OnLine With Zoe

May 21, 1982 ~ The Great Pizza Rebellion

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice

So Bernie (from the Bloomington Pantagraph) arrived at 9 A.M. with his photographer unaware that his visit was a force majeure.  And from his point of view, we must look like wilted wet noodles draping over our chairs.  He was allowed in the work room, but not the classrooms where we sleep.  At 10 A.M. we sat in a circle and meditated while pictures were taken.  In our circle sit a Quaker, an ex-Jehovah Witness, three ex-Mormons, an ex-Catholic and a Catholic; silent prayer seems the obvious choice. 

The chief offender at this point is our breath.  It is putrid and offensive and unrelenting.  It is our bodies throwing off toxins and from the smell of it, it could throw off Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I am very embarrassed about it.  It is just awful when a reporter leans in to ask an “intimate” question.  One even went so far as to ask if we would have periods while fasting.  I never thought of that.  I plan to.

Rich Woods, from the Illinois Religious Committee for the ERA, called to tell us that Phyllis Schlafly is going to have two hundred pizzas delivered to the rotunda today at noon.  Very Funny.  When we arrived at the Capitol there was a lot of anxiety.  Pizzas or not, the point was facing two hundred opponents in the rotunda.  Whenever and wherever the Green & Whites (pro-ERA) meet the Red & Whites (anti-ERA), it is very distressing.

As noon came closer, dozens -- if not hundreds -- of people poured in from all of the surrounding office buildings.  They formed a great deep circle insulating us from the Pizza Rebellion.  It was a warm and loving gesture that fed us all.  The pizza vendor never showed up.  Later we found out that it was a joke that some columnist thought up. 

Then from out of the crowd a young woman appeared with a gold florist box.  She put the box on the floor and opened it.  Inside were seven long stemmed white roses with a purple bow on each.  Returning to the box seven times, one by one, she handed each of us a flower.  She disappeared the very moment she finished.  I don’t know her name, but as long as I live I will never forget her.  I hope someday she will know what a miracle she was for us that day.

May 20, 1982, Day 3

This really is a battle, isn’t it?  There are lives at risk.  The most endangered species on the planet is woman.  What can women do after designing their lives to support marriage and children when their husbands move on for younger and childless women?  What if a woman has no money of her own, no insurance, no pension, no social security?  Women are battered, raped, held captive in economic slavery.  I wonder how many women would stay with their husbands if they had good jobs and all the money they needed.

What is this battle?  Who is the enemy?  How can this injustice cover the entire earth?  Why are some women fighting to maintain their secondary position?  Am I trying to win something that people don’t even want?  It is very confusing, but I must do this.  I truly believe that women must recover their power.  Women must define their own lives and their place in society.  Women must have absolute autonomy over their bodies and all reproductive decisions.  We have to abolish gender categories in jobs, credit, education, property and contracts.

I want a world where men and women have equal opportunity to express themselves.  I want sexism eliminated from the media and language and most of all in religion.  I want women to define themselves and not be classified by marital status and ability to reproduce.  It is a very simple premise: true justice is opportunity.  All parties suffer when there is an imbalance.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

Sonia and I talk about our Marriages

May 19, 1982, Sonia and I go to Chicago to be on Chicago AM.  Just missed Oprah by a couple of weeks. 

Twenty-four hours ago I was in a sleeping bag on a classroom floor and here I am in the finest hotel in Chicago.  Around noon today the people from Chicago A.M. called and invited two of us to be guests on the show tomorrow morning, all expenses paid.  Sonia was the obvious choice.  Since I was really excited about it, and the others just wanted to be left alone, I got to go too.  We will be interviewed on air by Robb Weller...

