the woman warriors of Nanyang

Back in the day, my grandmother was a rubber tapper for the British rubber plantations during the time of the anti-colonial movement in the 1950s and 60s. This was the period of the Malayan Emergency and alot of the tactics that the British used against the guerilla warfare, such as starving out the insurgents, was applied to the Vietnam War a few decades later. If the head of the anti-colonial Malayan Communist Party had not been a British agent, I wonder how history would have turned out. I grew up watching drama series reminiscing this era and sometimes romanticize that period. If I had been in that time, that place, I would have been a revolutionary fighting for my nation's liberation from the Japanese and the British.

Nanyang, 南洋 was the common term used to reference the region that rested South of China. My grandmother was the 3rd wife to my grandfather whom I never met, who died when my dad was barely born. He was a migrant worker.

My country was constructed by immigrant women, warriors whose names were never remembered.

I don't have much to say, just a nostalgia for my homeland and the women warriors who built it with their blood and sweat.

See more here

红头巾 Hong Tou Jin - I guess you can translate this directly into Red-Capped workers. They were female construction workers who did a lot of hard labor. They were women who migrated to Southeast Asia from a certain part, the Sanshui region in China.

妈姐 Ma Jie - These are women who swore into sisterhood and celibacy. They did factory labor, but also did household domestic labor. It is a stereotype that many of them escape forced marriages by joining the sisterhood. I dont know how true that is. I like to think many of them were queer, in the multi-varied ways of thinking about queerness.
*Charlie Yeung and Carina Lau have a queer movie, The Intimates, about this -- cute but not too deep

And then, this!
TP Factory, a documentary that W. shared with me, about Filipina migrant workers. They are gay, immigrants, and the international female proletariat!
[Removed from Youtube cos of copyright infringement :( ]

Last but not least, a reminder of why the British fought to rescue us from the Japanese! Yes it's true!

Break times: these "moments are elements of profit"

My heart was clogged, accumulated with unprocessed reactions and emotions. This round of writing is my filtering, to drain the sediments so I can restart and refresh this next round of struggle with a clearer mind and deeper understanding of what to anticipate, to share and process with my coworkers.

The most recent thing that happened at work was the struggle over our break time. I hadnt written about it for the past few weeks because a) I didnt really understand the importance/independent validity of these few minutes of free time even as I felt super indignant that it was being taken away from us because b) It didnt relieve the overwork and c) winning this breaktime is a pale shade compared to what we had before and thus a "victory" that is marked more by what we lost than what we gained, therefore: contradictory. But M pointed out to me in a conversation today, that such is the substance of small workplace struggles. Maybe, this is the substance and texture of the struggles, in practice, in real emotional living life, that Stan Weir talks about in Singlejack Solidarity. Our struggles are gained in small steps and my responsibility as a militant is to be clear about the gains we acheived, obstacles we faced, and capture these experiences and expand on them with my coworkers.

I'll add too that reading Chapter 10 of Capital inspired me to write this. Thanks Nate for encouraging me to do that. What got me motivated to write this up about our few minutes of extra free time, is reading the honest words of XYZ capitalist in Marx's writings, of how the thefts of workers' break times, are sources of great profit:

On page 352,

"These 'small thefts' of capital from the workers' meal times and recreation times are also described by the factory supervisors as 'petty pilferings of minutes,' 'snatching a few minutes.' or, in the technical language of the workers, 'nibbling and cribbling at meal times.'

It is evident that in this atmosphere the formation of surplus value by surplus labor is no secret. 'If you allow me to work only ten minutes in the day over-time, you put one thousand a year in my pocket.'

'Moments are the elements of profit.'

What this means, is that even as the capitalist tries to minimize the impact of taking a few minutes here and there of workers' time, these stolen few minutes are really "elements of profit," part of this grand plan of extracting every surplus value out of the worker, of further machinifying the human body so it can NOT rest. A few moments, and the loss of what makes us human.

Contrast this, with an interaction between myself, Z. and snitchbitch. Z. had skipped his 15 min break to put some residents to bed. I told him he should fill out a "Missed time" form saying that he be paid for those 15 min of lost break time. Snitchbitch chimes in with her ass-kissing, boss-loving condescension, saying something to the effect of,

"Oh, come on, I skip my 15 minute all the time. All you get is $3 more if you write it in anyway! Why give yourself and them all this trouble?"

Followed by chuckles, giggles, nasty model-worker condescension smirk plastered over her face

Z. then responds saying,

"Yeah you are right. It's OK. I dont need to give them trouble for $3."

I have objected many times to Z. losing his break time. Z. is not a very militant worker. He works HELLA hard and I see all the times when he strains his body just to work a little faster for these ungrateful management bastards. I had resorted in the past to a variety of strategies to get Z. to take his break. I try hard for a combination of reasons, many of them selfish I admit. First, I hate to see A. work so fucking hard for so little money. I want him to get his break. A break reduces the chances of injury. Second, it pisses me off that management gets to make this man work so hard. I hate to see them win. Third, I need him to take his break so I dont seem like a fucking lazy ass for insisting on taking mine. No model worker for them to compare me to, or at least, the less the better. Snitchbitch is the one exception. She has gone way over to the dark side.

So the methods I have resorted to in the past, to get Z. to take his break are:
1) No one likes to be cheated of their money:
"Z.!They dont pay you for the break, if you dont go you are working extra UNPAID! Is that worth it?"

2) Do you really want to be the only person missing out? AND doing other peoples' work for them while they chill?
"Ooops, sorry I couldnt help you. I was busy taking my break. Did you work really hard? No one helped you? Oh no! It's cause everyone took their break. I wish I could have helped you but you didnt take your break!"

