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“…you can disagree, but you don’t need to correct me.”—Ann Zimmerman

Supercharged after Texas Outages

People are doing their best to survive in their homes with no heat, no water, no sewage disposal (they have asked many to not flush their toilets), and temperatures in the single digits or less at nigiht. This is apparently the result of a privatized effort to manage the electrical grid, not for purposes of lowering cost, and not for purposes of more efficient management and maintenance. It seems the primary motivation to privatize the grid was so they wouldn't be interconnected with any other grids, other states.


They didn't want to be forced to share in times of emergency, so now that emergency is on THEIR plates, nobody can chip in to help. And they can't seem to find a solution with both hands and a flashlight.

So people are suffering, and they are resorting to "rolling black outs" to attempt to manage the disaster. That means your power might be working for an hour, then *click* it goes off, for some undetermined period, then *click* it might return. Or not. You have no idea.

If you're on oxygen, or medical equipment that requires power to operate, you're gonna have a really long day, and night, and next day, and next night, for goodness knows how long. This is nuts. Even more laughable, if it wasn't so FUCKING ridiculous, people are already getting power bills more than triple their normal price. So, they have to actually pay EXTRA for the mismanagement of their service. What a great solution! They apparently a) didn't pay attention to weather forecasts for the area, and b) didn't have sufficient capacity to compensate for an extraordinary peak in usage, whicch this is.


Are they offering amnesty for unusually high bills through all of this? No. Are they offering even an apology for the inconvenience? No. Are they offering ANY solution to prevent this from happening again? Um, no. Three strikes, and they have no penalty. That's a fumble, an interception, and an incomplete pass simultaneously. And they have no penalty, or loss of yardage, or points scored against them. Nothing. I am hoping this ain't over until the fat lady sings, and I have no intention of breaking into song anytime soon.

Anyway, I find quite often that white supremacy attempts to dictate cultural norms. I cuss.

I cuss a lot. Sometimes, when I'm excited about something - a concept, an idea, a conversation - I speak loudly. I'm not angry, although when I AM angry, I will speak loudly. When I'm with other women of color, there's not a problem, not even an eyebrow raised. Even when the loud volume is due to frustration or anger, it's met head on. And then we get past it. No big deal, unless you talk about my mama, my spouse, or my children. We just drive on.



There's a way of expressing frustration without getting personal, and we get that. Mere utterance of "foul" words and invectives does not constitute a "foul" conversation, or inappropriateness. When I deal with groups of white women, I frequently find myself under the control of the "tone police". I take it as correction, and that does NOT go over well with me. I'm a grown damned woman, and you can disagree, but you do NOT need to correct me. I may be wrong, but there's a way to say that you have a different understanding of something, or maybe disagree, than saying "I noticed you used the word "dyke" when you were speaking of LESBIANS, and that's a pejorative." I've been using the word "dyke" for longer than some woman-loving-women have been alive, so leave me alone with it. I was called a dyke, and not in a good way, for many years so yeah, it's reclaiming the power of that invective.

To get even more down to it, don't tone police anyone in the middle of an emotional outburst. I had a minister who used to say, "Say what you need to say, and we'll pretty it up later." That is gold to me, especially as a woman, especially as a woman with non-dominant cultural identies, plural, who feels that I have a right to my feelings and opinions. It's far more important for me to get stuff out than it is to make someone else feel comfortable.

We are sometimes numb as we try to navigate the perilous landscape of our world, soif I have emotion, that is NOT a bad thing. I once had an unfortunate outburst in the presence of a dear friend, and it was not pretty. It involved racial epithets and invective and ugly words and feelings. It involved anger and tears and nearly a break down on my part.


My friend let me go, without trying to stop me. When things were calmer, she and I talked about it, and I began with "OK, let me have it. I know that was way over the line.". She said, and I will never forget this, ever...she said, "Ann, who am I to let you have ANYTHING?" She did not make me feel like a monster, she did not make me feel so totally "wrong" that I could not recover. She did not shame me. We are close friends today, and I would trust her with my life. This is what 'sisterhood' feels like to me.

So, I have just spit out a flurry of words and some feelings and the sparks have died down on my keyboard, but that's how I was feeling this morning, in the cold and drearieness of this day. So, *whomp dere it is*.
—Ann Zimmerman, NC


Dear SisterScene Reader, do you have a connection to my story? Wanna share? We’d love to hear what YOU have to say!




