Young American Activist Women Raped, Murdered in New Orleans and Oaxaca, Gift Economy, Thoughts from Swaneagle
Oct 1st, 2008 by admin
Kirsten Brydum
The following letter from swaneagle came through this morning on a list I’m on. Kirsten Brydum, who was found murdered in New Orleans, was the amazing, visionary founder of the Really Really Free Market, something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while now, but particularly recently, when there is all of this talk about money and about exchange economies and exchange in general, that so, in my opinion, misses the revolutionary mark by a country mile, with just about nobody — as (frustratingly, aggravatingly) usual — talking about truly revolutionary alternatives. It’s as though even revolutionary women cannot envision any sort of economy but the one we have, either to embrace it or attack it. There’s more! Can we get beyond championing and trashing? And I make this point in honor of this incredible, brilliant young woman who has been murdered in the course of her activist work and life. Kirsten Brydum was committed to the concept of gift economies, which her brainchild, the Really Really Free Market was, and I hope, continues to be. Such an incredible loss! It’s hard to write about this, our young women murdered, women who would have changed history.
Marcella Sali Grace
Marcella Sali Grace was a young international activist, artist and dancer only 20 years old. She was working in solidarity with Oaxaca revolutionaries as an “international accompanier”. These are “foreign nationals who provide protective accompaniment to human rights workers, political activists, and members of social organisations who are under threat, such as members of the Asemblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) who are continuing to suffer widespread repression by the corrupt government of Ulises Ruis Ortiz. In the weeks before her death Sali had told friends and colleagues that she believed she was under surveillance, and was being subjected to political persecution.” She had been deeply involved in teaching women’s self-defense courses to Oaxacan women. The loss is an ache, it is beyond grief, I feel as though I cannot even allow myself to feel it, but I have to, for our sake, for women’s and girl’s sake, and for the sake of the whole world. Link
Following is the message from swaneagle:
Blessings All,
When Katrina hit New Orleans, i longed to go help but was unable as my daughter had started school in a remote area near the Canadian border 25 miles from our tiny cabin. But i was able to direct volunteers to Common Ground and to others areas needing supporters from my home while Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs traveled to the Congo to help Food Not Bombs there and speak on Gandhi’s birthday. I was very happy to be able to direct volunteers with my phone and the internet. I met several wonderful people during that 2 week period and was relieved i was able to assist in some small way.
2 years ago, i recieved a scholarship from the Colville chapter of Veterans For Peace to attend the VFP conference at the UW in Seattle. I introduced my son, Adrian Xavier, to Malik Rahim, a Green Party member and the founder of Common Ground in Algiers community of New Orleans. He was keynote speaker at the conference. His efforts brought help to those in dire need after Katrina and Rita and continue to do so to this day.
What happened in New Orleans is really a fate that awaits us all and is rapidly headed our way in these bleak times.
I was arrested with Starhawk and the Pagan Cluster in DC in 2002 while we were headed to a protest against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We were part of the pre-emptive arrest of 649 people. I was involved in a million dollar lawsuit against the city of Washington D.C. for illegal arrest. It settled in November of last year and i received $6,000 as my portion.
Today i learned of the murder of a second young American activist in the past few days. It truly made me sob with grief and the realization that white skinned privilege is indeed over.
I plan to attend workshops addressing white skin privilege on Wednesdays in the months of October and November. I do hope i will attain skills enabling me to better pass such information on to those who care to know….
My heart is very much in pain right now as i think of the state of our lives in these times of greed rulers, of death squads run rampant and the total silencing of the most desperate and utterly voiceless.
May the deaths of Marcella Sali Grace and Kirsten Brydum not be in vain. We must take great courage up with full soul force and trudge valiantly onward for the sake of the children’s future.
…
Peace,
swaneaglePlease read the following:
Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace!
Justice for Sali / Justicia para Sali!
Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca - Thursday, September 25Brother and sisters,
Our hearts are full of sadness and rage because our sister Sali was brutally raped and murdered 20 minutes from San Jose del Pacifico and up to this moment the Oaxacan Attorney General’s Office, as is its custom, is not doing anything regarding the fact that there exist witnesses who have information to identify those responsible.
