Teaching Inclusively

In a recent correspondence with a German Professor that I met at the Left Forum in March 2012, she presented me with an inquiry about the intellectual challenge of finding ways to get my students to critically go beyond basic concepts. The younger generations have been exposed to a far more manufactured understanding of history and reality under the tools of corporate technology: media, internet, film, and one can even bring in standardized tests failing to create critical thought but how to study to merely pass.

Getting my students to pull away from iphones, cellphones, computers, and headphones is an utter task. Working with international students, who may be in more affluent positions than their poorer counter parts from their own countries, have been exposed to the same manufactured bubble of the 'universal middle-class', which means they have as well not analyzed the role corporate development has exposed them to, this is a necessary task that may be neglected. 

In the classroom, I discuss a wide range of topics of global issues, whether they want to discuss the topics or not. Rather than being apathetic and ignorant of the topics, I at least make them aware of the issues, so that they are no longer ignorant. The next step is to go away from apathy. I don't know if it is possible in a short-term exposure of a single semester; but I have at least made my contribution to the academic scene by changing the voice of the institution regardless. 

I address a lot of Postcolonial Theory and enmesh it into my course work. Ngugi wa Thiongo, a Kenyan writer, discusses the idea of 'decolonizing the mind'; no more than in former colonies, but here in affluent western civilization, the masses need to decolonize their mind most from corporate 'manufactured consent' as Noam Chomsky calls it.

Students can only handle small doses of theory at a time, or it goes over their heads, just the same with most average individuals, particularly in the US. I think that in certain European countries, there is still a level of critical thinking, (from my overseas experience). But the US system nurtures 'infantiled adults'. The US system prefers childish adults who can be consumers for life, than mature adults who can solve real problems. Some of the key intellectuals that influence me at this time are Ngugi wa Thiongo, Edouard Glissant, Julia Kristeva, and Gilles Delueze. But the list is endless. Some of which appear significantly in my writing. 

In my discussion with the German Professor, I could see the similarities she mentioned in my own classes recently. In particular, my classes with middle-class economic level students at my one school are far more 'unmovable' at times. Many of these students care little about most things political or social. How to get them to talk about real issues beyond headphones, cellphones and entertainment is really tough. Visual aids, like documentaries work best. But there still remains a passivity.

More important, however, in my low-income multi-national classes with students trying to get beyond the poverty level, I feel like I am making the most impact. I have been bringing in essays written from all walks of civil rights and human rights the past two weeks. Some of the essays ranged from Martin Luther King on 'tolerance of oppression is immoral', Ngugi wa Thiongo on 'culture', Barbara Einheirch on 'maintaining the crime supply and the US prison system', and just the other day about 'Nepal acknowledging legally a third gender.' The class has been focusing on the Argumentative Essay, so by bringing in critical arguments, the students can see varying forms of presenting arguments.

I admit that my topics may appear risky and unconventional for some, yet because the syllabus required students to engage in the writing of an 'argumentative essay', I created arguments in class (yet I always respect all students right to stand by their argument and belief).  This session wasn’t to prove any one wrong or right, but to allow students to form an argument and support their position with facts, sources, and reflective analysis.

Some key moments in the class were when my class openly discussed the recent Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida. My African-American students were frustrated with racial profiling in the US. One of the male students mentioned that this could have been him. Later in class, I began discussing the 9/11 2001 attacks and how in the US since then, Muslim Americans have been racially profiled. One of the African-Americans, who earlier mentioned his anger at profiling, did not realize his own bias and mentioned how he still feared Muslims. Then my five Muslim students in class were taken aback and argued their frustration with his response. 

I began to slowly awaken some of the students bias, 'information is power'. I made my students aware that some of the most famous American athletes during the 1960's converted to Muslim teachings due to Malcolm X and as a protest to the Vietnam War. Some of the infamous athletes noted were Muhammad Ali, the boxer, and Kareem Abdul Jabar, the basketball player. This got the students curious to know more.

