January 2008 archive

CA Suburbs…no candidate is getting traction

This is going to be stepping way out of my self-imposed hiatus. BTW we should all try it since it has been good for my perspective on the primaries.

During the past two weeks of not posting much (20 comments a week down from 80+) I’ve lurked and read the blogs here and elsewhere. I’ve gotten out and had dinner with my neighbors and friends. One of the most interesting things of the past two weeks has been discussions on the upcoming primary election. The results have been staggering…to a political junkie that hangs out in the blogsophere.

Disclaimer: These are my observations based on a limited group of co-workers, neighbors, and friends. I live in Marin County, CA and we voted 67% John Kerry in 2004. Don’t get in a hissy fit if you disagree!

Tired of Talking About Racism?

On some positions a coward has asked the question is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. – Martin Luther King Jr., November 1967

A few days ago, coincidentally on Martin Luther King Jr.’s real birthday, I was at a gathering of middling size where I only knew two people. While I sipped my club soda and nearly nodded off listening to someone buzz on and on about football, a conversation cluster within eavesdropping distance took up the subject of reservation casinos. I live in California and four Indian gaming referenda will appear on the ballot February 5, so a discussion of the topic was not a surprise. I’ve always had an (apparently inborn) ability to tune into conversations across a room while blocking out those in front of me, and my interest was piqued because whoever was explaining the gaming proposals seemed to know quite a bit about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to these measures being put before the voters. Then I heard it. Somebody said, “It’s the redskins’ revenge.”

For the first time, I looked over that way, and all five people in the group were gently laughing or smiling or nodding assent.

I don’t think he meant it maliciously. Quite possibly he even thought he was being supportive. It’s doubtful he would have said “nigger” or “wetback” or “chink,” since there were African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos in the room. But no obvious Indians. Because I don’t wear feathers, mocassins or a loincloth and can pass for white, he apparently felt unconstrained in making what I’m sure he thought was a harmless little joke. Maybe even a pro-Indian joke. I could have walked over and explained how infuriating what he had said was, how hurtful it was that everybody seemed to have enjoyed what he said. But it gets so bloody tiring dealing with the reactions. Not just the accusations of “political correctness,” the rolled eyes or the  “Aren’t you being too sensitive?” charges, inevitably delivered with a smile. But also the downward glances, the stammering, or even the apologies that so often greet an objection: “Oh, I’m sorry. I know that you  … uh… Native Americans object to that.”

As if it’s okay to deploy a slur when no member of the slurred ethnicity is around to be insulted? As if racism only matters to people of color? As if every one of us is not harmed to the core by such talk about any ethnicity and should object to it?

This incident – I can recount a dozen others I’ve witnessed in the 21st Century – made me ponder a great deal the theme I’ve heard so much of recently, on-line and off, that race and racism have been transcended in America. That we no longer need to talk about these matters because, well, because talking about them only engenders bad feelings about something that is fixed except in a few backward locales by people who will be dead soon anyway. That, 45 years after the summer day Reverend King made that soaring speech on the Washington Mall, his dream is wholly achieved.

Nobody can deny that tremendous progress has been made. Progress that is a testament both to the message of universal legal equality in the nation’s founding document and two centuries of fierce and costly struggle by people of color and their white allies to transform that message into reality. A testament to people’s willingness to change themselves, to surrender their prejudices and fears, to recognize injustice and do something about it, even to give up their lives if that’s what it takes. That progress cannot be sneered at. It reflects an America and Americans of all colors at their best.

Racism nonetheless remains a chronic influence in our lives. Yet many white people say they don’t want to talk about race. They say they’re sick of talking about it. That stuff is all in the past, they say, and wonder aloud why we can’t talk about something else. I think what most are really saying is that they don’t want to listen to talk about race.  

Revisiting the Mountaintop

I am an activist for my people.  I perform my activism with my words, which is the tool I have at hand.  Sometimes I am repetitive.  I am a teacher.  Some lessons are hard.  That’s a clue to the fact that they are important.  Important lessons need to be taught, time and again, using different words, approaching the issue from different points of view.  That’s what I do.  Some of you claim that I do it “ad nauseam”.

Many of you know me as the transsexual woman (or whatever you call me…I’m sure that it is not favorable in many instances).  Some of you know me as a poet.  Some of you see the teacher in me.  Or the glbt activist and PFLAG parent.  I am all of these.  I am a human being.

I was born in a place and time.  I have absorbed the life lessons presented to me since then.  I am still learning.

I’ve tried to pass on what I have learned.  I continue to make that effort, in whatever new venues are available, wherever I can find an opened eye or ear.

“This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

“Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring-when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children-black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics-will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

–I Have a Dream

–August 28, 1963

Dr. King’s Greatest Speech

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I don’t think it’s the “I have a dream”  speech, either in its Washington, DC, or earlier Detroit versions.  I think Dr. King’s greatest speech was given on April 4, 1967, to a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.  It’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”  Exactly, a year later, on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was murdered in Memphis.

Dr. King’s holiday is a day when I hope we can pause for a moment to remember Dr. King, to read this timeless speech of four decades ago, and to recommit ourselves to the struggle for peace and justice.  And most important, I hope we can find ways to re-dedicate ourselves to action for peace and justice.

It’s also important to remember on this holiday not the sanitized, uncontroversial, bland version of Dr. King that the traditional media now commemorate.  The version who gave the “I have a dream speech” and did nothing else of importance.  To the contrary, it’s extremely important to remember the Dr. King who was wiretapped and surveilled by the FBI and state governments, and who was constantly attacked in the media as a Communist and an outside agitator and a revolutionary.  And the Dr. King who was despite his courage in actual physical danger, along with his wife and children, for every waking minute of every one of his days.  And the Dr. King who was threatened quite publicly with lynching and bombing and shooting so regularly by racists, white supremacists and reactionaries of every stripe. And the Dr. King about whom so many Americans expressed their outspoken hatred and contempt even in polite company, at the dinner table, and in their houses of worship.

