The Silenced #MeToo: War, Rape, & Racism

“Me Too was about reaching the places that other people wouldn’t go, bringing messages and words and encouragement to survivors of sexual violence where other people wouldn’t be talking about it.”–Tarana Burke, activist who started the #MeToo campaign

I hear a Me Too. It’s not a neat hashtag, I can’t heart or retweet it. The voice is bloodied and choked, burned and forgotten.

For the last few months America has been having a conversation that is most often not welcome  at the dinner table or the nightly news. Multitudes of women and a few men have come forward to expose sexual abuse by powerful men. Social and corporate media have been a buzz with new accusation after another. Many of the powerful men were fired from their positions as a result–a shocking phenomena in a country where most rape victims are treated as criminals.

While a movement to hold sexual abusers accountable is necessary, a movement born in the US and embraced by people with power is likely to be limited by bourgeois feminism and American exceptionalism. Many in congress have adopted #MeToo with conservative house speaker Paul Ryan stating “sexual harassment in America is absolutely pervasive and it’s got to go and we need to end it”. An ironic comment from someone who enthusiastically voted to violate the human rights of millions of people.

When movements are co-opted by the ruling class, the potential of the movement becomes limited to keep the scope within parameters that work for them. US lawmakers like Paul Ryan are sitting on a dirty secret–the depraved wars waged against the people of the Third World for the benefit of the US ruling elite. Wars where the invaded population is assaulted not just with bombs but with brutal sexual assault and rape on an everyday bases.

Let’s take #MeToo where it hasn’t gone: to speak for the girls, boys, women, and men raped due to US Wars—our government’s invasion of their national boundaries.  

War is by definition rape. It is the unwanted invasion of land, the peoples’ body. It is non consensual penetration of bombs and drones on the daily life of dark skinned people in nations far away.

Very few Americans say that they are pro-rape but many are pro-war or indifferent. How come a nation of inter-sectional feminists, leftists, Hijab respecters, Pussy hat knitters, Black Lives Matter chanters, human rights warriors, immigrant defenders, fetus worshipers, and gun controllers, keep tiptoeing around the enormous monster in the room?

The bombs and bullets we banish from thought by changing the channel, are unavoidable to their targets.

Abeer was 11 years old when the US invaded her country, Iraq, in 2003. Three years later a group of US soldiers planned her rape over a game of cards. They waited for the fall of night and invaded her family’s home. She endured hearing her parents and little sister being killed as she fought her rapists. In the second it took sweaty fingers to ignite a gun aimed at her head, young Abeer’s life was over.

Rape in US wars is not the deviance of a few bad apples, it is a documented strategy used by the US defense apparatus . When the rape and torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, the US run prison in Iraq, was exposed, Brig General Janis Karpinski admitted that this grade of rape and torture  came directly from Military Intelligence, the CIA, and private contractors.

Hardened criminals and terrorists didn’t fill Abu Ghraib. Ordinary Iraqi citizens ruitenly were rounded up and thrown in the literal hell hole because for the US military, the line between civilians and “the enemy” is microscopically thin. In practice, civilians are the enemy.

Iconic investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in a couple of speeches that Iraqi mothers held at Abu Ghraib were forced to watch as their young boys were raped in front of them. A former Iraqi detainee testified to the rape of a teenage Iraqi boy by a US military personnel at Abu Ghraib.

The atmosphere of rape savagery is all consuming in US war zones. The first American women  to die after the invasion of Iraq was 19 yr old soldier Lavena Johnson who was found severely beaten, raped and murdered in a tent belonging to the defense contracting firm Kellogg Brown& Root (KBR).  Also in 2005, defense contractors from the same firm raped and beat their female colleague so badly she had to have her breast implants removed. KBR continued to win competitive and lucrative contracts from the government following Lavena’s murder.

