winterkoninkje | Entries tagged with non/violence

I ran into this quote recently,

“We believe we are seeking happiness in love, but what we are really after is familiarity.”

The assertion sounded interesting enough, so I followed the link. In the rest of that discussion De Botton goes on to claim that what we are actually seeking in our adult romances is the same sort of dynamic we had with our parents, so we turn down perfectly good partners to seek out troubling ones with whom we can recreate our parental troubles. While I’ve no doubt this describes some people, and might even be willing to believe it describes a plurality, it most certainly does not describe all. And the unwaveringly universalizing way he makes this claim is patently offensive to those of us it excludes.

There are numberless people whose parental relationships were/are defined by abuse. To coyly describe these relationships as “[love] entwined with other, more destructive dynamics” is to normalize and erase the physical, sexual, and psychological violence we have endured. To boldly declare that, “We are constrained in our love choices by what we learned of love as children”, is to say that those who were abused as children are incapable of making healthy decisions as adults. To bombastically assert that, “Without [replicating our parental relationships], we may simply not be able to feel passionate and tender with someone”, is to say that passion and tenderness can only be felt through (re)enacting such violence as we endured as children. These claims are irresponsible and disgusting.

I, for one, have no desire to recreate the abuse of my childhood. Indeed, the surest way to end any relationship with me (romantic or otherwise) is to head even vaguely in that direction. And yet, I most assuredly do feel passion and tenderness and love. If those sensations were ‘learned’, they were most certainly not learned from my parents. What De Botton is doing is gaslighting those of us with abusive childhoods. Like most gaslighting it's a two-pronged assault: simultaneously denying the history of abuse, while also denying the healthiness of the present. De Botton is continuing the long tradition of blaming victims for the abuse they’ve suffered, lest one be forced to recognize the lie inherent in the fable of universal parental love. The lie must not be admitted, for to do so is to admit the truth that abusive parents exist and cause harm in virtue of a society that refuses to stop them or to protect its least powerful members from them. To admit the prevalence of parental abuse is to admit one's own culpability for not working to stop it. People will do much to escape blame, but they will do anything to escape blame for what they already feel guilty about.

Perhaps, in spite of De Botton, there is still some kernel of truth to the idea that it is familiarity more than happiness that we seek in love. Cognitively speaking, while excitement is valued in the short term, in the long term contentment is valued more. It's not too far a stretch to blur contentment/familiarity and excitement/happiness; so, to the extent that can be done, one might be able to substantiate the claim with data from cognitive and psychological research. But any further exploration of the idea should be done far away from De Botton's love affair with Freud by gas light.

The last week has been challenging for all of us. In the depths of my own fear and uncertainty, I reached for one of my favorite books —Pema Chödrön’s Comfortable with Uncertainty— and opened to a passage at random. On friday, a friend of mine asked how I’ve been able to deal with it all. I told him about the passage, and he (a non-buddhist) found it helpful in dealing with his own pain, so I wanted to share more broadly.

Before getting to the passage, I think it’s important for people to recognize that this pain we are feeling is a collective trauma. This is not our day-to-day pain, not our usual suffering. Everyone develops habits and skills for addressing the typical discomforts of life, but those skills are often inapplicable or ineffective for recovering from truly traumatic events. When someone is in a car wreck, or attacked, or raped, or abruptly loses a job or loved one— we recognize these things as traumas. We recognize that these events take some extra work to recover from. In the aftermath of the election I have seen many of the symptoms of trauma in the people around me. Depression, hypervigilance, difficulty concentrating, short tempers, and so on. When trauma hits, our usual coping mechanisms often fail or go haywire. A drink or two to unwind, turns into bleary drunkenness every night. Playing games to let go, turns into escapism to avoid thinking. Solitude, turns into reclusion. A healthy skepticism, turns into paranoia. If we do not recognize traumas for what they are, it becomes all too easy to find ourselves with even worse problems. Recognition is necessary for forming an appropriate response.

