Stop reading this stupid blog and CALL OBAMA NOW! 866.675.2008 and say, “Please appoint Mary Beth Maxwell for Secretary of Labor. Thank you, bye-bye.” It will take 10 seconds. Do. It. Now.

If you are lazy, cut this: Please appoint Mary Beth Maxwell for Secretary of Labor. Thank you, bye-bye.
Click here, paste and press send.

Maxwell makes a living advocating for low-wage workers and unions. She’s not a Beltway politician. She’s the founding Executive Director American Rights at Work. Prior to that she was the National Field Director for Jobs with Justice. Brownie points: Maxwell would be the first out lesbian to serve in a cabinet position. A pro-union, pro-worker dyke. What more could I ask for?

Anyway, Barr decided to write this book “when he discovered he could explain things clearly” –a point he re-states several more times throughout the book. Barr is a family doctor and his writing oozes the patronizing tone I associate with doctors, judges addressing poor clients and people speaking slooooowly and cleeeaaaarly to senior citizens.

It’s too bad the editors didn’t temper his didactic tone because the book is a comprehensive and clearly written primer on the elusive practice of “seeing” creatively. Barr walks readers through basic concepts behind visual composition (lines, points, planes, texture, tones, color etc.) and offers step-by-step instructions on critiquing and fully experiencing an image.

The images are beautiful and some are masterpieces of digital darkroom wizardry. The technique and craft lessons are helpful. It’s a useful resource if you can get past the self-flattery.

This Saturday (December 13) My friend Laura’s organization is hosting the first ever tamal festival/contest in San Francisco. I’ll be there around 2/2:30 to get my eats on!

What: Fiesta del Tamal!
When: noon - 5pm
Where: Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission Street
Why? Support Caminos’ efforts to bridge the digital divide that excludes many Latinas from sustainable high-tech job.

From their website:

“Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, CAMINOS enables low-income, Latina immigrants to create opportunities for self and economic improvement through access to technology. CAMINOS is a non-profit organization dedicated to using technology to improve the lives of Latina immigrants. By enabling unemployed or underemployed Latina, immigrant women move from manual or service labor to office and technology-based work, thus interrupting the cycle of poverty and social isolation affecting Latina immigrant women’s health and wellbeing.

CAMINOS works to ensure that low-income Latina immigrant women in the community can reap the benefits of the information revolution that is fundamentally changing our economic and social structure. Without programs such as ours, poor communities would miss the opportunity to be integrated into the technological era, further exacerbating existing equity problems.

Our programs work together to empower Latina immigrant women to build living-wage careers within the information and technology sector.”

Thanks again to everyone who sent helpful comments and suggestions.

http://www.tracychapman.com/

The proponents of the “black people passed 8″ theory rely on a parade of specious arguments, but the most facile is the reliance on a single exit poll of 2,240 voters showing 7 out of 10 African Americans voted yes on 8.

Let’s take a peek at how many black people were polled—224. 224 black people speak for the entire African American electorate in California? Note, the dashes in the “black men” columns indicate that with only 90 black men polled, they couldn’t even get a statistically relevant result.

But for the sake of argument, let’s accept this 7 out of 10 statistic. According to the US Census, African Americans are 6.7% of the entire California electorate–that’s 2.3 million people. White people comprise 43% or 22 million. Our single exit poll says white people were evenly split on 8. So that’s about 11 million white votes for 8. Our simple arithmetic reveals…whoa…way more white people voted yes on 8. Wait, that’s almost FIVE times the entire black electorate.

If we want to really use this non-reasoning and one poll in the Blame Game, the correct answer to who passed prop h8 is: White Republicans (82% for h8) and voters of all races who attend church on a weekly basis (84% for h8.)

Note, lest APIs think we can gloat about our “majority against 8” status. Puhleez, 134 “Asians” represent the ever mythical unified Asian America? Let’s be consistent in our demands for disaggregated data and not present ourselves as a blended happy SouthAsianFilipinoChineseJapaneseTonganSaomoanVietnamese family. We know there’s a lot of in-house work to do. Talk to your parents or born-again cousin about being queer lately?

So why blame African Americans? It’s lazy, easy and sells. If that were all, blaming black people for prop 8 is no less harmful than instant ramen. This knee jerk racism is more dangerous than your cup noodle because it focuses blame on a caricatured impenetrable “scary scary black peoples” who we can then fear, ignore and not engage. Shifting blame to some unknowable outsider breeds complacency and a self-righteous cocoon of All is Good in our non-scary house devoid of black people. And it erases the real lives, loves and struggles of queer people of color who create blended communities of Asian, Latino, black, haole and mixed race peoples.

So, as a dear friend often reminds me, it’s never ALL Good. Every community has its homophobes— 24% of San Franciscans voted FOR 8. That’s right, 1 in 4 voted for h8 in the gay Mecca. The wackness knows no bounds.

Post-election day I want to revel in unadulterated jubilation for Obama-dom, replay the joyous screams and ringing acceptance speech. But the joy is tempered by this memory. Yesterday, I joined a group of young women to hand out no on 8 flyers at my polling place (yes, I was a safe, non-electioneering 100 ft from the polls.) Two of the women endured an exchange with a construction crew that came over to tell them that in order to protect their children, they voted yes on 8. The posse of men then sat on a stoop to enjoy their sandwiches and entertained themselves by tossing homophobic slurs our way. Soon after, we were brushed back from the curb by a roaring SUV full of venomous, epithet screaming young men. The construction crew looked up and cheered them on. Welcome to the Bay Area! So very queer friendly.

It was just one incident amidst a flurry of positive honking and “of course, I voted no!” cheers, but my hopes died somewhere in that convergence of hate. That two groups of complete strangers could be so vocally united in their homophobia was the last reminder I needed that prop 8 is not about marriage. It’s about our right to walk in our neighborhoods without fear of harassment. Prop 8 came down to my ability to simply exist with a little bit of dignity and dare I say respect? So much to ask?

Because it seems so reasonable to expect so little, the election results really hurt. Because I am an ungracious little person, I spent the day imagining revenge scenarios and wishing for election fraud super powers (only on 8 of course…)

I should remember the many positives of the campaign: campaign antics with new and old friends and of course, Obama. Let those thoughts re-kindle hope by writing something thoughtful and beautiful like my friend over at Dogmo. I’m also supposed to be an adult, a big person, re-commit to the struggle and be all Zen- compassionate about the whole thing. Wait… I just got an email telling me what I’m really supposed to do is light a candle and go stand in front of City Hall. Sigh, too bad I feel like smacking something instead. Maybe what I need is some tasty fried chicken.

I DO care that unlike any past or present presidential candidate, Obama is committed to “fighting for equal rights for all Americans whether it’s by granting LGBT Americans all the civil rights and benefits available to heterosexual couples or repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’…” I take that to mean non-discrimination in employment, equal access to health care, tax equity and the 1000 plus bundle of federal rights that same-sex couples now accrue via marriage. Equality under the law sounds good to me. Marriage or no marriage–change is coming peoples.