Brandis' Voice in Washington
Category: News and Politics

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog....

This is from my girl Brandis' page... hope you enjoy it.

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Spoiled Rotten Adult

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Love Respect Honor Teach Share Love
Current mood: loved
Category: Imparted with Gifts Travel and Places

Force No Thing

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Chicano Studies @ CSLA
Current mood: hungry

Celebrate 40 Years Of Chicano Studies at CSULA     

Chicana/o Education Film Series:

Understanding The Struggle for Equality

• Wednesday,  Jan. 16   ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />6:15-7:30 pm

         Méndez vs. Westminster: Para Los Niños

     Guest Speaker Ms. Sylvia Méndez                                

• Wednesday, Feb. 6     4:00-6:00 pm

   The Lemon Grove Incident

     Guest Speaker Prof. Francisco Balderrama

    • Thursday, Feb. 21  11:40 am-1:45 pm

    WALKOUT Chicano! Documentary

   • Tuesday, Feb. 26    11:40 am-1:45 pm

    WALKOUT Panel Sal Castro, Walkout Students

Screening at the Golden Eagle, 3rd Floor Ballroom

Co-Sponsors: The Department of Chicano Studies,   

MEChA, Chicana/Latino University Association        & the Cross Cultural Center

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BeerHeadBitph
Current mood: amorous
Category: Friends

The day I became in Love with Her, we were on about our 4th or 5th date. On our 1st, she made me desayuna a su casa, it was great. Any 1 who knows me, knows I Love food. I digress. We went to see a friend play at the House of Blues. I looked great, sweat soaking my armpits in my silky turquise tank top. I was hot! We had been running porque estabamos tarde and we were walking for 15 mins. Pero we got there just en tiempo. We stood in the back for a little while, kinda of awkward/ cute. I got a beer y agua. The beer was nasty. A spot came up closer to the crowd/ dance stage, music was great. Some way cool spanish/ jazz/ blues/ santana shit, it was good. So I move closer with her to there. This woman starts bumping me and I'm like what, dude don't make me show out, I'm on a fkn date. So she doesnt stop, I quickly pull her hair, she stops bumping me, YEAH! She left me alone for a whole 10 mins. She talked to her friends and then came back. My next move was to hit her, mind you I'm in the HOB! So I move around her. Yaw, I hear a noise, I turn around, and this Amazing Godis is pouring my nasty beer all over this bitnhs head, it is just one of the most BEAUTIFUL sites I have ever seen in my life. Then the pushing started. I had so much fun! And when we got out the club the car was right at the back door. PS I'm In Love

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Gays as Gatekeepers by Malidoma Some
Current mood: awake
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Gays: Guardians of the Gates

by Malidoma Some



I found this page on the internet via the African Traditional Religion forum and found it appropiate for this CE Thesis Link. The original link is added below. This article apeared in the Sept 1993 issue of M.E.N. Magazine. It consists of an interview with Malidoma Some by Burt H. Hoff.



During one of the Conflict Hours at the Mendocino Men's Conference Malidoma spoke eloquently on indigenous people's views of gay men. He kindly agreed to elaborate on his views as he sat with me among the redwoods of Mendocino.

Bert: At Conflict Hour you told us that your culture honors gays as having a higher vibrational level that enabled them to be guardians of the gateways to the spirit world. You suggested that our Western view limits itself by focusing only on their sexual role. Can you elaborate for our readers?

Malidoma: I don't know how to put it in terms that are clear enough for an audience that, I think needs as much understanding of this gender issue as people in this country do. But at least among the Dagara people, gender has very little to do with anatomy. It is purely energetic. In that context, a male who is physically male can vibrate female energy, and vice versa. That is where the real gender is. Anatomic differences are simply there to determine who contributes what for the continuity of the tribe. It does not mean, necessarily, that there is a kind of line that divides people on that basis. And this is something that also touches on what has become known here as the "gay" or "homosexual" issue. Again, in the culture that I come from, this is not the issue. These people are looked on, essentially, as people. The whole notion of "gay" does not exist in the indigenous world. That does not mean that there are not people there who feel the way that certain people feel in this culture, that has led to them being referred to as "gay."

