Speaker 1:
[speaking Spanish 00:00:01].
Speaker 2:
[speaking Spanish 00:00:03].
Allan Campbell:
You're listening to People United, the show in solidarity with people of the world. I'm Alan Campbell. This week, People United talks about the conference, Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender and Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas, a project of the [Embry 00:00:22] women's human rights initiative of the center for women's and gender studies at the University of Texas in Austin. The Rethinking Power and Resistance conference seeks to put community organizers and activist scholars in dialogue about new movement strategies for gender justice. Among the participating organizations of the conference are the Transgender Jail Project, Conspire Theatre, and the Polochic Evictions Counteraction.
Allan Campbell:
Open to the public, the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference is being held Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th, 2012 at the Mexican American cultural center, 600 River Street here in Austin, Texas, except for that Saturday's closing event, Mama Said Knock You Out! 2; a hip hop benefit for the Mamas of Color Rising, which is taking place at The Collective, 2015 East Riverside drive.
Allan Campbell:
A full schedule can be found at powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com. I spoke with five of the conference organizers at the radio station on Sunday, September 23rd, 2012. You're listening to KOOP Radio. To talk about the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference are my guests, Kristen Hogan has been coordinating the development of this conference over the past two years. She is project director of the Embrey Women's Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Women's and Gender Studies on the Austin campus of the University of Texas, where she also serves as the center's associate director and graduate advisor. Kristen Hogan, welcome to KOOP radio.
Kristen Hogan:
Thanks for having us.
Allan Campbell:
Michelle Mott received her master's at the aforementioned center for women's and gender studies, and is now pursuing doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an ally organizer with allgo, as well as active with La Semilla Childcare Collective. She and Kristen Hogan together have been coordinating logistics of the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference. Michelle Mott, welcome to KOOP radio.
Michelle Mott:
Hi, Allan. Thank you.
Allan Campbell:
And heavy listeners to KOOP radio know T-Kay Sangwand as DJ T-Kay on the station's program, Hip Hop Hooray, where she alternates Sundays with Ms. Manners. She is also human rights activists at the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. At the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference, she is helping coordinate the women in hip hop round table being held Friday, October 5th from 5:30 to 7:00, as well as DJing the closing event, Mama Said Knock You Out! 2; a benefit for Mamas of Color Rising that kicks off Saturday, October 6th at 9:00 PM, and then goes until two, the following morning. T-Kay, welcome to People United.
T-Kay:
Thanks, Allan, for having me on People United. And I do want to make a quick addition to my introduction. I am not only human rights activist, but human rights archivist at the Benson Latin American Collection.
Allan Campbell:
And conscientious listeners to People United know Rocío Villalobos as organizer with a Hutto Visitation Project. She is also program coordinator at the multicultural engagement center at the University of Texas at Austin as well as an ally organizer with Mamas of Color rising. At the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference, she is working with T-Kay on the Friday, October 5th, women in hip hop round table, and also the Saturday, October 6th, Mama Said Knock You Out! 2 event. She is also coordinating housing and transportation. Rocío, welcome back to People United.
Rocío:
Thanks for having me.
Allan Campbell:
And Andrea Zarate received her Bachelor's from the UT Austin Center for Women's and Gender studies. She is currently media workshop director with Latinitas. She helped produce the short films Susana Almanza: The Life of an Activist, which recently screened at [inaudible 00:04:38] restaurant in East Austin, and which can also be found on the worldwide web. She is coordinating both translation and videography for the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference. Andrea, welcome to KOOP radio.
Andrea Zarate:
Hi, thank you for having me.
Allan Campbell:
I want to begin by asking conference coordinator, Kristen Hogan, about the name Rethinking Power and Resistance. Usually when someone uses the word rethinking, he or she is alluding to the limitations of an earlier paradigm. Was there a specific framing of the issues that you and your colleagues hope to rebut?
Kristen Hogan:
That's a great question and we've just been talking about this word, rethinking, and bringing it back into the round table discussions. I would say that the conversation began two years ago when we first started meeting about the conference. We had faculty and community organizers in the room, and we were talking about what we wanted the conference to focus on. And so we were reflecting on what was happening in with the Arab Spring, with activists in Egypt and elsewhere, thinking about challenging power paradigms, transnational paradigms of power. And we were also looking at this use of human rights language because we were working within this, framework of the center for women's and gender studies, Embrey Women's Human Rights Initiative.
Kristen Hogan:
And we wanted to really challenge that term, human rights, because it can be used as a way to further colonial projects and to really oppress, rather than thinking about grassroots movements and gender and racial justice, which is really what we wanted to bring out of that term, how the term human rights can be radicalized and used, and has been used by, for example, indigenous feminists within the US to challenge the erasure of sovereignty issues from conversations about human rights.
Kristen Hogan:
So, those were some of the issues we were thinking about, and they were many places of energy around that idea of where resistance was happening, and how we could take that term, human rights, and remake it. And in this with the energy of the movements happening around the world and connect what's happening in Austin with transnational conversations.
Allan Campbell:
When I hear the term, human rights, I think about Amnesty International and the United Nations declaration of universal human rights. You were talking about human rights being hijacked for colonial and imperial projects. Do you want to give us an example of how it's been used that way?
