race and the election

I heard this awesome piece, Does Race Matter In ’08? The View From York, Pa., on NPR yesterday afternoon and I want to write more about it, but don’ have time right now.  Still, I wanted to through it out there because I think the people profiled say some very awesome and very scary things, but they’re all very real in a way that I rarely see the media create space for discussions about race.  I think that people said the things that they did because the reporters framed race in precisely the right way, asking about race not just as who you are, but as what you’ve experienced:

Most voters say they won’t decide between Barack Obama and John McCain on the basis of race. But, in a question that is more subtle than the standard questions in a poll, can a decision be based on the racial experience of the voter?

awesome punk rock shows, kids, and change

For more than a decade, I’ve identified with and invested myself in punk music and subculture.  As I get older, I struggle with feeling like punk as I know it can be a little too much like Project Runway, “one day you’re in, the next day you’re out”.  Perhaps that’s overly cynical, but I do feel like my standards of what makes an ideal show have changed since I first got into punk.  If I can trust my memory, I think what made for a good show as a teenager was feeling like shows were a space made by and made for youth (without being mediated by adult regulation or supervision) and feeling part of a group of people who I knew and who could identify as separate from the dominant youth culture of my community.   The absence of violent dancing wasn’t a huge part of my standard for a good show, nor was equitable gender dynamics.  Both are things that I notice and agonize over now.  These days, I think a lot about who is encouraged to be in and who, by neglect is pushed out of punk subculture.

What is hard to reconcile is identifying with a subculture that rejects adult authority and now feeling like some of the people I most respect are parents or teachers.  It was never this cut and dry, of course.  My first introduction to a diferent way of making and experiencing music, one that was exciting then and remains endearing now, was at the hands of two teachers at my high school, Mr. Nagle and Mr. Barnes.  They formed the Alternative Music Club  and through this club helped students set up shows featuring bands from my school, nearby schools, and friends of the teachers during the club period of the school day and after school.  I still see this as an awesome and totally appropriate collaboration between adults and youth where the adults shared what they knew and loved without totally mediating it for their students.  This, I would imagine, was not an easy line to tread for Mr. Nagle and Mr. Barnes.

Living with kids and meeting  more and more parents in the last few years has made me realize a changing standard that I have for punk music.  One thing I’ve always liked about punk music, and live performance in particular, is that it has been a fun or celebratory expression of shared politics or values.  One of my greatest wishes for the music I’m involved with is for it to be a fun, excitng space that I can share with people with whom I have shared politics or values, even if they don’t have any affinity or history with punk subculture.  I see the comfort of people coming to shows with kids as one of the ways of judging how close we’re coming to this goal.  Most of the people who are my punk peers don’t have kids and most of my friends with kids don’t identify as punk.  When they come together at a show it’s obvious that there is a huge barrier between navigating the distance between the concerns and responsibilities of people who have kids and the absence of any of those considerations for many who don’t.  Furthermore, I see people with kids struggle to break out of an identity centered primarily around their role as parents (whether they’ve chosen this for themselves or had it imposed on them) and engage with people without parents as another person and not just as a person identified as a parent.

Will tried really hard to set up the last show of Defiance, Ohio tour in a way that might break through some of these dynamics.  We had it start early, made it a pitch-in, and had it in a picnic pavilion at a park near some nice hiking trails, a creek full of wildlife, and a bumpin playground.  Most notably, he put ‘kids welcome’ on the flyer.  These efforts had mixed results.  More people came with kids than most shows I’ve been to in Bloomington.  People seemed to enjoy eating together and it was nice for kids to have a place to play around the show, or to watch and listen to the show where it wasn’t so loud.  One friend’s middle-aged mother who was in town visiting came to the show and hung out and rocked out.  Unfortunately, the show was pretty slow to get started which tried the attention span and bedtimes of many kids and their parents.   There was also a noticeable division between the people who usually come to shows and people who brought kids, though this probably has more to do with people not knowing each other because the parents didn’t come to shows often.  Still, its something that needs to be worked on.

