Interview with a Comic Diva Part Deux: Yamaneika Saunders

A little over a year ago, I met a a beautiful and hilarious woman by the name of Yamaneika Saunders. A year ago August, I published my first interview with this sexy, sassy, no holds bar maven of the microphone. Over the last year, though I have not gotten to see her as much as I would like, I have gotten to know her better, and I love everything about this human being. From her art to her heart, I am a true blue fan of this gem of a stand up comedienne. Yama is an inspiration to me, and I am very happy to present this new interview with her.

Thank you to Yama for providing this very real, very straight up (no pun intended) conversation.


1. You have a keen and vivid sense of the political, talk about how your art as a comedian and your incisive political wit cross? How does your politics as a back woman inform how you choose your topics for your comedy?

Whether I like it or not, I am grouped into this "angry black woman" category, for the sheer fact that I'm loud, black, big and female - so right off the bat there are going to be generalizations. I take it in stride. I am definitely trying to carve out my own unique voice, in hopes that the world will see I'm not defined by my sub-culture.

It's important for me to take on certain topics, as well as, trying to veer from being marginalized and characterized by my physical identity.

2. A few months ago, you thought about giving up on comedy. Let me first say that I am damn glad that you didn't, but can you talk a little bit about what brought you to the point of making that decision? You decided to continue gifting us with laughter, can you talk about why you choose to keep doing stand up?

Well, its still part of the plan for me to take a break. The reason is not that I don't love comedy, I just don't love the business of comedy. I'm always going to be a performer, its in my blood, but if I can't use my gift to save a life or change one then I'm failing. So, its quite possible you might see me make a switch into the ministry very soon. I can tell jokes from the pulpit.

3. We are in a recession, duh, how has that impacted your work as a comedian? And, in this climate, who, if anyone, of your peers is "making it?"

The recession affects the city, a lot, because people want to keep tight with the purse and the clubs want to make money so there are requirements when you come to shows. I try to make it worth everyone's wild when they come and see me, trust me no one is going to say "I wasted money on that show" even if I'm the only person who does well that night, I give 100% and its often times is enough to overshadow a bad night overall (that sounds cocky, but I'm keeping it real) that's not to say I don't have my moments but after being the game so long they are few and far between.

I'm not sure who is making it, we all get opportunities and they seem like they are gong to pan into something, but you just never know. Most of my peers in this game have set such a high standard for "making it" that I think when everyone knows our name we feel like we are "making it". I sometimes get a little ahead of myself because I'll go out to a club and I'll be surprised when someone says "Oh, I saw you at this place or that place" and I'm like "Really? You remember me?"

4. You have an amazing spirit and an obvious strength. Where does that come from? How do you re-energize yourself and keep yourself moving forward?

Thank you, for saying that! It's tough because I as an individual am very weak, in my opinion; the fortitude that I have is from God, without Him I wouldn't even wake up out of the bed. He keeps telling me He has me in His arms, so I step out on faith. My mother also keeps me grounded. She is always reminding me to be strong and stay positive. I have a good friend system too, even though I fight with all my friends and alienate them, the ones who stick around keep me tough, they don't take the shit from me so I can't take it from myself. So, by the time people see me on stage I've been picked up by all the above.

The audience also keeps my strong. I am super sensitive and I have so much I want to say to people, jolt them into reality that life is hard but so the fuck what?! Don't let a person treat you like shit. Don't accept shit! Those are my messages, so when I get on stage I just want to shout and yell and tell everyone FUCK IT ALL LETS LAUGH!

5. You have a show coming up on tonight at Comix in NYC...how can folks get tickets? Where else can they see you? What else do you have coming up?

Yes, the show at Comix is a hot one! Its been a minute since I've been back in the city, and since I go on the road often I sometimes don't get the chance to really get on at some of the clubs like I could, so its great when I'm able to do such a prestigious club like Comix.

The show starts at 9 PM Oct 28th, which is tonight. Tickets are $20, but anyone who mentions my name at the door gets a $5 discount. So, come out!

One Liner of the Week Award: Jersey Woman at the Laundromat

This morning, I was up early and at the laundromat before 10am. If you were to judge me by the clothing I had on, you would think I was half-a-step above a psych patient off his meds that would not be out of place preaching the gospel to a recycling bin somewhere in the East Village.

I walked the block to do my laundry, and much to my surprise the place was almost empty. Usually Sunday mornings at the laundromat is a exercise in extreme patience. Usually, I want to start shoving irritable (irritating) old ladies into the jumbo washer and lock it permanently on spin.

This morning, two women that are what the hideous little creatures from the Jersey Shore reality show will someday become were putting clothes into the dryer.

One woman was tatooed to Jesus and the other was so skinny I could see her heartbeat through her chest.

Miss Skinny says, "Oh yeah. You know I am taking tai chi and the instructor is like a master. And he is tall for a CHINAMAN, like 5'10". And you know, those people can, like, just kill you. But he's really nice."

And that, ladies and Chinamen, is the One Liner of the Week.

POETRY: H-I-ME

H-I-ME

I live with HIV
I have been a part-time junkie
Trying to find something I missed
In between overachieving and the point of a needle
People generally look at me like I am lying
By trying to tell them I am recovering
And some days much less recovered than others
My Mother couldn’t believe that her Straight-A-Beaver-Cleaver
Would cleave to whatever he could snort or swallow or fit in a needle
Powders and pills devouring the pain of little red ribbons
T-Cell Counts and technical knock outs by Chelsea boy faggots
That see only a status
It might mess with their A List adventure if they fall for a retroviral warrior
Rejecting gentlemanly advances as if being asked to marry a leper
All the while playing jeopardy
Take a hit and then split in half/open wide to let the next big raw cock inside
You see Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is all very well in a fairy tale where in
Your sexual health is someone else’s responsibility
Silly me, I thought when I saw your ass bubble cum like a champagne fountain that you had made a decision

Not a wager

Lord and Savior
I know that there is a responsibility for disclosure
But somewhere it was decided that raw riders got to blame others
For riding without a saddle
I am madder than hell that with all my own shit
I have to deal with bitter bitches that pretend to some moral authority
to do as they say and not as they do and do and do
turning you into a cracked out rehabilitation project
filled with so much vehemence
it’s funny that they can’t see the real disappointment
but it’s boring to look at the weeds in your own back yard
when your neighbor has such a lovely garden

Let me be clear with all ya’ll here
If you are choosing to go on a meth fueled sex affair
My responsibility to the outcomes of your personal decisions stop right there

So happy we got all that out in the air.
I feel much better

HIV and addiction fly formation in a circular pattern
Its tough to unlearn
The poison poured into young ears
By the 1980s and shady queers
Never fear!
I am well aware that I am a tragically flawed human being.
There are choices that I have made that have ripped apart the lives of others.
A lover that came to me in tears when he tested positive
Confirming my own fear about my status
Except I had been too cowardly to take the damn test
At least if I had
it would have been only one life in shambles

In the end, I have more than enough to do
Without having to take care of you
Let this serve as final public notice
I am HIV Positive
There is the disclosure that everyone wanted
From now on, make your own damn decisions
and live with the consequences
because when two adults come to a conclusion
that they want a little skin on skin action
the minute your legs are in the upright and locked position
it’s your job to make sure that you don’t have a bumpy landing

Am I being unclear?

That’s your asshole in there
And while another asshole may have told you what you wanted to hear
You are the one that let him steer his jet into your hanger
Check your anger Boo Boo
In this game of cards
A tie goes to the dealer

I feel much better after having written this poem.

I know that I have a lifetime of work left to do
Hope never to have to write another poem like this
Or slip and let addiction back in
But if or when it happens
Or when the next person looks at me and sees only a status
I got this in my arsenal
Poetry sometimes is the best ammo

-Brandon Lacy Campos
-New York, NY
-Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Economics 101 or Why Capitalism Sucks

So, I received an email the other day from a friend of mine from high school. He sent the email to me and to the younger brother of another classmate of ours. Somehow, even though we all went to the same high school and graduated from the same magnet program (International Baccalaureate), Tue turned out moderate, Jared turned out a super conservative, and, well, I think that Sweden is a little too far right.

Tue was struggling around the upcoming election and had a question about the repeal of the Bush tax cuts and specifically whether or not it was cool to return to pre-Bush tax cut tax rates for high income earners while allowing the tax cuts to remain for those making less than $250,000. With all due respect to Jared, his response was something directly from the Rand Paul Bible. He believes that all taxes are wrong and that pure and unadulterated free market capitalism is the answer to all the ills of the world. Jared also suggested that businesses have fled this country because of our tax rates. I almost gagged on my own vomit.

Why thank you Adam Smith! Luckily for us, we have 500+ years now of various incarnations of capitalism that disprove that there little theory.

When I first read Tue's email and then Jared's response, I saw little flashes of red and almost burst a capillary. So, I waited a week before responded.

This was my response:

Dear Tue and Jared:

Actually, businesses left this country because it was easier for them to abrogate their responsibility to the working people that created the wealth that they want not only to maintain but to grow without regard to the social, community, political, or human cost.

