(Cartoon by Sean Delonas for New York Post, Wednesday, February 18, 2009)
It is, to deliberately use the phrase, as simple as black and white.
When you refer to African-Americans as simians, you are being racist. When you refer to European-Americans in the same way, it's not.
For at least a thousand years, people from Africa were denied inclusion in the human family by the cultural, religious, and political institutions of Europe. Insisting Africans were "not entirely human" but some kind of ape-being was not the cause of racism. Racism, like all other oppressions, begins with power imbalance based on perceived survival struggle which eventually becomes widespread enough to infect every system of the human cultures where it is found. At that point, justifications and rationalizations are created to "explain" the lie. The portrayal of black people as monkeys is an ancient attempt to excuse treating them like animals.
Follow the power. If a man is compared to a barnyard animal, it may be offensive but it doesn't threaten the power flow because there is no institutionalized lie which implies it might be true. If a woman is compared to a barnyard animal, it is an attack backed by possible denial of access to power. Which is why I don't use bitch, chick, sow, or cow as terms for women, any more than I would use buck, junglebunny, rat, or vermin to refer to various non-white groups. There is, in my opinion, no "reclaiming" of such terminology while the power structure remains intact, no "subverting" the fact that we are all raised to think of the lie -- and the hate behind it -- first when we hear it used.
The association is there, whether we admit it or not. Even the depiction of two white police officers shooting a chimp (although, in this case, the drawing looks more like a gorilla, which I believe is deliberate because gorillas are more intimidating) would have an underlay of recognizable racism, because a solid percentage of the American population will think "black" when they see that ape. It's an easy, cheap association.
But when the line "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" is the caption -- with the clear knowledge that our President wrote the current stimulus bill, and in fact a photograph of him doing so appears on the previous page of the same newspaper in which this so-called cartoon appeared -- then there is no arguing the intent of this drawing. The intent is to encourage feelings and thoughts of homicide against our President because he is an African-American daring to break free of his "animal" category, daring to assume economic leadership. Over white people.
I recommend reading BAGNewsNotes, who of course has their finger directly on the pulse. Also recommended is Jack and Jill Politics analysis in "The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality".
I also encourage us to think long-term about what this blatant display means. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend does a consummate job of listing all the racism employed by Republicans and the Right during this last election cycle in her post The New York Post Makes Its Case For a Post-Racial America. It's true that this is business as usual for that crowd. But is also true that as the delusion of their supposed majority is revealed, and as they lose access to power, they will not go gentle in that good night. Their racism is, as Orcinus and Sara Robinson have repeatedly warned, becoming a daily danger, beyond even the threat of violence and death at the hands of cops that every person of color in this country knows on a gut level.
We cannot "nice" and hope this away. We cannot educate infected individuals and leave the system intact. This is not an issue of semantics or artistic freedom. This is a clarion clear call to war. We do not (and I hope will not) accept their terms of battle, but we must pay attention: When a major newspaper in our largest city prints a cartoon advocating the murder of "whoever wrote the stimulus bill", reducing him to an ape out of control, we are facing cultural revolution.
Something's happening here...
[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]
Thursday, February 19, 2009
SOMETHING'S HAPPENING HERE
Monday, November 17, 2008
SPIKE IN DEATH THREATS AGAINST PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA
(Poster image by Alvin Blair)
I sat down to write a post on this and discovered Digby already covered it yesterday, with good detail, so I'll begin by referring you to her post Losin' It: The Secret Service is reporting a spike in death threats against President-Elect Obama which "from Maine to Idaho, it’s the most threats ever made against a President-elect."
The Statesman Journal from Salem, Oregon reports that the Secret Service has warned the Obama family about the dramatic surge in threats, and that they have begun investigating former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin because her attacks on Obama are believed by them to be responsible for the increase in threats.
According to a cited Associated Press count, "One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites (Stormfront) got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election" and had to temporarily go off line because of the increased activity.
The Statesman Journal article states "The verbal attacks by Palin on Obama had provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him.'"