3) Reminding him that every hard worker is just another lousy worker to management
"We all know we work super hard. Even if we work so hard, if we do any small thing wrong, they will fire you. They dont care.
Are you sure you dont want to take your break? If you do anything wrong, even if you skip your break everyday, they still will fire you, you know?"

4) Break = state of mind
When you insist on taking your break, it means you insist on taking time out to rest and remember you are after all, a fucking human being who cannot be worked in a machine-like pace. It is a few minutes but it is also a state of mind to carry onto the floor when you are working.

And so, I try.

But that day, Z.'s class-conscious worker voice lost out in his internal battle. No, he decided he would not go through the trouble himself, but more importantly, put management through the hassle, for compensating him the $3 for his 15 minute break.

I dont know how to comprehend all this. All I know now is that there is so much in that and it's all bad.

*

Before the staffing cuts happened, there was no real stipulation/regulation around our break time. In a way, we controlled how it worked, it wasnt politicized, and was regulated by how much work we had to do on the floor. We are mandated by the state to take 2 fifteen minute breaks, as well as our unpaid 30 min break. Many times, we would forego the second 15-min break if we needed to, and when possible, compensate for that forfeited break time by taking longer breaks earlier in the day. Point is, we were willing to give up our break when we needed to, and we took longer breaks when we could.

When the staffing got cut, and the struggle began, the issue around breaktime became politicized primarily because it was our only form of state protection (ie. the state mandated 15 min breaks every 4 hours of work). For workers like us who dont have a lot of bargaining power or protection, the break time law and safety regulations are our only legalized protections.

Myself and others started politicizing big time, the need to take our breaks. Gone was this chill attitude toward skipping our breaks. This was an important step in us trying to fight back and INSIST that we be treated like humans.

Our higher workload often meant that we had to skip our breaks to finish the work. However, if we took our breaks, it would be hellish for us when we got back cos we would have to work a lot faster in the remaining time. Initially, we did leave some work uncompleted for the next shift when the work was too much, but it was not sustainable for us to do that cos of fears of repercussion from the boss.

I guess my point here is that, unlike the factories described in Chapter 10 of Capital, where the capitalists stole into workers' break times to extract more surplus labor, for us, our surplus labor through speed up was determined already and institutionalized through the state law around Neglect. [ie. the state and management all played a hand together at making sure that surplus labor and value was extracted out of us because if we didnt complete the work, we would be charged with Neglect. It is not a case where we reduced the production quota by taking our break.] All in all, what this meant is that taking our break was contradictory for our actual work process. However, what we maintained was that we HAD to take our breaks. For me and I believe for others, it is a refusal to be treated like a machine. That attitude carried out into our work day -- that we are not rushing, we deserve breaks and we are not machines or dogs who can be at your beck and call.

However, because management had not had a regular structure for us to take our mandated break times, doing so in the midst of overwork was very stressful. We were stressed out about 1) taking our breaks and being yelled at by the nurse when we came back on the floor for not doing X,Y,Z or 2) Not taking our break and feeling like shit and getting all the work done but not risk being yelled at by the nurse for not being on the floor. Basic point is, the lack of a structure for regular break times meant that we had to individualize and improvise on when to go amid the increased workload. While this improvization had been a form of our freedom/self activity/"stealing" from the boss in the past in the form of occasional prolonged breaks, now it was a very very stressful activity.

One day, the charge nurse hauled me into the office with her evil crew of naysayers ie human resources. They sat me down and gave me shit for taking my break at the "wrong time." Fuck these assholes. I was doing the same thing I had done in the past, that EVERYONE had done in the past, basically taking my 30 min break before my 15 min break cos of time crunch issues, and never gotten into trouble with that. But this time, cos nasty evil nurse hates me, she sits me down and tells me I am not following the rules. Our interaction goes this way.

*The details in this is confusing, excuse me!

Charge Nurse: Why are you giving me trouble with breaks? You are the only one who does this.

Me: I didnt do anything wrong. You told me before I should change all my residents before I go on break. I cant do that and take my 15 min AND my 30 min before lunch time. So, I take my 30 min first BEFORE my 15 min break so if I have to miss out on one break, it's the 15 min break that I miss out on, not the 30 min break.

Charge Nurse: Yes, you can't go on break unless you finish cleaning all your residents. Otherwise, it's neglect.

Me: You are telling me I need to clean all my residents AND take my 15-min break by 9:15am?

Charge Nurse: Yes. This is your responsibility, **** (she fucks up my name, oh I hate her so much)

Me: Breakfast ends at 9am. If I go for my 15-min break at 9:15am, this means I only have 15 min to change 10 residents!

Charge Nurse: ****, you have to do your job. Don't think I'm stupid, ****
(btw these were the CLASSIC words of the day!!I totally think she's stupid!!)

~I am hella pissed. This woman does not know what she is talking about. I turn to Human Resources deliberately. I want them to figure this out for me cos it's so ridiculous

Me to HR: Can you please explain to me what she is saying? I dont understand what I am supposed to do.

HR and Charge Nurse go at it for 3 minutes.

Me to HR: Can you please write down designated times that we are supposed to go for break? I dont know how to do my work AND follow the law around breaktimes. When it's not on paper it's hard for me to figure out.

~My bosses have an aversion to putting any of their dumbass policies down on paper. I believe it;s cos they want us to improvize ie. they know it is only through improvization that the job gets done, and putting shit on paper means they set rules that we can claim to follow AND not get the job done cos they always have to pretend in their documentations and rules that they treat us like human beings

~~ What also killed me later that day is that another coworker who did the same thing as me, for which I was hauled into the office for, was given a hug by my boss and told, "Thanks for trying" when she did the exact same "wrong" thing as I did around break times. This fucking discrimination and divide and conquer tactics make me SOOO ANGRY!!!

So at the end of the day, we have designated break times. This means even if we are overworked, we are MANDATED to take our breaks at certain times.

