Navratri is a Hindu holiday celebrating the Mother Goddess' triumph over evil. Over the past year, I've also been thinking of it as a celebration of the collective action of people to create liberating change in our world.

Navratri is a nine-night holiday my family has celebrated for generations. In their communities back in India, both my mom and dad's family were Brahmins--a historically established privileged priest caste. My father is from a small farming village in Gujarat. His was the only Brahmin family in the mostly-Hindu village. Families went to his house for pujas, and my dad's family often led religious celebrations in their community. My mom's family is from a small town in Gujarat, and her family served a similar role in her community. After immigrating to America, they continued to celebrate Navratri as their parents did, and still do today. It's the most important holiday of the year in my family.

The mythology around the holiday is a beautiful story of female power, and the collective action of people to create change in their world. In my family's version of the story, Lord Shiva granted Mahishasura, a devout man, the wish to be more powerful than anyone on Earth and any God in heaven. Over time, Mahishasura became corrupt with his power, and created an army to take control of heaven, and exile the Gods to life on earth. Without any power to take back their land, the Gods put all their best qualities together to manifest a single, powerful, female warrior. She led the Gods to heaven and waged a nine-night war with the Mahishasura and his army. On the ninth night, she destroyed Mahishasura, and the Gods returned home.

My family has mainly celebrated this holiday as reverence to the divine mother. Growing up and celebrating women's power had an immense influence on my feminist worldview. Celebrating a Goddess, that was much bigger than our world, and fought unfathomable injustice gave me pride in being a fierce ally to my mom, my sister, and all the women-identified people I'm close to. Celebrating the feminine power that lives in all of us is an important part of this holiday for me.

But another aspect of the holiday that I've been thinking more and more about over the past few years is the decision of the Gods during a time of turmoil. Being banished from heaven, and individually being powerless to fight, the Gods decide to put their powers together. They decided to put their minds and their bodies together towards one goal to fundamentally change the state of the world they found themselves in.

Particularly over the past few years, we've seen many examples of communities coming together to change their worlds. The dynamics of each of these have been very, very different, but they share in common the collective decisions among the people that they wanted change, and they needed to work as a group to achieve it--Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Tibet, Myanmar, Wisconsin. At this very moment, people are gathered on Wall St. in New York and in financial districts in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Baltimore and across the country. In these movements, people without power to create change alone made decisions to add their power to a group of individuals. To demand and create change as a community of voices, as a collection of minds acting together towards a common goal.

In the story of Navratri, what came after the Gods' decision to act as a group was Ambaji, the Mother Goddess, divine female energy. In the examples we see in our world today, what comes after the collective decision for action is revolution. Ambaji embodies the collective fight for change in our world. She fought a nine-night war, against a massive army that was set up right from the start to win, and she persevered. Just like we have.

Navratri is a special holiday for me, and I've been thinking a lot over the past few years about what it means for me to celebrate it, and what my celebration of it should look like. During these nine nights, I've been thinking about how I can add my mind and body to the collective actions that are taking place in my own city. I alone may not have the power to change the world today, but collectively, we have the power to do anything.

This week President Obama announced that the U.S. military murdered Osama bin Laden. As a response, people flocked to the White House and Ground Zero partying to the news, chanting "USA! USA!" I'm frightened and confused at the celebration of violence as a resolution to conflict, and I'm particularly hurt by a sentiment underlying this response: that South and West Asians are valueless and disposable.

Violence as a resolution of conflict
I realize this celebration is a response to a tremendous amount of pain that has been felt since 9/11. Bin Laden took responsibility for the unbelievable, horrific events on 9/11, and I am not losing sight of the fact that he should be held accountable. But how does a thoughtful, rational society hold someone accountable for large-scale acts of violence?

Bin Laden's actions were a result of hurt and anger from racist and imperialist foreign policies that were (and still are) oppressive to his people. Since then, America and other ally countries have been engaged in a "war on terror" to eliminate people we've oppressed to such an extent that their anger may manifest into violent actions against us. As a thoughtful, rational person, I do not accept that to end threats to our safety, we must eliminate not the conditions that cause such extreme hurt and anger, but the people our systems oppress.

