White genderqueer with male privilege working through the contradictions of white supremacist capitalist Patriarchy on a neocolonial landscape.
Occupy Offshoot Blockades Home to Save South Park Man From Eviction | Slog
Co-authored by news intern Ansel Herz Goldy | The StrangerA dozen activists are ready to risk arrest to defend ironworker Jeremy Griffin from being evicted…
The pacifist claim that we should all be martyrs, that suffering the
violence inflicted on us ennobles our cause, is incompatible with
feminism. Under patriarchy, women are socialized to endure their
sexual, cultural, and social subjugation to men. This subjugation is protected by violence against our bodies and minds. At the same time, people who do not conform to the gender binary are equally threatened with violence and disciplined to assimilate to gender norms. Non-violence leads to the conclusion that people should not form organized resistance against gendered violence, but suffer it nobly in the hopes of winning over the hearts and minds of (powerful) men to our cause. Placing the power to end gendered oppression in the hands of those who benefit from it presumes that patriarchal power can be surrendered by persuasion, which reinforces the thoroughly patriarchal definition of men as arbiters and masters. Listen: we will not wait for men to decide we are human enough not to be brutalized. We realize that we have the power to challenge patriarchy with our organized resistance, and that this resistance must embrace violence as an effective political, defensive tactic. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
violence inflicted on us ennobles our cause, is incompatible with
feminism. Under patriarchy, women are socialized to endure their
sexual, cultural, and social subjugation to men. This subjugation is protected by violence against our bodies and minds. At the same time, people who do not conform to the gender binary are equally threatened with violence and disciplined to assimilate to gender norms. Non-violence leads to the conclusion that people should not form organized resistance against gendered violence, but suffer it nobly in the hopes of winning over the hearts and minds of (powerful) men to our cause. Placing the power to end gendered oppression in the hands of those who benefit from it presumes that patriarchal power can be surrendered by persuasion, which reinforces the thoroughly patriarchal definition of men as arbiters and masters. Listen: we will not wait for men to decide we are human enough not to be brutalized. We realize that we have the power to challenge patriarchy with our organized resistance, and that this resistance must embrace violence as an effective political, defensive tactic. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
A high ground of bourgeois morality is the secret platform of nonviolence. Unchecked by an analysis of lived, everyday violence, pacifism turns up its nose at direct confrontation as immature and ignorant, while painting passive resistance as dignified and spiritually pure. Like the liberal insistence on cooperating with the police, this ideology speaks from a position of privilege: not everyone can choose whether or not to engage in violence. Pacifism often presupposes an emotional, physical distance from conflict. Should Palestinians daily besieged by the Israeli military not throw rocks at armed soldiers? Does such violence undermine the legitimacy of their struggle against Israel’s political, economic, and cultural hegemony, and its
occupation of their land? Shouldn’t a woman who survives a rape inflict violence on her attacker? How are youth of color to respond to the police that violently, invasively, and with banal regularity stop and search their shit? — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
occupation of their land? Shouldn’t a woman who survives a rape inflict violence on her attacker? How are youth of color to respond to the police that violently, invasively, and with banal regularity stop and search their shit? — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
The doctrine of non-violence essentializes and polarizes political
struggles into violent and non-violent movements, ignoring the fact that successful struggles use a variety of tactics that cannot be so easily categorized. Advocates of non-violence point to the civil rights movement in the US as a winning example of non-violent protest, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Black Panthers’ militant actions. Drawing a moral line between Martin Luther King’s dream and Malcolm X’s nightmare, pacifists fail to recognize the solidarity between civil rights struggles and black militants. It was in the interests of the white media and politicians to emphasize the conflict between the non-violent and militant factions of the movement, in order to divide and conquer Black resistance. Malcolm X was well aware of this white agenda when he said, “instead of airing our differences in public we have to realize we are all the same family.” While these leaders criticized each other’s tactics, their understanding of racial oppression shared an analysis, and their political actions collaboratively contributed to the momentum of the whole civil rights struggle. Black activists all over the country used a variety of tactics to advance their political struggle, from the Black Panthers’ Free Food program, to armed paramilitaries protecting Black homes and churches from racist attacks. Riots, armed resistance, and revolutionary rhetoric were as much a part of the struggle as the more cherished marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. This real diversity of tactics worked to strengthen communities, raise collective consciousness, develop analyses, and secure helpful (if inadequate) legal reforms. To attribute the power of the civil rights movement to nonviolence alone is to manipulate history and occlude the totality of this struggle. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
