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a wish: watching Volver with you, she had written me a while ago pour rentrer ensemble dans ce enchanting fairy-tale comme toujours (ou de nouveau) tout un monde de relations entre femmes dense compliqué émouvant plein d’amour et care afterwards we’re most struck by the ghostly presence of care work comme si les corps qui soignent les autres sont on the verge (or well over over it…) de devenir invisible |
Category: gender and sexual difference
stop the violence
Por el amor a nuestros hijos
Alto a la violencia!
For the Love of our Children
Stop the Violence!
in respons to more shootings and killings in the area, Barrios Unidos called for a march today. i join the arrival of march at the Louden Nelson Community Center in our street. a rally of some hours with kids and young people speaking about the issues of drugs, alcohol, gang violence and, basically, suburban boredom. social problems that are shot through with race politics, as is reflected in the communities that come to denounce the violence today: mainly latino and also native indian communities. (but none of the speakers, i notice, speak of poverty or the economic architecture of the social problems they raise.)
the dances and rituals performed by a native american group (from outside of Santa Cruz) affect me very much. i keep on trying to understand why, and i realize it’s the first time i see native american performances for an audience of a political march, and not an audience of tourists or researchers or a documentary…
(my thoughts wander back to those stories of and encounters with “indians” when i was 6 and which impressed me very much at the time. first cloud of memories. the lessons in american history at school, which in our school often included an afternoon of playing out the stories we had just been taught. i remember us playing the arrival of Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. that was still fun somehow. then we played thanksgiving and “cowboys and indians”. in our class back then, 1977-78, in NY, indians were not very popular. most kids wanted to play pilgrims or cowboys. except me, i used to ask to play the indians all the time. cloud of memories number two. travel through america that summer, and getting all excited as we drive through new mexico and arizona. we would see indians, our parents told us. the reservations. the misery of it. the gaze of the little boy about our age throwing a stone at the car as we drive away. maud, do you also remember?)
the power of the performance has a grip on me. then the audience become participants as the dancers begin to draw people in and teach us the steps. there must have been a hundred of people dancing in a big circle, till one of the native american dancers breaks free from the circle. she becomes the head of a serpent of people that tries to catch up with the pounding of the drum. in the end we are running, out of breath, trying hard to hold on to the hands of those besides you. when the rhythm is finally broken, the people fall to the ground and thank the earth.
the Brown Berets are present. marÃa and i have been wanting to get in touch with them. i go to talk, and they invite me to their meetings on thursdays. i leave with the phone number of sandino, who drives every week from SC to Watsonville, and a happy plan for when i’m back in SC after the summer.
just before leaving i see a couple of elderly white women with small table and some flyers. about violence against women. we talk and i learn that Santa Cruz has an inexplicably high rate of violence against women. whether the statistics are compared to other towns of similar size, other beach resorts, or other college towns, an amount of violence consistently remains unaccounted for. the “this is a safe place” stickers and the (almost) free self-defense courses for women are starting to make sense. marÃa and me had wondered whether they were part of the progressive image Santa Cruz prides itself on, or whether there was another reason… and i think back of sahar’s impossible question if, objectivily speaking, and artificially disconnected from the rest of the world, Santa Cruz was a more liberated and more emancipated place. good to know the facts… the Commission or the Prevention of Violence Against Women just published a report on violence against women in Santa Cruz, to be checked out when i get back…
gay pride SF
Do as the locals do, and as none of our friends were going to the main parade of the San Francisco gay pride, we skipped the event. Important note: Sahar and Rutvica should stop insinuating that this had something to do with the parade taking off (kind of) early (to me, at least…) in the morning. We were first enjoying the good company of Lydia and Sandrine (et de nouveau on se retrouve dans un endroit on parle francais…) in the magic house where now Giulia wants to move in, and then we were meeting MarÃa in a hipster cafe on Valencia street – things clearly more urgent than the main parade. When later during the day we went to Civic Center, where the parade had arrived and a bunch of activities took place, we were up for mixed surprises. So this is what it looks like when the LGBT movement becomes mainstream… sure, enough examples of that back in Europe, but somehow the picture here gets enlarged (as for so many other things.) In terms of visibility: the way in which the rainbow flag flies above the city is impressive, signs of solidarity everywhere, a giant pink triangle on one of the Twin Peaks, the sheer number of people in the streets for the dyke march. But also in terms of integration into structures of oppression. Like two of the stalls we came across at the Civic Center:
No pride, no pride in this at all… unfortunately i wasn’t in the “let’s go up to them and strike a pseudo-naive conversation” mood, always worth to try out what little poking here and there can bring about…
dyke march SF
spiritual activism (day two)
By the time i get back the workshop on the free-market and the sinfullness of liberalism already started. So i didn’t hear everything, but most of what i heard was haunted by the ghosts of “China taking our jobs” and protectionism. It’s actually refreshing to hear economic justice being treated as a moral issue, after the religious right so succesfully managed to reduce morality to issues of gender and sexuality. But i can’t stand the anti-globalisation slant. (Not unfamiliar though, there are always fractions at the ESF doing precisely the same.)
