Archive

Feminist-Minded Children’s Books (originally posted 5/5/08 on blogspot)

This image is a self-portrait of illustrator Trina Schart Hyman with her daughter Katrin, who grew up to be an author. They collaborated on some books together. You can learn more about her at wikipedia, which is where this image came from.

Feministe has a call for feminist-minded children’s books that either feature strong female characters and/or feature diverse backgrounds and family structures. Seeing as I have a veritable route of used bookstores across the central part of Illinois and into St. Louis where I make pit-stops (is there anything better than used bookstores? maybe used CD stores!), and have amassed a collection of goodies for my daughter, I figured it might be better to post them here.

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George. A classic. Miyax (Julie) runs away from home after an attempted rape, and survives on the tundra by being “adopted” by a wolf pack.
Mama, I’ll Give You the World by Roni Schotter, illustrated by S. Saelig Gallagher. Luisa is the daughter of a single mother who works long hours in her beauty salon, scrimping and saving for the dream of sending Luisa to college someday. Luisa throws her mama a surprise birthday party at the salon, with all her regular customers and neighbors. Roni Schotter’s website.
Mel’s Diner by Marissa Moss. Mabel is a young girl growing up in her parent’s diner, learning the ropes. Mel’s Diner is the anchor of the community—so’s Mabel. Author/illustrator Marissa Moss has a website; she also wrote Mighty Jackie: The Strikeout Queen, about a 17-year-old girl who pitched against the N.Y. Yankees in a demonstration game in 1931, Brave Harriet, about the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel, and True Heart, about a 16-year-old girl who loads freight for the Union Pacific and dreams of becoming a railroad engineer.
Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco. Patricia Polacco is a prolific author/illustrator from Michigan (though she lived in Oakland for much of her life), and frequently covers multicultural and social justice themes. This book is no exception (psst! It’s autobiographical!). She is dyslexic, and is a fierce critic of No Child Left Behind. She has a website.
Stephanie’s Ponytail by Robert Munsch. Stephanie goes through various versions of ponytail, all of which the kids at school deem “ugly”, but copy her style the next day. Stephanie cooks up a real surprise for them…..! Here’s Robert Munsch’s website.
Friends from the Other Side/Amigos Del Otro Lado by Gloria Anzaldua, illustrated by Consuelo Mendez. A bilingual book about a girl named Prietita who befriends a mexican boy, Joaquin, and helps him and his mother evade the Border Patrol. She wrote two other children’s books, Prietita Has a Friend and Prietita y La Llorona. (Gary, Indiana has a version of La Llorona, so does the south side of Chicago. Maybe she knows Resurrection Mary.) Gloria Anzaldua was a giant in feminism, and her death was a loss to the world. Check out some of her adult books, too!
Bread and Roses Too by Katherine Paterson. A chapter book, this is the story of the famous strike as seen through the eyes of Rosa, an italian immigrant girl. Maybe you’ve heard of Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia?
Two books by Bobby Combs: ABC: A Family Alphabet Book and 123: A Family Counting Book. ABC was illustrated by Desiree Keane and Brian Rappa; 123 was illustrated by Danamarie Hosler. These books aren’t just multiracial, they also feature LGBT families.
Jesse on the Night Train by Richard Thompson, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes. Jesse’s adventures sneaking out of the bunk in the middle of the night to go help the engineer drive the train. Or….was she only dreaming? Richard Thompson has a website, too.
The Woman Who Outshone the Sun/La Mujer Que Brillaba Aun Mas Que El Sol by Alejandro Cruz Martinez, a young Zapotec poet who was killed in 1987 while organizing Zapotecs to regain lost water rights. This story is a traditional Zapotec story known as The Legend of Lucia Zenteno. The illustrator, Fernando Olivera, was a friend of the author.
Night of the Five Aunties by Mesa Somer, illustrated by Kate Salley Palmer. Pandemonium ensues as five sisters from a vibrant matriarchal family come to visit. The author hasn’t written any more children’s books (yet), but you can learn more about her here.
This is the Key to the Kingdom by Diane Worfolk Allison. Gorgeous illustrations. A young girl uses her imagination and compassion. We’ve got another one from this author, Wishing at Dawn in the Summer, which is about an older sister teaching her younger brother how to fish. The younger brother is secretly rooting for the fish to get away! Here’s a list of some other books she’s written.
Jezebel’s Spooky Spot by Alice Ross, illustrated by Ted Rand. Jezebel is being raised by her father and grandmother, and then her father gets sent off to war. She learns to face her own fears by heading out into the swamp alone to think.
Pockets by Jennifer Armstrong, illustrated by Mary Grandpre. A young woman goes to a drab little village and tries to adjust to its drab ways. Shows what happens when a woman stifles her dreams and creativity, and the power that is released when she starts to break the rules. Armstrong is another prolific writer with a website. For a time, she was married to the professional curmudgeon, Jim Kunstler. Sweet bedda matri, talk about opposites attract. Oh hell, let’s not go there; we’ve all made our mistakes in love-n-war! Anyway, you may recognize Mary Grandpre’s work from Harry Potter.
The Seven Chinese Sisters by Kathy Tucker, illustrated by Grace Lin. When the youngest sister gets stolen by a hungry dragon, the other six take matters into their own hands and rescue her—and second sister knows kung fu. Illustrator Grace Lin has a site and a blog!
The Fisherwoman by Louise Brierley, illustrated by Anne Carter. A fisherwoman finds a strange pink urn in her net, and her life really begins to change. Sort of a “be careful what you wish for, you just may get it” story. The moral of the story? Be proud of who you are.
A Castle on Viola Street by Dyanne DiSalvo, a wonderful italian-american author and illustrator. In this book, a family works hard for their Habitat for Humanity house. DiSalvo mostly writes books with urban and multicultural themes, and italian-american characters and culture are prominent in her work. Her website reveals her to be a pretty busy woman; when she’s not writing books, she plays rhythm guitar with her husband in the band Smash Palace.
Changing Woman and her Sisters: Stories of Goddesses from Around the World retold by Katrin Hyman Tchana, illustrated by her mother Trina Schart Hyman. A retelling of mythic stories from around the world.
How Night Came From the Sea: A Story from Brazil retold by Mary-Joan Gerson, illustrated by Carla Golembe. Traditional Bahian tale of the goddess Iemanja and her daughter. The author is a clinical psychologist who also writes children’s books. Her interest in folktales comes from her time in the Peace Corps. Here is illustrator Carla Golembe’s site.
Grandmother Five Baskets by Lisa Larrabee, illustrated by Lori Sawyer. Lucy learns to keep Poarch Creek culture alive from working with “Grandmother Five Baskets”, a tribal elder without children of her own. The illustrator is a tribal member.
The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean (in a really wicked Jackson Pollack style). Lucy saves the day, and her family’s house, when the wolves come out of the walls. Author Neil Gaiman is probably more well known for his graphic novels; on his website, it reads: “Sometimes, when he was smaller, people used to tell Neil Gaiman not to make things up. He never listened.” I like that.
Feliciana Meets d’Loup Garou by Tynia Thomassie, illustrated by Cat Bowman Smith. Feliciana was warned all day that the Loup Garou would get her if she didn’t cool her jets with that attitude, but she didn’t listen. When the Loup Garou comes to get her, she stands her ground; they end up commisserating on how hard it is to keep one’s temper. He teaches her how to howl in the swamp before she heads home. If you go to Tynia Thomassie’s website, you can hear the Loup Garou. Her books emphasize cajun culture.
Trupp by Janell Cannon. Trupp is a catlike creature called a Fuzzhead, sorta like a Yeti. He wants to find about about those strange creatures that call themselves “humans”, so he puts on some clothes and heads off to the City. No one sees anything unusual about him; he is so different he is “invisible”. After he cuts his paw, a homeless woman takes care of his wound and shows him how to survive in the City before he goes back home. Janell Cannon has written and illustrated several well-known children’s books, including Stellaluna and Pinduli.
The Ugly Princess and the Wise Fool by Margaret Gray, illustrated by Randy Cecil. Another story in the tradition of “be careful what you wish for…”, a notoriously ugly princess lusts after a handsome but rather dumb prince, and asks her fairy godmother to make her beautiful so Prince Dimbulb (no, not the name used in the story!) will take notice. She does, and he does, and the princess wants her ugly self back. Did I mention that the King has banned all wisdom, because he has a simple mind? (Are we living this story somehow, right now?)
Emily and the Werewolf by Herbie Brennan, illustrated by David Pace. Emily saves the day with the skills her witchy grandmother taught her—Hypnosis for Beginners! No more unfriendly neighborhood werewolf problems. Here’s Herbie Brennan’s website.
A Chair for my Mother by Vera B. Williams. A young girl lives with her grandmother and her single mother, who busts her ass as a waitress at the Blue Tile Diner, sometimes falling asleep at the table after she comes home and kicks her shoes off. After their house burns down, neighbors and relatives pitch in to help them move to a house down the block, but mama and daughter are really looking forward to having one piece of furniture that isn’t hand-me-down, and that is cushy enough to accommodate the both of them, cuddled up in the evenings while mama takes a load off. When the ginormous “tip jar” is filled up (mama empties the change from her pockets nightly), they go buy the chair of their dreams. Vera B. Williams writes about working class characters.
Sailing Off to Sleep by Linda Ashman, illustrated by Susan Winter. A young girl fights bedtime by making up stories about adventures in the arctic. Every time killjoy mama says she can’t do this-or-that, the girl invents a story about how her arctic animal friends will help her out. After all that imagination gets exercised, she’s ready for bed. This was/is a favorite in Lubu’s den; my daughter loves the animals, I love that mama appears to be single (which is why I first got the book, down at Left Bank Books in St. Louis. (What a great place!) It’s hard to find books that show single mothers as (a)existing, or (b)not pathological. I was always on the lookout for books that showed single-mama families in a positive light. Linda Ashman has a website worth checking out.
Into My Mother’s Arms by Sharon Jennings, illustrated by Ruth Ohi. Perfect illustrations! A day in the life of a busy single mother and her daughter. And I do mean perfect illustrations—mama has the pre-coffee morning face while daughter is a dynamo; mama is reading a book on a stool by the tub while daughter splashes around and gives herself a soap mohawk. Sharon Jennings has a website, and she has collaborated with Ruth Ohi on several books. Visit this site if you like Ruth Ohi’s expressive characters for other books she has illustrated.
Wilhe’mina Miles: After the Stork Night by Dorothy Carter, illustrated by Harvey Stevenson. Wilhe’mina runs through the swamp late at night to get the midwife when her mama goes into labor (daddy is working up north and isn’t back yet). Dorothy Carter is a retired schoolteacher who is also an actress both on and off Broadway. Her children’s books feature african-american characters, culture and history.
My Mommy by Susan Paradis. Beautiful illustrations. Mama would even bring down a slice of the moon for her little one. Mother/daughter animal pairs are right alongside the human pair in the imagination of the little girl as she tells the story of a typical day. Her website gives examples of her work.
My Somebody Special by Sarah Weeks, illustrated by Ashley Wolff. This story featuring forest creatures playacting as humans, can be summed up as, “Finally, mama came to get me from daycare!” I’m thinking, “Finally! A book that recognizes that daycare exists!!” I like the animal characters; some wear Carharrts, some carry coffee mugs, and the facial expressions are perfect. Here’s some more books by the author; over here is the illustrator’s site.
A Bird About to Sing by Laura Nyman Montenegro. Natalie is a young poet that finds her way out of stage fright so she’ll be ready for open mike night. Laura Nyman Montenegro is an Illinois author.
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. Sirius the Dog Star is sentenced in astral court for a crime he committed against another entity. His sentence? To be reborn as a dog (hence, losing much of his memory and ability to communicate) on the planet Earth and recover the weapon he used and lost in his crime—only then can he return to his former celestial status. A young girl name Kathleen rescues him from near death, and becomes his ally as he becomes hers (she’s an irish girl being raised in an english family, and her aunt really hates the irish). Adults love this book. This is a good fan site on the author and her work.
Bessie Smith and the Night Riders by Sue Stauffacher, illustrated by John Holyfield. Based on a true story of how blues legend Bessie Smith scared the shit out of the Klan when they came to bust up a tent gig. Sue Stauffacher is a Michigan author who has written several children’s books and has another website that targets parents, teachers and others who work with kids who have difficulty reading. Her Wireman comics project is designed to help low-level readers achieve proficiency.
and the entire Strega Nona series by Tomie dePaola. He’s been writing children’s books for over 40 years, and many of his books are a reflection of his irish and italian heritage.

Whew! Now, for some magazines that might be of interest:

All Round isn’t publishing a magazine anymore, but they do have a book, and back issues are available. Kids with a real creative, artsy streak will love it.
New Moon is for “Girls and their Dreams”
Skipping Stones, an international multicultural children’s magazine
Stone Soup, for young writers and readers
Teen Voices, a magazine by and for teenage and young adult women

Finally, here are some databases to help you find children’s books:

Happy reading!

UPDATE: I almost forgot—we read a book (borrowed from school) this weekend:

Just Us Women by Jeanette Caines, illustrated by Pat Cummings. A wonderful story of a fun road trip of a young girl and her Aunt Martha to visit other relatives in North Carolina. They do all the things they couldn’t do if they were hauling other people with ‘em! This book was a Reading Rainbow feature, and the author has won a lifetime achievement award from the Virginia Center for the Book. She had a children’s bookstore in Charlottesville called “The Purple Alligators”, but like many other small shops, it folded in the wake of megastores. Her books sometimes venture into territory uncovered by most children’s authors (adoption, divorce, “funny uncles”), but her work also reflects african american culture. Illustrator Pat Cummings does beautiful work; we borrowed Storm in the Night from the library. (and did I mention that Reading is Fundamental is an excellent source? They’ve been around my entire life, and their federal funding is in jeopardy. Go to their site and contact your Congressperson today!)

To Speak This Into Being…….. (originally posted 4/10/08 on blogspot)

There are no words, just a blank space. A disappearedness. Her last words were of letting go; being done. But I can’t help it, I’m a mother too, and I hold her words in my heart like a picture posted to a board; that picture silently announcing: do you know this woman? Have you seen her? She was here.

She’s still here. But her words are not. The only form of self-protection she has is silence.

It’s a lesson we learn early. Silence. Silence in the face of pain. Silence in the face of abuse. Silence in the face of mocking. Silence in the face of doors slammed shut. Silence in the face of rape. Silence in the face of theft. We even will our stomachs to be silent. We bite our tongues until they bleed, lest our words dig a hole for others to throw the dirt on top of us. We teach our children these lessons. Shhh! Hard stare, cut the eyes. Look straight ahead, keep your mouth shut, say nothing. You’ll only make it worse. We have elaborate nonverbal cues to convey our silence…..and our thoughts behind the silence. Expressions honed and passed through generations, until they feel entwined at the cellular level. We learn early on to allude, imply, invoke sotto voce. We learn the liminal space between the lines. We inhabit that space; give it our bodies and our voice. Or not.

I’ve been meditating on “La Lubu”, and why I chose to embody this name. It fits well, like a second skin, even better over the years. Lubu comes from the shadows, which has pretty much been my modus operandi in blogging. I get to it when I can. Life intervenes. I found the Internet in 1998. I’m still not very technically adept. I stand in awe at stuff the younger folks are doing, like Sudy’s vlogging. But like my namesake, pyrotechnics have never been my thing. Instead, I find paths. Half-paths, overgrown paths, rocky paths, flooded paths…anything to get to where I’m going. And like my namesake, I have endurance. I can run down those paths for days. Years, even. I will find my way.

Lemme get personal. When I first found the Internet, I looked for all nature of siciliata. Anything I could find! Books, websites, anything. And anything on tradeswomen. Any organizations that might still be active, any books I could read, anything that could help me find connections. But in those earlier days, I didn’t find much. And then I got pregnant. And remembered reading something in the Utne Reader about a magazine called HipMama, so I looked for that, thinking maybe that would be my kinda magazine. But it wasn’t just a magazine…it had something I never heard of before, called “boards”. Boards. Bulletin boards. A conversational style of reading.

So I read. Sometimes posted, but mostly read. Learned about breastfeeding, parenting, education….listened to the voices of mothers. And that was something. And then one fine day, a woman posted (I don’t even remember under what thread-heading) about italian-american women writers, and the work of the Italian American Writers Association. That I didn’t know existed. She gave lists of her favorite authors, and recommended reading.

And that set. me. off. Off and running. Across the Internet, across libraries, bookstores. It was like finding the holy grail, that woman putting up that post. I found new paths. Paths home. And I found out another curious thing from all my reading: that I wasn’t the only italian american woman who found connection and sustenance in the work of african americans. Helen Barolini, Rita Ciresi, Maria Laurino….many italian american women writers talked about finding their voice through following the paths of african americans who went before. Ishmael Reed is a man white middle-class feminists love to hate, but he was among the first to support italian american women writers, at a time when other publishers laughed at the idea that italian americans read books. Trying to traverse the minefields of race, class and place in l’ammerica, it only made sense to follow the footsteps of people already finding a way. Bent branch, stone on top of stone, quilt hung on the fenceline….the path laid and handed down to others crossing boundaries…..

So, when I read brownfemipower talking about how angry she was at her (relatively) late discovery of chicana writers, wondering aloud why they didn’t reach out to young chicanas in the midwest, how crucial their voices were needed….damn! did I relate to that!! Fred Gardaphe goes all over the U.S. spreading the gospel of italian american writers, and can’t find his way south of I-fucking-80?! Where were my people? Why hast thou abandoned me? And I too, reached the same conclusion bfp did—they aren’t in much better a position I’m in. Which of course begs the question: what have you done lately, Lubu? Why aren’t you that person? How much time does it really take to post, to link, to pass along those treasures? You also have knowledge. Will it die with you?

It’s so hard to unlearn silence. Omerta. Silence has been, and continues to be, a critical form of protection, sometimes even resistance. Yet I continue to find my way….through the liminal spaces, along the margins. Dreamscapes, magical realism, archetypes, visions, speaking with/that/by that which is unseen. Simultaneously existing in different planes, with different names, chiaroscuro, music (of the spheres?), poetry, and the prose that reads just like it. Interwoven connections, the ties that bind, knotwork, rootwork, and realizing….

…that we have our place. And not where we were told it was. That our lives have meaning. Actually have meaning, a meaning that doesn’t require approval. That our words do more than announce our presence, do more than bear witness…

They speak things into being.

Now that’s power. And that is known. That’s why slaves were kept illiterate on pain of death. That’s why the Irish Penal Laws were enacted. That’s why education is anathema to despots and their apologists all over the world. Language has an enduring power, far beyond the mostly tightly engineered structures. Keeping us silent steals our power. And when we are no longer silent? Stealing our words (ways of knowing, modes of expression, ideas, histories, bodies, land, mind).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the myth of individualism is toxic. It is literally killing us. The myth of ‘rationalism’ being both unrelated to and trumping ‘emotionalism’ needs to go. And the myth that ideas fall like manna from the heavens, completely unrelated to the on-the-ground reality of women’s lives….that has to go, too.

Awhile back, Rachel had a post about allies—about experiences that were likely to make a person an ally. When I read it, I thought, of course, and isn’t it obvious, and thank-you Rachel for pointing out that study, so it can be made plain to people for whom it isn’t already obvious. It was obvious to me, because that’s how I spent my life: in approximating experiences. It started with white parents slamming the doors in my face when I asked if their kid could come out to play. Being called a “dirty mexican”, because the bigots didn’t have a framework for ‘sicilian’. Having random whitefolks on the street tell me to ride my bike back to “my own neighborhood”, because my presence was polluting theirs (and they spent “good money” to not have to put up with the likes of me….the quiet, good student, who at one time woudn’t have said shit if she had a mouthful). But time went on, and I got tired of shit sandwiches (“sangwitches”). Got tired of being assumed to be dumb, ‘cuz thankfully I at least knew better in that instance. And since this was the seventies, I looked to Black Power and the Civil Rights Movement for inspiration. Yeah, as a kid. Because there were reflections of that on the schoolyard, too. And the radio. But mostly….I talked to people, like kids do, about uncomfortable shit that can’t be easily explained. I was fortunate enough to have people around me who were willing to talk. And to be frank: black people especially. (full disclosure: my upbringing was a weird combination of old-school “et-nick” and hippified. maybe not the most common mix, but not exactly uncommon for my generation).

Hell, in kindergarten there was a time the daycare bus came, but they kicked me off; saying my mom was coming to get me that day (it wasn’t one of her regular off days). So I waited, but she didn’t come—she was stone asleep at home from days of the third-shift with not enough sleep and slept right on through the alarm. But Somebody’s Mother saw me, long after everyone else had left, and motioned me to the car. (I’d been taught not to talk to strangers, so I was hesitant—but she had one of my classmates with her, so I figured she couldn’t be a kidnapper). Frankly, I was expecting an ass-chewing; I thought I’d catch hell for not going home, and what-the-hell was I doing there after school let out, and was I too stupid to find my way home, or something. I thought that woman was going to yell at me. But no, she asked if anyone was coming to get me, and if not, maybe I could ride home with them and call my mom from their house. And I thought: my mother is going to kill me if I don’t wait for her and am I just going to get my ass kicked at their house?, because I was already familiar with the nicey-nice act of bullies who’d land on you with both feet once they got enough of their friends around.

But, I figured mom wouldn’t come for hours, and it was chilly. And if I walked home (it was about three miles), I’d still get an ass-chewing, so I said yes. And the mother said: “I have to tell you something. We’re jewish.” So? And a conversation started about bigotry against jewish people. That mother felt she had to say something first. To a five year old. She didn’t want her ass kicked, either.

Now think about that.

It’s hard to break the silence. Feels like ripping off scabs. Or re-breaking an arm. Those wounds go marrow-deep, and aren’t forgotten easily. Or ever. So, when I read about post-traumatic slave syndrome I recognize this naming/framing as part of a means for healing. Hyperindividualism teaches one to distrust compassion, turn away from empathy. Can’t climb that ladder if you don’t have the stomach for stepping on the fingers of others. Feminism even has a name for the particular manifestation women show towards those they’d like to forget are sisters—Queen Bee Syndrome.

