Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
-
0:05 - 0:11Today on The Laura Flanders Show, writer
and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha -
0:11 - 0:17discusses poetry, capitalism, and the difference
between disability rights and disability justice. -
0:17 - 0:21All that and a few words from me
on Roads Less Traveled. -
0:21 - 0:23Welcome to our program.
-
0:45 - 0:47Hi, I'm Laura Flanders.
-
0:47 - 0:48Safety.
-
0:48 - 0:52Every law enforcement officer and every politician
will tell you that they're for it. -
0:52 - 0:56And yet for many police aren't the answer,
they're a problem in the community -
0:56 - 0:59and today's policy makers
are only making things worse. -
0:59 - 1:03If what we're doing isn't making
many of us safer, what might? -
1:03 - 1:06Our next guest has gone on a search.
-
1:06 - 1:10Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
describes herself -
1:10 - 1:15as a queer, disabled, writer,
performer, poet, healer and teacher, -
1:15 - 1:18inspired by poets, June Jordan, Suheir Hammad,
-
1:18 - 1:21and what she calls the whole
women of color pantheon. -
1:21 - 1:23She is the author of several
books of poetry including -
1:23 - 1:28Consensual Genocide
and the Lambda Award winning, Love Cake. -
1:28 - 1:33She has a new book of poetry, Body Map,
and a memoir, Dirty River, out this year. -
1:33 - 1:38She also performs with the group Mangos With Chili.
She's an editor, too, of the book -
1:38 - 1:45The Revolution Starts as Home: Confronting
Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, -
1:45 - 1:51a book that grapples with the difficult ideas
of addressing violence without police. -
1:51 - 1:55We also discovered that we shared
a meal together a few years ago in Toronto. -
1:55 - 1:58Many years ago. I'm happy to see
you again, Leah. Thanks for coming in. -
1:58 - 2:00Thanks so much for having me.
-
2:00 - 2:04Let's talk a little bit about this notion of safety
and we'll come back to other things. -
2:06 - 2:07What does it mean to you?
-
2:07 - 2:12I think that there are a million
survivors of violence out there. -
2:12 - 2:15I think that most people have survived
some form of abuse or violence. -
2:15 - 2:19I think that as feminists, we've been talking
about that at least since the '70s and beyond. -
2:19 - 2:22And I think that in the criminal legal system
-
2:22 - 2:25-which I don't call the criminal justice system,
because it doesn't bring it- -
2:25 - 2:28no one ever asks survivors of violence
what they need -
2:28 - 2:31to have safety, justice,
and healing in their lives. -
2:31 - 2:34We're told as survivors of violence that,
-
2:34 - 2:37"Yay! Second wave white liberal feminism works,
-
2:37 - 2:40so we get to call the cops
and send our abusers to prison." -
2:40 - 2:44I don't know a single survivor who's ever
called the police to get justice. -
2:44 - 2:47And of the ones that I've read about,
I don't know a single one who said, -
2:47 - 2:51"Yeah my experience in the criminal legal
system was great and I got what I needed." -
2:51 - 2:57We're basically being used to create more prisons
and to build mass incarceration. -
2:57 - 2:59Explain what you mean by that.
-
2:59 - 3:01I think that like a lot of feminists of color,
-
3:01 - 3:05I understand why a lot of feminists in the
'70s and '80s pushed for things -
3:05 - 3:08like the criminalization of domestic violence
and child and sexual abuse. -
3:08 - 3:11But what black and brown feminists know
-
3:11 - 3:14is that bringing more police into
our communities never keeps us safe. -
3:14 - 3:18My good friend Ejeris Dixon, who worked
for many years at Audre Lorde Project, -
3:18 - 3:22talks about how what we're calling
transformative justice is nothing new. -
3:22 - 3:25She's like, "My father is a black man from Louisiana.
-
3:25 - 3:29Growing up, the police were the clan
and still are"; and he's like, -
3:29 - 3:32"That's not who we called when there was
intimate partner abuse in our communities." -
3:32 - 3:35That hasn't changed.
-
3:35 - 3:41Is that where the artist and poet and
imagination comes in of what else might we do? -
3:41 - 3:43What else have other communities done?
