Being immersed in a sea of emotional political enthusiasm is always a peculiar experience. It's not necessarily bad -- emotions that are detached from political engagement or attached to it in unhealthy ways are all too common, and I think are more likely to be associated with socialization into whiteness and masculinity and middle-class status in North America -- but it is always a situation which deserves some wariness.
This feeling of oddness is optimized when the group enthusiasm is mobilized around an agenda that is a very particular distance from one's own analysis. If the way I see things and the dominant view in the crowd are mostly the same (they're never identical) then I am more likely to feel some comfort in getting into the emotional flow of things, though my wariness rarely completely leaves me. I'm not sure I've ever experienced this, but I can imagine that if they were completely unalike then the event might be disturbing in other ways but keeping my emotions separate from the group would be fairly easy. But at just the right distance there is enough commonality to overcome emotional detachment but enough difference to make sure that fleeting feelings of buy-in and oneness with the crowd are profoundly disconcerting.
Today I attended the electoral reform event I mentioned previously, and I even lent some labour power to setting up for the event. It was organized by a relatively new group called Citizens Act.
As a commenter pointedly reminded me more than a week ago, I'm not a citizen of this country. Though I interpret that to have quite different implications than he would in terms of my prospects for political involvement during my stay here (post forthcoming), one area where it does cause me some hesitancy is around electoral politics. That's not an area I'm inclined to get directly involved in anyway, even back in Canada. I attended this event to support people I know in the peace group with which I am active and to learn more about the issue, and I see no harm in offering some comments.
The format was two panels of speakers, the first outlining the problems and the second looking at paths for action. The event was in some ways much like many others I have been to, though few enough since we moved to LA. It was held in an assertively queer-positive Christian church in Santa Monica. The attendance was probably two or three hundred; the sanctuary of the church was packed full. The crowd appeared to be largely middle-class and even whiter (probably 95-98%) than I was expecting given the area of greater Los Angeles in which it was held. As always happens at these things, it started a bit late, speakers got less time than they were expecting, and it ran overtime. I counted five different people recording video and at least two recording audio, a much more intensive representation from alternative and independent media than would be found at an event in Hamilton. I stayed for everything except the Q&A after the second panel.
In my previous post in advance of the event I characterized the goal of electoral reform as being a "non-reformist reform, which is an incremental change that increases the chances of winning future improvements." As much as the electoral system can be an instrument by which social movement energy is co-opted and dampened, and as much as I see the most important kind of social movement action over the long term being extra-electoral, any social change strategy that completely ignores the electoral realm risks losing chances to make small but real improvements in the lives of ordinary people. Efforts to make the U.S. system live up more effectively to liberal-democratic ideals (however limited those might be) will both serve to mobilize people and add energy to social movements, and will make it easier to translate energy from other movements into material gains.
At the same time, the politics at the centre of the event were not mine. The Democratic party was very much woven through the event -- most folks in attendance, even those who are Democrats themselves, would be quite critical of the party, but there were still plenty of examples of a speaker uncritically using "we" with respect to the Democrats and the audience uncritically voicing support. Even the Greens, who were visible and welcomed for their role in initiating a recount in Ohio, are at heart mostly a more strident liberal party with often shaky takes on race, gender, and class.
There were plenty of things from the speakers that made it clear that they were largely contextualizing things differently than I would. There was no critical contextualization from any speaker of the ways in which liberal-democracy will be flawed and limited even when the process-related problems at the heart of this particular discussion get addressed, because of the ways that power is dispersed along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability in starkly hierarchical ways throughout society, politics, and the economy. There were plenty of invokations of patriotism, which is not something I would do in anything resembling those terms for my own country. One speaker repeatedly referred to the U.S. as the "most important democracy in the world" with some sense of medium-term limitations in the applicability of "democracy" but without any sense of critical engagement with the modifier "most important" -- i.e. without any acknowledgment that whatever truth that phrase has is because of the role of the U.S. as the chief arbiter and enforcer of an absolutely brutal (and worsening) global political economy (which of course Canada benefits from almost as much, without having to do as much of the dirty work). The moderator went on some tangent at the beginning that I didn't entirely understand but which involved characterizing undocumented immigrants as worth mentioning because they are potential security threats rather than because they are a highly exploited and oppressed pool of labour upon which the U.S. economy (and middle-class) depend, and then he advocated a national identity card (yikes!). I also found it surprising that organized labour was not mentioned once through the entire event.
Nonetheless, it was a good event. I was pleasantly surprised by Bev Harris. She was very explicit in pointing out that corruption of the electoral system was not a Republican thing, but rather something both parties engaged in, in various locations. And she didn't use this language, but she was also very explicit in linking electoral reform to neoliberalism; she said that local election reform activists are most likely to find instances of subversion of sound liberal-democratic process in association with wherever the local "big money" might be, such as in land development or privatization of services. She also had some very sensible words about the importance of coalition politics with some much more pratical things to say than the usual uncritical liberal "diversity" schtick.
The speakers I most enjoyed were Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and Global Exchange; Maxine Waters, who represents South-Central LA in Congress and is one of the country's most progressive legislators at the national level; and Greg Kealey, an aide to another local representative and an activist with Raibow/PUSH, Jesse Jackson's organization. I suspect that it's no accident that the latter two of those three were the only African American activists who spoke, given that their decades of activism have been grounded in experiences and analysis which would treat the need for these specific electoral reforms not as something newly discovered but as just one more piece of a struggle going back centuries.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Historical Quote
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in this fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
This is from five-star U.S. Admiral William D. Lahey, who was chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1942 to 1949, writing in 1950.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Fantasy and Sci-Fi Socialists Should Read
A listing of fifty fantasy & science fiction works that socialists should read, compiled by noted author in the field China Mieville. I've read relatively few of them. (Found via Scribblingwoman)
Power, Privilege, and Coalition
Tonight I got sucked into writing a comment to a post on another blog, and it turned out to be long enough to be worth posting here too. It is a comment in response to this post on the blog of Hugo Schwyzer (found via Feminst Blogs) which talks about coalition of and participation in diverse political groups, including those we don't completely agree with. Here's what I wrote:
Interesting post. I value a non-puritanical approach to politics, and I think our movements are strengthened by some or all of us not being what they -- the general public, elites, the media -- expect us to be.
My concern is that the way the issue is framed seems to be grounded in privilege in a way that isn't brought out and examined. What political spaces we go into and who we do or don't work with is cast, in this post, as a matter purely of principle. That's obviously part of it, but I think that leaves some important things out, specifically an explicit integration of power and privilege analysis. It's not just an issue of will or won't with respect to being present in different political spaces, but of can and can't, and what that latter two terms mean for the first two.
For example, it doesn't matter if I have some consciousness around trying to be an ally to women and people of colour and queer people, I still don't experience racism or (hetero)sexism. That means that there will be social spaces and political spaces and employment spaces which I can exist in with relative comfort which will drive away many people who experience those oppressions and who may be politicized in resisting them. It is easy to dismiss these absences as "choice" or "a matter of principle", but that is unfair: it can be a matter of basic emotional and mental health to avoid such spaces. Staying silent in the face of an oppression that you experience bears a psychological cost; speaking up usually generates resistance or even material consequences, and dealing with that also bears a cost. That means that there are lots of spaces out there that I can be in with much less difficulty than some friends, loved ones, and allies.
And I'm obviously not talking about the Klan, here, or something ridiculous and horrible like that; I'm not even necessarily talking about spaces as divergent as Hugo lists; rather, I mean even many progressive social movement-related spaces exclude in these ways, as do many non-political spaces. I mean groups that, themselves, might be organized to oppose some aspect of racism or sexism or poverty or war, as well as those which have no explicit progressive orientation whatsoever. In other words, the groups and organizations and spaces we are in are structured not just by choice but also by power, privilege, and oppression.
So I think there are additional questions that those of us with any privilege based in class, race, gender, sexuality, or ability need to ask ourselves:
Interesting post. I value a non-puritanical approach to politics, and I think our movements are strengthened by some or all of us not being what they -- the general public, elites, the media -- expect us to be.