Ahh yes, feminism. It took on special import for me when my body started to change during puberty. I was an “early developer”. A skinny eleven year old with breasts. I started dealing with street harrassment, adult men asking me to suck their cock. And reactions from grown women—I once overheard a conversation in the laundry room of the apartment complex we lived in, between two women. About me. Talking about what a little slut I was, how they had heard I was having sex with some of the men in the complex (guys in their late twenties), how I’d end up a welfare mother. They couldn’t see me, around the corner. My face burned and I bit my tongue to keep from calling them lying bitches—I’d get in worse trouble for that. It stunned me to think anyone would say that about me—I hadn’t gotten an ‘interest’ in boys yet; they were kickball buddies, fishing buddies. I was all-the-way-live tomboy, to the point my lesbian aunt felt sure I was a baby dyke-in-training. But to these women, my body betrayed me—it had nothing to do with my actions. It burned rage into my very core, and at the same time….who the hell could I tell? My parents? Not on your fucking life; I’d never be let out of the apartment alone again. So, when I read Audre Lorde, telling of her mother’s reaction when she complained about being unfairly slighted at school, it sounded familiar.

Familiarity. We’re taught to silence that, too. But so it came about that my grade-school self drew parallels between racism and sexism, like I thought I discovered the common threads. I thought I was hot shit and cool. But seeing and dealing aren’t the same thing. I didn’t have much in my toolbox. I had anger. I had silence. I was intimately connected with my fight-or-flight response (you’ll have that, growing up in an alcoholic home). So connected to that in fact, that I was successful at silencing from myself, too. Being dispassionate and cold. Stoic. Tough. And do you know, that the real horror—’cuz that’s what it is—of that little story in the laundry room never occurred to me until I became a mother. That those women (I could tell by their voices, their body language, and my familiarity with their tone) actually believed I was having sex with adult men. And they never called the police. At the time, it only occurred to me to feel anger, and shame. It never occurred to me to feel compassion for myself. Never occurred that I should have had a better defense than my own hot, silent anger.

That’s the silencing effect of internalized oppression. Turning up the heat on ourselves until we have the emotional equivalent of third-degree burns; dead nerves, charred synapses, nothing left to feel.

That’s why being an ally is important. It’s healing trauma. If I have any advice to give fellow or potential allies, it is this: recognize those approximating experiences of your own. Remember them viscerally. And hone your sensitivity to the point that when your sister or brother gets kicked in the guts, you feel the thud and taste the bile.

But remember, you haven’t really felt the thud or tasted the bile. You just remember what that feels like. Your sister, your brother—that’s the person who is traumatized. Re-living, bodily, old and current wounds. Wounds you can help heal. But you have to be there. You can’t abandon them. What you have to abandon,

is your silence.

I love the music of Me’shell N’degeOcello. When Plantation Lullabies came out, that was in heavy rotation on my tape deck (yeah, I’m old. deal.) when I was working in St. Louis. It was my drive-time all-the-time tape for awhile. She has a poem on there that starts: “Her beauty cannot be measured with the standards of a colonized mind….”

That’s really what ally-work is all about. Decolonizing your mind. In order to do healing work. Building work. Creative work. So….begin by being there. Fully present. Standing in collective integrity with your sisters and brothers. Shoulder to shoulder. Sweat on sweat. Don’t worry about fucking up. You will fuck up. And then you’ll fix it and move forward. We’ve got a saying in the building trades, “Do something!! Even if it’s wrong!!!” usually barked at lazy apprentices caught with their hands in their pockets, or on the cell phone. The emphasis isn’t on ‘doing wrong’; it’s just a tacit admission that when you’re starting out, you will do some things wrong. We have another saying, “It’s not a fuck-up if it can be fixed.” Again, the emphasis is not on fucking up, but fixing. And remember, the impossible just takes a little longer, that’s all.

Link Round-Up: Rethinking Schools, Winter 2007-2008 (originally posted 2/1/08 on blogspot)

Been doing more reading than writing lately; it’s hard to get the hang of this blogging thing. Guess I just have to keep on keeping on—like working out, or learning a language or instrument—do it enough, and it becomes second nature. Still, there’s only 24 hours in a day, and I am a single parent, so making bigtime (especially link-heavy) tour-de-force posts (my personal favorite!) isn’t really an option most of the time. The solution? More posts on what I’ve been reading.

See, I’m a big supporter of “alternative” media, which to me means media oriented towards social justice. I subscribe to several magazines I’d either seldom, or never, be able to find on the newsstand in my city. I even subscribed to the now-defunct LiP magazine, and wish like hell more people had heard of it—and maybe it wouldn’t have folded. So, during periods of not-having-enough-time-to-blog, I’m going to start providing links, reviews, and plugs for some good writing out there that maybe folks haven’t seen yet.

I highly recommend Rethinking Schools as a resource for anyone interested in education. It’s designed by and for teachers, but I started subscribing to it when my daughter started school (Early Start—preschool). I wouldn’t have known it existed had I not found a link to it on someone’s blog—a teacher who blogged under the name “folkbum” (I don’t think he blogs anymore)*. It’s dedicated to activism, social justice, bringing grassroots efforts and equity into the classroom and school boards, and publishes books that focus on how to bring lessons and critiques on globalism, immigration, Christopher Columbus, racism, sexism, etc. into the classroom. Like I said before, I subscribe to a lot of magazines; this is one I always read from cover-to-cover.

This month’s issue has “Stereotypes, Silence, and Speaking Out: Asian-American Students in Education on the cover. Benji Chang and Wayne Au, asian-american educators themselves, co-wrote “You’re Asian, How Could You Fail Math?” that helps dispel the ‘model minority’ myth, as well as the idea of Asia as a uniform culture. They dove headfirst into how classism plays into the ‘model minority’ (dissecting classism is a constant theme in articles in Rethinking Schools, yet one more reason I love this magazine). They offer suggestions for challenging the model-minority myth, anti-asian racism, and inserting asian and asian-american history into the curriculum. What didn’t make the online version of the article was their list of recommended resources:

The Asian American Curriculum Project, a resource for K-12 asian american books and materials
Chen, E. and Omatsu, G., Teaching About Asian Pacific Amercians: Effective Activities, Strategies, and Assignments for Classrooms and Communities, a collection of hands-on lesson plans available from Teaching For Change
Gage, S. and McNair, D., Colonialism in Asia: A Critical Look! (also available from Teaching For Change)
Ho, F, Legacy to Liberation, which outlines asian-american involvement in radical and politically left movements in the United States, such as feminist groups, the League of Revolutionary Struggle, and the Black Panther Party. (Frankly, Fred Ho deserves a helluva lot more mention than this. He is widely known in jazz circles for his work with/as the founding member of the Afro Asian Music Ensemble, and if you’re wondering why his name sounds familiar, perhaps you’ve heard The Underground Railroad to My Heart. He also authored Sounding Off! Music as Subversion/Resistance/Revolution, which helpfully comes with a CD so you can hear what he’s talking about in the book. More cancer was discovered in his colon, so say a prayer, light a candle, send some best wishes—the world will lose much if he makes an early exit. Read more about him here. Fred Ho is definitely my Exhibit A for exploding the myth that asian men aren’t sexy.)
Kochiyama, Y., Passing It On: A Memoir, autobiography of Yuri Kochiyama. (also from Teaching For Change)
Louie, S. and Omatsu, G., Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, about asian american civil rights, Yellow Power, and ethnic studies movements in the 60s and 70s
Wei, D. and Kamel, R, Resistance in Paradise: Rethinking 100 Years of U.S. Involvement in the Caribbean and the Pacific, a collection of lesson plans and teaching ideas specifically addressing U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, Samoa, Hawai’i and elsewhere. Published by the American Friends Service Committee, it is also available through (you guessed it) Teaching For Change
Zia, H., Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, a collection of essays about asian american issues past and present from the indomitable Helen Zia

One more thing—it wasn’t developed further in the article, but was mentioned that pilipino-american students “have some of the highest dropout and suicide rates.” Huh? Yes, it’s true.

The other feature article is by Carol Tateshi, Taking a Chance with Words, subtitled “Why are the Asian American kids silent in class?” that presents culturally sensitive tactics for helping asian american students contribute to classroom dialogue.

A satirical article, “Wish You Were Here” takes on Education Week’s ranking of Nebraska as the 51st state in education. (’nuff said, no?)

Barbara Miner continues to hammer away at the privatization of schools in her article, Public Studies Puncture the Privatization Bubble. Ms. Miner has been socking it to the voucher movement for years; it’s well worth searching the archives for her past work when in need of ammunition.

There’s an informative article on Vicki Phillips, the new education director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an influential organization with $3.4 billion, which is more than the discretionary funds in the U.S. Department of Education’s 2008 budget. Look for a heavy-handed management style that eschews input from teachers and parents on curriculum or textbook choices.

“Polar Bears On Mission Street” describes how Rachel Cloues’ 4th and 5th grade students developed an awareness/fundraising project on global warming for their contribution to Cesar Chavez Day, after reading about the plight of polar bears in Time for Kids. Of note is that this teacher guided her students through their spontaneous idea, and how they learned that being bilingual was to their advantage, as they could educate people who spoke either Spanish or English on global warming (and distributed informational pamphlets in both languages). She also provided a list of resources:

Global Warming Alert! by Richard Cheel
Teaching About Climate Change: Cool Schools Tackle Global Warming, edited by Tim Grant and Gail Littlejohn
Time For Kids Magazine (search: global warming)
Environmental Protection Agency
“What Is Global Warming? (available in English, Spanish and Chinese)

Linda Christensen’s article, “Beyond Anthologies” critiques the use of prepackaged curriculums and compares their use to factory farming. Insisting that “real teaching requires complexity,” creativity, and a certain spontaneity, she emphasized the use of stories for the transmission of knowledge, culture and soul. And who gets to choose what stories are told is crucial. Education can’t be trusted to the producers of prepackaged, fast-food curriculums, heavy on filler and low on weight. Christensen quotes sources as varied as Wangari Maathai, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Toni Morrison’s The Color Purple, Pablo Neruda, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Phillip Gywnne’s Deadly, Unna, Melba Patillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry, narratives from Ellen Levine’s Freedom’s Children (first-person stories by young activists in the Civil Rights Movement), Edward S. Herman’s article, The Banality of Evil, and a really detailed account of how she taught her students about the effects of dams on the Columbia River by using Craig Lesley’s novels Winterkill and River Song, literature from local Native American authors Elizabeth Woody and Ed Edmo, along with transcripts from the trial of David Sohappy,a Yakima spiritual leader who defended his ancestral right to fish according to the 1855 treaty with Indian nations, a classroom visit from David Sohappy’s attorney, and field trips to Horsethief Lake to see the pictographs and Dalles Dam to see the Army Corps of Engineers propaganda (providing a wonderful opportunity to look for examples of the passive voice)—-and damn! I (almost) wanted to go back to high school! Meanwhile, she used excerpts from Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma throughout, to drive home the comparison between factory farming and the factory farming of young minds.

“Acting In and On the World” describes the classroom use of Theatre of the Oppressed as a way to both educate about, confront, and brainstorm solutions to oppression. This method was created by Brazilian educator Augusto Boal, a friend of Paulo Freire. In this article, Katie Kissinger elaborated how she taught this method to students at the Freedom Camp (offered by the Oregon Diversity Network during the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday) using the real-life sexism experienced by one of the participating students (her principal told the girls’ basketball team that they would have to use the smaller court, and that they would have to practice without lights as the school couldn’t afford the electricity for both the girls’ and boys’ teams).

Raising Money, Raising Consciousness explores alternative fund-raising methods that don’t rely on child labor, lead paint and/or environmental destruction. Resources can be found here.

There’s an excellent review of No Parole Today, a poetry collection by Dine author Linda Tohe entitled Indian Culture vs. Dick and Jane. And another one on The Promise of Progressivism: Angelo Patri & Urban Education. Angelo Patri was an italian immigrant who brought his peasant past with him when he became an educator; he emphasized storytelling in his pedagogy, encouraged parent participation, used culturally-specific materials in the classroom, stressed a well-rounded education including art, athletics, dancing, festivals, music, nature study and folktales. A multicultural educator before his time, he became the first italian-american principal in the United States. The same methods he proved were successful in the classroom and community over 100 years ago are desperately fought against by conservatives and assimilationists now. Go figure. My favorite Angelo Patri quote? “Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody other than the person he is.”

Here’s an inspiring article on how a community stood up against a school board that disciplined teachers who had the temerity to support students who protested the war by walking out of school to peacefully demonstrate. Foster High School in Tukwila, Washington has 71 percent of the student body eligible for free or reduced-price lunch; as such, it’s a prime target for military recruiters.

Which brings up another point—even the ads in this magazine are great. Where else would I find out about free books for alternatives to the military for high school students in the midwest? Yes, the American Friends Service Committee has free downloads available for Youth Alternatives to the Military, and have concentrated efforts in midwestern states as the economic prospects tend to be bleaker here (but guides for California, Maryland, Massachusetts and North Carolina are also available). And it’s not like I’m going to see The MultiCultural Review on the newsstands around here anytime soon. There are very few ads in Rethinking Schools, but the ones here are ones you may enjoy (how many times is that the case for a magazine?!).

So there you have it. Happy reading! (oh, and this took forever! what was I thinking? heh. Guess I just can’t get away from link-heavy posts. Hey, that’s the breaks!)

*UPDATE: Hold up! Folkbum is still blogging! Found a link on Prometheus 6. Sorry ’bout that! (and he still has a link to Rethinking Schools, plus a lot of other good links on education. Now that I know he’s blogging again, I’m putting him back on the blogroll.)

Sneaking into the House and Killing the Master (originally posted 1/20/08 on blogspot)

So I’ve been letting my mind flow along paths introduced by this post from Sylvia, and this magnificent post from Fire Fly, furthering my previous thoughts on houses, tools, coalitions, ends, means, co-optation of struggles, and such. Don’t know that I know where I’m going yet with all this, but here’s a start:

First, there’s a recognition of intersectionality in individuals, but less of an acknowledgement of intersectionality within/amongst/across movements for justice, or within organizations within those movements. And that clicked like hell for me in the Bernice Johnson Reagon post from Fire Fly—that one of the reasons that might be—the reason that multiple identities within a movement go unspoken of, unacknowledged, unrecognized or passed over—is because of the Cult of Individualism that permeates the political atmosphere, particularly in the United States. See, we become indoctrinated into Individualism even when it doesn’t fit our lives or our needs, through the institutions we all must navigate. There’s that damn Master’s House again, setting up foundations in our psyche, putting up walls and barriers before we even get a chance to recognize what new terrain we’re on, and who we’re sharing it with.

Next, this struggle is generational. It moves across centuries. Ancestors we have who never laid human eyes on us, but who knew someday we would exist, knew also that we would continue the struggle.

Next, that coalition politics and alliance are inherent anytime the struggle continues. Once that critical mass builds up steam, it’s there. Whether that strengthens that site, or degenerates into the familiar divide-and-conquer has a lot to do with recognition.

Reading through the now-closed comment section of the ally 101 thread I was struck by something a commenter (rrp) said defining activism—setting boundaries on what activism is or isn’t. How individual efforts weren’t activism, how volunteering isn’t activism (unless one was a core organizer of the volunteer efforts—the actual work itself wasn’t activism), how teaching wasn’t inherently activist (which I assumed in the context of the comment followed the same trend as volunteering—unless said teaching led immediately to mass movement action, that it wasn’t activism).

And quite frankly, that pissed me off, because it is so, so, wrongheaded. Check Brownfemipower’s post, “There is a Difference Between Organizing and Mobilizing”. So much work, generations of work even, go into getting mass movements built and maintained. So much slow, brick-by-brick, door-to-door work goes into building relationships, building trust, and rebuilding broken trusts necessary to movement building. Especially when the people involved in carrying out the work are so overworked themselves in day-to-day living. Working, cooking dinner, doing the dishes, the laundry, cutting the grass, sweeping the porch, ironing the clothes, helping with the homework, wash-rinse-repeat. And then working towards cohesive solutions, on specific battlefronts, against institutionalized oppression, with its well-organized oppressors. And to add to the mix, the thankless job of carrying the load within the movement; the burnout that ensues, the infighting that relative isolation and unaddressed factionalism brings….

See, anyone that stays, that keeps on keeping on, deserves better than to have their efforts criticized from the cheap seats as “not activism”, because the effort didn’t bring about any immediate ready-for-prime-time photo ops. Any brand-new laws or court decisions, any front-page headlines hot off the presses. Somebody’s gotta chop wood and carry water. On my jobsites, there’s always that “moment of truth” time, when the contractors are waltzing the “tourists” (i.e., customers, future employees of the building, etc.) through the jobsite, pointing at this-n-that, what’ll be here, what’ll be there, da-da-da….and the sightseers only want to know one thing. “Why aren’t the lights on yet?” Meanwhile, miles of conduit were run. Many more miles of wire. Joints made in junction boxes, whips hanging out, run to fixtures that were lamped and laid in ceiling grid. And no, the lights aren’t on yet, because we still don’t have the main power feed. But we’re a helluva lot closer than where we were….

Makes me wanna holler. But on to co-optation. There’s an ever-present criticism about the relative value of working within institutions, as opposed to working outside of them—of the extent to which using the Master’s House is helpful or hurtful to the struggle at large. Is it really possible to sneak inside and kill the Master?

And I can’t help but think of that in reference to the labor movement; how the union can function as both “the Master’s House” and a tool for dismantling that house. The same could be said of higher education, or the pursuit of justice through the legislature or judicial systems. Religious institutions and their hierarchies can also be in the position of fighting the power or being the power. Historically, the potential for co-optation was frankly addressed within social justice movements, both for individuals and the movement as a whole, while strategically working “within the system” was recognized as an important tactic for gaining strength—and the critical mass necessary for creating and maintaining a real, systemic change in the system. That the Master’s House, sans Master, would no longer be the same house—but that without further structural change, it would be all too easy for another Master to step up.

I’m also thinking of historical amnesia and how it came about. Television and other forms of mass media (“bread and circuses” is how it’s usually put) exacerbates it, but it wasn’t the root cause. Power isn’t ceded without a fight. Our history of struggle includes assassinations, beatings, torture, disappearedness, imprisonment, deportation, long walks through the desert—you name it. And the more geared toward coalition politics a particular entity was, the more the hammer came down. Passing down “amnesia” instead of stories became a bitter survival tactic.

I’m thinking that sneaking into the House and killing the Master remains a viable strategy. The harder task is recognizing and wiping out the replication of the Master’s House within our own houses—that it’s in the nature of tyranny to cross intimate boundaries. It seeps in under the doors, through window screens, hides behind closet doors, rests on the other side of consciousness. It’s not enough to sneak in and take a machete to some walls and beams—the fight for justice means recognizing when servants quarters are being built within what we thought was/should be our house—during our watch. That machete has to remain sharp.

Meantime, much thanks to Sylvia and FireFly.

Tools, Masters and Houses (originally posted 1/8/08 on blogspot)

I’ve been thinking about the Master’s House metaphor for awhile now, first in conjunction with the effects of non-profit institutions* on community and movement organizing, as well as the impact of business unionism on the labor movement, and even further since reading this tremendous post by brownfemipower. There’s been some back-and-forth on that comment thread on whether or not the Master’s House should be destroyed or adapted—the classic argument on revision versus revolution that tends to stem from any mention of the Master’s House. That careworn phrase has many interpretations, some bearing frankly no resemblance to the intent of Audre Lorde (witness its ubiquitous presence amongst white feminists busy with the work of silencing critiques of white middle-class feminism by women of color and their allies). I found myself agreeing with points raised by both commenters, but tend to lean towards nubian’s assessment—that the Master’s Tools can indeed be used to tear down the Master’s House. What do I mean by that?

I see the “tools” as ways of seeing and being, and the actions that stem from that base. I see the “house” as institutions. Human institutions; formal, informal, social, cultural, political, religious—the various comprehensive collective entities humans create as a way to live with, amongst or against one another. And the way I see it, the task is not to get rid of the “house”. It is to get rid of the masters. No more masters. Not to see them, not to be them. Because the position of “Master” is the real institution that needs dismantling (including the internalized Master in our heads). The house itself will be adapted, restructured or rebuilt when it no longer needs to accommodate the Master.

I get really bogged down in the extension of the master/house metaphor. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a very erudite professor when I was a teenager attending community college. I never took any of his classes; I was sitting down eating lunch when he came over and sat at my table, and continued a conversation he was having with some other profs at the adjoining table. I overheard something that caught my attention, and made some pithy comment. He then included me in the conversation, as the other profs were finishing lunch and filtering out the door. I spouted off some more ‘symbolic’ shit, hoping that by doing so I would find out what the hell we were talking about without having to ask. And that set him off. He just rolled on forward, all-the-way live into arcane realms of glittering astral theory, with me nodding, inserting occasional asides into his groove. He finished lunch, thanked me for the conversation and my “insights”, while I said, “no problem!” and marvelled at the fact I just bullshat my way through a 20-minute conversation with a PhD older than my father.

Now, my ass woulda been seriously busted had another professor overheard that conversation. Dr. Yolanda Evans-Connolley, a fiery british woman, a dominatrix of the classroom, whose mantra was “Define Your Terms!!” (I took three of her classes. Got “A’s” in ‘em, too. I was never so proud of any grades I got—she gave out “A’s” about as often as there’s a total solar eclipse.) She was a woman who had received her education rather late in life, a “non-traditional student”. She was told by her faculty advisor that she had “three strikes against” her; being “female, foreign-born, and old”. But not without stamina. She was fierce, argumentative, loud, and not above having a few highballs before a night class. Constantly challenging, striding around the room, leaning over as if she held a horsewhip behind her back, she really made the most of the british Schoolmaster stereotype. And loved every minute of it. She regaled us with stories of coming of age during WWII, and was brutally frank with us about the politics of academia. She could be, as she was a tenured professor with a union card. She expected a lot of work from her students, and did so because we—no matter our background—we, collectively, were the type of people who weren’t supposed to be there. As was she, once.

