I Am the (Less than) 1%: The Myth of Racial Divisiveness in Occupy Movements
I’ve been going to the Occupy Oakland encampment since Monday, October 10th and participating with the People of Color & Queer People of Color (POCQPOC) Circle that has been taking place there since Tuesday, October 11th. Were it not for hearing that there was a POCQPOC group that Monday night I probably wouldn’t have come back. I have had and continue to have concerns over whether Occupy Together (OT) is a safe or even politically advantageous space for people of color, queer people of color, homeless people, people without documents to stay in the United States, people with various disabilities, friends, family, and other groups and individuals.
My fears have been verified in at least one way. Since the very first day I participated in the People of Color/Queer People of Color Circle that is meeting at Occupy Oakland, I have heard calls to put race aside. I have heard the word “divisive” thrown around in response to anyone raising any sort of concerns in regards to race, sexuality, ability, gender, and nationality. However, for this writing, I am going to focus on race.
I have also been following local and national media, blogs, and Facebook pages related to OT. Responses to people of color who bring up issues of race are being met with a lot of overt, angry racism and more subtle coercion to stop talking about race and focus on class instead.
Sadly, this overpowering idea has resulted in some people of color saying things like, “I’m not trying to be divisive by bring up race, but…” as if they had to apologize for bringing up issues that are central to their lived realities. Even more sad to me, other people of color have outright denounced other people of color who bring up race.
When I have discussed the OT movement with friends, there is widespread suspicion and distrust. I have seen few of the people I know who I often see participating in marches and rallies for various issues of social justice that are important to me. In fact, I have felt a little anxious and ashamed of bringing up that I have been spending time at the Oakland encampment. I think that this is sad as well.
I think that part of the reason that a lot of people are NOT engaging with OT is this idea of being divisive.
Why are people using the term divisive and why is it resulting in the silencing and pushing aside of issues of people of color in the OT movement?
I believe that the use of the term “divisive” amongst OT activists is oppressive to its core. It is a privileged person’s tactic to convince people with less privilege to stop talking about whatever issue they are bringing to the table. It is an old, tired argument heard by people of color who have tried to do political work with white people. For example, some (white) feminists say that focusing on issues of women of color is divisive. Some (white) gay people say that focusing on the needs of gay people of color (and transgender people) will keep gay rights from moving forward. And on and on and on.
This way of thinking guarantees that people of color will not significantly ally ourselves with OT as long as we are being told that our issues are not as important and in fact, detrimental to OT.
So why do people do it? I think that people who use this line of argumentation may be feeling that they have finally found a way to have a voice in the political landscape. It is a way for white people, whether they are poor or middle class, to express the ways that they feel downtrodden, abused and impacted by the forces in our society that seek ever more power, control and wealth—even if they benefit from these forces at times. To take the needs of people of color into account makes them feel that their experience doesn’t matter. They may feel that if we just pay attention to this seemingly all-encompassing issue of class, then we all will win. However, this sense is false. It is proven by examples like the Cuban revolution and its continuing struggles with racism and colorism. We MUST talk about race and class (and sexuality and ability and nationality and…) together in order to be effective and truly work for liberation.
Do I really need to pull out Dr. King’s quote?: “No one is free until everyone is free.”
If you read, watch or listen to conservative media, there has been a trend of some white people feeling that they have been “victimized” and are now an oppressed minority. I think that this feeling goes across the class and political spectrum for many white people and is about white anxiety over a perceived loss of white supremacy. I think that oppressors always have anxiety about their supremacy because they gain it through violence and abuse and other, more subtle forms of control. They know that people will not stand for it indefinitely and are trying to sidestep the ongoing backlash by trying to take on victim status themselves.
In my eyes, white people involved in OT who cannot at least try to hear the critiques I am summarizing (because believe me, I am not the first to make them) are not much different from right-wing conservatives who say they are tired of hearing people of color whine and complain by demanding equity and rights or be “racist” by taking “separatist” actions such as forming racially-based affinity groups or even teaching ethnic studies.
If we don’t talk about race and other forms of oppression and if POCQPOC are not respectfully allowed to hold our own spaces, the percentage that benefits from OT will be way less than 99%. I am a queer, transgender, mixed-race, Filipino, Chicano, middle class person with little familial wealth, born in the United States and with chronic illnesses. I’m not sure what percentage of the population is all these things, but I’m pretty sure it’s less than 1%. All of these factors that make up my life will influence whether or not the Occupy Together movement and the physical encampments themselves are beneficial for me or other people like me in any way. If OT is creating some sort of new model for society, it has a lot work to do. It’s foundations may already be so weakened by these and other issues (like the usage of the word occupy itself!) that I will not be able to participate in the future.
Despite all my concerns, I have been bringing food to the encampment when I can and encouraging young people and friends to check it out and participate. I say all these as things because I am engaged, not just to agitate, make empty accusations, or make white people feel bad.
