Past Tense

It feels crazy to talk about Fed Up Queers so completely in the past tense, like those were the glory days, and they're so over. But the facts are that I now live in the burbs and am surrounded by mostly heterosexual people, rarely get to do any street activism, and don't have a go-to group of people to make noise with.

I get riled up when people talk about how all of FUQ's drama was because all of us dykes were sleeping together. Sure, there was some of that, but a lot of the drama was an entirely different kind of passion. We cared about our message. We cared about what was right. We cared about making a difference, rattling people's comfort with the horrible things happening in NYC. And it felt fantastic. Exhausting too, but exhilarating to be part of a group that spent every week fighting for what mattered. Not all of our decisions were on target, and we spent a lot of time just spraypainting messages, which also meant a lot of time running from the police. But we also were in the thick of it. We got 10,000 people to show up for a demo in just four days, we got the Diallo protests rolling, we drew attention to every tranny murdered in NYC, Giuliani and his people knew who we were and knew they could expect us to cause him trouble wherever he went. I remember how it felt hearing "Fed Up Queers" on the radio, and on the tv news. The group drove me insane, and I loved them dearly. I remember how it felt when the whole thing fell apart because one person wanted to promote "inter-generational sex" as some radical cause, and all the dykes who'd suffered sexual abuse couldn't stop crying, and we couldn't get him to leave, and so we folded. I remember how angry I felt, and powerless. FUQ had been my power, and it was being taken away by a sexual predator. The whole thing made me mute. How typical.

I wasn't vegan then. I mean, I had been vegan for years and years, but then, when I moved East, it eventually fell away because I didn't know anyone who did animal rights. I was broke and depressed and dealing with massive police brutality in my little town. My head was elsewhere. When I moved to Brooklyn and met other queer activists and eventually became this powerful little gang called Fed Up Queers, I felt like my brain finally un-numbed, and I started to remember things that mattered to me. I remembered them in detail.

When FUQ was infiltrated and our actions started to fail, when we would get arrested before our actions had gone down, we decided to go to a skillshare in the swamp to learn some new tactics. We sold a bunch of "Brooklyn Out of Palestine" t-shirts to fund the trip, and it was there I went vegan again. The whole gathering was vegetarian, and really mostly vegan. My girlfriend and I had decided to spend the three weeks there eating vegan, dabbling with making the commitment while someone else was preparing the food.

Learning to climb was hard for me. Some of our gang took to it like monkeys, understood the physics, learned the knots easily, just excelled. It was slower for me: I had more weight to haul up that rope, was insanely scared of heights, terrible at math. I made it to the top of the scaffolding, but had a breakdown up there before I could come down. I was grateful to meditate with a group at the camp, felt it helped even though it felt funny, self-indulgent.

Then the fights started. Two guys who were too good to camp with us and were staying in hotels decided that the camp being vegetarian was racist. The whole production shut down, hundreds of people in multiple workshops, everyone stopped everything to discuss meat eating and race. No matter that indigenous Brazilians talked about cattle production destroying their land, no matter that indigenous Canadians talked about how, although they weren't vegetarian, that factory farms were against everything they believed in. No matter that people of every color, veg and not, talked about how the camp's basis in environmental activism required that it be vegetarian. Everything stopped to let two guys (whose favorite word was maricon) talk about how they'd lose their culture if they didn't eat meat. And they did eat meat, brought in styrofoam containers from a deli every day.

For fear of being called racist, the camp ceased being vegetarian, the (Iranian) director quit, the kitchen staff quit, and everyone went home having learned half of what they intended to learn. But my girlfriend and I were vehemently vegan from then on, having so many people to make up for.

The camp fell apart, and, despite our best efforts, FUQ fell apart too. I stayed friends with those queers, and sometimes did activism with some of them. All but the sexual predator, and the one woman who supported him and who I ceased to trust. None of them ever trusted our care for animals, either, always thinking "there are more important things" and forgetting that there are many things all at once.

