love in the house

Leta is a special one. It seems that she is also looking forward to the transformation of our house. As maria stopped by the house this evening before going home, and checked out once more her room to be, we ended up in Leta’s room (“I have great news for you, sarah. A friend of ours fell in love with a guy who speaks Flemish. We should meet up one of these days.” An american guy in Santa Cruz who speaks flemish, who would have thought… And Leta scored of course. Imagine her friend talking all about her new boyfriend, and at some point mentioning that he finds it such a pity that he cannot practise his flemish in Santa Cruz. And Leta being able to say: oh, just come to our house, flemish is spoken in our house…).

And we continued talking when Jenn, with whom Leta just broke up last week, left. About love, of course. And i was pleasantly struck by what she said: that it’s tough now to find another way of loving Jenn, since love-making was such an easy way to express love for friend. Maybe it’s good, she added, it forces me to be more creative. To write a poem, to write a song, to care in another way. We looked at each other in silence for a moment, before bursting out in laughter… let’s not be kidding, why should any of that exclude love-making…

fables

Another session with Michael Alexander, my favorite Russian bear. Okay, the Russian accent (remember, only audible in my ears) is wearing off. But we did talk about bears this time, i’ll tell you in just a minute. First there were his massaging hands, and as they touched my neck and shoulders, he laughed once more: “Such tiny shoulders and so many knots and tension – still carrying all the problems of the world around you on them?” I do my usual response: “It’s getting better, it’s definately been better since the last massage.” As he seems to be using all this force on my shoulders (“Hmmm, i can’t make them respond to my usual tricks…”), his fingers pause on one spot in particular and he says: “I know there’s supposed to be a muscle in there, only it feels like a bone.”

As i lay on the table slowly moving in a state of full relaxation, i start visualising the bone, the bones, my shoulders and back as a bone, and before i know it i see myself as a turtle. Yes, i think, it makes all the sense of the world, to have that kind of shield, that kind of house, always with you. And yes, to move with that kind of slowness. My mother used to call me a slug when i was a child, because of how slow i can do things (do you remember, mama? and imagine this, i’m actually at a university now which has a slug as its mascotte. the yellow banana slug, of which i desperately, desperately need to find at least one by the time yoran comes to explore the territory… his disappointment would be unbearable). True enough, but make it a slug with a house on her back, make it a turtle. And then there is the new animal in my life, Chaim, a kind of turtle. Considering the power of visualisation, i’m sure i shouldn’t have been visualising becoming a turtle when the bear was using all his might to loosen up muscles that felt like bones on my back. But there was nothing to be done against it. I sense the beginning of a whole series of fables featuring the turtle and the bear coming out of these massage sessions.

And zen (and later Leta told us that Michael was a practising Buddhist) and bones brought another animal to my mind: a mad ram. Once more, strangly enough, memories of the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Express came back to me in that room. Ulan Ude, the last stop and big city in Russia before the train crosses the border into Mongolia. Not far from the city, a monastry which is the centre of Buddhism in the Russian Federation. We go to visit the monastry, in the middle of a landscape that already hints at the vastness of Mongolian horizons, all of us feeling much in need of a zen moment. Remember that strange moment, Lotte and Wim? As soon as we enter the grounds of the monastry, a ram on the other side looks up from the grazing and the other things the rams were doing, and starts running wildly straight to me to slam its horns against my knee. Again and again and again. Causing much laughter around me, while i was getting really angry & disturbed by the animal, until one of the monks came and took the ram away. That kind of crushed my hope for a zen feeling that afternoon, meant the beginning of an enormous bruise on my leg, and was perhaps a bit of a lesson that one shouldn’t connect a hope for some kind of zen feeling too strongly with an actual space such as a Buddhist monastry.

