Afrocity Says…Lets Hang up the Chick Habit and Riot Grrls!!!! April 20, 2009

(Cross posted at THE CONFLUENCE)
I try not to show it much but being recognized as a PUMA is very important to me.

I imagine myself standing in a room filled with PUMA women of all ages, colors and backgrounds. We are a circle of sisters who will not be treated like shit. A moral and intellectual force and we have all just been through hell.

I step forward and say.

My name is Afrocity and I am a Republican (there I said it) and I want to be a PUMA.

It is March 2009 and I was thinking this scene out for sometime as I awaited surgery at a local women’s hospital. I had uterine polyps. I was bleeding and in pain. Nevertheless, I felt special because it was a women’s specialty hospital- only us girls and everything was trimmed in breast cancer awareness -pink. I saw an older woman being wheeled into the OR, her daughter behind her with an OBAMA tote bag. Hmmm I did not vote for the man but matter what, we are still women. No one can change that. She pees sitting down and so do I.

I put my Ipod on. I have a PUMA playlist you know. It is all Riot Grrl music. The third wave feminist girl bands. Bratmobile, April March, Jack Off Jill… The drugs they gave to me were kicking in. The nurse looked at me and smiled. I wondered if she would still smile at me if she knew I was conservative. The last song I remembered before they wheeled me into surgery was April March’s “Chick Habit”.

hang up the chick habit
hang it up, daddy,
a girl’s not a tonic or a pill
hang up the chick habit
hang it up, daddy,
you’re just jonesing for a spill

oh, how your bubble’s gonna burst
when you meet another nurse
she’ll be driving in a hearse

you’re gonna see the reason why
when they’re spitting in your eye
they’ll be spitting in your eye

I thought yes we need to hang up the chick habits, all get along and PUMA will be spitting your eye.

You may have noticed that I have been absent from The Confluence.

After a long and stressful election year I needed some time to myself.

I was tired of the Rasmussen polls and Obamabots. I felt overloaded by the imagery of sexism, race baiting and misogyny. I lost my race, my color, my gender. The thread I hung by was PUMA and that thread was breaking I felt, because I was a conservative.

During the election I really had no where to turn. I frequented Jake Tapper’s Political Punch Blog at ABCNEWS.com. There I experience a daily forced fed diet of Kool Aid and Hillary Hate Bars, full of energy with hope and change, packed with the extra fiber of racial pandering and humiliation. Hillary lost the primary. I felt personally defeated.

What was I going to do? Vote for McCain? It was almost impossible to comprehend. I had been a Democrat my entire life. I was an African American woman- it was craziness. I wanted to vote for John McCain. I had always admired his service to his country, his time as a POW, his maverick stance. It did not help that the left had fallen from grace in my eyes. For some time they had metamorphosed from dutiful donkeys to hypocritical assholes. “Hmmm which voting block will we pimp this time?” I’d had enough. Hillary was my last hope in the DNC and now she was gone. I wanted to go Republican but all the force of my racial sensibility told me not to. The only thing liberal about me was my pro-choice position. How could I? I would sit out the election.

One day, I went to the blog to pass the time away. Expecting the same ol’ Obamabutt garbage. Quick! Here come the sheeple. Get the Kool Aid! Fetch and Carry.

Today I was wrong.

Someone posted.

JUST SAY NO DEAL!!!! PUMA. NOBAMA,

Catchy phrase I thought. Just like the Howie Mandel game show. A week went by and I saw it again and again.

One lone poster: PUMA PUMA PUMA PUMA

I Googled it and saw sneakers…athletic gear…then a gem…It was Riverdaughter. THE CONFLUENCE.

At first I lurked and laughed. It was the epitome of estrogen and political snark.

Dare I post? I put a toe into the pool, then a leg, a body.

Afrocity was in, AngieNC grabbed my hand SOD was there, Madamab. Hi there Mr. Clown and Fuzzy, Simonfish. The water was refreshing and clear of Kool Aid.