The reason why I'm saying there are no such people is because the gay person is very well integrated into the community, with the functions that delete this whole sexual differentiation of him or her. The gay person is looked at primarily as a "gatekeeper." The Earth is looked at, from my tribal perspective, as a very, very delicate machine or consciousness, with high vibrational points, which certain people must be guardians of in order for the tribe to keep its continuity with the gods and with the spirits that dwell there. Spirits of this world and spirits of the other worlds. Any person who is at this link between this world and the other world experiences a state of vibrational consciousness which is far higher, and far different, from the one that a normal person would experience. This is what makes a gay person gay. This kind of function is not one that society votes for certain people to fulfill. It is one that people are said to decide on prior to being born. You decide that you will be a gatekeeper before you are born. And it is that decision that provides you with the equipment (Malidoma gestures by circling waist area with hands) that you bring into this world. So when you arrive here you begin to vibrate in a way that Elders can detect as meaning that you are connected with a gateway somewhere. Then they watch you grow, and they watch you act and react, and sooner or later they will follow you to the gateway that you are connected with.

Now, gay people have children. Because they're fertile, just like normal people. How I got to know that they were gay was because on arriving in this country and seeing the serious issues surrounding gay people, I began to wonder it does not exist in my own country. When I asked one of them, who tad taken me to the threshold of the Otherworld, whether he feels sexual attraction towards another man, he jumped back and said, "How do you know that?!" He said, "This is our business as gatekeepers." And, yet he had a wife and children -- no problem, you see.

So to then limit gay people to simple sexual orientation is really the worst harm that can be done to a person. That all he or she is is a sexual person. And, personally, because of the fact that my knowledge of indigenous medicine, ritual, comes from gatekeepers, it's hard for me to take this position that gay people are the negative breed of a society. No! In a society that is profoundly dysfunctional, what happens is that peoples' life purposes are taken away, and what is left is this kind of sexual orientation which, in turn, is disturbing to the very society that created it.

I think this is again victimization by a Christian establishment that is looking at a gay person as a disempowered person, a person who has lost his job from birth onward, and now society just wants to fire him out of life. This is not justice. It's not justice. It is a terrible harm done to an energy that could save the world, that could save us. If, today, we are suffering from a gradual ecological waste, this is simply because the gatekeepers have been fired from their job. They have been fired! They have nothing to do! And because they have been fired, we accuse them for not doing anything. This is not fair!

Let us look at the earth differently, and we will find out gradually that these people that are bothering us today are going to start taking their posts. They know what their job is. You just have to get near them, to feel that they don't vibrate the same way. They are not of this world. They come from the Otherworld, and they were sent here to keep the gates open to the Otherworld, because if the gates are shut, this is when the earth, Mother Earth, will shake -- because it has no more reason to be alive, it will shake itself, and we will be in deep trouble.

Bert: Christianity has separated spirit from body and spirit from Earth. And earlier you talked to us about Christianity suppressing your culture. So there's a suggestion here that suppression of homosexuality would be the way for the Christians to shut down the gateways, shut down the spirit, and shut down our connection with the Earth.

Malidoma: Yes! That's right! Christianity stresses postponing living on earth, as of we are only here to pack up our baggage and prepare for a life somewhere else "out there." Jesus Christ is right here, man! And of course anyone else who knows more, who knows better, will be suppressed.

And you start with the gatekeepers. You take the gatekeeper and you confuse his mind. You threaten him and you throw him in the middle of nowhere. Then nobody knows where the gate is. As soon as you lose the whereabouts of the gate, then you have a culture going downhill. What keeps a village together is a handful of "gays and lesbians," as they call them in the modern world. In my village, lesbians are called witches, and gay men are known as the gatekeepers. These are the two only known secret societies. These are the only groups that will get together as a separate group and go out into the woods secretly to do whatever they do. And if they find you during their yearly symposium, they have the right to kill you.

