the radical kids club

We've Moved!

2011-08-25T20:25:00.002+04:30

You can find us at RadicalKidsClub.tumblr.com

Counting My Blessings

2010-09-26T00:11:00.002+03:30

I've got love and assurance. I've got new health insurance. I've got strength and endurance. So I count my blessings.

whole

2010-09-09T06:57:00.003+04:30

Such bBeauty and wisdom, you fight against the system, all i want is you

2010-09-09T06:30:00.002+04:30

2010-06-24T01:35:00.001+04:30

Radical Simply Means Grasping Things At The Root

Angela Davis

You Are Responsible

2010-06-08T06:39:00.001+04:30

Emergency Demonstrations to Protest Israeli Massacre of Gaza Aid Convoy

2010-05-31T21:23:00.002+04:30

at least 10 but probably more like 20 people have been killed today because Israel attacked the Freedom Flotilla aid convoy headed for Gaza.

emergency protests are happening all across the country, here is a list:

Washington, D.C. at 3:00pm
Israeli Embassy
3514 International Dr. NW
(near Van Ness and Reno Rd.)

New York City at 3:00pm
Times Square
44th Street & 7th Avenue

Los Angeles at 4:30pm
Israeli Consulate
6380 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles
(Between Crescent Heights and San Vicente)

Boston, Mass. at 4pm
Park St. T Station

San Francisco at 1pm
Powell and Market

Miami at 5pm
Israeli Consulate
100 N. Biscayne Blvd.

New Haven, CT at 3pm
Federal Courthouse
141 Church St.

insanity and ground

2010-05-03T05:10:00.004+04:30

am i being naive by assuming that this arizona immigration bill (SB 1070) will actually be stopped before it is enacted on the ground in (less than) 90 days? Arizona is getting such a bad name that ariZona iced tea had to remind everyone that they are from New York, and have no formal affiliation with the state of Arizona. (a good sign for sure, but notice that the CEO didn't say anything in his little note about how insane the measure was. oh, the things people do for business.)

or maybe i'm not assuming it won't be enacted, i'm just phrasing it that way to myself because i can't deal with the possibility that it could be. after all, this kind country has countless laws on the books that operate on AND perpetuate racist principles...some, obviously, more explicitly than others.

i had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about absurdity and insanity. sometimes it all (it all being society, politics, life, reality, the world, the country, the history textbooks, the news, the cities, the people, the death---you know, it ALL) is so incongruous with anything human or good, so incongruous with itself ( and yet simoultaneously wildly consistent is the rationale of capitalism and oppression, hence our difficulties in countering it), so ABSURD that i for a split-second (or many) take solace in the idea that if it keeps getting worse, status quo will be 100% unsustainable (as if it werent already) and spontaneously combust. anyway, point is, i consider myself really privileged to be surrounded by people and ideas that remind me that i'm not crazy. that's all for now. in the meantime, i hope everyone finds what they need to continue trying to make this world better than we found it.

a late april list

2010-04-21T00:47:00.002+04:30

things i'm looking forward to: Rikers HS student art show, 4 great guys gettin out this week, leavin nyc for a minute, bein in the south for a minute, learning to drive stick, oh yea, seein ruby, waffle house, dc stop seein folks i love, sunday brunch in dc, meeting a close friend's new boo, arriving Home to nyc, oh yeah, ruby living in brooklyn, my car not overheating ( baby has a new radiator), brie bought yesterday, gettin out of bed early more often ( one of those things you don't regret), my plants growin, figuring out whether i wanna go to law school, a spring weekend in vermont, US Social Forum, concerts in the park, the park, keeping my nails nice, doing my job better, mr. softie all the time, fake tanning lotion, seein my sisters, rooftop all the time ( even more often than ice cream), reading and writing, intellectualism and activism, a world without prisons.

Hope you are having a beautiful weekend

2010-04-19T01:22:00.002+04:30

Here We Go (AGAIN)

2010-04-15T20:08:00.002+04:30

I'm so fed up with this.
If you are in ATL please come support us on Saturday.

I just sent this out to EVERY local news station in ATL:

This Saturday from 11am - 2pm in the heart of East Atlanta Village at Flat Shoals and Glenwood Ave residents of the neighborhood will take to the street to demand that Clear Wireless NOT erect a cell phone tower at 469 Metropolitan Place. The residents just WON a fight against T-mobile about the same location and T-Mobile agreed to construct the tower elsewhere. Clear could do the same, in fact, could rent space on the T-mobile tower but instead want to construct a tower on a residential street and next to a house of a woman who has been an East Atlanta resident since 1984. The neighborhood does not want the tower and yet Clear continues to threaten to construct it with out community support. We, as residents of East Atlanta, will fight this battle. My mother should not have to have a cell tower constructed steps from her home. She has dealt with enough in the neighborhood. Her home has been broken into 27 times and she has seen all kinds of drug violence in the neighborhood. Those days are now few and far between, she is over 60 and a cancer survivor and does not need to deal with a corporation erecting a huge structure next to her home with their revenue as their only motivation.

Thank you.
Please let me know if you need any more information.

resonance

2010-04-15T08:17:00.004+04:30

I have listened to Take Off Your Cool, Outkast w Norah Jones, between 10 and 15 times today. The itunes play count says 17, and i basically just discovered the song a couple hours ago before i then left the house for a few hours, so consciously i have only ever played it tonight, between 7 and 8 pm and then from about 11pm onwards...but i figure some of those counts must be from previous times i was playing another outkast song and just let the itunes roll through the alphabet like-so.

i spose i'll know tomorrow if the song truly is that good--if i listen to it and feel the way i do right now--or if its just resonating with something about today for me. nothing explicit or literal in the lyrics (i know this because 1. i'm not listening to the words since the first time i played the song and 2. it's been making me miss John deeply and specifically, someone whose Cool was taken off for me so long ago), but some other quality of the song is hitting me right now as it plays on repeat. hitting is too abrupt, there is no other way to explain it but that it just...resonates.

like astrologists describe alignment? the gravity that such and such planet etc X Y Z planet force aligned alignment aligns gravitational forces planets at the second we were born making us who we are? i know that isn't a fair representation of zodiac but it's what i think of because some intangible invisible thing is ALIGNing right now between my soul and this song, and it's as inexplicable to me, as without a logic i can follow, as the way it sounds when someone does try to explain zodiac.

its on its ninth rotation since i started typing.

and the earth rotates around and around and around, and everything is in a rotation and in a rotation is everything right?

Black Male Privilege

2010-04-13T23:10:00.002+04:30

Curious as to what people think about this idea. The intersections of race and gender are always complicated as are the politics of respectability and the history of sexual violence. Does this make sense to folks? Is there such a thing as Black Male Privilege? If so, is Dr. Lewis defining it correctly?

restful weekend at my own pace

2010-04-11T20:28:00.004+04:30

Moutains

2010-04-08T17:33:00.002+04:30

I have been "off the grid" for the last few days in the Blue Ridge Mountains! This territory is very special to me and always has been. The mountains are dynamic and powerful. I have been out of cell phone range, trying to cut back on internet time, spending time with my mama and walking through the woods. I recommend it.

As much of a city person as I am there is always a part of me that is brought to life out here that never is in the city.

I'll upload pictures when I'm back on the gri(n)d.

oh my

2010-04-08T06:53:00.001+04:30

If Hip-Hop Organized, the Whole World Would be in Trouble

2010-04-04T22:03:00.005+04:30

really feeling Rebel Diaz right now. well i guess i always am...
but in particular, these two new songs from their SXSW mixtape, "Libertad" and "We're Gonna Make It."

The group has opened up a community space in the Bronx called the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective, which i've been meaning to get to for weeks.

They describe themselves on their blog:
The Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDAC) is a South Bronx-based performance and multimedia space that aims to utilize culture as a means for education and self-empowerment in our community. We aim to provide an alternative to the profit-driven mass media that imposes values destructive to our community. By promoting a sense of community ownership, agency, and responsibility through the arts, we can begin to more effectively address the larger issues of gender, racial, and economic inequality in the South Bronx and beyond.

the Arts Collective and Rebel Diaz are on twitter, @rdacbx and @rebeldiaz.

growth

2010-04-01T17:30:00.001+04:30

i planted some seeds, and they have germinated.

this may not seem like a big deal, because if you've ever been in my apartment or in any of the college dorm rooms I've lived in, you know that i love houseplants. keeping something alive when you get it that way--at least whatever hearty pre-potted, lightning-quick-regenerative vines i've acquired over the years--isn't that difficult anymore.

on the other hand, growing my own vegetables, if it works out, will be a really big deal for me. i'm excited as shit about the fact that little green sprouts are peaking through the ready-made soil pellets i planted the seeds in and then stuck under Danielle's bed last weekend, a few feet from the radiator. i feel like a kid who just got a 98 on a spelling test the next level up, like when i first rode the bike without training wheels ( i remember the tennis court), like i felt a couple weeks ago when i did a whole hour on the elliptical for the first time since i can remember, or like i felt a few hours ago when the doctor, a doctor, wanted to shake my hand after i told him what kind of work i do. (seeing the growth of the seeds actually gave me a lot MORE satisfaction than the doctor's appreciation, because i find my job so enjoyable and rewarding that it deserves no congratulations beyond that). little personal moments of pride and joy that are mine. little things that don't have to matter to anyone but me, and are delightful as-is. and i sound sappy right now... but this content that i've been feeling lately is just that startling.

on saturday i'm going to plant the rest of the seeds, a staggered second set, the ones that say on the back of the little oaktag packets that they should be planted indoors closer to the timing of the last frost. i don't know from a farmer or grower's perspective if the seed germination is one of the hard parts. for all i know, seeds always grow into green leafy life things like this and then the hard part is knowing how and when to transfer them outside, and then into bigger pots, and water and light ratios and whatnot. maybe i'll never have any tomatoes to even taste for edibility. actually i surely wont unless i pick up some more seeds or seedlings, because the mom-and-pop hardware/garden supply store i got my seeds at didn't have any. whatever, maybe nothing will ever grow past sprout-size.

germination sure seems big.

the last time i remember writing for myself at length--without prompt, assignment, or argument (what my grandfather would call Staring at One's Bellybutton)--i was in relationship drama. it was almost all internal, as i was about to break up with my college boyfriend (to date one of the best people i have ever known) and i was, for a long time on my own, slowly but surely coming to terms with the necessary end of a long, healthy, and loving relationship. i'm fairly certain that sometimes we somewhat subconsciously prevent ourselves from reaching those weighty realizations that will mean imminent and major change once we acknowledge them. anyway, i wrote about it a lot, probably because i was so worked up by the emotional battle of simultaneously trying to and trying not to know what i was feeling. i wrote my way around it, over it, and through it.

the time before that, another period i can remember when i would sit with coffee and laptop and write about whatever, like my Microsoft Word was a diary, i had just been broken up with by my high school boyfriend who, though i knew was my first and one of many to come, i had actually thought would probably love me forever. And before that, i wrote about my mom. i think that time it was assigned, i was writing about her for a class and later turned it into a college essay, if i'm remembering correctly. each time it was kinda the same deep-rooted emotional turmoil at hand as the subject of my verbosity, each time i worked through it in writing (shared or unshared) and each time i went through a period of (either minimally or maximally) angst in writing, i was a little more grown. a little more self-aware, a little less self-deprecating, a little more comfortable with myself, a little less self-conscious.

i am not experiencing internal drama right now. unless it's one that has drugged me into thinking i'm happy when i'm really miserable, i'm not in the eye of any storm, or even at the edge of any storm. don't get me wrong, i have issues and problems and dilemmas and worries and fears and aches. but i'm not in the middle of any all-consuming crisis, and it's a refreshing place to write from. for me, anyway. not gonna make any bets on the experience reading.

things making me feel alive (yes figuratively) today ( sap sap sap)

-the book i'm reading. Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A., Mumia Abu-Jamal.

-sun! but also the rain

-white blossoms

-fuckin bright pink nail polish (not over it)

-an email from my father

-that crush feeling i have about NYC as a place

-thinking about law.

-twitter

Dallas PD Thinking of Arresting Erykah Badu for Being Naked.

2010-03-31T19:10:00.003+04:30

There's not really more to say.

Oh yeah!
I almost forgot!

She is naked in a beautiful and mind blowing music video about "groupthink," revolution, how people blindly follow what others tell them to do with out using independent thoughts, and about listening to your soul.

http://hiphopwired.com/2010/03/30/police-consider-filing-charges-against-erykah-badu-for-“window-seat”-video/

2010-03-31T06:26:00.001+04:30

BLOG THAT SHIT

2010-03-30T17:45:00.003+04:30

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIANA STELA!
You are beautiful and wonderful!
Celebrate Today! (and all week)

2010-03-27T20:26:00.004+04:30

Out my window, holy crap its like watching it happen in front of my eyes, more open every time I look

Just what we need

2010-03-24T23:21:00.001+04:30

New Bill in GA Senate will designate "smash and grab" burglaries as felonies. Putting more people in prison for longer doesn't alleviate poverty.

http://blogs.ajc.com/gold-dome-live/2010/03/24/smash-grab-to-become-designated-felony-under-new-senate-bill/

Tea Party Racism and Homophobia

2010-03-24T08:03:00.003+04:30

From Color of Change

Dear friends,

It's time to hold the Republican Party accountable.

You've probably heard about Tea Party members shouting "Nigger!" at Black Congressmen during a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend. One of the protesters spat on Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, while another called openly gay Representative Barney Frank a "faggot" as the laughing crowd imitated his lisp.[1]

But Saturday was just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it's been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it's usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it's completely unacceptable and has to stop.

It's time to confront Republican leadership and force them to take responsibility for the atmosphere they've helped create. Please join me in signing ColorOfChange's petition confronting Republican leaders about hate and fear-mongering in their party, and ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1904-519360

We're calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:

- Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.

- Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.

Republican leaders publicly denounced Saturday's ugly scene, but they failed to acknowledge that this is only the latest incident in a pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories at Tea Party rallies.[2] Many Tea Partiers aren't simply about dissent -- they use fear and hatred to assault the very legitimacy of our elected leaders. It's the worst America has to offer. Despite this, Republican leaders court the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.[3] This is nothing less than a betrayal of American values, and it's up to us to force the Republicans to stop aiding and abetting this enterprise:

http://www.colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1904-519360

The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off this weekend's assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called "isolated incidents" crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous.

At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced "Obama's Plan: White Slavery," "The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Oven," and "Guns Tomorrow!"[4] The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a "virtual tea bag" to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership.[5] After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn't have his current position, he'd be "out there with the tea partiers."[6]

The Tea Party's venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to "nigga David Scott."[7] Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking.[8] Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.

Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate. Please join me in calling on Republican leaders to denounce racist rhetoric and fear-mongering, and reject it from their party. And when you do, please ask your family and friends to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1904-519360

Thanks.

References

1. http://huff.to/atRmru
2. http://huff.to/9Sgf3S
3. http://huff.to/c4ZOH4
4. See Reference 2
5. http://huff.to/3nzZE
6. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31177.html
7. http://bit.ly/8YInIb
8. http://bit.ly/LV1wb

Bear Hands

2010-03-24T07:41:00.005+04:30

Bear Hands is a really, really great band. They are on tour with Passion Pit. If you can see them on this tour, do.
I'm used to living on the other side (but I really like this band)

Bear Hands // "What A Drag" from Cantora Records on Vimeo.