The plenary sessions. An angry tirade by Rabbi Lerner against the article that NYTimes ran about the conference. When i manage to read it later that evening i can’t help being surprised by his anger. It’s not the most flattering article, true, and his critique of the journalist’s way of working holds: among all the workshops she could have chosen to go to, she went to the one on personal relationships. The only one which didn’t concretely prepare to take policy concerns to the political representatives. Then she suggests that this new movement doesn’t really have a political agenda and is focused on personal relationships. Silly, and while i’m writting this up i can perhaps imagine that, after all the months of work of developing the Convenant and arranging hundreds of appointments with the people in power, this must be disappointing. But i can’t help sympathising with the article’s mockery of the new agie Ama Zenya, Reverend at the First Congregational Church of Oakland, and part of the NSP board. She strikes me as a bit of a caricature of new age fluffiness (when she speaks, i really need to switch off), which also makes it clear that the entire conference is not new agie, but that some fractions are.
And an interesting question, that gives some insight in what this crowd is made of. “Who is from a mainline denomination trying to change from within?”, we are asked. Almost a third of the people raise their hands. That’s kind of impressive (yes, they get applaus). These are churches and synagogues that for a good part are dominated by right-wing theologies and ideologies by now. “Who identifies as spiritual and is outside institutionalized religion?” Again, almost a third of the people raise their hands. The rest then are progressive denominations.
S. is searching for me to go out for dinner with him, but i disappoint him. Irene, my working group leader, had kind of figured out that we could both join the queer caucus, abandonning our working group. So why is there already a queer caucus on the second day of the conference? There was a conflict in the personal relationships workshop yesterday (yes, that workshop seemed much more explosive than all the others…) about the Tikkun and NPS line (well, it’s actually more clear to say the Rabbi Lerner line…) on so-called gay marriage (which i actually like, nadia, it made me think of a discussion we had!). A civil contract that is open for everybody, without any distinction between heterosexual and gay. That’s one field of struggle. A second field of struggle are the religious authorities, with the aim to open the religious ceremonies and rituals within religious congregations and communities for same-sex religious marriages. Perhaps it was the fact that the civil thing was called “civil contract” and the religious thing “marriage”. In any case, some people at the conference took offense, and the dinner was meant to discuss and prepare a petition to the organizers. It was interesting to be part of the discussion, but i couldn’t help not getting worked up about the whole thing. Perhaps it should be better to call it the same thing – civil marriage, religious marriage (although why should we pretend they are the same thing? and i don’t mind using contract for the civil sphere, and marriage for the religious, it seems rather appropriate.) Lerner had argued the point in terms of a separation of state and religion, and in case you would doubt: in the public sphere only the civil contract or marriage would count; the religious marriage is all about affirming a bond in the eyes of god and in the eyes of a religious community. Moreover, i didn’t feel it was a cheap trick to focus only on the civil contract struggle and leave believers alone with the struggle within their religious communities, as there was a lot of talk of how to struggle for same-sex marriage within various denominations, and the Beyt Tikkun synagogue indeed does same-sex marriages.
