May this ignite the spirit and calling for Real Change.

I haven’t been a fan of Clinton from the start. But l sincerely believed she would win. And last night when I watched America light up red for Trump I was shocked. The lesser of two evils sounded really good in that moment and I felt my heart sink.

I must remind myself that I have been carrying this sadness around for a while now. All the problems this election revealed about the state of humanity has weighed heavy in my heart for far longer than this election.

For all the things I have learned about American Imperialism. And for all the ways our generation and this world continues to support and invest in it.

Nevertheless, this morning my spirit of grounding faith in the possibility of change ignited within. A feeling of the silver lining arose. The wolf in sheep’s skin has fully revealed itself, I thought. I watched on my social media as people were collectively agreeing there is a problem in America.

Had Clinton won, with the backing of the media and celebrities galore, our generation might have gone to bed tonight thinking there isn’t a problem down south. We would have remained compliant to a status quo that is defining the direction of this Earth and its people. We might have celebrated.

America has been leading its nation and the world’s culture, economy and foreign policy in a certain direction for a while now.

Now that Trump has won; might we as a people collectively begin to agree that this direction is something we do not want to perpetuate or participate in? 

Might we as people and nations awaken into a sense of responsibility and self-leadership? Will we realize that it is more imperative than ever before that we forge new pathways and alliances? That we, at the grassroots, take this world and its people in a new more promising direction.

Will this inspire in the hearts of all that the state of things is far more serious than we lead ourselves to believe? Will this inspire us to think more before we invest in America and the perpetuation of its influence?

Will we finally be a part of a process of leaving American Hegemony behind for good? 

Some interesting and provocative perspective from my social media and some of my Progressive American friends:

 

A Grandmother in Berkeley

Learn more about this amazing spirit at her website: http://www.andreesingerthompson.com/

I never grew up with my grandparents. A byproduct of being a first generation Canadian, I guess. They were left behind, on the Tropical Island my parents parted ways with for the industrial urban American jungle. 

There I was born in a high-rise apartment in downtown Toronto. In a Jewish hospital nonetheless. And I was raised by my parents as best as they knew how. Moral, righteous loving beings they were. 

Taste of liberty came late in life. In my early twenties I’d journey out to the west coast. Not knowing then that it was where most Americans gravitated towards as they fleeted from conformity to liberty. 

As a wanderer-vagabond-traveler, life was light at first. But the dark side of it all was there as well. Kids from troubled-broken-homes hitting the road in search of joy or peace. 

And it was on one of those journeys you can say that I found Andree. An elderly half-Jew who’d be the closest experience I’d ever have to a Grandmother daunting over me. She’d set meals in front of me and never left me hungry. 

She lived in Berkeley. She'd moved in during the 60's, as the land near her home was excavated and North Berkeley Bart station was born. Her home held a large expansive Garden. Chickens laid eggs out there amidst the vegetation. “Help yourself to the Garden” she’d tell me. And I would. Making myself garden salads whenever she disappeared off on one of her many social engagements. 

She was an active woman. A social activist to be specific. She taught an Eco-Art class at Laney College and held happy hours at her kitchen table every evening. Intellectual discussions about climate change and environmental destruction ensued. Her house was always brimming with life and activity. 

 

She'd invite me to stay for awhile up the stairs and into her attic turned bedroom. Books alongside the walls, old family pictures and her personal office. She’d show me to the back to a small room that would be mine for the days that I’d stay. Sun light streamed in through the windows up on the ceiling. I’d fall in love with the space immediately and count my blessings that she’d offered for me to stay.

As someone who strongly believes that the revolution for change must begin at home, her life unraveled before me like the very inspiration and light I needed. It was quite evident from the moment I met her that I was destined to cross paths with her. Her Garage converted into an art-studio where she made the plates and cups we ate and drank from. Her house covered in hand-crafted art. A powerful example of how one person, one home can make a small shift in reality.

