The author and her brother as kids.

My relationship to exercise and fitness is complex, and deeply rooted into my identity. When I grow athletically, I grow spiritually, too.

When I was very young, I was a ballerina. I tap danced. I was on the swim team. I played games with anyone of any age and gender, because I loved the freedom of being able to move my body in the ways it was meant to be moved. I even taught my little brother how to ride a bicycle so that we could cruise down our desert streets together: Team Merson, representing!

Then I started growing boobs and soft spots and caring about sweat and undressing in front of strangers, and wearing shorts on days I wanted to wear pants, and feeling the insidious ways my body was no longer my own. That’s when I stopped being so into exercise. I became ashamed, scared, and embarrassed, and therefore resentful and angry towards anyone who tried to exacerbate my physical discomfort.

I was the queen of doctor’s notes. It was always my knee. I mean, it truly hurt (and continued to as I got older), but to this day I’m not really sure what I had. Whatever the cause, it meant I couldn’t run, and therefore didn’t have to change out of my “street clothes” into the white t-shirt and red shorts that were our athletic uniform.

Fast forward through fifteen years of my life. My boyfriend at the time could not stand that I was not riding a bicycle. So, he took me to a bike shop and helped me select a shiny new black and silver Specialized. With his support and encouragement, I re-learned how to ride, and raced that thing through the streets of San Francisco on a daily basis for the next two years. I rode nearly 15 miles a day to and from my home in Hayes Valley, my job in the Presidio, and my school in the Mission. The adrenaline and release were unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It kept me going.

Since then, I’ve exercised in some capacity more days of the week than not.  A year and a half ago, I started lifting barbells, swinging kettlebells, and doing burpees ‘til (almost) barfing with a group of awesome and kickass women and men at Phoenix Gym. My knee pain disappeared as the rest of my body grew strong, and my mind and heart grew strong alongside my body.

Last year, I participated in my first Half Marathon at the Oakland Running Festival with Team Ella Baker Center, which has become one of my most brag-worthy achievements.

Seven weeks from now, with eighteen months of weightlifting and half a million “mountain climbers” under my belt, I’m going to run the 5K with Team Ella Baker Center in under 20 minutes. Each week for the next seven weeks, I’ll share a story about my training process, as well as stories from my friends and fitness conspirators on their journeys to health, strength, peace, and well-being in 2012. Stay with me! And… join me on Team Ella Baker Center- Register now- walkers and runners of every experience level are welcome!

On January 5, 2012, Governor Brown submitted his proposed Budget for 2012-2013 to the State Legislature.  In his proposal, Brown addresses the need to invest in creating jobs and delivering public health, economic, and environmental benefits. He suggests that proceeds from the cap-and-trade# auctions, which are expected to be $1 billion in the first year of the program, should be used for such investments.

Even before Governor Brown’s proposal was released, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ Green Collar Jobs Campaign advocated for a similar policy by working with State Senator Kevin de Leon and a number of allies in public health and environmental justice to push Senate Bill 535.

This bill would set aside a portion of the money collected by CARB to benefit communities that are most impacted by air pollution and socioeconomic vulnerability.  SB 535 establishes the “California Communities Healthy Air Revitalization Trust” to target 10% of cap-and-trade revenues to jobs and projects in the most impacted and disadvantaged communities.  Senator de Leon introduced this bill while Schwarzenegger was still Governor, and firmly pushed again in 2011 and 2012.  If SB 535 passes, this money will be used to fund projects that create green collar jobs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and mitigate direct health effects of climate change.

Although the Governor’s proposal has a lot in common with SB 535, the details spelled out in SB 535 afford greater protection to the people who need it the most. While Brown’s language makes me happy that our Governor is ready to prioritize the needs of our communities, its ambiguity makes me worried that such efforts won’t be realized as strongly as they would be if our lawmakers would pass SB 535. Still, the Governor’s language also suggests that he would probably support efforts like SB 535 in moving forward. This is great!

Senator de Leon’s bill also includes a mandate that CARB shall convene a review panel consisting of seven experts in air pollution, public health, energy efficiency, transportation, economics, and running a small business. Three of these members shall also have demonstrated knowledge and experience in advancing community interests in the area of environmental protection.  This panel shall make recommendations and review the development of policies, plans, and programs as they relate to SB 535. In other words, community advocates would help CARB make better decisions about how to spend money in a way that benefits the least well off.

