Friday 12/2 Call @ 1pmET/10amPT: Occupy Research on Race/Class/Gender & Movement Building

[Yvonne Yen Liu]

Hi there,

Just a reminder that we have the second call for the Occupy Race research project tomorrow.

Date: Friday, 12/2/11
Time: 1pm ET/10am PT (one hour)
Call-in number: 1 (800) 617-4268
PIN: 22988982
Live notes: http://bit.ly/occupyracecall2

Agenda:
1. Introductions and check-ins
2. Review of themes from last call by Nayana (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)
3. Reportback on literature review by John (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)
4. Research methods: online survey, interviews, and focus groups (see: http://bit.ly/surveyrace)
5. Timeline and next steps
6. Check-outs

--
Yvonne Yen Liu
Senior Research Associate
Applied Research Center
Colorlines.com
510.338.4934
yl...@arc.org

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November 15-17, 2012 in Baltimore, Maryland
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[Yvonne Yen Liu]

Occupy Race/Class/Gender Call, 12/2/11

Link to notes: http://bit.ly/occupyracecall2

Link to project: http://occupyresearch.net/occupyrace

Next steps

• Next call is on Saturday, 12/10 at 1:30pmET/10:30am PT.  Call-in number: 1 (800) 617-4268, PIN: 22988982
• Jeff will share literature reviews on social movement theory and do a 15-minute presentation on the next call.
• Dalida will draft cultural text methods.
• Yvonne, Nayana, and Julia will draft focus group guide.
• Yvonne and John will draft online survey.
• Jeff, Julia, and Yvonne will draft qualitative interview questions. 
  

Agenda:

1. Introductions and check-ins: What are your plans for the weekend?
2. Reportback on Occupy Research project by Julia

1. Review of themes from last call by Nayana (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)

1. Reportback on literature review by John (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)

1. Research methods: online survey, interviews, and focus groups (example survey used for ARC’s Millennials project, http://arc.org/shatteredfamilies: http://bit.ly/surveyrace)
2. Timeline and next steps
3. Check-outs: How are you feeling at the end of this call?

Attendees:

• Yvonne Yen Liu, Applied Research Center/Occupy Oakland, yl...@arc.org, 510-338-4934
• Nayana Sen, Applied Research Center, se...@arc.org, 917.434.8470
• Julia Sebastian, DataCenter/Occupy Oakland, jseb...@gmail.com, 707.888.0210
• Jeff Juris, Northeastern U./Occupy Boston, j.j...@neu.edu, 510-390-1801
• John Sullivan, ARC, jsul...@arc.org
• Dalida Maria Benfield, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard/Occupy Boston, finishing PhD in Ethnic Studies/Gender and Women’s Studies at UC Berkeley, dalidamar...@berkeley.edu

Reportback on Occupy Research by Julia:

• Meeting yesterday.  Smaller call because moved to Thursday instead of Saturday.  Next call is Saturday 12/10, 10am PT/1pm ET, with update of general Occupy Research and then breakouts.  A few new people on call.  Talked about survey, almost ready for launch, ask everyone to turn in their pilots by Sunday.  So we can incorporate the feedback and launch next week.  Available in all platforms, like wiki and listserv, also on Occupy Together, occupies on the ground.  Not totally worked out dissemination strategy.  
• Pilot means recruit people to take the survey.  See if there are any glitches, if something doesn’t make sense.  Then, reportback.  
• General demographic survey broken into two parts: (1) demographics, (2) Occupy participation.  Julia will tell us where the pilot survey is located.  
• Jeff found it! occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/file/view/OccupySurvey_pilot.pdf
• This is the actual pilot on the survey monkey if you would like to take it. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/testorsurvey
• Yvonne suggested that we fold our Occupy Race calls into the larger Occupy Research calls.  Next call on Sat., 12/10 at 10:30am PT/1:30pm ET.  

Review research themes from last call by Nayana (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)

• 7 different themes:

1. attitudes towards race/class/gender, subquestion on millennials on race/class/gender
2. power/privilege/oppression
3. Leadership of and safe spaces for people of color, women, LGBTQ
4. Incorporation of racial, gender, LGBTQ, and economic justice in mission/demands
5. Relation of community based organizations and other institutions
6. Social movement timeline and evolution
7. Media, audio, and textual analysis; cultural studies

• Not necessary to consolidate into one central research question.
• Jeff Juris: My research interests are broad, these themes above are one component.  We created a research WG in Occupy Boston.  To work on the survey.  To do qualitative interviews: ask questions about race/class/gender, interested in helping to structure qualitative questions.  Also an ethnographer.  Dalida asked if it’s the same survey.  Yes, same survey.  