I’d celebrate Rosh Hashana with her. We’d light the candles and dip apples in honey. Her son would come over and enthrall us over dinner with humor. She’d hug me, as we prepared dinner, “thank you for helping me”. And I’d be overwhelmed. It was rare that elders hugged me. It was rare that I was commended. 

I didn’t know how to show her I loved her. She’d walk past me and my heart would brim. I’d want to stand and hug her, rub my hand against her soft skin. But I had just met her. So I’d hold it all back. Holding the love and admiration within me. 

It was interesting that my first extended time with a Grandmother that she’d be a Jew. I always joked that I was partially Jewish. Growing up in upper-middle class neighborhoods where Jews predominated. 

“So you were Rich” she’d inquire. I didn’t know how to answer the question. The economic state of my family had fluctuated from poor, to rich, to middle class all in one life-time. To explain my economic status was complex. I felt affiliated to every economic bracket that humans adhered to. And I’d have to branch into history to truly explain it all. 

Nevertheless, I could have simply have said that though I’d grown up amidst wealthy Jews that it didn’t mean I was always as wealthy. Instead I kept cutting up the egg-plant placed before me and continued preparing dinner. 

How to explain why I lived with bare minimal simplicity. What I was doing on the road this time around, I didn’t truly know. I’d left a burden of pain and confusion in South Asia. Another story I’m still waiting to write. 

But she’d catch me. Catch me as I wandered through hunched over from regret. She’d catch me the way Grandmothers do. And she’d make it clear that she’d tasted pain as well. But she hadn’t let it hold her back. It had turned her into a woman with a mission. A woman that was aware of the struggles of the Earth. And was committed to making a difference. 

In the little ways of course, extinct animals painted on her car. “Stop Bitchin’ and start a revolution” written clearly on one of those weekend T-Shirts she wore. Inviting me to the class she taught at Laney College on Eco-Art. And by giving a hand to whoever seemed to be in need. By being there for me, when I needed her the most. 

Perhaps I have not been blessed to truly live and be with my genetic grandparents, but I surely believe I have found a Grandmother in her. And oh how very grateful I am that it is a Grandmother with a spirit for life, positive change and human evolution. 

Buddha Flow

There have been so many great American adventures, thinkers. On those silent days where the mind’s past memories and conditions fade away I remember within me a piercing radiant light that just wants to feel what it feels like to be alive. A distinct unique phenomenal existence that should be remembered.

I want to be one of those people that remind people to wake up and seize the day. This could be your last day on Earth, make it beautiful. Praying, ruminating and thinking about Death helps me remember how precious and fleeting this glimpse of eternity can be. And fearlessly I recon I might as well become comfortable about being dead and free. 

So, I leave alone to places where I know no one. I sit on planes praying for all those I left behind, less I return to find them no more. But letting go I set forth into the unknown in hopes love will be found there too on the other side. And it usually is in the arms, hugs, support, and kindness of the humanity I have found everywhere. 

Humanity is what has kept me going for so long. So that I can build healing community centers, civic hacking projects for a new world paradigm, a world where working a prestigious 9 to 5 doesn’t encapsulate your day and life. Rather, perhaps that there are other things that one wants to put time to. To ride your bike a distance further than yesterday,  to sit by the ocean and feel it crash beneath your feet. These moments provide for me a glimpse a life of a Buddha amidst the chatter of material. 

Something keeps pushing me forward over the hill and into the arms of a hand glide up in the air over the Pacific Ocean. And you begin to wonder whether you’d ever want to stop living an exciting exhilarating life.

Especially when it seems to happen so effortlessly the more you let go of your mind, plans and to-do lists and just let life happen for you. The way a tree bares mango. The magical wonderful experiences that will make you as valuable as the sun - come naturally, organically. As you keep smiling and growing and accepting all the gifts life wants to share, seeking out to see the genius and intelligence in every precise moment that makes you whole and complete.

