Hillary Clinton Song

Dulce Maria Gonzalez's take on what we need this year. I'm just thinking why is it women of color don't seem to be the ones needed again this year.

Becoming a Black Man

photo by Kara Delahunt




Louis Mitchell expected a lot of change when he began taking injections of hormones eight years ago to transition from a female body to a male one. He anticipated that he’d grow a beard, which he eventually did and enjoys now. He knew his voice would deepen and that his relationship with his partner, family and friends would change in subtle and, he hoped, good ways, all of which happened.

What he had not counted on was changing the way he drove.

Within months of starting male hormones, “I got pulled over 300 percent more than I had in the previous 23 years of driving, almost immediately. It was astounding,” says Mitchell, who is Black and transitioned while living in the San Francisco area and now resides in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Targeted for “driving while Black” was not new to Mitchell, who is 46 years old. For example, a few years before transitioning, he had been questioned by a cop for simply sitting in his own car late at night. But “he didn’t really sweat me too much once he came up to the car and divined that I was female,” Mitchell recalls.

Now in a Black male body, however, Mitchell has been pulled aside for small infractions.

Click for complete article by Daisy Hernández

CAMPUS LOCKDOWN: Women of Color Negotiating the Academic Industrial Complex

The Campus Lockdown conference will center women of color in the academic industrial complex. We will consider its structural constraints, as well as the implications of our scholarship.

Please register by February 29, 2008


Saturday, March 15, 2008
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

FREE! (All meals on your own)

Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town

By REBECCA CATHCART
Published: February 23, 2008
NYT

According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.

That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Click for complete article.

And Here's the Thing

“Here’s the thing.” That’s what my friend from Iowa will say before she digs in to tell you what is the root of a problem. When you hear that phrase, get ready. Somehow that phrase got in my head from us working together through difficult times and now I’m applying it to the elections. So, that’s what I’ve been hearing in my head as I think about these primary elections. Here’s the thing, I live in Senator Clinton’s district. I have voted for her. Twice. But, here’s the thing, when I sat down to think about how my life was better after seven years of her being senator I couldn’t come up with anything. But then I thought, well, Senator Obama is all about talking about the South Side of Chicago as “experience.” I don’t live there, but here’s the thing, how have people’s lives improved there because of his community-based work? And I sure don’t know a thing about Arizona, but are things better out there? I wouldn’t mind knowing more about how the South Side, Arizona, and my own back yard have improved under these three Senators. How about a debate where what all three have done, actually done, for the folks in their district is discussed? Big plans for the whole country, but what did they do in their homeplace? Inquiring latté Latin@ liberals want to know.

And there's American education

This video was posted with an article in the NYT called, "Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?" But when I watched this video what struck me most was all the sexism, not that Kellie Pickler is dumb or dumber, although...please, is it really possible that she thinks Europe is a country? Oh, and that France, might be a country, but not sure? Still, not a bad comeback when she says she would win on a show called, Are You Smarter Than a Man? This whole scene is, well, you decide or just skip the whole thing and grab a little Derrida.

And hate crimes

A message from Executive Director Kevin Jennings
Executive Director, GLSEN

Lawrence King was a self-identified gay student who attended Green Junior High in Oxnard, California. His feminine gender expression “was freaking the guys out” according to one of his classmates.

Apparently, for this, he had to die.

On Tuesday morning Lawrence was shot at point blank range in his eighth grade English class by a boy who had apparently been one of his anti-LGBT tormentors. Now he’s going to die once they turn the machines off, which they may have already done by the time you get this message.

Ten years ago a gay college student, Matthew Shepard, was tied to a fence and beaten to death. Today, it’s a gay junior high student being shot in the head. When will we, as a society, say enough is enough?

Oxnard student declared brain dead
Police have not determined a motive in the slaying but said it appeared to stem from a personal dispute between King and the suspect. Keith and Totten declined to elaborate. But several students at the south Oxnard campus said King and his alleged assailant had a falling out stemming from King's sexual orientation.

The teenager sometimes wore feminine clothing and makeup, and proclaimed he was gay, students said. Some of the male students were bothered by his appearance, calling it a distraction, several students said.

"He would come to school in high-heeled boots, makeup, jewelry and painted nails -- the whole thing," said Michael Sweeney, 13, an eighth-grader. "That was freaking the guys out."

complete article from LA Times

And genocide

Torsten Blackwood/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. A crowd outside Parliament listened to the apology read by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to the Aborgines of Australia.


By TIM JOHNSTON
Published: February 13, 2008
New York Times

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened a new chapter in Australia’s tortured relations with its indigenous peoples with a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs.

