everyday contradictions

tooting my own horn

2011-11-21T17:23:00.002-05:00

there 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.

al jazeera english, dishing about taxing the wealthy
on AFP talking 'bout why I, as a wealthy person, fight for economic justice
huffington post spot on why the 1% should support the occupy movement (at 0:54 seconds)

BONUS: POOR's amazing new "decolonizers guide to a humble revolution." i wasn't a part of putting this together but the title is enough to make you want more, right?!

xo

We are the 1 Percent, We Stand with the 99 Percent

2011-10-14T13:52:00.002-04:00

Check out our Tumblr! Pictures! Stories!

We are the 1 Percent, We Stand with the 99 Percent

(Are you in the 1%-ish? Make your own and post it!)

Xo

Speaking out! 1% for the 99%

2011-10-11T17:12:00.002-04:00

Check out this article by the fabulous Pete Redington in the Valley Advocate, about Occupy Wall Street, Resource Generation, me :) and speaking out in solidarity with the 99%.

"Raise My Taxes: A wealthy Northampton activist brings her powerful message to the Occupy Wall Street protests"

xo

Re: Occupy Wall St

2011-10-02T15:30:00.007-04:00

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.

also: my sign at occupy wall st:

Really great reflections from Brown Power on POC presence at Occupy Wall St.

More reflections, from Racialicious, on colonialism and the weight of the act of "occupation"

Good footage of the first folks getting arrested at the Bridge. Cops a lot more aggressive than they were by the time they got to us "ladies"...

Look how fast the Great and Powerful can influence headlines to re-spin stories.

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

Aforementioned powerful "Decolonize Wall Street" image.

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.

big asks with a full heart

2011-09-27T12:37:00.004-04:00

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.

(*spoiler alert* it was received with a prompt, enthusiastic, and loving response, and "yes" to my ask!)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hey mom and dad!

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!

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!

As I've done for the past few years, I'm asking people in lieu of gifts to please give a donation to POOR Magazine. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?!

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 Resource Generation, 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).

Anyway, this is getting long. I want to remind/tell you a little more about Homefulness, specifically.

** 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.

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.

Specifically, residences in the co-housing project and POOR community members will connect to community spaces through:

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
A site for POOR's offices and all their media training and educational programming
A site for Uncle Al & Mama Dee’s Café, POOR's cafe & performance art space

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.

LASTLY! I want to respond to the "asks" you each made of me this summer as well.

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.
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.

Lots and lots of love,
Jessie

rock on, dad!

2011-09-02T19:35:00.003-04:00

my dad is a city councilor in northampton, MA and last night they passed a unanimous resolution to opt out of "secure communities." what's more, they passed a "sanctuary" resolution that reads:

"“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.”

rock on, dad!

we're all in it together.

2011-08-28T10:01:00.003-04:00

a post from the eye of the storm -

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:

it made for one of the best days in recent memory.

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 i 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.

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.

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 :)

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.

so the work was great. but the best part (insert cheesy drum roll here) was meeting our #1 goal - getting close.

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.

and you know what? 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. 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.

xo

so much going on

2011-07-13T14:59:00.008-04:00

y'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!

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:

Prisoner Hunger Strike in CA: 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 NY Times coverage, for the record.

The Care Congress: A kickoff for the Caring Across Generations campaign. Some bomb-ass transformative organizing happening! Thanks to Hand in Hand, the Domestic Workers Alliance, Jobs with Justice, and more, to "[build] a movement so we can be a nation that takes care of one another across generations.” Check out this awesome article from Colorlines.

A Call to Action from Indigenous and Women of Color Feminists for Divestment from Israel: 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.

This is why I do my job: 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.

Elspeth is profiled for her Bold(er) Giving! 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

Last but not least...photos of POOR's Homefulness site! Y'all, we bought real land in a real place that will manifest a real creation of the visionary Homefulness project. My heart sings every time I think about this happening.

more soon. with love,

Celebration Regiment

2011-06-12T17:46:00.002-04:00

friends, 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 fun.

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.

join me?!

Another Trust Fund Baby for Taxing the Rich

2011-04-02T09:48:00.002-04:00

Another Trust Fund Baby for Taxing the Rich

reposted from the Resource Generation blog...Elspeth should get credit for most of the writing :)

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.

Yesterday we headed out of the Resource Generation office on East 23^rd 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 New Yorkers Against Budget cuts 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.

We joined in at the back of the group of maybe 100 people already gathered in a barricaded area a block from the Waldorf.

Our signs said…

Tax Me! I’m ready to pay my fair share!

Tax Me! It will make all our lives better!

Don’t Cut My Taxes! Use them for healthcare, education, roads, bridges, parks & other necessary public services!

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.

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. 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. When we tried to explain people thought we were making a bad joke. Learning moment.

So we rolled up our signs and chanted along with everyone else, “Millionaires you can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!”

Then we got an idea and flipped one of our signs over on the sidewalk and wrote:

“Another trust fund baby for taxing the rich! Let’s pay our fair share!”

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.

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?”

A few take-aways from the day..

Get out there along side folks fighting budget cuts. It’s energizing and powerful.

Messaging! Messaging! Messaging! It’s key what you say and how you say it. And it’s ok to make mistakes while figuring it out

Young people with wealth have a critical role to play 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!”

Wanna get involved?

If you’re in NY, NJ or CT, sign the letter to Governor Cuomo to extend the Millionaires’ Tax, or wherever you live, sign the letter to increase millionaires tax rates nationwide.

Apply for RG’s Tax Organizing Team and help shape the next year of RG’s involvement in national tax organizing!

Get involved in organizing around taxes locally! There’s a lot going on including…Responsible Wealth coordinates ongoing actions specifically engaging wealthy folks. The Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative is a network of 28 organizations in 24 states that use grassroots power to promote progressive tax reform. US Uncut is coordinating national actions around corporate tax accountability.

We look forward to doing and learning more with all of you!

Elspeth & Jessie

finding love for the roots

2011-03-21T23:01:00.003-04:00

a letter to my greatgreatgreatgreatgreat grandfather.

dear papa TJ,

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.

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.

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?

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 lot 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.

because, you're my people. i am of 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.

to be continued. for now, it's time for bed.

xo,

jessie

is it possible i lead a wonderful life?

2010-11-18T22:12:00.001-05:00

i came up with this yesterday during a counseling session and have been enjoying playing with it. try it on for size.

ask yourself the question: "is it possible i lead a wonderful life?"

pause to register your gut response.

regardless of your answer...

make a list: what are all the components that make your life wonderful?

make another list: what are all the components that make your life challenging?

notice...

where are these lists actually one and the same?
what do you feel you have the power to change?

if your gut response was no...
what would have to shift in order to change that response? why?

if your gut response was yes...
what about the list of wonderful things ultimately trumps the challenges?

xo.

domesticity...the changing seasons

2010-10-09T11:27:00.002-04:00

i'm reminding myself that the most important thing is to make sure we're treating ourselves and the world well.

last weekend i spent two whole days doing nothing but exactly what i wanted to be doing. i rode bikes in the changing autumn leaves and preached social justice organizing to a room full of my elders. i stayed up late drinking wine with lifelong friends and concocted plans of building families and supportive parenting. i hiked in the woods and laughed really hard and went out for brunch.

last night i went to basha's and ate homemade CSA-veggie soup, fresh homemade bread, and homemade chocolate truffles (none of which i can personally take credit for home-making - thanks 1427 pacific!)

this morning i woke up early and made coffee and sat in the living room when the sun was doing it's incredible dawning-streaming-light-thing. i swept, and scrubbed and scrubbed the greasy stove with a passion. i also stumbled upon this poem via facebook friends of facebook friends; i really like it though i have no idea who the author is or my train of connection to them:

HOW NOT TO ENTER WINTER
EMPTY-HANDED

by Verandah Porche

Hold a candle to a mirror.
Spell out the lover’s name in tallow.
Dip a spatula in water.
If brittle letter-blobs chilled on silver
won’t lift off evenly
set him aside.

Fill a black sky-speckled kettle
with a rolling boil.
Steam quart jars.
Can light.
Seal and cool.

Take a cleaver to red cabbage.
Thunk! Choose half.
Ink its imprint: dense violet strata
curved around a geologic core.
Pull yourself together.
Shred the clean side
for a tart slaw. Serve.

Root for your future.
Bring daughters into wind.
Bend to the field.
Watch their white hands
numb and gladden
around red potatoes.
Say: Dig for our ancestors.
See with your fingers.
Quick work.
Frost’s no false alarm.

