I found out from my acupuncturist that the state of Michigan is considering requiring it’s citizens to get a doctor’s referral to go to an acupuncturists. So, in other words, rather than hearing from a friend that she went to acupuncture and that person deciding to give it a try too–Michigan wants to make it so that you have to go to a doctor first, and then, if the doctor is willing to actually give you the referral, you can go to the acupuncturist.

Many people who know about the history of midwives in the U.S. know why this is such an extraordinarily bad idea. But for those who don’t know that history–what this particular requirement would do is first and foremost, place an incredibly unfair burden on those people who don’t have health insurance. Those who are unable to afford a doctor would simply have yet another health alternative option removed from their already limited health arsenal.

In other arenas, it takes yet another independent profession and forces it under the control of a medical establishment that has proven already–it simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t *prevent* ill health, and in many ways, it actually encourages it. Again, to point to the midwives–as the process of birthing has become more and more medicalized, more and more women are becoming criminalized and subjected to unnecessarily violent births. Women who make the choice to refuse a cesarean (which is in a woman’s legal right to do) are getting children taken away for not submitting their bodies to the procedure.

The lives of the women are considered less important than a medical procedure.

Acupuncture is not necessarily subject to the same experiences. Until the community acupuncture model came to Michigan, it was something (and still is) something that simply isn’t widely available–and was only affordable to an elite group of people and/or people who were lucky enough to have insurance that covered the practice.

But now we have the community acupuncture model. We have dedicated women (interesting, huh?) who are finding ways to make the practice of acupuncture affordable and available to those people who are literally poorest of the poor. Detroit, for example, has an unemployment rate that rivals the Great Depression. It has people who simply don’t have the money to go to a doctor. Who often don’t have the 15$ it takes to go to acupuncture. Who are those people that everybody talks about–those ones who die from untreated cancer–because they didn’t have the money to go to the emergency room. A family member of mine had this happen–by the time he finally was vomiting blood and unable to work, he went to the Emergency room. About a month later he was dead.

We live in a system that deals with health care of poor and uninsured by keeping them out of the doctor’s office and hospital until they are dead. Then it pats itself on the back for it’s cancer treatment rates.

Community acupuncture models, while maybe not equipped to cure cancer–can extend the lives of people who deserve to live. I still get weepy when I read this story of a working class cancer stricken man interacting with community acupuncture. I think about my relative. And I wonder–How would things have been different? If every week he spent $15 dollars getting a treatment. Would the cancer have been so violent? Would he have had a few more precious weeks with his kids? Even a few more days?

Would he have been in so much fucking horrible pain at the end?

I’ve talked for a long time about what community acupuncture has done for my health. For those where it simply doesn’t work–it doesn’t hurt, either. Unlike so many medicines and doctors that at the best are struggling to do what they can, and at the worst, simply don’t give a shit. And it’s doing more than the system that doesn’t work. That simply doesn’t work.

This is a practice that deserves to expand and grow and become a regular part of every person’s life (if they want it to). Michigan’s new law would take away my ability to go to acupuncture–it would take away my daughter’s right to sit and take up space while she gets her health taken care of–it would make it impossible for all the thousands of people in Michigan who are out of work and without insurance to even *consider* getting help for their bodies.

Michigan has fucked with it’s citizens long enough. It needs to make self-referral to acupuncturists legal. And allow those of us who are regularly denied health care by the system they say they should be regulating acupuncture to find health and healing in a space that honestly really and truly does care if they live or die.

What you can do to help:
Sign this letter to send to Michigan legislators (even if you don’t live in Michigan! Or you haven’t used acupuncture!)
Forward this post
Read about why community health models are essential to revolutionary movements
Support community acupuncture clinics in your own state/Country!
Read Ouyang Dan’s post
Read Jaded Hippy’s post

God knows I’ve suffered through lack of confidence. Just on the blog alone (I have a whole separate writing career outside the blog), I’ve closed my blog down, blown up everything *multiple* times–from what ultimately boiled down to lack of confidence. There’s only been one time when I shut things down because I had the confidence to know it was the right thing to do.

I wrote the following to una hermana. Mi hermana. Because even though I know I never would’ve listened to these words as a young writer–I would’ve stored them, and thought about them. And used what I needed to–eventually when I was ready. Because everything goes in cycles, and some times you need to hear certain things–until you don’t any more. And it’s good to know that the things you need to hear are waiting for you…it’s a luxury when you’re a woman of color writer that comes from a long line of women who died before their time. It’s good to know. It’ll be there when you need it. You don’t have to rush to learn as much as you can. It’ll be there.