Dr. Yolanda Evans-Connolley died of a stroke on August 18, 2007.

It was 23 years ago I had my first class with her, and I hadn’t seen her in over twenty years; she retired and moved back home to England, until her health brought her back to the United States to live with her daughter. And when my mom sent me an email with her obituary, I cried.

She’d'a had her foot straight up my ass if she had heard me bullshitting her collegue. ‘Cuz if there’s one thing I wasn’t doing, it was Defining My Terms.

Where was I? (Look. If you’re gonna hang out here, you better get used to tangents, fractals and side paths. That’s what I do. I wire branch circuits. Even in my mind. Okay? Okay.)

Oh yeah. Terms and their definitions. Back to the tools and the house (damn. sounds like I’m going to work. I guess I am). When I think about the labor movement or feminism, I can’t help but think how our greatest victories, the ones that made the most impact on easing the strains of daily life, were through legal avenues—the courts and the legislature. The Master’s House, indeed. Cultural work, consciousness raising, and the triage of assistance work (women’s shelters, low-income housing, accessible healthcare, etc.) are seen as morally untainted, and sometimes/somehow as a better model of problem-solving—but those efforts have been unquestionably, immediately helped by institutionalized changes in the political arena. It’s not an either/or, but a push/pull continuum.

Money from donors can influence NGO/NP agendas, sometimes making them less accountable to the communities they were originally organized to assist. Access to power through mainstream institutions can have a corrupting influence upon individuals, or those individuals can be isolated within those institutions, unable to exercise much influence of their own. Grassroots social justice organizations can be co-opted by the mainstream and used to siphon community talent and monitor or manage activism. At the same time, the doors cracked open by legal avenues can provide the start for a widening path to critical mass. Work done by NGOs and NPs make visible problems the mainstream power structure tries to shift to the background. They provide immediate relief to those in need; those who can’t wait for either the long, uphill climb to the mountaintop through the system, or the glorious Kumbaya Day of the Revolution. NGOs/NPs can provide an important training ground for those entering institutional halls of power; their perennial low-budgets and need for woman- and man-power give young people especially opportunities to gain organizing and leadership experience they may not get through more mainstream avenues. At the same time, institutions can provide paths and training for folks to enter and get knee-deep in community or labor organizing. The impetus, drive and leadership for many of the successful legal battles came from the grassroots; think: women’s shelters in the fight against domestic violence and organizations like 9 to 5 for various issues related to employment discrimination.

So, it’s far from a one-way street. The varied sites of resistance all hold elements of utilitarian and idealistic goals, inherent to the multiple fronts that must be fought simultaneously.

Limber up, catch rest when you can, train hard and pay attention. Opting out of struggle is not an alternative for most of us—and an unsatisfying one for some of those who can. Our struggle is destined to be both within and without of the Master’s House—but make no mistake, the source of our struggle isn’t the house, but the Master.

*(the article referenced from the now defunct LiP Magazine discusses the INCITE! anthology, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex)

On Wholeness: Another Refutation of “Purity” and “Popularization” (originally posted 1/7/08 on blogspot)

So many brilliant, amazing, wonderful people wrote about this subject already, but since there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun than solidarity—I’m speaking my piece, too.

Where, o where, did the dichotomy of “puritans” vs. “popularizers” come from? That seems quite the stretch. But not near as much as who receives those labels. The entire construction of that infamous post falls apart under the most cursory examination.

What is usually meant by the term “popular”? What is “popular,” besides “liked/appreciated by a lot of people”? An uncharitable reading is that things become popular if they cater to the lowest common denominator, are unchallenging, simple. It is true that things tend to become popular inasmuch as they resemble what is already popular; popularity builds upon the status quo—but the shifting of what becomes known as “popular” usually points to an extension of what went before, rather than a mere replication.

What is usually meant by the term “purity”? What is “pure”? Something is “pure” when it is a distillate—refined down to one substance, one essence, one truth. Whatever else “pure” may be, it isn’t a blend.

So, I find that entire post bizarre in that it is a complete reversal of how those terms are generally used. It’s a reversal to name the folks asking for multiplicity, complexity, inclusiveness, a greater Whole—as “purists”. It’s a reversal of any common understanding of the term, to call the very people asking for more voices—the perspectives of disparate bodies situated in multiple locations (physical, intellectual, spiritual, sexual, emotional, racial, cultural, chronological, geographical, ethnical), as not desiring popularity. Isn’t a broader base by definition popular? Isn’t that wider range of people the proverbial “97%”?

I’ve noticed a distinct calling for the dumbing down of political thought over the years, as a response to the “sound bites” of the right (aided by the deregulation of the media). I’m mystified by that call. Right here where I stand, I see people who hunger for depth. Right here, in the heartland. In urban rustbelt neighborhoods, in diners, in churches, in taverns, on the shop floor. Folks are damn sick and tired of being spoken down to. Of heavy editing. Of canned talk, distilled answers. We are told by pundits ostensibly on the side of “the people”, that folks can’t digest the background information, the history, the theory.

That new message—”keep it simple, stupid!”—flies in the face of movement history and practice. Back in the day, alternative newspapers were a more common sight; publishing the news the mainstream papers would not, or could not. In-depth articles related the struggle both to the past and to contemporary struggles elsewhere. Back in the day, people craved literacy, and not just basic literacy, either. In the early days of the labor movement, some folks became known as “readers”—the people who would read works of literature or political theory to those who couldn’t read that well (or at all). Speakers were mighty popular, and massive crowds turned out for rallies. Carving away the complexity of a message breeds apathy; drains the blood from a movement. Without that lifeblood intricacy provides, a certain energy is lost. Communication is stunted.

We’re told folks will shy away from explanations that are “too hard”. Yet bell hooks’ books still keep selling, and remain favorites of women who thought feminism wasn’t for them, or about them, until they got knee deep in her knowledge. Women, even young women, continue to name hooks as their favorite feminist writer. How did she get that popular? By dumbing her work down? Eschewing theory? Far from it. She brings theory down into concrete examples; relating the concepts to the familiar substance of daily lives. She defines her terms, too—as in “white supremecist capitalist patriarchy”, which is usually shortened to “patriarchy” in the mouths of white feminists who perhaps are uncomfortable with naming white supremacy or capitalism.

We’re told to stay “on message”, or “on point”, as when the phrase “reproductive rights” refers to the right to choose abortion. If we posit the phrase “reproductive justice” to broaden the scope, replace the narrower term, we’re complicating matters. As if issues such as forced sterilization, tying welfare benefits to invasive forms of birth control (such as Norplant), tying welfare benefits to child support (even under the threat of violence from a former abuser), lack of access to reproductive health care and prenatal care, infant and maternal mortality, pollutants in breast milk, INS and family separation/deportation, the rights of disabled women to bear and/or keep their children, the effect of dioxin on endometriosis, employment discrimination against mothers, lack of availability of comprehensive sex education in public schools, low birthweight infants, prematurity, parental rights of single mothers/queer mothers/homeless mothers, HIV/AIDS, birth defects from: environmental racism/the use of depleted uranium in weapons/nuclear testing in the Pacific/uranium mining in the western United States/etc. aren’t already muddying the waters for the women who must wade through them.

And that’s just one issue. One issue with threads intertwined amongst the body politic as one’s own veins, arteries and raw nerves. Yet if you speak viscerally on such matters, you will be called out for your lack of “objectivity”. Another reversal, as the work of neurologist Antonio Damasio in Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain shows that without access to one’s emotional centers, one is unable to make rational decisions.

We are told that the barriers to greater complexity, a comprehensive message in feminist movement, are within the small minds of the common people. That no one is actually engaging in gatekeeping. That it is better for 97% of the masses to get 3% of feminism, rather than risk the chance that more than 3% will get 97%, and all hell will break loose (or something like that). But great thought, just like great art, does get appreciated by masses of people. It can and does become popular. It’s just that folks are all too frequently denied the rich experience of respect for their intelligence. Deemed “not worthy” or “not ready”. A replication of the status quo of low expectations and negative assumptions, from the very people who insist that they stand for Change! This isn’t Your Mother’s Feminist Movement! (which is a damn shame, because my mother’s feminist movement brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. But I digress….)

So, to be pure? or to popularize? Is that the question?! Or is it rather:

To be comprehensive.

To be collective.

To be recognized.

To be real.

Pace

It’s Always Personal (originally posted 1/6/08 on blogspot)

Back when Lubu was a cub, there was a movie that came out that did pretty well at the box office. Didn’t do too bad at the Oscars, either. And that movie was The Godfather, an iconic piece of cinema that still lends dittus to the world at large. The most popular? “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” (actually, strictly business) That particular saying is probably one of the most well-known filmatic expressions of all time, and is extremely popular here in the 24-Hour Church of Capitalism otherwise known as the United States. Where the business of l’ammerica is business. Such is the ubiquity of this quote that another box-office smash, You’ve Got Mail, works it into the plot. It’s supposed to mean just what it says—nothing personal, but yeah, too bad for you. But in its original context, that wasn’t what it meant at all.

See, Michael had to convince the older gangsters that he was up to what he had volunteered for—killing “the Turk” and the police captain. The old hands saw him as a hothead, and maybe still thought of him as a “kid”. It wasn’t that they doubted his ability of get the job done; Michael was a decorated combat veteran. But they did doubt his ability to get the job done right. Not sloppy. Not hotheaded. When Michael said, “it’s strictly business,” he meant that he could keep a cool head. That he wouldn’t lose control. That he would be businesslike—that is, unemotional, in his actions. Because make no doubt about it, it was personal. He was going to kill the people responsible for attempts on his father’s life. Remember, we’re talking about sicilian people here, my people. The people who brought you the word “vendetta”. With us, whatever else it may be, it’s always personal.

Now, despite the reification of stereotypes, I do have a serious love for Mob Movies. Partially because I get to see folks like me on the big screen—and behind the scenes, too (my mother and I would watch the credits roll after every episode of the Sopranos to see all the surnames). But also because of the not-so-subtle critique of those selfsame stereotypes for those who are watching—hidden messages hung like quilts along the Railroad, like sotto voce shadowed conversation about weather and fronts and which way the wind blows and it ain’t about meteorology at all, nor about predictions….

And it’s intensely personal.

Some people have lifestyles, while others have lives spent scrapping and scrambling for whatever we can get our claws into and hang in there, baby! like the little kitty who could…

Frequent flyers in the feminist blogosphere might get the idea this is about a book, but it isn’t. Naaah, it’s about the omissions. The margins. The vast amounts of empty white space between the words. It’s about what doesn’t make it into the written record. The legitimate record. And not just whose stories are considered important to tell, but which audience is coveted.

I have an eight-year-old daughter. She brought home a paper on Christopher Columbus awhile back that referenced how the New World was called that because “no one had ever been here before.” What the fuck, Chuck?! Welcome to No Child Left Behind. She said, “But what about the Indians?” and this odious school literacy paper became a touchstone for important concepts like “sanitized history” and “colonization” and “broken treaties” as well as lies-my-teacher-told-me and canned curriculums. And she got it. Not acted like she got it, ‘cuz Mama was watching; she actually received the message, and added some of her own. Am I indoctrinating my daughter? Sure the fuck am. I prefer to think of it as inoculations against the bullshit she’ll be receiving from many fora throughout the years. My parents didn’t do everything right, but they did speak to me this way; as if I was an adult and could understand political messages. Because make no doubt about it, even in the second grade, it’s political.

And personal.

Watching her grow and come into her own is quite the event. She’s quick on the uptake, understands nuance, knows when not everything is being revealed, and usually has a well-educated guess on the wherefores and whys. Sharp as a butcher’s knife, and cuts her eyes like she’s been here before. Yet I know as the sun rises in the morning and the moon follows it at night, that her native intelligence won’t be valued, her voice won’t be respected, and she isn’t likely to be the subject of anyone’s “marketing” campaign, particularly not in the marketplace of ideas. At the age of eight, she is already getting a sense of this; she knows what the royal “we” is, and when it does and doesn’t implicitly include her. She is particularly sensitive to when it doesn’t. As I’ve said, she’s eight, and she gets it. She’ll be getting a lot more as the years move on.

Speaking of moving on, the years have an easier time of it than I do. Like a bad habit, like the sweet taste of something promising that contains no small hint of poison, I just can’t let go. I still want a feminism that prioritizes the issues central to my life. A feminism that isn’t satisfied with “yes” as the most important liberatory response. Because from where I stand, “NO!!” remains a crucial site of resistance. I’d like to pass some shit on by….but dammit, it means something when powerful politicians center certain voices as the last word on feminism. It matters when policy is made.

See, I was a part of that last-ditch effort march for the ERA in Chicago. It was in 1980, in Grant Park. I was a kid, a testadura who welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate my dissatisfaction with the status quo. I rode up in a van with some women from my dad’s union; they suggested he ask me if I wanted to go. I felt at the time like I was part of history; I felt a momentum, even though we all knew at the time of the march that it was for demonstration purposes only—that we wouldn’t get ERA, and would have to go back and pick up the pieces and start over. I felt it in my blood and bones; that the struggle would continue. And it has. But.

Neither I, nor most of the women (and one other girl like me!) in that van are the coveted audience of mainstream feminism. We aren’t expected to be feminist. And now, we aren’t even expected to be the hod carriers for feminism, the warm bodies to fill out a demonstration. I’d bet that like me, none of the other women have been to an explicitly feminist demonstration since. Labor events, rallies, political fundraisers, community organizing, Labor Day and MLK Day parades, marches against police brutality, protests against the war, sure. But feminism? Nahh. It’s not that we’ve lost the faith, it’s that mainstream feminism lost faith in us. And then wonders what’s the matter with Kansas.

But I haven’t lost my hard head. Not yet. It’s not over yet. And it remains, as always, personal.

Trust, Mutuality and Co-Creation Within Feminism: The Art of Building a Movement (originally posted 10/27/07 on Feministe)

In the post on Intersecting Identities and Feminist Identification, commenter Tiffany of Houston summed up what I view as the core problem with one salient sentence:

“I can’t take feminism as a movement seriously because I have a lack of trust in it.”

That’s it. Right there. That accurately describes how many women feel towards feminism—a lack of trust. And that lack of trust is a critical barrier to building a movement. A movement that made tremendous strides toward improving the day-to-day lives of women, but whose momentum has withered (in the U.S.) in recent decades. Now, feminism is still kicking ass and taking names; despite the periodic premature announcement of its/our death in the mainstream media. Important work continues to be done concerning domestic violence, (hat tip: brownfemipower, whose blog should be part of your Recommended Daily Requirement of Feminism) reproductive justice, LGBT rights, racial justice, women of color in the media, women in the trades, women at work, motherhood…….all kinds of feminist organizing.

But. Our movement is fragmented. Our power is diffused. Old wounds have been allowed to fester. Old concerns remain current concerns. In fact, many of the same ills that exist within feminist movement also exist within the labor movement (save for one major difference—the labor movement has never been as geographically isolated as the feminist movement). Whining? If so, I’m in damn good company, and plentiful company at that.

And that’s key. Because there is a backlash. We have lost ground. And we cannot return to our former momentum of progress without solidarity. Without critical mass. Healing wounds takes time, and it often hurts. But the benefits outweigh the pain. So, let’s engage in little triage, hmm?

Back when I entered the apprenticeship program in 1988, the IBEW (at the international level, what we call the “I.O”—but don’t get me started on “international” as referring to Canada and the U.S.; that would be a whole ‘nother post) was well aware of losing ground. At the local level, not so much. Oh sure, folks were aware of the nonunion element getting work, but there was a combination of attitudes towards that fact. Among them: an arrogance that we were better electricians, that those who hired nonunion would live to regret their foolishness; a blase, “whaddya gonna do” attitude, a feeling that the pendulum would swing back on its own; a “fuck this shit” attitude amongst the older members close to retirement, ready to jump ship and collect their pension at the earliest opportunity; an apathy endemic to much of the union movement—a sort of just-keep-plugging-along and hope for the best. And of course, the still-present old-school unionism that still believed in organizing the unorganized, as enshrined in the (union) Constitution. In the years before and throughout my apprenticeship, the I.O. took many tacks toward stemming the tide of lost work and lost membership.

And one of them was a novel approach: the COMET classes. Construction Organizing Membership Education Training. The idea being, that the membership within the Locals had to get individualized instruction on what the problem was, why it existed, and how serious it was. COMET II classes were designed to further that education, with tactics for organizing and a framework of strategy to keep the process moving forward. I had my first COMET class with Jeremiah O’Connor, a mercurial Irishman who was the organizer for Local 701 (Brother O’Connor went on to become the Sixth District Vice President, and later the International Secretary-Treasurer. He was instrumental in the creation of the IBEW Women’s Conference).

COMET classes were resisted by the membership, especially by the baby-boom generation. Younger members thought, “yeah, we know, but the political tide has turned and that’s the way it is.” But the boomers? Shit, “we don’t need no stinking COMET classes.” It was bullshit, they said. Buncha blah, blah, blah thought up by too many people who haven’t picked up a set of tools in decades. The goal was for each Local to have every member attend a class. And the boomers unoffically boycotted the classes in droves. But then again, there were some who went—with the purpose of heckling, shouting down, telling why the whole procedure was bogus, why organizing wasn’t going to work.

Yet some people were converted. Even if they didn’t agree with every step in the plan, they saw that the big picture—organizing the unorganized, why that fell by the wayside over the years, and how to return to that critical mass—was central to our survival. Over the ensuing years, the focus changed, and various strategies were developed. Again, it was/is a process. There are organizing initiatives in strategic geographic areas. An army of organizers to carry out the work. The emphasis has switched from “stripping” (taking the workforce away from nonunion contractors) to organizing nonunion shops. There is a greater emphasis on improving the image of the union and its workers—correcting the misconceptions and misinformation perpetuated in the mass media. Also, a greater emphasis on diversity and bilingual information. And it is working. It is having an effect. We are gaining critical mass. Critical mass that will be especially important to political strength. The labor movement has always had its greatest gains—and greatest losses—through legislation.

So, for that matter, have feminists. We need critical mass, and we can get it by taking a few pages out of labor organizing handbooks. What has brought the most historical success for labor organizers? Face time, and a whole lot of it, with the unorganized. Listening to their concerns, and putting their needs on the agenda. Forming coalitions with other labor and/or community groups—and not just by having a few officers sit in on meetings, or take seats on a board—but by rolling up the sleeves and doing the nitty-gritty work. We have to create an atmosphere of trust, mutuality, and co-creation within the movement. Because building a movement is time, labor and money-intensive. It’s a labor of love. If folks feel unloved—well hell, there goes the movement, right out the door.

Again, I cede the floor. What are your thoughts on feminist organizing? If you had two hours a week to devote to feminist organizing, where would you spend it? Who would you spend it with? What area would be your emphasis? How would you fight the negative image of feminism? How would you create a safe space for those who feel like they are on the outside looking in?

I’ll even start: if I had two hours each week to organize for feminism, I’d do it through forming a local group dedicated to getting young women to consider nontraditional work. And because of the strong effects of stereotyping, it would probably be best to start in middle-school/junior high, and continue from there on through high school. And I would talk about feminism within that context, from both a personal, historical, and legislative perspective. I’d want all those young women hungry for the chance to register and vote when they turned eighteen. And I’d want ‘em hungry for a chance to continue the process of desegregating nontraditional fields.

Intersecting Identities and Feminist Identification (originally posted 10/24/07 on Feministe)

Although I identify as feminist, there are times when I feel alienated from feminism—or perhaps I should say, some of the narratives of dominant feminism (even when those expressions don’t necessarily come from the mainstream organizations, spokespeople, or media that traditionally represent feminism). I feel like the Outsider in a movement that should feel like home. My view is that our expressions of feminism (and everything else) is intimately connected to our identities; that it is impossible to separate those various facets of identity from one another—that those parts of ourselves are indelibly integrated into a whole; that feminism is necessary for us and the world; and that blogs can be an effective way to parse out our conflicts with one another and bridge the gaps in understanding in order that feminism remain a viable movement for positive change. The key word in that last sentence being “can.” I had a couple of posts here from the last time around titled “Like A Natural Woman”, Part 2 and Part 1, written in response to other posts going around the ’sphere at the time, and today I want to develop those thoughts a little more. Think of it as on-line, old-school consciousness raising. Not as accusations. That isn’t the purpose. The purpose is, to be real, to be whole, and to have a space to come together with other women on the path of feminism and justice. I want to hear you, and I want to be heard. I want to listen to you, and I want to be listened to. I want to know where we converge, diverge, and cross, in order that we build this movement together. So.

