REFLECTIONS ON FEMALE MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARY:

In 1969, Elena Poniatowska wrote the book, Here’s to You, Jesusa, based on the life story of Jesusa Palancares de Aguilar, a female Mexican Revolutionary fighting at a time when women were not considered as revolutionaries. “Like so many women, Jesusa is a part of the history of Mexico. But Mexico doesn’t welcome them, it doesn’t even acknowledge them,” noted Poniatowska, who as a Mexican voice from Polish origins, has created a name for herself in the role as intellectual and novelist.

I first discovered the writings of Elena Poniatowska, when I first read her novel, Tinisima, a novel reflecting on the life of another revolutionary and artist Tina Modotti. I highly recommend the novel as well. If you have ever seen the film Frida, on the life of Frida Kahlo, the character portrayed by Ashley Judd in the film was Tina.  It was a tail of connections that led me to know women who have had significant influence in Mexican history. I had been a fan of Frida, for as long as I can remember. She started this race in me to find other voices from Mexico.

As Frida Kahlo was one of the most striking artists of the 20^th Century from Mexico, whose life is radically admirable. Tina Modotti was a revolutionary, an actress, a photographer, and more. But unlike Tina and Frida who came from a life of privilege, Jesusa Palancares de Aguilar, a dark-skinned Oaxacan, came from poverty.

The author reflects on Jesusa’s callused raised hands in the wind, “I see Jesusa in the sky, in the dirt, everywhere, like God, the masculine.” Jesusa’s life was so strenuous and battling, the author gives the heroine the respect to put her on the same level of honor as any of her male counterparts in the 1910 revolution, even if it makes her appear masculine. The use of language and grammatical male focus lifts her up to being never undermined in verbal emphasis.

However, this does not stop her from exalting the feminine either: “I am a woman that cries. I’m a woman that speaks, I’m the woman that waits, I’m the woman that strives, I’m a female spirit, I’m a woman that screams. I’m the woman moon, I’m the woman interpreter, I’m the female star, I’m the female heaven, they know me in the Heaven, and god acknowledges me. Listen Moon, Listen Southern Cross Woman, Listen Morning Star. How will we find rest? We are tired and the day has still not come” (Poniatowska).

Whether it is Jesusa, Tina, Frida, or Elena, the voice that has not been heard loud enough is the voice of the Mexican Female Revolutionary in arms, in thought, in art, in literature, and in fighting for human dignity. I encourage you to read Poniatowska. She has my recommendation.

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Other Mexican Female journalists or novelists to read are: Alma Guillermoprieto, check out her memoir “Dancing with Cuba”, and Nina Marie Martínez, and look out for her novel, “Caramba”. 

REFLECTIONS ON EYEWITNESS LIBYA EVENT IN WASH, DC:

On Friday June 24, 2011 at 7pm, I attended an event at a Church in Washington, DC. The focus of the event was regarding Cynthia McKinney, former congress member and presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2004 and 2008, and her support team of experts, who recently went to Tripoli, Libya to gather first-hand evidence on the current crisis that has only escalated with US and NATO’s involvement.

Her team recorded and witnessed that what the mainstream media and US Government has been depicting to the public is just not true. Once again the US Government is lying to the American people and the world. 

The meeting at a small church in DC had an audience consisting primarily of black middle to low-income Americans.  However, diversity of the group was present with other ethnic groups present in small numbers.  The first portion of the event was highly motivating and informative with several speakers before McKinney. These voices were passionate and open to criticizing the tactics that President Obama has been reflecting. Rather than being the President of Hope and Change, he had disappointed the entire room by following the footsteps of Colin Powel and Condalisa Rice, and by being more loyal to corporate elite oil interest than to preserving human dignity.

Obama has followed the George Bush path of lying to the American people about a war in yet another Muslim country that is a strategic oil producing nation, and his strategic bombing of Tripoli has in deed destroyed a university and has killed innocent civilians.  Even more frustrating to the audience was that Obama has been an African-American President bombing an African Nation.

