Sep
9
“And what are the broader social implications for believing that there is just some power in this world that you shall remain completely passive in front of?” – brownfemipower
I would just like to give an ode to my wonderful blog feed. Lately whenever I feel like I’m really losing it, or just want to read something interesting I go to my reader and there is an endless amount of important/interesting/”this makes me feel sort of sane” stuff to keep me going.
The past few days have been no exception, though this post is meant to highlight the more disturbing things that have shown up. I still haven’t found a good way to quote a lot of material at once so it’ll probably be a little confusing.
Basically, while those at the RNC were crowing about freedom, civil rights and liberty the police were arresting activists preemptively and engaging in the brutal and unwarranted (illegal?) arrests of protesters. I’ve been reading a number of things about this and it’s basically going to be one huge list of entries with quotes. AS WELL, I’ve noticed a lot of comments from people that “these were just troublemaking democrats/liberals/leftists/anarchists who got what they deserved. L0lZ!!!@@#@”
I am quoting what brownfemipower quotes of Amy Goodman in her entry:
“There was a photographer right next to me who was also taken down pretty violently. He was screaming he was press, as well. He had credentials. He kept saying he was a photographer for the New York Post. And quite funnily, he said, “For Christ’s sake, it’s a Republican paper!” But that didn’t seem to matter.”
In that same entry are a compiled a bunch of videos on the matter I’m embedding Amy Goodman’s here:
Brownfemipower on Why All That Police Brutality Stuff Matters:
She didn’t do anything to deserve it.
And then I went back and thought of all the other dismissals about the police brutality we’ve seen.
What were those protesters expecting?
What did they think was going to happen?
Why were they even there?
Who cares, it’s their own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just a bunch of old hippies and troublemakers looking for attention!I’ve heard all this before. I’ve heard all this before over and over and over again.
What was she thinking?
What was she expecting was going to happen?
Why was she even there?
Who cares, it’s her own fault for causing trouble!
It’s just some fat bitch looking for some attention!
and a video – Police Brutality at the DNC – Cop slamming woman in the chest and then arresting her – brownfemipower
Nezua of The Unapologetic Mexican The Front Line is Everywhere – RNC 08:
The GOP actually needs an army now, to make itself evident and dare celebrate anything in public. They have lied, killed, they laugh while we suffer with health problems or bemoan the loss of life and humanity. They bring their army to protect them from the voice of the People they supposedly serve.
Chale. I am not sorry that I refuse to cheer for that army. I refuse to belittle those with enough heart to throw themselves at the symbols of encroaching police state and behind them, those who are responsible for all this hell and horror that our nation has entangled itself in and has unleashed upon other nations and thus, is becoming, morally and actually.
If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy. I just don’t think this is going to go away. I think as class divisions increase and resources become more scarce and the elitist politicians and CEOs and related kinds horde more treasure and starve the rest of both food, honest government, and truth, they will need more and more force to keep the illusion of a fair society in place.
and on his arrest at RNC 04 as part of the 1800 people that iWitness mentions in the next quote – Overlords in Name and Deed
PREEMPTIVE ARRESTS of the iWitness team – this is the blog entry that Eileen Clancy wrote as they were in a house that was surrounded by police:
This is Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video, a NYC-based video collective that’s in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week’s Republican National Convention.
The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.
We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.
We are asking the public to contact the office of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at 651-266-8510 to stop this house arrest, this gross intimidation by police officers, and the detention of media activists and reporters.
This doesn’t seem to be the half of it. There also seems to have been REPEATED RAIDS ON BOTH THEM AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS INVOLVED IN ACTIVISM DOWN THERE. THAT IS A LIST OF ARTICLES.
During the Olympics just weeks ago, there was endless hand-wringing over the efforts by the Chinese Government to squelch dissent and incarcerate protesters. On August 21, The Washington Post fretted:
Six Americans detained by police this week could be held for 10 days, according to Chinese authorities, who appear to be intensifying their efforts to shut down any public demonstrations during the final days of the Olympic Games. . . .
Chinese Olympic officials announced last month that Beijing would set up zones where people could protest during the Games, as long as they had received permission. None of the 77 applications submitted was approved, however, and several other would-be protesters were stopped from even applying.
On August 2, The Post gravely warned:
Behind the gray walls and barbed wire of the prison here, eight Chinese farmers with a grievance against the government have been consigned to Olympic limbo.
Their indefinite detainment, relatives and neighbors said, is the price they are paying for stirring up trouble as China prepares to host the Beijing Games. Trouble, the Communist Party has made clear, will not be permitted.
Would The Washington Post ever use such dark and accusatory tones to describe what the U.S. Government does? Of course it wouldn’t. Yet how is our own Government’s behavior in Minnesota any different than what the Chinese did to its protesters during the Olympics (other than the fact that we actually have a Constitution that prohibits such behavior)? And where are all the self-righteous Freedom Crusaders in our nation’s establishment organs who were so flamboyantly criticizing the actions of a Government on the other side of the globe as our own Government engages in the same tyrannical, protest-squelching conduct with exactly the same motives?
