Channeling Mo - *Or my "I have finally lost it!" political rant!

All right. For a blog with so much activism going on in it, I rarely really crank up with a political rant or post. Tonight, however...
Meet Mo - pictured here to my left. Mo is the central character in a cartoon series by Alison Bechdel, graphic comic artist and author of the comic series Dykes to Watch Out For (which maybe found here in her Archives. Shameless plug aside ( I really, really LOVE Alison's work, seriously) her character Mo has this habit of going off on political rants in fury at the stupidity of the establishment. And I have been channeling Mo since last night. Settle in for a long post - with fireworks - that goes down several different but inter-connecting paths. Go get your popcorn.
It all started when we were listening to Dreamweaver's favorite alternative radio program Phoenix Rising and he brought up whats going on in the Georgia court system right now. Basically, there have been several attempts via the court system to establish that Barrack Obama is not eligible for re-election for President and to therefore exclude him from the ballot.

(Now. Caveats. Before I go another step with this post. Obama is not perfect. Neither is he Satan incarnate. This is not a blog post about Obama. This is a blog post about some frighteningly scary ignorant politcal maneuvering by persons or people that I am going to *TRY* my best not to use foul language about in the course of this post. I cannot promise to succeed. I have no problems with you, gentle reader if you are not for Obama. But seriously - whats going on here folks is insane. Be forewarned. I will seriously police comments on this post, something I have never done before. All honest opinion welcome, even if it differs from mine. If you're trolling, your comment will be removed - as in take off and nuke it from orbit removed - its the only way to be sure. We now return you to this post. I really am in a mood. Sorry folks.)

So, when I heard about this court case, I went and looked it up, wondering by what technicality they thought they had grounds for this case. OK, yes, I am naive. I'm cute, but naive. In the extreme. Remember - well, its never gone away, but - remember the whole "Birther" movement, wherein President Obama's birth certificate and citizenship came into question?
During the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential primaries, anonymous e-mails from supporters of Hillary Clinton surfaced that questioned Obama's citizenship in an attempt to revive Clinton's faltering primary election campaign. These and numerous other chain e-mails during the subsequent presidential election circulated false rumors about Obama's origin, religion and birth certificate.
Jim Geraghty of the conservative website National Review Online may have sparked further speculation on June 9, 2008, when he asked that Obama release his birth certificate. Geraghty wrote that releasing his birth certificate could debunk several false rumors circulating on the Internet, namely: that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; that his mother had originally named him "Barry" rather than "Barack"; and that Barack Obama, Sr. was not his biological father, as well as the rumor that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen.
In October 2009, anonymous e-mails circulated claiming that the Associated Press (AP) had reported Obama was "Kenyan-Born". The claims were based on an AP story that had appeared 5 years earlier in a Kenyan publication, The Standard. The rumor-checking website Snopes.com found that the headline and lead-in sentence describing Obama as born in Kenya and misspelling his first name had been added by the Kenyan newspaper; and did not appear in the story issued by the AP or in any other contemporary newspaper that picked up the AP story. And so the snowball rolled until it became an avalanche of rumor, counter rumor, debunking sites, "Birther" sites ("Birther" being the term for those who believe that President Obama was not born in the United States.) and endless conjecture.

Now, we - Dreamweaver and I have done some serious research on this. Every single rumor, photo-shopped foreign "birth certificate", fake news story and claim has been debunked. Over. And over. And over. And still the Birther movement will not die. Its worse than trying to stake vampires! This by the way affects me personally - my beloved Father, whom I have such a loving but tangled relationship with is a Birther. He loathes Obama and believes every negative rumor ever put out there. So this hits me very personally. My dad and I are at the point where we are very careful to talk about the weather and neutral subjects. Or at least I am, and try very hard to keep him off politics. Even he has been proceeding more gently with me on it. I think he knows on a certain level how painful it is for me to hear all this coming out of him, even if he doesn't understand why. And given how hard headed he is, that's saying something!

Scanned image of Barack Obama's
birth certificate released by
his presidential campaign in June 2008.

What this all leads up to is...when I checked on the news story about the court case in Georgia subpoenaing Obama regarding possible ineligibility, I - naively - was looking for something new, given that the Birther   stuff has been so incredibly discredited. I mean - President Obama released his birth certificate on June 12, 2008, responding to the rumors by posting  an image of Obama's birth certificate. As if it hadn't already been settled at the very beginning before any of this started by the rigorous back ground checks that occur when one seeks the office of President. Gah! So...what do I find when I go to check on the Georgia court case????

Oh yes...the Birthers are at it again. Did I mention I am naive? My jaw dropped. Here's the story -  a Georgia resident made the complaint, which is intended to keep Obama’s name off the state’s ballot in the March presidential primary. The reason - oh yes - the tired old thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory of President Obama not being a US citizen.  The kicker is the lawyer they retained to represent them...Orly Taitz. Oh. My. God. Orly Taitz is a Moldavian emigrant to the US who became a naturalized citizen in 1992. She has a law degree from Taft, and was admitted to practice law in California in December 2002. She also speaks five languages: English, Hebrew, Romanian, Russian and Spanish, as well has having a dental practice. So she obviously is intelligent. She also claims that she lost relatives in the Holocaust and that her grandmother witnessed the Kishinev pogrom.

None of which prevents her from being, insofar as I can tell, crazier than a bedbug, evidently.

