BroadSnark

I’m hearing various rumors that occupiers are planning to descend on the capital for national actions. I don’t want to belabor the points I made in my previous post about activism in DC, but I just have to plead with you.

Please don’t come.

For the first time since I have been living in DC, I am seeing people coordinate about local issues in a big way. Small organizations that don’t get near enough support are getting attention. Occupiers are turning away from national campaigning. Links are being built. The seeds of workable solidarity networks are being planted. But we have a long way to go.

And if you come here, all our energy will be sucked right back into supporting you rather than doing what we need to do for our community. We just aren’t ready. Bad things happen when activists don’t do the relationship building and humble work of learning how to be allies instead of colonializers. If you don’t believe me, just read this post on racialicious.

Chomsky is right on this one. So are Mike Davis and Silvia Federici.

the movement should not be too eager to produce programmatic demands and should concentrate, instead, on making its presence more visible, on reaching out to other communities, and on ‘reclaiming the commons.’ This is beginning to happen with the migration of the occupations into the neighborhoods, which is essential to reconstruct a social fabric that has been dismantled through years of neoliberal restructuring and the gentrification and suburbanization of space.

Some of the coolest things that are happening in places like Seattle and the rest of the country are happening on a micro level. That’s where we should all be focusing our efforts right now. If people really feel like they need to do a national action, how about the proposed national assembly in Philadelphia? Maybe our Phili peeps have enough capacity to divert their attention.

But please, let DC focus on DC for a while.

I moseyed over to Occupy K Street last night for the general assembly and the action committee meeting. Not much to say about the GA – except maybe to mention that there was a serious shortage of women. Of the two that spoke, one offered to take notes and the other was reporting back from the committee that cleans and does dishes.  I’ll let you make your own comments.

The action committee meeting was much more interesting. If you have been following a certain blogger (who I most definitely would never, ever socialize with – please don’t ban me too) then you know that the action committee is exhibiting some of DCs most common ailments.

There are a whole lot of people in this town who make their living in orgs that lobby. That includes me, by the way. I work in the advocacy department of the Oxfam International Secretariat. I don’t lobby. I make sure people get paychecks and that their insurance doesn’t get cancelled. (There. Full disclosure. Happy now?)

I don’t actually think lobbying is very useful. I do think the watchdog role we play has some use. My peeps watch the World Bank and IMF. But I stay the hell away from all that shit in my spare time. I’m sure a lot of the people down at occupy are like me. They are paying their rent by working in an org that they hope doesn’t do more harm than good and are happy to have an outlet for the stuff that might matter. The revolution will not be funded and all that.

The thing is, it is extremely difficult to get out of the professional, policy, advocacy, pro-democrat mindset in this town. And not everyone is just paying the bills. There are a lot of climbers in DC. That includes lots of people in organizations that you may think are warm and fuzzy.

Happily, the first part of the action committee went pretty well. While we were still talking national politics, the general tone was that democrats and republicans are equally responsible for our mess and should all be targets. So far so good.

But then the conversation turned to actions sponsored by SEIU et al. While the committee separated itself from them to some extent, we were still basically talking about actions that will inevitably connect Occupy with organizations that spend money and energy to elect democrats to office.

One minute we were talking about how fucked up it is that the democrats are having a $1,000 a plate fundraising dinner. The next minute we were talking about supporting (however nominally) an organization that funnels millions of dollars to democrats in order to get access to the halls of congress.  (How’s that been working out for you, SEIU?)

Orgs that focus on the political process drain all our energy. They are part of the problem. Any organization that is taking our money and giving it to political candidates needs to be a target. They are screwing us. The idea of marching on K street with a bunch of lobbyists (albeit more benign ones) makes my brain hurt.

Nonprofits shouldn’t get a pass either. We spend too much money on the political process as well. We can’t support candidates, but we spend a lot of time on policy. I should note here that, while the Oxfam International Secretariat is not unionized, Oxfam America is represented by…wait for it… SEIU.  (It may be very awkward in the office tomorrow.)

I’m not saying that nobody should ever lobby for anything. People have immediate and pressing needs. Sometimes a minor reform can actually help somebody without increasing the state’s power. Changing the crack to powder cocaine sentencing discrepancy does not challenge the racist prison industrial complex. Though I’m sure those people getting out of prison a bit early are glad someone did it.

But that is not radical change. And people need to recognize that being reformist and radical at the same time is damn near impossible.

The capital occupies this city. It is just too tempting for activists to focus on big, sexy targets like congress, especially in a town where so many people move here specifically to focus on national and international politics. Then we have the continuous stream of outside protesters that come in needing coordination, support, and places to stay.

It weakens us.

All the time that we spend on protesting the national government or supporting the constant stream of demonstrators to the capital is time we do not spend on local DC issues. We live in a city that has hideous statistics. Three out of four African American men in DC will spend time in prison. Our illiteracy rates are through the roof. Our AIDS rates are astronomical. Unemployment may be as high as 50% in some areas.

And by allowing ourselves to be sucked into the national political scene again and again we lose so many potential allies that would work with us if we were focusing on their daily struggles.

Another thing I noticed last night, and that I have noticed in lots of activisty spaces in DC, is the rather narrow age range present. I was probably one of the oldest farts there. We live in a city that is packed with people who have experience with everything from CORE to ActUp. Where are they at?

It seems to me that a lot of activists get burned out on the national protest scene. It is emotionally draining and shows very little results. A person can only do that for so long. Some of those people go off and work in small orgs focusing on local issues. Those people need our support and we need their experience.

