Re-Broadcasting a Call to Action to Support the Winnemem Wintu Nation's War Dance

Help our tribe’s peaceful ceremony of resistance, our spiritual commitment to protect the Coming of Age ceremonies for our young women from public interference and harassment.

Please note we are expecting more than 400 supporters to converge on the ceremony site to help our War Dance. We will be holding the ceremony without a U.S. Forest Service permit, and it is possible there will be arrests.

Though we are simply holding a ceremony that has existed since before the Forest Service, it will be considered by the authorities as an act of civil “disobedience.” Please prepare as needed and remember this is a non-violent, ceremonial action.

When: Thursday afternoon, May 24 – Sunday May 27, 2012
Where: McCloud Bridge Campground on the McCloud River, Shasta-Trinity National Forest north of Redding, Calif.
Bring: Camping gear, TP, food donations, first aid kits, canteens, inflatable boats,inner tubes, canoes, kayaks, trash bags, walkie-talkies, life preservers and a peaceful, humble willingness to help.
If you have a pre-existing health issues (such as allergies to bee stings, pollen, etc.), remember to bring your own medications. There is also a chance of rain. Bring rain gear. Highs are unexpected to be in the mid-70s to 80s.
Remember: There is no cell phone service at the site. There is phone service at the Hirz Bay campground about eight miles. Also, try to car pool. Parking will be limited.

Boat Information

We will be blockading a 400-yard stretch of the McCloud River on Friday and Saturday definitely. We may possibly do it on Sunday.

Please bring canoes, kayaks, inner tubes, rafts and anything that floats. We will have an air-up station set up for inflatable crafts. Also, bring life preservers.

People who are bringing boats on trailers can come put their boats in the water at the McCloud Bridge campground and then they can find parking 8 miles south at the Hirz Bay campground. It costs $8. There will be limited free trailer parking at Dekkas campground. We will escort you to the parking spaces.

Be aware that there is no gas or grocery stores for 30 miles from the campground. The closest stores are in Lakehead and City of Shasta Lake.

Please bring T-shirts that are yellow, red, black and white – we will be wearing a different color for each day.

For directions and more information please go to: Call to Action: Help, Volunteer, Donate

Two Things on this Beltane May Day

Happy May Day!  And happy Beltane!  What a perfect combination.


1)  Today, I hope to see you out in the streets.  I'll be going, at the very least, to the immigrant rights/workers rights/anti-racismo march out of Fruitvale in Oakland at 3pm.  You'll also find what I think is a comprehensive list of the Bay area actions for tomorrow below.  Whatever you do, do something!  All labor is work, no human beings are illegal, and we've got to come together in struggle.

2) I met with my thesis committee today, who told me that, yes, in fact, I have a final draft of my thesis!!!  A few typos and some grammar to clean up here and there but hardly anything really.  I am beyond relieved and starting to get really excited.  Because of this, and because the project went through quite a few drafts, I will be taking down the earlier drafts I posted here and posting my sections in different increments over the next month.  Hope you enjoy it!


Occupy (Decolonize) Oakland's Schedule of Events:


6AM: Support Golden Gate bridge & Transit Workers pickets
Meet at 19th & Telegraph to reinforce pickets throughout SF. Buses will be available.

8:30AM – NOON: morning strike actions
Decentralized actions leaving from 3 points on the edge of downtown at 8:30am. These actions can take the form of "strike enforcement brigades" such as pickets, blockades, snake marches etc. Strike stations will be set up at each of these locations starting at 8am with coffee, snacks, water, propaganda etc.

Station 1  anti-capitalist: Snow Park – flying pickets to shut down banks and the Chamber of Commerce
Station 2  anti-patriarchy: 1st & Broadway – occupy Child Protective Services, called for by OOP
Station 3  anti-gentrification: 22nd & Telegraph – flying pickets to shut down Uptown & Downtown Business Associations

NOON – 1PM: Everyone Converge on Downtown
Mass rally from noon to 1pm at 14th & Broadway including speakers, food, music activities, etc.

