Left Forum, Occupy Upkeep, and Moving Forward:

This past weekend was the annual Left Forum in New York City. 2011 was my first year attending the Forum, and my reflections on this year’s event ranged from high to low. In part to carry forward my admiration for Grace Lee Boggs, “in order to have a real revolution, we must have a revolution of our selves first.”

I am victim to my own limitations. I had higher expectations of the Left Forum this year due to the Occupy Wall Street protests, which kindled six-months earlier. One cannot expect the left movements to shift a paradigm so quickly. Even towards the end of the Forum, Occupy Wall Street protestors were chanting, “Out of the Forum and Into the Streets!” I didn’t see the entire mass of the Forum pick up and walk to the streets, which followed with renewal action in Zuccotti Park.  

Even my walking along the sides of the protest in observation was skeptical of mob mentality. It was obvious to see that the police were like vultures eager for any simple excuse to rush in and brush out the crowd.  One siren followed another and within a matter of seconds the vans of bullying police came to the park.

There is a space in the movement for all mentalities; early in the day at the Forum, I planted a seat in a crowded room eager to listen to Frances Fox Piven. Her now celebrity status in protesting circles is due to Glen Beck’s slandering her principles. Most people have even forgotten who Glen Beck is, because let’s face-it, he has nothing sufficient to say that will sustain past his television show. Frances Fox Piven has been an activist for over fifty years.  Her panel consisted of her, Nelini Stamp, Stephen Lerner, and Lisa Fithian. The session on Strategic Directions for the Occupy Movement had an overflowed audience.

The elements discussed were well understood. “We must imagine beyond what we already had,” because the illusionary economy and the social acceptable standards we once enjoyed are no longer available. We are learning that a “job should not be considered merely a charity from the corporate monopolies.” When the panel spoke their piece, the room opened to questions, and like a common practice throughout the Forum everyone wanted to say their two bits. How do we get past the shouting and the need for each hand to submit what they wish to be relevant?  The failure of my expectation at the forum was that we were all preaching to the choir.

Most of us have known for quite some time that a paradigm shift is necessary. Preaching to our selves and proving to one another, about who knows more than the next guy, is not the solution. Once you learn the strategy of the open discussion part of each panel session, you learn that it is unnecessary to compete for airtime. Frances Fox Piven said it best in the end, “if you feel the movement needs to focus on labor unions, or if you feel the movement needs to protest the Bank of America Share Holders meeting, or if you feel one form of action is necessary or another, go out and activate your concern. Don’t just talk about the strategy but go out and live the example. Each new action that is created becomes a part of the larger process to change.”

Beyond the Left Forum, the wave of dis-grunt and yet growing passion for resistance is real. This is a growing ripple effect that has to have its waves of moving up and down. It is an exciting time and at times quite frustrating. People want change but, like myself, I know it won’t happen immediately. It is a process. Skipping steps could cause skipped conclusions.

While at the Forum, I particularly enjoyed the session entitled: Occupying Gender: Occupy Wall Street Organizers Speak Out. Some of the panelists were Sara Zainab Bokhari, Melanie Butler, Suzahn Ebrahimian, Amelia Sabine, Leah Todd and several others. The panel supplied a crowded room with tools and knowledge about the numerous formats that exist in directions of the Occupy Movement, especially in regards to the inclusion of women and transgendered activists in the offensive.

Even within the shared marginalized space of the movement, there are different levels of feminism. The mainstream of society and even at times amongst the activists, individuals are fearful of feminism. This makes me recall the quote I recently read via Maria Mies: “Feminists are those who dare to break the conspiracy of silence about the oppressive, unequal man-woman relationship and who want to change it.” The ambivalence in any movement to not address this issue fails to understand the need of revolutionizing ourselves first. The Gender Occupy panel brought to light the Speak Easy Caucus, the W.O.W.  groups (Woman Occupying Wall Street), Step-Up/Step-Back, and other strategic angles to help the Occupy Movement.

New strategies that fractions throughout the movement provide are necessary and welcomed on a constant flow. Moving forward will take time and patience, even if much of the American culture harbors us to be impatient. My own limits leave me restless for more sooner. I appreciated the opportunity that the Left Forum provided as an outlet for frustrated progressive Americans, yet we need to go beyond the walls of the conference center. If protesting in the street like a mob is not your thing, there are multiple approaches and angles to take that don’t require rushing into tear gas. The utmost need is to make more and more people aware that they have power and should know that ambivalence and apathy are cancerous. One can tell this to people directly, but other more useful strategies can be more enlightening. Or as one of the panelist mentioned, “Fuck the Mainstream.” Go out and create the world you want to create.

Paulo Freire once stated, “Blindness rushes to failure … Take time to build clarity.” We make the road by walking, not by just talking.    

Re-Weaving Consciousness:

Drum beats and screaming chants are motivational tools to create collective action. Outside the subways from Washington DC to Paris to San Francisco to London and New York street musicians bang on all sorts of instrumental creations. Virginia Vargas, a Peruvian activist, states in her essay International Feminism, “Conditions are ripe for the emergence of new forms of political culture or, better yet, for countercultural proposals that challenge the neoliberal logic of power now extant at the global level and strongly influencing the local level” (Vargas).  With the current economic strain on the international market, now is the ideal time to press new economic and political proposals that may have been quickly shattered in previous decades.

