The children

I confess, I kind of thought trump would win. I didn't want him to but it seemed possible. However, I didn't expect what came after his win. I was surprised by the depth of shock, grief, and fear among many white people. I was especially surprised to hear so many white people tell me about their children's fear.

They didn't know how to break the news of the election. Their children told them they were and are frightened. These parents have been understandably sad and angered and dislocated.

I didn't expect this.

My hope is that this pulls us into greater alignment with one another. I've talked to friends of color for years about how the government doesn't feel like it represents them nor protects them. They feel frightened of its symbols of power, like the military and police. After police killings of Black men, they try to figure out what to tell their sons about safety. They have long found ground in uncertain times.

My hope is that for those of us experiencing this sense of fear and uncertainty for the first time, that we can use it to fuel our empathy for those who have experienced it for a long time. Instead of spiralling into the fear, can this be used to say, "I am so sorry for what you've endured. I feel a piece of it. I want to figure out how to work together to make space for all of us to feel safer."

That's my hope.

White Women are not innocent. Everyone has power. Don't give it away.

Yesterday, I was heartened to read the following from writer Luvvie Ajayi: "White women. Some of you are starting to get in your feelings about everyone blaming you for Trump being president. Lemme tell you something. IT IS ABOUT TIME fingers start being pointed at you. Because in all of history, YOU have all gotten off scot-free for anything that has happened. White men are painted as the villains and folks have ignored the passive aggression and your role in the upholding of white supremacy.

In a world that doesn't really care about women WHEN it chooses to care, it is only for white women. You scream feminism but only fight for those who look like you. Y'all have been shielded from culpability all your lives and through history and been able to move in the system of oppression without getting blame when you have been active participants in the denigration of people of color and marginalized people. You have been the Damsel in Distress even as you've been the source of chaos. But still, you are protected above other women, because the way racism is set up, folks have been convinced that you are the default in womanhood. And part of what comes with that is you haven't learned to trust yourself. You didn't trust HRC to lead because you don't trust YOURSELF to lead.

COLLECTIVELY, y'all messed up on Tuesday.

So yes. You will sit in this discomfort and this shame. And you might choose to whine about it. What you should do is commit yourself to doing better. Look inward and see what part you've played.

Then we can move forward. For now, though, I'ma get these jokes off at your expense.

P.S. Read chapter 9 of my book (titled I'M JUDGING YOU). It's called "Nobody Wins at the Feminism Olympics.'"

Ajayi is an important writer to begin with and this is a very important sentiment.

To be clear: I'm not on the HRC bandwagon but I also did not and do not support trump. Just to get that straight.

I'm watching this election and the ensuing grief, fear, and bewilderment with my own trepidation, interest, and wonder. One of the things that gives me courage is that no one is allowed to be innocent.

None of us are allowed to be innocent.

I've tried to write about the place of white women as an idea, an archetype, in the cultural imagination before. I want to do this because I am a real, living, breathing white woman. Also, because I find ideas of white manhood and all that it entails-- unearned privilege, unearned pressures, etc. I find ideas of black manhood and all that entails-- undeserved criminalization, unrecognized humanity. I find ideas of black womanhood and all that entails-- unending pressures and responsibilities, unshared burdens. White women always feel a bit like a blank space. Unformed.

White women en masse love Oprah. White women en masse love Michelle Obama. White women voted for Trump.

White women were the excuses for lynchings of Black men. The accusation of looking at a white woman was enough to kill a Black man.

Helen of Troy was a white woman. As Ajayi wrote, "you have been the damsel in distress... and the source of chaos." That false innocence, that innocuousness has also meant lack of accountability. Along with lack of accountability, it means denial of responsibility, lack of agency, and power.

It's bullshit.

I'm not innocent. I never was. But I felt like I got a pass.

On Wednesday, after trump became president elect, when I walked down the rain soaked streets I passed a Black man who looked at me like, "Was it you, Judas?" And I wanted to pull out my radical ally card and beg my innocence, "It wasn't me! I swear!" And I thought, "This. This will be another side effect of this moment. This betrayal. My past actions don't matter. My current actions do." To be trustworthy, I have to be accountable. I have to keep showing up. I have to be culpable and also accountable. I have to have as much blood on my hands as anyone else, and I also have to have ownership. 

And that means I get to belong.

Part of the myth of innocence is not being a part of the whole, not making decisions, not having a seat at the table, not showing up. I don't get to be innocent and I also don't abnegate my own power. 

Short compilation of powerful reading on race consciousness for white folks

Amidst all the recent brutality, needed uprising, and horrific backlash, there has been profound insight. I've found some incredible articles that connected dots in ways that I had previously struggled to. As a white woman, I am particularly interested in how I can be aware of other people's experiences and how I can use whatever awareness that I might have to help other white people make more space for experiences outside of our known range. I found resources and help.

