Voting for Cynthia McKinney

Oh, just so y'all know, I'm voting for Cynthia McKinney in November unless Barack Obama swings me back to him based on policy.

I helped draft and support the guy for the Democratic primary process because I wanted one of the top 2 parties in America to have the person I most agreed with whom I could get to run (Russ Feingold refused drafters' begging).

But, that said, I never did intend to commit to voting for my top Democratic pick in the general, even if I participated in the Democratic primary process.





Obama earned my support among Democratic contenders throughout most of the primary process.

But he hasn't earned my support among all contenders--and especially not in this run-up to the general election.

And you darned well better bet he hasn't earned it enough to get me to vote for him in an "electoral college" election system when I vote in a state that's going to go blue this election. My vote's going towards getting Rep. McKinney and her party a high percentage of the general vote (although 15% would be AWESOME, I'd settle for 5%).

Based on what I've seen so far (though I will be reading her policies more closely now that she's won her nomination--I still can't believe that--happy daaaaaance!), she's just got so much better policy stances than Obama.

2008's "Hope" Is Gone For Me

After the failure of 3 of my efforts to turn a leftward swing in my milieu into something that would swing far enough left to truly undermine my milieu's culture of valuing "taking"...

...I've settled back into believing again that the Takers will continue to win the war--now and until the end of human life on earth.

Even "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded"--the 3 pages I've skimmed--is feeding into that worldview. The good people of the earth win a battle against Takers by offering incontrovertible evidence to taking-valuers that "taking" has to involve brutal violence? (Bashing of demonstrators, etc. in the 60's?) Well, the Takers have enough resources to change their enforcement of cultural esteem of taking to ways that are just about impossible to show to taking-valuers (in this book, the actions of the NPIC). They have the resources to keep winning the war after every battle they lose, I've come to believe.

I really do feel that way tonight, and most of the time.

That said...

...I'd be da**ed if I'm going to live comfortably with the privilege Takers give taking-valuers (and those who look like them) without fighting like hell against the Takers' perpetuation of valuing taking.

I believe we'll lose...but I know I'm not omniscient. I could be wrong, and if I'm wrong, there's no way on earth I'm going to turn my pessimistic belief into a self-fulfilling prophecy by not lending a hand to the good people of the world.



(Even if I can't do it with the optimist's smile I did for a few months.)



In other words, I, myself, do not "hope" anymore.

I merely act against my hopeless beliefs "just in case."

Library Books

I'm so excited! The Soil and Health and The Revolution Will Not Be Funded just arrived in my name at the library!

Citizenship & Crime

Holy ****.

As a citizen of a country where citizenship can't be taken away--benefits of it can, but citizenship itself can't--at least for people who're born citizens--no matter what kind of criminal act...

...what a mind-blower, to read about a government deciding to take away citizenship of relatives of people who commit certain crimes.

That just.......
.....
.....
.....
........can't be done.

Where I live.

What a trip to see that it can, elsewhere.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's campaigners

I am so impressed with Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's campaigners.

Yesterday I attended a post-campaign event so I could attempt to explain to Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer the source of my frustration.
(Click to read the details.)

I'm mathematical and calculating enough that I can't stomach the idea of putting my time and labor into preaching to the choir. I joined his campaign when it seemed like it was going to be a chance to get thousands of mainstream Americans who don't read "liberal fringe magazines" exposed to sound policy proposals that use phrases like "militarized empire."
(Something Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer slipped into a sentence yesterday without thinking, bless his heart.)

Mainstream Americans will show up and listen to such talk if what they're doing is "learning a political candidate's views before voting." They won't show up to places where policy and action proposals include that kind of language under any old circumstances.

That's what makes them not "the choir."

I told Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer that I needed guidance towards other arenas--arenas besides campaigns for public office--where I could direct my labor if I was going to feel my heart calling me towards his proposed "citizen movement."

Since I didn't have the heart to stick with the part of hte movement that's reaching, at best, 1 new mainstream person a week by waving "No Blood for Oil" signs, I asked him if through his mailing list or his next book he could provide guidance for people like me.