I am not a communist, but I do believe in a collective responsibility both to each other and to the means of production. Bill Gates, for example, should reap the benefit of his brilliance. But, without hundreds of thousands of employees, he would not now be the second richest man in the world. His wealth is in direct relationship to the individuals, humans that assisted him in creating that wealth. How then should he have no responsibility, which, in civil society is expressed through wages and benefits to the individual and to the broader society as taxes, to balance his personal benefit against the means by which he acquired his wealth in the first place?

In a purely capitalist system, which has NEVER existed, capitalism will, eventually, create such a disparity in social well being that even if it does not, as Marx suggested, eat it self, it will be destroyed (the good along with the bad) by those that rightly detest the unfair, illogical, and downright idiotic division in wealth.

The idea that those that are wealthy have acquired their wealth through perseverance, self-sacrifice, and by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps is as much a myth as Santa Claus, and like Santa Claus grown ups shouldn't believe it.

Show me a single major corporation in this country that did not acquire its massive wealth through generous subsidies from local, state and federal governments. Show me a corporate that is older than 70 years that did not acquire its wealth through massive oppression of workers that included state sponsored terrorism of workers. Show me a corporation that is over 150 years old that did not directly or indirectly benefit from slavery. Taxation is fair because the means of wealth creation are, in general, inherently unfair.

Further, if you'd like to discuss the social contract and political security, how then are people who relate to one another in a society based on capitalism and not small, localized barter communities supposed to pay for and sustain collective security while also dismantling despotism and watching out for the human tendency for exploitation? The honor system just doesn't work, and without a social structure to protect it neither does capitalism.

To answer your question, Tue, I believe that since the wealthy rely on the government to maintain their wealth that they should have to pay a proportionate amount of their income to sustain the systems that allow them to remain ridiculously wealthy. In the 70s, the marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket was somewhere around 70%, it is now around 36%...the income gap between the richest and the poorest has increased the largest it has been since before World War II which would lead me to believe that, perhaps, there is a correlation. Oh, and to be even more specific, the income gap began to widen drastically in the 1980s when the marginal tax rate for the most wealthy citizens was greatly reduced WHILE at the same time the Reagan administration began systematically dismantling the Great Society programs. No economist that believes in peer reviewed research and is credible will suggest that the two are unrelated.

We have seen what massive deregulation has done to industry. We saw it under Reagan (trickle down my ass), and we saw it under Bush (gotta love a complete reversal of the U.S. economy).

One of my favorite lines is...if you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got.

So, if you believe the Bush economic policies were good for America, if you believe our country is more economically healthy now than it was in the early to late 90s, then, by all means, vote for the Republicans.

Democrats are not much better but they are better. I pray to Heaven every day for a real change and a multi-party system but that may be too much to ask.

Yours,
Brandon

Tiffany Brought Me Glee and Glee Brought Me Tiffany

Last Friday, I was on an Adirondack Trailways bus on my way to Accord, NY for the Waking Circle's Fall Retreat. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, my Facebook account was only an iPhone tap away.

I opened the Facebook app, and I saw that I had a message from Susan Raffo. Susan, as many of my readers know, is one of my favorite people in the entire world. So when I saw that I had a message in my inbox from Susan, I was mighty happy. I opened the message expecting that it would be something wise or witty or fun or thought provoking. Instead, it was a short note letting me know that our mutual friend, Tiffany Harmon, had died of a heart attack the day before.

At first I thought there was something wrong with me. Not only did I not cry or feel sad, I didn't feel anything. As a matter of fact, I got a little pissed off at Susan. There was no question of me believing that Tiffany was dead. I didn't believe. Not only did I not believe it, I rejected it.

Of all the people walking this planet there was no one that I knew that loved God more than Tiffany. Also, on the good person scale from 1 to 10, 10 being Jesus/Buddha/Dalai Lama, Tiffany was, at least, a 9.9998.

So, if Tiffany loved God, and if Tiffany were good, then Tiffany, by all accounts a young woman (maybe 40 years old...maybe), could not possibly be dead. And she most definitely could not be dead from a heart attack. Therefore, Susan was lying and therefore I was pissed.

If you are amazed at my powers of deduction, and denial, you should know I shocked the hell out of myself.

Like a good Minnesotan, I don't do emotions in public, especially on a bus heading towards the idyllic countryside. A bus filled almost exclusively with well-off WASPy white folks. And I was headed to a retreat with a bunch of folks that I didn't know.

Unfortunately, grief acknowledges not geography nor demographic metrics.

The tears started coming, and I pretended as if I were moved by the mist rolling off of the mountains. Such a sensitive soul am I. (Please refer to my line about denial).

I spent a good part of the weekend thinking about Tiffany and the lives that she touched. The first time I met Tiffany was during a job interview. I was applying for the position of Development Associate at YouthLink. Tiffany, as director of human resources, was one of the people doing the interview. I was a finalist for the job along with Susan Raffo. I didn't get the job.

I pretty much thought that was the last time I would see Ms. Harmon.

But, a year later, Susan was promoted to Development Director at YouthLink, I applied, again, for the position of Development Associate, and lo and behold, this time I got the job. Tiffany was again part of my interview team.

From the first moment I met Tiffany, I felt relaxed and welcomed by her. In the grand world of HR personnel, she was pretty much the perfect person for the job. Strong, emotive, empathetic, and able to balance many personalities. She believed in lifting people up, holding them accountable, and helping them figure out how to move from the place they found themselves to the place they wanted to be. Life at YouthLink is always tricky. At the time that we all worked together, YouthLink had just moved its several large programs under one roof. Though each program had been part of the same agency, for years they'd operated almost as independent entities, with their own cultures. When the programs combined...all hell broke loose...again and again over a number of years.

Tiffany sat at the center of that storm. I watched her do her job, and I watched pick at her and cut at her. So I made it my duty to make sure that every day, at least once a day, I would go into her office and do or say something so ridiculous or outrageous that it would force her to laugh (usually followed by her shaking her head and giving me a "Big Mama," look followed by the statement, "Brandon. Brandon. What am I going to do with you?")

I'll tell you what she did with me. That beautiful amazing woman loved the hell out of me, and that love was returned. I watched her struggle with some of the positions of her church around queer folks. I watched her make the choice to leave her church because she couldn't reconcile its teachings with what she knew to be true. I watched her try and love herself in the way that she deserved. Almost every memory that I have of Tiffany includes laughter. How many people in your life do you have where your memories are 99.9% pure joy? Not to say that I never saw Tiffany down or struggling. I've seen her upset and angry. But she always held joy so close to her skin, and she shared it so freely even in times that she might not have had the spirit to give.

I looked back over my Facebook wall, and almost every note I ever got from that woman ended with I love you.

I love you too, Tiffany. I hope you were greeted at the Gates with a big old plate of fried calamari.

I shed my tears for Tiff, and I let go of my anger. And I thought I was doing just fine. And then I started watching the latest episode of Glee. In the new episode, Curt's Dad has a heart attack. And no sooner did I realize what was going on that I had to stop watching and start writing.

This is my goodbye to you, Tiffany. I know I will see you again (I hope not too soon...unless you get resurrected or decide to swing through on a Holy Ghost Conga Line or something). You earned your rest. Sleep well. I know you are with your God, and I know he loves the hell out of your beautiful self. I would be lying through my teeth if I said that I wasn't a little bit angry with him for taking you away. Those children still need you. Those staff people need you. Your family and friends need you. But I guess what you needed was to rest a little while. So take your rest, sweet sister. Sing and shout and dance and laugh and eat and feel that joy that you gave to all of us so freely, so sweetly, and so lovingly. I love you.

Thank you for loving us so well.

Tiffany's family announced that a scholarship fund has been created, in Tiffany's name, for the homeless and at-risk youth served by YouthLink. YouthLink is the largest provider of services to homeless, at-risk, and precariously housed youth in Minnesota. Through programs that provide basic needs of food, clothing, and transitional housing to education programs and a drop-in center for homeless youth, YouthLink changes the lives of young people.

Please consider a gift to the Tiffany Harmon Scholarship Fund. Gifts can be made out to YouthLink, care of Dr. Heather Husesby, Executive Director.

Checks can be mailed to:

YouthLink
41 North 12th Street
Minneapolis. MN 55403

One Liner of the Week Award: Kim Kortum

This last weekend, I was in Accord, New York with eight new friends for the first fall retreat of The Waking Circle. During a break in the day on Saturday, we went for a walk in the beautiful Catskills countryside.

As we walked through the woods, laughing and watching Tasmin the Dog bound around like a a little wood nymph, I was talking with Kim as we walked along next to Barbie and Tim.

Barbie, a vivacious crackerjack of a gal, steps over a log with a large cut off branch sticking straight into the air, grabs at her crotch area and screams, "Oh lord, I've been monkey bubbled!"

Kim and I blinked at each other like two little bunnies and then lost our shit.

I then said, "Sweet Jesus, she's been monkey bubbled in the cooter!" As we glared at the offending log and branch sticking up like a big middle finger in the middle of the woods.

