Month: January 2011

Harmful Sexuality: Workplace Exploitation

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One of the Buddhist precepts that I don’t hear discussed much in ‘official’ settings is the advice to “avoid using sexuality in harmful ways.” There’s a ton to unpack there, obviously, but one connection I’m making has to do with a meeting tonight of Bay Area radicals rallying around a friend of mine who got fired from her job.

She’s been an educator in an Oakland after-school program for a while, and a few weeks ago her boss fired her. Didn’t tell her why. (Still hasn’t.) Didn’t even bother to notify her: she came in and worked a whole day before being told that her contract had been terminated.

So what’s this got to do with sexuality? Well, even though no one has told her why she was fired, my friend has a pretty good idea: she turned down her boss’s sexual advances. For months he had been flirting with her, but as soon as she put a stop to it, the game changed. You can read her entire account on her blog.

Sexual harassment at the workplace? Clearly not okay. So tonight a bunch of us will get together and see what we can do to support. My friend already took the lead herself, by refusing to play along with her boss in the first place. (Reminds me of Robin D. G. Kelley’s Race Rebels, where he examines everyday worker resistance, and specifically names the form of struggle wherein women respond with calculated coldness to sexually aggressive male superiors.) But individual assertions of dignity are not enough. Not even when it comes to sila (Buddhist morality, including the precepts.) It takes sangha, community, to breathe life into explorations of harm and benefit.

And importantly, the precepts aren’t some kind of spiritual checklist. Don’t lie — gotcha; Don’t steal — okey dokey. If that were true, then as long as my shit is under control, I wouldn’t need to care about anybody else’s struggles with harm.

To me, rather than instruments for performance evaluation, precepts can act as guideposts for looking deeply and holistically into processes of harm and benefit.

We’ll see what we can come up with at tonight’s meeting.

Friends, Meet Two New Blogs

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‘Mornin y’all! Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

It’s cold here in Oakland. I am a hot-weather person. But it’s all good: I’m snuggled up under some blankets, and feeling especially cozy and glad because I get to share two lovely new blogspaces with you!

The first one a lot of folks are already excited about. It’s a blog for the Clear View Project, an engaged Buddhism org led by the totally rad Hozan Alan Senauke, vice-abbot at the Berkeley Zen Center. (Which, incidentally, is just a ways down from my new apartment. hey, neighbor.)

Just barely out the gate, Alan’s blog is already shining. Current events (national and international); incredible music (DAMN!); and personal/political reporting on the ongoing hearing of author, Buddhist, and death row prisoner Jarvis Masters — with whom Alan has cultivated a friendship for nearly 14 years. At Alan’s invitation on the blog, I joined supporters for part of the first day of Jarvis’ hearings in Marin. As someone who particularly appreciates blogs that bridge the online/offline divide, I’m so grateful that the CVP’s very first post was an offering for prison-support action. Dope, dope, dope. And the icing on the cake: Alan’s a superb writer. Clear View Blog: check it out, if you haven’t already.

And the second new blog, like most of the sites on my blogroll, is by a longtime friend and fellow young status-quo-questioner (who chooses to remain anonymous). The first few postings on handful of earth are personal and insightful, with the kind of sweet storytelling that, when you’re finished reading, makes you want to go on with your day a little differently; a little better. I especially love this dharma-infused reflection on a daily commute ritual with a stranger, commenting on the connection between generosity and joy.

There it is — two brand-new cybergems. Here’s to sharing freely online, while we still have the chance.

Colors, Coping

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radishes from tonight's Faithful Fools catering gig (Feast Of Fools! Dope!)

Hey friends. Sorry I missed posting yesterday: still don’t have Internet in the new place, though that’s not really a good reason since there’s free WiFi aplenty in the local coffeeshops and library. Really, it’s just been a very very full week: family visit, getting our feet on the ground in the new place (Ryan and I cooked our very first non-cereal-and-soymilk breakfast this morning, using our one pot — a huge soup beast — to boil water for tea). And blessing the apartment, Thursday, with its very first meeting: the Marxist feminist group (now weekly), preparing for a gathering the following night with two other Marxist feminist groups: one other from the Bay Area, one from New York. Pretty powerful.

Anyway, my point is I’ve been feeling pretty un-grounded (oh, did I mention I went on hormonal birth control again? motivation all plummeting; emotionality all skyrocketing), and thus blogging has suffered. Apologies! Please accept these colors (you know how I am with the colors) as a token of my love.

painting our bedroom
intimations of a living room -slash- dining room. (kitchen's too small for a table.) if you click to enlarge you can see some cute details, like a shadowy bike in the left background, and the corner of my billie holiday poster in the left front

See you Monday!

New Year, New Home, New Everything

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Dear friends,

Happy New Year!* Sorry I wasn’t able to put up a post yesterday, but I have a good excuse: no Internet, because I was moving into a new apartment!

2011 is bringing new beginnings for me on many major levels. After over a year of living and learning with the Faithful Fools in San Francisco, I’m crossing the Bay from the City to the Town, setting up shop in a cozy apartment in North Oakland. The “shop” itself will be the final four semesters of the Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts (through Goddard College) that I started in spring of last year, with the unbelievably generous support of the Buck Foundation scholarship. And my shopmates (fellow housemates) will be Ryan (whom you know) and Mai, a friend I got to know through the Marxist-Feminist study group.

Those are the basic facts; the meanings behind them feel a little complex.

Bittersweetness at leaving the Tenderloin, just as I was beginning to form some strong relationships, build trust, and get a solid feel for the place. Excitement to be living in Oakland, which was my original destination upon arriving in the Bay Area. (The Faithful Fools thing, in the city, kind of popped up as a surprise.)

Enthusiasm and optimism for my first time living with a partner.

And a complicated mixture of gratitude and grief about this amazing opportunity to pursue my dream education, fully funded, while so many other students worldwide suffer under tremendous debt from student loans — a collective yet tremendously isolating form of suffering owing to neoliberal attacks on public, accessible, common-good resources. But that matter deserves a whole post to itself: stay tuned.

As I transition into this new phase step by step, preparing to put lovely kitchen things into these lovely kitchen drawers (above), I just want to thank you, again, for reading, for commenting, for your kind encouragement, for your critiques, for your friendship, for your inspiration, collaboration, solidarity, and love in 2010. It was a year of great growth and change on Kloncke. To know that what I’m offering here continues to be of benefit to some people means more than I can express.

Thanks friends, take care, and be well in the new *Gregorian year!

love,

katie