No Words.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to this link.

I LOVE the BBC




also here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7745787.stm

Hunger Strike in Greek Prisons

I am under the impression that this is now an international hunger strike. This is specifically about the treatment of people in the prisons. There are so many ways to protest the treatment in prisons and so much those of us on the outside can do.

If you read Greek go here.

If you read English go here.

Here's a bit from Teacher Dude at Now Public.

Amidst the glam and glitter that go with the opening of any international event, the start of the Thessaloniki film festival was also marked by a march of between 500 and 1000 anarchist protesting conditions in Greece’s prison system. The demonstrations, which took place yesterday evening in most of the country’s major cities were aimed at bring public attention to the hunger strike taking place throughout country’s jails.

I was told last summer by a friend that prison abolition was not a good cause to take on because somethings are just the way they are and should be left that way. I couldn't disagree more.

the future

i couldn't help but post a link to this vision. and make sure you see the ads.

Existed

If you leave who will prove that my cry existed?









Tell me what was I like before I existed.

Agha Shahid Ali

You put the Care in Care Package

My mama sent me a package today with little hearts all over it and with chocolate covered almonds from the Farmer's Market in Atlanta inside. She was in the post office for over an hour waiting to send it and doodled on the box. She wrote fragile twice on the box and after one of the "fragiles" she wrote in little letters:

fragile...

...lives
economy
weather
relationships
stories
countries
people
bones
homes
environment




over in the corner it said, "but, you be strong!"




Mama, thank you for acknowledging and saying that it's ok to feel fragile. it makes it possible for me to feel strong..

Tomato Soup for the Winter

* 1 (28 ounce) can tomato sauce
* 7 cups water
* 3 cubes vegetable bouillon
* 1 bay leaf
* 1 small onion, chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
* 1 1/2 teaspoons dried parsley
* 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon pepper
* 2 stalks celery, sliced
* 2 carrots sliced



singing this while you makes it helps the flavor:

simultaneously sing:

"the chickens got into the to-ma-toes"

while someone else is singing:

even the rabbits inhibit their habits when carrots are green

and yet another person sings

squash squash squash

Duanna Johnson

AngryBrownButch asks if the LGBT community can spare some outrage for Duanna Johnson, A trans person of color that was beaten by police in Tennessee and was recently murdered on the streets of Memphis.

The HRC is demanding a full investigation. Is the idea that we can then bring someone to "justice" for this murder? Will this solve something? Will this change the realities of violence people experience everyday? Remind me again who you were blaming for Prop 8 passing? Does this full investigation include identifying Duanna's death as part of a larger reality of violence and oppression for transpeople of color? I'm a little confused HRC...

Quote for the day? month? next four (eight) years?

When he was preparing for the Democratic primary debates, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

The World

from here

from George Jackson, Blood in my Eye:

"That's the principal contradiction of monopoly capital's oppressive contract. The system produces outlaws. It also breeds contempt for the oppressed. Accrual of contempt is its fundamental survival technique. This leads to the excesses and destroys any hope of peace eventually being worked out between the two antogonistic classes, the haves and the have-nots. Coexistence is impossible, contempt breeds resistance, and resistance breeds brutality, the whole growing in spirals that must either end in the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed or the termination of oppression."

Resisting the Racist Blame Game Around Prop 8

Adele Carpenter writes:

Dear Friends,

I am writing because I am disturbed by the string of articles, blog entries, and list serve threads that have come out in the last few days suggesting that the high turnout of African American and Latino voters for the presidential election was responsible for the passage of California's proposition 8, which dealt a heavy blow to LGBT families by banning gay marriage.


These articles mistakenly imply that the struggles for civil rights for LGBT people and communities of color are separate or even at odds with each other. They deny the work that LGBT people of color do to combat homophobia and transphobia in their families and communities, often while facing racism within the queer community as well. These articles deny homophobia among white people, and they displace blame away from those who actually have the power to consistently deny others civil and human rights, and instead, charge that when communities that have long been disenfranchised and alienated from political processes begin to participate, that the results with be negative for LGBT people.


I believe all communities need to be held accountable for their homophobia and transphobia. I want to acknowledge the suffering and hardship that the passage of Proposition 8 has caused for LGBT couples and families. But, while the media casts blame on communities of color for the failure of civil rights for LGBT people, it is imperative that we struggle against the logic that tells us that struggles for LGBT civil rights and racial justice are separate, and that we examine our strategies for advancing LGBT civil rights and gay marriage and, in particular, look at places where LGBT communities have failed to align our struggles for civil rights with ongoing struggles for racial justice.


