Anti-Violence Workshops (Updated, Again)

Heyy everyone,

This fall I am interning at the Downtown Women's Center in the Los Angeles skid row area. Primarily, my responsibilities will be to educate the community there on issues of violence. I have a series of upcoming workshops that will focus on sexual violence and state violence, that I would love for you all to attend.

Workshop 1 will be held on November 3rd, 1-2:30pm and November 5th, 1:15-2:45pm. This workshop will cover sexual violence, how this type of violence affects homeless women, how this community, including organizations and activists, responds to it, as well as ways to end violence against this community.

Workshop 2 will be held on November 17th. 1-2:30pm and December 3rd from 1:15-2:45pm. This workshop will cover state violence, its relation to sexual violence, how this type of violence affects homeless women, what this community, including activists and organizations, can do to defend itself from state violence, the root causes of state violence, and why some communities are targeted more than others.

All workshops will be held at the Downtown Women's Center, 442 S. San Predro Ave. LA, CA 90013 on the 2nd floor patio. Hope to see you there!

West Coast Hip Hop: Part 6: Dregs One

Dregs One is an emcee and producer from Northern California, San Francisco to be exact. One of the aspects I appreciate most about Dregs's music, besides good beats, is that he actually has something to say and can actually be called a progressive or conscious rapper and he gets considerably better with every project. Check out some videos from Dregs off his newest mixtape "The Wake Up Call" below:







Also, check out Dregs' Wake Up Reports where he talks about community issues below:







Stay up to date on Dregs One's projects here.

I Love LA: Part 5: Downtown LA Artwalk

I went to the Dowtown Art Walk for the first time this past Thursday. It was pretty fun. There was some good art and cool vendors and it was hella crowded. I just wish the streets were better lit and that the galleries were all next door from each, they're too spread out. I'm proud of myself because all I bought was a $10 mojito. Why are drinks so expensive?! ugh. Well it will be my last time having a mojito, I don't like the taste. Check out the pics of me and some friends and some of the artwork below:

I Love LA: Part 4: Things To Do in LA This Week

Things to Do in LA:

• Downtown Art Walk
• second Thursday of every months starting on Main street, generally lasts from 12-9pm
• Free
• Self-guided tour of art galleries in the Downtown Los Angeles area
• Third Wednesday/Downtown Culver City
• live entertainment
• art galleries
• food & drink specials
• giveaways
• free samples
• between Culver Blvd & Washington blvd.
• 5-9pm
• 3102026060
• Activist Public Picnic
• Vegan Potluck
• Clover Park, 2600 Ocean Blvd. Santa Monica
• 12-3pm
• 3103991000

Hippie Shit

I don't like when people call me a hippie. Its not that I get offended, I just think its inaccurate. First off, unless you were a teenager or a young adult in the 60s that practically lived on Haight & Ashbury, then you my friend are not a hippie. Maybe you bear similarities to hippies, but hippies are not born/made everyday. They were a people/movement that has since died out.

I would guess that people call me a hippie because I always talk about love, peace, and equality, which was a lot of the stuff that hippies fought for. My problem with people that call themselves hippies are that they shout "love!" with no real analysis on why hate exists. They just say these things because its are trendy and call themselves hippies because that's the trendy thing to do but know nothing of concepts like appropriation, or colonization, or white privilege.

The clothes: which is another reason people probably call me a hippie. I don't dress like no damn hippie. Most people who try to emulate hippie culture are just doing it to be trendy. Native people all over the world dressed in bright, ornate ways way before hippies came on the map. Say I dress like the Native people of the world, not no damn hippie. More than anything, I try to represent myself in the way that I dress. & I am not a hippie.

Updated: Slut Shaming and Sexual Choice

Slut-shaming (I wish there was a better word for it) is a product of sex negative images. So not only is slut-shaming sexist it is also a process of policing gender. Slut shaming privileges men over womyn, by telling womyn that they are responsible for the sexual responses of men because womyn's power is sexual while men's power is material. "Put on pants instead of shorts, so men won't holler at you when you walk down the street." "If you weren't drinking so much, you wouldn't have been raped." In both of these situations, womyn are expected to be responsible for what men do, because supposedly men can't control their responses when women assumed to be hypersexual, show that they are indeed sexual beings. Slut shaming is telling womyn not to fall out of the confines of modesty and what the stereotype of what a woman should be: dainty, submissive, etc. When a woman falls out of those restrictions, society, including slut shamers ridicule her for not lining up to what their standards of a woman should be, for stepping out of line, for being a sexual woman with autonomy which womyn were never believed to be. They tell her she's not a real woman, that instead she is a ho, and strip her of her gender identity all together. This is the worst situation for a young woman of color to be in. They make her feel so bad that she'll get back in line and never stray again. Slut shaming serves to keep stoic ideas of what a woman should be in tact: pure and passive.


