What is greatness (in the USA)?

I've been back from Eire for almost two weeks now and with graduate school starting I have definitely had a combined culture shock. I am going to write some more about being away later on, with parts of my journal from the trip but right now I just want to repost something from my tumblr account that I've been mulling over since returning Stateside:

So, what exactly happened to the Civil Rights Movement? After the 1960s and 70s.
I mean, yeah we have come forward quite a bit...but it seems like things have just puttered out especially in the last decade or so. One step forward and three steps backward? Maybe I have an idealized view on the 90s and what I remember of the 80s, but things seemed to have degraded a lot since then.

Here are some points: We had one of the nastiest elections in the last four years with politicians and citizens being super disrespectful to each other and even now to our first non-White president, Barack Obama. We have politicians and regular folk calling other human beings "illegal", we got schools being shut down while military spending still hasn't been curbed nor have the armed forces withdrawn from multiple occupied countries. Women still don't make as much money as men do, check the data. Folks are still being killed in this country for being queer, or brown and poor (or all three).

This is not the vision. This is not the United States.
The melting pot isn't supposed to be cultural genocide.

What happend to the vision?

How are we all equal?

How can folks say this country is great?

A Bit of Perspective: My Response to Memorial Day Patriotism

Yesterday, I got into a very frustrating argument on a gay social-networking site on the validity of supporting war and supporting Memorial Day. Despite that I have relative and friends who have served in the American Armed Forces, I do not support war ideologically or spiritually and I am a vocal anti-war advocate, especially when it comes to celebrating memorials of war. I think that remembering and honouring the dead is fine, but there are no national holidays for remembering war victims, only people who fight in wars. 

My frustration with patriotism especially comes from this, I had many people on the website calling me names and saying I was disgusting for not respecting the dead. I have respect for the dead. I do not respect the war they fought in. I refuse to memorialize war. Patriotism goes hand-in-hand with white patriarchy and heterosexism in the United States. People who are seen as unpatriotic for their dissent are labelled traitors. Apparently I am a traitor. Despite this, I still firmly believe that peace is patriotic, and dissent is also patriotic.

One man tried to end the conversation by accusing me of “not caring about the deaths of hundreds of Chinese and Jews”. I assume this person does not know I am Jewish. It enrages me as a Jewish man when White Christocentric Americans use the Holocaust as a justification for war. The United States not only took its time when coming to the rescue of Europe’s Jewry, but it also sent back boatloads of Jewish refugees when they came seeking asylum. It is insulting to victims of the Holocaust and other genocides to use their suffering as a justification for war. Where is America’s Memorial Day for Yom ha-Shoah, where is America’s Memorial Day for the Nanking Massacre? It is also insulting to use genocide as an example to insult people with differing opinions from yourself…especially when espousing how WW2 was justified by saving the Jewish people but conveniently forgetting the slaughter of close to a million Japanese civilians in the American bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Another point that I want to emphasize is that the people calling me out, one self-described Libertarian even calling me a fool, were all White biological men. I believe that their sexual orientation is irrelevant in this case. Your sexuality or gender identity does not excuse White privilege. All these men have the privilege of occupying the upper echelons of our society especially as White men who have been to college. Education is a privilege and they used their privilege in an attempt to silence me. With this privilege comes power, and it is men like them who continue to perpetuate the interlocking systems of oppression in our society that hold women, people of colour and GLBTQ persons hostage. War and patriotism perpetuate these systems of oppression and I find it sadly ironic that these gay men continue to support them, erstwhile preventing true liberation.

(Ed. Note: I am currently reading Elizabeth Ammon’s Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet. She underlines how liberalism and academia have failed social justice. This, combined with White privilege in writing history from a White perspective and the privilege of succeeding as White people in higher education also fail social justice. I encourage you to read her book.)

Brown (a poem)

They say to me,

“You’re not really brown, you know.”

Or,  “I thought you were White.” and

“Oh, well you don’t look

(insert: Latino, Spanish, Jewish, Arab, Middle-Eastern, BROWN.)