Happy Tuesday

2010-03-24T01:39:00.000+04:30

New INCITE! Community Blog!!

2010-03-24T00:29:00.001+04:30

INCITE! Launches Community Blog

INCITE! is launching a community blog, which can be found here: http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/

The blog features items that promote a progressive or radical agenda for women of color, queer/trans people of color, and gender non-conforming people of color.

We invite you to submit announcements to post on the INCITE! blog! Announcements might include events, statements, videos, images, news articles, press releases, art, job announcements, or calls for submissions for zines, conferences, etc. Please e-mail your announcement to incite.news@gmail.com.

Goals for the INCITE! blog can be found here: http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/about/.

Every 2-3 weeks, blog editors will list blog items and e-mail links to blog posts, which brings back the INCITE! e-newsletter.

You can subscribe to INCITE!'s e-newsletter here: https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/incite

Also, please friend INCITE! on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/incitenews as another way to keep up with INCITE! news!

The Electric Slide Boogie

2010-03-23T03:05:00.002+04:30

New Year's Day 1:16 AM
and my body is weary beyond
time to withdraw and rest
ample room allowed me in everyone's head
but community calls
right over the threshold
drums beating through the walls
children playing their truck dramas
under the collapsible coat rack
in the narrow hallway outside my room
The TV lounge next door is wid...e open
it is midnight in Idaho
and the throb easy subtle spin
of the electric slide boogiestep-stepping
around the corner of the parlor
past the sweet clink
of dining room glasses
and the edged aroma of slightly overdone
dutch-apple pie
all laced together
with the rich dark laughter
of Gloria
and her higher-octave sisters

How hard it is to sleep
in the middle of life.

Audre Lorde

Doctor Lawyer Teacher

2010-03-22T21:47:00.004+04:30

Heather Day of What's Popping NYC reminds us what hip hop is actually about. She recorded this for her students.

Doctor, Lawyer Teacher from Heather Day on Vimeo.

CONTINUE(D)

2010-03-21T01:22:00.015+03:30

Reminders of how lucky I am to have this. whatever this is.

2010-03-21T00:30:00.016+03:30

Ghost Writer

2010-03-20T23:25:00.002+03:30

Artist: Sufjan Stevens Title: Chicago

2010-03-20T23:16:00.001+03:30

I fell in love again
all things go, all things go
drove to Chicago
all things know, all things know
we sold our clothes to the state
I don't mind, I don't mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind

you came to take us
all things go, all things go
to recreate us
all things grow, all things grow
we had our mindset
all things know, all things know
you had to find it
all things go, all things go

I drove to New York
in a van, with my friend
we slept in parking lots
I don't mind, I don't mind
I was in love with the place
in my mind, in my mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind

you came to take us
all things go, all things go
to recreate us
all things grow, all things grow
we had our mindset
all things know, all things know
you had to find it
all things go, all things go

if I was crying
in the van, with my friend
it was for freedom
from myself and from the land
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes
I made a lot of mistakes

you came to take us
all things go, all things go
to recreate us
all things grow, all things grow
we had our mindset
all things know, all things know
you had to find it
all things go, all things go

you came to take us
all things go, all things go
to recreate us
all things grow, all things grow
we had our mindset
(I made a lot of mistakes)
all things know, all things know
(I made a lot of mistakes)
you had to find it
(I made a lot of mistakes)
all things go, all things go
(I made a lot of mistakes)

"World's First Legally Genderless Person"

2010-03-18T21:08:00.005+03:30

This is very exciting.

I found the article while I was looking at pictures of an island sized yacht on the Huffington post (yeah, i know, I know)

but this is a big deal! Norrie May-Welby is legally recognized as existing but May-Welby's existence is not predicated by gender (legally, I mean). "World's First" is without-a-doubt inaccurate as we know of cultures world wide that put a lot less emphasis on gender than "we" in Western Judeo-Christian dominance do now, but this is thrilling in our paradigm.

Not a fan of the language in the huffington post article (HUGE surprise) but here it is.

Well, this is embarrassing, or "what I do when I'm not blogging"

2010-03-13T20:01:00.002+03:30

Yelawolf x B.o.B x Whynatte from Motion Family on Vimeo.

2010-03-09T06:49:00.008+03:30

unintended humor. THIS is a recipe for candied bacon...

read carefully (particularly the ad...)click on the imag to see it closer up, if you can't read it. CHOICE placement.

2010-03-07T21:27:00.003+03:30

renewal. feels like fifty-three. 53 feels like renewal! fresh coffee. unsteady calm, or an intensely calm unsteadiness. thinking about growth, movement, stillness. going to the park now.

i actually wouldn't mind seeing some flowers alone.

For VIVA

2010-03-05T07:17:00.003+03:30

The other day I woke up and decided I would remind myself throughout the day that I was beautiful. It is so much easier to do this when you know you have someone in your life that ALWAYS thinks you are beautiful and reminds you constantly. For as long as we have been friends Aviva has always been that for me.

Haikus for VIVA

When you say "miss you"
It has me feeling so loved
Which is all we want

Being far away
SUCKS SO MUCH BECAUSE TODAY
saw flowers alone

Need to find a job
Gchat is getting me down
video chat, better.

You are beautiful
You make seeing beauty fun
Look in a mirror

Wired Magazine (via racialicious) tells all: HOW TO RAISE RACIST KIDS

2010-02-24T20:21:00.006+03:30

Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that < insert your ethnicity here > is better than everybody else.

Read more on Racialicious.
Or here in its original home at Wired Magazine.

It's 11:27am

2010-02-20T19:57:00.002+03:30

We just finished breakfast and my mama opened a fortune cookie. It says, "Do something unusual tomorrow."

Brees For The Win (Literally)

2010-02-09T02:24:00.002+03:30

Superbowl 2010

2010-02-07T22:13:00.003+03:30

Aviva and I communicate using many social media tools. Twitter. Thefacebook. Blogs. E-mail. Gchat. Our favorite is leaving pictures on each other's facebook walls. Today Viva tried to leave me a picture of her WHO DAT tee shirt and I tried to do that same. Facebook photo sharing was not working for either of us. Screenshot it is. GAUX SAINTS!

Lil Wayne's Afterthought On Haiti and New Orleans

2010-02-05T04:31:00.002+03:30

WORD WEEZY.

This is an important thing for him to have done. He has been so famous for the last few years and in the age of cut and paste this is will spread so quickly.
I wonder what it could have looked like for him to attempt to start a conversation (in virtual internet land or just in that room) about why this "amazing" response that the world is having to Haiti did not ever happen for New Orleans. Maybe he is not the one to facilitate that conversation. Maybe his role is as a sound bite man and our role as listeners is to go home and discuss why this happened. To discuss the complexities of cell phone donations and knowing someone who knows someone who was there but not really feeling it. Or maybe the answer as to why this happened the way that it did is too painful to get into. For anyone. For Weezy. For us. For the United States' self image.

Goodie Mob Reunion ft. B.O.B.

2010-02-04T17:54:00.003+03:30

Can't even say how frustrated I am to miss this... Thankfully it is because I will be at Mardi Gras.. so Ima stop complaining. If you are in Atlanta, Go to this. It will blow your mind.

Chocolate Beet Cake

2010-02-04T05:51:00.007+03:30

[Crossposted from Squashmush]

This morning my dear friend, Erika, and I attempted making Chocolate Beet Cake. The process is fantastic. Boiling Beets, getting the amazingly strong color all over your skin and having to be careful not to wear white.

It’s great. Beets are such a neat, royal veggie. Erika had eaten beet cake before ( I, on the other hand, was a B C virgin) and well, each time she’d had some before it tasted a little less like, well, beets.

I think we over did it on the beets (we used 3 HUGE ones and after blended it probably made a bit more than the two cups that recipe called for.) But other than that the recipe is great and the texture and richness were yummy. If nothing else, its cool to be able to make a cake with beets.

Chocolate Beet Cake
from John Peterson’s Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables

3-4 medium beets READ ABOVE COMMENTS ON THIS MATTER
butter and flour for preparing the pan
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c. mild-flavored vegetable oil
3 eggs
1¾ c. sugar
1 T. vanilla extract
1½ c. all purpose flour
½ c. whole wheat pastry flour
2 t. baking soda
¼ t. salt
powdered sugar for dusting

1) Scrub the beets with a vegetable brush and trim roots. Trim stems and save greens for some other use. (I’m not sure what other use, but I’m working on it.) Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the beets. Boil for 20-30 minutes, or until the beets are tender and the skins slip off easily. Let the beets cool a little, the slip the skins off under cold water and then purée the beets in a blender or food processor. You should have about 2 cups of beet purée.

2) Preheat your oven to 375°F. Butter and flour a Bundt pan and set it aside. (This is where I went wrong — I followed the original instructions to coat the pan with oil (!) and did not abandon ship even when I noted that the oil was pooling in the bottom of the pan rather than coating the whole interior of the pan. Use butter; it sticks.)

3) Fill a medium saucepan about halfway with water and bring the water to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and set a heat-proof bowl over the simmering water. Place the chocolate and ¼ c. of the oil in the bowl and heat, stirring frequently, just until the chocolate melts.

4) Combine the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy. Slowly beat in the remaining oil, the chocolate mixture, beets, and vanilla.

5) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, and salt. Gently stir the flour mixture into the egg and chocolate mixture until just combined.

6) Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes.

Carefully remove the cake from the pan and allow to cool completely before sprinkling with powdered sugar to serve.

Haiti's Psalm

2010-02-02T06:01:00.007+03:30

I received this poem in an e-mail from Rabbi David at Wesleyan University. Shabbat services at Wesleyan were a very important part of my college life. The poem was written by Rabbi Josh Lesser of Congregation Bet Haverim that I attend in Atlanta, GA. Aside from the awe some personal connection, the poem is very powerful. It was published here. (re printed below)

Haiti's Psalm

By Rabbi Joshua Lesser

I lift my eyes up to the mountains
From where does my help come? (Ps. 121)

Shock, aftershock, aftershock
The devastation seems endless
Long after the earth has stopped moving
From where does help come?

From Haiti, we hear the cries around the world
We see the broken bodies, buildings jumbled
A structural collapse of comprehension
From where does help come?

The weight of it all crashes down
Like a palace wall
A calamity of sadness and death sealing us in
From where does help come?

But from the safety of our living room
We can turn off the television, the radio, the computer screen
Close the magazine, recycle the newspaper
From where does help come?

And if we shut our eyes
Succumb to our overwhelm and the fortune of being able to
Ignore the brokenness through our distance then
From where does help come?

The body of Haiti is broken
And its spirit sputters:

A spirit that was born breaking chains with the deepest knowing
That every human being was created with Divine love
Free and equal
Where the refrain of the country reverberates
"Strength through Unity"

May we find the way to share this immense burden
To strengthen through unity
To hear their cry as our cry
To help rebuild the country and revive its spirit
To not ask where does help come
But help us become that help that extends
From the Unseen One, the creator of the heavens and earth.

Together we pray, may
The Vigilant guard you from all evil, and keep your lifebreath safe.
The Shepherd guard your going out and coming in, from now unto eternity.
Let it be God’s Will/Kehn Yehi Ratzon

Playing on the Levee

2010-01-29T22:36:00.005+03:30

When mama came to visit I showed her New Orleans.. We walked in the Marigny, in the Quarter and I showed her the Levee in the Lower Ninth Ward. We made friends. My mama always makes friends.

SMKA: it's MUCH bigger than hip hop hip hop hip hop hip

2010-01-26T01:04:00.005+03:30

.

Ok its time.

Its time for me to give enough time and credit to the ridiculousness that is SMKA. SMKA is a recoring label created by Atlantins that love this city. Home town pride is something I deeply respect. I love it when people love their city. SMKA takes to a level beyond rocking a (404) tee shirt and telling all your Northern friends that they "don't even know" (both obviously things that I have done.) SMKA decided to celebrate hip hop in a way that both actually brings people together and promotes great music.

Friday night was the CD release party for the 808-Experiment Volume Two, SMKA's second mix tape that features fantastic talent. Download it. Go ahead. It's free. It's great. 808-Experiment Volume Two">Just do it now.

I walked into the release party, which was held at the Star Community Bar in Little 5Points, by myself. After noticing that I was counting out $1's and change and obviously feeling stressed about the (not very expensive but i haven't have a job in a while) cover charge, the door guy took pity on me and let me in without paying. I say this not to piss anyone off but it is important to understand the community oriented feel I found myself in the middle of. I met up with highschool friends all of whom were thrilled to see people we went to school with doing so well and really, passionately excelling.

SMKA is made up of 808 Blake a.k.a. Blake German , Mike Walbert and 7King a.k.a. Kyle King. These are folks that love hip hop so much that they want our current definitions of hip hop to get better and broader and want those definitions to be in conversation with pop definitions of hip hop. i.e. when we can get trap artists talking to the nappy roots, we're on to something.

I ran into probably 8 or 10 people I knew on Friday from all walks of life in Atlanta. All twelve of the performers (just a sampling of the works on the mix tape)absolutely killed their performances. The energy started high and never went back down.

The 808-Experiement Volume 2 features music from the likes of A.Leon Craft, a clever and supremely talened MC who you can hear on the first mixtape as welland on 2 highly anticipated albums coming out this year and Tom P, (who I personally have known since I was was four and who I beyond thrilled to see perform live) who was described on Friday as the "hardest working man in atl hip hop." Just to name a few.

The show paused at one point to collect money for a small organization in Haiti. The woman who went on stage to collect spoke briefly about how it is all well and good to offer money to large corparations and relief effots but that often a great deal of work happens on small scale levels. Her family has started doing such work and she was excited to talk about the importance of supporting such organizations. People passed bills forward across the crowd and a couple people had to hop on stage to help her hold and collect it all. I just read that SMKA decided to match the money donated Friday night.

Much to my excitement it wasn't all dudes! Neo-soul singer (my label, not sure how she self-describes) Alexandrea Lushington held it down. She started her piece by saying, "I'm the only non-MC on this mixtape," to which the crowd responded with various versions of "whooo!" and "get it!"

Jokingly, in conversation with a friend I said that I wondered if SMKA was sitting around talking and were like "Oh Shit We Need A Woman!"

"As Men usually are," he said.

"True," I responded. "And as hip hop usually isn't."

"True," he said.

I had a blast Friday.
SMKA, keep doing what you're doing.

EDIT ~~~ can't believe i forgot!
I GOT THIS and MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE:

"I just learned fast because I had the resources to."

2010-01-25T20:52:00.004+03:30

Check out this article in creative loafing about 13 year old sophomore at Morehouse College, Stephen Stafford. He casually mentions that he does not feel particularly different than other kids just simply that he had the resources to learn quickly.

Word 13 year old Morehouse kid, Word.

We all have (are) greatness.

radical football club? football kids club?