My concern is that the way the issue is framed seems to be grounded in privilege in a way that isn't brought out and examined. What political spaces we go into and who we do or don't work with is cast, in this post, as a matter purely of principle. That's obviously part of it, but I think that leaves some important things out, specifically an explicit integration of power and privilege analysis. It's not just an issue of will or won't with respect to being present in different political spaces, but of can and can't, and what that latter two terms mean for the first two.
For example, it doesn't matter if I have some consciousness around trying to be an ally to women and people of colour and queer people, I still don't experience racism or (hetero)sexism. That means that there will be social spaces and political spaces and employment spaces which I can exist in with relative comfort which will drive away many people who experience those oppressions and who may be politicized in resisting them. It is easy to dismiss these absences as "choice" or "a matter of principle", but that is unfair: it can be a matter of basic emotional and mental health to avoid such spaces. Staying silent in the face of an oppression that you experience bears a psychological cost; speaking up usually generates resistance or even material consequences, and dealing with that also bears a cost. That means that there are lots of spaces out there that I can be in with much less difficulty than some friends, loved ones, and allies.
And I'm obviously not talking about the Klan, here, or something ridiculous and horrible like that; I'm not even necessarily talking about spaces as divergent as Hugo lists; rather, I mean even many progressive social movement-related spaces exclude in these ways, as do many non-political spaces. I mean groups that, themselves, might be organized to oppose some aspect of racism or sexism or poverty or war, as well as those which have no explicit progressive orientation whatsoever. In other words, the groups and organizations and spaces we are in are structured not just by choice but also by power, privilege, and oppression.
So I think there are additional questions that those of us with any privilege based in class, race, gender, sexuality, or ability need to ask ourselves:
- What does it mean if it is only one's privilege that makes one capable of existing in the divergent spaces in which one exists in order to feel whole?
- What are our obligations to people who experience oppression and to whom we are trying to be allies when we decide to be in spaces or work with groups that are, functionally if not explicitly, impediments or even hostile to their liberation?
- When do we forgo our own wish to be in a particular space, organization, or action based on the experiences and voiced wishes of those whose struggles we try to support?
- When we are in such spaces, how do we let the ways in which we function there be guided by the experiences and voiced wishes of those to whom we are attempting to be allies?
More Churchill Links
I'm only occasionally a "current events" blogger, but I do sometimes feel an obligation to provide follow-up material after I've broached a particular issue. So here are some more links on the ongoing controversy centring around radical Aboriginal liberation activist and academic Ward Churchill:
- A transcript of a forum at University of Colorado in which Churchill speaks and answers questions from the audience. (Via ZNet)
- An article by David Peterson on the controversy. (Via ZNet)
- A post of an email looking at some of the ways the neocons are using this to reconfigure post-secondary education. (Via brownstargirl)
- An article by Scott Richard Lyons. (Via Indian Country Today)
- And don't forget the original articles I linked to, by Jensen, Albert, Street, and Cockburn.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Review: The Twilight of Equality?
Last week while L was napping I received an email from my partner that practically jumped off the screen, the enthusiasm illustrated by the numerous words in ALL CAPS and the creative and positive use of profanity. She had just returned to the lab from a seminar by a woman called Lisa Duggan, which included discussion of state regulation of relationships, neoliberalism, and gay marriage.
I also received this article by Duggan published by The Nation, which is about a year old but covers those same themes. She explores the ways in which a reinforcement of traditional marriage is part of the neoliberal agenda. She writes:
She goes on to point out that some of the rhetoric around same-sex marriage produced by some of the more mainstream gay and lesbian groups may tweak the noses of those with moralistic interest in keeping "traditional" marriage other-sex only, but it also serves to give a progressive gloss to a vision of marriage that reinforces its utility for neoliberal privatization of social costs.
She argues for a progressive agenda that recognizes longstanding feminist critiques of marriage and begins to give more flexibility for people to define their own households, and to apportion the various state-sponsored privileges lumped together as marriage in more flexible ways. Obviously this would include same-sex marriage, but could include a whole lot more. Frankly, her agenda in the article linked above feels a bit limited to my way of thinking but I suppose you've got to start based on where the world is actually at. Anyway, this progressive nudging of state interference in relationships is not some elitist, culture-wars-only agenda, but can and should be intimately integrated into a more general resistance to the economic and cultural outcomes of neoliberalism.
And that brings me to The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democray (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003). This is a neat little book that feels incredibly obvious but at the same time makes a point that is incredibly important and really needs to be made: economic/class politics are often treated as separate from identity/culture politics but they're not; because class is not experienced separately from gender, race, sexuality, ability, and so on, struggles based on class are not distinct from struggles based in those other identity markers and vice versa, whether we recognize that or not.
The book
For example, she traces in some detail how the agenda of eviscerating New York's public university funding was deliberately advanced by the creation of a propaganda storm against a conference on women's sexuality that included a small number of sex-positive demonstrations among a large menu of academic seminars. This campaign included calls for the head of the president of that campus, who had nothing to do with the conference but who happened to be a politically moderate but stubborn block to the neocon restructuring of the state university system. And there were lots of other prongs to the attack around funding and governance and so on that had little directly to do with the conference itself. (In fact, this use of deliberately generated controversy to impose a neocon remodelling of universities is very relevant to the ongoing Churchill controversy.) But the progressive response to this attack was largely unable to get beyond a fairly empty vision of academic freedom to really connect the dots between this front in the "culture wars" and bread-and-butter issues like accessible, publically funded, and emancipatory post-secondary education.
The book looks at other examples as well, of course, including a quite detailed exploration of the shifts in the gay and lesbian movement as a result of the fracturing of social movements and the neoliberal infiltration of equality discourse, which connects back to the issue of state interference in interpersonal relationships that I started the post with.
Like I said, this basic point about the interconnectedness between economic/class issues and culture/identity issues is at the same time both obvious and in dire need of being made. The audience Duggan targets is the mainstream of U.S. progressives, which is the site at which this artificial divide has been the most institutionalized. But in thinking about spaces and activists that I'm familiar with which try to operate from some version of anti-oppression politics, even though the intersecting and interrelated nature of race and class and gender and sexuality and so on is basic rhetoric for that worldview it's not always clear how that gets operationalized. There are lots of us (I say "us" because it has often been me) who know that there are these interconnections and support (rhetorically or practically) struggles on a number of different fronts, but we often don't take the time (or perhaps always have the conceptual tools) to really figure out how these different things work together. For example, my recent introduction to the regulation of sexuality as one factor in all of this prompted me to start conceptualizing queer, gender, sexuality, and relationship issues in new ways, including their connection to social regulation as a whole.
The real value of this book is that it is a kick in the pants to get us to start thinking about that in practical, straightforward ways in whatever struggles we happen to be engaged in.
[Edit: For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
I also received this article by Duggan published by The Nation, which is about a year old but covers those same themes. She explores the ways in which a reinforcement of traditional marriage is part of the neoliberal agenda. She writes:
Republicans and Democrats are by and large in agreement that as social programs are whittled away, gender-differentiated marriage (heterosexual, with different expectations for women and men) should take up the slack. ... So there is an economic agenda, as well as surface moralism, attached to calls for the preservation of traditional marriage. The campaign to save gendered marriage has some rational basis, for neoliberals in both parties, as a politics of privatization.
She goes on to point out that some of the rhetoric around same-sex marriage produced by some of the more mainstream gay and lesbian groups may tweak the noses of those with moralistic interest in keeping "traditional" marriage other-sex only, but it also serves to give a progressive gloss to a vision of marriage that reinforces its utility for neoliberal privatization of social costs.
She argues for a progressive agenda that recognizes longstanding feminist critiques of marriage and begins to give more flexibility for people to define their own households, and to apportion the various state-sponsored privileges lumped together as marriage in more flexible ways. Obviously this would include same-sex marriage, but could include a whole lot more. Frankly, her agenda in the article linked above feels a bit limited to my way of thinking but I suppose you've got to start based on where the world is actually at. Anyway, this progressive nudging of state interference in relationships is not some elitist, culture-wars-only agenda, but can and should be intimately integrated into a more general resistance to the economic and cultural outcomes of neoliberalism.
