Kate Clinton: Stonewall 40

Today's post is from Kate Clinton, author of I Told You So. Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. With a career spanning over 25 years, Kate Clinton has worked through economic booms and busts, Disneyfication and Walmartization, gay movements and gay markets, lesbian chic and queer eyes, and ten presidential inaugurals. She still believes that humor gets us through peacetime, wartime and scoundrel time. This post originally appeared on Clinton's CommuniKate blog.

On an early morning flight from Orlando, after appearing at the 19th Annual Gay Days at Disneyworld, I was “sirred” twice by a cab driver and flight attendant. All before 7 a.m. I would have thought the brand new faux leopard Croc flats I was sporting would have thrown them off. Or that the “Gay Day” banners everywhere would have heightened their threat levels to rainbow.

Usually I find mistaken identification an embarrassment or irritant. In past years I would correct quickly with "That's Ma'am not Sir," and then try to lessen their discomfort. But this 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I wear the gaffe as a badge of pride. I stare them down. Even if they seem remorseful, I don't help them through their moment. In solidarity with the unsung butch lesbians who were with the fags and drag queens at the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village in 1969, I have been doing my own version of butching it up.

It used to be hard to find a NY gay person of a certain age who did not claim to have been at the Stonewall Riots. I am a New Yorker of that certain age, but I most certainly was not at the Stonewall Riots. In 1969 I had just graduated from a small Jesuit college in upstate New York. Insert "Class of 69" joke here.

I was a member of the Gay Resistance. I was trying not to come out. Because of that resistance, I could not and then would not hear the news of gay liberation spreading upstate from Greenwich Village. Though pre-internet, the Stonewall message quickly reached upstate gays in the anti-Vietnam war, women’s liberation and civil rights movement. Before long even my little town in upstate New York had out gay activists organizing, educating and agitating.

Morning Song and Evening Walk by Sonia Sanchez

Today's post, a poem written in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is from poet, activist, and scholar Sonia Sanchez. Sanchez, one of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, is Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University. She is the author of thirteen books, including Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems, where this poem appears.

Morning Song and Evening Walk

                    1.

Tonite in need of you
and God
I move imperfect
through this ancient city.

Quiet. No one hears
No one feels the tears
of multitudes.

The silence thickens
I have lost the shore
of your kind seasons
who will hear my voice
nasal against distinguished
actors.

O I am tired
of voices without sound
I will rest on this ground
full of mass hymns.

                        2.

You have been here since I can remember Martin
from Selma to Montgomery from Watts to Chicago
from Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis, Tennessee.
Unmoved along the angles and corners
of aristocratic confusion.

It was a time to be born
forced forward a time
to wander inside drums
the good times with eyes like stars
and soldiers without medals or weapons
but honor, yes.

And you told us: the storm is rising against the
privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no
shelter in isolation or armament
and you told us: the storm will
not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of
the earth enables men (and women) everywhere to live
in dignity and human decency.

                        3.

All summerlong it has rained
and the water rises in our throats
and all that we sing is rumored
forgotten.
Whom shall we call when this song comes of age?

And they came into the city carrying their fastings
in their eyes and the young 9-year-old Sudanese
boy said, "I want something to eat at nite a
place to sleep."
And they came into the city hands salivating guns,
and the young 9-year-old words snapped red
with vowels:
Mama mama Auntie auntie I dead I dead I deaddddd.

                        4.

In our city of lost alphabets
where only our eyes strengthen the children
you spoke like Peter like John
you fisherman of tongues
untangling our wings
you inaugurated iron for our masks
exiled no one with your touch
and we felt the thunder in your hands.

We are soldiers in the army
we have to fight, although we have to cry.
We have to hold up the freedom banners
we have to hold it up until we die.

And you said we must keep going and we became
small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered
the slow bloodstream of America
surrounded streets and "reconcentradas," tuned
our legs against Olympic politicians elaborate cadavers
growing fat underneath western hats.
And we scraped the rust from old laws
went floor by floor window by window
and clean faces rose from the dust
became new brides and bridegrooms among change
men and women coming for their inheritance.
And you challenged us to catch up with our
own breaths to breathe in Latinos Asians Native Americans
Whites Blacks Gays Lesbians Muslims and Jews, to gather
up our rainbow-colored skins in peace and racial justice
as we try to answer your long-ago question: Is there
a nonviolent peacemaking army that can shut down
the Pentagon?

