S.O.N.G.

By SONG members Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Manju Rajendran & Isabell Moore

Published on: January 01, 2008 (first appeared in Left Turn Magazine)

Ask most progressive activists and organizers to characterize this moment and you will hear about gloom (How can this man actually be president?) and doom (This war has no end. Our use of environmental resources is killing the planet). But writer, biologist, and UBUNTU activist Kriti Sharma, emphasizes this suggestion, “Even on the eve of the end of the earth, plant a tree.” (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith). Accordingly, while there is doom and gloom (or even because of these two circumstances) there must also be bloom: growth, life, celebration, and beauty sustained by deep faith and critical hope.

This is not an obvious point. Many of us working on the Left are informed by Marxist, Anarchist, and other revolutionary traditions that focus on the role religious institutions have played in distracting oppressed people from their material conditions and maintaining capitalism, patriarchy, hierarchy, and dominance. We draw cynical conclusions about the potential of spirituality or religion—or ourselves—to build a just world, and we see the role that many faiths and institutions have played in reinforcing or justifying state power.

“The religious right appropriated the name and the institution of the spirit-based movement for justice, they captured it and wrestled it to the ground in order to put a different spirit out there. They wedged, split, and promoted domination by a small minority. They are going exactly the opposite way under the rubric of religion in a way that violates the deepest meanings of spirit and faith. We can’t allow it to be done. We have to try to create an alternative because it’s so deceptively false, and because it’s the right thing to do,” says the Reverend Nelson Johnson.

This section asserts that faith does not have to be either “false consciousness” deluding us into complacency or fear-based conservatism. Faith, used intentionally, can be one essential resource that allows us to sustain our action to create a world that is radically different than the one we are now surviving. The vectors of faith that we have named in the title of this section “religion” and “spirituality” have complicated relationships to each other and to our work. They are not interchangeable, they are not opposites and they are not necessarily companion terms, nor can either stand alone. While we have not arrived at strict definitions of “religion” and “spirituality,” we use both terms to gesture towards the places that we find our sustenance and faith.

Some of us access our spirits through a particular religious tradition. Some of us engage in spiritual practice that has not been institutionalized or validated as “religion” in the US landscape, but nonetheless draws on traditions that have evolved over centuries. Some of us engage critically with established religions, seeking to transform institutional norms and access faith at the same time. Some of us are involved in particularly libratory strains of dominant religions. Some of us work with our ancestors to develop spiritual practices on our own terms. Some of us bravely inhabit and represent religious traditions that have been demonized and slandered by the Religious Right. Some of us read what Audre Lorde and Che Guevara say about love as scripture to guide our spirits through struggle.

The three of us, all organizers living and working in the South for most of our lives, and currently all living in North Carolina, find our faith and our growth planted in this southern soil. We offer this piece, based on conversations with faith-full folks in our lives, as witness to spirituality and religion as resources for (and challenges to) movement building in the South, especially North Carolina, with the hope that it resonates for organizers in other regions of the United States.

National murmurs

There are increasing murmurs nationally toward welcoming spirituality and religion into Left spaces, and a growing faith-based radical movement. In the words of Stone Circles co-directors Claudia Horwitz and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, “We are moving toward a doing that grows more deliberately out of being; an understanding that freedom from external systems of oppression is dynamically related to liberation from our internal mechanisms of suffering.” Examples abound. At the SisterSong “Let’s Talk About Sex” May 2007 national conference in Chicago, women and trans people participated in large opening and closing spiritual ceremonies involving invocation of God(desse)s and ancestral spirits. At the first US Social Forum in June 2007, a Healing and Spiritual Practice Tent was one of the hubs of activity, hosting well-attended workshops, ceremonies, and therapeutic sessions. Kaliya Hamlin of Integrative Activism in Berkeley maintains a directory of over 300 programs and organizations connecting spiritual and religious practice with movement work.

Vimala Rajendran, a devout Christian from a liberation theology perspective, and one of the co-founders of community access station The People’s Channel in Chapel Hill, says she feels more religious and spiritual people are leaning to the left lately, and more progressive people are turning to spirituality. “People are realizing that spirituality goes hand in hand with works on earth. Personal stories are showing them that we don’t have to be on our own. There is a force out there greater than ourselves, which is also inside of those who seek.”

