carven-blog1

[carven-blog1]

Barbecues, fireworks, lots of beer and red and white all over the city. That’s what I see on Canada Day. Even when I’m not looking, I can hear the “Oh, Canada” chants from a kilometre away. But what are you really celebrating? Reflect on that for a minute. Patriotism? Pride? Freedom? Or maybe you just like a good party. I, however, cannot find a reason to celebrate alongside you.

In my opinion Canada Day is a hypocritical joke and no reason for fireworks, given its dark and fragmented history. I choose to not celebrate because of its colonial history and the untold human suffering it revels in. As an indigenous woman, I see Canada through a cracked, bloody lens, not through the rose coloured maple leaf-shaped glasses this country provides. I know there are indigenous and non-indigenous allies that share this sentiment, so I know I’m not alone.

Every day, we are forced to live with the continued theft of our land and resources—the broken treaties, the staggering number of missing and murdered sisters, the genocide of our peoples and the refusal to recognize our place in this nation. But on Canada Day, it hurts me to see people celebrating this country so blindly and forgetting the atrocities and lifetime of oppression that they’re praising.

We know this country was founded on corruption, lies and the dispossession of my ancestors, but still today it is not easy growing up indigenous. Why would I celebrate a country that is OK with the fact that I am three times more likely to go missing than a non-indigenous woman? Or that I am five times more likely to die a violent death? We live in a country that believes that proper housing, water, food and schooling are a privilege for a few and not a RIGHT for ALL. In a country where one in three people aren’t aware of the attempts made to exterminate our identity through the Indian Residential School system, where the political design was to assimilate us (along with the ongoing trauma and legacy it has left).

If what I’ve written comes off as a false representation of Canada Day, then I ask you to take a look at your way of life, your access to opportunities and your privilege.

If you have benefitted from colonialism in one way or another, than those responsibilities are yours to own. (To new citizens:, I encourage you to immerse yourself in learning about the history of this country and its indigenous peoples)

Ideally, for me, Canada Day would encompass everything it pretends to be: freedom, sharing, unity, prosperity and a healthy nation-to-nation relationship. But the relationship between Canada and its indigenous peoples today remains broken with an urgent need to be repaired.

Still, if you must celebrate Canada Day, make it a day to commemorate the lives lost as a result of this colonial system. Make it a point to learn about our history and its continued effects. But don’t be proud of it. Reflect on what this day means to the indigenous people on the land you are living on that has given you so much. Lastly, don’t forget to ask yourself, “How am I contributing to the nation-to-nation relationship?” and how we can work together to remedy the colonial legacy of this country so that one day it can be a place worth celebrating for us all.

[carven-blog1]

「住客力量、爭取正義」 

TENANT POWER, SEEK JUSTICE

 Landlords have too much power and, on currently on Turtle Island, settler landlords are maximizing a power that is based on a colonial, racist legal foundation. Through the neoliberal capitalism.

Found this awesome guy Bong speaking at Seattle City Hall!

"HI I’m Bong Nguyen. With Recover the World. The renter’s nation. I’m with Greg, the very first tenant that came out that said “Carl Haglin, my slumlord, is jacking up my rent to get rid of me in this Roach-infested place.” Seattle landlords are not mom-and-dad operations. They are not Mrs Murphy coming around to collect the rent while she walks her cow Bessie.Those folks are long dead in our history of owner-landlords.The modern Seattle landlord is a venture capitalist, looking to hedge their funds to the max market rate rents without mitigating financial and defective damages to our renters.They will say they are a mom-and-pop operations, but in protecting their slumlord profit, they are corporate landlords and they are profiteering on unchecked neoliberal markets."

video link: http://www.seattlechannel.org/FullCouncil?videoid=x65517

start at 36:13

As well, Beverly Erins spoke: “I’m a renter here and I’m a writer. I am the child of an immigrant father and an African American mother. I want to say that [this bill] is a social justice issue. And I can speak to that as a Black woman, ‘cos I can see everyday how black women and girls are impacted by this housing crisis and other injustices that they face.”

[carven-blog1]

The following translated excerpt is from a Chinese article published on The Initium, written from the perspective of a first-generation American immigrant from Mainland China. The article is fully into English, as part of a zine project by a diversity of people of Chinese descent. Included in the zine is an open letter by Hertencia Petersen, Akai Gurley's aunt. To read and share the full article, the link is

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7D52uU5UT63a0t6MWcwNzlRblU/view?usp=sharing

Translators are Carven Cheuk Fung L and AY (from Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories). Our decision to translate this is not because this article is a reflection of our own opinion.

The zine is released to the public on the day of a grassroots-organized event in Seattle on July 9, 2016: The Chinese-Black Racial Divide: Peter Liang & Police Brutality.

Event link: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/290422077974771/

Here is a list of facts I want to share in the beginning, ahead of the translated article.

Fact 1: Akai Gurley was a 28-year-old black man from Brooklyn, where he lived with his girlfriend Kimberly, their 2-year-old daughter Akaila, and her 6-year-old sister Kamyia.

Fact 2: On November 20, 2014, while was Akai visiting a friend at Brooklyn's Pink Houses, they tried to take the elevator from the top floor. When it did not arrive, they decided to take the stairs.

Fact 3: NYPD Officers Peter Liang and Shaun Landau had just started a "vertical patrol" in the stairwell. Officer Liang, a rookie, entered with his flashlight and gun out. When he heard a sound, he moved his finger to the gun’s trigger and fired a shot down the stairwell. The bullet hit Akai in the chest. Akai ran after hearing the gunshot, not realizing he had been shot, and collapsed two flights down. Akai was unarmed and had not committed a crime.

