Author: Ann Withorn

 

It’s Not Funny: It Never Was

In the white Southern culture of my youth, April Fools Day demanded cruel jokes at the expense of me, whenever I was serious about anything, especially when I  kept naming what was wrong, what hurt, or simply tried to speak and act honestly in the world. When I reacted with anger, shame or (the worst) tears, I would be taunted, “What’s the matter, girl? Can’t you take a joke? it’s April Fools Day. Why are you so sensitive about everything?”

Sometimes it was just “good natured” teasing– telling me that my face was dirty, or there was a bug in my hair.  Sometimes I would be sent on a “fool’s errand” to look for a surprise package in the yard, or to find a missing toy or our lost dog, who turned out to be tied up under the house. Ha, Ha, fooled again.

When my cousins did this I would be mad; when adults did it I would be humiliated, shamed and, disappointed in myself for falling again for their “jokes”, for believing that this time their lies were true, or because I forgot that it was just another April Fool’s Day.

Indeed, it really was petty, simply part the cruel, evolving set of rituals meant to “toughen me up,” to get me ready for the real world — a place where someday, someone with power would decide to trick me, to lie to me, and ultimately to make me seem like a  fool for falling for the joke…..

I read the news this morning, on another April First, the 72nd April’s Fools Day of my life, and now finally realize that this cruel world is crueler than ever. The “adults” in power are still lying, putting me and all of us in  jeopardy, and still laughing about it, still getting away with it, sill playing us for fools.  Enough.

So I decided to start anew, today, with some serious new April Fool’s Day Resolutions of my own.  I’m through laughing. I’m not being “a good sport,” for anybody, not anymore.

From this day forward I resolve instead to be a Wise Fool…i.e,.no matter what, to always be noticing, naming, and calling out the things that are still seriously wrong:

1) white supremacy, white nationalism and the white supremacists/white nationalists who practice and promote it anywhere.    It’s not funny.

2) male supremacy, misogyny, and all mistreatment and demeaning of women and girls.    It’s not funny; it never was.

3) tolerance of violence at all levels — toward family members, and/or toward “others” deemed needing a lesson, deserving punishment and humiliation of any sort.  It’s not a private matter; it sets deep public patterns.

4) fundamentalism and fundamentalist practice whether based in Christianist, or other faith-based dogma. It’s dangerous to all, not religious “freedom.”

5) disrespect and degradation of the planet by ignoring and continuing the human role in climate change and environmental destruction. It hurts our children’s and grandchildren’s future.

I know my resolutions seem grand, and won’t stop any of these normal, but still evil, practices today– any more than I could keep the “jokes” at bay during my childhood. But at least I can commit again to saying ‘no’, to keep naming what it wrong, whenever and wherever it happens.  And that’s serious.  At least I don’t have to be anyone’s fool, on any day, of any month.

 

Dear friends and receivers of my blog post,

I have not posted here for too long.  Some of you may not really know me, because it seems I keep adding to the list of recipients who become only passive “contacts” due to my lack of technical savvy.  Sorry.

I have mainly been in a state of retreat from new internet communication for several specific reasons: 1)a crisis of confidence in my internet skills which kept blocking out my accounts due to lost passwords, or worse, sent out mistaken messages. That scared me; 2)a probably age-related rise in my own sense of being  “out of it”, or that everything I could say is already being said better by someone younger, wiser or more connected; and 3)an honest lack clarity about how to respond to today’s realities.  The fact that Trump and the Hard Right behind him have not started a war somewhere, or done things worse than were expected/feared since his ascendency left me holding my breath, not wanting to add more foolish predictions to the daily blogosphere. Now I realize that I  miss communicating with a wider circle of old and new comrades.

 

BUT the latest set of media pictures/words from white, mainly Southern men have reminded me of the deepest root of my radicalism — my deep knowledge of, and hatred for, the (Southern) white racism that defined my earliest family and community life for the 21 years until I escaped in 1968.  I have written most recently on my website (“What’s in a Name?”) about how I graduated from the Jacksonville, Florida Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in 1964 which had been so named as a statement of continued reaction during the 1950s integration struggles and how its final un-naming caused controversy in 2014, the year of my 50th reunion. At the time I enjoyed five minutes of local media fame by trying to get my fellow alumni to publicly honor the name change, and to recognize at our event the students and community activists who led the effort to achieve it . (The alumni reunion committee wouldn’t let me do so publicly, but I’m hoping that the small publicity surrounding my failed attempt shamed them at bit.)