And that brings me to The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democray (Boston: Beacon Press, 2003). This is a neat little book that feels incredibly obvious but at the same time makes a point that is incredibly important and really needs to be made: economic/class politics are often treated as separate from identity/culture politics but they're not; because class is not experienced separately from gender, race, sexuality, ability, and so on, struggles based on class are not distinct from struggles based in those other identity markers and vice versa, whether we recognize that or not.
The book
argues that neoliberalism has a shifting cultural politics that the progressive-left must understand in order to constitute an effective opposition. But rather than focus on neoliberalism's cultural project, sectors of the progressive-left reproduce, within their own debates, Liberalism's rhetorical separation of economic/class from identity/cultural politics. This separation seriously disables political analysis and activism.
For example, she traces in some detail how the agenda of eviscerating New York's public university funding was deliberately advanced by the creation of a propaganda storm against a conference on women's sexuality that included a small number of sex-positive demonstrations among a large menu of academic seminars. This campaign included calls for the head of the president of that campus, who had nothing to do with the conference but who happened to be a politically moderate but stubborn block to the neocon restructuring of the state university system. And there were lots of other prongs to the attack around funding and governance and so on that had little directly to do with the conference itself. (In fact, this use of deliberately generated controversy to impose a neocon remodelling of universities is very relevant to the ongoing Churchill controversy.) But the progressive response to this attack was largely unable to get beyond a fairly empty vision of academic freedom to really connect the dots between this front in the "culture wars" and bread-and-butter issues like accessible, publically funded, and emancipatory post-secondary education.
The book looks at other examples as well, of course, including a quite detailed exploration of the shifts in the gay and lesbian movement as a result of the fracturing of social movements and the neoliberal infiltration of equality discourse, which connects back to the issue of state interference in interpersonal relationships that I started the post with.
Like I said, this basic point about the interconnectedness between economic/class issues and culture/identity issues is at the same time both obvious and in dire need of being made. The audience Duggan targets is the mainstream of U.S. progressives, which is the site at which this artificial divide has been the most institutionalized. But in thinking about spaces and activists that I'm familiar with which try to operate from some version of anti-oppression politics, even though the intersecting and interrelated nature of race and class and gender and sexuality and so on is basic rhetoric for that worldview it's not always clear how that gets operationalized. There are lots of us (I say "us" because it has often been me) who know that there are these interconnections and support (rhetorically or practically) struggles on a number of different fronts, but we often don't take the time (or perhaps always have the conceptual tools) to really figure out how these different things work together. For example, my recent introduction to the regulation of sexuality as one factor in all of this prompted me to start conceptualizing queer, gender, sexuality, and relationship issues in new ways, including their connection to social regulation as a whole.
The real value of this book is that it is a kick in the pants to get us to start thinking about that in practical, straightforward ways in whatever struggles we happen to be engaged in.
[Edit: For a list of all book reviews on this site, click here.]
Petition To Defend Churchill
Please sign this petition prepared by the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement to support Professor Ward Churchill.
Friday, February 18, 2005
The Myth of "Battered Men"
A page of links prepared by a feminist blogger to counter the claims of keep-women-in-their-place advocates (also known as men's rights or father's rights advocates) that men get abused just as often as women in intimate relationships. (Via Trish Wilson, via Feminist Blogs.)
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Solidarity With Churchill
My little contribution to voicing support for Ward Churchill on this little site doesn't mean much in the large scheme of things, but I want to do it anyway. I think it's important to avoid doing what some liberals are doing, and joining the condemnation, and what some progressives are doing, and taking a very abstract "defense of his right to speak even though I disagree with what he says" kind of stance.
For those who don't know, he is a radical activist in the struggle for Aboriginal rights and against U.S. imperialism, and an academic in Colorado. He is being attacked in the U.S. mainstream media and by politicians for an essay he wrote shortly after 9/11. In it, there are a few things that he says that I don't agree with, but his basic analysis that violent oppression of others will make them respond with violence is a fairly obvious and sound one. For a more thorough analysis of the essay and the backlash against it based in solidarity with Churchill, agreement with his overall analysis, and critical but supportive engagement with certain details and rhetoric, see writings by Robert Jensen, Michael Albert, Paul Street, and Alex Cockburn. I can't say anything more or better than they have said it.
The only thing I can add is how it makes me think of the attacks on Sunera Thobani in Canada in the months after 9/11. For those who don't know the story, Thobani is a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the coalition that represents Canada's women's liberation movement at the national level, and the first woman of colour to hold that position. At a women's movement conference in the months after 9/11 she made a speech in which she said things that to me seemed even to be very self-evident, the gist of which were very similar to Churchill's overall analysis: The U.S. state has a legacy of genocide, imperial intervention, war crimes, and mass murder, so it should hardly be surprising when the anger created among the victims of those crimes leads to violence against the U.S. state and people who live in it. Of course the 9/11 attacks should be condemned, but with an understanding of world history the fact that they happened should hardly be surprising.
Thobani was vilified in Canada's right-wing daily, the National Post, and they managed to create a propaganda storm of sufficient proportions that she was condemned by many politicians (including, shamefully, members of English Canada's left-wing party, the NDP) and she was subsequently investigated for possibly having committed a hate crime by the RCMP for having made that speech, even though it was she that was being targeted by all sorts of reactionary and white-supremacist vigiliantes with nasty telephone calls and letters and so on.
She was a useful target because she was a prominent member of the women's movement in Canada, a grouping that the right was interested in attacking, and also because she is a woman of colour and therefore an easier target in Canada's racist media and cultural environment. It hit home particularly poignantly for me because the same week that was happening I was listening to words spoken by Johann Galtung, a world renowned academic, founder of the discipline of peace studies, and a white man who was saying pretty much the same thing at the university in the city in which I was living. He was not a target that was politically useful or as easy to otherize so his words were ignored rather than used as fodder for villification.
For those who don't know, he is a radical activist in the struggle for Aboriginal rights and against U.S. imperialism, and an academic in Colorado. He is being attacked in the U.S. mainstream media and by politicians for an essay he wrote shortly after 9/11. In it, there are a few things that he says that I don't agree with, but his basic analysis that violent oppression of others will make them respond with violence is a fairly obvious and sound one. For a more thorough analysis of the essay and the backlash against it based in solidarity with Churchill, agreement with his overall analysis, and critical but supportive engagement with certain details and rhetoric, see writings by Robert Jensen, Michael Albert, Paul Street, and Alex Cockburn. I can't say anything more or better than they have said it.
The only thing I can add is how it makes me think of the attacks on Sunera Thobani in Canada in the months after 9/11. For those who don't know the story, Thobani is a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, the coalition that represents Canada's women's liberation movement at the national level, and the first woman of colour to hold that position. At a women's movement conference in the months after 9/11 she made a speech in which she said things that to me seemed even to be very self-evident, the gist of which were very similar to Churchill's overall analysis: The U.S. state has a legacy of genocide, imperial intervention, war crimes, and mass murder, so it should hardly be surprising when the anger created among the victims of those crimes leads to violence against the U.S. state and people who live in it. Of course the 9/11 attacks should be condemned, but with an understanding of world history the fact that they happened should hardly be surprising.
Thobani was vilified in Canada's right-wing daily, the National Post, and they managed to create a propaganda storm of sufficient proportions that she was condemned by many politicians (including, shamefully, members of English Canada's left-wing party, the NDP) and she was subsequently investigated for possibly having committed a hate crime by the RCMP for having made that speech, even though it was she that was being targeted by all sorts of reactionary and white-supremacist vigiliantes with nasty telephone calls and letters and so on.
She was a useful target because she was a prominent member of the women's movement in Canada, a grouping that the right was interested in attacking, and also because she is a woman of colour and therefore an easier target in Canada's racist media and cultural environment. It hit home particularly poignantly for me because the same week that was happening I was listening to words spoken by Johann Galtung, a world renowned academic, founder of the discipline of peace studies, and a white man who was saying pretty much the same thing at the university in the city in which I was living. He was not a target that was politically useful or as easy to otherize so his words were ignored rather than used as fodder for villification.