Its nice to know that others are thinking about this too.  I read an interview with Zegota in a recent issue of Give Me Back and one of the band members said that he evaluated shows on whether or not his mom would b comfortable going to them.  Also, my friend Josh wrote this about an adult and kid friendly show he’s setting up in Ann Arbor:

hey everyone! I’m sending out this mass e-mail to a whole bunch ofpeople to let you all know that this Saturday Sept 13th will be thesecond ROCK N’ ROLL FAMILY PICNIC/POTLUCK.     for those of you thatdon’t know what this is let me explain. the idea is to give parents andkids and friend of parents and kids a day to hang out in the park andsee some bands and do some art and play games and hang out in a kiddiepool and ride on a slip and slide and eat  some food. you know funstuff like that.  since it’s hard to go see bands when you have to paya sitter now you can bring the kids to the show.  the bands are notnecessarily going to be kid bands, but they will be bands kids can rockout to, if you understand what i mean. (like there bands that playaround town for adults but kids could get into them.)  so far PatrickElkins and Charlie Slick are signed on to play as well as a fewacoustic acts and hopefully one more rock band.

Decarcerate Monroe County/Critical Resistance Fundraiser “Vegan Dessert Party!” @ 110 N. Maple St. 2-8p. $5.

Decarcerate Monroe County/Critical Resistance Fundraiser “Vegan Dessert Party!”

–Saturday, September 13th.
–2pm-8pm
–110 N Maple Street

Support local jail resistance and help us get to CR10 in Oakland, CA!! Decarcerate Monroe County(DMC) is a Bloomington-based coalition resisting jail expansion and working toward meaningful alternatives to incarceration. CR10 is the tenth anniversary conference of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization working against the prison industrial complex- DMC will be hosting a panel of local anti-jail campaigns at CR10!! Please join us for a dessert party. The cost is only $5, and the food is served buffet style, so you can try whatever you like. There will be a number of different items, from cakes to pies, cookies to breads. All of the items are vegan and many will be wheat-free. Refreshments (tea, coffee, etc) will also be served. Please stop by, have a bite to eat, and support DMC. To donate $$ directly over the internet, please visit: http://criticalresist.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=55 Just click on the orange “donate now” button at the bottom of the page, and please specify that you want your donation to go into the CR10 travel fund, on behalf of Bloomington, IN.

why vote? and distance from policy

I would now ultimately summarize my last post on the election as saying that deciding whether or not to vote and who to vote for is a personal decision based on one’s own politics, policy analysis, investments, family, identity, etc. in all it’s contradiction and complexity and not overwhelmed by media coverage of the election, political pundits, ideological rhetoric, or other people’s (however vocal they might be) reasons for supporting a given candidate.  To paraphrase a pundit on the radio, this election is not about issues, it’s about how the candidates resonate with voters.  This is true and great and sad.  But, this reality doesn’t have to be as stark and uncomplicated as the campaigns would like it to be.  I’m so excited that race and gender are part of this campaign and that I have heard more and more people talking about these things as a result of the election.  Still, I got really sick of people debating just how black Barack Obama really was, or trying to explain why women identified with Hillary Clinton, and now, the super-cynical steel cage match between race and gender that was ushered in by Sarah Palin’s VP nomination.  What this leaves out entirely is any imagination for the way that Barack Obama’s experience with race might resonate with someone’s experience with gender or all the other complicated ways that we can connect with or reject the ideas of the people around us.  I resent the implication that people of color identify with Barack Obama just because he is multi-racial or that white, working class people can’t for the same reason.  It shouldn’t be that stark, and it isn’t if people just give themselves some space to do some critical introspection.

This isn’t the only reason why I think people like me (young, punk, creative-classish, college-town living) should vote.  In the first few elections where I was eligible to vote, I voted by absentee ballot.  The first time I actually went to the polls it was pretty exciting and also eye-opening.  I think that people should vote if only to see who else votes and what this says about where political power lies on your community.  Are the people at your polling place mostly of one race?  One gender?  Perceivably of one economic group?  What about the election workers?  Is it easy to vote or confusing?  What might your experience suggest about barriers that others could encounter in having access to even the most basic forms of political involvement?

