My second piece about the DNC and the current electoral scene is still forthcoming (I've been slowly picking my way through the more analytical stuff so obviously I've been stalling by posting Beatles, Abba, and Chinese poetry), but in the meantime here's a little video slideshow thingie I put together about my time in Denver, just to keep things flowing...
Daljit Dhaliwal interviews Irene Natividad about this year's Global Summit of Women in Hanoi, Vietnam:
Between 1970 and 1992, Texaco made off with $30 billion worth of petroleum from the northern Ecuadorian rainforest, while illegally dumping 18 billion gallons of acutely toxic sludge into 650 open pits near streams, swamps, and rivers which sustain local life. Ecologists believe it to be the second worst environmental catastrophe in human history, next to Chernobyl. In 1993, five Ecuadorian indigenous tribes filed a class action lawsuit in US federal court against Texaco (Aguinda v. Texaco) and have been waging legal battle ever since. The case turned a corner in 2003 when it moved to the Ecuadorian superior court; recently, another milestone was reached when the court's independent expert report assessed the environmental damage at $8 billion and recommended that Texaco (now folded into Chevron) pay damages of up to $16 billion. If the plaintiffs win this lawsuit, it will be a landmark victory for indigenous peoples everywhere in the fight to defend themselves against the toxic tentacles of corporatist neo-colonialism. This week's Foreign Exchange with Daljit Dhaliwal takes a look at the case:
from Rock and Tree Poems by Shih-Shu (1660?-1740?), translated by James H. Sanford
the human body is a little universe
its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
follow the path back to its source, else be
a house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
And just for fun, a couple pics from behind the scene: Nez shooting...
And editing back at the hotel...
UPDATE: There's much more on police action at the DNC from the reliably-incendiary Fire Witch Rising, including this:
On the ride from our Lakewood hotel into the teeming heart of downtown Denver, I'm looking out the window as we roll past homeless folks lined up outside the community service center. I see a thirty-something blonde woman wearing jeans and a white tank-top standing on the side of the road holding a cardboard sign welcoming DNC attendees and asking for spare change.
As we approach the convention area, we ditch the car on a sidestreet and do the final stretch by bus. Nezua and I are loaded up with gadgetry as we stand swaying in the aisle hanging onto the brushed steel bars overhead. A well-groomed middle-aged white woman is loudly holding forth on why Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate. Noticing Nez's video camera with its jutting microphone, she sizes us up and inquires, "Are you guys bloggers?"
"Yup," Nez answers, "we're officially credentialed to cover the convention."
"You and fifteen thousand other people," she says with a laugh. There's a distinctly dark streak running through her laugh, a sneering condescension that hangs in the air after the sound has stopped.
"I guess you're not impressed," Nez replies with a self-deprecating smile, a slight shrug in his voice.
"I've been to five conventions," she says, "it's hard to impress me."
"What's there to be impressed by?" I interject. The brief exchange fades away as the bus rumbles along.
The back row of the bus is occupied entirely by black folks. A mother is talking to her young daughter about Obama. "On Thursday he's gonna give a speech just like Martin Luther King did twenty five years ago," she explains. "What do you think about that?" The daughter remains doe-eyed and says nothing.
As we approach a stop, the entire back row of riders rise to their feet. I ask, "Is this our stop for the convention?"
"No, you wanna get off at California," a young woman answers kindly. Another adds with a smile, "It's gonna take you like thirty minutes just to get there with all the traffic."
"Sorry about that," I smile back.
"What was that about?" the Clinton-supporter asks once the riders have disembarked and the bus is moving again.
"They're annoyed at all the inconvenience the convention is causing in their town," I explain.
"What about all the money we're spending in their stores?" she once again sneer-laughs. Then back to silence.
~ ~ ~
Nezua and I spend most of Tuesday walking around in the pounding heat, soaking up whatever snippets of activity we stumble upon and ducking into random bars for fortification. Nez runs around holding his camera at various deliberate angles, shooting all manner of strangeness. The spirit of Hunter S. Thompson is clearly with us, splashing surrealism onto our path in the form of jarringly outlandish encounters with the kinds of characters you just can't make up, not to mention the seemingly endless supply of scowling riot cops moving around the city in angular packs with batons hanging down to their ankles.
Of course it's not all Fear And Loathing. There's a "festival of democracy" happening in Civic Center Park, down the street from the police station, safely out of range from the giddy mobs of conventioneers. There's a Spanish-language hip hop band on stage, bouncing the crowd with smooth beat streams textured with electric guitars and reed pipes. There are anti-war placcards and calls for impeachment and environmental literature and children's books for sale. There are people sitting on lawns and napping in the shade.
There's a large installation by an Iranian artist, consisting of numerous colorful photographic portraits printed on big translucent sheets of breeze-blown cloth, assembled in the shape of a small mosque. You walk through the structure, winding your way among the smiling faces fluttering in the summer sun. Outside the installation, Nez films a clip with three Iranian American women talking about the piece; the undercurrent of dread at the prospect of war hangs in the air just behind those translucent sheets; but for now the up-front mood is pure elation and relief at the simple and elegant representation of Iranian people.
