Joanna wrote: "I also think that the OWS rhetoric of 'color doesn't matter' -- or what comes across as that -- is not working for African Americans."
FM: I'm unfamiliar with examples of this "color blind" rhetoric from OWS. I am familiar with criticism of OWS from communities of color, some of it substantive, some of it not. But it's hard to say whether OWS is working for African Americans or not. What started as a mostly white protest movement became very quickly the most racially and class diverse spaces for protest that I've seen in my twenty-five of years of activism in NYC. Since the beginning of OWS not a day has gone by where the issue of racial justice and racism within the OWS movement hasn't come up... in the GA, in the Spokes Council meetings, in caucuses, in workshops. Still, all of that doesn't mean that OWS is or isn't working for African American or any other community that might be wary of joining a broad coalition where their struggles might be pushed to the background or ignored. At the same time, minority communities have their own entanglements with corporate and electoral power that also factor into their relationship to OWS.