But back to Michael. At the end of the session, I told him that maria and i would go camping in Yosemite next week. “Ah, Yosemite,” he smiled, and talked about how beautiful it was, how he loved to go there. Was it my first time, he asked. No, i replied, i had been there as a child, but i was only 6 years old, so it would be discovering it all over again. (Oh my god, now that i’m writing this i suddenly think of the possibility that the same thing might happen as with revisiting the house were we used to live in Tarrytown, NY: that everything looked so much smaller than in my memories. Oh, imagine, the rocks and trees in Yosemite might turn out to look small after all…) I add that at the time my sister and i had been excited by the idea of meeting bears, but in the end we didn’t. Ah bears, he replied, you never know in Yosemite. A good friend of mine, he continued, was once taking a shower on one of the camping sites, one of these open air showers, and all of a sudden she looks up and sees the paws of a bear on the metal construction holding the curtain, and a bear’s head curiously looking at her. She started screaming her lungs out, which scared the bear who tried to get away as fast as he could, clumsily tearing the whole shower construction down, leaving the woman not only frightened and screaming, but also standing naked on the camping site… Oh those bears.

sin fronteras

sinfronteras.jpg I read this article in the local Good Times newspaper on “A Day without an Immigrant” action on May Day during my dinner (what else is one to do when these house-mates of mine are already asleep at 10 pm, i don’t really understand that rhythm…), some interesting background information on immigration to California. Click here if you want to check it out.

racisme als collectieve verantwoordelijkheid

Voor diegenen onder jullie die de petitie “Racisme is onze collectieve verantwoordelijkheid” nog niet via een ander kanaal tegenkwamen: klik hier, lees de tekst, teken, en help vooral om de link te verspreiden onder vrienden en bekenden. Opdat we een collectieve visie en platform kunnen opbouwen waarin het strukturele karakter van het racisme in onze samenleving zichtbaar gemaakt en bestreden wordt. We hebben hiervoor zonder twijfel alle handen nodig – wees een hand in het web dat we moeten en zullen spinnen!
Et pour les ami-e-s francophones, la même chose! (Allez voir le site…)

queens of the desert

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Got back from Washington (with a sleepy zombie head, but so many stories waiting to be shared…) just in time to catch the girls in Santa Cruz, before they embark on their Californian On the Road journey, which Maria and i, if our brilliant meeting up plan works out, will join at some point next week. Necessary shopping for all one needs to confront deserts and bears and (cold! rainy!) Californian nights in fragile light tents… You might get the impression that we got stuck in Santa Cruz second hand clothes shops, but you should not underestimate how wigs and accessoires might be of good use in the desert, the forest, or Las Vegas and L.A. Do you recognise any of these women? (A hint: all their names start with the same letter…) They are merely the warming-up show for the great metamorphosis of the absent one on these two snapshots, a metamorphosis in need of full exposure one of these days…

spiritual activism (day three)

When i drop into the morning session, Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner are having an interesting discussion. I missed Wallis’ speech, but one can’t miss in the discussion that he comes on strong on poverty and its structural dynamics. We then go back into the “spiritual convenant” groups of yesterday to hear and discuss how the meetings with the political representatives went. (Before the session begins a woman besides me starts talking and asking about me, where i’m from and what i’m doing here. At the end we exchange names. She’s surprised: “Oh, but that is an American name.” well, actually it is a Hebrew name. “Oh…”, she smiles, “isn’t is embarassing how in this country we forget about the rest of the world.”) In great detail: from every visit to a political representative in which any of the international relations theme was addressed (a global marshall plan for a global redistribution of resources, war on iraq, war on terrorism), there is a narrative report. This part is fascinating to me: to hear how people presented their cause, the vast range of responses (that do not neatly collide with partisan lines), from polite and superficial acknowledgement of the visit, to what seems real engagement (For a moment i thought, ah, i should have joined then and played the concerned citizen for some hours yesterday morning….). The representative who seems to have given them most attention, who gets most attention and praise during the reporting back and whom Lerner intends to have a seperate meeting with: Barack Obama. A political allience in the making, to be further checked out.

Later on i go to the workshop on fair trade, together with Jayne. I’m happy to be doing this with her, have been enjoying our late evening conversations a lot, about the conference, american politics, her work on rural communities and policies, growing up in in the midwest and going to school in Boston, her years in Kyrgyzstan and her life in Washington. The fair trade groups leading the workshop (from Oxfam, Sojourner and Lutheran World Relief) are people Jayne knows from her work.