Along with spear heading and leading the Birther movement, and claiming that President Obama is not a US citizen and a Radical Muslim (which is he is not - he is a Christian, albeit progressive and pluralist) she also claims such things as a number of homosexuals from Obama's former church have died mysteriously (which has what to do with what???), that a person who was cooperating with the FBI in connection with Obama's passport died mysteriously, "shot in the head" (didn't happen); that a Kenyan birth certificate with the name "Barack Obama" is authentic (and we're coming back to that one, in a moment folks!), that her life and

Orly Taitz

property has been threatened and vandalized by the government, that internment and labor camps are being built for "anti-Obama Dissidents" - they're not - and that Osama bin Laden was killed years ago, with his body kept on ice, and the announcement of his death was timed to divert attention from an upcoming court case she is litigating challenging Obama's citizenship - oh my aching head. Really? Seriously? She also has other theories such as a strain of bird flu deliberately developed to kill people, PayPal attacks, the deletion of her Wikipedia entry (which was right there when I went to look for it) , and Google's flagging her webpage as an attack site and suppressing search results for her name - which is a joke because she's all over the damn internet in all directions...as in, oh, about 713,000 results when I last checked. Its called a persecution complex at the least. And by all means - go look at her suppressed, flagged, non-existent Website, please. 

Anyway, she's the lawyer representing the case in Georgia. She's already tried this in Alabama, New Hampshire - both of which were thrown out by the way - as well as litigation for military personal who challenged orders implementing his voluntary deployment to Afghanistan because of his claim that Obama is not a legitimate president and thereby could not order his deployment. She has numerous other cases - all of which have been dismissed and thrown out, and she has been sanctioned and fined 20,000.00 dollars for for deliberate misconduct in court. 

Now, remember the "Kenyan Birth Certificate" I said we'd get back to? Here's the icing on the cake. In 2009 Orly presented a photograph of Barrack Obama's Kenyan Birth Certificate.

 

This turned out to be a proven forgery of an Australian man's certificate of birth posted on an ancestry research site that was lifted and photo-shopped. It had so many glaring errors on it that it boggles the mind that anyone could take it seriously or think they could prove it genuine - errors such as incorrect ages, questionable birth locale, and unbelievably and most glaringly, the use of the term "Republic of Kenya", when actually at the alleged date of issue on this document, it was actually known as the "Dominion of Kenya" on official documents. Orly Taitz is too smart - one would think - to weaken her position as champion of the Birthers by attempting to present such a weak forgery, particularly when a few minutes of research would have turned up the discrepancies before attempting to go public with it. Evidently intelligence was not enough to prevent out right idiocy on this one. 

Now, having pretty much - I sincerely hope - proven my point on Ms. Taitz, which is that she's approaching delusional in this mess and should not be taken seriously....

Here's where my jaw hit the floor last night and put me into a serious rage. So, we were listening to the radio show last night, found out that Orly Taitz is at it again in Georgia...attempting to legally keep President Obama off the ballot for re-election, and attempts to subpoena him...AND THE JUDGE UPHELD THE SUBPOENA AND ENFORCED IT. 

A lawyer representing President Obama's interests submitted a letter - they probably have a form letter file a mile long by now to deal with Orly - stating that Obama's legitimacy has been clearly proven legally at the highest level, and they would not be responding to this nuisance case, etc. And the Judge upheld the subpoena ruling anyway and filed for Taitz and crew! 

What. The. Hell?!?!

Phoenix, our radio dude went on to point out to his listeners that this could seriously become major trouble, because just as obviously as the President cannot respond to nuisance lawsuits, particularly ones that have about as much legal precedence as a snowball in hell, if the judge upheld the plaintiffs side, it becomes a Civil Rights/States Rights issue and the rallying cry from that could become very ugly indeed. At the very least, if it truly carried all the way through, it would set a precedence of excluding President Obama from the ballot which would spread from state to state in the Deep South and that could result in the government stepping in, civil unrest and possible riot and mayhem. 

Pepper spray during Occupy Protest

Still with me here? Because we're about to take another turn down how my night went last night. Having heard the above, I became sincerely upset. Um...actually, in a furious rage to be honest. How dare such idiots play this kind of game with political due process in such a serious situation! You think I'm exaggerating? You think Phoenix is exaggerating? Remember, we've just seen the Occupy Movement get gassed, discredited and smashed into the bedrock by what amounts to brownshirt goons - you really think this could be an exaggeration? Let me go one step further. 

I was very upset last night about this whole thing. Sleep kind of went out the window, and I was sort of compulsively patrolling the internet chasing random searches on all this mess. So having thought about the States Rights thing, and gone chasing down several related posts to those things, I went and looked at THE main back history to the whole idea of States rights in America - The American Civil War of 1861–1865. Or as I grew up hearing it referred to - and I am NOT kidding - The War of Northern Aggression. 

Confederate Flag on t
he Capitol Grounds. 

I was raised in the deep South. I am by birth South Carolinian. I grew up with Rebel Battle Flags EVERYWHERE...including the one still flying on the capitol grounds today. I was taught that the Civil War was about STATES RIGHTS...that the Federal Government wanted to take away our freedoms, that slavery was not nearly as bad as it is fictionally portrayed (Really. I was taught that.), that freeing the slaves actually did them harm and that the war was never about slavery - that was just an issue introduced half way through as an emotional rallying cry. The phrase "The south will rise again" was not uncommon, Sherman's name is still hated here, and the phrase "damnyankee" was one word. And the Klu Klux Klan was just there to protect the women and children. All the classic cliches that you think could not be true about Southerners....well. They are. They were. That's what I grew up in and around the first half of my life. How in God's name I escaped being an emotionally blind bigoted bastard I will never know, but thanks be to God - and I MEAN that - somehow I did. I was taught to be proud my state fired the first shot that started the whole freaking blood bath. And it was a blood bath - that war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. It accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males in the United States aged 13 to 43 died in the Civil War, including 6% in the North and 18% in the South. (Don't know what the figures would be if other races and women and children were included in that.) 

