The Redstar Perspective

In lieu of the Halloween post I was planning about self-image, I’m linking to this campaign against violence against women of color (”Document the Silence”). From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The recent mass rally in Jena, La., protesting alleged racial injustice has led some pundits to ask whether it signaled the dawning of a modern civil rights movement.

Now that the Jena headlines have subsided,a group of Spelman graduates and others are asking different questions: …Isn’t it time for a modern civil rights movement to protest intra-racial violence just as vigorously as inter-racial violence? Particularly when it’s a crime against women.

The campaign organizers cite two particularly heinous violent crimes against women of color in W. VA and FL, respectively, in which women were raped, assaulted, verbally abused, and humiliated in ways I’ll let you read for yourself. 

“Race is easier to deal with because it’s a single issue,” [organizer Fallon] Wilson said. “It’s easier to build a movement around. But when you add in gender and sexuality, it gets harder.”

That complicated space where race and gender politics collide — is where a small, grassroots campaign such as “Be Bold” tries to edge in. The campaign has gained momentum through online blogs, but it will likely have nowhere near participation of the mass action in Jena.

Both [organizer Moya] Bailey and Wilson admit the campaign doesn’t have the deep resources of established groups. But if those groups don’t speak up, particularly in the case of West Palm Beach, “we have to,” Bailey said.

“We have to call it out and broaden the mission, because race cannot be the only thing we deal with,” Wilson said.

Well said.  They’ve got an audience and a pulpit here at the REDstar Perspective.

(This is me, working on some thoughts for my general exams forthcoming in December.  Read at your own risk.  You might learn something.  Links to follow later.)

Lately, there’s been two debates in the blogosphere (and beyond) that I see as distinctly related though I have not seen them paired.  The first is the question of whether activism is “dead.”  Never mind that the overly narrow definition of activism used here is a 1960s model of urban protest and Southern Civil Rights organizing; folks across generations seem eager to proclaim activism (and the Roxy) dead and unlikely to be resurrected.  (To their credit, young politically minded upstarts take issue with this, then claim fatigue and a suspectible distraction to house parties in Brooklyn).  Check out Weboy’s take on this silly debate with his own wizened view. 

In my opinion, activism is alive and well in different, perhaps more viral, but ultimately just as vibrant forms as periods past.  It has a transnational/global character (which is not new, though targets of the multinational corporations and governing institutions may be), and a multi-issue focus, often on the rights of varying overlapping groups - women, workers, immigrants, gays/lesbians, or on the rights of the overall human race.  It reflects the awesome mobility of capital, people and culture across borders, and is inherently highly multicultural as a result, despite being as susceptible to issues of equity and power (North v. South, white v. non-white, developed v. developing, West v. “the Rest”, etc.) as one might expect.  I argue it is more diffuse and de-centralized than, and certainly in contrast to our popular memory of, the movements of the 1960s and 70s. 

One of the key activist and generational claims and corresponding policy efforts I think we’re seeing today is demand for an enacted set of universal rights, in particular economic rights.  This includes the right to housing, the right to a basic education, the right to medical care, the right to work in a secure environment, etc.  This is qualitatively different than past activism frames and policy initiatives that demanded equality for specific groups (African-Americans, women, the poor and/or working-class).  The rather contradictory factors that shape these claims towards universalism are A) the (incorrect) perception that equality, or a good enough approximation of it, has been achieved within our civic capabilities, and B) that inequality persists and is worsening for most of us due to the machinations of institutional structures (free markets/capitalism, governing elites/constrained electoral systems).  Even those liberal (as opposed to conservative, versus in the political philosophy vein) individuals who don’t feel any particular claim that their rights or access is constrained feel indirectly threatened by the instability of a system of widening inequality, not least because they are often compelled to believe they ought to do something about the injustice of being so fortunate and privileged (and of course, ridiculously good looking). 

But here’s the (rather obvious) rub: C) there are many, many groups and individuals out there who (rightfully) believe that realistically achievable equality has not been met, and the rise of contemporary inequality is merely further erosion of a job not well done, hell, not even close to finished.  And this is where the recent debate about the rise/return of anti-black racism (and anti-Semitism) and sexism comes in (we can’t come clean with ourselves as a nation to really talk about class yet).  Because as individuals and group members, while we may have (relatively) strong concensus on B, we are sharply divided about A and C.  And this disagreement, and the political action it engenders on our behalf, is the source of rising conflict as we all strive to confront the shared realities of worsening income, wealth and spatial inequality.  We can’t mutually engage in the fight for universal social justice (or just universal healthcare, to start) if we’re not lined up along the political spectrum due to our beliefs that past struggles for equality are still on-going, and should thus take precedence, and that the (white, affluent) folks aiming to protect the “middle-class” now in the name of universalism are the same people, or their descendents, even by association, who uphold the racialized, gendered and classist inequality structure that is being exacerbated by current, neoliberal policies.  We’re not fighting the same battle, and that’s pissing everybody off, because it seems we’d like to be, and this dissonance, tension, mistrust and conflict is seriously obstructing our ability to take to the streets and create policy-by-riot, like the Boomers did in the good old days. 

