This story about Jess Espanola, a Filipino immigrant who came from poverty only to become an animator for one of the longest running television series and win an Emmy might make you teary-eyed. You’ve been warned. 

And then there’s Mike Roberts, a man with a minimalist lifestyle wherein he has fewer than fifty possessions. My volume of my sock and underwear drawer would probably sadden him. He’s inspiring nonetheless. 

But the story that’s got me going lately isn’t from KCET, it’s a link to HuffPo, entitled “Top 5 Regrets of the Dying.” You won’t regret checking it out (nudge nudge, wink wink). Not surprisingly, folks don’t mention regretting that they didn’t floss more often. 

indiegogo.com/AmericanRevolutionary

American Revolutionary – Indiegogo Pitch from American Revolutionary on Vimeo.

Children, by the very nature of being children, have infinite amount of time ponder completely non-essential questions. They have the leisure to thoughtfully consider the great questions that have pestered people-kind for years upon years. These are the would you rather quandaries that have enflamed schoolyard disputes and blacktop banter.
If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, would you rather eat ice cream or pizza?

If you could only marry one of the Chipmunks, would you rather marry Alvin, Simon or Theodore?
If you had to had to switch your fingers and toes, would you rather have your fingers instead of toes (and still have your normal hand-fingers) or toes instead of fingers (and still have normal feet-toes)?

Unfortunately, children, by the vary nature of being children, lack the weight of experience that comes from decades of living—of waking up everyday for more years than you can count on your fingers (or toes) and trying to figure out what you were waking up for. Though they have the time to think through these questions, they are unable to fully grasp the implications of their decisions because they are still at an age where a game like tag is a valid form of interaction.

It’s obvious to us now, as adults—as world-wearied creatures with skin that loses elasticity everyday the sun beats down on us, what all of the correct choices are.
Pizza. Pizza is as delicious out-of-the-fridge-cold as it is straight from the oven. Pizza contains more food groups than ice cream. Pizza is also much more portable, wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil or a flat cardboard box, for those of us who are constantly on-the-go and can only eat one thing for the rest of our lives.

Simon. Although Alvin might seem like the obvious choice to marry because of his unabashed confidence, disarming chipmunk handsomeness, non-threatening mischievousness and he’s the lead in the band—but he is more of a casual fuck-buddy type of friend than marriage material. (Please don’t judge me for referring to a cartoon chipmunk as a fuck-buddy possibility, as if this is out the realm of your imagination and you’ve never though about making out with The Little Mermaid.) Simon’s a total geek, with his coke-bottle glasses and unassuming wit. He’s the one that’s going to be the founder of something like Facetweet and be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. He will start a foundation that trains young women from developing nations to become green engineers and win eight simeaultanous Nobel Peace Prizes and a trip to the moon, plus one.

Fingers instead of toes (and still have your normal hand-fingers).With this mutant disfiguration, one can conceivably change the dynamics and physicality of competitive gymnastics. Imagine the insane amounts of flipping, contortiony things that can be accomplished on the double bars or balance beam if the gymnast had fingers on their toes! The only negative I can think of is in the difficulty of purchasing shoes, as we are a majority feet-toes world—but that’s a small price to pay to be a multi-gold medaled Olympian.

Amidst the cacophony of nonsense and logic that goes behind discovering the right answer to the would you rathers, there was always one that I found to be unanswerable: would you rather be deaf or blind? Of the five senses that children learned that they are capable of sensing, the ability to see and hear were the most obvious to choose between. Smelling, tasting and touching were secondary to watching and listening to TV.

I was a teenager the last time I had seriously considered this. Teenagers, by the very nature of being teenagers, operate on binary: black or white, prep or punk, brooding angst or naïve joy, horny or bored. Normally, it was easy to choose between either/or, but I was in high school and felt like I was discovering lost artifacts when I listened to a band or read a zine for the first time. I could not choose between sight and sound—I was adamant about keeping both those senses intact. I was done with the would you rathers when I faced the fallacy of a game where the choices were both equally uncool and somewhat plausible. The options aren’t fun to choose between if they aren’t absurd, semi-fantastical situations—the lost of vision and hearing wounds mortals everyday. And isn’t it a privilege to have the choice of which sense we would begrudgingly allow to degrade as part of a game with a sole purpose to kill time and not necessarily answer tough questions about the human condition?

