Raising Hell: For Ella, my daughter, who asks why?

Note: this is the intro to rad dad 14. I want to call on fathers everywhere to make a commitment to all youth and not just their 'own.'

On the night Barak Obama was elected, he threw out this rhetorical question: If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible…

I’d like a chance to answer.

Yes, Mr. president, there are.

Let me start with a story and then some facts:

Just two days before my daughters and I were leaving on a 5 week trip to southeast Asia, I heard a call come into my home phone. It was a collect call. My heart froze; it was from my son, who was being held in county jail, no longer a juvenile but now an eighteen year old “adult.” I was frustrated and confused. I could barely find out what happened because the cops were so unhelpful and condescending in my attempt to check on his situation and well-being. I was told that after he tried to evade police, they “subdued” him. Subdued?! What the fuck does that mean? I asked if he is hurt in any way. The officer said, ‘I looked at his mug shot and his face seems fine. Just a bloody nose.’ I couldn’t even talk to my son about what happened because the phones were monitored.

Then there were the other questions: should we still go on our trip? should we change our plans? After much discussion, we departed leaving his mother and the rest of our community to handle the situation, which didn’t appear to be over any time soon.

We had been in Thailand for just a week. It was a few days after New Years. We were at the point of feeling a bit homesick, missing our homes in Berkeley and Oakland, when a person whom we met on the road said, wow, you people in Oakland are crazy.

Oscar Grant had been murdered by BART police, unarmed and face down on the ground. He was shot in the back. In the aftermath, the people in Oakland took to the streets. Not knowing anything abut the situation, we made our way to an internet café and watched the video of his murder and of the protests on the streets of our home. My kids and I were stunned. We looked at each other, angry, horrified. There was nothing to say really. Until Ella, my youngest asked, how old was he?

Twenty two, I said.

Why’d they shoot him?

I shook my head.

Why does this happen? she continued.

I didn’t know what to say. What answers should I give her?

I don’t know why this happens, I responded.

She looked straight at me and declared, that coulda been Dylan, that coulda been our brother.

I know, I said, I know.

Some facts from the Ella Baker Center:

Of the 1,950 youth in California Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) prisons as of July 2008, 87% are young people of color. And virtually all of the kids inside are from low-income backgrounds….On average, children of color in California grow up with fewer services, poorer schools, more toxicity, more street violence and, as they grow older, fewer job opportunities than their white counterparts. These disparities carry over into the criminal justice system. When suspected of the same infractions, youth of color are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and jailed than white youth.

Since that day when my daughters and I discussed Oscar Grant, I have been haunted by my desire to answer Ella’s question with more than a head shake, a hug, and some lame phrase of disbelief.

I want to be able to look straight back at her with something to say.

I want to risk being honest with her.


Ella, this is why it happens.

We have failed you and other young people from the beginning. It is not about one cop killing one unarmed young man; it’s about the years of failure that many young people, like perhaps Oscar Grant, face in our society, from schools to jobs, from media representations to the courts.

This isn’t one isolated incident; this is a pattern.

And with pattern, there is usually design.


Ella, it happens because there is a war going on.

I know this sounds hyperbolic, but it’s true. Despite the “hope” and “change” we’ve been told will come from the top down like some liberal version of Reaganomics, if we just wait, the reality is that right now, right here on the streets of our cities, it is dangerous to be young. To be a teenager and a person of color can simply be deadly.

With the amount of consumer advertising budgets aimed at them, the pressure of social and gender conformity, and the economic stress of capitalist created desires, growing up is a constant battle.

As a young person, there is no room to test boundaries and make mistakes and challenge things that are given you. It’s a set-up. Community centers and after school programs close, so there’s no place to gather safely and legally; it’s prohibited to congregate on street corners and in parks past dark. We had to actually fight to get the local school playground open during the summer so that kids could play there during the day without get the cops called on them. It seems the only place safe to hang out is some shopping center, but you gotta have money to go there so you better hope you have job. Almost everything connected to youth culture, from skateboarding to the music you play, is seen as suspect, something to distrust, an excuse for adults to call the cops. Basically, for many young folks, they are guilty before they step out their door. And especially if that door is in East Oakland or Richmond.


Ella, it happens because young people are expected to be perfect.

If you are a teenager and/or a person of color, whatever you do, don’t fuck up. Don’t make a mistake. And don’t get caught. People wonder why there’s a “don’t snitch policy” in many working class neighborhoods and communities of color. Because getting caught up in the legal system is a nightmare. People know this. We live in a society in which mistakes are costly and if you the wrong class or color, those mistakes aren’t things you can simply learn from, but shackles that are extremely difficult, time consuming, and expensive to free yourself from.


More Facts:

The end result is that, though African-Americans constitute an estimated six percent of California’s population, in 2008, a whopping 31 percent of the kids in DJJ were black. Latinos made up 36 percent of state residents but 55 percent of the DJJ population.

Here’s another story, an analogy.

I teach basic writing at the local community college. On the first day of classes, I sit for a minute in silence as they stare and wait for me to begin. But I wait. I wait for them to get uncomfortable, to shift in their chairs, to mumble something under their breaths about this crazy fool sitting in front of them. Then I say I’m just observing and thinking. I ask everyone to look around. What can we gather about our class? What do we see? After some playful remarks (usually about some cute girl across the room) someone will say, there ain’t that many white people in the class. Which is always the case.

And then I show them statistics from the school’s website.

For example: black students make up a quarter of the school population but more than half of the basic skills population. That success rates from basic skills instruction are dismally low. That the statistics of basic skills classes eerily mirror the statistics of the prison system.

That this the ghetto of the school.

This the reservation.

The interment camp.

How do they feel about this? Now, there is a different kinda silence in the classroom.

I try to be honest with my students. Because I believe with this knowledge comes the possibility of choice, comes determination, comes anger, perhaps action. It now is up to them individually and collectively to face these issues.


So I am trying to be honest with you, Ella.

Unfortunately, it is also your responsibility to face these issues. Someday soon it will be you out on the streets at night with your friends. It will be you riding public transportation home after some holiday celebration perhaps running a bit wild, perhaps getting into a little trouble. It will be you and your friends that will be seen only in relation to your age, your clothes and style, your color. It will be you or your friend’s facing the gun.


Ella, but it is also my responsibility to do something about it as well. To do my best to trust you. To be honest with you about the potential consequences you face. To love you unconditionally despite what the world around me says about teenagers and young people. To listen and believe and let go and support. To stand up for other young people who are dealing with these issues now. To not let things like Oscar Grant’s murder go unmourned. To remember the number of other people, both young and old, who might also raise their hands in response to Mr. President’s declaration. The doubters, the hell raisers, those trying to be honest in spite of the pressure to conform, to believe that everything for the most part is fine.

Ella, I wish I was there on that, albeit wonderful night, when President Barak Obama asked that question: Is there anyone out there who doubts…

And for you Ella, I hope I would have had the courage to raise my hand.

