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: strategic essentialism
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, obama, race, space and place, 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, obama, race, safety net, 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
Green Jobs for Navajo Youth
Nikke Alex, the youth organizer for the Navajo Green Jobs and the Black Mesa Water Coalition, talked with us for a few minutes while she was at the Navajo Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock, Arizona, celebrating the historic passage of the first green jobs legislation in American Indian country.
The green jobs act establishes a [...]
Posted in interviews, race Also tagged accumulation by dispossession, american indian movement, national question, race Leave a comment
Racializing Uighurs: The Story of Internal Colonialism in China
China extends 3,400 miles from the west to the east and falls into five different time zones. Yet, the country operates on a single standard of time, eight hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, all year round based on the time zone for Beijing, the country’s capital.
A single Chinese time zone is as much [...]
Posted in multitudes, race, the state Also tagged china, han, national question, race, social darwinism, stalinism Leave a comment
Black Kids on Bikes
Once a month, a movement courses through the streets of Los Angeles. Moving together, in solidarity, Black cyclists are spurred forward by the revolutions of their wheels. Each individual coming together to join the flood that takes over the streets. Their momentum stirs the air, setting in motion a gale that blows clear across the [...]
Posted in multitudes, observed, race, subbaculture, urban studies Also tagged race, space and place Leave a comment
Ronald Takaki, Rest in Peace
via hapihour.org
According to numerous individuals, Prof. Ron Takaki passed away this week. Share your thoughts on Ron’s legacy on Facebook. We’ve lost a giant in the Asian American community. Join with me in wishing his family and friends our condolences.
Considered the father of multicultural studies, Ron was a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University [...]
Happy Birthday, Yuri Kochiyama
Born on May 19, 1921, Yuri grew up in a white middle class suburb of San Pedro, California. Her life was irreparably changed when Pearl Harbor was bombed. She and her family were forcibly removed from their homes and interned at detention camps setup for Japanese Americans during World War II. There, Yuri connected the [...]
Posted in gender, multitudes, race Also tagged bay area, national question, nyc, race, stalking Leave a comment
Food Chains
A food chain, according to Wikipedia, is the flow of energy from one organism to the next and to the next and so on. You start with what’s called a primary producer, usually a being that rates low in terms of evolutionary development and differentiation, and go successively through various trophic levels of predators feeding [...]
Ethnic Studies Beyond the Academy