When jayne has to run after the end of the workshop, i don’t feel like sticking around conference people anymore. I do my best to find a place to eat alone (not an easy task with more than thousand participants that not only need to eat at the same time, but also have been instructed to be social and eat with others…). I manage. (oh god, i these days remind me of how much solitude i actually need and how i usually manage to make it flow in my quotidian life – reading! writing! – the absence of these spaces in a situation like this drives me crazy.)

In the early evening i go back, and i go to the shabbat service led by Lerner and his wife. It is a beautiful service, with much singing and dancing and going out to see the sunlight retire for the day. When i get back to Santa Cruz, i think, i would like to go to more Beyt Tikkun services. After the service, and filled with a different kind of energy, i have no patience whatsoever to stay and listen to more speeches, that will go on till after 10pm no doubt. I escape once more, only to be found by Irene on the streets. She insists – i should join them to a party organized by the Code Pink women, with Amy Goodman and other beaumonde of the leftie scene. I hesitate, but recline.

A good thing, cause when i get home, there’s jayne and we’re both in the mood to talk more – about “middle america”. I tell her Lerner’s story about how people become “realistic” on other’s behalf. When he talks about his visions in San Francisco and California, people tell him that it’s not realistic. They relate to it, they say, and people around them might do so as well, but what about middle america… Similar story when he talks on the East Coast. In New York you might get away with this, they say, but what about “middle america”… Then he presents his audience with the story of an early talk in Kansas, to a group of 400 methodists. They full heartedly agreed with the vision he unfolded, but expressed their concern: “Rabbi, here in Kansas people might feel this way, but things are so different in the rest of the country…”

Jayne wholeheartedly underscores the point. She’s from Texas. And while she couldn’t stay there, and can’t go back to live there, she does find that people are more active and engaged, and much less blasé. As if in the small scale of the town they live in they see more of a difference one can make. She also finds them more knowledgeable, somehow knowing that they are from a small place and need to know something about other places. I also see the point, although i’m left wondering about the integrity she attributes to Middle America in combination with the passionate feeling that she can’t go back.

She gives me a book to read, which i spend half of the night reading: “What’s the matter with Kansas?” by Thomas Frank. It starts from the negative reference to Middle America that is so easily made. The author, from Kansas, recalls stories from his grandfather and how that generation was in fact very much focused and organised around workers rights, and voted democrat. Only in the last decades did the shift from blue to red take place (hm, to avoid confustion for european frames of reference: from Democrats to Republican). The book gives an interesting taste of (some of) the reasons why, not in the least the way in which the Democrats don’t engage anymore on social struggles and worker’s rights.

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.

spiritual activism (day two) at the white house

The appointments with “our” political representatives this morning. I chose to skip them – part of me is very tempted to do participant observartion: join other people going to talk to their Californian congressmen and women, and even intervene in the conversations if i feel like it, who knows. But another part of me finds it too much, and then the jet-lag that i forgot to schedule does try to kick in. I sleep a bit longer and spend a morning walking through “political Washington”.

I get there by bus, from Columbia Heights where Jayne’s appartment is. As we’re approaching the city, it’s strikes me that i’m the only white body on this bus, and that many of the black and latino bodies are marked by a lack of various kinds of resources. In the middle of wide avenues and imposing government buildings, and suits, ties and briefcases walking briskly and purposefully, this slow bus seems somehow out of place. The people whose posture reflects a sense of entitlement to these streets and the whole world it invokes, are not on this bus. I get myself to Capitola Hill, and do the long walk to the White House. War in my head: images of war and poverty keep flashing before my eyes. It’s infuriating. The more i look around, the more men and women in suits and ties seem to transform into small and not so small agents of this giant war machine. Am i in the headquaters now? Can’t help thinking: this place should be bombed, should be flattened with the ground.

