The fifty people that were murdered in Orlando were our people. They’re not just “those people”. They’re you and me. I can see many thinking, “Why should I care? I am not gay. My children are not gay. I don’t know any gay people.”
Gay rights are human rights.
When you implicitly condone violence perpetrated against one group, you’re aiding violence that WILL affect you one day in the future in some shape or form.
Thoughts and prayers haven’t worked. We need to protect the most beautiful thing about this country – diversity and tolerance (relative to many places around the world, for example, where I came from. I understand it’s not perfect here in the US). I’d love to believe that love wins but this tragedy did not happen in a vacuum. There’s been a disconcerting trend of backlash against LGBT (along with backlashes against POC and women). Just like racism did not die with the election of an African American POTUS, hatred (What’s in the fabric of our collective psyche to cause so many to hate complete strangers so much?) against the LGBT community did not lessen after the passing of marriage equality laws.
Love will only win if we make our voice heard with VOTES. VOTE in the next election to remove all the elected officials supporting (i.e. not banning) easy access to assault weapons. That’s one message that will get their attention.
Dear Internet, please stop sharing, re-posting, re-tweeting, liking, +’ing, quotes about travel that do not check privileges inherently associated with the ability to pick up and go.
I love travel. I enjoy travel. Heck, I focus in the travel product area at work. But I also understand that the ability to travel is a privilege. It implies wealth (or at least disposable income), ability and confidence to find hospitality (say you have no money but you want to rely on the kindness of strangers – I’m going to assume that this works a lot better for a white male in most parts of the world), physical capability, lack of restrictions of responsibilities for another human being, and more. That’s why quotes like this bother me to no end. It’s as if we’re accusing those who can’t travel (for one reason or another) of lack of imagination, of an inability to aspire for more in life.
“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” — Margaret Atwood
I came across a helpful, objective, step by step analysis of “Reverse [Fill in the blank]ism” complaints and the fallacy in those complaints. Often in the call for “compassion”, for understanding, for listening to the other side, these writings fall into the category of apologist-ic argument which, imo, set us back to the starting point – “So, you are saying that nobody sets out to hate anybody. Case closed. Business as usual then?”
Read “The Distress of the Privileged” on The Weekly Sift if you’ve been frustrated with the recent public discourse of invisible privileges and the commandeering of it by the privileged: Ferguson & all the future and past police shootings of unarmed black men, white privilege, Jon Stewart’s now famous intense schooling of Bill O’Reilly, G-A-M-E-R-G-A-T-E, sexism everywhere you look, etc. etc. If you are ever tongued-tied when confronted with “we should listen to the other side”. If you ever experience, with acute pang in your chest, l‘esprit de l’escalier. If you ever want to scream but you can’t really because “what difference then are we from the other side.”
“As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change. The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.”
“Confronting this distress is tricky, because neither acceptance nor rejection is quite right. The distress is usually very real, so rejecting it outright just marks you as closed-minded and unsympathetic. It never works to ask others for empathy without offering it back to them.”
“[F]irmness together with understanding”, the author suggests, may be the middle path that will move us forward.
“… my straight-white-male sunburn can’t be allowed to compete on equal terms with your heart attack. To me, it may seem fair to flip a coin for the first available ambulance, but it really isn’t. Don’t try to tell me my burn doesn’t hurt, but don’t consent to the coin-flip.” [Emphasis mine]
Something horrific happened in Boston, to Boston, to people who congregated in that resilient city for the annual Boston Marathon. Two explosive devices went off near the finish line when many were getting close to accomplish what was one of the most impressive feats, running in and finishing a marathon. There were a lot of footages and photos, and in some sense, the event was live streamed via various social media. There was one photo that emerged and was shared and reshared right away. Even though folks helpfully added #NSFW as a warning, I still got a glimpse of it because Twitter automatically shows the full image in the live stream. At first I did not even realize what the large ares of redness on the ground meant. There was so much red. Bright red. I thought it was paint because it was so errily bright. Later it hit me, and I started crying.