And you challenged us to breathe in Bernard Haring's words:
the materialistic growth--mania for
more and more production and more
and more markets for selling unnecessary
and even damaging products is a
sin against the generation to come
what shall we leave to them:
rubbish, atomic weapons numerous
enough to make the earth
uninhabitable, a poisoned
atmosphere, polluted water?


                        5.

"Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful
thing compared to love in dreams," said a Russian writer.
Now I know at great cost Martin that as we burn
something moves out of the flames
(call it spirit or apparition)
till no fire or body or ash remain
we breathe out and smell the world again
Aye-Aye-Aye Ayo-Ayo-Ayo Ayeee-Ayeee-Ayeee
Amen men men men Awoman woman woman woman
Men men men Woman woman woman
Men men Woman woman
Men Woman
Womanmen.

Caring for the Soul of the World

Today's post is from David Paul, co-author (with Craig Rennebohm) of Souls in the Hands of a Tender God.  Paul is a Seattle-based writer and editorial consultant. He is a former political scientist who taught at Princeton and the University of Washington, and he has authored or co-authored six books and many articles ranging from politics and history to film criticism, the Internet, and poetry translations.

A Canadian reader named Barbara wrote about our book, Souls in the Hands of a Tender God, that her favorite sentence in it is, "We begin caring for the soul of the world by caring for the souls of our neighbors, for each life that touches ours."

Caring for the Soul of the World. It's actually the title of our tenth chapter, and now that I think about it, it may strike some as pretentious—who are we to take care of the soul of the world? Or it may seem impossible, overwhelming; how can you and I bear the weight of everybody? A counter at the Web site ibiblio.org tells us that the earth's population is approaching 7 billion people. What an enormous responsibility, to care for all those souls!

The context of the sentence is an experience Chaplain Craig Rennebohm had eight years ago when he was invited to Bosnia-Hercegovina, a small country then trying to recover from the devastating war of 1992–1995. Craig's mission was to participate in discussions among local officials and healthcare workers whose task it was to rebuild the country's system of community mental health centers. Craig met with representatives of ethnic groups that had fought each other bitterly—Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Croats—and were now struggling to pick up the broken pieces of their community. What had been a functioning mental healthcare system was in shambles.

Books Still Burn Here

Today's post, by Christopher M. Finan, honors Banned Books Week. Finan is president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the bookseller's voice in the fight against censorship. He is the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America, which recently received the American Library Association's Eli Oboler Award for the best book on intellectual freedom in 2006 and 2007.

Some people will yawn at hearing that Saturday was the beginning of the 27th Annual Banned Books Week.

The story is the same every year, isn't it? Hundreds of titles are challenged in schools and libraries around the country. In 2007, the number was 420. This is fewer than the year before, but the number has fluctuated widely since the launch of Banned Books Week in 1982. The average is around 500.

Even the book at the top of the hit list is the same as last year–And Tango Makes Three, a childrens book that has been condemned as "pro-homosexual" and "anti-family" because it tells the story of two male penguins caring for an egg.

But this apparent sameness masks what is really going on. Behind the numbers are a lot of angry people–censors demanding the removal of books that offend them; teachers and librarians upset at finding themselves accused of trying to hurt kids, and the kids themselves caught in the crossfire.

Book banning is an old story, but it is new and often intensely painful for the people who experience it for the first time.

Pride and Sports: An Interview with Pat Griffin

For Pride Month, Beacon Broadside invited Pat Griffin, director of It Takes A Team! Education Campaign for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Issues in Sport, to discuss the issue of homophobia in sports. Dr. Griffin is the author of Strong Women, Deep Closets: Lesbian and Homophobia in Sports and co-editor of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook for Teachers and Trainers. The interview questions are from Helen Wheelock, a regular contributor to the Women's Hoops Blog and the Women's Basketball Coaching Association's magazine, Coaching Women's Basketball.

The WNBA is not the only professional women's league in the US, but it is the most visible. How proactive have the league as a whole and teams individually been in supporting their lesbian players and fan base?

My impression is that the league and individual teams have been privately supportive of individual lesbian players. They also have domestic partner benefits as part of the league contract with players.  Publicly, league officials have been what I would call cautiously supportive of individual players, but I have not seen the league take a strong stand against homophobia in basketball.   