A couple weeks ago I was walking Jack around the neighborhood, it was late evening and I peered into every lit window as Jack pissed on every other shrub we passed. I watched him skip ahead of me, his small white body bouncing while his four lean legs fluttered beneath him. I looked up at the sky and found familiar constellations and a bright moon beaming down on rooftops and tall trees. And suddenly, without any prompting, a flood of visuals wound its way through my brain.

My mother’s face when I surprised her on Mother’s Day last year by showing up at the dim sum restaurant a thousand miles away from my apartment. The Tibetan grassland plains with low rolling hills of lush green, an ocean blue sky and the kinds of large downy white clouds we drew as children, around in 360 degrees for as far as the eye could make out existence. The way DanE’s hazel eyes become more emerald when he wears green t-shirts.

I thought about how we can’t hear smiles or the ridiculous faces we made during inappropriate times. I thought about Cindy Sherman, Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” and David Hockney. I thought about Mimi Nguyen’s “Evolution of a Race Riot” and every other zine I had ever read. I thought about books and the way type floated on its pages, how stoic text can turn my imagination loose.
And it was while walking Jack when I realized that—if I would rather—I choose sight. This may be an unpopular sentiment amongst Razorcake readers, and yes I would miss music and the way it can say things through words sung out loud that we are otherwise incapable of expressing. I would miss the sound of laughter, the power of a hearty rally cry and dancing my face off.
It isn’t often that I am reminded of and revisit childhood questions, but when this epiphany struck me, it felt definitive. It felt satisfying, as if I had wizened with age and was now capable of answering tough questions. But it makes me wonder whether I really choose sight, or if its just the act of choosing that I needed. That all these years of waking up every morning, and occasionally questioning why I was waking up every morning, had a purpose to it. So that one day I can wake up and be definitive about something—know something as completely as I could possibly know it.
Or maybe I chose sight because I’d really love to see a foot-fingered gymnast kill on the balance beam one day.

“For folks whose entire identity and personhood is under attack every day, it is important and very political to stake claim to who they are. It’s often the most courageous act anyone can do,” said Walidah Imarisha.

Walidah was speaking specifically about her adopted brother, Kakamia, but she also meant people in our communities who feel like they can not be their whole selves. Kakamia’s ability to be all part of himself – Black-Puerto Rican-Irish, visual artist, organizer, bisexual, California state prisoner, poet — and to embrace the complex identities of others he meets without judgment, has inspired Walidah political and personally.

As a young woman of color, Walidah’s experiences in high school in Oregon as one of the few students of color shaped her understanding of racial justice. It was a hostile environment, where students of color were pushed down the stairs and told to “go back to where they came from.” At the time, Walidah didn’t understand why it was happening; her political awakening began when she searched for answers.

Walidah’s first political march was in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist, lifetime community organizer, and prisoner on Pennsylvania’s death row. His supporters, including Walidah, believe he should be set free. She found that Mumia’s case touched on many social justice issues and it ignited her interest in examining the prison system.

At the same time, Walidah happened upon an ad in the San Francisco Bay View, a political Black newspaper. It advertised Afrocentric and radical artwork done by a young California prisoner. Walidah wrote a letter to Kakamia inquiring about his work, and it changed her life. “I always like to say I mail-ordered myself a brother,” she laughed.

“The connections Kakamia and I don’t have in blood, we make up for in ink,” said Walidah. As artists and poets, Walidah and Kakamia used their words to commune with one another. Their bond grew so deep, the two adopted each other as sister and brother before ever even setting eyes on one another five years after the first letter.

In 2000, Walidah moved to Philadelphia and started organizing there. Her work began to explore the multiple layers of identity, and the way that oppressions intersect for people of color. She helped to found the Human Rights Coalition, with an organizing group of prisoners’ families and ex-prisoners aimed at supporting prison organizing, empowering prisoners’ family members, and ultimately abolishing the prison system.