struggles into violent and non-violent movements, ignoring the fact that successful struggles use a variety of tactics that cannot be so easily categorized. Advocates of non-violence point to the civil rights movement in the US as a winning example of non-violent protest, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Black Panthers’ militant actions. Drawing a moral line between Martin Luther King’s dream and Malcolm X’s nightmare, pacifists fail to recognize the solidarity between civil rights struggles and black militants. It was in the interests of the white media and politicians to emphasize the conflict between the non-violent and militant factions of the movement, in order to divide and conquer Black resistance. Malcolm X was well aware of this white agenda when he said, “instead of airing our differences in public we have to realize we are all the same family.” While these leaders criticized each other’s tactics, their understanding of racial oppression shared an analysis, and their political actions collaboratively contributed to the momentum of the whole civil rights struggle. Black activists all over the country used a variety of tactics to advance their political struggle, from the Black Panthers’ Free Food program, to armed paramilitaries protecting Black homes and churches from racist attacks. Riots, armed resistance, and revolutionary rhetoric were as much a part of the struggle as the more cherished marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. This real diversity of tactics worked to strengthen communities, raise collective consciousness, develop analyses, and secure helpful (if inadequate) legal reforms. To attribute the power of the civil rights movement to nonviolence alone is to manipulate history and occlude the totality of this struggle. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
Rather than policing the radical voices taking anti-capitalist, revolutionary, and anti-police positions, we should give these voices space to be heard and listened to seriously. The anarchist in-joke “Make Total Destroy” is true: the real political agenda consists in destroying state power, capitalism, and all its forms of coercive social control. Why was this phrase deliberately excluded from the agenda cards read out during a GA, while such platitudes as “We are All One” and “Peace on Earth and Good Will to All” were deemed worthy to be shared? The liberal-or-else reformism of Occupy Baltimore is perfectly encapsulated by the imposition of goals of peace and love. Fuck peace: we need to formulate a coherent political analysis and a revolutionary agenda to destroy capitalism and dismantle state power. Rejecting outright the eventual need for an armed uprising reflects an unwillingness to pursue the logic of our own (proto)demands to their full extent.
— ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
And you know how it goes: the neutral “me” is the white dude with all the time in the world (we have to say it: the ideal occupier). At Occupy Baltimore, whiteness and maleness have been duly reinforced as the not-so-secret standard at this occupation, in many ways. One example: an announcement made by a young white man at a GA that “everyone is accountable when they speak to media, because they represent the occupation as a whole” (FYI: there is no literature, no point person, no infrastructure to guide new members; only judgment). The countless snaps and twinkles in support of such a statement demonstrated clear consensus. Those twinkles expressed a range of assumptions that people who are largely comfortable in their own skin tend to make. Being present in a space makes
you in charge of its representation; most everyone agrees with you (and should). Those of us that have daily to prepare ourselves for an imminent bash, an imminent fight with hostile, privilege-denying strangers, an imminent insult (intended or not) — we take issue with this coercion into representation. We don’t ask you to represent us (please god no). Don’t fucking assimilate us into your views, and then make us responsible for them. We won’t even mention how much and how loud white dudes have been speaking. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
you in charge of its representation; most everyone agrees with you (and should). Those of us that have daily to prepare ourselves for an imminent bash, an imminent fight with hostile, privilege-denying strangers, an imminent insult (intended or not) — we take issue with this coercion into representation. We don’t ask you to represent us (please god no). Don’t fucking assimilate us into your views, and then make us responsible for them. We won’t even mention how much and how loud white dudes have been speaking. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
Perhaps other cities are different, but for all its rhetoric of “unity” and “inclusivity” Occupy Baltimore is really a movement organized by and for the white middle class. There is a reason why the people most besieged by capitalism are not coming down to McKeldin Square. When the organizers act like racism is a secondary issue (“We don’t have time to talk about racism — we need to bring this back to the real issue: finance reform”), it becomes clear whose movement this is. Let’s drop the false rhetoric: what’s wrong with the system is not that it is unfair to the 99%, but that is unfair to a disappearing middle class, an almost vestigial group that reappears in occupy among the concrete environs of its former promised land, the business sector. At McKeldin, in the shadow of corporate highrises, wedged between convention centers and the bourgeois playground of the inner harbor, Baltimore’s middle class comes to better envision the jobs and upward mobility they desperately want. Don’t get us wrong — there can be a lot of good in indignation, discontent, disillusionment. But we need to exorcise the living ghost of the middle class: the spirit of not giving a fuck who you fuck over. Why say “99%” when you really mean “me”?
— ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
Whatever this occupation is, it is not a camping trip from capital –
we are still in the patriarchy, still in a white supremacy, still in a transphobic and disability-loathing society. In these places, assuming we are unified will only obscure divisions that need to be confronted before anything else. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
we are still in the patriarchy, still in a white supremacy, still in a transphobic and disability-loathing society. In these places, assuming we are unified will only obscure divisions that need to be confronted before anything else. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
For those that recall the warm and golden age of US industrialism with dewy-eyed nostalgia: this crisis began with the failure of US industry in the late sixties. Real wages have been stagnant since then. The oil crisis of 1973 was the hinge; we are living in the declension of US global power. There’s no going back, no exchanging unproductive finance for good old-fashioned productive exploitation. Or is there? Today, American industry is indeed firing up again, as capital that had long flown from its shores returns to find wages lower than the so-called third world. “Reshoring”: a name for the farce that follows the tragedy of the post-war boom.
History insists on the eradication of capital as the only possibility of preventing crisis. Financial reform and “sanctions” are not enough: we will never see “the military industrial complex dismantled, the police disempowered, and the public sector fulfilling its obligations to the people” by redistributing wealth.7
Corrupt politicians and greedy financiers are only a superfluous, insulting layer on the thing that is truly condemned: capital, which in our time is inescapable. With this realization, we don’t need to occupy Wall Street, or any bank. Why was Tahrir square chosen? Was it even chosen at all? We could occupy any corner, any room, any building, and it would carry the social significance of what needs to be either appropriated or destroyed. The better question to pose when deciding what to occupy is: what do we want to inhabit? On this point, it is worth mentioning that the tactic to occupy has evolved since its recent revival in the 2008 occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago. What struck students in New York, California, Puerto
Rico, London, Athens, etc. about the occupation was that its strategy to reappropriate equipment, space, and organization could take place without recognition from authorities. Demands were auxiliary to the best part: the immediate process of retaking control over the means of production.