My first reaction as I sat here staring at my computer screen obsessively hitting refresh, refresh, refresh, feeling utter disbelief and helplessness, was “What’s wrong with people? With humanity? With this world?” Thanks to Twitter (with whom I am secretly in love) I came across the calming perspective provided by Mr. Rogers (or rather, Grandma Rogers), “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
It is true. Hundreds of Bostonians soon started using this Google spreadsheet “I have a place to offer” to open up their homes to runners and their families who are stranded because of the tragedy and the ensuing chaos.
Still, one could easily dismiss Mr. Rogers for being too nice, too trusting, too optimistic. I needed more. And I found it in an unlikely place… Patton Oswalt. You know, the stand-up comedian who’s not known for having a sunny, “look on the bright side”, personna?
I really appreciated his reminding us that in many of the video footages you could see clearly that when the explosion happened, many instead of running away ran towards the explosion to help.
If you are feeling lost, sad, helpless, and especially if you are feeling angry, read what he said. I like the math he did.
One of my favorite movies, as cliche as a cliche can be, is indeed The Sound of Music. I often thought to myself, “I should start a list of ‘My Favorite Things’ just so I could remember the little things in life, the fleeting moments, the silly indulgences, that make the sun shine, that remind me what it feels like to be free and alive.”
I should clarify that these are the things that demarcate the “me moments”. I guess this is ultimately a selfish list… These moments insulate me from the outside world, everything that is Not-me. They suck the air out of the space around me and create a vacuum that is almost imperceptible (except, of course, if this were literal, I’d be gagging for air. Duh.) Do you know the feeling you get when you put on a pair of noise cancellation headsets and you switch the noise cancellation voodoo magic on before you turn on the music? There is an indescribable (to me but probably not to somebody like Raymond Carver) yet tangible texture of tranquility, of emptiness in that split second.
To put it plainly, these are the moments that make it easier for me to imagine I am a heroin in an aimless, plotless European art-house movie, wandering the cobblestone streets looking for discarded playing cards appearing in random corners.
1. French bread sticking out from a paper grocery bag. ha ha.
2. Stomping in puddles in my rain boots
3. Burrowing myself into a pile of towels or bed sheets fresh from the dryer on a cold dreary day
4. Flowers sitting on my kitchen table. Or the idea of it since I seldom buy flowers…
5. A good book (or my Kindle) and a cup of tea or coffee
6. The sound of rain
7. The smell and fluffiness of freshly laundered plush 100% Egyptian towels
8. The scene in The Sound Of Music when Maria teaches the children to sing “My Favorite Things”
9. Toblerone
10. Falling into a perfectly made bed when I check into a hotel on a business trip
11. A bath surrounded by lit candles. Alone.
12. Hanging out at the Starbucks in the Metra train station with my laptop on Saturday mornings
13. Pathétique by Tchaikovsky, especially the 4th movement. No multi-tasking. Simply, listening.
14. December by George Winston. ibid.
15. Brushing my hair with long, calming strokes that are disturbingly similar to creepy brush strokes seen in scary movies
16. The feeling of my hair against my back when I tilt my head back
17. Lying inside a patch of sunshine coming through the window on the floor
18. Bench seat at a bay window
19. The delicate fragrance of flowers from a tea olive shrub
20. A piece of black forest cake, of course, at a quiet corner inside a darkened cafe. No ants.
21. A cup of tea on fancy china, with proper cup and saucer
22. Full moon that looks monstrously huge
23. Any moment when I am alone yet not lonely
This would be a laundry list that never finishes, kind of like my laundry in real life. Many more little things will be remembered and designated as a favorite thing only if I become self-aware and consciously register my enjoyment of it. That designation itself is fleeting for I will also need to remember to add it to this list. #FirstWorldProblem I know. This exercise has been good for my soul though as I walked through the minutes and hours today forcing myself to dig deep into the recess of my memory for the forgotten, precious moments that made me exclaim silently, “I am so glad I am alive.” Another #FirstWorldProblem yes. But you don’t live inside my head so please don’t judge too harshly my neurosis.