Just review what happened yesterday and today. Homes of college-aid protesters were raided by rifle-wielding police forces. Journalists were forcibly detained at gun point. Lawyers on the scene to represent the detainees were handcuffed. Computers, laptops, journals, diaries, and political pamphlets were seized from people’s homes. And all of this occurred against U.S. citizens, without a single act of violence having taken place, and nothing more serious than traffic blockage even alleged by authorities to have been planned.
A fine time to be reading The Shock Doctrine.
Aug
21
….and covering all sorts of things that don’t qualify as news there are things going on in the country that actually need to be covered!! Perhaps to some people this is an obvious statement. Isn’t one of the pillars of democracy a thriving, independent media?
I do tend to live under a rock, but I’m betting this wasn’t covered because everyone was too busy having fits about Britney’s parenting skills. (None of this is a knock on Spears – not interested in helping drag yet another woman through the mud.) A Los Angeles community farm was destroyed in 2006 for the purpose of a warehouse for the clothing store Forever 21. Again, thanks to my feed, from brownfemipower. (I feel like I should just put together a feed of my favorite blogs in place of my own blog, because I consistently just want to link every entry I read and say LOOK HERE!!!)
The fight for the land is still on, but the farm is gone. Apparently the Mayor of LA had championed it during his bid for election, but is now staying suspiciously quiet thanks to 1.3 million in donations from the Forever 21 camp. Hmmmm….. Gotta love democracy.
Original brownfemipower entry with lots of links and comments that make me tingle.
The South Central Farm website – information and opportunity to donate.
An extensive article about how the deal went down.
The Documentary – The Garden
A look at Forever 21’s record, quoted from South Central Community Farm: Not dead yet by Tom Philpott –
When developer Ralph Horowitz bulldozed South Central Community Farm in 2006, rumors swirled that the site would be converted into a vast warehouse for Wal-Mart. But now Forever 21 — a clothing chain noted for its flimsy clothes, its past abuses of immigrant workers [PDF] in L.A.’s sweatshop district, its blatant knockoffs of haute fashion, and the fervent Christianity of its owners (John 3:16, anyone?) — wants to lay down roots on the former farm site.
…
The L.A. Times piece doesn’t mention it, but Forever 21 got tangled up in a sweatshop scandal in the first half of this decade. While other scandal-plagued brands like Nike and Gap were caught abusing workers in places like Honduras, brazen Forever 21 was doing it right in downtown Los Angeles. In 2001, 19 workers, who worked at sweatshops spread throughout L.A., sued the company for abuse. (The number of plaintiffs later grew to 33.) Here’s what they charged (PDF):
Sub-minimum wages
No overtime
Worked 10-12 hours per day
Worked Saturdays and Sundays
Had to take work home
Dirty, unsafe factories with rats and cockroaches
No potable water
No health insurance
Fired for asking for small wage increases or for asking for the minimum wageFor three years, Forever 21 denied the charges and refused to pay the hundreds of thousands the workers say they were owed in back pay. Instead, Forever 21 counter-sued the workers, charging them with defamation. The company held fast against a national boycott called to protest the sweatshop conditions. Finally, in 2004, Forever 21 settled with the workers for an undisclosed sum. (The struggle to force Forever 21 to comply with labor law is laid out in the 2007 PBS documentary “Made in L.A.“)
It’s odd to see Mayor Villaraigosa, who won office in 2005 amid much progressive hoopla, hop in bed with such a company. But hop in bed he has, the L.A. Times reports. Villaraigosa recently appointed Forever 21 Senior Vice President Christopher Lee to the city’s Industrial Development Authority. And get this:
Lee and Forever 21 founder Don Chang were two of several business leaders who accompanied Villaraigosa on his trade mission to Asia in 2006. Six months later, Forever 21 gave $100,000 to Villaraigosa’s successful campaign to elect three new school board members. In recent months, the company agreed to give $1 million to Villaraigosa’s Million Trees L.A. initiative, which encourages residents to plant more trees.
The company also gave $150,000 to Villaraigosa’s staging of the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Century City last year, a donation so significant that Lee was given a speaking role at the event’s closing reception at the Griffith Park Observatory.
Forever 21 is threatening to leave L.A. altogether if it can’t plunk down a warehouse on the former farm site. The farmers, for their part, are urging the city to require an environmental-impact study before allowing Forever 21 to break ground on the warehouse. In place of a highly productive urban farm, they say, such a warehouse would bring in 2,400 daily exhaust-spewing truck trips to a neighborhood already choked with warehouses and semis.
Aug
17
Loooooooooooooove it….
Filed Under General | 2 Comments
Though I’ve been somewhat diligent about posting lately, I’ve been taking a long break from reading other blogs. Took a look at some of my feeds today and as usual, Brownfemipower is writing amazing stuff about why “private matters” are not just “private matters.” Also as usual, the comments are top notch.
An excerpt:
even more to the point–while young promising male congressional employees hobnob and network with other men to get to the or high power senator position, young promising women congressional employees are being manipulated and fucked with by dirty old man fuckwads. or they’re marrying dirty young man fuckwads in the hopes of helping their own careers.
and queer women of color are being thrown in prison for giving the police the finger. is it any wonder that cynthia mckinney had her run ins with the law? if a black woman can’t be fucked, what good is she/what the hell is she doing at the doors of Congress?