I know what my skin looks like:

café au lait, with too much lait

Brown isn’t a skin colour,

Brown is an experience

Brown is being told

To speak English

Brown is being called a terrorist on the train

When someone confuses your yarmulke with a kufi

Brown is people mispronouncing your name

Every fucking day

Brown is being afraid security is gonna be called

 When you’re browsing the aisles

Brown is being told to go back to where you came from,

When your apartment is just a block away

Brown is being assaulted in public,

With everybody watching

Brown is being scared of walking alone at night,

Of airports, the police, your own neighbours

Brown is being told

Your experience doesn’t matter

Brown is an experience.

I am brown.

Vote, dammit!

This is just a small side bar for any readers here in Multnomah County. The mayoral race is getting hectic and the ballots went out over the weekend. I just want to encourage ya'll to use your voice and vote.

Now here's my beef.
I've been grueling over who to vote for mayor and I don't have a good answer. I don't like any of the candidates' (especially Eileen Brady's) answers or understanding of issues I find important namely: gentrification, plutocracy and police brutality.

This is what I have to choose from?!

All I can say at this point is that I really, really hope that Portland doesn't elect Eileen Brady or Charlie Hale. They are most definitely the worst candidates out of all the rest. Hale kept a residence in Oregon while living in Washington to escape taxes and Brady is just a lying, incompetent fool. 

Occupy This!

I love freedom, and the media is attacking freedom.

Don’t talk to the media, that’s what it all boils down to. I have been watching the how the media has been presenting the Occupy Portland movement and issues and at this point, on the eve of the eviction from the two downtown parks, I believe I can safely say that the media is not on our side. One only has to look at the tone of the stories from outlets such as the Oregonian, KATU and KGW. These agencies highlight drug overdoses; criminal backgrounds, assaults and a thinly-linked Molotov cocktail, rather than focusing on the fact that these brave folks are, in fact, democracy in action. Why isn’t the media talking about the camp’s library, the fact that the kitchen has only servers with food-handlers cards, that there is a General Assembly and that the movement does not condone violence. It seems that the media has an agenda (of course) and that agenda is counter-revolutionary, pro-capitalist and anti-democracy.  

Our freedoms are under attack. We live in a country where hate speech is protected as "free speech" but our truly free speech isn't free. This must end. We must not be scared into complacency by the media. 

I urge you to continue to support the Occupy movement and the brave citizens demonstrating here in Portland. Don’t support the police, don’t support the media. KATU isn’t “On Your Side”. They’re on the side of money and fascism. Support your fellow citizens. Support freedom.

Is Your Speech Really Free?

It disturbs me deeply that I live in a country where hate speech (racist, homophobic, sexist etc.) is protected under a "Constitution" as "free speech" and yet decrying a corrupt politician or inhumane corporations is considered, legally, a criminal action.

Portlandia

This happened to me recently, with all good timing considering the new television from IFC about our "fair" city. It's the brain child of Fred Armisen. At one point in an interview about the inspiration for the series, Armisen and Bronstein  refer to Portland as "Whiteland", and how it made an impression on them how white upper-middle class it is.  And then this happened...


Every day at work I walk down to the Urban Grind on my break to buy the 99 cent ginger ale that I need to get me through the rest of the day. On this particular day I walked in and was waiting by the counter while the barista finished making some mocha contraption for this tall, lithe blonde hipster lady. Typical Portland hipster girl attire: boots, pageboy haircut, skinny jeans and some kind of artsy blouse. 


What struck me was that she was talking to the barista about how she had moved here from some other place and how great she found Portland. The barista mentioned that she had moved from California. The hipster girl gushes on about how great Portland is and how she just LOVES it here. She feels so free! 


That's when I had an epiphany. That is what Portland is for these liberal white 20-30 somethings. It is a paradise to "escape" to from their veritable hell of some Republican small town (Midwest, the South, take your pick). Portland is this bastion of liberal culture and free thinkers, oh and eco-awareness (yeah, right!). The thing is though...they're all White and upper-middle class. How are you changing the world by moving to a place that just has people like you, that think like you? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to change the minds of those "Republicans" you dislike so much? What are you really escaping to but another bubble of ignorance? Food for thought.


As for Portlandia, I don't think it's very funny. It does, however, get the stereotypes about Portland spot-on. So if you hate trendy Portland as much as I do, then you should watch an episode just for that.


Cheers!