Women's Crossroads

Many years ago, I visited the ruins of the ancient Zapotecan city of Monte Alban. It was a cool, overcast morning, and from the plateau on which the city lies the view of the surrounding sierras was breathtaking, the power of the place palpable. From the top of the huge southern temple, which some archeologists believe was used as an astronomical observatory, I watched threatening dark clouds moving swiftly towards us--so swiftly that we were quickly enveloped in the rain storm, and only with difficulty made our way back through the thick fog and driving rain to the shelter of the visitors' center.

A storm of this magnitude has engulfed the state of Oaxaca today, seemingly fueled by some of the ancient power that I sensed from Monte Alban. It's a political storm, grounded by the desperate resistance of the masses of Mexican indigenous campesinos and ordinary poor folk to centuries of oppression. Finally unwilling to stand for the open corruption and brutality of the state governor, the people of Oaxaca are standing up for their rights, and resisting police and military efforts to bludgeon them back into cowering silence.

As with the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, 1994, the movement in Oaxaca is benefiting from friends with internet connections. The declaration of the indigenous movement was posted online at the Narconews.org website on November 22, courtesy of El Enemigo Comun, and it makes for inspiring reading! Here's a small sample from the introduction:

"Today we are not only struggling against a local tyrant, but against an entire system, which for many years has implanted its political and economic structures and continues to import external cultural forms in order to dominate us. Thus, all the repression and low intensity warfare that we’re experiencing in the state and in the country as a whole stem from the confrontation between two projects: that of the oppressors and that of the oppressed, our project.

"We are resisting the demand to turn over our wealth to a few people and to become modern slaves in the new exploitation centers, the maquiladoras, or to become the muleteers of our natural resources. We are resisting the loss of our culture, of being governed by a gang of thieves that utilize power in their own self-interest and to serve those who keep us in dire poverty.

"We also remind you that it’s not only the powerful who are responsible for our situation, but also we, the oppressed people, who have let them have their way for many years, many decades, who have let those who degrade us stay in power. In other words, we’ve often elected our own executioners or have sold our dignity for a plate of lentils. And they’ve used our poverty to throw us a few crumbs. Our people have lived for too many years in this system that reduces us to beggars."

We here in the US like to think of ourselves as the most enlightened, modern society on the face of the planet, but don't you think we have a thing or two to learn from these grassroots activists from the sierras of Mexico?

In the US, the tactics of repression have indeed grown more subtle. For example, we don't deny the masses education, we use education as a tool of indoctrination into conformity to the system. Kids who aren't sufficiently pacified by mind-numbing media and multiple-choice pedagogy are put on expensive cocktails of psychiatric drugs. Their parents struggle to maintain the middle-class American dream--a nice house, two cars, a family vacation every year, and putting the kids through college--by locking themselves into endless cycles of expensive debt, and see it as a personal failure, rather than systemic inequity, when they just can't make their dreams come true.

Meanwhile in the halls of power, the pharmaceutical, financial, energy and insurance industries seem to have a stranglehold on our political system that mirrors the ironfisted control of the elites in Mexico. Both countries claim that their political systems are "democracies," but in reality, here as throughout the world, money talks, and the vast majority of ordinary people have to try to survive on the crumbs.

Those of us who are interested in the possibility of truly inclusive and fair democracy should pay attention to what's going on in Oaxaca these days. The grassroots leaders there are envisioning a system of governance that is non-hierarchical, consensus-based, and free of elitist corruption. Let's try to imagine what it would be like if Americans at the local level started embracing the radical vision expressed by the indigenous people of Oaxaca in their declaration, to whit:

"We must earnestly seek a new way of conducting politics.

"The APPO [Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca] now has the ability to change the correlation of forces in favor of the people because it is the people themselves. It can’t betray itself. We must understand that. That’s why we must all be heard. We can’t build anything if not through consensus. That does NOT mean voting and following the will of the majority. It means looking for a solution that we all agree with. Our program should be based on NEVER AGAIN MAKING DECISIONS WITHOUT CONSULTING THE PEOPLE."