Eliminationist rhetoric, ably tracked by Dave Neiwert and our own Sara Robinson, is frequently a canary in the mineshaft when a prevailing lie (such as the bedrock of racism in American culture) is effectively contradicted. Our response must deal with the core issue, not just the most evident symptoms. In particular, we must continue on our path of progressive vision without retreating in strategy or downgrading our expectations; we must insist on naming and speaking out against hate speech in all its forms (including from our own ranks, even if it seems to come from a place of "reacting to their attacking us first"); and we must be able to differentiate between examples where constructive dialogue can lead to long-term cultural change versus examples where an imminent threat means seeking legal intervention.
For more reading, check out the Appendix on Eliminationism in America compiled by Dave Neiwert at Orcinus. This appendix supplements Orcinus's 2007 series on eliminationism, and is arranged "by categories of eliminationism, namely: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm; identification of opponents with national enemies; identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration; expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder; identification with vermin or disease."
{Cross-posted at Group News Blog.)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
I'M GOING TO NETROOTS NATION!
Good news/bad news. Mostly good.
I did NOT get a Netroots Nation scholarship, despite receiving 45 votes and being somewhere in the top 10-15 votegetters (from a field of 30 scholarships awarded).
However, the support I received from ya'll simply blew me away. The things you said about me, the folks who turned out to stump for me -- it was jolting and made me take another assessment of myself. All in the most positive way.
And: I'm still going to Netroots Nation.
How? Because Jesse Wendel and the Robinsons (Sara and Evan) have come forward to pay my way. This includes the conference fee, which was offered a reduced rate by Democracy for America (THANKS, DFA!), rental of a power wheelchair for four days, transportation to and from the conference site, and all my meals. It's a done deal. I'm going.
Which means more than I can ever know, much less express. But I'll try, nonetheless.
When I began my own blog, I became interested on a whole other level in what other bloggers were doing. I became a critical consumer of writing, thinking, and strategy as it is presented on the web. I was looking for people who knew how to express themselves without negativity or denial, who researched and made deep connections, who believed in the goodness of humanity and allowed that to come through even when they were reporting on our worst behavior, and who were capable of addressing multiple (all) issues simultaneously. I wanted to read the thoughts of someone who meant to change the world but not from an ego-driven perspective.
Eventually, I found Orcinus and Sara Robinson. Every time I read one of her essays, I felt bells go off inside my head and I wanted to call all my friends, say "You GOTTA hear this". She invariably took on the fear and distortion present in fundamentalism and this country's Right with calm, intelligent, bold clarity. She wrote and thought better than I did. (I don't suffer from false modesty, just to be frank, here.)
Finally, I wrote her a fan letter. She, in her deliberate way, checked me out and passed on the information to her colleague at Group News Blog, Jesse Wendel, who also began checking me out.
All I can say is, thank g*d I didn't throw up a post about how scared I am of alien abduction or Sasquatch. (Just kidding.) (Kinda.)
At any rate, after a while Jesse came after me. See, Jesse is someone who has put in the time to sort through his male conditioning, deciding what makes sense to retain and what is counter to his best interests. He's figured out that being direct and assuming responsibility are admirable human traits, when scraped clean of self-righteousness, gender myths, and power grabs. It's a relief to be around in any form, male or female.
And I, on my part, have put in the time to sort through my working class conditioning, weeding out my fear of exploitation and distrust of my instincts. So, when he came after me, I said "Sure, let's talk." When a powerful equal approaches you and offers to work in tandem, you have everything to gain by saying yes.
I've had nothing but growth and increasing liking since. Don't underestimate liking; at my age, I think it's the most important outrigger of love, along with respect.
So, these folks are building a bridge from me to who knows what. (In an almost literal since: The route from my apartment to the convention site is almost a straight shot down Congress Avenue across the Ann Richards Bridge, as good a symbol as my poet heart could wish for.)
Please send them your thanks, your energy, your attention. Their writing and works are making an untold difference out there, as well as in my life.
And, heartened by this possibility, this turn of events, I've finally taken the step to add a Pay Pal button to my website. I can now accept donations. I'm not a tax-deductible entity, just needy. If you do make a donation, please tell me who you are and let me thank you directly.
Thanks for reading this far. You'll be hearing a lot more from me about this conference in the coming month. Summer is now officially launched, and so am I.
