Reflections and Introductions

I always feel like I’m walking into a trap when I start any type of self-improvement.  Despite my good intentions for doing it and the fact I WANT to do it, the moment other people get wind of what I’m doing they start projecting these expectations on my motives.  Eventually I join in until I don’t recognize why I started anymore, and the constant external plugging of Instant-Great-Life makes me quit.

I am physically healthy for a 5’7″, 237 pound African-American woman, haven’t had anything remotely close to high blood pressure or high cholesterol, haven’t tested anywhere close to having diabetes, and have a slight tendency towards anemia (my white blood cell count has been on the low side since I was a kid).  Yet whenever I go to the doctor’s office or whenever I tell someone I want to lose weight (mostly to become fitter and for my mental/emotional health since I can’t afford therapy, not even on a sliding scale), my doctor insists DESPITE MY DAMNED MEDICAL CHART we have reviewed together, that I need to ward off these specters of disease because BMI says I’m obese, and people presume that clearly I have been written a death ticket because I’m a fat black woman who wants to lose weight.

Reading this Bitch article on the links between privilege and a larger anti-feminist empowerment structure put it into perspective for me, because while I’m trying to make lifestyle adjustments and visualizing goals, I inevitably start wanting unrelated things.  I start wanting things that, for whatever reason, I’ve assumed that I can’t have now while I’m fat.  An excellent career.  A healthy romantic relationship.  Lots of money so I can join a gym, do a class, buy cute outfits.  Driving lessons and a car, so I can get my license.  Dancing lessons, so I can learn to dance.

Then when I look at all these little fantasies I’ve erected, I wonder, “How the hell did I get to wanting these things when I just want to get rid of these two asymmetrical rolls on my back?  Why is this my laundry list when I only want to get to the point that I can run and not feel like I’m going to collapse after an 1/8 of a mile?  If someone doesn’t think I’m attractive now, rolls and all, what does it say about me that I assume they’ll come running once I’m fit and slimmer?  Even more, what does it say about them that they felt no need to approach me until I conformed to their aesthetic?”

***

Weight Watchers is simultaneously improving and ruining my life.  Let me explain.

Since the beginning of this year, I’ve lost 25 pounds.  I lost the first 17 pounds using a free tool online called My Fitness Pal for calorie counting and estimating my activity.  I’ve lost the 8 pounds through my enrollment on Weight Watchers through my job.  I’ve been on the program since April, and I like the POINTS system as much as I like calorie counting; but of course, the POINTS calculator makes tracking more convenient, and you don’t have to rely upon people’s inaccurate assessments of nutritional facts as often.

But I am swiftly realizing it may have been a mistake to enroll in the Weight Watchers program through my job and to let it garnish my wages.  That choice has switched me from eking out a living with an administrative job to existing from paycheck to paycheck.  I cannot afford to go out with anyone.  I cannot afford to buy anything I need.  Instead, my money funnels towards home, student loans, and paying for the times when my fantasies of having enough, having it all, and continuing to have more blinded me to the reality of being a poor black woman with a relative to care for and the constant need to weave her own blessings from dust and dreams.

If I had that Weight Watchers money every two weeks, it would make a WORLD of difference.  But on the to-do list for a girl playing at privilege she doesn’t have — to eat, to pray, to spend — praying is the only thing I can afford!  So I do it regularly to instill some heaven into the hell I’ve created.

***

Credit is now the bane of my existence.  I relied mostly on credit to fuel my fantasies of having it all.  I could subscribe to magazines I liked.  I could buy my friends thoughtful gifts.  I could donate money to people and charities.  I could go out to eat.

And I LOVED going out to eat.

I ran up my credit card in college feeding myself and my friends.  Although we were granted the privilege of being served unappetizing food, sometimes undercooked food, often not very healthy food through our college diet plan, we opted not to take it.  We would either go to other places or buy groceries and cook ourselves.  We would choose our own unhealthy adventures, thank you very much, and we did it until we couldn’t anymore.  My little baby credit card, given to me at 17-18 (with parental supervision, initially) has grown from an $800 limit to approaching $10k while I’m the ripe old age of 24.  Guess how much your girl owes after 5 more years of higher learning, 5 years of running after security in shopping bags, and 5 years of wanting to feel responsibility through spending instead of through… well, taking responsibility.