During her time with the HRC, one of the members, an older Black woman whose son was incarcerated, learned of abuses happening to a transgendered prisoner of color, and wanted the group to organize around it. Walidah was apprehensive about the response from the other members, as they had never discussion sexual or gender identity as a group. But the group was overwhelmingly supportive, and Walidah learned a very important organizing lesson: Never underestimate our communities.

She also was educated more herself on the multiple disparities and oppressions that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people of color face, while recognizing there were few organizations of color for them to turn to. These experiences helped Walidah to shape the intersectional lens that impacts her work to this day, especially in the Uniting Communities project.

Walidah feels that Kakamia’s strength and his ability to build community and organize under the worst of situations – from a prison cell – have helped inspire her organizing work in the almost two decades they have known one another. “His energy is really like the energy that Uniting Communities is working to embody, seeing people as whole human beings, not making someone choose one part of themselves and check the rest at the door,” Walidah explained.

Since 2010, Walidah Imarisha has been a trainer and organizer at the Western States Center and works on the Uniting Communities project. The goal of Uniting Communities is to raise up the experiences, needs and leadership of LGBTQ people of color in organizations and communities of color. Walidah pointed out the importance of a project like Uniting Communities (UC) because “this is our community, this is our issue ;we are not just being allies. This is the work of organizing and empowering our communities.”

“There is also the idea that communities of color are more aggressively homophobic, and sometimes our communities internalize this idea as well. It’s really important to have organizations and leaders stand up to break this myth,” said Walidah. “We recently conducted an eye-opening set of interviews with more than 40 leaders of color in Portland, and overwhelmingly, the leaders said they would support LBGTQ equality—but not one as never asked for their support. This is inspiring and important to remember for the UC project, for all of our work.”

Uniting Communities has already supported 10 organizations in Oregon-based in organizations of color to raise up the needs, experiences and leadership of LGBTQ people of color in their existing program work. Earlier this year, the Center expanded the project beyond Oregon; the Center now work with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Mobilize the Immigrant Vote in California and Greater Birmingham Ministries in Alabama.

Uniting Communities strives to build a culture of inclusiveness so that no one is left out. In providing support for Uniting Communities, Walidah feels Kakamia constantly teaches her the most important lesson of all for an organizer. “His outlook always has been ‘Just come as you are. Whatever your issues, your problems, we’ll work it out when you get here.’ That’s what making a community is about.”

