I stayed up all night reading Octavia Butler's "Kindred"

And I’m not even tired. Holy shit, that’s a good book.

It was very good at making me think about - well, not so much the reality of slavery, because I’m sure no mere book would be enough to convey the experience of what chattel slavery is like - but the reality that my ancestors were slaves.

I got a similar feeling when I went to DC for the Obama inauguration - that the buildings all around me had been built by black slaves, and now a black man was being elected president. I was seriously on the verge of tears almost the whole time. (Not so much out of happiness at the election, although back then I was much more on team hopey-changey stuff than I am now, but out of horror of the past).

I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in a neighborhood where the oldest buildings dated to maybe the 1950s. Black chattel slavery is distant here.

To have my stepmom (who is from there, and who is biracial just like me) point out buildings and say “That’s an old slave auction house,” or “That tunnel is where they brought slaves in from the docks,” and whatnot was completely upsetting to me.

"You're very sensitive," she said to me, not unkindly.

My family is from Cuba, so the likelihood that any ancestor of mine walked through those tunnels or stood on those particular auction blocks is probably low. But they walked through tunnels, they stood on auction blocks. And there were similar ones, right in front of me. Meanwhile, a black man was getting ready to be President.

It was the same feeling I got when a white friend of mine explained to me that her grandmother, who I had spent the previous afternoon chatting pleasantly with, was actually a horrible racist and said mean things about my daughter. Betrayal, shame, embarrassment, anger, fury. Pride that I wasn't what her grandmother thought I was.

That feeling - that's what it's like to be black in America.

Thinking back about my week in DC two years ago, I remember a conversation I had about the whole thing with a man who was a friend of my stepmom’s family. “I don’t think white people understand,” he said.

I agreed.

Also, I’m pissed at myself that I haven’t been reading Octavia Butler this entire time. Next up - Fledgling.

Yes, I am a Muslim-American

(eds note: My father, who has been increasingly horrified by the growing tide of bigotry apparent on the nightly news lately, emailed me this last night and asked if I would post it on my blog. Of course I would, I said.)

Am I an American? Why am I asking myself this question again? Yes, I am an American, a Muslim African American.

Why am I asking that question again? It is because the monster is trying to once again rear its ugly head. A monster who once tried to trick me into believing that I was not an American because of the color of my skin and because of the origin of my parents and the first language that I spoke (Spanish) as a child.

The ugly beast who snapped at the heels of my parents, with its white only bathrooms and diners, and the black only seats at the rear of the bus or train, and the inequality and lack of justice that permeated its presence, breathing the fire of hate for those who dared to be different than it.

The horrible looks and words of hate that frightened a child and young adolescent, emanating from the mouths of pale skinned creatures that looked as human as I; and breathed the same air that filled my lungs, and walked the same earth that I walked upon. I a child not really understanding the disease that filled the hearts and minds of these men and women, some who called themselves the follower of Jesus (peace be upon him) as I was, the prophet of peace and love.

Why I said as a child why, why do you hate me so, the answer always being you are the other, not like me, apart from me. Yet in my heart I always knew this to be a lie, knew that the other was as human and fragile as I was. He or she was just sick in the head from some blow of a hammer that must have once fallen upon their heads.

Then as I grew into adolescence, came the words and actions of Martin, words of freedom, equality, respect, the transformational words of Malcolm demanding respect as a man and as a human being and servant of God. The demand for the implementation of the eternal principles that I knew permeated the hearts of all men and women who know the truth and that submit to the one and only Lord and Creator of the universe.

These waves of change passed through our country transforming hearts and minds, as they always have when the creature appears. Men like Mandela, Gandhi, Muhammed, Jesus, and Moses and so many others. Who chase the monster away; if not for a little time, making him hide in slumber for another day.

Here is that day, today when I ask myself again, am I an American? The monster stares in my face, I now a grown man a Muslim-African-American.

The beast once again looms in our presence, again staring at me with eyes aglow. It basks in its own self-indulgence of ignorance, hate and accusations of being the other. The same old story just another time and another place.

Know this oh beast, I will stand firmly on this sacred ground that I call my country, my home, my place of birth. A place called America; I stand here with no fear of you in my heart. Knowing with surety who I am and why I am.

I am a Muslim American, a servant of Allah, born in the home of the brave the land of the free.

I am a red-blooded American.