Transformative interventions

Many of the spiritually based activists, organizers, and community builders we spoke to saw spirituality as a key intervention into the often toxic culture that hurts us as individuals and invades our movement customs. They told us that their practices of faith had potential to be both personally healing and transformative of movement culture.

“The reason we are learning how to heal, by practicing on ourselves is because our movement needs healing,” says Nia Wilson, executive director of SpiritHouse. She describes the basic spirituality sustaining her work and healing as a belief in “first breath”. In Alex’s Story, an audio record of her journey of healing from sexual assault, she says, “Our first breath is divine. It is who we really are. Healing means honoring that first breath. We can always get in touch with our purpose for living.”

Purpose and spirit are central to the work of SpiritHouse, which uses art, self-expression and resource distribution to affirm the bodies, minds, and spirits of Durham’s black communities. In all their innovative programs, they use spiritual and healing practices to create a space where “our whole selves are safe and held.” Wilson and other members of the organization see this spiritual work as more and more necessary in a progressive movement characterized by burnout, exhaustion and pain.

For Afiya Carter, former director of the Weaver Street Community center in a public housing community, and current special events coordinator for W.D. Hill Community Center, both in Durham, spirituality provides a needed critique to the norms of movement culture. She remembers getting involved with local activism as a young mother and realizing “there was no place for kids to go.” Meetings that swallowed up what she calls her “hard earned time” and offered neither food, nor childcare, nor any other form of nurturing seemed to guarantee that working-class people would be excluded.

Carter, a practicing Muslim since her early childhood, was taught that the Prophet Mohammed married enslaved, disabled, and otherwise shunned women to prove that all people were worthy of respect and love. She was taught that according to Islamic law, women were never to be considered the property of men and that the education and freedom of women was the measure of a strong community. Her grandparents’ belief in religious diversity gave her a “broadened sense of who was in the world and who was valid,” and taught her that difference is a requirement for organizing. Afiya’s spirituality leads her to create community events that include centering the needs of mothers and children and embrace the complexity of communities in the making.

Spiritual practice can also transform our erotic selves and bring erotic spiritual energy into our movements. Calling her speech at the 2007 SisterSong Reproductive Justice Conference “testimony to those who have lost their bodies and lives in our communities through being commodified, criminalized, sexualized, colonized, and stigmatized,” Cara Page, creator of Deeper Waters and national director of the Committee for Population, Women and the Environment, invoked countless unknown ancestors as well as one specific ancestor, Audre Lorde. “When we are able to be sexual voluntarily and consensually we are able to have the freedom of choosing to receive touch and to give it, to receive energy and life and to give it, to possibly even receive love and transform it.” So creating community requires understanding our own relationships to life, energy, and love in the face of social and physical death.

Caitlin Breedlove, co-director of Southerners On New Ground (SONG) notes that since she and co-director Paulina Hernandez have turned the organization over to their deep faith in the queer working-class people of color communities that they are building, “things just started to go right with SONG.” Breedlove notes that working in a community committed to her whole spirit makes her less susceptible to burnout because she understands that she is valued through a long-term love relationship, not the need for immediate results. While many organizations focus on being against, “We can organize around longing,” Breedlove testifies, “We can organize around love.” Breedlove and co-director Paulina Hernandez envision their upcoming organizing schools as “revivals,” not as extended workshops or places for skill-accumulation, but rather as ways to “ignite the kindred,” to wake up our souls.

History and tradition

While spiritual and religious based movements may look “new” to some, many of the organizers who blessed us with stories draw on spiritual teachings that they recognize as historically rooted strategies for the survival of oppressed people. When asked whether he sees a major “increase” in spiritual and religious organizing in the South, Russell Herman—who coaches organizations and organizers to strengthen movement-building across North Carolina—says, “I’m not prepared to say there’s a big increase, if you take a 50-100 year span. I do see more religious language being used in contexts where I didn’t see it, oh, 20 years ago maybe—but I wouldn’t call that faith-based movement work. One factor is an unconscious adoption of the religious tone of the current mainstream society. And then sometimes there’s a deliberate attempt to use the mainstream language to communicate with people who are most used to that language. For some organizers, that is their language.”