Love, Maggie
Saturday, June 7, 2008
WHAT SHE SAID
Take me to the river, Shakesville.
Melissa McEwan's post For The Record has been seconded many places on liberal, woman-respectful blogs in the last week, so you may have already seen it. But if you have not, I say "Read it" and then "Me, too".
I have never voted for Hillary Clinton. (Though I did vote for Bill, twice, and am not a bit sorry for it.) I even wrote once that I agreed with Molly Ivins when she said she was giving advance notice, she would NOT vote for Hillary for President. But I had to publicly take back that blustering statement when Hillary became an equal contender for the nomination because, the fact is, if Spongebob Squarepants turned out to be the Democratic nominee this time around, I AM GOING TO VOTE FOR HER/HIM. The alternative is unthinkable. I found Hillary and Barack equally acceptable and equally unacceptable, although I do agree with Howie Klein's assessment that Hillary is/was demonstrably more liberal than Barack.
Yet any time I commented on a so-called progressive blog to protest hate language which was being aimed at Hillary on the basis of her being a woman, a wife, an older female, I was assumed to be a Hillary supporter. Not just that, a Boomer identity-politics-troglodyte racist C**T of a Hillary supporter who could not understand change or hope or vision if it bit me on my white, fish-smelling ass.
Yep, that's me to a tee.
Despite my best efforts, it got to me. And I've been sick inside as I've watched the testosterone-fueled fist-pumping victory dance. Because for some of these guys, too many of them, it was not just Hillary who was going down in flames. It was all the uppity bitches who ever denied their male superiority. We really can tell the difference, you know. You asswipes fool NOBODY but each other. And your exalted candidate did not lift one fucking finger to interrupt it. Which means when it's time to let YOUR values get assaulted, he'll choose silence if it serves him in the long run there, too.
PUH-LEEZE don't begin with your lizard-brain rebuttal of all the things Hillary's campaign did or said that were racist. I've read them. I agree. One does just not justify the other. Can you fucking understand that much? It's not a goddamned football game, nobody is keeping score of racism vs. sexism (except for you morons). I have and will continue to speak out just as much against racism, in all its forms. It's completely unacceptable.
And so is woman-hating.
I'm going to excerpt one part of Melissa's post here:
"...these women have witnessed this despicable but spectacular marriage of aggressive misogyny and their long-presumed allies' casual indifference to it, and wondered what fucking planet they were on that dehumanizing eliminationist rhetoric, to which lefty bloggers used to object once upon a time, was now considered a legitimate campaign strategy, as long as it was aimed at a candidate those lefty bloggers didn't like.
"And these women felt, quite rightly, like feminist principles were being thrown to the wolves in a fit of political expedience.
"And these women felt personally abandoned. By people they had considered allies.
"And while they struggled to understand just what was happening, while they were losing their way along well-traveled paths that no longer felt familiar or welcoming, they were admonished like children to stop taking things personally. They were sneered at for playing identity politics. They were demeaned as ridiculous, overwrought, hysterics. They were called bitches and cunts. They were bullied off blogs they'd called home for years.
"(But don't take that personally.)"
You have all shit in your beds, and you are too dumb to understand how. But nonviolent, steadfast refusal to cooperate with your cherished machinery will eventually get your attention. I'm asking all my sisters, mothers, daughters, and our allies to ELECT THIS DEMOCRAT, we have no healing option otherwise. He'll do some good, and he'll stop some of the death and destruction that's eating us alive. Boycotting this vote is suicide, and if you hint such a thing my way, I'll consider you self-destructive and unreliable.
After the election, though? The bot-boys are OUT. Lock the door. We know who we are, we know who stayed clean in the blogosphere, we took names and paid attention. Jesse Wendel, Lower Manhattanite, Shakesville, Crooks and Liars, Digby, Orcinus -- at the top of the list of those who can manage to fight injustice without resorting to racism or sexism. (Feel free to give praise to others in the comments here.)
Playing fair means, eventually, that only other fair players will sit down at a table with you.
But you'll always have Bush to whine with.
