How could I not write about these things?

To be honest, I haven’t been moved to say much publicly at all, but I’ve feverishly been writing in my journal. Much of what I’ve written has been about my own spiritual development and growth. Given the nature of what I was writing, I assumed out of hand that it was not for public consumption. Yet, as I flew back to San Francisco from St. Louis a few weeks ago, I felt compelled to begin sharing some of my insights.

The first of these insights – or at least the first thing I plan to share – isn’t in my journal at all, but occurred to me this evening after watching a film called Mooz-lem. I wasn’t expecting much, since the title of the film is so wack, but I was pleasantly surprised and moved to tears by the end. Without spoiling it for everyone, I’ll just say this: the film encourages us to grapple with, or at least confront, the ideologies and beliefs we hold so tenaciously.

As the film demonstrated the impact of our ideological stubbornness and bigotry, I noticed the pervasiveness of suffering. I couldn’t stop thinking about how everyone is suffering. I began to watch my mind catalouging all the egregious acts of violence that are (and sometimes are not) reported in the  mainstream and alternative media. My mind bounced from the violence visited upon agrarian folk all over the global south by IMF/World Bank-like policies that render farming an impossible career. I thought of the young boys who lose their childhoods to the nightmare of being a child soldier. I thought of the young girls the world over (but particularly in the global south) who are disproportionately affected by poverty and few educational opportunities. I thought of all the lives lost to AIDS, famine, war, incarceration, benign neglect and state sponsored violence. I saw the faces of the students I work with across North America who suffer from all manner of low self-esteem, co-dependency and substance abuse. The more I allowed my mind to follow the pain, the more pain I saw.

Then I arrived at the beginning of a thought that went like this: “The world is so full of pain and suffering! Life sucks!” But before I could fully entertain this idea, my dog, Lylah, rested her head on my leg and looked up at me with the most loving expression, as if to say, “you know that’s not true.” And she is right. While we cannot deny the ubiquity of suffering, it would be inaccurate to deduce that Life sucks as a result.

Sometimes it takes a minute for me to remember that there is a distinction between Life As Such, and these short lives we humans live. The “life situations,” as Eckhart Tolle calls them, in which we find ourselves, certainly spring from, but by no means exhaust the totality of, Life. Life is so much greater, so much more resilient and graceful than our finite human lives. The good news is that we always have access to this Amazing Grace, this magnificent register of limitless Life. We can always seek to vibrate higher; that is, seek to have a higher understanding of who, and what we are. Our daily laundry list of earthly troubles has the tendency to occlude our view, leading us to think that Life itself is bad, rather than the way we are choosing to live it. We are in a mess of our own making – a mess that actually has little to do with Life As Such.

This insight is a call to tremendous responsibility that is also deeply empowering. Essentially, we are crafting our realities and we can elect to live in a different, preferably more loving and gentle world. We are in choice!

Life is the constant, how we choose to live is the variable.

In the words of that amazing mystic, Andre Benjamin:
“Every boy and girl, woman to man/ When you feel you’ve done about the best you can/Mothaf*ck the wagon/Come and join the band/Vibrate higher.”

It seems they are everywhere, always surveilling, watching, waiting for something to go down. As I drove around trying to find my friend’s place in downtown Detroit, I was reminded of a blog I started shortly after Oakland went up in flames for the second time. Even though this blog is unfinished, I thought I’d publish it anyway. Here goes:

*******

I think I was 8 when I saw Robocop, the Paul Verhoeven film about the robotic future of law enforcement in a destitute Detroit. As an eighties kid, I remember a lot of  dystopic sci-fi visions of the future, androids and cyborgs terraforming on far away planets and ‘original’ humans directing resource extraction on mars and the moon. Well, we’re nine years away from 2019 and Los Angeles hasn’t quite turned into the L.A. we saw in Blade Runner, but there are interesting things happening up in the Bay that move us closer yet to full-on robotic and digitized policing.

(For the record, I’m suspecting that ‘drone-cops’ are probably not a far off idea, given that drones are such popular tools of international policing, er, warfare for the US Government. Moreover, as the US Military continues to “train” and “mentor” local police departments, we’ll continue see the ongoing militarization of community policing. I know drones are “unmanned aerial vehicles,” but who’s to say that “unmanned terrestrial law enforcement agents,” controlled remotely by cops in a huge gaming room aren’t on the horizon?)

If you’ve been following my posts, then  you know I’ve been thinking about justice, prisons and policing a lot lately. Overall, I’ve been suggesting that dysfunctional social conditions and the prison industrial complex are the problem, rather than this convenient and amorphous figure we call “crime.” Crime, in my view, is an effect, not a root cause. Nevertheless, public attention remains focused on this symptom and all attempts to keep “everyone” safe from “criminals” are directed at smothering, removing or otherwise relieving us of the symptom.  In the process of serving and protecting “the people” we are told that there may be some collateral damage – cops make mistakes too, right? An innocent person locked up, wrongfully murdered or subjected to excessive force; it’s all a part of the process, or so the logic goes. Yet, where I come from, the likelihood of being collateral damage is high, so since 1992 we’ve been vigilant about recording cops and thanks to improving video technology we’ve managed to catch some pretty egregious instances of police brutality on video.

Because it would be too agonizing to cope with the possibility that anyone, including ourselves, could become a prisoner, we tend to think of the prison as disconnected from our own lives….
We thus think about imprisonment as a fate reserved for others, a fate reserved for the ‘evildoers’…Because of the persistent power of racism, ‘criminals’ and ‘evildoers’ are, in the collective imagination, fantasized as people of color. The prison therefore, functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. …It relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and increasingly, global capitalism.
-Angela Y. Davis,  Are Prisons Obsolete?

What happens when the “criminal” isn’t your stereotypical “Latino or black guy,” but instead is an agent of the state? For some, sending a cop who’s convicted of murder (in whatever degree) off to prison is Justice par excellence. The “pig” is finally getting a taste of his own medicine, or so the thinking goes. But Angela Y. Davis’ insights above have me wondering what kind of ideological work the Prison is doing when the “pig” is sent to the pen.

If, as Davis notes, “the Prison functions ideologically…to relive us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues” that are indeed the conditions of possibility for a Grant/Mehserle tragedy to take place, then what are we missing when we call for Mehserle’s imprisonment? Have we missed the forest for the trees? Has our persistent experience of police brutality and mass incarceration reduced our sense of what Justice might consist of to a single conviction? And why do we believe that the Policing/Criminal Justice System/Prison Industrial Complex is now all of a sudden capable of providing viable solutions to our problems?

Needless to say, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for communities that are disproportionately policed, incarcerated and terrorized by state violence to call for the incarceration of Johannes Mehserle. My question has less to do with whether or not I believe he is guilty of murdering Oscar Grant. Surely, if there were no elaborate categorical system meant to differentiate between degrees of murder, we’d all still have to concede that he shot a prone, unarmed young man in the back. As such, we’d expect that some form of accountability, and responsibility be taken for his (video recorded) actions. So, my question has more to do with what accountability and responsibility (read: Justice) might look like when we seriously consider – or even recognize – the paradox at the heart of our demand that Mehserle be locked up.

The paradox goes something like this: by locking up Mehserle for up to 14 years we are legitimizing a system that typically and disproportionately incarcerates us. However, if we don’t demand Mehserle’s imprisonment, then we send the message that it is okay for agents of the state to kill people of color, poor people, queer people, and undocumented people with impunity. Furthermore, if we punish Mehserle only, when and how do we raise the issue of all the other agents of the state, from the FBI and their domestic counter-insurgency campaign to local police forces, who continue to terrorize, detain, and murder our loved ones and allies?

Are we, that is, those of us who truly want justice for Oscar Grant, for Sean Bell, for Abner Louima, for Amadou Diallo, for those murdered by the police and racist civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and for countless others,  fetishizing the Prison to our own detriment?