This type of logic disproportionately affects women of color. Since women of color are already seen by dominant society, including men of color, as hypersexual, callous deviants who use sex for purely economic and/or man stealing gains, our sexuality is even more boxed in. We put on a modest persona to seek acceptance not only from other womyn but from the men of our race also. Our sexuality is dictated for us even more than it is for white womyn. Most womyn are so afraid of being ostracized from the community based on sexual choices deemed inappropriate, that they make those choices, not based on love or fulfillment but only so they won't go through this process of gender stripping slut-shaming. My plea is for womyn to start making sexual choices based on what their desires are and what their own definition of a woman is and also allow every other woman to make those same rules, decisions, and choices for herself. Don't let society determine what your sexuality should look like. Define your own ideas and give every other woman the right to do that for herself, she deserves it. Shatter the degrading stereotype of what a woman should be.


My message to women is to be proud of the sexual choices you make when you don't care what others will think of you. Don't restrict yourself based on what ideas are out there about the purity of a woman. Even if afterward, you felt like it was a mistake and regret it later on, remember it happens to the best of us. Be proud that at that moment it was exactly what you wanted. Be proud that you had the clear mind and will to make that decision. If for no other reason, do it for the womyn who didn't get to make the choice about what sexual choices they were going to make.


"SEXUAL VINDICATION ladies, taking back whats ours!"

Sexual vindication: doing what you want, with your body, regardless of preconceived notions and not caring what people think about what you are doing, with your body.

Sexual Violence and Sex Negative Messages

The other day was the first day that I masturbated without guilt. I was in high school when I first started to masturbate. High school was also the time in my life when I was going through my die hard Imma-be-a-minister-when-I-grow-up Christian phase. Not only was I being sent covert messages from the media about how dirty and disgusting masturbation was but I was also being sent similar overt messages from the adults in my life that I loved, trusted, and believed about how wrong and sinful masturbation was. These messages didn't make me stop though, they only made me feel ashamed of what I was doing. I had found a part of myself that felt too damned good to stop, which made me feel even more bad and on top of that I was being told in church every Sunday to let go of the flesh and how only sinful, worldly creatures choose flesh over the Lord. I was a wreck, but a sexually satisfied wreck. Instead of persuading me to stop, those messages that were embedded into my psyche triggered an guilty response every time I felt the fruits of my masturbation labor. I relished the physical goodness but my mind felt like what I had just done was wrong, the physicality of what I was feeling was wrong. Pretty much, I felt bad about feeling good.

Every time, I told myself that I needed to stop, that I needed to get my life in order, that I needed to ask for forgiveness and I did. Over and over again. Imagine what that can do to a person, you continue to commit what you feel is a crime, a religious crime, one even worse than those committed against the law. Imagine what it did to my sexual health. I felt screwed up. The connection had already been made: sex is bad, dirty, wrong, and worst of all sinful.

Now that I've abandoned my religious beliefs and adopted love as my die hard spirituality, I have come to realize that sex is a natural part of life. To tell someone and send messages that sex is wrong is what the true problem is.

I recently read an blog post by sex positive activist Charlie Glickman. In his post he draws the link between sex negative messages and rape culture. He says "sex negative messages don't keep people from having sex. They keep people from having good sex." Brilliant. To further his argument, sex negative messages don't just keep people from having good sex they also keep people from feeling healthy, mature, equipped, and happy about the sexual choices they make. Sex negative messages are violent messages that keep people away from expressing themselves sexually in a safe, healthy, fun manner. They detach people from the very necessary connection human beings need to have with their physical body. Andrea Smith in her book "Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide," says, "as a consequence of this colonization and abuse of their bodies, Indian people learn to internalize self-hatred, because body image is integrally related to self-esteem. When one's body is not respected, one begins to hate oneself. Anne, a native boarding school student, reflects on this process: You better not touch yourself...If I looked at somebody, lust, sex I got scared of those sexual feelings. And I did not know how to handle them...What really confused me was if intercourse was a sin, why are people born?...It took me a really long time to get over the fact that...I've sinned, I had a child." Therefore, I agree with Glickman's argument that sex negative messages promote rape. In order to have a mind that sees rape as wrong, you have to believe that every person's body is worthy of respect and love, but how can you respect and love someone else's body when you've been taught that all things sexual are bad? when you hate yourself and your own body?, when you're indiscriminate and careless about the sexual choices you make? This why I believe more men commit sexually violent acts than womyn do, because men are taught to be indiscriminate and careless in their sexual choices. If they turn a woman down, they are tagged gay not selective.