NOON: Occupy Oakland poets will begin continuous readings at Oscar Grant plaza.

1PM – 3PM: Themed Actions & Marches Around Downtown
After the rally, those in attendance have the opportunity to stay downtown or join one of the autonomous actions that will be departing from 14th & Broadway to continue shutting down various capitalist institutions in the downtown area.

1PM: No Borders! No Stay Away Orders! Anti-repression Crew picket at Oakland City Hall/ Oscar Grant Plaza.

3PM: March for Dignity and Resistance
All are encouraged to join the march starting at Fruitvale BART station at 3pm, marching to San Antonio Park and Oscar Grant Plaza (14th and Broadway).
From Mujeres Unidas y Activas:
Oakland Sin Fronteras 2012 DEMANDS: 
LEGALIZATION FOR ALL UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS
SUPPORT WORKERS RIGHTS
STOP THE DEPORTATION OF ALL IMMIGRANTS
STOP THE CRIMINALIZATION OF IMMIGRANTS BY FEDERAL AND LOCAL POLICE
END U.S. MILITARY AGGRESSION & OTHER POLICIES THAT DISPLACE COMMUNITIES GLOBALLY
DEFEND AND EXPAND ETHNIC STUDIES 

6PM – 7PM: Reconvergence downtown to coincide with the march arrival
Everyone back downtown to rally and celebrate together as the March for Dignity and Resistance arrives. Convene and rally at 14th and Broadway. In the event of police interference meet at 19th and Telegraph.

Additional info here!!

(I'm the one that's) Cool

If you haven't seen the new music video from the cast of The Guild and writers Jed Whedon/Felicia Day and you too are a nerd/geek then you MUST see it:

Now I LOVED "(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar" but this video is fucking amazing.  I could be wrong too but I swear it looks like Sandeep's got real drumming chops.  Nice.

So take a moment for something fun today and watch this.

STRIKE

Link

Stories Matter: On Star Trek, Part 1

So, I haven't been around much but I have been writing a lot.  So I'm going to share with you some of what I've been doing.  This is a selection from my second (but not yet completed) draft of chapter two of my thesis.  In all likelihood I will also post the final draft of this project in some form, so expect that in May!  In the meantime, the second half of this draft will pop up soon, as well.  File under: "Stuff whatsername Is Working on For School".

The first section of this chapter will discuss broad themes of the Star Trek universe spanning the original series and The Next Generation.  This survey is not meant to be an exhaustive one, that would be impossible for a project of this size, but I do want to touch on several themes and conventions I have noticed in my own watching and re-watching of the series’ in question.  The second section of the chapter is dedicated to a specific storyline that begins on The Next Generation and is developed more fully on Deep Space Nine.  Instead of overarching themes, I have chosen two specific episodes to examine closely: TNG’s “Ensign Ro” and DS9’s “Duet.”  It is my hope that this combination of the broad and the specific will give even the fan-scholar a unique perspective on the potential, and on the successes and failures, of the Star Trek universe as a social justice project.

I feel it is also important to outline here what I mean by “social justice.”  As I use it here, “social justice” means “a project in pursuit of positive social change.”  This is a very broad definition and includes within it work that I might not pursue myself, an observation particularly true of Star Trek which is at its heart an assimilationist and US-centric project.  To define Star Trek (and in the later chapter Doctor Who circa 2005) as a social justice project is to refer to the intent of the creator as well as the perceived possible outcomes of the work.  Social justice can be framed in a radical or liberal way, though it’s rootedness in change precludes it from being traditionally conservative.  This definition does not mean, however, that this franchise never reinforces what I view as harmful social structures in its pursuit of “change.”  They do.