Over the years the league and individual teams have become more active in marketing to the lesbian and gay community at events like Pride Days, but I believe that they are still nervous about being too openly supportive of lesbian fans. They struggle to support and acknowledge lesbians as an important and loyal part of their fan base because they are afraid of alienating heterosexual parents and their children and older heterosexual fans. Unfortunately, lesbian fans are not perceived as "family-oriented," even though lesbians bring their sons and daughters to the games, too. 

I was disappointed to read about the make-up and fashion workshop conducted for the WNBA rookie players this year as part of their orientation—particularly hearing league officials saying that the players are "women first," as if to be a real woman you have to wear make-up and Gucci stiletto heels. It reminded me that women athletes, or at least the people running the WNBA, are still defensive about the perceived "femininity" and heterosexuality of the players. Not all the players are fashion models or married to men. Everyone knows that. I think fans are becoming more comfortable with this diversity. I just hope the WNBA can catch up. 

God and Man at Dartmouth

Today's post is from Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. Patel is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, an international nonprofit building the interfaith youth movement. This post originally appeared at On Faith, the Washington/Post Newsweek forum on religion.

I chuckled to myself wondering what William F. Buckley, the author of the landmark conservative tract God and Man at Yale, might have thought of this year's Baccalaureate Service at Dartmouth College. In addition to Christian hymns and Bible readings, there was a Native American prayer offered in the Yuchi language, and recitations from the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

The main speaker – yours truly – was a Muslim.

One theme of Buckley's classic work is that God should be at the center of people's intellectual journeys, and therefore should play a far more significant role on campus. And when Buckley spoke of God at Yale, he meant the Christian idea of God. (According to a recent New Yorker piece by George Packer, Buckley refused to promote David Brooks - now at The New York Times - past a certain stage at his National Review because he was not a "believing Christian".)

Buckley would be happy to know that religion is once again being taken seriously on college campuses, but one of the reasons is because of the diversity of traditions present. Jews, Catholics and Protestants have had an institutional presence on campuses for many years, and colleges (including Wellesley, Duke, Princeton, Brown and Georgetown) are increasingly hiring Muslim chaplains to minister to the growing numbers of Muslim students on campus. Dartmouth has all of the above, plus the first ZaZen Chaplain I've ever met on a college campus.

Caring for Souls in Need

Today's post is from Craig Rennebohm, author of Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Streets. Rennebohm has worked for twenty years on the streets of Seattle, WA, supporting homeless individuals struggling with mental illness on the journey through the community mental health system to stability in the community. You can read more about his work at The Mental Health Chaplaincy.

The scene is the pastor's study of a major church in a large American city. I am waiting for an appointment in the company of homeless women and men who have come through the church's doors seeking help, a daily occurrence here. Church staff and laypeople are trying to respond to the needs of these souls who have little or nothing to their name. One person has on only a worn t-shirt, muddy jeans, and shoes that are falling apart. No socks. His words make little sense, but it's clear that he's expressing fear of going back outside, probably because it is rainy and unusually cold for this late in the spring. On a bench not far away, a woman sits with her bags, quietly waiting her turn for the clothing room. A community outreach worker named John is interviewing people in the attempt to get help for as many of them as possible before nightfall, when the streets become more dangerous. Just as I am called to my meeting, the man in the t-shirt takes a sweater from the clothing room and makes his way slowly out the door.

The pastor greets me in the church's service center.

"It breaks my heart," he says.

Kai Wright on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Kai Wright, author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay, and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, wrote a piece for the American Prospect online in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, 1968. "Dr. King, Forgotten Radical," is a call to rescue King's legacy from a narrative that undervalues his role as a radical activist for change.

We've all got reason to avoid the uncomfortable truths King shoved in the nation's face. It's a lot easier for African Americans to pine for his leadership than it is to accept our own responsibility for creating the radicalized community he urged upon us. And it's more comfortable for white America to reduce King's goals to an idyllic meeting of little black boys and little white girls than it is to consider his analysis of how white supremacy keeps that from becoming reality.

Take, for instance, his point that segregation's purpose wasn't just to keep blacks out in the streets but to keep poor whites from taking to them and demanding economic justice. There's a concept that's not likely to come up in, say, the speech John McCain was rumored to be planning for today. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," King lectured from the Alabama Capitol steps, following the 1965 march on Selma. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man."

