I knew The Movement for Black Lives was preparing a new platform for release this summer, and this morning I found news of the launch in an email. It's really awesome. I hope folks will check it out and endorse the platform as an individual or group. You can access the platform, policy briefs, booklet (in English or Spanish!), list of organizations involved, platform endorsement form, and all kinds of images for use on blogs and social media here or using the link in the sidebar.
This weekend in Selma, Alabama, people have gathered to remember the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”. On March 7, 1965 -- in an extreme act of state violence -- Alabama state troopers brutally attacked civil rights marchers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an expression of solidarity to secure equal voting rights.
It’s significant to me in light of this collective remembering that by far the strongest connection I made in my reading of An Indigenous People's History of the United States (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) and The Cross and the Lynching Tree (James H. Cone) was to violence. From the beginning, violence pervaded colonizers' relationships not only to the land, but with Native Americans, Black people uprooted and brought here as slaves, and, later, any others perceived as a threatening in some way. This behavior – in one form or another – has been carried on against other “enemies” by colonialist descendants.
According to military historian John Grenier, American settlers created a fighting tradition that featured destruction of noncombatants, villages, and agricultural resources. For successive generations of Americans soldiers and civilians, the killing of Indian men, women, and children became a defining element of their first military tradition and thus part of a shared American identity.[i]
Though this first way of war lost its centrality after 1814, Grenier stresses that Americans must not forget that it has remained part of US military heritage. In similar ways, the Civil War, strategic bombing of Nazi Germany and Japan in World War II, and the Vietnam War, represent other military campaigns in which the United States “blurred or even erased the boundaries between combatants and noncombatants”.[ii]
There is another point made by Grenier that I find especially interesting in light of the pervasive shadow (and not-so-shadow) culture of violence that exists in the United States today.
It’s significant, says Grenier, that in the 1790s, settlers tired of what they saw as governmental and Army incompetence to secure the frontier, and so focused on destroying Indian villages and food supplies themselves:
They were unabashed in declaring that their intentions were to drive the Indians from lands on the western side of the Appalachian range and claim those lands as their own, whether the nation-state of the United States wanted them to do so or not.[iii]
Reading this, I thought about how this vigilante mentality evolved later into lynching of Black people and, to some extent, other minorities. I believe the same shadow of violence found expression through Jim Crow laws, segregation, attacks on voting rights, and, more recently, mass incarceration. Violence (and genocide) against Native Americans continued through the system of reservations, boarding schools, corporate land grabs and broken treaties.
I think it’s likely that many other kinds of both subtle and overt bullying and violence trace back to the same foundations. I think it’s all present anytime institutions or individuals try to make objects out of subjects. In my own profession, for example, I came to understand that diagnosing so-called mental illness by imposing a label based on a DSM checklist is an act of violence. It has nothing to do with life as any person actually lives and experiences it. It is attempted soul murder.
This culture of violence will continue to fragment people, communities and social institutions until we – the collective of US citizenry -- acknowledge the violence that operated beneath the ideals of freedom and brotherhood that we continue to tell ourselves is what America is all about. As a nation, we need to bring our history of violence into the light. Until we can do this, we need to remember all of our bloody Sundays.
[i] John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (Kindle Edition Locations 185-186, 203-205).
Very interesting indepth article by Janell Ross (formerly a reporter at the Tennessean) on the death of Marco McMillian:
Before his mysterious death in late February, Marco McMillian had hoped to lead this community, running for mayor with a reform-minded agenda. McMillian, 33, was black, and the first openly gay person to vie for public office in Mississippi.
The nation’s first black president may have put gay rights squarely in the center of righteous and patriotic American struggles for equality during his second inaugural speech in January. And the Supreme Court is currently considering two of the most important gay rights cases in U.S. history. But the way McMillian’s life is understood, and his death investigated, is also a barometer of sorts on the state of American equality.
“There is some complicated, heartbreaking, truly tragic and important stuff going on in Clarksdale,” said Omowale Akintunde, a University of Nebraska professor and Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. Akintunde came to town in early March to chronicle what he says is a story that America needs to see.
“What it tells us are some ugly truths about remaining bigotry and bias," he said, "even among those who have themselves been terrorized, exploited, excluded and demeaned.”
Thanks to an email from the Tennessee Equality Project, I finally found some links to language of the "right to bully" bill now being considered in the Tennessee legislature:
I have been relying on TNEP for news on LGBTQ issues in Tennessee...and there are many. I find this state to be pretty homophobic (as well as Islamophobic and xenophobic), and racial injustice is pervasive...lots of reasons to "Raise Cain" in Tennessee.
