The Joy of Co-Editing

Yasmin Tambiah and Joan Nestle, November 2013

Yasmin and I have worked for many months on our co-edited special issue, Lesbians and Exile, for Sinister Wisdom which got the go-ahead from head editor, Julie Enzer, just a few days ago.

La Professoressa snapped these post work session images, when we were both a little punchy. Yasmin and I managed to meet either in Melbourne or in a Sydney hotel lobby as we worked on the manuscript. Our friendship started many years ago in New York City when Yasmin won the Young Lesbian Writers Award from Astrae and I was m.c.ing the evening. Life brought us together once again here in Australia.

We want to thank all the writers who contributed to the project, Julie for being so welcoming to our proposal and our partners who watched and wondered. The issue will be out in October 2014.

Action Can be Taken

Dear US Campaign member groups,

Below, please find three urgent items from our friends at the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, UNRWA USA, and member group The Struggle, that you can forward to your membership to take action around the emergency situation in Gaza. Thank you for spreading the word.

1. State of Emergency in Gaza by Mohammed Omer

http://www.wrmea.org/action-alert-archives/12336-state-of-emergency-in-gaza.html

We decided to make this urgent report from Mohammed Omer into an action alert—Gazans need our help now! 

Contact Secretary of State John Kerry:

Write: U.S. Department of State

              2201 C ST., NW

             Washington, DC 20520

Call:    202-647-4000; select option 4 and ask operator for the comment line.

             202-647-6575  (Public Communication Division); select option 8 to leave your comment.

State of Emergency in Gaza

I want to thank all of you who have read the last posting. Little by little, we are changing what is allowed to be questioned, to be spoken, to be cared about.

Gaza Drowns and Silence Prevails

Sherry Gorelick, an old New York friend and tireless worker for justice in the Middle East, for an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people imprisoned by the merciless politics of Israel, sent me this report from Gaza.

"44 days without electricity! New emergency schedule started yesterday, electricity hours r downsized to 3 instead of 6, per day! Leaving Palestinians in Gaza with a 21+ hours of power outage a day. Add to this the horrible weather, constant rain, floods, wind, thunder and lightening!" Omar Ghraieb writing from Gaza

 "Israel 'Opens Dams' Flooding Gaza Strip Near Deir al Balah"

Dec 13, 2013
" The Gaza Government's Disaster Response Committee announced late Friday that Israeli authorities had opened dams just east of the Gaza strip, flooding numerous residential areas in nearby villages within the coastal territory."

The blockade has taken its toll on every aspect of daily life in Gaza and now a natural calamity, a storm, the likes of which had before been seen in this part of the world , from which there is no place to run for these imprisoned people, the sea on one side and Israel and Egypt turning their hearts away on the other, destroys all comfort. How is this not genocide, asks Sherry. The deliberate making of life impossible.

Photo by Oma Ghraieb, Dec 13, 2013

"State of Emergency in Gaza"
Mohammed Omer, Dec 2013

"It is cold, there is no power and I am charging my computer using a car battery in order to get this message out. It is so cold in Gaza that every one has cold feet and a cold nose. A new storm is hitting this besieged enclave. There is no electricity and shortages of water, fuel, and vital services mean people just sit and wait for the unknown." Omar writes of no garbage collection for weeks, no way to flush toilets, rats being flooded into people's homes, sickness every where. "It makes me wonder if U.S. Secretary  of State Joan Kerry is aware of Gaza's situation. Would he find it acceptable if Israeli citizens lived in the same condition? Or don't we in Gaza count as human?" As a Jew, whose history lies in the ghettos of Poland and Russia, I call out for the Diaspora to look into its soul--to stand by and watch the suffering of another people, while the "Jewish Nation" turns its back, makes life less possible--what has happened to us in the name of our safety?

From Fidaa Abuassi, December 13, 2013

"Gaza is drowning today. Houses are flooded by water. People are freezing there. No power. No water. No heat. No fuel. THIS IS A CATASTROPHE. A CATASTROPHE. I need to do something to help. I felt so helpless that I wanted to call 911, Red Cross or Amnesty International. Anyone! I want to tell the world that Gaza is living an unspeakable disaster and in need for your help. I cannot be silent. You cannot be silent!

Dec 12, 2013, the IMEU:
"Unlike Manhattanites, though--or, more to the point, unlike their neighbors in Sderot--Gaza'a refugees have nowhere to flee when heavy rains, flood their 25-mile occupied territory, blockaded by land, air and sea."

Once it was Jewish lives that were unmournable, so many did not care, did not value our lives and now, we have allowed in our name, and some even support, the entrapment, the forced affliction of another people. No nationhood is worth this ugliness of the human heart.

I know that the peace activists, the women of Women in Black  and so many others in Israel will mobilize to help if the State allows it--and we must too.