When do I feel this disconnect from feminism (or more accurately, its incomplete representation)?

the dominant historical narratives of feminism leave my ancestors out. A whole lot of other people’s ancestors, too. While the abolitionists, Quakers, and temperance activists are always mentioned in U.S. narratives, immigrant women and women in the labor and/or socialist movements do not receive the recognition they should. The effect of colonialism on women and the early feminist movement gets short shrift. What about women who fought against (even took up arms against) colonial masters—where are they? Partisan women? The indelible influence of indigenous culture (especially the Iroquois Confederacy) on the development of feminism in the United States. It’s as if feminism is being described to me as something that others did on behalf of my godmothers,* not as a movement that they also contributed to.
the primacy of a narrow definition of reproductive “choice” as meaning “the ability to choose to have an abortion,” rather than the more comprehensive phrase reproductive justice, that encompasses all facets of reproductive choice and parenting. See here for a description.
a dismissive attitude towards mothers and our struggles/concerns. The same dismissive attitude toward children. I perceive a certain assumption in some feminist quarters that women who are mothers have acquiesed to “the patriarchy” with our very bodies. I read/see/hear a lot of lip service towards feminist goals specifically pertaining to mothers and children, yet see little concrete action in that direction coming from mainstream feminist organizations. There are marches to maintain abortion rights; why are there not also marches to obtain universal childcare? School hours, especially in elementary school, that matches the typical work hours?
unaddressed classism. I cringed/cursed/growled/gnashed my teeth awhile back during threads like this one (and yes, I lost my temper during that one) that intimated that dependent-care deductions “incentivize” having children. Those deductions were a political coup won for all workers by the CIO back in the fifties. That is history that needs to be remembered by feminists. Where was that strong denunciation of welfare deform, that makes it that much harder for a woman on welfare to obtain her best chance at economic self-sufficiency—a college degree? Ask the average working-class woman what is the most pressing concern facing women, and you are likely to receive the answer making ends meet. “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.”
unaddressed racism and/or racialized marginalization of other women. I’m not seeing enough prime space devoted in feminist media on issues specific to or primarily concerning women of color—for example, how child welfare agencies work against the interests of mothers of color. How the portrayal of undocumented workers as dangerous criminals is affecting women in immigrant communities (not to mention the separation of families). I’m seeing too many examples of racialized shorthand for women’s oppression, as “hijab” is used to represent an extreme sanction of women, or “machisimo” is used to provide a contrast to the supposedly kinder, gentler white man.
the role of men remains unaddressed in most feminist circles. Feminism is in many respects a reaction of women to the increased presence of industrialization/colonization, and the anomie it engendered. It changed the landscape for men also. The labor movement did organize around issues important to men in a way similar to feminist movement (with the best of the labor movement actively coordinating both men’s and women’s struggles into a cohesive whole), yet the destructive impact of the oppression of the labor movement had massive repercussions for labor as a unified vehicle for justice. Why shouldn’t feminism move to bridge that gap? Men can also be co-authors of the movement for justice; men are also subject to oppression(s).
the momentum for integrating women into nontraditional fields has dissipated, and mainstream feminism seems to assume that the important battles have been won in that regard; the concerns of the remaining intrepid feminists are strictly minor-league. What happened? Why is this no longer in the forefront of feminist concerns?
too much gatekeeping of female sexuality and its various expressions. This irritating facet of antifeminist thought pattern has contaminated feminist minds as well (and how could it not, as we are inundated with negative, even conflicting, messages about female sexuality throughout our lives?).
assumptions that religious or spiritual practice/belief is necessarily “patriarchal.” Or inherently antifeminist. Again, yet another form of gatekeeping, or “will the authentic feminist please stand up?” Bah.

Now, those are just the critiques of one woman, though I’m sure I’m not alone in holding them. And those critiques stem directly from my intersecting identities; my history, my upbringing, my family of origin, my neighborhood(s), my chosen communities, my various educations and life experiences, and probably also some innate personality characteristics. I maintain that such influences can’t be parsed out or ranked in order of importance; they all come together in my unified Self. Some folks may think it’s telling that in descriptions of myself, I invariably list “Sicilian-American” first, but I don’t know that that particular part of me is the most important—it’s just the most handy modifier for the other descriptions that follow. It has the danger of introducing stereotypes and negative assumptions–some of which I may even be unaware of–yet it remains the best shorthand available for assuring a certain accuracy (even with the flaw of stereotype).

And why should those identities matter? Because like it or not, they do. I’m bringing my whole damn self to this table, and I’m sitting at this table, not standing in the kitchen (though I may be stirring the pot). I’m still determined to identify as feminist, though I may be viewed by others (with better credentials) as an obstacle to feminist movement, or as disloyal even, for having the audacity to talk out of class. I think it is important to maintain identification as a feminist, and to raise my voice whether in unison or in opposition as a feminist, within feminism. I plan to co-create feminism along with my sisters, and brothers. I may not fit a manufactured image of feminism—but then, who manufactured those images? And who owns feminism?

Questions: Do you identify as feminist? If so, why? If not, what would have to change within feminism to gain your full participation?

I now cede the floor.

*shamelessly stolen from Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, and used in place of “foremothers”

What Color Are the Holes in Your Parachute? (originally posted 10/23/07 on Feministe)

Back in my second introduction on this site, I mentioned that my daughter was born premature at 25 weeks gestation, 735 grams (one pound, ten ounces). As you might imagine, she was extremely medically fragile, and had many complications. She had four surgeries, and stayed in two different hospitals for the first six months of her life (her fifth surgery occurred after she was already home). I am typing on a borrowed laptop for the time being, but if I had access to a scanner I would post the picture that was handed to me as I was being wheeled out of surgery, about a minute after I regained consciousness from general anaesthesia. That Polaroid (taken by the nurses) is probably far more dramatic than I can describe in words, but I will try.

My first thought, other than “yay! she’s alive” (something I knew before they told me—I could tell the way the people around my stretcher were talking to one another, before they addressed me and could tell I was conscious enough to understand conversation), my very first thought upon seeing that photo was how raw she looked. It wasn’t even her physical size that had the most impact—it was her rawness. I had never seen a preemie before, let alone a “micropreemie”. Her skin was translucent—no pigmentation yet. She did not have a fat layer. She was all raw bone and muscle. It was like looking at someone who had been skinned alive. Her legs were darkened, due to the limited blood supply they received from her being footling breech. One leg was the color of liver, the other was even darker. And then came “the speech.”

A good neonatologist has “the speech” down the way a good funk band has the groove—smooth, detailed, all the right notes, the right timbre, the right punches in the rhythm. And my girl, because of the critical condition she was likely to be in, got the best, most experienced neonatologist in the joint. He is a small man, with the smallest hands I’ve ever seen on an adult. Serious demeanor. Thick Indian accent. And he had that speech down like James Brown. He started, “You have a very, very sick baby….” He went on, rapid-fire, in what was to him a familiar litany; he gave her a fifty-fifty chance of survival, and described the complications she had (respiratory distress syndrome, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, patent ductus arteriosis, hyperbilirubinemia), what complications she was likely to have that hadn’t yet been confirmed (intraventricular hemmorrhage, and what grade I-IV), and what complications she could develop during her stay (necrotizing enterocolitis, retinopathy of prematurity, periventricular leukomalacia). He described the current course of treatment, including the names of the medicines being administered. He even described what is known in the NICU as the “honeymoon period”, where the preemie does ok at first, and then crashes hard. He didn’t use the word “crashes”; that was a term I heard later from NICU nurses. He encouraged me to see her often, and told me that despite the sensitivity that preemies have to sound and touch, that she would be soothed by my presence and voice. He left, and the lactation nurse handed me some plastic cones to hold over my breasts while she gave me instructions on how to operate the breast pump.

A couple of weeks later, the honeymoon period ended. Her bowel was perforated, she went into sepsis, acquired the aforementioned NEC and a particularly gruesome complication—Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation, or DIC for short. Known as “Death Is Coming” to experienced medical personnel. I did not know how bad DIC was at the time; when I tell her NICU story to medical people, and tell them she had it, their jaws tend to drop and their eyes bug out. Surviving DIC isn’t the norm. I held her little hand and quietly sang songs to her, mostly Etta James and Koko Taylor, but some vintage Elton John, Rolling Stones, even some Mary J. Blige. Just, whatever I could think of at the time. I told her what sunsets looked like, ‘cuz her pod was facing west, but the windows were too high for her to see. I told her, just in case she was wondering why the light changed during the day as it moved into night. I tried to describe the taste of salsiccia and stuffed shells to her, piping hot rigatoni with rich, spicy sugu and fresh grated parmesan on top. What the wind felt like on the face and in the hair. All the places we would go and see when she got healthy and got outta there. I wanted to give her something to fight for. And just like on that first day, her respiratory and heart rate, and her oxygen saturation rate would improve as I spoke. It was a battle, and at one point a nurse told me point blank that if I was thinking about getting her baptized, perhaps I’d like to call a priest.

And during that time, I thought I was on Family and Medical Leave. After all, I called my employer from the hospital (when I was admitted on bed rest) and asked for it, citing my condition. I called the union hall and asked what paperwork I needed to complete—and found out no one knew. No one had ever asked before. I went home to eat and take a shower before going back to the hospital, and found the pink slip in the mail. Just a pink slip. In an envelope. By itself. No explanation. “Reduction in force” is what it read. And I was madder than a motherfucker. I went out to the hall and was told that it was just a regular layoff, and that I had no recourse, because it says right in the contract that the employer gets to decide who stays and who goes, and what was I mad about anyway, ‘cuz it was just a “reduction in force”, not a firing. At least I’d be able to collect unemployment. I had already done my own research, and had contacted my (union) district’s human rights department, explaining that I was breaking barriers by being the first pregnant electrician, likely to encounter a lot of resistance. Seeing a distinct lack of interest at the hall, I took matters into the capable hands of the Department of Labor. See, I wasn’t concerned about unemployment. What I needed, was health insurance.

Now, here is where I probably ought to explain how health insurance works for most of the building trades. ERISA plans for the building trades have some unique conditions because of the nature of our work, and thus warrant our own mention in the text of FMLA. See, we have something called “bank hours”. Our insurance, or lack thereof, is determined by the number of hours per month that we work. It varies from plan to plan, depending on the general financial health of the particular Health & Welfare Fund; on my particular plan (at that time), a person had to work 160 hours per month to have health insurance, with anything over that amount going into an “hours bank”. The “hours bank” has a maximum of six months’ worth of hours, and its purpose is to be there as a reserve during times of intermittent unemployment. (During the boom-time nineties, when work was plentiful in my area, a person only had to work for 140 hours a month to secure insurance, with the rest going into the hours bank.) With the minimum hours at 160, it was difficult to bank hours to have enough to reserve for the lean times. Also, my plan is “all or nothing”—either everyone in the family has it, or no one. COBRA is a one-size-fits-all. When it comes to bank hours, the FMLA is very clear—the employer is to continue health plan contributions as if the worker was still at work; the worker’s bank hours are not to be used.

And therein lies the rub. I needed that insurance. I knew from my daughter’s condition that she was likely to remain in the hospital past my bank hours. I needed the full twelve weeks of hours that FMLA grants by law. And since I fully qualified for FMLA, and considered it an act of discrimination to be laid off, off I went to the DoL. And it got really ugly. Really, really ugly. But it was quick, just like I needed it to be. And I won my claim—the brokered deal was, I could either have my job back, or I could have the twelve weeks of FMLA. I took the twelve weeks. It had already been that long; and I took the call from my DoL caseworker while I was in the Ronald McDonald House in St. Louis (the CWE—in case you’re familiar with STL).

Yes, she had been sent to St. Louis for her iliostomy takedown (although I didn’t know it at the time, the surgeon who had performed her iliostomy had lost hospital privileges and was under investigation for causing the death of an infant and the near-death of a couple of others—his license was suspended for a time and he was required to obtain substance-abuse treatment. I was told the “edited version”; that the reason for her transfer was that her reattachment surgery was likely to be tricky and needed the experienced hands of a pediatric surgeon, one experienced with premature infants—not a general surgeon. That was also true. How did I discover the background information? From the front page news of the newspaper, months after she was released from the hospital).

Prior to that, I received my first bill from her original hospital. It came after six weeks of treatment—before my daughter was officially listed as being under the insurance plan (see, you have to produce a birth certificate first, and there’s a time lag between when you can obtain the official birth certificate from the state, and the processing of the paperwork with the insurance plan. First, I had to prove that the baby that came out of my body via the fully-paid for emergency c-section, was actually mine. Don’tcha just love bureaucracy? It didn’t include neonatology services, radiology services, pediatric cardiology, respiratory therapists, or even surgery. But it was about $750,000 just the same. Now remember, that was before the hefty insurance discount was applied.

And I laughed. Yes, I laughed. What the hell else could I do? Who the hell did they think was going to be pulling $750,000 out of her ass? Because it sure wasn’t me. At the Ronald McDonald House, I traded war stories with the other parents. Most of the parents there were long-termers—waiting for the call for new organs for their sick children. Everyone had lost their jobs because of their children’s medical crises. At least once. I met folks whose employers couldn’t be bothered to give them a week of time off. I met a family where both parents had hepatitis C (and that ain’t cheap, people); they were waiting for their toddler son to get a lung transplant. People from all over the nation. A nation of isolated medical crises.

“Usual and customary charges.” That’s another pothole in the road. See, oftentimes you will have no idea if your healthcare provider charges above the “usual and customary” if the healthcare provider is not in the PPO plan—which, in an emergency, they may not be. My daughter’s neonatology group was not listed in the PPO plan, even though they were the only providers at the time at the only Level III NICU between Chicago and St. Louis. And they charged what my plan felt was double the “usual and customary”. The term is supposed to refer to charges listed in the industry-standard “Blue Book” or some such hocus-pocus shit. The feet-on-the-ground reality was that (a) my daughter needed a neonatologist, (b) that was my only local choice and (c) she was too medically fragile to transfer to St. Louis prior to her about her fifth month of life (and not that they had any beds, anyway. That’s a real busy place).

“Maximum lifetime benefit” is my favorite, though. My plan had a “maximum lifetime benefit” of one million dollars. Believe it or not, when my girl was released from the hospital, after all the insurance discounts had been applied (not to neonatology, of course—the outliers not in the PPO), she had not yet exceeded the max. Close, but no cigar.

So as you can imagine, I’ve got a certain take on S-CHIP, and the treatment the Frosts have received from the “compassionate conservative” set. Let’s recap, shall we? Here’s the sitch:

for almost all of us, insurance comes through employment
for almost all of us, COBRA payments are more than we can manage on umemployment benefits
even if we have insurance, it comes with a “usual and customary charges” clause
even if we have insurance, it comes with a maximum lifetime benefit
and if we are unfortunate enough to have a medical condition, it can be literally impossible, at any price, to obtain private health insurance

Ok? That is our insurance backdrop. For our international readers, this is health insurance in the United States. Fun, isn’t it? Perhaps I ought to explain the concept of the insurance discount. See, if you have health insurance, your provider negotiates with various local healthcare providers to negotiate them down to accept the lowest possible payment, in exchange for steering customers towards them (i.e., folks in need of medical care—in the United States, they are called “customers” because healthcare isn’t seen as a “need” like food, water and shelter. It is seen as a “want,” like a new car or plasma-screen television. A consumer good). Some plans have PPOs, some HMOs, but it’s roughly the same principle. Negotiate the lowest rates, and steer the sick folks into a particular set of doors. Both for-profit and self-funded nonprofit plans (like my ERISA fund) work that way.

So, if you have insurance, you will pay less for healthcare than a person without insurance. If you have Medicaid, the providers cannot forward higher charges on to the individual—they have to take what Medicaid pays. However—healthcare providers don’t have to accept Medicaid. If you are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid (which is damn poor—I didn’t qualify while I was on unemployment benefits), you can still be left without a provider (other than the emergency room). Healthcare providers won’t accept people without insurance unless they pay up front—which is beyond the means of almost everyone. Now you know why the emergency room is the preferred provider for the United States.

******

Although I had insurance, my daughter received what the “compassionate conservative” set tells us (hisses at us) is “welfare”. Her forms of welfare? WIC (Women’s, Infants and Children, a supplementary food program) while I was on unemployment, as my daughter was on nightly feedings of Pediasure through a g-tube. My insurance (remember those bank hours!) paid for the pump and the bags, but not the Pediasure, as that is considered “food”, and not medically reimbursible (despite being medically necessary due to her medical diagnosis of Failure to Thrive, which stemmed from her partial bowel removal and malabsorption from the necrotizing enterocolitis). WIC paid for the Pediasure (which cost over $200 a month) as it was prescribed by her gastroenterologist, and things like cereal and juice.

She was also the beneficiary of a federally-mandated (yet state-funded) program—Early Intervention. Early Intervention provided her with speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and developmental therapy. The purpose of the program is to provide these interventions during the critical first three years of life, in order to provide children with special needs with the best possible outcomes. “Best possible outcomes” are more likely the earlier in life therapy begins. Because of Early Intervention, you would not know my girl was a preemie if you saw her on the playground—she is slightly taller than average, runs and plays with the same vigor and ability as other kids her age, and speaks clearly (a real concern of mine in those days of speech therapy, as her palate is high and ridged from being ventilated the first two months of her life). This took years, people. She had to be taught how to eat. She had sensory integration issues. She had poor muscle tone and couldn’t hold her head up at seven months of age. Early Intervention enables children like my daughter to reach the same developmental goals as children without those challenges by the time school starts—and barring that, to at least be likely to be “mainstreamed” into the general school population.

And finally, Early Start, which is basically Head Start without the income requirements. Early Start is for children at high risk for educational delays. Because of her late birthday, she attended two years of Early Start prior to kindergarten.

Yep, those are forms of welfare. And I am so glad those programs were there. They made a tremendous, lifelong, permanent difference in the life of my child. I could not, and she could not, have done anywhere near as well without benefitting from those programs. And there are millions of families like mine, benefitting from public programs. And their lives are being saved. Their. lives. are being. saved.

*****

In 2005, I was unemployed for so long, I ran out of both unemployment benefits and health insurance. Luckily, nothing happened.

*****

There are many myths in These United States (why do I keep wanting to type “Untied” States?). The myth of Individuality reigns above all. The idea that one stands, or falls, all on his or her own. It is at the root of the notorious historical amnesia this country suffers from. It informs racist and sexist beliefs. It distorts the ability of various progressive groups to organize around issues central to the fabric of our lives, let alone form coalitions with other progressive groups to aim towards and achieve justice for All. It is the poison in our well. This ridiculuous notion that we can manage without the assistance of others. (and can I just mention that in the middle of the word “ridiculuous” there is a “culu,” or ass? So that while I can’t prove it, the true etymology of “ridiculuous” probably refers to laughing one’s ass off?)

We stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. We stand with the help of those who stand with us, whether we are aware of it, or whether we choose to admit it. In the United States, we are taught that we stand “on our own two feet,” as if we weren’t taught how to stand, how to walk. We are supposed to “pull our own bootstraps” regardless of whether we have shoes, or broken laces. Even those of us who are not taught those lessons in our family of origin are affected by them, as the Cult of Individuality permeates the atmosphere outside the front door: in the schools, in the workplace, and especially in the political arena, where the values of Calvinism are given a fuel injection of Ayn Rand. We are told that those who stumble are careless. That they should have planned better. Should have had more savings. Should have foreseen the deluge. Didn’t they know that it was inevitable? That they aren’t among the saved?

That is what is behind the opposition to S-CHIP. That those currently without a safety net, save that of their own wages and savings, should necessarily suffer. Should declare bankruptcy. It is their destiny. After all, if they were Worthy People, they would be able to come up with the money on their own. They would be able to find a sponsor. Hence, the number of benefit parties, barbecues, chili cook-offs, mostaccioli dinners, and poker runs held at taverns, union halls, churches (temples, masjids), and social clubs throughout the midwest and elsewhere; a desparate attempt to come up with some kind of money, and prove some kind of personal worth in the face of cancer, accidents, heart attacks, strokes, premature birth, job loss and any number of cascading personal crises that don’t tend to arrive alone. Half of all bankruptcies in the United States are due to medical bills.

What color are the holes in your parachute? The ones that you’ll see when, in a moment of need, you look up?

A Worker’s Memorial (originally posted 10/20/07 on Feministe)

People, I’ll be driving up I-55 again (the story of my life) to attend a family wedding (and a birthday party for two family members after the reception!), so I’ll be MIA for the rest of today. I trust that our fabulous moderators will continue to monitor my posts in my absence. Since I don’t have time to concoct an original post for today, I’m going to post a speech I gave for the April 2006 Workers ‘ Memorial in Illinois. Hope you like it. It’s the only formal speech I have ever written/given.

*****

First, it is an honor to come before my brothers and sisters in the Labor movement and speak a few words; I was asked to represent the area Building and Construction Trades Council this year, and I hope the words I give you today are worthy of that request. (*Bunch of personal identifying information omitted). You will hear the name of (my local) several times during our solemn ceremony in honor of our brothers and sisters who were killed on the job; I hope that the words I speak today do justice to their memory, also.

I stand here today to represent the Building Trades. We like to think of ourselves as the people who build America! You can see the products of our work daily; our work changes your landscapes, your lives. But we are not often seen—not directly. We are the folks you drive by, past the construction sites, past the orange cones and the reminders to slow down; we are the people working in the bitter cold, sweltering heat, high winds and bad weather. In the mud, slop, snow, various on-the-job dusts free for the breathing. We are the people you drive by and think, “Damn! I’m sure glad I’m not doing that!” Strangely enough, for the visibility of our projects, we remain invisible. And that invisibility is not limited to the building trades; it permeates our labor movement as a whole.

There are no current representations of us in the mainstream media. We have long since fallen out of favor as subjects of photographs or other works of art. There are no interviews, roundtables or summits disseminated in the news media featuring the knowledge and opinions of our leaders, let alone that of the rank and file. Newspapers have long since eliminated their “labor beats.” There are no holidays in honor of our national heroes of labor; no day off for Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, Asa Philip Randolph, Cesar Chavez. No chapters in our children’s schoolbooks that give recognition to our history, our struggles, our triumphs, or our defeats.

Making us faceless, makes us disposable.

Without our presence, media imagery of unions and union workers is distorted. This distortion serves to make our interests—and those of our unorganized brothers and sisters, unimportant. Whining, even. Aren’t we glad to just have a job?

Last year, 5,524 workers were killed on the job; almost all of them in easily preventable accidents. No doubt we will be reminded by pundits that workplace deaths were down this year. That is true. As our jobs have been outsourced, so have on-the-job deaths. But not all of them. Last year in Texas, an explosion at BP Amoco killed fifteen workers and injured 170. This particular accident gave me pause for the cause; many of those killed were tradespeople working for outside contractors—and I’ve been one of them, at a different refinery here in Illinois. Surprisingly, OSHA fined BP Amoco $21.3 million, the highest fine in OSHA history. Unsurprisingly, that fine represents two hours of BP profits. Just the cost of doing business. Not to pick on OSHA too much—since its inception in 1971, OSHA has bee responsible for cutting workplace fatalities by 60% and occupational illness and injuries by 40%. For that, OSHA itself has been subject to cuts.