All statistics from The Ella Baker Center website http://www.ellabakercenter.org as well as the Berkeley City College http://vistawww.peralta.edu website. This article was also inspired by an article Cherrie Moraga wrote with the same quote.

report back from the second annual celebrating parents reading

The other night, we had another wonderful “celebrating parents” event at Pegasus bookstore in downtown Berkeley, California. It was the second such event and we hope to have a third. I am hoping we get some musical acts! It was wonderful to be in a space where kids and parents and the accompanying noise and chaos were all welcome.

One of the things I shared at the last event was a list of ways fathers (and others) can fight patriarchy.

And since I love lists here’s another. A list of things parent allies can do to support the parents in their communities. Feel free to add more things and I’ll include the entire list in the next issue of rad dad…Here it is:

Concrete things you can do to support parents/or childcare givers and children in your community.

• Give children attention; talk to them, not about them, in a regular voice.
• Don’t get upset if they don’t want to talk to you when you do.
• Develop a consistent relationship with the children in your life. Set up a weekly or monthly date with a child.
• Speak up for childcare issues in all areas of what you do. Don’t let it fall to the parent to have to ask about childcare, or if it is a child friendly event.
• In general, feel free to ask a parent or childcare giver if you can help out when you see them “multi-tasking” (code word for overwhelmed, freaking out, having a melt down), and of course be gracious if they say no thank you.
• Smile at parents.
• Remember parenting doesn’t equal mothering; ask fathers how they are feeling as well.
• If you are throwing a party, hosting a meeting, planning a running street protest, announce that it is or is not a child friendly event. And if for some reason the event is not, make sure you are prepared to help parents stay involved: child care, classes for older kids.
• Create a space for children in your home: have some books to read and a toy or two to share when some little one (or not so little) comes over.
• Look at the world from child’s height
• Know how to change a diaper
• If you’re dating a parent offer to chip in on childcare costs while on a date
• Call your own parents regularly: remember you were a child
• Take the initiative to invite parents to events or to just hang out, even if they decline…parents often feel isolated.
• Remember parenting doesn’t end with infancy; parents of older children need allies too.
• And of course buy yourself and parents alternative books and zines about parenting…yes shameless plug

Rad Dad Wins!

Dear Mr. Moniz,

Congratulations! You’re the winner of the 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for Best Zine. We are honored to acknowledge your zine’s outstanding work last year, and hope to have the pleasure of reading it for years to come.

We’re sorry that you couldn’t make it to last night’s awards ceremony. We’ll be posting video from the event at our website, and sending out an official press release later today. We’ll also be sending out official letters and awards this week.

In the meantime, read all of the nice things we had to say about your zine—and watch a short video about the awards process (complete with Utne library tour!)—at www.utne.com/uipa2009.

Sincerely,

the Utne Reader staff

2nd annual summertime reading (or a celebrating parents day reading smack dab in-between mothers and father’s day)

Sunday June 14th 5 pm
calling all mamas and papas
come to radical storytelling hour

readings by local parents on the pleasures, pains and politics of parenting

hosted by tomas moniz editor/writer of rad dad zine (nominated by utne magazine for best zine of 2009)

featuring:
jeremy smith, author of the daddy shift
rahula janowski, joybringer zine
robin dutton-cookston, author of the foggiest idea
and others

Pegasus Bookstore 2349 Shattuck Avenue
Phone: (510)649-1320
Downtown Berkeley
Kid friendly

because you never know -- the intro to rad dad 13

Just a note to say that a bunch of local radical parents (including your very own Jeremy Adam Smith) will have a reading at Pegasus Bookstore in downtown Berkeley on June 14th at 5 pm -- spread the word and come out and say hi -- it should be a lot of fun! Here's my introduction to the newest issue of Rad Dad, nominated this year for an Independent Press Award for best 'zine:

Trust me. I was planning on writing this kick ass introduction for the fourth year anniversary issue of Rad Dad. The debut issue premiered at the 2005 SF Anarchist Bookfair (I make it sound all glamorous but really, I didn’t even have a table then, but occupied the free space outside the building). A lot of stuff has happened since then. I have met some amazingly inspiring and radical parents; the bookfair itself had evolved to include a kids’ space; last year we even had an anarchist parents panel! And, yes, now I have a table in the building. So I was all ready to write this articulate, perceptive, engaging manifesto on anarchism and parenting called A Primer on Potties, Procreation, and Politics. Or something clever like that. Trust me, I was.

But instead I find myself focusing on the little things. The small moments of fathering that bring my head and heart back to what is right in front of me. And upon reflection, I realize that it is in fact those very moments that all the theory and planning is put in to practice. It is in those moments we learn and test and reevaluate our values and morals; we discover our politics; we reveal on our honesty, our vulnerability, our humanity. What can be more radical than that? There is nothing wrong with theory and philosophy; in fact, I still want to write that manifesto, (someone out there wanna collaborate with me???) but for this introduction to Rad Dad 13, drummmrolll please, the anti-authoritarian anarchist zine on parenting, I simply want to share with you a few stories that for me get to the heart of this amazing, challenging, never static position we parents find ourselves in:

That coulda been…

Just two days before my daughters and I are leaving on a 5 week trip to southeast Asia, I hear a call come into my home phone. It’s a collect call. My heart freezes; it’s from my son, who is being held in county jail, no longer a juvenile but now an eighteen year old “adult.” I’m frustrated and confused. I can barely find out what happened because the cops are arrogant and condescending in my attempt to check on his situation and well-being. No help, no sympathy. I am told that after he tried to evade police, they “subdued” him. Subdued?! What the fuck does that mean? I ask if he is hurt in any way. The officer says, ‘I looked at his mug shot and his face seems fine. Just a bloody nose.’ I can’t even talk to my son about what happened because the phones are monitored.

Then there are the other questions: should we still go? should we change our plans? After much discussion, we depart leaving his mother and the rest of our community to handle the situation, which doesn’t appear to be over any time soon.

We had been in Thailand for just a week. It was a few days after New Years. We were at the point of feeling a bit homesick, missing our home in Berkeley and Oakland, when a person whom we met on the road says, damn you folks in Oakland are crazy.

Oscar Grant had been murdered, and in the aftermath, the people in Oakland took to the streets. Not knowing anything abut the situation, we make our way to an internet café and watch the video of his murder and of the protests on the streets of our home. My kids and I are stunned. We look at each other; we are all angry and horrified. There is nothing to say really. Until Ella, my youngest asks, how old was he?

Twenty two, I say.

Why’d they shoot him?

I shake my head.

Why does this happen? she asks.

At this point in her life, she knows me and knows my by now predictable stance on police brutality, on the need to rethink our criminal justice system and its affects on young people and people of color.

But what can I say now?

I don’t know why this happens, I respond.

She says that coulda been Dylan, that coulda been our brother.