Many organizers also told us that they purposefully both draw on and update traditional practices to strengthen their organizing. Omisade Burney of Anansi Productions, a consulting organization based in Durham, explains, “I believe in the interconnectedness of spirituality and activism and the mighty and righteous work of indigenous leaders tethered to ancestral imperatives in local communities and small organizations.” Burney tells us this intersection of spiritual grounding and movement has a long history in communities of color, from Yoruba, an African-based spiritual practice based on the belief that ancestors communicate and look after those of us living in the present, to the theology of elders from the civil rights era.

Black christian churches are perhaps the best known—though not the only—originators of spirit-based movements in the Southeastern United States. Many organizations drawing on African-American and working-class traditions of struggle in the South are currently involved with challenging the mainstream appropriation of religious spaces as havens for conservative, anti-worker, homophobic, and anti-feminist values through a faith in the present potential of Southern communities.

In Greensboro, the Beloved Community Center (BCC), draws on Martin Luther King Jr.’s concept of beloved community and “works towards social and economic relations that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth, and potential of every person.” Reverend Nelson Johnson, one of the founders of the group, started his activism as a student liberal integrationist, then was a Black power advocate, next a pan-Africanist, then a labor organizer and student of Marxism, and is now a is a pastor of Faith Community Church. “We are all spiritual and everything is spiritual. Spirit is inherent in being. Through all my different periods as an organizer, I was driven by a sense of spirit.”

Johnson and the BCC work closely with Word and World, a Greensboro-based national organization that draws the theological work of Black civil rights leaders into the present. Word and World, a popular education school committed to reinventing theological practice for social justice, practices biography as theology, literally reading the lives of activist leaders as the work of God, and therefore as scripture to build faith for movement in the present. As they plan their next school to focus on the life of Audre Lorde, Word and World refuses to translate theological work into nostalgia for the past, or a conservative view of the present. They exemplify a tradition-based but future-oriented theological practice of community embrace that resonates with the work of the Washington, DC-based Al-Fatiha Foundation (see organizational profiles).

At their most recent school in July of 2007, Word and World partnered with the Beloved Community Center and the Southern Faith Labor and Community Alliance (SFLCA) in a focus on economic justice and issues effecting North Carolina workers. Founded in 2005 in Greensboro, the SFLCA framing document, authored by the Reverends Nelson Johnson and J. Herbert Nelson, states, “We believe that Dr. King’s theological understanding that ‘unearned suffering is redemptive’ speaks to the rich treasure of suffering born out of slavery and Jim-Crowism. This treasure can flow into a transformative movement with work and labor at its center.”

They make it clear from the beginning, “From the perspective of faith, the South has reflected the dual trend of progressive, relevant theology on the one hand and backward, negative theology on the other hand. Since the Reconstruction period, the South has exerted a disproportionate negative impact on national priorities, including the refusal to uphold the dignity of work and value of those who carry it out on a day to day basis.”

The religious right and even some liberal Christians have traditionally interpreted all faith journeys as striving towards the afterlife, trying to earn a place in an always future heaven. But Beloved Community Center, SFLCA, and Word and World all are organizations that challenge this notion. Johnson asks, “How can we continue on the vocation of becoming more human? It’s different than just trying to get to heaven. Most people think you have to suffer on this earth, then leave to get to heaven, but Jesus is trying to help you make heaven here.” Faith-based movements are thoughtfully drawing on deep tradition while bravely shaping that tradition in new ways to aid in liberation as they forge a path forward.

Challenges forward

Stories of transformative faith and rooted spiritual traditions were not all we heard. We also received words of caution by many connected to this burgeoning movement. Growth is a complex process, embattled and facilitated by environmental factors at every turn. Johnson explains, “A theologian once said the best place for God to hide is in a church. I sometimes think the best place for God to hide is in religion. Religion is both a place to trap the spirit, and a potential place to release it. We must recognize that it has potential to trap the spirit if we want to be able to use religion to release spirit.”

Rishi Awatramani, recent transplant to North Carolina and participant in the Buddhist Sanctuary program for activists and organizers (see organizational profiles) also points out that spiritual practice is not above commodification, noting that “The commodification of Eastern religion as Western spirituality has given rise to a Spiritual Wellness Industry, and movement activists and organizers in the US consume spiritual widgets, much like the rest of society. The conversation of spirit and self-care is not in itself wholly organic to the movement, and reflects movement-building deficiencies as much as it reflects the echo of capitalism reverberating throughout civil society.” Awatramani practices a focused spiritual love within his community while maintaining a larger systemic analysis that applies to the dynamics of movement building.

