Lucky White Girl

"You mean you're 32 and you're not a lawyer yet??"

I should say first that I love DC.  Moving up here and starting this job has been the best thing to happen to me since...well, in a long time!  I'm lucky enough to work with really nice down-to-earth people who simply do good, honest work to make the world a better place.  And that's just it.  They're really good people, all of them, doing really good work!  If they were corporate types I wouldn't be feeling this way at all, but last night I met this guy who's 26 and does employment law which is, I guess, kind of a civil rights thing (you know, like discrimination etc)  and he's about to finish law school and take the bar exam and then he'll keep doing civil rights work and he was just so cool.  I was jealous.

And that's the thing about this city.  I'm feeling the pressure.  Am I a slacker?  I'm thinking thoughts I never thought before like, gee, I'm 32 and I'm not a lawyer yet! What's wrong with me?? lol...

Everyone here is a good-guy lawyer (okay well not *everyone* in the city but everyone I'm meeting in non-profit-land!).  I've never been even remotely interested in anything like law school.  The closest I've come is taking a few international law courses but now I find myself wondering about it.  You could argue that I should consider international law because I've always been inclined towards the theoretical (sorry that's an IR joke!) but if you want to make a real impact on people's lives it seems like domestic law would be more practical.  Save some family from being homeless.  Keep immigrant parents from being separated from their kids.  Challenge big corporations that spray their workers with pesticides.

Why am I so enamored with lawyers now you ask?  Is this just a phase?  Will I grow out of it?  Maybe...

But you see, lawyers are like the Catholic church.

I'll pause a second for that to catch your attention! Lol....

Okay, no, it's true: Lawyers are like the Catholic Church.  Both have bad reputations among certain sectors of the general public, right?  And to an extent there are valid reasons for those bad reputations.  But I didn't grow up around Catholics and I didn't grow up around lawyers and by the time I met both as an adult I was politically active enough to be meeting the cool ones.  I met the liberation theology Catholics and poverty lawyers.  The Catholics were organizing against US sponsored violence in Latin America and the lawyers were helping out people who were getting evicted from their homes.  What's not to love?

Law school would be a lot of time and money and effort.  About the equivalent of having a child (except that it ends in three years instead of eighteen) and since I'm now considering the very real possibility that having children might not be my lot in life, I think I've decided this: If I don't have a child, should I go to law school?

What do you think?

 

Learning DC, snapshot

Me: [looking at map] Hey there's the Naval Observatory!  I wonder what that is?
Chris: For navel gazing, of course! [snicker]

Ms. Lucky goes to Washington...

... for a job interview!  With a 26-year old non-profit organization representing farmworkers!  This is it.  This is THE job.  While I'm still considering other options right now this is the one that's pulling me most.  The group represents farmworkers across the nation "to improve their living and working conditions, immigration status, health, occupational safety, and access to justice."  I would sooo love to be a part of that!  I have some reading up to do on the subject but this is an issue that's long been near and dear to my heart. 

I applied for a position as Communications Coordinator which seems to be a combination of a writer/web-content developer/PR-type position.  I had a great telephone interview with the director of the organization last week and he offered to pay for a plane ticket for me to come to DC for a live interview.  I'm sooo excited!  Wish me luck!  I might just have landed myself a good ol' fashioned job!  Yipppppeeeee!!!!

Quick! What is the oldest peace and justice group still active in the US today?

This past week I had a job interview with some folks from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, commonly known simply as FOR.  The job is for organizer for their campaign to end military aid to Colombia and it would be based out of San Francisco (!!!).  I could write a lengthy post about my personal feelings about this adventure, detailing the nervousness and excitement I feel right now and what I would hope out of getting such a job but I won't.  I'm going to write about something else I learned this week that was mildly surprising. 