During the Reagan administration—when else?—the OSHA staff was slashed from 3,015 in 1980, to 2,355 in 1984 (today, that staff is slightly over 2,200). One third of its field offices were closed, and inspection staff was reduced by 25%. There was a new sheriff in town, and his name was Thorne Auchter. He doggedly went about his master’s business, dismantling the work done during the Carter administration, when OSHA was an agency serious about its assigned task of protecting our nation’s workers. Auchter was known for unilaterally dismissing citations against employers, if he thought the inspectors had been too aggressive, too diligent in their work. He did his work well. So well, in fact, that in February of 2000, Auchter’s own son, Kevin, a culinary student working his way through school as a demolition laborer, was killed on the job when a 40- to 70-ton chunk of concrete fell several stories from a silo and crushed him to death. OSHA gave the contractor two citations, and fined them $14,000 for the lives of the two workers killed in that accident. Auchter sued the contractor and subcontractor on that job; the trial was scheduled to begin tomorrow. The case was settled out of court on Friday for $2.3 million.

When we think of workplace deaths, we tend to immediately flash on the well-known, large stories—like BP Amoco and the Sago mine tragedies. Perhaps we also think of the ones a little closer to our own home, like that of IBEW Brother Tyler Gardner, a young apprentice from Local 34 in Peoria, who was electrocuted, leaving behind his wife and baby. But seldom do we consider the cost of our jobs to our lifespan—what I like to call “death on the installment plan.” Building Trades workers are routinely resented for our high hourly wage. Yet it is not generally acknowledged that we trade that wage for the years of our lives. The average man in the Unted States lives to be 76; the average electrician can statistically shave off over a decade of those years. Exposure to hazardous substances on the job takes its toll in the form of cancers, lung disease, and other life-shortening chronic illness. The EPA require testing for fewer than 200 of the 62,000 chemicals in commercial use. Yet in a case involving a chemical accident or injury, the EPA can be your bst friend—laws regulating the environment are much stronger than laws ostensibly protecting workers on the job. In 2001, the Motiva Corporation was fined $175,000 when a tank of sulphuric acid exploded, killing worker Jeffery Davis. Last year, the Justice Department fined the company an additional $10 million—a penalty that could be imposed under existing enironmental laws. It seems that the resulting acid spill killed fish in a nearby stream. The moral of this story? If you’re a worker who’s going to die on the job, take some fish with you.**

OSHA has been increasingly reliant on “voluntary alliances” with corporations, in response to their own understaffing. Yet the General Accounting Office recommended against such “alliances”, as their own audit revealed that there was no evidence of these alliances reducing occupational health and safety problems. Last year, OSHA made a ruling on protecting workers from exposure to hexavalent chromium, a chemical known to produce lung disease, liver and kidney disease, disorders of th central nervous system, skin disorders and tumors—yet left hexachrome’s use in concrete out of that ruling when manufacturers balked at the cost of protective measures. Many of us here are familiar with the Formosa chemical explosion that took the lives of several area workers in 2004. That same year, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazards Investigation Board recommended to OSHA that they add reactive chemicals to their Process Safety Standard in response to the 108 workplace deaths from reactive chemicals in preceding years. OSHA has yet to do this, preferring instead to form yet another “industry alliance” and post information on their website—information many workers never see.

But it is not just government agencies entrusted with protecting the lives and health of our workers that have abandoned their posts; last year, our very own AFL-CIO eliminated the Safety and Health division in a response to the “Change to Win” coalition,*** a group most noted for their mutinies with the AFL-CIO and Building Trades’ councils. This move is supposed to redirect more money and staff towards the task of organizing; to which many folks of my background, the ones most at risk (electrical workers have the seventh-highest rate of occupational deaths, ironworkers the fifth, roofers the sixth, and construction laborers in general the ninth) to respond, “What?! Organize and die?” This has not been our history. At the turn of the 20th century and beyond, workplace deaths and injuries were a strong galvanizing force for the union movement. They always have been. The forming of the IBEW itself in 1891 was largely a response to the high rate of on-the-job deaths for linemen—in some places, one out of every two. I would be remiss in my duties as a representative of Building Trades f I did not mention the incredible short-sightedness of this move. Many smaller unions were reliant on the research and database of the national AFL-CIO when it came to health and safety. Their own short budgets couldn’t support a department of that nature on their own. This is an important tool in our struggle that should not be abandoned. Workers are still eager to organize; many of them on this very issue.

Today, unions account for only 12.5% of workers in the United States, and only 7.9% of private sector workers. This is significantly down from the 1950s, when one third of U.S. workers were organized. I mentioned the lack of media imagery of union workers earlier. Yet, there are times when we are mentioned—when we’re portrayed as corrupt, as on the Sopranos, or as lazy, shiftless, perennial coffee-break takers. when labor issues are at stake, and we can’t bbe ignored, our leaders are shown as large, scowling, cigar-chomping brutes and called “labor bosses.” I highly recommend a book by William J. Puette, a teacher from Hawaii and himself a union member, entitled Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor.**** I heard Brother Puette speak on this subject at an IBEW conference I attended, and one of the stories he told involved his own Local’s negotiations with their school board. The President of his Local was often referred to in area newspapers as the “union boss” and her tough-talking, hard-nosed attitude revealed in the most creative writing the paper had to offer. The problem was, her five-foot, ninety-pound physique and soft-spoken voice did not easily lend itself to the image being created for her. No problem—the papers didn’t print her picture, and the television showed images of her larger, more “tough” looking membership, neglecting to run clips of her actual speech. Brother Puette also mentioned how these “labor bosses” are presented in the newspaper—with their ages following their names, as if in Police Beat instead of the Marketplace section. Rank and file union workers are almost never represented in the mainstream media, except in the funny papers, as the butt of jokes in comic strips. This has been going on for so long, it no longer registers as a calculated move; bias against union workers is largely unconscious. Sometimes it even affects ourselves. White workers would do well to pay attention to the critiques raised by people of color concerning media bias and lack of representation in the media, and how this affects the public consciousness. This is every worker’s issue. It affects the creation and administration of public policy. It impacts our lives and our health.

It is especially impacting the lives and health of Latin@ workers. While workplace deaths have decreased slightly in recent years for workers in general, they have dramatically increased for Latin@s. A recent newspaper article quoted a Denver, Colorado nonunion contractor who boldly told a reporter that he only has to pay his undocumented workers $10-$12 an hour, whereas he would have to pay $35 an hour (which he stated included worker’s compensation to U.S. workers. and he felt quite comfortable having this in print!***** He appealed to the economic interests of U.S. homeowners, by asking if they’d like to pay another $20,000 on a $200,000 house. Back in the day, we had songs in the labor movement like “Which Side Are You On”, sayings like “An Injury to One is an Injury to All”, and various exhortations to remember who we were and where we came from. It would be good to remember those traditional responses to divide-and-conquer strategies in the face of race-baiting, anti-immigrant diatribes. Border crossings have increased—and not only in the U.S.—as a result of global anti-labor policies formulated behind the closed doors of the WTO. If blame is to be placed, let’s place it where it belongs—at the feet of those who thought NAFTA, GATT and other trade agreements unhealthy to the lives of working people on a global level, were a fine idea. An Injury to One, is an Injury to All.

Back in the day, workers had our own forms of media. We published our own newspapers (in several languages), held rallies and night classes for our memberships. We did not rely on others to tell our truths. As corporate control of the media tightens, as our publically-owned analog airwaves are scheduled to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, I can’t help but wonder why we are not more active in pursuing our own interests in this realm. We need to do a better job of supporting the pro-labor media that exists, and create new forms of our own. Our survival, individually and collectively, depends on it. We will not hear from the mass media how the erosion of the eight-hour day contributes to rising injury and death rates at work. We will not hear how understaffing and doing more work with fewer people results in more illness, injury and repetitive-use injuries. We will not hear critiques of the repeal of the Illinois Scaffolding Act; we will not get answers to our question on why Illinois still does not have an Electrical Licensing Act. We may be informed that we have a new OSHA director and a new MSHA director, yet we won’t hear about their backgrounds or why they were chosen to lead these critical agencies. New OSHA director Edwin G. Foulke made his bones being the OSHA expert at Jackson Lewis, a huge law firm specializing in union busting. Richard Stickler, our new MSHA director, was the head of mine safety in Pennsylvania during the time of the Quecreek mine near-disaster, where fortunately nine trapped miners were rescued. He was notable for presiding over mines wih an injury rate double the national average. Every year, we celebrate the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a giant who lived among us—and every year, during the retelling of the story of his assassination, the mass media neglects to mention that the sanitation workers’ strike that Dr. King went to Memphis to support, was in response to the deaths of two workers. Even here in Springfield, with the plethora of historical information offered to tourists, there is no mention of John L. Lewis, or that his house still stands near Washington Park. There is no plaque to identify it; it remains an unacknowleged part of our past.

We, in this room, are the working class. We did build America. We have given our blood, our sweat, our tears. Our bodies, our shortened lives. Yet,

There are no parades, no ticker tape, no magazine covers celebrating the working class Man or Woman of the Year, no commemorative stamps, no moment of silence, no medals, no gold stars, no flag-lowering, not even the dignity of having our history taught in the schools.

We don’t ask for much. For today, we ask to be remembered. That we also not die in vain.

__________

*It won’t be the end of the world if I’m outed, but I do like a certain level of personal privacy.

**Those last two lines were blatantly stolen from the blog Confined Space, a phenomenal blog about workplace safety that is now defunct. The goodbye post is here. Confined Space had a roundup every Friday of all the workers killed on the job the previous week.

***My opinion on “Change to Win” can be found here.

****Check my post here

*****I ain’t makin’ this shit up. I originally saw it in print in the Parade magazine in the Sunday paper. You can find it online here and elsewhere.

Like A Natural Woman, Part Due (originally posted 10/30/06 on Feministe)

First, I’d like to thank the many commentators on the previous post. There’s so much to comment on and clarify, that I figured it was time for another post on the subject. There’s some patterns I see being recreated through the discussions on physical appearance. Patterns we learn early and often. Pre-existing patterns that operate under the surface…..sub-conscious, semi-conscious, unspoken, contradictory, incoherent even. I’m interested in those patterns and unraveling them.

See, one of the lessons I learned early on as a cub was that women have to justify every. got. damn. thing. we do. We’re supposed to come up with some justification for the simplest activities, the basic fabric of our lives. We even have ready-made templates for the pantomimes we’re supposed to engage in. Single mothers (like me) are supposed to apologize for our singleness, explain our singleness, justify our singleness to all and sundry. We’re supposed to promise we didn’t mean it to be this way, that we did everything we could to do avoid that terrible fate, but it just couldn’t be helped. We are supposed to offer up the best made-for-Lifetime-TV movie script of our lives we can muster. Even for strangers. For anyone who questions us. There are pantomimes on just about every female-oriented subject under the sun.

Now, not everyone does this, of course. And even most who do don’t do so in every venue, or on every subject, for every audience. But this is a pattern, and it sure as hell isn’t limited to the feminist blogosphere. Who said we have to do this? How and why did so many women, women from so many different backgrounds, learn to perform what I like to call the Justification Pantomime? I don’t think I’m the only person who’s seen this. I don’t think I’m the only person who’s ever performed a pantomime, either.

And back on the other post—remember the landscapes? How could I have possibly forgotten:

Puritanism—the belief that this world is profane, so we must not enjoy it. We must live lives of self-denial, renounce the pleasures of the physical body and our senses

And that denial of sensuality is key when it comes to dissecting the wherefores and the whys of beauty standards and physical appearance. The desire to be sensual, to feel sensual, to indulge ourselves in the pleasures of sight, of sound, of smell, of taste, of touch—that desire has existed in human beings long before the institution of Sexism. And the burden of this denial disproportionately falls on women. After all, we’re the source of temptation, no? Our sensual desire to bite into the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is what led to the Downfall of humanity, no? Female appetites, whether figurative or literal, are to be controlled. We’re even responsible for the controlling of male appetites.

I want to expand on this. Lemme go back to where our paths converge, diverge, and cross us. Each of us, from where we stand, are going to have times where our paths converge with the pre-existing sexism, diverge with it, or cross it entirely—where we will get the neck hairs of sexists (both male and female) up without putting much, if any, effort into it.

Back to Lubu’s short hair. It just happens to either diverge or cross with the predominant sexist paradigm where I live. But my wearing my hair short has fuck-all to do with feminist notions of what the Natural Woman looks like, and everything to do with sensuality. I enjoy the feel of my short hair, the fact I can run my fingers through it without getting them caught. I like the feel of the wind on my face and neck. I like not getting my eyeballs poked with sharp ends of hair.

But that doesn’t conversely mean that long hair can’t also be sensual, or that other women don’t experience it as such. Long hair just happens to converge with the predominant sexist paradigm where I live. I know women who express some of their creativity through their hair. Again, folks were doing this before the rise of patriarchy. So, if we see this as “feminine” expression, or kowtowing to patriarchal standards of Beauty, aren’t we seeing it through sexist-colored lenses?

I’m not aware of any formulae, any means test by which we can tease out just where the sexism ends, and where our natural selves begin. We don’t have much basis for comparison. But I know what my five senses tell me. And I know if I don’t enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like a fresh haircut, or hot food—I ain’t gonna get to enjoy too much. Every choice we make in regards to physical appearance—the collection of small choices, that is—is going to set certain assumptions up in the minds of others. Some right, some wrong, but there’s no avoiding it. Some folks see my short hair and think “dyke”. Some see my short hair and think “fashionable”. To some it says “young”. To others, “old”. It says a whole lotta shit I basically have no control over, because the interpretation lies in the eyes of the viewer. Not with me.

So, since it seems we’re on the subject already, let’s talk about power. I used the word “choice” up above just now, and I’m not really comfortable with that word. I don’t think most of us have a lot of choices, realistically, even about something as inconsequential in the long run as appearance. Whether we emulate (consciously or unconsciously) sexist standards of Beauty, or resist (again, consciously or unconsciously) those same standards, our actions don’t give all of us, everywhere, the same advantage or disadvantage.

See, something about Edith’s comment on the last post really resonated with me, and at the same time repelled me. Resonated, because I have at times been frustrated with the insistence on beauty. Something about the insistence that we have to be beautiful, along with intelligent, accomplished, serene, cheerful, upbeat, articulate, strong, assertive, wise, whatever…..beautiful too, on top of it? Why? If beauty is only skin deep, why does it have to be on the resume with all my other fabulous qualities, that obviously aren’t enough without it? (and shit, like I’ve got the other qualities locked, anyway!) And if Beauty comes in so many different forms (which incidentally, I believe), maybe “cheerful” comes in many different forms as well! Like, maybe my crabby ass is just “Uncoffeed Cheerful” in the morning, instead of crabby, hm? (Sorry, got carried away. This post is strictly stream-of-consciousness.) Seriously—when Beauty is set up in that manner, it makes me feel like it’s another hurdle to be jumped, instead something to indulge, to celebrate.

Does the nod to beauty norms give everyone an advantage? Nahh, it doesn’t. Speaking of power, I stand on a relative bedrock of privilege when it comes to challenging beauty norms, because my job doesn’t require any nod to Beauty, other than not having visible dirt or smellable stench on my person. Soap and water is the only beauty regimen I have to follow to put a roof over my head and food in my belly. Others lack that certain luxury of snubbing dominant beauty myths. There are jobs that require, by custom if not by rule, the keeping of certain beauty rituals—and one abstains from those rituals at a financial risk. Not everyone is in equal position to bear the consequences of resistance—even a small resistance. Not shaving armpits—-how can that be such a big sacrifice? Easy—if it means your employer sees those hairy pits and thinks those pits are losing customers. Then its a matter of having to wear sleeves, even in summer. Or finding another job. In a place where you’ve never seen a woman with hairy armpits.

Here’s what I’m bristling against, far more than concerns about beauty norms:

The norm of falling into the same old, same old sexist trap of female self-sacrifice. Worshipping at the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Self-Denial and Sacrifice, swearing our fealty by never once claiming our own pleasure without first ensuring that our loved ones are all enjoying life much more than we are. Eating the chicken wing so someone else, always someone else, can get the thigh. Taking the last shower, so no one else has to go without hot water. When do we get to claim our pleasure, say, “I like it because I like it, dammit, what more do you have to know?”

Replicating pre-existing sexist structure by centering the burden of resistance upon the backs of individual women.

Ignoring context, including historical and cultural context. Rejecting the integration and intersection of identities. Not remembering we are all seekers, finding our way home.

But I’ll also add—forgetting our anger. Our anger that we still have to negotiate these obstacles, and that we still haven’t found the common ground on which to even have these discussions, let alone act upon what we can and will learn from one another.

Like A Natural Woman (originally posted 10/29/06 on Feministe)

Seems like you can’t tour the feminist blogosphere for long before running up against some perennial, contentious arguments. Arguments whose origin is both without and within feminism. Arguments about: physical appearance/beauty, sex, birth control, birth plans, reproductive justice, breastfeeding, parenting, marriage or other partnerships, children, homekeeping, work, school/education, religion, family, age, Second Wave/Third Wave, how-the-hell-can-I-catch-a-wave when I don’t even know how to surf? And you can’t follow Lubu around the blogosphere without hearing at least one round of (all together now), “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Why are these disagreements so contentious? Easy. They mark exactly when and where you enter. Nothing will illustrate where your identities intersect faster than stepping into the ring of one of these arguments. They show where our paths converge, diverge, and cross us—individually and collectively. These paths are our past, present and future. And we walk on them with our own rhythm, at our own pace. The common thread in these arguments? Who is—or what constitutes—the Natural Woman? What would the Natural Woman look like and be like without patriarchy?

‘Nother words, these arguments are another field of power play. And there is no more frequent field of this play than on female bodies and female lives.

Here’s my take on the landscape upon which these arguments are taking place:

Capitalism—that the presence or absence of capital defines us, gives us mobility, options, creates and justifies demands
Consumerism—that purchasing power can be a substitute for institutional power; that we can buy freedom, liberate ourselves in increments on the installment plan, buy into the illusion of chump change as power
Colonialism—the invasion and theft of land and peoples and the cultural appropriation and corruption of cultural philosophies, art, creations
Racism—the creation of “races” and the classification of humans along hierarchical lines according to “race”
Nature As Opponent or Subject—the idea that humanity must “fight” and “subjugate” the rest of the environment, rather than be and act as an intrinsic part of that environment
Hyper-individualism—that individual decisions don’t have the same effect as communal decisions even when writ large; that we stand alone, even in the presence of others
the Eternal Now—the lack of responsibility and/or stewardship toward future generations
Dualism—critical questioning and discernment which lend themselves more easily to concepts of moderation, balance, multiplicity fade in a prevailing atmosphere of all or nothing
One Truth—whether with Deity or without, the idea that there is One True Way (probably a legacy of patriarchal monotheism)

Feel free to add—hell, it’s Sunday morning and I’m only on my second cup of coffee. I’m putting forth these institutional power practices as the backdrop we work against—or with. See, I purposely left out Essentialism—the idea that everything has an “essence” that reveals its perfect expression.

From the outside, feminism is often critiqued for giving a nod to multiplicity, for not being quick to strictly define and set forth Dogma, the better to separate the Sinners from the Saved. From the inside, too. From where I stand, multiplicity is our strength; multiplicity gives us the room, the skills, and the people to fight for our liberation on many fronts simultaneously. (Side note: liberation. Don’tcha just love that word? It wasn’t so long ago that we used the term “Women’s Liberation”. I like to reclaim that.)

Occasionally, I participate in these threads, like the ones on menstruation….but shit, most of the time I avoid this like the bubonic plague, like with the “appearance” threads. Sometimes, a discussion ain’t just a discussion for some us—it’s a painful reminder of how close to the bone some subjects are, and how little relative power or privilege we have. It’s easy to assume there can’t be a Feminist Beauty until after the Revolution, when your version of beauty is being televised right now. Age enters into this too; I’ve noticed a distinct trend over the years of postmenopausal working class women—the women who would never get a manicure before, because it was “a waste of money” (ain’t that somethin’ we learn early—spending what little we have left after bills on ourselves as being a “waste of money”?!) and they wouldn’t last long without chips anyway, getting their nails done. Why? Because of painful splitting of their nails, down to the quick. The lacquer and wraps prevent that from happening—with the side benefit of looking pretty. Giving them the opportunity to feel pretty, in a world that says older women are inherently ugly. Women who’ve never had “pretty” hands, because their hands were too busy showing the effects of years of hands-on work, getting the chance to get compliments on their hands. Feminism damn well better have room for that.

Frankly, I’d like to see every bone of contention in the feminism world start off with a blunt answering of the question: who holds the key to power here?, and then go from there. I got the impression from my brief look at the “appearance” threads that too many folks were answering that unspoken question, “the individual woman, as a consumer.” And that’s ludicrous.

There is no Natural Woman. Only natural women. All of us. Whenever and wherever and however we enter.

Fighting Is Not a Metaphor: Women’s Boxing (originally posted 10/23/06 on Feministe)

Way back when Lubu was a cub, I use’ta look forward to Wide World of Sports:

The thrill of victory!……the agony of defeat!……

My dad would pour me a small glass of beer, saying “Here kid, this’ll put hair on yer chest!” while I’d giggle and get settled in to my spot on the couch to watch boxing matches, if we were lucky. We’d watch Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Floyd Patterson, Jerry Quarry, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Roberto Duran, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns, Marvelous Marvin Hagler. My dad would point out all the shots to me, like a trainer; critique the fight and give me background history on the fighters. He boxed as a kid, and still enjoys watching the fights; it’s a cinch we’ll still be on the couch together any given weekend there’s a boxing match on, ‘cept now he drinks soda. I liked the fights—still do. It was and is pure competition, one-on-one—no team, no tools, no landscape except for the ropes and canvas. I wanted to grow up to box, too. I wished I lived somewhere where there was a boxing gym, so I could learn to be a fighter.