First things first!

First things first!

by Ann Zimmerman

I was on a meeting earlier today with some folks, and some of us are taking this Beloved Conversations course, from a theological seminary that credentials a lot of UU ministers. It's an interesting endeavor, and this first module is designed to help participants examine their internal biases, and what informs our participation in the status quo, things that have shaped us into our current form as members of this complicated society, our culture, how we look at citizenship. We didn't get here randomly, or accidentally.

If we want to move beyond our current reality, we need to figure out how we got here. The course is separated by race - white people are taking one facet of the course (focusing on liberation from what is seen as dominant culture, and the inequities that separate the cultures), and BIPOC another (focused more on identity, experiences, the toll of our journeys).

In the meeting, which was about meditation and mindfulness (irrespective of race or politics or current events or activism), there was another participant who is a friend of mine. He is a white, 70-ish, cis-gendered male, highly intelligent. He is taking the Beloved Conversations course, and was expressing some impatience and mild frustration with the course so far, saying that he was waiting for them to "get down to the race stuff" and "was anxious to move beyond all the introductory" materials.

Listening to my friend sharing about the curriculum, and his assessment of everything so far being "introductory", left me with a vague sense of dismay. I wanted to tell him this is how we keep winding up in this place, because some of us think we're beyond all this "introductory" stuff, and we’re ready for the more advanced course, so we can "get to it". Get to what, I want to ask. Get to solving the problem of race in this country? Are you ready to do that? I don't think so.

I know, I know - people mean well. Running the risk of offending or hurting someone's feelings, I sometimes need to say that meaning well is not good enough. Meaning well is roughly equivalent to "thoughts and prayers". Meaning well is a cop out that I feel robs me of the chance to say, very frankly, you don't GET it - you are more likely doing what makes YOU comfortable and allows you to give yourself a pat on the back for doing a good deed.

That's like earmarking federal money for putting up basketball hoops in the projects, while people are starving and can't drink the water. Not saying the basketball hoops aren't important in some contexts, but sometimes that is all that happens. There's no significant action on the food shortage and the water quality and the crime and the educational system. But look - there are basketball hoops. Don't say we didn't do ANYTHING.

Doing just the easy stuff is where I get frustrated. Doing the more difficult stuff...that's another story. Asking the people who live outside the basketball hoops what they feel like they need is more what I see as DOING well, not just MEANING well. Doing well is more what needs to happen right now, and continuing to do well, continuing to do the right things. Not just once, or for a month, or even for a year. For the rest of our lives. It's taken us a while to get here, it's gonna take us a while to get out.

I want to say to some people who mean well...I know you donate to the NAACP and yes, I know you volunteer with the food pantry and and donate clothes and blankets to the homeless shelters. You serve on the boards of various non-profits. But tell me...where do you live? Tell me where your kids go to school. Tell me who your friends are, and where you go for entertainment. Tell me about the books you read and the people you hang with. Tell me if you go to community meetings and listen to the people directly impacted by public policies that you think are great ideas.

Don't tell me about how much you hate hip-hop and rap music because people just can't see how damaging it is to "their" culture. Please don't tell me about how it confuses you why racial and ethnic minority communities are the most impacted by environmental pollution but often the least supportive of environmental activism. Please don't ask me over and over again to give you a list of things you can do to help. I don't speak for the entire Black community, I don't know what you should do. I can't navigate my way out of my OWN hell hole, let along steer an entire diaspora back to safe waters.

What I CAN tell you, however, is how it's been to go through my life as a Black person. I can tell you what it's like to be so frequently the "only" - the only person of color in your circles, in your groups, in your churches, in your work places.

I can tell you how I might have felt a little more included and welcomed during social events, how even something as simple as the decorations let me know I wasn't even an afterthought in the event planning. I can't teach you one damned thing. It's not what I do. My parents were teachers...they went to school to learn how to do that. Me, not so much, plus I have the patience of a flea. I'm trying to learn how to do my own life. If you want to know about that, I'm our girl. Otherwise...there's Google, free for the taking.

People have asked me in the past what I want to see happen. That's like asking me to tell you which grains of sand on the beach I want to see eliminated. Which leaves on a mountain laurel I want to see pruned.

Maybe what I want to see more than anything is knowing that you respect me, as an equivalent human being trying to make her way through this effed up morass of capitalism and power dynamics and the human condition. Maybe what I want to see is that you don’t expect me to be perfect.

