At the edges of the semester, I start to reminisce. A knee-jerk reaction, conditioned through the many times I’ve been forced to cut loose from something old and into something new, more than often unwillingly. Spending spots of time in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Georgia while growing up, times when my father’s job was unexpectedly taken away from him and forcing our family to bop around the country has a bit to do with my tendency to take temporal looks back and forth.

I tab pieces of time through the music I listen to, the people I meet at certain moments, the work I do, the things I read, the ebbs and flows I notice. These markers are there for convenience, but they are also framed by a strange neurosis - that at any moment, things could be taken away, that at any moment, things could be drastically different, that at any moment, things are no longer the same. Its as if the gargantuan processes of change that move the planets, that make our worlds work, were siphoning their energy specifically into me and my life, into my developing mind, my itty bitty heart. As if I was singled out to realize that things are always changing.

But then, I have always had a penchant for drama.

This might explain why I have this love-hate relationship with change. I often welcome it, and lately I realize I thrive off of it. But I have historically dreaded it.

Seeing as how my first semester of law school is coming to a quick end, I am looking back. And here’s what I realize: some people I’ve met I will know forever, some only for another few years; some ideas I’ve encountered will serve as the bedrock of my working life, some will be irreconcilable and plague me; some potential relationships will come to fruition, some will not; some conceptions about social justice I will latch onto, some I will discard; some simple things I will remember that I love, some I will not; sometimes I will cry, sometimes I will not; sometimes I will laugh, sometimes I will not; sometimes I will make someone else laugh, sometimes I will not; some people I will respect because of their politics, some I will respect because of the way they teach, some I will respect because of the way they act, some I will respect because of who they’re not, some I will respect because they need it, some I will respect because they’re just good people.

In other words, I haven’t seen much new or much old. Maybe its because change has its way of staying the same, and that it may be possible that I don’t dread it as much as I thought I did.

Law-ing | 4 Comments »

Munnabhai MBBS is arguably one of the funniest Bollywood films I’ve seen. And one of my favorite Bollywood actors, Arshad Warsi, is in it! And no, I haven’t yet seen the new Munna Bhai, but I will!

But I’ve never been a huge fan of Sanjay Dutt’s acting or fashion sensibilities. Now I have another reason to sway away. He was recently convicted of his participation in the Mumbai bombings earlier this year. According to the BBC, he is the most controversial Bollywood star around. He has spent some time in jail for his involvement in the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

Now, this brings up a tricky situation for that space between the personal and the politic. I love most of his films, especially the recent ha-ha-laugh-til-you-hurt films but my stomach starts hurting a different way when I think of his complicity in the blasts designed to kill hundreds of people in strings of eyeblink moments.

But thats the essential rub of all the pieces of our lives. They’re filled with contradictions, of scattered remnants connected in some ways to someone being oppressed, having to die, somehow, somewhere.

He states that he’s some kind of chosen one. I wonder what kind of chosen one he’s trying to be.

Bollywood, Politic | No Comments »

Janitors win! And I’m wondering what it all comes down to. What does it mean when we say a campaign wins, when the workers are framed in pictures - hands up in jubilation, union leaders clapping still. I am still absorbing this victory and yet, I have my reservations about the US labor movement in terms of actually building worker power. But we’ll have to see what happens.

Responses to the tazing incident two weeks ago have multiplied. I’m involved with a few graduate student groups across the UCLA campus trying to re-frame the issue as one of police brutality and race and take some action so that these kinds of egregious abuses of power don’t happen again.

Resistance, Race, Politic | No Comments »

Last night, after I posted about what happened at UCLA, I got a text from a friend — “Police Brutality against Houston Janitors!” Eyes widened, I took a breath, and propped myself up against a wall.

I am not startled that such brutality spans from UCLA to Houston and back. But I am startled that this is happening in my tiny world. I spent more than a year working for the Houston Justice for Janitors campaign and feel connected to the pound of flesh I left there. A friend had told me the other day that he was considering participating in the civil disobedience to support the Janitor strike. I was immensely supportive and tried to make him do it. So when I got that text, my fears about an impersonal, courtesy-of-you-tube police brutality - a political set of fears - became intensely personal. This tangled mess made me, well, a bit of a mess.

I went to the Houston Janitors website and watched the video - people I knew in the video were getting arrested but I couldn’t see my friend. I made phone calls and didn’t hear back. No one was picking up. No one would answer.

I eventually got a call from him and he reassured me that he’s OK. He had decided not to participate in the civil disobedience. I exhaled.

But after attending the protest today at UCLA, where the messaging was around public safety rather than police brutality and race, I realize that we do not have much time. We don’t have time to obfuscate, to skate over the issues that dig deep into us and threaten to rip us all apart.

If we don’t call things as they are - that Mostafa was targeted because he was a Persian male, that he was cuffed and then tazed more than four times because he was a person of color, that the UCPD’s actions have created a climate of fear for people of color all over campus, that ’safety’ as a message only means more cops and no change in accountability - then we all suffer.