Is this a victory? Is it not?

I have to say it has relieved stress around the work. We no longer have to improvize and make decisions on whether to take our break or complete the work. It is in writing that at X.Y.Z time, we have to go for our break.

Before the speed up occurred, we could improvize/take longer breaks. But for now, where there is overwork, our breaks are secured in a way. But it doesnt feel good because the root cause: overwork and speed up, is still lost. We have accomodated the best we can under these conditions. Our secured break times is one scenario.

Did I forget to add, that when we told the bosses that we missed our breaks because of the overwork, we were offered candy (Twix, Hersheys, Crunch in all its cheap plastic glory)...

I am a greedy chocolate lover but now I forever hate the sickening sweetness of cheap candy bars. More on that later!

emo marxism

Sorry for this angst-y moments!

I have been feeling like I am getting the beat down, and GETTING beaten down at work.
This is very hard. Being a worker-militant ---> means you SURVIVE work everyday AND! have to have a clear mind to organize, which means you need to NOT bring the short-term drama of everyday work life and let it disproportionately affect the strategizing! Ok, break it down --> It means I need to not be fucking PISSED OFF and ANGRY and EMO!!!

I hate hate hate the m-fucking bosses. I hate them. They willy nilly pissy wissily got me and other CNAs into trouble. They made us sign that we neglected our residents --- when they actually NEVER PROVIDE THE RESOURCES FOR ME TO GIVE GOOD CARE IN THE FIRST PLACE! I am so mad! Yes, I didnt change the resident every 2 hours and thats neglect, but you know what? 11 residents to 1 CNA is neglect too!! And when you do that to extract $$ and make more profit, thats even worse!! IT'S NOT OUR FAULT!! ITS THE GODDAMN FUCKING MANAGEMENT! and they threatened to take our licenses away. I am so angry!!! This is what happens when management, the state, and capitalism MONOPOLIZE and DEFINE what "care" and "neglect" means. From their standpoint, they PIMP care out of us working bodies under the conditions of REPRESSION, SPEED UP, and basically, a COMMODIFICATION OF ALL OF US, the elderly included!!

Sorry for the rant. Yesterday was a very hard day. Add to that, I had to fight to get protective gear for working with a resident who had C diff -- a contagious illness. The lady was pooping wetness out of her rear end uncontrollably, and also puking! But my nurse and charge nurse insisted that I did not need any protective gear -- no gown, no masks. I had to fight and argue with them for it. And it took about 2 hours before it got to me -- and in the meantime, the housekeeper was the one who gave us the supplies she had stored in her closet. I hate management. They think our lives are like dog lives. They dont care about our health, our well being. What does it mean that I even have to fight to get a cheap-ass gown and mask when dealing w someone w a contagious condition.

Is this what it means to win small struggles on the job?

I hadnt blogged about this yet, but we got them to give us standard break times and permission to GO ON BREAK! at designated times. This feels so small given the amount of daily stress and struggle we had to go through to get it.

I HATE THEM!!!

And add to that, I have realized this past year that my body reacts to stress. When I get stressed out, I have difficulty breathing. All is all, this made yesterday a very awful day.

I have been trying to talk w K and S, two janitors at the local university whom I have done a lot of organizing with. What reading Capital, or Marx at the Margins doesnt give me, is the emotional resilience I need, the calmness I need, to get through the work day. I am just, angry. Really really wiped out by anger and disgust. It feels like a tired refrain at this point, and it feels tiring too.

But K had some wise words for me yesterday. He said that I need to not feel angry, because it is such a taxing emotion, that if I let it get to me everyday at work, I WILL GIVE UP.

I feel that, and thats why I need their wise words to teach me how to survive. I feel like a fucking young ass militant. I spout theory and history, but fuck, I am struggling to get through my 9th month of being a CNA, my 3rd month of being a workplace militant.

Hella humbling.

an old piece resurrected

I found this piece written from a long time ago. I liked it, but never made time and effort to polish it. Here it is in its roughness. A blast from the past as I try to push forward.


Borderlines

I am tiptoeing on the fine line taut between my two ears. Curled many rounds over the ridge of each ear the line is tight, is firm. I pull the line every so often to check its pitch, the sound that will reveal that no bit is slacking, that all, is fine-tuned. Taut. Firm. Tight. Where cacophony is shrill and distracting, one needs to be sound, I say. Check not once but twice and maybe…right when I wake up right before I fall asleep adjust the sound so that the quality the tightness the firmness is bearable.

Tight firm taut, sound fine

My father crossed lines younger than him at age 17. Barely 7 years old at that time, the fine line drawn between the dissected British Siamese-twin states Was tended to everyday, drawn so unyieldingly that it had a pitch so high and shrill that my father ran away with hands cupped over ears to escape the piercing chorus of “Bumiputra!”, “Malaysia for Malays!”, straight into the jungles of Brunei to participate in the workforce erecting white-washed buildings on brown earth.

As the Malaysian anthem accompanied the hoisting of a new flag into the age of Negaraku, while the Singaporean anthem rang above marching army men rehearsing training commands taught by allied Israeli forces to herald in the Majulah Singapura, their earsplitting echoes reverberated through my life in jolting outbursts.

*

The Buddha said that birth, death, old age and illness are of life. The first noble truth that Life is suffering, we must sit with to realize that
all that doesn’t change is change itself and
clinging on, is pain.

Yet when he crossed over from life into death,
and 4 weeks after I celebrate her delivery of life from what did not exist till 9 months before,

the fine taut line between life and death vibrated at high frequencies, bouncing off the walls of my skull: dulling my senses with the incessant reminder of its presence.

Lines in two dimensions do not reflect potential to form circles.

