OnLine With Zoe

I am a sanctuary person, you are safe with me.

I have not talked about it much. It is not something I felt like amplifying. It would not help me or anyone. So from November 8 through last week, my light was flickering. I suppose I don’t like talking about things which have no whisper of a solution.

February 1st, I dragged myself to hear Rev. Dr. Barber. I have written about him, watched him, love him; never heard him in person.

Occasionally, the spirit just takes over, makes the healthy decision which is a clear demonstration that it is still in there. It is still oiled and ready to go. It may be asleep but not dead.  And so I got on the freeway and hoped.

Going in, I felt that there was nothing I could do about the changed direction of government, about the demolition of human rights, about the backlash.  I felt that at age 68, the equality, the equity, the balance I had invested everything in was vanishing.  It was an unmanageable loss.  It was so much larger than the loss of Sec. Clinton.  In fact it was a growing deadly virus that was unleashed and unpredictable.

You would think after all these years of meditation and study, that the fundamentals of Buddhist practice would have kept me afloat.  It is exactly that seeming failure that made recovery feel impossible.  I wanted to reassemble.  I wanted to get new lamps, fill them with new oil and begin anew as it seemed the old had disappeared, fallen to the trash heap, never to recover and serve again. 

And so it began.  He brought his axe and pick.  He dug in. 

As I told the Long Beach City Council, ~

Last week I had the immeasurable good fortune to hear Rev Dr. William Barber speak.
He was here from North Carolina to receive an honorary doctorate from Occidental College.
He is one of the founders of Moral Mondays, The Forward Together Movement and Repairers of the Breach.

He lives and breathes on the acute intersection of social justice and examined Christianity.
He told us many things that night.
He even got me to sing and clap.     He is irresistible. 

First he captured my mind with his deep understanding of how this moment in history predictably unfurled.
Then he nourished my soul with a call to care for the poor, disenfranchised and marginalized.

But most importantly, he lifted me from a spiritual dark despair by explaining that ~
This is not democrats vs GOP
This is not rich vs poor
This is not thugs vs righteous people

This is a crisis
This is a moral crisis
This is a moral crisis that has been born over centuries and lives in systemic racism, classism and sexism.

Today we are called to mind the light.
Today we are called to be the light.
This is the ultimate call to be a moral society, a moral people, beginning by being a moral person.

This is the moment when we demand morality from ourselves and let that morality pour forward as a beacon to light the way for others to find safety with us.  

Being a sanctuary city is the very least we can do.
To be a Sanctuary City does not just mean protection of those at risk.
To be a Sanctuary City is not just a public statement that we can proudly bear. 

To offer sanctuary to all who love freedom and liberty,
Opens our hearts,
Restores our souls,
It lifts our intentions and prayers above the law
And begins to repair our broken spirit. 

Let us be a sanctuary city.
Let us be a sanctuary to one another.
Let us be a sanctuary to ourselves.

To start, I am a sanctuary person, you are safe with me.

The Quieting of the American Conscience

Conscience by Vincent van Gogh

18 hours later and, with the rising sun, the fog on the windows of the mind is clearing.  I always knew Donald was like that.  It always showed.  Move along, there is nothing new here. 

Conscious women, can I say feminist women, saw it when he divorced Ivana or Marla or dismissed Melania or man-handled Ivanka.  We saw it on the Apprentice.  We saw it with his sons and the slaughter of big game in Africa.  We saw it with his disregard for Trump workers.  With his succession of bankruptcies.  With his opulence.  With his hair, tan and oddly long ties.  With behavior that would send a second grader to the principal’s office and a sophomore to detention.  We have always seen it. 

I think the pain of this explosive revelation that Farenthold facilitated and Access Hollywood with Billy Bush withheld, lies in the slow boil of it all.  How did everyone NOT see it from the start?  That is the immorality of it all.  What has happened to the quieting of the American Conscience? 

What has happened in the pulpit where cash is grabbed and, in some cases, little boys and girls.  What has happened in textbooks in the tacit removal of the mistreatment of the indigenous people, African people, Chinese people, women in total – too many to list.  And we celebrate these atrocities naming them Columbus day or Thanksgiving day.  And, of course, Women’s Equality day which is a titular lie. 

