We do not believe in your god

You are not our elders

Many of your ‘morals’ are our ’sins’

But we believe in and support your freedom to believe what you believe and to live how you wish to live

All we ask in return is the same magnanimity, the same goodwill

Keep your noses out of our uteruses and homes

Out of our loved ones’ private lives and relationships

Keep your threats off of our president

We don’t want your ‘morals,’ we don’t want your lifestyle

We have come to our own ‘morals’ with careful analyses of lifetimes of evidence

We are happy with our ethical codes and happy to live in a country whose constitution guarantees us the right to follow them

We believe in individual freedom, not taking freedom away

We believe in love, not bigotry and hatred

We believe in peace, not war

We believe in unity, not division

And we believe that if you keep trying to foist your beliefs on the rest of us, you are a political campaign and not a church and therefore should be taxed, like the rest of us

May the Catholic Church, Focus on the Family, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stop their ideological tyranny

May these churches and organizations engage instead in the Christ-like behavior of helping those who are suffering, of providing community and resources for those in need

And may we all enjoy the freedoms guaranteed by our founding constitution and so bravely defended for generations

Sincerely,

The Liberated

Everywhere, USA

Tonight I attended a panel discussion in which I could not get the space to phrase some simple questions. This is not to say that I feel the space was not allowed me, nor anyone else, but that there were, at all the wrong moments (for my little question(s)), many other people wishing to share commentary. And so it was that I was not able to ask my questions of the esteemed panel comprised of Phyllis Jackson, Judith Halberstam, Yong Soon Min, Amelia Jones, and Jennifer Doyle. While my questions remain, I now have- at least- the ability to better articulate the ruminatory peregrinations that my mind made during the volleyed commentary between panelists and audience members alike.

My primary question is: How can we (who label ourselves feminists, or more particularly, radical feminists) show everyone else that feminism is The Answer? I know, I know: the last two words of that last sentence will turn off many critical, educated postmodern theorists simply by implying a unified anything. I posit that we can sidestep that problem by allowing the radical, liberatory definition of feminism that I have learned from studying bell hooks which is, simply, that feminism is for Everybody (for the whole, unified entirety of humanity- Everybody!!) The definition of feminism in this case implies that it is a universal solution to a universal problem: oppression (which we may also call patriarchy). Liberation from oppression: feminism crumbling the walls of patriarchy. How do we show all of society that the feminist rejection of hierarchy and oppression, whether it be on the basis of race, sex, class, nationality, sexuality, physical ability, etc., is to everyone’s benefit? How do we show that even those amongst us who appear the most privileged have the benefit of a healthier society and a greater ability to express their true selves in a feminist context?

Professor Doyle referred to writing by Audre Lorde in which she exhorts those that are meeting, perhaps policy-making, to look around at each other and note who is missing. In any organization, who is missing that will clearly not be representing themselves? Who must we represent in our conversations? Professor Jackson made a great point: younger feminists were missing from the panel. I would add that older feminists (older than 60) were also missing from the panel. The question I really wanted to raise was . . . where were the men? This is, of course, tied to my conclusion that (obviously) mainstream society is not aware that feminism is for everybody, but more importantly: why didn’t anyone bring up the lack of 1) male-created feminist art in the WACK! exhibit and 2) the possible damage that may be done to feminism when it is represented in such a public way as simplistically “for, by, and about women” and 3) the panel’s lack of male members.

This concerns me because I work with young people, aged 12-18 years old. I teach them in the classroom, but I also work with them in an activist context, as the faculty advisor to the campus gay-straight alliance. Our GSA has explored the liberatory benefits to all people when we educate the campus on Transgender Day of Remembrance, National Coming Out Day, etc. The GSA members know that anti-racist work is directly tied to anti-homophobic work and anti-sexist work. We’re still working on class issues, but they are seeing the connections. I have used the word feminism once with the GSA students. When I did, the hint of snickers and sideways glances from some of the students indicated to me that for these children, feminism is the real “f” word. Feminism, to them, conjures what the anti-feminist backlash has intended for it to conjure: angry, white, queer women yelling about outdated concerns. I’m quite sure that this is as far as the young people who have not been radicalized into really learning about feminism go. They have not learned that feminism is an academic lens that deconstructs oppression of all sorts. They have not learned that, in the process of making women and men equal, all sexes benefit and that this equality-producing-universal-benefit is true in terms of all other (apparent) binaries (race, class, etc.) With my young students, I avoid using the word “feminism” just as I avoid using the word “anarchism.” The media messages regarding these terms are too strongly negative for me to approach them directly. Therefore, I have been challenged to articulate around the terms . . . which, in fact, is a very effective way to teach lasting knowledge.