Kristen Hogan:
Well, I would start with the universal declaration of human rights, not perhaps as a complete hijacking as you put it, but I think that document frames human rights as individual rights and as rights to be a participant of a single community. So it's about nations and it's about individuals being a part of particular nation states. So the kind of challenge to that would be well, what if we were thinking outside of the nation state structure, and we want to think about community rights, for example, thinking about The Polochic Evictions Counteraction that is a part of the conference, and the community rights of the Q'eqchi' people who were displaced from the Polochic valley and displacements and many other places.
Kristen Hogan:
So thinking about what community rights and then also thinking about the rights of multiple publics within and outside of the nation state. So it's that kind of reframing that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't address, but for example, the declaration of the rights of indigenous peoples does offer a counter narrative and a model of what community based rights would look like. And I would also say that human rights discourse then is used to justify, for example, the US military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example-
Allan Campbell:
You're talking about the latter day feminists who want to drop bombs on people in the name of find the misogynistic Taliban.
Kristen Hogan:
Right, and ignoring the grassroots activism that's happening with the revolutionary association of women of Afghanistan, other organizations, and really thinking about alliances and anti-colonialism, anti-new imperialism, rather than what kind of language will further, for example, US imperialism.
Allan Campbell:
When you were sending the information about our guests today, a recurring trend that came up was anti-racist feminist community organizing. With all five of you here, I want to hear from each of you about what the term means to you. Let's start with Rocío.
Rocío:
To me, anti-racist feminist community organizing is an acknowledgement of the fact that we exist at the intersection of different identities. And in order to push back and counter systemic and widespread oppression, you have to take into consideration a multitude of identities when you're trying to do community organizing. Since we don't experienced our identities individually, you can't really attack an issue unless you're looking at the ways in which a person's identities affect their experiences as a whole, and affects how they experience being a human in this society and in this world. And for me, that's what it means.
Allan Campbell:
What kind of anti-racist community organizing work have you done that has addressed both the racial as well as gender oppression?
Rocío:
Most recently in the project that I've been involved with for a little over two years is the Hutto Visitation program. I have helped coordinate a visitation program to the Hutto Detention Center, which is located outside of Austin and Taylor, Texas. And the majority of the women being detained at the facility are women from Central and Latin America who are coming to the US because they are victims of some kind of violence, whether it's state violence or domestic violence. And so you also have women who are indigenous, who are fleeing from similar situations and are encountering even greater obstacles once they reach the detention center because they can't find anyone else who speaks their language; one of their indigenous languages, and they're encountering even further isolation than some of the other women who may speak Spanish, and therefore they're able to at least find that support.
Rocío:
But I think there, you really see how women experience this kind of gender oppression, but that's also connected to their status as women of color. They're fleeing from situations in countries that are under brutal attack, a lot of violence against women, and they are fleeing because they don't know what else to do. They don't know who else to turn to. And they're hoping that by coming to the US, they will have another opportunity for finding some kind of peace and just finding a better life for themselves or for their families.
Allan Campbell:
Andrea Zarate, you've done short films in both Susana Almanza, PODER, as well as on Mamas of Color Rising. I imagine experiences with both groups have gotten you to highlight gender as well as racial oppression. Why don't you elaborate on that as well as on other media or activist work you yourself have done?
Andrea Zarate:
As a Chicana, I come from this from like a personal point of view like I've experienced things and going into media, especially I feel very isolated from the white male privilege and all this media making. And whenever I try to do my work, I want to document women of color and what they're doing in their communities, and not give up on including them in this like media work. And so other people can see what they're doing and how this work is happening. I really wanted to work on things such as like documenting the Mamas of Color Rising and how they're trying to open up a free clinic for pregnant women, because there's a lot of resources that they don't have access to. And then also the same with telling a short and putting Susana Almanza's big work into like a short film.
Andrea Zarate:
It's wanting to show what strong women of color are doing and how they've been organizing in the community for such a long time. And so for this conference too, I really want to make sure we document, and that's why I'm in charge of doing the video. I want to put this work on video, show what we're doing and how we're collaborating, and between academia and the community, and focusing on all these issues that have to do with our identities and how we're marginalized and kind of... Yeah, just bring it to light, bring it into the media and share it with people.
Allan Campbell:
Rocío, you had something?
Rocío:
I had thought about and wanted to mention about the fact that like Andrea, my own involvement in this kind of anti-racist feminist community organizing was really born out of my own experiences and also my mother's experiences, and seeing how much she struggled as an immigrant from Mexico, as a woman of color, as someone who didn't speak the language. And that solely over the years just started to push me to get involved in this kind of work and to center the experiences of women of color, of immigrants into the work that I do, so that it's not a community. They're not voices that continue to be marginalized and to be silenced. And it's something that I have that similar personal connection to, and I see it as a way of not only giving back to my community, but also as a way to fight for my own liberation and the liberation of other people.
Rocío:
I think through this kind of community organizing, I've met some really amazing people and it feeds me. It's something that I feel has started to feed my soul, and it's something that I need to continue doing in order to maintain some kind of a sense of sanity and to feel as though I'm doing something to further justice in such an unjust world.
Allan Campbell:
T-Kay Sangwand, do you want to offer your own reflections on anti-racist feminist organizing? And if you want to, expand on what points have been made so far by Rocío and Andrea.