Before I move on to the point that inspired this post, I have to say that our respective framings on past equality struggles and the outcomes as shaped by race, class, and other cultural factors has an irrefutable bearing on how we decide to approach contemporary problems of inequality.  Weeks ago, Matt Yglesias wrote what I consider to be his most ludicrous post to date about how the sources of inequality don’t matter.  I’d like to spend several more paragraphs and wee morning hours chastising him for this, but I hope my rather terse outline above is enough of a refute for now.

Now, on to the need for diverse coalitions.  On Saturday my mom and I attended the anti-war rally on Boston Common. (The family that protests together, stays together…and then has lunch at Louis Boston and goes shopping at Filene’s Basement.)  Though by now I should know better (e.g., my surprise at the HRC event earlier this month), I was still struck by the whiteness of the sea of faces.  People were mostly old and young, and almost all white.  And I realized, not for the first time: in the Gulf, I work with a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, cross-class coalition.  We are white, black, Creole, Latino, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, disabled, young, old, women, men, Northern and Southern, living in trailers and homes that we own (and that’s all I’ve been able to confirm so far via others’ self-identification).  At a meeting three days prior to the anti-war protest, I was one of only 2 white persons in the room, out of six (three men and three women).  At MIT, my mentors are white women and women and men of color.  Even though MIT is still predominately white and Asian, my intellectual networks are not.  And at Brandeis, well, most of you know my Jewish-Christian experience there.

See, for me, working in diverse coalitions is the norm, though not since Brandeis have I had to confront the issues of power and privilege that are bound up in all of these relationships.  But, the nature of my coalitions now demand this reflexive analysis, and at the worst, we’ll go down fighting to build a common agenda that best meets our different needs as individuals and group members.  And somewhere in that struggle ideally emerges a platform of universal claims and demands, and the political commitment and breadth to advance it. (Do multicultural coalitions have the power to raise resources to fund our causes?  Now that’s a question for another blog post!) 

Racial and economic residential segregation has rendered the workplace as the key site where non-homophilous interactions take place, and cross-racial and cross-class bonds are formed.  Yet activism (vs. charity) and organizing in most workplaces is prohibited or sanctioned.  I ask us, where do we form our socio-political bonds; what inspires us to action and where and when?  How do we effectively build these diverse coalitions so that we might press nationally to realize goals such as universal healthcare, better public education, an expanded social safety net, the enforcement of our civil and economic rights and claims to citizenship and full participation in society?  It is at the national level where these struggles must unfold, yet our current patterns of local segregation, alienation and control make this opportunity far less likely.  Furthermore, the likelihood that our victorious spoils will be distributed equally is even smaller unless we can build cross-cultural coalitions focused on universal claims.  Sustained, visible activism and a concurrent reduction in contemporary racism, sexism and discrimination depends on it. 

Let the arguments about universalism v. particularism begin.

For now I’ve spared you the analysis of activism and policymaking by urban liberals v. progressives v. conservatives and the roles of race and class.

Clearly Lucchino didn’t expect to win in four.  (Was he pulled into Game 4 unexpectedly during a quick run to Home Depot?  And what, no one had an extra sport coat lying around?  )

2007 World Champion Red Sox!!!!!  “Surreal,” says Papelbon, “it’s just beginning to hit me,” says Lucchino (yeah, no kidding), Tek chokes up.  Mike Lowell is the cutest ever (we must keep him!).  Everyone had their little moments of zen that they chuckled over after (tonight’s pleasantly surprised star: Kielty….yeah, that was a pretty bitchin’ homerun, he practically giggles into the mike). And of course, they couldn’t do it without the fans, they tell us.  Go Red Sox Nation!!!

It feels WEIRD; the miraculous, earth shattering events of ‘04 left me little prepared for the strong, righteous, kick ass team we watched this season more or less sail to this victory.  No doubt we had the expected highs and lows (my buddy Jake texted me as soon as they won, “did you ever doubt!” to which I replied, “of course! I’m a Sox fan!), but I feel differently stupified that we won again, so soon.  We’re f***ing good, not just beating the odds in a once in a lifetime moment.  Tito and the Nation might ask Belichick for some pointers on smoothly steamrolling the competition year after year, ignoring anything involving hitting the “record” button at any point, of course.  Who knows, perhaps we could do this again next year…

(Or did I just jinx us for eternity?  You know where to find me!)

As we seek cosmic meaning behind tonight’s win (anyone else get a kick out of the astrologers who give Youk detailed descriptions of the planets over at his blog?), Jake states for the record that he got married in ‘04, and had a baby in ‘07.  He and his wife have a long road in front of them if they plan to repeat the latter milestone annually to keep us awash in bling for the foreseeable future.

For me, this one’s for the M.A.S., the transplant who keeps marveling about how we were at Spring Break in March and Fenway in April and August and with Remy through the spring and summer on the radio and parked in front of our respective new cable boxes this fall.  There was even the baseball birthday, complete with the Sox cake, personalized baseball bat and rugby jersey for a fan who looks 30something but could unstandably be mistaken for 11 based on his loot. 

When we won in ‘04, one of the first things my dad said to me was that now both he and his dad had a WS victory in their lifetimes.  Now the M.A.S. has one too.  (Though I have two, which works, since I love winning.  Too bad I didn’t go to Jordan’s last spring!!)

Congrats! Mazel Tov! Hongera!* to the 2007 World Champion Red Sox!!