Fact 4: As Akai laid dying, Officers Liang and Landau argued upstairs for over 4 minutes whether or not to call in the shooting to their superiors. Officer Liang then searched the stairwell for the bullet casing in order to hide the evidence. Officer Liang then encountered Akai on the lower floor, in a pool of blood and urine, and did nothing; Officer Liang did not call for an ambulance or try to save Akai’s life.

Fact 5: While Akai's friend tried to save Akai with CPR, getting instructions from a 9-1-1 dispatcher who a neighbor had called, Officers Liang and Landau walked around Akai’s body and went to another floor.

Fact 6: On February 11, 2016, a jury convicted Peter Liang of second-degree manslaughter, for killing Akai without intent, and for official misconduct, for failing to aid Akai after he shot him. Shaun Landau received immunity for his testimony against Liang. Both officers remained on the NYPD’s payroll until the jury’s verdict.

Fact 7: Peter Liang will be sentenced on April 14, 2016. For being responsible for killing Akai and doing nothing to help him, Liang faces up to 15 years in prison. Both Liang and Landau, in defense to a pending civil suit, claim that Akai Gurley is responsible for his own death. Liang is still protected by the NYPD, which guards his home 24/7.

---

Title: Why did the usually quiet Chinese people stand up for Liang?

“My children are also second generation, and I don’t want them to suffer racism.”

For this reason, 50-year-old Chinese American Chen Jian-wei got up before 7am on Saturday, drove an hour and half from his Baltimore home to Washington D.C., and joined the rallies supporting police officer Peter Liang.

There, Chen and about 800 protestors were gathered on the lawn north of Washington Monument. Most of them were first generation immigrants from mainland China, all ranging in age and with many above 50.

...

Within the 12 day span of the time from the day of Peter Liang’s verdict to the time of the rally, the trending topics and hashtags have changed. Discussion range from topic to topic. One is online commentators’ collective asking of why seemingly guilty white officers are not indicted for police brutality while Peter Liang, as an ethnically Chinese officer, is likely to be sentenced for this very particular situation that led to the death of Akai Gurley’s death. Another is a call for people to gather by the north side of the Washington Memorial with petitions and to donate to Peter Liang’s family. Yet another is a call for people to organize various marches across America. There is also discussion around the case and the logic of arguments within the case itself: the jury, law, whether Peter Liang was neglectful or reckless, etc. Some people have also voiced, as a reminder, for the need to think about how the organizing of the rally will shape relationships with Black communities, especially whether a rally can cause tension...

At the rally, on the lawn, there were about a dozen of people lined up to deliver speeches in English at the rally podium. Most of them are first-generation Chinese American immigrants. There were another dozen Chinese people handing out flyers that are bilingual in Chinese and English, its design made by and its printing expense paid for the grassroots Chinese rally attendees.

Rally attendees were waving proudly their American flags and their self-made rally signs. They read as such: “Fair Judgment for Peter, and Not Selective Justice,” “One Tragedy, Two Victims,” “Accident Not Crime,” “No Scapegoating,” “Support Peter Liang,” and “Shame on NYPD.”

...

On that day of the #justice4liang rally, Chinese American Janelle Wong, professor and head of the Department of Asian American Studies in University of Maryland, made a clear decision not to participate.

On that day of the #justice4liang rally, Chinese American Janelle Wong, professor and head of the Department of Asian American Studies in University of Maryland, made a clear decision not to participate. She tweeted with the hashtag #justiceforakaigurley, to support the verdict that found Liang convicted. Twitter remained a social media front where Liang’s supporters have yet to develop a popular presence.

Wong has written three books on why Chinese Americans have historically had a low degree of political participation. In her op ed in the Baltimore Sun, Wong writes, “I’ve spent more of my adult years trying to figure out how to get Asian Americans more involved in American politics.”

“Maybe I was supposed to feel encouraged by this large scale protest or to applaud my Chinese American community for this awakening of ‘political consciousness’. But I felt a bit worried.”

She explains her concern by drawing from historical analysis:

The political mobilization happening in Chinese American communities can be seen as part of a longer history. In the mid-1800s, Chinese laborers were recruited in part so that white employers would not have to answer to the demands of newly freed black slaves. In the 1980s, when black leaders organized protests against Korean American grocers, a predominantly white media encouraged a narrative of "black-Korean conflict" that deflected America's eyes from the ways in which federal and private lending policies, zoning laws and restrictive racial housing covenants created residential segregation that excluded both black and Asian Americans from economic and political power. Instead of questioning why both groups faced widespread employment discrimination and were locked out of the mainstream economy, media stories focused on interracial tensions.

 Wong also writes:

True political empowerment can be achieved, however, through political education and voter registration. More importantly, it can happen through a more coherent political agenda that includes calling for necessary and systematic reforms to police accountability across the board. It can happen if Asian Americans work together for the policies that public opinion data show they support at high rates: universal health care voter protections and access to language assistance, and economic redistribution. Asian Americans can also work together to confront nativist rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiment that is leading to hate crimes against people of color and religious minorities across the nation. So, yes, by protesting Peter Liang's conviction, some in the Chinese American community showed they could mobilize politically, but there is still a long road to true political empowerment and representation.

