This little piggy went to market....

I am remembering the common nursery rhyme that my grandfather used to sing with me as a toddler...he would gently pinch my toes, we'd laugh and I'd squeal as he recited this familiar children's verse, each line corresponding to a single toe:

"this little piggy went to market
this little piggy stayed home
this little piggy had roast beef
and this little piggy had none
and this little piggy cried
wee wee weeeeeee
all the way home."

now, I'm not going to break this thing down too much.

but given the current backdrop of the 'swine' flu, i just couldn't let it go.

that little piggy that had none of the roast beef was a smart piggy.

cuz the 'roast beef' "food" of today's factory pig farms goes completely against what the little piggies should be eating in the first place. a strange concoction of all manner of dangerous ingredients such as bovine offal, synthetic growth hormones and antibiotics.

all the piggies should run home squealing WHAT THE FUCK!!!???? instead of 'wee wee wee'.

ruminants eating corn and vegetarians eating these ruminants' ground-up parts. it's an ecological cycle that's sure to spawn some new scary-species jumping microbes, as well as wake up some that had been lying happily dormant.

we've just really peeked into the 21st century and already the 'emerging diseases' are rearing their viral heads. it's enough to make me start screaming 'wee wee weeeee!!!'---not of a delighted child, but of paranoia and pessimism.

now we have to update Porfirio Diaz famous statement: Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States.

Poor Mexico. So far from God, so close to the United States' freakish agriculture projects exported thru neoliberal pressures and gone tragically awry.

this little piggy really did go to the market.

then there's the question of 'what's the real problem here?'

millions of people dying daily from malnutrition, drinking toxic water, breathing toxic air, living in toxic neighborhoods, and having their bodies riddled with parasites.

do we even need to do the math for points of comparison in terms of mobilization of the public health machinery?

health problems and diseases that we can either completely prevent, or mitigate through available and known technology and cheap medicines.

microbes live. microbes flourish. flu strains appear---ebb and flow---over the ages. dangerous epidemics occur. but the real kindling for stoking microbial fires is systemic inequality and poverty.

there are reasons why don't we see cholera outbreaks in the united states anymore, but we do see e-coli outbreaks.

'wee wee weeeeee' all the home!

meanwhile the constant, background hum of the real 'weapons of mass destruction' threatens to drown out the roar of discontent, anger, desperation and anguish of the world's most vulnerable people.

to paraphrase Michael Marmot, the British epidemiologist: There are no natural 'disasters'. There are only natural phenomena. All 'disasters' are the product of human action, greed, or neglect.

African queer women will reclaim their 'hood in Nairobi

This posting is dedicated to F, K and all the other queer men and women of the African diaspora who are claiming their dignity and space in a time of intense homophobic and misogynist attacks and threats of violence against them.

Last weekend, I received a message from a friend K, who lives in Nairobi. She related a horrible incident whereby some friends, 2 women (F & M), were leaving a club, Florida 2000. This club is frequented by everyone...queer and straight...mostly Africans. As the women walked out beyond the entrance, they were verbally assaulted with homophobic slurs by another woman--unknown to them.

Then this woman, brandishing a broken bottle, attacked F---cutting up her face.

The two male security guards, instead of trying to protect F and restrain the attacker, held on to F, prevented her friend M from assisting her, and joined in the assault against F. Eventually this melee was broken up when enough onlookers became involved and M prevented the attacker from leaving. F was taken to the emergency room at Nairobi Hospital and police reports have been filed. Human rights and feminist organizations in Nairobi have been contacted.

Two men held a woman who was attacked by another woman. No words.

F's face was severely cut up. She's had at least one round of surgery and was discharged from the hospital a few days ago. But she was readmitted to the hospital today because she's been losing consciousness at home.

F is surrounded by a lot of love and comfort from her sisters. The scars will be a testament to her survival, as well as a reminder of how precarious our lives still are as women and as queer people when we choose to live and love openly--without shame and fear.

A community that thought it had a safe place to just BE was severely traumatized. For some time.

But as K wrote me today, this despair, fear and disbelief is now starting to morph into reclamation and organized resistance amidst the women of her found family.

I feel hopeful and anxious about the news of what the women will do next.

So here are the words of Essex Hemphill for solidarity for F, her Nairobi peeps, and queer people in and from the motherland just trying to live their lives:

Everything different
tests my faith.
I have stood in places
where the absence of light
allowed me to live longer,
while at the same time
it rendered me blind.

I struggle against
plagues, plots,
pressure,
paranoia.
Everyone wants a price
for my living.

When I die
my angels,
immaculate
Black diva
drag queens,
all of them
sequined
and seductive,
some of them
will come back
to haunt you,
I promise,
honey chil'.

(excerpt from 'The Tomb of Sorrow')

When the bike lanes appear, there goes the neighborhood...

Welcome to 'Bad Neighborhood'.

A reclaiming of the term 'bad', a reclaiming of 'denigration'.

Yes, this site is intentionally "blackened", "darkened".

As is the majority of people on this blue planet---various shades of brown and black and red and yellow. As for those of you reading this who are not in the melanin-gifted department, better load up on the strongest SPF you can find with the ozone layer going going gone....

I employ no reverse-'paperbag test' here. All are welcome---as long as you have compelling 'bad neighborhood' stories to tell and have a deep abiding love, solidarity with and respect for the bad neighborhoods of the world. Some of my best friends are white folks.

This is not a 'poverty pimping' place. No glamorization of suffering and neglect and violence and environmental poisoning.

Because some neighborhoods truly have had the life beaten out of them and left for dead. These neighborhood are the unkempt toddlers standing wailing in the street left to fend for themselves. These neighborhoods are the aged left by themselves alone in dilapidated structures ---who are so dehydrated and disoriented that they don't know where or who they are.

This 'bad neighborhood' is harkening to James Brown's "I'm Superbad" kind of 'bad'.

A place where those of us who love/hate 'bad' neighborhoods, grew up in 'bad' neighborhoods, survived 'bad' neighborhoods, went to school in 'bad neighborhoods', received and gave love in 'bad' neighborhoods---can share our complex stories and experiences of these times and places.

These are the 'bad neighborhoods' that WMWFs---Well Meaning White Folks (no, not weapons of mass destruction, altho some would beg to differ...) refer to in polite conversation when I, often the lone person of color in the mix, am rendered either invisible or draped in honorary 'whiteness' (ie, 'goodness').

I have to thank the members of the Food Justice Group for whoever made that off-the-wall but oh-so-true comment and about white folks and bike lanes. We were having a discussion about neighborhoods we grew up in, live in now, what kinds of foods were available, etc.

Someone made a comment about the appearance of bike lanes as an indicator of neighborhood whiteness.

Forget about the absence of fried chicken joints, protestant churches on every block, brown and black folks hanging out on the corner and on porches, trash in the streets, hip hop blaring over speakers, run-down schools, dollar stores, taco trucks....no that's not how you tell whether you're in a 'bad' or 'good' neighborhood.

Look for the presence of bike lanes.

That's how you know that you're in a a 'good' neighborhood. With 'good' mostly white people. With 'good' brown people who care for their children and keep their lawns and pick their organic produce. With 'good' schools for the 'good' children who will grow up to make a lot of 'good' money. With just a sprinkling of black and brown folks, who receive the title of 'honorary good' just so that their presence can add to the urbane urban-ness, edgy potentially-but-not-quite 'bad-ness' of the neighborhood.

And of course, there are many many neighborhoods that flip this race and class divide cockroach on its back, with all six legs and antennae just scrambling!

So let's here about your bad neighborhood...with or without the bike lanes.