In the months leading up the election, I saw a massive mobilization within the queer spaces in which I spend time in San Francisco to get people to vote no on 8. We live in a state that has one of the highest incarceration rates in a nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Studies have estimated that at any time, 40 percent of black men in their 20's in California are under control of the correctional system. Criminalization affects many LGBT people, in particular, those that may be experiencing addiction or who, lacking familial support, move to expensive cities where they may have a hard time accessing affordable housing and living-wage work. Despite this, I saw little or no public discourse among LGBT people about very important state propositions: 5, 6, and 9, all of which potentially impacted things like funding for prisons, alterations to sentencing for drug crimes, or the trying of minors as adults in this state.


In the last months, we have seen raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throughout the state and in San Francisco. Many people immigrate here as a result of the US foreign policy of destabilizing foreign economies. Additionally, San Francisco is home to many LGBT immigrants who have come to the country seeking safety and asylum. While my inbox was flooded with emails pertaining to Prop 8, I heard from very few queer people who were seeking to mobilize around the October 31st demonstration to protest ICE raids, or other work pertaining to ICE raids, and San Francisco's establishment as a sanctuary city.


The November ballot contained several important city initiatives that could have affected the livability of our city both for low-income people of color and for many queer people. Proposition K, an initiative to decriminalize prostitution would have helped sex workers in this city to make major strides in their ability to organize for their rights and safety, allowing them to better protect themselves against violence and police harassment. Despite the fact that many, many young LGBT people in this city earn their livings as sex workers and daily face risks to their safety, and that two trans women working as sex workers lost their lives while working in San Francisco in 2007, I saw shockingly little effort among LGBT people to educate themselves on the realities facing sex workers or the background on Proposition K, let alone to spread any word about it.


Similarly, proposition B, which would have mandated that the city set aside part of its budget for affordable housing was defeated by SF voters. In a city with a history of racist schemes of redevelopment and displacement (SOMA in the 60's, Justin Herman's redevelopment of the Fillmore, illegal evictions in the Mission in the 90s, contemporary cuts to county welfare, and most recently, the gentrification of Bayview—to name a few), San Francisco voters have failed to stand up for working families' ability to live affordably in this city—a city with where remaining working class communities of color face major threats of displacement. Despite the fact that white LGBT people often play complicated roles in the gentrification of the city and displacement of communities of color, I saw no media reports released on November 5th scrutinizing the voting trends of white LGBT San Franciscans on Propositions B, N, K, 5, 6, or 9, as juxtaposed to the numerous articles scrutinizing the voting habits of Black and Latino voters on Prop 8. And despite the overwhelmingly negative outcome of several important local and state propositions, outcry among the wider LGBT community seems to have been reserved only for Prop 8.


As a young, queer, person living in San Francisco, I feel very strongly that affordably in this city is vital to the creativity and well being of the LGBT community of San Francisco. As a white person living in the Mission, I have to think and act critically in regards to the complicated role I play in the gentrification of this neighborhood and the larger schemes of displacement within this city. I love my queer life and love living in this city. I get to witness the ways of living and congregating, making new families, new cultures, and envisioning new worlds that are possible living in a city with so many other brilliant and creative queer people. While I would like to lend my support and compassion to the people who lost the right to marry this week, I also question the logic that tells me that my only struggle as an LGBT person centers around my right to marry, rather than my ability to live and create in many other ways within a city I love. Affordable housing is central to the vitality of the LGBT community in San Francisco, to all communities, and while I sign petitions to support marriage as a right, I would like to see LGBT Californians take a serious look at the fact that housing, healthcare, and freedom from incarceration are also civil and human rights.


I would like to see LGBT Californians talk not only about their right to receive their partners' health benefits but about universal healthcare. I would like to hear us talk not just about how many LGBT people's partners cannot receive citizenship rights because of a lack of marriage rights, but connect this to struggles for immigrant rights in this state. I would like to hear LGBT people not only talk about how their families are discriminated against, but think about how many families in California are living in alternative family structures because of the mass incarceration of parents with children.


The passing of Proposition 8 is a sad day and indicative of the work that lies ahead, however, as we heal from these blows, I would like to challenge us to consider how our struggles are bound up with struggles for racial and economic justice, and how our fight for civil rights, and the health of our communities could be strengthened by taking these connections more seriously. Above all, I would like to challenge us to resist racist media schemes that, during our moment of need and a moment of possibility, are attempting to pit LGBT people and supporters against communities of color in California.


I apologize for the hasty construction of this, but time is of the essence. I welcome your thoughts.


