Marian's Blog

Technical Difficulties?

Is something about the wireless connection here keeping me from uploading photos (to Flickr)? If I'm not able to I'll do it as soon as I can. In the meantime I'll try uploading to my album here. Patience is s'posed to be a virtue anyway.

Blogher: Signs of Life in the Over-Developed World

After weeks and months of waiting the first-ever Blogher conference is already over. One woman, who also was not under 40 (I'm 'educately' guessing from what she said in our closing session on the other side of the "Blogher living room"), said this was the first women's conference she'd ever been to in her life - and now she wants more. In my book to have missed several tens of thousands of women's meetings over the past few decades I'm guessing she must've led either a deprived or a sheltered life. Depending on how you look at it. So much was going on at Blogher. Mostly the person-to-person and small-group conversations/contacts. I planned to join others at dinner yesterday evening but taxi "service" from my hotel was abysmal. When it hadn't arrived after 30 minutes I gave up and went back to my room. In any case I enjoyed meeting so many people with such varied experience and abilities. Some of them I'd previously been in touch with via our various blogs &/or email. One woman and I actually came up to SJ yesterday morning on the same shuttle from L.A. All the time neither of us knew we were heading for the same place. I really do love Cali - starting with years ago in Santa Cruz. It's just that for me it's a bit of a ways from the Other Coast (East); not to mention traveling from Africa or Europe. Funny how family, friends, colleagues and work can shrink or make us overcome physical distance. Usually with the help of trains or planes. And phones (and emails, etc.). Even bicycles for some. I prefer trains though planes are faster. But traveling over water I believe boats and ships are coolest - by far. At the same time I do hope before too many more years go by our combined humanity (which is a capacity -not an inanimate object) will help us overcome some of our more senseless, wasteful and numbing uses of mechanised efficiency in travel. That would help us clear up some of our social symptoms - like the horrible smog that chokes California and steals some of its undeniable beauty.

Blogher, 'Black Is A Country', and "Globalization is Good for Women"

Right now I'm sitting in "When globalization is good for women" session at Blogher. Wonder whether panelist Anna John of the South Asian group blog Sepia Mutiny has ever heard of Black Is A Country, possibly on its way to becoming one of my favourite books, and its author, Nikhil Pal Singh, who is South Asian.

From inside Blogher...

Well here we are at Blogher! I'm in the political blogging session with about 70 other people. I'm connecting with this word some people are using - the 'parrotsphere' - which descriptively denotes those bloggers who parrot what others - possibly the folks they want to suck up to? - are saying. Oh... and I suppose there's also folks who can't seem to manage an original thought. What's scarier -- coming up with original ideas or not being able to?

Techmart: site of Blogher

Techmart Santa Clara, originally uploaded by MarianDouglas.

Shot of Techmart center here in Santa Clara which will host Blogher all day Saturday.

Blogher: Women of Color - This Space between 'Gender' and 'Race' is Not Empty

This "space" is not empty. We are already entering the waning days of 2005 as Beijing+10. Apparently somehow I must have missed the big events. Straight up. I am blogging this because I believe what's below is bound to be muffled, blurred, if at all audible or visible, or (hopefully less likely) absent, here at blogher, as just about everyplace else. And practically speaking - I just want to save myself a lot of breath over the next couple of days, while sharing, learning and enjoying the company of other women bloggers. This is about how the - simplistic - marketing of what 'gender' is, and of what 'race' is, have long been defined as reality, though they are far from being the whole reality. I don't know the exact marketing - branding - terminology. Globally - yet especially in the Global North (and its "outpost communities" and social networks on every continent) - women of colour are pushed simultaneously into a virtual no-woman's land AND into a virtual no-colored person's-land. We are "over here somewhere" in a vague, vaguely defined, very quiet, largely ignored and un-articulated space; bounced back and forth between gender and race- as others alternately do not and then do acknowledge our presence. With inadvertent and passive or active and deliberate collusion from others, 'gender' is politically and publicly framed as the turf of women who are "white" (or "'whiter' than"...), while at the other end of this spectrum 'race' is politically and publicly framed as if it were almost exclusively the turf of men of colour. Their thing. Women of color/colour are not seen - & substantially do not exist - in either space. What a weird place to spend one's life. Women of colour 'complicate things' beyond the willingness or ability of others to see how gender+race are functioning together and interchangably in everyday reality all over the world. People and organisations want it simple, although from time to time - or when it just can't be ignored any longer - they can find a 'two-fer' (two demographics in one: race + gender). It doesn't hurt when sometimes a woman of colour actually can be a practical efficiency. Just don't expect others to stay interested; to look too deeply; to see the bigger picture all of us of all colours, genders, are part of. To see the intersection of gender + race on a regular basis. When women of color describe our lives and communities it is far more knee jerk to perceive that voice/those voices as oppositional to more soothing, by-now-familiar and defined "single-issue" territorial mantras already staked out, solidified, codified by others. And yet women of color/colour are still the main intersection of race plus gender. You can go around us but we're still here and so are the world's most pressing and painful issues. Violence. Poverty in the midst of incredible abundance. The either-or framework of others cannot define us, simply cannot reflect our amazingly joined experiences of gender & race. This space that for others "separates" gender and race may be ignored but it is not empty. In fact it is very, very populated by the vast majority of the world's population of women, and we join race and gender - every day, 24/7.

