Have you ever been around a teenager before? They’re fucking obnoxious just for the sake of it!

When I was in high school I used to go downtown and play pranks on strangers and make messes and break things that I didn’t intend to clean up and try to buy porn and yell at boys to suck my dick and sneak around the cops when they tried to kick us off school property for loitering after school and say really stupid shit really loudly. Then I went to school and got almost straight A’s and did my homework and only got in trouble when it was for political rabble-rousing and graduated and went to an ivy league college.

These things are not mutually exclusive; they were all going on concurrently. That is how teenagers develop and learn what boundaries to push and what ones to respect and where to set my own. Like if I had had any money, best believe I would have had a ridiculous grill while I was sitting there in AP Calculus. And best believe if facebook existed when I was in high school there would probably be photos in the ether of me giving the finger with one hand and reading political philosophy with the other.

None of that would have made me a bad kid.

And if those photoshadbeen on the same Trayvon that was killed, it wouldn’t have mattered. He wouldn’t have been a bad kid, and he wouldn’t have deserved racial violence from the police.

Our goal needs to be supporting black youth—not the “right” or “good” black youth, butallof them. What are we saying to that other Trayvon Martin, the one who actually was the one photographed giving the finger and wearing a grill? That he would have deserved to be profiled as a criminal?

Fuck that. One of my favorite students, one of the smartest people I know (not just in the school, but in general), picked the wrong battle recently. I can’t give details on it but I had to defend him to someone not affiliated with the school who wanted to just brand him a criminal based on a few actions and profiling him as a young black man. This was just before the photos were put online of the other Trayvon, and I had to start worrying even more then about my students being labelled murderable in that same way. I’m sure every one of the high schoolers I work with and adore can be seen on facebook giving the finger or something similar. But they’re all so much more complex than that.

So what is the black community doing to tell the other Trayvon that had he been in the “wrong” place at the wrong time, he also wouldn’t have deserved to be murdered? What are we telling young people when we say that the Trayvon that was killed was a “good” kid, that he got good grades, that he stayed out of trouble—especially when those are markers of succeeding in a system that is set up against black youth?

The students that I’m most excited to work with are the ones that get in trouble, the ones who are angry and have outbursts and aren’t afraid to yell at authority figures and who have hobbies besides getting good grades. I’m really open about that with both students and staff. Those are not “bad” kids, and they are no more deserving of racist violence than “good” kids are. (And, if anything, my tendencies toward following the rules made me a hell of a lot more boring than my students now who make their own rules and get their own shit done, but that is a whole nother project to get into.)

Building a black community that really fights, that is a culture of resistance, means we gotta get complicated and we gotta let people be complex. And young people are really fucking complex. That’s why I love working with teenagers, they’re at a point of figuring out how the world treats them and how they want to move through it and making sense of what they’re up against. Sometimes that involves flipping off a camera, and in the age of facebook that’s gonna end up on the internet.

So when I want justice for Trayvon, I mean both Trayvons, but I also want justice for all black youth who aren’t allowed to be complex multifaceted developing people the ways white people are. And I want justice beyond labeling someone a token “good” black kid and settling for that, and I want justice beyond putting one token individual in a racist prison system that is generally set up against black people. Basically I don’t want to settle for anything that doesn’t deeply feel like justice, that isn’t clearly enough.

bell hooks (via hiphopcheerleader)

Exactly what I’m thinking about / trying to put together / some time going to write about

(via strugglingtobeheard)

I want to demand bigger, but I am not Trayvon’s family. But I am a big sister and cousin and teacher and neighbor. Hopefully I will never be the family of the next Trayvon.

But would this be justice? Is that all we mean when we demand justice? Of course that isn’t all, or shouldn’t be, but would a prison sentence be justice enough for us to settle for? Or can we keep demanding bigger, unattainably big conceptions of justice?

Saturday night thoughts / why I haven’t yet said much about Trayvon / what I’m wrapping my head around eventually

I am getting really fucking stressed out for my students, most of whom are black and/or latino young men, compounded by the world + working 10 hours at school + a fucked up faculty meeting where I spoke up tho for the kids I work with because I was too tired at that point to give a shit about pissing off white teachers who say derisive things about hip-hop while asking “What does success mean to our students” and then referencing Kim Khardashian who our kids do not give a shit about.