Its funny how when you're sure of what you think you know, you never really dig in and look at it until something else knocks the blinders off. Now, I was already totally disgusted with the whole "slavery wasn't all that bad, and emancipation actually harmed the slaves" thing...Naive I may be - Stupid I am not. But I did believe that the Civil war was about States Rights, and the evils of the Federal Government.  Its what I was taught in school and at home and at church and rubbed off on me at social gatherings. What else was I to know, when that was all I had ever been taught. Until last night, sore and angry and worried about my country's troubles at the hands of some crack pots and conspiracy theorists, I turned and did some true unbiased digging for the first time ever about the whole States Rights "movement" that arose out of the Civil War.

Rare 1863
photograph of a slave 

Oh, yes, it was about States Rights alright. The right to own slaves and continue the furtherance of slave ownership into newly opened territories of America after slavery had already been declared illegal everywhere except the specific slave states and the actual slave trade coming over seas had been criminalized. And for THIS my ancestors rose and fought one of the bitterest, most brutal wars ever, brother against brother, that generated the hatred, prejudices and resentments that still burn today in the deep south...for the right to own and enslave their fellow human beings. And because of this cultural myth that still is alive and well today - that the Federal Government is out to "get us" Southerners - we're primed for it already. Armed conflict and rebellion is romanticized in the name of that lie still. And when this legal circus that is being driven by the Birther's disproven fraudulent claims  to exclude Obama from the Presidential ballot in the states gets tossed out and quashed like it should be...its not impossible that civil unrest and blood could erupt in the streets.

Oh yes. If this Birther movement to exclude Obama from the ballot continues, with the Occupy debacle behind us - and the Occupy movement will be cranking back up when warm weather gets here, is my bet - it could well explode. I am not being paranoid. You saw the news this summer with the Occupiers being beaten, dragged off, pepper sprayed and gassed. We're poised over the edge. And the Deep South is where this will erupt if it does and we're living smack in the middle of it. God help us.

I guess the final reason for my severe rage was that every single conspiracy theory, crack pot claim, and bitter foul lie about President Obama that Orly Taitz is pushing or has created, I've heard from my father's lips as gospel truth. And he knows, despite my care not to start anything or even get involved in any political discussion with him, he knows that I disagree with him on this subject. And he thinks I am blind to reality and that he knows it all. It hurts. Orly Taitz's single handed insanity has brainwashed my dad into twisted knots of conspiracy theories and hatred and there is nothing I can do about it. Not one thing. I asked my dad what he thought, the day President Obama's birth certificate was released, and he said as far as he was concerned it was a fake, the man was no US citizen, but a Kenyan born Muslim who should be run out of the country and that even if he held Obama's birth certificate in his hand, he still wouldn't believe it, period. And this is why, perhaps I am so blazing mad. These lies have come close to destroying my relationship with my father, and have twisted what should be golden years for him into something filled with fear and hate because he is afraid of change and its easier to hate than think. It breaks my heart and has made me angrier than anything has in a long time. I am trying not to misuse that anger and succumb to hate myself. So I'm venting about it, and trying to wrestle with it and win through to being better than this.

Two final points. Orly Taitz is working on running for Senator for the state of California. Oh no. Hell no! Please God, no. She has to be un-electable. Unfortunately, her being born somewhere other than the USA doesn't preclude her from holding any office except the presidency. How ironic.

Secondly, today in court instead of tossing out the case in Georgia, the court stunningly refused to rule, meaning he did not toss them out on their asses - yet. Instead,they are to present their evidence, and he will make a ruling by February 5th, and where this will lead next, who knows. Hopefully he will toss it out. We'll see. I can't imagine he wouldn't. Here's hoping.

These are my honest thoughts. Perhaps venting here will give me the ability to see clearly and not be so blind furious. Perhaps the future will be better than my fears, will instead, be the future of my hopes. Such are my prayers this night.
May God give us grace. All of us.

Martin Luther King Jr. - the Force of the Soul

I Have a Dream is the 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of theAmerican Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address. According to U.S. Representative John Lewis, who also spoke that day as the President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering "I Have a Dream"
at the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March.

October offering...

The Witch

Cameron 11/27/2011

She appears this time of year,

Hanging from porches and

October trees…

Seen on the faces of children

In cackling masks.

Where did she come from?

What was her form?

Tortured body

Bent over, twisted, grotesque,

Broken bones, shattered ribs,

Teeth missing,

Beaten

Face green with bruises,

Swollen with blows,

Fingers smashed into claws

Clutching, desperate…

Draped in cloth soaked black with pitch

Stinking, bitter mercy

This crone of sixteen

Or twenty-two

Or forty-five,

Or sixty-five

Or eighty,

Riding the rumbling carts

Over rutted roads

Between jeering crowds

To the approaching fires,

For her “crime”

(Ultimate victim blame).

Only in the end rising free,

A dark black Phoenix

Of ash and smoke

Flying away on the wind of the world.

And today’s  autumn wind tugs this night

On fire proof black synthetics

And green plastic masks,

As children wear her form,

 Threaten tricks,

Seek treats,

Oblivious,

 To the wind calling low

“Never again!” 

