early morning meditations

This is Day Two of waking at 5am–something’s going on, and I might as well write until I figure it out.  Yesterday I left a comment over at Color Online, and since then have been thinking about Arundhati Roy, an Indian writer/activist I greatly admire.  While waiting for dawn, I read an online interview with Naomi Klein, and now I want to share these wise women’s words with you.  Roy gave this speech, “Confronting Empire,” at the World Social Forum in Brazil in 2003. I have removed her references to the leaders of that time, though she made very astute observations about former President Bush and his plans for Iraq.  But here’s the distilled essence of her ideas:

So this – all this – is “empire.” This loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them.

Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate that distance.

So how do we resist “Empire”?

…many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. We know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work…

If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation between “Empire” and those of us who are resisting it, it might seem that we are losing.

But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to “Empire.”

We may not have stopped it in its tracks – yet – but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world’s stage in all it’s brutish, iniquitous nakedness.

Empire may well go to war, but it’s out in the open now – too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It won’t be long before the majority of American people become our allies…

What can we do?

We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar…

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

When I first read that speech in 2003, I was so blown away I printed it out and taped it to my office wall.  Last week, while clearing out my office at Mt. Holyoke, I found that same excerpt, taped to the filing cabinet next to my desk.  Naomi Klein makes similar observations in her critique of the current Obama stimulus bill, namely the bailout of the banks. When asked about the significance of this economic crisis, Klein responds:

It’s created space; there’s new oxygen to propose alternatives…Capitalism is on trial.  And you have an organic, grassroots, sort of spontaneous revolt against the elite – which is actually what we’re hearing with this rage at CEOs, and bonuses and government collusion with the elites. Rage is an opportunity. The rage is there, and the country is seething, the world is seething with rage. The question is, where is it going to be directed? I feel there’s a moral responsibility for the Left and for progressives to provide an alternative in this moment that is moral, that is principled, that is just, that is hopeful, because if we don’t, then that anger is so easily directed at “those damn Mexican immigrants,” at “the first African American president.” So I feel a tremendous sense of urgency. It’s not just, “Hey, our time has come.” It’s, “We’d better get our act together because this anger is going somewhere.”

…What enrages me more than anything is impunity. I am in a state of rage about the impunity of the elites at the moment. I’m very disturbed by this idea that we just have to keep looking forward, we can’t look backward. That is a declaration in favor of legal impunity for the elites, whether we’re talking about torture, whether we’re talking about the financial crimes that created this crisis, whether we’re talking about what happened under TARP and the first $700 billion…You can’t have a society where the elites enjoy this flagrant impunity and expect people to respect the rule of law.

I think these women are BRILLIANT!  They make me proud to BE a woman–and a writer, and an intellectual.  I sometimes think of myself as an activist, b/c I think my teaching and writing are politically engaged.  But I’m not sure I really do *enough* to count as an activist.  Or rather, I could do a lot more.  Klein’s comments about history and vision really interest me, b/c I often encounter similar resistance in my work on racial violence; many people would rather “leave all that behind us,” b/c once you force it into the present, you force a conversation about liability and reparations.  In class this week we discussed imperialism and neo-colonialism, and I read aloud Jamaica Kincaid’s brilliant passage from A Small Place where she talks about that yearning to go back to the moment before “any of this” happened.  It’s impossible, and she recognizes that; we can only move forward with our rage, our yearning for all that was lost, our insistence that things be made right, that the criminals be named as criminals and not victors.  I may have mentioned previously that I don’t have a very good relationship with my siblings; in fact, I don’t have a relationship with them at all!  We’re still “friends” on Facebook, however, so I see when they go on trips or post photos of events in their lives.  Last week I got a letter from my younger brother and braced myself for the worst; we had a blowout via email on New Year’s Day, and that’s the last time we were in contact.  So, four months have passed, and this letter arrives; inside is a poem and a postcard from Cuba.  He told me about his plans to write a novel and then signed the letter “Your deceitful brother (just joking).”  I wasn’t amused, since the blowout four months ago was about the need to have a relationship based on honesty and integrity.  It’s not a joke to me, and it’s not going to go away.  So what do we do with a past to which we can’t reconcile ourselves?  I’m not one for “just moving on,” letting bygones be bygones, water under the bridge, etc. etc.   Can you achieve justice that way?  And I don’t mean revenge, or being told “You were right, and I was wrong.”  I mean a just, fair relationship that can be sustained into the future.  My father was the kind of man who never felt a need to apologize.  Only once, in more than 30 years, did he apologize to me–and there was a lot he needed to apologize for.  But he was old school (patriarchal) and didn’t believe he owed anything, least of all an apology or explanation for his behavior, to his child.  And that’s all I could ever be—his child, not a woman, an adult, a being deserving of respect.  So when I see that same trait developing in my brother, I wince and then harden myself against the temptation to just let it slide.  I’m not signing up for more of that.  I often talk about the “culture of accommodation” whereby women simply make space for the b.s. put out by a lot of the men in our lives.  We sigh, we vent to our female friends, but we very rarely resist or demand better treatment for ourselves.  We say, “boys will be boys,” and we move on.  In all areas of my life I’m looking for a “third way,” and it’s HARD sometimes, trying to navigate between the status quo and the radical action I’m not ready for yet.  I don’t want to build a cabin deep in the woods and isolate myself from corrupt society.  Yet I’m not marching on DC, either.  I want to live here in Brooklyn in a way that registers my objection to corruption and injustice AND my determination to continue to engage with my community.  I think my siblings read me as “holier-than-thou” and I regret that.  But I won’t go along to get along; that’s not in my nature.  Not anymore!  Unfortunately, standing up for your values sometimes means standing alone.  Yet when I read Naomi Klein and Arundhati Roy’s words, I don’t FEEL alone…I feel connected to something much larger than myself.  And I’m hoping I can use that sense of connection to build a life and a community that’s consistent with my vision of a just world.  Big ideas for so early in the morning!

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