To me, this is the role we play, no? We come up against internal contradictions, ones we already understand, and help people understand them as systemic and systematic, not the product of individuals or some pathology. Some of the internal contradictions we've already seen.
-- Cop violence exposes it as systemic, not an aberration
-- Profiling demonstrators exposes racial profiling as systemic
Any discussion of these two things will naturally expose structural racism, it will reveal to people, some of whom see this for the first time, as an instance where, in the past, they accepted police behavior as justified and that they do so against people who "aren't like them." (this, of course, ties into the prison debate). They start to realize that maybe they were wrong, that what they thought was normal, acceptable, just the way it is, isn't so at all. That there's something profoundly wrong with demanding that protestors be treated like human beings because "they're not doing anything wrong."
At some point during such processing within political action, radicalization happens. You start to say, why should anyone, no matter what they've done, not be treated as a human being? and once you can start seeing how that the normalizing operations of class society are where oppression lies, then you can see it everywhere - not that it will always be so easy.
I think that perhaps what we come up against is impatience? People see this mass of people willingly to lay their bodies on the line and they want a fighting force, right now?
Some expectation that people should have more of a radical analysis, right now? Of not wanting to wait for people to learn? Or perhaps a discomfort with the messiness - because it could go either way? A fear of failure?
Carrol wrote: <> The attacks on the sit-down strikers in the '30s emphasized lack of <> cleanliness. No proper bathing facilities in the factories. <> <> Carrol <> <> -----Original Message----- <> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org <> [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] <> On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb <> Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 1:41 PM <> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org <> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] New School occupation <> <> eric quoted: <> <> "Much of the repression of this movement has been conducted under <> the <> <> pretense of public health and safety. <> <> Not to take away from the message, but this reminded me of something I <> thought of as I was reading tweets of people complaining that they <> were being profiled if they looked like a protestor. <> <> A lot of the twitter chatter mentioned dirty, filthy, scruffy, <> pierced, tattooed, body odor, bad breath, etc. One twitterer <> encouraged people to "be smart. Look respectable. Get rid of the <> piercings, hide the tats." <> <> It reminded me of a conversation we had here long ago, on the process <> of racialization, how social antagonism constantly generates this sort <> of marking of the body, attempting to give these marks significance, <> to see to it that they are read one way. Angela M had a great post <> analyzing how class was racialized this way. It occurred to me that, <> if this were war, you'd see this kind of marking of the bodies of the <> enemy capital wants to put down. <> <> The language of disease, health, filth, safety, sanitation and the <> need to *clean* the parks was especially, uh, interesting. <> <> This jumped out at me when I saw clips of O'Reilly who was on about <> needles, drugs, sex, sickness, mental illness, etc. - as if he were <> defining the vermin that needed to be exterminated. you can also see <> it in tweets from conservatives who oppose Occupy. They focus on the <> filth and the deviant bodies. <> <> And yes, with Angela, I think it's interesting to see the way what a <> person does to their body - hair, clothes, piercings, tats - is an <> integral part of this. Normally, we think of racialization involving <> specific features we think of as part of the *body* - hair, eyes, <> skin. But watching this racialization happening now, it's utter <> arbitrariness, sheds light on the process - on racialization as <> process. <> <> shag <> <> -- <> http://cleandraws.com <> Wear Clean Draws <> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO) <> <> <> ___________________________________ <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk <> <> ___________________________________ <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk <>
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)