Radical motherhood.

When Dad was here last Sunday, he and I went with Anne to see Spotlight, the movie about The Boston Globe’s investigative reporting on rampant sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests – and the deliberate cover-up by powerful Catholic officials.

In that cloud of context, we drove home, and Anne ran some ideas by me for the prayer she was writing for that week’s coming Bible study.  Harry had invited Jeralynn Brown Blueford, whose son was killed by the police, to speak with us as we looked at the Biblical connections to Black Lives Matter.  (Ultimately, I wasn’t able to be there.  Ricky said it drew in a lot of people.  We’re looking for some place to resonate our griefs off of one another, I suppose.  And this badass mother – who could stand up and lead in that group.  Dang…)

Having lost a son herself, Anne wondered how she could both express solidarity with the mothers of so many sons murdered by the police but in no way claim to “understand what that feels like.”

Dad said (and Anne didn’t hear, so we didn't go on about it) that he could really see the connection there to Mary, another mother who lost a son.  

Such a good point, Dad.

Mary’s son was also executed within an unjust criminal justice system. The Sadducees, Jewish leaders themselves, often get blamed for Jesus’ death, but it seems to me to be more like men (ahem) scrambling for some semblance of power under the crushing weight of the self-evidently more (much more) powerful and oppressive Roman Empire.

(Police today are for sure a horrific part of the problem [and I’m afraid that this analogy might be anti-Semitic because of my pronounced ignorance about Jewish history], but White Supremacy has been the name of the game for a lot longer than the NYPD, and etc.  [As the Roman claim for dominion was certainly not Jewish-only antagonism.] Our country came to be under conditions not possible if not for those White guys’ already undeniable commitment to White supremacy.  It’s how we do.)

AND Mary was no naïve, whimpering victim.  No no.  Mary was our comrade.  Even at the very beginning of her pregnancy with Jesus, she boldly claimed that our God is a God who cares for the poor, the downtrodden.  She sings out: Our God is not a God who feels the need to assert that “Blue lives matter!”  Duh, they matter, but God’s immediate concern is not for those with the power to execute at will with impunity.  (God seeks and waits for them, gives unearned grace, and will rejoice at their turn toward God, but) God calls us to make the oppressors see that the lives of the oppressed matter (, too.).

And Mary said:  

“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”

I got an email from a dear friend recently who made a self-deprecating joke about her plan to be “a stay-at-home mom” next year.  Nuh-uh.

I like the model of motherhood that Mary offers us.  Mother as freedom fighter.  Motherhood as a liberation movement.  A couple days later I saw this piece on the shackling of pregnant women in prison – a piece published by MomsRising (!).

I’ve thought a lot about how God created us to be in family to help us to understand better, to give us some framework, for understanding God’s relationship with us.  God mothers us all.  (And God values the work associated with motherhood.  We're the ones who think it feminine and thus base or undignified or disempowering.)

Thinking about motherhood this way brought me back to one of the most compelling for me scenes in the passion.  Here’s John’s:

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” 

Comrades, here you are. 

My child, here is my child.   Go out, as you are called to do, and help to restore God’s order, God’s (social) justice.

Black lives matter to God.

God cares about all of us as, for example, we care about one another in our family relationships. 

God worries about the way that we’ve designed “race” as a powerful construct by which we move away from God’s justice, by which we forget or ignore that God calls us all God’s children.  All lives matter.

God worries especially about those of God’s children who are poor, who are murdered, who are silenced.

And God calls those of us who are squandering, who are murdering, who are silencing, to remember that God worries about us, too.  God will rejoice when we give up our shit, nurture our create-ivity, and sing together.  Yeah duh all lives matter. Seriously duuuhhhhhhh.

God mothers us all.  God watches Black people getting gunned-down again and again (and again and again).

AND, WITH SCREAMING URGENCY:

Black lives matter to God.

7 x 70

I was struck particularly, yesterday as I rode the bus to work, by the difficulty of finding something new to say about "Martin's dream and look at us now... no better," etc.  And yet it's worth saying every year.  Worth it, but it feels fucking futile.

Reports of police murders of unarmed People of Color keep coming and keep being infuriating.  And we should keep marching.