In Juice, Bishop said "I don't give a fuck. I don't give a fuck about you. I don't give a fuck about Steel. I don't give a fuck about Raheem, either. I don't give a fuck about myself. Look, I ain't shit. And you less of a man than me, so as soon as I figure you ain't gon be shit, pow!" Even though this is a fictional movie, it was a depiction of a real situation. When someone hates themselves they hate another person even more since society is shaped in a way where we don't give other the same respect we give ourselves. Therefore, I am making the assertion that the first step to stopping sexual violence is to stop sex negative messages. Teach people about sex positivity, so that they can be comfortable, and can respect and love their own bodies and the bodies of others. Its definitely easier said than done, but it can be done.

It took a long time of me constantly rethinking the sex negative messages that I had been sent for so long for me in order for me to fully love and appreciate my body and the body of others and it was definitely worth the wait.

I Love LA: Part 3: Eat Real Festival!

So I had been looking forward to the Eat Real Festival since I learned about it from the LA Times about two weeks previous and I finally got to go yesterday. While the festival didn't meet all of my expectations, which are always pretty high, it was still effin awesome. First, parking was horrible. This is the same crowd aligned with the green movement, so I wonder if the inconvenience was done on purpose. There weren't event any designated parking lots, only bike lots where you could get your bike valeted and shuttles. I'm all for the bikes and the like but they need to understand nonetheless 90% of people coming to this event will be driving, don't punish them for it. The festival was also a lot smaller than I expected but bigger isn't always better as showcased by this event.

The main thing I went for was the food trucks of course. The first one my mother and I decided on was the world famous Nom Nom truck from Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race. They were only selling one item, the Banh Mi, which I was a little apprehensive about since I don't really like lemongrass. However, I went ahead and tried it minus the mayo and it was the best lemongrass chicken I've ever had. All the ingredients were fresh, it had the perfect amount of spiciness with the jalapenos, and the baguette was really filling. It was delicious. I washed it down with a mango agua fresca. The next food truck we tried was Flat Iron where we ordered the house fries which were weirdly shaped potatoes seasoned with I believed to be sea salt, and some type of herb. Either way, they were dry but pretty good nonetheless.

We walked around and visited some booths about farming from South Central Farmers and organic food where Organic Valley was handing out organic string cheese, stickers and cards with information about how to make your own butter. We also bought white nectarines from a booth by Santa Monica Farmer's Market. The best part, besides the food, was the marketplace, even though I didn't buy anything. There was homemade honey and honey products from Backyard Bees. Their handcream was to die for. I also tasted a jerk sauce, jerk as in jerk chicken, from Jabberwocky Foods Inc. The sauce was good and reasonably priced. I also tasted pure chocolate which was good until the bitter end, literally. Last, I tasted an Original flavored olive from Orgasmo de la Boca, which the owner said her vegetarian friends describe as their bacon, I can definitely see the comparison!

Overall I had an excellent time, maybe I'll be at the one in Oakland next! Check out some of the flicks I took below:

I Love LA: Part 2: Things To Do This Week

• Los Feliz Village Street Fair. Sun. 11am.-10pm.
• Venice Beach Art Crawl-Explore Venice Beach's art community with more than 20 participating galleries. Thurs. July 17th. 6pm-10pm
• 3rd Annual Summer Fest, Venice Beach-Exhibitors, Food Vendors, and Live Music from 20 Bands. Sat. July 23rd. 10am-6pm.
• Volunteer Orientation. Sat. July 23rd. 9am-11am. at Downtown Women's Center
• Beauty CULture Exhibit at Annenberg Space for Photography

*only free events are posted*

I Love LA: Part 1: Venice

Today, I spent the day with my wonderful and very good friend TaRasha at Venice, Los Angeles; which is a sort of mecca in LA. Most people don't go to Venice Beach to enjoy the water but instead go to see the street art; graffiti and live circus-like performers; shop and eat. I bought two pairs of earrings for $23 at Gonzo Africa which has a lot of cool ethnic jewelry. Fred, whom I believe is the owner was really cool and gave us both discounts on our purchases.