The Way Home

Thursday night was my Cultural Competency class and we watched a second video on racism called "The Way Home". This video was comprised of   64 women organized into eight racially and ethnically defined “Councils.” The eight councils represented Indigenous People, African-American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian, European-American, Jewish, Latina, and Multiracial.Though the purpose of the individual council dialogues is to explore the challenges related to living in a white supremacist world, each group uncovers a variety of in-group issues and tensions based on skin color, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. 

The difference in the first and second videos we have watched were profound. In the first video a small mixed group of men, of different ethnic groups, gathered and confronted racism and one another, often times in harsh anger...the dialogue was powerful, combative and taut. In this video, the women's councils were separate and spoke with each other, confronting racism within and without, but not being overtly pitted against each other. The women in each space created sacred space, altars, with candle light and objects from differing cultures, from their pasts, that had deep personal meaning for them.

"The Way Home" video was created by World Trust - Social Impact Through Film and Dialogue, Their mission statement reads as follows... 

"World Trust works to eliminate racial injustice through transformational education. World Trust produces programs and seminars based on our films that open minds and hearts. We offer the skills to perceive and challenge the internal and external system that reinforces racial oppression. We believe that suffering perpetuated by racial and economic divides is, at its core, the result of a disconnect from our collective humanity. This disconnect plays itself out within ourselves, in our relationships with others and in our institutions and structures. We use the powerful combination of film, dialogue and transformative learning to create new understandings. In addition, we work to heal the wounds of racism by building community and cultivating the practices of love-in-action and respect: kindness, non-judgment, compassion, deep listening. World Trust sparks individual learning and links it to a growing collective will that is committed to change."

The class discussion was pretty intense afterwards...it was sort of like a combination of everyone's thoughts about the class before this when we had watched The Color of Fear, and our discussions afterwards then, and now reacting also to "The Way Home" that we had just watched. Last week, one of my class mates had spoken up and said that slavery and those horrible times happened a long time ago, and everyone involved in it back then was dead...none of us had been a part of it. (Anybody want to take a running guess at what race she was? It should be obvious!)

So this week, one of my class mates responded to this, by saying that the effects were still on going, and that she could not look at a photograph of blacks being lynched by a white mob, that it hit her personally. I might note that racially motivated lynching by hanging was still going on in the south in 1965, only 46 years ago. 156 African Americans were lynched in SC between 1882 and 1965, and 1965 was within MY life time, people! My father remembers the one in 1947 in the next county over and has mentioned it to me, briefly. (Lynching of course, still goes on today in various forms, and people are still charged with it today - however, the classic hanging lynch mobs of the post Civil War era are believed to have ended in the 60's.) He also remembers as a small boy seeing the KKK clan members ride out in their cars in the dark. My grandmother was approached by a KKK member and given a card with a number to call should anyone ever "bother her".  Given that she was a federal marshal, who backed down from no one, I think his efforts were a bit wasted...

Of course, what haunts me is the opposite of what haunts my classmate. It is painful for her to see the victimization of her people. My people were slave holders. Literally. My great great grandfather's family were southern slave holders; he fought in the Civil War and road courier for Lee, since he was small and wiry. His best friend when he was growing up was a slave boy his same age and the tale is they were mischief makers and holy terrors around the farm growing up and utterly inseparable - they went to war together into the Confederate army. I have always wondered what the other side of the story was from the slave boy's  perspective, how the slowly dawning gulf of slave and master affected these boys' innocent friendship as they left childhood behind. Did their friendship survive it, or did the institution of slavery destroy them in the end?  I have also seen a photocopy of a  broadside for an escaped slave from my families peoples further back before the Civil War...and this is extremely unsettling. The slave was described as mixed race, with red hair...I come from a family of redheads. The implications are bitterly plain. I hope he made it out.

 On my mother's side of the family, I don't know exactly what the history is but there is lingering custom that is very telling. Whenever my large family of cousins gathered for Christmas at my Aunts farmhouse, the tradition was that the first person who got to the door of the farm house was to call out "Christmas Gift"! That was all, just a fun tradition - until I found out where it came from. Slaves would gather at the back door of the main house where ever this was (not my Aunts farm - it was a modern structure on land they bought later in their lives). Having gathered, the first slave on Christmas morning, when the back door opened, who managed to call out "Christmas Gift!" first, was the recipient of a gift, usually a bottle of whiskey that was then shared among the other slaves. I was stunned and horrified...we were using THIS, as a family tradition??? After my Aunt passed away and the farm sold, while the family has remained close, and still gathers as they can, the custom seems to have fallen by the wayside and perhaps that is for the best!

So...I told these stories to the class this past Thursday night, and it was hard to say it, hard to do it. It was profoundly painful to look my African American classmate in the eye and tell her this about my past. I was crying.
And she told me not to feel guilt, not to take that on myself, but to use what I know to stand against racism. Which I told her I most certainly did take that stand, and have and will always.

It was deeply liberating to say these things out loud and for a good purpose - to bring home to my classmates that racism is not a "thing of the ancient past" but that its history in this culture was far more recent then they think...and that the affects of this continue to haunt us all tragically to this day.  It has always disturbed and unnerved me to these things about my past - finding a purpose to tell about them, that was for the good, to help my classmates think and see things differently some how redeems a small part of bearing this knowledge.

The class will not be all about racism - among our discussion topics are included gender and homophobia, class issues, and feminism and misogyny. But I suspect that race will continue to haunt this class and our groups for awhile to come as we wrestle with what all these things mean to us personally and in our futures as culturally competent therapists. 