*Swahili for congrats.

Ok, so now I’m just being cheeky and provocative…

9-5 Sox, with the M.A.S. at a conference, and me in my fave spot on the couch with my PC in my lap.  Thought I’d cross-link with a conversation going on over at Pandagon, that began at Feministing, regarding a study (full text) on gendered attitudes towards “childlessness.”  The authors run a regression of 11k+ survey responses (from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”) in 1987-88 and 1994 to

(all my emphases throughout)

“…the parenthood imperative: [i.e.] whether ‘’it is better to have a child than to remain childless’ [and]

…whether ‘the main purpose of marriage these days is to have children’…

[and] responses to a common warning about the negative consequences of remaining childless: that ‘‘people who have never had children lead empty lives’…”

They find that there is a strong if complex gender gap between women’s more positive attitudes towards childlessness (what they describe as being more “comfortable” with the idea) than men’s, particularly due to gendered attitudes toward marriage and its perceived trade-offs. 

(more…)

In honor of the Sox in the World Series, sent to me by my OFD* stepmom!!  Note my personal additions to this handy guide in italics.

Welcome to Bawstin!

For those of you who have never been to “Bawstin”, this is a good guide. I hope you will consider coming to “Beantown” in the near future.

Information on Boston and the surrounding area:

• There’s no school on School Street, no court on Court Street, no dock on Dock Square, no water on Water Street.
• Back Bay streets are in alphabetical “oddah”: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, no I/J/K/L, Mass Ave.
• So are South Boston streets: A, B, C, D, etc.
• If the streets are named after trees (e.g. Walnut, Chestnut, Cedar), you’re on Beacon Hill.
• If they’re named after poets, you’re in Wellesley.

Massachusetts Ave is Mass Ave; Commonwealth Ave is Comm Ave; South Boston is Southie. The South End is the South End.  East Boston is Eastie. The North End is east of the former West End. The West End and Scollay Square are no more; a guy named Rappaport got rid of them one night. Roxbury is The Burry, Jamaica Plain is J.P.

How to say these Massachusetts city names correctly:
**Say it wrong, be shunned**

(more…)

Check out The Rude Pundit on our national eagerness to compare the evacuees of the CA wildfires with Katrina evacuees.  Gross (with the photos to prove it).

Then check out this link for more information on how you can help. 

Well, right now, I’m on my couch in my pajamas, Shark frozen on my DVR.  But if you’re looking for Redstar via Google, here are 10 of the (less obvious than Redstar) search terms in which the RP pops up 1st:

1)) “feminist critique of grey’s anatomy”

2) “baptist church ninth ward”

3) “suburbs and urbanization”

4) “waterworks chestnut hill sucks”

5) “kisolanza farm lodge”

6) “new bedford ma raid on illegal immigrants”

7) “HUD public enemy” (this may be my favorite)

8) “why we don’t need health insurance” (It’s not what you think, I swear!)

9) “upper east side thin social women”

10) “costs of shrubbery”

What’s in your blog?

(h/t.)

I’m headed out this afternoon for a quick trip to Baton Rouge.  I’ve been drifting around the blogosphere, and had hoped to organize my thoughts for a substantive post on race here, a topic that’s all the “rage” these days (pun intended), it seems, since Jena 6 raised public awareness of the enduring anti-black antipathy in this country.  (In a related moment of rare media activism, the press has filed a motion to open up the Jena 6 re-trial of Mychal Bell.  It’s worth noting that the Chicago Tribune has been relentless on coverage of this case; commendable, especially compared to some of their peers.  Check out the still video image of hot ticket Maxine Waters in action in a recent Congressional hearing re: Jena 6.)

However, my ideas are still churning, and so instead I leave you all with some links to the different conversations that have captured my attention.  In my absence, discuss:

First, activism among the young.  Alive?  Dead? Worthless? I think this inter-generational conversation is overly binary, and certainly bounded by class and race.  As you all know, all my post-Katrina recovery work is happening at the margins of serious global, regional and national activism regarding workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, racial justice.  I’ve tried to raise this point in the past at Ezra and elsewhere, but it seems my experience with activists more likely to be found at the US Social Forum than on the mainstream political blogosphere is not that relevant to the other commenters.

Next, racism and the academy.  This is part of the larger conversation that’s been happening re: racism, nooses and the rising social conflict many of us perceive over racial inequity.  I could spend endless posts on this topic, bringing in the issues of class and gender, but I’d never make it to the airport.  This link is one of many that is a reminder to myself that I need to expend some emotional and intellectual effort on this topic.  In the meantime, another white academic takes the rest of us to task for our complicity in propping up racism; I almost feel irresponsible posting to this one link and no others (such as those from persons of color also calling us out), this topic is such a can of worms.  Let me say for now that there’s two issues for me here: a) the total isolated disfunction of the academy in which we talk to one another about issues such as inequality and race that have almost no relation to the way they play out for in “real people’s” lives (an academic phrase I loathe), and b) the aforementioned social conflict and racial antipathy that is the point of Rachel’s post.