2010-01-25T19:25:00.003+03:30

10:53 AM Ruby-Beth: so what if we just give up on this activism stuff (really hard) and only blog about football (only kind of hard)

we could be the new Dave Zirin.
but no... because i would feel left out

(re)(de)fining the SUPERDOME

2010-01-25T07:28:00.005+03:30

CONGRATULATIONS! TO THE

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS

FOR THEIR CONFERENCE TITLE AND SPOT IN THE SUPER BOWL.

WE LOVE YOU

A Whites-Only Pro Basketball League Set to Start June 2010

2010-01-25T04:44:00.004+03:30

There is obviously not a whole lot to say about this except "wow" and then e-mail the race wire article about it to all your white basket ball playing friends with the subject "maybe you can join!"
At least that's what I did.

Working on using this voice (wish it was more poignant, sorry)

2010-01-20T22:22:00.030+03:30

I need to be writing but I just keep crying in private.

Like tiny panic attack crying that no one could ever possibly see because I pull myself together as quickly as, well, as quickly as an earthquake catches you off guard.

But writing has never been easy, writing has never been easy, writing has never been easy. Speaking has been easy but yelling has never been easy (don't tell anyone I don't yell, no one knows I don't yell)

Like when I’m sitting in class and this man is talking about the benevolent colonizer and my professor is encouraging him yes YES YES YES YES YES YES YES keep going! dig deeper! and I make eye contact across the room with the only other person who seems outraged and I'm thinking dig DEEPer?

How much deeper can we go than suffering and slavery?

How much deeper can we goooooo?

oh!

You're not teaching this class for me are you?

oh,

this is starting to make sense.

Thankfully, the person I make eye contact with WRITES A POEM, much better than this one and reads it.. at a slam.

And so,

thankfully,

I don’t have to say anything. I don't ever have to yell.

But I think if ever there was a time it's time to yell. (why is is so hard to yell?)

I AM LIVID. I AM LIVID.

I AM LIVID AT THE WAY THAT POWER DYNAMICS AND RACISM CREATED THIS DISASTER

AND

I AM LIVID AT THE OUTDATED WAYS IN WHICH I HAVE TO BE OUTRAGED ABOUT THIS.

I AM LIVID.

(finally trying to yell out loud) (but i can't seem to figure out how to do it best)

tips?

EVERY DROP COUNTS

2010-01-20T20:45:00.002+03:30

So glad I follow Timothy Prolific Jones on twitter. He always says something to get me thinking, or helps me find a new wonderful person or organization. Another important gem from Prolif's blog:

Every Drop Counts is a grassroots organization assembled in response to the recent devastating earthquake in Haiti.

A group of young artists and activists in Chicago came together with the goal to raise funds in order to send filtration equipment that will provide sustainable, clean bathing and drinking water (Thus, the name Every Drop Counts.)

Their first event will be a Hip-Hop and soul benefit concert, scheduled to take place in Chicago on Sunday, January 31, 2010. The benefit is meant to create awareness of the fundamental need and human right to access clean water. This event will be hosted by artist/activist/beautifulsoul Aja-Monet.

Every Drop Counts is partnering with World Water Relief to facilitate distribution.

Now, if you are like me, and do NOT live in Chicago, and won't be likely to get a last minute flight to the Windy City, you can do the next best thing. Donate. My motivation to support this particular initiative is related to my longtime belief in the power of art as a vehicle for social justice. This is beyond a moment of social justice, it is a test of our humanity. This is not a one time effort, nor is the need to help Haiti recover something static. You can truly impact the relief effort. I applaud Aja and all of the other folks who worked around the clock to create such a necessary initiative. We should all stive to act as quickly and reponsibly.

thoughts on haiti

2010-01-20T06:25:00.001+03:30

1/14/2010
reading or hearing about this tragedy is making me wish i knew how to pray. i haven't prayed in years and i'm not sure i even know what i mean by it but i can't seem to access any other way to process the hugeness and the weight of the sadness and terror that so many are experiencing as a result of this disaster.

natural disaster, because no one made the earth quake.

but there is so much disaster that i will never believe to be natural. state violence is not natural, colonial and imperial exploitation is not natural, and racism is not natural. no matter how many times I am told that humans are inescapably wired to oppress and dehumanize other humans, I will not believe it.

right now we must remember that disaster is nothing new for Haiti. (even in terms of 'natural' disasters, or those understood as such instead of as political, social, or economic. as the media is noting, Haiti was hit by four serious storms in the summer of 2008. from Public Radio International: "Doctor says Haiti's vulnerability to storms are really socially created, and the recent disasters there are "un-natural" disasters." September 2008)

has Haiti not been classified as a disaster since before her birth as a nation?

the slave rebellion that freed Haiti from French occupation/political colonial ownership, the war that Haitians fought-- while enslaved by France--to free themselves and declare their independence as a nation in 1804--that was a disaster for France, and a disaster for centuries of european colonialism (though clearly it managed to survive...but was forced to change forms a few times). a disaster for slavery everywhere, across the carribbean islands and throughout the West. a disaster for all the many peoples and nation-states whose economic and social interests were vested in slavery, for those who understood themselves, their humanity, and their world only in contrast to those that were supposedly sub-human. (disaster averted by maintaining the beliefs and actions that to this day have kept Haiti down)

u.s. occupation of haiti

u.s. support of duvalier dictatorships

unsupport of aristide, too populist for us, for U.S., for 'our' interests

what is a disaster is that a country...

that HAITI, trampled on and raped and not just incidentally poor

would have THIS happen

as if U.S. and Western media coverage and representation of Haiti as poor-from-her-own-doing, poor-as-a-reflection-of-her-own-lack-of-worth, culture-less
as if the powerful part of the world

didnt ahve anythign to do with this disaster.

i cant even finish writing about this.
i pray for Haiti, for Haitians, for Haitian-Americans, for this world we live in, and for a new world to come.

EMERGENCY PROTESTS WED JAN 20TH- MUMIA DOES NOT DESERVE DEATH PENALTY

2010-01-20T01:39:00.001+03:30

mumia abu-jamal case AGAIN at legal crossroads

US SUPREME COURT GRANTS APPEAL BY PROSECUTORS
TAKE IT TO THE STREETS!
EMERGENCY PROTEST: WEDNESDAY 1/20, 4-7PM AT THE HARLEM STATE OFFICE BUILDING (125th St and 7th Ave)

Monitor http://www.freemumia.com/ and http://abu-jamal-news.com/ for news, analysis and emergency response plans

The Supreme Court has tossed out a lower court ruling that nullified the death sentence for former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. The appeals court now has the option of re-imposing the death sentence or ordering a new federal trial to hear other claims of injustice raised by Abu-Jamal.

No Death Penalty for Mumia!

In Philadelphia demonstrate Wednesday, Jan 20 at 4pm at the SE corner of City Hall (Juniper St.). Bring signs and noisemakers (pots, pans, whistles, etc). Bring copies of any Mumia literature you have. At the demonstration International Concerned Friends & Family of Mumia Abu Jamal spokespeople will give updates and legal analysis.

2010-01-20T01:01:00.005+03:30

Jessie's email, posted below, contains a link to Bill Quigley's list of 10 Things the U.S. Can and Should do for Haiti. Quigley is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights...he is also a Katrina survivor and has "been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti."

They are all important, and so I've posted the list...I feel like i'm doing this with some desperate delusion in mind, as if the more times they're copy-and-pasted on the internet, the more people will begin to understand...and the less bad will come from this already fully devastating disaster in Haiti.

BUT I WANT TO BRING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO LIST ITEM NUMBER TWO. This cannot be repeated too many times:

Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Hungry Haitians are not the enemy. Decisions have already been made which will militarize the humanitarian relief – but do not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Do not demonize the people.

This is NOT that complicated. I may be naive about certain aspects of world politics or the intricacies of international economic affairs...but THE HAITIANS ARE THE VICTIMS.

Bill's List:

One. Allow all Haitians in the US to work. The number one source of money for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the US back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the US will continue to help when the world community moves on to other problems.

Two. Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Hungry Haitians are not the enemy. Decisions have already been made which will militarize the humanitarian relief – but do not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Do not demonize the people.

Three. Give Haiti grants as help, not loans. Haiti does not need any more debt. Make sure that the relief given helps Haiti rebuild its public sector so the country can provide its own citizens with basic public services.

Four Prioritize humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the line. If they are moved to the back of the line, start at the back.

Five. President Obama can enact Temporary Protected Status for Haitians with the stroke of a pen. Do it. The US has already done it for El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Somalia. President Obama should do it on Martin Luther King Day.

Six. Respect Human Rights from Day One. The UN has enacted Guiding Principles for Internally Displaced People. Make them required reading for every official and non-governmental person and organization. Non-governmental organizations like charities and international aid groups are extremely powerful in Haiti – they too must respect the human dignity and human rights of all people.

Seven. Apologize to the Haitian people everywhere for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh.

Eight. Release all Haitians in US jails who are not accused of any crimes. Thirty thousand people are facing deportations. No one will be deported to Haiti for years to come. Release them on Martin Luther King day.

Nine. Require that all the non-governmental organizations which raise money in the US be transparent about what they raise, where the money goes, and insist that they be legally accountable to the people of Haiti.

Ten. Treat all Haitians as we ourselves would want to be treated.

-Bill Quigley

THE RIGHT RETURNS TO CHILE

2010-01-20T00:59:00.002+03:30

i dont even know what to say. is this when we're to be thankful for democracy?!

from DN:

Right-Wing Billionaire Wins Chilean Presidential Race

In news from Latin America, the right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera has been elected president of Chile, becoming the first conservative to win the presidency since the fall of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990. Piñera received 52 percent of the vote. Former Chilean president Eduardo Frei won 48 percent. Frei lost despite being endorsed by Chile’s popular president Michelle Bachelet, who was unable to run for re-election under Chilean law. On the campaign trail, Piñera said former members of the Pinochet government would not be allowed to serve in his cabinet, but Piñera has some ties to the former dictatorship. His brother, José Piñera, served as Pinochet’s labor minister and helped install the nation’s neoliberal economic program. Some members of Piñera’s coalition also served in the Pinochet cabinet.

2010-01-20T00:49:00.003+03:30

another email i wanted to share...thank you jessie!

Dear friends,

I've been drafting emails like this all week, not really sure of what I'm trying to get at. As I'm assuming is true for everyone on many levels, the current catastrophe in Haiti is devastating me. The immediate tragedy of it all and also the context; the dread and anticipation about how corporate and global powers contributed to this mess in the first place and may very well only make it worse, long-term-style worse, as recovery unfolds. How can we educate ourselves about the history, of Haiti and beyond, so we can stand at the ready when the corporate interest strikes again? Just one example of how this has already started, a quote from the right-wing Heritage Foundation .

I can't figure out how to react or what to do. What are other people doing? How are we keeping this in our minds and our hearts, and in our actions? I want to know.

I also want to keep at the forefront of our minds the way other issues can be manipulated in this time of crisis. I saw Naomi Klein speak on Wednesday and she so rightfully reminded us how crises are often used as a pretext for pushing through policies that wouldn't otherwise pass during times of stability; how disaster hysteria is taken advantage of to pass controversial or unpopular decisions.

So let's talk about Haiti and its immediate and long-term rebuilding. And let's also talk about how to see the big picture and not let those in positions of power- government, corporate, or otherwise- manipulate our focus and get away with more potentially devastating decisions.

I had been compiling a list of organizations, writings, articles, etc, and then Tyrone posted this very awesome and comprehensive list on Enough (enoughenough.org). Many of them overlapped, so please visit Enough for the full scope! Some highlights include:

~ Ten Things the US Can and Should Do For Haiti -- social justice lawyer Bill Quigley's straightforward, right-on rundown list.

~ Partners In Health's fund, Stand With Haiti: PIH is a longtime health organization working in Haiti. They are reputable among progressives and have pretty rad political analysis. The vast majority of their staff is Haitian and they are already on the ground there.

~ Lambi Fund of Haiti: Rooted in peasant and women's organizations in Haiti and based on the premise that the Haitian people understand how development is best achieved in their country. Doing long-term sustainability and development work.

~ Grantmakers without Borders' criteria for disaster response (they support the two orgs above):

First and foremost, provide unrestricted general funding to allow resources to go where they are most urgently needed.
Give only to those organizations with an existing presence in the region and a broad familiarity with local conditions, customs and politics. Avoid well-meaning but inexperienced organizations.
Give only to organizations that engage local community members in all aspects of disaster response and recovery. Avoid top-down responders.
Prioritize organizations with a strong focus on gender and the ways in which women are differently impacted during and after an emergency.
Prioritize organizations that link emergency response with recovery and long-term rehabilitation and that build local capacities.

~ Reasons why you should give to Haitian-led, localized organizations and NOT the Red Cross

~ much of this information is coming from and continually updated on DemocracyNow! and other crucial indie media sites.

Please respond with thoughts, additions, information, insights, challenges, ideas, reports on what you're doing or thinking...I don't want to let this fade.

With hope,

Jessie

donate directly to a town at epicenter of earthquake

2010-01-20T00:44:00.003+03:30

Today I received this email from my friend Olivia, and wanted to share in case anyone feels more comfortable donating on a more local level.

Dear Friends and Family,

As many of you are aware, I spent this past summer in Fondwa, Haiti. This is a town that has mobilized its citizens and taken matters into its own hands over the past twenty years to overcome many of the hardships facing the country. They established a local orphanage, an association of peasants that leads many activities including reforestation projects, a university that challenges students to implement their own development projects, a clinic (one of the only places to get any medical care for miles), a convent, a radio station and a bank. Over the summer they were working on building a road through the town, and even trying to establish a bakery in order to create a local business.

All of this was destroyed in the recent earthquake. Fondwa was at the epicenter of the quake, and each and every building and structure has been leveled, including the nun's guest house where I stayed this summer. Many people died, including a nun that I was very close to and an unbelievable 2 year old orphan who lived with us during my time there.

If you were planning on donating to Haiti, I ask that you consider donating directly to Fondwa. They are accepting donations for both the university and the peasants' association, which are the organizations most capable of funneling aid and furthering development in the area.

You can find donation information below, and can also contact me with any questions that you might have.

Many thanks for your support and all the best.

Much Love,

Olivia

If you are interested in assisting APF or UNIF at this time, it would be best to donate financial resources due to the many infrastructural and procedural obstacles that prevent aid from reaching Fondwa.

**************************************************************************
DONATIONS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF FONDWA
If you are interested in donating to the University of Fondwa, checks can be made out to UNIF-USA and sent to Father Med Laz at the following address:

The University of Fondwa-USA
P.O. Box 480300
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33348

***************************************************************************
DONATIONS TO THE ASSOCIATION OF PEASANTS FONDWA
If you are interested in donating to APF, you can deposit donations directly into our account. You can contact Sabrina or Veronica (numbers below) for assistance or for the exact bank account and routing numbers.

The APF Account at City National Bank of New Jersey (CNB), in USA.