Moist finger pad running on thin round rims of wine glasses can make clear sounds with beginnings trailing into ends trailing

*

The past few days I have seen flashes of moments caressing her. I would like to clasp her hand in mine. I imagine running my fingertips on the parched spots of her skin, moisture sucked dry by the thirsty winter air. I imagine her feeling my thumb damp with lotion pressed on the flabby flesh of her arm, rubbing firmly on the hints of muscles lying beneath and knowing that tension in her body is evaporating as my thumb moves in circular motion on her skin.

These nights, I am readjusting the line drawn between my ears.
Where cacophony is shrill and distracting, loose lines leave less chance for snapping.

a new year, a new practice and questions

2010 is approaching an end. It's time for those cliche reflections:) It's time to look back at formerly mundane or overly-dramatic moments and try to understand something deeper in them, being honest about my failings, trying to make more sense in those past daily encounters as if, as if they point me to something closer to truth. Not a distant objective truth, but the truth of my life as it emerges from my past, toward a path of freedom-embracing-contradictions.

I, like all of us, was not free when I was born, and in fact, was not born to be free. Year by year I want to inch away at those material, spiritual and egoistic burdens that try to keep me imprisoned, to have a shot at being free, to become lighter emotionally, to have less baggage, to emancipate myself from the daily sufferings of institutionalized class race and gender oppressions including the negative personality deformations they create in me. I know I cant do that alone and so the dramas of interpersonal relationships that arise as a by-product of this joint effort, is part of this freedom path. This is hard, but we do not choose our conditions.

There are some pieces in my mind that I hope to explore in this next year:

1) A piece I hope to collaborate with some comrades on, about women leadership* and good practice around that. There is so little written on the attempts and lessons of developing female leadership that feels real and honest.

Recognizing this is a work in progress and primarily through personal experiences, and drawing from our experiences of initially being politicized through non-profit domestic violence work and then breaking with that to join revolutionary left organizations yet feeling the dichotomy between the two to be lacking in good gender practice.

Some thoughts:
- Competition b/w women leaders is partly a product of patriarchy and the tokenization of women leadership in left organizations

Perhaps this applies also to male leadership, but what is so suffocating about the way the left talks about women leadership is that there is a prototype for THE woman leader. Whereas male leadership styles are acknowledged in different ways, women's leadership are often acknowledged only when they are upfront and out loud, not the "invisible" "natural" aspects of community building and caring work which has been typically gendered female.

- Be strong when we need you to, and stop being a bitch at other times
Also takes the form of: Be strong when we need you to fight the power, but don't be strong when you advocate for yourself.

No, I come in a whole piece and the strength I have gathered from surviving through DV and gendered violence is what makes me both the person that is acceptable AND non-acceptable at various times. It is hard to pick and choose when to be strong and when not to be when my survival has socialized me a certain way.

This is not to say I dont want to take responsibility for being a better person. It is hard to put down my ego and acknowledge my failures but it is something I have to push myself to do. That said though,I seek empathy from comrades to understand that times when I am fierce are not attempts at being authoritarian but rather are ways that I have learned to fight, to have my voice heard amid the cacophony. It has been my survival mechanism.

At other times, I hear the message to be strong and fierce when encountering our common enemies, but when I advocate for myself, it would be much more palatable if I was a meek woman, who cries, not shouts, who fights back and not just take it. There have been instances when I have stood up for myself and gotten backlash for being too aggressive, too strong, and my point of self-advocacy was lost. People would have much rather me go to them in tears and would have listened to my gendered concerns more readily then. That's messed up.

- To prevent the emergence of authoritarianism as a way of dealing with oppression, we all need to exercise self awareness. Oppressed people have a responsibility to do that.

I am not excusing authoritarianism at all. But I know from my own experience and others, that the strength and fierceness we exude sometimes becomes perceived as authoritarianism, though it is not what is intended. Oppressed people don't realize sometimes, the power we have once we become leaders. We continue to operate on the mode that we are used to --- to have to keep fighting to be heard. It takes a lot of self awareness and humility to understand the different ways we need to relate to people around us because of the power we have that is different from what we are used to.

Oppressed people, because we will be the ones on the frontline of struggle, because we are the ones who NEED to rise to leadership, have a particular responsibility to make sure that we KNOW our power, USE it but also be AWARE of how it can cut those around us and ourselves.

- Personal drama needs organizational space to process and decision-making. Code of conduct, not personalized interventions

- defining leadership as mentorship AND personal growth

This is to avoid the star leader/token leader approach to oppressed peoples' leadership. We need to train one another to build a community of leaders. Leadership is not a zero sum game, ie if someone is a leader it means you arent. We need many many a gazillion leaders. This is a conscious, intentional direction we need to work toward because the constant tokenization of oppressed peoples' leadership means we are often unknowingly and defacto being channeled into the star leader/token leader position. We have to fight this current.

That said!! We cannot let ourselves DEPRIORITIZE our own growth at the expense of others and repeat once again the invisible caring labor that naturalizes the skills we have been trained from young to do.

We need to get rid of the "invisible caring worker" vs. the token star leader dichotomy and develop a perspective of female leadership that doesnt react to patriarchal norms but sets as its goals, the expansion of women leaderships in all its varieties, as norm.

Is there a Marxist Humanist method of leadership development? Can we put the Marxist method into practice when we talk about women leadership, group culture and such?

2) Congealed labor power: emotions and alienation at work as sources of value

Off the top of my head, if value comes from congealed labor power and labor power comes from the myriad of contradictions, sufferings, tensions of life, then what is the value of these emotions? Are our emotions made material through the labor process?

If fundamental to Marxism is the overcoming of the exchange value, and recognizing that workers ownership of our labor power, production and its products, is a key way to overcome that, can we also apply this form of ownership to our emotions and see this ownership (or self awareness, self-overcoming) as part of the struggle against the domination of exchange value in our everyday lives?