Yes!

Labels: democracy, Latin America

What I love about Thanksgiving is the fact that it celebrates coming together and enjoying good food. What I hate about it is—a much longer list.

The holiday celebrates a duplicitous moment in American history, when the pilgrims were saved from starving by the generosity of the Native Americans, and gave thanks to their God for sending them such beneficent friends. It’s duplicitous because as soon as they could, those same smiling, grateful pilgrims turned around and massacred their Native neighbors in droves, savagely murdering any men, women, children or old people who had the audacity to think they could continue to reside in their ancestral homeland.

In the succeeding years, American capitalist culture has taken this nice family-oriented holiday and turned it into an orgy of gluttonous excess. We’re not supposed to just sit down to a special meal together, we’re supposed to stuff ourselves into total lethargy, like geese being force-fed to produce fois gras.

Most Americans celebrate Thanksgiving at home, not in a restaurant. And who do you think is responsible for producing this great feast? You guessed it, the women of the house.

Over the years I have asked hundreds of students to write about Thanksgiving at their homes, and it’s amazing how every one of them describes their mothers or grandmothers getting up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven, and slaving over the side dishes and desserts—not to mention serving and cleaning up after the meal. And then there’s the shopping that goes on for a good week beforehand—many hours spent in accumulating all the food that will be laid out on the groaning board that day.

In traditional American homes—and I warrant we are still talking about the majority of American homes here—the women do all the preparation, serving, and cleaning up for Thanksgiving. Maybe the man of the house carves the turkey when it’s presented to him on a platter. But the main activity of the men in the house, from little boys on up to grandfathers, is watching football, eating and drinking.

Someone please tell me I’m behind the times, and this picture has changed! I know there are some men who love to cook, and take responsibility for preparing holiday meals. But as far as I know, these men are exceptions to the rule.

The truth is that on Thanksgiving, we give thanks for the Native Americans who happily gave us this bountiful land, and for the women who have happily shopped and cooked so we could enjoy this bountiful feast.

Who the hell are “we”?

Oh Happy Day! It appears that America has finally awakened and begun to roar out its disapproval of the Republican leadership, from the President on down. The Democrats have been given a mandate to try to put out the raging fires of war and crisis that have erupted under Bush's mismanagement, and although it's going to be one hell of a task, the sooner we can get down into the bowels of the burning building and shut down the gas valves, the better. Donald Rumsfeld, here we come!

There will be many many pundits talking in the coming weeks about how best to get started on this monumental project, so I'm going to leave that discussion to them for now and turn to a more local matter.

It's 2006, America. Do you know where your children are?

Did you know that your teenager children are not welcome to congregate on the quiet, picturesque and touristy streets of downtown Great Barrington, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts?

Did you know that if they're on the streets of Great Barrington, not only are they likely to be harrassed by the local police and threatened with loitering charges, not only are they going to be watched by surveillance cameras with a live feed to the World Wide Web, but they (along with your younger children, I might add) are going to be subjected to blasts from a "Sonic Youth Repellent" to clear them from the streets?

Are our kids rodents, to be dispersed with such harsh electronic weapons? What's next? A police-enforced curfew for all kids under the age of 18?

When I was growing up, the public service announcement "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?" used to run on TV every night. The implication, in those pre-cellphone days, was that if kids weren't at home, parents should be concerned about their whereabouts, for the safety of their children.

Now, in 2006, it seems that rather being afraid for our teenage kids, we are afraid of them.

Richard Stanley, the Great Barrington landlord who has taken his distaste for loitering teens to extraordinary lengths, claims that the groups of kids hanging out in his parking lot behind the Triplex Cinema are frightening off his customers, as well as the potential customers of other stores in buildings he owns in the Railroad Street area (you can read more about the issue in The Berkshire Eagle).