Squash Song:

Simmer forever
my delicata: two-toned
thick-skinned
winter keeper.

Why take a lifetime
to be tender
While beside you
the slick seeds burn?

my birthday wishes

2010-09-16T12:22:00.003-04:00

friends!

My 24th birthday is in less than 1 week, on September 22. Will you give me one or both of these gifts? Please? My goal is 24 people by my birthday.

1) Become a member of Resource Generation ! All info on this googledoc -- https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1f8xRKvpxLCQzKPQtp_rb_9_k-pGkoWfCcgHr5dQa49s&hl=en&authke...y=CP6ntY8O

2) Become a monthly sustainer of POOR Magazine ! Visit www.poormagazine.org/rev_donor (scroll down)

Thank you!

xoxo

these are amazing

2010-08-22T10:57:00.001-04:00

WATCH THESE.

xtranormal -- Southern Organizing

xtranormal -- Love Story

xxoo

jessie

as i go through other people's thoughts...

2010-08-08T17:47:00.001-04:00

Claire Potter intelligently rails against Teach for America. brilliant.

more soon,

xo.

another list that leads you places

2010-07-22T15:35:00.008-04:00

two things you should read!

1) stop saying this is a nation of immigrants!
by roxanne dunbar-ortiz

2) learning from history: freedom summer, current summer
by yours truly :)

in love and struggle,
j

bad free things and good free things

2010-04-19T22:00:00.004-04:00

in the past two hours, i:

1) acquired a free, lovely old wooden dresser from a craig's list post, only to have my dear friend ben examine it closer and discover reminents of bedbugs. not wanting to take a chance on that shit in my new apartment, we had to leave it curb-side after adventuring in a giant blue truck and carrying it down a flight of stairs.

2) stopped off at the pile of garbage bags in front of my neighborhood bougie-food-mart, to open one and discover TONS of beautiful green beans! after reaping a large cardboard-box-full, i opened another bag to discover perfectly good looking strawberries (still in their driscoll's plastic cartons) and yet another to find that morning's fresh baguettes. i now have days and days worth of off-season produce and delicious bread to feast on!

xo.

family philanthropy retreat: some reflections

2010-04-04T10:40:00.009-04:00

a few weeks ago resource generation hosted the 4th Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat, a 40 person conference for young people with family foundations. i was truly moved by the weekend. it was pretty darn incredible. and i was equally as challenged by the question: how does philanthropy exist in a framework that is working towards true liberation, self-determination, and the redistribution of wealth and power? can it?

the night i got home from the retreat i felt so much passion. i was deeply humbled by the experience- by the complex stories of everyone there, the million little ways in which people are doing what they can, in their particular lives, to affect change and work for justice. what you make of life is so much more complicated than simply you-- it's about the messages you've been handed down, the legacy you're expected to carry on, the demands of "success" by those around you, the life you've come to know and also are trying to question.

i also re-remembered how much of this work actually has nothing to do with money. it has to do with the dynamics that money creates....often dynamics that go so far back and so deep that we loose sight of their direct ties to the money itself. but they are ever-present. power dynamics. definitions of self-worth. teachings of what it means to be good, to be successful, to be smart. expectations and prophecies to fulfill. the squashing of imagination, of creativity and risk-taking. and the fear. so much fear. this shit is scary. trying to break cycles, live life differently, envision the world transformed...it's hard to stand strong in the face of pushback and uncertainty and pressure. or even know what "standing strong" always means when facing tough choices.

as i take more time to reflect on the retreat, i continue to be in awe of what truly "creating change through family philanthropy" can mean, what people who participate in it every day are working to make it. i also continue to wonder about the existence of philanthropy as we know it, when, to me, it doesn't actually have a place in the just world we're fighting for. janine lee, president of the southern partners fund and keynote speaker at the retreat, brought up this MLK jr quote:

"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary."

so i wonder, how do we do this work simultaneously? how do we 110% work towards a vision of a world without the injustice that makes philanthropy necessary, while practicing philanthropy ourselves? are there ways to do this? there need to be... because i am (slowly but surely) learning that change takes time, patience, and strategy. more importantly, it takes everyone-- not just the folks who are most directly affected by injustice, not just the activists that live off the grid, not just the young wealthy folks whose parents are on board with redistributing their entire trust funds. no, true change needs everyone to do what they can, where they are, to work towards justice.

but... what practices of philanthropy are non-reformist reforms of the system? by that i mean, how can we rise up to the responsibility of philanthropy if it's what we're handed, and use that responsibility to chip away at the system of philanthropy itself rather than re-empower it? how do we- can we?- work within philanthropy while trying to create a world where it doesn't exist? seriously folks, i'm wondering- do you have thoughts?

to stand in our own power in this work is fucking nuanced and fucking scary. embracing the power in our privilege while trying to totally overhaul the balance of power socially/politically/economically/globally...is.SO.complex. but damn. if everyone at the CCTFP retreat, if everyone in the RG community and beyond in our networks could fully take on the task of the responsibilities we have access to...we could help shift things in a major, major way. this community has so much potential, and i really saw us grappling with it at the retreat. and that felt pretty neat.

xo.

simple.

2010-04-02T22:09:00.004-04:00

there's so much i've wanted to write lately and yet i haven't. it's coming, when it's ready. but in the meantime, here's something that made my day.

in the past 24 hours the following items have surprised me in my mailbox:
- make/shift magazine
- left turn magazine
- "sisters of the yam" by bell hooks (from south end press)
- "policing the national body" ed. by jael silliman + anannya bhattacharjee (from south end press)

i can't complain!

xo.

repression and health

2010-02-15T18:37:00.003-05:00

this resonated with me hardcore this morning. oh, cultural upbringings....

Dr. Gabor Maté: “When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection”

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about emotions like anger sharing with our immune system the same role of defending our boundaries, saying when we repress emotions, we may also repress our immune defenses. How does that play out in various diseases?

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, when I looked at the kind of people that would be coming under my care in palliative care, but also the kind of people who would get sick when I was in family practice, a number of salient characteristics presented themselves. One was the repression of anger. People didn’t know how to express negative emotion. They were afraid to do so or did not know when they were angry. People who were pleasers, they tried to always not to disappoint other people. They never knew how to say no. They took on everything without a murmur, because they saw their role as always being the caregivers and the caretakers. And they had an exceedingly powerful sense of duty, role and responsibility.

Now, if you look at the role of healthy assertion of boundaries and anger, for example, it’s actually there to protect you. I’m talking about healthy anger. It’s not there to attack anybody; it’s just there to protect your boundaries. That’s the same role as the immune system have...

read more!

Haiti.

2010-01-16T17:28:00.010-05:00

i finally wrote an email this morning, to everyone and no one in particular. i had been writing and re-writing it my head since wednesday and still am not sure exactly what it adds to the atmosphere. but i digress. please read on:

Dear friends,

I've been drafting emails like this all week, not really sure of what I'm trying to get at. As I'm assuming is true for everyone on many levels, the current catastrophe in Haiti is devastating me. The immediate tragedy of it all and also the context; the dread and anticipation about how corporate and global powers contributed to this mess in the first place and may very well only make it worse, long-term-style worse, as recovery unfolds. How can we educate ourselves about the history, of Haiti and beyond, so we can stand at the ready when the corporate interest strikes again? Just one example of how this has already started, a quote from the right-wing Heritage Foundation .

I can't figure out how to react or what to do. What are other people doing? How are we keeping this in our minds and our hearts, and in our actions? I want to know.

I also want to keep at the forefront of our minds the way other issues can be manipulated in this time of crisis. I saw Naomi Klein speak on Wednesday and she so rightfully reminded us how crises are often used as a pretext for pushing through policies that wouldn't otherwise pass during times of stability; how disaster hysteria is taken advantage of to pass controversial or unpopular decisions.

So let's talk about Haiti and its immediate and long-term rebuilding. And let's also talk about how to see the big picture and not let those in positions of power- government, corporate, or otherwise- manipulate our focus and get away with more potentially devastating decisions.

I had been compiling a list of organizations, writings, articles, etc, and then Tyrone posted this very awesome and comprehensive list on Enough (enoughenough.org). Many of them overlapped, so please visit Enough for the full scope! Some highlights include:

~ Ten Things the US Can and Should Do For Haiti -- social justice lawyer Bill Quigley's straightforward, right-on rundown list.

~ Partners In Health's fund, Stand With Haiti: PIH is a longtime health organization working in Haiti. They are reputable among progressives and have pretty rad political analysis. The vast majority of their staff is Haitian and they are already on the ground there.