My point is, how can we apply Theses on Feuerbach, ie overcoming the dichotomy between a dogmatic materialism and idealism, in our conception of "being a better person," which to me relates to the socialist values such as love and care, non-commodified redux.

Can emotions also have a materialist role to play in our struggle toward liberation?

3) My aging parents want me to go home, to a tiny peninsula and island in Southeast Asia. I dont want to. Yet, can I live down not being home with family for a shot at revolution?
This gives a different edge to the work I am doing here, away from home. I feel like I need to be clear on where my time and energies are going. At the same time I dont want to project my need for fulfillment/justification to be away from home, unto our political project which is something which cannot be forced out of my own will, but is the collective action of multitudes. My work is to facilitate it and embrace its ruptures, as a hardworking and patient revolutionary.

Or, I could take a year or two out of what I hope to be a long revolutionary life, to be with family.

4) A new understanding of
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

I am not a Christian by any means, but this resonates with me a lot these days. I have a lot of anger against the system but in my everyday living, this anger does not serve me well and it brings me more suffering. How can I make sense of this continual sense of anger, need for justice, need to understand the root cause of my suffering, while at the same time, knowing that everyday interactions, everyday life necessarily, doesnt make absolute sense. That there will be those who trespass us because, simply because they are dickheads, or that those who trespass us sometimes do that also as their own survival mechanisms that is outside of themselves.

As the immediate struggle at my job begins to die down and I enter into a period of consolidation as opposed to agitation with the militant coworkers I have organized with, I have more awareness of how the actions of some of my coworkers are really just a direct result of the fear and stress they feel from the job.

A. (he is not a militant guy by any means but has often followed along in our actions) and I argued a few days ago cos A. was fuckin stressed out and dumped it on me. I was pissed and told him he needed to chill out and defended myself though at the same time, I knew A. would not have been so much of a dickhead if we werent short staffed, if the bosses werent breathing down on him, if he didnt have 7 kids he had to feed back home in Ethiopia, if he wasnt working 60 hours a week barely making minimum wage while being away from all family.

In another scenario at work, a resident, who is fucking racist and annoying keeps trying to get me pissed off with him. I can't stand him, truly and it takes me a lot not to react. I need to let it go. I need to let his trespasses slide. I can't fight him because I will lose my job. He is also close to his deathbed and it doesnt really matter to me if he stops being a racist right before his death. He is not crucial in my own struggle for liberation. The smartest thing for me to do is to chill, and let it go, and not let this person's words get under my skin, not let it be yet another burden I carry into the limited free waking life I have available after I clock out.

In these scenarios, anger doesnt serve me. Anger traps me. I just need to let go. Understand, recognize, and then let go.

Sometimes dramas in life dont need to make sense. This is a different way of thinking for me because I, like many leftists and revolutionaries, is constantly inquiring, trying to understand, trying to investigate truth, the root cause etc etc.

But sometimes these dramas of everyday life DONT have a root cause. You just need to forgive, and forget, and let the damn trespass slide.

How to have this daily attitude, that emerges from the sense that my emotional well being is what is precious to me, that capitalism wants to INVADE my mental space and I need to resist that invasion so I can have a shot at having a good life. And the best way of having a shot at a good life under this system is to let these fucking unexplainable trespasses slide.

Yet, retaining a constant hatred and impatience to ABOLISH and DESTROY this awful awful system.

This is some form of double consciousness. I dont quite know how to handle it.

For now though, I try to turn the other cheek when the nasty racist elderly try to get under my skin. I turn the other cheek when snitchbitch at work pretends she doesnt hear me. It doesnt mean I stop sticking up for myself, but that I know that they too are products of this awful awful system and they too are not immediately directly responsible for my suffering. That they too, need liberation.

You can love your enemies and not forget that they need to be overthrown.

5) Recognizing and loving femininity as strength, not weakness

As I embrace more and more of my genderqueer identity, I start to ask myself more questions about why I have never fully resonated with femme, particularly Asian femme identity, even as I find it attractive.

Patriarchal society has designated femme as weak, conquerable, a target of heteropatriarchal sexuality; Asian femme as I experienced in my high school consisted of too many horny European boys looking for female bodies to conquer (literally with world map and stickers to indicate where they have "conquered"), seeking in Asian women a stereotypical demure femme appearance with a wild-in-bed, tight vagina fantasy. The European boys used to speculate about this, naming off Asian women they had slept with who satisfied these fantasies, and left me, utterly disgusted, and utterly repulsed of heterosexuality, and perhaps somewhat fearful of Asian femmeness because it was this target of this disgusting, colonial, patriarchal fantasy....

As I embrace more and more being boi, of genderqueer, loving the androgyny, loving the embracement of a masculinity that doesnt try too hard, I am asking myself if this slight leaning toward masculine of center, has anything to do with my fears of heteropatriarchy, of wanting NEVER to be the target of such personally repulsive fantasies or possible violence that comes along with it. Even against my best political instincts, sometimes I get shocked and even angry at times when I get hit on by hetero men. I dont want to criminalize sexuality, and peoples' fetishes and desires, and believe that we can have sexual desires that CAN be dissociated somewhat from the patriarchal and racist norms of our society. That said, a sex positive world requires an anti-patriarchal, anti-violence setting where our gender and sexual expressions and experimentations are safe and not perceived as invitations to unwanted violence.

I have hella love and respect for the strong femme women in my life, straight and queer, who are sleek and confident in the various expressions of femininity, being able to express the totality of who they are amid a world that only wants to sexualize them. Being femme is hard, is rough, in a world that objectifies everything about the female body, and that has effects on the relationships between women and their bodies.