T-Kay:
Coming into it as a human rights archivist, I feel like this type of conference really speaks to the type of work that we're trying to do, trying to document different stories for different communities around the world, working around a variety of human rights issues, and also looking at how these human rights issues affect our own communities here in the US. A lot of times people think of human rights "as an issue that happens elsewhere". It happens in other countries, and so I really appreciate the fact that this conference is looking at how questions of incarceration, what that looks like here, but also what that looks like in Latin America, in other countries. The work of the conference is very complimentary to the work that we're doing at the Human Rights Documentation Initiative, ensuring that people's voices are documented and their struggles are something that we can be able to learn from and talk about.
Allan Campbell:
And this is not the first UT-based conference that you've been involved with here in Austin. You're also involved with [inaudible 00:16:12].
T-Kay:
Coming off that conference and then me talking to Kris and hearing about this grant that they got through Embrey Family Foundation to do gender and human rights, I was really excited for the opportunity to work with her and continue this work of having a conference that comes out of academia, but is also very invested in incorporating the community and bringing these two often separated groups together.
Allan Campbell:
What do you get to these conferences that you don't necessarily get out of your general day-to-day work as human rights archivist?
T-Kay:
I feel like the experiences are complimentary. I do get to work with a lot of community organizations in my work because the crux of my work revolves around these partnerships with community organizations. But I think it's important to be able to build out from that and see what other community collaborations are doing, and also to meet new community members and hopefully potential partners as well, because a lot of these human rights organizations are creating documentation throughout the course of their work for issues of advocacy and education. But what I've seen is that there's not a whole lot of knowledge or expertise or resources to ensure that this sort of documentation is preserved long-term.
T-Kay:
So, just an example, one of our main community collaborations in this conference is with the Polochic communities in Guatemala. One of the other conference organizers, Heather, is heavily involved with these communities. And one thing that she's been able to bring back are these drawings that women from the communities and their children have done that depict the experience of displacement. And so we're going to be able to display those pictures at the conference and the human rights documentation initiative is going to help ensure that those drawings are preserved because they're not safe in their communities of origin currently in Guatemala.
Allan Campbell:
I guess really the potential of this conference comes out, not just simply the two days that transpire for it, but also for the different organizing opportunities that can build from there.
T-Kay:
Yeah, and that's another thing that this conference is really trying to foster is not only coming together for these two days, which is very important, and it's going to allow a lot of important conversations to occur, but we also want to be able to sustain those conversations and see how we can bring whatever lessons we learned at the conference and how we can maybe build something more together after the conference. And I know we've been discussing some of the best ways to sustain that conversation, and I'm sure Kris and Michelle have more to add on that point.
Allan Campbell:
All right. Well, let's go to Michelle Mott. Michelle, am I correct in assuming that you are not of color?
Michelle Mott:
Yes. I'm a white woman.
Allan Campbell:
You're a white woman. As a woman who is racially privileged though not so much privileged in gender terms, talk about what participating in anti-racist feminist organizing means for you, and then you can also feel free to tie it into the work of the conference as well.
Michelle Mott:
Yes, like as a white woman, I think that I'm still learning like what those things mean to me in terms of how I operate in the world personally. But as an ally organizer, it's something that's been really fundamental to my development and also my understanding of how to do that type of work is really centering the folks who are most directly impacted by the forms of oppression that you are focusing on, finding out what those people need, like what they want, and really privileging those folks in doing their own organizing. And as a person of privilege, thinking about how I can use my privilege to support and to be an ally in as much as possible, so.
Allan Campbell:
How did you get involved with La Semilla Childcare Collective?
Michelle Mott:
I was doing and organizing training, and I met one of the founders of La Semilla Childcare Collective at that organizing training, and so-
Allan Campbell:
So they were conducting one that you were being trained for.
Michelle Mott:
Actually the organizer was doing simultaneous interpretation, and so Hilda Gutierrez was... She was doing simultaneous translation and we happen to have a conversation about the importance of allyship for non parenting individuals, supporting the rearing of children and also making children an important part of community organizing. And so that's how I got involved in La Semilla. That was almost three years ago.
Allan Campbell:
That in turn put you in touch with the Mamas of Color Rising?
Michelle Mott:
La Semilla started out as an organization to support the organizing of Mamas of Color Rising. It was pointed out by one of the core organizers of Mamas of Color Organizing that a lot of times we don't see parents or children at these organizing efforts because there isn't the space for them to be there, to be present. There's not support for moms to be involved in their own advocacy and a lot of these organizing spaces. And so really needing to both make children part of the organizing efforts and also support moms and being able to have the time to do the organizing. And so that's how La Semilla got started was in order to support this work, this activist work that was already happening.
Allan Campbell:
Are you a parent yourself.
Michelle Mott:
I'm not.
Allan Campbell:
Anybody here a parent?
T-Kay:
No.
Allan Campbell:
Okay. Yeah, we have people who work with Mamas of Color Rising who aren't mothers themselves. Giving attention to other people who have worked with them, has working with Mamas of Color opened your eyes about children and parenting at all in ways that you hadn't thought as much about? Andrea.
