Intersectional

At the Women's March weekend and in several other settings involving activism, I have been hearing this word "intersectional." It seems to be a sort of buzz word of late. At first, I let it just slide past in my hearing, not really thinking about its meaning. But each time I hear it, I think a little harder about what it means, and more specifically what it means to me.

I realized after much thought that the word is so much a part of my way of being in the world, that it never occurred to me that it needed to be called something or defined. But now that I have begun thinking about it, I understand that not everybody thinks of the world this way, and while that's foreign to me, I get that other people go through life differently than I do.

So, I did what I always do--I turned to words, my friends. I think intersectionality is what John Donne meant in his poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee. 


Now, I'm no John Donne, and my poetic attempts may not be so eloquent, but after the march, I wrote this poem to try to express the word, the point of the march, the way I view the world in this respect. 

It's called: 

Intersectional 


As in, our lives intersect so much so that whatever happens to anyone, happens to me;

As in, women's rights are human rights, are LGBT rights, are refugee rights, are immigrants' rights, are black rights, are rights;

As in, violence toward one begets more violence to all;

As in, geographical, political boundaries are myths that cannot divide us; 

As in, we either rise together or we fall together;

As in, we have all been strangers in a strange land, all in need of welcome;

As in, the water in North Dakota, and Flint, and flooding homes, and pushed by tsunamis is all the same water;

As in, we exist as only a tiny part of an enormous ecosytem, but we are soiling our own bed--even dogs know better; 

As in, art and music and literature are how we understand our connectedness; 

As in, educating your child is just as important to me as the education mine already received; 

As in, all religions teach us to love one another, a concept so fundamental that even those with no religion intuitively know this;

As in, social justice for one does not take away anything from another, but expands justice for all; 

As in, there is enough for all when greed gives way to generosity and power gives way to humility; 

As in, we are all dreamers, whether we are laid off coal workers, struggling farmers, loggers, DACA children, corporate giants, or writers; 

As in, we are all formed from the same stardust, and we will all return to it; 

As in, the whisper you start in your heart becomes the rousing roar of the earth; 

As in, if we bring forth what is within us it will save us, and if we do not bring forth what is within us, it will destroy us; 

As in, we exist in an infinite spiral around each other and we can reach out to hug, help, heal, and house the whole world; 

As in, tug on one thread and the whole piece/peace unravels.

After Another Shooting

Dear America,

I am so tired and angry today, as I know a lot of you are. Why, why, does this keep happening? I am not going to get used to mass shootings, or any shootings, occurring every day. The President is right—no other advanced nation in the world has this problem.

Twitter is crowded with opinions. Racism. No, mental illness. No, terrorism. No, gun control laws.

I call bullshit. It’s all of the above, but it’s all part of a much bigger problem. Apathy.

We live in a crazy-producing society, unique to the U.S. We seem to accept that corporations with billions of dollars get to do whatever they want; that the government won’t, can’t, and shouldn’t protect its citizens; that no matter what we do, we have no power.

We are content to go buy our cheap merchandise at Walmart without thinking about the fact that this company and the family who owns it are raking in our money while refusing to give their employees even the tiniest benefits. That they and other corporate greed mongers refuse to pay employees a fair living wage. We continue to balk at paying taxes in order that folks with legitimate mental illness can get the care and treatment they need. We allow the government to dictate what will be taught in schools based on test scores, rather than paying teachers what they’re worth and trusting them to do their jobs.

All the while, we talk, and talk, and talk about how awful this latest mass shooting is and wring our hands and pray.

I’m sick of it. We are the problem. All of us. I admit, I enjoy a life of white privilege. But I hope I don’t allow that to lessen my humanity and my desire to continue fighting until all people have the same privilege.

When will we as a society put aside our short-sighted, narrow-minded, self-serving attitudes, get off our asses, and get to WORK? I mean the kind of work that can counteract hatred and violence. The kind of work that involves risk, pain, sacrifice. The kind of work that is uncomfortable.

It could be any kind of work. There’s so much of it to be done. It could involve actually going to vote on election day, even educating yourself about the candidates and what they stand for. Don’t have time for that? Do you have time to hang out on Twitter and debate whether this latest shooting is about hatred or gun control? It could be actually helping out on a campaign for a candidate who wants to fight for a higher minimum wage or the rights of LGBT folks to be included in our human rights laws.

It doesn’t have to be politics. It could be building homes for Habitat for Humanity. Or feeding homeless people a meal. It could be volunteering on a suicide hotline. It could be prison ministry. Or environmental activism. It could be neighborhood community building. The list is never ending.

If, instead, we are content to sit on our butts watching reality TV, complaining about big government, and holding onto our fear, then we will continue seeing more of the same.

I’m sick of it. It would be so easy to flee to the mountains and ignore the pain. It’s my first inclination. But we need more of us to stay here and do the work. Get out of our little houses made of ticky tacky and really start caring for each other. Stop debating what needs to be done. It ALL needs to be done. Just go do it. Every shot fired, every day, should propel us to work harder, care more, fight longer. This is OUR country. WE are the ones who are responsible.