Gaza se noie et le Silence persiste Sherry Gorelick, une vieille amie à moi de New York et une travailleuse infatigable pour la justice au Moyen-Orient et pour la fin de la souffrance des Palestiniens emprisonnés par la politique sans merci d’Israël, m’a envoyé de Gaza ce rapport. « 44 jours sans électricité ! Un nouveau programme d’urgence a commencé hier, les heures d’électricité sont ramenées à 3 au lieu de 6 par jour ! Laissant les Palestiniens de Gaza avec une interruption d’énergie pendant 21 heures par jour. Ajoutez-y le temps horrible, les pluies ininterrompues, les inondations, le tonnerre et les éclairs ! » Omar Ghraieb écrivant de Gaza « Israël ouvre des barrages inondant la Bande de Gaza près de Deir al Balah » 13 décembre 2013 « Le Comité de réaction au désastre du gouvernement de Gaza a annoncé vendredi dernier que les autorités israéliennes avaient ouvert des barrages justes à l’est de la Bande de Gaza, inondant de nombreuses régions résidentielles dans des villages voisins à l’intérieur du territoire côtier. » Le blocus a touché tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne à Gaza et maintenant une catastrophe naturelle, une tempête, semblable à celles qu’on a vu avant dans cette partie du monde, d’où il n’y a pas d’endroit pour s’enfuir pour ces gens emprisonnés, la mer d’un côté et Israël et l’Egypte se détournant, de l’autre, détruit tout confort. Comment ceci n’est-il pas du génocide, demande Sherry. Vivre de manière délibérée est impossible. Photo de Oma Ghraieb, 13 décembre 2013. « Etat d’urgence à Gaza » Mohammed Omer, Déc 2013 « Il fait froid, il n’y a pas de courant et je charge mon ordinateur avec la batterie d’une voiture pour envoyer ce message. Il fait si froid à Gaza, que tout le monde à les pieds froids et le nez froid. Une nouvelle tempête frappe cette enclave assiégée. Il n’y a pas d’électricité et le manque d’eau, de carburant et de services vitaux signifie que les gens simplement s’assoient et attendent l’inconnu. » Omar écrit qu’il n’y a pas eu de collectes des ordures depuis des semaines, pas moyen de tirer la chasse aux toilettes, des rats qui sont noyés dans la maison des gens, la maladie partout. « Cela me fait me demander si le Secrétaire d’Etat US Joan Kerry est au courant de la situation de Gaza. Trouverait-il acceptable que des citoyens israéliens vivent dans ces mêmes conditions ?  Ou nous, à Gaza, ne comptons pas comme êtres humains ? » Comme Juive dont les histoires se trouvent dans les ghettos de Pologne et de Russie, j’en appelle à la Diaspora de contempler son âme – à être aux côtés et à regarder la souffrance d’un autre peuple, tandis que la « Nation juive » tourne le dos, rend la vie moins possible – que nous est-il arrivé au nom de notre sécurité ?  De Fidaa Abuassi, le 13 décembre 2013 « Gaza se noie aujourd’hui. L’eau inonde les maisons. Les gens gèlent ici. Pas de courant, pas d’eau, pas de chauffage, pas de carburant. C’EST UNE CATASTROPHE. UNE CATASTROPHE. Je dois faire quelque chose pour aider. Je me suis sentie si impuissante que j’ai voulu appeler le 911, la Croix Rouge ou Amnistie International. N’importe qui ! Je veux dire au monde que Gaza vit un désastre indicible et qu’il a besoin de votre aide. Je ne peux pas garder le silence. Vous ne pouvez pas garder le silence ! 4.65 GB (31%) of 15 GB used Manage ©2013 Google - Terms & Privacy Last account activity: 1.5 hours ago Details

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Get ready for 2014

The Struggle Continues

Di, Oishik, Debolina, Joan, 2013

By the bay of my late in life city, we stand together on a sunny afternoon. Now the call goes out from our young friends, to stand together in the ways of resistance. Look for such a vigil in your city, country and move beyond the borders of our own concerns.

"Dear all,

As you might already know, on December 11, the Supreme Court of India upheld India's anti-sodomy law, which was decriminalised by the Delhi High Court in 2009. Oishik and I have been part of the queer rights movement in India and have been part of the legal process as well. 

A global day of outrage is being planned all around the world to protest this judgement. We wanted to organise some kind of public action - most likely a silent stand in outside the Indian Consulate in Melbourne. We'd be very happy if you join us and also put us in touch with queer groups in Melbourne who we can contact to gather some publicity.

Please write soon with ideas.

Warmly,

Debolina and Oishik"

Waters, Light, the Power of Theater--For Georgia

I  write and live surrounded by much beauty, moments touched by light, here in 4 Fitzgibbon Avenue.

Now I live much closer to the ground, down from the 13 floors of 215 West Broadway.

From our plantings, hands deep in the soil, comes these living things, scallions that snap green, beets still raw from their home in the earth. The colors of my life now.

