More than any previous time in my life, I feel like I’m living in a schizophrenic community. Half the people I know are in rapture at what Obama has done in his short time in office. And it’s not just mainstream people who feel that way – some of the fiercest left-wing activists I know fall into that category. They talk about his initiatives in arms control and climate change and softening the embargo on Cuba. Half of the other half are deep in loathing of Obama and everyone around him. Armed with the daily litanies of his failings on KPFA and Democracy Now, they point to his appointments of Clintonites and Bushites to high positions, his failure to do anything to step the tide of corporate looting of everything we have left, his refusal to consider single-payer health care and of course, his stepped-up bombing of civilians in Afghanistan and refusal to condemn even the worst Israeli atrocities.
Then there’s the other quarter, epitomized by my coworker. He sways back and forth like a pendulum, depending on which left-wing talk show he’s listening to at the moment. These are the people whose minds and ideologies tell them one thing, and whose emotions and perceptions point them in another direction. Which is to say, they love Obama, while being ambivalent about his policies. As one friend put it, “I still have a crush on him.”
And then there’s the mainstream news, which is having a love affair both with the man and his beautiful family including now their perfect dog, and even more with the idea of him, and what they believe it says about race in our country.
So while I’m trying to navigate these pretty unfamiliar streets, figuring out where exactly I’m wanting to go, along comes the Tea Party movement and the wave of secessionist bills passed in state legislatures in the last week. Yeah, that’s right. Not just Texas and South Carolina, from whom we expect such things, but 28 states including California, are entertaining bills to declare their “sovereignty.” And it’s being kind of calmly reported in the media, pretty much ignored by KPFA which is busy bringing on Scott Horton and Michael Ratner and others to talk about what we already know about the torture memos, and no one is taking seriously the fact that for better or worse, we have our first Black president and for the first time in 150 years, we have major right-wing protests and secessionist movements across the country.
Now it’s true that none of the tea parties were very big, and it’s true that without Fox News, they would have been barely a blip, but the fact is that we do have Fox News and the mainstream media promoted the tea parties as well. Remember, the first lunch counter sit-in had six people participating.
What am I trying to say here? Just that I fear that while the left is busy convincing ourselves – with plenty of help from Obama and his peeps – that the current administration represents no change from the last, the right is capitalizing on what is widely perceived as a sea change. I remember the coup that brought Schwarzenegger to power in California, and it was a time very much like this. We had a conservative Democratic old-time politician in office, after 16 years of right-wing republican administrations. The left sat on our hands because we rightly hated Davis, who was pro-death penalty and pro-corporate, but we also didn’t believe that the right would actually succeed in removing him from office, and when they did, we didn’t believe it would be as bad as it has been. And now we have a situation where a huge Democratic majority in the legislature can’t pass a budget without giving massive hideous concessions to so-called “moderate” republicans. And I’m really quite worried that the left is going to sit around talking about how Obama is just like Bush while the fascists are mobilizing to prove us very very wrong, and when it’s all over, we’re going to be asking “How did we get here?”
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
International Women's Day
Sunday was the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day, and I asked my friends to do a few simple things to commemorate this special day.
First, I have some good news. Although KPFA management was not willing to put Women's Magazine back on the air before the end of April, they did offer us the opportunity to produce a special which aired Sunday evening from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. My friend Rivian Berlin and I produced a program on the history of International Women's Day. It includes great interviews with feminist historian Eileen Boris and long-time local activists Aileen Hernandez and Judith Mirkinson. It also presents an excerpt from an incredible documentary by our friend Malihe Razazan on the International Women's Day protests following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 - the first resistance to the imposition of Islamic law in that country, led by left-wing women who had supported the overthrow of the Shah and U.S. imperialism, but were deeply disappointed by the turn toward theocracy.
Please, wherever you are, show KPFA that you appreciate women's programming by listening to the show at http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/49006. And if you like it, ask your friends to listen as well.
The second thing is this: In my writing class last week, a woman told us she was reading The Feminine Mystique. The teacher asked who the author was, and she said she couldn't remember. I said, "Betty Friedan," and it turned out that only two of us in the class had ever heard of her. Then I mentioned that I was doing a show for International Women's Day and the woman who was reading Friedan asked, "When is that?" So I told them and I asked who had ever heard of International Women's Day and only one person had!
So, I asked my friend Lisa, who's a wonderful designer, to make a sticker that says "Today is International Women's Day" with a website for more info, and I'm attaching it. I asked people to wear them on Sunday so people would ask them about IWD, and I printed out a bunch of them to give to people I saw over the weekend. People loved them. I've uploaded it here, so bookmark it for next year. They're formatted for Avery 5196 labels, if you happen to have any lying around, but if not, you can print it on a piece of paper and cut it out and pin it to your jacket.
For those of you who would like to learn more about the history of IWD, go to
www.internationalwomensday.com. Happy IWD!
First, I have some good news. Although KPFA management was not willing to put Women's Magazine back on the air before the end of April, they did offer us the opportunity to produce a special which aired Sunday evening from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. My friend Rivian Berlin and I produced a program on the history of International Women's Day. It includes great interviews with feminist historian Eileen Boris and long-time local activists Aileen Hernandez and Judith Mirkinson. It also presents an excerpt from an incredible documentary by our friend Malihe Razazan on the International Women's Day protests following the Iranian Revolution in 1979 - the first resistance to the imposition of Islamic law in that country, led by left-wing women who had supported the overthrow of the Shah and U.S. imperialism, but were deeply disappointed by the turn toward theocracy.
Please, wherever you are, show KPFA that you appreciate women's programming by listening to the show at http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/49006. And if you like it, ask your friends to listen as well.
The second thing is this: In my writing class last week, a woman told us she was reading The Feminine Mystique. The teacher asked who the author was, and she said she couldn't remember. I said, "Betty Friedan," and it turned out that only two of us in the class had ever heard of her. Then I mentioned that I was doing a show for International Women's Day and the woman who was reading Friedan asked, "When is that?" So I told them and I asked who had ever heard of International Women's Day and only one person had!
So, I asked my friend Lisa, who's a wonderful designer, to make a sticker that says "Today is International Women's Day" with a website for more info, and I'm attaching it. I asked people to wear them on Sunday so people would ask them about IWD, and I printed out a bunch of them to give to people I saw over the weekend. People loved them. I've uploaded it here, so bookmark it for next year. They're formatted for Avery 5196 labels, if you happen to have any lying around, but if not, you can print it on a piece of paper and cut it out and pin it to your jacket.
For those of you who would like to learn more about the history of IWD, go to
www.internationalwomensday.com. Happy IWD!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Chomsky responds:
Thanks for the generous words.
I don't see the disagreement about investment. I just looked at the transcript, and what I said is: "divestment became a proper tactic after years, decades of education and organizing, to the point where Congress was legislating against trade, corporations were pulling out, and so on. That's what's missing: the education and organizing which makes it an understandable move. And, in fact, if we ever got to that point, you wouldn't even need it, because the US could be brought in line with international opinion."