We have sent the Elders into substandard silos of dismissal.  We have used white-out on our Story-Tellers.  We have hidden the suffering and poor who remind us of the calling to generosity and lie in stark contrast under blue tarps with their only loved one, their dog.  We arrest indiscriminately and it appears that the overcrowding of prisons is being solved with outright assassinations on the street.  We medicate people into dysfunction.  We surround cemeteries with fences to promote the worst illusion of all, immortality.

And now we will simplify this boiling pot.  We will tar and feather.  We will drag through the street.  We will make ourselves righteous by vilifying in short and long term public shaming.  When after all it was you and me. 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

I shouted out,
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste,

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name

It isn’t that I believe in the devil.
I believe in Art.
Thank you Keith and Mick

Love Letter to Long Beach 2015

It was so alarming I could not take pictures. May 2, 2 P.M., 50 boxes were on the ground with nowhere to go. Two principle 6’ bookshelves had no wall space. No kitchen cupboards, no washer & dryer, no sofa. The sun was going down, a dozen people were trying to pile in whatever they could and an unrelenting inner voice kept whispering, “put it in the garage.” A bounding inner voice shouted, “there is no garage, there is no fence, there is no backyard.” The only smart stroke was that the gigantic poodle was overnight at her godmother’s house.

On the other column was that there were ten people organizing my new home. Before the moving truck arrived, one person had all of the technology up and running and two artists had delivered and arranged my mini-garden. Miracles began piling up in the form of things fitting within one inch or less; the desk, the Ikea shelves, the hangers, the shoes, the dishes, etc. Neighbors said hello as they walked up and down the street. Dogs and bikes. People speaking other than English and people who were not white. This was not the isolated island of xenophobes with Prop 8 lawn signs that was in my rearview mirror. This was Long Beach, this was Rose Park, this was the 2^nd most diverse city in the US.

In the course of a day, you might hear six disparate sirens. In the course of a month, you would meet 20+ people. In the month of July, you will hear 31 nights of fireworks. Locking doors is how it is done. Saying hello is the minimum. On a Saturday afternoon, you can hear 8 different music tracks reflecting the community. AND you can get the best Mexican food without crossing a street, right around the corner. As my friend Jean said, “This is truly urban living.”

Possibly the epitome happened in June. A man on a bike hollered into the house, “Hey can I buy one of your statues?” I stood on my porch and said no, they are not for sale. He said his mother liked them and wants one. I said, sorry, they are not for sale. The next day he came back and hollered in again. I went to see what’s what. He had a silver spray painted Buddha. He gave it to me explaining that he found it and thought I would like it. When I relayed this story to 2 local friends, they said, “That’s so Long Beach.” And now, after 8 months, I am accustomed to saying that to myself constantly, as friendliness rises up from the sidewalks, That is SO Long Beach. 

All new streets with the only familiar orientation being the ocean. The rising and setting sun assured me that I could not get too terribly lost. My GPS was my best friend. After a few google searches I noticed a pattern; nothing I wanted was more than 6 minutes away. The LGBTQ Center is 4.5 minutes. City Hall is 6 minutes. Vons and Ralphs are under 6 minutes and the master blaster was on a HOTTTT August day, there was a paleta shop 6 minutes from my house. Fifty flavors and no one spoke English. I got to stumble with my Buenos Dias, Muchos Gracias and Adios. It is no accident that the Museum of Latin American Art is 5.5 minutes, however the opening of the Frida Kahlo show was beyond an oyster’s pearl.

During Pride all of the statues wore rainbow leis. For the Dalai Lama’s birthday, I hung a Tibetan flag. Months later a woman introduced herself to me saying that she knew she wanted to know the woman in that house. You will find it hard to believe that she was saying it to a man who put up my flag pole and was my high school student in 1972. And just imagine, my letter carrier dressed as Dexter for Halloween delivery. The introductions began so fast and often that I had to admit I will never remember them all.

It’s a long, beautiful drive from Dana Rohrabacher to Alan Lowenthal. It’s a leap from posting support on facebook for $15 minimum wages to sitting at a city council meeting listening to workers stories of raising kids on $9 an hour. It is beyond my expectation that I know people running for City Council in my district and they know my name. I am bursting with national expectation over Hillary #45 but celebrating that now, for me, politics is local and I am engaged.