I’m coming down from an addiction, and I’ve had mini-meltdowns in recovering from my need to show that I’m magnanimous and generous through spending.  Spending money helped to curb my social anxiety in a big way and helped me feel engaged in a non-profit model that gets by with constant solicitations for money and signatures instead of time-consuming interaction with issues, instead of recognizing the patterns of how these issues affect my life even if I’m not immediately proximate to the causes.  And it’s telling that lately in activism, saying the phrase do something translates often to give money to starting/stopping something.

***

I learned earlier this year that I cannot afford to write for free.  The second I felt the impulse to sit down and write here, on my space, I would follow it up with a question: “Can I make this longer and pitch it somewhere?”  Writing is something I enjoy; it’s something I do to sort out the thoughts that don’t belong anywhere else.  But it takes time, and time is money.  I’m foregoing a trip to work for time and a half to write this.  This is the best self-care I have.

I’ve slowly tried to phase out using Sylvia Peay as my writing name.  I have a body of work here and other places writing under that name.  I’ve made great friends and occasional enemies writing under that name.  But for a woman who constantly writes things like “this is who I am” to keep using a name that is not the one she was given — it grew tedious.

Some writers do well pseudonymously.  But I like my name.  I want to write for free and write for money (multitasking!), and I want to do it under my name.  I found an archive of posts from The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum by chance a month ago (proving nothing ever truly dies in cyberspace), and I will slowly integrate them here and bulk up my archives.  Eventually I will learn how to get my own domain space, buy said space, and see if I can pretty things up beyond what WordPress has given me.

I’m Monchel Pridget.  I’m a Christian (non-denominational), lawyer, writer, poet, radical woman of color, online activist, armchair revolutionary, and big mouth.  Honesty is one of my most precious commodities, second only to love.  My words, opinions, and occasional fits of hubris belong to me and not to anyone employing me at any given time.

Nice to meet you.

Punishing Radicalism: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Andrea Smith, and Due Process

When I ran The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, I linked a post about one of many political prisoners in the United States right now, Mumia Abu-Jamal. (A consequence of nuking one’s blog is not knowing which post it was, or who wrote the post you linked. *sigh*)

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a renowned journalist from Philadelphia who has been in prison since 1981 and on death row since 1983 for allegedly shooting Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He is known as the “Voice of the Voiceless” for his award- winning reporting on police brutality and other social and racial epidemics that plague communities of color in Philadelphia and throughout the world. Mumia has received international support over the years in his efforts to overturn his unjust conviction.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was serving as the President of the Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party as a teenager. Years later he began reporting professionally on radio stations such as NPR, and was the news director of Philadelphia station WHAT. Much of his journalism called attention to the blatant injustice and brutality he watched happen on a daily basis to MOVE, a revolutionary organization that works to protect all forms of life–human, animal, plant–and the Earth as a whole.

[...]The prosecution claimed that the shot which killed Faulkner came from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s legally registered .38-caliber weapon, contradicting the medical examiner’s report that the bullet removed from Faulkner’s brain was a .44-caliber. This fact was kept from the jury. Moreover, a ballistics expert found it incredible that police at the scene failed to test Mumia’s gun to see if has been recently fired, or to test his hands for powder residue. One of the most damning prosecution claims was that Mumia confessed at the hospital. However, this confession was not reported until nearly two months after December 9th, immediately after Mumia had filed a brutality suit against the police. One of the officers who claims to have heard the confession is Gary Wakshul. However, in his police report on that day he stated, “the Negro male made no comments.” Dr. Coletta, the attending physician who was with Mumia the entire time, says that he never heard Mumia speak.

The star prosecution witness, a prostitute named Cynthia White, was someone no other witness reported seeing at the scene. During the trial of Billy Cook (Mumia’s brother) just weeks before Mumia’s trial, White gave testimony completely contradictory to what she stated at Mumia’s trial. Her testimony at Billy Cook’s trial placed someone at the scene who was not there when police arrived. This corroborates the other five witness accounts that someone fled the scene. In a 1997 hearing, another former prostitute, Pamela Jenkins, testified that White was acting as a police informant. Other sworn testimony revealed that witness coercion was routinely practiced by the police. In 1995, eyewitness William Singletary testified that police repeatedly tore up his initial statement–that the shooter fled the scene–until he finally signed something acceptable to them. The following year, witness Veronica Jones came forward to testify that she had been coerced into changing her initial statement that two men fled the scene. Witness Billy Cook, who was present the whole time, has stated very clearly that Mumia is absolutely innocent.

