After my last post, and realizing how strongly I came across with regard to the whole "Marriage is the WRONG FIGHT" thing, I think I need to dedicate a full post to my position on the entire Marriage thing and talk about it in full.
I think this is particularly because of the fact that I have a LOT of friends who had a vested interest in what was happening in CA, and that it is important to recognize that I'm not saying that what happened in all of those states was not important, that they shouldn't be hurt or upset about what happened, or that there has been such a large outcry from so many people in our country telling them/us that their relationships don't matter.
Here's the thing. With the end to sodomy, I feel like we had the chance to really sit down and strategize about where we wanted to go as a movement. And that we should have taken the precedent set in the establishment of privacy in the sodomy cases, that we should have focused on getting the government OUT of the business of marriage or of regulating relationships at all, in the first place.
The issues at hand are things like inheritance taxes that everybody other than married people have to pay, visitation and medical decision-making precedents, health and life insurance coverage, etc.
All of these things can be provided without needing to be connected to marriage. In fact, the reality that it is connected to marriage at the moment doesn't only leave out monogamous gay couples. It also leaves out polyamorous people (of which I identify), it leaves out families like my own that are parenting with more than 2 people even though there is only one primary monogamous couple within it, it leaves out adult people who are living with an elderly parent or grandparent, leaves out pairs or groups of elderly people who live together for mutual support and friendship (think the Golden Girls here, people!), and a ton of other people.
What we *could* have been doing in the past several years, instead of talking so much about how marriage was the key and that we wanted in, we COULD have been working towards getting the government OUT of marriage entirely. We COULD have been building coalitions with all of the other people above who have been left out of the marriage discussion, and adjoining our struggle for liberation with theirs, and with the betterment of not only the lives of a portion of our community, but to ALL of our community, and many people who otherwise would never have had any connection to us at all.
Instead, I've spent the last several years feeling like an outcast to my own community. Because every time we talk about the fight for marriage as if it's THE most important struggle in the movement, I hear a voice saying "you're a freak for not wanting monogamy, and you don't deserve to have the same rights as all of these couples." And yet, in the meantime, I had spent so many years feeling as if I'd given my life to the movement, and suddenly I was dedicating my life to a movement that considered me to be disposable.
So here we are now. Some states allow marriage, but many MANY others have constitutional amendments banning it. In all of those states, and in the ones that have not made either decision, what do we do? Where do we go from here?
This is where I believe we can finally start to work on the tasks that, in my opinion, we should have begun years ago when sodomy was finally struck down by the Supreme Court. Get the state out of the business of marriage. Set precedents that allow for people who are in intimate, loving relationships with each other to be able to visit and make medical decisions for one another, regardless of the type of relationship that they are in. Give us universal health coverage, so that no person is left without insurance, whether or not they are in a relationship with a partner who can provide it for them. Set a better precedent for dealing with inheritance and transfer of possessions.
We have a lot more work ahead of us to see the true differentiation between setting benefits for all people and only giving them based upon their relationship status. But it's the best and ultimate goal that we, as a movement, need to work toward. And in those states, like California, where people feel devastated and at a loss for what to do or where to go next, at least we can provide some direction. And in my opinion, it is sad that we had to go through the pain of having all of those couples needing to be told that their relationship doesn't matter by the state and by the majority of voters in their states, but I was not the one who chose the direction of the movement. I would argue that the people who decided that marriage was the real best fight owe all of those couples an apology, at least, for putting them through the pain and heartache. But even then, I don't believe that would help to heal the wounds that were dealt to them. Because in the meantime, their lives and relationships are still vulnerable. They still need their rights.
So let's not give up and give in to despair. Let's get out there and get them their rights. And get the rest of our communities their rights. Let's start networking and coalition-building. Let's focus on the core issues and needs that our community faces, and let's start fighting. And let's not give up until EVERYONE is covered by the same umbrella, and that EVERYONE is safe. We have a lot of work to do, and there isn't a moment to lose...
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
What This Means to Me - Bio
There are a lot of things that the election of Barack Obama means to me. There are a lot of very specific reasons why I feel so much more full of hope today than I did when I woke up yesterday. And in order to do that, I need to explain some context for me.
The first election I was able to vote in, I voted for Bill Clinton. I was excited, saw hope for the ability to take part in a political process, and saw the world as a much more clearly-defined fight of good versus evil. During that term, Bill Clinton turned around to offer us the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, only increased HIV/AIDS funding by a fraction of what we had hoped he would, and got us involved in several overseas military operations. We enacted sanctions against Iraq that served only to bolster Saddam Hussein's power base within that nation while crippling the livelihoods of most of the citizenship of the country. And finally, when Clinton himself failed to be there to support the queer community in our struggles, he found himself in a public scandal where he abused his power and position by engaging in a sexual relationship with an intern, and turned back to the same community he neglected, saying "you know what it's like to be marginalized because of your sexuality, why don't you come help bail me out of this now?" And most of the members of the leadership of our community seemed to take that line.
That was the guy I voted for. That was the result of my first vote as a full-fledged citizen of the United States of America. That was the action that I was supposed to be proud of.
