The Other Side of the Mirror

I have written about life as I experienced it growing up in a number of entries in this blog. For those that missed them, a short recap: I grew up loved, but also surrounded by intense and nearly constant physical abuse for a decade or more, watched my Mom go through a series of extremely physically and emotionally abusive relationships, grew up in intense poverty (near but never homeless at times), on public assistance, experienced chemical addiction at home (and have struggled with it myself), and also the joy of being queer and brown in a largely white rural family in Minnesota. I am saying this for a very specific point.

So many times in my life, folks have said to me to my face in a variety of circumstances: "I doubt YOU know what it is like to go without," or "you don't seem to have had to struggle much in your life," or "what do you know about poverty/violence/fear/etc," and on and on ad nauseum. The first time this was said point blank was when a former roommate of mine moved out of our apartment and stole a number of pieces of furniture that had come with the apartment. She'd left no forwarding address, and so the landlord came after me, believing I'd taken the items, and railing against me and the work he was doing to support low income people (and the flipside...I...a privileged boy should know better).

That was the first time I can remember having to use my history, rather awkwardly, as a very embarrassing shield. Yet, at the same time, it is MY history. I do not take some sort of noble poverty pride in it but neither am I ashamed of it. But, I also, as I have gotten older, had not been prepared for the level of legitimacy that history gives me in certain circumstances, except when it is taken away by someone that perceives me as distinct from or unable to have come from that particular historical narrative.

Let me be clear, because I am educated, because when I am in professional mode I tend to use rather impeccable upper-Midwest English, and because God at some point decided the fat kid from high school that couldn't get a date to save his life should have some sort of reprieve, day to day folks (read largely white folks) perceive that education/good English/confidence/achievement is anathema to poverty/violence/homelessness/mental health issues/welfare babies etc....EXCEPT...EXCEPT for those rare "exceptions" to the rule that still seem to carry a hint of the ghetto with them into their achievement or success....but since I carry no whiff of West Broadway and Lyndale in North Minneapolis, I must have a different story and come from a different more benevolent place...in Minnesota...we call that place Edina.

I beat up kids from Edina for shits and giggles.

But here's a part of the story folks don't know. My Mom busted her ass to make sure we lived in neighborhoods with good schools. We often lived in the smallest apartment in the neighborhood, my brother and I shared a bed for a year in high school, or I had a two hour bus ride to school in the morning to get me to the school that afforded me the best options. I was surrounded in school by amazing teachers that, from the gate, in pre-school, saw something in me that they took pains to nurture. Even though I never thought of myself as anything extraordinary, my teachers pushed, pulled, and sometimes shoved me into roles and places that opened up my natural abilities and talents, and as a result I was surrounded by a community of caring adults that wanted and demanded that I succeed. Hell, the advisor to the Minneapolis Citywide Student Government, Pam Olson, on one day's notice, drove me from Minnesota to North Carolina when my Father was unable to do so in order to get me to college on time. THAT'S the type of love and support that I had to counterbalance the violence and poverty. And if there is one thing that I learned and learned young...take every fucking opportunity offered. If you don't like it...you can always walk away from it, but if someone opens a door for you, walk through and see what's on the other side.

Now, though, and I swear to God I am not complaining, I have been experiencing a whole new level of prejudgment, along the same lines as before...but this connected directly to my body.


I wrote a blog not too long ago about an instance where an older gentleman made a comment about my biceps being bigger than my brain. Since then, as I have gotten closer to having the body that I have always wanted, a new phenomena has occurred. Now I have had folks assuming that 1) I have always looked like this (they tend to give me side eye when I tell them that these abs weren't here at the end of December), and 2) that having always looked like this I am used to getting what I want, am self centered, have no concern for others, and expect that everything will revolve around me because I happen to look the way I do.

Now, on a couple of occasions, I have had the opportunity to fully explain my Sexy Positive Bodies project, roll out all the pictures from the last year, and show, clearly, that not only is this body new but it was intentional and connected to fighting my own body dysmorphism. In fact, I was hanging out with someone recently, and I mentioned that this body was new. I received a curious text message some hours later asking me to explain. I did. He was astounded and admitted that he had made a number of assumptions based solely on my physical appearance.

While I am not complaining, I think it is curious that I am not taken less seriously on first viewing by strangers because of my body than I would have otherwise. I have been called Chelsea Boy, Gym Rat, Gym Bunny, and all other sorts of exercise rodents. I can't argue with the rodents, but I do take exception at the Chelsea Boy thing....that is just wrong.

