Asheville, NC: Who's laughing?

Undocumented, underpaid, migrant labor was used to make this mouthwatering corn-fritter, not the henna-ed hands of that white guy with dreads at the farmers' market? What a zinger!!! Photo credit: Ashevile Travel Blog

stream of consciousness poem:

Being in Asheville is so...
beautiful
confusing
money
organic
white
lies
normal
bubble
disappointed
obvious
vegan
gluten-free
accessible
priviledge
everywhere
pseudo-liberal hippies
confusion
what's real?
whole grains
farms
work-trade
secret possibilities
hidden currents
normal abnormal
cool different
real different?
mountains
sunsets
clouds
dramatic
jokes cause we're uncomfortable
jokes cause we have to
running up mountains
running down mountains
yoga
cultural appropriNation
duh
is it funny?


I've been around a lot of jokes about the lack of people of color and the general homogeneity of whiteness here in Asheville, NC. It's an effort to make it funny, to acknowledge it, to let people know that you notice, to make you feel better about it cause you're in on how fucked up it is so you can't be a perpetrator of racism. I'm not sure it's very funny. It's good to acknowledge it, better than to pretend it's neutral or absent. But I can't help feeling that this is a handy little tool to make folks feel better about it instead of getting mad about it. Instead of asking hard questions about why that is; instead of doing something about it.


The people who I'm thinking of have excused racist behavior as "just a part of things." which, yea, is obviously true, but the whole point of bringing up how things are racist is to change the fact that they are a part of things, not to prove that alien's must be temporarily inhabiting the flesh of these usually-normal-but-suddenly-extraterrestrially-racist people. These jokes come from people who say things like "all people have a responsibility to know what compost is," clearly assuming middle-class, mildly-liberally-educated, and most likely white people. These are, I assure you, not bad people. They are just isolated in a white-dominated culture that teaches people how to think critically about earth practices but not how to think critically about modern race in the U.S.

These jokes come from me too, so what's that? Comedy can play a huge role in getting folks to talk about what they don't want to talk about. With all of the controversy around Daniel Tosh's fiercely defended rape jokes, it's clear that there's a real re-evaluation of the role of comedy needed in this country. Comedians have long held an important role in airing out dirty laundry, getting a nation to see what it wants to ignore. But it can also reify bullshit. So if I respond to someone's comment about a black person with "What? a black person in Asheville?" what does that do? My intention is to show how ridiculously homogenous it is here. The snarl of my lip is there because this upsets me. But am I actually just doing what white people have done for ages and ages - made jokes at the expense of people of color? normalize racism?

well shit. I'm going to have to think about this.

Some bitty thoughts on Resisting Racism: Queer Liberation is Collective Liberation Workshop

Jenna and Damien (facilitators of the workshop) and Ian (Provdience-based queer organizer and artist extraordinary) celebrating the warm feeling of "woah, we talked about some heavy shit" after the workshop.

Traveling organizers!
what a thought!
what a dream!

Last weekend Jenna Peters-Golden and Damien Luxe blew in to town for a weekend of doing. The two bad-asses facilitated a refreshingly (not being sarcastic! truthfully!) 4 hour long workshop about how racism manifests itself and what queer liberation has to do with all forms of liberation.
It was refreshing cause it didn't have to end as soon as we got started.
15 people came, which is wildly wonderful considering the time commitment. It speaks to the hunger of people to connect the queer movement to broader struggle.

We almost had enough time to and enough detail to get really specific with our dreams. One exercise had use imagine the collaboration of two historical activist groups who never actually had anything to so with each other. I was in the group combining the American Indian Movement and the Boston Women's Movement. This was surprisingly fruitful, but so rushed that we couldn't get very creative and I felt anxious the whole time about getting a chance to speak or about one person talking the whole time. So, note to all facilitators: give lots of time to the creative side of things! I felt like most time was spent on clever tricks for understanding racism, taught by the folks in the front of the room to the folks in the back of the room. Because it was an audience of activists, I think more time could have been spent sharing our own opinions and experiences, and spent on building alternatives. Remember y'all, i'm in a hyper-action-ey mood lately, so i guess take this criticism with a grain of salt. or don't.