In the meantime, I came out of the closet myself in the same year. After somebody scrawled an anti-gay epithet on my dorm-room door sophomore year, I reacted with probably more fear than should have been resultant of what was likely more a random act than something that was specifically targeted toward me. But I then channeled that fear, became angry, and realized that I didn't want anybody else to have to live with the fear that I had experienced. I sought out the university's multicultural division, attempted to resurrect an existent-but-dead gay-straight alliance, and though I was told that the organization wouldn't be able to have an official connection to the multicultural division, they expressed support for what I was doing.
In those days, I had effectively kicked down the closet doors. I determined that making the organization into a support group, while nice for the couple of students that showed up for meetings, would not allow for any sort of real or long-term change, I had determined that I wanted the organization to be more activist and social-change-based in nature. With a long history of Catholic upbringing, and a connection to various Catholic social justice teaching at my back, I was able to ward off and fight against all of the religious-zeal opponents to SAYSO's mission, and was able to sway public culture within the university.
At the same time, I took my anger at not being included in the multicultural division's umbrella and turned it around. I recognized that I had no right whatsoever to be angry at others not reaching out to help mend our issues as queer students, if I myself was unwilling to understand and take on the issues of the POC on campus. And thus I began reaching out to the AHANA communities on campus, attended as many cultural celebration events as I could, engaged in struggles, joined the multicultural task force, helped organize the diversity conference held at the school, and even became, my senior year, one of the co-directors of cultural celebrations on the student council.
Those same years also marked the height of activism surrounding the janitorial staff on the university. Before I'd entered it, the university had decided to fire the entire staff and re-hire them the very next day through an outsourcing company. This cut their wages substantially, meant that they were no longer eligible for benefits (including tuition remission for themselves and their children, which was a tremendous blow to opportunity), and that they were greatly more vulnerable in their positions. Over the course of years, students, faculty and staff had been mounting protest to the decision and asking for some sort of benefits for the mistreated workers to be enacted, that the university was responsible for their welfare. This all came to a head while I was at school, and I took part in rallies, teach-ins, a sit-in, and a hunger strike. I was one of two students chosen to sit on a committee with two faculty and two administrators to come up with university policy dealing with any outsourced workers. Including the right to organize.
The janitorial staff finally gained recognition of their union, were awarded their first union contract while I was there, and while struggle was everywhere, everything was possible. Few students wanted to take part in the goings-on with the gay-straight alliance, so I did most of the work on that front. I was one of about 15 key players in the unionization fight, and I was one of the most prominent white students in the multicultural relations division. When I was getting ready to graduate, and I approached a counselor because of all that I saw still needing to be changed, and felt as if I hadn't done enough, one of the most shining memories in my life was her response that "my name has become synonymous with change on this campus."
Even still, when I look back and see the changes that have occurred on the campus of that university, which has now enacted a full-fledged safe space program, is being recognized as the most queer-friendly catholic institution in the US, and has slowly grown to become a campus where diversity is a prominent issue, I can't help but look back with a sense of pride. Because in those days, the struggle was uphill, and I always felt alone, but I also felt that I could do anything. Even as a single person, I was able to move mountains.
I graduated in 2000, and instead of doing the expected thing and going to grad school, I went to live in the New Haven Catholic Worker. At the time it was entitled the "Cesar Jerez Catholic Worker" but has since changed its name to the "Amistad Catholic Worker". I took part in an action protesting Sikorsky Aircraft and the fact that it lobbied Congress to waive its own human rights standards for giving foreign military aid to Columbia, then turned around and was awarded a $13 billion dollar contract to construct Blackhawk Helicopters to the Columbian military. Helicopters which had already been known for use in terrorizing dissidents in the nation, including assassinating union organizers, supporting paramilitary groups, and other acts of state-sponsored terror. I was arrested for trespassing in an act of civil disobedience.
During this time, I saw the campaign of Al Gore and realized that his policies would have meant more of the same betrayals that Bill Clinton had heaped upon my first political act. Knowing that the Green Party had no chance of winning anything, I determined that I'd feel better voting for somebody who I believed in, rather than voting for somebody that I thought would merely be marginally better than the other guy who had a shot.
When Julie approached me about parenting, my first thought was an emphatic "hell no." But after a lot of thought, I realized that I had always wanted to be a parent as a child, growing up, until the point where I came out and simply *assumed* that I could never parent as a gay male. I also had very doubtful concepts about the prospects of relationships in general being unstable, and so I figured that if ever there was a way that I would bring a child into the world, that was the type of situation I'd do it in... a friendship, based upon concepts of community and mutual responsibility. I moved to Maryland in December of 2000, only six months after having moved into the Catholic Worker, and began a new life.
I spent many of the next years volunteering with Amnesty International, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, and was a member of a community advisory board for HIV vaccine trials. I got a job that I loved working as a conference organizer at the National Minority AIDS Council, and stayed there for three years.
But in 2000, Bush went into office, even based upon a stolen election. In 2001, at the first conference that I was organizing for the National Minority AIDS Council, the United States Conference on AIDS that was scheduled to begin on September 13th had to be canceled because of the terrorist attack that had occurred exactly 2 days earlier. I witnessed activists in those couple of days scramble to do whatever they could to get to the hotel, make it to the conference anyway, and put together whatever bare-bones program they could, because the mission was more important than the fear.