My parents taught me well: never gloat. Never rub it in.
So I will simply put these up with no comments added.
Now… In case you are worried that we are all going to get a big head and become complacent and start subscribing to this false belief of a perfect world and have blind faith in the American people, NO WORRIES! There was (and still is?) a trending hashtag on Twitter “VoteWhite”… Yup. I saw a few of them and it’s just as sickening as you’d imagine. In fact, I could not have imagined some of the things that people actually tweeted to the public. They’re not concerned that everybody could see how much of a backwood racist they are? Including their employers? I assume these people are all gainfully employed since unlike the democrats, they do NOT need government assistance being so self-reliant “We built all this” and all. Anyway, keep this in your back pocket and show it to anyone that says, “There is no more racism.”
Thank you to “crazy things racists say openly in the 21st century” for keeping us on our toes.
Confession: I did not realize how massive the impact Hurricane Sandy had on the lives of people in New York City and New Jersey until I came across the pictures.
In my ignorance, I had thought in the very beginning, “How bad could it be? This is New York City we’re talking about.” Somehow I was enough of an idiot to assume that NATURE would have nothing to claim in NYC, the pulsing URBAN center of the universe. I know it does not make any sense to you. It shouldn’t since these were assumptions made by an idiot, moi.
I was waiting for reports on the dire situations to stop, waiting for the “All Clear!” news item showing people patting each other on the back for “disasters divertes”, for “a good job done”. Certainly this is New York City and New Jersey we’re talking about. These people know people and have people. Things should go back to normal soon.
But it didn’t.
On the contrary, more and more images and stories showing the devastations surfaced. Reports on how “far flung” [relatively] communities were still waiting for adequate assistance finally caught our attention: Reuters just published a news article on the dire situation now in Far Rockaway. For starters, many areas are still without power, and that means no heat as temperature drops to the 30s. Here is a video from Democracy Now.
Thanks to a good friend of mine who has been posting the latest updates and the most relevant information on Facebook throughout, I was able to quickly bring myself up to speed on what’s happening and how to help, regardless of how little I could do in the face of such devastation. I thought I’d share the information I’ve collected, thanks to the lovely Sue:
Red Cross is a great org, but at times like this, some grassroots orgs are better at reaching smaller, more remote areas that are not getting enough attention. I am not accusing FEMA or Red Cross: the needs are simply too overwhelming now as the communities in need are so widespread. If you would like to donate and help, consider some of the other orgs, such as AmeriCare and World Cares Center. (The links take you directly to the organizations’ donation pages – If I could, I prefer to donate directly rather than going through 3rd party sites. Just my personal preference…)
World Cares have volunteers on the ground in places such as Far Rockaway that are still waiting for the arrival of help in proportion to the needs. Follow World Cares on Twitter for live updates and also on how you could volunteer on the ground.
The Occupy movement reemerged as Occupy Sandy, a community-based relief organization mastering social media and crowd-sourcing to coordinate and distribute assistance on the ground. Check out their Facebook page full of updates from folks who are offering to help, such as an offer of industrial pumps to pump out the water free of charge. It really is amazing. They have also cleverly set up a “wedding registry” on Amazon for blankets, flashlights, etc. to be delivered directly to Church of St Luke and St Matthew.
Today, on May 9, 2012, for the first time in history, the President of United States publicly announced that he supports same-sex marriage. [Let’s not overlook the fact though that he also said each state gets to decide whether to legalize same-sex marriage or not… But still…]
What makes it such a groundbreaking moment in history is that right after the news got out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a devout Mormon, also made a statement supporting same-sex marriage:
My personal belief is that marriage is between a man and a woman. But in a civil society, I believe that people should be able to marry whomever they want, and it’s no business of mine if two men or two women want to get married. The idea that allowing two loving, committed people to marry would have any impact on my life, or on my family’s life, always struck me as absurd
What he said. Exactly.
