Blowing my mind

The quantity is huge and the breadth of usefulness immense for anti racist information on line.  Some of it must have taken decades to assemble.

These are just what I found this morning:

 

http://rabble.ca/news/2013/09/top-10-list-how-not-to-respond-to-indigenous-experiences-racism-canada
Definitions from academic research http://web.uvic.ca/~pjane/
http://www.aclrc.com/pdf/Anti_Racism_Resource_Kit.pdf <<<<—AMAZING and Canadian.
http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/Personal-Self-Assessment-of-Anti-Bias-Behavior.pdf
http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/selfassessment
http://www.beyondintractability.org/about/the-beyond-intractability-approach
http://www.whatsrace.org/images/racequiz-key.pdf
http://www.whatsrace.org/images/privwalk-long.pdf

 

Yeah!  Installed a Firefox extension which prevents me from surfing the internet between 7 am and 7 pm – all my favourite sites.  It’s very cool, although I think Katie will probably wonder what the hell is going on so I’d better give her a heads up.

Grace has no race

Man, I read some PAINFUL SHIT  yesterday.  But this is what fell out.

 

Unitarians have no issue with working through privilege and fighting discrimination. That is one of the functions of religion, to identify bias in ways that open the heart and warm the soul and loosen the fists.  It’s part of our congregational covenant.

â–ª The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

  • Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;

 

Race is not specifically mentioned in our principles.  I can understand why that is; my personal bias is that a specific mention of race when we’re all about the oneness of humanity is well, unseemly.

 

But… We haven’t had the internal conversation on race. I believe our ideas and words on the subject are hampered by fears of giving offense, by guilt, by ignorance, by denial and by a vast interlinked network of laws and customs, tv news and badly taught history which result in the elevation of white people over people of colour.

 

It’s time we got over that.

 

One of the things I’ve noted, and which yet again was pointed out to me by a young FN activist in November of 2013, is that it is not the responsibility of those discriminated against to plead their case as and when asked – or, indeed, ever.  If you’re an ally, the thinking goes, you will put down the Chardonnay and google “Residential schools” or “Highway of Tears” or “Poll Tax” or “Komagata Maru”.  You’ll educate yourself.  And if you’ve got a boatload of guilt or want to interrupt at public meetings, please stay home, you’re tiresome and a continual reminder that many more white people want to have wings than earn them.

 

Having accepted after all this time that it is my responsibility to look at the problem and develop my own curriculum, this is how I see the process.  We’re talking years, but there’s no reason we can’t start.

 

Step one. Sorting.  Get over how we don’t know how racist we are.  Staying home and reading about it on the internet is not helpful.  We must share our painful, quirky, horrific, wrackingly tragic, bewildering, magical and intimately personal stories about race in the comforting bosom of our church siblings before we talk about it in public.  It is by story that we will be set free.  It is through story that we will find both the will and the vocabulary to accept our complicity and move on together, with grace and forgiveness stumbling forward with us.

 

Step two. Reconnecting with the flow of life.  Develop a way of talking about race and racial discrimination which removes inflammatory language (by listening to what people of colour have to say on the subject and humbly paying heed), doesn’t play into old guilty habits (“well we’ve done talking about race now”), models the best possible behaviour church-wide for our children and visitors (so yes, special attention given to greeters and those people in the congregation who have the ability to talk to anyone and RE), and helps distinguish us from other liberal religious organizations.  We’ve been a stagnant pond, it’s time to be a tranquil stream.

 

Step three. Clean up time.  ACCEPT that we will likely never be racially reflective of the areas we live in, STOP being ashamed about it, WORK to eradicate discrimination the way humans everywhere always have.  Build networks with people you personally like, who value life and freedom and beauty and nature and art as you do, to find whatever role to play against racial discrimination you have the strength to fulfill.  They don’t have to be in the church, and in fact one of the marks of a healthy Unitarian congregation is how many different social justice sandboxes are being played in at once.

 

Step four. Sing the message.  Encourage those UUs who can to self identify as people who have quit taking racial privilege and discriminatory bias as part of the natural order of things. Teach consistent and tested ways of knowing the why and when to speak up, what to say, and how to say it with humility and temperance.  If we have a haven on Sunday where we can bring our stories of confronting structures of evil, it will be much easier for us to shift out of our guilty little comfort zones.

