American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity

May 29, 2021 by Guest Blogger 7 Comments

On Wednesday, June 2, Senators Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, and Patty Murray, of Washington State, will introduce, or more precisely re-introduce, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, “To prohibit and prevent seclusion, mechanical restraint, chemical restraint, and dangerous restraints that restrict breathing, and to prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint in schools, and for other purposes.” In 2009, the Government Accounting Office released a major study documenting the severe harm rendered by seclusion rooms in schools, especially for students living with disabilities. In the same year, National Disability Rights Network released a major study, School is not supposed to hurt: Investigative Report on Abusive Restraint and Seclusion in Schools. Since 2009, versions of the Keeping All Students Safe Act have been introduced, all to no avail. And so here we are: “There are no federal laws governing how seclusion and restraints can be used in schools, and there are no sweeping federal laws with specific guidelines for police use of force on children in general.” Loaded with evidence and good intention … and completely stalled in place for twelve years and counting. What is the U.S. investment in torturing and damaging children, and in particular children living with disability? Why is the United States so committed to an endless war on children living with disabilities?

Three years ago, the U.S. Department of Education released data that showed that students living with disabilities constituted 12% of all students enrolled. 12 percent. That very small sector of students living with disabilities constituted 71% of all students restrained and 66% of all students “secluded.” This year, the most update study shows that students living with disabilities make up 13% of all students enrolled and constitute 80% of those physically restrained, 41% of those `mechanically’ restrained, and 77% of students subjected to seclusion: “Physical restraint is a personal restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to move his or her torso, arms, legs, or head freely. Mechanical restraint is the use of any device or equipment to restrict a student’s freedom of movement. Seclusion is the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving.” These are the numbers and key words of education for children in the United States.

While restraint and seclusion directly assault children living with disabilities, it impairs all those children who are forced to stand as helpless, and themselves restrained, witnesses. Why is there no federal law, why is there no national will to end this torture of the innocents? Why is this left to the discretion of individual states, counties and cities? Three years ago, almost to the day, we asked, “What crime have these children committed? What is their terrible sin? Why do we continue to send these children into solitary confinement? Why do we continue to torture those who are most vulnerable? When will we stop this practice? What do you think we’re teaching children, all the children in all the schools, when we torture their classmates and then call it `seclusion’ and `restraint’?” Why has there been no answer? American school seclusion rooms continue to form a landscape of atrocity. Where is the outrage? Where is the action?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo, Image Credit: ProPublica)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Dan Moshenberg, Haunts, seclusion rooms, solitary confinement, torture

Armadale remembered: a Jamaican tragedy

May 23, 2021 by Guest Blogger 2 Comments

When something like the Armadale fire happens, where seven young women were burned to death, there is always the anxiety that a similar incident could happen again in the future. The issue is always whether the organisation responsible has learned from the terrible experience and put in place everything that they possibly can to stop it happening again. In this case this was the State, in whose care and protection the girls – aged between fifteen and seventeen – found themselves at Armadale.

The Armadale fire, which took place exactly twelve years ago, was not so much a disaster as a series of agonizing failures, actions, and decisions that led to the disaster. One thing led to another. This evening there was an online gathering to remember those who perished with human rights activist Alexis Goffe, who shared his thoughts here on the tenth anniversary of the fire. Here is the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network’s (JYAN) take on the matter. Please click on the highlighted links for more background information.

12 Years after the Armadale fire — has the Government learned their lesson?

On Friday, May 22, 2009, the unspeakable happened. Seven (7) young women, who were in the care of the state, perished in a fire at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre. Today, on the 12th anniversary of that fateful blaze, The Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN) would like to pay respects to those whose lives were lost and affected by the Armadale tragedy. We also want to take this opportunity to reflect on the systemic and operational issues that led to the fire and the state of State correctional care today.

The 2010 Enquiry into the cause of the fire revealed various inadequacies in the operations at Armadale and the apparent unfitness of the staff to oversee children in correctional State care. It was found that the young ladies within the facility started the fire, which was one of several fires over the months leading up to May 22, 2009. A month prior to the incident the ladies were placed in a small room (12 by 12 feet) as punishment and while in that room, a Police Officer threw an explosive item in the room, allegedly contributing to the cause of the fire. The key for the room could not be found to release the girls in time, resulting in seven girls dying in the fire and others suffering terrible injuries.