Now, the passage. As humans we have three habitual methods for relating to suffering. All three are ineffectual at reducing that suffering. These three ineffectual strategies are: attacking, indulging, and ignoring. And I’ve seen all three in great quantities in all the OpEd pieces floating around over the past week.

By “attacking” Pema Chödrön means not just lashing out, attacking Trump’s supporters or their ideals, but also all the ways we attack ourselves: We condemn ourselves, criticize ourselves for any indulgence, pity ourselves to the point of not getting out of bed. This strategy shows up in all those articles criticizing us for not having interpreted the polls correctly, or chastising us for not voting, or condemning the way the internet has formed these echo-chamber bubbles, and so on. But all this self-flagellation, all this beating ourselves up, does nothing to heal our pain. Now we suffer not only from our fears of what’s to come, but also because “it’s all our fault”. We refuse to “let ourselves off easy”, so whenever someone tries to address our pain we attack them and beat them away, protecting our pain because we feel like we deserve it.

Indulging is just as common. Though we are haunted by self-doubt, we condone our behavior. We say “I don’t deserve this discomfort. I have plenty of reasons to be angry or sleep all day.” We justify our pain to the point of turning it into a virtue and applauding ourselves. This strategy shows up in all those articles that relish in the details of how bad things will become, or congratulating ourselves for saying something like this would happen. But again, by cherishing our pain and presenting it as something to be praised, we are preventing ourselves from healing. Noone wants to give up something they cherish, nor give up on all the attention and sympathy they are lavished with.

Ignoring is no less common. “Ignoring” means not just refusing to acknowledge our pain and fear, but also pretending it doesn’t exist, dissociating, spacing out, going numb, acting on autopilot, or any of the other ways to try to keep our suffering out of sight and out of mind. This strategy is advocated by all those articles talking about how things actually aren’t that bad, or how this is just business as usual, or how it’ll all get better once the mid-term elections happen. While ignoring seems effective in the short term, it does nothing to address the suffering you feel. In addition to not healing that initial wound, it creates more pain as we inevitably force ourselves into tighter and tighter spaces in order to keep it out of mind.

There is an alternative to these three futile strategies. The enlightened strategy is to try fully experiencing whatever you’ve been resisting— without exiting in your habitual way. Become inquisitive about your habits. Recognize when you are pushing your suffering away, or embracing it, or denying it. Become inquisitive about your suffering. What is it, exactly, that you are denying? Why does it feel so urgent to push it away? Why does it feel so necessary to cling to it? Stop trying to justify your feelings, stop trying to explain them. Start instead to look at them, to see them for what they really are. Ask why it is they hurt, what part of your ego they compromise, what ideals they belie.

The passage on the three futile strategies follows a koan about “heaven and hell”. From a buddhist perspective, “hell” is not a place, it is all the feelings of pain and fear and suffering we experience. Nor is “heaven” a place, but rather all our feelings of gratitude and joy and understanding. Thus, the buddhist does not say “hell is bad and heaven is good” nor “get rid of hell and just seek heaven”. Rather, one should approach all things with an open mind, greeting both heaven and hell with that openness. In her words,

Only with this kind of equanimity can we realize that no matter what comes along, we’re always standing in the middle of a sacred space. Only with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle has come to teach us what we need to know.

I find these words powerfully healing. It is healing to remember that no matter where we are or what befalls us, our life is a blessing, and in virtue of that blessing our bodies and the places we move through are sacred spaces. The sacred is not something which exists without us, but something which is created from within. Moreover, it is healing to step away from questions like “what did I do to deserve this?” and instead remember to ask what it is we can learn from the experience.