Wright's words aren't falling on deaf ears: the piece has already been cited in op-eds, at Utne Reader and, according to Technorati, on forty-three different blogs so far, including Alas, a Blog, War and Piece, and Crooked Timber.

You might also want to look back in our archives to read Kai Wright on helping teenagers who come out and the continued relevance of James Baldwin's understanding of race.

The Psychological Trauma of War

by Margot Adler

It's not something you read in a newspaper or hear on an ordinary news show; it's only on the comedy shows like Real Time with Bill Maher where you hear it whispered: the idea that John McCain has PTSD, and that it would be scary to have his finger on the button. Whether or not this is the same kind of slur we hear from those who say Barak Obama was schooled in a madrassa, it seems perfectly reasonable to wonder if anyone who spent five years in a tiger cage might have some remnants of PTSD - even decades later.

So when I heard it on Bill Maher the other night, it reminded me that we are living in a society where thousands of young men and women, our very future, are returning home every day scarred from battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of those scars are painfully visible; many others are not. Few people are really looking deeply at what this means for families and relationships, even what it means for our daily lives as Americans. Only one person that I know of in the mainstream media has delved deeply and movingly into this issue. For more than a year, in a series of searing pieces, Daniel Zwerdling at NPR has chronicled the plight of military personnel to get the mental health care they need. In many cases, veterans with PTSD have been kicked out of the military for bad behavior and are unable to access mental health services.

Ten years ago, I wrote a book called Heretic's Heart about my own life during the 1960's. Several chapters of that book were letters between me, as a twenty-year-old University of California - Berkeley student and activist, and Marc Anderson, a soldier fighting in Vietnam whom I met through the mail after he wrote a letter to the campus newspaper that could only be described as a cry from the abyss.

Link Roundup: Israeli Soldiers Speak, UUs in Kenya

Beacon author Philip Winslow, in his recent book Victory for Us is to See You Suffer, several times quotes and highlights the activities of the Israeli group Breaking the Silence, "an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah."

Breaking the Silence sponsors tours to Hebron, and has organized exhibits to illustrate the enormous strain the occupation places on the soldiers who are assigned to protect settlements, as well as the myriad injustices and indignities inflicted upon the Palestinians in the Territories. Currently on display in Philadelphia until February 24, and coming to Cambridge March 1, is their exhibit of photos taken by soldiers (including the one featured here), artifacts of the occupation, and video testimonies from former soldiers. Hours and locations are available on their website, as well as photos, video, testimonies, and more information about the group and their goals.

Via Philocrites, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee just returned from a trip to Kenya. The emergency delegation was dispatched to assess the political and human rights situation there in the wake of the election in December. UUSC President Charlie Clements, in addition to submitting testimony to Congress on the mission (pdf), sent blog dispatches describing the unrest:

Kenya feels like it is on the edge of a precipice. Anguish and anger are pushing people into a free fall toward communal violence, which neither the leaders nor the security forces may be able to easily stop once it begins. As Kisumu, and now perhaps Nakuru (if the reports we got this afternoon are true), slip toward economic meltdown, the volatility of the situation will only increase. I fear that both Kibaki and Raila may be too insulated by hardliners to sense that they are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

For more information on the crisis, visit the UUSC's Kenya Crisis page.

The People Speak: Performances from Howard Zinn's Voices of a People's History of the United States

by Allison Trzop

Several weeks ago, a couple of folks from Beacon -- including Director Helene Atwan -- had the pleasure and the privilege of attending several readings and tapings for a miniseries being shot over at Emerson College’s Cutler Majestic Theatre here in Boston.

Hosted by Executive Producer Howard Zinn -- not only a wildly influential historian and one of the most inspirational activists of modern times, but also one of the most imminently likable people alive --"The People Speak" featured an all-star line-up performing excerpts primarily taken from Zinn’s book Voices of A People’s History of the United States. The four performances, broken into segments titled "Class," "Women," "Race," and "War," were the culmination of tremendous work by Zinn, Anthony Arnove, and Chris Moore of "Project Greenlight," as well as actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

While every last one of the actors who participated should be loudly applauded (yet again!), standout performances included John Legend pouring his heart and soul into Nina Simone’s "Mississippi Goddamn"; Marisa Tomei reading the words of Cindy Sheehan; David Strathairn standing in for a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which for those of us who loved Good Night, and Good Luck was hilarious; Josh Brolin doing more for Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun than any high school lit class ever could; and every last time Staceyann Chin walked onstage.

