tijuana meeting

on the bus home i met with Lili, a young woman from the Brown Berets with whom i didn’t yet get a chance to talk to. she comes up to me, surprised that i’m also at UCSC, and insisting that i could join the small group that drives from UCSC every thursday to the meetings in Watsonville. you can’t imagine how much easier that will make it for me. i missed last two meetings because it was difficult to get everything organized. oh yes, she laughs, i don’t have a car nor a driver’s license, i hear you.

beautiful energy to be talking with Lili. she’s just back from Tijuana and overwhelmed by the experience. the meeting the Zapatistas had called for, with latino groups and leaders from the U.S. a destroyed cinema theatre with no roof. a first day with local mexican groups telling their stories and strategies. the second day with US latino groups telling their stuff. the Brown Berets talked about the raids on migrants, the migra watch. Sandino brought up the importance of free radio in the US. about 11 brown berets went together to Tijuana, and ended up doing quite a bit of security work, around el subcomandante Marcos. Lili couldn’t believe that she found herself a body guard of el subcomandente, and was impressed by the way men and women were treated equally. if didn’t matter if you were a small woman, she said, if you were the bodyguard, you were considered as such and treated with equal respect. i could envision her well in the brown uniform and beret, taking her task very seriously. when i read some of the reports of the meeting, i saw that women raised the issue of sexism and machoism in their communities. but in “full armor” and in charge of security, the power dynamic looks different…

on thursday evening Lili had an idea… if el subcomandante would phone to the Brown Berets meeting in Watsonville, to greet the companer@s. got everybody in Watsonville very excited. and just this busride with her got me very excited as well… won’t be long till i go to the next Brown Berets meeting.

read more:
on the Otra Campana website: 18 october | 19 october
on narconews.com: The Other Campaign Hits the US-Mexico Border, Where the Indigenous Are Called “Migrants” and Roots Run Deep

and below is a translation of piece on the Brown Berets in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada

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The Brown Berets of Watsonville, California

In a City of Immigrant Farmworkers, a New Youth Movement Draws
Inspiration from the Zapatistas and the Radical Organizing of the 60s

By Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
La Jornada
October 24, 2006

They take up the legacy of Chicano agrarian leader César Chávez, of Malcolm X, of Martin Luther King, of the Zapatistas and, of course, of sixties movements like the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets. From this last group they retake its name, its berets and its fighting spirit.

The new Brown Berets are a group of autonomous youths, most of them students, dressed head to toe “in the color of the earth.” They are based in Watsonville, California, an agricultural region inhabited and, above all, worked by tens of thousands of people of Mexican, African American and Filipino origin.

Ramiro Medrano relates: “We began to organize in 1994. There was a lot of social mobilization in the United States in that year, because social assistance was being taken away from undocumented people with Proposition 187. That was also the year of the Zapatista uprising and we as Mexicans in the United States, as Chicanos, well, it made a big impact on us. The Chicano has an identity problem. We feel Mexican, but we are not recognized as such in Mexico, and neither are we gringos. After 1994, we were proud to say, together with the Zapatistas, we are Mexicans, indigenous people, and we are proud of it.”

In Watsonville, 80 percent of the population is Mexican or of Mexican origin. The majority are field workers, indigenous people who confront racism daily through organization and strength of character. They are the workforce of the U.S. city that has the greatest exports of strawberries, lettuce, broccoli and raspberries, as well as other products harvested by the exodus on this side of the Rio Grande.

“In 1994, the gang violence here left a young girl and her brother dead of gunshot wounds. This caused us to say ya basta – enough already! – to the violence generated by racism in the schools and in the fields. Young people with no options search for an identity, a sense of belonging, and that is how the gangs are formed. We didn’t want that in our neighborhoods anymore,” Ramiro continues. And that is how the Brown Berets began. First with a great march for peace and unity that went through all the battle-torn neighborhoods. Later, once organized as a group, they had more long-term goals: get the youths out of the gangs; have representation in the schools and on their administration to avoid racism in the selection of students; organize against immigration raids and their agents’ actions in the barrio; hold workshops and events to strengthen identity through education, and many more, including the organization of a “Justice Network” in order to communicate by telephone the actions of la migra. Through this network they organize rapid concentrations of people to stop attacks by immigration agents, which they record and distribute. “It’s about not just standing by.”

