I see you. Can you see her?

January 17, 2016

solidarity rallyOn Saturday, January 16, 2016 about 300 people gathered in Portland City Hall for a Solidarity Rally to #InterruptHate and #StandForLove together in he fact of too much hate in our community and around the world. (Check out these great pics taken by The Oregonian and if you do nothing else, download this 2-page PDF with concrete suggestions for how you can start taking action now to interrupt hate in your own community).

Family Forward was one of the event organizers, along with the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO), CAUSA, the Center for Intercultural Organizing, Fair Shot for All, Havurah Shalom, Iraqi Society of Oregon, Muslimahs United, Portland Japanese American Citizens League, and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), the Urban League of Portland, and the Portland Area YWCA.

These are the words of our Executive Director, Andrea Paluso, when she spoke at the rally:

Hello. Thank you for being here and for being the kind of people who do something in the face of hate. We, the people here today, should be just the beginning of a community-wide response. A response to hateful, shameful rhetoric and violence from a community that is declaring that we won’t stand for any of it.

I am here today as a member of that community. As an activist. As a woman. As a mother.

It has not always been this way for me, but now I see the world through this lens. I see the mothers.

I see the black mother who is forced to live in worry and fear about what kind of violence her child may encounter as they try, simply, to go about their day. I see you. Do you see her?

I see the Central American mother who has fled to this country with her children to escape violence and to try to find a better life, only to be met by hostility, racism, and federal raids. Or the mother who knows that maybe her child will have a better chance at remaining here if they arrive in this country alone. I see you. Do you see her?

I see the mothers fleeing Syria with their children on tattered boats in rocky seas. I know, as Warsan Shire, the Somali-British poet, so powerfully says:

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark..

..that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

I see the way our country talks about these refugee mothers, as though they’re not worthy of all the things we take for granted. I see you. Do you see her?

I see the mother, living in the richest country in the world, who works full-time and still gives up meals so that her children can eat. I see you. Do you see her?

I see the mother who is gathering her most precious belongings in response to talk of the detainment or exportation of Muslims – fearful of what may come, fearful of the hate this kind of talk creates in the eyes of her neighbors. I see you. Do you see her?

And so many more.

I see how we are the same, wanting what we do for ourselves and our children. And I see how we are different. I want you to have what we all deserve, and I want all the difference between us to be woven into the beautiful fabric of our beloved community.

I want to call some of the women of color into the room who have taught me about feminism.

The feminist author bell hooks writes about a “beloved community that can only be formed, not by the eradication of difference, but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming our identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” She notes that “if we want a beloved community we must stand (together) for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching that difference to privilege.”

I want a beloved community. I will work for a beloved community. As a white woman ally I will continue to use my voice, my actions, my body to show solidarity as we build this beloved community together. I understand that sometimes this means putting my body in front, and sometimes it means quieting my voice so someone else’s can be heard. I know it means supporting each of you as you negotiate for justice on your own terms. On this, I make a commitment to you.

I know, as Lilla Watson the aboriginal activist in Australia notes, that if I have come here to “help” all these mothers, I am wasting my time. Instead I am coming here because I know, sincerely, that their liberation is bound up with mine.

There cannot be justice until we all feel it. I cannot be free until we all feel freedom. We are bound together in our histories – and in our futures.

And in some ways, we are simply bound. Our bodies. Women’s bodies.

A great topic of concern, and violent focus for so many men these days, and always.

The occupation of women’s bodies is a well-exploited act of war. It is an exercise in complete domination. It leaves no grey areas, it is direct, it is violent, it is everything.

Whether by force or the powerful coercion of legislation, how can we women know freedom or justice when our bodies are under the domain of angry and fearful men?

This is a struggle that is not unique to women. The right to control and protect our bodies, whether against police brutality, access to reproductive freedom, or one’s ability to simply find a safe place in the world. Justice cannot be felt by those who have not yet attained even this most basic right: autonomy over their own being.

So where do we go from here? Do you want that beloved community?

What are you willing to do for it? How are we each going to step forward to claim it? For my white sisters and brothers: What are you willing risk for it? Or give up to get it? How are some of us going to step back so we can all be seen?

I hope you will leave today committed to answering these questions. Over and over again, until we all know justice.

Thank you.

Inspired to take action now to interrupt hate?  Great, because that’s exactly what’s needed. Check out this flyer from the rally: Things You Can Do Now (it’s a PDF).