There were almost only white people in attendance, which we didn't mention, but I just mentioned, so there. Is there a growing attempt on the part of white activists to get real about their anti-racist work? Is this just guilt? Is this just a tiny subsect of people who were already convinced that there's such a thing as modern racism? Where is this coming from and where is it going to?
My hope is that more folks are waking up to the pervasiveness of racism in the United States, that more folks want to figuring out how they can DO something about it versus comment on it often, that folks are increasingly seeing how racism operates at every level of society and identity.

What is the conversation around race in organizations and communities that you are a part of? What are the actions people are taking? 

I'm particularly interested in groups that aren't explicitly anti-racist, such as feminist groups and queer groups - are y'all organizing around race?

Fuck This; or how I feel on Youtube; Or Sexism is more than a Feeling

This was set off by a conversation with my father. He was complaining that he'd heard all about this "war on women" thing, but couldn't see how women's rights are being particularly eroded right now, why there's a war on women specifically at this moment in time.

I answered that it's harder to get an abortion now than it was ten years ago. That one in six women get raped. That women still get paid an average of 77 cents to a man's dollar, less if you're a woman of color. All these arguments seemed to fall flat on him - those were issues of access, of economics, not gender. Those were long-standing issues that have gotten better, not worse. None of those things are rights that the national government has impeded.

I realized that I need more facts in my toolbelt. I need numbers, ratios, trends, graphs that help break down the invisible oppression that mediates most women's lives, killing them, raping them, preventing them from realizing their dreams, keeping them from health, love, and intimacy. Ok.

 I will begin compiling my own and create a post with the most poignant information (i'll cite whoever sent me the info), so we can all use this in our toolbelt of education. Please send your factoids (cited if possible) my way.

 Re-post this or respond, and we'll make a great resource for everyone!

In the meantime, here are some interesting youtube trends I've noticed. I was really excited to find Anita Sarkeesian's series, Tropes vs. Women. Get's into some of the nifty bullshit I'm almost entirely used to. So I get all excited and then start clicking on links that pop up on the page - featured videos, etc. At first I'm thinking - wow, Tropes vs. Women is so smart, so well produced, and it has so many views! Until I noticed how many views these other videos were getting.
Note how youtube works: you see an opening image, a title, and the number of views. With that in mind, check out these popular videos and imagine what sort of culture results in these numbers.

#4 The Evil Demon Seductress (Tropes vs. Women) : 95,978 views

#1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Tropes vs. Women) : 145,746 views

Anti Feminist : 326,101 views

Mumbai Girl Forced in Jungle : 740,762 views

 

Photos from Hot Pink Mass! Queer Cabaret + Femmes Fight Back Community Installation

 Providence. Wow. You turned it out.

Damien Dealing With Dudes

J.R. Uretsky being amazing

 

Jess Chen and Noel'le Longhaul did some gorgeous spoken word situations

Alexis Drutchas laying it dooowwwwn

Femmes Fight Back! Installation

self-story: It Didn't Wait, and Why Should It?

These days are so long I could drink a beer now and sober up with the sun still reminding me I'm metabolizing. 
That backpack has held so much.
It's crazy.

I asked for two cups, one with ice and one without. I waited a few minutes, then switched the ice from one to the other and poured my beer into the cold empty glass. This made me feel clever, effective, and secretively excellent.

Earlier I sat by a river that's been chewed out from below, tugged across itself more than once to fit different money's meanings and now it's pretty and where it is and there's a weeping willow behind enough grass that the willow looks like maybe it's dangerous.
I sat there and read, remembering only between chapters and at slow parts that I'm alive and that means I don't know anything.
A soft bending cord which was also a branch brushed my face, so I stopped reading but not because I remembered but because I am and that's very different.
On the leaf I held between fingers loosened suddenly from pages it took me seconds to realize that the tiny beatle was giving birth.
You know, birth in a patient way, the way egg-laying creatures can squeeze and push all for a life that right now is smooth, featureless, unrecognizable as "next" but might be next one day.
When maybe isn't maybe worth it, it's definitely everything.

I debated for 5 egg-lays if I should take a picture. I was confused because I had immediately wanted to do this; then when I decided that it was hollow and modern and therefore bad I had wanted to write about the egg-laying instead; then I decided that it was fucked up that all I could do while watching the violent honesty of egg-laying was to try to stop wanting to capture it and make it mine forever.