At some point it occurs to us that we're tired, thirsty, and famished; so we leave the park and soon find ourselves perched at a German bar ordering beer and sausage from a tall lanky bartender with long sandy hair pulled back in a sloppy sort of pony-tail. His smile looks friendly enough at first but then I start feeling like there's something unright going on just behind it. The owner of the bar is a quirky older woman with dyed hair and a strong German accent; as in every place we stop, she asks us if we're in town for the convention; we say Yes, sipping syrupy beer and chomping on sliced sausage with bright yellow mustard and caramelized onions. There are a few other ragtag customers who occasionally walk up to the bartender and make various detailed requests for napkins and an extra toothpick and such, which annoys him enormously, to the point that he storms off into the Latino-staffed kitchen and loudly asks, "Do you guys have like a really intimidating-looking knife?" He returns to the bar and slams a cheap-looking chef's knife with a plastic handle onto the countertop. Then he turns to the bar-owner and chirps, "Let's get drunk!" Their eyes light up as he breaks out glasses and pours from a bottle of schnapps. The woman giggles, "Wine is fine but liquor's quicker!"
And that's about enough of that joint. We leave our beer mugs two-thirds full and bail to hop on a bus back to the hotel.
~ ~ ~
On the bus, a working-class white mother with a pre-teen son announces her philosophical orientation this way: "What's up with all these riot cops? Do they really need those huge clubs? My husband is a real police officer, he works undercover with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. He doesn't have to act tough. He never talks about his work."
Nez and I smile.
"So where are you guys from?" she asks.
"New York."
"What do you think of Denver?"
"So far so good. Seems like a nice town."
"It's okay. I mean, there are ghettoish parts of town too. Where are you guys staying?"
"Lakewood."
"Oh see that's a nice area. But if you go a little further down the road, it gets ghettoish. It's all Mexicans and Asians."
Nezua and I look at one another.
"Oh," she stammers, "that sounds horrible! I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I just mean, like, there was a gang fight and a shooting just the other day."
"I understand," I offer.
A moment later: "So, are you guys Obama supporters?"
"Not really supporters," Nez says, "we're just documenting things."
"We were at the convention today," she says with a sudden surge of pride; then, patting her son on the head, "He met a Congressman who was at the I Have A Dream speech during the civil rights movement."
"Nice," I say, turning to the boy, "did you like meeting him?"
"Yes," he beams. His eyes are bright and clear and they don't waver at all as he meets my gaze. I like the kid.
Suddenly from the back row of the bus: "If Obama wins, he won't make it to next year." It's a twenty-something white dude wearing a basketball jersey, a big chain around his neck, oversized shorts, high-top sneakers, and a baseball cap tipped to one side.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"If Obama wins the election, he won't even make it to his first term. People are gonna be pissed."
"So you think somebody's gonna kill him?"
"Yeah man."
"You're that sure about it? What's the spread on that? Are you willing to lay down money on that bet?"
I see his eyes faltering, glancing around.
"You willing to put money on what you said?" I ask again.
"Yeah," he firms up. "I mean, I'm not saying I want anything to happen. But there are a lot of people out there who are gonna go crazy if Obama wins. It's gonna be war in the streets."
"It's already war in the streets," I say, "and it's not because of Obama."
He thinks it over for a minute, then changes the subject. "You guys like hip hop?"
"Sure."
"I was at a show last week. They flew in Talib Kweli and Mos Def from Switzerland."
"Sweet."
Another pause. Then: "If Obama wins, I just hope that black people don't start thinking they're superior."
~ ~ ~
The credentialing system surrounding the DNC is a labyrinth of moats and draw bridges and palace guards. On our first day in Denver, Liza and her Kenneth Cole Productions crew are consumed by the stress of securing, obtaining, distributing, and enacting various convention passes. It doesn't help that her cell phone has completely crashed out.
On day two, I get my hands on a pass to the Big Tent, which is blogger headquarters. It takes a few hours to make it happen, but finally Maegan, Nezua, and I overcome all the fuzzy directions and vague instructions and claw our way past the security staff, shove our way past the Google lounge and up the diggit staircase and down the YouTube corridor...into a hectic room full of rude people with laptops. As a software guy, it occurs to me that I've never seen a room with so many computers and so few Asians. In fact, it seems to me that the blogger pool is considerably less racially diverse than the mainstream media. The overwhelming whiteness of this crowd really can't be exaggerated.
Of course, Liza works the room like a grand diva with a million dollar smile, embracing bloggy colleagues like long-lost relatives and making a continuous stream of beaming introductions left and right. There are flat screens hanging here and there, carrying feeds from inside the convention hall; there are lots of cameras and bright lights; there's an interview area and a coffee bar; there are big couches reserved for members of "big blogs"; there are politicians schmoozing their way across the room, shaking hands and slapping shoulders.