You can screech your words of being the other, of there is no room for Muslims or mosques, or adhans in this land. I tell you we are here to stay, over nine million of us strong and growing, most born American Muslims and true believers in our hearts.

I stand here wrapped in the cloth of freedom made by the blood of my ancestors and yours. The promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not a dream but a reality made true by the following words:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This is my birth-right, a covenant made to every citizen of this country born or naturalized.

Your disease of the heart has made you blind and ignorant to the beauty and guarantees encased within those words. So beware oh beast, the sword of justice looms over your head, and no matter how loudly you screech, justice and freedom always prevail as God our Lord and Creator has promised. Watch your neck because the sword of Damocles hangs over your ugly head. You will consume yourself in your own self-hatred and ignorance.

We stand as brothers and sisters together Muslim, Christian, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and all the other paths of life that exist in this world.

For we stand with the Creator who has given us love and compassion the most powerful forces in all of creation. Beware and be aware, because we have the Niyat (intention) to us this force of love and compassion to its maximum effect.

We wish to change your heart, to cure you of the ancient disease of hate and ignorance. Your brothers and sister call to you to join us in peace (salaams), to join us and to become part of the human family once again.
We await your decision.

Salaams always,

Imam Abdur’Rauf Campos-Marquetti
TaHa Mosque-Islamic Center of Santa Fe

How little things have changed.

It's really depressing, but not entirely shocking, to see how little things have changed since this speech was given.

It's not us and them. It's just us.

The hysteria surrounding the not-a-mosque, not-at-Ground Zero interfaith community center that an Islamic group wants to build in Manhattan has gone on longer that even I thought it ever would.

The objections to it are so ridiculous, so reactionary, so based in hatred and fear that I don't even know where to begin taking them apart anymore.

The fact that you have representatives of the Muslim community on the news having to make statements like "American Muslims were not behind the terrorist plot," is totally fucking Twilight Zone-scary.

David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana, says that the not-at-Ground-Zero, not-a-mosque is "a slap in the face to the American people." If that's the case, then I backhand slap the American people right in that stupid, afraid, bigoted, unthinking face. Twice.

9/11 was not an attack by Muslims against America. 9/11 was an attack by those who embraced a theocratic view against the forces of democracy and capitalism (there's a reason they targeted the World Trade Center, it was a financial center). Those Muslims who committed almost 3,000 murders that day were also attacking other Muslims. Many of the office workers, restaurant employees, firemen, police officers, and paramedics who were killed for the "sin" of living in New York (or D.C., let's not forget the Pentagon was also attacked) were...Muslims.

It doesn't work to say that "Muslims attacked us" when "Muslims" and "us" are two groups that overlap. This, despite the best efforts of many, is a cosmopolitan nation. Muslims are not others, they are us. As are Catholics, Jews, Baptists, gays, blacks, asians, hispanics, Dallas Cowboy fans, Sarah Palin fans, and even (gasp!) atheists.

I say again, this, despite the best efforts of the worst amongst us, is a cosmopolitan nation. You can't change that no matter how hard you try. It's the whole fucking point of our country. To think otherwise puts you on the losing side of history.

I mean, Jesus, even W. said we were not at war with Islam.

President Obama finally weighed in on the subject on Friday, saying “Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam,” the president said, adding, “In fact, Al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion, and that list includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.”

To which I add, No shit, Sherlock. Really? Does this even still have to be said? I get the feeling my poor dad (who is an imam now) is going to have to go on another "Muslims don't all have claws and fangs" tour of local churches.

Usually, I find Keith Olbermann just this side of shrill and histrionic, but this time I think he hit just the right note.

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Right now, (during Ramadan no less) millions of Pakistanis, the vast majority of them who are probably Muslim, are dying because of horrific flooding in that country. Wouldn't our energies (and our 24-hour news cycle) be better spent helping -or at least paying attention to- these people? (*cough* Donate to Doctors Without Borders *cough*)

To conclude, I like the point made in this blog post.

In the real world, New York is rebuilding. The site of the ruined World Trade Center is the site of the new World Trade Center, 20 stories high and rising. Get rid of the Islamic center and the alternative will not be a memorial park, but a fitness center, an American Apparel, a Pinkberry.

Maybe I'm naive in my patriotism, but the reason I think that so-called "Ground Zero" is sacred ground is because all of America is sacred ground, because the principles laid out in the Constitution (although, historically, actually following those principles has always been a bit touch-and-go) protect the inalienable rights of the people who live here.