~ Lambi Fund of Haiti: Rooted in peasant and women's organizations in Haiti and based on the premise that the Haitian people understand how development is best achieved in their country. Doing long-term sustainability and development work.

~ Grantmakers without Borders' criteria for disaster response (they support the two orgs above):

First and foremost, provide unrestricted general funding to allow resources to go where they are most urgently needed.
Give only to those organizations with an existing presence in the region and a broad familiarity with local conditions, customs and politics. Avoid well-meaning but inexperienced organizations.
Give only to organizations that engage local community members in all aspects of disaster response and recovery. Avoid top-down responders.
Prioritize organizations with a strong focus on gender and the ways in which women are differently impacted during and after an emergency.
Prioritize organizations that link emergency response with recovery and long-term rehabilitation and that build local capacities.

~ Reasons why you should give to Haitian-led, localized organizations and NOT the Red Cross

~ much of this information is coming from and continually updated on DemocracyNow! and other crucial indie media sites.

Please respond with thoughts, additions, information, insights, challenges, ideas, reports on what you're doing or thinking...I don't want to let this fade.

With hope,

Jessie

holy.

2009-12-31T14:29:00.002-05:00

on this morning of the eve of a new decade- a new year- a new day (as every morning is the morning of the eve of a new day, i suppose), i scribbled this:

i'm about as far from religious or spiritual as one can get. but it is new year's eve in new york city, and all i want, what i crave, is to find a church, a synagogue, heck anywhere with serenity and candlelight, and bow my head to the strength and wonder of the world. take this moment, this night, to bow my head to the strength and wonder i need, we all need, to move forward.

xo.

Christmas giving creativity: parts 1 and 2

2009-12-28T14:37:00.007-05:00

PART 1: for the past few years at x-mas i've experimented with different ways of re-directing gifts. last year, i asked people to give to a cause they cared about, and share about it on christmas morning. this prompted my aunt to give $500 to a health center in west africa that does surgery for women with vaginal fistulas, a simple procedure in a region where women are totally shunned from the community for this condition. the center seems pretty comprehensive in their work: not just in-and-out surgery, but housing, support in recovery, education...whatever my personal views on medicine and cultural sensitivity, to me the point is that my aunt moved $500 when it otherwise would've stayed in savings. the exercise, and the sharing with the rest of the fam on christmas morning, felt well worth it.

this year i asked everyone to give to resource generation. i had hoped it would spark more conversation and engagement than it did; folks didn't ask me about the work any more than the bits and pieces i've shared before. BUT, i did raise $375 for RG, which makes me far happier than any gift certificate to amazon.com ever could (the fallback gift from extended family).

what have other people tried out with giving and gift exchanges?

PART 2: this year i got $3,500 from my grandma. normally i promptly just add these annual gifts to my inheritance-bank account (where i do my giving from, and which is also about 10 times as much money as i have in my personal earnings and checking account).

2009 is the first year i was seriously giving money away; and because of working under the table for some months, not earning *that* much money overall (relatively speaking!), and complicated tax laws, i have actually hit the maximum amount i can give away and still have it be tax-deductible. i am very unclear how i feel about paying taxes. very unclear. but what i am clear on is that my dad feels strongly that giving at a slower rate over time and having it all be tax deductible will in the end save significant amounts of money, which i can then give away. money that otherwise would've gone to the government as tax. but the point here is not to talk about taxes. the point of this Part 2 is to share how i moved this money.

so this is what i did-- i wrote the check over to my parents, who have high enough income that there is no danger of hitting this magical, give-too-much-and-don't-get-tax-deduction amount. the money totally surpasses me, going straight from granny to mom & dad. then, i got to sit down with my dad and direct him where to give $4,000*!

so suddenly instead of just having granny's yearly gift meld into my bank account, i got to move it all, immediately. it felt awesome to just do it; a good practice in not thinking too hard or too long...there is definitely a time and place for thinking long, hard, strategically, but there is also a place for taking an opportunity when it arises and realizing at the end of the day, $4,000 is being given NOW to places that need it. and, i'm getting to sit with my dad and tell him snippets about where i'm directing the money, he gets to see i'm trying to be responsible with my wealth, and we both get to participate in this practice of creative philanthropy.

so, those are some stories on christmas presents. what are yours?

*the extra $500 is what they now do not have to pay in taxes- the deduction on the $3,500 worth of gifts- so they let me give that away too! $1,000 each went to: Fund For Southern Communities, USSF 2010, POOR, and RG.

positivity

2009-12-20T10:04:00.006-05:00

Good things of this past week, in no particular order:

- listening to so much news that i actually feel like i maybe have some iota of a handle of what is going down in copenhagen

- getting delicious sweets on sale at the farmer's market. eating those sweets and not feeling guilty about it.

- receiving unexpected email that made me feel appreciated on a night i was feeling sad.

- getting two South End Press books in the mail.

- holding a beautiful, tiny baby in my arms. hands down, for my whole life, this has been the most soothing activity i can imagine.

- taking time out to eat lunch with my co-workers.

- a visit from someone who knows me better than anyone in the world. remembering how incredibly lucky i am to have them.

- honestly confronting someone when i felt disrespected. accepting an apology but standing ground for myself.

- proactively inviting some newish friends out to dinner.

- finishing over half of a thursday NY times crossword puzzle by myself in one sitting.

- talking about shifts in the landscape of my job and feeling excited about new learnings and collaborations.

- buying what i think will be the only present i give at christmas, because it is exactly right and i am genuinely excited to give it.

- making pumpkin soup from scratch while listening to NPR this morning. it made me feel like my mother in the most wonderful way.

- paying attention to my breathing.

xo.

self-expression

2009-12-16T19:57:00.008-05:00

there were all these things i wanted to post about after my chaotic social-justice-funding whirlwind last weekend. new donor circle, new community fund, new models, new thoughts...i had all of this inspiration and energy. and i can feel it slipping away and i don't know how to hold on.

for a hot second there this fall i was so good about writing, voicing what i needed to say. i've fallen out of that and i can literally feel it in my body, like i'm trapping self-expression in my gut. i've had a frog in my throat for the past month that i just can't shake; i'm wondering if it's my thoughts desperate to escape in the form of mucus. ew.

not that i haven't been expressing myself at all. it's just that i'm simply...not good at it. i've never been good at it, it's the WASP in me, i suppose :) but it really is something i want to be better at, to say how i feel, what i want, or even just what is going on in my head. i think part of the reason why i get so easily frustrated with other people at times is because i don't realize they can't read my mind.

so. i think i want to start going to therapy again. some iteration of it, at least. when i went to a therapist in high school, i would always cry the whole time. no matter how good of a day i'd had, or what she asked me about, it would always quickly dissolve into tears, and i usually had no idea why. if i'm really really honest about the reasons why i haven't gone back... the unavoidable, no-good-reason-for-them-god-why-am-i-crying-if-i-feel-happy tears probably have a great deal to do with it. and, the sheer denial: i don't *need* a therapist. i'm healthy, happy, not depressed, not out of control, not any other things that i tell myself i should be in order to "deserve" a therapist. but maybe i should buy myself a holiday present this year: a 50 minute hour of someone's listening ear.

xo.

15 year old Maldives rep at COP 15

2009-12-09T21:39:00.002-05:00

damn.

"...So I ask you again, would you commit murder, even while we are begging for mercy and begging for you to stop what you’re doing, change your ways, and let our children see the future that we want to build for them?"

re-educate the holiday

2009-11-26T08:43:00.001-05:00

Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"

xo.

2009-11-21T11:14:00.003-05:00

SRLP opposes the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act

"...The recent expansion of the federal hates crimes legislation has received extensive praise and celebration by mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizations because it purports to “protect” LGBT people from attacks on the basis of their expressed and/or perceived identities for the first time ever on a federal level. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project does not see this as a victory. As an organization that centers racial and economic justice in our work and that understands mass imprisonment as a primary vector of violence in the lives of our constituents, we believe that hate crimes legislation is a counterproductive response to the violence faced by LGBT people..."

Read the full statement HERE

xo.

post- MMMC

2009-11-16T10:08:00.008-05:00

so much, so much. not coherent yet, maybe never will be. but what i'm left with is such an intense and visceral understanding and appreciation for the ways that deep ideas, emotions, reactions, knowledge can seep into my being without my even knowing it.

for the first two days of MMMC i was fully present, but almost to a fault. there was something about being there as an organizer, no longer the new kid, that made it harder to access my own vulnerability. but somewhere around saturday morning (in no small part due to Tyrone and Tiny's workshop, to be sure) i really felt...alive. for the rest of the weekend, and into today, i've remained in this incredible place of thought, of struggle, of challenge, of confusion, but also with such peace, such tranquility. i don't feel lonely in it. for the first time in a long time, i don't feel lonely with these feelings.

