Not a Bumper Sticker, but some Thoughts....

June 28 marks the 40th Anniversary of the Riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Many people have no idea what this is. Just like many people may have no idea what the Suffragettes were or what the March across the Bridge in Selma, Alabama was about. (Ask Senator John Lewis about that one. He was there and has a skull fracture to show for it.) Each of these represent two things, in my view - moments when a marginalized people stepped out of the margin, marring the neatness of history and moments when the course of history was changed forever.

According to Wikipedia, that modern day icon of wisdom, "Suffragette is a term originally coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for the more radical and militant members of the late-19th and early-20th century movement for women's suffrage..." It was coined in the United Kingdom and migrated to the United States. Yes, there were "radical and militant" women who actually once wanted the right to vote! Can you imagine that? How preposterous!

The march in Selma, occurred on Sunday, March 7, 1965, known as "Bloody Sunday." It was a march to protest the prohibition of the African American right to vote. Mary Stanton wrote in , FROM SELMA TO SORROW: The Life and Death of Viola Liuzzo (University of Georgia Press, 2000), "The marches drastically shifted public opinion about the Civil Rights movement as a whole. The images of Alabama law enforcement beating the nonviolent protesters were shown all over the country and the world by the cameras of television networks and newspapers. The visuals of such brutality being carried out by the state of Alabama helped shift the image of the segregationist movement from one of a movement trying to preserve the social order of the South to a system of state endorsed terrorism against those non-whites."

Here's an adaptation of the Stonewall story from "GLBTQ Social Sciences" Web Page:

Friday, June 27, 1969 found the world mourning the death of gay icon Judy Garland. In the early morning hours of June 28, police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a small bar located on Christopher Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. Although mafia-run, the Stonewall, like other predominantly gay bars in the city, got raided by the police periodically. Typically, the more "deviant" patrons (that is, drag queens and butch lesbians, especially if they were "colored") would be arrested and taken away in a paddy wagon, while white, male customers looked on or quietly disappeared. The raid began in time-honored fashion, as plainclothes and uniformed police officers entered the bar, arrested the employees, and began ejecting the customers one by one onto the street. But for some reason, the crowd that had gathered outside the Stonewall, a crowd that began to cheer each time a patron emerged from the bar, soon changed its mood. Perhaps it was Judy Garland's death, or the summer heat, or the fact that police had been especially busy that summer raiding bars and patrons had become angry and frustrated. Or possibly it was the sight of several drag queens being forced into a paddy wagon. Whatever it was, the on-lookers lost their patience.

As to who threw the first punch, accounts are contradictory. Some say it was a drag queen who initially defied the police, while others claim it was a butch lesbian. The crowd, now several hundred people, erupted and began pelting the officers with coins, which represented the payoffs gay bars had to make to the police to stay in business, then moved to stones and bottles. The police, surprised by and unused to such resistance from patrons of gay bars, beat those they could reach with nightsticks, but eventually were forced to take refuge by locking themselves inside the Stonewall Inn.

This single event brought a population that has been documented for thousands of years, remained hidden, "closeted" and oppressed, into the mainstream, in essence, likely short-circuiting the AIDS epidemic and thrusting medical research into a new century. (Think where we might have been if nobody had ever heard of gay rights twenty years ago, when HIV became an epidemic and had not been forced from the recesses of the shadows into the streets, media and limelight. Thank heavens for those drag queens and that crowd!)

In March, I visited New York City for the first time. Since I had worked all week, I had Saturday afternoon off and had an opportunity to "see the city" with a friend, who also happened to be in town. We planned a trip down to Greenwich Village and to the Hudson, to get a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty and the river where the plane landed. We would eat dinner and visit Rockefeller Plaza, walk through Times Square, and end with a walk in lower Central Park.

Yep, that's the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty in the haze in the background!

As we walked back from the Hudson River (where Picture 1 was taken, showing the Statue of Liberty in the haze in the background!), Marc suggested that we cross the street and walk over to the Stonewall Inn. It seemed only fitting. Hence, Picture 2.

The Stonewall Inn -- Remarkably unremarkable to have changed history, isn't it?