-
3:43 - 3:44Mm-hmm. [laughs]
One thing that I'm really grateful for -
3:44 - 3:50... so I'm about to be 40 which means I came up
as an activist and an organizer in the '90s -
3:50 - 3:55and I still... back then I would run into, you know,
in whatever movement spaces we were a part of, -
3:55 - 4:00a little bit of the "oh, cultural works,
this very feminized unimportant thing." -
4:00 - 4:04I still remember trying to organize
a Free Mumia [Abu Jamal] rally in 1996, -
4:04 - 4:06and there was some old white
Bolshevik guy who was like... -
4:06 - 4:09we wanted to have... we were young
people of color, and we were like... -
4:09 - 4:11"We want to have MC's
and hip-hop artists and poets," -
4:11 - 4:14and he was like, "That's not how you do
a proper rally. You sell the paper!" -
4:14 - 4:17and we were like, "you're racist and irrelevant."
-
4:17 - 4:20I think that cultural work still is minimized
-
4:20 - 4:24but I think that it goes beyond just being
the entertainment at the rally. -
4:24 - 4:26I think it is just what you said about ...
-
4:26 - 4:31Diane di Prima once said that, "The only war
that matters is the war of the imagination." -
4:31 - 4:34And I think that it's very easy
-
4:34 - 4:39when we are surviving and not surviving
multiple forms of violence all of the time -
4:39 - 4:41to focus on the power that we don't have.
-
4:41 - 4:43One thing that the Allied Media Conference
-
4:43 - 4:46-which is a grassroots media conference
I work with- -
4:46 - 4:51stresses in how we organize is that we focus on
where we're powerful not where we're powerless. -
4:51 - 4:54I think the imagination is one place
that we're powerful, -
4:54 - 4:57and I think that we don't have the state,
we don't have the prisons, -
4:57 - 4:59we don't have the cops, thank God.
-
4:59 - 5:04What we do have is the wild, queer,
feminists of color, decolonial imagination. -
5:04 - 5:08And what difference does your disability make
and the disability rights movement make? -
5:08 - 5:11I heard you begin to talk about it,
but I think it's important. -
5:11 - 5:15Right. We actually use the term disability justice
because the disability rights movement, -
5:15 - 5:20while it's incredibly important and I'm grateful
for the work those organizers did, -
5:20 - 5:23has been predominately a white dominated
single-issue movement. -
5:23 - 5:28Disability justice as a term was coined by people
of color with disabilities who were revolutionaries, -
5:28 - 5:31especially Patricia Berne and Leroy Moore
of Sins Invalid -
5:31 - 5:36who got really sick of being marginalized
as disabled revolutionary people of color -
5:36 - 5:41within both white disability rights and
non-disabled people of color movements, -
5:41 - 5:44and I would just say everything. [laughs]
-
5:44 - 5:49Cara Page, who is a beloved, beloved person,
who is the ED of Audre Lorde Project right now, -
5:49 - 5:52she was part of a group called Kindred,
which still exists, -
5:52 - 5:56which is black and brown queer southern healers,
and they came together because she was like, -
5:56 - 6:02"Organizers are literally dying in the South
because of chronic illness and ableism -
6:02 - 6:05and the relentless pace of our movements
that is ableist." -
6:05 - 6:07So I would say that the first thing
that's true for our movements -
6:07 - 6:11is that sustainability is a huge issue for us.
-
6:11 - 6:14There's so much that non-disabled activists
can learn from disabled people -
6:14 - 6:17and that's kind of one of the beginning places.
-
6:17 - 6:21I think a lot of non-disabled activists,
or people who don't identify as disabled yet, -
6:21 - 6:25are used to thinking of disability only in terms of,
"Oh we need to get a ramp." -
6:25 - 6:30And that's really important but it's a really
huge cognitive leap for non-disabled folks -
6:30 - 6:34to become aware that disabled folks
have our histories and cultures of resistance. -
6:34 - 6:35We have crip science.
-
6:35 - 6:39We have incredible organizing skills that
non-disabled people need to learn from. -
6:39 - 6:44I can organize from bed. I can organize
on the internet. I can organize on crip time. -
6:44 - 6:49I can do a lot of miraculous things that are
not on a 16 meeting a week relentless schedule. -
6:49 - 6:52I can do that on no money and I am not alone.
-
6:52 - 6:54I am one of millions of disabled folks
who are resisting, -
6:54 - 6:59and I would say a whole lot of other things
about eugenics and the value of our bodies -
6:59 - 7:04and how the struggle around those issues
are immensely connected with anti-prison organizing. -
7:04 - 7:05Just to begin with.
-
7:05 - 7:08And I would just add one other thing.
