Monday, December 26, 2005

yuck.

Why is it that I live in a place with all kinds of bacteria that my body's not accustomed to and when i come home, to fucking maine, i get scarily, violently ill? Why is it that I only have a few days to spend with my family, but instead I spend them hunched over the toilet, puking??

Anyway, happy holidays for everyone...

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Speaking of inspiration!

El pueblo unido jamas sera divido! (I don't know how to do accents on blogger, sorry...)

from alternet:

While the big news story yesterday were the offers put on the table and the U.S.-EU finger pointing on topics like food aid (see below), probably more significant was the emergence of a "G-110" group of countries. They're a mega-grouping that includes members of the existing big blocs of developing countries (G-20, G-33 and G-90), and they represent over 80 percent of the world's population.
This flummoxes all those economists who believe firmly in the rational actor; they say such a large bloc has too many diverse and divergent interests to hold together. They always point to Brazil, a leader in GMOs, and all those poor countries that are fighting to maintain their food security by avoiding patented seeds.
My own sense -- take it for what it's worth -- is that this is the law of unintended consequences at play; it's a backlash against the big three's (U.S., EU, Japan) legendary bullying, tactics that have worked so well for them in the past.
In Cancun, the U.S. tried to peel off five of the G-20 countries, but they held firm and the talks collapsed.
If this big bloc does hold together, it's of huge significance. Adriano Campolina of Action Aid told me, "It's the only way that the issues that matter most to billions of people in the third world will come to anything in these negotiations."
I asked what kind of tactics we were going to see to peel countries off and he said, "there's a wide range of tools. Sometimes they seduce, sometimes they offer one or two countries a good deal. And sometimes they get rough. Among the tactics in Cancun was the promise that USAID would "be watching" those countries that didn't toe the line. Campolina said I should look for an escalation in tactics and rhetoric in the next few days. So far, things have been relatively civil.

I'm a little sick of saturation.

Well, I guess it's not necessarily true. It's just that I was reading this article (as a former member of the funding world, I am starting to think I really ought to start to joing the ranks of those writing about how social justice foundations are threatining social movements), and it reminded me of something that always has irritated me: just how many blogs, magazines, organizations, etc. there are dedicated to similar causes. Then when I thought about it more, I realized there could be two reasons for this:
a) a whole host of sociological reasons (everyone wanting to carve their own niche, increasing isolation in the technological age) that indicate that our current sociopolitical culture engenders more, increasingly less effective, organizations dedicated to finding niches rather than working to build collective power
b) due to social movements' investments in empowerment and turning back to local issues, the proliferation of organizations and media sources represents a greater number of people interested in affecting social change, and doing so at the local level where they have a greater degree of both autonomy and ability to make change. This also means, as the article suggested and as people I used to meet as a funder suggested, that many organizations were founded by people that were marginalized by the bigger, collective movements they started out in: feminists of color marginalized by the mainstream feminist movement, environmental justice advocates marginalized by the mainstream environmentalist movement, prison abolitionists marginalized by the mainstream anti-death penalty movement, etc.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, with a whole host of other factors complicating it. In general, I'm glad there are so many people working on so many issues in so many places. It's what keeps me motivated, and let's face it, my job is to create more activists to cook in this crazy ass pot.

But it's just hard when one wants to try to figure out how to be effective given all of the nuances of the all of the issues that one cares about, all of the actors in the game, and the limitations of time/resources/interest, etc. I also wish that it was possible to have a collective spirit of activists that wasn't marginalizing to so many people. Sometimes I feel like that's happening at protests, when I'm surrounded by people waving free palestine and stop the drilling in the arctic and spank the world bank signs, and everyone seems equally passionate, and ready to work together to work on whatever cause brought them all together. At the same time, though, in those moments, I'm also filled with the idea that it's all so tragically ineffective.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

As much as the empire would like to try,

it cannot deny that the world does not want the WTO. Nor does it want the FTAA. The world has seen that these agreements only lead to more poverty and the consolidation of dominance for corporate entities. Enough is enough.