Did you ever expect to hear Viggo Mortensen sing Bob Dylan?

For those who couldn’t make it into the filled-to-capacity Cutler Majestic, you can read more about it over at Alternet,  watch some more clips on YouTube, and, with any luck, the producers will find a home for the miniseries.

Allison Trzop is an assistant editor at Beacon Press.

Monday Link Roundup: Tuesday Edition, featuring Tom DeWolf, Kai Wright, and Eboo Patel

Beacon Author Tom DeWolf (Inheriting the Trade)—who blogged here on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the U.S.—is at the Sundance Film Festival this week with his cousin Katrina Browne, director of Traces of the Trade. The book and the film deal with their shared family history as descendants of the most successful slave-trading family in our country's history, and they present an opportunity for greater discussion slavery's legacy in the U.S.

One of the many salient points DeWolf makes in his book is that slavery was not a "Southern problem," but an integral part of the economic lives of those north of the Mason-Dixon Line as well. This interview from NECN highlights DeWolf's Rhode Island roots and New England's "hidden history" of slavery. When asked by host Chet Curtis why the subject of Northern culpability in the trade isn't explored in the history books, DeWolfe offered this insight:

The North won the Civil War, and the winners get to write the history books. A professor we met with called it "constructed amnesia," that we create this mythical story of the great abolitionists from the North marching south to straighten out those Southerners. When in fact, there were portions of New York that contemplated seceding with the South prior to the Civil War.

(We embed the NECN story here—if it doesn't appear in your reader click here to watch).

While DeWolfe ducks the paparazzi at Sundance, Kai Wright is reading tonight at the Hue-Man Bookstore in New York. Time Out New York interviewed Kai about his new book, Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York. Kai talked about his own feelings of alienation as young, black, gay man living in Dupont Circle, a gay neighborhood in Washington, D.C.

“It started to dawn on me that yes, it was a gay neighborhood, but it was a white gay neighborhood, and I was a young black man. I didn’t belong. And I didn’t feel any better.” He recalls that there was a “layering of race over sexuality, and the feeling that there had to be a choice.” (Link)

On Colorlines, Wright discusses the Obama-Clinton campaigns, in the wake of "their racially loaded fight over the comparative historical import of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson." He warns both Democrats of avoiding "the diversity debate," citing the 2004 race of an example of a "weak-kneed dodge" that served neither the Democrats nor the country well:

The Democratic establishment cried foul when Republicans loaded state ballots with divisive initiatives on gay rights. Eleven states asked voters to weigh in on same-sex marriage, pumping up the conservative vote and, some argue, costing John Kerry a win—he lost nine of the states, most infamously Ohio.

The problem, however, wasn’t the existence of a debate about gay rights—that’s inevitable as long as gays refuse to cower in the closet—it was national Democrats’ refusal to participate meaningfully in it. At the state level, 94 percent of legislators who voted against the 22 proposed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage won re-election, according to the gay rights group Equality Federation. (Link)

Finally, be sure to Tivo Good Morning America tomorrow and Thursday. Eboo Patel, author of Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation, will be featured in a two-part segment highlighting the Interfaith Youth Core. We'll post a link to the segments when they hit the ABC website.

Monday Link Roundup: Interfaith Heroes, Praise for Our World, Womb Outsourcing, and Vet Suicides

Read the Spirit, an ambitious and thoughtful site devoted to issues of spirituality and religion, is devoting a portion of their impressive energies to a month of Interfaith Heroes. Featured so far, brief, illuminating essays on the lives of such disparate voices for tolerance as Moses Maimonides, Jaluddin Muhammed Akbar, and Roger Williams.

(Incidentally, we also owe a word of thanks to Read the Spirit for their link to us and a very flattering mention for Beacon Press generally and the blog specifically.)

In other good reviews of work from Beacon, the L.A. Times ran a thoughtful and moving piece by Susan Salter Reynolds about Our World, a book that collects Molly Malone Cook's photographs with accompanying text by her life partner, the poet Mary Oliver.

