At 6:30 I left for the 2 hour drive to the Amtrak station. I checked my tires, grabbed our prepacked suitcases and put the kids in the car. The drive to Sacrmento was lovely. The weather was cool, the sun was rising and I felt refreshed.
The Sacramento train station was adorable. It had a grand sweeping ceiling, blond wooden benches and brick walls. I kept running the Ani Defranco line "Waiting on the tall blond wooden benches, in a train station, alone with grace."
Sac train stationThen, in walked six Old Order Amish people!! Oh my freakin' gosh! I couldn't believe it! I sat as close to them as I dare. I really wanted to take a picture of the kids where the Amish would just happen to be in the background *wink* but I couldn't bring myself to violate them like that no matter how much I wanted to remember how they looked - forever.
They were young, early 20's, three men and three women. Their suitcase were more modern than ours. They were wearing the same brand of shoes Nykki was and the man had the same style shirt Nykki was wearing. I chuckled at this thought - I'm more Amish then I suppose and they are more modern than I in some respects.
Once on the train the Amish were on our train! Whoo Hoo! It only took me 10 hours to get up the nerve to talk to them LOL When I did they played Uno with Nykki and I learned that two of them were teachers, and one of the women's father was reading the same book I was, "Fast Food Nation"
Making friends on the trainThe train ride was lovely except for the food.I was not prepared for how expensive or how gross the food would be. I use the term "food" very lightly here. 17 hours of only microwave pizza, prepacked cinnomon rolls, and potato chips started to make the gas station look like a gourmet resturant and I lllooonnngggeeeddd for real food.
Our train pulled into the station an hour early. After dissembarking and gathering our luggage we caught a cab to the hotel. I did want to wake up my roomate at 4 AM so I thought I would hang out in the lobby for a few hours but the Sheraton was nice enough to give us a room to crash in for a few hours. The kids and I took a nap.
At about 7:30 I called Doe, my roomate and found she was at the Sunstone Board of Directors meeting. We gathered our things and met her at our room soon thereafter. It was so nice to finally get to meet the lovely Doe face to face! Although I felt like I had already know her forever!
My first presentation was at 11:15 so fairly soon after getting settled in our room (allowing Nykki to watch a few cartoons) and catching some breakfast at Denny's I went down to the symposium. I checked in, received my badge, drooled over the book shop they had set up and proceeded to the room which was holding my first panel on the FLDS.
I had no idea how to behave so I went up to a man already sitting at the table introduced myself and asked if I could sit next to him. He gladly obliged and I found out that his name was Joe Walsh. He has been called as an expert witness on the FLDS case in Texas because he has a PhD in Mormon Studies from a university in Wales.
I couldn't believe I was there just hanging out at the same table as Maxine Hanks! She's quoted ALL OVER my theis! She was moderating this panel. I was called on to speak first. Wow! I was sweating bullets, I had butterflies in my stomach. I gulped, took and drink of water and walked to the microphone.
Ronan was strapped to my back in the Ergo carrier. Nykki was happily coloring his Curious George coloring book on the first row of seats. I took a deep breath and delivered my talk. It went a little something like this:
"Throughout history the world over, imperialists have known how to break a culture – you take away their children. During the burning times in Europe my own great grandparents, seven times back, were thrown in jail, accused of witchcraft, along with their neighbors. Their children, eight total, ranging in age from 17 to 4 years old, either starved to death, were shipped as indentured servants to the United States or, as in the case of my great aunts, were shipped to England to become maids.
In the United States Native American children were forcibly removed from their homes and given to white schools for re-education into Western culture. Children of the Saami, the indigenous people of Northern Europe and Russia, were taken by the imperialist Europeans moving into the area and re-educated away from their tribal, pagan, culture in the 1900s.
It’s a pattern acted out across the globe by conquering armies and brutal leaders – take the children, break the family and then rebuild them in the image of the power at hand. Conformity through the cruelest torture – turning your own children against you.
As a woman, as a mother and as a feminist I am outraged both at the US government for perpetrating this crime against these women and children and by the lack of response from the liberal, feminist and motherhood communities of the US and the world.