And Kim, with a completely straight face said, "I think that if you get monkey bubbled in the cooter that you should probably go to the E.R or get a shot or something." She nodded sagely. I ruptured an internal organ from laughing, and Barbie finished the walk holding the inside of her leg.

And that, my little great apes is the One Liner of the Week.

Statement of Solidarity with Activists Raided and Subpoenaed on 9/24/10

Below is a solidarity statement crafted by some folks from Minneapolis in response to the FBI raids. Information about signing on to the statement is included. Please distribute widely.

Statement of Solidarity with Activists Raided and Subpoenaed on 9/24/10

The raids and grand jury subpoeanas against antiwar and international solidarity activists on the morning of Friday, September 24, 2010 are not just an attack on particular activists, but on our movements for social justice as a whole. With a united voice, we condemn this repression; we demand the federal government cease its investigation and withdraw the subpoenas immediately; and we vow to continue our work for true justice.

We reject the allegation that the government's investigation into our movements is based on "material support for terrorism" in any form. This allegation is particularly ludicrous considering the terror tactics the U.S. government engages in on a daily basis, both globally and domestically. Aimed against valued members of our community, the raids against activists on Friday morning were particularly offensive to us. However, we recognize that they are unexceptional instances of repression when compared to the daily crimes against humanity carried out by U.S. imperialism.

We refuse to let the accusations of a notoriously untruthful, repressive government divide us in any way. Because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, we resolve to set any ideological or other political differences aside and respond in solidarity with one another. Our struggle will continue.

Signed,

(All organizational affiliations listed are for identification purposes only unless otherwise noted)

Adam Briesemeister
Adam Greeley
Alicia Ronney
Amy Selvins, AFSCME 3800
Andrea Palumbo
Andrew Carhart, AFSCME 3800
Andrew Somers, Students for a Democratic Society
Angel Buechner, Welfare Rights Committee
Angella Khan, Welfare Rights Committee
Anne Benson
Bill Sorem
Brandom Madsen, Socialist Alternative
Brett Hoven, UAW 879, Socialist Alternative
Brian Payne
Bruce Berry, Vets for Peace
Bryan Berry, Junkyard Empire
Bryan Jones
Catherine Salonek, Socialist Alternative
Chante Wolf
Charlene Wilford, Welfare Rights Committee
Charles Underwood
Christopher Clauson
Christopher R. Cox, Junkyard Empire
Chuck Turchick
Cian Prendiville, Socialist Party--Ireland
Coleen Rowley
Colleen McGilp, Women Against Military Madness
Communities United Against Police Brutality (organization)
Cynthia Clark
Dan DiMaggio, Socialist Alternative
Danny King, Welfare Rights Committee
Darryl Robinson, Communities United Against Police Brutality
Dave Bicking, Green Party
David Keuhl, Anti-War Committee
David Riehle, United Transportation Union
Deb Konechne, Welfare Rights Committee
Deborah Howze, Welfare Rights Committee
Dori Ullman, Communities United Against Police Brutality
Doug McGilp, IBT--Retired
Earl Balfour, Mayday Books
Earth Warriors are OK! (organization)
Elizabeth Raasch-Gilman, RNC 8 Defense Committee
Eric J. Angell, Our World in Depth
Erik Zakis
Eryn Trimmer, RNC8
Garrett Fitzgerald, RNC 8
Gary North
Gaylyn Bicking
Greg Gibbs
Hallie Wallace
Heather Haymond
Jaime Hokanson, RNC 8 Defense Committee
Jane Franklin, Twin Cities Indymedia
Janelle Colway, Communities United Against Police Brutality
Janet Nye, Green Party
Jean Heberle, Women Against Military Madness
Jennie Eisert, Anti-War Committee
Jim McGuire, Industrial Workers of the World
Joan Feakins
Joann Gonzalez, Welfare Rights Committee
Joanne Schubert
John Everett Till
John J. Braun, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Pax Christi USA
John Kolstad
Joyce Wallace, Women Against Military Madness
June C. Conner, Welfare Rights Committee
Karen Redleaf, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network--Twin Cities, Our World in Depth
Karthik Ramanathan, Minnesota Cuba Committee
Katie Molm
Katrina Plotz, Anti-War Committee
Kieran F. Knutson, Industrial Workers of the World
Kimberly A. DeFranco, Welfare Rights Committee
Kira Downey
Kristen Keuhl
Kurt Seaberg
Linda Leighton, IPAC, SEIU 284, Industrial Workers of the World--Twin Cities
Linden Gawboy, Welfare Rights Committee
Lucas de Gracia
Luce Guillén-Givins, RNC8
Marie Braun, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, WAMM
Max Specktor, RNC 8
Melinda McGowan
Melissa Hill, Twin Cities Indymedia
Mia Overly, Univ. of Minn. Students for a Democratic Society
Michelle Gross, Communities United Against Police Brutality
Michelle Mandeville
Mickey Patterson, Women Against Military Madness
Minneapolis Autonomous Radical Space (organization)
MK Davis
Monica Bicking, RNC8
Nicole Duxbury
Phil Grove
Phillip Lickteig
Phyllis Walker
Polly Kellogg, Professor, St. Cloud State University
Rachel E.B. Lang, National Lawyers Guild--Minnesota Chapter
Rebecca Zaremba
Riva Garcia
RNC 8 Defense Committee (organization)
Robert Heberle, Veterans for Peace
Roger W. Cuthbertson
Roshaun White, Communities United Against Police Brutality
Sandra K. Bandli
Scott & Carrie Support Committee (organization)
Socialist Alternative (organization)
Stephen Abraham
Sue Ann Martinson, Women Against Military Madness
Susan Kolstad
Susanne Waldorf
Suzanne Linton, Green Party of Minnesota
Theodros Shibabaw, Socialist Alternative
Thomas Dooley, Mayday Books, Veterans for Peace
Timmy Ramone, Usual Suspects
Tom Schumacher, Boneshaker Books
Tonia Secor
Treana Mayer
Ty Moore, Socialist Alternative
Virginia Amy Weldon, Welfare Rights Committee
W. Brandon Lacy Campos, My Feet Only Walk Forward
Welfare Rights Committee (organization)

If you would like to add your name and/or organization to this list, please email ActivismIsNotTerrorism@gmail.com.

We Shall Not Be Moved

On 9/24/2010 the homes of several of my friends in Minneapolis were raided by the FBI. My friends have been subpoenaed and ordered to appear before a Grand Jury on charges of providing material support to terrorist groups in Palestine and Colombia. The same happened to activists in Chicago and in other parts of the country.

This election year ploy to "look tough" by law enforcement and federal agencies is nothing more than an intimidation tactic in the long tradition of state and federal sponsored anti-justice organizing (reaching back to anti-farm workers organizing in the 18th century through anti-slavery and anti-suffrage work, right up to anti-union, civil rights, and the peace and justice organizing of today). Never have the state or federal government been allies to peace and justice work of whatever stripe, nor have those entities ever been more than reactionary to organizing for liberation, workers rights, fundamental human rights, or any other economic, peace, or justice work of, for, and by the people (no matter what the Declaration and the Constitution may declare). This is simply another, predictable, carry forward of a long history of COINTELPRO type programs aimed at destabilizing the forces for truth, peace and justice in this country (and around the world for that matter).

And let's be clear, it is no coincidence that during this time of political and economic instability (to state the obvious...the two go hand in hand), the time and elements are ripe for a coalition movement to challenge the underpinnings of the capitalist corporate state. The Tea Party movement, no matter how misguided, is one example of every day folks that are (sadly) trying to reinforce the corporate values of the system, which the system may not love but tolerates since it does not fundamentally challenge the base structure of power. But the government and those that benefit from the status quo are deathly afraid that the Left will use this strategic opportunity to call BULLSHIT on the continuing vicious corporate political cycle that creates Great Depressions and Great Recessions, Oil Crises, and Housing Crises, Health Care Crisis, and double digit unemployment.

And so, staying true to form, the government has decided that the best defense is a good offense.

WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED!

We see ourselves in solidarity with the liberation struggles of people without regard to man made, created, and colonial borders. We see ourselves in solidarity with women, people of color, queer folks, differently abled communities, working people, the working poor, developing nations and First Nation's Peoples. We see ourselves as true democrats, that believe in the empowered right of each person to participate in creating the structures and avenues for sharing power in a manner that respects the individual but sustains the communal. We reject corporate personhood and corporate democracy and corporatism that is ripping apart the heart of America and the world. We reject bailouts for those without need. We demand a fundamental right to free education, free health care, and freedom from the shackles of the corporate cycle which demands our labor while maintaining our poverty. We demand justice, and no invasions of our homes or intimidation of our friends, family, allies, or community is going to deter us from our work, our cause, and our liberation.

It's a damn shame when photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Malcolm X are taken as proof of material support for terrorism.

We are not the terrorists, we do not participate in unjust attacks on our people, but the government, through these raids, has demonstrated that it does not share our principles. It has more in common with Al-Qaeda than it does with We the People.

Shame on you FBI. Shame on you Department of Justice, and shame on you Barack Obama.

We shall NOT be moved.