When asked why people he knows organize in religious spaces, Russell Herman answers, “The main strands of that thinking seems to be that religion—and here [in North Carolina], mostly Christianity—is a main influence on the thinking of the public, therefore it’s useful to have your ideas be available in that venue, and if possible, promoted in that venue.” Herman warns about the danger of elevating religion and spirituality to the point that they seem to be the only contexts for human connection. This could not only leave people with out explicit spiritual practice out of the conversation but also limit our awareness of tools we can use to transform movements.

Herman also notes, however, that churches are also strategic resources for movement building. “People are there. You go where the people are. And some people share the belief—since they are there anyway, they organize there. Some people’s analysis tells them that it’s a key element of society that needs to be organized…In certain sectors of society churches are one of the few economically autonomous institutions that are somewhat democratic.”

Awatramani challenges, “Where do we remember that it is people’s (real and perceived) relationship to ownership that more often than not determines their compulsion to rise up, how much of their heart they give of themselves? The time has come, I believe, to understand the true class character of the non-profit sector and of the spiritual activism networks in order to best understand why old limitations persist and new trends have emerged within our movement-to-be.” While spirituality, religion and faith may provide strength to movements, we must not see them as a catch-all, fix-all that will suddenly make everything work.

While Awatramani’s spiritual practice has strengthened his movement work and relationships, he warns us not to allow faith in spiritual practice to make every challenge of struggle a measure of our failure to approach divinity, “Let’s not forget…that our movement suffers not just because we’re not spiritual enough in our work, but also because we toil in the belly of the beast, with few successes, and no movement…yet.”

It is these challenges that inspire us to make the work of spiritual and religious organizations and organizers visible in this special section, to spark a conversation within the Left about how we can critically love religious and spiritual traditions, plant deeper faith, and produce creative energy in our movement. And bloom…

About the Authors

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a member of SONG, UBUNTU, and SpiritHouse and is the founder of Broken-Beautiful Press Feel free to contact Alexis at alexispauline(at)gmail.com.

Manju Rajendran is a 27-year old Desi based in Durham, North Carolina. Her mama is Christian, her papa is Hindu, and she’s just saucy. She is a proud member of UBUNTU, SONG, Future5000.com and the Not Your Soldier advisory board. Holla: manju.rajendran(at)gmail.com.

Isabell Moore is a 27-year old white chick based in Greensboro, where she is proud to be involved with Cakalak Drum Corps, Southerners On New Ground, the Fund for Democratic Communities and the Leadership and Empowerment Institute. She is currently an MA student in Women and Gender Studies at UNC-Greensboro. Contact her at zed(at)riseup.net.

Check out these resources: http://www.integrativeactivism.net/spiritual_activism.html

Letter from the SC Equality Coalition about victory in South Carolina!
—————————–

Greetings,

I have some exciting news to report! Just minutes ago, the Columbia
City Council voted unanimously to pass ordinances prohibiting
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity
in housing and public accommodations. South Carolina Equality
proposed these ordinances in January and the ordinances passed with
little opposition. Please see the attached press release.

We have passed one of the most comprehensive local ordinances in the
United States, in one of the most conservative states in the country.
These ordinances represent the most significant advance in GLBT rights
in SC, in the history of our state.

When we work together, when we’re focused, when we’re strong– there
is no limit to what we can accomplish. We have re-launched South
Carolina Equality in the last three months, and look at what we’ve
been able to do, together. With your help, South Carolina Equality
will take these ordinances to other cities in the state and continue
to work at a local level.

South Carolina Equality worked closely with the SC Gay and Lesbian
Pride Movement and the Harriet Hancock Center, coordinating activity
and building support. None of this would have been possible without
the efforts of Council Members Daniel Rickenmann and Tameika Isaac
Devine and Mayor Bob Coble.

South Carolina’s Capital City is the first municipality in the state
to pass comprehensive human rights ordinances in housing and public
accommodations including sexual orientation and gender identity.
Columbia joins two other cities in the “Deep South” that have passed
comprehensive anti-discrimination ordinances – New Orleans and
Atlanta.