I was surprised (and yeah, okay disappointed) at how many people --even those on the progressive left who have no excuse-- had never heard of FOR when I told them about the job interview.  "Your interview is with who?" they asked and I have to admit I was a little peeved.  Here I get an interview with THE OLDEST PEACE AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION IN THE U.S. and they've never heard of it!!!  Humph!  Count on your friends to bring you back down to earth! 

But really now, it's true.  Most people have never heard of FOR despite the huge role the organization has played in the history of the 20th century especially on behalf of the poor and poorly treated.  Why this is (that people have never heard of this organization) is too long and depressing to get into here but I thought it'd be worth it to write a mini introduction to the Fellowship of Reconciliation and why you --yes, YOU!-- should care:

• For was founded in the US in 1915 by 68 pacifists including Jane Adams and A.J. Muste.
• The American Civil Liberties Union developed out of FOR's conscientious objectors program
• FOR and the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, sponsored the first Freedom Ride in 1947.
• FOR worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.(probably their most famous member) on the Montgomery Bus Boycotts

You see the pattern here?  FOR is like the gold standard for faith-based peace and justice organizations in the US.  At every major campaign against injustice, they've been there.  The organization itself was founded out of a response to World War I and it's been a major force for social change even into the 21st century.  From domestic issues such as poverty and racism, to international affairs such as abolishing nuclear weapons and ending and preventing war and reducing US imperialism and the demilitarization of US foreign policy, FOR is one of the major players in the people's history of the United States.  You should know the name.  Not only because yours truly is hoping to have the honor of working with such a prestigious organization, but because they're a damned awesome group! 

Find out more about FOR around the world, in several languages at their international site.  And by the way, I'd be surprised if they actually selected me out of thousands of applicants across the country but if by some crazy chance they do, be warned: this blog may suddenly stop functioning because I will have had a heart attack!!

More than one way to catch a rat: On the direct and indirect approaches to persuasion

I was knitting a sock and listening to the Diane Rehm show the other day when an online friend of mine pops me an IM:  "Whatcha doing?"

"Knitting a sock and listening to the Diane Rehm show" I say and right away he was off giving me his unsolicited opinion about Diane Rehm, her "butt kissing" and the time she interviewed Henry Kissinger.  "I wouldn't have been surprised," he went on, "if she'd have leaned over and---" well, I'll censor that part of his remark as it involved sexualized language and I don't want anyone to get any wrong ideas about what kind of blog this is!  But his comments annoyed me for several reasons, not least of which was that I doubt he would've used the term he used if Diane Rehm had been a "he" and not a "she".

The other reason it didn't sit well was because it seemed indicative of a simplistic, monolithic approach to things.  Ms Rehm does not browbeat her guests; that's not her style.  She is always polite, both with guests and people who call in to the show. No matter how infamous the guest or how obnoxious the caller she will always treat them graciously and gently.  Even if they are brutal dictators (and no one has to tell me what a ruthless thug Kissinger was).  I do not think this makes her a brown-noser.  She is not Amy Goodman.  Amy Goodman is Amy Goodman and Diane Rehm is Diane Rehm and I don't need Diane Rehm to be Amy Goodman because I have Amy Goodman to be Amy Goodman!  Capiche? 

This sort of black and white approach irritates me.  If you had a nationally syndicated talk show and your guest was someone like George Bush or Henry Kissinger, how would you treat them?  You could be ruthless and direct (that's good sometimes) or you could take the indirect approach (that's good sometimes too).  Both can be useful but too often we ignore the latter in favor of the former and so here I want to make an argument for the indirect approach.

The indirect approach is subtler and it's true you risk losing the part of your audience that doesn't appreciate subtlety (or is too busy to take the time to notice it) but it also means you have enough respect for the intelligence of your audience to not tell them something they should be able to figure out for themselves.  Smart writers can put the facts out there and trust their audience to make reasonable conclusions based on those facts.  And let's be honest, if you do have someone like George Bush or Henry Kissinger on a stage and let them talk long enough, do you really feel it's necessary to hang a sign around their necks telling everyone what evil merciless asshats they are?