I did a couple of really interesting things in my new city and county. I went to a different church every week and I said yes to every meeting invitation for 5 months.

I have never had access to so many people who share many of the causes, ideas, and politics I hold. An organizer asked me to coffee which might have seemed normal to her but to me it was unheard of. I have stood in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel in protest, I have been on the Bluffs on World AIDS Day, I prayed in front of the courthouse for gun control. I read a poem at an open mic and spoke of an activist longevity at the Grrrl Collective. I have been welcomed at a Black Lives Matter meeting and talked on a panel on the Whitewashing of Stonewall. I have argued vehemently that transwomen are women and discovered that my lifelong friend is a living hero here in Long Beach.

 

My journey through the churches was equally rich and surprising. After one service on integration, I suggested to a woman that they might offer a Sunday service in Spanish, to be told that no one in the area speaks Spanish and that is why people live there. After the shooting in South Carolina, I took flowers to a service at the Grant Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church to experience song and community as I have never seen. 
Surreptitiously, even to myself, I was searching to see if there was a place to begin public ministry teaching Engaged Buddhism. Almost unbelievably, the perfect multi-faith church is on the next block where I walk the dog most days.

All of this leaves me with two big unknowns. My new friend Kenny and I talk about it often. There is so much going on, how can one choose and where is the greatest opportunity for service. We want to do them all.

Primarily, Long Beach needs affordable housing for Queers; seniors and the homeless. I want to be a part of that long-overdue ground breaking. Personally, I want to use my fifty years of activism to inspire and advise high-risk militant change-makers.

Finally, I want to remember the names of dozens of people who know mine. Just today, as I was walking my dog, a neighbor shouted from the back of her house, “Merry Christmas, Zoe.”
Merry Christmas, Dusty.
Merry Christmas, Long Beach. 

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.

The Implosion of a Mountain of Bigotry

There is something so palpable afoot in America today.  You can see it in print, feel it in the crowds, hear it on the radio, maybe even watch it at your family dinner table.  Things are changing.  Looking back it seems kind of funny that Barack Obama used the slogan Change You Can Believe In.  The fact of life is that change is always happening and all pain dwells in trying to stop it, control it, ignore it, deny it.
 
But the country is heaving with change these days.  The people who want no change (some even want to go backwards) are so morally, emotionally, spiritually bankrupt that they can only behave like bullies, village idiots, buffoons.  You can find them at town halls, on the Mall, protesting high school performances of Rent, forcing truancy on their kids to avoid hearing a Black man to tell them to work hard in school and to wash their hands.  They are birthers, deathers, yellers, shouters, blusterers; fundamentally they are gasping on fumes of their own exhale.

President Carter said that he believes some of the animosity being thrown at President Obama is happening because some Americans (mostly Southerners) do not believe an African American could be qualified to lead the country.  I think that is a very light touch on the mountain of bigotry that is bubbling underneath an ever thinning veneer.  I believe that this particular group of people cannot follow a Black leader, cannot be led by a Black leader.  And to go a bit deeper on this subject, they cannot reconcile that they made much of this possible through granting full citizenship to Black men, integrating schools, enacting affirmative action.  As I heard a woman on KPFK say, (I am sorry I did not get her name) “Once he got elected, some people were shocked that it happened and their hoods fell off.”  My opinion is that if you don’t see that this is all about racism, you need to do a lot of work on your racism.  To hear Mr. Gibbs say today, at the White House Press conference, that President Obama thinks this has nothing to do with race was so unauthentic, so insincere, so disheartening that I can only shake my head in disgust that it is so bad, Barack Obama cannot address this obvious racial bigotry.  I do understand that it would contribute to its volatility for him to name it; but it is pathetic.

We are in an arm wrestling tournament in regards to health care.  This is only and all about caring for others who did not accrue the ability to care for themselves.  On one hand, this is very, very complicated.  Are they poor?  Are they unable to work?  Are they lazy?  The racists might even think that not caring for the poor is one way to keep people of color from advancing – hoping for a high mortality rate, not just for babies, but for those who have no access to wellness, good food, clean water and clean air.  (and yes, they are really pissed off that one Barack Obama broke out of the hobbled pack)  But on the other hand it could not be easier; we have enough for every man, woman and child to be cared for and to deny that care is immoral.  I believe that only conversation that should be going on in regards to health care is how to take care of everyone ASAP.

