0:00:05.104,0:00:10.885 Today on The Laura Flanders Show, writer [br]and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha 0:00:10.885,0:00:17.219 discusses poetry, capitalism, and the difference [br]between disability rights and disability justice. 0:00:17.219,0:00:21.091 All that and a few words from me [br]on Roads Less Traveled. 0:00:21.091,0:00:22.705 Welcome to our program. 0:00:45.060,0:00:46.514 Hi, I'm Laura Flanders. 0:00:46.514,0:00:47.787 Safety. 0:00:47.787,0:00:51.904 Every law enforcement officer and every politician [br]will tell you that they're for it. 0:00:51.904,0:00:55.984 And yet for many police aren't the answer, [br]they're a problem in the community 0:00:55.984,0:00:59.148 and today's policy makers [br]are only making things worse. 0:00:59.148,0:01:03.365 If what we're doing isn't making [br]many of us safer, what might? 0:01:03.365,0:01:05.597 Our next guest has gone on a search. 0:01:05.597,0:01:09.621 Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha [br]describes herself 0:01:09.621,0:01:14.952 as a queer, disabled, writer, [br]performer, poet, healer and teacher, 0:01:14.952,0:01:17.628 inspired by poets, June Jordan, Suheir Hammad, 0:01:17.628,0:01:20.647 and what she calls the whole [br]women of color pantheon. 0:01:20.647,0:01:23.458 She is the author of several [br]books of poetry including 0:01:23.458,0:01:28.048 Consensual Genocide [br]and the Lambda Award winning, Love Cake. 0:01:28.048,0:01:33.460 She has a new book of poetry, Body Map, [br]and a memoir, Dirty River, out this year. 0:01:33.460,0:01:38.426 She also performs with the group Mangos With Chili. [br]She's an editor, too, of the book 0:01:38.426,0:01:45.167 The Revolution Starts as Home: Confronting [br]Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, 0:01:45.167,0:01:51.406 a book that grapples with the difficult ideas [br]of addressing violence without police. 0:01:51.406,0:01:55.456 We also discovered that we shared [br]a meal together a few years ago in Toronto. 0:01:55.456,0:01:58.413 Many years ago. I'm happy to see [br]you again, Leah. Thanks for coming in. 0:01:58.413,0:01:59.976 Thanks so much for having me. 0:01:59.976,0:02:04.460 Let's talk a little bit about this notion of safety [br]and we'll come back to other things. 0:02:05.794,0:02:07.281 What does it mean to you? 0:02:07.281,0:02:11.913 I think that there are a million [br]survivors of violence out there. 0:02:11.913,0:02:15.160 I think that most people have survived [br]some form of abuse or violence. 0:02:15.160,0:02:19.135 I think that as feminists, we've been talking [br]about that at least since the '70s and beyond. 0:02:19.135,0:02:21.873 And I think that in the criminal legal system 0:02:21.873,0:02:24.965 -which I don't call the criminal justice system, [br]because it doesn't bring it- 0:02:24.965,0:02:27.968 no one ever asks survivors of violence [br]what they need 0:02:27.968,0:02:31.273 to have safety, justice, [br]and healing in their lives. 0:02:31.273,0:02:33.550 We're told as survivors of violence that, 0:02:33.550,0:02:36.946 "Yay! Second wave white liberal feminism works, 0:02:36.946,0:02:39.874 so we get to call the cops [br]and send our abusers to prison." 0:02:39.874,0:02:44.051 I don't know a single survivor who's ever [br]called the police to get justice. 0:02:44.051,0:02:47.459 And of the ones that I've read about, [br]I don't know a single one who said, 0:02:47.459,0:02:51.159 "Yeah my experience in the criminal legal [br]system was great and I got what I needed." 0:02:51.159,0:02:57.135 We're basically being used to create more prisons [br]and to build mass incarceration. 0:02:57.135,0:02:58.633 Explain what you mean by that. 0:02:58.633,0:03:01.303 I think that like a lot of feminists of color, 0:03:01.303,0:03:04.878 I understand why a lot of feminists in the [br]'70s and '80s pushed for things 0:03:04.878,0:03:08.217 like the criminalization of domestic violence [br]and child and sexual abuse. 0:03:08.217,0:03:10.742 But what black and brown feminists know 0:03:10.742,0:03:14.155 is that bringing more police into [br]our communities never keeps us safe. 0:03:14.155,0:03:18.500 My good friend Ejeris Dixon, who worked [br]for many years at Audre Lorde Project, 0:03:18.500,0:03:22.491 talks about how what we're calling [br]transformative justice is nothing new. 0:03:22.491,0:03:25.127 She's like, "My father is a black man from Louisiana. 0:03:25.127,0:03:29.327 Growing up, the police were the clan [br]and still are"; and he's like, 0:03:29.327,0:03:32.491 "That's not who we called when there was [br]intimate partner abuse in our communities." 0:03:32.491,0:03:34.511 That hasn't changed. 