Betty Ford April 8, 1918 – July 8, 2011

Betty Ford has passed away at the age of 93. Everybody, of course, remembers her for her transparent honesty in dealing with breast cancer and addiction in the public forum, and for founding the Betty Ford Center for addiction treatment - pivotal in the way addiction counseling and aid is managed to day. But...she also during her active years counseled the right wing to moderation regarding social concerns and programs, supported whole heartedly the Equal Rights Amendment, was pro-abortion, pro-women serving in the military in combat, and pro-gays serving in the military. Her voice is silenced now, and people will pick and choose what they wish to remember her for...but she was a great and powerful example for us all.

One plus One plus One, or...Its OK to be Takei!

A bill pending in Tennessee will make it illegal to mention Homosexuality in the schools. George Takei of Star Trek fame has started a campaign against this with the catch phrase "Its OK to be Takei", playing off his coming Out (quite awhile ago) as Gay, the idea its OK to be Gay and his name. He has merchandise for sale to back it, and profits go to charity - you HAVE to go look, HERE, NOW!!!

The image of the famous Star Trek logo in rainbow pride colors with the words "Its OK to be Takei" is picking up speed and going viral - I am seeing it all over FaceBook! Its already on other blogs...Rachel Maddow has talked about it!

What makes this so exciting for me is that one of my best friends here in town DESIGNED the logo (I saw several incarnations of it as she fiddled with it, until she got the one she wanted!) and then, on advice from two of her friends, she sent the logo to George Takei for the fun of it. To her shock and surprise, he wrote her back and jumped on it!!! She immediately gave him permission to use the design, on condition of remaining anonymous and that she would receive no proceeds - she designed it as an activist and chose not to profit from it! So, dang it, I can't tell you her name! 

But I bring her up - and she is probably going to smack me when she reads this - I bring her up because I think she has another message to share. She pointed out that she created the design when she heard about the legislation in Tennessee, another friend posted a tweet about it and then said "make a button", and then another friend said " send it to Takei", and so she did...and now its EVERY WHERE! 

So now when people say that they feel that they can't do anything to make a difference because they're just one person, she can point out that  "me = one person + one of my friends who = one person + one of my other friends who = one person + George Takei = famous but still just 1 person..." 

So I bring up her part in this to make a point...

One person can make a difference. And that one person can be each and every one of us!!!

I think that what my friends and George Takei have accomplished is not JUST one FANTASTIC activist movement, but also that they have a second message - that each of ONE of us CAN make a difference, and that we make that difference in community as well as individually! So as you look at all the crazy legislation and homophobic slurs and hate pickets, don't become discouraged and think that there is nothing you can do, because you are just one person....each and every one of us may be one drop of water, but oceans are filled one drop at a time as the drops all join together!

Activism works! 

One by one and in community!

And all of us can spread it ever day!

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1  + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1...

Luminous beings are we....

Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard Educated and published Neuroanatomist who experienced a stroke on the left side of her brain years ago. She actually remembers the experience of the stroke and how it affected her, and her thoughts are remarkable. She has some very powerful observations about this, that profoundly speak to how we think and live and feel and experience our world. She is amazing!

Remembering, hearing, speaking out...

Rudolf Brazda

Meet Rudolf Brazda. He will be 98 years old this June. He has worked most of his life as a roofer, and has lived the past 30 some odd years in Alsace, France.

But he was born originally, in 1913, in Brossen, Germany.

And he is a survivor of the Nazi Germany concentration camps. In fact, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald, one of the more infamous of the "work camps" the Germans created.  Between April 1938 and April 1945, some 238,380 people of various nationalities including 350 Western Allied POWs were incarcerated in Buchenwald. One estimate places the number of deaths in Buchenwald at 56,000.

Rudolf Brazda survived it.

He is not a Jew, or a Gypsy, or one of the Allies...
He is a 175er.
In fact, Rudolf Brazda is the last living "Pink Triangle" prisoner to have been incarcerated in the Death and Work camps for being homosexual.
Here, in his own words, is a little of his story:

He was living in Germany in the last days of the old Wiemar Republic, with its easy tolerance and safety for homosexuals, when the rise of Nazi Germany changed everything...after being arrested twice under the 175 law prohibiting Homosexuality, instead of being deported as he expected, he was taken to Buchenwald in 1942. And the prisoners uniform they gave him had the Pink Triangle patch on it - not the symbol of Gay Pride as it is today, but a public mark of shame and singling him out as homosexual.

He spent 3 years in Buchenwald in unimaginable conditions, and finally, after being hidden by a friend, in the area where they worked, Brazda, managed to avoid being taken on the infamous death marches, and was rescued by the Americans.
He emigrated to France, to Alsace and in the early 1950s, Rudolf met Edi at a costume ball, who became his life companion. In the early 1960s they moved into a house they built in the suburbs of Mulhouse, where Rudolf still resides. Rudolf tended to Edi for over 30 years after he was crippled by a severe work accident, until Edi's death in 2003.

In spite of old age, he is a keen observer and follower of the news. So in 2008, when he heard on German TV of the impending unveiling of a memorial to homosexual victims of Nazism in Berlin, he decided to make himself known. Although he was not present at the monument's inauguration on May 27, 2008, an invitation was extended to him to attend a ceremony a month later, on the morning of the Berlin CSD gay pride march. Since then, Rudolf has been invited to attend a number of gay events, including Europride Zurich in 2009 and some smaller scaled events in France, Switzerland and Germany. In 2010, Rudolf also received the gold medals of the cities of Toulouse and Nancy in recognition of his commitment to bear witness locally and nationally in France.

Age, and health permitting, Rudolf Brazda is determined to continue speaking out about his past.  Because he knows that the generations to come must know his story.  And we must listen to him while his voice is still with us.