Join me at the Riverside Church.  

Notes from “Over The Hill”: Part One?

Yep. I’m “Over The Hill.”

And happy as hell about it.

I think it’s hilarious (now, that is!) to walk the Birthday aisles full of black banners and black balloons with screaming white letters shouting  “Over the Hill”, as if that’s as close to hell as one can GET while still on earth. On my 50th birthday, my staff literally FILLED my office with black balloons!

But think about it: we spend all our time and energy for decades, laboring to climb our hills and mountains. We all know time marches on, so did we really think there was some hilltop or mountain top we’d finally reach, * and then get to STAY THERE FOREVER? And would we’d even WANT to stay there forever?  We’re creatures of great curiosity. We like to keep moving to see what’s next. Even mountain tops get boring.

 

Transforming the Human Race

We can look back with a little space between us and the Twentieth Century now. And looking back, we can see that in the bloodiest century in human history…in a time period marked and defined by epic struggles of good versus evil, there are two men who stand head and shoulders above the rest, two real, undeniable and unsullied heroes. Now heroes are tricky, they are after all only human beings, just like the rest of us, and often have feet of clay. But the Twentieth brought us two undeniable heroes. Two men whose greatness, looking back, was not even in the acts that they did, though those were considerable. Whose impact reaches far, far beyond the number of people that they helped and affected, though those are innumerable. Two heroes whose lives have changed not just the course of history, though they undeniably did. The greatness of these two men, in many ways student and teacher, does not lie in just their actions, but in their world changing idea. An idea so radical to the previous history of the human race that I unreservedly hold them up as not just heroes of the Twentieth Century, but as two men who have changed undeniably for the better, and hopefully forever, all of humankind. For they have in a way, changed the very definition of good and evil.

Today we celebrate the birth of one of those men. And the idea that bound them together.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must

love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate

begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we

shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.


Martin Luther King, Jr.

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“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

 

Pony Party: Eek!

Hi all,

Eek! You know it’s Monday when the Pickle has procrastinated. Sorry it’s late! And lame. Perhaps my lamest effort yet. Is that even possible?

Docudharma Times Monday January 21

This Thread is Open 24/7

Monday’s Headlines: Highly Skilled And Out Of Work: Shut out by GOP, independents may tilt Democratic: Hardliner set for Serbia poll win: Moving day Helmand style: how to turn a farm into a fortress: Signs in Kenya That Killings Were Planned :The Populists Retreat: Frontline Blogger Covers War in Iraq With a Soldier’s Eyes

Pentagon Weighs Top Iraq General as Chief of NATO

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is considering Gen. David H. Petraeus for the top NATO command later this year, a move that would give the general, the top American commander in Iraq, a high-level post during the next administration but that has raised concerns about the practice of rotating war commanders.

A senior Pentagon official said that it was weighing “a next assignment for Petraeus” and that the NATO post was a possibility. “He deserves one and that has also always been a highly prestigious position,” the official said. “So he is a candidate for that job, but there have been no final decisions and nothing on the timing.”

Kucinich wins presidential endorsement from key Mexican American organization and more! w/poll

From Dennis’ campaign site site:

Kucinich wins presidential endorsement from key Mexican American organization

Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich gained a significant endorsement today from the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), a progressive advocacy organization based in California and well known for its work in the areas of civil and human rights.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

The Stars Hollow Gazette

So have you ever had it happen that you had to call up technical support?

Yes, well… I’ve been on the other end of that line and that’s one reason why I’m very considerate when I have to call.

So tonight I’ve been struggling with my cable company (hopefully for the last time) and my DSL provider and the manufacturer of my Wireless Router.

Here in Stars Hollow the BIG game was the one between the Pats and the Chargers and right after kickoff the cable went out.  Then it was on again.  Then it went out.  Then it was on again, but the picture was fuzzy, but when I unplugged my VCR and DVD it was less fuzzy but the cable modem still didn’t work.

Did I mention the BIG game?

So calling the cable company was of course useless because the lines were jammed, but the wrinkle is that I have a wireless sharing arrangement with my neighbors (who pay me off in blueberry muffins) and some of them called MY technical support hotline wondering what was up.

“Look at the Patriots!” I said and when they replied it was snowing in Foxboro I said- “There you go!”

I do have DSL also so I popped that right in the loop, but got the same result I always have before, which is that while it would plug right into any particular computer it would just not talk to my Wireless Router at all.  So I was fine but everyone else suffered and while that may seem a metaphor for our age to some I was unsatisfied with the result.

I had other boats that needed floating and the rising tide was not doing it.

You see it all has to do with your DHCP setting and I have pages of variations that don’t work and was reduced to the last refuge of the desperate.

Of course I experienced the same frustrations that everyone always does, the endless voice mail “Press 3 if you having problems with this menu” and the inevitable “We’re sorry but all our technicians are busy at this time.  The estimated hold time is…  Please leave your name and number and we will call you back.”  I’ve never actually had that work.

The DSL people were hopeless.  “You have WHAT kind of Router?  Never heard of it.”  Trendnet BTW, sold in CompUSAs across the country by the gagillion (I’ll miss CompUSA, the Manchester one is within driving distance and now I’ll have to order early and wait overnight).

So I took a nap and at 3 am I got right through to the Trendnet dude and 6 settings and reboots later here I am, just as obnoxious as ever.

Pony Party, NFL Round-up/MLK video

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