Occupy Race: Consolidating Research Questions (occupyrace@googlegroups.com)

[Yvonne Yen Liu (Google Docs)]

Occupy Race: Consolidating Research Questions

Message from yvonne...@gmail.com:

Hi there,

Here's a Google Doc to help us consolidate our research questions.

First, a thematic grouping of the questions identified on our call.  Please add or revise as you see fit.

Second, add what you think is the central research question.

Third, add what you think are secondary research questions.

Fourth, any brainstorms on research methods.  

Can we check-in on Tuesday, 11/29 at 10am PT/1pm ET, before our next general Occupy Race call on Friday, 12/2 at 10am PT/1pm ET?

Regards,
Yvonne

Occupy Race: Consolidating Research Questions

Link to this doc: http://bit.ly/occupyracequestions 

1. Thematic Analysis of Research Questions Shared in 11/18 Call

2. What is our central research question?

3. What are our secondary research questions?

4. Brainstorms on research methods

1. Thematic Analysis of Research Questions Shared in 11/18 Call

Attitudes towards race, class, and gender (Yvonne, Joe)

1. What are organizer’s attitudes towards race, class, and gender?  What do think of racial disparities?  Income inequality?  Sexism and patriarchy?  The American Dream?
2. Focus groups on millennials and their attitudes on race.

Power and privilege (Dalida, Michelle, Erin, Julia)

1. What is the "racial project" (Omi & Winant, 1994) of the occupy movement(s)?  How is this constituted, in words, tactics, images, and audio-visual texts?
2. I am also interested in the success of leaderless movements as it relates to our understanding of social and individual power.
3. Power dynamics around race and class.  The people who actually live in the camps and the people doing organizing.  What does that difference look like?  In Detroit, 90% of the campers are homeless.  They are the 99%, but their reasons are legitimate, but not the same as the organizers.  Who are the people staffing the camp?  What does the power dynamics look like?
4. How issues of privilege are playing out in Occupy, including interrelations of privilege? How can this space function to facilitate story-telling to expose those differences in privilege and power?

Leadership of and safe spaces for people of color, women, LGBTQ (Yvonne, Nayana, Dalida, Michelle, Saba, Mara)

1. How many POC, women, LGBTQ identified play “leadership” positions in the Occupy camps?
2. What’s the role of the POC/QPOC Caucus in the Occupy camps?
3. How can we find ways for Occupy movement to lead with the most marginalized communities first?  And, create safe spaces for immigrants and non-gender conforming individuals that are arguably different than “safer” spaces currently available for straight, white cisgender occupiers?
4. What is the relationship between race, gender, space, and participation? How is participation facilitated or inhibited for women, racialized and queer communities by the emphasis of the occupy movement on the inhabitation of urban space vs. virtual, online participation?
5. How do raced and gendered images and audio-visual texts inhibit or facilitate participation by women and people of color, on the ground and online?
6. People across race, class and gender do not necessarily feel equally heard.
7. The ways that race/class/gender playing out in the Occupy camp, both internally and externally.  How is it perceived: as a white movement?  And internally, what are the internal dynamics?  
8. What type of infrastructure has been setup to act as interventions against dynamics?  Safe spaces, trauma, counseling.  Sexual violence in camps.  How have narratives of decolonization and occupation played out and what are the responses to that?

Incorporation of racial, gender, LGBTQ, and economic justice in mission/demands (Joe, Nayana)

1. Struggle to figure out tactics and strategies in integrating a racial justice agenda.  
2. I perceive a vast gap between stated mission, branding and jargonistic terminology of occupation process (in Spokes Council, in GA meetings etc) and actual implementation of those principles (eg: occupiers might be in solidarity for POC but frequently act in ways that jeopardize safety of POC on the ground). How can the Occupy movement make these gaps visible and bridge them? How can Occupy movements unpack the rhetorics of “class war” to add in more complex, nuanced interpretations that incorporate race/gender dynamics?
3. How has the Occupy movement dealt with issues of POC representation and racial equity?
4. Have participants in Oakland, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland, and elsewhere woven a racial justice agenda into the fabric of the movement?

Relation of community based organizations and other institutions (Yvonne, Nayana, Saba, John)

1. What is the role of existing institutions--community based organizations, labor unions, faith based groups--in supporting the movement?  What are attitudes of Occupy organizers towards CBOs and nonprofits?  What are attitudes of CBOs and nonprofits towards the Occupy movement?  
2. Interest based on blocks in coalition building in OWS.
3. How is the space connecting to existing social justice organizations?  Alliances like Right to the City, groups who’ve already been organizing, low-income and POC-led, what are the spaces within the Occupy movement.
4. Influence of POC activists in other countries on the Occupy movement.  How has the Arab spring, Chile influenced Occupy?  

Social movement timeline and evolution (Yvonne)

1. What are the stages of social movement development and where is Occupy in that?  How is it changing?  Are we moving from informal charasmatic leadership to formal institutional?
2. Over time, how will the Occupy movement institutionalize itself, as all movements do?

Media, audio, and textual analysis; cultural studies (Dalida, Joe, John, Rhea)

1. What is the genealogy of images and audio-visual texts of the occupy movement(s)? What are the translocal genealogies? And can they be traced temporally and spatially, to people of color movements in the U.S., "Third World" decolonial movements, queer and feminist movements, to contemporary transnational sites of revolution?
2. Methodologically, I am committed to understanding the cultural texts being produced by the Occupy movements as an opportunity for intervention - making cultural work central to our movement theorizing - and also as an opportunity for understanding and supporting intersectional, trans-local and trans-media dialogue. I am also interested in supporting Occupy Research as an instance of participatory methodologies, engaging people in a collective process of research and media production.
3. Are there any articles or commentators in the media that have addressed this issue well?
4. What is the "racial project" (Omi & Winant, 1994) of the occupy movement(s)? How is this constituted, in words, tactics, images, and audio-visual texts?
5. Value of bodies, young man who was hit by tear gas canister and injured early on.  White vet.  Rallying point for movement and media.  A week later, a young Black man was murdered close by.  Media response was vastly different.  Interested in what’s going on there.
6. Media production by Occupy protesters by marginalized groups.  What issues are raised in the media?  For ex., documents related to OWS, decry what was perceived as trans-misogynist groups in OWS.  Interesting doc disseminating that concern.  And, other types of media production being done.

2. What is our central research question?

3. What are our secondary research questions?

4. Brainstorms on research methods

1. Focus groups
2. Online survey
3. Interviews

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