First Nations Occupation of Arizona Border Patrol Headquarters (Updated)

Breaking from Occupy California:

"Reports are coming in that the Border Patrol Headquarters at the Davis Monthan Air Force Base has been occupied and locked-down as of 1:15pm today by 16 members of a First Nations Indigenous Peoples’ group in opposition to SB 1070 and HB 2281."

For more immediate details and a press release, go to the link above. If you have updates, please place them in the comments.

UPDATE AT 7:30 PM CST: The protestors have been removed, cited for trespass, and released.

KVOA of Tucson reported the number of those actually chaining themselves in the Border Patrol headquarters as 6-8, with 15-20 additional protestors at the scene. The photograph below from an update at Occupy California seems to corroborate those numbers.



UPDATE 22 May 2010: The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), an international organization, is meeting in La Paloma, Arizona this weekend with 700 attendees. At the same time yesterday, a protest of about 100 people was held in Tucson against SB 1070 and HB 2281. Local KVOA footage below. Note the white supremacist interviewed by the news crew for "balance" who states "Learn the language and assimulate (sic)". What language would that be, O’odham or Cocopah? Clearly it's not English for him.



And correction to the news report via Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Please note that while NAISA appears to be taking credit for organizing and attending the 5/21 rally, they DID NOT organize it. A few of their members did go to the rally, and then apparently headed back to the Westin La Paloma. The rally and related events were organized by Indigenous activists, scholars, and allies.

There's more...

"American Able" and The Beauty Way

(American Able image created by Holly Norris and Jes Sachse)

"'American Able' intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media...Too often, the pervasive influence of imagery in mass media goes unexamined, consumed en masse by the public. However, this imagery has real, oppressive effects on people who are continuously ‘othered’ by society."

American Able is a brilliant slam-dunk against the ways genuinely "normal" bodies -- those which are what we see in our everyday public -- are rendered "other" by the media and particularly by fashion, which is an industry predicated on perpetuating our most deeply-held oppressions even as they might argue they are subverting it.

THIS is what real subversion looks like. It jerks you up short and makes you question ALL your assumptions, and notice the human connection you are missing.

Physical difference is the guidepost for identifying most groups targeted for oppression: Not Males, people of color/ethnicities, children, elderly, disabled, fat, and on a subtler but just as effective level, class and regional identity. Physical difference is, for most of these categories, presumed to have a biological origin which also imprints the personality/mentality of those in the different categories, and that "inherent" difference serves as justification for targeting.

We cannot imagine a difference which does not imply biological hierarchy of some kind. We cannot imagine a difference in which all deviance is equally valued.

But we have to try, because that is in fact the truth. And those of us who want to live in a reality-based community will have to lead the way, especially through art, in creating a goal of the imagination: THIS is what real, desirable, valuable people look like. They look like us.

Self-hatred allows a devastated system to sell us a devastated world.

To start imagining, it is necessary to understand exactly where your conditioning has hobbled you. For that work. I find implicit association tests extremely helpful. These tests can quickly unroof biases you may have denied or discounted. The good news is, whatever lies you were taught along the way can be unlearned. Take these tests (especially the ones you feel like you'd rather avoid), carry the information gathered to your support system, and embark on healing with loving company. You'll be moved to creative, effective action as part of the healing.

You won't believe the beauty that is in store for you.

A wide range of implicit association tests are available online at Project Implicit run by Harvard.

[Giant tip of the hat to the always groundbreaking BagNewsNotes for bringing this to our attention.]

There's more...

Repeat After Me: "Status Quo Ante"

Amidst the discussions of BP and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the issue of liability comes up. Apparently the current liability of any oil company for a spill in US waters is limited to $75 million by statute. The senate is trying to up that to $10 billion but Lisa Murkowski (R - Alaska & Big Oil) is blocking it.

$10 billion is not enough. There's only one way to put it.

Entities causing a spill should be responsible for spending whatever it takes to restore the local ecosystem affected by the spill to the status quo ante. In other words, to the way it was before.