In the end, folks are hard wired to make assumptions based on their past experiences and what they perceive in an individual based on outward markers. This body may be gone six months from now. My history, from this moment backwards, is what it is, but I can be cognizant about the assumptions and first impression judgments I make of others, particularly as I have this new heightened awareness of the way my appearance creates/or inhibits others from seeing me.

Osama Bin Laden Is Dead: Now What?

"In front of the death of man, a Christian never rejoices but rather reflects on the grave responsibility of each one in front of God and men, and hopes and commits himself so that every moment not be an occasion for hatred to grow but for peace." -Father Federico Lombardi, The Vatican spokesperson on Osama Bin Laden's death.

I woke up last night and saw a text from my Dad. I figured it was an update on the health of my Aunt Sis, who is fighting bone cancer and has been in and out of the hospital over the last couple of months. My Dad sends me daily updates on her progress. Since I thought it was another health update, I chose to not read the message until getting up to go to the bathroom at 6:30am this morning. When I opened it, it was a simple message, "They finally got Bin Laden's ass."

That's my dad, an ex-military man not prone to mincing words.

I quickly clicked open the Huffington Post on my iPhone to confirm my dad's text message. Indeed, I found, Osama Bin Laden was killed last night by the United States. The cryptic news alert I'd gotten from HuffPost just before going to bed announcing that President Obama would be holding a news conference was made clear. Osama Bin Laden is dead. I logged into Facebook next to see what brief reactions I could take in before starting to write the blog entry that I knew was inevitable.'

There was a note from my friend Alyssa saying, "Look at all those New Yorkers celebrating in the streets, are you out there?"

There was a statement in my Facebook from Muslims for Progressive Values:

Press Release
Statement on News of Death of Osama Bin Laden
May 1, 2011

Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV) expresses great relief at the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden as President Obama announced in a special report. Osama Bin Laden has singularly disgraced Islam and dragged our faith through the mud with his promotion of terrorism throughout the world from Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and here in the United States

MPV applauds the resolve and dedication of President Obama in pursuing Osama Bin Laden. As Muslims, we hope this will forever quench the flame of terrorism and that with the rise of democracy throughout the Middle East we can all finally begin to heal. Our condolences continue to go out to the families of those who perished on September 11, 2001 as well as all the victims of terrorism committed in the name of Al Qaeda throughout the world.

My first response on the topic, which is echoed by the statement from the Vatican (lord knows I never thought I would be using a statement from the Vatican for anything but blog fodder) is that I do not celebrate the death of any man. Osama Bin Laden earned his death. I do not regret the actions of the U.S. military and covert operations. I do not believe his death was undeserved or unearned by his own terrible and horrific actions, but I do not celebrate his death. His death is too linked to failed U.S. military and political policies of the past. His death is too connected to our own quest for power. Osama Bin Laden made his own terrible, terrible choices, but just like a serial killer whose mind was bent and broken by an abusive father, Osama bin Laden is a part of the U.S.'s shame. The U.S is not responsible for Bin Laden's choice to turn to terrorism and the murder of innocents, but we are responsible for creating the global circumstances, particularly in the Muslim world, where the twisted and hateful ideology espoused by Bin Laden was able to take root and grow tall enough that men and women across the region have been willing to give their own lives, killing innocents, in a quest to lash out against an enemy that is so inimically tied to their own poverty, suffering, and privation: U.S. economic and foreign policy and the global financial and economic machine propping it up.

I am sad that the circumstances ever existed to create an Osama Bin Laden. I find some comfort in the fact that, like Hitler, a crazy man that was able to inspire individuals to commit acts of atrocity is no longer in the world. But, the circumstances which created Osama Bin Laden still exist. The poverty, privation, and degradation of the developing world have not been alleviated. The under education and religious extremists willing to exploit ignorance for personal gain (in the name of God) still exist (and, to be clear, that particular issue is not unique to Islam...Christian fundamentalist leaders in this country have and still do use reactionary religious views to marshall the undereducated to act against their own best self interest).

