One last gloat...

Can't you imagine the American people saying this to Republicans?

Or, in the more important news, Brittney saying this to Kevin?(no sound til 22 seconds in)

I know, I know, I'm usually hard on B, but I've been looking for a way to sneak this on the blog without having to admit I backtracked. I really like this song!

Ok, I'm off to catch up on everything abandoned sice Monday.

Rumsfeld...

...I guess Bush's loyalty is a thing of the (recent) past?

Who Knew?

Apparently, some of my friends/family back home aren't as apathetic as I thought. I've gotten four e-mails since 11:30 last night with this in the subject line: "WE HAVE A BLACK MAYOR!"

Why the excitement? My hometown is approximately 60% black and this is a first.

But this mayor is facing an issue that small town mayors all over the South are beginning to grapple with: the poultry processing industry in the area has attracted a number of new settlers and there is an undercurrent of tension and conflict over very limited resources. He has to also deal with old issues like poor schools, never enough money, making it with only a volunteer fire department, a mostly white police force hated by a mostly black poopulation.

I'll keep you posted.

Election Update

Yay, for Ms. Pelosi!

Aww, damn, Mr. Ford!

We get the point, Mr. Allen. You're waiting for the recount!

C'mon, Ms. McCaskill, hold on!

Can they count FASTER in Montana?

But--Who knew the Republicans would be such sore losers? One quote: "This is not a vote for a liberal, Democrat agenda. This is a vote against other issues."

But when y'all win, it's a mandate backed by Jesus, "real" Americans, and all "democracy loving people in the world."

Save that shit.

Really, I'm going to bed now.

Dare I Hope?

No reassuring reports from the Republican hell in which I live--pretty much what I expected.

But MSNBC.com has an update that reads "NBC projects Democrats take control of House."

I want to go to bed now, because I'm still sick. But, 6 years ago, I went to bed on election night with Al Gore president and woke up to a disappointment like none I'd known.

So I'ma try to stick around another hour or so.

Did I mention that the only productive thing I did today was vote?

Doing Everything I Can Do...

I have voted.

Crossed my fingers.

Thrown salt over my shoulder.

Ate a teaspoon of black-eyed peas from a barbecue restaurant.

Sent all my less-politically-inclined friends (in three states) a text message that said, "I know y'all always tired when you get off work, but please stop to vote!"

Rattled off one of those, "God, if you just let..." prayers that my mom and pastor would kill me for. I should admit, those haven't worked too well in the past--I don't think I have much to bargain with when it comes to God.

And now, feeling better, but still a bit tired, I'm going to wrap my hair back up and unapologetically get back in bed.

To wait.

Update: Moksha describes the hellish wait between now and tonight.

In Janitors' Own Words: Veronica Taboada

Clergy members did step in to support the janitors' cause. They attempted to talk with Gerald Hines, who manages 7% of Houston's commercial space. Hotel staff at the Hilton-Americas where Hines was speaking turned them away.

But no worries for Hines and the professionals with whom he was meeting!! According to the Houston Chronicle, "Despite the protest, the mood at the downtown event was upbeat."

100 Facts about elle in 100ish days However Long It Takes (14)

Fact #14

I would much rather have a runny nose than a stuffy one.

I hate congestion with the intensity of a thousand suns.

**from the land of the Miserable-with-Head-Cold people**

Children of the World, Unite!

The children 'round these parts are on strike. They have decried the necessity of school and poutily proclaimed that they wish they were "ZERO YEARS OLD SO I DON'T HAFTA GO TO SCHOOL!"

Of course, this proclamation is not rooted in any real injustice, but in their desire to stay up late tonight, the last day of the weekend, the last time they can watch the Disney Channel til Friday.

So, they have blown up an air mattress in the living room. They are currently watching The Emperor's New School. They just bid me good night (sister is already knocked out, having laughed herself to sleep thinking about how they're going to be wailing in the morning). I am saying nothing.