And yet, people here got quite upset… takes my thoughts in different directions… one of them: how religious and civil marriage is, whether in actual fact or in the imaginary, quite mixed up here… (in the discussion at some point someone refered to how she thought that in Germany civil and religious marriage were separated, and then there was much discussion trying to grasp the modality of such a separation – things which to me felt quite self-evident…). Throughout the discussion, the tone and claims of the petition were softed, and in the end i think the main thing was that lgbt people should be actively involved in any position the NSP with regard to personal relationships, family, sexuality and marriage. Makes sense of course, but i must say that i found the “caucus logic” (which now has it own mailinglist, etc.) a bit tiresome… But it was good to talk with my table guests: a bunch of lesbian preachers (methodist church), non ordained, and a tranny (sufi) muslim woman. All the stories of exclusion but also insisting inclusion as they stood their grounds, and were supported by believers-friends among them.
mother’s day
A good chunk of public life in this place is concentrated on Pacific Ave, the one main street in town where most of the shops, a number of restaurants and bars and two cinema theatres are located. Pacific Ave on a Friday night is to be avoided, if one doesn’t appreciate a kind of compulsory small town “it’s time to go out and have fun” atmosphere. Too familiar from those American movies and series that actually make you happy you didn’t have to grow up in that place (oh mama, now i want to know why precisely you decided we shouldn’t grow up in the U.S. and move back to Belgium? will you tell me?), and too familiar from growing up in the village, where that kind of Friday and Saturday night entertainment was definately greatly aspired by the bored-to-death teenagers, an aspiration which couldn’t be met in our small village (with its public space limited to a grocery shop, a bakery, a school, a church and a cafe, and the youth movement house) and which took the kids to neighboring bigger villages.
Do you remember that you didn’t let me go out till i was 16, mama? And of course i wanted to, “going out” (from that place) sounded so promising. Did i ever tell you the truth about that first time that i could go? That i found it so stupid, so senseless, such a waste of time. That, if anything, this rural discotheque was village stupidity and boredom larger than live; it was by no means going out, rather falling deeper into it. Of course, i couldn’t tell you then, after having put up the “why can everybody go except me” routine for a while, but i stopped wanting this “going out”. Would only be satisfied with a “going (getting) out” of a more radical kind (remember the episode when i desperatedly wanted to go to school in New York…) Anyway, my first friday evening downtown in Santa Cruz, back in February – while i was walking home between the loud, drunk, behaving stupidly and vomitting teenagers (and students no doubt, they’re beginning to look so young…) – represented one of the moments of lucidity in which i knew i couldn’t stay in this place. Yesterday evening i walked on Pacific Ave again, on my way to Berna and Feza. It was early in the evening, just after dusk. I had a six-pack of Corona and a big bag of blue tortilla chips in my hands (an evening of movies!) and was addressed pretty much the whole way down the street, by underage kids and the homeless, begging for one of those bottles of beer…
We started off watching a Belgian movie, Everybody’s Famous! I hadn’t seen it before, didn’t think it was a good movie, but Berna and Feza had heard good things about it. And it was sweet, and interesting from a Marxist analysis, in which we indulged ourselves – its represenations of a post-industrial context and of class (heavily marked by differences in a spectre of Flemish and Dutch accents, which totally got lost in the subtitles of course…). And one scene made us laugh so much we almost rolled out of the sofa… on the basis of an eye-witness of one of the kidnappers of the famous singer the police makes a profile that is subsequently distributed, and according to the profile the kidnapper (a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes…) is… Moroccan. Before watching the movie we had a whole session on the recent “events” in Belgium of course – the stabbing to death of the 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeek some weeks ago which initiated an intense scapegoating of the Moroccan community until (and still after…) it seemed that the perpetrators were Polish kids, and the rambo-style action of taking a gun to the streets and killing non-white people (women and a girl basically) by an 18 year old white boy (who happens to be the nephew of a Vlaams Belang politician) in Antwerpen and the current discussion whether this is a racism or an disturbed kid (who actually declared that his mission was to kill as many non-white people as possible, but you see, he might be so disturbed that he is deluded and even if he proudly claims to be a racist, it might actually not be appropriate to speak of racism in this case, cause he’s a disturbed individual and Belgium is not really a racist society and the earth is oh-so-flat – do you understand? But i shouldn’t get on my horse now, saving the AAA (Anger, Analysis and kicking-Ass) for the Flanders blog that Nadia and me are starting soon… What was i writing about? Movies (and i had brought Yes; friends, i really want you to see Yes!) and companionship and sleeping over and making pancakes in the morning. And so today I was walking down Pacific Ave again on my way home, and all of sudden i saw and heard this bunch of old grey ladies who squatted – with a little table and banners and their somewhat fragile but impressive selves – in the middle of Saturday afternoon (shopping) business.
