Staceyann Chin, Round 2: Open Letter

...to gay men, dykes, transsexuals, blacks, women, et al.

S.C. doesn't immediately give away how her letter to a gay group relates to the impeachment of the president. She takes her time, reading in measured breaths, appalled that gay women have gone from happily out, in the Ellen era, to shunning the word "lesbian" for more neutral, less politically-identifiable terms today, only a decade or so later. S.C. is pissed. Something has changed, and she's not exactly sure why, and I'm not exactly sure what's changed, but I'm fairly sure I agree with S.C.'s views about it.

Here's my best attempt to decode the calmer portions of her letter:

Gay men used to be united in the struggle against AIDS - everywhere. They supported young black women in other countries who are routinely raped our forced into prostitution. Now those same well-to-do gay men don't seem to care as much. AIDS isn't a huge epidemic in America anymore, at least not for white men, so the issue is over and AIDS will not addressed elsewhere.

[Her tone changes; her face bunches up. This is just an example of something. A general apathy. A malaise with the Left, the enervated, vitiated, minority-lip-servicing-but-really-who-cares-because-let's-face-it, we're-doing-fine Left...]

The less calm regions of Chin's thoughts would look like night in Alaska if you painted them. They are black and white, and cold, cold, cold...

Chin, like a young Bell Hooks, excoriates all of us who do not daily involve ourselves in the plights of the poor and abused and mistrusted, here and abroad, gay and straight and black and whatever. Her point is that struggles are interconnected, and deadly apathy eventually circles back home.

I.e., we cannot stand by and say, "this isn't my struggle; I'm a [fill in identity-group]." Bush and Cheney's crimes effect not only all U.S. citizens and noncitizens, but all people of the world. If this time the boy in the small town dies for the cause of his oil, next time it could be you, for some evil cause you never dreamed of.

Chilling stuff - watch her do it - she twists your own brain on itself, making you ask, "What have I done to help anyone? Am I one of the imperialists (I can't be!)?" But if we all band together...? Incantation that stuns, prepares for the revelations ahead (the proceedings of the impeachment - what to do).

Hard to write in the dark; hard to finish this post; I'm not sure how else to talk about Chin's work but in these immediate impressions. Perhaps a later post will clarify where I think her cynicism and boundless energy and moral laser-guidance can/will take us.

Anyway, I won't yak more about it when you can watch her yourself here. (The audio seems to cut out every few seconds - is that just me?)