Here's a selection:

http://www.womboflight.com/white-women-racism-and-the-mother-wound/

https://bittergertrude.com/2016/07/08/whiteness-is-a-disease/comment-page-1/#comment-17289

http://virginiarosenberg.com/blog/2016/7/10/converting-hidden-spiritual-racism-into-sacred-activism-an-open-letter-to-spiritual-white-folks

http://chaninicholas.com/2016/07/haunted-by-our-history/

Emotional health as anti-racism

I'm thinking a lot these days on how political awareness relies on emotional capacity. As a white woman who works to be accountable to my own white privilege and an ally against racism, I have a lot of conversations with other white folks about race. Probably not as many as I should have. It's exhausting. But, not as exhausting as being constantly assaulted by racism. So.

Often in conversations with white folks about race, I have said or heard:
1) But, I have friends of color...
2) But, I grew up poor/rough/abused...
3) But, I'm not racist...

But.

Thankfully, many of us have many friends. (However, white folks are statistically more likely to be friends with mainly other white folks.)

Unfortunately, many of us grew up under challenging conditions.

I think it's safe to say that we all have prejudices and preconceptions. I don't think it's possible to have not been influenced by your parents (wonderful though I'm sure they are), teachers, religious leaders, and the media. Depending on who you are, where you were raised, and when, the messages might not have been about a black/white dichotomy. Were your raised in Colorado? There was likely more messaging against Mexicans and Indigenous people. Were you raised in the Dominican Republic? There was likely more messaging against Haitians.

I'm learning from some friends of color (there I go!) that some type of internal setting or resiliency told them at a young age that they would not be liked or respected due to circumstances beyond their control. While this is true of all of us, this is extra true for people of color in the United States. It is simply a fact that there will be judgment and differing levels of access for a person of color in the United States.

Given this fact, there's a different relationship to being liked or right. It's a different emotional maturity.

Some white folks have this too. Some white folks know that they might be judged or limited due to forces beyond their control. I'd wager women have experienced some level of this. However, when it comes to race, there is a quick defensiveness. "I want to be RIGHT here," I'm NOT a racist," "I am INNOCENT," "I get a PASS because of my friends or upbringing or..."

But.

I'm wondering if there's a way that I, as a white woman, can be more comfortable being uncomfortable. I'm wondering if I can not be right. I'm wondering if I can not *accept* unfair judgment, but also have perspective around this type of tendency. Can I have an emotional core that offers me the resiliency to be wrong and still OK? Can I have the fortitude and strength for people to correct me when I'm wrong, share experiences that are outside of my range, and simply receive?

I want to. I want to because I love a lot of people who's experiences are outside of my range for any number of reasons. There is a lot that's outside the scope of my understanding and I'd like to be OK with that. I'd like to be sufficiently emotionally stable for everything to not be about me.

Maybe that's the crux: part of white supremacy and privilege is centralizing white experience as the norm. Can we all be sufficiently comfortable with not being centered? Is there a way we can fortify for ourselves and those closest to us a sense of wholeness and care that leaves sufficient space for others?

Ferguson

If you follow this blog, you know it sometimes comes in spurts. My work is seasonal. I find myself in time crunches and then with space. When I get breathing room, I'll sometimes write a chunk and schedule posts to be published in advance. This post was written on Sunday Sept. 14, 2014. Today, it's been well over 30 days since a cop shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. In the intervening time, like so many of us, I've watched, I've supported activist campaigns, and been surprised at my own unending shock. Why be shocked that Black men are being hunted? Hasn't that been the case since Black bodies were brought over the Atlantic as slaves?

And yet, I keep hoping for more. As a white woman, I keep hoping to see white people, white government officials, white police officers behave as humans. Recognize the humanity of Black people, like Michael Brown, and now his family rightfully demanding accountability.

Instead, on Facebook, I read white friends begging for patience and understanding for the police.

I read Black friends expressing their fear for their children's survival.

So much has been written and well. There have been multitudes of compelling articles, particularly by authors of color, writing about experiences of white friends not believing the police harass or that racism is real and current. And I keep wondering, what will it take for white people to get it? 

I wondered when Troy Davis was killed.

I wondered when Tookie Williams was killed.

I wonder every time another person of color is killed.

Evidence amply demonstrates the brutal, fatal, murderous reality of systemic racism. Obviously, that's not enough. People operate from emotion more often than fact. What do white people have to *feel* to absorb the reality of Black experience?

I think that white people are feeling fear. And it's absurd, because the reality is that white supremacy and racism is creating TERROR for people of color. But isn't that often the case? The abuser lashes out over fear. The United States, harbinger of international power, militarily intervenes due to fear (founded or likely not). I think white people fear respecting people of color. I think white people fear that accountability means acknowledging slavery, lynchings, and the on-going incarnation of racism in our grandparents, parents, and ourselves. I don't think that white people know how to reconcile these horrors in people they love let alone themselves. I think this is the political and personal work that we have to do to evolve. 

