If I Can’t Dance…
“…I don’t want to join your revolution”
Free coffee on Saturday May 23rd to whoever can identify who said that, cause at 10:25 on this Thursday night I can’t for the life of me remember who that was. A kick ass anarcho-feminist did, that’s all I can remember.
As far as I’m concerned, it may as well have been Ate Cel. Seriously, the woman can rock a rally like no one else – physically and verbally. I got to know her multi-faceted awesomeness at the March 8th International Women’s Day rally in Montreal, and I’m forever grateful for the encounter. She can switch from dancing in the street to spitting tight rhetoric on the LCP in a second, in both instances managing to unite people and move them to join in, shout out and get involved.
The PWC decided to extend International Women’s Day and turn it into a two weekend event, and invited Ate Cel to share on the history of migration and organization of Filipina women in Canada. I have to admit, I left feeling a little more fierce and a little more empowered – knowing that if I put a little back into it, I could probably get things moving in Montreal, too.
From the shift Canadian (im)migration policies have taken, away from specialized trades targeting cheap Filipino labor, to an overt de-skilling and disregard for Filipinas’ skills and education level through the LCP, she struck so many chords along the way it was hard to not be moved. To tears, to anger, or ideally to action.
She didn’t only speak on the ‘struggles’ and the ‘oppression’ though. She spoke on how women organized in Canada to better their condition, demand their rights and get some space (literally, sometimes), and recognition in a country that was totally satisfied forgetting they were around.
The last thing I want to do on here is generalize how you all would have felt listening to her, so I’ll speak for myself: it felt so good to hear how a community could and did come together in though times and changed things for themselves, even if that meant moving the boat and maybe getting some cut eye and un-kind words along the way. It felt good to hear that they didn’t wait, or got fed up of waiting, to have people do things for them and for change to come on its own and got to it themselves. That they faced up to the hard truth of injustice, and unfair treatment, and the sadness, and maybe the anger. That they stopped trying to do it alone, came together, and used the negative and turned it into positive.
And it’s so good to know that I have examples of really cool women to base my life on – that ‘they’ can become ‘we’, you know?
In these days of third-wave, POC/WOC revolutions, I’d like to append to that quote “if you’ll give cut eye to my doorknockers and pink shirt”… But that’s stuff for another post.
We added a few excerpts from her presentation to this week’s Sigaw Ng Bayan radio show. Check out the CKUT archives HERE to listen to the show – guaranteed you’ll love it! Hmmm – maybe we can figure out a way of uploading those here directly?
Free coffee on Saturday May 23rd to whoever can identify who said that, cause at 10:25 on this Thursday night I can’t for the life of me remember who that was. A kick ass anarcho-feminist did, that’s all I can remember.
As far as I’m concerned, it may as well have been Ate Cel. Seriously, the woman can rock a rally like no one else – physically and verbally. I got to know her multi-faceted awesomeness at the March 8th International Women’s Day rally in Montreal, and I’m forever grateful for the encounter. She can switch from dancing in the street to spitting tight rhetoric on the LCP in a second, in both instances managing to unite people and move them to join in, shout out and get involved.
The PWC decided to extend International Women’s Day and turn it into a two weekend event, and invited Ate Cel to share on the history of migration and organization of Filipina women in Canada. I have to admit, I left feeling a little more fierce and a little more empowered – knowing that if I put a little back into it, I could probably get things moving in Montreal, too.
From the shift Canadian (im)migration policies have taken, away from specialized trades targeting cheap Filipino labor, to an overt de-skilling and disregard for Filipinas’ skills and education level through the LCP, she struck so many chords along the way it was hard to not be moved. To tears, to anger, or ideally to action.
She didn’t only speak on the ‘struggles’ and the ‘oppression’ though. She spoke on how women organized in Canada to better their condition, demand their rights and get some space (literally, sometimes), and recognition in a country that was totally satisfied forgetting they were around.
The last thing I want to do on here is generalize how you all would have felt listening to her, so I’ll speak for myself: it felt so good to hear how a community could and did come together in though times and changed things for themselves, even if that meant moving the boat and maybe getting some cut eye and un-kind words along the way. It felt good to hear that they didn’t wait, or got fed up of waiting, to have people do things for them and for change to come on its own and got to it themselves. That they faced up to the hard truth of injustice, and unfair treatment, and the sadness, and maybe the anger. That they stopped trying to do it alone, came together, and used the negative and turned it into positive.
And it’s so good to know that I have examples of really cool women to base my life on – that ‘they’ can become ‘we’, you know?
In these days of third-wave, POC/WOC revolutions, I’d like to append to that quote “if you’ll give cut eye to my doorknockers and pink shirt”… But that’s stuff for another post.
We added a few excerpts from her presentation to this week’s Sigaw Ng Bayan radio show. Check out the CKUT archives HERE to listen to the show – guaranteed you’ll love it! Hmmm – maybe we can figure out a way of uploading those here directly?
posted by dancing chaos at
5:29 AM
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