But in the interests of being good capitalist management, thoroughly unsympathetic to their plight and intent on punishing them for daring to protest, I'm going to wake them up ten minutes earlier than usual in the morning. And I'm going to do it by singing the "Wake Up, Mr. Sleepyhead" song. And I'm going to be chipper and talk loud and say "Hurry, hurry, hurry!!"

I figure there's no time like the present to teach them the nature of class hierarchy and conflict.

But... but... What about Our Culture of Life?!

Okay, is this really how we want to be known? As people so selfish, so single-minded, and so hypocritical that our nation does stuff like this? From the NYT:

Under a new federal policy, children born in the United States to illegal immigrants with low incomes will no longer be automatically entitled to health insurance through Medicaid, Bush administration officials said Thursday.

(Y'all want me to say something about the fact that this sentence manages to turn "U.S. citizens" into "children born in the United States," don't you?) Highlights:

Under the new policy, an application must be filed for the child, and the parents must provide documents to prove the child’s citizenship.

The documentation requirements took effect in July, but some states have been slow to enforce them, and many doctors are only now becoming aware of the effects on newborns.

Obtaining a birth certificate can take weeks in some states, doctors said. Moreover, they said, illegal immigrant parents may be reluctant to go to a state welfare office to file applications because they fear contact with government agencies that could report their presence to immigration authorities.

Now, let me look at this little piece of legislation through the lens of my knowledge of medicaid. From what I remember, while in the hospital, a newborn used to be covered under Mom's medicaid (for undocumented moms, this would be emergency medicaid. Don't get me started on how we say "Fuck prenatal care! All we can begrudgingly offer you help with is labor."). Then, baby got her/his own coverage for the first year of life. You could apply to have coverage continued after that.

So now there will be no automatic extension of coverage until the child's citizenship is proved? And this only applies to certain parents? Words like "discrimination" and "desperation" are running through my head, but first, I have to ask one question.

Why do you have to prove citizenship of a child that is born in the U.S.? Can someone explain that to me? Did I miss the repeal of the 14th Amendment? Sarcasm aside, I really don't understand this.

Let me look at something else--acceptable proof comes in the form of the child's birth certificate. My child was born in early July. I got his birth certificate in late November/early December. Five months. Let's imagine a newborn going without care for five months. How do parents pay for:

The 2 weeks check-up where the PKU will be repeated?
The 4 weeks check-up?
The 2 months check-up at which the child needs DTP, Hib, OPV, HBV vaccinations? (Vaccinations at a doctor's office can be pricey!)
The 4 months check-up at which the child needs DTP, HIB, OPV vaccinations?

Oh, and perhaps you just get the birth certificate in your hands at five months. You still have to go file for coverage (assuming you are comfortable enough to go into a government office*, which, we all know, they're hoping you're not). In the interim, your child may also need her/his 6 months check up and vaccinations.

And what about:

If baby has jaundice?
If baby gets sick?
If baby doesn't adjust to formula or isn't receiving enough breast milk?
If baby develops thrush?
If baby cries a lot and you don't know why?

And all those other reasons we take our babies to the doctor in those early days.

Sometimes I wonder, when things like this come up, does anyone sit down and say, "You know, it's really not worth the health and well-being of our children to take this opportunity to bash immigrants once again."

And the irony of it is, once these parents, who can't get routine, preventative care, start taking their children to emergency rooms for overpriced care, this administration and its xenophobic base can start saying "Ah-hah! We told you they were a drain on local resources!"

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of conservatives. I want them to let me write their slogans. I'd come up with something snazzy like, "We love all life... right up until birth. And then we care about life if it belongs to an American. And typically, a white American. And truthfully, a wealthy, white American. And, specifically, a wealthy, white American born to married, heterosexual parents..."

But all those qualifiers get tiresome.

H/T to Feministe. Phantom Scribbler has more.

http://haloscan.com/tb/becceratoo/1995467952211285838 (Y'all know my trackback skills leave much to be desired... somehow, I'm thinking that link is not supposed to show up like that!)