Yasmin Tambiah and I are finishing up our work on the Lesbians and Exile special issue for Sinister Wisdom. In the sun, so bright with hope, I read and read of journeys of displacement, of shifting senses of self, of thinking trying to make sense of new positionings. And I am as grateful to these words as I am to the precious sun lit light that makes life possible.

Along the banks of the Yarra, the brown river that flows through Melbourne, La Professoressa and our Cello take in the old old flow, wondering at all it has seen from the times before Invasion until now, when the first walkers of its lands, still ask, where now is our place by the Yarra, our dreams of possibilities. Old stones, old water, worn banks, mourning times and struggle times, so simple the flow of rivers, so huge in their holding of our histories. "My soul has grown deep like the rivers," sang Langston Hughes, the rivers of once my land, now yours.

In Sydney, we gaze upon the European starting place here in this land, the harbour, filled with iconic images of my new home, always a reminder that on one fateful morning, an old people gazed upon a new one, and in the sails saw the history of loss.

On the ferry to Manly Beach we pass the Heads, the opening to the sea, the waters that carried the new history to this island home of so many for so long--even though to European eyes, the original peoples were invisible; an empty land, they said, they found.

Sweet William  (Luke Carroll) speaking with his son, played by James Slee

On a stormy night in Sydney, we go to the Belvoir Theater in the Surrey Hills neighborhood of Sydney to see a new production of "The Cake Man," Robert Merrit's pioneer play about the "unseen" first people of this country. A joint production of the standing Belvoir theater ensemble and the Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company, Australia's leading Aboriginal theater group, the play is just beginning its Sydney run.

"Back in the early 1970s, a group of pioneering indigenous theatermakers occupied a dilapidated terrace in Redfern and started the National Black Theater. The first full-length play they staged was Robert J. Merritt's 'The Cake Man.' A droll examination of white paternalism from a black point of view, Merritt's play kicked off a renaissance of art and performance that laid the foundations of contemporary indigenous theater."

After climbing up a steep hill in the pelting rain, we rush into the crowded theater, filled with damp excited theater goers. Down a few steps, and we find some seats and wait for the curtain time. More and more people, young dashing ones, energized couples, interestingly dressed older ones sipping their wines and beer, the place is filled. Much like a successful off Broadway launch it feels to me. Then the bell announcing it is time to go to seating, but it is too early for the stated starting time of "The Cake Man." Wow, I say to Di--this is really a wonderful turnout. People start rushing up the steps; a young man announces seating for "Hamlet" has begun. It is then that I discover this is a two venue theater--upstairs is the larger, more mainstream productions. The lobby empties out at a furious pace.A few of us are left waiting, and I get a sinking feeling.

"'The Cake Man is at once straightforward and complex. It is about the small details of life in a changing world. Jumping off effortlessly from a pre-invasion idyll to the hard scrabble of modern life on a mission in Western New South Wales, Merrit's virtuosic play pings with closely observed portraits of people doing what they have to do to get by. Tucked away inside it is an account of the roots of despair and of the beautiful means of overcoming it."

Once again the bell summons us, and we go further down deeper into the building's core and enter a small theater, with wooden rows serving for seats. Perhaps forty of us now have filled the space. Company members are there laying out the perimeters of the stage with white chalk, small black dolls sit on the floor, an actor walks to the performing space from the audience, Luke Carroll, who will hold us in his hands for the rest of the performance as Sweet William, the Black man who lunges against the confines of his life, who bursts with love for his wife, Ruby, and his son, lovingly called Pumpkinhead. See this play if you can. Sit and hear Sweet William turn to us and ask, "what do you want from me? What do you want me to be?" All of us sitting in that place as if we are in a small boat and can't escape our histories--those of us of the conquering class know, there are no answers that will save the indigenous dream of ownership of their lives, so complete is the rule of colonizing power. I think now of all those others sitting in the audience above us, listening to the Prince of Denmark looking into a similarly darkened space and asking his now so known existential question--to be or not to be, even in his despair, in total self ownership. When will the voice below the known histories, when will the stark and so clear voice of Sweet William pierce our cultural norms, "What do you want from me," as if we would give an answer that would end his dispossession. As if some lucidity behind our brutality would make all clear, allow his world to stand free and sweet as his love for Ruby and his son.

Performers: Sweet William, Luke Carroll; Civilian/Mr Peterson, Oscar Redding; Priest/Mission Inspector, George Shevtsov; Pumpkinhead, James Slee; Soldier/Mission Manager, Tim Solly; Ruby, Irma Woods

When the play ended,  I sat thinking of Lorraine Hansberry, and her portrait of a Black-American family trying so desperately to do things the right way, I thought of Georgia, as if she was sitting there beside us, this is the theater that gave her life and I think, the writer victoriously found his way to make himself heard above the din of invisibility..