These young people can make the intellectual leap from anti-homophobic work to anti-racist work. My impression is that they are not able to make the intellectual leap from feminism as the outdated and angry to feminism as the utterly relevant and inclusive. Professor Halberstam raised the question of the pieces in the exhibit that represent the female body in a selfless way- as object. She described them as disarming, as unexpectedly political. [I was not taking notes: this is me paraphrasing what she said (corrections welcome!)] She pointed out that these pieces used a patriarchal expectation of women as the medium for feminist expression. This was intriguing as Professor Halberstam described the pieces, but also intriguing to me because this is not how feminism is represented in mainstream media, which is where my students have learned anything they may know about feminism. What my students have learned is the image of reactionary feminism. Feminism that has had ENOUGH! of patriarchal, sexist bullshit and is ready to say something about it. What Professor Halberstam described were pieces that could be described as a kind of evocative feminism . . . by hooking a crochet needle (if you will) through one part sympathy and one part fury and one part identification and one part sadness, a feminist might be made. This is not the feminism we see in mainstream media.

In fact, this is not the kind of activism we ever see in the media, because it’s not the form that activism most often takes. For every anti-war or anti-Bush demonstration I go to, I have the choice of myriad contingents to join. All but one of them intend to hold many signs and to be vocal. The one group that I have never (yet) chosen to join is the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. While I am affiliated with the group, I have not walked with the group in silence at a large demonstration nor sat in quiet meditation off to one side. When making this decision, the question I always ask myself is: how long can I be angry? Is this the time to reject reaction and to NOT just do something, but to sit there? Until now, I’ve decided that my daily life is the peaceful activism of intentional community and cultivated compassion and that the demonstrations are the time to speak up and protest loudly against the white supremacist capitalist [imperialist] patriarchy that is literally in the way of every beautiful possibility on the planet. To be sure, there are ways to subvert that power structure (what I do when I find a place of compassion inside myself or when my community consenses on a decision after much discussion.) However, these subversions are lost in the onslaught of media images of gyrating hipsters listening to their iPods in a false reality of materialistic bliss. What I am protesting is that denial of a voice for our subversive collectives in an age when product consumption is identity and representation is reserved for the highest bidder. At the same time, I am living one alternative and sometimes documenting such.

This may be where the schizophrenic requirement to be at the center and also in the margins, as a few people mentioned during the panel / audience discussion, arises: a movement requires visibility and representation, but is at the same time so much more than what most people will ever see and could ever try to represent. Perhaps this is where our imperative, those who would call ourselves feminists, arises. We must represent ourselves. I consider myself a radical feminist, and my questions may serve to represent not only me, but perhaps other radical feminists: Where were the men tonight on the panel, and how can we get a widespread embrace of feminism as a present solution rather than as a historic event?

Last summer, I was given a ticket by a poor excuse for a civil servant in San Francisco. I was very upset. In response, I wrote the following letter. The San Francisco court’s response is posted below my letter.

********

August 30^th, 2006

To Whom it May Concern at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco,

I am sending this check of $114.97, corresponding to citation number MXXXXXXXXN, because I have no other option, nor apparent recourse to question this fine, available to me. I am writing this letter to you at the San Francisco MTA, the San Francisco Guardian and Mayor Newsom’s office because the circumstances causing the imposition of this fine, which I and my friend both received, were unfair and highly discouraging of visitors to your otherwise fine city.

My friend and I were in San Francisco for the San Francisco marathon in late July. I live in Los Angeles, and my friend that I traveled to San Francisco with lives in Long Beach. While we both have traveled to San Francisco many times, we are not very familiar with the public transit system in that city. We usually ride bicycles when in San Francisco.

On the particular day that we received our fines, we had taken the Muni from our friend’s house to the Embarcadero station in order to pick up our race numbers for the race the next day. Upon re-entering the station the way we had exited (as far as we knew, the only entrance,) we found all of the turnstiles closed to accepting money. There were bits of metal disallowing the insertion of the coins we had just changed from our bills. There were no directions posted on the turnstiles about how one could go about paying her money and then use the Muni to get where she needed to go. We were both perplexed. We saw that there were people downstairs, who had somehow paid their money to ride the Muni. We also saw that there were two people in police uniforms on the platform below, just as another passenger walked past us and used the wheelchair door to go downstairs, avoiding the turnstiles. We quickly decided to do the same and approach the officers for direction on how to pay our money in order to ride the Muni.

As an aside, I was raised to look up to police officers and consider them the authority figures to approach when in trouble or, in this case, when you need some guidance for familiarizing oneself with a foreign transportation system. They are supposed to protect and to serve. As an adult, I now know that this image of police officers is a mythology, but in this case my friend and I both earnestly believed that a simple good-natured request for direction would be harmless. I imagined it would, at least, not bother the officers as much as screaming from upstairs for some directions, which appeared to be our only other option.

So, we descended the stairs, coins in hand, and approached the officers, only to receive about twenty minutes of belittling and rude behavior from one officer, named K. Randall, serial number 21 (according to my citation.) The other officer remained silent. We received no help in learning how we could have paid our money to approach the platform until after being issued the fines. Ostensibly, we were punished for not paying money before approaching the platform. However, we were really punished for being tourists in San Francisco and not being familiar with the fact that there is more than one entrance to the station or that, when in doubt about what to do if the turnstiles are out of commission, one must scan all of the notices on the operator’s kiosk to find one that explains what to do in that situation.