The time-line seems very close to what you sketch below. There was no epiphany, and it wasn't sudden. It was a long-drawn out process, which by the late 70s and early 80s had gained enormous popular support, elite support as well. Pressure for the Sullivan principles was in 1977, but the movement really didn't take off until the 1980s. That was after decades of serious educational and organizing work.
However, there is a fundamental difference between South Africa and Israel. In the case of South Africa, the goal was to undermine Apartheid. In the case of Israel, the goal is to end the decisive military, diplomatic, and ideological US support for Israel -- more narrowly, to bring the US to support the international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US had blocked, unilaterally, for over 30 years. If that happens, Israel will have to go along. So BDS directed against Israel is a very seriously misleading tactic, which absolves the US, the major actor in this affair.
If organizing and education reached the level of opposition to Apartheid, BDS would be beside the point (as well as misdirected), because it would by then be able to shift US rejectionism.
Noam Chomsky
Thanks for the generous words.
I don't see the disagreement about investment. I just looked at the transcript, and what I said is: "divestment became a proper tactic after years, decades of education and organizing, to the point where Congress was legislating against trade, corporations were pulling out, and so on. That's what's missing: the education and organizing which makes it an understandable move. And, in fact, if we ever got to that point, you wouldn't even need it, because the US could be brought in line with international opinion."
The time-line seems very close to what you sketch below. There was no epiphany, and it wasn't sudden. It was a long-drawn out process, which by the late 70s and early 80s had gained enormous popular support, elite support as well. Pressure for the Sullivan principles was in 1977, but the movement really didn't take off until the 1980s. That was after decades of serious educational and organizing work.
However, there is a fundamental difference between South Africa and Israel. In the case of South Africa, the goal was to undermine Apartheid. In the case of Israel, the goal is to end the decisive military, diplomatic, and ideological US support for Israel -- more narrowly, to bring the US to support the international consensus on a two-state settlement that the US had blocked, unilaterally, for over 30 years. If that happens, Israel will have to go along. So BDS directed against Israel is a very seriously misleading tactic, which absolves the US, the major actor in this affair.
If organizing and education reached the level of opposition to Apartheid, BDS would be beside the point (as well as misdirected), because it would by then be able to shift US rejectionism.
Noam Chomsky
Friday, January 23, 2009
Ask Chomsky to Think Again About Divestment
Dear Professor Chomsky,
I’ve long been a huge admirer of yours, and I remain so. I heard you on Democracy Now this morning and really appreciated how clearly you articulated the gap between what President Obama said and what needs to happen in order to have a genuine and just peace.
On the issue of divestment, however, I really must take issue with your statement. You are right, of course, that education and organizing are necessary for a divestment campaign to be effective and comprehensible. But you are wrong to imply that the movement for divestment from South Africa did not begin until that organizing and education had already taken place. You are helping to perpetuate the myth that everyone in the U.S. and other countries in the global North always opposed apartheid and came to the divestment solution simultaneously, in some kind of epiphany. And this is very harmful to the young people who are now getting involved in the movement for justice in Palestine, making them feel that they are up against insurmountable odds.
I well remember the movement for justice in Southern Africa. I entered college in the fall of 1976, months after the Soweto uprising, and the first wave of campus divestment actions consumed my college years. I remember sitting in lecture halls and listening to well-reasoned, liberal professors explaining why divestment was the wrong tactic, that it would be morally wrong for Oberlin College to divest, that we needed to use constructive engagement. I remember that the U.S. government’s position was that the ANC was a terrorist organization and that Mandela needed to renounce violence before the South African government could be pressured to negotiate.
We were largely unsuccessful during that period, as you will recall. It was not until ten years later, 1986, that colleges began divesting in large numbers – only three years before the fall of the apartheid regime. The struggle for divestment, boycott and sanctions against South Africa took a very long time, and the U.S. government and major U.S. institutions joined it very late.
Yes, we who want justice in Palestine need to do education and organizing, but divestment/boycott itself is a tool for education and organizing. When you ask a church, union or college to divest from Israel, you are of course going to have teach-ins and panels and all manner of activities to educate people about why divestment is necessary. When you ask consumers not to buy L’Oreal or Sara Lee, you are going to hand out fliers and pamphlets and do street theater to show them what the connection is between their hair care products and tanks and checkpoints.
As one of the most influential intellectuals in this country, and one of those who have done the most to bring the issue of U.S./Israeli colonialism into the light, you are in a unique position to influence how people think about this issue. Therefore, I urge you to carefully consider the issue of divestment/boycott and why you are reluctant to embrace what have unquestionably been the most effective pressure and organizing tactics of our time.
A South African friend wrote to me the other day, “here in South Africa, we can’t find any white people who voted for the apartheid ... sometimes I wonder if apartheid was just a figment of our collective imaginations ... inshallah zionsim will suffer the same fate.”
I believe we can make it happen. The first step is reminding people that yes, apartheid did exist and yes, people did support it and yes, people did refuse to oppose it vigorously and yes, all that changed because people refused to be deterred.
With sincere admiration for all you have done,
Kate Raphael
I’ve long been a huge admirer of yours, and I remain so. I heard you on Democracy Now this morning and really appreciated how clearly you articulated the gap between what President Obama said and what needs to happen in order to have a genuine and just peace.
On the issue of divestment, however, I really must take issue with your statement. You are right, of course, that education and organizing are necessary for a divestment campaign to be effective and comprehensible. But you are wrong to imply that the movement for divestment from South Africa did not begin until that organizing and education had already taken place. You are helping to perpetuate the myth that everyone in the U.S. and other countries in the global North always opposed apartheid and came to the divestment solution simultaneously, in some kind of epiphany. And this is very harmful to the young people who are now getting involved in the movement for justice in Palestine, making them feel that they are up against insurmountable odds.
I well remember the movement for justice in Southern Africa. I entered college in the fall of 1976, months after the Soweto uprising, and the first wave of campus divestment actions consumed my college years. I remember sitting in lecture halls and listening to well-reasoned, liberal professors explaining why divestment was the wrong tactic, that it would be morally wrong for Oberlin College to divest, that we needed to use constructive engagement. I remember that the U.S. government’s position was that the ANC was a terrorist organization and that Mandela needed to renounce violence before the South African government could be pressured to negotiate.
We were largely unsuccessful during that period, as you will recall. It was not until ten years later, 1986, that colleges began divesting in large numbers – only three years before the fall of the apartheid regime. The struggle for divestment, boycott and sanctions against South Africa took a very long time, and the U.S. government and major U.S. institutions joined it very late.