It was a tragic day in our country, and while some restitution was given to the survivors or their families, it remains that the Government of Jamaica (GOJ) was negligent, whether directly or indirectly, in discharging their duty to protect our young and vulnerable. Sadly, JYAN fears that the GOJ and their agents have not learned from this tragedy. Is History Repeating Itself?

The Independent Commission for Investigations (INDECOM) in their quarterly report for July to September 2020 revealed disturbing details of the operations of the Rio Cobre Juvenile Correctional Centre (RCJCC). INDECOM noted that, among other things, the penalties applied to the boys are inappropriate and the facilities they are expected to use are subpar when measured against international standards. JYAN considers the report to be eerily hard to digest when one considers that it seems to be a replica of the various reports completed in the aftermath of the Armadale fire.

At RCJCC, “Jail Block” is where the boys are placed for days at a time, often without the ability to leave to relieve themselves, when found to be in breach of rules (such as climbing trees; failing to rake premises; going downstairs without a shirt; and picking up clothes off the line as it was about to rain instead of going directly back to the dormitory). This bears an uncanny similarity to the “Lock-Down” practice at Armadale. Under this practice, in June 2020, a Ward on Jail Block had a seizure but could not be attended to because a Correctional Officer left the Centre with the only key to the cell, supposedly to make a duplicate. The cell only has a sponge on the ground, graffiti on the walls and has no bathroom area. This is already concerning enough but becomes even more problematic when understood that several boys are placed in the cell in some instances, in only their underwear as a strategy to mitigate against self-harm and possible suicide. This sequence of events, again, is reminiscent of those that led to the Armadale fire.

While a percentage of the boys would have said that the facilities are satisfactory, the toilets have no seat, the faucets are missing in the showers and leakages are a regularity. The Nelson Mandela Rules, which are international standards on prison management, in Rules 15, 16 and 17 speak to the need for the sanitary installations, bathing and shower facilities and overall upkeep of the facility to be properly maintained. RCJCC’s management should be vigilant of and be guided by these, bordered on our own domestic laws governing childcare.

Call to Action The GOJ must take the necessary steps to ensure that the Department of Correctional Services and other competent authorities with responsibility for the supervision of children in State care, conduct(s) a thorough assessment of the operating procedures in all such facilities in Jamaica. JYAN also recommends that current Officers be reviewed and vetted for possible additional training or removal from office, whichever the case may be.

We at JYAN believe that State care should coincide with proper care, and that rehabilitation should be rehabilitation and not concentrated provocation of young children in detainment. As young men already found to be on the wrong path in life, the GOJ should take every precaution to ensure they are provided with the right behavioural guidance to become functional parts of society. It would be most unfortunate to witness a similar incident as May 22, 2009; especially if it is because of the government not learning from their severely consequential mistakes. The government should rely on and enforce the provisions of our own Child Care and Protection Act as well as the Nelson Mandela Rules, to completely overhaul the operational framework of RCJCC and other such facilities—more children should not have to die for our leaders to learn their lesson, which should not have had to be taught in the first place.

(By Emma Lewis)

(Emma Lewis is a writer, blogger, social media activist, based in Jamaica, and the editor/curator of Petchary’s Blog: Cries from Jamaica, in which this first appeared, here. Thanks to Emma for allowing us to share.)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Emma Lewis

You move too slow

May 18, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

You move too slow

You move too slow
I get to hear
from a greyhead
behind me

not in the pecking order
not at the feeding trough
but in a shopping queue

You move too slow
clipping my heels
as she veers
to the right

to another queue
where the grass is greener
and there is more
on offer

You move too slow
the over 60s are urged
(on evening etv news)
not to rush to centres
for their vaccine shots

so I am just
practising my slowness
my lack of speed
or slothfulness even

amused once was I
to hear two queueing locals
pondering which service
was the more slothful
(we won’t say which)