---------------------------
For those of you with energy to deal with denial, recommended reading to help you not feel crazy:
From Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, How right-wing crap polluted Democrats' political waters
Shakesville keeps a simultanous Hillary Sexism Watch and Barack Racism Watch. The latest I could find are Hillary Sexism Watch #104 and Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Forty-Goddamn-Six.
A request by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville to provide concrete evidence of posts and comments on "progressive" blogs of woman-hating directed at Hillary produced this depressingly long and detailed list:
List of Leftie Misogynist Hate Against Hillary
Saturday, February 9, 2008
MORE ON AFRICAN AMERICAN LIVES: LAND AND REPARATIONS
(A family picking peas in their garden, Flint River Farms, near Montezuma, GA. May 1939; historical photo from Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund)
Ding over at Bitch Ph.D. has an extraordinarily good post up, Black History Month: A Case for Voting Black that is also a result of her watching Henry Gates' African American Lives. She relates some of the research in the documentary to her own family stories of how crucial land ownership became to African-American trying to undo the effects of slavery, and all the ways their land was eventually stolen from them (a process going on at this moment). Her comment about having land sums it up: "It acts like a bracket around early black families: you were property and now you have property."
She also ties the struggle to own land and develop economic security to the history of lynching, which lasted as a strong form of terrorist activity in this country until the 1960s and whose enduring symbol -- the noose -- has not died one iota (The Jena 6; Professor Madonna Constantine).
Regarding lynching, Wikipedia cites a number of good sources:
'In The Strange Career of Jim Crow, the historian C. Vann Woodward wrote of the post- World War I period: "The war-bred hopes of the Negro for first-class citizenship were quickly smashed in a reaction of violence that was probably unprecedented. Some twenty-five race riots were touched off in American cities during the first six months of 1919, months that John Hope Franklin called 'the greatest period of interracial strife the nation had ever witnessed.' Mobs took over cities for days at a time, flogging, burning, shooting, and torturing at will. When the Negroes showed a new disposition to fight and defend themselves, violence increased. Some of these atrocities occurred in the South — at Longview, Texas, for example, or at Tulsa, Oklahoma, at Elaine, Arkansas or Knoxville, Tennessee. But they were limited to no one section of the country. Many of them occurred in the North and the worst of all was in Chicago. During the first year following the war more than seventy Negroes were lynched, several of them veterans still in uniform."
'The executions of 4,743 people who were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968 were not often publicized. It is likely that many more unrecorded lynchings occurred in this period. Lynching statistics were kept only for the 86 years between 1882 and 1968, and were based primarily on newspaper accounts. Yet the socio-political impact of lynchings could be significant. In 1901 the state of Colorado restored capital punishment, in response to an outbreak of lynchings in 1900. The state had abolished capital punishment only in 1897.
'Most lynchings were inspired by unsolved crime, racism, and innuendo. 3,500 of its victims were African Americans. Lynchings took place in every state except four, but were concentrated in the Cotton Belt (Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana).
'Members of mobs that participated in these public murders often took photographs of what they had done. Those photographs, distributed on postcards, were collected by James Allen, who has published them in book form and online, with written words and video to accompany the images.
'Retaining incriminating evidence is not uncommon for sadistic criminals and in a study conducted by Robert R. Hazelwood, M.S. it was reported that of the sadistic criminals studied: "Forty percent of the men took and kept personal items belonging to their victims... which included... photographs... and some of the offenders referred to them as 'trophies'."
In her post, Ding links to James Allen's exhibit biography page for her at their website states:
'In 2003, Mark co-directed with Alferdteen Harrison the Unsettling Memories Conference, for which she and Harrison received the Public Humanities Achievement Award from the Mississippi Humanities Council. The conference, which Mark describes as an “exciting and terribly sad five days,” brought together artists, civil rights activists, and historians to address through art three of the most devastating moments in southern culture: the Cherokee removal, slavery, and lynching. “It was as if humanity and what we see as our souls and our ability to love and perceive each other as human beings was taken into question,” she says. “When you have slavery, when you have lynching, when you have the Cherokee removal – how can we even be America? The notion of democracy is potentially devastated by that.” She compares these moments in American history to the war in Iraq, the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, and FEMA’s response to Katrina. “It’s those exact kind of moments, when our democracy tilts on its side and becomes something we can’t even recognize,” she says. “People will be writing about Katrina for the next 300 years. We can’t even look ourselves in the face.”'
