Issue #3 of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind!

Issue #3 of Don't Leave Your Friends Behind is finished!!

41 pages of ways to support families in radical and social justice movements, including:

• organizing the Kids' Track at the Allied Media Conference
• a group interview with Revolutionary Motherhood's own Noemi Martinez, Fabiola Sandoval and Maegan "La Mala" Ortiz on supporting single mothers of color
• an interview with Diana Block on raising children while underground
• what other organizers can learn from La Leche League
• Kidz' City!
• holistic first aid for all ages
• babyproofing for punks

and much much more!

We made a PDF to better share it, so you can print, and distribute as you like: ithttp://issuu.com/strongwindsahead/docs/don_tleaveyourfriendsbehindzine3.bw.final

If you want a paper copy sent to you, please send $3 (or $5 for two and give the second to an ally in your life!) to:

V. Law
PO Box 20388
Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009

Apply for the School of Our Lorde Poetics Unit by January 25th!: Available in Durham and the Diaspora!

The School of Our Lorde is comprised of 4 units of Thursday evening sessions that allow participants to deeply engage and build on the work of Audre Lorde as transmitted through the committed (obsessive) research of Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the poetics, teaching practices, political implications and publishing interventions of Audre Lorde’s work (and to enjoy delicious local desserts together) on Thursday evenings. Participants will also get coursepacks with some exclusive and unpublished materials on/by Lorde. Participants can choose to participate in one 3 week semester or the entire 4 month process. Engaging, interactive poetic childcare will be provided at every session with amazing activities imagined with and implemented by Beth Bruch!!!! No one who completes an application and can attend will be turned away.

February 2010: Poetics ****Applications Due January 25th 2010****

Poetics: Audre Lorde is best known as a warrior poet. In February, School of Our Lorde participants will get a change to deeply engage Lorde’s poetry (with the benefit of Lex’s archival research on her revisions) and write their own poetry. We will meet over dessert on Thursday February 4th, 11th and 18th (Audre’s b-day!!!!) and the poets will perform their own new or transformed work at a community reading on Saturday February 20th.

Apply for the poetics course here: School of Our Lorde Poetics Application (pdf version)

School of Our Lorde Poetics Application

email applications to brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com or drop them off at the Inspiration Station (email for directions)

Distance Learning

For those of you who are not lucky enough to live in Durham, NC right now...don't worry. Audre Lorde and I both believe in long-distance love.

You can participate in the School of Our Lorde long-distance in 3 ways:

Host Your Own Satellite Campus!:

Why not have School of Our Lorde at your organization or in YOUR living room!? If you can gather 5 or more people to participate in any unit you can get a course packet with the course readings and worksheets to guide you through each session. You can also participate (along with other satellite campuses) in a monthly interactive BrightTalk session and office hours on LiveStream.

Our vision is that each Satellite Campus will be able to make a sliding scale contribution of $75-200 per unit. No group will be turned away.

To become a host, email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com with what session you'd like to host and your vision!

Independent Study:

Let us know how the School of Our Lorde poetics, pedagogy, politics of publishing process can support something you are working on with/for your community. You will get a course packet and worksheets. You can also participate (along with other satellite campuses) in a monthly interactive BrightTalk session and office hours on LiveStream.

Fill out the application for the appropriate unit here: http://summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/registration/

and get 7 people to financially support your participation. Our hope is that each independent student will raise between $50-150 to contribute to the School of Our Lorde. No one will be turned away!

Lorde as Our Witness:

You can participate in the School of our Lorde through this blog. There will be weekly video blog updates and reflections from the local participants and you can always post comments and questions here and I'll respond. Feel free to spread the good news in your community so one day you can host a School of Our Lorde institute where you live!

AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio Forces Woman to Give Birth While Shackled

The news team for Telemundo 52 recently reported on Alma Minerva Chacon, a women who was terrorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Unfortunately, she is just the latest in a long line of Latinos who have suffered at the hands of the ruthless Sheriff whose personal goal is to rid Arizona of all "illegals" and just maybe, all Latinos. Arpaio has repeatedly stated that he is breaking no laws and just enforcing the constitution by arresting more than 600 Latinos a year. But the problem with his tactics is that less than half of those arrested are even in this country illegally.

The most recent atrocity committed by the self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" involves a woman who was detained while 9-months pregnant. Alma Minerva Chacon's case has been receiving media attention due to the brutality with which she was treated. The very same night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and found herself afraid and alone, being rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs chained in shackles.

Once she reached the hospital, nurses repeatedly begged the Sheriff's staff to allow them to unchain the mother, but they refused and Chacon was forced to give birth while still shackled to the bed. At one point, the nurse asked for them to release her so that she could be escorted to the bathroom for a urinalysis, but even that request was denied. But the worst came once Chacon gave birth to her baby girl.

Still chained to the bed, Arpaio's police staff refused to allow Chacon to hold her newborn baby and then warned her that if no one came to pick up the child within 72 hours, she would be turned over into state custody. Telemundo 52 sat down with Chacon and let her tell her side of the story.

Check out the interview here and if you don't support Sheriff Arpaio's barbaric practices sign the petition at www.SheriffJoeMustGo.com

Be Bold Be Re(a)d: The Podcast

3 years ago women of color came together and transformed what it meant to transform terror on Halloween, declaring October 31st Be Bold Be Red Day, a day for women of color and allies to speak out against violence against women. And 30 years ago women of color came together to respond to violence in the same critical and poetic spirit.