It has to do with fun. -
7:08 - 7:09Oh, yeah, right?
-
7:09 - 7:13I had a disability justice activist
talk the other day about aging -
7:13 - 7:17and said to her not-disabled,
they didn't think, colleagues, -
7:17 - 7:24"You want to learn how to work your body as it ages,
-
7:24 - 7:29as if you're lucky it will acquire disabilities,
learn from us." -
7:29 - 7:32Oh I need to say this.
My friend Naima Lowe said recently, -
7:32 - 7:33she's like you know,
-
7:33 - 7:35"The thing that non-disabled folks
have to learn from us -
7:35 - 7:38is that we've already survived some of
the worst things that can happen; -
7:38 - 7:42and I don't just mean what ableism sees
as the individual tragedy of our bodies, -
7:42 - 7:45I mean surviving ableism and capitalism,
and we know how to do it. -
7:45 - 7:50And we are thriving and we are surviving
and we're not always surviving but we are." -
7:50 - 7:51So yeah, exactly.
-
7:51 - 7:56When that, y'know, break-neck speed
burn-out able-bodied activist -
7:56 - 8:00gets cancer or diabetes or, you know, gets an
amputation and is like, "Oh my God, my life's over!" -
8:00 - 8:02we're there to be like it actually really isn't,
-
8:02 - 8:05but you need to change the way your life is
and the way movements are -
8:05 - 8:08so we can actually be part
of that radical imagination. -
8:08 - 8:09[Laura] And we can have fun.
[Leah] And we can have fun. -
8:09 - 8:11[Laura] Talk about fun.
[Leah] What do you want to know? -
8:11 - 8:13[Laura] What you're into.
[Leah laughs] -
8:13 - 8:15[Laura] I'm watching you and I'm thinking
-
8:15 - 8:22you're talking about some of the most intense,
hardcore stuff and yet you're clearly relishing it. -
8:22 - 8:24[Leah] I'm not dead.
[Laura laughs] -
8:24 - 8:27I was like many survivors who make it to 40.
-
8:27 - 8:30I was not supposed to ... I'm going to
quote somebody who's going to make you cry. -
8:30 - 8:35I mean June Jordan, right?
The revolutionary queer black poet. -
8:35 - 8:41Cancer survivor and, y'know, cancer not-survivor
said right after 9/11, -
8:41 - 8:45"Some of us did not die. I guess it was our fate
to live, so what are we going to do about it?" -
8:45 - 8:51I was talking with one of my chosen family members
who is also a hardcore survivor who's 42 -
8:51 - 8:56who painted this cane and they were like,
"We made it. Now what do we do with it?" -
8:56 - 8:58We survived and we have all that knowledge.
-
8:58 - 9:02I'm thankful every day and not in some
weird bourgie Christian way. -
9:02 - 9:04I'm just like, I get to be alive.
-
9:04 - 9:07[laughs] I get to have made it through
some of the roughest stuff, -
9:07 - 9:11and that's not to say that there's not going
to be disasters that keep coming. -
9:11 - 9:13I have a poem in the book called
The Worst Thing in the World, -
9:13 - 9:15which is the truth is, it will keep happening.
-
9:15 - 9:20You know, we're about to run out of water in
California in a year. Octavia Butler was right. -
9:20 - 9:24What one thing that we also have power over
-
9:24 - 9:26is our capacity for joy and pleasure
-
9:26 - 9:29and that's something that queer and trans folks
have always held onto, -
9:29 - 9:33is, y'know, we don't have to be homonormative.
We actually don't have to. -
9:33 - 9:39We have so much that's about sex and joy and pleasure
and the powers of decadence on no money. -
9:39 - 9:46You have great examples of how people do confront
violence without recourse to the police in your book. -
9:46 - 9:47[Leah] Thank you.
-
9:47 - 9:52The group UBUNTU stands out in my mind.
The word meaning born to belonging. -
9:52 - 9:55[Leah] I am because we are.
-
9:55 - 9:57I am because we are.
-
9:57 - 9:59Talk about how they work and why you thought
it was important to put them in the book. -
9:59 - 10:03UBUNTU is one of the most amazing groups
that I've ever run into ... -
10:03 - 10:07Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who is a queer black
feminist troublemaker genius ... -
10:07 - 10:08[Laura] Who's been on this program.