I know, I say.

I know.

Kow Jai

After a few weeks of traveling, my daughters and I had the chance to meet up with Julia, a woman we meet earlier in our trip through a friend and who helped us out while we were in Bangkok. When we first met, I had been feeling a bit overwhelmed, and she was a blessing, showing us around the city for a couple days, making us feel at home. Her generosity really helped calm and relax me, something I needed after dealing with the stress of my son in jail and the reality of jet lag and the 15 hour time difference that hit me like a punch in the face (though my kids seemed amazingly unaffected!)

So we’re all there joking and feeling good; but it’s her laugh that is so amazing. It’s the best laugh: loud, guff, like a punchline. When she laughs, all three of us look at each and laugh even harder. To make matters worse, she speaks exactly like Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin; I can’t listen to her without smiling. The shitty thing I realize is that she’s the exact kinda person -- white, from the Midwest, dreads, yes dreads, hippie girl -- I would probably roll my eyes at, make some hasty generalization about with in earshot of my kids.

And my kids would hear and listen.

Yet when I, a complete stranger, needed some help, she was there, genuinely, asking no favor, nor thanks.

We we’re sitting around, telling stories over iced coffee - yes my daughters convinced me that they should be able to drink iced coffee while in Thailand -- don’t ask me how – discussing the differences we noticed between Thais and people in California. It just so happens, she’s is also tutoring this 13 yr old Thai girl who had asked the same exact question that morning. Julia says she’s not sure what the difference is and perhaps there really is no difference between us all. (I said she’s a hippy right)...

And then Ella shares with us all the Thai phrases she’s taught herself from her little Thai phrase book. After a few, she shares this one: ‘I don’t understand’ in Thai is ‘mai kow jai.’

Julia asks, so you wanna know what that literally means. It means ‘it has not entered my heart.’ Jai means heart and Kow means to enter or come into.

She smiles and I turn to her and ask, so when you wanna say ‘I understand’ you are saying: ‘it has entered my heart’?

That’s so amazing.

Oh yeaaah, she says, Thaïs always talk about their heart.

I say, that’s so opposite of us; we always talk about the mind. When do we ever talk about heart?

We both smile and she takes out her journal and writes a note about this to share with her student.

I look at my kids sipping their coffee and say: Ella and Zora kow jai. Kow jai.

Jai. Heart.

Why we do what we do

Here’s my favorite story from our travels. We were on a boat traveling between islands in the southwest of Thailand. The night before we had been struggling over the reality that my children were assigned homework to do while they were traveling. And not just some – shit loads. The school district doesn’t seem to think that they will learn anything outside of a classroom, regardless of the fact that the kids learned more about life in those five weeks than what could possibly be covered by the California state grade standards.

For example: the exchange rate for the Cambodian Riel is 4,226.87 for 1 dollar. Try figuring out how much a meal is when the bill’s 47,500 Riels? They learned phrases of Thai and Cambodian. They witnessed the social realties of global poverty. And talk about gender. Try explaining why we kept seeing signs about the dangers of “sex tourism” as well as the preponderance of so many older white men with super young Thai women.

Kids see a lot.

So as we were on the boat, we saw these fish jumping out of the water and flapping their little fishy wings like they were flying. We were amazed at them, whole schools jumping out and flying. I asked my youngest daughter why she thought that they evolved that way? What makes them do it? She shook her head and guessed that maybe they were escaping predators. I said, or perhaps it’s to see other fishies they wanna eat. Or maybe to breathe, she guessed.

Feeling like a good teacher helping my children rationally examine the world through the good ol’ scientific method, I turned to my middle child happily sitting there, head in a book, and I asked her why she thought they did that.

She looked at me and then looked out over the water and then without the slightest bit of hesitation said simply: because it’s fun. She returned to her reading.

I smiled. Yes. Because it’s fun.

It’s true: sometimes we do things because it’s fun.

Because it feels right.

Sometimes, there is no better reason.

So one of these next issues, I will address the historical implications of anarchist tendencies in regards to the notion of discipline. Or, How to Say ‘No’ the Anarchist Way. But for now, I am doing this because it feels right.

Because it’s fun.

Because it has entered my heart.

nominated for best zine of 2009!

Utne has nominated rad dad as one of the best zines of 2009; in fact, there is an awards ceremony in Denver this May that I won't be able to attend but anyone there wanna represent, let me know...

check out also the video review in Utne of our latest issue at http://bit.ly/3140hc.

review of our latest issue at the microcosom website

Rad Dad #13

Oh Rad Dad, why are you so freaking good every single issue? Why do I have to read you cover to cover the moment you land in my hands? Because you're full of heart-felt parenting stories from all types of radical dads. This is the 4th anniversary of Rad Dad, so Tomas' introduction is a story full of tiny moments that make up the experience of parenting. There are two articles written by both members of a queer couple, one of whom is transgendered. The write about their gender roles, and how they influence the way they perceive their parenting, and the way others' perceive them. There's also a birthing story, and a short piece reflecting on how to best approach your kids' Obama fever, when you might be a bit dubious yourself.

sf anarchist book fair and rad dad 13

so the san francisco anarchist book fair is once again here, march 14th and 15th; i have a table to peddle the last few issues of rad dad including the brand new issue: rad dad 13!!!!

however, this year it will be only me at the table (unlike last year's parent fest with 4 other radical parents all hanging out at different times, visiting from different places) so i have room. if you have radical parenting material you'd like to share with people, i'd be happy to sell or distribute it for you. i know it's short notice so let me know soon if you're interested

and/or if you're in the bay area for the festival, stop on by and have a sit...

or at least say hello...

until

tomas

to my father

I have been thinking a lot lately about how we say goodbye. How we honor and respect those people and things that are no longer in our lives but, like memories or genes or scars, remain always with us.

Saying goodbye has always been scary to me, linked to issues of abandonment and events happening outside of my control. I was too young to say goodbye to my father when he left us for jail. He was just gone.

I can remember having to saying goodbye to my life in Hawaii at the age of ten moving to California knowing no one, speaking a different slang; it felt like I said goodbye to my entire universe, and I had no choice in the matter.

And then four years later, I had to say goodbye to California when I was forced to return to Hawaii, a changed person, with a new accent and new interests. But saying goodbye when you move pales in comparison to saying goodbye when someone dies.

My father passed away on August 25th. I had the chance to sit with him for the last five days of his life, taking care of him, preparing him for hospice care, dealing with his insurance, his hygiene, his eating. It was like parenting your parent as a newborn. Something familiar yet disconcerting, something I was thankful I had the chance to do yet disturbed by.

When I first got the call to come home, I was terrified because this, of course, was another goodbye that I had no control over. There was no coming back from where he was going. The doctors knew it. He knew it. I knew it. There is a certain relief when faux optimism is replaced with the stark reality of what is coming. But relief and clarity don't make it any easier. On my way to the airport, a friend said to me: when you see him, touch him. Don't be afraid to touch him.