Marcella Sali Grace was born in the United States, with a big heart in solidarity with just causes. She had many friend because she was always inclined to help, using her artistic talents to paint a banner or a wall or dancing Arabic dance to raise funds for the struggle, or putting on punk shows, or giving self-defense courses to the women because she knew very well how the men accosted them. This was one of her struggles, that women were free and respected. Sali was so involved in the struggle that she was an international accompanier of brothers and sisters who felt harassed by the bad government of lises Ruiz Ortiz.
Unfortunately, on September 24, a woman’s body was found with the physical characteristics of Sali, in a deserted cabin twenty minutes from the village of San Jose del Pacifico and at the moment when a village member went to feed some dogs around that area, he was struck by a fetid odor coming from this cabin and notified the municipal authorities of the village, who proceeded to removed the body that was found which was already in a state of decay, and after these events, they did not give any more information to the people in the village.
Yesterday, companera Julieta Cruz (who knew Sali was headed for San Jose del Pacifico) was informed that a young, foreign woman was found in the Miahuatlan amphitheatre, where she went, and where she recognized the body of Sali because of the tattoos she had, as her face was unrecognizable. Julieta thinks it is because of burns, but it doesn’t explain why the rest of her body has less visible damage. When we asked for the case number we were denied as well from seeing the results of the autopsy, as they argued with us that because we weren’t relatives they couldn’t give us any information.
Due to her solidarity work with the popular struggle of the people of Oaxaca, in other struggles in the world and against the racism on Mexico’s border with the U.S., on different occasions and to different people, Sali mentioned that recently in Oaxaca she had suffered political persecution and surveillance. This makes us think that her cowardly murderer is related to the widespread repression against the social movement and directed particularly at international observers. Because of this, we don’t dismiss that the intellectual authors are the same who ordered the repression against the people of Oaxaca in their struggle for justice and freedom.
In the face of these bloody events, and for the brutal cruelty used against companera Sali, we don’t disregard that this could be a clear message directed at all the people of Oaxaca, as well as the companeros in solidarity from different parts of the world; we say this based on the recent national and international news which says that “APPO members we re the ones who killed U.S. journalist Bradley Roland Will” and as there is no justice in Oaxaca, we worry that the distortion of information could interfere in procuring true justice
for our companera and the clear bureaucratic slowness with which the involved authorities are already treating this investigation.In the face of these lamentable events, WE DEMAND:
The immediate speeding up of the investigations.
The immediate clarification of the facts.
Punishment for the intellectual and material murderers.
Justice for our sister Marcella Sali Grace!
Enough is enough with of the murders, violence and hate against women
who fight for justice!We ask you to sign on (at the email indicated) to this demand for
justice and to become a part of the urgent activities to demand the
clarification of these cowardly acts.rebeldiasentrelazadas@yahoo.com
Information: (01 951) 5178190 CIPO…
Signed:
Encuentro de Mujeres Oaxaquenas “Compartiendo Voces de Esperanza”
Colectivo Mujer Nueva
Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca Ricardo Flores Magon
Voces Oaxaquenas Construyendo Autonomia y Libertad
Colectivo Tod@s Somos Pres@s
Encuentro de Jovenes en el Movimiento Social Oaxaquenohttp://elenemigocomun.net/1590
Dorinda Moreno, FuerzaMundial/ConcilioMujeres2009, CalifAztlan
———————————————————-San Francisco Activist Killed in New Orleans
Tue Sep 30 2008 Community Mourns Loss of Kirsten BrydumClose friends report that the body of San Francisco activist Kirsten Brydum was found Saturday in New Orleans, where Kirsten had traveled as part of a popular education tour. Kirsten was known locally as an organizer of the Really Really Free Market in Dolores Park, a monthly gathering to freely exchange goods and services with no money, trade or barter.
According to press reports, Kirsten was fatally shot several times in the head. New Orleans police say they are awaiting a report from the coroner, who has not yet released information about the death.
