How to defeat Daesh - no, really, this will work

How to defeat Daesh (what others call ISIL and, unfortunately, the same name as the Egyptian goddess, ISIS)? Not by even MORE bombing of Syria. What a stupid idea. Didn't work in Vietnam, won't work in Syria.

Send in our troops? Anyone saying that has to sign up themselves to be a part of the invasion and occupation, OR, get at least one of their children to do such. Otherwise, you aren't saying "We should go", you are saying, "Someone that's not me should go."

The murderous problem with Daesh will not be solved militarily any more than problems with any terrorist group has been solved militarily.

Here's what I don't hear anyone saying - and, yet, these, all together, would work, because they've worked when fighting Christian extremists and any other large terrorist movement:

1. Cut off the money. “Grossing as much as $40 million or more over the past two years, ISIS has accepted funding from government or private sources in the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait—and a large network of private donors, including Persian Gulf royalty, businessmen and wealthy families.” These countries are allies of the USA. It’s overdue to tell them there will now be consequences for funding terrorism. Also, start saying loudly and clearly that those found with antiquities stolen from Syria and Iraq will be prosecuted even 100 years from now - no “I didn’t know!” defenses allowed for 100 years. If you are caught with stolen items, you go to JAIL. Period. More about how Daesh is funded.
   
   
2. All intelligence agency workers, law enforcement, and politicians, nationally and locally, world wide need to learn about Islam - and not from fundamentalist Christians - and develop meaningful, strong ties with the majority moderate Muslims in their countries. They need to build trust with these organizations, such that Muslims will feel comfortable coming forward and saying, “I’m worried about my nephew/my Uncle/my neighbor…” Remember: when mass shootings at schools and work places have been prevented in the USA, it’s been because students, family members or co-workers heard someone talking about their plans and, despite that person being a friend or family member, they contacted law enforcement.
   
   
3. Every country needs to encourage regular inter-faith events with Muslims in their midsts. That goes against everything Daesh stands for. Daesh hates hates hates any mixing of Muslims with non-Muslims - in stark contrast to Mohammed, who welcomed Jews and Christians into his mosque in Medina. Peace between warring religious groups is possible. There was a time when Catholics and Protestants killed each other - yet I don’t know anyone still calling for vengeance regarding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, when French Catholics murdered between 5,000 to 30,000 Protestants.  On Sept. 11, 1857, in a meadow in Utah, a militia of Mormons began attacking a wagon train of Arkansas families - all Christian but not Mormon - bound for California, and slaughtered 140 men, women and children. Several historians believe Mormon church leaders ordered the massacre. And the Catholic and Lutheran majorities of Germany actively participated in the expulsion and murder of Jews. There are still calls for accountability and atonement and remembrance regarding all of these tragedies, these murders, as there should be - but no one is blowing anyone up over these events anymore, because we actively work for understanding and reconciliation and humanitarianism.
   
   
4. Christians have to condemn Christians that call for oppression and even murder of Muslims just as they call on Muslims to condemn acts of violence by people who say they are Muslims. Christians have to distance themselves from extremist Christians in the same way they demand Muslims distance themselves from extremist Muslims.
   
   
5. Mainstream Muslims and all governments have got to get way better at propaganda, including on social media. The narrative regarding Islam among non-Muslims and non-religious youth born in Muslim families MUST be changed. Anti-Daesh efforts on social media are *pathetic*. Give groups like Quranalyzeit and Sisters in Islam huge grants to hire more staff and be WAY more active on social media with their moderate, peaceful, loving, pro-women, Islamic-based messages. Those two tiny organizations are doing a *brilliant* job of countering extremist messages regarding Islam, and doing it as Muslims and from an Islamic perspective. But they are drowned out by Daesh. Governments also need to heavily promote the help they are providing Syrian refugees and people in primarily Islamic countries. But do it right - don't do this.
   
   
6. And last, but never, ever least: fund Islamic women's groups. Give them more money! LOTS MORE MONEY. There's no better way to counter the narrative of Daesh, Al-Queda, or any other extremist Islamic group, than giving Islamic women's groups REAL RESOURCES.