I don’t know how we avoid getting caught in the national, international, labor, NGO, lobby black hole. I’m not sure if the reform v. radical or agitating v. organizing conflicts are resolvable – or even manageable. And I have no idea if we can actually get more people in on this conversation. But I don’t see where things are going if we don’t try.

I hate this picture.

I get the point that they are trying to make. The “99%” at the occupy protests are privileged, white, college kids who just want loan forgiveness. They aren’t really the people most suffering in the world.

It is true that many of the people who are participating are relatively well off. I’ve written about how the conversation needs to widen. I was disappointed that the occupy movement completely ignored the prison hunger strike, clearly people who are worse off than most in those parks.

I understand the frustration that so many people only open their eyes to injustice when it affects them. But what should we do? Do we dismiss people because their awakening is belated? If we want things to change, we need most people on board. Maybe some of those people will sell out, just like a lot of former hippies did. But not all of them will. Once you have experienced police  violence, you aren’t likely to forget it. Once you expand your knowledge and circle of relationships, that is not so easy to undo.

What else does that picture say?

It says that poor, POC are just sitting helpless? They are just waiting for someone to come and rescue them? Horseshit. Have you seen the Bolivian protestors who stopped a government planned road through their land? Have you seen the pink gang in India? Or how about the women’s only village of Umoja. Why do people feel the need to portray the poor without any agency? Why do people feel the need to draw a line between the struggles of the poorest and those of the relatively comfortable?

Conservatives do this shit all the time.  The Heritage Foundation loves to talk about how well-off poor people in this country are. According to Heritage, most of our poor have air conditioning and televisions, so they aren’t truly poor and should just shut up. These are the same people who would like nothing better than to erase all POC from the occupy movement.

The other thing that this picture says it that, unless you are truly “the wretched of the earth” you have no business advocating for yourself. It says that acting in your self interest is wrong. It says that people who have never starved should act only out of selflessness.

Does a rich, black person not get to advocate for an end to racial injustice? Does a privileged, white woman not get to advocate for an end to gender discrimination? Does a prisoner who hasn’t been raped not get to advocate for an end to the prison system? Are we all to seek out the most oppressed and only advocate on behalf of them? Doesn’t that indicate our belief that they can’t advocate for themselves? When does one cross the line from helping to having a messiah complex?

In The Dispossessed, Ursula Le Guin’s novel about a future anarchist community, the worst insult you can say to anyone is to call them an altruist. Altruism indicates an imbalance of power. You can only be an altruist if you have more than those you are “helping.”  I want a world based on mutual aid, respect, and equal power. I want a world where altruism is impossible.  So how does that fit into a world where power and privilege is currently so uneven?

I think people often mistake selfishness with self-interest. True self-interest does not damage the people around you. True self-interest recognizes that, if I do something that negatively effects my community, it will likely come back to bite me in the ass. Like Thich Nhat Hanh says,

Anything you do for yourself you do for the society at the same time. And anything you do for society you do for yourself also.

The trick is being able to differentiate between what is selfish and what is self-interested. In order to do that, we need to understand the people around us and how things effect them. We need to see systems for what they truly are.

We should all be examining our motivations constantly. But do not think that because something seems selfless or altruistic that it means the motivations are pure. Altruism often comes from people who want to feel superior, who want to pat themselves on the back. Selflessness can come from an unwillingness to examine the obstacles that you face in this world.

I’ve come across far too many male feminists who want to white knight their way into vanguardist stardom to cheer when people want to fight for “the other.”  The truth is that it is sometimes easier to fight on someone else’s behalf. When you fight the oppression that you experience, you have to face your own personal pains. And you have to face that you are not completely in control of your destiny. In order to get where you want to go, there is a whole system that you have to go up against. It’s a daunting realization.

It is important to recognize the power and privilege that you have. It is essential to be constantly examining your own motivations. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that only some people can act in ways that are self interested. We shouldnt make the mistake of thinking that it is always admirable when someone takes up anothers cause.

All struggles for justice are interconnected. The more power and privilege you have, the more responsibility you have to make sure your actions aren’t fucking other people up. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t get to fight for your own self interest. It means you have to be careful to identify what that interest is.

Why do anarchists spend months organizing protests around events like the G20 or the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings?

I’ve heard some reasons over the years, but none of them are very convincing to me. Some people say that we need to publicly protest those institutions of power. Some say it is about not letting them take over our cities and streets. Some see it as an opportunity to build solidarity with like-minded people. Some people just get a rush from confrontation and smashing things up.

But aren’t there better ways to do all those things?

Maybe the question isn’t so much what we are doing there. Maybe the question is, what are they doing there?What are those meetings for anyways? Decisions are made long before those meetings happen, as anyone who has to lobby the key players weeks or months in advance can tell you. Very little of import actually occurs there. It is mostly a media opportunity for glorified PR people/presidents/head hoohas.

Honestly, I am beginning to think that these events are planned just for us. Clearly, a media event is for public consumption. But I mean that these events have the added benefit of keeping activists occupied with shit that won’t make a difference. It makes us predictable.

If we are spending months organizing protests at the G20, we are taking that time away from organizing in our communities. If we are spending our money on international flights, we can’t use it for other things. If we focus all our energies on the World Bank and IMF only twice a year, then we leave them to perform business as usual every other day. It is a game. We are playing by their rules. Why are we letting them set the schedule?

And don’t even get me started on the grand excuse these meetings are to give shit tons of money to the “security” apparatus.

These events attract media. If we think we can get productive media attention, that media attention might do something, then maybe it is worth a little energy. But otherwise, shouldn’t we use our time more wisely? Shouldn’t we at least be surprising?