Commotion: police cars with sirenes racing in, out of nowhere, from every direction. They surround a truck with latino road workers. It seems that the truck was taking taking a road that it shouldn’t take, in order to get to the road works. The mistake is cleared out in a couple of minutes, the truck turns around, the police cars disappear as fast as they had come. Five minutes later there’s no trace of the commotion. A sense of heavy yet rather invisible surveillance remains. This place should be bombed, but when the workers’ shift is over. (is there ever such a moment, in between janitors and the construction workers?).

LaFayette Park, opposite the White House. the pray-inn, called for by the Network for Spiritual Progressives has just started. Cindy Sheehan is speaking. Then there’s Code Pink, who were gathered in Washington after their recent Mother’s Day vigil. I recognize a old grey-haired woman whom i saw in the Greyhound Station in Oakland in the beginning of this month. As she squatted on the floor besides her backpack with a tag with a Washington, carrying a peace sign and wearing quite some pink, i remembered thinking that i could guess where she was heading. Many people speak and propose prayers, some sing. Sahar, guess who was also in the crowd, the iranian guy who spoke at the NYC demo against the war in Iraq. “Long live Venezuela. Friendship with Iran”, is the message that he carries around.

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At the end of the pray-inn we march to the white house. In the midst of all the imposing buildings in this neighborhood, this white house is deceptively small. Almost a bit insignificant, as if it wants to convey the message: don’t pay too much attention to me, i’m just another rich guy’s house. It also seems deceptively accessible. But as we get closer, the “police do not cross” yellow tape all around the gates becomes visible. We march with many papers, which are spread out all over the marchers. These are the names of people who signed the petition to stop the war on the Iran before it starts. as we approach the gates, people lift their arms and hold the papers in the air. Don’t Iraq Iran, is one of the slogans.

Disappointment: we are not allowed to officially hand the petition to White House. In the end people throw the papers over the gates. Some people get angry. Others get put off by the anger. They get into discussions with each other (why do you need to get angry? etc.). I get put off by the discussions, which don’t seem to lead anywhere, and which add nothing to the discussions on different tactics within a demonstration that are familiar to me. I actually get a bit upset with those who don’t like the anger – i mean, this is one of the most peaceful marches i’ve ever been to (and i’m sure there’s a reason for that, i’m sure the police would intervene massively and quickly if someone stepped over some kind of line), and the slight bit of anger against the refusal of an official reception of the petitions does not seem out of place at all. I have respect for the radical non-violence stance of some of the marchers, for whom shouting was inacceptable, only i felt that their annoying questions (do you really need to shout?) were not only counterproductive but also reflected a lack of creativity. If they wanted a different kind of energy, this was not the way; they could have tried to sing a song or something. (Coming to think of it, one of the songs was All we are saying, is give peace a chance… equally a bit tiresome…)

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I turn away from the crowd and focus a bit on the police. They must be slightly amused by the discussions among the marchers, although their masked expressions don’t show it. They are filming all of us. I’m starting to feel in the mood for a little conversation. I turn to the cop near me, whom i see very well is not the leader of the gang, and ask him very sweetly:
– Excuse me Sir, can i just ask you for some information?
He gives me a friendly nod.
– The thing is, i’m a relatively new resident of this country (okay, a little lie, but it sounds better than “i’m an alien non-resident”) and i don’t really understand the situation. Could you explain me what exactely is the problem with giving the citizen’s petition to someone who can bring it to the White House?
Very friendly he explains me that it would be better if i’d spoke to his superior, to which he leads me. I repeat the thing, adding this time:
– Cause you see, i would have thought that this would have been a civic right, in line with the first ammendment?
The superior (y’r typical ugly cop):
– Well, it’s their right to accept it or not, and they won’t accept. You see, that’s your right; if somebody comes to your house, you can choose if you receive them or not.

I’m baffled by the comparison of the White House to any private house. I think back of cop-conversations when our actions were stopped around the parliament and government buildings in Brussels. Their the argument would be that we were disturbing a “neutral” zone with “progaganda”. Here the argument is connected to the sanctity of private space?
– But Sir, surely that is not the same thing. The White House is not a private house, it has a political function.
He considers for a moment, and responds:
– Okay, yes, it’s something political [sic!]. But you know, there’s always a security issue.

