Fist of Justice: How to win rock, paper, scissors

people like a happy bus much better than a sad one.

[citizenally]

About to show Tough Guise to the incarcerated folk...

About to show Tough Guise to the incarcerated folks at

[flanneryogonner]

[citizenally]

get yer knowledge on.

[citizenally]

Change "Rodney" to "Trayvon" and you have the 2013 version.

[citizenally]

Report Highlights Climate-Poverty Link

STOCKHOLM -- The World Bank says it will increasingly view its efforts to help developing countries fight poverty through a "climate lens." In a report released Wednesday, the international lending institution warned that heat waves, rising seas, more severe storms and other impacts of climate change will trap millions of people in poverty.

[citizenally]

thank you, tina. 

[citizenally]

yes.  thank you, Ellen. 

[citizenally]

using humor for commentary--one of my favorite ways to drive home a point.  what are your thoughts?

[citizenally]

Happy National Coming Out Day!

For perhaps the first time in my life, at age 30, I'm feeling particularly proud of and strong about this day.  It is a day of pride--for those who overcame the boundaries of socialization and fear-induced secrecy or denial to finally say it to someone else.  I know I was saying it to myself for years before I ever said it to someone else.

It is a day of hope, too.  It is a chance to see that it is possible--to live in this world and do so with pride and strength.  On this day, I think about those for whom coming out is not (yet) possible and I stand in solidarity for them.  There are multiple government-sanctioned consequences in many other countries for those who are openly LGBTQQIAP2S, some of which are fatal.  It is a circumstance I'm privileged enough to not have to experience, though there are still many acts of violence on LGTBQQIAP2S folks in the U.S. that go un-policed.

This year, I've started to facilitate with a LGBTQQIAP2S youth group here in town.  Seeing the students embrace, struggle with, question, and joke about their sexuality is inspiring to me.  It makes me believe that we are on a path of forward momentum to real change around how folks view sexual orientation and gender identity.  In those two hours a few times a month, I'm able to forget about what I know still exists:  fear of and consistent incarceration (in the prison complex, in mental spheres, in poverty) of trans and queer folks, kids (and adults) committing suicide because of the maltreatment others enact upon them upon knowing OR SUSPECTING that they're LGBTQQIAP2S, and LGBTQQIAP2S folks consistently being considered second-class citizens in terms of the rights afforded to heterosexual folks that are not afforded for us--these are just some of the many challenges experienced by these communities.  The way many of these students speak about their identity, though, gives me hope that the times are a' changin', as Bob Dylan would say, to become a more accepting and tolerant society.

Since it is National Coming Out Day, I want to say it here, because it only comes up in the context of my relationships and I don't know how much I've come right out and said it, with pride, that I am Pansexual/Queer.  And, although it has been tough for those reasons of socialization, it has been absolutely worth it--to fall in love without being strangled by the fear and judgment others place upon me.  It has been absolutely liberating.

Yet, I have a confession.  I am still not out to so many, including my father.  I came out to my mom and brother in 2004 when I had fallen in love with my good college friend-turned-girlfriend.  When I told my mom, she advised me not to tell my dad because he was worried about my mental well-being as I was headed abroad to Sweden and had suffered with depression the entire year prior.  Then my parents split up, and I wrestled with (and continue to do so) whether or not he should get the privilege to know this, as I gathered he'd not been honest about the relationship that I believe caused him to leave my mother.  But, I think I'm going to tell him today.  I'm 30.  I'm full of joy in a same-sex relationship with Emily and he should know, if nothing else, how happy I am to be with her.  Because isn't that what it's about--trying to find happiness amidst the gloomy storm of society in which we currently live?

I want to end this with a video that struck me four years ago.  This video, from straight-identified Keith Olbermann, is for the straight folk who are still trying to understand why all of these governmental decisions that deny rights for us based on who we love are so horrible. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChanTFSmqao&feature=share

Happy National Coming Out Day--let it be happy.  We're a fabulous bunch.

[citizenally]

[citizenally]

A very powerful video in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin.

[citizenally]

And then a heroine comes along...

This woman has my vote.  Over and over.