In contrast, Governor Brown’s budget proposal provides that “an expenditure plan be jointly submitted by the Director of Finance and the Air Resources Board.” The proposal says nothing about who shall help the Director of Finance and Air Resources Board in making expenditure decisions.

That’s why urging our representatives to support SB 535 is imperative to advancing our communities’ needs. Together, we can start to build a thriving, green economy that puts the planet and people first.

Ever watch something and knew almost immediately that what you were watching was important, amazing, and groundbreaking? As soon as it was done you went and told everybody- making pleas with them to watch the movie for their own benefit.

On Friday of last week, I sat at my desk in the Ella Baker Center offices and watched an entire film, refusing to leave my desk  even for a simple bathroom break. I was that captivated. The film was the highly acclaimed documentary The Interrupters, by Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz.( see trailer below)

The Interrupters tells the stories of three “violence interrupters” who, with bravado, humility, and even humor try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they themselves once perpetuated. The film, frankly, is a shot to the gut, wakes you up, slaps you around a little bit, and then lifts you back up all in an hour and a half. This film holds particular importance to me because of the recent, senseless violence in Oakland. A film like this highlights the solutions and challenges of creating lasting peace on our streets.

So here is what’s really exciting– you can watch this film and have an opportunity to meet some of the amazing people doing important work in Chicago that are highlighted in the movie.

Free Community Screening
The Interrupters
A Film By Steve James and Alex Kotlowitz
Thursday, February 9
4:00-5:00 PM Light Reception
5:00-7:00 PM Film Screening
7:00-8:00 PM Panel Discussion

Oakland Museum of California
James Moore Theater
1000 Oak Street
Entrance on 10th Street

RSVP here http://oaklandinterrupters.eventbrite.com/

After the film, join us for a panel discussion moderated by yours truly that will feature two of the film’s inspiring subjects, along with youth and adult leaders engaged in violence prevention work in Oakland.

Today marks the date upon which the Underground Railroad was founded in 1838. This was a network of secret routes and safehouses (often called stations) used by Black slaves in the United States to escape to Canada or free states.

Folks known as “conductors” helped direct the fleeing slaves from station to station. Most famous was Harriet Tubman, who made at least 13 trips and rescued more than 70 slaves using the Railroad.

There are many different estimates as to how many individuals were able to travel North using the Underground Railroad. One Railroad historian, Giles Wright claims that “During the approximately 31 years of the nineteenth century that the underground railroad operated, 30,000 to 50,000 slaves are estimated to have passed through it. This was at a time when there were a total of about 4 million slaves throughout the United States. This means that barely one percent of all slaves escaped to the North.”

The Underground Railroad remains an important demonstration of collaborative resistance- how people can come together in the face of unjust laws to attempt to fight for the freedom of oppressed peoples. It feels important to note that all of the actions of the fleeing slaves and the abolitionists who helped them were, at the time, illegal due to the Fugitive Slave Acts. Yet now we celebrate the UR conductors as heroes and champions of freedom.

That makes me reflect on the words of a civil rights leader whose activism came 100 years after the Underground Railroad, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote from his jail cell in Birmingham, “One who breaks an unjust law must do it openly, lovingly…I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law.”

In celebration of the anniversary of the Underground Railroad, I am reflecting on these words and on the courageous legacies of all the freedom fighters before us who followed the convictions in their heart to stand for real justice and freedom.

Learn more on the site for the Freedom Center, a museum that celebrates the legacy of the Railroad.

This post is based on a press release from the office of Assemblymember Tom Ammiano.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s bill (D-San Francisco) to restore media access to prisoners, AB 1270, passed the California Assembly today. The bill would remove restrictions on pre-arranged in-person interviews with specific prison inmates. Since these restrictions went into effect in 1996, eight versions of the bill have been vetoed by three different governors.

“Independent media access to prison inmates is a critical part of keeping our prisons transparent and accountable while providing information to the public,” said Ammiano. “Despite the thousands of prisoners who participated in a state-wide hunger strike last year over conditions in the prisons, it was near impossible to get unbiased information about what was happening due to these restrictions. Inmates kept in secure housing units (SHU) have no visitation or telephone privileges and information about their solitary confinement punishments are largely unknown to the public even though a disproportionate number of inmate suicides occur in the SHU.”

Ammiano sponsored the bill citing the need for more transparency and public accountability from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/CDCR, an institution that receives $9.2 billion dollars of taxpayer’s money. The bill passed unanimously in the Assembly Public Safety Committee on January 10.

