HERE HE COMES TO SAVE TEH DAY ?!?!!?

O I posted on facebook I post things.

My most recent one was about confusion and BUHHHH?!?

at this

The cover of Ms. Magazine.

UHH WHAT?

One of my great facebook nuisances is that every now and then someone who knows me and reads my profile and interest and goes

" BA will LOVE this group"

and tries to egt me to join this is what a feminist looks like.

I hate it. I hate that meme so much.

It's this constant wink wink nudge to this stereotype of ugly feminists

And please don't tell me that not it's about how " diverse" Big F feminism is.

That's why peopel stilltake time out of articles to tell us how pretty X woman is.

The shift has been more about the fact that kind of kind of twee aren't I so cute in my both aesthetic egoism and deep desire for attention stopped being so marketable ( and if I had anything to do with that I will take that as a joy)

but that's only part of it.

I really am disturbed the need of an Obama superman who has to UNCOVER his feminist ?

Asif that is his " superhero " identity 

Maybe it's just me but I think that feminism is not nor should be "marketed" but most importantly shouldn't be marketed as a thing where it shows how much " better"you are than everyone else.

I also feel this way about socialism , black power,and "consciousness" of all forms. I Don't get a  cookie for doing things that I knwo to be right and more so are GOOD FOR ME

If we recognize that these are endemic and systemic problems that intrinsically affect us all , why is it turning into the moral superiority game?

Not to mention if it needs to be uncovered why aren't we talking about WHY we feel it needs to be uncovered.

And frankly on the basic level I am really really put off by  the imagining of President Obama as a superhero that we need to help be super( I  even read the contents and articles I am good girl)

coming to the rescue of women?

BUHBUH BUH??!?>!

I voted for Obama , shit I voted for and supported probably long before many people involved with Ms. did ( i am STILL not okay with Gloria Steinhem) but , here's something

he's not my savior, and considering his platform I find images of him as a savior one of the most disconcerting things ever. Because as he talks more and more about responsibility , and seeming people CLAIM to get him  and his emphasis on historical accuracy and pragmatism. 

What continually gets asked of him ,  seems to be the utmost desire to annoint him as a servant of fantasy.

And its irksome because these same people are the first to tell any "minority" interest group that hey this is teh "real world" . That such lofty goals like hey proper representation or such  "negativity" as pointing  out the system's inherent flaws are unWise and wrong and bad

but making a superhero out of a president A-OK

and 

yeha maybe it's just me being picky 

but the idea of a man on a feminist magazine as a "savior"

I don't like it.

I am bothered and straight up scared at the idea that rather than accountability we endeavor to make a superperson  wearing a tired slogan.

I am worried that THIS president who was ELECTED with a whole LOT of women, behind the scenes, fundraising , who has exposed rifts , has a WIFE and a SENIOR ADVISOR not to mention a multimedia icon  

ALL women

that the special thing we can think off is him coming to save the day?

What will we ask of ourselves

I worked on the inaugaration and walked through the day with that kind of weight on my heart , a small but insistent melancholy.

A combination of yes happiness, deep personal spiritual joy, fury and lostness.

On facebook, on twitter, in blogsI get to be a witness but as of yet I am not sure I am a lover.

I don't talk about it often because in a lot of ways I fell I am both a dissapointment and disappointed , but I am a member of ( tangentially) the young black and fabulous. And the tools we use to connect with each other.

Facebook , I was on there when the only other people were Harvard Yale and Brown.

I have always felt apart from it and even more so after graduation. Once my fatehr got deported and I went to work basically anywhere taht would pay ,I felt the governement had revoked my membership. I was red painted and out. But I still have connections.

And watching facebook, and the like I'm not sure how I feel about it .

Most of my friends who are there are at balls through connections, and they are as they should be basking in the glow of being part of that knowing elite, that Ivy League ancestral club that for us was often denied, no matter how hard we worked. Of having president that is literally less than ten steps away.

For many of them this is the moment. We are as they say the next big thing.

We were spotted as microtrends.

And suddenly our opinions matter . Isn't venue after venue that a year to six months ago went " WE DON'T CATER TO SPECIAL INTERESTS ( insert derisive sneer) damn near falling over themselves to FIND ME A MINORITY.

Aren't these same places that wouldn't even feature WOC writers or thinkers or even properly invest time in meeting with them , creating shows and themes and ISSUES around our existence, thanks to Michelle Obama.