Mass shootings keep on happening.  And every time we say, "What's it going to take?," and "Something has to be done," and we keep pointing out, and we should, how coverage of White shooters leans toward mental illness and coverage of violence committed by People of Color condemns "terrorists" and "thugs."  I'd love to hear someone on the news call for moderate White people to speak out against White supremacist extremists; but we always hear how moderate Muslims need to take a stand.  And we should keep being pissed and saying so.

Though it usually doesn't get much new coverage, men perpetrate violence against women at outrageous rates.  And actually, not often enough do we make a big ol' deal about that -- which is why this interview about the rape of a woman by a bunch of teens in a playground is so gratifying.

CNN newscaster: She was drunk, combative, and bit a police officer.  What would you say about that? 

Badass: I would say that that's typical.  That individuals often talk about the woman.  We rarely talk about the individuals who actually committed the rape.  Those are the individuals we should be focused on right now... We need to focus on those five individuals who committed this heinous crime.  And what were the bad decisions that they made all throughout the day?  Had they been drinking?  Had they been smoking?  What would put something in someone's mind to make them think that that was okay?

So mundane and so exhausting and then so fucked up for being mundane and exhausting.

(And I want to be really clear that as a White person, I by no means claim the kind of exhaustion that I might be party to had I not this White body that keeps me safe from the same kinds of danger that I'm railing against.  I'm in no danger of being gunned down by a police officer who thinks I'm dangerous just by the look of me.  What a privilege.)

I sat on the bus wondering what was the point of it all, and I was struck with remembering the time when one of the apostles is sick and tired of being sick and tired and asks Jesus, "How many times am I supposed to forgive these fools? Seven times?"  And Jesus says, "Seven times seventy times."  -- Which I have to believe is a Biblical way of saying what I might call "a thousand billion trillion million times." Because it seems like he's saying so many times.  And it's 986 people that were killed by the police last year.  And that's more than 490.

How many times do we have to notice on Dr. King Day that White (patriarchal, homophobic, capitalist) supremacy has what seems like an impossibly firm hold on our lives? A thousand billion trillion million times.

Relatavism?

Last year at Willard’s spaghetti dinner, he was telling us about how different student activism was at U of I during the sixties.  Shit’s different when there’s a draft, he explained, when young [White] people’s lives are actually in danger.

When I was watching Selma, in the throes of #BlackLivesMatter, I was awestruck by the brilliant, disciplined, strategic coordination of those activists.  I’m still wondering how those strategies must be transformed in our current contexts, especially in the places where racism is no longer de jure but is certainly de facto.  (But then again, people putting their bodies in front of BART trains takes a page straight from that Civil Rights book.  I wonder if it’s always going to come down to throwing your body out in front of the bullshit.)  It’s not as easy to deconstruct our White supremacist ideology as it is to call for an end to Jim Crow laws.  And who in the hell would call the work of our elders “easy”? (And who in the hell would call the abolition of current draconian immigration laws "easy"?  For fuck's sake.)

Following the Oklahoma stuff last week, I was both encouraged to see a university administrator take racism seriously, but also concerned that the president’s call for “zero tolerance for racism in our nation” indicates a seriously incomplete understanding of how seriously fundamental racism is “in our nation.”  Does he mean that we should have no tolerance for White folks using the n-word?  That’s good and easy to point at and publicly deplore -- but holy hell, not enough.  What’s dude gonna do about the fact that Black students make up only 5% of his campus' population?

I’ve got to (I get to) do some writing about our work at the prison this afternoon, and especially having just helped to write about it for an audience I don’t care for, I’m feeling excited about writing about it for real -- not as a bad-ass “prison education program” (i.e. lower rate of recidivism = save states and feds money) but as a bad-ass learning community, full stop.

But: Why do I think it will be possible to co-create and collaboratively sustain this community in a prison when I’ve very nearly given up on the possibility of doing so in a public school? As we move forward, I’ll be interested to learn whether (a) this is because I don’t understand the prison as well as I understand the public school, or (b) because it’s easier to resist oppressive systems when they make themselves obvious -- as prisons do relative to schools. (Or [c] some other lesson I have no idea I'm about to learn.)

Until the revolution?

