Let's Dance

U Amsterdamu, u internet kafeu cekam  rezultate predsednickih izbora u Americi...nisam sama, kafe je pun stranaca pre svega.  Prikrivena nervoza kao na svetskoj berzi: zatisje. Godine 2004. sedela sam u internet kafeu u Parizu kad je Bus pobedio: ljuti vlasnik nas je izbacio napolje kao amerikance koji su usput prolili kafu od nervoze. Izasli smo na kisu i surfovali pod kisobranom, rizikujuci smrt of our best friend,  Mr  Mac. Secam se naslovne stranice nekih engleskih novina mislim da je bio Guardian: nesto ala milioni idiota glasali za Busa. Tada sam napisala "Letter to my  Imaginary American Friend" ( Stop the Next War Now, Code Pink 2005,)

Dobila sam ovaj mejl iz Kalifornije:
 When Obama is declared the winner of this election Tuesday night
go out to your street and dance.

Forward to all you know.

Pisite sta znate i ocekujete
http://www.b92.net/info/vesti/index.php?yyyy=2008&mm=11&dd=04&nav_id=326960

Belgrade, November 22, 2004

Four years ago, I wrote in my first letter to my virtual friend from

Baghdad, Nuha al Radi: We should be enemies. You are a Muslim, I am a

Christian. You are dark, I am white. But we both are women, we both

 write

diaries, we both are pacifists....

Unfortunately, Nuha died and we never managed to meet, we never managed

 to

touch. Our love and understanding was virtual, transnational and

 global‹far

more intensive and valuable than relationships with most of our

 "natural"

allies based on everyday commonalities. We shared 200 pages of

 questions,

emotions and insights, unveiling the universality of militarism and

patriarchy. We called our correspondence ³The Globalization of Evil.²

 We

survived it...we grew.

Our common enemy should have been USA: sanctions, bombings. At one

 point she

wrote, ³I could never live in USA². And I said, ³I could never, ever

 fall in

love with an American.² We both had to eat our words. Nuha had to be

 cured

in the USA and I must admit that I now love Americans. Ever since Bush

 won

for the second time (notwithstanding his obvious aggressive and

 paranoid

militarism), ever since their economy went to pieces and threatened

 global

disorder, ever since their raving antiterrorism measures have turned

 the

whole world into an internment camp, I have a feeling that the ³decent

people² from the USA who raised or want to raise their voices against

 the

interior enemy, need the world¹s support in order to set us all free.

As I said to Nuha, I am saying it now to you, my Imaginary American

friend: We should be enemies. Your country bombed us and killed

innocent people with sanctions, but I know it was not You who did it.

  I

know because it happened to me, too. My country also bombed and killed

innocent people and it was not Me doing it.  It is easy to be against

 the

Other, to be against the obvious Enemy. But it is not only wrong but

dangerous to fail to see the real Enemy, the universal enemy who is in

 our

home and sometimes inside ourselves: militarism and nationalism. They

 are

killers, killers without faces or names or races. They are invisible

individually but lethal as a system.

At the 2003 international conference of Women in Black in Italy, when

 after

16 years of international growth we managed to cover nearly all

 continents,

I declared: World beware, Women in Black are everywhere. They don't

 have to

be women, they don't even have to wear black. We are all Women in

 Black.

We who say: Not in our names, not with our money. We who are not fooled

 by

our own, we who are labelled traitors, we who are building confidence,

 we

who are anti-patriots, we who are spreading the politics of women¹s

solidarity, we who accept the mark of social shame, we who transform

 the

sense of guilt into acts of responsibility, we who support the

 conscientious

objectors, we who transgress ethnical walls and barriers, we who

 condemn

every war, we who support victims of war, we who demand accountability

 for

war and war crimes, we are all Women in Black. And we are building an

alternative world that is not only possible but already there.

When I think of the United States, I don¹t think of Bush, of frenetic

militarism, of global warming, of racism. I think of my editor and

 coauthor

Steph. I think of my young friend Violeta, half Serbian half Albanian,

 who

married an American and has an American child, I think of Indira, who

 lives

with a Croatian man, both as American citizens. I think of Andy Warhol,

Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, bel hooks. I think of rock music, of

 Internet,

of my dreams, dreams of freedom and multiculturalism for which so many

people died there. I think of a new continent that was always there for

 all

of us who decided not to belong to the trenches of national history. I

 think

of all those American friends (and there were many) who sent me

 packages,

mail and books during our dark times of Milosevic.

And I want to tell them now, because I found it out myself, written in

 scars

all over my body: Nobody can save you, lead you or destroy you but

yourselves. We are never alone but only lonely.

L