Well, for now anyway.

Chuchu the sock monkey.

Why yes, I did just spend the last 10 hours or so making two socks into a monkey, why do you ask?

Discoveries along my journey across the sock monkey learning curve: use thicker socks, use longer socks, use smaller stitches, use more interesting socks, and most of all, don't explain to your child what a sock monkey is because you're certain to spend the next ten to twelve hours making one, much to your chagrin.

But then she named it Chuchu and gave it a big hug and loved it despite all the obvious flaws I saw. Which is why she is wonderful and I am a jaded former punk rocker.

Full evolution of Chuchu here.

A challenge.

I don't know what I was thinking. I ventured into the comment sections of this and this (much better) article on the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" (which is neither at Ground Zero nor a masjid) and I think I've been driven to the edge by the complete rejection of both reason and reality on display by many of the commenters.

So, I issue a challenge.

I challenge anyone to explain to me why this community center shouldn't be built at this location, using 500 words or less. You must (unlike anyone I've read or heard who so far who objects to this) take these five actual, factual points into account:

1) The proposed building is not just a mosque, but a community center that will include a restaurant and a gym.

2) The proposed site is not at "Ground Zero" but in fact several blocks away, and you can't even see it from the WTC site.

3) Dozens of the New Yorkers (and, if I recall correctly, at least one of the people on the planes) murdered on 9/11 were Muslim, and their families deserve the same respect as the other victims.

4) It's private property owned by this group, and as long as all proper building codes are followed they're allowed to build whatever the fuck they want.

5) Republican politicians (and celebrities like Sarah Palin) are using this as a wedge issue to motivate their base to vote for them in November, as a distraction from the successes of the Obama administration and the previous eight years of Republican failures.

Seriously. 500 words or less. I'll send you a free Viking Fish t-shirt.

I don't expect any takers, because a) no one reads my blog anymore, but more importantly b) once these five points are addressed you don't have much of an argument beyond, "I hate Muslims because television and the Internet said I should."

Hm, I kind of like this idea. Maybe I'll try it next for those who oppose gay marriage.

The power of images

I've been kind of haunted by Time magazine's most recent cover image ever since I saw this Salon piece on it yesterday. In it, a striking beautiful young Afghan woman stares defiantly at the camera. The woman, an 18-year old named Aisha, has been brutally mutilated by her own husband, her nose and ears cut off. But the way the photographer Jodie Bieber captures the fire in her eyes shows that even this brutal act did not defeat her.

Or, at least, that's what the photo says to me. I have to idea how Aisha actually feels about her situation and the horrific crime that her husband and the people of her village, who enabled him to do this, enacted against her. But I appreciate the decision Bieber made to not photograph her as a broken victim.

What I don't appreciate, what in fact drives me up the wall, is the headline Times chose to place with her picture. The cover reads, "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan." Nice try, Times, but I'm not buying it. This isn't what happens when we leave Afghanistan, it's what's happening now. Aisha was attacked last year.

In what, as Daisy on Facebook mentioned, appears to be a bald attempt to engage in a propaganda war with Wikileaks (and what I think is more of a cynical attempt to sell magazines), Times has hoped that the arresting nature of this image will make your brain skip over this fact.

Not to mention that, with the addition of that text, the image becomes yet another Muslim woman is the "ultimate victim" needing rescue from the West. Boy, does that trope not ever get old.

You can't solve problems like violence against women with a war. If anything, our presence, and the money we're funneling to all the wrong people, is merely fueling top-down corruption that is probably making situations like this worse. Watch this segment from Rachel Maddow's recent trip to Afghanistan to see what I mean.

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I don't have a solution for how to make it that another woman never gets mutilated for attempting to escape abusive situations. I don't even know whether or not I actually feel like we should withdraw from Afghanistan, really. I mean, I recognize all the good reasons to do so, but there is a part of me that feels like its kind of amoral to destabilize a country and then just leave.

What I do know is that you can't use what happened to this woman as a reason to stay. Because our presence there couldn't keep it from happening in the first place.

And also because the suggestion that we're in Afghanistan to protect the lives of the women there is laughable. If this were the case, how come it took us so long? I was reading about RAWA and the oppression of Afghan women years before the war (in, if I remember correctly, Jane magazine). What about women in the Congo? Women in Juarez? Women in Darfur?