My friend Megan-Brette, when we'd really be getting into some good shit, radical ideas for education,  etc., she'd always laugh with/at us and say, "Yes, but UNTIL the revolution, what are we gonna do?"

It's helpful to remember that she had a good point.

MTJ

I started graduate school in the spring of 2010, and that semester I took a class with the locally famous choir director, Mr. Summerville.  The class was called “Harmonizing Select Differences Through African-American Sacred Music.” (It used to be called “Harmonizing Differences Through African-American Sacred Music,” but he added “Select” because “we’re not gonna argue about whether or not Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and that He’s in this room because He IS.”  Got it.)  The class was a trip.  I’d go into some of the stories, but it’s impossible to do so without somehow giving the impression that I’m making fun of Mr. Summerville (because some of the shit that he said and did was funny), which I have no interest in doing.  I learned so much from him in that class.

One of the things that we had to do was visit a bunch of historically Black churches in town for Sunday morning services and write up reports of our experiences.  I loved that assignment because it got me further into a practice I was already doing, visiting various places of worship in town to see where my students were on Sundays (or Fridays).  As a teacher, I could not recommend this practice highly enough.  I did learn so much about the spiritual, cultural, and linguistic communities to which my students belonged, but more importantly I learned that I had so much more to learn about them, from them, with them.

As a person, I came to believe in God.  It happened sort of gradually, and it happened sort of suddenly.  The gradually part I’ll leave for some other day, but the suddenly part I’ll take up now.

I was visiting New Covenant on the invitation of a dear friend and co-worker.  The teaching that day was on Acts 12:1-19, a story I’d never heard before.  Because it’s a good’n’, I’ll quote The Message version of it in full here:

Peter Under Heavy Guard  

^1-4 That’s when King Herod got it into his head to go after some of the church members. He murdered James, John’s brother. When he saw how much it raised his popularity ratings with the Jews, he arrested Peter—all this during Passover Week, mind you—and had him thrown in jail, putting four squads of four soldiers each to guard him. He was planning a public lynching after Passover. 

 ⁵ All the time that Peter was under heavy guard in the jailhouse, the church prayed for him most strenuously. 

 ⁶ Then the time came for Herod to bring him out for the kill. That night, even though shackled to two soldiers, one on either side, Peter slept like a baby. And there were guards at the door keeping their eyes on the place. Herod was taking no chances! 

 ^7-9 Suddenly there was an angel at his side and light flooding the room. The angel shook Peter and got him up: “Hurry!” The handcuffs fell off his wrists. The angel said, “Get dressed. Put on your shoes.” Peter did it. Then, “Grab your coat and let’s get out of here.” Peter followed him, but didn’t believe it was really an angel—he thought he was dreaming. 

 ^10-11 Past the first guard and then the second, they came to the iron gate that led into the city. It swung open before them on its own, and they were out on the street, free as the breeze. At the first intersection the angel left him, going his own way. That’s when Peter realized it was no dream. “I can’t believe it—this really happened! The Master sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s vicious little production and the spectacle the Jewish mob was looking forward to.” 

 ^12-14 Still shaking his head, amazed, he went to Mary’s house, the Mary who was John Mark’s mother. The house was packed with praying friends. When he knocked on the door to the courtyard, a young woman named Rhoda came to see who it was. But when she recognized his voice—Peter’s voice!—she was so excited and eager to tell everyone Peter was there that she forgot to open the door and left him standing in the street. 

 ^15-16 But they wouldn’t believe her, dismissing her, dismissing her report. “You’re crazy,” they said. She stuck by her story, insisting. They still wouldn’t believe her and said, “It must be his angel.” All this time poor Peter was standing out in the street, knocking away. 

 ^16-17 Finally they opened up and saw him—and went wild! Peter put his hands up and calmed them down. He described how the Master had gotten him out of jail, then said, “Tell James and the brothers what’s happened.” He left them and went off to another place. 

 ^18-19 At daybreak the jail was in an uproar. “Where is Peter? What’s happened to Peter?” When Herod sent for him and they could neither produce him nor explain why not, he ordered their execution: “Off with their heads!” Fed up with Judea and Jews, he went for a vacation to Caesarea.