Quite often, almost on a minute-to-minute-basis, I am reminded of how little I understand of the physical space and contemporary culture that I live in. My small brain has trouble understanding abstract ideas, like the notion that everything that we can see—and even things that we cannot see like gas and odors—are made up of atoms. I have never seen an atom, except for science-book renderings that depicted them as miniscule glossy spheres. I’ve never been able to reconcile those tiny balls and how they form water, dirt or fish sticks.
Apparently, lots of kids ask ‘Why is the sky blue?’ though I don’t remember asking that myself. Some things just seemed obvious in its answer, the sky is blue because it’s the sky. What color would the sky be if it wasn’t blue?! I have seen the a thick layer of clouds cover the sky so that it was a muted grey that stretched far beyond the horizon, and I have seen marbled swirls of fire orange and deep lavender that glowed at sunset. I have seen night skies that looked like a mauve brown painted against black, a night sky that is the result of clouds absorbing the lights of a city. The first time I distinctly remember seeing a brown night sky was when I was in high school, on the weekend of my grandmother’s funeral. As Buddhist ceremonies dictate, all of her kin were dressed in white robes and sat on a straw mat for three days of prayer for her safe arrival into the underworld. On the second night, after a full day of mat-sitting, I looked into the sky and didn’t see the infinite expanse of space and stars. It was heavy and brown and felt like closed thick curtains hung above us. By then I was too old to ask, ‘Why is the sky brown?’ though I don’t think anyone could have answered it for me.
What is brown? How do I know it’s not orange? Why is orange named after a fruit? Or is it the other way around? How come green is called green and not peas? Maybe folks who are color-blind are the ones who are actually seeing colors as they are intended to be seen. Why are some eggs white and others are brown? Why do we eat eggs? Is it because eating the unfertilized unborn is so delicious? What came first, the scramble or the omelet?
Why do high school students need to learn math beyond algebra and geometry? Is it really that practical to study calculus and trigonometry, especially in this economy where the vast number of university graduates can’t find work and end up shopping at the dollar store anyway? Doesn’t it make more sense to teach them how to fill out food stamps applications without feeling shame?
How come ‘Communications’ is still a valid field of study? It’s so vague and non-descript and it makes me feel as though universities are awarding degrees to students merely for showing up, paying tuition and ‘communicating.’ And what’s ‘Business Administration’? I know plenty of immigrants who are functionally illiterate in English and have been successful in owning small businesses without being tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a piece of paper. My mom is the general manager of two busy restaurants and she’s just learning how to send e-mails. And me? Well, with almost a decade worth of post-university experience, I’m still earning less than I did from my first big job after school,
Why do humans have memories and insight and inner monologues? How is it that these relatively small organs that sit insides our skulls can perform such complex tasks like recalling memories from decades past or being able to function on 18-hour workdays without my head rolling off my shoulders? But at the same time my brain isn’t able to parse away some space to remember the majority of my own birthday dinners or the name of my best friend from kindergarten who used to get into trouble with me for talking too much. I remember having mock elections in second grade and voting for George Bush (Sr.) over Michael Dukakis, I don’t remember why I chose him because my parents didn’t vote and didn’t discuss politics around the house. I remember voting for Nader in 2000 because I was emboldened by youth and naiveté and this foreign notion of change. I remember being seven-years-old and specifically wanting to be the first Asian-American and woman president, but I can’t remember when that dream dissolved. I remember loving the rain when it came occasionally during our southern California winters, and I remember my first day after I had moved to Portland and crying in frustration in the unrelenting downpour. I can remember details of all the places I’ve lived like the Chinatown apartment with the broken tile in the kitchen that I used to pretend was the porthole into Adam West’s Batcave or the studio apartment I had in Van Nuys where I heard police helicopter buzz overheard everyday, but I cannot the specific addresses. I remember life before the internet and kinda feel bad for kids who will never know that. I can’t remember who I thought I’d be when I grew up—I’m not sure I have an idea now either.
Why do people have children, knowing full well the gamut of hurt and pain that can befall these small people created? Why do I consider having my own children knowing the same thing? Is it narcissism or a biological drive? How does DNA look? Am I really to believe that my blood stream is swimming with interwoven double helix, floating about determining the color of my hair and the shape of my earlobes? Why are we taught to believe things we can’t see? Why do I even care? Oh wait, I care because when my dad blames me for being short because I didn’t sleep enough and insisted on staying up late during my adolescence, I don’t have to carry around the guilt of being a midget but understand that I am short because he’s short too. Why didn’t I pay more attention in Biology? Why aren’t I fascinated by quantum physics? Is it because I feel like the less I know, the better? Am I just trying to run out the clock?
Why can’t we be more like all the other animals—naked, primal and without desires beyond hunting, eating and fucking? Why do I find myself yearning to be a dog? Sometimes I’ll look at my friends’ dogs and be envious of their lives, laying about and sleeping all day. They want nothing more than a w-a-l-k and perhaps a few crumbs from that sandwich you’re eating. All they want is affection and to protect you and to snuggle up against your warmth on a cold night, I mean, really, that’s all I want too. We want comfort and isn’t that why we work so hard? Isn’t that why we spend more waking hours at our workplaces than we do at our homes, so that we have a soft spot to sleep in?
I remember being a kid and looking at the clouds in the sky and day dream about living upon them like the Care Bears did. I remember being on my first plane ride when I was 18-years-old and thinking how amazing it was going to be above the clouds. A couple years ago, I hiked through Nepal and literally walked above a cloud and it was anticlimactic and satisfying at the same time. Why am I so obsessed with the sky and whatever it is that inhabits the sky? Why do I want to be up there when its blue, or grey or brown? Even though birds get to soar high, do they even enjoy it? Is it better to not know than it is to wonder endlessly?

I was completely enthralled with this Promise Land story about the effects of the BP spill on the Viet-American population in New Orleans. I was unaware that such a large population of Viet immigrants had settled there and this story about a community, and how their community organizers, are working to rebuild and continue on with their lives and livelihoods was another reminder that surviving can be a challenge and living is overcoming that challenge.

