Posted by lamamitamala 
Category: Remember when the internet was about personal experiences and tying those into wider, more universal realities?
When I started online many years ago it wasn’t about action alerts and news. It was about my life. It was about me as a single young activist boricua mami feeling mad isolated as I protested, mami’ed, spit poetry and fucked. Yes, I said it fucked. It was how I came into contact with amazing other mamis and eventually how I helped start VivirLatino, which has since blown up to a level that still bugs me out. Like for real, to think I go to national conferences and am on radio shows because so many years ago I started writing about my life is una locura. And I am constantly reminded that the way the internet has changed, shifted from personal to political to careerist and that changes how we deal with one another.
The internet used to be about communication and connection. It was a space that was an extension of real life experiences and where the way we talked with each other mattered. It was why the mami’hood was born, because white “radical” mami spaces had no problem using racial epithets and men had no problem moving their attacks on mujeres to new spaces. Pero now, with people making careers out of blogging, with the blogosphere being about what orgs pays you to parrot their message, suddenly talking about how we interact with other in public is considered divisive and airing dirty laundry and not fucking critical in terms of how we build movements together.
I call bullshit.
I call bullshit porque I have never been good about that line between the personal and political. It has gotten me into trouble, has made me feel unsafe physically, and has led to heartache, and not just my own. Pero if we cannot talk about how we interact with each other personally, how the fuck can we expect to work together to move shit forward in the struggles?
What people don’t realize is that after I was rolled up on with a camera at Netroots Nation, I walked away from the exchange and sobbed and shook. The same way I sobbed and shook at the DNC when who I was twisted into a disgusting sexist/racist stereotype. At NN09 the person who was calling me out said he was criticizing the blogger, not the person in front of him, yet it was body language he imitated in a grotesque way as if my physical being was not the same person who makes the decision to sit in front of this computer everyday, not because I have a boss telling me I have to churn out a certain number of posts or present a certain message pero because it has to fucking be done for me and for others. It’s an ugly, scary place to be in, a space that triggers a legacy of colonization and abuse that is painful.
So when I am told in a caucus, after I raise the point that we need to talk about how we work with other, that bringing up a personal/political attack isn’t appropriate, it feels like I am being beat down. When I am told that my raising a point about how Latino men and women work with each other is divisive in a “Latino” space I wonder where the fuck am I supposed to bring these issues up? When I am told by another Latina that my raising these issues stems from a lack of strength, I am silenced, made invisible and it hurts and enrages.
One of the strongest tools that has been used against communities of color, has been to erase/coverup/rewrite history. So when I see people who call themselves my “sisters” doing this and using my name and experience as proof that they support something besides their own precious careers, it shows me that some “sisters” cannot be trusted. I am not a charity case to be displayed as an example. Value my long ass history as an activist, artist, mujer, mami blogger, do not pity the fact that my ass is so poor that without your help I wouldn’t be here. Do not invent narratives about mutual decisions to not include me in specific spaces and expect me to accept that narrative in the name of decorum or so that political business isn’t personal.
Another part of this dynamic has been my being placed in the middle of conversations between men, sometimes without my consent, and being used as a pawn to attack men of color. If I need someone to step in and intervene on my behalf, I will ask. Thankfully when critical issues have been raised, I haven’t even had to ask. I have been fortunate enough to have men of color have my back. No, this does not dismiss the sexism that men of color bring down against women of color. Pero in a space when there are no women of color I can feel safe among, some men of color have been invaluable to my sanity and sense of safety. I do not appreciate being sent off the record information so that I can side with one man of color over another. I do not appreciate my agency being denied by a white male when it is said that a man of color is tokenizing/using me. I do not appreciate that my not being mentioned while a Latino man was, is an example of privilege and then that privilege being twisted around so you can “protect” me. As if I am incapable of speaking up for myself with my own words. As if I haven’t raised issues over and over again only to be ignored and only when that same issue is raised by a man of color is it answered.
Do not fucking play me.
It’s funny, my mom, who doesn’t get this whole internet thing and yet takes an interest in what I do and has been extremely supportive, was told about all the back talk and bullshit, she asked me, from her outsider perspective: why the fuck am I interacting with these people. And it’s true. Why the fuck am I? For all it’s good and bad things, I am in a position where I am accountable to myself and my community, not a signed paycheck by an org. I have tried for months to give people the benefit of the doubt, to maintain an acceptable tone only to have that used against people who have had my back.
