thatneedstogo:

this is the best.

sunisup:

Sometimes I hear people say that racism/sexism/etc in culture isn’t important or worth criticizing.  ”Oh it’s just a book,” they say.  ”It’s just a crappy TV show.”  ”It’s just a commercial.”

This argument always baffles me.  It’s like if you put poison into a fish-tank and then say “Oh well I didn’t poison the fish, I just poisoned the water.”  The fish lives in the water, dumbass; it’s completely submerged in and surrounded by the water.  I’m pretty sure that poisoned water is going to affect the fish.

Similarly, we all live constantly immersed in this miasma of information that we call “culture.”  People are not born prejudiced.  We don’t emerge from the womb knowing that all black men are scary thugs, that all Latinas are spicy sexpots, that all Indians are violent savages, that all women are weepy and frail, that all gay men are depraved pedophiles, and that all people in wheelchairs are objects of pity.  We learn these things, usually starting at a very young age, and we often learn them from our culture — the books we read, the movies we watch, and the constant barrage of advertising that we don’t really pay attention to but which still manages to seep into our brains, and which shapes the way we think about the world, for better or for worse.

If you want to save the fish, you need to purify the water.

their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”

“Carlos—what’s genocide?”

they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.

I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”

“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”

“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”

…what’s genocide?

they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them

…what’s genocide?

Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him

…what’s genocide?

Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade

…what’s genocide?

she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal

…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Luz, this…
this right here…

is genocide.”

“Consider the recent Indiana Supreme Court ruling, which declared

that if a cop tries to illegally enter your home, it’s against the law for

you to do anything to stop him. [Having the attitude that] we don’t have the

right to invade your home without probable cause … but if we do,

you have no right to stop us, and we have the right to arrest you if

you try.”

“Why not apply that to the rest of the Bill of Rights, while we’re at

it? ”You have the right to say what you want, but if we use violence

to shut you up, you have to let us.” (I can personally attest to the fact

that that is the attitude of the U.S. Department of “Justice.”) Or: “You

have the right to have guns, but if we try to forcibly and illegally

disarm you, and you resist, we have the right to kill you.” Or: “You

have the right to not testify against yourself, but when we coerce you

into confessing (and call it a ’plea agreement’), you can’t do a thing

about it.” 

“To be blunt, if you have the right to do A, it means that if

someone tries to stop you from doing A–even if he has a badge and

a politician’s scribble (“law”) on his side–you have the right to

use whatever amount of force is necessary to resist that person.”

“Thus, there are only two choices: you are a slave, the property of the

state, without any rights at all, or you have the right to violently resist

government attempts to oppress you. There can be no other option.”

Remember, “far more injustice,

violence, torture, theft, and outright murder has been committed in

the name of “law enforcement,” than has been committed in spite of

it. “

-“Race has no scientific basis except that it is determined 

by an arbitrary selection of phenotypic traits that 

are only loosely tied to geographic origin”

-“Nor does race have an ethnic basis. Ethnicity is distinct from 

race in that it is a self-identification based on cultural similarities”

-“Race then, is a historically constructed, hierarchically 

imposed social status. Its existence necessitates unequal social 

relations between people because it partitions people into groups, 

one of which receives preferential treatment, while the others are 

subordinated. By definition, race is a system of discrimination, 

hierarchy, and power—race presupposes racism”

-“borders are the arbitrary assignation and 

partitioning of space based on military conquest.”

-“Just as the existence of race presupposes the 

unequal and antagonistic relations between people, the existence 

of borders presupposes unequal and antagonistic relations between 

nation-states. This is because declaring and defending borders 

are essentially acts of aggression and exclusion”

-“Elizabeth Martinez succinctly describes 

white supremacy as a “historically based, institutionally perpetuated

system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and 

peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European 

continent, for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system 

of wealth, power, and privilege”

-“Today, 

white supremacy manifests itself worldwide, through what is known 

as the global assembly line of production, in which white nations are 

the consumers and non-white nations are the producers.”

