Category: politics & causes

politics, both trans & otherwise

Posted on

Italian Americans: Just Not Columbus

I love that Indigenous People’s Day is taking over, but as someone of some Italian American heritage (Sicilian American, it turns out), it would be nice to have a day of recognition. Just not Columbus, please, who enslaved a peaceful people, and by his own admission:

“[The Indians] do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

But there are other Italian Americans that might fit the bill. Because I’m generally horrified that all people know about Italian Americans is the mob and pizza, here are my choices:

My top choice is Mario Cuomo. He died just as Indigenous People’s Day was getting some recognition, so the timing seems right.

Joe Petrosino, a Sicilian American, who was the first detective to really go after the Mafia & the Black Hand in particular; he was assassinated while in Italy (supposedly undercover) in 1909, and they’ve only just “solved” his murder.

Then there’s Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who was surely innocent of the crimes he was killed for but who wrote some beautiful, peaceful letters while in prison. His trial, along with Nicola Sacco’s, caused the first real anti death penalty push in the US & continues to inspire. Their judges called them racial slurs – proving they didn’t get a fair trial, whether they were guilty or not – and connects to a lot of the racialized injustice happening even today around the death penalty in particular.

Alternately, we could just have a day for eating, because Italian food.

& Honestly, living here in Wisconsin, a Lombardi Day seems like a shoo-in, and the famous coach was anti-homophobic and anti-racist in ways that the NFL could still take a lesson from. His daughter explained: “My father was way ahead of his time,” Susan Lombardi said. “He was discriminated against as a dark-skinned Italian American when he was younger, when he felt he was passed up for coaching jobs that he deserved. He felt the pain of discrimination, and so he raised his family to accept everybody, no matter what color they were or whatever their sexual orientation was.”

Posted on

WI Bathroom Bill

Sadly, this transphobic bathroom stupidity has arrived at our doorstep, WI. It’s time to act.

Here’s the MoveOn petition. Go sign it.

Here’s a letter draft you can email to your representatives:

I imagine you have heard of a bill proposed by Sen. Steve Nass & Rep. Jesse Kremer that will limit transgender students’ access to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identities. This bill is discriminatory and further stigmatizes transgender and intersex youth, who already face disproportionate levels of discrimination, harassment, and bias from teachers, community members, and often peers and family members.

Phone Script:Hello, my name is, and I live in city/town/district.I am calling about Proposed bill LRB 2643/1. What is your stance on this bill?I am concerned about this bill because it is seeking to discriminate against transgender and intersex students in Wisconsin. I urge you to not sign onto this bill as your constituent.

>Add personal reasons against bill here.<

Continue reading “WI Bathroom Bill”

Posted on

Cecile Richards

Her mama, of course, was Gov. Ann Richards, and apparently these guys have forgotten how often she handed them their asses on a plate.

As much as I appreciate everyone pointing out how many amazing services Planned Parenthood provides, it seems we’ve lost sight of the fact that abortion is legal and a legitimate health need for many, many American women.

Here are some other clips NPR collected from the testimony.

Posted on

“Politically Correct” Means What?

Because my last guest author used the term “political correctness” I feel the need to comment on it. I won’t edit to that degree, but I do like to clarify why I don’t, and won’t, use this term.

I remember when ‘politically correct’ started being used. It was a term meant to deride activists and other progressives who didn’t want to be called things that were pejorative, racist, insulting or otherwise unfortunate.

You know, like adult women not wanting to be called girls, and black people not wanting to be called the N word.

We were, then as now, derided for being oversensitive, pushy, and annoying for insisting on being called things that brought us respect and didn’t identify us only in the context of white-het-capitalist-racist patriarchy. Nutty, I know.

In the classroom I’ve noticed it is a term that has somehow become neutral, that even progressive students use it casually to mean things like “language policing” or the like. When students and colleagues do use it neutrally, I often ask them to define it, first: what do we mean when we say it, and what makes it a bad thing, exactly? To call marginalized, oppressed people things that don’t further marginalize and oppress them? I mean, how is that not cool?

So I’m pleased to see this piece by Julia Serano outlining some of its current usage. She says:

In other words, “political correctness” is merely a pejorative wielded by those who wish to protect the status quo. But of course, the status quo is always evolving. The proverbial line in the sand that determines which words or ideas are acceptable within civil discourse and which ones are deemed to be beyond the pale is constantly shifting over time.

The key words here are ‘civil discourse’ by which we mean both what’s considered polite and what we, as a citizenry, consider appropriate.

& That is all it is – no more & no less. Some of us are trying to evolve culture into something that looks a little more humane, a little more fair, and a little less deadly, and believe that language can and does shape reality.