The following class we discussed the idea of 'culture'. Somewhere in the middle of the class time, one of my older students mentioned how 'women no longer want to stay at home and cook.' He had no clue how old fashion and outdated his response was, because my female students made voice and stood up. Even after class, my students were still discussing the arguments in the hallways. This is when I feel that I may have opened student minds and gone past the standard class time. When students continue to think about the topic after the class ends, then I feel I have started a lit fuse to ignite challenging ideas and social standards.

My last class may have been over the top. Since the previous class had ended on the gender note, between culturally imposed gender roles reflected by different generations; I attempted to discuss the idea of a third gender. The open argument and discussions were excited. Even for most Americans, the idea of societies having 'legally accepting Third Genders' as in Nepal and Thailand, challenges imagination. However, historically transgender, intersex, hermaphrodites, and eunuchs have been around societies since the start of human existence. Indigenous and tribal communities have had different roles for mixed-gendered individuals. Recently the United Nations' Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon made a great speech in March available on-line about protecting the rights of homosexuals and those who are transgender. The class discussion most likely did not change the most 'conditioned by normalization' terms, but now those students are at least aware and not oblivious. 

After class, one of my Muslim students told me she did not believe in such ideas, but when I discussed briefly with her about the historic role of Eunuchs in Islam, she did not know the history. Now she is aware, and she can search on the internet and find countless resources referencing the topic. If you give eager students who have an opinion, just a little bit of information, some of them seek outside of the class more data.  One may not have taught the student more than he or she had before class, nor have impacted them to think critically. But one can at least try to share information to create the possibility to think more inclusively.

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. 

Critical Necessary Activity:

Edwidge Danticat, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Cornel West are from three very different political histories but they come together in a unifying global community of select voices that have the courage to speak truth to power. Cornel West grew up in Sacramento, California during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement. Edwidge Danticat grew up in Haiti under the Duvalier dictatorship and Tsitsi Dangarembga grew up in Zimbabwe first under the apartheid Rhodesian government and then under the Mugabe regime. In order for us to overcome the limited constructions of greed, success, and sovereignty, we must create a global social consciousness that brings together active members willing to remain heard and outspoken. 

Cornwel West recently questioned, “What will you use your success for? Never confuse success with greatness. … You trouble the water by being honest and candid about truth and justice in the world.” Troubling the water with speaking truth to power is one way to overcome the heartless sovereignty. Those who have used their wealth and success to manipulate the system are not great: the corporate elite of Exxon, Mobil, General Motors, General Electric, IBM, Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and the list is long. But the open public, who have been externalities due to the practices of these giants, are significantly more populous in numbers.

Edwidge Danticat in a similar reflection to Cornel West, and alluding to Albert Camus, believes that the artist, the writer, and passionate individuals must be willing to ‘create dangerously’. The Haitian novelist in her superb essay of the same title, discusses how through creative work, ‘we trek back to rediscovery’, we are ‘not just accidents of literacy’ but one’s who ‘keep things alive’. Each writer (and artist) finds unity with the more we create. Reflecting on Roland Barthes terms, ‘a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.’ We must unify through our outspokenness and “create dangerously, no matter how trivial our words may seem” (Danticat).

Writing about reality and the hazardous roads that got us to this passing are our responsibility as citizens of the 21^st Century, whether here in the US or in Haiti and Zimbabwe, or all other destinations overcoming destitution. The luxury of not knowing is irresponsible. When corporations like Monsanto poison the food supply with chemicals and genetically modified crops, we are risking a great crime. When elder Americans claim support for US Presidents, whether current or dead, regardless of their policies and how many masses of innocent casualties foreign and domestic they’ve decided not to protect, this is irresponsible; this is not just irresponsible, but an acceptance of ‘repressive tolerance’.  In Haiti, the only significant reason the island is extremely poor and unable to develop is because the super-rich elite in Haiti does not care about the human dignity of those who lack the means of subsistence. Though Robert Mugabe may have been a revolutionary, who overcame the apartheid Rhodesian government in the 1970’s, he has overstayed his support to his people, leaving the nation with a dictator and not a savior.