Shouldn't we be drunk on this possibility? Shouldn't I be chomping at the bit to be included? Shouldn't we be sating our thirst on the flow after centuries of dehydration?

To realize that those who don't even know our ANTHEM will now be under a president that for better or worse we have enveloped as ours.

To be quite clear I delight in seeing these people I love , many of them in fields they question, feeling pulls to service that can not be matched in their need to pay off bills ( OH MAN do i understand that)

To be awakened to the idea that they can be leaders, but

What will we ask of our leadership?

Not of our out there some old guy, or elite gal that we don't really feel connected to but , now that we feel that we can be our own leaders

What will we ask of ourselves?

At this moment more than ever we MUST require more than just being there.

Becoming a new face of power only means that those whose lust is power and influence will be quick to copy your face.

Consequently they will be quick to abandon it or pretend not to know it when it no longer offers the mysteries or privileges they believed it promised

The speeches were appropriately florid and Rev. Lowry underscored how silent and deep the rift between some of us is . ( yep people don't know Lift Ev're Voice and Sing, glad I sing cause my mandibular dropped THAT fast )

But my fear is that in that speech there was a mention of work, of getting down to teh unpleasant, of elbow grease and I see no joyous mention of that.

In that speech an entire world was singled out as an other and told how to live, but nothing was said of that same rhetoric being used to exterminate a people

What will we ask of ourselves?


To remember deeply what it means to be asked in, to remember what being asked in cost, to see how it has unfolded and to be cautious of how it unfolds

What will we ask of ourselves

Coughy, Horny, Thinky and already tired of inauguration .

Letter to My Children : All Of Them

Dear Children,

I saw you on the train today my love and you don't know who I am. You were

FIERCE

loud as all hell and ghetto to boot, but you are FIERCE

you were beautiful girl all 6ft of you ,

and you were you.

You had decided to be you and you were make upped and finger tipped

and still had that bass when you had to

let

em

know.

I saw you at my job today , you were baggy pantsed and deep in thought and a lil shy about asking.

and you tucked your girlfriends

hair behind her ear with the utmost of tenderness

I saw you rapid fire spanish , and machismo , bright brown eyes

mumbling faggot under your breath and looking at your best friend with so much pain my heart broke somewhere I can't ever put it back together again.

I see you every day and wonder why aren't you in school. Your skin with a layer of too much white on that beautiful brown. Your eyes focused to much on a screen taht convinces you to wear a thin parka in 10 degree weather but your sneakers are appropriately fresh.

You hair is a blue and mohawked

And you die in front of my eyes every day little.

and I count off the days as I realize they will tell you it's your fault , even as the FAS is written on your face in

3

2

1


I saw you on the news today

how good did you feel just making it into NOLA to see your fam.

How good did that air smell.

Did you bound up the steps excited beyond all measure that you hadn't dissappointed your daddy?

Your beautiful girl was with you, and your baby boy.

I say your name with Oscar's and I wonder does anyone miss YOU and nnot teh dreams your killing killed.

I see your pictures and am so sad .

I wonder does anyone think of you.

Of the songs you would have song the loves you could have had.

If one day you could have seen a time when you weren't expendable.

IF you weren't jsut the thing peopel told peopel about to prove how much some man 44 was or was not doing.

I wonder would you have liked caramel.

It is odd.

I wonder if you could meet your sisters and brothers and do tehy even know of you

do they know

do you know

do you knwo

how much I love you

do you knwo how much someone loves you

hwo many someones love you

and why loving you hurts so much

and not because you did anything wrong but beacause loving you isn't enough

to keep you safe

This Magic Moment

I call the 2007/2008 year the year I missed my moment. I could have been a "contender". I could have played nice and been "big" I could have been at meetings, I could have been on super secret special lists and in books!

I know my name floats around regularly with the phrases "angry" "unreasonable" " not nice" but most amusingly , one not to be talked to , to be ignored erased. She is always angry , she is always , black

She could be if she just

I could have been a contender instead I just get the look

the " I see you but there are important things so god forbid anyone know I think of you but hey I can't concentrate with you in my sightline"

the " I'm scared of you"

the " I did horrible things to you or watched as horrible things were done to you but any reaction you have to this at all outside of you know how hard it is for me will be completely out of proportion and you're so sensitive and SCARY"

the " I am trying to erase you from existence ! HOW DARE YOU MAKE IT DIFFICULT BY BEING WHERE I CAN SEE YOU! IS NO PLACE SAFE FROM YOU!"

