Archive for the 'friends' Category

That’s Why I’m Voting for Alison Duncan…

… for lieutenant governor of New York.

Also, because she got me on TV. Heh.

But seriously – yes, I’m voting for Alison Duncan (and, in turn, Malachy McCourt, since you vote for the ticket, not the individual candidates.) And you should, too! And not only because they have a solid, truly progressive platform, and not only because I can personally vouch for Alison and say that a whole lot of people who never get paid much mind in Albany will get paid a whole lot of mind if she’s there.

I think it’s also important to vote for Alison and Malachy because we really need to break out of the two-party system. Especially when the two parties always look so damn similar. And a good way to do this is to get third parties, like the Green Party, a line on the ballot, so that their candidates actually show up as an option for people’s votes. If Alison and Malachy get 50,000 votes, then they’ll get ballot status back again.

And for voters who’d normally be more inclined to vote for Spitzer – he’s clearly a shoo-in (or is it shoe in? who knows), so if you agree with me that we need more parties and more options, why don’t you make your vote do some heavy lifting? 50,000 isn’t much, but it’s the kind of number where every vote truly counts.

So, head into that voting booth, look for Row F, and pull that lever for truly progressive, independent candidates. Pull that lever to make a clear statement about the need to break out of the stale and stagnant two-party system. And pull that lever for someone who’s just a right-on person and who I know would do a brilliant job. Yes, that’s an official endorsement – AngryBrownButch endorses Alison Duncan for Lieutenant Governor of New York! Hehe.

(ps When we speak about “our community” in the commercial above, it’s always about the LGBT community. it was a commercial for Logo.)

I have smart friends.

Many of them, in fact. Here’s some recent words from two of them.

My friend Dean writes about polyamory in “For Lovers and Fighters” on Make. This article really resonated with me, as a currently poly person, in so many ways. In it, he touches on many things: “how interrogating the limits of monogamy fits into [his] queer, trans, feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-oppression politics,” how we treat people we’re dating or in a romantic relationship with vs. how we treat our friends (and how we might do well to treat our friends more like our dates and our dates more like our friends, sometimes), and how polyamory is emergent in communities that question and break gender rules and norm. He also talks about the negative aspects of the relative popularity of polyamory in some communities – how sometimes polyamory is seen as more “radical” and right on, while monogamy is seen as a throwback; how poly people can hold themselves up to stringent and unrealistic standards of behavior, with any jealousy or insecurity yielding feelins of shame and inadequacy. Dean writes:

It seems like the best answer to all of this is to move forward as we do in the rest of our activism, carefully and slowly, based on our clearest principles, with trust and a willingness to make mistakes. The difficulty of having open relationships should not be a reason not to try it, but it should be a reason not to create new punishing norms in our communities or in our own minds. We’ve done difficult things before. We struggle with internalized oppressions, we chose to live our lives in ways that our families often tell us are impossible, idealistic or dangerous, and we get joy from creatively resisting the limits of our culture and political system that are both external and part of our own minds.

In a post entitled “The internet ate my subculture,” Anne writes about whether something has happened in recent years to “completely destroy american public culture,” and whether that something might be the internet. She writes:

Is it totally trite to blame MySpace? Or Friendster? Or hell, livejournal? The timing is right. They keep everyone “connected” without having to, y’know, do anything together except catechise our daily living and fuck. Memoirs are now the best-selling genre of new book. Coincidence? We can get all the kudos and sexiness we need without ever leaving the house, without ever extending ourselves beyond our individual choices of which job, which identity, which sound card, which sex act we prefer. Narrativize it, publish it, let the appreciative comments pour in…

Alison Duncan for Lieutenant Governor

My good friend Alison Duncan is running for Lieutenant Governor of New York on the Green Party ticket. She’ll be keeping a campaign blog, which I encourage you all to check out. I have to admit that I know nothing about the other candidates for the post, including Senator David Paterson, the NY State Senator, a person of color, who is Elliot Spitzer’s running mate. But I do know Alison, and I know that she’d be a superb candidate with lots of excellent ideas and her priorities in the right places. And I’m also a strong supporter of third (and fourth and fifth and tenth) party politics, so it’s kind of like a two-fer deal. Check her out!