Reportback on literature review by John (see: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions)

• Jeff suggested including Philly as a place that had racist issue.  And recommends that we don’t make conclusions based on media representations.  
• Touraine identified universities and knowledge as a key locus for social conflicts and proposed that sociological analysis is a form of intervention in social movements.
• Arrighi and Wallerstein: think about Occupy in the larger world-system context.
• Shukaitis and Graeber: research and knowledge production must come from various social worlds, as “there is no pure social space in which new practices and ideas will emerge from an ideal revolutionary subject that we only need to listen to”. Centrality of the Internet.
• Resource mobe: Occupy has been able to get large numbers.  
• Repression deters protest. Micro-mobe is when repression is considered illegitimate.  Very applicable.  Police repression boost participation and media coverage.  
• Eisinger: protest makes sense for “extraordinary” demands.  
• Jeff has suggestions on people of color and women of color theorists on social movement theory.  SM theory is HUGE.  Jeff teaches a class on this.  There are political implications to the approach we use.  You have to see Occupy in the context of global justice and USSF movements.  He’s written about the tensions between these movements and race/class/gender.  More writing from postcolonial theory and intersectionality, also literature on USSF and global justice is more specifically relevant to the Occupy movement.
• Dalida says there should be more focus based on our questions.  We formulate our own curriculum.  We feel free to draw from whatever kinds of traditions we’re interested in, to remix and reinterpret.  
• Jeff can pull together larger bibliographies of SM theory.  Jeff can do a primer on SM theory on the next phone call and send out literature reviews.  He can do this on the next phone call on 12/10 for 15 minutes.  

Research Methods

• Yvonne proposed that experts in certain methods take on writing the first draft of a survey, interview questions, or focus group in alignment with our research themes.  
• Dalida can draft cultural text work methods.  
• Yvonne, Nayana, and Julia can work on draft of focus group transcript and guide.
• Yvonne and John will work on survey.  
• Jeff, Julia, and Yvonne will draft qualitative interviews.

[Yvonne Yen Liu]

I love this response: "As Carl Sagan said, we are all "star stuff."  :-)

Wasn't there a racial and class demographic aspect to the general online survey?  I took the pilot version and was confused because I didn't see it there.

I seem to remember the categories offered, for race, were:

• Black
• Latino
• White
• Asian
• Indigenous
• Other
  

It might be easier to code responses if you give people multiple-choice options, instead of an open-ended answer.   What was the reason to switch from closed- to open-ended?

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 6:03 AM, Hector Cordero-Guzman <hcor...@aol.com> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

Good morning. This is just incredible. Thanks for the work.

 

Is there a page or somewhere I can find what different people and surveys (of various kinds) are finding in terms of the “racial\ethnic\national origin composition” of OWS at various levels (supporters, participants, campers, people participating in GAs)? Anyone has or knows where I can find these data? I know what we have from our 4 waves of OWS (occupywallst.org) surveys and the one at Occupytogether.org. In the first two waves of the OWS survey we did a “close ended” question and in the last two waves and the OTG surveys we did an open ended question (with many interesting answers—see below)…I have seen a couple of other surveys--but nothing recent or particularly comprehensive.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks so much for the kind invitation. I will try to participate.

 

This is just a tiny sampling of what people are writing in the open ended question…we have 13,000 of these (~5,000 each in waves 3 and 4 of the OWS survey and 3,000 in wave 1 of the Occupytogether survey)…

 

Anybody wants to help me try to code this…J there is a book just with the answers to this question…

 

Some of the answers I have found interesting...

 

The question is: 44. I am most likely to identify my racial, ethnic, or national background as...

 

·         Caucasian (German/Cherokee, 75/25 respectively, so I'm not really 'Caucasian'...)

·         white, though I'm only answering this question since I know it'll help with this survey.

·         US passport w russian n czech rep heritage & latin american soul

·         I look like a white female.  I am actually an American "melting pot".

·         white american mixture of Pennsylvania Swedish and Kentucky hillbilly

·         Ethnically I am a white Episcopalian but my appearance is swarthy and of indeterminate origin. I blend in well with Latins (both old-world and new) in look as as well as attitude.

·         As Carl Sagan said, we are all "star stuff."

·         AMERICAN That's a big mixing pot of DNA

·         Human being living within the Occupied United States of America

·         Im from the human race,  the color of my skin is as relevant as the color of my bowel movements.

·         Mixed, I'm white of German/Jewish ethnic heritage but don't think of myself that way. There may be some Black, French and Mongolian in there somewhere.

·         Irrelevant although I'm sure you can guess given the demographic, right?

·         white American who HATES Communists, Marxists, Anarchists, Socialists, and all other subhuman life forms that are Anti American!

·         I believe that this question is unethical and refuse to answer it for that reason, except to say that I am a citizen of the United States of America

·         I am a human being living on earth. However, for reasons I do not fully understand, I was born a Caucasian male in the United States of America. Most people on this planet have had to work much harder than I to feed and protect their families and loved ones.

·         Female white American. *who is totally pissed off and has been for a VERY long time*

 

Let me know any reactions…

 

Best,

 

Hector

 

Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Ph.D.

Professor

School of Public Affairs

Baruch College

and Ph.D. Programs in Sociology and Urban Education

City University of New York (CUNY)

1 Bernard Baruch Way, D-901

New York, NY 10010

 

Office:  135 East 22nd Street, Room D-910

Work Telephone:   646-660-6716

Fax: 646-660-6701

Work Email:   Hector....@baruch.cuny.edu

Mobile Telephone: 646-382-3717

Personal Email: Hcor...@aol.com

Web:  www.baruch.cuny.edu/spa

Twitter: @hcorderoguzman

Skype: hectorcorderoguzman