MJK, i wish you had been there. all of my personal and organizing work around wealth and class certainly doesn't center around moving home, nor should it. but it was a topic that continues to make it's way into all those spaces, no matter what aspect of privilege i am talking about. or even, what aspect of humanness i am talking about. what MJK writes in the recent post up here, or what i wrote about for Enough this summer, it all builds and shifts. and every time i talk about it, it feels more nerve-wracking, but more possible.

three scary things still swirl in my mind. scary isn't bad. it's just....tenuous excitement...maybe? thanks to those of you this weekend in particular who reminded me i'm not alone in these worries.

scary #1: who and what i think is cool don't necessarily think moving home is cool.
i get thumbs up and support for my decisions, sure. but at the end of the day, the radical, mostly-queer, mostly-privileged, mostly young folks i turn to as my "community," who i look to for guidance about life-choices, are not making this decision. they are living in communal houses or co-ops or lovely, loving families of choice. the cool rich kids movement, as billy wimsatt coined much of the RG world, tends to supports certain models of rebellion over others... parents = not cool. where you came from= everything wrong with the world. presenting alternative, more nuanced models is hard. and scary. and feels unpopular. wasn't i supposed to get over this anxiety in middle school?

scary #2: what if i wake up when i'm 40, having lived with my folks for 15+ years, and feel terribly, deeply, regretfully ALONE?
this sounds dramatic, but it's so real. beyond the scariness of making unpopular decisions- no, underlying the scariness of making unpopular decisions- is the fear of being alone. i have always feared being alone. not alone like, i can't depend on myself (in fact, i am sometimes a loner to the point of my own detriment) but alone like, really, deeply resisting the dominant paradigm of partners and children and nuclear families. living with my folks doesnt prevent that scenario, but it certainly would change the decisions i made leading up to that dreaded mid-life morning.
someone recently made the excellent point that moving in with my parents and working on building multi-generational community still actively includes relationships with people my own age. but fighting the idea that long-term relationships and people to grow old with (not just lover-types, but all types) have to be within a certain age range is fucking hard.
beyond that-- even validating my relationships with my parents, or their/my older friends is incredibly difficult! i was home over a weekend last month and spent all saturday night cooking, drinking wine, eating, talking with my folks and close family friends. was that genuine fun, authentic relationships, and community? for sure. did i feel like i was missing out on my "real" life, not attending a queer dance party or having brunch with my young friends in brooklyn? for sure. how do i validate, to myself as much as anyone, the time i spend like this? again, the middle-school cool factor rears its head.

scary #3: what if i turn into my parents?
this is a different kind of scary. in many ways, i DO want to turn into my parents (mom, i love you). or at least learn a hella lot from them. but in other ways, i honestly want to make different decisions. i'm not sure i want to live in such a sheltered place (like literally, on the street i grew up on). i'm not sure i want to offer my kids- if i take that path- a guaranteed private college education. or trips to other countries. maybe i will. i have no idea. but i want to make sure i am pushed to have those different options, and worry i'll fall into old patterns too easily if i'm at home (this includes lots of not-so-good-for-me adolescent habits that creep up from time to time when i spend too long at home). will i be a perpetual 16 year old? i wasn't very happy at 16. i worry.
i also worry that in moving home i'm totally mooching off my privilege, futher burrowing into the cushion of it rather than pushing against it. but it's not like i can ever step out of it, so on my better days i say, why not just dive headfirst into it?

xoxo.

this made my day

2009-11-08T14:19:00.001-05:00

my mom reads my blog. and loves it.

taken from naomi, who took it from her friend...

2009-11-05T15:17:00.002-05:00

I’m Pro Marriage Equality, But Anti-Marriage

"...of course I believe that anyone should be able to marry anyone.

On the other hand, I do sometimes wish that the LGBTQ community and anyone who identifies outside of heteronormativity would have chosen a different fight. Or, perhaps the fight for rights could have been cast in different terms. In other words, there is a part of me that wishes we weren’t fighting for what is at best a limited conception of love and commitment and is at worst a broken institution...." READ MORE!

why sometimes i think philanthropy is just.plain.fucked.

2009-11-01T09:35:00.004-05:00

"TASINI: That’s correct. I mean, the beauty—and I say that ironically—of [hedge fund owners] is...they like when things collapse, because if they made the correct bet against a currency dropping or something happening that’s bad in the economy...they bet that the housing crisis would happen—they actually make a lot of money. And that’s, to me, moral obscenity.

...if you look back at the guys who ran some of the big hedge funds, the Vanguards and the folks who are out there, and they’re still out there, they were really at the core of that kind of collapse, that they were betting against the housing.

GONZALEZ: You even mention George Soros still is benefiting from—

TASINI: Yes, George Soros, who funds many liberal causes. Actually, he goes back to having bet against the English pound, and he made a huge amount of money on currency trading and betting that a currency would drop. And you make an enormous amount of profit if you get the bet right."

[Read the whole Democracy Now! interview with Johnathan Tasini on “The Audacity of Greed: Free Markets, Corporate Thieves and the Looting of America”]

special guest post by martha jane! on actually moving home.

2009-10-27T12:04:00.003-04:00

This piece was inspired by Jessie’s post about moving home after attending the POOR conference. I read it and, since I had recently moved home, felt a lot that resonated. Here are some of my thoughts on the experience.

Since I graduated from college I’ve lived in several different gentrifying neighborhoods. Most of the time living in these neighborhoods left me feeling some combination of guilty and out of place. As much as I saw myself as a gentrifier and therefore a person with systemic power I continued to feel powerless in terms of making decisions about where I lived. I repeatedly felt that I had no affordable options that would allow me to avoid contributing to the process of gentrification. I was deeply troubled by my complicity in this violent process. I spent a lot of time talking with friends in the same situation about what our best choices and options were, and how much power we really had when it seemed like so much was decided for us by banks, city planners, realtors, etc. While I resisted gentrification by engaging in economic justice and housing rights organizing, getting to know my neighbors and supporting local organizing, I was constantly bothered by the fact that the physical presence of my body in the neighborhood where I lived was contributing to a cycle of displacement. One year later I still have no good answers for this conundrum but I have found a solution that works for me: one that I am finding to be surprisingly fulfilling, radical and transformative.

I recently suffered a bike accident and had to go home to my parents’ house for surgery and recovery. The moment I got here something clicked. Living at home feels like the most right thing I've done since college. Let me back up for a minute before I lay out all the reasons why living at home is beautiful and radical and fulfilling for me and let you know some things about what home is for me. My background is upper middle class and white. My family is queer and Jewish, academic, liberal, socially engaged and connected. For me home has never been a place of violence or insecurity. Unlike many people close to me, I feel more safe and loved and in the home of my family of origin than anywhere else. I think that my ability to do the things I most believe in and am most committed to- writing, organizing, art- is owed in large part to the longstanding support of my family of origin.

I know that part of the reason this change feels so right to me is that I have always felt better at intergenerational relationships than anything else. In the past I’ve felt ashamed of this but right now I’m finding it allows me to do the really important work of building relationships of trust with those who have different views from me. In the past I have mostly lived and spent time with communities of young white activist queers. I have felt pretty alone in these communities and I’ve come to think this is because a lot of my peers have had a real need to distance themselves from their family and family's lifestyles, and this has translated into a sort of urgency around building community. I’ve a hard time plugging into this way of building community because of my strong relationship with my family of origin. At this moment in time, I’m coming to see this as a gift that helps me contribute to change and growth of all the communities I’m part of.

So. Living at home feels like the most right thing for me emotionally and politically, and right now, like the place where I can do the most important work. There are a number of reasons why: first, there is a room for me here in the house my parents own. Sharing space with my family, for me, means I am not paying rent to a landlord somewhere else. This means that the money that would go to rent can go to other things such as organizations whose work I believe in and individuals in need. It also means that the hours I would have to work for pay in order to pay the rent are lessened and I can spend more hours volunteering, organizing, writing, doing childcare and contributing to my family and community in important ways.