Andrea Zarate:
Yeah, especially visiting them so much and just listening in on their conversations when I was videotaping them for the documentary. The work that they were doing made me unafraid of having children and thinking of how it can be possible and to have kids and do work. And especially like as a filmmaker, it's kind of like, if you're a woman, you probably shouldn't have kids because then how are you going to take them to the shoot? But I shouldn't be so negative to have kids, and it's this idea that like the mom has to take care of the kids, and that's just her responsibility. Instead, it should be like we should support them. And so it just brings a positive light into having kids and being a mom and stuff.
Allan Campbell:
When I saw the screening of your short film about Susana Almanza, Librato was actually working the media equipment, and Librato Almanza is one of Suzana's sons. And when the shots came up of Susana protesting against the first Gulf War, Librato was like, hey, I remember that. Rocío, do you have anything to say about how working with Mamas of Color maybe has opened up your eyes about the role of children as well as parents in social justice movements?
Rocío:
Absolutely. I think I have even greater respect for mothers who are able to find the support, so that they can do these organizing projects and get involved in those issues. And I think that it also speaks to the importance of creating ways in which youth from an early age can learn about what their parents are doing, what type of community organizing is going on in order to build something that is long-term in order to raise their consciousness from an early age, and for them to see themselves as a part of these movements and as part of these families that were involved in these movements. I think that there's a lot of personal empowerment that can come as a result of that, and I think that the kids from who were in the Mamas, I think they're probably going to do some amazing things just based on what their mothers alone are doing.
Allan Campbell:
Go ahead, Michelle.
Michelle Mott:
I just wanted to add that there will be childcare available at the conference, that La Semilla is organizing having childcare, child-centered activities available.
Allan Campbell:
All right. So talking the talk and walking the walk. You're listening to People United, the show in solidarity with people of the world. This hour, People United is talking about the conference, Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender and Human Rights from Texas to Transnational Americas. It's a two day conference being held Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th, 2012, at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River Street here in Austin, Texas. Information about the conference can be found at powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com.
Allan Campbell:
Kristen Hogan has been coordinating the development of this conference for the past two years. We're also here with other conference participants, Michelle Mott, T-Kay Sangwand, Rocío Villalobos and Andrea Zarate. Everybody here is the co-organizer, and I want to return now to Kristen Hogan and what anti-racist feminist organizing means to you, how you feel you've participated in it, what you've gotten out of it and so on. And you can also expand on anything else mentioned by your fellow organizers thus far.
Kristen Hogan:
Oppressive power uses different kinds of oppression to try to separate people. So in order to really respond to power like racism or sexism or homophobia, transphobia, classism, ageism, ableism, it's important to really connect with each other. So Audre Lorde, black feminist, lesbian, writer and theorist, an activist, of course, wrote about being present at the edge of each other's battles. And I think it's really... that sense is really important to me as a white anti-racist ally, as a feminist, as a queer person to really try to be a good ally without appropriating to support the people who are affected by a particular kind of injustice, be at the center of what it means to redress that, so that people aren't taking over someone else's conversation, but that when we talk about remaking power and revising power, we start with the people who are furthest from that center of power. Start listening there, start organizing there and move in to remake what power looks like.
Kristen Hogan:
So, that's what that means to me. And I think to connect with how T-Kay was connecting this back to the conference, I'm really excited about how our three core collaborations make this more visible and challenge us to make it visible too. So early on in the conference organizing, we decided that we would ask for submissions of collaborations of community organizers and activist scholars. And then when we would shape the conference around those collaborations, because we really wanted to break up that binary of academy, community.
Kristen Hogan:
And so we, as a group, selected the three organizing projects, the Transgender Jail project, the Polochic Evictions Counteraction and Conspire Theatre. And these three projects all address issues of racial justice, issues of feminism, issues of transgender justice, as well as issues of sexuality. So it's part of this, well, getting back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, making human rights as an individual project, instead of just saying like one person can be independent and can make it in the world. We really have to do it collectively. So how do we take apart that really lie of independence and be invested in each other's communities and lives and remake power and resistance in that way?
Allan Campbell:
I think what everybody seems to be preoccupied with is acknowledging the specificity of different oppressions and making sure that no community struggle is displaced or marginalized, especially those who have historically been marginalized.
Kristen Hogan:
I think that's true. Yes. And thinking about how to build connections among those communities and how to sustain that conversation over time, because of course that resistance work is exhausting and it's dangerous for many. And so I think for me, part of the exciting work of the conference is to imagine how do we weave interconnections and how do we keep that conversation going.
Allan Campbell:
Among the details you sent me about the guests, you mentioned with yourself that you were involved with anti-racist feminist queer alliance building. You want to say a little bit about what that has entailed for you.
Kristen Hogan:
I try to make that a practice in the project that I take on at work and outside of work. One example that I could give recently has been my work on the black queer studies collection at the UT libraries. So this was a project that I worked on with Dr. Matt Richardson, who's a faculty member in the African and African Diaspora Studies department, and he's also an organizer with the Transgender Jail Project and will be involved with the conference, and with then librarian Lindsay Shell at the UT Libraries, and we worked together to create a collection that would; a virtual collection, make visible black, queer materials in the UT Libraries, because in any catalog, this is part of what I meant by the separation of struggles. It's difficult to find black queer materials in any library catalog, because when you look up lesbian or gay, you get back a bunch of white people. You get Virginia Woolf, things like that, right?
