Community organizers

So here is my OMG from today's class:

OMG they don't know why or how "community organizer" became such a loaded term! Ok, one person knew that Obama considered himself a community organizer. But no one remembered that Sarah Palin disparaged them. Where were they?!?!?! Just 5 months ago, right? Sheltered? Inattentive? Selective? Or maybe Palin's comment didn't have that much play except among those of us who got offended. Hmmmm.

But today was a good class. We discussed "Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History..." with questions like these:

• Let’s call Philip Vera Cruz a community organizer. A loaded term, I know. So let’s reload it. How do you think Philip Vera Cruz would define “community organizer”? Think in terms of knowledge, qualities, skills and other factors that you think are important.

I also asked about his lessons in leadership and coalition building and participation. Most importantly, I threw all sorts of current events into the mix: harassment of day laborers, "illegal immigrants," the stimulus package, majority rules, bi-partisan "compromise", driving while brown. What does Philip Vera Cruz's personal history have to tell us about these issues? Got a lot of participation! And my favorite, we got some disagreement and surfaced some prejudice. Teachable moments! Yeah!

Diana Ross

I came out to my Asian American Sexualities class today (3rd meeting). I'm never sure how to do it (oblique reference? or ellen-level declarative?) and it's always a bit unnerving. And as usual with this generation, the class is nonplussed. Next subject.

Of course, I don't think my students are representative of the school. The title of the course, I'm sure, selects for a certain set of students.

Today was declarative, minus ellen's elan.

History live!

There's nothing like hearing history from the history makers themselves. Today in class I was lucky to have the two fierce pinays whose activism created Asian American Studies at UMD, Christina and Angela Lagdameo. If I can figure out how to link to the Washington Post article about them (Aug 31, 2000), I'll post it. And then Juanita Tamayo Lott came by too, so that we could also hear about her experience in the 1968 student strike at SF state. Hearing them speak reminds me of how much history does not capture. The passion, the enthusiasm, the moment, and fascinating tidbits get freeze-dried and abstracted for our textbooks. Of course we should still clamor for inclusion in those books. But never let books be the only tool for learning.

My course is titled (not by me) Filipino American History and Biography. But today it dawned on me (or maybe I'm just admitting) that the more appropriate title is Filipino American Activism.

We hear over and again about the Asian communities' lack of activism and interest in engaging politically. About our meekness and desire to not rock the boat. And I hear this mostly from other Asians. But maybe that's the narrative we've been fed to keep us down (and that we believe it means we've internalized the racism it represents). Maybe it's that we don't know where to look for the activists, because Asian American studies isn't around in enough places to raise our consciousness about how much we've actually done. And because people like me often do complain, why aren't we being louder? Where are we (on x issue)?

We need to hear more stories about ourselves to repudiate, complicate and diversify this portrait of the non-activist Asian American. And in recognition of my very diverse class, I should clarify that "we" and "ourselves" is not just Filipinos or Asians. My class will leave knowing who the activists are.