Through PUMA, I gained unlikely acquaintances. Women I would never meet in real life. Along the way the wounds were terrible. Gotcha interviews, pigs with lipstick, Sarah Palin open debate threads, our PUMA eyes wide and keyboards tapping to her defense. We were like dolls in a museum, stripping off our gingham and corsets. We would no longer allow ourselves to be political ornamentation.

We were honing a message. Whispers from “Camp Chosen One” turned into threats and slurs. We were demonized as Menopausal Mollies who hated Obama. We were called the “R word”. Yes even me… We marched together on Election Day and cast our ballots. Many votes were in protest, others in earnest, a few mentally at home. The un-vote. Still, no matter how we voted, no matter how difficult it was that the vote was not for SHE, there was an undeniable bond of unity and we all found ourselves NOT VOTING FOR OBAMA.

I am a Republican but to me and the many other conservative and independent voting women that I know- we admire the PUMA cause as we lurk here. We watch with much interest as the PUMA question is answered. What is your mission. Will it include us?

Women of all political parties need to look for ways to simultaneously embrace women’s rights. Defiant political posture is a means to an end in the face of rising discrimination on the basis of our sex.

What happened during the election happened to both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.

We should come together and avail ourselves of liberal and conservative tools- every divisive tool of patriarchic propaganda. Let’s widen our base and broaden our message.

Ceilings must shatter at the White House. As women, we should challenge the concept of the executive branch as ONLY masculine and the congressional branch as tolerably feminine.

We need collaboration to overcome the current divide. This past election told us much as ourselves not only as conservatives or democrats, blacks, whites, gays or straight but as women. Together we can advance in parallel directions. We can combat the horizontal fraternization between the patriarchy and the media. We can unburden ourselves of critical surveillance and revisionist History i.e. SHE IS STUPID, ONLY A ROOM WHERE HE COMES OUT, SHE IS PERIODICALLY DOWN.

Otherwise our work is in vain. Hidden in plain sight and the gendered assaults will continue.

Please lets hang up the chick habits. Let’s RIOT GRRLS

Then my operation is over and I have opened my eyes.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

Obama Faces UN Race Conference Dilemma with Iran

Obama As Bait- From American Thinker

Trouble brewing at a United Nation conference on Race.

The Wall Street Journal
Iran’s President Slams Israel, Prompts Walkouts
April 20, 2009
By CHIP CUMMINS and CHARLES FORELLE

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted an angry walk-out by European diplomats at a racism conference in Geneva, calling Israel the “most cruel and repressive racist regime” and throwing up what could be a new hurdle to U.S. rapprochement with Tehran.

The U.S., along with a handful of European allies, had previously said they’d stay away from the United Nations event, worried it would become a platform for criticizing Israel. The Iranian president’s planned attendance added fuel to those concerns. Earlier in his term, he questioned whether the Holocaust really happened and has said Israel should be wiped off the map.

Early Monday, Israel said it would temporarily recall its ambassador to Switzerland, protesting a meeting between the Swiss president and his Iranian counterpart Sunday evening.

Keeping with his unpredictable style, some of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s more recent comments about Israel have been more muted. He has also made reserved but tentatively welcoming comments in response to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic charm offensive.

But Mr. Ahmadinejad’s tone and comments Monday shocked the international community once again. The uproar the comments sparked could make it more difficult for Mr. Obama to convince allies, in particular Israel, along with the U.S. public, to continue to accommodate his outreach to Tehran.

The speech comes just days after an Iranian court sentenced an Iranian-American journalist to eight years in prison for spying, drawing a rebuke from the U.S. State Department.

Let’s remember that on April 19th Sunday, Jewish communities in Europe began several days of events to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is supposed to be conference AGAINST RACISM. Ahmadinejad comes in and makes statements that continues hatred and racism.

The conference was attended by many U.S. and Israeli allies, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon earlier Monday reprimanded those countries who chose to stay away in protest. But he was forced into an embarrassing reversal, saying after the speech he deplored “the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite.”

Editorial Cartoon by Chuck Asay

Am I remembering this correctly? Isn’t this the very same man that Obama wants to have an open dialogue with? Ahmadinejad lecturing the world on race at a United Nations conference is like the KKK offering a diversity workshop. I commend those who walked out on this farce.