I'm grappling with a lot of latent fear myself and finding where it limits me. The antidote has surprised me: it's loving myself. The gentler and more patient I am with myself, the less I fear being vulnerable, intimate, and exposed. This kindness is asking me to be stronger and more self-confident. 

I don't know how to enact this type of emotional work on a national scale. I hear that it sounds woo and perhaps a bit weak. Maybe it is-- there's a strong chance that I'm absolutely wrong. 

I am invested. I want hope for myself to be a different presence. I want space for the people I love, many of them people of color, to feel safe and seen. 

Confessions of a stuttering white woman

Recent moments when I became scrambled:

1) Read a poem about race. For context: I am a white woman. This poem attempted to situate me within race. This poem was about political being personal, therefore, about my family. Slaveholders. Racists. Humans. Like me. Read to an audience of many people of color. I was scared. Realized the worst that could happen is that people thought I was a racist, bad lady. The worst that can happen to people of color speaking about race is much, much different (see Ferguson).

2) In an online forum a white lady wrote, "GURRRLLL" with the neck swivel & another white woman called her on it. A discussion on white privilege & language ensued. In the end, folks began donating to the PayPal accounts of the women of color who had spent so much time and energy educating. It was a payment, an energy exchange, an acknowledgment, a drink at the end of a long day.

3) I walked into a party where women were speaking Spanish. I introduced myself, discovering one woman was from El Salvador. Shared I'd been there and was robbed. In the course of conversation, shared that I'd lead two yoga retreats in Guatemala prior to the El Salvador visit. A look of, "You did what...?" As the opportunity presented, I offered that these retreats are in part an attempt to orient participants more firmly in the globe. Shift perspective, engage with parts of the world where the narrative is perhaps one dimensional. I was explaining with shuffling feet.

I want to draw conclusions here. I'd like to paint myself in a flattering light. Instead, I'm going to leave these right here.

Some resources for white folks working to be anti-racist allies

The following is a resource list culled from a private online group. Please feel free to add more resources in the comments.

HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF FERGUSON AND SUPPORT JUSTICE FOR MICHAEL BROWN:
RECENT UPDATE WITH LINKS FROM NOT SORRY FEMINISM:http://www.notsorryfeminism.com/2014/08/whats-happening-in-ferguson.html

BAIL FUND FOR JAILED RESIDENTS FROM AUGUST PROTESTS: http://antistatestl.noblogs.org/post/2014/08/11/bail-and-legal-fund-for-those-arrested-during-ferguson-anti-police-demonstrations/

GAYLON ALCARAZ

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/03/30/crocodile-tears-antichoice-billboarders/

SHANNON BARBER

http://lunalunamag.com/2014/05/29/white/

http://lunalunamag.com/2014/06/18/dear-white-ladies-remix/

http://www.literaryorphans.org/playdb/shannon-barber-my-life-is-no-minstrel-show/

http://mediadiversified.org/2014/02/21/writing-and-reading-while-black-lessons-learned/

WAGATWE WANJUKI
http://mic.com/articles/38363/college-rape-does-the-media-focus-only-on-white-survivors

TEACHING FOR CHANGE web site: http://www.teachingforchange.org/

WHITE ANTI-RACISM: LIVING THE LEGACY (and other resources from the Teaching Tolerance website):

http://www.tolerance.org/supplement/white-anti-racism-living-legacy

AUTHORS OF INTEREST - please consider ordering these titles from Teaching for Change to support them financially
Mindy Thompson Fullilove - amazing social psychiatrist known for Root Shock, a book about displacement, and recent author of the charming, wise book Urban Alchemy
bibliography at http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/search/apachesolr_search/mindy%20thompson%20fullilove

bell hooks - poet and cultural philosopher ... does she even need an intro?
bibliography at Teaching for Change: http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/search/apachesolr_search/bell%20hooks

June Manning Thomas - urban planner and author of an authoritative book on planning and racism in Detroit (her bibliography search at Teaching for Change brought up some amusing, random results thrown in): http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/search/apachesolr_search/june%20manning%20thomas

Toi Derricotte - amazing poet and prose writer; her book The Black Notebooks is a mind-blower:
http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/search/apachesolr_search/toi%20derricotte

Holiday in Cambodia, or, trying to be a white anti-racist ally

Travel is messed up.

Travel necessitates some type of transportation, which usually means using gas and hurting the environment. Then, what businesses do you support? How do they treat their workers? Their environment? What is the implication of your citizenship and level of access? Is that shared by those in your host community?