So in summary, if you consider yourself part of the Occupy Together movement and have any interest in engaging, including or supporting people of color in this movement, then help us to challenge and reject the idea that bringing up any issue that is not about class or the “the 99% vs. the 1%” is going to destroy the “movement.” Stop being divisive by calling us divisive. It’s the very least you can do.
Nico Dacumos
Oakland, CA
24 October 2011 (Final Edit)
15 October 2011 (1st Draft on Facebook.com)
Gender Rant #1,234,754: Non-Cisgender Blues
Is cisgender still the appropriate term du jour for a non-transgender person? If yes, is anyone else disturbed by the way that its use seems, to me anyway, to continue to imply that by using “scientific” language, we will ever employ a term that is not in some way messed up when referring to gender conformity, gender normativity or its various iterations? Why, you ask? Because such a term should not exist in the first place!
I can’t bring myself to use the term cisgender. I mean, no disrespect to Carl Buijs or his supporters who want a neutral and trans-centric counterpart to the term transgender, but the prefixes cis- and trans-, as I understand them, are borrowed from chemistry and therefore, demand legitimacy because they have an air of scientific authority. I believe cisgender is just as troubling as the concepts of female-bodied, male-bodied, biological sex, and chromosomal sex determination because of the ways science is always suspect; it claims to exist in a vacuum but is always already filled with cultural and societal values.
Hell, even the word transgender is, to me, a placeholder at best. You could call it anything and it still wouldn’t describe me or most other people very well at all. It’s like playing a game of Gender Mad Libs:
One day, a [insert adjective here] man named [proper noun] walked out of the [noun]’s room.
“Oh my!” said the [adjective] woman. “What are you doing in the [noun]’s room?”
“Taking a [bodily function],” replied the [adjective] man. “Would you like to see my [body part] to prove I deserve to be here?” he added.
“How [adjective]!” exclaimed the [adjective] woman.
Artists’ Tips: Video Tip #1
If you ever want to get into a school or a festival, get a paid gig, or get a grant, you will need a video work sample. After my own mishaps, frustrations, and lessons learned, here is the first in a series of tips:
If you have your work videotaped, keep a few things in mind:
What is the format of the footage? Is the videographer going to hand you a DV (digital video) tape? Will they be editing something for you that will be on a DVD? Will it be posted on Youtube or Vimeo? Will they be giving you an MOV, MP4, MPG, WMV or AVI file?
The easiest way to go is a professionally edited version of the performance. Even better are additional edited excerpts of varying lengths: 2, 3, 5 minutes. Length depends on where you are submitting; grant committees, festival panels, school entrance boards, etc., all have unique requirements. If you can afford to buy or barter for someone to do these things for you, go for it and get those samples in multiple formats: on DVDs, as computer files, and posted on your Youtube, Vimeo, or another streaming video site.
If all you can get is a DVD, then you will be limited to only being able make copies of the DVD and sending them to the people who need your sample, which is annoying if there is a specific length the clip needs to be. If there are length requirements, you need to “rip” and manipulate the DVD, which is another post altogether.
If you can only procure a DV tape, you will either need to borrow a camera and learn to use video editing software or pay to have someone transfer the DV tape to a useable format, like MOV files (especially if you have a Mac computer) and then also learn to use video editing software. Or hire or barter for someone to edit the video for you or teach you how. That is also another post.
If you can get high-quality MOV, AVI, WMV, MP4 or MPG files, that is the easiest way to work from raw footage that you can then edit or have someone edit. Yet another post.
If your footage is on Youtube, Vimeo, etc., then you can just send the link to anyone who wants to view it. If you want to have your own copy to put on a DVD or CD, then you have to download it, either directly or by using a site like KeepVid. Post on that to come soon.
Hope this was helpful, herm@nos! Your tips or opinions (I’m no expert) are welcome.
Thanks to Irina, from whom I have learned lots of video tricks! If you live in Bay Area, we plan to start a skillshare related to these issues.
Disaster and loss / Colony and genocide / Song, ritual, rite / forgotten
Still we tell story / Proof that we survived / The act itself our future
![ignoblebeasts:
Writing on the back of picture reads, “MAS [Men Against Sexism] member Ed Mead + Danny Atteberry (misidentified as “lovers” in CM [“Concrete Mama”, a nickname for the prison]) walk the tier of Big Red, the isolation unit at Walla Walla State Pen. 77 or 78
Ed Mead was arrested relatively early in the Brigade’s trajectory, so he spent much of his organizing time behind bars. In his close to twenty-year sentence, Mead led work strikes, filed petitions, and generally did his best to fan the flames of discontent wherever he went. This made him something of a scourge to prison administrators, who bounced him through state and federal penal systems, moving him along whenever his organizing efforts began to bear fruit.