My sense is that this may indeed be the case, such that our overemphasis on incarceration both sustains an industry-institution that captures us daily, while we do little to address the systemic sources of our vulnerability to state violence, state repression and incarceration. I mean, think about it: the Prison Industrial Complex generates nice profits for corporations while draining social wealth, thereby reproducing the conditions that set up a direct line from the playpen to the penitentiary. I don’t believe this is hyperbole. California is a case in point.

My state has the most prisons in the country and, logically the most prisoners. As of today, July 16, 2010, we also have no approved state budget. We have ongoing cuts to social services; deep cuts that disproportionately affect the elderly, the sick, the poor, and communities of color. We have one of the worst public education systems in the country, coupled with a university system that has raised fees consistently since 2001 while cutting academic programs (disproportionately in the Humanities and Social Sciences), and faculty and staff salaries. We have a Governor who refuses to levy taxes on oil extraction even though California is the fourth largest market for oil extraction in the country – taxes which many argue would effectively make up the fiscal shortfall. And all of this is happening while we watch gubernatorial hopeful, former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman, spend upwards of 71 million dollars OF HER OWN MONEY on her campaign so she can turn around and do the same thing. These are just some of the interlocking social conditions that impoverish our communities, destroy ecosystems, ravage mental health, trigger substance abuse, dismember families, and obliterate genuine and fulfilling opportunities for millions of young people.

I began with Davis’ epigraph because I believe it is as relevant for those of us who come from targeted communities as it is for people who are in positions of privilege such that they can gaze at the ‘criminals’ from afar. If any substantive form of Justice is to be experienced by any of us, we must look at the paradox above very closely and begin to demand for systemic change, rather than one-off convictions. We must eliminate, uproot and transform the conditions of possibility for state violence, rather than punish individual cops when they slip up and get “caught” for the violence they routinely visit on our communities.

There was a rebellion.

My sense is that when we combine anxious, power-tripping cops with a justifiably enraged, saddened and frustrated community it is a matter of time before something goes down. I know how police talk to people, or better, talk at people, when we’ve assembled to express our grievances. I’ve been on the other side of that baton more than a few times. Theoretically, it is our right to assemble, just as much as it is our right to speak our minds. Yet, the parameters within which we must do so, while under enormous duress, strikes me as soul crushing and meant to shut us up, dishearten us and regulate us into submission. I’m reminded of Louis Althusser’s take on how ideology works to manage and regulate populations. He described institutions as being the primary means through which such regulation occurred, and when institutions failed (or needed shoring up), he said force was always exerted to eliminate resistance, dissent and rebellion. This is what the police call “maintaining order,” an order which would have the dispossessed, forgotten, and disregarded, disappeared as well so “citizens” don’t have to hear the moans and groans of those who keep this system going by functioning as the foundation upon which this unjust system is built.

No person is meant to live on the bottom of another person’s shoe. Every life counts. Each of us is just as valuable as the next simply by virtue of Being. This is a spiritual truth and birthright that the social order may work to ignore, but people know better. And it is from this knowing that rebellions surge. We must see last night’s events in Oakland in this light.

Yes, the people rebelled. And while I do not support violence, or believe it is a sustainable way to move toward effective change, I nevertheless understand how accumulated disappointment, frustration, anger, feelings of powerlessness and sadness erupt into a shitstorm so dissociated from its own effects that people burn down their own neighborhoods. And, even though I argue for a return to Love wherein we, the oppressed, strive to see the humanity in our oppressors and thereby effect a transformation for all of us, moments like this push me to the edge of my own capacity to see the Divine in others. It is hard to Love someone when they have their foot on your neck, or when their baton is cracking the side of your head open. The extreme difficulty of Loving and channeling anger into something constructive should be obvious to everyone, and yet I still believe it is the one thing we must keep trying to do.

I write this from a space of profound sadness, and an awareness that what we are facing as a human community is our own disconnection from our hearts, and from ourselves. Please take this seriously. It’s not neo-hippy, self-help, mumbo-jumbo. It’s the Truth. When we are unable to see others as people who have feelings, who cry, who laugh, who get startled when something falls in the dark, we are revealing that we are not in touch at all. Genuine reconciliation, and peace requires people on both sides of the war line to begin seeing with more compassion. As I hold space for the anguish in my community today, I also challenge us to begin working this difficult edge of Love.

People demand justice outside Mehserle trail

I’ve been conspicuously quiet about this trail. In fact, I haven’t written a word about it since last January (see We Are All Oscar Grant), just after the riots in Oakland. Since then, public sentiment – at least in the ‘public sphere’ in which I find myself – has remained convinced that justice for Oscar Grant equals incarceration for Johannes Mehserle. Yet, I am not as convinced by the easy math powering the concept of retributive justice. Overall, I’m just not sure this equation is the best formula for justice. My ongoing uncertainty began to beg the question, what exactly is justice in a context such as this?

I’ve only said this aloud once or twice and in each case it hasn’t been a popular statement to make, nor have my questions provoked any real consideration. The people around me usually ask some combination of the following: Don’t you know how horribly racist policing in the United States is? Don’t you know that cops are never held accountable for the violence and terror they exact on communities of color everyday? Didn’t you see the videos? Oscar Grant was on his belly with his hands behind his back for Pete’s sake!

Yes. Yes, I know all of these things.

I also know that it is downright brutal to intend to tase a person who has suffered head injuries and is prone, but nevermind that for a moment.

So, given all of the above, how could I not agree that the most logical outcome is for Mehserle to sit in prison for several years on the taxpayer’s dime?

Well, for starters, I am not convinced that locking anyone up is the best solution to social problems. And, while some may remind me that they don’t believe it is the “best” option either, those who tug at my arm will also let me know that “it is the system we’ve set up.” In other words, we’ve established a social norm that we are having a hard time thinking outside of. Moreover, we’ve established that norm based upon a very specific notion of what constitutes justice, where retribution and vengeance relative to the act(s) in question takes precedent over remedying or removing the conditions of possibility for the act in the first place. (As a side note, I should mention that the ideas of ‘correction’ and ‘repentance’ upon which penitentiaries were originally developed are clearly no longer applicable. In fact, whether they succeeded at correcting or instigating penitence in the 19th century is a question as well, but that’s beyond the scope of what I want to say here.)

What I’m getting at is this: if Johannes Mehserle is incarcerated on any of the possible charges the jury is now deliberating over, will his incarceration prevent another young black man from being shot and killed by law enforcement agents of any stripe? Will that reduce the amount of police brutality and racial profiling in our neighborhoods? Will that provide greater educational and career options for all young people who end up tracked into low paying jobs, or mediocre careers that they hate? Will it change the way policing agencies view communities of color? Will his incarceration help Oscar Grant’s daughter? Or Oscar Grant’s mother? And what of the pain coursing through Mehserle’s family right now? Are we to believe that their pain is justified because he pulled the trigger on what he claims he thought was his taser?

Overcrowded Prison - California State Prison, Los Angeles

And why should we all agree to keep paying for people to be in prison when we know how horrendous “correction facilities” are? Which isn’t to say we should privatize prisons so tax payers are not responsible for them anymore. That is most certainly not my point. The corporatization and privatization of punishment is already underway and is super-profitable. The emergence of the Prison Industrial Complex under global capitalism reinforces a knee-jerk ‘lock-em-up’ logic because it brings in the big bucks, while disproportionately capturing and disappearing people of color. The irony here is that calling for Mehserle’s incarceration actually supports an entire industry-institution that has more Grant-like characters in its corridors than Mehserle-like folks. Where is the justice in that?

It seems to me that one of the key problems on both sides of this situation – Grant’s death and Mehserle’s impending incarceration – is that we, Americans, suffer from an acute case of life-devaluation. We are in the habit of throwing people away, either by murder, or by putting them away for the rest of their physical lives so they become the living dead. In plain English, I’m saying we have learned to not give a shit about Life. And this is a shared problem, not just one that Mehserle has, or that police officers have, or that “gang-bangers” and “thugs” have. This problem is everywhere evident: from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the xenophobic violence in Arizona, to the commercial trafficking of women and girls, to the shameful number of children and adults who are incarcerated.