relationships are hard...

and this is probably my first one with weird, as we say, "power dynamics". I was ready to break up with him, or at least scream at him, when I planned my whole day around hanging out with him at a specific time on Sunday, and he arrived three hours later. But then as i stroked his face, and told him, tears streaming down my face, how horrible it was to spend hours waiting and listening to every car that drove by and calling him every cinco minutos, I looked at the pained look on his face and I started feeling horrible. He then proceeded to tell me how he needs to correct the exams for the class he teaches before he can get paid; he has about three pending cases where none of his clients have paid him, and if he doesn't finish his three essays for his masters he will be kicked out of the course, despite years of working on classes, which he may be already. Basically, he had to beg his mom to lend him money to take the bus to see me, because he had to choose between that and calling me, and calling costs twice as much: about ten cents.

It's not just that he's broke, it's that even with a master's and a law degree, the chances of getting a job in this country (which has a 70% under/unemployment rate) are very, very slim. Without the security of a job, it's impossible to do much of anything beyond hanging out at each other's houses. He told me this the first day I met him. "I am poor," he had said. "Do you know what that means?" I told him I couldn't say that I did, never having been poor, but that I wanted to do everything I could to see eye to eye with him, to understand him, and to enjoy each other as people, which doesn't cost anything. And I'm trying. When I want to go out someplace with him, I think about the cost before asking. Most of the time, I actually enjoy just hanging out at home, watching pirated DVDs, talkign about books and dreams and big ideas. Neither of us want me to loan him money, because that's creating another level of weird power dynamics, but there aren't any free fun things to do here, and sometimes I want to experience some of this city I live in. (The national theater, which used to host all kinds of free concerts, was privatized, and when energy was privatized, the costs of air conditioning shot up, forcing them to raise prices to three days' wages for the average nicaraguan for a concert.) I feel fine making this "sacrifice", but then again, feel like a brat that it's even an issue, that he is working his ass off and doesn't know when he'll be getting the ten cents to pay his mom back and I'm feeling slighted because I want to spend my "hardearned" paycheck on booze and concerts and night clubs.

So, we went to his house that night, and I read while he corrected some exams, and I watched telenovelas with his mom, and we slept peacefully in each others' arms. I remembered how much he gives me, and how much we share that has nothing to do with money, and I feel at peace. At the same time, this issue won't go away, and I want to be mature and strong and very aware and yet...

Sunday, December 11, 2005

So we decided to write each other poems for christmas...

and i have writer's block!

How is it that it's so easy to write when you know you're just writing for yourself, but so hard when you want to let someone know how blown away you are by who they are and what they make you feel????

Going home in less than week. Fucking unreal. My sister got a job at a fancy schmancy restaurant on madison avenue (as a pastry chef); researching it, I found that the average plate costs "$51+". Hmmm. That's more tham 80% of Nicaraguans make in a month. It's stupid to think like that, I know, but at the same time, how am I going to go back to super consumption land and not feel conflicted 100% of the time? Wait, do I want to not feel conflicted?? Fuck...

Thursday, December 08, 2005

11 days, 14 teenagers...

Can be a bit overwhelming, but this one went really well. Sometimes they'd be meeting with maquila workers or with the ambassador himself (!) and they'd be staring off into space and I'd want to kill them, but they were good kids and by the end were passionate about what they learned. I have doubts but when I send people like them off telling me what an amazing experience they've had I have to realize that what we are doing is creating activists one by one and that is beautiful. Their teacher told me that she thinks I'm in exactly the right place doing exactly the right thing and I have to say that I was actually thinking the same thing! Oh, and I translated well too, which makes me feel a million times more confident.

And, it just feels so good to come home to someone after all of that, and to make plans for the future, and to argue about politics, and to fall asleep in someone's arms. I had cut off the side of myself that needs that, and it feels good to let it breathe again. Love is easy to get lost in, but when you are left without options but to jump in with two feet, then you got to be brave I guess.

Feeling good.