Meanwhile, here’s just a brief glimpse of the impacts of racial inequality on the lives of women and kids, a topic I am digging into right now in the terrific and easy read Flat Broke With Children.  Anyone up for a blog book club?  After Flat Broke, we can get to this one on single mothers choosing to have children alone.  Jessica at Feministing takes issue with some of the letters in the author Louise Sloan’s Salon interview that criticize Sloan as selfish and putting her child at risk by her choices.  I personally like this one by spacekase:

The fact that the lifestyle “choice” championed in this interview is applicable to such a tiny, insignificant fraction of America as wealthy, single lesbians speaks volumes about its relevance. It’s a faux-cause; it is certainly admirable that she is so happy with her choice, but to attempt to link it to fundamental issues such as sexual identity or single motherhood sounds like narcissism to me. I think this is why books and polemics of this type are always doomed to fail. So a few right-wingers pooh pooh your choice — I don’t, and I still don’t really think you’re making some grand stand for womens’ rights.

Start talking about affordable daycare, living wages or the working class and I might think otherwise.

Sums up perfectly my cognitive dissonance over the obsession over women’s reproductive rights in the mainstream feminist blogosphere at the seeming expensive of a wider treatment of how cultural expectations of our role as caregivers clashes with the economic and cultural realities of women’s labor force participation, and how this clash plays out very differently according to race, ethnicity, class, etc. 

And with that, I’m out.  Back on-line Thursday.

[UPDATE, 4:11 pm: Just on the phone with customer service rep rolling over my IRA funds.  He noticed my Boston residency and we chatted about how fired up people up here are.  Turns out he’s originally from Quincy; I’m from Braintree, look at that.  Go Sox!!]

I’m already way behind in the on-line whoopin’ and hollerin’ over last night’s pennant win.  The Red Sox are going to the World Series!!!  In my house, this one’s for the M.A.S., a transplant to MA who arrived without a real team loyalty, ever since his childhood Orioles abandoned him after a manager whose name escapes me took over.  Already partial to the Sox by virtue of being a Yankees hater, and a true baseball fan the likes of which my family has not seen since my dad, the M.A.S. has found a kindred spirit in the beer-drinking, baseball-obsessed Red Sox Nation, not to mention an adopted extended family prepared to shower him with paraphrenalia (what 37 year old receives a mini Sox bat with his name on it for his birthday??) in the hopes it will strengthen our attachment to the city and stop us from moving away anytime soon. 

Needless to say, we were up as late as the rest of the region, drinking it in and waiting for the Papelbon post-game victory dance.  And though we agree that Butch Stearns is a clown, I have to admit I loved his “he’s a little whacko isn’t he?” comment about Papelbon.  There’s just so much Fox/MLB hatin’ to do, it’s hard to dish it all out in the midst of all the celebrating. One of my other favorite asides was probably a McCarver malaprop, when he said there were 2 nations watching last night’s game: Red Sox Nation, and Japan.  Given I’m a politics buff, I’m looking forward to hearing Joe and Tim expand on the geopolitical significance of the Sox advancing to the World Series.  

Certainly, the Nation metaphor (it is a metaphor, isn’t it, Josh?) is getting a little out of hand.  Check this comment out in BU’s student paper, The Daily Free Press, re: the police presence around Fenway last night (which may be construed as another affront in the escalating war b/w BU students and local police):

“We figured we’d step out for a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Lasell University sophomore Seth Mantei. “There’s no reason to be kicking people out of the celebration. It’s Red Sox Nation, and Fenway is the capital. . . . They wouldn’t close down D.C. during the presidential election.”

Yeah, that sounds about right…except for the part where this kid doesn’t expect to see this kind of performance from the Sox again in his lifetime.

Go Sox!!!

In the last 24 hours, Presidential Candidate Sen. Dodd’s stance against retroactive immunity for telecom companies has the lefty set clamoring to shower him with some sweet, sweet electoral love.  Try as I may to capitalize on the comment ebullience and point out that Darling Dodd is also the co-sponsor of critical, long overdue, fairly progressive legislation to bring resources for affordable housing to the Gulf Coast, my pleas - and links - are ignored.  Damnit.

Then I see Cara over at The Curvature celebrating the Senate’s rejection of Bitter Vitter’s (R-LA) proposal to deny government funds to any non-profit using private money to fund abortions.  Seriously, this guy is a piece of work.  I let Cara know as much and urged her to support S. 1668: the Gulf Coast Housing Recovery Act, the bill Dodd is co-sponsoring with Landrieu, the OTHER LA Senator, the bill that Vitter has publicly opposed using lies, mis-characterizations and ideological racist- and classist-language.  In actuality, he’s just trying to deny Landrieu a win for the region since the GOP thinks her seat is vulnerable.  (And I thought we got rid of the Puppet Master.)  As one of NOLA’s direct action public housing activists let Sen. “Family Values” Vitter know, “New Orleans needs housing, not brothels!” 

Meanwhile, Jen @ Feministing is attending the Why We Can’t Wait civil rights conference, where she had the honor of hearing Rev. Lois Dejean speak.  Rev. Dejean is a 71-year old activist and community leader from Gert Town in New Orleans, where prior to and since the storm she has been part of an environmental justice movement that has expanded to include a human rights framework for bringing her community home.  Rev. Dejean and allies met with the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva in July 2006:

Despite efforts to defend its response to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the United States failed to convince the U.N. body that it had done enough to protect the rights of the poor and people of color.