And so I call on each of you that believes in justice, that believes in peace, that believes that you have the right to live free from intimidation and fear from the government that is supposed to represent not repress you, to lift your voices against this injustice. Pick up your phone and call the FBI, call the Department of Justice, call the White House, and then call your Mama, your sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, your neighbors, your teachers, your students, random numbers out of the damn phone book and tell them about this injustice. Raise the cry and ask people to set aside their strategic differences and embrace their fundamental realities as peace and justice organizers. Trust, it doesn't matter if you are a progressive Democrat or a member of the Socialist Party, if you are to the left of Bill Clinton, then these attacks were aimed directly at you, at anyone that thinks like you, at anyone that would dare suggest that we live in an imperfect world with flawed values and that the answers and responses of the government are aimed only at ameliorating and not eliminating the root causes of why we find ourselves in this economic crisis. We are in a spiritual crisis, in a freedom crisis, in a justice crisis, and instead of reaching out to lift us up, the government has demonstrated that all it cares about is keeping us down, in our places, as cogs in the wheel of a broken system that doesn't work, doesn't serve, and doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything but the dollar.

Last time I checked the dollar didn't eat, breathe, sleep, make love, have children, cry, laugh or starve. The dollar doesn't go homeless or get sick. It doesn't die from neglect.

People do. Paper doesn't.

I stand with all those that were raided and intimidated on 9/24/2010. I choose people. I choose justice.

FBI Raids Activists Homes Across the United States

This afternoon, the FBI raided the homes of anti-war and solidarity activists across the country, including the homes of three personal friends of mine: Steff Yorek, Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby. For nearly a decade, I worked with Steff, Jess, and Meredith either directly through the Anti-War Committee in Minneapolis or through solidarity work around queer liberation, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and efforts to halt the march towards war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are women that I love and respect. I also know that they have done their work and organizing with integrity and respect. These raids are an election year ploy, and must be denounced by folks that believe in justice and the right to organize.

Statement from Fight Back News below. Also see coverage from Star Tribune, MPR.

http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/9/24/activists-denounce-fbi-raids-anti-war-and-solidarity-activists-homes

Activists Denounce FBI Raids on Anti-war and Solidarity Activists Homes

Subpoenas, Searches, and FBI visits carried out in cities across the country
By Staff | September 24, 2010

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists in several states across the country. The FBI began turning over six houses in Chicago and Minneapolis this morning, Friday, October 24, 2010, at 8:00 am central time. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to about a dozen activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. They also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

"The government hopes to use a grand jury to frame up activists. The goal of these raids is to harass and try to intimidate the movement against U.S. wars and occupations, and those who oppose U.S. support for repressive regimes," said Colombia solidarity activist Tom Burke, one of those handed a subpoena by the FBI. "They are designed to suppress dissent and free speech, to divide the peace movement, and to pave the way for more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and Latin America."

This suppression of democratic rights is aimed towards those who dedicate much of their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The activists are involved with well-known anti-war groups including many of the leaders of the huge protest against the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN in September 2008. The FBI agents emphasized that the grand jury was going to investigate the activists for possible terrorism charges. This is a U.S. government attempt to silence those who support resistance to oppression in the Middle East and Latin America.

The activists involved have done nothing wrong and are refusing to be pulled into conversations with the FBI about their political views or organizing against war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Palestine Solidarity Group, Students for a Democratic Society, the Twin-Cities Anti-War Committee, the Colombia Action Network, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera (a Colombian Political Prisoner).
Steff Yorek, a long-time antiwar activist and one of the activists whose homes was searched, called the raids “An outrageous fishing expedition.”

We urge all progressive activists to show solidarity with those individuals targeted by the U.S. Government. Activists have the right not to speak with the FBI and are encouraged to politely refuse, just say “No”.
Please contact info@colombiasolidarity.org or info@fightbacknews.org if you would like to provide support to the targeted activists.

Two Year Anniversary of Cousin Jim's Death

Two years ago today, my cousin and friend Jim Wakefield left his journey in this world for another one. He was 28 years old.

Jim was an amazing human being. He was a social justice organizer working with new immigrant communities in Chicago. He'd lived, worked, and taught in West Africa and Korea. He was funny, brilliant, and loving. He is the kind of person that this world craves.

Like all humans he had his faults. He smoked too much, and every time I would see him I would tell him that his teeth were as ashy as my feet (which is pretty damn bad). When he taught me how to ride a back when I was seven, we were at our Grandma's house, and he neglected to tell me how to stop. Thank God the garage stepped in and showed me how to stop the hard way. His ex-girlfriend stole a t-shirt that I'd left at my cousin's parent's home when I was visiting during college. She took it to France and brought it back to me with a cigarette hole in it (damn those French! It's Freedom Fries from now on), and since I would never have known Allie...I blame Jim for her Francophone ways. But other than those foibles, my cousin was pretty damn cool (though, like most of the straight men in my family...I always wanted him to consider something other than a raggedy ass pair of jeans an and old stained white-ish t-shirt as daily wear).

Today, I am remembering the awesome human being that Jim was. From the time when we were all too damn young and Jim's older brother danced around our grandparent's hunting trailer with nothing on but some tube socks and an attitude and danced around singing, "Babies are made when the man puts the penis into the vagina," to drunken antics we shared at my cousin Dawn Michelle's wedding when Dawn asked my Mom to go commando on my Aunt Joanne's drunk and lecherous boyfriend...Jim figures prominently in some of the best times of my life.

I love you, Jim. I miss you, Jim. Say hi Grandpa for me, and save me a spot, k? I'll see you one day (but not too soon, I hope...and if you know something more than I do...keep it to yourself. Cheeky bastard!).

Interview with a Musical Genius: Tori Fixx

In 2004, I was a featured performer at PeaceOut East the International LGBT Hip-Hop Festival in New York City. I was one of two folks from Minneapolis at the festival; the other individual was Tori Fixx.

I was blown away by his performance during the festival, and I thought it was hilarious that I had never met him in Minneapolis. In fact, it would be another three years before our paths crossed again. In 2007, I started hanging out with some fantastic human beings in the Twin Cities. I ended up playing softball with these peeps (SLAMMERS, YOU KNOW!) and volleyball. My life, for two years, was built around these amazing humans, and at the center of this community was the artist known as Tori Fixx aka DJ Naughty Boyy aka Lar'Isha Mae aka my friend Larry.

It is my honor and pleasure to share with you an interview with Tori Fixx. Also, DOWNLOAD ALL OF HIS MUSIC! I am currently listening to three of his newest tracks, and I am bouncin' in my chair like a drag queen in Atlanta during Freak Nik. His music IS the definition of HOTNESS!

I love you Isha.

Tori Fixx Bio

One of the pioneers of what is now called “out hip hop”; Rap, funk and R&B artist and one-time personal DJ for Prince - Tori Fixx is the Timbaland of out hip hop. The Minneapolis based Recording Artist, Producer, DJ; Vocalist & Emcee has been heralded as the “most ready for prime time” by music critic Ernest Hardy (Vibe, Rolling Stone) in the nationwide publication, The Advocate and he has appeared on The Tyra Banks Show, and CNN’s Paula Zahn Now show.


1.. The first time I met you was in 1994 at PeaceOut East, the queer hip-hop festival (which was funny because we were both living in Minneapolis, and I met you in NYC). Talk to me about that experience, what was it like to be around other out and proud LGBT hip-hop artists?

Not to quote Paris Hilton, but that was a HUGE weekend for me. For all of us, actually. Not only were there a bunch of out hip-hop artists and a massive concert weekend (by our standards) but we were filming a documentary that eventually became "Pick Up the Mic". I cannot explain how high I was that weekend, from the energy and love that was all around. Not really that "kum-by-ya" type of love but you could feel the power of the entire movement. We were all there for (and unified through) one purpose, Out Hip-Hop and to be amongst so much talent is indeed a Blessing. Even more so, in being an artist who's allowed to "be who I am" and still be allowed to take the stage and obtain the utmost respect is something that I'll never tire of and this happens everytime I'm at a function like Peace Out East.

2. How did you come up with the identity of Tori Fixx? Why Tori and not Larry?

It's a spiritual thing, really. Larry is like the "home base" for so many different talents and in the beginning of my career I found it difficult for people to accept one person utilizing so many of their talents all at once. For instance I'm a Dj, Producer, Remixer and Recording artist who makes House, Dance, Hip-Hop, R&B, Pop, New Age, and Movie Score music and that just doesn't sit right with people so one has to divide it all up. It just so happend that Tori Fixx "found me" after a battle with suicide many moons ago. I survived, thankfully but in being given a chance at life again I wanted to start over and do it right and eventually Tori Fixx was born as an outspoken hip-hop/activist who was both a person of color and openly gay. Plus it just had a nice ring to it. LOL.

3. Like many of the people that love you, I was transfixed to the television set the day that you were on the Tyra Banks Show. What was it like to have such a mainstream figure as Tyra do a show about homo-hop? Did that appearance have any impact on your career? Did it have any impact on the way that the general public thinks about hip-hop and R&B?

