Amy Sohn's Blog, page 2

The Park Slope Food Coop Israeli Boycott Meeting

Yes, we tweeted snarky things. Yes, Samantha Bee mocked us all on “The Daily Show,” and allowed three eccentric coop members to create satire simply by being themselves.

But I came away from the vote last night feeling renewed affection for the Coop. I was impressed by the level of debate, intelligence of the speakers, surprisingly low heckle quotient, and the organizational know-how that made the proceedings go off with only a few technical glitches. I came away feeling like the Coop is a utopia within the dystopia of Park Slope. I grew up in middle-income housing in the midst of Brooklyn Heights. Our building was nothing like our ZIP code. I feel the same way about the Coop. It’s nothing like 11215. It’s the only place in my neighborhood where I see very different people bonding, connecting, disagreeing, getting into it, engaging with each other.

It is this engagement that is wholly lacking on the sidewalks of PS. People gossip behind each other’s backs, snicker about ill-behaving dogs/children/spouses, even sound off on message boards, but are afraid to say what they really think to the person or people who pissed them off in the first place. Park Slope is getting too much like Sweden. The Coop is more like . . . Tel Aviv.

I took the B41 to the event and crossed Lafayette around a quarter to seven to find the line snaking its way from South Elliott Place (where Brooklyn Tech is) down Lafayette to the corner of Fort Greene Place. I couldn’t believe so many people had made time to come and vote on whether to vote.

I inspected the faces, trying to guess where people stood on the issue. This was not an easy task. The suited, bearded sixtysomething man in a suit in front of me had a Brooklyn accent and reminded me of my dad but said he was in favor of a boycott. I assumed that the banged, thick-accented Argentine girl smoking cigarettes next to me was anti-boycott until she said she would vote no, but was excited to come to the meeting because she loves the democratic process. “In my country,” she said, “people just riot.”

As I snaked down Lafayette to South Elliott Place, I thought of the old Fort Greene. One of my childhood friends grew up in Fort Greene pre-gentrification. Her family’s brownstone, across the street from Brooklyn Tech, now houses Jhumpa Lahiri, who bought it for a few million in 2005. My friend’s parents paid about $30,000 in the seventies. For a great article on the diversity of South Elliott Place, the block, check this out by awesome writer Stacy Abramson. The fact that Fort Greene is no longer the old Fort Greene is a part of the story, as is the fact that Park Slope is no longer the old Park Slope.

The media spin on PSFC/BDS was that the new Park Slope (New Slope) doesn’t care about a potential Israeli boycott because New Slope (white banker/lawyer parents with kids) shops at the Coop for foodie-ish, not political reasons. It’s a funny hook but it’s facile.

And it was not borne out by what I saw in line. I saw a lot of white yuppies my age. There was also museum curators; international grad students; my buddy Ricardo Cortes, the illustrator of Go th F*** to Sleep; old-school Slopers and their kids, now raising their own kids in the Slope; cute twentysomething gay girls reading The Hunger Games when bored; hipster thirtysomething Israelis looking distressed; a freelance Orthodox Jew named Matt Hue; local rabbi of Garfield Temple Andy Bachman; and the usual roundup of bloggers and tweeters like Brian Braiker, Irin Carmon of Salon, and Reuters’ Chadwick Matlin. There were a few black-hats but not nearly as many as I expected.

If the vote when the way it went due to the black-hat contingent, I hope those families are honestly reporting the number of people over 18 in their homes so that they are not scamming the Coop of work shifts. I see a lot of Lubavitcher women working, not too many men. Just sayin’.

Was the meeting a cartoon of eccentricity? Of course. People who want to stand up and have their say are stronger personalities. There were dreadlocked white people. And stand-up acts (the woman who urged us to fight for our right to party appeared to be dressed as a fake Hasid, an ill-conceived comedy act), yellers (the African American man and thirty-year Coop member who reminded us this process was as painful as an enema), and a self-identified black lesbian who said it’s political every time she walks into the Coop. This got twinkles. There were also impassioned Jewish-American women who support BDS and feel human rights abuses in Israel go against Jewish values. And some hateful people. An older BDS supporter stood up and made her case by spitting the names “Bloomberg” and “Lander” with a venom that shocked me. I remembered that I had trained this woman how to use the checkout machine.

There was also a wacky white-haired hippie in a Hawaiian shirt who actually had a good idea: a straight up-or-down vote on a boycott. The idea was not voted on and Mr. Albert Solomon was asked to leave the stage.

I expected the vote to be no and it was. It was about 60-40, closer than I had expected. The BDS movement is gaining momentum. In another five years if BDS comes up for a vote again at the Coop, it will probably pass. The movement will not go away and it got huge media attention based on this event, certainly one of its goals.