This would work! Of course, Haliburton and others that profit from wars wouldn't be able to make any money from it, so it won't happen...

Here's some terrific resources for more reading:

• This blog by J.M. Berger, a nonresident fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings and the author of "Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam".
  
  
• Here's the manual that Al Qaeda and now ISIS use to brainwash people online
  
  
• This article from The Atlantic explores this further: "ISIS is not succeeding because of the strength of its ideas. Instead, it exploits an increasingly networked world to sell its violent and apocalyptic ideology to a microscopic minority—people who are able to discover each other from a distance and organize collective action in ways that were virtually impossible before the rise of the Internet.

Don't mess with my gender identification

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler premiered in 1996. Based on interviews conducted with more than 200 women, it is a staged reading of monologues about sex, love, menstruation, rape, birth, self-love, and more. It has been translated into 48 languages and performed in at least 140 countries.

I saw it in 2001 in Austin Texas (I think - could have been earlier), with a cast of readers that included Linda Ellerbee. It was a glorious, raucous night, and the crowd went wild several times with cheers. I can’t remember when I laughed that hard. And oh how I cried at times. So much of the show hit home for me - it was very personal at times. When I left the theater that night, I felt glorious. In fact, that evening changed the way I talk about women’s genitalia forever.

But I’m not supposed to say much of that, at least not the way I've said it. Instead of “interviews with more than 200 women,” I should say “interviews with more than 200 people with vaginas.” I’m not supposed to say “women’s genitalia” - I’m supposed to say “genitalia that is traditionally identified as female.” Mount Holyoke College, a school for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, cancelled a scheduled performance of the play back in January 2015 because the play “is not inclusive of transgender women.” Indeed, a play called The Vagina Monologues is not inclusive of people that don’t have vaginas.

If you identify as a woman, but were born with male genitalia, and you want me to refer to you with a female name, you want me to use female pronouns in reference to you, and you want me to share women’s bathrooms with you, I will. I think the fears that male child predators will stalk women’s bathrooms dressed as women if laws protecting transgendered rights are passed are ridiculous - I’m much more worried about the safety of someone who identifies as a woman, who dresses as a woman, being forced to use men’s bathrooms.

But I also identify as a woman because of my genitalia and other physical features and how I have been treated all of my life, and it is NOT wrong for me to do that. I am very angry that I am being told I may NOT feel empowered as a woman at a performance of The Vagina Monologues, that it's wrong for me to identify as a woman because of my genitalia, that the show "offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman," and that it is "inherently reductionist and exclusive" (that's what the student spokeswoman at Mt. Holyoke said). You are, in short, denying how I identify as a woman, and that's just as wrong as denying transgender identification.

To cancel a performance of The Vagina Monologues because it might hurt the feelings of people that identify as female but don’t have vaginas is like canceling a showing of the movie Chariots of Fire because not everyone can run. Or The Turning Point because not everyone can dance. Or Amadeus because not everyone can hear the music. Or Call the Midwife because some people cannot have children that want to. We have become obsessed with trigger warnings - we've gone from trying to be compassionate to trying to control conversations in the name of "creating safe spaces." To quote The Atlantic: In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

I do not think that The Vagina Monologues is saying "Being a woman means to have a vagina and if you don’t have one, you’re not a woman” But it is, most definitely, and unabashedly, a celebration of the vagina - and of women that have them. And that celebration is DESERVED. It's overdue! There is no denying that a physical aspect of womanhood that involves having a vagina, that it involves fertility, and involves cycles. We talk about these things, celebrate such, complain about such, embrace such, are discriminated against because of such, are loved because of such, mourn when we lose or give up such - it’s who we are, it’s part of our identification as women. To deny those aspects of womanhood means you are denying *my* identification. And it fucking pisses me off.

Spare me the comments about being transphobic. I’ve made it clear that I support people’s rights to identify however they want to identify when it comes to their gender. If you want to identify as a woman, despite having male genitalia, that’s fine with me. But if you don’t like The Vagina Monologues, then don’t go.

I am woman. Hear me roar.

Gun control NOW

Does requiring everyone to have a driver's license and having speed limits mean that EVERYONE follows those rules all the time? No. There are still speeders. But those laws make a HUGE difference in our safety. HUGE. No one can dispute that.

