talking at me, not talking to me

there were some middle age white communist dudes passing out literature at the hollywood farmers market today. one of these fuckers invoked harvey milk in an attempt to draw common ground after i had begun speaking about the legacies of black feminist marxism within this country.

excuse me sir, my first reaction is anger.

*how dare you make assumptions about my political identifications. you might as well call me a lesbian (a low down dirty shame on you). you are listening to the words i am saying. no no. you are looking at me and assuming i am at best a leftist leaning dyke with some complimentary economic views that you might be able to sway into organizing ranks for your leader bob avikian.
you need to sit down and think about a few things.

another smug asshole scraping from the barrel of identity politics. i am wiser than i look.

*why is harvey milk standing in as a the placeholder for the common ground of our conversation? and does it make you feel good about yourself that you can get out there in the middle of hollywood and preach the gospel, you aint trying to hear it from anyone but yourself?

youre up there riding on an awfully high horse to be considered a comrade.
dont get it twisted.
those persons constituted into subjects in the aftermath of the recognition of your own privilege are making you feel real good about your solidarity capabilities.
and i bet you call yourself an lgbt ally.

my second reaction is anger tempered with a bit of saddness.

the rich historical and contemporary litany of great organizing work being done by and for queer folks engaged in a struggle for economic justice reaches far closer to my heart than that of a post-sean penn harvey milk symbolism.

Conference this Saturday!

I am in Amnesty International, and we're putting on a conference this Saturday.
The focus is about the trafficking of women and the femicides of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Here's all the information if any of you are interested. It should be really intense and thought-provoking, since it's addressing many of today's hotbutton topics:

STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACTIVISTS' CONFERENCE hosted by Amnesty International on Saturday, April 28 at the University YMCA. In Juarez, over three hundred women have been raped, mutilated and murdered, while the perpetrators remain at large. Every year, millions of women and girls are trafficked across international borders and forced or coerced into prostitution. This culture of abuse extends even to our own campus, where every year female students are raped and assaulted. Meanwhile, women and men everywhere are taking action to stop the violence. Hosted by Amnesty International 124, a program of the University YMCA, this conference will include workshops designed to raise awareness about these current issues, and to teach important skills for engaging in women’s rights activism, including fundraising, outreach and publicity, and how to organize effectively on a college campus.Amanda Flott, Field Organizer for the Amnesty International Midwest Regional Office, will be delivering the opening plenary, unveiling a new report by Amnesty International, "Maze of Injustice: The Failure to Protect Indigenous Women from Sexual Violence in the USA." Dr. Karen Flynn, professor of African-American studies here at UIUC, will be presenting "Sex Trafficking: Making the Global Connection" at the closing plenary.Whether you have signed a petition once in your life, or you are a seasoned activist, this conference is for you! This event will be held on Saturday, April 28th at the University YMCA, located at 1001 South Wright Street across from Lincoln Hall. Come at 10:30am for breakfast, we will begin at 11am and adjourn at 3:30. This conference is free and open to everyone!

Day of Silence

I feel the need to give you the back story to this. I’m taking a class right now that is all about oppression and activism. It’s an amazing class, in part because many of the most recognizable campus activists are in it this semester. And I was so excited that it fell on a Wednesday. In fact, secretly, it was the one thing I was looking forward to most about Day of Silence this year. I announced the day of silence events twice in class in the last week, and we watched a video in class last week in which June Jordan railed against all those people who will protest racism, but not homophobia. The timing was perfect.

I eagerly awaited class today, imagining the silence as those who most often participate were silent, hoping that for the first time in four years, I might have a class where I wasn’t one of a small handful in black, but part of a collective majority. I was so excited in fact, that I got there early. And as one after another they walked in chattering and wearing blue, pink, red, green, yellow clothing, my heart slowly sank. As I sat in class today, instead of taking notes, I wrote this.

An Open Letter to Student Activists at the University of Illinois
As I went through my day on this Day of Silence, I was profoundly sad. If people who call themselves anti-oppression, anti-chief, anti-racism, anti-sexism, against the racist, imperialist war on Iraq, or activists for justice and equality really were all those things, the whole campus should have been filled with people dressed in black the same way Foellinger was filled with people fed up with the racism, abuses of power, and unacknowledged privilege rampant on this campus. This was a singular opportunity to easily and visibly unite around a cause that affects members of all our communities, and it was missed.