*My son's paternal grandmother, who is a social service analyst in Louisiana, says that undocumented immigrants can apply for services for their children and that the analysts may not report their status to other agencies. However, she says that parents have to be constantly reassured of this and many of them simply decide they don't want the potentially damning paper trail.

What the Hell?

Okay, I'm a little irked.

Last week, BfP noted she'd been having problems posting on this blog. "Hmm," I thought, but it slipped my mind.

Last night, I tried three times to post at Rick's place and got an error message.

Then today, I posted a reply to Moksha on the globalization post and to nubian on the blacks and suicide post. They were there and now they're gone. I remember seeing them. I know I double checked the word verification. And I'm way too lazy to type them up again at this moment.

But I'm pissed. Damn!

Janitors seek help from church leaders today

Read here.

I'd like to believe the reasons I'm watching this strike so closely are related to my interest in U.S. labor, economic justice, and my belief that people deserve better.

But that's all my "head" stuff. My heart knows that it's because they remind me so much of "my" workers. And in the case of my workers, churches have provided immeasurable assistance in the push for justice.

I hope they step up again.

In Janitors' Own Words: Austraberta Rodriguez

They average $5.30 per hour. They have no health benefits. They're keeping their promise: Invisible no more.

Update: Something was going wrong so I reposted this. There is a series of these on youtube.

Cruces

Y'all know all I ever have with me is the terrible camera phone, but here are a couple of pictures from the Cruces program on yesterday, All Soul's Day:

The altar for the women killed and disappeared in Ciudad Juarez.

Not one more dead or disappeared woman.

It was a beautiful memorial. 450 names read, broken only by the recitation of poems (including one I believe is called Justice that I want to get and post). As they were reading the names of the women, I kept thinking "Who was she? Who loved her?"

And the unidentified women... hearing those numbers in place of names was sad, but it was also chilling. Nameless in death, those women meant something to someone at some time. What must those left behind be thinking?

There was a professor there who kept emphasizing, kept pressing home the point that these women were killed for being women. That they were hated, mistreated, tortured for being women. "No one cares about the women of Juarez," she said, "But we care." She also reminded us, that it is our responsibility as women (as the audience largely was) to care, to tell, to make sure they didn't die in vain.

You can find more information here.

If You Can't Tell...

...I have a million things on my mind right now.

A million things I want to post about, a couple of memes I want to do, another dissertation related question I want to ask, a story about my mother's life in which I have to look at her outside the context of being my mom (which is written but I want to re-read).

But first, gotta fine tune my intro for the new chapter.

Grrrr.

Study could dispel myth about blacks and suicide

from the AP: "More U.S. blacks attempt suicide than previously thought, according to a landmark study that could help explode the myth that black suicides are rare because of a mind-set that took hold during slavery."

Highlights:

...there is a common misconception that suicide is rare in the black community because of cultural and religious beliefs dating back to slavery times...

The study is the first to look at suicidal behavior among the two leading ethnic groups within the U.S. black community _ African-Americans and Caribbean Americans.
The lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts was much higher among Caribbean-American black men, at 7.5 percent, suggesting that about 53,000 try at least once to kill themselves.
The reasons for that relatively high rate are uncertain. Although the study lacked data on how long Caribbean-American blacks and their ancestors had been in this country, it is likely many were more recent arrivals than African Americans and thus more vulnerable to frustrations with discrimination and other societal pressures...

Historically, suicide was taboo in the black community going back to slavery times, at least partly because "it was really frowned on by the black church," said Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard University psychiatry professor and race relations specialist. "It was a stigma and it brought shame to your family."
Blacks "thought life was supposed to be hard for them," and that may have helped protect them from suicide, Poussaint said.
Interestingly, suicide attempts in the study were least common among blacks in the South, where that mind-set may linger from slavery times, he said.

OK, I have mixed feeling about why people think this study is such a shock. Of course I'm proud to be part of a people who've proven to have an amazing resiliency and incredible faith. I say faith, because, as Tavis Smiley pointed out, it's not/it wasn't hope. There was very little to give us hope.