* I am not quite sure how to describe my gendered experiences. I defacto identify my struggles around leadership as something that is gendered female. I dislike the gender neutral pronouns (zir, hir) so defacto I use female pronouns even when I dont exactly feel very physically connected to being a woman.

some tough decisions

It's the end of the year. Will soon be reflecting on this challenging year. I hope it is only one among better ones in a long political life.

I will be making some tough decisions in the next few weeks.

I know I am a hard worker, motivated and enthusiastic about our political project. I am assertive and push myself to speak even when I am intimidated. I have been silenced too long in my life and I have made a promise to myself not to shut up out of fear and need to please people around me. If our project is revolution, then lets stay real about it and not tiptoe around. Carry yourself like you know that your goal is to change this world and fight with every inch of our muscles, heart, strength. Live everyday with a heart that can fit in all the contradictions and pain of this world, especially one in upheaval. Act everyday like you know that when your enemies come down on you, you wont let go inside. Talk everyday like you know that what we are striving for is a conglomerate of pain, suffering, joy, love and what keeps it together, lets it make sense, is honesty and preserverance, not niceness to every tom dick or harry around you. I aim and strive for this state of mind, this preserverance, this tenacity, this honesty.

Confidence, assertiveness and firmness also does not mean we become so tough we are no longer tender.

We can and must be tender to the world, as we struggle in the world.

But some people dont like this. Some people read my assertiveness as aggressiveness, and others read my humility as weakness.

I have some tough decisions to make because I believe I have a lot to give to the political project, that I can't compromise simply because of loyalty.

Survive, and Sacrifice

What has stood out most to me in the past few months, is the level of mental and emotional space my workplace experiences take up. Apart from physically altering my life -- the machinification of my body, the degrading of activities that should express love and care into senseless, objectifying, rushed, numbed acts, what is also tormenting for me, is how even after I clock out, my bosses faces dont disappear from my mind, our interactions replay, the emotions I feel swell up, and anger disgust fear layer up over each other.

At my best, I channel these emotions into organizing -- both in my mind and in conversation -- to speak not of the emotions as they are static feelings sitting, dull, boring, tiring -- but rather dynamic feelings that can move us and push us along, toward another place; emotions that can be transformed and not be tired refrains. I have raved and gushed about this many times before on this blog, of my love for my coworkers, and the cooperation, solidarity that we experience together everyday, and how I never felt in such a deep way that someone's got my back. These forms of solidarity contrast deeply with the negative emotions of anger and fear and stabilize a vision, for the direction our organizing needs to be headed: where these socialist expressions can be normalized, accountable and generalized. This outburst of creativity, affirming of our loving capacities, of envisioning how struggle can transform us into people who bring joy, not pain to each other and others around us -- this is living. this is loving living.

At my worst, I realize that this churning and rechurning of hate, anger, frustration at my workplace -- and add to the debates within Congress, police brutality, queer violence, the wars, etc -- means that everyday I only survive, not live, that I am functioning in reaction against the determinancy of the worst aspects of my material reality. Not dreaming, not organizing toward something fresh, beautiful, not loving...

And this is how my bosses hope to do, to wear and tear me down. Their daily repressions are aimed at exactly that: MAKING MY LIFE MISERABLE. That seems more satisfactory than immediate firing -- it assures that everyone on the job becomes demoralized and questioning of our resistance.

Capitalism, Patriarchy, Racism wants us to merely survive. They dont want us to live.

And ironically, we use our life capacities and time to engage in activities that make sure we only survive, not live. And these institutions make sure too that the rest of our free waking life is also channeled toward survival.

And then we internalize everything. The pain, stress, anger we feel from work, lacking a channel for transformation into new things, then settle to become a part of us.

There is so much history in this. There is so much history to how our emotions, as women of color, has been internalized, like a bucket that needs to be dumped out but yet we are forced to swallow its discontents, swallowing till we have a belly full of life and its discharges, which then become a part of us. Then they tell us we are angry, resentful and aggressive.

Some of my coworkers go through this back and forth where on the job, we share moments and enthusiasm to fight to preserve the solidarity we practice, yet when they go home, check the bills, see the kids, they do a "reality check" and come back saying we can't afford to do it. The job is more important.

Suck it up.
Bear with it.
Swallow life's pain, life's debris
Survive.

*

Sacrifice.

I hate this word. I want to tear it apart.
Separate the fibers that form the tenacity of this term, especially for women.

Our daily survival, is already a daily sacrifice of our lives.

the Detachable Pussy

I love wanda sykes, except when she gets into her islamophobia, anti-Muslim, American chauvinsim diatribes.
she needs a lesson in Malcom X pan-Africanism and Black Power.

that said, I love love love this skit: The Detachable Pussy.

watching it earlier this year reminded me of my early consciousness of my body.

my first inkling and knowledge of my sexual organs came not from joy, or knowledge of their pleasure, but from the what had been drummed into me from a young age, that they would be taken away from me, without my permission.

age 10, my first awareness of women's particular oppression as a group, came from my knowledge of comfort women and the history of japanese militarism and rape in southeast asia, rape as ethnic genocide, rape as torture. so much so i would rehearse this scenario in my mind, where i would be forced to choose between being raped and not snitching, or snitching to rescue my pussy, and my body, and betraying my people.

now, i realize it was a false choice to begin with. women never not get raped in war. women never have a choice under a patriarchal militaristic invasion.

but i rehearsed this choice in my head every time i watched these 9pm drama series, which ended promptly at 10pm, so i could be tucked nicely into bed, ready for school the next day. ready to belt out our national anthem at 7.20am sharp with my other country mates.

