Revolutionary Girl

A talk given at a SFLNC rally at San Francisco Civic Center
October 28, 2001 by Ann Kyle Brown


I have been asked by Revolutionary Girl, The Electronic Music Defense Fund and San Francisco Late Night Coalition(SFLNC) to speak as a poet activist. So I'll talk for a few minutes about what it means to be an activist in this cruel time we are all now living in, but I also want to address the perhaps more compelling issue on this night…Why we must dance?

I lived and worked in this city for more than 20 years. Accomplished quite a lot. Worked with a lot of other artist-activists, politicians, and community leaders. Can look around and see childcare centers, community centers, recycling centers, neighborhood newspapers, arts programs and institutions, historic public events everywhere. Don't think there is a neighborhood I haven't worked in to some capacity. Ever heard of me? Nope. You know why? Because I'm nobody. Nobody. And let me just say, if you don't already know it -- there is no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't need to take credit.

But being nobody does not mean I am nothing. I think being anonymous in a celebrity-driven, power-hungry, materialistic culture is the most revolutionary thing you can do.
Why? Because you are free…free of greed, attachment and fear. Greed for fame, fortune and power, attachment to results so you look good, or fear of failure so you don't look bad. You are free to be creative, to take risks, to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, to not know, to live in the great unknown.

So what's so great about the unknown…aren't we supposed to know everything already? Know where we are going? Know who we are? Know what we want to do? Know what's what about what? No! Absolutely not. Because if we all already knew everything we wouldn't have the problems we do most certainly have.

The great unknown is where life actually happens. The unknown is certainly where the sixties happened. One of the most creative times in history. But those of us who where young and active in the sixties, don't know what we need to do now…anymore than we did then, anymore than you do now. But we are going to figure it out. Just as you are.

What needs to be done now? In this time of terror? Trust yourself, listen to yourself. Quiet all the voices in your head telling you what you should do, what cool people do, what a patriotic American would do, what once was done, what a real man does, what a good woman does…quiet those voices, and in the spaciousness that then exists in your mind…listen to yourself. Let me explain…

Scratch the surface of all our human religions, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Islam, etc. and you will see the same message…cultivate peace within yourself and from that heart of peace take action in the world.

I am an activist and I am concerned here, tonight, with the question of where right action springs from. I believe it springs from a heart of peace. But how do we cultivate peace in our hearts, let alone in the world? I for one find it challenging to cultivate peace in my own family.

I have eight children, four of whom are my stepchildren. I remember one holiday my eldest daughter offered to cook Christmas Eve dinner. Words cannot describe my joy at handing over this task after more than thirty years. Her father is Italian. She strongly identifies as an Italian. Thus, she decided to make veal scaloppini.

Now, my youngest stepdaughter was a vegetarian at the time. All hell broke loose around our dinner table. It was so bad, I spent the next two months slowly taking each child out to lunch to have a talk and try to patch things up.

My young vegetarian was adamant, "You don't understand," she said, "I am a political vegetarian."

"You don't understand," I said, "Your stepsister is a political Italian."

To cultivate peace in our hearts we must first understanding the nature of our mind and second, develop the capacity to open our hearts to all realities, not just those that we prefer, like or want.

As for understanding the nature of mind, I'm sure you can all relate to the following situation.

Things are not going well at all. You feel slightly depressed, perhaps anxious, perhaps angry and frustrated. You see an acquaintance walking towards you -- let us say it’s a man-- you are so out of sorts you hope he doesn't see you, you don't want to deal with anyone right now.

He walks near, glances in your direction, grimaces, then hurriedly crosses the street and walks away.

Suddenly, you are furious. You say to yourself…I never liked that guy. No wonder we've never become friends. He's so stuck up. Next time I see him I'll ignore him too and I'm going my friends just what I think of him.

That's one scenario. Here's another.

You are having a good day. Everything seems to be going your way. You feel happy, and content, perhaps even powerful.

You see an acquaintance walking towards you -- let us say it’s a man. You are feeling so good, you hope he sees you…you've never had a chance to really get to know him before and would like to.
He walks near, glances in your direction, grimaces, then hurriedly crosses the street and walks away.

