Grrr....thoughts!

I have a barrage of stuff in my mind. As usual, I need to spill them before they explode in my brain.

1) Joy and comfort from hearing my parents' voice, even from afar.
The knowledge that this may not last forever.

2) Anger, deep anger and resentment of the nursing program.
Specifically, anger about the racism and classism within the program, including the obvious withholding of knowledge from CNAs in nursing homes. 1 quarter of being a nursing student, I feel I have more knowledge of my patients than 2 years of being a CNA. I am resentful. Also pissed about how nursing school is educating a whole generation of nurses to be punked on and to punk on CNAs. Reproducing the hierarchy of white supremacy, division of labor...etc etc

3) Sinking realization that industrialization and capitalist division of labor is primitive and backward. That a generation of industrial capitalists came up with an idea one day and disseminated it wholesale everywhere in a powerful way and this has changed our earth, our living, our bodies in ways unimaginable. In ways that made human life unworthy and equivalent to the products that we handle -- whether it be hogs, or cars, or in the case of caring labor, people with disabilities and the elderly. Industrialization and capitalist law of value dehumanizes in such a complete, unbelievable manner. I can't believe it. I rememeber not being able to believe when I was treated SO MUCH like shit, and again it's that whole feeling of incredulousness...

4) The pace of the movement -- D/OS, alongside being a student, a child to elderly parents, a friend etc - is unsustainable. Needing to rest, as I am right now, but also to figure out an involvement that is more sustainable. Understanding that this, is now, my new reality. Needing to figure out how to absorb this mentally, emotionally so every moment is not a crisis or a dilemma.

5) How to integrate all the energy from D/OS into workplace organizing -- or is workplace organizing obsolete at this point??

A Xmas day note

2011 is coming to an end.
Xmas day doesnt mean much to me except as a landmark. The week before the end of the year, a reminder that some things, tasks or mental notes, need time to wrap up for the new year's welcome.

I believe in new beginnings. Resolutions are a way to initiate them. I have collected lists of resolutions, and kept, only a mere few. Yet a mere few that has meant a lot to me.

The same time last year, I was not good. This same time this year, I am doing better. I would say much better except that I believe in jinxing myself. So, officially, I am doing slightly better :)

I feel like there's a lot in my head that needs to come out. Thats how I process and make real in my head the experiences my body takes me through.

Uncharted terrain

Writing has always brought me back to myself.

Since the Occupy movement has taken off, I have been gradually losing touch of myself. It is an irony, because it is precisely this moment of potential mass upheaval, the expansion of possibilities, that I feel that I, and many others around me, have sprung into, that coincides precisely with me losing a sense of myself. Where every work of creation begins with a work of destruction. It rings too true and I can't handle it.

I am afraid of the power that I simultaneously have and dont have. I am suddenly shocked by how much power this democracy offers me, and people around me. We have the power to make the powers that be, throw down their weight on us. We have the power to smash on their ideas. I have no illusion about the somewhat weak position we still are, and the challenges we confront. But for regular people like me, and everyone else around me, the sudden power we have is both beautiful and somewhat fearsome. I don't know if I have the mental, emotional resilience, stamina, and most importantly, the compassion of heart, to handle these moments.

I have felt myself become patient with emotions because, emotions are rough and tumble unpredictable things that throw me off my rocker. Does it build the revolution? No. It distracts me from the tasks I need to do. I know it's the wrong way to feel. It's a baggage of capitalism, a baggage that I have fought to resist, a baggage that my entire upbringing and schooling has trained me to be. But in moments of stress, I run auto-pilot and distance from that which destabilizes is wise.

And strange.

And strange because it has never been how I have seen myself. Strange because I have always been that emo kid who cried too easily about dolphins and laughed too loudly about inappropriate shits. I don't know. I just feel lost.

Or burned out.

I feel so nervous about the upcoming actions. the last time we organized something big like this, it flopped on us and all the relationships around us burned. Burned to a crisp that tore my heart, lost people whom I thought I loved. So, what now when this fails?

And the voice of the bureaucrats whom I had shut out for a while, relishing the new found joy, freedoms and sense of power that my community and I have struggled for, suddenly came back. Suddenly I heard their voices again that reminded me of  what we slide back into when this movement, if this movement, dies.

I fear my loss of inihibition. I love my loss of inhibition. I love the visions of a new world and I fear losing it and what awaits us if we do.

Days like this I realize that dreaming, actually, as cheesy as it sounds, takes a hell lot of strength, and super super thick skin.

Occupy Seattle...

Occupy Seattle is like a drug that I can't remove myself from even when it hurts.

OCCUPY, to END CAPITALISM

Hey all,
This is a piece that BOC, a group I am a part of, put out today. It was produced in a hurry given that we have all been heavily involved in Occupy Seattle. Check it out:

http://blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/occupy-to-end-capitalism/

Caring: A labor on stolen time

Care workers, feminists, labor militants, read this and share your thoughts!