-
10:08 - 10:12Good! I feel blessed every time
I'm in Alexis's presence. -
10:12 - 10:17I ran into UBUNTU's work when I was stealing time
from my day job at the eviction hotline. -
10:17 - 10:22They came together after the Duke University rape
-I hesitate to call it a trial- -
10:22 - 10:26but where several white male
Duke University Lacrosse players -
10:26 - 10:31sexually assaulted black female sex workers
who they'd hired to dance for them at a party. -
10:31 - 10:37I always talk about that story when I'm asked
to talk about transformative justice -
10:37 - 10:40because that is an example where, you know,
-
10:40 - 10:43I mean, just the forces
of anti-black racism, whorephobia, -
10:43 - 10:45you know it's a perfect storm of everything awful.
-
10:45 - 10:49It would be really easy to feel like
there's nothing we can do, -
10:49 - 10:51and UBUNTU came together and they said,
-
10:51 - 10:55"We can't control the courts but we can
do a national day of truth-telling march -
10:55 - 10:58past the house where the assault happened
holding signs saying, -
10:58 - 11:01"Someone I love is a sex worker," and,
"I believe survivors," -
11:01 - 11:04and do a dance routine to Audre Lorde's
A Litany for Survival -
11:04 - 11:07in front of the house where the assault happened.
-
11:07 - 11:11They just grew to do incredible anti-violence work
in Durham, North Carolina and beyond. -
11:11 - 11:14Just speaking to that,
-
11:14 - 11:17this example that is in the interview that
we did with Alexis that pops out at me is that, -
11:17 - 11:20you know they had multiple examples of just,
they were like, -
11:20 - 11:23"Yeah, we were just walking down the street one day
and we ran into this young woman -
11:23 - 11:27who'd just been assaulted by her partner and we
just said, hey, what do you need? Come with us. -
11:27 - 11:30We took her into our home. We made her tea.
We talked about our experiences. -
11:30 - 11:32We called her family and her faith leader."
-
11:32 - 11:37And when I asked Alexis, "So that's something
a lot of feminists wish they could do, -
11:37 - 11:40but when something like that happens, we freeze,
so what made that possible?" -
11:40 - 11:42Cycling back to what you said about relationships,
-
11:42 - 11:45she was like, "90% of our work doesn't
look like traditional activist work. -
11:45 - 11:47It's doing childcare. It's hanging out.
-
11:47 - 11:52It's building with each other so we're not a clique,
we're an actual community, -
11:52 - 11:58and we know that we can call on each other during
the times of deepest crisis and we can respond." -
11:58 - 12:01That's why I think we need to do relationship work
-
12:01 - 12:03and that's work that's looked down on
because it's feminized -
12:03 - 12:07and it's not seen as like big, beating the chest,
I'm leading the rally, work. -
12:07 - 12:09It's just what women and feminized people
have always done. -
12:09 - 12:13I always say we have a big fight around
the shredding of the social safety net -
12:13 - 12:17but what we don't talk often enough about
is not the net but the fabric. -
12:17 - 12:20We need to re-stitch the social fabric.
-
12:20 - 12:23Which I think is what you're talking about
when somebody opens their doors. -
12:25 - 12:27So much to talk about.
-
12:27 - 12:29Mentors. I'd love to hear about
more of your mentors. -
12:29 - 12:31What you've learned from different people.
-
12:31 - 12:34Then this word transformative justice.
-
12:34 - 12:38This idea that you're in a transformative
justice moment. What do you mean? -
12:38 - 12:40[laughs] You want me to start with that?
-
12:40 - 12:41[Laura] Yeah.
-
12:41 - 12:43Yeah. We're in a transformative ...
-
12:43 - 12:45I mean we've been in a transformative
justice moment all of our lives. -
12:45 - 12:51I think that right now it was really intense being
at the Color of Violence 4 Conference, -
12:51 - 12:53which happened this past weekend,
-
12:53 - 12:59and feeling, really feeling, how I feel like I've been
in movement with the folks who were there, -
12:59 - 13:02the black and brown women who were there,
for 15 years, -
13:02 - 13:06and for so many of us we started, y'know,
going back to that ... -
13:06 - 13:08the early Incite documents of like,
-
13:08 - 13:10so the police don't work for us
as black and brown folks. -
13:10 - 13:14When they're called, they arrest us,
they beat us, the deport us. -
13:14 - 13:17It's never safe to be a black sex worker who calls
the cops when your partner is beating you up. -
13:17 - 13:20It's never safe. It's never going to add to that.
-
13:20 - 13:21What do we do instead?
