[OccupyCU] 2 scents

Thu Nov 15 21:30:11 UTC 2012

Susan--

It seems to me that to replace liberation theology's 'preferential option for the poor' with a 'preferential option for women' or a 'preferential option for marginalized voices'  is to make the same mistake that American liberalism made more than a generation ago - that is, to substitute identity politics for class politics. (See Hedges, "Death of the Liberal Class," etc.)

The strength of OWS is that - with its rhetoric of 99%/1% - it re-intorduced the notion of class to American politics, after Neoliberalism had paradoxically purged the idea - even the term - from our political discourse in more than 30 years of quite vicious class war.

Not that discrimination shouldn't be opposed - of course it should. But OWS reminds us that it occurs in the context of massive and accelerating inequality.

See, e.g., <http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/unconstructive-criticism-abigail-fisher/>:

"... as the gap between the rich and everyone else gets larger, it’s a striking fact that rather than re-thinking the centrality of anti-discrimination to our sense of social justice, on the Internet we’ve just  doubled down—not only do we want our rich people to be black and brown as well as white, we want some of them to be fat too. But the real problem is not that rich people are too white, or even too thin. It’s that they’re too rich."

Regards, CGE

On Nov 15, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Susan Parenti <sparenti at illinois.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, Stuart. This is an excellent recap.
> 
> I don't consider email a medium for discussion, so I've stayed away from the torrent. However, that's a kind of snooty position, as we probably have way more people on the Occupy CU list serve who can participate in email discussion than come to the meetings, so this is something we need to think about in the future.
> 
> When I hazarded the idea at the November 5 meeting that Occupy follow liberation theology's 'preferential option for the poor' by making Occupy a movement of 'preferential option for women', or, as Karen suggested, for 'preferential option for marginalized voices' I was hoping to ward off such torrents. But it may be we each feel marginalized (but how can a 'we' feel marginalized?), so this might not yet be a sufficient direction.
> 
> I'm sorry that friend and fantastic organizer Sarah Lazare is resigning from the Occupy CU list-serve. I don't think there's yet an Occupy CU to resign from, so I'm persisting.
> 
> BUT I'm nervous that good will and trust between us is running out----we've had 3 meetings with attendance of 22 people October 29, 15 people November 5, and 18 people November 12. There will be one more meeting this Monday, Nov. 19th. Jesse made an offer, and the response would make me, if I were Jesse, jump back into silence.
> 
> WHAT WE HAVEN'T YET DONE:
> create a mission statement or core idea that we excites us, that makes us feel we are moving towards a system/society we want, and fundamentally undermining the current system/society we have, and that we can build campaigns around. We need to find a mole we can whack that will break the whack-a-mole system.
> 
> Towards that end,
> 1. we haven't yet made connections between the various ideas that people have presented. Could we prepare to do that for Monday's meeting--connect the various proposals, provide an analysis?The notes are on email.
> 2. take into account that Occupy successfully put two (non-binding) referenda on the Nov. 6th ballot. This is serious.
> 3. take into account that Obama not Romney won, that Obama continues to pursue corporate-financed state capital policies as we speak
> 
> Probably there are other things to take into account.
> susan
> On Nov 15, 2012, at 6:33 AM, Stuart Levy wrote:
> 
>> I'd like to back off a bit and look at how we've been discussing Jesse's presentation & OccupyCU.  What I see:
>> 
>>  - Jesse asked to come and speak to Occupy on Monday.   He told us about his well-visited website, featuring many dozens of subjects from the Iraq war to colony collapse disorder to the LIBOR scandal, but most prominently about 9/11 truth.  He offered its services, if OccupyCU wants them.   We asked him some questions.  We deliberately (thank you Susan!) postponed any discussion of whether we considered taking up his offer to be a good idea.
>> 
>>  - Scott, who wasn't present but read about this offer, made a connection which must be incandescently strong to him - between the 9/11 truth movement and neo-nazi sympathies.   I'd never heard of this association before.  None of the people I've talked to who were at the meeting had, either.
>> 
>> Then what?   How the conversation *might* have gone:
>> 
>>  Scott:  Is OccupyCU seriously considering associating itself with this web site?   Were people aware of this connection?   Look at A, B, and C on that site if you don't believe me.   I say we should have nothing to do with this.
>> 
>>  Any of us might have replied:   That is news to me.    Thank you for raising it.   We've had little discussion and no decision, but this will be important when we do.
>> 
>> What happened instead?    I'm guessing that, Scott, you assumed we did know, and we (a) didn't care and (b) were happily going forward.   And further, that you *expected* not to be heard. Right?
>> 
>> If so it reflects an alarming distrust of the group.  Where has that led us?    Accusations have flown.  We've had *27* messages on this topic yesterday.   At least two people have dropped off the list.  I don't think we've made any progress toward anything that Occupy stands for.
>> 
>> Worse, I think this discussion has deepened what mistrust there had been.   That is a terribly destructive thing for a group.   What can we do to heal it?
>> 
>> 
>> Yesterday's flames were also a distraction from the really fine presentation we heard from Francisco Baires in the latter part of Monday's meeting.  He talked about Johan Galtung's theory of hierarchies of violence, direct and cultural and structural; how movements - particularly the immigration rights movement - can form effective responses to them; and what we in Occupy might take from their experience.   This is 'way more fruitfully consequential. Let's talk about that!
>> 
>> 
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