Mike Tyson, kicking off his World Tour, offered up the possibility of a demonstration match with Ann Wolfe, a fighter women’s heavyweight champion Laila Ali has been assiduously trying to avoid getting in the ring with for years. What went mostly unnoticed in the hype and hiss about Tyson, was the fact that so many folks have never even heard of Ms. Wolfe and her 24 wins (16 of them knockouts) , 1 loss record.

Ann Wolfe is the only fighter in boxing history to hold world titles in four different categories simultaneously. Her story is the stuff of legend—dropping out of school in the sixth grade to support her family, her mother dead of cancer when she was only 18, her father murdered soon after, she did time in prison, was homeless with two children, a survivor of domestic violence (she once tried to get Ali into the ring with the idea that they would both donate their purses to battered womens’ shelters)—Ann Wolfe conquered all of that to rise to her current standing in boxing. No one in the sport, notorious for its hard-luck stories, has worked harder to get where she is now. Yet still, she can’t get a fight purse worthy of her, and covergirl Laila Ali keeps blowing her off—perhaps feeling time is on her side, as Wolfe gets closer to 40.

Ann said, “Ain’t no way in this world.” about the suggested Tyson matchup, but she’s no stranger to the controversy of fighting a man. She was scheduled to fight Bo Skipper before Hurricane Katrina postponed that fight; it was rescheduled, but in the interim period she injured her shoulder in a car accident and underwent surgery. The fight ended up being scrapped, but the reasons for it still remain:

“Here is what I think, I am not going to go by my manager or what anybody else thinks because it is what I think, because at first I didn’t want to fight a male fighter but you know the first time I fought Valerie (Mahfood) I made one dollar, I got one dollar. I fought at least four or five fights for one dollar; I gave my opponent more than half of my purse in order for them to fight because the promoters didn’t want to come up with any more money. The first title I won I was supposed to get three thousand dollars I had to give her two of mine, I ended up with a thousand she ended up with five. Now, the girls now that whenever they step in that ring, win lose or draw or what ever it is they know I am going to do something to them. Not all but most want more money, they want twenty-five thousand, fifty thousand and one hundred thousand, and they want me to do what I have been doing. Do you know that I am a junior middleweight, I am a natural junior middleweight and I am fighting girls at one hundred and seventy, one hundred and eighty, girls like Vonda Ward. I have to give up all the money in order for the girls to fight me and all the weight, we are talking about twenty pounds of weight, no matter how big I get or what I look like I am a junior middleweight. I have given up the weight and the money. It is so difficult to get opponents it is pitiful, what am I supposed to do, retire?”

Interviewer Benny Henderson pushed her harder on how fighting a man was going to get her anywhere in her sport, but she pushed back:

“How does it help out? You might not want me to say how it helps out. Where were they when I was getting a dollar a fight, why weren’t they asking that question, let’s pay Ann more than a damn dollar. I am training all the time and missing out on so much with my kid’s school, all I do is train. None of the girls in this sport or the boxing commission is worried about my best interest. They were going to allow two girls to fight for a million dollars, but I am supposed to fight for a dollar and that is justified?”

It’s a familiar story in women’s boxing, one in which women had to continually fight for the right to fight. The stories of women boxers still aren’t commonly known; every schoolgirl has heard of Billie Jean King, but how many know of Marian “Lady Tyger” Trimiar, who went on hunger strike in 1987 for better money, conditions, and more recognition and opportunity for professional female fighters? or of Sue “Tiger Lilly” Fox, creator of the Women’s Boxing Archive Network?

I’m still a fight fan. Boxing in general doesn’t get much play in the sports pages anymore, and women’s boxing even less. Ann Wolfe is one of the more successful women in boxing, yet if you visit her website and look around, it won’t take you long to figure out just how much of a hand-to-mouth operation her gym is. Headlines splash with the misadventures of sports heros, but this heroine who gives what little she has back to her community, gets little attention. Women’s magazines—even women’s sports magazines, aren’t putting her face on the cover. Her impeccable fight record hasn’t resulted in any lucrative endorsement contracts. She hasn’t been asked to model clothing, makeup or shoes. But she’s still out there, keeping on keeping on, in the tradition of boxing’s foremothers. I would have thought that things would have changed; that there would be room for women boxers since back in the day when I first asked my dad where they were, why I couldn’t grow up to box, too. Maybe someday.

Unite to Spin (originally posted 5/11/05 on blogspot)

The AFL-CIO has been living in ‘interesting times’ lately. Andy Stern of SEIU has been the front man in pushing the AFL-CIO in a new direction, and joined by Terry O’Sullivan (Laborers), John Wilhelm (UNITE/HERE), Bruce Raynor (UNITE/HERE) and Doug McCarron (Carpenters), has formed the New Unity Partnership to forge a new agenda. NUP disbanded in January, so let’s look at the postNUPtials, shall we?

When Andy Stern started singing lead for the “Gang of Five”, he recommended a ten-point program for restructuring the AFL-CIO. Some of the points were the same old obvious observations and recommendations, easily recognizable to anyone familiar with labor organizing and rallying cries. Some were not, and instantly invoked the ire of various labor unions (notably the mechanical trades), grassroots union reformers, central trades councils, women, african-americans and other people of color, and affliated organizations.

Buried within the business-as-usual small talk, was an inherent agenda for corporate unionism. This was not stated outright by its protagonists, or course, and very little was said by the AFL-CIO. If you weren’t already familiar with sources like Counterpunch, Labor Notes, Voices at Work, or various Carpenters reform sites like this one or this one, you’ve probably been missing out on the opportunity to seriously educate yourself. Anyway, a quick synopsis of recent events can be found here, with a short critique from the beginning over here. You wouldn’t find these links at the AFL-CIO website!

Yet, in retrospect, The AFL-CIO may have been keeping mum ’till after Mother’s Day. On May 9, 2005, the AFL-CIO released a new document, “Winning for Working Families” that outlines the changes that have already been taking place within the organization since the March gathering. And even the most terse reading demonstrates that many of the changes advocated by the Gang of Five have been implemented. Not all, but most. And in the humble opinion of this die-hard unionist, there is still a distinct absence of analysis on the real reasons multinational corporations are eating labor’s lunch. I look at “toolkits” like this and wonder where the sense of history is.

The corporate model of unionism seeks to fight corporations toe-to-toe, playing their game, by their rules, using the same strategies, yet with far fewer financial and political resources. And then is going to wonder why we’re not winning, not to mention not having any fun (nod to Saul Alinsky!). Has labor lost so much vision, that we even feel the need to use their terminology? Aaaiiiyy!

Back to the basics. Why do people join a labor union? More pay? Better benefits? More rights (and enforcement of those rights)? To be treated equally? Shorter working hours? Better working conditions? Job safety? Fairer promotional policies? Better life for their families? All that and more. But what originally inspired people to join unions, in the heyday of organizing? What inspired the founders of some of today’s unions, and the firebrand organizers of labor’s history? What did they do that convinced so many people with nothing—not a damn thing—living hand-to-mouth, deep in debt to the company store, with no legal rights to organize, to literally risk their lives for the union? Color me skeptical, but I don’t think reformulating a bureaucracy had anything to do with it. The history of organized labor in the U.S. is passionate and colorful, filled with characters that were too bold for fiction. Mother Jones. Eugene V. Debs. Big Bill Haywood, Frank Little, Joe Hill, Father T.J. Hagerty, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Henry Miller, John L. Lewis, A. Philip Randolph, Cesar Chavez. The Molly Maguires. Haymarket. The Pullman Strike. The Eight-hour Leagues. Tompkins Square. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Ludlow. Coxey’s Army. The Western Federation of Miners. Knights of Labor. The I.W.W. The Free-Speech fights. Sacco and Vanzetti. The International Longshoremen’s Association. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Flint and the sit-down strikes. The Civil Rights movement. The Women’s Movement. United Farm Workers of America. The lettuce boycott. Teamsters and Turtles. It’s not like we don’t know what moves people; what makes ‘em get hit in their soul.

So why do we continue to model ourselves after our enemies? Why aren’t we looking to our own history, our own heroes, and our own innovations for inspiration? While union officialdom seeks to emulate Big Business, our rank-and-file grows ever more disgusted with a top-heavy bureaucracy that leaves them with little voice and less influence. While those at the top busy themselves with restructuring and consolidating, the rest of us want more latitude, creativity, and response. A look at the past several decades of the corporate world shows that companies with the most top-down, autocratic structures were also those who lost market share. This is a war, got-damn it! Start fighting like guerillas! We need institutional structures that allow for mobility and command decisions made out in the field. We have problems global, national, and local in scale. We need the free rein necessary to motivate the rank and file. What do we need to do?

For starters, union democracy is crucial. The biggest part of the backlash against the potential mashing together of unions is the issue of union democracy (the second is the dissolving of hard-won jurisdiction). Mechanical trades’ members immediately balked at the prospect of joining the Carpenters, as rank and file Carpenters are already fighting their autocratic union. Within the building trades, it’s common knowledge that the Carpenters have the worst job and bargaining conditions amongst us. In my Local, we elect our Business Managers and other officers. Elect. They are not appointed from On High. That matters to us.

If I never hear another empty paean to “diversity”, it won’t be too damn soon. We hear this rah-rah every time some labor official needs to find some friends, quick. Personally, I’m tired of the photo ops. Some of the suggestions by the NUP were quite hostile to the interests of african-americans, asian-americans, latino/as, and women. So far, the AFL-CIO has stated a committment to maintaining the size of the Executive Council to insure diversity. But it’s not enough. The forming of the Women in the Trades committee in the department of the Building and Construction Trades is a step in the right direction. So far, that department still exists, and the AFL-CIO still has constituency groups and affiliated organizations. Black unionists are not taking this for granted, however. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 55% of union jobs lost in 2004 were held by black workers. Out of all the union jobs lost in 2004 that were held by women, african-american women comprised seventy percent. Black union women lost 100,000 jobs in 2004. One year. One-hundred-thousand black union women.

If there is one thing the corporate world and the Republican party does better than we do, it is recognize, identify and develop talent. We are not doing this effectively at the local level for anyone, but certainly not for younger workers, women, or people of color. Many workers I talk to said that child care is an obstacle to coming to union meetings. Why not offer child care at union meetings, central labor council meetings, and political activities? Might just get more participants that way! We seriously need more involvement for the rank and file at the local level. We need to start recruiting more of our members into key organizing positions. Not everyone is able to attend constant meetings, but more people than we think are willing to get out and do grassroots, hands-on work. Central labor bodies have been critical in fomenting relationships with other community institutions. This is a trend whose time has come. We need to get local, as well as global, and rebuild the relationships that used to exist between labor and the churches, and other community groups.

Funny how here in North America we call our unions “Internationals”. Few unions have actually taken concrete steps to build bridges between unions in other countries; a notable exception being the ILWU. We need to make inroads and have solidarity with union in other nations, and we should start right here in this hemisphere, and on the Pacific Rim. We need to organize across borders. The AFL-CIO is starting to do work of this nature with the Solidarity Center. That’s good. But not everyone within our own organizations is on the side of the angels. We need to clean house.

*Gasp*! Did I just say that? Clean house? For real? You better believe it. Union corruption like “Labor’s Enron” make us look like hell to potential union members, and doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the already organized. Autocratic practices piss off and drive away the membership. Our international reputation has suffered by pandering to post-McCarthyist “red scares”. We try to emphasize solidarity, but then shoot ourselves or each other in the foot; for example, SEIU being the largest financial supporter of the Republican Governors Association. SEIU has donated $565,000 to the RGA, more than the National Right to Work Foundation! Meanwhile, 50,000 state employees in Indiana and Missouri lost their collective bargaining rights at the stroke of a pen when the newly elected Republican governors signed Executive Orders. We also have to pay attention to vulnerable others, as was not done here. C’mon folks, this is the labor movement. Let’s keep some perspective here! “An Injury to One is an Injury to All”? “Which Side Are You On?” Damn!

We do have a pro-labor press in this country, but we need to access it more often. I listed some in the “Reading is Fundamental” portion of the sidebar to this blog; there are even more listed under “Solidarity Forever”. Do yourself a favor; if you give a damn about alternative voices, since media deregulation in the Reagan Administration took away the concept of “equal time” on the publically owned airwaves, start subscribing to two labor-oriented magazines, and make one of them Labor Notes, which is written by rank-and-file union members who know which side they’re on! We also need to start demanding more accountability for our publically owned airwaves. Places like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Free Press, and the Center for Media and Democracy are good resources. The International Labor Communications Association, the Joe Hill Dispatch, and for radio, the Workers Independent New Service are also worth checking out. We need to be active in demanding a labor viewpoint in local talk radio. Right-wing blowhards aren’t the only people with opinions! We can also work to creat our own media sources at the grassroots as a brother did here, online. Community access programming provides us with potential pro-labor airwaves, both on TV and radio. (Shout out for a local hand, brother Jim Hade, who kicks out the jams for us in central Illinois!) Let’s get wired, brothers and sisters.

One department that is noticeably missing from the new AFL-CIO reorganization of departments, is the Health and Safety Department. What! With all workplace accidents on the rise? With OSHA practically on life support? That’s another influence of the Gang of Five’s ten-point program; no mention of safety, despite the fact that workers represented by each of the Gang are among those losing the war of attrition to workplace accidents. If you want a sobering look at workplace accidents, visit Confined Space every Friday, where you can read a toll of the weekly workplace deaths. Give yourself plenty of time. Another source for workplace safety issues is Worker’s Comp Insider.

Last, but not least, I have heard absolutely nothing about the coming oil crisis from any of labor’s heavy hitters, how that is going to impact organized labor, and what contingency plans we have to accomodate the coming changes. On the upside, it’s a built-in wrench in the works for neoliberal globalization. It’s also a built-in jab-in-the-side to the U.S. government to get busy and rebuild our infrastructure for future sustainability. We need high-speed rail, light rail, and communities that de-emphasize long commutes for work and shopping. We need alternative sources of power, and will need to rely increasingly on electric power. Yet the sound of chirping crickets is all I’m hearing from any of the Big Boys. Lots of posturing, low on substance.

One last note: seems like, just as I suspected, boxers ain’t the only ones duking it out in Vegas. Check it out.

Hope She Brought You Chocolate Bimbi Eggs… (originally posted 4/29/05 on blogspot)

“Did the Easter Bunny visit you?”

OK, so it has been awhile. You’ll have that. Besides busyness in general, I happened to be working on my template in March when Blogger was working on their system, and my template evaporated. Blogger apologized, but in the meantime I had to start from scratch, because I didn’t have the damn template saved to disc—just to the hard drive of my old computer, which was toast a long time ago. So. Let that be a lesson! Typing code isn’t much fun.

Meanwhile, I found this cute picture from a street fest last year. We went to hear the l’il one’s favorite Stones tribute band, Jack Flash. We once went to hear them at the coffeehouse for an acoustic set, and she eagerly joined in when they got the audience singing along with “Ruby Tuesday”. Long after the song was over, and the lead singer was introducing the next song, you could still hear her little voice in the background singing, “….good-bye, Roobee Toosday….”

Her rossa bandera is not an inspiration from Il Postino, but an impromptu accessory spawned from our earlier visit to Angela’s Taste of Italy. Angela’s parents run an alterations shop off in the back, and she races in to see them every time we visit. They don’t speak much English, and she doesn’t speak much Italian, but their “grandparentese” is most excellent. They spoil her with bacciddus, and she raids the scrap box for interesting material. Her lefty instincts are either impeccable, or she’s hearing the voices of her ancestors….I’m not sure which! Well, at least folks won’t mistake her for being Republican!

3-7-77 (originally posted 1/4/05 on blogspot)

Last night, I watched An Injury to One, a bold documentary by Travis Wilkerson, on the lynching of IWW organizer Frank Little. But it doesn’t stop there—Wilkerson draws parallels between Little’s assassination and the later economic slow demise of Butte, Montana, the rewriting of the Sedition Act for union-busting purposes, the subsequent Palmer Raids and McCarthyism, and corporate rape and destruction of the environment.

Frank Little was quite a character; one of the Old Guard of the IWW, he hopped freights across the nation to organize and agitate for the working class. Proud to be half-cherokee, he would brag of being a “real american”, a “real Red”, and would joke, “the rest of you are immigrants.” He was in the thick of the free-speech fights that raged across the West and Midwest from 1910-1913, but he was no fool—James Cannon, in his Notebook of an Agitator, was impressed with Little’s ability, while in a Peoria, IL jail cell during the strike and free speech movement there, to defuse the unfocused anger of a young man who just wanted to get out and fight. He carried a quietude and authority with him, earned by long years on the labor battlefront. He served 30 days on the rockpile in Spokane for publically reading the Declaration of Independence. During the ore-docks strike in Duluth and Superior, after he had been kidnapped and held under armed guard while strikebreaking thugs broke up worker meetings, he led Cannon on a walk down to the docks. The hired guns of the company were all about, but he insisted that the walk was necessary “to show the gunmen that we aren’t afraid of them, and also to show the strikers that we’re not afraid, so that they won’t be afraid.” Far from a “swivel-chair” leader, he was in the trenches—literally, when in Iron River, Michigan, he was found beaten and unconscious with a rope around his neck. That happened a year before his coming to Butte.

Butte had formerly been a union mining town, but years of struggle, including martial law, had broken the movement. After the Speculator Mine explosion of June 8, 1917, when 168 miners were gassed and burned alive, trapped behind bulkheads cemented to save the company money, interest in unionism was renewed. Frank Little heeded the call. He was all activist, blasting company greed and WWI in the same fiery speeches. “Either we’re for this capital slaughterfest, or we’re against it—I’m ready to face a firing squad rather than compromise.” Novelist Dashiell Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective (translation: company thug) for Anaconda in Butte claimed to have been offered $5000 to kill Frank Little and turned it down. Someone took it.

On August 1, 1917, Frank Little’s body was found hung from a railroad trestle, the note “3-7-77″ pinned to him—the legal dimensions of a Montana grave; 3′ wide, 7′ long, 77″ deep. Over 8000 people attended his funeral; still the largest in the history of Butte.

The Anaconda Mining Company was extracting 10% of the world’s copper from Butte during WWI, and the mortality rate for miners was greater than that of the soldiers in Europe’s trenches. It is estimated that at least $25 billion in copper has been extracted from Butte’s mines. Now all that is left is the Berkeley Pit, the largest Superfund site in the United States. Locals keep their eyes on the Pit, a deep and highly toxic sinkhole of acid in the center of town. Efforts are undertaken to discourage migratory birds from landing there after hundreds of Canada geese, looking for a safe place to land before a storm, chose the Pit as their spot. Their skin and feathers were burned off from the acidic “Lake Berkeley”; with open lesions and esophageal corrosion resulting in death. A new term arose to describe it; “pit effect”. The Berkeley Pit has been proposed as the nation’s first National Environmental Disaster Monument.

Anyway, An Injury to One will be playing again on Saturday, and throughout the month. For more info on modern Butte, you can’t beat this article from William Langewiesche in The Atlantic. And film and/or labor history buffs will recognize that Will Oldham, contributor to the soundtrack, was the teenage preacher in John Sayle’s film, Matewan.

Gendered Bodies, Gendered Minds: Femininity, Barriers, and why the hell don’t more women apply for apprenticeship?! (originally posted 12/20/04 on blogspot)

Another one of the more interesting presentations at the union conference I attended a couple of months ago was “Gendered Bodies at Work” by Dr. Bob Bruno. He started his talk with a humorous story about his young daughter; apparently, her fourth-grade class was given an assignment concerning goals—what is/are your goals, and how do you plan to achieve them? His daughter decided that her goal was to have a baloney sandwich, and she gave a rather detailed account of exactly how she was going to do just that…the route home, opening the door, letting the dog out, going to the kitchen, opening the fridge door, getting the baloney….you get the idea. While her classmates were planning the trajectory of their lives from grade school to college to career, young Ms. Bruno was planning her sandwich—and her father was regarding himself as an abysmal parent and failed feminist! Well, not exactly….but he did regard it as a wake up call, and an occasion to ruminate on messages on gender and abilities.

The talk began with a discussion on masculine images in the labor movement; how images of muscular, virile men were and are consciously used to reflect strength—the physical strength of the working class in opposition to the effete elite. Images of brawn were supposed to embolden men to counter the power of the almighty dollar. This, of course, led into a rich side conversation amongst the sisters (this particular talk was held on the first day, the ‘Women’s Conference’, so brothers in the room were vastly outnumbered) on where exactly we can find men in our locals who look like the brothers in the T-Shirts and posters, otherwise known as the “why do the guys in the logos have washboard abs, and the guys in our local have washtub abs” question. And a little wicked laughter, as our poor brothers shrugged with the general “hey, I put good money into this belly” or “ya gotta have a good shed over your tools” grin. Then we moved on.

Powerful, masculine imagery has been synonymous with organized labor practically from the start…even though throughout labor’s history in the U.S., women have been front-and-center—from mill girls to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, from telephone operators to teachers. Women have been instrumental in broadening the horizons of what is considered to be labor issues. Organized women have often been more radical than the men. But for all our work, images–even those created, promoted and distributed by organized labor–are overwhelmingly masculine. And this set me to thinking.

In the United States, women in construction are 3% of the total. If you include only the mechanical trades, the number is lower…1%. The most recent statistic I have for my union, the IBEW, is 1.1%. Why so low? And what can we do to increase the number of women in the trades? I think images are key…to the problem, and to solutions.