(Rebecca Mark beside Dean's Cottage, Newcomb Institute, Tulane, New Orleans)
Dave Neiwert at Orcinus, which should be your number one online source for information about the Klan and other hate groups, published a ten-part series on Eliminationism in America. In an earlier essay, The Elimination Game, Dave defined eliminationism as "a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination."
Part Six of his series, Strange Fruit, talks about lynching, in particular drawing the line between lynching as a form of terror control vs. lynching as a form of eradication. The latter led to "sundown" towns. In a later essay, How to Out a Sundown Town, Sara Robinson at Orcinus explains this as "American towns that once had small African-American communities -- which, at some point, simply up and vanished. The historical fact is that if you're a middle-class white American living in the north or west of the country, the odds are overwhelmingly good that the town you live in, right now, is a sundown town -- or was one at some point in the not-so-distant past."
How, then, do we find our way beyond this legacy? In her post, Ding speaks eloquently about the idea of reparations, and you should go read it because she says what I think and feel. But, with your promise that you won't settle for anything less than her complete essay, I'll excerpt some of her beautiful language here:
"What I want is a deeper, more public acknowledgment of how slavery impacted and drove our capitalist system, and how our nation's participation in the slave trade laid a foundation for practices, industries and institutions that not only continue to have an adverse affect on communities of color today but still provide the elite in this country with wealth and prosperity. That's not too much to ask, is it?"
EXTRA RESOURCES:
African-American Land Ownership statement by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund
Website for Homecoming, a PBS special about African-American land loss and chronicle of black farmers from the Civil War to the present ("In 1920 there were nearly one million black farmers in America. In 1999 there are less than 18,000.")
The African-American Mosaic, Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
WORDS WITHOUT END, AMEN
("Lampbox" by Alan98)
Regret the Error, edited by Craig Silverman, has published 2007's media errors and corrections, an equally entertaining and disturbing list of errata. Included in the compilation are Trends of Note (mostly misrepresentations about Barack Obama), Student Plagiarisms, Mistaken for Terrorists (the British press seems to be especially fond of mislabeling Arab leaders as terrorists), and the Correction of the Year, followed by the runner-up, hilariously copied in below:
"This year’s winner is a correction to an April article in the Independent Saturday (UK) magazine:
Following the portrait of Tony and Cherie Blair published on 21 April in the Independent Saturday magazine, Ms Blair’s representatives have told us that she was friendly with but never had a relationship with Carole Caplin of the type suggested in the article. They want to make it clear, which we are happy to do, that Ms Blair “has never shared a shower with Ms Caplin, was not introduced to spirit guides or primal wrestling by Ms Caplin (or anyone else), and did not have her diary masterminded by Ms Caplin.”
"Runner Up -- The Sentinel-Review (Woodstock, Ontario):
In an article in Monday’s newspaper, there may have been a misperception about why a Woodstock man is going to Afghanistan on a voluntary mission. Kevin DeClark is going to Afghanistan to gain life experience to become a police officer when he returns, not to shoot guns and blow things up.
The The Sentinel-Review apologizes for any embarrassment this may have caused."
Gastronomica, the Journal of Food and Culture, has a feature by Mark Morton called Ort of the Week, an explanation of a food-related bit of vocabulary. Ort, the site explains, "was originally a scrap of food or leftover fodder not eaten by cattle or pigs. The word then came to be applied to leftovers from the kitchen table, leftovers that were also known as relief or relics. Ort appeared in the mid fifteenth century as a compound of the prefix oor, meaning not, and etan, meaning to eat; quite literally, therefore, orts are the uneaten scraps of a meal."
For word-freaks who love food, check out such past orts as runcible spoon, spurtle, fletcherize, catillation, and the unexpected origin of cookie. Perhaps it will help your score in Free Rice!
Illustration Art is David Apatoff's blog dedicated to "celebrating great art in humble places: the glorious talents of the artists who illustrated stories, advertisements and comics in the 20th century". His latest post, Words and Pictures, begins "When words and pictures are combined to tell a story, one medium or the other usually ends up doing most of the heavy lifting." He goes on to talk about examples of each (mentioned Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan), before arriving at Mort Drucker whose body of work for Mad Magazine has gone entirely too unrecognized. For any of us who grew on on Mad, it's a fascinating read, and the discussion in comments is illuminating as well.
