Non-Profit Organization = Community-Based Organization?

{ July 13, 2007 @ 6:10 am } · { Poli-ticks of Non-profits, funding social change }
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I’m applying for an internship with the Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) and I got stuck at this particular question: “What is your experience working with community-based organizations?” I felt stuck trying to answer that questions because i’ve been working with an HIV/AIDS service organization that has certain aspects which resemble a community-based organization, but at times, seriously makes me doubt its authenticity.

So i did a Scroogle search of “community-based organization” and found this policy statement by AIDS Commitee of Toronto (ACT).

They spell out what it means for an organization to really serve its community. Essentially, this means knowing:

A) Which specific communities does the organization represent? And, of these communities, which maintain or are relinquishing primary control?

B) What type of responsiblity do the persons in the organization elected/chosen to represent “the community” have when acting and speaking for the community?

C) How does an organization balance the tension between trying to identify with constituent communities versus maintaining relationships with big funders that often don’t have the best interests of the community in mind (government, corporations, foundations)? This is an especially sticky point for which several HIV/AIDS organizations have gotten unplugged or cut severely when they pushed advocacy into areas that the feds felt uncomfortable with.

… continue reading this entry.

Silly tourists…

{ July 7, 2007 @ 3:58 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Hilarious post from the website of Kenyan Indian diaspora poet Shailja Patel:

Click here

Tourists ask the darndest things. Here’s an on-line Q&A from a Kenyan tourism website:

Q: Does it ever get windy in Kenya? I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (United Kingdom)
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.

U.S. Social Forum Blogs

{ July 6, 2007 @ 10:40 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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I feel so behind.

Anyway…the U.S. Social Forum is a national get-together of folks working to address systemic inequalities, oppression, and broken social/economic institutions. No government or corporate sponsorship has been sought or accepted since “the gubmit” and corporations are notorious for trying to water down proposals or shutdown conversations about things that they deem too controversial. The U.S. Social Forum is also meant to be a place for people from the community, from grassroots organizations, and from “green businesses” to get together as a direct contradiction to the idea that people need elected (or supposedly elected) politicians to speak for them. There is no particular organization that is allowed to dominate the conversations.

This is the first event of its kind in the United States, but it is based on organizing models developed in the global South: Mumbai, India; Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Karibu, Nairobi have been sites of past global social forums.

However, since i was not at the U.S. Social Forum i have no personal reporting to give you. Instead i refer you to the following blogs:

♦ brownfemipower’s Women of Color Blog. Day-by-day updates and some speech summaries by fierce WoC leaders at the Forum.

♦ Un blog bilingüe (de un peruano)

♦ National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights has Migrant Diaries

♦ Third Wave Foundation’s blog

♦ Monthly Review Foundation’s blog has lots of links to participating organizations

Enjoy! I will soon review the last edition of Left Turn magazine, which contains lots of stuff about the USSF.

Censorship at Frameline Film Festival

{ July 6, 2007 @ 4:31 am } · { censorship, indie film }
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For those of you outside “the Bay” when this happened (or who don’t live in the area anyway), there was a film approved by the Frameline screening committee called “The Gendercator,” made by a Catherine Crouch, which got pulled after someone began circulating an on-line petition against it.

A summary of Crouch’s film here: www.catherinecrouch.com/mainwebsite_html/filmsDetail.php?pageID=gendercator

It’s pretty clearly transphobic – lumping all transgender people together with gender policing straight people and the State (DUN DUN DUN!). And it ignores the lived circumstances of transgender lives: how not passing can be hazardous to our health, how transgender people who don’t pass or choose not to pass are shunned in many L and G spaces, how the government does not, in fact, encourage or support people who want sex-change surgery and hormones unless one is living in a place like San Francisco.

Still, i am against censorship except under extreme circumstances. Pulling an already approved film sets a bad precedent. Frameline could well censor a film with a story about

… continue reading this entry.

Trans Rape Survivor Sues Prison System

{ July 3, 2007 @ 10:00 pm } · { prisons, violence against trans }
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*TRANSGENDER WOMAN RAPE SURVIVOR SUES CALIFORNIA STATE PRISON SYSTEM*

Article on Alexis Giraldo in the latest Bay Area Reporter http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=1957

Community United Against Violence (CUAV) and the Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) are encouraging community individuals, groups, and social justice organizations to show their support for Ms. Alexis Giraldo. Ms. Giraldo is a young Latina transgender woman in the California prison system. For three months Ms. Giraldo repeatedly sought protection from prison staff after her cellmate threatened to rape her. After numerous denied requests for assistance, Ms. Giraldo’s cellmate raped her in early 2006. She is suing the state of California for failing to protect her. Ms. Giraldo is asking the court to require the State of California to develop guidelines to better protect transgender people in prison.

*CUAV and TGIJP are requesting community presence and attendance at Ms. Giraldo’s trial.

* Community presence in court will demonstrate our belief that the state must be held accountable for continually placing our community in life-threatening danger.
… continue reading this entry.