Kirsten’s death follows closely after news of the murder of another young activist, Marcella “Sali” Grace Eiler, in Oaxaca. Those who knew Kirsten or Sali have been invited to Station 40 on Sept. 30th to grieve and to honor the women and support one another.
__._,_.___
Even if Sali’s torturers were not explicitly government officials authorized to do what they did by Gov. Ruiz, he is responsible – “self-proclaimed Radio Ciudadana (Citizen Radio), the pirate radio funded by the governor’s party, has played a role in escalating the violence, calling people to burn down houses of known supporters of the movement and offices of NGOs and local newspapers, turn in neighbours and kill foreign journalists, activists and sympathisers.”
http://intercontinentalcry.org/december-22nd-urgent-action-for-oaxaca/
Because the violence in oax is tacitly sanctioned by both the state and federal government, Sali’s case is worth writing to US congresspersons about, with an eye toward applying some (figurative) muscle to our southern neighbor for once.
“worth” there being a poor choice of words. Of course she is worth it, they both are. But most murders of women abroad by “rogue forces” are declared unfit for US government action against a state — just pointing out that this is NOT that “rogue force” kind of event, which needs to be said.
It makes me feel ill that a young woman with a soul and intentions as bright as the sun was snuffed out by those who can only be her spiritual, ideological, and personal inferiors. What despicable bullies. This is what women are see as by brutal cowards worldover–as usuable, disposable flesh, only. Some days I despair.
Oh goodness, this is just awful. So, so many brilliant world-changing, inspirational women lost to male terrorism.
Kirsten Brydum’s last letter from the road, traveling to New Orleans:
From the Global Sisterhood Network list.
Tears.
Article in the New Orleans Times Picayune about Kirsten Brydum’s murder.
This struck home with me because my beloved younger daughter is spending the next two months volunteer teaching in a refugee camp in Nablus. My dear niece graduated from Annapolis and is now on a destroyer headed for the Middle East. I fear for both of them, in this world full of posturing men eager to start another war. Even though, statistically speaking, they’re probably safer than they would be driving to the mall or going out for an evening with friends in an American city. It is hard to be the mother of daughters, knowing how much evil is out there, but not wanting to stop them from following their hearts.
And I am angry, SO ANGRY that they–and we–are the targets simply because they are women. I was reminded of this quote from a book I love, “The Female Man,” by Joanna Russ. It’s about the arrival of a stranger on our world–a woman from an all-woman planet they call Whileaway. Her story intertwines with those of three other women, but really they are all the same woman, they are all Everywoman. (Sorry this is long!)
There’s no being out too late in Whileaway, or up too early, or in the wrong part of town, or unescorted. You cannot fall out of the kinship web and become sexual prey for strangers, for there is no prey and there are no strangers–the web is world-wide. In all of Whileaway there is no one who can keep you from going where you please (though you may risk your life, if that sort of thing appeals to you), no one who will follow you and try to embarrass you by whispering obscenities in your ear, no one who will attempt to rape you, no one who will warn you of the dangers of the street, no one who will stand on street corners, hot-eyed and vicious, jingling loose change in his pants pocket, bitterly bitterly sure that you’re a cheap floozy, hot and wild, who likes it, who can’t say no, who’s making a mint off it, who inspires him with nothing but disgust, and who wants to drive him crazy.
On Whileaway, eleven-year-old children strip and live naked in the wilderness above the forty-seventh parallel, where they meditate, stark naked or covered with leaves, sans pubic hair, subsisting on the roots and berries so kindly planted by their elders. You can walk around the Whileawayan equator twenty times (if the feat takes your fancy and you live that long) with one hand on your sex and in the other an emerald the size of a grapefruit. All you’ll get is a tired wrist.
While here, where we live–!
Yes, here where we live . . . . Joanna Russ wrote that in 1973, before either of my daughters was born, and they’re grown up now. Another generation struggling to change a world that hasn’t changed nearly enough. If all the murdered women could rise and shine like stars, how bright the sky would be. They will shine in my mind’s eye. Thank you for bringing them to our memory, Heart.