I suppose it was naïve of me to have so much faith in other people. But these are not my enemies. These are MY people. They are my friends, my classmates, my, dare I say it, comrades in the struggle. They are those who nod in agreement when I question sexist attitudes, who smile and compliment my anti-chief t-shirt, who march with me when I protest the war. And I feel betrayed.

All that we asked was that you put on black clothing this morning. Silence was highly encouraged, but left to your discretion. And you chose not to participate. You chose not to take a stand against violence and oppression when doing so would have meant no inconvenience to you.

None of us is perfect, of course. We forget, we rush around without thinking, we get distracted. And if you were not aware of what today was, then I apologize. Our hours of chalking, hundreds of fliers, thousands of facebook ads and tens of profile pictures, our letters to the editor, weeks of quad tabling, and numerous class announcements went unnoticed.

But when such a huge proportion of a group shows such ambivalence, that is no accident. This speaks to me as the clearest evidence of what is wrong with this campus. Your complacency implicates you, and your silence on this issue speaks louder than the silence that we gave this campus today. And now, even as I am surrounded by those who chose to take a stand, I am profoundly sad.


In peace,

Bridget

Where did the kittens go on the class trip? -- to the meow-seum.

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of making a visit to Grinnell College to see a dear friend. She took me on a bit of a tour and showed me their student activist common area (I guess you could call it). Its a mad cool place with a large work/meeting room, a smaller room with a little library and then a locker room that I think would be used mostly for storage. Now granted its a very small-very liberal school (about 1500 students I think), it seems like its a great place for like-minded people to gather in one centralized place and I bet the environment that stems out of that is really invigorating. As I related this back the structure of our school's student group complex, it became clear that the size of this university is both a determining positive and negative factor in terms of coalition building amongst similar goal oriented groups.

We have a ton of groups here so theres a lot of potential for broad coalitons to make resonant social and political progressions but at the same time sometimes I feel like we are too diffused. I feel like theres not enough of a centralized calendar or events/meetings/actions etc. and also a lot of times cosponsorships or coalitions are more so in name or a kind of 'removed' support than anything else. That is to say, if I was to cosponsor your event or become a coalition member it would consist of me 1. supporting it, 2. advertising it to people, and 3. potentially showing up. But, maybe in order for these cosponsorships/coalitions to really become dynamic movements there needs to be a strength of force in numbers at all stages, not just a show of solidarity by way of a shout-out on a phamplet or something like that. I am speaking solely out of my own individual experience on this campus and I don't want to make claims that are bogus or anything, so I am posing two questions sort of. One being: how do you feel about the environment of student activism within the University of Illinois? The second being: do we need a more centralized space to bring people together or with so many people, is it better to just work hard in forming connections by sending people out to different meetings/events to establish familiar ties thereby making it easier to overlap/piggyback onto each others' activism?

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, because I really believe coalition building can be foundational in the evolution of a movement. Ultimately, we are affected and potentially oppressed intersectionally and right now it makes sense to me to see activist movements stemming from such oppressions working most efficiently when we can enlist a cross-section of groups. Maybe if our identities are constituted through a number of intersectional forces and networks, it then also makes sense to use an intersectional approach in how we resist/reflect those identities through our activism.

word. let me know your thoughts.

In the spirit of Stephanie's post about FIST because I, too, am very excited about our group, I thought I'd post a little bit about what we're trying to do so that if anyone else wants to join they can.

We met after a follow-up discussion about Racism, Power, and Privilege and decided to continue that conversation and form a group around it. It seemed like a great opportunity to form a group of GWS undergrad and grad students (since not everyone knows each other), and to act on the issues we discuss every day in class.

After discussing the possibility with the STOP coalition, we decided to jump on board with some of what they are doing because for some reason there wasn't an organized GWS presence around the issue. We're still just starting, and right now we're in the process of getting together with the Tri Delts to discuss how they've felt oppressed as women in the Greek system, hear more about their experiences of what happened after the "incident," and hopefully to link some of their oppressions with other oppressions on campus. This will later be a part of the narrative collection that STOP is doing.

If anyone has anything to contribute or would like to join our weekly parties-er-meetings, we meet on Thursdays at 4 in the GWS house. If you can't make it but would like to be on the email list, let me know and I'll send you weekly notes (elabedz2@uiuc.edu).

Also, this Tuesday the 10th, our group is sponsoring a queer women's night at the rainbow coffee house. If you or anyone else you know who identifies as a queer women would like to come, join us at the coffee house on the corner of Goodwin and Green from 6-9 and discuss the current climate on campus.

With Feminist Fury,
Elizabeth