New Clear Vision

Choreographing the Father-Son Dance

by Rob Okun

Rain was gently falling overhead; clouds obscured the stars. I was safe and dry in my son Jonah’s tent. I turned off the flashlight and dozed. I was sleeping a parent’s weekend sleep — one ear open waiting for his safe return. Old habits die hard; I needn’t have been so vigilant. He had only gone in search of cell service to call his girlfriend to say goodnight; he was years past high school curfews.

Jonah is our youngest and had recently finished college. As a graduation present we were spending the weekend at a writing workshop at a conference center and camp we both have a long history with and deeply love. We hadn’t done something like this for some time — just the two of us going away for a few days — so the gift was as much for me as for him. (more…)

Fighting for Reproductive Justice for Women in Prison

by Tina Reynolds and Victoria Law

“I never thought of advocating outside of prison. I just wanted to have some semblance of a normal life once I was released,” stated Tina Reynolds, a mother and formerly incarcerated woman. Then she gave birth to her son while in prison for a parole violation:

“When I went into labor, my water broke. The van came to pick me up, I was shackled. Once I was in the van, I was handcuffed. I was taken to the hospital. The handcuffs were taken off, but the shackles weren’t. I walked to the wheelchair that they brought over to me and I sat in the wheelchair with shackles on me. They re-handcuffed me once I was in the wheelchair and took me up to the floor where women had their children.

“When I got there, I was handcuffed with one hand. At the last minute, before I gave birth, I was unshackled so that my feet were free. Then after I gave birth to him, the shackles went back on and the handcuffs stayed on while I held my son on my chest.” (more…)

Cultural Recuperation and the Case of Southern Italy

by Diane Lefer

Last month I learned about a genocide I had never known of before. It happened not in an isolated unknown part of the world, but in Southern Italy, the ancestral home of members of my own family. Even more shocking to me, Southern Italians themselves are only now beginning to learn the facts of this ethnic cleansing, in large part thanks to the books of Pino Aprile, journalist and Southerner. Terroni: All That Has Been Done to Ensure That The Italians of The South Became “Southerners” had an electrifying effect on my friend Enzo Fina who comes from Lecce, in the heel of Italy’s boot. Enzo is half of the duo Musicàntica, the other half being Roberto Catalano, ethnomusicologist from Sicily. Based in Southern California, they keep the music and traditions of Southern Italy alive.

“You grow up knowing there’s something that isn’t right,” Roberto told me.

“You have feelings, even if unconscious,” said Enzo. (more…)

To Government Officials, Law Enforcement Employees, people of the University of California,  and Occupy the Farm community — and to all humanity in general…

by Pancho Ramos-Stierle

That we live now in an economy and society that are not sustainable is not the fault only of governments, administrations of public institutions, and corporations armed with political power, heavy equipment and police enforcement.

We all are implicated. 

We all, in the course of our daily (economic, educational, and social) life, consent to it, whether or not we approve of it. This is because of the increasing abstraction and unconsciousness of our connection to our economic sources in the land, the land-communities, the land-use economies, and the way we learn.

First, I would like to offer a set of questions, intended to facilitate the process of “farming truth and love,” and specifically in relation to recent events around the Occupy the Farm movement and its experience with UC-Berkeley: (more…)

Promoting Personal and Communal Responsibility

by Windy Cooler

“Bite this stick,” the doctor might have said as we birthed our children a hundred years ago. The grunting,  whimpering, sobbing, pleading, sweating, stinking, bleeding nudity of motherhood channeled into that sweet gag, silent, as the towels mount to soak up all of the  nasty animal we are as we labor with the promise of life. Bite this stick.

To date, my most popular blog entry (Of Mice and Moms), is one in which I refuse the bite the stick. It is  vaguely about Mother’s Day and it is, honestly, the kind of screaming that does not produce life. Birth is a channeling of the pain, down, not up into the air,  pushing through it, sinking, a kind of focus that for all the animal smell, is what is truly animal. But the response from other mothers, and even fathers,  people in general, to my scream was huge.  I was a little taken aback. We are angry. We are sad. (more…)

Let’s Get on With Our Lives…

by Robert C. Koehler

Nothing fills an emotional void quite like the piercing drone of bagpipes. No matter the kids were rolling their eyeballs as they shuffled two-by-two into the stifling field house — this was profound, and I was on the verge of tears.

Oh, there she is. My daughter. Gulp. Eighteen years old. A college student. I stifled the impulse to wave and embarrass her still further. We had fleeting eye contact, then she turned to the business of finding her seat, one of almost 500 reluctant stars of this event.

I sympathized with their reluctance. Ceremony is about the past, not the future; and the past, represented by a thousand graying moms and dads looking on from the bleachers, wasn’t quite ready to let them go. It had them in its loving tangle. They were making the best of it.

I knew how self-conscious I would have been. All weekend I’d been reliving my own undergraduate career. The previous night, after arriving in St. Paul — a seven-hour trek from Chicago — we’d gone to dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and I couldn’t shut up about the old days, and the wonder that I had survived them. (more…)

Peace and Justice Activists, Assemble!

by Matt Meyer

It has been one of those life-affirming weeks. When something that has been a part of you for decades finally gets the attention and admiration you’ve felt it has deserved all along, a special pride is evoked; you can now pass it coolly and smoothly on to your own children and to the next generation. I’m speaking, of course, of the new, mainstream Hollywood blockbuster: the Avengers.

OK, by now the reader may be wondering if they are viewing the correct website, where movie reviews of major new releases, especially apparently militaristic ones, are not commonly lauded. Allow me to explain, or rather — to confess. Since about age eight, now more than forty years ago, I have been a more-than-avid Avengers fan-boy. At first, it was just a simple reader’s favorite, one of many comic books which sparked my imagination at a young age. As I grew older, however, and the others were swept aside and replaced by passionate interests in music, and then my grown-up commitment to the movements for social change, the Avengers remained a faithful reminder of fun things past and maybe possible; I’d take my vacations each August finding a comic book shop and buying the past years’ worth of stories, catching up on old friends. When I landed my first substantial paycheck, one of my first acts (after paying numerous bills!) was to go to a local comic convention and fill in the “blanks” of my still-preserved Avengers collection — including the rare and wonderful “first issue.” (more…)