Yes, we who want justice in Palestine need to do education and organizing, but divestment/boycott itself is a tool for education and organizing. When you ask a church, union or college to divest from Israel, you are of course going to have teach-ins and panels and all manner of activities to educate people about why divestment is necessary. When you ask consumers not to buy L’Oreal or Sara Lee, you are going to hand out fliers and pamphlets and do street theater to show them what the connection is between their hair care products and tanks and checkpoints.
As one of the most influential intellectuals in this country, and one of those who have done the most to bring the issue of U.S./Israeli colonialism into the light, you are in a unique position to influence how people think about this issue. Therefore, I urge you to carefully consider the issue of divestment/boycott and why you are reluctant to embrace what have unquestionably been the most effective pressure and organizing tactics of our time.
A South African friend wrote to me the other day, “here in South Africa, we can’t find any white people who voted for the apartheid ... sometimes I wonder if apartheid was just a figment of our collective imaginations ... inshallah zionsim will suffer the same fate.”
I believe we can make it happen. The first step is reminding people that yes, apartheid did exist and yes, people did support it and yes, people did refuse to oppose it vigorously and yes, all that changed because people refused to be deterred.
With sincere admiration for all you have done,
Kate Raphael
Monday, December 15, 2008
Rethinking Leadership Paradigms
The other day I was reading an article by Merle Woo, which laid out the following proposition, “…the most oppressed shall lead in the movements for radical social change because being at the bottom, their perspective is the most clear, and, out of necessity, their conscious vision is a militant and collective one.” (Merle Woo in Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray)
Running across this bold statement made me reflect on the paradigm embraced, or at least espoused, by most of the groups I have worked with over the last 20 years or so. I myself have taken the position articulated by Woo as pretty much unquestionable. But recently, I’ve started to think about whether one, this really IS our working paradigm, and two, whether in fact it should be. I want to stress that I’m not trying to attack anyone or misrepresent what is said or what’s meant by it, and I am not saying that this is necessarily not what we should strive for. What I am doing is looking back on some of the work I’ve been involved in, and asking myself what I’ve learned. I’m not at all interested in turning my back on the analysis of power and privilege within our movements, as well as in the larger world. I am interested in refining how we use that analysis to create movements that are powerful and sustainable.
One of the first objections that someone not well versed in the “unlearning racism” world view might make is that a model that says middle-class white people can’t be in leadership isn’t fair to them. I would try to explain to them that fairness doesn’t really exist in the society we inhabit, and that we who are white, middle or upper class and able bodied have been reaping the benefits of unfairness for so long, we need to put our personal feelings aside for the greater good. I would still say that, but I would also mention that most of the people I’ve explained that to over the years are not still hanging around social change movements. Well, you may say, that’s fine, if they aren’t willing to step back, they’re not really interested in change. That’s the part I’m not so sure about.
It’s not about fairness, it’s about efficacy. In my experience, people who are not the most oppressed but believe themselves to be capable of leadership will not stay in movements where they don’t feel their skills and energy are welcome. To be sure, some of them are people we wouldn’t want anyway, people who don’t have nearly as much knowledge as they think they have, people who if they did get to lead, would tell us why we have to use a marketing approach, or work within the Democratic Party, or whatever. But some of them are people who have a lot to bring to a social change movement, who do understand and recognize that it’s not always appropriate for them to be the spokespeople, who are happy to stuff envelopes and do the heavy lifting, but who also have strong opinions about what should happen, based on years of experience in social movements. They are not going to find it satisfying to be a cheering section for people who do know more about being oppressed, but may know less about building effective and sustainable movements. Since nothing requires them to stay, they are going to leave.
Just to keep this from sounding like a straw man argument, I want to give a concrete example. Since I’m not talking about my own experience, I have changed some of the details, but the basic facts are true. A friend of mine in New York joined a collective that was working to improve conditions for women in prison. My friend is a middle-aged white lesbian, from a middle-class background, who has worked as a teacher for a long time and been active in her union, as well as a lot of other political work. The organization she joined was initiated by a combination of young queer people of color and older white women, and nearly everyone except my friend worked for some kind of nonprofit. The group wanted its leadership should reflect the people most affected by the prison industrial complex: people of color, trans people, and former prisoners. My friend agreed with this. The group also decided that white women in the group needed to participate in an antiracist caucus meeting once a month. My friend went to it a few times and found the level of discussion not that interesting to her, as someone who has done a lot of reading and participated in a lot of study groups about racism. She’s very busy, works a full-time job and has meetings nearly every night. She ended up deciding that there wasn’t enough for her to do to in the group to make it worth going to three meetings a month – two regular meetings and the antiracist caucus meeting, especially since once the group got some funding, most of the work was being done from the office, which was only open during the hours when she was working. Last I heard, everyone but the three paid staff people had also left that particular group.
Now I am a fan of antiracism discussion groups; this example is not a way of dissing them. But they have to serve a clear goal of the organization where they are happening, and they should not be anyone’s primary work in the organization. In my friend’s case, what drew her to the group was a desire to work in a multicultural women’s organization and to oppose the incarceration state. She ended up feeling that she wasn’t doing either; she was mostly getting to know the other white women, and talking to each other about racism wasn’t actually making any difference for women in prison.
The flip side is that often – not always – the people who do stay will not be the people you want. They will be people who are glad for others to take all the responsibility and do the hard work while they reap the cache of being the cool white (straight, male) person. Stuffing envelopes is a lot easier than making phone calls to create networks, going to speak to other organizations, or creating action plans. If I can go stuff envelopes and make coffee a few hours a month and then tell my friends about what a good anti-racist I am, why wouldn’t I do it? The young women of color can work 80 hours a week trying to build the organization and move it toward its goals. And if they don’t succeed, no one can blame me because I was just respecting their leadership.
The next problem with defining our groups as led by the most oppressed is that it encourages lying. First there’s the petty form of lying – lying about our own oppression. People misrepresenting their class backgrounds is probably the most common, but we’ve all met white people who claimed to be people of color, straight people who “identified as” queer, “young” people who were pushing 40. But none of these is as big a problem as the much more common form of lying – lying about who is really the leadership of our movements. I’ve been to lots of meetings that were very careful to have young people of color running the meetings, with middle-aged white people calling the shots behind the scenes, planning the agendas, bringing the materials, getting the funding, ultimately even hiring the staff.
But of course, that’s okay, because they’re the “good” white (old, middle-class) people.
The problem with the “good privileged people” category is that it’s quite finite. I have nothing but respect for Tim Wise; he’s smart, funny, honest, a great speaker, an interesting writer. He is also making his living by being the best straight white guy in the country. You might be as brilliant and sincere and clear as Tim Wise, but you can’t be the good straight white guy, because he’s pretty much got the market cornered. White men who go to listen to Tim Wise and get inspired can’t sign up to become just like him, because face it, none of us want to be spending that much of our time listening to straight white guys talk about their privilege. So what do people who get inspired do?