 

Step five. Carry the flame.  Find ways to set congregational goals regarding eradicating racial bias, incorporate them into church life, celebrate milestones.  Continue to hold workshops and write curriculum on racism and equality, make art and media about it, blog and write and link on facebook and other social media platforms, build links to faith communities not just for interfaith kumbayas but for true stories about institutional racism and how we can be of practical help.  Put refresher courses on the church five year plan.  Note to self:  leave the presence of the word kumbayas but take it out of the final version because it refers to a spiritual song wrested from the Gullah folkways. Of course when I heard it in my childhood it was the Weavers singing it.  And I have to go away and think about that for a while.  Anyhoo…

In sum:  Racial bias must be defined and that definition broadly accepted, its eradication valued, encouraged and honoured, and participation in self-reflection, liturgy and civil engagement to end racial bias must be considered a foundational aspect of UU life. Grace has no race.

De Colores

After Rev Deb’s mighty sermon on racism yesterday, I thought of a possible curriculum.   THIS IS TOTALLY IMAGINARY AT PRESENT and I haven’t heard back from anybody because Holy shizzsnacks it’s five in the ayem.  So if you have comments, it’s about the imaginaryness of it first of all.

 

Skin in the Game of Life is a ten session recovery program for Beacon UUs addressing racism.  The goal is to help each participant understand where they are on the continuum of racism and to move themselves closer towards Unitarian Universalist principles of social justice.

 

1.  How dare you call me a racist!

What is privilege?

What is intersectionality?

Having the conversation about racism – in ourselves, in others, in our culture.  Current understanding of inclusive language and why what you say and how you say it is so important.

 

2. Family stories

Sharing stories about racism, tolerance and aha! moments.

Understanding families as racism incubators.

Examining racial makeup of UU congregations.

What we didn’t learn in school.

 

3.  Otherness

Race is “policed” by, among other things:

Education, Law, Language, Affiliation, Occupation, Religion

 

4. “I pity the poor immigrant”.

The Canadian immigrant experience, focussing on the East Indian and Chinese migrant experience in Vancouver.  The Poll Tax.  The Komagata Maru.

 

5. The Settlers and Turtle Island

Colonialism and the ongoing resistance of First Nations.

 

6. Science and Race

An overview of the latest research. Facts, questions, controversies.

 

7. Highway of Tears

The Highway of Tears and the collisions of race, politics, media, law enforcement and gender.

 

8. The Laws of the Land

Current laws and important court cases.

 

9. Good people keeping quiet.

How social conventions stressing harmony and lack of overt conflict sap the strength of anti racism actions, and contribute to the growth of overtly racist actions.  Finding allies in the struggle against racism.

 

10. Now what?

Continuous improvement as a model for recovering from racism.

Racism, like all human bias, requires a cognitively pragmatic, emotionally stable and physically active approach for eradication to be contemplated and achieved.  The bias must be defined, its eradication valued and honoured, and its eradication must be supported by personal and collective will, and participation in activities which will challenge, inform and invigorate anti racism in UU life.

 

 

Reading List:

 

The Inconvenient Indian, Thomas King

CUC resolutions addressing racism, diversity, First Nations

Learning to Be White, Thandeka

http://cuc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/CUC-ACM-2013-Keynote-Radical-Inclusion-Mark-Morrison-Reed.pdf

Charter of Rights http://lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html#h-45

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/lou-james/racist-native-canada_b_3795232.html

http://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.ca/

http://apihtawikosisan.com/

http://www.anti-racism.ca/node/1

http://www.hopesite.ca/remember/history/racism_canada_1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komagata_Maru_incident

http://www.idlenomore.ca/manifesto

(link removed for safety)

http://intercontinentalcry.org/

Rant and sing.

  • Rex Murphy – please quit talking about the First Peoples as if you had a clue; you’ve left both compassion and history mired in the mealy-mouthed racism of your latest screed. Link goes to cluelessness.   Oh and by the way, it’s a special left wing brand of racism to say those cop cars were burned by white plants of the RCMP; people who were there say otherwise and I’ve decided to believe them. Steal land, steal children, crush languages and cultural structures and see how cuddly and all ages appropriate the response will be. Let’s not forget they are fighting fracking in #Elsipogtog, for everyone!

    Practiced for an hour today… Jeff had to go out to wrangle backups for a customer so I sang loud and hard and got FINALLY FINALLY a verse together for the Game of Thrones song.
    When we were small no one could tell the two of us apart
    and I learned to fence and ride with all my soul and all my heart
    then I’m just a little older and my Da cares not a fig
    I’m tarted up and shown about just like a harvest pig
    And there’s more than one way forward, and there’s more than one way back
    and you can sit this one out if you haven’t got the stones
    I’ve always thought a good defense starts with a swift attack
    and that’s the way I play it when I play the Game of Thrones  (Obviously this is Cirsei’s verse).
    And now, time to do some chores.

wotcher

How’s everybody this morning?  Good?  Not so good!? Hm. Let me see what I can do about that.