I find that I struggle with this in my own writing, especially when writing for certain audiences.  There's a certain pressure to reveal not only your subject but also your personal position in each piece.  This is why I like this blog.  Most of the time I'm not trying to prove anything here to anyone so I say what I think and leave the rest up to you.  You either get it or you don't.  The downside is it does leave quite a bit of room for misinterpretation.  I like to think that's not my problem.  I wish I could be more like this when writing for non-personal-blog outlets.  It's something I have to work on.

The point is there are several ways to catch a rat.  Only one of them involves poisoned cheese.

Popularity

Whew, anyone else feel it's gettin' a little crowded in here today?  That might be because we've had some 100,000 visitors come through in the past 24 hours since I posted the melted laptop story on reddit last night.  (I didn't know about reddit two years ago when the incident happened; last night I was sorting through my blog and came upon the post again.  It's a good story so I thought I'd submit it.  Next thing I know it's on the front page and getting thousands of hits per minute!)  Now it's gone on to digg and various other places and the comments are flooding my inbox.  (Most are nice, sympathetic or laughing; a few people who just seem to be perpetually angry left really nasty comments as if I'd insulted their mother or something <insert eyeroll here>.  I don't understand what would make them so upset but there's a lot of things I don't understand in this world!)   

I'm really grateful to Typepad and their servers for not crashing on me with all this traffic and I'm really, really glad to be meeting a few really cool new people who came to read a funny story about a melted laptop but stayed because they like or just appreciate my writing on other subjects. 

For a lot people this is the first they've come across a Marxist before and several people seem to want to know more about it so here's a note to say you can get an overview of sorts by reading my FAQs. 

Oh and I learned a new thing about popular perceptions of Marxism: people get Marxists confused with Luddites or maybe the Amish!  Apparently we should all be driving around in horse and buggy carts because Marx was against technology!  lol... that one made me snicker it's so silly and obviously uninformed but I think I know where it comes from.  I might write a longer post about this later but here's the short answer: Marx was certainly not against technology.  He didn't talk much about it one way or the other but Marxist theorists have debated whether or not technology is good or bad for the working class.  Some think that technology is a tool of the ruling class to keep control of the system which benefits them and others see technology as a potential tool for the working class to organize and fight back.  Lots of people including me, think it works both ways and that technology is indeed a useful organizing tool that can enrich our lives and the worldwide struggle for liberation.  There's a really good book called CyberMarx by Nick Dyer-Witheford which gives an excellent summary of this question. 

So anyway I'm glad the story's so popular and I'm glad it gave people a good belly laugh but I am sorta looking forward to things calming down and to all the wingnuts to disperse.  Those who like good Marxist theory (even if they don't know it yet) are welcome to stick around.  I usually have a regular stream of thoughtful and controversial posts.  For now, my 15 minutes of fame has been a fun diversion but I have translating to do and articles to write.  To all the new visitors: have fun exploring Lucky White Girl!

There's a word for people like us

One day about ten years ago I was sitting on an old school bus in Guatemala with this French-Canadian girl I had met in my homestay.  I remember the bus was nearly empty (that was unusual in a country whose primary mode of transportation is buses) when during the course of the conversation my new friend said something to me about why I use the term "American" when referring only to people from the United States.  I was a little dumbfounded.  "What do you mean," I asked her, unsure of what she could possibly be getting at.  What else would I call them but 'Americans'? 

"America is the whole continent," she explained in her accented English.  "There's North America, Central America and South America.  It's odd that for you an American is someone from the US but for us and others an American is someone from any of the countries that make up the Americas". 

Wow.  Really?  I thought about it for a minute and realized it was true.  It was a silly term.  "Americans" can't just mean folks in the U.S.!  We're all "Americans".  But then what do I call us then?  Ah, there's the rub! 