The 18-member panel which reviews compliance with a 40-year-old treaty that protects civil and political rights noted that it was concerned about testimony and evidence that suggest both blacks and poor people “were disadvantaged by the rescue and evacuation plans implemented when Hurricane Katrina hit the United States of America,.”

The body added that it is also concerned by evidence that supports claims that these groups “continue to be disadvantaged under the reconstruction plans.”

Oh, there in Jen’s post - there’s Katrina! Hi Katrina!! (Redstar squints and waves furiously.)

Oh, you’d better make the jump - I’m not done! (more…)

Last Sunday, the M.A.S., Weboy and I had a terrific afternoon exploring the hot spots of my ‘hood: the brand new headquarters of WGBH (so cool) and the excellent Chinese food at Shanghai Gate.  On the B line back to our apartments, I said to the M.A.S. - as I almost invariably do when looking out the window at the endless rows of stately, dense old apartment buildings, “I like our neighborhood.”  He smiled and agreed.

One topic of discussion that Sunday was my falling blog numbers.  As I’ve mentioned, there are a few topics I cover that apparently few other bloggers do - New Bedford’s immigration woes, the NJ Turnpike’s Vince Lombardi rest stop, and FEMA trailers.  My love of Grey’s Anatomy also drives people to this site.  But increasingly over the last few months, regular readers have been disappearing, leaving Weboy as my main conversant in a sea of random Google-driven hits. 

This depressed me.  Contrary to friendly wisdom, this blog is not solely an on-line journal, but my attempt at creating conversation, and more so, finding community.  With rare exception, my closest friends do not live here in Boston.  After three years in the isolating confines of academia, I have yet to find consistently close confidants to fill the loss of having my peeps spread out geographically and busy with our reluctantly adult lives.  Though I can be charming and gregarious, I have a strong introspective streak, and an outsider nature - if you see me in a crowd, I’m much more likely to be standing on the edge of it, looking in, or not paying attention at all, my head in a book (this was perfectly in evidence at a family party this summer for one of my paternal cousins.  Every time more than 10 of my relatives surrounded me, I found myself escaping back to the less crowded room.  Back and forth I went from the kitchen to the porch in the course of an hour, instinctively seeking to find some space in the midst of 20+ kin).  I’m the type at the museum to get more out of the plaque describing the art than the actual piece beside it; the written word is without question my preferred and cherished medium.

So for me, blogging is a natural approach to trying to find communities of interest in which I can relieve some of the intellectual and inquisitive churn that threatens to keep me up at night and likely contributes significantly to my daily calorie burn (wahoo anxious energy!).  Although I often have to effortfully force myself out of my apartment to school for some mentally mandatory human contact, I rely heavily on the blogosphere for “conversation,” input, ideas and socializing. 

Truthfully, I don’t love blogging.  Like Weboy, I agree that it orients your mind around writing regularly, and that I appreciate.  But this is not a written medium in which I excel.  First, I am prone to longer arguments, which is the #1 killer for building your readership.  I am too meticulous to throw up posts most of the time without fastidiously editing them first; I loathe typos in others’ work and especially in my own.  While I can be funny and irreverent, my writing is as frequently sober, melancholy or angry - and I haven’t fully embraced the latter as my blogging tone.  I’m not out here to shock readers into awareness; what I’d really like is to leave people thinking, by imparting some wisdom or viewpoint that they hadn’t considered.   And I certainly don’t want to take my passion out of it, but I’d also really like to lighten up sometimes.  Basically, I’m still working on my voice here, unlike my academic and professional writing, which tends toward instructive, compelling and critical.  Overall, my aim is to be thoughtful and provactive, without abandoning my often dry and irreverent wit.  And after blogging for a 18 months, I’m still not sure how to populate a site devoted to policy more than politics, unless the latter refers to our racial, gendered and classist perceptions, with a particular emphasis on cities, neighborhoods (mine in particular), and the occasional tv or book “review”. 

So when Weboy repeated the useful advice about inserting myself in other blogversations to drive traffic to my site, a method I’ve tried with little results in the mainstream threads I’d been trolling for awhile, I knew I needed to find some other sites where the point of view was going to be more politicized, i.e., more likely to look at the world and our struggles in it from gendered, racial and class lens.  If this week’s hits are any indication, so far, so good. 

By joining the conversations more assertively and regularly at Feministe and Feministing, I’ve succeeded in generating traffic and at least one comment (keep ‘em coming people!).  I’ve also found, esp. in Feministe, a tone that is both provocative and erudite, and through these sites, links to other like-minded women.    At Shakesville, I’m laughing my a** off and appreciating the relentless critique of our current political climate. 

Now, what these sites are missing - knowingly, in the former case - is diversity in perspectives and topics.  There’s a noticeable split between middle-class, white feminist critique and commentary from feminists of color, where you can typically also find a broader range of class perspectives.  I can trace even less clearly the other divides (sexuality, disability, etc.).  The lack of integration of perspectives leads to a narrowing in the range of topics.  It seems I have to visit one set of sites for discussions of my reproductive rights, for instance, and another entirely to join conversations about poverty and spatial and class inequality, which are my preferred topics of conversation.  It’s not an easy divide to bridge, particularly because my skin can only thicken so fast against assumptions/realities of elite privilege (as a white person, as an academic, as a NE liberal, etc).  In my position, I long for more conversational breadth in sites like Feministe, but feel like I’m on constantly on the defensive in the latter sphere (see the “Update” and comments in the Feministe link above to see this “defensive crouch” in action). 