Just when La Mami Naturaleza seems to have shot her last bolt in the weird department, along comes something like this.  Do please watch the video.

I bought and now have used a bunch of equipment for my rehab.  I am already stronger and more able to extend my arm forwards at 90 degrees.  Jeff rolls his eyes when I do exercises while watching TV, it’s quite distracting.

Jeff’s first impressions of the Mac Mini. There’s something useful in there about the Home/End issue which people transitioning from pc to mac always trip over.

Hey, I don’t mind fashion when it looks like this.  Possibly, erm, not suitable for work.

More evidence, although it didn’t need to be adduced, why Stephen Fry fucking RULES.

The Nepean Redskins will be changing their name and logo at the end of this season.  VERY PLEASED ABOUT THIS.  On the other hand there is this piece of dreck masquerading as a sports common tater.  In a hundred years we will look back and wonder why the hell we did this to ourselves.

And in this Brave New World, homeless people use Bitcoins.

I could do this without breaking a sweat. After all, I’ve already done it, just ask Jeff.

 

 

 

The damnedest things

Physio was AWESOME.  No needles, this time, just manipulation and exercises.  I don’t see the bone doc until NEXT Friday, so my next physio is the Monday after that.  I am driving again; I am playing mandolin again, but only short hops for driving and only 15 minutes  for practicing.  Physio says I can add a song a day as I get stronger.  I am making 100 percent progress for some kinds of mobility, and less than is good for others… so pretty much a standard recovery for a fat middle aged woman.

I have learned to my startlement and wonder that the US’s only TDCS clinic is 20 MILES from the GAFilk hotel.  I am going to try to book an appointment, as it is one of the few treatments for mental thrumps and emotional hollow heels.  Okay, Read This Article and see why I like the idea.

I have finished Thomas King’s the Inconvenient Indian.  I have a much clearer idea of what a settlers have gotta do if they want to be allies to REAL INDIANS as opposed to Dead or Legal ones (he makes a distinction, a very interesting one, in his book). I am going to follow his lead.  Native people are Indians if you’re using the “what nation/tribe/linguistic grouping/band they are hardly matters, they all got shafted by the settlers and this is now the uneasy general term white and First Nations people use” line of reasoning.  But they are Thomas King (Cherokee) and Buffy Saint Marie (Cree) and Elijah Harper (Red Sucker Lake First Nation) and Tantoo Cardinal (Métis) if you are referring to individuals; for they belong to a lifestream that is rooted in a way of life on this land, their land, that goes back ten millennia, even if the middens and the weirs only go back five millennia.  I am a settler.  Well, I’ve hated ‘white’ as a term for light coloured people for 20 years at least now.  I want to call us the pink people, cause we are.  White is such a bullshit term.  But settler, that I can deal with.  I am three generations removed from it.  It’s part of who I am.  Even so, there’s a picture from my family history that always makes me smile when I think about it. Back in the day, there would be rodeos, and Indians would be invited, because cowboys without Indians are not very exciting. (I know, right?)  There’s a pic of my mother’s father squatting, in a line, with a bunch of other white ranchers.  Behind them, arrayed in panoply, are Indians on horseback.  Makes for a nice change, in terms of optics.  I know it made no difference in daily life.  But it happened.

 

Lists

I have started making lists again vs. the overwhelm.

Wrote some on both projects this morning.

This made me laugh very very hard.  It’s a combination of the clothing and the locomotion.

Slept at least a  couple of hours in the cpap machine last night.  I don’t remember waking up and tearing it off, but I did.

Today, more laundry.  Really what I should do is get rid, mercilessly, of every piece of clothing that is too tight or ugly or stained, but I get super attached to clothing.

I show the shop again today at noon.  Heavy sigh. At least the last time I went in I got rid of the last of the stuff that was going bad (I hadn’t been able to see it, unfortunately, and this last time I crawled around on my hands and knees until I saw it, removed it, bleaugh).  So it will smell a lot more like a restaurant thankfully.  (Added later… another person wants to see it.)

I think in about two weeks I may be able to handle a tray of cookies, so if I don’t sell it, I will be going back to work.

