| Combating Oppression Inside and Outside |
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| escrito por Betita Martinez | |
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There is a promising new development among social justice activists aimed at overcoming racism, a longtime barrier to unity.
Published in the Fall 2005 issue In the anti-war and global justice movements, activists from mostly-white organizations have been challenging oppression politics in their own practice. That means racism, homophobia, and other destructive forces. Professional anti-racist training projects for whites have long existed. There is the 25-year-old People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, based in New Orleans, which offers intensive sessions conducted by experienced activists and organizers of color. There are church-sponsored projects like Crossroads, born in 1986. In San Francisco, the 12-year-old Challenging White Supremacy (CWS) workshop has regularly offered anti-racist training to thousands of primarily white social justice activists and others who want to get involved.The new efforts are different. Most importantly, they emerged out of movements. The successful mass actions against the WTO in 1999, followed by the widely read article 'Where was the Color in Seattle?', opened up movement debates about white privilege and organizing on a scale that had not existed in decades. The CWS workshop recruited younger generation global justice organizers to develop an anti-racism training program - the Catalyst Project, in the Bay Area - specifically for this new upsurge. Catalyst Project joined with thousands of white global justice, and later anti-war, activists around the country. Together they were struggling to understand white supremacy and bring anti-racism into the structure, strategy, and vision of their groups. The Colours of Resistance network, formed in 2000 in the U.S. and Canada, brought together activists of color and white anti-racists in the global justice movement to advance multiracial, anti-imperialist politics in their movement. The COR website has become an important tool, collecting essays and perspectives from what they refer to as 'a collective liberation tendency.' Over the past five years, dozens of organizations and networks have made commitments to anti-racist work. These efforts have often included training and support from groups like Catalyst Project, CWS, and People's Institute. But activists within the groups have formed the organizing cores to lead the internal change process. Frequently people of color have played leading roles in the process. Some examples - and dozens now exist across the U.S. - include the Ruckus Society, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Young Religious Unitarian Universalists - all national organizations. Even some long-established organizations led by mostly older people have been moving to challenge oppression politics within their midst, like the War Resisters League. What is critical to understand is that for most of the activists leading these efforts, anti-racism isn't just consciousness-raising. It's an important step in developing a multiracial left movement in this country. SOA Watch offers one of the most recent examples of an organization incorporating anti-racist politics. For 15 years it has worked to close the U.S. School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia, which trains the Latin America military in all forms of brutal repression against their own people. Its graduates have directed and conducted torture sessions, assassinations, and massacres, with thousands of victims. SOAW's annual protest at the School, which included 16,000 people last November, always attracts a wide range of people in terms of age, gender, geography, ableness, and, to some degree, sexual orientation. But it has always been almost totally white. SOA Watch Combats Oppression Politics Since the organization's goal is to abolish a powerful instrument of monstrous oppression, SOAW realized it had to look at any oppressiveness within its own policies and action. It had to develop an institutional analysis rather than just focusing on individual behavior. Failure to do so would prevent evolution of an anti-oppressive organizing practice. That, in turn, would not only be a violation of the commitment to social justice but also a strategic error, undermining the alliance building so vital to victory. SOA Watch, therefore, launched its Anti-Oppression Working Group three years ago, with a booklet, Compilation of Anti-Oppression Resources, a sexual assault team, and work on physical accessibility. Since the beginning, it has hosted anti-racism trainings at every major fall and spring event. It was then decided to host an open forum where 80 SOAW people came together as a multi-racial, multi-generational group for a wide-open discussion. Participants raised many problems such as arrogant leadership, favoritism toward those who had done SOA jail time, women of color saying they felt marginalized, people of color wanting respect for different communication styles, and frequent disagreement about SOAW's strict nonviolence guidelines. The forum had great impact. For the first time, it was not just the working group raising the issues. Suddenly there were way more people calling for support of the group?s anti-racist and anti-oppression initiatives. Now called Anti-Oppression and Accessibility Working Group, it has published educational reading materials bilingually along with programs in Braille, in large print, and sign language (ASL) at all major events. Anti-oppression work was a centerpiece and a priority of the November 2004 SOAW gathering, with the usual agenda modified to make time for its various activities. The first day featured training in resisting sexual assault. Emphasis was then placed on whites learning to understand white privilege and other aspects of white supremacy, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. With that goal, the program included showing the documentary The Color of Fear and then a discussion led by Darren Parker, a Black activist and intellectual from Philadelphia. At least 350 mostly white participants attended. Near the end of the discussion, an important and universal message came from Rev. Graylan Hagler, senior Black minister at two Washington, DC churches, who gave a fiery speech blasting the failure of many churches to educate their congregations about horrors like the SOA and take a stand against repressive forces that prevail today (including 'Christian Supremacy'). Given the strong religious presence in the SOAW, why aren't church leaders doing more and what should be done to get them going? His message needs to be heard by churches everywhere. Later came a paired presentation by this writer and Chris Crass, again to a primarily white audience, but smaller in number. After emphasizing that our goals were not what the 'diversity industry' of corporate origin promotes, I offered a historical, systemic review of white supremacy and the militarism it has sustained as seen at the SOA. Then Chris Crass, a longtime white anti-racist trainer and Catalyst Project coordinator, stood on a chair and demonstrated how white supremacy upholds white privilege. He placed his experience growing up with white privilege in a historical and institutional analysis and explained that while white people are structurally positioned to maintain their privilege, they also have a responsibility to end supremacy and join multi-racial movements to build a just society. None of the presentations drew signs of defensiveness from whites and some 20 people expressed appreciation after the second set. The smaller workshop seemed more productive in terms of interaction. People of Color Caucus At the end of the evening until almost midnight, some 40 people of color came together. There were twice as many women as men and participants' backgrounds included China, Korea, India, Kenya, Argentina, Ecuador, three U.S. Blacks, five or six Latinos mostly from Chicago, and a Jewish-Mexican. At least six to eight were undergraduate students. Topics they wanted to discuss included internalized racism, identity issues, coalition building, and relations between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans/Chicanos. Individual recommendations to the Working Group included:
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My blood is drunk by the roots of the tree from that one day the fruit of freedom will ripen. - Nelson Mandela |
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