Month: November 2016

Satire is not yet dead…

Here’s a telling piece, written about the elections as though the USA were an African nation.

The US of A, a nation located in the center of the North American continent, is shaken by its latest electoral results, which threaten the weak racial equilibrium the nation has painstakingly built since the abolition of racial segregation, a mere half a century ago, thus heralding a fresh round of racial tensions and social instability.

 And from within the US, “My Fair Trump”:
Obama: I understand that it can be difficult to go from not having to read or study or do anything even a tiny bit hard or boring at all, ever, to being the CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE MOST POWERFUL NATION ON EARTH, whose life is an unceasing parade of unpleasant responsibilities and difficult decisions, but, please, focus. The second article — what do you think that deals with?
Trump: That’s the one that says everyone has to have a gun.
Obama: Okay, I think I see what our mix-up is here. That is the Second Amendment (mumbles); also that’s not exactly what the second amendment says, but — (louder) I’m talking about Article II, which deals with the powers of the executive. That power has limits, Donald. Are you paying attention? It is important to understand what those limits are. I know I’ve issued my share of executive orders — take that out of your mouth, Donald.
Donald Trump spits out a curtain tassel.

All communities at risk: #ReportHate

More on reporting in general, for all communities at risk, via the fabulous Berkeley South Asian Radical History folks.
 

REPORT. REPORT. REPORT. Every post-election hate incident (from a racist statement up to a physical attack) needs to be reported — whenever it’s safe/appropriate to do. Bystanders/observers can report too.

(1) When you report a hate incident to a national anti-hate group, they can use that data to understand the national pattern. Did hate incidents jump 20% or 2000%? We have no clue unless we report.

(2) When you report a hate incident to a national anti-hate group, you can sometimes also get help from an attorney, counselor, etc. if needed.

WHERE TO REPORT?

• Report ALL incidents to https://www.splcenter.org/reporthate
• Report anti-Muslim incidents to https://www.cair.com/civil-rights/report-an-incident.html
• Report anti-South Asian incidents to http://saalt.org/policy-change/post-9-11-backlash/
• Report anti-Sikh incidents to http://www.sikhcoalition.org/…/leg…/request-legal-assistance
• (multiple overlapping categories? just copy/paste the report into each form)

If possible/safe, please also report incidents to the local media, school/city officials, police. Unless we speak out, people don’t believe the attacks are real.

P.S. Hate incidents are not a joke. Check up on your friends and family. Keep your phone charged, have cash on hand, remove your headphones, and be aware of your surroundings.

Safety pins and beyond

To allies wearing safety pins, know what it means, and be prepared to act upon the symbol you wear. Have a plan. Thank you for the support.

Know What The Pin Means.

It is a sign that you are a safe person. A marginalized person who is being harassed will look to you to help keep them safe. By wearing the safety pin you make a public pledge to be a walking, talking safe space for the marginalized. All of the marginalized. You don’t get to pick and choose. You can’t protect GSM people but ignore the Muslim woman who needs help. You can’t stand for Black people who are dealing with racial slurs but ignore the disabled person who is dealing with a physical attack.

But really, away from the public spaces, in your homes and workplaces, be prepared to have the brave, difficult, painful conversations around power and privilege (including your own) that you may have been uncomfortable, wary, afraid of having so far. Those may well go much further than safety pins.
 

Reporting hate: South Asians and Arabs

We’ve been hearing of increased incidents of targeted violence across the US, post elections. For South Asian and Arab communities and friends who are vulnerable, here are some tips from South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT). I’ll keep posting updates on some of the response mechanisms we’re all working on to put in place. Stay safe, and please pass these on to others in our communities.
 
1) SAFETY: Check up on your friends, family, and community spaces. Keep your phone charged, have cash on hand, take off your headphones, and be aware of your surroundings. During an incident, do your best to get to a SAFE PLACE, try to RECORD with a phone if you’re able, contact folks who can help ASSURE YOUR SAFETY (for some this may include the police), and then REPORT the incident.
 
(2) HATE INCIDENTS: If you or someone you know is subjected to a hate incident, it’s important to address and report it. This can include things like name-calling, vandalism, school/workplace harassment, housing discrimination, or physical attacks.
 
(3) HOW TO REPORT: If you encounter a hate incident (anything from name-calling up to physical assaults) targeting South Asian, Sikh, Muslim, and Arab communities, report it via South Asian Americans Leading Together’s online form.

Fascist Club meets Capitalist Club

How apt that this popped up in my ‘memories’ feed today, and I could share it (ironically) to my Facebook community.

Mirza Waheed writes:

During his trip to Silicon Valley in September [2015], Modi was seen hugging a fawning Mark Zuckerberg. Yet, at the same time he was promoting Digital India to Silicon Valley tech-plutocrats, his government turned off the internet in disputed Kashmir for nearly four days.

Modi, Zuckerberg, Trump, and the unholy nexus of greed and power for profit. Beneath it all, the racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, the xenophobia… is a wildly monetised consumerism of fear. Produced by Modi, Trump and their ilk but also by Zuckerberg and his ilk. Fascist Club partners with Capitalist Club. Will Silicon Valley do any soul searching at all?