Do restaurants sometimes flout food safety laws? Yes. But food safety laws have DRASTICALLY reduced this happening, creating an environment where unsafe handling of food is not tolerated by most people. Those laws make a HUGE difference in our safety. No one can dispute that.

Do people sometimes flout laws regarding littering? Yes. But laws, and public awareness campaigns, have drastically changed the American landscape since the 1970s. Remember how the sides of highways were lined with trash? I do. You will still see trash on the landscape, but not nearly as much as when I was a kid. Those laws and public awareness campaigns really have kept America beautiful. No one can dispute that.

Go to countries where they don't have these laws, or where the laws aren't enforced, where no one is educated about these situations. I have. It's horrific.

And yet, people are saying more gun laws and more enforcement will make no difference.

Other countries have people with mental illness. Other countries have people that want to do harm for others. But we're the only industrialized country where mass shootings happen again and again and again. Yes, there have been mass shootings in Norway and German and France and all over Western Europe where gun laws are oh-so-strict. But they are rare. They aren't rare in the USA. Not at all. Compare ALL industrialized countries with the USA when it comes to gun violence - in domestic violence, in suicide, in mass shootings, in robberies. And that's that - the facts win. Gun control works.

I've read comments online like this: "Germany doesn't have speed limits on the Autobahn and they have less traffic accidents than in the USA." First of all, Germany DOES have speed limits on the Autobahn - there are only a few places where there is no speed limit. Secondly, to get a driver's license in Germany, a person has to take very lengthy, difficult driving tests, both written and practical, and requires that every person to take a very long, expensive driving class before attempting the tests. I'll be all for getting rid of speed limits on remote stretches of American highways when we have similar intensive driving training and testing.

It’s time for every sensible person to reject the notion that laws and enforcement won't prevent gun violence, or that more guns will lead to less violence (just look what widespread gun ownership has done for Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and too many other countries to name).

Let's license every gun owner just like every car driver. Let's license every gun just like every car. Let's require every person that wants a gun to undergo an extensive background check and to take an extensive, intensive class on both gun violence and gun safety, and then have to take a test to prove they have the capabilities for responsible gun ownership. And let's set a limit on the number of guns in a household.

Let each of us no longer tolerate jokes or comments about killing people. Let's call our friends and family out when they say, "I'd like to shoot that place up" or "I'd love to just kill them all." It's not funny. It's not normal.

Let's remember that there's no way the writer of the Second Amendment ever intended for the words well-regulated to be dismissed, and never intended for an American to have an arsenal of guns that could kill dozens of people in just 60 seconds. If everyone wants an 18th century musket, ala what our Founding Fathers had, I'm fine with that.

And one more thing: someone on Facebook, on a friend of a friend's post, said, "But there must be a way to know if somebody has been hospitalized for or has been medicated for a mental illness, and not allow them to purchase a weapon." Treatment for mental illness doesn't mean someone is more prone to violence. There's ZERO studies that say that. ZERO. Stop trying to steer this away from the reality there are too many guns and we have a cavalier attitude about them, one I've seen in only one other country of the more than 35 I've been to: Afghanistan.

Gun control now.

September update: we start with Monty Python, then move on to trees

Yeah, so, that happened. I finally got the attention of a member of Monty Python. At least it wasn't followed by a restraining order.

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I have no nostalgia for the homes of my childhood, no desire to return to any of them. But curiosity got the better of me recently, and I decided to have a look on Google Street View at the house I lived in longer than any other in Henderson, Kentucky. And I was stunned: all of the trees in front of that house, and most of the trees on that part of the street, are gone. The street was shady in my childhood, with many of the trees heavy with blooms in the spring. I remember the smell. I remember the shade, providing relief on scorching hot days. I remember the birds, sometimes overwhelming in the noise they made in the evenings. The street now looks barren - and cheap. I wonder how much everyone's air conditioning has gone up without all that glorious shade. It's just another ugly street in the USA now.