-
13:21 - 13:23And to go on these, what Alyssa Vera calls,
-
13:23 - 13:28"marvelous journeys and stories
that are still being written." -
13:28 - 13:31I think that we're in an incredible moment right now
-
13:31 - 13:35with Black Lives Matter as a black feminist-led
movement and created movement. -
13:35 - 13:40It is incredible for me to look at Rolling Stone Magazine,
to look at that article that says that, -
13:40 - 13:43"Policing's a dirty job and it turns out no one
has to do it. Here's 10 alternatives." -
13:43 - 13:47To feel that all over North America,
people are saying, -
13:47 - 13:50"Actually calling the cops always ends up
with someone getting killed, -
13:50 - 13:55so what are we actually do instead? Because
our lives are on the line all the time." -
13:55 - 13:59I've felt complicated about transformative justice
and I'm someone who's helped organize it. -
13:59 - 14:04Revolution Starts at Home came out in 2011
and I was very optimistic and I thought, -
14:04 - 14:06"Oh and you know we just had the US social forum
and in 3 years we'll just abolish the police. -
14:06 - 14:08It'll be great."
-
14:08 - 14:11And it turns out that this project of replacing
the state with community based alternatives -
14:11 - 14:17is thrilling, maddening, exhausting, you don't know
what's going to happen around the corner. -
14:17 - 14:21It's very hard to work ...
it's the most triggering work you can do. -
14:21 - 14:29To speak to especially people in our communities
who we love who cause harm, -
14:29 - 14:32and to be able to be in the place where we say,
-
14:32 - 14:34"I love you. I do not want you to be
locked up for the next 40 years. -
14:34 - 14:38What you did is absolutely not alright
and we're not going to let you keep doing it." -
14:38 - 14:41We have not been trained to do this and it takes
developing a lot of emotional muscles to do it. -
14:41 - 14:44I believe that we are doing it
and it's also not a straight shot. -
14:44 - 14:46Your life is so not the straight shot.
-
14:46 - 14:47[Leah laughs]
-
14:47 - 14:52You are performing. You are organizing.
You have 2 books coming out this year. -
14:52 - 14:54You've written a memoir already.
-
14:54 - 14:58A. How do you find the time?
And B. Is it a little early for a memoir? -
14:58 - 15:05No. [laughs] I know. I mean, my niece Luna
Merbruja, formerly known as Askari González, -
15:05 - 15:09who's an incredible 22 year-old
transgender Latina organizer -
15:09 - 15:12who co-organized the first trans-women of color
national gathering ever last year. -
15:12 - 15:17Her memoir Trauma Queen came out
2 years ago, she's 23. -
15:17 - 15:17[Laura] She beat you to it.
-
15:17 - 15:19I think she did. She did.
-
15:19 - 15:21Dirty River took 13 years to write
-
15:21 - 15:25and it makes me think a lot about
the stakes for feminist of color writing. -
15:25 - 15:30Alexis, as you probably know, she was one of
the first people to get access to June's archives. -
15:30 - 15:35June wrote, what 27 books over her life time? 30?
-
15:35 - 15:39Alexis has spoken a lot about, "Yeah, I read
the correspondence where June was like, -
15:39 - 15:40'I couldn't pay my phone bill that month.'
-
15:40 - 15:44Or where she was fighting so hard with
the publishers of poetry." -
15:44 - 15:48The people who wanted her to delete the subtitle
"a revolutionary blueprint." -
15:48 - 15:53I feel immensely lucky to be a queer,
disabled feminist of color writing, -
15:53 - 15:58and it's not, you know, it's not ...
no one dinged me on the head with a star. -
15:58 - 16:00It's not automatic. It's taken a lot of collective labor.
-
16:00 - 16:04It doesn't happen if our presses
and media movements don't keep going. -
16:04 - 16:09And like a lot of queer working-class,
feminists of color, disabled folks, fill in the blank, -
16:09 - 16:12we've really led real lives.
-
16:12 - 16:18My memoir is about me running away from America
when I was 21 to set a national boundary -
16:18 - 16:21between me and my parents and their love
and their abuse and their internalized racism, -
16:21 - 16:26and walking straight into a movement moment
in Toronto in the late 90's that was filled -
16:26 - 16:29with queer feminists of color and Desh Pardesh
-
16:29 - 16:33which was a revolutionary cross class
south Asian queer organizing center -
16:33 - 16:37and the biggest global diasporic
Sri Lankan community in the world. -
16:37 - 16:40And, y'know, nothing like being in love
-
16:40 - 16:44with a queer brown crazy boy
who you're reading Franz Fanon with -
16:44 - 16:46who also hits you when he's triggered too;
-
16:46 - 16:49and that's where my feminism
and my organizing comes from. -
16:49 - 16:51And we need those road maps.