Let us be clear: finance is not the problem. Finance is a precondition and a symptom, a necessary and contradictory part of capital. Deregulation, globalization, deindustrialization: none of these words can provide a substantial explanation for the present context. Each is only a surface phenomenon, an effect of capital’s self-defeating tendency to make its own systemic reproduction increasingly difficult. Crisis and the reconcentration of wealth among capitalists are not only
regular but necessary; the tendency to financialization has many historical precedents. Genoa in the period 1557-62 looks like the Dutch Republic in 1780-83; Britain in 1919-21 looks like the US today. But even if financial booms and busts are as old as mercantilism, there is a qualitative change to the nature of these crises since the 18th century, when capitalist production was imposed on the British countryside and the credit system emerged as its necessary lubricant. Capitalist production creates an unparalleled need for credit, an unprecedented need to consolidate and centralize capital, a grotesque scale of fungible assets that strives to make everything solid melt into the sophistry of mathematics. Asset-backed securities and
credit default swaps didn’t make this crisis, they only allowed it to heat up and billow out of control. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
regular but necessary; the tendency to financialization has many historical precedents. Genoa in the period 1557-62 looks like the Dutch Republic in 1780-83; Britain in 1919-21 looks like the US today. But even if financial booms and busts are as old as mercantilism, there is a qualitative change to the nature of these crises since the 18th century, when capitalist production was imposed on the British countryside and the credit system emerged as its necessary lubricant. Capitalist production creates an unparalleled need for credit, an unprecedented need to consolidate and centralize capital, a grotesque scale of fungible assets that strives to make everything solid melt into the sophistry of mathematics. Asset-backed securities and
credit default swaps didn’t make this crisis, they only allowed it to heat up and billow out of control. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
Nothing is more clear in the US debt-scape than the racial character of everyday finance. There is no better indicator that people of color cannot be assimilated to the faceless borrowers of the 99% than the strategic location of payday loan offices, taxpreparation outlets, and banks that specialize in subprime mortgages. But debt is sexed, too. And not only because women, like people of color, were disproportionately solicited for subprime mortgages (across all income levels). A map of foreclosures, of adjustable-rate mortgages, a topography of interest rates: all these overlap neatly on the demographics of racialized and feminized poverty, because race and gender are no longer grounds to deny credit, but indexes of risk. And as long as risk can be commodified, as long as volatility can be hedged against and profited from, our color and gender will be blamed for the inevitable collapse. This is the absurdity of everyday finance. We are the risk? We are the predators? Finance’s favorite game must be the schoolyard refrain: “I know you are but what am I?
— ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
If we want to use this figure to underscore how far polarized the rich and the poor are today, fine. But those of us that don’t homogenize so easily get suspicious when we hear calls for unity. What other percentages hide behind the nearly-whole 99%? What about the 16% of Blacks that are “officially” unemployed, double the number of whites? The 1 out of 8 Black men in their twenties that on any given day will be in prison or jail? The quarter of women that will get sexually assaulted in their lifetime? The dozens of queer, trans*, intersex, and gender-variant folks that are murdered each year, 70% of whom are people of color? Is a woman of color’s experience of the crisis interchangeable with that of the white man whose wage is twice hers? Are we all Troy Davis? As austerity grinds us down, who among us will go to prison? Who will be relegated to informal, precarious labor? Whose benefits will be cut, whose food stamps canceled or insufficient? Who will be evicted? Who will be unable to get health care, to get hormones or an abortion?
— ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
Before anything else, we must frame this movement within a prior occupation: that of white settlers on Nanticoke and Susquehannock land. The genocide, expulsion, and dispossession of native peoples is foundational to the ascent of the US as a center of global capital.2 As a settler colony, the US was founded on a logic of agricultural settlement that implies the commodification of land — an always-violent process. The early history of capitalism in North America is a bloody story: to establish a vast supply of arable territory and docile labor,
capital coursed through colonial domination and enslavement. On this ground, we cannot reclaim this country, but only acknowledge it as a unit of capitalist destruction. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
capital coursed through colonial domination and enslavement. On this ground, we cannot reclaim this country, but only acknowledge it as a unit of capitalist destruction. — ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H. HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
There is no way for capitalism to continue its reign — this
is clear. And yet, capitalism will not behead itself: we know
that we need to struggle in some way if we are to overcome it. —
is clear. And yet, capitalism will not behead itself: we know
that we need to struggle in some way if we are to overcome it. —
ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS COMMUNIQUE FROM W.&.T.C.H.
HALLOWEEN 2011 BALTIMORE, AMERIKKKA
DAMN. Reading the threads in the Occupy Portland facebook group is so. Fucking. Depressing.
So much racist, patriarchal, kyriarchal, ignorant, hateful bullshit all on one page.
gpoy