You move too slow
could be said to be

The state we are in

(By David Kapp)

(Photo Credit: Health-e News / NW Health Department)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: David Kapp, South Africa, The very unfortunate

Blackness, Gender Violence, and Colonialism in Puerto Rico’s Feminicidios

May 16, 2021 by Guest Blogger 2 Comments

After Hurricane María, the number of femicides in Puerto Rico started increasing at an alarming rate. Disappearances and femicides of women are ongoing issues in Puerto Rico, which has one of the highest femicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. But it was not until two years later, in 2019, that this was brought to public attention (in the continental United States). Gender-based violence calls to attention the consequences and history that colonialism, transphobia, racism, and sexism have on the island. Currently, women and feminists’ group like La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción have repeated their demand for a declaration of a State of Emergency against gender violence on the island but the Puerto Rican government has only recently acted on these demands, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common.

History is important and can be an act of resistance, but it is also about power; how it upholds the victories of the colonizer, not the colonized. Within the social contexts of Puerto Rico, heteronormativity is colonized by religious principles and gender-based perceptions that in recent years have caused an escalation of violence against transgender women and reports of anti-transgender violence, especially femicides. Along with the temporal displacement of Blackness and Black bodies that is closely connected to State modernizing agendas, Puerto Rico’s police has a history of marginalizing Black people without any consequences within the law, especially when it comes to racial profiling and recent police killings of Black (including LGBTQ+) Boricuas.

The history of colonization in Puerto Rico is not as buried as some are led to believe. By being aware of the history and current ways in which colonization is incorporated, there is resistance and a foundation for radical freedom on the island. Conversations about race and gender, however, need more work. Ethnicity and nationality are focal point in conversations about race, therefore causing erasure. Consequently, as a way to not talk about race, Latin America pushes its citizens to think of themselves in terms of their ethnicity and nationality. Puerto Rican’s acknowledge their history of Blackness; however, it is along admitting their Spaniard and Indigenous roots first, and Blackness last. Awareness about the danger trans women faced during the femicides is there, but no discussion as to why or how transphobia plays a part in it. Instead, trans women are placed into a generalized “all women in Puerto Rico are in danger” category, equating their fear and likelihood to femicide to cis women, which is highly problematic.

And the government needs to be held accountable. As of January of 2021, the Puerto Rican government has issued a State of Emergency due to gender violence, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common. In order to take accountability, the government should provide more resources (including legal protection, housing, and financial support) to survivors of femicide, domestic violence, and any form of gender violence. A relationship and conversation between the State, survivors, community organizers, and the people of Puerto Rico must be formed in order to hold the Puerto Rican government accountable and responsible.

(By Glorimar Mariño)

(Image Credit: Michelle Dersdepanian / TodasPR)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: femicide, feminicidio, Glorimar Marino, Puerto Rico

Memorial Day in Manitowoc Wisconsin

May 13, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Memorial Day in Manitowoc Wisconsin

I took an inhalation and like Bashō I traveled North
Returning to native soil only to find my mother gone
Though unlike the hair in Bashō’s haiku
The silver strands caught in my mother’s hair brush
Did feel as though they would melt in my fingers
She was Wisconsin strong
And so was her hair
And it still smelled like her

I exhaled and traveled south to find my father gone
He had left to chase my mother’s ponytail into eternity
I inherited his sense of humor
And wore a giant plastic wedge of cheese on my head
As I gave my father’s eulogy in a bright green sari
His favorite color

Here I see my Mother
Here I see my Father
Here I see my brothers and sisters
And the line of my family reaching back through beginning-less time
We left coins on my parents tombstones
Safe passage Mom and Dad for crossing both the rivers Styx and Lethe

My family takes so many photographs and movies
Among them
Photographs of smiling children dancing on tombstones and graves sites
Like little Śivas and Kālīs
The older generations tell stories of posing in taffeta funeral dresses
Next to the caskets of the departed for stiffly posed pictures
Or cradling departed siblings in their arms to create final mementos

Photographs like these inspired my sister to become a photographer
And a Wisconsin State Treasure
But by the time Julie had died
We had forgotten how to practice some of the old rituals
The rituals that had once allowed us to embrace Death like a lover