For context: Mi hermana is dealing with major writer’s block. Is searching for things to say. For a way to say it.

~bfp

p.s. if you feel like sharing any of your own advice you wish had been waiting for you–or that you had the luxury of waiting for you–please feel free to do so in comments!!!

Oh, Xxxxx.

i promise you something. Writing is not that big of a deal. you don’t have to save the world with your writing–and you’re not going to no matter what you write. From what I’ve seen, you’ve been lucky enough to not have had to deal with some of the same blog wars that I’ve had to–so, I’ll share with you some of the very hard won truth I’ve learned from my experiences.

Writing is just writing. The most fabulous piece of writing you ever write? It will not change anything or anybody. The writing you slave over for hours and hours and hours to get to the finest piece of perfection? It’s secretly the equivalent of garbage. Because that’s just the way life is. Everything I’ve ever written…is garbage, to more than one person. To many many people. To probably hundreds of people. And the thing I’ve learned? To treat my writing as if it is more precious than the humans who think it’s garbage? To protect my writing rather than or over a human being’s right to hate my writing? That goes against everything I’ve thought and worked towards for the last 10 years.

So. If my writing is not that precious. If it’s just garbage. If it’s something that doesn’t need the kind of protection I’ve given it….what do I do then?

I treat it like everything else that I care about in my life. It’s work. It takes work and time and effort. It takes screaming and yelling and sleeping on the couch. It takes making huge mistakes and neglecting it because you’ve got other things going on. Other fires to put out.

It’s not “WRITING” (stars shine and the angles sing)–it’s a commitment to wading through words and putting them together in a way that pleases you. Then it’s putting it out there. Letting go and moving on to something new. Because when you hold that baby too tightly, it either suffocates and dies or bites you until you let it go so it can run away.

This writing thing–it is not yours. The only thing that is yours–is the commitment to writing. You can help words grow, you can mold them and move them and twist them and turn them and smile at them when they finally listen to you–but the only thing that truly belongs to you is the commitment to working on those words.

Your ultimate choice here is not to think about “who do I write for” or “what do I write about” or “what happens if it’s all wrong” or “how do I represent myself”—all those things are important–but not really anything to worry about until after you make the *real* choice–

are you committed to the process of writing? Not the text, not a community, not a movement–

but to the *process*.

Are you committed to editing, to typing, to researching so you shape your words in a better way, to sitting in a chair for long hours at a time, to scratching a few words down in between dealing with the kids…etc. Are you committed to getting feedback, learning how to take feedback, editing, and then editing some more? Are you committed to destroying your essay physically (cutting up paragraphs into sentences–with scissors) and then moving the sentences around and around, cutting out words, setting sentences aside completely, and then sitting back at the computer and re-writing the whole thing?

If you are committed to the process–you will see–your work is garbage. but the good kind. Many people will try to convince you it’s worthless garbage–but you know garbage keeps people alive. I know garbage is used to make compost. it’s just garbage–nothing precious. It can be taken apart and put back together again. it can be and probably should be discarded after a few weeks. but it will help things to grow and can keep you alive.

your writing is not that precious. My writing is not that precious. nothing is so important that it will change everything. we need thousands and thousands and millions of voices for change to happen. if you’re lucky, you’re writing will be the garbage that somebody else uses to make compost. and that’s the very best you can hope for.

And think about it–what do you as a reader need? Do you need precious perfection in something that you read? Or do you need something that is practical–that you can take apart and mold for your own needs? And as a writer that is working to empower people–do you really *want* readers to take your work of perfection and declare to the world–This Is Perfect, ya’ll!

Or do you want readers to come up with their own ideas? And build their own dreams? and sing their own songs?

That’s what I want for you, mama. i want you to decide things for yourself and decide your own way doing things and existing in this world.

stop searching. decide if you are committed to the process of writing. and then get that work out there. in your own way, on your own time, when you are ready. and be ready for everybody in the world, including your dog and your best friend to look at you and say…Xxxxx. how could you? because it’s gonna happen. and be ready to cringe at stuff you wrote in the past and think “how could i????” be ready to take your own work apart—five years down the road, you’ll look at something you wrote, be charmed by one or two sentences or ideas–and steal that little bit to write a whole new essay.

be ready to find out five years after you’ve been writing what it really feels like–what it REALLY feels like–to be used by media. and realize all the mistakes you’ve made. doing what you thought was best. and be ready to flush when, after you make your big mistake, you get a charming email from a beloved friend who says you inspire her.

and then sit down. renew your commitment to the process.

and do it all again.

remember your writing is garbage.

and savor that freedom.

and know that forever and always–

i love you.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

I want to hear that you’re developing new models of manhood, ones that are not patriarchal, ones that deal with the needs of Black men and boys who need healing, ones that let boys become the Men of their choosing and of their community’s wanting. Few of the rules that you are implementing are creating a healthier pathway for Black men, they’re simply polishing the same “broken” brothas and yet you wonder why it is not working.