In her teaching that day, the pastor talked about Peter’s half-sleeping fumbling.  He's about to be lynched, but then he gets saved, and he’s like, “Wha..? Nah, I’m cool.  Just let me go back to sleep.  Weird dream.”  He doesn’t really see or believe what’s happening.  And there’s no reason for him to do so.  Duh: His participation in the leadership of followers of the Jesus Way has made him an enemy of the state.  The authorities have gone to great lengths to securely isolate him from the movement.  His comrade James has been imprisoned and executed.  He is imprisoned and will be executed.  He gets it.  It all makes sense to him.  And maybe the reason he’s even able to sleep that night is because he’s just so clear on the fact there’s not shit he can do about it, and he’s “given it to God” as some Christians say. 

It’s easy to judge him as having no faith in God’s capacity to deliver, that faced with the choice between freedom and oppression, which should be a no brainer, he’s un-believingly dragging his feet.   But it seems more kind and right to see it from his perspective: He’s in a shitty (the shittiest?) spot, and he’s being asked to make a choice between the known, what makes sense, and the unknown, which seems ridiculous.  (An angel?  Aren’t they just metaphors or something?)

The pastor asked us to offer our own selves the same compassionate understanding as we teeter on the edge of decisions.  If the tough choices we had to make presented themselves as “choose freedom or choose continued oppression,” we’d know what to do.  But they don’t show up like that.  Often, they show up more like, “take a risk and change your life and trust in … whatever it is that you believe there is to trust in… or keep doing what you’re doing and just, y’know, suck it up.”

God wants for us freedom, and God will lead us there if we just let God and quit trying to predict and know and calculate.  Peter doesn’t really get that he’s being led to freedom by God until it’s already over.  The angel’s gone, and then he’s like, “Holy shit, I’m free.”

(And then there’s that whole Rhoda scene which reads like something from a romantic comedy about somebody coming home for Christmas.)

When I heard this teaching that day, something in me assented to this version of explaining what life is all about, to explaining why the hell we all even exist.  I was (like I am now) in the middle of a serious depressive episode, the way out of which I could not see (like now).  So I decided to just… believe in this Jesus Way even if it didn't really make that much sense.  Until that day, I identified squarely in the atheist camp.   Until that day, I could not argue with the logic of “Nothing happens when you die.”  But that morning, sipping my Dunkin Donuts (side note: Why the hockey puck is there no Dunkin Donuts in the Bay Area?), I opted for the illogical, the nonsensical.  Hope when there’s no reason to hope.

A few days ago, I posted about the dream-as-the-sign-from-God thing that I’ve been worrying about.  I’ve been stressing about wanting to feel some kind of sacred guidance and feeling sure that if it came in the form of some dream, there’s no way I’d notice it, let alone have the courage to radically change my life because of it.  A close friend and I use the disparaging phrase “Magic Trick Jesus” to refer to silly shit like that.

When I was home in Champaign-Urbana last week, I shared my worry with some loved ones from New Covenant, all of whom seemed to share my skepticism about “signs.”  God probably doesn’t care, we decided, whether we take this job or that job, wear this shirt or that shirt.  But I’m not willing to extrapolate from that that God doesn’t care about the deep depression and anxiety I’ve been living in because of the need to make a difficult decision about my job.  I kept coming back to that in our conversation.  Finally, one of my friends said, “God knows you well enough to know how to get you to listen if God really wants you to.”  I was like, “Oh yeah.”

Last night, I felt for the first time an overwhelming sureness about some of the ideas I’ve been having about what to do now and next.  I won’t get into the details of it because it’s impossible to do so without sounding super cheesy (and also super weird and, like, flighty or dumb or something.)  But I was at Bible study again, and the text that the pastor had chosen for us to read and discuss was Acts 12:1-19.

The sense of calm and peace I felt then is gone this morning, but I still think I’m on to something. 

Takes all kinds.

speaking of activism

Here's one thing I really don't care about. I was invited to this Facebook group today.

As I clicked, "Reject Invitation," I thought back to last night's exploration of activism. I can remember times where it's been hard for me to understand how it could be possible for someone to not do anything let alone not care about some of the things I'm passionate about.

I guess it's good to get some perspective.

OK, not "I guess." It is.