In October 2011, Tsitsi Dangarembga read aloud, available on Tedtalks on-line, her essay reflecting on "The Question Posed by My Cat”. In her passionate reflection she gathered knowledge from observing her cat’s behavior. “The antidote to the desolation in Zimbabwe,” as also seen in the US and abroad, “is that amongst our interpretations of greed and violence, is that greed, like violence, is a much graver ‘existential crisis’ than our limited definition.” While her cat has the capacity to learn when she is full and is satisfied, certain human beings seem impossible to know what is required and when they have reached enough.

“When you do not know where your next meal will come from, it is impossible to eat enough” (Dangarembga). Her cat knows she has had enough, because she has the ability to identify when she is satisfied. But human capacity to identify satisfaction is not just greed or gluttony, it is deeper, there is “a neurosis of not knowing what ‘enough’ means,” and it is essential to understand this neurosis in order for us “to redefine it”. 

In the 1940’s, at the brunt of World War II, the economist Joseph Schumpeter projected an idea of Creative Destruction. When the corporations and the banks get too big and overstay their necessity to society, they become obtrusive and in the way. When dictatorships and wealthy elite limit the growth of others trying their hardest to gain a sense of human dignity, creative destruction allows the exclusive dinosaurs and larger trees to creatively collapse so that other species and plants can grow.

The neurosis that allows greed to maintain control with use of violence or manufactured consent is certainly an existential dilemma. But Dangarembge believes global viability is graspable. Edwidge Danticat believes that we can awaken this rediscovery through creative risks, and Tsitsi Dangaremba believes that it is essential to understand this neurosis, so that we can move from a stage of “not I” to a stage of “We” inclusive.

As for Cornel West’s commitment to speak candid and truthful, he traveled throughout the past year across the United States on a ‘poverty tour’ trying to bring to the American attention that poverty is significant in the US. While mainstream media attempts to hide the divide of wealth in the US, Cornel West is addressing the imbalances beyond politics. He is not alone. Ralph Nader and Senator Bernie Sanders have also continually stated that if a financial or corporate institution is “too big too fail,” then “it is too big to exist.” Sanders states, “We should break these institutions up, so they are no longer in a position to bring down the economy.” If they are too big to fail, then the corporate powers need to be broken up, so as not to bring desolation to a larger population. This is true not just in the corporate and financial world, but in the general relations of sovereignty to the greater public whether in the US, in Haiti, in Zimbabwe, and nearly the most overshadowing obtrusive powers.

If the power system does not provide the opportunity for inclusive growth, nor does it provide the tools to obtain a neurosis that understands when enough is enough, then we as socially conscious individuals need to bring together active like-minded progressive voices to be responsible and ‘creative’ risk-takers, like West, Danticat and Dangarembga, who speak truth to power. 

Gloria Steinem, Leymah Gbowee, and Willie Nelson: Positive Social Pressure...

In the past week, former President Jimmy Carter has reflected on the preliminary success of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Fidel Castro has pushed in his new memoir that the world needs higher expectations on human dignity, Ralph Nader in a speech at Harvard Law School iterates that both the Obama and Bush administrations are guilty of crimes against humanity while the established congress does little to make such issues legislatively accountable, Noam Chomsky examines “America’s decline”; and Gloria Steinem has recently started a new social networking movement, entitled Women Under Siege. We are at a unique time in global history and social pressure is steaming at the valves.

Social Pressure is a driving force for positive and negative change. Social Pressure begins when a small group verbally, physically, and even in subconscious ways push others to act in ways they would not necessarily follow maliciously or even conscientiously.  Most of us have largely seen negative social pressure early in life when in school. Peer Pressure is a micro-level of larger social pressures. When students bully, intimidate, or judge other students the psychological effects can create enormous distress.

Such distress on a micro-level appears in Mim Udovitch’s essay A Secret Society of the Starving, the author reflects on high school female students encouraging one another to be anorexic, because they consider looking thin and sexy more hip and more important than eating healthy.  This small level of social pressure reflects the larger society excessive emphasis on women as visual objects. Even several years ago, an example of extreme social pressure in school levels led seventeen fourteen-year olds to make a pregnancy pact in Massachusetts, where they all pressured one another to get pregnant by any means possible. As Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, noted in his research approach, one must study the extremes of society at times in order to better understand the manufactured norms of society.  A pregnancy pact or hip anorexia, seem like extremes. But such means to social acceptance seem painful ways to belong.