She once saw, in Wechat, that dissents about the verdict on Liang had turned into some malicious speeches attacking black people. During the nationwide protests, there had not been any serious conflict between Chinese Americans and African Americans. In the Philadelphia protest, a quite respected black priest Robert P. Shine was even invited for a speech, expressing his stand with Chinese American protesters on the same front. But these did not cancel Wong’s worries.

She used a news title in the New York Post as an example: “Asian And Black Communities Square Off”. In the news article, the New York protest was reported with a standoff scene between Chinese American protesters and about 20 African Americans who holding signs “Jail killer cops” and “Justice for Akai Gurley”. “The mainstream media would define the event in such terms.”

Wong thought that, in the long run, this protest would not do much good to the political participation of Chinese Americans, because the protest organizers only focused on individual case, rather than the systematic, nationwide racism against Asian American police officers. “This protest did reflect the frustrations of the participants, but only showed a very narrow-minded, short-sighted kind of racial justice.”

In a similarly reflexive manner, California lawyer Meng Xiao-jie’s recent piece on the Liang-Gurley case reminds Chinese Americans to be reflexive, about why and how Chinese Americans rarely stand in solidarity with people of colour. She asks her Chinese readers to stand with black people and to demand an end to systemic injustice against police officers of ethnic minority backgrounds.

[carven-blog1]

It is extremely chilling to me that there has yet to be an easily searchable article written from a gay Chinese man or, even, a queer/trans* Chinese folk about Lin Jun and Liu Qian, honouring them and connecting their murders to the greater white supremacist violence that communities of colour face, in various ways.

Police believe that Lin Jun, a 33-year-old engineering student from China living in Montreal, was brutally murdered by fugitive Luka Rocco Magnotta in a twisted case that has been in the headlines in Canada all week. Lin’s body was dismembered and severed limbs were mailed to the government in Ottawa. A manhunt for Magnotta is underway.

[carven-blog1]

White people othering anti-colonial struggles, my critique of liberal & leftist nostalgia, and my thinking through Andrea Smith as a Queer Person of Colour (aka Part I --the QPOC piece)

On his Feb 20 2015 show, Bill Maher said that former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani accused President Obama for not loving America and voiced his concern for America this way: “it’s not racism; it’s socialism, or possibly anti-colonialism [that is the problem.]” In response, Maher and Reiner looked baffled; Bill Nye and Elahe Izadi, the only woman of colour on the panel, remained silent. Lebowitz quickly explained that we are to interpret Republican's hatred for "anti-colonialism" to be "the anti-colonialism of the African and Indian... [someone interjects "Rhodesian"] ...against the British.” When director Rob Reiner said that " *WE* are the colonies to the British," Lebowitz quickly responded that the 1950's is the time of Black and Native anti-colonialism that the Republicans were responding to.

I've definitely seen the word "anti-colonialism" being used in Black and Native organizing in white supremacist colonial America. With all respect to anti-colonial activists in Rhodesia, how the hell are these white American liberals not first speaking to Black struggles in Ferguson, Native people's organizing against the Keystone Pipeline, and Black and Native organizing against colonial violence to life and land? This colonial oppression is *not* the 1950s. It is before the 50's, during the 50's, and most certainly, after the 50's with systemic incarceration of Black people and Native people, especially communities of Black and Native activists.

It's very interesting for me to see how a discussion of colonialism in relation to the United States played out on mainstream TV among white celebrities, as a Guangdongren trans-Pacific Han folk who is learning and is attempting to navigate philosophies of goodness and Earth-caring from my ancestry and those that are embedded in the indigenous laws of the Coast Salish nations (whose traditional land I live on). It is important for me to comment because of my lived experience being racialized and gendered, in Canada, as a generically Chinese (and not specifically Han) man who has Canadian citizenship and who speaks English with a non-foreign Canadian accent. It is perhaps even more important to me because of my own political identity as a member of a politicized community of anti-colonial people of colour, which definitively commits me to working with all those who have been "minoritized by oppression"1 and to become very mindful in distinguishing white supremacist logics (in the words of Cherokee intellectual Andrea Smith). Smith succinctly explains white supremacy in the context of occupied Turtle Island:

The idea underlying the three pillars of white supremacy is that in fact we are not commonly oppressed. White supremacy doesn’t operate through a singular logic. It operates through multiple logics. I offered three logics, but maybe there are ten, I don’t know. The point is to see that these distinct logics are related to each other – they intersect and inform each other – but they are still distinct. When these distinct logics of white supremacy are recognized, we can also see that our goal should not be to organize around a common oppression, but rather to organize around building strategic alliances based on where each one of us is situated in the political economy. This understanding of the distinct logics of white supremacy also helps us realize that people-of-colour organizing can no longer be solely about organizing where we are oppressed, but must also involve organizing around where we are complicit in other peoples’ oppressions. These pillars don’t simply oppress you in whatever sphere of white supremacy you might be located. They also oppress you by making you think that the way to survive is to take part in the other pillars. So, for instance, Native peoples attempting to survive genocide often join the military and fight Orientalist wars abroad. People-of-colour organizing, therefore, must simultaneously be about organizing around complicities.

This post I'm writing will primarily work off of Smith's articulation of white supremacy's operation in liberal democratic white settler colonial states. Because the majority of what drives my analysis on the Bill Maher panel is my interpretation of Andrea Smith's various works, and, as someone who has not organized with her, it's important I make clear my intention of using her work. 