Rape cards—photographs of acts of rape were traded like baseball cards by US personnel in Iraq. When there was push to release hundreds of thousands of such images to the US public, US decision makers decided they were too disturbing to release.

PTSD is not only suffered by those who get hurt in war but also by those who commit crimes in war. War is a horrific nightmare that makes monsters of men.The atmosphere of chaos in war zones is intentionally created by decision makers by utilizing the violent masculinity, white supremacy, and patriotic bigotry that is the life blood of this settler colonial nation.

The youth, like Lavena Johnson,who join the military for a better future are victims of the US ruling class–their bodies are offered up to shrapnel and their minds are made into psych wards. US wars are the wealthy using the poor to accomplish their agenda of  wealth accumulation. The movement for free college is not simply about affordable education but an economically secure and fulfilling future for low income youth that doesn’t involve doing the dirty work of the wealthy.

But of course, the ultimate victims are the youth of the invaded population, dead before they have a chance to contemplate the sunrise over the misty desert air of their homeland.

The most American thing is not to be able to see our American privilege. We live in a land where our elected officials and their billionaire backers wage a nightmare called war on the rest of the world. Forget Donald Trump’s wall, how about the borders on our hearts that makes us so removed from the struggles of people from the so called “Third World”. Ironically the Third World’s problems are our government and our military.

So what do we do? How do we move forward in this politically hot moment where the planet’s future is in flux, waiting to be caught by Nazis OR the dark skinned hands of justice.

How much is enough solidarity when hashtags aren’t enough? An end to business as usual. No work! No School! Until every US base on foreign soil is closed. No work! No school! Until reparations for Libya and Haiti and every victim of US wars. No work! No school! Until every political prisoner held by the US–at home and abroad–is released. No work! No school! No work! No school! No work! No School!

Until peace.

 

Erica Garner: The White Progressive’s Dilemma

Erica Garner died at 27 years old in the closing days of 2017. She left behind an 8 year old daughter, Alyssa, and a 4 month old newborn son named Eric after her dad. Little Alyssa starred in the 2016 campaign video for Bernie Sanders along with her mom. In the short glimpse of their lives, Erica reveals the sorrow in both their lives since an NYPD officer killed the man who was daddy for Erica and pop-pop to her daughter. “Are you ok mom? Do you miss pop-pop” asks the little girl in the film. Now the same child has the added trauma of losing her mother, her protector and guiding light. A tragedy happening in quick succession to Black and Indigenous children of the world because of Western led capitalism and neo-colonialism.

Erica Garner was typical of the young Black women found in cities across America: working class, committed young mom, weaving through the maze of capitalism to provide the basics of life for her family. Erica was unknown outside her circle of family and friends but when she died on December 30th her name trended worldwide on Twitter.

Her rise from ordinary to extraordinary was born of a routine tragedy in America:  State forces murdering citizens; and of the brave action of an ordinary citizen, Ramsey Orta, who dared to film the crime.

The powers that be hoped that Erica, after making a few statements at a press conference would slip back into obscurity.

The ruling class holds working class people of color in utter contempt. They can’t empathize with us or imagine us having the ability to feel the same pain or joy. Our life value is low and our death is at best irrelevant.

To the NYPD, Bill De Blasio, and President Obama, Eric Garner was just another surplus Black man. His death meant nothing and his family’s feelings meant nothing.

Erica kicked back against the devaluation of her dad’s life, her reflex changing the trajectory of her legacy forever. Erica’s defiance was the sick-and-tired reaction of a generation raised in the illusion of color blindness but faced  too much injustice to believe it.

Erica led protests every week regardless of the weather. She spoke at conferences, rallies, and wrote articles. In 2016, she endorsed Bernie Sanders and went to bat hard for him. She spoke at his events, made a powerful video for his campaign, and put in groundwork campaigning in South Carolina. She  wasn’t “liberal” for endorsing Sanders. He appeared to be the most progressive candidate with the highest chance of winning. If Bernie won, she had plans for running for congress. Erica understood the importance of taking power.