But I worry that such resiliency is misinterpreted as an excuse to mistreat, to disdain, to exclude. Sort of a "They're black. They can take it."

What this study may show is that, resilience aside, the things we face in this country--the opposition, the racism, the poor health care, the inadequate educational system, the justice (hah) system, the stigma, stigma, stigma--takes its toll on us, as a people and as individuals. Yes, we can survive, but we want so much more than survival.

And I think it's especially telling that rates among young black men are rising.

Am I Mean?

Excerpt from e-mail received from a student:

hi, i am ___________, who is in dr ________'s class on mwf, and was wondering if you could tell me which class i am in, because i hear they split them up. thank you.

My response:

Let me be honest. It is ironic that you contacted me, the TA who takes attendance, to ask this as I know that you have not been to class in weeks (and we just entered November). I should point out that the other class split off some time ago, which reveals how long it has been since you've graced us with your presence. So, three observations,

1) Excessive Absences can lead to your being dropped from this class.

2) I have a sneaking suspicion (hint, hint) that you've missed more than the classes splitting.

3) If you are curious as to where you need to be, stop relying on other's information and COME TO CLASS YOURSELF!

Short answer: No, I won't tell you.

See you Friday,
-elle

Student's response:

lol. okay. thank you. see you soon.

The other TA's got a big kick out of this, along the "Wow, you are a hard ass," lines. And when I re-read it, it is a touch snarky. I don't mean to seem like this, it's just that this student missed most of September, all of October (every single day including two tests), and the first day of November. It'd be different if this was "my" class though. The professor is more laid back and forgiving, and I don't want to violate his policy.

What's an elle to do?

(somebody's baby) blogging

Quaker Dave has a gift for telling stories through pictures. Check out the post with the title: "Wednesday (somebody's baby) blogging" and pictures like this:

Because that fact gets dismissed.

Placing Myself...

...in a global context. How do I do that? Especially when, as a U.S. citizen, I am afforded this sense of isolationism and autonomy. I am painfully aware that I am largely un-conscious when it comes to a world outside the US. My concern with globalism has been in a historical context, topics like triangular trade, transnationalism and transatlantic, immigration patterns, corporation outsourcing or, as is the case with poultry processing, bringing people "here" rather than taking industries "there." "We live in an era of globalization," I can say smugly, and back it up with these examples.

But I never thought consciously about the fact that the "We" includes women.

So, I've been thinking.

I've been thinking about BfP's post on "Why feminists must stand against government oppression in Mexico."

And I've been thinking about Darfur, which I admit in complete shame, that I knew little about before this past summer.

And I'm thinking about the women I approached on campus today, from an organization called Cruces, who had set up a display and an altar in memoriam of 450 women killed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (More on that later. I'm going down at noon when they read off the names of the dead and missing).

And I'm thinking, if I, wholly preoccupied with my own life and school and what I want, know of these three, how many more must there be?

And then I'm thinking, why the hell did BfP have to explain why feminists need to make their fight global?

Is This New?

Never, in all my years of living in the Bible Belt, have I seen something like this, directed specifically at children. Check out this treat my kid got in his bag last night:

I mean, I'm all for sharing the good news, but to specifically "market" to kids (Jesus is the real (emphasis in the original) Superman)? And look, they ask the kids to fill in their addresses and send this thing in with a box checked "Yes, I now trust in Jesus!" Is a little bitty thing like this enough to convince someone who really needs convincing? And should you be asking people's children to mail in stuff? Who's comfortable with their kid receiving mail from unknown entities?

Whenever you see me asking a bunch of questions like this, trust, I'm a little agitated. I can't explain it exactly--it's obvious that I don't mind my kid hearing and knowing about Jesus. And it's not that I think everything has to be filtered through me--that is contradictory to my denomination's belief in the value of a personal relationship with God.

But this really got to me. This paper has a number for kids to call. The only time it suggests consulting your parents is if you go to their website. My kid had his already filled out!

It's been a long day. I'm 73% sure I'm overreacting. But good grief!