And I don’t want to be a sucker for the old stand by your man shit but I also don’t want to do a politics that abandons men of color and especially young black men. I don’t want to do a feminism that doesn’t get why so much of my energy is spent on worrying about black and latino men in my life who I have this urge to protect while knowing that it’s probably a losing battle.

And white teachers scoff at “rappers” as their only answer to “Who do our students think of as successful?” and after subbing 4 classes, 3 of which involved me being the asshole giving them busywork, I don’t have the energy to go into a character evaluation of Kanye West whose music I am listening to right now and who speaks to me far more than that room of white teachers ever could and same goes for those students who they don’t know how to communicate with but do know how to scoff at behind closed doors.

And then a white lady writes off the smartest kid in the school, the kid who comes to me to borrow books on black history because he isn’t getting it in school and who isn’t afraid to call a pompous white teacher a stupid asshole, and also writes off a kid who has amazing but completely uncontrolled energy who has fucked up things going on that I’m worried will wind him up in the same spot as Trayvon Martin but without a march for him. And another afterschool staff person runs in looking for me to tell me how fucked up it was and I start yelling in the afterschool office and cannot handle all this shit. Just yelling, and someone has to close the door because I’m yelling things like “THEY DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT SHAKESPEARE”

and I cannot handle the erasure and history and am suddenly furious when I’m at school in a bad mood without the kids around. Cause when I’m in a bad mood, the kids who know me recognize it and usually try to help me out on it.

And I’m here reading about violence that young men of color are hunted down by, because what else is there to read about? That’s the news. People are marching for Trayvon Martin, and I am marching for my students and thinking it would be great if I were sure their teachers were too, and hopefully all of us will get somewhere and tht somewhere is JUSTICE and ends with Trayvon and Troy Davis and Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo and Malik Jones and Oscar Grant and all my students who I no longer need to worry about just COLD CHILLIN.

Tomorrow we are doing some basic media literacy by looking at portrayals of black men in the news and talking about youth voices and playing a round of Tell Em Why You’re Mad and I’ll admit to them that I’m PISSED.

so-treu:

i need you to come to terms with the way white women have facilitated some of the most unspeakable violence upon black and brown and indigenous people, bodies, and community. often in the name of white womanhood. often in the name of freedom. often in the name of feminism.

i need you to understand that you killed Emmitt Till. i need you to think about all of the black men and boys that have been murdered because either you accused them or your men took it upon themselves to defend *your* honor. i need you to look at pictures of lynched bodies and think about what role you played in it.

i need you to know the names of the women raped by U.S. military in countries we invaded, in part because feminists said we needed to save the women and/or children and supported the various invasions.

i need you to know that those reproductive rights you all are up in arms about were created via the destruction and maiming of black and brown bodies. i need you to know who Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy are, and what was done to them. i need you to know the names of the Puerto Rican women who were lied to and who died so that The Pill could bring you your precious sexual liberation. i need you to know the central role white women played in sterilization programs that targeted black women, poor women, anyone they deemed too “feeble” to procreate. i need you to think about why more big name feminist organizations are up in arms about the most recent kick up about contraception than about sterilized black women getting compensated for what was done to them.

i need you to understand that at this point, it’s not about privilege. it’s not about you being able to find products that work with your hair no matter where you go. it’s about people’s lives. it’s about WOC lives and a centuries old disregard white women have shown for them. it’s about that fact that white women have been an active agent in the destruction of our communities, our histories, and our families. for centuries.

and WOC don’t owe you a damn thing. not. one. thing.

so get that through your skulls then maybe we can work together. maybe.

I can’t believe there are white feminists who can talk about Sisterhood out one side of their mouths, and then get up in arms about a statement like this out the other side.

It seems to me like studying history would make you a good feminist, no? So why the refusal to acknowledge the less pretty parts of that history? (When was the last time you think I, a black woman, picked up a standard US history textbook and found pretty things about myself that made me feel good about myself?)