So, why am I writing about this momentous occasion. Well, yes, I do support the cause of the GLBT movement. Yes, I do believe this was a monumental occasion. However, I think the more important point is the reminder that, once again, it was the troublemakers, the odd, the marginalized that brought about change, revolution and the freedoms that we all take for granted today.

I firmly believe my mother would have been a Suffragette. It was women like her who wrestled the right to vote from affluent, educated Caucasian men. After all, she had the wherewithall to obtain two unrelated Masters Degrees in 1942, to have the absolute audacity to not only continue teaching in an academic institution after she married, but also to return after she had each of her 4 children (which, BTW, she insisted on nursing when she was rather aggressively told by the medical experts that her babies would not grow up normal without being fed formula! Tell that to our 97 years of higher education!) It was the marchers in Selma who began the movement that wrestled the right to vote, live, marry, and be human from a Caucasian majority. Today, my family is about as "conspicuous" as they come! We are not only multi-racial, but multicultural, mutlilingual and multi-just-about-everything-else! When I was in grade school (and I'm NOT THAT old), my extended family would have had to eat in separate dining rooms, use separate restrooms and water fountains, and may have even been arrested! I have godchildren who would have been considered illegitimate because their parents could not have legally been married an any state in the union!

Far more importantly, I want us all to pause for a moment and ask what just may be in the air. Once again, a growing number of issues are being raised by a marginalized population. They center on the right to live, love, work, and be treated like human beings. These are not questions about sex any more than Suffrage and Civil Rights were about sex, corporate takeovers, destroying any institutions, or contaminating any aspcts of humanity. I remember the arguments in my eighth and ninth grade class that allowing "blacks" to marry "whites" would lead to a "gray" race and the ruination our future. It hasn't happened. Nor, has the 49 to 52% failure rate of marriage significantly changed in states that allow same sex civil unions (or whatever they choose to call them). The earth has not opened up and swallowed America because we have a President who is not Caucasian in ancestry.

Stonewall, Selma and Suffragettes remind us that we are all human. We live on a planet that has abundant resources, space, and creativity. While we cannot all have everything, but we can all have enough. Until we learn that the way to access this abundance is NOT to take something away from another, but to give freely and to find ways to creatively spread around what we do have.

Is it such an unreal vision of the future that, one day, our history books may not be earmarked by our conflicts, wars and fights, but by our successes. That we may not record milestones in terms of deaths, but lives saved. That we may not record geographic boundaries in terms of who destroyed whom to get to the top of the heap, but how many lives were enhanced and enlightened, how many mouths were fed and how many heads received shelter. That power may be defined not in terms of money, weapons, and potential for destruction, but in terms of how far arms are outstretched. That Peace may not be defined as the absence of war, but the persistence of a world filled with satiated appetites, warm slumber, dry shelter, and safe drink in time of thirst.

Am I a dreamer? I hope so. Then, I can walk in the margins with other greats: Like those radical militant women who got my daughters, nieces, great nieces and granddaughters the right to vote without even thinking about it. Like those irrational marchers, who crossed that bridge, facing loaded weapons and gave people of all colors, including mine, the right to vote, live, learn, work and love to their potential. Like those drag queens (reportedly mostly of color!) and butch lesbians, who brought an entire ten or more percent of our population out of the margin. Like a small movement you haven't even heard of that is trying to save hundreds of children from dying in orphanages in Ethiopia and other African countries while thousands of affluent Americans custom order babies from overpopulated countries, such as China, because they have the right skin color.

It's uncomfortable here in the margins. It's not popular. However, if we look at history, the "mainstream" has brought about very few changes. True change comes from the margins and the marginalized. From people who forgot to hear that they couldn't do something or other. Like these: John Stuart Mill, Emily Davison, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Sylvia Pankhurst, Julia Ward Howe, James Bevel, Amelia, Sam and Bruce Boynton, John Lewis, Bayard Ruston, Martin Luther King, A group of unnamed Drag Queens, Richard Berkowitz, and the list goes on. (Google some of them. You'll learn some things you didn't know!) These are the people who began to change history. What if all that dreamers likeme dream could be true?