The Eyewitness Team has noted that the Rebel groups in Libya have also not been well truly captured in mainstream media. The half-truths have hidden that in fact the rebels are quite racist and have, without hiding it, targeted innocent black Libyan’s with murder, rape, and intimidation to the point of mass departures and fear.

Why Libya? Why not Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or the Ivory Coast? I am all for justice and supporting human rights against dictators; but US military interest in Libya as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait, has always proven to be about natural resources that corporations such as Exxon, Mobil, Haliburton, and many friends of George H. W. Bush. Libya has been an interest in capitalist gain for a considerable time because, as with Cuba, it has been independent and uninfluenced by the imperial interests of the US, UK, or France even during the Colonial era.

The most impressive speaker of the Eyewitness presentation gave the audience a better understanding of Libya’s history alongside the history of its fellow neighbors in Uganda, Kenya, and Egypt. While the British had strategically chose the leaders to follow independence in Kenya and Uganda for business interests that would be obedient to the Common Wealth, they stifled democracy seeking patriots of the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya, who had consisted of many former Africans forced to fight for the British in World War II; leaving a trail of blood and open scars. In Uganda, the British did not want the socialist leaning freedom fighters to succeed, so they aligned power with a man notoriously known as Idi Amin. In Egypt, the resistance to British imperialism was Nasser who empowered his people with independence; but when he did fall from power, the US had well worked the leadership of Egypt with Sadat and then Mubarak. Gadaffi was inspired by Nasser, and ever since Nasser’s fall, he has been a pariah since, because Libya had been so independent and unable to break. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, first as the head of the CIA and then as vice-president, George H W Bush had oil interest in finding ways to chisel at the regime in hopes of change for corporate benefit.

When Cynthia McKinney spoke she was straight-forward about her interest in going to the ground level and making sure what the US Government and mainstream media was saying to the American public was truthful. But it was not. Now if one goes back the Bush-Cheney-terms in office, as a Congress-woman, McKinney was one of the very few elected officials to pursue impeachment measures and, as well, during Donald Rumsfeld’s hearing, she was the only one asking questions that he evaded to answer on Weapons of Mass Destruction.

As the night carried on, after my energies and overall feeling of solidarity with the audience felt good, the event took a nosedive. Rather than an informative meeting, the event turned the stage over to a local preacher who began to push the audience to donate money. The audience began to fracture from unity. The continuous drive to seek donations from a mostly economically struggling demographic seemed disheartening.

When I spoke up about the movement being more than just about fund-raising, I was silenced. What I had wanted to say was that I believe the way out of our current frustration with the military corporate governance needs to lean towards social togetherness and resistance, and not seeking to break capital with capital. But don’t take my word for it, Grace Lee Boggs in her recent interview with Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, iterates that before we can have a political and social revolution, we have to have a personal revolution, where the way we think about change is beyond economic interests.

Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Gandhi made their bold changes to society by not pushing the profit margin. They gathered the hearts and minds of the people and with their leadership made enough voice to change the acceptable standards. If we choose to fight the economic robber-barons through economic means, they will always win because money is all they know how to use as a tool to suppress the masses, and they know it well.

By the end of the night, I was so turned-off by the final show of the Eyewitness Event, that I walked away disappointed and yet empowered to write more. We cannot make significant change in society if we play by the market system's imbalances. Information sessions should not be tools for political agendas when the higher value of social needs is beyond politics. That is why, while walking away from the event, I realized why I truly loved Ralph Nader, and always chose him rather than the Green Party.

Ralph Nader has always remained a strong idealist, true to his cause and never wavering. His speech at my college in 2001 is still significant in my mind, because he urges us to “Raise our Expectations”, don’t settle for a political party system that only supplies you with the illusion of democracy, but push for and reach for a true democracy that holds corporations, individuals, and elected representatives accountable for their actions.    

 

SLUTWALK, UKRAINE, FEM-EX, AND MORE…

Since my initial blog posting of my reflections on the current SlutWalk phenomenon more and more exciting acts of Civil Disobedience have been storming the world and my awareness of them has been from media-news, events that I’ve gone to first-hand, and to current books I happen to be reading as we speak.