Warm Regards,

C. Ray Drew
Executive Director
SC Equality

P.S. They say that commitment isn’t about the time you spend, but the line you cross. Look behind us. That’s where the line is now.

“>

(Above: Caitlin Breedlove, SONG Staff, and Mia Mingus
at the US Social Forum 2007)

Amazing Atlanta-based SONG member Mia Mingus accepts the Creating Change Award 2008! Read her in her own words below, as she accepts the award last week in Detroit, MI! Congratulations, Mia, we love and honor you!!

mias-2008-award-acceptance.doc

Two-weekend advanced training for people committed to social justice work that is cross-issue, anti oppression work that meets at the crossroads of race, class, culture, gender and sexuality , towards building the local capacity, unity and interconnection of people in the greater Jacksonville, FL area.

If you are interested?? Want to know more information?? Want to apply??

If you are in the Jacksonville, FL area, contact JASMYN:
Phone: 904.389.3857 // Email: garrettboardman@yahoo.com or
mindymiddleton@hotmail.com // Check out our website: www.jasmyn.org

For more information on the Organizing School,
(including information on future ones!) contact SONG:
Phone: 919.286.3230 // Email: kindred@southernersonnewground.org

“…we cannot live without our lives” ~ Audre Lorde

Some of the topics & themes of the Organizing School will be:

CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING
· Connections of liberation work within LAND, BODY, SPIRIT & LABOR
· Legacy of Revolutionary Political Movements & People
· Role of Gender & Sexuality within colonization & liberation.

SKILLS-BUILDING
· Popular Education.
· Healing / Memory / Reclamation work.
· Building democratic & equitable structures and groups.

The SONG Organizing school is a two-weekend sub-regional training intensive in collaboration with JASMYN, based on community organizing, starting at the premise of broad-based social justice work. It is an advanced training and opportunity to meet the needs of leading community organizers & movement people from the greater Jacksonville, FL area.

It will give 20 live & ready organizers & members an intense & deep opportunity to do some consciousness raising as well as skills-building into the fundamentals of movement building, healing & sustainability work, and anti-oppression, liberation work…. Southern style’… guided by the experience, heart & vision of other working class, People of Color immigrant Queer / Lesbian Gay / Bisexual / Transgender & Gender-non- Conforming folks living in the Southeast…

This is not a queer-exclusive space, but it is based on the premise of work and experience born out of the connections, lives and intersections within queer communities.

This organizing school is intended and targeted to meet the needs of youth, youth organizers, and folks from organizations, groups and collectives who have at least a year’s experience in community work ~ to help those emerging, as well as more seasoned organizers take their political work, thinking, connections and strategies to the next level. This is not intended to be an introductory training to organizing or social justice work.

Our work, as well as the mission and strategy for this school is out of the belief that while the South as a region is underfunded, and the work & achievements of our communities often invisible and minimalized… that we are the legacy of amazing communities, elders, queers, people of color, and working-class people who’ve been making it happen each and everyday. It is our hope that we can expand, as well as deepen our skills, understanding, and ability to continue engaging inter-generational, multi-racial, multi-gendered communities in our own liberation & survival…please join us!!

Written By: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

First published on September 8, 2007 in Trea’zure Magazine

Girl, you want this. You know it. You would stand in line for it. Waste your time for it. Work all year to pay for it. You would dress up for it. Strip down for it. Travel out of town for it. You would scheme, dream, sell your soul for a pass at this. You wake up wanting this, and you pass out dreaming it too.

And no. I’m not talking about sex, and I’m definitely not talking about money. I am talking about what we really want. The need that races your heart to the beat of the next black gay pride celebration. Queer black women like me and you stay up all night craving a community where we can be ourselves and express our love freely. We know that we deserve to feel at home everywhere we go. We deserve to be reflected lovingly in the eyes of strangers. We deserve to feel well-fed and safe in the homes we create.

But we are deprived. Everyday we experience the unwanted advances of disrespectful men and boys as we walk down the street. We work at jobs where we can’t be open about our sexual desire for women. We consume TV shows and music that ridicule or ignore our lives. We get harassed when we hold each other’s hands. And worst of all we are subject to racist, sexist and homophobic violence at all times. And the law does not protect us.