This has lesson plan written all over it.

When I mentioned my frustrations detailed in the post below to Kasey, she brought this article in yesterday's Daily Illini to my attention. I knew I liked Terrell Starr.

Letters about The Daily Illini's coverage of Cotton Club

By Steve Contorno, editor in chief, Terrell Starr, staff writer

We've spent the better part of the last week trying to figure out where went wrong in our coverage of the Cotton Club after-party. Internally, our own issues with diversity kept us from understanding many of the issues brought to light by comments on our Web site. It wasn't until I received a letter from Terrell Starr that I began to see the many ways in which our paper can be perceived. And although our reporter covered that story because of the amount of police attention it garnered, not the skin color of the people involved, Terrell also helped me to see how coverage of the event and other stories that week were interpreted by the public.

Terrell has been a reporter on our staff for two years and is a graduate student at the University. As a black student on campus, he was able to see the issue from many sides. I forwarded his letter to our entire staff and would like to share it with all of our readers.

Perception is often not reality, and without dialogue, those perceptions become hurtful assumptions or stereotypes. I don't pretend to understand how the minority population felt when they read our paper last week just because I talked to Terrell; likewise, I don't think the majority of our readers understand how we put together our paper just because they read it. But I would like for both sides to begin to understand each other better by encouraging communication. We must engage in dialogue to fix the gaps that only grow larger by ignoring these problems. I haven't received a phone call or an e-mail, just one letter to the editor concerning what happened, and I fear that were it not for Terrell and his letter, we would be completely oblivious to what was going on. We pride ourselves on being the voice of students, and we're working harder to be the voice of the entire campus by diversifying our newsroom and our coverage.

The lines of communication are open, and I will be working to contact leaders within the minority community to help us in better understanding each other. Please read Terrell's letter and let us hear your voice.

Thank you.

Steve Contorno, editor in chief

Letter from Terrell Starr

Masha said he was disappointed that negative events such as these garner so much attention, while more positive programs in the black community go unheeded.

"I didn't see any DI coverage (of those successful events), but when altercations like this occur, I get a call the very next day," he said.

- Femi Masha, social action chair, Central Black Student Union. The Daily Illini, Monday, Feb. 23, 2009.

Dear Colleagues,

Masha's words cannot escape my mind. They contradict my view of the people I have come to know and love during my two-plus years at The Daily Illini. I always brag about working here and show off the outstanding work we do. I'm proud to be a reporter for The Daily Illini. Besides this, I feel the people with whom I am learning this wonderful trade called journalism are kind, unique and thoughtful.

But thoughtfulness seemed to be missing in the Monday-Wednesday front pages of our great newspaper last week. At first glance, Monday's front-page story concerning the Cotton Club incident made me think, "Wow."

"Did someone get hurt? Dozens of arrests had to occur," I assumed from seeing the bold-type headline.

Yet, I learned in Tuesday's article that only one arrest had taken place. I wonder if any of our editors considered how some would view a front-page story (with a bold lead, mind you) about a mostly black event covered negatively for a second year in a row. And that many black students may feel our coverage of them in general is already limited - with the exception of front-page stories about fights and academic underachievement (more on this later).

Quick question: Are fights so uncommon at the U of I that when one occurs, it's front-page news?

The reason why I hold on to Masha's words so tightly is because they reflect the larger problem of how local and national news media cover the black community. There's a saying in journalism that "if it bleeds, it leads." But with black coverage, I feel it's, "if no one bleeds but someone is scratched, it still leads."

I felt our newspaper reinforced this model unintentionally. We didn't mean to, but that's the feeling that I and many other people felt over the past few days.

I don't profess to represent the University's black community, but most of my friends and other colleagues of color do share Masha's perception of the DI. I hear these views now, and I heard them more than two years ago when I joined the staff.

This is unfortunate. Most importantly, I know such perceptions do not truly define anyone with whom I work. And I have defended our newsroom when critics made what I felt were unfair comments (charges of racial insensitivity, mainly) about the people who work in it.

Yet our paper's odd front-page layout on Wednesday did nothing to debunk these views.

The page prominently shows the nation's first black president speaking before Congress. Then on the side, an equally prominent story with a bold headline reads, "Report says blacks trail on AP tests."