Bush cut HIV/AIDS spending substantially, many program funds were diverted into faith-based and abstinence-only programs, and after 3 years with NMAC, I was laid off due to a lack of unrestricted funds in the organization. I had identified so strongly as an activist that I took the first non-profit job I could find, as an office manager for an environmental funding organization for the Galapagos Islands. The mere three months that I spent there, I realized that I had a problem with an overinflated ego for the accomplishments I'd made, as I disdained doing filing and answering telephones as my primary job functions, couldn't bear the constant racism of the director and two of the other people in the office who could never stop talking about why Asians shouldn't be allowed to drive, and that the people of Ecuador couldn't figure out a way to run an organization properly if their lives depended on it, and how stupid they all were. That I was having to commute 2 hours each way to get there didn't help matters much. Three months later, it was mutually decided that the relationship wasn't working, and we parted ways. I took a job temporarily at Home Depot while applying to other activist jobs.
When I landed at the Family Pride Coalition as a Development Associate, I thought I'd finally landed home. I was greatly demoralized already by what had happened, but had seen a great deal of possibility. Unfortunately, I also learned that I was not the superman I'd envisioned myself as in college. Development work comes hard for me, and outside of grant writing, I haven't tended to be particularly successful at it. The people I invited to our major annual fundraising event never materialized, keeping track of the membership database gave me bad flashbacks of my previous job doing filing, and prospecting for corporate sponsorships was immensely straining. I managed to get through it, and was building their grant program from scratch, but after another short three-month stint, the Executive Director called me in and told me that, while she liked the grant work I was doing, she couldn't justify continuing to pay me a salary. I was out of a job again, and more demoralized than I had ever been before.
By this point, Bush took office again, and this time it was clear that he didn't steal it, but the American people offered it to him freely. I went crawling back to Home Depot, and promised to stay for a year so that I could add some degree of stability to my resume again.
If ever there was a time where I crashed and hit a low, that was it. The thing that kept me going at that point was the fact that Sara was pregnant with Dayton, and I continued to do volunteer and consulting work with the Task Force, Equality Maryland, Amnesty International, and the DC Rape Crisis Center.
But as my one-year commitment turned to two and then three, and I realized that I was straining my time while still not getting any jobs, and never feeling as if I'd come out of the state of burn-out that I'd gotten myself into, I had to cut myself off from all volunteering and other political activity completely.
What conclusions I'd come to were the fact that I'd literally given my life for the sake of change, and yet time and again, it felt as if organizations and the people within them were doing it for the sake of their own careers, and were willing to do anything to anybody in order to get what they wanted. I took very small consolation whenever I found out that the ED who'd been running Family Pride at the time of my departure had almost driven the organization into the ground, and that the ED who inherited the organization from her was having trouble paying the bills in the years to follow. I still had taken the firing as a blow to my own abilities, and to my own self.
This is where I lost all hope in humanity and the world. People had CHOSEN George W Bush to lead them, TWICE. I'd lost my job in the HIV/AIDS field because funding was becoming scarce there, and I realized exactly how unstable it was of a field. I realized that I couldn't bring myself to work in an organization that didn't share my values, but also realized how few organizations DO share my values. And again, Family Pride had been the Mack Truck to my limping pride, for it told me that I not only was not the superman who was able to accomplish anything with determination alone that I'd believed myself to be four years earlier, but that stability wasn't anywhere. Not only that, but what sacrifices I'd made for the community and the world in years past didn't matter now, and never would again. What mattered was what I was doing now. And what I was doing now, and still am, is working at Home Depot, a company that has anti-union policies, that despite reputation does NOT treat its workers well, and which is a company focused not on values but on profit.
Given all of that, I shouldn't wonder about the fact that I started feeling abandonment issues and an overwhelming need for validation from loved ones. In the days since, I've fallen into a pattern of neediness, obsession, and self-victimization in some sort of search for love that is supposed to give me the sense of meaning that I used to find in the world.
But today is a different day. Today, voters across the country have re-affirmed to me that we CAN make a difference again. That maybe the need for a connection with one another is more important than the desire to set ourselves apart. This morning, I've read exhortations from other nations that have been borderline adversarial with the United States, brimming with excitement for a new day, where we can work together WITH our fellow nations, rather than as a bullying dictator of nations. Today, I live in a world where economic recession will only continue so far before it backtracks and returns. Today, I live in a nation that is going to recognize the NEED for social programs, the overwhelming need for HIV/AIDS funding, the crisis that exists within Washington, DC itself with such high incidences of HIV infections.
Is this world or nation perfect now, and getting better? Not yet. The votes have still come in that have given California, Arkansas, and a number of other states constitutional amendments writing discrimination into law in those states. However, I also can't help but remember when the Romer decision came out, banning all sodomy laws, and thinking "Thank god, now we can really strategize our movement, get the government out of the business of determining what types of relationships really matter, and create a REAL social change in how our nation defines human interactions and relationships with one another." Before hours later, when Robin Tyler and other activists hijacked our movement, made public declarations that marriage was the next battlefront, and forced the entire movement into a stage-play that was inevitably headed towards this tragedy.
