I am not in the mood for love. So I'll cut to the chase. This entry is a good hard look at who I was three years ago and who I am now as an activist. Three years ago I was like those people living in america, who identify as radicals and lefties -- people who have a deep passion for peoples' movements making things shift radically for the poor and dispossessed in pakistan.
Three years ago I moved back primarily to reacquaint myself and connect more directly with these struggles. I was not as naive or as ambitious to think I could make a difference. But I thought I could better understand things. And in better understanding things, I could figure out where to expend my energy; and not spend my life being redundant.
For this I deserve nor desire accolades. This isn't an exercise in holier than thou-ism.
I left because I found activism abroad to be sterile, dissatisfying, and ultimately riddled in paradox. When we are there, there is a sense of feeling completely connected to Pakistan I don't know why exactly. Perhaps because frequent trips, meetings with radical organizations -- peasants in Okara, and a good group of diverse urban activists-- give us that abridged, yet intense sensation of knowing the struggles. Of course this is compounded by the fact that we then offer these struggles whatever logistical, economic, and intellectual support and shows of solidarity we can from abroad. Then the heartstrings, the constant feeling and fretting when war crimes and rights violations are particularly egregious and reporting on it is criminally negligent or controlled by corporate interests.
Perhaps that feeling of being connected comes by virtue of being brown and informed in america; we are authentic in the eyes of the largely clueless, and fairly well meaning (if smelly) american left. That we are able to call out the charlatans like Vandana Shiva and Pervez by reminding people in america that they do not represent the environmentalists of India, the radicals of Pakistan. That people with access to the Western are ultimately not the voice of Pakistan (the very thought!) but simply people with access to american audiences.
We fall into a bind, perhaps, being seen as more authentic than them. That authenticity is well deserved. Leftie friends abroad have regularly offered pretty lucid analysis about the war - at times surpassing in intelligence (if I may make a sweeping generalization) what is offered as analysis by local activists and reporters, say Cyril and Beena.
But the paradox of our connectedness and authenticity lies in the fact that there is always someone below who at the heart of the fight. Someone who is a working class person, a Pashtun, a victim of war, someone who has become politicized because of his or her oppression, someone who is engaged in a a genuine struggle. What if this person had also read Fanon, Gramsci, Marx, Spivak, Eqbal, Humza Alavi, Ralph Ellison and Angela Davis, and was thus able to give a verbally stunning analysis? And if they didn't have the tools, then is it our job is to "market" that voice -- then, what is lost in translation?
What is lost in transit if we got this person to america to speak for herself? Like the liberals feminists in their "show and tell" of Mukhtaran Mai. How much did she lose in the posing and the lights - who can tell - and imagine years later feminists everywhere wondering about how a person like her could go on to become someone's second wife.
I once told an activist friend when she was planning an action in Pakistan from overseas - ground realities are very different - and she remarked how so? There is a certain incredulity.
People abroad are the intellectual capitalists of pakistan. We are much like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bloated on hormones, but no legs to stand on. We've spent our lives in hallways stale with the smell of old books. We have yet to offer our virginities to the battlefields. I had a history professor once who worked in a factory for several years after his post doc. God bless his heart, but even that's naive.
I don't want to be a hen or a virgin. I tried to be down with the struggles of immigrants and detainees in america, anti war veterans, youth of color recruited for the war - south asian working class, and survivors of dv - but I fell back into that identity wickedness of being, really, a girl from gandhi garden. My best friend from college, also a karachite, tirelessly organizing lives stolen by police brutality and sweat shop workers. It's never felt sterile to her. And me always struggling that there were at least a few hundred who could do my job (fighting for the immigrants) with more soul and cleverness.
In developing legs, I have stumbled and failed. And to me an understanding of ground realities on this cinco de mayo are vastly different from three years ago. So I say this for myself and not other activists abroad. I think they are perhaps much much better versed in the ground realities. And I say this humbly, I hope, and not sarcastically.
I tried to work with a labor research organization - and went to Sialkot - only to find the project to be an overly top down attempt to gain currency on the deplorable wage rates and working conditions of soccer ball stitchers.
I went to the beach with a group trying to prevent a Dubai size high rise on the coast- only to find that liberal elites had come to this without any sincere sense of empathy for the real victims - the indigenous fisherfolk of Pakistan.
We organized against the war - and the group disintegrated due to personal baggage and that we were never able to get the numbers. Never able to build a momentum.
I went one day to the press club and asked some youth leaders if they would like to come to our teach in and one of them asked me if I was the youth minister. I said no. And he responded -- Oh good. Can you imagine they have made a 45 year old lady a youth minister. I ignored his smses.
The the lawyers movement. What songs of love and despair we could share about that.
I take the risk of sounding like - with all this - I am now more authentic than people still living abroad - but that is not my intention. The horror.
So I was a KFC bloated chicken then and I still am. I have nothing much to offer in analysis. And I haven't even found my organizing home.
But the one thing I have learned is on-the-ground organizing is infinitely more complex. And shifting here was paradigm shifting.
Virginity is overrated. So keep slutting and slumming. Stop hoping and cheering, and exaggerating because it never is what it seems to be.
Now if someone could only pull me back into that life of Borders, starbucks, and matinees at Lowes. How can we be so stoic about the sacrifice.
The bleakness of life and activism here.
Three years ago I moved back primarily to reacquaint myself and connect more directly with these struggles. I was not as naive or as ambitious to think I could make a difference. But I thought I could better understand things. And in better understanding things, I could figure out where to expend my energy; and not spend my life being redundant.
For this I deserve nor desire accolades. This isn't an exercise in holier than thou-ism.