(Meka leka hi meka hiney ho)
Words Without Borders, an online magazine for international literature, "opens doors to international exchange through translation of the world’s best writing — selected and translated by a distinguished group of writers, translators, and publishing professionals — and publishing and promoting these works (or excerpts) on the web....Our ultimate aim is to introduce exciting international writing to the general public — travelers, teachers, students, publishers, and a new generation of eclectic readers — by presenting international literature not as a static, elite phenomenon, but a portal through which to explore the world. In the richness of cultural information we present, we hope to help foster a 'globalization' of cultural engagement and exchange, one that allows many voices in many languages to prosper."
Seguing into other boundary expansions, I highly recommend the review of Thomas Hines' The Great Funk book by Annali Rufus currently at Alternet, "Blame It All On The 70's?" One paragraph reads: "Ecology. Diversity. Ethnic and sexual identity. Individuality. Alternative sources of energy. Feminism. Fundamentalist spirituality. Retrace our steps (in Earth shoes and a crocheted vest and Dacron flares, of course) through Jimmy Swaggart and solar-heated geodesic domes and blaxploitation films and the Village People and you will find it there, albeit all innocent and earnest and embryonic. And not just the topics themselves but the ways in which we face them now: our wary citizen-journalist vigilance, questioning authority, scoping out conspiracies, pursuing truthiness."
It's a really good grasp of a pivotal decade, I found. So many of our current analyses begin "Thirty years ago..." I'm sure this essay will spawn some of my own, but I'll leave you here with another paragraph:
"Apocalyptic and disco fantasies mixed giddily in those years with a yen for authenticity -- by which yogurt and animal-rights activism and vibrators became mainstream, and by which manufacturers got rich churning out decor in feculent "earth tones." And this is what marks the '70s: this urgency, this dazed, tender, ever-so-public awakening on the cusp between Strawberry Fields and multinationals. It was the decade when a hundred pride movements bloomed. So much pride, so little embarrassment."
And, to jumpstart the year, Sara Robinson at Orcinus is "launching a short series presenting a few things we might bear in mind as we get organized for the long journey ahead". The first post, "2008: A Year in Limbo" is up, beginning with stanzas from Yeats' "The Second Coming". Be brave and read it. Better to think and know than to not, honestly.
(Thx to little gator for this image.)
Monday, November 19, 2007
BAPTIST INTOLERANCE THREATENS COMMUNITY WELL-BEING
(Poster created and copyrighted by Austin Cline)
A controversial evangelical megachurch in the heart of Austin, the Hyde Park Baptist Church, is again in the news this week, this time for overt religious intolerance.
Last July the Church agreed to book its large facility known as The Quarries for the November 18th Thanksgiving interfaith worship organized by Austin Area Interreligious Ministries. This annual event, now in its 23rd year, is "..an expression of gratitude through worship and is co-hosted by a different congregation of faith tradition every year" according to Simone Flowers of AAIM, which invites Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bahais and others to worship together.
However, four days before the event, the interfaith group was informed by Hyde Park Baptist Church that it would not allow them to gather on church property because of the Muslim presence. According to the Austin American-Statesman, Kent Jennings, one of the pastors at Hyde Park released a statement that says in part:
'The event was cancelled when Hyde Park Baptist Church became aware via a postcard on Monday afternoon, November 12th, that the event was not a Christian oriented event. The postcard promised space for Muslim Maghrib prayer and revealed that the event was co-hosted by the Central Texas Muslimaat, the Forum of Muslims for Unity, and the Institute of Interfaith Dialog. Although individuals from all faiths are welcome to worship with us at Hyde Park Baptist Church, the church cannot provide space for the practice of these non-Christian religions on church property. Hyde Park Baptist Church hopes that the AAIM and the community of faith will understand and be tolerant of our church’s beliefs that have resulted in this decision.'"