I realize the few sites I’ve linked to are only the tips of the blogberg out there, and I’m hopeful that if I apply myself to the task, I’ll find an intellectual community where I can speak comfortably from my feminist, neo-Marxist, anti-racist, coaliton-building lens, which I also hope to keep developing by sticking with the blogging.  If that means I lose my less political readers, I suppose I have to come to terms with that.  I like to believe I can be all things to all people, but it ain’t the case, try as I may.  For readers who appreciate the more confessional aspects of the blog, I hope you’ll check in occasionally.  For the others who want to hear more about housing policy, planning, equity and justice in the U.S., I hope you’ll visit the RP often.  Grey’s fans I expect will keep turning up. I should be so lucky if I have readers who are interested in all those things, simply because they’re coming from my, quite frankly, genius perspective (hi Weboy!). 

H/t to Outside the Toybox for directing me to this sustainability quiz developed by American Public Media.  It allows me to estimate my consumption footprint compared to the appropriate productive acreage per human on the planet (about 4.5 acres; they explain what “productive acreage” means), and then calculates how many earths are needed if everyone lived like me.  Oh, and I get to design a personal avatar and a neighborhood avatar. 

So how many earths are needed if everyone else lived in a little, one-person apartment and drove a sh*tbox back and forth 5 miles to school and within a 3 mile radius for errands a few times per week?  And went shopping at least once a month and ate mostly dairy, grains and veggies?  9.6.  Welcome to the Redstar Solar System.

Turns out, I can blame the T - that’s right, the public Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority system - for my one-woman path of destruction.  What, you don’t expect me to actually ride that thing regularly, do you?  Sitting here at my PC I rarely shut off, I was flying way under the tree huggers’ radar; I live in a small place, alone, use hardly any electricity or heat comparatively (of course, I don’t pay for heat directly, so that’s probably the culprit there), and recycle A LOT.  3 acres, 1 acre, and 1 acre for my home, power and recycling habits, respectively.  Look at me! I’m a mere spec on the world’s surface.

Then the questions came about public and personal transportation usage.  Miles driven per month, mileage to the gallon, monthly miles ridden by bus or rail, and hours flown yearly, and in what class (why the latter matters I have NO idea).  Well, DAMN if I don’t take up 21 acres with my monthly first class to the Gulf Coast (thanks FF miles) and intermittent T riding ways.  I went from 1.7 earths to 6, just based on public transportation ridership alone.  Together, the MBTA and I will put this planet out of business in no time!!

My eating and shopping habits apparently gobble up 3 more planets, though a major flaw of the quiz is no available stats when I’m asked to compare myself to the average American shopper.  Well, do they mean the folks living in FEMA trailers in the Gulf Coast or the women in Lexus SUV’s in the Chestnut Hill mall parking lot?  Or apparently some combination of the two.  And who knew coffee is the second most traded commodity after oil, and also travels huge distances?   Our caffeine addiction is obviously the lesser known cousin to the American oil addiction.

I’m curious to see how you all fare.  According the comparables they offer at the end, most Americans (Dems, GOP, Green, male, female, etc.), are consuming over 99 planets with their power usage.  But when you break it down by state, and most likely only the public radio listeners/Cambridge-Berkeley-Austin radicals in each, you get much much smaller figures.  Compared to folks in MA, CA, and NY, I’m ravaging 3 to four times the number of planets. 

All without leaving my kitchen table. 

Back in March, I read Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked.   I wrote a bit about it, but truthfully, the book left me fairly unmoved.  I found it to be a weak journalistic endeavor (though I may have unrealistic academic standards).

The women Stepp portrayed were pretty uncertain about their rights to safety, respect, autonomy and control in intimate encounters, though this may shed more light on her own biases about seeking out what she was looking for vs. an accurately representative sample of sexually active, high-achieving, relatively affluent, college-aged women.  Since it’s release, feminist blogs have been rightfully mobilized around this ludicrious concept of Stepp’s called “grey rape.”  (Click through to see Cara at The Curvature’s on-going coverage of the issue.)  Infuriatingly to many of Stepp’s critics, she considers herself a mentor to the generation of young women she portrays as dangerously hooking up across college campuses today.

What I remember from the book is that at the ripe old age of 31, I couldn’t relate to the hook-up behavior she was describing, even though I could relate to their self-described emotions about men, self-confidence, self-image, etc. that were supposedly fueling their sexual activity.  Raised by an overprotective single mother/nurse, it has been drilled into my head that casual sexual activity with men you don’t know well is risky and dangerous, especially re: one’s physical and social health.   I continue to think this today and can’t imagine Stepp getting out of her own way to set aside her own similar pre-conceived notion in undertaking her study.  It’d be relatively easy to run a large, quant survey of attitudes and behaviors to test her theory that the practice of hooking up will irreparably harm these women relationally in their adult lives.  Christ, I was in three monogamous, serious relationships in a row from ages 15-22, and one of them (with an emotionally abusive adulterer), combined with family history, left me unable to form long-term, intimate relationships with men until recently.  Just because I wasn’t bed-hopping through college or my 20s doesn’t leave me any less screwed up than Stepp believes these women will become.

