3 more articles on race and occupy
etta cetera
3 More articles on oppression and Occupy - first 2 from NY and last from sacremento!
Occupy All the Harlems, to Save Ourselves from the Dictatorship of Wall Street
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The question for Black America is not what’s going on in the heads of young white people in Zuccotti Park, but how WE will organize in our own defense against Wall Street, which has “done more damage to Black people than anyone else” in the country. Barack Obama, “most of the traditional Black organizations, and the entire Black Misleadership Class” are all bought and paid for by finance capital. “Our job is to wake our people up, so that we don’t sleep through this moment.”
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/occupy-all-harlems-save-ourselves-dictatorship-wall-street
Justified Rage from an Unsafe Space: Reflection on Occupy Wall Street
excerpt:
A lot of us have reasons for feeling enraged. At my first GA, several young white men who identified themselves proudly as those who had been at Zuccotti Park since “Day One” shouted disagreements with a Black woman who voiced legal concerns about the risks of arrest for undocumented protestors. The men used their self-proclaimed “veteran” status to silence and ridicule the legitimate concerns of some of the most economically disadvantaged and historically marginalized of the 99%–undocumented workers.
Resistance is Fertile; Anti-oppression the Fertilizer
An open letter from privilege, to privilege, on oppression, to oppression
By
Josh Cadji of Occupy Sacramento
As the Occupy protests continue to swell into a
full-on, populist movement – the first we've seen since the 1930s and the most
effective resistance demonstrations since 1999’s Battle in Seattle – it is
crucial that we build on this culture of dissent in the most constructive and
inclusive ways possible. The “occupy movement” is aspiring to be what many
movements before us have fallen short of: the potential to be a
multi-generational, multi-class, multi-racial, multi-identitied and
multi-abilitied movement. But this is not by accident. All over the country,
anti-oppression activists and white anti-racist organizers are holding down
teach-ins to understand the history of oppression in this country and the
reasons people of color and marginalized folks are the ones most deeply
affected by this economic crisis and simultaneously the ones left out of the
organized response to it.
Specifically, we are educating ourselves to new
levels on why these folks might not feel comfortable in this movement, be it
because of the prevalence of mostly white people seen on TV in leadership
positions, disenfranchisement from the political process, the intimidation of
police presence and therefore the constant threat and fear of violence, the
mostly white cultural space occupies have created, etc. Folks who consider
themselves privileged – be it racially, economically or gender-wise – would
serve the movement best by being on the front lines of outreach and education
and helping to build the most multi-racial movement we are capable of. We need
sacrifice, humility and love on the front lines, not privilege, entitlement and
racial ambivalence.
Furthermore, we must acknowledge how activist culture
can reinforce racism and classism by ignoring those who do not look like us,
which is a trap many of us fall into. The excuse that privilege holds on to --
“I’m not classist or racist, so that’s all that matters” -- is stepping on the
throat of true progress. It is not enough to not take part in an evil system;
rather, we must be actively engaged in dismantling the system itself, for that
is revolution. To quote the Mahatma, “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a
duty as is cooperation with good.”
As a white anti-racist activist, it is my moral and
civic obligation to use my privilege and leadership skills to build up and
promote the leadership and power of others who are not yet part of this
movement, that is, those bearing the brunt of this crisis most acutely. People
of color have been subject to a sustained economic crisis in their own
communities since the genesis of this country, yet only now that it has hit the
white middle class has anyone really started paying attention. Those on the
front lines of economic injustice hold the keys to our success as a populist
movement. It is therefore imperative that privileged folks support them in
leading this movement, as their first-hand experience of structural oppression
is a force we need to understand and then utilize in order to dismantle the
very system that produced it.
Furthermore, we in the 99 percent can't pretend that
we are a homogeneous group of equally oppressed, equally poor, equally
marginalized folks. There are doctors, lawyers and other people with assets
that total over a million dollars within that group, juxtaposed with the
majority- folks of color, including the lower-middle classes, the working poor,
with middle class folks the ambivalent buttress. The 99 percent contains an
awful lot of privilege and an awful lot of oppression, both of which are
contingent upon each other, each one side of the same coin.
Although class is spoken of as the issue de jour
in the occupy movement, race remains largely unexamined, despite it being used
against our black and brown sisters and brothers to maintain a class system and
exploited reserve labor base. While it may be true that we are “one human
species,” the facts on the ground show a darker truth – that we are not all treated
the same – with people of color having higher home foreclosure and unemployment
rates, in addition to being subject to the most dehumanizing of conditions in
environments perverted by racial profiling and police brutality, predatory
lending and redlining, grossly lower life expectancy rates and immigration
raids and policies of the most racist 19th and 20th century kind.
Admirably, the occupation movement has brought its
“A” game by throwing down a radical and thorough analysis of Wall Street,
capitalism and government corruption, but we have not adequately and sincerely
dealt with the question of why it’s the same folks over and over who have been
historically and consistently most oppressed by the symptoms of these problems.
This explains why the majority of folks who are in leadership positions in this
movement, including Occupy Sacramento, is overwhelmingly white and male.
As the article “An Open Letter from Two White Men to
#OccupyWallStreet” explains, “White people may not be to blame for the
privileged position we occupy, but we must be accountable for the liberties and
benefits we enjoy at the expense of our black and brown brothers and sisters.”