I use her analysis of white supremacy and I quote her specifically because of the writing's radical community-building potential and because of her mindfulness to not reproduce hierarchies. I see her as a community organizing leader whose work has contributed to people of colour solidarity work significantly. In her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, Smith speaks to the importance of her identity as a community organizer and her acknowledgment of co-organizing with INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, which is an organization that "builds coalitions around the intersections of state violence and interpersonal sexual and domestic violence from a grassroots-organizing, rather than a social service delivery, perspective." She acknowledges that "from [her] organizing efforts... [she has] had the opportunity to learn from countless indigenous women and women of color who have helped shape [her] analysis about violence.... [and that] analysis is always a group effort that arises from the context of struggle." The mindfulness that she exemplifies in her writing has me inferring that her activism work is reflexive. I infer that she is mindful of her access to getting interviews from various non-community-oriented media that capitalize on her status as a published author of a book popular in women's studies curricula and/or on the perceived image of Andrea Smith as a PhD-holding Native woman whose activist words are university-educated, digestible and intelligible.

In organizing an open mic performance evening event that prioritizes the voices of QTIMIPOCs (queer, trans*, intersex, mixed, Indigenous, persons of colour), I have found Andrea Smith's theory on white supremacist logics to be very helpful in articulating the space I want to hold. I have used it in our event community document on whiteness, which explains why white people are not to perform at the open mic and why we organizers of the open mic ask white people to be mindful of whiteness and of how white people take up space. My investment in ideas that question white supremacist logics and have radical community-building potential come from my own lived experience of white anti-Chinese violence in gay men's health research and service delivery forums, in gay social circles, in LGBTQ nonprofit work and in academia, and my own lived experience navigating various Hong Kong diasporic communities that are imbued with a cis-hetero-patriarchy of British colonial and Confucian influence. Having spent a short but memorable amount of time connecting with the Indigenous camp leaders (namely Audrey Siegl) at Oppenheimer Tent City in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and having seen online the police arrests of Indigenous campers at Tent City, I have found Andrea Smith's analytic on Indigenous genocide has given me clarity on my approach to advocating for state-funded social housing and on how the manifestation of white anti-Indigenous colonial violence must be understood categorically to include the moderate force employed by police officers. I quote Andrea Smith's work in the need of liberating myself in a way that does not oppress anyone else and that breaks down the interlocking systems of oppression.

Many white self-identifying Canadians and Americans critique their countries' contemporary imperial policies and discourses that are more related to capitalist expansion and American imperialism overseas, but fail to theorize their own complicities in colonial discourses that are integral to the white-settler-colonial discourses of anti-Indigeneity, anti-Blackness and Orientalism, as proposed by Andrea Smith. Many proud leftist Canadians/Americans, especially white people, speak nostalgically of a New Deal, Great Society and pre-Nixon-Carter-and-Reagan era, and speak similarly of Canada under Trudeau's Liberal government and 1960's Canada as Tommy Douglas (Canadian Member of Parliament) led his democratic-socialist provincial and federal parties to champion for Canada's publicly funded universal health insurance system. But whiteness is such that people do not think about how these leftist gains are within a white supremacist colonial system that oppresses the communities it racializes. Smith writes in The Colonialism That is Settled and the Colonialism That Never Happened that "[w]hile both Black and Native studies scholars have rightfully argued that it is important to look at the distinctness of both anti-Blackness and Indigenous genocide, sometimes this focus on the distinctness obscures how, in fact, they are mutually reinforcing."

In thinking through this quote and about Black and Native communities, I urge everyone to seek out the works of Black and Native communities (be it in the form of published writing or community organizing methods) that critically examine the affects of white people's nostalgia for a liberal democracy that many white liberals believed had defined the good times and that need to be won back, and the actual workings of white supremacy logics during those times: Tommy Douglas's federal leadership as the Official Opposition 1961-1971 and Indigenous People's resistance to child welfare involvement in response to the Sixties Scoop, Democrats' lack of leadership in working with Indigenous communities to uphold traditional fishing rights and curb state policing2, the anti-Indigenous displacement and sacred land destruction caused by the construction of Kinzua Dam in 1960 under the Kennedy administration, American and Canadian state surveillance on activists of colour (COINTELPRO) and self-identified lesbian/gay/homosexual/homosocial activists (read: Gary Kinsman's Canadian War Against Queers), President Johnson's debatable stalling of safeguarding Black people and all oppressed people's right to vote, the cruel attitudes and conditions that imprisoned people of colour had to face (read: Assata Shakur's autobiography) and continue to face, the historic and ongoing systemic police brutality and incarceration against Black people and Native communities, etc.

What I do in this piece is not to prescribe to Black and Native community organizers a political vision in my name. What I hope to do is build capacity within my community to build new relations and strengthen existing ones, in servitude of ending oppression for all. As a queer person of colour, I gently caution people of colour that our political imagination will be curtailed when we greatly compromise our time to learn from and dream with diverse communities of colour in order to fulfill our time commitment to left-leaning nonprofit boards, nonprofit advisory committees, academic disciplines and 'progressive' partisan groups that consist predominantly of privileged white folks or of the most privileged members from our ethnic/racialized community. I caution against the simplistic understanding of white benevolence in liberal/socialist movements and the perceived innocence of investing in the state as a site of change for all people of colour. For example, any opportunities people of colour received from the Office of Economic Opportunity, part of President Johnson's Great Society legislative agenda, must be understood through the analytic of settler colonialism: Eurocolonial land theft and racialized poverty/displacement/abuse/torture.