The SlutWalk craze is simultaneously spreading around wealthy Western nations, just as in Middle-Eastern countries Women are standing up for their rights as well. Last week, a significant triumphant call in Saudi Arabia had women protest by getting in cars and driving throughout the city defying the ban on female driving.

This week in solidarity to both movements, in the Ukraine, women protestors drove in their cars topless yet veiled their heads and faces to reflect the challenges of imposed repression on women due to strict religious codes in the East, and women as sex-objects in the West. The Ukraine activist group is a notorious feminist movement known as FEMEN. Their activism has turned the tides of making noise.

Back in Washington DC, on Tuesday night, I was at an award ceremony at the Canadian Embassy where the Canadian Ambassador to the US, presented the Julia Taft Award to the UNDP Afghanistan Project; and in his opening to Helen Clark, he praised that UNDP projects are always better implemented and run when a woman is at the reins of command. Like Helen Clark, Julia Taft in her lifetime was an international humanitarian worker who led the United Nations Development Program for a considerable length of time. 

Thursday night, hours earlier to typing this post, I attended an empowering event by a rather new community based organization known as FEM-EX, not to be confused with the Ukrainian group, but perhaps they could collaborate one-day in the future. The event included presentations to empower women in America, from youth oriented all-women drum ensembles, poets reading aloud Eve Ensler-like monologues, singers promoting self-confidence and self-love, dance instructors encouraging self-expression through erotic dance moves on chairs and even a strip-pole, and yoga-instructors encouraging trust in people with one-on-one body lifts.

To top it all off, I reached a part of Wangari Maathai’s memoir where she discusses the intensity of the 1990’s in Kenya, where the push for better Democracy and accountability led to open confrontation with the corrupted government. After the male protestors were detained, the Mothers went out and protested for the release of their sons.

When the government tried to crack down on the elder women with the police, “the women refused to be intimidated and they did not run. Instead, they did something very brave: Several of them stripped, some of them completely naked, and showed the police officers their breasts. One of the most powerful of African traditions concerns the relationship between a woman and a man who could be her son. Every woman old enough to be your mother is considered like your own mother and expects to be treated with respect. As they bared their breasts, what the mothers were saying to the policemen in their anger and frustration as they were being beaten was ‘By showing you my nakedness, I curse you as I would my son for the way you are abusing me” (Unbowed, Maathai).

Whether she is your Mother, or a stranger never abuse Women! Respect is the key. 

LESSON FROM WANGARI MAATHAI:

I have recently been enthralled in the pages of the book “Unbowed” by Wangari Maathi. Her memoir is powerful and moving. Like Shirin Ebadi’s “Iran Awaking” and Somaly Mam’s “The Return to Lost Innocence”, Maathi’s memoir reflects pure power in the face of oppressive forces.

When reading through the pages, I can only think that I had wished I had this book when I was in Malawi as a Peace Corps volunteer. She enlightens people who are set to make projects in trying conditions bringing culture, history, environment, and personal life experience together. Not only would the book empower prospective Peace Corps volunteers, but also and more importantly her story would empower Kenyan and Malawian women as well as women from almost any developing nation.

As with Winona LaDuke and Vandana Shiva, Wangari brings with her lifework an inclusion of ecological awareness in bringing together social problems and environmental concerns. With her Green Belt Movement in Kenya, her project “grew from a tree-planting program into one that planted ideas as well,” encouraging women and men to identify problems and find the source of where these problems root.

“I knew that we could not live with a political system that killed creativity, nurtured corruption, and produced people who were afraid of their own leaders,” this strength brought Maathai into continual confrontation between her and her government. The Green Belt Movement not only became a tree planting organization, a women’s rights organization, or a human rights organization, but a voice for democratic growth.

When her government began to target her and disregard her for being an educated woman, she responded with her being a woman was irrelevant, and that the complexity of the problems in society required the use of not anatomy from below the waist, but anatomy of what lies above the neck (Maathai). Critical thinking had little to do with gender, but the ability of the human brain to solve problems of environment, economy, and social inclusion.