Finally, Patrick asked me why I thought many of my peers weren’t voting.  Off the top of my head, I said it was because of people’s identification as radicals or anti-authoritarians and because many people just couldn’t be bothered to navigate the process of getting registered and going to the polls.  I forgot one important factor however.  An argument that I frequently hear is that libral, Democratic candidates are just as bad as the conservative ones at a policy level.  Common examples of this are the environmental policy during the Clinton admininstration or support for free trade agreements and more recently Scott Ritter’s statement that there wasn’t much difference between Obama and McCain’s rhetoric about Iran.  More importantly though, I feel like many of my peers feel unaffected by politics, even in the last 8 years of the Bush administration.  This makes sense.  Of my friends few own or drive cars very often, hardly anyone has been in military service or even has a family member in active duty, hardly anyone is a parent, hardly anyone is an immigrant or child of first-generation immigrants, few had to sustain the full cost of a college education themselves and many decided to forgo college, few work in a professional setting where job loss due to discrmination or harassment is a concern, most are young and lead a healthy lifestyle and have been free of chronic health concerns.  I’m not hating.  This describes me too, and I’d say we’re in good company.  However, this is a dangerous place to be in because it is very easy to feel like we haven’t been directly affected by the policy decisions of the last 8 years.  It’s also easy to imagine weathering another 8 years of a Republican administration feeling like little has changed in our daily lives and with the slim satisfaction that we supported neither the reviled Republican leader nor their imperfect liberal rival.

I don’t think this perception is always true, but it’s an easy one to have.  For myself, I had to think a little before I realized how differently my mom, a special-ed elementary school teacher, talks and thinks about teaching and what she sees as possible within and as a result of education since No Child Left Behind became part of her reality.  Also, I’ve been out of college for a few years, but I’m thinking of going back and the prospects for financial aid are really, really different than five years ago.  Still, it took a bit of thought and intention to go from “all the candidate’s policies suck, fuck em'” to “these things affect me”, so I understand the apparent apathy of many of my peers.  I just hope it doesn’t stick.

Election

Reported from the Defiance, Ohio site:

Two nights ago, at our show in Bloomington, I talked about why I’m voting in this election and why I’m frustrated that many of my punk and activist friends feel like not voting somehow changes all the things that are wrong in our world and all the things that are problematic about electoral politics. As usual, I didn’t feel like I articulated myself as well as I wanted to, but instead of trying to explain at greater length why I’m voting for Barack Obama in November especially in the presidential race, despite realizing all the problems with many of Obama’s policies and rhetoric and the shortcomings of electoral politics in general, I’d like to quote from Adrienne Marie Brown (who works with projects like the Ruckus Society, League of Pissed Off Voters, and Allied Media Projects) from her post i want barack obama to be the next president of the united states, but.. because she says it really well:

… i feel like two people watching this.one sees this strategic, dynamic, mixed race man, skillfully touching all the bases on his way home to the white house. that self drinks the kool-aid as much as a cynic can, i am impressed by his grasp and execution of community organizing and mobilization, how he has crafted himself as king and kennedy and more. he seems to have been made for this moment, even for skeptics and community organizers. i lean in when he speaks, trying to disguise my own smiles at some of the lovely lines that slip in between the ones that hurt me, or disappoint me.

the other side sees the parts i disagree with, the special interests, the effects of a broken and at this point actively stupid and elitist, capitalist, empire-protecting system. i see how he has to say things that are morally reprehensible if he wants to consider being elected to this position, and god knows which of his values will have to be compromised once he’s in office, that place most distant from the people of the nation. i believe that we would need 50,000 baracks or people more radical than him running at the local level to experience any changes based on leadership like his. and yet…

what the rest of world will understand with this shift!