Please President Obama have wisdom and let it lead you.

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY

If You Are Reading This, You May Be A Right Wing Extremist: A Soldier’s Story

…And a racist and a redneck.

Perhaps I should preface this post by adding a background clip. It seems our Department of Homeland Security is afraid that our troops will come home as rabid RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS:

Since I have become a conservative never have I noticed that the left has so much dislike for servicemen until now. Was it there all the time and I did not notice? Or did I somehow inactively participate in bashing without giving it a second thought?

My family has quite a few military men. My brother served in the army as well as my two uncles. I was proud when my brother went off in uniform. He is 15 years older than I and at the time I was only six years old when he left for training at Fort Sill. Looking at the dark green uniform and the flag pins made me believe that he was keeping me safe. For my mother the Army meant that America was keeping him safe too. Away from the gang ridden streets of Chicago. He had already got into trouble with the law and joined the Disciples, one of the most notorious street gangs in Chicago. During the summer of 1976, it was the bicentennial Chicago had the usual summer celebrations in Grant Park. My brother and a friend stopped the car for him to get a drink. When my brother exited the store his friend was dead in the driver’s seat with a bullet in his head. That would be the last summer my brother would spend in Chicago. Gone would be the days of him taking me to the corner for a snow cone, riding on the “L” to catch a downtown movie, playing the guitar on the apartment stoop because it was too hot to stay inside. My big brother would never live under the same roof with me again. He joined the army the next month and was in Germany within two years.

There were times when I resented the military for taking him away from us. I was also afraid. Afraid of the stories I would hear about “shell shocked” veterans from the Vietnam War. Images from movies like Coming Home and The Deer Hunter
. I would hear stories too. Stories that they would tell in the kitchen when they thought I was sleeping. One in which a soldier came home without legs. Another had a cheating wife and a soldier gone “crazy”. Would my brother come home like that? Mother also told me that no one wanted the war. The soldiers were blamed for the killing and never received a proper welcome. I always thought that was unfair.

Still, I knew that he was doing something constructive with his life and not out on the streets. Not dead in the streets. School was not for him. A lack of intelligence was hardly an obstacle for him, he just didn’t have the patience for the classroom.

“College is the only way for you Afrocity”, mom would say. “Some people are just better at school than others. The service is no place for a woman, especially not a black one.”

Yeah, I know she was being sexist and racist but truthfully I would never make it through military training. I am a girly girl and my joining the military would be akin to the misadventures of Private Benjamin chocolate style.

In 1979, my brother and I would visit for the first time since he left. My mother packed a huge suitcase and off to O’hare airport on my first plane ride ever bound for Frankfort, Germany. When I saw him at the airport, he was unfamiliar to me. Stronger, smarter but that boy in Chicago popping fire hydrants and playing dice was gone. He was now fluent in German had interesting friends, knew everything about artillery, a sergeant, a better man than the boy that left. He drove me across the autobahn to Italy and Holland. I saw windmills and castles, ate fancy food I had never seen. My first James Bond movie Moonraker was in Amsterdam (I am a huge Bond fan to this day thanks to my brother). Towards the end of the trip I realized that his experience was helping me. I forgave the army.

The military has definitely had a positive effect on the life of my brother. Today he still lives in Europe and has two wonderful children. He came to Chicago last month to visit me. We went to dinner. He did not at any point show signs of being a RIGHT WING EXTREMIST. In fact he voted for your treasured Barack Obama. Absentee ballot no less. He voted for him despite having serious reservations about Barry’s leadership abilities. My brother grew up during the Black Pride Movement so understand that it was awkward for me to tell him that I voted for John McCain. Thankfully, he was not angry with me. He was silent for awhile and said “But Afrocity right now Obama is all Black people have”. Golly Gee Janet isn’t that exactly what you Democrats want to hear an African American say. (Smile throw on an Obama tee-shirt and have a KODAK MOMENT).

Does my brother sound like a RIGHT WING EXTREMIST TO YOU???

MY ANSWER IS:

Autographed Letter Signed,

AFROCITY