-
16:51 - 16:53I partly wrote that book because ...
-
16:53 - 16:56I mean I'm a book nerd and I have an
incredible collection of small press literature -
16:56 - 16:59that's currently in a storage unit in Berkley.
-
16:59 - 17:03The incest survivor and survivor narratives
that are out there -
17:03 - 17:07are often very white, very from
second-wave feminism, very single-issue, -
17:07 - 17:12and I wanted to document all of our true life
adventure stories of actually how we survive, -
17:12 - 17:14in a very complicated way.
-
17:14 - 17:17Now there's never a moment on this program
where I don't use the word queer -
17:17 - 17:18and someone doesn't email me and say,
-
17:18 - 17:21"How can you be insulting people.
What, are you going to use the 'N' word next?" -
17:21 - 17:23What does queer mean to you?
-
17:23 - 17:28Queer means everything that's not straight that's
in the practice of moving always towards freedom. -
17:28 - 17:32So, Leah, you agreed generously to read something
to us. What are you going to read? -
17:32 - 17:34I'm going to read a poem called
Wrong is Not Yours, -
17:34 - 17:37after June Jordan,
and it's from my new book Body Map. -
17:37 - 17:42"One day you are a 22 year-old with
dread-locked half Desi hair -
17:42 - 17:45you decided to lock when you did
double dip mescaline on New Year's Eve -
17:45 - 17:49after staring at pictures of sadhus from south India.
-
17:49 - 17:53Years before Carol's Daughter in Target or
Palmer Coconut Hair Milk or Kinky Curly, -
17:53 - 17:58and you have no idea what to do
with all that curly, curly hair. -
17:58 - 18:01And you decide you want to change your name
-
18:01 - 18:03from Albrecht to no more Albrecht.
-
18:03 - 18:05You want your great grandmothers'.
-
18:05 - 18:09You are a 22 year-old on a straight diet of nothing
but Franz Fanon, Marlon Riggs, and Chrystos. -
18:09 - 18:13You are a Sri Lankan daughter
of the Dutch East India company. -
18:13 - 18:16You want no more Albrecht.
-
18:16 - 18:17No more rape in your pelvis.
-
18:17 - 18:19No more, "Where'd you get that name?"
-
18:19 - 18:21No more, "Are you adopted?" No more.
-
18:21 - 18:24Even though your grandmothers whisper,
"Keep a white name for the passport." -
18:24 - 18:29In fact, keep as many passports as possible.
-
18:29 - 18:31You never know what boat
you're going to have to get on. -
18:31 - 18:33Who you'll have to bullshit in an immigration office.
-
18:33 - 18:36You'll never know where we'll have to run to.
-
18:36 - 18:38Make home on. Sip your tea.
-
18:38 - 18:40Cook your rice. Wait for death.
-
18:40 - 18:43Looking at an ocean almost like your own.
-
18:43 - 18:46But you, you want your great grandmothers' name
who eats hot pepper. -
18:46 - 18:49Who walked out of Galicia with 13 children.
-
18:49 - 18:51Your other great grandmother
-
18:51 - 18:55whose name is a foot-note in a Lankan
history books' cross-reference index, -
18:55 - 18:59you find researching your senior thesis
on mixed race women in Sri Lanka. -
18:59 - 19:02Teachers, union organizers, and sluts,
every one of us. -
19:02 - 19:07And you get something infinitely Google-able.
And infinitely unpronounceable -
19:07 - 19:09except for Ukrainians and Lankans and Dravidians.
-
19:09 - 19:12And even when Dennis Kucinich runs for president
-
19:12 - 19:15and puts and Mp3 file on his website
saying how to say his name -
19:15 - 19:19and you think it might be a good idea, too.
-
19:19 - 19:21Your name is not wrong.
-
19:21 - 19:23Wrong is not your name.
-
19:23 - 19:27It is your own. Your own.
Your own. Your own. -
19:27 - 19:28Your.
-
19:28 - 19:29Own."
-
19:30 - 19:36Listening to you read Leah, I hear references to home.
You have the word tattooed on your chest. -
19:36 - 19:37[Leah] I do.