A parable (please note that this parable is hypothetical/composite and NOT meant to be read as criticism of any actual people or organizations): Once upon a time there were some very good white people. They were passionate about ending racism, so they joined a group of mostly people of color. Then some of their white friends saw what they were doing and saw that it was good. So they wanted to join too. But then the people of color said, “Well, now there are so many white people, this does not feel like our group any more.” So the good white people said, “What shall we do?” and someone said, “White people are the problem. You must work with them, to spread the news about racism.” And the good white people created a workshop, and they saw that it was good. So they made an organization to do more workshops, and the people who did well in those workshops were encouraged to go out and make their own workshops and before long there was a whole workshop industry. And these workshops were turning out people who had learned a lot of theory and a lot of skills to deconstruct racist dynamics in organizations, but the problem was, there were not enough multicultural organizations for them to use those skills in. Because if everyone joined the same groups, then those groups would become white-dominated. So they formed their own organization, the Good White People’s Organization to End Racism. And suddenly it started not to seem so good. In fact, it started to feel almost white supremacist. Which of course was not their goal, so they dissolved it. And most of the Good White People went home and wondered what they could do about racism. And there they remain.
This is an oversimplification, but I think some of you will recognize the paradox. There’s a fine line between working on your own shit, and segregation.
The third problem with “leadership of the most oppressed” is that it leads to the oppression sweepstakes. This is what we’ve seen with a vengeance in the aftermath of the November elections: Obama’s victory combined with the passage of Proposition 8 and other anti-gay-marriage initiatives has given some white gay people (especially men, in my observation) the notion that gay oppression has suddenly replaced African American oppression on the oppression ladder. False, but worse than false, wrong-headed. And that leads some straight people to argue that gay people are not oppressed at all, or that oppression based on sexual orientation is not as bad as racism, which is also false and wrong-headed. And EVERYONE LOSES. (Deeg wrote an excellent statement on this for the latest UltraViolet (coming soon to a website near you). Read it here.)
Of course Woo’s statement doesn’t presume a strict hierarchy. She’s not suggesting that we rank the working-class white transwoman versus the college educated heterosexual African American woman. But the idea of a “last shall be first” approach can lead us in that direction. And that can also give oppressed people a stake in hanging onto their own oppression. I mean, face it, if my place in a social change movement is based on my status as most oppressed, and my place in that movement is a strong part of my identity, I’m going to have pretty mixed feelings if the movement becomes so successful that I’m less oppressed. Maybe that’s not a big fear in terms of racism and class oppression in this country, but I think it was a factor in drawing some white gay men with AIDS to become AIDS deniers in the nineties, rather than taking retrovirals and getting better. It is certainly a reason mainstream Jewish organizations are constantly on the prowl for “the new anti-Semitism.” (Once again, I do not mean to imply that gay men with AIDS are no longer oppressed or that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in our society.)
Finally, and probably most importantly, this leadership model can put an unfair burden on the most oppressed. If there is commitment to leadership by people of color, and a group doesn’t have many, then those who come in have to assume leadership whether they’re ready or not. If I come into a new group, I can sit at the back and check it out for a while, and no one is very likely to even ask my name, let alone urge me into leadership. Friends who are people of color have gone to check out groups and found that people are all over them. One friend reported that at her first meeting of a certain group, she was offered the chance to represent the group at a conference in Europe. While the attention might be flattering at first, most activists of color quickly realize that they’re being tokenized. They know people can’t be overwhelmed by their talent if no one even knows them, and no one wants to be chosen for the color of their skin (except maybe Clarence Thomas). On the other hand, sometimes people who are not that experienced find themselves very quickly pushed into leadership without the kind of mentorship that would help them use it successfully.
None of this means that we should forget about racism and other forms of oppression in our movements. It’s not meant to suggest that people of color, working class people, trans people, disabled people should not be the leadership of our social change movements. White people, class-privileged people, and men need to be very conscious of how much space we take up in mixed groups. When we think we’re sharing power, usually we’re dominating. Some years ago, there was a study which showed that when girls participate equally with boys in classes, everyone – male and female, students and teachers – believes the girls are talking much more than the boys. I don’t know of a study like that about racism, but I’m quite sure it would come out the same. I’m also willing to bet that in just about any racially mixed group, if you counted the minutes everyone talks, you would find white people talk at least three-fourths of the time.
We do need to step back, but we also need to be sure we’re giving all we can to the movements we are in, and think about how we can support many different types of leaders. I think we all need to consider whether rather than operating by an inverse hierarchy, it’s possible to build movements which model true democracy and equality.
Running across this bold statement made me reflect on the paradigm embraced, or at least espoused, by most of the groups I have worked with over the last 20 years or so. I myself have taken the position articulated by Woo as pretty much unquestionable. But recently, I’ve started to think about whether one, this really IS our working paradigm, and two, whether in fact it should be. I want to stress that I’m not trying to attack anyone or misrepresent what is said or what’s meant by it, and I am not saying that this is necessarily not what we should strive for. What I am doing is looking back on some of the work I’ve been involved in, and asking myself what I’ve learned. I’m not at all interested in turning my back on the analysis of power and privilege within our movements, as well as in the larger world. I am interested in refining how we use that analysis to create movements that are powerful and sustainable.
One of the first objections that someone not well versed in the “unlearning racism” world view might make is that a model that says middle-class white people can’t be in leadership isn’t fair to them. I would try to explain to them that fairness doesn’t really exist in the society we inhabit, and that we who are white, middle or upper class and able bodied have been reaping the benefits of unfairness for so long, we need to put our personal feelings aside for the greater good. I would still say that, but I would also mention that most of the people I’ve explained that to over the years are not still hanging around social change movements. Well, you may say, that’s fine, if they aren’t willing to step back, they’re not really interested in change. That’s the part I’m not so sure about.
It’s not about fairness, it’s about efficacy. In my experience, people who are not the most oppressed but believe themselves to be capable of leadership will not stay in movements where they don’t feel their skills and energy are welcome. To be sure, some of them are people we wouldn’t want anyway, people who don’t have nearly as much knowledge as they think they have, people who if they did get to lead, would tell us why we have to use a marketing approach, or work within the Democratic Party, or whatever. But some of them are people who have a lot to bring to a social change movement, who do understand and recognize that it’s not always appropriate for them to be the spokespeople, who are happy to stuff envelopes and do the heavy lifting, but who also have strong opinions about what should happen, based on years of experience in social movements. They are not going to find it satisfying to be a cheering section for people who do know more about being oppressed, but may know less about building effective and sustainable movements. Since nothing requires them to stay, they are going to leave.
