Yup, it's true. I'm employed! I'm going to be (starting on Monday, 7/30) an administrator for an organization called The Center for Anti-Violence Education (actually called "CAE," since activists and organizers only speak in acronyms...do we just have so much to do we don't have time to pronounce whole words?) If you're curious, the website is www.cae-bklyn.org
Now I'm off to Providence (the city, not the state of mind/being) for a few days to visit a friend...and now I really gotta speed up the apt search because otherwise I have an hour and a half commute every morning...and waking up that early a lot of days in a row is really not appealing.
July 24, 2007
July 16, 2007
mostly ranting
Rants:
1. There is no such place as "israelpalestine." I don't know if any of you have ever encountered this, but people keep wanting to talk to me about israelpalestine. and there just is no such place. there is a place called Palestine. there is an imperialist apartheid state currently known as Israel, referred to often as "48." The place I went to over the winter is called Palestine. I did not go to israelpalestine and i did not go to Israel either.
2. As my mother put well, I think, "you can't really be colorblind after the age of like, 8." I love my mom, she's awesome. What I do not love is 4 hour long conversations with friends which start out as discussions about hip hop and turn into discussions about language and dialect, where the person saying racist things in these discussions says "But I'm not racist, this isn't about race, I don't even see race, I'm colorblind." And telling a story about how you were once the only white person in a group of four and you told all the people of color not to tell racist jokes about each other so they could all get along better really does not make you a good person. Sorry.
Ok enough rants for now. More to follow soon, I'm (unfortunately) sure.
Now I feel a little better because I'm in Brooklyn with Sarah! We're subletting a place for a few days. The place is in Bushwick, which I've decided is a neighborhood I really like. There are a lot of families and I guess I like that. It makes the city feel cozier.
Oh and two things I love about BK:
1. drinking on fire escapes
2. apartments with rooftop access
going to check out a place in bushwick today...still waiting to hear back from a job interview...i'll post the details of the job if i get it.
how do i end blogs? i am never sure.
1. There is no such place as "israelpalestine." I don't know if any of you have ever encountered this, but people keep wanting to talk to me about israelpalestine. and there just is no such place. there is a place called Palestine. there is an imperialist apartheid state currently known as Israel, referred to often as "48." The place I went to over the winter is called Palestine. I did not go to israelpalestine and i did not go to Israel either.
2. As my mother put well, I think, "you can't really be colorblind after the age of like, 8." I love my mom, she's awesome. What I do not love is 4 hour long conversations with friends which start out as discussions about hip hop and turn into discussions about language and dialect, where the person saying racist things in these discussions says "But I'm not racist, this isn't about race, I don't even see race, I'm colorblind." And telling a story about how you were once the only white person in a group of four and you told all the people of color not to tell racist jokes about each other so they could all get along better really does not make you a good person. Sorry.
Ok enough rants for now. More to follow soon, I'm (unfortunately) sure.
Now I feel a little better because I'm in Brooklyn with Sarah! We're subletting a place for a few days. The place is in Bushwick, which I've decided is a neighborhood I really like. There are a lot of families and I guess I like that. It makes the city feel cozier.
Oh and two things I love about BK:
1. drinking on fire escapes
2. apartments with rooftop access
going to check out a place in bushwick today...still waiting to hear back from a job interview...i'll post the details of the job if i get it.
how do i end blogs? i am never sure.
July 6, 2007
confessions from a past life
moments like this are what give meaning to the term "moment of weakness."
i just added a friend of mine from Palestine to my facebook (yes, i have facebook, i just don't use it). i realized i still have an old friend from high school on my facebook friends...one who happens to be in the u.s. military. he and i haven't really spoken since the start of the war in Iraq. i stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, contemplating deleting him. realizing the contradictions of having her and him both called "friend." i didn't do it. why? is it just curiousity? like looking at his facebook page is some kind of window into the life of "the enemy." or is it my own past that i want to look into? a past that includes a friend who voluntarily joined the military. and a present that includes a friend who, however supportive of me she pretends to be, leaves messages on his myspace telling him he's "so hot." i wonder if she posted that when she saw the picture he posted of him in uniform with a gun. who the fuck thinks it's hot for someone to kill people in the name of imperialism? and what the fuck is wrong with me that makes me not just delete this guy from my life and my memory? and what will happen when he comes back here? and ends up hanging out with the friends of mine who do still talk to him? will i see him? and if so, how will i stop myself from yelling at him that i too have seen war, only i have seen it from the other side, and how dare he inflict occupation on people, doesn't he know what occupation means, does, is? when i talk like this to even my closest friends here, they talk to me about "acceptance" and "friendship." so suddenly i'm the bad guy, for wanting to cut him out of my life (even though something stops me from cutting him out of my facebook). suddenly i'm judgemental, and he, despite the fact that he's killing people in a racist and imperialist war, gets to be the tolerant one, because he's willing to "tolerate" me and my radical politics. it makes me want to scream. instead, i'm just posting a blog.