Published in Spanish in Gloria Muños Ríos’ column “Los de abajo” (“The Underdogs”) of October 21.

theories of slavery

The Time of Slavery, an article by Saidiya Hartman. i read it at the beach yesterday, liked it a lot. there are still grains of sand in between the pages. yet in class everybody seems to agree that it is a very pessimistic piece. when walking a bit of the way home with one students, he tells how the text got on his nerves – her bourgeois indulgence in sentiments. he is a serious political theory student, into high theory and anarchism. and yes, i see what he means. but there is something in the way she works through what preoccupies and affects her that, precisey because she doesn’t claim an easy “working through” model, takes her readers to different places. coming to think about it, the consensus on the pessimism of the text strikes me as strange. to me it drew lines of hope.

her visit to Elimina Castle in Ghana (one of the places on the West-African coast from where enslaved Africans were merchandised to the Americas). she is addressed as a sister from the other side of the Atlantic, returning. she rejects the idea of “the return”, yet does not remain untouched by the address. “Dear Sister” pierces through the armor of my skepticism, which, like a scab covering a wound, is less the sign of recovery than it is a barrier against the still pulsating state of injury. Without this defense i am exposed and vulnerable, a naive woman on an impossible mission: the search for dead and forgotten kin. the seduction of “sister”, the banality. a placebo, a pretend cure for an irreparable injury.

the tour within the castle invokes reflections on the tourist industry feeding of injury, at times it infuriates her. yet when in the children’s dungeon women start crying, she recognizes something else going on, that exceeds the closures of tourism. When some of the women begin to cry. I am suprised since I have been unable to shed a single tear; moreover, this shoddy and sensationalist tour incites my anger, which seems the only emotion I can express with an ease. Yet watching these women, I realize that they have come here to act as witness.

remembering. the necessity. the traps. the time of remembering – the coevalance of then and how, of us and the dead. It would appear that our lives and even those of the dead depend on such acts of remembrance. Yet how best to remember the dead and represent the past is an issue fraught with difficulty, it not outright contention. The difficulty posed by the plaque’s injunction to remember is as much the faith it bespeaks in the redressive capacities of memory, as the confidence it betrays in the founding distinction or a break between then and now. For the distinction between the past and the present founders on the interminable grief engendered by slavery and its aftermath. How might we understand mourning, when the event had yet to end? When the injuries not only perdure, but are inflicted anew? Can one mourn what has yet ceased happening?

refusing the return, refusing a fantasy of origins. refusing the idea of repair, refusing that the injury and grief is whiped out by repair. The most disturbing aspect of these reenactments is the suggestion that the rupture of the Middle Passage is neither irreparable nor irrevocable but bridged by the tourist who acts as the vessel for the ancestor. […] The ease with which the “greatest crime against humanity” is invoked and instanteously eclipsed but the celebration of the return of those descendants of the Middle Passage would suggest that in the last instance the language of return acts to disavow the very violence that it purportedly gives voice to and insinuates that the derangements of the slave trade can be repaired.

mourning. it perils. and, she suggests (and i feel the classmates skipped over this), the beginning of a counterhistory. Mourning, a public experession of one’s grief, insists that the past is not yet over; this compulsion to grieve also indicates that liberal remedy has yet to be a solution to racist domination and inequality. […] Yet the work of mourning is not without its perils, chief among these are the slippage between responsibility and assimilation and witnessing and incorporation.

we talk about the difference between mourning and melancholia in class. in a text that might feel melancholic, her insistance on mourning is deliberate, as a footnote reference to Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia testifies. mourning as a reaction to the loss (of a person or an abstraction, like a motherland), and melancholia when you take the loss in yourself. it’s mourning that raises the question of ethical responsibility, that has a transformative power.