The Name of the account: APF (Asosyasyon Peyizan Fondwa)
Banks’ Name: CNB ( City National Bank of New Jersey )
Bank's Address:
382 West 125th. Street
New York, NY 10027
Tel. 212 865 47 63 ( Sabrina Brice or Veronica Gilbert at 866 551 58 88 ext. 645)
e-mail: sbrice@citynatbank.com

*********************************************************
Donations will be used to satisfy immediate needs such as food, water, medicine, and temporary shelter. If you are interested in offering long-term assistance for reconstruction of Fondwa, please let us know so that we can ensure that your donation is allocated towards this.

inspired

2010-01-20T00:42:00.001+03:30

from Democracy Now:

Gaza Residents Donate to Haiti Relief Effort

Aid contributions for Haiti continue to pour in from around the world. On Sunday, a group of Palestinians in Gaza offered to send donations.

Jamal Al-Khudari of the Committee Against the Siege on Gaza: “We are sending donations, because, as Palestinian people, we suffered a lot, and we, the Palestinian people, feel more than other people of the world with the suffering of the people in Haiti. We suffer a lot, and we feel their suffering. That is why we decided to donate from the center of suffering, from the besieged Gaza.”

Things that help me remember to breathe deeper

2010-01-18T03:41:00.002+03:30

folding warm clothes pancakes. my mama talking to the dogs in a silly voice. sunday. washing my face. tweets from @fatbellybella. remembering compliments. anticipating smiles. losing followers on twitter when i talk about real things. surrounding myself with music.

If Humanity is Sacred, Trying to Survive Should Never be a Crime

2010-01-15T02:46:00.008+03:30

WE MUST NOT CRIMINALIZE ACTS OF SURVIVAL BY THE VICTIMS OF THIS TRAGEDY

(SADLY, THIS WAS A COMMON NARRATIVE IN THE AFTERMATH OF KATRINA. in the words of a description of the South End Press Collective Anthology, What Lies Beneath, w a foreward by radical feminist and abolitionist scholar Joy James: 'In August 2005, thousands of New Orleans residents—overwhelmingly poor, largely people of color, the majority black—were left to face one of the worst “natural” disasters in US history on their own. They were left to die in prisons, in nursing homes, and on the street. Survivors were criminalized as “looters” for struggling to obtain food, water, diapers, medicine, and other essentials of life that no one else could or would provide. )"

i have taken out some exerpts from the following pieces and pasted them below

US Policy in Haiti over Decades Laying Foundation for such Severe Devastation

and

Haiti faces Dangers of (Worsened) Disaster Capitalism

BILL QUIGLEY: Yeah. The trauma that this causes affects the elected officials, the police, the fire, everybody through. And ultimately, you know, until order is restored—and “order” meaning a just order is restored—people break into small groups, family groups, neighborhood groups and that to try to care for each other. The police are just as bewildered and traumatized as everybody else. And I want to say, one of the big worries that we have about Haiti is this, you know, sending in the military, that there is this real sense that you can’t actually start to feed people, you can’t actually share water with people, until you have people there with machine guns to prevent, you know, these—the worries of folks. And there’s an actual fear of the victims by people who are coming. They’re afraid of the people, when in fact the people are the most resilient, cooperative, generous folks who have already survived on their own. And this sort of militarization and scaredness—you know, scariness of the people there is something that’s common to all disasters. And we can talk some more about that in a bit, but it’s a very eerie sense of what’s happening there.

NAOMI KLEIN:

But as I write about in The Shock Doctrine, crises are often used now as the pretext for pushing through policies that you cannot push through under times of stability. Countries in periods of extreme crisis are desperate for any kind of aid, any kind of money, and are not in a position to negotiate fairly the terms of that exchange.And I just want to pause for a second and read you something, which is pretty extraordinary. I just put this up on my website. The headline is “Haiti: Stop Them Before They Shock Again.” This went up a few hours ago, three hours ago, I believe, on the Heritage Foundation website.

“Amidst the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S. In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the image of the United States in the region.” And then goes on.

Now, I don’t know whether things are improving or not, because it took the Heritage Foundation thirteen days before they issued thirty-two free market solutions for Hurricane Katrina. We put that document up on our website, as well. It was close down the housing projects, turn the Gulf Coast into a tax-free free enterprise zone, get rid of the labor laws that forces contractors to pay a living wage. Yeah, so it took them thirteen days before they did that in the case of Katrina. In the case of Haiti, they didn’t even wait twenty-four hours.

Now, why I say I don’t know whether it’s improving or not is that two hours ago they took this down. So somebody told them that it wasn’t couth. And then they put up something that was much more delicate. Fortunately, the investigative reporters at Democracy Now! managed to find that earlier document in a Google cache. But what you’ll find now is a much gentler “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti.” And buried down there, it says, “Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.”

But the point is, we need to make sure that the aid that goes to Haiti is, one, grants, not loans. This is absolutely crucial. This is an already heavily indebted country. This is a disaster that, as Amy said, on the one hand is nature, is, you know, an earthquake; on the other hand is the creation, is worsened by the poverty that our governments have been so complicit in deepening. Crises—natural disasters are so much worse in countries like Haiti, because you have soil erosion because the poverty means people are building in very, very precarious ways, so houses just slide down because they are built in places where they shouldn’t be built. All of this is interconnected. But we have to be absolutely clear that this tragedy, which is part natural, part unnatural, must, under no circumstances, be used to, one, further indebt Haiti, and, two, to push through unpopular corporatist policies in the interests of our corporations. And this is not a conspiracy theory. They have done it again and again.

haiti we remember you

2010-01-14T22:01:00.000+03:30

here is a poem from stacie, on this inspiring blog skinned knees.wings.blueprints.:

Haiti, I remember you.

They call this an earthquake

But I remember you.

How we paralyzed your rebellions

Forced you to pay twenty-one billion dollars to France

For reclaiming your own freedom.

Haiti, how many ways you have paid for us.

And now, when your buildings crumble as the earth beneath you ruptures

Violently once again

Our reporters talk of your construction standards

Your dire poverty

Your “proclivity” for rebellion

Removes us from your history.

But I remember you Haiti.

I remember the Arawak people

The sugar cane fields

The Code Noir

Touissant in prison.

How it took 22 years and several failed attempts at re-enslavement

For France to recognize your independence

How it took the U.S. thirty-seven more, and later

with it’s own turn to master you, a nineteen year occupation

to control your people and pillage your resources

How, unsatiated, we backed Trujillo as he massacred your peasants

Helped install Papa Doc Duvalier and trained his notorious army

Overthrew Aristide not once, but twice. And now,

We will offer you “Aid”

Benevolently and bereft of history.

But I remember you, Haiti.

I remember the fault line

where the Spanish, French, and U.S. plates collide

For your bodies, your sugar, your coffee, your submission.

And I know this is no more natural than Katrina

because I live here on the San Andreas

and they say the big one is coming.

But Haiti, you are the Maldives, and I

Am the Netherlands.

And you are still paying debt to my banks

While I harbor your war criminals.

It is not much Haiti, but I remember.

-Stacie Szmonko

Voting

2010-01-10T00:18:00.006+03:30

In conversation this past week with a friend who was a field organizer for the Obama campaign. She told me about a conference call that occurred between all of the Pennsylvania teams when one of the branches posted a sign in their office window that said "FELONS CAN VOTE." In Pennsylvania convicted Felons can vote for local, state and national office. After a huge amount of negative media press the branch was reprimanded by the "Obama for America" headquarters for putting up the sign. Sad but not surprising that the campaign wouldn't want an office to publicize this information to encourage people to register to vote (although I'm sure they were excited to get the votes) because of the stigma of jail time and incarceration. Made me think about the notion of the Obama campaign as an uninclusive movement and what kinds of movements I want to be part of. It is difficult to make things inclusive and celebratory of all but also so so worth it. Elana posted this article on the face book and now I have been really thinking about voting rights and who can vote. WHAT AN INSANE THING TO EXIST AS A STATE LAW especially in this time when *CYNICAL ALERT* voting barely means anything anyway.
Here is the article about felony voting in Washington State

RB and Aviva attempt to broaden their horizons by engaging for the first time with the game of Football

2009-12-07T01:36:00.004+03:30

Aviva to RB: why are multiple games on at once, and doesnt that mean you have to choose between watching the saints and the falcons (who are currently playing the team they lost their dogfighting player to?!?) is that even right? so confusing, sports are. where is dave zirin when i need him>!>!?~??~

AT: YESSSS. and y'all should be proud, i learned what this is all about:
well kind of. something about some dude changing the game by being really fast and on the left side and blind spot and then you have to put a big guy somewhere to stop him?

nah WAY more important is that i know that the saints are 12-0 right now.

should have gotten a fleur-de-lis tattoo instead of those stupid dots.

"narrative" caught my eye

2009-11-30T07:09:00.003+03:30

ew ew EW:

from Thomas Friedman's op-ed column in the NYT:

"The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving."

U.S. shouldn't recognize Honduran election

2009-11-30T05:48:00.002+03:30

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) — The United States risks souring relations with much of Latin America if it recognizes a presidential election in Honduras on Sunday, the foreign policy adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said in an interview on Wednesday.
full article here: NYT

2009-11-28T02:08:00.002+03:30

love

"not in the world of magical realism" !??!??!?!??!

2009-11-14T03:19:00.001+03:30

U.S. Tries to Salvage Honduras Accord

By GINGER THOMPSON
(NYT November 10, 2009)

The State Department sent Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Craig Kelly to Honduras on Tuesday for meetings with Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted from power as president more than four months ago, and with the head of the de facto government, Roberto Micheletti.

Senior administration officials said Mr. Kelly would try to get both men to abide by the terms of an Oct. 30 agreement that called on them to form a coalition government to run the country while the Honduran Congress prepares for a vote on whether to return Mr. Zelaya to power.

The deal began to unravel last week when the Congress announced it would postpone a vote on Mr. Zelaya’s return to power until after the election. In protest, Mr. Zelaya then refused to submit names for the coalition government. And the United States, breaking with its allies in Latin America, announced it would recognize the results of the coming presidential election, even if Mr. Zelaya were not reinstated.

While the announcement was celebrated by Republicans as a “reversal” of the administration’s policy, it ignited a storm of criticism from Mr. Obama’s allies at home and across Latin America.

Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, telephoned Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg to express his concerns about the administration’s handling of Honduran crisis. An aide to the congressman said, “It was not a feel-good phone call.”

Frederick Jones, a spokesman for Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the senator believed that the State Department’s “abrupt change” of policy toward Honduras “caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.”

On Tuesday, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said that he would not send observers to monitor the presidential election, scheduled for Nov. 29. And many of the organization’s 34 members said they would not recognize the election winner unless Mr. Zelaya was reinstated to complete his term.

“Paraguay is not only not going to accept the outcome of the elections, it will not even accept that the elections are held,” said Hugo Saguier Caballero, Paraguay’s ambassador to the O.A.S. “These elections for us simply will not exist.”

Ruy de Lima Casaes e Silva, Brazil’s ambassador to the organization, said the situation in Honduras seemed like a “badly written soap opera, with sinister characters played by the de facto regime, which history will judge.”

The Obama administration’s representative to the O.A.S., W. Lewis Amselem, said that the agreement signed in Honduras two weeks ago did not guarantee Mr. Zelaya’s reinstatement, but put that decision in the hands of the Honduran Congress.

Mr. Amselem said it was not possible to translate Latin America’s position on the coup into policy, noting that most of its countries had used elections to establish democratic order after coups. And he urgently pressed for a more pragmatic line.

“I’ve heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras,” Mr. Amselem said at an O.A.S. meeting in Washington. “I’m not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?”

"jews love books...books are bodies of stories and stories make history and we are a people who believe in the stories of people to tell history"

2009-11-12T20:58:00.003+03:30

shared with me by my sister

Posted by Kevin Coval

peace. i invite and hope for conversation with poems i write. this about a real event that happened last month
that sounds like orwellian fiction, but is true and tragic and unacceptable. it is 2009. writers, artists, and all who believe in democracy must consider the current and historic practices of the of state of israel. i offer a reflection.

Reflection on The Israeli Army shutting down The Palestine Festival of Literature
in the month of May in 2009: Burning Books, A Bebelplatz in Jerusalem

Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.
Heinrich Heine

jews love books.
we dress them up
in crowns and gold
breast plates. fine
paper, our finest
calligraphy. our books
live in an ark lit by a flame
that always burns, a metaphor
for a G-d, we don’t have
vowels for.

if we carry nothing
else into Diaspora, we carry
these stories, these scrolls
that unroll a history we revere
and parade thru aisles
on the highest of holy days.
we kiss the corner of tallis
to our lips, put cloth to text
to praise words Moses brought
off the mount, our ancestors
lugged thru the desert. stories
told and told again at a kitchen
table some where, the 5th and 15th
time we heard them bored out
our seder mind, but the 50th
and 502nd time something stuck
so we wrote them down
in our most reverent hand style
in the blackest of ink on bone
parchment. we record the trials
and rivals and lineage and heroes
of our families cuz we love books
mourn all the storied bodies
burned by the those who hate books
with messy endings. we love books
cuz books are bodies of stories
and stories make history
and we are a people who believe
in the stories of people to tell history
and mourn all the bodies and stories
burned before they are recorded
in the Eternal book, authored
by the voiceless and Voweless.

but it is 2009/5769

& this spring Israeli troops shut down The Palestine Festival of Literature
behind barrels of guns. they stormed into a theater where poets were reading poems
& demanded silence behind triggers where bullets scream & governments check point
& knessets approve military bombardments & schools bombed & burned on ground they are meant to be on fire from words & ideas, not metal.

in the name of a jewish state
Israeli educated young men aimed guns in the faces of women
reading poems. in the name of a jewish state stories silence forever.

which raises the question(s):
who are we because of empire? what democracy are we scared of?
how can we deny the right to sing, to chazzan a Palestinian song?

mad men bring books to the bond fire.
power mad men bring bodies.

our books been banned & burned & bordered, bodies into boxes
& camps cuz they demand memory, insist our presence in the story
of the world & books are memory of never forgetting & people house books
in their stories & stories should never be crushed by missiles. books record the day
& days in exile & days that should not have been recorded. the horrors & the horrible. the record of families spilt & broken & bastards forever. books are records that never forget & preserve & serve memory & history when militarized revisers deny events
as lived by the natives. the records prove otherwise, proof of existence & empires
want proof of purchase & per chance & pursue silencing stories that make them look criminal in the honest of day & moon of night.

records are stories, a people
hold dear. who knows this
more than us?
all us wandering immigrants
all us seekers of safe land
all us unfettered poets of wind
all us literate builders of pidgins
all us inventors with scraps
all us people of the book

though we don’t seem to know anything
anymore except the havoc
reaped on our bodies in exile, the learned
behavior of executioners we internalize
the bureaucracies & boots & lines of refugees
we terrorize. gather families into open air
prisons & worse. we bury bodies in graves
of steel. bodies who house forests of stories.
the sad song of our own malignancy untold.
where is the ark in the center of the congregation
the ark in the center of the city of peace filled
with bodies of stories, records stacked
unsequestered & unsilenced.

it is mad men who burn books
& bodies & hold poets at gun point

this the work of emperors & empires
furors & fascists. scared colonists
insane to control what no state could
the record of people living
despite the state’s efforts
to have them not.

self-proclaimed Economic Hit Man on Mutant Capitalism, Homeland Security, and our Tiny, Tiny Planet

2009-11-11T01:15:00.005+03:30

i was SO into this DN interview this morning. have highlighted some parts...found particularly interesting that he does not condemn CAPITALISM but instead THIS FORM of capitalism. his noting that colonialism is part of the development of capitalism reminded me of Arundhati Roy's ideas re: the relationship between genocide and "progress." OH, and...as you should expect by now, I like hearing others say that WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, you know?