I do not accept "success" in "ending terror" being defined by who lives and who doesn't. I do not accept killing being the resolution of difference. I do not accept that economical colonialism and American globalized oppression is not part of the conversations about 9/11 and Bin Laden's death. Killing Osama bin Laden does not end the oppression that caused his anger. It unfortunately is not even slightly connected. The systems that created his anger are still in place.

Celebration as a response to Bin Laden's murder shows that we'll continue to be distracted from real, meaningful solutions to our world's problems. We'll continue to be confused about what a better world will look like and how to get there.

South and West Asians are valueless and disposable
No one's death should be celebrated. Violence is not an acceptable form of resolution to conflict. I don't care how violent someone has been against us, retaliatory violence is not an acceptable response. America does follow this line of thinking in some spheres of our country's foreign policy, why does it not apply in cases of "terrorist camps" in South and West Asia? Because South and West Asians are viewed as a dime a dozen. As disposable. As if it doesn't matter if we're on this Earth or not.

America’s immediate response to 9/11 was to bomb the heck out of Iraq, letting the world be in "shock and awe" of our great power to mercilessly eliminate a mass of people at the blink of an eye. Mainstream news media here never really gave us a complex understanding of whom it was we were attempting to wipe out. Our government was responding with intense emotions and naming entire countries on an axis of "evil" (which is similar to how Bin Laden viewed America, which we as Americans felt was an unjust generalization). We were operating under the thinking that If you were in one of those countries, no matter who you were, you were of no value, disposable, and it was in our country's best interest if you no longer existed.

We as Americans were disgusted when a video was released of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after 9/11 (a video later to be found as manufactured and fake). But the idea that a people would celebrate such an act of violence was beyond our comprehension. The idea of those celebrations sent us the message that "they" don't really care whom it is they're killing, they just want us blindly eliminated. Our celebration of Bin Laden's death, though not quite the same, signals that we too approve not only of violence as a resolution to conflict, but more so of our little value for the people of South and West Asia. We approve of flying into a country without their government's consent and deploying huge amounts of weaponry (the bomb blasts were felt 4 miles away), because America's sense of safety, however false it may be, is more important than the people of South and West Asian countries.

Personally, I'm disheartened by what's happened outside of the White House and in New York. I cannot accept that violence, as a means of resolving conflict, is an appropriate option. We must eliminate the oppressive conditions that cause so much anger that people are willing to organize huge missions of attack. We must seek to understand the complexities of globalized, imperialistic racism and xenophobia, and the conditions the rest of the world is in as a direct result of our oppression. Only then will we be able to think about alternatives to violence as a response to violence against us.

I've been blessed to collaborate with some amazing artists on a performance work over the past year or so. I've composed sound for the ~30 minute work that will debut at Columbia's Dance Center as part of their Ten Year Celebration on September 25th.

It's been a really great experience collaborating with Ni'Ja and the performers. Creating this work has taken me to places emotionally that I didn't even know existed. It's been hard, scary and really exciting all at the same time. There are moments in the piece of a brutal fierceness of one fighting for their own survival, and moments of tenderness and real vulnerability. See the info on the show below, check out a sampler of the sound I created for the show, and come see the show next Saturday!

I Still Live Here is the premier work of Chicago-based African diasporic performance project, The Artisans of Alchemy (AOA). AOA's founder and director, Ni'Ja Whitson choreographs this eclectic and gripping interdisciplinary performance work, that locates and expresses body memory; a gesture boldly traversing the collection of scars and narratives stored between skin.

Supported by original compositions from sound artist nikhil trivedi, site specific performance for video composed by Whitson, and presented through expressive and dynamically moving bodes, the multimedia landscape of I Still Live Here questions our complicity and personal relationship to violence, connects the horrific reality of “corrective rapes” occurring in staggering numbers in South Africa, to shared histories of, struggles to overcome, and experiences within, collective trauma.

