Posted on 09/17/2001 11:23:11 AM PDT by BigTime
From: Robin Morgan
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 16:02:33 EDT
Subject: NYC report . . .
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Dear Sisters and Friends,
Forgive the mass emailing of this letter, but in this situation it seems more important to get some personal, basic lower-Manhattan news/impressions to you all than take the time to reply one-on-one to each of your many, many, moving emails. I've received emails and phone calls from women in 18 different countries over the last 24 hours--from South Africa to Jordan, Malaysia to Brazil, Nepal to Canada, Australia to the Caribbean, The Philippines to Peru, all across Europe and the USA--and from West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
First, thank you from my heart for all your thoughts, concerns,invitations to come stay with you, expressions of sadness, solidarity, and political anxiety. So many, many of you have astonishingly cited my book The Demon Lover as the essential expression/analysis of what has just happened (as well as the background and underlying conflicts) that even in the midst of deep sorrow and grief you have renewed my belief that art, an attempted clarity of thought, and a stubborn politics of transformation do make a contribution, make a difference. But so far, as we know all too hideously, not enough.
I am well and safe, as are those dearest to me. (I've also been in touch with dear friends who were in transit around the US, who are safe, though some stranded in hotels and airports.) Here in Greenwich Village we are, as many of your worried, in lower Manhattan, but north--about a mile and a half--of the catastrophic area. We have electric power, water, the basics.
Friends who live(d) much closer to it staggered here yesterday morning, covered with ash, shaking with fear, and spent the day and last night here.
The infrastructure of the city is holding extraordinarily well: subways and busses are already running again (though not south, near the site itself); there was a brief run on the banks and food stores but that seems to have passed. (Personally, I'm supplied enough even to be able to help others; have garden vegetables growing plus leftover Y2K water, candles, and canned goods--but that seems probably unnecessary.)
This morning the National Guard arrived--and on my dawn walk I could just as well have been walking through a military state: police, state troopers, and emergency personnel on every corner below 14th St., with trucks filled with Guardsmen, rifles bayoneted and at ready, beginning to roll through the streets. Since this area is uptown from the site itself, you can imagine how tight security is closer to the WT Center. We must be calm but truly vigilant, since in such a time of crisis, the danger of a turn to the extreme Right is genuinely real. The press continues to roll, though no newspapers could be delivered below 14th St.
Media coverage has been nonstop, and relatively cautious to avoid rumors(especially in the wake of misreporting the election results last year). As of this morning (first day "after") the expectable patriotic blabber and religious jargon had started, along with pundits and politicians issuing media cliches about "beginning the healing process" and seeking "closure."
Maddeningly, there have been frequently repeated airings of film clips of some Palestinian men in West Bank celebrating the attack with laughter, dancing, and v-signs--but unfortunately there have NOT been as frequently repeated press airings of Palestinian leaders, Arab leaders, and leaders of the Arab American community deploring it; equal time has NOT been given; only once in 24 hours have I heard major media announce the official statement of the Muslim community in the US that heatedly denounced the attack. But there HAS been heartening journalistic comment--including from the mayor of NYC--warning against bigoted responses to this tragedy.
As those of you with whom I've managed to speak know, in fact, that has been one of my great worries, because a few years ago, in the 48 hours after the Oklahoma City bombing (before it was discovered that the perpetrator was a white Christian right-wing male) three Arab Americans were lynched in the Midwest of the US. Already, mosques are being defaced and Internet chatrooms spewing hate against "all Arabs." We (feminists, progressives, etc.) are doing everything we can to avoid this kind of escalating nightmare--and a network of safe houses is already being set up to shelter and help innocent Arab or Muslim civilians who might be persecuted in the wake of this tragedy.
This morning I was touched to learn that the Pagan and Wiccan community is doing the same thing, in the name of religious freedom from persecution. We are also trying to organize a press conference of support--but whether that will be covered or not is questionable, given the major news that breaks every hour or so.