It feels like the best advice I have ever been given.

When I saw him in his barely recognizable state, yellow, bloated, often delirious, I was shocked, standing rigid for a second wondering what to say. But then I walked directly over to him and laid my hands on his arm, his cheek, touched his face, stroked his hair. It was a grounding act, a gesture that could say more to him than any of my words could.

We sat like that for days, often in silence, sometimes talking about my kids or my sisters and brothers; we never really directly said anything about the lives we led, the decisions that have pulled us apart and brought us together, but we touched, we hugged, my hands always on his.

On his last day alive, he was feeling good enough to go to the library to get some books for his stay in the hospice. He wheeled about the library while we stayed with the grandkids in the children's section. An hour later when he found us, he had a librarian with him holding a box of twenty seven books, most of them romantic novels. I now have someone to blame for my obsession with romantic comedies. Twenty seven books for a man who had less than a month to live. My brother laughed and said: Papa, how 'bout like one or two?

My father responded: Chale, mijo, you never know and plus I can't decide. They all look good.

Needless to say, we checked out every fucking book in the box and stacked them by his bed that afternoon.

However, he never got a chance to read any of them because he died that night while I was flying home to gather my children. When I told the story to my daughters, they asked me, in their infinite wisdom, if I knew the titles of the books. I realized I didn't and immediately picked up the phone and called my brother and asked him to write out all the titles. Perhaps one day, I'll read them.

The funeral was going to be in a week. We had a few days before my kids and I were to return to Albuquerque. In the meantime, I thought I'd do some research for a story I was writing. You know, to get my mind off of goodbyes, off of how we pay our respects to our past and to our history. So I went to the library to get this classic book called Subway Art, one of the first books ever published on graffiti; it contained hundreds of pictures taken by this old white dude who had the wherewithal to recognize the incredible art going on in New York city by these fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids.

They had one copy in all of the Berkeley public library system, and it was in a special reserve section. I asked to see it and the librarian said: You can no longer take it out of the building. You have to stay right here.

I was thinking What's her problem. It's just a fucking book. Yes, I was in a foul mood that week. I said fine and walked to this table and sat down. I opened the book up and I was stunned. I understood why she was so careful.

At first I didn't know what to feel; at first I thought I was offended. Every possible piece of whiteness was covered with notes, with people writing in the book. Every margin and blank area, even some strategic spots in the pictures themselves, like backdrops behind people's faces or the sky above the trains, every possible space was covered with tags and throwies.

It was overwhelming.

People had written simple things like: J loves T, or westsiiiide, or just their names: Hector or Jaime. It was like they had come to pay their respects, to show their love. They were very careful not to cover any classic subway art. They wrote notes to their graffiti idols: Les you live forever, or lady Pink stole my heart. Page after page, I marveled at the intensity. I became filled with such a powerful feeling, like this book held so much, carried so many wishes and prayers, from so many kids who probably never felt this way about a book in their lives. Who had never even been to New York City. But here, in the pages of this book, they took their time to leave a little something behind. Here it was.

Honor.

Respect.

Love.

I thought to myself that this must be one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

I couldn't help it; I just broke down right there in the library. And the best thing was no one did or said anything. Except this one old dude. He got up and brought me some tissue, dropped a box that must have been in the library on a table and walked away. It was the first time I had cried since my father died. I felt myself wanting to cover my face, trying to keep from crying, but I couldn't. I just let myself cry and turned page after page.

When we finally arrived for the funeral, the typical family drama ensued: we had to have both a Catholic and a Christian service, people argued over cremation or burial; I seemed to have offended everyone when I suggested we just divide up his ashes and bury some in the family plot we've had for over a hundred years and spread some in the mountains of northwestern New Mexico.

But none of these rituals was the kind of ritual I wanted to honor my father with or was the way I wanted to say goodbye.

I wanted to write something.

I wanted to put on paper the pain, the pleasure, the complexity of being his son. On the plane ride to see my father before he passed a way, I had taken out a sheet of lined paper. I wrote on the top of it: To My Father. I was ready to write out all the things I wanted to say to him.

For the entire week, I was taking care of him as well as the days before the funeral, I would take it out now and then and start something; then scratch it out. I'd write a word here or there, but ended up crossing them out. More often I'd take it out and look down at the blank sheet, the growing false starts and illegible words and find myself speechless.

Wordless.

At the funeral, they placed the casket in the front of the church so people could come up to see the body. Everyone waited and milled about for a while and then the Padrino asked the children to come up first. I watched as one child then another came up. My father was surrounded by a dozen children all looking in at his body and finally one reached out and touched him. Then another. And another. My kids were lost somewhere in the group. They petted his face, stroked his hair, picked up his stiff hands, some laughing, some crying, some looking blankly at a man most of them barely knew but had heard stories about. Some placed on his body little cards or pictures.

Finally, the adults got up, and I sat there and watched his friends approach him one at a time. Some didn't do anything but walk up and look down, share a moment of silence with him. Many walked up and bent down and whispered their final goodbyes, their final words to him. And many others walked up, and with the hand drawn pictures from the kids, left something: someone tucked a 60's peace patch in his hands, someone a crucifix, someone stuffed a twenty dollar bill in his pocket, someone left a Corona bottle cap, a bullet, a picture of him and a woman on a boat.

In the end, when it was the family's turn, I took out my scratches on the piece of paper, its solemn silence holding all the things I wanted to say but didn't have words for, all the anger and the sadness and the joy; in the end, I folded it up tightly and I tucked it into his suit. It joined the other tokens of remembrance, other parts of his story: the tears from family and friends, the softly spoken memories, the odds and ends people left with him.

In honor.

In remembrance.

With love.

In the end, I simply reached out and placed my hands on his.

And whispered goodbye.

a reading...

Attention!

Lovers of Words & Free Wine & Cheese

Attention!

Poets & Playwrights & Fiction Writers

Attention!

Writers & Readers & Listeners

Announcing:

the triumphant return of

VELVET REVOLUTION

a reading series

Every Tuesday at 5pm

Join us in the fabulously cozy

Casablanca Room

(Creative Arts Building, Rm 158)

Each week there will be 2 featured writers and an open mic.

This is a chance to hear SFSU graduate and undergraduate students read their work.

And an opportunity for you to share your own writing.

BRING SOMETHING TO READ

(All genres welcome)

Our first event is September 30^th

Starring:

Tomas Moniz & Neale Jones

rad dad on the radio (well, internet)

I won't be talking about yoga, but we'll talk about parenting, community, and other fun stuff I'm sure...

Event: Yoga Mama Satsangha with LaSara Firefox
"Interview with Tomas Moniz, of Rad Dad Zine."
What: Listening Party
Host: Revolutionary Moms and Dads.
Start Time: Friday, September 26 at 12:30pm
End Time: Friday, September 26 at 1:00pm
Where: Talkshoe.com

everyday parenting

Rad dad 11 will be out in mid September, so get ready...

