Suppressed Women's History

Look what I found:








Video clips by Max Dashu

Cynthia McKinney / Rosa Clemente

Thank you, Young Naiya for the post mentioning Cynthia McKinney

(And don't let whitey get ya down in N.O.!!)

Before there was Barack Obama...

...there was Shirley Chisholm. And while I'm still deeply suspect of U.S. politics, rock on sister. Annnnd she was from Brooklyn (Brooklyn!). <3



















Who was she?

http://www.jofreeman.com/polhistory/chisholm.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm
http://www.africanamericans.com/ShirleyChisholm.htm
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/shirleychisholm.htm

"I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin. When you put it that way, it sounds like a foolish reason for fame. In a just and free society it would be foolish. That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black and a woman proves, I think, that our society is not yet either just or free."

"I want history to remember me not just as the first black woman to be elected to Congress, not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and dared to be herself."

"In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism."

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear, is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn't always discuss for reasons of political expediency."

"One distressing thing is the way men react to women who assert their equality: their ultimate weapon is to call them unfeminine. They think she is anti-male; they even whisper that she's probably a lesbian."

"Of my two "handicaps" being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."

A poem (or, one of the many reasons i <3 Audre Lorde)

For Each of You

Be who you are and will be
learn to cherish that boistrous Black Angel that drives you
up one day and down another
protecting the place where your power rises
running like hot blood
from the same source
as your pain.

When you are hungry
learn to eat
whatever sustains you
until morning
but do not be misled by details
simply because you live them.

Do not let your head deny
your hands
any memory of what passes through them
nor your eyes
nor your heart
everything can be useful
except what is wasteful
(you will need
to remember this when you are accused of destruction.)
Even when they are dangerous
examine the heart of those machines you hate
before you discard them
and never mourn the lack of their power
lest you be condemned
to relive them.
If you do not learn to hate
you will never be lonely
enough
to love easily
nor will you always be brave
although it does not grow any easier

Do not pretend to convenient beliefs
even when they are righteous
you will never be able to defend your city
while shouting.

Remember our sun
is not the most noteworthy star
only the nearest.

Respect whatever pain you bring back
from your dreaming
but do not look for new gods
in the sea
nor in any part of a rainbow
Each time you love
love as deeply
as if it were
forever
only nothing is
eternal.

Speak proudly to your children
where ever you may find them
tell them
you are the offspring of slaves
and your mother was
a princess
in darkness.

- Audre Lorde
in From a Land Where Other People Live

Like it is.

Yesterday I was listening to snippets of Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary on Like It Is.

In an effort to draw parallels between oppressions and illustrate the fact that the white folk who used to attend lynching parties were your everyday, average whitefolk (indeed, lots were respected community members who attended lynching parties in suits), she cited a study that found that 75% of average-joe type everyday men said that they would commit rape upon a woman if it could be any woman of their choosing and there would be no consequences for the rape.

Look at how oppression harms the psyches of both oppressed and oppressor. Can I please find the 25% of men who said no? What a noble, relatively unharmed population of people in a patriarchal, white supremacist (to quote bell hooks) society.

I discovered Margaret Cho for the first time today and she is my new hero <3

First, look. In the Daily Press, no less:

dailypress.com
HU students demand changes from school leaders
In an "open letter" in the campus paper, two dozen students state that students' "rights have been eroded, their morale diminished."
By Kim O'Brien Root 928-6473

November 16, 2007

HAMPTON —


Student leaders at Hampton University blasted school officials for their treatment of students and demanded changes in a full-page "open letter" that appeared in HU's campus newspaper Wednesday.

The letter, on Page 5 of the student-run Hampton Script, was signed by 26 student leaders — including the president of the Student Government Association, the Script's editor and the presidents of the senior, junior, sophomore and freshman classes. It was written out of "concerns for our future alma mater, its longevity, and its continued reputation as an elite institution."

"The students of Hampton University have silently suffered while their rights have been eroded, their morale diminished, and their educational and social experiences jeopardized," the letter reads.

Among the claims, the students said they've witnessed mistreatment of students, disregard for university policies by school officials, exploitation of students, mishandling of student handbooks, misappropriation of funds within student organizations' accounts and "systematic removal of democratic safeguards protecting student rights."

The letter demanded that the school's student affairs division be restructured and its leadership reviewed, and that the university's student handbook be suspended.

The student leaders also asked for a meeting with HU President William R. Harvey, giving him a deadline of 5 p.m. Thursday to respond to a request for a meeting if he wanted to resolve the situation.

The time came and went Thursday. Mychal Smith, editor of the Hampton Script, said shortly after 5 p.m. that there hadn't been a response from the administration.

Signers of the letter, including Darrian Mack, president of the Student Government Association, wouldn't comment Thursday.

Harvey was unavailable, said Yuri Rodgers Milligan, HU's director of university relations. Earlier in the day, Milligan said she "couldn't say" whether there would be a response.