"i will accept rape, and survive rape before i will ever let the japanese military murder my people."

this was often what i told myself, echoing the messages these nationalist dramas conveyed.

but the nation betrayed me.

it never sought my liberation. in nationalist feminist drama, the woman always dies. the woman always becomes a martyr, leaving the good sturdy men to continue the legacy of the nation.

i dont wanna be a martyr. i want to be a survivor and a builder. there is no long-term process of learning, growth, challenges in sensationalized grand moments of martyrdom and sacrifice. i want to live to learn, to build relationships, to endure and pick myself up after the fall, not die grandly to be part of a forgotten memory. i want my liberation to be part of all of our liberations. i dont want to sacrifice. enough of that self-negating bullshit.

i dont want to be loyal for the sake of an image of the preservation of "my people," "my nation," especially not when they dont reciprocate the love and trust.

this post is a little abstract.a lot of stuff is happening in my life these days. i am trying to externalize, not internalize and let pain, anger and suffering monopolize my mental space. i want to be free as i struggle, i want to save room and make space for self-transformation as i struggle, not let past pains, betrayals and anger engulf me, capture me, suffocate me, so much so that i can't grasp and appreciate the beauty of the invading socialist society i feel i experience everyday at work.

i dont know how or why, but these were some of the feelings that came to me when i first watched wanda syke's skit.

if you feel comfortable sharing, i wanna know what came up for you too.

enjoy:

betrayal

for a former friend for whom my love was not enough
and therefore forgotten.

betrayal

is like a blunt knife ripping through rubber tires,

grating, rubbing, blurring 

pain, spurts 

of air heaving through

perforations -

losing 

form

i once loved you.

now,
i can't stop feeling this incessant pain you bring me.

my pussy is not for you to maim, or claim. it belongs to me.

the past week, i could not stop thinking about gender, sexuality and me. i have been meaning to write about this in a more coherent way, but can't manage. i am sick of confessionals -- women, queers, transfolks, people of color, being expected to write out their heart, rewind back to past traumas, pains, and survival, just to make a point to an injurious, hurtful world. to say to this world that no, actually you did get it wrong and here's why. to claim, and reclaim my voice is important. but some things i want to forget and start anew on. some things i dont want to keep reliving cos they are painful. i am tired of flashbacks because each flashback actually brings me back and it's taken so long to forgive myself for hurting myself and allowing others to hurt me. so dear world, why do you insist on digging through years of scab, scraping dead skin, exposing these wounds, just to have them be raw, raw, raw to the elements?

last week i hung out with folks who once, had been a part of my community. they were a part of a community that i built with trusted friends. it was not an explicitly political community, deliberately so cos we shared many different politics, but it was a somewhat safe space. we relived immigrant experiences, family drama, and nostalgia for our pasts, miles and years away. we were a bunch of queers, lesbians and straight folks who laughed together, watched movies together, and got drunk and high together.

but since then 2 precious people in my life, with whom i shared this community, have left the city to pursue new dreams. what i did not know, was that the safety and joy i felt in this community we built together, left with them.

last week i hung out w some friends, and got introduced in an abrupt way, to the stockholm syndrome.

the stockholm syndrome refers to a psychological phenomenon where hostages (people who are oppressed) begin to identify with their kidnapper (the oppressor) and defends them. there is a lot of psychoanalysis on these hostages loss of their sense of self, becoming "protectionist" so to speak, of their oppressors.

K., who used to identify as queer but is now presumably a lesbian separatist, asked me;

K: How is your relationship with M going?

Me: Very good. I have been going through a hard time and he's been very supportive.

K: Have you heard of the Stockholm Syndrome?

Me: No, what is it?

K: You should read it. It explains a lot of things in all our lives.

                                                                 *M is my partner. He is cis male.
Seriously?

In addition to this, there was a whole lot of sarcasm and disdain of queers -- like: who would want to identify as a "bi-dyke? that's just weird!" or, "there are a lot of those queers around," followed by sniggers and laughter.

The totality of my experiences around gender identity and sexuality, of me coming to my own in my skin, of being born "woman" but not being of "Woman" in this patriarchal, gender-binaried society, of not knowing what to do with myself, with my body, in those angst-y teenage years when puberty seemed to pass me by, when i walked into stores with friends not knowing what to do cos those styles dont fit, neither do those sizes, of me struggling with being in love with a woman, almost stalking her, calling her, writing love notes to her and being told everyday that i would get over it but then even 3 years after that as a teenager, still wondering what this "phase" meant, of me wanting more but fearing where this 'more' would take me, of me coming out to myself on a plane-ride home, admitting to myself that those moments when i massaged her with thumb kneading into skin, those moments were love moments, desire-moments; and me coming to terms with love, that my loves do not fit into labels and boxes, that my love for this cisboy doesnt make me less, or more. it's just love that reciprocates, that is honest, that is desire, that is bodily and expansive, that is growth, that doesnt force me to deny the other loves and desires in my life. this is me. me, who is neither of the males, or of the females. me,  who is queer not because i wanna claim your lesbian experience, but because there is no other term that makes sense for me, no other term that lets the edges of me stick out of boxes, quirky but not awkward. just me. You call me, and my trials, my tribulations, a fucking "stockholm syndrome?"

who, the fuck, are you?

today, i have a pussy. i love the sensations i get through this body organ. but, i dont particularly identify with this organ. i definitely dont detest it! but neither am i absolutely crazy over it. it is not central to my gender expression, to my daily living. it is a bodily organ to me that brings me a lot of joy, and allows me to share with my lover. at other times, it prompts me to reflect and question myself cos it shuts down, for good reasons. and for a long time, witnessing and experiencing domestic violence made me think pussy-love=vulnerability=beatings/anger/violence and for a long time, this organ was not of reach, out of touch, out of sync. but today, i found myself and can reach deep down with less fear.

you, lesbian separatist, wants to tell me that you know where my pussy should be, more than i do.

i am sick of people politicizing my body, objectifying it like they know more than me how it should look like, which way it should be penetrated, which race it should breed.