A few nights before Father's Day, we had a wonderful "celebrating parents" event at Book Zoo in Oakland, California. It was amazing to see so many kids running around, parents relaxing, and parent allies enjoying the stories the readers shared with the audience. We fantasized about doing a reading and softball game next year…

I have to share something. I feel like such a fake, a phony. Like I'm the last person who should be writing for a zine like rad dad. Let me explain. About a month before Mother's Day, Ariel Gore, editor and founder of Hip Mama, emailed me and asked if I'd be willing to read at their Mother's Day Extravaganza. I was honored; of course, I would. This is what I had been hoping for all along: recognition for rad dad in the radical parenting community and a chance to gain exposure for the zine and for all the amazing writers and stories I have had the chance to work with.

Nothing could stop me. I was now officially super rad dad editor.

And then my son's counselor called. He wasn't going to pass high school, she said, unless we did an intervention, unless we corrected his behavior. Now. Immediately. Tomas, she demanded, you gotta do something.

It seems I hadn't done enough. I had been harboring that fear all along. Had I let him down? Had I hid behind a veneer of trusting his "choices" when in reality I was just in denial, just at a loss for what to do? And instead of sitting with those questions, contemplating ways to approach him, I did the worst possible thing after hearing his counselor's pleas; I got hella angry with my son. Not a good approach, about as successful as parenting by denial. When I confronted him about his progress report, which for every class including PE was listed as F, he looked me straight in the eye and said: Don't worry dad; I got it under control. Like a cartoon, I looked down at the progress report: F, F, F, F, F and back up to him, down, back, down, back over and over again. Who was this kid?

Basically he's been a normal teenager. Yes, we've gone through some difficult teen years, the not coming home, the walking in after school drunk, the hoarding of every glass and bath towel in his room as if he were the only one who needed to drink or shower. But through these years, I've also seen glimpses of what he will become: the way kids look up to him and the way he gives them such respect, the times he connects with his sisters when he doesn't know we are listening in the next room, the way he plays with our pet chickens.

So how do I explain the situation he was in? Can a rad dad raise a high school failure? Not a dropout, mind you, but someone who failed his classes when many of his teachers bent over backwards for him. He was given opportunity after opportunity, second chance after second chance.

But it gets worse; as we get closer to my departure for what I'm thinking is my big coming out party, my day in the sun, his monthly court date arrives for his probation hearing. Oh, did I fail to mention also that he has been on probation for the past two years? Each time I take him to court, which, of course, is peopled with nothing but kids of color and blatantly class targeted, I can't help but get livid at my son as the Judge reads off: his attendance (I didn't know you could miss over 100 days in a semester), his straight Fs, his unfinished hours of community service, his failed drug tests. It just never ends, and I feel so angry that he hasn't dealt with it. Because one day the Judge is gonna do something, I warn him.

Well, just as I'm about to leave, that's what happens. My son is sentenced to Juvenile Hall for the weekend. My weekend. I just couldn't, and still can't, get over the irony; the universe must be trying to tell me something.

You can talk all you want about how you would like to parent, what you think is valuable, what the implications of your parental choices might be, but all that theory, all that shit, flies out the window when you're faced with the power and pain of parenting in the moment. You are on your own when they're hurt. When they're dealing with their disappointment in the world. Or in you. When they step further and further away from you. Moments like these aren't talked about in books or zines; there are no answers found by doing readings in front of other people or participating in Mother's Day Extravaganzas. In fact, all that stuff just seems silly. Instead, what you discover in those moments is your capacity to love unconditionally, to forgive and forget, to be gentle, to put things in perspective. But it's not easy; it's ugly and hard, and it hurts.

I finally decided to skip the event because too much was happening, but my partner convinced and reassured me that I should still go, that it would be alright, that staying was not gonna change what had happened. So come Friday morning before I'm supposed to fly to Portland and my son is supposed to check in to the Alameda County Juvenile facility (after school, of course), we meet up in my living room. I hug my boy goodbye. I tell him I love him, I trust him, I have faith in him even if the world doesn't seem to, even if he doesn't believe in himself, even unfortunately when I too often act like I don't.

I do. This is hard, I say. But you can do this. You can.

He nods his head, says thanks, and saunters off to school like it ain't no thang.

That weekend was a profound awakening in many ways for me (and for him, I believe); hearing his mother describe how they took him away, how she watched him being searched before they shut the doors behind him and also hearing inspiring stories of creating a free school in Portland, gathering with a ton of parents to share a little bit of rad dad with them, sharing my feelings of failure with old and new friends in the middle of the afternoon, considering how to expand rad dad into a larger format, more inclusive magazine, and finally flying home to hear stories of my babies' mama spending Mother's Day contentedly gardening with our daughters and eventually leaving to bring our son home from Juvie.

Parenting is so much more than something we should celebrate on a day or with an event, so much more than feeling good at times or bad. Or like a phony. Or like a failure. It's an adventure, it's unknowable, fluid, never static, ever evolving. It's work. And, it's what matters most. Happy parenting to everyone out there, holdin' it down and keeping it real.

I believe in you. I do.

This is hard at times. But we can do this. We can.

sf zine fest

i'll be tabling with mk chavez, one of my favorite writers, at this years sf zine fest on july 19-20. i'll have the newest issue of rad dad as well as some of the few remaining copies of the last four issues. i'll also have some new fiction out, so if you're into zines, comics or crafts, check us out!

tomas

How to Reclaim Father's Day from Ties and Work

The other night, we had a wonderful “celebrating parents” event at Book Zoo in Oakland, California. It was amazing to see so many kids running around, parents relaxing, and parent allies enjoying the stories the readers shared with the audience. We fantasized about doing a reading and softball game next year…..

One of the things I shared from rad dad 7 was a list of ways fathers (and others) can fight patriarchy. Feel free to add more things and I’ll include them in the next issue of rad dad…Here it is:


Things Fathers (or really anyone) can do to challenge Patriarchy

1. Remind yourself and others that parenting does not equal mothering.
2. Wear your baby in a sling.
3. Take your kids with you everywhere you can—grocery stores, errands, to your place of work, Sunday afternoon celebrations, meetings
4. Believe in other men’s ability to parent. Talk to other men about fathering.
5. Vocalize your support of breastfeeding moms
6. Consider being a stay at home dad.
7. Take any parent infant class you are interested in. Be proactive in your parenting.
8. Talk to your kids about gender, class, and racial privilege. Be proactive in addressing the subtle ways these things are taught to your kids.
9. Start a new dad’s group, one where you take the baby with you.
10. Volunteer to help set up child care in the organizations you are a part of.
11. Ask others, especially non-parents, to help. Be a parent ally!
12. Make a point to ask if there are changing tables in the men’s restrooms everywhere you go.
13. Fight gendered parental roles – make dinner, do the laundry, mop the floors, clean the bathroom, watch the kids.
14. Combat images of bumbling fathers in the media. Talk to your kids as you encounter these stereotypes ala “Daddy Day Care,” “Mr. Mom,” “The Pacifier,” “Big Daddy.”
15. And, of course, write for Rad Dad as well as create your own fathering/parenting projects. And invite others to participate.

