tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81788895428288227462024-03-13T13:39:51.521-04:00everyday contradictionsbecause nothing is cut and dry.j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-15314922968968127562016-06-15T20:12:00.000-04:002016-06-18T07:56:52.814-04:00Read things that other people wrote, and then if you want to you can read what I wrote too. <div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Below is an entirely personal reflection and processing that I've been doing over the past couple days. Its not edited or crafted to be a political statement or analysis, its my raw journaling that I'm making public for the sake of breaking isolation, and also trying to literally reach my friends and community - so many of whom are white and/or class privileged and/or straight - by using my personal story as an inroad for learning and understanding the bigger picture, a spark for learning more not about me, but the root causes of this awful massacre that is ripple-effecting me and them. So! Especially straight people, white folks, people with class privilege - please read the stories and framework of people of color, queer immigrants, poor and working class queer folks, b</i><i>efore or alongside reading anything I write. Those are the voices that should be central right now. </i></span><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A few suggestions:</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<li><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/06/14/how-to-talk-to-a-queer-person-who-is-afraid-of-dying/&source=gmail&ust=1466121987432000&usg=AFQjCNEEbcOS2k0frHvkBNbQAKJOA2NmAg" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/06/14/how-to-talk-to-a-queer-person-who-is-afraid-of-dying/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">How to talk to a queer person who is afraid of dying</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></li>
<li><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.thenation.com/article/please-dont-stop-the-music/&source=gmail&ust=1466121987432000&usg=AFQjCNGtqKngycNQm6PPtPVg46WFCr6cpw" href="http://www.thenation.com/article/please-dont-stop-the-music/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Please Don't Stop the Music</span></a></li>
<li><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://blacklivesmatter.com/in-honor-of-our-dead-queer-trans-muslim-black-we-will-be-free/&source=gmail&ust=1466121987432000&usg=AFQjCNF0ojnlHLimjKzodDOoUdIJoL8XJQ" href="http://blacklivesmatter.com/in-honor-of-our-dead-queer-trans-muslim-black-we-will-be-free/" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">In Honor of Our Dead: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Muslim, Black — We Will Be Free</a></li>
<li><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://medium.com/@Lyles/from-charleston-to-orlando-reflections-on-massacre-in-the-time-of-the-right-61e546db6c86%23.ai1j08b2f&source=gmail&ust=1466121987432000&usg=AFQjCNGp_oFeCPZZSAWafgE2FNOsM0HzBw" href="https://medium.com/@Lyles/from-charleston-to-orlando-reflections-on-massacre-in-the-time-of-the-right-61e546db6c86#.ai1j08b2f" style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">The Pulse Nightclub Shooting Robbed The Queer Latinx Community Of A Sanctuary</a></li>
<li><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://medium.com/@Lyles/from-charleston-to-orlando-reflections-on-massacre-in-the-time-of-the-right-61e546db6c86%23.ai1j08b2f&source=gmail&ust=1466121987432000&usg=AFQjCNGp_oFeCPZZSAWafgE2FNOsM0HzBw" href="https://medium.com/@Lyles/from-charleston-to-orlando-reflections-on-massacre-in-the-time-of-the-right-61e546db6c86#.ai1j08b2f" style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc;" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From Charleston to Orlando: Reflections on Massacre in a Time of Backlash</span></a></li>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>June 15th, 2016</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remembering, my first pride, in May 2000. I was 13, barely out to myself and certainly no one else. I had gotten as far as writing in my journal "I think I'm a lesbian" and then diligently doodling around it so no one else could see what was written unless they knew it was there. Pride in my hometown of Northampton was a family affair, a PG event, a place I went with my friends and their sets of two mommies (and my mommy, too). Dykes on bikes was always my favorite part. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remembering, the following year how I started to wrap my mind around racism and classism, as my high school courses quickly atrophied down to mostly other white kids on the AP tracks, and my Latino buddy from 8th grade science was indefinitely suspended. <i>Boys Don't Cry</i> came out and like so many other sheltered white kids, I learned about violence, misogyny, trans and homophobia through a screen. Movies also taught me about queer relationships and hot sex as I watched <i>If These Walls Could Talk 2</i> more times than I can count. Wrapping my mind around my obsession with that movie diverging from my besties' obsessions with, well, boys. Still never telling anyone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remembering, how excited I was that my UU youth group leader was a visible dyke. She introduced me to the Indigo Girls by way of playing their live version of "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee," and to recent history of Native oppression and resistance via a teach-in about Pine Ridge. I wanted to be just like her, though I never told her that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Remembering, how I spent so much of my teenage years feeling profoundly alone in my queerness. I didn't, and still don't, have the language to describe feeling simultaneously surrounded by love and acceptance, role models and people who looked like what I wanted to grow up to be (I mean, I grew up in Northampton), and absolutely stop-in-your-tracks terrified to come out as queer. Culture is deep. No amount of privilege or rainbow flags or gay best friends of my parents could actually shield me from the reality of oppression in the world. Even if I was so sheltered I couldn't fully understand where that fear was coming from. Even if that oppression would probably never directly hit me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Remembering a few years later, 18 years old and summer in NYC. Landing a job that got me in - underage and for free - to pretty much any and every queer and dyke bar and party in the city. Remember Snapshot? My favorite dance party, every Tuesday night. Back when going out past midnight (or let's be real, past 10pm) was a totally reasonable and sustainble-feeling thing for me to do on a Tuesday. Back when it was in that dark and sweaty basement at the Boysroom on Avenue A; before it was moved to Bar 13 and rubbed up against suit-wearing post-corporate-job straight professionals. Late night, sitting down on the dirty F train platform because my feet were so weary from dancing, waiting endlessly for the subway with other sleepy queers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Remembering the New York City pride march that year, 2005 - for all its complications and cooptation, dancing on a DJ-ed float for 7+ hours straight (no pun intended) with thousands of people cheering along the streets is still one of the most exhilerating days of my life. How different NYC pride was than Northampton prides of my youth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Remembering that year and for years after, countless nights at Cattyshack. The upstairs was my favorite; I always preferred the DJ up there and the second-floor deck out back where I smoked the occasional cigarette (sorry mom). So many dramatic unfoldings as my friend group dated and broke up and made out and were "just friends" again. Like queers do; like queers do in spaces that are created and held and maintained and explored for such things to blossom. <br />Remembering not as long ago, when Hey Queen was a monthly staple in my life. When it started at Sugarland, with the tiny crowded dance floor and makeshift stage. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />Boysroom is now closed. Cattyshack is now closed. Sugarland is now closed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />I don't "go out" very much anymore, but these recordings of that decade of my life - when I was unfolding my understanding of my own sexuality, living into it and living so OUT about it - have been playing like a home video in my mind for the past several days. They're just mine; my memories and my process in the sea of thousands and millions of other peoples' memories and processes -- they're not the important ones in this moment. But since they're mine, they're what I've got. </span></div>
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j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-22071995664003594282015-09-01T15:33:00.003-04:002015-09-01T15:37:53.116-04:00Two Odes to the Clothesline. With love, from my sabbatical. <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Two Odes to the Clothesline. With love, from my sabbatical.</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br /></b><br /><i>I. Hold on</i><br /><br />The sundried clothing is starched, almost as if the cloth will crack<br />like the cliff-clay figurines left to dry on oceanside rocks.<br /><br />The sun is not soft, per se, and<br />neither is the ray-kissed fabric.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no such thing as dryer sheets for a clothesline.<br /><br />No matter how long, now, the towels stay folded, the bras in a drawer, the dresses hung</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">they seem to hold the light like photosynthetic plants</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hundreds of years could pass, I believe, and still the clean sheets would taste like summer,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">would infuse you in Vitamin D as I wrapped you up in them,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">would whisper precious wonders of the everyday world, not to be forgotten.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br /><i>II. A Haiku</i> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">spiders spin so swiftly</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on wet clothes hung on the line</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to dry in the sun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-52992981738673988362014-12-01T22:49:00.000-05:002014-12-02T07:28:28.805-05:00Dear white people<i>This is not a polished or highly-edited article. It is my raw writing and thoughts; prioritizing imperfect sharing and sparking dialogue over prolonged crafting [end caveat].</i><br />
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To myself and my fellow dear, beloved white people,<br />
<br />
We need to look at our own anti-black racism. How it lives in each of us. We need to also look at the impact it has on the world.<br />
<br />
<br />
We need to look at what's holding us back from 100% committing to the idea and growing movement that <a href="http://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-2/">black lives matter</a>. We need to push through the walls that are keeping us silent amongst white family and friends. White supremacy depends on white people being taught not to think or ask questions about race and racism. That needs to end with us.<br />
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This isn't just about cops killing people, or gun violence, or black men. This is about state violence. State violence includes being complicit in regular citizens turning violent against each other - for walking down the street as a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/nyc-transgender-assault-_n_3806092.html">black trans woman</a> or for being houseless and sleeping on the street. State violence includes letting <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/17/new-census-data-children-remain-americas-poorest-citizens/">one in three black children</a> live below the poverty line in a country with plenty of shelter and food. State violence includes locking millions of black people up in cages (<a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet">almost half of the prison population, at six times the rate of white people</a>) instead of supporting them to lead safe lives. State violence includes insufficient funding and support for people living with HIV/AIDS. This is about so much more than cops killing people with guns.<br />
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As many others have said, this is not about Darren Wilson in particular. He is not a "bad apple." He is a white person in a system of white supremacy. Part of me doesn't doubt he<a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/08/21/the_ultimate_white_privilege_darren_wilson_and_being_afraid_for_your_life/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow"> felt his life was threatened</a>. And - does that make justify shooting? Killing? <br />
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The racism that made Wilson "feel 5 years old" and see Mike Brown as "the Incredible Hulk" is a racism that was trained into him. Systematically. A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/28/what-white-people-need-to-know-and-do-after-ferguson/">racism that was and continues to be trained</a> into all white (and nonwhite, though distinctly differently) people in the US. Trained into me, into the most "down" anti-racist white people that exist. We all have racism within us. <br />
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And yet - anything that is trained and learned can be un-trained and un-learned. Its like a Magic Eye - you can teach yourself to see the layers. You can teach yourself to see the system of white supremacy that is separate from your own humanness, your own rational thoughts about sacredness of human life and dignity. I am on a life-long journey and have a long way to go. And yet, I can tell I am changing, I am unlearning, I am re-learning ways of being distinct from white supremacy. I see other people changing and unlearning and re-learning around me all the time. It is not hopeless.<br />
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So, we act. Those of us who have been showing up, we need to keep showing up. Those of us who haven't shown up, spoken up, engaged in some way -- I'm asking you to engage with me.<br />
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I'm saying this to myself as much as anyone else. A personal mantra. Putting it out to my community will help keep me accountable.<br />
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Keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up. Proudly carry that sign that reads "Black Lives Matter." <br />
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Keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up in the name of black lives mattering. Mattering to me, to me, to me.<br />
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Not in a "my best friend is black" kind of way.<br />
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In a "our histories and lives and futures are intertwined as humans" kind of way. In a "until the world is safe for black folks it will not be safe for me" kind of way. In a "I cannot sit idly by when black parents' kids are being shot" kind of way.<br />
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I've spoken to white family and friends - progressive, liberal, social justice-oriented family and friends - who are so immersed in their own shame of having racist thoughts that they are silent during this time of uprising. "This one time I had a racist thought so I must not be ready to show up to a protest for racial justice." Or, "I don't know what to say, or what my sign should say, or what if it feels awkward to be there as a white person?" Or, or, or.<br />
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I have spoken to white family and friends who have fixated on the details - "what if Mike Brown *did* steal?" "What if he did punch Wilson?" "What if Wilson really did feel like his life was threatened?" "I don't totally get what these protests are for." They are unable to look at the bigger picture.<br />
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Perfectionism keeps us from acting. There is never a perfect time or place; a perfect instance. That is not the point. <br />
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I grew up with a framed posted hanging in our family bathroom that read <i>"the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. - Dante.</i>"<br />
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There are movements happening all over the country and Earth; crisis is not new. We are in a time, however, of being called upon to respond to moral crisis, to sustain our response, and to push for long-term change. To remain neutral is to support the status quo. To support the status quo is to be complicit in the continued killing of black people.<br />
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This country is one that is literally built on the backs of exploited native, black, and brown people. To stay "neutral," as in, not to act in some way, is to stay neutral on the issue of white supremacy, racialized economic exploitation, and more.<br />
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We need to remember that anti-black racism is fundamental to this country's existence. We need to remember that by liberating black folks from this oppressive society, we liberate everyone else - white people included.<br />
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We must act in the name of this collective liberation.<br />
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"Acting" looks all sorts of ways.<br />
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If you have the time and the able body, turn out. Physically. Feel what it feels like to be part of a movement - literally.<br />
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Donate money. Sign petitions.<br />
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Write. Share your thoughts. Ask questions that feel scary to ask.<br />
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Turn to community support that can be helpful. Engage community that is being unhelpful (please don't just un-friend them! Lets engage our white folks, not shut them out. They are our responsibility - nay, opportunity - to organize).<br />
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One of the things that helps me get in touch with my personal anger about anti-black racism is how it has affected me. How it has numbed me and my people (who historically were slave-owners) to the suffering of black people. How this country - the policies, the history I was taught in school, the messages the media gave me about beauty, who I was taught to fear, who I was taught to love - on every level I was taught I could look away from black suffering. My parents and others in my life have done their best to teach me otherwise, but it is not enough in the face of a whole society that is built on making sure I and other non-black people look away from black suffering.<br />
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So, I call on us white people to look. To watch the videos and the histories and the violence and the outrage and the devastation. And the resilience and creativity and hope and love. I am not calling for some exercise in making ourselves feel terrible just so we can try to "know what it's like." We will never know what it's like to be Black in America. What we will do is flex our muscle of empathy. Get in touch with our shared humanity.<br />
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White people, we need to get our people. <a href="http://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/">Showing Up for Racial Justice</a>, <a href="http://collectiveliberation.org/">Catalyst Project</a>, <a href="http://www.chriscrass.org/">Chris Crass</a>, <a href="http://www.paulkivel.com/">Paul Kivel</a> are great places to start. <br />
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I am not even sure posting this so publicly was the "right" thing to do but I didn't want to hide behind my own fears and silence my own thoughts....so here I am.</div>
