Author: Roan

Hello! Did anyone else feel a little demolished by Detroit? Amazing but exhausting. But I underwent a transformation at the U.S. Social Forum (at first I thought it was just regular emotional meltdown, but now I’m reconceptualizing it as transformation in honor of the USSF), a result of not eating or sleeping enough, doing too much, and extending myself far beyond my limits. The nonstop intensity was punctuated by moments of deep awe and inspiration, and since coming home I’ve been thinking so much about care and healing and community-building and how important they are as tools for movements. I was confronted with some important truths about my body’s capacity, in a space where I also got to be amazed by incredible organizers and healers and workshops about trauma, somatics, healing justice, accessibility and disability justice, and building communities of support and care. Exposure to all that amazingness can change a person! I’m landing back home committed to prioritizing those things even more, both in my life and my organizing. And not in a lip service-y way – in a real way.

I’ve been having great conversations about the multiplicity of forms that capitalism (patriarchy/ableism/colonization…) takes in our lives – like how easy it is for many of us to push ourselves too hard, to value tangible productivity over art, creativity, emotions, healing trauma, building relationships. I was talking the other day with my wonderful friend Susan about shifting paradigms, building communities rooted in interdependence. She observed that as much as we all now talk about interdependence, most of us don’t fully experience that in our current society – we get to taste pieces of it that leave us with questions and ideas. A lot of our work right now is about turning those ideas into tools and building them into strategies, practicing living the way we want to live in the world we want to live in.

For now, in the interest of ideas, I want to share some links that have been inspiring me lately:

First, I’ve been very obsessed with the Storytelling and Organizing Project website – they have tons of amazing audio recordings about community interventions in interpersonal violence. So important.

And Tiny’s piece about POOR Magazine’s time in Detroit:

In the U.S. we are all conditioned on the capitalist notion of independence, which demands separation of families from their elders, children from their parents and youth from their cultures…Our work as mamaz and fathers and grandfathers and grandmothers isn’t honored or considered. Our abilities to grow our own food, build our own houses, or comfort our folks, practice our traditions, honor our ancestors, take care of our elders, these aren’t considered “legitimate” forms of labor or real forms of work.

Also this recent post on Bilerico about building intersectional queer movements:

…collectivizing our movement strategies to get to the root of these issues is going to require that we share power, resources and remain authentically and deeply invested in one another’s individual and collective liberation. A tall order indeed when movement organizations and leadership are tied to a corporate funding system designed exquisitely to keep us from engaging in the hard conversations and ally building across communities that would bring us in strategic concert with one another.

And I’ve been wanting to link to this piece by Mia for so long but I keep forgetting. Everything she writes is amazing: Interdependency (exerpts from several talks)

We believe and swallow ableist notions that people should be “independent,” that we would never want to have to have a nurse, or not be able to drive, or not be able to see, or hear. We believe that we should be able to do things on our own and push our selves (and the law) hard to ensure that we can. We believe ableist heteronormative ideas that families should function as independent little spheres. That I should just focus on MY family and make sure MY family is fed, clothed and provided for; that MY family inherits MY wealth; that families should not be dependent on the state or anyone else; that they should be “able-bodied,” essentially. We believe the ableist heteronormative racist classist myth that marriage, “independence” as sanctified through the state, is what we want because it allows us to be more “independent,” more “equal” to those who operate as if they are independent. That somehow, this makes us more “able.”

I walked into the gym this morning at 7am to find people gathered around a TV screen, weeping over the coverage of the most recent earthquake in Haiti early today. I can’t imagine what survivors must be going through.

Several people sent me these resources, and I wanted to share them here:

Statement from INCITE! and the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative in New Orleans: Haiti: Responding to the Situation

“As these important efforts are underway, we recommend that we also pause and ask the question: How can we intentionally support the long term sustainability and self determination of the Haitian people?”

ONE Petition to cancel Haiti’s debt

“Dear Finance Ministers, IMF, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and bilateral creditors,As Haiti rebuilds from this disaster, please work to secure the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s $1 billion debt and ensure that any emergency earthquake assistance is provided in the form of grants, not debt-incurring loans.”

As I’m sure is true for all of you, my heart is breaking over this new devastating human catastrophe made infinitely more desperate by poverty and imperialism – over all of the immediate suffering, as well as the all-too-likely possibility that this tragedy will be used by the U.S. and corporate interests to push forward even more brutal forms of capitalism in Haiti. I’m sure we’ve all been inundated with various links already, but I thought I’d consolidate a few that I’ve found helpful anyway.

We all know not to give through the Red Cross, right? Here’s why, and here’s why. Grantmakers Without Borders has this list of helpful criteria for disaster response:

1. First and foremost, provide unrestricted general funding to allow resources to go where they are most urgently needed.
2. Give only to those organizations with an existing presence in the region and a broad familiarity with local conditions, customs and politics. Avoid well-meaning but inexperienced organizations.
3. Give only to organizations that engage local community members in all aspects of disaster response and recovery. Avoid top-down responders.
4. Prioritize organizations with a strong focus on gender and the ways in which women are differently impacted during and after an emergency.
5. Prioritize organizations that link emergency response with recovery and long-term rehabilitation and that build local capacities.