To be most honest, this whole situation couldn’t have seemed more like a trap to extort money from tourists. Here was the Muni station closest to the race depot on the day before the race, and the stairs entering the station lead directly to turnstiles that will not accept money. Then, at the bottom of the stairs past those turnstiles (and not at the bottom of the stairs with functioning turnstiles,) there are two police officers barking to those descending, “Do you have your ticket?” The citations issued are for no small change, yet small enough that it would be ludicrous to take time off from work and get oneself to San Francisco for a court date to contest it, which is the only listed option that we have.

I’ve always been a fan of San Francisco for so many reasons, but this experience has left me with a negative view of San Francisco police officers and a decreased interest to travel to the city again. If this is how police officers are trained to handle tourists and the process for violation contestation is set up to exclude recourse for tourists, I’d rather forgo the many hours of ruminating the injustice of this situation, the egregious treatment from Officer Randall, and not spend the valuable work time I have had to dedicate to writing this letter.

I request that our fines be overturned and that the apparent system of hiring officers in order to gouge money from people in the city in order to pay those officers’ wages be closely examined. It seems like a negative system, from the perspective of one that has been exploited by that system.

Sincerely,

A. Velorucion

********

October 25, 2006

IN RE: CITATION NO: CMXXXXXXXXN

Please be advised that Commissioner G. Rosen-Park reviewed your citation, and the matter has been dismissed. Therefore, the matter is now closed and no further proceedings are necessary. You will be receiving [sic] refund of $114.97 within eight weeks. Please retain this letter for your record.

N. Gabriel,

Deputy Clerk

Lately my attention, ever so protected from distraction so that I may create beauty and life in spite of the ugliness and death that one may see so often in the news, in other people, in the air . . . has been drawn into the ugliness. My attention has been taken, despite myself, as I increasingly cannot ignore the fact that my tax dollars and my nation of citizenry are being used to destroy those values that I hold dear and reinforce those patterns that destroy life.

It is easy, in this patriarchal, homophobic, philosophically intolerant, over-consumptive time and place where intellectualism is vilified and war is waged to dismiss someone like me and my views. I am a young queer woman who chooses humility- to ride a bicycle and eat low on the food “chain,” to aspire to follow the eightfold path of Buddhist teachings- rather than accept the dominant culture of immediate gratification interwoven with Death with a capital “D.” I am a Feminist with a capital “F,” militant without being violent. That is to say, I believe all men and all women should be free to be who they dream to be, regardless of whether a man will be able to support a family being that person or a woman will be conventionally beautiful as that person. We should all have the freedom of realizing self-actualization. That is feminism.

I am also a scientist that doesn’t take myself too seriously, and a teacher that desires to share a healthy and peaceful planet with my students rather than just knowledge. For all of these reasons, it is clear that I don’t support George W. Bush or his regime and I never have- I did not vote for him in 2000 and, when in his first few months in office he reneged on the Kyoto protocol, I had already had enough. Now that affront to the rest of the planet is forgotten in a slew of affronts and outright war crimes and human rights crimes perpetrated by the Bush administration. But I’m just an angry feminist queer, right?

Think Again.

I grew up in a highly conservative household. I was raised on evangelical Christianity, Republicanism, and Focus On the Family readings. I was a “Young Republican” in early high school, later a self-defined “Libertarian” (thank you, Ayn Rand.) I’m a Daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve heard all of the arguments about all of the controversial issues a conservative can make. I’m not categorically in opposition to all of them. But I AM categorically in opposition to leadership the likes of Bush and all of the politicians in D.C. that are supporting him. And I will be in the streets, along with thousands in LA and as yet untold numbers in over 175 places throughout the United States on October 5^th, protesting Bush and the course he has taken this nation.

I remember the time when my father signed me up with the Daughters of the American Revolution. He had spent parts of his free time for the last decade or so doing intense genealogical research on his (and my mother’s) family, eventually discovering that someone in our ancestry fought in the American Revolution. This is the only criterion for becoming a member of the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution. So he sent the evidence in and suddenly he and I were members of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution (but my mother wasn’t, because it wasn’t her ancestor that fought.) I was in college. I quickly heard from friends that the Daughters of the American Revolution have an unfortunate history of racism and nationalism.

As part of my joining the Daughters of the American revolution, my father sent the Daughters my email address, so I would get periodic Southern California Daughters of the American Revolution email updates about gatherings and whatnot. Well, one of those emails had a homophobic, nationalist and militaristic joke in it, which implied that French soldiers are all gay because they aren’t as interested in war-mongering as American soldiers apparently are. I was so disgusted by the email that I deleted it. And then I immediately deleted it from my trash box. And then I kicked myself because I had just lost my chance to write a scathing reply to the violent homophobe that had sent it and everyone else on the list. Soon after that, I was graduated from college and I lost that email address. I no longer receive emails from the Daughters of the American Revolution that insult other people and my intelligence. Good riddance.