I want to be very clear here.  I love Star Trek.  Next Generation, Voyager and more recently Deep Space Nine have been incredibly important shows to me on a personal, intellectual and political level.  But these shows are not perfect.  Even the elements I label as “positive” are often a mixture of elements I consider both “good” and “bad” in pursuit of the social change I would like to see.  There is no purity in this analysis.  That is because, as Avery Gordon reminds us: “life is complicated” (Gordon 3).  I take that axiom just as seriously as she; it is not just “a banal expression of the obvious, but…a profound theoretical statement” (3).  I refuse to shun complication in pursuit of a more “tidy” theory-making or the possibility of confusion.  Confusion and complication can be useful tools, they can frustrate, but they can also bring a deeper understanding once trudged through.  I also reject purposeful obfuscation, and do not aim to purposefully frustrate my readers; I ask only that you keep in mind that there are always multiple layers to the topics I discuss below.

Section One: Race Matters

In popular discourse, race is an issue that Star Trek “got right” from the outset of the original series (from here shortened to TOS).  Or, at the very least, the rhetoric most often used talks about TOS as "ground breaking."  People of various ethnicities (both white and of color) worked in the command center (called “the bridge”) of a starship (the USS Enterprise) hundreds of years in the future, with total equality.  That things like racism, sexism, and poverty had all been eliminated on Earth in this in-universe time period is explicitly expressed within the series’ themselves often.  The image is therefore one of the diverse bridge crew going about their work together on equal terms.  But the real world time was that of 1968, and so the image was more idyllic than the actual writing of the series, with the characters of color getting only bit parts.

Yet even this image, without any real character development for the marginalized crew members, was a powerful picture and concept in the collective social imagination.  It was powerful enough that when Nichelle Nichols (who played Lt. Uhura) had decided to quit the show in frustration over the very issue of lack of a substantial role, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself told her she needed to stay (Nichols interview).  Even if the part was hardly more than crumbs, seeing a Black woman on the bridge of the Starfleet flagship week after week was a testament to the survival of Africans and people of the African diaspora into the 23rd century.  But I want to pause here as a reminder: this is fiction we are talking about.  As I write this we are only in the 21st century, and the survival of any human beings to the 23rd is hardly guaranteed.  So why was this fictional representation so important?

Star Trek: The Next Generation, And the Making of Me

As many of you probably know, I'm a graduate student.  And I'm in my last semester, in the process of writing my thesis.  It's coming along ok and it's an interesting change of pace having only this one thing to work on for once, a first in my academic career.  Anywho, over the winter break in prepping for this project I kept being bothered by some very personal reflections that demanded to be written down.  Who am I to argue with my subconscious?  So I wrote them down.  That is what follows.  It's, yeah, very personal, and will be reworked before it's printed up in my thesis pages, but I thought I might as well share it with you in it's initial form to give you a taste of what I'm thinking about lately and why so many of my posts are reposts, links and action alerts.
Enjoy.

How did you become the person you are today? This is a question that has been haunting me for the past few years. It is a question that is probably unanswerable, as the events which shape my life slip in and out of what I consciously remember and bubble somewhere beneath the surface of that memory, ready to emerge at (in)opportune moments.

The roots of this question lie in another question, one that all feminist scholars are at some point initiated into: nature, or nurture? Essentialism, or constructivism? I take for granted my own conclusion that we are some combination of both, where what is essential about us can probably never be proved, but where we can trace some of the elements we have taken into ourselves and allowed to change us.

A search for those elements in myself, to better understand myself, my perspective on the world, my attractions, my insecurities, my place and function in the world around me led me back intuitively to television. And not just to television, but to very specific television, to Star Trek: The Next Generation.

There are other places I could have landed.  Books I read and re-read like Pollyanna or A Little Princess or the American Girls series' or The Hardy Boys.  I could have gone back to other shows I watched religiously as a child like The Wonder Years or The X-Men or Boy Meets World, or later The X-Files (and indeed The X-Files almost ended up in this project as well).  Or it could have been films I loved like Star Wars or Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid.   Or the music I spent hours upon hours in my room memorizing the lyrics to and in fact still listen to like Green Day or Garbage or Alanis Morissette.  But even as I have thought on all the ways I learned to be who I am today, none has quite the resonance of The Next Generation.