"Robert J. Merritt watched his first opening night under police guard: he was an inmate of Long Bay at the time."

My dear Georgia, how do I say good by?

Georgia Brooks, in her work suit, Mabel Hampton and Arisa Reed at an LHA event, 1980s

The word came to me: "Georgia passed this morning." For morning after morning, I heard your voice. You said, I have endured so much but I know I have to endure more. You told me about your father and growing up in Georgia, how you worked with him to lay the food market's floor and I heard the love for him in your voice through all the miles between us. Never had we been so close as in your final months--the word final sticks in my throat. The triangle of love between Paula, you and me--Let's talk memories, you said and we did. The Black Lesbian Studies Group you ran in the dining room of 13A, way back in the 1970s,  the LHA slide show trip you, me and Deb took to Boston, the coldness of the night, and how we walked the streets trying to find some warm food, and laughed and laughed. Off Broadway should dim its lights tonight, for the love you had for the wonder that was the theater, sometimes lugging your oxygen tank from Hoboken to Broadway. We spoke of old lesbians friends, you listened while I read Ms Hampton's words to you of her North Carolina childhood and I promised you I would read Cheryl Clarke's new speech to you. We laughed with delight at De Blasio's win and spoke of our memories of the Combahee River Collective, with Chirlane in the midst of it. Look at her now. Every morning for so long as the nurses turned you, as your friends brought you bologna sandwiches, your favorite, as you kept trying to take responsibility for your own care, always thanking those who touched you with care but firm in your needs, your knowledge of the body you had managed for so long, the telephone putting me at your bedside and you in our dining room. I would tell you of Melbourne weather, of the parakeets in the gum trees, trying to give you moments of relief, of flying out of the room that held you. You are loved by so many, dear Georgia for all you were, for the caring you gave others even when your body did not know itself anymore, I am grateful you would say, it's a journey, you would say, exactly you would say when we took the same breath. Now I know the full weight of living so far away from where our lives met. How I would like to be with Paula, Deb. Morgan, talking of your dignity and strength of purpose, of your love for the archives, your second home, you said. I love you very much, you told all those who some how managed to be there with you, with your final moments of strength you loved.

La Mia Professoressa

So much of my life now is made possible by this woman, Di Otto, but she gives life to so much more. In appreciation for her years of work, teaching, advocating, Di has been appointed the inaugural Francine V McNiff Chair in Human Rights Law at Melbourne University. When in 1999 she told me, get your passport ready, I could not imagine the journeys she would take me on. Thank you, my darling.

That's My City!

This is the city that gave me life. Thank you all who voted in an new old hope and voted out an old power. From across the seas, I see New York looking to the future.

Joy

Yesterday was a warm early summer day--today an icy wind has returned--but yesterday all the richness of crisscrossing of lives. Here we are, with gratitude to the fisherman who left his much watched pole to give us this gift. La Professoressa and two of her post graduate students from the University of Melbourne School of Law, Oishik and Debolina--they also far from home, Kolkata, the capital of East Bengal, India-- and the gray- headed one. We spent the day by the bay, talking, talking, our histories bouncing off each other, the desire to be in each other's presence despite shyness and difference of age, lands of origin, to hear the thoughts of others trying to make sense of the complexities of gender, race, desire while we watched the ancient rituals of near naked bodies lying helter skelter on the sand, dogs scampering, children squealing with delight as the gentle but cold waters of the bay nipped their toes, the four of us,our eyes looking out, our own bodies touching, smiles of welcome.

Shores of Stone

The sea, all around is the sea, the sea that whether here or washing up on the shores of Lampedusa, more and more is becoming the site of perished hope, the sea where the inequities of our world are carried on every ceaseless wave. The sea meeting lands where war and exploitation have made life impossible, where the North refuses the South, where power, like the sea, relentlessly pushes its own protection and the unwanted bodies slip under the surface, once again.

A Glimpse

Here I am in Queensland, wearing warratahs, an ancient Australian flower. My Australian body, so different from my Broadway, New York body but traffic and water flows, street cries and parrot songs all merge into the stretch of life.

Belarus Free Theater: Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker on a Cold Spring Night in Melbourne

Belarus Free Theater, "Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker"

 Without arts' festivals, it would be hard to coax many Western artists and companies to make the long trek to Australia, but as I saw when the National Art Gallery brought a smattering of Impressionist masterpieces to these shores, people came from the bush and the small towns to stand ten deep in front of the starry nights of Van Gogh--I, originally from the overly art rich world of New York City--watched bus-trip  weary Australians trying to get a glimpse of living lines of color and madness, and thought the margins are still where things can be seen as never seen before. Isolation is a place of yearning and of gratitude.

"The company was formed in Europe's last surviving dictatorship, and every member of Belarus Free Theater has, at one time or another, been imprisoned, threatened or mistreated by the authorities..."

