Bits in my head

This is going to be a short one. I just wanted to post a few of the pictures that the students who went to Juarez w/me sent. I especially like the signs that the Border Network for Human Rights made for people to put on their front lawn. They get me to thinking about what other creative strategies we can use to get the word out...

This weekend was mild. I did a lot of much needed thesis reading and watched some movies including some Japanese sword/samurai thing which got me back to thinking about the individual and the collective... and what it means to be a warrior... and the man-ness of war in general. Also had a good coversation about development and thinking about how when we talk about capitalism, rights, dignity and autonomy we always seem to come back to who owns land...

Here is my cultural relativity quote of the day from the EZLN files:

"There are no cultural universals, no concepts or criteria based on universal
culture. Any time that anyone thinks or feels, whe s/he concieves of the
other or him-herself, they do it from their culture, from a specific manner of
being in the world that no one can elude, and that charaterizes the
fundamental
plurality of social reality."

And then they say "We are all Mexican, but each lives and feels his/her Mexican-ness differently." And I wonder can you say that for the US and sit right? "We are all American, but each lives and feels his/her American-ness differently?" if it seems understood that to be American means to be first, from the US, and secondly to be living under white supremacy? Can you feel American-ness differently when race is so dominant?