“Every experience has a lesson. Every situation has a silver lining. Each person needs to raise their consciousness to a certain level so that they will not give up or succumb. If your consciousness is at such a level, you are willing to do what you believe is the right thing – popular opinion notwithstanding” (Wangari Maathai).

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Another great Kenyan voice, Ngugi wa Thiongo, read his book: "Petals of Blood" or "Devil on the Cross".

ECONOMIC CALCULATION

As we have all learned that in the current times Americans, who have a job, are working harder and for less money than they had thirty years ago. The cost of living and inflation has made the value of the dollar go in opposing directions. Not to mention, the stress of the overworked and, the counter, unemployment, have made America a very depressed nation.

If the government wanted to make considerable changes, they could impose lowering the cost of living and deflation on housing and basic needs like food and clothing. Then the next step would be to convince business owners to change the 40+ hour work week to a 32 hour work week. With the extra hours, businesses could be encouraged to hire more staff to lower the unemployment rate.

With the extra day to rest for the overworked, they could spend more time enjoying life, and they would also have more time to spend money on leisure, education, and other consuming options. As well, the newly employed would be able to now afford to consume as well. This would be if the cost of living were low enough not to stress finances. Rather nurturing excessive competition, we could take home less to allow others to have some opportunity, which give both, more time to enjoy the art of living.

 

However, the lifestyle of the European will not work in America. The 4 day work week and low-cost of living to allow more quality time in society may have logic if our society wasn’t so caught up in the dependency of oil that dictates the cost of all other products, and if the bulk of the business suits were not so damn greedy.

Economic calculation in the end is not Human calculation. But would it really hurt to enjoy three-day weekends all the time and know at the same time your neighbor isn’t out on the street broke. You may not be able to enjoy a luxury car, but you could have the luxury to breathe. With the looks of the current economy, if you are working now anyway, you won’t be able to pay the bills on time.  So the real question is, when will our government start regulating the economy again and get out of big business' pockets? Most likely never without further significant social unrest and by then it would be too late to calculate.

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Look out for my future post: Why I am not a Capitalist.

LESSON FROM GRACE LEE BOGGS:

Like my recent discovery of the 78 year old activist, Frances Fox Piven, and her emphasis on The Nature of Disruptive Power, where social actions of ordinary people rise up to propel against falsely determined structures; I more recently discovered the power of Grace Lee Boggs.

At 95, she proves to the Hippy generation that activism doesn’t stop when you retire at 65. Her latest book is entitled: The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism in the 21^st Century. Though she was born at the time of Emma Goldman and Mother Jones, notorious Human Rights Activists during the early 20^th Century, Grace Lee Boggs has been able to share her lessons from that era with us today.

Grace Lee wants us to grow our souls. She believes now is the time for the next great American Revolution. In an interview on June 3, 2011 between her, Tavis Smiley, and Cornel West, she spoke of grassroots and self-reliance. “We have to call upon more than just governance and elections to change society. You cannot find a thermometer to tell us the temperature of the people, but we see the beginnings of trying to make a way out of our current No-Way.”

Like Noam Chomsky and Harry Belafonte, both in their 80’s, she brings a sharp dispute that age is no excuse for failing to make noise in regards to the failures of our current system to provide for human dignity. “Jobs have disappeared. We have to re-imagine our concept of work.” How we have made our living over the last thirty years is quite different than how American’s made their living during the Great Depression. We now have to re-imagine how we make a living in a different way. Before we have the political and social revolution, we need to start by having a personal revolution. We need to, according to Boggs, change our personal agendas and not focus on monetary wealth or self-gain, especially when it is at the cost of others. The competitive nature of our culture is unhealthy.

Sustainable Activism takes the suffering of the negative and turns it into a tool to gain progress. Much like Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialects, a negative such as Auschwitz, becomes a valuable history lesson so that we are responsible enough to never let it happen again. Boggs notes that we should not preoccupy ourselves with just the negative but emphasize the positive as well, “Connect the negative to make new positives. Love and Hope still exist,” even if it has been smeared in political campaign dialogue.