Where Hope is Found -- Transgendered Fathering

From the start I knew I was in trouble. I understood that there lurked a Pandora’s box waiting within the pages of rad dad that would ultimately have to be opened releasing, as the myth states, chaos and confusion into the safe easy gender dichotomy that defined men as fathers and women as mothers. But to extend the metaphor, opening that box would also release hope, release the belief that in the end despite the difficulties of walking this parental path, we will make it out alive.

In issue one, I joked about feeling excluded from the mama club at parks and playgrounds. I wrote: Damn my cock! Although I know cocks don’t always make men and men don’t always have cocks, but that’s an essay for another time. But issue after issue, I skirted that essay, avoided it; however, in each consecutive zine, it kept rearing its pretty little head: someone wrote an article exploring the relationship sperm donors have to their biological children. I also considered how my vasectomy changed my perception of myself as being able to “father.” So now what kind of man was I? Does biology make the man or the father? Absolutely not. I know this, but how to write about it, how to explore it; and of course what does challenging gender do to how we define fatherhood; one dad pondered how, as a bisexual father, he should discuss sexuality with his growing pre teen child? But finally a friend flat out told me: I love rad dad but you gotta talk about queer issues, about how fathering is constructed there?

I could hear the box opening, all those questions wanting to get out. Now my friend had volunteered to help me with the cover, and I immediately asked her if I could talk with her abut being a new mama, but finding herself by default in the position as father. Out in public people constantly spoke to her partner, the birth mother, and completely ignored her as she stood right there, clearly the “other” parent. How much of a fathering moment is that? The assumptions people make that if you’re not Mama, you don’t know about your child, his or her routines, his or her diet. Even though she identified as a woman, since she was not the breast-feeding birth mama, she was invisible, she was negligible, she was -- father. We talked about how her experience is similarly replicated across the queer community as queer parents grappled with the public perceptions of their parental roles and, perhaps even more intense, their own perceptions of themselves as parent.

One afternoon a few weeks later, we met with another person who is a transgendered man, and specifically Papa to his near two-year-old daughter. Our conversation that afternoon was a reminder to me, O.G. Papi that I am, what it’s like to be around new parents, little babies, the glowing exuberance, the love, the concern, the hope. We all traded stories about each of us feeling excluded by the connections moms created with the baby. We all shared fears of inadequacy when our child wanted to be soothed by the mom in times of need and not us. We all discussed how we tried to challenge the gender sanctified responsibilities of dads by offering to watch the baby as often as we could allowing mom to stay connected to her life outside of parenting.

It was one of those afternoons that reminded me how amazing having children and, perhaps more importantly, having community to talk about children is. I learned how parenting is so disconnected from gender when it comes down to it. I saw instead how parenting is grounded in love and nurturing and dialog and commitment. I learned that queer couples’ parental intentions force them to contemplate the meaning of parenting so much more deliberately than parents who have a child by “accident.” I learned how gender is institutionally reinforced by making the non-birth parent have to legally adopt his or her child, which requires in home visitations and hella money. A “biological father” doesn’t have to do that. I learned about the word “gaybies.”

But as engaging an afternoon as it was, the reality is that gender happens. Socially and institutionally, gender is enforced, sometimes subtly and sometimes violently. And it will take more than an afternoon’s conversation to change things but it’s a start. And I’m hoping rad dad can also be a part of that conversation. We need to reflect on what we do as parents, on how we support other parents. Working on rad dad, forcing myself to confront issues around my identity, my politics, my parenting has been one of the most difficult tasks I have done. I have fought against it, resented things I discovered, my internalized sexism, my gender privilege; but it has also inspired me, allowed me to love more openly, more honestly. Despite the chaos and confusion analyzing gender might cause in ourselves and our families (and our zines), there is also hope: hope in asking tough questions, hope in challenging each other and our assumptions, hope in the struggle.

So tell me about your hope. Perhaps your hope is found in your community, in those around you. Perhaps it is embodied in the partner you’re committed to and the family you dream of making together. Or perhaps your hope is something else, something smaller, something more immediate, something you wake at three in the morning to rock back to sleep, something you sing songs to; the hope in those moments of love and caring is powerful.

Send in your stories of what it’s like to be a transgendered parent, a queer parent, a queer ally and a parent. This the beginning, the first baby steps on a much longer journey towards redefining fatherhood, parenting even, an attempt at understanding, at support, at ultimately creating communities between all of us parents, parent allies, mamas, papas and all those in between and outside of and a little bit a both.

Baby Daddy

So I’m watching the movie Baby Mama which I have to say was hella funny and horrifying at the same time. I was expecting though the requisite number of jokes about how pathetic fathers are but for the most part they weren’t there. In fact, at the end of the film there is this scene at which all three dads were there: one wearing a baby in a sling, all laughing with their child, nurturing their child. I was momentarily stunned. But, hey, times can change and even Hollywood comedies about parenthood can challenge (however weakly) some stereotypes. But it finally came: one dad does give his 1 yr old daughter a motorized pocket motorcycle. Yes, I laughed out loud.

However, this has been what I’ve been struggling with lately. How to challenge gender prescribed roles of fathering. How popular culture reinforces traditional gender roles about bad dads and their inept parenting abilities. And right about the time, Jennifer Margulis contacted me about reviewing the book The Baby Bonding Book for Dads.

Sure, I said. Anything that connects fathering to nurturing and babies, that equates men with the ability to offer support, to handle a crying baby, to discover themselves through the act of parenting, is something I want to support.

I eagerly agreed and waited for the book to arrive in the mail. When it did, I sat with my two youngest daughters and flipped through it. Of course the baby peeing in the air was wonderful, and we wondered how many times they tried to take that picture. My daughter asked if the man got paid to get peed on. Good question? Yes, unfortunately some of my preteen bonding techniques involve really bad comedies like Baby Mama. And I wonder where my daughter gets her crude sense of humor? Hmmm.

But peeing aside, I like the book. I think any new father would appreciate a book so clearly based in loving your child, in the beauty and power of becoming a father..

I did have three concerns that are really issues I have with many of the parenting resources out there, issues, I’ll be honest, I have with my own project rad dad. My main concern is how the tone of the book seems to assume that the standard or normal fatherhood mentality is one grounded in patriarchally defined gendered roles. Somehow I want to think that today’s dads are beyond thinking that they have no real place in their kids’ lives until they are able to play ball. Do many men still equate cooking dinner for their kids as something too close to domesticity? Would most men really rather plop down in front of the TV, drink in hand, than go out for a hike? Don’t get me wrong; I’ll be the first one to act the fool during a big time Raiders game, but I’m not sure that I’d rather do that than spend quality time with my family and/or community. And I don’t think most men would either.