j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-33207915979191521972014-08-21T13:30:00.001-04:002014-08-21T13:38:46.703-04:00Racism is white people's issue too<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I feel compelled to keep speaking and writing and acting, as a white person -- reminding myself and my white community that the truth is that racism is our issue, the killing of black and brown people of all genders is a community issue for white people too. Simple, fundamental, and yet - so often and easily forgotten. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I am trying to combat the urge to use perfectionism to be silent - to endlessly edit and re-edit anything I write; to use time passing or “being too busy” to stall on saying something, no matter how incomplete or imperfect.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I can’t figure out a nice way to say this, because its not a nice thing: white people must not forget or minimize that it was our people - specifically wealthy white people - who created and maintained these systems of brutalization in order to gain and maintain power. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those of us living today, this history is not our personal faults. It bears repeating: this history is not our personal faults. I truly believe that we ourselves would not create this. I don’t believe that as white babies we were born racist, or imperialist, or money-hoarding capitalists. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As <a href="http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/08/michael-brown-and-ferguson/" target="_blank">Chris Crass</a> put it, <i>“This is a time for white people to recognize that our irrational fears of Blackness are the result of the logics of white supremacy, which are intended to concentrate power into the hands of the few by creating and maintaining structural violence and inequality.” </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So its not our fault. And - not “but,” and - it IS the reality. And it IS our responsibility. Now, in the horrific repression in the wake of Mike Brown’s murder, and for the long haul. It is our responsibility. In the wake of 500 years of horrific repression of (particularly poor) black and brown folks in the United States and around the world - ending racism, racist systems, racist ideologies, racist murders (and murders of all kinds)...our people created this shit. My people created this shit. Now I get to be part of changing it. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We need to proactively connect the dots between Mike Brown’s murder, with the murder of <a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/one_year_after_islan_nettles_murder_justice_remains_illusive.html" target="_blank">dozens of trans people of color</a> every year, with the<a href="http://972mag.com/photos-same-tear-gas-used-in-ferguson-and-west-bank/95699/" target="_blank"> bombing currently in Palestine</a>, with the fact that the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/world/3-planks-us-policy-we-need-change-end-gaza-slaughter" target="_blank">US government has armed and trained Israel</a> in most of what they know and do, with the fact that the US and other (white-led) imperial governments have armed and trained (<a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/09/11/pers-s11.html" target="_blank">one example of 1973 Chilean coup here</a>) most Terrible Violent Things that humans are doing to other humans in the past few centuries. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It is not the responsibility of communities that are directly affected by oppression to connect the dots for us or be our educators. We need to be part of diligently and actively understanding and organizing around the interconnections. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I bet I have close to 1,000 white Facebook friends. What if we each made sure our 5 closest white people deeply understood and took up the mantle of building an anti-racist world? That would be 5,000 more white people committed to ending racism and violence. And seriously, seriously, we need all of us. Our lives will be better, and the lives of communities of color will be better, when we speak out and act, consistently and boldly, to end racism and violence toward the majority of humanity (which is people of color). What a great world that is going to be.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> More links and analysis about Mike Brown’s murder, and what white people can do in solidarity:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">- <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sOX4RNO5CPQp4zMUvosoWPNu_fuencZNI1nmCcRuUag/preview?sle=true" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;">Ferguson Solidarity: Ways to Support the Fight</a><span style="line-height: 17.25px;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="line-height: 17.25px;">- </span></span><a href="http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/08/14/ten-things-white-people-can-do-about-ferguson-besides-tweet" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">Ten Things White People Can Do About Ferguson Besides Tweet</a>
</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/holocaust-survivor-hedy-epstein-arrested-ferguson-protest-says-racism-alive-america-265703"><span style="line-height: 1;">Holocaust Survivor Hedy Epstein, Arrested in Ferguson Protest, Says Racism Is Alive in America
</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">- <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-emdin/5-ways-to-teach-about-michael-brown-and-ferguson-in-the-new-school-year_b_5690171.html" style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1; text-decoration: none;">5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year</a>
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">- <a href="http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/08/18/black-women-are-killed-police-too" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none;">Black Women Are Killed by Police, Too</a>
</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- <a href="http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/08/michael-brown-and-ferguson/" style="text-decoration: none;">For Michael Brown and Ferguson: Facing White Fears of Blackness and Taking Action to End White Supremacy</a></span><span style="color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">- <a href="http://urbanecology.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-request-from-organizers-in-ferguson.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;">Urban Ecology: A Request From Organizers in Ferguson</a>
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">- <a href="http://forward.com/articles/204280/why-jews-should-care-about-ferguson/" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;">Why Jews Should Care About Ferguson</a>
</span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- <a href="https://docs.google.com/a/resourcegeneration.org/document/d/1g6AMtVP1YC7Z_WLqsEwsptQ-FvnvuUxIrrVW3jfE4TU/edit" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;">Young People with Wealth Call on Philanthropic Community to Stand with Ferguson, Mo</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.
</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">- <a href="https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/jewish-voice-for-peace-stands-in-solidarity-with-the-community-of-ferg" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;">Jewish Voice for Peace Stands in Solidarity with the Community of Ferguson, Missouri</a>
</span></span>- <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/08/michael_brown_and_our_obsession_with_respectable_black_victims.html" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: blue;">Black Kids Don’t Have to be College-Bound for Their Deaths to Be Tragi</span></span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">c</span></a>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-25456689529244683292014-08-20T19:32:00.000-04:002014-08-21T13:34:36.900-04:00three poems, about three places i feel like home. <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name" style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 22px; text-indent: 10px;">
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial;"><i style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">with all the devastation in the world hitting me rather hard these days, i've had the urge to write about the things in my life & history that bring me the most comfort and safety. here are the three poems that have come from that:</i></span><br />
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">7/17/14 - Untitled</span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I think it was Judy</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">who started the tradition of not looking back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">It's too hard, the story goes. When you’re walking off, just walk off. You’ll be back next year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I cried as I drove Middle Road to Beetlebung<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">my mind and muscles steeped with memories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">stronger than my mom’s morning tea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">The home-i-ness of a home that isn’t enclosed by walls<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">that’s more permanent than any man-made structure <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">that’s about the way the hills roll, or the signs are painted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">not just the house we happen to be renting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I don't mind the obvious changes - irksome as the now-bad pizza is - it's the ones that are slow over time that get me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Like a snail you can't tell is moving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">until you see a small trail of slime along the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">The rock that was once our endless playground has been eroded so much so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">it finally looks like the moated castle I often believed it could be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">The waves seem small now, and surf rough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I can't tell if the tide has actually shifted <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">or if my memories of afternoon-long body surfing fests<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">are just a 9-year-old's interpretation of a couple full-mooned ocean swells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Cherries and chips, pretzels and dried mango, warm tap water with an occasional treat of cooler-ed seltzer from friends far more prepared than I – the snacks to sustain any good beach afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I’m not sure what “the witching hour” means<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">(apologies if its racist or otherwise offensively derived)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">but I swear the phrase was created to describe Lucy Vincent at dusk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">like <i>Hocus Pocus</i>, our favorite movie one year --<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">touted as spooky craft, but really just the suspense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">of finding one’s place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">the magic of knowing you’ve got people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Anyways,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">at LVB its hardly just the sky, the sun still glaring but dulling in its heat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">it’s the atmosphere of a deserted desert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">prideful as the ones who persevered, patiently waiting for this coveted time,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">who have too much fun with each other to care that the gate might lock us in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">By the time we leave, the once-full parking lot is a dusty ghost town,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">our few remaining cars awkwardly peppered up the slope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">We wave arms out open windows as we peel off towards our own homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">We have chance meetings on the sandy wooden porch of our favorite overpriced store,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">drop by unannounced to borrow sunscreen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">coordinate dinners and consult on medical advice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">like we were cousins in some big extended family busting the seams of a small town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">The difference is, for many years we didn’t have a picture of each other's lives outside of this tiny island – 50 weeks would spin by with nary a phone call.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">And yet somehow year after year we’d settle back in without skipping a beat, as if a colorful autumn, harsh winter, or rainy spring hadn’t intervened along the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I’m thankful to say the passing of time has brought so many threads of our lives together, even the bad ones –<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">weddings, birthdays, cancers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">bat mitzvahs, interstate moves, career changes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">couch-crashing, midyear texts, impromptu invites to broadway plays --<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">our crew has broken the seal of summer lovin’; at some point when I wasn’t looking we crossed over from pals to kin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Even Barrel now shows up on my gchat list.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I see the age on us all</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">the older adults <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">- I call them that because I am an adult too, though still relatively so -<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">have settled into themselves </span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">are easier, somehow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Grudges have ebbed and wounds been stitched (though scars remain). They've seen a lot of life and survived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">What's left is more giggles, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">softened skin alongside softened hearts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">small bellies where tautness once held stiff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">eyes melted into crows feet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">like branding from the sunshine of so many beach days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">We have grown older, too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">more and more of the seed of the people we each always have been<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">remarkably parallel though such distinct characters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">It was our un-diapered bottoms we all have to thank for this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Some parents become grandparents<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">more generations distinguishing the passing of time <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">napping new babes under the same umbrellaed shade. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">Some parents become more like friends: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">what’s 30 years when you’ve lived almost that long or longer?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">We rub elbows like peers, though I take comfort in knowing that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">somewhere in each of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">you’re always still mommas and papas and I’m always still the kid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I just peeked out my airplane window<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">one of a dozen passengers patiently awaiting a stalled takeoff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">and the sunset takes my breath away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">I’ve seen hundreds on this island - can conjure the smell of Menemsha in a snap, the view from the Gay Head cliffs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial;">the sound of applause for the cycle of another day’s completion.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">************************</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where the house once stood<span style="font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">someday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">i hope a long way off from now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we are going to look and say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"that's where the house once stood."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's where the porch swing outlived the cat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rocking countless secrets shared, </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">coffees sipped, </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">flirtations exchanged, </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wines poured,</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">phone conversations whispered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where the front yard never went more than a season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">without a cheaply-made laminated sign hammered into the edge of the street<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">commanding that passers-by "say no on 2" or "vote for deval" or simply to "go slow, children playing."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><o:p> </o:p></span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for years we had a record player (do you know what that is?) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and more afternoons than i can possibly recall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">were spent choreographing dances to <i>Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band</i>, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">double-pirouettes<span style="color: black;"> more achievable on the hardwood living room floors</span><span style="color: black;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where em and i were always burning the midnight oil, sprawled on the wraparound couch, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and she taught me how to take off my own bra with one hand.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the same couch waiting, years later, to cushion mom as she slept off the codine and the migraines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's where we had a front door </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that we didn't know how to lock til last year<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">thank god<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because it meant kathy could burst through, unannounced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">one christmas when her family came back from the movies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to find a gunman in their home across the street. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we now spend every christmas night with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where dad won his first election,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where i got my acceptance to wesleyan,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where 20 rugby teammates had an impromptu slumber party, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where we played "cards against humanity" with our neighbors, and the under-30 crowd had to explain to our dads what a glory hole was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's where the room above <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">housed iterations of adolescence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the closet walls still markered-up from a third grader's baby-sitters club meetings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">our graffiti a reminder of when imagination was lived into reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the lofted nook, now crowded with storage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was once the only safe place to hide from the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(to try and hide from myself). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">i'd listen to my favorite indigo girls cd on repeat, by just leaning over the edge </span>to the mounted shelf</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and pressing play on my new boom box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and the roof - oh, that roof!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where stages of transgressions plodded along with the times:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">initially crawling out there to sit was radical enough, sunning our pre-pubescent bodies and pointing fingers at boys biking by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then it was first cigarettes and bowls - objectively stupider to do outside than in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but we felt so much more hip getting to be under the stars. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then there was margot. margot on the roof. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's where we had a magic room. a sunroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">smelling of incense (or "incense"), stocked with ram daas, plush with yoga pillows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where as children abby and i would beg to stay together, instead of our own separate beds,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">so every tuesday night when dad was gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">mom would snuggle between us and sing us sleepward.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where in that same bed, in later years, i made sarah make me come out to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for one year we had a back patio<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that i discovered with our backyard neighbor - a 10 x 10 patch of concrete where a garage once stood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">putting our younger siblings to work, my new friend and i cleaned that back patio so hard! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that was the summer of our moms perfecting their frozen margaritas,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the summer i learned about divorce,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the summer i had a best friend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">leave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this house is where high school drama <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">led all sorts of girlfriends (not that kind) to come crying at my front stoop, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the days when we had our drivers licenses but not a cell phone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the house where mom and dad have taken in any young person in need of a home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tiki sarah emily emily cori emily izzy hannah sarah kali olivia marli harper kate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">evermore 20 and 30 somethings staying for dinner or unforeseen nights </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hammering chinks in the walls of nuclear family isolation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">someday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">i hope a long way off from now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we are going to look and say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"that's where the house once stood."</span></div>
</h3>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">***************</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b>
