SF Examiner-Golden Bears Aikido_Martial Artists Making a Difference at UC Berkeley
Huge thanks to Paul Rest for his article at the Examiner.com and continuing work toward aikido's future, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area! For more about this weekend's event, please visit http://peacepractices.com
RIP Felice Yeskel
Rest In Peace, Felice Yeskel, Co-Founder of Class Action
Felice Yeskel, a co-founder of Class Action and United for a Fair Economy, came from a working-class Jewish family from New York City’s Lower East Side. She was a founder of the UMass Stonewall Center: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Educational Resource Center and served as the director for 20 years. Felice was also a founder and co-director of DiversityWorks, Inc. an organization of social justice educators that provides training and consulting on issues of diversity and multiculturalism.
As an adjunct faculty member of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass Amherst she has taught both undergraduates and graduate students. She led hundreds of workshops across the country about economic inequality and about healing divisions among Americans of different class backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations. She was the co-author, along with Chuck Collins, of Economic Apartheid in America, published by The New Press in fall 2000. The second edition was published in the fall of 2005. Felice had a doctorate in Organizational Development and Social Justice Education.
She rocked and will be missed.
Class Action just released the following via email:
Felice devoted her entire life to waking people up to oppression, and in particular to classism. After a long struggle with cancer, she passed away peacefully in the night last night. Her funeral is at 2 pm today at the Jewish Community of Amherst (742 Main St), with a reception afterwards at Pioneer Valley Cohousing (120 Pulpit Hill Rd, Amherst). Our hearts are with all of you whose lives were touched by this extraordinary woman.
ABC renewal 2011
"John Mabry" <apocryphile@me.com>, "Odette Lockwood-Stewart" <revodette@lmi.net>, "Michael Mansfield" <jeangarcon@aol.com>, "Angela Sevin" <markangela@mail.com>, "Carol Swann" <carolswann@aol.com>, "Kayla Feder" <kaylasensei@yahoo.com>, "Justin Gordon" <aikidoka.playinginsand@bluetie.com>, "Lindsey Kerr" <lkerr1125@gmail.com>, "Lisa Fullam" <Lfullam@jstb.edu>, "Don McClure" <don@digi-element.com>, "Joe Good" <joegood666@yahoo.com>, "Joanie Albee-Good" <joanieag@yahoo.com>, "Jeffrey Hohenstein" <jeffrey.hohenstein@gmail.com>, "Ed Correia" <ecorreia@sagacent.com>,
20110107
Religiously Archetypal Glee
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stillness is a lie, my dear
Glee: A Very Glee Christmas
So, here’s the thing. I hate Glee. I don’t celebrate Christmas. I cannot stand Christmas music. And I really hate ‘cure the crip’ storylines. So, pretty much, there was no way on earth that I would not hate this week’s episode. On those grounds, one might reasonably ask why I should review it at all. Because, really. Yet, I soldier on, because, here’s the other thing: I watched this episode from start to finish, it was excruciatingly painful, and there’s no way in hell I’m enduring that for nothing.
I knew this episode was going to be bad going in, because numerous people told me not to watch it. What I didn’t realise was that Glee, once again, would manage to surpass my expectations. Every time I think the show cannot possibly get any fucking worse, it pulls something new out of the hat. The next time multiple people take time out of their days (one person even called me) to advise me not to watch something, I am heeding their warnings.
Here are some observations I made during this week’s episode:
I think it’s interesting that they chose to have the desexed gay boys sing ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ as a duet. There are pretty solid grounds for thinking of the song as a rape anthem, considering that it involves lines like ‘Say, what’s in this drink’ and ‘Beautiful, what’s your hurry’ (to someone who expresses a desire to leave, and is then told to drink some more) and ‘Baby, don’t hold out.’ The show has yet to show us any serious nonheterosexual making out although it’s happy to show us het people rolling around on various beds, but I guess it’s fine to use the gay characters as a vehicle for…yeah. I don’t even know.
This episode cracked out the fat jokes early, with Lauren saying ‘you can eat that, you know!’ in response to a comment about faking slushies with food colouring and snow. Because fatties, you know, we will eat anything. What really pisses me off about this character is that whenever she opens her mouth, she is either eating, or talking about food, or saying something sour and bitter because she’s fat and has no love. Which, fuck you, Glee. Fuck you for saying you’re all progressive and shit and for embodying the worst stereotypes about fat people. (Although I do note that she has rockin’ fashion, but, of course, no one ever talks to her about fashion or treats her as a fashion authority, I guess that’s Kurt’s job.)
Of course, the main event of this episode was the miracle cure. My jaw actually dropped when Brittany asked for Artie to walk again for Christmas. (And you know how people say ‘my jaw actually dropped’ when really they mean ‘I was metaphorically astounded?’ Yeah, I don’t mean that. My jaw. Fell open.) I’d been warned about this storyline, but the reminder that yes, they really were going to do this, was a little more than I could handle.
