las meditaciones de victoria

On The Road Again

I am on the road again, working to get The WIP ready for our September launch. The WIP is a journey that I can't quite put into words. Every stage has been facilitated by something outside of me. I feel like a footwork junkie—I just keep doing what I discover in front of me each day when I wake up, and little by little, high by high, building blocks are forming the foundation of something I believe is so important and meaningful.

I am on the road again, this time I'm not in the desert meeting presidential candidates with my good friend James, nor in Boston trying to get along with feminist journalists. This time I came home to Carmel to crunch the numbers and tighten the plan so it runs like an American car, you know the type. A car that is easy to change the oil or fix a tire. One with a standard transmission that makes sense when you drive it. There is no mystery as to how it moves forward or what to do when it's broken. I came home to make sure that, when The WIP is up and running, I can give my dream a real shot at coming true.

I did something I never do when I come home—I stopped by the beach and took a walk. It is the same beach we used to sneak off to in the middle of the school day when we went to Carmel High. It’s the same beach we spent sunsets howling at the sleepy sun as it descended behind the sea. It’s the same beach we cruised looking for surfers to gawk at and to dream about at nights in the privacy of our own thoughts. As I walked along the water, I remembered how the sand crunched, as white and as fine as Waikiki, and the salt and seaweed, like family, kissed my skin and perfumed my nostrils.

From the edge of the water I saw a girl, no more than six, fearlessly allowing her father to push her beyond the breaking Pacific. I saw her catch a wave for just a moment, riding it on her knees until she was toppled head first into a rip curl that ate her up. I wondered why it took me this long to become that fearless. I wondered if the little girl would always be so brave. I wondered if the benefits I unknowingly possess from my mother's generation have transcended into an even greater power for the younger generations behind mine. From underneath the white foam the little girl's head popped out of the water and she danced on her tiptoes back to the surfboard floating away. By the time she got to the board, her mother had come from the shore and plucked her up out of the water and into the shelter of her arms.

The Fate of the South Central Farmers Community Garden

Yesterday the South Central Farmers Community Garden was raided and the farmers were forcibly evicted from their 14-acre plot of land—land they have cultivated for the last fourteen years. I visited the farm once and shared a blog with you about it. At five a.m. the invasion began when the farm was surrounded by the LAPD and the LAFD. I heard about it when I woke up at seven. I wondered why the eviction was being carried out when it had been reported that individuals and foundations, to pay off the developer, had raised the money, and supposedly Mayor Villaraigosa was now supporting the farmers.

I listened to the report on KPFK and tended to my job and my garden and my trees, wondering why gravity has a way of elevating the powerful and pinning down the people who could use the Yerba Buena and Manzanilla, people for whom organic isn’t a concept that originated in Whole Foods Market, but is instead a way of life.

A bulldozer came crashing thorough the chain link fence that surrounded the 360 plots of land and a saw cut down a branch of the tree on which Daryl Hannah sat. It all seemed part of the LA County Sheriffs Department’s show—a shameful performance before crops on their way to mulch—orchards, bushes and plants filled with meaning, lying in wait, a silent audience in the warm June wind. As I said in my previous blog, this is a farm that exemplifies what all cities must strive for as we overdevelop our urban centers and lose our agricultural lands. For some eyes, the South Central Farmers Community Garden is only a bit of green among the industry of South Central Los Angeles, but for me to be surrounded by banana and walnut trees and feel the warmth and inhale the smell of Central America in the midst of the most unattractive, smutty, ironic land in LA, is nothing short of a miracle. To see subsistence where earth and deep roots are unimaginable is magic.

Years ago in Brooklyn, my sister and I met Kofi. I think he was a Rastafarian, although we never talked religion. We were twenty-three and, needless to say, a little lost. He put us on a coconut water fast. It was all very Dan Millman, and definitely worth the clarity and energy I experienced from giving my digestive system its first nap in a couple of decades. Kofi mentioned several times that after this fast we ought to try a dry fast. I moved from Brooklyn to Uptown and never did try that dry fast, but what I have thought about consistently since my visit to the farm was Kofi’s reasons for why we should try it. He had predicted that in the future, a day would come when there would be no food. He had touched my heart and my sister’s and then his own, and said “We will survive.” 

The day without food has arrived for the 350 families who have subsisted on the food they have grown at the farm. The fate of the crops and the trees will be decided today. As for the farmers, it remains unknown.

Blogging The Netroot Revolution

Today I am writing from Las Vegas after my first day at the YearlyKos Convention 2006. I had a full day that even included a little Vegas, dancing my butt off at a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy concert poolside at the Silverton Lodge & Casino. Although I could probably blog on forever today, I will keep it simple and share with you one theme that was dominant at the convention today. The theme I noted lives somewhere in between the media’s obsession for balance rather than truth and what Barbara Boxer called the Foxification and the ClearChannelization of media—netroots are growing, developing, and making a difference where media has failed.