That was my introduction to how enthnocentric even our language can be and how blind we who grow up within the ranks of the privileged can be to such enthnocentricity.  At first I thought my friend was being over-sensitive --after all she was Quebequois!  But as I spent more time in Latin America it began to make more sense to me.  How rude --and how typical-- for us to not even notice (linguistically) all the other non-US people living in the Americas.  I spent a lot of time as a "guest" in various Latin American countries.  Of course I didn't want to offend my hosts.  After awhile, it became more natural for me to refer to "the Americas" and to use the term "American" more inclusively.

In Spanish there's a word for people from this country (and I don't mean "gringo"!).  The word is estadounidense.  It's precise and it rolls off the tongue as easily as canadiense or japones.  In English, however, it's trickier.  United-Statesian sounds incredibly awkward until you get used to it and for awhile I played around with using "USian" (pronounced like the pronoun "us" with "-ian").  Mostly, however, I just tried to avoid using the word at all.  "People from this country" I would say.  Or "folks in the United States".  I was definitely in the minority and usually no one noticed I had abandoned the term (but I was thrilled when I once had a class taught by a professor from Cuba who did the same thing.)

So that's why I was pleasantly surprised to read this op-ed in yesterday's NY Times. Surprised because it just hasn't been all that often that I've encountered other English speakers who have thought about this, much less tried to change the way they use the word "American".   Then I looked again and saw the article was not written by English speakers at all but by two French journalists from the newspaper Le Monde. 

How much does language reflect our social reality and vice versa?  As I mentioned in this post, I really don't know, which is maybe why I haven't been more vocal about the matter.  But I know I do like precision in language and if nothing else, USians, estado-unidenses or just plain "people from the US" gives us that.  In the scheme of things, though, what does it matter?  Borders are fiction.  It's true, there is a word for people like us.  That word is "Americans".

Traveling by bus in the US: A primer

Not that I mean to sound conceited about it or anything (because there is a certain category of folks to whom such a claim would sound admirable) but I have done a significant amount of bus travel in my life.  I've been on rickety old former school buses in Guatemala re-incarnated into gentle metal mammoths belching diesel fumes into the air as they careen along green mountainsides loaded down with people, tourists, chickens, bags of maiz and sometimes goats and pigs.  I've been on luxurious double-decker Pullman buses in South America with reclining plush seats, air conditioning and Jackie Chan movies.  And I've been in dingy Greyhound buses with malfunctioning toilets easing in and out of dirty downtowns in cities across the US.  No matter where you are, buses in some form or another, are the ultimate in proletariat transportation!  They are, arguably, the best way to really see a country and its people (the only near comparisons I can think of being trains and bicycles, but that's another post).

This is not meant to imply that I've thoroughly enjoyed every bus ride I've ever taken!  I've never been so car-sick as I was one time on a bus traveling from Manizales back to Bogota, Colombia.  I thought I was going to die and so did several of my nearest co-passengers (even the driver felt sorry for me)!  And I remember a similar one in Guatemala when I thought my kidneys were going to burst and they would have to bury me alongside the ambulant venders selling bags of water and frozen bananas.  Crossing the border from Guatemala into Chiapas once we were stopped by an Army roadblock and everyone had to get off and be searched for contraband.

But I have had way more plesant experiences on buses than unplesant ones.  Once I sat next to an older man I swear was Gabriel Garcia Marquez and fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.  Once when I was in high school and snuk out for the weekend to go visit my boyfriend in Savannah (telling my parents I had gone to a friends house), a man on the Greyhound serenaded us from DeLand to Daytona with his mellow acoustic guitar tunes and every one seemed caught up in the glow of unexpected intimacy of strangers. (And it was still a good trip, even though when I got back I found out I had been caught because my truck had been towed from behind the bus station while I was gone and my parents duly notified by the company!)

No journey is really complete, I think, if it does not involve a long bus ride upon which to reflect.