My visit to Kanon

{ July 2, 2007 @ 4:16 am } · { Power of Myth, anime, family violence }
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Warning: Spoiler Zone Ahead!

Do not read unless you are certain that you are NOT going to watch Kanon or unless you have already seen it.

Kanon (2006) has been therapeutic for me.

The Makoto arc

Piro’s goneReunited

It’s painful to lose someone you love. I connected to Makoto’s gradual loss of human abilities and intelligence because “my cat” died not long ago. I say “my cat” because i had given the name and had been one of two people primarily responsible for Hazel’s wellbeing for several years – until i went off to college.

… continue reading this entry.

Anime Review: Kanon (2006)

{ July 1, 2007 @ 1:19 am } · { anime }
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Title: Kanon TV seriesAnd for today’s ceremony…

Director: Tatsuya Ishihara

Japanese release: 2006

U.S. release: n/a (internet fansub only)

Production company: Kyoto Animation, based on visual novel by Key

How does it look?Sooooo cute

Since the 2006 version of Kanon is one of the most blogged about recent TV series, i will try to provide a short description here.  I will write about my reactions to this series in a separate blog.

The setting is a northern town of Japan, which the wisecracking Yuuichi Aizawa has not visited in seven years.  He returns to stay with his aunt and to continue his education as a sophomore at the local high school.  Yuuichi has forgotten everything that happened to him in this town, but the other characters have not.

Quick introduction to the main characters:

… continue reading this entry.

From my cell

{ June 30, 2007 @ 4:26 am } · { poetry }
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Somewhere outside a man shouting his god’s judgment.

Somewhere outside the sun burning itself to the ground.

Somewhere outside flowers sheltering their pistils.

Somewhere outside the finger of a tree floating on the water.

Somewhere inside maggots squirm and feed.

Somewhere inside a severed head still speaks.

Somewhere inside a rusty nail pins the wings of a dove.

Somewhere inside the power cord for the fridge is tripped.

Somewhere inside a beetle’s mandibles gape wide.

Somewhere inside a thirsty well with no bottom.

Somewhere inside a labrynthe of broken wands.

Somewhere inside the gasping of a bee’s final fight.

Somewhere inside a gate is breached.

Somewhere inside a box i fear to open again.

Prevent eviction of Street Spirit’s editor

{ June 28, 2007 @ 5:03 am } · { homelessness, indie print }
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On a real serious note, here’s a call out for someone who works tirelessly on poverty issues, fighting anti-homeless laws and also providing education and employment to homeless folks every day.

Link to Freedom Voices website: http://freedomvoices.org /streetspirit/

I’m writing to bring some sad news and a request for help for our fellow journalist Terry Messman. As many of you know, Terry Messman is the founding editor of Street Spirit Newspaper, one
of the outstanding examples of street newspapers and progressive journalism in the
country. Terry has dedicated over 20 years to organizing with homeless people in various ways, from occupying and winning housing for shelter to the brilliant advocacy journalism he has practiced in Street Spirit for over a decade. In addition to providing a free speech venue for poverty rights, peace and social justice views that are censored by the mainstream, the paper provides income for scores of homeless people who act as vendors earning honorable income selling papers on the street.

In one of capitalism’s ugly ironies, Terry is now facing possible eviction and homelessness.

… continue reading this entry.

Movie Review: El Calentito

{ June 26, 2007 @ 8:46 pm } · { Cine en espanol, queer film }
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El Calentito

Las Sioux

Director: Chus Gutierrez

Starring: Veronica Sanchez, Juan Sanz, Lluvia Rojo

Spanish release: 2005

I saw this movie at San Francisco’s Frameline last week at the Castro Theater. Frameline is San Francisco’s annual lesbian, gay, queer and transgender film festival. (There’s hardly anything addressing a bisexual audience.) An organ player rose up from a pit in front of the screen and entertained the audience just before the showing.

I don’t go to the theater much. Tickets are expensive and i feel bad when i see a movie that sucks. Movies that i do go to el cine for: those with great visuals and/or when music is an important part of the story.

It’s 1981 and nightclub scene in Spain is shaking as people find themselves freer to express their individuality, a quality long suppressed under Franco’s dictatorship. El Calentito is one site of rebellion, where youth party to punk rock, score hits, and well, score. But not Sara. She lies plastered on the floor of the restroom after witnessing her boyfriend making out with another woman. Rescued by Carmen, one of Las Siux, an all-women punk rock band one singer short of a trio, Sara is convinced to fill in at a record label meeting. You pretty much can guess what happens for the rest of the movie – except for some characters’ reactions to martial law when military fascists stage a coup.

El Calentito reminds me of an Almodóvar movie, but with fewer plot twists. Chatty transexuals? Check. Lesbian/gay side character? Check. Controversial Catholic sexual imagery? Check. Linear plot, unimaginative lyrics, a few tired metaphors; but historically interesting and very high energy, El Calentito is a good popcorn sort of movie. It just might have you jumping up and shouting “¡Libertad!”

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