Venice is home to many cool restaurants like famed taco truck Kogi BBQ which makes Korean tacos, you also find them at this event tonight. TaRasha and I ate a cool little Mediterranean restaurant called Cairo Cowboy, which is known for its Kabob N' Roll food truck as well but the owners just opened up this restaurant in Venice. Despite the corny name of the place, the food was really good, the portions were small but adequate for the price. I had the vegetarian version of the Mediterranean pizza, I think it was called Zatar. It came with a puree-like sauce of herbs, sesame seeds, purple onions, and tomatoes. TaRasha had fried banana nutella bites which were like pupusas filled with....you guessed it, nutella and fried banana. They were really good too.


Check out the earrings I bought today below:

Los Angeles

So after spending the majority of my time in Riverside for the past four years, I am back in LALAland and appreciating the hell out of it. So I'm making a effort to learn more about the city that I grew up in, specifically focusing on history/historical sites, events, and cool places. I'm starting a new series where I talk about places that I've been and cool events coming up in the Los Angeles area. In addition to blogging pictures and stories about the places I'm visiting, I'll post Things To Do in LA every Sunday. Stay tuned!

DivaCup Review

After I stumbled upon much research on the ills of menstruation products such as tampons and pads, I became disgusted. But not because of menstruation, but because like everything else in this world, capitalism had gotten a hold of something as natural as blood from a cooter. Why was I surprised, of course companies at the forefront of menstrual health were male-centric, capitalist and were least of all concerned with women's well being; that's why most of these products contain harmful chemicals like bleach. There had to be a better way, I thought. (And!) there is! I settled on the DivaCup, a resuable mentrual cup. My first cycle, it was to die for. Conveinent, clean, and safe, I worshipped the dear DivaCup. But from there, it all went down hill. The damn thing wouldn't stop leaking, and you know what a bother that can be. Frustrated, angry, sad, and heartbroken were not overly dramatic reactions to my DivaCup demise, they were true from the soul. Anyway, I sought help from online forums and even the company itself to no appropriate avail. Now I'm back to regular, unsafe methods, but I'm thinking, I may try this next.

Song of the Day

to all the wack rappers...these are called LYRIIICS. :)

As a Woman

As a woman, I am tired of feeling the need to look perfect every time I go outside so I won't be criticized for how appealing I don't look.
but also, as a woman, I am tired of feeling the need to dress down so as to lessen the amount of leers and jeers I get from disgusting men.
As a woman, I am disgusted that I am never not aware that men want to have sex with me.
As a woman, I am even more disgusted by the violences that I and my sisters face daily; the rapes against my body, against my sexuality, against my sexual orientation, against my womanhood.
As a woman, I am tired of having to defend my position as intellectual, as a person of having a viable conversation with any person!
As a woman, I am disgusted that I am positioned as a victim in every situation.
And as a woman, I am tired of having my thoughts, beliefs and knowledge questioned because you don't think that I am smart enough to know things about this life and about this world.
As a woman, I'm frightened about what this world will look like if this behavior continues.
As a woman, I'm thoroughly annoyed by the fact that men are given privilege solely based on the fact that they were born with a penis!, a penis that some of them don't even know how to use properly.
As a woman, I'm tired of feeling the need to live up to standards of men who do not even have a relationship with me.
As a woman, I am sickened by the fact that there are womyn who oppress other womyn just as much as men oppress womyn.
As a woman, I am tired of being ignored!
As a woman, I am tired of having to hide the fact that I enjoy sex, very much!
As a woman, I am discomforted by the idea that my body is used to sell products in a capitalist system that oppresses me more than it does a man.
I am not a ho, I am not a bitch, I am not a slut, I am not a whore, I am not a prostitute, I am not a chick. I am woman, I am a girl.
I am beautiful no matter what anyone says.
I am smart.
I am capable.
Its not easy to love being a woman with all this and more to deal with it, my only solace is to sit up and speak about these injustices, to notice that this is not right and to do something about it! I have a big voice and I will use it for change until change comes because my vagina said that I should. :)

My Favorite Slum Village song: Climax

"The concept is a menage a trois really, a guy's fantasy. We're trying to break the monotony and relax the stiffness of sexuality because it's so suppressed. We're trying to tell everybody it's okay if you wanna have a menage a trois. Do your thing, it's alright. Sexuality is freedom and we support that. I don't suppress my sexuality and we don't do it in our music, so we're sharing it with the world - something that another group probably wouldn't do." ^-Baatin

Ugh.