Still, I could easily write another thesis on the complexities of the Disney movies I watched, on the femininity played out there that I adored from afar and felt like an impostor trying to embody, on the years I spent trying to embody it anyway and hating myself and other women for its limitations and my failure to live up to it as the less than graceful tomboy I was and am. But, that is not where I landed in my search. And as I have thought on it, much of these same things were represented on The Next Generation (TNG) too, and in fact they seem to have lodged themselves much deeper in my psyche by virtue of being so.

Perhaps that is because, as I remember it anyway, the watching of TNG was a family event. My Mom didn't care for the show, but my Dad, brother, and I all loved it, and sat down once a week for nearly the whole seven seasons to watch it together. One vivid memory is of my little brother and I flinging ourselves to the sides of the television set as the Enterprise zoomed diagonally across the screen over and over during the now iconic opening credits. I remember us laughing as we pretended the Enterprise might come out of the screen and run us over if we didn't get out of the way. Looking back on it, this moment illustrates well just how real these characters and events were to me, even as I knew they were fiction. No wonder then, that on re-watching the series I would discover such moments as Captain Picard expressing a perspective on knowledge and education that I have long held as my own (“Samaritan Snare”). It is this viewpoint that led me on the educational journey now culminating in this project.

Must Read: "Notes from an Occupation 14: Shock and Awe! Or: How I learned to stop loving the motherfucking Police and start loving Oakland (part 1?)"

I think this is a pretty important post to read when thinking about what happened on Saturday...
File under: Things that made whatsername almost cry reading

First off, as I said on facebook, the only way I can really start this out is by saying “Fuck the Police!” And I well and truly mean it. I know many of you who have known me for years, and even a lot of my brothers and sisters in the Occupy movement, who have only known me for a few months, will probably be shocked that I’m at this point, and frankly, I am too. I’m torn up about it. I might laugh when I say it, but it’s that uncomfortable “Oh God.” laugh, because I’m really split about it. 

I’m very much in the nonviolence/no property destruction camp, and I was also one of those Occupiers who would argue “but the police are our friends!” and I was one of their first defenders, “oh they’ve got such a shitty job!” or “oh they’re caught between a rock and a hard place.” Hell, I’m sure I’ve tweeted and blogged about it in the past at some point. I still believe that right now, but at the same time, fuck that bullshit. Really. There comes a time when your orders are so wrong, so unjust, so ill conceived, poisonous and odious that you must refuse. You have to do it, for yourself, and for those people who you are about to cause harm to. That point has come and gone, more times in just the last few months during the police vs. occupy movement alone, setting aside, for a moment, all the decades of police brutality and oppression in certain neighborhoods and against certain races in our cities. Today, these Oakland cops were batshit insane, and were going buck wild all over town. Good people were hurt, good people were arrested, and many innocent people, both marchers and pedestrians, were put in harm’s way, for no justifiable reason. 

It’s not like I’m “new” to police brutality or I didn’t know it happens. I’ve read about it, written about it, and been an activist against it in the past. That said, there’s a distinct and jarring difference between seeing and knowing it on paper, and seeing people ridden down by motorcycle cops, or seeing people get their heads smashed into the pavement and all the other lovely, grisly things police like to do to assert the little power they’re given. I mean, sure, we can dress it all up nicely and call it “training” and “tactics” and whatnot, but really, Police are just a gang. A gang employed by the state, but a gang nonetheless. Enforcing laws, regardless of whether that law is right or not, and using their force of arms and the backing of the criminal justice system to keep us in line and make sure we follow our marching orders.  

Detailed Schedule for #OccupyOakland Events This Weekend

Occupy Oakland Weekend of Action Detailed Schedule


Redistributed with permission, please forward an post widely.

Oakland Rise Up Festival!