I read a friend's writing about FUQ and about seeing Le Tigre in the 90's in a tiny space in Brooklyn and how we were all freezing and about an action in Central Park in the Ramble when gay men where getting arrested there. And I can tell that she hasn't felt that exhilaration since, that momentum, that belief that anything can happen. And that makes me sad. We've given power over to that child molester, to that infiltrator, to those silly men who think they'd lose themselves by not eating meat. We've gone silent.

water bottles for good

Here's a disheartening example of rational pro-people, pro-earth arguments being co-opted by conservatives. An Arizona immigration activist with the group No More Deaths has been charged with littering and banned from a wildlife refuge for leaving water jugs for migrants in the desert. Read the whole story here.

sean bell, in retrospect

I'm a little late to party: I'm just learning to use video. This unthrilling footage was taken on May 7, 2008 when there were coordinated acts of civil disobedience throughout NYC in response to a "not guilty" verdict for the cops who murdered Sean Bell. This symbolic blockade took the street and blocked the Queens-Midtown tunnel for about half hour during rush hour traffic. The idea was to shut the city down, but that didn't quite happen.
- Pictures from One Police Plaza
- Pictures from Harlem
- Report from the Brooklyn Bridge
- Report from the Triborough Bridge

It didn't happen because when black people are routinely murdered by the NYPD, the only people who become enraged enough in any numbers are black people. At the one big march that happened right after Sean Bell died, there were very, very few faces that were not black. People like to believe the dirt throwing stories that are drummed up: that the victim had been arrested once on drug charges, that he'd been rumored by another drug user to have an illegal weapon. But neither of things, if true, justify what happened.

killed by NYPD, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

The fact is that Sean Bell wasn't high when he was killed, and had no weapon. Undercover officers followed he and his friends out of a bar, drew guns on them without identifying themselves as police offers, and shot three unarmed men fifty times.

There's no doubt that the amount of force endorsed by the NYPD is outrageous, and that an enormous number of people are murdered by them every year; for being black, for being mentally ill, for being homeless or sex workers.
I've blogged some of these images before, but feel today, like it's worth posting them again. When Amadou Diallo was killed, and a group of mostly white queers kicked off the demonstrations, Al Sharpton was moved to say "I am a Fed Up Queer." Though honored by that statement, I think it means there aren't enough allies for the black community. We're way more comfortable assuming victims are some kind of troublemaker, that there must have been good reason.

the real cost of prisons

It's fascinating watching the Rockefeller Drug Laws be knocked back a bunch of steps. Drug arrests and arrests of vendors or homeless people in public space are so much of what the NYPD is about. The entire Hudson Valley is covered in prisons, many of which are filled with people being held for absurdly long sentences on drug charges. The bulk of the arrests were made just for possession. Of course those people should be freed.

It has an interesting edge, though, because for the first time in decades, prison populations may shrink, and some prisons may close. Of the three prisons near my home, at least one is filled primarily with drug offenders. Maybe two. (Different people give different reports, and prison websites are useless.) One expert on Democracy Now said whole upstate towns would be closing down when their prison closed. It feels really strange to live in a town that may see collapse because its evil main industry is being challenged.

Reading an entirely different article about Queens County Farm Museum (agriculture in the city, we like that), they make reference to sending animals to slaughter at a slaughterhouse on Long Island that uses prisoners as workers for "job training." More like training your free workers, a.k.a. slaves, to be killers. Crazy!

Things like this shouldn't surprise me. After all, we live in a country where people couldn't figure out where Timothy McVeigh got his killer instinct. Duh, the military! There's nothing quite as brilliant as locking up innocent people and training them to be killers.

Image from the book The Real Cost of Prisons, from PM Press.

broke, eating meat

Will all this joblessness make people finally break down and grow veggies for dinner and collect rainwater off their roofs, or will it just make people hold up convenience stores with guns? (You know how sometimes crises make people deal with things they've long been putting off? Of course, some people just shut down and go ballistic.)

This goes out to all those people who don't go vegetarian because they don't give a crap about animals, or are "sympathetic" to animals but think they are superior to them. The Matt & Nat blog has a nice list for those who don't care about animals but do care about the environment (as if keeping those things exclusive of one-another is possible!). For those who need a non-veg source, here's the the facts & figures from a non-veg chef. There are the world poverty reasons to eat less meat. Then there are the environmental racism reasons, or concern for workers.

Yeah, yeah, there's health, too, but people seem to care about that as little as they care about animals. (Here's an article that puts them all together, just in case you do care about all these things. Enjoy your fresher food and your fresher water, even if you haven't got a nickel in your pocket!)

drilling for gays

I went to one of the protests last week about the CA gay marriage ban. I wasn't happy there. Again and again I don't have all the words to explain why. I can bristle at the "God Loves Gay Marriage" banner, I can point out to everyone that 95% of attendees are white men, I can joke about how everyone there seems to be on their cell phone, and still I'm never eloquent about saying why the demo didn't work for me, why this will never be my issue.