Upstairs the noise fades away as we enter the Huffington Post Oasis, a suite of offices converted into a New Agey den of sappy indulgence, where bloggers can book facials and hand massages and manicures. There are plenty of free goodies being offered, books on organic nutrition, pamphlets on Eastern Philosophy, whole grain muffins and energy bars. There are lots of skinny blonde women walking around in yoga outfits; a few are standing on their heads, others are speaking in hushed tones and fawning over babies in ergonomic slings.
The beer garden seems like the right place to hang out. Free local microbrew. Maegan, Nezua, and I stand around a table and stare silently at one another and at our plastic beer cups.
Just to clear up any confusion about who's the most tersely talented crafter of the English language currently working in food/travel media, and possibly in documentary TV period, I've assembled three haikus which Tony Bourdain read as bumpers during a recent episode of "No Reservations" in Tokyo. Appropriately, these snippets were not cheesily announced as haiku but simply delivered for those with ears to hear. They progress with beautiful Zen style from the sharp transcendent toward the mystical mundane. The compact discipline of the form and the purity of the poetic focus says it all.
1.
Life will go its way
Beauty can only be found
Step aside — it's there
2.
Down a narrow street
Worlds within worlds — nomiya
Take a seat, eat, drink
3.
Tokyo calling
Sushi sings for me to hear
And the rice — the rice
And suddenly the date is upon us! Early Monday morning, I'll be flying to Denver in order to attend the 2008 Democratic National Convention as a credentialed member of the CultureKitchen crew assembled by Liza Sabater.
I have no idea what to expect. I have no idea what I'll end up writing about. I'm planning on feeling it out as I go along, seeing what grabs my attention and what seems worthwhile or absurd or funny or outrageous or righteous.
Here are a few things that I will not be doing in Denver:
Having said all that: in addition to recording my longer-form reflections here at Zuky, here are some other internet avenues I plan on using during this affair:
And that's pretty much all you need to know to follow my DNC follies!
Thank you so much to those of you who have generously dug into your own pockets and chipped in, you've helped make this trip happen! Of course if you haven't done so yet, the Alms Bowl remains open and your contributions to my sustenance and thirst-quenching funds are deeply appreciated. It's going to be a hectic couple of days as I try to pull myself together for the surreal week ahead, so aside from some weekend music, the next words I post will likely be coming to you from Colorado!
Peace.
It is a bitter irony that the end of Chinese Exclusion arrived along with the beginning of Japanese internment. The pliable, cynically-shifting nature of modern racism was densely displayed when, overnight, US society ostensibly lifted its anti-Asian hatred from one ethnic group in order to bring it crashing down on another. Suddenly, the Chinese were friends (who had to wear buttons identifying them as such) and the Japanese were enemies.
In the early 1930s, in the wake of the Meiji restoration and under the spell of industrial imperialism, Japan had initiated a series of military incursions into China, snatching up chunks of northeastern territory while a weakened China reeled under Western colonialism and civil war. As the Japanese invasion escalated with notorious cruelty in the late 1930s, the two sides of the Chinese civil war — Communists and Nationalists — worked out a temporary alliance in order to fight in unison against Japan. When the US declared war on Japan in 1941, China became an invaluable US ally. China waged a crucial, costly, and unheralded land war while the US took on the naval front.
Like so many marginalized groups, Chinese Americans went above and beyond any reasonable call of duty in order to prove their loyalty, putting their lives on the line for a country which denied them basic rights and joining the domestic wartime mobilization in force. In 1943, Chinese Exclusion laws were repealed without fanfare.
And that's our series, folks. Of course there's plenty missing from these glimpses into the Exclusion era. And even after Exclusion laws were lifted, immigration from China remained severely limited to 105 persons per year. It wasn't until the 1960s that US immigration policy opened enough of a crack in the door to enable a new wave of academics and professionals from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, giving birth to the "model minority" myth and the stereotype of the Asian nerd. But that's another story, isn't it? For now, I hope you enjoyed this look at a largely-ignored phase of Chinese American history — of US history — which continues to echo in the shape of our world and to burn in the hearts of those of us who inherit its legacy.
The Outlaw Bible of American Essays
This diverse, dense, rowdy, erudite collection of classic dissident writing is full of required resistance reading.
Jean Pfaelzer: Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
The most comprehensive, probing history of the brutal and systematic ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest during the Chinese Exclusion era.
Jennifer Gordon: Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights
A broad-ranging, tightly-written rundown on the new economic, political, and legal landscape confronting pro-immigrant activists.
Joyce Carol Oates: On Boxing
A sweeping, passionate exploration of the colorful characters, crazy contradictions, and mythic meanings which animate the sport of boxing.
Louise Derman-Sparks: Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach
Based on a solid pedagogical framework and informed by years of classroom experience, this dense educational guidebook is an invaluable contribution to the anti-racist toolbox.