So we take what we can get. Because we are desperate for the sight of each other. We thirst to remember we exist. We pay full price for watered-down drinks at the one club in town that has a gay night and plays hip-hop. We drive for hours and shell out even more money for overpriced nightlife events at Black Pride celebrations around the country. We bear a party scene that is reminiscent of a second-rate hip-hop music video with neither a hook, nor a storyline. We even accept disrespect and stay in abusive and unhealthy relationships because love seems so hard to come by.

And we are not wrong for this. It is no surprise that after 10 months of keeping our desire for women under wraps we go buckwild at “hot-body” contests and pad our pockets with one dollar bills for go-go dancers. And this is definitely not meant to disrespect those of us who dance to support ourselves and our families.

But we deserve MORE than two nights of extreme sexual expression to sustain us for the next year of silence, fear and repression. And the fact that we survive invisibility and violence from the larger society along with violence and disrespect in our OWN spaces and keep coming back for more is proof of how much we want each other.

In these, the worst of circumstances our need for each other does not die. The fact that we have enough energy to keep funding the less-than-perfect spaces that are available to us proves that we ALSO have enough energy to create something else. An empowering community is not something we can buy, barter for or pay admission to get into. It is not waiting for us at the next chocolate city “Girl Ball”. Community is something we have to make ourselves.

This magazine is an example of black queer women coming together to create a space of empowerment and mentorship for each other, and this is just one example in a rich tradition. For example, the Combahee River Collective, a group of black lesbians in Boston in the 1970’s held retreats and did day to day organizing to fight violence against women, win more jobs for black people in black communities and eventually created Kitchen Table Press a publishing company especially for women of color centered on the writings of lesbians. Today, magazines like this and publishing companies like RedBone Press continue that legacy along with the other community organizations and informal support networks that keep us alive. Community is something that WE create ourselves.

And I believe that we can, because those of us who are brazen enough to endure spike heels and shiver half-naked for the attention of other women, those of us who are bold enough to bend gender and shine studly despite what the men on the street might say or do in response, those of us who insist on being ourselves no matter what anyone says are warriors. Those of us who are BRAVE enough to do anything for the possibility of love are also STRONG enough to go for the real thing.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is queer black trouble-maker, a freedom seeking writer, a PhD candidate in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies at Duke University the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press & a SONG member. She lusts for community, so email her at alexispauline@gmail.com.

Members of Oaxaca’s Sexual Diversity Collective,
adherents to the Sixth Declaration and the Other Campaign
(This article from an amazing blog–check it out: www.zapagringo.blogspot.com)

A lot has transpired in the past week or so…the students at the Autonomous University “Benito Juárez” in Oaxaca City have taken back their radio station and various groups (1,2) have reclaimed the center (Zócalo) of Oaxaca City as a space of protest…national and international actions and events marking the first anniversary of the attack on Atenco and demanding the release of Mexico’s political prisoners..the LAPD wildin’ out on the Immigrants’ Rights/Anti-War march on May Day…and Movement for Justice in El Barrio (MJB) was there and denounced the state agression. Meanwhile, a bunch of us here in NYC were at a packed BBQ/concert raising funds for MJB to go to the US Social Forum (USSF) this summer in Atlanta (you’ll find info on their upcoming community dinner fundraiser in this post). And, speaking of the USSF, the deadline for workshop proposals is May 11! Oh, and in case you haven’t seen it yet, the English translation of the call for a Continental Indigenous Encuentro this October in Sonora, México is up…spread the word! All this, yes, but it was USSF delegation preparations coupled with friday’s jam-packed fundraiser for FIERCE! that inspired this weeks post…

Zapatismo & Queer Struggles
… or some observations to continue a conversation

Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a gang member in Neza, a rocker in the National University, a Jew in Germany, an ombudsman in the Defense Ministry, a communist in the post-Cold War era, an artist without gallery or portfolio…. A pacifist in Bosnia, a housewife alone on Saturday night in any neighborhood in any city in Mexico, a striker in the CTM, a reporter writing filler stories for the back pages, a single woman on the subway at 10 pm, a peasant without land, an unemployed worker… an unhappy student, a dissident amid free market economics, a writer without books or readers, and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains of southeast Mexico. So Marcos is a human being, any human being, in this world. Marcos is all the exploited, marginalized and oppressed minorities, resisting and saying, ‘Enough’!

