Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

http://kloncke.com/2012/04/14/letter-to ... ist-holla/

Letter To David Banner (Or, Why Mindful Queer Sex Is Hotter Than A Feminist Holla)

Some comments:

Crunch
April 20, 2012 7:56 pm
I want to pose a question about this particular blog post because I think that it would be good to have a full discussion around post and thoughts like this- where there are so many identities and experiences intersecting.
I remember being in high school and listening to David Banner speak about Black Power and the need for kids like myself to organize. I remember not even knowing who he was because of how removed I was from mainstream culture. My friend told me that he was the rapper who penned the song “real girls get down on the floor” – a standard hot mess rap song, deeply entrenched in patriarchy. Some of the kids atmy school called him out and pointed out the contradiction of him calling for Black unity and movement while he was actively taking part in the oppression/ suburdination of Black womyn. He couldn’t speak much more in his favor. This is important because Banner- like all of us has his contradictions.
Men struggle with patriarchal thought and ideology in ways similar to white people and white privilege. Part of the process of moving towards a collective liberation is over coming that and its hard. As a man I have struggled to overcome alot of socialization and I value my feminist praxis and using it as a tool to cut through the conditioning and what not. I also value the times where my privilege was checked – otherwise I wouldn’t b able to grow. We must confront our privilege.
It becomes problematic to me however when there seems to be no thought about compassion and historical experiences when we confront others who are speaking from places of privilege. I think i’m ready to see people engage with patriarchy and thoughts of the like in a manner that does not just attack. The humanizing of privileged peoples positions and statements would be nice, especially when we’re talking about Black men, who have historically been apart of a racist witch-hunt. Black men commit real violence but where does that come from? I believe that it comes from a particular kind of conditioning that we undergo combined with a horrifying racial oppression.
The author of this seems to not know or care about this. Attacking Black men is easy. It’s so simple and usually supported by the entire culture- lest we forget that this country has made the Black Male body a target for destruction. But it’s also like placing a band-aid on gaping wound. You are doing little to nothing because you are not addressing the root of the issue. Dialogue like this, in my opinion, continues in the racist tradition of this country and seems like more critical engagement might be needed.

chakaZ
April 21, 2012 10:08 am
‎Thank you Crunch for sharing your thoughts and encouraging a discussion around the complexities of these issues and the emotions that arise. I had a lot of uncomfortable feelings around this post, which relate to a lot of what you say here,
“It’s so simple and usually supported by the entire culture- lest we forget that this country has made the Black Male body a target for destruction. But it’s also like placing a band-aid on gaping wound. You are doing little to nothing because you are not addressing the root of the issue. Dialogue like this, in my opinion, continues in the racist tradition of this country and seems like more critical engagement might be needed.”
It is dangerous to speak about the black male patriarch divorced from the conditions that made him; it is dangerous to speak of the black male patriarch divorced from any compassionate understanding of how this socialization is the source of his oppression. Why are we putting our energy into highlighting black male rappers, still, as the main reproducers of patriarchy, when there continues to be systematic state violence committed to brown/black/gendered bodies. Don’t they have a relationship? To speak of black male patriarchy within the mainstream rap world without an understanding of its relationship bourgeois patriarchal culture, leads us to believe that the problem lies in black men and not the system. How are these positions any different then the historical racist arguments that position black men as the sole rapist of society. HELLO! ‘Birth of A Nation’ The KKK, these arguments are not new. And with no systemic analysis, the arguments within this blogpost are drifting close to the patriarchal racists capitalist foundation of this country.
So, am I saying that we cannot critique David Banner? No. But I think Crunch is right when he says that he is ready to see these conversations go down in a manner that is not an attack. Black men are my brothers and they have contradictions like us all. I grew up in a home with a tremendous amount of violence being committed by my father. As hard and traumatic and as angry as I was for a long time because of it, I always carried love and compassion for my father. I saw the humanity in him. Growing up as a black man in this country is violent and oppressive. I saw my father struggle with state violence; I saw him struggle with my mom to pay the bills; I saw him struggle with crack addiction; I saw him be ripped apart from us through numerous stays in prison; I saw him struggle to express his emotions, something systematically denied to him, which often led to his bursts of violence. I watched him through these struggles as I read about the conditions of our people and the struggles they waged to get free. I always understood that the contradictions within my father were not solely of his own making, but represented the foundations of this white-supremacist patriarchal capitalist system.
To not highlight the system as the source of our gendered oppression is to only strengthen its rule over us all.

skyla
April 21, 2012 10:34 am
Hi Crunch,
Mm, I appreciate the points you’re raising. Looking through your blog, you’ve obviously thought and written a lot about these issues in informed and inspiring ways. And I agree with you: the world certainly doesn’t need more vilification of Black men as hypersexual, violent predators. I guess I’m surprised, though, that you read this as an attack on Black men, or even on David Banner. I definitely honor that it came across that way to you, and I’d like to know more about that. For the sake of my understanding and grounding the conversation, would you mind pointing to the specific parts where something written (or left unwritten) gave you the impression of an attack?
When you say, “there seems to be no thought about compassion and historical experiences,” and I think you mean that there wasn’t enough context about the vilification & “witch hunts” of Black men that shapes a lot of how the world sees them, and how they are forced to navigate a hostile, capitalist, white supremacist (and basically anti-Black -except for entertainment value-) world. Navigate it in ways that include their experiences with sex, or sometimes with women. I hear that, and I think you’re right that more context would hedge against the racist tendencies toward scapegoating Black men. But again I’m surprised that you didn’t find *any* of that in the piece. When I give Banner props for his words about Trayvon Martin, and the violence Black men endure because the ruling class is afraid that Black people will rise up against them, I’m being sincere. When I link the words “bestselling, mainstream narrative of [male misogyny]” to an article about a white man’s popular books, that’s an intentional redirecting of scrutiny away from hip-hop to the arguably more insidious white pop terrain. (Was trying to take a cue from Byron Hurt there, in how he looks critically at violence and misogyny in hip-hop but also points out that it merely reflects (rather than causeing) the violence and misogyny of white culture.) And when I compliment Banner’s sex-positivity and attention to consent, I mean it.
When you say that “Black men commit real violence” but ask us to consider how that is conditioned (in a violent capitalist world that continually re-traumatizes and dehumanizes people of color), I agree. And I think I should have spoken more directly to that issue somewhere, because it haunts every single critical engagement with Black masculine sexuality. True. At the same time, why I’m surprised by the strength of your feeling is that this engagement with Banner is not about him being violent. It’s about him seeming to have worked through some of his patriarchal conditioning, which is great, but at the same time also replicating other, more subtle aspects of misogyny that flatten people of all genders. And also it’s about trying to offer some tools (Audre Lorde’s eroticism; trans politics) to move us all (cus let’s be real, Banner probly won’t read this) toward a sexual praxis that helps make everyone more and more safe, recognized, supported in their pleasure and desires, and staunchly resistant to the systemic forces that commodify our sexuality, our humanity. (In different ways, according to gender, race, class, (dis)ability, region, age, religious context, and who we do or don’t have sex with, and how we do it or don’t do it.)
When I imagine saying any of what I wrote to Banner’s face, I don’t imagine a hostile confrontation. In my head this was a pointed but basically friendly conversation with someone who is putting his complex ideas out there on the major platforms he has access to.
So I guess that’s all I’ll say right now. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts if you feel like it would be worth your time, and I want to thank you for what you wrote — not “thank you” in a way to patronize, minimize or neutralize the criticisms, but out of respect and appreciation for your positions, and where you’re coming from, and your revolutionary goals. I hear that this piece may have unwittingly perpetuated anti-Blackness, even if that wasn’t my intention. I regret that. Like you said about patriarchy, that kind of call-out helps me be sharper on overcoming the racism instilled in me.
appreciation,
skyla

skyla
April 21, 2012 12:43 pm
Hi chakaZ, didn’t mean to ignore you, I guess your comment came up while I was replying to Crunch. I hear your emphasis on the ways that unless you bring explicit, multiple-layers-of-oppression context to your critique of Black masculinity, you automatically perpetuate the assumption of Black men as violent aggressors who must be dealt with: which means, in practice, either terrorized into labor or locked up for profit. And I’ll bear that in mind, to address that more explicitly, if I ever write more on these issues. I’m sorry to have minimized the complexity of Black masculinity, and Black men’s subjectivity and struggles for freedom in a racist, structurally violent world.
Relatedly, thank you for sharing your story about your father. It definitely illustrates the ways that blaming individuals can distract from recognizing and struggling with the bigger issues. Systemic patterns and material forces that shape us as people. And yet as you say, love is still in there. Engagement on a personal level is what enriches us as people who are able to hold both compassion and a critical eye, motivated by the hope that things don’t have to be this way; they can be better. For us and our loved ones; for everyone.
For me, that’s where concepts of the erotic, gender self-determination, and beginner’s mind can open up possibilities for inspiring radical change on a systemic level. What if people insisted on the right to live our erotic, irrational selves, rather than be forced for survival’s sake into constant dehumanizing rational labor that insists on dictating our gender *and* is always getting sped up? This could be an inspiration to get rid of “work” as we know it, as Grace Lee Boggs says, or to transform work into a process that supports discovery, and “beginner’s mind,” rather than the stressed-out, body-breaking, dehumanizing hustle that is survival for most people on the planet. (Let alone non-human beings.) We see some examples of people taking this approach, like the “slow food movement” as a challenge to agrobusiness, but unless we push to change things at a system level (like beyond policy reform) those choices and social experiments will only be available to a select few.
Katie and I talk about this kind of stuff sometimes, and even though it didn’t make it into the original post I’m thankful that you brought up the systemic question. There’s a lot I want and need to learn. For this piece specifically, I hope it might contribute to an idea of what more healthy, healing, and pro-liberation sexuality can look like: adding to the discussion that Banner brings up in his video interview.
I feel you in that unless a piece on sexuality includes explicit systemic analysis, it tends to automatically reinforce the idea that sex is somehow divorced from structural systems — who works where and how; distribution of medical and other resources; systematic theft of land and bodies; forcing people to sell our bodies in various ways, including sexualized ways; state violence, terrorism, and training of acceptably gendered workers — and exists ‘purely’ as culture, or as individual choices or behaviors. So I agree, reason and analysis needs to get in there somewhere: especially if we were talking about violence among Black men, which is already so loaded. But again, I’m surprised that you saw the piece as an attack on Banner, or as painting him as violent (in the way most people think of Black male violence in our racist sexist capitalist society), although I respect that that’s how it came across to you, and will continue to reflect on that. It would help me if you could point to things I wrote (in addition to things I didn’t write) that gave you that reading.
As far as focusing on David Banner in particular, when I watched those videos of him I thought he seemed like a particularly interesting and nuanced public figure to engage with. He seems very charismatic, many people know who he is, and his job as an artist is to stir up feeling, so people already approach discussions about his work from that generative nonrational place — although it seems like he also encourages his audience to theorize as well. I hear you on the pattern of picking on Black male rappers, or rappers in general, and I agree with you, like I said to Crunch, that a pop entertainer like Tucker Max is on a whole other level of horrible misogynistic violence that reflects the violence of the system we live in. My intention in engaging in a friendly, critical way with Banner’s work was that I’d like to help make more and more conversations about queering and liberating sexuality on a level that’s very relatable and familiar to a lot of people, if that makes sense.
This might be one of many ways. I hear that it didn’t resonate with you and that you found dangers and problems in it, and I appreciate you expanding on the problems you see. I’ll continue to reflect on what you’ve written. In any case, I appreciate the dialogue and hope it might have some beneficial contribution to more radical sex education, or continual re-education, learning and unlearning, within the sea of oppression we’re swimming in, and trying to come ashore from.
This blogging thing is intense! Much to think on.
peace and appreciation,
skyla

henrymills
April 21, 2012 7:48 pm
I found this article to be pretty positive. I had recently read another article about how guys should go down on a girl. I was pretty entertained by it. Reminded me of being a curious teenager and looking for a window into what sex was/ should be like. I grew with the same images Banner did. With the same ones he’s reproducing.
So I found it refreshing to read, “ultimately it becomes about marketing a repertoire of sexual skills, with no need to demonstrate responsiveness, mindfulness, and openness to the many permutations of sexuality that might actually exist!”
Wish the younger me had this piece of wisdom.
I don’t feel attacked by this letter as I’m guessing Banner wouldn’t either. Credit is given where its due. Its more of a reaching out than a witch hunt.
Crunch, Chakaz, while I agree with the points you are making, they seem almost independent from the text at hand.
Skyla, I don’t think I could have responded more gracefully. Thank you for your positivity!



Crunch
April 22, 2012 5:18 pm
*the above article has some typos. my bad, here is corrected version.
I feel as though this article was not written with care. point blank. it has a sarcastic tone without a structural, social, or systemic analysis of where patriarchy in the black community comes from. When writing about communities about people it is important to take matters seriously if you are being serious. Talking about Black men and patriarchy is a serious matter. Using language that can be perceived as appropriating (“holla”) in the same article where you show no care for a member of the community that that language is socially attached to is not care. I am offended by this work.
I believe that there is also a problem with the subject of this letter being david banner for the fact that I see these quasi, half formed polemics against Black celebrity figures as useless. all they do is go with the current of racist thought and speech against Black folk. If you really wanted to talk about patriarchy then logic tells me that I need to go beyond Banner as a source. Also, why choose Banner? Are there no other white men saying things equally sexist things on air? that makes me think that it was just easier to choose Banner to focus in on because he’s a Black man. And a rapper. and the society teaches us to hate/ fear Black men.
I believe that you acknowledge this. maybe you should re-vise the article.



http://kloncke.com/2012/04/14/letter-to ... /#comments

[American Dream]

http://occupytheory.org/read/why-i-step-back.html

WHY I STEP BACK

Joey M.