Hoodwinked: Former Economic Hit Man John Perkins Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and How to Remake Them
Guest:
John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981, he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main, where he was a self-described “economic hit man.” He is the author of the bestselling Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. His latest book is called Hoodwinked: An Economic Hit Man Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.
(clip from film The End of Poverty)
JOHN PERKINS: [translated] Bolivia is a country with so many natural resources. Why does a country like this have so many poor people?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] I think this has to do with what we call the colonial condition of our societies. Countries that have a collection of natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable, seem to be condemned to be poor countries. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? Unfortunately, colonialism is always a part of the development of capitalism. There is an emancipation process that happens through the implementation of a different global economic order than the current one. That’s why a total, simple and definite break with colonialism allows us to imagine a world economic order, globalized in a different way than that which is driven by the accumulation of capital.
JOHN PERKINS: [translated] What things can Bolivia do, or should they do, to bring about necessary change?
VICE PRESIDENT ALVARO GARCIA LINERA: [translated] This is a country of nine million inhabitants, where 62 percent of the population is indigenous, both in the cities and the farmlands. Bolivia is a country with mestizos, Aymaras, Quechas, Guaranis, Mojenio, Trinitarios, Irionos, thirty-two indigenous groups and nations. But, unfortunately, in the 181 years of the republic’s political life, the indigenous people were never recognized as citizens with collective rights. Never. This continent is waking up. I like the idea of “a continent in movement” as a synthesis of what’s been happening during the past five to six years in Latin America. There’s a movement developing of world citizenship and planetary responsibility. There is something beautiful happening in these countries which makes them get involved in the situations of countries like Bolivia, a country that wants to live a better life, where 58 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day.
...
Welcome, John. Well, for starters, though we’ve discussed this before, what exactly does an “economic hit man” mean?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, Amy, I think it’s fair to say that we economic hit men have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire. And it’s basically a secret empire.
We do it in many ways, but principally, we identify a country that has resources that corporations covet, like oil, arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sisters. The money never actually goes to the country; it goes to our own corporations to build the infrastructure projects in that country that help a few very wealthy people, but don’t benefit the majority of the people, who are too poor to buy electricity or have cars to drive on the highways. And yet, they’re left holding a huge debt that they can’t repay.
So we go back at some point and say, “You know, you can’t pay your debts. Give us a pound of flesh. Sell your oil real cheap to our oil companies. Vote with us on the next critical UN vote. Allow us to build a military base in your backyard.” Something along these lines.
And when we fail—as I talk in my books, I failed with Jaime Roldos, president of Ecuador, Omar Torrijos of Panama—the Jackals go in and either overthrow or assassinate these leaders. And if the Jackals fail, as they did in Iraq, then we send in the military.
AMY GOODMAN: And what personal experience do you have to prove this?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was there. You know, I was with Jaime Roldos in Ecuador. I was the guy—one of the guys who was supposed to corrupt him, bring him around, and Omar Torrijos of Panama and many others. When I failed with those two gentlemen, the Jackals went in and assassinated both of them. And I was there; I was in those front lines. My official title was chief economist of Charles T. Main. I had about three dozen employees working for me and did this for ten years, and finally saw the light.
But I think what’s—you know, what’s really important about all this is that in this period of time, since the 1970s, and really beginning very strongly in the 1980s, we’ve created what I consider a mutant, viral form of capitalism. Earlier on the program, you showed the statistics of 37 percent of the people in the survey not believing that capitalism is working. I don’t think the failure is capitalism. I think it’s the specific kind of capitalism that we’ve developed in the last thirty or forty years, particularly beginning with the time of Reagan and Milton Friedman’s economic theories, which stress that the only goal of business is to maximize profit, regardless of the social and environmental costs, and not to regulate businesses at all—regulation is bad, all forms—and to privatize everything, so that everything is run by private business. And this mutant form of capitalism, which I think is really a predatory form of capitalism, has created an extremely unstable, unsustainable, unjust and very, very dangerous world.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the robber barons, the modern day robber barons. Who do you mean?
JOHN PERKINS: So many of them. You know, we’ve seen them recently on Wall Street, the people from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and so many other organizations, people like Jack Welch, who is a former CEO of General Electric. And as I lecture at business schools and MBA programs, Jack Welch is often held up as this idol. Jack Welch laid off a quarter of GE’s employees. You know, he said he was making the company meaner and leaner—he certainly was making it meaner—gave himself huge raises and bonuses at the same time, turned General Electric essentially from a manufacturing company into a financial services company, which really was one of the leaders in taking us down this course today that we’re on of a failed economic system.
And we truly have a failed economic system at this point. It’s deep. You know, one of the reasons I wrote Hoodwinked is because I saw a lot of books coming out that deal with what I consider triage. What do you do with AIG? What do you do with General Electric? What do you do about the immediate problems with Wall Street? But the problem is much, much deeper. There’s a cancer beneath all that. And this is this very basics of our current economic system. And we must delve down and root out that cancer and move into something much better.
I have a two-year-old grandson. And as I look at this baby, you know, I think, what’s this world going to look like in six decades, when he’s my age? If we stay the course, it will be horrible. But we have this opportunity now, and I think this economic turmoil that we’re in today is teaching us that we must change. We have a failed system. We must create something better. And we must realize that my grandson can’t possibly hope to inherit a sustainable, just and peaceful world, unless every child growing up in Ethiopia and in Bolivia and in Indonesia and in Israel and Palestine has that same expectation. For the first time in history, we’re really living on a very, very tiny, highly integrated planet, and we’re all communicating with each other. Everybody is listening to Democracy Now! all around the world. We’re all talking on the cell phone and by internet. We really get it. We’re a very, very small community, and we need to recognize that.
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, you have an interesting theory about what happened in Honduras, the coup that just took place there. What do you think?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I don’t think it’s a theory. You know, I think it’s—I was in Panama at the time that the coup took place. And, you know, the democratic—
AMY GOODMAN: In June.
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah. The democratically elected president, Zelaya, had called for a new constitution to replace the old one that was really set up by the oligarchy in favor of the very, very, very wealthy and the international companies. He also called for a 60 percent increase in the bottom wage rate, which had a huge impact on Dole and Chiquita, two of the biggest employers in that company. They, along with a number of companies that have sweatshops in Honduras, strongly objected, very much the same way that they had objected to Aristide in Haiti, when he did something similar, and called in the military. The general in charge of the military was a graduate of our School of the Americas, this, you know, school that’s famous for creating dictators, and they overthrew Zelaya. It was a classic CIA-sponsored type of coup, very similar to what United Fruit had done in Guatemala in the early ’50s. And, of course, United Fruit became Chiquita.
So you had this—you know, this strong relationship and got rid of this democratically elected president, because he was drawing a line in the sand. We had seen ten countries in Latin America bring in new presidents who are instituting very significant reforms in favor of the people, in favor of using local resources to help the people pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and I think the corporatocracy decided to draw a line in the sand in Honduras.
AMY GOODMAN: Iran and the swirling clouds?
JOHN PERKINS: You know, I think Iran today—Iran is this example of where we went in and overthrew a democratically elected president, Mosaddeq, in the early ’50s, and we’ve seen terrible blowback from that ever since. It’s, you know, not only in Iran, but it impacted the whole Middle East. If we had supported that president, who simply wanted to use more of his oil money, his country’s oil money, to help the poor people—we strongly objected. We overthrew him in a coup and replaced him with the Shah. So we’ve seen the blowback that comes out of that. And this has led to this situation that we’re in today.
And the swirling clouds, to me, are the big corporations. So, in the past, you had roughly 200 countries on the planet, which a few had a lot of power—the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States. But today the geopolitics might better be envisioned as the same roughly 200 countries with these huge swirling clouds that are the big corporations. And they are really calling the shots all over the planet. They know no national boundaries. They don’t listen to any specific set of laws. They strike deals with the Chinese and the Taiwanese and the Tibetans and the Israelis and the Arab nations. Whoever has the markets or the resources, they cut deal with—deals with. And as we’ve seen in our most recent election here in the United States, we bring in a president who is very diametrically different from the former president, and yet the corporations are still calling the shots.
Which takes us back, Amy, to the fact that we, the people, must create the change. This has always been the case. And this is a clarion call for us at this point now in history, that we must get out there. We’ve got to get behind Obama and all the other politicians. We’ve got to force the corporations to change their goal, get away from this goal of maximizing profits regardless of social and environmental costs, and instead say, “Yeah, it’s OK. Make profits, but only within a context of creating a sustainable, just and peaceful world,” only within the context of creating a world that my grandson will want to inherit, and that means every child on the planet will want to inherit it, because I think it’s really important that we understand today we cannot have homeland security unless we understand that the whole planet is our homeland. Our homeland is now no longer defined by the Rio Grande and the Canadian border. It is—we are one—one human species living on a very fragile planet.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the burden of the melting glaciers?
JOHN PERKINS: The melting—you know, I was in Tibet a couple of years ago, and I stood there with these nomads and looked at this glacier that had been down at the road a decade or so before, now it’s way back a mile away. And these glaciers up in the Himalayas feed the five largest rivers in the world. They provide water to China and to India. And as these glaciers melt, the water is drying up. The glaciers are melting because of global warming, because of us. And what we have to understand is the huge consequences. If these five rivers no longer can feed water to the Chinese and the Indians, these people are going to die of thirst. And before they die of thirst, they’ll become very rebellious.
We have to understand that one of the root causes of terrorism—I don’t even like the word “terrorism,” because I don’t think it really is—it’s a whole bunch of diverse groups all over the world. But in every—practically every case, it results from starvation, from desperation. I’ve met a lot of terrorists. I’ve interviewed them for books. I’ve never met one who wanted to be a terrorist. These are farmers who have been driven off their farmlands by oil companies or hydroelectric projects, or they’re fishermen, like the Somali pirates, who can no longer make a living fishing, because their waters have been fished dry or destroyed by nuclear waste from US military vessels. I have not met anyone who wanted to be a terrorist. They’re desperate people. If we want to get rid of terrorism, we must get rid of the root causes, that cancer that is destroying our whole system.
AMY GOODMAN: The new rules you propose for business and government?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, you know, we all know that getting rid of the rules that protected us from another recession has helped to bring on this current recession, you know, things like Glass-Steagall and the banking laws and so forth. We need to implement a lot of those again.
But I think we also need another whole new set of laws that says businesses must be—look at being environmentally and socially responsible. For a hundred years after United States became the United States, no corporation was allowed to get a charter unless it could prove that it served the public interest. And charters came up for renewal every ten years or so. They didn’t get a renewal unless they could prove they served the public interest. That all changed with a Supreme Court ruling that made corporations equivalent to individuals in the late 1880s, and then John D. Rockefeller stepped in and really took things—made things go out of hand.
But we need to go back to an understanding that corporations are there to serve us. When I went to business school, I was taught that a good CEO takes care of the long-term interests of the corporation—the employees, the customers, the general economy—not just there to make short-term profits. And we really need to get back to that, to an understanding. I think we need laws and rules that say that corporations must be aiming toward creating a sustainable and just and peaceful world. We simply have to do that. These are our main controlling organizations today, and they must be answerable to what’s best in the public interest, not just the interests of a few very wealthy, powerful people.

ALL WALLS FALL

2009-11-11T01:07:00.005+03:30

Palestinians take down parts of WB wall
Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:06:37 GMT

Palestinian youths have tipped over a part of Israel's separation wall in the occupied West Bank during a demonstration which marked the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some 300 Palestinians and left-wing activists attended the demonstration in the village of Naalin, Ynet reported on Friday. They held banners reading "No matter how tall, all walls fall." According to the demonstrators, a 6-meter (20-foot) high section of the wall was taken down. "Twenty years ago, no one imagined that the monstrosity that divided Berlin would ever be taken down, but it took only two days to do it," said Muhib Hawaja, a protester attending the rally. Israeli police however dispersed the crowd by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Some of the demonstrators were wounded, according to the report. Israel began the construction of the barrier in 2000 despite the fact that the International Court of Justice had declared the project illegal. It confiscated thousands of acres of Palestinian lands for constructing 723 km (454 miles) of a barrier of steel and concrete walls, fences and barbed wire.

listening, on a lighter note

2009-11-02T20:20:00.003+03:30

SO re: listening.
i listen to pop radio an unfortunate amount these days (well the unfortunate part is that i like it), and every time i hear this song, i laugh. out loud. and i'm pretty sure it isn't supposed to be funny?

check some of the lyrics:

[Verse 2: Trey Songz]Put the code in the gate
Pull up to the driveway
Cause she like the way I touch her
Listenin to usher I got a confession
kno we bout to sin but your body is a blessing (Papa forgive me)
Can we take it up stairs
My bed when and there
All I want to do is
Give you all of me
And want you give me all of you
I want your body like right now (right now)
You know I live a magnum lifestyle (lifestyle)
Baby turn the lights down
And ima turn you on
[Chorus: Trey Songz]Girl let me get you to the crib (let me get you to the crib)
Upstairs to the bed (upstairs to the bed)
Girl you gonna think [x4]
Girl when I pull back them sheets
And you climb on top of meGirl you gonna think [x4]
You gonna think I invented sex [x2]
Cuz im gonna do it like I did

THAT DOESNT EVEN MAKE SENSE. you are going to think i INVENTED SEX.

Things I heard for the first time today

2009-10-29T06:19:00.004+03:30

Waiting outside of Glenn Memorial on the campus of Emory University to hear Cornel West speaking on Race in America I heard,

"I just don't get where there are NON EMORY students taking OUR seats."

As part of Cornel West's lecture on America's racial history he talked about,

"Mustering the courage to cry."

He reminded us that this is not an easy task but that people have been doing it for centuries and without it we wouldn't have JAZZ and HIP-HOP and PAINTING and LOVE.

RE RE RE RE listening to The Messengers as done by J.Period and K'naan and I heard Bob Dylan say,

"Nothing in this story has been changed, except for the words."

Always trying to get better at listening. Don't you always remember those people that listened SO well the first time you met them?

chronicles of my recent kitchen obsession with squash and squash-shaped vegetables

2009-10-27T07:43:00.014+03:30

(is eggplant a squash? looked this up. no: in the nightshade family, related to tomatoes and potatos!) 1. butternut: cubed and drizzled with olive oil and rosemary, baked--> couscous with mint, red onion, carrots, peppers etc

2. eggplant- drizzled with olive oil and baked--> pasta with tomatoes and basil

3. summer squash- and zuchini, sauteed w onions--> tomato sauce over pasta

4. butternut- baked with skin on, then scooped out and pureed, with eggs and a couple kinds of cheese--->shells, baked!