Due to police manipulation of witnesses, fabrication of evidence, and the rights of the defense severely denied, Mumia was found guilty. He was sentenced to death during the penalty phase based solely on his political beliefs. Mumia has been unjustly separated from his family for twenty-two years, with the threat of death looming over his head.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reviewed Abu-Jamal’s case, and they affirmed the federal district court decision to conduct a new sentencing hearing and invalidate the death penalty sentence, rather than award Abu-Jamal a new trial. (Via Xicano Power.) Robert Bryan, the lead counsel for Abu-Jamal, spoke with Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about the pros and cons of the court’s decision:

On the one hand, the death penalty—the court threw out the death penalty in this case, even though Mumia remains on death row today, and if the state appeals or seeks further relief, nothing will change, at least for the present. The court did order a new jury trial on the issue of whether he should be on death row. In effect, what they did, as I said, was throw out the death penalty. So that’s the good part of the decision. And having done this type of work defending people facing the death penalty for over three decades, I can tell you any time the death penalty gets thrown out is a real victory.

On the negative side, as Juan just pointed out, the jury—the court ruled against granting a new jury trial on the issue of guilt and innocence. And we were rather astounded that the court made that ruling. The silver lining to that ruling, to that dark cloud, is that it was a split court. We were before three judges. Two judges ruled against us; a third judge, Judge Ambro, rendered a forty-one-page dissent in which he strongly criticized the majority and said that racism was a work in this case, that racism—that the prosecution engaged in removing people of color, African Americans, from sitting on the jury of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

For some brief background, before the start of a trial, the prosecution, defense, and judge conduct a process of jury selection called the voir dire. A pool of potential jurors enter the courtroom (thinking of excuses to get out of serving), and the judge or the lawyers ask the potential jurors questions about their abilities to decide the case in question fairly and impartially. In most jurisdictions, the lawyers can ask questions — Maryland, which is in the minority on this issue, has the judge ask potential jurors questions.

During this process the prosecution and defense have two mechanisms for eliminating jurors from the panel until they receive the final 12 triers of fact: challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. Challenges for cause are unlimited, and they are used when the lawyers and/or judge determine that a juror’s conscious or unconscious biases will affect his/her impartiality. Peremptory challenges, however, are limited depending on the type of case before the jury. Peremptory challenges can be used for any reason by either side. In crimes carrying the possible penalty of death, the peremptory challenges are very high and the voir dire is more stringent.

The exclusion of people from juries on the basis of race via peremptory challenges has affected the state and federal court system through a large portion of United States jurisprudence. Prosecutors would routinely strike black Americans from the juries of black defendants using peremptory challenges; as a result the trial, conviction, and sentencing would not be determined by a proper jury of the defendant’s peers.

The seminal case that outlawed this practice of excluding people from juries on the basis of race is Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). The Court at that time articulated a test where defendants could challenge the prosecutor’s peremptory challenges if it followed a pattern of removing members of a certain race from the panel. Upon being challenged, the judge asks the prosecutor to go back and give legitimate reasons for striking the jurors removed. If the prosecutor cannot provide satisfactory reasons, the jurors stricken are reinstated.

Getting back to Abu-Jamal’s case, Robert Bryan notes in the Democracy Now interview that the Supreme Court reinforced the principles of the Batson case earlier this month in its decision in Snyder v. Louisiana, 128 S. Ct. 1203 (2008). Justice Alito, who wrote the majority opinion for the court, reinforces the importance of upholding the general principles of Batson:

As previously noted, the question presented at the third stage of the Batson inquiry is “‘whether the defendant has shown purposeful discrimination.’” The prosecution’s proffer of this pretextual explanation naturally gives rise to an inference of discriminatory intent.

[...]In other circumstances, we have held that, once it is shown that a discriminatory intent was a substantial or motivating factor in an action taken by a state actor, the burden shifts to the party defending the action to show that this factor was not determinative. [...]We have not previously applied this rule in a Batson case, and we need not decide here whether that standard governs in this context. For present purposes, it is enough to recognize that a peremptory strike shown to have been motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent could not be sustained based on any lesser showing by the prosecution.

However, the Third Circuit decision in Abu-Jamal’s case does not take the extra step to order a completely new trial for him — only to have his sentencing redetermined by a new jury.

But since the jury during the course of a normal jury trial decides the defendant’s guilt and innocence, as well as recommends a sentence of life or death, why won’t Abu-Jamal’s entire case — guilt or innocence determination included — be reevaluated in a new trial by a new jury?

