What is Radicalism?
there have been two conversations happening in the radical women of color corner of the blogosphere that have been on my mind, even when i wasn’t feeling my blog at all and couldn’t write—
1.) Who You Calling Radical?? For folks that identify as a woman of color, do you identify as radical? What is media justice and media reform? What are their points of tension? Points of potential collaboration?
2.) What are woc media-makers and community organizers ready for?
This week I got a wonderful email from a sister about my blog and it kind of inspired me to get back to writing, especially the things I want to write about… This humble space is for her, for Charlie, for Anita, for all the folks who’ve said that they needed a place and let me be a part of their life, whether it was through comments, emails, postcards, video chats, conferences, media collectives, tweets (oh twitter, you evil thing…who i love)..
The fact that this is for us and us alone, that I am most concerned about our own healing, our own communities, and that I don’t really write for anyone else, makes me feel that this is why I identify as a radical woman of color. People say we are wrapped in our own bitterness, drama, or naive ideals (put your big girl panties on—wtf?) but if everyone else is working on the advancement, the assimilation, who does the work with our own? Where do the conversations about our own pain happen? When do we get to have a space that centralizes our own work, instead of packing it in a pretty 101 package for anthologies for white feminists, for soundbytes in speeches to nondisabled people, for the mainstream? When does it get to be about us, about you?
We’ve really changed the way we do youth organizing here in NC and no longer focus on getting as many disabled young folks as we can on boards, speaking at conferences, etc. I don’t think folks have caught on to what we’re doing yet (which is why we’re able to keep doing it with no problems) but there is a different kind of energy in our collective. Our work feels more meaningful than ever before. Folks trust our vision because it’s not self-serving. They want to be involved because it’s not a resume thing for them, it’s about directly making their community better. Making it better today, tomorrow, not some slow, gradual process that requires us to change who we are.
If radical is about getting to the root and not putting your time into the bullshit, then I’m proud to be radical.
And this is why I love love love you. Reading this is like warm sunshine on my face.
Sylvia/M
13 Mar 09 at 10:47 AM
:)
It’s the same in the way some people talk about the “ND movement” as if we were a paramilitary organization, with secret meetings, a manifesto and so on, when in reality it’s just about civil rights, I never understood what’s radical about that.
“If radical is about getting to the root and not putting your time into the bullshit, then I’m proud to be radical.”
I second that!
Miss Gonzo
13 Mar 09 at 11:18 AM
*laughs* really?? to me ND work is COMPLETELY radical… it questions everything and even as a NT person, i feel empowered by it : )
next blog post is going to be about that!
cripchick
13 Mar 09 at 11:42 AM
I love my buiddy . I wish at times I was more eloquent but fuck it if it works and is true
Blackamazon
13 Mar 09 at 3:38 PM
cripchick,
well then comrade! *salutes*
Looking forward to that next blogpost!
Miss Gonzo
14 Mar 09 at 4:05 AM
“People say we are wrapped in our own bitterness, drama, or naive ideals (put your big girl panties on—wtf?)”
See, I don’t understand these criticisms at all. When I see the work radical women of color are doing, I see lots of awesomely practical work filled with love that takes the needs of everybody in the community into account *from the beginning* (as opposed to, “oh, we’ll worry about Group X later”) and doesn’t get caught up in theory and abstractness. (Holy cow, that was a terrible run-on sentence).
Like the Boarding School Healing Project. The Allied Media Conference. BFP’s posts about gardening and self-sustainability. (Okay, and everything else she writes ). The Sylvia Rivera Law Project. The Empowered FeFes. Kortney Ryan Ziegler’s film “Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen.”
And this isn’t “putting on your big-girl panties”? Wha?
Tera
15 Mar 09 at 10:45 PM
yes! yes!
nosnowhere
16 Mar 09 at 1:33 AM
Making it better today, tomorrow, not some slow, gradual process that requires us to change who we are.
–yes yes fuck yeah. i am so sick of hearing how we just have to be patient and slowly folks will see the light and then we can acquire the power to change our communities. we can do it now.
thanks for writing this. its exactly what i needed to hear.
(i told you always seem to find the poetic in the difficult space…;)
hey can we xpost this for ravens eye?
pretty please?
maia
16 Mar 09 at 9:45 AM
hey yall,
out of town right now so will write back soon. maia, yes– crosspost!!
xoxo
cripchick
cripchick
16 Mar 09 at 8:21 PM