... Lying in our beds, talking into the night, our thoughts and feelings lifted like steam rising over boiling soup.  We talked about our marriages.  I told Sonia what a hard fall it had been for me as the myths of romance disintegrated one by one.  Like Sonia’s Mormonism, I had been a devout Catholic respectful of the sacrament of marriage.  I married young and loved my husband.  We were both idealists: marching for civil rights, opposing the Viet Nam war and fighting the draft.  I wanted to be a school teacher and he was interested in prison reform.  A couple of years after moving from Illinois to California, he felt cheated for having married so young.  He was bored with our relationship and wanted to experience other women.  Once I became aware of his many affairs, the marriage was over in a matter of months.  I was broken-hearted.  Our mutual dreams were gone forever.  We both were sad.  We lost the innocence we had celebrated together.

Then one day the entire illusion broke open for me.  I am not certain why or how, but I realized that married life and parenthood were not my destiny.  Being single was not a miserable life as a half person.  For me it was a whole life, a complete life.  This was not a lesson I could learn from school or from bride dolls under the Christmas tree.  This is a rite of passage in a soul’s unfolding journey.  This is a knowing that is born out of pain, rejection and finally healing.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

The Women's Fast for Justice Begins

Sonia Johnson reads the statement to begin the 1982 Women's Fast for Justice:

We have gathered today in Springfield, Illinois to begin a solemn fast for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.  By making visible women's deprivation and by witnessing to women's deep hunger for justice, we seek to turn the hearts of the lawmakers to fulfill the Constitution's 200-year-old promise of equal justice under law.

    Fasting has been a part of momentous developments in this country.  On May 28, 1774, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers inaugurated a fast "to implore a divine intervention to avert the destruction of our civil rights and to turn the hearts of king and parliament to moderation and justice."  The fast, by unmasking the injustice of British rule, stirred the hearts of the colonists, led directly to a call for a Continental Congress, and made revolution inevitable.

    Two hundred years later, women are still struggling to gain our civil rights, and so today we begin our dialogue with the Governor and state legislators of Illinois:  Governor Thompson, will you join with us in seeking democracy for the women of this nation by committing yourself to majority rule in the House and Senate?  Mr. Speaker, will you open your heart and seek justice for us?  Will you bring the rules change to a vote on the floor of the House?

    Does the State of Illinois have the courage to do the will of the American people who overwhelmingly desire the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment?

    We have chosen to fast in Illinois because it poses the greatest challenge to ratification.  This is true because it operates under the least democratic procedures of any state presently facing a decision about the Equal Rights Amendment.  It has, despite all logic, insisted on a 3/5, rather that a majority, vote for ratification.

    In this crisis in our country's history, when it seems -- unbelievably -- as if our Representatives are about to ignore our commitment as a nation to justice and democracy, and repudiate the American dream of equality, this fast is the most formidable call to conscience we know how to make.  We hope the spiritual energy and enlightenment we generate will ultimately free both the oppressed and the oppressors from the cycle of injustice in which we have been bound.

    We invite people throughout the United States to join us in the fast, either in their home states or in the Capitals of unratified states where the Equal Rights Amendment is under consideration.  We invite the Governor and legislators of Illinois to join us in fasting to clarify their role in molding the destiny of this nation.

    Perilous times in human history demand extraordinary focusing of spiritual power and love.  These are perilous times for women.  This fast is our act of love.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

Message from Dina Evan, my Sister Faster

This message is from my close Sister Faster, Dina Bachelor Evan honoring the depth of love that was manifest on May 18, 1982 in Springfield, Illinois. 

(Picture includes Dina, on the right, and me as we look at a petition to the Illinois legislation to ratify the ERA)

To the women and men of my heart,

So many of you have traveled this spiritual journey with me over the years that I want to share the intimate moment with you that forever changed my life. Please take a moment to read this special message and join me on May 18th.