You are disappointed. It occurs to you that he might be in trouble. He looked worried. You wish he hadn't gone off so fast. You vow that the next time you see him you will start a conversation and get to know him better.

The difference between these two approaches to the same event is the story that your conditioned mind created. That is what the mind does -- creates stories, searches for meaning -- that is its nature. Are either true? Was he stuck up? Was he is trouble? You cannot possibly know. You would have to ask.

Ah, asking…that is the first step on the road to peace.

We Americans have a lot of questions to ask. And many of the answers are very painful to bear.

Our foreign policy is faulty? We are in denial about the suffering of other countries? Even of other neighborhoods in our own city? We think we can ignore it and it won't effect us? Our domestic security is faulty, we and our children are vulnerable and exposed to people who hate us? People actually hate us? This is painful, painful, painful.

Which brings us to the second requirement for cultivating peace…opening our hearts to all of the realities of a situation and holding them all, being with them all, not doing anything yet, just being with the whole situation and all the people involved.

Can you do this…now? Perhaps not yet…but you can certainly learn to do this…and this learning to hold dear everyone…no one left out…in the first step to being an activist.

There is much that needs to be done to remedy our current international situation, to cure it deeply. But you are human beings first, not human doings. First, you have to live and be in the truth. You have to know it with your mind, heart and body before you can know how to respond to it appropriately, before you can take what the Buddhists call "right action."

If you can be in the unknown, hold all of the truth in your heart without judgement; be with all of that, then you can say you are cultivating peace. Then you can rest assured; you have prepared yourself to act. Then you can trust yourselves, each other and our leaders. Then you can know, definitively, that we shall overcome.

Now, one last word on why we must dance…After the attack on the World Trade Center…The New York Times Sunday magazine had story after story about the Taliban, about Islam, about the victims and about the survivors…they also had a big high-fashion spread.

When I first saw it, I was horrified. This was an over the top fashion spread…the model had to have been 6' tall or more…she was wearing stilettos, had her hair piled up on top of her head in a twisted knot, adding even more inches to her almost grotesque physique…she was wearing a jewel-encrusted matador cape over hand-painted leather pants and a lace and feather camisole, and she was standing, towering over passersby on a street in Paris like a great freak amazon queen.

Why? Why this? Why now of all times. I read the text… which I rarely do…here, is what it said…"If you want to make an indictment against fashion, spend a day under the pale blue burka of a woman living under Taliban rule in Afganistan. The freedom of women…to express themselves through their dress is trivial, of course, until it is taken a way. Just as laughter is trivial. And an unrelentingly bleak view of the world is as false as an unrelentingly cheerful view.

They were right. Unknowingly…I had been looking at a picture of a Revolutionary Girl…doing her thing...lighting up the dark sky of a terrifying night!

So dance…wear bright colors…feed your soul…nurture your spirit…dance…fall in love…dance…register to vote…dance…next election, vote for peace…then dance, dance, dance.

Let me close with a poem, since I a am a poet activist. It is not about war or peace…it is about love.

THE CHERRY TREE

Love is not a thing you do.
In fact, it is a thing you don't,
A thing you are
A thing to be
No different that…a cherry tree.

Summer comes,
The cherries red.
You do not take them to your bed
Check the sheets in case they bled
Hang them for the town to see
Bragging of your virility.

No.
You simply see them,
Simply know
Their nature as they slowly grow,
Simply be beneath their boughs
As beneath the eaves of your own house.

Pick them?
Eat them?
Give them all away?
Let the birds consume the lot?
Sweep the pits from off your walk?
Talk of cherries, talk, talk, talk?

Yes.
But that is only part
Of letting cherries break your heart.

Simply see them.
Simply be
Beneath their boughs gratefully.


Ann Kyle Brown
Kume-do
July 2001




People who hate…inspire us to hate people who hate…People who judge…inspire us to judge people who judge. People who are violent…inspire us to be violent…to people who are violent…people who love inspire us to love everybody.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
Martin Luther King, Jr.