5. some other kind of squash, with beets, sauteed with onions and carrots--> couscous that turned a beautiful ruby color from the beet juice (had beet greens with brown sugar and onions on the side)

6. eggplant- sliced into circles, drizzled with olive oil and salt, baked, with fresh mozzarella and polenta

7. butternut squash- sliced and boiled with potatoes, layered with caramelized onions, shredded parmesan and cream sauce (butter, flour, milk and white wine, cooked on the stove), baked (au gratin)

...and then i realized why i keep thinking that the inside of a butternut smells like cantaloupe. (internet says that cantaloupe is indeed related to squash and has a nutrient value in between that of winter and summer squash)

Noose hung from gates of McKenna Museum of African Arts In New Orleans

2009-10-24T07:21:00.003+03:30

A noose was found today on the gates of the McKenna Museum of African American Art.

From blogger Kataalyst Alcindor comes this powerful piece about discovering a noose hanging from the gates of the museum. Kataalyst's blog deeper than soil offers power and outrage. deeper than soil.

Today was going to be such a beautiful day, I had willed it to be so. Until my day was shattered by a foot-long inch of nylon looped and crafted after a tool to suffocate the life out of too many of my ancestors. A Noose was found hanging precisely on the onyx bars to keep hate and evil out as an forget-me-not. Proof that hatred will come knocking on your door even if no one will answer. Blinded with rage, The only thing I could do was whisper a prayer to The Most High begging to not let me find whoever done this, it would so easily become a assault with intentions of manslaughter. I raced to The Trolly Stop in hopes to find police officers who so often frequent the restaurant, luckily I find a couple off duties and direct them to the scene of vandalism. Awaiting the squad car I debated on running to the apartment to grab my web camera and thought, "Of all days I would't bring my camera, Today would be the day!" The Caucasian Woman Officer jumped out of her car and asked about the crime. I could only shake my head and point at the unwanted adornment. The color of her face drained away to her knees. "O Shit." all she could say was "O Shit." "Yeah." I said. She kept apologizing for me seeing such a thing and I don't know if it was the rage talking but it felt like Honestly, she was apologizing for her race. I know I shouldn't say that but I'm sure some White folks wish that other white folks would just vanish from the face of the earth.(My first draft picks are Rush & Glen.) We filed out a report and against my will she took down the noose and placed it in the car, the gave me a slip to possibly pick it up from the station as if it was a drunken family member I care enough about to bail out of prison. I still don't don't know how to feel but fury & scorn. This felt like watching a man slap your mother in the face, The McKenna is a place of peace, vibrancy & love. I can only take this as a lesson that ignorance still thrives in this old southern city and it still hides its face in the dead of night rather than face the sun.

Hopeful the vandal knows that realizes that a home build on love will never be conquered by something as small as weathered ropes and a obsolete message.

Peace.

Please hold the museum and the community in the Light.

Images from today in ATL

2009-10-23T02:32:00.010+03:30

OCTOBER 22nd -- A Day to call attention to police brutality and the incarceration of a generation.

Today was beautiful. Very positive energy and wonderful people out in the street to support an end to the policing of our communities and the incarceration of our friends and families. People shared stories of being abused by the criminal justice system. We remembered those that we have lost at the hands of the system. We marched from Woodruff in downtown Atlanta to the the Atlanta Detention Center. People joined us along the way.

My sign said, "DEAR MAYORAL CANDIDATES, WE DON'T NEED MORE POLICE! WE NEED RE-ENTRY PROGRAMS! WE NEED JOBS!"

We stood outside of the jail and yelled "no justice! no peace! no racist po-lice!" and heard responses from the people inside the Jail yelling back to us. They heard us. We heard them.

Support ALL Morehouse Students!

2009-10-20T22:25:00.003+03:30

Please read this beautiful beautiful piece from brother Michael Brewer.

We need to stand in support of our institutions and more importantly ALL of the people in them. Solidarity with gender non-conforming students at Morehouse and everywhere!

Brewer writes,

On the 'Appropriate Attire Policy' at Morehouse College
There's an old saying at my alma mater that one does not simply choose to attend Morehouse College, rather, Morehouse College chooses her sons, those "Men of Morehouse" to be made "Morehouse Men." She chooses these men, these men called not to curse the wretchedness of the dark, but rather to light a candle in that dark and illuminate within it the truth, beauty and justice that disturbs the universe.

This is my attempt to light a candle in the dark.

It was earlier this year that I first heard vestiges of what was to eventually become the ‘Appropriate Attire’ policy that has temporarily catapulted Morehouse College into dissonant notoriety. During a landmark address to the college last April, Morehouse College President Robert M. Franklin, a Baptist preacher with the most liberal politics the college has seen in that particular office, articulated an unprecedented vision for the Morehouse community, urging for a peaceful integration of the queer experience into the college’s canon of tradition. His words received prodigious and widespread praise for his inclusive, enterprising mission to revive the Herculean image of the Black man while simultaneously seeking to bridge the very public discord between homosexual and heterosexual – at Morehouse and throughout the Black community.

What was missed by most during his speech, though, was the admonishment of feminine dress sported by some of the male students on campus and abhorred by the larger body politic. It was this tacit repudiation and obscuring of the Black queer experience that has recently exploded into a mass cultural debate about how the image of the Morehouse Man juxtaposes with non-conventional expressions of Black male identity, with as many people praising Morehouse’s actions as stalwart leadership as are berating the institution for its regressive candor.

I support President Franklin and the progressive direction in which he is steering the College. However, I cannot condone the subtle, if ill-intended, castigation of transgressive and non-conforming gender expression and identity espoused in this new ‘appropriate attire’ policy. While I appreciate any attempt to incubate Morehouse’s illustrious legacy, I do not believe that such resuscitation of Black male identity should come at the expense of the institution’s queer students, who, while not exclusively targeted by the policy, will possibly be disproportionately disenfranchised by it. But what’s more significant, and disconcerting, is that, as opposed to the named ‘thugs’ and ‘gangsters’ whose dress may now be limited by this new policy but have no history of significant social subjugation at the college, Morehouse’s gay, bisexual, and transgender students may exclusively reap a possible resurgence of latent homophobic sentiment and the recapitulation of heterosexism, heteronormativity and patriarchy that has now been codified (and therefore legitimized) by the institution, a school that has a sordid history of placidly facilitating oppression against queer students. Is the policy itself homophobic? Not neccessarily. Admittedly, the policy does not specifically seek to limit the expression of the college’s queer-identified students exclusively, nor or its restrictions concerning ‘feminine garb’ an overt attack on gay and bisexual students. While gender expression and the expression of one’s sexuality are tangent to one another, they are not the same thing. Likewise, many gay and bisexual students will remain unaffected by the shift in prohibited campus attire. However, will the policy possibly fuel homophobia, transphobia and hinder the revolutionary edict that President Franklin so courageously initiated? In my eyes, yes.

Just as troubling is the reality that, as an academic institution, Morehouse has chosen to subscribe to, and superimpose onto its student body, a very hegemonic and heteronormative prescription of masculinity without genuinely interrogating masculinity as a concept. To be the premiere institution for the education of Black men, there are surprisingly few course offerings aimed at the scholastic investigation of the Black male experience, much fewer that integrate any semblance of sex, sexuality and gender into that sphere of analysis. Morehouse is missing a unique opportunity to lead this burgeoning conversation in the larger Black community about what it means to be a Black man by refusing to incorporate the intersectionality of orientation, gender performance, and sexuality into its curriculum. Leaning on antiquated paradigms of the Black male experience makes it harder to explore this concept in a fresh, erudite, and optimally useful way.

In closing, I offer the following:

To the greater LGBT community: We of Morehouse College acknowledge that we hold a peculiar position of prestige that solicits a slightly more refined look at our evolving legacy. The collective behavior of Morehouse College does not occur in a vacuum and, when it challenges a fundamental percept of ethical code it, like any other institution, need be challenged on its breach of moral decorum and held accountable for its actions. However, I’ve become particularly incensed by the unmitigated gall of the larger LGBT community to continuously criticize Morehouse for supposed “infractions” against queer people when, in aggregate, that same community does nothing to support the institution or its progress towards more LGBT friendly policy and practices at the institution. With a few notable exceptions, there is no concerted effort by the external LGBT community to substantially give of its resources to support the mission of Morehouse College or even the queer students whose interests it purports to serve. So, while you are welcome to express your disdain for perceived prejudice and injustice, please refrain from using my institution as a case study and catalyst for the LGBT social justice agenda – particularly when the larger LGBT community rarely (if ever) engages the institution with any reciprocity of accountability, or in a way that utilizes cultural competency and does not perpetuate the equally problematic oppressions of racism, classism, and cultural imperialism in its intervention.

To my Morehouse brothers, Morehouse College, the greater Black community and other proponents of the policy: I understand that we have a responsibility to uphold the highest moral standard for the Black male ideal – that how we think, speak, act, and yes, look, are all cuts of the brilliant diamond that is Morehouse College and our history of leadership. However, it is the arguments in favor of this policy, much more than the policy itself, that concerns me about our institutional cognition surrounding issues central to this conversation. That the thinking of some welcomes this policy as a targeted censorship of gay/bisexual identity, however, demonstrates that as an institution and cultural community we have a lot of self-edification to do concerning issues related to gender, sex, and sexuality and are not yet mature enough to police these concepts 'appropriately'.

As a proud alum of Morehouse College, I love my institution with my whole heart and am infinitely indebted to her for making me the open and unapologetic Black queer man -- the Morehouse Man -- that I am today. In all that I do, I seek to only bring continued strength and honor to "Dear Old Morehouse". As we all look forward to the continued leadership of Morehouse College – the Morehouse that is going to be – we must realize that we must divorce ourselves from certain barnacles of paternalism and bigotry that have characterized the Morehouse that was. The Morehouse demagogue cannot ethically be replicated by the same oppressive forces that helped to create it. The Morehouse Man (and thus, the definition of such) is ever evolving because that is what keeps our mission alive – the renewed spirit of the Morehouse College mission inspired in a new breed of distinctive philosopher-kings. Our image is not marred or depleted by creating a space in our trajectory for fluid gender expression and non-heteronormative sexuality. On the contrary, this phenomenon radically fortifies our purpose and cements our name further in the annals of history, transforming the conventional concept of Black masculinity and liberating all Black men from the oppressions of imperial patriarchy that have kept us bound in dysfunction for so long. And, though that heritage of prescribed hegemony may be what brought us to revere Mother Morehouse and her sons, it is incumbent upon us to seek an even higher standard of existence – one that embraces diverse expressions of Black male identity, folding them into to the excellence of Morehouse College. This is how we grow the legacy and lead the people.

This is how we change the world.

OCTOBER 22nd COALITION TO STOP POLICE BRUTALITY

2009-10-19T17:22:00.005+03:30

heard about this on the radio this morning (WBAI, which broadcasts my beloved Democracy Now)...haven't yet discerned much about its origens, history, context (beyond the obvious), but worth posting, because it's always important to speak out about police brutality.

"October 22nd is the day when people all over
the country demand a STOP to police
violence, repression, and the criminalization of
a generation. In different cities and through
different means of expression, we raise a
resounding "NO" to these police raids, attacks
on the youth and immigrants, and destroying
of lives."

List of Assembly Points for Oct. 22, 2009
(information is posted as it is received, so check later if your area is not listed yet.)

Atlanta, Ga. oct22atl@gmail.com
1 p.m. rally at Woodruff Park
Peachtree Street & Edgewood Ave (downtown Atlanta)
and then march to Atlanta City Jail

at Georgia State University in Atlanta:
12:15 p.m. rally in the courtyard
speakout and march to Woodruff Park for the citywide event

Chicago, IL. 312 217 2202
12 Noon
Federal Plaza, Adams and Dearborn

Cleveland, OH
3:30 Public Square
(in front of Tower City) in downtown Cleveland

Fresno, CA IWAPGH@aol.com 559-268- 2261
6 p.m. at the park
corner of "N" street and Mariposa St.
Vigil

High Point, N.C.

Humboldt-Eureka-Arcata, CA.
copwatchrwc@riseup.net
707 633 4493
Behind the " redwood curtain", we recognize the 22nd and the 23rd because
16 year old Christopher Burgess, a native youth, was fatally shot by a Eureka cop on
October 23, 2006. We are mobilizing for two continous days of action remembering those who
lost their lives to police, fighting against an international politics of cruelty, and building community
that recognizes everyone's dignity. October 22 and 23rd: guerilla theater, marches,
memorial bike ride, vigil, speak-outs, film screenings, and as always, sharing food, rage,
tears and strength together.

Kansas City, MO.

Los Angeles, CA
contact: aidge@aestheticscrew.com
12 p.m. Gather Crenshaw and Florence in South Central
2 p.m. Marchnorth on Crenshaw to Leimart Park (43rd and Crenshaw)
4 p.m. Rally at Leimart Park
6 p.m. Vigil, and march from Crenshaw to Slauson

Minneapolis, MN
5 p.m. Loring Park
March to Homeless Shelters and other areas strongly impacted by police brutality

New Haven, CT
gather on the steps of New Haven Courthouse
(corner of Elm and Church)
3:30 PM
There will be a speak out
Contact: newhavenrbnyc@aol.com

Newark, NJ.
lvick06@yahoo.com
732 600 2694
Rutgers School of Law, Newark
123 Washington Street, Newark, NJ
Brown bag lunch --
what can law students do about police brutality?
New York, NY
347 586 1773
4:30 p.m. Washington Square Park -- Rally and March (assemble west of fountain)
6:30 p.m. Voices Against Police Brutality -- music and art protesting police brutality
at Gay and Lesbian Community Center, 208 West 13th Street
(7th Avenue and 13th St.)

Olympia, WA
Contact: mailto:ersatzcats@gmail.com

Pensacola, Florida
october22pensacola@gmail.com
5 p.m. corner of Hayne and Cervantes
(near the Pensacola Police Department), then
Marching to Pensacola City Hall meeting that
begins at 7 p.m. at 180 Governmental Center/ 222 West Main Street

Phoenix, Arizona
contact: 602 232 5884

Pittsburgh, PA
Contact: taylorceleste@hotmail.com, kennethalanmiller@yahoo.com
Freedom Corner

San Antonio, TX
Contact: jgemgaiton@aim.com

San Diego, CA
Contact: Jjordan@janicejordan.org

San Francisco/Bay Area oct22BayArea@gmail.com
12 noon
Oakland City Hall Plaza, 14th and Broadway
Rally and March
and then to the neighborhoods

Seattle, WA
Contact: oct22seattle@hotmail.com/ 206-264-5527
Occidental Park (between S. Washington St. and S. Main St.,
and between 1st Ave. S. and 2nd Ave. S. in Seattle's Pioneer Square District)
5 p.m. gather
5:30 Rally
6:15 March
Disperse at Westlake Park (4th Ave and Pine St.)