Kristen Hogan:
So, and when you look up African-American or black or African diaspora, you often don't get back queer materials or visibly queer materials, right? So how do you know, how can you get back a body of materials that shows you if you are a black queer person that shows you back a validation of your experience and your communities, or if you are a person in power and trying to decide whether you're going to acknowledge that this field of black queer studies exists. How can you get back something that shows, yes, there is an incredible body of scholarship, of narrative, of cultural production in this area. So, trying to weave narratively within the catalog that story to make lives, experiences, cultural narratives visible, and a part of our lives was really important in that project. So that's one example of what that looks like for me.
Allan Campbell:
In terms of your work at the Women's and Gender Studies Center, has there been much discussion there about how to bring transgender issues in communities into the curriculum and into the archives?
Kristen Hogan:
I think that that's been a big part of our conversations and has been part of a lot of organizing going on at UT for quite some time. So, for example, the Gender and Sexuality Center has gotten gender expression and gender identity into the protected class for employment and classroom life at UT. So, and then thinking about gender neutral bathrooms, thinking about graduate student housing, they've been doing a lot of activism around those issues, particularly to address the importance of safety for, and a nourishing life for transgender people at UT. So there's been that piece. And in addition, it's a very lively time for transgender studies, and there's a new transgender studies journal that's just been started, not at UT, but nationally. So there's a lot of energy and excitement around the field. And that's been something that we've been paying attention to.
Kristen Hogan:
And that Dr. Matt Richardson has been working on in particular as well, and in part through the Transgender Jail Project. It's always a struggle to work across different communities and build alliances, particularly within a system like a university where there are so many power plays at play, but I think we're working against that and trying to really build effective alliances that will create change. So, yeah, it's central to our work at the center for women's and gender studies, and I think this conference is one example of trying to make that happen, so I'm excited about it.
Allan Campbell:
We've mentioned the Transgender Jail Project in passing. That organization's one of the participants at the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference, which is happening Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th, 2012. Talk about the work that Transgender Jail project is doing and about the specificity of transgender communities within the criminal justice system.
Kristen Hogan:
So the Transgender Jail Project is a program of two different organizations; locally the Texas After Violence Project and allgo, the Texas statewide queer people of color organization. Those two groups came together with the connection of Dr. Matt Richardson in 2009 to create the Transgender Jail Project and have been serving jails across Texas about how they treat transgender people who are incarcerated in the jails. And this is a particular issue for transgender folks because often people are not allowed to be housed with their gender identity, but are rather housed with their biologically assigned sex. So, that means that trans folks are in danger of violence. There is transphobia and there is a lot of tension in jail, so that's a major issue; the safety of people who are incarcerated, and also one response of that, a common response, is to put transgender folks into solitary confinement, which of course is intended to be a kind of further punishment, but in this case, it's considered to be for the safety of the transgender person.
Kristen Hogan:
So that is in fact then further punishing people for their gender identity just because the jails don't have the understanding to really or interest in making that change. But the Transgender Jail Project has gotten back a surprising number of responses from administrators at jails across Texas, and they're working on developing educational programming in response to the situation of transgender folks incarcerated in Texas, so that they can really change the system. And of course, speaking to intersections, right, because people of color are the most incarcerated group in the US, it's a major issue, particularly thinking about addressing racism, as well as transphobia within the jails and within the carceral system.
Allan Campbell:
It's through the work of the center that you got in touch with the Transgender Jail Project then?
Kristen Hogan:
Dr. Matt Richardson is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, so he was already involved with the center and has done a lot of work with us and came on as a conference co-organizer. So it was through the connection with him that we got involved with the Transgender Jail Project.
Allan Campbell:
I want to hear a little bit from not only you, Kristen, but also T-Kay who were both involved with the development of this conference since the beginning of it. It started in 2010.
Kristen Hogan:
Yeah, in fall of 2010, is when we started beginning the conversations around organizing the conference. So it's been awhile.
Allan Campbell:
And so how did this come into being, and how did this develop?
T-Kay:
My involvement, I think, began because I know Kris personally and professionally, and she brought me in to the gender and human rights grant project that the center was working on because of my work as the archivist for the Human Rights Documentation Initiative.
Allan Campbell:
Does this grant relate just to the conference, or is it to a bunch of other projects as well?
T-Kay:
A bunch of other projects, including the conference. So, in addition to the conference, one of the other projects that the center works on is developing curriculum around gender and human rights for first-year undergraduate students at UT. And so Kris and Sue Hanselman, the director of the Center for Gender and Women's Studies were very interested in seeing how the Human Rights Documentation Initiative, which is a really amazing library resource could be incorporated into the project. And so we began our conversations around how to incorporate primary source archival material into undergraduate curriculum. And then Kris told me more about the conference and asked if I would be interested in being involved, which I was because as you mentioned, I was working on the Abriendo Brecha conference, and I wanted to continue my engagement with the faculty in hopes that I could also bring in the work of the Human Rights Documentation Initiative and raise awareness around that.
