painful political positionalities
my head is swimming with the politics of place, privileged institutions and power-hungry people, well-meaning yet fully uninformed groups attempting to supply the people with broken systems and half-composed dreams, imposing food systems pathways that further marginalize the people they call “they,” the unnamed and faceless Other, further subalterned at the mercy of the powers that be… because of the scurry to draw down millions of dollars in economic stimulus money from the almighty obama packages and put their names on the map, and of course supply ‘programs’ to the ‘marginalized’ communities of our area and build a regional food system that creates dependency on urban metropoles and money and infrastructure they call sustainable without involving community members who will receive the benefits of services in the very processes that create those services, local authority figures from the institutions of higher education and service state agencies and non-profits are wondering why we aren’t supplying token ‘colonias people’ at the table. what exactly are they asking for? let’s break it down. take two steps back.
i am tasked with targeting ‘colonia people’ (i’m sorry, i can’t get over this disconnected and disenfranchising terminology to save my life) to bring to the meeting with city reps, professors, and service agencies who are creating local food systems pathways to serve the needy and marginalized communities of southern new mexico. the other ‘marginalized’ groups at the table? the homeless community where a community garden and CSA is being built and the senior citizens… pause for thought… so the ‘colonias people’ add that extra benefit of seeing the brown skinned dispossessed puppets around the board room table… and i would be invested in doing that why? so i asked one of the powers that be who exactly these ‘colonias people’ are that they would like to target for this stage presentation, and of course, i got no answer, because there is no specific name and no specific face, just a general understanding that our mexican-national and mexican immigrant ambiguous populations are underserved. okay. so what would ‘they’ get? apparently they would get ‘transported’ 30+ miles from their own communities, their own families, on bus systems from their homes up to the urban metropole to receive trainings and programming of services… still i ask, what would they get? apparently now, at this point, i’m just being caustic and difficult with my questioning because i receive a very defensive and angry response to my innocent (okay, not so innocent) line of questions and then gingerly point out how this system seems to continue the cycle of breaking the family apart, transport already mobile communities even further into a power process that leaves them without connection to the spaces where they live, work, play, learn and worship, without a land or infrastructure base, with childcare dilemmas, and further fear of being stopped and harassed by border patrol who have commenced with a system of marshall law in our lands. so why am i resistant to this painful political positionality? because i felt personally attacked for refusing to take part in this sustainable endeavor, for forwarding instead a local, community based agenda whereby land and water is used within the colonia communities themselves to promote a regional food network and sustainable local economy where ‘people’ won’t have to travel long distances to procure safe, healthy, local foods and services, where one can remain at ‘home’ and partake in the same access to services and infrastructure that affluent communities take for granted. place my neck upon the chopping block.
mood: angry