I love the people that came to the meeting last night, even those whose politics disgust me. But there were 14,000 people who stayed home or worked. As my neighborhood gets more and more affluent, we are going to start to see people joining the Coop for reasons that have nothing to do with the principles of its founding. It will become more like Whole Foods. (Even though we will soon get our own Whole Foods in Gowanus.) Maybe the plastic bag ban will be reversed. I have many peers who send their children to public school for political reasons even though they could afford private school. To them it’s a statement. It’s like choosing to drink tap water instead of bottled. There will be people who join the Coop with a similar line of thinking. It makes them feel good in the kind of vague, noble way that sending a check to WNYC does.

I hope that these people get politicized when they walk in, and I hope all the bat-shit-crazy people on both sides of the issue keep coming to PSFC even as more coops pop up in neighborhoods where a lot of batshit-crazy people live. The Slope needs to be more like the Coop but I hope the Coop never gets too much like the Slope.

It’s Not About the Pom-Poms

On March 20, the memoir I co-wrote with Laura Vikmanis, It’s Not About the Pom-Poms: How a 40-Year-Old Mom Became the NFL’s Oldest Cheerleader and Found Hope, Joy, and Inspiration Along the Way, will be released by Ballantine Books. Laura and I could not be more excited about it (as we were by former cheerleader Madonna’s ode to cheerleaders at the Superbowl halftime show). Laura has an amazing life story and is an inspiration to me. She is sunny, optimistic, and most important, she was not afraid to pursue her dream of becoming an NFL cheerleader as a middle-aged single mother of two, even after being told repeatedly that it would never happen for her. She ignored the haters and went for it. After being rejected the first time she tried out for the Cincinnati Ben-Gals, she kept working out, took a hip-hop dance with twelve-year-olds, and enrolled in a class taught by a former Ben-Gal, all to help her get on. It worked and the next time she tried out, she made it! Though there is an NFL cheerleader who is a grandma, Laura remains the oldest NFL cheerleader.

I had a great time hanging out with Laura in Dayton last year learning her story. I also realized that when you spend time with a bunch of twentysomething cheerleaders with rock-hard abdominal muscles and almost no body fat, it makes you join a gym, which I did.

Here is a Yahoo video on Laura’s story. The video is part of a great series called Second Act, which is about people discovering a new passion midlife.

Here is Laura’s web site, CheerleaderLaura.com.

You can pre-order the book now from Amazon, Indiebound, or B & N. There is also an audio version recorded by Laura.

Stay tuned for readings and events and news about the motion picture of Laura’s life to be made by New Line. This is Invincible for women.

What Michele Bachmann could learn in a Fishbone moshpit

When Questlove of The Roots chose to introduce Michele Bachmann’s appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon with a few chords from punk band Fishbone’s “Lyin’ Ass Bitch,” he was going for an easy joke. But true Fishbone fans, while elated that the fading, three-decade-old band was experiencing a pop cultural revival (and new dowloads) were also aware that “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” was one of the less political songs of an extremely political band.

Born in the late seventies when its members were still in high school in the San Fernando Valley, Fishbone always crossed boundaries. They were a black punk band that incorporated rock, funk, reggae, and ska. Many have noted the irony that an African American band that influenced white musicians like Gwen Stefani, Flea, and even Kurt Cobain is now virtually unknown, while its proteges have surpassed it. (This is the topic of a new documentary on the band called Everyday Sunshine that I plan on seeing.) Fishbone was alt rock before the term existed. Questlove and his bandmates would be among the first to acknowledge the debt they owe to Fishbone, with whom they have toured.

“Lyin’ Ass Bitch” is about a girl who was cheating on Fishbone frontman Angelo Moore when they were both in high school. Though extremely entertaining, catchy, and really fun to skank to, the song demands less of its listeners than some of the other songs on the same album, their self-titled 1985 EP.

The band has said that the opening track, “Ugly,” was meant as a criticism of Ronald Reagan, who Bachmann and her ilk lionize. It is a takedown of a manipulative dissembler who has power. “Boy you’ve got no reason and you’ve got no sense/Your stupid lies, it just makes me wince/Your face is twisted and your mind is warped/You scare me sick ‘cuz I just want to get out/All the children’s suffering lies in your hands/Unless the commies are gonna heed your demands.”

Take away the “boy” and the “commies” references and the band could be singing to Bachmann. “Another Generation” is an optimistic plea for a brighter future and a world in which we all take responsibility for social ills: “Another generation, another forward state of mind/It’s somewhere deep within our consciousness/Problems of the aged, problems of the kids/Problems are the mistakes of the past we’ve made/It’s time to look forward to a third generation.” It’s a foreshadowing of the same anger (and hope) that fuel the OWS movement today.