it also strikes me in this class, after listening generously and searching for places to connect, that i don’t like the way the students are trained here – in the sophisticated humanites. the things we read and talk about are disturbing, they affect… yet the students seem only in their comfort zones when talking in a well rehearsed theoretically sophisticated voice (which includes much talk about affects…), about representational strategies and all. so many times i feel like asking, now cut the crap, what exactely do you mean? the moments in between the well-rehearsed parts they seem so clueless…

abortion day dream

i wake up from a deep sleep with a morning dream… that was abortion day at SC Planned Parenthood and the waiting room was filled with women consumed with their misery, alone. i pauzed in front of the door, took a deep breath and stepped in. began to talk with one woman and she’d tell me her story, and then another one and before long the waiting room was buzzing with stories shared between all. abortion days followed, with more women coming back to PP and more stories to be shared. among the crowd was maría, and our friend. and all the women who came for an abortion brought many friends. each time the buzzing would go on till the last woman came back from the surgery and then we’d all walk in the sun and lie on the beach and eat ice-cream… “happy abortion day” someone would say (and everybody would understand, that it was about shaking off dominant choking moralism and taking collective care).

abortion

it was still dark outside, when maría and i left the house this morning to meet up with a friend in a cafe. she had sneeked out of her house, so that nobody would know. she is having an abortion this morning. Planned Parenthood, the second floor of a grey building at parking lot at the back of Pacific Avenue. our friend was petrified.

today was abortion day in Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood. once a month they do abortions. once the month. for whatever reason, this scarcity (and with problematic consequences – like in the case of our friend she had to fix an abortion appointment before having made the decision, the next appointment would be too late), it keeps the place from being identified as an “abortion clinic”. it keeps the picket lines away, a nurse says.

the process of making a decision was tough. drenched, and drenched again, in feelings of shame, humiliation, fear. surrounded by nightmares. we were the only friends she found she could tell. we begin to feel, from the inside of friendship, how fragile and small social acceptance of abortion is in this country. old childhood friends, “best friends”… she was terrified by the idea that they would know. i’m talking about circles where the legality of abortion is defended (not to be taken for granted in this country); it still feels like the forbidden.

women in the waiting room. most of them alone. some look miserable. the nurses and doctors attending to our friend kept on asking about us. “are these your friends?” “how lucky you are.” “not one, but two friends came with you.” this was the part that made me most sad.

our friend was unemployed and without health insurance when she got pregnant. this means that she should qualify for Medicaid, a state funded program providing medical care to people who are part of designated eligibility groups. being pregnant should make one eligible. last week our friend had an appointment with Planned Parenthood in order to do the paper work and apply. the woman she talked to questioned her decision to have an abortion. was she really sure… she could be making a big mistake… many women regret it afterwards… it wasn’t a good thing in the eyes of god… a whole arsenal of weapons in an embryo saving mission. it caught our friend by surprise, made her feel miserable (as if she hadn’t felt miserable enough the last weeks), she couldn’t stop crying. the emotional pressure came with financial pressure. if our friend would have the baby and give it up for adoption, the woman would make sure that our friend didn’t have to pay a thing, that she’d be fully covered. this still remained to be seen in the case of an abortion, the woman suggested, and made sure our friend understood that she was on the commission that takes the decision.

(the insistance on adoption, also on the flyers. it’s not the “keeping pregnancy vs. abortion” decision as it is mostly played out back home. no, giving up for adoption is very present as an option.)

we were so angry. this is Planned Parenthood, this is after counselling sessions to help women make an informed decision. probably there’s a better screening of those counsellors, maría suggested. but i wouldn’t be surprised if women on embryo-saving missions infiltrate these places. our friend partly feels she should follow up on this, file a complaint somewhere, but of course it’s the last thing on her mind these days. maría has fantasies of an action like dumping a whole lot of chicken embryos in front of the door (you want embryos… here they are!) but it’s not clear at all how that would distinguish us from those anti-abortion activists. that was last week, when we were angry.

today is different. some sadness, some fear, lots of care and tenderness.

the nurses. one telling our friend about how she had been alone to cross the picket-lines years ago when she had an abortion. another one recognizing what our friend feels and offering her (“i probably shouldn’t be asking you this, but do you believe in God?”) to pray together, that she will be safe and all will be fine. a picture of an ocean, beach and palm trees on the ceiling, right above where one’s head lies on the table.

the darkness of the night was just pulling away when we entered the PP building. there’s beautiful sunlight in a clear blue sky when we get out. we have a good meal together and spend the entire afternoon on the beach, where our friend wanders in and out of sleep. today was not a bad day.