I live in a historic neighborhood now, in Oregon, covered in trees. People are out walking through it all the time. There's a house near us that isn't historic, isn't all that attractive, on its own. Probably built in the 70s. But the three gorgeous Oregon pine trees out front made it beautiful, cozy... sweet. I'd look at it as I walked by and think, it's amazing how these trees make this place look so appealing.

The long-time owner of the house died recently, and the new owner moved in almost immediately.

And those three trees are gone. The trees weren't hurting the sidewalk, nor the foundation, and were oh-so-healthy.

The tiny, sweet front porch that looked so inviting now looks like the cheap tack-on that it is. The shady sidewalk I sought out all summer now bakes in the full sun for hours. The house looks like just a cheap pre-manufactured home.

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Did you enjoy my travelogue for our 16-day trip to the Yukon and back? Or the photos?

Where to next? Not sure. Lots of dreams...

What about the chalk art festival photos?

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"Portlandia" was filming this month at a store very near us. If I'd known, I would have stood outside with a sign that said, "Rose City Rollers storyline NOW!!!"

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I've now lived in Oregon longer than any other state in the USA except Kentucky. I've lived in Oregon for six years, longer than I was in California (five years, 11 months), Texas (four years, three months), Connecticut (almost two years), Massachusetts (two summers) and New York (two months).

I'm a gypsy. I know, it's not the politically-correct term, but I love it so much more than the term that's in vogue now: nomad. The longest I've been at a job is just over four years. The longest I've been at the same address since I was 22 was four and a half years - that was in Sinzig, Germany.

I love getting to know a new community, starting a new job, etc. I've always loved it. It's been a much more affordable way to see different places in the world than continually traveling. But... I'm also so tired of moving. Since my time at university, I've moved more than 15 times. I'd like to keep traveling as long as I can - travel is in my blood - but I'd really like to stay here in our home for a while, at least longer than I've lived at any other address, which means I'd like to stay put at least through July 2017. 10 years would be January 2023. I'll be 57. How frightening...

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On the night of the lunar eclipse, I did an interpretive dance with a tennis ball to illustrate to Stefan the difference in a New Moon and a lunar eclipse. He did not applaud at the end.

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From my living room window, I saw a guy last night sitting on the steps of a nearby church, frantically swatting away imaginary bugs crawling all over him, or putting out tiny imaginary fires all over his body. I debated what to do. Call the police - because he was tripping and who knows what he'd do next, he might hurt himself, he might need medical attention... don't call police because he isn't bothering anyone, he is obviously in a very vulnerable state and could be harmed by others and needs to be alone, he has no where else to go, I'd rather him be there than in someone's back yard... I ended up calling. Police arrived, the bugs immediately disappeared, they talked, they drove away, he walked away. Problem in no way solved, situation in no way improved. And I'm still debating.

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Off to Kentucky in a few weeks...

Finally watched Birth of a Nation. Yuck.

According to the dictionary on my computer, the term racism means "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races." There are a lot of people that would read that definition, without the word racism, and happily, even unashamedly, identify with the phrase. I am not one of those people. But they are all around me. That belief about different races is not limited to only people descended from European tribes, I've learned as I've traveled the world. And when people tout any race - their own or someone else's - as smarter, kinder, more family-oriented, sneakier, more violent, more passionate, more creative, better with money, or WHATEVER - than other races, I get a really ugly pain in my stomach. Racism is real.

In our vernacular use, most people, when they say something is racist, mean something much stronger: they use the word for something that has a message that is demeaning at best, and hateful at worst, regarding all people of a particular race. When someone says some book or movie or play or whatever is racist, that's usually what they mean: that the piece is demeaning to an entire race.

When someone says, "Hey, that's racist" about a movie or book or play or whatever, if I haven't seen it or read it or whatever, I'll give it a look. And sometimes, I don't find it truly racist - I don't always think the author or screenwriter or whatever is trying to say something specfici about all members of a race, good or bad. Maybe I do think it's racist, but I think it's more a relic of a time - presentation of stereotypes and sweeping generalizations we all, surely, know now aren't true, right? Often, I think, yes, it's racist - but it's far, far more sexist, so why aren't we talking about that?!