This may be one of the best known quotes from Zapatista spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos. Taken from a 1994 interview, it was actually Marcos’ response to the media frenzy following an interview he had done with a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in which he stated that he had been fired from a restaurant in San Francisco for being gay. The Mexican press ran headlines claiming that Marcos had “admitted” that he was homosexual. Coming from the early days after the uprising, this would turn out to be just one of many attempts to discuss queer sexuality and liberation struggle made by the Zapatista spokesperson over the past 13 years…

Indeed, the language of the Zapatistas has attracted queer radicals from the first days following the 1994 New Years’ uprising. The language of fighting for “a world where we [in the zap's case, mexico's indigenous] fit” and for “a world where many worlds fit” found obvious resonance with queer folks in struggle.

In “Message from the Zapatistas”, a video message sent this year to New York City (in response to Movement for Justice in El Barrio’s “Message to the Zapatistas”), Marcos admits that this resonance initially surprised them. This surprise soon gave way to a steep learning curve, however, that found the Zapatistas embracing the many allies who came forward. In this way it could be said that they were both contributors to and open-minded observers of a process that I’m calling “queering the sectors” of the left.

queering the sectors

The three traditional sectors of the Mexican left (and, perhaps it should be said, “The Left” in general) are workers, peasants, and students. The Zapatistas, in asserting the centrality of their indigenous identities and cultures, are pushing the rest of the left to see them as more than peasants. They are pushing the left to see that there is also something valuable in their experience as indigenous peoples. They recognize in their indigenous culture a powerful non-conformity with the capitalist westernization of Mexico being led by its neoliberal politicians. And they’ve found many others who also do not conform.

As the Zapatistas began attracting supporters after their 1994 New Years uprising, they began recognizing “new sectors” in struggle: youth organized into musical subcultures (punk, goth, etc), women (organized as women!), and yes, queer folks. And so, by the time we reach the Zapatistas’ Sixth Declaration, released in June 2005, we see the three traditional sectors completely exploded:

We are inviting all indigenous, workers, campesinos, teachers, students, housewives, neighbors, small businesspersons, small shop owners, micro-businesspersons, pensioners, handicapped persons, religious men and women, scientists, artists, intellectuals, young persons, women, old persons, homosexuals and lesbians, boys and girls – to participate, whether individually or collectively, directly with the zapatistas in this NATIONAL CAMPAIGN for building another way of doing politics, for a program of national struggle of the left, and for a new Constitution.

awkward steps

Although we see no mention of trans-folks in the Sixth Declaration itself (a collectively written document), the Zapatista spokesperson had already been making attempts to integrate the terms transgender and transexual into his lexicon. Shortly before declaring the Red Alert which preceded the release of the Sixth Declaration, the Zapatistas bounced back into the media limelight with the announcement that they were challenging Inter Milan (a professional soccer team in Italy) to a series of matches. An amusing exchange followed, including this suggestion:

And, perhaps, in order to differentiate ourselves from the objectification of women which is promoted at football games and in commercials, the EZLN would ask the national lesbian-gay community, especially transvestites and transsexuals, to organize themselves and to amuse the respectable with ingenious pirouettes during the games in Mexico. That way, in addition to prompting TV censorship, scandalizing the ultra-right and disconcerting the Inter ranks, they would raise the morale and spirits of our team. There are not just 2 sexes, and there is not just one world, and it is always advisable for those who are persecuted for their differences to share happiness and support without ceasing to be different.

I’ve seen no responses yet from the Mexican “lesbian-gay community” (please send them my way if you have!). Inter Milan, however, has accepted the challenge so we may one day see how this spectacle turns out and how that particular invitation was received.

Following the release of the Sixth Declaration, in the early days of building the Other Campaign, the Sixth Commission of the Zapatistas began employing the language of “other loves” to poetically capture what we might say with “queer” or the litany of letters “TLGBTSQQ” (Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Queer, and Questioning). And as you’ll see from the photo and link above, there were queer radicals more than ready to join with the Zapatistas in building the Other Campaign, but not without struggle…

When the members of Oaxaca’s Sexual Diversity Collective addressed Delegate Zero (Marcos) during his 2006 listening tour to build the Other Campaign, they reminded him that the queer struggle was important and could not be left out (as it had been in his speeches in the state up to that point).