When it comes down to it, what I understand least is how white feminists can respond to a statement like this by selling themselves so short. Someone wants to talk about the role of white women in the histories of lynching, and you refuse to engage? Those are historical facts; how can you possibly benefit from pretending it isn’t true? Emmett Till was lynched because white men thought white women so fragile that a woman couldn’t even be whistled at by a black 14 year old boy; how does it speak to your strength if you then refuse to fight against that?

But in the meantime, there is plenty that I feel amazing about being built by people of color. Y’all probably haven’t noticed (at least til it becomes tokenizable and trendy). If you want to be a real ally to people of color, make it happen. Put in that work. But we have things to build and no time to just wait around for you.

Joshua Merritt said he had no reason to be suspicious when one of his friends texted him, asking him to hang out with two other teenagers they both knew.

But after Merritt, 17, arrived at the home of one of the boys in Chicago’s East Beverly neighborhood Dec. 23, he realized his friends weren’t simply looking to have a good time.

The three teens, who are white, allegedly put a noose around the neck of Merritt, who is black, and hurled racial epithets at him before one of the boys held a knife to his throat and threatened to kill him, police and Merritt said Thursday.

The teens were apparently upset about Merritt’s relationship with one of the boys’ female cousins, police said.

People wonder why I’m so grumpy all the time: this happened two blocks away from my parents’ house, the house I grew up in. In fact, I just wrote about 2 weeks ago about the threats of violence that come from growing up black in such a segregated and racially tense (racially fucked up?) environment. And now here we are, and I am not surprised but wish I were.

This is exactly the sort of stuff my mom warned me about when I was a kid, about not going past the cemeteries alone because that was how the white kids jumped out to beat the shit out of you when they were drunk, and why no one stayed around my grade school once classes got out.

Meanwhile, my parents’ block just became the border of their ward, because Chicago had a ward redistricting fight going on and the two blackest, lowest-income streets were a worthy thing to compromise and kick out the ward.

Why I don’t often go back home, and why I’m mad about it even when I’m not there. In my zine class we’ve been talking and writing about our neighborhoods and conflicts and violence, so they’ve been asking me what my neighborhood growing up was like. This is all I’ve got for them.

This morning, immediately after I posted a live Max Roach video about black liberation and said it was one of 3 options I’d give my students to watch and write from today, I rushed to get out of the house to catch the early bus to work. But because I’d gotten caught up watching videos at home, so I’d have some good videos for us to talk about our communities and violence, I missed the bus I wanted and ended up waiting a long time for the next one.

So, I was on the street a block away from my house where I catch the bus, and which is kinda like a black Main Street through my side of town. I got a cup of coffee and was waiting at the corner nearby.

Very short story even shorter, while I was standing there, a drive-by happened no more than about 30 feet from where I was standing. There were about a dozen of us standing nearby for different reasons; there’s a cornerstore that I was in front of where a lot of older dudes hang out, and another spot across the street where people hang out.

It was scary because there was nowhere for me to go, standing pretty much out in the open, and it was so close to me. But mostly it was scary and depressing because it was the middle of the day, a little before noon, in an area that’s full of people. No one was hit, not even the targets, but there were still a lot of us standing around not knowing what to do besides shake our heads and say, “Damn, man.”

I got to school, we watched a video (“My Block” by Scarface), talked about what our neighborhoods are like (pretty diverse but a lot of them are rough), and I told them about the shooting which had happened about an hour before by that point. They thought it was funny I stayed at the same bus stop still waiting for the bus, but I was like, “Well what was I supposed to do? I still gotta come in here and work with you guys!” Also really ironic that I was standing there thinking about how to facilitate our discussion about our neighborhoods and violence, and then that went down in my neighborhood, and none of us who saw it were surprised.

Anyway, just…..depressing. Not shocking, just depressing.

camtastical:

The Sweet Wizard in Remission: I take anarchism very seriously

readnfight:

but not when it requires wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. Especially given that Time Warner has a copyright to the image of the mask because of their bastardization of V for Vendetta.