When Sanders fouled the Democratic nomination, Erica moved on and endorsed the Green Party ticket even though it was being projected that Hillary Clinton would win. Erica was principled.

Erica did not have a college degree, she was an organic working class intellectual whose knowledge came directly from her fight against the oppressive system. Erica used her platform on social media to criticize the Democrats, capitalism, Israel, US wars, and the police state. “When i think about capitalism I think about slavery, share cropping, bank scandal wall street donors… #HillaryClinton’s people” she summed up on twitter.

Even with the everyday stresses of being a working class Black women and mother under capitalism along with the added stress of being an activist with the NYPD on her back, Erica vowed “I’m in this fight forever” weeks before she died.

White Progressives and Working Class Black Women

Bernie Sanders betrayed Erica Garner and flowery condolences from his twitter page can’t change that. Two days after her death Bernie hovered over a Bible to swear in Bill De Blasio into his second term as mayor of NYC. Months before, when Erica was still alive Sanders publicly endorsed De Blasio putting his campaign cred behind the “blue lives matter” mayor.

Bill De Blasio is a poor people hating, elitist character who used the spectacle of a black wife and kids to make himself appear progressive. More significantly De Blasio was the one who made Erica’s life hell since the summer day in July when her dad’s life was snuffed out.

Either Bernie Sanders wasn’t listening to Erica or just didn’t care the effect his betrayal would have on her emotional, mental, and physical health. And in turn how his betrayal would effect the little girl who appeared in his video.

Bernie Sanders neither listened to Erica or cared about her wellbeing. His settler colonial status, patriarchal upbringing, and his acculturation into the ruling class made him physically unable to really see a working class Black woman and value her opinion. This misogynoir thing is so hard–he tried to see her but he’d blink and only see stereotypes and Charlie Brown wonk wonk.

He didn’t have the decency to stay out of sight of De Blasio’s inauguration two days after she died. He was in NYC to swear in her antagonist but did he stop by to see her family?

He made a social media statement about her but he also did the same for the notorious right wing supreme court justice Antonin Scalia.

Bernie Sanders has not been called out by his supporters for betraying Erica–someone who put her heart and sweat into his campaign. The only way for former supporters of the Bernie campaign to not appear as racist and classist as he, is to reject the Bernie2020 nonsense. Our future depends on setting our sights on something better than the crumbling façade of a liberal reactionary.

Erica Garner’s life and revolutionary potential was cut short but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a revolutionary. She was a revolutionary, not brought into the fight because of abstract ideals but because of the oppressive details of her life. She had her sight on power, kept her eyes constantly on the prize, and made moves based on the conditions on the ground. Erica didn’t have the support that she needed because of the shortcomings of our movement–revolutionary self criticism is the only thing that can help a movement move forward in the right direction.

Revolutionaries and movements change the dna of nations and communities; let Erica’s story change us.

“WE are not democrats. WE are not republicans. WE are Black in America which means we will NEVER be American. Cant u tell 300 yrs later?”

–Erica Garner 1990-2017

Forthcoming: Erica Garner was NOT homophobic & What Erica Garner’s Death says about Black Lives Matter

How To Keep Self Promoters From Stealing Movements

The energy of Ferguson reached Western Massachusetts but the possible movement was hijacked by self promoters masked as leader organizers.

 

Vanessa Lynch of BLM413 emerged in the position of leader/organizer of the Black Lives Matter effort in  Western Mass. Many young people eager to get involved in a movement gravitated to her enthusiastic claim of “the revolution is happening!”

 

While we were marching screaming “not one more” it felt right. I fell behind in classes as did my roommate Keysha. Homework seemed like a distraction compared to working to make a world where black lives actually matter. My skepticism began to rise as we continued to answer the calls of BLM413. What were we actually doing to ensure “not one more”?