Carol Strickman, staff attorney for Legal Services for Prisoner with Children and a mediator during last year’s state-wide prison hunger strikes stated, “Over the years, including during last year’s hunger strike, LSPC has been contacted by many journalists who wanted to interview prisoners about prison conditions. The reporters are always disappointed to learn about the media ban. While LSPC does its best to inform reporters based on our experience, we are an inadequate substitute for someone presently incarcerated. The public would be better informed if reporters could interview prisoners directly.”

“Prisons tend to be out of sight, out of mind for anyone not directly impacted by them. That’s a recipe for rampant abuse, which is too often the story inside prisons. As taxpayers, we have a right to know what goes on behind prison walls. This bill offers a much-needed step forward in making prisons accountable to the public,” said Sumayyah Waheed, Campaign Director for the Books Not Bars program of the Ella Baker Center.

“If the only information the public gets is from the CDCR spokesperson, how can we really know what’s going on?” stated Dorsey Nunn, Executive Director of Legal Services for Prisoners With Children. “What makes Pelican Bay any different than Guantanamo Bay? Public safety requires openness inside the prisons as well as out. Crime often happens in dark, hidden places. In regards to prisons we depend on journalists and the media to be the light.”

The following organizations support the bill: Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, California Broadcasters Association, California Public Defenders Association, American Civil Liberties Union of California, California Newspaper Publishers Association, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement, Drug Policy Alliance, Fair Chance Project, Friends Committee on Legislation of California, Pacific Media Workers Guild and the California Correctional Peace Officers’ Association, which includes prison guards and parole officers.

I started this petition with help from Books Not Bars because its important for those outside of prison to stand in solidarity with those of us who are locked away and too often forgotten. We are inside the Ventura Youth prison organizing to try and make our situation better.

We live our daily lives in unsanitary and unhealthy living conditions that include:

• Water fountains that do not drain and hold stagnant pools of dirty water.
• Toilets that are broken, leaking, or frequently overflowing.
• Filthy showers and bathrooms in our living units.
• Lack of clean and fitting clothing for us.
• Air vents that smell of sewage.
• Walls and floors stained with the chemical agents sprayed on us.

The conditions are so bad that we feel desperate. Some youth here are so desperate they are trying to get transferred to adult prison. The only way to do this is to commit new crimes and try to get charged as an adult.

We ask that the California Division of Juvenile Justice take professional and immediate action on these real, unsanitary conditions. Many young people have brought these concerns to the Ventura facility staff, only to get responses such as, “I don’t have to live here, why do I care?”

I was put in solitary confinement for covering a light in order to sleep. Once they took away everything in my room, including my socks, because I showered for too long. They even refused to let me go to church or have my bible. I’ve witnessed guards beating youth already handcuffed on the ground, saying things like “let me get some.”

As youth in the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility, we aren’t asking for special treatment. We only seek to have our basic needs be met.

We’re going public knowing we’ll face retaliation unless enough people sign our petition to show prison officials that the public hasn’t forgotten about us.

Please join our campaign in asking the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility to clean up its act!

This post is a part of Blogging for Choice Day.

This week we celebrate the 39^th anniversary of Roe. V. Wade, the landmark decision by the Supreme Court to guarantee a woman’s right to privacy and the legalization of abortion. This decision dramatically changed the way women and families live their lives –for the better. It offers a safe and legal way for women to make decisions for themselves and their families based on need, access to resources and family planning. Women all over America are able to freely express their reproductive autonomy by choosing to have children, not have children and parent their children with dignity. While we are fortunate to live in a country where abortion and birth control are legal in all 50 states, there are policy makers and politically motivated movements who have prioritized controlling women’s access to reproductive health care – and our bodies.

In 2011 women’s bodies monopolized political debate as the right attempted to defund Title X facilities and strip reproductive healthcare access for millions of women nationwide. Congress pulled out all stops to slash funding for women’s reproductive services targeting Planned Parenthood and gunning for families with the greatest need. Fortunately anti-choicers and their political muses were unsuccessful, but 2012 is looking like another tough year for reproductive rights activists in the fight to secure and sustain access for women and families.