30 years ago, on May 18, 1982, I began a vision quest that forever changed my life. I had the privilege of joining six other women to begin a 37-day water fast on behalf of Equal Rights for all people. To respect and honor them, I want to share out-loud the names of these powerful and courageous women whom I still hold sacred in my heart:

            Zoe Ann Nicholson (Ananda)
            Mary Boone  (Barnes)
            MaryAnn Beall
            Dr. Sonia Johnson
            Shirley Wallace (deceased)
            Sister Maureen Fiedler
            and Dina Evan (Bachelor)

We were attended to, by three volunteers from the National Organization for Women who also left their families, sacrificed so much and stayed for the duration of the fast: Judy Block, Dixie Johnson and Mary Woods.

We all took a leap of faith, we left our children, our spouses and significant others, our businesses and our jobs and flew to Springfield, Illinois. At that moment, there were only five states left in our entire country that had not ratified the EqualRights Amendment. We were very close for the first time in history. Illinois was the only state, out of the five remaining, that had a three-fifths rule rather than a simple majority.

The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923 to affirm that women and men have equal rights under the law. That is ALL it says. Since 1923 women, men and children, mine included, have walked precincts, gathered signatures on petitions and had come so close that in 1982, only three of the five states remaining were needed to ratify this amendment. After eighty-nine years of struggle, this amendment and this simple principle of justice is still not part of the U.S. Constitution. In addition, unfortunately, not unlike many heroines, this story will never appear in the history books to inspire our children.

At considerable risk, we chose to fast because throughout history, Lincoln, Gandhi and Jesus fasted for their beliefs. We initially stayed at Lincoln’s, Kumler United Methodist Church in the children’s classrooms on the floor in sleeping bags. We folded our bodies into the kitchen sinks to bathe and climbed several flights of stairs each night after our daily vigil to the Springfield Capitol Rotunda to remind the legislators of women’s “hunger for justice.” When the Church realized the health risks involved, they asked us to leave.

National and international press began to spread the word about this phenomenon of women fasting for human rights. When then President Ronald Reagan got off the plane in France, seven hundred women were there to greet him wearing white armbands and fasting in solidarity. Nationally known activist and comedian Dick Gregory and his wife quietly joined the fast in support. Eleanor Smeal, then President of The National Organization for Women, arranged for the balance of our stay at a Ramada Inn and Gloria Steinem rented a “fast mobile” to transport us to and from the hotel as wheelchairs became necessary and we grew weaker.

As you know, this act of bravery and the fast did not result the ratification of the E.R.A.. Legislators who had previously promised support were bought out one by one by major corporations and insurance companies who did not want to equalize salaries and benefits.

However, something much greater occurred on an energetic scale that forever changed this country and the world. Women stopped asking for the right to be equal and they gave equality to themselves!

Women began opening their own companies, hiring and supporting other women. They moved into previously male-dominated careers and educations. They broke through the glass ceiling and into corporate boardrooms. Out of that simple act of love, a movement of profound change was birthed. We believed then, and now, that great change comes from this extraordinary focus of spiritual energy and love.

So we are asking each of you, to send this message to every woman and man of consciousness you know and join us on May 18th in a single day of prayers and fasting for the return of civility, an end to discrimination in any form and for an elevation of consciousness worldwide.

There is great power in this simply act of love. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin says, Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfill them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves. We are one after all, you and I, together we suffer, together we exist and forever will recreate each other.

To help you feel empowered from the energy of our fast and that sacred 37 days, I have included the People Magazine article June 28, 1982.

Now, we, the remaining women fasters, invite you to join us in another act of courage. That act is to step away from the divisive status quo of today and join us in creating another profound change of unity and compassion.

If you feel able and committed to doing this, please forward this letter to everyone you know and all of your social networking contacts and email Dr. Dina Evan at DrDBE@attglobal.net so that we can have a count of those who will participate with us. We welcome your energy and we believe all things are possible in a loving united effort.

With the deepest of love,
Dr. Dina Evan
From Dina's Newsltter, Awakening

The Entire Text of the Equal Rights Amendment
Section 1.
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation,
the provisions of this article.
Section 3.
This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification

Press Release May 17, 1982

PRESS RELEASE
Monday, MAY 17, 1982

Contacts:        
Maureen Fiedler RSM
Jean Harvey

SEVEN WOMEN BEGIN FAST FOR THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS.