I Still Live Here
September 25, 2010
12:30 pm
1306: Ten Years Later - Dance Center of Columbia College
1306 S Michigan Avenue
FREE

Anida Yoeu Ali's "The 1700% Project" is a fierce, passionate response against violence directed at Muslim communities since 9/11. Using text found in hate crimes that were filed, she writes of acts of violence against the Muslim community, and folks *mistaken* for being Muslim, and uses her writing as a launch-point for a multi-disciplinary work. This retelling of real reports is as compelling as it is horrifying. She uses quotes taken directly from the mouths of perpetrators in her text: "terrorist," "kill all arabs", "go back to your own country", "you Islamic mosquitoes should be killed", "America is only for white people." It's hard for me to even feel comfortable restating those words, all shockingly similar to things I've personally heard in my life and stories that were shared in my community of things that have happened to people I love. I feel re-stimulated by her work, I feel hurt and saddened all over again. But I also feel challenged by Ali, to speak up louder than I have, to stand strongly in solidarity with other oppressed people, and to turn my anger into action, because as she puts it, "we refuse to end in violence."

Unfortunately, last week the installation of her work was defaced. Some of the responses to the news spreading of what happened have been really disheartening. People have been placing the blame on Ali for being "too political," accusing her of defacing her own work just for attention, and questioning whether the act of defacement is a hate crime at all. These questions and accusation are problematic on a number of levels.

First, let's try to frame what the circumstances around the defacement were. When one walks through a gallery space, it's not typical to touch the art or to physically interact with it unless there's something in the space specifying (a sign, security guard) what is allowed by the artist. We can have lots of discussion about artist and audience here, but generally, it's the artist who is given control of a space, and gets to decide what their intention is with their work, and what is safe and appropriate for the audience to do in their space. As a rule of thumb, this usually translates to "don't touch the artwork!" These norms should have been followed with Ali's installation, as there was no such invitation for the audience to interact with her piece.

With no such invitation, one or more people visiting the gallery, viewing her work, used the materials in the space (ink, rags, stick) to paint cartoonish figures on her work. The incident most likely occurred during gallery hours, as that is when most people would have had access to her work. Her work is displayed in a very large gallery with minimal traffic when there is not a special event happening. The perpetrators had a lot of time to act, as the defacement was detailed and deliberate. Her piece is in a space with dozens of (if not close to a hundred) other artists' work. No other work was vandalized besides Ali's, a piece that was made very clear was about hate crimes (through the title card on the wall, takeaway literature on a shelf, and of course the text on the wall). Whether the intent was malicious, ignorant, or intended to be somehow funny, this is just plain disrespectful.

But it's much more complicated than that. Whether it was their intention or not, defacing her installation actively took away her control over the direction of her work. Someone decided that what they had to say was more important than what Ali has to say. Someone decided that Ali's perspective is of lesser value than theirs, and acted to silence her. Because no other work was vandalized, it's clear Ali was targeted specifically--probably for who she is and what her work says. Whether it was their intention to or not, this was an aggressive, racist act of violence. This defacement was a hate crime, against Ali, everything her work is saying, and anyone who comes from a people that have endured similar oppression and violence that her work speaks of.

This is not okay. We cannot let our silence on the matter send the message that what happened is okay. We cannot allow this to be talked about only in terms of vandalism, we must insist we talk about this as an act of violence--and we must refuse to let this end in violence. This is about art, but it is also about much more. This is about oppression and racism. This is about the silencing of communities of color. This is about how we choose to respond as witnesses of violence.

Dear Cold Stone Creamery,

I love your ice cream. On hot summer days, I've treated myself many-a-time to your Peanut Butter Cup Perfection, Chocolate Devotion, or Cookie Doughn't You Want Some. How could I resist the smooth, creamy ice cream, freshly mixed with sweet, fun, tasty mix-ins right there on the spot? So, it really saddens me to write you this letter, just as summer is beginning to show her light in Chicago, to let you know that I will no longer be visiting your stores.