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iland [sic] </span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the inevitable rainy afternoon</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we sit on musty couches</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and leaf through old gold-plated guest books.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Year, after year, after year</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">searching for our own signatures</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as if anything would be changed -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">recognizing childhood scrawls</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">piecing together anecdotal notes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to re-craft full blown memories of summers past.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The year we wove endless friendship bracelets,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the year I was allowed to drink my own gin & tonic,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the year of competitive card-playing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The year you could tell would be Grandpa's last, when the paths got steeper for no one but him</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the year we all knew was Al's final visit,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the year Lee died and we came just in time to haul in docks and sunset summer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It really is timeless.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The 7 years olds still eagerly gong the bell that calls us to meals</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that 20 years ago i too, eagerly rang</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a bell that to me will forever signal "quick, dive into the food!" --</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">an impolite and notorious family trait that sweetly contradicts</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the elite mannerisms of the origin story of this place.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the world burns</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on every other square mile of earth, it seems</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">except ours --</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my baby nieces squat on the deck, busily crafting a fairy house</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of uprooted moss and found birch bark.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Adorned in their found treasure -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tarnished rings, thick gold chains, a tattered black flag worn as a doo-rag, with a strip of lace trailing down the back of a Peter Pan aged boy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What was a nightmare at bedtime turned to adventure by daylight.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh to live in a land of magic,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of pirate maps and shooting stars,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of bedtime river dips,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">stifled high-pitched squeals as </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">white bodies shimmered like silkies in the Super Moon</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">surrendering into the blackness of open water.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Loons, ducks, a rumored porpoise (perhaps sent by the Whale) -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reincarnation here lives like the legends that will outlast us all,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gives us purpose for returning indefinitely - mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who went ashes to ashes, dust to dust</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">not to be abandoned or forgotten in the hemlock trees and stone ledges.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wind whistles through the attic windows</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as cousins crawl into sleighbeds (or sometimes cozy into single ones)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to gossip about new crushes,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">giggle at uncle's dinnertime conversation,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">let tears flow freely on recent heartbreaks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whispers of new school anticipation or autumnal moves</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as August backs up into September.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The only place in the world I'd cry to lose the scent of mothballs,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the incessant creak of all floorboards,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the swing and slam of screen doors,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the curtains of spiderwebs made daily afresh in every doorway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sun sets over the rocks</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">another day come and gone.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we're lucky,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">if we remember to not forget,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">another will come again.</span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-22292747150352643102014-08-01T19:19:00.000-04:002014-08-01T19:26:14.881-04:00where the house once stood<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>with all the devastation in the world hitting me rather hard these days, i've had the urge to write about the things in my life & history that bring me the most comfort and safety. here's the next installment:</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>where
the house once stood</u><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">someday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">i
hope a long way off from now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we
are going to look and say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"that's
where the house once stood."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's
where the porch swing outlived the cat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">rocking
countless secrets shared, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">coffees sipped, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">flirtations exchanged, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">wines poured,</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">phone
conversations whispered. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
the front yard never went more than a season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">without
a cheaply-made laminated sign hammered into the edge of the street<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">commanding
that passers-by "say no on 2" or "vote for deval" or simply to "go slow, children playing."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><o:p> </o:p></span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for
years we had a record player (do you know what that is?) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and
more afternoons than i can possibly recall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">were
spent choreographing dances to <i style="color: black;">Sargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band</i>, </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">double-pirouettes<span style="color: black;"> more achievable on the hardwood living room floors</span><span style="color: black;">.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
em and i were always burning the midnight oil, sprawled on the wraparound couch, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and she taught me how to take off my own bra with one hand.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the same couch waiting, years later, to cushion mom as she slept off the codine and the migraines. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's
where we had a front door </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that we didn't know how to lock til last year<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">thank
god<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">because
it meant kathy could burst through, unannounced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">one
christmas when her family came back from the movies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to
find a gunman in their home across the street. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we
now spend every christmas night with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
dad won his first election,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
i got my acceptance to wesleyan,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
20 rugby teammates had an impromptu slumber party, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
we played "cards against humanity" with our neighbors, and the
under-30 crowd had to explain to our dads what a glory hole was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's
where the room above <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">housed
iterations of adolescence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
closet walls still markered-up from a third grader's baby-sitters club meetings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">our
graffiti a reminder of when imagination was lived into reality. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
lofted nook, now crowded with storage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was
once the only safe place to hide from the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(to
try and hide from myself). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">i'd listen to my favorite indigo girls cd on repeat, by just leaning over the edge </span>to
the mounted shelf</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and
pressing play on my new boom box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and
the roof - oh, that roof!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
stages of transgressions plodded along with the times:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">initially crawling out there to sit was radical enough, sunning our pre-pubescent bodies and
pointing fingers at boys biking by.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then
it was first cigarettes and bowls - objectively stupider to do outside than in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but
we felt so much more hip getting to be under the stars. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then
there was margot. margot on the roof. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that's where we had a magic room. a sunroom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">smelling
of incense (or "incense"), stocked with ram daas, plush with yoga
pillows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
as children abby and i would beg to stay together, instead of our own separate
beds,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">so
every tuesday night when dad was gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">mom
would snuggle between us and sing us sleepward.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">where
in that same bed, in later years, i made sarah make me come out to her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">for
one year we had a back patio<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that
i discovered with our backyard neighbor - a 10 x 10 patch of concrete where a
garage once stood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">putting
our younger siblings to work, my new friend and i cleaned that back patio so
hard! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that
was the summer of our moms perfecting their frozen margaritas,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
summer i learned about divorce,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
summer i had a best friend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">leave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this
house is where high school drama <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">led
all sorts of girlfriends (not that kind) to come crying at my
front stoop, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in
the days when we had our drivers licenses but not a cell phone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the house where mom and dad have taken in any young person in need of a home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">tiki
sarah emily emily cori emily izzy hannah sarah kali olivia marli harper kate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">evermore 20 and 30 somethings staying for dinner or unforeseen nights </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hammering chinks in the walls of nuclear family isolation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">someday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">i
hope a long way off from now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">we
are going to look and say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"that's
where the house once stood."</span></div>
<br />j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-81113216747119142772014-07-18T00:00:00.000-04:002014-07-18T00:00:00.192-04:00The Vineyard, to me<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">7/17/14</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I think it was Judy</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">who started the tradition of not looking back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">It's too hard, the story goes. When
you’re walking off, just walk off. You’ll be back next year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I cried as I drove Middle Road to Beetlebung<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">my mind and muscles steeped with memories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">stronger than my mom’s morning tea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">The home-i-ness of a home that isn’t
enclosed by walls<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">that’s more permanent than any man-made structure <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">that’s about the way the hills roll, or the
signs are painted <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">not just the house we happen to be renting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I don't mind the obvious changes
- irksome as the now-bad pizza is - it's the ones that are slow over
time that get me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Like a snail you can't tell is moving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">until you see a small trail of slime along the
ground.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">The rock that was once our
endless playground has been eroded so much so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">it finally looks like the moated castle
I often believed it could be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">The waves seem small now, and surf rough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I can't tell if the tide has
actually shifted <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">or if my memories of afternoon-long body
surfing fests <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">are just a 9-year-old's interpretation of
a couple full-mooned ocean swells.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Cherries and chips, pretzels and dried mango, warm
tap water with an occasional treat of cooler-ed seltzer from friends far more
prepared than I – the snacks to sustain any good beach afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I’m not sure what “the witching hour” means <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">(apologies if its racist or otherwise
offensively derived)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">but I swear the phrase was created to describe Lucy Vincent at dusk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">like <i>Hocus Pocus</i>, our favorite movie one year
--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">touted as spooky craft, but really just the
suspense <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">of finding one’s place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">the magic of knowing you’ve got people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Anyways,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">at LVB its hardly just the sky, the sun still
glaring but dulling in its heat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">it’s the atmosphere of a deserted desert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">prideful as the ones who persevered, patiently
waiting for this coveted time,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">who have too much fun with each other to care
that the gate might lock us in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">By the time we leave, the once-full parking
lot is a dusty ghost town, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">our few remaining cars awkwardly peppered up
the slope. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">We wave arms out open windows as we peel off
towards our own homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">We have chance meetings on the sandy wooden porch of
our favorite overpriced store, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">drop by unannounced to borrow sunscreen, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">coordinate dinners and consult on medical advice <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">like we were cousins in some big extended
family busting the seams of a small town.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">The difference is, for many years we didn’t
have a picture of each other's lives outside of this tiny island – 50 weeks would spin
by with nary a phone call.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">And yet somehow year after year we’d settle
back in without skipping a beat, as if a colorful autumn, harsh winter, or
rainy spring hadn’t intervened along the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I’m thankful to say the passing of time has
brought so many threads of our lives together, even the bad ones – <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">weddings, birthdays, cancers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">bat mitzvahs, interstate moves, career changes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">couch-crashing, midyear texts, impromptu
invites to broadway plays --<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">our crew has broken the seal of summer lovin’; at some point when I wasn’t looking we crossed over from pals to kin. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Even Barrel now shows up on my gchat list.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I see the age on us all</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">the older adults <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">- I call them that because I am an adult too,
though still relatively so -<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">have settled into themselves </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">are easier,
somehow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Grudges have ebbed and wounds been stitched
(though scars remain). They've seen a lot of life and survived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">What's left is more giggles, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">softened skin alongside softened hearts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">small bellies where tautness once held stiff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">eyes melted into crows feet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">like branding from the sunshine of so many
beach days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">We have grown older, too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">more and more of the seed of the people we
each always have been<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">remarkably parallel though such distinct
characters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">It was our un-diapered bottoms we all
have to thank for this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Some parents become grandparents<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">more generations distinguishing the passing of
time <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">napping new babes under the same
umbrellaed shade. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">Some parents become more like friends: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">what’s 30 years when you’ve lived almost that
long or longer?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">We rub elbows like peers, though I take
comfort in knowing that <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">somewhere in each of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">you’re always still mommas and papas and I’m
always still the kid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I just peeked out my airplane window<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">one of a dozen passengers patiently awaiting a
stalled takeoff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">and the sunset takes my breath away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">I’ve seen hundreds on this island - can
conjure the smell of Menemsha in a snap, the view from the Gay Head cliffs <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;">the sound of applause for the cycle of another
