Home School

My paper is due at 5pm. I have like....1 page written. Oh well. I've already decided for myself that I'll turn it in late tomorrow. I just don't feel like doing it. What is this feeling?! Senioritis, my young friends.

Anyway, I was talking to Erika during breakfast this morning at Denny's:

Me: What iffff a group of community activists got together to home school all their kids?!

They would get the social interaction with the other kids, for one. And two, they wouldn't have to deal with the BULL SHIT that is known as "public education." We'd finally be able to provide our kiddos with a decolonial framework that is absent in classrooms. Imagine that! Am I being ridiculous? I dunno.. I feel like the education system (especially CA) is going down into the shits, not to mention the fucking 28% increase in tuition that is again being proposed for UCs (am I up to date on these numbers? But i mean, whatever it is... people shouldn't have to spend half their lives on an education that they most likely won't even use.) Neither should students have to act like starving artists for four years.

And private school costs way too much as well...

But does this sound a bit like a resistance army? LOL pretty much.. I'd just be happier knowing that i don't have to waste time reeducating my kids with the social consciousness that i've developed far later in my childhood (or end of).

Of course such ideas are hindered by our ability to find ourselves in economically/socially stable situations. Who actuallly has time to educate their kids and make a living at the same time? Perhaps the home school parents can rotate their teaching schedules ;) I can see workshop Mondays and Tuesday biking and womyn wednesdays and thrifty thurdays...

Just a seed I though I'd plant...

(I'm imagining a PNX academy. Instead of pledging allegiance to the flag.. we'll recite the PNX vision. LOL)

Oh yeah. And all of this came into my head because I just hate writing these papers. Sure, learning about the media in today's society is great. I just don't need people to grade my opinions and label my capabilities with a letter. Plus, the language of academic text is over my head. I don't fucking care with digimodernism is. Just call it the evolution of social media, and i'm good.

# sodonewithschool.

being pretty

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female.”
-fuckyeahfatpositive.tumblr.com

wear purple on oct 20th

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101008/ap_on_re_us/us_bullying_one_town

In light of recent "bullicides" by teens, it is especially disheartening that the following scene played out while I was SMing...

Resident - I'm gonna sign her in. Actually, she's going to sign herself in. I'm not capable of scribing today.
Friend ("she") - *starts writing on visitor sheet*
Resident - *reading over her shoulder* What did you just write? How rude. What, are you like three years old?

After they walked away from the booth and stood waiting for the elevator, I pulled the sign-in sheet toward me to initial it. It read:
Resident's name: Fag Porter [first name]
Visitor's name: Emily da bomb [last name]
*Full names not provided just in case there's some kind of privacy issue I have to comply with.*

I sat here in my chair, disappointed people could throw around these hurtful labels lightly. The two individuals were still in the lobby, so I leaned over the counter and said, "Can we make an effort to not use these kinds of names, please?"

I was more polite than the situation called for, but perhaps the girl had enough of a heart to feel embarrassed by her actions because she just said, "Ok" while the resident smirked at her.
--
Community organizing has taught me to "meet people where they are," but sometimes I do not have enough time or patience to wait for them to catch up.

I don't ever want a job

Wading through the sand,
each grain, I sift by hand,
while burning sun
and frigid wind
bear down upon
the battered soul within.

For lengthened hours,
and tortured, fruitless nights,
too I have wondered,
the difference
between wrongs and rights.

To want it
is to gorge myself.
To deny it
is to cry for help.
And yet I lie
in thickening abyss
a month gone by
what life is this?

where does it stop?

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc&sc2=news&sc3&id=108755

On a day that civil rights and equality earned a victory as Prop 8 was overturned in California, it is sickening that such an act of intolerance could take place in the United States.

The victim was just a baby. He was only 17 months old, for crying out loud. Nothing could have justified physically hurting someone that young, much less violence that took his life. Pedro Jones, who was entrusted with care of the baby, said he beat the child to "make him act like a boy instead of a little girl." Although Jones did not specify what exactly that behavior entailed, it is heartbreaking that "effeminate" traits are considered so inferior that a baby had to die for America's protection of hypermasculinity.

Someone's comment on Facebook:
"fuck this foo
and the kids stupid momma, she should know not to trust your kids to someone that is not their daddy, DUMB BITCH"

This statement does not help anyone. Blaming the mother will not bring her child back, nor does it shift blame from Jones. You do not need to be someone's biological father to be capable of love. In part, isn't that what the fight against Prop 8 is about? Marriage rights, adoption rights, the right to love freely, justice and equality and all that rainbow sunshiney goodness. It's not wrong or stupid to trust your kids with a partner who is not their biological parent.