Yeah. And yet, travel can be absolutely illuminating. Travel can change consciousness and shift our realities. It can teach us greater levels of respect for humans and the environment. It can inspire within us dedication to justice and its realization.

Many people have asked me to develop a yoga retreat in the winter of 2015 to somewhere warm and not so far from the northeast of the US. I have been looking. Lordy, have I been looking. It's surprisingly complicated to find a place with a yoga space, the right accommodations, access to vegan food, and that doesn't require a ton of travel.

I found some promising leads in Vieques, Puerto Rico. And then I had to call some Puerto Rican friends and ask, is it right for me to go there? I was a part of the call to get the US military out of Vieques. There are still high levels of toxicity linked to cancer due to the military's experiments on the island. After conversations with friends, they felt it potentially could be a responsible act. The military stunted Vieques' economy. Tourism dollars, coupled with awareness of Vieques' history and current reality, could be beneficial.

I began concocting an experience including visiting the bioluminescent bay and inviting a Puerto Rican Independentista and former political prisoner to come speak to the group. And then I began calculating accommodations, transport to and from the local airport, and food. It would be nearly double what I charged in Guatemala, thereby cost-prohibitive to much of my community.

Accessible travel is important to me. I kept looking.

I found eco-cottages in St. Lucia that looked absolutely enchanting. Further research showed that while it would still be a little more costly than Guatemala (everything is) it would be more accessible for a larger demographic. I read on and discovered the site was a former plantation.

Seriously.

I checked in with a friend who recently returned from St. Lucia. Our conversation confirmed my sneaking suspicion. Tourism in the Caribbean generally means supporting a large multi-national resort where money is siphoned away from the local community and locals are largely exploited. Or, you can sometimes find small, locally-owned businesses, but many are located on former plantations.

Many of you followed the controversy earlier this year when Ani DiFranco cancelled a planned music retreat on a plantation outside of New Orleans. My friend, Clarissa, and I talked about our feelings over the Ani controversy. Clarissa largely felt sad because she felt like it was a missed opportunity for Ani, as a white woman, to model anti-racist solidarity. I also felt like Ani's defensive response was insensitive to the valid concerns of women of color and their allies.

And then I found a retreat center on a plantation in St. Lucia. WTF.

My first thought: you witnessed Ani's lack of awareness to the trigger of a plantation. Move along.

My second thought: why are so many plantations now restaurants and hotels?

I titled this piece, "Holiday in Cambodia," after the Dead Kennedy's song highlighting this behavior of white folk running all over and playing on beaches that were sites of massacres. In Cambodia, all tourists are invited to see the killing fields. While in Vietnam I talked to both Cambodians and tourists about this practice. Cambodians felt strongly that visiting the killing fields broadened awareness, provided history, and context. It kept alive both tragedy and accountability.

The tourists I spoke to were deeply affected and reverent.

I mentioned the St. Lucia plantation to a Jewish friend. "Yeah," she mused. "Former concentration camps are all museums. There's reverence in visiting these sites."

Old sugar-wheel on the grounds of the eco-retreat/former plantation

Granted, there are more plantations than concentration camps. But why have so many been converted into tourism spaces?

What do we do with these spaces of tragedy? I called Clarissa to talk this through. I explained that part of me wants to go and think through slavery's legacy. To do that responsibly, I think I would need guidance from and participation with an ally of color. But what does that mean for any participants of color? And a retreat implies some level of self-care. Would participants of color be able to feel safe there?

As Ani said, we all inhabit plenty of buildings and places with tragic histories that we don't know. But what about when we do know? When it's super obvious or we've done due diligence? Is there ever a way to inhabit that space respectfully?

The specific space I'm considering is owned by a German family who bought it in the 1960s. They've completed ecologically-sustainable renovations, created a diverse organic farm, and opened up partnerships with the surrounding community. From my research, it seems they've made space for neighbors to have farm plots, and share in other collaborative, community-driven enterprise. The owners are historians and speak openly about the land being inhabited first by Arawak Indigenous people before slaves and slave-owners.

No amount of community gardens erase this place's history as a plantation. Is there anything that can be done to make this space safe for people of color and allies? Who is this space meant for?

I'm genuinely interested in your comments below. I'm working to be clear, considered, respectful, and uplifting in my words. I ask for the same.

Clarissa urged me to write this piece to be transparent in processing as a white anti-racist ally. So often, I'm scared of being offensive or insensitive. I closet many processes for just that reason. She pointed out this tendency can be a disservice to other white allies on the same journey. Let's be open about these conversations and support each other in navigating responsibly.

With love, justice, healing, and accountability,
Maiga

White anti-racist ally who wants more from other whites

As a white, anti-racist ally, I'm troubled & angered by the response to Trayvon Martin's murder.

Trayvon Martin was the victim.  Criminalizing him in public discourse and during the trial of his murderer is akin to blaming a rape victim.  