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Talkin' With Moms
As 18 month-old L. and I navigate the play areas in our apartment complex as well as the nearby park, inevitably we encounter other toddlers with other parents, mostly moms. The kind of talk that goes on in such situations is not, for me, one of the highlites of parenting.
I don't dislike all such talk, of course -- I'm not some kind of ogre, glowering my way between the swings and the slide and turning my back on friendly smiles as we proceed towards the play structure. I make a point of smiling and nodding or saying hello to whoever we encounter, and if chatter seems to be in order I most definitely participate. I even enjoy it more often than not; though this blog may come across as a little cynical at times, I rank few of lifes pleasures higher than hearing about other peoples' lives (though admittedly talking about my own is rarely something I enjoy, and I prefer to hear substance rather than the fairly trivial stuff that makes up most playground banter). My problem isn't so much with the actual practice of this parental conversation as with the ideal to which it is supposed to adhere, the standard against which it is judged. The farther the conversation is from the ideal, the more likely it is that I'll enjoy it.
In thinking about this, I've been a little worried that in feeling this way I have been drafted into the cultural tendency to devalue the feminine. Like I said, there is the odd dad, and a few more grampa's than that, but mostly the adults in this particular space are women. To give such encounters the respect they deserve, I suppose it is important to recognize that they have historically functioned, at least for some women, as a kind of mutual sounding-out, an audition for inclusion in each others' networks of practical advice and emotional support by which the uncharted waters of mothering can be navigated. Quite understandably, male existence in that space and potential for inclusion in those networks is somewhat different -- not nonexistent, but different. I'm not complaining about that, by the way, because I have a sense of the historical, cultural, and political reasons why it is so; sharing your birth story or complaining about sore nipples is just less likely to feel comfortable when the stranger on the playground is a man. As well, I'm not sure that such a strategy for parenting support particularly meets my needs or ways of dealing with things either.
And even so, playground encounters between moms are most often just trivial and superficial ways to pass the time while the toddlers steal each others' toys. Sharing the experience of being a parent is not a particularly strong indicator of having much else in common. As one of my sisters joked to my partner when we were back in Ontario in December, whatever words are used to start conversations between moms on playgrounds they more or less always functionally amount to, "So, I see your ovaries are functioning too."
So partly it is the triviality of such interactions that turn me off. Smalltalk of any sort bores me and I've never been very good at it. But there is something about conversation in this situation that goes beyond ordinary smalltalk -- like I said, something about the ideal irks me. There is a script that outlines the general pattern for the conversation, and a series of rules that hems in where it will flow. This ideal is not a neutral thing -- it is a recipe for the performance of middle-class "respectability," and its power is felt even in many situations in which the identities of one or both or some or all of the participants deviate from oppressive North American "normalcy." Even more than in other kinds of smalltalk, there is an expectation that the rules will be followed. It has something to do with the presence of kids, I think, some shared understanding that substantive "adult business" will be avoided for the sake of child-focused harmony and for the sake of appearing to be a "good parent." In the general culture that category, of course, gets constructed in ways that validate ways of being associated with privilege and conformity. It is this expectation that I will perform that I resent the most. And, of course, the fact that I can generally meet these criteria purely by performing (i.e. by hiding self) is itself a privilege -- lots of other parents cannot. And none of us should feel we have to.
Admittedly, I tend to be hypersensitive to such scripts and expectations. Lots of other folk probably wouldn't even see it as performance but rather just as talking about the stuff of everyday life (though I think there's a lot of cultural training that goes into what is considered the stuff of everyday life, versus what is taboo and what is not even seen). Others who would see them as potential constraints would find ways to skillfully violate them in ways that did not alienate, or ways that maybe sometimes did; hopefully I can get better at that. But mostly I think I'll just continue quietly preferring conversation with other parents that deviates even in trivial ways from the performance of "respectability" and conformity.
I don't dislike all such talk, of course -- I'm not some kind of ogre, glowering my way between the swings and the slide and turning my back on friendly smiles as we proceed towards the play structure. I make a point of smiling and nodding or saying hello to whoever we encounter, and if chatter seems to be in order I most definitely participate. I even enjoy it more often than not; though this blog may come across as a little cynical at times, I rank few of lifes pleasures higher than hearing about other peoples' lives (though admittedly talking about my own is rarely something I enjoy, and I prefer to hear substance rather than the fairly trivial stuff that makes up most playground banter). My problem isn't so much with the actual practice of this parental conversation as with the ideal to which it is supposed to adhere, the standard against which it is judged. The farther the conversation is from the ideal, the more likely it is that I'll enjoy it.
In thinking about this, I've been a little worried that in feeling this way I have been drafted into the cultural tendency to devalue the feminine. Like I said, there is the odd dad, and a few more grampa's than that, but mostly the adults in this particular space are women. To give such encounters the respect they deserve, I suppose it is important to recognize that they have historically functioned, at least for some women, as a kind of mutual sounding-out, an audition for inclusion in each others' networks of practical advice and emotional support by which the uncharted waters of mothering can be navigated. Quite understandably, male existence in that space and potential for inclusion in those networks is somewhat different -- not nonexistent, but different. I'm not complaining about that, by the way, because I have a sense of the historical, cultural, and political reasons why it is so; sharing your birth story or complaining about sore nipples is just less likely to feel comfortable when the stranger on the playground is a man. As well, I'm not sure that such a strategy for parenting support particularly meets my needs or ways of dealing with things either.
And even so, playground encounters between moms are most often just trivial and superficial ways to pass the time while the toddlers steal each others' toys. Sharing the experience of being a parent is not a particularly strong indicator of having much else in common. As one of my sisters joked to my partner when we were back in Ontario in December, whatever words are used to start conversations between moms on playgrounds they more or less always functionally amount to, "So, I see your ovaries are functioning too."
So partly it is the triviality of such interactions that turn me off. Smalltalk of any sort bores me and I've never been very good at it. But there is something about conversation in this situation that goes beyond ordinary smalltalk -- like I said, something about the ideal irks me. There is a script that outlines the general pattern for the conversation, and a series of rules that hems in where it will flow. This ideal is not a neutral thing -- it is a recipe for the performance of middle-class "respectability," and its power is felt even in many situations in which the identities of one or both or some or all of the participants deviate from oppressive North American "normalcy." Even more than in other kinds of smalltalk, there is an expectation that the rules will be followed. It has something to do with the presence of kids, I think, some shared understanding that substantive "adult business" will be avoided for the sake of child-focused harmony and for the sake of appearing to be a "good parent." In the general culture that category, of course, gets constructed in ways that validate ways of being associated with privilege and conformity. It is this expectation that I will perform that I resent the most. And, of course, the fact that I can generally meet these criteria purely by performing (i.e. by hiding self) is itself a privilege -- lots of other parents cannot. And none of us should feel we have to.
Admittedly, I tend to be hypersensitive to such scripts and expectations. Lots of other folk probably wouldn't even see it as performance but rather just as talking about the stuff of everyday life (though I think there's a lot of cultural training that goes into what is considered the stuff of everyday life, versus what is taboo and what is not even seen). Others who would see them as potential constraints would find ways to skillfully violate them in ways that did not alienate, or ways that maybe sometimes did; hopefully I can get better at that. But mostly I think I'll just continue quietly preferring conversation with other parents that deviates even in trivial ways from the performance of "respectability" and conformity.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Some Stuff To Read
- An article about a new book on the history of hip-hop by Jeff Chang, and an excerpt from that book.
- An interview with Stan Goff. An excerpt:
The most unfortunate result of the last 20 years of counter-revolution has been the left's loss of its combat edge, if you'll forgive the military language. Many people have taken to whining and putting on hair shirts. But when the conditions are not propitious — which they were not during the disintegration and defeat of first epoch communism — we have to recognize that these are the conditions. By the same token, when the conditions are favourable for intervention from the left, we have to switch out emotional gears, and go back into overdrive. A deep analysis of the current conjuncture, some of us have been arguing, shows a decaying US imperium that is increasingly fragile...