You can email the Jennifer Ng here

caring: a labor of stolen time

pages from a CNA's notebook

*                             

The Machine endangers all we have made.

We allow it to rule instead of obey.

To build a house, cut the stone sharp and fast:
the carver's hand takes too long to feel its way.

The Machine never hesitates, or we might escape
and its factories subside into silence.
It thinks it's alive and does everything better.
With equal resolve it creates and destroys.

But life holds mystery for us yet. In a hundred places
we can still sense the source: a play of pure powers
that -- when you feel it -- brings you to your knees.

There are yet words that come near the unsayable,
and, from crumbling stones, a new music
to make a sacred dwelling in a place we cannot own.

Rilke (Translated by Joanna Macy)

                *                             

This piece is dedicated to all nursing home workers, residents and their family members.                                       Be patient with me, as I share our silenced stories.

All names have been changed to protect the identities of my coworkers and residents

*                             

I work in a place of death. People come here to die, and my coworkers and I care for them as they make their journeys.Sometimes these transitions take years or months. Other times they take weeks or some short days. I count the time in shifts, in scheduled state visits, in the sham monthly meetings I never attend, in the announcements of the “Employee of the Month” (code word for best ass-kisser of the month), in the yearly pay increment of 20 cents, and in the number of times I get called into the Human Resources office, counting down to the last one that would get me fired.

The nursing home residents also have their own rhythms. Their time is tracked by scheduled hospital visits; by the times when loved ones drop by to share a meal, to announce the arrival of a new grandchild, or to anxiously wait at their bedsides for heart-wrenching moments to pass.  Their time is measured by transitions from mechanical food to pureed food, textures that match their increasing susceptibility to dysphagia, their appetite changing with the decreasing sensitivity of their taste buds. Their transitions are also measured by the changes from underwear to pull ups and then to diapers. Even more than the loss of mobility, the use of diapers is often the most fearsome adaptation. For many people, lack of control over urinary functions and timing is the definitive, undoubted mark of the loss of independence to dementia.  

Many of the elderly I have worked with are, at least initially, aware of the transitions they undergo, and respond with a myriad of emotions such as shame, anger, depression, anxiety and fear. Theirs was the generation that survived the great depression, armed with fervent missions of world war. Aging, that mundane human process, was an anti-climatic twist to the purported grandeur and tumultuousness of their early 20th century youth.   

“I am afraid to die. I don’t know where I will go, Jennifer,” a resident named Lara once said to me, fear dilating her eyes.

“Lara, you will go to heaven. You will be happy.” I reply, holding the spoonful of pureed spinach to her lips.

“Tell me about your son, Tobias.”

And so Lara begins, the same story of Tobias, his obedience and intelligence, which I have heard over and over again for the past year.  The son whom she loves, whose teenage portrait stands by her bedside. The son who has never visited. The son whom I have never met, but whose name and memory calms Lara down.

*

Continue here

"Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us"

"The body had to die,

 so labor power could live"

Silvia Federici 

Caliban and the Witch (141)

I am strongly influenced by Silvia Federici's "Caliban and the Witch." I read that book alongside Maryse Conde's "I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem." Conde's book is also really amazing, and Federici's historical and theoretical ideas give another layer of meaning to the depth that is already there. I hope to do a more detailed write up of these books sometime down the road.

In the meantime, I want to share a talk that Federici recently gave in Philadelphia, entitled, "Capitalism Destroys Us, Movements Heal Us." The organizer has kindly uploaded the audio recording. Check it out. It's super helpful. I especially like the distinction between "sacrifice" and "suffering." The Buddhist instincts in me really like her acknowledgement and acceptance of aspects of life as suffering.

It's making me think alot about the importance of organization in helping maintain sustainable political lives. The 10% we can offer to political work while also studying, working, caring for family, self care, is small when it is alone. In fact, it becomes a small droplet that gets lost in the midst of a gazillion other things. But when many people pool their 10%, 5% - s together, then our joint (small) forces become bigger and more meaningful political activities.

I have been to meetings where people spend the only 2 hours of the week they have to spare, nearly dozing off because the work is not engaging or meaningful. Being present at a political meeting does not mean we are growing and engaging meaningfully. We need to have organizations that channel the only 2 hours of spare time someone can offer, into meaningful, inspiring, challenging work that helps us grow. For that, we need structure and political content.

We need to build that! Or we won't win against the capitalist scum bags that overwhelm us! We need to build that, so we dont burn out! Also so we won't conflate all forms of "sustainability" with self care that takes us AWAY from political work.  I believe it is possible to be sustainable and be engaged politically. I also do think there is need to take time away sometimes, but that cannot be the only way we conceptualize sustainability.