A blue(s) nation has to learn from a blues people

Folks have been surprised that I have seemed shocked but stoic through this past week. And a friend just asked about practices and resources of self-care – and I think that’s deeply important as everyone gears up for the long haul (I will post my list, and would love to hear friends share theirs). But it might be helpful to remember that some of us _have been in the long haul all our lives – in the US and around the world – and the histories and stories and music of our peoples have always given us courage, and singing, and sometimes joy, in the dark times.
 
This interview between Toni Morrison and Cornel West in 2004 exemplifies that, and feels poignant and insightful right now.
 

Toni: I feel two things at the same time: terrified and melancholy, and I think in both domestic and foreign affairs it’s frightening–the altercations, the agenda. There have been other frightening moments, but the melancholy that I feel now is about a country like this with the best shot in the world, that a country like this with a certain kind of plenitude and intelligence and ambition and generosity and some history from which to learn, could, indeed, throw it all away and become the worst parts of its own self.

Cornel, I see you sitting here nodding and frowning, but what is curious to me is that whenever I read you, as well as talk to you, and as clearsighted as you are and as aware as you are of these difficulties, you always seem to be something I used to be but no longer am, optimistic. And since I’m rapidly losing that quality, maybe just because of age, I wanted to ask you why.

Cornel: I’ve always viewed myself as a person with a deeply sad soul but a cheerful disposition. So that when you say you feel terrified and melancholic, that describes my situation too, but it’s just that I always believe that struggle and the unleashing of moral energy in the form of moral outrage can make a difference no matter what the situation is. And it may have something to do with just having a blues sensibility, a tragic orientation, a sense that no matter how mendacious elites may be, they can never extinguish the forces for good in the world. And if that’s true, then they’re mighty but not almighty.
 
And in some ways that’s a characterization of just being black in America, it seems to me. Since 9/11 all Americans feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hatred, and that’s been the situation of black folks for 400 years. In that fundamental sense, to be a nigger is to be unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hatred. And now the whole nation is niggerized, and everybody’s got to deal with it. And I think we’re at a moment now in which a blues nation has to learn from a blues people.

The numbers don’t vote :-(

The numbers update (with help from a brilliant political scientist friend parsing them through her fury and grief) for 9/11/2016:
 
231,556,622 eligible voters
46.9% didn’t vote
25.6% voted Clinton
25.5% voted Trump
 
So when you don’t vote, it counts. When you do vote, it… counts. :-/
 
The biggest shock demographic that swung it, may well have been the *53%* of white women who voted for the most outrageous woman-hater President-elect ever (a good reminder that being a woman doesn’t mean you’re a feminist). But there’s also the people within 47% who didn’t vote… if it’s you, you have soul-searching to do. (And ‘didn’t’ is very different from ‘couldn’t’ – a proportion of the 47% _couldn’t vote because of the repeal of the Voting Rights Act. We know who they are and how they’d have voted if they could have.)
 
On the positive end, don’t forget the map of the 18-25 year olds (the 51% of millennials who turned out). If the US (and the planet) survives the next few years, it might well be a very different election in 2018 and 2020.

The morning after the night before…

This is the morning after of the world’s largest election of ineligible voters – those disenfranchised within the US, and those disenfranchised as the impotent, unable-to-vote ‘rest of the world’ impacted by the good, the bad, and the oh-so-f***ing-ugly of US politics. And it’s a morning in which – strangely, weirdly – I’ve moved from surreal despair to fierce fierce determination.

We did some simple things this morning. We went for a walk around the Bay and listened to the ocean remind us that it has been here before and will be here after. We spontaneously executed a drive-by-hugs programme, visiting friends in the neighbourhood who needed the comfort we did. And we decided to host solidarity potlucks that will help remind us that the true spirit of organising starts with love and friendship and the openness to have difficult conversations (aided now by legalised recreational marijuana). Let us know, Bay Area folks, if you want to participate in any of the above…

20161109_075847

And in doing all these things, I’ve come home to the realisation that now, more than ever, we need to know each other as deeply as possible, in the fullness of all our complex identities and backgrounds and experiences. The world cannot afford these horrible, awful, echo chambers in which stereotypes and caricatures are built and fuelled for hatred and division. I honour all my social justice warrior friends, who do this every day and will, today, too. And, Siko Bouterse and my Whose Knowledge? compañera/os, we have work to do.  and energy to us all.

Remember the black suffragists

#Remember. What it took to #getoutthevote for _everyone.

When and Where I Enter: a difficult but needed reminder that Susan B. Anthony did not believe in the black vote. And from black suffragist Anna Julia Cooper,

The white woman could at least plead for her own emancipation; the black woman, doubly enslaved, could but suffer and struggle and be silent.

And from the article, the African-American Suffragists History Forgot, a prescient quote from Frances Ellen Watkins Harper,

I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need today is not simply more voters, but better voters.