In attempting to claim distance from George W. Bush, Stephen Harper, the Republican Party and the Conservative Party of Canada, many white people remain ignorant that the liberal/social democracy with which they identify has often reproduced and continue to reproduce settler colonialism. Many white people can openly identify with anti-war activism, socialist policies, and justify the efforts to recuperate American and Canadian democracy, with no understanding of Indigenous people's earth-based spirituality and labour in tending and defending the land and of the white supremacy's anti-Indigeneity, anti-Blackness and Orientalism settler colonial discourses.

I will quote Andrea Smith's thinking through Kiristina Gail Sailiata's and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's writing to drive home the point that recuperating democracy within a colonial nation-state whose foundation requires the capitalization of land and lives, in the name of white discovery of wealth for free enterprise or common property, can still be oppressive. 

... as Kiristina Gail Sailiata argues in her recent dissertation, The Samoan Cause: Colonialism, Culture and the Rule of Law, the common typology within settler colonial studies, that anti-Black racism is about stolen labor whereas Indigenous genocide is about stolen land and resources, is very problematic. She critiques Lorenzo Veracini’s formulation that settler colonialism is about the demand to go away where as other forms of racism are about the demand for labor: “As if the elimination of Native people’s does not require labor – such as reproductive labor, and as if the demand for ‘real’ labor is not also accompanied by a demand to keep away – hence the creation of. . .‘separate but equal.’” Furthermore, the formulation of stolen labor versus stolen land obscures the fact that it is the disappearance of Indigenous labor that both justifies stealing Indigenous lands, as well as rendering the work of Black peoples as non-labor. Furthermore, this relationship between Black fungibility and the disappearance of Indigenous labor rests on the commodification of land as property that then prescribes the terms of anti-colonial struggle safely within the confines of nation-state governance. In other words, anti-colonial struggle, under these false terms, must only be about challenging who “owns” land and hence has the right to govern it, rather than challenging the idea that land should be property at all. As Leanne [Betasamosake] Simpson (Anishnaabekwe) describes the necessary struggle to decolonize Indigenous homelands: “I am not a nation-state, nor do I strive to be one. Our politics and our nationalism are not based on enclosures defended with violence.”

In my opinion, democracy serves us when we communities of colour dream together, long-term, by thinking through how we are all bound by white supremacist logics and thinking through our own ancestral systems of hierarchies and justice.

In my multi-piece series that will address liberalism and socialism as progress in Canada, this is my first piece and I write this piece primarily as a Queer Person of Colour. My next piece will interrogate the assigned label of "Asian Canadian" to histories of people of colour communities, and I will introduce the voice of a trans-Pacific Han Guangdong identity.

1 in the words of Loretta Ross, cofounder and national coordinator of SisterSong -Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, in reference to one of the birthing moments of the term 'women of color'

2 Charles Wilkinson's book Messages from Frank's Landing: A Story of Salmon, Treaties, and the Indian Way ---

Summary of discussion on colonialism in the video: Maher then pointed out the other thing Giuliani said, that “it’s not racism, it’s socialism, or possibly anti-colonialism.” “Where are our colonies?” Rob Reiner asked. “We’re the colonies! We’re against ourselves!” “Exactly,” Maher replied. “Isn’t colonialism bad? I thought we were all kind of on that page, and now it’s bad to be anti-colonialism? I mean, what was George Washington fighting against?” "They’re not talking about that anti-colonialism,” Lebowitz said. “They’re talking about African and Indian anti-colonialism against the British.” “And that’s bad?” Maher asked. “To them,” Lebowitz replied." Director Rob Reiner interjected, "it was the British with us! We were the colonies to the British!" "He's not thinking back quite that far. He's stuck in the Fifties (1950's)." White director Rob Reiner nodded and mirrored Lebowitz's hand gesture.

[carven-blog1]

Jessica Huang gives her son “the talk.”

[carven-blog1]

What are your must-read recommendations of fictional pieces/books written by authors who draw from their ancestral history and/or their personal racialized experiences of displacement, colonial genocide, alliance and resistance? Autobiography recommendations are also welcome.

[carven-blog1]

It just hit me:

The Grammys are saying…

Thrift Shop

is a better RAP SONG than

NEW SLAVES.

…………..

[carven-blog1]

"QPOC" and epistemological violence against the subaltern

People who navigate white colonial settler academia, charitable foundations, business associations, citizen advisory boards and/or the nonprofit industrial complex to secure positions of social change, and people who can start these structures are not the subaltern. In Vancouver, being a 'queer person of colour' does not default you as the subaltern among the marginalized. Let me focus on 'QPOC' here: if you feel in retrospect that you had a subaltern identity before participating in QPOC politics (perhaps an identity that is culturally appropriated by or one that is unknown/unintelligible to the West and other cultural hegemonies) but you have the privilege to organize under the QPOC citizens label strategically to be read as political by the mainstream and our state government, then you must acknowledge your access to QPOC citizenry politics and honour the care you need to take to speak about your pre-QPOC (Canadian) citizen identity. If you can negotiate with the state without your identity being appropriated, then you are not the subaltern. Even if you make homonationalism critiques on Western militarism as a marginalized queer person of colour, you must not center your QPOC citizenry voice over your non-citizenry, dispossessed voice(s) of the past. And just because you have access to both voices does not mean you are any more authentic of a spokesperson for the subaltern, especially when you center your voice in political actions that are intended to be in solidarity with "the LGBTQ of [a state nationality]." How do you know 'those communities' you 'sometimes identify with' unitarily identify as 'LGBTQ' and identify with a particular state nationalism or with state nationalism in general? When marginalized citizens organize political actions in solidarity with those not here and the actions center 'LGBTQ' and 'POC' without an effort to introduce politics that transgress post-Euro-colonial identity politics, you are committing epistemological violence.