Being able to contribute to and build with my family and community of origin had proved to be invaluable for me. Because I have grown up in this family/community there are concrete ways that I know how to contribute. For instance, taking care of my baby sister and other young people and dogs in the neighborhood as well as cooking, cleaning and shopping. Contributing this way to my family and community very solidly feels like work I should be doing. It makes a lot more sense to me than many things I have been paid to do as work in the past; for instance, being a youth-worker in communities where I have no experiential context or connection to the youth I am working with and so can’t really provide good mentorship. While I am living at home I can support (financially and otherwise) radical youth work that goes on in communities that I am not part of (but care about) and provide it for the communities that I am actually part of.

Contributing this way to my family and community means getting up close and personal with the class my parents and their friends are in and how it functions and sustains itself. This is incredibly important work for me, because I want to make sure I don’t become them. That is to say, I want to develop strategies to avoid hoarding the wealth my family has and break the cycle of the bourgeoisie reinventing itself generation after generation. In the past, I have feared that, after growing up in a home of extreme comfort, I would gradually retreat to a similar lifestyle as I got older without being conscious of it. Now I am realizing all the complex ways that class sustains itself that I was not able to really notice as a child, and understanding concrete ways that I can make different choices from my parents.

Because I am doing the work of spending time and contributing to my family and community of origin I am sustaining and building relationships of trust with many individuals whom I wouldn’t otherwise. This means I am seeing people in this class and culture more and more as allies. I am listening to them more deeply, with greater compassion, and understanding and valuing the ways they contribute to the world. Because we are building trust I am able to challenge them to question things both easy and hard, like their reliance on liberal media, or their spending habits and choices about how to give and invest money. Conversations like these require a lot of trust built. I am realizing that dialogue between radical and liberal politics has huge potential for making both sides grow. I also see value in things I didn't before, such as the work my mom and her colleagues do as scientists. There is the reality that my parents and people they are connected to in the world of wealthy liberal professionals, have a lot of power. The more time I spend with them, the more they grow to care about things I care about. For instance, after years of conversations about prison abolition, my mom, of her own initiative, wrote and read something about the prison industrial complex and abolition at a Passover Seder last spring.

Last year when I graduated from college, I and many people I knew moved across the country to be engaged in a large community of social justice activists involved in a number of liberation struggles including anti-racism work, anti PIC activism and economic justice. While I learned a lot from spending time in that world, from this vantage point I am seeing the way that staying at home can be more effective than following a larger activist community. That kind of activism needs to happen everywhere and especially in places where there are much fewer people already doing the work. Also, when my family and community learn about the local social justice struggles I am involved with, they want to learn more and contribute to these struggles.

Here at home I am constantly entering new spaces of young people and being asked where I live. When I say I live at my parents house they have to get over the idea that that means failure in order to connect with me. And they always do. I think presenting this model of returning to your family/community as opposed to growing up and moving on and being independent starts to dissolve some of the allure that capitalist independence has. While I understand that for many this is not an option, in the class I come from moving away after college (often to another city), is so deeply the norm that young people from my background are often very surprised to see me challenge it (is the rupturing of continuity in family and community part of what allows this privileged class to keep reinventing itself? How?)

As a writer, artist and organizer the business of owning where I come from has always been very important to me. Returning to the place I come from and doing work in my family and community of origin feels to me like a very empowering and meaningful way to do this. It is, after all, work that I am in a unique position to do.

nothing like mary oliver excerpts to lighten my life

2009-10-26T17:10:00.003-04:00

"When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms."

rodney had us read and discuss this mary oliver poem at our staff meeting last week. ever since, whenever i've felt frustrated or sad or aggravated or judgmental or uptight, i've asked myself "am i acting like i'm married to amazement right now?" and try to remind myself what it's like to live life in constant wonder about everything around me. i was like that once, but it happens less and less easily, less and less often. i'm trying to find it again.

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination"
-- wild geese

"Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute."
-- wage peace
[mistakenly attributed to m.o., actually by judyth hill. also my senior high school yearbook quote. i really felt that way, the world so breathtaking and at my fingertips.]

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"

50 visionaries!

2009-10-18T22:12:00.002-04:00

utne reader: 50 visionaries who are changing your world

yay, dean and tyrone are on the list! also lots of other radrad social justice folks. thanks, utne.

example: why giant sportsgames suck

2009-10-17T23:02:00.003-04:00

South Africa's Poor Targeted by Evictions, Attacks in Advance of 2010 World Cup

Democracy Now! interviewed 18-year-old Mazwi Nzimande, president of the Shack Dwellers Movement’s youth league, and Reverend Mavuso Mbhekiseni, member of the Rural Network in South Africa.

"...to us, this World Cup is a mass eviction of poor people. So that’s what is happening in South Africa...."

Read the full interview!

Shared via AddThis

Check it out!

2009-10-06T16:32:00.003-04:00

Flipping the Script on Poverty-- POOR Magazine's welfareQueens, by Jess Hoffmann

The Bay Area-based welfareQueens, a project of the POOR News Network, are fighting back against a system that dehumanizes poor mothers—with poetry, theater, and any other media tool they can access. welfareQueens began in a kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District when a group of poor women who knew each other from anti-poverty organizing gathered around a table to share their personal stories....[read more]

excerpts from Derrick Jensen's lil' zine "forget shorter showers"

2009-09-28T21:42:00.006-04:00

I picked up a zine by Derrick Jensen at the really really free market at Judson Memorial Church. I liked it, so I typed up some excerpts. Enjoy!

"Part of the problem is that we've been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption-- changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much-- and had nothing to do with shifting power away form corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide."

...

"The third problem is that [perceiving simple living as a political act as opposed to living simply because that's what you want to do] accepts capitalism's redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it."

....

"The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned-- Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States-- who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems."

xo,
j

"capitalism: a love story"-- tangential thinking

2009-09-26T09:25:00.008-04:00

i saw michael moore's newest last night, "capitalism: a love story." afterwards we sat in a coffeeshop and decompressed. well, we let our thoughts wander. but that's the point of collectively witnessing and discussing: it takes you places!

i came away thinking about the reality of rah-rah-capitalism-sucks-wall-street-is-greedy v.s. the reality of what it actually means to redistribute wealth or re-structure our government/economy/society. to use the ever-popular pie metaphor: its not about glen beck giving his precious piece of the pie to mr. hacker (who was evicted from his home and interviewed for the film), it's about us eating something more nourishing than pie all together. something that regenerates, is from the earth, and can cyclically grow and re-birth and re-plentify. not something so finite or so damn sugary :)

sorry for the extended analogy. what i mean to say is, how do we support, encourage, or even force those with lots of pie to give some of it up- and more critically, how do we hold space for the often-painful process that this creates? i can rail against capitalism all the live-long day, but when it comes to giving up my vacation house or the funding to travel home to visit my family in the name of a 'more just world,' that shit can be hard! last night e. brought up the word "grieving," which i found useful. how do we hold compassionate space to grieve the loss of real things? it is a process to lose material, space, and freedoms we are accustom, for rich folks and folks all along the economic spectrum. it looks vastly different in different scenarios, but fundamentally i believe that loss is loss.

as a wealthy and privileged person, who works with other wealthy and privileged folks, this is a crucial and really real process to be aware of. how do you allow space for everyone's humanity, emotions, and tangible investment in the current system? while still fighting fucking hard to reinvest that humanity and those emotions in an entirely different one? how do i not get frustrated with folks who are caught up in the crash of their stock portfolios, when that sum still equals most people's net worth dozens of times over? i turn these questions on myself as much as anyone else.

how do we have compassion and patience with ourselves and our processes of lifestyle shifts? i think it hits on some deep, touchy subjects. like, if my family can't go on vacation to the beach, we will have to entertain ourselves! and talk to each other and deal with our shit and omigod that can be scary! the flip side of losing and giving things up is creating other ways of living and valuing. how do we learn to create new kinds of meaning, new kinds of fun, even?

i don't have good answers, but i want to keep thinking. keep thinking with me!

xo.

i heart middle aged activists

2009-09-23T22:17:00.004-04:00

i swear i'll write more on this soon. but i just had to say: working with this collection of 40-80-something activists via the telephone, most of whom i've never met, has actually been an awesome and energizing experience. i'm learning that i have a lot to learn-- and also that i have a lot to offer!

something more brilliant soon, i promise....

xo.

making money make change: it matters.

2009-09-12T21:47:00.008-04:00

this is an email by kristen cox, a resource generation rockstar. i got permission from her to post the email here, as she does an incredible and compelling job articulating the importance of spaces like making money make change. please read!

