Anti-racism

Infaquerical Breakup

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infaquerical: a term created by my friends Candy and Castro,* who did not identify with either monogamy or polyamory, and wanted a new framework for thinking and living their coupledom. After writing out the aspects of their relationship that matter to them, together they birthed this word.

in: indigenous

fa: familia (chosen, community, & biological)

que: queer, querida

r: revolutionary, radical

ical: magical

Since its inception, they’ve been using infaquerical as a touchstone as they navigate complexities of a nontraditional, gender-bending and anti-capitalist romance.  Castro might say to Candy: querida, I really want to spend my time with you: it’s been a hard week and my instinct is to retreat with you into our little world.  But since we’re in an infaquerical relationship I think it’s important for me to spend some time with my homies, rather than defaulting into monogamous isolation.

Or Candy (feminine-centered) might relish opening doors for Castro.

Or Castro (masculine-centered) might enjoy sitting on Candy’s lap in public.

As you might imagine, I instantly fell in love with this dope-as-hell word.  Not only for the meanings it carries, but for the process of intention that shaped it, and the ways it might live through people’s loving thoughts and actions.  Reminds me a bit of the way Ryan and I attempted to (re)define our “Open Relationship” Facebook status in the early days.

Now, over two years later, Ryan and I have decided to end our time as a couple. And I think the way we’re doing it reflects the infaquerical qualities of our time together.

  • Non-blaming.  It so happens that our breakup is nobody’s fault.  If a couple (or group) decides to split up because one person wants to have children and the other(s) don’t, is anyone to blame?  Ryan’s and my situation differs in specifics, but the gist is similar: our needs and desires just don’t happen to match up. Since we’ve spent over two years together responding to our conflicts with compassionate listening rather than defensive blaming, the breakup conversation, too, remained drama-free.
  • Supporting.  In addition to harboring no resentment, we each have an inclination to actively (and carefully!) support one another.  I say “carefully” because you know what?  It’s easy for us sensitive-type humans to deceive ourselves, during a breakup, into thinking that the best form of support is sustained contact and connection.  We want to show our former partner that we still care.  So we stick around.  (This has usually been my instinct, personally.)  For some people this might work out well; I’ve seen it happen once or twice.  But for many of us, “supporting” our former partner may actually mask our own desire to feel needed, wanted, and less-than-dispensable.  More important than soothing them is ensuring they have the tools they need to heal independently.  For cohabitants: do they have a place to go if they don’t want to stay at home with you?  Can you stay with a friend for a while to make space for your partner?  The stresses of making rent under capitalism can add a whole other level of stress to co-habitating couples splitting up.  Can you have conversations about housing and property that stem from a place of “from each according to ability; to each according to need”? Instead of trying to be the main person emotionally supporting your former partner, can you enlist others?  (Which brings us to:)
  • Community building.  Typically when we think of a community supporting a couple, we might imagine a wedding (if we’re more mainstream) or a, Octavia-Butler-esque collective of people (and/or vampires), romantically and non-romantically involved, sharing resources and helping to raise the next generations.  But it seems to me that for infaquerical relationships, the breakup is also an important moment to deepen community ties and trust.  Especially when, as is the case with Ryan and me, the former partners share friends/comrades and important projects.  Like Candy and Castro, Ryan and I have always felt it’s important to encourage each other to deepen friendships even while remaining anchored in a primary partnership.  Now I see the fruits of this orientation.  The day Ryan and I decided to separate, I later ran into one of his friends on the street, and as we were chatting it came quite naturally to me to ask this friend to check in on Ryan, to let him know that he’s loved and cared for.  I know Ryan would do the same for me.
  • Enlightening. One of the most precious aspects of our relationship — and one that I’ll carry with me — was the way Ryan and I supported each other’s Buddhist practice.  And as Thanissaro Bhikkhu says, “This is what we’ve been practicing for: the situations where the practice doesn’t come easily,” a.k.a. crises, or “storms.” A breakup like ours encourages us to cultivate paramis (positive qualities) of patience, generosity, acceptance, compassion, and determination.  And while it may not hold true for everyone, I’ve noticed that for me, times of disorientation and big emotion (Pema Chödron famously calls this “groundlessness“) can actually flow spontaneously into deeper dhamma practice.  When the mind and heart get overloaded, it can be easier to escape the tyranny of cognitive thought.  Notice more sensations; notice the quality of change itself.