On Tuesday, May 18, a group of women gathered in Springfield, Illinois will begin a solemn fast for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.  A press conference will be held in the Press Room of the Capitol in Springfield at 10 A.M. on May 18 to announce the fast and explain its purpose.

Seven women from around the country are beginning to fast, including Sonia Johnson, the Mormon woman who was excommunicated because of her advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

The Last Eating Day

May 16, 1982  From my Diary ~

So today it is going to be a fast.  It is active.  It is spiritual.  It is the way of the satyagrahi; fueled with love, formed by truth, spiritual in nature.  The opponents will lose their footing as they find their spirits intoxicated with such a display of truth.  They will be spellbound by its innocence and charmed by its grave dedication.  We will change their minds because ultimately their spirits feel the truth and want it to prevail too.

No matter what they say, no matter what they do, we must love them.  We may have to love them through our own deaths, but that is the way of a satyagrahi.  Our love will create an irresistible impression on even the most hardened of people.  It will awaken them to what is right -- liberation.  We are not just seeking the liberation of the oppressed, but that of the oppressors too.  As the perpetrators, they are suffering more from this system than the oppressed.  Breaking the cycle of injustice liberates us all. 

 What could be more simple?  Today I will join six women to begin a fast.  Today seven women will become the truth.  We sit and wait and fast.  As Hesse said about Siddartha; we will sit and wait and fast.  So look out all you oppressors.  Guard your hearts for today there are satyagrahis afoot.  Without your permission or even your conscious participation, we are going to change your hearts about this system of yours.  We are all going to be liberated soon.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

How Can it be Thirty Years?

These next 45 days mark the 30th anniversary of my fast for the ERA, the last 45 days of the artificial deadline for the ERA, the 45 days when the American Women's Movement was on fire. Celebrate with me. Mourn with me. Be patient with me as this may be the last big milestone in my life in regards to the ERA.

 

May 15, 1982 from my diary ~
We may be filling up on chicken but our hearts are bursting with the hope of changing history. None of our reasons are particularly reasonable. We seem to be here out of dream visions and irresistible compulsions. Everyone one of us is afraid but clearly have the courage to get this far. I feel as if we are pioneers. It sure isn’t that society is calling us to do this. If this is a calling -- the call was made from far away.
I believe that each of us is listening to something celestial. I knew that I am on a spiritual quest but I had not expected it to be the case for the others. Leave it to me to be so self-centered as to think the heavens were talking exclusively to me as opposed to directing the fast in its entirety. NOW sees the Women’s Movement as a civil rights movement but to me it is really a radical spiritual revolution. Woman Spirit is ready to make her move. Maybe this appears to be just a move on the men’s game board but every woman who participants in this action will never be the same; ERA or no ERA.

From The Hungry Heart ~ A Woman's Fast for Justice 

 

Enough is Enough (in every language, every country)

Something extraordinary is happening at this time, while you are alive.  This is it.  This is not a movie or a chapter in a book or a sheaf of photos that invoke nostalgia.  This is now.  It is not the 60’s with Marvin Gaye singing to us.  This is not the 70’s with photos of Vietnam.  This is not the 80’s with the unfolding of the Names Quilt.  This is now.  And though you may think the difference is that you are alive, there are other differences that mark this time as extraordinary.

With the events of April 28, 2012 how can it be denied that change is bubbling up in numbers that cannot be ignored.  It is global, not only geographically but across the population, across issues, across borders.  My preference is to award this to social media but that is a shallow interpretation.  A more accurate account may be that a tribe of souls incarnated in the mid-fifties to usher in this new set of tools for us to unite, find one another, compare, realize our similarities and see clearly that those who hold power are a minority that travels dark alleys.