I don't want to be negotiating, being threatening to an oppressive world system and then being paid to contain my rage, doing nonprofit work and planning intersectionality workshops for life.

[carven-blog1]

"Will I attend your community event?"

Answer:

If it does not

- provide an attempt at accessibility information,

- have a registration that asks for accessibility information, which your organization will take seriously and accommodate accordingly to the best of your organization's ability

- have an event info that makes a territorial acknowledgment of indigenous stewardship and nationhood

- address the gender binary imposed onto the people here on this land and it does not have washroom info,

- have an entry sliding scale,

- have a spiritual/prayer space

- have 'safer space' and 'step up/step back' community guidelines,

then

I may (if I remember) comment "this event is not culturally accessible for me and is not accessible for the people who identify as my community."

It is much harder for me, considering my positionality and quality of life, to MAKE time to have an open discussion with your collective about first starting with the 'equality' framework to organize, to 'include different people': people of Indigenous Nationality and people of 'Different' Gender Expression, etc. (Disclaimer: I hate colonial equality of differences framework.)

I acknowledge that we are all on our journey in terms of learning about power relations and histories of institutionalization and resistance. So when your event or my event does not include information on, say, the arrangement for indigenous ceremonial welcome, EMS, clean needle availability, nearby food options, childcare, the extent of non-State medical care, non-Western countries' occupation of land, and other information, I will connect with your group, share, challenge my own thinking, learn and volunteer my time to 'be the change I want to see' or can't see but would like to envision.

For me, this *only* applies to activist spaces. I do show up at oppressive spaces, usually with an agenda that is not 'to be in solidarity with the event organizers.' I acknowledge that we all, including me, organize oppressive and inaccessible spaces for paid work.

[carven-blog1]

Wow! This looks exciting! Will consider.

#加拿大

#人头税

#不公平

#公平

#歧视

#历史

#公正

#华人

#中國人

#中國

#idlenomore

#indigenoussolidarity

#coastsalish

#反殖民

#女權

#和平

#家庭

#親密

#原著

#原住民

#chineseheadtax

#queer

#qtipoc

#intimacy

#racism

#antiracism

#intersectionality

#feminism

#qpoc

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY! Suggested (extended) Deadline: Friday 24, 2014 Email: saintweasel@gmail.com Prose: 2000 word max 新年快樂!  As Chinese peoples radicalizing the idea of intimacy on Coast Salish, the editors are seeking prose (and poetry/artwork) that highlights radical ideas of gender, unlikely friendships, marginalized desires, adoption, community-building, siblinghood, mentorship, cultural ‘lost and found’, forgiveness and rekindling, disassociation and decolonial anti-racism from Chinese-identified peoples who navigate or have navigated the white settler colonial state of Canada. (You define radical!) We wish to focus on voices of those under the age of 35 in this edition, so as to offer a space from which youth can speak to our elders and families. We also welcome poetry and other forms of artwork in English and/or a Chinese language, and we encourage you to submit prose as well! We are in gratitude to the First Peoples who have been doing and who endeavor to continue their stewardship work on their Coast Salish homelands. Based on our current knowledge, the Coast Salish Territories include the territories of the Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh-ulh, Stó:lo & Tsleil-Waututh nations. The first edition will include the voices of Chinese-identified youth who have been brought up by family who lived in the absence of the anti-Chinese racism legislated by the white settler colonial Canadian government, which includes the Head Tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act and other explicitly racist legislation. Though we welcome the works of descendants of early Chinese settler-immigrants in this edition, the goal for this edition is to explore the interest in a call from recent-generation Chinese settler immigrants for the wisdom of those who have lived experience living and loving in an explicitly White supremacist settler colonial state. Because of the need to make space for Chinese systems of knowledge, especially on love and on keeping/exploring loving relationships that transgress social norms, the editors are not operating strictly from a place of ‘People of Colour’ (POC) and have opted to explore indigeneity, diaspora and Chineseness not in a pan-POC collective. This edition will only feature works of youth under the age of 35 in attempt to signal that the next generation is showing dedication to learn from each other and to share how we see our own histories. With the diversity of young visionaries coming together, we can dream bigger than our elders and ancestors have, for an even more just vision for the world, and give thanks to those who paved the way. We intentionally seek to publish works that cover at least one of the following topics, hoping to have these thematic threads in each edition: - 反殖民主義, 女權, 自由與和平 - 前衛的親密關係和家庭觀念 - Chinese anarcho-feminism - the discursive influences on race relations, borders and intimacies from Chinese economic powers in various states - sharing Chinese folklore myths and histories of resistance - our respect and gratitude for our Chinese mentors and leaders who came before us - feelings of resentment, pain, shame, loneliness and uniqueness - our strength in remaining in tough relationships to care for and educate our family/community - our strength in venturing out and seeking redefinition - reinventing traditional ways of spiritual emancipation, self-care, renewal and redefinition - dispossession, statelessness, exile and national self-determination - migrant hopes, dreams, expectations and stress - loss of family, loss of connection to Chinese communit(ies) and loss of connection to homeland - the definition and the complexities of building community against colonial stereotypes, internalized racism and exploitative relationships, both in the diaspora and in the globalizing homeland - the radical love of communicating across colonial stereotypes and silences to free the colonized mind of those with privilege - feelings of alienation and ownership (re)connecting with Chinese culture(s) - the radical love of communicating across colonial stereotypes and silences, towards varying audiences, and against multiple barriers of age, language, and status(es) We hope to share the first edition around or after Chinese New Year (Jan 31). We would like to receive input for our next edition. The editors thought it is important to include the voices of Chinese-identified youth who are descendants of or who had been interdependent on people who navigated and resisted anti-Chinese racism legislated by the white settler colonial Canadian state. We hereby invite editors who have this lived experience to email us their interest to join our collective. Current Editors BIO: Cheuk Fung I am the child of two Han Chinese settler-immigrant parents from Hong Kong, all living together in Richmond BC, on Coast Salish Territories, since 1997. I speak fluent Cantonese. Being a part of the Centre for RAGA, I have come across many like-minded people of colour who feel compelled to discuss the discursive violence of colonial and globalized Eurocentricism, examine our interracial colonial-diasporic relations and make room for critical analysis of international politics. Benita Bunjun’s mentorship have greatly influenced my understanding of being assigned a sexual orientation that contains my ideas of desire and radical love, assigned a dominant gender within a cis-hetero-patriarchical gender binary, and assigned a race within a Western colonial and globalized worldview. I am currently volunteering with Centre for RAGA to produce a workshop on colonial intimacy and volunteering with youth groups. I am turning 24. Jane Jane is a Han settler-immigrant born in a hospital in Nanjing, China. She later saluted the Chinese flag in Shanghai, before moving to Richmond, BC, Coast Salish, in 1999. From there she discovered ‘multiculturalism,’ the English literary tradition, and a thin-privileging, white standard of beauty. She prefers to put “has a basic understanding of Mandarin” on her resume, but refuses to measure her worth in degrees, qualifications, or employability. Her poetry (published at ditch,) often tries to probe the liminal spaces between her native tongue and dominant language, and is continuously moving away from its initial, but powerful influences—white racist poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.  Jane volunteers at WAVAW, organizes for Colour Connected against Racism at UBC, and edits for the Undergraduate Journal of English, The Garden Statuary. Currently her intellectual crush on Andrea Smith motivates her to join the fight to end global oppression, while her committed spiritual affinity for Lemony Snicket and Jose Saramago grounds her work in a healthy, black-humoured pessimism. 