T-Kay:
But my involvement soon became more focused on the event that's taking place on Saturday, October 6, at The Collective, which is the Mama Said Knock You Out! 2 event. And this builds on an event that Mamas of Color Rising hosted in 2010 for South by Southwest, which was an all woman of color hip hop showcase. The program that we're putting on is another all woman of color hip hop showcase, and it's going to feature Invincible from Detroit. She has her own media company, Emergence Media. We also will have Lah Tere who is formerly of Rebel Diaz and is now doing amazing work in Chicago with Momma's Hip Hop Kitchen.
T-Kay:
We'll also have Las Krudas who hail from Cuba, but are now based in Austin, Texas. Tru Bloo from Oakland who's done a lot of work with Wanda Kruda, a former Kruda, and we will also be flying in DJ Trinity, who is a trans DJ from Oakland. And we're also going to have live graffiti painting by Toofly who is a graffiti artist from New York, but she's now based in South America, I believe.
Kristen Hogan:
In Ecuador.
T-Kay:
In Ecuador. So she's going to be doing live painting of the themes that she saw being discussed at the conference.
Allan Campbell:
I always think of you as having kind of like two different identities as a hip hop DJ as well as a human rights archivist who's involved with these conferences. But I think one of the things that you're pointing out, that there's some inner connections made there.
T-Kay:
I actually did my graduate work on hip hop as an archival resource. And I think hip hop has such a strong connection to these human rights, since hip hop is music of protest. It started off in the Bronx in New York talking about police violence, police brutality against communities of color and what these communities were doing to resist. And so hip hop is a form of resistance music. And I think that's even more exemplified in the work of women hip hop artists, because as you know, we all know that hip hop is a really male dominated genre of music. And so having these women, really powerful women, discuss issues that directly affect them through the lens of hip hop, I think, is super powerful and really engaging. And hopefully I should also mention that this is a benefit for Mamas of Color Rising, and so it-
Allan Campbell:
The final Saturday night event. Right.
T-Kay:
Yeah, the hip hop concert is a benefit for Mamas of Color Rising, and I think the work of these hip hop artists and the work of Mamas of Color Rising are really complimentary and we'll be able to see that at the event.
Allan Campbell:
All of these parts of the conference are happening at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River Street here in Austin, Texas. It's a two day conference happening Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6.
T-Kay:
I do want to mention that the Mama Said Knock You Out! 2 event is happening at The Collective, which is a venue located at 2015 East Riverside Drive. It's right behind Emo's and Beauty Ballroom. So that's the one event that's not taking place at the Mexican American Cultural Center.
Allan Campbell:
I stand corrected. The Collective would be within walking distance relatively from the Mac?
T-Kay:
No, but at the conference, we'll have options for transportation for folks, but they're not very far.
Allan Campbell:
I'm kind of wondering how you got into hip hop, T-Kay.
T-Kay:
I started working in community radio about 11 years ago in California, and I started off at a college radio station doing a punk rock show. And so I did that show for a year and following my show was a hip hop show. And there was this guy named Andy and he had studied abroad in Cuba and he pointed out the CD that we had gotten at the station called Cuban Hip Hop All Stars. And he was like, "Oh, this is really great stuff. I hung out with these guys in Cuba." He was like, "You should take a listen." So I did take a listen and I was really struck by the social message within hip hop. I had grown up around a lot of mainstream hip hop and I didn't really pay much attention to it until I had been introduced into Cuban hip hop.
T-Kay:
And a lot of Cuban hip hop is very socially conscious, talks about the impact of the revolution, the special period on Cubans, but especially Afro-Cubans. And that's really what drew me in was learning how much history we could learn through hip hop and histories that we aren't normally taught in other places or a part of this sort of mainstream consciousness. So, that was my introduction to hip hop.
Allan Campbell:
Once you discovered hip hop that highlighted social justice, that became the bridge that connected you to it?
T-Kay:
Essentially, yeah. And I began seeking it out and seeing what other hip hop artists from in different parts of the world were talking about and seeing what sort of connections could be made between this globalized form of music.
Allan Campbell:
All right. Well, you mentioned that your work as a human rights archivist is not readily made available. On KOOP radio, T-Kay Sangwand does cohost the hip hop program, Hip Hop Hooray every Sunday from two to three here on 91.7 FM, KOOP, Hornsby, Austin. T-Kay has also been involved with the development of the conference, Rethinking Power and Resistance, which again is happening on Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River Street, except for the concluding deejaying event, Mama Said Knock You Out! 2, which is a benefit for Mamas of Color Rising. That's happening at The Collective.
T-Kay:
Located at 2015 East Riverside behind Emo's and Beauty Ballroom. And if people are interested in purchasing tickets, they are available at powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com.
Allan Campbell:
Where you can also find out more about the conference. Again, that's powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com. I want to hear a little bit more from Kris about the early beginnings of the conference building on what T-Kay has just said.
Kristen Hogan:
Well, I think I've already talked about the importance of, to us, of connecting activist scholars with community organizers and bridging that divide that's talked about but often is a lot more permeable than we allow because there obviously everyone at UT is also a community member and community organizers also often have stakes in what's happening at UT. So we really wanted to make that connection, the core of the conference, so that we could figure out together what the direction of the conference would be, and that's really what we did. When I came into my current job, the Embrey Women's Human Rights Initiative was already funded by the Embrey Family Foundation. The center for Women's and Gender Studies had a mandate to create and support an educational environment around gender and racial justice. And so I was really excited to be a part of that project.
