“Panel on the Criminalization of Black and Brown Youth”
Amazing panelists, awesome attendance, great planning and raised a lot of money :) YAY
Rally @ Pomona College on Cesar Chavez day for the 16 fired dining hall workers. It was HUGE! Super well organized! BRU came to represent wutwut
and spotted: congresswoman judy chu
Here’s an awesome and thought provoking article that relates to the personal sustainability email, called ‘Silenced Knowings, Forgotten Springs: Paths to Healing in the Wake of Colonialism’.
On the buses
“You’ve probably noticed that most of the people you interact with happen to be men, yeah? It’s because men are socialized to be more open and friendly.” -Esperanza
I’ve noticed this like crazy. The three times I’ve been on the bus… my contacts have ALL been men. And currently we’ve also assigned to follow up with our contacts and it’s been chill- any conversation that goes towards, “do you have a boyfriend,” I just remember to keep a sense of humor and push them back towards the topic at hand: transit racism. It’s worked so far for me. Right now Esperanza has taken Allison, Heidi and I off the buses and we’re doing small projects. Heidi and I are working on making a 3ft x 6ft banner of the BRU’s victories :) Funfun
On the Center
After spending two days there til 5:30PM (they work mad long hours from 8 to whenever they leave wahh), I feel less out of place. Just chilling there doing excel spreadsheet stuff on weekend service from 2004-2010, joking around with the other folk, listening to Carla give Jose a quick rundown of Gender and Sexuality for a high school presentation coming up, sitting in on Carla’s excellent debrief (funny and effective, SO GOOD). Yeah the energy of this office is amazing and everyone works hard not just on their assignments but to be accountable to one another to energize each other.
On Meeting Mo Nishida
Mo is Fred Ho’s pseudo-mentor and he was at the informal talk. I talked to him for like an hour about Buddhism, spirituality, his annual trek (yes, TREK) from Lil’ Tokyo to Manzanar (used to take him 5 days to run now it takes him 8-9 days to walk), Chinatown LA as still a site of resistance. :) I’m going to go visit him random weekends, so if y’all like to know more about Chinatown, subsistence farming, spirituality based on community engagement or all the work this man does in Lil’ Tokyo and since the 1950s, come with me!
On the BRU meeting
First real meeting! Audrey and I went cause we were sleeping over in LA. It was a rainyyy day but mad people still came out. Highlights:
- Barbara was facilitating this meeting and she is good at it. She keeps people super engaged and speaking for myself, I totally forgot the time. I still don’t know how long that meeting was cause I enjoyed it the whole time.
- There was this one instance where a member refused to wear the headphones and Barbara asked him to leave. “It is out of respect, respecting people who wish to speak in the language they are most comfortable in, and if you cannot follow this ground rule we have, then you gotta go.” Then she asked who agrees with this very basic ground rule of respect and people cheered super loud
- Rosalio Mendiola has been buying food for BRU breakfasts for the past I don’t even know years and they are amazingly delicious and healthy.
- CRC folk recapped their victory and the energy and the morale in the room just spiked
- Sunyoung (who is trilingual and is the only one who doesn’t need a headphone) facilitated the presentation on BRU Civil Rights history, what has led us to this point, and the impact that a decision finding the MTA in violation of Civil Rights LAW would have locally and across the country.
- (HILARIOUS) Skit: on the upcoming FTA v. MTA v. BRU decision pointing out key players: Huizar (MTA board member representing working class Brown folk), Leahy (MTA CEO, appointed by board, former bus driver), Mayor Villaraigosa, Eric Holder (Civil Rights Justice head or something), Rogoff (FTA Director) and Yaroslavsky (40 years on MTA board, for middle-class, for rail, for profit) and SUPER PASAJERA (the super passenger)=BRU. Something new I found out: Obama’s re-election campaign is CENTRAL in this decision. Basically Villaraigosa, Holder and Rogoff (all of whom will benefit from Obama being re-elected) are basing their stance (BRU wants them to be on the side of Civil Rights) off of what will be less detrimental to Obama’s campaign.
- What a victory would mean: set precedent for nation: transit boards cannot act without thinking of consequences and community organizations can learn from this tactic. (Previously individual bodies could sue agencies like the MTA (how BRU won the 1994 case) but 2001 Sandoval case: Supreme Court took away this right). Community folk would get to sit on board meetings (or have more of a say) and could lead to a million bus service hours back.