While I understand that many in the world are breathing a sigh of relief today, I find it telling that while Western and developed nations are "celebrating," a Yemeni official stated:

"We welcome the news ... millions of people will sleep in peace tonight," the official said. "Osama bin Laden was more of a symbolic figure, a spiritual leader for al Qaeda."
The official said it is too early to determine how his death will affect the war against terror.
"But this is definitely a strong blow to the organization," said the official, who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

"

It is my fear that we have cut the head off of the hydra. It was a head that needed to be removed, but we have left the body intact, wounded, but when it heals it will have two heads instead of one. As Congress continues to balk at providing reconstruction aid to Afghanistan in any amount that is meaningful, as we continue to prosecute wars in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, as we continue to provide the world, through our own internal political processes, with live examples of how to use divisive and ignorance politics to build fanatical power bases, we are lancing Al Qaeda's wound just after we've given it. Our justification for war in Afghanistan was the prosecution of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden is dead. Does this mean we will end the war?

No. We did not end the war in Iraq when we caught and executed (under the guise of the Iraqi judiciary) Saddam Hussein, we will not be pulling out of Afghanistan anytime soon. This means that our soldiers, my brother and sister, will continue to be put in harms way in order to shore up a dying U.S. empire.

If there is a true silver lining in this narrative, it is that this pretty much makes certain that Obama (not Osama) will be elected to a second term. To many of the Tea Bagger and more conservative set (and many Lefties as well), this will make him an instant hero. He took decisive military action which resulted in the death of global enemy number one. Tim Pawlenty, Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls let out a collective, "OH FUCK," last night when this story broke. I am sure that they will give out begrudging kudos today (well maybe not Bachmann, she lives so far down the rabbit hole that she will find a way to say something completely inane and stupid instead).

This event doesn't change my opinion of Obama. He is a flawed man in a flawed institution doing his best within the parameters and constraints of the U.S. political and economic system to make sense out of the world, our diminishing role in it, while doing what he can to try and lift up the people of the United States (without stepping too hard on the toes of the corporate oligarchy that runs the country). The fact of the matter is that the limits of the president are defined in direct relationship to the sacrifices the progressive community are willing to make to help him push against the corporate alliance that runs the U.S. Frankly, he's done a bang up job, and I will put him back in office for another four years. He's done more good than harm and much more good in three and a half years than Bush did in eight.

But I digress. Back to the topic du jour.

Osama Bin Laden is dead. The boogeyman has been taken out. God help us all, because we've all seen horror movies, and we all know this plot. The boogeyman that is taken down is never as terrifying as the one that we don't even know exists yet. I am content that Osama Bin Laden is no longer a threat. I understand that it will take time for a new Al Qaeda mastermind to appear. Perhaps, in fact, Al Qaeda has received a death blow. The truth remains, though, that from El Shabaab to Hamas there is no lack of organizations willing to use terrorist strategies to achieve their personal ends. And as long as we in the developing world continue to support global economic policies that keep 90% of the world in the poverty and circumstances which make these organizations possible, any future attacks and innocent blood shed is as much on our hands as it is on the hands of the murderers that will make them happen.

I pray to God that Obama realizes this as well and implements healing strategies to change what feels like the course of inevitability. I am a person of faith, and I still have some of that hope that Obama talked about almost four years ago.

Climate Change is About People Too

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

Al-Shabaab and the U.S. Military: Gangs of a Feather Flock Together

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard a story about my hometown of Minneapolis. Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in the United States. Since the mid-1990s, when I first left Minneapolis for college, the Somali community went from non-existent to more than 10,000 individuals. An area of the city once known as Seven Corners is more usually called, now, Little Somalia. In the last few years I have had a chance to know and even work with amazing Somali men and women that are looking to build a strong community and sense of home thousands of miles from war torn Somalia. As a former member of the board of directors of the Headwater Foundation for Justice, I was able to fund and support the work of the Somali Action Alliance—a social justice organization focused on building positive community strength in the Twin Cities Somali community.

Thus, I was totally caught off guard this morning when I heard that Somali youth in Minneapolis, many of them U.S. born Somalis, are being recruited by a Somali jihadist organization called Al-Shabaab...a fundamentalist group that is actively committing acts of violence against the Transitional Federal Government in Somalia. At least 27 Somali youth from Minneapolis have gone missing since March. They are thought to be in Al-Shabaab training camps. Their parents have no idea where they have gone and are terrified. And none of this is helped by the fact that last October, a 27 year old Minnesotan Somali by the name of Shirwa Ahmed killed himself in an Al Shabaab suicide bombing act killing more than 30 people.

In a report given to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Andrew Liepman, Deputy Director of Intelligence, of the National Counterterrorism Center shared seven pages of testimony. In that testimony Deputy Director Liepman stated that:

Compared to most Muslim immigrants to the US, many Somalis—seeking refuge from a war-torn country—received less language and cultural training and education prior to migration. Despite the efforts of Federal, State and local government and non-governmental organizations to facilitate their settlement into American communities, their relative linguistic isolation and the sudden adjustment to American society many refugees faced has reinforced, in some areas, their greater insularity compared to other, more integrated Muslim immigrant communities, and has aggravated the challenges of assimilation for their children.