I have endured many traumas in my life, and I half expected the election outcome, but still it felt like a kick in the chest. This wound brought back all my darkest habits. Once I recovered from the shock enough to begin the rituals of healing and self-care, I reflected on the question of why this particular wound hurt so bad. In my experience (and not just because I’m buddhist), deep emotional pain always stems from some threat to one’s ego; so what part of my ego is on the line? For me, the reason the election hurt so much is because I had become complacent in believing that the world is steadily becoming a more just place and believing that people are by-and-large fundamentally good. With the election of Obama, the passing of the ACA, the supreme court ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges, and so on, I think a lot of us on the progressive side have been susceptible to those beliefs. The election hurt so much, for me, because it forced the recognition that it’s not just the legacy of systemic institutionalized hatred we must fight, but that over a quarter of the population actively supports the worst extremes of that hatred. Yes, the election itself was offensive. Yes, I fear for my life and the lives of those close to me. But the real root of the pain itself, the reason it hurt so bad, is this refutation of those optimistic beliefs about humanity and the path towards justice. Realizing that this was the root cause of my pain did a lot to help me process it and move on. It also gave a healthy way to shift focus from the pain itself, to something actionable. Having experienced the pain, I can accept it. And having learned what it has to teach me, I know what I must do.

So sit with your pain, and try to experience it fully. Stop pushing it away. Stop embracing it. Stop beating yourself up over it. Approach it with an open mind and let it pass through you. And, finally, ask yourself what you can learn from it.

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October first marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I don't have the emotional energy to write anything about it at the moment, but y'all should read this (Trigger warnings ahoy): Because If I Was Honest, Everything I Knew Would Explode.

Judith Butler's incisive discussion of the public aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks —overwhelming anti-intellectualism, self-censorship in a "you're with us or you're a terrorist" regime, refusal to seek understanding of the attacks, etc— also applies more broadly to other social issues under public deliberation/renegotiation. (To be more fully explicated in another post.) Mostly this chapter is about posing questions and questioning the "inevitability" of our interpretations and framing of events, rather than providing answers to those questions.

Themes and ideas:

US flag as ambiguous symbol of (a) solidarity with those lost in the attacks, vs (b) support for the US military campaign; thereby insinuating that these are one and the same, and that the former leads in a single stroke to the latter.
Disallowing the story we tell to begin earlier than the 9/11 attacks themselves, thereby predetermining the sorts of stories that can be told, and preventing any real answer to the question "why do they hate us so much?"
Shoring up the first-person perspective and, hence, the presumption of US supremacy and centrality. Any attempt to decenter the US being perceived as a component of the psychological wound of the attacks themselves. The "we're reaping what we've sown" response is just another way of asserting the centrality of the US. The refusal to acknowledge the UN and other supra-governmental bodies rooted in the fact that such acknowledgement would decenter the US.
The distinction between conditions and causes. And, hence, the distinction between explanation and exoneration. The need for moving beyond a framework of "justification" and "culpability".
"the failure to conceive of Muslim and Arab lives as lives." (Butler 2004: 12, emphasis hers) More generally, the unwillingness to show or see the faces of those we've killed. Facelessness of the "enemy".
"Our fear of understanding a point of view belies a deeper fear that we shall be taken up by it, find it is contagious, become infected in a morally perilous way by the thinking of the presumed enemy." (Butler 2004: 8)
"Dissent is quelled, in part, through threatening the speaking subject with an uninhabitable identification. Because it would be heinous to identify as treasonous, as a collaborator, one fails to speak, or one speaks in throttled ways, in order to sidestep the terrorizing identification that threatens to take hold. This strategy for quelling dissent and limiting the reach of critical debate happens not only through a series of shaming tactics which have a certain psychological terrorization as their effect, but they work as well by producing what will and will not count as a viable speaking subject and a reasonable opinion within the public domain." (Butler 2004: xix, emphasis mine)

[Content warning: discussion of rape culture and child abuse]

Transitioning is a mindfuck. Doesn't matter how prepared you are, how sure you are, how long and deeply you've thought about gender/sexuality issues. Outside of transitioning¹ we have no way of inhabiting more than one position in any given discourse. Sure, we can understand other positions on an intellectual level, we may even sympathize with them, but we cannot empathize with what we have not ourselves experienced, and even having experienced something in the past does not mean we can continue to empathize with it in the present. Julia Serano emphasizes this epistemic limit in her books. And it's no wonder that no matter how prepared you may be, completely uprooting your sense of self and reconfiguring the way the world sees, interprets, and interacts with you is going to fundamentally alter whatever notions you had going into it all.