Just to keep this from sounding like a straw man argument, I want to give a concrete example. Since I’m not talking about my own experience, I have changed some of the details, but the basic facts are true. A friend of mine in New York joined a collective that was working to improve conditions for women in prison. My friend is a middle-aged white lesbian, from a middle-class background, who has worked as a teacher for a long time and been active in her union, as well as a lot of other political work. The organization she joined was initiated by a combination of young queer people of color and older white women, and nearly everyone except my friend worked for some kind of nonprofit. The group wanted its leadership should reflect the people most affected by the prison industrial complex: people of color, trans people, and former prisoners. My friend agreed with this. The group also decided that white women in the group needed to participate in an antiracist caucus meeting once a month. My friend went to it a few times and found the level of discussion not that interesting to her, as someone who has done a lot of reading and participated in a lot of study groups about racism. She’s very busy, works a full-time job and has meetings nearly every night. She ended up deciding that there wasn’t enough for her to do to in the group to make it worth going to three meetings a month – two regular meetings and the antiracist caucus meeting, especially since once the group got some funding, most of the work was being done from the office, which was only open during the hours when she was working. Last I heard, everyone but the three paid staff people had also left that particular group.
Now I am a fan of antiracism discussion groups; this example is not a way of dissing them. But they have to serve a clear goal of the organization where they are happening, and they should not be anyone’s primary work in the organization. In my friend’s case, what drew her to the group was a desire to work in a multicultural women’s organization and to oppose the incarceration state. She ended up feeling that she wasn’t doing either; she was mostly getting to know the other white women, and talking to each other about racism wasn’t actually making any difference for women in prison.
The flip side is that often – not always – the people who do stay will not be the people you want. They will be people who are glad for others to take all the responsibility and do the hard work while they reap the cache of being the cool white (straight, male) person. Stuffing envelopes is a lot easier than making phone calls to create networks, going to speak to other organizations, or creating action plans. If I can go stuff envelopes and make coffee a few hours a month and then tell my friends about what a good anti-racist I am, why wouldn’t I do it? The young women of color can work 80 hours a week trying to build the organization and move it toward its goals. And if they don’t succeed, no one can blame me because I was just respecting their leadership.
The next problem with defining our groups as led by the most oppressed is that it encourages lying. First there’s the petty form of lying – lying about our own oppression. People misrepresenting their class backgrounds is probably the most common, but we’ve all met white people who claimed to be people of color, straight people who “identified as” queer, “young” people who were pushing 40. But none of these is as big a problem as the much more common form of lying – lying about who is really the leadership of our movements. I’ve been to lots of meetings that were very careful to have young people of color running the meetings, with middle-aged white people calling the shots behind the scenes, planning the agendas, bringing the materials, getting the funding, ultimately even hiring the staff.
But of course, that’s okay, because they’re the “good” white (old, middle-class) people.
The problem with the “good privileged people” category is that it’s quite finite. I have nothing but respect for Tim Wise; he’s smart, funny, honest, a great speaker, an interesting writer. He is also making his living by being the best straight white guy in the country. You might be as brilliant and sincere and clear as Tim Wise, but you can’t be the good straight white guy, because he’s pretty much got the market cornered. White men who go to listen to Tim Wise and get inspired can’t sign up to become just like him, because face it, none of us want to be spending that much of our time listening to straight white guys talk about their privilege. So what do people who get inspired do?
A parable (please note that this parable is hypothetical/composite and NOT meant to be read as criticism of any actual people or organizations): Once upon a time there were some very good white people. They were passionate about ending racism, so they joined a group of mostly people of color. Then some of their white friends saw what they were doing and saw that it was good. So they wanted to join too. But then the people of color said, “Well, now there are so many white people, this does not feel like our group any more.” So the good white people said, “What shall we do?” and someone said, “White people are the problem. You must work with them, to spread the news about racism.” And the good white people created a workshop, and they saw that it was good. So they made an organization to do more workshops, and the people who did well in those workshops were encouraged to go out and make their own workshops and before long there was a whole workshop industry. And these workshops were turning out people who had learned a lot of theory and a lot of skills to deconstruct racist dynamics in organizations, but the problem was, there were not enough multicultural organizations for them to use those skills in. Because if everyone joined the same groups, then those groups would become white-dominated. So they formed their own organization, the Good White People’s Organization to End Racism. And suddenly it started not to seem so good. In fact, it started to feel almost white supremacist. Which of course was not their goal, so they dissolved it. And most of the Good White People went home and wondered what they could do about racism. And there they remain.
This is an oversimplification, but I think some of you will recognize the paradox. There’s a fine line between working on your own shit, and segregation.
The third problem with “leadership of the most oppressed” is that it leads to the oppression sweepstakes. This is what we’ve seen with a vengeance in the aftermath of the November elections: Obama’s victory combined with the passage of Proposition 8 and other anti-gay-marriage initiatives has given some white gay people (especially men, in my observation) the notion that gay oppression has suddenly replaced African American oppression on the oppression ladder. False, but worse than false, wrong-headed. And that leads some straight people to argue that gay people are not oppressed at all, or that oppression based on sexual orientation is not as bad as racism, which is also false and wrong-headed. And EVERYONE LOSES. (Deeg wrote an excellent statement on this for the latest UltraViolet (coming soon to a website near you). Read it here.)
Of course Woo’s statement doesn’t presume a strict hierarchy. She’s not suggesting that we rank the working-class white transwoman versus the college educated heterosexual African American woman. But the idea of a “last shall be first” approach can lead us in that direction. And that can also give oppressed people a stake in hanging onto their own oppression. I mean, face it, if my place in a social change movement is based on my status as most oppressed, and my place in that movement is a strong part of my identity, I’m going to have pretty mixed feelings if the movement becomes so successful that I’m less oppressed. Maybe that’s not a big fear in terms of racism and class oppression in this country, but I think it was a factor in drawing some white gay men with AIDS to become AIDS deniers in the nineties, rather than taking retrovirals and getting better. It is certainly a reason mainstream Jewish organizations are constantly on the prowl for “the new anti-Semitism.” (Once again, I do not mean to imply that gay men with AIDS are no longer oppressed or that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist in our society.)
Finally, and probably most importantly, this leadership model can put an unfair burden on the most oppressed. If there is commitment to leadership by people of color, and a group doesn’t have many, then those who come in have to assume leadership whether they’re ready or not. If I come into a new group, I can sit at the back and check it out for a while, and no one is very likely to even ask my name, let alone urge me into leadership. Friends who are people of color have gone to check out groups and found that people are all over them. One friend reported that at her first meeting of a certain group, she was offered the chance to represent the group at a conference in Europe. While the attention might be flattering at first, most activists of color quickly realize that they’re being tokenized. They know people can’t be overwhelmed by their talent if no one even knows them, and no one wants to be chosen for the color of their skin (except maybe Clarence Thomas). On the other hand, sometimes people who are not that experienced find themselves very quickly pushed into leadership without the kind of mentorship that would help them use it successfully.
