Gender Justice Series. Gender is shifting in the U.S., spawning deep soul searching, fear, and backlash – as well as new opportunities for social transformation. In our Gender Justice series Let’s Talk will explore how gender is woven together with other social identities such as race and class, and how a liberative approach to gender can inform and strengthen a wide range of social movements.

I am a queer Chicana building an alliance with boys and men of color.

The connections between who I am and who I work with may not seem obvious to you or to many people, including those launching My Brother’s Keeper, President Obama’s new initiative aimed at empowering boys and young men of color. In fact, the connections weren’t even completely clear to me just three years ago.

Three years ago I was pregnant and bombarded with the question, “What do you want – a boy or a girl?”  “A healthy baby,” I would answer.

A month into my second trimester I had a vivid dream, my wise curandera Tereza rubbed my swollen belly and gave me a consejo to take care of the little girl inside of me. I woke up from that dream thinking about how I would raise this child with the least amount of pink and dolls, and with the greatest amount of spunk and spirit.

Weeks later at the ultrasound that would confirm the sex of our baby, I looked at my partner with disbelief as the technician ceremoniously announced that we were having a boy. I was incredulous. Over and over I asked the technician to check again. In the end my partner and I were sent home with an ultrasound picture with an arrow pointing to our son’s anatomy and capitalized letters that read BOY!!!

The awesome responsibility of raising a boy of color weighed on me heavily. Having grown up with two brothers in a predominantly people of color community, I am painfully and intimately familiar with the low expectations, school tracking, and racial profiling boys and men of color are subjected to. I know that youth and men of color are seen as expendable by systems that are stacked against them.

Unconsciously I decided that the best way of protecting my yet unborn child was to keep him inside of me for as long as I could. I felt that he would be safer inside of me. Because how could I possibly protect him from the outside world? I was in denial about birthing him. Fortunately for me, I was in the care of an experienced and intuitive midwife, Eva, who saw right through my fright. At our 39th week visit, Eva and my partner gently confronted me and started chipping away at my fears. I was flooded with emotion, realizing that my role was to guide this baby into, and in, this world.

My son was born on his due date, one ounce shy of nine pounds. My fears of the world around him have not disappeared but have been abated by the network of people and organizations engaged in Boys and Men of Color (BMOC) work in local communities and through statewide initiatives funded by The California Endowment.

As a queer mami of color, my faith in a better world is restored through this work as I hear, witness, and engage in challenging yet healthy struggles about the boys of color who are traditionally left out of the conversation – queer identified and transgender boys of color. It’s undeniable that outcomes for boys and men of color are dire when it comes to higher education, employment, health, and life expectancy. These issues are compounded when we talk about queer and transgender boys and men of color.

In our work with BMOC we have found that focusing on gender and sexuality is crucial for empowering men of color. For example, the experiences of youth leaders in the Young Men’s Empowerment Program (YMEP) at the Long Beach-based Khmer Girls in Action (KGA) illustrate the power of creating safe spaces to address gender identity and sexuality with young men of color. In the words of Seng So, Young Men’s Empowerment Coordinator at KGA and a leader in the Brothers Sons Selves coalition in Los Angeles County,

YMEP serves as a safe space where young Southeast Asian men share in collective knowledge, growth, and transformation…Through YMEP we are redefining the markers of manhood, reshaping masculinity and the role that we play in being allies to our sisters and young women who are fighting to dismantle patriarchy.

Seng So describes how the empowerment of young men has allowed some to come out to their friends, family, and community – serving as leaders and advocates of LGBTQ rights in the process. Through YMEP young men are developing into effective organizers in their local communities, fighting for wellness centers and restorative discipline practices in their schools.

As Seng So’s story illustrates, focusing on gender means broadening the definition of “what a man is,” how masculinity is defined, enforced in our families, cultures, and society. In statewide gatherings and curriculum for BMOC, participants explore and challenge limiting concepts of what a man looks like. This exploration goes beyond breaking down familiar stereotypes to challenging the gender binary and widening the lens to look at the intersections of gender and sexuality.

Ultimately, a focus on gender means an inclusive way of looking at issues that affect all of us. How do we uplift our black and brown, young people of color without leaving out part of who they are – gender identity and sexuality? How do we raise our children to express their full humanity and all of who they are — for gender to support that expression — not be a prison, an expectation, a limitation, a target for state violence, a purveyor of unearned privilege and power.

Understanding and exploring gender is important for all men and boys as an essential part of their development and empowerment. Understanding and exploring gender is necessary for any program or initiative because otherwise we end up excluding and discriminating and traumatizing those who don’t fit into the established boxes, and reinforcing oppression for all.