When Black people are victim to crime, their aggressors are not prosecuted as vigorously as when white or light-skinned people are victim.

Yes, Zimmerman is of Latino-descent.  Many white people seem to think that his identity blurs the racial aspects of this encounter.  He is a light-skinned man who saw a Black youth as criminal.  It doesn't matter that he wasn't "pure-bred" caucasian.  Viewing young Black men as only criminal isn't exclusive to the white gaze.  Its prevalence is unacceptable.

I was raised in a homogenous, largely white, largely upper-middle class community.  I remember being 18, interning with Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and being mentored by a Black woman in her 40s.  When my internship concluded, she hugged me.  I remember her and I remember that moment.  It was the first time I had developed a close enough relationship with a Black person that we hugged.  I was deeply troubled by my own lack of exposure to other people, communities, and experiences.

Since that time I've had the privilege to develop close friendships and relationships with people of a multitude of backgrounds.  I've been told by Black friends that my ignorance was deeply painful to them.  I was simply unaware of their reality.  Race wasn't part of my day to day experience, because whiteness is considered baseline "normal" in the region where I was raised and largely lived.  I'm grateful to these friends for patiently explaining their reality to me and answering my questions when this was not their responsibility.  It is my responsibility.  It is each of our responsibilities to investigate, listen, and be attentive to various experiences.  Why?  Because it betters us.  

I still have significant work to do to be attentive towards institutional racism, interpersonal racism, and the latent prejudices I carry.  My family is only a few generations away from being slave holders.  I remember acute racism from my grandparents in Georgia.  I think about reconciling these experiences.  I'm certainly not responsible for any actions other than my own, but I am positioned to understand the context in which I live. The access and privilege I receive, unearned, has to be redistributed towards larger swaths of the population around me.  In this way I can once more find scale.  White skin makes me worth no more than anyone else.  

I strenuously urge other white folks to listen to people of color.  Listen to their experiences.  Read.  Learn.  Don't cling so tightly to what you feel you have, deserve, earned.  Did you really?  What does that mean about you?  

I got into a seven sister's college because I was raised in an environment that prepared me for that education and I had parents who could pay the tuition.  I didn't deserve that education more than anyone else.  And that doesn't mean that I'm a terrible person.  It means that I used that education to the best of my ability, and I know the world would be a better place is we were operating from a level playing field.  If I didn't get into that college, I would still have been able to live and breathe.  

Don't let the world be a place of "us and them."  Don't allow swaths of the world's population to strike you as fearsome.  Don't let the world be a place of such tumult.  Breathe deeply, find your own humanity (underneath your resume and degrees and zip-code) and LISTEN.  Listen the way you wanted to be heard about deeply traumatic experiences.  Listen the way you needed to be heard about struggles that made you feel alone and isolated.  Listen, and be compassionate.  If the person talking to you is angry, let them be.  Understand anger as a valid response to injustice.  Let people feel.  Let yourself feel.  Let the process of making space for one another deepen both of your humanity.

Cheryl Strayed, as columnist Dear Sugar, wrote a bright, insightful reply to a query about jealousy and privilege.  Her response speaks specifically to class privilege, but is applicable to white privilege too:
"Privilege has a way of fucking with our heads the same way a lack of it does... You’ve been given a tremendous amount of things that you did not earn or deserve, but rather that you received for the sole reason that you happen to be born into a family who had the money...  I believe our early experiences and beliefs about our place in the world inform who we think we are and what we deserve and by what means it should be given to us."

Trayvon may have been any number of things, but bottom line, he was human.  Zimmerman is too, and given that he lives, he needs to be held accountable.  All lives matter and we need to demonstrate that to one another.  Making space for another doesn't cede your own.

Unfuck your head.  Be human.

We're Wrong

Riding in a bus between the jungles and Andes of
Ecuador there was one thought landing
more heavily than any competitor: "We're wrong."

I look out the window at decaying
missions, harbingers of "hope" that sold
land, flesh, belief and
now NGOs and mining & drilling
companies who build schools and
hospitals to once again teach literacy
after contracts are signed

Teach lessons on construction sites, at the helms of
oil wells, in classrooms, on the labels of pills
prescribed at the clinic
teach how to live.
Teach how to live when the jungle is
gone when the mountains are blasted when
flesh and hope and belief  are
sold

People who look like me staff
the embassies and company headquarters
and clinics and schools.  I could easily
get a job teaching how to live when
the other people who look like me
have auctioned off the land and plants and water
and air and flesh and hope

What do I know about how to live?  The way
I live doesn't work.  The way I live supports a
few people who look like me (not all) and

I'm told I have skills.  I can teach in schools
and clinics in places like this that are
being sold for parts.  I don't have skills.
I don't know how to grow food or build
shelter or birth or cook or be present

My parents hired people who had skills.  These
people cleaned and planted and built.  Why would
I then be exported to build and clean and plant
and teach?