The taping of that show was great. It was one of those moments where I "just know" that this is the life for me. Tyra was so fierce. Plus she loves her gays. That first show was a "good start" but I think we actually needed an entire show and she even said so herself. I really felt like we had a short time to try and convince the world that we exist. It's been helpful with the career this far, but unfortunately more is needed. I'm still wishing for another show to come along (like Ellen) and pick up where that left off. Maybe get some performances in there as well. THAT would really let people know that the Out Hip-Hop community and music genre is ALIVE AND WELL......and it's just as HOT as anything on the radio, today.

4. You are a proud (and pretty) black man. How has your music been received in the black community?

It's been received pretty well, thus far but I really want to penetrate the community further. No, I'm not on the radio next to Beyonce. I don't have Beyonce budgets for things like fierce videos and other marketing so that means I have to do all that I can to try and get the attention of DJ's and potential fans and consumers alike. Right now all I care about is getting the music to the people, especially glbt people of color because this music that I make is truly FOR US and I'm trying to go every route possible just to get the music and the name further into the community and all around the world.

5. Your music exudes a sexuality and sensuality that is palpable...sometimes I listen to "Good Morn'ting," and think about the twins that were in the video and have to have some private time...how does your sexuality inform your music?

OMG. Thank you. I've always wanted to know if I could turn someone on with my music. My sexuality is a major part of my life and my life informs all of my musical creations so you're going to get it all. I can't help it. Sometimes I write things and later on go, "oooooh did I write that? Ooops!" I usually always write a song starting with the music and then I'll just play the instrumental for awhile until the lyrics come to me and that's how I get something that turns into "Good Morn'ting".

6. Finally, if people want to get them a piece of Tori Fixx or DJ Naughty Boyy (your DJ persona), where can they get some of you? Do you have any tours coming up? New albums coming out? Space for new mens in your life? Spill the T.

There is still space for a man in my life and if you know of someone in need of a good piece of chocolate in their life please send them my way. For better or worse they make for really great songwriting. LOL. As for the music.....umm, well I have about 4 projects in the works right now, maybe a few more. I just finished producing a NYC native named Jesse O. His CD Love & Go Crazy can be found on iTunes, also Shunda K (of Yo Majesty) is about to drop her new album featuring a handful of T. Fixx produced tracks. There's 2 Tori Fixx solo records in the making, and two duet projects as well. One of the projects is a group called LGTFX and its myself and another New York emcee named Lester Greene doing some serious out Hip-Hop/Electro-dance realness and we've been working on it for the past year and it's pretty much done now. Yet there's still MORE to come but I won't try and tell it all here just visit both of my websites (www.torifixx.com and www.djnaughtyboyy.com) and I always encourage everyone to feel free to spread the word.

Thanks again, BLC. Love uuuuuuuuuuuu!!!

POETRY: A Birthday Poem for David

Today is David's 46th birthday. If I were a rich man, I would have bought him a gorgeous artist studio on a lake where he could escape to make beautiful things.

I am not a rich man, but I can always write.

Happy Birthday baby. Love you.

A Birthday Poem for David

I love you
Like the morning loves the dawn
Brilliantly
Yet slowly
My love rises
Each morning
Like a fresh day
A little brighter
No matter the weather

I love you
Like the sea loves the shore
Kisses it gently
Steadily
Washes over it
To smooth away worry
To calm it
To change it
Just a little
As the two change
With each other

I love you
Like the Moon loves the night sky
Sometimes silently like the new moon
Sometimes brightly like the full moon
Never waxing or waning
Steadily
Like the tide
We push each other
To reach for the stars
To touch the face of heaven

I love you
More than yesterday
Less than tomorrow
Just right for right now
Sometimes it feels like it is too much
But the heart can grow
As much as love can
Getting stronger
Day by day
Steadily
I love you.

-Brandon Lacy Campos
-September 12, 2010
-New York. NY

POETRY: Honey Bun

I have a Great Aunt whose name is Edith Daughtery. Folks my age and older call her Aunt Sis. When Aunt Sis' grandson Ryan was born, she would call him Honey Bun, and so he started calling her Honey Bun in return. All of my younger brothers and sisters know Aunt Sis as Honey Bun.

This short woman with a giant's spirit still lives in the same house that is right next door to where the house she grew up in once stood. She still lives, in her mid-80s, by herself in Ronceverte, West Virginia. Ronceverte is the town where my family were slaves. My Dad travels from Charleston to Ronceverte to see her every other weekend, and this spitfire woman still works as a house cleaner, still runs the street like a fast teenage girl, and teaches the children's service at her church.

When I came out of the closet, she shrugged and said to tell her something that she didn't know.

I love my Aunt Sis, and I wrote this poem for her.

Honey Bun

Sweet like honey
She is
Those hills
Are powerful
Green shoulders
Hunched and laughing
Streams course along her
Telling stories
'bout blackberry brandy
Brewed up out back
'long side the white lightning
Home
Remedies
Fried chicken and chittlin's
Collards green like those hills
Just out the backdoor
The stone wombs
That sheltered Her
That child of 1709
According to the Bill of Sale
African embryo
Artificially inseminated
Across the Middle Passage
Implanted in those Hills
born from a coal mine
And mountain granite
Gave birth to a black bird
Singin'
Sweet like fresh honey
We shall overcome
As she built a bonfire
To celebrate Brown v Board of Education
Said, "Don't know who burnt down the Negro school."
Hehehe she laughed
"But I do know they wasn't sending my children back."
Black bird said, "I am old and crazy as hell."
She'll not be with us much longer
Daughter of those hills has bone cancer
It doesn't matter cuz she's been to the mountain top
And took us with her
Honey Bun coating our tongues and spirits
With sweet strength
This Black Bird gon' sing a little bit longer
Stronger than those granite hills
Spill stories like rivers of honey
Sometimes bittersweet memories
Of mill slaves marched off to glory
Hallelujah
Sweet like honey
She is all we could dream to be
Strong like those hills
Those Greenbrier hills that gave birth
to a blackbird
sweet like honey
sing us home.

-Brandon Lacy Campos
-New York, NY
-September 11, 2010

iPhone Hacked....Again!

My iPhone was hacked. Again. Over the last five years or so, I have had my computer hacked a number of times and my phone hacked twice. I know exactly who hacked my computer. When I was using and not being up front about my HIV status...someone to whom I had disclosed my status hacked my computer and was sending information out about me to potential hook ups. The cause was noble...though the person doing it was ignoble to the core. I always found his moral superiority suspect since this particular human being had been my number one meth dealer and had no qualms about supplying me (and anyone else with money to pay) with drugs. The irony (and hypocrisy) was something to boggle the mind. Yet, it was what it was, and that time has long past.

About six months ago, my iPhone started doing something peculiar. In addition to having a pass code to unlock an iPhone, there is also an additional pass code to unlock the SIM card. I discovered this by accident once when I was monkeying with the settings on my phone, hit the wrong button, and my SIM card locked itself. The first time your card locks itself, you have to call AT&T to get the factory built in pass code in order to unlock the phone. Once you unlock it the first time, it prompts you to enter a healthy numeric code that you will remember.

Did it. Set the new code. Thought it was the end of the story.

Then, about a month after I'd first changed the code...I turned on my phone one morning to find that the SIM card was locked. Now, normally, the card only locks in response to user input or a failed attempt to access the SIM card. But, I shrugged it off to some random glitch with the phone and entered my pass code.

The code didn't work.

So, I called AT&T and asked them for the code, which they happily provided. I entered the code, the phone unlocked, and I hung up with the good woman at AT&T.

No sooner had I hung up the phone than I looked down and the damn phone's SIM card was locked again. So, I entered in the new SIM code that I had just chosen, and the phone wouldn't open.

How curious.

So I called AT&T again, and the woman gave me the code (which was not the one I had chosen nor the one that she had given me before), and we did the unlock game again. This time she asked me to stay on the phone during the process. The phone unlocked, I set a new pass code, and about a minute later the damn thing locked itself again.

Once again I tried to unlock it with the new pass code that I'd chosen, but no dice. The woman on the phone looked up the SIM code and lo and behold it was another completely different code.

She then informed me that nothing like this had ever happened to her before in her x number of years working at AT&T and specifically with the iPhone. So, due the wonders of modern technology, she executed a three-way call with an Apple iPhone representative. We got a gentleman from the Genius Bar at Apple on the phone and went through the whole process again with exactly the same results.

Dude was dumbfounded. This had never happened to him either. In the meantime, I had done my Inter Webs based research and found out about iPhone hacking. I suggested this as a cause. At first, neither of them really wanted to admit it was a possibility. But after a few more minutes...they both agreed...something shady was going on with my phone....so shady in fact...that they paid for me to get a new SIM card, and I almost had to give a pinky swear that I wouldn't tell anyone else about this ever.

Steve Jobs is the Don of the Apple Mafia. If he makes you an offer, and you say no, you end up as a SIM card in an iPad. Just saying.

The point ended up becoming moot about that iPhone when I dropped it in a toilet bowl during a Pride party in June. You can't hack a phone when you can't dial the 0 button. Just saying.