Now the younger generations call the old ways
“Wisconsin Death Trip”
Once we knew our rituals of life were true
Because our rituals of death were true
Large gravestones baring the family name
As certain as hand and footprints on a certificates of live birth

Here I see my Mother
Here I see my Father
Here I see my brothers and sisters
And the line of my family reaching back through beginning-less time
And when my time comes
Leave coins for me, too
Two rivers to cross
Same as it ever was

American Gothic
There they all lay in a Manitowoc cemetery
My cradle named after Algonquian Demi-gods that rule nature
Though not death
The ancestors continuing to teach us
Even from the grave
Teach us about time
And the folly of the vehement dreams and nightmares we choose to live
They are dust to dust
And they are the native soil
On which I was nurtured
And from which I drew my strength

Sing of Carl Sandburg and the Midwestern bread basket
Corn ripening and falling to the earth only to rise again
Become the popcorn my nieces and nephews eat while watching Disney movies
Become cows
Become milk
Become cheese
Become butter
And the bodies of the farmers that plant and replant crops generation after generation
Stalwart sunburned men, women, and children whose graves we pass
On the way to our family plot
For the annual Memorial Day picnic

The cookies are made from molds taken from tombstone imprints
Children merrily fight for particular flowers shapes
Or the letters that begin their given names
And the adults spill a little beer
Some because of clumsiness
And some on purpose

From time to time Memorial Day coincides with my oldest brother Phil’s birthday
And then there is birthday sheet cake too
It is cut into perfect squares and served on paper plates
Waiting for the greedy tiny finger to take it
From the top of the largest granite family headstone

Sing of graveyards on Memorial Day and family picnics
Celebrating the generations past and present
Variations on a singular theme
Experiencing a counterpoint in well kept bone orchards
Proving that Omar Khayyam was right

Sing of Bashō’s cicada
And it’s song that showed no concern for imminent death
Like the children eating snicker-doodles, brownies and bars
That have been neatly packed in old shoeboxes saved for just such occasions
Carefully arranged in layers separated by wax paper

One day my breath will merge with the atmosphere
Let me cover my body with this good rich earth
Into which my ancestors have merged
In which they now rest
And on which the children are now playing
Their bodies too will someday become the loam that feeds America

Immortality is a song passed down from generation to generation
Always changing
And never changing
It can be heard in the lowing of cows waiting to be milked
And in the sound of seed corn and wheat filling silos at harvest time

Life giving grain falling like rain

Let my body become this good earth too
The first of many who will follow me
And in the midst of all who have preceded me
Let me remember all of my deeds
Good and evil
So that I can say
I have learned

Let me remember
Let me remember
Let me remember

It momentarily died again to became me
Now let me live again to become It all

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Cicada, by Hobun Kikuchi / Ukiyo-e)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Heidi Lindemann, Michael Perry

Who is a citizen?

May 10, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Who is a citizen?

Hey Siri, who is a citizen?
[sit-uh-zuhn]: a member,
inhabitant,
native—
one who owes allegiance,
and is therefore entitled to protection.

A citizen.
Pledge allegiance to the flag,
league or commission,
knowing that cisness
means entitlement to competition.
If gender identity matches certificate of birth,
Better suit up! In their eyes you have worth.
You can focus on your game
and mold your craft,
“stick to sports”,
even perfect your autograph.
When “ball is life”
each day may be a grind,
and if gender fits the script,
the game can dominate your mind.

Meanwhile…
trans athletes await
as officials sit and debate
if their status as humans
should let them cross home plate.
Clubs and boards fret about funding,
and do everything they can
to keep Lindsay Hecox from running.
They cite “fairness”, “safety”, and “integrity”,
as if hyping women up
isn’t something of rarity.
Aim to keep the binary at all costs
even if that means
so much talent is lost.

Fear runs all
and preserves the status quo
so states like Tennessee
can stop the next Patricio.
Where’s the logic
in claiming fairness is dealt,
when they’re the very ones
supplying blows below the belt?
Texas ain’t Cali
Mack’s begs fell short,
so all his state titles
deemed wins to abort.
Fighting each day just to play the game
but they’re all stuck on still debating your name.