When green leaves turn in the wind
I vow with all beings
to enjoy the forces that turn me
face up, face down on my stem

~Robert Aitken Roshi, a senryu verse from The Dragon Who Never Sleeps

Naturally, separating from someone we love brings pain.  Not tryna deny that sadness.  Splitting up with Ryan means losing my best friend.  But if I’ve learned anything from dharma and visionary politics, it’s that within crises — inside the instabilities: of gender, of capitalism, of heteropatriarchy, of the mind — we can also find opportunities for liberation.

With deepest gratitude to everyone who has loved and supported me and Ryan, as a couple and as independent people: you bring infaquerical to life!

love,

katie

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* Sweet corrections from Castro:

[M]y my housemate Ray, Candy and I all thought we should re-name and re-define our reality by creating an evolving framework and term that speaks to our lived experiences. So, infaquerical was a trio effort which is why it is also so wonderful because as Candy pointed out, the way we defined our reality included another person (Ray) not just the two of us.

In: Indigenous
fa: familia (chosen, community and biological)
que: querida/queer
r: radical/revolutionary
ical: magical

Infaquerical: a magical, radical, revolutionary and romantic relationship between two non-gendered conforming people; they live to restore humanity instead of living to make profit; have the desire to decolonize their mind and to abolish male supremacy; value familia (biological, chosen and communidad) and challenging male supremacist ways of thinking.

So amazing, right? Have you experienced or witnessed dynamics of infaquerical in your life? (Hehe, I know the answer is Yes because so many of y’all are dope livin-yr-politics messy queer feminist beauties) Please feel free to share testimony! I’ll be sure it makes its way back to Candy and Castro. :)

Inside/Outside: Demo at San Quentin Prison

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All photos from demo: some taken by me, others taken by friends.

When I heard of the call raised In Oakland, California, to “Occupy the Prisons,” I gasped. It was not an especially radical call, but it was right on time.

~Mumia Abu Jamal, Souls On Ice

As the carload of us walks back along the two-lane road toward the parking area, leaving a crowd of 500 or so outside the east gate of San Quentin, clusters of military-looking guards stud the hills above us, watching through sunglasses. We’re tired from walking and standing for a few hours. I’m feeling cranky, and a little disappointed. What was I expecting? Maybe the Occupy/Decolonize events have spoiled me with their frequent snake marches and militant ruckus-making. Shutting down banks; shutting down ports; attempting to take empty buildings for community use. Being near San Quentin (my first time) has me itching to tear down a wall or two.

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Occupy Is Failing — And That’s A Good Thing

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Holy smokes, is this a welcome morsel of public intellectualism.

The entire piece is deft and deeply relevant — worth a read, for sure. And since I seem incapable of connective theorizing that extends beyond whichever book I’ve last read, or whatever idea I’ve most recently started exploring (“Neuroplasticity, you say? You know, in a weird way that comes up in this book/article/Facebook post I just read on Black politics/Barbara Kingsolver/the disappearance of bees.” Lazy, I know, but at least the randomized combinations keep things surprising), I’m struck by the similarities between the recent work of Keith Hennessey (a performance artist who just presented and workshopped here at the MFAIA program) and the kind of thinking that Jeb Purucker applies to Occupy Oakland.

“Failure” is evidently enjoying a current popularity surge within academia: Jack Halberstam and a few others are releasing books on the topic. In his lectures and hands-on workshop here, Keith discussed a recent piece of his called Turbulence, in which he explores the concept of failure — as in, a performance piece that is set up to fail. Without going too much into it, I’ll say that participating in his workshops helped remind me of (a) the fruitfulness and dignity that come from improvisation, (b) the usefulness of reflecting on failures in order to glean lessons, and (c) the ways in which, with “success” kind of off the table, we are freed up to redouble our focus on how we work together. The process.

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This Is Some Serious, Glorious Play Right Here

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Click to read the full article on Libcom

5. The workers at the General Hospital of Kilkis answer to this totalitarianism with democracy. We occupy the public hospital and put it under our direct and absolute control. The Γ.N. of Kilkis will henceforth be self-governed and the only legitimate means of administrative decision making will be the General Assembly of its workers.

. . .

7. The labour union of the Γ.N. of Kilkis will begin, from 6 February, the retention of work, serving only emergency incidents in our hospital until the complete payment for the hours worked, and the rise of our income to the levels it was before the arrival of the troika (EU-ECB-IMF). Meanwhile, knowing fully well what our social mission and moral obligations are, we will protect the health of the citizens that come to the hospital by providing free healthcare to those in need, accommodating and calling the government to finally accept its responsibilities, overcoming even in the last minute its immoderate social ruthlessness.

