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01-31-02 craig: soaking in it Sorry we've disappeared for awhile, there is just a lot of shit going on these days and everyone seems to be crazy busy... Escapist train rides to Montreal, medic trainings for the prepared protestor, World Economic Forum flyer- and zine-making, last ditch efforts to prevent some illegal evictions by a local slumlord, fundraising for trans poverty legal services, etc. But we're excited about the Globalizing Justice conference and the arrival of our friends from Homes Not Jails D.C. sometime tonight. For some inspiration, check out this article about the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and their strategies for "direct action casework" on housing and immigration rights abuses. And if you're here in New York for the anti-WEF mobilization, download an outreach flyer for this weekend's events. The upcoming World Economic Forum has the NYPD and their cheerleaders, the New York Times, confusing anti-globalization activists and terrorists or perhaps simply revealing their lack of interest in democratic practices like protest. Of course, NY's finest wouldn't have to deal with those pesky protestors if we simply followed one op-ed writer's suggestion that the United Nations be moved to Governors Island, a former military base in the NY harbor and henceforth play host to similar "conferences." Huh? Do these people even hear what they're saying? So, all you terrorists out there, check out the Anti-Capitalist Convergence website for info on crashing the party. Just wanted to take a moment to marvel at how immediately the story on that kid in Florida who flew his airplane into a bank building was foreclosed and decided and eliminated from any possibility of political meaning. He was "a troubled, lonely kid" who "expressed support for Osama bin Laden" through his suicide note, which for all we know may have actually indicated a broader sympathy/empathy for the cruel, cruel world that should indeed be cause for simultaneous mourning and action (and if it takes a particularly visceral mass death in an American's 'homeland,' so be it). I heard an interview with one of his teachers who expressed anger at how he was portrayed as a bin Laden sympathizer, saying that when the WTC fell, the boy was quite hurt by the episode. As if sadness and grief at the deaths of 3,000 in Manhattan could not possibly lead to an overwhelming need to act in response to the gadzillions of deaths taking place in precisely that kid's name both before and after Sept. 11. I suppose we'll never know, the boy's mimicry forever cast as the personalized and psychoanalyzed neurosis of a teenager--and we all know kids can't be anything but troubled and lonely, devoid of any political sensibility or will. Hey trannies! I have to joyously recommend the transforum board at Strap-On.org. The conversations going on there are fun, complex, and most importantly, celebratory of tranny life and sexuality. I especially recommend the threads "Frontal Sex (for FTMs)" and "Positive Tranny Body/Image Thread." These people are smarties, they don't attack each other when disagreements come up (you know what I'm talking about if you've been on some of the lists), and they are really figuring some shit out. If your days are filled with gender policing assholes, this is the place to go for a little inspiration. Visit, if for no other reason, than to learn great new terms like "bonus tranny hole" and "boyjunk." Courtesy of Colby, check out September 11th: Contexts and Consequences, a reader put out by some folks at Berkeley with lots of good links. Mimi led us to this article about the death of FOIA which neatly induced a further round of hyperventilation for me. And finally, for people in New York gearing up for the protests against the World Economic Forum, there's an Intergalactic Anarchist Convention this weekend which should prove interesting. Okay, my heart is literally racing right now but I'll do my best to get some coherent thoughts out there. I just finished reading The New McCarthyism on the Progressive's site, and if you think it's drama to compare what's going on now to McCarthy's reign of terror then you need to check out the Progressive. Secret Service agents going to people's homes and questioning them about political posters hanging on their walls. Gallery curators interviewed by agents about the addresses of artists who make lefty work. This shit is unbelievable and it's taking off all around us. Terrorism is the new communism, Ashcroft is the new McCarthy. This is no accident, this is the new mode of operation for the right-wing fascists calling themselves the u.s. government. I think, like a lot of people, especially in NY, I've been a bit out of commission the last few months. Kind of overwhelmed, caught up in managing my own petty concerns. No more. It is time to seriously take things up a notch. I know this is cheesy, but in this little movie you may have heard of, there's this part where this guy who's on a pretty taxing mission is like, "I wish I never got stuck on this mission," and his wizard friend is all, "Yeah, no shit, that's what people always say when they realize they are implicated in fuck-up times." That's a paraphrase, but you get the idea, and I think there is something deep there, and this is it: every moment of every day we make choices about how to situate ourselves in terms of resistance and compliance, that's the Big Picture whether we see it or not. The collective submission to the state does not take place explicitly and discreetly--we're not like, in unison, okay, go for it Bush, we're with you! It's done by consensus, by which I mean all of us each day making seemingly-small choices that aggregate to a collective thumbs-up to government policy. Having been thoroughly searched on my last two flights, I totally think about what I'm packing. I think, do I want to take this zine that has pictures of guns on the cover, or do I want to make it home for Christmas? And I definitely am more hesitant to graffiti in the city now; I walk around with a pocket-full of stickers that say "I Hate Bush" and wonder what