Inclusion’s better
but not a perfect solution,
when inclusion still means
checking hormone distribution.
The issue isn’t really about you and me,
it’s about the assumptions plaguing our society.
The system believes
that men are always better
but if a woman tries to challenge
no way they’re gonna let her.
They see gender
as black or white,
they say any other view
isn’t worth the fight.

They see anomaly
and hone right in,
boost views they support
like those of Caitlyn Jen.
They say, “See, look!
I’m not transphobic”,
as if banning hopeful athletes
is somehow heroic.
Industries’ bigotry
outweighs social advancement,
they give more grace to using
performance enhancements.
I guess their greed might have a limit,
‘cause transactions
involving trans action
they’ll always prohibit.

So Siri, let’s talk.
Can you tell me again?
Is an athlete a citizen,
as long as they try to win?
If loyal and devoted,
shouldn’t they be protected?
Or is citizenship for athletes
exclusively selected?
At the end of the day,
we all just want to belong
so how come trans athletes’
belonging is so prolonged?

(By Hannah Stein)

(Photo Credit: Teen Vogue)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Hannah Stein

BTS as a model for solidarity

May 4, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

To call BTS a global phenomenon is an understatement. If you are unfamiliar with the boy band from South Korea, a quick Google search reveals numerous headlines that document their record-breaking successes. As music artists, they have attained a number of accolades that signify their impact on music and as a collective of seven men, they have had great impact on social movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate. It is this latter movement that reveals their symbolic status as successful Asians that have made it, by all definitions of Western musical success, in America. It is a success story that many Asian Americans, including myself, can relate to: the successes of Asian children validate the sacrifices of their parents. All too often these accomplishments in social, cultural, and political life erases the enduring trauma of hate and racism that Asians and Asian Americans continue to experience. This is most evident from the racist rhetoric about the coronavirus, the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and the tragedy of the Atlanta shootings. This new political reality calls for a new collective awakening that dismantles the Western definition of success and the antiquated model minority myth.

Bangtan Sonyeondan or BTS, the globally recognized moniker, is a seven-member boy band from South Korea. If you ask fans or ARMYs what BTS means to them, answers vary from the impact of their music to the joy of their non-musical content that perhaps figures in fans’ real lives cannot produce. This is not just because the seven members are representative of the age group of their fans but also their telepathic understanding of their fans’ wants and likes from them as musicians and entertainers. That communication explains their global success, an accomplishment that many artists, Korean or Western, only hope to achieve in their musical careers. Furthermore, BTS has inspired social change with their messages against prejudice and violence. In June 2020, at the height of the racial protests over the murder of George Floyd, the septet donated $1 million US dollars to Black Lives Matter, which was later matched by their fans. Since 2017, the band has partnered with UNICEF for their LOVE MYSELF campaign to stand against hate directed towards youth and promote love. That social power is significant, and in a global world with arbitrary borders, BTS are model and productive global citizens. Thus, BTS transcends their significance as musical talent and can be reimagined as symbols for the Asian American experience.

For some Asian Americans, cultural and social expectations of success are high because something is always sacrificed for it. My parents gave their all to give my sisters and I the best opportunities, and we took them to excel and succeed. By a Western definition of success, many Asian Americans have made it: they are doctors, lawyers, scientists and other white-collar occupations with multiple higher education degrees. This proximity to whiteness is the Achilles’ heel: Asian Americans are conveniently white and non-white. For example, the model minority myth perpetuates a harmful image of Asians as academically superior with great musical capabilities. It erases differences across nationalities within the Asian American category and creates a monolithic image of Asian Americans. When an Asian individual lives up to this stereotype, they become the model Asian American for all others and more importantly, for white Americans to ignore their racism and prove the American Dream is alive and well.