day’s completion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-45345192725431169762014-03-27T22:42:00.001-04:002014-03-27T22:43:09.423-04:00#dispatchesfromthewhitehouse<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today I had the honor of attending the “White House Conference on Next Generation Philanthropy.” It totally got my juices flowing!<br /><br />Here are some immediate, unedited thoughts and questions, in no particular order:<br /><br />* Philanthropists (broadly defined) are averse to <b>talking about power</b>. This is NOT just an observation from this conference - its endemic. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">* There are a lot more <b>people trying to do good things</b> in the world than I sometimes give the world credit for. <br /><br />* I’m very thankful to <b><a href="http://www.nationalservice.gov/newsroom/official-statements/2013/meet-new-director-social-innovation-fund">Michael Smith</a></b>, who I met for the first time today (Director of the Social Innovation Fund at the White House, and fellow Western Massachusetts native!). When I asked a room of 20 people to respond on the fly, “what is a cause of poverty?” he was the last to go, right before me, and said “racism.” When I exclaimed that that had been my answer as well, he prompted me to add in “sexism” instead. #realtalk #rootcauses <br /><br />* The question of <b><a href="http://www.enoughenough.org/about/">“how much is enough?”</a></b> is so, completely, totally the crux of all the issues we address in these philanthropy and entrepreneurial spaces. Do we, as a room full of people with wealth, really need to be concerned about getting the best possible financial returns on our investments? When do we have “enough”? What do we expect from ourselves and others on how much to spend on everything from cocktails to hotel rooms to owning homes (or several?) to how much we give away, and how much we keep endowed or saved? <br /><br />* In any conversation about poverty and economic inequality, you have to face the ethical question<b> <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/files/outofbalance.pdf">“is it ok to live in a society where anyone is living in poverty</a>?</b>” I don’t think so! And I do not agree with any of the arguments like “but if there’s no underclass how will people be incentivized to get ahead? won’t everyone get lazy?” Frankly, I think that’s bullsh*t. But as long as we’re talking about a “middle class” and an “upper class” (like many folks do when we talk about a more equitable distribution of wealth in the US) - it implies a necessary “lower” or “under” class (which I realize does not have to equal “impoverished,” but that’s certainly what it effectively means currently). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">* <b>Government budgets</b> <b>are on such a wildly different scale </b>(read: bigger) than most philanthropic or non-profit discussions I'm ever part of. <br /><br />* <b>Is it possible to have financial profit for an investor making “socially responsible” (or “mission-related” or “impact”) investments without exploiting any people, or the planet, along the way? </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Put another way: can I invest in (for example) a company making solar panels, make a financial profit if the company does well, AND be 100% sure that everyone who labored to excavate or manufacture every part of that solar panel, and every resource that was relied on to create it (all the natural and fabricated materials) was paid a living wage / treated well in the workplace / is a sustainable practice for our precarious environment?<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>* I don’t believe it is possible to grow endlessly</b>. As in - businesses, corporations, endowments, houses - whatever it is! An individual business, or businesses as a general realm, cannot profit endlessly more and more and more….without eating up other things in their path. What’s up with the assumption that The Best Thing is to grow bigger and bigger forever and ever? That is a narrative we need to shift.</span></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-27345230255845183902013-12-24T11:37:00.000-05:002013-12-24T11:37:49.198-05:00But how do I choose?!? Some thoughts on year-end giving<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Its that time of year when there is an all-time high of people in my community asking my opinion about giving and charity. I'm writing this for my personal blog</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, but in such a way that I hope it is shareable with all of our broader networks. It is by no means comprehensive, but its a start. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When you, dear reader, are asked by your cousin or co-worker or housemate about giving, I hope this is something you will find useful to share!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of the questions I've gotten this week include: how do you know that the money is actually going to "the cause"? If an organization sends glossy fancy mailings multiple times year does that mean they're spending too much on overhead? Should I give to causes in the global South where things seem much more dire, or give domestically? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Should i give to large organizations that are well-established, with far reach and tried and true structure? Small or newer organizations that are doing experimental work? Give to a foundation, that has a specific focus and has a process for evaluating organizations, or "cut out the middle man" and give straight to the organizations? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Political advocacy and lobbying, or traditional 501c3? Give my time and personal growth by participating in a cross-class decision-making process about my and others' donation dollars? Or entrust the resources i'm stewarding to poor, working, and middle class leaders to make the decisions about where the money will be best used?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The goal of this post is not to hand anyone a proscribed method of giving, or precisely the vehicles or organizations your money should go to. I want to lay out a reminder on the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> different vehicles or types </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of giving you can do; and also some of the basics of what i think it means to be a </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">responsible and accountable</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> philanthropist and donor working for progressive social change. Check out </span><a href="https://resourcegeneration.org/resources/resource-library/social-change-philanthropy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Resource Generation's page on social change philanthropy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for more info, or order RG's </span><a href="https://resourcegeneration.secure.force.com/pmtx/cmpgn__MiniStore?id=70170000000keDa" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social Change Giving Plan Workbook</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The organization</span><a href="http://boldergiving.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Bolder Giving</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> also has great resources and stories on giving and philanthropic practices.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some types of places to give...</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Non-profit 501c3 organizations</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Much social justice work happens within non-profits, often called “501c3s” because of the IRS charitable status. Replace the word "philanthropy" with "non-profit," and many of these </span><a href="https://resourcegeneration.org/resources/resource-library/social-change-philanthropy" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">social change philanthropy principles </span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are applicable to running a social justice non-profit org. The federal government incentivizes donations to 501c3s by making them tax-deductible, making them a popular favorite. I love to debate the collective societal cost/benefit of the government subsidizing charity, but that's a different blog post.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Non non-profit community groups:</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The concept of the non-profit as *the* way to work for social justice is a relatively new and often times limiting model. Some important projects working for social change can't afford, or choose to avoid, the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">rigamaroll and red tape it takes to establish and run an institution</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> like a 501c3. Some of the most groundbreaking work around migrant justice, for instance, is happening around personal kitchens or in church groups (this was also the case for myriad historical "movement moments" including anti-apartheid organizing in South Africa and Civil Rights organizing in the US South, to name two). Push yourself to look and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">think outside the box</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the non-profit model. What might be brewing in your own backyard?</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Political lobbying or advocacy organizations</span><span style="line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: A key to any social change is shifting power. This includes who is elected into government, who can affect legislation, and what laws are on the books. Organizations that are working in these arenas to amplify the voices of people most directly impacted by injustice, get truly progressive people into office, get corporations out of bed with politics, etc. are crucial. Legally these organizations are often classified as 501c4s, PACs (Political Action Committees), individual candidates' campaigns, political parties, and more. Here is one example: the "<a href="http://nysjpac.com/" target="_blank">New York Social Justice PAC</a>." </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Social justice foundations</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: My definition of a social justice foundation is one that is committed to (1) funding work that is addressing the </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">root causes</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of injustice, and (2) having grant decisions made by people most directly affected by oppression and injustice - aka, the people with the big money don't decide where it is most needed, they work alongside or hand over decision-making power to people with marginalized voices - poor and working class people, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, indigenous people, immigrants, etc. </span><a href="https://resourcegeneration.org/resources/resource-library/giving-giving-plan-resources?showall=&start=3" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is one list </span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of some social justice foundations, and h</span><a href="http://fex.org/memberfoundations" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ere is a list of the foundations</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in the former Funding Exchange network. Checking out their current & former grantees is also a great way to find organizations doing work "on the ground." </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Donor circles</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: Also known as giving circles or funding pools, donor circles can take many forms. Generally, they involve a group of individuals coming together to pool their resources, and make giving decisions collectively. Giving circles are great because they are a way to include the leadership of non-wealthy people in decision-making. M</span><a href="https://resourcegeneration.org/resources/resource-library/giving-giving-plan-resources?showall=&start=4" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ore explanations and examples here on RG's website</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A responsible and social change oriented donor generally...</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...gives to organizations </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">led by the people directly affected by the cause </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">they are tackling and </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">amplifies the voices</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of people of color, poor and working class people, indigenous people, women and trans people, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people with disabilities, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and more. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">clear and concrete</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> about how much they are able to give (Do: "I can commit to giving $300 this year." Don't: "I can't commit to giving you a nice-sized gift.") Descriptors are so relative! </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...makes </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multi-year pledges </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">whenever possible, so organizations can plan their work (rather than having to re-evaluate every 365 days based on funding streams). </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...gives to (or mostly to) </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">general operating support.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Earmarking donations only for specific programs makes it so the funders are dictating what is important to prioritize - trust the folks who work day in and day out at the organization to know where the funds will be best used. It also tends to make extra hassle and administrative work to attach strings to your donation. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gives to the little guys!</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Organizations with annual budgets in the tens and hundreds of thousand dollars (or even smaller) are usually not even considered by larger funding streams, like foundations. Mainstream "charity guides" like CharityNavigator.org won't even rate organizations with budgets less than $1 million, so the millions of individual donors that rely on such websites as a guide won't even have smaller organizations on their radar (which sucks). A good rule of thumb is to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>default to supporting small - social justice - organizations</b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that don't have the cushion of mainstream philanthropy. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...supports organizations that </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pay all their workers a living wage </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to the best of their ability. There is talk in mainstream charity analysis that if too much of an organization's budget goes to Personnel or Administration, it's not going to </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"the actual work."</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Lest we forget, it costs money to run an organization! Offices, computers, healthcare, salaries..."overhead" has become like a 4-letter word in the giving/charity sector, which is devastating for the</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> health and long-term effectiveness </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of most organizations. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To caveat the above: some (mostly larger) non-profits can slip into some not-so-social-change-y ways -- like paying Directors and Fundraisers more than 3 or 4 times what other full-time employees make. If you're curious - do your homework! All non-profits are required to put their 990 Form online as a matter of public record.</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...does their homework</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. People working in the arena of social change are incredibly busy (I know, we all are. I know!). So it makes a huge difference - especially to small organizations, that may not have funding to hire a donor-relations staffer - to try your darndest to do your own research. The internet is amazing - do some serious poking on organizations' websites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, to find the information you might be looking for about an organization's work. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...knows that </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">some of the most groundbreaking work is the most experimental</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, has the least fancy web presence, and oftentimes fails a bunch before it succeeds. Dozens of wealthy, mostly white college students and their parents helped fund the Freedom Summer of '63 (read </span><a href="http://www.resourcegeneration.org/blog/2010/07/21/learning-from-history-freedom-summer-current-summer/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">more here</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). Did some of that work "fail"? Yep. Did some of it meet their goals? For sure. The donors didn't always know exactly what was happening on the ground (there was no Twitter in '63, friends) but they trusted that their dollars were part of overall movement-building, of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">trying things out in the name of a better world</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. We need more of that. </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In closing...remember: we live in an economic depression of capitalism at its worst. Money needs to be moving - don't get stuck by trying to do it all exactly right. According to a report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, in 2011 </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">less than 12% of all granted funds went to social change philanthropy</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (broadly defined as "“work for structural change in order to increase the opportunity of those who are the least well off politically, economically and socially”). Any money that anyone can give towards social change is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so direly needed</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So! Give big. Take some risks. We'll all be better for it.</span></div>
j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-34809286526858810282013-07-18T17:42:00.002-04:002013-07-18T17:42:28.014-04:00taxes and gay marriage<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Chew on this: </span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Taxes and gay marriage - did you know that Edie Winsor, the face of the recent DOMA case, inherited over $3.5 million from her deceased partner? And that because of DOMA is being struck down, she won't have to pay taxes on it (because it is seamlessly considered hers via a recognized marriage).</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I think rich gays should be really highly taxed on wealth transfers! Read on...</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The US v. Windsor case rests upon the fact that Edith Windsor had to pay $363,053 as taxes on her partner’s estate. While this is indeed a large sum...[Windsor] inherited an estate of over $3.5 million. In other words, she was asked to pay 10% of a massive estate, on which she can live quite <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2013/03/27/high-court-ruling-on-same-sex-marriage-could-alter-estate-planning-for-gay-couples/" style="border: 0px none; color: red; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">comfortably for the rest of her life</a>."</span></span></i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #222222; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://dot429.com/articles/2027-hrc-and-the-illusion-of-a-grassroots-movement </span></span></div>
j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-71809551401009197342013-07-15T19:57:00.001-04:002013-07-15T19:57:25.071-04:00Because I do not want to be silent<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am full of hope and love and rage and despair. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I write from the airport, exhausted and awe-inspired after 5
incredible days of meeting with 30 member leaders of Resource Generation. I
write because in this very moment I don’t know what else to do and I’m worried
I’ll stop processing I’ll stop feeling. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m committed to not stop feeling. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I keep looking at my arm. My white arm. My white woman’s
arm. My rich white woman’s arm. An arm that has never held a child I considered
as my own. This arm, connected to this body, that has no idea what it feels
like to have been Trayvon, or his mother, or his sibling. Or even honestly in
many ways, his friend. An arm that has been kept world’s away from his, by
racism and classism and capitalism and UGH I continue to rage and despair and
reach for love and hope. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And I grieve. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and probably many
tomorrows to come – I start with grieving. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I call myself to grieve. To not look away, to not disconnect
or disengage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I call myself to
cry, to rage, to notice, to care, to feel and feel and feel and feel and feel
feelings that humans feel at the loss and degradation of a human life. Of any
human life. Of so many human lives. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I grieve the fact that grief is hard to feel, at all, ever,
in this body that has lived in the harshness and numbing of capitalism for almost
27 years. I grieve the harshness and numbing that I see as an epidemic in my family
and privileged white community; this numbing that keeps us silent and looking
away and not noticing, not connecting, not acting. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I call myself to act. To speak, to stand, to post, to not
stay still or silent or unplugged. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I call myself to be and be and be present. To be humble. To
listen, to really listen. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To say again and again and again to myself and my community
– my white community, my wealthy community - that this is our issue. That the
killing of black and brown boys, of black and brown bodies, with bullets and
poverty and prisons and police, is our issue to see and to feel and to grieve
and to act on. To listen to. To notice. To see. To feel. To learn from. To
organize ourselves around. To fight like hell to change. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barbara Walters on airport news is telling me George
Zimmerman’s parents fear for his life, as death threats proliferate on the Internet.