While it is important to highlight abortion as a key hot button issue this election year (and every year), we must also focus on the importance of contraception and access to other facets of reproductive health care. Last year pro-choice activists suffered a huge loss when Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Katherine Sebelius overruled a much-awaited decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make emergency contraception (EC) available over-the-counter (OTC) to women of all ages. More recently, some conservative candidates have taken a firm stance against contraception – one even stated “contraception is a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”   In addition five of this year’s Republican presidential hopefuls have signed personhood pledges, promising to acknowledge the “equal and unalienable rights” of zygotes while disregarding the free will and self-determination of fully formed women. Last November, Mississippi voters faced and defeated a ballot initiative that would have declared life begins at fertilization, making contraceptives like the IUD lethal weapons and we are certain to face even more threats to reproductive autonomy with the upcoming election.

For decades the sovereignty of women’s choices has been threatened by the irresponsible and self-interested conservative agendas of bible yielding, hypocritical tyrants whose quest for power leave women and families in precarious positions.  Those on the margins, with access to the least resources including low-income women of color will suffer most from policy that restricts access to family planning. In 2012 we face restrictions on birth control and abortion, limited funding for reproductive health care including pap smears and mammograms and after all of this damage is done there will be no options for assistance to mother’s whose choices were limited by those who have no vested interest in their well-being. If women’s access continues to be a leading issue for the current Republican presidential field, pro-choice advocates are looking at another heavy year of advocacy and push-back and push-back we will give them!

It is my hope that we celebrate another 39 years of Roe v. Wade. Another 39 years of reproductive freedom for women and families who deserve tangible options for family planning and who can make their own decisions about when to have sex and when to have a family. We don’t need policy makers telling us how to make choices for ourselves, bodily integrity is one of the most important facets of human dignity – it should be that we are the governors of our own physical being. Here’s to another year of celebrating Roe, another year of freedom!

When I first heard about FemSex while a student at Brown University, I was skeptical. The Female Sexuality Workshop. I was from the Bay Area…issues of sexuality had been on my radar since elementary school. I didn’t need an entire workshop on sexuality. But then I noticed something in my peers who had participated in the workshop—a better ability to communicate, improved allyship within and across difference, and a sense of individual and community empowerment. I decided to take the workshop. It transformed my relationship to myself, to others, to systemic oppression, and to social change. The workshop was so impactful for me that I committed myself to bringing it out of a university setting and into the larger community.

In a few days, a community-based version of the workshop, FemSexComm, will launch its second season in Oakland and SF after a successful fall season at The Women’s Building in San Francisco. FemSexComm provides a safe space for exploration, encourages honest dialogue, and facilitates collective learning. It engages and grapples with the social forces that inform individual experiences, and seeks to build allyship.

The lens is female sexuality, and the scope is much deeper. The workshop uses a peer-to-peer learning model to ground exploration of issues from female health to pleasure to power/privilege to communication/consent in personal experience. Within the workshop, we connect systemic, structural issues of oppression with our lived experience. The workshop creates a safe space for discussion, dialogue, and collective learning. Together as a group, we co-create solutions, build solidarity among difference, and advocate for intentionality, agency, informed decision-making, and consent in all areas of life.

Social change starts with individual change and community empowerment. We believe that FemSexComm catalyzes that process. We hope that members of the Bay Area community will join us for an info session to learn more:

FemSexComm

The Female Sexuality Workshop for the Community: Season 2 is happening this spring in San Francisco and Oakland!

FemSexComm provides a safe space for exploration, encourages honest dialogue, facilitates collective learning, and builds solidarity within a community.

Coming off of its successful launch in San Francisco last fall, the community-based FemSexComm workshop will continue to offer two sections this spring at 518 Valencia in the Mission District.  We’re also opening up a third section at Tech Liminal in downtown Oakland. The workshops run the weeks of February 6^th through May 15^th 2012 and meet once each week from 6-9pm on either Monday or Tuesday evening, depending on location.

*    *    *

If you are interested in this transformative, 15-week workshop we’d love to tell you more:

INFO SESSIONS

(not mandatory but strongly encouraged. Info sessions are the best way to learn about the workshop and apply)

San Francisco Info Sessions

Monday, Jan 23rd and Tuesday, Jan 24th, 6:30-8:30PM

518 Valencia: The Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics

Oakland Info Session

Monday, Jan 23, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Tech Liminal

268 14th St Oakland, California 94612

You can RSVP on Facebook!

*FemSexComm charges a donation-based workshop fee which helps pay for materials for the 15-week workshop.