So what would Justice look like if we deeply valued Life? Perhaps justice would show up in the way wealth, resources and opportunity are distributed throughout the social body. Perhaps justice would show up in our understanding that all Life is interconnected and interdependent. Perhaps justice would mean digging up root causes rather than constantly tending to symptoms. Perhaps justice would look like creating an environment where someone like Johannes Mehserle might feel safe enough to tell his story, no matter how racist and f*cked up people thought it sounded. And I’ll pause here because this is important. How can we ever begin to undo the underlying issues that lead to Oscar Grant’s death if Mehserle can’t get help? He was shamed into silence, and then shamed into producing a ‘reasonable’ or likely story. My assumption here is that people who do “bad” things are still people and should be offered some way to heal the pain they’ve caused, while also healing the pain they undoubtedly feel. For the record, I should say that I am aware that some of the motivation for his defense probably has nothing to do with shame, and is rooted in his desire to stay out of prison. So, with that potential outcome looming large, we are yet again, unable to move any closer to substantive, restorative justice.

As I try to wrap this up, I am noticing that I do not have any answers, or a concrete plan for moving forward. I simply have questions that complicate the basic equation we’re asked to support, where one life lost has to equal another life lost. In my heart I feel something must be done to redress the loss of life. But I do not believe that “something” is taking another life. The solutions are deeper, more protracted, and in a range of places all at once. Our task should be seeing to it that the possibility of a second Oscar Grant/Johannes Mehserle tragedy is no longer a possibility.

Retribution is about adding to the body count.

Justice is about Love and Balance.

The difference between our work and that of our colleagues is not one of ultimate objective. It seems to me that we all want to bring about a better world, a world that is more equitable, loving, joyful and regenerative. Yet, when we seek to redress contemporary conditions through transactional politics, we do so within the existing cultural norms, and we do so for an immediate issue that may not touch generations to come. In other words, we may alleviate a present danger for a specific group of people, but we may not create a lasting structure or set of habits that prevent such dangers from resurging years, decades or centuries later. Furthermore, by acting within the existing political culture, we validate its sense of legitimacy, its norms and its underlying ideologies. This, to me, seems shortsighted even as it has the power to help some people in the moment.

When we understand that mainstream North American political culture depends upon a set of ideas, shared ideologies, shared assumptions, and a shared language around rights, obligations, duties, and so on, we see that changing the impact of legislative and juridical outcomes requires us to change the way people think about a whole range issues. For example, we are now bearing witness to an egregious violation of a vital resource: Water. As oil continues to surge into the Gulf of Mexico and marine life dies, fishermen lose work, executives run for cover and politicians wrangle over whom to blame, we are still operating under several spurious assumptions.

1. We continue to believe that “humans” (by which I mean the ‘human’ of liberal humanism) have a  “right” to own natural resources, partition waterways, and claim them for competing collectives, while doing so at the expense of the environment.
2. We continue to believe that we, humans, are separate from the environment in which we find ourselves and therefore can instrumentalize the objects, resources and materials around us. (This is also true of how we see each other.)
3. We continue to believe that we can penalize corporations through the existing political system even though corporate wealth has irreparably compromised the impartiality of political representatives.
4. We continue to believe that profits are more valuable than people and the natural environment.

Given the basic assumptions that guide how clean-up, reparations and penalization will occur, the likelihood of another BP disaster is ever present. Simply imposing financial penalties, firing high and mid-level executives and placing a short-term moratorium on off-shore drilling is not a thorough solution. It’s a superficial solution to a deep-seated problem. Another great example is playing itself out in Arizona.

While I honor and respect the courage it takes to stand arm in arm in front of hostile police forces and civilians as one protests the criminalization of Latin-American immigrants, I am also quite aware that challenging racist legislation does not uproot the potential for racist legislation to appear in our state capitals. Addressing the immediate political impact of racist legislation helps those of us who are hurt by such legislation today. But, what of the days to come? If we do not address the underlying ideas of who is allowed within the border, or indeed the very idea of a ‘border’ itself, then we find ourselves dealing with xenophobia and racism again a few years down the road. In all fairness, this is not a critique of progressives and lefties who utilize the existing political infrastructure as a means of redressing sociopolitical injuries. This communiqué is written in the spirit of furthering our work and making it more effective over the long haul.

So, what is to be done? How can we effect lasting changes that are both remunerative and progressive? In other words, how can we transform our world in a way that rights historical wrongs and the daily experiences of those injuries while crafting a way of being that is regenerative and lasts for generations to come? It seems to me that two things are in order, both of which fall under the umbrella of culture in my mind. Changing our minds seems to be the first answer to our problems. That is, shifting and redefining our master categories of thought and supporting those changes by creating institutions that enable our new way of thinking to reverberate through the socio-cultural fabric of our communities. But more than this, I believe spiritual transformation is required, and indeed may be a prerequisite for the deep epistemic shift I feel is needed.

By ‘spiritual transformation’ I do not mean a return to a specific theology, but rather a re-enchantment of the world whereby we re-cognize that we do not have lives, but rather, that Life has us. We must remember that our subjective experience of being in the world is not greater than the Isness of the universe as such. Whereas all living things come in and out of existence through the cycle of birth and death, as far as we can tell Being itself never ceases to Be. In this way, the human ego might be right-sized again, and resituated alongside other life forms in the community of life on Earth, rather than situated in a position of domination over other things. A spiritual shift would remind us that we humans belong to the Earth, and not the other way around. And that the Earth is in, and is a part of, a mysterious cosmic entity of which we know very little. Thus, the spiritual transformation I have in mind reaches into human psychology, transforming our conceptual system and healing the underlying belief in separation that is ravaging our world today.

From this humbled and reconnected space, we might rethink how we define what it means to be human. We would be in a position to reimagine our relationship to the trees, the water, and other animals. Overall, I’m suggesting that we would be in a position to change our minds about who and what we are, a change that has enormous implications for how we might be with each other and the kind of normative behavior that would follow from this cultural-ethical revolution. Furthermore, in rethinking who we are and what our relationships could look like, it follows that the exercise of power would shift and from here we would see a different kind of political culture sprout from the new seeds of our transformed consciousness.

Common Fire and the NonProfit Structure: A Bridge to Tomorrow

Common Fire is a non-profit 501(c)3 corporation. It supports the creation of intentional communities that are geared toward the transformation of society, from the inside out and the ground up. We seek to build a world that is more loving, joyful, just and sustainable, one community at a time.

Common Fire West - The Bay Area Community

Like many of our colleagues working toward a more just and sustainable world, we too recognize, not only the shortcomings of the nonprofit structure as a long-term solution to the troubles of our time, but we also believe that the current social, environmental and cultural crises we now face cannot be remedied at the same level of thought that produced said crises. Given this, we are committed to personal transformation, nonviolent communication as the basis of sustainable relationships and alliances, and cooperative communities organized around resource sharing and consensus based decision-making. These features are the cornerstone of our work in the area of intentional community building; features that we envision will eventually supplant the “individual” of (neo)liberalism and its attendant “rights,” as well as capitalist notions of individual property ownership over land, food, and other vital resources.

At the same time, we are quite clear that community building at this scale – multi-acre cohousing facilities with organic farmland, retreat centers and other buildings – requires considerable amounts of funding and still occurs within the existing legal, economic and political cultures we seek to transform. So, we use the nonprofit structure to negotiate the dominant culture. For us, the non-profit is a tool we harness toward an end that was not originally intended for it: radical social change. Our board is comprised of people who hold the vision of the organization and who actively expand the capacity of Common Fire to carry out its mission. Thus, unlike traditional BODs, which tend to be comprised of big donors, lawyers and the like, our board is full of innovative change-makers.