Sonoma County, CA

St. Louis, MO
contact: 314 454 9005
capcr_cob@hotmail.com

Bahamas:
Sharaht@gmail.com Thebrentonfoundation.org
March for Justice October 12
9 a.m. Arawak Cay
Justice for Brenton Smith

CANADA:

Guelph, ON:
Contact: guelphunionoftenants@yahoo.com

Montreal, QC
Contact: cobp@hotmail.com

here's a little more on who this is coming from:

National Coordinating Committee (NCC)
The core of the NCC is the six representatives of groups who participated in the finalizing of the date, call and slogan. These are Pam Africa (International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal), Akil Al-Jundi (Community Self-Defense Program), Angel Cervantes (Four Winds Student Movement), Omowale Clay (December 12th Movement), Carl Dix (Revolutionary Communist Party) and Keith McHenry (Food not Bombs).

i'm the asshole holding the useless orange lighter

2009-10-17T21:47:00.003+03:30

photo from creative loafing

Justice Denies Interracial Couple Marriage License

2009-10-16T04:19:00.004+03:30

Evenin friends,

Just thought you should know that a justice of the peace in Louisianna denied an interracial couple a marriage license because of the potential difficulties their kids would face. He explains that he has "piles" of black friends and that personal racism is not present in this situation.

There are many articles on it. Here is one.

He says that he has denied four couples licenses in the past and always checks to see if he is speaking with an interracial couple before deciding to proceed. Its been a few years since I was very invested in interracial rights issues and up on the all of the current literature on interracial issues.

IT IS SO PAINFUL TO REALIZE HOW HARD IT IS TO TALK ABOUT RACISM NOW WHEN THE LAWS ARE IN PLACE. IT IS SO EASY TO WRITE HIM OFF AS A RACIST SOUTHERN JUDGE. IT IS SO much more than that.

I wish i could figure out what our sit ins need to look like. I know they need to look different. I know what our demands are. I just wish i knew how to demand them. I'm sick of asking. I'm sick of pretending like "non-violent protest" means that there isn't violence around us all the time.

I am sick of this.

I am sick over this.

Ok Utne, We see you!

2009-10-15T22:31:00.004+03:30

Utne magazine published an unbelievably dope list of people making the world better! The movers and lovers and shakers of 2009.

Shout out to two of the Radical Kids Clubs' "people-that-we-are-so-inlove-with-it-hurts" Lex Gumbs! and Dave Zirin!

See the list in its entirety!

2009-10-14T01:28:00.001+03:30

WHAT HELPS YOU REMEMBER WHAT IS IMPORTANT AND WHAT IS JUST IMPORTED?

NORTHERN BREAKFAST

2009-10-12T06:04:00.002+03:30

2009-10-09T17:15:00.001+03:30

This artist's rendering released by NASA on Friday shows the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite as it crashes into the moon to test for the presence of water.

Call Me the Poor Girl Cause I Love to Fight Them

2009-10-09T16:34:00.002+03:30

gchat: where real talk happens

8:53 AM me: omgggg

8:54 AM Ishta: this is ridiculous
i dont know about you, but im personally not down for the moon or the prize
it's all a little fishy
especially because he wasn't even nominated

me: agreed

8:56 AM Ishta : but whatevs im a total conspiracy theorist half the time

me: oh me too
we are prob right too

8:58 AM Ishta : conspirators tend to be mad obvious though anyway
and wtf we bombed the moon on the same day that obama got the prize
projecting, anyone?
trying to distract us

me: obvi

8:59 AM Ishta : i don't know who to be suspicious of...nasa or....the us gov...wait aren't those like almost the same thing
plusss
i was watching msnbc this morning and they said the patriot act was supposed to be getting an expansion
wtf?

me: mama came into my room at 7 and said obama won the peace pirze and i was half asleep and i said ..."why"

Ishta : yeah
they said he's giving a speech at 10:30
this is so weird

9:01 AM me: ugh
Ishta : yeah
pigs have flown
on that avian swine flu tip

9:02 AM me: is unthankful a word?

Ishta : haha

me: im putting this conversation on my blog

9:03 AM Ishta : oh boyzies

me: haha
no really, is it a word?

Ishta : i'm all about making shit up
ishta is a word in arabic and it means cool

9:04 AM me: :-)

Ishta : i thought that was just the sound people made when they censored the word shit on the radio
anything is possible.
and yet they are interchangeable in english, look:
ruby-beth is the ishta

9:05 AM im scared for this blog post :-{

me: dont be
the gov is watching us already

9:06 AM ill change your name
to
ishta

Ishta : ok
haha
i'm so curious about what he's going to say

me: nothing

feeling inspired

2009-10-08T20:48:00.000+03:30

B.O.B.

2009-10-06T16:47:00.004+03:30

Dear World,
If you aren't on B.O.B, Get on B.O.B.

enjoy in joy

Love,
RB

Time To Start Strategizing

2009-10-05T06:20:00.005+03:30

about how I am going to tell this guy I am in LOVE with him and his words...
Any ideas?

-typewriterblues

arundhati roy fascinating analysis of democracy/neoliberalism/terrorism/occupation/progress/genocide/THE STATE OF HUMANITY AND THE WORLD

2009-10-04T03:42:00.016+03:30

on my way to work a few days ago, I caught part of Democracy Now's hour-long interview with Arundhati Roy. I just went back and re-read it, and this may be one of the most all-encompassing and powerful pieces I have come across in a long time. I've copied most of it below, and highlighted some of the parts i found particularly astute/important, but really the whole thing is just incredible. (also-- she describes in india how the indigenous peoples have been labeled 'maoists' by the government/media as a reaction to their resistance, which is ALL TOO parallel to the situation with the mapuche in the south of chile, down to a T--check out previous posts for more about the relationship between democracy, economic growth, and military repression of the indigenous in chile). full text of DN broadcast available here.

ARUNDHATI ROY, sep 28 2009

"But as we know now, because of the way the global economy is linked, countries are not—you know, the political systems in countries are also linked, so democracies are linked to dictatorships and military occupations and so on. We know that. We now that some of the main military occupations in the world today are actually administered by democracies: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir.

But what I think is beginning to be very clear now is that we see now that democracy is sort of fused to the free market, or to the idea of the free market. And so, its imagination has been limited to the idea of profit. And democracy, a few years ago, maybe, you know, even twenty-five years ago, was something that, let’s say, a country like America feared, which was why democracies were being toppled all over the place, like in Chile and so on. But now wars are being waged to restore—to place democracy, because democracy serves the free market, and each of the institutions in democracy, like you look at India, you know, whether it’s the Supreme—whether it’s the courts or whether it’s the media or whether it’s all the other institutions of democracy, they’ve been sort of hollowed out, and just their shells have been replaced, and we play out this charade. And it’s much more complicated for people to understand what’s going on, because there’s so much shadow play.

But really we are facing a crisis. And that’s what I ask. You know, is there life after democracy? And what kind of life will it be? Because democracy has been hollowed out and made meaningless. And when I say “democracy,” I’m not talking about the ideal. You know, I’m not saying that countries that live in dictatorships and under military occupation should not fight for democracy, because the early years of democracy are important and heady. And then we see a strange metastasis taking over.

---

You know, when September 11th happened, I think some of us had already said that a time would come when poverty would be sort of collapsed and converge into terrorism. And this is exactly what’s happened. The poorest people in this country today are being called terrorists.

And what you have is a huge swath of forest in eastern and central India, spreading from West Bengal through the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. And in these forests live indigenous people. And also in these forests are the biggest deposits of bauxite and iron ore and so on, which huge multinational companies now want to get their hands on. So there’s an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] on every mountain, on every forest and river in this area.

And about in 2005, let’s say, in central India, the day after the MoU was signed with the biggest sort of corporation in India, Tatas, the government also announced the formation of the Salwa Judum, which is a sort of people’s militia, which is armed and is meant to fight the Maoists in the forest. But the thing is, all this, the Salwa Judum as well as the Maoists, they’re all indigenous people. And in, let’s say, Chhattisgarh, something like the Salwa Judum has been a very cruel militia, you know, burning villages, raping women, burning food crops. I was there recently. Something like 640 villages have been burned. Out of the 350,000, first about 50,000 people moved into roadside police camps, from where this militia was raised by the government. And the rest are simply missing. You know, some are living in cities, you know, eking out a living. Others are just hiding in the forest, coming out, trying to sow their crops, and yet getting, you know, those crops burnt down, their villages burnt down. So there is a sort of civil war raging.

And now, I remember traveling in Orissa a few years ago, when there were not any Maoists, but there were huge sort of mining companies coming in to mine the bauxite. And yet, they kept—all the newspapers kept saying the Maoists are here, the Maoists are here, because it was a way of allowing the government to do a kind of military-style repression. Of course, now they’re openly saying that they want to call out the paramilitary.

And if you look at—for example, if you look at the trajectory of somebody like Chidambaram, who’s India’s home minister, he—you know, he’s a lawyer from Harvard. He was the lawyer for Enron, which pulled off the biggest scam in the history of—corporate scam in the history of India. We’re still suffering from that deal. After that, he was on the board of governors of what is today the biggest mining corporation in the world, called Vedanta, which is mining in Orissa. The day he became finance minister, he resigned from Vedanta. When he was the finance minister, in an interview he said that he would like 85 percent of India to live in cities, which means moving something like 500 million people. That’s the kind of vision that he has.

And now he’s the home minister, calling out the paramilitary, calling out the police, and really forcibly trying to move people out of their lands and homes. And anyone who resisted, whether they’re a Maoist or not a Maoist, are being labeled Maoist. People are being picked up, tortured. There are some laws that have been passed which should not exist in any democracy, laws which make somebody like me saying what I’m saying now to you a criminal offense, for which I could just be jailed. Even sort of thinking an anti-government thought has become illegal. And we’re talking about, you know, as you said, 75,000 to 100,000 security personnel going to war against people who, since independence, which was more than sixty years ago, have no schools, no hospitals, no running water, nothing. And now, now they’re being—now they’re being killed or imprisoned or just criminalized. You know, it’s like if you’re not in the Salwa Judum camp, then you’re a Maoist, and we can kill you. And they are openly celebrating the Sri Lanka solution to terrorism, to terrorism.

---

ANJALI KAMAT: Arundhati Roy, can you explain a little bit more about how India has so successfully hidden this side of it, this underbelly of democracy that you bring out in your book—murder, disappearances, torture, rapes, thousands—millions of people displaced, whether it’s for development projects or in the process of fighting wars, tens of thousands disappeared in Kashmir, the insurgency that’s being fought, the military that’s fighting the insurgency in the northeast? How is India, on a global stage, continues to be seen as this successful democracy, a place where investors are flooding to?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, precisely because it is a democracy for some of its citizens, you know? And so, in a way, it has—this whole system has somehow created an elite that is now suddenly enriched in the last, you know, twenty years since the advent of the corporate free market. We have a huge middle class that is hugely invested in this sort of a police—or, you know, a police state that isn’t acknowledged as one. So you have—it’s not just a small sort of coterie of generals, like in Burma, or a kind of military dictatorship that’s supported by the US in America. You have a huge constituency in this country that completely supports this whole enterprise, and you have a free media where 90 percent of the turnover of those media houses comes from corporate advertisements and so on. So they’re also free, but free to also embrace this particular model, in which, you know, a small section of people—well, not a small section; there are millions and millions of people, but they are not the majority of the people of this country. The light shines upon this rising middle class, which is, as I said, such a huge number that it’s a very, very attractive market for the whole world.

So, when India opens its markets, you know, because it has opened its markets, and because it’s—you know, international finance is flooding in, and all of that is so attractive, it is allowed to commit genocide in Gujarat; it’s allowed to commit civil war in the center; it’s allowed to have a military occupation in Kashmir, where you have 700,000 soldiers, you know, patrolling that little valley; it’s allowed to have laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in the northeast, which allows the army to just kill on suspicion. And yet, it’s celebrated. It’s allowed to displace millions of people, but yet it’s celebrated as this real success story, because it has all these institutions in place, even though they’ve been hollowed out.

So you have, for example, a Supreme Court in which there are very erudite judges, and there are some very erudite judgments, but if you look at how it’s actually functioning, it has hollowed out. To criticize the court is a criminal offense. And yet, you have judgments where a judge openly says something like—you know, that—I’ve forgotten the exact words, but how corporate—you know, a corporate company cannot basically commit anything illegal, cannot commit an illegal act, you know? Or you have a judge in court openly talking about, let’s say, Vedanta, which is mining in Orissa for bauxite. And the Norwegian government had pulled out of that project because of the human rights violations and so on; and, you know, for a whole lot of ethical reasons, they pulled out. And in India, you know, the company was taken to court, and a judge openly, in an open court, says that, “OK, we won’t give this contract to Vedanta. We’ll give it to Sterlite, because Sterlite is a very good company. I have shares in it,” omitting to mention that Sterlite is a subsidiary of Vedanta.

You know, but there’s so much fancy footwork. If it was a military dictator, they have would have just said, “Shut up” and “Vedanta will get the project.” But here, there are affidavits and counter-affidavits and a little bit of delay and everything; everyone thinks it’s democracy. You know, you have the Supreme Court hearing on, let’s say, the Parliament attack, where openly the Supreme Court of the world’s greatest democracy says, you know, on the one hand, “We don’t have evidence to prove that the person who was charged is—belongs to a terrorist group,” and a few paras later says, “but the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if we sentence him to death.” And it’s just said so, blatantly, out there, you know? And you can’t criticize it, because it’s a criminal offense.

---

Well, I think, you know, when people would ask me what I thought of Obama, I said I hope that he would land the American empire gently, like the pilot who landed the—who crash-landed the plane in the Hudson.

Yes, he’s expanding the war in Afghanistan. I think, basically, people, including Obama, just don’t know what to do in Afghanistan, and expanding the war is certainly not going to end that war or create any kind of just peace in that region. It’s, in fact, going to exacerbate the situation, draw Pakistan into it, and when Pakistan is drawn into it, so will India, and so on. So it goes.

I think, you know, the real change that has taken place in the last, you know, ten years is also the rise of India and China as kind of imperial powers, you know, playing out their games in Africa and also in parts of Latin America. So it’s a very—and, of course, the rise of Russia.

So, I think the situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir is very volatile. And, of course, let’s not forget that these are nuclear powers, even though a scientist recently has announced that India’s nuclear tests were a damp squib and that they were not successful, but I don’t know what that’s about and why he’s coming out with it now.

But I think we are headed for a lot of chaos. And in India, you know, as I said, while the situation in Kashmir—even now, as I speak in the studio, there’s news coming in of what they call “encounter killings,” you know, almost a few every day. So, obviously, given that nonviolent protest has been put down violently, things are going to go back to a previous era of some kind of militant violence there. And, you know, the heart of India being sort of hollowed out by this civil war and this assault on its poor.

I really don’t know what to say or what to expect, except to say that this kind of pressure can never result in an orderly submission, even if people wanted to submit. What’s going to happen and what is happening is that unpredictable kinds of battles and chaos is erupting all over the place, and, you know, the government is constantly firefighting and trying to douse those flames.

But out of this chaos, something new has to come, and will come, because it cannot go on like this. And I don’t know whether that thing will be worse or will be better, but it can’t go on like this. You know, the kind of polythene bag over our heads has to burst open at some point. You know, we have to be allowed to breathe. And this kind of surveillance and drone attacks and all this that’s being planned is not going to be able to hold down millions of people who are just getting impoverished and hungry and homeless.