 Because only in remembering, in hearing the stories, in speaking out and taking a stand, can we stop the barbed wire and the hate from rising again.

 

Rudolf Brazda as a young man. 

And then we too must speak...

ANYBODY PASSING THROUGH, PLEASE READ!

...and especially including the links. The New York Times recently published an article regarding the heineous rape of an 11 year old girl in Texas. That such a thing could happen is horrifying enough...however the New York Times article compounded this atrocity by victim blame, subtle stereotyping, and a sickening description of the crime scene. 

The issues attending this are well explained here at Alternet, including that we have been told the ages of the men and several have been personalized: "Five suspects are students at Cleveland High School, including two members of the basketball team. Another is the 21-year-old son of a school board member." Etc. All we know about the 11-year-old is her age and gender.Quotes cited in the article place blame on the mother of the child, who for all we know may have been frantically looking for or appealing for help for her daughter, and even if she wasn't, does that justify gang rape? The little girl is described as dressing inappropriately for her age (too old and hanging out with older boys) which perpetuates the stereotype of "she asked for it", which as my friend MizBehavin states "I don't care what a female is wearing, how her make up is, if she is buck naked and dancing the watusi in the middle of the street .... rape is wrong.To rape a child is beyond foul...People have this misconception that rape is a sexual/sensual act. It's not. It's about power. A rapist takes the victims power to control what happens to their own body." 

Let me point out some more from the actual article..."The town’s economy has always rested on timber, cattle, farming and oil. But there are pockets of poverty, and in the neighborhood where the assault occurred, well-kept homes sit beside boarded-up houses and others with deteriorating facades." Obviously (dripping with sarcasm, note) these things only happen on the "poor side of town". couldn't possibly happen in a well to do neighborhood, and well, poor people aren't as important, and they do these things to each other, they are not as "human" as we are...
They said "she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to agrown woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground"...friends, I am in a therapy masters program, and I can very clearly state that a young child who dresses and behaves in ways that are older like this quite possibly has already been a victim of sexual predation and molestation.If I had been the school counselor, I would have been all over this looking for that possibility! That should be a screaming red flag to assess for child molestation somewhere back up the time frame...instead, as is pointed out, she is judged as a little harlot who tempted men.
The trailer where this atrocity took place is sickeningly, lovingly described down to the last detail...last time I looked, the latest shooting at the local gas station was not described down to the location of the aisles and the amount of milk in the freezers! In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a description of a crime scene like this outside of a murder mystery, let alone in a newspaper that is of the caliber the NYT is SUPPOSED to be. I got the feeling the author of this garbage was enjoying fantasizing about the scene! It felt slimy!

There is a Petition circulating for the New York Times to issue a published apology for their coverage of this incident and publish an editorial from a victim's rights expert on how victim blaming in the media contributes to the prevalance of sexual assault. Please take a moment of your time and sign it...there is a space to personalize your signature with your thoughts. They are up to 15,000 signatures at least, at the time of this blog. 

Sadly, so far, the New York Times has failed miserably in its response, stating that they published the views they found, and standing by their article. 

Finally, partially in response to this article, as well as to other issues arising in the news and community, a new Face Book Group has been formed called Survivor Here. Its mission statement is as follows...

"This group, Survivor Here has formed out of a community of friends who have reached the point that we feel we must do something more than just rant about social injustice, hate and pain. We wish to make our words heard. We wish to be available with compassion to those who are in need and hurt. We wish to provide a forum for not only our anger and our activism, but also for those who are also survivors, who know a survivor, or whose social conscience and compassion drives them to do more. We wish to address Rape and this culture that blames the victim, and perpetrates the pain. We wish to address religious persecution and intolerance. We wish to address Marriage Equality and and Equal Rights for GLBTQ's We wish to address all hate crimes and racism We wish to address any time any where that our culture and our government fails in its moral and ethical duty. We wish to hear your stories... We wish to honor all our experiences with compassion and gratitude for our strength and survival as a community and a family. We wish to honor diversity. If you know of any petition, injustice or need, please contribute it to the group. Survivors here... And our voice will be heard! "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead"

Anybody who wishes to join and contribute or needs a place to vent, be an activist, or share their story in community, please check it out and join. 

Maybe its a small thing, but small things change the world! 

Counter Protest - Fourth and Final Part...

Prophet H. Walker is questioned regarding True Light Pentecostal Church's picket permit.

A final post on the Counter Protest to Westboro Baptist Church's scheduled picket of the screening of Anatomy of Hate...

As we now know, Westboro Baptist Church was a no - show, though we happily went ahead with our counter protest. However, there were evidently some individuals who showed up in SUPPORT of Westboro, which is something I have never heard of occurring before. Not to say it hasn't, but I sure have never heard of it, or seen pictures of any other church or organization ever supporting or turning out to join Westboro's infamous hate filled picket lines. Until this past Monday. 

True Light Pentecostal Church  showed up with eight people to support Westboro.“We're protesting because we're against these rallies that the sodomites (and) lesbians have. We're trying to show another side of America — the true side of America,” said Prophet H. Walker, overseer of True Light.


One wonders if they even understood the original reasoning Westboro scheduled to turn out? The Phelps picketers scheduled their protest to oppose Anatomy of Hate; Dialogue of Hope because it, rightfully so, identifies them as a hate group, not as a direct protest of anything GLBTQ related. True Light's statement referring to our counter protest as a rally of sodomites and lesbians is utterly ludicrous, given that the percentage of GLBT in the crowd of students was actually very low - most were straight, and a fair amount were both GLBT and straight identifying Christians. Also, based on all the photographs and information I have been able to turn up, True Light appears to be an African American Church. Anatomy of Hate opposed racism of the most virulent sort - the Aryan movements that would despise and seek to destroy a church like True Light. Over all, this very much boggled my mind. True Light, it must be pointed out, does have mission projects that house and feed the homeless and the hungry, and despite their extremely conservative stance on scripture, appear to be a positive influence in their venues.