Fishbone’s second full-length album, Truth and Soul (1990) was their most political. Responding to racial and economic tensions of the Reagan era, it was protest rock — angry, pulsing, electric, and of the moment. And much of it was about being black and disenfranchised in America. “Subliminal Fascism” would have made an excellent intro to a Bachmann segment: “And the hate grows more each day/So when the infected try to affect you/Don’t listen to them when they say/Follow the rules and forget the bomb/Communistical patriotic/The plan is subtle but it’s in the open/Kingpins Nazi scheme getting under your skin/So you better wake up US/Subliminal Fascism.”

If you want to understand the roots of the anger young Americans are feeling today, the anger that has led to Occupy Wall Street and protests in other American cities and on college campuses, a good place to start is to listen to all of Fishbone’s music. If you want to understand the rage of the poor and disenfranchised, try listening to “Ghetto Soundwave,” more prescient today than ever: “There’s a ghetto soundwave/Gets to me everyday/There’s a ghetto soundwave/Gets to me everyday/Another bourgeois politician/Hears our pleas but does not listen/Never, never, never sees the need/But caters only to his greed/Can’t he see there’s no use in lying/And don’t he know all our hope is dying?” Are you listening, Rep. Bachmann?

After the news came out that the Bachmann intro music was “LAB” and she expressed her displeasure, Questlove gave a non-apologetic apology. “The performance was a tongue-in-cheek and spur of the moment decision.” (Not possible when it surely had to be cleared for rights purposes.) “The show was not aware of it and I feel bad if her feelings were hurt. That was not my intention.”

Fallon and an NBC vice president apologized to Bachmann, recognizing that the B-word, even used to describe an abhorrent woman, won’t fly on network television in 2011 -even though the word was never sung. Now there is talk that Bachmann will return to the show – delighted, I am sure, to get another fifteen minutes out of a controversy she was totally unaware of until after her appearance.

I’m glad NBC didn’t fire Questlove and the band, not just because I love their music but because those guys have kids and need the health insurance they get from AFTRA. Health insurance she will surely try to eliminate should she ever be elected.

As a woman I am not offended at the choice of song because as a progressive I am offended and disgusted by Bachmann and I do not see her as a sister. Add in the many layers of the critique – the only lyrics actually sung were “she’s just a . . .” and the only people who got the joke were those who already knew the song – and the insult becomes even more oblique, and more genius.

Asked for a reaction to the Bachmann brouhaha, Fishbone’s bassist and co-founder John “Norwood” Fisher told the Bay Citizen CultureFeed, “When you’re running for president, you become a target for all manner of things. I honestly think, in that context, if you want to be a presidential candidate, you better be able to take a joke.” Is the word “bitch” low-hanging fruit? Absolutely. Should it be off-limits when used in the context of political protest? Unlike some of my younger feminist sisters, I say no.

Just as Fishbone called Reagan “Ugly” to get at darker, bigger truths about power and its abuses, Questlove’s decision to play “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” gets at darker, bigger truths about Bachmann. She misrepresents the truth. She is a self-aggrandizing power-monger who does not care about poor people, women, or people of color. She lacks empathy for anyone who doesn’t share her enraptured worldview, she is a self-interested manipulator, and she is already doing her best to ruin America.

Bachmann was, not surprisingly, outraged by the event, telling Fox News, “[I]f that song had been played for Michelle Obama, I have no doubt that NBC would have apologized to her and likely they would have fired the drummer, or at least suspended him. . . . This is clearly a form of bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite but it’s also sexism as well.”

Let’s parse that for a second. Would The Roots have played “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” to introduce the First Lady if she made an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon? Of course not. Questlove is an Obama supporter who has performed at an Obama benefit, donated to his campaign, and has a Twitter profile picture of him and the President. But Bachmann surely didn’t believe her own stupid analogy even as she uttered it.

What she was trying to say was that a black band would never employ a misogynistic word to describe a black woman. Only about seven million hip-hop and rap lyrics prove her wrong. Have liberal entertainers used misogynistic words to describe one of their own – read liberal women – in the past? Of course! Remember Tina Fey’s “Bitch is the new black” routine about Hillary Clinton on Weekend Update?

But the most intriguing thing Bachmann said in response to the incident was that it was “bias on the part of the Hollywood entertainment elite.” This obvious coding for “bias on the part of Jews against people like me” was classic Fox News shtick, tired, empty, and old. And the “elite,” of course, is an echo of many of the critiques that have been made about our President – that he’s too intellectual, out of touch, snobby, Harvard-educated, and arugula-eating, even if he was raised by a single mother and is black. In Bachmannworld, Questlove and the all-black Roots are Hollywood elitists and she, an elected politician and former IRS tax lawyer, is a persecuted minority. She’s saying black is white and white is black. That means she is lyin’.

If only The Roots had played the song to the end. No, I don’t mean the spoken-word plea that includes the phrase “slut trashcan scummest dirtbag” but the lyric that best applies to Michele Bachmann and all that her party represents: “You know she says she loves you but you know she doesn’t.”