Guy Fawkes tried to kill members of Parliament to replace the British government with a…

Contrary to popular belief, the “Guy Fawkes” mask is not of Guy Fawkes, it is of the Pope. When Catholics eventually received equal rights in England, the government decided they needed to find something a little more politically correct. And now, the day isn’t even known as Guy Fawke’s day. It’s called bonfire night and it’s no longer popular to burn the effigies. The masks have always symbolized the rejection of religion and the promotion of separating church and state. They are a  true symbol of anarchism, and always have been. It just been mis-assumed through history.

And no, Time Warner does not have copyrights to the image of the “Guy Fawkes” mask. Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re wrong.

Maybe I should have been more clear? I really am not interested in commenting on the actual holiday, since I have never been somewhere that celebrates it. I’m not even interested on commenting on the masks themselves or how they were used through history, but it definitely is interesting to be reading about. I didn’t know how the holiday had changed, so thank you for pointing me in that direction.

This topic of the masks themselves definitely isn’t super important to me, it just shows again my frustration with the lack of research and critique going in to stuff that’s currently thought of as radical, right now being the “occupations.” I don’t want to put anyone down for learning about something from a movie instead of books, because I think that’s still totally cool. And if that’s the working knowledge people have of anarchism, then cool, that’s a start. But there’s a silly amount of hypocrisy in wearing something that does symbolize anarchism but not knowing anything about anarchism that wasn’t put together in a Time Warner movie, and especially when it refers back to an attempted act of violence but at the same time you will condemn people around you for what you’ve defined as violence.

Is breaking a window violence? Is self-defense violence? Is property damage in response to racial violence, itself violence? These are open ended questions, and I am interested in how people choose to consciously define violence (I am not, however, interested in people’s regurgitation of what a violent society has told them real violence is).

I don’t even care so much about people having to pick sides (although I feel like that’s what I’m doing, like forcing people to choose violence vs. nonviolence when I know it’s not like that at all); I just want to see work that is being done with a level of critique and self-reflection that it is not so obviously hypocritical. Just because someone breaks a bank window doesn’t make them a bad person, and it’s insulting to assume it makes them an agent provocateur; sometimes people are mad about state violence, and very often banks are agents of violence. Maybe depending on the type of violence we should be asking whose violence was worst, or whose was unprovoked, or who’s gaining what from inflicting violence?

Again, there are no solid answers, but I really hesitate to call work truly radical until it is trying to build working answers to these types of questions, or at least to engage with them to a level beyond the hypocrisy I’m seeing right now.

Here is an open letter by someone involved in Occupy Oakland, trying to ask these very questions about violence, given that people who damaged property are now being condemned as violent and “not what our movement is about” (which makes me curious, then, what the movement is about).

Finally, the link I posted with the claim that Time Warner has a copyright on the image of that mask is here again; it comes from Time magazine, as in Time Warner, so I’m guessing they got this right about their own company. Obviously this wasn’t true until a few years ago; it’s also not the first time a corporation has been allowed to “own” the rights to a popular culture image that they didn’t create but simply made money from co-opting.

1. name-redacted said: The next time it’s appropriate, mention you’re willing to listen if anyone wants to talk privately. Your charges seem to respect and trust you enough to know you’re serious about that kind of thing and will take you up if they need to. 
2. expandedcircle answered: despite not fitting the demographic at all, i have lived through this and i think just a brief offering of an open ear can mean the world
3. browngurlwfro answered: be there

Thanks, friends! It didn’t come up today, but I wasn’t working with any of the kids that I know went to the same school as him or live in his neighborhood. I’ll keep my ears open for anyone talking about it.

A 13 year old kid was shot and killed last night in the next neighborhood over from ours. Not right near our house, but where I bike home from work if I take the scenic route. He went to a grade school across town where several of my students went. Nobody mentioned it at school today to me, but it’s pretty likely that some of my kids knew him; they might not have been friends since he’s younger, but probably some of them knew him.

This afternoon in my program, a couple of my kids were talking about violence and shootings in their neighborhoods. All of us live in neighborhoods with a lot of shootings and police presence, and where it seems like all that is escalating, so we were all talking about that. All of us were saying that we hear gunshots and don’t pay it that much attention anymore. Of course, then, one of the knuckleheads had to turn the conversation into totally ridiculous stuff; in hindsight, though, maybe it was getting too heavy for him and he needed comic relief.