It is wrong to take advantage of that trust. Trust is humanizing and beautiful. It's believing in someone, a two-way street where trust has to be reciprocated with a commitment to follow through. Jones didn't do that. He murdered a child for.. what? To assert his own masculinity? To save society from the social ills of an individual who didn't follow traditional gender roles? The mother is no less of a mother for thinking she could trust him. It pains me deeply that some people would call her a bitch when she had no idea something like this could or would happen.

The irony of it all? "I’m sorry," Jones said. "That’s my baby. I loved him to death."

Evidently, he meant it.

The Real World, What would you do if tomorrow the world was fixed?

Before I graduated last year I felt like I was ready to take on the world. I was so looking forward to being miss nonprofit lady and riding my bike to work everyday, shopping at farmer's markets and generally doing my part to make the world a better place. After I graduated I felt tired and overwhelmed. I took a break by moving out to the country and chillaxing for the summer. I finally felt ready to get back at it and applied for some jobs.

The first interview I went to was for a generic environmental group here in Santa Cruz and well we didn't quite see eye to eye on why blaming ocean pollution on "Hispanics" was not and effective way to fight the trash island.

Job interview two, a phone interview, went really well and everything was going great until I realized that I love my country life and this is not going to work out because she didn't understand I have serious time commitments that I cannot miss or ask a friend to do-my goat needs to be milked everyday at 7am and pm.

I always imagined that I was going to be the next Julia Butterfly or Van Jones bridging the issues of environmentalism and communities of color together to build holistic meaningful solutions. But now I feel that my place is here in the woods. I feel a little guilty about this because I read the news of all the horrible things going on in the world and I still try to spread the gospel of social justice but using a toilet now just doesn't feel right. Rising and setting with the sun feels right, drinking fresh goats milk everyday and shearing my sheep and making my own chicken stock from my chickens feels right and I want to share this feeling with other people. I really believe that the system we live in cant be fixed because its based on oppression and continuous growth and all the other shit like racism and sexism that are caught up in it. I wanted to spread the word and inspire people that another world is possible but I never had any alternatives. I used to feel like this was just a hobby but now I feel like this is what I want the world to look like. Relatively small communities producing their own goods and doing light trading.

I don't expect everyone to return to an agrarian life but think about what you would do if tomorrow the world was justified? What is there still left to do? I don't intend to make this sound preachy, I have just had this on my mind for the last few months and am curios what other people think about this. If we didn't have to work for social justice, what would we work for?

love of all kinds

PNX in the capital

Last Thursday-Sunday, I went to Washington, D.C. for a collegiate leadership conference, hosted by the Japanese American Citizens League, the nation's oldest and largest Asian Pacific American civil rights organization. At a young professionals mixer, APAs [both current college students and college grads] working in D.C. offices came out to network with the 14 conference attendees.

During introductions, one womyn said, "Hi, my name is Monica Thammarath."
Me [thinking] - WAIT, I KNOW THAT NAME.
Monica - "I graduated from UC Berkeley."
Me [thinking] - I KNOW YOU. I REMEMBER YOUR NAME FROM THE PLEDGE BOOK. FINALLY, STAYING UP ALL NIGHT TO MEMORIZE THOSE FREAKING NAMES HAS COME TO FRUITION!!

Well, no, I really just freaked out mentally and didn't have that internal monologue.

My intro
"Hi, my name is Carmen blah blah blah... I think I have the most in common with Monica over there because I also go to Berkeley and we share similar majors. Also, I think we're sisters of the same sorority."

I got to pick her brains during dinner and found out
1) She's Jessica's grandbig.
2) She's currently working with SEARAC [Southeast Asia Resource Action Center] on education policy.
3) She's doing exactly what I want to do when I graduate.

We chatted [well, I listened] about what life in D.C. is like.
Me - Is it hard to transition from the Bay Area to D.C., especially in this weather? *fans self*
Monica - It's really hard. But I realized that it's not about me. It's not about what I want, or how much I miss good Asian food, or how terrible the weather is. It's about something bigger than me. I'm here to be part of a movement.

I almost started crying because that was something I really needed to hear with regard to [possibly] moving away from home after graduation.

Fierce Phi Nu Xi womyn everywhere I go... <3