My hope is that my son will grow to become a kind, thoughtful, community oriented human being: someone who believes in inclusion, who will struggle to find another way, a third way, that transcends the “either-or” options to which we’ve limited ourselves.

Let’s have this conversation as if the lives of all boys of color are on the line, because they are. Just like the lives of girls of color are on the line. Let’s find another way, a third way, to include boys of color in all of their wholeness.

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Feature photo: © iStockphoto.com/digitalskllet

“Capoeira é defesa, ataque, a ginga de corpo, e a malandragem.”
“Capoeira is defense, attack, the sway of the body, and deception.”
—Traditional capoeira song

Every organizer knows that awful moment, that slow stomach-churning realization that your campaign is about to hit a dead end.

I had that moment recently in my work with a coalition of local youth organizations fighting for Restorative Justice in public schools.  Unlike harsh and ineffective “zero tolerance” policies, Restorative Justice programs create a way for those who have committed harm to dialogue with those who have been harmed, to understand what happened, agree on a remedy, and build relationships that reduce the possibility of future harm.  Deep in our bones we wanted Restorative Justice and an end to the disciplinary policies that push out large numbers of African American, Latino, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander students every year.

Our formula seemed strong: expose incriminating school district data in a forum that would also feature students and parents giving powerful testimony from their personal experience.  But pretty quickly we discovered that we had no leverage. None of the school board members were willing to come to the forum. The Superintendent boldly asserted that the issue of discipline reform and our campaign proposals were “dead on arrival.”

We had to make a choice: stick with the moves we knew and escalate our current strategy (e.g., march on the school district headquarters) – or bust out some brand new moves.

We went for the new moves, and won a victory that – multiplied in communities across the country – could deal a serious blow to the school-to-prison pipeline.

The funny thing is, the moves we made weren’t new at all. They were moves that any capoeirista would recognize, moves that echoed the powerful liberatory cultural practice that grew out of the struggles of enslaved Africans and African descendants in Brazil.

Moves that I’ve been learning for eight years now.

Let me start from the beginning: I’ve been a consistent student of the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira since 2005, when I joined the Omulu Capoeira group in search of a sense of community after moving from Chicago to the often isolating, urban sprawl of greater Los Angeles. As the only known martial art to emerge from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the European conquest of the Western Hemisphere, capoeira is now a global phenomenon. Capoeira is a cultural expression of survival and resistance with deep African roots grounded in a holistic conception of body, mind, and spirit – one much less fragmented than dominant Western concepts of the three as separate elements.

As a “total body workout,” capoeira demands rigorous training and uses movements that stretch the boundaries of human physicality. The improvised game of capoeira – played in a circle known as the roda in Portuguese – demands swift thinking and a strategy akin to chess, but moving at “100 miles per hour.” The songs and rhythms that serve as the heartbeat and energy for capoeira give the art form a distinctly spiritual foundation.

So what does capoeira have to do with social justice organizing?

While eight years is a relatively short time to practice capoeira, I’m starting to glean broader life lessons from the art.

Take the key campaign moment I mentioned, when the Superintendent of Schools had basically decided to boycott our long-planned community forum.  Our gut reaction was to escalate our tactics and organize a large rally outside the school board meeting.

Instead, we took some time to develop a more nuanced response, inspired, in part, by my experience with capoeira. We knew the school district practices a “top-down / bottom-up” approach to policy and administration. The Superintendent and Board set broad policies and give individual principals and schools lots of leeway in how to implement them.  We also knew several mid-level district administrators were open to the idea of Restorative Justice and concerned with the overuse of suspensions. Over the summer, our youth leaders and adult organizers met with these administrators to begin to develop a relationship, share students’ stories, and open a dialogue about common concerns. One meeting included an ally teacher who shared very positive experiences with the Restorative Justice pilot program at her school. We reviewed the School Board’s current policy on student discipline and shared our ideas for revisions.  Our campaign leaders worked with the teachers’ union and principals to promote Restorative Justice. Supportive City Council members helped us to draft a city resolution urging the district to support alternatives to suspension.

Looking back through a capoeira lens, I can name three key ways that we shifted our approach – three shifts that lay at the heart of our 2013 campaign win.

1 Turn Reaction Into Response

When I first began practicing capoeira, I would often react to attacks with an unthinking reflex, rather than respond to them. I would often flinch and barely escape a kick flying towards my head. As I’ve progressed in my capoeira skills, I now try to be much more responsive to attacks during games in the roda.  My responses are quick but thoughtful defensive or evasive moves that set me up for counterattack.  Responding in capoeira requires an immediate synthesis of thought and physical action.