 

The following is a critique of Vanessa Lynch’s leadership. Vanessa has great qualities that can be used in a revolutionary movement. I have been to multiple events where she was the only speaker who connected the struggle for Black liberation to Palestine and to the struggle of indigenous people of this land. And still her leadership style indicates that right  now she is more committed to making herself a public figure than being involved in a real movement.

 

Red flag #1: There was a glaring absence of political education in the movement. Energizing people with solidarity protests is fine and has its time and place.To build the foundation of a powerful radical organization that brings change, comprehensive political education has to be a focus.

 

“The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.”–James Baldwin

 

A real movement is not possible without political education. A lot of people know that the situation that we are living under is messed up and needs to be changed but don’t know where to start. A lot of people feel powerless to change these hostile condition we live under. A lot of people know the basic oppressors but don’t know the ins and outs and the intricate layout of the system. This is a vulnerability because we can’t fight and win against enemy that we don’t know. The objective of comprehensive political education is to understand the intricate layout of the system on the local, national, and global basis and to be able to identify the people who are stealing our wages, lives, and futures. When we understand this, ideas flow and we can plan strategically how to end the assault on working class Black people* world wide.

 

1. a) Vanessa talked about the system of White supremacy but capitalism was not discussed. It is vital to have a comprehensive understanding of capitalism because we live under a capitalist system. Millions of people are killed every year from dangerous work conditions. Millions more are seriously injured because of unsafe work conditions. Billions of workers suffer long term health deterioration from constant exposure to carcinogens, reproductive toxins, and neurotoxins all while earning slave-wages. Who is subject to the most dangerous working conditions and slave-wages? Capitalism is the number one threat to our safe, healthy, and happy existence. It is the number one cause of war and conflict. The number one cause of displacement, illness, starvation, and death of Black workers* world wide.

 

Besides subjecting workers to dangerous work conditions and slave wages, capitalists are destroying the environment we live in. Millions of people die from polluted water every year. Who is subject to the most toxic living conditions? The communities of the Black workers* who get toxic waste dumped on them, are targeted for the building dangerous factories, landfills, and generally suffer the toxic side effects of oil and mineral mining in their communities.

 

Understanding capitalism is empowering because we gain a consciousness of ourselves as workers. The capitalist ruling class is fooling us by having us do all the work while they take all the profits because in reality workers are the people who make the world go round. The Big Boss may ride high by stealing wages and subjecting workers to unsafe work conditions but if the workers took control of the means of production and refused to work to make him rich, he would fall flat on his face. The wealth accumulation agenda of the capitalist ruling class is unattainable without our labor. Workers have the power to shut shit down. It the goal of making revolution our role as workers is our strongest asset.

 

Red flag #2: Vanessa’s style was more dictator than organizer. Vanessa disregarded step up step back, a method that allows everyone’s ideas to be heard. At gatherings after protests she dominated conversations. If others managed to get a word in, it wasn’t for long. Vanessa would interrupt by saying “just cutting in” while making it clear that “cutting in” was a privilege just for her.

 

There was no collective decision making for the protests. The protests were unorganized. We didn’t present demands to the local city governments–the people who decide the funding for the local police departments. There were no discussions prior to the protests to collectively decide 1) Should we avoid getting arrested 2) Can we afford to get arrested 3) Is making bail (enriching the police state) the best use of our resources?

 

One night, a couple of us opposed Vanessa’s decision to move the protest from Holyoke to Westfield. Instead of listening to our reasons, Vanessa promptly shut us down. We ended up protesting inside of an empty Walmart where the only people there were tired workers on the night shift. A Black worker told Keysha that Walmart was denying them their bonus because of missing inventory. I relayed this to the group and suggested that we should add ‘Walmart workers deserve their bonus’ in solidarity with the dispossessed workers. Without so much as a show of hands, Vanessa shut it down with “I think black lives matter is enough”.