You remember. Life is easy. Life is precious. Life is awesome.

Free Space for a Free Bird

The day of my 24^th birthday I’d whispered out to the Earth from the top of a hill in Berkeley: ‘Universe I want to know now what exactly you strive to teach me’. Hours later, with the night sky for company, I’d venture to meet a friend at a pop-up civic venture project at Mission and 7^th in the Somo District of San Francisco.

A four-storey building would reveal everything I’d ever searched for. Free Space they’d call it, a project for the month of national civic-hacking. A property owner would decide to pass over his property for a month to some of the most experienced civic-hackers. Four stories high and spacious, in days they’d transform the space. Cultural-hacking they’d call it.  A massive network of burners and civic-hackers painted the walls and filled a month’s calendar with more than a 100 free workshops. Allowing me to taste first-hand what it would feel like to live in a free-world.

All my needs were met. I’d attend the contact dance classes, yoga and book-readings. Rummage through a free-cycle of clothing; I’d find new outfits to replace those lost on the road. And food-hackers ensured boxes of food were donated in the second floor kitchen. I’d even find a place to stay just blocks away for free!

The abundance of social engagement and goods to be shared for free uplifted me to heights of elation. It was the best gift the universe could give me. After months of living out of my back-pack to prove some inner intuitive knowing that humanity can be as free as the birds in the sky… This social-project settled beyond my imagination my inner-stirring that believed that we could live for free.

Free with value and worth. The project would go on to be recognized by the White House for its innovative nature. And to think all it took was a pure intention, a wish and a well-placed coincidence for me to discover magic. It was one of those miraculous experiences that would prove beyond all doubt that all dreams can be manifested!

In front of  Free Space in June 2013. This whole wall was painted in less than 10 days for free. Check out the video below to get a virtual tour of the space! You can find me in the video below at 6:29.

I'd pack one bag and set forth...

I’d go to work, swirl in my chair and watch my heart pace. Something was calling me in the direction that he had left. 

Three days would pass before I worked up the nerve to book a ticket to catch him in Calgary. I’d pack one bag and set forth… 

Reconciliation: A Personal Journey

Reconciliation in the context of post-war Sri Lanka is something I have dedicated several years to. But it is only recently that I’ve begun to realize how much reconciliation is a part of my intimate-personal narrative as well. It is a journey dictated by love; an effort to love society in its wholeness, beginning with learning to love myself in my completeness.

As I walk back into the ancestral clutches of an Island past-on to me. I see the Island's society as it may perceive me and my blood; worthy or unworthy of their honor. I seek to reconcile this disharmony.

There are parts of me that I can pipe with pride. My mother, the child of a high-caste Kandyan who was educated in English and spent his afternoons with his glasses at the rim of his nasal reading English newspapers because he couldn’t read Sinhala. My grandfather was the son of a great lineage where doctors, lawyers and government officials were born. And he married my grand-mother of the same black-smith caste.

But, there are parts of me I whisper under my breath to the unsuspecting. I look pensively through their eyes after having spoken to see if I’ve been accepted. The part where I am the daughter of a father that grew up on a small plot of land in the low-income ‘hoods of Kotahena. His mother educated only to know Sinhala. She was a proud indigenous woman that ran her own Kadai, but she had no Victorian sensibility.  She was known for her aggressive and almost manly nature. Ministers would come in search of her to round up votes in the area. An Arachi by sir name, when I hear stories of her, I feel she carried her village chiefdom tact into the urban city.

The little I do know of this side of my family has been picked up in bits and pieces. The history of this side of my family is often left un-spoken. I know very little of my father’s father. They were always at odds, for as long as he was alive. And it was only in his passing, when returning for his funeral, that I discovered my grandfather’s brother’s sons were known as house-builders.

I don’t know when I learned to hide the part of me that revealed ancestry that lacked wealth or western education; the things that a Euro-centric-minded individual would de-value.