In our original campaign plans we were set to throw aggressive, straight kicks – such as the martelo or “hammer” kick – at the head of a much larger, more experienced opponent.  Of course, we could have played the game that way, but it wouldn’t have been very wise. In the roda, this approach would have left us with hurt pride or hurt bodies or both.  Instead we regrouped and figured out a response to our target’s stubbornness.

2 Make Flexible Moves

Capoeira requires a great deal of physical and mental flexibility.  The best capoeiristas have an inspiring ability to change movements in mid-course all while maintaining a beautiful “flow” to their game. They almost instinctively choose from the capoeira “toolbox” of many different physical movements to lead or respond to the flow of the game in the roda. This flexibility connects to another concept of capoeira practice and philosophy: the ability to “fake out” your opponent and make him or her react to a move that you’re not actually going to use.

Flexibility is critically important in social justice organizing, as the landscape of power and policies is constantly shifting. Organizers and leaders must exercise a flexible strategy in order to take advantage of emerging policy opportunities or changing relationships between our institutional targets, opposition, and allies.

The shift in our campaign strategy demonstrated this flexibility. Taking the time to build relationships with district folks on the “ground level” and to surface shared values was akin to a capoeira game played on the “floor” that builds a good “flow” with your opponent. These weren’t the moves of surrender, but rather evasive and defensive moves that set us up for more proactive tactics. They were similar to the capoeira-like takedown moves and sweeps that allow a smaller or less physically strong capoeirista to bring down an opponent from the floor. While we didn’t actually use the famous capoeira tesoura – the scissors move you do with your hands down and legs up — building relationships with mid-level managers, the teachers’ union, and principals played to the district’s “top-down / bottom-up” approach.

3 Analyze With Cunning

Perhaps the most important shift in strategy was our attempt to understand the self-interest and motivation of the Superintendent and the district. One of the preeminent figures in capoeira lore is the malandro, which roughly translates to “trickster” or “street hustler.”  Similar to the malandro described in Nestor Capoeira’s book, Capoeira: Roots of the Dance-Fight-Game, we capitalized on our “ability to analyze people and situations with…cunning.”

The ability to feign physical movements, to put on an attitude or expression that will draw your opponent into a set-up for an attack or takedown is a quintessential skill of high-level capoeiristas and mestres (masters). As a relative novice in the decades-long trajectory of capoeira training, this skill is the hardest for me to grasp. But it has probably influenced my thinking about social justice organizing campaign strategy more than any other.

The Brazilian-Portuguese word malandragem, best describes this skill. Malandragem doesn’t easily translate into English. In his book, Nestor Capoeira offers this explanation:

…malandragem is one of the basic tenets in the philosophy of capoeira and is similar to the cunning of the Hunter (Oxóssi)… Closer to guerrilla warfare than the way of fighting of the traditional army. Closer to the way someone who is oppressed fights than do those in power… The Malandro works through his [or her] intelligence, seduction, charm, and a deep intuitive knowledge of life and human psychology.

Using this psychological “hustle,” we knew the Superintendent and district were interested in being leaders among urban school districts, especially in the areas of accountability, closing the achievement gap, and equity. We worked with the State Assembly’s Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color to plan a policy hearing about California’s new school accountability standards. One of these standards requires districts to address discipline issues, including the disproportionate suspension of student subgroups. In order to build a bridge with the Superintendent, we invited him to be a keynote speaker at the hearing. It provided an opportunity for him to highlight the ways the district is playing a leading role in new accountability measures and improving outcomes for students in need, especially boys and young men of color.

The Superintendent accepted the invitation, which allowed us to meet with him to review the agenda and plans for the hearing. In reality, our “hustle” wasn’t mean-spirited at all. Collaborating with the Superintendent opened up new opportunities for dialogue and relationship building.  Paying attention to the Superintendent’s perspective allowed us to “see” him in a different light, an awareness that’s critical to the call-and-response of great capoeira games.

To our surprise, at the end of a recent delegation meeting, the Superintendent informed us that the district would introduce a resolution on discipline policies and practices at the School Board meeting the following week. Poised to respond to the Superintendent’s move, the coalition mobilized 200 youth, parents, and community members for an energetic and positive rally outside the School Board. More than fifty campaign members attended the Board meeting inside to support the passage of the resolution.  A slew of student and parent speakers shared their perspectives and support during public comment.