Michelle O’Brien has compiled this very useful list of aid organizations, articles, and analysis on the earthquake. It’s public on Facebook, but for those who don’t have a Facebook account, I’ll cut and past it after the jump. I really recommend reading some of the articles she links to, and whatever other analysis you can find – as well as sending money, aid, and prayers, it’s so important to put this tragedy in a broader context and also respond by strengthening movements against the violent, powerful systems that make all natural disasters so catastrophic for poor people. Continue reading “Haiti resources”

Have y’all seen the website Bolder Giving? It’s all about people who give away lots of money – like, way more of their money than is normally sanctioned by capitalist society. It’s not very explicitly political, but a lot of the profiles are really amazing and radical. Anyway, I participated in a conference call they hosted the other day because I thought it would be interesting to report back for Enough. It was a conversation with Tom Hsieh, a high earning executive who decided with his partner to live at or below the national median household income and give the rest of their family’s income away, which they’ve been doing for years.

There are lots of interesting questions bound up in this story (how do we make decisions about what is “enough”, etc), but one of the things that stuck with me from the call was a moment when we were talking about spirituality. Tom and his partner are religious, and their choice to give away such a large percentage of their income is connected to their faith and their belief in god. Tom talked about his experience of feeling provided for by god even while making the choice to sacrifice a lot of the things that people often think they need to be secure. 

Faith and spirituality are such a crucial part of these conversations for me, not because I believe in god but because I think that any questions about how to live in a just way in such an unjust world are fundamentally spiritual, because they have to do with our beliefs about humanity and what we think is possible and things like justice and hope and goodness. During the call, I was completely identifying with Tom in terms of how faith affects my choices about money and giving, even though our belief systems are probably really different.

When I decided to give away most of the money I inherited, a lot of people around me (family etc) were flipping out because it wasn’t a “responsible” decision and they were really worried about me being safe and secure. I was very unworried, because class privilege and rich family give me a huge safety net (same way that Tom’s high-paying job gives him a huge safety net), no matter what I do with the money I have access to now.

But the other reason why it wasn’t a hard decision to give away that money was because I gave it to support things I believe in so much. I believe in deep, systemic, transformative change. I believe in a world without prisons. I believe in ending violence without relying on systems of policing and incarceration. I believe in a world in which everyone has access to housing, healthy food, ancestral wisdom, safety, community, and human dignity. I believe in those things even though they’re big and intangible and hard to quantify, and even though giving some money to organizations that are working towards that world is (as my dad often reminds me) a small act in terms of measurable impact. I don’t think about giving away money in terms of impact – I just think about it in terms of doing the right thing, the thing that is the most true to my deeply held beliefs.

And I would rather put my faith in that vision – of a world based on liberation, where people share resources freely and everyone has what they need – than put my faith in the much more tangible security of things like a big retirement fund and lots of insurance, even though the latter things are tangible and – for me – fairly easily attainable. On a spiritual level, I don’t think those things provide real security. (Not to say that material security isn’t important and necessary – just that it isn’t necessary at the extreme level that capitalism teaches us to strive for.) I think real security comes from things like community, caretaking, love, and recognizing our interconnectedness with other people. Acting according to those values makes me feel provided for and safe and connected, in a way that felt similar to what Tom was saying about feeling provided for and connected to god.

I’m remembering this old thread on Dean’s livejournal in which many people have brilliant and thought-provoking things to say on this topic. Dean writes:

capitalism is based on or produces a notion that people are fundamentally selfish, greedy, and individual, that it isn’t safe to share because you won’t be taken care of, that private property is innate and natural. i believe that people are fundamentally connected, well-intentioned, generous and caring. i have no solid singular proof of this, it’s too general to prove, it’s a matter of faith. i also believe that capitalism is unsustainable and change will occur, and that change can be less violent and more beneficial if we do key work now to set up community resources, political education, to redistribute wealth and power in ways that allow for new political leadership, etc.

I want to pick this conversation back up – I’m curious about ways that your faith and spirituality and religious traditions are connected to how you think about the work you do for justice and liberation, and the choices you make about money and giving.

Happy winter, everyone. Anticapitalist musings are in the works, but for now I cannot help but share this video starring my friend’s friend’s brilliant daughter. You don’t need so much dollars anymore!

Give a Chance 4 Peace (8mins) from T’chaka Sikelianos on Vimeo.

I recently got a chance to co-facilitate a workshop designed by Wealth for the Common Good (they’re organizing rich people to fight for fairer tax policy) about wealth, taxes, and inequality. It was an awesome workshop and gave me the chance to a) get very in touch with how totally ignorant I am about basically anything having to do with taxes (and learn tons preparing for the workshop) and b) agonize over some frustrating political questions that I still don’t know how to think about.