I am, however- still and forever, because I can’t change my ancestry- a Daughter of the American Revolution. As such, and as an American citizen generally, I will demonstrate on October 5^th as part of the World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime! demonstration. I will demonstrate against the Bush regime for taking the nation that my ancestor fought to liberate from empire and that subsequent ancestors worked their entire lives- in factories, in offices, in fields, in homes, and even in the military- to create. They created the wealth of this country and upheld the early ideals of this country and served this country in whatever ways they knew how. My father’s ancestors have served this country since its inception and my mother’s ancestors have served this country since the early 20^th century. I will demonstrate on October 5^th in all of their names.

I understand that this country’s wealth has been created first on the backs of slaves from Africa and forever on the backs of those with the least monetary wealth and more recently on the backs of people in developing countries, but I also recognize that many Americans today and many Americans in the past didn’t realize these scaled power structures, repeated from international dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics, etc. It is in the idealized America that my ancestors placed their faith, and it is the Bush Regime’s erasure of that America and worldwide endangerment of America and Americans that I will protest.

On October 5^th, with respect for the ideals with which this nation was conceived, such as democratic representation and division of powers and the agency of the people that are governed to demand justice and a government that reflects their best interests, I will demonstrate. The zeitgeist producing this nation and its founding ideals are clearly described in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I recognize that every government is established by idealists, truly believing that their form of government will lead to a peaceful and prosperous existence. I also recognize that, while the founders of the United States of America had very clear ideals, shaped by the fire of tyrannical rule by a foreign king, they were also racist and engaged in a genocide of the indigenous peoples on this continent. Our history is a shameful one. I am proud of the ideals, and not proud of the hatred and killing that came alongside those ideals. Even at the beginning of this nation, those that called themselves citizens of the United States did not see the blatant connection between the imperialism they were escaping by declaring their independence and the imperialism they were perpetuating by claiming a land and murdering its people.

The clauses of the Declaration of Independence following the one above are a litany of the abuses suffered by residents of the British colonies under the thumb of the king of Britain. These are the abuses shaping the “absolute despotism” that motivated the colonists to “throw off” the king’s rule and declare themselves an independent nation.

Most of the abuses directly describe the tactics taken up by the Bush regime. More importantly, the arrogant, imperialistic, militaristic and self-interested attitude defining all of them equally describe the Bush regime’s actions. The founders of this nation declared this type of ruler a despot. They used the lessons from the oppression and suffering endured under the king to create a nation where such abuses would not happen again. And yet, before our very eyes, the Bush regime is bucking all of those protective devices against intolerance and despotism- the right to one’s own religion, the separation of powers, the right to privacy and fair trial . . . the list doesn’t end. It is time to throw off this government. This government that not only doesn’t represent most U.S. citizens’ best interests, but doesn’t represent the United States, as a nation’s, best interest as it perpetuates our “addiction to oil” and our military-industrial complex that, while it fattens the pockets of Bush’s CEO friends, places our nation at the top of every list of most despised peoples. We are despised for allowing our government to get so out of hand that the health of the global ecosystem and the life of people all over the planet are ominously at risk, both indirectly through our refusal to take responsibility for the planet’s health or directly, as the targets of our weapons.

As a Daughter of the American Revolution and as an American citizen, both labels conferred upon me not through any particular virtue of my own but by happenstance of my birth, I declare this government despotic and demand that the Bush regime step down and take its program with it. Please join me on October 5^th, in the town or city that you live in, to demand the same. It is our patriotic duty.

The World Can’t Wait- Drive Out the Bush Regime!

san francisco.

fabulous in so many ways. frolick into muni station, stop and realize that exact change is needed. dollar fifty. seek out change machine, change the twenty into fives and the five into dollar coins. lucky for us, we already got the quarters.

head for the turnstile, sign reads “PASS ONLY.” hmm . . . maybe i’ll just try to put my coins in the coin slot . . . but it’s blocked by a piece of metal.

man bypasses turnstile and opens the wheelchair door to go downstairs and catch the train. we follow, and, at the door, see that there are two muni officers downstairs. we can ask them how we’re supposed to pay. as we’re coming down the stairs, coins in hand, one officer yells up to us,

“do you have your tickets?”

“actually, we were just coming down here to ask you how to pay, because the turnstiles weren’t accepting money.”

“oh- you came down here to ask us?”

“yes.”

“and how did you know that we were down here?”

“we could see you from up there. the guy before us came through the handicapped door, and when i walked over there, i saw that you were down here.”

“how long have you lived in san francisco?”

“we don’t. we’re visiting from LA.”

“can i see your ID cards?”

“okay.”

“are you in the process of moving here?”

“no- we’re here for the marathon.”

“did you look for an attendant when you couldn’t pay your fare?”

“yes- there wasn’t one.”

“oh? and how did you know that there wasn’t one?”

“there was no one in the kiosk.”

“so you looked in the kiosk?”

“yes.”

“and you didn’t see the sign?”

“what sign? there were many signs. we were looking for a person to ask how to pay our fare.”

leading us upstairs,

“well, you’ve entered a ticket-only zone. it’s up to $500 dollar fine for entering this zone without a ticket.”

pointing to rather large, but otherwise surrounded my many other visual distractions, sign,

“if you had looked in the kiosk for an attendant, you would have seen this sign.”

the sign reads, “NO ATTENDANT pay fare at other end of station.”

silence.

