am i being naive by assuming that this arizona immigration bill (SB 1070) will actually be stopped before it is enacted on the ground in (less than) 90 days? Arizona is getting such a bad name that ariZona iced tea had to remind everyone that they are from New York, and have no formal affiliation with the state of Arizona. (a good sign for sure, but notice that the CEO didn't say anything in his little note about how insane the measure was. oh, the things people do for business.)
or maybe i'm not assuming it won't be enacted, i'm just phrasing it that way to myself because i can't deal with the possibility that it could be. after all, this kind country has countless laws on the books that operate on AND perpetuate racist principles...some, obviously, more explicitly than others.
i had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about absurdity and insanity. sometimes it all (it all being society, politics, life, reality, the world, the country, the history textbooks, the news, the cities, the people, the death---you know, it ALL) is so incongruous with anything human or good, so incongruous with itself ( and yet simoultaneously wildly consistent is the rationale of capitalism and oppression, hence our difficulties in countering it), so ABSURD that i for a split-second (or many) take solace in the idea that if it keeps getting worse, status quo will be 100% unsustainable (as if it werent already) and spontaneously combust. anyway, point is, i consider myself really privileged to be surrounded by people and ideas that remind me that i'm not crazy. that's all for now. in the meantime, i hope everyone finds what they need to continue trying to make this world better than we found it.
5/3/10
4/21/10
a late april list
things i'm looking forward to: Rikers HS student art show, 4 great guys gettin out this week, leavin nyc for a minute, bein in the south for a minute, learning to drive stick, oh yea, seein ruby, waffle house, dc stop seein folks i love, sunday brunch in dc, meeting a close friend's new boo, arriving Home to nyc, oh yeah, ruby living in brooklyn, my car not overheating ( baby has a new radiator), brie bought yesterday, gettin out of bed early more often ( one of those things you don't regret), my plants growin, figuring out whether i wanna go to law school, a spring weekend in vermont, US Social Forum, concerts in the park, the park, keeping my nails nice, doing my job better, mr. softie all the time, fake tanning lotion, seein my sisters, rooftop all the time ( even more often than ice cream), reading and writing, intellectualism and activism, a world without prisons.
4/15/10
Here We Go (AGAIN)
I'm so fed up with this.
If you are in ATL please come support us on Saturday.
I just sent this out to EVERY local news station in ATL:
This Saturday from 11am - 2pm in the heart of East Atlanta Village at Flat Shoals and Glenwood Ave residents of the neighborhood will take to the street to demand that Clear Wireless NOT erect a cell phone tower at 469 Metropolitan Place. The residents just WON a fight against T-mobile about the same location and T-Mobile agreed to construct the tower elsewhere. Clear could do the same, in fact, could rent space on the T-mobile tower but instead want to construct a tower on a residential street and next to a house of a woman who has been an East Atlanta resident since 1984. The neighborhood does not want the tower and yet Clear continues to threaten to construct it with out community support. We, as residents of East Atlanta, will fight this battle. My mother should not have to have a cell tower constructed steps from her home. She has dealt with enough in the neighborhood. Her home has been broken into 27 times and she has seen all kinds of drug violence in the neighborhood. Those days are now few and far between, she is over 60 and a cancer survivor and does not need to deal with a corporation erecting a huge structure next to her home with their revenue as their only motivation.
Thank you.
Please let me know if you need any more information.
resonance
I have listened to Take Off Your Cool, Outkast w Norah Jones, between 10 and 15 times today. The itunes play count says 17, and i basically just discovered the song a couple hours ago before i then left the house for a few hours, so consciously i have only ever played it tonight, between 7 and 8 pm and then from about 11pm onwards...but i figure some of those counts must be from previous times i was playing another outkast song and just let the itunes roll through the alphabet like-so.
i spose i'll know tomorrow if the song truly is that good--if i listen to it and feel the way i do right now--or if its just resonating with something about today for me. nothing explicit or literal in the lyrics (i know this because 1. i'm not listening to the words since the first time i played the song and 2. it's been making me miss John deeply and specifically, someone whose Cool was taken off for me so long ago), but some other quality of the song is hitting me right now as it plays on repeat. hitting is too abrupt, there is no other way to explain it but that it just...resonates.
like astrologists describe alignment? the gravity that such and such planet etc X Y Z planet force aligned alignment aligns gravitational forces planets at the second we were born making us who we are? i know that isn't a fair representation of zodiac but it's what i think of because some intangible invisible thing is ALIGNing right now between my soul and this song, and it's as inexplicable to me, as without a logic i can follow, as the way it sounds when someone does try to explain zodiac.
its on its ninth rotation since i started typing.
and the earth rotates around and around and around, and everything is in a rotation and in a rotation is everything right?
i spose i'll know tomorrow if the song truly is that good--if i listen to it and feel the way i do right now--or if its just resonating with something about today for me. nothing explicit or literal in the lyrics (i know this because 1. i'm not listening to the words since the first time i played the song and 2. it's been making me miss John deeply and specifically, someone whose Cool was taken off for me so long ago), but some other quality of the song is hitting me right now as it plays on repeat. hitting is too abrupt, there is no other way to explain it but that it just...resonates.
like astrologists describe alignment? the gravity that such and such planet etc X Y Z planet force aligned alignment aligns gravitational forces planets at the second we were born making us who we are? i know that isn't a fair representation of zodiac but it's what i think of because some intangible invisible thing is ALIGNing right now between my soul and this song, and it's as inexplicable to me, as without a logic i can follow, as the way it sounds when someone does try to explain zodiac.
its on its ninth rotation since i started typing.
and the earth rotates around and around and around, and everything is in a rotation and in a rotation is everything right?
4/13/10
Black Male Privilege
Curious as to what people think about this idea. The intersections of race and gender are always complicated as are the politics of respectability and the history of sexual violence. Does this make sense to folks? Is there such a thing as Black Male Privilege? If so, is Dr. Lewis defining it correctly?
4/11/10
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