-
19:37 - 19:40June Jordan also wrote a collection
Moving Towards Home. -
19:40 - 19:41What does home mean to you?
-
19:41 - 19:43Oh, you sucker punched me.
-
19:43 - 19:48I think that, for those of us who are diasporic,
home is always a question. -
19:48 - 19:50I think that part of the reason why
I got "home" tattooed there -
19:50 - 19:54is that this body is the only thing that
I'll ever own, and it's on loan. -
19:54 - 19:57And I think that for those of us who
have been forced from our homeland -
19:57 - 20:02through, y'know, the top 5 of colonialism:
rape, genocide, war, imperialism, et cetera, -
20:02 - 20:08we carry home in our body's memories.
In our cells. In our bones. -
20:08 - 20:11We make home wherever we are.
-
20:11 - 20:12Whether it's a prison cell.
Whether it's Brooklyn. -
20:12 - 20:15Whether it's wherever we go
when we're gentrified out of Brooklyn. -
20:15 - 20:17And we make it in the imagination.
-
20:17 - 20:22And we also get to envision where home's
going to be that hasn't happened yet. -
20:22 - 20:24It doesn't just have to be loss.
-
20:24 - 20:26It doesn't have to be the thing that
we're imagining that we want to get back to. -
20:26 - 20:30When Palestine is free, it's going to be
a different place than it was in '48. -
20:30 - 20:32Yeah. And we make it with each other.
-
20:32 - 20:33Right. Exactly.
-
20:33 - 20:35You can find out more about our guest Leah,
-
20:35 - 20:41and June Jordan, the Poetry For The People founder
and professor at UC Berkley at our website. -
20:43 - 20:45This is Airport Ode #1
from Body Map. -
20:45 - 20:48"the truth is, I ask for the opt out.
-
20:48 - 20:51I ask for it every single time.
-
20:51 - 20:56I would rather be patted down by a 60-ish white
working class woman who looks just like my mom -
20:56 - 20:59who I will studiously ma'am and ask about her day,
-
20:59 - 21:03than to sit sweating waiting for it to happen.
-
21:03 - 21:05than to have beam of atoms shot through my body
-
21:05 - 21:11and still get barked aside, patted down, tarot card,
cock and coconut oil wanded. -
21:11 - 21:13Once on my way to a red-eye
from a performance in a cocktail dress, -
21:13 - 21:15you were young and brown and queer
-
21:15 - 21:19and you said damn, it'll be easy to search you,
you're hardly wearing anything at all -
21:19 - 21:21you complemented my mukkuthi
-
21:21 - 21:23and because I am a frequent
queerartbrownlady flier, -
21:23 - 21:26you remember me from a week or two ago
-
21:26 - 21:28this is where we are in 2012:
-
21:28 - 21:32I chat friendly and deliberate
with the sister who searches me -
21:32 - 21:33legs spread out in front of the other,
-
21:33 - 21:36the back of the hand on sensitive areas
your zipper line, your bra -
21:36 - 21:41casual spread eagle in public as everyone
hops on shoes, puts laptops back -
21:41 - 21:49Not too long ago, every airport line a panic attack,
every airport four hours sweating armpit rank, -
21:49 - 21:53every bus crossing the small room and barking
guards who don't even pretend to be polite -
21:53 - 21:57who go through all your things
and take you to the glass toilet -
21:57 - 22:03Every time they chirp or bark, "I'm going to pat your
hair now" I go deep inside and all the way out -
22:03 - 22:07once, my girlfriend picked me up at the airport
with a little tupperware of dinner -
22:07 - 22:10and fucked me in long term parking
bent over the hood of her car -
22:10 - 22:15I was too nervous to come but
I loved how she wanted to feed me, -
22:15 - 22:17how she wanted to fuck me back
-
22:17 - 22:24in the middle of all these concrete cameras wands
scanners fingerprints nexus red blinking eye -
22:24 - 22:27this place that hates us."
-
22:31 - 22:33That was a poem from Leah's new book Body Map,
-
22:33 - 22:36about which you can get more information
and find out how to get a copy for yourself -
22:36 - 22:38at our website: GRITtv.org
-
22:38 - 22:40It's hard to imagine an American poet
-
22:40 - 22:44more celebrated than 4 time
Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost. -
22:44 - 22:46Whose most famous poem concludes
-
22:46 - 22:51"Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I, I took the one less traveled by. -
22:51 - 22:53And that has made all the difference."