You know what I'm tired of?, the phenomena from people within activist circles to pant relentlessly about their disgust and astonishment with our country that we aren't as "progressive" as we seem, or apparently should be, just because we are *cue the national anthem* Americaaaa, the beautiful. Shit, tell me something I don't know... and why isn't this something that you already knew? The worst part of it is when they put such statistic as; "What does the United States of America have in common with the African nation of Somalia? Answer: They are the only countries to refuse to sign Article 37 of the 1989 UN document entitled, "Rights of the Child."; against a largely undeveloped country like Somalia in this real-life example to emphasize how "primitive" (her words, not mine) and "third world" this country truly is and juxtapose it with heightened surprise, complete with raised eyebrows. Like, Oh! My! God! My Beautiful, superior country has something in common with this ravaged and destitute country??! How could it be? There must be some type of mistake! Not Americaaa... the beautiful. Gosh! We must do something about this, and quickly!... so we can further widen the gap between US and THEM, privileged and underprivileged, progressive and unprogressive. We cannot possibly in the same pool as them and therefore doomed to the same fate. Nevermind the REAL needs of the subject or issue we're speaking about or the country we're persecuting. Sigh. Will it ever end?

Sara Tavares--->J.Cole

Marvin---->G-Unit

I fucking love this song and I love Marvin.


& this used to be my song. :)

The Police Institution

Think about it, when you have a problem like domestic violence or robbery, who do you call? It goes without saying, the police. Yet we are all aware what the police institution has done to our communities. Oscar Grant, Sean Bell. Everywhere we look people are calling for the arrest of someone, the extension of prison time for another person. Even activists rely heavily on the police institution to end the problems that speak about. Police officers are found most often in poor, communities of color, the police institution was specifically designed to be a type of watch dog mechanism for these communities. We forget the violence done to us by the police institution, something we should never forget. Abner Louima. Duanna Johnson. They keep us in tact, whenever one of us steps out of line they send us to prison, no matter the circumstances. Entire communities are criminalized, which results in the overrepresentation of Black, Chicanos, and Natives in the prison system. Being a person of color is a criminal offense in this country. Driving while black, longer prison terms for crack than cocaine, the three strikes law, the criminalization of poor mothers of color, the criminalization of prostitution; all these issues disproportiantely affect people of color. Prison, police and the military are branches of the same oppressive tree. We cannot forget the racism and sexism inherent in the police institution. Kathryn Johnston. Amadou Diallo. We think that the police are inevitable, that they are needed. Indigenous communities, before conquest praticed community accountability. Communities that have love and respect within them do not need outsiders to maintain "order and peace."

Immigration and Race Relations

Most people assume that all Raza people are illegal immigrants. However, the majority of Raza persons in the US are legal citizens. Because of this, for the most part all Raza people get treated like illegal immigrants, as taking advantage of the system, as dirty, and as stupid. Being an undocumented person is racialized as being Raza. However, there are many more immigrant populations that are not apart of La Raza; mainly European and African. However, La Raza is targeted for the racism that comes along with discussion about immigration issues.

This also means that other races get left out of the immigration conversation. Anti-immigration rhetoric relies on the slaveability of Blackness and also as seeing La Raza as a threat to US empire building. Privileged persons who have high paying jobs and are able to successfully navigate the job world know that blacks will still be here to do the slave labor. They and anti-immigrant blacks are ignorant of the fact that undocumented persons do necessary labor for this country. With documented labor out of this country, all those people with jobs will see an decrease in the lure and viability of their position. In fact, Blacks have benefited largely and gained privilege in the job market because of mass immigration. Blacks, in the long run, are largely in a better economic position. We hold better jobs and live in more affluent areas than ever before.

Immigration can also be seen as threatening to an individual's personal privilege of being a legal citizen. Undocumented persons are seen as taking advantage of healthcare, welfare, and public educational services. This logic also seeps into the conversation when anti-immigrantion people accuse undocumented persons of taking American jobs. There is especially tension between Black Americans and La Raza. Black Americans have typically been situated as slaves in the American labor force, however, now more undocumented workers hold lower level positions; which can be interpreted as "taking jobs." However, when we complicate the notion of capitalism and white supremacy, we see that immigrants are not to blame for this. La Raza also has issues with unemployment. However, corporate entities will take cheaper labor, which is immigrant labor not black labor, because undocumented workers do not possess the means to fairly negotiate the workforce because they are without legal citizenship status. They are also pawns in a capitalist state, they take what labor is available to them out of necessity to feed their families.