0:03:34.511,0:03:40.706 Is that where the artist and poet and [br]imagination comes in of what else might we do? 0:03:40.706,0:03:42.566 What else have other communities done? 0:03:42.566,0:03:44.154 Mm-hmm. [laughs] [br]One thing that I'm really grateful for 0:03:44.154,0:03:50.455 ... so I'm about to be 40 which means I came up [br]as an activist and an organizer in the '90s 0:03:50.455,0:03:55.289 and I still... back then I would run into, you know, [br]in whatever movement spaces we were a part of, 0:03:55.289,0:04:00.103 a little bit of the "oh, cultural works, [br]this very feminized unimportant thing." 0:04:00.103,0:04:03.936 I still remember trying to organize [br]a Free Mumia [Abu Jamal] rally in 1996, 0:04:03.936,0:04:06.450 and there was some old white [br]Bolshevik guy who was like... 0:04:06.450,0:04:08.962 we wanted to have... we were young [br]people of color, and we were like... 0:04:08.962,0:04:10.704 "We want to have MC's [br]and hip-hop artists and poets," 0:04:10.704,0:04:14.397 and he was like, "That's not how you do [br]a proper rally. You sell the paper!" 0:04:14.397,0:04:17.415 and we were like, "you're racist and irrelevant." 0:04:17.415,0:04:20.048 I think that cultural work still is minimized 0:04:20.048,0:04:24.225 but I think that it goes beyond just being [br]the entertainment at the rally. 0:04:24.225,0:04:26.067 I think it is just what you said about ... 0:04:26.067,0:04:31.470 Diane di Prima once said that, "The only war [br]that matters is the war of the imagination." 0:04:31.470,0:04:33.947 And I think that it's very easy 0:04:33.947,0:04:38.525 when we are surviving and not surviving [br]multiple forms of violence all of the time 0:04:38.525,0:04:40.778 to focus on the power that we don't have. 0:04:40.778,0:04:43.406 One thing that the Allied Media Conference 0:04:43.406,0:04:45.820 -which is a grassroots media conference [br]I work with- 0:04:45.820,0:04:50.850 stresses in how we organize is that we focus on [br]where we're powerful not where we're powerless. 0:04:50.850,0:04:53.701 I think the imagination is one place [br]that we're powerful, 0:04:53.701,0:04:57.422 and I think that we don't have the state, [br]we don't have the prisons, 0:04:57.422,0:04:59.051 we don't have the cops, thank God. 0:04:59.051,0:05:03.691 What we do have is the wild, queer, [br]feminists of color, decolonial imagination. 0:05:03.691,0:05:08.058 And what difference does your disability make [br]and the disability rights movement make? 0:05:08.058,0:05:11.105 I heard you begin to talk about it, [br]but I think it's important. 0:05:11.105,0:05:14.939 Right. We actually use the term disability justice [br]because the disability rights movement, 0:05:14.939,0:05:19.724 while it's incredibly important and I'm grateful [br]for the work those organizers did, 0:05:19.724,0:05:22.994 has been predominately a white dominated [br]single-issue movement. 0:05:22.994,0:05:27.979 Disability justice as a term was coined by people [br]of color with disabilities who were revolutionaries, 0:05:27.979,0:05:31.219 especially Patricia Berne and Leroy Moore [br]of Sins Invalid 0:05:31.219,0:05:35.803 who got really sick of being marginalized [br]as disabled revolutionary people of color 0:05:35.803,0:05:40.725 within both white disability rights and [br]non-disabled people of color movements, 0:05:40.725,0:05:44.105 and I would just say everything. [laughs] 0:05:44.105,0:05:49.140 Cara Page, who is a beloved, beloved person, [br]who is the ED of Audre Lorde Project right now, 0:05:49.140,0:05:52.481 she was part of a group called Kindred, [br]which still exists, 0:05:52.481,0:05:55.881 which is black and brown queer southern healers, [br]and they came together because she was like, 0:05:55.881,0:06:01.827 "Organizers are literally dying in the South [br]because of chronic illness and ableism 0:06:01.827,0:06:05.133 and the relentless pace of our movements [br]that is ableist." 0:06:05.133,0:06:07.157 So I would say that the first thing [br]that's true for our movements 0:06:07.157,0:06:10.827 is that sustainability is a huge issue for us. 0:06:10.827,0:06:14.338 There's so much that non-disabled activists [br]can learn from disabled people 0:06:14.338,0:06:16.530 and that's kind of one of the beginning places. 0:06:16.530,0:06:20.685 I think a lot of non-disabled activists, [br]or people who don't identify as disabled yet, 0:06:20.685,0:06:24.786 are used to thinking of disability only in terms of, [br]"Oh we need to get a ramp." 0:06:24.786,0:06:29.559 And that's really important but it's a really [br]huge cognitive leap for non-disabled folks 0:06:29.559,0:06:33.635 to become aware that disabled folks [br]have our histories and cultures of resistance. 0:06:33.635,0:06:35.096 We have crip science. 0:06:35.096,0:06:38.558 We have incredible organizing skills that [br]non-disabled people need to learn from. 0:06:38.558,0:06:43.566 I can organize from bed. I can organize [br]on the internet. I can organize on crip time. 0:06:43.566,0:06:48.887 I can do a lot of miraculous things that are [br]not on a 16 meeting a week relentless schedule. 