- A post from Doug Ireland talking about Canada -- the first part is about how the U.S. religious right is invading Canada to oppose the pending full legalization of same-sex marraige, and the second part is about Wal-Mart closing a store in Quebec to prevent unionization.
- An article by a gay Christian man in Canada illustrating that the "one man and one woman" definition of marriage trotted out by conservatives is not, in fact, based on what the Bible actually has to say about marriage.
- A personal/political site by "a 36 year old, capricornian, deviant, bajan-born, working class, barbadian-born, immigrant, Black conscious, dark-skinned, fat, out queer, femme, far seer and militant mama who lives, loves, works and struggles here on first nations' land [canada]" who has some pretty powerful and insightful things to say.
Civiblog
I received an email yesterday from a person involved with a centre called Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab is a project of the Munk Centre for Intenrational Studies.
The purpose of the email was to let me know about a project of theirs called Civiblog. Its goal is to "provide free blog space to all people, in all corners of the world, working in the citizen sector for the benefit of humanity. We do this with the view to build community online and feedback mechanisms to fulfill the promise of the citizen sector in the years ahead." The email adds, "In time, we'll also fill the
site with academic papers, audio files of interviews with featured
participants, a blogmap (dynamic pattern analysis of commentary in the blogging community), and so much more. We're interested especially in co-creating the evolving content with the community of bloggers." An updated design is apparently due to be released on February 18 or thereabouts.
It looks like an interesting project. It doesn't look like it talks about the world in necessarily the same language as I would, and any such institutional endeavour has ties to state and corporate foundation funding that should make us wary -- in fact, I assume that the "Munk" in the centre's name is from Peter Munk of Barrick Gold, a Canadian resource extraction company of dubious reputation among activists. However, Civiblog offers an opportunity for connection, virtual relationship building, and dialogue among activists coming from different physical locations and different experiential/political standpoints around the globe, and I think that's a useful thing. Even just the offer of space and blog-related resources are worth checking out. So please do, and see if it is something you might wish to participate in!
The purpose of the email was to let me know about a project of theirs called Civiblog. Its goal is to "provide free blog space to all people, in all corners of the world, working in the citizen sector for the benefit of humanity. We do this with the view to build community online and feedback mechanisms to fulfill the promise of the citizen sector in the years ahead." The email adds, "In time, we'll also fill the
site with academic papers, audio files of interviews with featured
participants, a blogmap (dynamic pattern analysis of commentary in the blogging community), and so much more. We're interested especially in co-creating the evolving content with the community of bloggers." An updated design is apparently due to be released on February 18 or thereabouts.
It looks like an interesting project. It doesn't look like it talks about the world in necessarily the same language as I would, and any such institutional endeavour has ties to state and corporate foundation funding that should make us wary -- in fact, I assume that the "Munk" in the centre's name is from Peter Munk of Barrick Gold, a Canadian resource extraction company of dubious reputation among activists. However, Civiblog offers an opportunity for connection, virtual relationship building, and dialogue among activists coming from different physical locations and different experiential/political standpoints around the globe, and I think that's a useful thing. Even just the offer of space and blog-related resources are worth checking out. So please do, and see if it is something you might wish to participate in!
Friday, February 11, 2005
Peace Vigil Notes #5
Tonight was another quiet one. It was also raining, so turnout was on the low side. The only notable thing was a conversation with the woman that I tend to chat with the most at the vigil -- she was saying that she has a son who is in the age range that could be drafted, and was asking about the possibilities of sending him to Canada if they reinstate the draft here in the U.S. I had to regretfully say that as far as I knew the government had made no announcements about how they might handle hypothetical future U.S. draft resisters making Canada their home. So I hope peace movement folks back in Canada get to work pressuring Paul Martin to let 'em stay!
I don't have a good sense, by the way, of how likely a reinstatement of the draft is. I think it will be necessary if they plan to engage in any new military adventures that go beyond bombing and small-scale special forces stuff. Which they may. At the same time, I think the Republicans are aware of the potential political cost of reinstating the draft. Which is obscene in and of itself, because it would carry that political cost because folks who are white and middle class would start having to bear more of the burden of danger and death in these imperial misadventures, costs currently borne disproportionately by people of colour pushed into the military by poverty -- as an essay by Tamara Nopper puts it, "the anxiety of whites who fear an impending draft can not be understood unless we look at the situation as one in which, to the 'general public,' some bodies matter more than others. Implicit in this privileging of certain bodies are racist/sexist assumptions about other bodies."
I don't have a good sense, by the way, of how likely a reinstatement of the draft is. I think it will be necessary if they plan to engage in any new military adventures that go beyond bombing and small-scale special forces stuff. Which they may. At the same time, I think the Republicans are aware of the potential political cost of reinstating the draft. Which is obscene in and of itself, because it would carry that political cost because folks who are white and middle class would start having to bear more of the burden of danger and death in these imperial misadventures, costs currently borne disproportionately by people of colour pushed into the military by poverty -- as an essay by Tamara Nopper puts it, "the anxiety of whites who fear an impending draft can not be understood unless we look at the situation as one in which, to the 'general public,' some bodies matter more than others. Implicit in this privileging of certain bodies are racist/sexist assumptions about other bodies."
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
LAPD Shooting
This from Democracy Now!:
In Los Angeles, a 13-year-old African-American boy has died after being shot 10 times by police. The unarmed eighth-grader was shot dead while driving a stolen car. Police initially claimed Devon Brown was a gang member but it later emerged that he attended a magnet school for gifted children. Following the shooting, the Los Angeles mayor called on the police department to quickly adopt a new policy on shooting at moving vehicles. The shooting has increased tension between the city's African-American community and the police. Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade said, "They have killed women, they have killed black men wholesale and now they are killing our children."
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Learnable Moment
In doing some thinking in preparation for writing another post, which I hope to get to soon, I got to thinking about an incident from my past activist involvement. I think it contains some stuff that is useful for thinking about power and privilege issues, and in partiuclar issues surrounding collective social/political spaces.
The group was a collective devoted to supporting people on social assistance by going with them to meetings with the welfare bureaucracy. This was something that provided an immediate benefit to the individuals involved, as advised in advance by activists we had worked with who were on social assistance themselves, and as reported once the group got up and functioning by individuals who were thus accompanied. But rather than a service that aimed at becoming professionalized, this was also an effort to create networks of people for both the purpose of mutual aid and which could be mobilized for more overtly political activity, though in my time of involvement with the group the latter part of this agenda never quite got off the ground in the ways that we wanted.
The founding group was mostly middle-class, entirely white, and mostly men who identified as activists, and whose ages varied but who had from a handful to dozens of years of experience in social change activity. To a certain extent the class privilege of the founding group was addressed directly in the purpose of the group -- the idea of using that privilege as something of a protection for people forced to beg inadequate incomes from an abusive system was explicitly part of the point, and it did actually work that way. As well, the group and individuals within the group had prior and ongoing relationships with another group that did more active advocacy with/for social assistance recipients, and that group was almost entirely comprised of people on assistance. This provided something of an accountability mechanism, and a grounding for the group in the experience and analysis of those suffering at the hands of the system being targeted. It was also decided early on to try and incorporate principles of anti-racism and anti-oppression into the work as best we could, including mandatory participation in an anti-racism training session for all active members (for whatever that stereotypically mainstream gesture in the general direction of anti-racism is actually worth).
If I am remembering correctly, the incident in question occurred before the group was actively accompanying social assistance recipients, but it may have been just after that had started. In any case, the founding group had evolved, with some folks dropping away and new people becoming involved, including a couple of people on assistance themselves, a few women, and (briefly) a couple of people of colour.
The meeting in question happened to be the first or second meeting being attended by two or three young activists of colour who were seeing if they wanted to become more actively involved in the group. At this meeting a white person who had been active in the group for some months said some things rooted in and replicating oppressive understandings of social assistance recipients themselves (though this person himself was on assistance) and of immigrants and refugees. The latter content was, by not-too-subtle extension, also oppressive to people of colour.