i am not on a fence between republican or democrat, i am not tempted by green at the federal level. i want a multi-party system with permanent records of voting (paper ballots), same day registration, a vote for anyone paying taxes, and proportional representation, but i don’t think the path to get there is by placing us in john mccain’s fragile, feeble, maverick hands by splitting the progressive vote. i specifically want barack obama to be the next president of the united states, in spite of all my doubts and cynicisms and fears. i like how he splits the difference on the hardest issues, i like his (or his speechwriter’s) ability to find a common sense middle ground, and i like that he is passionate and visionary at a time when the easiest space to occupy is debilitating and isolating anger.

and because it scares me to feel even slightly authentic in my excitement about a candidate, understanding what i do about the history of candidate failures, disappointments, flip-flopping or sheer incompetence, the broken system, the inherent flaws of humanity that makes us desire hierarchy so…i will not hit the streets stumping for obama, i will not start a little fundraising page for him that spirits more money away from the projects i work on 365 days a year election or not. i will continue to pour my energy into election protection, and raise money to support grassroots organizations who make sure candidates who are willing to listen have organized bodies to hear from.

but behind a closed door, rereading the transcript of his speech on race, delving into his organizing analysis from his early years in chicago, seeing parts of my story in his own, and wanting to debate him about those issues on which i deeply disagree with him, i confess: i want barack obama to be the next president of the united states.

I urge everyone to read the post in its entirety. What I love about it is that it shows that political engagement is not about a singular decision or moment, it is not about investing oneself fully in the promises or rhethoric of a candidate (or a grassroots movement for that matter). To me, politics have always been about the constant process of questioning and requestioning both the external and internal messages. It has always been about reconciling hope, fear, anger, cynicism, and accountability to my history, my family, my loved ones, my community, and the social work that I do.

Defiance, Ohio; K-9; Beyond Things at Lower Cascades Waterfall Pavilion. 6p. $donation.

So in an attempt to make my life seem less disconnected, I wanted to tell you all about a show that I’m playing with the band that I play in and have been on tour with for the last 2 weeks.

Sunday, August 31.
6pm
$donation
Lower Cascades Waterfall Pavilion, Bloomington, IN
(see http://bloomington.in.gov/documents/viewDocument.php?document_id=274  for directions)

Defiance, Ohio (that’s me! punk rock with violin and cello)
K-9 (Detroit jam rock with viola and homemade instruments)
Beyond Things (Bloomington O.G.s playing pretty, brooding songs.  Hear them yourself at http://www.myspace.com/ephemeropteramusic)

Come a little early and bring some food to share!  Bring young or old friends!  Bring your pets!

Some folks who have been involved in I-69 resistance are going to have a table and talk a bit about what’s been going down recently.

Published
Categorized as Lets Go

Asking about animal ingredients in Spanish

 

We were in Miami 2 days ago and were pretty excited to make sandwiches with Cuban bread.  Unfortunately, a lot of Cuban bread has lard as an ingredient.  I struggled to ask if bread contained lard.  I found on the web that the Spanish word for lard is manteca (or perhas grasa de cerdo).

My high school spanish question should have been: ¿Hay manteca en este pan?

go outside and play

We’ve been playing Oh, Susquehanna pretty much every night on tour.  In part it’s a song about how childhood mobilities have been affected by a changing environment.  But, as this editorial suggests, its not just the loss of natural spaces that is changing childhood.

From Remember ‘go outside and play?’ – Los Angeles Times:

Increasingly, American children are in a lose-lose situation. They’re forced, prematurely, to do all the un-fun kinds of things adults do (Be over-scheduled! Have no downtime! Study! Work!). But they don’t get any of the privileges of adult life: autonomy, the ability to make their own choices, use their own judgment, maybe even get interestingly lost now and then.

Somehow, we’ve managed to turn childhood into a long, hard slog. Is it any wonder our kids take their pleasures where they can find them, by escaping to “Grand Theft Auto IV” or the alluring, parent-free world of MySpace?