READ THE WHOLE THING

Not just “community” that I count myself a part of.

~has that ever happened to you?

It changes how you see things. Because you see yourself for the first time through the eyes of others. Up close. You can feel their breath on your skin. You can smell their perfume.

And you know what they think of you.

Not abstract you, not “identity you claim” you.

You.
you.

I think the report takes several cheap shots at white people. Goddamn fucking hell, yes, I said it. Did those white people know that you were filming them to critique them? Are white people the only people who eat blueberries?

Those are the white people many many many farm workers in remote and midwestern areas are forced to/chose to live with and by. Often, many of those same small town white folks are the ones that give migrant workers a warm meal and a friendly place to gather (those nasty churches the left dismisses and hates as hick haven? Guess where Mexicans learn to speak English and get their soul comforted?).

It was a cheap shot at those white people (oh sweet goddamn JESUS, I can’t believe I am saying this) to use them as a way to critique a *system* that doesn’t mind sending five year olds to work–AND NEVER HAS (slaves, sharecroppers, miners, sweatshops,…).

Did the reporters think of that at all?

And oh, Jesus, the fingers, the little baby fingers that are supposedly so good at picking blueberries (when any picker who has been in the fields for more than five hours know little bodies are *best* at fetching things, that bigger hands are better because bigger hands can grab the clusters more easily.).

The baby blueberry child fingers.

That are attached to little bodies that forget how to dream through work.

Don’t these people know? Don’t they know?

Work is where you learn to dream. Where the heat stifles you into second by second existence. One more second. One more second. You can make it one more second. Until.

Your mind learns to tell you stories. Entertaining, interesting, romantic, mystical stories. That help you to forget. Help you to bear. Help you.

Second by second.

What language did you ask those children what their dreams were?

You.
They think they know you.

Because they got paid by an institution to work along side you (their bills wouldn’t have been paid otherwise!), they think they know you.

And now people across the world think they know you.
They look at your little girl body and listen to your Spanish accented English and watch your parents turn their backs resolutely to the camera…

And they think they know you.

And they talk about you and decide things about you and use you and images of your body to change their minds and call you names you laugh at (the blueberry children! wtf? you ask in eight year old language)…

They bleed earnestly for you, and identify with you and sit judgment on you and their mouths fall open in shock just looking at you.

And you think…

What’s wrong with *you*?

~has that ever happened to you?

Our fingers are our fingers and you don’t get to decide what they’re being used for. You don’t get to name us. You don’t get to use our bodies and our faces as a way to beat up privileged white people.

You don’t get to identify with us.

Because you don’t know us. Three months with us, seven minutes of us. Does not unfold the knowledge of us.

~us up close through the eyes of others…
has that ever happened to you?

Show.
That is enough.

My world is changed.

VIDEO: ABC investigative report on blueberry field child labor abuse. HEre is a transcript.

Here is the link from ABC.

I stopped shaking for a bit. Enough to say–the only thing I can hear anymore is that line, that fateful line: there are so many children working illegally in the U.S..

Now it’s not just the parents they’re gonna go after, it’s the kids too.

It’s the five-year-old baby girls.

Investigation Uncovers Child Labor at Michigan Blueberry Farm

And Wal-Mart and the Kroger supermarket chain have severed ties with one of the country’s major blueberry growers after an ABC News investigation found children working in its fields. At Adkin Blue Ribbon Packing Company in South Haven, Michigan, a five-year-old child was found working alongside his seven- and eight-year-old brothers. As part of the ABC News investigation, four fellows from the Carnegie Corporation spent weeks in fruit and vegetable fields in Michigan, New Jersey and North Carolina. Congratulations to Democracy Now!’s Kieran Krug-Meadows, a Carnegie fellow, who worked on that report for ABC.