Posted on

Bernie Sanders Shows Us How It’s Done

(For the record, I’m only going to comment here about how Sanders responded to the shutdown of his speech in Seattle. I’m not interested in talking about activist tactics (but I think they were right), but more in how white allies respond to criticism.)

Honestly, I’m so impressed to see any politician respond exactly how he should have to being protested and shut down: he conceded the stage, listened, and responded with a remarkable statement about what is needed in order to do something about the systemic, structural, economic, carcerel racism in this country. But of course Sanders is more than a politician; he’s an old school radical who’s been arrested for his views and actions in the past.

I’m sure it was incredibly frustrating but you know? Black activists are furious for a reason, and it’s embarrassing to me that more of us aren’t with the disregard we have for the bodies and lives of people who have created so, so much beauty and music and labor and theory. Honestly. Love black people as much as you love black culture is exactly right.

More tomorrow on misplaced outrage and purity politics.

Posted on

EEOC Ruling

So what does this recent EEOC ruling mean? It means that sexual orientation discrimination is now considered sex discrimination, because the gender of you and the gender of who you love means it’s about gender, not orientation, per se.

The first time we saw this in any significant way was when Hawaii’s Baehr v Lewin case left the door open for civil unions back in 1993 (causing, some might argue, the whole DOMA movement at the federal and state levels).

This EEOC ruling is *not* binding in courts, but the EEOC investigates a lot of workplace cases and the courts, in turn, often defer to EEOC rulings precisely because the EEOC has more experience and expertise as their mission is to uphold the Civil Rights Act of 1064.

NCTE adds:

The argument that gender identity, but not sexual orientation, is already covered by Title VII and other sex discrimination laws has sometimes been asserted as a reason to cut gender identity out of LGBT nondiscrimination bills at the state or local level. In fact, all forms of anti-LGBT nondiscrimination are inherently gender-based—and yet we still urgently need legislation to make clear beyond doubt, once and for all, that LGBT people are protected. The EEOC’s underscores that the entire LGBT community is in the same boat in that regard.

Which is NCTE’s way of saying that the EEOC ruling may help, but it does not (yet) invalidate the need for ENDA.

Posted on

Ramadan’s American History

Today is the start of Ramadan.One fourth of the world observes this Muslim fast, and I miss being in a culture where I could regularly witness the very happy fast-breaking at sundown; having grown up in a faith that fasts, I always felt especially sympathetic to the guys who worked in restaurants and delis and the like.

Social scientists estimate that 15 to 30 percent, or, “[a]s many as 600,000 to 1.2 million slaves” in antebellum America were Muslims. 46 percent of the slaves in the antebellum South were kidnapped from Africa’s western regions, which boasted “significant numbers of Muslims”. 

So of course significant numbers of slaves were Muslim, and they were practicing, too:

In addition to abstaining from food and drink, enslaved Muslims held holy month prayers in slave quarters, and put together iftars – meals at sundown to break the fast – that brought observing Muslims together. These prayers and iftars violated slave codes restricting assembly of any kind.

For instance, the Virginia Slave Code of 1723 considered the assembly of five slaves as an “unlawful and tumultuous meeting”, convened to plot rebellion attempts. Every state in the south codified similar laws barring slave assemblages, which disparately impacted enslaved African Muslims observing the Holy Month.

Therefore, practicing Islam and observing Ramadan and its fundamental rituals, for enslaved Muslims in antebellum America, necessitated the violation of slave codes. This exposed them to barbaric punishment, injury, and oftentimes, even death. However, the courage to observe the holy month while bonded, and in the face of grave risk, highlights the supreme piety of many enslaved Muslims.

And while this all makes perfect sense, it had never occurred to me, certainly. Do go read the rest of the piece by Khaled O Beydoun. American cultural and religious diversity continues to amaze me; so many things we consider “imported” in recent history – Islam and Socialism, for starters – have really been part of the American fabric for more than a hundred years. It does make you think about who has framed the narrative of America, and why.

Posted on

The Origin of Memorial Day

Interesting piece on the black origins of Memorial Day in the U.S.:

The largest of these events, forgotten until I had some extraordinary luck in an archive at Harvard, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the city’s Washington Race Course and Jockey Club into an outdoor prison. Union captives were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand.

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

After the dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantrymen participating were the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th United States Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite.

The war was over, and Memorial Day had been founded by African-Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders’ republic. They were themselves the true patriots.

Despite the size and some newspaper coverage of the event, its memory was suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day. From 1876 on, after white Democrats took back control of South Carolina politics and the Lost Cause defined public memory and race relations, the day’s racecourse origin vanished.