So here’s the thing: the entire U.S. tax system is set up to maintain and increase incredible, horrifying wealth inequality. Income tax is hardly progressive; work (income from a paycheck) is taxed at a much higher rate than wealth (income from investments); inheritance taxes are minimal and under attack from rich conservatives who believe that freedom means the freedom for really rich people to get really REALLY rich. Learning the details of all of this stuff is enraging and really illustrates how tax policy is a major contributing factor to all the forms of structural violence and inequality that we fight against.

So what’s the solution? Wealth for the Common Good has a campaign to make rich people pay more taxes, which seems like a good idea. I obviously don’t believe that anyone should be allowed to accumulate massive wealth even in the best of times; right now, in a recession that’s causing widespread poverty and cuts to already insufficient public resources everywhere (here in Philly, we just barely avoided passing a “Doomsday” budget that would have resulted in the layoff of 3,000 city employees and forced the closing of every single public library in the city), taxing the rich more seems like an important and obvious thing to fight for.

Except, the government already has lots of money, and is using it for war. And occupation. And policing and incarceration, and a long list of other things that are incredibly objectionable. Money for public services has been scarce since Reagan – not for lack of funds, but because cutting social spending (and privatizing everything) is a basic tenet of neoliberal capitalism. People aren’t fighting universal healthcare because the government can’t afford it; they’re fighting it because anything resembling a social safety net has been practically criminalized.

I get that taxation is essentially the only real mechanism for wealth redistribution that exists in our current structure. But I guess when I talk about wealth redistribution (the involuntary kind, not philanthropy), I’m more thinking about socialist revolution – not directing more money towards the federal government of an imperialist superpower.

The tax system does seem like an important (and often overlooked) target for economic justice struggles – I’m just having a hard time wrapping my head around the contradictions. Will the fight to get rich people to pay slightly more in taxes have a major effect on wealth disparity that will impact other things in positive ways? Are there other ways to accomplish the same goal of reducing wealth disparity that don’t also fund the military and police? How does a campaign around tax policy intersect with critiques of capitalism and imperialism? 

Is there a simpler (or more complex) way of thinking about taxes and economic justice that is less fraught with political ambiguity?

I’m so very slow to post things here, but one thing I’ve been meaning to put up is this email from Ramesh, a participant in the POOR session, who shares some thoughts on making a financial gift to POOR through the framework of revolutionary giving. It was great to read such transparent reflections on the process of giving, and Ramesh gave me permission to share it with Enough readers:

hey all,    

it’s been a real treat to run into some of you here and there, and keep connections alive through email and phones. i am still taking in all the gifts at our gathering from the scholars at POOR and from each of you, and for me especially the pieces around spiritual grounding.

anyways, in response to tyrone and cathy’s request to financially support POOR, i decided to take my first step at practicing reparations rather than donations. a friend of mine dropped this bit of knowledge on me, 

“don’t tell me what your values are, show me your budget, and i’ll tell you what your values are.”  

that got me thinking. and i hope the thinking i did is useful to folks like me who have a job or some banked resources and might be in a similar position. i also hope it’s useful for folks who will have a paid job and will have some banked resources some day.

so here’s what i’m doing. i’m paying the same amount as i pay for rent to POOR for the next 6 months. i pay 400 bucks in rent, this is my single largest monthly expense.  i was totally in denial once i made this decision. it wasn’t until i walked over to POOR and gave tiny the money that i even believed i was doing it. then it was done…and then came the drama of “what will they use it for?”  “should i ask that it support a particular project?”  “what if they use it for pizza?” “should i get a receipt?”  

so that was my “donations” self coming up. i decided then that if i was even going to ask those questions in my head, i better be willing to do the same for my other expenses – so am i willing to ask my landlords (a great vietnamese family) what they do with my rent check?  am i willing to get on the horn with verizon, or my car insurance company? turns out, i’m not.    turns out, when i think of my donations as reparations, i think of it like paying a bill. i do it, because i feel i owe it. now, that doesn’t mean i am justifying my bills, i’m just noticing where i put my energy into “wondering about where my money goes.” let’s see if it’s any easier next month when i know the bill is due…. 

much love to you all, and i hope your own process with reparations is going well. i’m starting to feel liberated from my relationship with money…and feeling happily governed by my relationship to people.  

peace
ramesh kathanadhi – learner in training

Ok, so people have been trying to convince me that blogging is  an appropriate forum to post thoughts that aren’t necessarily fully formed. I’ve been wanting to write about Revolutionary Giving (the weekend long session/workshop/conversation/meeting put on by POOR Magazine last month), about a feeling/idea I’ve been turning over in my mind, but it’s hard to describe and constantly evolving.

POOR’s pedagogy happens through poetry, song, theater, and storytelling. It isn’t easy to write about, so instead of trying to describe Revolutionary Giving, I want to reflect on it and offer some of the thoughts I’m left with. Continue reading “Reflections, in progress.”