Rha Goddess - We Got Issues!: A Young Womens Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life

New World Library
14 Pamaron Way
Novato, California 94949
www.newworldlibrary.com

2006 by Rha Goddess and JLove Caldern
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or in any
form whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.

Cover and book design by Design Action Collective
Julia Ahumada Grob, Editorial Assistant
Alli Maxwell, Research Assistant

We got issues! : a young womans guide to a bold, courageous and empowered life /
Rha Goddess & JLove Caldern.
p. ; cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-930722-72-9 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-930722-72-9 (pbk.)

1. Women--Social conditions--Literary collections. 2. Feminism--Literary collections.
3. Women--Identity. 4. Feminist literature.
I. Rha Goddess. II. Caldern, Jennifer.
HQ1155 .W44 2006 305.42--dc22 0610

TK

Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 DATA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the legacy of bold, courageous, and empowered women...

by Sara Littlecrow Russell

Its not a voting box
Its a cauldron
Ritual container
Object of power
Receptacle
For spells and prayers
Curses and dreams.

Lets gather together and brew some magik
Lets gather together and brew some ceremony
Lets gather together and brew some change

Mix the blood of an Iraqi child
With the sweat of a Bangladeshi factory worker
Add the ashes of a lay-off notice
And the venom of a congressional snake

Stir it well, sister,
Stir it well.

Add a pinch of uranium from the floor of a Navajo miners kitchen
And a drop of potassium chloride from an execution chamber
But dont forget
The skin of a slave,
The scalp of a cavalry officer,
The finger of Chinese railroad worker.

Stir it well, sister,
Stir it well.

Lets make a charm or powerful trouble.
Sisters we need to make a fire that burns so hot
Our ballots burn through the sides of the voting box
So blend in the roar of a lioness
The bite of a wolf-bitch
The swat of a mother bear
The sting of a queen bee
Now... the ceremony is complete.

In the spring of 2002, I was invited to give a keynote address at the first annual Women & Power summit at Omega Institute. Thats when I began talking to all the young women in my life about the P word. Elizabeth Lesser, Omegas cofounder, wanted me to speak about the next wave, where I thought young women were headed, and how they approached claiming, using, and having (or not having) power. In the many conversations that led up to and came out of the summit, I became acutely aware of both the crisis and opportunity facing young women in their quest for agency, influence, effectiveness, and recognition.

In August of the following year, I found myself totally uninspired by the frenzy of political mobilization. In response, I invited six of my closest artist-activist colleagues to come together and explore what young womens social and political power in the United States could be. Over the course of three days, we laughed, raged, cried, and envisioned a world where young women could be heard, where the passion of our words and the determination of our spirits would be felt by those who claim to represent the leadership of this nation. In a moment of raw honesty, we named this project We Got Issues!

Dont you?

Knowing that we werent alone, We Got Issues! went on the road in the fall of 2003 to create a national dialogue among eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old women about electoral politics and our most crucial concerns as members of U.S. society. For more than twelve months, we traveled across the nation, reaching out to young women everywhere and asking them about their politics and their hearts.

Women in Ohio told us about a recent divorce, or being attacked on campus while walking to the dorm, or finally leaving behind the boyfriend who hurt way more than he loved.

We broke bread in the dining rooms and kitchens of women from Seattle to Brooklyn as they gathered for book clubs and brunches; we held rantfest-style open mics in churches and community centers. We sat in the grass with young women in Washington, D.C., when more than a million women gathered for the March for Womens Lives; we went to the National Hip-Hop Political Convention in New Jersey, where more than 150 women linked arms and cried for a young women who had lost her child, and applauded another who became a Hip-Hop poet-preacher.

We went to the womens penitentiary at Rikers Island, where we werent allowed to bring pencils or pens to give to the girls for safety reasons. Later, we couldnt write fast enough to record the pain, the innocence, the guilt, the suffocation, the loss of these forty-five young women sitting right in front of us, and the loss of their voices in our community on the outside. That year of listening had a profound effect on us, as we celebrated the power of sisterhood and learned what our sisters wanted and needed in order to thrive.

As someone who has worked with young people for the past twelve years, I was excited to be supporting women my age. Our culture tells us that once you hit a certain age youre not allowed to need help anymoreyou should have it figured out by now. But what if you havent? What if I havent? I myself was looking for development in that next-level shit. Yeah, I felt accomplished in certain areasyouth development, facilitating healing spaces for young women, youth and Hip-Hop activismbut I had hit my own ceiling of expertise. Whats next for me? I often thought.We Got Issues! helped me find what I was looking for, and it rocked my world from the inside out. Helping other women develop as leaders and transforming my own life on a new level felt so powerful bouncing around in my body that I needed a release, a physical sign of my complete shift. The day I couldnt hold it in anymore, I went short n pink. My hair. I chopped off the brown hair that had cascaded down my back for so long, and I dyed what was left hot pinkcause that had become the color of my soul.

These conversations created an acute awareness of the painful silences and the critical need to celebrate the voices of our sisters everywhere. Our visions, songs, movements, and battle cries have the power to preserve, heal, and protect families, communities, and the globe. Yet all too often this power is hidden.

When we started, I just assumed that women would rush to the mic to participate. I had no idea just how much encouragement and affirmation young women would need in order to speak their minds authentically. Quiet as its kept, young women in this country expect to be ignored. Theres an unspoken assumption that we are here only to service the needs of others. Most young women believe that people dont really want to know what we think. My most powerful moments in this project have been watching young women move out of their silence and into their truths