I forgot my physio appointment yesterday – how, I have no idea.  However I get another on Friday. I am getting stronger, but sometimes things ‘catch’ and it hurts A LOT. There’s a huge divot in my shoulder where all the muscle attachments fell away.  Or whatever, I am not one hundred percent sure about what is going on except I sheared off my greater tuberosity.  I have to check on my next doctor appointment, I sure don’t want to miss that.

I am reading Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian and it’s making me REALLY REALLY MAD about policy toward native people in Canada (and in the US, because like most First Nations people he considers the border a willful chimera, and so deals with both nations).  I mean foaming at the mouth mad.  His metaphor to deal with the constant refrain of  ‘get over it’ is miraculous, and I will be using it whenever I talk about intersectionality and civil rights in future.  He also makes mincemeat of the whole sad and tired trope I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS RACIST STUFF AND I’M NOT RACIST SO QUIT CALLING ME ONE.  It’s certainly not an academic work, but there’s plenty of followup reading.  I had NO FRICKING IDEA that there were first nations film documentarians (including a woman??!!) in the 20’s in the US, whose work of course is so far out in the margins I’ll be lucky to ever see it.  We get Nanook of the North instead.  Tanks Mr. Flaherty.

I am going to – definitely! – read more Will Rogers.

 

 

 

bad tempered comment

By not dying in harness, Benedict is spitting on the traditions of his office, and showing that he’s either afraid of prosecution or death, either of which demonstrate a marked public lapse in faith.  And the commentary from the Vatican on how African cardinals couldn’t get past first ballot in the conclave because they are ‘not known’ seems like the most egregious twaddle from a catholic – ie UNIVERSAL church.  (Notice how I didn’t use the words ‘institutional racism’?)

 

At least Rome no longer has crowds in their thousands outside the Holy See yelling ‘GIVE US AN ITALIAN’ which has happened more than once.

 

More commentary.

Tru dat

What psychologists consider five crucial aspects of wise reasoning: willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to search for compromise; recognition of the limits of personal knowledge; awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.

 

2020 says why the hell are you using AAVE Allegra

BCCLA asks for money.

Dear Friend of the BCCLA

Normally at the end of the month we’d send you a list of the rights violations we’ve been working on. This month I want to tell you about what might be the biggest issue we’ve ever uncovered. Thanks to our contacts made over our recent northern outreach tour, and our partnership with strong aboriginal organizations like the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, we have been able to uncover three videos of what we believe are abusive interactions between aboriginal men and RCMP officers in Williams Lake, as well as what appears to be clear retaliation against a local media outlet for trying to tell the story of RCMP and aboriginal relations in the community. We’re sending the information to the media this morning.

Lloyd Gilbert was tied to a chair for over three hours and forced to urinate on himself in what we thought at the time was an isolated incident of problematic policies and lack of judgment. It proved to be the tip of an iceberg. Lloyd’s video led us to Curtis Billy.

Curtis Billy was sitting in his cell when he was tackled by Warren Brown, the head of the RCMP in Williams Lake and pinned down by four RCMP officers. Bleeding and in pain, he was dragged into court for his trial. His lawyer demanded to know what happened and the matter is back in court today with Staff Sgt. Brown testifying. Curtis was allegedly refused medical attention, even though he said he was having difficulty breathing. His video led us to Oren Mostad.

Oren Mostad was punched repeatedly in the booking area of the Williams Lake RCMP detachment after he pulled his arm away from an RCMP officer and was then tackled to the ground. He says he was asking why he was being arrested after showing up at the station to ask why the RCMP had seized his guns. He was never charged with any offence in relation to the hunting rifles, but the incident in the video caused police to believe the officer involved had been assaulted, and Oren was charged with assaulting a peace officer. Oren’s video led us to information that yet another video of a separate incident might exist. We’re still following up on that one, and who knows where that video will take us.

The head of the RCMP in Williams Lake is Warren Brown. Brown is the first man in on Curtis Billy and the voice in the media defending the decision to tie Lloyd to the chair for three hours. When he read a local news story from WelcomeToWilliamsLake DOT ca saying RCMP officers were harassing aboriginal customers at a local bar, Brown appears not to have investigated the serious allegations. Instead he cut the media outlet from the RCMP press release distribution list and personally sent them an e-mail saying so and advising them not to report the contents of his e-mail.