I’m ruminating on this today, thinking about play and experimentation in radical takeovers. Gratitude to Pete Hocking, Keith Hennessey, and the relational aesthetics folks (readin’ up on ’em here at Goddard) who are giving me some new perspectives to play with. May come back with some new ideas for EastBaySol. :)

As always, would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share!

Gratitude to Nigerian General Strikers

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The General Strike worked in Nigeria! Beautiful testament to who really constitutes the foundation of the world economy: not politicians or businesspeople (so-called “innovators”), but workers and ordinary people (who continually innovate new ways of asserting power against bosses, patriarchs, and state oppression).

Thank you, friends in Nigeria, for inspiring the rest of us! May we continue to develop and use our collective material power, worldwide, and discover together how to replace capitalism with a system that promotes freedom, equality, compassion, and positive interdependence among humans, animals, and the earth (and maybe robots; who knows ;) ).

Also, smiled at this seemingly pro-queer shoutout from Femi:

Later in his office, Mr. Kuti shouted at his television as he watched the labor leaders announce the end of the strike. “I told you those people would back down,” he said to his aides, looking up from the screen. As for the government, he said, “They prosecute people for being gay, but there is no law against stealing 14 million.”

Bed Bugs In Paradise

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I don’t want to fight my landlord
over who will pay for bed bug extermination.
I don’t want to feel relieved
when the infestation’s epicenter
turns out to be in the unit upstairs.
Those men are broke enough as it is,
trying to stay clean and sober and keep a job.
Can’t afford a thousand dollars
for liquid CO2.

I want a building, a block, a cityland
where everyone is secure
in a shelter they love
where no one feels pressed to salvage
a dubious mattress
unless they can take it to the free clinic
for thorough inspection and cleaning.
No big deal.
I want to be free and open
to share the pains of infestation:
we’re in this together.
I don’t want to fight my landlord.
I don’t want a landlord at all.
I want a world without them;
bed bugs we can handle.

Roundup: Oakland General Strike and Beyond

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So many people have been writing and sharing wonderful views on Oakland’s General Strike — I thought I’d collect a few for my digital memory chest.

Where We Been

Grew up listening to him on KSFM 102.5 — now appreciating Davey D’s take on the day.

Mushim Ikeda-Nash, writer and one of the many dope teachers at East Bay Meditation Center, offers a perspective as a spiritual leader and involved Oakland parent.

Dope commenter, organizer, and now blogger in her own right, Huli breaks it down and offers a delightful new phrase: “peace bullies.”

A 10-year street medic, present for the attempted re-opening of the former Traveler’s Aid Society, supports liberating empty buildings and standing up to cops, but urges us to prioritize inclusive solidarity and sustainability, not spectacle.

Where We Goin

Ryan and I made this flyer a few weeks ago for East Bay Solidarity Network, to pass out at the Occupy/Decolonize Oakland encampment. (Click image to download & read)

And sure enough, what headline is the Chronicle running now?  “Occupy Oakland’s new target – foreclosed buildings.”

Some parts of Occupy Wall Street seem to be heading in a similar direction, as with this beautiful recent action, when #OWS folks occupied a boiler room to win tenants heat and water.

Official, institutionalized groups like Causa Justa / Just Cause and ACCE have been doing some anti-foreclosure work since before #OWS.  But I think that the movement now lends two vital long-term ingredients: (1) a crucial boost of irreverence for the law, and (2) more people power to defend this wave of “political disobedience.”

Despite some people’s insistence that occupiers are exercising “the right to assembly,” when it comes down to it, Oakland occupiers are maintaining an unpermitted encampment.  We are disobeying laws not for the sake of flauting unwanted codes, but for the sake of building new wanted realities. And we have enough support —thousands and thousands of people — to keep on making moves.

The strain of positive lawlessness underlying the movement is, in my opinion, a good thing: especially if it means that we, the 99%, are asserting that the law institutionally favors the 1%, and thus is not a reliable mechanism for real change.  And since nonprofits in this country, like big unions, are so bound up with legalism (in order to get grants/contracts, avoid lawsuits, and continue to exist as orgs), it’s important to have strong unofficial wings of mass movement, willing to take that extra step into illegal (but positive, life-affirming) territory.