Quick—what images come to mind when you hear a term like “female construction worker”? What does she look like? There are many stereotypes, none of them flattering. The reality is far less dramatic, or controversial. Hence, less press. Both my sixteen years of experience, and my avid reading on the subject have shown me that if any image of us occurs with enough frequency to be an accurate stereotype, it is this one: the single mother. Single mothers tend to outnumber both the married and the childless on the jobsite. That, and more of us tend to enter our apprenticeship from a working-poor background. Male apprentices tend to take a cut in pay on acceptance into the apprenticeship; women experience a raise. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone; many organizations, including various women’s labor coalitions and central trades’ councils, promote apprenticeship as a way out of poverty, though we still struggle to find our place at the table, and poor women are motivated to stay. Some women found their way into the trades by taking a ‘preapprenticeship’ course; that is, an overview of many trades with both “hands-on” and classroom studies. I found my way in by applying after reading the advertisement for apprentices in the back of the newspaper.

And that’s pretty much the story for most of the tradeswomen I’ve met in my area too. We happened upon the posting in the newspaper. The year I applied (1988), there were a handful of women who tested, but years go by in which no woman applies or tests. For every organization like Chicago Women in Trades, Oregon Tradeswomen, and Nontraditional Employment for Women, who run preapprenticeship programs and provide logistical and moral support for women entering the trades, there are hundreds of jurisdictions who do not have such a program (or, much access to that type of program).

Women who enter the trades will face hostility; it’s only a matter of time. IBEW Sister Susan Eisenberg documented some of the hairier stories in her seminal work on the subject, We’ll Call You If We Need You. But for all the run-ins with knuckle-draggers, frankly the jobsite is where one is least likely to find them–or, where one is most likely to succeed in smashing stereotypes. Most of the articles and discussion I’ve seen on the topic that has not come from tradeswomen themselves has been rife with well-meaning misconceptions and seriously lacking in depth. The jobsite is not the site where the problems begin; while it is a site to enact solutions, it’s hardly the only one. Integrating women into the nontraditional field of construction is going to require structural changes in the application process for apprenticeship, more gender integration in industrial education in the public schools, and a whole lotta changing in the minds of the general public. A step into the world of construction is a trip in the Wayback Machine, where the most progressive element is the actual brotherhood on the jobsite.

First, a woman battles the misconception about her “suitability” for the job. Many women never get to the application process because they have either internalized that message or have been intimidated by countless stories of the hostility, hazing, and pure nastiness they will face. That’s probably the reason that you will find more women coming from a working-poor background who both enter and stay in construction: we don’t care! Being able to pay one’s bills is a great incentive to shrugging off adversity, real or potential. Childcare can be a barrier to more female participation; in my area, almost all jobsites start at 7:00AM, which is the time almost all childcare (like the SCOPE program for school-age kids) opens. The few other childcare facilities that open earlier do not take “older” (meaning post-kindergarten) children. This will be a scramble for me in the near future. Apprenticeship classes are held at night, and in my area there is a dearth of evening childcare available. The apprenticeship interview can be a source of tension; I faced a roomful of older white men who were all business, had hostile looks on their faces (no one smiled), and asked such illegal questions as whether or not I was married and/or had children. They stressed the physicality of the job (I stressed that I was a gym rat who lifted weights), and asked me if I minded “foul language, as it can be rather earthy on the jobsite” (I was so tempted to say, “oh, fuck no!”, but in that sea of unfriendly faces I thought I better not. Didn’t want to offend anyone and blow my chance of a lifetime). And sometimes, the “just one” theory is operative, meaning female candidates are only judged against other female candidates, and the “best one” is chosen. It is thought to be discriminatory against males to have more than one woman in an apprenticeship class.

When a new woman arrives on the jobsite, there’s a palpable tension amongst the brothers. The apprehension goes both ways, as the brothers are afraid of doing or saying something that will get them in trouble (the relative few knuckle-draggers have no such qualms; in the face of everyone else’s quietude, their vocality can be assumed representative—not good for anyone!). New female apprentices have often had no experience in the trades, not even in high school (I was prevented from taking Industrial Ed, and that was the early ’80s), and generally need more hands-on support from a journeyman, especially when there are safety risks. Women apprentices can be afraid of breaking tools, especially power tools (that was me all the way—can you imagine thinking you can fuck up a Hilti TE 76? Bwa ha ha!). And then there’s the gauntlet of questions: “so, why’d ya wanna do this for a living?” repeated for years after one has topped out. And yeah, there can be actual hostile incidents (as opposed to more pedestrian mouthiness). More often than not, these are isolated incidents that involve one cowardly man, but again, with no background in the construction world it is easy to assume that these types of actions are representative. Female apprentices who want a well-rounded, thorough education must be vigilant; there is a trend towards limiting women to the “easy” stuff.

After a woman tops out, she can find herself fighting to stay employed. Brothers on the jobsite either are or can be egalitarian; men higher in the office, in the shops, are rarely so. Female journeymen can become ghettoized in the “minority calls”; and there is still a strong tendency amongst those who don’t work with us to belive that we are just working to find a husband, or that when jobs are in short supply they must go to the men first…after all, they have families to support. “Minority calls” (jobs which require 6.9% nontraditional female participation because they are funded publically) are nonexistant in California becasue of the passage of Prop. 209 and this has had a negative effect on female employment. Women who top out are rarely offered the same opportunity for job longevity or advancement in their career that men are. But despite the drawbacks, most tradeswomen find their career in the building trades quite rewarding, and not just financially. Personally, I wouldn’t be anywhere else!

So, with the situation as it stands, how do we increase the number of women in apprenticeships? By engaging the same qualities of resourceful and flexible thinking common in solving mechanical problems on the jobsite, that’s how! Wider Opportunities for Women offers a collection of strategies and resources for girls, women, union halls, labor organizations, employers and service agencies inerested in nontraditional employment for women. Their sister site, Workplace Solutions, is especially rife with practical, down-to-earth, easily implemented practices that are cost-effective and get results. ISEEK offers a questionnaire for women considering a nontraditional path of employment. Part of the problem is circular: a lack of female representation means fewer women apply, which continues the lack of female representation, which perpetuates stereotypes and hinders female progress, and so on. Any attempt to integrate the trades must work hand-in-hand with recruitment. Critical mass is necessary to resolve the problems inherent from lack of integration. Great Britain, in their efforts to increase nontraditional employment for women, has noticed a strong correlation between careers with a high concentration of men and a skills shortage. Efforts are being made to recruit young women in secondary school, but research shows that in many cases employment stereotypes are already well in place by that time, and recommend starting strategies such as job shadowing at even earlier ages. Tradeswomens’ groups in the United States have been recommending this for years, and have produced resources such as Tradeswomen, Inc.‘s The Little Tradeswomens’ Coloring Book a trilingual coloring book featuring women in nontraditional jobs. Hard Hatted Women offers the Painting Our Way to a Better Future coloring book, and the Cool Careers for Girls in Construction book, and “Power Tools are a girl’s best friend” T-Shirts. Work4Women offers the Cool Jobs for Girls website, and the corresponding parents and educators guide here. Ms. Fixit encourages girls to explore nontraditional employment. There are several tradeswomen’s organization that focus attention on this issue, such as:

A couple of good resource sites for tradeswomen include a no-nonsense legal guide from Equal Rights Advocates, the Women’s Project for Union Democracy, and a site run by a sister Ironworker, here. (She also has a magnificent eulogy for one of her mentors, here.) For a good insight into the life of a tradeswoman from the application process, through apprenticeship, through journeyman status and beyond, you can’t beat the humorous, fictionalized account of real-life tinner bluecollargal, entitled Hey Lady, Your Tin Snips Are Showing!. Right before Bethola and me got laid off the last job, she informed me that she was in the midst of the sequel to that, so keep yer eyes open! And IBEW sister Victoria King has written a book, Manhandled: Black Females, that takes up many issues, but support for more black women in the trades is one of them, as she outlines her experiences as a Journeyman Wireman in New York’s Local 3.

Now, for La Lubu’s quick and dirty guide for female apprentices:

Keep your eyes open, your mouth shut, and your nose to the grindstone.
Remember that your enemies are few and your allies are many. Allies tend to be quieter than enemies, but they’re out there. Don’t allow yourself to fall prey to the same stereotyping process you are subjected to. When in doubt, refer to rule #1.
Your allies will come in every size, shape, color and gender; with that said, you will notice that your staunchest allies will tend to be older journeymen and veterans. Why? Well, the Old School has a strong sense of “all for one, one for all” unionism, and a strong work ethic. If you have a strong work ethic, they will respect you. Also, older men have experienced their own form of discrimination, and that tempers their view. Older female journeymen have generally gone through the wringer, and most will keep a lookout for you. Veterans? Well, the armed forces are more integrated racially, ethnically and by gender than just about any other work force in the U.S. A strong work ethic is stressed there, also. (remember rule #1!) More often than not, a person leaves their round of service with less bigotry and a more open mind than before. They have also had the opportunity to see women performing nontraditional work, so they’re not going to experience culture shock when you come on the jobsite.
Always complete your apprenticeship assignments on time, always attend class, and study hard for your tests!
There is no such thing as a stupid question. When in doubt, ask. After all, no one expects an apprentice to know shit, anyway. And few things are more irritating than a know-it-all, won’t listen apprentice.
If there is hot, cold, dirty, nasty, tough work, be Janie on the spot for it. Don’t ever cop out on the rough stuff. Some guys can get away with it. You can’t. So don’t.
Be aggressive in your work. Ask questions and take the initiative. The construction site can be a chaotic environment at times, but stay busy. And don’t ever stand with your hands in your pockets.
Gain as much breadth of experience in your apprenticeship as you can. If there’s a facet of your trade you haven’t learned, ask for an assignment for that, even if you have to take a job transfer. Subscribe to trade journals (they’re free). Go to trade shows (they’re free too, plus you can win door prizes of new tools, and if you’re a smooth operator, sometimes you can sweet-talk sales reps out of cool tools. It’s fun to try, anyway!).
You will be tested. Don’t sweat the small stuff. How will you know if it’s the “small stuff”? Ask yourself: does it affect my work record, paycheck, or job performance? If the answer is no, it’s small stuff.
On the other hand, if you experience a real problem, you don’t have to tolerate it. But always follow the chain of command. First, approach the individual presenting the problem. If that doesn’t work, take it up the chain: to your journeyman, to the steward, to your foreman, if necessary. If none of those people can solve the problem, speak with a business rep at your union hall. Keep a job diary; a job diary is a worker’s best friend. What’s a job diary? A journal of dates, dates, times, and what you did on various days….what your job duties were, who you worked with, where you worked, that sort of thing. And of course, anything problematic. Chances are, you’ll never need it.
Get involved in your local union! Attend meetings, and if you can, volunteer for committees. It’s a good way to meet other people in your hall. You will get out of your union what you put into it—just like anything else in life. You may also want to join various other labor organizations such as the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (naah, you don’t have to be black), or the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Be politically active. Get involved with issues affecting working people. Volunteer time to political candidates and causes that are pro-labor. Historically, labor has won more and lost more through the political arena than any other avenue. Keep this in mind at election time. Vote your paycheck!

So, how is that list any different from the advice you’d offer male apprentices, Lubu? Not much. And that’s the point. Advice to brothers who are nervous working around women? Relax. Most women don’t have the “sue you blues”. Just be yourself. And if the brother in question is an asshole? Be someone else!

I’ll be back to this subject again; I plan to offer recruiting strategies for apprenticeship councils and union halls, and strategies for employers. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Amp has a somewhat related post on employment segration at his gig. The constuction field definitely rates as segregated, but it doesn’t have to be….

Terry McAuliffe, YOU’RE FIRED!!! (originally posted 11/10/04 on blogspot)

Ok, Black Wednesday is over. It’s time to get busy.

I volunteered for the election campaign; I stumped for Kerry in St. Louis (swing state!) and in Illinois. I phone banked. Sat on the PAC committee. I, and thousands of other union members bit the bullet and went with the program, flaws and all. We shook our heads, but kept on. We held our noses. But kept on. We held our tongues. And now some people have the nerve to say we should just keep on holding them, that to do otherwise is just giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Bullshit. For too long, our silence has been our own worst enemy. Now, the DNC needs to hear it. I owe them the truth, and they owe me their ears. Let’s see if anyone listens. I am addressing this open letter to the DNC, but really, everyone who has been going with the program needs to listen up. Recognize. And then get busy.

The election results shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Disappointed, yes. But not surprised. The Repugnicans have been organizing from the ground up for several decades, while the Democrats have just been calling in favors from the usual suspects (unions, african-americans, environmental groups, what’s left of the women’s movement), and then only during election time. That’s when we are courted. Between elections, our concerns are not addressed. And some of the citizenry that you occasionally flirt with (youth, gays, immigrants, latinos) are pretty much ignored, especially if their votes are seen as alienating some of the more usual suspects. This shit has to stop. If the Democratic party is to have a future, if it is to learn any lessons from this election, it better learn that number one on the agenda better be organizing from the bottom up.

Yeah, go ahead and suck your teeth. Then siddown and listen. You take home a nice salary. The people who would be your constituency do not. The people who would be your constituency not only do not take home much money, but we do not have very much control over our working conditions, or even whether or not we are working. We do not need one more “boss” lording their higher education over us, telling us what to do and how to do it, and telling us that our analysis doesn’t count. Top-down organizing has really been pissing off the troops out here. Start looking at some trees. Bottom-up organizing, starting at the precinct-committee level, needs to get more attention. It will require asking more from people. More legwork. More going out and talking to people. Don’t look for a ready-made solution. Wake up. This nation is deeply divided, and those divisions exist throughout your would-be constituency. Here are some suggestions:

Every neighborhood, every township needs a Democratic precinct committeeperson. It is embarrassing the number that do not. Don’t make excuses. Find one. One thing I have learned through union and community organizing, is that people need to be asked to volunteer. These people can and do rise to the occasion. Ask them for their help.
This precinct committeeperson then has to get really, really busy. And not just during election time. The only time I see my precinct committeeman is during election time. This should not be the case. The precinct committeeperson should be on a first name basis with everyone in the neighborhood. That precinct committeeperson should be known by people in the neighborhood. That precinct committeeperson and his or her die-hards need to see and be seen at community events. Church suppers. Union meetings. Various fundraising events, whether to help an uninsured person with cancer treatment or to give toys to needy children. PTA meetings. School plays. The Boys and Girls Club. Poker runs. Chili cookoffs. Mostaccioli dinners. Get the picture? Your people need to see and be seen. They need to talk to people about their concerns, in person.
and what’s more, if people have problems, the precinct committeeperson should be able to help with solutions. I took a training course through the local Trades’ Council to be a ‘union counselor’; basically to run point through the maze of community services that could help a person with a particular problem…a liason maybe, or someone who can help cut red tape. Precinct committeepeople could benefit from such a training program. Many people are afraid to volunteer for certain positions of authority because they are not provided with any training or walk-through. No one wants to volunteer and then fall flat on their face. Give them training. Watch them get results. Watch your membership rise. While I was phone banking on Thursday, the lead-man came in with a list of phone numbers from my parents’ hometown. A dying rust-belt town in the northern part of Illinois, with a high proportion of very elderly people. I spoke with many who were bedridden and couldn’t make it out to vote. Where the fuck was their precinct committeeperson? Why wasn’t that person talking to the disabled elderly people and making sure they were registered and had an absentee ballot? Or assistance to the polls? Think about new mothers too….especially mothers of twins or triplets. Think about people on workman’s comp. The precinct committeeperson should make it his or her business to reach these potential voters.
don’t just focus on the “big” elections. Think about focusing some effort at the local level. I live in Illinois, a “blue” state, that came out for Kerry. Again, it’s embarrassing the number of races where there are no Democratic challengers. Races are written off, because “oh, we’ll never get that one.” That doesn’t seem to stop your competition! What about the school board, the county board, city elections (many of which are officially “nonpartisan”, like that’s fooling anybody), park district, sheriff, etc.? Don’t let a race go without a Democaratic challenger.
Criminy, I can hear the excuses now. B-b-but that’ll take too much money! Where will we get the volunteers? Start working. You can’t get results without starting the work. You can start with the usual suspects, but you have to begin reaching out. Preaching to the choir does not work. They’re the only ones in church anymore, dig? Don’t believe the bogus stereotypes that are thrown around by your competition. Remember, you were just gifted with a senate seat here. A lot of rural Republicans voted for Barack Obama. Why? Because he bothered to come out here to the sticks, which is more than can be said for practically any other Democratic politician with a Chicago base. He worked. He got results. Study this case. It can work with other races, and in other states. Oh, and a word about volunteers…maybe this is Illinois-specific, the land of patronage, but I doubt it…there’ve been two traditional camps of volunteers: people from the union halls, and people who want a decent job, that the party might be able to help them get. You are ignoring other demographics here! I’m a die-hard, you’re pretty much stuck with me until and unless there’s a viable labor party (uhh, you could be that party, you know). Even so, I would have spent more time volunteering if there was child-care available. There’s more single parents that feel the same way. You’d get more of us if we could bring our kids, who would have other kids around and something fun to do, maybe some pizza (‘cuz you’re feeding volunteers anyway)…food for thought. And if you go to the dollar store and pick up some trinkets for the kiddos to take home (older kids might dig movie or amusement park tickets), they just might remember that when they’re in their teens and ready to volunteer themselves. Teens. Why aren’t they being asked? What better way to get the youth vote when they turn eighteen than to get them already involved in the process? Elders? Remember, it’s flattering to be asked. Ask some people.

The bottom line on bottom-up organizing is that it will offer more flexibility, a better handle on geographic and/or cultural problems and solutions, and the local control will give the constituency more of a sense of ownership…more investment in the process. That they are a part of and not the “hired help” will make all the difference in the world, and keep them coming back.

So. What does that leave us with? Oh yeah…..the issues. Now that the election is over, do you think it’s safe to talk about some issues? Republicans have been doing the framing for decades, and Democrats have been playing their game, on their field, by their rules, with their ball. And then turning around and wondering why they lose. The Democratic party has acted like Republicans are a united front; that they don’t have any divisions or internal contradictions like we do. Here’s a news flash from someone who was born, raised, and lives in the heartland….they do. Pay attention. Here are some ideas for tactics and issues whose time has come:

The Living Wage. Push the living wage. Push it hard. People in the United States like to believe in Fairness. We like to believe that our work counts for something. Every working american should be taking home a paycheck that covers housing, food, utilities, transportation, clothes, school necessities for the kids….in short, all their basic expenses. No one should have to go begging for charity at the end of the working week. This is a message that will resonate with american people. This is what the minimum wage started out being. The framework and the idea are already there. This elephant isn’t just in the room, it blew through the front wall and is running down the street. Run after it, dammit!
Full Employment. Yes, I said full employment. That big bugga-bear of economists everywhere. Sure, we can argue about whether or not full employment can ever really be achieved, but the fact is….there can stand to be a lot more employment than what there is. And this is a message that deeply resonates with most americans….that everyone who wants a job, who took the time to get educated for a job, who has the skills necessary to do a job, should have that job. This is important. Many people are unemployed. Many more are underemployed. Most of the underemployed have jobs with no benefits, such as health insurance or a pension. This will have dire ramifications for America’s future. This needs to be talked about. Start talking about full employment and set it as a goal.
Education. Our public educational system is seriously underfunded. No Child’s Behind Left is not going to fix it; it’s another unfunded mandate that has more problems than solutions. Don’t take my word for it; listen to the people who make that their job. Property taxes are not properly funding the schools; most of us will never have the kind of income needed to pay an amount of property tax that will give our children the school they deserve. Again, americans like to believe in Fairness. Start talking about the ways and means to fix our schools. In December 2000 the U.S. Department of Education identified thirteen key indicators of school quality: school leadership, school goals, professional community, discipline, academic environment, teacher academic skills, teaching assignment, teacher experience, professional development, course content, pedagogy, technology and class size. Too many schools in America aren’t making the grade. Money is part of the solution, particularly for lower-income areas where teachers tend to be less experienced, class sizes tend to be larger, technology tends to be outdated and/or nonexistant, and kids already have adult-sized problems on their shoulders. This isn’t just a message for the cities; rural areas can’t consolidate schools fast enough with their dwindling tax base. Rural kids are losing out too. Democrats should feel free to bring up the fact that schools were considered okey-dokey until Brown vs. the Board of Education. After Brown, conservatives magically wanted government out of the education business. Democrats should feel free to talk about the resegregating of schools, as well as strategies to combat this. College costs are also spiralling out of control. Every now and then, you’ll hear talk about a “G.I. Bill for everybody” (meaning, giving non-veterans a cheap means to obtain a college education). This is a policy that Democrats should be working on.
Health Care. This is certainly on the minds of many americans! Meanwhile, Bush’s only game plan for health care involves capping malpractice awards, so that regardless of the damages done (including future earnings of the dead or injured patient) or the negligence involved, doctors get a break. What the hell is that going to do for uninsured americans? Especially young uninsured americans, who are entering a job market where benefits like health insurance and pension plans have gone the way of gas lighting and the horse and carriage. It will do nothing to reduce the number of bankruptcies filed because of medical expenses. Hospitals and health clinics are not closing down in rural areas because of the cost of malpractice insurance. Hello? Universal Single Payer Health Plan?
The Commons. The what? You know, everything in the public domain. Public libraries. Public parks. Public roads. Public buildings. Publically owned resources. All of the things that belong to us in common. What we share as our national heritage. Slowly but surely, conservatives have framed “the commons” to mean “Communist”, capital C. Why the hell have Democrats let this happen? Why did we succumb to red-baiting? We already know the “how”, of course, and it relates to another aspect of the commons….the airwaves. Perhaps by bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, and stressing that the airwaves belong to the public, we can come up with more tools to combat the idea of the “ownership society”, which in short means that everything and everyone should be owned. Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to mention that “privatization” is shorthand for “less access and fewer resources for the common people”. What was built and/or sustained by the public should not be given or sold. Period. We all need the commons.
Our Environment. That most important part of the Commons. You can’t turn around these days without reading headlines about the melting of the polar icecaps, the destruction of Rocky Mountain glaciers, the large dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the lack of ozone around Australia, mercury poisoning, fish and amphibians with multiple limbs and/or sex organs, plankton dying in the oceans (Soylent Green, anyone?), E. Coli, acid rain, the rising cancer rates…yet the Repugnicans have managed to frame any mention of our shared environment as coming from tree-hugging radical trustafarians. Clean air, clean water, clean land and safe, healthy, life-sustaining food are of interest to all human beings who plan on surviving. Believe it or not, this is an issue of interest to what has been disdained as “middle America”. Wake up. There’s an awful lot of gun-toting, Second-Amendment loving outdoorspeople out here in “middle America” who see first hand what the destruction and neglect of our environment is doing. And they don’t like it. “Middle Americans” aren’t real thrilled about factory farms, genetic modification of crops, or irradiation of the food supply. It’s not just coastal intellectuals that read Fast Food Nation.
The Bill of Rights. The most beloved part of the United States Constitution. That for which we are envied. That for which we would fight and die. That which is being gutted by the PATRIOT Act. This is one of the pillars of the United States of America. Do not let it fall to fears of “terrorism” or “crime” or anything else that supposedly lurks in the shadows of night. The PATRIOT Act cut large swathes across our Bill of Rights in broad daylight, with too few Democrats standing up against it.
Energy. Or as was said in the Seventies, the Energy Crisis. Peak oil production means it’s all downhill from here; meanwhile we are focusing all our resources towards the “global economy”, which won’t be sustainable in the post-oil world. Spend enough time here and you may agree that we need other strategies than “burn, baby, burn”. The Democratic party could be capitalizing on the fact that americans like to believe in Progress; progress in this instance could involve renewable energy and rebuilding of our infrastructure, with the resultant increase in living wage jobs. Speak up! Oil is not our future!!
Our Infrastructure. What is now dismissed as “flyover country” was once the backbone of the nation. Now we’re the Rust Belt, a name that is visibly apropos for anyone brave enough to drive through, not fly over, our nation. Let no Democratic speech go without mentioning the infrastructure. Blue-collar ears perk up at the mere mention of this word. We’re listening. Start talking.