I know I’m really lucky to have never had a friend killed by a gun. I’ve known people who were killed, but never someone I was friends with. To be black and make it to 25 years old and be able to say that is really fucking rare. Most of my kids can’t say that. I worry about them all the time, and sometimes when messed up things happen I get devastated to realize that I can’t protect them from everything, and I know I don’t entirely want to anyway. You learn by having shitty, messy things happen in your adolescence, I understand that; but as much as I can, I want to just shield them from all that, and I really can’t.

Does anyone know what might be the best course of action? I don’t know if I want to bring it up to kids who went to that school and live in that area, because I don’t want to open fresh wounds unnecessarily. If kids mention it, I will definitely do what I can to support them, but it won’t be from my own experience because of how lucky I’ve been. Anyone have experience supporting young people in these situations?

Wikipedia research. These things are related, if only tangentially. Not necessarily relationships where one event causes another; I’m not trying to place blame. But they are parts of a system, and all events whose anniversaries are also September 11.

• 1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.
• 1776 – British-American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop nascent American Revolutionary War.
• 1857 – The Mountain Meadows Massacre: Mormon settlers and Paiutes massacre 120 pioneers at Mountain Meadows, Utah.
• 1919 – U.S. Marines invade Honduras.
• 1921 – Nahalal, the first moshav in Palestine, is settled as part of a Zionist plan to colonize Palestine and creating a Jewish state, later to be Israel.
• 1922 – The British Mandate of Palestine begins.
• 1941 – Ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.
• 1944 – World War II: The first Allied troops of the U.S. Army cross the western border of Germany.
• 1944 – World War II: RAF bombing raid on Darmstadt and the following firestorm kill 11,500.
• 1970 – The Dawson’s Field hijackers release 88 of their hostages. The remaining hostages, mostly Jews and Israeli citizens, are held until September 25.
• 1973 – A coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet topples the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Pinochet remains in power for almost 17 years.
• 1978 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel meet at Camp David and agree on the Camp David Accords a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt and a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
• 1982 – The international forces that were guaranteeing the safety of Palestinian refugees following Israel’s 1982 Invasion of Lebanon leave Beirut. Five days later, several thousand refugees are massacred in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
• 2007 – Russia tests the largest conventional weapon ever, the Father of all bombs.

Malcolm X (via jadedfucker)

Zzzzzzzzing!

(via jadedfucker-deactivated20120302)

firesandwords:

cloveflowers:

[TRIGGER WARNING]: guns, violence

About three months ago, I posted this and didn’t get any really satisfying conversations out of it.  I’d like to think my thoughts have developed some since then, and it’s a conversation I’m still interested in having.  To reiterate what I was saying in the first post: I’m basically thinking about radical and “scene kid” culture (which in my experience has comprised mostly of upper class, white kids, who have lived in the U.S. their whole lives) that like to glamorize gun imagery— both in posting on their blog and in clothes and jewelry, creating this hip violence aesthetic.  So, I’m questioning if this is somehow appropriative or fucked up.

I feel like I’m reaching the conclusion that for folks who have never interacted with guns before (both in using one or having one used against them), it is appropriative and fetishizing other peoples experiences to sport this imagery.  As I stated before, as someone who is queer/trans/a survivor, I can fully understand wanting to own a gun, and having there be an option of bashing back feel safer.  However, I see the reality of wanting a gun as something completely different from people who have never interacted with a gun posting pictures of blinged out pink guns, etc.  The latter seems like a fetishization of other people’s struggles for safety or resistance, coming from a really privileged standpoint, and a lack of understanding of those experiences.  This fetishization is something I have definitely participated in, in the past, and I want to own up to that and work on deconstructing where that came from.

Additionally, I feel that the way I see this imagery being used totally ignores that it could be triggering for someone.  I think it’s much easier to be aroused by gun imagery and violent rhetoric when it hasn’t been a constant reality in yr life.  This appraisal of guns seems like a blatant disregard to the fact that those images carry a lot more weight for some folks, and that guns have had hugely damaging effects on peoples lives and should not be something that is uncritically praised, especially by folks who are really financially/racially privileged in hella liberal, rich, white towns (oh hey, Olympia and Arlington.)  After all, guns are not only a tool of resistance they are a tool used to oppressed, they mean different things based on who is holding them.