You may be feeling confusion because of how we communicate at the New York City General Assembly and related movements. I am writing this because it is not the job of traditionally marginalized voices (i.e. female, queer, black, etc.) to educate dominant voices (i.e. white, male, heterosexual, etc.) about systems of oppression. It is the job of dominantly-voiced allies like me to do so. We call this “Step up/ step back.”

Nobody wants to stifle anyone else's energy, but as dominant voices we often do so unintentionally. I was not raised in anything resembling a "PC" household, but I have been learning to step back and build healthy dialogue. Never let yourself be judged for circumstances of your birth, but if you feel someone is judging you consider that a perfect opportunity to step back and practice compassion. Many of our brothers and sisters are judged and marginalized on a daily basis.

The purpose of this list is to reveal the systems of power that give dominant voices like mine privilege in our traditional social discourse, and to help all allies understand when, why, and how to STEP BACK and empower traditionally marginalized voices to STEP UP.

-I expect some level of authority because of my education.

-I feel comfortable using academic terminology.

-I have always been told that my voice is important.

-As soon as I have something to say, I feel like I should say it.

-When I speak, I expect not to be interrupted.

-I was taught that aggressive speech is admirable.

-Every time I personally feel slighted, I am inclined to demand justice.

-I often feel that I represent "we" and I hear marginalized voices as "they."

-My voice sounds like most voices in the media.

-Most leaders look like me and I feel comfortable leading and expect others to follow.

-People know how to address my gender identity.

-I normally feel that my good intentions justify my words and actions.

-When there is a crowd, I instinctively move to the front.

-When there is a conflict, I want to be involved whether or not I have anything to contribute.

-I often feel that others need and want my help.

-My voice is never eclipsed by my sexual objectification

-I do not fear violent reactions.

-My native language is the only language I ever need.

-I was raised to expect people to respond to insensitivity with a sense of humor.

-I have never been admonished for excellence.

-When I am eloquent and knowledgeable I am never called "feisty" or "uppity."

-I expect the police and government to serve me, and I feel comfortable engaging in arguments with them.

-I am more interested in what is said than how it is said.

-I sometimes view conversations as having winners and losers.

-I am inclined to talk mostly about things I'm interested in or proud of.

-I am naturally more interested in conversing to report, plan, or act than to build rapport.

-I normally value data over personal experience.

-I was raised to value muscle and intellect but not spirituality or compassion and I often expect my values to be the norm.

-I use the word “I” a lot.

-Most metaphors and expressions are relevant to my culture.

-I never feel judged for my sexual orientation, and it is considered normal for me to express my sexuality.

-No hate speech exists that would dehumanize me or my heritage.

-People assume I have money and a lawyer.

-I love to work, think, and act alone.

-The status quo largely accepts and feels comfortable with me.

-When I look at groups of people, I might not immediately notice if most of them are white men.

-People value my time and don't expect me to console them or listen to their personal problems.

-People often are reluctant to share their opinions with me if they don't think I'll agree.

[American Dream]

http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/rel ... ationships

Love and Race

Modern love can be summed up in one quick status update: It's complicated. In the first of a three-part series, we explore the role race plays in relationships.



MIXED BLESSING

Half-black, half-white — how one woman discovered her romantic color-blind spot —By Anna Holmes



You are a girl who looks like the world," a friend once told me. I knew what she meant: My caramel-colored skin and curly hair, the product of a '70s-era marriage between a white Midwestern woman and a black Southern man, marked me as the living embodiment of the triumph of love at the time.

I was raised to be open-minded and curious. And my biracial heritage gave me a vantage point to see the world from different perspectives. But in my late teens and early 20s, this didn't prevent me from assuming my own racial blind spots, especially when it came to love. Turns out that the girl who "looked like the world" had a very muddled view of it. I didn't know who I was, or whom to trust.

When darker-skinned men wanted to date me, I assumed it was because they considered me a trophy for my light skin. It reminded me of seeing so many successful and powerful black males — politicians, businessmen, entertainers — who appeared alongside lighter-skinned, sometimes white female companions. Tokenism? It wasn't for me, so I either outright rejected black men or begrudgingly went on dates with them only to write them off well before the dessert course arrived.

Caucasian men were another problem: I didn't believe they saw me as a potential romantic partner, given that I knew so few white male/black female couples. And although I socialized and worked with white men, the romantic relationships I entered into with them were brief and unremarkable. I didn't trust them either, assuming they saw me as a novelty, as a way to sample another culture, or as a stand-in for all black women.

In hindsight, my distrust of men didn't get me far. I hadn't yet learned that giving others the benefit of the doubt was an important part of finding love, both from others and within myself. I was ignorant that appearances could be both deceiving and alienating — that my racialization of romance kept me at arm's length from deeper intimacy. Not trusting that white or black men would see beyond my skin color let me stay apart, aloof, even a little superior. It gave me an excuse to overlook the fact that I had trust issues with all men, that my hesitations and presumptions were less about fears of being rejected and more about my anxieties over really being seen.

Eventually I got over myself. In my mid-30s, I met and married a dark-haired white Australian. He was well-acquainted with interracial relationships — two of his sisters had babies with men of color — and was generally less concerned with appearances than I was. "Look, I'm darker than you!" he once pointed out after I'd tried — and failed — to get a tan while on vacation. It was a joke, but it was also true. I winced a little: The irony was not lost on me.



"NEVER MARRY A MEXICAN"

A Mexican-American recalls her dad's advice —By Michele Serros



The plan was to not marry a Mexican. Don't believe me? I have proof: a letter I wrote to "my future daughter" when I was 11 years old. There it is, in proper preteen cursive handwriting:

"When I grow up, I'm going to marry a surfer with blond hair and brown eyes. He's not going to be a Mexican."

Before you judge me, know that I'm a Mexican-American myself. And that I never rejected my heritage altogether. As a child in Oxnard, California, a coastal town near Malibu, I loved hearing my father recite the works of 19th-century poet Amado Nervo, eating chicharrones (fried pork skins) as an after-school snack, and showing off my limited Spanish slang. But as much as I treasured those memories I felt only a Mexican family could create, my parents — especially my dad — told me that, for my own good, I should look outside of our culture for love.

One day when I was 8 years old, I tagged along with my dad to his job as a janitor at the city airport. Even I could see that he seemed invisible. Although he had worked there for three years, many people didn't know his name. By comparison, the tall white pilots strolled through the airport with purpose, commanding respect. My father nodded to them and told me, "That is the kind of man you want to marry. A white man."

My parents' relationship only underscored that message. For 18 years, I heard them argue about my father's salary, which wasn't enough to afford my mom the lifestyle she wanted. Eventually, those fights tore their marriage apart. To avoid my mother's fate and to live a prosperous life, I knew what to do: not marry a man like my dad.

Throughout my 20s, I followed my parents' advice, dating only white guys. When I was 30, I fell in love with — and married — a white man who was an aspiring rock star. He wasn't rich and his career wasn't exactly father-approved. But my husband embodied excitement and opportunity, and he embraced my culture, learning Spanish.

Ultimately we weren't compatible, and our marriage ended after two years. With divorce papers in the works, I flew to New York City to emulate Erica Benton, Jill Clayburgh's character in the 1978 film An Unmarried Woman. Benton rediscovered love after her divorce. Maybe I could, too.

I moved to the predominantly Dominican area of Washington Heights, where meeting my white prince seemed unlikely. The guys who lived in my neighborhood were mostly newcomers to the United States, and as a fourth-generation Californian, I just couldn't relate. Through my job in publishing, I fell in with a mostly white crowd of creative types. And I spent most nights below 125th Street, in karaoke bars and at poetry readings.

After living in Manhattan for a decade, I had dated casually but hadn't met anyone who fit my husband model. From talking to my family in California, I knew that my younger female cousins were repeating the same pattern: They wanted so badly to emulate the roles played by Jennifer Lopez in films like Maid in Manhattan, Monster-in-Law, and The Wedding Planner — young Latinas who marry wealthy white men. But if I hadn't achieved that by my late 30s, was there any hope for my cousins?

On a trip to Berkeley, California, in the summer of 2010, a friend treated me to lunch at a vegan Mexican restaurant. As the handsome chef-owner took our order, he said he recognized me from back home. We had both attended Santa Clara High School, and Antonio confessed to having had a crush on me. I blushed as he recalled my teenage persona: a New Wave girl who "only hung out with the skinny white boys." I didn't remember him, but now, 25 years later, I was drawn to his lean build and intense eyes. When he asked me to lunch, I didn't overthink it — my plan was to not marry a Mexican, not avoid having lunch with one.

We spent the remainder of my weeklong trip together, talking late into the night over vegan tikka masala and red wine from Sonoma Valley. Since Antonio had a hectic work schedule, text messages flew back and forth between us when we couldn't be together. He was direct: Te quiero, te extraño — I want you, I miss you. And when he touched my nose — a feature I always disliked — and told me he loved it, I knew I was falling for him.

Antonio was turning around my perception of Mexican guys, but I could still hear my father's voice. At face value, Antonio represented everything I was told would block my success. He was the man who, despite all his accomplishments, embodied an ethnicity that would hold me back in life. And yet, I was a successful writer with a thriving social life and a new co-op apartment. I was struck by a realization: On my own, I had achieved the kind of life my father said only a white man could give me. This revelation freed me to be with the man I loved.

Within a month we told our friends that we wanted to get married. But the last hurdle was introducing him to my dad.

Antonio and I flew home to Oxnard for the big first meeting. On the morning Antonio met my father, he whipped up vegan pozole and tamales. Although an enticing aroma of chile California and corn tortillas enveloped the kitchen, I couldn't eat, I was so nervous about how my father would react. As they ate, my father was cordial yet reserved. I braced myself as he asked Antonio if he owned his own home and about his college education, and I could tell he was pleasantly surprised by Antonio's plans to expand his business to New York City. Soon my dad and Antonio were laughing about mutual friends from the old neighborhood. It was then that I finally exhaled. I had made my dad and myself happy at once.

Antonio and I were married this past June. While I no longer write letters to my future daughter, I now share a stepdaughter with Antonio from his previous relationship. And this is what I want her to know:

"Dear step-hija, I did not marry a surfer with blond hair and brown eyes. I married your dad, a Mexican just like us. And the best-laid plans are often the last thing you really need."



THE ASIAN THING

Want to date me? Fetishists need not apply —By Ji Hyun Lee



Sometimes men try to get my attention —By greeting me in Chinese: "Ni hao ma." If I tell them I'm Korean, they'll try Japanese: "Konichiwa." Perhaps they think all Koreans speak Japanese? My physical Asian-ness (fair skin, jet-black eyes, China-doll-round cheeks, and petite size) is apparently blinding — it's all they can see. In college, a boyfriend with a telltale string of Chinese ex-girlfriends asked me to try smoking a cigarette with my vagina — something he'd seen on an Asian porn site. (I dumped him.) Even in progressive New York City, I recently fended off a lecherous 40-something bus passenger who leaned in to tell me how "accommodating" he found the Korean girls who worked in the deli near his office. All my life, I've had to deal with guys with an "Asian thing" — men attracted to a stereotypical idea of Asian women: We're docile, hardworking lotus flowers —By day and sexual tigers —By night.

I haven't had that much experience with Asian men, I should point out. In fact, I've never dated one. Part of it may be that Asian guys rarely hit on me, perhaps because many aren't raised to be assertive with women. But I also haven't been interested in them, maybe because of how I was socialized: I tend to be attracted to aggressive men and often perceive Asian guys as passive. (I know, I know — I need to work on my own stereotyping!) But I've found myself in a dating pool of mostly white men, many of whom have offensive, clichéd views — in a word, fetishists.

It's a problem faced —By many women I know. Karen Lee, a 28-year-old Korean-American marketing executive in New York City, has unwittingly dated so many fetishists that she's edited her online dating profile to remove any mention of her race because a friend told her that "guys search for those words and then go through all the associated girls." But her tactics have been only so successful. After meeting one cute new guy, she checked his Facebook page and found that all of his newest friends were Asian women. "That was a red flag," says Lee. Now she's guarded. "Every time someone messages me, I wonder if it's because I'm Asian."

Lena Chen, 22, recalls a boyfriend who said he was into her because Asian girls were thinner, less loud, and more promiscuous than white women. "He was saying I only got his attention through an arbitrary twist of genetic fate," says Chen. That wasn't Chen's first experience with stereotypes about Asian women. When she chronicled her dating life as a Harvard undergrad on her blog, one commenter called her a "comfort woman," and she fielded queries about the mythical smallness of the Asian vagina.

Where do guys get this stuff? Pop culture is rife with female Asian stereotypes. Case in point: The 2010 film The Social Network, which dramatized the creation of Facebook, was bursting with hypersexualized Asian female characters who partied with the Harvard guys. One was depicted as so blinded —By passion that she even lit a fire in her boyfriend's bedroom. On Jersey Shore, cast member Ronnie once approvingly told his girlfriend Sammi that she looked Asian, causing a jealous blowout because he had an Asian ex. And the explosion of anime porn, featuring cartoon depictions of Asian women, perpetuates the stereotype that we're super-kinky.

According to Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, the origin of some of these tropes may go back centuries to Japanese geishas, female entertainers trained in classical music and dance who performed for men at high-class social gatherings. Then came the seedy sex clubs staffed —By poor women that proliferated around U.S. military bases in Asia during the Korean and Vietnam wars. On a research trip to South Korea in 1987, Kim visited a sex club where women performed contortionist sex acts for patrons, including tourists and servicemen. One even put a knife in her vagina and used it to cut a cucumber. Kim also recalls racist myths about Asian women during her childhood in the 1960s: that they could gestate a ba—By in six months or had a slanted vagina to match their eyes. "The idea was that these women had different bodies, and it was exotic," says Kim.

Those myths might feel antiquated, but from my experience they're alive and well today in some form or another in the minds of many guys. So where does all of this leave me and my single self? Since I can't single-handedly re-educate mankind, I'm trying to make changes in my own life — like being more open-minded about dating Asian men. I'm noticing that the Korean boys who were invisible to me in high school have grown up into a handsome lot. I also joined a few Asian meet-up groups in an effort to get dates. My latest crush is a Korean doctor whom I met in the emergency room after I slipped while walking my dog.

My advice to other Asian women: Initially, it may be hard to gauge whether a guy is a fetishist or is genuinely into you, but if he has a bevy of Asian acquaintances (but can't keep their names straight) and keeps asking you how flexible you are, you've got your answer.



SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

I'm a young black woman. And despite what you've read, I will get married —By Helena Andrews



Consider this my formal declaration of war — on numbers. I'm talking statistics, percentages, fractions, averages. If they can measure something like my marriage prospects, then I want nothing to do with them. Because for too long, one number has dominated the love lives of black women — and it's time to revolt.

Chances are, you've heard the offending statistic: 70 percent of black women are single. A hot topic in the media, this fact has been the basis of an ABC News Nightline segment about "the black girl's curse"; crowed about in a recent Atlantic cover story; and debated in the opinion pages of The New York Times. Even Oprah devoted a show to the "crisis" of single black women. And now my dire love life has become fodder for national best sellers, like Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks' Is Marriage for White People? and Steve Harvey's book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, which was spun into a film that hit theaters in March.

So, according to the data — and the media that are obsessed with it — I'm screwed. As a 31-year-old college-educated black woman who's never been married, everywhere I turn, the odds of finding a good man are against me. That is, of course, until I turn over every morning to the man sleeping next to me. He is (gasp) black. He is (quelle surprise!) college-educated. He isn't a felon, a deadbeat, a father of illegitimate children, or a cheat — all the categories women like me are forced to choose from, according to the seemingly never-ending stories about the "crisis" of black marriage. Attention, media! There is no crisis in my bedroom.

Many black women I know say the exact same thing: Where is this epidemic of singledom, anyway? "In my social network the number of women my age who are unmarried is low," says New York City — based TV producer Nyree Emory, 38, who is single. "I can count how many I know personally — um, two. I'm a minority among my peers. I keep wondering if this cluster of single women are all hanging out without me. Because I don't see them."

Nyree is single — not sad, desperate, and lonely. But the numbers continue to be rolled out at her feet like a red carpet to retiring alone. "Scholars and the media have pathologized the black family as different from the mainstream," says entrepreneur Jamyla Bennu, 36, from Baltimore, Maryland, who has been happily married for 12 years. "That's not how most black women see it."

How could my experience and that of so many other black women be so different from the official statistics? I wanted to find out — so I started digging. Because so many news reports repeat the 70 percent figure without citing a source, I went straight to the mother lode of demographic data: the U.S. Census.

And what I found was shocking: While, according to 2009 data, it's true that 70.5 percent of black women were never married compared with 45 percent of white women, look closer and you'll see that the figure pertains only to women between the ages of 25 and 29. Not that surprising, right?

Researching further, I found another U.S. Census statistic that may have sparked the frenzy. According to the 2009 data, only 30 percent of black women were married — but the data includes every female from 15 years old up to 90-somethings. So ... my baby cousin and grandmother are single. Is that really a crisis?

Finding those reports only made me more curious about the truth — what are the real numbers, since we've been so focused on bogus ones? I called Ivory Toldson, a psychology professor at Howard University who analyzed census data between the years 2000 and 2009. "Our research shows that most black women eventually do marry," he says. "And 75 percent of black women older than age 35 have wed at least once."

That should clear things up, right?

Tina Wells, 32, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, doesn't need convincing. Wells is the CEO of the company Buzz Marketing Group, and she deals with numbers all day — compiling, analyzing, and then reporting them to big-name clients. But in her dating life, "the numbers" don't add up to much. "The statistic that the media love to hype means nothing to me," she says. "I'm focused on living my best life, and —By doing that, I'll attract the right guy."

While it's great to know that most black women's lives don't match the exaggerated numbers, the media are not only to blame. Black people themselves perpetuate the hype.

Recently I took my boyfriend on a "meet the family" tour from Washington, D.C. to North Carolina to Southern California. At every stop, my relatives devoured him from the screen door. And why wouldn't they? He's not just tall, dark, and handsome, but adventurous, talented, and hardworking.

I know my family wished him for me, the daughter who made it to the Ivy League and New York, but some relatives didn't expect me to find him. When I did, they couldn't believe it. I'd forgotten that my aunts watch the news, too. They read The New York Times, listen to Steve Harvey's advice, and watch all of Tyler Perry's movies, which suggest that a woman like me would never find a guy like the one sitting on the couch in my grandmother's house. They too succumbed to the statistics, believing that there is a shortage of men who not only looked like me but also were for me.

On New Year's Day we all sat in the dining room. As my aunts piled slices of pie onto my boyfriend's plate, I watched my cousin play I Declare War with his wife. I Declare War is probably the most boring card game ever. Nobody wins, it's just a never-ending stack of number upon number upon number. But they were smiling, happy to be together. An aunt nudged me and said, "That's how it should be. Just enjoy each other." Then she winked at my boyfriend, who was none the wiser.



BREAKING THE RULES

Afghan-American actress Azita Ghanizada and her parents learn about love in the U.S. AS TOLD TO CARITA RIZZO



In Afghan culture, you don't date — you marry. Even talking to boys before marriage brings great shame to your family.

My parents learned that the hard way. They met in Kabul when my dad was a 25-year-old playing in a Beatles cover band and my mom was the 13-year-old daughter of a well-off, prominent family. Their age difference may sound extreme, but it's not in Afghanistan, where younger girls are often married off to much older men. After school, my mom would sneak over to music venues where my dad played and hang out with him after the show. When their parents discovered their fledgling romance, they were forced to marry.

I'm not sure if they would have married if they'd had a choice.

In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions. We prayed five times a day and attended mosque and Farsi school, and my sisters and I weren't allowed to associate with boys. My parents' plan was for us to someday marry Afghan men of their choosing. They didn't want us to shame our family the way they had shamed theirs.

Even at an early age, I rebelled against my strict upbringing. When I was 9, I built myself a "make-out fort" in our backyard from wood, filled it with candy, and invited my blond, blue-eyed neighbor over to kiss. One day my mom caught us together and my dad kicked down the fort, but it was too late. I had gotten a taste of something forbidden, and I knew that my parents' lifestyle wasn't for me. I didn't want kabobs, Afghan music, and rules that required girls to be carefully monitored. I wanted mac and cheese, country music, and independence.—By my early teens, everyone in the local Afghan community — neighbors, my parents and their friends — already considered me too Western to be a proper wife. It was true. I loved American fashion and wore Guess jeans, sprayed my hair with Sun-In (turning it orange), and slathered my body with ba—By oil before sunbathing. I also threw myself into after-school activities. My parents forbade me from joining theater groups (in case there was a kissing scene), but they let me join the cheerleading squad, and I became class secretary. They didn't know that after school, I led a secret life with my girlfriends. We'd raid their parents' liquor cabinets for Johnnie Walker scotch and hang out in the McDonald's parking lot, drinking and flirting with older boys.

But I wasn't the only one in my family who had begun breaking away from our Afghan traditions. My dad started wearing baseball caps and polo shirts, watching football on Sundays, eating at Pizza Hut, and hitting the gym. He spent more time at dinners with his gym buddies and less time with our family. Meanwhile, my mom preferred to spend her weekends with my grandparents, cooking and talking.

My parents began fighting over their divergent lifestyles until it got so bad that my dad would come home from work, walk to his room in silence, and close the door. The tension carried on for years until they realized they had a choice. This wasn't Afghanistan. They could separate.

Their decision outraged our local Afghan community. I remember a group of about 30 people descending on our house to convince my parents to stay together. I locked the door, but they banged on it, shouting, "No one will marry your daughters with such shame!"

Pressure from the community kept my parents together for six more years, but eventually my mother decided to end her failing marriage. I was shocked at her bold move — traditional Afghan couples just don't divorce, much less at the wish of the wife. I thought she would sooner die in a loveless marriage than break with tradition, an act punishable —By disownment, exile — and in our homeland, even death.

After my parents' divorce, the first in our family, we entered a scary, messy new world. My father eventually started dating a blonde American doctor who walked around barefoot in her big house and laid her legs across my dad's lap right in front of me. It was odd to witness. I recall thinking that if this were Afghanistan, she would have been beaten with a stick.

But my father was finally laughing and being playful, things I didn't know he was capable of. Seeing him like that made me happy. He was living for himself — not for his culture — just what I had always wanted for my own life.

My mother moved on, too, but for her, marrying another Afghan man was the only righteous path. A few years after the divorce from my father, she booked a two-month trip to Pakistan to visit family. While there, she agreed to an arranged marriage with an Afghan engineer. She married him right away and moved back to Virginia with her new husband. When my mom called to share her news, I was shocked. But I take comfort in the fact that her marriage will remain intact due to her husband's strong beliefs in his religion and culture.

My parents' breakup, though painful, has benefits for me. While they are exploring their new romantic lives, they spend far less time trying to plot mine. The lesson they are learning is clear: Loving someone from the same race or religion doesn't guarantee happiness. It's no longer as important to them that I marry a "good Afghan man." My dad's advice now is simply: "Marriage will come when the time is right." I did introduce him to one American boyfriend I was serious about. He wasn't Afghan, but my dad knew I was in love, so he made an effort to bond with my boyfriend over their shared love of watching football at TGI Friday's. In the end, my dad admitted he was a good guy — maybe knowing all along that I was capable of making a smart decision. I'd be lying, though, if I said that my parents don't hold on to a small string of hope that I'll have a change of heart and end up with a traditional Afghan husband. They can't help it. But while I doubt that's going to happen, I'll break that to them later.

[American Dream]

"Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex"

[American Dream]

“Men who want to flirt with women have to realize: Women live in a state of continual vigilance about sexual safety. It’s like having a mild case of hay fever that never goes away. It’s not debilitating. You’re not weak. You’re not afraid. You just suck it up and get on with your life. It’s nothing that’s going to stop you from making discoveries, or climbing mountains, or falling in love. Sometimes you can almost forget about it. It doesn’t mean it’s not there, subtly sucking your energy. You learn to avoid situations that make it worse and seek out conditions that make it better.

If a female stranger is wary around you, it is not because she suspects you are a rapist, or that all men are rapists. It’s because a general level of circumspection is what vigilance requires. Don’t take it personally.

If this frustrates you, try to remember that women are blamed for lapsed vigilance. If a woman does get raped, everyone rushes to see where she let her guard down. Was she drinking? Was she alone? Was she wearing a short skirt? Did she go to a strange man’s room for coffee at 4am?

A woman must be seen to be vigilant as well as be vigilant. If she is deemed insufficiently vigilant, she will be at least partly blamed for any sexual violence that befalls her. If she’s regarded as downright reckless, that “evidence” can be used to completely exonerate her rapist. If it comes down to a he said/she said dispute over whether sex was consensual, as so many rape cases do, the dispute becomes a referendum on whether the woman seems like the sort of reckless person who would have sex with a stranger.

If a woman does go back to a strange man’s hotel room at 4am, even if she only wants a coffee and conversation, she’s more or less given him the power to rape her. No jury is going to believe she went up there for anything but sex. So, don’t be surprised if a stranger reacts badly to that suggestion."

— Attention, Space Cadets: Do Not Proposition Women in the Elevator

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://boingboing.net/2012/05/04/pastor ... k-the.html

Pastor Sean Harris: crack the wrists and punch children you suspect of being gay

By Mark Frauenfelder at 8:48 am Friday, May 4




Pastor Sean Harris (motto: "Proclaiming Christ Through a Blog in the 21st Century") gave a sermon on Sunday at his church in Fayetteville NC in which he told parents to beat their children if they showed signs of being gay:

Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch, OK? … You were made by god to be a male and you're going to be a male.

And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you rein her in. And you say "Oh no - oh no sweetheart. You can play sports. Play 'em; play 'em to the glory of God. But sometimes you're gonna act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl. And that means you're going to be beautiful, you're going to be attractive, you're gonna dress yourself up."

In an "Important Clarification to Sunday's Sermon" that he posted to his blog, Pastor Harris complains that people who disagree with him are using naughty words that hurt his feelings:

Those in the opposition are suggesting all sorts of hateful things and using ungodly and profane words. Those who speak of the love of God are using the most hateful terms I have ever read. We must never resort to such language.

And in his fake apology (with the classic "I apologize to anyone I have unintentionally offended") he says "I have never suggested children or those in the LGBT lifestyle should be beaten, punched, abused (physically or psychologically) in any form or fashion." I guess that part's true, because in his sermon he commanded, rather than suggested, fathers to punch their gay sons.



Pastor Sean Harris Tells Congregation to Punch Their Gay Sons

[American Dream]

The Fire This Time

[American Dream]

http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/16

The Color of Authority

10/01/2004

by Roy San Filippo

One of the most compelling aspects of anarchism is its holistic approach to human freedom. “We are opposed to all forms of domination and oppression” is a phrase that appears almost universally in every statement of purpose and political statement of anarchist collectives and projects. This reflects anarchism’s total rejection of all forms of oppression and its belief that no one oppression is the base or “primary oppression” upon which all other oppressions rest. Racism or sexism could thrive in a socialist society, and eradicating racism or sexism by no means guarantees the eradication of capitalism or the state. Oppressions, as the saying goes, are relatively autonomous. This is an important insight that developed out of a critique of the crude class reductionism of neo-Marxism and was often used as an excuse by white, male leftists to not take the seriously the struggles for racial justice, women’s liberation, and queer liberation. However, when pressed to develop this analysis further, anarchism falls silent. Beyond recognizing this “relative autonomy” (and thus the “relative” interconnectedness of various oppressions), anarchism has failed to articulate precisely how these oppressions interconnect in a way that is useful for organizers. Predictably, this has hampered the capacity for anarchists to effectively develop the analysis of society that is needed to develop strategies for revolution.

Moral Equivalency, Strategic Hierarchy

For revolutionaries, it is not simply enough to oppose all forms of authority and oppression; we need a plan for destroying them. If we are to transform society, we must understand precisely how forms of authority are related and determine where the weak points are so we can develop effective strategies. An important step in developing a strategy is the recognition that while oppressions are morally equivalent, strategically they are not. Many organizers implicitly accept this notion in practice—at least when it comes to systems of authority other than race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. Anarchists who do community organizing on a regular basis know the importance of working with religious institutions—churches, mosques, and synagogues—in any organizing effort. They do this despite anarchism’s opposition to religious forms of authority. To use just one example, in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, anarchists from across the country, clad in their black “No Gods, No Masters” t-shirts, began working closely with Muslim groups and mosques in their cities in order to assist Arab and Muslim communities with self-defense efforts. Clearly this was the correct thing to do and consciously or not, reflected an assessment by anarchists that defending Muslims from attacks by racists and the state takes a strategic priority over anarchism’s (largely philosophical and ideological) opposition to forms religious authority.

A second important step in developing a strategy is the recognition that oppressions connect in ways particular to the historical context and social forces in which they develop. The relationships between race, class, and gender in one country are likely to be quite different than it is in another, and therefore the strategies for destroying them will also be different. The U.S.’s rather unique history of racial slavery and segregation have made white supremacy central to the functioning of America in a way it hasn’t in others societies. Activists must understand the ways that the particular historical experiences of the United States wove race and class together that makes fighting white supremacy central to any revolutionary project. In other words, those who wish to fight against all forms of authoritarianism must understand one crucial fact of American politics—in America authority is colored white.

The White Shadow

In the United States, one cannot escape the importance of race. Anyone familiar with the literature of critical race theory already knows this basic truth: that race is a social construct with no biological basis. Though biologically race is “fiction,” it is still a social reality. Race is a signifier of social, legal, economic, and political value (or lack thereof) in America. White supremacy casts a long shadow over American society and colors more than just the consciousness of white folks. It has institutionalized white privilege in political institutions, the courts, schools, and labor unions to name just a few. The state not only legitimates these privileges, it also actively enforces them in the back rooms, through public policy, and in the frontlines, through police, prisons, and jails. American society grants real and significant material and psychological benefits to those defined as “white.”

One of the affects of these benefits has been that the white working class has identified its interests with the white ruling class and not with the rest of the working class; this has effectively driven a wedge within the working class—a fact illustrated every time a real estate agent “steers” a Black family to a Black neighborhood and every time a bus driver made Black folks sit in the back of the bus. In order to seriously challenge the existing system, this wedge must be removed. A successful, anti-authoritarian revolution in American can be engendered by a revolutionary crisis in the institutions of white supremacy. As happened during Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, attacks against institutions of white supremacy generated such a crisis and opened up political space for movements to attack not only racial oppression, but also all forms of domination. In the case of Reconstruction, the United States was brought to the brink of a social revolution, the first wave of feminism emerged from the abolitionist struggles, and queer liberation, AIM and countless other struggles for freedom emerged on the heels of the Civil Rights movement. The lesson learned here should be clear: a strategic orientation to the destruction of white supremacy does NOT violate the anarchist opposition to all forms of oppression, rather it fulfills the potential of their anti-authoritarian vision.

White Abolitionism as a Strategy for Revolution

When Donovan Jackson, a Black youth, was brutally beaten by a white police officer in Inglewood, California last summer, the incident was caught on videotape by Mitchell Crooks, who is white. A revealing twist to this incident lies in the fact that the first two people arrested in connection with this incident were Jackson, the Black victim, and Crooks, the white man whose videotape exposed the police brutality. In this moment we see enforcement of the color line by the state twice: first in the all too common form of police abuse in the Black community and secondly in the form of the harsh retribution against the person who exposed one instance of that abuse. Crooks’s act was an instance of race treason—when a white person violated an unspoken rule of whiteness by actively opposing the state’s attempt to enforce the color line, a transgression of the norms of whiteness that the state took so seriously that Crooks was promptly incarcerated. Why are such acts of race treason so threatening? Because the enforcement of the color line is predicated on the belief that the state can determine who is a friend and who is an enemy by the color of their skin. By attacking the institutions of white supremacy and flagrantly violating the norms of whiteness, the state would no longer be able use white skin as reliable determiner of who is a friend and who is a foe to the existing society, undermining the separate deal that the white working class struck with capital.

Though white supremacy has driven a wedge within the American working class, these social relationships are neither natural, nor inevitable. It is the current result of historical contestations for power. Simply put—the state and capital have been more successful at institutionalizing white supremacy than we have been in fighting it. The task ahead is to reverse that trend. As activists, agitators, and revolutionaries, we needn’t abandon our anti-authoritarian vision. However, strategies for realizing that vision need to be informed by an understanding of the intersection of oppressions that have resulted from this society’s particular historical development. In the United States, focusing on white supremacy does more to fight all forms of oppression than by “fighting” them all simultaneously. When we refuse to strategically prioritize our political work in response to historical and structural conditions, we lose the struggle.



Roy San Filippo is the editor of A New World in Our Hearts: Eight Years of Writing from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (AK Press).

[American Dream]

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/05/of-co ... 99-spring/

Of Conspiracies, Critics, and the Crisis: Reflections on the 99% Spring

by Edmund Berger / May 4th, 2012



Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

— Hebert Marcuse1

[A potential solution to the financial crisis is] a global neo-Keynesianism… to save capitalism from itself and from potential radical challenges from below.

— William I. Robinson2


Ice Cream and Social Change

In the midst of the slow-down of the Occupy movement in the early months of 2012, a strange creation emerged from its dense horizontal network of assemblies, spokes-councils, and working groups. Dubbed the Movement Resource Group (MRG), its nature drew controversy – and for many, condemnation – from the movement that it claimed to represent. It appeared as a vertical blip on the flat radar screen, an image of wealth operating in a space where class and rampant material accumulation were adamantly questioned.

The MRG’s aim was to act as a conduit for funding for the movement, seeking to ease Occupy “as it transitions from being a series of spontaneous actions to a more strategic national movement.”3 It was first launched by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of the progressive-minded Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream. They were quickly joined by other high profile left-wing millionaires and figureheads: Anna Burger of the SEIU labor union, entertainment moguls Danny Goldberg and Richard Foos, and others. Maybe it was because Ben and Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, is a member of the much maligned American Legislative Exchange Council. Or maybe it is because the image of money cozying up to Occupy reeks of the age-old tradition of progressive co-option – a threat very real to all that seek real change. Regardless, MRG did not seem to make much headway, and attention has shifted in both the Occupy movement and the media at large to a new grassroots movement sporting the same rhetoric and tactics of its predecessor – the 99% Spring.

The brainchild of the professional left, the 99% Spring is a joint project of a myriad of organizations, ranging from the Rainforest Action Network to the Institute for Policy Studies to 350.org, all taking part in helping push their agenda far beyond Occupy, transforming its energy and ethos into a structured complex. MRG members don’t seem to be very far from the action, with Anna Burger’s SEIU and Ben Cohen’s USAction adding their support for the 99% Spring.

Critics, rightfully skeptical of power of the professional left (particularly in light of the never ending cascade of letdowns and broken promises from President Barack Obama) have repeatedly drawn attention to the pro-Democratic Party attitudes of so many in the 99% Spring Coalition. These analyses have been published in many well-known and well-read publications such as Truth-Out, CounterPunch, and others. Yet an immediate backlash against these viewpoints has come in torrents. One article put forth by PRWatch quotes one 99% Spring affiliate as saying that the criticisms are “misplaced,” while another dismisses critiques of the professional left as being akin to a “Glenn Beck rant.” 4

Individuals who are pointing out the obvious and glaring correlations between the promoters of this new “grassroots” movement are being labeled as conspiracy theorists or cranks, bent on seeing patterns that aren’t there and avoiding to contribute meaningfully in the push to the fix the nation and the world. Never mind that Coffee Party, a 99% Springer, was founded by an organizer from United for Obama; or that the founder of Code Pink, another coalition member, garnered between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president’s 2008 campaign. Never mind that their partner, the Working Families Party, has been a longtime endorser of Obama, even hosting an image on their website informing visitors that “voting for Obama is good.”

This article will not attempt to summarize all of the data collected by the various detractors of the 99% Spring, though I’ve compiled links to various articles below in the notes.5 However, it will attempt to refute the ideas that there is no ideological link between the 99% Spring and the Democratic Party and that this sudden mobilization has nothing to do with the impending round of elections. In order to do that, primarily two organizations backing the 99% Spring will be looked at: MoveOn and the AFL-CIO; their history and their extended ties will be summarized, albeit in an extremely abridged fashion. Following this, the rhetoric and mentality of the 99% Spring and their backers will be examined and placed into a wider theoretical perspective on the nature of the current capitalist epoch.

From MoveOn to Big Labor to the American Dream

At the center of the controversy surrounding the 99% Spring is the question of MoveOn’s allegiance – the “conspiracy theorists” charge that MoveOn is an unofficial astroturfing organization that acts on behalf of the Democratic Party, while other critics maintain that there has been an important “cross pollination” of ideas and rhetoric between the organization and the more radically-inclined left. These critics, however, are framing their debate strictly around the currently unfolding events, ignoring the history of MoveOn and its ongoing ties to the Democratic establishment. However, these simplistic diversionary tactics, when placed into an overarching context, fall short of proper analysis and largely negate one of the central visions of the Occupy movement; namely, that “another world is possible.”

If one doubts MoveOn’s current affiliations with Democratic politics, one needs to look no further than one of the email blasts that was sent out on April 17th by their campaign director Steven Biel. Titled “Republican Political Suicide,” it carefully navigates around outright support for President Obama, though it makes it clear that MoveOn is preparing to once again act as the grassroots wings of the upcoming reelection campaign. “In 2008, young people voted in record numbers and went for President Obama over John McCain by more than 2-to-1,” the email reads, before stating that because of Congressional gridlock and the student debt crisis, “Republicans have handed us a golden opportunity to fire up young people to vote in 2012.” Biel then unveils his organization’s plan: “To make sure young people know what’s happening, we’re launching one of the largest online ad campaigns in MoveOn history.” MoveOn then asks for $5 donations to help with their emergent strategy – one that is rooted directly in electoral politics consumed in the divisive two-party paradigm that so many in the Occupy movement have spoken out against. Yet this is not the first time, and certainly not the last, that MoveOn has worked in tandem with the Democratic Party.

Perhaps the most notable example of MoveOn’s relationship with the liberal political party was its role as a coalition member of the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI), which had begun its life as an anti-war lobby in 2007. It became rapidly apparent, however, that the AAEI was closely connected to the Democratic Party – for example, it was staffed by members of the public relations firm Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, which at the same time was working with the Obama presidential campaign. One of the firm’s founders, Steve Hildebrand, had served as the director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, while his partner, Paul Tewes, would go on to serve as then-Senator Obama’s Iowa campaign manager. Likewise, AAEI staffer Brad Woodhouse went on to act as a director of communications at the Democratic National Committee.

With the slew of connections forming to what would eventually become an extremely successful campaign for the Oval Office, eyebrows were certainly raised — grassroots protestors, working in alignment with figures from a party that had thrown its support behind the opposition’s war efforts. Despite these lingering questions raised by skeptics, the AAEI went on to rally massive support for Obama in the anti-war movement – yet in the aftermath, the president of hope and change rapidly descended into what could only be described as business as usual.

In further considering MoveOn’s ongoing ties to the Democratic Party, the best place to begin is with the long biography of Tom Matzzie, the organization’s former Washington director and perhaps one of its most important members. Matziee had been the leader of the AAEI, and is of immediate interest to the 99% Spring, as he is currently an online strategist for the New Organizing Institute (NOI). The NOI is closely connected to MoveOn, with many of MoveOn’s executives and founders operating on its advisory board. Furthermore, NOI’s Joy Cushman, who worked as the director of the Obama campaign in Georgia, is credited with having “full-time on the 99% Spring plan.”6

Matzzie’s skills with online organizing date back to his pre-MoveOn days, when he worked as a director for the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign in 2004. Two years later, when he was officially affiliated with MoveOn, he was working in Washington politics again by running the Campaign to Defend America, a spin-off outfit from the AAEI that ran anti-Republican ads in the build-up to the 2008 election cycle. Matzzie was joined at the Campaign by MoveOn founder Wes Boyd and Jeff Blum, the executive director of Ben Cohen’s USAction. The Campaign’s pro-Democrat media blitz was heavily subsidized by the heavyweights of “progressive liberalism,” including SEIU leader and future MRG member Anna Burger; Mother Jones’ director Robert McKay; Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta ; and billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Burger, McKay, and Soros went on to act as leaders in the Democracy Alliance (a coalition of centrist philanthropists), while Podesta headed up the Obama-Biden Transition Team and runs a lobbying organization that represents megacorporations like Wal-Mart on Capital Hill.7

Matzzie has also served on the board of directors of Progressive Majority, a network of Democratic operators that seeks to “elect progressive champions” by “identifying and recruiting the best progressive leaders to run for office; coaching and supporting their candidacies by providing strategic message, campaign, and technical support.”8 While the mission statement touts their commitment to electing “people of color” and propelling new faces into Washington, the majority of Progressive Majority’s directors are directly linked to either the Democratic Party or the AFL-CIO labor union – the importance of which will be summarized momentarily. For now, however, a cursory mention of some of Matzzie’s cohorts in Progressive Majority is in order:

Karen Ackerman, a political director for the AFL-CIO.

Ellen Golombek, a former political director for the AFL-CIO, now affiliated with the SEIU.

William Lux, one of the AFL-CIO’s in the early 1990s. Following this, he served as President Clinton’s Special Assistant for Public Liaison before becoming in 1996 the Vice Chair for the Democratic National Business Council. Later, he was the co-founder of the Progressive Donor Network, a fundraising body for Democrat candidates.

Terry Liarman, elected as the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party in 2004. Prior to this he served as the National Finance Chair for Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. It should be noted that prior to his loss to John Kerry, Dean was financially backed by many of the major centrist moneymen – including the aforementioned McKay, Podesta, and Soros.9

Clearly, Matzzie – as well as MoveOn – has historically operated in a close-knit sphere of Democratic Party organizers and operators; specifically, the people who build up campaigns by selecting the politicians, financing them, raising awareness for them, and, in short, helping them secure the White House. They are the unseen players who keep the political machine oiled and running. It is interesting to note the prominence of the AFL-CIO in this network, as big labor has been quite often viewed as an autonomous unit from Washington politics since the collapse of the New Deal politics of yesteryear. Thus, it is notable that Matzzie himself helps to bridge the gap between labor and Democrats, as he worked for the AFL-CIO in the early part of the 2000s, incorporating online activism as part of their movement building program. It might also be worthwhile to consider that MoveOn and the AFL-CIO share the same PR firm, Fenton Communications, which also represents Soros’ Open Society Institute and Ben & Jerry’s.

The AFL-CIO has been a major supporter of the 99% Spring – the name of the union’s current president, Richard Trumka, can be found on the list of signatories of the letter that initially launched the movement. But even after the AFL-CIO declared its support for this grassroots mobilization that is allegedly outside of the Democratic Party, the website OpenSecrets revealed that the union’s political action committee was working hard to raise money for Democrat candidates.10 A month earlier Trumka announced that the union was formally endorsing Barack Obama, commending him for his progressive rhetoric and passing the $800 billion stimulus package.11 But rhetoric falls short without real change; as many left-wing commentators have noted countless times, Obama’s so-called reforms – the so-called “ObamaCare” and his attitude towards Wall Street – have been empty promises, nothing more than populist imagery hiding pro-business agendas. Regardless, the AFL-CIO plans on launching a strategy of “door-to-door canvassing, phone banks and registration drives to help President Barack Obama and other Democrats.”

The AFL-CIO has been no stranger to Washington; for the entire duration of its existence it has operated closely with big politics and big business in curbing radical grassroots demands for structural change. When it was simply the American Federation of Labor (it merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the AFL-CIO in 1955), it was led by Samuel Gompers. During this time Gompers was also serving as vice-president of the National Civic Federation (NCF), a pro-collective bargaining organization that was led primarily by representatives from leading industrial and financial firms. Gompers’ boss at the NCF, the mining magnate and Republican “king-maker” Mark Hanna, had viewed the promotion of “conservative trade unions” such as the AFL as beneficial to capitalism, noting that they would “play a constructive role in reducing labor strife and in helping American business sell its products overseas.”12 While Republican benevolence to collective bargaining certainly seems an oddity in the modern post-Reagan world, sociologist G. William Domhoff writes that the NCF’s stance “involved a narrowing of worker demands to a manageable level.” Continuing on, he charges that collective bargaining “contained the potential for satisfying most workers at the expense of the socialists among them, meaning that it removed the possibility of a challenge to the capitalist system itself…”

In the decade following the AFL-CIO merger, the union, working in conjunction with the Kennedy administration, began to export this moderate unionism overseas through the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). Funded by USAID and operating closely with the CIA, the AIFLD adopted a militantly anti-Communist perspective and assisted in a series of US-backed interventions across Latin America, including the infamous coup against Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende.13 Later the AIFLD underwent a transformation into the Solidarity Center, a subsidiary organization of the US government’s primary vehicle for “democracy promotion” abroad, the National Endowment for Democracy. Importantly, Trumka has served as the head of the Solidarity Center’s board of trustees – making him a de facto member of the US foreign policy establishment.

If all of these connections and ties isn’t convincing enough that the 99% Spring doesn’t bare the hallmarks of Beltway wheeling and dealing, there is the upcoming “Take Back the American Dream” conference, which is being put together by Progressive Majority and Rebuild the Dream – the latter of which is one of the key 99% Spring planners. The conference is being hosted by the Campaign for America’s Future, (CAF) which counts both Richard Trumka and his predecessor, John Sweeney, on its board of directors. Eli Pariser, MoveOn’s chairman of the board, is also an official at CAF. This is not the organization’s only tie to MoveOn; CAF is a coalition member of Healthcare for America Now, a lobbying organization for Obama’s health care plan, alongside MoveOn, Podesta’s Center for American Progress, and Ben Cohen’s USAction.

Another CAF leader, Robert Borosage, is married to Barbara Shailor, the director of the AFL-CIO’s international affairs division. He also serves alongside Tom Matzzie on the board of Progressive Majority, while an organization that he is a former director of, the Institute for Policy Studies, is part of the 99% Spring movement. He still maintains close ties with the Institute: he is currently on the board of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, right alongside Wes Boyd and Joan Blades from MoveOn and the NOI, and Bill Fletcher, a high-ranking official in the AFL-CIO. Fletcher is the current co-chair of United for Peace and Justice – yet another 99% Spring coalition member.

While Borosage, who incidentally is one of the keynote speakers at the Take Back the American Dream conference (along with Howard Dean and Rebuild the Dream founder Van Jones)14 has been critical of Obama’s willingness to bend to corporate America’s demands, Campaign for America’s Future has not minced words about electoral agenda: “Just five months before what could be the most important set of elections in our lifetimes, thousands of progressives will convene in the nation’s capital to energize the movement to Take Back the American Dream.”

Disruption and Redirection (or the End of Neoliberalism)

Borosage’s anti-corporatist tone leads us to one of the major criticisms that defenders of the 99% Spring have of its detractors. MoveOn and its adjunct organizations such as the AFL-CIO and Rebuild the Dream have led activists to protest the corruption surrounding mega corporations, including GE and Bank of America. How can something that does try to bring these abusers of democracy to justice be a negative factor in the activist landscape? The answer to this question is more complicated, yet it is something vital to be discussed in today’s world of the perpetually evolving “flexible capitalism.”

First off, it is important to take note that MoveOn and the extended progressive network does not necessarily practice what it preaches. For example, MoveOn’s “brand-based imagery” for the 99% Spring was crafted with help from Berlinrosen, a “communications consultancy” that operates out of D.C. and New York City.15 The firm, whose Washington director is a former communications director for Obama’s 2008 campaign, lists on its website MoveOn Political Action (MoveOn’s political fundraising arm), SEIU, Healthcare for Americans Now, and Brookfield Properties as clients. Brookfield, incidentally, is the owner of the now-famous Zucotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street set up camp before its eviction in mid-November, 2011. Brookfield Properties, later revealed to be in contact with Federal agencies just prior to a raid, is in turn owned by Brookfield Asset Management – an Ontario based corporation that counts George Soros as a shareholder and is represented in Washington by a member of the Podesta family.16 If these people – all tied in one way or another to the 99% Spring – are against corporate malfeasance and are truly in solidarity with the Occupy movement, one would certainly think that they would cut monetary ties with outfits like Brookfield.

Aside from that puzzling detour, the relationship between the “professional left” and capitalism is important to look at. Recent and influential treaties, such as The Shock Doctrine and The Corporation, or the articles published in progressive magazines such as The Nation and Mother Jones, have raised awareness about the destructive tendencies of neoliberalism, showing how they dissolve national boundaries, exploit poor and undeveloped countries, and curtail representative democratic practices by buying off politicians. Yet these publications, for the most part, tend to equate capitalism with its current neoliberal incarnation, and also serve to position corporations – not the underlying structures of the capitalist mode of production – as the problem. While all these works play a critically important role, they simply do not go far enough – overall, their analysis is unfortunately superficial.

This framework – where corporations, not market economies dictated by uneven wealth distribution, finds its physical expression in the works of moderate liberal economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz. While their individual approaches may differ, all of these individuals maintain a pro-market rhetoric that avoids undermining the ultimate Washington consensus that reasons that private enterprise and individual greed is the cornerstone of equality. Stiglitz himself appeared at an Occupy Wall Street rally and told protests “The fact is that the system is not working right… Our financial markets have an important role to play. They’re supposed to allocate capital, manage risks. We are bearing the costs of their misdeeds.” 17 But as the Monthly Review’s Michael Yates retorts, Stiglitz is wrong: the system is working correctly. “It is working exactly as capitalist systems work. They have always been marked by poles of wealth and poverty, periods of speculative bubbles followed by recessions or depressions, overworked employees and reserve armies of labor, a few winners and many losers, alienating workplaces, the theft of peasant lands, despoiled environments, in a word, the rule of capital.” What Yates is expressing here is a clear and undeniable truth. We cannot attack corporations solely, because they are not the cause of the problem. They are only the symptom of it.

The AFL-CIO and SEIU are also indicative of this mentality, with their perpetual protest slogan of “protect the middle class.” Such a phrase or symbol it represents clashes directly with anti-capitalist sentiments; it’s rooted in the inner-workings of the classist system and is generated solely by workplace hierarchies and capital flows that trickle down ever so slowly. It is true that the world of globalized neoliberalism is dissolving the middle class; this is the result of the breakdown of the social contracts of the Keynesian era, which allowed unionism to flourish and mild redistributive policies to take place. But look at the unofficial label given to the heyday of Keynesianism – “the Golden Age of Capitalism”. 18 It was the time when the American Dream in all of its illusionary splendor was at its peak; is it any wonder why one of the 99% Spring’s most prominent backers is Rebuild the Dream, or the Campaign for America’s Future’s upcoming conference is called “Take Back the American Dream”? It is as French economist Guy Sorman argued: “I think that the liberal society needs a welfare state… people will accept the capitalist adventure if there is an indispensible amount of social security.”19

World systems theorist Immanuel Wallerstein once said that “we’ve been living in the wake of 1968 ever since, everywhere.” What Wallerstein was alluding to was the dramatic upheaval that happened across the globe in that year, with a surge of left-wing consciousness and revolutionary mobilization from America to Germany to France and beyond. For a brief moment – particularly as France was paralyzed by widespread wildcat strikes – it looked as if a victory was at hand, but it was not.

Within a handful of years the neoliberal project had begun, and capitalism was launched into its current flexible stage. As deregulation became central legislative policy and free trade agreements interconnected the globe in a myriad of ways, the newly unleashed capitalism also took on a rather curious, almost human appearance. For every public asset auctioned off, more and more “socially aware companies” spring up, for every worker protection removed, a corporation unveils an environmentally sustainable plan of action. For every transnational behemoth, there is a corporation that reworks its caste system into networks of interlocking team members. Slavoj Zizek has written about this phenomenon at length, identifying it as a capitalism tailor-made for the post-’68 world:

The new spirit of capitalism triumphantly recuperated the egalitarian and anti-hierarchical rhetoric of 1968, presenting itself as a successful liberation revolt against the oppressive social organizations characteristic of both corporate capitalism and Really Existing Socialism – a new libertarian spirit epitomized by dressed-down “cool” capitalists such as Bill Gates and the founders of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. (emphasis in original)20

French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have tackled this problem, drawing directly from the malaise that settled in their country after the revolt of ’68 lost its power. Writing in highly verbose theory-talk, they explain it by appropriating terminology from anthropology – capitalism’s power results in deterritorialization, but this is quickly reterritorialized before the process is complete. 21 What this means is that capitalism is destructive in an absolute sense, gobbling up and breaking down nation states, cultures, religion, social structures – all things that result in discontents or other internal tensions that threaten to undermine its functionality. But through “reterritorialization” these tensions are acknowledged and measures are taken to smooth them out, to fix them in way that surplus value can still be extracted from the dominated labor force.

Antonio Gramsci called this the “Passive Revolution”: in order to protect themselves in the long run, the capitalist elite (or certain sectors of the elite, depending on which time of business interests are threatened) bend to measures that seem contrary to their short-term benefits of the system. This is precisely what gives rise to things such as corporate philanthropy or socially aware business models and practices – and this in turn, to put it in Zizek’s words, separates the “basic ideological dispositif of capitalism” (individual greed) from “its concrete socio-economic condition.” 22 No longer is capitalism bad; it is the people running the corporations that are bad. Capitalism, when purged of those who exploit it, can work for the betterment of all. This paradigm is reiterated by Drummond Pike, the founder and head of the Tides Foundation (a progressive philanthropy that funds many of the 99% Spring organizations), who rebuked charges that he and his colleagues were socialists by saying “Tides may be progressive, but we are enthusiastically American. Were it not for the capitalist system, not a dollar would flow through Tides.” 23

Of course, the debate being covered here – whether or not the 99% Spring is connected with the Democratic Party – is simply a microcosm of this wider, more theoretical and abstract meditations on the shifting nuances of capitalism. These avenues of analysis do, however, provide important insight into the nature of this latest clash between the haves and have-nots.

Is it undeniable that MoveOn and its cohorts are intricately bound to a specific aspect of the political machine – the “underbelly” where PR firms, communication consultants, and brand imagery collide to build campaigns. Conducting this kind of business requires a widespread manipulation of people’s emotions by crafting images that play on people’s hopes and desires, their fear and distrust. In short, it is a sphere of politics that is based entirely in propaganda of action, aiming to mobilize mass groups across the nation into a voter base. If MoveOn and other promoters of the 99% Spring are connected to this world, immediate suspicion must be cast on their true aspirations.

The question still lingers on their anti-corporatist rhetoric, but as noted above, this does not necessarily contradict the “reterritorializations” of capitalism. During Keynesianism, the state more or less acted as a limiting agent for capital flow; it was antagonist towards capitalism for the benefit of capitalism. The state was subsequently “deterrioralized” through neoliberalism, and now we’re seeing a sort of “return of the state”. It first occurred with the outright rejection of neoliberalism with the slew of bail-outs, and now that a grassroots movement has arisen challenging these perspectives from a leftist point of view, another movement has risen to re-inject the state itself (through its emphasis on electoral politics) into a dialogue that up to this point has been driven instead by classist dispute.

With the demands of anti-corporate, localized capitalism, what is being posed is the idea of the state acting as an arbiter to limit the exponential growth of the neoliberal project. This is not a new idea – limits to capitalist growth was posed in the 1970s by the Club of Rome, a little know yet influential technocratic organization that counted some of the leading financiers and industrialists of its day as members.24 More recently the Club has made some rather interesting recommendations for the future of capitalism, going beyond the idea of limiting growth: “…capitalism needs a reliable frame. It means that the trend since the late 1970s of weakening the state must come to an end and should be reversed.” 25 Intriguingly, some of the founding members of the Club were leaders from the United Auto Workers union, which today is one of the backers of the 99% Spring.

So what happens now? Capitalism, in its neoliberalism form, is broken. The ongoing global financial crises reflect the inherent instability and structural defects of the transnational trade system. A return to Keynesianism and the state power may be a temporary solution, but economic legislation ebbs and flows with the changing of administrations. Keynesianism tomorrow could bring a new stability, but it will be most likely repealed at some point again and neoliberalism will return. There is also no guarantee that Democrats will ever hold to their campaign promise of economic justice; those that were roped into voting for Obama under MoveOn’s image of the senator as the anti-war candidate will tell you that words without action are nothing.

What it boils down to is simply that the question is not over whether to side with the 99% Spring or not, whether to allow co-option to take root and proliferate. The question, in actuality, concerns what kind of change we truly want to see. Is it the world of limited growth capitalism, managed by the state through representative candidates, or is it a brand new world where real democracy is realized, where power is returned to the people and the capitalist system is finally overturned?



Herbert Marcuse One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society Routledge Classics, 2002 [↩]
Quoted in Michael Barker “Who Wants a One World Government?” Swans Commentary April 6, 2009 [↩]
“Make a donation” Movement Resource Group [↩]
Mary Bottari, “99% Spring has Sprung: Shareholder Actions Underway Across the Country” PRWatch, April 29, 2012 ; Bryan Farrell, “Conspiracy Theorists takes Swings at Tar Sands Action but Misses” April 25, 2012 [↩]
The following links are to articles criticizing the 99% Spring, as well as its earlier incarnations: Steve Horn, “MoveOn.org and Friends Attempt to Co-Op Occupy Wall Street”, Truth-Out, October 11, 2011; Edmund Berger, “Strange Contours: Resistance and the Manipulation of People Power”, Dissident Voice, December 21, 2011; The Insider, “The Guns That Smoked: 99 Percent Spring: the Latest MoveOn Front for the Democratic Party”, CounterPunch, March 16-18, 2012; The Insider, “Fooled Again? MoveOn’s 99% Spring, Obama, and the Dems in Lock-Step”, CounterPunch, April 12, 2012; Charles M. Young, “’Front Groups, Not Issues!’ Yes, the 99% Spring is a Fraud”, CounterPunch, April 13-15, 2012; Edmund Berger, “Harnessing People Power: Co-Option at Work in America Today”, Swans Commentary, April 23, 2012 [↩]
“Nonprofit Quarterly: The 99% Spring is Here: An Interview with Organizer Ai-jen Poo”, Change to Win Strategic Organizing Center, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 [↩]
Podesta, as well as his organization the Center for American Progress, are discussed in my article, “Intervention Mentality and the Spectacle of Joseph Kony”, Dissident Voice, April 14, 2012 [↩]
“Mission Statement”, Progressive Majority [↩]
Walt Contreras Sheasby, “George Soros and the Rise of the Neo-Centrists”, Citizine, December, 2003 [↩]
“AFL-CIO Worker’s Voice PAC Summary”, OpenSecrets [↩]
Sam Hananel, “AFL-CIO boosts ground support for Obama, Democrats”, Yahoo News, March 14, 2012 [↩]
G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State: How Policy is Made in America, Aldine de Gruyter, 1990, pgs. 72-73 [↩]
The role of the AIFLD as an arm of US foreign policy will be covered in my forthcoming book on American democracy promotion. [↩]
“Speakers at Take Back the American Dream”, Campaign for America’s Future [↩]
Arun Gupta, “How to Rebrand Occupy”, Truth-out, April 30, 2012 [↩]
This, curiously, has only been reported on in right-wing media outlets. See Aaron Klein, “Look whose relatives just got a $135.8 Million Energy Loan”, World Net Daily, October 11, 2011 [↩]
Michael Yates, “Occupy Wall Street and the Celebrity Economists”, MRZine, October 23, 2011 [↩]
Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism Verso, 2004 pg. 216 [↩]
Quoted in Slavoj Zizek First as Tragedy, Then as Farce Verso, 2009 pg. 26 [↩]
Ibid., pg. 56 [↩]
See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Penguin, 2006. 6th edition [↩]
Zizek First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, pg. 35 [↩]
Drummond Pike, “Why does the Right Hate Soros?” Politico, October 29, 2010 [↩]
The Club of Rome published its recommendations for a reworked capitalist economy in the 1972 book Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Today, one Club of Rome member, David Korten, is the co-founder of Yes! Magazine, which counts Rebuild the Dream founder Van Jones on its advisory board and has also published pro-Rebuild the Dream and 99% Spring material. Korten himself has gone from working with the Ford Foundation and USAID to espousing an anti-corporatist rhetoric on Occupy rallies. See Stuart Jeane Bramhall, “The Club of Rome and the Sustainability Movement”, Dissident Voice, April 21st, 2012 [↩]
Ernst Ulrich Weizsäcker, Oran R. Young, Matthias Finger (ed.) Limits to Privatization: How to Avoid Too Much of a Good Thing, Earthscan, 2005 pg. 186 [↩]


Edmund Berger is an independent writer and researcher from Louisville Kentucky, where he has been active in the pro-Palestinian movement. Read other articles by Edmund.

[American Dream]

The U.S.’s rather unique history of racial slavery and segregation have made white supremacy central to the functioning of America in a way it hasn’t in others societies. Activists must understand the ways that the particular historical experiences of the United States wove race and class together that makes fighting white supremacy central to any revolutionary project.In other words, those who wish to fight against all forms of authoritarianism must understand one crucial fact of American politics— in America authority is colored white.

This is a photograph from a book called ‘Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography ins America” (pub. 2004). The photo is called ‘The lynching of Frank Embree, July 22, 1899, Fayette, MO”

By all reckoning, that makes this barely 113 years old.

There are two other matching photos to the set. The one below, and the one of him hanging, which is too upsetting to post. You can see it (along with others from much later time periods here: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/omalley/race/four.html)


(via theeducatedfieldnegro)

[American Dream]

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... ung-girls/

ON THE SEXUALIZATION OF YOUNG GIRLS

by Lisa Wade




Alexandra O’Dell, a student at North Idaho College, does a great job of integrating data, interviews, and images in this 11-minute video about the sexualization of young girls in the media:

[American Dream]

http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/95

Minutemen and Klansmen

originally posted at Imagine2050.org

By Joel Olson

I recently reviewed The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan by Rory McVeigh (University of Minnesota Press 2009) for the academic journal American Studies. The book is a little dry, but there were some notable lessons in it for understanding anti-immigration organizations today.

The Klan originated after the Civil War to restore white supremacy by terrorizing ex-slaves and antislavery whites during Reconstruction. This generation of the Klan ended when Reconstruction did in the 1870s. McVeigh’s book studies the second generation of the KKK, which started in 1915 (coinciding with the release of D.W. Griffith’s famous pro-Klan movie The Birth of a Nation) and exploded in growth from 1920-1924, with a membership of over four million people at its peak.

McVeigh argues that this version of the Klan emerged as a white Protestant response to the rise of large-scale manufacturing and retail, which squeezed small businesses and farms, diminished the political influence of the heartland, and strengthened the power of the cities—and the ethnic communities that lived in them. Klan organizers successfully mobilized White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) by playing on their fears of losing their economic, political, and social power as a result of these economic and political changes.

McVeigh argues that while the 1920s Klan was racist, its focus was not primarily on anti-Black terrorism like the Reconstruction-era KKK. Rather, the 1920s Klan was essentially an anti-immigration social movement. Most social movements, he notes, seek to win power and status for the powerless. But right-wing movements “act to preserve, restore, or expand rights and privileges of a relatively advantaged social group” (38). The 1920s Klan is an example of this. They used a populist rhetoric that attacked industrial elites above them for manipulating labor markets and the “rabble” below them (i.e. ethnic, Catholic working class communities) for flooding these markets and for being culturally alien. The top and bottom of American society, they charged, conspired to squeeze the virtuous, hard-working, upright, white Protestants in the middle.

The KKK argued that “true Americans” were losing ground to immigrants, that immigrants burdened public resources, and that they degraded American culture. The Klan mobilized anxious WASPs by presenting itself as a “one-hundred percent American” organization that promised to restore their status. The fears of these relatively privileged WASPs, combined with effective mobilization techniques by the Klan, led farmers and middle class white Protestants to join the KKK in droves.

These arguments—and many of the quotes McVeigh provides from Klan papers—could have come from the Minutemen today.

What this suggests is that the key to understanding today’s anti-immigration movement—as well as anti-Obama organizing such as the “tea parties”—is to see it as a “virtuous middle” movement. In other words, these are movements whose members see themselves as a virtuous middle—religious, moral, hardworking, patriotic and truly American—who face the threat of losing their relatively privileged social status. They fear that they are under attack by a bewildering global economy and unscrupulous corporations that are moving their jobs overseas. Even more, they feel they are being attacked by cultural elites—Harvard and Hollywood, the universities and pop culture—who undermine the moral values of this virtuous middle with moral relativism and sexual permissiveness. They also fear that they are under attack by the rabble below them—lazy people who live off public benefits paid for by the virtuous middle’s tax dollars (these folks are often secretly coded as black) and illegal aliens who are flooding the country, stealing jobs and degrading American culture (these folks are often coded as brown). The virtuous middle fears that cultural elites from above and the black and brown rabble from below are conspiring —now with the help of a black president!—to undermine their social status and by extension the moral, political, and economic foundations of America. The fall into Sodom is right behind.