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Armed with aprons and kitchen utensils, they were singing popular and American folk songs with modified lyrics – one of songs they had aptly entitled “The Raging Grannies”. This one i heard a couple of times (to the tune of Country Roads):Bring ‘m home, bring ‘m home To the place, where they belong There are children, stop the killing, Bring ‘m home |
They were from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; they even looked as if they had been part of the league since it was founded. More than that, they looked determined, “still standing”, and not planning to go anywhere else soon. Their leaflet reads: “It was the wisdom of our founding foremothers in 1915 that peace is rooted not only in treaties between great powers or even in ending the arms race. They understood that peace can only flourish when it is planted in the soil of justice, freedom, non-violence, opportunity and equality for all.” They were collecting signatures against the war in Iraq to send to senators (“Can i sign, i’m not a U.S. citizen?” “Of course, my dear, they won’t really know, will they?” she giggled. “The more post-cards we send to our senators, the more pressure they will feel.”) And they were giving out cards for Mother’s Day (“What about giving this card to your mother instead of shopping for a present?”). I’m sometimes troubled by peace-activism so rooted in a certain notion of motherhood. But not on Mother’s Day, and not here in Santa Cruz where i wished more of the students would continue to struggle and organize against the war their country is waging. And i wish i could give you the card the raging grannies made, mama, but it won’t cross the atlantic in time. So i copy the text below for you. En ik wens je fijne moederdag, mama, van ver weg, maar toch ook weer dichtbij! dikke kus, sarah
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Mother’s Day began with a woman named Julia Ward Howe,
who nursed the wounded during the American Cival War. In 1870
she started a crusade to institute a Mother’s Day as a Day for Peace.
Here is her Mother’s Day proclamation:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have
hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us,
reaking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons
shall not be taken form us to unlearn all that we have been
able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”
We women of one country will be too tender of those
of another country to allow our ons to be trained to
injure theirs. From the bosom of the devasted earth
a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
altares
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A quick trip to the library this evening, meaning a brisk walk through the ancient forest and the cold that lingers in between the redwoods, and i find myself visiting the Gloria Anzaldúa Memorial Altares Exhibit at the McHenry Library much longer than usual. I remember my first visit to that library very well. A moment of exhilaration — if other spaces seemed small and closed upon themselves, the library held such a promise of openings to other worlds. And then there was the shock of finding out that Gloria Anzaldúa had died, already a little while ago (15th of March 2004). Ever since all visits to the library are made of a moment of pauzing among her books, objects from her alters and quotes from her writing. When i get back to Santa Cruz, i realized today, the exhibit will be gone. |
From a woman who understood the power of words and used them wisely.
“Through the act of writing you call, like the ancient chamana, the scattered pieces of your soul back to your body… the ability of story (prose and poetry) to transform the storyteller and the listener into something or someone else is shamanistic. The writer, as shape-changer, is a nahual, a shaman.”
I didn’t know that she used to live in Santa Cruz, near the Lighthouse. Maybe that’s where the picture is taken, or maybe the rock is a part of Natural Bridges. As i was looking for an image of the poster of the exhibit, I came across an online altar with condolences, and i was very much struck by this comment:
“Gloria Evangelina Anzaldua–another feminist, Lesbian, writer of color dying long before her time. Joining the ranks of other great women. How long before the health of sisters becomes a priority instead of just another problem to be lived and solved by minorities?” (Judith K. Witherow)