Trans Day of Rememberance
Before I begin, I want to note that today is the Trans Day of Rememberance. My thoughts and love are with all trans folks today, especially Black trans women.
Rethinking Thanksgiving: From Land Acknowledgements to LANDBACK
If I am remembering correctly, I found this program through SURJ, or Showing Up for Racial Justice, an organization specifically working to organize white folks around racial justice. It may have also been NDN Collective or an associated Indigenous organizing group. I get a lot of emails from them, and I've lost track of who sent me the invite for this particular event.
This series of speakers helped ground me. I always feel grounded when I listen to Indigenous and Native speakers, leaders, storytellers. I had a friend ask me if this was a recent interest of mine - she noticed I'd been going to a lot of native talks recently - and I answered that the more I learn about the movements I care about, the more I see that all roads lead back to indigenous peoples. We cannot have collective liberation or racial justice or climate justice or economic justice or gender justice without native folks and their wisdom. That's what I've noticed and learned.
Speaking of, pay attention to what is happening with the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) right now. The Supreme Court has had initial hearings and how they rule will significantly impact tribal sovereignty.
Dream Daddies and Fearful Fathers: How Indies Can Cope with Being Terminally Online
For a total change of pace, this Game Developers Conference (GDC) talk from 2019 is about Leighton Gray's experience and reflections on having made the game Dream Daddy and how to relate to the internet as a developer. I like this talk. I want to make sure that is clear before I continue. This is a solid primer (and it's short too!) on what happens to individuals on the internet today. I am happy that talks like these are being given and agree with the sentiment, but I get frustrated when topics are very close to being revolutionary but miss the mark by juuuust that much. We need systemic shifts to fix the problems being raised in individual conversations. After you watch this talk, I ask you to keep going. Which brings me to...
Ha-hah! Secret fourth topic!
Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed
I drove down with some friends and saw Marcella Murray and David Neumann's piece Distances Smaller Than This Are Not Confirmed at the University of North Carolina's Carolina Performing Arts's CPA series. I will note here that I know and have either tangentially or personally worked with everyone involved in this show, so I have more feelings about it than the average audience member.
I found this show to have a wall between me and the subjects. I never felt like I could grasp on and hook into it. The springboard is from an Octavia Butler interivew on the Charlie Rose show and personal conversations between Marcella and David about happenings at a college they were both at. Specifically, this is a conversation between a Black woman and a white man (who is older and more established than her). The mixed metaphors between television presentation, ground control and space travel and quantum physics, and race relations and white supremacy.... didn't work for me. Unfortunately!
I talked with my friends in the car afterwards and I think my difficulty with it is that I disagreed with it politically. It never felt like it went out from the individual conversation, despite claiming that it did. The talkback helped me pinpoint that - as they mentioned that they wanted to start with the one on one and move out from there, but I never felt like they did. Save for! A dance section near the end of the 2nd 3rd of the piece. That felt like the conversation that was the most inclusive of other people.
I was longing for a direction they were choosing to go or an action being taken; I didn't need a solution to the problem of Structural, System Racism, but having a one on one conversation about it and acknowledging that it's all around us is not the end. That's where I felt like it left me. Choosing to come sit at the table so to speak is not the end, that is the beginning. What are you going to build together?
I'm still sorting through my feelings on it. It certainly wasn't bad, but it also didn't work for me.
Community Fridges
I've been volunteering with my local community fridge group. I'm helping to install their newest fridge so they can open another location. I wonder what local organizations and organizers could use your helping hand this holiday season... I bet they'd love to have you.
Have a good night.
(It's early but it's dark out and I'm sleepy because the time change really came for me this year.)