So, in July, I got a brand spanking new iPhone. It has worked flawlessly without any craziness or magic SIM card moments.

That is until today.

Today, I texted David to let him now that I'd seen "Ted on the street."

David texted back, "Who's Ted?"

I responded, "Joe's Boyfriend."

A few moments later, my phone went off with a text alert. I opened up the phone to David's response of "Ah."

Except between my text, "Joe's boyfriend," and David's text of "Ah," there was a text, supposedly from me, that said, "FBI."

Now I promise you that after hitting send on the "Joe's boyfriend," that I clicked the lock button on my phone as I was in a meeting with my boss. No second text did I send. Which means that either Carrie Anne from the Exorcist left the TV and ended up in my iPhone or the motherfucker has been hacked again.

I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do I do I do believe in spooks.

But I also believe in fucked up hackers that need to get the hell up out of my shit.

So, once again, I am faced with a piece of expensive ass technology that has been iRaped by an iHacker that can kiss my iAss.

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Apple likes to pretend that their shit is invulnerable, but last fall a couple was awarded $15,000 because they demonstrated how you could hack an iPhone, without ever seeing or touching the target iPhone, using a glitch in the Safari Browser.

Ladies and gentleman gird up your loins and put a firewall on your iPhones because there are stank biznatches out there that are passive aggressive hacking sons of bitches that like to cause mental drama for fun.

I'm just saying.

Tomorrow me and Lady Betty Ignatious Pennybottom (aka my iPhone) are going to take a little trip to AT&T for a long conversation about iPhone security.

But let ye all be warned....don't buy the hype....don't put anything on your iPhone that you wouldn't mind being broadcast during the middle of the Superbowl like Janet's wardrobe malfunction.

Ye have been warned.

(PS And if the FBI did hack my phone...you better have a warrant...and isn't there a crazy preacher in Florida that you should be harassing? I'm just saying.)_

Bareback Sex: Human Need vrs Condoms

I think about sex quite often. Even before testing positive for HIV, I thought about sex, well, almost constantly. Whether it was the politics of sex, teaching my peers about sex positivity, deconstructing sex, looking for sex or having sex, I was (and still am) thinking about the various ways that sex impacts my life and our lives as humans.

As humans as the key part of that statement, as more often than not we attempt, or others attempt, to separate sex from our basic humanity and the fundamental connection that sex provides between two (or more) human beings.

Today, I received an email from a good friend (and super smokin' hot friend) of mine from Minneapolis. He has been positive for two decades, and he is one of the people I know that lives, and fucks, beautifully with HIV. When I have struggled and needed someone to share emotional vomit, angst, shame, or fear around HIV, and particularly being an HIV positive man that refuses to walk away from his sexuality, this friend is the person to whom I have turned.

Today he turned to me. His note to me wasn't about sex per se but was more about at times realizing there are things that he can't do and limitations he has because of being immuno-compromised. I won't go into too many details, but because of his upcoming travel, he won't be able to visit some family because of their geography and the risk of some nasty health complications due to the make up of the natural environment where they live. This triggered for him some personal regret around decisions he made as a young gay man coming up in the 1980s around sex. Those decisions lead to him testing positive.

Please, please please note the realness of his regret. He isn't angry at the person that infected him. He isn't blaming the other. He regrets the decisions HE made around HIS sexual choices in the 1980s. In this age of over information with regards to the risks of unprotected sex, it is down right ludicrous, except in very discrete situations around sexual assault and rape, that an adult that contracts HIV from consensual unprotected sex should place the burden of his or her choice on someone else.

This man has been HIV positive since the mid-80s when the White House wouldn't acknowledge the existence of the HIV virus, there were few prevention programs, and people were dying left and right while also marching in the streets demanding that Congress pay attention (God Bless ACT-UP). He could blame a whole lot of people, particularly our elected officials, and rightfully so. But he doesn't. He is also clear that this, for him, comes up every five years or so...he sees it...holds it...looks at it...and then lets it go.

I wrote back to him this message:

You know you can emotionally upchuck here any old time. We all need to do it. All of us. I used to not do it, and that is why I ended up with these three letters attached to my identity...I didn't know how to externalize the damage and the pain, and so I found other ways to make it go away...temporarily.

And, I believe this with all of my heart, condoms save lives but there is also a biological imperative to feel that basic connection with another person that happens through sex. Because we don't talk about that, because we believe it doesn't exist, because it is shamed as something purely psychological, we don't really teach ourselves, our children, or each other how to make the best decisions concerning when to have that experience that all of us need...and that some of us may never get again or think we never will. It is a loss. We don't talk about that shit either.

Let me be clear. I am talking about having unprotected aka bareback sex in the note that I sent back to him. Because of the fear and shame that was created around HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, because the virus was so virulent and people were dying, and because the evolution of the messaging was so retarded by the lack of information available, the message came out that any sex but sex with a condom under any circumstances unless you are married (meaning a man and a woman) is wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

Meanwhile, HIV and STD rates continued to climb, and they are climbing again. Why? Do all of us having a fundamental death wish? Does no one anywhere care about his or her own sexual health? While there is a woeful lack of education in certain quarters over what types of sex can transmit HIV (please note that a study in NC in 2000 of high school students found that 80% of high school students in that abstinence only education state thought that unprotected anal sex was abstinent behavior), the general messaging about how to protect oneself is out there and most folks know the basics of it now.

Let me suggest what others that are smarter and wiser than I am have suggested: in addition to the psychological damage reasons why a human being may disregard their sexual health, there is a psychological need (and a healthy need) to want to physically connect with another human being without any barriers.

Anyone, and I mean anyone, that tells you that sex with a condom is just the same as sex without a condom is telling you a goddamn lie.

But, because it is not PC to talk about unprotected sex openly. Because we don't talk about both the need to connect with someone else without barriers nor how to do it in a healthy way or in a way that reduces risk of contracting HIV or an STD, as a community we walk around, many of us pretending like we are condom commandos and are always safe all of the time, and that is just a comforting lie we allow ourselves so that we can look down, shame, and wag our figures at other people...all the while bending over and taking it raw again and again and again.

And let me be clear, I am not talking just about queer folks here. Very recently, in the last few days, a straight person close to me told me that she is on the pill because the person she is sleeping with hates condoms and won't use them. Now, I have fucked or known one too many of my friends that have taken a supposedly straight man for the pony ride of his life, to even have to talk about why that is not the smartest sexual move. And, also, HIV can be transmitted from penis/vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman. It is less likely, but it does happen. But the assumption that the only risk from unprotected penis/vaginal intercourse is pregnancy is one of the reasons why women of color are the fastest rising population of people being infected with the HIV virus.

Yet, for many of my highly educated straight sisters, having unprotected vaginal intercourse while using chemical contraceptives is so common as to quite often be the norm. These women know all about dudes on the down low. These women know all about high risk transmission rates, yet they still participate, and most of them happily, in straight bareback sex.

I thought we learned long ago that the thing that we do not talk about is usually the thing that is most likely to kill us. There is a reason why the HIV prevention slogan from the 1980s was SILENCE=DEATH.

If HIV infection is the symptom of unprotected sex, then why aren't we having a frank, non-shaming, and healthy discussion about bareback sex? Haven't we learned, and don't I know from personal experience, that by creating shame, risk, and danger about bareback sex, we actually heighten the desire for it in unhealthy ways? In the same way that we drive fast cars, go bungee jumping, and slather ourselves in fish blood and then go diving in a cage in a great white shark spawning ground, the forbidden factor/the danger/the excitement of bareback sex is, in my honest opinion, part of what makes it so appealing to so many people: gay and straight.

Why aren't we talking about the intensely erotic and often deep, if only temporary, connection that occurs from bareback sex. People aren't just having bareback sex because of the riskiness of it. People are having it because humans are biologically/mentally/spiritually designed to have sex.

Please note I am not advocating in any way for people to throw out their condoms and blame it on biology. We are also biologically predisposed to solving problems through physical violence, yet we don't go around whacking people in the head that get on our nerves. If that were the case, I would have the biggest biceps on the East Coast.

Instead of criminalizing people living with HIV (which, btw, does nothing for prevention, disregards personal responsibility for negative people, heaps more shame on people living with HIV, and keeps people from getting tested), instead of pretending that everyone uses condoms, instead of reacting high and mighty when a friend talks openly about bareback sex and then going out and starring in an Xtube video ass up in a sling with cum dripping out of your ass, and instead of denying that there is a need and something that can be truly beautiful about connecting with another human being, consensually, without a condom, why don't we actually talk openly about bareback sex? Why don't we look at new HIV prevention models that focuses on a whole person healthy view of sex that includes risk reduction and strategies for how, when, and under what circumstances to have unprotected sex? How about stripping the fear and shame out of sex education and injecting positive sexuality as the core of sex ed? Condoms are one strategy, and it is a strategy that is not working effectively. We still have idiots that believe that abstinence is the only answer while denying that it doesn't work and in the absence of any kind of education, STI and HIV infection rates among youth continue to rise.