-
22:53 - 22:57When the most celebrated poets'
most well known lines praise difference, -
22:57 - 22:59why is it that we're so scared of it?
-
22:59 - 23:00"Maybe we need more poets."
-
23:00 - 23:03That's what John F. Kennedy said
just weeks before his death, -
23:03 - 23:07at the groundbreaking of the
Robert Frost Library at Amherst College. -
23:07 - 23:10It was soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis,
the Cold War was raging on, -
23:10 - 23:1410 million Americans needed jobs,
"America needed strength", said Kennedy. -
23:14 - 23:16"But strength takes many forms,
-
23:16 - 23:20and the most obvious forms are
not always the most significant." -
23:20 - 23:21His words.
-
23:21 - 23:26"The men who create power make an indispensable
contribution to the nations' greatness," -
23:26 - 23:27the president continued,
-
23:27 - 23:31"but the men who question power make
a contribution just as indispensable. -
23:31 - 23:34For they determine whether we use power,
or power uses us." -
23:34 - 23:38Music and poetry and the arts
push us, said Kennedy. -
23:38 - 23:45"When power leads man toward arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations. -
23:45 - 23:48When power narrows the area of man's concern,
-
23:48 - 23:53poetry reminds him of the richness
and diversity of existence." -
23:53 - 23:56That was half a century ago.
-
23:56 - 24:00Today we have entire months
dedicated to something we call diversity, -
24:00 - 24:03including this one, June, LGBTQI Pride.
-
24:03 - 24:07Except mostly, we don't celebrate diversity.
We celebrate sameness. -
24:07 - 24:12We honor all the progress that we lesbian
gay bisexual and trans Americans have made, -
24:12 - 24:15becoming accepted as normal by straight America.
-
24:15 - 24:19Now I'm for everyone enjoying
the same rights in these United States, -
24:19 - 24:22I support that ongoing project, for everybody.
-
24:22 - 24:25But I would like to celebrate
something else this June: -
24:25 - 24:27Roads Less Traveled.
-
24:27 - 24:34Especially the roads less traveled that
LGBT people have taken, and take daily. -
24:34 - 24:37The same old roads will take us
to the same old places. -
24:37 - 24:41It's divergence,
as the straight white poet once wrote, -
24:41 - 24:43that makes all the difference.
-
24:43 - 24:44Tell me what you think.
-
24:44 - 24:47Laura@GRITtv.org
-
24:47 - 24:48And thanks for listening.
-
24:57 - 25:00Today on the Laura Flanders show,
from the archives, -
25:00 - 25:03an interview with author and law professor
Dean Spade. -
25:03 - 25:07[Spade] One of the really interesting,
um, contests, inside trans communities, -
25:07 - 25:09and more broadly in queer and trans politics,
-
25:09 - 25:12is whether or not hate crimes laws actually work.
-
25:12 - 25:13[Flanders] And an exclusive preview of
-
25:13 - 25:15Spade's new film about pinkwashing.
-
25:15 - 25:18[speaker] Israel is gay friendly
when it serves its purposes... -
25:23 - 25:31[speaker]... every year, chemical pesticides
kill no fewer than 3 million farmers. -
25:32 - 25:41Every day, workplace accidents
kill no fewer than 10,000 workers. -
25:41 - 25:48Every minute, poverty kills
no fewer than 15 children. -
25:49 - 25:53These crimes do not show up on the news,
-
25:53 - 25:59they are, like wars, normal acts of cannibalism.
- Title:
- Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
- Description:
-
Safety: every law enforcement officer and every politician tells us that they're for it. And yet for many, police are a problem in their communities, and today's policies are only making things worse. If what we're doing isn't the answer. What is?
We explore this issue, and what we all need to learn from the disability justice movement, with this week's guest. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled writer, performer, poet, healer and teacher, inspired by poets and authors June Jordan, Suheir Hammad and Audre Lorde. She is the author of several books of poetry, including Consensual Genocide and the Lambda-award winning Love Cake. She has a new book of poetry called Bodymap, and a memoir, Dirty River. out this year. She also co-founded the performance group Mangos With Chili and is an editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities, a book that grapples with the difficult idea of addressing violence without police.
All this, and Laura discusses the roads less traveled.
================
Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, on the Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
================ - Video Language:
- English
- Duration:
- 26:03
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | ||
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | ||
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha | ||
Radical Access Mapping Project edited English subtitles for Beyond Disability Rights; Disability Justice: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha |