Gawd. Even today's very liberal, college-educated young white men and women are STILL unaware of the way they reproduce structures of racism through their language.
All that foundation funding apparently means zero!
> [Inspiring article by someone who challenged racism in the movement.
> -- Tj]
>
>
> So Real it Hurts - Notes on Occupy Wall Street
> http://www.leftturn.org/so-real-it-hurts-notes-occupy-wall-street
>
>
> I first went down to Occupy Wall Street last Sunday, almost a week
> after it had started. I didn't go down before because I, like many of
> my other brown friends, was wary of what we had heard or just intuited
> that it was mostly a young, white male scene. When I asked friends
> about it they said different things: that it was really white; that it
> was all people they didn't know; and that they weren't sure what was
> going on. But after hearing about the arrests and police brutality on
> Saturday, September 24th and after hearing that thousands of people
> had turned up for their march I decided I needed to see this thing for
> myself.
>
> So I went down for the first time on Sunday, September 25th with my
> friend Sam. At first we couldn't even find Occupy Wall Street. We
> biked over the Brooklyn Bridge around noon on Sunday, dodging the
> tourists and then the cars on Chambers Street. We ended up at Ground
> Zero and I felt the deep sense of sadness that that place now gives
> me: sadness over how, what is now in essence just a construction site,
> changed the world so much for the worse. I also felt a deep sense of
> sadness for all the tourists taking pictures of a place where many
> people died ten years ago which is now a testament to capitalism,
> imperialism, torture, and oppression.
>
> Sam and I get off our bikes and walk. We are looking for Liberty
> Plaza. We are looking for somewhere less alienating. For a moment we
> feel lost. We walk past the department store Century 21 and laugh
> about the killer combination of tourists, discount shopping and the
> World Trade Center.
>
> The landscape is strange. I notice that. We are in the shadow of half
> built buildings. They glitter and twist into the sky. But they also
> seem so naked: rust colored steel poking its way out of their tops and
> their sides, their guts spilling out for all to see.
>
> Liberty Plaza
>
> We get to Liberty Plaza and at first it is almost unassuming. We
> didn't entirely know what to do. We wandered around. We made posters
> and laid them on the ground (our posters read: “We are all Troy
> Davis”, “Whose streets? Our streets!”, and “Tired of Racism, Tired of
> Capitalism”). I didn't know anyone down there. Not one person. And
> there were a lot of young white kids. But there weren't only young
> white kids. There were older people, there were mothers with kids, and
> there were a lot more people of color than I expected, something that
> made me relieved. We sat on the stairs and watched everyone mill
> around us. There was the normal protest feeling of people moving
> around in different directions, not sure what to do with themselves,
> but within this there was also order: a food table, a library, a busy
> media area.
>
> Actually, there was order and disorder, organization and confusion. I
> watched as a man carefully changed his clothing, folding each piece he
> took off and placing them carefully under a tarp. I used the bathroom
> at the McDonalds up Broadway and there were two booths of people from
> the protest carrying out meetings, eating food from Liberty Plaza,
> sipping water out of water bottles, their laptops out. They seemed
> obvious yet also just part of the normal financial district hustle and
> bustle.
>
> But even though at first I didn't know what to do while I was at
> Liberty Plaza, I stayed there for a few hours. I was generally
> impressed and energized by what I saw. People seemed to be taking care
> of each other. There seemed to be a general feeling of solidarity,
> good ways of communicating with each other, less disorganization than
> I expected and everyone was very, very friendly. The whole thing was
> quite bizarre: the confused tourists not knowing what was going on;
> the police officers lining the perimeter; the mixture of young white
> kids with dreadlocks, anarchist punks, mainstream looking college
> kids, but also the awesome black women who were organizing the food
> station; the older man who walked around with his peace sign stopping
> and talking to everyone; a young black man named Chris from New Jersey
> who told me he had been there all week and he was tired but that he
> had come not knowing anyone, had made friends and now didn't want to
> leave.
>
> And when I left, walking my bike back through the streets of the
> financial district, fighting the crowds of tourists and men in suits,
> I felt something pulling me back to that space. It was that it felt
> like a space of possibility, a space of radical imagination. And it
> was energizing to feel like such a space existed.
>
> And so I started telling my friends to go down there and check it out.
> I started telling people that it was a pretty awesome thing, that just
> having a space to have these conversations mattered, that it was more
> diverse than I expected. And I went back.