I want to put on headphones but force myself to listen. To listen to
Zimmerman’s mother, speaking English with a Spanish accent, and feel afraid for
her son’s life. Wondering what she thinks and feels about Trayvon’s mother.
Wondering what Trayvon’s mother thinks and feels about her.</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am full of hope and love and rage and despair. On Saturday
evening when the verdict was announced, our crew of 30 RG leaders gathered and
mourned together. We reflected. We spoke. We sat in silence. Those who pray,
pray. We noticed, and felt, together.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We sang. We sang, and we danced. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We kept on our work, dismantling racism and classism and
building up our leadership of wealthy communities towards justice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hold on to hope and love, as I rage and despair. I hold on
because its what keeps me going. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hold on because I have to believe in myself
and my people to transform and orient towards justice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hold on because I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> believe that I and my people are
transforming and orienting towards justice. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>*</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am about to board the plane. I cannot get out of my mind,
or stop singing under my breath, a round we sang again and again yesterday at
the RG leadership institute:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“When the world is sick<br />
can no one be well.<br />
But I dreamt we were all<br />
beautiful and strong.” </span></div>
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j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-73228682948532453022013-01-23T09:25:00.000-05:002013-01-23T09:25:05.571-05:00Healing and hopeComing out of two days of a Resource Generation board meeting I have a re-energized hopefulness for the work we do.<br />
<br />
There<i> </i>are vast questions, great risks, and headache-inducing complications every step of the way that sometimes freeze me in my tracks with fear. At this moment, though, I can see past the fear. I see exciting challenges and necessary growth; a life force and lifeline for me and my community.<br />
<br />
The first day of the Board meeting, we broke into race caucuses (white folks and people of color) and told 3-minute long money stories.<br />
<br />
I listened to story after story of histories of violence, racism, exploitation, genocide and greed. I told my own family's history, which reflects all of these atrocities. I felt the weight of the trauma caused by our ancestors, and by the systems that continue to perpetuate all this same shit in implicit and explicit ways.<br />
<br />
And I had a new level of clarity about the healing that white folks, particularly those of us who benefit from class privilege and wealth accumulation, need to do. <b>We have some mad trauma to uncover, mourn, and heal from</b>. <br />
<br />
If my great-great-great-great grandfather could make hundreds of human beings his own property, if he could whip them or hang them on a whim, if he could rape and manipulate women, if he could disown his own children...holy fucking shit. His insides, his mind, his heart, his spirit must have been <i>brutalized</i>. In order to enact such cruelty, in order to think that was the way the world was supposed to work, what was he thinking? What was he feeling? What kind of de-humanization happened to his soul, that he was able to dehumanize countless others?<br />
<br />
One of the first concrete "lessons" I remember my mother teaching me as a young person was that bullies were bullies because they had been bullied. That whoever was treating me or anyone badly was doing that because they had been treated badly themselves. I should stand up for myself and for what was right, but I should have compassion for their spirit, having been broken somewhere along the way in order to be able to try and break mine.<br />
<br />
I still believe this (or try to). That no one is born a bully. Or born believing that whipping or raping or bombing or manipulating or hurting anyone else, in any way, is an okay thing to do.<br />
<br />
<b>I need to have more faith in humanity than that if I'm going to survive</b>.<br />
<br />
I also need to truly face the effects of generations of trauma on the perpetrators - my people.<br />
<br />
On what it passes down to me, the intergenerational dehumanization.<br />
<br />
On how I was born into a level of numbness to violence that is part of keeping systems of oppression in place.<br />
<br />
On how implicitly and explicitly, my spirit must be crushed in order to be able to allow for the crushing of others'.<br />
<br />
I have a renewed understanding of, and hopefulness for, the thawing we need.<br />
<br />
I have a renewed engagement with the question of what kind of healing needs to happen for us to truly recover from these legacies.<br />
<br />
To not get bullied into being another generation of bullies.<br />
<br />
To actually face our histories, to be able to not just learn and hear and speak them, but actually <i>feel</i> the weight of them.<br />
<br />
To uncover and reclaim our own spirits and our own humanity.<br />
<br />
To stop the buck at us.<br />
<br />
* <i>I feel compelled to make note of the use of the word 'trauma.' It is the most appropriate word I know to convey what I'm talking about. And, I know it is sometimes thrown around in diluting ways. In no way am I attempting to compare or rank the trauma I'm talking about with the trauma experienced by </i><i>those who are directly targeted by oppression.</i><br />
<br />j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-9405973403807180082012-11-03T12:16:00.001-04:002012-11-03T21:14:22.580-04:00Hurricane Sandy in NYC: Ways you can help! Updated!Hey folks,<br />
<br />
Its been a wild week in NYC. Am running out to go see how I can lend a hand in Gowanus, one of many neighborhoods in Brooklyn where they still don't have power and no government assistance in sight.<br />
<br />
In the meantime - I wanted to share with my community far and wide ways YOU can help the recovery effort! My bestie Basha wrote this great, comprehensive email to her family last night, giving a picture of the situation here with some suggestions of where and how to send money.<br />
<br />
Here is a list of places (and I'm sure there are more, I am not pretending I can be comprehensive right now!) and below is the full email. Mad props to Basha for taking the time to write this all out.<br />
<ul>
<li><b>First of all, stay updated by following <a href="http://www.facebook.com/OccupySandyReliefNyc" target="_blank">Occupy Sandy on Facebook</a> </b></li>
<li><b><a href="http://caaav.org/take-action/donate-to-caaav" target="_blank">CAA</a><b><a href="http://caaav.org/take-action/donate-to-caaav" target="_blank">AV</a> </b></b>- one of the first responders/organizers to Sandy's devastation - a long-standing community organization in Chinatown, CAAAV has been an incredible, grassroots, neighborhood-based, hub for hurricane relief. </li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.goles.org/">GOLES</a></b> (Good Old Lower East Side) - another great neighborhood community organization doing on the ground support in their community <b><b> </b></b></li>
<li><b><b><a href="http://elpuente.us/" target="_blank">El Puente</a> -</b> </b>organizing relief work in the Rockaways and on Staten Island<b> </b>- two of the hardest hit places that are incredibly under-resourced right now. <b><br /></b></li>
<li><b><b><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDYQjBAwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rhicenter.org%2Fdonate.html&ei=7Y6UUN6VC9HF0AHq1YFg&usg=AFQjCNGeneoX_gtgVkU_uMk-evMtoxULpg" target="_blank">Red Hook Initiative</a></b> - </b>working in Brooklyn's Red Hook, which was
flooded Monday<b> </b>- they've been super organized </li>
<li><a href="http://northstarfund.org/news/2012/11/recovering-from-hurricane-sandy.php"><b>North Star's Grassroots Hurricane Relief Fund</b></a> - North Star is a social justice foundation in New York that supports grassroots organizations and are collecting funds for quick turn-around support of communities across NYC</li>
<li><b>INDIVIDUALS!! </b>A lot of this relief work has been done by individual people going out and buying tons of supplies and delivering to various distribution points or going door-to-door. I know a few folks who are looking for more funds to be able to do another round of supply-shopping - please be in touch with me directly so I can hook you up. </li>
<li><b>NEW! <a href="http://www.aliforneycenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1101" target="_blank">Ali Forney Center Hurricane Sandy Relief</a></b><a href="http://www.aliforneycenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=cms.page&id=1101" target="_blank"> </a>- Ali Forney Center provides housing for LGBTQ youth around the city. Their drop-in center in Chelsea was destroyed.</li>
</ul>
<u><b>Basha's email</b> </u>(with some updated resources)<b>:</b><br />
<br />
Hey family!<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
First off, as you know, I'm safe and
sound in Brooklyn. I luckily never lost power, cell phone service, or
experienced any flooding in Crown Heights. But I wanted to give you guys
an update about what's happening in New York, especially to point you
to places to send monetary donations, (aka money!), if you are
interested in donating.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm sure you've been following the news on the
damage from the storm, but I can confirm that things are still really
bad in a lot of New York and New Jersey; in some places, it's been
devastating. Moreover, there is not a lot of government or institutional
support coming in. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You probably have seen that parts of Manhattan,
Queens, Brooklyn, and a lot of Staten Island still don't have power, (I
think parts of Jersey too), and some places are still partially flooded.
Even the Lower East Side only got it's power back this afternoon. It
seems that the national Gaurd will be bringing gas to the area soon, but
as of now, most stations are out and closed, and people have been
syphoning gas from parked and stranded cars in order to get to work,
leave their damaged homes, check on their families, and get to volunteer
sites. My friends who were able to make it into the city confirmed that
grassroots organizations like CAAV and GOLES, along with churches and
residents, were doing the ONLY organized relief in Chinatown and on the
LES... there have been no FEMA trucks or personnel in site. For example,
folks from the five boroughs biked, walked, and bussed into Chinatown
to deliver supplies to elderly folks in 13 floor walkup apartments with
no elevator service and no way to leave their apartments. The same lack
of government aid goes for parts of Queens devastated by the storm, such
as <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/breezy-point-queens-article-1.1195845" target="_blank">Breezy Point</a>, which literally burned down, and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/02/staten-island-sandy-relief-fund_n_2063853.html" target="_blank">Staten Island</a>, (19 bodies found so far, many pulled out of the water... and watch this <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc-morning_joe/#49650027" target="_blank">video</a>),
which is largely unrecognizable and has seen no FEMA support as of yet.
