ivan boothe : the.quixotic.life : searching for the windmills

Misreading antiracism in the Left Business Observer

ivan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:33:41 +0000

Crossposted to the correspondence blog A Red Letter Day.

At first glance I have to say that Adolph Reed Jr. seems to have a very different experience with antiracism than me, based on his recent article, "The limits of anti-racism" in the Left Business Observer:

In the logic of antiracism, exposure of the racial element of an instance of wrongdoing will lead to recognition of injustice, which in turn will lead to remedial action—though not much attention seems ever given to how this part is supposed to work. I suspect this is because the exposure part, which feels so righteously yet undemandingly good, is the real focus. But this exposure convinces only those who are already disposed to recognize.

What this sounds to me like is the squishy-diversity workshop approach to racism, in which white folks feel really bad about racism and the possibility that they might do something racist, and spend a lot of time focusing on how to become better people, usually looking to a person of color to educate them on just how to do that.

Similarly, Reed's impression of the target of this "antiracism" also seems familiar to me:

As the basis for a politics, antiracism seems to reflect, several generations downstream, the victory of the postwar psychologists in depoliticizing the critique of racial injustice by shifting its focus from the social structures that generate and reproduce racial inequality to an ultimately individual, and ahistorical, domain of "prejudice" or "intolerance."

Certainly that individualist, unaccountable, white-focused and, in my view, racist type of study/thinking does exist, and perhaps in some places it goes by the name of antiracism. But the overall movement of antiracist theory and action has been away from just that type of approach, which I think of as more common in the 1970s and '80s.

Reed also seems to think that a commitment to antiracism means being uncommitted to working to dismantle any other forms of oppression, notably classism and capitalism. After accusing Tim Wise — whom he says is a "professional antiracist," which sounds to me like calling a labor organizer a "professional anticapitalist" — of downplaying Van Jones' history with a Marxist organization, Reed writes:

This ... deepens my suspicions about antiracism's status within the comfort zone of neoliberalism's discourses of "reform." More to the point, I suspect as well that this vitriol toward radicalism is rooted partly in the conviction that a left politics based on class analysis and one focused on racial injustice are Manichean alternatives.

My experience has been just the opposite. I see most writing, training and organizing around antiracism as happening within the context of an anticapitalist, feminist, queer-friendly framework that sees an overall system of oppression privileging the few at the expense of the many.

Organizations like The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, Training for Change, The Change Agency, the National Coalition Building Institute, the Catalyst Project, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights develop movement strategy within this resistance framework.
Historians like Herbert Hill, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa and Robin DG Kelley have complicated the whitewashed social histories of the twentieth century demonstrating that "single" oppressions like classism and sexism have multiple dimensions.
Recent movements and activist organizations like the Zapatistas, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Critical Resistance, INCITE, Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, among many others, operate from that systematic-oppression and resistance framework.

It's just really hard for me to believe that Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz or Paul Kivel or Helen Luu or Daniel Hunter or anyone else who "does" antiracism would argue that it's all about awareness, or that we should focus on individuals, or that classism and racism aren't intertwined.

In 1997, Reed wrote that then-President Clinton's desire for a "national conversation on race" was not connected to any real substance:

It's just part of the fundamentally empty rhetoric of multiculturalism: diversity, mutual awareness, respect for difference, hearing different voices and the like. None of these notions is objectionable on its face, but that's partly because none of them means anything in particular ... The problem isn't racial division or a need for healing. It is racial inequality and injustice.

I think he was right to identify the mainstream liberal approach to race as sidestepping rather than confronting the systemic injustice of racism. But in pointing the finger at antiracist activists, I think he misidentifies the very community that's been working to more effectively dismantle systems of oppression.

Organizing communities, on the left and right

ivan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:50:29 +0000

Crossposted to my new correspondence blog, A Red Letter Day — check there for Al's response!

Dear Al,

Has the mainstream left gone insane in response to these town halls on health care reform?

When you have what you see is an illegitimate process set up to provide the appearance of taking people's views into consideration when in fact the outcome is a foregone conclusion, then of course you try to shut down that process.