"The university has a grievance process," Milligan said. "If students have a grievance, there's a process they can go through."

Among those processes, Milligan said: Every month, student leaders meet with the administrative council, which includes the president, vice president for student affairs and general counsel.

The last administrative council meeting was Oct. 23, and student leaders also met with the university's Board of Trustees on Oct. 26. Milligan said she wasn't aware of any of the issues mentioned in the letter coming out.

"Obviously it wasn't to this magnitude," Milligan said.

Wednesday's letter requested a formal, non-administrative council meeting, but details of what that meeting would entail were not clear.

The letter is the latest in the squabbles among Hampton University students, teachers and administrators over the years.

Last year, a journalism teacher resigned because he said the school had a repressive attitude toward the First Amendment. Four years earlier, the then-journalism school director resigned over differences with Harvey over whether students would be allowed to practice free speech and press freedom in their reporting.

In 2005, a student faced expulsion after being accused of handing out fliers about the Bush administration, genocide in Sudan, AIDS awareness and homophobia. Seven students who participated in a walkout were disciplined for not getting approval for the event.

And in 2003, HU administrators confiscated an issue of the Script after it ran a letter from Acting President and Provost JoAnn Haysbert on the newspaper's third page rather than on the first page, as she had requested.

Several students outside a Burger King and a laundromat on Settlers Landing Road near HU said Thursday that the letter in the Script was the talk of campus and had been posted in dorms. One sophomore political science major, who declined to give her name out of fear she'd be disciplined, said she was glad to see student leaders taking a stand.

Another student said she's heard complaints about the administration ever since she came to HU from California this year as a new, five-year MBA student. Among the complaints she said she's heard: Lack of organization and confusion about exactly where money goes.

"Everyone knows the 'Hampton run-around'," said 20-year-old Cristina Nataniel, a junior biology major from Maryland. "That's a quote. Everyone uses it."

Fellow junior Folasade Gallimore, 19, a biology major from New Jersey, said the student handbook this year only appeared on the university's Web site — which made some worry that school officials could change it at will without notifying anyone, she said. But she said she doubted the Script letter would have an effect.

"I don't think Dr. Harvey's going to do anything," Gallimore said. "He's so stuck in his ways."

-----

Well. I'll be. Hampton students are definitely getting more riled up, less complacent, and are seriously tryna get some shit started. There's a new wave coming over Hampton--how ironic that it's happening in my last year here when my thoughts are set far beyond this tiny locale that I have refused to allow to define me for the past 3 years.

Speaking out against injustice is always an act of bravery, but it's so necessary. Like the great Audre Lorde said,

"Death...is the final silence. And that may be coming quickly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words...I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger...In the cause of silence, each one of us draws the face of her own fear—fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But, most of all, I think, we fear the very visibility without which we also cannot truly live. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength...It is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding...And it is never without fear; of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But, we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the time now, that if I were to have been born mute, or had I maintained an oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered. And, I would still die."


Yea. That's why I stand behind the student leaders, even as my sights are far, FAR beyond Hampton at the moment.

But anyhoo, I discovered Margaret Cho--I watched her stand-up routine called "Assassin" that I checked out from the HU library. (The HU library actually has some surprisingly good material sometimes.)

Outstanding! I love her! She's great. She's a married (to a man) bisexual Korean-American woman who is one of the LGBT community's fiercest public champions, and she gets questioned or labeled hypocrite by some media forces because of it. Some folk can't quite fathom how you can be so dedicated to the fight for equality and not be in a primary relationship with someone of the same sex. How you can still claim the LGBT community as your own even when partnered with someone of the opposite gender.

Well, besides the fact that she id's as bi, gay rights is not a "gay" issue. Fighting for gay rights is an expression of compassion, of wanting certain gestures of basic human decency extended to everyone. You don't have to be gay or be partnered with someone of your own sex to feel a deep need to undo the damage of homophobia and heterosexism. You just have to want equality. You just have to see yourself reflected in all people, no matter what superficial differences exist between you.

This hit home for me because a few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me that he would stop being my friend if I ended up having a primary marriage relationship with a man as opposed to a woman, because I wouldn't "understand" the struggle for equality anymore. That I would be changed somehow, my activism and committment to LGBT compromised.

Bullshit.

First of all, ANY person who is partnered with me would have to measure up to certain standards. One of these standards is the committment to undo any homophobic or heterosexist conditioning that he or she has acquired as a result of living in an unequal, fucked-up society. I constantly seek to undo the damage within myself, so I could only be with someone who was also actively working on doing the same thing.

Secondly, what? As my friend, I would hope that you would be happy for me when I find love period, regardless of the form it packages itself in.

But alas, people are fickle, fickle beings. Maybe he won't really end our friendship over something like that, should it come to pass. But it's definitely a hurtful thing to say to someone.