Since then I have continued to be proud of their successful effort, and glad that it connected me to local Black and white activists in Jacksonville, whose continued struggle in an area still so stuck in deep racism inspires me today. I have tried to keep in touch and am mainly just glad that they are there — and, honestly that I am not. I can’t go “home” to that.

Yet now, I notice when the same words and deeds I grew up with are recalled from even younger public figures, whose responses are still so confused. Today I am moved when Reverend Barber, and writer-activist Bill Fletcher call us to respond not with demands fro resignation in disgrace, but for current, more focused, anti-racist action as repayment for their horrendous past words and deeds.

Of course we should remove statues of dead white racists, and take their names off public places.  But more important is that we insist on public reparations — defined within efforts informed by a deep awareness of local history and a serious accounting of the continuing cost of past racist deeds and words.

How do pay back the long denied effects of racism?  We spend money on projects aimed at uncovering the damage. We involve young inheritors of racism’s effects in documenting the full story, and in devising meaningful responses. We create a real “never again” mentality, with money and demands attached.  And we keep monitoring the responses, and keep coming back for more accountability. I want to help do this, yet I don’t how to begin.

I welcome your reactions. And I promise to respond.  I’m also committing to reach out personally to people who are part of my network.  If you don’t really know me, I ask you to check out my website, and my past posts, and start a communication.  If you knew me in the past, through CPCS, please contact me because I am now rededicated to writing the book I was researching for several years about our College, still to be titled “Who Did we Think we Were? Radical Higher Education and the Neoliberal Imperative:  The Experience and Meanings of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts/Boston.” I’m still seeking a publisher, but a current CPCS faculty member, Raul Ybarra, is offering to join the project. Hooray

Otherwise all I can say is that I have a 9 month-old grandbaby, named Sage, who offers a real reason for hope and hard work for justice.  And I am still involved in anti-poverty activism through the MA Poor People’s Campaign, and though less so, through the national Basic Income movement. (I promise to post more updates from both movements on my website, again I have been avoidant.)

BUT most important I want to hear more from any of you about what else we should be doing, or talking about, together.  Thanks