In other words, we must understand how we have come to have the privilege that
insulated us from economic crisis, while leaving others naked and exposed to
its effects. This insulation is what has allowed privileged white folks to have
the most extra time, money and resources to be so integral in this movement. In
fact, our presence at occupations is tremendously important and essential, but
we must be accountable to the privilege that has facilitated our access to
political education, allowing us to be organizing to the extent that we are.
To use a business metaphor of white anti-racist
activist and scholar Tim Wise, when you inherit or buy a company or
corporation, not only do you inherit the assets of the business but also its
debt. The debt is our history of oppression in this country and the assets the
luxuries gained from it. How do we cope with such a cruel and unusual system?
As privileged folks, let’s utilize our collective assets in order to continue
to pay off US debt.
To be a successful movement, both in Sacramento and all over the US, white folks need
to acknowledge the structural racism that allowed Wells Fargo to intentionally
pray on folks of color who desired a piece of the housing pie, but who instead
got a house underwater or lost their home altogether. In doing so, white folks need
to become allies, to act in solidarity with people of color and support their
much needed and essential leadership in this movement while continuing to build
our own leadership skills. As Ella Baker, the famed Civil Rights activist,
points out, what makes a good leader is not how many followers she has but how
many leaders she herself helps to produce.
To build power,
folks with economic privilege (upper and middle-class folks) need to awaken to
our collective class consciousness in order to reach out to folks who are
under-represented in this movement. We must intentionally build with
low-income, working poor and houseless folks, as their leadership has been
noticeably missing thus far. Our reluctance to do so is not always intentional
and conscious but cuts deeply nonetheless.
To be more inclusive, the educated young and hip hanging out at Occupy
Sacramento and all occupies need to acknowledge their educational privilege, to
reach out and appreciate more fully the experiential knowledge and wisdom inherent
in older folks. Often I see older folks sitting by the fountain but not engaged
by coordinators and committees because of a subconscious bias that they have
nothing to offer us that we do not already know.
To be more just,
we have to recognize our ever-present ignorance and intolerance around others'
identities – including LGBTQ folks – so as to confront our “soft homophobia” of
respecting those folks in speech and action but subconsciously ignoring
the leadership and organizing skills of those with marginalized sexual
orientations and identities. This soft oppression critique is not unique to
individuals but instead systemic in movements lead by people with racial,
economic and gender privilege that only see as valuable those who look like
them.
To endure long-term, we need to move beyond the assumption that people who are
physically disabled have nothing to offer but their token opinion, that them
having a disability in a society that privileges able-bodiness means that their
disability inhibits them in other, unrelated ways too. Because capitalism
teaches us to value able-bodies because of their production capacity, we
naturally devalue bodies that do not fit our normative conception of ability
and monetary value and worth. We also must examine our assumptions that
houseless folks and folks with mental issues cannot be articulate or
thoughtful, cannot speak at City Council and cannot take on a leadership role.
To truly build love, we must cultivate a movement of gentile and
(com)passionate men that understand the devastating effects of male supremacy
and how it has produced a culture of patriarchy that not only systematically
violates women’s bodies and devalues their labor by relegating them to
invisibilized secretarial or administrative work but also socializes men to be
callous, digital and incapable of emotionally understanding women’s issues. Men
must learn a new way, a way that teaches growth through opening up, supporting
a feminist politic and destroying the very culture that has, in fact, also kept
men internally oppressed through masculinity, homophobia and sexism.
Much of the oppression in our society, furthermore,
is unintentional. That is, most people don’t go around actively discriminating
against others (though that obviously still occurs). Instead, while we all may
not be oppressive in action or speech, we still don’t make the added effort to reach
out to those alienated from political action. Those with the deepest
personal relationship to financial marginalization and political powerlessness
are largely absent from this movement, so it is our role as privileged folks to
work harder to ensure that their leadership is on the front lines of this
movement. Folks who have experienced economic oppression can speak most
sincerely about the devastating effects that this catastrophe has had, which
allows us to learn of the real-life harm that has been wrought in the name of
profit, not just on an intellectual level but on an emotional and spiritual one
as well.
This movement is extremely unique because of its
inclusivity and ability to reach all people and their individual and communal
needs, which means that we have to be careful that our critiques do not
alienate those who are only here because of the how broad this movement is.
Despite our individual politics – whether dealing with political parties,
whether or not the police are part of the 99 percent or the protectors of the 1
percent or whether signs that say “restore freedom and democracy” are even
relevant considering our country's genocidal, slave-driven historical agendas
to separate, conquer and oppress – we need to acknowledge these
differences, have dialogues about them but not let them become points of
separation and alienation.
Finally, we need to continue to build a more kind, just
and compassionate movement, a multi-generational, multi-racial and
multi-identitied movement that strives to build up rather than tear down. But
before we can do that, privileged folks must “carry the cross” so to speak.
Just as we have benefited from this system of oppression, we must also carry
the burden of those benefits for the same reason. This is the 21st century
challenge of all people of privilege striving for collective liberation through
the abolition of oppressive systems. Let’s make it our sincere intention to
support less advantaged folks in building this movement going forward, not only
for their sake, not only for our conscience, but for all of us, together,
united, forever in our struggle for collective liberation.
--
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