will happen if an undercover cop catches me, and I sticker less and less. These are the kinds of small choices I'm talking about. Thus far, a lot of anti-war organizing has felt like we're on the defense. I mean, I've encountered some amazing work, but I feel we need to set new agendas with new terms--our terms. Those of us in the u.s., we're in the belly of the beast--what are we gonna do with that? How are we gonna shut this fucker down? I guess when I say we need to define our own terms for resistance, I mean that we shouldn't begin our activism by trying to strategize legal solutions to these circumstances. Fuck that! I feel like anything they're letting us do, must not be much of a threat. So bring on the wiretaps! I'm ready to get caught, so long as I'm doing something the government thinks is dangerous. If I'm not, why do anything at all? Colby brought this zine back from her last trip to Canada called kick it over. Sadly, it has no website, so I can't just link you to the article I want to share. It's an interview with Chaia Heller about biotechnology, but includes really smart analysis about the development of the biotech and telecommunications industries as new developments in capitalism as new methods of commodifying information. Heller also discusses how "culture making" has become less autonomous and more linked to capitalist practices as more and more aspects of recreation are privatized ("encroached on by service capital"). Its really good. You can get kick it over by writing to P.O. Box 1836 Guelph, ON, Canada N1H7A1 or emailing them. Also, email me and i could copy the article and mail it to you. here's a quote from another part I think is really smart. Heller has been asked about how a lot of the opposition to genetically modified food is based on a gut feeling that it is "gross."
This is a kind of thinking about activist tactics that I crave. It reminds me of when some well-intentioned NYC activists who were generally white and upper class made some stickers a few years ago that said "encourage cop suicide." I understood the point that the police are dangerous, but felt suspicious of suggesting that employees of a violent system are the real problem, rather that the organization and incentives of that system. Its that recurrent problem of mistaking the (usually not-so-privileged) person guarding the door for the enemy, when the real enemy is still behind the door. Does that make any sense? The other thing this makes me think about is how the 'ick factor' comes up when we talk about sexual and gender transgression. I remember this one conversation I had when I first started telling people I was trans where a dyke asked me "so are you gonna fuck boys or girls now?" She was trying to figure out if I would be straight or a fag or what. I told her "that way of thinking about people doesn't really make sense to me these days" or something. She responded that "dick just really grosses [her] out." Her "ick" response to dick was fueling panic about my gender transgression and my transgression of easily identifiable sexual identity categories. Though understandable in a world where the cultural phenomenon of dick is often violent and abusive, it is dangerously policing to embrace fixed notions of what our body parts can mean and to accept uncomplicated reactionary responses to those fixed notions. Two things I've been thinking about since September are consumerism as citizenship and the deployment of mythic constructions of "childhood" to mobilize nationalism/militarism/racism. We buy things to "keep America strong" and send off soldiers to protect our innocent children (as opposed to their Other, untamed, children). I found an essay called Lunchbox Hegemony? Kids and the Marketplace, Then and Now by Dan Cook, at LiP magazine that talks about how the marketing of kid products obscures the means of production and the production of consumer desire itself. Cook writes:
Yes! I find the article compelling both for how it explodes popular constructions of childhood as a self-enclosed asocial sphere, and for how it connects with earlier cell phone conversations about the embodiment of capitalist impulses and purchasing power as self-expression. There looks to be cool stuff at LiP including pieces by local favorites Ward Churchill and Robin D. G. Kelley, so go persuse, you're not getting any work done anyway.
I just put up a few more letters to the Examiner.
I just put up some of our letters to the Examiner. have a look.
The angry letter-writing abilities of dean spade, so well honed in the last year, have been unleashed again in response to the latest journalistic violence against trans people to come to my attention. On Monday the San Francisco Examiner published "Girls to Guys--It's on the Rise". As you might guess, this misinforming, inflamatory drivel focuses on every transphobes favorite theme: "FTM transgenderism is a lesbian trend that all these youngsters will someday regret once they've mutilated their bodies with these fascinating and too-easily-accessible procedures." Enraged San Franciscans report that the article was accompanied by detailed graphic images of FTM surgical procedures which are not included in the web version. Please write to the Examiner to let them know what you think of the article. I'll post some of our fiery responses here, so copy me to your email if you want.
I'm working at the computer, listening to the new compilation cd put out by AWOL, a rad group working to counter military recruiting in poor communities of color by exposing the truths about the GI bill (i.e., you'll never get money out of the Army to go to college) and the colonialist aims of militarization. They say:
We got the cd and their zine (featuring articles on how hip-hop mag The Source is funded with Navy ads, and on sexual violence in the military) at a screening of the video Military Myths put on by Paper Tiger last Friday. Always necessary, this work takes on a greater urgency as Bush sends young, poor people of color to murder Afghanis and destroy the homes and communities of survivors, in turn exposing themselves to harms that the u.s. government will no doubt cover up.