Remember, they once said that electricity would never replace gas, the west would never be settled, slaves would never be free, women would never vote, blacks would never have rights, we'd never go to the moon, Maman would never have a cell phone, and well, you hear the rest every day! Maybe, they never consulted the Drag Queens!

Never, Never Hug a Porcupine...No Matter How Cute They Look

Janice wanted so badly to love her brother. They were 5 years apart in age and, to listen to them talk, they grew up in not only different homes, but different neighborhoods that were in different counties on different planets. Her brother was in kindergarten before she was born (living the family's extremely high expectations!). He never saw any of their mother's manic highs and days of endless crying. He never heard the arguments that ensued when their father came home to find the endless bags from her shopping binges or no dinner on the table because she had not gotten out of bed. Her brother only knew that she was the little princess and got whatever she wanted. He accused her of lying when she spoke of a steady flow of men through the house, some of them fondling her while waiting to be "next" with "Suzy," their mother in the bedroom.
As Janice and Jerry tried to talk about their younger years, they argued as though they were both experts on different foreign lands. In reality, they had very few confluent memories of their childhood. They could remember the same house and the same family contexts, but never the same events. When they tried to describe a specific event or holiday or gathering, they would end up arguing bitterly about obvious facts, as though neither one was actually there and both were fabricating the entire history.

They did, however, agree on one major event -- their mother's precipitous death. She was a very vain woman and would not allow herself to be seen as ill, weak or frail. Therefore, real treatment for her lymphoma was out of the question. She was at church one Sunday, took to the bed on Tuesday and was buried on Saturday. Not a word was spoken. While the two children argued bitterly over whether or not their mother was a "screamer," or not, they agreed that the house after her death was deafeningly silent.
While Jerry espoused that their father was a quiet man and great father who was a ball coach, ever ready to teach and to play, a supportive teacher and a great confidant, Janice swore he was a silent, feelingless shell of a man who did what their mother said, regardless of the cost as long as it shut her up.
Though he vehemently and nearly violently denied it, as he matured, Jerry began to reveal more and more of his mother's characteristics. He could sweetly smile through a tense purchase or menu selection, while leaving no doubt that actually speaking to the sales or food service person was obviously beneath his dignity. He would interrupt anybody, friend, foe or stranger to let them know that they were obviously ill-informed and had no idea what they really thought, felt, wanted or needed. After all, it was Jerry's job to inform them of what was really best for them and what they really felt.
Janice had tried. My how she had tried to have a relationship with Jerry. She wanted a brother. She wanted a family. Over the years, she had traveled to his home. She had traveled with her brother. All had become disasters. She would end up either going away angry or feeling battered and bruised by his constant verbal barrage. Either he was correcting her, telling her what she was REALLY thinking or feeling, or outright criticizing her and describing the next impending catastrophe she was obviously going to create.
This last trip was the final blow. Janice had worked hard in therapy to face her attachment to her mother's depression as a driving force for her own depression. She had been years without hospitalization and was responding to minimal medication. She was living her life on her own terms, financially stable, surrounded by friends with whom she was comfortable, enjoying a seasonal garden every year, riding horses in the spring, hiking in the fall and dancing whenever she wanted. She CHOSE to share her trip to a family gathering with her brother. She was resolve to let his verbal diarrhea just land in the trash and pass her by. She was going to imagine a black hole between the two of them into which anything she did not elect to hold would be drawn immediately and irretrievably.
The trip was four days. She made it three before his criticism, arrogance and innuendos of incompetence cut through her armor. When a natural break in their time together came, she simply left a message with the hotel desk that she would get her own cab to the airport and leave early the next morning, rather than riding with him in the rental car. She elected not to answer his phone call as she waited in the airport.
As Janice and I discussed this event, she wanted to find some formal way of "Filing for Divorce" from her brother to gain some form or just or fair closure to their relationship. She did not want to treat him like she had been treated when she had acted like their mother had taught them to act in the past. She knew how much it hurt to have people just disappear from her life. She wanted to let him know how intolerable and unbearable he was and that she was going to sever their connection. By the time I saw her, she had obsessed about this endlessly for over four days. As we volleyed this issue back and forth, I became clear about the BS Moment aat hand.

