¡No ha parado de nevar!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
LeAnne Howe: Choctalking on Other Realities
LeAnne Howe, Associate Professor, American Indian Studies and English, University of Illinois interviewed on NPR on January 23 about her new work, what it takes to write, war, religion, land, aunts, and other realities.Click here for audio
My Sister's Keeper
By SARAH KERSHAWPublished: January 30, 2009
New York Times
THEY called it a lesbian paradise, the pioneering women who made their way to St. Augustine, Fla., in the 1970s to live together in cottages on the beach. Finding one another in the fever of the gay rights and women’s liberation movements, they built a matriarchal community, where no men were allowed, where even a male infant brought by visitors was cause for debate.
Click for complete article
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Trans-: WSQ
Trans-: WSQ: Fall/Winter 2008. Women's Studies Quarterlyby Paisley Currah (Editor), Lisa-Jean Moore (Editor), Susan Stryker (Editor)
Ednie and I have a piece of writing in this issue: "TransPedagogies: A Roundtable Dialogue."
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Between the Lines: "Steady As You Go"
A Springfield civil rights leader reflects on President Obama's inauguration
Thursday, January 22, 2009
By Natalia Muñoz
He's 71 now and his legs can't carry him anywhere near the long distances he regularly marched for civil rights in his younger days.
For this presidential inauguration, Rance O'Quinn sat down and watched on television the embodiment of one of the civil rights movement's highest goals take the oath of office.
It's been a long walk to Jan. 20, 2009 for the man born and raised in Centreville, Miss., a small town of mostly sharecroppers near the Louisiana border. His father was shot in the back of the head on Aug. 14, 1959 for educating other black Americans about their rights.
O'Quinn became president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP; a director of investigations for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination; a staff member at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights; a supervisor of investigations and acting area office director for the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in Boston.
There are names and dates, births, deaths and killings, the blessings of his family, what he lost along the way and now, Barack Obama.
He has simple advice for the new president: "Steady as you go."
for complete article click here
Thursday, January 22, 2009
By Natalia Muñoz
He's 71 now and his legs can't carry him anywhere near the long distances he regularly marched for civil rights in his younger days.
For this presidential inauguration, Rance O'Quinn sat down and watched on television the embodiment of one of the civil rights movement's highest goals take the oath of office.
It's been a long walk to Jan. 20, 2009 for the man born and raised in Centreville, Miss., a small town of mostly sharecroppers near the Louisiana border. His father was shot in the back of the head on Aug. 14, 1959 for educating other black Americans about their rights.
O'Quinn became president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP; a director of investigations for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination; a staff member at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights; a supervisor of investigations and acting area office director for the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission in Boston.
There are names and dates, births, deaths and killings, the blessings of his family, what he lost along the way and now, Barack Obama.
He has simple advice for the new president: "Steady as you go."
for complete article click here
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gives the benediction at the end of the swearing in ceremony
"God of our weary years,God of our silent tears...help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. Let all who do justice and love mercy say amen and say amen."
Amen.
Photo of Rev. Lowery by Ron Edmonds/AP
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
We Will Not Move
"BUYER BEWARE
A case in HOUSING COURT to decide on the
CONDOMINIUM CONVERSION of the BUILDING is
still pending. WE WILL NOT MOVE."
This was the sign that our mother, Viviana Muñoz Mendoza, posted on the window of our rental apartment, our home on Dartmouth Street in the South End of Boston, that began what would lead to a precedent setting legal case for tenants to be able to place signs expressing views anywhere on their apartments as a matter of free speech.
This was when "condominium conversion" during the Reagan years was gentrifying neighborhoods of color all across cities in the U.S. Buildings were set on fire to vacate them for "renovation."
At Casa Myrna Vasquez in the South End of Boston, a shelter for battered women, a mother and child died in such a fire. Arson. Reagan's trickle down economics just rained down fire on ethnic neighborhoods.
Hoy, en este día de tu muerte, te recordamos por todo lo que nos enseñastes sobre la importancia de las palabras y las acciónes de resistencia.
click para el caso legal
Mamá en el apartamento de la Dartmouth.
A case in HOUSING COURT to decide on the
CONDOMINIUM CONVERSION of the BUILDING is
still pending. WE WILL NOT MOVE."
This was the sign that our mother, Viviana Muñoz Mendoza, posted on the window of our rental apartment, our home on Dartmouth Street in the South End of Boston, that began what would lead to a precedent setting legal case for tenants to be able to place signs expressing views anywhere on their apartments as a matter of free speech.
This was when "condominium conversion" during the Reagan years was gentrifying neighborhoods of color all across cities in the U.S. Buildings were set on fire to vacate them for "renovation."
At Casa Myrna Vasquez in the South End of Boston, a shelter for battered women, a mother and child died in such a fire. Arson. Reagan's trickle down economics just rained down fire on ethnic neighborhoods.
Hoy, en este día de tu muerte, te recordamos por todo lo que nos enseñastes sobre la importancia de las palabras y las acciónes de resistencia.
click para el caso legalMamá en el apartamento de la Dartmouth.