Politically--well, it's too early to say, of course. But some things can be hypothesized. It may be heartening that this disaster might deter Bush's star wars anti-missile fantasy--since, as so many of us have said for so long, THIS kind of attack, not missiles, is the real 21st century threat (and it was amazingly "low-tech": ceramic knives, commercial flights, 3 to 5 men ready to die for a cause: simple). Furthermore (despite the expectable "let's all stand together behind our president" rhetoric) general press analysis plus public reaction seems fairly critical of Bush's handling so far, noting 1) Bush's policy of withdrawal from Mideast peace process talks, 2) Bush's administration having ignored warnings 3 weeks ago of a major "unprecedented" attack to come, and 3) Bush being incapable of projecting leadership or even a sense of basic competence.
In talking with colleagues in feminist leadership, a number of us have noted that for years we've tried everything to get the US to move forcibly against the Taliban, given the literal attempted genocide of women and girls in today's Afghanistan--and each time we've been impeded by the powerful boys of Big Oil--who care only for their beloved pipelines. Perhaps this may finally make a difference.
As I write this, news breaks that the FBI has picked up possible "suspects" in Florida and in Boston . . . but that kind of story you will hear or read as it evolves, in your own press, or if you can access CNN, where you are.
So I will sign off for now. Feel free to share this communique with your own networks. I trust with all my heart that you will each do all you possibly can in your own countries, cities, and situations to educate people as to WHY this kind of tragedy happens--that it is NOT just "madmen" or "monsters" or "subhuman maniacs" who commit dramatic violence, but that such acts occur in a daily climate of patriarchal violence so epidemic as to be invisible in its normality--and that such tactics as this attack come from a complex set of circumstances, including despair over not being heard any other way; desperation over long-term, even generational, suffering; calcification of sympathy for "the other"; callousing of sensibilities, blatant economic and political injustice, tribal/ethnic hatreds and fears, religious fundamentalisms, and especially the eroticization and elevation of violence as a form of "manhood" and "solution." Violence IS psychosis --but it's a psychoses that contemporary incumbent leaders of most nations share with their insurgent opponents.
Even as we mourn, we somehow must continue to dare audaciously to envision and revision a different way, a way out of this savage age, to a time when our species will look back and gasp, recoiling at its own former barbarism.
Even as we weep, we must somehow reorganize to reaffirm our capacity to change the world, each other, and ourselves--to insist, even in the teeth of despair, on a politics that is possible and necessary: a politics not of thanatos and death, but of eros and joy.
I send each of you my gratitude and my deep affection.
Robin Morgan
(sorry AppyPappy, just trying to make a point)
When you get back to planet Earth let us know.
Golda Maer?
Shalom.
History. The Trung sisters of Viet Nam. Maria Theresa of Austria. Elizabeth I of England. Catherine the Great of Russia. Queen Nzinga of Angola. Wars aren't "fought" by rulers---they're fought by the ruled. And women in power have sent men to death in wars just as men in power have. Utopian femi-nazi theory won't change that.
OK, how would you rebut this?
You being with, "Robin, you ignorant sl*t..."
I'm a woman and I agree with you.
In the end it matters not what they think or want, for MEN will have it the way they want it regardless of their ratings and actions. Those foolish women who would physically put themselves in the inhibiting path of this inevitability will pay the ultimate price for their ignorance and their arrogance.
I'd tell her to use a good bikini wax on her upper lip, let her hair grow a bit, lose 50 pounds, eat more beef, and hire a male prostitute every once in a while.
In the end it matters not what they think or want, for MEN will have it the way they want it regardless of their ratings and actions. Those foolish women who would physically put themselves in the inhibiting path of this inevitability will pay the ultimate price for their ignorance and their arrogance.
Idiots. If they're really interested in "religious freedom from persecution" their first priority should be helping the US fight the Taliban.
By way of introduction, this is the description that was included with the e-mail: Most of you probably know the work of poet Robin Morgan (recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize), founder of the Sisterhood is Powerful Institute (an international womanist think-tank), author of 14 books (including, a little over a decade ago, *The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism*...
LOL!
What a coincidence! One of my favorite _books_ about terrorists was compiled by a British journalist who interviewed a couple of dozen women terrorist and published the transcripts. She titled the book after adivce given new anti-terrorists soldiers: "Shoot the Women First," by Eileen MacDonald
It's great reading! Mark W.
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