I think Milloy provided the best answer to the question about race. I could post it on my website if anybody wants to read it. It's probably buried now behind the Post's fee barrier.
I'm glad that Njoki brought up point 2 because these discussions (and the criticisms from newspaper pundits) to some extent "disappear" activists of color and invalidate the actions of those who *did* attend A16 or were involved in the organizing. Among my circle of local anarchist and activist friends, there were people of color like Javi, who participated in working groups and on A16 hung out with the Anarchist Soccer League affinity group. There was my good friend Kadd, who is of a mixed background, some of which includes Native American. He did a lot of work in the scenario working group, was in the ASL affinity group, and got arrested at the A17 line crossing. There was Nisha, a woman from India, whom I've helped put on the National Conference on Civil Disobedience. She ran the the Welcome Center at the Convergence Space and was arrested when the fire department closed down the Convergence Space.
There were people of color at A16, if anybody had bothered to look around. Yes, there should be more, but let's not cheapen the participation of those who worked hard to make A16 successful!
Chuck0
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> [I asked Njoki Njoroge Njehu, the director of the U.S. 50 Years Is
> Enough campaign, to comment on the ColorLines piece, and the
> subsequent commentary here. Here's her response. By the way, Njoki is
> neither white nor American - she's Kenyan.]
>
> I started a response to Colin Rajah, but I didn't finish it yet, I
> have to go out of country for two weeks and I am a little STRESSED
> OUT!!! I'm going to try to finish it on my flight and hopefully will
> find a way to email it out and posted on a couple lists.
>
> A couple of points though:
>
> (i) We end up expending lots of energy responding and being
> bean-counters to prove that there was effort and resources put
> towards outreach to people of color;
>
> (ii) Yes, there were few of us "People of Color", and the article and
> the 'discussions' are being very successful in "disappearing" us. And
> I for one greatly resent this! Any one who knows me, I am sure also
> knows that I/50 Years Is Enough (and we were not alone in this) went
> to great extent to ensure diversities (race, class, gender,
> geography, etc.) Of course we could have done BETTER!