There is still a silver lining to that, though. We have our proof that Marriage was the WRONG FIGHT. We know now that the REAL challenge is social change. The REAL challenge is to get the government OUT of the business of marriage entirely, not to simply open up the window of marriage a little bit to include a few more people. The REAL challenge is to make *everybody* matter, not just a couple more than yesterday.
And today, with our first-ever Black President-Elect, we have the ability to DO that social change-building. We have the opportunity to change people's hearts and minds. We have the chance to enact universal health coverage, recognize the needs of ALL people within our nation and world, and work towards a better place for all of us. Not just the few and the powerful. Not just the Bushes, or the Clintons, or the Robin Tylers, or the HRC's, who can make back-room deals that cut out entire sections of our community in the name of marginal, incremental, or "pragmatic" improvements that set more obstacles towards future progress. Instead, we have opened up the path towards REAL progress. Towards a politics that does what is right, not just what is the next step that some privileged pundit has laid out for us.
Possibility has opened back up. We have a voice again. And we can express it. And with that renewed voice, I have felt empowered now in a way that I haven't since college, or that first doomed USCA. We can do it. With shoestrings and breadcrumbs, if need be. But we can do it. *I* can do it again. *I* have a voice, and I can speak out with it, to make certain that our movement is not hijacked again. To make certain that our country is not hijacked again. To make sure that our WORLD is not hijacked again. Because today, it is ours. I have a piece of that world again, and this time, I know that I cannot let it go. Because I've seen where that leads, and I never again want to go back into that dark, cold night.
The first election I was able to vote in, I voted for Bill Clinton. I was excited, saw hope for the ability to take part in a political process, and saw the world as a much more clearly-defined fight of good versus evil. During that term, Bill Clinton turned around to offer us the Defense of Marriage Act, Don't Ask Don't Tell, only increased HIV/AIDS funding by a fraction of what we had hoped he would, and got us involved in several overseas military operations. We enacted sanctions against Iraq that served only to bolster Saddam Hussein's power base within that nation while crippling the livelihoods of most of the citizenship of the country. And finally, when Clinton himself failed to be there to support the queer community in our struggles, he found himself in a public scandal where he abused his power and position by engaging in a sexual relationship with an intern, and turned back to the same community he neglected, saying "you know what it's like to be marginalized because of your sexuality, why don't you come help bail me out of this now?" And most of the members of the leadership of our community seemed to take that line.
That was the guy I voted for. That was the result of my first vote as a full-fledged citizen of the United States of America. That was the action that I was supposed to be proud of.
In the meantime, I came out of the closet myself in the same year. After somebody scrawled an anti-gay epithet on my dorm-room door sophomore year, I reacted with probably more fear than should have been resultant of what was likely more a random act than something that was specifically targeted toward me. But I then channeled that fear, became angry, and realized that I didn't want anybody else to have to live with the fear that I had experienced. I sought out the university's multicultural division, attempted to resurrect an existent-but-dead gay-straight alliance, and though I was told that the organization wouldn't be able to have an official connection to the multicultural division, they expressed support for what I was doing.
In those days, I had effectively kicked down the closet doors. I determined that making the organization into a support group, while nice for the couple of students that showed up for meetings, would not allow for any sort of real or long-term change, I had determined that I wanted the organization to be more activist and social-change-based in nature. With a long history of Catholic upbringing, and a connection to various Catholic social justice teaching at my back, I was able to ward off and fight against all of the religious-zeal opponents to SAYSO's mission, and was able to sway public culture within the university.
At the same time, I took my anger at not being included in the multicultural division's umbrella and turned it around. I recognized that I had no right whatsoever to be angry at others not reaching out to help mend our issues as queer students, if I myself was unwilling to understand and take on the issues of the POC on campus. And thus I began reaching out to the AHANA communities on campus, attended as many cultural celebration events as I could, engaged in struggles, joined the multicultural task force, helped organize the diversity conference held at the school, and even became, my senior year, one of the co-directors of cultural celebrations on the student council.
Those same years also marked the height of activism surrounding the janitorial staff on the university. Before I'd entered it, the university had decided to fire the entire staff and re-hire them the very next day through an outsourcing company. This cut their wages substantially, meant that they were no longer eligible for benefits (including tuition remission for themselves and their children, which was a tremendous blow to opportunity), and that they were greatly more vulnerable in their positions. Over the course of years, students, faculty and staff had been mounting protest to the decision and asking for some sort of benefits for the mistreated workers to be enacted, that the university was responsible for their welfare. This all came to a head while I was at school, and I took part in rallies, teach-ins, a sit-in, and a hunger strike. I was one of two students chosen to sit on a committee with two faculty and two administrators to come up with university policy dealing with any outsourced workers. Including the right to organize.
The janitorial staff finally gained recognition of their union, were awarded their first union contract while I was there, and while struggle was everywhere, everything was possible. Few students wanted to take part in the goings-on with the gay-straight alliance, so I did most of the work on that front. I was one of about 15 key players in the unionization fight, and I was one of the most prominent white students in the multicultural relations division. When I was getting ready to graduate, and I approached a counselor because of all that I saw still needing to be changed, and felt as if I hadn't done enough, one of the most shining memories in my life was her response that "my name has become synonymous with change on this campus."