If you can't afford to do that, don't spill the oil.

Repeat after me: Status Quo Ante


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

There's more...

The Maryland Club Coffee Can Story

During the young years of their marriage, my parents moved often to small towns all over Texas and Louisiana, following my father's job. They had some money then, driving a late-model Chevy and using their vacation time to journey even more, visiting family here and there. But my father refused to shell out for restaurant food, so my mother packed sandwiches, pickles and pie to last the trip.

Daddy also hated to stop except when the car needed gas. He believed learning to "hold it" built character. Once my older brother passed the diaper stage, however, Mama pointed out a toddler simply wasn't capable of controlling their bodily functions for four hours at a stretch. Daddy's soluton was an empty Maryland Club coffee can in the back floorboard, that could be emptied at the next gas stop.

This practice was put to an unexpected test on a trip from Houma to Bowie when my parents were driving my grandmother Sook back home after an extended visit. Sook had a short fuse for nastiness, as she called it. When my brother had to use the can that afternoon, it turned into a #2 voiding, Mama assisting him in the back seat.

But it was winter and with the car windows rolled up, the odor from that can spread throughout the car. Sook, sitting in the front passenger seat, demanded my father find a place to pull over so it could be emptied, and my father kept refusing. Finally Sook rolled down her window, they thought to freeze out Daddy and force him to comply. Daddy set his jaw and ignored her, focusing on speeding up to pass a tractor-trailer rig.

Sook showed surprising agility by leaning over the seat, grabbing the offending can, and pivoting to hurl its contents out her open window without splashback. Unfortunately, she didn't notice the tractor-trailer rig now to her right and far enough behind our Chevy to take all of the coffee can's load -- so to speak -- full on the truck's windshield.

"Oops" said Sook. Mama, who told this story often, swore she would never forget the truckdriver's enraged face as he spit out his Skoal and pushed the accelerator to the floor while taking his first swerve at the Chevy. For the next half hour, Daddy tested the combustion ability of that newish car engine while Mama clung to my weeping brother and Sook leaned out the window trying to convey her apology via a sign language that Daddy said the truckdriver clearly interpreted as further derision.

They were finally rescued by the appearance of a rare hill on that two-lane blacktop, which slowed down the rig enough to allow Daddy to get far ahead. At the next town, he dove deep into a residential area and located a gas station on the outskirts, where everyone in the car used the facilites and Daddy restored his shot nerves with an unfiltered Camel followed by a bottle of Coke with Tom's peanuts poured into the neck.

After that, Daddy stopped when we had to go the restroom. He grumbled about it, but he pulled over.

There's more...

If You Are Ever Pulled Over In Arizona

Be Polite, Comply with the Officer

But!

Blast this one.


I rebel music
I rebel music
Why can't we roam this open country?
Oh, why can't we be
what we wanna be?
We want to be free.

3 o'clock
roadblock - curfew,
And i've got to throw away -
Yes, i've got to throw away -
A yes, but i've got to throw away
My little herb stalk!

I rebel music - yeah, i'm tellin' you! -
i rebel music

Take my soul
And suss - and suss me out
Check my life ,
If i am in doubt i'm tellin'
3 o'clock roadblock - roadblock - roadblock,
And "hey, mr. cop! ain't got no -
what ya sayin' down there? - hey hey! hey, mr cop
Ain't got no birf cerfticket on me now."
---
(i rebel music)
(i rebel music)
(oh-oh-oh-oh-oh)
(open country)
(oh-oh-oh)
---
(do do do!)
I (rebel music) - yeah, i'm tellin' you! -
(i) i rebel music (rebel music).

Oh-ooh! take my soul
And suss - and suss me out oh-ooh!
Check my life ,
If i am in doubt i'm tellin'
3 o'clock roadblock - roadblock - roadblock,
And "hey, mr. cop! ain't got no - hey hey! hey, mr cop -
what ya sayin' down there? - hey hey! hey, mr cop -
Ain't got no birf cerfticket on me now."



This one's on speed cue when ever I drive now.

There's more...