USSF day5

Saturday, June 30

What a day—action packed with back from set up for the EJ (environmental justice) Tent in the morning to the GGJ (Grassroots Global Justice) reception for the international delegates lasting past midnight.

Being the main EJ tent coordinator for EJ day, keeping track of the flow of people & activities turned up my internal thermostat. Have we told you it reaches the higher 90’s with humidity in the middle of a USSF-Atlanta day? The USSF has been a true exercise of cool (head & body) under extreme circumstances of making sense of chaos, taming the overwhelming, and sharing your best thinking with the best US grassroots activists around. Everyone deserves to be commended, especially the USSF planning committee!

9am: EJ Tent Set-up was smooth thanks to Eco-Action folks.

10am: Water Ceremony at Indigenous Tent. I scooped up a bottle of Oakland Estuary water to bring to the ceremony where Native women from the Great Lakes shared their prayers. I learned that women are the bearers of water, and the men are the keepers of fire, and these roles are kept distinct.

10am: The APEN team, led by Mimi & Keri, facilitated a workshop on Organizing Asian Communities. I headed over after the Water Ceremony & caught the presentations by APEN, CPA, DRUM & CAAAV. It was powerful to see such amazing API’s share the various challenges in organizing members under different languages, immigration status, working & living conditions, as well as the analysis that our campaigns may be at one place but our visions go beyond & deeper in fighting for justice. While sitting at the back during these presentations, I also got to play with a little boy from one of CAAAV’s staffers. We made planes & trains from the many flyers we were handed by USSFers. I was missing my own kids at this point & our play reminded me to have fun during this jam-packed Forum.

12pm: EJ Tent preparation for the EJ movement panel. It was great to be teammates with Bianca/SNEEJ as she is a great model for keeping cool. We laughed a lot, even when our opening act disappeared, then reappered past the 1pm panel start time, while apologizing to the full tent of folks waiting for the program to start, & the power going out. Thank goodness APEN brought our fans (collectors item now!) to circulate the nearly 100 degree air.

2pm: To the drumbeat of Danza Azteca beside the tent, we proceeded with a packed panel: Cecil/NEJN, Jenice/JTA, Dalila/YUCA, Tom/IEN, MrsBush/localAtlanta, Nelson/FNEEJ, 2 youth reps, and me/APEN & Bianca/SNEEJ playing many roles including panelists. During my speech, I asked the audience how many of them had attended Summit2—and to my surprise, less than half raised their hands. It was a good surprise because so many new faces were young people & members of EJ organizations. It was reassuring to know our movement continues to grow because the work in our communities is so important.

4pm: After the panel, open mic, closing ceremony & a bit of clean-up, I voted to go to the workshop called: Pool, Where There Is No Thinking or Effort Allowed. And so back we went to the hotel & off I floated in the pool.

7pm: A try at Gladys Knight’s Chicken & Waffles restaurant, but no luck. Lines of 50+ people outside! The taxi driver brought us to a restaurant with southern cooking he said was good. No lines & the menu looked great, however… most of the customers were White & we felt a bit awkward. I asked a Black brother in line whether we should be here & he said: the food is GOOD. We were starved, as APENers’ appetites are huge, so we decided to stay. Our orders included: fried green tomatoes, fried okra, black-eyed peas, greens, mac & cheese, buttery cabbage, creamed corn, sweet potato soufflé, corn bread & various meats (which as a vegetarian I’d rather not describe). Delicious! Stuffed. We later were clued in on the difference between Southern Cooking (by Whites) and Soul Food (by Blacks).

10pm: After a MARTA electric train ride, 3 APENers made our way to a residential Manor for the GGJ reception for the international guests. We liked the front porches built on to the homes, picturing the many cool drinks & neighborly conversations that are facilitated by that architecture. This is pretty different than the gentrified, skyscraper & freeway-lined streets of the USSF meeting sites. We enter the manor & live music fills the air, as well as many appreciations for USSF organizers including by WSF (World Social Forum) organizers who reiterate how absolutely important it is that grassroots Americans build another US so that another world is possible. A job well done.