He said he was searching for answers to such a question and would continue to do so so--and address them as he figured out how to.


But it turns out I didn't need to worry about Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer campaigners turning his message's mainstream momentum into a bunch of choir-preaching.

A large chunk of Nelson-Pallmeyer's contact structure in CD 1 has turned into an opposition movement to construction of a corn ethanol plant.

Let me reemphasize that.

JNP campaigners are keeping one of his "liberal fringe magazine" messages--that almost all biofuels do more harm than good--in the mainstream down there.

Wow.

What the heck was I worried about?




(Click here and scroll to the end of the post to read a wonderful University Ave. light rail fight story, too.)




Beyond that, the "Hopeful Thursdays" meeting in someone's back yard that I rolled my eyes at when I first heard about it...

...is pretty much a mirror image of the meetings in the same person's back yard out of which SPRUNG this candidacy (which I do not roll my eyes at).

After that news, I'm excited to hear what people come up with at "Hopeful Thursdays" meetings.



And, last but not least, a Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer supporter or two really touched me yesterday by surprising me with support for my University Avenue activities I hadn't asked for:

Attached to my clipboard, on top of the flyers, flapping in the wind, were two dollar bills.

What confidence in people's "do good" projects exists in the Nelson-Pallmeyer world. Running both ways.

You Couldn't Find A Few Hundred Non-Killers Out Of 12,000 Detainees, Hamas?

I read that the ratio of prisoners being talked about exchanging with Israel & Palestine is something like several hundred : 3.

Now, that sorta makes sense, once you factor in that the number of people held by the two sides is something like 12,000 : ... is it less than 10?


But here's what BUGS me.

Dumb*** officials on the Palestinian side aren't asking for a list that's 100% people who shouldn't be imprisoned in the first place.

According to this article, some of the hundreds they're asking for have committed actions that resulted in deaths.

Now, I'm not for keeping all people whose actions have resulted in deaths locked up forever, but for crying out loud, can they at least ask for them to be let out SECOND?

Can they at least ask for them to be let out after letting out a few hundred of the Palestinians who were locked up for throwing a rock at a tank or spitting at a soldier who let a bully beat them up?

I really hate the way people w/ power behave. **shakes a fist at Hamas elected & appointed officials**




(I wish I knew of some group who'd agree w/ me who could communicate with and influence Hamas officials. Something like Avaaz, only they don't get that narrow, so that wouldn't really work...da**it.)

Farmer's Market food

Grocery stores in my area:
Salad bar: $8/lb
Bread: $2/lb

Farmer's Markets in my area:
Salad fixins: $0.50/lb - $4/lb (mostly $1/lb - $2/lb)
Bread: $4/lb - $8/lb


Why on earth some people go to farmer's markets for the bread and other prepared goods and seem not to care much about the beans, greens, and other salad fixins is beyond me.

(P.S. Make sure to take a close look at the produce of people of color. The bread-lovers are probably passing them over for $32/lb artisinal oregano or something, so they could use your business to stay on the farm.

The more you shop at stalls with cheap food marketed based on traditional-yet-wise approaches to safety and health (and no more), the better they can stay afloat despite the non-traditional rules set up by modern bureaucracy.

If you worry about them not being "organic," which is a crock, anyway, talk to them.

My favorite experience: I said I was so hungry, I'd like something I could eat right now, without access to water for washing. Did the farmer-vendor have any ideas? She showed me some greens with holes in them, and when I expressed skepticism about the holes, she answered: "If the bugs won't eat it, neither should you!"

Lesson: there are always old tricks and farm wisdom that can help you pick out safe food for you and your family at low prices.)

Minnesota senate race

Blogger Penigma wrote:

Franken...obviously wouldn't...utter political pomposity and economic boondoggle for the benefit of corporations (summer gas-tax break).

Excuse me?

Do you really think that?

I would LOVE it if that were true.

