Sell Yourself for a Cause

Blurb of the day because I am bogged down:

So Queen Rania of Jordan came to Yale last week. Of course I couldn't go because of a Theater Studies class. However, I respect Queen Rania.

In an age of FACEbook, linked in, Twitter, and Myspace, there really is no better time to sell yourself, your lifestyle, and your face for causes---especially if you have the power, the connections, and the money to do so. I respect women and men who have this ability. Queen Rania is one of them.

When you can literally tag your name to Women's Empowerment, Children's Rights, Community Connectivity, and even Jordanian Tourism, there is some definite Marketing power in your voice. Don't get me wrong, I love what she's doing and think more icons should do work like this. Don't think I am dissin HM Queen Rania.

http://www.queenrania.jo/default.aspx

The world loves an icon. Why not make yourself an icon for a cause and then run with it? We love to worship something or someone beautiful and then have a reason to do so. Throw in some human rights to a picture of a beautiful lady and suddenly you aren't guilty for wanting to follow someone.

There should be a course at Yale in "How to make yourself into an Icon-101."

What Happened in My Home? : Police and Protest in Pittsburgh

http://www.pittsburghpostgazette.com/pg/09270/1001203-482.stm

I am a skeptic. I tend to shy away from protests--I guess I don't find the efficacy in them, often wary of their purpose.

But I know that feeling. People want a cause to fight for. They want to be part of a group, a collective. This applies to both a police force and a protest group. Behavior quickly imitates itself and spreads like wildfire. The collective is an imitation of itself.

So it begins. You get students gathering, for instance, do these girls below even know what they are doing? This isn't a Steelers game girls. This is the G-20.

These sights of SWAT officers 4 blocks from my High School KILLS me. It pains me to see this force come out from seemingly no where and run the streets like an insurgent brigade. Like an insurgent power.

Its easy for a police officer to fall back on coercion, on power, so tediously balanced on the scrim of governance behind it. It feels like at any moment it could fall through, but can it really now? Is that even possible? You protestors, you think the state is afraid of you?

Perhaps you do. You have Twitter revolutions, Facebook revolutions, and a global community of supporters, looking for a way to connect themselves to a cause. And this is powerful. Lucrative (in some cases that you may not realize--think of all those Urban Outfitters T-Shirts). Frightening. Exciting.

While I remain a skeptic about your intentions and your cause, you drive an industry and for that I applaud you. I applaud you for creating a culture that could rival any large business. You are connected. You are young. You are fighters. You are what everyone at one point wishes they were. You want to stick it to the man and you don't even know who the man is. But that fact that you want to stick it, matters somehow.

Look, the G-20 issues will drag on. People in the Man are going to fight Climate Change. They are also going to fight recession. They are going to investigate these things and change them in policy or hard work within (hopefully, if the right people win anyways). I don't know the issues in and out, I don't know if even you know the issues. But props to you for thinking you can change the world. Because someday, you actually may.

Actors in Management: My World View

Sometimes, I feel my worldview is royally unique. It could be brilliantly effective, or a huge, misguided utopian failure.

I am an actress who looks at the world as a stage. Where do our motivations come from? Why do we gather together in search of spectacle? Uniqueness? Unity? Why do we strive for the best performance, in whatever arena we are in (business, sciences, military, sales)? Its about putting on the best act, the best show, to please the client, to improve their lives, and maybe get something out of it yourself.

At the same time, I'm obsessed with business, marketing, networking, organization. I like to create projects, initiatives, get funding for them, create value in them, oversee them, and then pass them on. (Ivy EME, theater, Afghan Sister School, even now with a new entrepreneurial venture I'm developing in the field of headhunting). The interaction. The creation of value. The all holy thing we call capitalism. Hell, creating capitalism! (Why else am I fascinated by Kosovo and the business climate of the developing world?)

Its all the same. Its about putting the right actors in the right business to get good performance ratings, and put on a hell of a good marketing campaign--a spectacle if you will.

Ultimately, even the vocabulary is the same.

Now, how to get this business going would be fabulous.....

Hopefully I'm not sounding too idealist. But I sold you? Right? ;)

Now to say that to myself.

Today in my "Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform" class with Douglas Rae gave a great lecture on the utter importance of Freedom as a means of driving cooperation, success, innovation, and reform. Freedom to enter a market. Freedom to do. Freedom to choose what we so pleased.

As I was leaving, I noticed what looked like a black and white photo of a round planet on a sheet of paper tacked to a message board in LC. Upon further investigation, I found that it was actually titled:

"BABY LUCY, 0 weeks."

"Baby Lucy has just been conceived. She is a zygote, a single cell invisible to the unaided eye, but she is already a whole and distinct organism, possessing all the genetic characteristics necessary to direct her own development from within. We invite you to join us as we watch Baby Lucy grow over the next nine months. Sponsored by Choose Life at Yale."

Feeling that I should be incensed, that some inner feminist rage should overtake me, I came up with a bunch of rash arguments and ranting in my head:

WHAT? MAYBE THOSE MEN SHOULD THINK OF ALL THE DATE RAPES ON CAMPUS. THEY CAN'T CHOOSE TO PREVENT. MAYBE THEY SHOULD TALK TO THOSE BOYS FIRST. HUH? HUH? HUHHHH?