This raid of the Texas FLDS community is nothing short of an imperialist assault on an ethnic and cultural minority. An ethnic and cultural minority was defined by High Commissioner van der Stoel in his keynote address at the opening of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Minorities Seminar in Warsaw in 1994. He stated, ”First of all, a minority is a group with linguistic, ethnic or cultural characteristics, which distinguish it from the majority. Secondly, a minority is a group which usually not only seeks to maintain its identity but also tries to give stronger expression to that identity (www.osce.org)."
We need to start seeing these men, women and children with their conservative clothing, their long braided hair, their practice of simple living, and yes, even their practice of plural marriage, as elements of their unique and valid culture and certainly not automatic evidence of child abuse either present or potential.
If we let this invasion and rape of the FLDS community continue who will be next? Will they perhaps remove the children of polyamorus, transgender or homosexual families? Will they routinely be taking children from any teen mothers in our country from now on? Will CPS be investigating Irish Catholic families with eight children simply because they have a lot of children? What about the Amish with their style of dress, no electricity, young marriages and large families? Will families controlling their children’s education either through home school or private school find themselves targeted next?
As a united community of moms, dads, liberals, conservatives, feminists, home schoolers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. we must stand up and say no to what happened in Texas. We must put our feet down and say that suspected or potential abuse is no reason to strip the civil liberties of a group of people and exercise cookie cutter politics on them in mass. We must reign in the rouge agency of child protective services across this country and stop the abuse that CPS is visiting upon countless families who live alternative lifestyles. We should all care, and once we realize we do, we need to all act."
I took my seat. Ronan nursed to sleep and Nykki was a quiet angel as I listened to the other panelists give their talks. One of the presentations was given by a woman who had actually visited the YFZ compound and showed us slides of their lifestyle.
It was amzing to see the self sufficiency. These people had brought to life in the desert a true United Order of Zion. They grew all their own food on raised bed gardens. They had built a temple, communal houses, schools, a fire department and even a sewage system. They furnished their homes with all hand crafted furniture, toys, clothes, etc. I was amazed. It was almost enough to have me packing my things for Texas. It was better than any hippie communal living project I had ever seen. Truly amazing.
After it was over I was in shock as Margaret Tuscano herself came up to me and thanked me for my preentation and told me how much she enjoyed it. I nearly pissed myself! She is hands down the female half of my favorite scholar team of all time THE Tuscanos! Maxine Hanks approuched me and said she wanted to talk to me and get to know me better. A few minutes later I bumped into D. Micheal Quinn (literally) in the hallway. I was walking on air. It was like some all star line-up of greatness. I couldn't believe I was there among it all!
After a nice lunch and a rest back in the room for the kids, I went back and was able to catch a few presentations. We ate dinner, we mingled and I met lots of lovely people who read my blog *waves* The first day there was also the day I got to meet Bored in Vernal in the flesh! What a sweet and beautiful woman she is! I was so thrilled!
Nykki passed out during a sessionBack to the room for cartoons nad then I attempted to go to the evening presentaion which was documentary on African Americans and the Church. I thought the kids would be tired and they usually behave so well in movie theaters I thought it would work out fine. Well, it didn't work so well. Ronan was too well rested and he kept walking out the back door to the room and then would run down the hallway. He did all this while barely making a sound so I wasn't too worried about it. At one point when I was hanging out in the doorway watching the film and keeping an eye on Ronan an old, skinny, pointy eye-browed woman came up to me and said to me that having children at an evening session was inappropriate.
I said, "Children are part of our society." as she started walking away.
"Children belong with a baby sitter!" She yelled at me over her hunched, scrawny shoulder.
"Children belong with their mother, I am their mother!" I was so livid!
"They belong with a baby sitter!" She yelled once more as she rounded the corner. I quickly gathered the kids and rushed off to chase her down. This argument was not over. But when I got around the corner she was gone and I had no idea which way she had went.
About 10 minutes after that Ronan started squealing and Nykki couldn't sit still. I wanted them to behave so much to prove that b**ch wrong but they were just too much so we went back to the room.
It was lucky we did however because we got to meet the halrious Becky - or the Beckster a everyone calls her - when she came up to visit Doe in our room. I adored the Beckster right away -it's hard not to! And I was thankful that the kids had been loud and I had to go back to the room.
Stay tuned for day 3 and 4 coming tomorrow!