Kristen Hogan:
We knew we were going to have a conference, but we didn't know what it would look like or what the topic would be, what we would address. So what my intention was, was just to really bring together a vibrant group of people who could figure out what would be important to them to hear about and to build together. And so it's really been a process oriented conference, as you can probably tell, just by the fact that we've been organizing it for two years. So it's been that collaborative attention to process, which has meant also reflecting on what it means to be located at the university and having a conference that's not on the university campus. So that question of space, accessibility, how to make the resources of UT accessible to the communities that it serves. So all of those issues have been part of the process.
Allan Campbell:
All right. We talked a little bit about the work of the Transgender Jail Project among the other organizations that you've built relationships with have been the Conspire Theatre, and then you've mentioned passing Polochic Evictions Counteraction. Anything you want to say about those organizations?
Kristen Hogan:
The Conspire Theatre is a project that was created by Katherine Craft and is now also facilitated by Michelle Dahlenburg. And together they visit and work with correctional facilities, so-called correctional facilities in Texas. They're based out of Austin. They work with women in incarceration to create writing and performance projects that are narratives of the women's own lives. So it's really about the women who are incarcerated, being able to have control over their own stories, to be able to create their own narratives, and perform their experiences and lives. So it's that idea of arts-based advocacy, which is at the core of the conference, as you can tell, from what T-Kay has been saying about the women in hip hop.
Kristen Hogan:
So, similarly Conspire Theatre takes on those same issues. And the Polochic Evictions Counteraction is another of the three core collaborations that's a part of the conference and involves Q'eqchi' organizers from the Polochic valley in Guatemala. And the people who are organizing from Guatemala are petitioners to a case that's before the International Human Rights Commission. So we're not using their names publicly, but they are here. They will be here at the conference to share their stories and to also connect with human rights lawyers and a graduate student in the anthropology department, Heather Teague, who has been working with the project as an ally, and has been working to bring folks together at the conference, both to strategize around the human rights case and also to share the stories.
Kristen Hogan:
So, as T-Kay mentioned, the Polochic Evictions Counteraction organizers have been sharing their story in many different ways, and this is a big part of their resistance to the human rights violations that have included massacres, violent displacement, destruction of crops over more than 40 years. So, they have shared their stories by traveling with their stories, by creating the drawings, which will also be here in Austin. And by building these networks internationally, we wanted to make these connections among these three; the Transgender Jail Project, the Polochic Evictions Counteraction and Conspire Theatre because they have shared interest in militarization and resistance to incarceration in issues of anti-racism or racial justice, as well as indigenous justice and indigenous sovereignty, issues of community, commitment and displacement from land.
Kristen Hogan:
And also thinking about issues of gender identity and sexuality within each of them and how participants are experiencing intersections of oppressions, interlocking oppressions through many different ways. So, this conference, it creates an opportunity to really interweave those collaborations and figure out how to be allies together.
Allan Campbell:
Rocío Villalobos, you've been active with the Hutto Visitation Project. Has the work of the organizations that Kris has just mentioned in some ways resonated with you as somebody who's been involved with incarcerated immigrant women.
Rocío:
Absolutely. And we've been trying to connect with Conspire Theatre about providing some workshop or some type of activity with the women at Hutto. We face the obstacle of not being allowed access to the women who are detained at Hutto. We've been trying to work on how we might be able to do a similar project with women who may not be currently at Hutto, but perhaps women who have been released from Hutto. But recognizing that women who are in detention experience a lot of trauma before they are detained, but then also just the act of being detained. Members of the Hutto Visitation program see that as a human rights violation in and of itself. This lack of access to freedom and to not having control over your own body, and in where you go, where you spend your time, who you surround yourself with.
Rocío:
And we hope to be able to do a similar project with women who have been released from detention, whether it's some kind of theater workshop or a writing workshop. I'm currently working with a professor in the anthropology department at UT, Shannon Speed, to develop a series of oral history and writing workshops with women who are immigrants from Latin America, some of whom may have been detained. But it's, again, going back to what one of the other co-organizers mentioned about finding avenues for women to share their stories and to raise consciousness about what immigrants go through, what people in detention go through, what people who exist at the intersection of different identities go through and how all of those identities affect their experiences in this world.
Allan Campbell:
Now, Kris, you were talking about Audre Lorde earlier and about how her writings have influenced your thoughts about confronting both gender as well as racial oppression. Have there been writers that have influenced each of you. Rocío.
Rocío:
I have been really influenced by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga who are both queer women of color who engage in the practice of sharing testimonios, of sharing their own stories and getting into deeply personal details about how their location at the intersection of these identities has shaped the way that they see themselves, the way that they have interacted with society and then their own commitment to sharing these stories in order to create a space that encourages women to also share their experiences and to use the personal details that have shaped their lives as a vehicle for social change. And I find their work to be really inspirational and moving, and it's something that has had a big impact in my life and I... really in all of the work that they've done.
Allan Campbell:
Michelle, you've been awfully quiet.
Michelle Mott:
Andrea Smith, who is another scholar and also activist who is involved [inaudible 00:50:32] and critical resistance.
Allan Campbell:
She speak in Austin a few times as well.