Nursing homes and areas that are destroyed have evacuated people to
makeshift shelters at schools, churches, and large city buildings, but
in many cases they are largely being manned by volunteers, and seem to
be very donation-based. This is not to say that the government has done
nothing, but that many places have seen literally no support, not even a
vehicle or representative.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There has been some news on the lack of government and institutional support, such as this <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/02/hurricane-sandy-relief-staten-island_n_2063692.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post piece</a>,
but I haven't had access to a TV, (not because I don't have power, but
because I don't own a TV), so I'm not sure what's being reported. What I
know is that a LOT of the aid is coming from volunteers, and that it's a
diffuse on the ground effort, which means it might not be well
publicized. A few websites like <a href="http://interoccupy.net/occupysandy/" target="_blank">Occupy Sandy Relief</a>, and <a href="http://brokelyn.com/where-to-volunteer-this-weekend/" target="_blank">Brokelyn</a>,
are consolidating information on where to volunteer and where to give
donations, but by in large, people don't even know how many people have
been displaced, or that thousands of people are in makeshift shelters at
public schools and churches, and how badly they need aid.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't think this is a remotely comprehensive
summary of the damage done by the storm, or the relief efforts
happening. I mean to convey, first, that the damage is incomprehensibly
vast, second, that incredibly high numbers of residents have been
thus-far abandoned by the government, and third, that there is a dynamic
network of aid happening in the city, being lead by non profits,
religious organizations, and individuals. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In moments of mass-disasters, people from far away,
or anyone with the financial resources, donate money to disaster relief
funds. It's one of the best ways to get survivors safe, and equip them
with necessities and resources when their lives have been overhauled.
It's great to donate to organizations like the Red Cross, because they
have institutional-level resources and access. But it can be complicated
to donate to organizations like Red Cross and Salvation Army, both
because we don't always feel aligned with their ideology (pro-life,
anti-gay, etc), and because we don't actually know to where and to whom
our donations are going. If you guys are thinking of donating to aid
efforts, I urge you to choose a recipient that is on the ground working
with the needs of the people most effected. This means not necessarily
donating so a group like the Red Cross, (although they claim they have<a href="http://www.redcross.org/hurricane-sandy?scode=RSG00000E017&subcode=paiddonationsbrand&gclid=CLOszqvqsbMCFYKK4AodT0kAjw" target="_blank"> provided a lot of hurricane relief</a> in
the northeast this week, and they do legitimately provide
institutional-scale services, which are invaluable), and instead giving
it to those places that are working tirelessly without support.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you want to donate, I have a few resources on
hand, (gathered with the help of Jessie Spector), and can try to come up
with more. <br />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="http://caaav.org/take-action/donate-to-caaav">CAA</a><b><a href="http://caaav.org/take-action/donate-to-caaav">AV</a> </b></b>-
one of the first responders/organizers to Sandy's devastation - a
long-standing community organization in Chinatown, CAAAV has been an
incredible, grassroots, neighborhood-based, hub for hurricane relief. </li>
<li><b><a href="http://www.goles.org/">GOLES</a></b> (Good Old Lower East Side) - another great neighborhood community organization doing on the ground support in their community <b><b> </b></b></li>
<li><b><b><a href="http://elpuente.us/" target="_blank">El Puente</a> -</b> </b>organizing relief work in the Rockaways and on Staten Island<b> </b>- two of the hardest hit places that are incredibly under-resourced right now. <b><br /></b></li>
<li><b><b><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDYQjBAwAw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rhicenter.org%2Fdonate.html&ei=7Y6UUN6VC9HF0AHq1YFg&usg=AFQjCNGeneoX_gtgVkU_uMk-evMtoxULpg" target="_blank">Red Hook Initiative</a></b> - </b>working in Brooklyn's Red Hook, which was
flooded Monday<b> </b>- they've been super organized </li>
<li><a href="http://northstarfund.org/news/2012/11/recovering-from-hurricane-sandy.php"><b>North Star's Grassroots Hurricane Relief Fund</b></a>
- North Star is a social justice foundation in New York that supports
grassroots organizations and are collecting funds for quick turn-around
support of communities across NYC</li>
<li><b>INDIVIDUALS!! </b>A lot of
this relief work has been done by individual people going out and buying
tons of supplies and delivering to various distribution points or going
door-to-door. I know a few folks who are looking for more funds to be
able to do another round of supply-shopping - please be in touch with me
directly so I can hook you up. </li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
I'd also encourage you to forward that list, or come up with your
own, to send to colleges, friends, and family. And if you donate, or see
a place that you want to promote, put it on your facebook wall - It has
been a major source of information this week, even to people in New
York, who can't necessarily access the damage happening 3 miles away.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finally, if you have anything to donate, such as
coats, blankets, underpants, clothing, shoes, children's books, toys,
etc, I think a lot of places are taking donations, and I can' try to
find out more!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've never sent out a fundraising or solicitation
email and don't really know how to write one, but I hope this was
informational and helpful, and not too pushy. And I hope that your
friends, family, and all of your people are safe after the storm.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
xx</div>
<b> </b> j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-44908525504017120562012-02-28T21:43:00.002-05:002012-02-28T21:47:50.895-05:00re-post: Love, Challenge, and Insights: Organizing Wealthy Folkshere's my latest on the RG blog. Eep!<br /><a href="http://resourcegeneration.org/blog/2012/02/28/love-challenge-and-insights-organizing-wealthy-folks/"><br />Love, Challenge, and Insights: Organizing Wealthy Folks</a> <span style="font-style: italic;">(re-posted below)</span><br /><br />I love the crap out of rich people. RG has helped show me that. Meeting dozens and dozens of wealthy people, each and every one who is smart, thoughtful, and wanting so badly to do right by the world—time and time again, I am bowled over by the sheer magnitude of kindness and generosity in this community. <p>And organizing RG’s base has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever taken on. Y’all are a tough crowd! For good reason. Pretty much every message in the world tells wealthy people to run away from coming together and from envisioning a more connected, community-based, “less-is-more” kind of world.</p> <p>Personally, I’m no exception. I love my job, and the people I work with… and, it is still a huge struggle for me to stay committed to being deeply involved with my community of young people with wealth.<span id="more-1769"></span></p> <p>As a young person, I’m being told the world is my oyster, and I should be testing the water on all sorts of fronts—parts of me want to forgo all commitments (like to RG and organizing with rich people) and run away. Parts of me are sick of examining my own privilege and reminding myself and others that rich people have a strategic and important role to play—at times the work feels unsexy, uncool, and boring. Parts of me want to keep a lot of the money I inherited “just in case” I decide I want to take time off from paid work, or I wake up one day and realize I do “need” a suburban house with a yard and no mortgage. Some days I really think I might.</p> <p>Y’all in the RG community (and I mean you all—young and older, wealthy and middle and working class alike) help remind me why I try to stay committed to organizing—and being organized as—young people with wealth. Its not always easy, as everyone knows, to stick with something—or anything—for the long haul. It’s deep! But it’s the people at RG and the commitment you express that keep me here. It keeps me grounded. Hear that? At the end of the day, you all keep me grounded!</p> <p>And I wanted to share a few trends I’ve learned about us over my past few years of organizing in this community of young wealthy folks. They are broad generalizations, but… any of them resonate for you? (I see myself reflected in most of them, whether I like to admit it or not.)</p> <ul><li><strong>As rich people, we’re often told we are self-sufficient and should get everything done by ourselves.</strong> No interdependency required if we can buy everything we need! So we easily forget to ask for help or lean on each other—despite intellectually knowing that this is how you really get close to people and really build community.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Most of us haven’t been taught how to depend on other people.</strong> Like really depend. We haven’t been forced to need other people and seen them come through for us, so this makes it hard for us to build trusting relationships and not be afraid to get messy. (I hope you’ve gotten the memo that social change is gonna be messy).</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>We’re encouraged to travel the world and not put down roots.</strong> We’re not forced to get a job. It’s been modeled for us that we are entitled to not have to stick with commitment, so we have trouble building deep relationships, and sticking with a community, people and places.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>We think we’re exceptional and always have an “out” of anything we dive into or tinker with. </strong>We can change our minds on anything if we have the money to pay for the fallout, so we back out when stuff feels hard, can’t seem to plan ahead, or change our minds about what we want.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>We have the endless privilege and burden of having anything we want</strong><strong> (that money can buy)</strong>… so we think whatever particular project we are involved in, or whatever we want to see through, is the most important. We have trouble trusting the thinking of other people in what to prioritize or what is best for the community or movement as a whole.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Most of us haven’t been taught that living in a world with such vast wealth disparity, and being cut off from the majority of humanity as the people at “the top” is terrible for us</strong>… so a lot of folks in RG easily forget that we are doing this work for ourselves. We forget that we get to reclaim connection, relationships and work.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>We forget how important social change is for our own well-being</strong>… so it’s easy for wealthy people to run away from RG, like it’s easy to run away from lots of things in our lives.</li></ul> <p>Often people will say that RG’s work is different from marginalized people fighting for justice. Those folks are dedicated to the fight because a “win”—say, affordable healthcare—would have a direct positive affect on their lives. At RG, some people assume our fighting is optional. We can choose to confront our privilege, we can choose to go against the grain of wealth accumulation and capitalism, or we can choose to walk away. We can choose to leave the fight, no skin off our back.</p> <p>Well, sure. It’s very true that our lives are not literally on the line. I’m not out to pretend like there’s the same urgency behind making better lives for rich people as there is for communities being slammed by injustice.</p> <p>But I am out to say that there is some urgency behind it. It is absolutely necessary that there is a big, healthy dose of positive transformation for wealthy folks in order to build the world we all want to see. Transformation that means grounding in our humanity as generous, symbiotic, social beings that are at our best when everyone is taken care of well.</p> <p>This transformation is a BIG project. This takes time, love, commitment, and thoughtfulness. This means not moving every six months, so we can actually build relationships with people (wealthy or not) around us. This transformation means remembering to prioritize attention to the RG community, and reminding other wealthy people how important this type of work is. It looks like deconstructing and reconstructing our perceptions of reality and our creative imaginations, envisioning a world in which we feel awesome about ourselves, where we get to be dependent on and close to and trusting of all sorts of other people, and get to learn from all the brilliant minds that we’ve been divided from for so long.</p> <p>So, I love the heck out of organizing rich kids (yep, I said it). Getting to figure this out and fight for it is one of the most incredible and personally-satisfying projects I’ve ever taken on.</p> <p>Do me a favor, young people with wealth: challenge yourself to be organizable. Challenge yourself to become an organizer and leader in this community yourself. Open up to it and let it in. There are many ways to do this. Here are a few ideas:</p> <ul><li><strong>Respond to the doodle poll</strong>: Scheduling things to happen is not to be underestimated!</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Ask for help</strong>: What do you need? A more socially-conscious financial adviser to shift your investments? Guidance for creating a giving plan? Support to introduce the idea of non-family board members to your family foundation? Reach out to the RG community—there is so much expertise.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Offer help</strong>: We all have so many experiences and so much expertise in different areas. When someone sends a question out over a listserv that you can help answer, respond!</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Stick it out</strong>: Everyone has a lot on their plate and we should all be trying to pick quality over quantity (see next bullet). But once you commit, really commit. Joined a Praxis group? Then do your darndest to make it the best it can be, whether you’re brand new or a primary facilitator. No one responding to the email about scheduling your next meeting? Send out a reminder! Don’t let it slide, even if it gets hard. And see bullet #2—don’t be afraid to ask for help.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Slow down</strong>: Don’t take on too much. No matter how excited you are, adopting 100 projects will devalue your ability to do any of them well. Outside RG, this looks like committing to a few organizations or causes and diving deep into the role you play. Inside RG, this looks like committing to a few projects and then going for them full-throttle.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Work with others</strong>: Everyone has so many fabulous ideas about what we can do at RG, and its gonna take a lot of different perspectives—definitely not just from wealthy folks—to make RG’s work the best it can be.</li></ul> <ul><li><strong>Remember the person or people who have inspired you, and be that to someone.</strong> Talk to somebody new about why you’re involved.</li></ul> <strong>Remember how much this community means to you, and remember to stay in the fight.</strong> It’s for you!j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-4483104297505996292011-11-21T17:23:00.002-05:002011-11-21T17:34:19.550-05:00tooting my own hornthere are so many updates to be had! none more important than the next. BUT i'm going to choose to do this one thing, which i feel kinda funny about but is just posting links to some press i've been in lately, since it's cool and new (and scary as hell) for me to be so visible. (gentle if its critical) commentary is most welcome.