What amuses me though is the fact that in addition to issuing a carefully worded statement containing the paragraph quoted above, Senator Reid also tweeted his stance. I smiled when I saw those tweets. “Now it’s official: He’s tweeted those exact same sentiment. There is no going back now, Senator Reid, because screenshots, like diamonds, are forever.”
Unless you live under a rock, or you are my husband, by now you must have seen (or chosen to skip) this video, KONY 2012 (video at the bottom of this post for all you under-the-rock-dwellers), and it is possible you are already tired of “hearing” about it on your Facebook or Twitter (or even, dare I say, Google+?) stream.
Here is what the non-profit organization, Invisible Children, the people behind one of the most brilliant marketing campaigns I have ever witnessed (and by calling it a “marketing campaign” I do not mean to trivialize the issue to which it aims to raise awareness of), says to be the objective of this well-executed video:
KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.
It is possible that you, like me, thought to yourself, “Who the f is Joseph Kony? And why should I care? And what the f is going on?”
Well, making you aware and thus making you care IS the objective of this video that is the talk of the town today. It had 100,000 views on YouTube last night when I shared it on all the social media channels; as of now, there are more than 15 million views. In 24 hours. It is a trending topic on Twitter and Facebook. Of course, detractors and critics have come out of the woods; it seems that nowadays rocketing fame and popularity cannot evade the fate of soon becoming notoriety. Invisible Children‘s charity score and financial practices have since come under severe scrutiny.
[Update on March 8, 11:30 am: The video now has almost 37 million views on YouTube, i.e. the view count has more than doubled overnight]
But Joseph Kony and the atrocity he and his army has been committing is being talked about. I’d say Objective Achieved.
As I said, this is one of the most brilliant campaigns. As I scroll through the slick website and all its social-media-optimizing graphic designs and html code (TWEET the celebrities and politicians directly from the website to make them aware, because, sad yet true, when George Clooney is pissed off by something, people that matter actually listen), I could not stop being amazed at how this was not a brainchild by some corner suite on Madison Avenue. I will let the pundits and scholars and all the commenters out there do the debating for me/you. Read this one if you must: Taking ‘Kony 2012′ Down A Notch, and this one, Stop Kony, yes. But don’t stop asking questions. But by god, do not read the comments on YouTube; they really make you lose faith in humanity: one glowing example accuses this video/campaign as an Obama conspiracy.
Here is my Facebook status at 10:28 pm last night:
My boys insisted that I watch a video today. I thought, Not another stupid YouTube video (Yes, Charlie the Unicorn I am looking at you!) I am glad I “obliged” and watched this very well done, call for action, film created by Invisible Children. It astounds me that Joseph Kony is number 1 on the war criminal list and yet I didn’t know about him and the atrocity he has committed
IF THE WORLD KNOWS WHO JOSEPH KONY IS, IT WILL UNITE TO STOP HIM. IT STARTS HERE.
KONY 2012 IS A FILM AND CAMPAIGN BY INVISIBLE CHILDREN THAT AIMS TO MAKE JOSEPH KONY FAMOUS, NOT TO CELEBRATE HIM, BUT TO RAISE SUPPORT FOR HIS ARREST AND SET A PRECEDENT FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE.
The least we could do is to pass this movie on on the Internet.
When I was watching it, my 9-year-old (Mr. Monk) came to watch it again with me. He was alternating between being sad, outraged, incredulous, and agitated. He was doing those jumping without moving his feet thing that people do when they are excited about something but don’t know what to do with it, or where to start. His eyes were red, and yet shimmering with hope. Yes, hope.
