Feminism and Diversity

I saw that article with the certificate yesterday, it's so brilliant. When 'friendly fire' blasts away from what is supposed to be 'your side', it's worse than some of the outright obvious hate. It's like an extra reminder from the world, that there is really nowhere safe.

I'm glad SlutWalk is doing some reflection. This episode brought back memories of an arts organization that tried to get started in the neighborhood I was living in in Oakland at the time, which is primarily Latino/a. I didn't join it, so I have this story second-hand, but basically a bunch of warehouse dwellers got together and formed an association of artists, put together a name that referenced the neighborhood name and put together a mission statement etc.

It was finally brought to their attention that there had been artists living in the neighborhood for decades already, Latino and Latina, and that the newer white artists who had just moved in, coming in and saying "Hey, we're the arts organization", was hugely arrogant and blind. My partner was on the list-serv for the org. and there were huge faily emails of "Oh god, we didn't know, we're not bad people". "Hey, they can join, we're diverse!" on and on. I don't think they ever got to that place of "Shit, we fucked up. We need to do something about that."