In struggle,
Adele Carpenter
yesyesready@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif






INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.

r-b you must have seen this, right?
broken beautiful
i love that: love production.
also, someone named intisar commented on the blog. could it be the same whose sister-blog inspired MY sister-blog?

Erasing Queer People of Color

Who is getting left out of this conversation?
Why is this how we talk about queerness over and over and over again?

Dean Spade of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project writes about the erasure of queer people of color in the rhetoric of the passing of Prop 8 in California. Erasure of queer people of color is alive and well in queer movements.


At the "Campus Progress" national conference this summer in Washington DC I attended a panel on the future of the civil rights movement and there was a speaker on the panel from the Human Rights Campaign. She spoke about how young people are so much more accepting of queer people because of the wide spread images of queer people in the media. This person did not talk about which queer people were being highlighted. She did not talk about the reality that white queer celebrities are taken as the norm of what it means to be queer and that the HRC feeds into those stereotypes. She cited Ellen Degeneres as such a strong positive image of what it means to be queer and in the spotlight. Regardless of how you feel about the talk show host it spoke volumes to a long standing critique of the HRC as being a nationally listened to and government respected voice representing a very limited reality of what it means to be queer. I was fuming by the end of the panel and talked to her about this critique of the HRC. (don't buy it about the hrc? check out this) She was well aware and agreed with a great deal of it but failed to understand that her examples and assumptions that all publicity is good publicity was really damning and left people out.

There's so much to be done before I'd be comfortable with slapping one of those blue and yellow equal signs on my car.

history. weapon?

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/hiawblog.html

ALSO: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon2/world.html

AND: www.historyisaweapon.com


WHAT DO WE THINK?

Damali Ayo on The Election

Damali writes:

Tuesday night we elected this country's first African American President.

Now, we have no black senators.

I say that not to bring the party to an end, but to remind us that this work is not complete with the election of a single man to our highest office. No doubt, this is an incredible moment and for sure, my heart races when I think of it -but mostly my heart races, not because Obama is black but because he is the first true leader I've seen in the entirety of politics in my life.

And though we gave him a "mandate" with our overwhelming vote- it is *oour* mandate that I am most interested in as we move forward.

Last night at an election party during Obama's acceptance speech one woman who had voted for him crankily growled at the TV "yeah, we've heard that all before...." another friend texted me "we need to keep him on his toes." This is the side of our citizenry that disappoints me heartily. We are lazy and put responsibility on others instead of ourselves. We prefer to criticize rather than support. We elect a leader and within minutes of his first speech are ready to dis him and look for flaws. As an artist who holds a mirror up to our culture as my primary work, I hope that we can hold a mirror up to ourselves and realize that changing this country around is not the sole responsibility of our elected leaders, but is truly our responsibility too. They may be able to change the policies, but only we can change our real lives, our relationships, our attitudes, our beliefs and our behavior.

Instead of sitting back and waiting for how this new leader will screw up, let's envision, and then created a new, better country worthy of a leader of Obama's caliber.

As Gandhi said, let's become the change we seek in the world.

Let's not stop at having one person of color at the head of our country but instead integrate our entire government, executive, legislative and judicial branches to represent all aspects of the citizenry.

Let's give Washington DC, a 65% black city, a vote in our government.

Let's challenge ourselves not only to vote for one black president, but to make real relationships across races and enhance our lives beyond our ballot.

Let's eliminate the n-word from our culture. (I was called that on the street only two weeks ago).

Let's make an even stronger effort to listen to the stories and experiences of people of color rather than ask them to be silent now that "one of them" is president. (something I also heard recently).

Let's no longer be afraid to examine how racism continues to be at play on a day-to-day level, admit where we lack trust and relationships and work to build those relationships and regain trust in the people with whom we share this country.

Let's realize that the evolution within us is crucial to evolving the world around us.

And much more- we can do much more, we can be much more.

One of the things that strikes me about Barack Obama is that he is not in this office for selfish reasons. He does not seek fame, credit, or praise. He is in this to effect a change in the country that he values and for the people of that country for which he cares. We elected him not only to take us there but to serve as an example for how we can all operate in our world- to be our role model- not for the little black children that can look up to him and know they can be like him and be president, but for each and every one of us- that can look up to him and know that *we* can be like him, that we can be better leaders, better citizens, better human beings to each other.

This is the change we need.
This is what I mean when I say "Yes We Can."



--- feel free to cross post----

Damali Ayo.com

so we dont have answers...we at least need to ask better questions.

more from trouillot:
"the more we acknowledge the contradictions that mark our times, the better we can pierce through its fragmented globality and the more likely we are to find imaginative solutions to the dilemmas that differentiate us from previous eras."

definitions of humanity re: neoliberalism

from michel-rolph trouillot, Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World--"A Fragmented Globality."