And that’s what I think Kony 2012 did the most brilliantly. It breaks down a complicated political/social/historical/economical/national/global/humanitarian situation into simple, forceful messages that people of any background, age, education, intellect can easily grasp. Sort of like a call for action for the drive-through generation. Of course, that is also one of the shortcomings picked out by its critics, that Kony 2012 does not provide the whole political/etc. context. Because if it did, most people would not even click PLAY. Sad but true. Even well-intentioned, compassionate young people, the target audience of this video (complete with t-shirts, bracelets, posters and pins!), would have been too overwhelmed by the hopelessness in the situation, “So, there is nothing nobody can do about it?” What would they have done? Probably go back to mindless YouTube videos that show the myriad ways a guy can get his crotch hit by some foreign object.
Yes, it’s a First World Problem, that our young people have to be spoon-fed easily digestible messages, but this may be a start, their first engagement in social activism, no matter how whitewashed it is. (Why don’t people criticize all the walkthons and fundraising that I have been forced to donate to because I do not like my children to hit up relatives/friends for money? Don’t even get me started on how the retailers donate $1 stinkig dollar per crap to our school. I will just give you the money directly, Mr. Principle. School fundraising is, IMFHO, MOST. STUPID. IDEA. EVER. How about youse don’t vote down property tax increase so we don’t have to send our children out to be extortioners?! And why do we need to buy more balls for the playground??!!)
Even more impressively, people behind Invisible Children understand that in order to get the masses to do something, you have to tell them what and how, and keep it simple. We are all Homer Simpsons. Or in the case of its actual target audience, you have to make sure the actions you are calling for are well within the capability of teenagers and young adults: Camp outside an embassy in protest. No. Tweet Lady Gaga. Yes. This is not said in jest. They’ve smartly figured out that in order for there to be a cause, you need a celebrity + a political figure to carry the torch. How do you get a celebrity to carry the torch for the said cause? The power of fans, most of them young and passionate. How do you get a political figure to care? When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt come-a-calling.
The actionable instructions at the end of the video are so concise and simplistic that even Mr. Monk was excited and convinced that he, a 3rd grader, could do something about it. He’s been brooding since last night. The story of Jacob really struck a cord and he could not stop thinking about Kony 2012 the whole day today. Finally he asked, “Mom, is it ok if I buy a kit from Kony 2012? And also, I would like to donate. What do you think? Do you think $3 a month will be ok?”
I said, “Of course, honey. I am very proud of you.” And then I went, SHIT, and started reading all the comments on all the posts.
I am a cynical curmudgeon. Yes, I was emotional for about half an hour after I watched the video despite the gnawing discomfort I had, and started bombarding the Internet with “OMG. You’ve got to watch this video to find out who Joseph Kony is!” In my defense, people do need to know who Joseph Kony is, and need to be reminded that child slavery/abduction/abuse/etc. is still going on even though CNN stopped reporting it.
The shit moment came because I had not vetted Invisible Children as a charity. Unlike my kids, I have heard/read/been disgusted by how some charities turned out to be the front for people to line their own pockets. Sharing the video and getting the word out is one thing; putting money where it deserves to go is something else. I would be very very upset if Mr. Monk’s money went towards some shady charity taking advantage of young people for their innocence and compassion. And I worried because… this campaign has been too well executed. What can I say? I am a cynical curmudgeon.
So I sat in front of my computer and followed along the multiple threads of debates raging on the Internet, gritting my teeth, seeing all sides of stories and finding no solace. For some reason I had the false flashback of pulling petals off of a flower, “He loves me. He loves me not.”
They are legit. They are a sham. They mean well. They are doing this wrong. You did the right thing. You have been taken for a fool.
Watching Mr. Monk cautiously calculating how much all these will add up and figuring out whether he’s saved enough money to pay for it, I had not the heart to explain to him the cold, hard reality of the world. Not about how sometimes people that mean to do well are actually doing more harm. Not yet.