Ah, the saving grace of security. From the private straight to security, pushing out the public-political.
– A security issue for papers? We just want to hand over some papers?
– Oh yes, papers can be very dangerous.

In the meantime we’re surrounded by a bunch of marchers. Frankly everybody looked rather baffled. The exchange should have been filmed – the kind police officer in front of the White House saying that papers can be dangerous was quite a powerful image. (The conversation was in fact filmed, but by the police). As we continued talking among us, i understood that i didn’t quite get the thing as it was intended. In my imaginary, it was all about non-democratic regimes declaring the written word to be dangerous. My co-marchers assured me that the cop was invoking the threat of anthrax.

The march continues to Rumsfeld’s house, but the participants to the Spiritual Activism conference are asked to convene at the All Souls Church for the rest of the afternoon and evening program. As we move in small groups, i pick up more and more conversations of people who didn’t like the energy at the march, how some people were aggressive, etc. I shut up, don’t feel like arguing, pretend i don’t know these people. Then a woman addresses me and when she finds out that i’m from Europe, she asks why the EU did nothing to stop the war in Iraq. I suddenly feel like arguing – Oh, who exactely took the initiative for this war? And where exactely were all the millions and millions of people in the street in this country, as happened in many cities all over the world? (i mean, extrapolating the number of people that got together in Rome on the 15th of Feb in 2003, that would translate in about 15 million people on the streets of NYC or Washington.) And more than that, do you think those massive marches would have happened if people couldn’t overcome the “i don’t like the atmosphere of this march” feeling and got stuck arguing about “why are you shouting?”. Plus the way in which the “punishment” of warmongers like Blair and Aznar provokes a certain kind of understanding among many people throughout europe, although they don’t agree with the tactics of the violent attacks, which destablizes or interrupts a hegemonic use of “the events” like that of 9/11 in the US, for more war. I’m all about criticizing and organizing against european goverments and policies, but what about getting a bit more active within the belly of the beast instead of hoping for someone or something “from outside” to stop the US? (oh friends, i already told you, this spiritual activism conference really doesn’t bring out the best in me…) The woman politely turns away and continued chatting with the other people, pretending not to know me.

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spiritual activism (day one)

A pleasant early morning walk from Jayne’s house to the All Souls Church (a Unitarian Church), which hosts the conference. More than 1000 people are gathered in the building, it’s an impressive thing to bring so much people together for four intensive days of seeking to elaborate a new and different agenda. I’m eager to understand the stakes of this project, and determined to find out how and where it might or might not work, and what is to be learned from it, either way. In this vein, and since this move is about articulating progressive politics and religion/spirituality, i want to take the spiritual side very seriously, and not merely assess it in terms of how it enables or hinders progressive politics, which would take an existing notion of progressive politics as the standard. But how to “assess” the spiritual dimension of the projects, what are the points of reference in this respect? i’m not sure, i’ll have to figure that out as i go along. But the obvious place to start is myself, and allow to feel and articulate what the spirituality that is invoked and practised here does to me.

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A folder with the program and various kinds of background information – as it already was clear before coming, this conference is packed. Packed with speakers, activities, moments of prayer and meditation… We’ll be sitting in this church a lot, as we start at 9 am and go on till 11.00 pm. Tough on the body, and yet the set-up differs from an academic conference with a similar crazy schedule. Collective moments of singing, dancing, turning to your neighbor to have a conversation about what one just heard from the pulpit (of course, after all, we’re in a church). Hm, some of this is hard on the soul for me… i love singing. But the conversations with the neighbor are too soon, too forced for me. The sociability of such a large gathering is already demanding enough, i don’t feel i can do the “now take 10 minutes to discuss this with your neighbor” pedagogy from day one… The first people i feel obliged to talk to share the mixed feelings, as a couple. He is very enthousiastic to engage, while she makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Yet she’s following the conversation i have with her man, and gets really interested in what i do, and clearly wants to know more (she does radio, her man tells me, and these are the kinds of subjects she likes to make radio shows about), and finds herself oscilliating between an engaged conversation or total withdrawal from the whole scene all together. A plenary session later, she has left the place. We should have met somewhere outside all of this. A reoccuring feeling throughout the day – somehow the social set-up it too much for me.