According to data from the most recent census, the Somali-American population suffers the highest unemployment rate among East African diaspora communities in the United States, and experience significantly high poverty rates and the lowest rate of college graduation. These data also suggest that Somali-Americans are far more likely to be linguistically isolated than other East African immigrants. (11 March 2009, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, page 4)

Basically, due to abject poverty and feelings of isolation, Somali youth are vulnerable to recruitment. Two other groups I can think of target the poor and the isolated for recruitment: Gangs and the U.S. Military.

I was surprised when I heard the report this morning on NPR. I was surprised that some of the students recruited were from Roosevelt High School, a school that was less than two miles from where I last lived in Minneapolis. (Incidentally...to anyone that heard the report this morning...the reporter referred to Roosevelt as being in the suburbs...it is not. It is in the heart of South Minneapolis). But, after reading the Senate testimony my surprise faded to dull anger.

Roosevelt High School, since I was a student in the Minneapolis Public Schools in the early to mid-90s, has been an economically depressed, highly segregated, and high violence school. While I love the Minneapolis Public Schools, I can not understand why Roosevelt has been allowed to continue down a road of under achievement and poverty and racial segregation while, for example, my own high school, Patrick Henry, has enjoyed a renaissance and is now one of the top public high schools in America. We know that gangs target these communities, so why are we surprised, in this growing global world...that an immigrant population with a homeland in turmoil would not be vulnerable to international recruitment.

When crazy white Americans convert to radical Islam and join Al-Qaeda, how can we suppose that our Muslim youth, trapped in isolation and feeling despondent, will not turn to whoever will give them hope and a sense of self...no matter how ultimately destructive that acceptance turns out to be.

And when poor students of color and poor rural whites in the United States feel they have no other option than to join the U.S. military or are actively recruited by the military using the exact same media and Internet tactics that Somali militants are using to recruit Somali youth...how can I have been surprised.

In this moment, there is no moral high ground for us. We readily sacrifice our poor and brown/black/red/yellow young people on the altar of the Oil Wars. The difference between the recruitment of these Somali youth and the recruitment of poor black Americans into the U.S. military is only that the Somali youth are being recruited into an independent militia without state power behind it. Let me be clear...U.S. Military recruitment tactics are only differentiated from Islamic militant recruitment tactics because they are state sanctioned. Just like these Somali recruiters, who use the Internet, media, and real time recruiters to appeal to the Somali's sense of duty, honor, commitment, patriotism, and sense of self worth to get them to sign up for Al-Shabaab...so do the U.S. military recruiters use the Internet, media, commercials before movies, financial incentives, and patriotic and duty appeals to recruit those that also see themselves as isolated, without much of a future, and no ability to see a way forward.

Whether recruiting young American Somalis for Al-Shabaab or young black men for the Marines, both groups are recruiting what is fast becoming or already is cannon fodder. Both Al-Shabaab and the U.S. military are offering up our young as sacrifices to a set of ideals that have nothing to do with the prosperity and welfare of their people...they are sacrifices made on the altar of power in a quest for dominance.

I do not in any way blame those that sign up for either cause. I support my little brother and my sister. They did what they believed they had to do in this world that gave them few options. Their stories are their own to tell, but I can promise you that those stories would break your heart...that for both of them...they put themselves in harms way for reasons that had nothing to do with glory and power but realities and limited possibilities.

I lay blame on the recruiters, on Al-Shabaab, and on the U.S. military industrial complex and the government that benefits from it.

It is my fervent hope that the city of Minneapolis, the Minneapolis Public Schools, the state of Minnesota, and the U.S. government take this as a wake up call. Understand that the racism and economic disparity upon which our grand U.S. society is built is the reason that our youth continue to be shipped overseas or recruited overseas to die.

The Senate report stated that there is no proof that Somali youth are being recruited abroad with intentions to return back to the U.S. to execute acts of violence. If we act now to systemically address the fundamental justice and inequality issues that make recruitment possible, we will eliminate any possibility of Somali youth turning their anger and isolation back on the U.S.
In so doing, we will save our youth from needless wars that eat our young without sating our hunger for power, wealth, natural resources and world dominance.

(The report mentioned in this post can be read here.)