Mr. Rudd’s apology was particularly addressed to the so-called Stolen Generations, the tens of thousands of indigenous children who were removed, sometimes forcibly, from their families in a policy of assimilation that only ended in the 1970s.

“We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country,” Mr. Rudd said as hundreds of members of the Stolen Generations listened in the gallery, some with tears in their eyes. “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

“To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.”

complete article from the NYT

The Caucus: Obama’s Success in the Caribbean

A caucus in Charlotte Amalie, V.I. (Photo: Brennan Linsley/Associated Press)

By Gerry Mullany
Published: February 11, 2008
New York Times

Senator Barack Obama won 90 percent of the vote in the Virgin Islands and picked up three delegates.

Click on title of this post above for the whole (brief) piece.

...

Just like Puerto Ricans who live on the island (and are U.S. citizens no matter where we live; no choice in the matter), U.S. citizens who live in the U.S. Virgin Islands can vote in the primaries, but not in the general elections. Can anyone say, colonialism?

Confessions of a Facebook Latte Latin@ Liberal

Okay, mi gente, I'm feeling the need to address the fact that friends have thrown Hillary and Obama at me on Facebook and that CNN is also throwing all sorts of stuff around.

It’s true, I order lattes with skim milk at Starbucks when I’m near one. This is most usually when I travel to professional conferences in urban areas. It’s true, I make more income than my mother or grandparents made. I am one of those “higher income and educated” folks that statistically are voting for Barack Obama in greater numbers than for Hillary Clinton.

CNN likes to say that Senator Clinton has the “lunch bucket vote,” older folks, women, Latin@s, Chinese-Americans, and Whites. Senator Obama has educated folks, African-Americans, Blacks, the young, the higher income folks, and people who identify across these categories. Thank you, CNN.

Put Hillary and Barack together and you have a pretty good cross section of who can vote in this country -- I guess just about everybody. Why don’t they make nice and get together to make a ticket? Thank you, Pundits.

Okay, mi gente, so while the headlines are saying GENDER or RACE it seems to me that the underlying, and as usual ignored, issue is CLASS. Forgive me for this feminist thought, but don’t you think taking an intersectional approach could be useful here? I mean, how about thinking about RACE, GENDER, AND CLASS? Who are working-class African-American women voting for? Who are transgender women of color voting for? And why oh why are the Puerto Rican “delegates” all set to vote for Hillary when Puerto Ricans cannot vote for president when we are living on the island? Which brings me back to my original point.

Yes, I’ll have a latte and yes I’m Boricua and yes, I’m liberal (actually, I'm "Other" in my political views on Facebook), and yes I’m now higher income and educated, but why does this matter when most Puerto Ricans CANNOT vote for president simply based on where we live; on island = no, in the U.S. = yes. A plane ticket away from a vote. That’s anywhere from one hour to five hours away from deciding who will be the next president. The Latin@ vote? Break it down. Latin@s in the U.S. are diverse.
"Travel now. No Passport Required." We're a "winter escape."

The Bread and Roses Primary

I call my aunt in Puerto Rico. "What do you think about who to vote for?" I ask her. Although Puerto Ricans on the island cannot vote for president, she says "Ay, Obama, Obama. Es que el me da esperanza." "But he doesn't have experiencia" I say. I imagine my aunt formulating her answer and then she says, "There is no one in the world who has enough experience to be President of the United States before they get there. ¡Eso es un rebulú!"

Into the small voting place here in rural New York, this little Boricua walks in. There is never a line. Always way more folks tending to the signatures at the Republican and Democratic tables to make sure you are who you say you are, usually someone remembers your name or at least reading it in print (but maybe that's because for here, my name is unusual), then there are people to reset the two voting booths; one for each party. So, basically we're talking six election volunteers per the usual 1 - 2 voters at a time. You're pretty well covered. In rural New York, the voter is a rock star. I have to walk by the Republican table to get to the Democratic table. I smile, "Good afternoon." I have smiled at Republicans! They smile at me. I take the few steps to the other side. The other voter is also a democrat. Right on.

At the Democratic table, I sign my name but not before taking a hard look at my up-side-down signature signed years ago which is still used as the comparison signature. After signing a million student drop/add forms for classes, well, my signature has "changed." I really don't want to have to convince anyone I am me, so I sign as close to the up-side-down signature as possible. Good enough.