 

Once, I suggested a film by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as part of a political education agenda. Vanessa turned it down saying people “wouldn’t get it”.

 

These are just a few incidents where this “leader-organizer” disregarded people, alienated people, and empowered only herself. What kind of leader organizer doesn’t want to listen to the people and yet assumes the authority to dictate what the people are able understand? A counterrevolutionary one.

 

When Vanessa left the area sometime in January it was quiet in the activist circle. When there wasn’t a call from BLM413 there was no action. This should reflect very badly on any leader-organizer. Vanessa’s actions show that she wants uncritical followers who won’t challenge her and a movement that is dependent on her.

 

Revolutionary leadership is collective leadership where the masses are empowered thru political education so we all have the agency to act and have power to change these circumstances. A movement where political education is disregarded, only a few voices are held up, and the masses are silenced, will not work to the best interests of the people.

 

This critique of the black lives matter movement leadership also applies to organizers like Kahlile Rodriguez whose “womanizing” behavior is straight out of Why Misogynists Make Great Informants.  It applies to mealy mouthed professor Chris Tinson who calls himself a feminist but has been described as misogynist by multiple women of color who have worked with him. And as a mentor to  Vanessa Lynch, this critique applies to him and her leadership style  should reflect negatively on him.

 

There are others in positions of influence in Western Mass who need to be called out. Rapists, rape apologists , victim shamers. It isn’t my place to do it but I hope it happens.

 

This letter came about from what I witnessed of the movement and from conversations with other people who are disheartened by their experience in the Western Mass movement.  There was a culture of respect of authority in the movement that made being critical of leaders taboo so people whispered their discontent. We need to be critical of leadership and we need to be loud about it. Being a leader is not a game that revolves around egos. It is a job. And when a job isn’t being done right these people need to back off and make room for others who will work for  the best interest of the people’s movement.

Venture out on a political education project on your own. Become a regular reader of Black Agenda Report. Build on what you know and expand your knowledge on what you don’t know. If you want more resources comment below.

“The greatest weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”–Steve Biko, Afrikan Revolutionary

Toni Morrison: In Defense Of Life

• Q-This leads to the problem of the depressingly large number of single-parent households and the crisis in unwed teenage pregnancies. Do you see a way out of that set of worsening circumstances and statistics?
• A-Well, neither of those things seems to me a debility. I don’t think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It’s perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man. Two parents can’t raise a child any more than one. You need a whole community-everybody-to raise a child. The notion that the head is the one who brings in the most money is a patriarchal notion, that a woman-and I have raised two children, alone-is somehow lesser than a male head. Or that I am incomplete without the male. This is not true. And the little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for white people or for black people. Why we are hanging onto it, I don’t know. It isolates people into little units-people need a larger unit.
• Q-and teenage pregnancies? 
• A- Everybody’s grandmother was a teenager when they got pregnant. Whether they were 15 or 16, they ran a house, a farm, they went to work, they raised their children.
• Q-But everybody’s grandmother didn’t have the potential for living a different kind of life. These teenagers-16, 15-haven’t had time to find out if they have special abilities, talents. They’re babies having babies.
• A-The child’s not going to hurt them. Of course, it is absolutely time consuming. But who cares about the schedule? What is this business that you have to finish school at 18? They’re not babies. We have decided that puberty extends to what-30? When do people stop being kids? The body is ready to have babies, that’s why they are in a passion to do it. Nature wants it done then, when the body can handle it, not after 40, when the income can handle it.
• Q-You don’t feel that these girls will never know whether they could have been teachers, or whatever?
• A-They can be teachers. They can be brain surgeons. We have to help them become brain surgeons. That’s my job. I want to take them all in my arms and say, ‘You baby is beautiful and so are you and, honey, you can do it. And when you want to be a brain surgeon, cal me-I will take care of you baby.’ That’s the attitude you have to have about human life. But we don’t want to pay for it. I don’t think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they’re black-or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That’s what we’re upset about. We don’t care whether they have babies or not.
• Q-How do you break the cycle of poverty? You can’t just hand out money
• A-Why not? Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich get it handed-they inherit it. I don’t mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network. That’s shared bounty of class.