Ann

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Dear friends and receivers of my blog post, I have not posted here for too long. Some of you may not really know me, because it seems I keep adding to the list of recipients who become only passive “contacts” due to my lack of technical savvy. Sorry. I have mainly been in a state of retreat from new internet communication for several specific reasons: 1)a crisis of confidence in my internet skills which kept blocking out my accounts due to lost passwords, or worse, sent out mistaken messages. That scared me; 2)a probably age-related rise in my own sense of being “out of it”, or that everything I could say is already being said better by someone younger, wiser or more connected; and 3)an honest lack clarity about how to respond to today’s realities. The fact that Trump and the Hard Right behind him have not started a war somewhere, or done things worse than were expected/feared since his ascendency left me holding my breath, not wanting to add more foolish predictions to the daily blogosphere. Now I realize that I miss communicating with a wider circle of old and new comrades. BUT the latest set of media pictures/words from white, mainly Southern men have reminded me of the deepest root of my radicalism — my deep knowledge of, and hatred for, the (Southern) white racism that defined my earliest family and community life for the 21 years until I escaped in 1968. I have written most recently on my website (“What’s in a Name?”) about how I graduated from the Jacksonville, Florida Nathan Bedford Forrest High School in 1964 which had been so named as a statement of continued reaction during the 1950s integration struggles and how its final un-naming caused controversy in 2014, the year of my 50th reunion. At the time I enjoyed five minutes of local media fame by trying to get my fellow alumni to publicly honor the name change, and to recognize at our event the students and community activists who led the effort to achieve it . (The alumni reunion committee wouldn’t let me do so publicly, but I’m hoping that the small publicity surrounding my failed attempt shamed them at bit.) Since then I have continued to be proud of their successful effort, and glad that it connected me to local Black and white activists in Jacksonville, whose continued struggle in an area still so stuck in deep racism inspires me today. I have tried to keep in touch and am mainly just glad that they are there — and, honestly that I am not. I can’t go “home” to that. Yet now, I notice when the same words and deeds I grew up with are recalled from even younger public figures, whose responses are still so confused. Today I am moved when Reverend Barber, and writer-activist Bill Fletcher call us to respond not with demands fro resignation in disgrace, but for current, more focused, anti-racist action as repayment for their horrendous past words and deeds. Of course we should remove statues of dead white racists, and take their names off public places. But more important is that we insist on public reparations — defined within efforts informed by a deep awareness of local history and a serious accounting of the continuing cost of past racist deeds and words. How do pay back the long denied effects of racism? We spend money on projects aimed at uncovering the damage. We involve young inheritors of racism’s effects in documenting the full story, and in devising meaningful responses. We create a real “never again” mentality, with money and demands attached. And we keep monitoring the responses, and keep coming back for more accountability. I want to help do this, yet I don’t how to begin. I welcome your reactions. And I promise to respond. I’m also committing to reach out personally to people who are part of my network. If you don’t really know me, I ask you to check out my website, and my past posts, and start a communication. If you knew me in the past, through CPCS, please contact me because I am now rededicated to writing the book I was researching for several years about our College, still to be titled “Who Did we Think we Were? Radical Higher Education and the Neoliberal Imperative: The Experience and Meanings of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts/Boston.” I’m still seeking a publisher, but a current CPCS faculty member, Raul Ybarra, is offering to join the project. Hooray Otherwise all I can say is that I have a 9 month-old grandbaby, named Sage, who offers a real reason for hope and hard work for justice. And I am still involved in anti-poverty activism through the MA Poor People’s Campaign, and though less so, through the national Basic Income movement. (I promise to post more updates from both movements on my website, again I have been avoidant.) BUT most important I want to hear more from any of you about what else we should be doing, or talking about, together. Thanks Ann . .

The Poor People’s Campaign for Moral Reconstruction is a Poor People’s Moral Movement.  It is motivated and led, not by experts or politicians, but rather by people who themselves KNOW poverty, up close and personal…Folks who KNOW that something is wrong, that poverty is an evil which hurts, and that the only way to make the immediate and deeply rooted pain stop for all of us is to face it, to know it, to study it. And, most importantly, they are people who are prepared together to push back against poverty and against the rich people who personally condone it, and whose laws, systems and structures perpetrate it.

HOW do we know? We study poverty through stories.  Her stories, His stories, Our stories. Our lives tell stories — stories that are our truths, our “data,” our evidence.  I mean the stories we hear from our families, our friends, our “people”, and from our own selves when we talk to ourselves about what we KNOW happened, not LIES other people told us to confuse us, or because they so much wished their world had been different, or because the pain of their stories was just too hard to face.

My own stories first emerged at night when as a child I lay in bed telling myself what I KNEW was really true… In the dark, I needed to warn myself, to explain to myself, at least, about what I thought was happening in my world, and why what Mother and others around me were saying wasn’t true, couldn’t be right.  Somehow those corrective stories helped keep me going. And still do. (Even though I’ve had to learn that they too may not be the only truth, that I need to keep revising them so I don’t fool myself either).

So what does it mean that this Poor People’s Campaign is a Movement built on the TRUE stories Poor People tell? And, indeed, what do we think makes a good story? It is one that is true, and yet still bravely open to constant evolution based on others’ different ways of explaining things, as we share more stories. It is one that sounds true because it is clear, with understandable words,  explained clearly AND checked out against other stories, and other kinds of data..  It may begin with “once upon a time:”  in a particular place, far away or familiar. Or it may start with an example, a story about something or some things that happened to me…”Let me tell you about a time when this happened, then that happened, and then something else happened next.”

When somebody tells us a Good Story we go back with them,  We feel something of what they were feeling that thereby helps us to connect, to learn, to want to know more, to ask questions.  We want to tell our stories;  about what we learned, or about what it might mean. We ask, why did a particular story happen the way it did? What other stories does it prompt us to recall? To want to share? To want to understand more deeply?