At the same time, whenever we talk about positive lawlessness, the question arises: arrest risk.  Real talk, hella people simply cannot afford to be arrested, cuz they’re already overcriminalized because of racism, transphobia, anti-migrant terrorism, family responsibilities, etc.!  So it’s also important to continue having lower-arrest-risk actions, ideally led by people who aren’t trying to get arrested themselves.  For instance, this march led by POOR magazine (Prensa Pobre), scheduled for this Thursday.  From their web site:

We are asking the powerful Decolonize (Occupy) movements in the Bay Area to decolonize and march with us in solidarity with those of us in severe poverty who struggle to survive, raise our babies and face ongoing racist, classist laws legislations and false borders everyday on both sides of the bay as we present demands to the government offices that continue to racialize, criminalize, harass, evict and abuse us.

We will march and decolonize four govt spaces on both sides of the Bay – ICE, Welfare (DHS), HUD (Housing n Urban Development) & The Po’Lice in one day  at the front of each of these buildings – we ARE not trying to endanger ANY poor peoples/migrante peoples with arrests as none of us can risk arrest.

POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork(PNN) is a poor people-led.indigenous peoples led grassroots, arts organization dedicated to providing revolutionary media access, education, art and advocacy to youth, adults and elders in poverty across Turtle Island.

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It’s so encouraging to see issues like free education and housing coexisting with labor demands and greater organization of the working class across sectors.  In the long-long-term view, as Advance the Struggle reminds us, we — not the politicians and policymakers — will occupy the means of production and begin to build the world we desire.

See y’all out there. :)

I Predicted All This Would Happen

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Photo by Diosa Diaz

Yesterday, before my eyes, Oakland turned a corner. A successful general strike (or, as Clarence Thomas of the ILWU Longshoremen’s union put it, “the closest thing this generation has seen,”) shut down capital and commerce around the Town, including the fifth largest port in the nation. (And, as I understand it, the port workers went home with pay!)

And six months ago, I predicted all of it.

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Kloncke IRL: A Gathering

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Hey folks, sorry for the signal loss! It’s been mad busy around here, partly because of the following little experiment I’m planning, with the help of some good friends. In short, for one afternoon I’m going to try to translate the blog “in real life” (IRL).

The only the IRL ‘blogger’ (or blogger-heavy) gatherings I’ve attended myself have been conferences. Media conferences; technology conferences; things like that. In this type of scene, bloggers from across the country (or among many countries) not only get to expound their theories before a live, half-listening-half-Tweeting audience, but can also lock screen-addled eyes with many writers theretofore befriended — or offended — exclusively online. I’ve seen drama erupt at these idea emporiums, but I’ve also witnessed cyberdenizens leap over tables to greet each other, practically converging midair in an embrace of mutual affection, admiration, and I-can’t-believe-it’s-really-you.

For my own shindig, though, I want to go in a different direction. Very chill, more like a housewarming or offbeat birthday party than a serious networking meet-and-greet. Although there are plenty of online writers and creators I’d love to meet in person someday (and many wonderful ones I’ve already had the fortune to know), most everyone invited to Kloncke IRL are people I’ve known offline for a while.  Here’s the email I sent out about it (well, a slightly less colorful version) to my local peeps. Faraway compas, I love you and wish you could be here! My address has been changed for this version because, well, I don’t want it circling around, you feel me? But I’m posting it here because I occasionally meet people in the Bay who’ve read Kloncke but don’t know me personally (yet). If that’s you, shoot me an email, and come on out next Saturday! Love to have you.

 dear amazing wonderful human friends. 

as most of you know, i make a blog called Kloncke.

i know you know about this blog because many of you have left rad, sweet, insightful, and sometimes hilarious comments there.

i appreciate this a whole lot.  i appreciate YOU a whole lot!

and so, as a small means of saying thanks for reading, sharing, linking, and just being your fabulous selves, i want to warmly e-vite you to a gathering in my home, In Real Life (IRL).

what can you expect at such an event?

live incarnates of the cyber version; including:

  • vegetarian and vegan homemade treats
  • photographs, available by donation
  • group meditation
  • a reading of my recent guest column in make/shift magazine, on buddhism, feminism, and resistance
  • a “blogroll” table featuring your political, artistic, and spiritual lit to share or display (bring some!)
  • the colorful walls of our apartment
  • chillin and building with other lovely folks


Kloncke IRL
Saturday, October 15th  
 3–5pm (Reading at 4pm) 
 555 33rd Street, Oakland 
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this event will be free (of course!) but please bring your own mug or thermos (for tea) and, if you can, a cushion to sit on.  (we’ll also have a handful of chairs.)  unfortunately our apartment is up one flight of stairs with no elevator or ramp; please let me know if this will be a problem for you, and we can try to work something out.

also, please arrive scent-free so my peeps with Multiple Chemical Sensitivities can come and enjoy themselves without getting sick!

finally, Our place has limited space! Please RSVP so we can have a sense of numbers, and calculate how many walls to knock down. (j/k :)  feel free to RSVP-plus-one or two, but don’t roll through with a whole posse.  our kitten Eloise will be acting as bouncer, keeping careful track of the guest list.