On the dark side of this coin is the history of anti-Asian racism reveals a record of otherizing and dehumanizing Asians. Stereotypes about Asians were anchored in the image of disease carriers with questionable morals and intellectual inferiority to support narratives that they would degrade racial and social purity in the United States. These stereotypes are reproduced today in the rhetoric of Kung-Flu and China Virus. Unsurprisingly, as these narratives were espoused by political leaders, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased by 169%. This unchecked racism culminated in the violent and racist attack on massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia where six of the eight victims were of Asian descent. Therefore, Asian Americans simultaneously approximate whiteness and occupy racial imaginations.

BTS represents this in-between: as artists, their musical successes exceed all Western standards and expectations, and as Asians, they still face prejudice for their identities. They shared this reality in a group statement against the number of increasing violent incidents against Asian Americans. This straddling between two racial categories is an issue because it erases experiences of hate and racism for Asians. On the one hand, the proximity to whiteness almost offers relief from experiencing racism. If you succeed, then you can escape experiencing hate. On the other hand, Asian American experiences of racism are not too serious until it becomes too much in terms of the number of reported cases and in degree of violence. At the center of these determinations are familiar systems that dictate the American experience for minority individuals, that distinguish between the fortunate and less fortunate. Therefore, Asian Americans should follow BTS’s lead and show solidarity and community with other minority groups that are oppressed under the same systems.

(By Michelle Nguyen)

(Photo credit: Hype)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: #StopAsianHate, BTS, Michelle Nguyen, solidarity

Mitochondrial DNA

May 1, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

Mitochondrial DNA

Mama told me a story

She said:
You are an ocean and I am a river that feeds you and makes you grow.

If I’m an ocean now; then what will I be when I grow up, I asked?
That’s easy, she said, you’ll be a river that will feed an ocean just as I do.

Choose those that choose you.
Not every eye can see your coat of many colors
Nor can every ear hear your plaintive cries desiring belonging

Not all fingers can touch the wounded places and the scars
Nor offer the healing touch of consolation.
Not all skin folks are kin folks
And strong enemies contribute to ones growth, too.
Rivers lose their identities once they reach oceans.

Lose their identities
And their contradictions.

Who is my mother and father asks the ocean?
Child of many streams
And many rainstorms
Where is your home
And where will you lay your head?

What floodgates open because of intrepid questioning?
And, what Jerichonian walls crumble because of courageously blown conch shell horns?

Funeral Pyres blaze in India
Telling two stories
One ancient
And one new
Tell me who I am as I inhale deeply
As the dust of the dead mingles and enters my nostrils
reminding me that I am a sleeping god.

Pandora’s curiosity brought forth both plague and hope.

Who is my family in all of this?
Like calls to like; but, can that call be answered?
All of this is mission; but, can it be accomplished?

My brothers and sisters have many names.
They ask questions as I do
And are not afraid of the answers that they receive.
By their curiosity my Family of Choice is known.

In Tibet they are called Vidyādhara because they want to know
And knowledge is their seat.

Among the Lakota they are called Heyoka — contrarians for whom night is day and day is night
And, Reality is only just when and if it can be questioned.

In India they are called Brahmins because they seek the truth.
This cannot be achieved merely through bloodlines and birth within a family.

Among Yoruba Orishas, my family calls on Shango
And the Wise Women in my family venerate Yemaya.

American Griots,
Fearlessly tell your stories and sing your songs
And teach the children to sing, too.

Sing the songs that Grandma sang in the kitchen
Or as she danced on the laundry with her blessed feet.

Sing work songs and war songs
That helped men survive chain gangs
And oppressive assembly lines.

Sing bawdy songs and love songs
That foment perilous rendezvous.

Sing new songs of Hope and learn to call on The Mothers once again.

How many more Mothers of Exiles can be named
In this melting pot called America?
That hasn’t yet finished melting

Not even close.

But the Gods came here to these shores with the people who brought them
Listen for the answers that they whisper
Even though we vaguely call upon them
With dimly remembered prayers.

Let your peace fall upon all of those who will listen to you and receive you
But if they shun you
Shake off the dust of your sandal on their threshhold
As a testament against them and their house
Then walk on.

All it takes to make stone soup is
A pot
A stone
a story
And the willingness of Families of Choice to bring the rest of the ingredients.
All seasonings and flavors blend in a stew.