The tiny beetle made me sad. I was reading about love and women and mothers and jealousy and murder and broken-hearts and the foreverness of certain types of sad. That beetle worked. It would barely finish one impossibly long yellow egg before its butt found a new dot of leaf to establish sticky contact with and place the next maybe life just-exactly-so. Its diligence made me sad, like here this beetle was, giving its whole life simply to its task of maintaining eternity, and it didn't hate itself or its pregnancy or its decisions. I wanted to call it love. And this one thing that loved simply was going to walk away soon; the distance would be huge. There's a sweaty palmed closeness in our human families and so my heart broke wondering if the only way to hurt was to stay and the only way to love was to leave.


Now I feel safe and a little drunk at a table far from things too dangerously simple they might break my heart. It doesn't look like it to the other people here, but this is all I have. I can see my bike out the window and there is the bag for clothes, there is the bag for books. It's a funny feeling, to sit down next to a stranger at a cafe and let them see everything; the whole house piled against the table legs, the water botter is also the cup and the scarf is also the blanket. Maybe my sadness back at the tree came because of its easy potential for home; that could be it, my water bottle resting just so in the roots and everything already there so why do I keep leaving?


I bought a beer so I could make it make sense. This public life means that dropping 3 bucks makes me feel normal. Yeah, I'm a customer; I'm not sitting here for hours because it's inside and quiet and almost like a private sort of space and cause there is no other private space for me to go, this is as close as it gets. I wonder if the bags give me away, but I'm white and young and have a camera and they didn't even card me cause they already trusted me.


Back when I was at the willow I took out my camera, and by the time the lens had focused the tiny beetle had crawled completely out of the frame.

everything that existed at the moment of writing this.

Detroit: Yeah, But... and why I'm so tired

Two other people were also couchsurfing at the Goldengate Restoration Project. They were around my age, early twenties, lived in DC. And I can't stop thinking about what one of them said the first night we met.

 

I asked her what she thought about the AMC (she hadn't been yet) and she responded "The AMC is cool, but it's problematic."
Not Detroit enough.
Only a certain kind of person comes.


And it made my heart sink. Like sink. Suddenly I was barely breathing to stave off the collapse. I wanted to cry but my face was so moist from humidity that it felt superfluous.




Will it ever be enough? Everything is too narrow, too broad, too radical, too reformist. I don't want to discount these problems, in fact I want to live inside them, every damn day. But shit. When do we get to sink deep into our trying; sigh and say "we're doing our best" and not mean it as a cop-out? Cause let's be real - that's all we've ever been doing and if we can't celebrate it right now then when the hell do we get to celebrate at all?

Yea yea yea we're always pushing, but that isn't the same thing as not being there yet.

Detroit: Squatting like it ain't no thang

I showed up at the spot I would be couchsurfing at for the rest of the AMC.
It was already dark and it was far out there. I didn't know anything about where I was going, except for that a few Detroiters said various "mmmmmm..." sounds when I told them where I was staying. Driving up (thanks person who so kindly gave me a ride so I wouldn't have to wait 2 hours for a bus!) we passed one and another and again burned out houses. I had already google-mapped the spot, so I knew what to expect. Right?

 

 Turns out my couchsurfing host lived in a community of 9 (NINE!) squatted houses and lots, all on the same block of Detroit. Say whhhaaaaa? Like it ain't no thang. Most of these houses were off-grid. Ok, lots of squats are off-grid cause they haven't gotten the electric company to turn their juice on. But in this case they were taking the opportunity to install rainwater catchment systems and build cobb ovens. Yeah, there were chickens. And that sad looking house I'd seen on googlemaps? 

It's been transformed into a free bike shop for kids called Red Planet Bikes. Running on the regular, teaching workshops and giving away tons of bikes. For freez.

 

That night I fell asleep in the attic of the first unlocked city house I've stayed in in years. 

And that was what hit me the hardest about this space - people were out on the stoops, in the street, constantly talking and sharing food, ideas, lighters. The street was poppin, and this in the middle of blocks of burned-out depression. 

The amazingly sparkly room I stayed in

I have hesitations with squatting - who's doing it? Isn't there already a word for middle class white people moving into a community of color without adding economically to the people who already live there - gentrification? (total disclosure - i didn't think of that zinger, it was read somewhere else on the ethersphere). But there seemed to be real community involvement, many of the people involved had lived around there all their lives. I wasn't there for long enough to really understand the complicated dynamics that usually go along with squatting, but I know that the block felt really welcoming. 