This series has spent pretty much its entire existence reminding us that it’s tragic that Artie uses a wheelchair, and that the only thing Artie really wants in life is to be able to walk again. We’ve already been subjected to a dream sequence ‘safety dance’ episode, and now this, where Artie is gifted a very expensive piece of experimental equipment FAR beyond the reach of most people with spinal cord injuries, all so the show can have a feel-good Christmas miracle.
Glee tells us, all the fucking time, that it’s a progressive show exploring social issues and really honestly depicting important things. It wins awards for it. People praise it pretty much constantly, and have taken special time to single the show out for it’s ‘sensitive,’ ‘honest,’ ‘realistic’ treatment of disabilities. Most of these people, I note, are nondisabled. Most of the people with spinal cord injuries I know who watch Glee find it every bit as enraging as I do, because Artie’s characterisation is so very far from their lived experience.
Glee is disability through a nondisabled lens, served up for the nondisabled gaze. Which doesn’t make it stand out from most other depictions of disability in pop culture, except for the fact that it claims to be saying something about disability, and many nondisabled viewers believe this and speak about the show as if it is an honest depiction of disability and they are taking away things from it. This week especially, I am reminded of the role Tiny Tim plays in A Christmas Carol; much like Artie, he is an object of pity and sorrow. Critically, he is an object. He is not a human being. He is a projection of disability, sprinkled in saccharine, for nondisabled viewers to pat themselves on the back over.
To depict disability honestly, to show real lived experiences, is apparently too messy and scary, and might cause people to reconsider the way they think about disability. Obviously, we would not want that, so instead most depictions of disability are like this; they are fantasies of disability, they are things that nondisabled people think they know about disability, and they are incredibly harmful.
I’ve been ranting about this show for a good long while now, but Artie’s handling in this episode was outstandingly bad, even for Glee, and I just…I see all these people talking about how great the show is, and specifically about how great it is on disability, and most of these people are nondisabled, and I just want to scream. I want to actually scream. While people praise Glee to the skies, we are are being murdered by the scores. The government is slashing our benefits to the bone. Disabled students are being bullied to death.
And it’s things like Glee that make the continued dehumanisation and marginalisation of people with disabilities possible. Because nondisabled people can turn to a sanitised version of disability tidied up for their consumption and made accessible for them, for people who think that having a spinal cord injury is their worst nightmare and who are convinced that wheelchair users spend their entire lives longing to walk again, because nondisabled people can always tune out our voices and listen to other nondisabled people telling them about disability, telling them what we need, telling them about our lived experiences, because of this, we face discrimination at every level of society. Because of this, we live in a world where ableism and disability hatred are so embedded into the socialisation of most citizens that people find it entirely unremarkable that abuse against people with disabilities is structured into our very government policy, our educational system, our health care system. Because of this, I am reminded every single day that I live in a world that wants to kill me.
But you keep right on joking about ‘holiday hoarders,’ Glee.
P.S. Confidential to Sue Sylvester: My Lai jokes? Never funny. Ever. Ever.
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Please help my friend find a laptop
From: Iris McGinnis
Date: Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 3:52 PM
Subject: Needing your help to find a laptop
Hey y'all,
You have just upgraded and have a MacBook (Pro, Air, whatever) that no longer suits your needs.
I have an old PowerBook that is barely crawling and $200 that says you'd like to help out a poor, old activist cross the road to the land of a venerable laptop with a webcam that works.
Please check out these details and, if you know of something like this, please let me know:
OS 10.5 (Leopard) or higher
G4 or G5 chip
1 GB of memory or more
60GB of hard drive space or more
a webcam
Grateful in advance,
Iris May
--
"If you have come here to help me then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together."
--Lila Watson (aboriginal activist)
Craig Zelizer article on humor and peacemaking 201011
Recommendation: Craig Zelizer's new article on humor and peacemaking in the Journal of Conflictology uoc edu at http://journal-of-conflictology.uoc.edu/ojs/index.php/journal-of-conflictology/article/viewFile/vol1iss2-zelizer/vol1iss2-zelizer
Happy News
Very Excited! Due date at the beginning of June. Names under consideration.
Training Holiday Break Nov 25-28
Golden Bears Aikido and Free Aiki Dojo are on holiday break Th Nov 25 - Sun Nov 28. Next class Mon 7am Nov 29.
Golden Bears and Free Aiki new 2011 Tue classes at Aikido of Bekeley
Even more opportunities for Golden Bears Aikido and Free Aiki Dojo deshi to train, and with Kayla Feder Sensei at Aikido of Berkeley. Kayla Sensei invited me to resume my earlier practice of teaching a beginner's class every Tuesday (beginning January 4th, 2011) from 6-7pm at AiBerk, followed by her class from 7-8:15, and invited everyone, including my students, to attend. I hope they will also join us for the monthly, first and third Tuesday potlucks which will continue into the new year.