Ferenc Molnar:
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.
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I wish I had read this before writing my post. This is excellent. But note that it is also vague: a virtue rather than a defect at this time. The issues broached here can probably be worked out only day by day in specific actions and organizations. OWS is not necessarily structured to come up against the kind of instances within which that day by day process can go on. OWS has changed the framework of thought and discourse: that is the core fact. Other foms of organization will emerge/have emerged.
There is independent Latino struggles going on at the present time and that makes White/Latino cooperation must easier. And failures of such cooperation can become the occasion for self-criticism and change.
Carrol