In short, I'm not quick to jump on the oh-my-goodness-that's-racist! bandwagon. So knowing that's my MO, please take this for what it is worth:

I finally watched Birth of a Nation, all three plus hours of it, and it's the most hateful, racist-filled crap of a movie I've ever seen in my life. By far. It's absolutely reprehensible. It's so much worse than I ever imagined. To call it racist doesn't even begin to describe its horribleness. It is hideous.

Tons of old American movies are racist. Maybe all of them. Maybe all of the new ones as well. I love old movies, but loving old movies, like Gone With the Wind, is like loving my grandparents (one of whom I'm relatively certain was in the White Citizens League back in the 1950s): racist, painfully so at times, but there are so many, many other wonderful things about them that are worth loving, worth loving deeply, and I do so, even if, at times, they make me cringe - or even make me angry and ashamed. I look at the entire picture, and see what the heart of the message is, and what might be a product of the time, and see if I can reconcile, if the heart is good and greater than the unpleasantness around it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.

There's a racist joke and a couple of racist scenes in my beloved Duck Soup.  There's oh-so-much racism in Red Dust, yet another film I adore. There's a couple of cringe-worthy comments in His Girl Friday, a comedy we all claim to love. Often, in a quest to not address racism, movies simply ignore that black Americans or Asians exist at all - not exactly racism, but most definitely not anything to applaud. I am fully conscious of the racism every time I watch these films, but it doesn't keep me from enjoying them, because there is so much more there, so many wonderful portrayals of the human spirit and of human values. If I avoided movies that could be considered racist, I wouldn't watch any movies.

And I'm always amazed at how the people so quick to tell me what is and isn't racist will roll their eyes when I start to talk about sexism in movies - especially when I go off on The Philadelphia Story, a movie I LOATHE for its horrible sexist message: men cheat on their wives, but as long as they go back to their wives eventually, or don't entirely leave them, they are just being normal and women should accept it. BITE ME.

But the obvious, hateful agenda of Birth of a Nation... its entire story, its characters, its presentation - EVEN THE TITLE... it is all beyond anything I can get my head around. It has no other purpose than to say that African Americans are sex-crazed buffoons naturally prone to violence, that their subjugation was (and is) for the good of everyone in the USA, and that the only way to have world peace is for white people to be united in their subjugation of Africans everywhere. It also promotes a twisted view of history, saying explicitly that, before the Civil War, there was no one nation, there was no union - just happy independent states doing entirely as they pleased (which makes it perfectly in-line with the modern-day GOP, but I digress...). Birth of a Nation has NO OTHER PURPOSE than inspiring hate and feelings of superiority by white Americans, and to say that the USA should give states the right to subjugate black Americans. It wasn't made primarily to tell a love story, or a survival story, or a horror story, or any kind of story: it was made solely to say horrific things about one race of people, and to claim it was best for the people of that race to be enslaved by another race of people, who the movie says are superior intellectually, emotionally, culturally and spiritually. It promotes a passionate, irrational hatred of black Americans - and it makes the Ku Klux Klan the heroes. That's its message, first and foremost.

Geesh, the movie is so freakin' racist that many of the black characters are played by white actors with make-up, when those characters were required to come in contact with a white actress. This film is widely credited for reviving the long-dead Ku Klux Klan - and I completely see why.

I have always hoped, having not seen it, that maybe it was just really outdated, that it would turn out, once I saw it, to be just to be just archaic and misguided. At worst, insidious. Nope, there's no stealth here - it's infused with angry, intense, unashamed arrogance regarding the film-maker's supremacist beliefs. No subtlety at all.

I can't admire the film-making techniques of Birth of a Nation any more than I can in Triumph of the Will. I don't give a rat's ass that this movie pioneered panoramic long shots, iris effects, still shots, night photography, panning shots, the staging of battle scenes, color tinting and having its own musical score. I DON'T CARE. It's like saying, "Sad about the stabbing of that family, but look how well the knives worked! What technique!"