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thanks, love, take care, see you soon, be well, and call or e-mail me with any questions,

katie loncke

More to come this week online: the next Newsies post on how the courts are stacked against us, inspired by a frustrating but illuminating experience this morning before a judge. Stay tuned. :)

Labor Lessons From A Disney Musical, Part 2: Make Your Own Media

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Part 1

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As with most mainstream tales of the oppressed fighting back (see, most recently, The Help), in Newsies our young working-class heroes enlist the aid of a White Savior: New York Sun reporter Bryan Denton. Now, obviously, most of the newsies are white themselves, so the importance of the White Savior doesn’t lie in a racial differential in this case. But it matters, all the same, because Denton’s whiteness positions him to represent at least a modicum of institutional power. When he takes a sympathetic interest in the newsies’ organizing, he cinches their place in the mainstream media, otherwise impenetrable because Pulitzer has ordered a blackout on the newsies strike story among all the other local papers. Denton’s coverage not only keeps the pressure on Pulitzer and Hearst, but also gives the formerly nameless, faceless newsboys, accustomed to being treated like the scum of the earth, a nice little ego boost — and a set-up for one of the film’s most delightful musical numbers.

Lyrics here

But the euphoria of fame and fan-twirling soon evaporate and, in a brilliant and illuminating twist, the newsies discover that the White Savior won’t actually save them. When Pulitzer bribes the owner of the Sun into dropping the story, Denton is reassigned — back to his previous role as the Sun‘s “ace war correspondent.” Feeling betrayed and furious, the newsies try to convince Denton to shrug off his orders, but he explains (accurately): “I’m a newspaper man. I have to have a paper to write for. I’d be blacklisted from every major newspaper in the country . . . you know, sometimes they don’t fire you.”

In other words: as a full-time professional activist, you’re only as radical as your indispensable funders. An apt lesson for today’s non-profit economy, no?

Which brings us to . . .

Lesson Two: Make Your Own Media

In order to win, the newsies need to generalize their strike, to include all the child laborers of New York. And to do that, they need a paper of their own.

Transcript here.

Remember when I said that Newsies is a love story of solidarity? These lyrics say it all:

This is for kids shinin’ shoes in the street
With no shoes on their feet every day
This is for guys sweatin’ blood in the shops
While the bosses and cops look away
This is to even the score
This ain’t just newsies no more
This ain’t just kids with some pie in the sky
This is do it or die
This is war!

Once and for all
We’ll be there to defend one another
Once and for all
Every kid is our friend
Every friend a brother

Five thousand fists in the sky
Five thousand reasons to try
We’re goin’ over the wall
Better to die than to crawl
Either we stand or we fall
For once
Once and for all

Part of the mechanism for building widespread radical solidarity has to be independent control of our own literature and media. Because although mainstream media can come in handy as a short-term tool, there’s no way we can consistently rely on it to advance our program for systemic change at the root of capitalism, racism, patriarchy and political economy.

Clearly, there are a million examples of important stories of progressive struggles that don’t make the mainstream headlines. To focus on just one, let’s take the ongoing Occupy Wall Street thing.

Honestly I’m not totally certain, but it seems like the mainstream media was a little slow to pick up on this story. Broadcasts and documentation came to me, personally, through Facebook connections with people who were there, participating, from day one. Eventually, after some police brutality, big news centers started to cover it. And then we got this gorgeous aberration:

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But as Newsies teaches us, don’t hitch your wagon to the Major Journalist’s star. As lovely and impassioned as O’Donnell’s piece is, the truth is he’s employed by MSNBC, and the minute they tell him to cut the shit, he will. (Or get canned.)

But that’s no reason to despair. After all, half of that segment consists of on-the-ground media made by people who are not journalists. Even before YouTube, radicals were scrounging for printing presses, strategically taking over community college media organs, and cultivating discourses locally and internationally. And these days, alternative media justice collectives are popping up left and right — while radical collectives continue to blog their hearts out.

Even better than a White-Savior journalist? Media for the movement, by the movement.