On Privilege

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Resistance blogs:

First, the author notes that she was expelled from high school for truancy. Yet none of the vitriolic responses chastise her for “not valuing education” or “not finishing school” or “not having parents who knew the value of hard work.” All of these sentiments are expressed. However, they are all directed towards black people.

Second, she believes that she has not experienced privilege. One of the main ways privilege functions is through its invisibility. I was thinking about this recently because of a white friend who had been stopped by the police while carrying a large amount of an illegal substance. He wasn’t arrested. Rather, the police officer scattered the drug and told him to stay out of trouble.

And this is one of the ways in which I believe privilege functions. White people give other white people the benefit of the doubt, maybe even when it’s not deserved.

What Do We Want? A Five Part Series

Cross-posted from Double Consciousness.

I got this e-mail from the blogger Brown Man, check it out:

I’ve heard a constant refrain lately – at work, on TV, on the internet – from some of my black brethren about Barack Obama.

He doesn’t need to “lecture black people” about personal responsibility.

He should be mindful of the tone he uses when he speaks to us.

He’s just saying what racist white people want to hear.

He sacrifices black people to score points with whites and other non-blacks.

I was offended by his criticism of black people.

What gives him the right to call anybody out about anything?

Since he doesn’t have anything good to say about black people he shouldn’t say anything at all.

What do we want from this man?

Over the next five days, the blog Brown Man Thinking Hard presents “What Do We Want?” which will explore some of the issues that underlie this intraracial discord within black America.

New Section

So, in case anyone hasn’t noticed yet, I have a new section in my right-side column.  It’s my podcast section.  All you guys need ta do is just click on the pics to get where you wanna go.  I update my music and news podcasts once a week.

Consuming Whiteness

Professor What If has a series called “Consuming Whiteness.” The first part is titled “What if whiteness doesn’t do a body good?” and the second it titled “What if you (don’t) got white skin?“.

Image From:
CounterPunch

Kyle Payne is an Ass

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Which is obviously a huge understatement. Ravenmn blogs:

Kyle Payne, a blogger and advocate against sexism and pornography, has been convicted of sexual assult. Renegade Evolution explains and follows up with a list of links to other bloggers who are following the story. Way to go, Ren!

Go. Read. Learn. When you’re done, let me disgust you some more.

Belledame’s post on the matter beings with an interesting post about the weenie character in politics and blogland (that last link stolen from belle’s post-thanks).

Renegade Evolution writes:

So, yes, meet Kyle Payne, a man who is staunchly against pornography, a man who is dedicated to men rethinking their views on sexuality, privilege, rape culture, and masculinity, a man who spent time as a Rape Crisis Advocate. A man who assaulted and photographed a unconscious young woman under his authority as a university resident advisor, for his own sexual gratification and without her consent. A man who had child pornography on his hard drive, a man who’s blog, The Road Less Traveled, is filled with angst and turmoil and emotion, condemnation for the exact sort of behavior he himself has engaged in.

That is the real Kyle Payne. Hypocrite of the worst kind.

And finally, belledame222 blogs:

So, I’m surfing around, procrastinating, you know how it goes, and I find what appears to me at first to be yet another garden variety (as these things go, there aren’t actually THAT many of them I don’t think) male radical feminist blog, one Kyle Payne. Since I’m in the mood to snark, I read and roll my eyes a bit: yeah, your classic: all of 22 years old and teddibly teddibly earnest, doesn’t seem totally rabid or nothin’ but your basic pompous, sanctimonious hetboy dweeb fangirling Andrea Dworkin and other Famous Not The Fun Kind Feminists for whatever reason. Yeah, there are a few of these around, mostly kind of, well, um, creepy and risible in a milquetoast way at best, foamingly horrid at worst. Ime, imnsho, etc.

But this one, thus far, well, I am thinking, trying to be relatively charitable, not really sure why–basically he just seems like this character, albeit with politics I find particularly teeth grinding. Oh, whee, yet more hairshirting and lecturing about the horrible awful pr0nz and such small portions.

Stuff White People Do

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Changeseeker blogs:

…last night, thanks to a comment by Professor Zero, I discovered a new blog called Stuff White People Do. The author is smart, right on the target, introspective and clever.

…

…if you haven’t read Macon D. over at Stuff White People Do yet, then let me send you on over there post haste.

Just recognize that you’re probably gonna be there for a while.

Salam سلام

I would like to say farewell and peace to my comrade, kasama, habibi, and friend Hossam el-Hamalawy.  It was such an honor to get to know you and I know that, someday, we will share coffee together in a free Egypt, but until then, Salam.  But for now, I would like to introduce some of my readers to Hossam and his blog 3arabawy.