9/8/09

Subject: i hope you will read this. it matters to me that you do.

friends, i'm writing to you because we all know and love folks involved in the struggle who come from privileged backgrounds. you may be one, or your close friend who may or may not be aware of, or want to talk about it or face it head on. i am one of those folks whose politics, scope and path CHANGED after attending this Making Make Money Change conference (MMMC) in 2005. After which I came back to Chicago, donated inherited stock, and invited peers to help create the Fire This Time Fund.

MMMC has been THE most important participatory and engaged, cross-class, multi-racial space that has helped unite my three identities: class priviledged, queer, and liberal with the motivation to continue to ask hard questions of myself, my family, the world, etc. I have met INCREDIBLE people. Coined by Billy 'Upski' Wimsatt as the cool rich kids movement and from where this fabulous blog: Enough Make/Shift Magazine partly erupted from.

I urge you to forward on. Tell your Peers. This year the conference theme is on building community alternatives for economic transformation and the keynote speaker is Adrienne Maree Brown! and

Not to mention it is always held in a beautiful, off the grid(ish) location with uber fresh and healthy food. More detailed info is included below. Fliers are attached!

I am also happy to meet 1:1, talk about my experiences, give a bit of a supportive arm to anyone who seeks it. We can all help young people with wealth (or with future access to resources) move from isolation to community, inaction to action, and help increase their giving of money, time and energy towards social justice.

Thank you for reading and considering this plea.

In peace and struggle,
Kristen

MMMC 2009: Community Alternatives For Economic Transformation
November 12-15, 2009
Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center, Falls Village, CT

What is MMMC?
Making Money Make Change (MMMC) is a national, multiracial gathering for young people with wealth (ages 18-35) who believe in social change. MMMC is a confidential space to explore issues related to wealth, privilege, philanthropy, and participation in grassroots movements for justice and equality. Through workshops, discussions, and community-building activities participants support, challenge, and inspire each other to align their resources with their values and work for personal and societal transformation. While the majority of participants are young people with wealth, social movement leaders and nonprofit practitioners from other class backgrounds are invited to speak, facilitate sessions, and participate in the entire retreat. MMMC is co-sponsored by four national social change organizations: Tides Foundation, Funding Exchange, Third Wave Foundation, and Resource Generation.

Generally, MMMC participants feel like they have or will have access to more resources than they need. “Wealth” is self-defined by those who participate, and the amount of wealth people have access to varies greatly. Young people with wealth are racially diverse and their money comes from many sources including inheritances, earnings, lottery winnings and legal settlements. Some people who are involved have access to philanthropic resources (for example, as board members of family foundations), but may not have access to personal wealth.

Register Now! To register for this year's MMMC go to www.makingmoneymakechange.org

2009 Theme: Community Alternatives For Economic Transformation
Our 12th annual retreat brings us together at a moment framed by financial crisis. How are communities responding? How are people working together to create alternatives to unjust and unsustainable economic arrangements? What are the roles of cross-class movements in working towards social, racial, environmental and economic justice?

Keynote: Adrienne Maree Brown
Adrienne Maree Brown is the executive director of The Ruckus Society, which brings nonviolent direct action training and action support to communities impacted by economic, environmental and social oppression. She sits on the boards of Allied Media Projects and the Center for Media Justice (and just stepped down from the boards of Wiretap Magazine and the Brower Center), and is a participant in Somatics and Social Justice. Adrienne facilitates the development of organizations throughout the movement (most recently Young Women’s Empowerment Project, New Orleans Parents Organizing Network, ColorofChange.org and Detroit Summer). A co-founder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters and graduate of the Art of Leadership and Art of Change yearlong trainings, Adrienne is obsessed with learning and developing models for action, community strength, movement building and transformation.

Location:
The retreat will take place at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut, accessible by a 25-minute shuttle ride from Metro North Railroad-Wassaic and a two and a half hour drive from New York City. The retreat center sits on 450 rural acres in northwestern CT, is environmentally friendly and serves food from local organic growers when possible including food grown on their organic farm. The retreat center is wheelchair accessible. For more about the Retreat Center, see their Web site at http://www.isabellafreedman.org/

If you have questions about MMMC, please e-mail Stephanie Yang, Retreat Director, at sydconsulting@gmail.com

Thank you,

The Making Money Make Change Planning Committee

Anthony Colón
Theo Yang Copley
Elokin
Eliot Estrin
Elspeth Gilmore
Nikki Morse
Matt Osborn
Naomi Sobel
Monica Simpson
stephanie yang

MMMC is sponsored by Resource Generation, Tides Foundation, the Funding Exchange and Third Wave Foundation, and organized by a cross-class team comprised of representatives of those organizations and past MMMC attendees.
http://resourcegeneration.org/
http://www.tidesfoundation.org/
http://www.fex.org/
http://www.thirdwavefoundation.org/

talkin' to family friends

2009-09-08T14:17:00.005-04:00

this is an email i stumbled across this morning. it's in response to an email from a dear old family friend; her email was following up on a heated-ish conversation we, her partner, and my mother had had the night before. not all of the facts and figures hold totally true for me anymore, but i thought it was worth sharing as one way i tried to articulate my politics and thoughts around wealth.

4/26/09

dear ____,

first and foremost, you in NO way fucked up in our conversations last night! no forgiveness is necessary because i never felt angry in the first place. i did not feel like you were ranting in the slightest, and figuring out "the right words to use" is hard for all of us, myself definitely included-- it comes with the territory of talking about taboo topics that we fumble or don't say exactly what we mean, and i take that as a given in any conversation i have about this stuff. i love engaging in lively conversations about money and giving and i always learn from whomever i'm talking to, last night included. i'm honored that you took the mental space and literal time, especially given all that's going on in your life, to write me today and express your views and personal decisions. really, like you said, all this shit is kept so incredibly guarded in our lives, it truly means a lot to me that you're willing to share and actively discuss it all.

all that said, it doesn't mean i don't want to continue these conversations. i don't think the first step of simply breaking the taboo of conversation should be undervalued-- just discussing money and wealth as an upper-class person feels like a radical act in and of itself. and that's a lot of what my work is and what resource generation does. just getting people to talk about their values and their money, especially simultaneously, brings up all sorts of things, some that are really hard to wrestle with.

i'm having trouble figuring out how to respond to all that you said, because i hear you on so many counts and really value your model and beliefs. it gives me a lot to think about, and is very much along the lines of what my mother had said to me that afternoon. i guess i should start with a disclaimer, which is that i am hyper-sensitive to feeling patronized, and sometimes get exasperated too quickly because i get caught up in that (which is really just my own personal shit, and has a lot to do with being so small and "cute" and "little" my whole life-- hardly money issues!). i don't feel annoyed or patronized at all by you, but it's important to know that if i start to sound exasperated, it's because i often feel like what this comes down to is people not believing that i can know myself at age 22. and again, i really hear that over time, throughout life, you and i and everybody learns and matures and grows in ways they can't anticipate. but that's exactly why i'm not giving away my whole fortune. i'll be open about numbers, because i think its the only way to have real conversations about this stuff: i have a trust fund that i inherited at 21 that had $235,000 in it (currently it has $189,000 since the market crashed). i am planning on giving away $40,000 a year for the next two years, so by the time i'm 25 i'll still have over $100,000 left. this doesn't include my personal savings, which over the years has accrued and now totals around $20,000.

so just based on those figures, the most straightforward thing i can say is that because i don't know what life looks like down the road, and because i know that i don't know all there is to know about the world, i'm still keeping a substantial amount of wealth. i have no idea what my life and needs will be in two years, so i'm keeping what i consider more than a cushion-y enough amount so i have time to continually re-evaluate my priorities and decisions.

so then there comes this ever-present, never-answered question of what is "enough." what is enough to have, what is enough to give away, what do necessity and security mean? for me, it all starts at myself, at really knowing and trusting what values i hold true, and with teasing out true and meaningful security and happiness from "extras". for example, in my opinion, everyone should be able to have the financial and community stability to be able to support aging parents. that is a priority. but by the same token, supporting and building government and community infrastructures that ensure that all aging folks can be cared for is also integrally part of what i envision in the world. and both sides of that coin are integrally a part of my own personal ability to sleep at night, my own happiness and ability to "sit right" in a truly genuine way with the world i'm living in.

i also know about myself that the world i envision doesn't give me, or anyone, the option of some of the absurd richy-rich things that wealthy people engage in. i'm not talking about you or me here! i'm talking about like, people in LA who own multi-zillion dollar homes and private jets and fancy cars. i fundamentally hold true the belief that these things are a) not necessary, b) moreover, destructive (to the earth, eco-wise, etc), and c) never going to be available to everyone and thus fundamentally unfair. and these a, b, and c are the opposite of what i was talking about with aging parents-- the security of something like that IS something i think everyone should and could have in their lives, if only our country and world were shaken up a bit. the zillion dollar homes and fancy cars, though, not so much.