0:06:48.887,0:06:51.645 I can do that on no money and I am not alone. 0:06:51.645,0:06:53.934 I am one of millions of disabled folks [br]who are resisting, 0:06:53.934,0:06:58.540 and I would say a whole lot of other things [br]about eugenics and the value of our bodies 0:06:58.540,0:07:03.775 and how the struggle around those issues[br]are immensely connected with anti-prison organizing. 0:07:03.775,0:07:04.955 Just to begin with. 0:07:04.955,0:07:07.585 And I would just add one other thing. [br]It has to do with fun. 0:07:07.585,0:07:08.677 Oh, yeah, right? 0:07:08.677,0:07:12.557 I had a disability justice activist [br]talk the other day about aging 0:07:12.557,0:07:17.189 and said to her not-disabled, [br]they didn't think, colleagues, 0:07:17.189,0:07:24.371 "You want to learn how to work your body as it ages, 0:07:24.371,0:07:29.161 as if you're lucky it will acquire disabilities, [br]learn from us." 0:07:29.161,0:07:32.304 Oh I need to say this. [br]My friend Naima Lowe said recently, 0:07:32.304,0:07:33.241 she's like you know, 0:07:33.241,0:07:34.944 "The thing that non-disabled folks [br]have to learn from us 0:07:34.944,0:07:37.535 is that we've already survived some of [br]the worst things that can happen; 0:07:37.535,0:07:42.301 and I don't just mean what ableism sees [br]as the individual tragedy of our bodies, 0:07:42.301,0:07:45.454 I mean surviving ableism and capitalism, [br]and we know how to do it. 0:07:45.454,0:07:49.749 And we are thriving and we are surviving [br]and we're not always surviving but we are." 0:07:49.749,0:07:51.321 So yeah, exactly. 0:07:51.321,0:07:55.513 When that, y'know, break-neck speed [br]burn-out able-bodied activist 0:07:55.513,0:08:00.206 gets cancer or diabetes or, you know, gets an [br]amputation and is like, "Oh my God, my life's over!" 0:08:00.206,0:08:01.887 we're there to be like it actually really isn't, 0:08:01.887,0:08:04.744 but you need to change the way your life is [br]and the way movements are 0:08:04.744,0:08:07.633 so we can actually be part [br]of that radical imagination. 0:08:07.633,0:08:09.200 [Laura] And we can have fun.[br][Leah] And we can have fun. 0:08:09.200,0:08:11.220 [Laura] Talk about fun.[br][Leah] What do you want to know? 0:08:11.220,0:08:13.104 [Laura] What you're into.[br][Leah laughs] 0:08:13.104,0:08:14.546 [Laura] I'm watching you and I'm thinking 0:08:14.546,0:08:21.885 you're talking about some of the most intense, [br]hardcore stuff and yet you're clearly relishing it. 0:08:21.885,0:08:23.521 [Leah] I'm not dead.[br][Laura laughs] 0:08:23.521,0:08:26.604 I was like many survivors who make it to 40. 0:08:26.604,0:08:29.755 I was not supposed to ... I'm going to [br]quote somebody who's going to make you cry. 0:08:29.755,0:08:35.109 I mean June Jordan, right? [br]The revolutionary queer black poet. 0:08:35.109,0:08:40.650 Cancer survivor and, y'know, cancer not-survivor [br]said right after 9/11, 0:08:40.650,0:08:45.316 "Some of us did not die. I guess it was our fate [br]to live, so what are we going to do about it?" 0:08:45.316,0:08:51.338 I was talking with one of my chosen family members [br]who is also a hardcore survivor who's 42 0:08:51.338,0:08:56.363 who painted this cane and they were like, [br]"We made it. Now what do we do with it?" 0:08:56.363,0:08:58.315 We survived and we have all that knowledge. 0:08:58.315,0:09:01.676 I'm thankful every day and not in some [br]weird bourgie Christian way. 0:09:01.676,0:09:04.327 I'm just like, I get to be alive. 0:09:04.327,0:09:07.057 [laughs] I get to have made it through [br]some of the roughest stuff, 0:09:07.057,0:09:10.864 and that's not to say that there's not going [br]to be disasters that keep coming. 0:09:10.864,0:09:13.460 I have a poem in the book called [br]The Worst Thing in the World, 0:09:13.460,0:09:15.140 which is the truth is, it will keep happening. 0:09:15.140,0:09:20.167 You know, we're about to run out of water in [br]California in a year. Octavia Butler was right. 0:09:20.167,0:09:23.726 What one thing that we also have power over 0:09:23.726,0:09:26.030 is our capacity for joy and pleasure 0:09:26.030,0:09:28.867 and that's something that queer and trans folks [br]have always held onto, 0:09:28.867,0:09:33.108 is, y'know, we don't have to be homonormative. [br]We actually don't have to. 0:09:33.108,0:09:39.220 We have so much that's about sex and joy and pleasure [br]and the powers of decadence on no money. 0:09:39.220,0:09:46.121 You have great examples of how people do confront [br]violence without recourse to the police in your book. 0:09:46.121,0:09:47.374 [Leah] Thank you. 0:09:47.374,0:09:52.368 The group UBUNTU stands out in my mind. [br]The word meaning born to belonging. 