To vote, you step into a booth that has curtains straight out of the 50's. Is that lime green I'm seeing, mi gente? You step in and crank a lever from the left to the right. I am always intimidated by this cranking for some reason. I guess it's the finality of it: I have to vote now. Also, I'm right handed and have to use my left hand. Plus, it's the symbolism. From left to right. Um, no. I'm easily distracted by details that go nowhere much. The curtain behind you closes. You are facing lots of little metal and plastic levers. For me, that is a bit of a nightmare since, of course, I am compelled to read the names on every lever out of simple curiosity with the mechanism itself. Hillary, Richardson, Edwards, Kucinich, and Obama have their own levers and then there are levers for their delegates. There it is. Choose.

I choose hearing the voices of support from my aunt in Puerto Rico, my father in New Hampshire, my friend in Michigan, my counselor in Ithaca. I choose hearing "Sí, se puede." Wishing that I could find the way to vote with Dolores Huerta, my sister, and my partner who support Hillary. But, for me, this is the bread and roses primary. Esperanza y experiencia. Barack Obama.

from DemocracyNOW! The Latino Vote between Obama/Clinton

Democratic Presidential Nomination Could Hinge on Divided Latino Vote

Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are actively courting support from Latino voters across the country. We speak to Dolores Huerta, a longtime labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers of America, who is supporting Clinton; Federico Pena, a former Clinton cabinet member and Denver mayor, now co-chairing Obama's campaign; and California State Senator Gilbert Cedillo, who is also backing Obama.

Esperanza o Experiencia or Race or Gender or Bread AND Roses

This is the choice Democrats apparently have to make on Tuesday; hope or experience? Esperanza o experiencia. That’s a tough choice when it’s framed that way because it’s like being asked to choose between bread or roses. Don’t we need both? So what does this choice mean? Esperanza has become equated with the first African-American president. Experiencia with the first woman president. Okay, is there anyone out there who doubts the need for thinking about gender, race, sexuality, and class in relation to each other? You know, what feminist theorists call, “intersectionality.” Maybe the way to think through this dichotomy of la esperanza o la experiencia is to imagine a way that includes both. Which way of voting will do that, mi gente?

BREAD AND ROSES written by James Oppenheim in 1911

As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: "Bread and roses! Bread and roses!"

As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!

As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for -- but we fight for roses, too!

As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler -- ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

...

free song version Ani DiFranco and Utah Philips

“Our President, Ourselves!”

An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
“Our President, Ourselves!”

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy—as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she’s the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because she’s refreshingly thoughtful, and I’m bloodied from eight years of a jolly “uniter” with ejaculatory politics. I needn’t agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama’s—and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she’s already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first U.S. woman president, but as a great U.S. president.

As for the “woman thing”?

Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.

The complete article by Robin Mogan.

You know, mi gente, when you stop and think about all the misogynist hatred spewed at Senator Clinton it does have to make you stop and think about what it would mean to not vote for her not just what it means to vote for Senator Obama. My sister sent me this article, it's very worthwhile. Robin Morgan definitely nails it in regard to sexism. Check it out. See what you think.

Obama: Making my case in Indian country

from Indian Country Today
Posted: February 01, 2008
by: Barack Obama

"Furthermore, I firmly believe in the words of Justice Hugo Black that ''[g]reat nations, like great men, should keep their word.'' So under my presidency, we will live up to the federal government's solemn commitments enshrined in treaties with the tribal nations. And I will ensure that we live up to our commitments in ensuring the effective, efficient and honest management of trust income, as this Nation has promised to do, and to equitably redress the errors of the past."

Complete article by Senator Obama.

"When a candidate calls for ''change,'' most voters of all ethnicities understand we are so far down that any change is up."
-- Steve Russell

Right on, Professor Russell!!!

Check out Russell's interesting article published in Indian Country, too, "Indians in a change election," where he discusses the many issues involved in figuring out who to vote for. The quote above is from this piece.

Yes, We Can: The Tainos

This is a three part series on the Taino. This is part 3. In this time of "change" it's worth remembering how long this has all been going on.

"Yes We Can"

Check out this video featuring will.i.am, john legend, herbie hancock, nicole scherzinger, scarlett johansson, kate walsh, and others, singing along with the Yes We Can speech by Barack Obama.

read more | digg story

“obrar la justicia y la paz”

This is the homily that Padre Picó gave at a mass in Nagüabo for Abuela on what would have been her 100 birthday on January 10, 2008. Fernando Picó is a leading Puerto Rican historian, a Jesuit and liberation theologian, and was very beloved by my grandmother. In this homily, Father Picó observes Abuela as she tells him stories of her childhood in Nagüabo, of the abuses and displacement of her family from their farmland by the sugarcane conglomerates, of how she always waited for her pueblo to arrive to any big event, how she and Lolita Lebrón shared un abrazo over their mutual resistance to placing Haitians in concentration camps on the island, how she called him up to tell him that she wanted to join the physical resistance to Villa Sin Miedo being plowed under by the government. Picó is left speechless by the image conjured by his mind of her standing against the riot police poised to demolish homes. He doesn't answer her question of whether or not she should go. He later learns someone must have dissuaded her from doing it. Abuela would have been in her 70's at that time. What touches me most about this homily is that Padre Picó, a scholar, rather than writing about abstractions of peace and justice, grounds his memory in the acts of justicia y paz he observed. Here I would like to honor Abuela's life through the words of her friend, el Padre Picó.