i guess i bring up these two sort of extreme examples to lead to all the gray matter in between. i think about this stuff all the time, trying to be compassionate with myself and others in my/their belief of what is necessary and what is extra. and i also try to push myself and others to rethink assumptions or ways to build a meaningful, balanced, secure, and fulfilling life. a good example of this in my life is travel. i have never ever been someone who has been drawn to traveling. sure, going to france and peru and chile were all wonderful and fun and inspiring. but when i really sit down to think about what makes me happy and what im naturally drawn to, it's not travel. i knew this about myself when i was 4 when i refused to go on sleepovers, and when i was 11 and decided to opt-out of a vacation to italy, and when i was 21 and decided not to go to st. john with my dad. it also extends to the fact that most of the people i love are pretty close by me geographically, so far travel isn't needed. for me, traveling is "extra," and not really something i'm willing to spend my money on. for other people, it's different. their families are across the country, or overseas, or they have trouble truly being happy without adventure to faroff places. in that case, the decision about need/extra is considerably foggy, and i try to trust people, in general, to make the decisions that are right for them. but for me- spending money in that way isn't what i want, so redirecting those resources to places that need them makes far more sense. does that make sense?

i also push myself to think about what really makes me happy when it's not quite as obvious as the travel scenario. take college, for example. the ability to attend any school i wanted, no questions asked, is something i am indescribably thankful for and wish that wealth of opportunity on everybody. however, something that i've learned is that there are many other places, and many other ways, that i could've learned just as much and been just as happy as i was at wesleyan. in fact, it is almost because of the opportunity i had to go anywhere that i didn't stop to think about all the great things i could've done instead of attending a highly prestigious institution. just like age and experience teaches you things between 20 and 40, it also taught me things between 17 and 22. such as, i would have excelled and done great things at UMASS, or smith [with the half-off tuition for northampton residents], for a fraction of the cost of wesleyan. i would have excelled and done great things if i had done an americorps program, or become an outward bound leader. i know that my ability to excel and do great things very much stems from the already-privileged position i came from, but that position also sheltered me from all of the wonderful opportunities i could have had if a place like wesleyan wasn't the "obvious" or assumed choice. and think about all i could've done with that $190,000 of tuition!!! i want to question the assumption that that's the best and idealized way to spend one's resources after high school.

phew! i'm sorry this is getting so long winded. i tend to be a rant-y writer, and also am thinking through so much of this stuff as i write my thoughts are a bit jumbled or roundabout. but i'm so super excited to just have these conversations, and have people push back against what i present, and be able to push back against them.

i guess the last thing i want to share is that i think so much about how even being able to have these conversations, and these options, put me in such a teeny tiny class of people, and that the vast vast majority of folks in the world can't even conceive of what i have. and while there are certainly loads of people in the world who are unhappy and unhealthy in all sorts of ways i would never wish on myself, there are also a whole lot of people who are happy and healthy and fulfilled living with a whole lot less than i have or could have. so part of my own quest for happiness and fulfillment is figuring out how to embody those ways of life myself. and for me, that also includes the act of giving money away. sure i have my fair share of days where i feel burdened by guilt, but by and large thinking about all my resources and how i can redistribute them is an incredibly exciting and empowering thing; it's exciting and empowering to be able to support, but also trust and learn from people and organizations and movements that are doing work to make the world a more just place.

so! this has been my food for thought lately, and i'd love to hear more of your thinking and wisdom on it. as much as i stated i am extra-quick to feel patronized, i also know that i can come off as incredibly patronizing at times, so i really really hope you are not taking any of this as personal judgment, or criticism, or dogma, or me preaching, or anything remotely like that!! this is me, thinking aloud and trying to make sense of it all and share that with you, so i hope you see it as a peek into my mind and nothing more.

i love you so much! it was wonderful, as always, to see you last night and i had a fabulous time catching up. i love that you've known me for so long and we can have these complicated conversations with the trust and knowledge of each other's goodness that (i assume!) we do. thank you, really, again for taking the time to be so thoughtfully concerned with how the discussion went last night and to write me with more meaningful things to say. i always look forward to talking with you!!

so much love, and please pass along my love and support to ____ as well.

hope you enjoyed today's sunshine!

xo,
j

teaser of more interesting things to come

2009-09-04T09:07:00.005-04:00

i really want to post about this new social justice fund in northampton that i'm excited about, called the markham-nathan fund for social justice. a family friend- who i respect and admire tremendously- is starting it and i have been involved in the preliminary planning meetings. things i want to think/write/talk more about include:

- age dynamics: paternalism and how sometimes its annoying, and sometimes it helps to have someone else (older) advocating for your voice; feeling young and thus obviously inexperienced AND simultaneously feeling young and thus obviously way more knowledgeable than older folks

- cycles of money-moving and the definition of social justice: frustration with people who are founding a supposedly social justice fund assuming that it's reasonable to write an 8-page grant report with a detail profit & loss statement and budget for a $3,000 grant. aren't we trying to move AWAY from oppressive philanthropy?!

- [tangent from above] how indoctrinated we all are with How Things Are that we have a hard time even envisioning How Things Could Be

- how no one necessarily has any idea what they're doing so creating new things- together, collectively- can be so exciting and powerful. and also dangerous and scary.

more later!! xoxo

re-inspire office work

2009-09-01T17:07:00.004-04:00

i always crash by 5pm. when i'm not in an office setting i'm inclined to half-assedly read the NY times online, or watch television that i don't really like. if i were a nap-taker it would be my nap time.

when i'm in an office, it is especially difficult. i often combat it by setting out concrete tasks to do at that time so i don't aimlessly fall into "checking email" or otherwise pittle away my time.

but it also makes me contemplative, even philosophical. lately i've been feeling rather removed from the world, in general but in my work i feel it the most intensely. sometimes i lose sight of how sitting in front of a compter for 40 hours a week has anything to do with social justice. i mean, they tell me i'm young, in the prime of life with the world at my fingertips and i'm... looking at budget spreadsheets and databases?

help me remind myself of the bigger picture: without budget lines we wouldn't know what we're spending or what we need to spend to put on our programs, to visit our chapters, to print our books or pay for these dang computers. and without databases we wouldn't know who to reach out to with said progams, chapters, books. right?

and to boot, the specificity of what we do as an organization warrants tactics such as email and phone...lots of young wealthy people are all about technology. and are super mobile, spread out all across the country/world. AND we have to interface with lots of folks from the Old School of Wealth who require things like excel spreadsheets and formal letters and conference attendence. hell, RG makes attending Old School of Wealth conferences part of a social justice agenda! and that's rad.

ok, i'm feeling a bit better now. still far away from reality, though, or at least reality of other human beings in this work besides the 6 amazing folks i work with. reading other people's blogs and getting updates via email are great, but i think what it comes down to is i'm feeling a void of Human Contact. and this all ties into my voluminous work, aka the previous post, on community....

and all of this is why i'm so pumped to get involved with a small social justice fund my mom's friend is co-founding in northampton! more on that later, but it feels...juicy and dirty and hard. and i'm ready for that.

Moving home; community

2009-08-31T21:45:00.006-04:00

This is a journal entry/rambling essay i wrote after the POOR revolutionary giving session in june. it is also posted here. take a peek...

6/22/09: HOME

On the first morning of the session several POOR Scholars spoke about home, family, community; leaving, staying, the privilege wrapped up in it all. I latched onto that theme and it stayed with me through the rest of the weekend- and clearly beyond.

I've always known it is a privilege to be able to leave “home,” and that it is part of a larger, constructed trajectory that includes actively separating myself from where I was raised, my parents, my immediate family, as part of a "successful" growth process. But lately I've really been sitting with just how much of a privilege it was for me to be able to leave, to have the opportunity to be individualistic- in a very "little girl makes her own way in the big world" kind of way. Some of that was awesome- college, living on my own at age 18 in grand New York City, getting to resettle here- or anywhere I wanted, for that matter- after I graduated. Not only could I leave my parents and younger sister behind, but I fully knew that they would be taken care of, that they would not only care for themselves but would actually continue to support me in explicit and implicit ways, even from afar.

None of this do I out-and-out regret; like with many privileges there also come opportunities I wish everyone had, opportunities that even many "privileged" people don't have, like being able to reflect on this home as a place of unconditional love and safety. But precisely because this home was such a place of love and safety, I'm starting to realize a huge loss in "building my own life" as separate from where the majority of my lived experience has been. What I'm beginning to discover are these losses, and just how exciting it feels to think about regaining part of what I've lost.