She iterates that the differences between the Great Depression and the current Recession, is that the 1920’s was during the hay-day of mass-production. The different forms of work today make the lifestyle of the 1920’s no longer feasible, especially with computers, internet, cellular phones, and the nature of office work. Work can no longer be the main focus of people’s lives.

This is a creative struggle for those who work for it, and being a Revolutionary means being a Solution-ary. Authentic simpler living, “We must live simple so that others have the opportunity to live. Live with each other.”  

LESSONS ON FORGIVENESS and Oppression:

Still fresh in my mind is the May 13, 2011 Newark New Jersey Peace And Education Summit. Now skeptics would say Newark is a mess-up of a city and why should anyone care? But the Dalai Lama and Noble Prize winners, Jody Williams and Shirin Ebadi, as well as Somaly Mam and Martin Luther King III, cared enough to partake in the event. Numerous Human Rights Activists made Newark a platform to speak up.

At one point in the opening of the conference a debate took place between the Dalai Lama and Jody Williams. The Dalai Lama’s strategy of non-violence focuses on the individual transcending inner conflict, urging his Buddhist followers and world admirers to let go of anger and achieve tranquility. However, Williams and Shirin Ebadi caution us against easy forgiveness, suggesting that anger at oppression could be a tool for fighting injustice. “Forgiving the oppressor while he is committing injustice, is permitting him to continue.” Almost parallel reflection, Christianity’s ideal of paying for your sins after you die allows certain individuals falsely to conclude to continue to sin throughout his or her life without ever feeling guilty. The misunderstanding allows the crimes to continue. 

“It is not that I am just an angry human being, it is anger at injustice” Williams continues, “I am still struggling with inner peace and I am not sure I will ever work it out.” I can agree with Jody Williams’ perspective at this time as well; she is worried that too much talk of tranquility contributes to the stigma that Peace Advocates are seen as ‘wimps’ in the public eye. But she retorts, “Shirin Ebadi is no wimp. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, is no wimp. Martin Luther King Jr. was no wimp. Gandhi was no wimp.” Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace prize because she was a lawyer in Iran who fought for women’s and children’s rights under the repressive regime of the Ayatollah, and she was unable to keep quiet. The Dalai Lama has been living in exile from Tibet most of his life, but has not been silenced. Somaly Mam as well, continues in Cambodia to save women and children from being trafficked into forced prostitution.

Jody Williams added in that Peace had become synonymous with weakness. The Dalai Lama agreed, saying that Tranquility should not be confused with Ease. Jody Williams advocates that compassion of activists must continue to push the voice of the people; refusing those in power to enjoy their luxury on top; making noise; and nonviolently forcing compassion onto those who cannot see humanity in themselves or others.

Also at the event was Martin Luther King III, the son of the infamous preacher, and he noted, “There is a great disparity between what we imagine our society to be, and what is really going on, … We preach peace and yet practice war, … We say we care about our children, but we pay our Athletes more in one year then we pay our Teachers in a whole lifetime.”

“We can think of Forgiveness only after the Injustice ends,” Ebadi confirms. Timing is important, “Justice is a way to overcome Injustice. Recognizing Revenge would only perpetuate Injustice. Trial and Court would address the crime” (Williams).

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Book recommendation on forgiveness: Simon Weisenthal “The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.” Regarding the challenges of a Jewish Holocaust Survivor and his confrontation with a German during WWII.

World Women Writers (short list to start your summer reading):

Recently an important friend asked me for a list of writers to empower her political frustrations in our current world, afterwards I felt why not share the list with you:

Realists:

**1) Somaly Mam -- "Return to Lost Innocence" -- Cambodian Human Rights Activist

**2) Shirin Ebadi -- "Iran Awakening" -- Iranian Nobel Peace winner

3) Alma Guillermoprieto -- "Dancing with Cuba" Mexican-American

4) Nina Marie Martinez -- "Caramba" -- Mexican novelist

5) Elena Poniatowska -- "Here's to you, Jesusa" Polish-Mexican novelist

6) Tsitsi Dangarembga - "Nervous Condition" -- Zimbabwean novelist

7) Wangari Maathai -- "Unbowed" -- Kenyan Nobel Peace winner

8) Gioconda Belli -- "The Country Under My Skin" -- Nicaraguan novelist
9) Maxine Hong Kingston "Women Warrior" Chinese-American novelist
10) Leslie Feinberg "Stone Butch Blues" Transgendered Warrior