When our team started digging, we found a B.C. Supreme Court case that said that Warren Brown had started work as a Delta Police Department officer. While there, Brown was investigated by his Chief for of deceit, discreditable conduct and abuse of authority and then was forced to attend a discipline hearing. The BCCLA doesn’t know if there ever was a discipline hearing. At some point, either before or after that hearing, Brown quit Delta PD and moved to the RCMP.

Thanks to your support, we uncovered this story and will be making it public this morning. We wanted you to be among the first to know, because you made it possible. Of course, as usual, the RCMP will be investigating and will be the investigated, but we’re working on that issue too.

We’re counting on you to ensure accountability for the RCMP not just in Williams Lake, but across British Columbia. $100 a month makes a huge difference because it makes us possible for us to invest staff hours in education, litigation, and advocacy. $50 a month means that we can keep pushing for the release of the Clayton Alvin Willey video from Prince George and get justice for his untimely death. Even a pledge of $10 a month means we can do outreach to people in communities like Williams Lake that would otherwise never hear from us and lack resources for knowing and protecting their rights.

Your dollars are an investment in justice and RCMP accountability to ensure better policing for everyone.

an open letter to Kash Heed

Dear Sir,

My initial reaction when I learned that the BC Liberals think it’s a good idea to axe the mandatory inquiry after a death in custody was, wow.  No more coroner’s inquests into government embarrassments.  Maybe articles like this will magically go away.

Then I thought, you know, just because I’m a tubby left leaning atheist with queer sympathies and anarchist tendencies doesn’t mean I have to even react to it.  After all, a 51 year old white woman who lives quietly in Burnaby (honestly, my neighbours probably wouldn’t even know I was here if my cats didn’t crap in their gardens, and if my brother’s car didn’t rumble in and out of here twice a day) doesn’t really need to put ‘death in custody’ on the top of her most feared methods of checking out.  I’d just pull out all of my priviliges and a harassed looking lawyer would show up and I’d waltz out of whatever misunderstanding had occurred.

Then I thought, well, sheeeeit.  It’s not like the BC Liberals do 5/8ths of a listless denial about deaths in custody right NOW, so why should anybody care that they are legally mandating what’s happening in truth in the cold light of spring, 2010?

But won’t someone please think of the children?  I tried to think of how an appeal to the interests of children might get spun by the BC Liberals.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of children growing up in BC – and other places, thank goodness – who want to be po-po when they grow up.

They want the gun, the badge, the pulling prostitutes over and getting free blow jobs in cars.  They want the skittery way meth-high teenagers deke down alleyways just before the Tazer comes out.

I kid, I kid.  Really what people want when they grow up wanting to be cops is to be on the right side, to catch dirtbags, to jail pedophiles, to bust drunk drivers.  Nobody who wants to be a cop when they are little thinks about the mental hardships and physical perils of being po-po.

Right now all police departments are having a bitch of a time hiring.  The RCMP nationally is looking to hire 8000 newbies in the next five years to handle resignations and retirements.  Things are so bad that they are hiring – so I have heard – people with known mental illnesses.

So I guess one way of looking at it is that the BC Liberals are canning inquests into deaths in custody as a recruiting ploy.  Come and join our police forces, all those with barely concealed personality problems and contempt for minorities!  If you get a little enthusiastic with a scumbag and he or she dies, not only will you not lose your job, your badge or your benefits, you’ll never have to face the scorn of the public and you’ll be able to sleep at night knowing that it was all a tragic misunderstanding.

Good job, Kash, hope that works out for you and your somewhat tinted kinfolks in the years ahead.  Yeah, I know you were the first Indo-Canadian chief of police in Canadian History, and that you have a storied career.  I just have one last question to ask.  Given that the Chief Coroner in BC is a political appointment given to a retired cop, do you have your eyes on that job after your political career moves away from you?  Cause if the omnibus bill passes, the Chief Coroner’s job just got easier.  That’s what I call planning ahead.

Peace love and anarchy,

Allegra

Give me a frakking break you asshats!!!!

Okay, thanks to the incompetence being shown by the cops and the Crown in Victoria (and no, I’m not talking about it on my blog because I don’t have permission to) I FnCKING HATE the cops and their apologists in the halls of the legislature of BC –  and everything to do with them right now.  But this latest is FnCKING OUTRAGEOUS.  They are hiding it in an omnibus bill.  The BC government wants to END mandatory inquests into deaths in custody.

Get off your asses and protest.  If you think that giving cops a licence to kill teenagers, immigrants and First Nations people, and that the right of the government to appoint a retired cop as Chief Coroner, makes BC a better place to live, you can go back to sleep now.