Beyond the levels of school peer pressures, the pressures on image, identity and conduct are continually at odds with what seems moral and what seems inclusively hip. In George Orwell’s short story Shooting an Elephant, the classic author brings to the focal point, the colonial police officer in Burma pressured to kill an elephant that had run-off in a mad rage. By the time the British officer reached the elephant, the rage had seemed to pass; however, the villagers were excited to see a white officer shoot an elephant. Unfortunately, he had easily given into to social pressure to prove his manliness and his image of powerful imperial control, so he shot the elephant. The officer appeared limited to his accepted action. Afterwards, he did not feel any more accepted. Submitting to social pressure, in the end, did little for outside interests but a brief entertainment, and no one really cared about his emotional dilemma or the elephant minutes later.

Why submit to negative social pressure, as Orwell’s character had or the girls in American high school, when after submitting to such forces there clearly appears limited new self-assurances? In Gloria Steinem’s new project, which continues her life long commitment to women’s rights and human rights, she seeks to end the use of rape as a weapon of war. Nobel Peace Prize activists in 2011 had also committed the same determination at a summit in Montebello, Canada. Like Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams, Gloria Steinem with the new Women Under Siege Project seeks to gain global attention to stop one of the most brutal crimes against humanity.

Gloria Steinem addresses in a recent interview with Lauren Wolfe that rape and war were not always co-existent entities. Rape as a weapon for war has significantly been a 20^th Century and today phenomenon. One of the earliest notions when an army pushed rape as a military strategy was during World War II, when the Japanese soldiers entered China, Korea, and other neighboring nations. The historic ‘Rape of Nanking’ was an extreme example of such policies during wartime.  However, the US soldiers were guilty of the same crimes during the Vietnam War and the Serbian’s during the Balkan Conflicts.

Soldiers whether ordered to commit rape or soldiers who choose to commit rape as a social pressure among other soldiers during war, as seen in Iraq and Libya, are submitting to negative actions that only reflect the contradictions of just-wars. Soldiers enacting rape as a weapon of war, accepting such orders without civil disobedience, is a clear example of malicious social pressure. Gloria Steinem and her project are attempting to fight such practices with the positive social pressure of gaining enough ear and voice to create legal actions to stop the practice. If landmines and cluster bombs can be banned from war politics, certainly rape can be banned as well.

  

Positive Social Pressure can be a significant tool to make established norms change to a more moral and ethical practice. Rather than Orwell’s officer bowing down to social pressure to shoot an elephant, groups such as Green Peace use positive social pressure to overcome whaling boats and the fishing industry. Green Peace activists put their lives into the frontline to step in when malignant practices hurt and endanger the environment for animals as well as the public.

Positive Social Pressure can also be pushed during wartime. In the violent Second Civil War in Liberia in 2003, not to be confused with Libya in the past year, Leymah Gbowee organized a women’s peace movement to attempt to end the war. At the time, the dictator Charles Taylor was enacting atrocities across the nation; little did the US Government admit until 2011 that Charles Taylor previously worked under the Central Intelligence Agency. Leymah Gbowee, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, and her peace movement were fed up with the war, so they encouraged women throughout the nation, Christian and Muslim alike, to stage in nonviolent protests and participate in a Sex-Strike.  The Sex-Strike involved thousands of women refusing to sleep with any man until the war ended. Such acts of positive social pressure caused the war to surprisingly end faster than expected. This modern day acting out of the ancient Greek Lysistrata proves that there is a level of power that could be enacted through uses of Positive Social Pressure.

How can the acts in Liberia or the Women Under Siege Project be useful for those Americans and other high-Capitalist nations who are not in a war-zone or first handedly aware of their contributions to the globalized world? Most of the wars on foreign soil are directly connected to large Corporate interests in oil and other natural resources that wealthy nations are apathetically or ignorantly dependent upon at the expense of others: from Iraq to Vietnam, from Guatemala to Zimbabwe, et al. 