i just added a friend of mine from Palestine to my facebook (yes, i have facebook, i just don't use it). i realized i still have an old friend from high school on my facebook friends...one who happens to be in the u.s. military. he and i haven't really spoken since the start of the war in Iraq. i stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, contemplating deleting him. realizing the contradictions of having her and him both called "friend." i didn't do it. why? is it just curiousity? like looking at his facebook page is some kind of window into the life of "the enemy." or is it my own past that i want to look into? a past that includes a friend who voluntarily joined the military. and a present that includes a friend who, however supportive of me she pretends to be, leaves messages on his myspace telling him he's "so hot." i wonder if she posted that when she saw the picture he posted of him in uniform with a gun. who the fuck thinks it's hot for someone to kill people in the name of imperialism? and what the fuck is wrong with me that makes me not just delete this guy from my life and my memory? and what will happen when he comes back here? and ends up hanging out with the friends of mine who do still talk to him? will i see him? and if so, how will i stop myself from yelling at him that i too have seen war, only i have seen it from the other side, and how dare he inflict occupation on people, doesn't he know what occupation means, does, is? when i talk like this to even my closest friends here, they talk to me about "acceptance" and "friendship." so suddenly i'm the bad guy, for wanting to cut him out of my life (even though something stops me from cutting him out of my facebook). suddenly i'm judgemental, and he, despite the fact that he's killing people in a racist and imperialist war, gets to be the tolerant one, because he's willing to "tolerate" me and my radical politics. it makes me want to scream. instead, i'm just posting a blog.
July 4, 2007
red is for blood
red for blood.
white for the people who settled here and drew the blood from the indigenous Peoples of the continent(s).
and what is blue for? sadness? sadness as deep as the ocean and wide as the sky?
fucking fireworks.
who the hell decided that emulating war is celebratory?
i hate the fourth of july. a fucking celebration of colonialism and war. at least it's appropriate, right, to celebrate US "independence" with explosions. it sounds like bombs and gunshots outside, and i know that it isn't, but my stomach still turns over when i hear it. the poet in me is playing with the words. "fire works." fire works for what? works for colonization, imperialism, genocide? sad, because fire itself is a beautiful thing. fire works, however, are not.
i'm not good at blogging about anything other than the present moment, but i'll try to talk a little about my past couple weeks.
so there was camping in massachusetts- "summercamp." it was fun. it feels a long time ago now, so while i had lots of rants about it when i was there, it feels hard to access that now, which might not be a bad thing. basically: "radical" politics, patriarchy, & white privilege. i shouldn't generalize though. that was really only some people who were there. but of course those are always the ones who seem to take up the most space.
then the ussf. movement building rocks. for me, the highlight of the forum was when some folks who are organizing around the border wall b/w the u.s. and Mexico stopped by the Palestine Tent to talk about divestment from both border walls (that, and the one in Palestine). for those of you reading this who dont already know, the same (israeli) company is a part of the building of both the walls.
i'm listening to climbing poetree right now. they were at the ussf. listening to them always brings a calmness to me. not a false calm that assumes there is actually calm and peace in the world, but a calm that encompasses anger and pain, and then surpasses it with inspiration and hope. ahhh.
white for the people who settled here and drew the blood from the indigenous Peoples of the continent(s).
and what is blue for? sadness? sadness as deep as the ocean and wide as the sky?
fucking fireworks.
who the hell decided that emulating war is celebratory?
i hate the fourth of july. a fucking celebration of colonialism and war. at least it's appropriate, right, to celebrate US "independence" with explosions. it sounds like bombs and gunshots outside, and i know that it isn't, but my stomach still turns over when i hear it. the poet in me is playing with the words. "fire works." fire works for what? works for colonization, imperialism, genocide? sad, because fire itself is a beautiful thing. fire works, however, are not.
i'm not good at blogging about anything other than the present moment, but i'll try to talk a little about my past couple weeks.
so there was camping in massachusetts- "summercamp." it was fun. it feels a long time ago now, so while i had lots of rants about it when i was there, it feels hard to access that now, which might not be a bad thing. basically: "radical" politics, patriarchy, & white privilege. i shouldn't generalize though. that was really only some people who were there. but of course those are always the ones who seem to take up the most space.
then the ussf. movement building rocks. for me, the highlight of the forum was when some folks who are organizing around the border wall b/w the u.s. and Mexico stopped by the Palestine Tent to talk about divestment from both border walls (that, and the one in Palestine). for those of you reading this who dont already know, the same (israeli) company is a part of the building of both the walls.
i'm listening to climbing poetree right now. they were at the ussf. listening to them always brings a calmness to me. not a false calm that assumes there is actually calm and peace in the world, but a calm that encompasses anger and pain, and then surpasses it with inspiration and hope. ahhh.
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