Even still, when I look back and see the changes that have occurred on the campus of that university, which has now enacted a full-fledged safe space program, is being recognized as the most queer-friendly catholic institution in the US, and has slowly grown to become a campus where diversity is a prominent issue, I can't help but look back with a sense of pride. Because in those days, the struggle was uphill, and I always felt alone, but I also felt that I could do anything. Even as a single person, I was able to move mountains.
I graduated in 2000, and instead of doing the expected thing and going to grad school, I went to live in the New Haven Catholic Worker. At the time it was entitled the "Cesar Jerez Catholic Worker" but has since changed its name to the "Amistad Catholic Worker". I took part in an action protesting Sikorsky Aircraft and the fact that it lobbied Congress to waive its own human rights standards for giving foreign military aid to Columbia, then turned around and was awarded a $13 billion dollar contract to construct Blackhawk Helicopters to the Columbian military. Helicopters which had already been known for use in terrorizing dissidents in the nation, including assassinating union organizers, supporting paramilitary groups, and other acts of state-sponsored terror. I was arrested for trespassing in an act of civil disobedience.
During this time, I saw the campaign of Al Gore and realized that his policies would have meant more of the same betrayals that Bill Clinton had heaped upon my first political act. Knowing that the Green Party had no chance of winning anything, I determined that I'd feel better voting for somebody who I believed in, rather than voting for somebody that I thought would merely be marginally better than the other guy who had a shot.
When Julie approached me about parenting, my first thought was an emphatic "hell no." But after a lot of thought, I realized that I had always wanted to be a parent as a child, growing up, until the point where I came out and simply *assumed* that I could never parent as a gay male. I also had very doubtful concepts about the prospects of relationships in general being unstable, and so I figured that if ever there was a way that I would bring a child into the world, that was the type of situation I'd do it in... a friendship, based upon concepts of community and mutual responsibility. I moved to Maryland in December of 2000, only six months after having moved into the Catholic Worker, and began a new life.
I spent many of the next years volunteering with Amnesty International, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, and was a member of a community advisory board for HIV vaccine trials. I got a job that I loved working as a conference organizer at the National Minority AIDS Council, and stayed there for three years.
But in 2000, Bush went into office, even based upon a stolen election. In 2001, at the first conference that I was organizing for the National Minority AIDS Council, the United States Conference on AIDS that was scheduled to begin on September 13th had to be canceled because of the terrorist attack that had occurred exactly 2 days earlier. I witnessed activists in those couple of days scramble to do whatever they could to get to the hotel, make it to the conference anyway, and put together whatever bare-bones program they could, because the mission was more important than the fear.
Bush cut HIV/AIDS spending substantially, many program funds were diverted into faith-based and abstinence-only programs, and after 3 years with NMAC, I was laid off due to a lack of unrestricted funds in the organization. I had identified so strongly as an activist that I took the first non-profit job I could find, as an office manager for an environmental funding organization for the Galapagos Islands. The mere three months that I spent there, I realized that I had a problem with an overinflated ego for the accomplishments I'd made, as I disdained doing filing and answering telephones as my primary job functions, couldn't bear the constant racism of the director and two of the other people in the office who could never stop talking about why Asians shouldn't be allowed to drive, and that the people of Ecuador couldn't figure out a way to run an organization properly if their lives depended on it, and how stupid they all were. That I was having to commute 2 hours each way to get there didn't help matters much. Three months later, it was mutually decided that the relationship wasn't working, and we parted ways. I took a job temporarily at Home Depot while applying to other activist jobs.
When I landed at the Family Pride Coalition as a Development Associate, I thought I'd finally landed home. I was greatly demoralized already by what had happened, but had seen a great deal of possibility. Unfortunately, I also learned that I was not the superman I'd envisioned myself as in college. Development work comes hard for me, and outside of grant writing, I haven't tended to be particularly successful at it. The people I invited to our major annual fundraising event never materialized, keeping track of the membership database gave me bad flashbacks of my previous job doing filing, and prospecting for corporate sponsorships was immensely straining. I managed to get through it, and was building their grant program from scratch, but after another short three-month stint, the Executive Director called me in and told me that, while she liked the grant work I was doing, she couldn't justify continuing to pay me a salary. I was out of a job again, and more demoralized than I had ever been before.
By this point, Bush took office again, and this time it was clear that he didn't steal it, but the American people offered it to him freely. I went crawling back to Home Depot, and promised to stay for a year so that I could add some degree of stability to my resume again.
If ever there was a time where I crashed and hit a low, that was it. The thing that kept me going at that point was the fact that Sara was pregnant with Dayton, and I continued to do volunteer and consulting work with the Task Force, Equality Maryland, Amnesty International, and the DC Rape Crisis Center.
But as my one-year commitment turned to two and then three, and I realized that I was straining my time while still not getting any jobs, and never feeling as if I'd come out of the state of burn-out that I'd gotten myself into, I had to cut myself off from all volunteering and other political activity completely.