[carven-blog1]

Wow! This looks exciting! Will consider.

#加拿大

#人头税

#不公平

#公平

#歧视

#历史

#公正

#华人

#中國人

#中國

#idlenomore

#indigenoussolidarity

#coastsalish

#反殖民

#女權

#和平

#家庭

#親密

#原著

#原住民

#chineseheadtax

#queer

#qtipoc

#intimacy

#racism

#antiracism

#intersectionality

#feminism

#feminism

#qpoc

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY! Suggested (extended) Deadline: Friday 24, 2014 Email: saintweasel@gmail.com Prose: 2000 word max 新年快樂!  As Chinese peoples radicalizing the idea of intimacy on Coast Salish, the editors are seeking prose (and poetry/artwork) that highlights radical ideas of gender, unlikely friendships, marginalized desires, adoption, community-building, siblinghood, mentorship, cultural ‘lost and found’, forgiveness and rekindling, disassociation and decolonial anti-racism from Chinese-identified peoples who navigate or have navigated the white settler colonial state of Canada. (You define radical!) We wish to focus on voices of those under the age of 35 in this edition, so as to offer a space from which youth can speak to our elders and families. We also welcome poetry and other forms of artwork in English and/or a Chinese language, and we encourage you to submit prose as well! We are in gratitude to the First Peoples who have been doing and who endeavor to continue their stewardship work on their Coast Salish homelands. Based on our current knowledge, the Coast Salish Territories include the territories of the Musqueam, Skxwú7mesh-ulh, Stó:lo & Tsleil-Waututh nations. The first edition will include the voices of Chinese-identified youth who have been brought up by family who lived in the absence of the anti-Chinese racism legislated by the white settler colonial Canadian government, which includes the Head Tax, the Chinese Exclusion Act and other explicitly racist legislation. Though we welcome the works of descendants of early Chinese settler-immigrants in this edition, the goal for this edition is to explore the interest in a call from recent-generation Chinese settler immigrants for the wisdom of those who have lived experience living and loving in an explicitly White supremacist settler colonial state. Because of the need to make space for Chinese systems of knowledge, especially on love and on keeping/exploring loving relationships that transgress social norms, the editors are not operating strictly from a place of ‘People of Colour’ (POC) and have opted to explore indigeneity, diaspora and Chineseness not in a pan-POC collective. This edition will only feature works of youth under the age of 35 in attempt to signal that the next generation is showing dedication to learn from each other and to share how we see our own histories. With the diversity of young visionaries coming together, we can dream bigger than our elders and ancestors have, for an even more just vision for the world, and give thanks to those who paved the way. We intentionally seek to publish works that cover at least one of the following topics, hoping to have these thematic threads in each edition: - 反殖民主義, 女權, 自由與和平 - 前衛的親密關係和家庭觀念 - Chinese anarcho-feminism - the discursive influences on race relations, borders and intimacies from Chinese economic powers in various states - sharing Chinese folklore myths and histories of resistance - our respect and gratitude for our Chinese mentors and leaders who came before us - feelings of resentment, pain, shame, loneliness and uniqueness - our strength in remaining in tough relationships to care for and educate our family/community - our strength in venturing out and seeking redefinition - reinventing traditional ways of spiritual emancipation, self-care, renewal and redefinition - dispossession, statelessness, exile and national self-determination - migrant hopes, dreams, expectations and stress - loss of family, loss of connection to Chinese communit(ies) and loss of connection to homeland - the definition and the complexities of building community against colonial stereotypes, internalized racism and exploitative relationships, both in the diaspora and in the globalizing homeland - the radical love of communicating across colonial stereotypes and silences to free the colonized mind of those with privilege - feelings of alienation and ownership (re)connecting with Chinese culture(s) - the radical love of communicating across colonial stereotypes and silences, towards varying audiences, and against multiple barriers of age, language, and status(es) We hope to share the first edition around or after Chinese New Year (Jan 31). We would like to receive input for our next edition. The editors thought it is important to include the voices of Chinese-identified youth who are descendants of or who had been interdependent on people who navigated and resisted anti-Chinese racism legislated by the white settler colonial Canadian state. We hereby invite editors who have this lived experience to email us their interest to join our collective. Current Editors BIO: Cheuk Fung I am the child of two Han Chinese settler-immigrant parents from Hong Kong, all living together in Richmond BC, on Coast Salish Territories, since 1997. I speak fluent Cantonese. Being a part of the Centre for RAGA, I have come across many like-minded people of colour who feel compelled to discuss the discursive violence of colonial and globalized Eurocentricism, examine our interracial colonial-diasporic relations and make room for critical analysis of international politics. Benita Bunjun’s mentorship have greatly influenced my understanding of being assigned a sexual orientation that contains my ideas of desire and radical love, assigned a dominant gender within a cis-hetero-patriarchical gender binary, and assigned a race within a Western colonial and globalized worldview. I am currently volunteering with Centre for RAGA to produce a workshop on colonial intimacy and volunteering with youth groups. I am turning 24. Jane Jane is a Han settler-immigrant born in a hospital in Nanjing, China. She later saluted the Chinese flag in Shanghai, before moving to Richmond, BC, Coast Salish, in 1999. From there she discovered ‘multiculturalism,’ the English literary tradition, and a thin-privileging, white standard of beauty. She prefers to put “has a basic understanding of Mandarin” on her resume, but refuses to measure her worth in degrees, qualifications, or employability. Her poetry (published at ditch,) often tries to probe the liminal spaces between her native tongue and dominant language, and is continuously moving away from its initial, but powerful influences—white racist poets T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.  Jane volunteers at WAVAW, organizes for Colour Connected against Racism at UBC, and edits for the Undergraduate Journal of English, The Garden Statuary. Currently her intellectual crush on Andrea Smith motivates her to join the fight to end global oppression, while her committed spiritual affinity for Lemony Snicket and Jose Saramago grounds her work in a healthy, black-humoured pessimism. 

