Derailing for dummies

[Mostpeople.etc]

Celeste suggested this. Pretty funny!

http://derailingfordummies.com/

On Nov 6, 2011, at 5:31 AM, occpghd...@googlegroups.com wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/occpghdiversity/topics

• 3 more articles on race and occupy [1 Update]
• Halliburton Flashmob Practice Schedule! [3 Updates]

 3 more articles on race and occupy

etta cetera <mostpeo...@gmail.com> Nov 05 10:25PM -0400  

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<http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/activism/organizing/justified-rage-unsafe-space-reflection-occupy-wall-street/>
*
 
http://www.peopleofcolororganize.com/activism/organizing/justified-rage-unsafe-space-reflection-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.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
--
 
412-802-8575 landline for phone calls
 
443-603-6964 cell for texts


 

 Halliburton Flashmob Practice Schedule!

etta cetera <mostpeo...@gmail.com> Nov 05 11:33AM -0400  

Monday November 6 - 7pm in the T station at the occupation. The corner by
the porta potties closer to the food tent.
 
Friday November 11 - 7pm same place as above.
 
there will probably be a weekend practice.
 
We are making a utube instructional video that will be invite only that you
can learn from at home.
you must respond to me if you want the link and the lyrics. if you have
already responded to me -
no need to do it again, you'll be the first to know!
mostpeo...@gmail.com
 
we highly encourage you to come to a practice or hook up with a friend who
has been to one.
 
 
We need you to participate in a flash mob.
Halliburton is having a party for a bunch of marcellus shale
drilling big wigs. let's give em a song and a dance!!
 
Please let me know if you are interested.
etta- mostpeo...@gmail.com
 
to see an inspiring flashmob follow this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-79pX1IOqPU
 
Halliburton's party details are below..
 
 
you are invited to :
Crash the Party
 
occupy HALLIBURTON's reception for the oil and gas industry!
Lets disrupt the conversation about bigger profits for the corporations and
more destruction for us.
outside of the david lawrence convention center tuesday nov 15 5:00pm
 
 
 
 
--
 
412-802-8575 landline for phone calls
 
443-603-6964 cell for texts


 

Adam Simmons <asimm...@gmail.com> Nov 05 11:42AM -0400  

Please send me the link to the video and lyrics.
Thanks


 

Alecia Alecia <aleciar...@gmail.com> Nov 05 01:08PM -0400  

i want the video and lyrics, plz!! yay!!
 


 

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