None of this means that we should forget about racism and other forms of oppression in our movements. It’s not meant to suggest that people of color, working class people, trans people, disabled people should not be the leadership of our social change movements. White people, class-privileged people, and men need to be very conscious of how much space we take up in mixed groups. When we think we’re sharing power, usually we’re dominating. Some years ago, there was a study which showed that when girls participate equally with boys in classes, everyone – male and female, students and teachers – believes the girls are talking much more than the boys. I don’t know of a study like that about racism, but I’m quite sure it would come out the same. I’m also willing to bet that in just about any racially mixed group, if you counted the minutes everyone talks, you would find white people talk at least three-fourths of the time.
We do need to step back, but we also need to be sure we’re giving all we can to the movements we are in, and think about how we can support many different types of leaders. I think we all need to consider whether rather than operating by an inverse hierarchy, it’s possible to build movements which model true democracy and equality.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
An Open Letter to Naomi Klein
Dear Naomi Klein,
Thanks so much for your incredibly brilliant work. With The Shock Doctrine, you have given me a great framework for understanding the current economic and political crises. Now, however, listening to you on Democracy Now three times in the last few weeks, I would like to make a suggestion.
Those of us who listen to DN! are well familiar with your critique, familiar enough to do it for ourselves. So next time they call you, why not say, “You know what? I don’t really have anything to add to what I’ve said the last few times I’ve been on. Here are some names of women economists and policy researchers you haven’t interviewed. Try to get one of them.” (In the event you don't have such a list, I'd be glad to share mine with you. I just interviewed two of them on KPFA-Pacifica.)
That’s step one. Here’s step two:
Get together with all the other really smart, well respected experts you’ve been on panels with recently. Make a video of yourselves laying out a progressive – not radical – program of action – things you would like to see the Obama administration do that they might actually consider doing (e.g., put Paul Krugman on the economic team; suspend or repeal the time limits for welfare recipients who can’t get jobs; sign the Employee Free Choice Act; don’t use a bailout of the auto industry to crush the unions; etc.). Post the video on YouTube and post the link on every blog or website you can post to. Ask every blogger you are in touch with to post the links on their blog. Make it go viral. Make sure the Obama team sees it. Demand a response from them.
Step three: Put out a press release letting the mainstream media and the alternative media know what you’ve done. Make noise! The story: progressive economic analysts are using the technologies popularized by the Obama campaign to change the direction of the Obama administration. Keep on them until they cover you.
This is not meant as an empty challenge. The administration is moving to the right so far so fast because they know the right is a threat, and they know the left isn’t. I am unwilling to spend the next four years the way I’ve spent the last eight – shaking my head and feeling hopeless while I listen to the news. The time for critique is past; the time for action is now.
Your sister in struggle,
Kate Raphael
Monday, November 17, 2008
Reflections on Elections
Election night caught me by surprise. A week or so before the election, I read an article that said that people were experiencing unprecedented anxiety during this election season. They were not able to sleep, and while not sleeping, were reading more and watching more news and pseudo-news that was increasing their anxiety over what might happen. I shared that sense of dread and anticipation. I was terrified about the election being stolen; I was terrified of what the reaction to that might be, and what the reaction of the government to any reaction by African Americans was sure to be. I was obsessed by the fear of what would happen to Barack Obama if he were elected, and how people would react to that and the reaction to the reaction … More than anything, I was terrified of a McCain-Palin presidency, quite simply afraid that the world could not survive it.
Through most of election season, I did absolutely nothing except read and talk to my friends. But in the last weeks I threw myself into the campaign against Proposition 4, a California ballot initiative attempting – for the third time – to force teens to notify their parents before obtaining an abortion. The polls showed Prop. 4 likely to pass, and I was terrified about what that would mean for thousands of girls like I had once been, who felt they could never tell their parents if they became pregnant. (Currently in California, a pregnant teen can qualify for “confidential services,” a wonderful category that too few Californians know about, which means she can get whatever services she needs [whether termination or prenatal care] without her parents knowing, and she can qualify for Medi-Cal based only on her own assets, not her parents’.)
The one thing I wasn’t worried about was Proposition 8 passing. First of all, I don’t really care about gay marriage, and not just because I haven’t had a girlfriend in seven years. When I was in college, I thought marriage was an archaic institution that was on its way out, and one of the big disappointments of my adult life has been watching more and more of my alternative friends go through various kinds of marriage rites. In terms of the pragmatic reasons people give for why marriage is so important, there are much better ways to get health care for all, a just immigration policy, support for children and old people, than tying them to what type of sexual or romantic relationship someone happens to be in. And secondly, I was sure that Prop. 8 wasn’t going to pass. All along, the polls showed it behind though gaining, plus the youth vote was going to be a big factor in this election, and according to everything you hear, youth don’t care about people’s sexual orientation.
I spent most of election day holding a No on 4 sign 100 feet away from my polling place. I was standing next to the people holding No on 8 signs, who were much better organized than we were. All day people ‑ mostly African Americans, because most of the neighborhood is African American – drove or walked by and gave them the thumbs up, and a lot of them asked me, “Which one is Prop. 4?” And when I told them, some of them said, “Oh, I don’t know about that, I have a daughter.” I gave them our talking points and hoped that in two minutes I could convince them their daughters would be safer if they could make their own decisions around what to tell them about their sex lives. Even a lot of the No on 8 people asked me which one Prop. 4 was.
So my first surprise on election night came at 8:01 here, when the numbers flipped from 207 to 274 and the banner started to roll: “Barack Obama elected president of the United States.” I was not by that time surprised at the news, because we had been watching it for an hour and a half and we knew that he was going to win. I was surprised by the sheer elation I felt. Two friends and I walked out onto the balcony and started screaming, hoping to start a collective cheer but only resulting in someone calling down from upstairs, “Is everyone okay?”
And then the other returns started coming in and the first surprise was a good one – Prop. 4 was losing. When early returns showed Prop. 8 ahead, we didn’t worry too much – it was early, these were early voters, it didn’t count San Francisco or Alameda County … but as the night wore on and the numbers stayed pretty much the same, I was shocked to realize how devastated I was. Because this wasn’t about marriage. You can decorate it any way you want, but it comes down to the fact that people don’t think we’re as good as they are. A majority of California voters don’t think that I should have the same rights they have, and the fact that marriage is not a right I am interested in exercising doesn’t matter. We went to the Castro and wandered around, watching the huge TV screen they had set up in the street, and it was a bizarre mix of overpowering joy and gnawing sadness. Bizarre because neither was anything I would have told you that morning I would be feeling.