What conclusions I'd come to were the fact that I'd literally given my life for the sake of change, and yet time and again, it felt as if organizations and the people within them were doing it for the sake of their own careers, and were willing to do anything to anybody in order to get what they wanted. I took very small consolation whenever I found out that the ED who'd been running Family Pride at the time of my departure had almost driven the organization into the ground, and that the ED who inherited the organization from her was having trouble paying the bills in the years to follow. I still had taken the firing as a blow to my own abilities, and to my own self.
This is where I lost all hope in humanity and the world. People had CHOSEN George W Bush to lead them, TWICE. I'd lost my job in the HIV/AIDS field because funding was becoming scarce there, and I realized exactly how unstable it was of a field. I realized that I couldn't bring myself to work in an organization that didn't share my values, but also realized how few organizations DO share my values. And again, Family Pride had been the Mack Truck to my limping pride, for it told me that I not only was not the superman who was able to accomplish anything with determination alone that I'd believed myself to be four years earlier, but that stability wasn't anywhere. Not only that, but what sacrifices I'd made for the community and the world in years past didn't matter now, and never would again. What mattered was what I was doing now. And what I was doing now, and still am, is working at Home Depot, a company that has anti-union policies, that despite reputation does NOT treat its workers well, and which is a company focused not on values but on profit.
Given all of that, I shouldn't wonder about the fact that I started feeling abandonment issues and an overwhelming need for validation from loved ones. In the days since, I've fallen into a pattern of neediness, obsession, and self-victimization in some sort of search for love that is supposed to give me the sense of meaning that I used to find in the world.
But today is a different day. Today, voters across the country have re-affirmed to me that we CAN make a difference again. That maybe the need for a connection with one another is more important than the desire to set ourselves apart. This morning, I've read exhortations from other nations that have been borderline adversarial with the United States, brimming with excitement for a new day, where we can work together WITH our fellow nations, rather than as a bullying dictator of nations. Today, I live in a world where economic recession will only continue so far before it backtracks and returns. Today, I live in a nation that is going to recognize the NEED for social programs, the overwhelming need for HIV/AIDS funding, the crisis that exists within Washington, DC itself with such high incidences of HIV infections.
Is this world or nation perfect now, and getting better? Not yet. The votes have still come in that have given California, Arkansas, and a number of other states constitutional amendments writing discrimination into law in those states. However, I also can't help but remember when the Romer decision came out, banning all sodomy laws, and thinking "Thank god, now we can really strategize our movement, get the government out of the business of determining what types of relationships really matter, and create a REAL social change in how our nation defines human interactions and relationships with one another." Before hours later, when Robin Tyler and other activists hijacked our movement, made public declarations that marriage was the next battlefront, and forced the entire movement into a stage-play that was inevitably headed towards this tragedy.
There is still a silver lining to that, though. We have our proof that Marriage was the WRONG FIGHT. We know now that the REAL challenge is social change. The REAL challenge is to get the government OUT of the business of marriage entirely, not to simply open up the window of marriage a little bit to include a few more people. The REAL challenge is to make *everybody* matter, not just a couple more than yesterday.
And today, with our first-ever Black President-Elect, we have the ability to DO that social change-building. We have the opportunity to change people's hearts and minds. We have the chance to enact universal health coverage, recognize the needs of ALL people within our nation and world, and work towards a better place for all of us. Not just the few and the powerful. Not just the Bushes, or the Clintons, or the Robin Tylers, or the HRC's, who can make back-room deals that cut out entire sections of our community in the name of marginal, incremental, or "pragmatic" improvements that set more obstacles towards future progress. Instead, we have opened up the path towards REAL progress. Towards a politics that does what is right, not just what is the next step that some privileged pundit has laid out for us.
Possibility has opened back up. We have a voice again. And we can express it. And with that renewed voice, I have felt empowered now in a way that I haven't since college, or that first doomed USCA. We can do it. With shoestrings and breadcrumbs, if need be. But we can do it. *I* can do it again. *I* have a voice, and I can speak out with it, to make certain that our movement is not hijacked again. To make certain that our country is not hijacked again. To make sure that our WORLD is not hijacked again. Because today, it is ours. I have a piece of that world again, and this time, I know that I cannot let it go. Because I've seen where that leads, and I never again want to go back into that dark, cold night.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Daring to Hope
I've been extremely skeptical coming into this election year. For me, it has seemed far too much that change has been too far away. That so often, our allies were even the ones who placed barriers in front of our goals for change.
Particularly in the past few years, being disillusioned and cynical, I've been keeping my distance from the political process, from the activist world that I have generally otherwise maintained as a part of my identity. I have not had very much hope in the world.
Even seeing the progression of the campaigns, I've maintained a certain emotional distance, thinking that it might be more of the politics of the same, even with the players being different in some way.
And yet, as I watched the election results roll in, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by emotion. Not only have we made a blip in history by electing the first black president of the United States, but we have seen a tremendous amount of change already. People came out to vote in record numbers today. People who have felt isolated from the political process, who have considered themselves to be outsiders to the decisions that have been made on the Hill, came out and voted in numbers that have not been seen before.