I don't agree with the views or falsehoods or ahistorical analysis (Nazis were socialists, single-payer is socialized medicine, the specter of "death panels," etc.) put forth with those protesting health care reform — and I wish grassroots movements I've been a part of had been bankrolled by huge corporate lobbies and trumpeted by major pundits.

But it's a legitimate strategy — and it's not like even most mainstream Democrats haven't been a part of an angry town hall once or twice when their local library is going to be closed, or someone wants to build a nuclear power plant, or someone's dumping sludge into the river. Is this giant collective, selective amnesia?

And then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi calls the protests at town halls "un-American."

Who are these people? Are Democrats really going to position themselves as the party of the anti-populists? Is that even a smart political strategy?

Even more frustrating than the response of politicians have been some grassroots activist groups. In an email to their supporters, Code Pink lamented that conservatives were turning to Saul Alinsky for tactics:

It’s so frustrating watching angry voters at town hall meetings spouting ridiculous accusations like Obama wants to euthanize the elderly and turn this country into Russia. And it’s ironic to see the right contorting leftist tactics. In a memo Rocking the Town Halls, a group called Right Principles urges its members to “Use the Alinsky playbook,” referring to Saul Alinsky, the guru of 1960s grassroots organizing whose work influenced community organizer Barack Obama.

Let’s not be out-organized by violent, right-wing tools of insurance corporations incited by Fox News.

I agree that "we" shouldn't be out-organized by "violent, right-wing tools of insurance corporations incited by Fox News." But I actually think it's kind of exciting that they're looking to Saul Alinsky for tactics. (Though I don't really see Alinsky ideas evident in these protests.)

But come on! They're not "contorting leftist tactics," they're using them! Poorly, perhaps; to despicable ends, perhaps. But on balance I'd rather have them looking to Alinsky than William F. Buckley or Barry Goldwater. Especially when lefties are regularly wondering about the much more credulous coverage given to these protesters than, say...Code Pink. A world in which politicians were sidelined and people organized their friends and neighbors around issues they cared about sounds like a pretty good one to me.

I think there's this myth that people on the right don't do community organizing. I think until it's been true that most organizations on the right don't do grassroots organizing, but conservatives have been doing organizing around issues like abortion for a generation now.

Rootwork: Freelance web services, online organizing and more for nonprofits

ivan — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:34:18 +0000

Last year, I launched my freelance consulting firm, Rootwork, which provides web development services, online organizing and fundraising strategy and more for nonprofits.

Some of you have already noticed that the old articles from this site have moved over there (with search engine-friendly redirects, and comments intact). For those of you who haven't made the switch, here's a direct link to the RSS feed.

On this blog, I'll continue to post about some of the day-to-day activism I'm involved in, as well as art and politics, and my academic studies of third-party nonviolent intervention.

Feel free to follow Rootwork on Twitter, Slideshare or Virb. And do contact me if you know of upcoming projects with nonprofits or social change groups interested in web development, online organizing, social media or other "social change technology"!

So, what should we do now that racism is over?

ivan — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:12:55 +0000

Because you know some people are going to be making that argument now.

"Hey, we don't need affirmative action, there's a black man in the White House!"

Right. Just like when FDR was elected, they stopped bothering to try to cure polio.

Update: Like, say, here and here and here and here.

'I want a language that speaks the truth.'

ivan — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:06:28 +0000

At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day — indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue — the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.

RIP, Studs Terkel

One more great quote, relevant to this site, from the Sun-Times:

"I'm on a quest," he said. "I'm Don Quixote. Of course I want to tilt at windmills. I want to tilt at other things. It's the Don Quixotes of the world — call them the seekers of the ideal — who keep the juices going, give them pepper, the salt, change it for the good."

Drop Debt Not Bombs: Drexel Convocation Dance Party [Flickr]

quixoticlife — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:38:43 PDT

quixoticlife posted a photo:

Convocation is when the president welcomes people to Drexel and talks about the glories and traditions of our fine academy. It's generally a boring waste of time. Instead Drexel Students for a Democratic Society hosted a hoppin' outdoor dance party to mobilize students for our campaign to END STUDENT DEBT! Students are facing our own economic crisis, so let's focus on organizing ourselves to fix our future!