I left because I found activism abroad to be sterile, dissatisfying, and ultimately riddled in paradox. When we are there, there is a sense of feeling completely connected to Pakistan I don't know why exactly. Perhaps because frequent trips, meetings with radical organizations -- peasants in Okara, and a good group of diverse urban activists-- give us that abridged, yet intense sensation of knowing the struggles. Of course this is compounded by the fact that we then offer these struggles whatever logistical, economic, and intellectual support and shows of solidarity we can from abroad. Then the heartstrings, the constant feeling and fretting when war crimes and rights violations are particularly egregious and reporting on it is criminally negligent or controlled by corporate interests.
Perhaps that feeling of being connected comes by virtue of being brown and informed in america; we are authentic in the eyes of the largely clueless, and fairly well meaning (if smelly) american left. That we are able to call out the charlatans like Vandana Shiva and Pervez by reminding people in america that they do not represent the environmentalists of India, the radicals of Pakistan. That people with access to the Western are ultimately not the voice of Pakistan (the very thought!) but simply people with access to american audiences.
We fall into a bind, perhaps, being seen as more authentic than them. That authenticity is well deserved. Leftie friends abroad have regularly offered pretty lucid analysis about the war - at times surpassing in intelligence (if I may make a sweeping generalization) what is offered as analysis by local activists and reporters, say Cyril and Beena.
But the paradox of our connectedness and authenticity lies in the fact that there is always someone below who at the heart of the fight. Someone who is a working class person, a Pashtun, a victim of war, someone who has become politicized because of his or her oppression, someone who is engaged in a a genuine struggle. What if this person had also read Fanon, Gramsci, Marx, Spivak, Eqbal, Humza Alavi, Ralph Ellison and Angela Davis, and was thus able to give a verbally stunning analysis? And if they didn't have the tools, then is it our job is to "market" that voice -- then, what is lost in translation?
What is lost in transit if we got this person to america to speak for herself? Like the liberals feminists in their "show and tell" of Mukhtaran Mai. How much did she lose in the posing and the lights - who can tell - and imagine years later feminists everywhere wondering about how a person like her could go on to become someone's second wife.
I once told an activist friend when she was planning an action in Pakistan from overseas - ground realities are very different - and she remarked how so? There is a certain incredulity.
People abroad are the intellectual capitalists of pakistan. We are much like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bloated on hormones, but no legs to stand on. We've spent our lives in hallways stale with the smell of old books. We have yet to offer our virginities to the battlefields. I had a history professor once who worked in a factory for several years after his post doc. God bless his heart, but even that's naive.
I don't want to be a hen or a virgin. I tried to be down with the struggles of immigrants and detainees in america, anti war veterans, youth of color recruited for the war - south asian working class, and survivors of dv - but I fell back into that identity wickedness of being, really, a girl from gandhi garden. My best friend from college, also a karachite, tirelessly organizing lives stolen by police brutality and sweat shop workers. It's never felt sterile to her. And me always struggling that there were at least a few hundred who could do my job (fighting for the immigrants) with more soul and cleverness.
So I moved to karachi. Was I reclaiming my privilege or my roots? Or just trying to get into the thick of radicalism in the ditches. And now the three year itch. Activism and I need a counseling session.
In developing legs, I have stumbled and failed. And to me an understanding of ground realities on this cinco de mayo are vastly different from three years ago. So I say this for myself and not other activists abroad. I think they are perhaps much much better versed in the ground realities. And I say this humbly, I hope, and not sarcastically.
I tried to work with a labor research organization - and went to Sialkot - only to find the project to be an overly top down attempt to gain currency on the deplorable wage rates and working conditions of soccer ball stitchers.
I went to the beach with a group trying to prevent a Dubai size high rise on the coast- only to find that liberal elites had come to this without any sincere sense of empathy for the real victims - the indigenous fisherfolk of Pakistan.
We organized against the war - and the group disintegrated due to personal baggage and that we were never able to get the numbers. Never able to build a momentum.
I went one day to the press club and asked some youth leaders if they would like to come to our teach in and one of them asked me if I was the youth minister. I said no. And he responded -- Oh good. Can you imagine they have made a 45 year old lady a youth minister. I ignored his smses.
The the lawyers movement. What songs of love and despair we could share about that.
A group that apparently represents the working class. How transformational can it be when two or three people are propelled to the forefront -- when this group does not believe in empowering its own membership base.
So I was a KFC bloated chicken then and I still am. I have nothing much to offer in analysis. And I haven't even found my organizing home.
But the one thing I have learned is on-the-ground organizing is infinitely more complex. And shifting here was paradigm shifting.
Virginity is overrated. So keep slutting and slumming. Stop hoping and cheering, and exaggerating because it never is what it seems to be.
Now if someone could only pull me back into that life of Borders, starbucks, and matinees at Lowes. How can we be so stoic about the sacrifice.
The bleakness of life and activism here.
2 comments:
Your post reminds one of ME peace activist Susan Nathan – the author of “The other side of Israel”. She was a Zionist, took Israeli citizenship (or nationality, there’s some difference between the two that I don’t really understand) in her 50s, lived in a Jewish part of Israel and, like all Zionists, firmly believed in the foundation of the state of Israel – thinking Palestine was a land without a people. But when she slowly realised that she was sitting on stolen land, she went on to live in an Arab neighbourhood. She endured all the miseries that befall an Arab living in Israel. She lived with an Arab family and researched and penned the book that describes how Israel treats its non-Jewish residents.
This is what one thinks real activism is. The real leftie who abandons her home, family, class, comforts and dedicate herself to the cause she thinks is close to her heart. It’s extremely difficult. Impossible for me, I’d say. But such examples of total commitment and absolute devotion make one understand the expectations that the word ‘activist’ generate.
You're awesome. Someday, I will write like the way you do. Blatant yet subtle, and totally spot on.
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