Anti-racism and the yogurt cup of despair: hello from SF, California

On day two of anti-racism school, I opened my eyes after listening to this poem and saw that my tears had created little dew drops on my name tag.

"Catalysts for change are everywhere." (Guest presenter, chicana organizer Betita Martinez)

But before I get to that, let's dispense with the recent past: I went home to Toronto, and it felt like home and I felt loved and grounded and happy with intermittent deep stress about moving stuff around so much. The comfort I felt was so sweet, it was almost excruciating. I hadn't felt that in 18 months.

Perhaps because it was so nice to be home, I know I am not going back too soon. My connections, my history, my safety net have not disappeared, though yes, my relationships have changed. I feel blessed with this incredibly supportive network around me, one that I relied on to love and nourish me—to a degree that sometimes felt smothering—and now that I have it, I can leave the nest.

I may be back in Toronto next year or in five years. The point is that I'm giving myself license to go where my passions and curiosity take me. Plus, I learned early on that there will always be ways for me to make a living and support myself. I'm not, it turns out, dependent on Toronto or Canada (who said I had to stay Canadian?). Why wait to find out what else there is to learn? “Do it now!” as my pa says.

What I Did On My Summer Gaycation
While I've been overseas, I had this nagging guilt that I wasn't really doing anything. I was just livin' the dream, seeing the world and accumulating some gorgeous and heart wrenching lessons along the way. Somehow, I genuinely hadn't noticed that in the past year and a half I'd published two magazine articles, an anthology essay, organized an anti-racism training, a Dec 17 event, performed 4 or 5 times (in three different towns), volunteered and networked with sex workers in two countries, attended conferences, demos, lectures and festivals, completed a painful 10 day meditation retreat and started a daily practice. Plus, lived the dream and accumulated some gorgeous heartwrenching lessons along the way. (boy did I learn some exciting things about the anti-trafficking “rescue industry”, anarchism, squatting, indigenous issues in majority-white organizing, how to bake with coconut flour and ride side saddle on a tippy motorbike. Oh, and nearly throw up from homesickness.)

I think this “doing-ness” is because I've internalized capitalist ethics around productivity. Do! make! produce! more! now! What if I'd just been sitting on a beach for 18 months? And that is one my lessons: yes, if I wanted to, I could “produce” sweet nothing and still be a valuable, deserving person. What I want to do though, is to continue to agitate. Specifically, with sex workers.

Anti-Racism for the crusty of heart
And that's how I find myself sitting in a very little room in San Francisco, reading about indigenous women's resistance, making plans to go into the Critical Resistance office this week and learn how to write responses to prisoner mail. I came to SF for the four month long Anne Braden Anti-racism training for white social justice activists and I am so in the right place.

Going more deeply into understanding racism and white supremacist history has been like peeling the lid off a yogurt cup. The lid is all the bitterness and cynicism that just sits there like a crust everytime I notice some new horrible manifestation of white supremacy (let's just say, oh, the way the canadian gov't delayed sending supplies needed to combat swine flu to the hardest hit communities: first nations). Now, peeling that lid back, I find a wellspring of pain and grief. I've rarely been able to articulate why I'm anti-racist or feminist etc because the reasons are far from my theories about justice. They are in my heart. I don't have any language to talk about this. This is my fumbling attempt.

No one deserves this more than you
Why do we want to make change? Why do I? It's something about how I know that we are all equally precious and “there is no such thing as the not-deserving”*. Every one of us is dear and inequity, that paltry word, is cruel. I still don't really understand this but it seems that cruelty towards you hurts me. Every time I remain complacent in my ignorance or deem someone an enemy (and ohhhh, it's tempting), I haven't just injured you, I've injured myself. I dunno. Why is it painful to read about uranium poisoning on navaho reservations? Or hate crimes against young black transwomen? I don't understand it but there you go. That pain is what's pouring out right now.

In a practical sense, I am simply learning tactics for building an irresistibly powerful multi-racial and international sex workers movement that united, will KICK ASS and WIN. But anti-racism is also about returning what was stolen from me: an awareness of my shared humanity with people of colour, who I and all white folks, have been systematically taught to view as less valuable.

So I have cried every session. And if I'm not crying, I'm outraged. My instructors are generously calling me “passionate”.

And it's great. When I'm done, my heart feels a hundred pounds lighter and I know I've left some of that sorrow behind. The yogurt cup of despair is emptying.

Deep Thoughts
I have already learned heaps. I have a list entitled “major intellectual revelations” (like how prisons are a capitalist extension of slavery and alternatives to punishment as a way of redressing harm. Damn!), I learned that I need, desperately, a community of allies (not just a few friends) who are dedicated to this process, and that I was so used to cringing when white people talked about racism that I never developed the skills to have those conversations myself. I already feel clearer about my political goals and more confident talking about race and racism. This isn't going to mean I am “not racist”. That assumes racism comes down to the personal attitudes and behaviours. That's part of it but it's hella more than that. I can however, be a conscientious objector to racist capitalism and become more human in the process.

The gossip
Everyone wants to know 1. what do we do in class and 2. are there babes?
The short answers are:
1. classes are 4 hours/week and run like a (well-oiled) workshop on a different theme each week. There are also substantial readings and a volunteer placement in a racial or economic justice organization in the bay area. Finally, there is a mentorship with another white anti-racist ally (I will be meeting her next week)
2. Hell yeah. Remember, I'm GAYLANDIA. But it's mostly in that comrade-y way where you just wanna talk about strategic decarceration. Or at least I do.

I'm a bit in love with the “leadership team” (there are like, nine of them) and each week I debate who I have the biggest political crush on. They offer a model of anti-racism that looks to me to be sustainable, kind, self-respecting, accountable, fierce and rigorous. They are good people, though at this point, still an amorphous heap of “good people”.

And I'm tentatively making new friends, asking folks out on friend-dates and nervously wondering if anyone will like me. Of course I bake cookies and ride my bike and this makes me super happy. I am still though, homesick and will always be for as long as I am out of Toronto. I accept that.

Good night from San Francisco.

* My classmate A said that. She also said “(we fight because) systems of domination cause suffering”. Basically, she says things that handily summarize entire ethical and political philosophies in ten words or less. Awesome.