Towards the world the we all deserve, fully transformed from the misogyny and internalized racism we face in popular music to the frightening expendability of the lives and bodies of women of color this podcast places the brave voices of women telling the truth about gendered violence over the remixed sounds of Miles Davis. This year we take every sound back, starting with our own voices and the background that seeks to silence them.

Listen with your community, your class, your friends, your study group, your church, your crew, pass the link on or listen by yourself and see, hear and wear red.

listen here

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/real-be-bold-be-red-podcast.mp3]

or download here: http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/real-be-bold-be-red-podcast.mp3

the divine survivors clinic

welcome to the divine survivors clinic!

my name is mai’a.

i am offering free reiki treatments to us– the lovers, the fighters, and the survivors. a way to reduce pain, cleanse and strengthen the body, balance the emotions and experience more clarity and vitality in our lives.

the divine survivors clinic began as a vision i had at dawn listening to the fajr call to prayer.

i have seen that many of us as doing amazing life-changing work and yet suffer from long terms and short term illnesses. we do not have the time, money, energy to eat well, laugh, meditate, move, and mother ourselves. we live on the edges of society, enduring and resisting with every breath, the various and connected forms of violence.

reiki is a specific frequency or wave of energy. i tune into this energy. connect with your mind and body (no matter where you are in the world). and then reiki vibrates throughout your being. allowing you to relax, de-stress, and transmutate toxins in the body.

selah.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.
–Audre Lorde

* is a safe, gentle, non-physical healing practice that reduces stress and promotes relaxation and transformation of all kind of ailments and disease.
* can never act harmfully.
* is not controlled by the practitioner, but by the needs of recipient’s bodymind.
* is not limited by time nor space. and thus can be activated across distances and times, allowing us to commune across oceans, heal the past and create a joyous future.
* transforms toxins and illness in the physical, emotional, and psychological systems.
* is not a religion and belief in reiki is not necessary for it to work.

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Podcast!

Check out this FIRST EVER PODCAST as part of the BrokenBeautiful Press educational campaign "Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind." Black Feminism LIVES by every means necessary.

What does it take to survive a year like 1979?

This first podcast is about the year 1979 and how the world, and black feminism began and ended in some crucial ways that year. With the election of Ronald Reagan, the Boston Murders, the Atlanta Child Murders and the Greensboro Massacre all attacking the the lives, minds and spirits of black women 1979 was a crucial year. This podcast focuses on how Audre Lorde, Alexis DeVeaux, June Jordan and Barbara Smith reach(ed) across time and space to transform the meaning of survival. (And there is some good period appropriate and anachronistic music too!)

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/08/1979.m4a]

download to your itunes here:
http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2009/08/1979.m4a

Please leave comments here!

p.s. Sorry about the moments of outburst distortion. A sista is clearly super exuberantly excited about black feminism and promises to stay a little further away from the mic on podcast number two! :)

Mami Vs. Mommy, Mami’hood vs Motherhood

Mami Vs. Mommy, Mami’hood vs Motherhood

from mamita mala

Hermana, Resist Says:

Like seriously, I’m supposed to explain to someone who doesn’t even get what the difference between Mami and Mommy means, I’m supposed to explain sanewhy my form of media is valid in their movement? I’m supposed to try to sell you on my career?

What career? This is my life, my kids life, our sanity.
And for the record, no we don’t start or “media” after we get funded and no we don’t start working on “media” when we’re up for a sabbatical. No we don’t start any “movement” after our grant gets accepted. Some money might come along the way, some one will donate $10 or $50 or someone gets a scholarship to attend a conference that’ll be critiqued the hell outa.

It gets tiring having to explain Mami vs mommy, mother, mom. I probably shouldn’t frame it as a vs. cuz it’s not like mommy media makers, mom 2.0′ers and mamis are fighting each other. Most of the time we’re ignoring each other. I can’t say exactly why the moms/mommies/mothers ignore radical mami’s of color, especially us single media maker ones, like when at the Women’s Equity Media Summit I had to ask that Mommy be changed to Mami up on the paper in the front of the room, or like when I after I explained why mami (Mami based in my Latina/WOC identity, based in the hypersexualization or the diminishing of my sexuality, based because my mami’hood is a fucking community that I am working every damn moment to create and live in not some marketing tool or playdate), the woman walked away and gave two other mamis and me her back.

“Guess she’s not a mami” one of us said shrugging.

When the two other mamis and I came up with lists, words, stanzas and lyrics about who/what we were (cuz we have a long ass history that Ms. China Martens is gonna help me document by coming to casa mala so I can write ::wink wink::), the people in the room of that Women’s Equity Media Summit fucking cheered. These were some of the ideas that came out of the mami conversations.

Pero when the applause and the patting on the back stops, when the one on one conversations in corners that amount to nothing but some white mujer telling us thanks for doing/saying the things I’m too lazy/privileged to be bothered, where is the support or the “resourcing” that women media makers are supposed to be doing?

Not that we’re holding our breath or anything. When I ignore you, fail to link to you, not attend your conference, think about why.