Monday, January 12, 2009
The Rights of the Land
The Onondaga Nation of central New York proposes a radical new vision of property rights
BY ROBIN KIMMERER
Published in the November/December 2008 issue of Orion Magazine
... ON MARCH 11, 2005, the Onondaga Nation filed a complaint in a federal court in Syracuse seeking title to their lost homelands. Their claim is made under United States law, but its moral power lies in the directives of the Great Law: to act on behalf of peace, the natural world, and the future generations. The motion begins with this statement:
The Onondaga people wish to bring about a healing between themselves and all others who live in this region that has been the homeland of the Onondaga Nation since the dawn of time. The Nation and its people have a unique spiritual, cultural, and historic relationship with the land, which is embodied in Gayanashagowa, the Great Law of Peace. This relationship goes far beyond federal and state legal concerns of ownership, possession, or other legal rights. The people are one with the land and consider themselves stewards of it. It is the duty of the Nation’s leaders to work for a healing of this land, to protect it, and to pass it on to future generations. The Onondaga Nation brings this action on behalf of its people on the hope that it may hasten the process of reconciliation and bring lasting justice, peace, and respect among all who inhabit this area.
The lawsuit is not a land “claim,” because to the Onondaga land has far greater significance than the notion of property. Sid Hill, the Tadodaho, or spiritual leader, of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, has said that the Onondaga Nation will never seek to evict people from their homes. The Onondaga people know the pain of displacement too well to inflict it on their neighbors. Instead the suit is termed a “land rights action.” When they finally got their day in court last October, members of the Onondaga Nation argued that the land title they’re seeking is not for possession, not to exclude, but for the right to participate in the well-being of the land. Against the backdrop of Euro-American thinking, which treats land as a bundle of property rights, the Onondaga are asking for freedom to exercise their responsibility to the land. This is unheard of in American property law.
...
for the complete article click here.
Robin Kimmerer’s book, Gathering Moss, was awarded the 2005 John Burroughs Medal. She is a professor of botany at State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and tends an old farm in upstate New York.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Gap in what we say vs. what we do about racism
Gap in what we say vs. what we do about racism
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:33 PM EST, January 10, 2009
WASHINGTON - Think you wouldn't tolerate a racist act?
Think again, says a surprising experiment that exposed some college students to one and found indifference at best.
Here's the scene: Researchers in Toronto recruited 120 non-black York University students for what purported to be a psychology study.
A participant was directed to a room where two actors posing as fellow participants -- one black, one white -- waited. The black person said he needed to retrieve a cell phone and left, gently bumping the white person's leg on the way out. The white actor then did one of three things: Nothing. Said, "I hate when black people do that." Or used the N-word.
Then a researcher entered and said the "psychology study" was starting and that the student should pick one of the two others as a partner for the testing.
Half the participants just read about that scene, and half actually experienced it.
Those asked to predict their reaction to either comment said they'd be highly upset and wouldn't choose the white actor as their partner.
Yet students who actually experienced the event didn't seem bothered by it -- and nearly two-thirds chose the white actor as a partner, the researchers report Friday in the journal Science.
"It's like these nasty racist comments aren't having an effect," said York University psychology professor Kerry Kawakami, the lead author.
"It's important to remind people that just because a black man has been elected as president doesn't mean racism is no longer a problem or issue in the States," she added.
The study can't say why people reacted that way, although the researchers speculate that unconscious bias is at work. They have new experiments under way to see if maybe these witnesses suppress that they're upset to avoid confrontation.
"The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world," said Indiana University psychologist Eliot R. Smith, who co-wrote a review of the experiment. "People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it's rare they will actually confront them."
...
Professor Kerry Kawakami has published extensively on the psychology of racism with Professor John Dovidio. Click here to go to Professor Kawakami's faculty webpage at York University and learn more about her research.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:33 PM EST, January 10, 2009
WASHINGTON - Think you wouldn't tolerate a racist act?
Think again, says a surprising experiment that exposed some college students to one and found indifference at best.
Here's the scene: Researchers in Toronto recruited 120 non-black York University students for what purported to be a psychology study.
A participant was directed to a room where two actors posing as fellow participants -- one black, one white -- waited. The black person said he needed to retrieve a cell phone and left, gently bumping the white person's leg on the way out. The white actor then did one of three things: Nothing. Said, "I hate when black people do that." Or used the N-word.
Then a researcher entered and said the "psychology study" was starting and that the student should pick one of the two others as a partner for the testing.
Half the participants just read about that scene, and half actually experienced it.
Those asked to predict their reaction to either comment said they'd be highly upset and wouldn't choose the white actor as their partner.
Yet students who actually experienced the event didn't seem bothered by it -- and nearly two-thirds chose the white actor as a partner, the researchers report Friday in the journal Science.
"It's like these nasty racist comments aren't having an effect," said York University psychology professor Kerry Kawakami, the lead author.
"It's important to remind people that just because a black man has been elected as president doesn't mean racism is no longer a problem or issue in the States," she added.
The study can't say why people reacted that way, although the researchers speculate that unconscious bias is at work. They have new experiments under way to see if maybe these witnesses suppress that they're upset to avoid confrontation.
"The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world," said Indiana University psychologist Eliot R. Smith, who co-wrote a review of the experiment. "People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it's rare they will actually confront them."
...
Professor Kerry Kawakami has published extensively on the psychology of racism with Professor John Dovidio. Click here to go to Professor Kawakami's faculty webpage at York University and learn more about her research.
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