One of his more notable efforts was Men Against Sexism (MAS), a group of “tough faggots” who forcibly stopped the buying and selling of prisoners by prisoners for the purpose of sexual exploitation [violent pimping of weaker prisoners by stronger ones] in Walla Walla. During the group’s zenith in 1978, MAS proved so effective that a feminine male prisoner could wear a dress around without threat of violence. MAS backed up their work with homemade grenades, single-shot rifles, and a willingness to die to stop prisoner-on-prisoner rape. ”Of all the political work that I’ve done,” says Mead, Men Against Sexism is what I’m most proud of. (The group effectively disbanded after a foiled escape attempt in 1978 involving Mead, several other prisoners and an array of homemade weapons.)
Yes, Mead and others actually had smuggled weapons into the prison, including a gun Mead was ready to use on at least one occasion. According to Burton-Rose, the two men you see below holding hands debated killing members of a prison gang who defied their ban on “owning”, selling, and raping other prisoners. Only under threat of death did the gang release an effeminate gay prisoner over whom they had claimed “ownership”.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqcboarCY51qc1dxco1_500.jpg)
Writing on the back of picture reads, “MAS [Men Against Sexism] member Ed Mead + Danny Atteberry (misidentified as “lovers” in CM [“Concrete Mama”, a nickname for the prison]) walk the tier of Big Red, the isolation unit at Walla Walla State Pen. 77 or 78
Ed Mead was arrested relatively early in the Brigade’s trajectory, so he spent much of his organizing time behind bars. In his close to twenty-year sentence, Mead led work strikes, filed petitions, and generally did his best to fan the flames of discontent wherever he went. This made him something of a scourge to prison administrators, who bounced him through state and federal penal systems, moving him along whenever his organizing efforts began to bear fruit.
One of his more notable efforts was Men Against Sexism (MAS), a group of “tough faggots” who forcibly stopped the buying and selling of prisoners by prisoners for the purpose of sexual exploitation [violent pimping of weaker prisoners by stronger ones] in Walla Walla. During the group’s zenith in 1978, MAS proved so effective that a feminine male prisoner could wear a dress around without threat of violence. MAS backed up their work with homemade grenades, single-shot rifles, and a willingness to die to stop prisoner-on-prisoner rape. ”Of all the political work that I’ve done,” says Mead, Men Against Sexism is what I’m most proud of. (The group effectively disbanded after a foiled escape attempt in 1978 involving Mead, several other prisoners and an array of homemade weapons.)
Yes, Mead and others actually had smuggled weapons into the prison, including a gun Mead was ready to use on at least one occasion. According to Burton-Rose, the two men you see below holding hands debated killing members of a prison gang who defied their ban on “owning”, selling, and raping other prisoners. Only under threat of death did the gang release an effeminate gay prisoner over whom they had claimed “ownership”.
My friends lil’ sister’s Kreayshawn diss! Goes all the way in!!!
“oh you think you swag’ cuz you got black dudes in yo’ video?!”
Best diss ever! And aimed at racist wannabe Kreayshawn, makes it that much better.
…
Nico Dacumos as Dr. Amador
LGBTQ* History You Should Know (And Probably Never Heard Of)
Alcatraz’s First Prisoner
Alcatraz, San Francisco Bay’s “Rock,” opened as a prison in the 1934. The prison, considered the most intense maximum-security facility in the United States, housed the most “dangerous and incorrigible” criminals in the country. Murderers, mob bosses, serial murderers and enemies of the state were sent to Alcatraz. Also incarcerated at the mighty prison where men who committed the punishable crime of sodomy.
Frank Bolt (pictured above) was Alcatraz’s first inmate, processed on July 1, 1934. Bolt was convicted and imprisoned on the charge of being caught in a homosexual act and received a five-year sentence for acts of sodomy. He would later die at Alcatraz.
-Nine of the first twenty-five prisoners processed and housed at Alcatraz were jailed on charges of sodomy.
Source: The Portable Queer: Homo History p.25-26
(via knowhomo)
Oakland 1969 , Black Panthers and Brown Berets
Black and Brown Power!
BAM
Protesters clash with policemen during a demonstration responding to an initiative launched by the group dubbed “Youth Without a Future” on the Internet, in Madrid on May 15, 2011, to protest against professional and social conditions of the youth in Spain. Spain’s unemployment rate for those under 25 stood at 43.5 percent in February, more than twice the average for the country and the highest youth unemployment rate in the 27-nation European Union.
AFP PHOTO / PEDRO ARMESTRE
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If you follow me PLEASE read and reblog this post!! >__
My country Spain is going through a social revolution, many people from all kind of social groups are joining together a revolution for a change in the politics. We’re tired of our politicians only doing things to please the banks and corporations and not the common people. We demand a new system for all of us and we have started to do pacific marchs and sit-down protests to show our fellows we can do an Island revolution here in Spain.
We need support and media coverage, we are not just a bunch of young punks as police and corporate media are telling, but people from all kind of ages and social statuses.
PLEASE I BEG YOU FOR REBLOGGING THIS MESSAGE, WE NEED TO SPREAD THE WORD!!!
The wildfires of discontent are rapidly spreading throughout Europe. We are all in this together. Fuck the EU. A real united Europe is what we need, in the interests of the people.
