greetings from beijing!
stayed up til 2am posting & approving subscriptions. occasionally the janitor would come in, shake his head at me, & make sleeping motions at me. i felt a bit sorry for him because people had left the press & press room a mess--plastic water bottles, styrofoam lunch boxes, & literature was everywhere. at 8am, it was perfectly neat.
all this garbage as been an occasion for political art. yesterday, as i was eating with lotus fong, a woman from hong kong strolled by with an open umbrella & vatious discarded wrappers & plastic items strung from it like raindrops ( a great variation on the canadian black rain protests). today while i was eating with a south african journalist, three young women came by, scooped up all the empty plastic water bottles, and where in the process of adding them to an already long garland made solely of plastic water bottles. in many american cities, there are separate bins for aluminum cans, plastic, glass, newspaper, white & colored paper; here there doesn't seem to be any pre-sorting & much seems to be needlessly disposable. but one can also say that when it comes to garbage, americans "strain out gnats & swallow camels."
went with an apc tech from equador to a workshop entitles "networking beyond beijing" hosted by sarah from the rochester school of technology. it was packed (50+) & cnn was filming (ok, everyone act natural). sarah & another woman from apan talked about remote learning via computers. i talked about my experience moderating BEIJING95-L & BEIJING95-WOMEN and the apc conferences dedicated to the coverage of the conference. the equadorian tech talked about her experience training users (especially women) in remote locations. there were many questions about appropriate technology, connectivity, networking, and gynocentric computer materials. we encourage people to come by the apc room and also the ofan pavilion, particularly to pickup virtual sisterhood's newsletter: sea changes (forgot geek girl--darn!). people also got up and talked about their own experiences using ham radios instead of phones wire to connect to the net, women email & web pages, and what they want to see on the net. the workshop ended with a flurry of business card exchanges. a grand success--thanks sarah & wilma!
next the tech grabbed some ice cream and checked out another info pavilion, which was in a half finished building next to the convention center where the plenary sessions were held. on the bottom florr were nice dispplay of chines women in science. on the top floor was a mixture of display fom different un/unifem/unicief programs, arabic women groups, and scientific organizations. my goal was to get this very cool women & aids button plus literature from a coalition educating for empowerment & prevention, especially since OH WOW THERE IS A BAT IN THE COMPUTER ROOM!!!! (she knows there are many tasty mosquitos here) uh, where was i? especially since aids is exploding in the female population.
finally we went to work. i subscibed new email users in the press room & and saw several paticipants from the mornings workshop. one brought by this great t-shirt ASK WOMEN 716-839-0855 which is a lovely, thick magazine full of national (US) & international business women. not only is it a directory, it also includes some great articles & interviews.
when it was time for me to go to lunch, i was directed to a journalist from a south african catholic magazine. i talked about faith orgins of BEIJING95-L & BEIJING95-WOMEN. as a catholic school girl, we learned that you could change the world through work and prayer--and i have no reason to disbelieve this as an adult. i also talked about my shift from doing church work (the women do all the work, the men get all the glory) and how my study of feminist thealogy redirected my political activites. finally in november 94 i was faced with an info gap: the info related to the beijing conference was squirrled away & people, including me, were dying to get it. it finally occured to me that i could use my skills as a computer technician to access this info. it was a "stone soup" situation: i bring the "stone" of the email list, the other folks bring the "vegetables" of info, and then we'll all all eat.
and it worked.
instead of going immediately back to work, i went on a walk about. as i was going to the global tent, i came upon RIGOBERTA MENCHU & her friends in full gutamalean regalia! less than five feet in height, she is bigger & more colorful than life! i gaped open mouth, and then cheered & clapped--she cheered & clapped back. i was too dazed to follow her. this is a woman whom i idolize. her picture along with audre lorde and susan b anthony with elizabeth caddy stanton are displayed as a triptych on my living room altar (across from this massive, at least 50 lb crystal which irene stuber brought me from arkansas). i searched for her later at the latin america tent and the press room (jammed pack with a press conference of pro-chinese minority/tibetan women), but she was nowhere to be found.
immediately after my encounter with rigoberta menchu, i wandered in a bit of a daze until i happened upon the altar of the sacred feminine in the far corner of the second peace tent. in was a multi-tiered altar filled with photos & images of women & goddess and it was crowned with a photo of a black woman. there was also a craft corner where one could decorate & offer paperdolls. there were many prayers & aspirations written upon these dolls & pinned to the backdrop & the overhead garlands.
i revived a bit, checked out the regional tents, and then went back to the computer room. eveything seemed to be under control (there is amethod to the computer room madness) so i sat down and read through some email, the highlight: my second brother's account of my first brother's wedding--congrats Gene & Guadalupe!
no meeting tonight, some of the apc techs are cross-training the hp volunteers (computer science students from beijing universtiy--they are very good). also four users volunteered to help type in plenary speaches into the computer (the demand is so great, and there has been a delay in transferring the info from the ngo staff, so we are extremely grateful for the volunteers help). hope i will call it an early night.
final tidbit: the laed story of the daily newspaper, forum 95, is "vatican to stick by cairo". the final feature includes a snapshot of the often-photographed ronald macdonald, sitting on a park bench in front of the mc donald's tent with the caption:
Who gave him his visa? Who booked his hotel? Who processed his pass? I think we shold be told!
thanks! --jennifer
ps the bat escaped & is happily flying back & forth outside
