January 29, 2011
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Shit-shaking
Despite being restricted to only 140 characters per post, twitter is way more intelligent than facebook. When I log onto facebook I get pictures of people getting drunk at parties / grinding up in da club. For the past 6 days, my twitter feed has been flooded with updates of the Egyptian uprising.
200 marchers in downtown VancouverI lost my protest virginity last Thursday. It's admittedly a funny way of putting it, but for me it's one of those pivotal life moments. All my activist work to date - the petitions, the letters, the articles for the school paper, the facebook discussions - all that was done in the safety of my home. It's easy to get the instant gratification from writing a couple words; it's harder to show your face and to put your own body on the line.
It was a joyful, happy protest - it was like nothing I imagined. The rally was attended by students, faculty and other concerned Vancouver citizens. I couldn't believe my eyes as the megaphone was handed to senior, disabled, and low-income women; they finally had a voice and it was a beautiful, impossible sight. I felt myself tearing up as our voices joined with those of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) residents. There was music and dancing in the streets and I have never been so proud of our Vancouver.
That was last Thursday. Yesterday night I was browsing the internet like how I always do and I noticed something different. A lot of the time I read activist lit and write stuff on the internet to help dissipate my agitation and anger, but now that inner unrest was gone. I still read and I wrote, but now it wasn't out of a need for something to cling onto.
There's a Season 6 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy is told that everything she's ever known about vampires and Sunnydale is a hallucination, and that she's actually a mental patient in the hospital. During this episode she fluctuates wildly in between the hospital (a vampire-free world) and her demon-infested Sunnydale. In the end she is asked to choose one of the two realities.
I know you know that I'm heavy with the dramatics, but I can't think of a better way to describe my activist life. In my Sunnydale there are people who eat McDonalds and parents who want you to shut up and friends who look awkwardly away when I suggest bringing your own mug to the club icebreaker. In Sunnydale I have to argue with [bebe] and Starr. In my hospital I can play dress up with friends and smile at boys and obey my grandparents. There isn't anyone to call me a lesbian, man-hating feminist.
This is about acceptance. Which is the reality where I can find that solace, where I don't have to question my own sanity?
But I remember marching down the Vancouver street with 200 hundred others, yelling and singing at the top our lungs about freedom and possibility. And in that group the college boys weren't the usual gamers or jocks, but 3-dimensional humans who don't look away from the people sleeping in the streets. The women don't have to wear Aritzia to be beautiful. When low-income people have something to say, we give them a megaphone and we listen.
And it's possible from my computer desk to imagine that these people exist, but at the rally I saw their faces and I shared their spirit. I'm not so scared anymore, because I know I'm not alone.