If I could believe that about him, I would definitely vote for him (right now, uninformed about 3rd-party alternatives, I would...but of course, I'll see if there's anyone I like better come November. 3rd-party voting is useful here--5% in a statewide election gets them automatic entrance to debates) and possibly even campaign for him.

*sigh*

I wish Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer had won.

Two Buck Chuck, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, UFW

Well I'll be darned.
My favorite of ProfBW's action suggestions, which she asked me to subordinate to promoting the UFW's actions (which were more relevant to the immediately deceased victim), is now a UFW action.

Good thinkin' 99.

(On the other hand, now I wish I HAD gotten around to getting my conservative buddy who shops at Trader Joe's all the time to call them about Two Buck Chuck and voice his opinion as a consumer before the UFW got behind it. Now he'll think I'm just bugging him about my "UFW mailing list" stuff when he Googles the issue and sees the UFW come up!)

Female Dentist of Color

Click here to read why I'm looking for a female dentist of color.

Yesterday, I read Dr. Weems write:

Who can say for sure whether it’s blackness or femaleness that’s despised most in this country? Meaning, there’s probably no way to parse out which part of you is under attack when as a black woman professor you sit reading the vicious evaluations of your students

I'd searched for her after seeing her leave this comment:

Have you ever considered the possibility that your students' reactions hav more to do with You than they do with the material you are asking them to reflect upon there in the classroom?

Could it be that it's not only their own unexamined racism, but their own internalized sexism that makes them resent and resist the race discussion their black Female professor is trying to get them to engage?

Sure, the Obamas of the world faced their share of racism as they traversed through the halls of places like Harvard and Princeton. But the experiences of the black women students in class with Obama and other black males would tell that there's a very unique reaction academics reserve for black women in the classroom.

I wonder if a significant part of white (and black) students' revolt against and resistance to the material you and I present isn't also motivated by their deep suspicions about our right and competence to teach them.

As black women in academia we all have a rather sophisticated grasp of race and racism in the classroom, media, and in this country. But sexism, especially when it's directed at us, we aren't always astute at naming and addressing.

I don't know if the reaction I'm having is a helpful one or if it's a well-intentioned yet "*headsmack*" one...but my reaction, after thinking:

Geez Louise, that must be hard. I don't know if I could survive being in their shoes.

was to think,

By gum, since I do my darndest NOT to be like the students described over there (who give bad reviews of a teacher simply because the teacher is bringing coverage of women of color to their rightful proportional representation in studies about women), maybe I, just by going into someone's professional world and being a good human being, can be a bright spot in someone's day.

Although I'm not a student any more, I do have other ways in which I need to interact with professionals and support them. And this would be with my dollars, not my "review" words.

See, I need a dentist.

So I'm thinking about looking for a female dentist of color. Particularly of a racial/ethnic background that gets practically NO respect in the health fields.


Of course, my mom being in the health field, I've heard nightmare stories about incompetent treatment. Stories that make me very much want to avoid incompetent treatment.

So it'll be quite a challenge to filter out truly incompetent people from people who're very competent but not racially/ethnically mainstream enough to get the reviews they deserve.


But, the good news is, once I FIND a dentist of color who knows what she's doing with teeth, the rest of it isn't any more complicated than being who I strive to be anyway. A good person. (Who actually bothers to get dental checkups.)




But...

Boy is it hard to find a list of female dentists of color in Minnesota! 2 hours on the internet and nothing.

Can any readers help me?

I'm Going To Continue Protesting The Central Corridor LRT Plans

Well, today didn't go as badly as I thought.

My mobilization efforts did--I only managed to mobilize 4 people, thanks to my lousy organization.

But luck connected me to proper organizers who, although previously not 100% against light rail trains going down University Avenue, are now 100% against it. They've changed their minds about not fighting the route because they've decided that they're not going to be able to win a fight for any other means to their end (true economic justice for the people currently on & around University Ave..)

I have hope that even as a lazy, half-assed runner, I've nevertheless looked up, wishing for someone to hand my baton off to while I walk off the track and coddle my ego for a while, and, miraculously, found a whole team reaching back to me.