My observations all come from looking at the tactics.  The groundswell of conversations have gotten so big that a whole new language is emerging that demonstrates the equality that is unfolding.  The diversity of the issues and locations is eliminating one charismatic leader; both in need and effect.  Possibly soon we won’t care so much who said it but, rather, what did it mean.  Just as art survives the artist, truth must survive the speaker.  Content will be tested by its longevity.  Maybe it will collect like a rolling snowball or dilute like a game of telephone; but the truth which survives will have its own special force that is beyond a rarefied elitist set of voters in a Rotunda.

The founders of Wiki trust that given enough time and freedom of access, the truth shakes out.  It is a big change, one that offers respect that we have a common intuition for knowing the difference between what sounds right and what sounds insincere, manipulated, even invented.  There is something coalescing that has the same chant, tone, cadence; Arab Spring, Occupy, Slutwalk, Women Unite, Travon Martin protests, Keystone; people are finding what binds them in one simple phrase ~ Enough is Enough.  (lets wish for ERA and Marriage Equality)

Try as any liberation activist might, to break the bands of convention and call for change, nothing has come close to the realized potential as the disenfranchised finally discovering that what they have in common isn’t blood, isn’t desire, isn’t oxygen but oppression.  This is potent, profound, fecund.  Stand by me, march with me, push my wheelchair.  I don’t care what specific minority you currently represent, fact is you belong to all of the them if you find yourself saying, enough is enough.

Peace on Women 4/28

Honestly I struggle with posting my speeches.  I want to deliver them to you myself, in my voice, standing in a room or in sunlight.  On the other hand, how can I share what I want to say, have to say, want you to know.  I do not approve of all this patricrchal language but I am not a person who merely tells what should not be but offers the alternative.  I do not like declaring war or fight back as that all will end up in the woof and warp of us.  Today I choose to declare PEACE on Women and everyone including Mother Earth herself. 

___________________________________________________________

 Good Morning   Buenos Dias

I am so proud to be here with you today.
I am in love with equality and you are too 
It is just that simple.

Welcome to this moment
Welcome to the place our opponents fear the most.
Where we have drawn a line
We have drawn the line to say enough is enough
When we rise up together to say enough is enough
In all 50 states We UNITE to say, enough is enough.

Welcome to this moment
We are women and men who demand equality
We are LGBT who demand equality
We are First Nation who demand equality
We are First Immigrants who demand equality
We are the 99% who demand equality under the law.

Welcome to this moment
when the majority sees their power,
seizes their power,
exercises their power
The moment of UNITY has arrived
when we refuse to be divided, diminished, dismissed.

Welcome to this moment
The whole of Mother Earth is calling for change. 
The forces are collecting
The tipping point has arrived
From Egypt to Wall Street, from India to Mexico
The people are rising up and uniting for change

Welcome to this moment
Throw open your arms, be of good cheer,
we have found one another as never before 
I am in love with equality and you are too
It is just that simple.

Today Let Us declare:
Peace on Women
Peace on Immigrants
Peace on Queers
Peace on Workers
Peace on the Poor
Peace on America
Peace on Earth

Appreciative Inquiry

 

Have you ever heard that Madonna has had such a long career because she keeps reinventing herself.  It’s a funny idea to a Buddhist.  How could one not continue to invent a new self.  To me it would take more energy to stop change.  Would you faint from holding your breath?  Maybe an iron maiden could stop physical growth but nothing can stop the mind (even a coma?). 

Given the gift of being 63, I am able to look at the timeline of my life and see where the big changes happened, how they ignited, percolated, burst out and, finally, integrated into everyday life.  One of the bigger quakes occurred upon discovering a whole burst of thought about leadership, inquiry, conversations and servant-leadership.  Greenleaf, Brown, Wheatley, Cooperrider and Whitney absorbed me for several years after the turn of this century.   

How it shows up in my life is constant.  Pacific Shore NOW was convened after holding a Feminist Café in my backyard; a brilliant young slate of women were elected to California NOW after holding a Young Feminist Summit in Sacramento; my openness to the LGBTQAI culture, language and spectrum of expression is the outcome of respecting the honest question and the honest answer. 