For the past two weeks, the Melbourne Festival has been in full swing, but one offering particularly caught my eye because it had the word Minsk in it. Now growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s, in a family with Polish and Russian roots, Minsk seemed always to be in the air, like Lodz. Words that had no real outline but carried weight, words that marked roads that led nowhere or that held parcels of meaning never opened or the shifting ground of Jewish peasants, one day Polish, the next Russian, always unwanted. Minsk, I said to myself. Darling, I said out loud, we are going to see this performance.A small window opened on my Bronx past here, in the land of desert and vast sea and embattled heritages and I wanted to peer though it, to see what Minsk stood for now in 2013.

"Minsk is the capital city of Belarus, a country situated between Poland and Russia, where the same President has ruled for almost 20 years. It is a place where the authoritarian regime has taken to enforcing control over people's very identities, including their sexuality. The most recent Gay Pride march in Belarus was broken up by police after only 15 minutes. All the gay clubs in Minsk have now been closed down."


So there we were,  La Professoressa with her glass of red wine and me pacing the carpeted halls of the Arts Center, knowing I had to be there. And sure enough, I see Dennis Altman, the gay historian, also Jewish and we hug and say, we had to be here and then I see Arnold Zabel, the caretaker of Yiddish culture in Melbourne and refugee rights activist, he too in pursuit of Minsk. So Jews floating in their own memories of memories of Minsk take their seats along with so many more, not a seat left and the new refugees from Minsk give us their hearts and bodies, scarred and brave, words breaking through enforced silences; they give us the once again the power of a people's theater, stripped down to naked confrontations with the State and their own yearnings, their own displacements, bits of white paper become the snow of Eastern Europe, and I sit in the darkness, thinking of how quiet the streets of New York become during a thick snowfall, how good the cold snow star feels on the cheek as long as refuge is close by. Not a Jew in sight in this Minsk, but the connections are there, for this queer one. I thank the Belarus Free Theater for coming so far from their river, from their country without access to the sea, locked in in so many other ways, to this island continent where sea is our master and the home of our own cruelties. I thank you for the history you invoked and for the history you taught, for your bodies bearing the bruises of exile, even and more then ever, when you were home in Minsk.

And in memory of Kathy Acker whom I met when we formed the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force (F.A.C.T) in New York City in the late 1970s. I can see that room with its neat rows of wooden folding chairs, with Kathy and Ellen Willis and Ann Snitow and many others, feminists all and sex radicals all.

The Sweetness, the Sorrow

I am cooking for a gathering of Jewish lesbian friends, a time of sweetness; the cookbook, Jerusalem, compiled by the Palestinian author-chef, Sami Tamimi and the Israeli author-chef Yotam Ottolenghi has been my bible for the past few days as I measure out my sumac and whole coriander seed. On the pages of this book two cultures live in vibrant colors of streets and shared ingredients, any moment of mutual appreciation so valued and then I turn the page and read:
Za'atar [a spice mix consisting of powdered dried hyssop leaves, ground sumac, toasted sesame seeds and salt, part and parcel of the Palestinian heritage] has now also become central to modern Israeli cuisine. Regrettably, za'atar has joined the long list of thorny subjects poisoning the fraught relationship between Arabs and Jews, when the Israeli authorities declared the herb an endangered species and banned picking of it in the wild. Though a compelling argument was made about preserving the dwindling population of wild za'atar, the decree was taken without any form of dialogue with the Arabs, who see it as a deliberate violation of their way of life.

Not even this pleasure, this memory of spice in the mouth, can be allowed. From the smallest seed to the huge gray wall, the Israeli State crushes Palestinian possibilities for pleasure. I stir my pot with sadness at this huge petty insult to human life.

My Sweetness, My Sorrow

My Sweetness: Ruby and I during our weekly mentoring session--and I have to say the mentoring goes both ways--Ms Ruby, 16 now, and I sharing thoughts about the imagist poetry of H.D. and the Circe tale as Homer tells it. I have been struggling to find my way back to this site, to force my words again into this mix of private public touch. Not because there is nothing to mourn for or rage about or to remain obdurate in our demand to take note and find actions of resistance, but because there is so much. I am thinking now of the three young Russian women of Pussy Riot who have been imprisoned on the outer limits of their Russian geography, how much the Putinites would like us to forget them, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutserich, and how we will not forget them, even as they are disappeared into the incarceration black hole of the Russian prison system. The lightness of their touch, their thin disruptive bodies now exiled from our ken but oh how foolish, how brutal Putin looks as he struts his masculinity over their youthful bodies. Somewhere over the steppes a strum is carried on the winds, young women's voices, fresh and brave, mocking the hollow iron man.  