Since transitioning none of the major details of my identity have changed. I'm still a woman. Still feminine. Still a flaming lesbo. Still kinky, poly, and childfree. Still attracted to the same sorts of people. Still into the same sorts of fashion (though now I can finally act on that). Still interested in all the same topics, authors, and academic pursuits. And yet, despite —or perhaps because of— all this consistency, transitioning is still a mindfuck.

( Read more... )

On this day we remember our dead.

When right-wing bigots lie and fabricate stories about trans* people, you look at our dead and tell me with a straight face who should fear whom. While you worry about your kids feeling nervous about nothing happening, I'm too worried for the children who will one day soon be shot, strangled, suffocated, stabbed, tortured, beheaded, lit on fire, and thrown off bridges simply for existing.

And you on the left: I love all you queers, and I'm glad for your victories; but the next time you celebrate an "LGBT" victory you take a long hard look at your history of throwing that "T" under the bus and you look at our dead and tell me with a straight face how it's not yet time to fight for trans* rights.

Anyone who thinks sexism isn't such a big thing anymore, needs to read the following articles. Anyone who has been raised as male and thinks women's lives are essentially the same, needs to read the following articles. Anyone who wants to believe they aren't sexist or who wants to think of themselves as an "ally" to women, needs to read the following articles. Anyone who lives or works in academia, needs to read the following articles.

The terrible bargain we have regretfully struck: quoth @juliepagano: "If you are a man and have been confused about some of my anger and frustration recently, read the post."
Teaching Naked, Part 1: quoth @jenebbeler: "Incredibly thoughtful post about how a young female prof handled an inappropriate student comment"
Teaching Naked, Part 2: Followup to the first post, on how the administration responded to how she handled the sexual harassment.

Why won't we talk about violence and masculinity in America?

Google has their well-known unofficial motto "don't be evil". However, as they have grown as a corporation they often run into issues living up to that motto. As a recent example, Google is a major sponsor of this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. Conservatism alone is not evil, however this conference gives platform to anti-gay and white supremacist bigotry. There's a Change.org petition which has more details on the issue. Do go read it, and please sign it if you agree with the points made there.

Ten years ago a large number of people died tragically. After a decade of colonial warfare, torture, and oppression, Americans are starting finally to come to the realization that maybe it would be good of us to stop killing. As so eloquently phrased in On 9/11 and the War on "Terror": Names, Numbers and Events:

The events that have been taking place since 9/11 are not something that came out of the blue, but rather they are best understood as a continuation of a long history of deception, racism of Western modernity, and the ways in which those who are not white/westerners have figured into this history.

On this day, so full of jingoistic pride at "liberating" humans from their life on Earth, you should read that article and take Ibn Khaldoun's message to heart. Do not think that you are somehow special and exempt. Who funded and armed Al-Qaeda in order to oppose the Soviets? Who put Saddam Hussein into power and supported his regime? Who supported the Shah in Iran and opposed the democratic revolution in the 1970s? Who has been a close ally and long-time supporter of Mubarak? Whose officials helped Gaddafi cling to power and advised him in stomping out the beginning of Libya's uprising? The uprisings throughout the Arabic world are not uprisings against "Muslim extremists". The uprisings are Arabic peoples who are finally able to free themselves from the shackles of western hegemony.

Today, right now, a large number of people are dying tragically. They need our help; and the help they need is for us to stop killing them.