>
> General Assembly
>
> On Wednesday night I attended my first General Assembly. Seeing 300
> people using consensus method was powerful. Knowing that a lot of
> people there had never been part of a consensus process and were
> learning about it for the first time was powerful. We consensed on
> using the money that was being donated to the movement to bail out the
> people who had been arrested. I was impressed that such a large group
> made a financial decision in a relatively painless way.
>
> After the General Assembly that night there was both a talent Show
> (“this is what a talent show looks like!”) on one side of the Plaza
> and an anti-patriarchy working group meeting (which became the
> safer-spaces working group) on the other. In some ways the
> juxtaposition of both these events happening at once feels emblematic
> of one of the splits going on in the square: talent shows across from
> anti-patriarchy meetings; an announcement for a zombie party right
> after an announcement about the killing of Troy Davis followed by an
> announcement that someone had lost their phone.
>
> Maybe this is how movements need to maintain themselves, by
> recognizing that political change is also fundamentally about everyday
> life and that everyday life needs to encompass all of this. There
> needs to be a space for a talent show across from anti-patriarchy
> meetings. There needs to be a food table, medics, and a library.
> Everyone needs to stop for a second and look around for someone's
> phone. And that within all this we will keep talking about Troy Davis
> and how everyone is affected by a broken, racist, oppressive system.
> Maybe, maybe this is the way?
>
> I went to the anti-patriarchy meeting because even though I was
> impressed by the General Assembly and its process I also noticed that
> it was mostly white men who were in charge of the committees and
> making announcements and that I had only seen one women of color get
> up in front of everyone and talk. A lot was said at the
> anti-patriarchy meeting about what was safe and wasn’t safe in the
> occupied space. Women talked about not feeling comfortable in the drum
> circle because of men dancing up on them and how to change this, about
> how to feel safe sleeping out in the open with a lot of men that they
> didn't know, about not-assuming gender pronouns and asking people
> which pronouns they would prefer.
>
> Here is the thing though: I've had these conversations before, I'm
> sure a lot of us in activist spaces have had these conversations
> before, the ones that we need to keep having about how to make sure
> everyone feels comfortable, how to not assume gender pronouns and
> gender roles. But there were plenty of people in this meeting who
> didn't know what we were doing when we went around and asked for
> people's names and preferred gender pronoun. A lot of people looked
> taken aback by this, who stumbled through it, but also looked
> interested when we explained what we were doing. They listened to the
> discussion and then joined the conversation about what to do to make
> sure that Occupy Wall Street felt like a space safe for everyone.
> People who said that they had similar experiences and were glad that
> we were talking about it.
>
> This is important because I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is
> right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in
> which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is
> and as it has been are coming together and thinking about ways to
> recreate it. For some people this is the first time they have thought
> about how the world needs to be recreated. But some of us have been
> thinking about this for a while now. Does this mean that those of us
> who have been thinking about it for a while now should discredit this
> movement? No. It just means that there is a lot of learning going on
> down there and that there is a lot of teaching to be done.
>
> Race
>
> On Thursday night I showed up at Occupy Wall Street with a bunch of
> other South Asians coming from a South Asians for Justice meeting.
> Sonny joked that he should have brought his dhol so we could enter
> like it was a baarat (Indian wedding procession). When we got there
> they were passing around and reading a sheet of paper that had the
> Declaration of the Occupation of Wall Street on it. I had heard the
> “Declaration of the Occupation” read at the General Assembly the night
> before but I didn't realize that it was going to be finalized as THE
> declaration of the movement right then and there. When I heard it the
> night before with Sonny we had looked at each other and noted that the
> line about “being one race, the human race, formerly divided by race,
> class...” was a weird line, one that hit me in the stomach with its
> naivety and the way it made me feel alienated. But Sonny and I had
> shrugged it off as the ramblings of one of the many working groups at
> Occupy Wall Street.
>
> But now we were realizing that this was actually a really important
> document and that it was going to be sent into the world and read by
> thousands of people. And that if we let it go into the world written
> the way it was then it would mean that people like me would shrug this
> movement off, it would stop people like me and my friends and my
> community from joining this movement, one that I already felt a part
> of. So this was urgent. This movement was about to send a document
> into the world about who and what it was that included a line that
> erased all power relations and decades of history of oppression. A
> line that would de-legitimize the movement, this would alienate me and
> people like me, this would not be able to be something I could get
> behind. And I was already behind it this movement and somehow I didn't
> want to walk away from this. I couldn't walk away from this.
>
> And that night I was with people who also couldn't walk away. Our
> amazing, impromptu, radical South Asian contingent—which stood out in
> that crowd for sure—did not back down. We did not back down when we
> were told the first time that Hena spoke that our concerns could be
> emailed and didn't need to be dealt with then. We didn't back down
> when we were told that again a second time and we didn't back down
> when we were told that to “block” the declaration from going forward
> was a serious thing to do, that if our block to the Declaration was
> not agreed upon by everyone present we would have to walk away. I
> knew it was a serious action to take, we all knew it was a serious
> action to take, and that is why we did it.
>
> I have never actually blocked something before. And the only reason I
> was able to do so was because there were 5 of us standing there and
> because Hena had already put herself out there and started shouting
> “mic check” until they paid attention. And the only reason that I
> could in that moment was because I felt so urgently that this was
> something that needed to be said.
>
> There is something intense about speaking in front of hundreds of
> people, but there is something even more intense about speaking in
> front of hundreds of people with whom you feel aligned and you are
> saying something that they do not want to hear. And then it is even
> more intense when that crowd is repeating everything you say-- which
> is the way the General Assemblies or any announcements at Occupy Wall
> Street work. But hearing yourself in an echo chamber means that you
> make sure your words mean something because they are being said back
> to you as you say them.
>
> And so when we finally got everyone's attention I carefully said what
> we felt was the problem: that we wanted a small change in language but
> that this change represented a larger ethical concern of ours. That to
> erase a history of oppression in this document was not something that
> we would be able to let happen. That we knew they had been working on
> this document for a week, that we appreciated the process and that it
> was in respect to this process that we wouldn't be silenced and that
> we demanded a change in the language. They accepted our change and we
> withdrew our block as long as the document was published with our
> change. I stepped down from the ledge I was standing on and Sonny
> looked me in the eye and said “you did good” and I've never needed to
> hear that as much as then.
>
> Worth it
>
> After the meeting ended we found the man who had written the document
> to remind him that he needed to take out the part about us all being
> “one race, the human race.” But it’s “scientifically true,” he told
> us. He thought that maybe we were advocating for there being different
> races? No we needed to tell him about privilege and racism and
> oppression and how these things still existed, both in the world and
> someplace like Occupy Wall Street.
>
> Let me tell you what it feels like to stand in front of a white man
> and explain privilege to him. It hurts. It makes you tired. Sometimes
> it makes you want to cry. Sometimes it is exhilarating. Every single
> time it is hard. Every single time I get angry that I have to do this,
> that this is my job, and that it shouldn't be my job. Every single
> time I am proud of myself that I've been able to say these things
> because I used to not be able to and because some days I just don't
> want to.
>
> This all has been said by many, many strong women of color before me
> but every time, every single time these levels of power are confronted
> it I think it needs to be written about, talked about, gone through
> over and over again.
>
> And this is the thing: that there in that circle, on that
> street-corner we did a crash course on racism, white privilege,
> structural racism, oppression. We did a course on history and the
> declaration of independence and colonialism and slavery. It was hard.
> It was real. It hurt. But people listened. We had to fight for it. I'm
> going to say that again: we had to fight for it. But it felt worth it.
> It felt worth it to sit down on a street corner in the Financial
> District at 11:30 pm on a Thursday night, after working all day long
> and argue for the changing of the first line of Occupy Wall Street's
> official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. It felt worth
> it not only because we got the line changed but also because while
> standing in a circle of 20, mostly white men, and explaining racism to
> them, carefully and slowly spelling out that I as a woman of color
> experience the world way differently than the author of the
> Declaration, a white man; that this was not about him being personally
> racist but about relations of power; and that he urgently needed to
> listen to and believe me about this
this moment felt like a victory
> for the movement on its own.
>
> And this is the other thing. It was hard, and it was fucked up that we
> had to fight for it in the way we did but we did fight for it and we
> won. The line was changed, they listened, we sat down and re-wrote it
> and it has been published with our re-write. And when we walked away,
> I felt like something important had just happened, that we had just
> pushed a movement a little bit closer to the movement I would like to
> see-- one that takes into account historical and current inequalities,
> oppressions, racisms, relations of power, and one that doesn't just
> recreate liberal white privilege but confronts it head on. And if I
> have to fight to make that happen I will. As long as my people are
> there standing next to me while I do that.
>
> Later that night I biked home over the Brooklyn Bridge and I somehow
> felt like the world was, just maybe, at least in that moment, mine, as
> well as everyone dear to me and everyone who needed and wanted more
> from the world. I somehow felt like maybe the world could be all of
> ours.
>
> Manissa McCleave Maharawal is a doctoral student in the Anthropology
> department at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also a longtime New
> York City based activist.
>
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