[carven-blog1]

In the last few months I’ve had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of a special mix of ageism and racism within the gay community more times than I care for. Though one incident sticks out as the most infuriating. That is because at the time, these two intersecting oppressions...

[carven-blog1]

Humans or anti-oppressionists?

"i identify as queer in that i ideologically oppose heteronormativity, but i acknowledge my Straight privilege, *OR* Heteronormative privilege of not having the struggles of being sexually marginalized. I take responsibility of my Heteronormative privilege by…"

"i identify as anti-racializationist/transracial in that i ideologically oppose racism and racialization, but i acknowledge racism, colonialism and [dominant racial group] privilege. I take responsibility of my [dominant racial group] privilege by…"

"i identify as an anti-Genderist in that i ideologically oppose sexism, genderism (cultural belief that gender is a binary), sexing and gendering and Cisgender privilege, but i acknowledge my Cisgender privilege. I take responsibility of my Cisgender privilege by…"

Really, ANYONE can do it. you can replace queer, transracial and anti-Genderist with anti-oppressionist!

[carven-blog1]

[carven-blog1]

Anti-oppression in all racialized and linguistically distinct communities

So, it seems like the Conservative Party and Ipsos Reid are policking again, with Ipsos Reid saying that the Conservative Party of Canada has initiated "The Big Shift" and may likely to be in power for a long time.

Though it's from Ipsos Reid, I do think it's still worthwhile to look at what they're saying as a wake-up call for us anti-oppression folks. My message:

Please consider adding transnationalism and assemblage to our theory kit and consider adding multilingual focus to our work. New immigrants will benefit hugely if we include them in discussions of indigeneity, intersectionality, nationalism, apartheid and global apartheid. I do see 'ethnic media' and various multicultural 'diversity' or 'immigrant' functions that play into some 'equal racial opportunity to forgetting history and becoming conservative' ideas.

[carven-blog1]

In today’s WTF Friday edition, I have to ask: WTF is “homo”?

The first is “Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven.” Some member of the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church has made young children perform a discriminatory song that these children do not have an understanding of and, hence, cannot give informed consent to perform. What’s worse, the performance is videotaped and is uploaded for the world to see, as a public message of hate.

My strongest reaction to this was the term “homo” itself. I don’t identify with the term. I feel that using the word ‘homosexual’ to describe me, even to claim that “homosexuals are people too,” makes me feel like an outsider. An alien species.

‘Homosexual’ is a really inadequate term for representing my choice to identify with gay and queer culture in Canada. I’m a first-generation immigrant from Hong Kong and I self-identify as a gay and queer person. That is the respectful way of speaking to how people navigate our society and their lived experience, not to dehumanize them into a label that is single-faceted.

I observe that the majority of people who have a strong preference of being described as ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ over ‘homosexual’ are from or have spent a considerable amount of time in North American urban centres.

(Continue Reading)