Take Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was definitely a highlight at today’s convention. As bloggers are well aware of, we succeeded where mainstream journalists failed at all stages of this ongoing investigation. Wilson reminded us of the continuing failure of this story—as it continues to go underreported and we still don’t know who is responsible for the famous 16 word lie that somehow made it into the State of the Union address. Wilson provided a simple market analysis for blogs and their significance that echoed the mornings science panelists, such as Dr. P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula who suggested we combat the Religious Right’s science hijack at the school board level, and blogs at scienceblogs.com —blogs are competition for traditional media and have come to fill the void where the media was absent in the Wilson family’s story. Although we may still not know why we were lied to, he encouraged bloggers to keep on telling the truth and left us with a quote from George Orwell: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

As the media landscape shifts, bloggers have filled in the empty spaces with a passion to counter spin, to hold those in power responsible, and most extraordinarily, to hold modern mainstream media accountable when they fail. Bloggers ought to keep searching for the truth and continue posting the truth in the face of lies. Like everyone that came to the conference this weekend, Barbara Boxer summed up the reason why we all traveled to the desert by saying that one day, we will look back on this time in our history and see that it was netroots that made the difference.

What’s wrong with The Black Rider?

I went to see The Black Rider last night with my sister and aunt. It was such an easy theater choice—collaboration between Tom Waits, Robert Wilson, and William S. Burroughs is pure genius. I expected nothing less than what I got: a visual trip of artistic lighting and design, lyrics that hit my core and vibrate well into the next verse, not to mention a full orchestra and then some when you add the conga and the didgeridoos, a surreal story lodged in history and reality difficult to ignore. The acting was brilliant and the post-modern dance added an element usually rare for me to connect with. It was a love story meets vaudeville, uprooted with addiction, then grounded by music, lights, and movement. The woman to my right turned to me and said, “I don’t know how to describe this...it’s like German Kabuki.” 

You can imagine how disconcerting it was to be so absorbed in this aesthetic experience when, about 20 minutes into the first act, the first couple got up from their seats, crossed in front of the stage of actors, stepping across other theatergoers to exit the theatre. Their movement out the door seemed to give permission to at least 30 or more people, some as little as five minutes before intermission, to get up and leave. During intermission, I tried to figure out what had made so many Angelinos walk out—the pact with the devil, the make up, the striking vocals that sang so beautifully in their obscurity? I wondered why these patrons couldn’t pick one thing, the orchestra, the visuals, or the characters, and just ride with it until the intermission and leave then. What made it so important for them to leave when they did, to make such ruckus? Did they attend just to re-enact what they’d read in LA Times? What did they expect from Wilson, Waits, and Burroughs anyway? I don’t know.

The good news is by the second act so many seats were vacated that everyone in back moved to the front and we all truly enjoyed the show. The second act was even more inspiring than the first as the drama intensified and the dancing and music went deeper. But then again, did we expect anything less from Wilson, Waits, and Burroughs?

Who Has More Friends on MySpace? Be sure to check before you vote!

With the primary election only a few days away, I have made all my selections for statewide office. I’ve decided to support Phil Angelides for Governor and I was hoping to share with my California readers why I chose him through this blog. Conducting some last minute research on Google, I was surprised to come across an Angelides’ website on MySpace. Now, I can’t claim to know much about MySpace, other than it is the most popular place for my middle school students to hang out with friends, and that my sister is fairly addicted and reports to me daily about new friends she’s found on the site.

On Angelides’ MySpace site there are all sorts of information, stuff like Phil’s a Gemini and proud parent and that he is interested in networking and making new friends. He has 1388 friends already and his top eight are all younger than me. His friends are exceptionally supportive, like Joey for instance, who sends messages like: “hey phil i went to your tight party at the democratic convention. I had a great time and like the greek dancers they were cool. i also had a nice talk with your oldest daughter and she is cool. she is really supportive of you in just the way she talks. i went to steve’s party too but it wasn’t as good. how can you run the great state of california and not throw a good party? you can’t. you are going to win phil you have my vote. and thank you for supporting my grandmother sharon berry for congress on the 22 district. see you later phil take care.”

After I called my sister to tell her she absolutely had to ask Phil to be her friend, I couldn’t resist looking to see if Steve Westly had a MySpace website, too. Sure enough, he does. Westly has fewer friends than Angelides, (only 198) and also shares the basics like he is married, a proud parent, and a Virgo, as well as relevant information for voters like he’s straight. Westly’s top eight friends are also young and supportive. I was surprised to find Jon Garamendi, our Insurance Commissioner who is running for Lieutenant Governor. Even though I am voting for State Senator Jackie Speier for Lieutenant Governor, I couldn’t resist a peek to see who Garamendi’s friends are. Like Westly, he shares that he is straight and of his 64 friends, he includes Barak Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Jon Stewart. This is what I call MySpace good! 

I had to stop and sing when Nancy Pelosi’s MySpace website greeted me with Scott McKenzie singing San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair.) Beside a lineup of big name friends, including Russ Feingold and Hilary Clinton, she had messages from fans like David, from Lake Forest, Washington, who tells her she’s the only one with balls in Washington. (Poor David must have slept through her performance last month on Meet the Press. Not only does Nancy not have real cajones, she is without metaphorical ones too!)

It was no surprise to discover that Senator Barak Obama, who is clearly the most popular friend on all the websites I’ve visited, has a whopping 4883 friends and, unlike Westly, Garamendi, or Pelosi, he doesn’t include any of them in his top eight. Instead, he has friends like Maya, a Harvard student sporting a bare midriff and a white baby tee that says “John Edwards is hot” across her chest. His top eight also includes a 14 year-old named Erin whose tag line says, “I’m awesome, tell your friends.”

So, I guess you are on your own next Tuesday when deciding who to vote for. My words of advice—ignore the negative campaigning and stick to the candidate’s record. Most importantly, forget everything I’ve just told you about and pray that the Democrats have something better up their sleeve than getting popular on MySpace!