Ms Ruby, in her new dress, celebrating her 16th year in our Melbourne home

From Zoe in Belgrade--Complexities of Activism, the Solidarity of Activism

Lesbian Resistance

Unfortunately I don’t have good news – the Belgrade Pride has been banned again this year. Serbian authorities have shown once again that violence is legitimate and justified, and have shown just how much we are weighed down by fascism and intolerance. Regardless of the fact that I did not agree with the politics of the Pride’s organizational board and that I was once again brought to a situation where I had to weigh out the pros and cons of going or not going to the parade – the problem being, when you don’t talk about internal problems in a transparent manner then politics itself becomes confusing. but I guess that’s the point of the neo-liberal system – to fragment us to pieces. For the third year in a row the state has shown itself to be incapable of providing elementary rights, and that includes the right to life without fear – in short, the right to life. Tonight, we gathered in front of the government and marched to the parliament, and showed that the LGBT community can react and act in unison. That does not mean that I am very hopeful when it comes to the human rights situation in Serbia - a state which shows weakness when facing hooligans should suffer the consequences of their mistakes. and those mistakes are all around us in this country. Regardless of everything, what’s important is that I do not fear who I am and, in spite of the spineless wimps in our government, I love who I am – a lesbian, feminist, art activist and human being.

Now is not the time for silence--I am still here

So much beauty, and so much fear                                               Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia


Jews Condemn New York City’s Latest Incidents of
Racist Violence & Religious Bigotry
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Amy Helfant jaicpress@gmail.com
Donna Nevel denevel@gmail.com

Jews Condemn New York City’s Latest Incidents of Racist Violence & Religious Bigotry

September 26, 2013     Members of the Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition were angered and saddened to learn of the vicious bias-related attacks on Saturday, September 21, in New York City, and join with all
those who are fighting to ensure that we live in a city that is safe for all residents. Dr. Prabhjot Singh, a
professor at Columbia University, and a companion, a fellow Sikh, were assaulted in upper Manhattan by
about a dozen individuals who called them “Osama” and “terrorist” and broke Dr. Singh’s jaw. As part
of his Sikh faith, Dr. Singh was wearing a turban. According to a new report, Turban Myths, put out by
SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) and Stanford University, 48% of
Americans mis-identify urban wearers as Muslim, and over 20% of Sikh schoolchildren suffer violence as
a “price for maintaining their Sikh identity." As Dr. Singh commented two days after the attack, “Our
turban and beard are a trigger for fear in the minds of many Americans” (NY Times, September 23,
2013).] Additionally, an individual assaulted a New Jersey woman wearing a hijab and called her a
“f**king terrorist,” as she attended a pro-democracy rally in Times Square.

    Even as we deplore these vicious attacks on individuals, we view them not as isolated incidents but as
part of a systemic assault on the rights and liberties of Muslim, South Asian, and other targeted
communities in NYC. While the police are investigating the attack on the two Sikh men as a possible
hate crime and have arrested the alleged perpetrator of the assault on the Muslim woman at the rally, the
NYPD and public officials, along with right-wing media and a network of anti-Muslim ideologues, must
share responsibility for fostering an anti-Muslim atmosphere that encourages people to view both
Muslims and those mistaken for Muslims as terrorists. A police department that has guidelines associating
those who wear a beard and other signifiers of religious observance with “terrorism,” and implicitly labels
all Muslims as terrorist suspects by its surveillance of New York City’s entire Muslim community,sends
a message of suspicion and bigotry that fuels such attacks.
      We urge members of the Jewish community and all New Yorkersto speak out strongly in our schools,
workplaces, community organizations and houses of worship against bigotry, wherever it may occur; and
to demand strong responses and action from government leaders and representatives that must include,
first and foremost, requiring that the NYPD abandon its anti-Muslim policies. We also encourage as
many of us as possible to join community actions and responsesthat are called by our allies during this
time. (Our website will list actions as we learn about them.) Attacks on individuals because they are
“walking while Sikh” or “standing on the street while Muslim” are simply unacceptable in our city.
The Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition (JAIC) consists of three groups: Jews for Racial and
Economic Justice (JFREJ), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Jews Say No! (JSN!)
http://www.Jewsagainstislamophobia.org/

Hellen Cook: A Woman for All Times

In homage to all the gray haired women who stand now and have for decades in so many cities in the world, the gray haired women who are supposed to be invisible but whose love of life and what it could be in a world without war or extreme nationalism, pushes them out into the streets, out of the decorum of aging into an activism for the ages.

Hellen on the streets

With her WILPF banner, Marg in the background

A wonderful photo taken by a passing photographer, 2009

I received the unwanted, unexpected word last night. Our Women in Black comrade Hellen Cook had died. So quietly she left us, and the Us is huge. I will write more when night falls here.