White Mob Violence Is Alive and Thriving

In Nelson Peery’s Black Radical, Peery details his life fighting for the liberation of working-class people world wide. Peery who fought in a segregated Black infantry division in WW2, details the horrific violence and death  that returning WW2 black veterans were met with at the hand of white mobs. Between June 1945 and September 1946, not a week went by without a lynching or other mob violence. During this time 56 Black veterans were lynched by white mobs.

This is one improvement, I thought. There are not mobs of regular-joe white people just up and offing black people for fun.

George William’s story, recently published in the New York Times, jarred me into consciousness of the reality that hundreds of thousands of men and women live and die everyday in America’s prisons. The angry white mobs I had imagined gone were actually employed in America’s prisons where they terrorize,beat and murder Black and Brown people legally and with impunity.

PEOPLE. Because “inmate” “convict” prisoner” “criminal”  normalize and justify the immoral imprisonment, torture and murder of fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, sons and daughters.

George Williams was arrested for robbing a jewelry store. Slave wages and pervasive unemployment makes such action necessary for survival. He was sentenced to 2-4 years in a Maximum Security Prison. An outrageous repercussion when the wealthy white men who caused and benefited from the 2008 financial crash that harmed billions of people are free to lounge in their 3rd vacation homes.

George Williams was keeping to himself in his cell at Attica Correctional Facility when four white guards ordered him to strip for a search. Under the false pretenses of a drug test they took him to another room and  beat him until he couldn’t walk. At one point they invited other guards to join in the fun. Up to 12 other white guards were witnessed. White Mob Violence.

With no rights that this land of democracy is bound to respect, men, women and children behind bars suffer brutal state sanctioned violence at the hands of guards everyday.

George Williams was left with horrific injuries that included a broken shoulder, two broken legs, multiple cracked ribs, broken eye socket, huge amount of blood lodged in his maxillary sinus, and cuts and bruises all over his body.

He was so close to death the prison infirmary didn’t admit him and ordered him  to an outside hospital. The first hospital also turned him away because his injuries were too severe for them to treat.

That night the necessity of liberation for Black and Brown people agitated my mind and kept sleep at bay. I was overwhelmed by the necessity of action because our existence depends on it.

From the cells of Attica and Rikers and Guantanamo, to the mines of South Africa, to Ethiopia, to Pine Ridge, to Zimbabwe, to Gaza, to Haiti, to the Congo, to Myanmar, to Nicaragua, to Eritrea, to Mexico, to Ferguson, to Iraq, to Peru, to Guatemala, to China, to Afghanistan, to Vietnam, to India, to Somalia, we are struggling for survival. Our existence–our safe healthy happy existence–makes taking action a necessity.

To the white people who have acquired the children of Black and Brown people thru adoption: Why don’t you feel this necessity that we do?  How can you claim to love Black children without loving Black humanity? How can you claim love while refusing to acknowledging the role you hold in our oppression with your active indifference?  How can you claim to love the Black and Brown children in your care without taking action to eradicate the white-supremacist+misogynist+capitalist system that is detrimental to their safe healthy and happy existence?

As for George Williams, he suffers a leg that is constantly bothering him, headaches, sinus damage, and PTSD. He is plagued by nightmares.  “I still can’t sleep” he told the New York Times.

Teenage Mothers Are Not The Problem

There is this pervasive shaming and stigmatization of young parenthood disguised as “teen pregnancy prevention”. It is so normalized by the corporate media that many don’t question the depravity of shaming young parents and few find it disturbing. But it is so very disturbing. From MTV’s Teen Mom to the Candies Foundations and United Ways offensive and and misinformed “teen pregnancy prevention” ads.