0:09:52.368,0:09:54.766 [Leah] I am because we are. 0:09:54.766,0:09:56.584 I am because we are. 0:09:56.584,0:09:58.752 Talk about how they work and why you thought [br]it was important to put them in the book. 0:09:58.752,0:10:03.088 UBUNTU is one of the most amazing groups [br]that I've ever run into ... 0:10:03.088,0:10:07.311 Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who is a queer black [br]feminist troublemaker genius ... 0:10:07.311,0:10:08.498 [Laura] Who's been on this program. 0:10:08.498,0:10:11.976 Good! I feel blessed every time [br]I'm in Alexis's presence. 0:10:11.976,0:10:16.830 I ran into UBUNTU's work when I was stealing time [br]from my day job at the eviction hotline. 0:10:16.830,0:10:22.175 They came together after the Duke University rape [br]-I hesitate to call it a trial- 0:10:22.175,0:10:26.476 but where several white male [br]Duke University Lacrosse players 0:10:26.476,0:10:30.551 sexually assaulted black female sex workers [br]who they'd hired to dance for them at a party. 0:10:30.551,0:10:37.189 I always talk about that story when I'm asked [br]to talk about transformative justice 0:10:37.189,0:10:39.895 because that is an example where, you know, 0:10:39.895,0:10:42.772 I mean, just the forces [br]of anti-black racism, whorephobia, 0:10:42.772,0:10:45.472 you know it's a perfect storm of everything awful. 0:10:45.472,0:10:48.928 It would be really easy to feel like [br]there's nothing we can do, 0:10:48.928,0:10:50.887 and UBUNTU came together and they said, 0:10:50.887,0:10:55.348 "We can't control the courts but we can [br]do a national day of truth-telling march 0:10:55.348,0:10:58.020 past the house where the assault happened [br]holding signs saying, 0:10:58.020,0:11:01.056 "Someone I love is a sex worker," and, [br]"I believe survivors," 0:11:01.056,0:11:04.182 and do a dance routine to Audre Lorde's [br]A Litany for Survival 0:11:04.182,0:11:06.525 in front of the house where the assault happened. 0:11:06.525,0:11:11.306 They just grew to do incredible anti-violence work [br]in Durham, North Carolina and beyond. 0:11:11.306,0:11:13.570 Just speaking to that, 0:11:13.570,0:11:16.928 this example that is in the interview that [br]we did with Alexis that pops out at me is that, 0:11:16.928,0:11:20.230 you know they had multiple examples of just, [br]they were like, 0:11:20.230,0:11:22.567 "Yeah, we were just walking down the street one day [br]and we ran into this young woman 0:11:22.567,0:11:26.613 who'd just been assaulted by her partner and we[br]just said, hey, what do you need? Come with us. 0:11:26.613,0:11:30.107 We took her into our home. We made her tea. [br]We talked about our experiences. 0:11:30.107,0:11:32.357 We called her family and her faith leader." 0:11:32.357,0:11:36.947 And when I asked Alexis, "So that's something [br]a lot of feminists wish they could do, 0:11:36.947,0:11:39.723 but when something like that happens, we freeze, [br]so what made that possible?" 0:11:39.723,0:11:41.633 Cycling back to what you said about relationships, 0:11:41.633,0:11:45.021 she was like, "90% of our work doesn't [br]look like traditional activist work. 0:11:45.021,0:11:46.560 It's doing childcare. It's hanging out. 0:11:46.560,0:11:51.803 It's building with each other so we're not a clique, [br]we're an actual community, 0:11:51.803,0:11:57.882 and we know that we can call on each other during [br]the times of deepest crisis and we can respond." 0:11:57.882,0:12:00.920 That's why I think we need to do relationship work 0:12:00.920,0:12:03.214 and that's work that's looked down on [br]because it's feminized 0:12:03.214,0:12:06.708 and it's not seen as like big, beating the chest, [br]I'm leading the rally, work. 0:12:06.708,0:12:09.303 It's just what women and feminized people [br]have always done. 0:12:09.303,0:12:12.966 I always say we have a big fight around [br]the shredding of the social safety net 0:12:12.966,0:12:16.889 but what we don't talk often enough about [br]is not the net but the fabric. 0:12:16.889,0:12:19.926 We need to re-stitch the social fabric. 0:12:19.926,0:12:23.440 Which I think is what you're talking about [br]when somebody opens their doors. 0:12:24.916,0:12:27.164 So much to talk about. 0:12:27.164,0:12:29.329 Mentors. I'd love to hear about [br]more of your mentors. 0:12:29.329,0:12:31.158 What you've learned from different people. 0:12:31.158,0:12:34.383 Then this word transformative justice. 0:12:34.383,0:12:38.329 This idea that you're in a transformative [br]justice moment. What do you mean? 0:12:38.329,0:12:40.116 [laughs] You want me to start with that? 0:12:40.116,0:12:41.078 [Laura] Yeah. 0:12:41.078,0:12:42.952 Yeah. We're in a transformative ... 0:12:42.952,0:12:45.025 I mean we've been in a transformative [br]justice moment all of our lives. 