Tolerance for their intolerance, that's what they are asking of us. But this is also assuredly a direct result of last month's Values Voters Summit, where the evangelical Right seized on opposition to so-called Islamofascism, with its racist underpinnings, as the best organizing and fundraising mechanism at their disposal now that the anti-gay gravy train is not hurtling down the tracks as well. And according to an article on that subject in this week's Advocate, the Texas-based conservative Christian group Vision America president, Rick Scarborough, stated ''It's the ultimate life issue. If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist.''
News8 Austin reports that Austin's largest and oldest synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, stepped forward to host the celebration at their facilities. Interesting how a synagogue failed to recognize the threat of "Islamofascism" in worshipping with Muslims.
And I want to issue a demand here, as a lesbian, of all my queer-by-any-definition cohort, that we fight for the human and civil rights of Muslims just as ardently as we have fought the Christian Right for our own. Muslim-hating is as much our issue as Don't Ask Don't Tell.
Hyde Park Baptist Church is best known in Austin for its insistence on tearing down historic old homes and elbowing its megachurch way, with five-story parking garages, into one of Austin's oldest and most prized mixed-class residential neighborhoods. The battle between the church and the City of Austin, according to the Austin Chronicle "a cause of civic conflict for nearly 20 years", is not yet over.
Last spring, however, the Church was also in the news when a teacher at its child care center, Belinda Sue Lowry, was found guilty of intentionally injuring not-yet-two-year-old Parker Curtis by deliberately swinging her hip into him, causing him to fall backward and injure his head. The child was not treated, and despite an aide who witnessed the incident reporting it to the center's administration, the child's parents were not notified until after the aide had gone to Child Protective Services, launching an investigation, and Lowry was fired.
An in-depth article by the Austin Chronicle states this aide "had reported Lowry's mistreatment of children to day-care administrators 'almost every day' for several months, before asking to be transferred to another classroom. She says administrators ignored her complaints and told her that because she was the only witness to the incidents, her complaints were pointless."
The article goes on to state "When deposed, the center's head administrator, Ginny Braden, had said Lowry would have been fired if she had not resigned – not because Parker fell but because Lowry failed to complete the proper paperwork to report his injury. At the trial, Braden praised Lowry's teaching ability and said she would in principle be willing to hire her again."
This attitude toward children is part of the larger picture of evangelical arrogance masking their terror of modernity: We have the only route to g*d, we cannot bear to hear the viewpoint of another, our needs are more important than those of the community, and authoritarianism is our chief means of enforcement. It's exactly the same no matter which fundamentalist religion you are referencing. For an excellent overview of other Baptist behavior toward children, check out Sara Robinson's post at Orcinus, The Southern Baptist Church Has A Dirty Little Secret.
And here's my personal connection to all this: From ages 5 to 12, I was a member of the Southern Baptist Church. I went to services and children's activities there hoping for community and help -- my family was in desperate trouble, and I myself was barely hanging on. Despite years of beseeching Jesus for intervention, things were only getting worse for me. When I began changing my silent prayers for Jesus to just let me die that day, rather than endure more molestation, abuse and shame, I had one last try at asking for help. I went to Miz Urban, the woman who led the GA's of which I was a member (Girl's Auxiliary, a Southern Baptist girls' missionary group). 
(Maggie and brother Bill, ages ten and six, Easter 1966, Dilley, Texas, right before heading for the local Baptist Church)
I had never approached her before, so that alone should have been a clue something was up. She was a staunch church lady, middle-class, influential, with kids in the grades ahead of me. Falteringly, I avoided telling her directly what was happening to me but did say "If you pray to Jesus for something terrible to stop, and it keeps happening, what does that mean?"
What would you do if an emaciated, terrified girl came to you and asked that question?
Well, what Miz Urban did was use the golden opportunity to teach me about Original Sin -- how, if I was suffering, it was because Eve had caused humanity to be cast from the Garden of Eden with her quest for knowledge, and thereafter all women and girls were tainted with her wrongdoing and must carry a greater burden. My best hope, she said, was to keep praying for Jesus to make me clean, because obviously whatever I was doing was letting him know I was, in fact, still a sinner.
I was eleven years old. You can imagine how this hit me.