A supposedly simple, straightforward lesson of compassion and “let’s do something to help someone else” is in reality far from being that.
Or, did Kony 2012’s meteor rise to fame cause the complexity? If we ignore its notoriety and the speed in which it reached that notoriety, could this still be a simple straightforward opportunity for sheltered young people in the first world to be inspired to care, and to care enough to take actions no matter how simplistic they are?
Sadly, after reading 1000+ impassioned comments, I have no answers.
By taking them to the exhibit dedicated to the 1980s at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, of course!
I am kidding on the square, seeing how this is a hard glance back at the 1980s with a critical eye: feminism, gender politics, race politics, AIDES, political upheavals in the Latin America, Disappeared, Reaganism, NEA, Robert Mapplethorpe. How do you explain to a young child what happened in the 1980s when all they heard nowadays was how in the 1980s everybody was happy because the economy was great?
It’s kind of scary how little the kids know about what really happened in the 1980s.
It’s also kind of difficult, as a parent, to gauge “how young is old enough” and “how much is too much”. I don’t like to shelter my children but I also want to make sure what I share with them is “age appropriate”…
I believe I screamed, just a little, when I saw Adrian Piper’s My Calling (Cards) on display since I’ve used this often as an example of how one performance artist has chosen to deal with racism in mundane, daily life. MCA has them on display, in multiple copies, free for the taking.
Coming off from my high, I was immediately put on “high alert” when next we walked into the wing dedicated to “Gender Trouble”. Because of the in-your-face shock value of the protest art, I felt I had to prepare Mr. Monk, who’s in 3rd grade, even though he’s a mature 3rd grader, for the images on display. Here’s what I came up with in a panic:
The rise of feminism means that women artists started questioning the social orders in the society: why are men given more power and authority than women? What makes a man a man? What makes a woman a woman? And that’s why they show the anatomy of human being to confront the man-made meanings and differences between men and women, and that’s why you are going to see a lot of penises.
He dutifully nodded, and laughed to mask his discomfort. Nobody wants to hear their mother utter the word “penis” in public even at a whisper.
As I went through the internal struggle of whether to impose “censorship” on the fly, I instinctively shielded him from an open, video screen room [Later, The Husband told me that the room came with a warning sign outside so I guess my instinct was correct]. Then across the room were these:
Robert Mapplethorpe. The artist that embodied two main Reaganism in the 1980s: the government’s willful negligence towards the Aides epidemic and its fight to censor what it deemed as “obscene” art. Without thinking, I had strategically positioned myself between these photos and Mr. Monk’s sight line. To this moment, I am still questioning myself whether I had done the right thing: If I disagree with the conservative’s accusation, why did I shield Mr. Monk’s gaze from these pictures, esp. the leather-encased penis? [In my defense, I was not worried about my 13-year old; he roamed through the exhibit without a chaperon]
Lots of questions were asked: Why was Reagan’s portrait there? Was it for sarcastic reasons? Why? What did he do? Why were people upset?
What is AIDS?
I think Mr. Monk understands this picture or at least walked away with his own interpretation.
Photo Courtesy of The Husband
[After all, he got it when Jack Donaghy said, about Kenneth the Intern, “He’s a white male with hair, Lemon. The sky’s the limit.”]
Even though this is a child who is extremely mature for his age, sensitive and observant of the world around him, has watched possibly all episodes of The Simpsons, and Weekend Update on SNL with me, I left the museum still questioning myself: Was is it too much? What is too much? Have I shown my child “age appropriate” material?
Photo Courtesy of The Husband
This is such a difficult picture to look at straight on. But it is not difficult to grasp the messages. Should I have shielded him from the ugliness of the world?
So… 1980s. I almost forgot. It’s not just about the cheesy music, leg warmers and big hairs.
More pictures from our visit to MCA that day here:
