sea's blog

WTF

I watched the film Ashes and Snow today.

I want to lighten up, and enjoy this truly enchanting and fluid film, but I cannot shake the feeling that I was supposed to be seduced into not noticing the racism and exploitation ...

People of color with their eyes and mouths closed and still as stone. Exquisite women of color dancers playing second fiddle to the white swim-dancers who had the first and last scene. Haikus written with the self-important tone of a white man. The white man who has the last word while the third world folks are his "medium." It was set up so that the human beings were objectified. He contributes, imo, to racism in the form of the exoticizing and dehumanizing of women of color. Men and children too for that matter. Then he imposes his poetry on top of their worlds.

At the time I was watching, I thought the narrator was white. I stand corrected Laurence Fishburne is a black man. That helps some, but the fact remains that a white man waltzed around the world and took what he wanted from it.

Harshness in parenting. We've seen it across cultures, certainly.

But what is it really? It's a less harsh scenario than what that parent grew up in.

They've managed to lessen the blows they pass on to their young one.

But how?

Through sheer goodness. Through sheer love for their child.

And sheer hatred for what happened to them.

They decided back then, back when it was so hard, to never inflict that same crap--the harshness they found themselves receiving--onto another human being. Ever.

And now you'll hear them lament that they are "just like their mom", "just like their dad."

They aren't.

They are less harsh, less mean--even if only by a fraction. But their parenting lets you get a glimpse of how it was for them as children.

But that stuff happened. And it goes into one's brain like a recording.

It doesn't seem to matter whether I saw someone be mistreated or I was actually mistreated myself. Being that small and mostly unable to stop the unfair and senseless harshness--in whatever form--is a hurt.

And hurts become oppressor patterns down the road. (In the case of POC internalized oppression.)

Unless!

Unless a natural healing process is allowed.

Hey there,

This is my friend who I met at the Spirituality Beyond Religions
conference in India in February. He's awesome, so if you have a chance
to go to any of his talks, I highly suggest it! If you go, please
introduce yourself and tell him Rae from the India conference says hi
and that I send my love.

Love,
Brittany/Rae

------------

From: Eliyahu McLean

Hello friends,

I am in the US, teaching a course on Judaism and peace-building and
will soon embark on a short speaking tour of the West Coast. Please
forward this invitation to anyone who may be interested in upcoming
West Coast events in Los Angeles, Ashland, Santa Cruz and Berkeley.

This is followed by an announcement for the multi-faith peace
prayer gathering taking place Thursday, July 27th in Gan Sacher,
Jerusalem, from 5:00-8:00 PM, Jerusalem time.

Shalom, Salaam,
Eliyahu McLean

Jerusalem Peacemakers, director
Abrahamic Reunion, coordinator

------------------------------------------------------------

Healing Abraham's Wounded Family: Reconciliation in the Holy Land in
a Time of Conflict

with Eliyahu McLean of the Jerusalem Peacemakers

Eliyahu will speak about the response of the Israeli and Palestinian

Day two of this financial thing.

Had a lot of feelings.

Notice that I am cranky and not trying to hide it. (I'm showing myself, one of the things I admire about poc and raised poor folk, generally speaking) But in my case, it's all the oppressive stuff coming out at usually white, working-class or poor people. At least I'm not doing the polite middle-class thing but no, this just is not right and it's my chronic privilege stuff. I can feel it and it doesn't feel good. (Feeling good is not the goal, ending racism is.) But it has been there all along. I haven't gotten through it yet.

There's a deeper level I need to go. (But Max knew that.)

It shows right when I'm hot and sweaty, tired and impatient. The thing that prompted this was searching for an air conditioner and going from store to store and they were all sold out. Even the fans. I just kept getting less and less friendly to whoever I came in contact with.

Like the "I'll get mine and screw you" syndrome which typically typifies classist and racist chronic conditioning. (Argh but get me MY air conditioning. No! I don't THINK so white girl!) ;-)

I decided to tackle my money disorder. I'm spending the next 30-days in a spending freeze and at least a session a day on money. Meanwhile, the spending that can happen is: finishing the office and W's scooter so he can get to work reasonably.

Additionally, I will list out my monthly bills, commitments and income needed to pay that. In detail.

I'm certain beyond any doubt that my money unconsciousness is directly intersected with racism. I just can't see it clearly enough. But it's something about "give me mine and screw everyone else".

I decided tonight that "Even if no one helps me, I will see to it that the distribution of goods and services on this planet becomes fair and equitable."

crossposted at Sea's Vox Blog

Sea Ganschow is a Parenting by Connection facilitator in Portland, OR, USA and director of Listening For Change, a budding family center for healing from the hurts of white racism and supporting parents and allies of young people.