"But if we look closely at the assumptions behind neoliberal extremism, we quickly discover that what we are being sold is not just an economic program. We are being asked to endorse growth as a moral value. We are asked to take as a religious--that is, unquestionable--tenet the proposition that productivity in any domain, anywhere, anyhow is good for humankind as a whole. We are being asked to forget that productivity without a consensus on its distribution is another name for sheer profit and that whenever profit is sheer only a few can collect it. We are being asked to renounce worldviews that suggest the ethical solidarity of humankind. In short, we are being asked to accept a prepackaged formula about what it means to be a good and proper human being in all times and places, to endorse one vision of humanity, and an odd one at that." (56)

Sly and RB do PA

Late Monday Sylvia and I, anxious and worried about the outcome of the election decided to go to PA to help with encouraging people to vote. This election was obviously important but also so so emotional for people. We were a collective mess and thought maybe having an activity would help. It did.

We traveled down down to Levittown, PA on election day to knock on doors, ask people if they voted and if they hadn't encourage them to vote and tell them where their polling places were. We worked through the Obama campaign HQs in Bucks county where my friend Ellie has been for months. We got our assignments and headed to the section of Levittown where all of the streets begin with the letter "H." We were so excited and enjoyed walking up and down and trying to engage with the area. Our knocking was the fourth time this community has received information about the champaign and where to vote and some people were less than amused that we were coming again. At one house I knocked and when the woman came to the door I told her that "We were just checking to make sure folks voted today." She rolled her eyes and said "I have had 4 phone calls at home and work and now y'all come to my door?!" I apologized saying that it is just a REALLY important election and we want to make sure people are actually voting. I encouraged her to put a little "I voted" sign on her door and we would stop knocking. She half smiled at that but made it very clear that is was time for me to leave. I thanked her profusely and as a I was walking away she said begrudgingly "Thank you for your passion."


We knocked on about 80 doors, nothing compared to some of the people we met who hadn't slept or stopped for weeks and months. It was a tiring reality but it was a reality. People are done. People are so tired of the political feelings of pain and loss. I am scared that people will continue the rhetoric that racism is over and that "ultimate color line has been crossed." I am actually terrified. But I am also thrilled that people can admit when something in necessary. I am hoping this is a real leap in the arc of the moral universe.


Also thrilling (and intense) is the reality of the political landscape in Levittown specifically.


Love.

colors are improving. (intentional halloween spirit?)

also improving: characteristics of a president elect of the united states of america (intelligence, ability to inspire on a newly national scale (can't find this confirmed--was looking for statistics showing voter turnout. help!), etc).

not improving enough: california voters' decisions on the propositions on their november 4 ballot. i am most interested in 5, 6, 8, and 9. wish that 8 and 9 had failed, and that 5 had passed.

yes!

Done. and Done.

From Schuyler:

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/HM/obamobile.gif

Talking to rob.

G chatting with rob while he's in France.

me: hey
robert: hey
11:29 AM me: how are you? hows the election coverage over there
11:30 AM robert: this is what i think...if, no when, Obama wins, all of europe will be celebrating!!
everyone is so into it
me: im freaking out
robert: it's almost frightening
me: like i just start crying randomly whenever i think about it
robert: like they're more informed than some americans
robert: why?
what's happening
me: just a lot of threatening STUFF
its the normal stuff that makes me cry its just more public
this world and country are so divided and race is at the forefront of it
and im scared
11:32 AM robert: Race is the ultimate world social problem
me: yes
robert: everywhere in europe is the same
11:33 AM tomorrow ruby. our lives will start to change.
i believe that no matter what happens, we are going to move forward
me: i know
everywhere everywhere
this helps me freak out less: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiJbs-JS3XQ
11:34 AM agreed
gotta run
love you
robert: haha I love you you are in my heart all the time
me: same
same
11:35 AM robert: I'm sending you my love and good vibes, and obamaness
me: tHank you boo


LETS KEEP BEING THERE FOR EACH OTHER AND LOVING EACH OTHER AND TELLING EACH OTHER. SOMETIMES I NEED THE REMINDER THAT WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER EVEN WHEN IT FEELS LIKE THE OPPOSITE.


I AM WITH YOU. Gotta Remember gotta remember I NEED YOU TO SURVIVE.

Sorry for Messing Up your Game!

We all know Obama is the most charismatic speaker to grace us in some time. We also know that after the "fist jab" he was deemed by many, hipster and non hipster as "DOPE." But it gets better.