For years, I became jaded to the sense of apathy that I couldn't bear to witness amongst my peers, amongst the general public, amongst so many people that I've had contact with. And for once, I have to admit, ashamed though I may be about it, I began developing that hard shell of apathy even within myself.
The significance of what just happened today is more than just the fact that we have the first-ever black President. What happened today is far more significant than that. For the first time since I can remember, I feel as if the country is finally OURS again. That it is not a nation that is run by a few powerful families like the Bushes, it is not run by oil companies, the military-industrial complex, or any other industry. It is OURS.
I haven't felt this way in a very long time. The world seems possible again, in ways that I'd given up on since college. Just watching the speeches, I can recognize a connection to the process that I don't believe I've ever felt before. I feel like I can re-engage in the struggle, and dedicate myself 100% once more. That the work I've done before, and that the work I'll do in the future will MEAN something.
For the first time in a very long time, I am actually proud of my country again. I don't have to look at a flag and think that it is one of "their" tools. But I can look at it and say that it is a symbol of OUR country. That change is just as intrinsic to the symbol now as the hurt and war and bloodshed that I used to associate it with has been.
Today, I celebrate a new vision of America. I celebrate the fact that I live in a different country than I did before, because I live in a country that is so much more possible than the one I've been living in. I have hope for a new day. I have hope that tomorrow will truly be better than today.
I hadn't realized how far I'd sunk or how jaded I'd become until this moment. How much I'd allowed myself to be beaten down. Until now, when all doors are open again. Now that we live in a nation, a world, that has so much more possibility than it did before. That so many of us can step forward and work together toward a future that is so much brighter than I'd imagined it to be.
So from today, I am going to make several commitments. I commit to never allow myself to lose hope the way that I had again. I commit to re-engaging in the political process. I commit to making my life into a tool and instrument for positive change in the world again. I commit to looking into the future and seeing the possibilities inherent within it. But most of all, I commit to hope.
Particularly in the past few years, being disillusioned and cynical, I've been keeping my distance from the political process, from the activist world that I have generally otherwise maintained as a part of my identity. I have not had very much hope in the world.
Even seeing the progression of the campaigns, I've maintained a certain emotional distance, thinking that it might be more of the politics of the same, even with the players being different in some way.
And yet, as I watched the election results roll in, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by emotion. Not only have we made a blip in history by electing the first black president of the United States, but we have seen a tremendous amount of change already. People came out to vote in record numbers today. People who have felt isolated from the political process, who have considered themselves to be outsiders to the decisions that have been made on the Hill, came out and voted in numbers that have not been seen before.
For years, I became jaded to the sense of apathy that I couldn't bear to witness amongst my peers, amongst the general public, amongst so many people that I've had contact with. And for once, I have to admit, ashamed though I may be about it, I began developing that hard shell of apathy even within myself.
The significance of what just happened today is more than just the fact that we have the first-ever black President. What happened today is far more significant than that. For the first time since I can remember, I feel as if the country is finally OURS again. That it is not a nation that is run by a few powerful families like the Bushes, it is not run by oil companies, the military-industrial complex, or any other industry. It is OURS.
I haven't felt this way in a very long time. The world seems possible again, in ways that I'd given up on since college. Just watching the speeches, I can recognize a connection to the process that I don't believe I've ever felt before. I feel like I can re-engage in the struggle, and dedicate myself 100% once more. That the work I've done before, and that the work I'll do in the future will MEAN something.
For the first time in a very long time, I am actually proud of my country again. I don't have to look at a flag and think that it is one of "their" tools. But I can look at it and say that it is a symbol of OUR country. That change is just as intrinsic to the symbol now as the hurt and war and bloodshed that I used to associate it with has been.
Today, I celebrate a new vision of America. I celebrate the fact that I live in a different country than I did before, because I live in a country that is so much more possible than the one I've been living in. I have hope for a new day. I have hope that tomorrow will truly be better than today.
I hadn't realized how far I'd sunk or how jaded I'd become until this moment. How much I'd allowed myself to be beaten down. Until now, when all doors are open again. Now that we live in a nation, a world, that has so much more possibility than it did before. That so many of us can step forward and work together toward a future that is so much brighter than I'd imagined it to be.
So from today, I am going to make several commitments. I commit to never allow myself to lose hope the way that I had again. I commit to re-engaging in the political process. I commit to making my life into a tool and instrument for positive change in the world again. I commit to looking into the future and seeing the possibilities inherent within it. But most of all, I commit to hope.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Writing My Book
So I have a major challenge ahead of me.
In the past, I've kind of viewed myself as a sort of competition between these two sides of myself that include being a selfish, manipulative jerk, which includes all of my cynicism, my calculating of other people's motivations and efforts, etc. And the other side being the more "reasonable" me, which is willing to do the right thing despite having been hurt or slighted, to do whatever I can to help people, and to try to make the world a better place in some way.
Apparently, there's a third component in there somewhere, which my therapist not-so-subtly described as the "core self". That both of those other Brants are themselves just an extension of my defense mechanisms and insecurities. In effect, they are the accumulation of my defense against being hurt, and my desire for affirmation within the world. But that neither one of them is truly me.