In the words of a now infamous email that is being denied, given everything, I am going in a different direction.
Tags: blogging, history, NN09, reality check —
August 18th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Right on, Mama. Don’t let the people forget, the personal is political, and the political is personal! Once we begin to dehumanize ourselves and each other, the work ain’t worth it, and in turn, becomes self-destructive. Reading about personal experiences in the blogsphere has brought more insight about politics than anything else. Writing about them has opened up even more insight. I need to get on mine, y gracias for the bit of fuel to feed the fuego here!
August 18th, 2009 at 8:32 am
The silencing can come from any direction, but it hurts even more when it comes from those who should know better. Hang in there; they wouldn’t be trying to take away your power if you weren’t speaking truth.
August 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am
i kind of wonder if this greater community shift will end up looking like a breakdown. i feel like everyone’s been in the grip of the tornado, getting thrashed around, and now we’re in the wake of the storm, everyone spit into different directions, figuring out where their homes are and who their family is and what kind of garden they want to grow exactly. it reminds me of a quote from this teenybopper movie:
girl: “That reminds me of this part of Judaism that I really like. It’s called Tikkun Olam. It says that the world is broken into pieces and it’s everybody’s job to find them and put them back together again.”
boy: “Well maybe we’re the pieces, you know, maybe we’re not supposed to find the pieces, maybe we are the pieces.”
August 18th, 2009 at 11:24 am
well said. yeah, not feeling the careerist games and the leveraging being done by culture-thieving knights. done.
August 18th, 2009 at 11:35 am
All I can say is a find your voice very valuable on a number of issues and levels. continue writing, artsing and being a mamita mala, and i will continue learning, even if we don’t agree.
August 18th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
honestly, had i been there, i would have kicked his ass. yet i know that’s not the only thing that’s bothering you. it’s the silencing from those who are supposed to be “our people”.
well … fuck’em. am done. the little that i saw totally disgusted me. am totally over it.
and, you know what? am not gonna waste my time on them. i have bills to pay, things to do. and i never ever forgive nor forget. so, se jodieron en mi lista.
and with that, pa’lante mi’ja.
you know i’ll always champion you
August 18th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Yeah my fuego is fueled too, pero not to waste any more energy in that direction. It’s becoming more and more clear how I want to move forward and who will be there as compañeros/as. Un abrazo y cuida la pansa!!!
August 18th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Honestly I don’t need them attempting to silence me as proof of my power. There are positive signs. The lesson is to move way from the negative assertions of my voice and move towards the positive.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Well I think part of this is acknowledging that there are multiple movements, that can support each other but also contradict each other.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
no doubt! I don’t ask for agreement. Thank for for listening and talking back.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Gracias mujer
August 18th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Even though you didn’t email me back, I am glad to have read this and gotten your opinion. I apologize for what transpired at #NN09 — maybe I am the new tool/token — I don’t know. But I do look up to you and appreciate everything you have to say. Pls never be silent in anything that you have to request from me.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Hey mujer. I’m not ignoring your email. Just struggling with a million cosas today including trying to figure out how I’m gonna keep a roof over my kids’ head.
August 19th, 2009 at 10:02 am
interesting stuff. interpersonal relationships, identity politics and a whole lot of bullshit. keep it up.
but try to put us more into a scene of what’s going on. if there’s anything i miss about your writing it is that. i know you have to tread this line between being too revelatory and too muted, but fuck it, you’re mala.
abrazos
August 19th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
[...] Personal vs Political business : Tokenizing and White Knights [...]
August 22nd, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Hola Marco!!
Yeah well you know the trouble my blogging can get me into. We shall see.:)
Hope all is well!!
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:40 am
[...] written a few posts on some of the invisibility/silencing that I experienced at NN09 and that happens quite often actually in so called progressive spaces, [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 9:51 am
[...] seems like the WOMAN WHO MADE THE CRITIQUE ( or a similar one) or a woman of color who wrote about HER experience at NN09? This gaffe isn’t uncommon ( i am leaving out the women who equated progress with [...]