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(photo from maría’s ocean woman series)

sankofa

from Sankofa, the “homework” film for Theories of Slavery:

“Spirit of the dead rise up, lingering spirit of the dead rise up and posses your bird of passage. Those stolen Africans, step out of the ocean from the wombs of the ships and claim your story. Spirit of the dead rise up, lingering spirit of the dead rise up and posses your vessel. Those Africans, shackled in leg irons and enslaved, step out of the acres of came fields and coton fields and tell your story. Spirit of the dead rise up, longering spirit of the dead, rise up and posses your bird of passage. Those lynched in the Magnolias, swinging on the limgs of the weeping willows, rotting food for the cultures, step down and claim your story. Spirit of the dead rise up, lingering spirit of the dead, rise up and posses your vessel. Those tied, bound and whipped from Brazil to Mississippi. Step out and tell your story. Those in Jamaica, in the fields of Cuba, in the swamps of Florida, the rice fields of South Carolina. You waiting Africans, step out and tell your story. Spirit of the dead, rise up, lingering spirit of the dead rise up, and posses your bird of passage. From Alabama to Suriname, upt to the caves of Louisiana, come out you African Spirits, step out and claim your stories. You raped, slave bred, castrated, burned, tarred and feathered, roasted, chopped, lobotomized, bound and gagged. Spirit of the dead rise up, lingering spirit of the dead rise up and posses your bird of passage. You African spirit. Spirit of the dead rise up, lingering spirit of the dead rise up and posses your bird of passage.”

election sunday

these were the elections that would deliver the first Vlaams Belang mayor in Antwerpen. i can hardly remember elections in Belgium from before the time they were nick-named “black sunday” (since that election day in the 1980s when became clear how many people were ready and eager to vote for what then was called the Vlaams Blok). yesterday’s elections did not turn out black. ambigious, but not black. (and the mayor of Antwerpen remains red, although it’s the red of a socialist party revamped by neoliberalism and populism.) a bend in the VB growth line.

what made that happen? much talk about the charismatic populist leader of the socialist. in fact much talk about everything except… jan hertogen’s careful analysis of the elections results relates the interruption of the VB growth line to the so-called migrant vote. nadia wrote an excellent piece based on this analysis, monsterverantwoordelijkheid voor een monsteroverwinning. the affirmation of an “allochtoon” political subject in the realm of party politics and elections. but guess how difficult this is for Vlaanderen to see and recognize…

march for peace and unity

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maría, veronica and i arrive at the Watsonville plaza just in time to hear the song of this year’s march played on the harp and the blessing by Lutheran priests. the churches should be here, he said, this is where our struggle is. jesus of nazareth is with us at this march, she declares. in 1994 the Brown Berets marched for the first time through all the neighborhoods of watsonville, to insist that the violence must stop, that the community must empower itself. this is how they started a work that still continues; they stand, in their brown uniforms, in silence and dignity.

los alteres. pictures of those who died, flowers and objects, the Virgen of Guadalupe. maría had noticed it: in the spanish text people were invited to bring objects for the altars, in the english translation the altars were not mentioned.

the White Hawk group which i had seen before at a march against violence in santa cruz. they are the head of the march, dancing the whole way through. stopping at some places, to perform rituals with incense. our intuition about these places turns out to be true: killings happened here.

names of peoples, their ages. placards at the front of the march, which we help carrying for a while. i ask the guy next to me, eventhough i see that he is not wearing the uniform, whether he is part of the Brown Berets. i don’t go to the meetings and stuff, he responds, but this is part of my heritage. this is my community, this is where i come from.

there are not so many people. if one would start counting the people affected by violence in this community, it doesn’t make sense. yet the march is powerful, in the way it stands for commitment and remembering.

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see more reports and pictures on indymedia