What annoys me about this book is how it was a missed opportunity to reframe the debate about sexuality, identity, autonomy, equity and women’s empowerment.

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Colbert on his ‘08 election prospects:

“voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.”

Hat tip.

(Meanwhile, keeping in mind his own presidential aspirations, Weboy tries to goose my flagging blog #s…)

Or so Hillary Clinton promised about 3,000 supporters at a fundraiser at Boston Symphony Hall last night.  Don’t believe the hype about the “star-studded” event, unless local politicians are your kind of celebrity.  I didn’t realize I was supposed to swoon over the Goo Goo Dolls anymore (who I only want to call the Google Dolls), or Buffalo, NY at all (sorry Kate), which received numerous shout outs in the accolades for the band.  Truthfully, HRC should probably have secured the Indigo Girls if they were available, as the event was about as white and female as any IG concert I’ve ever attended.  Chris Rock gives me the opening when I say that if HRC could just get all white women in the U.S. to vote for her, she’d have this election locked up.

“>Rock on the ‘08 elections  

Political scientist Clarence Stone points out that it is not at the voting booth where true change happens, or power is secured.  It is in the long, tedious process of policymaking.  Yet, we focus so much of our attention of what has become a fairly tedious election season; if I had to endure effectively two years of endless fundraising day in and day out, I’d shoot myself.  Last night’s event was not unlike being at a wedding, minus the food but including the band, where you wish the toasts would end so you could just hit the dance floor.  At least the bar was open.

I signed up to attend, because, I will almost certainly vote for Hillary, and I wanted to see who else was in this camp.  I was surprised over a number of things last night:

a) The homogeneity of the crowd.  We can attribute some of this to the event and the city.  The cost to attend (albeit comparatively low), the venue of historic and stodgy Symphony Hall, and the relative segregation of Boston (despite our demographics to the contrary, it’s pretty easy to continue to think Boston is a majority white city).  The only real variation was in the age range of the mostly white women who attended.

b) The numerous Ron Paul supporters outside the Hall.  I’d like it if one of them could clarify for me what exactly an “Independent Republican” is.  Apparently Paul is about restoring the Constitution and “Love”, as the latter was spelled out backwards in the “Ron Paul rEVOLution” paraphrenalia his fans wore (with the L backwards).  Apparently, it’s all about “life, liberty, and property” for them (v. the pursuit of happiness, as some of us were taught to believe).

c) How uncomfortable protesters make people feel.  As I’ve begun spending more time with activists, organizers, and direct action afficionados, and come to appreciate their role in our whole political system, I’d forgotten that they make others tense up, turn their heads in the other direction, and stare awkwardly into space, hoping that the guy shouting about Hillary and Mastercard will just go away.  Even if they number only in the single digits, and spew less than ironclad logic at us. (”The rich start wars and Hillary’s rich!”  “A vote for Hillary is a vote for death!”)

d) The relatively tepid response to Hillary’s criticisms of the Bush Administration.*  I wrote about this this morning over at Ezra, and don’t get me wrong, there was definitely boisterous support for her remarks about Bush and the “right-wing attack machine.”  But it was, to my ear, decidedly less vigorous than what sounded to me like the top three priorities in the room last night:

- putting a woman in the White House;

- withdrawing from Iraq;

- ending Bush’s war on science.

Last night I really felt like I went to MIT.  The thunderous applause for restoring scientific integrity in policy research, and for lifting the ban on stem-cell research, I was part of it and simultaneously amazed at how stimulated the room was over this issue.  I know, I know, I live in Boston, with its universities and bio-tech, etc., pretty much in Ground Zero of it all.  Clearly, I’m a little slow on the uptake.  (Know what else is an important election topic this year?  Healthcare.  Perhaps you’ve heard.)

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It’s difficult to know sometimes what will move us emotionally, what will trigger our tears, cause us to fight back, or lie awake at 3 a.m. in a fit of unresolved rage. For my stepmom and my friend JVD, commercials can launch the “waterworks,” as my dad calls them. When I was growing up, I was much better at taking on the enemies of my cousin and best friend than fighting my own battles, whatever those were. The sleepless, rageful nights though, I’ve had many. Usually over ex-assholes I wish desperately I could forget, rather than waste hours telling them off in my head or in jagged journal outbursts.

Lately, I’ve been beaten down and far too often, furiously pissed off at the political obstruction and racist, classist bullsh*t I see going on in the Gulf Coast. When white, “family values” Southern male conservative politicians pander to some alleged base with phrases like “folks like Maxine Waters” in their public opposition to public housing (watch out!! beware black people and/or women and/or radical liberals with power!!), I can feel my blood boil. And almost three weeks ago, in an episode I’ve been unable to transfer to the blog for your own personal growth, I spent about 24 hours having seizing sobbing fits over deep racial, gender and all sorts of stratification politics that I succeeded in internalizing in my most recent three months of work in the Gulf.

Now, in my Google reader, I see three consecutive posts from Ezra seriously taken aback, I’d say shaken, at the right-wing’s political “lynching” (since the word’s so in vogue these days) of the Frosts, the lower-middle-class family whose son publicly spoke at a Democratic radio address on how he benefited from S-CHIP, the child health insurance program Bush just vetoed. All his posts and links tell the story better than I can, so the best I can do here is urge you all to click through for more detail on the subject.