The opening talk by Sister Joan Chittister impresses, Peter Gabel’s talk doesn’t. Rabbi Michael Lerner talks about the inspiration for The Left Hand of God, elaborating on his talk in Santa Cruz. See, this is the part i appreciate a lot: re-thinking the world from the values of love, care, awe, radical amazement, generosity, gratitude and ecological responsibility (which, for people who have gathered here, are religious and/or spiritual values). A new bottom-line, as this is called here. Then comes the slippery, risky, but also exciting, part that is affirmed throughout the three talks: the need to redo the public-private distinction. How do public-private relate in a world that is fiercely private (rampant individualism) and dangerously public at the same time? (Sister Joan Chittister) We need to learn how to speak for an agenda not in the bureaucratic language of “single payer health care” but in terms of values, of why social security matters for us (Peter Gabel). By the way: i won’t be writing up my notes of all the talks on this blog, i’ll do that in a kind of more comprehensive report – get in touch if you want to have a look at that.

This desire to transform existing political culture is accompanied by two tactical moves. Splitting up in small groups of about 10 to 15 people, which are organized according to where one lives. The idea is to strenghten local networks and initiatives, maybe even local chapters- in other words, movement building. There are a couple of Bay Area groups, mine is faciliated by Irene from Beyt Tikkun. Together with her, i’m about the youngest in our group, which confirms an impression i had about age when entering the church this morning (Serious Problem #1). There’s one black woman in our group, which confirms an impression about ethnicity (Serious Problem #2). Hm, this doesn’t look good for a new movement…

The second tactic is that of influencing or impacting political bodies here in Washington DC, where the conference intentionally takes place. The Friends Committee on National Legislation, a quaker lobby for peace, holds an informative session and hands out guidelines on the process of contacting and talking to one’s political representatives. Hm, i’ll have to get my head around these particular kind of “civic lobby politics”.

The afternoon is all about preparation for meetings with senators and congressmen and -women tomorrow. Hundreds of appointments have been made beforehand, with the idea that individuals or small groups of people go and see their representatives and speak about either one or more issues that are elaborated in what this Network for Spiritual Progressives calls a new Spiritual Convenant with America (in which a new bottom-line is articulated for a number of important axes of public policy). I go to the International Relations workshop, facilitated by Rabbi Lerner. What would a new bottom-line in the field of international relations imply? Lerner proposes to start with a commitment of spending 5% of the GDP to development aid – a global Marshall plan to eliminate global poverty. The rationale: a redistribution point of departure will foster better international relations and security (“this would do far more for “homeland security” than anything else”.) Something dodgy about how that rationale posits the relationship between the economic and the political, but of course economic redistribution on a global scale is a good thing. The critical questions follow soon: what about problematic regimes? We wouldn’t want to be giving those amounts of money to regimes that support terrorism… A solution in by-passing such regimes and giving the money to NGOs (oh, more dodginess, the question of public accountability of NGOs…) and a strong affirmation that measures like these will precisely take the grounds for terrorism away. We need to make the political representatives understand that the well-being of America depends on the well-being of everybody on the planet.

Then i participate in a workshop about the new immigrant struggles, by Norma Chavez who works for JOB (Justice Overcoming Boundaries) in San Diego. The emphasis is on the Christian dimension of the recent mobilisations. Norma wants us to understand how in many places the organization of the marches was led by Catholic organisations, and think more about how these kinds of politics and spirituality could enforce each other. In fact, some participants to the workshop literally have a Bible in their hand to argue for open borders and against the illegalisation of people (Exodus and Leviticus are helpful here). She offers an overview of different laws and law proposals in the process of making people illegal, with HR 4437 as a landmark. She also vents some criticism against Rabbi Lerner, who consistently emphasizes the need for an integrated vision and warns against the trading in and negotiating over agenda points here and there, which culminated in “Screw realism!” at the end of his morning talk. Norma wanted to make it very clear that the different law proposals currently discussed would each have different material impacts on people’s lives, and that this is reason enough to advocate for the least bad proposal, even if it clearly does not express our ideal vision…

We are encouraged not to eat alone in the evening. Oh god, i was so ready to go and eat alone. But then i see the guy whom i bumped into when he was looking for the workshop on the clash of civilisations. I was curious to know how it went, and he wanted to know about the immigration one, so we decide to eat together. Before we know it some other people stick to us. Did i already mention that the kind of sociability the conference sought to foster was affecting my ability to be social in a nasty way? Moreover, some of the “feel good” spirituality had exactely the opposite effect on me.