Hossam is a fellow socialist, labor activists, journalist, and blogger from Egypt (which could be the possible reason for our compatability as I too am a trade unionist, socialist, journalist, and blogger) who reports (through is blog and photography) on the political and labor atmosphere in Egypt that many mainstream newspapers in the West tend to not report on.  He’s such a learned subject on the Egyptian labor movement and pro-democracy movement that his writings from his blog have been quoted by Associated Press.

His blog is filled with wonderful writings, tidbits, quick updates, videos, music, photos, and translations of important anoucements that its almost impossible to classify in one category.  Sure, its a blog by a journalist which provides valuable information; but it’s also a personal blog for him, a multimedia hub, a blog on music, and just personable ramblings.  His blog is also updated frequntly (5.8 times a day on average) so there is always something to read (I reccomend going through a few pages of his stuff as some of the gems can get burreid due to his great over abundence in posting).

Hossam also has a Flickr account, a Twitter, and del.icio.us account, all of which contribute to his activist work as he feels (as do I) that the revolution must take advantage of the technological advances human kind has made over the past two decades and vehicles such as Twitter, Flkr, and the like will help spread the word visually as well as through standard writings.  This, he believes, will raise the consciousness of his fellow Egyptians and activists and citizens world wide in order to broaden the struggle of revolution.

One of the things he had told me that struck out at me was that when he was handed an underground socialsit newspaper, “It was the first time I had ever seen the words Mubarak and dictator, in Arabic.” And in an age were more and more common folk are getting access to the internet the chances to increase class consciousness and solidarity are greater than ever; which is one of the reasons why he created the Lenoshpere.

I reccomend you all check out his blog from time to time as it is quite a valuable resource to everyone out there in the blogosphere.  For now, I will end with some pictures from Hossam’s going away party in Berkeley from June 8th, until latter this year Hossam!

Lenosphere Round Up 6/5 - 6/12

I’m starting a Lenoshpere round up of posts from the past week. Hopefully this is a weekly thing. I’ve already started another (supposedly bi-weekly) series and haven’t kept up with it as I’d like. But hopefully this will pan out better.

Here’s a short round up of posts that caught my eye in my reader.

Sean Purdy (Brazil):

Where is Lula’s Brazil going?

Brazil is Latin America’s largest and most economically powerful nation.

On the surface it is a success story – President Lula of the Workers Party still enjoys substantial popularity within Brazil. The economy has been relatively stable and it is likely that Lula will choose his own successor in the next presidential elections in 2010.
But to see where Brazil is really going, we need to look beyond the slick public relations of the government…(Read More)

Lenin (U.K.):

42 days. But only 37 rebels. And nine crucial votes from the hard right DUP. Without the support of Peter Robinson and his dour, petit-bourgeois party of Orange ascendancy, the government could not have won this vote today. They say the DUP has been bought - no doubt, but how much would you have to give these fuming reactionaries to get them to back extended internment? And though the government won the vote, I have not yet detected a coherent argument for a 42 day detention limit. Bear in mind the obvious harms that result from detention without trial already…(Read More)

John Mullen a Agen (France) highlights the blog of undocumented striking workers in France:

Lisez ici le blog des sans papiers en grève à Paris. Publié par John Mullen à l’adresse.

Snowball (U.K.):

London is not only hosting Marxism 2008 in July, but also a more academic Marxist conference organised by Historical Materialism journal in November…(Read More)

Mashahed (Egypt) blogs about the bread uprising in Burullus:

وحسب ما جاء في المصري اليوم فإن الآلاف من أهالي البرلس تظاهروا يوم السبت الماضي - 7 يونيو - وقطعوا الطريق الدولي احتجاجاً علي قرار المحافظ وقف توزيع الدقيق المدعم علي البطاقة التموينية ، كما أننا لم ننسَ نضال المدينة الباسلة .في العام الماضي احتجاجاً على قطع مياه الشرب

Hossam (Egypt):

Irish labor union passes motions in support of Palestine النقابات العمالية الأيرلندية تنضم لحملة مقاطعة الدولة الصهيون

Renegade Eye (U.S.):

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has called on Colombian rebels to lay down their weapons, free all their hostages and put an end to a decades-long armed struggle against the Bogota government.

He said efforts by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to overthrow Colombia’s democratically elected government are unjustified.