That was me in fourth grade- nine little years on this planet. It was my first year at a new school that wasn’t in a predominant Asian-American immigrant neighborhood.
There was this kid, Richard Sanchez, who tormented me. He called me every Asian-related slur his ten-year-old brain could remember. I spent entire lunch recceses hiding in a stall in the girls bathroom rather than face him. I sat on the toilet, with my pants at my ankles so that it looked like I was using the potty, and just stared at the metal stall door as I waited for the end-of-lunch bell to ring. The confusion and anxiety that I held inside my small body was compounded by the fact that I didn’t tell my parents because I didn’t think they could help. I was in the fourth grade, learning about fractions at school and calling utility companies to ask about billing questions at home. If my parents couldn’t settle an odd charge on our phone bill, how would they stop Richard Sanchez?

Even though the bullying hurt terribly and I was just a kid- I never questioned why I was who I was. Even though I had never felt such blind vile hate shot right at me- I knew that I was worthwhile. Even though I would watch TV sitcoms and daydreamed about how lovely it would be to live with a white suburban family- I knew that I belonged where I was. Even though I didn’t think my parents could make it better- I knew that if they survived the Vietnam war then I could survive a kid who made me cry every day.

I had a type of strength that only a child could have, the type of strength that comes from truly believing in fairy tales and the heroic deeds and historical legacies of the folks who existed before us. Fourth grade was the year that I learned about Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. and about altruism and character. I learned about how a single person can inspire social change even if they are made to feel powerless. I learned about how people build movements—one mind and one heart at a time. I learned to let Richard Sanchez get it out of his system, because he was just another kid of immigrants too, probably frustrated and confused about the two worlds he lived in.

Now, 20 years after fourth grade, I find myself working for an organization whose mission is to build a progressive movement from the ground up—with people power. Our organization, Western States Center, supports the work of other orgs and individual community organizers who fight for social justice in the region.
We have a program here called WILD (Western Institute for Leadership Development), which is a year-long intensive training for emerging community organizers. Through WILD, participants gain invaluable leadership, management and community organizing skills. They also deepen their understanding and analysis of social justice issues such as gender justice, LGBTQ equality and racial justice.
Taj Suleyman a graduate from our WILD Class of 2006-2007 said “If it’s not for WILD I would continued to feel lost and isolated in the U.S. I wouldn’t know how to advocate for my community and for what we need.”
Folks like Taj are continuing to lay the foundation for progressive change within our communities that can help to build and inspire a larger movement. Our WILD grads may not be written about in history books, but they are working toward creating history.
I think about the folks who arrived in America long before my parents walked through the LAX terminal, toward the Social Security administration office to receive their refugee status, about all of the work that community organizers had to do to create systems that offered multi-lingual and multi-cultural services to my mother and father. I think about the folks who organized and protested the war in Vietnam- to end the brutality on both sides. I think about the grassroots movements, and the people who worked tirelessly within them, that shaped policies that we take for granted- policies for inclusion and diversity. I think about how I can support the work of community organizers, to ensure that we can continue to pay it forward and forward for future generations.

I think about who I would be if I didn’t have Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. to look up to, if I didn’t have those two community organizers to ignite my own belief in myself- who would I have become?

This is why I am asking you to join me to support the upcoming WILD class of 2011-2012, which starts this fall. The work of community organizers is only as strong as the community that supports it. Folks like you, who support the progressive movement, keep the momentum going to build stronger communities where everyone can thrive. Your support is just as essential as the training that the activists receive at WILD.

Please visit my fundraising page for the next WILD class and considering supporting the work of community organizers and activists. The grassroots movement toward building a more just society is propelled by people power. Will you be one of those people?

When Jeana Frazzini was growing up in in central Washington, her family owned the local pizza parlor. It was the type of hang-out where anyone who came through was always treated with dignity and respect.

“Folks who felt like they didn’t belong anywhere were always welcomed at my dad’s pizza place,” said Jeana. She started working around the restaurant when she was eight years old and was raised in an environment that laid the foundation for the work she would do. “I’ve just always been a person who fights for the underdog.”