In the meeting, there were a couple of weak efforts to disagree with the expressed sentiments but no real direct challenges. This (relative) inaction included two or three of us who were founding members (middle-class, white, male activists) and therefore had no excuse for not speaking up based on discomfort with the space, and who in general tried to live a certain degree of consciousness around racism, and power and privilege issues more generally. It was because one of the activists of colour had a past history of political involvement and social connection with us (i.e. that sub-group of white guys) and felt able to bring it up with us soon after that it did end up getting processed and addressed after the fact, as well as such things can be.
There are a number of things that can be learned, here. Some are quite trite, if no less important for that: It was yet another instance of white folk who think we have at least a faint clue of what it means to be an ally to people of colour dropping the ball and making poor decisions in the moment -- of choosing uncomfortable silence and oblique half-measures instead of taking the risk of naming oppressive behaviour for what it was.
I was not conscious of this at the time but I think there was an additional factor at play, beyond generalized reluctance to speak up. I think the fact that the person from whom these comments came was on social assistance himself made a difference. That doesn't mean I think we would necessarily have addressed it any better in the moment if it had been someone else, but I think my general desire to avoid overt conflict was heightened by not wanting to alienate a person whose experience the group was, in some sense, about. Which, of course, is not only a poor job of being an ally to people of colour but is also disrespectful of the capacity for political agency of the person who made the comments.
However, I'm not bringing this up for the purposes of self-flagellation. What is more interesting is the more general implications about activist space.
For one thing, it taught me that after the fact isn't good enough. As I said, our after the fact dealing was, all things considered, not bad. I say that based on my own analysis of what happened and based on feedback from at least one of the activists of colour who was involved. But not a single one of the people of colour who were present came back to another meeting, though they were all directly involved in shaping the post hoc "dealing" that occurred. Of course I can't presume to know why they made those decisions, but it seems reasonable to guess that it had something to do with not seeing that space as the best use of their political and emotional energy. Which is fair enough, given what happened.
But the key thing to be learned, I think, is not what decisions were made but who had the capacity to make the decisions that mattered. It was the people with the most privilege in the group that had the power to determine who the space was safest for, regardless of how we actually used that power. The level of comfort of people of colour in that space was largely determined by white people, regardless of whether we (the white people) acted in ways that maximized or minimized their comfort. In fact, it was a space where middle-class white men with pretensions to being allies along axes of race, class, and gender ended up with the power to apportion comfort, as it were, for those with less of various sorts of privilege (whether we wanted it or were aware of it or not). Us "doing a better job of it" would not change the oppressive dynamics upon which us doing any kind of job of it is predicated.
Which isn't to imply that people of colour in general or these activists in particular needed protection by benevolent white folk -- of course they don't, and that's not the issue. The issue is where power lies to shape the nature of a given space.
And how did this partiuclar space come to be the way that it was? Well, as it was experienced by those of us who were with the group from the beginning, it "just sort of happened." The group came out of networks of social and politcal connection that were very white, in the context of a city where such networks as a whole tend to be quite divorced from the analagous networks that exist in the city's communities of colour. The fact that some of us had some vague awareness that this was the case and were struggling to figure out what it meant did not fundamentally shift the fact that this was the context in which negotiations (both explicit and implicit) occurred with respect to political intent, ways of work, and bounds of acceptable discourse in the creation of that activist space.
This incident also provides an in for a critical understanding of "diversity" -- that is the most common language for talking about difference amongst agency-based and community-based white activists in that city, and probably elsewhere, whose self-identified politics might range from liberal to social democratic to radical. It tends to focus on diversity in representation around whatever table is at issue as an end rather than as an indicator of political practice. It tends to avoid forethought about what might be required of the group's functioning or goals for that to happen. It leads to neglect of discussion about how discourses of difference other than uncritical liberalism, such as discourses that focus on power and privilege, might translate into political practice. It neglects the fact that sometimes making a space safe for one person or group means making it less welcoming or even unwelcoming for another person or group. Beyond even that, it ignores the fact that people who experience racism or some other oppression might not want that kind of space as a political home because of the likelihood of having to deal with that oppression in that space, even if the group deals with it "well" (whatever that means) in the moment. And it ignores that if they do choose to participate in such a space, they might well engage with it with expectations different from those of us with privilege about what that space will mean, what they hope to accomplish by being in that space, and how "at home" that space is going to feel.
Anyway. All of this is important but to me it's critical to try and bring it back to issues of political practice. What does this mean about actions we take?
I'm kind of conflicted about that. I still think that this group as a whole was a worthwhile endeavour, and still is -- as far as I know it is still functioning. Yet I have no clear picture of what we could have done differently starting from that point when there was a group of us who mostly knew each other, who saw a need and saw capacity to do something about it, who were sitting in a room for the first time saying, "What can we do?" Nor do I have a clear picture of this means for future decisions on my part about social movement participation. But when I get around to that post I was thinking about to begin with (hopefully this weekend) I'll talk about these issues some more.
The group was a collective devoted to supporting people on social assistance by going with them to meetings with the welfare bureaucracy. This was something that provided an immediate benefit to the individuals involved, as advised in advance by activists we had worked with who were on social assistance themselves, and as reported once the group got up and functioning by individuals who were thus accompanied. But rather than a service that aimed at becoming professionalized, this was also an effort to create networks of people for both the purpose of mutual aid and which could be mobilized for more overtly political activity, though in my time of involvement with the group the latter part of this agenda never quite got off the ground in the ways that we wanted.
The founding group was mostly middle-class, entirely white, and mostly men who identified as activists, and whose ages varied but who had from a handful to dozens of years of experience in social change activity. To a certain extent the class privilege of the founding group was addressed directly in the purpose of the group -- the idea of using that privilege as something of a protection for people forced to beg inadequate incomes from an abusive system was explicitly part of the point, and it did actually work that way. As well, the group and individuals within the group had prior and ongoing relationships with another group that did more active advocacy with/for social assistance recipients, and that group was almost entirely comprised of people on assistance. This provided something of an accountability mechanism, and a grounding for the group in the experience and analysis of those suffering at the hands of the system being targeted. It was also decided early on to try and incorporate principles of anti-racism and anti-oppression into the work as best we could, including mandatory participation in an anti-racism training session for all active members (for whatever that stereotypically mainstream gesture in the general direction of anti-racism is actually worth).
If I am remembering correctly, the incident in question occurred before the group was actively accompanying social assistance recipients, but it may have been just after that had started. In any case, the founding group had evolved, with some folks dropping away and new people becoming involved, including a couple of people on assistance themselves, a few women, and (briefly) a couple of people of colour.
The meeting in question happened to be the first or second meeting being attended by two or three young activists of colour who were seeing if they wanted to become more actively involved in the group. At this meeting a white person who had been active in the group for some months said some things rooted in and replicating oppressive understandings of social assistance recipients themselves (though this person himself was on assistance) and of immigrants and refugees. The latter content was, by not-too-subtle extension, also oppressive to people of colour.
In the meeting, there were a couple of weak efforts to disagree with the expressed sentiments but no real direct challenges. This (relative) inaction included two or three of us who were founding members (middle-class, white, male activists) and therefore had no excuse for not speaking up based on discomfort with the space, and who in general tried to live a certain degree of consciousness around racism, and power and privilege issues more generally. It was because one of the activists of colour had a past history of political involvement and social connection with us (i.e. that sub-group of white guys) and felt able to bring it up with us soon after that it did end up getting processed and addressed after the fact, as well as such things can be.
There are a number of things that can be learned, here. Some are quite trite, if no less important for that: It was yet another instance of white folk who think we have at least a faint clue of what it means to be an ally to people of colour dropping the ball and making poor decisions in the moment -- of choosing uncomfortable silence and oblique half-measures instead of taking the risk of naming oppressive behaviour for what it was.
I was not conscious of this at the time but I think there was an additional factor at play, beyond generalized reluctance to speak up. I think the fact that the person from whom these comments came was on social assistance himself made a difference. That doesn't mean I think we would necessarily have addressed it any better in the moment if it had been someone else, but I think my general desire to avoid overt conflict was heightened by not wanting to alienate a person whose experience the group was, in some sense, about. Which, of course, is not only a poor job of being an ally to people of colour but is also disrespectful of the capacity for political agency of the person who made the comments.
