by Mahfam Malek (cross-posted from Watch Me Cultivate)
Today? Oh, am I ever struggling with notions of masculinity and femininity and the in-between and the outside-of.
Over the past couple of days at work I have been subjected to the highest concentration of the toxic combination of male…
It is with a heavy heart that I begin to write this note to communicate the deep sadness I felt tonight at the solidarity action for Cece McDonald, a trans woman of color who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for defending herself against nazi scum, and for Brandi Martell, a trans woman of color who was murdered in downtown Oakland last week forbeing who she was. I got word of this action earlier today and was looking forward to gathering with the queer rebel community, of which I consider myself a part. I thought this was going to be another opportunity to unite and attempt to work through the trauma of being reminded yet again that our bodies and identities are criminal in this hetero-patriarchal society. I was thinking of Brandi’s family and friends as I rode my bike across Oakland, who are no doubt still mourning the loss of their loved one, and of Cece sitting in a cold prison cell, all because she refused to become another name to be called out in remeberence in November, all because she wanted to live. I approached the gathering on Telegraph Ave and was instantly confused. Why were people dancing to Michael Jackson in the middle of the street? Was I in the right place? I spoke with a couple of people who confirmed that this was the solidarity action for Cece and Brandi.
I immediately began to question what the connection between solidarity and celebration would be in this instance, and it just doesn’t make any sense to me. It was unconscionable for me to even think of dancing or celebrating in light of the Brandi’s murder and Cece’s incarceration. My heart turned to lead, and I could only walk around, dumbfounded, asking people what they thought was happening. My inquiries were met with more confusion. A few said they didn’t know exactly how this event could be interpreted as solidarity action, and I felt relieved by the interpellation of my discomfort.
To me, this manifestation of “solidarity” was completely inappropriate. How can we be dancing and drinking in the face of our collective oppression? If one is oppressed, aren’t we all (as the old adage goes)? I felt this event trivialized the meaning of solidarity, as if all we had to do was gather a hundred people in the middle of Telegraph and stop dancing for five minutes to chant, “we’re here, we’re queer, fuck OPD.” I was reliving my own trauma on Telegraph as the cops approached and sirens blared in the background, thinking I could be arrested, or beaten again. I came for solidarity, but experienced only emotional distance, isolation, and deep discordance. It looked and felt like we were celebrating the death and incarceration of our community. This made me incredibly sad…
Then, frustration set in.
I know some people are going to say that it wasn’t meant to be like that. I know some will try to defend this event in some way to legitimate their participation, to make themselves feel better. I know this will happen because that’s how we have learned to function and survive in a society rife with contradiction. This post isn’t meant to accuse anyone for their participation or moralize about what we should or should not be doing, but rather, to ask: why the fuck was I invited to an FTP march under the guise of solidarity with Cece and Brandi??? The guise pisses me off because it’s OPPORTUNISTIC. It uses the murder and incarceration of our comrades to say FTP, the most reductive shit we could say in a time when we really need to think about the complex nature of all of this violent shit that is going down. Oakland rebels already know that the state and the cops are fucked up. What the fuck are we going to do about it? Dance?
I’m really nervous about posting this, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m tired of being silenced by the fear that people won’t like what I have to say, that people will try to delegitimize my position because I haven’t been as involved or whatever. I say FUCK IT. This is politics.
I’m down to organize or put a call out to the whole occupy/ decolonize community for a massive GA to respond to Brandi’s death, and the bullshit plea bargain offered to CeCe. We need to work in our neighborhoods, with the people we see everyday, and try to break down the hegemonic patriarchal and colonial ideology that pathologizes our bodies. We can START with the people that we already organize with, the people who say they have a radical politic, but turn around and reproduce these oppressive relations over and over again. In calling for this GA, we get to shift queer struggles from the margin to the center. We get to see who’s down and who’s not. We get a sense of the project that lies ahead.
”ANY LIBERATION STRUGGLE THAT DOES NOT CHALLENGE HETERONORMATIVITY CANNOT SUBSTANTIALLY CHALLENGE COLONIALISM OR WHITE SUPREMACY.”- Andrea Smith
I’m posting this mostly for myself so I can have a handy link whenever I (foolishly) decide to debate Ron Paul supporters.
The Newsletters:
How Ron Paul used racist newsletters to wipe out debts, get rich
Has gone on record that he had no…
The moon cycle controls the tides, so why is it so far fetched to believe that it affects us as well. Seeing as our bodies are made up of 70% water it only makes sense that it tugs and pulls us as well.
YES.
Cece McDonald stood up to bigots and survived a hate crime. Now she’s in the county jail waiting to be tried for second degree murder. This is a story about intersectionality – what happens when a young trans woman of color goes up against white supremacy, misogyny and transphobia. It’s a story about what happens when you have to fight for your life.
It began last June, the night of the 5th, when Cece and her friends – all young, black and queer – decided that they wanted to walk to the grocery store. The grocery store in question is in south Minneapolis just off Lake Street, the busy, polluted, vital artery running from the wealthy white neighborhoods by the lakes through blocks of working class, multiracial, immigrant businesses before it ends in upmarket gentrification at the river. To get to the store, the group had to walk past a dive bar called the Schooner. Dean Schmitz and his friends were standing outside the Schooner’s side door. All were older – Dean was 47 – and all were white. When they saw CeCe and her friends walk by, they started yelling – “faggots” “chicks with dicks” “n*****s” – a litany of vile abuse targeted at a group of much younger strangers. CeCe McDonald has a strong sense of justice – she decided to confront Dean and his friends. So she and her group walked toward the bar.