I don't deserve it, of course...but I got it. It's what luck delivered today.

And I'll take it.

And keep fighting. I ain't quitting today.

Protesting the Central Corridor LRT Plans

I'm about ready to give up the fight against light rail trains on University Avenue.

I don't like why, either.

The thought of how badly I've failed--both through lack of time investment and lack of skill--at organizing makes me sick at my stomach.

I suck at getting people to follow up.
I suck at following up and doing work myself (like getting my damned flyers and calls to action translated into Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, & Vietnamese).

And now it's mobilizing time and I've got no one standing beside me because I failed at organizing.

That's no reason to give up fighting the good fight.

But it sure makes me feel like doing so.

Contact Google; Boycott If They Don't Respond

I wrote:

Please change the mouseover text of your front page graphic ASAP. It is HIGHLY offensive and makes me want to avoid Google for the day and go use Yahoo or something. And makes me want to spread the boycott via blog if the caption lasts. It reads, "Anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest." That is ridiculous and erases people of color's history by implying that the only things that the entire world bothers to count when it says "First," etc. are first-world Westerners' history. Please change it to, "Anniversary of the first outsider ascent of Mount Everest" or "Anniversary of the first Western ascent of Mount Everest." Thank you.

Write what you like, but submit a comment to them, then change your home page, hide your toolbar, and search with something else until the word gets out that they've changed the "mouseover" text of that image on the front page of http://www.google.com/

I'm not sure if the above comment link is better or if this one is. I sent my comment to both.

Teaching Different Consent Rules ->->-> Society Judging Breach Of Consent Differently?

I don't know how to get our entire judicial/legal culture changed so things like this don't happen.

*sigh*

Best I can come up with as my own plan of action is to work on getting our entire mainstream culture changed in the ways BetaCandy suggests here and let the changes seep from there into our judicial/legal culture.

My current guess is that actions like BetaCandy's are the fastest way to get to the point where most mainstream-acculturated people would answer a dialogue like the one Marcella had with a commenter ("Anna C") exactly the way Marcella did:

Anna C:
So basically, his actions (from his point of view) come down to [3-point list]

Marcella:
I disagree with your assessment of his actions from his POV. That assessment at most matches the rationalizations and excuses he would give for his actions if he faced a criminal investigation. Someone's rationalizations which support the decisions they make are not the same thing as the situation from their perspective.

Do White Male Vegans Think Of Themselves As "Vegans," Not "White Male Vegans?"

Johanna at Vegans of Color asked:

Do (white, male) vegans see themselves as my ally automatically when they learn that I, too, am vegan? Do they assume we’re on the same side? (Is it even a conscious thought?) Such vegans divide the world into two parts: people who are vegan, & thus allies, & those who are not vegan.

I'm not vegan, but Johanna, I can tell you that the answer for me, as a white woman raised with a lot of privilege, is "Yes."

Nerdishness, sci-fi lovers, fellow students and enthusiasts of my favorite high school subject...YES.

That's exactly how I felt 80% of the time. And I don't have any stand-out memories I can think of as I type this about the likely 20% of the time that I didn't feel that way.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I finally got exposed to enough words like yours:

Some of us don’t have the luxury of seeing things that simply. Some of us will never, ever have the privilege of ignoring, if we want to, the rest of who we are in favor of focusing solely on our diets. Why?

Oh yeah, because the world won’t let us.

Because being who we are — completely aside from veganism — can be very dangerous sometimes. Some of us are getting raped or fired for being gay or pulled over ... or losing our homes ... or being harassed on the street or getting deported or being tortured or having the franchise taken away from us or struggling to get health care or ...

and Sly Civilian's on figuring out how to make whiteness something as prominent in my sense of identity as my "interests" or B.D. Tatum's book and started doing my damndest to think of myself as "colored" the color white.

Rachel Moss needs to know what she did

So here's a link to the post that I think lets her know.

Hopefully, Rachel Moss see that post whenever she Googles her own name and never forget AngryBlackWoman's take on what she did.