Off to Blogher...

Time to pack up the "laptop" and brace myself for food-less flight to Cali. These airlines that give you nothing to eat anymore... what-a-trip. I wonder how diabetics manage. See some of you at Blogher; I'll blog something from there.

Venezuela's TeleSur TV network: Can the rest of us watch too??

Is it truly possible that Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez - who is no dummy - actually cracked on (translation: made light of/made fun of) US prez George Bush's putative 'command' of el idioma latino americano? That would be (Latin American) Spanish. Today I looked up at BBC News and who do I see at the opening of new international TV network Telesur but my culture colleague James (Early) with actor and fellow pan African activist Danny Glover. I last saw and spoke with both of them during TransAfrica's luncheon back in April. BBC's website calls Telesur Venezuela's 'rival' to CNN while some members of the US Congress reportedly see the broadcasting as some kind of "threat." Hello?! All this is muy, muy interesante. I'm sure we haven't heard the last. More here on of all this later. I'll be looking for your feedback.

Help Alaska's oldest Native Women's Shelter

Could it be true that Alaska US senator TED STEVENS is opposing renewed federal funding to battered women's shelters that serve Native women and girls in Alaska? By way of Kay Humphrey (of Sacred Circle National Resource Center to End Violence Against Native Women) & Indian Country Today - via my friend "Vid" (actually "Ved") - comes news that funding to a shelter that helps Native women and girls has run out. "... the first Native shelter in Alaska was funded by the state of Alaska and the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault - but its grant has run out. The Emmonak shelter is one of just two Native-run shelters in Alaska." ''... The staff has been laid off and the shelter's executive director has been working on a volunteer basis until funding can be optained. ''We have not been able to service victims in need of safety. ...'' she said. Messages are left on the shelter's crisis line from women in need of a safe place to go. Calls made to the shelter on June 27 were sent to an answering machine. Women in crisis were instructed to call local law enforcement. ... ''We are asking for any donations to assist us in covering our office expenses, staffing, so that we may continue this difficult but important work to end violence against Alaska Native and American Indian women, children, elders and girls. We are a tax-exempt organization, and therefore, any contributions will be tax-deductible [for US taxpayers]'' she said. ... "American Indian and Alaska Native leaders said the federal [funding] set-asides for the programs are at risk because of key congressmen who oppose the funding of tribal programs and look more favorably at funding state-run programs. However, the Native shelters - which are small in number in comparison to state-run programs - provide cultural and traditional help to victims that the states do not. Geri Simon, a member of the Alaska Native Women's Coalition, said Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has opposed federal funding for the shelter. [Is that true???] Domestic violence against Alaska Native and American Indian women is "more than twice the average" of other women across the USA. Please share a donation: Emmonak Woman's Shelter, P.O. Box 207, Emmonak, AK 99581.

UK, Iran: what to say about some things in the News?

What's to be blogged about some of the things we're hearing every day in the news? The "missing" body count of Iraqi civilians (said to be @ 20-30 thousand as of July 2005); or those two young men who were hanged in Iran last week - because they were known or believed to be gay - what vicious, cowardly hypocrisy; and the police in London discovering that deliberately and mistakenly they have taken the life of a Brazilian who apparently had nothing to do with terrorism or the bombings last week. God help all of us. Everywhere.