I want to see that you're secure in who YOU are, and what you can do, and that you relate to me as the same. I want to see compassion and grace, because we're gonna screw up. Screwing up isn't what makes us imperfect, but not dealing with the imperfection can make us less than human.

I want to see your humanity, and be able to trust you with mine. Not being able to trust you (and vice versa), feeling the need to be constantly on guard and one step ahead is not the way out of this.

Here's a thought: explaining to me "how we do things here" doesn't help me learn anything but how attached you are to your own supremacy. How scared you are that something might change. How unwelcome difference is.

That's always the lesson I get when I'm dealing in dominant culture. My feeling these days, and I believe I've said it before, is that we don't need to be trying to "fix" things, or dismantle what we've already got to make it "more inclusive". Doing that is great for a start, but it still focuses on the existing inequity and gives it power

**Now Pay Attention to Annz Inspiration:**
These days, I'm thinking we may do well to focus on creating something radically new. Something that departs from the status quo, from the traditional. We can retain some parts of the old systems, the parts that work, but let's re-launch the whole effort.

New graphics, new logo, new goals and mission statement. No organizational charts, no linear progressions. Start at the beginning...with the introduction. No skipping ahead to the final chapter because you think you've heard the opening lecture already. We're starting over - it's a new day.

Keep in mind that while it may be a new day, we have debris to clean up from the storm that roared through here yesterday. There are trees down, cars on the sidewalk, signs and roofs that are no more. We've gotta clean that up, but...as they say...many hands make light work. (yeah, that's trite, but sue me later.)

The big thing we are going to need to remember, in building this new community, is that we have GOT to be cognizant of who we are.

We have to know who's here, and who needs to have a place in the final product - that is going to include the people we know, and the people we don't know. The people we agree with, and the people we don't agree with. The people we understand, and the people who make us tear our hair out with their illogical approach to how we live together.

We're going to have to know ourselves, and that's where I started - with this Beloved Conversations. That's what the course is really all about, not regurgitating historical data and testimony of inequities and empirical data concerning the state of racial/ethnic minority communities. We can read that in books and white papers, and we've done it for many years. I might argue that a steady diet of empirical data is what amounts to mental masturbation.

The most honest assessment I can make of myself is that I'm no better than anyone else, and certainly no worse. I'm just who I am. I learned a while back that is really a definition of humility - I am right where I'm supposed to be. If we can start there, we might be able to start doing the work in earnest.

Dear SisterScene Reader, do you have a reaction or feel a connection to my story? Wanna share? We’d love to hear what YOU have to say!

Screen Shot 2021-06-02 at 11.44.24 AM.png

PETITION TO UNC Board of Trustees from 1,619 alum, PLUS the SisterScene:

We are 1,619 University of North Carolina alumni outraged by the Board of Trustees’ failure to approve a tenured professorship for UNC alumna and founder of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Dismissing a list of merits that includes winning a Pulitzer Prize, Peabody Award, and MacArthur “Genius” Grant is an attempt to penalize Nikole Hannah-Jones for her groundbreaking and unvarnished reporting of American history. We demand that the Board of Trustees immediately revisit this matter, grant tenure as recommended by the appropriate faculty, Dean, and Provost, and restore the integrity of our University. #ProudUNCAlumni

To support the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting co-founded by Nikole Hannah-Jones, you can make a donation here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/proud-unc-alumni-1619

To learn more about the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting click here: https://idabwellssociety.org/

SisterScene’s UNC Alumnae:

Meleata Smalls Pinto

Emily Cox

Dear SisterScene Readers: Have you listened to or read the “1619 Project,” yet? Follow the NY Times journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author/documentarian, @NikoleHannahJones

Welcome Bill Crocker, here with Mollie Crocker, into the SisterScene Community for Creative Justice. 7/1/21

Welcome Bill Crocker

As I continue to unpack years of fundamentalist religious trauma/

indoctrination

and childhood trauma

that confused my perception of life and love,

I have found that I can come to accept that I do not fit into a box made by society on who I am “supposed” to be. Be you, be authentic. Don’t worry about labels, terminologies, or standards. No other explanation is needed. #pridemonth #Pride2021 #kindnessmatters #coloryourlife #bekind

36Alétia Ferreira, Sadiee McNeil and 34 others

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