Signs to hold front & center!

 

Great signs out and about. These two photos have been circulating on Facebook. The photo on the left is from Occupy Philly Day 4. The signs say: “Racism exists in the 99%” and “Black people have always been the 99%.” Not sure where the photo on the right was taken (credit: Head Roc on FB), but the sign says: “White people live at the expense of the REST of the 99%. #checkyourprivilege Let’s Talk About Race”

Meanwhile, there definitely is racism in the 99% – we just read this post about racism and resistance at Occupy Philadelphia: BLACK OUT! at Occupy Philadelphia

Read the signs, read the post, keep fighting.

Learning from our History – Letters to Zuccotti Park

By Caroline Loomis

Occupy Wall Street is great. I’m glad for the rebellion, the hope, and the determination to change this country, to change capitalism. I’m grateful for the tens of thousands of people in the streets of New York City, for fellow passengers on the train cheering us on, for occupations sprouting up around the country. I’m thankful for the collective stomping of the foot, the imagining of new spaces, the commitment to change. At the same time, I’m concerned. There are internal dynamics playing out at OWS that I hope we can address in time for this thing to become truly unstoppable.

It is wonderful that people with privilege (and by this I mean white people, college-educated people, men, straight people, cis-gendered/non-trans people, able-bodied people, middle class people, wealthy people, Christian people, etc*) are filling the streets and plazas and turning out in droves against capitalism right now. They/we absolutely should be.

At the same time, I’ve been observing interactions, hearing stories, and reading writing that indicates that there’s a long way to go before the space is really safe for, and centers the participation of, people who experience the brunt of structural oppression. There’s a lot of great writing going around, primarily by people of color, that covers this. Check out the rest of infrontandcenter.wordpress.com, for starters.

For those of us who envision OWS becoming a genuinely anti-oppressive space, we’re also fortunate to have road maps left by previous struggles. However innovative OWS is, there’s also a long radical history that leads up to this moment. There has been resistance since there has been oppression. Among the rebels there have been allies with privilege, tumbling enthusiastically before us. It’s important to learn from both their mistakes and successes.

Speaking Up and Listening: From Wall Street to New Orleans

By Amy Wolfe

In the past few days and for the first time in my life, I simultaneously lost and found my voice. I’ve never had laryngitis before. Usually it is hard to hear what I’m saying, because I’ve got a low, mumbly voice, and when I stand up in front of people and talk, I start blushing fast and my hands shake. Counter to this, I am also a very argumentative and opinionated person. The past few days, I’ve had occasion to do several things that scare me in front of a whole lot of people, and there’s something about having a raspy, scratchy, squeaky voice that has made it so much easier. Last night I told my roommates, “I feel tougher! Like, this is how I actually sound on the inside!”

And the past few days have felt like months. Occupy Wall Street is gathering supporters faster than anyone can believe, and here in New Orleans we’re just starting up. Today is Friday, October 7th, 2011, the eve of Yom Kippur. Five days ago was the first general meeting to start up Occupy NOLA. I knew something important must be going on, because it drew two hundred people to a sunny park at noon during a Saints game. Yesterday was the first march, and the beginning of the Occupation in Duncan Plaza, across from City Hall. This feels like déjà vu to a lot of us; in 2007, a group of people fighting for public housing and homeless rights occupied Duncan Plaza for about a year, before they were forcibly removed by the police. In that time, what began as maybe six tents, became three or four hundred people. The plaza is beautiful, in a very city-specific way. It has a huge gazebo in the middle, winding paths all around, and several rolling green hills. It is between the city hall, the large public library, and Tulane Avenue, all within the shadow of the locked and empty Charity Hospital, where all of New Orleans’ un-insured and under-insured got their healthcare, Pre-Katrina. The plaza is often full of all sorts of characters and law enforcement types, like most city parks that I’ve come to know in my life.