The world is finite and bounded and I look
out the window of a bus traveling the
country from jungle to Andes in Ecuador
and I see companies from my home and I
know that earth, mineral, plant, substance will
be robbed here and mined and sold and
taken to where I live

and the people who were robbed and stolen
and whose lives were changed will be taught
how to live in the aftermath of theft, robbery,
rape, and destruction

I am watching from the bus window.  I am
grateful for teachers (who look like these people,
from the jungle, the mountains, the cities) who are
patient with me, who teach me.  I am grateful
for heart and space and room to not

My head leaned against the bus window it
rattled it bruised my temple and buzzed my skin
and my knees wrapped to my chest gently
resting against the seat back of the man in front
of me (I hope not digging into his back) and I saw
a sign announcing that this town was named "Shell."

(steven biko. nigeria. massacres and oil.  shell)

I passed the first manicured lawn I'd seen yet

(like the only manicuredmassacred lawn I saw in
all of Cuba, in Havana, at the U.S. Interest Section [housed
by the Swiss Embassy] where dark-skinned people
served iced tea on trays to light-skinned people)

I passed the first gated community I'd seen since arriving there
was a sign "Shell employees and guests."  I saw more visible
poverty surrounding this community than anywhere else
in the country.

On my lap, on this bus, jiggling through the mountains
and communities named
after corporations founded where I'm from a book written
by a NY Times journalist about Indigenous
struggles for land against powerful companies like
Shell and other multinationals busy drilling for copper
and oil or pharmaceutical companies looking for drugs in the rainforest
(and in their wake communities, ways of life destroyed
replaced by clinics and schools
and teachers teaching how to live in the aftermath
of oil and copper and drugs and progress)

We're wrong.  How I live (a life based on drugs, extracted from
these jungles, with technology, made from minerals in these
mountains, from exploitation, from globalization, from NAFTA)
is wrong
the story I was told that well-meaning people know
how to live can teach others
(in the jungles, on farms, in the mountains, in
the cities, in ghettoes)
how to live is wrong.

This is why I sit in buses and cross countries.  This is
why I take journeys into earth and jungle
and thick midnight and early mornings and ask and
thank my teachers.  I watch.  I watch villagers in
Vietnam rebuild and farm out of milk jugs and I watch
people in Guatemala build houses out of litter and
I watch people in Ecuador in the streets, in the jungle, from the
bus window, across the table

I know many point to statistics and life
expectancy and how well-meaning people who
look like me who come from where I come from vaccinate
and feed and shelter and change
and the statistical evidence of improvement
and it looks like this
it looks like the town of "Shell" and strip-mined
West Virginia and sold-for-parts Camden
and then gated communities and manicured lawns

I want to live differently.  I saw rain barrels on roofs in Panama
(and hear of workshops at home) I see teachers everywhere.  People
live in scale out of necessity and sometimes by choice.  Not saints,
not sinners.  The way to not see scarred earth & starved
inhabitants is to stop stealing.  That's the cost of making IPhones and
cars and drugs and toys.
I want to break my own addictions.

We don't have to steal and then teach
those who have been robbed
how to live
We can live differently
I can live differently
I can learn and be thankful and watch
and observe and
Stop taking from
or allowing the taking from
or permitting the taking from
and simply be here
(and let others be there)

Memory, Appropriation, and Gratitude

Listening to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, I've heard this band cover songs ranging from traditional Haitian  folks songs to Gaelic ballads.  They're primarily known as an African American Old Time string band, but their musical reach is far more expansive.  There are a few things happening with them that make me super excited.

Old Time musicians seem to always be historians.  I love that they are so invested in lineage.  It reminds me of yoga-- you can identify various practitioners by their teachers & trace everyone back to the same source.  Two of the Chocolate Drops identify Joe Thompson as a primary teacher, educating not just on traditional songs and styles of performance, but on each song's lineage and history.  Through oral telling and scholarship, the banjo relates its long voyage from Africa to the Americas.

Another piece that sets me alight-- the music they play encompasses the whole of their heritage.  As Americans of mixed descent-- African, Irish, and Caribbean ancestry (though I'm sure that's not a complete list)-- the musical strains are a composite of their background.  The last time I heard such a complete telling of lineage was studying abroad in Cuba.  I went to a ballet folklorico performance in Havana.  The performers danced ballet, acknowledging Western European influence, Flamenco nodding to Spanish heritage, West African dance forms, traditional Indigenous movement, and culminating in exploratory modern pieces.  It was so lovely to encounter such an embracing remembrance.

