Author's posts
Feb 03 2009
if you’re white – you have privilege.
This is good to keep in mind when liberals, radicals, anarchists, anyone on the left is doing things within their communities, being an activist, their daily lives, etc, etc …
Its quit visible that this country (the USA) has a rather large white population. And with this of course, comes privilege. Unearned privilege, privilege most of us don’t even realize we have. Privilege most of us can’t even see because we are entrenched in it.
First, I want to define what privilege is. Privilege is a sociological concept that defines the benefits that white people enjoy and/or take advantage of. These benefits may exist in social, political, and economic situations and issues in comparison to so-called non-white people. It is not the same as racism or prejudism, mind you. Many people don’t even realize their own privileges whether that is so-called race, male, heterosexual, religious, class, cultural, gender appearance and many others. Within these privileges, as well, people don’t even realize that they unearned. Meaning, a person did not have to do much of anything to benefit and/or receive them. For example, a so-called white person will more than likely NOT be called out in a classroom to explain what it’s like to be white, but a non-white person probably will. It’s almost as though a non-white person is called out in class to be the spokesperson for their so-called race. But within their race, the experiences are different, as well. These privileges are a part of socialization and societal norms, unfortunately.
Sep 07 2008
St Paul, Repression, Solidarity and Diversity of Tactics
As a witness to some of the events this past week in St Paul, I wanted to write about it. As well as having friends who were arrested, in jail and looking at prison sentences, I took it more personal.
I’ve thought about the fact of how many have brought up how they’ve been arrested and/or fellow comrades and how that may take away from the movement and any issues going on in the world. However, I think that bringing that up is so important because of the police repression that happened in Minnesota this past week, simply for organizing, protesting with a WIDE variety of tactics (whether that is deemed legal or not) and other things that “apparently” people arrested did.
The Welcoming Committee brought up the diversity of tactics for other groups of all kinds on the left to sign on to, as a lesson to the WTO Protests in 1999 in Seattle. Of course, not everyone is going to agree on what Anarchists do and what Liberal kids do … I certainly don’t agree that voting is the change of everything or signing petitions in mass numbers will do much. However, I can agree it may work better at a local level.
An article from May of 2008 (about Diversity of Tactics):
Simply put, “diversity of tactics” means that activists will respect each others’ methods of protesting, allowing each other time and space in which to conduct their protests. Many cited the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle as a successful protest from which lessons on mass mobilization should be drawn. Others spoke of their experience as anti-war activists during the Vietnam War.