A week or so before election day, I had decided I was going to vote for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney for President. After all, Obama was going to carry California, and McKinney’s platform was everything I could ask for. I had to turn off every debate after a few minutes, because I couldn’t bear hearing Obama rant about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, the need to send more troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan, or his unwavering commitment to Israel’s military strength. Then I went to New Orleans. On Sunday, I went to a second line in Central City, and just about every person there was wearing Obama on their body. A woman had on an Obama dress, Obama’s face wrapping around her curvaceous body in a halo of glitter. Someone was giving out fans proclaiming, “Vote First & Be the Change,” which provided a surprising amount of information about how to protect your voting rights. To all of those people, it would have made no difference that McKinney is also African American. To virtually all of them, a vote for McKinney would have been a vote against Obama, and a vote against Obama meant you didn’t want a Black man to be president. Because they have had the experience of voting for a Black person who couldn’t win. I voted for Obama because, very simply, I feel that African Americans have the right to be disappointed by a president they chose.
I know very well that African American politicians can be just as disappointing as white politicians. I lived through the Willie Brown era in San Francisco and am living right now in the hugely disappointing Ron Dellums era in Oakland. The only Black girl in my elementary school was Lynn Wilder, whose father Doug became Virginia’s first Black governor, and trust me, it wasn’t a good period for the state.
When Obama named Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, people in my circles immediately started sending around information about Emanuel’s hard-core Zionist background, the fact that his father was in the Irgun (the infamous Jewish terrorist movement in pre-1948 Palestine), and I got annoyed because it seemed like an inverse of the sort of “But is it good for the Jews?” mentality I grew up with. The chief of staff is responsible for a lot more than Israel/Palestine policy and nothing that Obama has said in the last six years has left any doubt about how good his administration was (not) going to be for the Palestinians. But then I learned that Emanuel is an ultra-successful investment banker, was the largest recipient of campaign donations from hedge funds and financial institutions … it’s not good news. Neither is the fact that one of Obama’s top economic advisers is Robert Rubin, who as Clinton’s treasury secretary started off the deregulation that set up the current financial and economic crisis.
Yesterday I went to the big rally in San Francisco to protest the passage of Prop. 8. It was a pretty good unity event, with speakers like Rev. Amos Brown, an African American former county supervisor who has at times been pretty anti-gay. There were great signs like “No More Mr. Nice Gay”, “Another Str8 Against H8” and “Two Nice Girls In Love = REALLY SCARY.” There were also some really offensive ones like “Black Is the New Gay.” You might think that all the white guys carrying that sign would at least pause to wonder why they didn’t see any Black people carrying it, or if not, you might at least think the fact that a Black lesbian yelled at them that they didn’t have Black skin so they have no idea what it’s like would cause them to think, but not so. We argued with them until we were hoarse and frustrated, but they just couldn’t get what’s wrong with expropriating someone else’s struggle. There were also a lot of signs saying, “Chickens Have More Right Than Gays” or “Chickens 1, Gays 0,” referring to the passage of Proposition 2, giving farm animals the right to turn around. Next time I go to one of these things, I’m going to carry a sign saying, “Queers Rights = Animal Rights.” (Some Israeli friends of mine are in a group called One Struggle, that is a largely queer anti-occupation animal rights group.)
Despite all these conflicts, I feel hopeful. I can’t help it. It feels like a huge cloud has lifted. I believe Obama is a supreme opportunist. I read Dreams from My Father a few years ago, and the person who wrote that book was a lot more progressive than the guy who is about to be president. So I believe he changed his politics to get elected, and that makes it hard to trust him.
The good thing about opportunists is that they sway with the wind. And that means it’s up to us, the progressive movements, to create a huge wind.
Code Pink plans to demonstrate at his house in Chicago for the next two months. That’s a mistake. But it’s not a mistake because Obama shouldn’t be pressured or criticized, or because, as one friend said, “Obama hasn’t done anything yet.” He has done plenty. His appointments speak loudly, as do statements he made during the campaign. It’s a mistake because one, it’s something only a small group of full-time activists can do, and two, they have not built broad support for such actions. It will make people who like Obama, especially African Americans, see the left as old racist nay-sayers, and will make Obama feel embattled before he gets started.
A better approach would be to target every Democratic congressperson or senator for the next two months. That is something everyone can do wherever they live, in whatever manner works for them, and it puts the people who depend on our votes on notice that we’re watching them, not just Obama. For eight years, we in San Francisco have heard from Nancy Pelosi’s staff, “It’s not us, it’s the Republicans. We’re with you. If only we had the majority, we would do what you want. If only we had the White House, we’d make change.” Okay, you’ve got the majority and you’ve got the White House. Let’s see it.
The left needs to get it together, and fast. The people who work on every issue, from health care to green jobs to prison abolition to housing rights to welfare, need to get together and come up with a 100 days agenda for the new administration and the new Congress, and we need to get it out there using all the communication technologies whose power the Obama campaign proved.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the constitution. All the big civil rights groups have announced campaigns to “Restore the Constitution”. Well the constitution is more than the Bill of Rights, though goddess knows, that is something that needs to be restored in a hurry. The preamble to the constitution says something about promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Civil rights are more than freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Civil rights include the right to housing, the right to food, the right to some leisure time, the right to education, the right to love whom we choose and marry them if we insist, the right not only to survive but to thrive. If we can convince the ACLU and CCR to make this part of their 100 Days to Restore the Constitution campaigns, and if we all unite behind that campaign, then I think we have a chance to get things off to a better start.
Through most of election season, I did absolutely nothing except read and talk to my friends. But in the last weeks I threw myself into the campaign against Proposition 4, a California ballot initiative attempting – for the third time – to force teens to notify their parents before obtaining an abortion. The polls showed Prop. 4 likely to pass, and I was terrified about what that would mean for thousands of girls like I had once been, who felt they could never tell their parents if they became pregnant. (Currently in California, a pregnant teen can qualify for “confidential services,” a wonderful category that too few Californians know about, which means she can get whatever services she needs [whether termination or prenatal care] without her parents knowing, and she can qualify for Medi-Cal based only on her own assets, not her parents’.)
The one thing I wasn’t worried about was Proposition 8 passing. First of all, I don’t really care about gay marriage, and not just because I haven’t had a girlfriend in seven years. When I was in college, I thought marriage was an archaic institution that was on its way out, and one of the big disappointments of my adult life has been watching more and more of my alternative friends go through various kinds of marriage rites. In terms of the pragmatic reasons people give for why marriage is so important, there are much better ways to get health care for all, a just immigration policy, support for children and old people, than tying them to what type of sexual or romantic relationship someone happens to be in. And secondly, I was sure that Prop. 8 wasn’t going to pass. All along, the polls showed it behind though gaining, plus the youth vote was going to be a big factor in this election, and according to everything you hear, youth don’t care about people’s sexual orientation.
I spent most of election day holding a No on 4 sign 100 feet away from my polling place. I was standing next to the people holding No on 8 signs, who were much better organized than we were. All day people ‑ mostly African Americans, because most of the neighborhood is African American – drove or walked by and gave them the thumbs up, and a lot of them asked me, “Which one is Prop. 4?” And when I told them, some of them said, “Oh, I don’t know about that, I have a daughter.” I gave them our talking points and hoped that in two minutes I could convince them their daughters would be safer if they could make their own decisions around what to tell them about their sex lives. Even a lot of the No on 8 people asked me which one Prop. 4 was.