What is the purpose of stigmatizing young parenthood and shaming young parents? What is the purpose of drilling into girls that the worst thing they can do is have a baby young?

So that when a teenage young woman gets pregnant she is so filled with feelings of failure and shame because she is sentencing her baby and herself to a horrible life that she contacts a Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) who then confirm all her fears and add a few more before assigning her an adoption counselor who tells her what a brave selfless decision she is making as her stomach aches for her newborn and she ends up pumping milk for her child now in the care of strangers.

 

Recently, under it’s “Good News” section, Huffington Post ran a congratulatory story about a teenage mother who pumped gallons and gallons of milk for her baby who was being raised by strangers. It is curious that this is the image of teenage mothers that the corporate media portrays positively: a young mother pumping milk for her baby that she is aching for.

What is the message that this sends? That teen mothers are only acceptable are only worthy of praise when they are doing the “best” for their babies and allowing them to have “adult” parents.

There are never news stories about teen mothers lovingly caring for their children even though this is the honest reflection of the vast majority of young mothers.

“Teen pregnancy prevention” papers over the real problems that make life a challenge for families young and old. Capitalism+White-Supremacy+Misogyny. The huge intertwined ball of systemic oppression whose existence is a constant attack on working-class families of color all over the globe.

How about fighting for rent control so that teen mothers have access to truly affordable housing?

How about fighting for a real living wage so that teen mothers don’t have to work two jobs to care for their children?

How about fighting to end the gender pay gap that has women of color earning less than white men, white women, and men of color?

How about fighting to provide a real safety net for women with abusive partners so they can leave the relationship without making themselves and their children more vulnerable?

How about dismantling the white supremacist classist educational system that suspends and expels working-class children of color at outrageous rates starting in preschool.

How about dismantling the school to prison pipeline that targets working-class children of color for consumption.

How about dismantling the prison industrial complex that profits from tearing Black and Brown families apart.

How about working to create a world that is hospitable to young families…to all families.

A child is not the problem. A young mother is not the problem. A young family is not the problem.

Keymani Kirby: How CPS fails families

 

15 year old Keymani Kirby, a young mom whose Facebook page is filled with  pictures of her beautiful baby, made headline news when she ran away from a foster home with her 6 month old baby son.

Why did she run away?

The young mama fled when she learned that her baby was going to be separated from her and put into a different foster home.

What utterly terrifying heart sinking news to get. To be already in a system that is so disempowering and get the news that your baby is going to be taken away from you and there is nothing you can do about it.

#BlackLivesMatter should mean black families matter. But just as white supremacist cops abuse and kill Black people with impunity, just as the criminal “justice” system locks away our people with impunity, Child Protective Services steals children from their mothers with impunity.  This White Supremacist-Capitalist-patriarchal system shows loud and clear that our families/our lives don’t matter.

 

Every mother deserves to raise her child that she has watered and fed and grown beneath her heart. That means 15 year old mothers living in foster care.

It is completely unacceptable that CPS is seeking to separate this mother and child. It is violent. It is heartless. It is reminiscent of 400 years of children being sold away from their mothers.

People are fighting to keep Keymani and her son together. Please like this Facebook page. Please spread the word and get involved. This is what #BlackLivesMatter means.

Every Mother Deserves to Raise Her Child

In a wilderness of heartbreak

and a desert of despair,

Evil’s carrion of justice

shrieks a cry of naked terror.

He’s taking babies from their momas

and leaving grief beyond compare. -Gil Scott-Heron

Every mother deserves to raise her child that she has watered and fed and grown beneath her heart.

This “poverty” you speak of to convince/brainwash/gaslight her into believing that she isn’t enuf is a weak excuse because we know that poverty is manmade.

The solution you say is take that child–that love grown child that reflection of her ancestors–and give him to people who pay 40,000 for a “homestudy”.

How about pay her a living wage?

How about a long, paid maternity leave?