Di, Geraldine and Hellen

For many years now, a group of us have stood vigil once a month outside the old post office here in the heart of Melbourne, like so many other groups of women around the world involved in the Women in Black movement against militarism, against war and occupations. Our names are Sue, Marg, Esme, Joan, Geraldine, Sandra, Alex, Hellen and others who know where to find us the first Saturday of every month.This is old news, gray haired women standing in the streets for almost over a 100 years one way or the other, trying to catch the eye of passer-bys, handing out leaflets, talking, talking, taking abuse and still talking.

A special comradeship is born in these groups, over cups of tea, here, making banners, preparing leaflets, filling each other in on other actions for peace, for dialogues of all kinds against social exclusions, long talks about what should national security really mean--work, health, care for children, respect for human life and the environment and the end to nationalistic bullying. We are a mixed lot, Christian, Jewish, Atheist, Radical Feminist, lesbian and straight, from several different countries . From time to time Muslim women join us, speak with us in the street and say they did not know such a voice existed, Lebanese families take our leaflets and stop to talk about hope as do some of the long time Jewish residents of Melbourne.

Hellen speaking with Alex

And always Hellen, travelling from Frankston on the train, slight, smiling indefatigable Hellen carrying her latest WILPF document (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) along with her banner. No matter what happened on the streets, Hellen was calm and gentle, not in a Pollyanna way, but in the way of someone who has seen much of life and struggle and has her eyes on a different vision. If life had not shifted so for me in 2001, I would never have met Hellen or indeed, any of these women, would not have entered into their history of resistance going back for some, Marg, for instance, to the 1980s or Alex who was part of the original Women in Black stand in Haifa. And Hellen. Little by little she told me about her life, about her Chinese grandfather who came to Victoria to work in the mines of the gold rush in the early  20th century, about her husband who died on the edge of a volcano he had made his life's work to study, about her children and their children and about her garden. When I returned from my third cancer surgery to the group, she had  homeopathic help for me,  but the most healing of all was simply Hellen herself, playful with difference, quiet in the face of my New York bombast, her steadiness of purpose without self righteousness, her optimism built on deep despair of what the world was doing to itself. I think, simply put, Hellen was a good person, a goodness that she gave freely of. Once after a good vigil, I took Hellen into my lesbian arms and we danced a little in the streets.  We are all still taking in her loss. Not Hellen, please, not Hellen. We need her so.

Esme, Alex, Geraldine, Marg, Hellen, Joan, Savan, Karen

In Honor of Eric Ohena Lembembe; In Honor of David Kato; In Honor of Noxolo Nogwaza

David Kato. Noxolo Nogwaza. Eric Ohen Lembembe. They fall, lesbians and gay men who meet in rooms and on the streets to speak with each other, to give hope to each other, to organize, they fall, but not from our collective memory which spans continents, ordained divisions. Your bodies must be in our ken, we must respect your histories, but our queerness will be another history of comrades. In honor of Eric Ohena Lembembe and his fallen comrades, lesbians and gay men, who stood in the street and sat in rooms, turning their backs on preached hatreds, and lost their lives as they looked towards another future.

In honor of David Kato from Uganda and Noxolo Nogwaza from South Africa, who fell to hatred but who stand tall in our struggle for human dignity. With deep respect for all those who now mourn the loss of their friends.

From Cameroononline.org:

A prominent gay rights activist in Cameroon was tortured and killed just weeks after issuing a public warning about the threat posed by "anti-gay thugs," the Human Rights Watch said.

Friends discovered the body of Eric Ohen Lembembe at his home in the captial, Yaounde, on Monday evening after he was unreachable for two days, the rights group said in a statement Tuesday.

One friend said Lembembe's neck and feet looked broken and he had been burned with an iron.
Lembembe was among the most prominent activists in one of Africa's most hostile countries for sexual minorities.

First as a journalist and later as executive director of CAMAIDS, a Yaounde-based human rights organization, he documented violence, blackmail and arrests targeting members of Cameroon's gay community. He was also a regular contributor to the Erasing 76 Crimes blog, which focuses on countries where homosexuality is illegal, and he wrote several chapters of a released in February on the global gay rights movement, From Wrongs to Gay Rights.

Race and Real Estate: America's Deadly Partnership

Over Australian radio came an American woman's voice, muffled by the distance between us, but the words grew in menace, their certainty of power over- reaching the 23000 miles of ocean they had to travel: "he had every right to shoot, we hired him to protect our property and that was what he was doing." Race and real estate, gated housing estates and stand your ground home protection laws, conservative money pouring into think tanks that come up with laws that ensure America's apartheid will have deadly force behind it. For all the years of my American life, I have seen what happens when protective capitalism claims its exclusiveness, what bodies fall at the gate, at the wall. The jungle out there, white paradise in here. A teen-age boy in a hoody, his face bare, runs into a hired mercenary who himself would not be allowed to live behind the walls he is so fervently protecting, with a gun in his pocket that burns against his thigh, this time I will get you, thug, he says, this time I will carry out the ethnic cleansing I was hired for and maybe, I will be one of them and not one of you. Six white women, like an American tragic chorus, perform their ordained racial script and other mothers grasp their sons and warn and warn and rage and rage. Obama is trapped in his political skin, a King Lear who can only scream his anger, his sorrow on a solitary plain blasted by national winds.