The poor logic in this case reminds me of the poor logic of the University of Michigan in denying tenure to Andrea Smith, an eminent Native American feminist scholar.

Jointly appointed in the Program in American Culture and the Department of Women’s Studies, Dr. Smith’s body of scholarship exemplifies scholarly excellence with widely circulated articles in peer-reviewed journals and numerous books in both university and independent presses including Native Americans and the Christian Right published this year by Duke University Press. Dr. Smith is one of the greatest indigenous feminist intellectuals of our time. A nominee for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Smith has an outstanding academic and community record of service that is internationally and nationally recognized. She is a dedicated professor and mentor and she is an integral member of the University of Michigan (UM) intellectual community. Her reputation and pedagogical practices draw undergraduate and graduate students from all over campus and the nation.

With this type of record, the reasons for denying tenure seem incomprehensible. However, the fabric of Andrea Smith’s work consistently challenges the racism, sexism, colonialism, and systematic disenfranchisement and violation of Native Americans at the hands of the United States and its supporting institutions. (See her published work, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, as an example.) This trend of radical thought and activism, when considered along with the fact other women of color professors at the university being denied tenure, indicates a more invidious reasoning is afoot for these decisions.

Comparatively, since Abu-Jamal’s incarceration and long wait on death row, he has written a series of published works about the nature of his imprisonment, his life on death row, and the legitimacy of the operation of the U.S. criminal justice system. His lawyer thinks, and I agree, that the reluctance of the court to award a new trial for Abu-Jamal stems from a reluctance to accord any substantial benefit to him because of the body of his work, despite the fact the remedy would be entirely appropriate considering the prior history of his case:

What’s interesting about this decision yesterday, and Judge Ambro raised this question twice in his forty-one-page dissent, and that is, why is this case being treated differently from other cases? Why is the majority, the other two judges, treating this case differently? It’s what we often think of as the Mumia exception. And that is, the law is one thing for everyone else, but the courts seem to strive to carve out an exception for Mumia Abu-Jamal, because obviously he’s outspoken, he’s very critical of the establishment. And I might say that the big issue lingering over all of this is that he is absolutely not guilty of murder.

The overarching result of this decision is Mumia Abu-Jamal gets the option between facing death (again) or receiving life in prison, even if his attorney presents exculpatory evidence that proves his innocence. On what planet is this choice just?

Why is it seemingly a facet of this system that if you challenge its illegitimacy or its flaws — within its logic, using its rules, with acknowledgment of the paths constructed to allow everyone following them a fair chance at life — its response results in more erosion of its so-called just and neutral foundation? I hold little doubt that the penalties lodged against Abu-Jamal and Smith stem from their work to criticize and to expose the history and cycle of unjust and immoral practices this society encourages daily. And it’s sickening to be raised under such high ideals about this country’s capabilities when its foundation can’t even face up to its own history, its own consequences from the bloodshed implanted into its legacy.

The criminal justice system of the United States, along with many of its other institutions, needs redemption and transformation desperately. It needs restoration and drastic transformation into a system that truly tries and judges people accused of crimes fairly and impartially, granting the appropriate remedies and levying the appropriate punishments when required. And Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case is one of many cases that proves our system has a long road to travel before it reaches its highly lauded standards of due process and equal protection under its laws. Through its everyday application, these guarantees of rights, justice, and liberties seem to exist for people only in this country’s deluded idealizations of itself.

The Secret Council of American Negroes

Just read the PSA. I’m too busy laughing to tell you how awesome of a blog this is; the work speaks for itself. A snippet:

NARRATOR: Black women laugh 25 percent more than white women and smell like cinnamon and cocoa butter. They shit rainbows and have posteriors so lovely that if you tossed them up in the air they would turn to sunshine. Their voices are sexier and they’re just more interesting, more black than other girls. A matter of fact, black girls can do 50 percent more with their hair and are 100 percent blacker than other girls.

Cut to man on the street

NARRATOR: And do you want to know the best part, Jim?

Man leans in a little.

NARRATOR: The same black women I told you about are all single!

MAN: (shocked) They can’t be single. Not all of them! They sound so great! I mean, any man would be lucky to have a fun, happy girl with great never aging skin who shits rainbows!

NARRATOR: I know! You’d think that wouldn’t you!