My main dinner partner, i’ll call him S., is really interesting. He calls himself a spiritual anarchist. He came to the UK as a political refugee from South-Africa during the 1980s, and pursued his studies in Oxford, where he developed a brilliantly sharp insight in the old boys network and the workings of power especially in relation to racism. He’s a professor in sociology now, still in the UK. I fall for his language and accent, British with a postcolonial touch and a very fine sense of irony. His account of the clash of civilisations workshop is most entertaining. “Now Sarah (hm, the first one at the conference who doesn’t americanise my name…), do you know what i mean when i say that the session boiled down to a white liberal chap instructing his eager audience that islam is all about love and peace?” Oh yes. “So tell me, how useful would you say that it?” We could have talked for hours, not only about luke-warm and lousy responses to the clash of civilisations discourse, but very soon we talk about the ANC and the anti-apartheid struggle, how power and spirituality worked there, about anarchism, etc.

But that was without taking our other dinner guests into account. The Presbyterian minister, a rather young guy. On the right end of the religious spectre at a gathering of spiritual progressives – part of the people who, once they had identified to which religious tendency they belonged to, are met with surprise and gratitude, “Thank you for your presence here.” At some point the pastor asks me where i live. His eyes start to shine when i say Santa Cruz, “What a great place, i’ve lived there for a while, you must love it.” Ay ay ay, wrong move. “No, i basically can’t stand it.” He’s taken aback, and wants me to explain. When i describe the sense of isolation (politically, culturally,…) he considers for a moment and kind of gives in. Yes, he could see that, indeed, “it’s a bit away from the world.” But that, he continues on a more theological note, has it’s value, “to be away from worldly things.” He nods complacently. “And surfing,” he adds, “there is something very spiritual about surfing”. Sure, i nod (my turn to make a complacent move), “but before you know it there’s more blood on your hands than you can stand or deal with. You see, that bloody war in Iraq is not going to stop by itself while one is surfing in Santa Cruz.” Oh friends, what can i say, a spiritual activism conference doesn’t really bring out my better self, does it… But i had to come up with something, no?, here’s a theologically conservative pastor (i’m sure if we’d started talking about sexuality or reproductive rights i would not have liked at all what he was saying) giving me a lesson of the value of staying away from wordly things which is subsequently connected with an imaginary of a wonderful life (and waves) in Santa Cruz. And of course i was surrounded by people very well-trained in being patient and practising forgiveness and love so i was safe. To push it a bit further, and so we end up digging a bit in this seperation between “wordly and spiritual realms”, as it is framed in theological debates. And i take the opportunity to check out some of the hypotheses of my intellectual work, in which i take fundamentalism to be a signal of trespassing the established and “proper” demarcations between religiosity/spirituality and politics with the Presbyterian surfing dude. He tells me his church has been concerned by such “fundamentalist” (but more accurately, Evangelical) tendencies that are formulating their politics on the basis of their faith, cause though his church might share very similar theological concerns, it doesn’t like the politics these new evangelicals come up with. This is why his church is, carefully, tentively, checking out the progressive religious lines – in first instance not for their beliefs, but for their politics.

