New Clear Vision

Toward the Quiet Creation of an All-Ages Revolution

by Victoria Law

It is Sunday afternoon. My daughter and I are at home. I am on my (borrowed) laptop in the kitchen, revising chapter forwards for Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind, an anthology on how to support parents and children in social justice movements that I am co-editing with the amazing “grandma of mama zines” China Martens. Garlic bubbles away into broth on the stove, filling the kitchen with warmth (and a very savory fragrance).

In the other room, my 11-year-old daughter is on her dad’s computer and on the phone at the same time. She is on a conference call/computer chat with the folks planning childcare to talk about the Big Kids’ track for this year’s Allied Media Conference. I am, thankfully, not part of the efforts to coordinate either the Kids’ Track or the Big Kids’ Track, but I do wonder how the conversation is going. I can hear my daughter’s fingers strike the keyboard as she enters her ideas into their group chatbox, but I hear her voice much less often.

While puzzling over how to succinctly sum up the gist of each chapter, fittingly on how movements and communities and individuals have supported the children and caregivers in their midst, my thoughts drift back to the event I attended last night: Angela Davis’s talk about prison abolition and a conversation between her and Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was allowed to call in to the event for an all-too-short fifteen minutes. (more…)

The Last Great American -ism Is Heading Your Way

by Mary Sojourner

You find yourself sitting at a big conference table in one of those trying-to-be-classy corporate hotel meeting rooms.  There is a pad and pen in front of you.  The company has sent you to a training on stereotyping.  You figure it’s a waste.  You’ve been through all of that before — doesn’t matter if you’re Anglo, African-American, Asian-American, whatever.  You went to college and the racism training was part of the deal.

The room fills.  Everybody’s got their laptops open in front of them and a cup of bad hotel coffee. A person walks in and closes the door. The person is dressed in baggy clothing.  It wears a featureless mask and gloves. You wonder if this is some Occupy mic-check. (more…)