07 December 2010

ATTN:

To my women,

You lovey strong women (of color, or not, queer, or not, and of fluid gender, or not) who have inspired, loved, and comforted me this past year...thank you. I give back to you all as often as I can, and being as diverse as our needs are this sometimes means tearful hugs in bed, cooking delicious meals, dancing, bike rides, writing papers all night coffees houses, or distracting each other from our "real" work by discussing Gloria Anzaldua's "Borderlands". In honor of the diversity of ways in which we support one another I wanted to share an excerpt from "We Don't Need Another Wave," entitled "A Time to Hole Up and a Time to Kick Ass: Reimagining Activism as a Million Different Ways to Fight."

Here, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha describes how she struggled to remain active (in a large-scale organizational way) in her causes, but never ceased to struggle towards justice in everyday life. This is one of the few places were I found what I felt was an accurate representation of how we all struggle together. She describes how disheartened she was when it came to dealing with the post-9-11 harassment of people of color and the violent images broadcast of the casualties from the places they were fighting to save. Being afraid to leave the house or be present at large-scale actions and feelings of hopelessness with regards to our causes seem to be issues that echo in our family.

She describes how isolated and despair-ridden she felt after attempting to get involved with the local movement against the wars, and how she chose to stay at home and avoid organizing all together becasue of the way organizing was approached. "This is what it felt like to try and do traditional activism when you're so physically and emotionally attached to the subject matter...[we were] stuck in the kind of old-school activism that Aya de Leon describes as 'an endless series of meetings where people sit on their butt, get stiff backs, feel hungry, have to go to the bathroom, get dehydrated, and stay up in their heads'" (170-180). As we move forward in organizing for these causes that we are so intimately involved, it will be important for us to remember all of the things that count as activism. Realize that everything we do is activism. Piepzna-Samarasinha says it best here: "I decided that my kind of activism was the kind of activism women of color do on a daily basis. Everything I did to keep myself alive--from holding down my job to painting my toenails to building and using my altar to cooking up big pots of sweet potato curry with my girlfriends..." (172).

It itsn't the whole way in which we struggle (we need large-scale organization as well), but it is a significant hunk. For this reason we must seek to get creative/validate creative approaches to fighting on behalf of the emotions that brought us to the table to begin with.

As we continue to support one another and organize towards a greater realization of human rights for all, I want to commend you for being the most amazing people I have ever met and most of all congratulate you on kicking so much ass.

I look forward to many many amazing years with you all.

All my love,

C