And if you're looking for arresting images, how about the image of this child, burned after a NATO bomb attack?

War is a complicated issue, there are no easy answers. Let's not be swayed by an (admittedly powerful) image, but try to actually think.

**Edited some for clarity. It's hard to blog when a four-year-old is also seeking your full attention**

Housekeeping

If I really am going to pick up blogging again, which I seem to be doing, then I need to update my blogroll. There are blogs I don't read, dead blogs, dead people on it, and blogs that I do read (lurk at, mostly) that aren't on it. I'll be doing this over the next few days.

New Fridge!!!

Motherfucking iced tea in the house, yo!

We were snookered! Wait, what?

Last night, Jon Stewart returned from a two-week vacation and unleashed his sharp knives of satire on those on the left who were "snookered" by a re-edited tape released by Andrew Breitbart that supposedly demonstrates racism and corruption on the left.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Lost in Race
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

(Also, Comedy Central, your embed code is crappy. I had to go in and close like three tags to get it to work. In case I screwed it up, the link to the video is here.)

Which is something I would have thought way more awesome, if this hadn't been Jon Stewart's response to Breitbart's completely fraudulent ACORN tapes last year.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Audacity of Hos
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

(Link here.)

Hm. Did you get snookered, too, Jon? Were you so eager to demonstrate that you treat the left and the right equally that you were willing to throw poor, black, (and in that clip, mostly females) under the bus?

I had sincerely hoped that someone in the media would be willing to revisit the ACORN tapes, just to throw light on the extreme injustice done to this now-defunct organization at the behest of the crybabies on the extreme right. I kind of thought it might be the Daily Show. Oh well.

The beard is dead sexy though.

Someone get this man a cape.

Because he is a superhero.

Just sayin'.

On Shirley Sherrod

It's hot and humid (well, humid for Albuquerque) and my fridge is still broken. I'm grumpy and I promise you, this post will have problems with tone.

This whole Shirley Sherrod scandal has really gotten me all perturbed. In case you've been living under a rock these past few days, here's what's happened.

The NAACP finally had the gumption to say out loud what has been obvious to everyone else with half a brain: the Tea Partiers willingly and knowingly harbor racists in their midst and should, if they're wanting the other 98 percent of America to take them seriously, cut that shit out.

Proving that calling a white person a racist is a bigger insult these days than calling a black person nigger, professional crybaby and total douchebag liar Andrew Breitbart (who was also behind the totally fake prostitution ring tapes that got ACORN disbanded) released a tape of a black woman named Shirley Sherrod who works for the USDA, giving a speech to the NAACP about being annoyed at a white farmer who came to her for help, "proving" that the NAACP specifically and black people in general are the real racists.

Of course Sherrod was forced to resign. The NAACP also immediately renounced her, calling her actions "shameful."

Now, even before this tape was even proved to be maliciously re-edited in a deliberately misleading way, I was put out. Maybe it was just that coming so close on the heels of the slap-on-the-wrist verdict given to the white cop who shot Oscar Grant (an unarmed black father of a girl my daughter's age, shot in the back while handcuffed and having his face shoved into the ground with a knee on the back of his neck in front of a dozen witnesses all holding cell phone cameras) but I just wasn't impressed by the degree of "oppression" on display here.

Oh, a black authority figure was less than respectful to you, and sent you somewhere else? Boo fucking hoo. Try getting shot in the back while face down and handcuffed with a cop's knee pressing down on your neck.

Not to mention the man what seeking help from an organization specifically set up as a co-op for black farmers (the incident actually occurred back in the 80s, before Sherrod even worked for the USDA), and was not a dues-paying member. Not to mention that the man was being snooty towards her. And not to mention that she did actually help him anyway during that first encounter, sending him to a white lawyer who could assist him.

But come to find that douche Breitbart had edited out the last part of the story. The full video shows that when she realized her initial reaction was perhaps related to lingering bitterness surrounding the fact that her father had been murdered by a Klansman (go ahead, grow up black in the south of a few decades ago after your father was murdered by the Klan, and see how you feel about white people, I dare you) and that she should overcome these feelings if she's going to have any luck making the world a better place.

