I went to the USSF expecting to be the most privileged, conservative person in the room -- in every room. I was likely among the more privileged, but my politics were more progressive. I was happy to find that E was one of the few people to the left of me. My first take-home lesson is this -- having the time and opportunity to organize is a gift, a luxury, and a privilege. Spending time on articulation and vocabulary and shades of gray are important to me, but they, too, are a luxury that people in crisis (and/or people who have limited time/energy/resources) may not want to spend time on. As someone who finds it important to ally to oppressed communities, this is a reason to focus less on thorough articulation, and be willing to move quickly towards action. I'm not saying that people who need to move quickly should be left out of planning -- absolutely not. But we should be aware and careful of constraints people have that could keep them out of a planning/strategy process before it even begins. Not being available for productive navel-gazing isn't the same as not having important things to contribute.
The bad--
"Consciousness-Raising Strategies for Middle-Class Young Adults" sounded like a way for me to learn about cultivating progressive consciences among my Emory friends. I was wrong. The workshop was run by people who work for Americorps-like programs, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. The whole thing was "young adults" as recent college grads, "middle-class" as people who can afford to volunteer for a year, and "consciousness-raising" as volunteering with a modicum of conscience. They had us start with thinking about a time when we felt our own consciousness was raised, then they put on a flipchart characteristics that we each identified about those situations. These were overwhelmingly classist, pitied others, denied others' dignity, and were only about looking at people without your particular privileges and thinking that their lives must just suck. When I brought up that it seems like we were all talking about "learning" through looking down on others, they wrote that up on the board with the rest, with no conversation about the theme everyone was working through. The pinnacle was when one middle-aged white guy said that the experiences all seem to be when you can "feel someone else's pain." When the facilitators tried to make that relevant and less fail-ful by saying "when you can empathize" and he insisted that he meant that you could literally physically feel someone else's pain. I was lucky to have had a sharing partner who was just as shaken up by this monstrous fail, and we talked afterwards to try to process. The programs do pretty much what is expected -- pay people very little, make them volunteer, have weekly processing meetings, and promote poverty tourism. It's what's expected. So why were they at USSF? I expected to be challenged and pushed towards a broader and better view of the world, but I wasn't.
Other details--
- One speaker who works with the Domestic Workers Alliance (not sure of the exact name) made the point that we need to be careful about the differences between how we view people and how they view themselves. Many of the women she works with are immigrant women of color who are exempt from labor laws. They view themselves as independent, upwardly mobile entrepreneurs, making a life in a new country. It is equally true that they are some of the most exploited workers in American and the next hope for organizing workers.
- For an alternate view on movement research, check the Institute for Policy Studies. (I'm just now checking it out, so this is a note, not an endorsement.)
- Storytelling is a way of research and knowledge production
- Zapatista quote: "If you have come here to help us, go home. If you have come because our struggle is your own, let's go."
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