10th Annual Day of Remembrance

Today is the 10th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. I especially want to urge those of you who have been organizing for same-sex marriage in recent weeks to attend your local DOR event tonight...Because it's a question of solidarity. Because it's a question of intersecting identities.

Because I've got your back and I need to know that you've got mine.

DOR is about honoring the lives of the community members we lost in the past year at the hands of hate and transphobia. It's about celebrating their lives and acknowledging their deaths.

Today, I am 12 days away from beginning hormone therapy, and I feel a tremendous sense of displacement. In addition to the 23 years of work it's taken to get to this point, I've spent the last several months coming out to family and friends about my plans and process, assuaging people's fears about "who I will become" once more testosterone enters my system, about whether all of this is really necessary, about whether I'm bringing a stigma upon myself that could easily be avoided.

About whether I will be safe.

It's a real, legitimate fear--this worry over safety. And while there's something very real about the fear-induced hate towards visibly trans bodies, this body of mine has never felt safe. It's felt wrong, it's felt weighed down, it's felt surreal-ly unknown, it's felt painful as hell, it's felt numb, it's felt bigger than I can handle, it's felt freakishly foreign, it's even felt like the excruciating trade-off for dual insights.

But it's never felt safe.

And yet, I've made it work for me. I've dwelled here for 23 years, and I've made it work. Now that I'm finally taking a stand for myself and owning my right to feel at home in my skin, I feel displaced.

I think it's because this entire process involves so much uprooting. It involves tearing up foundations that really weren't ever doing much service to anyone, and in so doing, risking the possibility that a new framework may never be laid. This is the case with body, with family, and with community.

With body, I am letting go of what I've made work for so long, and I'm banking on the fact that the visions of self I hold in my mind's eye are about to manifest. With my family, I am letting go of the need for their approval and understanding, putting faith in the hope that they will come around as time progresses. With community, I am letting go of my pre-op, pre-t trans identity, of my woman of color public hologram (which depends heavily on the light, angle, and context in which I'm viewed). I'm leaping out and hoping that I will find a healthy trans masculinity and a community of folks with whom I can have a healthy, growing relationship.

This journey is a scary one, but the risks are not really new. At worst, I am opening myself up to ridicule, alienation, hate, and death. At best, though, I have a shot at freedom; I have a chance to finally be able to breathe.

Peace without Borders

I had been meaning to post this earlier...but hey, better late than never, right?

Check about the number of people who showed up for nothing more than PEACE.

Beauty in the making.

On Sunday, March 16, 2008 tens of thousands of people came together on the Columbian/Venezuelan border.  Their goal: to call for peace without borders, flags, or boundaries.  This event organized by the Columbian musical rocker, Juanes was an effort to ease tensions between Columbia, Venezuela and Ecuador using music as a medium for peace and solidarity.  If you don't know about the recent diplomatic crisis between these countries, click here for an LA Times article on the events.

The concert was staged atop an international bridge between Columbia and Venezuela named after the liberator, Simon Bolivar.  Among artists in attendance: Miguel Bose and Alejandro Sanz from Spain, Carlos Vives from Columbia, Dominican musician Juan Luis Guerra, Ricardo Montaner from Venezuela, and Juan Fernando Velasco from Ecuador.  The obvious question: where are the women? Unfortunately, Columbian-artist Shakira was unable to make the line-up (and yes, one woman in the show would not have been a good representation either). 

[side note 1: I apologize for the absence of much needed accents, that's one thing I have yet to learn how to include in posts.]

[side note 2: I gotta say that Spanish-language news sources have a much better description of these events (and personally, I'm finding that they do much better coverage of news in general).]

Youth Media Blog-a-thon

What up fam,
Starting tomorrow, our blog will be participating in the second Youth Media Blog-a-thon, sponsored by WireTap Magazine and Youth Outlook. This month, we'll be taking a look at how violence impacts our communities. Check out the press release:

Violence Selected as New Topic For Weeklong
Youth Media Blog-a-Thon
More than a Dozen Seasoned Young Bloggers Will Write About Violence and Its Effects on Youth and Our Communities

San Francisco, CA - YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia and WireTap will host the second round of the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon from Wednesday to Wednesday, March 19-26, 2008. Youth bloggers (between the ages of 15-25) – along with any bloggers dedicated to writing about youth issues and youth media – will address the topic of violence and its effects on youth and our communities.

The monthly blog-a-thons will connect the youth media community around issues that affect their lives, asking for their thoughts on hard-hitting topics. The goal of these monthly events is to foster more dialogue between youth media, which will lead to their connectivity as media makers and as activists.

Our first Youth Media Blog-a-Thon, held February 20-23, 2008, was a huge success! Over 15 bloggers discussed the upcoming presidential elections, the youth vote, who they were voting for and why, the idiosyncrasies of the super delegate system and whether making voting mandatory would help fix the system.