We don’t have time to call things otherwise because eventually we all are going to be hit by this. And it will hurt like hell when it happens to us or to someone we love.

Update:  My blog posts have been picked up by WireTap, an excellent on-line magazine run by AlterNet.  Please visit and post!

Resistance, Race, Politic | 5 Comments »

Police brutality is not exactly abnormal. Its seems to have become part of the normal run of things. It happens often and with regularity. As if the state mandates it. Just as KRS-One put it.

But my severely optimistic head never expects it. I would never expect it at all. And everytime I hear about when it, I feel disgusted angry victimized angry mad lost hurt.

This is how I felt yesterday when I first heard about what happened at UCLA at the Powell Library, which was mere minutes from where I was studying. UC cops were checking undergraduate students at the Powell Library’s computer lab for IDs. Mostafa Tabatabainejad, a Persian UCLA student, did not have his ID and after some time, the cops were tasering him repeatedly because of his ‘non-compliance.’ They were asking him to stand up but kept tasering him (which immobilizes muscles and often prevents control of one’s body for up to 10 minutes). Students gathered round and many people recorded the incident through their cell phones. After being tasered several times, the cops took Mostafa to a holding cell and later released him.

Mostafa was never asked for an alternate means to show he was a student. Is it justifiable that a person should suffer massive electric shocks for not having a small piece of plastic? How much power should police be given in regulating a computer lab?

The video can be linked to here through the Daily Bruin. Be careful, its really disturbing. I couldn’t watch all of it.

There is much more that needs to be done about this. A google news search of “Mostafa, taser, UCLA” will uncover more than 100 news articles, including a few indicating that Council of American-Islamic Relations is justifiably calling for a deep investigation into all of this. The LA Times calls this a third incident in a recent wave of cell phone videos documenting police brutality.

While this was happening, Mostafa was yelling “Here’s your Patriot Act…here’s your abuse of power.” Those who are at UCLA, pressure the UC Police Department and anyone else who has abused their power at the UCs to conduct a full, thorough, and impartial investigation into all of this.

Update - Here are some things you can do:

Contact the UCLA Police Department and express your disapproval of how the situation was handled: http://www.ucpd.ucla.edu/

Contact UCLA Acting Chancellor Norman Abrams About the Incident at Powell Library:

Dr. Norman Abrams (Interim Chancellor) - chancellor@conet.ucla.edu
Dr. Daniel Neuman (Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost) - evc@conet.ucla.edu
Dr. Maryann Jacobi Gray (Assistant Provost) - mgray@conet.ucla.edu
Dr. Robert J. Naples (Assistant Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students) -
dean@saonet.ucla.edu

Resistance, Race, Politic | 6 Comments »

A language spilt out that would have made sense had I been awake. It seemed to resemble a foggy pattern that traced birth to death, the opening of eyes to their closing. The pattern expanded, contracted, took on a life of its own every new second that stampeded into this particular slumber.

Babies crawling, mothers brooding, sisters weeping, fathers running. Firecrackers and snowshoes. Bicycles, tricycles. Some old. Some never known. Marches and protests and banners and slogans and fists and hookups and sweet mango juice. Vietnamese sandwiches and smiles and secret looks and mild stares and bad jokes and pimples and trucks with big ass wheels and changing channels and running up and down the stairs and driving everywhere and hunger and tears and eating alone and annoying parties and math problems and bike riding. Law books, new friends, old friends, missed opportunities, isolation, simple breaks, communities of ambition, awkward moments, the smell of the sun, a new start.

Nostalgia wrinkles into us those times that we least expect.

Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Minding my business, doing what law students do while occasionally sipping down my favorite drink, I was with a friend. And then there was a sneak attack.

“Hi, are you guys law students?”
“He is, I’m not” my friend responds while pointing at the law student.

I move my head, spotting an eager-looking, blue-eyed person. His gaze on our splattered pages and laptops, empty glass tea holders, highlighters.

“Oh, where do you go to school?”
“UCLA.”
“Oh, I’m at UCLA too!” Its nice to have a conversation with a stranger, I think to myself.
“What’s your major?” my friend asks.
“History - what kind of law do you want to do?”
“Immigration - or at least something in that general area.”
“Cool - so did you go to law school immediately after school?”
“No no no, I’m old - I’ve been out of school for five years.”
“Oh.”

After we end this semi-awkward conversation, we return to our highlighting sticks and typing machines.

We two brown people in a Persian cafe that serves Brazilian coffee. A good place. There are some women sitting on the side, not far from us. No one is really far in this small place, where there are backgammon boards and wonderful-looking cheesecakes under shiny bright glass. There is hookah outside and Persian music inside.