“so i’m going to have to give you a citation. hello, supervisor.” as another person in uniform walks by.

anger seething out of my pores, disempowermentoverwhelmingadrenalinerushingfistclenchingicouldtearyour fuckingheadoff,youslimyexcuseforahumanbeingusingmeasawaytomakeyourself feellikeyouhavesomekindofpower,whenallitisisapowertripbyabutchdykewoman inaworldthatcan’tacceptyousoyou’regoingtofuckthewomanyoucouldneverlayin whateverwayyoucanandoh, you’regoingtohaveyourwaytoday,aren’tyou? becauseyou’vegottheuniformthatididn’tgiveyou. someonetoldyouyouhadsomeauthorityandnowyou’reusingitlikethegoodcopyouare. whensomeonecomestoyouforhelp,yougive’emanicestrongfuckintheassbecause

youisacopandiisnothingand

i’d

better

learn

to

take

it.

right?becausethere’snothingelsetodointhisunderground,tiledhell.

“is this your address?”

“no. it’s my parents’ address.”

“do you want to give me your address?”

“i don’t have an address.”

“i need an address where you can be reached.”

“do you want my work address, ma’am?”

“sure. whatever address.”

people start walking up to the turnstiles. some have passes, know what they’re doing. others, like us, look perplexed.

“look out! this is a trap!”

second officer shushes me. i continue.

“if you have coins, you’ll have to go to the other end of the station, like this not very obvious sign says,” pointing to the sign.

people walk in the right direction, thanking me. back to the officer, i slowly state my work address, measured enunciation that you could slit a throat with.

“okay, i’ll need you to sign here.”

“i’m not signing that. why would i sign that?”

“if you don’t sign it, you’ll be arrested. this is a nontraffic violation. it won’t appear on your driving record. the top part shows your information, the bottom part describes the violation, this is my name and star number,”

i take the pen, write my initials across the entire bottom half of the sheet,

“i’m really impressed with how well you filled out the sheet.”

as she tears the sheet off her pad, handing it to me,

“when i go in to the station tonight, i’m going to make note of your poor attitude,”

“and i’ll make a note of yours.”

“your three options are to not appear in court or pay a fine, and a felony warrant for your arrest will be issued, or pay the fine,”

“do you still have my ID card?”

“yes,” finding it and handing it to me.

“or contest the charge.”

i’m already walking away. disgusted. fuming.

my friend A.B. finally walks over, after the officer refuses to tell her what our options are, as i clearly wasn’t listening.

we’re walking up the stairs out of the muni station, walking now that i’m too enraged to consider going and paying a fare after such treatment, enraged that my afternoon has been thoroughly ruined, and i scream

likeafuckingbansheealltheragepoursoutofmylungsechosinstairwellscaresoffother passengersfromtrainundergroundtobusaboveground,myfuriousvoicegrowls atthismonsterthathoversoverme.

second citation in two months. the police state is out of control. just when i think i couldn’t be any more radical, a situation comes along and i think, “well- i’ll be damned. we’re more fucked than i had imagined!”

by the time we’ve walked halfway to friend M.G.’s house, my body feels limp. a simple jaunt to the waterfront and back turned into an exhausting lesson to never: NEVER trust cops. avoid them at all costs.

how does one exist in the city and avoid the cops?

the lyrics from “cop killa” come into my head because i just heard them two weeks ago when i saw “beyond beats and rhymes: a hip-hop head weighs in on manhood in hip-hop culture,” which was well-done and thought-provoking. and, as usual, i realized that it’s all connected. the power-trip grasping after manhood of the cops that have given me citations is in response to their own sense of inadequacy (because, really, why else do people become cops?) this posturing and claiming of power make those that are oppressed- me, lately, and african-american youth, usually- hold onto OUR “manhood” all the more tightly.

it’s a vicious cycle and, like war, there will be no “winner.”

just losers, all around.

that’s what a fascist police-state (few will deny it, at this point) makes us all.

i’m reminded now of the tactical ice-cream unit, straight outta SF. yes. i think that is all i have to say about that. even in these times that try my soul, i can still count on signs of irreverant disregard for authority to warm the cockles of my heart.

I returned to the intentional community that I live in (the Los Angeles Eco-Village) this week, after two weeks in Colorado. Curious to see how the most recent building committee meeting had gone, I navigated to our online listserve and read the meeting notes. Discussion topic number two was documented thus:

2. Short stay for 2 people from New Mexico August 26 through September 1. APPROVED. Also, 2 traveling teachers sometime in June. APPROVED. Are they angry vegans?

I’m certainly relieved that my community is asking tough questions about people that will be sharing our space. I know I don’t want any “angry vegans” in this building. What I don’t understand is why this question, with no answer, found its way into the meeting notes? Usually we document knowns and decisions, and if there is an unknown, someone’s name is usually ascribed to the unknown, because that person has agreed to follow up on the weighty question and report back to the community about their findings. Perhaps the point person on this question was erroneously left out of the meeting notes. If so, I would appreciate someone letting me know who the point person is. This is because I have some of my own concerns about these traveling teachers.