Footage of sad, lonely, but pretty black women sighing and frowning

NARRATOR: But there are literally thousands of these wonderful women just sitting on the dating market untouched. More than half of all black women between the ages of 25 and 34 have never been married and black women are the most likely group in the United States to never get married.

Cut back to man on the street.

MAN: That sounds awful.

NARRATOR: All that wonderfulness, sitting alone with no one to talk to. But you’re probably not interested in hearing more about these wonderful women. You’re probably gay anyway. All the men worth dating are gay.

MAN: Hey! I’m not gay!

NARRATOR: So what are you now, some homophobe?

MAN: No … it’s just …

NARRATOR: Calm down, I’m just fucking with you.

MAN: Oh. OK, awesome.

But you have to read the rest because it’s even more hilarious from there. (And true. So there.)

“you are sucha fool” | Ntozake Shange

you are sucha fool/ i haveta love you
you decide to give me a poem/ intent on it/ actually
you pull/ kiss me from 125th to 72nd street/ on
the east side/ no less
you are sucha fool/ you gonna give me/ the poet/
the poem
insistin on proletarian images/ we buy okra/
3 lbs for $1/ & a pair of 98 cent shoes
we kiss
we wrestle
you make sure at east 110 street/ we have cognac
no beer all day
you are sucha fool/ you fall over my day like
a wash of azure

you take my tongue outta my mouth/
make me say foolish things
you take my tongue outta my mouth/ lay it on yr skin
like the dew between my legs
on this the first day of silver balloons
& lil girl’s braids undone
friendly savage skulls on bikes/ wish me good-day
you speak spanish like a german & ask puerto rican
market men on lexington if they are foreigners

oh you are sucha fool/ i cant help but love you
maybe it was something in the air
our memories
our first walk
our first…
yes/ alla that

where you poured wine down my throat in rooms
poets i dreamed abt seduced sound & made history/
you make me feel like a cheetah
a gazelle/ something fast & beautiful
you make me remember my animal sounds/
so while i am an antelope
ocelot & serpent speaking in tongues
my body loosens for/ you

you decide to give me the poem
you wet yr fingers/ lay it to my lips
that i might write some more abt you/
how you come into me
the way the blues jumps outta b.b.king/ how
david murray assaults a moon & takes her home/
like dyanne harvey invades the wind

oh you/ you are sucha fool/
you want me to write some more abt you
how you come into me like a rollercoaster in a
dip that swings
leaving me shattered/ glistening/ rich/ screeching
& fully clothed

you set me up to fall into yr dreams
like the sub-saharan animal i am/ in all this heat
wanting to be still
to be still with you
in the shadows
all those buildings
all those people/ celebrating/ sunlight & love/ you

you are sucha fool/ you spend all day piling up images
locations/ morsels of daydreams/ to give me a poem

just smile/ i’ll get it

“Song for the Deaf” | Queens of the Stone Age

I love the entire Songs for the Deaf album.  

B-Day Intervention

b-day: the day when birth grew wings and traveled through generations through soul-fused song 

Look at it. Look at what you’ve done.
You’ve impaled it,
Had it gang raped,
Date raped,
Free bleeding,
Self destructing,
Gun probed,
Homeless,
Plundered from your unholy war
On white patriarchy.

Use a pocket mirror,
If you must,
And look at what you’ve done.

I am a brown woman
And I have a vagina
And I do not want to
Tell you or anyone else
My story and I do not
Want a captive audience
Probing into my most
Private and
Painful moments
As its only mode of release –

You told them
That if we are young
And the right person—
The right woman—
Drugs and sexualizes us
So that we feel something,
It must be good.

Stop speaking for me.
Look at it.
Talk to it.
Not through it.
Not beneath it.

Not deciphered with
The barrel of a gun.

Not with trivia for the love
Of our fathers,
Sent to jail for protecting us.

Not through the phantasm
Of our brothers,
Taught to rape for lost causes.

You globalized us
Into pain magnets
Through our vaginas
For your fame and
For the delight of
White-privileged, mat-thrashing,
Dress-staining, sex-revering,
Birth-loving, choice-chasing
Hair shaving, cunt-crying women.

I am a vagina and I have learned
Some of us are not happy
But I will not display our pain
Among a sea of smiles for trinkets
And expect little love to come later
Instead I will hug my friend vaginas
And we will rise in many hues
And we will fight while holding hands
And stamping feet and vamped voice boxes
Shocking muses with songs of love –

We had no luxury
To board our vaginas up,
Having our men
Or any men
Staring at our vaginas,
Making us feel whole;
No blue mats, no lost rings,
No Schick Tracer Effects,
No miracles of childbirth –

Stop speaking for me.
Look at it.