As you must already know, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer recently signed into law the harshest anti-immigration bill passed in the U.S. in more than a decade. As an American-born child of South Asian immigrants, I have experienced firsthand the negative repercussions of the oppression of immigrants, people of color, and those who are perceived as "foreign." Stereotypes and misconceptions of what an American looks like--and in particular what an American doesn't look like--made me grow up isolated, alienated and a survivor of violence committed against me by folks in the community I grew up in. Assumptions about my background and my right to be here were rooted in the same xenophobia and racism that are behind Arizona's new law.

Because of SB1070, I simply cannot in good conscience spend another dollar on a business that is based in a state that dehumanizes me and the very people I know and love. Governor Brewer, by signing this bill into law, has validated all of the irrational fears of people who are not willing to acknowledge the economic, social and cultural benefits of immigration to our country.

I feel like I'm breaking up with you, Cold Stone, but it doesn't have to be this way. I just need to know where you stand. I ask that you, Cold Stone Creamery, use your power and influence in the state of Arizona to publicly speak out against SB1070. Further, I ask that you publicly urge Congress to the do the right thing and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Until I know where you stand, I will not visit your stores again.

In hopes of your action,
nikhil trivedi
Chicago, IL

Beyond attending rallies and marches protesting the various wars and occupations that the US has been involved in or supported very heavily over our lifetimes (big *auuugh*), there's been a lot of ways technology has been used to give power to our voices, and organize that power in large numbers. Many groups have forms you can fill out with a pre-formatted, customizable letter that will be forwarded to your state or federal legislators, which they'll determine based on your street address. Other web sites have created on-line petitions, making it easier to collect lists of folks supporting a cause without having to go door-to-door. But this? Oh man, this steps it up to a whole other level:

It began with a drive for 20,000 signatures at Rethink Afghanistan’s website, but folks who added their signatures were also given instructions for participating in the Facebook (Facebook) protest.

Hundreds of people have posted the following message or something very close to it to the White House page:

“President Obama, I am one of more than 20,000 signers of this petition from Rethink Afghanistan: ‘In your State of the Union address on January 27, 2010, I want you to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan that begins no later than July 2011 and which completes a withdrawal of combat troops no later than July 1, 2012.’ Petition: http://bit.ly/7romlW“

Since a protest like this asks folks to post the comment on the White House's Facebook page, your organization doesn't even need it's own Facebook page to make something like this part of your campaigns!! But what really makes this genius is it makes voicing your dissent more public than a phone call or an e-mail. With those traditional forms of communicating with our legislators, it's one voice being heard by one person. But when you post a message on your legislator's Facebook page, anyone else who looks at the their page--more than likely other folks in your same constituency--could potentially see your comments. Taken more locally, if you (or your organization if you're organizing a campaign) posts messages on your State Rep or City Alderman's Facebook or Twitter pages, other constituents could potentially see your message and say to themselves "yea, that is messed up! wtf?!!"

Is this much more power than we as constituents in a governed body have ever really had before?

A few days ago, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. Government buildings crumbled to the ground along with a countless number of schools, hospitals and homes. The pictures and reports coming to us can only convey a fraction of the pain that must be over there, making it all the more heartbreaking. Many of my friends are talking about how to donate to Haiti. Here's some thoughts on how to be more mindful of where and how you give.

Text message donations
Donations made via text message can take up to 90 days to reach the organizations. :-( mGive is the main company helping organizations like the Red Cross provide this service, and on their FAQ:

"How long does it take for a donor's gift to reach the intended cause or charity?

The distribution of funds is based on the quarterly carrier payout schedule. Every 90 days the carriers disburse the funds generated from your mobile donation campaign to The mGive Foundation which then passes those funds along to your organization along with a detailed remittance report for each donation campaign you have."
http://www.mgive.com/FAQ/Default.aspx

Ooooofff... This method of donating might be easier for us, but that seems to be about the extent of it... Although I'm sure your donation will still be much appreciated in three months, just be aware that you're money won't get to the ground as quickly as you're able to send the text message.