I also think in some cases, this use of gun aesthetic play into a larger trend of a really awful fetishization of violence.  There were some posts from kavitiya and waiflike on the racist and imperialistic aspects of white, western anarchists glorifying “riot porn” footage from other countries.  Somewhat related to this, I’ve also seen recently, a “reclamation” of the word terrorist coupled with glorifying 9/11 from anarchists.  Presumably it’s because they are “enemies of the state” and are seemingly comparing themselves with the people who bombed the twin towers, which seems to carry similar appropriative undertones the posts I linked above.  I don’t have very developed thoughts, or much knowledge around the use of the word terrorist, and I’d be interested in hearing from other folks.

i don’t know the posts yr referring to, but to take this in a slightly different direction: it’s also definitely very common for white radicals—or more generally for people who’ve never had to turn to violence as an act of survival— to glamorize oppressed people using guns, rioting, or whatever. i know i’m guilty as charged too. there’s a fine line between being like, ‘hell yeah, i’m stoked to see people rise up and fight back and maybe even go on the offensive’— and being appropriative and fetishizing such actions.  there are very few situations— the zapatista’s being the most obvious— where leaders of said groups of people have encouraged the fetishization of guns. i was watching a film recently that showed subcommandante marcos posing with his ak for marie claire and other fashion magazines. even though they’ve de-emphasized guerilla warfare, the zapatistas have nurtured this image a bit, but this doesn’t necessarily open up the floodgates and declare that anything goes.

it’s fine to support and be excited by oppressed people revolting due to their conditions and  using force or ‘violence’ (often ambiguously defined and meaning something more like self-defense or extensional self-defense) as a means of resistance. but, when you’ve never been in a position where use of violence, as a response to your conditions- was a condition for your survival or dignity, then carrying that imagery can become a very different thing.

and calling yourself an anarchist or communist or whatever doesn’t put you in a vaccuum where your race, class, immigration status, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. are irrelevant because anarchists, communists and other radicals are persecuted and repressed by the state. because  those movements, especially when they take place at several intersections of privilege, as they most often do in the us and kanada, have often been oppressive and repressive to different intersections of oppressed and marginalized people. many people of color, even apocs see white anarchists oppressors—and minus the rhetoric and lifestyle, not very different than the dominant culture. and part of that has to do with us fetishizing their struggles while remaining a predominantly white subculture that as a whole has failed to display sincere solidarity with people of color.

anyway, i really appreciate your post. i know readnfight and mytongusforked have both written a lot of rad stuff on this subject in the past.

I wrote about this a while back, specifically about Queers With Guns, a regional meet-up of queer and trans people who learn how to use all kinds of different guns at a shooting range somewhere in New England. I was getting invited to it, and it made me really nervous. For the most part, how I feel about it was said well above. It seems like an easy thing to adopt and think is cool or glamorous when it hasn’t been an unwelcome part of your life. I grew up on the Southside of Chicago, in a relatively “safe” neighborhood, so I didn’t have nearly as much gun-related violence going on right around me, but it was still present. People get shot and killed in Chicago almost every single day.

Now I live in New Haven, which is faaaaar less intense than Chicago, but there is plenty of violence present in our neighborhood. And working with high schoolers who live in the same or similar neighborhoods, and many of whom know someone who’s been shot, that shit is very real to me; I am very protective of my kids and worry about them a lot.

Having lived in both of those places, it is difficult for me to jump on the bandwagon of thinking guns are cool or sexy. Guns are a threat to my students, in their neighborhoods. Guns are a threat to entire neighborhoods where I grew up—I am not exaggerating. Random drive-bys happen pretty often in Chicago; it’s not a place where you are safe just by not being a part of a gang or drug trade. Why would I turn around and embrace that for its sexiness? Especially why would I embrace that amongst white radicals, being a woman of color? I’m not giving them the okay on that if it isn’t something they’ve lived.

This is also why I’m interested in the POC antiviolence work that I’ve been getting involved in the past few months, that it’s rooted in what is more realistically helpful for communities of color. A lot of it centers around finding ways for young people of color to feel safe in their communities without relying on guns.