The Tennessee Equality Project works to promote equality throughout Tennessee and to serve as advocates of change by:
fighting any legislation in the State of Tennessee that would endanger the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens
actively pursuing measures that would provide protection for the GLBT community at both the state and local levels
educating citizens on the importance of lobbying their elected officials
providing the resources and training to assist through statewide initiatives
TNEP is organizing action against the "Right to Bully" Bill as well as last year's "Don't Say Gay" Bill. Here is the "take action" section from the TNEP email today, in case you are interested:
Take action today to promote safety in Tennessee Schools:
Become a sustaining donor to the Tennessee Equality Project by participating in the 12+12+12 campaign. Donate at least $12 for 12 months in 2012 to promote safe schools and promote equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families in Tennessee.
Judging by the number of returns on a Google search for this "right to bully" bill, I'd say Tennessee's laughingstock is already up over this. The new bill would amend existing anti-bullying law to give bullies a "loophole" if they bullied LGBTQ students on religious grounds. If I can ever find the actual text of the amendment, I'll come back and add a link for it.
Here are some other links, including one for taking action via change.org...
Back in November, Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D) made national headlines for delivering an impassioned speech condemning legislation that required schools to adopt anti-bullying policies that exempted students who bullied based on “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction.” As a result of Whitmer’s very public opposition, the Michigan legislature eventually stripped the so-called “license to bully” provision from the final bill and now the state leader is hoping to duplicate that success in Tennessee, where lawmakers are considering a very similar clause.
Jorge Rivas at Colorlines has a great video interview of Dee Rees, director of "Pariah" and actress Kim Wayans. The video brings out many aspects of racial injustice in the entertainment industry. I really resonated with both Dees and Wayans when they spoke about their desire for gretaer diversity in stories and storytelling. Here's an excerpt from the short article, and the video on YouTube:
It’s no secret that films that tell stories about people of color have a hard time getting made. Seasoned Oscar-nominated directors like John Singleton, Spike Lee and Gregory Nava have a hard enough time finding investors to back their films, so when Dee Rees decided she wanted to tell a coming of age story about a young, black lesbian, she couldn’t go the traditional route and went as far selling her Brooklyn apartment to raise funds.
“We knew that if we could just get the film done, that regardless of sexuality, race and identity, people would be able to see themselves in different parts of the story,” Rees told Colorlines.com last month, as she awaited the release of her feature directorial debut “Pariah.”
“We’d go to pitch meetings and the moment we said ‘black, lesbian, coming of age,’ they would turn around, validate our parking and hand us a bottle of water.”
Keli Goff's article at Huffington Post begins with a story of her mother's encounter with a bully many years ago, then connects bullying past and present:
Most of us would like to believe that the kind of prejudice my mom faced is a thing of the past. The thinking goes, "Sure prejudice exists but it's more subtle" or as an older family friend once said, "People no longer spit in your face but in your food."
But in recent days we've all been reminded that this is not true and that the kind of prejudice and open hostility my mom faced fifty years ago is still alive and well in America's schools.
The idea of moving from a position of tolerance toward one of empathy is an important notion for all human relating. Lauren Reichelt at Tikkun Daily Blog interviews Bishop Gene Robinson for his thoughts on this idea. Read the whole article here.
"I think first, we have to talk about tolerance not being enough. I have a friend who says the only thing you really have to tolerate is hemorrhoids.
And that kind of says it. You tolerate something that is unpleasant, unwanted but you have to learn to put up with. So when we talk about greater tolerance, whether it be around racial lines, or gender lines or sexual orientation lines, you know, its not much of a step forward. I mean, tolerance beats violence and negativity by miles! But tolerance is not the end that we’re seeking. I believe that we need to celebrate the diversity of races and gender and sexual orientation, and so I will never settle for tolerance only because I think that is far short of what we can do and far short of what is needed."
To reach out to and sustain relationships with so-called “minority users,” progressive media makers need to move beyond their core white audiences (pale), reach out to women and queer communities (male), and stop being so serious all the time (that is, wonkish, humorless, and stale).
These are not matters of political correctness—they are matters
of political clout, democratic representation, and sustainability.
Great article by Jessica Clark and Tracy Van Slyke about "why 'legacy' progressive media must reinvent themselves to remain relevant." The article is an excerpt of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media (2010, New Press), written by a former executive editor and publisher of In These Times.