US-based orgs can *only* send goods overseas
The US has a policy that organizations that send aid to other countries cannot send that aid in the form of a bulk of money -- they must buy American goods and send them over. This might be good for our local economy and business, but it also means a big part of your donations are paying for fuel and freight costs. This may not be as much of an issue for Haiti, because orgs in Haiti may choose to get supplies from our gulf states anyway. They may choose to. The also may choose to get supplies from the Dominican Republic. Or Cuba. Or other places much closer, affordable, and economical for them to get supplies from. But this is an especially troublesome policy when our government and orgs want to help with disaster relief in Africa or Asia, like after the tsunami hit in 2004. Shipping bottles of water on a plane from the US to South and East Asia probably isn't the most economical way to get clean water to those countries. Giving them cash, and letting them decide and control where they get their relief supplies is a much more economical way to help. Something else to keep in mind when donating to US-based orgs like the Red Cross.

Speaking of the Red Cross...
I'm usually wary about donating to really, really, really big non-profits. I feel like because they're so big, they sometimes can't operate on very progressive politics. But beyond that, I just never know if they're so bloated that only a fraction of my money will actually make it to the ground. With the Red Cross's International Response Fund, you're donating to a big pool of money that the Red Cross will use to provide support to "countless crises, like the recent earthquake in Haiti" (http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main, emphasis mine). You're money might go directly to Haiti right away, or it could go into a mutual fund where it'll collect interest for a few years, then eventually help with a disaster that hits another country in 2015. It looks like they're also collecting money now outside their International Response Fund, with language that sounds like it'll be used specifically for Haiti. But I'm still wary.

Moreover, the Red Cross got a lot of criticism during Katrina and 9/11 with how they managed their donations: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9518677 and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4851428.stm

In light of all this, it's important to remember however you decide to give, I'm sure it will be much appreciated!! But if you're interested in being more critical about where and how you give, keep these things in mind. If you're interested in donating to an org directly in Haiti, as me and my partner have done, here's a place that has come up a lot with my Facebook friends:

Haiti Action:
http://www.haitiaction.net/About/HERF/HERF.html

Do your own research, and donate to places you feel confident in.

Just watching the third debate tonight, I heard for the first time the term "pro-abortion." used by McCain, it conjures up nasty images of people pushing for others to have abortions. Wondering if I was out of touch about pro-choice-pro-life terminologies, I did a Google search for "pro-abortion" and only one website came up, which describes pro-abortion as basically pro-choice. The website was run by another site call allaboutgod.com.

Are McCain and other conservatives trying to use the term "pro-abortion" instead of "pro-choice" to make those of us who support a woman's right to choose look like monsters who want to murder babies? If so, aaauuuuugh... If not, where did this term come from?

Props to Kelly Tsai: I'm not black or white, but I'm not "whatever" either.

This is horrible, and absolutely disgusts me:

On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West—the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail—were distributed by mail in Ohio, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to—Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.
from daily kos

Although there has been no direct link established between Obsession and the events in Ohio, the documentary is clearly having an effect. The founder of the Interfaith Youth Core received a call from a Lutheran pastor, who told him that "his congregation has been involved in several interfaith projects, including allowing a group of Muslims to use the church for worship on Friday evenings while their new mosque was being built. ... But recently, this pastor has fielded several angry phone calls from congregants condemning the decision to allow 'dangerous people' to use church space. Why these calls now ... Last week, his community received the film 'Obsession' in the Sunday newspaper.
from raw story

Yet, the police covering the case don't see it as a hate crime?

A 10-year-old girl sprayed in the face with a chemical Friday, Sept. 26, while at a local Islamic mosque was not the victim of a hate crime, police Chief Richard Biehl said.
from Dayton Daily News

I can't even find words to say about this.

Our government and media has brewed so much hate against the muslim community in our country. there's always an ambiguously defined "other" that our government uses as a fear tactic, so it can go on with whatever hate-filled plans it has, and for years now they've been trying to frame the muslim community as that "other". Post-9/11, we were worried about "rogue"-governments getting access to chemical and biological weapons to attack the us with. Now who's being attacked with chemical weapons, and where? The same attacks our government is waging overseas is being replicated and made domestically on the same group they've defined as hating America. I'm disgusted, and fuming right now.

Moreover, no one's covering this story. It took me forever to get some info about this. I guess Palin's latest fumbles are more important?

More info on the film's distribution.