D.W. Griffith didn't make Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages as a follow-up in order to apologize for Birth of a Nation - isn't it OBVIOUS that he made that follow-up because he was so upset at people disgust at B of a N, that he felt the criticism was, itself, intolerance and that such was unfair? Well, DW, yes, the criticism, the disgust, were - and are - intolerance. And humans have a right to express such, to reject your pathetic world view. No, I don't think this movie should be banned. But I also think it needs to be presented honestly and openly for what it is - no sugar-coating, no oh-but-the-film-techniques! justifications. Let's present it as the love letter to white supremicists that it is. That is what it is. Period.

I'm really glad Turner Classic Movies (TCM) showed it. I'm glad I've seen it. But I'm disappointed to learn it's even more horrible than I ever expected. Wow.

On a side note: I was on the light rail coming home from Portland in 2013, and was eavesdropping on a group of African women, I think from Tanzania, and a group of Indian women talking about movies they love. And they all love Gone With the Wind, and went on and on about why. They loved it like I do. No mention of its racism was ever made - I kept listening for it, but it never happened. Sometimes I wonder if people in other countries, even Africans, understand the horrors of slavery in the Americas... but I kind of loved that they loved the film without experiencing any racist subtext. The way women are expected to enjoy so many films without getting upset about the sexism.

What is Southern heritage? What is worth celebrating?

What is heritage? It's a thing that can be inherited. Heritage is valued objects and qualities: cultural traditions, music, art, natural landscapes, historic buildings and a particular, shared history that come from previous generations.

Following up to a previous blog, I've been thinking a lot about what being from the South means to me, what heritage that it is a part of it that I want to celebrate.

The first thing that comes to mind: food. Stereotypical, I know. But there is no better comfort food than Southern food. Barbecue, biscuits and milk gravy, fried chicken, sweet corn on the cob, chicken and dumplings (dumplin's!), breaded and fried catfish fiddlers, burgoo... okay, not the healthiest cuisine in the world, and since leaving Kentucky, I've changed my daily diet rather significantly. But I still indulge in those Southern foods every now and again, usually when I want to celebrate something - and always when I visit the region. Going into a soul food restaurant on the West Coast makes me feel at home - waving a Confederate flag does not.

The second thing that comes to mind: music. Everyone from the Carter Family to Bessie Smith to Loretta Lynn, from Elvis Presley to Fats Domino to BB King, from Dolly Parton to Rhiannon Giddens, Southern Culture on the Skids to REM to the B52s to Government Cheese. It's country, bluegrass, gospel, rock and roll, rockabilly, blues, zydeco and on and on.

The third thing that comes to mind: our way of speaking. It's not just our accents - it's our cadence, our choice of words, our narratives, our poetry, our manners - it's what we say and how we say it and our intent behind it. If you've read William Falkner, Tennessee Williams, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers or Alice Walker, you experience this.

The fourth thing that comes to mind: our violent history. The white settlers drove out the native people of the region - and some Indians on the trail of tears took the African slaves they owned with them. Every Southerner wants to claim native American history, but not ancestry that drove out native Americans. Our ancestors were slave owners and slaves, and the time of slavery was never a universally-happy, simple time; rather, white Southerners wanted black Southerners to work in menial jobs, cook their food, entertain them, and take care of their children - but they wanted them otherwise completely segregated and subjugated, living in poverty, and were willing to undertake violent means, even long after the Civil War, to ensure that status. Some of us choose to be in denial about that history, some of us choose to sanitize, even glorify, the history, and some of us would like for it to be acknowledged, remembered, and taught in school - unfiltered.

The fifth thing that comes to mind: how we think of family and community and class. Every culture on Earth will say family is important, and the South is no different. But there's something particular about family and community and South, the way religion permeates it - even if you are Atheist, you cannot get away from religion in the South. There is so much prayer. The only place I've seen people praying that often has been in Afghanistan. Also, how you are related to other people in the community matters - who your blood relatives are, what families you are related to by marriage, and on and on. There are family aristocracies even in the tiniest, poorest communities that can hold a person back from jobs or social advancement. I learned the term trash from my black friends back in Kentucky, who used the term for people that, whether they had money or not, and no matter their racial identification, lacked propriety, decency, tact and grace. And, of course, there is our sports culture. The only place where I have seen sports treated the way we treat it in the South - like a religion - is in other countries where soccer is King. Entire communities here will shut down for the "big game," which might be American football, might be basketball, might be a softball game. And it will be talked about long after that game is over.