Michelle Mott:
Yeah, exactly. And I also think that there's a number of people. I can go on, but-
Allan Campbell:
[inaudible 00:50:45] especially. You don't have to give me an annotated bibliography by any means, but anybody who, especially means something special to you.
Michelle Mott:
Well, actually was thinking about Joy James, who also teaches here at UT. Her work on resistance and also the work that she's looked at on incarceration has been really influential for my thinking about those things and how they connect to other forms of oppression.
Allan Campbell:
Andrea.
Andrea Zarate:
I really like Michele Serros. She's kind of like a humorist and autobiographical fiction writer. And some of her work is out of print, but she's done a lot of work that's, from a Chicana perspective, has a lot of Spanglish. And I really like that because I speak Spanish and English, so I like to see that in books, that multiple language information and whatnot. I should add that the conference is going to be bilingual. And so there's going to be Spanish and English speakers, and then we'll be translating for those folks that don't speak both languages. It adds more access to different folks, especially to Spanish speaking communities, especially thinking of like my parents. They don't have access to certain things, especially like in the university or in any different places, in society, because they don't speak English.
Allan Campbell:
Andrea brings up a number of important issues to have us think about. And when you mentioned humor, Andrea Smith, I've seen Andy Smith speak, and she is so funny. She really brings a kind of whet to her analysis in order to get people to think about things. As you kind of build things up in order to point out the inadequacies of this, so then it almost kind of turns into a punchline as you're thinking about things. Is there any role of humor for social justice work. Anybody thought about that at all?
Michelle Mott:
I think that it's really essential, right, to have some level of joy and appreciation like that makes us work both rewarding and also keeps people going and doing the work. If you're not able to find the joy in the work that you're doing, in the life that you're living, it's really hard to continue on, so absolutely, like it's essential, right?
Andrea Zarate:
I think a big part of that is connected to doing this community building, where you're able to get to know people on a very personal level and develop those relationships, so that you are able to laugh together, to cry together, to find joy together and to struggle together. I think that's really important. And I think that this conference is a way to do that. It's a way to build community. It's a way to get people who may not normally be in conversation to develop those relationships that may be able to further their work.
Allan Campbell:
And Andy Smith spoke at UT, and one of the things that she talked about was the domestication [inaudible 00:53:47] programs. And what she was speaking of specifically was what happens when someone [inaudible 00:53:56] programs ensconced in a university lose touch with their activist roots. And it seems that by taking the conference off campus, making it more accessible to the people in the community, you're trying to reconnect with the activist movements that have brought certain areas [inaudible 00:54:20] programs into existence to begin with.
Kristen Hogan:
That is a really exciting history that we definitely want to sustain, and that's important to sustain. It's important for our students as well as for our faculty and for our broader community, right? So the idea was creating a space within the university would then value the stories, the narratives of our lives in a way that made that knowledge valuable and taught us to understand things in a different way. So, that's really important. I would also say though that it's also a way of feeding back the activism that happens within the university. So, for example, there are of course ongoing battles within the university to maintain the identity studies programs and to work for the hiring of faculty of color and of both women of color and white women to hire and sustain the lives of queer faculty.
Kristen Hogan:
So, and then in turn, thinking about recruiting and retention of graduate students of color, of queer graduate students. So thinking about... and the activism that's happening within the academy as well, and the idea that grassroots movements are still feeding that activism. So it's all interconnected and just kind of, I think, having the conference at the Mexican American Cultural Center is one way to engage and communities that... People find it just a more accessible space for one thing and allows the conversation to really happen so that we really can feed each other and continue the work.
Kristen Hogan:
One of the major organizers of the Transgender Jail Project, allgo, the Texas Statewide Queer People of Color Organization has had many events, at the Mexican American Cultural center. So it's been a place that I think we've all been for those events as well as many other events. So it's a place that our communities also use, and so that's another reason why we chose it.
Allan Campbell:
Rethinking Power & Resistance: Gender & Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas is a two-day conference being held Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th, 2012. Most of it will be happening at the Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River Street here in Austin, Texas. Information about the conference can be found at powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com. Kristen Hogan, Michelle Mott, T-Kay Sangwand, Andrea Zarate and Rocío Villalobos, thank you all so much.
T-Kay:
Thank you.
Kristen Hogan:
Thank you.
Rocío:
Thank you.
Michelle Mott:
Thank you.
Andrea Zarate:
Thank you.
Allan Campbell:
You've been listening to People United, the show in solidarity with people of the world. This week People United talked about the conference, Rethinking Power and Resistance: Gender & Human Rights from Texas to the Transnational Americas, putting community organizers and activists scholars in dialogue about new movement strategies for gender justice. Again, the Rethinking Power and Resistance conference is being held Friday, October 5th and Saturday, October 6th, 2012 at the Mexican American Cultural Center here in Austin, Texas. Except for that Saturday night's, Mama Said Knock You Out! 2 benefit for the Mamas of Color Rising, which takes place at The Collective in East Austin. Details can be found at powerandresistance2012.wordpress.com. I spoke with five of the conference organizers, Kristen Hogan, Michelle Mott, T-Kay Sangwand, Rocío Villalobos and Andrea Zarate at the radio station on Sunday, September 23rd, 2012. I'm Allan Campbell. You're listening to 91.7 FM, KOOP, Hornsby, Austin.