0:12:45.025,0:12:50.995 I think that right now it was really intense being [br]at the Color of Violence 4 Conference, 0:12:50.995,0:12:52.530 which happened this past weekend, 0:12:52.530,0:12:58.576 and feeling, really feeling, how I feel like I've been [br]in movement with the folks who were there, 0:12:58.576,0:13:02.207 the black and brown women who were there, [br]for 15 years, 0:13:02.207,0:13:05.785 and for so many of us we started, y'know, [br]going back to that ... 0:13:05.785,0:13:08.042 the early Incite documents of like, 0:13:08.042,0:13:10.321 so the police don't work for us [br]as black and brown folks. 0:13:10.321,0:13:13.619 When they're called, they arrest us, [br]they beat us, the deport us. 0:13:13.619,0:13:17.355 It's never safe to be a black sex worker who calls [br]the cops when your partner is beating you up. 0:13:17.355,0:13:19.763 It's never safe. It's never going to add to that. 0:13:19.763,0:13:21.157 What do we do instead? 0:13:21.157,0:13:23.457 And to go on these, what Alyssa Vera calls, 0:13:23.457,0:13:27.866 "marvelous journeys and stories [br]that are still being written." 0:13:27.866,0:13:31.168 I think that we're in an incredible moment right now 0:13:31.168,0:13:34.816 with Black Lives Matter as a black feminist-led [br]movement and created movement. 0:13:34.816,0:13:39.782 It is incredible for me to look at Rolling Stone Magazine, [br]to look at that article that says that, 0:13:39.782,0:13:43.492 "Policing's a dirty job and it turns out no one [br]has to do it. Here's 10 alternatives." 0:13:43.492,0:13:46.556 To feel that all over North America, [br]people are saying, 0:13:46.556,0:13:49.840 "Actually calling the cops always ends up [br]with someone getting killed, 0:13:49.840,0:13:54.592 so what are we actually do instead? Because [br]our lives are on the line all the time." 0:13:54.592,0:13:59.327 I've felt complicated about transformative justice [br]and I'm someone who's helped organize it. 0:13:59.327,0:14:03.609 Revolution Starts at Home came out in 2011 [br]and I was very optimistic and I thought, 0:14:03.609,0:14:06.235 "Oh and you know we just had the US social forum [br]and in 3 years we'll just abolish the police. 0:14:06.235,0:14:07.753 It'll be great." 0:14:07.753,0:14:11.111 And it turns out that this project of replacing [br]the state with community based alternatives 0:14:11.111,0:14:16.875 is thrilling, maddening, exhausting, you don't know [br]what's going to happen around the corner. 0:14:16.875,0:14:21.311 It's very hard to work ... [br]it's the most triggering work you can do. 0:14:21.311,0:14:29.481 To speak to especially people in our communities [br]who we love who cause harm, 0:14:29.481,0:14:31.539 and to be able to be in the place where we say, 0:14:31.539,0:14:34.368 "I love you. I do not want you to be [br]locked up for the next 40 years. 0:14:34.368,0:14:37.523 What you did is absolutely not alright [br]and we're not going to let you keep doing it." 0:14:37.523,0:14:41.486 We have not been trained to do this and it takes [br]developing a lot of emotional muscles to do it. 0:14:41.486,0:14:44.197 I believe that we are doing it [br]and it's also not a straight shot. 0:14:44.197,0:14:46.070 Your life is so not the straight shot. 0:14:46.070,0:14:47.366 [Leah laughs] 0:14:47.366,0:14:51.702 You are performing. You are organizing. [br]You have 2 books coming out this year. 0:14:51.702,0:14:53.503 You've written a memoir already. 0:14:53.503,0:14:58.021 A. How do you find the time? [br]And B. Is it a little early for a memoir? 0:14:58.021,0:15:04.872 No. [laughs] I know. I mean, my niece Luna [br]Merbruja, formerly known as Askari González, 0:15:04.872,0:15:08.583 who's an incredible 22 year-old [br]transgender Latina organizer 0:15:08.583,0:15:12.323 who co-organized the first trans-women of color[br]national gathering ever last year. 0:15:12.323,0:15:16.564 Her memoir Trauma Queen came out [br]2 years ago, she's 23. 0:15:16.564,0:15:17.447 [Laura] She beat you to it. 0:15:17.447,0:15:18.996 I think she did. She did. 0:15:18.996,0:15:21.494 Dirty River took 13 years to write 0:15:21.494,0:15:24.955 and it makes me think a lot about [br]the stakes for feminist of color writing. 0:15:24.955,0:15:29.745 Alexis, as you probably know, she was one of [br]the first people to get access to June's archives. 0:15:29.745,0:15:34.793 June wrote, what 27 books over her life time? 30? 0:15:34.793,0:15:38.729 Alexis has spoken a lot about, "Yeah, I read [br]the correspondence where June was like, 0:15:38.729,0:15:40.451 'I couldn't pay my phone bill that month.' 0:15:40.451,0:15:43.737 Or where she was fighting so hard with [br]the publishers of poetry." 0:15:43.737,0:15:47.954 The people who wanted her to delete the subtitle [br]"a revolutionary blueprint." 