Current Music: No Peace, Yes War? ~ 체리필터 (The Third Eye)

An Atlanta area mother was recently convicted of vehicular homicide. Convicted for the crime of being a pedestrian hit by a drunken driver, a driver who was also on painkillers, also half blind, also convicted of two previous hit-and-runs. Her child was also hit, and killed, which is why she's now a criminal. In truth, she was convicted for the crime of being black and poor in America. I haven't been in the country six hours and this is the news story that greets me. Racism, the othering of people who take public transit, and the deadly violent car culture that dominates the US.

A (white) friend of mine was killed in a crosswalk in Portland years ago. The SUV driver couldn't be bothered to check if it was safe when making a left-hand turn across a busy street, at full speed without slowing at all. There were witnesses. He also fled the scene. She was headed to the corner to next to her apartment to buy a mop.

I've been hit three times in crosswalks, all three with the walk sign on and a red light for the cars. Only one of those times was it serious. But I was saved by the fact that the rich white man was driving a sporty little thing so I went over the hood instead of under.

What a welcome home.

Current Location: The SPoT, Buffalo, NY, USA

As Glenn Greenwald helpfully pointed out, the editors of the NYT — America's allegedly liberal newspaper — reserve the word "terrorist" solely for use in conjunction with the word "Muslim".

All the hate mongering confirmation bias in the wake of the tragedy in Oslo just shows how much the extreme terrorism of the right wing has corrupted American culture. As Ahmed Moor says in zir excellent commentary on the situation,

But not all liberals are created equal.

It is a credit to the Norwegian people that their prime minister did not respond to the terror attack with scorched-earth rhetoric or a carpet-bombing campaign. A real liberal with strong principles, he did not succumb to fear or vicious speculation.

(As always, the hat-tip goes to homasse for cutting to the heart of the issue, as well as informing me of world news in my last week here in Canada.)

Current Location: Williams Cafe, Hamilton, Ontario

I've said it all before (and been harangued for doing so), but maybe it'll be heard better coming from someone else's mouth. Here's the shortest excerpt I can give from Why I'm leaving feminism:

My ‘issues’ being things like the rape of people in institutions, the fact that the average transgender person can expect to live for 23 years, forcible institutionalisation of people whom society doesn’t want to look at, ridiculously high domestic violence and sexual assault rates for transgender people and people with disabilities. The widening pay gap between white women and women of colour, the fact that the median net worth for Black women is $5. The fact that fat patients die without treatment due to fat hatred in the medical community. The fact that industrial pollution disproportionately impacts communities of colour, that class mobility is at an all time low, that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer, that protections for worker safety are steadily being eroded, that unions are under attack in the United States.

These barely scratch the surface of ‘my issues.’ Because I believe that no human is free until all humans are free, no human is equal until all humans are equal, no gains for one group at the cost of another are acceptable. I believe in social justice, in liberty for all. These are my issues. And many people who identify themselves as feminists tell me the issues need to wait. They pay lip service to them until something more important comes along and then it becomes all-consuming. They repeat the same mistakes make by older generations and appear surprised at the inevitable outcome.

[...]

People who continue to be celebrated as feminist heroes leave a legacy of ableism, racism, classism, transphobia in their wake. The feminist movement has never gotten away from this, despite the best attempts of many of its members.

For a long time, I genuinely believed I could change the feminist movement from within. I thought if I fought hard enough, and long enough, feminism would make a place at the table for me, that I would be welcome in the feminist community. But it’s painfully evident I am not wanted, not in mainstream feminism, which is the ‘feminism’ most people are exposed to. I know well enough to know where I’m not wanted. The leaders of the feminist movement don’t just have a lack of interest in ‘my issues,’ they actively want to suppress my voice, and the voices of people like me. They want us to shut up and go away. It’s evident from the palpable sighs of relief when they manage to quash us, it’s evident from the total silence when a disabled women talks about why she is leaving feminism and not one person, not one, says anything about it.