[citizenally]

Really, people?  I MEAN, REALLY?!

[citizenally]

Christmas conversations with my brother are in the near future.  Maybe I'll just show him this.

[citizenally]

Childhood Delusions

Someone asked me the other day when Columbus Day was this year.  I said I didn’t know and didn’t think much about it.  And then I thought back to my years of being in school.  It was always one of those days for which I was quite excited; the prospect of having a day off in the middle of my favorite season meant a day of jumping in piles of leaves and pumpkin carving with my mom and brother.  A few days before the holiday, my teachers would talk about the Nina and the Pinta and the Santa Maria.  We were made to admire these ships for bringing about people who would make this country the great country it would become.

We were duped.

This fall holiday, if you can call it one as its impact hardly warrants celebrating, was the kick-off to learning about the history of the United States.  Sure, we’d learn about Indians; they were the folks that learned so much from the voyagers, or worse, “pioneers,” that came on these ships and ships to follow.  All the interactions between Euro-folk and Native folk were framed as peaceful, with a few battles here and there in which the Indians were being combative.  We gave them all this education and these wares from a civilized society and all they could do was retaliate?  How dare they want to defend the communities they’d established long ago and intended to preserve?

Today a classmate and I led a discussion on the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  In brief, it is the story of a poor, African-American woman whose cancerous cervical cells were taken from her body and sent around the world to various labs that then used the cells to develop various breakthroughs in medical technology.  HeLa cells, as many know them, were shopped around the world, allowing large biotechnology companies to emerge from the rapidly producing cells of a woman whose family never saw a penny of the profit.  These scientists, like Columbus, were heralded as great discoverers, changing the world for the better.  Henrietta Lacks remained anonymous for years.  Her story is hardly known, like that of the numerous tribes that were wiped out after the dawn of colonization.

Celebrating Columbus Day is celebrating genocide.  Celebrating Columbus Day is celebrating the silencing of millions of people who were deemed less-than because of a difference in tradition.  Celebrating Columbus Day is allowing the youth of this country to believe in the fallacy of a noble "discovery."  Celebrating Columbus Day is allowing one more generation to absorb the ignorance maintained over the years, undermining the thriving existence and society of countless tribes across this country and upholding conquering via violence and in the sake of commerce.  Celebrating Columbus Day is a reflection of the continued priorities of this country--acquire wealth as quickly as possible by whatever means necessary.  When will we celebrate Sitting Bull on a national scale?  Now that's someone worth celebrating, something I hope to see in my lifetime.

[citizenally]

Thanks for passing this along, Bryon.  Really good read about sexism/objectification of women in comics. 

[citizenally]

Sometimes I wonder...

Sometimes I wonder how I can want to work in education and with other people when sometimes I just want to run off to seclusion in the woods.  I envision a life by the water, looking cranes taking flight and keeping to myself. 

When I hear things like the horror of Troy Davis's execution, I ask myself, why even try?  When a country that espouses liberty, claiming to be the home of the free of the brave, chooses to execute a citizen of its own country in the name of justice, I ask myself if there's any hope.  Is this just a losing battle?  Why should we be proud as Americans?  Why do I want to work in a system that continues this cycle of oppression?

I even look to people around me and feel disappointed.  There is a lot of lip service and I fear I will one day be guilty of it.

I keep doing this, fighting for humanity, because I'm riding out my hope.  Because, well, it really is ride or die.  I hold tight to the notion that education can change things.  I, as well as others, I'm sure, want this swift change to happen.  We want to be bewitched to a better society, but aren't willing to build it. 

A few months ago, I was talking with somebody born in the late 40s who saw the turbulence of the late 60s.  She said she thought it'd be hard to be someone of my generation, because "in [her] time, you knew what to do.  You protested.  Now, what are you supposed to do?"  I agreed.  I said, "I guess people blog about it."  And here we are.

But then I started to think about how protest has taken shape.  It has become, sadly or not, somewhat more individual.  I look at change as taking place on that individual level.  If I can have a conversation with a student that 5 months later makes the student or me really reflect and change some of our actions or thoughts, is that just as good? 

[citizenally]