Find out more about the Drexel SDS student debt campaign and how to get involved at phillysds.org/

Drop Debt Not Bombs: Drexel Convocation Dance Party [Flickr]

quixoticlife — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:38:24 PDT

quixoticlife posted a photo:

Drop Debt Not Bombs: Drexel Convocation Dance Party [Flickr]

quixoticlife — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:38:05 PDT

quixoticlife posted a photo:

Drop Debt Not Bombs: Drexel Convocation Dance Party [Flickr]

quixoticlife — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:37:45 PDT

quixoticlife posted a photo:

Drop Debt Not Bombs: Drexel Convocation Dance Party [Flickr]

quixoticlife — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:37:28 PDT

quixoticlife posted a photo:

Gender politics and civic discourse

ivan — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:39:00 +0000

In the wake of Matthew Shepard's death, the playwright Tony Kushner wrote an essay, "Matthew's Passion," in which he talked about the hate speech that leads to hate crime. He said,

A lot of people worry these days about the death of civil discourse ... [but] I mourn Matthew Shepard's actual death, caused by the unimpeachably civil "we hate the sin, not the sinner" hypocrisy of the religious right, endorsed by the political right, much more than I mourn the lost chance to be civil with someone who does not consider me fully a citizen, nor fully human. I mourn that cruel death more than the chance to be civil with those who sit idly by while theocrats, bullies, panderers and hatemongers, and their crazed murderous children, destroy democracy and our civic life. Civic, not civil, discourse is what matters, and civic discourse mandates the assigning of blame.

I start with that for two reasons: First, because I think that the policies embodied by Sarah Palin, John McCain and other high-profile Republicans mandate an assignation of blame for all sorts of real, actual deaths of people in the United States and around the world. (For the record, I think Democrats often aid and abet these policies and in numerous cases are even the originators of them.) The breadth and depth of these implicated policies are beyond what I want to discuss here, but suffice to say I think there's plenty of blame to go around. And I agree with Kusher that — while I might personally believe that all humans are good and have the capacity for good — a functioning democracy demands that we call out people and policies that harm, oppress and kill people.

The second reason for including Kushner is that I think I have some blame to assign myself here. Kushner was talking about the vile history of hate speech inciting crimes against marginalized communities. As a white, Protestant, able-bodied, tall, male-presenting person who often passes as straight, I encompass whole boatloads of unearned, inherited privilege. I can pretend that I don't benefit from that privilege — that I don't get preferential treatment because I'm white, for instance, or that my ideas don't get taken seriously in part because I'm male — or I can do my best to counteract it. In the past few years, I've decided personally that the most important political work I can do is within those privileged communities to try to bring people to a state of active anti-oppression, not simply awareness or sympathy.

But that's not the blame I'm talking about today. In this case, I helped to propagate a use of hate speech that I didn't fully agree with — but secure in my male privilege, didn't really think too hard about, either.

On Saturday, Republican vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin came to Philadelphia. ACT-UP/Philly, among many other groups, called for an organized protest. I showed up and took some pictures. I even made a video of the protest (and on Facebook) of which I'm quite proud.

In wanting to represent the breadth of the protest, however, I took some pictures of people wearing shirts that attacked Sarah Palin using language demeaning to women.

You can see the original photo of these shirts here, but be aware the language used could be triggering.

I then uploaded these images to Flickr, without comment. Apparently my images were noticed quite quickly, because they started getting blogged about and the comments on this image in particular were quite extensive (the image is no longer on that page, but I left it up for the sake of recording the comments).

I made a mistake in propagating this language.

I want to be clear that I don't think there's anything at all wrong with treating elected officials who directly and indirectly harm others with contempt. There were some great other images of Sarah Palin "lookalikes" that I would proudly display. I think the pressure from elected officials to be "courteous," "respectful," "civil" and "civilized" is simply a way to disempower ordinary people and disconnect them from the prospect of real social change. William Greider describes it in this way:

In practical terms, the most dreadful consequence is the way in which ordinary citizens are silenced and demoralized — made to feel dumb — by the content of information politics.

Jeffrey Goldfarb, as quoted by Alexandra Bradbury in her study of the approach of college students in a fair labor campaign, puts it even more directly:

[T]he commitment to civil society and civil discourse, unquestioned, without disruptions such as those of Malcolm [X], becomes a force for the continued subjugation of the marginal, in the US particularly the continued functioning of racism.