So many disabled people, nonwhite people, transgender people, people of colour, poor people, adamantly refuse to identify with feminism in its current incarnation in the United States. ‘Feminists’ talk about this in the sense that we’re all really feminist in how we think, behave, and act, we just have some irrational resistance to the label. No, we’re not really feminist. The model of feminism we see is one where oppression perpetrated in the name of ‘activism’ is acceptable, where casual ableism, racism, classism, transphobia run so deep that many of us don’t even bother to point it out anymore. The model of feminism we see is one where a handful of people profit at the expense of others. And that’s not how we think, behave, and act. That is not what we believe.

"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer."

Why I would rather work for the yakuza than National Geographic Television: My resignation, apologies, and words of caution to anyone involved with production. (hat tip to homasse)

Current Mood: what's wrong with people?

I've always been a fan of the Metroid series because it was one of the few franchises with a strong female protagonist. From the first game, her being a woman was not a plot detail, but rather just a fact about the character. She can wield a gun with the best of them and wears real armor instead of prancing about in neglige. Being tough as nails doesn't mean you have to be a sexbot, the most competent and effective women can be practical too! But this well-done analysis of the latest installment calls all that into question.

August 31st marked the release of Metroid: Other M, the latest installment of Nintendo’s Metroid franchise, and the most aggressively marketed game in the series. Produced, directed, and written by franchise patriarch Yoshio Sakamoto, with game design by Team Ninja, it represents a significant change of direction for the series. Plenty of reviewers have already dissected its gameplay, with mixed but mostly favorable impressions.

But this is not a gameplay review.

I’m here to address the game’s writing — not so much where it failed artistically (though there are some legitimate complaints to be made on that front), but unfortunately where it succeeds. When it comes to the game’s story, there is an elephant in the room which very few reviewers have addressed head-on.

To put it bluntly, Metroid: Other M is a story that consistently portrays an abusive relationship between two of its main characters, and romanticizes it, painting the depicted behavior as justifiable, even laudable. No single moment in the game bears the blame for this (though a couple are problematic on their own); the entire story, taken as a whole, is the problem.

Current Location: PourHouse

Or, rather, why the people who state that are usually wrong.

So this definition for racism was brought up again recently when yet another person claimed we live in a post-racial society. Which is usually the context it's brought up in: someone claims Racism = Prejudice and then declares minorities need to get over themselves because of their evidenced prejudice against white folks; and then someone more educated on issues of racism seeks to correct them (using R=P+IP to disprove R=P). I certainly don't believe R=P, but rather my point of contention is a meta issue about how R=P+IP is presented. That is, the theory of R=P+IP as it is customarily presented online is false, even though I do believe something similar is in fact true.

Why it is wrong comes down to one simple fact: there is no Institution. There is no single power structure in which we're all embedded. Even if we parameterize IP by country (as people often do), it's still wrong because there is no single power structure for the entire country. By stating R=P+IP there is an implicit theoretical belief in this singular notion of IP. And as if the implicit theory isn't enough, people often feel the need to be explicit about it. It is this totalizing discourse which is wrong. In addition to being inaccurate, totalizing claims transfer the problem of racism from individuals and individual actions to some external and ineffable "Institution" which individuals are not able to affect (due to its externality). So in addition to being inaccurate, it also serves to dissuade people from altering their personal actions in hopes of combating racism.

The fact of the matter is that we are, each of us, embedded simultaneously in multiple different and often conflicting power structures. I am not only in America, I'm also in Bloomington and I'm also a graduate student. (And anyone who thinks academia isn't a power structure orthogonal to real life is seriously misled.) More to the point, prior to moving to Bloomington I lived in Baltimore for two years. In Baltimore they have problems with racially-motivated black-on-white hate crimes. Now, when I can be hospitalized or killed for the crime of riding the bus while white, anyone who says it's merely "prejudice" has some very odd definitions rattling around in their head. In Baltimore, yes, blacks can be racist too. So when someone gets on their high horse and starts making totalizing claims about how the general disenfranchisement of blacks in America means they can't be racist, it's my turn to call them out for spouting bullshit.