In Excitable Speech, Judith Butler writes: "To be injured by speech is to suffer a loss of context, that is, not to know where you are. Indeed it may be that what is unanticipated about the injurious speech act is what constitutes its injury, the sense of putting its addressee out of control. The capacity to circumscribe the situation of the speech act is jeopardized at the moment of injurious address. To be addressed injuriously is not only to be open to an unknown future, but not to know the time and place of injury, and to suffer the disorientation of one's situation as the effect of such speech. Exposed at the moment of such a shattering is precisely the volatility of one's 'place' within the community of speakers; one can be 'put in one's place' by such speech, but such a place may be no place." I would add that having to go through the world knowing that at any moment such injurious speech may occur and I may be "put in my place" is one of the most difficult aspects of my trans experience. This week, I was harrassed by two groups of men (changing into my uniform, and changing out) in the men's dressing room at my tae kwon do class. "You look like a girl to me."–-snicker, giggle, snicker–"Are you sure you're in the right room? I really thought you were a girl. You really look like a girl."–snicker giggle. At the doctor, after writing "transgender-male" in the gender section of the form, and writing "CALL ME DEAN" in the name section, explaining that my insurance says my old name, I was announced to the waiting room as "Jane Spade," reminding me that no one is required to comply with my wishes. At work, on the phone, my stomach in knots, I informed yet another attorney "actually, it's 'Mr.Spade,' not 'Ms. Spade'" and was greeted with nervous laughter. And yesterday, dressed in my "short men's" suit, I attended a birthday party for the judge in the chambers that neighbor mine, and the gay clerk who works there and with whom I've discussed my transgender on many occasions (my ally?), greeted me in front of a room full of strangers with "You look so Isabella Rosalini!" fixing my gender presentation as female for a room full of people I'll be working with for the next two years, so that I will have to un-do his comment again and again. Butler rightly points out that we become and know ourselves through language, and others know us through language. To be undone by language, or displaced, is a decontextualizing violence, an erasing. To be a person who does not look to others like the gendered language I identify myself by is to enter a lingual field where erasure is constant, and to be told repeatedly that that erasure is trivial, unintentional, blameless. I am not entitled to have gender that is at odds with some aspects of my appearance. I am naive to ask for recognition, I am only getting what I asked for, I am making everyone uncomfortable.
Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, 838 Palestinians have been killed and 16,685 Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 60% of those killed were killed indiscriminately; they were not involved in demonstrations or clashes. During the same period, 222 Israelis have been killed. But these numbers don't reflect the enormity of the war against the Palestinian population by the state of Israel. Collective punishment of Palestinians for suicide bombings and other attacks has resulted in extensive damage (through shelling) of over 4,000 homes, mosques, water wells and schools. 25,000 olive and fruit trees have been uprooted and 78% of Palestinian-owned farmland has been razed. Every day, through roadblocks, curfews and town closures, Israel prevents 125,000 Palestinians from going to work, with a combined daily income loss of \\$6,250,000 (u.s.). 1.3 million Palestinians now live in poverty (earning less than $2 a day); this number has doubled since the beginning of the current intifada. A cursory look at the numbers reveals which population is actually under siege. Why would the u.s. media accurately cover a war which the u.s. government supports and funds? We know all this already. And the recent coverage of the suicide bombings in Jerusalem and their aftermath-- the missile attack on Arafat's base, the indiscriminate killings, the total road closures and curfews -- is as content-free as usual. Palestine "attacks," Israelis "retaliate." An article in the London Times yesterday reported on two funerals: one for a "cold-blooded killer," the other for his "innocent Israeli victim." An article on MSNBC.com this morning featured a prominently displayed pullquote from Ariel Sharon, explaining that Arafat is currently the greatest obstacle there is to peace in the Middle East. Below it was a picture of a bloody Israeli on a stretcher. There were no other pullquotes or photos in the article. A piece on iwon.com about the attack on Arafat's base briefly referred to 17 "lightly wounded" Palestinians. The current international investigation into the extent of Ariel Sharon's responsibility for the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon has gotten virtually no coverage in the u.s. media, so most Americans aren't questioning Sharon's authority to determine who is and who is not a terrorist. As James Goldsborough wrote in today's San Diego Union-Tribune, "When do terrorists become statesmen? When terrorism succeeds." Two weeks ago, Colin Powell urged Palestinians to arrest and punish "perpetrators of terrorist acts" against Israel, and told Israel to "end its occupation" of Palestine. Are acts committed against an occupier acts of terrorism or of resistance? Who gets to say, and who gets to hear it?