The sixth thing that comes to mind: the influence from African slave culture and of segregation. Our food, our music, our way of speaking, and how we think about our history are all affected by African slave culture and segregation. You will find a history of segregation and subjugation in other regions of the USA, but you will never find such infusing the food, the music or the way of speaking to the degree you will find such in the South. There's no way to experience our culture without seeing the deep infusion of slave culture and influence of segregation.

That's our beautiful and ugly, gentle and violent, welcoming and hateful, inclusive and exclusionary. I love it, I hate it. I accept it. And there's no way you can say the Confederate battle flag represents all that, and all of the people of the South - it does NOT. I want a symbol for ALL of the South.

Hijacking each other's causes

Like so many thousands of other people, I was beyond saddened by the senseless, pointless killing of Cecil the Lion. The lion population continues to plummet, lions that are still in the wild are getting smaller (because trophy hunters are killing the biggest), and communities are deprived of the significant, long-term economic prosperity living lions bring. Plus, who in the hell wants to live in a world without lions in the wild?!

But the pushback against those of us that expressed our sadness was immediate: on my own social media, I got chastised by a vegan friend who felt my outrage was misplaced and misguided. I saw another friend reprimanded by someone who said she should be more upset about the soldiers killed in Chattanooga. I saw anti-choice/forced-birth activists go after people upset about Cecile. I saw people rebuked by others who said it was insulting that they were talking about a lion in Africa “instead of” #blacklives matter.

How did it make me feel when someone tried to hijack sadness about Cecil? Angry. In fact, it made me instantly double-down, to post MORE about Cecil and related issues, not less. It did not make me want to start posting about the aforementioned causes at all - and many of those causes are ones I support and frequently post about (but NOT the anti-choice/forced-birth folks).

As an activist regarding various causes since the 1980s, I know that pushing a cause always inspires “but why aren’t you protesting such-and-such” pushback. Always. But these days, it seems fashionable to try to hijack someone else’s cause. The most recent example are the people that rushed the stage when Bernie Sanders tried to speak in Seattle. They demanded the crowd give 4 1/2 minutes of silence for Michael Brown, the young man killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri last year. I cringed, just like I cringe when someone demands I bow my head in prayer (I’m an atheist - I will NOT do it) or demands I put my hand over my heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance - which I will NEVER do. The #blacklivesmatter activists refused to let Sanders speak at all. It wasn’t enough for them to get their message out - they wanted to shut down the event and not allow any other message to be said. And as a result, they turned away some potentially really great allies.

I’m not vegan, but I’m happy to significantly reduce the amount of meat in my diet - I know now, through the education efforts of others, that a plant-based diet is healthy, and that meat is not raised in a healthy manner in the USA or a lot of other places - and I'm  happy to hear about delicious vegan recipes - but if you’re going to belittle my compassion for another animal-related cause, I’m going to turn away from you. I’m going to unfollow you on Facebook and turn down your invitations to get together. I am horrified by the murders in Tennessee - but I’m going to stop communicating with you if you badger me about that every time I post about the murders in Charleston or Lafayette, saying, “But why don’t you care about OUR TROOPS and Islamic terrorism?!?!?” I am horrified by the systematic racism in law enforcement and the denial about that racism, and I’m trying to promote ways to improve that as a part of my professional, daily consulting work - I want to be an advocate in every way, not just on the weekends and on social media - but I will not support shouting down allies or demands to adhere to a particular script.

Yes, activism often is most effective when it's in-your-face, when it's disruptive, when it's loud and it's impossible to ignore it. Queer Nation's tactics in the 1990s are a great example of this. But their tactics generated not only awareness, but allies - like me. I credit them with waking up me, a straight girl, about gay rights. They made me an ally. They made me WANT to be an ally.

I will listen. I do listen. Talk to me, not at me. Be explicit in describing what it is you want me to do to support your cause in a meaningful way. Educate me. But don't just shout slogans. And don't belittle my compassion. This isn't about who shouts the loudest - it's about changing hearts and minds.