My time in Baltimore was thankfully free of any (noticeable) racism. And I'm sure most other white residents receive less racism from blacks per annum than the average black person does from whites in most places. This isn't the oppression olympics, but rather it's an existence proof: When I was living in Baltimore there were numerous white people hospitalized and killed due to being assaulted on the bus by blacks because of their race. This happens in spite of the fact that everyone living in Baltimore is also living in America where blacks are typically the targets of racism. These two different kinds of hatred stem from being embedded in two different systems of power. In America whites have more power than blacks and use that to police racial borders. In Baltimore, which has different population dynamics (e.g., blacks aren't a minority), blacks have more power than whites and will use that to police racial borders. There is nothing about the power dynamics of America as a whole which precludes some part of America having opposing dynamics.

So IP is not a constant, nor is it a function only of the country. For the R=P+IP equation to be true, IP must be a function which takes in all the different power structures we live in and highlights whether any of those structures provide power in the given context. Whether my power as a white person in America or my weakness as a white person in Baltimore is more relevant will depend on the situation and is not simply the sum of the power from all structures. Similarly, whatever sorts of power I have as a graduate student are unlikely to be of any relevance in contexts that have nothing to do with education. Institutionalized power is both polysemous and contextually dependent. What is institutionalized in one structure need not be institutionalized in others, and which of these many "institutions" can be brought to bear is constantly changing.

By trying to totalize over these two dimensions, people prone to espousing R=P+IP as if IP were a constant are not only misleading those they are presuming to educate, but in so doing they are also failing to acknowledge that individual institutions can be changed, as can the dynamics of which institutions affect our lives. Institutionalized power can never be entirely eliminated. It can, however, be restructured so that it does not support the marginalization and oppression of racial minorities (or women, LGBTQ, disabled people, etc). And most importantly it is because of our own power within these different systems that we are able, through personal actions, to alter the systems in which we have power. We don't have racism because Those People Out There all got together and agreed to it; it is because our personal actions are complicit in preserving the institutionalized structures which support the oppression of minorities. But those very same institutionalized structures give us the currency needed to alter them; it is not enough to want equality, we must have the power to obtain it.

Important words from pdx42:

In 2006, Dr. Martin Luther King Day happened to fall on January 16. Below, I am reposting a small part of what I wrote for that day, slightly updated for 2008.
(original)

In three days' time, on January 21, the third Monday of the month, we as a nation will be celebrating the life, accomplishments, and blessings of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our nation and our society have truly been transformed for the better by his life. Many Americans regard him as the greatest peacemaker of our history. I believe him to have been the greatest American patriot of the 20th Century.

This weekend, while enjoying your day off on Monday, or listening to a sermon on the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., keep in mind that he was, first and foremost, an inspiring man of God, a man of peace who kept close to the words of his prophet, Jesus Christ. Please also keep in mind that at the time Dr. King was assassinated, most of his civil rights work was done. Almost two years earlier, he had turned his attention toward the injustice of the Vietnam War. I and many others believe that this is the reason he was killed, much more than for his stalwart work for civil rights.

This weekend, many people will be quoting Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I'll bet you that even President Bush quotes this speech sometime in the next three days. Many consider it Dr. King's magnum opus, but they neglect -- perhaps intentionally, perhaps not -- the speech he gave not long before his death, "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam". So that this is not forgotten, so that the words of this great patriot, America's greatest peacemaker, are not left to history, particularly in these days when we most desperately need to hear them, please download and listen to Dr. King's thoughts on the Vietnam War, which can plainly be applied to any war.

And do read the original. I know you are all old enough to remember that war. It was my first exposure to politics. I remember it. And I remember being ten years old and asking all the adults around me why we were there, and I remember noone could give any answers then either. I remember green-light videos of those missiles on the news. I remember people talking about Vietnam, a mythical word the wound too new to expose to some kid. And I remember losing power with those green lights when the hurricane hit Maine. It passed straight over us. I remember the eye, the deafening silence.