This fearful “virtuous middle” (or the “silent majority,” to use Nixon’s term in the 1970s) is a commonplace in American history. Jacksonian Democrats used it in the 1830s to attack corporate elites and slaves (but not masters), populists used it in the 1890s to attack corporate elites and defend segregation, the Klan used it in the 1920s to attack economic elites and Catholics and immigrants, Nixon used it in the 1970s to attack cultural elites and Black and student protestors, and now the anti-immigrant right is using it today.

From the perspective of participants in the anti-immigration movement, this is an effective strategy that should be continued, for it has often worked in U.S. history. From the perspective of those who support immigrant rights, it seems to me that the task is to convince this middle that their true interests lie in a united front with the black and brown “rabble” below them against the capitalist elites above. That would be hard, but it would also make for interesting times.



Joel Olson is the author of The Abolition of White Democracy (University of Minnesota 2004). He is a member of the Repeal Coalition, a grassroots organization that seeks the repeal of all anti-immigrant laws in Arizona.

[American Dream]

http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/4

The Liberatory Family

By Traci Harris and Daniel Horowitz de Garcia

This is a working document meant to express general thoughts brought up in recent political conversation. This document does not represent a final view of thought on this subject and is meant only to further our understanding.


Family is a central part of society. A free family, therefore, is a central part of a free society. Bring the Ruckus proposes that to create a free society we must look to the struggles to create a free family, a liberatory family.

The family, particularly in the feminist context, has come under considerable critique, and justifiably so. For this reason we make it clear we are not talking about the patriarchal family but the liberatory family. The liberatory family is the form taken by those who, for strategic as well as moral reasons, recognize struggle against white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as a totality. Simply put, the liberatory family is the struggle of the oppressed to maintain close social relations and have those relations recognized. The family cannot and should not be defined by the state. The struggle to define oneself and one’s relation to others against the pressures of capitalism is the struggle for the liberatory family. These efforts often incorporate all the elements of a liberatory family: non- patriarchal leadership, prison abolition, fights for a living wage, a focus on health care, the call to recognize extended families as legitimate, and the recognition that women are the ones who keep the family together. We propose this struggle as the basis from which any movement for freedom and justice will develop its most successful structures.

We see family struggles as feminist struggle even though mainstream feminists often argue against the family unit. For example, attacks on reproductive freedom do not simply affect those seeking abortion rights, but also those seeking to have families at all. LGBT families, for example, are often engaged in struggles to have and maintain family units. The attack on reproductive freedom does not only include the right to have a pregnancy terminated, but also the right to create healthy families. To attack reproductive freedom is to attack the liberatory family, especially those families who are not seen as legitimate by the state or who have been living under state encroachment.

The United States is structured by race and class. Thus, it should be no surprise that we often see this struggle to build a free family coming from women of color, who frequently act as bulwarks against social control. Their struggles to keep families together in the face of mass incarceration, invasive policing, or repressive immigration policies are struggles for a liberatory family.

The idea of liberatory family is an idea we in Bring the Ruckus are still struggling to flesh out. It came from observing and participating in two struggles: one working against social control and one focused on workplace organizing. We hope in developing the concept of the liberatory family we will help identify where radicals need to focus their struggles for a free society.

Work, Social Control & the Family

Struggles around work and against social control are at the heart of the struggles for the liberatory family. We recognize that women are key political agents for social change because women have been and continue to be key targets of oppression.

Women are often at the centers of campaigns against social control because the state has always had a gendered view of social control and it has always been aimed at containing people of color. During chattel slavery, there were essentially no gender distinctions between men and women of color. A Black woman could be whipped just as heinously as a Black man because they weren’t considered to be men or women— just property. After abolition, systems of social control changed in order to keep the newly freed population in line. These systems treated men and women of color differently. For example, prisons were designed to lock up Black men in order to do two things. First, they "protected" white women because it was believed that the newly freed Black man endangered white women’s "virtue." Thus things like miscegenation laws were enacted to prevent race mixing while prisons and lynch laws were aimed at keeping Black men off the streets and "in their place." However, these systems of social control recognized the usefulness of Black female domestic labor even as they took many Black men out of the labor market. States couldn’t lock up Black women like Black men because they were doing all the domestic labor. These systems of social control ultimately preserved Black domestic labor while it systematically locked up 1/2 of the Black population. The legacies of these systems of racialized social control continue today.

Social control systems have had a direct impact on wages, particularly for families of color. The earning power of all women in the workplace has always been below men. During the time of the welfare state, when social programs kept extreme poverty within limits, this impact was somewhat muted. Today, neoliberalism has ended the family wage pact. The result is that more women of color are now often forced into the workplace at substandard wages while other family members are incarcerated. This has made entire populations superfluous to society.

Since the days of chattel slavery, the function of the family under capitalism in the United States has not been the same for people of color as it has been for white folks. While white women have been struggling to emancipate themselves from a family system that subordinated them to their fathers and husbands, women of color have been struggling to be able to even have a family and have it recognized as legitimate. Whereas in the days of slavery Black women married men in secret and struggled to keep their families together as they faced the prospect of having their partners or children being sold off, today women of color are consumed with struggles to keep their families together as they face the prospect of their partners or children being sent to prison and/or deported. As part of this struggle, many women of color have in practice expanded the nuclear family to include extended families and partnerships.

If we are going to do radically feminist work, we must begin by re-imagining and reconstructing the family in the ways that women of color are already doing. We must support the struggles of these women to redefine, legitimate, and keep their families together. To challenge the structures of social control that break the family up leads to a different type of radical feminist politics and in fact is a more radical form of politics than is being done today.

A radical feminist praxis focused on the systems of social control can help to link the struggles against prisons and police with struggles in the workplace. Rather than competing areas of struggle they can be viewed as connected. For example, the activist-scholar Ruthie Gilmore has done excellent work in showing how patriarchy is the primary system used to determine who is a danger to society and who must be protected. Focusing on women in the workplace and why they are there could lead to a greater and more complete understanding of capitalism’s pressures on the family.

What Needs to be Done

In discussing the liberatory family one thing becomes very apparent: we have a lot of work to do. We must define and flesh out what the liberatory family is and how it compares to our common understanding of family. We should further define “what is a family?” and “what is a liberatory family?”. We must also further define gender and how the construction of gender is significant to the family and the liberatory family. In terms of expanding our feminist praxis and family discussions, we must also develop a new framework that engenders the notion of freedom, not choice as most feminist literature does. This new framework of freedom must include a discussion around families and health as well as politics.

Studying the family and developing feminist praxis around the liberatory family must look at and understand how communities are struggling to maintain their families in the face of state intervention. It must also dive deeper into the connections of our work around systems of social control (e.g. prisons, police & immigration) and the workplace through the lens of feminist praxis. We must understand what women in the workforce means for the perpetuation of capitalism. We must look at the different roles that women of color have played in the workforce. After all, they have always been a part of the working class. How does this historical fact change our understanding of workplace organizing? How does this relate to our understanding of race and the workplace? How does it change our examination of all our political work? Ultimately, what is the relationship between the racial patriarchy and capitalism? These are only some of the questions we must examine more closely.

But engaging in study is only half of our task. We must also engage in work. Because systems of social control have been developed and refined in the South, Bring the Ruckus feels the southern region of the US is vital to revolutionary change. Having first-hand experience in the region will help in understanding the multitude of ways systems of social control function. Furthermore, it will help us to understand and engage in the already existing work around radical feminist praxis, and see how people are struggling to establish forms of the liberatory family.

Revolutionaries must continue to examine current work through the lens of feminist praxis. If we truly seek to build a free society, we must have a theory and engage in work that fully incorporates a radical feminist praxis that ultimately struggles for the liberatory family.

Key Questions:

What has it meant for capitalism to have women in the workforce? How has women’s racially differentiated experience in the workforce impacted capitalism?

What is the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism?

Is globalization changing the relationship between patriarchy & capitalism? If so, how?

How do we define family? How do we define the liberatory family?

How might a theory of the liberatory family challenge existing constructions of gender and sexuality?

[American Dream]

http://bringtheruckus.org/?q=node/53

Since When Has Working Been A Crime?

Submitted by Peter Little on Thu, 06/19/2008

We've received numerous responses to the article on Gun Show organizing and the far right. The question which has repeatedly been posed in light of the article has been,"So-how should we be organizing potentially insurgent white workers in a way that takes the game back from the far right?"

We post this article, written in 1977, as the beginnings of a response, and as a peek at how little some things have changed in the context of factory and neighborhood immigration raids and working class responses.

Since When Has Working Been A Working Crime?

by Sojourner Truth Organization

1977

NEWS FROM THE PLANT

When Frank Stewart came to work early Tuesday morning, he punched in and went up to the locker room to change clothes.

"Where were you yesterday?" asked Joe Williams, who changed at the next locker. "Don’t you know we work on Mondays around here?"

"I had to go to court to fight a speeding ticket. First they kept me waiting half a day. Then 1 had to look at this stupid movie about how to drive."

"You missed some real excitement around here," said Joe. "The government pulled a raid."

"What do you mean, a raid?"

"Just what I said," Joe answered. "A raid. Around four guys in suits came in and started asking questions. 'Where were you born? Where are your papers?' Questions like that. As soon as some of the people in packing saw what was happening, they took off. Man, you never saw anyone disappear so fast."

"No kidding? Where did they go?"

"I don't know. Out the door. Behind the boxes in 114. In the can. Maria told me one lady in her department hid out in the garbage pail."

Frank was starting to get the picture.

"Who were these guys?"

"Bill, the union steward said they were agents from the INS - Immigration and Naturalization Service. They were looking for people in this country without papers."

Frank was disappointed he'd missed the excitement.

"Wouldn't you know I'd pick that day to be off. How come I always miss all the fun?"

Joe looked serious.

"It wasn't much fun. I saw them hassling Julio -the Puerto Rican over in assembly. They were really giving him a hard time - making him show his papers. And he's a citizen, so he hasn't got papers. They were calling him a liar. Pushing him around. They wouldn't believe he was Puerto Rican. They kept asking him if he got here by bus."

Joe clearly didn't think much of the way the agents acted.

"They were pulling every person who looked like they were Mexican off their lines and hassling them. They even stopped Steve, and he's Japanese. This one agent kept talking to him in Spanish. The place was crazy - people running all over; lines backing up; everyone getting all shook up. The only departments that weren't touched were the ones where almost everyone's white."

"Did they catch anyone?" Frank asked.

"When I saw them leaving they had Juan Lopez and Eliseo that works in packing. And they had one of the Spanish women from assembly. I think her name is Mercedes. The foreman said they were here without papers. I guess they'll all be put on a bus back to Mexico."

"Why some of those people have been here for years. Two of Juan's kids were born here. And just last week he was telling me about the plans for his son's christening."

"Maybe so," said Joe, "but the christening will have to take place in Mexico, because he's gone from here."

Frank finished changing his clothes. He didn't say much for the rest of the day, but he listened to other people talking. Some of the conversation was about the raid of the day before. People wondered if there were others without papers in the plant besides the three they caught.

That night, after Frank and his wife, Joyce, had put the children to sleep, they sat around talking. He told her about the raid.

"It doesn't seem right," she said. "Those people have been in the plant working like everyone else. Juan's wife just had a baby. How will they live with three kids and him losing his job? And both of them being sent back?"

"I don't know. Some of the guys were saying it was a good thing that they got the three of them, because it will mean more jobs for Americans. That makes sense. It's hard enough to get a job now."

"Isn't Juan the one you used to trade food with?" Joyce continued.

"That's right. He'd give me tacos from home sometimes, and I'd give him some of my lunch. He really likes your meat loaf."

Frank thought for a minute.

"The other thing some of the guys were saying is that the Mexicans who are here illegally don't pay taxes and are a drain on the economy. I read something about that in the "Tribune" last week."

"How could Juan not pay taxes?" Joyce asked, frowning. "That's ridiculous. The company deducts taxes from his check the same as they do from yours - before you even see the money."

They both sat quietly for a minute, before Joyce continued.

"You'd think that a rich country like this wouldn't have to turn away anyone looking for honest work. After all, there are plenty of things that need doing."

WORKERS WITHOUT PAPERS

The incident at the plant that Frank and Joyce Stewart talked about was only one of many such incidents all over the country. It is estimated that there are from six to twelve million people living in the U.S. without what the government calls "proper papers". They come from all over - from Canada, from Hong Kong, India and Greece, from Jamaica and Haiti - but the largest number come from Mexico.

Why do they come? The answer, in most cases, is simple: a chance to work. And work they do, in agriculture, food processing and serving, clothing manufacture, transportation — wherever productive labor is carried on.

The argument is often made that the undocumented workers don't pay taxes. Exactly the opposite is true. Joyce Stewart was right when she pointed that out to Frank. Juan Lopez' employer withheld federal and state taxes from his paychecks. When Juan was returned to Mexico he was unable to recover the excess in income tax he paid during the course of the year. And taxes aren't the only losses suffered by people forced by the U.S. Government to leave. There is the money the employer takes out for social security. If people are forced to leave they lose it all. Even if they stay, they can't collect social security for the time they were here without papers. People also lose bank accounts, furniture, and other household goods and personal belongings — everything that can't be packed up and put on a bus with them.