Unless they go out on their yearly symposium, the village cannot be granted another year of life. They have to go out to do what they do, in order for the village to feel safe enough to live the way it has lived before. This is why, to me, we're playing with our lives.

Bert: So our culture may not be granted another year of life.

Malidoma: That's right! Every year it feels like the number of years that this culture is entitled to live is getting smaller. So God only knows how close to the chasm this culture is. This constantly- reiterated discomfort and hatred for the gay person is again another indication that every year we might as well be prepared for the apocalyptic moment when the stars start to fall to the earth.

You see, unless there is somebody who constantly monitors the mechanism that opens the door from this world to the Otherworld, what happens is that something can happen to one of the doors and it closes up. When all the doors are closed, this earth runs out of its own orbit and the solar system collapses into itself. And because this system is linked to other systems, they too start to fall into a whirlpool. And the cataclysm would be amazing!

Ask the Dogon, they will tell you that. The Dogon. They're a tribe that understands this so well, it's amazing, mind-boggling. And it is a tribe that knows astrology like no other tribe that I have encountered. And the great astrologers of the Dogon are gay. They are gay. There is a dull planet that, in its orbit, is directly above the Dogon village every 58 years. Who knows that, but the gay people.

I mean, I'm not just trying to make gay people look fine. This is the truth, man! I'm trying to save my ass!

Why is it that, everywhere else in the world, gay people are a blessing, and in the modern world they are a curse? It is self-evident. The modern world was built by Christianity. They have taken the gods out of the earth sent them to heaven, wherever that is. And everyone who aspires to the gods must then negotiate with Christianity, so that the real priests and priestesses are out of a job. This is the worst thing that can happen to a culture that calls itself modern.

Bert: That theme came up earlier with you and Martín, the Mayan shaman here, that if a modern society wants to shut down another culture they will go out and kill the keepers of the ritual.

Malidoma: Oh, yes! Because they know that this is where the life-pulse of the culture is. This is where the engine room of the tribe is. So if you go and bomb that place, then the whole mechanism shuts down. That's pretty much what's at work in the third world, and what has happened here with the Native American culture. And the thing about it is that humans are going to be begetting gatekeepers, no matter what. This is the chance that we've got. So maybe that means that sooner or later we're going to wake up to the horror of our own errors, and we're going to reconsecrate our chosen people so that they can do their priestly work as they should. Otherwise, I just don't understand. I just don't understand. My position about it is not so much that gays be just forgiven. That's just tokenism. But that they serve as an example of the wrong, or the illness, that modernity has brought to us, and that we use that to begin working at healing ourselves and our society from the bottom up. That way, by the time we reach a certain level, all the gatekeepers are going to find their positions again. We cannot tell them where the gates are. They know. If we start to heal ourselves, they will remember. It will kick in. But as long as we continue in arrogance, in egotism, in God-knows-what form of violence on ourselves, no, there's that veil of confusion that's going to continue to prevail, and as a result it's going to prevent great things from happening. That's all I can say about that.



Click here for original link
http://www.vix.com/menmag/somegay.htm

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Bucket Bathing
Category: Pets and Animals

     Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been bucket bathing for almost 2 weeks, I have not been able to cook and I cannot use my clothes dryer.  