“The guerrilla war is history,” Chavez said during his weekly television and radio programme on Sunday…(Read More)

Hop On the Bus

Comrads, I’ve added a new blog to my blog roll in the right hand column of my blog.  It’s called Guerilla Buasfare by emcee, journalist, and activists EyeASage aka Krish.  I’ve worked with her cousin Andrea who has spoken highly of her moral charector plus she was a former member of LFS-SFSU member (holla!).

Her blog is quite the mixture of politics and music (especially music, she has quite good analytical contextual reviews of hip-hop artists and albums) and what ever happens to cross her mind.  She was also a founding member (I think) of Rhapsodistas, a politically conscious Pinay rap group.

Plus, her husband is Bambu (who blogs here) whom I’ve quoted numerous times in my blog (just search Bambu in my blog)

Thought I’d give ya’ll a heads up, plus Hossam is always done to get more leftist music from the U.S.

Blogging the Convention

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Francis L. Holland blogs about the complete lack of invited bloggers whom are people of color, at the upcoming Democratic National Convention:

Has the DNC consulted with the 20% of the Convention delegates who are Black to determine whether they approve of this color-based caste system? Of course not! However, unless the floor blogging caste system is either immediately scrapped or broadened to include a representative number of Blacks and Latinos, then many afrosphere bloggers will continue a determined and concerted nation-wide campaign to bring this new color and ethnicity-based blogger caste system to the attention of all of the Black and Latino delegates to the Democratic National Convention, as well as state Democratic Party elected officials, the media and the public, so that the entire nation can participate in deciding what should be done to rectify the virtually all-white “Jim Crow” floor blogger corps of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

If so, this promises to be a long, hot summer for all concerned.

Bloggers Unite for Human Rights

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Sokari posts:

The 15th May - a day for bloggers to unite and focus on human rights everywhere. For more information Bloggers Unite.

Via Devious Diva

Primero de Mayo

Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

Hopefully I will be able to (I was able to) take some pictures from the May 1st immigrant rights rally latter today. I will post the photos on my Flickr account.

LiveBlogging: Emmi de Jesus, Sec. Gen. of GABRIELA

All times are PM.

A discussion on the situation in the U.S. with BAYAN orgs and with the situation in the Philippines with Emmi de Jesus, the secretary-general of GABRIELA.

1:36: Folks from local BAYAN USA orgs have begun showing up. Folks are setting up food and snacks.

1:41: Mmmmmmmm…chips and salsa.

2:37: Done with food and talking and we are beginning the “sharing” and introduction session.

2:39: Riss, the chair of babae, introduces the folks from Liwanag Kultural Center (LKC) and League of Filipino Students-SFSU, (LFS) Pilipino Youth Coalition (PYC), as well as everyone else (around 15 folks).

2:44: Shea from LKC talks about the organization, which was set up around two years ago in order to serve the Pilipino youth in the Daly City area as there was very little in the area for them; despite the fact that Daly City has around a 36% Pilipino population (The San Francisco Bay Area is the second largest metropolitan area in the world with a Pilipino population, just behind Manila, Philippines).

2:48: Sergio from LKC:

“Just this past month Gov. Schwarzenegger announced a huge cut in the education budget…We are educating the community around how the [school] district works…and the lack of understanding of the history of this area…We’ve been doing a lot of ‘in searching for deeper answers…’ We’ve found a lot of our community does not have spaces to study…A lot of our community is living in two family residences…They go home to really crowded homes,” which is why many of them don’t end up getting all of their homework done. “We do after school programing…We are focused mainly at Westmoor High School…We teach them [Pilipino] culture before Spain came” and colonized the Philippines. “There has been this gap of service with the community and is building up relatively quickly.”

2:53: Heather from PYC:

“It’s a Bay [Area] wide thing…We have one in Sacramento and there used to be one in Stockton and Tracy. It started out in 1996 when there was a lot of gang violence in Union City and the community wanted to create something positive in that area…Back then it was based on culture and issues going in on the community…I started when I was 13 and now it is in Daly City with [LKC]…We serve the youth in Daly City…It’s doing really well and a lot of them were helping yesterday at [Diwang Pinay]…[The youth] are very excited to be apart of the community and to help and they could be doing other things but instead they are doing something positive.”