There are other losses as well. Greedy lawyers charge all kinds of money to "defend" victims of immigration arrests. In the end, the people have to leave anyway, and they leave a lot poorer than before the lawyer took their money. Similarly there is the problem of notaries. In Mexico, a notary is almost like a lawyer: someone people go to for certain legal services that do not require actually going to court. In the U.S., anyone with $15. can be a notary. But since the Spanish word is similar — notaria — and since unscrupulous notaries with neon signs outside their neighborhood offices are able to attract people with immigration problems, many notaries do a large illegal business. They steal money from people and give back false promises or simple services that are available at low cost, if the people only know where to look for them.

People without proper papers suffer other financial losses as well. There is the money that some pay to contractors for jobs and false papers. Not everyone does this, since not everyone has the money or the connections. But there are many contractors or middlemen who fix workers up with papers and jobs, in return for big sums of money. If these workers get caught by the immigration agents, they lose the money they put up for the jobs and papers, as well as everything else.

There are personal losses. Families are broken up by the immigration laws. The U.S. Constitution says that any person born here is a citizen. This means that many undocumented workers have children who are citizens. If children are old enough to stay and work, they may choose to stay and support the family when it is sent back. Or the child may go back with the family and then return when it is old enough to work. Also, it is very common for sisters and brothers to be separated by the immigration laws.

DISCRIMINATION IN THE U.S.

So why, with all these problems and risks, do people come? As we said before, the answer is simple: a chance to work. Because he didn't have papers, Juan Lopez was forced to take a low paying job with little union protection. Some are more fortunate and manage to get jobs in high paying industries like auto and steel. Most, however, have to settle for the $2.50/ hour jobs: in unorganized factories, in service stations, in restaurants. And the lowest paying jobs in this country are usually the hardest, the hottest, and the dirtiest. In addition to the problems resulting from lack of official documents, Juan, like other workers of color, was a victim of the system of U.S. white supremacy: discrimination based on skin color. Furthermore, he had to survive the discrimination against him because his first language was Spanish. Not many employers will hire people who don't speak English — even when the job has nothing to do with speaking English, or any language for that matter. And in many jobs, if there are white people willing to do the work, other workers don't get hired. So Juan and his family faced double discrimination: color and language.

Besides discrimination at work, people like Juan live in constant fear and uncertainty. They know that if the immigration officials catch up with them, what little amount of financial security they've found will be taken away. Anything can lead to being caught: a raid, a fight with a neighbor, sending a child to school, a speeding ticket or just walking down the street and being Mexican. Raids and other forms of harassment are still common despite the government's claim that they are no longer doing this. In and near the community of South Chicago, there have been recent raids on local restaurants and numerous work places such as Republic Steel, Jay's Potato Chips, Solo Cup and two local hospitals. In the case of the hospitals, supervisors called an "employees meeting" and once the workers were assembled, the doors of the meeting room were closed and the immigration officials were brought in. Even workers with proper papers are hassled as the government is liable to stop any Mexican or person of color, trying to find "illegals." Being caught means jail, until the victim can put up $500 to $1500 in bond, or until that person is on the bus to Mexico.

WHAT ABOUT MEXICO?

Can't they find work in their own country? Often the answer is no, and one of the reasons for that is U.S. business. The border between Mexico and the U.S which is closed up tight to Mexican workers who want to come north, is wide open to U.S. corporations running away to Mexico. Large corporations like to boast how their investments help underdeveloped countries grow in industrial strength. The truth is a lot different. When U.S. corporations enter a country like Mexico, they provide jobs for just a handful of people — at the cost of distorting and retarding economic growth of the country as a whole. Thus, Mexico has been unable to develop many of the basic industries vital to any independent country because the new business enterprises are crushed by giant U.S. agricultural, auto, pharmaceutical and other monopolies. When U.S. corporations invest money, large profits are sent back to the U.S., to the banks and shareholders of the corporation. Thus, money is drained out of Mexico and many other countries of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South America, enriching the wealthiest segments of U.S. society. When the Lopez family came north looking for work, they were simply trying to follow the money that the Yankee exploiters have taken from their country.

Another problem that these U.S. corporations in Mexico create for workers is the language problem. The companies often want their employees, especially those in office jobs, to speak English. And because these companies want English speaking workers, Mexican schools want English speaking teachers. Since the arrival of U.S. business interests in Mexico, speaking Spanish is not good enough for many jobs. So people come here to learn English while they work, in hopes of some day landing a better job back home. It is doubly aggravating to Mexican workers here to have to put up with the argument "If they live here they should speak our language", when even in their own country, its getting to be important to speak our language.

COMPETING FOR JOBS

Many workers just stay a few years in this country, before returning home. Others, like Juan, settle here and raise families. Do they compete with "American" Workers for jobs? Of course they do. Under the present system, all workers compete for jobs. But we think there is something wrong with the idea that competition of workers is more important than their contribution. Workers without papers, like immigrant workers generally — be they from Africa, Europe, South America or the East — have built the railroads, dredged the canals and dug the mines that have given this country the mightiest industrial base on earth. With so many more tasks waiting to be performed, the country cannot afford to turn away those who come from other lands looking for work. The contribution that the immigrant workers, including those without official papers, have made in the U.S. is enormous: a lot greater than the contribution made by those who are seeking to deport them.

THE TRUTH ABOUT IMMIGRATION LAWS

Whenever we have high unemployment, those representing the interests of big business attempt to cover up their own responsibility for this situation by blaming working people. As the U.S. unemployment rate rose in the last five years, new laws were introduced to the Congress which were designed to blame Mexican workers for the U.S. economic troubles. One of these laws, the Rodino Bill, was defeated due to the united opposition of many people who understood its unjust-ness and the dirty trick behind it. However, a number of states have enacted similar legislation and others are attempting to do so. Furthermore another bill, called the Eilberg Law, was sneaked through the U.S. Congress to replace the Rodino Bill. Among other things, the Eilberg Law reduces the annual quota of Mexicans legally entering the U.S. from 43,000 to 20,000. It also changes the status of parents with children born in the U.S. by making them wait until the child is 21 before they can get the papers which would make them legal residents. This provision makes many more people liable for deportation and divides families. Such laws must be resisted and stopped. But it is even more important to resist all efforts to deport working people who are simply trying to work for the money that is being drained out of their country by U.S. corporations.

A PAGE FROM HISTORY

Frank and Joyce Stewart didn't know it, and neither do most people, but there is a precedent in history for the kinds of reactionary deportation laws that are being enacted against workers without papers now.

In 1850, when slavery still existed throughout the U.S. South, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law. This incredible law was designed to stop the steady stream of slaves escaping to the North. It provided for fines and prison terms for anyone sheltering refugees from slavery. Suspected runaway slaves could be arrested on request, or on sight, without a warrant and turned over to a claimant, on nothing more than the claimant's word that he was the owner. It was all perfectly "legal" — just like the deportation hearings are today. A person would be arrested and brought before a judge. In about one minute, the person would be charged, the owner would testify the victim was "his" slave, and the so-called trial would be over.

The appeal the slave holders made to enlist northern support for the Fugitive Slave Law was in many ways like the argument put forward today by the U.S. Government for deporting undocumented workers. The slaveholders — the biggest and cruelest exploiters of labor of their time — painted themselves as heroes and champions of white labor. They boasted that they were protecting white people from competition for jobs by black laborers. "After all," they argued, "as long as black folks are working without wages on the plantations, they can't take away white people's jobs."

These arguments were exactly backwards. They were answered very well by Frederick Douglass, a brilliant man and a former slave himself. He showed that it was slavery, not black people, that degraded free labor. As long as black people were forced to work without wages on the plantations, nobody's wages — black or white — could rise very high. Unfortunately, few from the ranks of white laboring people heeded Douglas's wise words. Just like today, most white workers attached way too much importance to the benefits they received for being white. Then, they focused on the benefits of being free: as bad as things were for them, at least they weren't slaves. Today they focus on their relatively better jobs and housing; on their nicer neighborhoods and better schools. What they ignored was — and still is — the most important thing of all. As long as the corporations and the government can keep white people happy and quiet with their little privileges, they can keep the whole working class under their heel.

RESISTANCE GROWS

At the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, fear and dread spread through the black population of the North, where it was estimated that more than 50,000 fugitives had taken refuge from slavery. Would they be caught? Would they be found, even after years of freedom? Would Congress come up with new laws making northern blacks slaves, as well. Some fled to Canada.

At the same time, resistance developed. Lots of it. Opponents of slavery condemned the law, declaring that the slaveholders were attempting to turn citizens of the republic into slave catchers. They held public assemblies to marshal opposition. They formed anti-slavery societies and circulated petitions. And they made bold, heroic efforts to rescue fugitives, in open defiance of the law. Armed clashes broke out between the slave catchers and defenders — black and white — of fugitive slaves.

An outstanding example of direct resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law was the case of Anthony Burns.

$40,000 FOR A SLAVE

On May 24, 1854, Anthony Burns, who had learned to read and write in slavery, was arrested in Boston as a fugitive slave, put in irons, and placed under guard in the federal courthouse. The guard was a posse of special police, one-third of whom were known thugs with prison records. News of the arrest spread fast. The next day, three lawyers came to court to defend him: Charles M. Ellis, a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee, which was organized to protect the rights of black people; Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of Two Years Before the Mast; and Robert Morris, the city's most respected black attorney.

The next night, during a gathering nearby of citizens to protest Burns' arrest, a man cried out "WHEN WE GO FROM THIS CRADLE OF LIBERTY, LET US GO TO THE TOMB OF LIBERTY — THE COURTHOUSE!" And go they did. The crowd stormed the courthouse and battered down the door, attempting to rescue Burns. The attack was repulsed by armed constables and deputies, but one deputy was killed in the process.

Black people gathered around the courthouse and stood vigil around the clock. Knowing it was impossible to win Burns' freedom in court, abolitionists and black people raised $1,200, his "price" and tried to buy his freedom. The U.S. Attorney, however, refused to allow this transaction, arguing that the Fugitive Slave Law required Burns' to be returned to his owner in Virginia.

Of course, Burns did lose the legal battle. When he was to sail to Virginia a few days later, 22 military units were called up to make sure he didn't escape. A cannon was mounted in front of the courthouse. 50,000 shouted "SHAME" as they watched the Boston police and the U.S. Army march Burns to the docks. The town was draped in black. At one point, the crowd tried to break through a police cordon to rescue Burns, but they were forced back.

Although Anthony Burns' market value was $1200, it had cost the government more than $40,000 to return him to his owner. Back in Virginia, the Richmond "Enquirer" printed an account: "We rejoice, but a few more such victories and the South is undone."

There were other slave rescue attempts, and some were successful. On February 15, 1851, waiter Fred Wilkins, or Shadrach, as he was known, was seized from his job and rushed to the Boston courthouse. While Shadrach was still in court, a group of 50 black people from the neighborhood pushed into the courtroom, lifted him in the air, and spirited him to a carriage. Shadrach and his rescuers moved away "like a black squall." The rescue was so fast, nobody even pursued Shadrach. His rescuers were all eventually found not guilty by a sympathetic jury.

From the beginning, black people made up the main force in the resistance to slavery. They operated on the universally recognized principle that people fighting for their freedom must themselves strike the first blow. The Civil War began with both sides fighting for slavery — the South to take it out of the Union, the North to keep it in. It was the noble efforts of the black people, free and slave, and the efforts of their white supporters, that brought about the greatest achievement of the war — the ending of the evil system of human slavery.

IT IS TIME TO RESIST EVIL

If Frank and Joyce Stewart had known the history of this country — not just the part about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln they teach in school — they would have been able to answer the question a lot of people ask about deportations. What can you do?

As was described in the previous section, at the time of the Fugitive Slave Law, the widest, boldest resistance came from the direct victims of the law: slaves and free black women and men. Just as then, widest resistance now will come from Mexican residents of the U.S., who bear the heaviest burden. Already, they are beginning to show the way. In Los Angeles last year, workers who are here with legal papers refused to show them to the immigration agents, jamming the prisons and courts with their resistance to an unjust, unfair, racist law. Also in Los Angeles, thousands of Mexican people without papers marched in defiance of the law to the Immigration Department offices. In such large numbers, and with the support of so many people, nobody was arrested.

There are many more actions that people can take to defend workers without papers. We can refuse all cooperation with the immigration agents. We can refuse to answer any questions, including where we were born. We can turn around and ask them where they were born. Or tell them to show us their papers, if we are stopped. All this is completely legal. And if a lot of us who are citizens or permanent residents refuse to cooperate, it will make it very difficult for the immigration police to do their dirty work.

Beyond that, we can go even further. We can begin to show our strength by acting together where we work. Workers in large plants and mills can prevent the immigration police from freely circulating around and snatching people out. There is no way that raids can be carried out at large mills like Republic Steel, the scene of a recent raid, if the people who work there decide to stop them. Furthermore, workers can respond with strike action against the deportation program. They can strike if the front office lets the immigration police in the door.

Like the slave rescues described earlier, these actions could put a fast stop to the ugly harassment and deportations of Mexican people in the U.S. There is no doubt that the American working class, veteran of the eight hour day movement, practitioner of the sit-down strike and the roving picket line, instigator of the flying wedge and the strike-on-the-job, can bring these evil deportations to a screeching halt — once they make up their minds to do it.