I want our point person to call up these teachers and ensure that they are not: terrorist Arabs, poor vehicle-maneuvering Asians, greedy Jews, irrational Women, criminal Blacks, promiscuous Queers, lazy Hispanics, stupid Poor people, unrealistic Liberals, or dirty Hippies. I don’t think we should invite anyone into this community who exhibits these characteristics. I know some of the Eco-Villagers might take a more lenient stand than I am, and claim that laziness or irrationality really aren’t that bad, but I’m willing to block any conversation on this matter at the next meeting because I have seen the kinds of problems that ensue when you begin associating with these Hispanics and Women, etc. All you have to do is turn on the television to see what I’m talking about. The evidence is everywhere. The Arabs, the Asians, the Jews, the Women, the Blacks, the Queers, the Hispanics, the Poor, the Liberals and the Hippies are nothing but trouble. The Vegans, however, I’m not so sure about. I haven’t seen as much evidence of the problems that they cause as the others that I have mentioned.

Clearly, we don’t want angry people in our community just as we don’t want criminals or greedy people. However, aside from the adjective “angry,” the noun “Vegan” indicates something that we DO want at the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Vegans are actively choosing an eating pattern that is the most sustainable eating pattern possible in this urban environment. Nearly three times as many resources are needed to produce a human’s omnivorous diet compared to an entirely plant-based diet. So . . . I’m willing to argue that we, in fact, don’t worry about angry veganism because we have the Conflict Resolution Committee to deal with anger from Vegans, but that we still look closely at the possible Black, Asian, Queer, etc. status of these teachers because being Black, Asian Queer, etc. does not redeem their criminality, poor driving, or promiscuity by our Eco-standards. We’re also not prepared to deal with people with these negative characteristics the way that we are prepared to deal with anger.

I would like to communicate with our point person to express my reservation regarding selecting out Vegans from the community while still allowing the Liberals, Jews, etc. to move in. Frankly, I think this reasoning is a little bit backwards, considering we are the Los Angeles Eco-Village. Yes to Vegans. They are “eco.” No to people of color, women, etc. They are not.

For more ironic negotiated readings of hegemonic messages propagated by residents of the Los Angeles Eco-Village, continue to support and not put in check the straight white males and the women that rely on patriarchy for a sense of worth in the community. These people have every interest in keeping the status quo of the greater society mirrored in our own community, and will, so long as the rest of us are complicit.

Last night I joined up with the central LA critical mass ride. There were about 60 of us, including the always-fabulous sound system that turns our rolling conversation into a rolling saddle-dance party. After some tug-of-war at the front of the ride, we veered towards South Central, to visit the South Central Farm [or] and show support for the struggle happening there. [In (very) short, the Farm is the largest contiguous urban farm in the entire country. It has been producing for 13 years, and it supports 350 families of very low income, mostly recent immigrants. It is an irreplaceable resource for the 350 families, South Central, the city of Los Angeles . . . for the planet.]

For the last 3 years, the families and organizers have been applying themselves full-time to staving off eviction by the city after the city decided to sell the land out from under the farmers. Myriad paths have been traveled in an attempt to save the farm. As of a few days ago, what appeared to be the final path had ended up short and now the farmers are awaiting, in a hypervigilant state, the sirens of the police as they arrive to forcefully remove the farmers and allow the bulldozers onto the land to tear up their livelihoods/community/culture and replace it all with a large concrete warehouse.

Our ride through South Central residential streets was met with confusion, mostly, but also the cheering and clapping and reciprocated “peace” signs that we get from pedestrians and some motorists when we go the usual north or west direction from our starting point. In reality, the “confusion” I just ascribed to most who witnessed our passing last night was something more than that. Most people don’t know what critical mass is, so there is some confusion for people who see a very motley group of people NOT in racing clothes (for the most part), on bicycles and trailing a large sound system. We aren’t carrying signs or passing out xerocracy, lately, so there’s really no indication what we are riding for. In fact, that is our most commonly received question: “What are you all riding for??” My usual response: “Fun!”

While everyone has some confusion about us, the majority of folks we saw last night in South Central met us with suspicion. Like the farmers, the whole of the low-income people of color in this city (this nation) have reason to be suspect of unusual people entering their community. In short, their own hypervigilance begs, “are these people here to exploit us?” So the joy of sharing a different vision of a Friday night with the children who were running on the sidewalk, cheering at us, was sharply counterweighed by the squinted eyes and crossed arms of the weathered men in front of their humble homes and the momentary stress our large group with no obvious purpose caused them.

And so our mass birthed out of 41^st street heading east, crossed the blue line tracks and took a sharp turn north on Long Beach Ave., past the main entrance to the farm as a whole line of activists were walking around the perimeter of the farm, holding candles and cheering at the vision of us flooding into the street and past them. We did a loop around the entire farm in the opposite direction of the marchers, and on the far side of the farm the people on watch with walkie-talkies took notice and quickly picked up their radios to report / get feedback on what all the people on bikes with a sound system was about. Hypervigilance.