- After the skit, we broke up into groups to talk about reactions and kind of breaking down the skit and relating to the Thursday (tomorrow’s!) rally. I was in a group with Lawrence and Eric. Lawrence is an excellent facilitator (especially this being his first time!). They dialogue mad well here, just sayin.
I think the Strategy Center’s organizers are amazing but I find the BRU members to be even more so.
-vicki
On meeting Fred Ho
Shoooottttt- okay first of all, being in a room with people who have done Left-wing organizing for 1-50 years…. amazing. Second of all… the content of Fred Ho’s lecture was wahhhhhhhhh And his books…I cannot put down Afro Asia, just sayin. Some notes I took:
- His Evolution of Thought: “Yellow Revolutionary Nationalist” to “Marxist, Leninist” in order to try and explain the contradiction of sellouts of oppressed communities, to figure out why people would exploit other people of similar backgrounds (capitalism as global imperialism, and the people who are closer to the ideologies and interests of the system would be more drawn to participation in it) to “Afro Asian….. Music“ (sorry I missed that middle part) such that he’s working towards a Ecosocialist, Matriarchal, Indigenous-Centric, Subsistence-based Revolution at the CELLULAR level.
- Mr. Ho is a cancer warrior. He has metastatic cancer and he notes that he is “at peace with the notion of dying.” “Cancer is not a disease, because it’s not curable. Like cancer is killing the body, capitalism is killing the earth. Both are not curable so instead of reform we need to look at revolution.” Don’t preserve the matrix, don’t be seduced, co-opted, tricked, do away with it.
- Microlevel Revolution: Eliminate Use of Plastics (highest concentration of dioxycin, which plastic decomposes into, is found in mother’s breast milk). Extreme Raw Food Diet (he cured his hypertension, lost weight and got rid of (Type II) diabetes).
- Strip away (1) a priori acceptance of USA (and its borders) (2) reliance on industrial technocentrism- industry cannot heal
- “Scientific Soul is the way to go”- I’m not sure what this means, I was going to look it up
- Ecosocialism: subordination and submission of humans to mother earth (goes back to Mies reading)
- Monoculture is death. Goal is to end the food industrial complex. To fight on the level of democratic policy, we need to expand our space (counterhegemonic spaces) to push out their positions. It’s not about ‘getting a seat at the table,’ it’s thinking about: “How can we make it difficult for them to rule? Push their position.” Build liberated zones= building preconfiguration models.
- Revolutionary Cadre: Fred believes in a multiplicity of organizations and tactics on the ground. So many groups organizing around a radical goal but not one organization directing every movement, so non uniform and non hierarchal. A lot of experiments, projects; welcoming resistance to pragmatism and opportunism (meaning, resistance to cutting long term goals for short term concessions).
- Always be wary of co-optation: ie. Cal fight for Third World Liberation College… became a department under Cal that was then professionalized (student voices edged out) and liberalized (progressive professors edged out).
That’s SOME of my notes. I wish y’all could’ve been there cause he is much more eloquent than I am…. and I am also much more confused and taking time to digest all of this.
-vicki
Last Wednesday I went to the LA MTA Construction Committee meeting, where the agenda was set to discuss a ton of suuuuper interesting issues. I was trying to get some data for the research project that I am doing for the BRU, mapping the powers behind rail development.
And who did I run into?
Some foxy characters from the BRU, of course.
During the first meeting, two BRU members addressed the Board after they submitted their report on the progress of the civil rights review of the MTA.
What did the MTA’s findings show?
Oh hey good news guys, the MTA fixed their racism. It’s all good now.
Some folks from the BRU informed them that if they really wanted to address the issues if inequality inherent in their agency’s agenda, they should really try to work on their racist policies instead of commencing an advertising campaign.
What I had intended to be a morning meeting of sitting through mindless bureaucracy became a participation in a BRU rally, complete with local media outlets, picketing, chanting, singing, and generally being a bunch of rabble-rousers.
Why?
The BRU was protesting the MTA trying to slide in a new methodology for evaluating their system that had not been released to the public for comment or scrutiny. So after we sang beautiful songs of empowerment and resistance, we made our way inside to address the Board about this nonsense at their operations meeting.
After noticing the huge number of people set to speak about this measure, the Board decided to postpone discussion of the issue until more information was made available.
Small victories, small inches wrestled away from the MTA’s smoke and mirrors agenda.
There will be a super important Board Meeting next Thursday, and give tons of insight on the workings of the MTA.
Thursday, March 22nd, 9 am @ the MTA building at Union Station, Third Floor
And also, Mayor Villaraigosa is kind of a dick, which is hilarious to watch.
Solidarity,
Alyssa