It was still disturbing to realize that my area of the world produced a picket line in support of Phelps and Westboro's virulent hate message, particularly since it was obvious that they had not truly researched what they were protesting in actuality. It kinda blows my mind, actually. 

I also learned that money was raised based on the public's counter protest! The money, totaling $550.00, went to  Piedmont Care, a local AIDS non profit advocacy organization and for Upstate Pride, the local organization for the Gay Pride in this area. This is excellent. So...lets see...a hundred or so students on the campus counter protesting, a hundred or so counter protesters from the local community and surrounding colleges also taking a stand, a packed out showing of Anatomy of Hate, funds raised toward two excellent organizations, Westboro was a no show, and even though it disturbed me that they showed at all, only eight very mistaken picketers for Westboro. 

All in all...I am proud of my community and very glad to have been a part of it that Monday night! 

Counter Protest Part Three...

So, what then, why then, do we kill? Why do we hate? Why do we do these horrible things to ourselves as a self aware sentient species? The Documentary explored this – that we are very much wired for survival by our evolutionary heritage. Our Limbic systems are wired for survival, for finding food, for procreation, for fight or flight. However, as self aware intelligent species, we have the capacity for Love, for culture, for science, for learning, for growth beyond imagining – we imagine. And we also Hate.  Carl Jung’s idea of the Shadow self that we are uneasy with, the dark, survival oriented, aggression that is in all of us – we perhaps project it outward – no, not me, I can’t be like this – he’s the demon, he’s the bad guy, he is the focus for all my aggression…I am good, I am saved, I am superior. And when we are told that we are threatened by the Other, when we are told that the Other are monsters, we hate. We damn. We kill.

So, what about the other half of the documentaries title – “Dialog of Hope”? Where in all these gory, pitiless, nightmare scenes does the Hope come in, when does dialog start?  

The Israeli/Westbank has a growing number of Israeli and Arabs who have withdrawn from the armies and the insurgents, and have begun to sit down and talk. The call themselves Combatants for Peace. They are dialoging. They are discovering that there are no demons, only people who have been trapped in this cycle and that there is a better way out – they have begun a school for Israeli and Arab children together, so that they can play together and learn together and grow up without hate and talking to each other and finding their best friends among each other.

The US troop who lost one of their members to the Iraqis, later found themselves teamed up together in a mission against Al Qaeda with the very men who had most likely killed their buddy. It was hard going, but they sat down and talked and slowly realized that they we all people, more alike than different, able to talk, able to understand that they did not have to hate each other, that they both had friends who had died because they were caught in the machinery of war, but they did not personally wish anyone to die or to kill each other. And they became friends and teammates together.

The Westboro Baptist Church founder, Fred Phelps has a stunning unknown past. He was a Civil Rights Lawyer who in the 60’s took on many Civil Rights cases for the black community and won. He is honored by the NAACP. During that time, he and his family were called nigger lovers and suffered abuse at the hands of the community, as he fought the Jim Crowe laws.

And then there in the movie, there is the story, in his own words in an interview, of the White Supremacist who went into a gay church to plant a bomb on a Sunday morning which would have killed close to 100 people. He sat there, in the service, brief case in hand with the bomb…and looked around and thought, these are people just like me. They are here to be close to God, just like I do at church. How can I do this? And he turned to his buddy who was with him…and said, “Come on. Let’s go.” And walked out, taking the un-triggered bomb with him.

 When we stop projecting hate, when we stop listening to rhetoric that says “Any one different is a monster, is not like me, I must hate them, I must kill them”, when we start talking to people and beginning that dialog, that discussion and see the person as another human being, more alike us than different from us, the cycle of fear and aggression and hate begins to break. It does not mean that we must AGREE with each other, but that we can disagree without making the other into an enemy to focus our hate on. I cannot agree with Shirley Phelps Roper…everything she stands for is anathema to me, as I am sure I am to her. But I can look past it, and not hate her, and see instead a human being just like me. Not a monster, but one with pain, and inner struggles that have landed her where she is. And I can take a peaceful stand against what she believes, wearing a shirt that says “Love is…” instead of Hate. Hate is easy. Love and dialog are harder. Both are learned. And dialog is our hope and our salvation.

It was an amazing night, all told, with the counter protest and the incredible turn out, and getting to actually hear and speak to Mike Ramsdell (you betcha I got the DVD autographed!) and seeing this amazing Documentary.  In the end, the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church and their picket weren’t there became irrelevant. What we came together and shared became so much bigger, and I suspect many of my classmates and fellow students left that documentary and that event with their lives changed.  I am honored to have been a part of it, and frankly…

Westboro, we're sorry you weren’t there…you missed something really amazing. 

We missed you! 

The Counter Protest Part One...

So, on Monday, Valentine’s Day, I headed over early to School for the counter  protest to the Westboro Baptist Church. Like really early. I had contacted my teacher that morning and told her that I would be late to class due to the possible Picket line by Westboro Baptist church because of the Anatomy of Hate, Dialog of Hope documentary that was being screened that night at my campus. My going over early had a lot to do with parking concerns – parking is always tight, and I figured that if you started to add in protesters, and people coming to the documentary on top of students fighting for spaces for night classes, I’d better get there early if I wanted a shot at parking at all. Also, I have to admit I was a little wound up. As a member of the GLBTQ community, having WBC come to picket us was pretty big! My small all women’s college has a small Gay Alliance Group and I knew they would be front and center on this, but I wasn’t sure how many others would be there.

