Occupy Boston; your comments are welcome here!
I asked the facilitator what she would do if she read two Message Statements (without knowing who the authors were) and unwittingly decided that the one written by an individual was better than the one written by a group. Would she change her opinion when she realized that she had chosen the document that didn’t conform to the inclusiveness policy? She said she didn’t know.
This was my fifth real-time visit to Occupy Boston. My mission was to get a “reality check” to reign in my virtual preoccupation with the Occupation. My question: what is in the minds and hearts of the people on site (who, btw, are largely w/o Internet access)? This facilitator told me that the group had been very inspired by an anti-oppression workshop that had been held a few days ago and that the solidarity with Native Peoples statement passed recently was also a big charge. I thought to myself, “The American left is running in circles.”
Real-time and on-line, racialism is winning out over economic justice, again. This is particularly strange for a movement that has a relatively large number of not-white (male) Leaderless Leaders and started as a response to economic injustice. The puzzled response that I got when mentioned the not-white Leaderless Leaders reminded me of my own painful realization that “we” weren’t as white as the racialist were trying to make us believe.
While facilitating a meeting of other occupiers during at sit in at UMass Amherst in the mid-eighties I referred to us as “all white”. I can still see the look on the face of the Asian woman in the front row. I was so politically correct I couldn’t see the truth in front of me. It seems the same is true for OB. But why? It would be easy to assume that there’s some insidious force at work covering up the message that the path to racial justice is through economic justice. But I think the deeper truth is that it’s easier to be nice than to focus on economics. Not just easy, but familiar, not requiring learning new things. Solidarity statements that affirm our commitment to other human beings are more familiar than the dry language of economics. And yet, taking things away from the individual realm is exactly what will save OB Boston from the morass of identity politics. Race is a myth, a social construct, and building a political platform on it will lead to exactly the kind of confusion expressed by the facilitator above.
What the Message Statement says is more important than who wrote it, that is, unless you are a racialist or a racist. Inclusiveness is great, but what do you—whoever you are-- stand for?
It’s not really all that surprising that the folks at OB want to be nice; what is surprising is how little they know about the basic tenets of personal growth. The day I heard one of the Leaderless Leaders say that ‘It’s ok to break the no drugs rule as long as you’re cool about it’ the hair stood up on the back of my neck and the heroin addict next to me headed for the corner to score a bag. The Occupation is still overrun with mentally ill addicts, which makes a teach-in about Enabling Behavior an even more immediately necessary than understanding why so many people of color are poor.
Near the end of my visit, I heard another of the Leaderless Leaders give an impassioned plea for a return to discussing the political questions that inspired the Occupation. I’ve heard him speak before. Like me he seems very frustrated. I wonder if when wandering around the Occupation, he also feels like he’s traveling through an enormous cloud; some parts are murky dark, others less so, and some shine with the bright light of a righteous purpose. If he does, I wish for him, and the others, many more sunny days.
0 comments:
Post a Comment