The current situation in the Middle East is one formed over many years by the oppression of its peoples, including colonization and manipulation by countries far from the Middle East. The unthinking attempts to solve a problem by hurting the other side with enough death and damage that they will accept one's position cannot work, but is now being played out, yet again.

Fresh thinking is needed to find solutions to the real problems that exist, not the repetition of old, failed and unworkable policies on all sides, not terrorism nor mass retaliation nor oppression. Such actions simply lead to a reinforcement of the existing difficulties, make it ever more difficult to find a real, just, and workable solution, and must be abandoned.

Any real solutions cannot be enforced by one side on another, nor by outside forces manipulating the peoples of the Middle East, or those will not ever be real solutions, just another set of enforced inequities that will foster more violence, death, and destruction in the future.

All peoples involved in the present conflict are good humans who have been oppressed and hurt, and none should be blamed for the distressed actions of their governments or other groups operating in their territories. The fears we all feel at the situation should not be used to justify our giving in to any pull to act oppressively at any people.

So boys get this stuff. They begin to be trained--early.

I mean it starts at birth! Or whenever someone says, "It's a boy". Could be in utero, depending on the stage of pregnancy--the developing young one can begin to hear what is going on.

The tone of voice. The loaded words dripping, "It's a boy" ... all the implications--get in there--The young one hears it. Begins to understand there is something crucial being expected of him.

And it would be ridiculous if it weren't so fucking tragic.

We isolate the shit out of our males. Cut off their humanity as mothers, as women we do this--Then we turn around and say men are assholes.

Hello! Women--whether self-identified as feminist or not--create and at the very least perpetuate sexism. Similar to how we, as moms can prevent racist conditioning, we can prevent the oppressive sexist patterns from being installed on our young boys' minds. We have incredible power here.

Yes, I know. We've been hurt by sexism. White men in particular. And we have to heal from it in order to see our way, in order to be powerful enough to stop it. The way we've been hurt makes it difficult to think clearly about boys ...

I came across this headline MN Poised to Make History, Send First Muslim American to U.S. Congress through veiled4allah blog where I find her views informative and refreshing.

Keith Ellison said,

“I think it’s time for the United States to see a moderate Muslim voice, to see a face of Islam that is just like everybody else’s face,” Ellison said. “Perhaps it would be good for somebody who is Muslim to be in Congress, so that Muslims would feel like they are part of the body politic and that other Americans would know that we’re here to make a contribution to this country.”

GOOD NEWS
sent to me by Allan Hansen, Ph.D. (edited for LFC)

In the latest issue of 'Pediatric News' (Vol. 40 Issue 4, pp.28-29), there is a call to stop seeing the so-called ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) as a mental disorder of the child, but instead seeing it as a disorder of the school system (i.e., the adults around the child).

It contends that the problem is not with the children but with schools that fail to cherish the different ways that young people learn and understand things. This failure, of course, causes distress that is acted out.

The article instead calls for adults to pay attention to the young people and to fix what causes the difficulties. It states that many of the traits that currently cause trouble in an inflexible school school system (and result the children to be drugged) are traits that may lead to success later. The drugs only cover up the problems, they never solve them.

A Song I Wrote i don't know if i'm gonna finish it, it's a song/ rap
by Mariah Occhi

After all my pain my gain my aches my ways my days. After all my stress I’m still blessed still striving to impress struggling in my happiness. My power to exist is to be someone else living life through others and not myself. To the sky through lies i swear i deny it wasn’t me is that why i’m still alive? X2

When I was born I lost my mom don’t really know about my dad alls i know is the mom i have now is the best one i’ve ever had and you know it’s really sad for someone to keep givin and givin but they ain’t getting nothin back five kids under one roof with one parental unit honestly she’s exhausted i have no clue how she does it. I wrote a letter to Oprah but it just got passed up just like any other sad story or homeless guy askin for money to tell the truth i am upset it really meant a lot and plus that shit was just way to important to be forgotten I’ve been worryin for so many years feels like I lost it but that’s not the end of my story i’m just getting started. My ****** hasn’t she suffered enough blood work needles and followups every month? This shouldn’t be somethin she has to handle sometimes wish it was my stomach she came outta. Even though she has it her brother didn’t seem to catch it, now tell me, would you pop pills, take drugs, or drink booze if you knew that you was pregnant, nope i didn’t think so but now because of those wrong decisions she in special ed and she thank that everything is hilarious. Laughin it up it’s all a joke but what happens when she runs into the wrong person and they don’t know now i gotta have this up on my brain i just cant stop thinkin even though it’s driving me insane to know one day she could get hurt and i swear i’d just kill myself if one more person i loved got buried under the dirt