Later that evening, I watched Delegate Zero make a speech from the Zócalo in which he stumbled a bit, replacing what was perhaps meant to be “transgénero” (transgender) or “transexual” with “transgénico”…meaning “transgenetic.” He immediately caught himself, however, and looked back sheepishly at Tlahui, who was waiting to speak adorned with a purple wig and a stunning rainbow dress.

a work in progress

The previously mentioned “Message from the Zapatistas”, sent this year to NYC’s Movement for Justice in El Barrio, perhaps marks a new level of understanding and connection being made by Marcos:

We were finding we had allies that we didn’t expect and learning to listen and come to understand their struggle and how it was linked to ours…not only will we not conform, but we will fight against this system, raising our difference almost like a flag…autonomy means we can be compañeros even if we raise different flags…gays and lesbians approach us and we do not have to become gays or lesbians or, being gay or lesbian, we don’t have to choose this as the basis of our struggle.

Now that we are in the second stage of Zapatista participation in the Other Campaign (not to mention the continued emergence of the Zezta Internazional), we’re gaining the opportunity to hear not just from Marcos but more and more directly the voices of the indigenous comandancia; as well as the declarations and denouncements coming from the Zapatista communities (distinct from the political/military organization). And in these spaces we’re hearing from queer radicals throughout Mexico and the world who are committed to building an anticapitalist movement “from below and to the left.”

I’ve shared the thoughts here…more a series of vignettes than anything else…as another stick in the fire fueling this dialogue . Because it’s in this dialogue between all of us, and in the transformation and action that follows, where I find hope.

(Check out the link up top this great blog!)

We were touched and thrilled to have such a great group of Movement People from around the country come together to work on creating the SONG Organizing School!

We are happy to announce the release of our National Report from our combined listening campaign with Gay / Lesbian / Bi / Trans & Queer movement people of the South, and some of our fiercest national allies… enjoy!!

Hey all…SONG is a Coalition Partner for this…check it out!!!

For all those who know that “it is better to speak”

A CALL TO ACTION

Creating a World without Sexual Violence
National Day of Truthtelling

April 28th, 2007
Durham, North Carolina

For all who ARE survivors of sexual violence/
For all who choose to BELIEVE survivors of sexual violence/
For all who KNOW WE CAN end rape culture/

join us on April 28th, 2007, in Durham, North Carolina, as we come together-across divisions and disempowering silences-to create a world full of the safety, possibility, dignity, justice, and peace that we all deserve. Stand with us as we dare to imagine a world free from sexual violence and ALL forms of oppression.

Meet us in Durham to speak, teach, learn, demonstrate, and tell the truth. Together, WE can make this world a reality!!!

Questions? Contact us at dayoftruthtelling@gmail.com or check us out on My Space at www.myspace.com/ubuntunc

This event is being organized by: the North Carolina Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Ubuntu, Men Against Rape Culture, SpiritHouse, Raleigh Fight Imperialism Stand Together, Southerners on New Ground, Independent Voices, Black Workers for Justice, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization/OSCL.

“What would happen in one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

- From: “Kathe Kollwitz” by Muriel Rukeseyer

We enclosed this picture–because this is how Kriti’s work makes us feel: all shining inside!

This link opens onto a beautiful zine created by Kriti Sharma, as a younger woman of color who sees the importance of younger activists drawing from lessons on the lesbian feminist movement in the US during the 1970’s.

She has used ideas from the book ‘Lesbian Ethics’ by Sarah Lucia Hoagland, and created an easy to read and use zine that summarizes a lot of the information. (Don’t worry…Sarah Lucia knows about the zine and loves it!)

We have found this to be a really useful tool for some of our community groups to spend an evening with–just sharing and talking and growing. Excellent for helping groups to think more about conflict transformation too!!

This is a report/letter from a  gathering that happened in the Summer of 2006 about Inter-generational organizing in the South. It was held at the Highlander Center in New Market, TN and was a project of the Highlander Centerletter-to-an-inter-generational-south.doc. It contains: visioning about an inter-generational community, ideas for how to build such a community, bios of all involved, and discussion questions at the end for using the letter as a tool to talk with groups about inter-generational work.