I dunno. I’ve had a really bad morning this morning, and so that is probably coloring how I am reacting to this news. But I feel vaguely triggered by the damn thing, rather than relieved or excited that migrant workers in Michigan are getting some air time.

I think I worked at that field–I’m not sure, because blueberry fields are a dime a dozen in Michigan. But it certain is in a city where I worked, and it certainly has the same name of the place where I worked.

And it just pisses me off that it’s been almost 25 years since I worked there….12 and 13 hour days, some times longer…with other kids my age….25 years of more and more and more kids spending their summers in the fields, their time after school in the fields…and it’s only just now that somebody “discovered” the story. That somebody is going to use this story as a way to build a resume.

I don’t doubt that Krug-Meadows is a good person, who has committed to at least a certain type of media justice. And god knows, YES do we need attention brought to the very real fact that farm worker violations are NOT only happening in California or Florida.

But…I can’t help thinking about that family. The kids are younger than I was when I was out picking…but they are by no means not “normal.” And I can’t help thinking about how desperately that family must need money, and how guilty those kids must feel right now. They know, kids fucking KNOW why they are out working when others are playing. They know that with their work comes food to eat and money for a place to live. And now it’s gone.

And just like kids blame themselves for a parents divorce, I can promise you those kids are blaming themselves for “getting everybody in trouble.”

There is no link to the story on the Democracy Now website, so I’m not sure what the full reported story is here. All I am going on is the blurb on the DN website.

But I am thinking of the 4 dollars a pint blueberries that are “on sale” at our local Meijers, and that I was paid 25 cents a bucket (about the size of a can of paint) when I was picking, and that farm worker wages are notorious for never increasing, even over the period of 25 years…and I’m thinking of the people I know who were picking when they were four and five years old, and how one girl I know was the youngest in the family so she wasn’t driven as hard by her parents as her older brothers and sisters were…and how that caused resentment in her family. She was “babied” for being a baby. And it wasn’t fair.

I’m thinking about how angry everybody is at those rapists and observers who stood around and watched as brutal violence played out right in front of their faces, I’m thinking about 25 years, and the formation of community identities and the way the dew shimmers like diamonds on the dark green leaves and how the only thing you can hear in the morning fields are crows and swishing berry branches…

25 years.

So more people can make careers off of pointing out injustices that nobody cares about.

Take pictures, take pictures.
And smile while you drop your cleansing blueberries into your morning cereal.

(papas of color, feel free to chime in as well)
(ETA: actually, any damn body who has any sort of influence over young boys of color–please chime in!!)

a 15-year-old girl was gang raped near a school–and groups of people took pictures, laughed, stood around and watched, and basically did nothing to intervene. it was a young girl who heard through the grape vine what was going on who finally called the police. here’s a link to the story (big time trigger warning).

the following is a little of what i am thinking about this horror. because it’s happened more than once–my blogging career is filled with stories of horrific gang rapes where nobody did a fucking thing to help the victim. and then outrage and disgust starts piling in from scores of internet people sitting judgment on humanity, rather than a culture that (through hundreds of different methods), promotes individualism, complete submission to power, and total helplessness in the face of problems at every turn. We can all sit judgment on humanity and feel righteous about ourselves with every new gang rape story that comes out, or we can start imagining how to stop this shit from happening. as a mother to a daughter and a son, i choose the later:

well, i think there’s two things going on here, maybe three. 1. women hating is culturally acceptable. I’m not a big fan of blaming howard stern, etc. for what happens thousands of miles away–but remember that link you sent me about that dude that makes movies that are basically hating on women? there is an entire culture of shock jock movies/radio stations/internet sites, etc that exist solely because they do “funny” things like call women cunts, take pictures of their tits without the woman’s consent, etc. So those who laughed and took pictures have already had plenty of practice doing what they did.

2. male centered gang violence against women is a rite of masculinity–to put this in perspective–think of how many stories we’ve heard in the past ten years about gangs of women beating the shit out of a single man, raping him for two hours and then leaving him for dead. male centered gang violence is world wide–from frat parties violating a stripper to armies gang raping conquered villages.