And all oceans eventually become rivers that feed other oceans
Losing both their identity and their contradictions

I am just a ghost driving a mitochondrial DNA machine made of:
Blood
Fat
Bone
Marrow
Tissue
Ovum
And Sperm

Why am I even afraid?

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Metropolitan Museum)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: death, fear, Heidi Lindemann, India, Michael Perry

The eviction rate is too damn high everywhere … especially in Alexandria, Virginia!

April 28, 2021 by Guest Blogger 1 Comment

Remember the rent is too damn high? It was, and it still is, in many areas actually getting much worse. You know what else is too damn high? Rates of eviction. Numbers of eviction are too damn high, and rates of eviction are too damn high. Take Alexandria, Virginia, nestled in the leafier part of what is known as the DMV, DC – Maryland – Virginia.

According to the most recent report from the Eviction Lab, at Princeton University, in the 5 states and 27 cities the Lab tracks, last week, landlords filed for 5,460 evictions. That’s up from 4,937 in the previous weekly report, and the numbers have been rising lately.

In Virginia, according to the most recent Quarterly Report from the RVA Eviction Lab, directed by Kathryn Howell at Virginia Commonwealth University, even though eviction filings and judgements have been down these past three months (and the year prior), primarily thanks to federal and Commonwealth moratoria, there are still “high levels of housing instability and eviction pressures”, especially, and predictably, in Black and Brown neighborhoods, also most devastatingly hit by the pandemic. Who is particularly targeted by evictions, nationally, in Virginia, prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic? Women of color.

While the report notes that, of the northern Virginia jurisdictions, Fairfax County ranks fifth in eviction filings and eighth in judgments, there’s another tale of numbers in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County’s population is 1,146,000; Arlington County’s Population is 236,842; Alexandria’s population is 157,613. In the first quarter of 2021, Alexandria had 129 filings and 35 evictions; Arlington had 73 filings and 31 evictions; Fairfax County had 288 filings and 84 evictions.

Relative to its population, Alexandria’s rate of eviction filing is four times that of Fairfax County, and almost three times that of Arlington County. Why? Residents of Alexandria, ask your City Council, why is the rate of eviction in our city so damn high? The rent is too damn high. The rate of eviction is too damn high.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: New York Times / Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Alexandria Virginia, Dan Moshenberg, eviction, Haunts

A Lazy Sunday For Her

April 26, 2021 by Guest Blogger Leave a Comment

A Lazy Sunday For Her

The single mother
Raising two busy children alone
Unable to find half a minute
In her day
to sweat and scrub down
the manky bathroom.
To your pristine whims.
Today is for her.
A lazy Sunday,
Just washing her own hair.
And sitting in the Sun.

For the woman.
Young of years.
Aged by everything.
Working two and a half baked jobs
To pay for her degree.
And keep.
Today is for her.
A lazy kind of Sunday,just clipping
and painting
her chipped toe nails.
In the shade of a tree.

And her,
The always hurried sister.
Living on the edge
of perpetual panic.
Who’s learnt to make three pieces
Of chicken stew
From one drumstick.
And not distress.
Because yes, she’s the bread maker.
No.
The bread winner.
Both.
Today, the sink full of dirty dishes.
That’s hers.
A lazy Sunday.
Doing nothing.

For the mother,
Daily kept busy at covering up.
Her unexpected joblessness.
Wearing it over and over,
in threadbare dignity.
Averting your mean spirited judgement
Of living in her unfinished dream home.
Where, every May winter moves in.
uninvited.
And settles itself fat and cold.
On gravel floors,
Un-plastered walls.
Today’s lonely, dust free broomstick is her
lazy Sunday.

And so you see,
How your very many slurs
Of disorder.
Wait, instability.
All those other churls.
Chortling too.
About her different kinds of mess.
Is how life
Has refused to let her be
Everything
She imagined
For all of her many selves.
Including
A woman
with a very little bit of some laziness.
In her Sundays.

(By Isabella Matambanadzo)

(Image Credit: Naume Chaota / National Gallery of Zimbabwe)

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Isabella Matambanadzo