Dialogue Notes only:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes.  Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Reflections on whiteness and gender in the Occupy Movement

Opening Check-in Question:

Name, preferred gender pronoun, relationship to occupy movement, what have you noticed.

We began with a go-around of themes people wanted to bring up and dive into, and what we have noticed or what has stood out to us around how dynamics of white privilege and gender issues have been showing up/playing out in Occupy settings (online, in the media and on the ground).

• Ways in which mainstream media has disproportionately shown young white females getting arrested/mistreated by police – how does this tap into the “innocent white female victim” cultural narrative? How is it being used to mobilize outrage? What is problematic in this?
• The OccupyOakland General Assembly addressing a proposal around nonviolence, and the debate about “violence vs. nonviolence” and a “diversity of tactics” – whose voices are prominent? What issues of safety are present or ignored and for whom?  How is privilege playing out?  Who is (not) represented?
• Gender and race dynamics with flashmob
• Interfaith camp leadership in OccupyOakland predominantly white women
• Portapotties brought by teachers’ union, who are mostly white women
• Decisions/tensions that organizations of people of color are grappling with around providing more energy and resources to a movement that looks mostly white, and supporting movements led by communities of color
• The right of anyone to protest anywhere vs. the responsibility to mindfully bridge to context and community
• Ways in which identities can become invisibilized for the sake of coalition-building, such as not making space/time to recognize gender diversity
• How does one engage as a parent? Decisions such as whether to go to the General Strike or stay at work teaching pre-schoolers – how do I both serve the families that I serve every day and still be involved in a meaningful way?
• Emails circulating from the Bahai community are mostly from white women
• The power of spaces (in Occupy encampments) to have dialogues with people you may never talk with otherwise, and have discussions about what decolonization can look like, collective liberation, solidarities across different lines

Theme: mainstream media (over)representation of young white women

• Young white women getting teargassed vs. young black men getting teargassed – how this brings a different kind of attention (or any attention) and outrage, emotions
• Does this social perception make it particularly important and useful to have white women show up in confrontational action – what are our responsibilities?
• How can I use my privilege, while in the nation’s eye we are this “valuable resource to be protected”, and what does it mean to be an ally? How do we challenge this narrative and not perpetuate it, and at the same time strategically use what we’ve got? Use it and name it, while it is happening, should any of us get a spotlight media moment?
• How have both race and class privilege been showing up and used in the media to build support for Occupy, i.e. middle-class white women holding signs that convey some variation of, “I am college educated and even I can’t get a job!”
• The phenomenon of when a movement has speakers and visible leaders of privilege then there’s a demand for mass attention and recognition of the crisis (i.e. white boys on the cover of a magazine discussing the crisis in education)

Theme: is the face of the Occupy movement mostly white?

• From a regular and very active participant in the Ogawa/Grant Plaza encampment: experience is that a lot of the organizing and movement is made up of white males, with white females coming in around the police violence, in support capacities and being noticed.  There is a lot of tokenization of famous people of color, and white women being used to hide that.  In Des Moines, it is definitely mostly white men in their late teens-early 20s.
• OccupyOakland is more diverse, perhaps most divers in terms of the national picture
• There is the face, the strategic face, and the internal realities
• “Swagn for Justice” brought out a ton of youth of color, and then they all left feeling unwelcome in the encampment, which made it really apparent how white it is
• In confrontations with police violence and state repression, how can white allies support ways in which people of color can show up and have an escape hatch is needed?  This arose in relation to the arrest and threatened deportation of Pancho Ramos Stierling.  The police culture impacts who can show up.
• There are a lot of different groups who are a part of Occupy, there is not one solid homogenous group.  The demographic of who stays at the encampment has shifted – noticing that a lot of the “crusty white folks” who are more transient left, and a lot of homeless people showed up because there was free care, food and shelter.  This gave local businesses the ability to say, “this isn’t a movement, this is homeless blight”. And, what is unique in Oakland is how homeless people have been allowed (and sometimes encouraged) to participate in the process, in contrast to other occupations across the country.
• The “safe spaces” committee was formed to address the issue of people of different demographics feeling welcome here, and some homeless people had roles in this.
• It is really mixed – seeing racially diverse facilitation of the General Assemblies, and noticing that all the facilitators seem college educated, a lot of the leadership coming from an educated class

Activist Language

• There’s ways in which activist insider language becomes inaccessible and alienating
• Didn’t think of myself as a legitimate activist until I had the language – there is an internalized standard that we judge ourselves by, that can be self-marginalizing
• And – we need to re-create language and liberate it from its oppressive patterns
• There is something important about having a sense of tribe and subculture unity
• Language can be exclusionary in lots of ways – in some ways jargony activism is problematic, in some ways all languages can be problematic.  There is NO one way to be – different languages. Let’s be explicit and strategic about that.
• Having to ignore being called “a lady” from people in other cultural contexts
• What has to be compartmentalized to be part of movements? What parts of self backgrounded?
• Noticing an African-American man who spoke at the GA who was wearing baggy jeans and people were not accepting of him until he spoke and people could hear he was educated – then he was welcomed.
• There was an open forum on power and privilege within Occupy.

Dynamics around tactics

• With the controversies and difficult discussions about property destruction after the Nov. 2 General Strike, the GA to address it was overwhelmingly white, noone brought up “strategy” or “goals” except for two women of color, and the discussion focused on defense of moral principles to destroy stuff
• Something so scripted about the way it all went down after such a massively successful day, with the destruction equated with violence, which then takes the media spotlight
• White people threatening the work people of color had been doing for years to end the violence between communities and cops
• Hurt people hurt people.  One of the organizers who took the lead on confronting the cops had almost been killed several times by police, lots of reasons to be incredibly angry. We need compassion for the cops and folks among us. It takes relationship to have that analysis – the GA is not going to be a site for people to examine their own trauma
• Young white folks fetishizing armed struggle in other countries – and saying this is in revolutionary alignment

Flash–mobbing

• Hordes of white women coming out for this – why?
• The face of organizers
• The moves
• The style of organizing – big and anonymous

Interfaith Dynamic:

• Both very inspiring and problematic
• Before General Strike, there was different faith groups – called an Interfaith Group to figure out how to plug in
• Discussions of how to not do this as missionaries – others have been here longer, what needs to be sensitive to
• The idea of Christian charity – what can we do for folks when it starts raining. Both touching and practical – what do we need to offer?
• Discussions about top-down leadership and eldership – there’s a place for eldership
• Open letter from Lisa Fithian and Starhawk about why we need agreements, what do strong movements make possible, and the safety for who can show up.  Felt like an elder moment. And, they have felt problematic to some in their leadership.
• Felt like Christians and Jews took over the interfaith space.

** how can parents plug in?