3. There has been, to my knowledge, not one form of intervention into this particular aspect of masculinity made by feminists, men, anti-violence campaigners, etc that assumes that not all men in the ‘gang’ appreciate that particular type of indoctrination. That there may be even just one or two guys who don’t like what’s going on, are scared of it or even sickened by it–but don’t have the tools they need to say no and not participate (much less intervene) in a situation like that. Shock jocks are teaching dudes what to do when a rape is going on, not feminist men, you know? I mean, I read that article and immediately thought about my son–I need to teach him what to do in that situation. but he’s not spider man, he doesn’t have magical web powers to protect him when he takes on 6 men who are raping a girl.

to be clear, I am talking about gang rape in general (i.e. frat houses, bachelor parties, a couple friends in a back room, etc) not just this particular rape–it is taking everything i have to not spit into a serious man hating fuck men men can lick my spit of the bottom of my dog shit covered shoe rage just thinking about what happened to that girl….the only thing keeping me centered is sort of a desperation to make sure my son will intervene. that my son will be The Intervener.

So–what does a boy/man do when he sees/hears something like this happening? How does he do it? And most importantly, how do we (who are helping a young boy/man train in intervention), stop assuming that boy/man is a certain type of masculinity (John Wayne, Spider Man, Super Hero, Big Stud) that will have no problem beating up gangs of raving men to keep a woman safe? How can do we train somebody like my son: quiet, unassuming, not very forward around people he doesn’t know, a recipient of bullying behavior more than once, and generally lives in imagination world rather than reality the vast majority of his life–to intervene in a rape? When intervening in a rape literally means opting out of normalized masculinity?

I’m not sure I believe that telling a young boy/man to “intervene” or “interrupt” abusive violent behavior is going to cut it.

Speaking of possible environmental reasons why little girls would get breast cancer, I have to wonder what the health conditions of women and girls are in this region.

Massey Energy Begins Blasting Coal River Mountain

In West Virginia, Massey Energy has begun blasting operations on Coal River Mountain despite deep opposition from environmental groups and critics of mountaintop removal mining. Coal River Mountain is the last intact mountain on the historic Coal River Mountain range. All of the other mountains have been blown up by coal companies.

Jeff Biggers, author of the book The United States of Appalachia: “Residents in the Coal River Valley in West Virginia were shocked last Friday to hear the rattle of explosives and see plumes of smoke rise above Coal River Mountain. According to news reports on Monday, Massey Energy has clearcut the lush forest and blasted part of the historic ridge in the first leg of a 6,000-acre mountaintop removal mine. For advocates across Appalachia and citizens group across the nation, the impending mountaintop removal operation on Coal River Mountain amounts to a final showdown between out-of-state coal companies and the state of coalfield residents.”

Activists had proposed to save the mountaintop and turn it into a wind farm, a proposal which was seen by many as a model for sustainable green economic development. Anti-mountaintop removal activists are now calling on President Obama to halt the mining operation and save Coal River Mountain.

Well, turns out that it’s not so good. From the Huffington Post:

“Twenty-two year old Josh McCormick is dying of kidney cancer. Twenty-six year old Tanya Trale has had a tumor removed from her breast; her husband has had two tumors removed from his side and both have had their gallbladders taken out. Rita Lambert has had her gallbladder removed; so has her husband and both parents. Jennifer Massey has a mouthful of crowns and so does her son after their enamel was eaten away, and six of her neighbors – all unrelated – have had brain tumors, including her 29-year old brother, who died. Bill Arden is one of those neighbors. He survived his brain tumor, but Arden’s eight-year old boxer named Sampson did not. What do all of these people have in common? They all live within a 3-mile radius of Prenter Hollow in Boone County, West Virginia. And all have well water.”

This reminds me of the wise words of my acupuncturist: treating individual health in an individual setting is simply a part of the unsustainable model of health we have in the U.S.

If you treat all these people as individuals, what you have is a bunch of individuals with cancer looking for help. Maybe you refer them to a cancer treatment center–or maybe you look at it as a fabulous opportunity to start your own treatment center.

If you treat all of these people as members of communities–if you treat them WITH their community members (think: community acupuncture models), then–you have ten people on one block with the same sickness sitting in the same room talking to each other. Then you have an acupuncturist/doctor saying, you know, you might find it useful to talk to Jean, who is already talking with Tom. Then you have a whole bunch of people wondering why every woman and even some girls in their families have breast cancer.

Is it really because they didn’t take the precautionary measure of preemptive mastectomies? Or–is there maybe *literally* something in the water?

And what might happen when all these people who’ve held hands of dying loved ones and had to wives and can’t even count on the presence of a dog in their loneliness and had to explain what dying might feel like to a ten-year-old–what might happen if all those people get a hold of that righteous wood quality that promotes the movement of anger and action?

Would we still be so confused about why little girls are getting breast cancer? Would little girls still be getting breast cancer?