How about quality healthcare for all?

We know this country has plenty of money.

BILLIONS & BILLIONS & BILLIONS in giveaways and tax cuts and tax breaks to corporations every year. TRILLIONS to wars that kill other people’s children.

So your solution to separate mother and child is violent. Is lacking. Is unimaginative. Is cruel. Is reminiscent of 400 years of children sold away from their mothers.

In this land of plenty, there is an industry that function on separating children from their mothers. And we are not screaming.

You Shouldn’t Adopt Black Children If…

If…You in anyway rationalize the murders of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Mariam Carey, Aianna Jones, Rekia Boyd, Yvette Smith, or any other black person who was murdered by state sanctioned police violence. Or you let your family members do it without calling them out.

If…You don’t have any meaningful relationship with a black person.

If…You think the Black Panthers were national terrorists. 

If…You hear the slur “welfare queen” and imagine a black woman.

If…You think the problem with this country is welfare queens getting pregnant just to steal more of your tax dollars.

If…You imagine a One God, gendered male, and colored White.

If…Your idea of beauty and excellence in people, art, music, film, literature etc. is rooted in Eurocentricity.

If…You think the disproportionate number of black people in US prisons is due to Black criminality.

If…You secretly think Black people should “just quit their whining and pull themselves up by the bootstrap”  while refusing to realize that this White Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchal system grants you innumerable privileges in every part of your life.

If…If you refuse to use these privileges to work to break down the White Supremacist-Capitalist-Patriarchal system that is so hostile to Black life.

Adoption in the context of Imperialism

What’s adoption got to do with it?

Adoption–infant, international, or foster–is the practice most misunderstood by the public even by leftists and social justice activists.

Activists are like *let’s make sure adoptive parents get equal maternity leave when they adopt a baby* instead of asking why can’t this newborn stay with his mom or investigating the power inequality that led to this arrangement.

Adoption scholar Daniel Drennan ElAwar, himself internationally adopted as an infant from his homeland of Lebanon, has produced the deepest and most historically accurate scholarship on adoption/family separation/trafficking.

He states:

“From what I know now of adoption and trafficking, I state the following:

Adoption is, in and of itself, a violence based in inequality. It is candy-coated, marketed, and packaged to seemingly concern families and children, but it is an economically and politically incentivized crime. It stems culturally and historically from the “peculiar institution” of Anglo-Saxon indentured servitude and not family creation. It is not universal and is not considered valid by most communal cultures. It is a treating of symptoms and not of disease. It is a negation of families and an annihilation of communities not imbued with any notion of humanity due to the adoptive culture’s inscribed bias concerning race, class, and human relevancy.

 

“It is a negation of families and an annihilation of communities not imbued with any notion of humanity due to the adoptive culture’s inscribed bias concerning race, class, and human relevancy.”

This applies to the crisis raging in America (or by America) right now–the immigrant children torn from their parents for whatever shady reason and also families torn apart by the prison system, war, and by the ironically named CPS (Foster Care).

Adoption is part of the subjugation of women, the working class, and the Third World (the global working class).

Adoption has been used as a tool of colonialism and cultural genocide and is used today for the same.

This needs to be talked about Truth Out! Adoption Collective will talk about it.

We will not cater to the petite bourgeois adoptive parent gaze. We are not here for their approval. They can eat a huge slice of humble pie and learn. Or not.

“We currently have ample evidence that reveals that adoption is not “about children”. I no longer feel the need to argue about adoption along lines which take for granted its status quo acceptance. And I would like to go on the record as saying: As opposed to seeing adoption as a beneficent action, it can instead be stated that its very presence marks the failure of a society to care for those in need.”–Daniel Ibn Zayd

Truth Out! Adoption Collective is a space for adoptees, current or former wards of the state ( aka Foster Care) and mothers/first families to share their stories. If you would like to share your story or become a blogger on this site email truthoutadoptioncollective@gmail.com