However, I'm not bringing this up for the purposes of self-flagellation. What is more interesting is the more general implications about activist space.
For one thing, it taught me that after the fact isn't good enough. As I said, our after the fact dealing was, all things considered, not bad. I say that based on my own analysis of what happened and based on feedback from at least one of the activists of colour who was involved. But not a single one of the people of colour who were present came back to another meeting, though they were all directly involved in shaping the post hoc "dealing" that occurred. Of course I can't presume to know why they made those decisions, but it seems reasonable to guess that it had something to do with not seeing that space as the best use of their political and emotional energy. Which is fair enough, given what happened.
But the key thing to be learned, I think, is not what decisions were made but who had the capacity to make the decisions that mattered. It was the people with the most privilege in the group that had the power to determine who the space was safest for, regardless of how we actually used that power. The level of comfort of people of colour in that space was largely determined by white people, regardless of whether we (the white people) acted in ways that maximized or minimized their comfort. In fact, it was a space where middle-class white men with pretensions to being allies along axes of race, class, and gender ended up with the power to apportion comfort, as it were, for those with less of various sorts of privilege (whether we wanted it or were aware of it or not). Us "doing a better job of it" would not change the oppressive dynamics upon which us doing any kind of job of it is predicated.
Which isn't to imply that people of colour in general or these activists in particular needed protection by benevolent white folk -- of course they don't, and that's not the issue. The issue is where power lies to shape the nature of a given space.
And how did this partiuclar space come to be the way that it was? Well, as it was experienced by those of us who were with the group from the beginning, it "just sort of happened." The group came out of networks of social and politcal connection that were very white, in the context of a city where such networks as a whole tend to be quite divorced from the analagous networks that exist in the city's communities of colour. The fact that some of us had some vague awareness that this was the case and were struggling to figure out what it meant did not fundamentally shift the fact that this was the context in which negotiations (both explicit and implicit) occurred with respect to political intent, ways of work, and bounds of acceptable discourse in the creation of that activist space.
This incident also provides an in for a critical understanding of "diversity" -- that is the most common language for talking about difference amongst agency-based and community-based white activists in that city, and probably elsewhere, whose self-identified politics might range from liberal to social democratic to radical. It tends to focus on diversity in representation around whatever table is at issue as an end rather than as an indicator of political practice. It tends to avoid forethought about what might be required of the group's functioning or goals for that to happen. It leads to neglect of discussion about how discourses of difference other than uncritical liberalism, such as discourses that focus on power and privilege, might translate into political practice. It neglects the fact that sometimes making a space safe for one person or group means making it less welcoming or even unwelcoming for another person or group. Beyond even that, it ignores the fact that people who experience racism or some other oppression might not want that kind of space as a political home because of the likelihood of having to deal with that oppression in that space, even if the group deals with it "well" (whatever that means) in the moment. And it ignores that if they do choose to participate in such a space, they might well engage with it with expectations different from those of us with privilege about what that space will mean, what they hope to accomplish by being in that space, and how "at home" that space is going to feel.
Anyway. All of this is important but to me it's critical to try and bring it back to issues of political practice. What does this mean about actions we take?
I'm kind of conflicted about that. I still think that this group as a whole was a worthwhile endeavour, and still is -- as far as I know it is still functioning. Yet I have no clear picture of what we could have done differently starting from that point when there was a group of us who mostly knew each other, who saw a need and saw capacity to do something about it, who were sitting in a room for the first time saying, "What can we do?" Nor do I have a clear picture of this means for future decisions on my part about social movement participation. But when I get around to that post I was thinking about to begin with (hopefully this weekend) I'll talk about these issues some more.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Who Got Glitched?
I'm not sure if any of the handful of people who read this blog actually live near enough to be interested, but I promised one of my co-vigilers that I'd do what I could to promote an event of which she is an organizer. It is called "Who Got Glitched? A Teach-in on Election Reform." The speakers include Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, reporter Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus Free Press, and Butch Wing of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Jesse Jackson's organization. It will be on Sunday, February 27th from approximately 6 to 10 pm at a Los Angeles-based venue to be named later. It costs $20 if you want to attend a light dinner with Harris and $10 for students or if you want to skip the dinner. You can get more info or order tickets by emailing here.
That having been said, I'm not sure exactly how I, personally, would characterize the political context of this event. I'm personally dubious about tales of high-tech shenanigans to steal the presidency. The Republicans won because of increasingly consolidated right-wing control of elite institutions, because of the powerful radical right (mostly Christian) populist movement in the United States, because of the skillful mobilization by the Republicans of homophobia and racism and the systemic (hetero)sexism and racism that permeate North American society, and because of the organizational and popular weakness of liberalism and the utter marginality of the left. Tinkering with the bits and pieces of the electoral process on its own won't make anything better; only larger, more organized and more radical social movements will make real progress.
On the other hand, from what I've seen there does seem to have been voter suppression efforts that particularly targeted African American communities, and however limited the ability of the vote on its own to constrain oppressive power, that sort of disenfranchisement is not to be taken lightly. And even by the rather limited standards of the liberal-democratic tradition there are some serious problems with the U.S. system -- technological approaches to voting that are less than ideal and not standardized, partisan control over election mechanics, the racist and anti-democratic mechanisms of the electoral college and felony disenfranchisement, and numerous other things. My sense is that electoral reform will be a good issue to push in order to mobilize people and get them passionate. I think it qualifies as a non-reformist reform, which is an incremental change that increases the chances of winning future improvements (a concept I first encountered in stuff written by Michael Albert of ZNet and which I think he nicked from an old socialist named Andre Gorz). This issue can be a part of creating the necessary social movements and making the necessary progress.
But it is also a direction which, if we are not careful, can lead into the fruitless and energy-sapping pursuit of elite conspiracies rather than real, grassroots politics. And it can also reinforce our society's narrow fixation on voting as the essence of democracy, and thereby obscure the fact that voting in our current context is what we do to win small victories in a system stacked against equity and liberation. We can't fail to critique liberal democracy even as we strive to make it function a bit more fairly.
Anyway, if you're interested, please check it out.
That having been said, I'm not sure exactly how I, personally, would characterize the political context of this event. I'm personally dubious about tales of high-tech shenanigans to steal the presidency. The Republicans won because of increasingly consolidated right-wing control of elite institutions, because of the powerful radical right (mostly Christian) populist movement in the United States, because of the skillful mobilization by the Republicans of homophobia and racism and the systemic (hetero)sexism and racism that permeate North American society, and because of the organizational and popular weakness of liberalism and the utter marginality of the left. Tinkering with the bits and pieces of the electoral process on its own won't make anything better; only larger, more organized and more radical social movements will make real progress.
On the other hand, from what I've seen there does seem to have been voter suppression efforts that particularly targeted African American communities, and however limited the ability of the vote on its own to constrain oppressive power, that sort of disenfranchisement is not to be taken lightly. And even by the rather limited standards of the liberal-democratic tradition there are some serious problems with the U.S. system -- technological approaches to voting that are less than ideal and not standardized, partisan control over election mechanics, the racist and anti-democratic mechanisms of the electoral college and felony disenfranchisement, and numerous other things. My sense is that electoral reform will be a good issue to push in order to mobilize people and get them passionate. I think it qualifies as a non-reformist reform, which is an incremental change that increases the chances of winning future improvements (a concept I first encountered in stuff written by Michael Albert of ZNet and which I think he nicked from an old socialist named Andre Gorz). This issue can be a part of creating the necessary social movements and making the necessary progress.
But it is also a direction which, if we are not careful, can lead into the fruitless and energy-sapping pursuit of elite conspiracies rather than real, grassroots politics. And it can also reinforce our society's narrow fixation on voting as the essence of democracy, and thereby obscure the fact that voting in our current context is what we do to win small victories in a system stacked against equity and liberation. We can't fail to critique liberal democracy even as we strive to make it function a bit more fairly.
Anyway, if you're interested, please check it out.