Surrealists:

1) Angela Carter "Passion of a New Eve"

2) Ingebord Bachmann "Malina"

3) Helen Zahavi -- "Dirty Weekend"

Male-Writer with Strong Female character:

1) Jorge Amado --"Tieta" -- Brazilian novelist

2) Tariq Ali -- "The Stone Woman" Pakistani novelist

3) Pramoedya Ananta Toer -- "The Girl from the Coast" Indonesian novelist

Essays not worth missing:

1) Inga Muscia -- "Cunt"

2) Eve Ensler -- "Insecure at Last"

Poets:

1) Audre Lorde

2) June Jordan

3) Adrienne Rich

More to Follow soon....

Thoughts on the SlutWalk protests:

So I was intellectually debating the issue over in my mind yesterday, whether the Slutwalk undermines Women's Liberation. I find that the issue is complex. 1) The key is the important issue that anyone should be able dress anyway they want without it leading to another exploiting, raping, or taking advances on her or him: "Never without my Permission". 2) However, my concern comes in that this form of protest in its context still focuses on the visual and the nature of Western Image of women as sex-object, rather than redefining human in-all-forms as individual subjects. 3) This combines my knowledge of the growing protests in the US and globally by Women for equal rights: in Saudi Arabia, Women have recently staged a mass protest in cars by pushing civil-disobedience to overcome the false law that women cannot drive cars, or the recent protests in other Muslim countries. All the while in Congo, the issues of mass rape is nearly a genocide happening as we speak. 

The ISSUE of treatment toward our fellow human beings is Immediate. The More Noise the better, that is why the SlutWalk Protest is important to make noise, but we should also continue beyond the object to reach higher Subjective reality. I recommend the book by Inga Muscio's controversial manifesto "C-nt", She has some great perspectives on "Knowing One-self", "Loving One-self" and "Expressing One-self"; and Eve Ensler's book "Insecure at Last".

What is Human Ecology?

For me, Human Ecology means, the study of the relationship between humans and their natural and social environments. Inspired by writers like Murray Bookchin, Paulo Friere, Wangari Maathai, and Winona LaDuke, who discuss that – more than ever, nearly all, ecological problems are social problems, and the relationship of society to nature, and how our communities affect the environment around us are important to consider thoughtfully…  “The problems which many people face today in "defining" themselves, in knowing ‘who we are’—problems that feed a vast self-identity—are by no means personal ones. These problems exist not only for private individuals; they exist for modern society as a whole.” – We suffer not only as individuals from alienation and confusion over our identities and goals; our entire society, conceived as a single entity, seems unclear about its own nature and sense of direction, and the greater issues of society politically, economically, and historically (US and World culture and what are we doing to our neighbors) … - “If earlier societies tried to foster a belief in the virtues of cooperation and caring, thereby giving an ethical meaning to social life, modern society fosters a belief in the virtues of competition and egotism, thereby divesting human association of all meaning—except, perhaps, as an instrument for gain and mindless consumption.” 

            Human Ecology is ‘Education for Critical Consciousness’. Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, generally known as British anthropologists, She worked in communities separate from mainstream Western values and studied cultures such as the Samoa, searching to find universal values and finding vast differences in conduct.  … He contributed to human ecology in the realm of the ecology of mind. He was opposed to the way scientists try to reduce everything to matter; his goal was to re-introduce the mind into the equation. He emphasized the importance of looking at the world not just through reductionist logic but to understand the connections in the "pattern which connects" all of our minds through stories.

            I can relate to my own experience in Indonesia traveling to the famous Buddhist temple Borobudur, with two Muslim women. Vast differences and yet vast similarities; or when I was in Malawi, teaching students from various tribal backgrounds and realizing race is not merely black and white but each tribe was a race in itself, infinite varieties and variables, and they also had their own languages to match. Human Ecology brings together the living world with man’s genuine potential for responsibility to care for society and nature.