Check out most of the posts:
http://blogs.newamericamedia.org/yo/?pg=6

Check out a wrap-up of the first blog-a-thon: http://www.wiretapmag.org/blogs/elections2008/43435/

While we think it's important to get our voices out there, we also would love to dialouge with readers. Take some time out, read, comment and help spur discussion. Also, if you're interested in participating, hit me up at jamilah@wiretapmag.org

community and identity

i've been thinking a lot about community lately. living in a city foriegn to me, treading on streets of one of the oldest cities in the u.s. which have some of the oldest "commmunities" of urban america. i have lived here for a year now. and sitting in class last night, we were talking about community. my friend, said "[community to me has rarely been a geographic drawn commmunity, i grew up in Harlem, but now live in Washington Heights, ive been there for 10 years now, but when i think of the the community, i think of communities i dedicate myself to and belong to, like social justice and labor, not necessarily drawn by physical boundaries.]"

her words reflect more than just the reality of a global economy and society, where captial and people (sometimes one in the same) can be moved over night. telecommunications have us talking and seeing eachother over a computer, and when we want to "stick it to the man" its often hard to find out who that man really is.

but to me, more importantly, her words highlight the importance of empowering people across demographics, beyond boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual orientaiton. especially if looking at the potential democratic presidential candidates. one, a african american man, the other white woman. we have all heard "what it would be if we had a woman president? or a black president?"

although our identity and how we interpret it - our privilege, social honor & esteem, or lack of - is the basis for our views and political orientations, its important to realize that when it boils down to it, its about how we think. creating degress of opprssion has never made sense to me, i cant imagine weighing one person simply based on a single demographic. good politics are good politics, consciousness is consciousness, and if you truly believe in liberating education and empowering communities, thats what important. at least it is to me.

On Day of Remembrance

We trans people are heroes. The doctors among us, the lawyers among us, the artists, the activist, teachers, and parents:

All of us.

It’s not what we do that makes us heroes. It’s how we do.

We trans people dare to dream. We dare to envision our better selves, and set out to create them.

THIS is heroic.

I spent so much of my early life fighting against stereotypes. Growing up brown in a conservative part of St. Louis, MO, I fought hard. I fought against the conflations among South Asians, Middle Easterners, and Native Americans, I fought against the exotification of my people, I fought against the accusations of Satan worship hurled at my Hindu community. I fought hard like a tornado tearing through a Midwest town, and when the storms of my indignation had settled, I found that I had left nothing but destruction in my wake. I had never stopped to imagine the future I hoped to create. I had never stopped to envision something better.

Coming out as trans forced me to do something different. For me, this process has taken vision. For my own well-being—indeed, for my own survival—I have had to learn to focus, not on the parts of myself that I want to destroy, but on the ideal self I seek to create.

It takes vision to see beyond that which is physically present—to see a fuller truth beyond tangible images—and to mold that vision into corporeal form.

Our bodies embody vision for the future.

We trans people are heroes because this very act of BEING provides leadership and direction for the future of social justice movements.

This question “How do we keep the ‘T’ in LGBT?” is particularly salient at a time when that T seems to keep getting dropped…when gay and lesbian marriage rights take precedent over our basic health care, and when protections against discrimination based on gender identity become easy points to bargain down.

But this question “How do we keep the ‘T’ in LGBT?” might be answered with more questions. “How do we keep the ‘L’ as in Living in poverty, the ‘G’ as in Growing up with a disability the ‘B’ as in Born brown into a system of white supremacy, the ‘T’ as in Trying to apply for amnesty, how do we keep the LGB & T in LGBT?”

The needs of our LGBT community are as diverse as the members within it. It is up to us trans people—and us allies—to lead our communities in a shift. Little by little, we can stop fighting against, and start building towards. No doubt, the futures we can imagine drop no letter for the ostensible gain of the others. In the futures we can imagine no human is “illegal” or “alien.” In the futures we can imagine, community members—not prison systems—hold people accountable for harms caused to a community.

We trans people, we heroes, we leaders—WE must keep daring to dream. Though we continue to lose, though we continue to struggle and hurt, we find compassion and the will to carry on when we can look at our present situation and see beyond it—when we can look at that reflection of our society and see, not a mirror image, but the future we want to create.

Strength & Solidarity in Jena

I hope everybody went and got their black and green on today in solidarity with the Jena 6.

The injustice is appalling, but the nationwide solidarity is monumental.

NOLA organizers have been working tirelessly for months. Mad props to Safe Streets , FFLIC, and all those who've worked, and continue to work, to not only seek justice, but transform its meaning.

Even the New York Times ran a front page piece in its online edition highlighting the mass mobilization today in Jena, Louisiana.

And Pittsburgh rapper/activist Jasiri X recently released an ill track based on the case:


Mumia's got commentary on it.

And the young men and their families, who've stood strong throughout this entire ordeal, continue to offer their thanks

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