In our hands, the non-profit structure enables us to support grassroots groups as they organize themselves into shared housing and cooperative economic communities that put the transformative values above into practice. Through the non-profit structure, we are able to provide community groups with training opportunities in areas like nonviolent communication, grassroots fundraising, sustainable building practices, and permaculture. The non-profit entity also enables us to provide concrete support like bank accounts and legal resources to the communities with which we partner. Most importantly, the non-profit helps us secure financing for land acquisition, which is a feat that would be fairly difficult for the groups we are currently partnered with in New York and California, where their individual economic realities keep them rooted in their current class position. In community people are able to experience relief from the economic and social burdens of living as nuclear families and single people. Our ultimate goal is to shift the underlying culture by creating communities that model what future societies can look like.

For more information about Common Fire, and how you might participate in our work, visit our website and watch our video.

local organic veggies

I was so excited that I called three friends and my mother as I walked through the new Mandela Foods Cooperative on 7th Street in West Oakland. I had been eyeing the developing grocery store for months during my daily commute to San Francisco. After work I would peer into the windows and watch the co-op workers fill up bulk item containers and place gloriously bright yellow bell peppers in produce baskets. I felt like a kid in front of a toy store: I could not wait for the store to open so I could enjoy locally grown, pesticide-free produce everyday without spending most of my paycheck, or having to travel to another neighborhood, or having to wait until Saturday morning to visit a farmer’s market. Then, one afternoon in early June, I de-boarded the train to find a couple of people shopping in the co-op. I picked up a hand-basket and cruised through the store, grabbing organic strawberries, raspberries, apricots, bananas, red cabbage, kale, collard greens, spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, free-range organic eggs, and apple juice. Imagine my delight when I carried all of my goodies out of the door for less than twenty-five bucks.

While the Mandela Foods Cooperative is certainly one of a kind in West Oakland, it is also accompanied by a handful of community gardens, urban homesteading programs, and backyard farms developed by West Oaklanders to counteract food insecurity in the neighborhood. Before the Mandela Foods Cooperative opened, one could travel from the northwest tip of West Oakland to the “lower bottoms,” and find plenty of convenience stores, even a few fast food restaurants, but not one full-service grocery store. Some legislators and academics use the term “food deserts” to describe areas like West Oakland, by which they mean predominately low-income neighborhoods with little to no access to healthy, affordable and “culturally appropriate” food in the immediate area. According to a study commissioned by the USDA meant to discover the extent of such “food deserts” in the U.S., minimal access to food translates into a higher likelihood of chronic hunger and greater incidences of diet-related illnesses. While these conclusions are important to state, the study’s popularization of the term, and under-investigation of its sources, threatens to obscure some of the bigger issues at stake.

For people living and working in West Oakland the term “food deserts” only names a symptom, or effect of the systemic social inequities that make it difficult to find healthy food. Brahm Ahmadi, Executive Director of the West Oakland community-based organization Peoples Grocery, argues that the term “food apartheid” or “food injustice” better describes the situation confronting people in poor urban areas. In an exchange with other food activists, Ahmadi maintained that “the term food desert has emerged as a safe and neutral way to avoid rocking the boat with an analysis of inequity, racism and oppression…. No one in our neighborhood has heard of, or uses, the term food desert,” he notes, “but folks do talk about racism, [and] exclusion all the time…. We may live in food deserts, but we live under food apartheid.” The distinction is an important one that pivots on the latter term’s ability to surface the structural and systemic inequities that give rise to “food deserts” – a distinction enabling us to formulate better solutions to the problem of food insecurity, economic disparities, and diet-related illnesses in poor communities.

The Mandela Foods Cooperative really understands the distinction to which Ahmadi refers. The Co-op is part of a multifaceted food and economic security effort mounted by the Mandela Marketplace, a West Oakland based “community leadership incubator that provides civic engagement, economic and entrepreneurial opportunity to low-income residents and minority farmers.” According to Dennis Terry, who has worked on the development of the Co-op for three years, “the co-op is seen as part of a larger effort to develop food security in Oakland, provide income opportunities, and provide nutrition education to Oaklanders.” This integrated approach is meant to reinvigorate local food cultures and the transmission of knowledge about whole foods cultivation and preparation, develop greater self-sufficiency in the community, and support local economic circuits.

Moreover, this three-prong approach tackles some of the root causes of food injustice thereby marking a qualitative shift in how the problem of food insecurity is addressed. By moving away from a owner/worker business model to a cooperative business model, Mandela Marketplace addresses issues of worker’s rights and most notably, the right to democratically determine one’s working conditions and wages. Through their nutrition education classes, which will begin once the market completes the construction of its onsite kitchen, the Co-op provides practical ways for West Oaklanders to take control of their health by learning how proper nutrition can prevent a range of chronic illnesses. It is a low-tech, “do-it-yourself” approach to healthcare in the midst of a healthcare reform debate that consistently fails to connect the dots (at least at the policy level) between real food and healthy people. Finally, the Co-op sources their produce from small to medium sized local farms within a 120-mile radius from Oakland. Consumers can learn about these farms from well-placed informational placards in the store as they shop. It is a gesture that reminds consumers of the reciprocal relationship between food growers and food eaters: the farms support our wellbeing, and we support the health of small farms.

In all of this, what may be one of the most important things about the Co-op is that, as Dennis Terry told me, “it’s the kind of store West Oaklanders want. People can walk to the Co-op” and it is open everyday. In short, it is a neighborhood market that has really taken into consideration what matters to the community it serves. It is a one of a kind food retailer in Oakland: run by the people, for the people.

Avalokiteshvara, The Bodhisattva of Compassion

Learn to let go. This is one of the most concise instructions for living and dying in Buddhist teachings. I’ll explain why by way of a story about a pig.

I recently saw a performance by The Dance Brigade in San Francisco. The show, The Great Liberation Upon Hearing, is a dramatization of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The show began with one simple, but somewhat alarming, question: “Did you kill the pig, and why?” (The question itself wasn’t so alarming, but the pig carcass a few feet away from my seat sure was.)

The performance explored how killing the pig, with varying motives and intentions, could lead to the accumulation of merit or the lack thereof, also known as good and bad karma. In the instances in which killing the pig was done as a selfless act – say to feed a starving village – one accumulated good merit. Yet, when one killed the pig to satisfy one’s own self-serving ends, one did not accumulate merit. It is conceivable that killing the pig for a starving village could still be a deeply self-serving act if the intention behind feeding the village was to gain recognition, rather than purely helping others. While some good comes of it, it doesn’t generate good merit. This leads me to my next point.

"Pig head businessman counts US dollar" by Kutay Tanir

The desire to gain recognition (among others) is an ego driven desire. It is a desire to amplify ego, to make one’s sense of self bigger, more robust and more potent. Ego-amplification depends upon a conception of oneself as independent and separate from others (indeed, separate from everything in the universe), such that one’s primary concern is to indulge one’s self-interests, and appease one’s desires without much regard for how self-satiation impacts the larger environment in which one lives, and from which one gains life. We can call this ego-clinging.

Ego-clinging is the fertile ground from which identities sprout. Identities are rigid little boogers that have the force of substantialist grammar behind them. Substantialist grammar is grounded in, well, fantasies of substance. It is way of speaking about the phenomenal world that yields an illusion of fully present and finite objects with impermeable boundaries between them. One thing cannot be another thing, right? A bird cannot also be a cat. Water cannot also be a tree. And most of all, I cannot be you, right?

Well, maybe we’re wrong. Maybe our perception is a bit off, restricted as it is by the physical limits of the human eye. Maybe one thing can be in two places at the same time. (Or, so says quantum physics about matter at the subatomic level.) Perhaps there is nothing existing(?!) That is, no-thing, or no individual thing in existence, but everything existing in everything else to varying degrees?

If so, then, might s/he who kills the pig with the intention of ego-gratification also be the pig who dies?

I’m not sure. But I do know that the idea of no-thing existing is the basic proposition of Buddhist theories of interdependence. It proposes re-imagining the phenomenal world in “both/and” terms, rather than in binaries. The idea of interdependence encourages us to see, for example, the interconnectedness of water, sunlight and plantlife, such that we can say, the water is the tree, for without precipitation and the process of photosynthesis, seeds cannot grow into trees. And, without food, which contains other elements in it, we cannot exist, so we inter-are with cabbage, apples, chickens, pigs, quinoa, wheat, and so on. Being is seen as interrelated. Being ceases to be singular and we speak in terms of inter-being, in terms of humans being part of an ecosystem not of our own making.