Like in other cities, NY had a huge crowd. I hadn't seen a crowd so big so white so male at a demonstration for ten years, since Matthew Shepard was murdered, to be exact. This was the first thing in ten years that made Chelsea come out to a demo.

Gay marriage has never been my thing. As Ms. Mel of readspeakresist says, "I feel like fighting for marriage is the gay equivalent of Drill Baby Drill. It's antiquated. It's a short-term solution and it's only useful to some of us." It causes other damage, that isn't spoken about. It's surface, no structural changes required, a continuation of the "we're just like you" charade. Like mattilda says "no on eight isn't really no on hate."

Two days after this massive demo, about which I'd received a zillion emails, Teish Cannon, a trans person of color, was murdered in Syracuse with barely a whisper. I found out about her murder tonight, and only by accident. No demonstration, no email campaign, no mention anywhere but the local paper.

Gay marriage wouldn't have helped a deviant queer like Teish Cannon. And I'd rather work for her.

election night in brooklyn

As luck would have it, I found myself in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn on election night. Nervous as all get-out and knowing there'd be no sleep, I walked to the store for a beer. On a street where I've never gotten more than a nod, various groups of people chatted me up, all as worked up as I. I was asked at least 5 times in 2 blocks who I'd voted for. And, for the first time in my life, met teenage boys hanging out on their stoop absolutely obsessing over the returns, and afraid to watch. A group of men set up to play chess all sat instead fixed on the tv they were powering from the light post.

I knew I had to vote for Obama. I often vote Green or abstain, but knew that this time, even though it was certain New York would go blue, I couldn't take the risk. Not only did he need to win, it needed to be a landslide.

I knew how it ended before the station I was watching announced it. People screamed. They ran out of their houses, and screamed some more, shaking their arms in the air and jumping. Kids chanted, to no-one in particular. For hours, cars honked and the people inside shouted to anyone they saw.

I surprised myself by crying. It was huge, and I was grateful to have experienced it in this primarily Black neighborhood to really feel how huge.

I noticed agent inkysocks cried, too, when she encountered teenage boys (by definition, unengaged) who cared passionately about what goes down. Now, to make national politics continue to be relevant to this many young men, to this many people on a whole. To make all the days besides election day matter.

**Thanks to BlackPast.org for the photo. That vote was about the improvement of schools in Black neighborhoods in Seattle.

no more tricks

As much as Derrick Jensen tells me hope is the wrong way to go about things, I still find myself hoping.

As centrist as I know Obama is, as much as I know about his pro-Israel stance, as convinced as I am that he's going to attack Pakistan, I still get swept up in this emotional current, this excitement that something could be different. That a black person (albeit, still a straight, rich, christian, man) with a non anglicized name could be president of the U.S. That he might remember all the little people, improve health care, extend care to the environment, and generally be less of a capitalist scuz. I hope. And I plan to push him, with your help. I prefer to dismantle our government from the bottom, but could still use someone a little less evil on top.

Happy halloween, and happy end to our scary regime! Here's hoping.

remember

remember sakia gunn, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

See more from the murdered queers set at the aboveground pool activist archive.

renata hill back on trial

Free the New Jersey 4

connected

Sunny Taylor was born in Tucson, Arizona, my hometown. She lived near Davis Monthan Air Force Base, which was the reason my military family was in Tucson. She was born with a muscle development condition that has her in an electric wheelchair. Many children in the neighborhood are born with disabilities, and people suffer from an increased rate of cancers.

The mostly Latino and Chicana neighborhood's drinking water is toxic because of military waste.

Sunny Taylor is a painter and writer. Her subject matter includes disability, environmental racism, the military's free pass to pollute, and factory farms. She is a disability rights activist, a vegan animal rights activist, an anti-military activist, an environmental and anti-racist activist. Though the media likes to focus on her painting with her mouth and toes, what is much more interesting is how she so easily connects the impacts of war and industry on human and other animal bodies.