Quick Peace Vigil Notes #4
Not much to report this week. The numbers were up, relative to what they have generally been since the presidential election, probably because of psychological momentum generated by the meeting last week. I did not have (or create) the opportunity to discuss my concerns about the plan to relocate the vigil with anyone, but there will be plenty of chance to do that in the next couple of months. No egg throwing occurred this week, thank goodness. The most important novel happening was that I think progress was made towards correcting the glitch which has meant I haven't actually received any emails from the group's list in the months I have been part of the vigil, except for those recently forwarded by one kind soul who attends -- this hasn't actually mattered much up to now but I do want to be able to participate in discussions and planning around the proposed move.
Technofrustration
Computers are wonderful things. A friend can, in mere seconds, share her dreams and pains with me from three thousand miles away. I can learn about my uncle (something like six thousand miles away) and his pending hernia operation in far less time than a carrier pigeon would take to traverse the distance. I can track our finances, however depressing an endeavour that might be, as well as upload digital photographs recently taken, listen to music, and print documents both profound and banal. I can share my ideas with the world, no matter how irrelevant to its continued functioning the world might consider them, by hitting just a few keys, or record my voice and edit it. I can learn about goings on in Iraq or Nepal with the greatest of ease. I can even find out what kind of happy bunny I am.
But I can only do these things if the gods of technology continue to smile benevolently upon me, and the last couple of days they've been blowing raspberries in my general direction.
I'm out two days of work on my social movement history project because of technical problems, and I haven't been able to check my primary email account since early afternoon because the server appears to be down. I have now fixed the former problem -- not sure why it started, but it is gone now. I thank my lucky stars that I use Linux so this is really the first unexplained stability issue I've had since I installed my current version of the operating system in the autum of 2003. If I used Windows I'm sure this would happen every other week. As for the email hassle, I'm hoping somebody back in Hamilton notices and fixes it tomorrow, but the account is through a community net so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it might be out until Monday. Pfui.
But I can only do these things if the gods of technology continue to smile benevolently upon me, and the last couple of days they've been blowing raspberries in my general direction.
I'm out two days of work on my social movement history project because of technical problems, and I haven't been able to check my primary email account since early afternoon because the server appears to be down. I have now fixed the former problem -- not sure why it started, but it is gone now. I thank my lucky stars that I use Linux so this is really the first unexplained stability issue I've had since I installed my current version of the operating system in the autum of 2003. If I used Windows I'm sure this would happen every other week. As for the email hassle, I'm hoping somebody back in Hamilton notices and fixes it tomorrow, but the account is through a community net so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it might be out until Monday. Pfui.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Dalit Struggle
This seems to be a day for linking to other writing...sorry about that...but I felt I had to add a link to this long post from Zeynep at Under the Same Sun. It is about the author's experience at a panel at the recent World Social Forum. This panel focused on the experiences of Dalits, the so-called "untcouhables" in India. Hearing Zeynep relate how powerful the experience was is itself quite powerful, and helps put our struggles in North America into perspective.
The post includes:
The post includes:
I remember thinking that this was the most uncynical space I have been in a very long time -- and it comes from people who face such massive injustice that one could hardly blame them if they lost all hope, and hated the world that mistreats them so horrifically. Often, one hears people talk of apathy and cynicism as resulting from lack of success. How can that be if these people who have mountains to move, and faced such crushing oppression for thousands of years, do not display a shred of apathy? You feel it sitting there, listening: they are fighting hard, they are struggling against it all with every ounce of their being. They're unfazed. They aren't "moving to Canada," as it were.
Many speakers talked about how "globalization" made things much worse for them. I want to write some more about that at some point, the numbers were really striking. It's clear that the neo-liberal machine is decimating communities like these that were marginally surviving to begin with. Some speakers spoke of how this neo-liberal "advanced capitalism" was strengthening feudal institutions like the caste system.
Workers' Liberty
Workers' Liberty is an interesting political organization in the UK. Its platform includes:
(Found via Rabble.CA.)
Every major industry should be reorganised on the lines of social provision for need, democratically controlled by the workers and the community. The privileges of managers and officials should be abolished, and replaced by a workers' democracy, far more flexible, responsive and accountable than any government of today.
(Found via Rabble.CA.)
Iraqi Election Context
An interesting post at Empire Notes which gives some historical context for the oft-repeated (in the mainstream media) phrase "Iraq's first real election in over half a century."
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
NDP Passes Resolution Against Secret Trials
I have mentioned before on this site how the Canadian state has decided it deserves the power to hold people indefinitely without charges or adequate due process. For more information, visit this site. As it says there:
The NDP is English Canada's social democratic or labour party. Like social democracy as a whole, the NDP is flawed and limited and deserves all kinds of criticism. At the same time, they have managed to accomplish some important things over the years, and my stay in the U.S. has made me appreciate even more the value of having such a party. At its federal council meeting this past weekend, thanks in part to tireless activism by former party leader and MP Alexa McDonough, it passed the following resolution:
Five Muslim men have been held, as of January 2005, a collective total of 179 months in Canadian prisons, much of it in solitary confinement, without charge, without bail, on secret "evidence" which neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see. They are men with wives and children they cannot touch or hug. None has ever been convicted of any criminal offence in Canada. Welcome to Canada's own Guantanamo Bay.
The NDP is English Canada's social democratic or labour party. Like social democracy as a whole, the NDP is flawed and limited and deserves all kinds of criticism. At the same time, they have managed to accomplish some important things over the years, and my stay in the U.S. has made me appreciate even more the value of having such a party. At its federal council meeting this past weekend, thanks in part to tireless activism by former party leader and MP Alexa McDonough, it passed the following resolution:
NDP Resolution on Security Certificates
WHEREAS the federal government has not laid a single charge against any detainee currently held in Canada under Security Certificates, for periods of up to four years; and
WHEREAS Security Certificates apply only to Permanent Residents and Refugees; and
WHEREAS denying non-citizens access to the judicial process violates our Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as Canada's international obligations and goes against the fundamental notion that human rights are inalienable and do not depend on legal status; and
WHEREAS issuance of a Security Certificate by the Minister of Public Safety restricts the scope of a court's examination of the case to deciding on the possible viability of allegations - not necessarily evidence - on which the Minister has signed the security certificate; and
WHEREAS neither the detainee nor their lawyer are informed of the precise allegations or given access to government information against the accused; and
WHEREAS this process forces judges to base their decisions on one-sided arguments; and
WHEREAS Security Certificates violate a basic tenet of the rule of law by denying detainees the right of appeal; and
WHEREAS Canada is a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture; and
WHEREAS detainees face deportation to their countries of origin, even if there is a substantial risk of torture or death; and
WHEREAS the UN Committee against Torture felt bound to remind Canada in 2000 that it is a violation of the UN Convention against Torture to deport someone facing a substantial risk of torture, even if there may be some security concerns; and
WHEREAS Security Certificates have been described by Amnesty International as "fundamentally flawed and unfair"; and
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the NDP calls on the federal government to:
1. Either lay charges and allow the accused to undergo a fair and transparent judicial trial or immediately release all individuals being held under Security Certificates;
2. Refuse to deport any detainees to a country where there is a substantial risk of torture and possibly death, in compliance with the UN Convention against torture;
3. Immediately halt the use of Security Certificates and re-write the security provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to make them consistent with our Constitution and Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture;
4. Provide leadership in ending the attacks on civil liberties and racial profiling and targeting of Arab and Muslim individuals and communities and other ethnic and religious minorities occurring within federal jurisdiction, in partnership with other levels of government and civil society.; and
5. Develop a plan of action and provide adequate resources to defeat racial profiling and religious bigotry.
Press Freedom
I heard this on Democracy Now this morning:
I think the remedy proposed by Dvorak is a bit simplistic and relies on a conception of "free" media and "free" communication that is itself unfree in a lot ways but 33% of U.S. high schoolers supporting fascist-style media is still disturbing.
A new survey of high school students has found that one in three students feel that newspapers should get "government approval" of stories prior to publication. One third of students also said the press has "too much freedom." Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington said the survey confirms that students are not learning enough about the First Amendment in school.
I think the remedy proposed by Dvorak is a bit simplistic and relies on a conception of "free" media and "free" communication that is itself unfree in a lot ways but 33% of U.S. high schoolers supporting fascist-style media is still disturbing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
