With exception to political/advocacy meetings, an occasional noon movie, and coffee with friends, I don’t go out that much. I’m very much a homebody and I’m comfortable staying in.

Today I went to the movies and was amazed at the crowds. In these crowds I saw young people with amputations, wheelchairs, and other mobility devices again and again. People with physical disabilities were everywhere (I can’t even imagine all the other disabilities people probably had.) At first it didn’t hit me, but after the fourth or fifth crip, I realized these were all soldiers who had come back from Iraq over the last two months.

Growing up as an “army brat”, celebrating July 4th was always a big deal for my community (especially since I lived on this base for 18 years, very rare). During the 4th of July week, everyone wore red, white and blue, soldiers were given a break, and we did fun crafts at school. The week was sealed off with a huge festival with big time country music singers, carnival rides, cotton candy, and the biggest firework display you could ever imagine. The celebration crowd chanted about all the silly leftist anti-war people and talked about how they weren’t supporting the troops. People left energized about winning the “war on terrorism”. People left believing the US was perfect, which eventually led to things like hating immigrants and people who do not “appreciate American generosity” or “use what they’ve been given”.

Most times Halmoni and my mom stay(ed) at home and my family would say jokes like “oh you shouldn’t have a green card if you don’t do fireworks!” Even though I didn’t get why they stayed home before, I’m appreciative for this now. I know my grandma and mom do not stay home for political reasons—more of not connecting with the holiday or feeling like it’s theirs, although my mom is very patriotic— but I’m glad to not be the only one who stays home nowdays.

A brillant friend suggested on her blog that we should transform Independence Day into a holiday that celebrates freedom fighters like Justin Dart, Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, Dr. King, and the many others. I’m definitely down for this…

i spent tonight writing my first zine and planning out how i am going to print it while being anonymous and needing assistance from a PA in printing it?…and how to make it accessible? and and and… anyways. i wrote this poem for my zine (i’m so freaking energized and inspired from the AMC! can’t wait to tell yall more about this zine and a video project i am planning…)

she takes one step forward
losing footing, another one back
that’s 14 fucking years of physical therapy
in those stupid little backward forward steps

hey girl, stop for a second
stand a moment
shift your weight around a bit
figure out which way you want to go, i’ll hold you

sometimes you have to lean on another person
or sit down
take a rest, it’s okay
the journey can be long for tired feet

remember that the journey can be adapted
changed
altered
a new plan can be created if you let it, one that can be liberating and free

life doesn’t always have to be about moving forward
making connections
achieving big goals, like climbing up those steps
life is standing still and a quest to find balance

maybe I did get something out of PT afterall

twitter is a feature that allows your friends to send updates about themselves to your cell phone if you have text message. i thought this was mostly used for “i just had the most delicious sandwich ever” type messages (who cares?) but it turns out people have been using this as a form of media (i.e. brownfemipower live-blogged from the Allied Media Conference using twitter) or a way to send out action alerts (i.e. violent raids on the border).

you can search for my twitter by typing in cripchick at the top search bar on twitter.com

is anyone else on?

wrote this while sitting at adele’s kitchen table in detroit after the Allied Media Conference. i’ve come to believe that community organizing for me means working with other disabled women of color and leaving the assimilationist [trying to fit into mainstream society] political bullshit behind:

for far too long have i thought
community advancement meant
serving on boards
applying for nonprofit status
developing programs
and listening to white people speak for my experience.

but it is not enough.

for far too long have ignored racism and homophobia
betraying my people and parts of me
so i could call this place
home

but it is not enough
and it will never be enough.

i can no longer be a part of a single-issue movement that carries no understanding of how all oppressions are intertwined (without co-opting them)

i can no longer be a part of a movement that ignores multitudes of people and silences them through invisibility and a one-issue agenda

NO! i can not be a part of a movement that uses my body, my blood, my words without acknowledging where they come from
and who they are for
but instead filters them into a hetero white rich folk framework
everything that i am not and my people are not…

you can no longer quiet me, cut me,
separate me into bite-size pieces
cause yes i am no longer a part of this movement.