We want to be clear that absolutely no one will be turned away for lack of funds.*

FemSexComm

Learn more at:

http://femsexcommsf.wordpress.com/

facebook

twitter

email us: femsexcomm@gmail.com

Sitting at the front of the 9-story high room were panelists Maria Poblet of Causa Justa Just Cause, Shaw San Liu of Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), Brooke Anderson of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and Tina Bartolome of SOUL—four powerful women with deep insights and experience in organizing for social and economic justice.   Here are just some of them.

SUCCESSES OF #OCUPPY

Brooke Anderson laid out five successes of #occupywallstreet: “

1) It changed the national conversation from being about the debt ceiling and how much to cut services to bank accountability, class inequality, and wealth redistribution.

2) It has taken away the stigma of struggling economically.

3) It has named bigger targets, like Wall St., when we are so often only targeting middle-men.

4) It as put direct action at the forefront; marching can be more accessible than lobbying officials in Sacramento.

5) It’s gotten us out of our campaign silos.”

WHITENESS and RACISM

Maria Poblet broke it down: “Communities of color have known these issues for a longtime—joblessness, cuts to the safety net, a lack of democracy or control.  This is the product of aninternational economic system.”  She challenged the whiteness of the Occupy movement that too often acts as if the movement for economic justice is a new thing.   “People in the global south are waiting for the U.S. to show up,” she said.

And closer to home: “Black people can tell you what long term divestment and unemployment does to a community.”

She brought up the crucial role of the white working class, “which has traditionally been bought off by whiteness,” she pointed out. “Can white working class people be involved in an antiracist movement?” she asked.  “The challenge is also for people of color to work with them.  This is a debate and development that needs to happen in the progressive movement.”

Speaking to the majority people of color audience, Shaw San Liu emphasized having ownership of the movement. “We need to be engaging our folks, so our folks can help shape the direction of Occupy.”

LONG TERM ORGANIZING vs. SHORT TERM UPSURGES

Poblet also centered the relationship between spontaneous upsurges and conscious, long-term community organizing.  ”The first is vibrant.  It names what is wrong.  It feels like it’s coming from everywhere and going everywhere.  It rising and it falls; I know because of my involvement with the immigrants rights mobilizing in 2006.”

“The second is based around campaigns, naming the solutions as well as the problems, long-term base building, and developing leaders. “

“Neither are enough by themselves.  They both need each other.”

ELECTIONS

“How do we create policy, such as taxing the 1% and a moratorium on foreclosures, without co-optation?” Poblet asked.

While the speakers didn’t mince words about the injustices perpetuated by the Obama administration, they warned against disengaging from the Democrats too much.  “People who always vote will vote.  People who have a critique always disengage…We have more and more correct ideas [on the left], but less people doing anything about them,” Poblet said.

She spoke about pushing elected officials with movements from below, especially having a strategic understanding of elected progressives.  Former community organizer John Avalos pushed SF mayor Ed Lee first as a supervisor, then as mayoral candidate, to enact millions of dollars worth of public services, Poblet said.   “Electoral politics is a tool—one of many tools.”

DISCUSSION & ENCOUNTER: TOWARDS A UNIFIED MULTIRACIAL WORKING CLASS

“We need places for discussion, in addition to the convergences. We need to be aligned.   What would an International Working People’s Union of the 99% look like?”  Poblet challenged the group.

Shaw San Liu spoke about the Progressive Workers Alliance, formed in SF last year between black, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and queer workers.  What would it take to include the white working class on that list?

In the end, Poblet warned against disengaging from the movement that has swelled nationally: “Anyone who puts blast on Wall St. can be on our team.  This is a laboratory for our development as a movement.  As funky as the dynamics can be, stay involved, write, reflect,” she said.

Forward movement.

UPCOMING ACTIONS

Join the Ella Baker Center Book Club.  This month we’re reading “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power.”  It’s about multiracial, working-class coalition organizing in the 1960’s between the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots (poor whites).

Occupy Wall Street West, Friday, January 20

ALL DAY

SF Financial District (meet at Justin Herman Plaza at 6am, noon, 5pm)

THIS IS NEXT BIG BAY AREA OCUPPY WALL STREET ACTION.  Come out and hit the streets any time of the day.   The big action at 5pm (for those getting out of work/school) will be anchored by the folks I’ve quoted in this post!

“Share the Fortune” led by the Colorful Mama’s of the 99%

Saturday January 21^st

Bank of America, Oakland Chinatown

10am (meet at Lincoln Park, 11^th and Harrison)

It’s the weekend before the lunar new year, and the time to “clean the crap out of your house, life, and Wall St.”  It’ll also be extremely cute!