            Also exciting  for me, I had contacted my teacher  to tell her I would be late to my not very conveniently scheduled class because I was participating in the counter protest and why, and that I would get there as soon as I could. It had made me a little sad, because I would have to miss the actual documentary, but missing classes in Grad school is just not a good idea. Imagine my delight, after getting a return email from my teacher saying she had not heard anything about this, and was going to look into it, I then received a second email, sent out to my whole class –

            Hi all,

Part of EDU683 Advanced Techniques is developing cultural competency and awareness when working with clients, as the syllabus indicates. We have a really great opportunity tonight to take advantage of. As part of Black History Month, Converse is showing the film, Anatomy of Hate: A Dialogue to Hope at 7:00 pm. I’d like for us as a class to attend the showing.  The maker of the award winning documentary, Mike Ramsdell, will be present to lead a discussion following the showing.  Honestly, I think this will be a great learning experience, much better than a class lecture.  I’ve copied below some information about the film that was published when it showed in Atlanta and pasted it below.  We’ll meet class at 5:30 as usual, have a brief lecture, and then attend. We’ll go at 6:30 in order to get a seat.  As you’ll note in the Dean”s email below, members of a church have threatened to protest the showing of the film. If they follow through, they will have to stay off campus. In a counter-protest, the students are staging a “Love-In” to show their support.  See you tonight.

How wonderful! So instead of missing my class, we would all be going over together! 

After some waiting around, I finally tracked down where the counter protest was setting up and found a miraculous nearby parking space.  That was when my jaw dropped…close to a hundred students were crowded in the open area next to the student union building (where they were going to show the documentary, picking up t-shirts and magic markers. 

 Here was the idea behind the counter protest; since WBC’s message was Hate, our message would be Love. So, the “Love in” had been provided with T-shirts (free, I found out later, by the campus services) that said “Love is….” And we were all provided with magic markers to write in whatever we wanted the shirt to say. 

I waded into the crowd, snagged a shirt, a magic marker and this is what I wrote out on mine, which I had carefully chosen with WBC in mind – “They that Love not, know not God, for God is love… 1 John 4:8” Since the WBC relies so heavily on out of context scripture from the Bible to support their hate, I wanted a verse to counter it. (I was not the only one to use that particular verse, either. ) 

Set up to the side of the open square was, believe it or not, Fox News, filming us milling around and writing on shirts. About that time, Dreamweaver, who was on her way over, had called and was on the phone with me. She reached the campus, and began circling the school. No one knew where the Westboro’s were going to set up – they were not allowed ON the campus itself so it could be a sidewalk anywhere around the outside. The main gates at the entrance were, of course the most likely spot. For a moment, Dreamweaver thought she had spotted them at the Gates, but it turned out to be ANOTHER group of counter protesters from the outside community and other colleges set up to counter Westboro. The WBC was supposed to get there at 6:15, and the minutes were ticking down. Dreamweaver kept circling – we figured if she could spot them, I could let the group know, and we could all head that way.

Meanwhile, the 100 or so, excited, milling counter protesters, including myself, had grouped up in front of the Fox News camera’s, begun waving our signs, wearing our t-shirts and cheering and singing – yup. Singing. Seems like music goes with protests the world over! We had really good harmony going with “Lean On Me”, I might add. The minutes ticked by, getting closer and closer to 6:15. The Fox news team decided to tear up to the gate and get footage of the counter protesters there. It was getting darker, as the sun set. 6:15 came and went, then 6:30.

So my class trooped over to the Student Union and got in line for the documentary. I went and found Dreamweaver who was at the head of the line to try to get us front row seats due to my hearing disability. The crowd at this point had swelled to twice its number and maybe more, with alumni and teachers joining. One teacher, herself a lesbian, came over and threw her arms around me and said how proud she was of all of us! Then we heard that a picket line had indeed formed out at the front gate moments before the Documentary started. At first, we assumed it was WBC, late to the party. I have to admit, I was frustrated – I knew that they were being met and countered by the public protest out front, but I wanted to be there myself, and there was no way to get there at that point – too far to the gate. However, we then heard that it was not Westboro, but a local church that had turned out to support THEM! Unbelievable. I have to say, I have never heard of anybody supporting a Westboro Picket Line. That was a first. 

Then, we were in our seats and the room was packed out, every chair taken, people sitting on the floor, standing in the back. Mike Ramsdell was introduced to speak, before his film ran. He was amazed – I was too. You know how documentary films go at colleges. 20 people show up, 5 of which want to actually see the film, and 15 who are there because they are required to be for a class report. There were easily 200 and more jammed into that room any way they could fit, and he was awed. 

Mike Ramsdell spoke of the purpose of the film, and why he made it. That he wished to counter Hate with dialog, with compassion. With seeing each other not as the Enemy or the Other, but as human beings, even if we disagreed, and not demonizing the Other. He then said this, which made me so proud of my fellow students, prouder than I ever have been. “Whenever I speak at showings of my film, everybody asks afterwards ‘What can I do?’ Well, you people have already done it. You could all go home, now. You have done it. Countering Hate with Love, and peaceful intervention. I am amazed!”  Wow. 

And then the lights went down, and the Documentary started. And make no mistake, despite its powerful message of hope – it was a trip into Hell. Continued in part two.