…so where is home?

Gaydar—
When does this function begin to work?
Is there a help number
I can call?
Hi, Hello.
Yes, the gaydar you gave me just won’t turn on.
Yes, I read the instructions.
I have my queer proof of purchase right here,
Can I get a replacement?

Is immersing myself in queer culture required to getting this thing up and running?
After my sister graduates, she’s going to my aunt’s place in Seoul
There she’ll learn the gayageum and brush up on her Corean,
Maybe that’s what I need to do?
Assimilate myself in all-queer surroundings
Get the language down right…

If there is a password, just tell me
Maybe I can guess
“loveLorde”?
“heternomativity”?
“ENDAtransexclusiontheHRCdoesntspeakforme”?

Or is it that I’m so used to being stared at,
So used to everyone watching my every move,
That I’ve drowned all you out?
Ah yes maybe I’ve missed step one—

direct your eyes towards the subject.

I’m 48 minutes early but happy birthday Nadia!! I am constantly amazed w/ your raw honesty, your zine, your blog, your activism, and your passion for media justice. Keep doing what you do, Nadia, you are shaping the world into a better place.

And Lex! Happy belated birthday! Your love, your questions, your vision brings a new kind of hope. I am glad to know you and call you my sister.

I love you both and am thankful for, your warmth, your friendship, and everything I’ve learned from you both… Happy birthday! See you in DETROIT! <3

i fell into a numbness
til the only tree i cd see
took me up in her branches
held me in the breeze
made me dawn dew
that chill at daybreak
- ntozake shange, for colored girls…

(okay is that not appropriate for a birthday? hmm. it’s beautiful though and everything yall mean to me *grin*)

from Vox ex Machina:

Fox News “charmingly” chose to refer to Michelle Obama as “Obama’s baby mama.” [Source] Sexist AND racist. Nice job, Fox.

The National Organization of Women, of course, has a blistering rebuttal on their website. Nah, just kidding, they totally don’t. But there are, of course, several pieces about Sen. Clinton’s loss and what it means for women, paycheck discrimination, and “reproductive rights” (although they only seem to deal with the right to birth control/abortion part of that issue). … Come to think on it, NOW didn’t have a response to Imus’ “nappy-headed hos” comment for over a week after it happened. And they’ve never put up a response when someone in the media insinuates that Dr. Rice has her job because she sleeps with the president.

Neither have Gloria Steinem or Rosie O’Donnell. Neither have several other mainstream feminist organizations or magazines — at least on their websites. And very few bloggers have done more than give it a passing mention with more than an ironic comment about how Fox News is stupid, ell oh ell.

So, Linda Hirschman, I don’t think you need to worry about intersectionality “ruining feminism” any time soon. Mainstream feminist organizations still aren’t worried about anything but middle-class white women’s issues.

I made a commitment to a close friend that I would write about my personal journey from being a right-wing, flag-waving evangelical fundamentalist to a proud, disabled, queer, radical woman of color that is always growing and never having the answer… however, it is too much to tell in one story so I’m going to make it a series of posts. (See, Ry, now the pressure is officially on! <3)

My sister would never come to me to talk about race. I’m too irrational and “out there” in my politics.

Still, my mother told me tonight how on the way home from a church group meeting, my sister had asked her to pray because she wasn’t fitting in at church and was dreading the trip she had signed up (and already paid for) next week. Though my sister is devoutly religious, if she asked her to pray, it must be serious.

“dah hin sadahm ya, guchee?” I asked in broken Corean so my brother and dad wouldn’t understand.
“yes. all of them.”

While my mom talked to me, I could see her playing back memories in her head. Recent memories, though very painful, that had actually brought us closer (finally she understood what I had been saying for years about where we fit in with white people and why I didn’t go to church). My own head was busy with thoughts. Sterile white-walled classrooms. Clean white girls laughing over inside jokes. Role-model white women teachers telling us how to be good Christian girls.

