona, undocumented immigrants are actually illegal) then you have no more sense than a common wild dog. If you act like a dog and raise your leg to piss on people, then you have earned the use of the term bitch as an apt noun and adjective to describe you.

Already there are calls to boycott Arizona. The Lakota and Ojibwe nations have released a poignant and beautiful statement establishing the rights of indigenous people from across Turtle Island to migrate as they wish as the borders themselves are illegal constructions created by an illegitimate occupying power that used genocidal practices to create their political and military hegemony. And even Shakira, today, has turned her ojos asi towards Arizona and rolled them so far up in her head that she can see her brain.

And, of course, GOP Chairman Michael Steele (who should, as my Mama used to say, be held up and have the black beaten off of him) along with other GOP turd faced pundits called President Obama's condemning of Arizona's idiocy "playing the race game."

This is a race game mother fuckers, and it was not started by President Obama or any other person of color in this nation, but I swear before God that we will finish it either by Malcolm's plan or Martin's, but the shit is on. Bitches.

Arizona goddamn.

(P.S. Just to be clear, if you ain't native...you are undocumented.)

Cultural Appropriation Can Kill You

So today I read an article on Yahoo about a self-styled guru spiritual leader self-help expert James Arthur Ray who booked a spa in Arizona and charged clients $9,000-$10,000 for a week called a "Spiritual Warrior" retreat. The culmination of the retreat was a "sweat lodge." Three people have died from multiple organ failure from the sweat.

First of all, I have no experience in running a sweat lodge but common sense says that you do not pack 80 people into a superheated space, period. Anyone that has ever been in a sauna or hot tub or steam room has seen the sign warning against over exposure to those superheated spaces. And a sweat lodge is NOT one of those things. it is an even more intense space that is also a spiritual ceremony tied to rigorous traditions that are both for enlightenment and for the safety of the participants.

James Arthur Ray was a stupid cultural appropriationist as well as criminally negligent. The deaths have been ruled a homicide, and while I don't think he murdered those people, they entered the sweat of their own free will, he was responsible for their health and safety, and I hope that the three families smack him with a wrongful death suit that leaves him penniless eating government cheese straight from the box.

For fuck's sake white folks, stop STEALING shit that you DON'T understand, that is NOT part of your life tradition, and that you have NO BUSINESS APPROPRIATING for your own.

Charging for a sweat not only is wrong but also it profanes the experience. This isn't some weekend Scandinavian recreational event, this is a spiritual ceremony tied to a tradition of faith. Why the fuck do certain privileged, generally white people, all of a sudden up and decide they can steal another people's spiritual practices and then CHARGE for the shit?

If I put on a cassock, got me a bottle of Three Buck Chuck Merlot and a box of Wheat Thins and started charging people for Holy Communion there would be a riot. Hell, in some states it is illegal to impersonate a member of the clergy. So why the hell is it alright for Joe Whitey to impersonate a shaman, medicine person, or other spiritual leader?

Now don't get me wrong, there are some white folks that do cultural immersion the right way. Pema Chodron is a white Canadian woman that after a nasty divorce took vows as a Buddhist nun and is now a world renowned and respected leader in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. But she didn't take the spiritual learnings for herself and then charge for them. She followed the ways, laws, teachings, and traditions of the path that she found fulfilling for her. She submitted to the structure of her new faith and worked within it under experienced teachers and through that found her way.

The fact that white folks still think that they can snatch up something that they do not understand, slap some "wampum" on it and a dreamcatcher and call it a self-help seminar is endemic of the continued subjugation and culture war being waged on the native peoples, my people, of the United States.

It's time for this shit to stop. Three people dead is a high price to pay for one man's greed, cultural appropriation and racism.