Too much, too much, too many, too many--the dismantling of the Voting Rights protection laws is a national version of the gated community that condones the killing of Trayvon Martin. Property rights and white race rights, property rights and wealthy protection concerns--big cities do it by pricing living spaces in the millions and billions.

Who might you have become, Trayvon, the lawyer who along with others dismantles once and for all the legal privileges of the corporate class, the father of daughters and sons who took the sun full on their face and laughed into life, the lover of many or of one, the poet who still dreams of rivers as deep as our souls. American crumbles a little more, its history shot through with betrayals of its own stated principles, from the death of Allende, the CIA support for the apartheid regime and its arrest of Mandela, once a young boy himself who was not allowed into his own streets. Build your prisons higher and higher for those who manage to survive their teens but it is yourself that is imprisoned--violence stalks your dreams, national and internationally, between citizens and between countries. Race and real estate, conservative dreams of who is really human--but we still dream of rivers as deep as our souls, rivers of refusal.  

Translated by Edith Rubenstein La race et l’immobilier: un partenariat mortel en Amérique  La voix de la femme est arrivée au milieu de nous assourdie par la distance, mais les mots devenaient de plus en plus menaçants, leur certitude de pouvoir dépassant les 23.000 miles d’océan qu’ils devaient parcourir : « il avait absolument le droit de tirer, nous l’avions engagé pour protéger notre propriété et c’est ce qu’il faisait. » La race et l’immobilier, des lotissements de maisons entouré d’un grillage et des lois de protection permettant à une personne faire usage de la force en autodéfense sans obligation de se retirer d’abord, de l’argent de conservateurs arrosant des groupes de réflexion pour proposer des lois pour assurer que l’apartheid d’Amérique aura derrière lui une force mortelle. Pendant toute les années de ma vie américaine, j’ai vu ce qui arrive quand un capitalisme protecteur prétend à l’exclusivité, j’ai vu quels corps tombent devant la grille, devant le mur. La jungle dehors, le paradis blanc ici à l’intérieur. Un adolescent portant une capuche, le visage découvert, tombe sur un mercenaire payé qui ne serait pas autorisé lui-même à vivre derrière les murs qu’il protège avec tant de ferveur, avec un revolver dans la poche qui lui chatouille la cuisse, cette fois, je t’aurai, voyou, dit-il, cette fois-ci je vais exécuter l’épuration ethnique pour laquelle j’ai été engagé et je serai peut-être, l’un d’eux et pas l’un d’entre vous. Six femmes blanches, comme un chœur américain tragique, accomplissent leur copie raciale dictée et d’autres mères attrapent leurs fils et les mettent en garde, les mettent en garde et se déchaînent et se déchaînent. Obama est piégé dans sa peau politique, un Roi Lear qui peut seulement crier sa colère, son regret sur une plaine solitaire anéantie par des vents nationaux. C’est trop, c’est trop, ils sont trop nombreux, ils sont trop nombreux – le démantèlement des lois de protection des droits de vote est une version nationale de la communauté à l’intérieur des grilles qui excuse le meurtre de Trayvon Martin. Les droits de propriété et les droits de la race blanche, les droits de propriété et les préoccupations pour la protection de la richesse – de grandes villes le font en fixant le prix d’espaces de vie en millions et en milliards. Qui aurais-tu pu devenir, Trayvon, l’avocat qui avec d’autres démantèle une fois pour toute tous les privilèges légaux de la classe d’entreprises, le père de filles et de fils qui ont pris tout le soleil sur le visage et ont ri à la vie, l’amoureux de beaucoup ou d’une seule personne, le poète qui rêve encore de rivières aussi profondes que nos âmes. L’Américain se désagrège un peu plus, son histoire atteinte par des trahisons de ses propres principes d’état, de la mort d’Allende au soutien du régime d’apartheid par la CIA et l’arrestation de Mandela, autrefois un jeune garçon lui-même qui ne pouvait pas aller dans ses propres rues. Construisez vos prisons plus haut et plus haut pour ceux qui s’arrangent pour survivre à leur adolescence mais c’est vous-mêmes qui êtes emprisonnés – la violence règne dans vos rêves, nationaux et internationalement, entre citoyens et entre pays. La race et l’immobilier, les rêves conservateurs de qui est vraiment humain – nous rêvons encore toujours de rivières aussi profondes que nos âmes, des rivières de refus. Posté par Joan Nestle (une Américaine qui vit en Australie ER)    *******************************************************     _______________________________________________ Click here to Reply or Forward 4.21 GB (28%) of 15 GB used Manage ©2013 Google - Terms & Privacy Last account activity: 10 hours ago Details