And my latest favorite picture -
Apr
21
I’ll admit to completely selfish relief at being able to read one last thing by brownfemipower. Here is a portion of a very powerful post:
1. there are clear racialized reasons why women of color are never and will never be the sought after by big companies, named as the leader of feminist movements, asked for interviews etc
2. that white feminists bear a responsibility (that they are NOT accepting and in fact are actively rejecting) to negotiate power and create spaces (while working alongside or a step behind marginalized communities) in which power is de-centralized
3. As a result I do NOT consider myself to be a part of any fucking “feminist movement” because to me, feminism requires diversity (We have a responsibility (especially in the undergraduate years) to demonstrate to ALL students, no matter what their identity is, how to interact with the critical thinking of people who think differently than they do. To bring this a step further, however, feminist academics who are actively aware of how power plays out in very negative ways in the classroom, have a very specific responsibility to those students who have little to no power. The very basis of feminist scholarship/academic training is to dismantle and/or redistribute the power structure within a classroom and the academy. Women’s studies is nothing more than an articulation of this demand–women WILL be studied. Men will NOT be the focus of all academic work. Thus, women’s studies professors (and all other ethnic studies, disability studies etc depts) have built the commitment to diversity within a classroom into their very existence–so I feel no qualms at all about insisting that women’s studies professors (and instructors, lecturers, adjuncts etc) are *required* to show diversity within the classroom through the texts that they teach.)
And even though I wrote this whole post about those three points–the only thing people heard was “She thinks she’s Freud and she wants money/power/recognition.”
No, actually, I know I’m brownfemipower and I want to end violence against women. And I wanted to do that with all the women who keep insisting to me that we are all in this together and we have common problems that we have to work against and we’re all sisters, and there is such thing as a commonality of experience between us all—as I said in my original post—I thought feminism was important because it brought women together (I had thought at one time that feminism was about justice for women. I had thought it was about centering the needs of women, and creating action in the name of, by and for women. I had thought that feminism has its problems but it’s worth fighting for, worth sacrificing and sweating and crying and breaking down for.)
But how can it have “brought us together” when my implicit goal in feminist centered media justice is to write erased communities into existence—and the result of the work of the ’sister’ down the street is the erasure of the same communities I’m working to write into existence? (And no, I do NOT accept that I or any other fucking Latina out there should just be “grateful” that our work is being talked about while we remain hidden in the shadows. Even now, as a person who explicitly rejects feminism, I KNOW that Latinas have the right to demand that the work we do not be hidden in some dark silent space that nobody talks about and everybody avoids even as everybody else eats all the fruit that we pick. Yes, even Latina writers have the right to fucking unionize and come into the light.)
There is no “feminist movement” because the work being done is not just conflicting with the work of other “sisters”—it’s directly negating it.
For me, this shit has all been about community. I did not expressly state this in my original post. I was angry enough at the time that I really didn’t flesh out my ideas fully. Having since had the time to think things through more carefully and surf around several of the blogs that are talking about this—part of what I was trying to say was that feminists have a choice in deciding what community they belong to. And they are implicitly choosing to stay away from and otherwise distance themselves from communities that make them uncomfortable or worried for any reason. This has consequences for the communities that they refuse to work with. Most importantly, it has consequences because WOMEN belong to those communities that they refuse to work with.
Apr
12
brownfemipower, blank page
Filed Under Feminism | Leave a Comment
brownfemipower has taken her blog down.
I know it’s not her job or responsibility to educate me about my privilege or about the racism and sexism that women of color face. It’s not her responsibility to educate me about the problems with white feminism. At the same time, I have learned so much from her blog. And in concert with the class I took last semester – Race in Latin America and the Caribbean, taught by Winnifred Brown Glaude (hands down, best professor I have ever had) I’ve at least begun to build a framework where I can begin to understand these issues better. I have a very long way to go, but I credit these two women with helping me to even begin to comprehend these issues on a deeper level.
brownfemipower’s posts routinely blew me away and it’s hard to describe the loss. I know it’s nothing compared to those who had built a relationship with her over the years she had blogged. I won’t be taking any of the links to her in my own posts down in the selfish hope that she may reinstate her blog and resume posting, though the chances look slim to none.
There is a post at Feministe that gathers a number of posts together to explain what happened. From what I’ve read concerning the matter it is the one that has been the most constructive in trying to look at the larger issue. A short explanation rather lacking in eloquence – that when white women are given an opportunity to speak “for” women of color, they have a tendency to appropriate WOC work as their own and do not give credit where it is due. It erases people and their experiences, and it allows for this structure that privileges certain voices over others – that it is news when a white person says it, nothing important when a person of color (who has been working on the issue for years) says it – to continue.
It makes me cringe that mainstream feminism often regards the issues that women of color face as “special interest” and only worthy of coverage “when there’s time” or if they can get a “marketable” white woman to cover it. Sounds rather familiar, in that it is the same bullshit way that patriarchy devalues the issues women face as a whole.
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