---

In fact, I was actually—you know, when I was in this place, Chhattisgarh, Dantewada, where the war is unfolding, a senior policeman told me, “You know, Arundhati, as a policeman, I can tell you that the police are not going to be able to solve the problem of these indigenous, you know, these Adivasi people”—“Adivasi” is the word for tribal people—“and I have told the government that the problem with these people is that they don’t have any greed. So, the way to solve the problem is to put a TV in every house. Then we’ll be able to win this war.”

So, you know, you have a situation where more and more people are just outside the barcode. You know, they are what you would call “illegible.” And we have a very, very serious situation here, where now they are planning, you know, once again, to make a—what do you call it—a electronic ID card. Of course, once again, to people who don’t have water, who don’t have electricity, who don’t have schools, but they will have ID cards, and people who don’t have ID cards are not going to exist.

---

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Arundhati Roy. She’s speaking to us from New Delhi, India. She has just published a new book called Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. Arundhati, why “listening to grasshoppers”?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Oh, it was the name of a lecture that I did in Turkey last year on the anniversary after the death of Hrant Dink, the Armenian journalist who was shot outside his office for daring to talk about the Armenian genocide of 1915, which you’re not supposed to talk about in Turkey. And my lecture was really about the historical links between progress and genocide.

And “listening to grasshoppers” was—referred to the testimony an old lady called Araxie Barsamian, who’s the friend—mother of my friend David Barsamian, who is Armenian and who talked about how, you know, the wheat had ripened in her village in 1915, and suddenly there was this huge swarm of grasshoppers that arrived. And the village elders were very worried about this and said it was a bad omen. And they were right, because a few months later, when the wheat had ripened, the Turks came, and that was the beginning of the Armenian genocide for her.

And so, I talk about—the whole lecture was really about how societies are prepared for genocide and how genocide is, you know, it’s like part of free trade, and how, you know, genocides that are acknowledged, and denied, and prosecuted, all have to—all depend on world trade, and always have done, and about how I worry that a country like India, that is poised on the threshold of progress, could also be poised on the threshold of genocide.

And that essay was written in January of last year. And now, as you see, the troops are closing in on the forest areas where the poorest people live. And they will be sacrificed at the altar of progress, unless we manage to show the world that we have to find a different way of seeing and a different way of going about things.

But here in India, there’s the smell of fascism in the air. Earlier, it was a kind of an anti-Muslim, religious fascism. Now we have a secular government, and it’s a kind of right-wing ruthlessness, where people openly say, you know, every country that has progressed and is developed, whether you look at Europe or America or China or Russia, they have a quote-unquote “past,” you know, they have a cruel past, and it’s time that India stepped up to the plate and realized that there are some people that are holding back this kind of progress and that we need to be ruthless and move in, as Israel did recently in Gaza, as Sri Lanka has recently done with its hundreds of thousands of Tamils in concentration camps. So why not India? You know? Why not just do away with the poor so that we can be a proper superpower, instead of a super-poor superpower?

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, we just have less than a minute. What gives you hope?

ARUNDHATI ROY: What gives me hope is the fact that this way of thinking is being resisted in a myriad ways in India, you know, from the poorest person in a loincloth in the forest saying, “We’re going to fight,” right up to me, who’s at the other end, you know. And all of us are joined together by the determination that, even if we lose, we’re going to fight, you know? And we’re not going to just let this happen without doing everything we can to stop it. And that gives me a tremendous amount of hope.

Paideia is on Fire

2009-10-03T03:37:00.003+03:30

One buildings of my high school is on fire right now. Please hold us in the light. They are thinking it was intentionally set. Many of us reacted to the new as if it was our own home. It was in many many ways.

The WelfareQueens

2009-10-02T22:15:00.004+03:30

If you don't know this group PLEASE check them out. try to see them if they are ever performing near you. I saw them a couple years ago and it was striking and groundbreaking.

Groundbreaking as is breaking the earth and forcing you to listen in new ways.

From RaceWire
Like many innovative ideas, welfareQueens, a multi-media performance project, was born over a series of kitchen table conversations between a group of poor women in anti-poverty organizing sharing their personal stories with poverty, racism and sexism. Jessica Hoffman for ColorLines.com writes:

One recalled how the welfare system had invaded her family’s life in the 1970s, and how the same struggles against poverty and racism persist today. Another had been told she made a few dollars too many to qualify for public assistance while struggling to care for a disabled elder. A third described the hardships she experienced in seeking health care through the Medi-Cal system.

They met monthly in that kitchen for almost two years. To facilitate the gatherings, they provided each other with food, childcare, and other supports. Over time, they started calling themselves the welfareQueens, a name coined by founder Tiny, aka Lisa Gray-Garcia, and turned their stories into a scripted play. Today, they perform in settings ranging from street protests to classrooms. Since their debut stage performance in summer 2007, they’ve expanded to become a multimedia art, education, and advocacy project. Their mission is to radically alter the public discourse around poverty.

Check out the rest of the article where you can also find a clip of one of their performances.

are we still even trying to pretend we care about democracy?

2009-10-02T19:27:00.005+03:30

(then again, what kind of democracy do WE have, even without coups like this one? see recent post of Arundhati Roy's analysis of democracy's relationship to free trade, progress, and genocide)

Republican Lawmakers Travel to Meet Coup Government in Honduras

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and three Republican congressmen are heading to Honduras to meet with the coup government in defiance of the Obama administration. Senator John Kerry, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, initially blocked the trip from happening but relented late yesterday. Also traveling will be Republican Congressmen Aaron Schock of Illinois, Peter Roskam of Illinois and Doug Lamborn of Colorado. All four have been vocal supporters of the June coup that ousted the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya secretly returned to Honduras last week and is currently inside the Brazilian embassy. On Thursday, a group of Brazilian lawmakers traveled to Honduras and condemned the coup government for attacking the embassy with toxic gas.
-Democracy Now Oct 2

The Southern Breakfast

2009-10-01T21:46:00.007+03:30

One of the most difficult cultural changes for me in going to college in the Northeast was the loss of southern breakfast. The creation and explosion of the Facebook group I MISS WAFFLE HOUSE > MY MOM signaled that I was not alone. Breakfast is an experience. At many Southern schools people dress up for Sunday brunch more than for the night of partying that precedes it. Eggs and Biscuits are just the beginning.

We do it all down here.

I have been a vegetarian my entire life and I still get immense joy out of the wonderfulness of breakfast. Yes, that's right I have NEVER had a one piece of bacon in my entire life and breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day. There is nothing like waking up and making a colorful meal that is easily accompanied by Orange Juice or Coffee or Tea or ALL THREE OMG. The problem with breakfast in the south and particularly Atlanta is that there are so many places that do it so much better than I do. So I always want to go to them. and I do.

My two favorite spots which happen to be famous and classic ATL spots are The Flying Biscuit (opened by emily sailers of the indigo girls among others, they have since sold it) and Ria's Bluebird Cafe. Both of these spots are with in 10 minutes of my house. At the Biscuit I always get the egg-ceptional eggs which is two over medium eggs over two blackbean cakes with salsa, sour cream and feta cheese. I always get greens with it as my side which has a light vinaigrette on it that is mouth watering in its simplicity. I also always get coffee. I am not a coffee drinker but their coffee is so good and just enough of a jolt of a day-starter that it compliments my meal beautifully. I have tried so many times to get something else but it is such a well proportioned meal that I know I would just spend the entire time regretting it if I tried anything else. (kind of like not getting pad thai, i always reset whoever DID get pad thai) Eating the same thing every time is completely ridiculous considering the bites of other people's meals that I've tried over the years. I went recently (who am I kidding I went TODAY) with a friend who got raspberry french toast. I'm not kidding you I ended up almost begging for them not to finish just so I could have a couple more bites.

The vibe at the biscuit is also legendary. Today I spent my entire meal making faces at the toddler at the next table who giggled every time I smiled. At the end of the meal we started chatting with the adults that belonged to the toddler. One of them was the lead singer of Arrested Development and they all invited us to a celebration their church was having. I love bringing people from out of town (esp the aforementioned northeast) because the servers are notoriously nice and kind. They will cater to your every need but not in an annoying way. Everyone is smiling and like many intown ATL restaurants it is extremely racially diverse. I bring friends and just then just sit back as they take it all in. Yes, I say, this IS ATL. Yes, This is really what its like. Enjoy your Breakfast.

PS The Flying Biscuit RECENTLY FRANCHISED.. COMING SOON TO A CITY NEAR YOU... KNOW THAT IT WILL NEVER BE ANYTHING LIKE THE ORIGINAL... NOT HATIN, JUST SAYIN.

carpool

2009-10-01T06:57:00.001+03:30

typewriterblues

http://typewriterblues.com/wordpress/?p=262

she is always speaking to us if we are listening.

2009-09-29T21:49:00.003+03:30

Women of Color in America have grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside its service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony , because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so they do not tear us apart.

– Audre Lorde “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”

Yom Kippur

2009-09-29T07:31:00.006+03:30

MY favorite holiday after my birthday just ended. Stacie spoke beautifully on their blog about the holiday of Yom Kippur including some of the important questions to think about on such a day. For many progressive and/or radical Jews the holiday can be a difficult sell. Yom Kippur is about atoning for one's sins. It is about taking away all distractions to focus on a relationship with divine based on seeking forgiveness for what wrongs we committed in this past year that qualify as sin and focusing on what we intend to do in this coming year. Many folks take issues with such a relationship with the divine and with condemning ourselves as sinners. Traditionally people fast from sundown the evening before through sundown of Yom Kippur day.

I have been doing this for many years and every year I am so hungry. I always took my hunger as part of my experience and worked so hard THROUGH my hunger to find meaning in the holiday. I was not hungry this year. I was instead heightened by not thinking about food, not thinking about my phone, about my blog, about twitter (ruby_beth), about falling in love, about sex, about what to wear and I instead spent most of my day in temple listening, chanting and reconnecting with the things I love and respect about my self and my community and the things I wish to improve upon. Wow. What a difference a day makes. I feel renewed internally and feel the beginnings of building community with the people I was in temple with. I was not condemning to myself but I was very challenging and critical of the things that I take for granted.

The unbelievably special place that my mama and I have attended high holidays services for many years in called Bet Haverim and it was founded by a small group of gay men and lesbians in the Atlanta area that could not find the type of inclusive community they were looking for in Jewish communities in Atl. It is a powerfully inclusive space and is constantly working to improve upon its mission of inclusivity.

Driven by the pleasure of community, we are a congregation that fully understands the needs of families and individuals whose history, outlook or situation means they have not felt comfortable enough in typical Jewish community environments to relax and be themselves. Alternative families, single parents, interfaith families, gays and lesbians, Jews of color, families with adopted children of color, and Jews with a progressive mindset all experience the safe haven of true acceptance at Bet Haverim.

This special place is part of why this holiday is so much more about love and understanding than it ever has been about self hatred and wrath. But really.. I mean REALLY REALLY it was about prioritizing and allowing myself time with myself with my "faults" with my joys and with my contradictions.

RUBIES

2009-09-26T18:50:00.004+03:30

a heads up: geographical distance between your 2 lovely contributors, now in ATL and NYC when previously both within a square mile of CT, might just make this blog a little more sentimental on occasion.

but i wanted to say: RB you may be broke but YOU ARE ONE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE I KNOW.

"rich"

4.	abounding (usually fol. by in or with): a countryside rich in beauty; a design rich with colors.

5.	of great value or worth; valuable: a rich harvest.

6.	(of food) delectably and perhaps unhealthfully spicy, or sweet and abounding in butter or cream: a rich gravy; a rich pastry.

8.	sumptuous; elaborately abundant: a rich feast.

9.	using valuable materials or characterized by elaborate workmanship, as buildings or furniture.

10.	abounding in desirable elements or qualities: a man rich in kindness.

11.	(of wine) strong and finely flavored.

12. (of color) deep, strong, or vivid: rich purple. ("Prices of rubies are primarily determined by color.")

13.	full and mellow in tone: rich sounds; a rich voice.

14.	strongly fragrant; pungent: a rich odor.

15.	producing or yielding abundantly: a rich soil.

16.	abundant, plentiful, or ample: a rich supply.

17.	Automotive. (of a mixture in a fuel system) having a relatively high ratio of fuel to air (contrasted with lean ).

18.

Informal.

a.	highly amusing.

b.	ridiculous; absurd.

fiasco

2009-09-26T09:30:00.006+03:30

lovin the playlist idea, ruby! keep 'em coming.

still stuck in a lupe fiasco rut (well, i clearly don't feel that way-- i can't get enough, but i'm assuming the roomies are getting a little fed up of me playing the same thing ALL THE TIME, and not even a compilation but one artist. well, at least he has lots of others featured...)
since i saw him speak on a panel--about poetry, rock, hip-hop, and words-- at the Brooklyn Book Festival a weekend or two ago.

he was pretty great.

one story about the panel reports that Lupe "explained that before he worked with music and beats, he filled notebooks with words. "I had a plethora of words," he said. "See how many pieces I could collect."

final food for thought:

Lyrics to Intruder Alert :
(feat. Sarah Green)

She said there was no love in her heart,
Cause one day a rapist attacked her and broke that heart apart,
She said there was no way to fix it or to cover her scars,
Then one day a guy came along and probably could help her start,
He was sincere, made her believe it was safe for her to trust again,
Before long she was cool with giving hugs to him,
Knew that it was right, cause something was wrong,
The alarms in her mind didn't tell her he didn't belong,
There was no,

Intruder, [x4]
Alert [x4]

He said nobody else ever loved him,
That's why he'd get high enough to go touch the heavens above him,
Vividly remembers every pipe, every needle that stuck him,
Every alley he ever stepped in, every purse that he snuck in,
Every level of hell he's been to and the one that he's stuck in,
The one he can't escape, even though it's of his own construction,
Maybe you can relate, maybe you're one of those that just doesn't,
Maybe he doesn't care, loves to allow these demons to come in with no,

Intruder, [x4]
Alert [x4]

Famine striking his home, landing no social standing,
In the econmic pecking order of emergency relief distribution systems,
Is in disorder, he's checking water, making sure it's safe enough for his daughter,
To float across in the boat he built, hopefully strong enough to support her,
Praying border patrols don't catch her and process and deport her,
Before she reach the shore of the land of the free, where they feed you,
Treat you like equals, deceive you, stamp you and call you illegal,
and there's an,

Intruder, [x4]
Alert [x4]

find these lyrics very engaging for the linkages they make between violence on different scales, from interpersonal/domestic violence to international/state violence. will look back to syllabus from Borderlands lit class from my last semester at school, cause i know i read some stuff makin some of the same powerful connections about violence in one form--say, state or societal-- re-creating or re-appearing in another form--like interpersonal--, that we as a society have an awful habit of trying to isolate as if it weren't related... get back to you on that one. another example i always think of though is the wall that Israel has built up around Palestine, as if that kind of aggression and violence WASN'T going to just create more in the opposite direction. every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? basic physics. we're too advanced a society at this point to not be getting this stuff that ISNT THAT COMPLICATED. love--> more love. hatred--> more hatred. bah.