Visionary Politics

This week's session included a panel that was ON FIRE! People from truly visionary organizations really laying out the framework of radically different paradigms for the world they want to see.

We got to hear from four amazing women:
Rachel Herzing from Critical Resistance, Chela Delgado from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Sara Kershnar from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan from Movement Generation.

Resilience - Resistance - Reimagining
Michelle spoke on Movement Generation's work to connect the people who are working locally to stop the disastrous effects of environmental racism in their communities - connect them to the larger global struggle around climate change to create - voila - the climate justice movement. Their approach is visionary: Resilience - Resistance - Reimagine. For resiliency, they aim to foster the learning of "hard skills" around sustainability - greywater reclamation, urban agriculture, etc - that will help peoples survive as the world's resources get exploited. In the Resistance arena, they look to "changing the system" via campaigns, new policies, and taking over governance. In Reimagining, Michelle spoke of replacing capitalism's place as "common sense" and shift to a more cooperative second nature, transforming the mindset of "gotta get min" to "let's share ours."

One of the most useful mindflips Michelle laid out was the shift from giving people "jobs" to looking at people's "roles." Looking pre-capitalism, people didn't have jobs, they had roles within society. Only certain people get jobs (namely the able-bodied, young & middle aged adults, with a heavy preference for white men) and they must compete for them, but everyone in a society has a role, and the sooner we learn to respect that, the sooner we can live in a more equitable society.

She also talked about how important it was to be creating a transformative counter narrative different from the one we have been taught (capitalist and based on domination). Stories are powerful - that is why cultural workers, who are slowly shifting mindsets on a major level, introducing new words and concepts via posters, stories, songs, etc - are so instrumental. The sooner more people see the world through a different lens, one that we have deliberately crafted, the sooner the world will actually become the way we envisioned it.

Why do we think punishment = justice?
Rachel spoke to us about the prison industrial complex: which is far beyond just prisons and police - it includes the whole machinery of punishment and surveillance that we accept as normal and necessary - militarized schools, depressed education system, unaffordable and inaccessible health care, normalized policing, etc.

From Angela Davis' article: "What then, would it mean, to imagine a system in which punishment is not allowed to become the source of corporate profit? How can we imagine a society in which race & class are not primary determinants of punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice?" This last sentence is so crucial to think about - how often do we look at the doling out of justice solely in the terms of how heavily the perpetrator was punished? Does this bring back a murdered loved one? Does this actually ease someone's injuries from violence? Does this actually ever heal a community?

For anyone who might not instantly see how race & class are "primary determinants" of punishment, think about this: What's the difference between a "criminal" and a "lawbreaker"? Think of all the white middle class kids off smoking pot or doing acid or cocaine in their homes - are they "criminals" - then picture the black working class kids with a culture of hanging outside of the home - smoking pot - then ask yourself how easy it would be to call them "criminals" and watch them get arrested and sent through jails and probation. People are sent to prison, not so much because of the crimes they may have indeed committed, but largely because their communities have been criminalized.

The System is Not Broken
Rachel is fond of saying "The system is not broken; it is working perfectly doing exactly what it was built to do." This is deep. This is why reform of the "justice system" will never create a just society - so what we must do is abolish it completely and rebuild society to address issues in a totally different way. Another helpful quote from Angela Davis "The first step would be to let go of the desire to discover one single alternative system of punishment that would occupy the same footprint as the prison system." We need a holistic recreation of society that doesn't create the ills of poverty and racism that allows us to think we need a prison punishment system. Rachel talked about Critical Resistance's no compromise stance by saying we demand what we want, we don't settle for what we think we can get. The idea of the transformative counter narrative comes back here, as people are working to create a narrative of what holistic justice looks like, and this is the first step to making it a possibility. CR has a motto similar to Movement Generation's 3 prong approach: Change, Dismantle, Build.

Anti-Zionist Judaism
Sara was a powerful speaker who brought to light the truly elitist roots of Zionism and the need for Jewish resistance to Zionism. A piece of IJAN's work is looking to rescue the humanitarian, liberationist roots of Judaism from the racist, colonialist Zionist strains that dominates public understanding of Jews. Or as Ricardo Morales says "Self love in Jewish life requires displacing the ultra-nationalist cult that has hijacked Jewish public life and caused so much suffering."

In ways similar to how the brutalities of maintaining white supremacy has stripped many whites of their humanity, maintaining the racist apartheid of Zionism in Israel has stripped many Jews of their humanity. Sara read a really powerful quote from Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, that was shocking to hear

“Palestine cannot absorb the Jews of Europe. We want only the best of Jewish youth to come to us. We want only the educated to enter Palestine for the purpose of increasing its culture. The other Jews will have to stay where they are and face whatever fate awaits them. These millions of Jews are dust on the wheels of history and they may have to be blown away. We don’t want them pouring into Palestine. We don’t want Tel Aviv to become another low-grade ghetto.”

This said in 1938, in the midst of growing fascism and the soon to come Holocaust.

One of the articles we read, Lihish'tah'weel by Ricardo Levins Morales, laid out the argument that if Israel's purpose was to create a safe and secure homeland for Jews, it has not worked. The Zionist, racially defined society has not worked and will never work, and any moves towards a two-state solution where Jews have one place and Arab Palestinians have another will also not worked - this will always be apartheid which requires force to maintain. "No polity, no matter how well intentioned, can govern a system based on racial privilege without becoming reactionary."

Making the Road by Walking
Chela spoke to us about INCITE!'s work and their commitment to using consensus based collective models, even on a national scale. Though there are many difficulties in working this way, remaining true to their ideals is extremely important. In speaking of the slowness of building a new world based on consensus, and the frustration that can bring up in real life organizing, she said "When you are making the road by walking, it's hard to run." Wow. Think about that for a while. If the work you are doing is truly groundbreaking, truly pioneering, it will be slow hard work.

Two more articles that were in this weeks reading packet were:

Love & Community
bell hooks' "love as the practice of freedom" which boils down to the fact that domination is built upon suffering and liberation is built upon love. "The absence of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arise from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of the spirit and an overdetermined emphasis on material concerns." She talks a bunch about the levels of despair created by the current system and how draining that is for everyone. She quotes Joanna Macy, " the energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies."

I think to how many of my closest friends and companeros that have been lost to depression and addictions and are no longer able to be active in the struggle for liberation. bell also says that "in choosing love we also choose to live in community, and that means that we do not have to change by ourselves." this is so relieving, to not carry the weight of transforming the world as individuals. I can be part of a collective process, where the workload is manageable, and together we will get somewhere. This I think to me is why I crave working in collective so deeply - it is easier and more nourishing.

Last Thing! La Mestiza
We read this awesome, beautifully written article by Gloria Anzaldua called "La conciencia de la mestiza - towards a new consciousness." It wove together crafted myth and poetry and political reality. The main thing I got out was the power of mixed blood people to be creating new ways of thinking that synthesize the contradictions of different racial & cultural beliefs. "In our very flesh, (r)evolution works out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the center holds, we've made some kind of evolutionary step forward." She speaks of alchemy, morphing, crossroads, borderlands, synthesis, transformation - the creation of something that is more than the sum of its parts. Like the way that transgendered people have created an understanding of gender that supersedes the binary system, and in doing so, liberates all from the oppressive implications of binary gendered socialization.

It is people at the crossroads of race, of gender, of sexuality, of class - that have the broadest range of experience, and thus are best posed to lead us all into liberation.