Motley Moose – Archive

The news that the Obama administration will be lifting some of the travel restrictions to Cuba, is welcome, but it does not cover “family” in the way that I define it.

“Family” for me is a term broader than one of consanguinity.  For me, and thousands like me in the US, who are practitioners of a branch of an ancestral African religion, popularly referred to as “Santeria” and formally known as “Lukumi” my links to Cuba are religious.  

My daily prayers honor my blood relatives.  My daily prayers also honor those enslaved persons who were brought to the New World as priests from their homeland, and against all odds preserved and protected a traditional belief system.

Many of you who are not from the NY area, or the Puerto Rican activist community,  may not be familiar with the name of Luis Barrios.  

Father Barrios is currrently “doing time” in the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in NYC for “trespassing” at a military base last fall.

I received an interesting email this morning which I thought I’d pass on to you all here.  

Dear friends,

Last week, on his first visit to Africa, Pope Benedict said that “[AIDS] cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.

The Pope’s statement is at odds with the research on AIDS prevention, and a setback to decades of hard work on AIDS education and awareness. With powerful moral influence over more than 1.1 billion Catholics in the world, and 22 million HIV positive Africans, these words could dramatically affect the AIDS pandemic and put millions of lives at risk. Worldwide concern is starting to show results and a willingness by the Vatican to revise the statement – sign our urgent petition asking the Pope to take care not to undermine proven AIDS prevention strategies:

The petition is linked here.

is the slogan on buttons displayed by the people protesting gay marriage legislation in Vermont. The tactic being used by the right wing protesters, led by The National Organization for Marriage a group based in Princeton New Jersey, which is stepping up its campaign with radio ads which will pepper the state and neighboring areas, and they have encouraged supporters to send emails to legislators which state:

For millennia, marriage has been the way that societies, across all cultural, ethnic and religious lines, have connected children to their own mothers and particularly fathers. This is a fundamental role of marriage which ought not be changed lightly.

Daily I listen to news reports discussing China owning a huge portion of our nations debt, and worrisome discussions about what that means about our economic future.  

But today I want to discuss China’s impact on an alternate universe; the one inhabited by more than 11.5 million players world-wide.  I am of course referring to the citizen players of World of Warcraft, known to those who play simply as WoW.

The Guardian UK has a recent piece by Rowena Davis Welcome to the new gold mines, discussing this practice.

I am not amused.  

Saw this story and it gave me pause over my morning coffee yesterday.

PETA dresses in KKK garb outside Westminster Dog Show

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals knows how to grab attention. And show off its laundry.

The animal rights group, which every year stages a protest at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, had two of its members dress in Ku Klux Klan garb outside Madison Square Garden on Monday.

Their goal, according to a post on the PETA website, was to draw a parallel between the KKK and the American Kennel Club. “Obviously it’s an uncomfortable comparison,” PETA spokesman Michael McGraw told the Associated Press.

But the AKC is trying to create a “master race” when it comes to pure-bred dogs, he added. “It’s a very apt comparison.”

The group passed out brochures implying the Klan and AKC have the goal of “pure bloodlines” in common.

Driving in my car on the way to school, I listen faithfully to my local Public radio station WAMC, Northeast Public Radio, which I also listen to at home via computer.  They have just finished a major fund-drive, which amazingly in this time of economic crisis raised more money than ever, fueled by those listeners elated by the election of President Barack Obama, and the station’s liberal-left positions.  

In honor of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth the station has launched a 15 part series of interviews with a majority of historian scholars on Lincoln, starting yesterday with Harold Holtzer.  

I have watched the Obama’s now, since the early days of the campaign, and as they danced together at the inaugural balls to the strains of Beyoncé covering Etta James, “At Last”, I mused about what we (as black American’s and we as women of color) have finally achieved “at last”.

When Reverend Lowery did the benediction earlier that day, his words echoed an old childhood schoolyard rhyme “if you’re white you’re all right, if you’re brown stick around, if you’re black stay back…”

Yes, we have the first POTUS of African descent. But that is not the focus of this diary.  Of more significance for many women of color, we have a first couple, where the wife is darker in complexion than her spouse.  

Much has been written about Barack Obama’s mother being white, and Michelle Obama as a really  black American.  What I have not seen discussed are the social implications of the image they present to many in not only the African-American community, but to those of us who may also be from other communities of afro-descendancy (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Brazil, Jamaica etc), where skin-color gradations have historically had a significant relationship to social class, and where this relationship has applied specifically to women of color.

Reuters reports:

Jan 26 – A Congolese militia leader goes on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague accused of training child soldiers to kill, pillage and rape.

Prosecutors say Thomas Lubanga enlisted children under 15 to his Union of Congolese Patriots in eastern Congo during the 1998-2003 war to kill members of a rival ethnic group.

Lubanga is pleading not guilty to the charges.

Some of the evidence being used in the trial consists of two documentary videos.

I woke up in tears this morning.  

So many memories flooded back in the chaotic jumble that is my life, brain, history.

Some things are just beginning to sink in as I wait for Tuesday, and all of a sudden the flood of emotions became tears again.  I cried on election night.  I cried during speeches at the convention.

Me.  The hard-nosed radical feminist.  

And it’s okay cause I’ve got plenty tissues here.

Tears wash the soul.