Maxine Water's Town Hall

August 22, 2009--We attended a town hall meeting at Southwestern College in Los Angeles, CA to hear what folks had to say about the hot button topic of Health Care Reform. Congresswoman Maxine Waters was the featured speaker along with a panel of distinguished guests including health care professionals who administer to the greater Los Angeles area. The energy was static and you could feel the urgency of the standing room only crowd in the theater as people lined up for a turn to voice their opinion on the mic. Their intent: to ask congresswoman Waters pointed questions or simply tell their stories of human betrayal by insurance companies and the current archaic system which fails to deliver adequate health care to themselves and their family--often resulting in death, dismemberment or permanent disability due to pre-existing conditions, lack of adequate coverage or sheer neglect. Here's a list of questions we asked the crowd of over 300 people

1. Can you afford health care?
2. How would government universal health care reform help you, your family, your community?
3. Why do you think people oppose health care reform?
4. What did you think about the town hall meeting?
5. Did it help you better understand or clear up issues concerning the reform bill?
6. How will you act from this day forward?
7. What do you think other industrialized countries think about the current U.S. debate?

The Health Care Bill is a document of over 1100 pages. One of Congresswoman's Walters Aides simplified the Bill to large posters displayed on the stage, which made it easily comprehesible to the audience. The town hall meeting was highly informative and brought a regional swath of the country together who are concerned with the lack of adequate and accessible care. Most thought that Health Care should be a right like the 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech. One of the doctors on the panel gave the WHO (World Health Organization) definition of Health which includes mental, physical, social, spiritual and economic well being. A concensus of all who attended when asked about those who oppose Health Care was fear and ignorance. One woman was appalled that no major media outlet covered the town hall meeting, especially because Congresswoman Waters hosted the event. We spoke with a young mother who informed us that Kennedy, her baby daughter, was in danger of not having health care benefits due to state budget cuts. When asked what other countries thought about the current U.S. debate, Raul said that they probably think we are ignorant bullies. He has friends and family members in Mexico and Spain and and other places that have free health care. He commented on the irony of America going around the world engaging in war and telling everyone else how to run their affairs, but sadly...we can't even provide health care for our own.

Aluta Continua

From 1959 to 2009, women have been struggling for recognition. Recognition that household labor is work that merits compensation, or in the words of the 1860 Hasting's labor strikers, Britain's laundresses demanded, “less work or more pay.” The Wash House Collective's third eye is fully dilated and Lavandería is about to be birthed. The tedium of layout & design (big ups to Will and Otim), revision and line editing is complete, and (save for the faux pas of the U.S. pony express) ready for the final phase of publication. So...we are back and want to extend our apologies for the lack of material appearing on our blog, but our energies were completely focused on selecting and organizing the work published in the anthology. We are grateful to all of you who responded to our call. We received over 500 submissions, but were limited by space and were forced into a grueling selection process which took months to complete. Michelle and Lucia flew in to L.A. from Chicago and Philly, respectively, and we read non-stop (save for Vodka Martinis and Afro-Mexi-Caribe gourmet) for 10 straight days. Still the task wasn't finished, because we had a cacophony of voices and were limited by space of what we were able to publish. Although our hands were bound by these constraints and some voices were shelved (hopefully for part two of Lavandería remixed / remeasured), in hindsight we connected with the many voices who are out there in the universal spin cycle representing--thinking, writing, challenging, revising; all the while doing domestic work that must be done in order to "keep it together," while inventing creative ways to raise families (neck-bones simmered to pot liquor perfection, garden greens glistening in their ju-juice, rib-sticking arroz con frijoles y tortilla or pepper soup to wash down whatever ails you) where ends stretch like fitted sheets but rarely meet the so-called lives of the working class-poor reclaiming their right to dry. We acknowledge all of you in national and international spaces who gestated, and took time to ponder the 4th power of words to lift mind and heart above and beyond the fray of dirty deeds. In the process of compiling your voices, we leaned over the bent back of epistemology, and deciphered how we know what we know (what's the best way to remove blood stains?) and how this knowledge informs our actions in a warring world of power moguls, diamond dealers and coltan collectors, precious stones and metals valued more than the lives of those who harvest the minerals that fuel our devices from the deep bowels of the earth. Those of you who consider words at their smallest energy level—a grunt, aiiieee, a field holla, deep breath, silent moan with the potential to resonate, to make melodies that change square behaviors into round ones washed clean with the sweat and tears of washer women reaching forward and nudging us through history to continue their labor of love. Aluta Continua, the struggle continues....

Genuflections

I came across one of Yukimi's photos--something she shot on a recent sojourn to Europe. I  was stunned when I saw it and thought it captures completely what the wash house women attempt to convey with words. I stared at the photo and was transported to the sights, smells and sounds lingering upon this waterway graced by freshly hung laundry drying between flats. If you look closely you can see a woman standing on the bridge performing a task. And although it's unclear to me what she has in her hands, she seems to be working, completely given to the task before her. It is that same energy we take and give as we work on producing the anthology. An energy that intertwines between thinking, composing, work shopping, revising, producing, surviving, longing and loving, and makin' sure ends meet for our family and for our selves. All over the world women (in particular and people in general) work...their purpose--to help their familias stay afloat, like the gondolas in the water mirrored within this image. As above, so below...I can think of no better metaphor save the bridge and its double that beholds the eye, the cypher, the recursive circle of completion. A labour of love genuflected by wash house women's voices all over the world in solidarity--crisp and curry...we bring you Lavanderia.  