Courtesy of Colby, check out September 11th: Contexts and Consequences, a reader put out by some folks at Berkeley with lots of good links. Mimi led us to this article about the death of FOIA which neatly induced a further round of hyperventilation for me. And finally, for people in New York gearing up for the protests against the World Economic Forum, there's an Intergalactic Anarchist Convention this weekend which should prove interesting. Okay, my heart is literally racing right now but I'll do my best to get some coherent thoughts out there. I just finished reading The New McCarthyism on the Progressive's site, and if you think it's drama to compare what's going on now to McCarthy's reign of terror then you need to check out the Progressive. Secret Service agents going to people's homes and questioning them about political posters hanging on their walls. Gallery curators interviewed by agents about the addresses of artists who make lefty work. This shit is unbelievable and it's taking off all around us. Terrorism is the new communism, Ashcroft is the new McCarthy. This is no accident, this is the new mode of operation for the right-wing fascists calling themselves the u.s. government. I think, like a lot of people, especially in NY, I've been a bit out of commission the last few months. Kind of overwhelmed, caught up in managing my own petty concerns. No more. It is time to seriously take things up a notch. I know this is cheesy, but in this little movie you may have heard of, there's this part where this guy who's on a pretty taxing mission is like, "I wish I never got stuck on this mission," and his wizard friend is all, "Yeah, no shit, that's what people always say when they realize they are implicated in fuck-up times." That's a paraphrase, but you get the idea, and I think there is something deep there, and this is it: every moment of every day we make choices about how to situate ourselves in terms of resistance and compliance, that's the Big Picture whether we see it or not. The collective submission to the state does not take place explicitly and discreetly--we're not like, in unison, okay, go for it Bush, we're with you! It's done by consensus, by which I mean all of us each day making seemingly-small choices that aggregate to a collective thumbs-up to government policy. Having been thoroughly searched on my last two flights, I totally think about what I'm packing. I think, do I want to take this zine that has pictures of guns on the cover, or do I want to make it home for Christmas? And I definitely am more hesitant to graffiti in the city now; I walk around with a pocket-full of stickers that say "I Hate Bush" and wonder what will happen if an undercover cop catches me, and I sticker less and less. These are the kinds of small choices I'm talking about. Thus far, a lot of anti-war organizing has felt like we're on the defense. I mean, I've encountered some amazing work, but I feel we need to set new agendas with new terms--our terms. Those of us in the u.s., we're in the belly of the beast--what are we gonna do with that? How are we gonna shut this fucker down? I guess when I say we need to define our own terms for resistance, I mean that we shouldn't begin our activism by trying to strategize legal solutions to these circumstances. Fuck that! I feel like anything they're letting us do, must not be much of a threat. So bring on the wiretaps! I'm ready to get caught, so long as I'm doing something the government thinks is dangerous. If I'm not, why do anything at all? Colby brought this zine back from her last trip to Canada called kick it over. Sadly, it has no website, so I can't just link you to the article I want to share. It's an interview with Chaia Heller about biotechnology, but includes really smart analysis about the development of the biotech and telecommunications industries as new developments in capitalism as new methods of commodifying information. Heller also discusses how "culture making" has become less autonomous and more linked to capitalist practices as more and more aspects of recreation are privatized ("encroached on by service capital"). Its really good. You can get kick it over by writing to P.O. Box 1836 Guelph, ON, Canada N1H7A1 or emailing them. Also, email me and i could copy the article and mail it to you. here's a quote from another part I think is really smart. Heller has been asked about how a lot of the opposition to genetically modified food is based on a gut feeling that it is "gross."
This is a kind of thinking about activist tactics that I crave. It reminds me of when some well-intentioned NYC activists who were generally white and upper class made some stickers a few years ago that said "encourage cop suicide." I understood the point that the police are dangerous, but felt suspicious of suggesting that employees of a violent system are the real problem, rather that the organization and incentives of that system. Its that recurrent problem of mistaking the (usually not-so-privileged) person guarding the door for the enemy, when the real enemy is still behind the door. Does that make any sense? The other thing this makes me think about is how the 'ick factor' comes up when we talk about sexual and gender transgression. I remember this one conversation I had when I first started telling people I was trans where a dyke asked me "so are you gonna fuck boys or girls now?" She was trying to figure out if I would be straight or a fag or what. I told her "that way of thinking about people doesn't really make sense to me these days" or something. She responded that "dick just really grosses [her] out." Her "ick" response to dick was fueling panic about my gender transgression and my transgression of easily identifiable sexual identity categories. Though understandable in a world where the cultural phenomenon of dick is often violent and abusive, it is dangerously policing to embrace fixed notions of what our body parts can mean and to accept uncomplicated reactionary responses to those fixed notions. |