2:55: Brian, Sec. Gen. of LFS:

“LFS-SFSU started in 1996 when a few students went on an exposure trip to the Philippines and wanted to bring that organizing space back to the U.S. and San Francisco State. It started back then with 5 students and we have now 30 something. SFSU has a 10% Pilipino population; we saw the need to bring that militancy back to that activism which has been gradually been lossing since the 1960s…When SF State held the longest student strike in history…We want to bridge the connections with the issues of the Philippines and the situations here…We have many different programs as well, Diwang Pinay, our women’s event, JUFRAN…It’s our internship program, 12 weeks of workshops which is geared towards students who are on the edge or are thinking of joining LFS. We have had a image of being too hardcore so we break this down for them in the internship” and break down the history of Marxism and the Philippines into more digestible bites in order to make it more broad and appealing to a large segment of the student population. “A lot of Pilipino American students want to get into education” so we are thinking of adjusting our program accordingly.

3:02: A question on the common issues that come up with Pilipino students at SFSU. Brian says:

“They’re very happy some how, I duno?” Laughter. “Well, there’s an increase in tuition fees and we have a large coalition with that with other folks” not just Pilipino, “They’re cutting…part time teachers…Half of Asian American Studies are part time teachers.” It takes longer to graduate because you can’t get your classes and in turn costs students more money. They are going to have a 10% increase every year over the next few years. When some folks in the room started at SF State just five years ago it cost close to $1,000 but it now costs $1,700. “A lot of students are more upper class.”

Sergio:

“A lot of the students in our community depend on financial aid and some students are undocumented [immigrants]” and they might not be able to get certain loads and government aid to go to school.

Brian, “Overall the school is shifting to be done like a business to make profits.”

Emmi, “Sounds familiar…I remember at the University of the Philippines. Admission used to be 300 pesos and now it is 21,000 pesos.”

Chito, a union organizer and former LFS member from the Philippines, from 1987 to 1989 was a secretary general for an LFS chapter and also organizes with the International League of Peoples’ Struggles [ILPS]: During the early 1980s there was a lot of tuition fee increases, as well as in the late 1970s. “Students barricaded the school and were very militant.” One year there was a 300% increase; there was a three day barricade of the school.

3:17: Chito, “It’s going to get worse because we have not seen the worst of the economic recession…The budget will go down and the first thing they will do is to cut social services. However it is not all glum…Issues will come up, people will start to think and question, ‘Hey, why is this happening?’ It will hit home, people will lose their houses and income and it will be a good condition to organize” because people will now be able to see the contradictions between those how have and those who have not and will better see the flaws in the system.

3:21: Riss, “Everyting is interconnected. babae is about three years old, since February. Just coming from youth and studnet organizing and to come into community organizer. It was a challenge with us for the first year. The pace is much slower and you have to make yourself more visable. Most of the member ship we have are petty bourgouisie women now. We want to focus more on working lcass women and we need to see what services we need to provide to bring them into the space such as child care and…”

Chito, “You just mentioned it…It will be an entry point to organize.”

Riss, “Yes. That’s a long term project. We know there is a need there, how to you tap into financial resources for that.”

3:26: Riss:

“Another one of our campaigns is violence against women…domestic violence…In San Francisco the past three out of the six domestic homicides have been Pinays…We have built a name for ourselves in the [domestic violence organizing] community and we are tyring to figure out how to do something nationally with that…We also coordinate with BAYAN-USA on stopping the political repression [in the Philippines].”

Elaine, a babae member:

“We have a young women’s org at the [Filipino Community Center]…We meet just once a week” and are trying to build up the org within and as well as get more middle school youth…”[Those women] are hella sharp. Sharp-sharp.”

3:30: Riss, “We have eight members but only three [executive committee] members. But its good because” babae has very dedicated and smart women in its org.

“We’ve started Pinay Brunch which started with Fire in New York” to build stronger ties with other Pilipina women’s orgs in the Bay Area.

3:34: Riss to Emmi, “Any questions for us?”

Emmie, “No, I’m just absorbing.”

Joanna from babae. “The thing is we are babies [BAYAN-USA and its orgs] and we will stumble along the way and we are trying to figure out how to build the mass bass here” and to bridge the political with the mass line in order to please those whom are highly political as well as attract those who aren’t political.

3:42: A question to Emmi on how to solidly organize among the female youth section in the Bay Area:

Charm, from LFS, “It’s been ingrained to not trust women” in U.S. culture “and I want to understand how to better build my relationships with other women.”

Emmi, “When it comes to organizing the bottom line is its the principles of the organization…The struggle and competition comes along the lines as organizing. In the early years [of GABRIELA] we were branded as ‘ultra-feminists’ and were considered ‘class-reductionists.’ When it comes to women organizing you always have to prove something. But with the organizing it is always the political.” Relearning and over viewing the politics of the organization and the political analysis of the organization.

Question: There are hang ups on labels. What do you categorize yourself?

