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April 21, 2008
Free Tibet, Be Tibet
free Tibet
free you
be Tibet
be me
and then
tell me
whom to hate
July 2001, the International Olympic Committee votes to make Beijing ground zero for the 2008 Summer Games.
January 10, 2008, I'm cascading amidst the prayer flags in Upper Dharamsala, McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama's India based government-in-exile.
March 14, 2008, I'm back in the addiction riddled States, Tibetan's willing to take blows as the world's eyes turn to Lhasa.
April 9, 2008, the Olympic torch builds and burns bridges all through San Francisco.
April 11, 2008, the Dalai Lama is on his way to Seattle, and squeezes in a press conference on a layover in Narita, Japan, where reminds the world how compassion works: "We are not anti-Chinese. Right from the beginning, we supported the Olympic Games."
But he also says that when it comes to protestors, no one "has the right to tell them to shut up."
Free Tibet? No doubt.
But it's about more than supporting any one campaign. More than Free Tibet: Free Palestine, Free! Free! Free Palestine! More than Free Mumia: Free All Political Prisoners. It is more than a campaign, it's about alignment. It's about that moment on the dancefloor, when you are so in sync with the music that every dancer around you can't help but to groove harder.
In what way are we all political prisoners?
I am most aligned with global struggles when I am actively aware of the ways I work to liberate my own person. In my case, liberation has everything to do with the daily fight for my life post-incest.
I've organized since I was 15, keynoted Take Back The Night's, emceed Artists Against Rape, and take note, April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. But even now, it's still hard to justify dealing with what happened to me. How do I integrate my life's personal campaign with organizing and educating communities?
It ain't easy building bridges between the false dichotomy that is implicit in Peace Corps and corporate modeled 501(c)(3) structures. This dichotomy asks us to divide into a tide of service provider vs. service consumer, organizer vs. constituency, liberator vs. liberatee, occupier versus. occupied.
But when I understand that the persons who occupied my body were also invaded in shock and awe assault, I feel that I am closer to liberation for all. Alignment with my truth allows me to be pro-me without being anti-my family, even though. The Dalai Lama is pro-Tibetan without being anti-China, even though. Even though.
free Tibet
free you
be Tibet
be me
and then
tell me
whom to hate
Roopa Singh is a political poet, an adjunct professor of international political science at Pace University and a theater instructor with South Asian Youth Action. Visit her blog, with "All the News That's Fit to Flip."
gratitude
Posted by: cambioymuerte on Apr 21, 2008 7:49 PM
thank you for this. as a survivor who also has been organizing against violence since i was 15 (and a generation 5 community response project grad), I so often feel alone in connecting my own liberation with global struggles... and particularly really being able to articulate the connection. I'm also sick and tired of the folks in the domestic and sexual violence "service provision" community talking about survivors as other instead of us. so thank you for this.