So my first surprise on election night came at 8:01 here, when the numbers flipped from 207 to 274 and the banner started to roll: “Barack Obama elected president of the United States.” I was not by that time surprised at the news, because we had been watching it for an hour and a half and we knew that he was going to win. I was surprised by the sheer elation I felt. Two friends and I walked out onto the balcony and started screaming, hoping to start a collective cheer but only resulting in someone calling down from upstairs, “Is everyone okay?”
And then the other returns started coming in and the first surprise was a good one – Prop. 4 was losing. When early returns showed Prop. 8 ahead, we didn’t worry too much – it was early, these were early voters, it didn’t count San Francisco or Alameda County … but as the night wore on and the numbers stayed pretty much the same, I was shocked to realize how devastated I was. Because this wasn’t about marriage. You can decorate it any way you want, but it comes down to the fact that people don’t think we’re as good as they are. A majority of California voters don’t think that I should have the same rights they have, and the fact that marriage is not a right I am interested in exercising doesn’t matter. We went to the Castro and wandered around, watching the huge TV screen they had set up in the street, and it was a bizarre mix of overpowering joy and gnawing sadness. Bizarre because neither was anything I would have told you that morning I would be feeling.
A week or so before election day, I had decided I was going to vote for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney for President. After all, Obama was going to carry California, and McKinney’s platform was everything I could ask for. I had to turn off every debate after a few minutes, because I couldn’t bear hearing Obama rant about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program, the need to send more troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan, or his unwavering commitment to Israel’s military strength. Then I went to New Orleans. On Sunday, I went to a second line in Central City, and just about every person there was wearing Obama on their body. A woman had on an Obama dress, Obama’s face wrapping around her curvaceous body in a halo of glitter. Someone was giving out fans proclaiming, “Vote First & Be the Change,” which provided a surprising amount of information about how to protect your voting rights. To all of those people, it would have made no difference that McKinney is also African American. To virtually all of them, a vote for McKinney would have been a vote against Obama, and a vote against Obama meant you didn’t want a Black man to be president. Because they have had the experience of voting for a Black person who couldn’t win. I voted for Obama because, very simply, I feel that African Americans have the right to be disappointed by a president they chose.
I know very well that African American politicians can be just as disappointing as white politicians. I lived through the Willie Brown era in San Francisco and am living right now in the hugely disappointing Ron Dellums era in Oakland. The only Black girl in my elementary school was Lynn Wilder, whose father Doug became Virginia’s first Black governor, and trust me, it wasn’t a good period for the state.
When Obama named Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, people in my circles immediately started sending around information about Emanuel’s hard-core Zionist background, the fact that his father was in the Irgun (the infamous Jewish terrorist movement in pre-1948 Palestine), and I got annoyed because it seemed like an inverse of the sort of “But is it good for the Jews?” mentality I grew up with. The chief of staff is responsible for a lot more than Israel/Palestine policy and nothing that Obama has said in the last six years has left any doubt about how good his administration was (not) going to be for the Palestinians. But then I learned that Emanuel is an ultra-successful investment banker, was the largest recipient of campaign donations from hedge funds and financial institutions … it’s not good news. Neither is the fact that one of Obama’s top economic advisers is Robert Rubin, who as Clinton’s treasury secretary started off the deregulation that set up the current financial and economic crisis.
Yesterday I went to the big rally in San Francisco to protest the passage of Prop. 8. It was a pretty good unity event, with speakers like Rev. Amos Brown, an African American former county supervisor who has at times been pretty anti-gay. There were great signs like “No More Mr. Nice Gay”, “Another Str8 Against H8” and “Two Nice Girls In Love = REALLY SCARY.” There were also some really offensive ones like “Black Is the New Gay.” You might think that all the white guys carrying that sign would at least pause to wonder why they didn’t see any Black people carrying it, or if not, you might at least think the fact that a Black lesbian yelled at them that they didn’t have Black skin so they have no idea what it’s like would cause them to think, but not so. We argued with them until we were hoarse and frustrated, but they just couldn’t get what’s wrong with expropriating someone else’s struggle. There were also a lot of signs saying, “Chickens Have More Right Than Gays” or “Chickens 1, Gays 0,” referring to the passage of Proposition 2, giving farm animals the right to turn around. Next time I go to one of these things, I’m going to carry a sign saying, “Queers Rights = Animal Rights.” (Some Israeli friends of mine are in a group called One Struggle, that is a largely queer anti-occupation animal rights group.)
Despite all these conflicts, I feel hopeful. I can’t help it. It feels like a huge cloud has lifted. I believe Obama is a supreme opportunist. I read Dreams from My Father a few years ago, and the person who wrote that book was a lot more progressive than the guy who is about to be president. So I believe he changed his politics to get elected, and that makes it hard to trust him.
The good thing about opportunists is that they sway with the wind. And that means it’s up to us, the progressive movements, to create a huge wind.
Code Pink plans to demonstrate at his house in Chicago for the next two months. That’s a mistake. But it’s not a mistake because Obama shouldn’t be pressured or criticized, or because, as one friend said, “Obama hasn’t done anything yet.” He has done plenty. His appointments speak loudly, as do statements he made during the campaign. It’s a mistake because one, it’s something only a small group of full-time activists can do, and two, they have not built broad support for such actions. It will make people who like Obama, especially African Americans, see the left as old racist nay-sayers, and will make Obama feel embattled before he gets started.
A better approach would be to target every Democratic congressperson or senator for the next two months. That is something everyone can do wherever they live, in whatever manner works for them, and it puts the people who depend on our votes on notice that we’re watching them, not just Obama. For eight years, we in San Francisco have heard from Nancy Pelosi’s staff, “It’s not us, it’s the Republicans. We’re with you. If only we had the majority, we would do what you want. If only we had the White House, we’d make change.” Okay, you’ve got the majority and you’ve got the White House. Let’s see it.
The left needs to get it together, and fast. The people who work on every issue, from health care to green jobs to prison abolition to housing rights to welfare, need to get together and come up with a 100 days agenda for the new administration and the new Congress, and we need to get it out there using all the communication technologies whose power the Obama campaign proved.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is the constitution. All the big civil rights groups have announced campaigns to “Restore the Constitution”. Well the constitution is more than the Bill of Rights, though goddess knows, that is something that needs to be restored in a hurry. The preamble to the constitution says something about promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Civil rights are more than freedom of speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Civil rights include the right to housing, the right to food, the right to some leisure time, the right to education, the right to love whom we choose and marry them if we insist, the right not only to survive but to thrive. If we can convince the ACLU and CCR to make this part of their 100 Days to Restore the Constitution campaigns, and if we all unite behind that campaign, then I think we have a chance to get things off to a better start.
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