0:15:47.954,0:15:53.090 I feel immensely lucky to be a queer, [br]disabled feminist of color writing, 0:15:53.090,0:15:57.580 and it's not, you know, it's not ... [br]no one dinged me on the head with a star. 0:15:57.580,0:15:59.868 It's not automatic. It's taken a lot of collective labor. 0:15:59.868,0:16:03.694 It doesn't happen if our presses [br]and media movements don't keep going. 0:16:03.694,0:16:09.088 And like a lot of queer working-class, [br]feminists of color, disabled folks, fill in the blank, 0:16:09.088,0:16:12.032 we've really led real lives. 0:16:12.032,0:16:17.572 My memoir is about me running away from America [br]when I was 21 to set a national boundary 0:16:17.572,0:16:21.283 between me and my parents and their love [br]and their abuse and their internalized racism, 0:16:21.283,0:16:26.146 and walking straight into a movement moment [br]in Toronto in the late 90's that was filled 0:16:26.146,0:16:29.089 with queer feminists of color and Desh Pardesh 0:16:29.089,0:16:33.375 which was a revolutionary cross class [br]south Asian queer organizing center 0:16:33.375,0:16:37.289 and the biggest global diasporic [br]Sri Lankan community in the world. 0:16:37.289,0:16:40.337 And, y'know, nothing like being in love 0:16:40.337,0:16:43.891 with a queer brown crazy boy [br]who you're reading Franz Fanon with 0:16:43.891,0:16:46.173 who also hits you when he's triggered too; 0:16:46.173,0:16:49.092 and that's where my feminism [br]and my organizing comes from. 0:16:49.092,0:16:50.698 And we need those road maps. 0:16:50.698,0:16:52.707 I partly wrote that book because ... 0:16:52.707,0:16:56.440 I mean I'm a book nerd and I have an[br]incredible collection of small press literature 0:16:56.440,0:16:59.107 that's currently in a storage unit in Berkley. 0:16:59.107,0:17:02.750 The incest survivor and survivor narratives [br]that are out there 0:17:02.750,0:17:07.326 are often very white, very from [br]second-wave feminism, very single-issue, 0:17:07.326,0:17:11.881 and I wanted to document all of our true life [br]adventure stories of actually how we survive, 0:17:11.881,0:17:13.960 in a very complicated way. 0:17:13.960,0:17:16.788 Now there's never a moment on this program [br]where I don't use the word queer 0:17:16.788,0:17:18.229 and someone doesn't email me and say, 0:17:18.229,0:17:21.375 "How can you be insulting people. [br]What, are you going to use the 'N' word next?" 0:17:21.375,0:17:22.635 What does queer mean to you? 0:17:22.635,0:17:28.204 Queer means everything that's not straight that's [br]in the practice of moving always towards freedom. 0:17:28.204,0:17:31.507 So, Leah, you agreed generously to read something [br]to us. What are you going to read? 0:17:31.507,0:17:34.155 I'm going to read a poem called [br]Wrong is Not Yours, 0:17:34.155,0:17:36.735 after June Jordan, [br]and it's from my new book Body Map. 0:17:37.405,0:17:42.022 "One day you are a 22 year-old with [br]dread-locked half Desi hair 0:17:42.022,0:17:44.962 you decided to lock when you did [br]double dip mescaline on New Year's Eve 0:17:44.962,0:17:48.605 after staring at pictures of sadhus from south India. 0:17:48.605,0:17:53.347 Years before Carol's Daughter in Target or [br]Palmer Coconut Hair Milk or Kinky Curly, 0:17:53.347,0:17:58.369 and you have no idea what to do [br]with all that curly, curly hair. 0:17:58.369,0:18:00.602 And you decide you want to change your name 0:18:00.602,0:18:02.562 from Albrecht to no more Albrecht. 0:18:02.562,0:18:04.617 You want your great grandmothers'. 0:18:04.617,0:18:09.456 You are a 22 year-old on a straight diet of nothing [br]but Franz Fanon, Marlon Riggs, and Chrystos. 0:18:09.456,0:18:13.082 You are a Sri Lankan daughter [br]of the Dutch East India company. 0:18:13.082,0:18:15.562 You want no more Albrecht. 0:18:15.562,0:18:17.164 No more rape in your pelvis. 0:18:17.164,0:18:18.763 No more, "Where'd you get that name?" 0:18:18.763,0:18:20.726 No more, "Are you adopted?" No more. 0:18:20.726,0:18:24.315 Even though your grandmothers whisper, [br]"Keep a white name for the passport." 0:18:24.315,0:18:28.558 In fact, keep as many passports as possible. 0:18:28.558,0:18:30.832 You never know what boat [br]you're going to have to get on. 0:18:30.832,0:18:33.244 Who you'll have to bullshit in an immigration office. 0:18:33.244,0:18:35.892 You'll never know where we'll have to run to. 0:18:35.892,0:18:37.854 Make home on. Sip your tea. 0:18:37.854,0:18:39.653 Cook your rice. Wait for death. 0:18:39.653,0:18:42.809 Looking at an ocean almost like your own. 0:18:42.809,0:18:46.457 But you, you want your great grandmothers' name[br]who eats hot pepper. 0:18:46.457,0:18:49.314 Who walked out of Galicia with 13 children. 0:18:49.314,0:18:50.976 Your other great grandmother 0:18:50.976,0:18:54.690 whose name is a foot-note in a Lankan [br]history books' cross-reference index, 0:18:54.690,0:18:58.503 you find researching your senior thesis [br]on mixed race women in Sri Lanka. 