Before we go any further, let’s talk about CeCe. She’s 23, a college student in fashion design, a trans woman, Black, femme, very funny and widely known to be a generous person – a woman who housed and took care of her chosen family of younger queer and trans folks. Her friends call her Honee Bea. CeCe is someone who fights for social change who even from jail has been urging her supporters to help other victims of white supremacy – including the family of Jaime Gonzalez, who was killed by the Texas police while he was at school. She is someone who has faith in herself, in her community, in her values. “Love is inevitable and overcomes any and all things,” she writes. CeCe and her friends are brave and tough, strong enough to walk around being visible in a world that attacks and criminalizes you if you’re young and African-American, and doubles the assault if you’re young and African-American and trans and femme.
You probably know – if you’re trans you definitely know – that trans women of color face incredible, staggering rates of violence and homicide. In most places it is essentially legal to discriminate against trans people in housing, employment and social services. As a result, trans people, especially trans women, are socially vulnerable in all kinds of ways – and vulnerable turns into “criminalized”, whether it’s because you can’t change your legal documents to match your gender or because you’re homeless and panhandling or because you’re doing sex work to make the rent…or because you have to fight to keep yourself safe. Trans people are ten to fifteen times more likely to have been incarcerated than cis people. Nearly half of all African-American trans people have spent time in the prison system. Seventy percent of the GLBTQ people murdered in 2010 were people of color. Forty-four percent were trans women. If you’re vulnerable, you have to wonder – will someone assault you? Will you survive? Will anyone help you? That’s a pretty heavy thing to carry around in the back of your mind every day.
AUSTIN, TEXAS, is no stranger to police brutality. On March 9, a Travis County grand jury decided not to file charges against Austin police officer Nathan Wagner for shooting and killing Byron Carter, a 20-year-old African American.
Byron and his 16-year-old friend were starting their car, when two police officers approached them from behind, without identifying themselves and with guns drawn. Byron and his friend attempted to drive away as the police opened fire—which they claim was an act of self-defense.
As community activist Debbie Russell said after the ruling, “What we have been seeing across this country for years and years and years holds true in our liberal county—that it’s okay to kill young men of color, and police can still get away with it.”
Meanwhile, at the UT campus, north of downtown, every day, students can find statues adorning the South Mall, with Confederate generals on one side and Confederate statesmen, such as the slave owner Jefferson Davis, on the other.
This represents the neo-Confederate ideology that the university was built around. As Edmund T. Gordon, chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies department, said during an Occupy UT-sponsored walking tour of campus on the history of racism: “Privileged and elite white folks felt like vindicating the Confederacy and what the Confederacy stood for.”
EVERYONE gets niqab and burka the wrong way round in the West. And when it’s large media organisations, it’s really inexcusable.
There are those who advocate on behalf of the education for profit system as the solution to our education needs; this of course – is the scariest and most ridiculous thing that I have ever heard in my life. Having an “education for profit” system would essentially put America back where it was pre-public school; in fact – one of the reasons that America became a dominant force in the world and a “global power” was due to the improvement in education and skills for American workers all courtesy of public schools.
We currently have a sufficient supply of “for profit” and public schools to pull empirical data to determine what is working and what is not working. Private or “for profit” schools have their place in society and if you can afford them – it can be one of the best educations in the world; unfortunately – most people do not have 5k a month to pay for a private school to ensure their kids can get a top notch education. And costs to taxpayers go up with “for profit” education just like they do with “for profit” prison systems and “for profit” healthcare systems….
From InTheseTimes:
In recent years, major studies suggest that, on the whole, charter schools are producing worse educational achievement results than traditional public schools. For example, a landmark study from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes discovered that while 17 percent of charter schools “provide superior education opportunities for their students,” a whopping “37 percent deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.” Likewise, the National Center for Education Statistics found that charter school students performed significantly worse on academic assessments than their peers in traditional public schools.
The current “separate but unequal” status of the school system is already unacceptable….and moving to a completely “for profit” education system would be a death knell to communities around the United States. We’ve written about the huge gap in inequality in the education system in our piece: American Education: The Modern Feudal System.
For a history lesson on the public education system – PBS has more.
Source: US News
BLESSED ARE THE SISSIES
BLESSED ARE THE BOI DYKES
BLESSED ARE THE PEOPLE OF COLOR MY BELOVED KITH AND KIN
BLESSED ARE THE TRANS
BLESSED ARE THE HIGH FEMMES
BLESSED ARE THE SEX WORKERS
BLESSED ARE THE AUTHENTIC
BLESSED ARE THE DIS-IDENTIFIERS
BLESSED ARE THE GENDER ILLUSIONISTS
BLESSED ARE THE NON-NORMATIVE
BLESSED ARE THE GENDERQUEERS
BLESSED ARE THE KINKSTERS
BLESSED ARE THE DISABLED
BLESSED ARE THE HOT FAT GIRLS
BLESSED ARE THE WEIRDO-QUEERS
BLESSED IS THE SPECTRUM
BLESSED IS CONSENT
BLESSED IS RESPECT
BLESSED ARE THE BELOVED WHO I DIDN’T DESCRIBE, I COULDN’T DESCRIBE, WILL LEARN TO DESCRIBE AND RESPECT AND LOVE
AMEN