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Gotta Have It
Current mood: BLESSED

   We came into this world without clothing, shoes, money or jewelry.  We had our Soul, Mind and Body.  We leave much the same way.  While We are here, We struggle to find our purpose, our niche and our place.  Only one of those things really matters, Our Purpose. 
  It is too easy to fall into molds that have been pre-set for us to casually move (fall) into.  We are bombarded with subliminal messages that were devised to "teach" us who we are and how to be.  What to wear, how to wear it and what to buy.  This last part, is how our money is controlled by someone else (if we allow it), And We presently do. 
 Remember who We are.  And if you don't yet, then take the initiative and LEARN.  All knowledge does not derive from a book, article or radio show (OR TV).   Ask your Elders, ask children to close their eyes and tell you a story about what they see.  Do what your given EYE shows you to do.  Love, Respect, Build, Honor, Share, Do No Harm To Your Brother or Sister,  Clean (this is for me Yaw!, that hurt).  We are so much more than what We think We know.
   Yah Bless

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Consumerism
Current mood: awake
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

     THIS is a reply to a Friends Blog about the gas strike, enjoy........


One of the first things that conquerors do, is change the beliefs or religion (by force), then, they work on the value system.  Spain, for instance, received a great deal of money from Anglo Europeans and then began the Spanish Inquisition.  Spain exiled all Jews (because they were then mixing with Moors) and ofcourse all the Moors, which had been there for centuries living peacefully (after they conqured Southern Spain).  There was an exchange of free ideas and knowledge.  The Jews and Moors (called Gypsies, by the Northern Spanish conquerors), were kicked out of Spain and sent back to Africa, or tortured to death.  The Southern Spanish were forced to accept catholicism or suffer the same fate.  They were then forced into slave labour , which began working on their value system.  It is a well known fact, that people will naturally want what is deemed as "valuable".  At one time, in Rome, people were paid in SALT!  It was more valuable than gold.  To cure food, I'm sure.  But damn!  Can you imagine working all day and then getting paid in SALT!!!!  Anyway, I have said all this to ask:

What do you value?
 
What does this have to do with gas?  Everything!  A close freiend of mine, from Bama, recently told me that she understood why people are so unhappy in CA.  There exist a huge gap of quality within a single CA block.  Meaning, that you can be in  the hood one minute (without trees, streets dirty, kids dirty) and walk/drive a little bit and be in a place like Bev Hills.  Everyday, we are bombarded by what we DON'T have, we forget what we do have.  We forget about our Children (seen but not heard, leave them at home all the time, don't talk to them), we forget about our Elders (not visiting, calling, spending time, listening to them), and most of all, we lose Ourselves (chasing after the Anglo American Dream).  At one time, we had our own dreams, that did not include making a million dollars annually or wearing the latest clothing or driving the nicest cars.  We need to wake up and realize what is most important, US. 

Until we change our value system, we will continue to be suffering consumers of their products.  We keep ourselves in slavery.  We have to meet, we have to talk, we have to build and we need the village to do it.  IT IS MORE THAN POSSIBLE!

The high gas prices will create an even wider divide amongst us.  It will soon be next to impossible to travel, believe it.  Ask yourself, if there is no gas, how will you get to Las Vegas, San Fransisco, France?  When it is time for us to move, we should collaborate with our families, friends, Village to live closer together.  I know this probably sounds out there, but think about it.  We have to come together.

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Segregation Again!!!!!!!!!!
Current mood: busy
Category: News and Politics

  It is past the time for us to take an offensive approach to the world around us, their world.  We have to create for ourselves.  We have to talk to eachother and stop talking about eachother.  We ARE our Brothers/ Sisters keeper, and they must be ours.  It's ok, and necessary for Mrs. Johnson to say something to your child, when they are doing wrong.  I would rather she did it, then the gov.
  No one is going to help us, but us.  I say we need to have segregated areas again.  We need to get together on grass roots levels (like a neighbourhood block) and meet to discuss our own local issues.  Like cleaning up our own damn streets, cuz the city is not going to obviously.  Also, policing our own knuckle-headed kids, cuz the gov WILL do that for us.  They will gladly place our young Black Men in the system, shit they are already after mine and he's only 11.  We need to start scaring them for a change, with our minds and obvious signs of a strong community.


ACT     DO     BUILD    LIVE HEALTHY     STOP SMOKING CANCER

LISTEN/ TALK TO Our Elders And Children, WE ARE THE BRIDGE

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