<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbcNeYFVPg&feature=youtu.be">al jazeera english</a>, dishing about taxing the wealthy<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d16Lp-3Qi50">on AFP</a> talking 'bout why I, as a wealthy person, fight for economic justice</li><li><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/17/occupy-wall-street-video-_n_1100623.html">huffington post spot</a> on why the 1% should support the occupy movement (at 0:54 seconds)<br /></li></ul>BONUS: POOR's amazing new "<a href="http://www.poormag.info/static/decolonizersguide/index.html">decolonizers guide to a humble revolution</a>." i wasn't a part of putting this together but the title is enough to make you want more, right?!<br /><br />xoj.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-83099320909269393952011-10-14T13:52:00.002-04:002011-10-14T13:54:46.604-04:00We are the 1 Percent, We Stand with the 99 PercentCheck out our Tumblr! Pictures! Stories!<br /><br /><a href="http://westandwiththe99percent.tumblr.com/">We are the 1 Percent, We Stand with the 99 Percent</a><br /><br />(Are you in the 1%-ish? Make your own and post it!)<br /><br />Xoj.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-7073814586473012702011-10-11T17:12:00.002-04:002011-10-11T17:20:06.876-04:00Speaking out! 1% for the 99%Check out this article by the fabulous <a href="http://affluentangst.wordpress.com/">Pete Redington</a> in the Valley Advocate, about Occupy Wall Street, Resource Generation, me :) and speaking out in solidarity with the 99%.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=14191">"Raise My Taxes: A wealthy Northampton activist brings her powerful message to the Occupy Wall Street protests"</a><br /><br />xoj.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-33435176665186820642011-10-02T15:30:00.007-04:002011-10-03T12:39:05.561-04:00Re: Occupy Wall St<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >y'all, it's been a tiring weekend. i have lots of thoughts on all of this but none all-too coherent yet. for now, here's some links to please check out re: this occupy wall street business.<br /><br />also: my sign at occupy wall st:<br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wH3DmF_IQts/Tondx9XgJkI/AAAAAAAAAQc/FkWAl3F76Gc/s1600/one%2Bpercent%252C%2Btax%2Bme%2Bphoto.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wH3DmF_IQts/Tondx9XgJkI/AAAAAAAAAQc/FkWAl3F76Gc/s320/one%2Bpercent%252C%2Btax%2Bme%2Bphoto.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659298257124206146" border="0" /></a><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" ><a href="http://henaashraf.com/2011/09/30/brown-power-at-occupy-wall-street/#more-500">Really great reflections from Brown Power on POC presence at Occupy Wall St.</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2011/09/30/occupy-wall-street-the-game-of-colonialism-and-further-nationalism-to-be-decolonized-from-the-left/">More reflections, from Racialicious, on colonialism and the weight of the act of "occupation"</a><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" ><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1tCYAEDl6g&feature=player_embedded#%21">Good footage of the first folks getting arrested at the Bridge</a>. Cops a lot more aggressive than they were by the time they got to us "ladies"</span><span style="font-size:130%;">...<br /></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" ><br /><a href="http://i.imgur.com/6doY8.jpg">Look how fast the Great and Powerful can influence headlines to re-spin stories.</a></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><br /><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">Sarah Abbott's smart query: Thinking about what it means to use the language of Occupation re:Occupy Wall Street, by non-native folks on native land. Good image circulating that says "Decolonize Wall Street: Decolonize the 99%". Truth. We need to push ourselves to shape language and demands that recognize our history of genocide and fight to address it<br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691094896#%21/photo.php?fbid=2236360581600&set=p.2236360581600&type=1&theater">Aforementioned powerful "Decolonize Wall Street" image. </a><br /><br /></span><span jsid="text" class="commentBody"><span style="font-size:130%;">and, my question: does anyone know what the deal is with Safety at these demos, and being in solidarity with folks who are at high risk of being arrested/really can't be arrested? aka, those of us with race and class privilege and job safety getting in the way of the arrests of folks for whom arrest would bring a lot more severe consequences...this seems like another key role for RG-esque folks to be playing and i haven't heard of any formalized contingents yet.</span></span><br /><br /></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-66204517362150664022011-09-27T12:37:00.004-04:002011-09-27T23:11:16.473-04:00big asks with a full heart<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">i made a big ask of my parents recently to make a $5,000 gift to POOR magazine (20 times more than any gift they've ever given on my behalf). i put a lot of energy and thought into the email i wrote them, and thought it might be useful to share. it's below.<br /><br />(*spoiler alert* it was received with a prompt, enthusiastic, and loving response, and "yes" to my ask!)</span><br /><br />* * * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >* * *</span><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />Hey mom and dad!<br /><br />Hope you're having a good anniversary, despite mom being in another state :) I'm so excited to see you guys in just a little over a week!<br /><br />This summer, we talked about giving and loaning money (for instance -- mom, on that hike in Menemsha Hills; dad, on a bike ride about the YMCA solar panel loan project). It was so great talking to both of you and recognizing how far we've come even in the past couple of years in being able to have really great, dynamic, adult conversations about money!<br /><br />As I've done for the past few years, I'm asking people in lieu of gifts to please give a donation to <a href="http://www.poormagazine.org/">POOR Magazine</a>. As you know, I've been deeply involved in POOR for the past 2 1/2 years, and continue to find it an incredible source of education, growth, and community on a personal level, and an awesome, cutting-edge, game-changing organization on the institutional level.<br /><br />I want to ask you guys to give POOR $5,000 in honor of my 25th birthday. It's the same amount that I'm giving them this year.<br /><br />As I told mom this summer, the reason why POOR has been so incredible for me is that I've learned so much about myself through the process of being on the Solidarity Board. The Solidarity Board is a group of about 5 young wealthy folks like myself who literally use our privilege to help the work of POOR move forward.<br /><br />This looks like: us helping with fundraising. Us using our college-level-writing skills to help edit a new book they're putting out. Us doing the logistical back-end work and research to go to a land auction in Oakland and actually purchase land for POOR's Homefulness project (more below**). Us using our networks to connect POOR to pro-bono lawyers, researching architects, filling out government loan forms, testing the soil on our land, calculating square footage and materials needed, etc, to help build Homefulness.<br /><br />Being on the Solidarity Board has also had huge implications for me personally. As an owning (upper) class person, there are deep-seeded ideas within me that working class or poor people won't like me because I have money. Or, that they will only like me because I have money. All my life I've been very conscious of the class background of people in my life, and have noticeably often run away from deep relationships with people who I fear would judge me for having money. I also struggle with the feeling that the history of mom's side of the family is "bad" because a lot of our ancestors did fucked up things like own slaves. Yet again, I often feel like there are no "right" places for me to be a leader, because as a privileged person, I don't deserve to have my voice heard, or to step up into leadership, or to be made to feel important.<br /><br />None of these things have anything to do with you guys, I hope you realize!! The point of saying all of that is to say: being on the Solidarity Board has changed so much of that. Working with the folks at POOR, notably one of the founders, named Tiny, has taught me that my story is valuable. That I'm wanted and needed and liked by poor folks, and people of color. That I have a key, and very important, role to play in the social justice movement that is beyond just giving money away. That my family is important; crucial, in fact, for me to maintain and build ever-stronger ties to, and for me to learn about and deeply explore. Did you guys know that POOR is the reason why I started thinking about moving back home?!<br /><br />So, in a nutshell, POOR has been hugely transformative for me. If you remember the chronology, the first year I starting digging into this class & wealth redistribution stuff it was sometimes challenging for us to talk about privilege and money and giving. I was reactive and judgmental and impatient, and felt like you were not trusting of me. I won't try and put words in your mouths, but you can probably remember whatever it was YOU were feeling at the time :) After my first year at <a href="http://www.resourcegeneration.org/">Resource Generation</a>, I gained enough skills and confidence to venture to the weekend-long session at POOR...and that's when things shifted in terms of me being able to slow down, think more broadly, and not be so...angsty, or something. It helped me grow, to be able to engage in conversations and have perspectives (like, how quickly giving away the majority of my money wouldn't solve all the world's problems).<br /><br />Anyway, this is getting long. I want to remind/tell you a little more about Homefulness, specifically.<br /><br />** This summer, we helped POOR navigate the crazy system of land-acquisition and bought a piece of property in Oakland!!! (POOR is based in the Bay, CA). It's on a residential street. There is a dilapidated building and space for a garden. To paraphrase Tiny, the vision of POOR is "a project rooted in the landlessness of so many of our [poor] people. It’s a sweat-equity cohousing model, meaning that people will work in the community in exchange for living there. The vision includes gardens, microbusinesses, community spaces... the idea is about moving off the grid of social-service management of poor people’s lives. It’s about creating healing and equity for landless, urban, indigena families." As a permanent solution to landlessness - they will own their own space.<br /><br />As I said, we already bought the land and are currently securing a government loan for building, vetting our pro-bono architect options, and searching our more funding sources. The vision is to construct a 4-story building, that will have space for media equipment, training and performing art, as well as 6 units of low-income housing (which we might be able to secure as Section 8, getting additional government assistance for the cost of building). As much as possible we will use recycled products and "green" the building. The POOR office is already virtually a community center, but it's currently a tiny, rented space. The Homefulness project would create a true community center--materialize that reality.<br /><br />Specifically, residences in the co-housing project and POOR community members will connect to community spaces through:<br /></span><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;"><li><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > A site for POOR's F.A.M.I.L.Y. program (Family Access to Multicultural Intergenerational Learning with our Youth), an on-site child care and education project for homeless children and families that incorporates a multi-cultural and multi-lingual curriculum centered around social justice and arts for families and children of all ages</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">A site for POOR's offices and all their media training and educational programming</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">A site for Uncle Al & Mama Dee’s Café, POOR's cafe & performance art space<br /></span></li></ul><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Ok, I will let you go now. Sorry this got to be so long...as you know, I'm a long-winded writer. I would love to talk to you more about this. I love you tons and will no matter what you decide about giving, of course! And, it would mean so, so much to me if you gave POOR the $5,000 in honor of my birthday.<br /><br />LASTLY! I want to respond to the "asks" you each made of me this summer as well.<br /></span><ul style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;"><li><span style=";font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" > Mom, you made a big ask of me to give to the Care Center, I believe $3,000. I've thought a lot about it, and decided that if you two are willing to give the $5,000 to POOR, I will make a contribution of $1,000 to Care Center (given that I am one person and you are two, and that you collectively earn a lot more money than I do). I trust and want to support the things you are excited about.</span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;">Dad, I continue to be excited about the YMCA solar panel project. I believe you asked me to loan $10,000 -- I am happy to do that! Let me know when its set up.<br /></span></li></ul><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ><br />Lots and lots of love,<br />Jessie<br /></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" ></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-84082768504496547372011-09-02T19:35:00.003-04:002011-09-02T19:41:52.019-04:00rock on, dad!my dad is a city councilor in northampton, MA and <a href="http://www.preservingcivilrights.org/?p=164">last night they passed a unanimous resolution</a> to opt out of "<a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/secure_communities_101.html">secure communities.</a>" what's more, they passed a "sanctuary" resolution that reads:
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<br />"<em>“Municipal employees of Northampton, including law enforcement employees, shall not monitor, stop, detain, question, interrogate, or search a person for the purpose of determining that individual’s immigration status. Officers shall not inquire about the immigration status of any crime victim, witness, or suspect, unless such information is directly relevant to the investigation, nor shall they refer such information to federal immigration enforcement authorities unless the information developed is directly relevant.”
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></em>
<br />rock on, dad!
<br />j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-43467230052589271592011-08-28T10:01:00.003-04:002011-08-28T10:45:19.958-04:00we're all in it together.a post from the eye of the storm -
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<br />hurricane irene may or may not end up being the meteorological anti-climax of the decade, at least in central brooklyn. however, i have one thing to say:
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<br />it made for one of the best days in recent memory.
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<br />i was meant to be co-facilitating a training all weekend, that nicole (my co-worker) and i had spent the past 8 months preparing. friday we were stressballs (ok, at least <span style="font-style: italic;">i</span> was a stressball) trying to figure out the best course of action, the responsible thing to do. cancel the training because of severe weather warnings?! continue as-planned, with a Fearless Leader mentality that could've possibly become stupidly dangerous?! host some halfway version that had the potential to be watered down (no pun intended), half-assed, and useless?! these were my fears.
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<br />none of these fears were realized. far from it. a dwindled group of participants still gathered, for an abbreviated version of the formerly 2-day training. we re-located from the office to someone's living room (THANK YOU MARGOT & SARAH) and transparently re-shuffled the agenda to accommodate changing travel plans, a new configuration of people, and intermittent weather.com updates.
