Kitchen Table we need your help!
Along with other members of the blogging community I am posting the following message, from a friend/colleague of Winona LaDuke, with permission. Please help to get the word out and do what you can to help. Winona LaDuke's life and work have, for many of us in Women's Studies, Native Studies, and Environmental Studies, been foundational. Her work with Indigenous communities and on renewable energies and food systems has been revolutionary. She is one of many women of color whose work has been absolutely central to feminist scholarship, yet she does her work from outside the academic system.
Come on Kitchen Table, please help.
This past weekend,
I'm writing to you because I know
Photos: One positive thing about being a public figure is that lots of folks have photos of you and your children. We have a good collection at Honor the Earth but I'm asking if you could go through your pictures and send photos you have of the family, especially the kids. Wasey and Ajuwak were born before the digital age so a lot of the photos of them growing up are gone.
Photos would mean a lot.
Movement T-shirts and Art: The kids all had an amazing collection of movement t-shirts that comprised the bulk of their wardrobe.
events in sizes Small, Large or X-Large, I know the kids would cherish them. Zapatista shirts are a favorite. Also gone is
Books:
Lastly,
These are the things -- photos, t-shirts and art, books and baby/toddler clothing that I think would be most helpful right now, and would touch the family most.
Winona and the kids are renting an apartment in
Posts
3 comments:
Forwarded to the SFSU WOMS email account.
What terrible timing. :( I can't imagine losing so much.
Hello there!
I will link to this post at my blog to let my blog guests know about this!!
Peace, blessings and DUNAMIS!
Lisa
Yesterday when I read your post it was a little before we were closing at work. I was shaken but instead of being loquacious I thought to try to do whatever I could proactively in the moment instead of commenting on a blog. I really have not had time to comment lately on your blog. It gets like that.
So instead of commiserating, I told our Managing Director of the environmental division, who happened to be in office yesterday as well as his Deputy Director whom I know a little more personal who would care. I kind of knew both men knew of her even though I didn’t know if the relationships were good. It was refreshing though to hear the head honcho thank me for telling him instead of saying, “Oh”. He has a trademark of giving emotionless, detached responses to news solicited to him. That was a good sign that he had good feelings of her. In Washington, you never know who really, really, really like each other or others in their own field. It’s a bit clandestine here because people have goals that sometimes force them to work together when they really don’t like each other. I was hoping for my co-workers to give me a warm response to her because I think some are pro-nuclear energy eventhough they are long-time grassroots environmentalists.
I sent it to our Managing Director of another division. I knew that she would want to know. I also sent what you posted to some office peers who were lower-tiered on the office food chain who either studied women studies or leaned towards openly wanting more women-centric attention to appeal to recruit women into environmentalism. It’s always been a boyish field that needed more appeals to attract women into it. Green campaigns are the boutique public relations’ marketing strategy edge for mainstreaming environmentalism so it is easier to swallow and become more normal and accepted. That attracts women. But still, the field of environmentalism is filled up with boys because it’s science. (There is some inconvenient truth and substance to Larry Summers’ opinion about women in math and science.)
Eventhough I worked on the Nader campaign the year Winona was his Vice-Presidential nominee, I never became close to her. I never had the opportunity. She was rarely in Washington, here. But when she was in Washington, we didn't run the same circles. I am not a purple-color wearing, tie-dye, granola eating feminist, if you know what I mean. I wear pearls and my target issues of interest have to do with the sustainability of Black families through strengthening Black women and men. That usually falls short on feminist agendas as we saw as by-product of evidence in the feminist promotion of the White Female in the last election. But I do merge on value sentiments with stereotypical womanists in some ways. My heart longs to find a place in solidarity with their ideas that match mine. I don't really belong to one niche and those niches she belongs to, I cross paths with them through friendships and work relationships to still not be a member of those niches.
But I cannot boast that she is my friend. And eventhough I know people that know her, I only know of her achievements from afar. And yes, I have always admired her. My heart extends. Thank you for letting me/us know.
I’m sending some items. I will take time over the holidays to pull things to send. I have items with her name on it from the campaign but I don’t know that she would find value in it. She never seemed to care about superficial things others seem to put value in that were superficial. But these items are reflective of her attributes to change the world. I don’t know.
Items will be more feasible for me to send at this time of money tightening and not being as certain. Normally I send cash donations but I need to save for a prep test. Money is that tight for me, if you know what I mean.
I wished I could do more in sharing the information with others to implore them to react proactively but I cut off all of my communication networks in 2006 out of frustration of their apathetic resolves to empathize empty platitudes so they would not have to leave their static, predictable comfort zones that would not require they have to exercise living out of the stabilized norm they engineered for themselves. So I could only move forward at work yesterday in the little time since I found your post with this vital information that needed immediate attention to detail, response, and organization. I wish I could do more. I really wish I could but I really don’t know proactive people that care about
I realized that she had to have insurance, right, that will replace her home and a nominal amount of items like furniture and appliances?
But I wanted to tell you that you did it again: you just did not sit back and watch her in despair spin in the wind like all of this is a movie to watch and comment on. I’ve noticed this is what women tend to do in processing. We watch women in struggle from afar. I watched women actually take steps backwards and dig in their heels to not react proactively yet project a monologue of solidarity. I am sick of it. I think systematic powerlessness perpetuated from formative years created this dysfunction in us to think we are being smart to stand back and surmise the situation(s) as time, space, and opportunity is lost. Our power already weak further diminished even more. We don’t see our building blocks in that they are really not as strong as we think they are. But you pitched in. You took steps forward when you could have like so many women, made an excuse, performed a soliloquy, and then scrammed. Abandonment is our forte and yet you are attempting to break this paradigm. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Modeling is such an important part of teaching while I think most conventional, commonplace think projecting is all that is required to catalyze. Modeling is way more powerful than projecting because modeling is exhibited in our every action --- even when we don’t think we are teaching. Modeling shows people how to respond and feel when life is not under lights on stage. Projecting is manipulative performance. I see that you understand that to be effective in shifting our broken paradigms, we need some simple modeled behaviors in action that is in direct contrast to our normalized deficient behaviors that inhibit our abilities to be proactive in our lives. It’s take more than projecting to make a difference. Thanks for modeling.
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