Some weighty realizations have been clues that I'm feeling a loss of home and community. Whenever anyone asks about my home, neighborhood, or community, my first thought is not where I currently live, Brooklyn, but the place I grew up. I’ve known since I moved to New York City last year that it wasn’t where I wanted to settle forever, but it's fascinating to me to unpack how far that's penetrated— I wasn’t consciously aware before of just how deeply I feel that Northampton is my home, and certainly hadn’t recognized how that emotional affiliation could really affect how I choose to spend my energy and think about my organizing. We spent a lot of time at the POOR session discussing relationship-building, and also the centrality of the literal space we inhabit; how each goal and need and struggle is totally unique to the time, space, and place in which it's enmeshed, and the ability to meet that goal and engage in that struggle is contingent on truly authentic and interdependent relationships. So I was forced to ask myself, how am I engaged (or not) in needs and struggles surrounding me, if I don’t consider them part of my home or my community? And how am I building (or not) real relationships with folks literally nearby if I don’t feel in my gut that my roots belong here? And, most of all, how am I copping out, by allowing myself to opt out of any given neighborhood meeting, local election, protest, block party, neighborly conversation, etc. on the basis that the place I’m in currently isn’t really where I want to end up and so do not need to invest? Of course this is all in the context of a much larger picture of displacement, gentrification, etc., and shows how my physically being here (in Brooklyn) without really emotionally being here is feeding that cycle. And there's the proof that displacement and the whole dang system we've got going that robs land and resources really does hurt everyone- as an owning/ruling/displacing-class person, that trajectory is beginning to bite me in the ass in the form of community-less-ness.

Hand in hand with this I recognize the ability to be able to return home (to Northampton) is equally as privileged and complicated as the privilege to leave in the first place. Many folks who are very much like me in appearance and politics simply cannot return to a place they called home for any number of reasons. It can be violent, unsafe, hostile, or just downright unpleasant for folks' emotional, mental, and physical well-being. But I don't have such complicated history. I am lucky enough to come from a home that I love very much, that is nurturing and supportive of (most of) my choices, and that is somewhere that does not negatively affect my personal, emotional, mental, or physical health. Having somewhere I can definitively call "home" to begin with is a huge opportunity and privilege in its own right, let alone the option to return to it...the consistency, security, and structure (literal and metaphorical) of such a situation is something I totally take for granted. Some folks have no other choice but to stay, whether or not they care to continue living in such immediate and often co-dependent circumstances with their given family members; others have no other choice but to leave. The opportunity to return to a place that feels healthy, safe, and loving is something to be prized. I’m left wondering, what would it mean for me to return home? I’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that living with your parents is indicative of failure, immaturity, over-reliance, or just plain uncool. But really, why the hell is that?

I get excited thinking about all the things I could do if I moved back in with my parents- a new way for me to think about leveraging my privilege! There are no people I can imagine being able to live more collectively with, in terms of basic resource-sharing. Even if I did pay them rent, split utilities or grocery costs, the difference between that and my $900+ a month for rent and bills in Brooklyn is staggering. How much freer my funds would feel; and what a better usage of literal space and habitat- it's not like anyone else would be living in my bedroom in my folks' house if not me. No doubt gentrification and displacement are giant, complicated matters, but simply put: if I'm not committed in my gut, then taking a step back from this place that is gentrifying so rapidly and intensely could be a tiny iota of the part I can play in affecting change. There's no doubt that my family contributed to the "revitalization" and "upgrading" (aka, gentrification and displacement of other peoples) in Northampton over the past decades. But whether i like it or not, my personal history and knowledge are rooted there, including concrete things like a house- that someday will be in my name- with a door already designated "Jessie's Room." If I feel good about committing to that space, why move elsewhere and gentrify anew; if i have the option, why not save on rent, save on space, share my mom's garden, cook my dad dinner? Not to mention capitalizing on more explicit privileges, like how my father is a city councilor and buddies with the mayor, or my mom sits on the board of several local organizations. If i actually knew the hot-button issues, if they were part of my town and my day-to-day, I think i could really help to challenge political decisions- something that for the very first time feels exciting to me. I hear first-hand about zoning laws that would limit who can ask for money on certain parts of the sidewalk; controversy over where to haul our trash; the complications around re-building public housing units. Influencing those at the table from behind the scenes- which is exactly the privilege I carry- could hopefully help to shake up the white liberal status quo. And because of personal safety nets and privileges, I feel like I would have the courage to push back in a way I often don't in other places.

I get really jazzed think about all the new ways I could get to know my hometown if I returned. I'm trying to push myself to give more credit to my emotional and visceral and spiritual needs, something the WASP in me has often shortchanged. It's kinda no surprise I’ve fought this fundamental feeling of Northampton being my home for so long, and yet I’m still surprised at my own profound excitement and comfort when I think about returning. I think about all the knowledge I have of the town, the layout, the space, the history. Even at 23 years young I've seen it change, seen the large and small battles that are fought-- between elite colleges and working class residents, middle-class teenagers and war vets living on the street, newly wed lesbians and anti-marriage queers. I also realize how much I have to learn about all that goes on that I’ve been totally sheltered from. The excitement and potential in recognizing that is really, really powerful to me. I always talk about the importance of organizing my own communities, in the places I know the ins and outs of. And particularly as someone with class, race and educational privilege, my access to those community ties is an especially strategic and useful way of broadening and strengthening social justice work. It is empowering to think that I am truly organizing folks from similar backgrounds, in a place I call home, and i feel it rising in my chest as I think about the possibilities in returning.

I've also been thinking about all the positive side effects if moving back home felt viable for the long term. My mother literally said it would be a "dream come true" if I moved back to Northampton-- what I hear in that is not only joy but also comfort and stability in knowing that I, physically, would be sticking around as my folks aged. when I proposed the bold wealth redistribution plan I cooked up a few months ago, their primary concerns were about family- and self-care, and all the "what if's" and "just in cases" that go along with the individualistic social culture of capitalism in general and our particular upper-class community in particular. But I imagine that moving back in with or near my parents would alleviate a lot of these fears of (in)security and (lack of) support systems, allowing for more and radical options in my redistribution of wealth. I truly think that the security of my physical presence would comfort their concern about our individual and collective well-being and long-term ability to thrive.

Phew! There's some of what I've been mulling over these past many weeks. These are all thoughts in progress, and I don't know how they will actually play out over the coming years. Would I actually move back in with my parents? Would I actually like it? Am I totally romanticizing these opportunities, or inventing cool enclaves of radical organizing in Northampton that actually don't exist? As much as all of what I've been thinking about excites me, I am also envious of other folks I know who thrive in chosen families, who have done the hard work of building community for themselves in NYC and elsewhere. Am I just running away from putting down new roots? I honestly don't know. But I'm excited to keep thinking on this, and having conversations about it, and discovering in what ways this resonates, provokes, excites, bores, or otherwise affects the personal politics of resisting capitalism.

first time for everything

2009-08-28T22:59:00.002-04:00

friends, i've joined the ranks: i too now have this place where you can come to read my thoughts. i caved for 3 reasons:

1) i think of things to journal constantly throughout the day, but never actually take the time to write them down. being the product of the 21st century that i am, i'm hoping that a virtual space will make it easier to actually follow through on my desire to be the kind of person that records things.

2) i am pretty damn nervous about sharing my thoughts and writing with people; strangers but moreso folks i know and work with and admire. i'm hoping that by making writing a regular thing and constantly putting myself out there, it will dull the fear of judgment. in fact, that's what the name is rooted in-- the contradictions of thoughts; the often unfinished, unpolished nature of musing; remembering that some days we will find brilliance in big ideas and other days we will simply find simplicity.

3) i forget #3 now that i've gotten this far! whoops.

anyway, this first post is mostly just so i can get over the hurdle of The First Post and move on to bigger and better things. i'll leave you with the following links to more good reads:

http://skinnedkneeswingsblueprints.wordpress.com: stacie and lex saying some really smart shit.

Enough: the personal politics of resisting capitalism: tyrone, dean, and guest posters (myself being the latest one!) saying some more really smart shit.

Flip Flopping Joy: the (re)thinking walking series-- jess and others blog about walking, movement, and re-defining their relationships to it. i dont read it nearly enough but when i do i am seriously blown away.

more links coming later...for now it's time to go to sleep. sweet dreams, world!