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.
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
talkin' to family friends
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
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
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
re-inspire office work
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.
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.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Moving home; community
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.
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.
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.
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