At the core of this whole line of study is an understanding that positive inquiry draws out something valuable, wholesome, interesting.  I have had the honor of being interviewed by college students working on papers, radio shows, TV programs, archivists, journalists.  I don’t recall ever declining a genuine interview – though I have tried to talk people out of them for fear that they will be disappointed. 

This last Sunday I was interviewed by a friend, Veronica.  I warned her that I would not be a good interview and she insisted.  I am so glad she did.  She asked new questions, interesting questions, challenging questions.  I love it when I think ~ oh oh I wonder what I am gonna say.  And, Veronica was open to being asked questions too.  It was a true conversation.  I am so glad I said yes but, moreover, I am so glad she asked. 

Here is the interview as an mp3 (mouse over the bar and an arrow appears on the left):

VS interview 04222012

At the end of the call, Veronica said that she hoped one day I would post my third book, Matri, Letters from the Mother on the internet. 

Thank you for asking and here it is in its entirety.

 

 

Service is Leadership and Leadership is Service

Over the last few months I have been asked, I have written and I hold steadfast on the subject of privilege.  I hope that I have not participated in the singling out of one person but rather have held the conversation on a general plane; an applicable plane.  I realize there may be a lot to say about an individual on this issue but not by bystanders and not in the public square.  I believe and I live that I am accountable for my life, I demonstrate with my life, that is the purpose of life.

While working on a new memoir, when I got to 1975, I wrote about my year teaching at an all-girls high school in Echo Park which was 90% Latina.  After the chapter was done, I realized that I had demonstrated what I think about privilege even back then.  To me it seemed obvious and not some heady philosophical theory at all.  It was the organic response to empowering the disenfranchised.  If I am a senior in a meeting of young feminists, if a straight person comes to a meeting of LGBT people, if a White person comes to a meeting of People of Color; the right thing to do is to support the emerging group in service to their empowerment. 

In a recent interview, the journalist asked, “So you think that Mr. so-in-so had no place at a women’s march?”   Oh, yes I do: Fundraising before the march.  Arranging for city permits.  At the end of the march, picking up litter.  At the landing of the March checking the sound.  Along the route with a First Aid kit.  But never leading.  The interviewer was not interested or, maybe, lost his verve as I did not give him the answer he wanted.  Pity.

This what I think about privilege and how I demonstrated it. 

Early in the year, when I was having a meltdown about no one doing any homework, one of the Sisters told me that many of them have no time for such things.  They worked or they were the primary adult in the household making dinner for their younger siblings.  I had to get hip to all that pretty fast.  Many times, maybe most days, someone was missing and it was because of a funeral, a gang funeral; a brother, a boyfriend, a tribe mate.  These girls knew things I could not imagine.  Try as I might, love them as I did, it was clear they needed a Latina standing in front of them not a privileged white girl, wearing a navy linen dress, driving her red beetle from the beach.  They needed a woman who knew their lives, their family life, their future possibilities and could demonstrate how to push onward.  On Holy Thursday I gave my notice with one caveat, asking Sister Jeannine to hire only a Spanish speaking Latina to teach junior and senior religion.  It made me really sad but right is right.  I was given the “Most Liked Teacher” award that year.  A treasured pearl.

The MOVEMENT needs us to prioritize and study leadership.

My plan was to avoid the conversation all together but my plan has evaporated.  About a week ago I saw, on facebook around 9 PM,  a picture of Hugo Schwyzer with a red circle and strike on it.  I opened the page, “Feminists Against Hugo Schwyzer“ and watched the “like” tally roar.  I think I went to bed when it was at about 160.  Now it is at 566 and the debate has bled all over the pond, small pond but one of the ponds I frequent.  I am not certain I want to get in the fracas but my thinking is mine, I own it and offer it. 