Working on this University Ave. thing

Just in case it isn't clear, like Macon D, I hope I'm being a different kind of helper.

I hope I'm being a true ally.

Though I'll appropriate "do-gooder" language when people who understand it have power and I'm trying to convince them, I do hope I'm not a do-gooder.

I did start this whole "stop the train on University" thing because of the answers to questions I got from people who live and work there. If I hadn't met so many people who share my opinions, I wouldn't be doing this, and I don't try to convert people who live and work in area to sharing my opinions. (Converting people with power--politicians and such from out of the area--is a different matter.) I don't even explain why I'm against LRT on University unless they ask.

I hope I'm doing a good job of being an ally.

Back to the Drawing Board: Keeping train transit off University Avenue

Dammit.

The MN legislature re-introduced bonding legislation that funds the "Central Corridor" University Avenue light rail train, the legislature passed it, and Gov. Pawlenty promised, as part of budget negotiations, not to veto it.

I don't even know whether to call the governor and ask him to veto that line of the budget bill or not.

I mean, it probably wouldn't help if he was working all weekend and, as a result of a whole week's/weekend's work, said he'd sign the bill, including that part.

*sigh*

I THINK my time--and especially the time of the people I'm trying to organize--would be better spent calling those who have yet to make any decisions about whether or not to fund the University Ave. train plan.

Still, it's really hard to imagine trying to convince all the people I'm organizing to move on to the next stage. I think half of them signed on because the questionable status of state funding gave them hope that they could do something.

I don't even know how to get myself up out and at 'em enough to get as many of my 130 contacts as possible writing letters (which is what it's going to take at the next level of funding decisions, I think).

*sigh*

Help?




I could use some advice about how to further organize the people on my petition.

I think we have to write the next organization that'll be making a funding decision now. I don't know if calling that organization will work.

I mean, I'll write a letter, and I'll tell the organization that my petition has about 130 people of the University Ave. area on it so far, but I doubt that'd be nearly as effective as 50 of those petitioners EACH writing a letter. A good swarm.

Thing is, I'm no experienced activist! And a ridiculous number of people of my race and social class (that is, the people I actually strike up conversations with easily) are for this stupid train because they're upper-middle-class privileged people who just don't happen to see what a poverty-creating clusterfuck this thing is. Everybody makes mistakes, but theirs are particularly frustrating to me right now.



I only have phone numbers for most of the people I've gotten contact info of who're against putting light rail on University Avenue (sometimes addresses, sometimes not--almost never e-mail addresses). So getting sample text to them is either going to be hard & slow (going door-to-door) or super expensive.

I'll bite the bullet & choose one of those two ways of trying to motivate them to get a letter written and get it off to next organization making a funding decision if I have to...but are there better ways than providing sample text to get working people to write letters?

Central Corridor - 24 signatures against University Avenue trains in 2.5 hours

I got 24 signatures against putting Central Corridor light rail trains on University Avenue in one night!

Considering my petition was only at about 110 when I set out this afternoon, that is AWESOME.

I hope I can really get this going. If I could keep up at this evening's rate, I'd actually reach my first goal of getting more signatures on my petition than there are policymakers who have backed the current plan. (State legislators, the Metro Council, nonprofits, big businesses, etc.)

People of the Central -> Charles / Lexington -> Western area, you rock. You're probably not reading this, but thanks for talking to me today. There IS strength in numbers--glad you believed it.

Poll: Twin Cities Couldn't Care Less If Current Central Corridor LRT Dies

I do believe that the good people of the Twin Cities know that Light Rail would kill University Avenue and drive minorities into an even worse wealth gap!

Although the overall Minnesota poll wasn't so good, when asked, "Governor Pawlenty vetoed funding for the Central Corridor light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Should the Central Corridor funding be re-considered as part of a budget deal at the end of the legislative session?" Twin Cities residents (who were 64% of poll respondents) answered:

No: 45%
Not sure: 9%
Yes: 45%


Not all hope that Twin Cities liberals care about the poor is lost.