It took me a few months, but eventually I decided to leave all connection with g*d whatsoever. I betrayed my mother in order to get us away from that town AND my molester, and I never looked back. But the truth is, I was smarter and stronger than most kids I knew. Otherwise, the Baptists might well have killed me.
Friday, October 12, 2007
IMAGINE MY SURPRISE
When I awaken to start my day, after I fire up the rockets on my PC and hit warp DSL, the first thing I do, of course, is visit Emailandia. Then spam dump. Then, most of the time, I hop on over to Orcinus or Group News Blog.
Partly this is because the two blogs I write for have a notification feature so if someone has posted a comment, I've been informed by email. And if I want to answer, I need to think about it a bit.
But mostly it's because what's a-hoppening at Orcinus or GNB is going to engage multiple layers of my brain, not just the political gecko but also my wobbly g*d interface, my funnybone, my "whoa I hadn't thought about that" child wonder, and my human gang loyalty. All at once. Their snark doesn't make you laugh meanly, and they have kickin' graphics.
I like waking up to my Lieutenant Ellen Ripley persona. Ripley rides my perimeter.
"I thought you were dead?" "Yeah, I get that a lot."
See, here's the scoop about me:
I don't take the pain meds prescribed to me. I don't smoke, drink alcohol, or use drugs. I drink caffeine once a day, if that, and chocolate maybe once a week.
I don't use terminology that others have told me is oppressive. When someone confides in me the ways in which they hate themselves, I am not persuaded that they are right in their self-doubt. I listen to children, always.
I have forgiven the people who failed me and tortured me as a child. I have forgiven myself for allowing them to fail and torture me.
I sleep eight to ten hours a night, when possible. I mute commercials. I buy halogen bulbs and brown eggs. I let myself cry.
When I masturbate, I don't fantasize about anyone I've ever known, even someone I haven't known personally. (Because I don't have their consent.)
I resist being pissed at g*d. I write my whole truth, but my ethic insists I try to inject balance and hope into it.
Somewhere early on, I decided to stay present, to move through this life awake and alert, and mostly I've stuck to that decision. Yeah, there were those episodes of leaving my body when he was lying on top of me, when I was 9, 10, 11. And a few tries at getting stinking drunk as a teenager. But those flights never became habit.
More than one person who believes in past lives have told me I am an "old soul" and that this is my last time driving down the block, this existence. First of all, I don't know how they can tell such things -- is there an expiration date stamped on my aura somewhere? And second, it's sad to contemplate. I like being alive and in a body. Yes, the ways we are oppressing each other is horrendous. Yeah, pain sucks. But being able to draw breath, to notice light and shadow, to feel air on the hairs of my arms, to speak a sentence out loud, to have a child climb confidently into your lap, to make pan gravy and then it over fresh biscuits -- heavenly. I want every second of it I can get.
As Terry Galloway once said, "It's a good life, if you can stand it."
My long-ago mothers left the trees and caves, exposing their small, fleshy bodies to savannah risk, building houses of clay and straw, planting grain, inventing grammar and nouns in unending torrents, and I feel like I owe it to them to keep on truckin', evolutionarily-wise.
So anything that bring out Ripley in me is a drug I allow myself. Those two blogs are Ripley friendly.
You can perhaps imagine, then, what it felt like to discover two posts referencing my recent post here about "My Knees, Part Three" and "Crip Ward Tango" -- amazing, eloquent posts, quoting me at length and going on from there to make dazzling connections. By Jesse Wendel and Sara Robinson (who writes for both those blogs).
Like Jesus, I wept.
What can I say? KTHX doesn't really cut it. I could sing something I bet Sara's heard often, "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know", wo-wo-wo. But then what would I sing to Jesse -- "I wish I was Jessie's girl..."? Alas, I'm an unreconstructed bulldagger. And I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus.
Still, sloppy smooches to you both. Let's keep cross-fertilizing, shall we?
And ya'll, go read the posts there, give 'em some sugar. While you're there, be sure to read the Are You Saved? post and follow the link back to Sara's article at Orcinus about the good news for modern (hu)man. I was going to write about it, but she beat me to it and, as usual, did an awe-inspiring job.
See ya at the sockhop. Bring yr flamethrower.
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