Then there are two women doing and MA in women’s pastoral work. They want to know all about my doctoral research. So what do “they” want, they kept on asking, about Muslim women. Remember that these are believing Christian ladies – their point was not one about incomprehension of why women would be believing – and slowly it’s starting to get on my nerves. S. drops a point about western and eurocentric bias within feminism and i have first have to turn to him and make the point that it all depends on which feminism and which concrete groups you’re talking about (and before i can finish the examples he’s nodding and smiling and i catch the lights in his eyes – he just wanted me to say all this…). By then the words conflict and antagonism were flying in the air and the two women were shaking their heads and saying that it was such a pitty that there were so much conflicts within the women’s movement, that we should stand strong together. As i still wanted to make the point of the bias in the things they were saying, i couldn’t help saying: “No, there are not enough conflicts! We need more conflicts that acknowlegde and work through the antagonisms which are there, now that would make our movements stronger.” By then the ladies look slighty upset and S. is holding his belly which is shaking with laughter.

At some point during the evening session, which promises to go till 11pm, i leave. I want to walk home, but people around me say i really shouldn’t. Since i’ve just arrived in this city, i don’t feel i can assess the situation very well. My intuition says it’s okay, but then all these people say no. I keep on asking the next person, and everybody says no. Whatever, i accept the lift that i’m offered. When i get back home, Jayne says it is not supposed to be a very safe neighboorhood, but that she regularly walks home at night and that it’s fine. Oh all those god-trusting people getting worked out over security…

I notice that Jayne usually goes to sleep earlier, and i’m pretty tired as well (i forgot i’m supposed to have a jetlag while booking my ticket, and the program doesn’t really allow for one), but there are still many things we need to talk about. She lived three years in Kirgistan, which i want to hear all about, like she wants to know about Tatarstan. She tells me sweet stories about being at home and happy there, feelings which got interrupted by a need to return to the USA as she realized more and more that this is the place where she can make more of a difference. And we talk about lobby politics. At first she wants me to explain my preocupations and even why i use the term “lobbying” for the civic thing of concerned citizens meeting with their political representatives. While i’m just trying to figure out whether these are dots that can be connected through a continuum. She kind of insists on a difference between citizens (civic activism) and NGOs (advocacy) lobbying on the one hand, and corporate and industrial lobby politics on the other. But our conversation leads us to into one grey zone after the other.

Jayne works in a NGO focused on small farmers in the US. Among their activities: to strengthen support networks among small farmers, and to create conditions for transnational solidarity. One of the things they do, in search of countering global neo-liberal ideologies and tactics, is to invite famer activists from Africa to tour among small farmer communities in the US and start conversations about common grounds and strategies. This is the part of the work she likes. But at the moment their energies are consumed by the new Farm Bill, which is supposed to be renewed and voted next year. Trying to raise awareness among political representatives, advocacy and the spiral of lobby politics. You know that the big agro-business are doing it, Jayne says, so you can’t afford not to try to get your vision and points on the agenda “in Washington”. A widely spread rationale, hence the crazy amount of jobs opportunities in Washington, that are, in some way or another, about influencing political agendas. Sounds a tiny bit like Brussels. But you see, i tell her, in Brussels among certain political networks and circles, there’s a strong idea that politics shouldn’t be like this, shaped on the “lobbying” model… Well, here it’s an established and widely accepted way of how the political terrain operates (Jayne studied government studies and international relations, in some Boston school focused on political science and goverment), she tells me, and putting yourself outside of it means cutting yourself off from some of the available power and resources to change things. Mind you, meanwhile she’s looking for a new job and would so much rather be working on the farm…

arriving in washington

It’s very late when i arrive in Washington DC, at the Dulles International airport. Jayne, my host, gave me very precise instructions to get to her place with public transport, always a bit exciting when arriving at night in a city one does not know. The first part of the trip takes place on a bus, where i study the public transport map. Huntington-Pentagon. Wow. i mean, the link is tangible in many respects, but to see it presente in such a direct line… my trip continues through the metro network. The style of the subway strikes me: grey-brownish concrete, uniform, minimalist. Must have been built sometime in the 1970s or perhaps the 1980s. Seems like one giant nuclear shelter to me. Feels like we’re back in the Cold war. When i surface at one of the stations, i find myself in what seems a nice neighborhood (with a rather familiar kind of urbanity, wasn’t sure to  expect this or not) with the friendly face of Jayne welcoming me.