I've been in that parking lot at night, and observed the knots of teenagers hanging out, smoking cigarettes, talking enthusiastically and yes, sometimes loudly with each other. Although I am a former Manhattanite with alert antennae as regards the possibility of danger lurking in dark alleys, and a seemingly inborn fear of boisterous groups of young men, none of my warning bells went off in the presence of these kids.

Indeed, there have been no muggings or assaults in the Railroad Street area in my memory, and that may in fact be thanks to the regular presence of so many of our teenagers on the street!

I'm not starry-eyed about the possibility that some of the kids hanging out in town are, among many other activities, engaging in the commerce of illegal substances. It may certainly be true that some kids are buying or selling drugs in town, as some of them do in school, and in the privacy of their own homes. I don't condone this, but I do accept the reality that it happens today, just as it was happening when I was a teenager.

But as a parent of a young teen, I would far rather my kid hang out in the public square, as it were (and although it's a pretty sad excuse for a public square, the Triplex parking lot does serve that function by virtue of its central location in town) than be off in some dark park at night, where he might be at risk of becoming a victim of crime or drug pushing himself.

If you think back to your own teenage years, you may remember the exceptional happiness that could come from simply kicking back with friends and talking about anything and everything. In these academically pressured and media-bombarded times, many kids don't have enough time to just relax and enjoy each other's company, in person, rather than online.

In fact, one thing that's especially positive about the fact that teenagers want to hang out together in town is that it actually provides them with an unusually media-free environment, where the chief form of entertainment is--gasp!--talking with one another, face to face. Isn't this much preferable to the options that are available to most of them at home: playing video games, surfing the Web, watching TV, or chatting endlessly on MySpace?

We should be celebrating the fact that in our little town, a good number of our kids are choosing to make friendship a priority in their lives. And we should be glad that our kids are choosing downtown Great Barrington as their stomping ground--it's good for the kids to be in the public eye, and it's actually good for most of the merchants in town, especially those providing inexpensive meals and--yes, Mr. Stanley--movies.

Just a quick birthday post before I run off to work, to thank Bob Herbert of the NY Times for sending out a cry for help on behalf of the world's women in his column today! I couldn't ask for a better birthday gift. Even though it's such grim news he's spreading, it's news that needs a wider audience, and what better pulpit than the op-ed pages of the NY Times?

Herbert is responding to a recent U.N. report on the "permanent world war" being waged against women all over the planet. He gives examples, familiar to those of us who follow international women's issues: sexual trafficking, honor killings, wife abuse, female genital mutilation of girls, systematic rape as a weapon of war or ethnic cleansing, infanticide of girls...the list goes on and on and on.

And the abuse is by no means limited to Third World nations--those "savage" countries! Herbert tells us that "The most common form of serious abuse against women and girls around the globe is violence by intimate partners. Huge percentages of female murder victims, even in such developed countries as Australia, Canada, Israel and the United States, are killed by current or former husbands or boyfriends."

Indeed, he continues, "A study of young, female murder victims in the U.S. found that homicide was the second leading cause of death for girls 15 to 18, and that 78 percent of all the homicide victims in the study had been killed by an acquaintance or intimate partner."

Women are targeted because they're women, and they're targeted in all kinds of ways--from the subtle forms of fashion and beauty standards that lead to anorexia and other self-dstructive behaviors, to the more open treatment of women as property, to be abused at will in many places in the world.

Herbert is right to call this a World War, and to demand that those sitting safe on the sidelines--readers of the New York Times, for example--take note and take action.

What can you do? Support the work of the United Nations on behalf of the world's women, for one thing: make a donation to UNIFEM or the UNFPA. Get involved in your own community, working on behalf of local women. Celebrate International Women's Day with a big event or an intimate women's circle!

The first step toward action is simply becoming aware, and letting your compassion and concern resonate until it finds the appropriate channel for you to act. It's never too late to start, and nothing is too little a step to help the women and girls of the world put this war behind us and move on into a peaceful, prosperous, equitable future.