0:18:58.503,0:19:01.964 Teachers, union organizers, and sluts, [br]every one of us. 0:19:01.964,0:19:06.880 And you get something infinitely Google-able. [br]And infinitely unpronounceable 0:19:06.880,0:19:09.336 except for Ukrainians and Lankans and Dravidians. 0:19:09.336,0:19:12.387 And even when Dennis Kucinich runs for president 0:19:12.387,0:19:15.499 and puts and Mp3 file on his website [br]saying how to say his name 0:19:15.499,0:19:19.288 and you think it might be a good idea, too. 0:19:19.288,0:19:21.229 Your name is not wrong. 0:19:21.229,0:19:23.414 Wrong is not your name. 0:19:23.414,0:19:27.041 It is your own. Your own. [br]Your own. Your own. 0:19:27.041,0:19:27.748 Your. 0:19:27.748,0:19:29.429 Own." 0:19:29.829,0:19:36.139 Listening to you read Leah, I hear references to home. [br]You have the word tattooed on your chest. 0:19:36.139,0:19:37.270 [Leah] I do. 0:19:37.270,0:19:39.962 June Jordan also wrote a collection [br]Moving Towards Home. 0:19:39.962,0:19:41.272 What does home mean to you? 0:19:41.272,0:19:43.212 Oh, you sucker punched me. 0:19:43.212,0:19:47.549 I think that, for those of us who are diasporic, [br]home is always a question. 0:19:47.549,0:19:50.101 I think that part of the reason why [br]I got "home" tattooed there 0:19:50.101,0:19:54.056 is that this body is the only thing that [br]I'll ever own, and it's on loan. 0:19:54.056,0:19:57.355 And I think that for those of us who [br]have been forced from our homeland 0:19:57.355,0:20:02.128 through, y'know, the top 5 of colonialism: [br]rape, genocide, war, imperialism, et cetera, 0:20:02.128,0:20:07.503 we carry home in our body's memories. [br]In our cells. In our bones. 0:20:07.503,0:20:10.503 We make home wherever we are. 0:20:10.503,0:20:12.221 Whether it's a prison cell. [br]Whether it's Brooklyn. 0:20:12.221,0:20:15.165 Whether it's wherever we go [br]when we're gentrified out of Brooklyn. 0:20:15.165,0:20:17.266 And we make it in the imagination. 0:20:17.266,0:20:21.526 And we also get to envision where home's [br]going to be that hasn't happened yet. 0:20:21.526,0:20:23.687 It doesn't just have to be loss. 0:20:23.687,0:20:26.219 It doesn't have to be the thing that [br]we're imagining that we want to get back to. 0:20:26.219,0:20:30.089 When Palestine is free, it's going to be [br]a different place than it was in '48. 0:20:30.089,0:20:31.828 Yeah. And we make it with each other. 0:20:31.828,0:20:33.349 Right. Exactly. 0:20:33.349,0:20:35.431 You can find out more about our guest Leah, 0:20:35.431,0:20:40.865 and June Jordan, the Poetry For The People founder [br]and professor at UC Berkley at our website. 0:20:42.571,0:20:45.449 This is Airport Ode #1[br]from Body Map. 0:20:45.449,0:20:47.511 "the truth is, I ask for the opt out.[br] 0:20:47.511,0:20:51.446 I ask for it every single time. 0:20:51.446,0:20:56.260 I would rather be patted down by a 60-ish white [br]working class woman who looks just like my mom 0:20:56.260,0:20:59.216 who I will studiously ma'am and ask about her day, 0:20:59.216,0:21:02.781 than to sit sweating waiting for it to happen. 0:21:02.781,0:21:05.225 than to have beam of atoms shot through my body 0:21:05.225,0:21:10.633 and still get barked aside, patted down, tarot card, [br]cock and coconut oil wanded. 0:21:10.633,0:21:13.367 Once on my way to a red-eye [br]from a performance in a cocktail dress, 0:21:13.367,0:21:15.214 you were young and brown and queer 0:21:15.214,0:21:19.204 and you said damn, it'll be easy to search you, [br]you're hardly wearing anything at all 0:21:19.204,0:21:20.597 you complemented my mukkuthi 0:21:20.597,0:21:23.352 and because I am a frequent [br]queerartbrownlady flier, 0:21:23.352,0:21:26.342 you remember me from a week or two ago 0:21:26.342,0:21:28.284 this is where we are in 2012: 0:21:28.284,0:21:31.861 I chat friendly and deliberate [br]with the sister who searches me 0:21:31.861,0:21:32.933 legs spread out in front of the other, 0:21:32.933,0:21:36.492 the back of the hand on sensitive areas[br]your zipper line, your bra 0:21:36.492,0:21:41.197 casual spread eagle in public as everyone [br]hops on shoes, puts laptops back 0:21:41.197,0:21:48.579 Not too long ago, every airport line a panic attack, [br]every airport four hours sweating armpit rank, 0:21:48.579,0:21:53.164 every bus crossing the small room and barking [br]guards who don't even pretend to be polite 0:21:53.164,0:21:56.656 who go through all your things [br]and take you to the glass toilet 0:21:56.656,0:22:03.331 Every time they chirp or bark, "I'm going to pat your [br]hair now" I go deep inside and all the way out 0:22:03.331,0:22:06.752 once, my girlfriend picked me up at the airport [br]with a little tupperware of dinner 0:22:06.752,0:22:09.633 and fucked