If we take the proposition of interdependence seriously, then ego-clinging turns out to be a disavowal of the vast network of relationships between “things”: between people, sentient beings, various forms of inanimate matter, and ultimately the universe that holds us. In this repudiation of connection, one clings to oneself despite the ongoing fact of connectivity. According to the Dharma, clinging, or attachment, is the source of suffering. For instance, one clings to good feelings and pushes away painful ones. Yet, no feeling lasts forever. So, as the phenomenon of impermanence swaps out one feeling for another, we experience suffering because we yearn for something that can no longer be, at least not in the present moment.

"Hand of person grips chain" by Michael Hitoshi

Or, consider how much suffering we are currently experiencing because we insist on clinging to an economic system that is failing precisely because it is grounded in the ego-based fiction of self-interests that are seen as separate from the interests of others. This is a double-whammy, where attachment is at work on two levels.

First, we are clinging to the individual subject at the heart of (neo)liberal economic and social theory. If we think in terms of interdependence, or ecosystems, then the individual cannot be the primary unit of society because society is comprised of various networks. Thus, the networks are primary, not the nodes.

Second, we are clinging to the economic system built around this individual subject and “his” hoarding activities. “Financial Bailout” is a tactic that reveals an attachment to a system that is deteriorating under the force of its own effects. Rather than figure out how to craft a better system that reflects the shared and collective process of wealth generation, our elected officials move in the opposite direction.

But this is not unusual. We tend to turn away from pain rather than sit with it. Allowing the economy to fully collapse so another system can emerge from its ashes would be absolute pandemonium. Lots of people would suffer terribly from various forms of deprivation. And that kind of potential chaos, insecurity and contingency triggers attachment to things that are not in themselves solid, like this notion of “our way of life.”

What does all of this have to do with self-liberating the antidote? The antidote is the realization that there is nothing solid to hold on to, not one’s ego, nor the teachings themselves. I’ve learned that letting go of my attachment to the various identities I crafted for myself over the years opened me up to changes that were coming into my life whether I wanted them or not. Practicing non-attachment helped me meet change with less resistance. In short, I suffer less. For such an insight to be useful in the context above, we’d have to experience a broad-based transformation in social consciousness whereby we’d be less attached to ego, the idea of individuality, and all that comes with living in an ego-centric world. But that’s a big let go, especially for those of us who aren’t even aware of our egocentrism. Maybe we better start by thinking about why we killed the pig.

Social Unrest in Guadeloupe, AFP images

My partner missed a call on Sunday from a dear friend of hers who lives in Guadeloupe, one of the Francophone islands southeast of Puerto Rico. Her friend left a voicemail describing the heightening political-economic crisis on the island, which we later learned was also happening in Martinique, another Francophone island south of Dominica. Folks on both islands have staged a general strike for the past four weeks protesting the rising cost of living, which outstrips the meager wages they are paid, and to denounce the ongoing racial stratification of wealth and resources between black Guadeloupians/Martiniquans, and the 1% of the population that controls the wealth, businesses and resources on the islands.

While there is nonstop media coverage of “the worst economic crisis” since the Great Depression from the perspective of people in the global north, it is rare that we hear about the impact of this economic meltdown on those situated on the margins of global capitalism. For instance, many news sources covered the social unrest in France proper, where somewhere between 1 million and 2.5 million people protested the deteriorating state of French infrastructure on January 29. Yet, little was said about the concurrent protests going on in the French territories, which are, by any sane account, infinitely worse off than people living in the industrialized center.

Martiniquans listen to Union leaders negotiate lower grocery prices. Fort-de-France, Martinique, Feb 10 2009

Life on the island is one of dependence: 80% of Guadeloupe’s food is imported, making the island deeply vulnerable to price fluctuations in the global market. When the French economy flutters, stutters, and then takes a nose dive, the French islands go along with it. Such is the nature of neocolonial entanglement.

But, one might ask, if neocolonial populations are so marginal to the global economy, why does France continue to hold on to the territories at all? What’s in it for them? Why not let the remaining territories go the way of Haiti, (but without the bloody revolution) if they are marginal and insignificant?

Good question.

The first thing I’d say is that unlike our colloquial use of the word, “marginal,” in this context it doesn’t quite equal insignificance – more on this below. Secondly, there’s good reason for France to be in the (neo)colonial racket. Traditionally, colonies had two important functions: first, early colonies were overflowing with slave laborers, whose descendants became low wage laborers working the land to extract raw materials and crops that were exported to European countries. Secondly, the colonies provided much needed markets for the circulation of the processed and manufactured goods produced in the metropole from the raw materials harvested in the colony.

Sugar cane cultivators in Guadeloupe

So, the circular economic logic goes like this: the cost of production is kept low because labor and land are exploited. The profit margin is ridiculously high because the manufactured goods are sold in a consumer market that is virtually closed to other products, particularly products grown locally. Despite the “end of colonialism” such political-economic relations persist between France and its “territories” because it is economically advantageous for France. (Nevermind all that “civilizing mission” crap. The crass money incentive is clear to everyone by now.)  Given that colonial administration of the land meant the land was parceled out to French companies, little land was available for the cultivation of crops grown by black Guadeloupians, and meant to circulate in local markets. This continues to be the case. As such, the development of a market for local, fresh, hopefully non-GMO, whole foods that would nourish our friend and her family far better than any of the processed foods could, is highly unlikely without a radical redistribution of land and wealth on the island as well as the safeguarding of farmer’s rights, wages and the integrity of their seeds in the face of monster companies like Monsanto. (There’s a hyperlink there in case you want to know who/what Monsanto is.)

(By the way, the issue of sustainable farming also has implications for the preservation of local biodiversity, which impacts climate change. Furthermore, it has implications for the reduction of food-related chronic illnesses like heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension, which are often outcomes of a diet high in processed foods and low in whole foods. Thus, in this ostensibly isolated issue of worker’s rights, we see environmental and health issues unfold as well. This is yet another lesson in the basic interconnectedness of our shared problems.)

So, returning to my use of the word “marginal,” I hope it is clear that Afro-diasporic peoples in the West, be they in Anglophone nations like my own, or Francophone territories like our friend, are not marginal to global-capitalism as such. Quite the contrary is true. Without the exploitation of low, or no-wage, black laborers, and the expropriation of Caribbean lands, its agriculture, and other natural resources, capitalism as we know it in the West would not exist. So in this sense, our friend and the people on her island are absolutely central to global capitalism. Yet, they are marginal insofar as they do not reap the benefits of the system. They work daily, typically under union loathing French business-owners, and are paid measly wages in return; wages that are insufficiently calibrated toward meeting the exorbitant costs of living in the contemporary world.

The idea of economic sovereignty, that is, cultivating local economies in Martinique and Guadeloupe that actually sustain the people living on the islands, and in the region more broadly, would send a big “Fuck You” message to the French government. France would be cut out of the equation, thereby losing a market for their goods, which would adversely impact its national economy. Seems like a good reason for the French to hold on to their territories, right? (I’m assuming it is the market incentive and the nasty habit of racist paternalism that renders relinquishing the territories unthinkable.)

Haitians wade through a flooded town in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, September 2008

Going the route of Haiti, that is, seeking independence from France, would require an enormous regional alliance between other Caribbean islands, Latin American countries, and friendly countries in the global north (if such a thing exists). We should remember that Haiti was the first black republic in the West, and continues to be one of a kind. Historical hindsight allows us to see that such an anomaly was not taken lightly, as the United States and Britain did everything they could, from the early nineteenth century onward, to cripple the new republic and effectively cut it off from the global economy. (Cuba’s situation is another example.) The longstanding effects of internaitonal isolation, foreign infiltration, weapons trafficking, and internal political instability has rendered Haiti the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, and led to unspeakable human suffering. We need only look to the food crisis in 2008 and the impact of Hurricane Ike to get a glimpse of Haiti’s struggle.

I typically try to tie up my posts with some insight into the possibility of cultivating loving-kindness and compassion in the face of such suffering. But today, I’m so in the pain that it’s difficult to say something hopeful. I pray that our friends in Guadeloupe fight for their right to exist and flourish, just as much as I pray, think, and argue for a way out of the international juggernaut of suffering wrought by our current way of life. By now it is painfully clear that the social order brought into being by the expansion of European capitalism into all areas of the world is woefully unsustainable. As I have said elsewhere, bailing out this system is not the answer. It may be a temporary pain reliever akin to popping an Advil for a headache born of dehydration, but the painkiller won’t hydrate the areas of the body that need water the most.

*UPDATE

As of February 19, the French government has conceded to demands that they increase wages 200 euros a month. See the BBC article, “France Meets Guadeloupe Demands” for a few more details.

I remember sitting in my friend Celine’s room with Walzer’s book in hand, and dropping it on the floor when the significance of his words really sunk in. Forgive my inability to directly quote the book, but the gist of Walzer’s argument went thus: Upon entering the land of milk and honey, God’s chosen people found others already occupying their gifted land. Although these people were the indigenous inhabitants of the land, the Hebrews were free to occupy Canaan because the Canaanites were outside the Hebrews’ sphere of moral concern.*

Canaan after the Conquest

WHAT?

This didn’t make any sense. Why would it be okay for one group of people to take another group of people’s land just because their God said it was okay, I wondered?  That’s like me telling the girl in the dorm room next to mine that I had a revelation about her car last night, and God said he was bequeathing it to me, so she should handover the keys. Of course, she’d look at me like I’d lost my mind and do no such thing. What, then, might be the outcome ? Right, conflict, war, and bloodshed.

(Ever thought about what mass PTSD looks like? Think Native Americans post-European invasion. Think Africans in the Western Hemisphere from the 17th century on. Think Congolese in the age of Leopold. Think Jews sequestered to the Warsaw ghetto in the age of Hitler. Think the Japanese in the wake of Hiroshima. Think the Vietnamese under clouds of agent orange. Think Sunnis and Shiites the moment operation “Shock and Awe” got underway.)

I was soon informed that groups who anchored their truth claims, their moral certitude and ethical norms in differing authority figures, particularly differing transcendental authority figures, stood at an impasse that only force could bridge. One version of the truth would force the other version of truth “underground,” as it were. The imposition of one group’s will on the other was the basic recipe for war.

I am reminded of this as I read the New York Times today, as I surf through Al Jazeera online and bounce around the BBC website. What’s happening in Gaza today may not be identical to the occupation detailed in the Old Testament, but it surely shares in the logic of that old story. What troubles me now, however, is the way in which Israel’s justifications for what is all but genocide in name, can gain traction in the public sphere. What kind of psychic space must we all be in to read last year’s “warning” by Israel’s deputy defense minister, Matan Vilnai, without mass outrage being our response? Vilnai told us:

“Palestinians risked…’bringing an even bigger Shoah’ (the Hebrew word for Holocaust) upon themselves if they did not stop firing Qassam rockets into Israel….” [emphasis mine.]

There are many things wrong with this statement, not the least of which is Vilnai’s back door, or accidental, admission that Israel’s actions amount to a Holocaust, but to think that such a lopsided, underfunded, and ill-equipped defense against said Holocaust would be openly regarded as Palestinians “bringing an even bigger Shoah upon themselves” is outrageous. Seriously. Such a statement is delivered as if Israel cannot chose to respond differently; as if exerting more force is the only option.

C'mon, this can't be legal...

As I read more reports of Israel’s use of white phosphorous as an “obscurant” in  the densely populated urban area of the Gaza Strip, I  can feel my frustration and sense of helplessness rise up from my belly and circle around my heart. What are we to do, those of us who are committed to peace, compassion and avoiding adding another drop of suffering to this world? It is easy to feel compassion for those who suffer such indignities, but how are we to muster compassion and forgiveness for their killers?

Unlike Walzer’s notion of someone being outside of our sphere of moral concern, and therefore not worthy of our time, love, compassion or care, we must begin to move towards an ethic that leaves no one out and wrestles with the difficulty of building relationships within the interstices of disagreement and on the edges of discrepant world views. Surely, the tie that binds Israel and Palestine is a shared history of suffering, both at the hands of others and each other. A shared commitment to reducing the level of suffering and violence ought to be our goal, rather than the (false) “security” of one group at the cost of the other group’s sanity, genuine security, and ability to flourish in peace.

Notes

*In all fairness, Walzer isn’t the only one to make such a claim, or attempt to explain the situation in these terms. For a critique of this kind of reasoning see the work of the late Edward Said, in particular, “Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading,” in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (London: Verso, 1988): 161–78.

The New Yorker's Commemorative Inauguration Cover, Jan 2009

My coworker handed me a copy of this week’s issue of the New Yorker yesterday. I wasn’t paying attention when she passed off the magazine so my reaction to the cover was a bit belated. As I ripped open the magazine’s plastic covering, and my eyes adjusted to the image, I was simultaneously dumbfounded and relieved. Dumbfounded because, on one level, I couldn’t believe Mr. Friedman and the New Yorker editorial board thought it was a good idea to refigure George Washington as Barack Obama, or, to convert Barack Obama into George Washington. But at the same time, I was relieved because I could believe – and shouldn’t have been surprised – that the folks at the New Yorker would release such an image to visually signify how our political present heralds a new beginning.

Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up and it’s a relief that I don’t have to, otherwise my entire analysis of our contemporary malaise would seem like a figment of my imagination. The cover image, this “commemorative” picture that you can order online and keep for posterity, is a symptom of a deeply rooted problem that must be corrected at the level of thought, at the level of the episteme, not at the level of the regime.

Alas, the break is always a repetition.

I won’t rehearse the full argument here, check out Firefighting on MLK Day and All in the Family 1, 2 and 3, for that, but suffice it to say that “New America” is only new to the extent that it has fully duped itself into believing inclusionary politics is tantamount to radical social change, rather than superficial rearrangement of the chess pieces. Such delusion is also symptomatic of the root illness. Speaking of symptoms, let me explain my title.

Our friend, Slavoj Zizek, possibly one of the most influential thinkers of our time, wrote a book by the same title in the 1990s. Zizek’s book concerns itself with Lacanian psychoanalysis and popular culture, or the ways in which some of Lacan’s central motifs can assist in the analysis of popular culture. In its strictest sense, the “symptom” is understood as an embodied, corporeal metaphor for a repressed desire. That which is deeply yearned for, but cannot be consciously entertained due to some powerful social interdiction, pops back up in a new form, either as a compulsive behavior or physical ailment. Following Zizek’s shift from the analyst/analysand context to the domain of popular culture, we can read certain cultural objects as symptoms betraying a repressed collective desire.

For clarity’s sake, I should say I am intentionally weaving together two connotations of the word/concept “symptom” into one, where I mean to suggest that the symptoms in question (primarily the image of Obama-Washington above, and secondarily the delusion of Progress) are both indicative of a repressed desire and a systemic imbalance, in the physiological sense.*

First, the repressed desire. It seems to me that the image betrays a yearning for more of the Same, by which I mean more of the same structural arrangements that Washington helped establish. Sure, Washington represents a break with English rule, but such a break was itself a repetition if we consider that the overarching theory of what it meant to be human didn’t change, a theory that had embedded in it both the presumption of capitalist exchange as the only logical mode of social organization and a notion of race that supersedes the race-as-phenotype model.* Yet, desiring white supremacy, desiring heteropatriarchal family structures, US global dominance and the continued peonage of workers are desires that rarely find their way into language. Rather, what we hear is “Change!” This is what must be said in the face of a social interdiction rendering identity-based discrimination not only passé, but straight-up uncool, thus racism turns into multiculturalism, patriarchy turns into liberal feminism, and heterosexism turns into gay pride and queer weddings.

But, the systemic imbalance persists, such that all of the above “social transformations” are themselves symptoms of said imbalance. What, you ask, is out of whack? Well, two things at two different registers. First, the very idea that one world view could possibly get it right, that is, get the description of reality right, is, quite simply, egocentric, delusional, and well, wrong. The multiplicity of human explanatory systems suggests that all are partial, imperfect knowledges with which we may weave a fuller, better picture. Nevertheless, Eurocentric thought universalized its local knowledge into global knowledge via colonization and enslavement. This error is an error at the epistemic level, at the level of knowledge, at the level of thought. Second, the practice of including previously “excluded” populations into the existing power structure mistakes this practical correction as a gesture capable of curing the real problem, that is, the error at the level of thought.

Thus, the New Yorker cover is perfect for its moment, but not for the reasons it thinks. The cover blends the old with the new in an attempt (I’m assuming) to suggest that Obama’s presidency marks a definitive break with the intolerable America Bush II made. But in so doing, it reveals that the break is actually a return to the Same, perhaps a kindler, gentler, more responsible Same, but the Same no less.

The image is symptomatic then, precisely because it signifies a repressed desire not to release the delusional ailment that the Euro-American worldview is The Correct Worldview. But, no one seems to notice, let alone care, that this is the sickness. So, by all means, enjoy your symptom!

Notes

*In Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic Healing, symptoms are seen as indicators of a fundamental imbalance or block in the life force, Chi or Prana, depending on the tradition. Rather than treat or repress symptoms and then declare the patient healed, these healing traditions seek to address the root issue which is the imbalance or block itself.

*See the notes for Firefighting on MLK Day for a more detailed explanation of the idea of Race as a theory of what it means to be human.

We lost Dr. King in Tennessee. He was in Memphis to lead a protest on behalf of sanitation workers who suffered from unconscionably poor working conditions and equally disturbing wages. Many MLK academic historians note the significant emphasis King began to place on economic justice in the years before his untimely death. However, few popular accounts of King’s contributions include this important detail about his life and work. The effect of this elision is that the general public receives a watered-down picture of MLK; one that is routinely harnessed to the liberal multicultural politics that helped elect Barack Obama, and now aids the misleading notion that “we” have “overcome” our collective ailments.

In his reflections on working toward peace, actor and peace activist Harry Belafonte recounted a conversation he had with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shortly before King was assassinated. King told Belafonte he was disturbed by a realization he had about the long, hard fight for integration: “We have fought hard and long for integration, as I believe we should have, and I know that we will win,” King said. “But I’ve come to believe we’re integrating into a burning house.”*

Belafonte was “taken aback,” by King’s admission and visible discontent. The project of integration did not, King argued, fully address the need to remedy the injustice of economic exploitation – an injustice intrinsic to capitalism and dispersed across racial and ethnic groups. “I’m afraid that even as we integrate,” King said, “we are walking into a place that does not understand that this nation needs to be deeply concerned with the plight of the poor and disenfranchised. Until we commit ourselves to ensuring that the underclass is given justice and opportunity, we will continue to perpetuate the anger and violence that tears at the soul of this nation.”

Though Belafonte agrees with King’s insight, though we face the greatest economic crisis in recent history, and though we continue to witness social unrest and egregious acts of violence against the poor, the disenfranchised, the stateless, and the homeless, Belafonte remains optimistic about the possibility of change.

He writes: “Deep in my soul, I know there are more Rosa Parks, more Dr. Kings, and more Ella Bakers ready to emerge. Perhaps we are the firefighters who can save the burning house. Martin would have embraced such a thought.”

2. On Inauguration Eve

Belafonte’s optimism and belief in the possibility of change is similar to, but not identical with, the brand of hope and change articulated by the Obama team. Contrary to popular opinion, the election of Barack Obama does not fully realize Dr. King’s dream. Though we bear witness to a most miraculous event tomorrow, when considering the “change” Obama’s election signifies, we’d all do well to see it as a symptomatic shift, rather than an eradication of the root illness Dr. King sought to address by the end of his career.

Here’s why:

Obama’s presidency can, and should, be regarded as the apotheosis of integration/multicultural politics in the United States. And for the majority of Americans, reaching this multicultural consensus is a very good thing.** Yet, we must be aware that adding more people of color and women to positions of power, both in the U.S. and abroad, does not rewrite the foundational assumptions and beliefs informing the global socio-political and institutional matrix that determines the quality of our lives. Even with a bright and dashing new president before us, it is fair to say that the house is still on fire.

Yes, tomorrow’s inauguration of the first African-American president certainly marks a shift in U.S. racial politics, but it does not mark the end, nor does it herald a substantive change, in the way racism is entangled with capitalist exploitation. Racism, which, I should add, is a deeply gendered affair, continues to aid capitalism in the creation of exploitable labor groups and usurpable, instrumentalized land.***

While I suspect Obama knows the house is still on fire, I’m less convinced that his method of dealing with the flaming house (which should be seen as the entire world, not just the U.S.) will move us in the direction of taming the blaze. To be frank, integration doesn’t change the world if it means we now have a black guy injecting massive amounts of capital into a gendered and racialized economic system instead of a white guy. Such a response to the implosion of an ethically vacuous (think Madoff, Dreier, Enron, et al.) and systemically unfair mode of organizing and distributing resources deals with symptoms, not root causes. It allows us to hobble on a bit longer on an ultimately unsustainable path. They’ve change the players instead of the game.

Consider this: one of the distinctive characteristics of our economic system is its demand that we all “compete” on the market to secure and accumulate the most basic of human needs. (I’m resisting the urge to address the absurdity of individual ownership as such, i.e.: private property.) Now, one might say that competition is the province of sellers, not consumers like you and I, but Marx reminds us that the consumer/worker is also for sale, perhaps now more so than ever. Each day we sell our labor in exchange for cash and “benefits,” benefits that are better understood as withheld birthrights erroneously routed through the workplace. As company after company lays off more and more workers (my job just sent 6 home last week) the buyers of labor can drive down wages because we are all competing for work. Meanwhile, Washington prepares for phase three of its “bailout” plan in order to keep this system running, so some of us may return to the market for further exploitation at a later date – should we last that long.

The competition-accumulation dyad is simply a bad combination that brings out the worst in people while actively devaluing the qualities we ought to be cultivating: mutuality, compassion, generosity, kindness, forgiveness and patience, in short, LOVE. In my first blog post, “Say When,” I had this to say about capitalist ideology:

As I sail through my entrepreneurship for dummies class, I’m learning that improving my bottom line is the goal, with a dash of social responsibility thrown in for good measure. But, I can’t help thinking we might wanna adjust the profit-accumulation model that leads businesses to desire ever-expanding coffers. Can we learn to have a wealth accumulation cap? You know, like when a friend pours you a glass of wine and says, “tell me when,” and you wait, watch the glass fill up with your favorite vino, all the while knowing that filling up to the brim is in bad form because others wanna taste too, so at the half way mark you say, “when!” Can we learn to say “when” before buying that second house, before buying that third car, before the mind-boggling vacation in the Maldives Islands? Can we learn to associate bling-bling excess with “bad form”? Surely it’s in bad taste to dine out for 200 bucks while others massage a grumbling belly and the family down the street is kicked out of their foreclosed on house, right?

As we celebrate the alleged demise of racism, capitalist ideology continues to propose an “individual” who is independent of everyone with whom he or she interacts. Such individuals are thought to have discreet and substantial identities that are mutually exclusive, rather than interdependent and contingent upon the actions of others. This conceptual paradigm lands us in the arena of individual rights, rather than collective responsibility, such that one can argue that their “right” to liberty enables them to accumulate capital irrespective of the human and environmental cost of such accumulation. (It’s a free country, right? WTF?) It is such a worldview that enables the “It’s not personal, it’s just business” saying to make any damn sense. Collective responsibility on the other hand, recognizes that what I do here has implications not only for other people near and far, but also for the unborn millions in generations to come. Yet, this idea of the self-interested, individuated human sits at the core (as in it’s one of the roots) of the contemporary global economic system/crisis everyone is struggling to save/solve. Only when we begin to see the interconnectedness between self and other, when we see that “my interest” is ultimately the same as “your interest,” will we begin to move toward collective responsibility, toward the liberating power of love, and indeed toward putting out the fire ravaging our home.

3. We, the Firefighters of Planet Earth

I say all of this not to detract or denigrate Obama’s brilliance or the blessed journey that is his life. Rather I make, what I suspect is a somewhat unpopular argument, in the spirit of King’s great insight about the nature of our contemporary illness, and to point out where the easy line drawn between King and Obama actually breaks down. It seems to me that paying homage to Dr. King necessitates maintaining fidelity to his legacy. The kind of quick and dirty historiography for which popular culture is notorious offers us a version of King that serves the interests of the status quo, and lends itself well to the celebration of Obama’s presidency. This is all fine and good if you don’t mind living among embers and billowing smoke that often erupts into scorching flames. If however, you prefer a less volatile life, then we ought to insist upon popularizing the version of Dr. King who was a peaceful radical, implicitly calling forth the firefighters of the next generation.

Notes

*Many thanks to my friend Bea for passing on the Belafonte passage. We truly are “we” – there is no I, no Self. The insights articulated in this blog are impossible without the input of others. If you’re interested in reading the rest of Belafonte’s notes, you can find them here: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/Belafonte/essay.html

**I find it difficult to communicate both the relief I feel over the decreasing occurrence of egregious  and monstrous acts of racially motivated violence, and the impatience I feel with broad based acceptance of the idea that multiculturalism in the U.S. solves the problem of race. Yes, we rarely see folks hanging from trees these days, but systemic and institutionalized violence persist in, perhaps, more atrocious ways: rampant poverty and mass negligence, deliberate under-education, incarceration, etc.

***By “racism” I refer to the bigotry, physical and epistemic violence accompanying the hierarchical distribution of the idea of “racial difference.” When I say “racism is a deeply gendered affair,” I mean that the metaphorics of racial difference map “gender differences” onto the idea of race. It would take too long to explain how this works, but it is very important for understanding why we’re not in the era of radical change. This blog requires an understanding of “racial difference” as a historical idea, rather than an objective Truth. My theory of race draws upon the work of philosopher Sylvia Wynter and Marxist historian Cedric Robinson, among others, and it theorizes Race as a bio-economic idea of human being, which was the idea of difference subtending the expansion of European monarchies-cum-nation-states in the early modern period. As a bio-economic theory of what it means to be human, racial thinking by the nineteenth century conceived of the Human as a pan-optic, evolving organism in various phases of evolution. The most evolved human was presumed to be capable of seeing its earlier incarnations in “primitive” others (hence, “pan-optic”), and simultaneously responsible for “helping” such groups “develop,” and enter the “modern, civilized” world. And, insofar as the human could reason, the human was imagined to be a self-possessing entity. The discourse of rationality therefore served to draw boundaries around the coveted space of self-possesion, and the “inalienable rights” that came along with ownership of the self. “Primitive accumulation” of capital thus turns on the fabrication of some groups of people as irrational, unable to tend to their own affairs, and so on. Of course, the only normal, rational humans were conveniently, also the authorial subjects of the discourse on human being and racial difference. This model of human being thus operated by a princple of inclusion within the “human family,” while exploiting people according to where one fell along the evolutionary line. Solving racism then, cannot to be solved by way of multiculturalism, which relies upon the “make-believe” racial categories of yore and demands being regarded as a human LIKE the one who initially oppressed and excluded. Rather, our way out of our contemporary morrass comes by decolonizing what it means to be human as such.

First, the “how”:

Now, the “why”:

As I recounted my practice I noticed, perhaps for the first time, why I continue to meditate. Of course, meditation practice is part of Buddhist practice generally, and often this would be my answer when someone asked me why I meditate. However, such a generic answer didn’t really explain the value of meditation, or why it’s an integral part of Buddhist practice.

As I spoke with my friend I realized that in the moment when I notice my mind wandering I have touched the jewel of awareness. It is by being aware of my wandering mind that I am able to bring myself back to the breath, rather than remaining caught up in the thoughts carrying me away. The long term benefit is that I water the seed of mindfulness in me, and as a result I am more mindful in my daily life when I am not sitting. Through meditation I become more aware of my thoughts, and my habitual ways of responding to painful situations. By seeing these responses and thoughts, I can begin to disidentify from them: I am not my thoughts, nor am I my reactions. That is, I do not have to craft an identity out of my feelings, thoughts and reactions that keep me locked into thinking, feeling and reacting in the same way for perpetuity. From the space of awareness I am free to make a different choice, liberated to feel, think and respond differently.

In short, I am free to grow.

The former traditions, the most obvious being the Abrahamic religions, are hotbeds of conflict precisely because they have come to disavow the Divine power and goodness that is intrinsic to all beings and things in the universe. They form static identities with hard boundaries that compel the rest of us to reckon with the material effects of our imposed outsider status: We are the “Children of God,” the chosen few, and you are not. The source of their certitude, the veracity of their claim, is anchored in a transcendental figure with whom only they are acquainted, and from whom only they receive revelation. This is a convenient turn of events indeed. Others are thus made to live in the shadow of such an exclusive relationship.

By withholding Divinity, by claiming that some are “chosen” and others are damned, such traditions disavow the reality of the interconnectedness of all beings with Divine Being, and the inter-being of earthly beings with each other. If we can agree that Being as such is the Source, if we can agree that all that is comes from, and is infused with, the divine creativity of the Source, then no special relationship to the Source can really be claimed. Well, choseness can be claimed, and surely it is, but it cannot be proved to the satisfaction of all parties involved.

What we can be sure of is that we are all here, we all are, and must find a way to live together. Thinking “we” rather “me,” seeing “you” in “me,” moves against our atomistic existence and the Western insistence upon the rights bearing individual. We move toward a notion of collectivity, toward a notion of responsibility for others and for the environment in which we live. We inter-are with the earth, and with each other. Our ability to flourish is contingent upon the happiness and flourishing of all that lives in and around us. For example, to the extent that the earth lives, so do we. This should be obvious: without food we cannot live. If we ruin the environment that enables food to grow we perish along with it. I have no illusions about the arrogant pretensions of some to create synthetic food-stuffs (read: processed food) meant to replace the divine nutrients that sustain us. However, incidences of various cancers, immune diseases, arthritis, kidney disease and other ailments continue to be linked to synthetic foods and the chemicals used to bolster meat production and preserve vegetables and fruit. In short, the “replacements” and additives are killing life rather than sustaining it. (GMOs are equally problematic, but I’d digress to much if I got into it now.)

The spiritual model I have in mind does not propose a God that is anthropomorphic or separate from you and I. Quite the contrary. The “God” I have in mind (if it can be called that) is dispersed energetic light radiating through all things as all things, sowing the seed of Divinity in each of us as its Being exceeds our own. In reclaiming the Divine we re-member, that is, put back together, our awareness of the Divine inside of us.

Such remembrance has had enormous implications for how I move through the world, how I relate to other sentient beings, and how I engage with the natural environment. I no longer feel so separate and alienated from everything around me, and as such, I no longer regard human being as a form of being meant to instrumentalize everything to my own ends. My impulse is to think connection, integration, affinity, and cooperation. As a spiritual practice, my reclamation of the Divine is a living-belief system: it is alive, active, mutable and an open-ended way of being in my daily life. Being open to my own potential to touch the Divine in me has transformed my life from one of intense suffering, addiction, and fear to a life of joy, understanding, peacefulness and courage. I invite you to come along on the path toward the Divine, toward that which is majestic, formless, and noble in you. From our internal, personal transformations we can effect a change much grander, one that may bring a suffering world back to the basic goodness already within itself.