She realized that the real problems in this country are between the haves and the have-nots, and while that's often overlaid with the matrix of the social constructs of race, it's not always. And then not only did she go on to personally help this white farmer, but she probably saved their farm and the two are friends to this day.

I agree with Joan Walsh. Shirley Sherrod is a hero.

But that's not where the irritation ends, oh no.

I'll let Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell speak for me for a moment here. She said exactly what I was thinking on Countdown with Keith Olbermann the other day.

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Nice Crash reference, by the way. Agreed about that movie as well.

So Shirley Sherrod was thrown under the bus. But after the tapes vilifying her were revealed to be an embarrassingly transparent fraud perpetrated by a huckster who is already known for releasing racially-tinged frauds to the media, everyone from the president on down apologized and jumped all over themselves to show how wrong and falsely quick to judge they were.

Tom Vilsack, the head of the USDA, even offered her a new special job. What is the new special job? An "outreach" position that would deal specifically with racial discrimination issues within the USDA.

This is the part that really got to me.

It is really annoying how mainstream white America wants black people to be, like, cultural envoys about race or something. I don't think Shirley Sherrod should have to leave her old, chosen job helping poor farmers and take a new job teaching the USDA not to be racist.

And, although I don't find him blameless in this situation (seriously, stop reacting to right-wing blowhards like their opinions matter!)I also don't think the Obama administration has some sort of obligation to "start a conversation" on race because he is black. I resent it when white people expect people of color to help them learn not to hate us.

Figure it out yourselves, already. Real life is not a movie with Morgan Freeman in a supporting role. No magical Negroes are coming along to help you overcome your own faults and teach you about love and friendship with their earthy wisdom. Deal with it.

Sigh. I'm sure this post makes me sound really bitchy and mean and violates the suggestions in this video. Until I have a working freezer so I can put some ice in my beverage and maybe cool off for a moment, I don't really care.

My fridge is broken.

The fridge broke. So I had to eat everything.



If only I had some attractive wealthy roommates to help me pay for it.

Immigrants.

The news that some group of serious xenophobic assholes has made a list of 1300 people, including children and pregnant women (with, most creepily, mentions of their due dates) and tried to have it made public, with no care or feeling of responsibility to what might happen to those people, has freaked me out way more than a little.

I mean, come on.

It's got me thinking about my own past.

I, like most Americans, am descended from other places. On both sides of my family, I am descended from lower-class immigrants, people who worked back-breakingly hard for what little they owned, and whom the American system of living consistently disenfranchised politically and socially.

My mother, second youngest in an Italian Catholic family of 13 surviving children, never had her own bedroom. My father, oldest child of two Afro-Cuban immigrants, famously states that his first bed was a box (and whether or not this was true or merely his own brand of constructed folklore I have never properly established).

In any case, my immigrant family members found themselves left out of the American political process. This may be why the political figures that exist in my family have always been elevated to near-legendary status.

For me, the political has always been personal. A friend once nicknamed me "Political Spice." It's in my genes I guess.

On my father's side of my family, a man named Generoso Campos-Marquetti was the first black man to hold a political office in Cuba, and played a key role in the Race War of 1912. On my mother's side of the family is her uncle Frank Rizzo, the 1970s Philadelphia mayor with mob ties. During their many knock-down, drag-out fights my mother often invoked her familial mafia connections the way a woman in an ancient Greek play might invoke the furies.

Also, I really want to see this movie.



I'm not sure what my point is, I guess. Most of America is descended from immigrants. Property crime and violent crime in border states is down. Undocumented immigrants form a crucial part of the nation's economy. Also, a generation or tow ago, I might have been in the shoes of those 1300 people in Utah. And political power is hard to come by, and is treasured for generations after.

So, what's the problem? If your big beef is that these people are here illegally, then make it easier to come to the United States legally, problem solved. (I have a friend who works in immigration law, and trust me, it's a seriously difficult process.) It would take care of the human smugglers and the drug runners who control the process now.

But it wouldn't deal with the problem of their being so many brown people, which is increasingly more obviously the anti-immigration crowd's real issue.

Another Abbie Summer

There are eleven foot tall sunflowers in my yard this year.



Abbie is four now, and still retains a hint of babyness, as when she falls asleep, sweaty in the summer sun.



But she's also sort of a badass, as when she won her match at a recent judo tournament.



(Hilarious slo-mo and soundtrack courtesy of my father, who also took first at the same match.)

It's another Abbie summer.