"Never, Never Hug a Porcupine...No Matter How Cuddly They Look"

For Janice, Life had been a six decade effort to try to cuddle with a series of porcupines while trying to live comfortably on the Tundra! She had survived some of the most difficult losses in childhood, more in adulthood, and was facing more as she continued her journey. Her family, like many, wanted to deny that she was abused as a child and pretend that they lived behind the white picket fence between Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and the Brady Bunch! Nobody "saw" what happened and, therefore, it didn't happen! Nobody chose to grieve their mother's death. Rather, they chose to act as if it just was another day in their lives. Somewhere within her psyche was this screaming child that wanted someone to notice that she was hurting. However, these crazy people called her family were far too wounded to hear her.

As Janice and I talked, I was reminded of how innocent it is for all of us to want to see our families as capable and able to give us what we need (a.k.a. "Eckerds"!!). However, we are all born into frail collections of people who are, by and large, wounded throughout their own lives and struggle just to survive their own woundedness. In the fog and turmoil of all this, innocent children try to dance their innocent dances and live their innocent lives, not having a clue that they are unable to change the pain all around them.

As little children, we do some pretty magical things. If we are hungry, the world stops and food appears. If we are tired, we fall asleep and, magically, awaken in our beds. If we are frightened, we bury our faces in a grown-up's body and the scary thing goes away. All of this is the natural child-like thinking of innocence. As grown-ups, we are forced to learn that things do not go away simply because we do not look at them. Pain does not stop simply because we wish it to. People do not love simply because we need it from them.

On top of that, our families dress up well. We could all show up all dressed, smiling, laughing, saying nice things about each other, and looking just great at Christmas, Bar Mitzvah's, family reunions and other events, even funerals. However, the ruse rarely made it past the exit driveway before some fight broke out, some tacky comment erupted, or somebody got hurt. Somebody returned to the lie.

Many times, in the healing process, we want to go back to these educated, talented and apparently capable people and "teach" them. It seems so very logical. They can maintain such a good act an pull off such good shows, they must be brilliant! Certainly, they can still learn! Right? WRONG! Learning these lessons requires introspection and growth. Growth requires honesty and integrity, which requires a painful look at ourselves. Life for many family systems is primarily about the AVOIDANCE of pain. Hence, very talented, brilliant, capable people, turn into bumbling fools when it comes to healing processes.

My description to Janice and others to whom I've applied this Bumper Sticker is that her family is "just a bunch of porcupines." That's all, just a bunch of porcupines. I can't explain how a capable, competent human being was raised by a group of porcupines, but it happened. Her journey has been one of trying to figure out how to get cuddling, nurturing and warmth from them. News Bulletin: It ain't gonna happen! They're porcupines.

Over the years, Janice had tried to wrestle them to the ground and file each quill down to a nice round point. Not cuddly. She had cornered Jerry and tried to pluck every single quill from his body. Suffice it to say that his attack was only reasonable -- he would have ended up with no defenses in the wild! On many occasion, especially in her youth, she had taken a deep breath, closed her eyes and just cuddled up next to them, taking her pin-cushion treatment and trying to understand why she didn't get the warm fuzzy she thought would result.

Part of her healing would be for Janice to grieve the loss of a "Human" family and face the grief of dealing with the family she had. (Can anyone say, "Have you seen the movie, "Shrek"?) Then, she can decide if she wants to seek out training in handling Porcupines. Zoo handlers probably have special gloves and clothes and face guards just for this. There's probably all sorts of things you need to know about porcupines in general before you ever go in the cage with them , much less approach them in the wild! Then, you need to know what porcupines mean when they do this and that, since they really don't talk human! Go figure! All these years, Janice thought SHE had a problem -- She did. She was trying to do something that required precise training, exact equipment and much practice. No wonder it hurt.

Maybe, if she could see her family as simply being porcupines and grieve the losses that come with that, Janice could seek out a "family-of-choice" to help her grieve her childhood losses, figure out what those needs are in this adult world and begin to actually enjoy getting them met. She'll just have to remember:

No Matter How cuddly they look, Never, Never, Never Hug a Porcupine!