They used glass bottle and cobb walls to fix burnt out city walls! Notice the light coming in through the bottles.

The history of the place is even more wacky.  The ecovillage got started as a part of Tumbleweed University, which is now wrapped up in the Goldengate Restoration Project. Basically, Occupy Detroit took all that momentum and all that heady theory and did what so many occupations talked about - squatted the hell out of foreclosed houses. So now this is also the Occupy Detroit epi-center.

Making a front yard garden in some serious sun

 Interestingly, almost no one around here knew what the Allied Media Conference was. I suppose Detroit ain't tiny, but still, with folks coming from around the world, you'd think they'd manage to take a trip around town and see if anyone who doesn't happen to work for a not-for-profit might be interest.

This place was such a delicious balm from the incessant concept crazy of the AMC that I was choking on. I do think that I'm actually over-reacting to the AMC and it was way more skills based than most conferences, but my own experience was surprisingly frustrating. Point is, here I was on accident, just looking for a couch to stay on, and I tumbled into the welcoming lab of a block of squatting community building self-sufficient DO-ers.

Maybe all I want to do is hang out with plants. 

Oh Em Gee Keep Queering! Keep Fighting!

can't wait to wrap my brain around this weekend's events after the fact, 

but before the fact = you can still come!

Poster by Olivia

Allied Media Conference Thoughts: Pragmatism, Buzzwords and Metaphor

note: this advice and rant is so deeply happening because, of all people, i live in abstract theory land and this is my struggle on the regular. i've noticed that my advice is generally stuff i'm trying to believe in myself.





Skills vs. Discussions. Workshops need to be labelled clearly skillshare, discussion, lecture, or performance. Have you ever gone to a workshop expecting some skills and it turns out everyone's sitting in circles theorizing about what the word "skill" means? Point is I have learned something important about myself at the Allied Media Conference.

I have no patience for metaphor.

I have no patience for theory. 

I want to learn what you tried yesterday, how it went, and what you are going to try today.

Display from the Maine-based Beehive Collective

The AMC is a conference full of Radical Activists (note the capitals). A lot of these folks know the language and the grammars of this community. I swear if I hear another buzzzz word.... liberation. oppression. I don't even know what liberation means! I don't even know what oppression means! Don't just drop that as though you're saying something when in fact you're saying everything/nothing!






Mind you I drop that shit like an exhale. I'm all "feminism"-this and "liberatory community practices"-that. Cause I'll admit it - it's useful. I need these words so I don't have to talk all day just to explain the first sentence I said when I woke up in the morning. But nah, nah, nah, ENOUGH.






Being in the high-density-buzz-world of the AMC has convinced me that this language is dangerous. We can talk in circles all day about the word accountability, but if I still have no idea what tactic you tried out last time there was an assault in your community, if I have no idea what that conversation looked like and what steps were taken, then what have I learned?
I've learned that a lot of people think accountability is important.
Cool. Check. 




Of course education is extremely important, but let's be conscious of our audiences and our opportunities to move into action-mode. DOING is more important than theoretically-doing-but-it's-cool-cause-I-have-a-list-of-references-I-can-google-later.







Have our brains been so academicized, so made to privilege intellect, that that is the inherent mode in which we operate? We slip unblinkingly into analysis, criticism. & yes, that is essential. But at a certain point it rings hollow. What are we talking about? Are we too afraid of making mistakes? of being remembered negatively? of speaking for others? So we stick to abstraction. Better that than allow the vulnerability of giving a single detail. Our vocabularies are so bulked up, our brains so used to filling out multiple choice surveys, that all description,  all experience, all detail have fallen to the wayside. I think it also has to do with not trusting that our experiences are truly worthwhile and relevant.




This happened so much in femsex. Big ideas, suggesting at experiences, got traded around like abstract playing cards. We sat inside a flurry of hints forming clouds of people that I maybe knew something about. It took months and one much-needed conversation about masturbation to put some spine into our concept clouds. Some intimacy. Yes darling, imagine for a moment that you're truly around friends. Tell them what happened. They'll try to understand. You don't have to convince the room that your head is in the right place or that you read the right zine.


Pragmatism. I'm taking about what makes us do things.
How we spend our minute of our days is not besides the point. Are you trying to guess at how best to change the world? Or are you trying shit out on the daily to see what sticks?