The notion of “re-weaving” the social fabric that Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez projects in her anthology, Women Writing Resistance: Essays on Latin America and the Caribbean, parallels the ideal that Edouard Glissant promotes of “enmeshment”. The unraveling of the societal and economic fabric to unknot limited patterns is an enlightening force that will help create a more inclusive community and reweave the dynamic potential of a currently homogenizing failed consumerism.

Our communities must come to terms with our limitations and our obvious dependencies outside of them. From import and export of food supplies, oil, labor, to technological production, there is no longer a small town wholesome community in a local sense. Products made in China, oil from the Middle East, labor from Mexico, and food from Ecuador to Ghana, the American system is dependant, just like most nations in the 21^st Century. Unable to isolate from the Neoliberal economic and political might of corporate drive for unlimited profit, even if the small town conservative wants to close the borders from country to country, or state to state the means to survive are an oblivious reality until truth is faced with evidence. For example, when Alabama changed its laws on immigration, the backlash was a surprise to the state; illegal immigrant labor was a significant force in the agriculture industry. Without labor working the fields, for manipulative fees, the economy of the state has faced a significant decline. Being a Conservative appears to be merely suicidal today.

Upon waking up to reality, a new sense of ‘community’ needs to be addressed. The conservative small town is not a lone entity, and will not maintain its sense of self without re-evaluating its dependencies. Undo the fabric! Now is the time to reweave a more inclusive system that has a healthier economic, political, and subjective approach.  The Guatemalan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu believes in ‘community’ as an alternative way forward, and not simply a memory of the past. Community “is something dynamic. Identity is not just nostalgia for eating tamales. It is holistic and comprises all the integral aspects of culture” (Menchu). Our pasts are part of our identity, but in order to have a well-knit society tomorrow, individuals must do more than accept that this reality is ‘as good as it can get’. A new sense of responsibility for community must prevail.

Even more dependent on the global system, than the small town, is the apathetic city dweller. The urbanization of society has atrophied the sense of community. Neoliberal policies have nurtured a deep sense of ‘selfish’ tendencies. The “singularity of your experience should be allowed to exist, along with your own peculiarities, inconsistencies, and your own voice,” but the work of “infusing people’s imaginations with possibility, with the belief in a bigger future,” involves us overcoming the acceptance that humans are selfish and self-reliant entities (Danticat/Morales). Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez promotes that in order to overcome, we must be unafraid to open horizons, uproot dualist thinking, and undo artificial separations.

The progressive struggle to overcome obsolete paradigms is a survival necessity. Many individuals fear the unknown of what would replace the current system. But we already have a replacement that has been waiting to be fully activated for some time now. The United Nations, if given a significant opportunity to create a more inclusive community, would be a legitimate alternative. This would mean that governments and corporations would need to release their exploitive grip over the public. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights signed and ratified has the groundbreaking post-constitutional fabric to include human rights across borders. Unfortunately, without the most powerful nations upholding their already signed agreement, the UN has no feasible worth. By waiting for businesses and governments to allow a more legitimate UN, the UN has diluted with corruption in its waiting stage. Community support and involvement in addressing and cleaning up the UN system would create a healthier alternative away from the nationalistic system of today that ignores how interconnected we all truly are.

Neoliberal hegemonic powers will never allow this to happen peacefully. The World Trade Organization, the IMF and the World Bank continually allow corporate entities to remain indifferent to ethical standards that irresponsibly ignore the social impacts of capitalistic endeavors. So we must beat our drum louder and louder. The emergence of the ‘me culture’ have created knots in the fabric of society (Virginia Vargas). The American way of ‘selfish interests’ has to be altered or un-weaved to get the knots out.  Understanding that we must overcome “sweeping assertions” and immature egoism is an unsettling notion. But there is a connection between the personal lives we live and the world we create.  Louise De Salvo states, “We are the accumulation of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. So changing our stories can change our personal history, and can change us,” if we create stories that balance our beliefs. We must create inclusive histories.

Creating an inclusive history is fundamental for survival. Changing our stereotypes can only be done, if we have the opportunity to step outside our safety net. For example, recently I spoke to a student who came from Palestine. We had an open discussion about history and life. When my student found out that I was Jewish, he was surprised. His experience of Jews, prior to our conversation, was mostly reflective of Israeli authority. Changing his stereotype was a moving experience. Not all Jews are Israeli and not all Israelis are Jews. Creating connections with individuals from multiple communities and multiple experiences allows people to realize that one’s experience with another person from a different background should not be sufficient enough to brand a universal truth. The more an individual expands the connectivity one has with others of different and dynamic backgrounds the more one's definition of humanity expands.

Gloria Anzaldua, emphasizes that “those who have been ‘pounced on’ may also have pounced on others,” and all of us need to be accountable for our behaviors, responsibilities, and privileges (Anzaldua). A new definition of ‘community’ must move from nationalism to internationalism, the linkages are far closer than most individual’s concept of daily life retain. The shirt one is wearing traveled through at least two countries. The silk from one, the labor to knit it together another, the store yet a third, and the soap to clean it perhaps came from a fourth location. Vargas notes in a speech made at the Third Feminist Dialogue in 2007, “ a new definition of democracy is necessary to make national, global, and subjective personal change.”  Especially during the farce of an American election year, when the choices designated to vote for are the least of the worst, a new definition of society and community must un-knit the knot in the weave. The pathetic choices presented truly reflect the limits of what can be hoped for in a façade of solution-ary rhetoric.     

              

Drum weaving is a rhythmical music dance that takes fabric in each hit to the pattern. Isolating knots and untangling them, gives space for more movement.