But as the love child of these two converging human narratives, I am subjected by the very nature of my being to learn to love these sides of myself equally for the social poise or lack thereof.

Thus, Reconciliation is coming to terms with why parts of me are deemed worthy while others are not. And in that search for personal healing and acceptance, I have aligned with the stories of the marginalized and their stories of oppression. Somewhere in their critical analysis of their histories, I hear mine as well.

I am Educated enough to know better than to sweep the past away, rather than to come to terms with the shame I and others have been taught to carry. A few post-colonial history courses set me off course to rediscover a part of me that I was taught to disown, devalue. To learn to fall in love with a part of myself, I had been taught to not share; the part of me that would set me at the bottom of an imagined social hierarchy.

And in returning, as I grow in my courage to speak, as I grow in my courage to be in my wholeness, I watch the way I engage with society transform. My path is that of one who claims her inferiority as her shield, discomforting those who live under a shield of imagined superiority. I hold it above my head watching in curiosity whether the ocean of social perception will part or submerge; colliding into me in unity, in a deep remembering of innate oneness. 

The Fallacy of Sinhala Privilege

The Sinhala are privileged, I’ve been told.

 So one must respond; how do you know? Did television and papers say so?

Spending time in Sri Lanka, I have found that the current Sinhala supremacist state broadcasted via media is much different than the experience of being Sinhala on the ground. 

Neo-colonial appropriation is as strong as ever, as is the lack of interest in indigenous heritage. It takes more than being Sinhalese to receive social value and worth.  There are more people in this country appropriating western forms of dress and professionalism to gain social worth, than there are people trying to appropriate authentic Sinhala customs.

Traveling beyond Colombo out into the south, where Sinhala families predominate. Native Sinhala tongue is common and Buddhist temples fill the streets like corner stores.  

                                Photo by Natale Danko 2013

“Let’s not forget, we live on a globe where economics and a neo-colonial underpinning impacts the world; where wealth, prestige and a corporate glow gets you love, value and worth.”

But, it doesn’t look like it matters how good your Sinhala sounds or how authentic the Sinhala garb; bare feet with a sarong.

Political economy runs things out in the rural parts as well. Wealth, prestige and a corporate glow promise  more value and worth than touting your Sinhalese lineage.

So these days I take this claim that the Sinhala are privileged and frown, especially when it's related to social worth. Sure, there are a few that identify as Sinhala who are extremely privileged in Sri Lanka. But, there are also the many that are underprivileged; under-paid and devalued.  How does one account for this?

It is essential to have an over-lapping dialogue about privilege. There are places where the concern about inequity in the nation overlap and goes beyond the dialogue of ethnic difference.Exclusively engaging with one’s ethnic group, will only give you a limited understanding of the ways members of the Sinhala community, especially those who retain indigenous practices, are de-valued as well. You will miss out in hearing the stories of the Sinhala migrant worker, farmer, fisher-man, garbage cleaner, the man who sells pineapples for a living, house-wife or under-paid employee. Inequitable access to “Privilege” is a common burden and struggle that members of all ethnic groups experience.   

As one observe human beings in Sri Lanka, the way they create value structures in their minds, the way they define some with more value and worth than others... yes, ethnicity is at times a cue. But social roles, behaviors, the color of your skin, the sex you were born with are factors that too deem you inferior or superior. 

And, I have found that the social cues that promise privilege in Sri Lanka often supersede one's ethnic affiliation. Something I see everyday as I observe the continued struggles of individuals who identify as Sinhala. 

Photo Natale Danko 2013

This piece specifically refers to the following statement:

“The social, political, and economic arrangements of a society can place some people in a privileged position relative to others, particularly with respect to important goods, like institutional representation, economic resources, and even less tangible goods like “respect” and “welfare”

My piece explores whether tangible goods like economic resources or less tangible goods like "respect" and "welfare" are promised to those who identify as Sinhala in Sri Lanka.