Our capoeira-inspired strategy paid off.  The Board voted to unanimously pass a resolution that “urges careful monitoring… to prevent… a disproportionate share of suspensions from occurring at a given campus or within demographic subgroups of students” and “urges schools to build upon existing efforts to provide alternatives to suspension or expulsion, using multiple strategies…” including restorative practices.  While the resolution is not everything the campaign wanted to see, it provides a strong basis for students and parents to advance alternatives to suspension and Restorative Justice on campuses across the district.

Our win was certainly helped by the “top-down” pressure of new state and federal accountability requirements to address discipline and suspensions.  And our bottom-up pressure as a youth-led campaign was key, turning reaction into response, being flexible in our moves, and practicing our own strategy of malandragem.

Now if I could just get my own capoeira skills to progress that quickly!

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Feature photo: Meia Lua de Frente – Photo by Alonzo Gonzalez

Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently unrelated, yet are experienced as occurring together in a meaningful manner  —Wikipedia

Twenty years ago I was sitting at the Alex Haley farm with an amazing groups of young activists and veteran organizers from this country’s past freedom struggles.  We were learning about how the conservative movement had organized and built a web of infrastructure to turn back the victories of the movements of the 60’s and 70’s and infuse fear — and their values – into  our governing institutions from every local school board to the Supreme Court.  Theirs was a vision and strategy for a movement united across issues, with the power to “turn back the clock.”

I left that meeting clear that the only way to defeat a unified conservative movement was to build a unified progressive movement with the leadership of those most impacted and marginalized in our society at the center and at the forefront.

I left the meeting to return to my work as a regional organizer for the Black Student Leadership Network and did what everyone else did:

I went back to my job.

Like most of us, my job was not to build a progressive movement. My job was to train and organize young African American and Latino organizers working for justice in our communities. Was my job a piece of the puzzle? Yes. But it was only a piece. Who, I wondered, was helping to connect the pieces together?

This year, in the strongest way since I started asking that question, I feel I am seeing movement unity becoming a reality. In the past year I’ve seen:

• The U.S. women’s movement organizing to defend and advance the rights of new Americans and migrants for whom this country is home.

• The AFL-CIO moving to affiliate with civil rights, economic justice, and environmental organizations in ways that make clear there can be no workers rights without racial justice and immigrant rights – and no viable economy without balance with the natural word. If brought to life in local communities, the agenda laid out at the recent national convention would be a huge step in weaving together the strongest strands of our progressive fabric.

• Growing synergy and collaboration between the food movement and the immigrant rights movement, with groups like the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance putting forth a bold and historic position that “the principles of food sovereignty would be served by policies that honor the humanity of all workers, including the unconditional right to migrate as enshrined in the International Declaration of Human Rights, the right to organize, and the right to defend and implement economic policies that allow for people to prosper and stay in their home communities, including a democratic and sovereign control of local agricultural and food markets and local agricultural policies.”

Perhaps most exciting for me personally has been the growing relationship between the climate justice movement and the new economy movement.  While there have been “blue green alliances” and talk about a “green economy” before, things feels like they’re really getting serious now.

As I’ve learned from my friends in the Climate Justice Alliance, our democracy and our ecology are totally linked: there can be no solution to the economic crisis without a solution to the environmental crisis. And neither can be solved without expanding and advancing real democracy and human rights. In fact, expanding democracy is the engine of the economic and ecological change the climate justice movement is calling for.

Exciting conversations are happening between the climate justice movement and the new economy movement trying to build living and vibrant alternatives to our tired and dysfunctional economy.

Just this past month climate justice history was made when over 60 climate and new labor groups sent an open letter to the AFL-CIO at their national convention, applauding traditional labor for taking important steps toward climate justice — and laying out steps that need to be taken to turn those steps into action that produces results for workers and the environment. Among the groups signing on to the letter were: Labor Network for Sustainability, Union of Commercial Oystermen of Texas, Southwest Workers Union, and Vermont Workers Center.

Historic convergences are happening, as well as a push to go even further.

Maybe what we’re seeing can even go beyond unity, to something like synchronicity, a big word that tries to capture convergence that’s deeper and more meaningful than we’ve ever imagined

I am not the only one feeling it or seeing it. MSC family member Billy Wimsat calls it a “super movement.” Our friends N’tanya and Steve who wrote the Ear to the Ground report documenting conversations with hundreds of activists around the country are seeing the emergence of “a movement of movements.”

Whatever we call it, I can feel the beat and the rhythm getting stronger as we shake the world and begin to remake it.

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Feature photo: Union members and climate justice activists march together in Richmond, CA. Photo: Brooke Anderson.