class

Thanks to Jessica Hoffmann for alerting me to a new project I'm thrilled to spread the word about:

Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism

Enough is a space for conversations about creating shared values and practices around wealth redistribution, how to sustain grassroots movements, how to resist capitalism in our everyday lives.

Please go there now!  Read, comment, send your thoughts and ideas, submit your essays, and spread the word...

I promise I won't always hijack my blog to write about my dad, but on the heels of the first Father's Day since my dad died, today would have been his 68th birthday. I sit here reflecting further, trying to connect to him emotionally/psychically, swimming in memories, thankful that the experience of walking him to his death shifted the focus of my mind and heart to sweet moments rather than sites of pain and struggle in our relationship. Thankful, too, that it's further pushing and inspiring my own political analysis, helping me put words to what's been (growing) inside. I continue to work through this complicated web of feelings, continue the process of opening my heart, continue looking for words and ways to speak, heal, connect, create an integrated/politicized identity/experience that feels both respectful and loving to myself and my experience and accountable/honest to others. And I think about how to best open doors for others to come through and speak (I don't mean to imply here that others need my assistance to speak, but that I strive to be always-conscious of the privilege being affiliated with Bitch brings, and the many ways I can actively work toward building an inclusive and collective movement for liberation). About experiences and identities that are often overlooked or ignored. About family politics... The politics of love and death... The politics of the ways we live our lives... The politics of unlearning and (re)building... The politics of justice, compassion, home, intimacy, "safety"... 

Since today is Father's Day, I want to take some time to reflect on my dad, and try to start giving voice to some ideas and pain and anger that have been simmering in my mind.

My dad died this past winter after a shitty and long battle with cancer (he was a life-long smoker). He was 67. Now I know this might seem like a particularly loaded way of bringing politics down to the level of personal (and thus emotional), but here's the thing. I've been doing a lot reading lately. Of books, of blogs, of zines, magazines, chapbooks, of vision statements and organizing principles of self-described radical organizations and people... I've also been doing a lot of listening. And struggling to find the language to pull these ideas and feelings out of my head/heart, thoughts about identities and experiences. Critiques of which ones are validated/politicized and which ones aren't, and which others aren't even considered as possibilities for political analysis. And I've been struggling to even speak because, who knows? Maybe I haven't considered enough. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe I haven't been as thoughtful as I think I have. Maybe I haven't searched hard enough.

I knew I was close to home when I started hearing corn crop fungicide commercials on the radio.

I got into Minnesota a day early, because I took a wrong turn leaving Chicago and by the time I called the folks I was supposed to meet up with, they laughed (kindly) and told me to keep heading West, as it would've taken another two hours of backtracking to get there.

Here in Northeast Portland is a place called In Other Words Women's Books and Resources, a nonprofit bookstore founded in 1993. I've only lived in Portland for a year, so most of what I know I've learned from talking to people and reading news articles, like this.

A few nights ago I went to a screening of a short documentary called Moving In: A nonprofit feminist bookstore and the politics of place. The documentary, created by Dawn Jones (who's on the board of Bitch; photographed below), examines the bookstore's 2006 move, which resulted from being economically displaced from their original neighborhood, to a historically African-American neighborhood. The film is fantastic; you should see it if you have the opportunity.

....check out this lecture by the awesome Jennifer Pozner, Executive Director of Women in Media & News:

Even though the human, environmental and economic impact of Hurricane Katrina are all still deeply felt throughout the regions that were ravaged by the disaster, the ongoing personal and political tolls of Katrina have fallen away from the headlines and out of public debate. This is just one of many ways media have failed the American people their treatment of one of the worst natural disasters in the history of our country.