So for three days, many of our readers got this message: You don't behave well in large groups (Monday and Tuesday). And on Wednesday, our paper added insult to injury by saying, "You have a black president. BUT most of you are underachievers." Many people have been asking me what I think about the first three days of this week's newspaper.

This time, I can't defend our newsroom.

But look at last Wednesday's front page once more, and ask yourselves if you would run it again. If your answer is yes, I would be very concerned. As a black graduate student who strives to contradict stereotypes of being unqualified and unfit to attend institutions like the U of I, I was personally offended. It wasn't that the story was bad. It just had no business being placed next to the Obama piece. What were we insinuating with last Wednesday's layout? What message were we sending our readers? Given our first two front pages that week, were we sensitive? I think not.

Not to mention that study was released three weeks ago, so I wonder why someone thought it was so immediate and breaking that it deserved an equally prominent place on the front page (BOLD PRINT AND ALL) with the president discussing our nation's worst economic woes since the Great Depression.

We have to do better than this.

I am writing this to you because I care about the unintentional messages we are sending our readers. Equally important, I care about you all; so to stay silent would not be collegial and it would breach my definition of friendship. Numerous minorities have declined to grant me interviews in the past because they feel our paper is racially insensitive and that I would not be fair to them in my reporting. Simply put, many minorities on campus do not feel the DI is their newspaper.

Masha's ending quote and our front pages this week sum up the reasons why.

Last week, a young African-American journalism student who is held in high regard by several College of Media faculty, approached me and inquired about working at The Daily Illini. But he said he was reluctant to apply because of our coverage of the Cotton Club incident. "What should I do?" he asked me. "What's going on in (your newsroom)?"

Several other graduate students have approached me and asked, "How do you feel about (these front pages)?" I've heard too many complaints over the years and last week to stay silent any longer.

I told them all that I would hold my judgment and share my disappointment over last week's first three front pages with my colleagues first - just as I know any of you would do if someone questioned my integrity and work.

As young journalists, we will be entering the workforce, taking on the editorial positions of retiring baby boomers and making decisions about what goes to print and what doesn't. Our decision-making last week was not a good start for our future occupations.

Unfortunately, The New York Post did not provide us the best model of how to confront insensitivity last week. Their so-called apology over their insensitive ape and stimulus package cartoon did nothing to quell grumbles of minority communities already skeptical of the media.

They would have been better off not apologizing at all. But we have a chance to offer a proper apology. We must even do better than The Post and set the industry standard when it comes to expressing sensitivity for all peoples of all backgrounds. It's sad that the professionals our journalism professors consistently ask us to model failed to set the right example for us.

Therefore we, the students, must set the example for them.

Last week's series of front pages reveal that we all (regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or gender) have to do a better job of moving beyond our cultural vacuums to better understand everyone in our campus community. It can be difficult. Even uncomfortable.

But taking such steps to connect with people who do not reflect our backgrounds can help avoid the blunders of last week. I, as a black person, could have been equally insensitive to some other group with a poor editorial decision.

I've spoken to several of you over the week and saw the regret in your eyes concerning this issue. Now it's up to our editorial staff to show our readers the same regret I have seen these past few days.

And hopefully, the time will come when people like Masha will begin complimenting us on our fair and balanced coverage of their communities rather than highlight what they feel is our absence of it. I'm ready to help our newsroom do just that.

oh hey, check US out

role models

I invited Idris Goodwin to speak to some of our kids today, as he is spending this week on campus hosting various events each evening. He was really exciting; the kids seemed really interested in what he had to say. I'm really looking forward to processing some of it with them tomorrow.



One thing I don't want to process them tomorrow is Goodwin's response to the question, "How do you make a living writing poetry?" He answered that in this capitalist society, everybody's gotta sell what they can. When people call Kanye West a sell-out, he went on, that's unfair. Everybody's selling something. He goes around selling his type of hip-hop at poetry slams and at schools. Ms. Dahlke, he continued, comes to school to sell herself.