Progressives are collecting their spirit, counting breaths, identifying causes, holding the line of sight on Equality.  All of this push back is ugly, scary, should I even say ~ violent but it means people can feel that change is a comin’. 

Professor Gates, Take a Letter

This is what I would have preferred to see ~

Dear Ms. Lucia Whalen,

I hope you like the flowers I sent.   They are just a small expression of how grateful I am that you had an eye on my house on July 16 and didn’t just look away when you suspected foul play.  It is really inspiring to know someone who does the right thing, takes on responsibility and calls 911.  So many people,  it seems these days, just turn on their heels, think it is none of their business and let crime scare them from what their conscience informs them to do.

I have a wonderful life here in Cambridge, this is a beautiful street and my house is a warm place to return to after traveling so far.  I was home at last, keys in hand and the door was jammed.  I bet it was the hot weather and humidity; it seems to happen every July.  The driver was nice enough to help this old, cane – assisted man get into his missed home. 

I have been told you too work for Harvard.  I have also been told that the media accused you of using racist language on the 911 call and that you never did.  You had to hire an attorney.  I am so very sorry that your act of kindness and courage placed you in danger and distress.  It would be my privilege to pay your attorney fees.  Please send the bill to me and accept this payment as my celebration of my good fortune, my neighborhood and gratitude.

Your grateful neighbor,
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Working on my Racism

As you can see in the blog below, the National Women's Law Center posted a correction in the comments.  I just cannot stop thinking about it.  Like hundreds of others, I signed up to blog on Fair Pay Day about the significance of the day.  God knows we need information about the wage gap and, surprisingly, that the day is not a celebration as so many seem to think.  It is not a holiday; it is a significator of hard work reaping different values based on sex.  It is based on the number 77.8 %.  The short hand of it is that a man and woman who start working fulltime on January 1, 2008, it will take the woman working to April 28, 2009 to make the money a man made by December 31, 2008.

I can remember carrying signs that said 59 and 63 cents so, now, to see this increase to 77.8 is slow but growing increase.  This has been a real pillar of my talks.  I tell college students that they borrow at the same rate but have to pay back with this disparity.  And a two adult household of gay men makes 200% but two lesbians make 156%.  And that a husband and wife working make 178%, etc.  Then I would look around the room and, with shame and alarm, I would say that Black and Latina women make even less with their gender compounded with their race.  I thought I was taking responsibility for the racial inequity.  But hidden in the top amount of 77.8 is a racism that I cannot stop thinking about. 

As I was told yesterday, 77.8 is not what I can make as a white woman.  White women make 81%.  After all of the years carrying a sign with this all important number I find out that this is the AVERAGE of what women make which, obviously, means that the disparity between the races is not only worse and wider but HIDDEN in this averaging.  I am just furious about this.  I am just in tears about this - I have participated in this amalgam of obfuscation, not that I think it is intentional but its not clear, not honest and carries a callousness that we, as caring people, have to examine.

As an activist, I often throw around the room the proper axiom that we are only as advanced as our least; how we care for the least is how we care for all; we can be known by how we treat the least among us.  There are so many ways to say it that it is attributed to King, Gandhi, Jesus, etc.  But how can we ever make this determination if it is all rolled into one?  Wouldn't the right thing be to go with the least?  Isn't the real wage gap the White men and Latina women = 41 cents?  The signs should read 59 cents.

Over the last year I have been giving some of my time to the Marriage Equality Movement, not without some internal conflict.  Let's face it the best thing to do would be to delete marriage from governmental lexicon entirely but, in any event, it is about equality and I deeply believe in that.  However I am concerned that the masses of men and women, upon winning the right to marry and have unencumbered access to over a thousand rights, will consider the job done and stop participating in the work for equality.  The men will go home the victors and the women will still be earning less, under represented, missing from the Constitution and this evasive, all important, equality will still be be needing advocates. 

One man who knew this was Harvey Milk.  He insisted on including women in politics and society.  (memo to Lance Black - what were you thinking??)  Just as Gloria Steinem will speak on a panel only if Women of Color are seated also.  Over 40 years of carrying signs about the wage gap and today, TODAY, I crack open in seeing that even my sign was racist.  I am not guilty.  I am not wrong.  I am evolving.