-“The main result of abolishing race and border will be the 

creation of a unified exploited class that will be able to rise up 

en masse against its oppressors. White privilege is the mace force 

preventing this because it serves as a consolation for poor whites that 

ensures that they will never be at the bottom of the social hierarchy”

How police brutality should be handled!

“Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.

In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.”

darkjez:

thatprettyoddfeminist:

THIS is why i have trouble getting behind occupy wall street and other white-led movements. because despite how “progressive” people who lead them are, there is STILL rampant oppression within the movements. WOC are STILL silenced. and there is never anything done about it. if you like to think of white progressive as saints, it would seriously behoove you to read this article.

_________

A FEW CHOICE QUOTES FROM HER ACCOUNT:

• “Women are being molested in the park and there is no real viable system in place to handle it without the need for police intervention. There are white supremacists groups running around there. There are people smoking drugs there even though it puts the entire action at risk…”

“There is a constant marginalization of women and I was even verbally and physically imposed on and threatened by a white man who was up in my face with his fingers pointing in my face because he wanted to dictate to people what he thought they should do. When I spoke up and said that he and two other white men are not supposed to dictate to everyone what should happen but that the decision should be made through consensus he got angry.”

• “A black man I met there came over I was telling him what happened. Another white guy steps in between us and proceeds to explain to him what happened in order to protect the other white man.”

“White people are still acceptably in charge, arrogant and superior. In other words, you can have all of the experience in the world as an organizer, activist or facilitator but if you are not a white man then its a problem. If you are a white man…its acceptable and fine, even if the meeting isn’t fruitful and doesn’t result in anything.”

• “I don’t know what the agenda of these white people are but their paternalistic attitudes, constant invalidation, smart remarks and repressive behavior toward myself and other black people is not productive nor is it liberating.”

“He said he doesn’t understand why black people are attacking him when he presents this to them and he has been attacked five times already that day. I told him that the fact that he doesn’t understand why he is being attacked, is all the more reason why he shouldn’t be in charge of an action like that. This is another example of the paternalistic attitudes that exists amongst these white people who think they are automatically in charge and not only that but are somehow in a position to articulate my oppression as a black woman for me.”

• “I came away from this experience feeling unsupported, disrespected, maligned and even more oppressed.”

“This disgusting display of white superiority and male dominance exists throughout this OWS movement. The only bright spot in all of this was the newly formed Women Occupying Wall Street (WOW) group. These women were informed, supportive and concerned about the issues I and other women raised and also had been subjected to abusive behaviors themselves.”

Although I completely understand her frustrations, I do not entirely agree with her conclusion. That is, although leaving the situation might have been the most beneficial course of action for this women and her life, I don’t think her experience should be taken as a message of retreat for others thinking of occupying and for those already occupying.  I think this movement has created a wonderful platform to have everyone’s voices heard in a rational manner and it is important that the concerns of marginalized not escape the consciousness of those who have perpetuated their dominance for so long. I think the best course of action for people of colour and other marginalized groups is to create a solidarity group (like the Women Occupying Wallstreet group she spoke of) within the broader movement so as to ensure that they do have the validation and support they need to be more effective in expressing their concerns in GAs.

Link to recorded audio of Essay on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xdz67Pge6M&feature=related

Some quotes from the essay: 

“Religion - the dominion of the human mind, property - the dominion of human needs, and government - the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails.” Emma Goldman

“Law never made man a wit more just, and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice”

‘There is hardly a modern thinker who doesn’t believe government, organized authority and the state is necessary only to maintain and protect property and monopoly’

‘crime is not but misdirected energy. So long as every institution today economic and political, social and moral conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels, so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living the life they loath to live, crime will be inevitable’

‘in the political arena one must either be a dunce or a rogue’

“man has as much liberty as he is willing to take”

“anarchism stands for direct action, the open defiance of and resistance to all laws and restrictions economic, social and moral. But defiance and resistance is illegal! Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance and courage. In short, it calls for free independent spirits.”