Calling all laundresses...the ad hit Poets & Writers Magazine, and the submissions are rolling in by the washload. Michelle and Lucia and I met in cyberspace to strategize about upcoming dirty deeds including the soon to be launched website--in particular, the gallery of photos taken by Michelle and Yukimi in San Diego, Tijuana and Los Angeles. There is mucho trabajando ahead, but the magnitude of the anthology calls for nonetheless than the Wash House collective to roll up our sleeves, tie up our heads and get busy with the many facets of pre-production. It's a labor of love, much like the thankless job of keeping our families in clean threads. But the focus here is to unbind voices that might not ordinarily be heard. I see bubbles, like the kind I used to blow from a blue wand on my back porch when I was a little girl.  Voices, I imagine, bubbling up, out and over the top of the container. They are fragile yet full of stories and poems that are structurally sound, well crafted--encasing a spectrum of colors in all of their lovely convexity. 

Mami Wata

Signs were everywhere: Mami Wata on exhibit at UCLA's Fowler gallery.  Me and Oteezy had to go witness, so we left Inglewood and headed north on the 405. We arrived and walked across campus. Music streamed from an outdoor concert in the ampitheater in front of the museum. We entered the dark chambers of the gallery and the first thing we saw and heard was the sea broadcast across an entire wall. We stopped dead in our tracks because something unnamable was calling us: back to life...back to the vulva, back to the sacred space from which all things rise up in funkiness.  We were moved and moved again through the space taking in breath, beadwork, altars, paintings, assemblage, iron and wood sculpture of artists from places like Haiti, Sierra Leone, New York, Nigeria, Cuba, New Jersey, Brazil and Gabon. Artists who were compelled to create and consecrate Mami Wata's presence in the world. Our bodies are made up mostly of water as is the planet. Get it? We are bathed in her nourishing fluids as we develop in the amniotic sac that sustains us. No doubt we need water to hydrate lest we shrivel and sucuumb. It is the liquid of lushness that makes the creative juices overflow in the morning or evening shower. Water is healing, especially salt water which is why we add Epsons or sea salt to a therapeutic bath in order to draw out the toxins that tend to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of the mind/body cortex. Like dirty laundry, we must shake up the crud that clings to our psyches,  doing our best to purge it from our selves and our cells which are ever beginning, transforming, retooling, refreshing. The old self falls away and a new self emerges in a higher state of consciousness. Nothing is constant but change. Every day we rise we have a chance to reinvent who we are in relationship to what we do, moment by moment or in the words of Lauren, the main character in the great late Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower..."to shape God" or in Mami Wata's case, shape the Goddess within our best self.  

...Con los manos

Just rolled in to LA from San Diego about 9 a.m. Cruised down last night with Otim to make our  presence felt at the 7th Annual Illfonix soiree (KSDS 88.3 FM)  hosted by DJ Sachamo and crew. We arrived right before midnight and entered Kadan's on 30th and Adams in Normal Heights. The joint was jumpin' and we made our way over to the sidebar to get Sach Boogie's attention. A big smile lit up his face when he realized me and Otim were in the house. Later

he confessed that he had just talked smack about Otim's no-show (he sorely misses him). But Otim bees on his grind and it took several calls and gentle nudges for him to bounce outta his slave at Copy City in the Crenshaw district. Not that he minds the work, but his creative genius is wasted on running the spot. "How you gonna print up obituaries if you ain't got paper?" he said when we finally got on the road. 

...back at Kadan's ranchero, I hugged Sach ( ain't seen him in a coon's age) and he pointed over to a spot near the dance floor where Michelle was standing. I went over and in one swoop grabbed her and hugged her tight. She had just blown in that evening from Chicago O'Hare for the weekend celebration. No doubt, she was h-a-p-p-y to see me and Otim as we she--and we did our best to dance the night away, which you couldn't help but get your groove on listening to the dope dj's Sach had assembled. We caught up and got down on the dance floor along with Tinquer, Kanesha and none other than Zach Kolo from Cameroon--sportin' a Cameroonian national jersey and (you gotta love it) white patent leathers. Sandra was cuttin' up the dance floor and later that night I told her when the dj's play she becomes the music. Much flava that gyrl has in her petite mainframe. Yukimi strolled in looking like Oxun in an ankle length tank top dress. The talent in the room was overflowing and all the party people got their groove on until the bartenders shut it down.  Lovely...

We got a few zzzz's before getting back on the road. I drove (so Otim could sleep) listening to Toni Allen's Lagos No Shaking and Laila Hathawy's newest joint thinking about the beautiful things we do with our hands: Snap shutters, draw designs, vibrate vinyl, caress keys, create change. At our highest we are creators in and of the universe. How is it then that the world is mad chaotic? Our challenge, as the great late artist Romare Bearden said of his fragmented assemblage technique, is to "order chaos." I believe that and take up the challenge to compose and produce from the ashes. Think bird: Charlie Parker, fried chicken and the Phoenix rising from the cleansing fires that have direct purpose in transcending madness. Look at your hands. Create.     

Yu Gef fo Creep*...

Delila hovers seamlessly/drapes over crowded streets

in twilight dance/burgandy brown

face stoned/a burden revealing 

unknown/ silent lines

slumped sillouette singing

window pains/catches morning corner stress

she 

hums away the weariness

in stuttered sound and

muted beat

song slips around periphery/discordant sounding

un able to pass

subtly seeming

she says 

what 

of this tension teasing her

back to this place...

 

l.g. kanga

*Yu Gef fo Creep befo yu tenap: Krio for You got to crawl before you stand