What struck me was how frustrated, upset and disbelieving Ezra - a blogger I usually consider unrelatably cheerful in his posts - sounded. It’s the “How can this be?? How can they do this?????” feeling of absolute incomprehension I suffer at least twice a week these days. It’s hard; I don’t want to start using phrases like “wingnuts” all the time over here at the RP - I’m more partial to terms like “public enemy“** anyway - but it’s difficult to resist just writing people you don’t understand off as complete nut jobs or total a**holes (a word I’ve used at least five times today in my GC work).

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(Happy Monday! My answers in BOLD)

1. you can analyze the significance of appliances you cannot operate;

2. you have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the progress of your own joke across the Internet;

3. you are startled to meet people who neither need nor want to read;

4. you have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar;

5. you rate coffee shops (or bars) by the availability of wifi and outlets for your laptop;

6. everything reminds you of something in your discipline;

7. you have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event;

8. you have ever spent more than $50 on photocopying while researching a single paper;

9. there is a microfilm reader in the library that you consider “yours” (teka, uso pa ba ito?);

10. you actually have a preference between microfilm and microfiche;

11. you can tell the time of day by looking at the traffic flow at the library;

12. you look forward to summers because you’re more productive without the distraction of classes;

13. you regard ibuprofen as a vitamin;

14. you consider all papers to be works in progress;

15. professors don’t really care when you turn in work anymore; (did they ever?)

16 .you find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text;

17. you have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area;

18. you have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation;

19. you reflexively start analyzing those Greek letters before you realize that it’s a sorority sweater, not an equation;

20. you find yourself explaining to children sheepishly admitting that you are in “20th 22nd grade”; (Christ!)

21. you start referring to stories like “Snow White et al.” ;

22. you frequently wonder how long you can live on pasta or cup noodles without getting scurvy;

23. you look forward to taking some time off to do laundry;

24. you have more photocopy cards than credit cards;

25. you wonder if APA style allows you to cite talking to yourself as “personal communication”;

26. you can identify universities by their internet domains;

27. you are constantly looking for a thesis in novels;

28. you have difficulty reading anything that doesn’t have footnotes;

29. you understand jokes about Foucault; (Nope, still over my head…)

30. the concept of free time scares you; (There’s no such thing; everyday is Wednesday in grad school)

31. you consider caffeine to be a major food group;

32. you’ve ever brought books with you on vacation and actually studied;

33. Friday or Saturday nights spent studying no longer seems weird;

34. the prof doesn’t show up to class and you discuss the readings anyways;

35. you appreciate the fact that you get to choose *which* twenty hours out of the day that you have to work;

36. you still feel guilty about giving students low grades (you’ll get over it);

37. you can read course books and cook at the same time; (Considering I can’t cook, not sure this says much)

38. you schedule events for academic vacations so your friends can come;

39. you hope it rains during spring break so you can get more studying done;

40. you’ve ever worn out a copy card;

41. you find taking notes in a park relaxing;

42. you find yourself citing sources in conversation when posting blog comments;

43. you’ve ever sent a personal letter with footnotes; and,

44. you have days when you can’t bring yourself to do any work, so you “keep busy” by procrastinating (or blogging).

(Courtesy of Mad now/here no/where woman, via Profacero.)

From the M.A.S.’s couch to mine, from Television without Pity to the blogs, to A&E’s Flip this House to VH1 Soul, I’ve barely moved a muscle as I’ve consumed a tremendous range of information this weekend (not to mention about 50,000 calories, thanks to birthday party and hungover consumption of beer, cake, peanuts, chips, hotdogs and Vitamin Water, the latter doing little to counter the effects of the rest). 

I’ve posted a couple belated comments over at Ezra re: communal living and unionization and gender, a brief shout out to Brandeis over securing Anita Hill as a professor, and more rambling about my new cable offerings at NYC Weboy (soon to be a reality, sadly).  But I’ve got Matt Yglesias to thank for introducing me to this fun, fun comparative data site: ZIPSkinny, where you can enter your zip code and see how your neighborhood’s demographic profile compares to those around you.

No surprise - especially to my suburban cousin who informed me Friday night she hates my ‘hood because it’s so “crowded” - to find that Brighton (02135) is the third densest zip among its neighbors, at over 15,000 people per square mile (bordering Brookline and Allston are first and second, respectively).  She’s not the first visitor to comment on how dense it is.  My urban planning pals love it, and the M.A.S. and I also dig the vast sprawl of mostly pre-war, low- and mid-rise apartment buildings all over the neighborhood.  But after NYC, Brighton feels still feels green and relatively uncluttered.  My peep Nikki compared it to Brooklyn, and I’m going with that. 

Compared to our swankier neighbors, which include Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Chestnut Hill, Watertown and Allston, our only other Top 3 placement is in our poverty rate - third after two Allston zips.  So other than being one of the most crowded and least affluent (third lowest median income too) neighborhoods in western Greater Boston, we’re also more single, more transient, less educated (though this is relative, since over 50% of our residents have at least bachelor’s degree), and yet employed in greater numbers than our urban and suburban counterparts.  Did I mention I love my ‘hood?