Yeah, he said that. And yeah, the kids got it.

things swirling around in my brain right now:

1. Susan is almost 7 hours into her drive. Suckerrrr. Except it's really cool that she's moving so far away, and I'm going to miss her.
2. I need to reply to Didi and Wendy, but I have so much I want to tell them, so I don't know where to begin.
3. I left my phone in Matt's car which simultaneously sucks and is awesome.
4. Whoa. I'm starting school in 3 weeks.
5. I'm SO excited to spend my afternoon reading English Journal (There's an article called "Teaching Ethnography: Reading the World and Developing Student Agency." And how good does, "Walking the Talk: Examining Privilege and Race in a 9th Grade Classroom" sound? So good.)
6. I also continue to be enthralled with How to Interpret Literature. Just about to head into the chapter on Marxist theory. Yessssss.
5. I want to make a poster for my classroom that asks these questions that I found in an EJ interview with Linda Christensen, social justice educator extraordinaire:

key questions:
Who benefits?
Who's marginalized?
Why is a practice fair or unfair? How could it be different?
What kind of society would I like to live in, and how could I get there?

6. Bobbie Fein is so cool and hilarious.
7. How the hell am I going to pull off this move next weekend with no vehicle?
8. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't want to pack.
9. The Cranberries are so underrated.
10. I wonder when Michael's coming home.
11. I hope my teaching certificate comes in the mail soon. Really soon.
12. I am so happy I started using Google Reader.
13. I'm feeling a major life shift coming on, and I don't really know how to feel about it.
14. I don't know what to do with myself right now.
15. I want someone to tell me what to do with myself right now.
16. How can I justify showing Do the Right Thing in my World Studies classes? Can I?
17. I want to start reading Sherman Alexie's blog, but it's overwhelming. I don't know where to begin.
18. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to quickly inject all of the thinking that happens when you read something into you so that you could "have" all the reading that you want to "have." Except that you don't "have" reading; you read. It has to be a process, and it has to be an effort, otherwise we wouldn't even think it was cool, and we certainly wouldn't want to be injecting ourselves with something uncool. Now would we?
19. I've probably been called "Ms. Burrito" for the last time. Sad. I hope the kids arrive safely back in Texas this weekend.
20. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I think I'll look at this:

Blog for Choice Day 2008

My brain is working hard to wrap itself around some heavy lesson planning, and anyway, I don't think I could put it better than Melissa did.

Vote pro-choice! (Sorry, Gram.) (Actually, I'm not sorry.)

"No, no we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

the battle cry of my generation:

"Don't tase me, bro!"

Seriously, if we had a "Remember the Alamo!" I think it would be "Don't tase me, bro!"

I mean, someone even re-mixed it:



Andrew wrote about this when it was actually new news. I think he's particularly poignant with his closing, "So be warned, young Americans, we may participate in the democratic process, but only for 45 seconds at a time."

Why am I writing about this now? Well first, a couple weeks ago I read this article for Campus Progress in which Tim Fernholz rips into journalist Courtney Martin for her article "The Problem with youth Activism" that blasts American college-aged activists for going about things all wrong.

"[Typical youth socio-political activism today] is sweetly collaborative, mainly focused on raising awareness among students, very keyed in to particular dates (Love Your Body Day, Earth Day, Black History Month), and most of all, safe," she writes.

He responds, "Martin would like to see today’s young activists adopt the tactics of the 1960’s student radicals—protests, theatrics, and the like. Martin’s complaint is that young people today are too complacent, too safe, and too co-opted by 'the man.' We’re just not angry enough, she argues. But today’s young activists are angry—they’re just too busy attempting to create meaningful change to sit around waving signs." And he goes on to chastise her for calling it "Youth Activism" when really she only addresses activists on college campuses (campi?). Nice point.

Last night, in a totally unrelated conversation, a friend of mine quoted, "Don't tase me, bro!" Since we all got the allusion, we laughed knowingly and moved on. It's some kind of joke. But come on. "Don't tase me bro!"?

As much as I think it's funny, re-watching the video this morning made me sad.They seriously tased him. And I can't understand how he was in the wrong. And nobody responded to his cries of, "Will somebody please help me!"

For young activists like us, this seems to be pretty quintessential The-Man-is-so-fucked-up. But then at the same time, for The Man, it's probably quintessential these-kids-are-morons. "Don't tase me bro!" What the fuck?