Fabian Romero • falling apart: a strategy in self care and activism

falling apart: a strategy in self care and activism, via Joanne.

my work being one of witnessing the hard feelings unfold, of creating a space of honest conversation where anyone of any gender can fall apart around me and i will listen, i will love, i will honor your survival and remind you that it is okay to let it out that you cannot hold all that pain inside.

as a masculine person of color i take this role seriously. often this role falls on the backs of women, of femmes and that is playing into patriarchy.

Decolonization is not a metaphor

Decolonization is not a metaphor, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.

Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, nonwhite, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances.

Power and the Internet

Power and the Internet, from Bruce Schneier.

It’s not all one-sided. The masses can occasionally organize around a specific issue — SOPA/PIPA, the Arab Spring, and so on — and can block some actions by the powerful. But it doesn’t last. The unorganized go back to being unorganized, and powerful interests take back the reins.
Debates over the future of the Internet are morally and politically complex. How do we balance personal privacy against what law enforcement needs to prevent copyright violations? Or child pornography? Is it acceptable to be judged by invisible computer algorithms when being served search results? When being served news articles? When being selected for additional scrutiny by airport security? Do we have a right to correct data about us? To delete it? Do we want computer systems that forget things after some number of years? These are complicated issues that require meaningful debate, international cooperation, and iterative solutions. Does anyone believe we’re up to the task?
We’re not, and that’s the worry. Because if we’re not trying to understand how to shape the Internet so that its good effects outweigh the bad, powerful interests will do all the shaping. The Internet’s design isn’t fixed by natural laws. Its history is a fortuitous accident: an initial lack of commercial interests, governmental benign neglect, military requirements for survivability and resilience, and the natural inclination of computer engineers to build open systems that work simply and easily. This mix of forces that created yesterday’s Internet will not be trusted to create tomorrow’s. Battles over the future of the Internet are going on right now: in legislatures around the world, in international organizations like the International Telecommunications Union and the World Trade Organization, and in Internet standards bodies. The Internet is what we make it, and is constantly being recreated by organizations, companies, and countries with specific interests and agendas. Either we fight for a seat at the table, or the future of the Internet becomes something that is done to us.

An open letter to peaceful protesters

An open letter to peaceful protesters, at Vancouver Media Co-op. via Lisa B

Another distinction that is important to make between peace movements of the past and protest movements of today is the level of organization. When people think of the Civil Rights Movement, the first thing to come to mind should not be “peaceful.” It should be “organized.” The Civil Rights Movement was highly organized through pre-existing networks of church and school groups. Civil Rights organizers led frequent non-violent civil disobedience trainings all over the country. They organized intensively in communities for years to get to the point of wide scale protests and actions. An example is the Rosa Parks and the bus incident: it is often thought that Rosa Parks sparked a movement by her refusal to move to the back of the bus. In reality, Rosa Parks was trained and groomed to take on that role, as was the larger movement prepared to step into action behind her. This was not a spontaneous event gone ‘viral.’ It was well planned and coordinated. As was the Civil Rights Movement overall: it was not based on public call outs to who ever could show up. To go to a civil rights demonstration participants were instructed and trained at workshops, and they literally signed a contract to abide by specific rules of conduct.