Fwd:Two Articles oppression and OWS

[Mostpeople.etc]

From my comrade...


Begin forwarded message:

From: Kate Cardona <yoso...@gmail.com>
Date: January 9, 2012 4:19:11 PM EST
To: anne-braden-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Two Articles from OWS
Reply-To: yoso...@gmail.com

Hi All,

Hope everyone is doing really well! I am visiting Oakland right now,
feeling its wonderfulness, and of course thinking a lot about the
Braden program and all of you. It was so great to see some of you at
Regan's last night and I am hoping to see some more people tomorrow
night at the immigrant rights report back from Alabama.

I have been wanting to send you all a report back from my experience
as part of the Anti-Racism Allies working group at Occupy Wall Street
for some time now and have not yet sat down to do so, but it will
come. For now, I wanted to pass on two articles from New York by two
women of color that I think are really important and highlight a lot
of what's been coming up re: race, power and privilege at OWS, the
complexities and the frustration and anger and pain, and also the hope
and the victories and the deepening of commitment and strategy and
inspiration. There isn't a day of Occupy Wall Street (at Spokescouncil
and General Assemblies, at events and actions, in workshops) that
isn't full of (often ugly) tensions around race, class, gender,
ability etc. and all the different ways that people grapple with the
tensions or refuse to. It has never felt so clear to me as now how
deeply racism and oppression prevent people doing anything at all
together to fight for collective liberation. In hard moments I often
have an image of a huge grey concrete wall that inhibits any movement
that people are throwing themselves and each other at again and again,
slumped and hurt and broken. But there is also this opening I'm
feeling in New York, cracks in the wall that so many hands are
reaching into and pressing apart, committed to bringing more people
in... and every day I am impressed and enlivened and full of love that
people keep showing up, recommitting themselves to anti-racism and
anti-oppression work for the long haul, with recognition of the slow
spade work and all the years and history that go into movement
building.

There are many examples from OWS that could go with the above
descriptions, but for now I will leave it to these two articles to
highlight some of what's been going down in NYC:

http://www.racialicious.com/2012/01/02/private-danny-chen-and-why-i-will-never-again-reach-out-to-ows-about-something-that-matters-to-me/

http://infrontandcenter.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/why-occupy-wall-street-matters-to-me-and-how-it-can-continue-to-matter/


So much love and gratitude,
Kate