There has been a lot of controversy over white musicians appropriating Black music.  Elvis Presley garnered attention for taking Blues songs and bringing them to white audiences, often without acknowledgment of the source.  White hip hop artists are often asked for accountability in working within a traditionally Black musical realm.  The issue is often one of recognition for the musical trajectory as well as disproportionate access.  In the United States, white people have access to most neighborhoods, physical spaces, as well as artistic mediums.  There is still institutional racism, meaning people of color often do not share that same movement between physical and cultural spheres.  For white people to also adopt traditionally Black music can feel assuming, at the most innocent characterization.  (My friend Kieu used to term appropriators "culture vultures.")

These musicians, primarily identifying as African American, are playing a range of music encompassed within their own heritage.  Within that primary identifier as African American, they also play traditional Gaelic songs.  I can't think of another African American group or artist playing traditionally white-identified music.  The music is beautiful & the Carolina Chocolate Drops perform it masterfully.  It's so beautiful to hear the resonance of these performers sharing music that is a part of their heritage alongside strains from their other forebearers as far south as Haiti.  The music feels powerful and grounded because it's offered with historical knowledge, musical expertise, & creative feeling.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops know and study the history of the music they share.  They share minstrel music and offer what it meant to various communities and how it allowed Black artists to perform when they were otherwise excluded from public art.

As much as their music moves me, it also excites me to understand how we can respectfully honor and exult cultural tradition.  I think the key piece is they acknowledge lineage.  They acknowledge history.  They tell the stories of who could perform what music at what time.  What type of personal cost some of these musicians suffered.  The Carolina Chocolate Drops offer music in full context, with full story, and then add the flavor and swagger of today's experience.  The end result isn't a melting pot where identities are blurred or lost.  Rather, a full-bodied acknowledgment and passionate reply to generations and regions of sound.

Their music is helping me acknowledge Thanksgiving.  I often struggle with this holiday.  I love sharing gratitude and a meal with family.  I love tradition-- when it binds together.  However, I have a hard time embracing a tradition that white-washes the historical encounter between Indigenous and European colonizers.  The romantic story of sharing obscures the larger historical reality of a genocide of Indigenous people in the Americas.  The music of the Carolina Chocolate Drops reminds me to both acknowledge history, to recognize the experience of Indigenous people today, and to hold onto the gratitude and community of a Thanksgiving gathering.  Rather than allowing the nostalgia of the day wipe away historical memory, let that knowledge mingle with the positive pieces of building family, connection, & awareness.

Rain without thunder and lightning

Chris Hedges' & Joe Sacco's Days of Destruction, Days of Rage will stay with me.  I'm thumbing through the multitude of notes, highlights, & exclamations I've added to these pages.  When profiling Camden as a city gutted by un-checked capitalism, Hedges wrote, "Economic segregation is the new, acceptable form of segregation."  This assertion is embedded in a history of self-sufficient Black farmers in Mount Laurel, who were pushed out when the New Jersey Turnpike extended south and created a Mount Laurel exit.  Developers knew the land would be valuable so they used the weapon of code enforcement to cite farmers who had never concerned them before.  Simultaneously, Camden was being gutted of factory jobs & experiencing white flight.  The Black farmers were enticed to Camden, where there were no jobs, while the developers colonized Mount Laurel.

These histories are so crucial in understanding the rich histories & capacities of all people.  Only one or two generations ago Camden was a vital city.  It's current inhabitants also lead productive lives.  Growth, unchecked by any sense of human nor environmental well-being, displaced all but the most economically elite.

Hedges goes on to interview at length Father Doyle of Sacred Heart Church.  He said, "The immigrants who came with a shovel on their shoulder, could dig a canal.  You could walk till you turn blue with a shovel on your shoulder, and there's now job [now]."  I appreciate this reminder.  I hear a general nostalgia for a lost work ethic-- which I agree with in certain respects-- but it would be well-paired with a nostalgia for lost opportunities.

The theme among many survivors of these economic sacrifice zones is that a generation or two ago, many who were poor didn't realize it, because they weren't surrounded by what they didn't have.  Father Doyle explains that many poor today are compounded with added feelings of rage and deprivation due to the onslaught of consumerist culture.  When investigating West Virginia, anti-mountain top removal activist Larry Gibson echoes this sentiment by stating, "I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world, with nature."  It wasn't until he moved to Cincinnati that he became aware of what his family didn't have.  He still would have rathered his rural life, and the richness of access to the natural world.

From one of our many trips to the annual Woodstock Martin Luther King Day Event

The parallel looting of the natural landscape in West Virginia show the patterns of unchecked corporatism.  Hedges includes a quote from Frederick Douglass, "If there is no struggle there is no progress.  Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.  They want rain without thunder and lightning.  They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.  The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle."

I remain inspired by those who continue to struggle & those who tell their stories.