A smaller issue, but one that is important to me as a reader, is the voice of the narrative. I kinda wished they wrote as a mom and dad? I wanted to see the variations in the voices, to see them work things out on the page, back and forth between each other, as mom, as dad. Instead I felt the book had a slightly detached, impersonal tone to it, as if they were trying to speak to all parents rather than as parents.

I loved the all pictures (not just the peeing one), but as usual I wanted to see more diversity than the three or four pictures out of the thirty or so ones in the book. Too often it seems to me parenting is seen as a white experience when clearly and obviously it is not.

But having said those issues, I loved some of the things they say especially the idea of taking your baby with you everywhere you go. How often do women take their kids to errands, to work, to the store or bank. I love that they encourage fathers to do the same, to be seen publicly as fathers. We need to see that more often.

I love the notion of getting naked with the baby. It is so true that nothing is as wonderful has skin on skin with your newborn.

And the recommendation to carry your baby in a sling. So true.

I can’t say enough about how important it is that the notion of discipline was absent from the book! Thank you.

Finally, the chapter on comforting was wonderful, was so important I wish it was even more prominent. Men can comfort, men can sooth, men can parent, even though yes sometimes they buy dumb presents that are more about them than their kids.

As a twenty one year old dad with a newborn, I would have loved this book. As a thirty seven year old, I’d love a book on how to bond with your seventeen year old child. When’s that one coming out?

i love it when you call me big papa

Reclaim Father's Day

come celebrate transgressive parenting: readings on the pleasures, pains, and politics of parenting (or being parented)

open mic

hosted by tomas
editor / writer of rad dad
and the good folks at book zoo

7:30 pm

parents of all persuasions and genders welcome to attend and read!

Thursday
June 12th

Kid Friendly

BOOK ZOO
6395 Telegraph Ave
at Alcatraz Ave
Oakland California
(510) 654 - BOOK

the official announcement

Radical Parent Writer-Zine-Friends Together at Last:
Joybringer, My Mother Wears Combat Boots, Rad Dad, The Future Generation!

Wednesday, March 19th, 7 pm @ AK Press Warehouse, 674-A 23rd. St Oakland, CA:
Book reading event with China Martens, The Future Generation: A Zine-Book For Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others (Atomic Books Company) and and Jessica Mills, My Mother Wears Combat Boots (AK Press). For more info contact: AK Press at 510.208.1700 or visit www.akpress.org

Thursday, March 20, 6:00 PM @ Modern Times Books, 888 Valencia Street, San Francisco
What does it mean to be a radical parent in these times? Join these anarchist parents and authors of Rahula Janowski , Joybringer; China Martens, The Future Generation; Jessica Mills, My Mother Wears Combat Boots; and Tomas Moniz, rad dad for a reading and a discussion.

Saturday and Sunday March 22-23, @ 13th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, SF, http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/
Check out our zines and books!

Sunday March 23rd, 12:00 – 12:50 @ Anarchist Book Fair:
PANEL DISCUSSION - Anarchist Parents / Building an All Ages Community of Resistance
Anarchism challenges us to create personal and social change but often provides no support for mothers, fathers, and other caretakers of children who try to do so. Let’s learn how to work together in new ways. By valuing the involvement/work of parents and caretakers, we form a more vibrant culture of resistance; and we teach the young the vision we want to see of a more equitable future by including them in our activities now. This will be a discussion between both parents and non-parents, on concrete ways child-free allies can support parents and children in their community. Good for everyone!

Co-presented by:

Rahula Janowski is an anarchist, anti-racist white mama living and raising her child collectively in San Francisco. Her zine Joybringer is about politics, parenting, and the places where they intersect.

China Martens, a single mother of a 20-year-old, is the author of The Future Generation: A Zine-Book For Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others (Atomic Books Company) and the coordinator of Kidz Corner @ the Radical Mid-Atlantic Book fair in Baltimore. (Baltimore, Maryland) myspace.com/chinamartens

Jessica Mills, a partnered mother of two, is the author of My Mother Wears Combat Boots (AK Press 2007) and the monthly MRR column of the same title. (Albuquerque, New Mexico) mymotherwearscombatboots.blogspot.com

Tomas Moniz is living, writing, teaching, loving, fighting, and parenting three awesome children 17, 12, 10 in California’s East Bay. He works on rad dad zine. raddadzine.blogspot.com

book review

i just wanted everyone to know that a good friend's new book just came out and i have it in my greedy little hands and it is wonderful -- i was so inspired by the how to aspects of the book -- how to set up a child-swap collective and even how to set up a freeskool

it's called my mother wears combat boots

i highly recommend it!

who's your daddy?

Hello -- it's been a while since I posted, and since rad dad 8 is taking shape, I thought I’d post something from rad dad 7 as a way to say, "hey come on, I know you all got something to say, so say it -- write for rad dad 8!"

It’s been so difficult to get father's to write birth stories! In fact, I received no birth stories, so I’d love to get someone to write one for this issue out at the end of November.

Also I really like Jeremy's post about his own blog "where we are writing from." It reminded me why I enjoy writing about all this craziness called fathering. This piece is about how fatherhood gets represented in the media, and well I apologize in advance for the tone; it's a bit much but I tried...

Tomas

Some of you may know this about me, but for those of you who don't, let me just spill the beans: I am a media whore! I'll be the first one to own up to my obsession with romantic comedies, with horribly bad TV dramas, with power ballads; in fact, I can identify the various stages or periods of numerous cultural pop icons—there's the Hugh Grant evolution pre or post his blowjob bust, there's the musician turned actor careers of J-Lo, Justin, and a slew of others. There's the progression of TV shows to the big screen…you get the picture.

However, I also consider myself an astute critic, ready to recognize gender stereotypes, to point out class issues, to call out racist tropes; my favorite is Justin Timberlake himself. How the fuck can Justin bring sexy back when it never went anywhere? What a perfect example of white entitlement? But I was kinda shocked the other day when my daughter said something that made me laugh but soon started gnawing at me like one of them zombies in Evil Dead.

"Dad, you should be in a TV show," Ella said innocently, and then of course added, "with your belly and your dog and you always making chili."

"Hey, don't be saying nothing about my mean vegan chili!" I replied.