In the US we have few inter-city and inter-state bus systems and by far the most popular and well known is Greyhound.  I'm planning another bus trip in a few days so that got me thinking about writing a post about the subject.  It's definitely a good way to go, but before you pack your bags and hop on the 'hound, take a minute to consider the golden rule of bus travel which I've learned in my years of bus riding:

Above all else, when taking the bus in the US, consider the route between your destinations.  If there is no major highway between your point A and your point B you might want to reconsider.  Try bus-free alternatives instead such as hitch-hiking, train-hopping or car-sharing if you cannot bike or walk because even if the two cities are physically close, if there's no direct bus route between them you'll end up going to a hub somewhere and waiting on a transfer.  For example, my folks live in a little town about an hour and a half from where I live but I would never consider taking the bus there.  It would take at least eight hours as I would have to first go north to transfer in Jacksonville then wait for another bus going south through Daytona then to Tampa via Orlando.  In that amount of time I could've biked the distance from here to there and stopped to have a dip in one of the fresh-water springs in the national forest along the way.

On the other hand, if you're traveling between two major cities linked by an interstate, it's pretty wasteful NOT to take the bus.  Gainesville to Atlanta for example is 7 hours 20 minutes, only an hour or so more than driving a car, PLUS it's safer, PLUS they're almost always on time, PLUS you don't have to worry about where to leave your car when you get there, PLUS there's a MARTA (Atlanta metro) stop right there and PLUS you can get a lot of reading and thinking done along the way. 

The same is true going the other way, south from Gainesville to Tampa/St. Pete but last I rode that route the bus didn't use the interstate much but made lots of little meandering jogs to stop off at small towns along the way.  It is very scenic but it takes about twice the time as driving it.

Buses in the US are not as colorful nor as convenient as they are in other countries.  There's no doorman or small boy riding shotgun and yelling out the name of the destination in a voice that echoes through the misty morning of a third world bus depot where women in huipils cook fresh arepas or tortillas and serve strong lukewarm coffee for hungry travelers in hole-in-the-wall restaurants.   But you WILL share your ride with grandmothers and young people, hippies and recovering drug addicts.  And maybe if you're very lucky, there will be some long-haired romantic on board who will break out the guitar and sing you some beautiful old love songs along the way.

Survey says!

I remember one time, not long after George Jr. stole the 2000 election (or maybe it was after he was elected in 2004) I was despairing about the state of the world and what would become of it with such a man put in charge of the most powerful country on the planet and a friend of mine said, "I remember when Reagan was elected we felt the same way".  Really, I said, what did you do? I asked him.  "We got through it".  Just that.  We got through it.  And I felt better.  I began to see that this wasn't the first time something absolutely horrible had happened.  Terrible things have happened before and people get through it.  Some individuals might give up, but social change, collective action does not stop.

Now the end of the reign of Bush is within sight.  I thought this day would never come.  His poll numbers are in the pits; for the first time in my life the majority of the US population appear to be against war (I just wish they coulda figured it out sooner; woulda saved so many lives).  I went to an anti-war vigil a few weeks ago and it was nice to be on the winning side for a change.  Most passersby supported us.

We got through it.  Two terms the worst president in US history (thanks bin Laden for making the second term possible!) and we got through it.

This is project is still in its formative stages, so nothing's set in stone yet.  The idea is to talk to a bunch of activists, especially older people or people who've been active for many years and collect their stories about how they got to where they are today, what they've learned over the years and what keeps them going through difficult times.  Because we could use that kind of long-term perspective.

So I've interviewed five people so far.  They're sorta like my trial run --you know the practice interviews you do while still working out the kinks-- but I've gotten such good stuff tonight I really want to use it somehow.  You might get a transcript here or at least some excerpts.

I've got about five or six questions depending on how the interview was going and the interviews take about 5-10 minutes.

I recorded the interviews on a digital tape recorder.