The problem is... I didn't even have an idea that some third me even existed, let alone that it is my core self. Which really gets down into the dirt of the statement "I don't know who I am." Apparently, my assignment is to delve down into myself, find that self, and start feeding it, because it's apparently been getting starved out for the past 30 years.
Ok, sounds like a good idea. But how do you learn more about and start feeding something that you still have trouble imagining in the first place? It feels to me like somebody telling you that you have a third psychic eye, and that all you have to do is tap into it to start moving objects around with your mind. Just do it. Where do you even start with something like this?
At least in theory, I'd say that I'd need to determine all of the things about me that have nothing to do with building up a wall against other people, or wanting to help anybody. I then have to take out all of the things that I enjoy that are simply reminders of things that I have done or used to do with other people, because those tend to muddy the waters a lot. Then, I start to think about games and things, as the fact that I am an avid Dungeons and Dragons player might be something that distinguishes me a bit, but there are a ton of questions even within that. Like the fact that I'm always trying to find a non-standard type of character to play, the whole concept that I like about it that it makes you feel as if you have some sense of control in a world that is bigger than you, where you don't have that same sense of control in the real world. In general, I'd say somewhere in there, all of my issues of all of my other two selves get wrapped up in there, so I don't think that I can use D&D or other role-playing games as examples there...
But with all of the questions that get raised in that, then it even goes so far as to be the same with movies! Do I only shy away from scary movies because of some bleak view of the world that they denote, or the basest parts of human nature that my affirmation-seeking self would like to steer away from? Does an enjoyment of action movies come from that same desire to wrest a sense of control and order in the world in the face of chaos and oppression? Do I land on comedies just for the sense of community gained from giving in to laughter? Is my sense of being drawn to cartoons somehow related to the loss of self I experienced from my early childhood, and some sort of innate desire to find that core self?
At the point where I can no longer trust that any part of my likes, desires, or activities is anything other than a part of those complex and competing internal struggles, then truly, how do you even begin to try to find a self that is somehow other than those struggles?
I feel as if I'm plodding blindly through a marsh without a guide or any resources, trying to find some sort of miraculous clue to a treasure that I don't even know what it is.
Or, going back to my writing example. I've sat down to write the book of my self, but I don't have any notes, there are no guidelines or bases for the topic, and I'm suffering from writer's block.
In the past, I've kind of viewed myself as a sort of competition between these two sides of myself that include being a selfish, manipulative jerk, which includes all of my cynicism, my calculating of other people's motivations and efforts, etc. And the other side being the more "reasonable" me, which is willing to do the right thing despite having been hurt or slighted, to do whatever I can to help people, and to try to make the world a better place in some way.
Apparently, there's a third component in there somewhere, which my therapist not-so-subtly described as the "core self". That both of those other Brants are themselves just an extension of my defense mechanisms and insecurities. In effect, they are the accumulation of my defense against being hurt, and my desire for affirmation within the world. But that neither one of them is truly me.
The problem is... I didn't even have an idea that some third me even existed, let alone that it is my core self. Which really gets down into the dirt of the statement "I don't know who I am." Apparently, my assignment is to delve down into myself, find that self, and start feeding it, because it's apparently been getting starved out for the past 30 years.
Ok, sounds like a good idea. But how do you learn more about and start feeding something that you still have trouble imagining in the first place? It feels to me like somebody telling you that you have a third psychic eye, and that all you have to do is tap into it to start moving objects around with your mind. Just do it. Where do you even start with something like this?
At least in theory, I'd say that I'd need to determine all of the things about me that have nothing to do with building up a wall against other people, or wanting to help anybody. I then have to take out all of the things that I enjoy that are simply reminders of things that I have done or used to do with other people, because those tend to muddy the waters a lot. Then, I start to think about games and things, as the fact that I am an avid Dungeons and Dragons player might be something that distinguishes me a bit, but there are a ton of questions even within that. Like the fact that I'm always trying to find a non-standard type of character to play, the whole concept that I like about it that it makes you feel as if you have some sense of control in a world that is bigger than you, where you don't have that same sense of control in the real world. In general, I'd say somewhere in there, all of my issues of all of my other two selves get wrapped up in there, so I don't think that I can use D&D or other role-playing games as examples there...
But with all of the questions that get raised in that, then it even goes so far as to be the same with movies! Do I only shy away from scary movies because of some bleak view of the world that they denote, or the basest parts of human nature that my affirmation-seeking self would like to steer away from? Does an enjoyment of action movies come from that same desire to wrest a sense of control and order in the world in the face of chaos and oppression? Do I land on comedies just for the sense of community gained from giving in to laughter? Is my sense of being drawn to cartoons somehow related to the loss of self I experienced from my early childhood, and some sort of innate desire to find that core self?
At the point where I can no longer trust that any part of my likes, desires, or activities is anything other than a part of those complex and competing internal struggles, then truly, how do you even begin to try to find a self that is somehow other than those struggles?
I feel as if I'm plodding blindly through a marsh without a guide or any resources, trying to find some sort of miraculous clue to a treasure that I don't even know what it is.
Or, going back to my writing example. I've sat down to write the book of my self, but I don't have any notes, there are no guidelines or bases for the topic, and I'm suffering from writer's block.
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