Fernando Picó
10 de enero de 2008

Doña Inés

“Llegó mi pueblo, llegó Nagüabo”. Con esas palabras doña Inés María Mendoza reconoció la presencia de una delegación de Naguabo en el acto multitudinario de bienvenida que se le hiciera a Luis Muñoz Marín en Plaza Las Américas en octubre de 1972, palabras que harían eco en una ofrenda floral que otra delegación de Naguabo traería al entierro de doña Inés en agosto de 1990. La persona cuyo centenario conmemoramos hoy siempre tuvo presente sus orígenes en este municipio. En diversas ocasiones la escuché rememorar su niñez y adolescencia en Naguabo, en los tiempos difíciles en que los colonos azucareros se les regateaba el peso de su caña y el monto de sucrosa resultante de la molienda. Doña Inés recordaba aquellas difíciles transacciones en que los grandes exprimían sus ventajas y en que la necesidad de una extensión de crédito era juguete de arbitrarias negociaciones.

Por eso el sentido de justicia cristiana que doña Inés continuamente reclamaba no estaba derivado de disquisiciones abstractas, sino destilado de experiencias vividas, sentidas, recordadas y compartidas. Siendo puntillosamente tradicional en la expresión de su religiosidad, doña Inés a la vez era osadamente radical en la manifestación de sus exigencias por una justicia equitativa y remediadora de las injusticias cometidas contra los desaventajados. La víspera de la ocupación por la Policía de Puerto Rico de Villa Sin Miedo, aquel asentamiento espontáneo en Río Grande que fue emblemático de toda una época, doña Inés me llamó por teléfono y me preguntó qué me parecía su idea de irse a Villa Sin Miedo y confrontar con la gente a la Fuerza de Choque. Yo me quedé sin palabras. Pasaron por mi mente imágenes apocalípticas.
Pensé que Puerto Rico se conmovería en sus cimientos, que ocurriría uno de esos momentos mítico-mágicos que aturden la historia de los pueblos. No me recuerdo que le contesté a doña Inés, se que quedé electrificado. Alguien la disuadiría, quizás hoy me entere aquí de la resolución de aquella propuesta. Pero que ella asumiera una posición de confrontación no debió de haberme sorprendido.

Si me sorprendió, es porque nunca llegué a conocerla bien. La veía siempre en las antesalas de las reuniones entonces mensuales de la Junta de la Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín. Me recibía en el balcón de su casa, a veces con reminiscencias preciadas, su visita a Haití, una cena presidencial en Managua, el día de las elecciones de noviembre de 1940, a veces con inquietudes y proyectos. De muchas de sus actividades me enteraba sólo por la prensa. La viudez pesó mucho sobre ella. No quería permanecer pasiva ante los problemas del país, pero se veía precisada a encontrar maneras discretas de hacerse oír. Desarrolló entonces su veta literaria, escribiendo columnas en los periódicos, siempre atinada al identificar un problema, siempre gentil al ofrecer una respuesta.

Detestaba las ambigüedades y los embelecos protocolarios. Asumía con naturalidad su poder de convocatoria. Aquella vez que fue a Juana Díaz, al Fuerte Allen, a piquetear contra el encerramiento de los haitianos indocumentados resultó en su memorable encuentro y abrazo de Lolita Lebrón. Yo creo que los gabanes se estremecieron en aquella ocasión, que se atusaron los bigotes y tragaron hondo. Pero el pueblo comprendió y celebró aquella ocasión; en la novela social puertorriqueña era una estampa deseada. Nunca más los federales osaron usar a Puerto Rico de esa manera; quizás sin doña Inés la desgracia y el bochorno de Guatánamo hoy nos hubiera tocado.

Necesitamos mujeres y hombres así, que piensen con claridad y rectitud, que sean consecuentes, que sean atrevidos en sus acciones y diáfanos en sus palabras. En fin de cuentas, eso es lo que la doctrina cristiana nos recuerda que debemos hacer, “obrar la justicia y la paz”.