About
Yvonne lives in Berkeley, California with her partner and their four-legged family. During the day, she works at a racial justice think tank, crunching numbers to eradicate white supremacy. At night and sometimes weekends, she sits at her computer, trying to make sense of the world.
These are the fruits of her attempts. Apologies in advance if they are sometimes sour, not always sweet, unripe or not fully ready to launch. Yvonne is working on her craft of writing and playing with using all five senses.
Yvonne tweets, shares what she reads, makes friends, takes pictures, and watches video. Occasionally, she chats and talks on the phone. She loves hearing from you at yvonnegrapher at gmail dot com.
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Tag Archives: obama
Communities of Possibilities
This was first published on RaceWire.
The concept of community is an ever-shifting one.
It first becomes applied to movements for social change after World War II, when a dissatisfied social worker Saul Alinksy shifted his efforts into organizing urban communities, based on geographic proximity. He was the first recognizable community organizer that developed a model beyond [...]
Posted in gender, labor, multitudes, race Also tagged capital crisis, geography, geopolitics, national question, neoliberal, race, space and place, strategic essentialism, white supremacy Leave a comment
A Tale of Race and Recovery
via RaceWire
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.*
The Obama administration enacted the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) back in February, the largest boon to public spending and [...]
Posted in capital, gender, labor, race, realpolitik, the state Also tagged apartheid, capital crisis, neoliberal, new deal, race, safety net, strategic essentialism, subprime, white supremacy Leave a comment
The Cruxifiction of Van Jones
Philly artist Jasiri X made a music video linking the attack on Van Jones to how black and brown men are systemically discredited, especially when they are speaking truth to power and shaking up the status quo.
via Davey D’s Hip Hop Corner
Posted in race Also tagged bay area, music, race, strategic essentialism, white supremacy Leave a comment
Empire Strikes Black
“I want to join the Starfleet Academy!” I exclaimed to a colleague when leaving the theater. Watching the new Star Trek movie left me with a sense of optimism about intergalactic governance, a desire to trust and give of myself wholly to the Federation, who will school me, train me on how to [...]
Posted in dead white men, geek, race, the state Also tagged accumulation by dispossession, dead white men, neoliberal, race, social darwinism, space and place, spatial fix 2 Comments
Tent City
“Excuse me, where’s the tent city?”
The man with matted dreadlocks and a weathered face from the sun squinted at me. He wore a white tee shirt grey with wear and slung a tattered jean jacket over his shoulder, hot from the afternoon sun. “Why would you want to go there?”
Why indeed. Like [...]
Posted in capital, race, urban studies Also tagged accumulation by dispossession, capital crisis, new deal, race, space and place, spatial fix, subprime Leave a comment
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay
From my perch here on the thirteenth floor in downtown San Francisco, I can catch a sliver of the Bay. There’s often a boat, usually cargo, floating in the water with a backdrop of a mountain range and sometimes at sunset a fantastic explosion of color streaking the sky: pinks, blues, violets, and then black.
One [...]
Hope from People
An open letter to those seeking to build a world from below, in which many worlds are possible
We call on all anarchists, horizontalists, autonomists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians, and others organizing a world from below to bring our best creative spirits to the project of a “Celebrate People’s History and Build Popular Power” bloc on January 20, [...]
Say Cheese
Sunday afternoon. Yuppie parents, pretending they’re in Critical Mass, aggressively block aisles with their baby carriages. Ah, Fairway.
After sneaking a few olives from their bar, I spied in the cheese display: Barick Obama from the Lazy Lady Farm in Westfield, Vermont. It was a square-shaped cheese with a dull orange rind. [...]
Ethnic Studies Beyond the Academy