After graduating from college, Jeana moved to Portland to pursue organizing and social justice work. After a number of years working on a variety of causes, in 2005, Jeana joined the staff of Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), a statewide organization that formed to fight against anti-LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer) measures. The far right had been pushing for anti-LGBTQ ballot measures since 1988— and Basic Rights Oregon was an underdog pushing back against their attempts at anti-equality policies such as Measure 36.

As a board member, Jeana and the Basic Rights staff worked steadfastly to mobilize voters to vote “no” on Measure 36, a 2004 state ballot that would amend the Oregon Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Their opponents had hired an African-American woman as the spokesperson for an otherwise white-led campaign, a tactic that helped to make voters feel as though Measure 36 wasn’t discriminatory because a woman of color was speaking on behalf of it.

The pro-equality campaign scrambled to engage leaders in communities of color and LGBTQ people of color because those relationships had not been in place prior to the campaign. But it didn’t feel right. “We hadn’t done the work in advance to build strong relationships in communities of color,” said Jeana.

When the votes came in, Measure 36 passed. Basic Rights had to reevaluate how they were doing their work and with whom. And this included being thoughtful when asking themselves “How do we, as an organization, engage people of color?”

“It was humbling,” Jeana recalled. “We received feedback that our LBGTQ members of color were saying that ‘I don’t see a place for myself in this organization. You don’t prioritize the needs of my community.’ It was difficult to hear these things because I’ve always fought to include everyone in the struggle for justice and here we were leaving people behind. We were missing a whole lot of the community.”

The Basic Rights Oregon team realized that it wasn’t so much about how to get people of color to the table to discuss these issues, but how to create a table that is welcoming and inclusive. In 2006, they launched a partnership with Western States Center to integrate racial justice in its organization—starting with basic dismantling racism training. The Center provided a roadmap as to what the work would look like for an organization like Basic Rights.

“Without the help of the Center, it would have been much more of a struggle to transform our organization and begin to do work that engages LGBTQ people of color,” said Jeana. “Together, we were able to create cultural change for our organization and for our members.”

By 2007, the Center supported Basic Rights through an internal organizational transition and now the organization was ready to get their members on the same page. Within the year, they hosted a series of workshops on immigrant rights and racial justice that informed their members about why it is important for an LGBTQ organization to ally with other groups who are being attacked by the same far right organizations. The Center supported Basic Rights in deepening their relationship with organizations like CAUSA, Oregon’s immigrant rights coalition.

“Our opposition is often the same—the person who promoted a local anti-immigrant ballot measure in 2008 was the same person who had been involved in earlier anti-gay ballot measures,” said Jeana. “Most importantly, these anti immigrant ballot measures impact LGBTQ immigrants—so this is a direct issue for our members.”

Since 2009, racial justice work has become a core part of Basic Rights Oregon’s work in every aspect of their programs and they have prioritized the engagement and leadership of LGBTQ people of color.

“Nowadays, rather than saying, ‘Isn’t it interesting that we are doing this type of work.’ Now our members expect us to do this work.”

This reminded me of the handful of times that friends and I would be walking or biking by a party, and being emboldened by the obliviousness of youth and alcohol, we would saunter in like we belonged there. Never had I been kicked out of a house party I wasn’t invited to.
Perhaps my confidence was backed by the fact that I had a “plan” should anything happen. It entailed the following:

1. If asked, “Who invited you?” or “Who did you come with?” Always answer with names like Chris, Mike or Jen. Everyone knows a Chris, Mike or Jen. And make sure to say that Chris, Mike or Jen was the one who was invited and had brought you along.
2. Be inconspicuous, unless, of course, your conspicuousness makes you more fun to have at the party. For instance, if you’re just about sneaking in to have a few beers for free, don’t make a scene. But if you’re there to hang out and have a good time, go ahead and dance your ass off. Other party-goers will appreciate your enthusiasm.
3. Don’t insult anyone. Even if you really really want to. At the very least, insult them behind their backs to your own friends to avoid getting into a scuffle. I thank the high beings that I always had the wherewithal to talk shit about folks and not to them. Though, make sure you do it in a not-so-loud manner, because I’ve sometimes said things too loudly.

Now, if only I could train Jack to sniff out really awesome dance parties in the neighborhood I would be stoked.