Let's have a revolution in the way we think and talk about sex. Let's have a revolution in the way that we have sex. No one, positive or negative, should have to walk away from bareback sex, nor should it be reserved to straight married couples that are trying to procreate. Nor should we believe that it is only wildly idiotic irresponsible queer men that are having it. What we need to do is talk about sex (thank you Salt-n-Pepa), and talk about it without shame, without guilt, and with a realness that honors our physical and emotional need to connect to one another as part of our fundamental humanity.

One Liner of the Week Award: Shannon Lacy

Smart-assery, as I believe I have mentioned before, is an inherited trait in the Lacy family. Like storytelling and makin' shine, it is an ancient family tradition.

My little sisters are currently visiting me from Atlanta. Last night, we were chilling in their hotel room in Times Square, watching a random crime show, and I kicked off my flip-flops and stretched out on the bed.

The room went eerily silent.

My sisters then started laughing and asking me why my feet were so messed up and ashy.

Jasmine said, "Ewwww, you look like you been walking around in high heels."

Shannon said, "High heels hell, it looks like you been walking around in concrete bricks."

If she wasn't in the military, I woulda whooped her tail last night.

And that, ladies and gentlenerds is the One Liner of the Week Award.

POZitively Struggling with Sex

Living with HIV is a constant fucking struggle. It's a struggle against yourself and the internal tapes associated with being positive. It is a struggle to deal with stigma perceived or otherwise. It is a struggle to master fear and fear of rejection. It is a struggle to just live your life like any other human being does or gets to do.

I have been trying to do some serious work integrating HIV and acceptance of it into who I am. Yesterday, I taped a video interview talking about that process for TheBody.com. Since May, I have been writing for TheBody.com, and I have received some really amazing support and love from other poz folks in the world struggling with the same shit that I am attempting to deal with, and that has been truly a wonderful experience.

But, translating these thoughts, experiences, and feelings into daily actions is sometimes very hard to do.

All of this is complicated by semi-attempts to try and venture back out into the world and enjoy the benefit of being in an open relationship, to make connections with people (sexual and otherwise), to enjoy those possibilities, and to navigate what it means to be a positive individual while doing so.

The paranoia and fear around situations, even ones in which there has been no responsibility to disclose, has me at a spiritual and mental tipping point.

Then, on top of all that, add to the mix that I am a recovering meth addict. One of the loveliest and most fun long term impacts of meth use is a syndrome called PAWS (Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome), which is basically the fun experience of having, from time to time, bouts of mild paranoia that can come on suddenly. This lovely by product of meth use can last for up to three years after use has stopped.

Hands down the only times that I have experienced PAWS has been when I have been worried about a failure to disclose (whether or not it was necessary to disclose) or some other circumstance where, to use a recent example, where I connected with someone, there wasn't a need to disclose, but he chose not to continue in communication.

Now, for most people, someone not calling you back after having a minor hook up with some heavy petting, would simply mean that it was a one night stand or dude decided after all that he wasn't interested. For me, my mind and spirit immediately jump to a place where he Googled my name, found my blogs, and is now waging a silent war against me for being HIV positive and not telling him. Even knowing when there has been absolutely no risk of transmission, I still end up in this place.

That is some fucked up shit.

And it really doesn't matter. I could hook up with a dude that never asks about my status, doesn't care, and has an entire collection of photos and video tapes of all the men that he has hooked up with and practiced unsafe sex, and I will still feel the responsibility of the world coming down on my shoulders for his choices and mine. I repeat HIS choices and mine.

I need to have my own conspiracy theory show. Because, really, this shit is better than anything on the Spike Channel or Lifetime.

So, being a Virgo and thinking logically, and also never wanting to go through another PAWS experience in my life (I can avoid PAWS experiences...for the most part....I will never be able to avoid poz experiences...that's just my reality), and knowing that most often my PAWS experiences are triggered by hook up situations or even just plain old dating situations where no one has lied to anyone about anything, but I don't know the other person's status, and they don't know mine...I have come to the conclusion that the only way to avoid PAWS situations caused by a poz situation is to make a commitment to only date and/or hook up with other HIV positive guys from now on.

At this point in my journey into integrating my identity as an HIV positive man, I haven't found a way, yet, to bring up casually while negotiating a blow job from a hot guy at a party that I am HIV positive. And since not having found the strength or whatever it takes to disclose in a situation like that or any other random hook up moment, the best thing I can do is avoid them altogether until I can find a way to do so without having a complete and total breakdown.

And walking down the street sober and believing that there is a queer mafia out there watching your every move and judging you or somehow monitoring your computer usage or cloning your cell phone to read your text messages is not worth it. It just really isn't worth it. And, truly, I don't want to end up pushing a cart full of old cat bones up and down 10th Avenue talking to my invisible friend Buttons and singing the Star Spangled Banner every time a car alarm goes off.

Yes people, I am on medication. Zoloft is my bestest friend ever.

It doesn't really matter that this moments are rare. It doesn't matter that 99.8% of the time, I go about my life, eating, shitting, talking, praying, laughing, and loving. One single evening, like tonight, where the issues converge by a chance moment and grow into something so unwieldy, uncomfortable, and avoidable, is so not worth it.

Maybe six months or a year from now, I will have done enough internal work that I can once again open myself up to deeper physical connections with negative folks. Perhaps I will get over whatever it is in my life that will not allow me to see, own, and be responsible for just my actions and not the actions of folks with whom I have connected, but that day is not today.

But I also refuse to walk away from being a sexual being. That is what so many would have us do, stripping an integral part of our humanity away from ourselves or boxing in our choices for us. Also, it is what so many of us living with HIV do to ourselves, denying that we are inherently sexual beings and that having a sex life is critical to being a healthy person.

Dealing with the mental health impacts of meth use is no joke people. Struggling with addiction is no joke people. And living with HIV isn't either.

And, just to answer a question that has been asked by more than one person, "Why/How do you write about some of the things you write about so openly," and the answer is so simple: I am not the only person that is going through this in the world.

We hide anything to do with mental health. We pretend it doesn't exist. We judge and look down on anyone that openly acknowledges that they are living with a mental health diagnosis. I don't have to tell you that addicts are dehumanized (and we won't talk about the fact that 75% of all queer people are either active or recovering addicts or alcoholics). We do the same thing to people living with HIV.

And, because of the work I have done or the way people perceive me or the way I project myself or the education I have or the opportunities I have had, when I talk about my struggles as openly and candidly as I can, it puts a different mental image in peoples heads about who it is that lives and works and even thrives living with addiction, HIV, and mental health diagnosis (temporary or otherwise). It also lets people know that living is work and growing is work and sometimes it is hard work.

So I try to struggle openly. I try to share what I've attempted and how it turned out...whether it is a recipe gone wrong or a date gone wrong. Just like with queer folks, the more of us that are living with HIV, addiction, and mental health diagnosis come out of our closest, the easier it will be for those that come after us to live better, healthier, and less stigmatized lives.

Please Come Back Dr. King

It's the day after my birthday party. Last night I was surrounded by some of the most beautiful and amazing people that I have ever had the pleasure to meet. That so many tremendous humans came together to celebrate my birthday was a sweet joy and a blessing. This morning I had to fight my own internal tapes that tell me that I don't deserve to be loved by so many beautiful people, but this morning those tapes don't win. Love wins. Thank you my family, my community, my people for loving me so gently and so beautifully last night.

I have been crying for the last five minutes. And not just crying but acting like I have been beaten for doing something wrong. You know the kind of crying where you can't catch your breath. You know what I am talking about.

But they are actually happy tears. Let me tell you a story.

This morning, a person that is family to me as if he were blood kin, posted on his Facebook wall, an excerpt from Dr. King's speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop." If you haven't heard this speech, and so many people have not heard it, you should listen to it now. This was the speech that Dr. King gave the night before he was assassinated. These were the final words he spoke in public:

Well I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has it's place. But I'm not concerned with that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I am happy tonight. I am not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Maybe I am a big old softy...but listening to that speech in the doctor's own words maybe me choke up like an old black lady at a funeral.

Hey glory.

Yesterday was the 47th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Yesterday Glen Beck and Douchnozzle Extreme Sarah Palin held a rally...at the Lincoln Memorial....talking about taking back the Civil Rights Movement.

Fuck them. FUCK THEM. FUCK THEM IN THE FUCKING SKULL WITH A RUSTY RAZOR BLADE COVERED IN EBOLA!

So glad I got that out of my system.

I am actually angry. I am so angry I could spit random toiletries. The anger is directed solely at one target: myself. I am angry that I have succumbed to hatred. On the anniversary of Dr. King's most famous speech. I have betrayed his memory and legacy by bowing down to the emotion of the enemy. I have let hatred overcome my spirit, and I have reveled in it.

I am ashamed of myself. Dr. King deserves better. I deserve better.

I wish that I could love my enemy as I love myself. I wish that I could live the spirit of Dr. King.

