In all honesty, there was some internal resistance to writing this post. Today is International Women’s Day and part of this woman just wanted to take the day off but instead, I would like to acknowledge where the multiple struggle(s) for justicia are and their relationship to mujeres and yes giving space, creating space, opening space for women to step back to rest, heal, and conserve energy for the battles to come.

It is interesting, I spent the weekend going through documents of my personal 16 year history doing various work. When I was a baby activist, my mentors and role models were all men and I functioned in a hyper-masculine world where struggle was about long meetings, long actions and preparing for those long meetings and actions. There were plenty of women around : mothers whose children had been killed by racist violence, including police brutality, independent journalists, loyal partners, and other young energetic mujeres like me. What there wasn’t was alot of talk about taking care of ourselves, unless we were forced to.

Suddenly in 2000, my mentor was getting sicker. I was a young single mother struggling to keep it all together and yet there wasn’t enough space given to discussing how we take care of ourselves and each other. My mentor passed on. My mental health forced me to step back in a less than healthy, accountable way and my focus was set on working more closely with other women : in my daughter’s school, online where a small but strong and kick ass community of radical mujeres/mamis of color was growing and supporting each other.

2011 feels like the late 1990′s in many ways. We are seeing law enforcement brutalize our communities, especially our young people. Immigration enforcement has expanded it’s reach and local law enforcement now act as defacto ICE agents and it is the women who are at the center being criminalized, brutalized, blamed. In the last 1990′s, then Mayor Giuliani, on a live radio show, blamed the mothering of Margarita Rosario for the murder of her son at the hands of two NYPD officers (who also happened to have been his bodyguards at one point). Mujeres are still being blamed. Whether we are saints or sex workers (or a saintly sex worker), from the inside of our bodies out, our wombs or ,lack thereof if we dare still identify as women, are blamed for the ills of the world. Our bodies are seen weapons of mass destructions that birth anchor babies that threaten the ideals of the United States, or our bodies are seen as not conforming enough to standards of womanhood, are not available enough as labor, as commodities, so they are violated repeatedly like in Honduras and Juarez (or in hour hoods and homes). Laws are being presented where the heartbeat of a fetus is testimony but the dead bodies of our sisters are ignored.

Something is happening. In a conversation this past weekend with a fellow m/other, she said that sometimes we need to step back, to heal so that we can gather our energies for what is to come. Something has been coming and growing for a long time. How do we take care of ourselves and each other, making sure our very basic needs are taken care of so that we can go to to the battle line, tag our sisters in or at as needed, and keep going?

I am, more than ever, committed to making this space a place for exploring that. Let’s look at the policies and politics but let’s also look at the practices in how we treat ourselves and each other.

As I told my mother, who in past hoped that my “activism” was a youthful phase, 16 years is not a phase, it is a life, a path that was started before me by other mujeres and a path that will continue by other mujeres.

Feliz dia mujeres, y pa’lante siempre.