whether they are nationalists, lesbian separatists, patriarchal men or transphobic shitheads. this is it:

get off me.
let me be me.
today i have a pussy, and maybe tomorrow i wont.
and you know what? i dont feel particularly distressed about this uncertainty.
neither should you.

brainstorming on goals

I need some clarity in my own thinking. I have been reading like crazy, my mind stimulated by conversations with new friends about organization and politics, by the bold boisterous actions of activist groups based in this city, by a gazillion thoughts on gender and queer liberation (always!!) and then also by the marxism study group....and most recently, inspired by what comrades in ATX have been doing!!!

i love those moments, short and transient as they are, when these different areas of what i am thinking about come together and it all makes sense!...until it disappears again...

but now, a little sketch which i hope to expand on later

some lofty goals for the struggle at my job, drawn from many conversations with comrades and coworkers:


- continual informal political conversations/discussions on the job
our conversation topics range from white supremacy, to iran, to imperialism, police brutality, patriarchy...and the like.
these conversations are so vibrant and happen at the most unexpected moments and keep me alive! at work.

- building a culture of solidarity inside and outside of the job
organizing a get-together at my house/S's house sometime in the next month. This is to consolidate relationships and a sense of community. It can be a small get-together with the key militants at work.


- regular weekly meetings and contents
the past month we have been meeting regularly, weekly, when we get out of work.
i hope we can have these meetings be a little more systematic.
this upcoming week we are going to meet w the folks from other community-based organizations that can support us in our struggle.
the downside is these meetings are short because my coworkers have to go pick up their kids and what not.

i hope to get to a place where we can start doing weekly readings of short articles about labor history

the history of the textile workers/triangle shirt factory/elizabeth gurley flynn/general IWW stuff i think is most relevant

i could see us discussing it during our work time. at least i can experiment with this and see where it goes.

i am down to summarize/ "translate" articles into more accessible english/ shorter passages.

[if anyone is reading this: please suggest articles you think would be good, and if you can help me with the summaries and 'translation', let me know!]

i have been feeling stressed out about the "campaign" for a 1:8 staffing ratio.
but if we have a sense that this is going to be something long term, that we can't fight this in 1 month, then i think things can be less stressful.

of course, having a long term vision of the struggle, and also having a sense that we have to capture key moments for our demands, is really important.

i feel like this is what makes a workplace committee different from organizing for a business union.

comrades have told me, that our indy workplace group organizing, does not have the same 'timeline' as a union campaign.

this is what makes us powerful and what trips up the bosses.

i need to share these thoughts with my coworkers --- that we are digging in the trenches for something long term and we need to prepare and grow ourselves as militants and organizers to be able to do that.

so the readings are both for our long term visioning as worker militants, for thinking about "how the fuck do we organize this industry cos many of us are gonna be stuck in it for a damn long time", as well as short term "how can we transfer the lessons from the textile strikes to the nursing home organizing?"

so the content of our meetings need to meet the variety of goals

for now we have spent time coming up with this Bill of Rights.

what exactly we are going to do with it, we dont know yet. but these are the DEMANDS we want to fight for.

i think one thing that can keep morale going is for us to strike off these demands piece by piece so my coworkers and i feel like this isnt just a talk-session.

there are some demands in here that we can probably organize around pretty easily which is low risk.

so my sense now:
- start up regular reading, or at least experiment with this
- start doing some low risk organizing that get at some of the demands and show we can really organize at this workplace
and
- building a network of militants in the industry (below)


- building a network of militants in the industry
through our past organizing, we have made a lot of contacts with the custodians in the local university. many of the custodians also have family members/friends/themselves who work as CNAs as well.

we should flyer and organize for some kind of prelimnary network of militants in the industry.
it doesnt need to be a thing where we do an immediate campaign together
it is more a thing for my coworkers and i, as well as other militant CNAs to have a sense of community together to politicize our bitching sessions, to translate those complaints into worker demands, immigrant demands, anti-racism demands...and discuss a process to make the oppressive shit topple.

this can be done informally -- through pot lucks/hang outs, but also need to have a component of collective process and learning.

i hope to start flyering about this with some comrades to custodians and their friends and we can check back in on this


- ad hoc committee of supporters and co-organizers
right now, i have an amazing community of local activists who are supporting me in strategizing about our struggle.

i am trying to make sure my coworkers also meet with and communicate w these activists so the relationships dont only happen through me. this is important for a few reasons, the most obvious being democracy, and then also to build my coworkers up as organizers. another reason is also that this community of activists need to see themselves as supporting a workplace struggle, an organization, a structure, and not me, a personalized relationship.

the formalizing of this is going to take some time.

thinking about the challenges i have with this, i think it is because we are talking about a broader political relationship -- we are thinking about to build a relationship b/w community and workplace struggle that is emerging and new.

the challenges are not only that it now happens primarily through me, which is something i want to change.

another challenge is that there is a question of how much of the campaign needs to be carried by the community support, and how much by the workplace group.

for my job, it is a vulnerable religious institution. it is also a small workplace.

our strength on the job cannot on its own change things. we need outside help as well.

yet, the outside help needs to not dominate the struggle. it should not become like a typical "consumer boycott" struggle that doesnt build up worker militants.

the balance of this is very challenging. i imagine it will go back and forth and wont look like a clear relationship. because all this is new, it is important to keep in mind the philosophy and not let the immediate tactical moments cloud the philosophy.

the relationship b/w workplace and community in winning demands probably also depend on the demand we are trying to win.

this goes back to the Bill of Rights that i posted below.

which ones of these can we do in the workplace itself to build our confidence first?
and then which ones of these can we escalate with through community support?

what we still definitely need, is a plan for if anyone gets fired for our job action/agitation. this definitely needs community mobilization.

work in progress...more to come!

please offer suggestions and thoughts!