Occupy Oakland will be holding a weekend long festival starting this Saturday, January 28 with the takeover of an empty building where it will host workshops, panels, a film festival, live music, assemblies and more. The Oakland Rise Up Festival runs through Sunday night and features over 50 speakers and performers including former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, anarchist anthropologist and member of Occupy Wall Street David Graeber, feminist, revolutionary & historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and many more. Saturday has been designated the Move-In day and activities will focus around settling into the building and celebrating Occupy Oakland. Sunday is organized as the Conference Day and a wide range of panels, presentations and workshops are scheduled. Music and cultural events in the occupied building are planned throughout the weekend. Below is a detailed schedule of the Festival's planned events. The Festival also encourages self-organized discussions, workshops and events and will help to publicize additions to this schedule to the best of our abilities. 

Look for the festival table during the weekend & occupyoaklandmoveinday.org for the latest updates!

"Letter to the Mayor, Oakland Police Department and City Council on Occupy Oakland's Move-in Day - Jan 28!"

Released recently at Occupy Oakland Move-In Day:

Dear Mayor Jean Quan, Oakland Police Department, and Oakland City Council,

As you probably know, Occupy Oakland is planning the occupation of a building on January 28th that will serve as a social center, convergence center, headquarters, free kitchen, and place of housing for Occupy Oakland. Like so many other people, Occupy Oakland is homeless while buildings remain vacant and unused. For Occupy this is in large part because of yourselves, having evicted us twice from public space that was rightfully ours. For others it is because of the housing bubble, predatory lending, the perpetual crises of capitalism, and far reaching histories of imperialism and systemic violence.

Our families, friends, and communities built the buildings that sit empty in post-industrial Oakland. Now these buildings outnumber the homeless and represent the theft of our collective labor as the class of the unpropertied and dispossessed. Allowing this building to remain vacant while so many are in need is injurious theft, injustice; its extralegal occupancy is not.

When Occupy Oakland was first evicted on October 25, we organized a General Strike on November 2nd with only a week to plan. November 2nd proved our strength and relevancy. Conservative estimates said twenty thousand took the streets, but for those of us who marched on the ports it could have been a hundred thousand. November 2nd was an inspiration for the Occupy Movement and public condemnation of your violent repression.

Eventually we reoccupied Oscar Grant Plaza only to suffer a second violent eviction on November 14th. At this time there was a national crackdown on the Occupy movement as evictions were happening in Boston, New York City, Atlanta, Portland OR and elsewhere. It was revealed that you, Jean Quan, had been coordinating with federal agents how to best repress dissent. In response Occupy Oakland was the impetus for a West Coast Port Shut Down, in solidarity with Longview ILWU workers whose union is under attack by EGT. The action escalated to a national and then international action as more occupations signed on. In Oakland alone the shutdown cost some $8.7 million dollars in lost revenue and proved that when civic and economic institutions do not serve us, we can shut them down.

Since the beginning of the Occupy Movement when you have exacted violent repression on us we have proven that we are more powerful and diffuse than you. If you try to evict us again we will make your lives more miserable than you make ours.

This may be in one or more of the following forms:

-Blockading the airport indefinitely

-Occupying City Hall indefinitely

-Shutting down the Oakland ports

-Calling on anonymous for solidarity

It will be in our mutual interest if you respect our occupation by recognizing our residency and imminent domain. We are sure that we all look forward to the needs of Oakland’s people finally being met.

Don’t fuck with the Oakland Commune.

Signed,


Occupy Oakland Move-In Assembly

While I personally wouldn't have gone with the "Don't fuck with the Oakland Commune" line (despite the fact that it made me smile) because I think it undermines the professional tone of the rest of the letter (and this seems like a good moment/medium to speak the language of professionalism to me) I am in agreement both with the content and sentiment of this letter and the upcoming action, so, here it is re-posted in my space!

The move-in begins Jan 28. Rally at noon in Oscar Grant Plaza (otherwise known as Frank Ogawa Plaza), march to the as-of-now undisclosed building at 1pm. Join us if you can!