I've never been much of a fan of classical oil painting, but Sunaura Taylor has proven that it can still be radical, and very moving. The painting pictured here is "Chicken Truck", from this year, and is a ten and a half foot wide glimpse of hundreds of broken bodies.

bloc

blockades, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

Sometimes there's an emergency, and your only choice is to form a blockade. This can be done using trees, boats, tubes, barrels, locks, sticks, wheelchairs, tripods, and bodies bodies bodies.

safe for whites

Created for The Unapologetic Mexican by Joaquìn Ramòn Herrera

free the new jersey 4

If the recent flurry of gay weddings has you thinking that queers have it all cushy and nice, familiarize yourself with the case of the New Jersey 4, and do some support work for these young women.

• Article from Workers World
  
• Free NJ4 events & artwork
  
• Interview with Terrain Dandridge
  
• Excellent coverage on Women's Space (with photos)
  
• More Stabbings, Please
  
• My initial reaction: bash back

gay marriage

While "the gays" have been celebrating in California, I've been mum on gay marriage. That's because I'm not into it. I like ritual sometimes, I like queers being committed to one another (monogamous or no), and I get warm fuzzies when I hear about those couples who've been together for 60 or so years.

But in my mind marriage is a stopgap. It might get a couple of queers health insurance. But shouldn't we all have healthcare, whether we're in relationships or not? It may help a queer or two not lose their child or their home when their lover dies. But that really hasn't been tested yet, has it?

Gay marriage doesn't solve our problems. And when everyone's atwitter & aglow over their new right to marry, I feel like a jerk pointing out those problems. My co-worker reinforced that feeling this week when he quoted a gay man as hanging his head and saying "I miss having something to be angry about."

Sorry ya'll. I like a party as much as the next one, but that's no reason to invite the government to regulate my relationships, no reason to invoke old institutions that secure property. My dear old friend mattilda bernstein sycamore always comes to the rescue when I am without words, and I stumbled on this Alternet post from mattilda today. It's not just about wanting to be different.

I'm not going to spend my time fighting against gay marriage. I still haven't recovered from a late eighties gay rodeo protest where our signage (as queers against animal abuse in rodeos) wasn't clear enough, and the local paper clumped us with the protesting Christians. Still, I would like to be able to give a clear answer when people ask me about it, or assume I'm on the bandwagon fighting for my right to marry.

P.S. As unattractive as it may be to some, I'm still angry. Remember Sakia Gunn?
P.P.S. Image courtesy of Gay Shame SF.

jesse helms dead

For a queer artist of my era who is pro-choice, vehemently anti-racist, and has done of lot of AIDS activism, the death of Jesse Helms has an impact. When Reagan died the media immediately forgot his (many) sins, and focused on his charm, how loved he was. It may be tempting to go there when someone dies, but both Reagan and Helms unapologetically ruined the lives of many, many people, and are responsible for the horrible deaths of many more. When Reagan died, little shrines celebrating his death popped up around NYC, and I couldn't help but be grateful for them. The collective memory loss was too horrible without something countering it. I'm not celebrating the death of a toddering old man, but I am happy about the end of the influence of one BIG white supremacist in the U.S. Goodbye, Jesse, and good riddance.

spotted in harlem

miltary equals slavery, originally uploaded by abovegroundpool.

birth

The senior member of my queer family, my friend, died this winter. While I'm crawling around looking for buds or other signs of early spring, two baby girls, twins, were born into that family. They're so tiny, still, as to barely have caused a ripple; tiny squirrels, a few pounds, wrapped like burritos.

The missing I have for Bob Kohler aches more with the appearance of these tiny girls. He would have had something to say about their birth. He may have been grouchy about queers feeling a need to have kids. But I bet a nickel he would have been interested in them, felt tender, wondered what good parts of each of us their presence might reveal.

Bob had many careers, one of which was running a store. The Loft was on Christopher Street, the "gay strip" of New York's West Village, where Bob also lived for 50 of his 81 years. He fought for queers, for kids, for animals, for people of color, for the homeless, for the HIV+ and disenfranchised people of all sorts for all of those years. The Loft had a sign that Bob liked to reminisce about. It said, "straights welcome, if they behave." It's funny, but he was serious about the store being a sanctuary, safe for the queerest of the queer. That it be theirs. Ours.

I birth abovegroundpool in Bob's activist spirit. I picture him at the helm in his New Year's sequined vest. Fabulous.