The Questions:

1.) If you'd like, you can state your name and maybe your age.
2.) Where are you from?
3.) What do you do?
4.) How long have you done it?
5.) What was the defining moment or moments in your life when you felt like you really understood the world in a way you hadn't before?  How did it change you or what was your response to this shift in perspective?
6.) From your own personal experience being a political activist, working for political change, what was the most unexpected thing that you learned?
7.)  What's your take on the world now?
8.)  What would you say to young activists today to help them get through difficult times?

I think I'd like to change number 6 to this:

"From your own personal experience working for political change, what was the most surprising thing that you discovered about the process of working in an organized movement?"

That should yield some interesting responses!  I can't wait to ask people that one!

Maybe I'll post my own answers to the questions tomorrow so watch this space and --please-- if anyone out there reading this wants to contribute feel free to put your answers in the comment section below.

Scotland, PA and other remakes

I watched Scotland, PA last night and it was great!  I used to say that I didn't like remakes of Shakespeare but I think that's an old opinion that I need to revisit.  Back in my undergrad days I saw several remakes (on the stage and on the big screen) I didn't like.  Back then I was an English lit major and I was really into the bard.  I took two classes on him and read most of the plays.  I memorized the entire fourth act of Hamlet.  We had a Shakespeare in the park festival in St. Pete that I used to go to regularly and when I was at Clemson they had a festival too. 

The most memorable play I ever saw was one that was almost more like a dramatic reading of the play.  It wasn't a play in the sense that they had no costumes or stage scenery.  But no, they weren't naked!  They just wore simple black shirts and pants.  The only props they used were three black boxes.  Our professor explained that the elaborate costumes and scenery one normally sees in presentations of Shakespearian plays are more a product of the Victorian era anyway.  What this minimalist presentation did is strip away everything but the words themselves.  You could totally focus only on the language and the pure emotion displayed therein.  It was great.  I'd really like to see another presentation like this one day.

Anyway Scotland, PA is a good remake.  For me a good remake doesn't just represent the famous story; it adds something.  It has to be a good movie in and of its own right.  The best remake ever done in my book, is Apocolypse Now.  It's every bit as important as a work of art as is its inspiration (maybe even better because it lacks the 19th century racism Chinua Achebe pointed out)  The movie goes above and beyond just adapting Conrad's story about the evil inherent in human nature to a contemporary setting.  Coppola uses it to make cutting political commentary on important social issues of his time (the Vietnam war). 

Scotland, PA doesn't aspire to anything so lofty.  It's just an entertaining murder-comedy.  There's no risk of the audience member identifying uncomfortably with the murderous protagonists, but it is cute to think of the parallels of modern fiefdoms in the fast-food business and cheezy 70s popular culture. 

It made me want to have a mini-Shakespeare fest of my own so I put some old favorites on my list, some of which I want to see again:

• Richard III 1995 remake with Ian McKellen set in early 20th century facist Europe (one of my favorite remakes)
• Looking for Richard (my all time favorite documentary about the making of a fictional film version of Richard III with Al Pacino; excellent commentary giving context and background to one of Shakespeare's best plays)
• Hamlet the 1990 Mel Gibson version; I liked it then when I was a kid.  I'm not sure if I'd still like it as much now compared to....
• Hamlet the 1996 Kenneth Branagh version.  This one just blows every other version away.
• Romeo and Juliet Zeffirelli's 1968 classic.  Still the best... so beautiful!!
• The Merchant of Venice Al Pacino plays Shylock, the most problematic of Shakespeare's plays it's unavoidably anti-semitic but definitely makes you think and I love Al Pacino!
• Othello
• My Own Private Idaho... a funky adaptation of Henry IV

Adaptions I didn't like:

• Hamlet adapted to modern day NYC; so painfully bad I almost walked out

Adaptations I saw but thought were just so-so:

• Romeo and Juliet the Leonardo DiCaprio version.

Anyone have any other recommendations to see or avoid?  There are so many out there.