It seems that there are a lot of very strong opinions, strong like coffee or a scent is strong.  There is little that is subtle or mindful or aware or refined or worthy of many of the writers.  I am choosing to believe that many of the voices around this pond are gifted thinkers; by that I mean I would like to hear from them on the actual subjects of privilege, gender, leadership; the entire oppressed/oppressor paradigm.  I am sincerely flummoxed that the conversation always includes names and never takes a leap to arching lessons, tenets, ideas, general social conclusions, etc.

My unfolding in activism has always been parallel with expanding my understanding of humans, of organic physics, of the science of leadership.  I have to admit, this keeps me sane in the face of Roe eroding, Prop 8, unforgivable suicides and so much more.  I do not use it as an excuse but as a shoring up of my heart in terrible bloody waters. 

I want to talk about the role of a white person in racial civil rights.  I want to talk about a rich person’s responsibility to the economically depressed.  I want to talk about the best place for a senior when surrounded with young people, young legs, young minds and new ideas.  I want to talk about straight allies and their fundamental necessity in the LGBT movement. 

Most of what I have learned on this subject is from Robert Greenleaf and Margaret Wheatley.  The finest leader I have read about is Leo in Hesse’s Journey to the East.  He meets a group of western pilgrims and builds them a fire, cooks their food, arranges their passage through the Himalayas while never mentioning that he is the Abbott they are searching for at the monastery which is their final destination on their treacherous trip.  They think he is their servant, their Sherpa, their inferior and all the while they are traveling; warm and safe.  They are becoming independent and Leo knows that his invisibility is integral to their mutual success.

I think Malcolm X is another powerful example.  He did not want privileged white people anywhere near his movement until he circumambulated the Great Mosque seven times, found his own higher self and, then, considered the place of blue-eyed people.  And we have to see that Branch Rickey brought up Jackie Robinson but Robinson ran the bases.  I believe that HRC should have a straight ally on their Board of Directors because there is no movement without expansion out of our queer ghetto but the majority, the leaders must be queer.

All of this seems to me to be a worthy conversation.  It would be a worthy conversation for anyone who is interested in the matrix of domination, who cares about the empowerment of the disenfranchised, certainly anyone who has studied The Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  Not only is this a conversation that the current circumstances could benefit from but our intersected futures as well.  Instead of keeping the conversation so puny as to be about one human this could have been about the physics of change. 

 Oh I have opinions about Hugo’s past, his teaching, his writing, his devotees.  As a member of Alanon for almost 40 years, I have opinions about addiction.  I have a boatload of opinions about rape culture, violence against women and men, about the mis/use of the word feminism.  However, what I really care about is the rising of the oppressed which will release the oppressor from our shared cycle ~ advancing all of society.  Hugo and you and I are just a few players who have a lot to do that is way beyond personal, beyond name-calling, beyond defenders v. attackers.

The MOVEMENT needs us to prioritize and study leadership.  Settle for nothing less.  Learn to build your own fire, to travel your road and pave it wide enough for all of us.  These two pictures are all I have to say about this individual controversy ~ now I gotta get back to work.

Occupy Generation ~ Occupy Heart

While Berkeley is being occupied, visited by Daniel Ellsberg, tents on the Mario Savio Square, I feel so much more than nostalgia.  I am rifling through my mind to figure how on earth I found out about the Free Speech Movement.  It was not on the Nightly News with Huntley Brinkley, it was not in the local papers (Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel), it was not dinner conversation in my home or any home I visited.  You can know it was not in my Catholic Church; they were not pro-Kennedy.  It was not the lunch talk over tuna noodles or sloppy joes. 

To say there was no internet, there were no PC’s but, moreover, there was no lateral communication that had a secret factor as there is today.  Many adults have not kept up with electronic news possibilities; they merely read CNN on their ipad rather than fish for the Guardian or Al Jezeera.  Though I carry my own biases, it appears to me that many people my age who are devotees of Amy Goodman and foreign press are child-free or involved in learning professions. 