The photographs Oliver has chosen reflect Cook's intuitive relationship with her subjects (even inanimate objects). The little girl on the stoop in New York City looks directly at the photographer, as does a kindly Robert Motherwell and a fierce, almost intimidating Walker Evans. Even though most of the photographs are dominated by a central person or object, there is a lot to look at in the margins, all part of the story. The stance of her subjects -- reading a book, looking through a telescope -- is always distinctive, creating the mood of the entire composition. The two photos of Oliver could have been taken only by someone who knew the subject well.

Marketplace ran a story over the holiday break that many, including Judith Warner on the New York Times opinion blogs, found troubling. The story highlighted the practice of "womb outsourcing," an increasingly popular surrogacy option involving hopeful parents from wealthy countries paying what amounts to "bargain rates" (when compared with the high cost of surrogacy in the U.S.) for surrogates in India. Amy Tiemann at MojoMom condemned the practice – "Is this what colonialism looks like in the 21st century?" – and invited Barbara Katz Rothman, author of Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption, to comment as well:

We women of the wealthy world profit from the exploitation of poor women, men and children with almost every shirt we put on our backs, almost every bite of food we take. We exploit people in poverty and never have to think about it. And now we can profit in our motherhood -- but unlike the shirt and the food, this time the product is going to grow up and demand an explanation. (Read more here)

And, to return to a topic  we discussed during Veterans Day Week last November, Penny Coleman, author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War, has been writing about the issue of veteran suicides regularly at Alternet. Her latest post is an account of her experience testifying before Congress alongside Mike and Kim Bowman, who lost their son to suicide after he returned from Iraq. In the piece she quotes Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, who displayed a stunning lack of tact and understanding of the issue when he passed the buck to the Bowman family for their son's death:

"The building up of the self-esteem is the key," he said, "and the parents somehow have to convince him or her that everything is going to be all right, we're going to work through it. And in this case it didn't happen, and so, tragic and sad."

It is precisely because of this tendency to blame the victims that the work that Coleman and the Bowmans do is so important. The hearing ultimately resulted in a dressing down of the head of mental health at the VA by the chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Bob Filner, along with the appeal that the VA start listening to the stories of families who have lost loved ones to suicide. Excuses and passing the buck are not going to save any lives.

Indigenous Peoples Day

Today's post is from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an historian, university professor, co-founder of Indigenous World Association, which lobbies the United Nations on behalf of indigenous peoples’ rights, and author of a number of books and articles on indigenous peoples of the Americas, most recently, Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico. She is at work on a history of the United States from the indigenous perspective, which is forthcoming from Beacon Press.

“I'm convinced that indigenous peoples are the moral reserve of humanity.” Evo Morales, Aymara, President of Bolivia, Democracy Now! September 26, 2007.

Every year as October 12 approaches, there is a certain sense of dread that can be felt in indigenous communities in the Americas. That it is a federal holiday in the United States is regarded as hideous, a celebration of genocide and colonization. However, beginning thirty years ago, indigenous peoples formed an international movement, demanding, for one thing, that October 12 be commemorated as an international day of mourning for the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Informally, the day has been appropriated as Indigenous Peoples Day.

Fasting for Peace

Religious leaders of all faiths are joining together this coming Monday, October 8th, for an Interfaith Fast to End the War in Iraq. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, co-author of The Tent of Abraham, forwarded this call to participate, which you can read in full at his Shalom Center blog:

In grief we see that our culture, our society, our public policies, are honeycombed with violence. Daily murders in the streets of our cities, recurrent mass murders in our schools, violence in our families, on our television programs, our films, our computer games—and in Iraq.

On October 8 we will gather to focus on the last and bloodiest of these. We must end the shattering of Iraqi and American lives by offering American generosity and support—but not control—for international and nongovernmental efforts to assist Iraqis in making peace and rebuilding their country, while swiftly and safely bringing home all American troops.

Today we call for Americans to join in a fast from sunrise to sunset on Monday, October 8, to bring the spiritual renewal and empowerment of fasting to bear on healing ourselves.

Of course, Monday is also a civic holiday—one with highly problematic provenance. Next week we'll get an explanation of the alternative to Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. We're also honoring National Coming Out Day next Thursday with thoughts from Kai Wright and Massachusetts State Representative Carl Sciortino. Remember to check that RSS feed!