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<br />as a facilitator, my lofty hopes and dreams for the training were scaled way back. disappointing, though almost relieving in some ways. the goal we exclusively focused on was building relationships amongst the folks that were there. the simplest and most complex goal there ever is :)
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<br />we spent the day digging deep. we talked strategy & organizing. we talked vision & long-term goals for resource generation. we talked logistics & 3-week goals for local chapters. that was all great. we were stuck indoors on hurricane watch - what better use of our time than jumping headfirst into what we were all there for? everyone's energy was there without us even needing to ask.
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<br />so the work was great. but the best part (insert cheesy drum roll here) was <span style="font-weight: bold;">meeting our #1 goal - getting close.</span>
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<br />so often we forget that our own liberation as owning-class folks is key to the puzzle of social justice for all. we have to start by breaking our intense isolation, individualistic self-reliance, and (often) lack of close relationships and deep roots. this weekend, we did that. we committed to being in the same small (humid!) living room together for 24 hours (and potentially longer, weather-pending). we committed to getting to know each other as a 7-person group of people, some of whom had barely met before. after the day was done we went to one of the only open bars and collectively started a two-hour dance party, inspiring the rest of the bar to jump up and join us. we frolicked in the rain and ate bodega sandwiches.
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<br />and you know what? <span style="font-weight: bold;">our longevity in our work together, as owning class folks organizing for social justice, depends on this. depends on dance party-ing and puddle-jumping together. it depends on us allowing ourselves to care enough about each other to not let go, or walk away, or dismiss the next-steps we set at the end of the training</span>. the word "accountability" came up again and again over the course of the day - it can be such a dirty word, conjuring enforcement and un-fun to-do lists. but when we actually learn to care about and love one another, to commit to our work together not just because we think we should but because we are doing it in community - then accountability just comes. and transformations happen.
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<br />xo
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<br />j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-44526571840396377112011-07-13T14:59:00.008-04:002011-07-13T16:45:37.508-04:00so much going ony'all, summer has been a mix of incredible friend-and-sun-and-food-centered goodness...alongside somuchgoingonallthetimealways. in my life, and also, in the world! <div><br /></div><div>there is so much incredible resistance/organizing/mobilizing/writing going on, too much to decide on just one to post on facebook or whatever medium (google+ ?) i'm now supposed to use to share information. so, here's a list of some things that have gotten me going today:<div><ul><li><a href="http://prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/">Prisoner Hunger Strike in CA</a>: 6,000 incarcerated folks, hunger striking to change their horrific caged conditions! This campaign needs all our support, y'all. Thousands of strikers on the inside are in critical health conditions (aka, might die). And the CA Department of Corrections still won't negotiate. It just got <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/us/08hunger.html?_r=1">NY Times coverage</a>, for the record.</li></ul><ul><li>The Care Congress: A kickoff for the <a href="http://caringacrossgenerations.org/">Caring Across Generations</a> campaign. Some bomb-ass transformative organizing happening! Thanks to <a href="http://www.domesticemployers.org/">Hand in Hand</a>, the <a href="http://www.domesticworkers.org/">Domestic Workers Alliance</a>, <a href="http://www.jwjblog.org/">Jobs with Justice</a>, and more, to "[build] a movement so we can be a nation that takes care of one another across generations.” <a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/whos_gonna_care_for_the_aging_boomers_poor_immigrant_women.html">Check out this awesome article from Colorlines.</a></li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/07/women_of_color_delegation_to_occupied_palestine.html">A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists for Divestment from Israel</a>: Cogent reflections and mobilization from a delegation journey to occupied palestine. Also - did you hear israel just passed a law making it illegal to boycott itself?! (aka, its illegal to be in israel and boycott any israeli institutions, including IN the west bank). Kids, this stuff is unreal. Except its real.</li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://faireconomy.org/enews/11_things_the_richest_us_households_can_buy_that_you_can%E2%80%99t">This is why I do my job</a>: An article from United for A Fair Economy demonstrating how much money the wealthiest 400 US households control. Imagine what kind of revolutionary organizing could be funded, how many folks' lives could be transformed, if that wealth was re-allocated? The potential is awe-inspiring. </li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://www.boldergiving.org/spotlight.php">Elspeth is profiled for her Bold(er) Giving!</a> Hot off the press: my rad co-worker and fearless RG co-leader speaks out about her wealth, giving, and commitment to collective liberation. <3</li></ul><div><ul><li>Last but not least...photos of <a href="http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150230518906996.315765.39770831995&saved">POOR's Homefulness site</a>! Y'all, we bought real land in a real place that will manifest a real creation of the visionary <a href="http://poormagazine.org/homefulness">Homefulness project</a>. My heart sings every time I think about this happening. </li></ul></div><br /><div>more soon. with love,</div></div><div>j</div></div>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-73599030125794655662011-06-12T17:46:00.002-04:002011-06-12T17:56:09.128-04:00Celebration Regimentfriends, i've decided: this summer i am implementing a Celebration Regiment. it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that without sufficient praise, pride, joy, levity, and laughter, i can't actually do my best work - my imagination isn't as creative as it needs to be for the kind of change i want to be a part of. i want the path to revolution to include <span style="font-style: italic;">fun.<br /><br /></span>i'm not exactly sure what this looks like yet. my first step is intentionality -- carving out time every week (or every day?) to let go a bit. have an adventure. go dancing. there will be lots of dancing.<br /><br />join me?!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-57934396606383638462011-04-02T09:48:00.002-04:002011-04-02T09:55:34.401-04:00Another Trust Fund Baby for Taxing the Rich<span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://resourcegeneration.org/blog/2011/04/01/another-trust-fund-baby-for-taxing-the-rich/">Another Trust Fund Baby for Taxing the Rich</a><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">reposted from the Resource Generation blog...Elspeth should get credit for most of the writing :)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Here’s a story for all you communication geeks, you appreciators of learning moments, you RG members looking to use your privilege to fight for equity as budget cuts rage across the country.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px;"><div class="contentpaneopen clearfix"><div class="entry-content" style="clear: both; padding: 5px 0px 0px;"><p>Yesterday we headed out of the Resource Generation office on East 23<sup>rd</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>street, poster board signs tucked under our arms, and boarded the 6 train towards the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue. We were joining the newly formed coalition <a href="http://march24ny.wordpress.com/calendar/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">New Yorkers Against Budget cuts</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in a rally to “Demand That Millionaires Pay Their Fair Share” in response to governor Cuomo’s plan to end the Millionaire’s Tax while slashing public services.</p><p><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MfHFKvIfzjY" allowfullscreen="" width="640" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe><br /></p><p>We joined in at the back of the group of maybe 100 people already gathered in a barricaded area a block from the Waldorf.</p><p>Our signs said…</p><ul><li>Tax Me! I’m ready to pay my fair share!</li></ul><ul><li>Tax Me! It will make all our lives better!</li></ul><ul><li>Don’t Cut My Taxes! Use them for healthcare, education, roads, bridges, parks & other necessary public services!</li></ul><p>Now let me remind you that this is a rally of folks chanting “Not another nickel, not another dime! Bailing out millionaires is a crime!” and “Hell no we won’t go! Not til you cough up the dough!” from organizations of people who are daily feeling the impact of social service cuts.</p><p>Needless to say our signs didn’t go over so well. We tried to check in with some people about the signs and there was a complete disconnect. <strong>Bottom line, we were not read as millionaires and our signs didn’t make it clear who we were or how we were trying to connect to the issue.</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>When we tried to explain people thought we were making a bad joke. Learning moment.</p><p>So we rolled up our signs and chanted along with everyone else, “Millionaires you can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!”</p><p>Then we got an idea and flipped one of our signs over on the sidewalk and wrote:</p><p>“Another trust fund baby for taxing the rich! Let’s pay our fair share!”</p><p>Pleased with ourselves we held it up for Park Avenue oncoming traffic (after passing it back and forth a few times, squirming in our shoes a bit, and wondering if we were really about to publicly declare ourselves Trust Fund Babies.) Then we held it up so that pedestrians passing in front of the Waldorf could read it.</p><p>A lot of people read it. We will never know what was going through their minds, but to us there was a sense of, “Oh…right. We have to say who we are! Obviously! And once we do, in a light and fun way, we have such an incredible opportunity to connect with these folks at the Waldorf, to say hey, I’m like you, and I’m for taxing us. Aren’t you?”</p><p>A few take-aways from the day..</p><ul><li><strong>Get out there along side folks fighting budget cuts.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong>It’s energizing and powerful.</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Messaging! Messaging! Messaging!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong>It’s key what you say and how you say it. And it’s ok to make mistakes while figuring it out</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Young people with wealth have a critical role to play</strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>in connecting with other wealthy folks to say, “hey, you could be on the other side of the barricade!” We can be a critical (and frequently absent) voice in the budget cut fights around the country saying “tax me!”</li></ul><p>Wanna get involved?</p><ul><li>If you’re in NY, NJ or CT, <strong><a href="http://www.faireconomy.org/new_yorkers_sharing_in_the_solution" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">sign the letter to Governor Cuomo to extend the Millionaires’ Tax</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong><strong>or wherever you live, <strong><a href="http://wealthforcommongood.org/campaign/increase-millionaire-tax-rates/" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">sign the letter to increase millionaires tax rates nationwide</a>.</strong></strong></li></ul><ul><li><a href="http://resourcegeneration.org/index.php?option=com_content&id=78" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;"><strong>Apply for RG’s Tax Organizing Team</strong></a><strong><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong>and help shape the next year of RG’s involvement in national tax organizing!</li></ul><ul><li><strong>Get involved in organizing around taxes locally!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></strong>There’s a lot going on including…<a href="http://www.faireconomy.org/issues/responsible_wealth" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">Responsible Wealth</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>coordinates ongoing actions specifically engaging wealthy folks. The <a href="http://www.faireconomy.org/issues/fair_taxation/tax_fairness_organizing_collaborative" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is a network of 28 organizations in 24 states that use grassroots power to promote progressive tax reform. <a href="http://www.usuncut.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 157, 204); text-decoration: none; outline-style: none; line-height: 20px;">US Uncut</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is coordinating national actions around corporate tax accountability.</li></ul><p>We look forward to doing and learning more with all of you!</p><p>Elspeth & Jessie</p></div></div></span></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8178889542828822746.post-39878662777222072802011-03-21T23:01:00.003-04:002011-03-21T23:04:20.713-04:00finding love for the roots<div><i>a letter to my greatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandfather.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>dear papa TJ,</div><div><br /></div><div>i've been composing you a letter as i traipsed the streets of washington DC today. i stood and looked at your monument, daring to get close but not quite close enough. i had forgotten such an homage existed at all until i spotted it on the google map - it's that big of a deal. and, like all decisions in my life, once i decided i wanted to visit it, i was determined.</div><div><br /></div><div>my determination didn't get me quite all the way there. truth be told, i ran out of time. the tribute to your mark on history is so, er, monumental, that i underestimated how long it would take to get to its foot. i watched it like a beacon as i walked down from the white house, across the mall, past the washington monument, over a small footbridge....and then i had to turn around, the building still too far away and across the pond.</div><div><br /></div><div>i usually talk about you like a demon, use your name for shock value. "my greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandfather was thomas jefferson." see? i can own it so well. name the demons of my past. naming is half the battle, right? </div><div><br /></div><div>i've been thinking a lot about love lately. about how to love really deeply even people it's easier to hate. i found myself wishing today that we could have a conversation, you and i. that you were still alive, and we could drink tea together and i could learn to not just hate you but to understand you. i'd pick a really good fight, a whole series of them, again and again. and i'd try to really listen, too. i bet we'd have a <i>lot</i> to discuss. there is certainly a lot i'd like to ask you. i want to learn how to love you fiercely - and fight with you fiercer.</div><div><br /></div><div>because, you're my people. i am <i>of</i> you. belonging is such a fundamental desire; belonging not just in the present but in a context of people who came before and people who come after. i want to figure out ways to know you, to own you. i want to kick and scream and yell at your bad parts (that'll take awhile...) and i want to find the kernels of goodness that must be there, too. hating you, feeling guilty and righteous on your behalf, kinda just makes me hate myself, feel guilty for myself. and i'm in a place in life where i'm learning new layers of how to practice self- love, self-respect, have patience for my nuances. new depths of how to love, respect, and have patience for other people. one of those depths i'm realizing needs exploring, needs loving, are my roots - all of them, even you.</div><div><br /></div><div>to be continued. for now, it's time for bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>xo,</div><div>jessie</div>j.c.s.http://www.blogger.com/profile/02167661822700068901noreply@blogger.com0