Somehow I knew, I knew about Birmingham, I knew about Martin Luther King, I knew about the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.  Somehow it found me.   My compass was set on autopilot to point 180 degrees from anything my mother supported; Wisconsinite, Joseph McCarthy; the Committee on Un-American Activities; the John Birth Society; crazy messages about communism including people building air raid shelters in their basements. 

Mind you this is all before Betty Friedan, before PC’s, before Stonewall, before HIV/AIDS, before home pregnancy tests, before thousands of things that are now simply, “in the water.”  As best I can measure how it got to me at 15, it was books, music and a genuine taste for fundamental resistance to the same ole, same ole.  Anything that had been tested, tried and true was toxic and antiquated.  Change was being born, born in me; where else could it be?  Yes, I was a genuine card-carrying anti-war hippie by the time I was 19.  I wore overalls with an American Flag sewn upside down on the bib. 

Today as I watch the news, comb through facebook, watch youtube videos and search on #OWS I see the outcome of a sliver of that investment.  And there are Joan Baez and Crosby & Nash singing right on queue.  I see 19 year olds and 25 year olds who are moving the world one change at a time.  The human mic, refusing dogma, demanding equality, valuing books, standing in unison. It isn’t déjà vu all over again, it is burgeoning brilliance roaring across the earth on the finest brand of courageous NEW.  From Marines to medics, from seniors to daycare, from a few to a thousand, change is being born in each and every one. 

But here is what you may not know, what you may not have realized.  Today there is a kid, 12 or 13, who is lost in a sea of toxic traditions of bigotry and fear, who is taking it all in.  They are writing it all on the walls of their heart.  They will continue on a lifetime trajectory, now plugged in, and, whoa, change is gonna come, born at the speed of light, fueled by today’s resistance, informed on a scale I can not even dream of.  Oh, lucky kid.  Oh, better world.

A Big Fat Thank you

Today, as I was sitting at the Hollywood NOW table at the Love Your Body Day celebration, a woman stopped and asked me if it would be okay to ask me a question.  Of course, I said.  She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment and then removed it to say, “Do you mind being overweight?”  I laughed and said no, not at all; certainly not in the ways she wanted me to mind. 

As we talked for a long time, she told me that she is 68.  She had once been overweight but worked really hard on it and continues.  She was so small, maybe 5’2’ and 115 lbs.  Then she got to the important point, she is terribly worried about her daughter.  She said when they take her grandchildren to MacDonald’s she finds it impossible to watch her daughter eat french fries.  I laughed again and said, well I won’t be eating with you either.  You mean to say that if we go out and I order an hot fudge sundae and you order what ever you want, you will be disturbed that I am eating ice cream?  Yes, she said.

She inquired further, aren’t you worried about your health?  I told her that it seems to me that 1) worry is unhealthy & 2) it is no ones business but my own.  I told her that each of us has a 3x5 card entitled, MY BUSINESS; that no ones body should be on that card but our own.  Her daughter’s body should not be on her card at all. 

She just said it was too hard.  I asked her how she felt about all the fabulous fat women at the event today, high heels, sexy, all glammed up for the fashion show.  She was really uncomfortable with it.  I told her that the judge inside her head, sitting high up in her perfect black robe needed to be fired.  She was not popular, making any friends and doing a lot of harm.  Finally I told her to go to the most expensive bakery in her neighborhood, buy their very best cake, take it to her daughter and tell her that she was sorry.  Tell her that she could not change all at once but she would keep working on telling that judge, YOU’RE FIRED.

I suppose that was my mom.  She was so ashamed of me, taking me to the chubby department, putting gussets in my girl scout uniform, telling me often how terrible things fit.  My First Communion dress has to be made as I did not fit in the ones in the store. 

Mom’s who cannot love their daughters, big or small, pierced or inked, dressed in ways that confound, suffer a torture of their own design.  I hope daughters find themselves and end this terrible legacy.  Lane Bryant, Torrid, INC; Love Your Body Day and Chenese Lewis you are healing a generation.