Next thing I hear is Farsi coming from this eager person’s mouth. He has conversations with the workers at the restaurant, he talks to the women. They are astounded that he can speak and comprehend their language. His chair slowly moves towards them as the two tables warm up to each other.

It turns out that he is studying Farsi and as he speaks more and more of it, asking the women questions as he studies, they are oohing and aahing at his language mastery. He is humble and I’m not so sure it is genuine or not. He constantly asks every few minutes “don’t mean to bother you, but…” He is trying hard to seem the oblivious eager language learner.

Of course, I am always wondering. Is he really oblivious to it all, to the appropriation of someone’s else’s language, going to a cafe to try and talk it up with women who are impressed by his abilities? Are his language abilities indicative of a larger kind of respect of culture that people with immense amounts of privilege often don’t have? Or is it straight up appropriation?

Of course, he could simply be trying to learn - and what better place than a Persian cafe? Right?

Right.

Tea, Ha Ha?, Race | 11 Comments »

Writing makes motion.

Write to doubt, to make mistakes, to search and experiment, to imagine the possibility of saying “no” to authority. Without writing, all is frozen.

No doubt, no making mistakes (or anything else), stagnated and repetitive, closed down to all thought, always “yes” downbeat, downtrodden, a slack rope.

(from bad texas, who is paraphrasing from Ignazio Silone on Lornadice)

I think there’s more than truth to that. Write to experiment, to create, to destroy, to live, to stay awake, alive.

Writing is a way to jostle yourself out of forgetting. Because forgetting is a state of frozen, where you are stuck in the present and cannot remember or posit.

Memory is a favorite subject of mine. Memory is that haunting thing that magically brings logic to the heavy, gray mishmash atop my shoulders, straddling my neck. It pervades my senses, spotty reminders of that one time, the first time, the almost time, when I remember the smell of the arcs made by their movements, the feel of the stare they gave me, the subtle impressions of the air.

Writing is masterful excess and a wonderful timepass. It is the clickety clackety, the notes of love and labor, the spinning of the mishmash in a way that forces structure and significance.

It is the process that makes me make sense.

Writing | No Comments »

Dear friends, foes, bloggers, and web cruisers,

There’s a fight going on right now. Its happening in Houston this time, where janitors are striking and coming together to fight for decent wages, healthcare, and perhaps more importantly, dignity and respect. Houston’s the only major city in the country that still utilizes the federal minimum wage as a standard for paying janitors. The workers are mostly Latina, mostly Mexicans and Guatemalan, don’t have health care, work ridiculous hours for little dignity and respect, are around toxic chemicals during almost all their work hours. They are fighting for their lives. How do I know? I researched it for over a year with the campaign.

Please go to the Houston Justice for Janitors site or the Indymedia site and support in whatever way you can. A strike fund is being put together. Food is gathering. Send letters to the editors of the Houston Chronicle, the Houston Press, even the LA Times. Make noise wherever you walk and wherever you drive.

SEIU’s unionizing drive in Houston is historic - its one of the largest in Texas and the South. Its building on years and years of strategy and organizing in other major cities. Houston’s not a union town by any objective measure, so this campaign is even more important.

Resistance, Immigration, Race | 1 Comment »

The time drew through me too quick, too easy to make sense more than once. It was only for that time that the time made sense.

I’m talking about most of my days, the ways time runs throughout, a fervent arbiter, peeking its way into my world through my clocks: my watch, my computer, my phone. It dictates me and my physical and mental movements more than I would have ever hoped.

Sectioned, cordoned, walled, cut off. Everything in its box and time keeps it there. Classes, studying, friends, neighbors, family, lovers, objects, sidewalks, roads, mouth movements, head nods, surface tensions, deep gut feelings, books, cleaning, plant watering. All have their respective theories of time and all are tunneled through something that can be made instantaneous, a flick of the wrist and I know how to rank those things with respect to the AM or the PM, the colon and the hands.

It has its way about me, this time. It can know how I’m feeling and give me another few seconds or it can rip hours out of me. It can falter at times and I can zealously swindle it for more. I can take a gamble and usually lose. I can spend hours phone calling and realize time got lazy and made itself known to me with a fearless vengeance moments later when I fall asleep on my case books, drool and all. I wake hours later, realizing I was done in once again.

There is, however, one peculiarity in this varied mix. Its kind of a secret weapon. Its those moments when I pay no mind to the exacting nature of it all, the compression of experiences that demeans every piece compressed juxtaposed with the slicing and dicing of my daily travels. The varied artificial ways we experience everything is rendered unique and approaches something feeling tangible and real, even a kind of natural. Its the most beautiful thing, gleaned from a sordid past, and it makes things slow down. The swirling of things loses its ferociousness and they turn into mild eddies, ones you just want to sit next to and enjoy, at least for a little bit.

This secret weapon, this delay in dissection, is when I have my tea.

These days, I’m into Moroccan Mint. Anyone else?

Tea | No Comments »