I think that this editorial definitely writes from a middle class perspective as youth in other communities definitely face different degrees of safety.  Still, even middle class culture restricts children out of concerns for their safety without taking on any of the root causes of the things that make us less safe. 

[tags]youth, safety, mobility[/tags]

Great moments in personal sporting history

The collective sense of captivation that the Olympics now seems to hold and just trying to be more active on tour has made me think a bit about sports.  On the first day of tour, stopping in Columbus to pick up t-shirts, will and I played a fast game of basketball against Ryan and Austin.  We lost by a point, but it felt good to run around before getting back in the van to drive the hours to Buffalo.  My only basket was a pretty beautiful one where I moved into space around Austin, shot, and swished one through the hoop.  I played horse yesterday afternoon in a well-worn court by the sea and while we were playing it made me think about the ideas of great moments in personal sporting history.  I think that sports are a pervasive enough part of our culture that everyone has a few of these.  These are things like the time you swung high enough on the playground swingset to awe your playmates, or the time you got the 4-square bully out with the eliminator, or the time you miraculously got picked first for the kickball game.  For those who played organized sports there might actually be a goal in the big game or a sprint to the finish to outpace a rival.  Will remembered his as the time he stole home base in a little league game or the time that his proficiency at sinking 3-pointers from the corner of the court got him the respect of two girls who were total ballers at his childhood summer camp.  For me, I remember fencing in the woods with sticks with this kid I knew who was kind of a bully.  At one point, I knocked him off balance and he fell into a creek.  I ran like hell hoping to escape the repurcussions of my momentary triumph.

Sports, Race, and Imagination

I came across this article in the New York Times, A Country Feels a Hurdler’s Pain, and was at first surprised that there would be such a reaction to one runner being unable to compete.  It made more sense when I read further in the article and read this quote by the runner, China’s Liu Xiang:

“It is kind of a miracle,” Liu said. “It is unbelievable — a Chinese, an Asian, has won this event. It is a proud moment not only for China but for Asia and all people who share the same yellow skin color.”

“Please pay attention to Chinese track and field,” he said. “I think we Chinese can unleash a yellow tornado on the world.”

and the accompanying commentary:

Please note these are not the ravings of a Western journalist. These are the words of Liu — reasonable enough, since he had just become the first Chinese male ever to win a gold medal in Olympic track and field.

…

This was not some foolish boast of racial superiority, just an assertion of standing tall against the world. Liu was suggesting that a Chinese man could reach the level of Rafael Nadal of tennis or Kobe Bryant of basketball or Ronaldinho of football or Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, who sprang from other continents.

I can see why the prospect of a Champion Chinese sprinter would be a big deal.  I loved sports as a kid, but of all of the heroes of Ohio Sports at the time Bernie Kosar, Mark Price, and countless baseball players whose names now escape me – none of them were Asian, looked like me, or my father, or my paternal relatives.  I think it’s hard with institutions, like pro sports, that seem so important, to feel like you don’t really have a place in this world.  This is connected to ideas of masculinity too and a global event like the Olympics and the things that people invest in it make me think about the possibility of a  globalized masculine ideal.  To be sure there are many talented, respected, championed Asian athletes.  However, none come to mind that rise to the top in the contests that seem to define a certain ideal of manhood – absolute strength and speed.

For a long time I’ve wanted to interview my friends who are Asian about their experience, because it’s something that doesn’t seem to have much space to be discussed otherwise.  I’ve only gotten to interview one friend so far, and the thing that surprised me the most when he spoke about his experience of being Asian in a small Indiana town was that what defined his sense of difference was size.  He was just smaller than most of his other male peers.  In retrospect, this was important to me too.  One way of being a boy, one centered around strength and power and physical presence just felt closed to me.  This is probably for the best, and I should feel glad that I managed to find things that gave me attention, that garnered respect, that made me feel like an expert, chances to lead or make decisions, all the subconscious expectations that are important to many people, but that I have always felt were tied to maleness.  I can still remember that sinking feeling though, of surveying the territory and hearing the hum of voices insisting, “this is not for you.”