Emmi, “For [GABRIELA] we don’t debate but we always want to deepen and expand what type of feminism we have. We are not feminists because it is about fighting for equality between men and women within the status quo, which is capitalism. We don’t do that, we want to smash the status quo. What we do is define our work, the bottom line is always alanlysie things within the context of the national structures that bread oppression and oppression toward women and how these structure perpetuate patriarcy. The labeling thing is slowly being set aside and is more on substance…We we argue with women in conferences and with women in academia, we always start with patriarchy and violence against women. Which to us is nature, because they are coming from the point of view from the gender question. You don’t antagonize and at the same time you compromise. Highlight unity first. We say yes, yes we are feminists…While that is our practice we don’t really deepen our discourses on feminism because of the situation we have [in the Philippines] we have to prioritize the issues we study on. Such as handling they are more on studying of feminism and gender issues because they are from the academia. For a while we thought everything was OK but we realized that some of the lines they were openly discussing were not the lines we believed in. When it comes to the international arena maybe we should be firm…It’s a lot of talk about fighting and struggle against men and women but that’s not our line” as it removes the discussion on imperialism and capitalism. “In the Philippines it is easier of course.”

Question: In one word how was your three weeks here?

Emmi, “Overwhelming!” Laughter. “Overwhelming in a positive way…It’s an opportunity to see the realities because I read ‘This is what we do in the U.S.’ It’s like you exposure trip!” Talking on the exposure of trips BAYAN-USA orgs take to the Philippines in where they hook up with BAYAN orgs in the Philippines.

4:03: Discussion ends.

Related Post:
LiveBlogging: Emmi De Jesus from GABRIELA

LiveBlogging: Emmi De Jesus from GABRIELA

I will be LiveBlogging at a get together of activists at a fellow activist’s/friend’s house with GABRIELA Secretary-General Emmi De Jesus.

GABRIELA is an umbrella organization in the Philippines and is apart of the national democratic umbrella org BAYAN (New Patriotic Alliance). The organization is named after Gabriela Silang who lead a revolt against the Spanish in the 18th century.

Ms. de Jesus will be fielding questions and will be talking about her experiences in the Philippines as an organizer and a women and for fighting for true democracy and freedom from imperiialist and capitalist expansion.

Image From
Fire (Filipinas for Rights and Empowerment)

Cross-posted in The Blog and the Bullet.

BrownFemiPower says:

I wrote what I wrote to say that there either is a feminist movement or there isn’t—and if feminists can’t even be called on to point to the work that other feminists are doing—if simply pointing to a whole sphere of pro-immigration bloggers (because, to be clear, I stated pro-immigration bloggers and men and women bloggers of color NOT brownfemipower) who have been blogging incessantly about this is too much work for feminism—well, then there’s no fucking feminist movement.

…

I never said that it’s important to recognize that I had the idea first. I don’t give a shit who came up with the idea first—even if it WAS me. I don’t give a shit who thought of what first. I don’t fucking want credit for anything outside of existing. (For those who care, what I really said: There’s a lot of women of color (and men of color!) who have talked about immigration. There’s a lot of women of color and men of color who have examined how sexualized violence has been the foremost result of the “strengthening” of borders. There’s been a lot of us who have insisted for a long time now that immigration is a feminist issue, goddamn it, get your head out of your ass.

I even wrote a whole speech about it (link not available–BUT for those who DID see the speech, do you happen to recall that long list of LINKED work at the beginning of the speech?).

…

This was NEVER ABOUT FUCKING BROWNFEMIPOWER except in the sense that I BELONG to immigrant communities and I BELONG to pro-immigration blogger community and I BELONG to the women of color community and I THOUGHT I belonged to a feminist community.

This was about women of color constantly being written out of feminism, being written out of our own communities BY feminism—then being beaten up by feminists with JUST DO IT, JUST DO IT, JUST FUCKING DO IT YOU LAZY SPICS.

…

I know I’m brownfemipower and I want to end violence against women. And I wanted to do that with all the women who keep insisting to me that we are all in this together and we have common problems that we have to work against and we’re all sisters, and there is such thing as a commonality of experience between us all—as I said in my original post—I thought feminism was important because it brought women together (I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.)

…

I realize now that “feminism” and I stand in direct opposition to each other—that the feminists who aren’t actively working against me and my community are, like Seymour Hersch, few and far between.

This has caused a radical shifting in my thinking. A shifting that I have no desire to work through online—but that I need to think through before I can act. I am not giving up. I am just thinking. And resting. And reading my beloved books and soaking my tired dogs.

Cuz giiirls, my dogs are TIRED.

As I said in my last post—I will find you, and you will find me.