Because the criticism of the photo that I posted often focused on the "incivility" of any criticism of Sarah Palin's beliefs, I want to be clear that I'm not arguing for a more "refined" discourse as a way to solve our problems. But treating someone who supports wars of imperialism or subjugating entire swathes of the population because of their citizenship status or love interests (for instance) with justified contempt isn't quite the same as invoking misogynist language against someone you disagree with.

And that's what I need to apologize for.

In trying to do work in active anti-racism as a white person, I've tried to keep in mind from the beginning that mistakes are inevitable — it's whether I'm willing to be called out and check myself that matters. I think that's true in many sorts of anti-oppression work. I don't doubt the necessity of fighting to protect people's lives from a (new) murderous regime. But I do think that accusations framed in hate speech are a poor way to work for a better future.

I welcome your comments.

May Day with Mushrooms

ivan — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:55:54 +0000

I went to a demonstration this afternoon in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, sponsored by the Farmworkers Support Committee (CATA) based in South Jersey and the Kaolin Workers Union in Kennett Square. This part of rural (but increasingly exurban) southeast PA is a mushroom-growing area; it supplies 40 percent (!) of the United States' mushrooms. CATA and the Kaolin union are both fantastic worker- and immigrant-led organizations that, beginning with the Kaolin Strike in 1993 and culminating in successful unionization in 2002, have kept up the pressure both for workers' rights and migrant laborer and immigrant rights.

I forgot to bring my camera this year, but here are some photos from last year's demonstration:

The crowd was decidedly smaller this year; it had been threatening to rain all day (and did, a little bit). There also seemed to be much less turnout from organizations — last year there were visible representatives from SEIU, IWW and faith communities as well as a few different folks running for local office (on a platform of workers' rights, yay!); this year it seemed somewhat more subdued.

I was actually interviewed for some of the press coverage last year; though there were TV crews and some print reporters at the demonstration none of them apparently spoke Spanish, as they only seemed interested in interviewing English speakers. Some students from Swarthmore had the fantastic idea this year to go along as translators, and it was announced at the beginning that any of them were available to translate for media interviews of the workers.

I'll end with some photos from La Primera Marcha back in April of 2006 in DC. Though it seems in some ways there is less pressure and organizing going on along these issues today — partly as a result of the splintering of groups with the "compromise" immigration bill last year — I think if successful organizing can continue to happen in places like Kennett Square then there's still a lot of potential.

Today, by Frank O'Hara

ivan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:52:12 +0000

Day 14 of the 2007 Fun-a-Day project with the Artclash Collective.

Today
By Frank O’Hara

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about

still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

F is for foetus, by E.E. Cummings

ivan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:48:43 +0000

Day 13 of the 2007 Fun-a-Day project with the Artclash Collective.

F is for foetus
By E.E. Cummings

F is for foetus(a

punkslapping
mobsucking
gravypissing poppa but
who just couldn't help it no

matter how hard he never tried)the

great pink
superme
diocri
ty of

a hyperhypocritical D

mocra
c(sing
down with the fascist beast
boom

boom)two eyes

for an eye four
teeth for a tooth
(and the wholly babble open at
blessed are the peacemuckers)

$ $ $ etc(as

the boodle's bent is the
crowd inclined it's
freedom from freedom
the common man wants)

honey swoRkey mollypants

After the Convention, by Robert Lowell

ivan — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:34:43 +0000

Day 9 of the 2007 Fun-a-Day project with the Artclash Collective.

After the Convention
By Robert Lowell

Life, hope, they conquer death, generally, always;
and if the steamroller goes over the flower, the flower dies.
Some are more solid earth; they stood in lines,
blouse and helmet, a creamy de luxe sky-blue—
their music, savage and ephemeral. ...
After five nights of Chicago: police and mob,
I am so tired and had, clichés are wisdom,
the clichés of paranoia. On this shore,
the fall of the high tide waves is a straggling, joshing
march of soldiers ... on the march for me. ...
How slender and graceful, the double line of trees,
how slender, graceful, irregular and underweight,
the young in black folk-fire circles below the trees—
under their bodies, the green grass turns to hay.