And we went on to the next subject. However, the next day I was working on an essay about how men can challenge patriarchy, and I was bouncing ideas off my Official-Idea-Bouncer-Offer Andrea, and we came up with the idea of exploring stereotypes about fathers. It clicked; Ella was putting me into the category of so many images she has seen of how this society views fathers. Why had I never seen it before? But wait a second here, I'm no stereotype. Ella knows that…right? Perhaps though I hadn't noticed because even while I adamantly disagree with these images of fathering, I may in fact benefit from them, even play into them? I began to think back to early parenting roles my partner and I fell into. Most of the time we clearly processed who did what and why, what felt fair, and when we felt overwhelmed or overburdened. But it's true; I almost always would watch the kids while she would cook. And then I'd clean the dishes. How often did I mop or do some other big house-cleaning project while she took the kids to the park? Looking back on those first few years, not as often as would like to admit.

And when I was in public with my son, I remember the constant reproaches from usually older grandmotherly women about the way I held my baby, the way he was so damn dirty or the way I dressed him, especially my keen ability to never have socks on my kid's feet. But hey, who can keep track of socks, I argued. With all the advice and suggestions and snide looks I received, I often marvelled at what I was doing, particularly because I didn't have that many male role models to fall back on. Was I really that weird, that unmanly, that lucky to be able to parent my kids and keep them alive or at least warm?

We need to ask ourselves why so many in our society don't trust men to be competent at parenting, to be trusted to handle a newborn without being watched over by the mother or the grandmother. And a good place to start would be to start questioning the images of bumbling fathers we're inundated with. It is the butt of our parenting jokes: men fucking up, dressing kids, trying to feed kids, trying to be both macho and cool, because parenting in our society equals mothering. Not fathering or fathers. And is not cool.

So I decided to do a little investigative research: how are dads represented in the media? It took me only like five seconds to come up with a slew of movies all reinforcing the loving but clearly not primary parent material father: Daddy Daycare, and the new sequel coming out Daddy Day Camp, the Ice Cube movies, the Adam Sandler movies, it just goes on and on. Or there's the action adventure movies in which you threaten a Real Man's family and then you'll see what Real Fathers are like—you know the male protector/patriarch and all.

But it has gotten even worse now as parenting has become a trend with more pop icons having babies because with celebrity comes a market for cool hip parenting stuff. Sure enough, along with designer sippy cups and bibs, there has been a bunch of new books on fathering. And they all seem to have one common premise, which is how to maintain gender privilege, those traditional notions of men and masculinity, and still parent; how to be that cool dad, that hip dad, that (gulp) rad dad.

So I decided to read one and peruse a few others. I chose Alternadad by Neal Pollack because it was in my library. For a taste of some others, I moseyed on into a bookstore and, as I am walking through the aisle, I see the new GQ and pick it up (yes, because it had Jessica Alba on the cover). I kid you not, but I flip it open and come to a spread of nine famous fathers all dressed up with their kids. The headline was something like: How to Still Dress like a Winner When You Have Kids. Because of course kids make you a loser, make you so not stylish, ruin your cool life (assuming of course that the point of life is to be cool). I was shocked and turned to go find the other books when I saw Parents Press' new issue, the only free parenting newspaper in the baby area, and what is one the cover, I kid you not, but the picture of a new daddy book by some pop-punk rock singer and his three kids.

Aghhhhh!

Now there is nothing wrong with being interested in fashion, with telling your story, with connecting punk rock and parenting (in fact that can be a key politicizing event for parents; check out China Martens' new book The Future Generation: The Zine-Book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends and Others) but something seems so disingenuous, so exploitive, so apolitical about these books. As if fathering is simply a trend.

Low and behold, as I move into the kids section they had a little display of other papa books seeing as how Father's Day was coming up (because that's the only time fathers ever speak up about parenting and it's all about being fucking cool anyways). I'll be the first one to tell you never judge a book by a cover, but I actually did in fact judge the store by their display. There were five books in the Celebrate Fathers floor display: Alternadad, Punk Rock Dad: No Rules, Just Real Life by Jim Lindberg, Dadditude: How a Real Man Became a Real Dad by Philip Lerman, and Dinner With Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table. All by white men. All by very upper middle class white men. All by upper middle class, white men with wives at home. Wow. After I mention this to the children's section coordinator, she was aghast and immediately put out a Bill Cosby book!? Somehow I felt too bummed to do anything else.

So I grabbed the books and set out to skim them as best I could. Now I will admit that most of them brought up interesting points about struggling with discipline, creating honest lines of communication, trying to maintain a healthy relationship with a partner. So I want to acknowledge that their stories are worth sharing, that I did smile at times, despite my best intentions, that I did nod my head in agreement with their struggles, that I did find connection with some of their points. But as I said they were just so similar, so privileged, with no mention of race or recognition of class differences or anything substantive outside of individual family struggles, which of course are extremely important.

However, there is not much to say for the book about making a yearlong commitment to, and I kid you not, come home at least six days a week to help make dinner with his family. See, men, we should make such a huge, committed, life-changing commitment to actually spend time with our families. His conclusion—it really changes your relationship with your family. Do people really buy these books? Ah, but cynicism is never revolutionary I remind myself, so let me take the plunge and actually read a whole fathering book.

After a month of toting it around, it became overdue and I had read only about half of Alternadad and felt like I couldn't finish it. But knew I had to. To his credit he is hella funny, and we connect as I think all parents do on the issues of poop. He relished it like a true veteran and told some very funny stories. However, Alternadad, like the other books, is just another one of those cynical, nauseatingly self-justifying stories of how a once-privileged white male aware of the issues around him chose to forgo all political and systemic critique in the wake of becoming a dad. Pre-parenthood, he always lived in neighborhoods in the edgy parts of town or places where cars had booming bass, which, of course, 'booming bass' is code word for 'young male of color,' but as a father, he's not so sure. When it comes down to it, he'd rather opt for white flight than stay in shitty neighborhoods because he can leave. He has that privilege to pack up and move cross country. Yes, he loves his neighbors, but he just wants things safer, calmer, cleaner. He knows he doesn't belong there. He ends the book with a story of enrolling his son in a hippie/hipster daycare and celebrates moving to Los Angeles because of the last straw in his old neighborhood in Austin: four youths spray painting Vatos Locos in his neighborhood. Ah, people of color again; I hope he knows they are in LA too.

Okay, I know I'm being too mean, too sensitive perhaps. And in the end I realize it actually is very important to have books out there about fathering. But man do we need other stories, other views, other perspectives about fathering that go beyond the stereotypes we see in the media all the time: the bumbling fools, reformed womanizers, and amazed businessmen about how fun being a daddy can be, golly.

So from books to TV to films, I still haven't changed my wicked ways and will probably be the first to see Transformers on my block, but I will also no longer allow the parenting/father stereotype to go by unchecked. Adam Sandler better watch out! Perhaps one day a few other fathers and I can write a script for a movie about ordinary dads from various backgrounds and ethnicities trying to parent in conscientious ways who, en route to a fun camping trip in the woods of Califas, get lost and end up in the vile clutches of the mean patriarch called Walt and are forced to rely on wits, trust, and patience to foil his plot at global domination and destroy his nefarious, dangerous alternate world called Disneyland…hmmm someday.