Hold up. This is not how I think. After a moment, I realized, "Danielle, you can't be that crass. You can't be like the anarchist Living Theater people you saw last night. You need to be tactful towards yourself." It's very difficult for a woman not to sound like a raging feminist and get a bad rap when she sees things like this.

You see, it is very difficult for a woman to think about abortion, about choice. Its not as simple as choosing life. Its about preventing life. Its about choosing to DEVELOP life when you want to.

Its about freedom. Freedom of expression of both parties. Yes. However, if there is something that I learned in life, its not what you say, its how you say it.

Look boys. Its about FREEDOM. I want the freedom to choose life. I want the freedom to choose life when its ready, and when I'm ready. I want the freedom to prevent it up until that point. I want the freedom to regulate when my eggs will become human beings (they too are potential life, like a zygote). I also want the freedom to stop the development of a zygote into a human being. You care about life obviously, so lets work together to maybe get some of the date rape off campus we see, to ease/end the inequality between the sexes we see at Yale, even today. Lets create a dialogue with less accusation. Please stop incensing most women on this campus with biting and cruel posters that do nothing to promote life, only anger it.

Forty years, women have been at Yale. About 40 years, women have been able to get an abortion or birth control. 40 years. 40 years. 40 years and you want to take my freedom?

Look. I don't want an abortion... ever. But do you understand the circumstances and consequences of what it means to be in that situation? Perhaps, as a male, you really wouldn't. You've been at Yale for hundreds of years. My sex has only been around for forty. We don't have time to loose with an unwanted RAPE.

I don't want to sound emotional, but LIFE is emotional. Choice is serious. Choice is about freedom. Freedom is life.

Turks Needs A Laxative? Or some Nicorette.

Today I was having tea with a fellow a met at at Model UN try out. After doing that Yale thing (debating politics, ethics, the business sector etc.) we fell into actual Yale discussion, like discussing smoking culture in the world.

Don't get me wrong. I am not a regular smoker. Smoke doesn't bother me, though I tend not to like the idea of smoking. But fact is, come tech week for a show, I smoke. I feel guilty as hell for it too. But also, I'm one of the only female members of SIGAR club at Yale.

However, when a woman with a headscarf is shoving a cigarette in your face after dinner, or when a group of Swiss entrepreneurs smoke in between each course of the meal you are having with them, the guilt disappears. In fact, it eases any tension that may exist (amen for the Muslims who can't drink).

So I was describing how Turkish men in particular tend to smoke a lot, drink 9 cups of tea, and click prayer beads away as they pass time in anxiousness, waiting for someone to come buy their donor or their rug or their souvenir. Let's face it. Long hours. The market is flooded with the same products. You need something to pass the anxiety time presents. Alcohol cannot do it. I told this to Richard who responded: "Turkey sounds like its constipated. They have this secularism kinda stuck in there and they don't know what to do with it so they sit around and smoke."

I laughed. HOWEVER, I love Turkey. Yea, it may need some nicorette or laxative and sort out its complex secular/nonsecular issues, but its always moving forward. (Just look at that domestic market that weathered the economic crisis storm!) haha.

Just sharing the image guys. Images aren't always reality. Thankfully Turks have nice senses of humor. Go ahead and use the line, Orhan Pamuk.

Interraciality for a Mutt Like Me

According to my spellchecker, interraciality is not a word. It also is not something I personally have mused over much in my life as an Eastern European-Gypsy-Cherokee-DAR-??? background.

Yet what I love about Yale is that the people around me bring up these topics to me even though I'm not thinking about them. Meet Dalia, my sweet suite mate. Dalia is a New Yorker. She is a African American Jew with the craziest, sexiest hair (definitely more than my mane). She can kick your ass in Hebrew and is a certified New York Bartender. She has a childlike laugh that makes me smile and she understands kids like no other.

She is taking a course on interraciality and hybridity and sat down on our green couch last night to talk to me about it. I won't go too much into the conversation for privacy's sake, but basically, what we talked about where notions of not being "Black enough" or how being a "halfie" often makes you "BI" racial, and not inter racial. You are not a venn diagram and a whole, but rather two separate things, divided which can make you doubt where/who you are.

For a mutt like me, I don't think of myself in terms of being interracial (in America, what you SEE in color terms is more what defines you as inter racial, being black/indian/asian/chicano, and then something.) It got me to thinking about a whole different struggle in identity that has never crossed my mind. Often times, people at Yale get down on themselves for not being "cool" or "original," by being black and japanese or indian and jewish. Yet people who think this, clearly are not thinking into nuances of the situation. The struggles, the triumphs, and the confusion. These are dilemmas I probably will never have.

So what does it mean to be a mutt? Where is my role in this conversation? I could politely sit back and listen, offer a sort of minimal understanding, and my care/heart for Dalia. I was really interested in her story. Sometimes I wonder though, should I be part of the conversation? If so, where am I valuable? As Dave Chappelle said, "Lets fuck each other till we're beige," I guess I'm already beige (my bubby swears her great grandfather had some african blood). So where do the beige talk?