me in long term parking [br]bent over the hood of her car 0:22:09.633,0:22:14.752 I was too nervous to come but [br]I loved how she wanted to feed me, 0:22:14.752,0:22:16.663 how she wanted to fuck me back 0:22:16.663,0:22:24.294 in the middle of all these concrete cameras wands [br]scanners fingerprints nexus red blinking eye 0:22:24.294,0:22:26.708 this place that hates us." 0:22:30.680,0:22:32.879 That was a poem from Leah's new book Body Map, 0:22:32.879,0:22:35.680 about which you can get more information [br]and find out how to get a copy for yourself 0:22:35.680,0:22:37.742 at our website: GRITtv.org 0:22:37.742,0:22:39.853 It's hard to imagine an American poet 0:22:39.853,0:22:43.779 more celebrated than 4 time [br]Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost. 0:22:43.779,0:22:46.157 Whose most famous poem concludes 0:22:46.157,0:22:50.990 "Two roads diverged in a wood,[br]and I, I took the one less traveled by. 0:22:50.990,0:22:53.123 And that has made all the difference." 0:22:53.123,0:22:56.562 When the most celebrated poets' [br]most well known lines praise difference, 0:22:56.562,0:22:58.594 why is it that we're so scared of it? 0:22:58.594,0:23:00.119 "Maybe we need more poets." 0:23:00.119,0:23:02.955 That's what John F. Kennedy said [br]just weeks before his death, 0:23:02.955,0:23:06.632 at the groundbreaking of the [br]Robert Frost Library at Amherst College. 0:23:06.632,0:23:09.873 It was soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis,[br]the Cold War was raging on, 0:23:09.873,0:23:14.107 10 million Americans needed jobs, [br]"America needed strength", said Kennedy. 0:23:14.107,0:23:16.442 "But strength takes many forms, 0:23:16.442,0:23:20.095 and the most obvious forms are [br]not always the most significant." 0:23:20.095,0:23:21.348 His words. 0:23:21.348,0:23:25.517 "The men who create power make an indispensable [br]contribution to the nations' greatness," 0:23:25.517,0:23:27.095 the president continued, 0:23:27.095,0:23:30.768 "but the men who question power make [br]a contribution just as indispensable. 0:23:30.768,0:23:34.379 For they determine whether we use power,[br]or power uses us." 0:23:34.379,0:23:38.042 Music and poetry and the arts [br]push us, said Kennedy. 0:23:38.042,0:23:44.874 "When power leads man toward arrogance, [br]poetry reminds him of his limitations. 0:23:44.874,0:23:48.369 When power narrows the area of man's concern, 0:23:48.369,0:23:53.487 poetry reminds him of the richness [br]and diversity of existence." 0:23:53.487,0:23:55.850 That was half a century ago. 0:23:55.850,0:24:00.393 Today we have entire months [br]dedicated to something we call diversity, 0:24:00.393,0:24:03.219 including this one, June, LGBTQI Pride. 0:24:03.219,0:24:06.895 Except mostly, we don't celebrate diversity.[br]We celebrate sameness. 0:24:06.895,0:24:11.860 We honor all the progress that we lesbian [br]gay bisexual and trans Americans have made, 0:24:11.860,0:24:15.338 becoming accepted as normal by straight America. 0:24:15.338,0:24:18.677 Now I'm for everyone enjoying [br]the same rights in these United States, 0:24:18.677,0:24:22.467 I support that ongoing project, for everybody. 0:24:22.467,0:24:25.016 But I would like to celebrate [br]something else this June: 0:24:25.016,0:24:27.424 Roads Less Traveled. 0:24:27.424,0:24:34.024 Especially the roads less traveled that [br]LGBT people have taken, and take daily. 0:24:34.024,0:24:37.324 The same old roads will take us [br]to the same old places. 0:24:37.324,0:24:40.889 It's divergence, [br]as the straight white poet once wrote, 0:24:40.889,0:24:43.268 that makes all the difference. 0:24:43.268,0:24:44.336 Tell me what you think. 0:24:44.336,0:24:46.551 Laura@GRITtv.org 0:24:46.551,0:24:48.165 And thanks for listening. 0:24:57.488,0:24:59.660 Today on the Laura Flanders show,[br]from the archives, 0:24:59.660,0:25:02.975 an interview with author and law professor[br]Dean Spade. 0:25:02.975,0:25:06.874 [Spade] One of the really interesting, [br]um, contests, inside trans communities, 0:25:06.874,0:25:08.891 and more broadly in queer and trans politics, 0:25:08.891,0:25:11.598 is whether or not hate crimes laws actually work. 0:25:11.598,0:25:13.125 [Flanders] And an exclusive preview of 0:25:13.125,0:25:15.325 Spade's new film about pinkwashing. 0:25:15.325,0:25:18.201 [speaker] Israel is gay friendly [br]when it serves its purposes... 0:25:22.984,0:25:30.565 [speaker]... every year, chemical pesticides[br]kill no fewer than 3 million farmers. 0:25:32.272,0:25:41.210 Every day, workplace accidents [br]kill no fewer than 10,000 workers. 0:25:41.210,0:25:48.317 Every minute, poverty kills [br]no fewer than 15 children. 0:25:49.380,0:25:53.105 These crimes do not show up on the news, 0:25:53.105,0:25:58.627 they are, like wars, normal acts of cannibalism.