“I should have kept us at the Corean church, right? Your sister went to Johnny’s graduation party yesterday and all the kids there were his friends from Corean church. The Corean church was like a fishbowl, I wanted you kids to have an aquarium experience so you could go far.” She cupped her hands like a bowl and then stretched them like a box.

After thinking long and hard, I told her I didn’t have an answer. I was an outsider at the Corean church and it wasn’t cause of race or cultural values. All the kids there were half white, half Corean too. It made an interesting dynamic— the white army daddies stayed home and Corean women ran the whole church. Though this Confucian, strong Corean woman background is part of me, I didn’t fit in as an ugly, penguin-steppin (I walked bobbing from side to side) kid who wore FOB clothes that emo sent from Seoul.

Not knowing what else to say, I told my mom that my sister would be okay. After all, they couldn’t get their deposit for the trip back. “Umma. Remember I met Desiree, Henry, Angie, Richard and the others at church? She’ll meet people too. When she comes back from the trip, she can switch to Johnny’s church. She’ll be okay.”

Even though I reassured my mom that everything would be fine, the pangs in my heart told me different and I felt bad for my beautiful, perfect younger sister (how could SHE be an outsider?). Maybe my sister would be lucky enough to meet good people like I had. Des’ mom, though born in this country, forced her to come to church for the same reasons my mom had. We became best friends and when a few latino, black, and Lumbee kids trickled in, we formed an impenetrable group of teenagers (you know how we folks of color multiply!…sarcasm noted hopefully).

The environment was so hostile that this group was the one place there that love seemed to grow. From the outside, we looked liked we had nothing in common (I was the only gimp and one of the few non-black kids of color) but inside our friendship flourished. And in a world where White Jesus loved us but told us we were bad (but white kids were less bad), we managed to go on without being too heartbroken about this…

Anyways. I am forever thankful to those friends and thankful for the experience of hammering out such a space. This is one of the stories in my journey in which I have begun to call the place I build with other rwoc home.

Dear Harriet,

After hearing the news of your death yesterday, many friends and I have been saying the same thing over and over: “I know it’s wrong to be so heartbroken about this—I didn’t know her— but I can’t help it.” No one wants to take the mourning away from those who knew you and make it our own, but you are our kin too and we mourn this loss as a community.

Over the last two months, I had been in communication w/ you to see if you could speak at our youth conference here in NC. You talked about how your family lived so close to where we were having our conference and how maybe you could come stay with family and visit the Tobacco Museum afterwards. It made me laugh that you were so friendly and open about your life but I guess I should know *something* about Southern culture by now!

Through emails, I gushed on and on (to the point of embarrassing myself) about how we had all read your book and would love the opportunity to meet you. You didn’t know this, but when I found out you couldn’t come, I started to see if my friends and I could go to Charleston (post-conference vacation) in hopes of randomly calling you up and having a meal together. I’m sad that the chance is gone.

You were the first person I really saw put an experience so similar to my own into words. I have a form of Muscular Dystrophy too, although the form is unknown. The fear of early death and a life of pity made my family stay away from the word MD. To this day, I still have a hard time describing my medical diagnosis to people.

Needless to say, your fierceness rocked my world! You understood what organizing in the South looked like (something I am still learning) and it was a natural part of your activism. Your childhood experience sounded so much like my own (worrying about death, not knowing privacy, etc.) And your writing is full of humor, one of the cornerstones of disability culture. Even the way I found out about you speaks for who you are—I received Too Late to Die Young from a friend (whose favorite part was the “sea of butts” chapter), loved it as well, and then gave it to others as gifts. We all really connected with your writing so much.

We love you, Harriet, and are so thankful for all the spirit, energy, and dedication you’ve brought to the movement. You will not be forgotten.

In community,

cripchick.

–edit–

Media dis@dat and Laura at Crip Commentary both have a great collection of articles written by Harriet.