Let me be clear. Dr. King was a human. He was a womanizer and was not faithful to the commitments he made to Mrs. Coretta Scott King. He was gay accepting but only to a point. He kept his mentor and friend and architect of the 1963 March on Washington Bayard Rustin on the sidelines and out of the limelight because of his sexual orientation. But not despite all that, but because of all that...because he was human and because being human he still inspired us to be more than we are and gave us the space to imagine ourselves as better than this world would have us be, I love Dr. Martin Luther King.

I remember.

In high school, I had an amazing history teacher by the name of Frederick Burton. In my senior year, his three year old daughter recited, from memory, Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech as part of a Black History Month celebration in Minneapolis. Mr. Burton blessed my entire school by having his daughter's rendition of the speech broadcast over the school's intercom system. In my mind and in my spirit I can still hear her little and powerful voice say, "Free at last...free at last...thank God Almighty...we are free at last."

I believed every word that little girl said.

The power and legacy of Dr. King is that he continues to inspire us 42 years after he was assassinated by the United States government. Now, more than at anytime when Dr. King was alive, we know the truth about him as a man. We know about his weaknesses and his foibles, and we, or at least I, love him even more for his humanity. And though Glen Beck and Sarah Palin tried to co-opt his dream yesterday...though they straight up lied about the coincidence of organizing a rally on that day while including Dr. King's fucked up, self-hating, stupid and ugly niece in the line up for the event....no one can take Dr. King from us. No one can take his dream from us.

Dr. King DID get to the mountaintop...and he DID see the promised land...and though that land may still be far off...and though many of us may not live to see our arrival...the arc of the universe does bend towards justice...and we will get there...we shall overcome...some day....very...very soon.

Who We Date: Queer Men of Color and Race

A blessing that I have found as a writer and particularly through my blogging is that more often than I ever imagined, folks that read my writing come to me with questions wondering if I've ever written on the topic or wondering if I would share my thoughts on a subject.

With total and complete humility, I am really and truly honored when that happens. And sometimes, I don't have much to offer but I always try to share my thoughts honestly, including owning when I just don't know.

But now and again someone asks a question that I have not only thought about but also lived in a really personal way. Recently, a long time acquaintance of mine from Minnesota sent me a really honest and searching email. In some real ways he and I have had parallel journeys. We are both mixed race queer kids from Minneapolis. In fact, we both grew up in the same neighborhood. We are about the same age, and, in fact, though I didn't know him growing up, we have many friends in common. I met this gentleman almost as soon as I started going out to 18+ night at the bars in Minneapolis.

Unsurprisingly, in the mid-90s, he and I were two of a very very very small handful of queer men of color in the bars at the time.

When he wrote to me, he was asking if I had ever had the experience of having a black gay man ask me if I have ever dated a black man. Or, even more directly, accused me of being only into "hot white boys." He also asked if I have had the experience upon meeting someone in person or online and politely declining their interest if I have been accused, immediately, of my declination being about the color of the person asking, specifically, black skin. He also talked about the frustration of being in those moments and feeling that based on the place the conversation had gone that he was unable to answer honestly. For him, the honest answer is that he hasn't dated a black man. In my case the answer is yes.

But the distance between his no and my yes is not all that great.

Like my friend, I grew up in what is still the third whitest state in the country. In the last 15 years, Minneapolis as a city has diversified in leaps and bounds. The city that is now is not the city, demographically, that it was in 1995. There were no queer Latin nights at the bar. The black queer community was deep underground and it organized itself through a series of house parties. The queer Latino community also eschewed the gay bars for house parties and straight Latin clubs. Indeed, we knew who each other were at the salsa bars but it was a community in the closet--a really big closet. The Asian/Pacific Islander queer community at the time would throw late night BBQs in order to get together, and they would, from time to time, go out en masse and dance all together in the same corner of the bars. The gay bars were dominated by white gay men who felt absolutely no restraint in saying clearly and to your face, "I don't date black men." And, frankly, it didn't matter how light skinned a black man was...if the skin wasn't pearly white, then you weren't on the menu. There were the exceptions, most often white men that fetishized men of color, but, overwhelmingly, the message was quite clear: Black ain't beautiful in the queer community in Minneapolis.

Add to that the conundrum of the mixed race family. I have no idea the details of my friend's family, but I was raised by my white Mother and her family. And, although my Mom is now married to her fourth husband of color, I was deeply aware of how my own family struggled with race, and I knew some of our family history around race. In particular, I knew that my Mother's relationships with men of color had caused deep divisions in the family.

Throw on top of that all of the media messages we get about what constitutes beauty...and you have a trifecta of factors, particularly in a city with almost no visible queer community of color or examples of brown and black men loving each other openly, which has lead to many a person of color in Minneapolis that, indeed, is only into "hot white boys."

Further, my friend went on to discuss the fact that sometimes people are just attracted to a certain type of person, look, etc. And that there are folks that won't date someone because of their skin color, but he had a hard time wrapping his head around why folks would go into the world and start from a place of assuming that if they are turned down for a date/hook up by another man of color that the reason must be about race.

I really have no problem understanding that.

I have heard too many times and been told to my face or via chat on a hook up site that, "I am cute but I don't do XYZ," that I am suspicious, particularly with white men, when it comes to that. I don't assume the rejection is based on race unless they admit that it is, but when they do, I about lose my mind.

And, when a man of color asks me or accuses me of not being interested because he is black, I general have a very compassionate reaction and understand where that question originates. It originates in the very real racism, and in the case of queer men of color, internalized racism that exists overtly in the queer community. Unless said person that I've rejected is being a straight up biznatch, I generally am really clear about why it is that I am not interested...usually its because the man has a butter face, but, instead of saying that, I simply outline, nicely, that this or that isn't working for me. And, if necessary, I can always pull out my slut book and list off the 100 or so black men that I have quite happily dated and or rode like a mechanical bull at a country bar in Texas. Ahem.

That's Brandon now...Brandon in 1995 wouldn't have dated a black man to save his life. And that shit was all about me.

I grew up with a Step-Dad that beat my ass so badly that I still take anti-PTSD medication to this day. I grew up in a family where I received, never ever consciously, indirect messages that black was somehow bad--as I knew that my family had been angry with my Mother for dating black men....so....in a child's mind....logically....dating black men must be a bad thing. Being mixed race and one of the "smart kids," I had been given shit by other black kids in my neighborhood and all throughout school, so by the time I left for college, except for the black kids in my magnet program in high school, I didn't want anything to do with the community--and I had never experienced the very real and beautiful educated and loving black community that exists nor did I understand the roots of the anger of those beautiful black men that ridiculed me in school....I had been the target of anger from black men that were justifiably pissed off at white folks but since they couldn't attack them, I was the next best thing. And then coming out when and where I did and being told clearly that black wasn't beautiful was the final nail in my self-hating coffin. I then ran off to a school with exactly 9 U.S. born students of color about half of which were black. So, you know, not a lot of unlearning negative messages about blackness and beauty coming from that quarter (though there were a lot of white fake hippy children playing djembe and taking African dance...GOD HELP ME!)

I didn't think about any of that nor did I engage with any of that when looking at the men that I was dating, I just told myself that I just wasn't attracted to black men and that, you know, people are attracted to different people, so what's the big deal.

The big deal was all that shit beneath the surface that was the real reason why I wasn't attracted to black men...and it had nothing to do with black men, everything to do with me, but...and this is the part that is about community...by not engaging with the truth behind why I wouldn't date black men...and by turning a number of black men down...I was replicating the exact cycle of hurt that was dividing black and brown men from each other and made me unable to find my own people beautiful.

I was lucky. I transferred from my first college to the University of Minnesota, and Minneapolis had started undergoing a radical demographic shift and queer people of color were asserting themselves into the community. Folks were also pushing back against the racism found there. I started doing national work with other queer people of color and was given the opportunity to work in close community with loving people that knew EXACTLY the reason why it is so hard for brown men to love each other, and, through their gentle love, I was able to start seeing that my lack of attraction wasn't really just a "preference," but a result of a series of personal historical and community history events that decided for me what constituted beauty and attractiveness. I worked at a queer youth organization that was mostly queer youth of color organizing with other queer youth of color. And we all struggled around these issues together.

Finally, I made a decision that I was only going to date men of color and for almost four years that is exactly what I did. I had the blessing and the privilege to look into my own past, see my wounds, and work to heal them with other people that had experienced the same thing.

And because of that, to this day, when I am confronted by anger from men of color that immediately believe that I am not interested in them because of race...I understand. For me, now, it isn't true. And I am able to share clearly why it is that I am not interested in a particular person with the complete and secure knowledge that it isn't about race. (And I am fairly certain that the parade of nations that has made it way through my bed including some lesser known island nations in Micronesia is a certain indicator that the days of only white men in my bedroom are long gone). But I understand the anger. I appreciate the anger. And I hope that the reasons for the anger will one day no longer be there.

But that is going to take more intentional work on the part of brown and black men to examine the decisions we make, understand the decision we make, heal from any wounds that we have taken, and then look again at who we love and who we fuck. And, if at that point you still have a preference for this or that type of person that includes a particular shade of skin, you at least know that it is actually a preference and not a choice that was made for you by history, racism, and a standard of beauty that most often doesn't include men with skin like ours.