I decided to do my recollections for New Year's and my desires on Christmas, because you decide what you want based on the life you life and the experiences you have had.

What 2007/2008 ( it's been essentially one year to me and if you look at my blog it reads like one too) has taught me is that as long as I must be invented, as long as I have to fight inventions, or play a game to justify my right to be heard, to play politics instead of being actually political , I am continually displaced for someone looking for a moment.

I fighting to be considered real. I am fighting to have reality. To be living breathing flawed, and willful , to exist needing the same things any " human" does without having to justify it as a special interest.

because someone doesn't want to miss their moment.

2009 needs to be a year where we are okay with missing moments. Life while consisting of moments can not be lived looking for them. Especially when the " moment" depends not on how much we are part of the world we are in but how much we are above it.

These moments instead of being or becoming these chain links where we can link ourselves to each other and form and weave places of safety and security and empowerment.

Are moments that are to make myself more important to make myself " a player" a mover a shaker or I can finally bend this thing to my will.

Do I mean Gaza. OF COURSE I MEAN GAZA. I mean GAZA . I mean Somalia. I mean Darfur. I mean Detroit. I mean NYC. I mean Italy. I mean West Virginia. I mean the "border".

I mean wherever that edge is where we fight and die and kill and protect ourselves form that insane other we think haunts our dreams.

The place where we willingly lose ourselves just to make somone else deserve the worst of us

Rose:

How superhuman do you expect them to be? is one question. The other is, to believe these things about these people--that this bombardment was all part of a sinister Hamas plot to sacrifice lives to make Israel look bad, that Palestinians are turning out the lights and inducing their children to cry on camera and faking injuries to pretend to the outside world that they're suffering--how subhuman do you believe these people are? How far do you have to go to believe that these people are so alien to you, all sociopathic monsters, to believe these things? That they asked for it?

I mean where I get on facebook and people tell me with straight faces that while schools are bombed , with white phosphorus over an open air prison it's the same thing as rockets .

That 's the moment. A moment where I can be powerful . A moment where no matter how many kids die, if it can be proved that we can erase something it's alright.

That moment where people are animals becuase it's easier to justify killing them

These moment's are even more crucial when you factor that making these moments necessitates erasing something.

TO have that moment of being " avant garde" means you have to out pace or more likely erase the garde to establish yourself.

Between WAM/Seal Press/IAJOT the problem that has come up again and again is not that there is an issue in the moment but that to be in that moment to be infront was not JUST a factor of talent

but a systematic and conscious taking advantage of the privilege ( and it's constant companion the oppression) of the garde .

It is to emphasize that at this moment whatever I want is more important than your life. The life you live , the life you want to live,the life you have lived.

and luckedly blessdly thankfully for me it has only been in the form of " missed opportunities" or bad relations.

for others

For others that moment is the last moment of their lives decided by someone else , because no matter what anyone says .

Oscar Grant begged for his life because he had a daughter, because he dreamed of moments , or laughter of highscool of college

but one moment was more important

Lostsonofodin(via LJ):

There is no explanation, because there exists no legitimate reason for it. The truth that will never be told, will never be entered into court record provides the only reason, and that is Oscar Grant was worth less as a human being. Despite all this florid polemic about living in a post racial society floating around, as a black man in America, Oscar Grant was worth less. That's why it was okay for him to die, face down, arms pinned behind his back, on a cold metro platform in full view of witnesses, because the tacit assumption was then, and shall remain, that his death, even if noticed, would go unmourned, and likely unavenged.

And this was no accidental shooting. You cannot accidentally shoot someone in the back, when they pose no threat, and there can be no fear of endangerment. The moment that police officer pulled a weapon, any weapon, from his belt in lieu of handcuffs any argument of accident ceased being valid. And the moment that weapon discharged into Oscar Grant's back, that officer became nothing more than a common killer, and nothing less than an executioner carrying out the will of a nation whose domestic policy has been for the past four hundred years that black lives are worth less.

Because that officer's moment was greater than any moment Oscar Grant could dream of, Because that moment when someone decided he wasn't still enough, he wasn't begging HARD enough, he was a thing.

That moment where people are animals becuase it's easier to justify killing them

These moments

We have to be willing to miss these moments

Dear Heavens can we miss more of these moments.

For Palestine. Twenty Five Things You Can Do

For Oscar Grant. Five Things You Can Do