Women of Water

The Goddard train dropped off another passenger.  Gailanne left a note in our guest bed for Shameka reading, "Where you lay your head, last night was my bed.  When you wake at 3, you better think of me."  Shameka came in wearily from lots of East Coast travelling.  She got some rest before I introduced her to two dear friends, Erica & Josslyn.

Shameka is an actress & writer who is creating content this semester about water in the African American experience.  She, Erica, & Josslyn are all beautiful artists of color.  They began swapping stories about being discouraged from swimming in the ocean because "Black folks don't do that."  As Shameka engaged in this research she found evidence of slaves being discouraged from water as it was a potential means of escape.  So many of these early experiences in the US were absorbed into cultural identity. Her work is understanding water as an archetype for movement & transformation, as well as a physical connector between brown people around the world.

Lovely, exuberant Erica immediately began sharing her own history as a surfer girl in LA.  Later, she moved to Bahia, Brazil where she was engaged in truly challenging organizing among the homeless in favelas.  Elders told her she needed to live by the water where Yemaya could nourish her spirit each day and sustain this work.  The following day, she found her sea-side home.

Watching swimmers in Bahia she was struck by beautiful brown bodies rushing the waters.  Jamaica & elsewhere in the world hadn't made the same impression because Brazil, like the US, is filled with citizens whose skin tone runs the gamut.  However, even though color is so widely varied among Brazilians brown people are still the highest percentage in the water.  Something in Erika was reaffirmed as she swam amongst them.

Some of Erica's greatest teachers were the Sisters of the Good Death.  These elder women waited at the river for slaves liberating themselves.  If the emancipating slaves didn't survive the journey these women told their families they would provide a "good death" with all attendant ceremony.

The conversation wandered amongst us.  Shameka is headed to Atlanta & we all encouraged her to go further east to Savannah, land of pirates, Gullah culture, Tybee Island, & water.

Space

Yesterday I was able to spend a bunch of quality time with a friend.  She recently finished residency at Goddard, where Kevin graduated.  As a Black woman, she was a part of a group of students of color who created some space to share thoughts, ideas, & concerns about life & academia at Goddard.  It was a big hulabaloo.  White students felt excluded & couldn't understand why students of color wanted an opportunity to share amongst themselves.  My friend had lunch with a white student who was particularly distraught over this event.  The white student couldn't understand why it was important to students of color to have space where they didn't have to explain themselves & their experience.

Most of us who have worked towards safe space & recognition on campuses or in communities have been a part of similar conversations.  Trying to help broaden a sense of understanding & also respect for experiences we can't understand.  There is always something outside of the realm of my knowledge, so maybe part of the work of being a conscious being is being humble to that fact.

Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica

My friend and I began remembering various moments of carving out space.  We compared stories of Costa Rica, where we'd both spent time.  I remember arriving at national parks to find them closed.  My first reaction was, "Seriously!  I'm here for a limited time.  I rented a bike."  Hands were probably on hips. Thankfully, patient people explained to me that there's a national policy to close parks one day out of every week so that the animals and plant life have a breather from humans.  That shut me up.  What a shift in perspective too-- only one day out of every week to live without interference, gawkers, cameras, heavy footed hikers.  & what about all the swathes of earth without relent from human presence?

Earlier, when I was 20, I studied abroad for a semester in Cuba.  I had a beautiful conversation one afternoon in Havana with a woman who had played a large role in the Revolution.  I had come to her because I was struggling to understand gender dynamics in Cuba.  I was exhausted from constant cat calls, "sss sss, oya nena!  Oya!"  I could never be anonymous, never walk down the street uninterrupted nor unaccompanied.  Accustomed to the privacy of the northeast of the US, I often hid in my dorm room.

20 year old me eating cotton candy on a merry go round in Parque Lenin, Cuba

This woman had been a wealthy college student when Fidel & Che swept through Havana.  She was a part of the student movement making molotov cocktails & helping former prostitutes resettle for housing and job training in the fancy, exclusive downtown hotels after Batista was ousted.  She recalled to me when she had visited Chicago.  "I felt invisible," she said.

She helped organize women into the Women's Federation, a body representing 80% of Cuban women.  They met regularly and annually presented to Fidel, Raul, and the top cadre for five days on issues impacting Cuban women.  That floored me.  At the time, Bush was president of the US.  First, I tried to imagine a body that represented 80% of US women.  Then I tried to imagine Bush listening for FIVE DAYS to this presentation.  And then I thought what a small percentage of a year-- 5 days out of 365!

Gathering space for growth.  I feel this internally as I practice yoga.  Learning to lengthen spine and allow for there to be more-- more communication, more presence.  Maybe becoming slightly more adept at allowing the same for others-- animals to have uninterrupted space, those I love whose experiences are distinct to have space to share & explore-- allowing each of us to be a bit more unimpeded.