As we rounded the bend back towards the main entrance, our cacophonous and blinking mass of cyborgs was in distinct juxtaposition to the tranquility of the quiet vegetables and the palpitating candlelight at the farm. Then, out of our group, came a loud “beeeoooooop!” police-car-imitating yelp originally meant to get the attention of motorists who might otherwise crush us, as cyclists, if they weren’t forced into attentiveness by the threat of a cop car in the vicinity. Most people have no idea about this sound, so any non-cyclist who witnesses it has nothing to conclude except that there is a cop car behind the mass of cyclists . . . or, in the case of THIS situation, if someone saw that it was, in fact, a cyclist’s mouth that made the sound, that the farmers’ hypervigilant state was being mocked. It’s like entering a sweatshop in downtown LA and yelling “La migra!” Insensitive, idiotic, or both. As the cop car imitation is now a greeting in the cycling community, another cyclist shot a loud “beeeeeooooooooop!!” back. I did what I could to quickly shut those people up, and I think no hard feelings were experienced by the farmers guarding the front gate, as they allowed us in. We all stayed for some amount of time, hearing the speakers, eating some food, touring the farm, enjoying the music, checking to see how Julia Butterfly Hill, up in the oldest tree at the farm and on her 11^th day of a hunger strike, was doing.

The night was not ruined, but the issue arose: as a subculture in this city, we have a responsibility to be sensitive to other subcultures. We, of all people, should be able to identify with the vulnerability and concomitant hypervigilance that being in a subculture can cause. While a large group of our cyborg beings of flesh and bicycle steel might be considered threatening in some places, we’re usually roaming the city by ourselves, and, as such, we are vulnerable to the much larger and sometimes much faster-moving cyborgs known as people in cars. Whether we dwell on it or not, we are aware of our vulnerability. If someone behind us honks, we jump because we are in, even if we don’t know it, a hypervigilant state. If we hear a skidding car somewhere behind us, we think “oh SHIT . . .” because the car could be heading straight for us. It is ironic and appropriate that from this vulnerability was spawned the cop-car-imitation as a weapon against those that could harm us.

We are imitating a (multi-leveled) oppressor in order to manipulate another oppressor. And so our weapon was inadvertently turned last night, for a moment, against a sister subculture in this city: some recent immigrants of low income that are finding sustainable, culturally appropriate ways to exist.

It’s easy to be caught up in one’s own experience, regardless of who you are. This is a call to each of us, as members of some cultures and some subcultures and as over-privileged in some regards and under-privileged in others, to THINK . . . about those around us and their positionality and to be sensitive to such, particularly when they are inhabiting a more oppressed subculture than we can claim.

[This post cross-posted with Biciblog and published on CICLE.]

Yesterday I went to see my friend L.M. perform a somewhat intense tragicomic monologue that she had written about three years ago. This was her second time performing it. It was interesting to see and even more interesting to see the audience’s response, juxtaposed to my response. I think “comedy” stems from either a sense of identification or a sense of shock. I laughed throughout her whole piece, even though I also had tears in my eyes at one part, because I identified with what she said. From what I could observe, the audience laughed every so often because they were shocked by what she was saying. They were shocked by the idea that an anarchosocialist activist could be a “nice girl.” They were shocked by the discussion of using therapy and gardening and any other reasonable method to try to mediate intense feelings of anger. They were shocked at the idea of having a physical altercation with a parking code enforcer. They were shocked by what would be a politically incorrect portrayal of Italian families if any of them tried to convey the same information.

I identified with many of her experiences / statements. I don’t even know how much of what she said is true of her own life, and how much was created for comedic effect. But I feel that much more grateful to have L. as my friend knowing that she understands my experience in a deep way, whether from personal experience or from intuiting the array of realities in which people find themselves from her studies of human behavior. In either case, she’s a genius in her execution and in her ability to draw the comedy out of the tragic.

Listening to her reminded me of Thich Nhat Hanh and some of the books he has written regarding anger. One viewpoint that I derived from those readings is recognizing immediate emotional responses to situations as seeds for greater, widely-encompassing vines that can either support and tie all of our psychological pieces together (joy) or break through and create crumbling fissures between those pieces (anger). We can choose to water the seeds of joy and weed out the seeds of anger. L. talked about viewing her garden as a metaphor for her life, with the cultivation of the beautiful and nourishing plants as a symbol for her cultivation of the positive in her life and the weeding of the plants that she did not want as the removal of the anger in her life. I think Thay would find that a beautiful practice. So long as we also recognize that the plants that we do not want are valuable, in their own right. They provide oxygen and food and habitat for other organisms, just like our anger provides insight into our core beliefs and fears.

So yesterday I met Peggy McIntosh . . . and in her presence I felt as though I was in the presence of the aging Emma Goldman herself, with her greyed hair pulled back in a loose bun and her loose-fitting, business-casual attire and spectacles and not a speck of the make-up or posturing that is so rampant in Los Angeles. She came to us from Massachusetts, where perhaps intellectual pursuits are encouraged.