My vagina just told me
It hates you and it will learn
To hold a pen and write a
Womanifesto about how it loves
And feels and knows and heals
And sometimes it shudders from
How great it feels when she
And sister clitoris go sailing
Together –

You gave us a sour moan,
An alien wailing,
An animalistic whimper
For brown womanhood:

Stop speaking for me.
Look at it.

I am a brown woman
And I have a vagina
And it has lips
And it wants to speak
But not to you
Because you are the Yellow
Paper of Brown Vagina Tales
And its story is not a gawker
Or a gasper –

You told them
That if we are violated
And brutalized
And beaten until
Our bodies fell apart,
The pride we had
In our hips and lower lips –
Our life spring, our love spring –
Would be destroyed and
Devastated forever.

Stop speaking for me.
Look at it.

I don’t have a vagina,
Goddamn you, I don’t,
But I am so many women
And so much love
And so alive and feeling
And very much still here
That I do not want one
To be name-wrecked by you –

If we left the task
Of learning to love our bodies
To women like you,
We would be dead and
Our woman-souls would take over,
Forcing us whole into a
Hysterectomy of will
To make our deaths easier.

Stop speaking for me
Or you cannot come (not without guilt)
And you will be the first to hurt
When my sisters levitate
Off the House of Impalement
Your monologues built.

Cover debuts today

COVER opens nationwide on Friday February 22 including the AMC Loews and UA Riverview Theaters. Please visit www.coverthemovie.com for a complete listing of theaters showing this sexy thriller ripped from today’s headlines.COVER was filmed entirely in and around the City of Philadelphia. It boasts an amazing supporting cast, including Vivica A. Fox, Louis Gossett Jr., Tomorrow Montgomery, Roger Guenveur Smith, Patti LaBelle, Clayton Prince, Karen Vicks, Lenny Daniels and Sakinah Bingham.

It deals with a very controversial topic — HIV and AIDS in the Black Community in an entertaining and provocative way–sure to cause discussion.

COVER is being released independently, without the huge marketing support of a major studio. Please do your part to spread the word about this great new movie and fun event.

Source: LJ Blackfolk

Trailer:

Collider article with 8 clips from the film.

“Bag Lady” | Erykah Badu

Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections

Dear M,

In homes across America, DFA members are gathering on February 13 to reveal the truth about our voting system.

Please join fellow DFA members, friends, and family for the new documentary film, Uncounted, at a house party in your town. At the party, you’ll be able to see this remarkable film and join a special conference call with the director, filmmaker David Earnhardt, and DFA’s Chairman, Jim Dean.

Search for a DFA-Uncounted House Party near you:
www.DemocracyforAmerica.
com/SeeUncounted

Uncounted is an explosive film that shows how the election fraud that changed the outcome of the 2004 election led to even greater fraud in 2006 — and now looms as an unbridled threat to the outcome of the 2008 election. This film examines in startling terms how easy it is to change election outcomes and undermine election integrity across the U.S.

The film ends with a call to action to take our elections back. Offering ideas, identifying possible coalition partners, and providing the tools to get the job done. This is a great way to have fun watching a movie with friends while working to move America forward.

Find an Uncounted House Party near you on February 13:
www.DemocracyforAmerica.com/SeeUncounted

Thanks for everything you do,

-Ilya

Ilya Sheyman
Field Director

P.S. If you can’t find an Uncounted house party near you, you can still set one up today (we’ll even send you the DVD). Set your event up here:

www.DemocracyForAmerica.com/uncounted

an idealist’s struggle with the ’08 vote

i’m going to write this out and i’m not going to capitalize on my dilemma right now.this is my space and i’ll remain lowercased because i’m only one person, and i have many dreams, and none of them compact into one solid dream of peace on earth and racial equality.some of them contradict themselves; i suffocate under my dream weight.i am afraid — as an idealist, as a healer, as an infp, as a scorpio, as an ox, as a spiritually motivated minion of hope (i’m always hoping for light — small or great — to touch people in teary-eyed precise ways) –i am afraid to vote because i keep hearing the world, the sounds of music, the voices of people talking about this race and this change and this war and this hope and this life.i keep hearing the rapid zips and dips of a footage wheel spinning, racing and erasing, rewinding and cueing, warping and distorting.i keep hearing the wheels of industry and hegemonic institutional weaponry crunching bodies between its teeth, not caring which bodies are crunching, whose dreams are breaking, what lives are bloodied out of the book of history, and i keep hearing the screams.i wonder if i’m doing too much hearing and not enough listening. because i have this brick. a single, red-brown brick. called my vote. my choice.my life, my decision to place my faith in a representative to make choices for running the lower 48 + 2 and a few. i have this brick.and i know change. we hear promises of change, but not the type of change it will be.we’ve experienced a lot of negative changes in 8 years’ time. we’ve spiralled down a path of violence and starvation and homelessness and disease and disease and malnutrition and we are the soldiers who haven’t gone to war being shot by the ones who haveand every rape that happens there is stealing our idealsand every refugee who crosses here is revealing our ideals are missing and we drug them and cart them back to where they were before because we’ve told the lie and sold the lie and there are no refunds/exchanges/substitutions/exceptionsand we don’t want to face those lies and we sure as hell don’t want them back.this is what i listen to and i think that’s why the sound on my laptop is broken; the speakers are overwhelmed. the speakers are dying, souls crackling, sound cards waterboarded, wires frayed and ready to snap.i am afraid that this election will only make history because our choices come in different colors and packaging. chocolate-covered oppression. warmongering for girls.and then there’s the good ol’ boy sitting in the cut, always occupying the middle aisle, who’s gathered enough mistrust from any and every side people are willing to call it neutrality. the type of guy a young, bold hunter thompson would call a long-haired friend.and it’s still a vote among the lesser of more evils! an evil by any other name smells as putrid. and god, does ’08 stink for me!speeches have made hope and change sound trite to me. even after jena. even after people saying they are ready to vote, ready to move, ready to hope, ready to do.it makes me scared. what have we been voting and moving and hoping and doing all this time?why do we invest ourselves bodily into these bricks, these walls we’re building that only stacks us together, uncomfortably close, yet split by a thin sticky distance on all sides?my brick is gifted, blushing purple because she-brick does not know who she will be voting for — with the choices looking the same but different.she does not groove into her new movement that schmoozes in unfamiliar vocabulary and makes unsatisfying crunches onto bone.she does not know what she’s hoping for that she hasn’t hoped for since she was born.most importantly, she-brick does not know what she’s doing. she’s only a brick! bricks don’t have limbs, they don’t have feet, they don’t have mouths, they don’t have brains –what will she, a brick, do that no other brick has done since people first learned walls keep things in and block things out, since walls have protected heat and admitted cold…what will she-brick do when she learns people build walls and other people tear them right down and step on the bricks? she-brick doesn’t have teeth; she can’t bite the heels! she only injures people as she breaks;she passively stabs with jagged edges, posing as hardened shrapnel but suffers under a concentrated stomp.the audacity of hoping she can cause some pain as she disintegrates.and then i wake up from this dream, checking my body. still red-brown, a little yellow at points. but mostly red-brown. hands with fingers, feet with toes, a nose that still smells bullshit and eyes to pinpoint which heel put that bruise on this rib.and then i look at this vote that threatens to erase the best parts of me and my voice and my life, this vote that tells me my only hope and my biggest change lies in the lies and voice and body of another person.and i remember friends telling me about the life and the change and the work and the blood that existed beyond ballot boxes, those who died bolder than diebold, light that shined brighter than charcoal marks on dingy paper, love undelegated that did not pass through electoral colleges and –i realize this vote again will be one in many, and the change that belongs to me is mine because i’ve crafted it with my heart, my hands, my voice, and my dreams. i clasp hands with my fellow dreamers, and we work in marathons that run longer than four years.we work, hope, love, change, dream and live.we don’t want for large voices to tell us when and to show us how and to have us do what they cannot do themselves — give them power concentrated into passive and brittle bricks.which eventually become bitter bricks.we bring our power willingly with outstretched arms and dreams converged, and we use it to change for the better. we’ve seen change unchallenged, change unchanneled before.and one friend says she’ll vote for the one who will see focused, sweaty, calloused, and pulsing change and will step wisely out of its way.my body, my voice, and my life are not bound within my vote. it’s just one more wall i can scale, move around, or push down.so in the end i remember i’m voting for me. and i’m happy again. and i’m back to weaving webs of dreams so that true change and light trickle inside.