Now, let me repeat myself: Framing is Everything. If the Democrats take nothing away from this election loss but Framing is Everything, the game is still on. I didn’t mention foreign policy, because it ought to go without saying that war should be a last resort rather than another tool to implement foreign policy. Get out of the empire-building game; it didn’t work for Great Britain and it won’t work for the United States (especially after peak oil production). I did not mention “women’s issues” because that is divisive framing. What is called “women’s issues” in the United States are really human rights issues, and many are children’s issues, which emphasizes the neoconservative stance that (a)women are really only good for raising children anyway, and (b) children are only for photo-ops. Back to the factories with ‘em! Childcare, family leave, the education of children, care for our elderly, equal pay, equal opportunity….don’t ghettoize these as women’s issues; they are everyone’s issues. I will mention this though: religion. As in “freedom of” and freedom from. Make no bones about it; this election was lost because of religion. There’s an ill wind blowing, and it’s name is Dominionism. *that link shamelessly stolen from The Goddess.* Groups such as the Family teach their members to toss out God-talk at every opportunity but not to get into pesky specifics. As the saying goes, the “devil is in the details”, and ain’t it the truth. The beliefs of these american jihadists bear little to no resemblance to the faith of mainstream americans. Democrats should never miss a chance to force dominionists or their lackeys to show their hand. Wanna bring religion into the ring? Then make them state their real beliefs. American people are used to listening to polite benedictions of the most general sort at public events. Most americans don’t get too out-of-sorts when hearing mention of God; most americans of christian faith assume that the speaker is talking about the same God they believe in. When it comes to dominionists, nothing could be further from the truth. Catholics especially need to pay attention; dominionists are no friends of catholics. Democrats tried to play the religion game by pandering to homophobia and abandoning the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Didn’t work, did it? Meanwhile, here was this nice institution called the Bill of Rights, sitting idly by, waiting to be used by some enterprising Democrat who would dare to say that the government is not in the business of enforcing the laws of religion, and invoking that most american right of privacy in the interests of homosexuals being permitted the same right to civil marriage that heterosexuals have. Freedom of religious practice goes hand in hand with freedom from having someone else’s religion crammed down your throat.

Now, DNC…are you ready to rumble?

This Is Not My Holiday (originally posted 10/11/04 on blogspot)

Another Columbus day. Another Columbus day going by with a serious lack of critical commentary from the italian-american community. Why? Good question. Frankly, where and when I grew up, Columbus day meant nothing….it was a day off from work or school. Like Thanksgiving, it was not viewed as our holiday. Obviously, that wasn’t/isn’t the case everywhere. The images of Columbus day offered up in the mass media pit american indians vs. old italian men in K of C garb….genocide vs. “italian pride”….let’s take a look at that.

No bones about it….Christoforo Columbo was a real butcher. Before sailing for Spain, he was a slaver for Portugal…sailing down the coast of Africa and bringing back enslaved africans for sale in Lisbon. After gaining a certain amount of shipboard experience and picking the brains of more experienced sailors, he figured his sure thing for fame and fortune would be finding a faster route to Asia….the Portuguese already had a lock on the route around Africa, and were busy keeping ships away from the eastern Mediterranean (no, it wasn’t the turks who wanted to shut down that lucrative trade route!). Columbus had a hard time coming up with funding, but his ship came in….in the persons of Ferdinand and Isabella. Leaders of an up-and-coming nation state, they were hungry for what Columbus promised them….more wealth, more gold.

He set sail for Asia, and stumbled upon some Caribbean islands that no one told him existed. It didn’t take him long to determine that these islands were not owned by an empire, and probably not east Asian. This did not discourage him; if these islands were not previously claimed by anyone capable of fighting off spanish soldiers and irregulars, why, they could be his! Or ten percent of the proceeds, anyway, per the deal. He set himself up as the Boss, and got down to the real business at hand—enslaving indians to hunt for gold. Those who did not bring in enough gold were either killed or mutilated. Ears and noses were cut off; runaways or serious offenders (those who perpetually didn’t make their haul) had their hands chopped off. Mothers had their babies chucked headfirst into rivers by laughing solidiers. Soldiers took bets on whose sword was the sharpest, based on how many cuts it took to carve an indigenous person in half. Rape was endemic. Fields lay sallow and nets stayed dry—with the heavy penalties exacted for lack of gold, no one had time to farm or fish. They did have time to die.

Estimates of the indigenous population prior to Columbus’ landing range from three to eight million people. There is less controversy about the number on the numbers that remained. Bartolome de las Casas wrote that in 1508, there were 60,000 indigenous people on the island that became known as Hispaniola. By 1550, there were 500. By 1650, there were none. None.

Modern day revisionists are quick to claim that genocide is far too strong a word for what Columbus presided over and took part in. That Columbus was a “man of his times”. Yet, the behavior of Colombus, and by extension the spanish Crown, was heavily critiqued in his day, in far stronger language than we hear in modern media histories of Columbus. Bartolome de las Casas gave thorough eyewitness accounts of the butchery on Hispaniola; Francisco de Vitoria wrote extensively on the rights of native peoples (before he also contracted gold fever and changed his opinion–and writing–to reflect the glint of gold the spanish policy of seizing everything). Columbus was brought back from his third voyage in chains, accused of brutality (among other charges). Oh, and the reward of 10,000 maravedis for life to the first man to spot land? Colombus stole that too. Contrary to pro-Columbus propaganda, he did personally bring arawak slaves back to the court of Spain; he liberally lied about his findings and stated that (with some funding, of course!) with his next trip he would bring in (for his padrones benefactors), “as much gold as they need….and as many slaves as they ask.”

What of the popular claim of Columbus being from Genoa? No one really knows. There is no record of his birth. He would certainly be mystified by claims of “italian pride” in his honor….there being no Italy in his day, and he not having much if any ties to any location there. The fame is something he could appreciate, however.

So…how did Columbus day get to be a holiday, anyway? The first celebration of Columbus was by the Tammany Society in New York City in 1792, long before any significant numbers of italians started showing up on U.S. shores. There wasn’t another celebration of Columbus day until 1866, again, in New York City. Another celebration took place in San Francisco in 1869. These are labeled as celebrations of the italian-american community, but at that time there were very few italians in the United States; those that were here were mainly northern italians who were artists or artisans, not the poor peasants from the Mezzogiorno who came later (‘nother words, my people).

And therein lies the rub. There wasn’t much (if any) anti-italian prejudice in the U.S. before the swarthy masses started swarming in. Italians were thought of as being educated, artistic, cultured people. When poverty and starvation brought shiploads of uneducated peasants with dark skin and calloused hands to the docks, this presented a problem to the older (northern) italian residents. A system of noblesse oblige developed in larger cities, with established northern italian residents acting as the “talented tenth” for the great unwashed masses. Social clubs and mutual aid societies cropped up, with (more often) northern italians at the forefront, acting as go-betweens from the italian to the anglo world, and again between italians and other ethnic groups, most notably the irish who were politically dominant. Some of these clubs were helpful to newcomers. Some of them were baldly exploitative. New residents from the Mezzogiorno would invest money with banchiste, hire legal services from notaie, and contract with other prominenti who would more often than not steal their money. An increasing number of these prominenti were fellow southerners who learned the ropes of capitalism, and how to hang their paesani with ‘em. But whether northern or southern, the blame in the popular imagination went to the northern italians, as the conditions that drove immigrants to l’mmerica were still fresh in mind.

The preexisting ethnic pecking order of the day had the irish at the top, in every city. The irish had the ear of city hall, the patronage jobs, and large parades on St. Patrick’s day. Italians had parades too, usually festas on various saints’ days. Processions were held through italian neighborhoods that took all day and blocked traffic. This irritated the hell out of city hall, and out of various employers who suddenly found themselves without a workforce when a saint was being feted. But more…it really pissed off irish priests. Irish priests who were already ticked about the anticlericalism demonstrated by southern italians and sicilians. Irish priests who viewed southern italian and sicilian religious expression as paganism.

In 1882, an irish-american priest founded the Knights of Columbus. Columbus was chosen as patron to reinforce “americanism” amongst catholics. In the northern U.S., the Knights started as a mostly-irish organization that simultaneously expressed american loyalty while maintaining the ethnic pecking order. In the southern U.S., the Knights had their work cut out for them proving to anti-catholics that they were as american as they were catholic. Christoforo Columbo, a supporter of aristocracy, was reified as the symbol of “america”. And here was a ready-made lobby for “Columbus Day”.

Italian-american communities were not so much interested in Columbus at that time. There was no recognition of Columbus even being italian, let alone someone who accomplished anything that a person from the Mezzogiorno would recognize as heroic. He was genovese, a thief, a slaver, a murderer. Bah! But there was a universally recognized hero in italian-american communities across the U.S.: Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of the Risorgimento. There was a push to have Garibaldi be the noted figure for italian-americans, and for good reason. Not only did Garibaldi fight to unify Italy to be a representative democracy like the United States, he had even lived here and applied for citizenship! Already distinguished in battle in Brazil, Uruguay, and Italy, he was considered for a position as general in the Union Army by Abraham Lincoln. Outside of the italian-american community, there was no call for any recognition of Garibaldi. People from outside, and later from inside, the italian-american community began the push for Columbus as the italian-american holiday. And just back in the Mezzogiorno, those who disagreed turned their heads and rolled their eyes; after all, those with the power are going to do whatever-the-hell they want anyway, aren’t they?

So now here we are, with another Columbus day. Another day of eye-rolling and head-turning, while self-appointed leaders of the italian-american community feel free to spew racist invective against indians. What of the rest of us? Are we going to let those in Columbus garb speak for us? Where are our tongues?

Well, here’s a brother with a voice. Tommi Avicolli Mecca is calling for a “Sacco and Vanzetti Day” to be a source of real italian-american pride. How about it? How about honoring Sacco and Vanzetti, who stood flat-footed in their community and told flat-footed truths? Sacco and Vanzetti are heroes I can get behind. Not Columbus. He’s not my hero and this is not my holiday.

UPDATE: visit this site for all kinds of news and information on Columbus day. And Rethinking Schools has some tools for blowing the myth out of the water.

Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor (originally posted 9/25/04 on blogspot)

It’s good to be back home! I’ve had the honor of spending the past few days in Chicago representing my union at a conference. There were many fine speakers, and the brother- and sisterhood I found there was amazing! Much love and respect to the good sisters and brothers of Minneapolis and St. Paul!!! Anyway….

One of the fine speakers was Dr. William J. Puette, author of Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor. He found that anti-union attitudes are strikingly consistent, even though labor history and/or education is rarely taught at the elementary or secondary level. His students already arrive with preconceived notions about unions, and have little to no actual knowledge of labor history (as shown by their answers on a test). The students who hold anti-union views believe that unions: are un-american, are ruining the country, are too powerful, are no longer needed, have “bosses” that are corrupt, have “bosses” that are overpaid, are greedy and selfish, protect bad workers and are always going on strike. Hmm. Where could they possibly be getting these ideas?

Ever heard the term “media bias”? Film, television (news and dramas), newspapers, cartoons…all emphasize different facets of anti-labor bias, but together present a unified portrait of the evils of “Big Labor”. In fact, that’s a popular loaded term, “Big Labor”; often used in opposition to “small business” (which is used many times without regard to the actual size or income of the business! He presented an example of one of Hawai’i's airlines referring to themselves as a “small business”…not exactly a mom-and-pop operation, no?). Typecasting, caricatures, and stereotypes are trotted out on a regular basis to emphasize bias, not challenge it. Subliminal messages are given through images and placement (and size) of articles in print media.

Film tends to emphasize violence in relation to unions. Especially mob violence (which could be, and will be, its own topic on this blog!). It’s telling that Jimmy Hoffa is still the best-known labor figure. Fictional images of working-class men with ballbats and ax-handles are given more space than real news footage of police attacking nonviolent, unarmed labor demonstrators with plastic bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and batons. Movies also highlight strikes (in reality, 99.3% of labor negotiations are handled without a strike), corruption (again, cue up the Godfather theme), and greed (greed?! CEO pay, anyone?!!).

Print media utilizes liberal use of subliminal messaging, images and verbal bias. Contrast “labor boss” with “corporate executive” (or official, spokesman, etc.). But it fits nicely with “Mafia boss”. During negotiations, labor “demands”, employers “ask for concessions” or “make an offer”. Employers “resist”, in order to “seek higher profits”; when union members seek an increase in wages to keep up with the cost of living, or an increase in health benefits, words like “lust” and “greed” are used. When labor leaders are featured, they tend to have their age listed right after their name…like criminals do in the police beat section. In fact, Dr. Puette kept track of labor articles during the writing of his book; thirty percent of the time, labor articles were on the same page as the police beat. He even showed an example where the labor news was embedded in the arrest records, although there was no tie-in at all! There was another example of a magazine article on organized crime in Hawai’i; the graphics featured different areas of organized crime (prostitution, drugs, etc…..and “labor racketeering”). There was no mention of labor in the article, as there were no charges of labor racketeering!

Visual images are important. Labor leaders are not only referred to as “labor bosses”; they are almost universally presented as large, heavyset, broad-shouldered men (the better to beat you up with, my child! Sorry, been reading too much “Little Red Riding Hood” over here). Pictures shown are unflattering, and with scowls instead of smiles. Contrast that with photos of business leaders…clean-cut, smiling, average-sized. If a labor official does not fit the image, well…the photo isn’t shown! Dr. Puette’s union president was referred to as a “union boss” in an article during negotiations, but because her petite, slight build did not match the aggressive terminology of “boss”, her photo was not published. Newspapers often use photos of picket lines, even of informational pickets, and inflammatory headlines for labor articles; when negotiations are resolved (again, 99.3% with no strike, let alone no violence!), it gets a small blurb in the back of the paper. There is no regular labor beat in today’s newspapers. The Chamber of Commerce, traditionally hostile to unions, is used as a news source. Graphics are increasingly employed in an attempt to compete with USA Today; an example of the “Union Boss” puppetmaster pulling strings, a la The Godfather was the visual headline in one magazine article. And of course, no image of a union leader is complete without the standard-issue large cigar clamped between the teeth!

Television reiterates these images, and tends to emphasize the pettiness and “foolish goals” of unions. Take for example, a 1993 episode of the Simpsons, which featured Homer Simpson as the president of the International Brotherhood of Jazz Dancers, Pastry Chefs, and Nuclear Technicians. This animation hauled out all the old, tired negative stereotypes, from sicilians being synonymous with the Mob (Homer was referred to as “the Kingpin” after his election), to beer-swilling, not-too-bright union members. Interestingly enough, this was released after an unsuccessful 1991 attempt by U.S. animators of the Simpsons to organize; this particular animation was done in Korea.

Which brings up another point…global union density rates. Media images feature large union “bosses” and cartoons of big muscle to highlight how powerful unions supposedly are in the U.S. Here’s an actual breakdown of the percentages of union membership in various countries:

80% Denmark
70% Belgium
44% Italy
43% Germany
31% Canada
28% England
26% Australia
26% Japan
25% Spain
19% South Korea
17% Taiwan
13% U.S.A.

Labor is a political party just about everywhere besides the U.S. So, who’s kidding who about labor and power?

The rise of corporate media coincides with the decrease in pro-labor voices in media. Around the turn of the century, most newspapers were locally owned, and each had its own philosophy; there were diverse opinions, and working people had advocates. There was accountability to the community. Those days are long gone…in print, in television, in radio. In 1996, Clear Channel owned 40 radio stations; after 1996′s deregulation, they now own 1200 radio stations. (Quality and variety of music played on radio did a swan dive, and that’s another topic for another time…in the meantime you can google “Greg Tate” for good articles on radio apartheid).

What can we as union members do? For starters, we can monitor the media, and offer critiques. We can point out media bias to our children. We can develop contacts within the media; it’s harder to demonize real human beings as opposed to nameless masses. We can provide leadership training to our members so they can be more media-savvy when called upon for photo-ops and interviews. We can provide contrasting images of our membership to counter the stereotypes. We can support the labor press that does exist; give it a greater audience. We can develop our own PR. We can use pro-labor cartoonists. We can do even more….but we can’t ignore the impact of the media. We do so at our own risk.

Like this:

Be the first to like this page.

No comments yet.

About

mother, daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, niece. only child. curse in 2 languages. background is meridionale, terrona, pagana, tho’ i am mmericana. my people come from Sicily, up in the mountains where Hades captured Persephone. then they came to Ellis Island, Chicago, and points south…time doesn’t heal all wounds but music almost does…hyperbolic, hyperaware, hypersensitive, hyperactive…mind set to flowing all directions simultaneously, winding over and under and behind and through like Styx…snap reflexes ‘cuz i’m still a survivor, still know where the exits are, still look for weapons & the defensive position, still picking up the pieces…journeyman wireman, 5th generation trade unionist, rustbelt consciousness, old-school labor activist in the vein of Eugene V. Debs (“while there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison I am not free”). visit the grave of Mother Jones once a year. lean hard to the left like the good end of the radio dial and the low end of the guitar…inveterate bookworm, lover of words written and spoken. savor the expressive cadence of the unexpected and mostly unsaid. feel the undercurrents and invisible turbulence, look beneath the surface, revel in the exquisite passion of what irish soulman/road opener Van Morrison calls the “inarticulate speech of the heart”. like to blow the dust off buried treasure/buried truth…been driving up/down I-55 between Chicago & St. Louis since some of it was still Route 66. been cooking sugu before there was “italian seasoning”. carry home in my heart, not under my feet. stamina and resilience. raw nerves and sore muscles. low voice and full-throated howl…….this is La Lubu.

May 2012
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Feb
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Changing Moods
Women in Film

Sunshine Cleaning
Women in Music

Koko Taylor

Teena Marie

La Lubu

la notti e di lu lupu

Archive

Feminist-Minded Children’s Books (originally posted 5/5/08 on blogspot)

To Speak This Into Being…….. (originally posted 4/10/08 on blogspot)

Link Round-Up: Rethinking Schools, Winter 2007-2008 (originally posted 2/1/08 on blogspot)

Sneaking into the House and Killing the Master (originally posted 1/20/08 on blogspot)

Tools, Masters and Houses (originally posted 1/8/08 on blogspot)

On Wholeness: Another Refutation of “Purity” and “Popularization” (originally posted 1/7/08 on blogspot)

It’s Always Personal (originally posted 1/6/08 on blogspot)

Trust, Mutuality and Co-Creation Within Feminism: The Art of Building a Movement (originally posted 10/27/07 on Feministe)

Intersecting Identities and Feminist Identification (originally posted 10/24/07 on Feministe)

What Color Are the Holes in Your Parachute? (originally posted 10/23/07 on Feministe)

A Worker’s Memorial (originally posted 10/20/07 on Feministe)

Like A Natural Woman, Part Due (originally posted 10/30/06 on Feministe)

Like A Natural Woman (originally posted 10/29/06 on Feministe)

Fighting Is Not a Metaphor: Women’s Boxing (originally posted 10/23/06 on Feministe)

Unite to Spin (originally posted 5/11/05 on blogspot)

Hope She Brought You Chocolate Bimbi Eggs… (originally posted 4/29/05 on blogspot)

3-7-77 (originally posted 1/4/05 on blogspot)

Gendered Bodies, Gendered Minds: Femininity, Barriers, and why the hell don’t more women apply for apprenticeship?! (originally posted 12/20/04 on blogspot)

Terry McAuliffe, YOU’RE FIRED!!! (originally posted 11/10/04 on blogspot)

This Is Not My Holiday (originally posted 10/11/04 on blogspot)

Through Jaundiced Eyes: How the Media View Organized Labor (originally posted 9/25/04 on blogspot)

Like this:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

About

Pacing & Howling

Category Cloud

Archives

Arti, Musica, Cultura

Bedda!

Blogs

Good Ideas & Liveability Resources

Liberazione della Fimmina: Womanism/Feminism

Local Links

Parenting & Children

preemies

Reading is Fundamental

Solidarity Forever: Lu Lutta Continua

Pages

Meta

Changing Moods

Women in Film

Women in Music

Site info

Follow “La Lubu”