By hearing ourselves tell our stories we, in turn, help ourselves not feel so alone, Not be so alone, to figure out a next step, or two, or a next question to ask. A next person to talk with…To discover that Hope which us allows to keep on keeping on.

SOON, in Massachusetts and across the US, we will be to creating Poor People’s Campaign Storyteller Teams who will gather stories from the people most impacted by poverty in ways that explain and justify our Movement.  Check it out.

 

 

 

 

“ I call on Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good employees and to remove Federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.”     Trump’s State of the Union Address 1/30/18

When I originally heard this I realized that, in the midst of all our righteous uproar regarding racism and other systemic abuses within new immigration, social, criminal “justice” and educational policy assaults, we also must heed this brief, chilling threat to today’s public sector workers, their unions, and therefore to all us.   Most of citizens and residents of this nation have rights to expect government to be effective, accountable, and responsive. Yet our criminal “justice” system is still, and has always been essentially racist. We must document and highlight and never forget this, even as we keep demanding more and getter service.

Since January, under the guise of tax reform, Republicans have already undermined healthcare promises, protections for immigrants, and the environment.  By not hiring new workers to meet the government’s obligations we only create more dissatisfaction.  With Tax Day just past, it’s time to remind ourselves of what it meant historically when governments failed in these ways.  We know get what we pay for.  And in terms of public services, we must be prepared to pay (fairly and proportionately) for it all.

Please, let’s demand the revenue we need to operate as a responsible society.  otherwise we undermine our ability to trust ourselves, and to demand what we need from ourselves

 

Over the past several months I have become very involved with the Massachusetts Poor Peoples’ Campaign.  As I have said before the whole national Campaign is very exciting, and now we are beginning more state and local activism, leading to Forty Days of Civil Disobedience in May.   For now it just want to post the principles of the national Campaign and a link to be connected to the Massachusetts Campaign.

More later, but for now check out Poor Peoples Campaign principles +

If you don’t know more of the story behind who Cheri Honkala is and how she has been part of the welfare rights/Poor People’s scene for years,
As long time welfare rights activist,Cheri’s statement seems powerful BUT why is she issuing it now? If she has problems with the current PPC, why isn’t she being direct about it?
Why announce her own march without respect for all the amazing, legitimate work motivated by William Barber, Liz Theoharris and Willie Baptist, and lots of us NOW, around the nation, which being led by more poor people, and more people with real personal poverty experience than any major social movement in history. Indeed, why introduce innuendo suggesting that the only current movement that is actually coming forward with real success is suspect?
Don’t get confused. Ask questions. Check out who has been doing the the most work of fighting poverty for the longest time. It is William Barber, Liz Theoharris, and Willie Baptist, along with others prominent in the PPC.
I respect Cheri’s history, and lifelong energy and I recognize her powerful voice.
But Cheri’s way now is not the right way. It is confusing and divisive. She could be joining, but then she might not be leading in the way she expects to lead — I could say “mislead.”
Today’s poor people ARE single mothers like Cheri using what’s left of welfare to survive, AND they are also immigrants, and low waged workers who are often single mothers or the children of single mothers. Today’s poor people are still disproportionately African Americans, who join with college students of all ethnic backgrounds in invisible poverty as they try to get an education, even as they know that the debt they are accruing to get it will keep them poor or near poverty for a very long time. Today’s poor people are sick and getting older living in fear that there will be no simply available health care for them. They reside in all parts of the USA — in large part because real estate developers are taking their cities away.
Finally, we now have a new national anti poverty movement growing organically again, out of the history of civil rights, labor rights and women’s rights and human rights movements. It is built upon the best parts of global environmental and LBGT movements. It is led by “people of faith” but still is welcoming to all who have been damaged by faith or who never sought it. AND the new Poor People’s Campaign has adopted 12 fundamental principles for a moral revival that preclude righteous Neoliberal tricks.
Let’s embrace it. Cheri Honkala should too. But I, for one, will not widely circulate her statement directly, nor waste time engaging with her self-serving plans fro her own march to distract us.
Let’s move on and build the one big movement that is proving its credibility every day. Please. The time is NOW.    Cheri’s original statement can be found here.