I was so honored to meet her because I read some of her White Privilege work last year, as part of our faculty reading group, and she's . . . right. I've also seen Tim Wise speak twice, and he's also right, but she was his inspiration. She gave him the ammunition-in the form of acknowledging white privilege- and the target- in the form of all of the white folk who can't or won't see the fact that, in order for people that are "underprivileged" to exist, there must be some group of people, in comparison to them, that are "overprivileged" and that that group is white people.

Of course, there are many binaries in the over-versus-under privileged world, but skin color is the one which Wise speaks about. As for McIntosh, she addresses many of the privilege dichotomies that exist, including queerness. I was able to meet her because the Gay-Straight Alliance that I advise was invited to speak with her, and I was very glad to hear her excitement about our group.

I was glad because, from all that I can see, everything (literally) comes back to gender. And the queer space and the feminist space seem to be the most effective realms for deconstructing (or fucking, if you will) gender.

Gender is that quintessential, polar example of submissive vs. dominant that gets repeated in every inequitable relationship on the planet. And I believe in equality. Anti-racists believe in equality. Feminists believe in equality. Anti-capitalists believe in equality. The founders of the United States claimed some kind of belief in equality.

Yet you can't have equality when every human is raised from birth to either act in a dominant way or act in a submissive way. These gendered humans act out their pain and their rage caused by having their dynamic, free beings squeezed into some narrow description of what is feminine and what is masculine by perpetuating their pain in their relationships with people of different classes and different abilities and different physiologies and different nationalities and different belief systems and different skin colors and different attractions . . . and also in their relationships to the planet and its other creatures. In order to deconstruct the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that encompasses all of the "isms" of oppression, such as racism and sexism, we must first deconstruct gender. This gender deconstruction should be the primary goal of feminism. For some feminists, it is.

McIntosh's work in pedagogical theory relating to the creation of classrooms that take the privilege out of the material being studied and that place privilege in the hands of the students- who not only see reflections of themselves in the curriculum, but are given the space to make their lives part of the curriculum- reminded me of a book I once read called Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. It said exactly that. Maybe hooks was influenced by McIntosh, like Wise was. Or maybe McIntosh by hooks. In any case, just today I read a brief by Senator Sheila Kuehl to the LA Times discussing her recent bill to the CA legislature asking for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in anti-discrimination in school curriculum laws and for efforts to increase visibility of LGBTQ contributions in the curriculum.

It's the same message, from McIntosh, hooks, Kuehl . . . And it's true. Our experience is our reality. What good is education, if we have no point of entry? What good is education, if it only serves to disenfranchise? Just today, amidst all of this, I was teaching about star evolution and I was talking about the Orion constellation. I took a side trip in my teaching to explain that the constellation names we use in this country come from the Romans and Greeks, but that every civilization had its own astronomy and its own stories for why the stars are in the patterns that they are in. A student then asked if there were any "American" names that we use for constellations and I thought for a moment and said, "well, the big dipper is 'American,' because that constellation was actually called Ursa Major by the Romans." And he pressed, "Wasn't it named the big dipper by the slaves?" and I said "I don't know!"

Well, I looked it up, and the student was right. I'm glad to be able to report back to this student and the class tomorrow that, indeed, he (who happens to be African-American) was right and, yes, people that look like him DID contribute to our knowledge of the heavens. How many times a day do I, alone, miss opportunities to engage and affirm my students?

This process of stripping away the privilege in the curriculum is as much a way of subverting gender as crossing gender lines is a way of subverting white privilege. Kate Bornstein writes about how being straight, male, white, rich, etc. is the pinnacle of being gendered. She refers to the privilege gradients between people of differing skin colors as aspects of gender, as well as all of the other privilege gradients that can and do exist.

"The Man" is most surely straight, rich, white, male, able-bodied, masculine, and conventionally attractive. But only one person will ever be "The Man," and that person isn't me and he isn't you. So we're all out in the world with "clouds of inferiority forming," trying to demonstrate how we're ALMOST "The Man," or at least a closer resemblance to him than the person next to us.

This is how patriarchy functions to keep us insecure, to keep us tearing each other down, and to keep us in the damning business of perpetuating privilege binaries. There will always be something to grasp after. The grasping only leads to suffering.

However, it's not enough to reject one's own gender assignment and just BE as one feels most comfortable being. The dominant paradigm and the media are still heavily gendered, damaging most people's abilities to truly be free. The hierarchies that patriarchy supports are not only antithetical to the anarchistic world view, but cage individuals, on a personal level, in a state of imprisonment with significant expectations regarding behavior and lifestyle. We need to actively and publicly question gender, gender assumptions, gendered behavior, and gender expectations.

When I read Emma Goldman, the gendered nature of her assumptions and propositions sadden me. Even though she was radical and revolutionary for her time (and ours,) a cross-gendered consciousness could have taken her to even greater levels of freedom. Instead, she suffered in her grasping after the feminine role, assigning it and sexuality to utmost (essentialist) import.

And so it is with great excitement that I met Peggy McIntosh, a modern-day Emma, with a racial and sexual and gender consciousness that form a state of true liberation. I honor her and her work in schools, where we obtain our first understandings of power and privilege systems. May the universe allow that our paths cross again.