We have the potential to awaken our fellow neighbors to participate in Positive Social Pressure that would overcome Negative Pressures. For example, in the past week, the musician Willie Nelson and more than 300,000 American activists have sued the giant agro-chemical corporation Monsanto.  Willie Nelson’s new organization entitled “Occupy the Food System” attempts to use Positive Social Pressure to stop Monsanto from dominating the food industry nationally and globally.

Social Pressures, negative and positive, are imperative to human progress or human decline. We can choose to give into negative peer pressure and commit crimes we whole-heartedly wish not to accept, but accepting them we’ve become passive invisible voices. We must refuse to be silent. As Aurora Levins Morales notes we must work at “infusing people’s imaginations with possibility, with the belief in a bigger future.”   

Gloria Anzaldua, Judith Butler, and Ameena Mathews: Mix of Ambiguity and Shouting:

On the eve of turbulence where Syrian violence continues, Israel seems ever closer to bomb Iran, and Egypt has become more enraged, fear of war between worlds, clashes of civilization induced from a market out of control. But a common desire wants to push past greed and general sovereignty.

Gloria Anzaldua mentions the ideal ‘towards a new consciousness’, one that involves a Tolerance of Ambiguity, where the “borders and walls that are supposed to keep the undesirables out are entrenched habits and patterns of behavior” (Anzaldua, Borderlands). Violence is a pattern. Such patterns and habits that lock us in are the enemy within. “Rigidity means death.” Rigid war profiteers, capitalizing on perpetual confrontation over oil, resources, and objectivity of desire.

The inner war, the borders of self and other should be inclusive and not exclusive; “breaking down the paradigms” is the duality of transcendence. Anzaldua persists that the “First step is to take inventory…Just what did we inherit from our ancestors? … This step is a conscious rupture with all oppressive traditions of all cultures and all religions. … We must surrender all notions of safety, of the familiar” (Anzaldua). Deconstruct in order to construct. The “whole struggle is to change the disciplines and overcome the internal struggles.”

Frantz Fanon urges the opposite. He urges that violence is the only way to “explode the former colonial reality.” For such a struggle overcomes unknown facets, “as the struggle enfolds, the power of ideology is elaborated,” and a ‘spectacular of voluntarism’, overcomes the ‘obscurantist tendencies’ (Fanon, Wretched of the Earth).

Yet Ameena Matthews, working with CeaseFire.org, an organization in Chicago consisting of ex-gang members, seeks to ‘Shout at Violence’. Matthews and her co-workers attempt to re-direct gang violence away from brutal means. “Violence is a disease. It does not solve anything.” She continues in a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, “We as Violence Interrupters stop the violence from one person to another… We just get right in the middle of it because our goal is to save a life and be proactive not reactive” (Matthews).

Violence hurts the innocent.  Violence objectifies the value of human life. In Judith Butler’s reflections on the Subjects of Desire, a reinterpretation of Hegel, she states “Desire is in part a desire for self-reflection, and because desire … as a cognitive effort to thematize identity, Desire and Reflection are not mutually exclusive terms” … Desire is an ambiguous project of life (Butler).

Butler’s ‘ambiguous project of life’ moves along the similar route as Gloria Anzaldua’s ‘tolerance of ambiguity’. Butler reflects, “Identity is not to be forfeited simply because there is no guarantee of its success … both arbitrary and doomed failure, the striving to know one’s self to think the conditions of one’s own life, is a function of the desire to be free.”

“Desire can relieve human beings of their Consciousness of their own negativity” (Butler). To grasp what is lacking without the violent urge to destroy. “The Negative exists in us and we must come to terms with our own negativity in order to accept what we cannot control” (Butler).

This possibility to create anew, hopes to avow an advocated violence, but one fears today violence is inevitable because too many pattern-prone powerful interests cannot self-reflect on their own negativity, and do not have a tolerance of ambiguity.

Ameena Matthews shouts at violence, “You deserve to be loved!” Violence won’t solve the problem; it avoids the problem rather than being constructive.

But is this a Catch-22? Are we left either doomed to be objectified by the hegemony, or empowered to demand subjectivity? Still that is the point of ambiguity, the opportunity for the new unknown.   

Corporate Boundaries

While the headlines reveal that Pfizer recalls over 1 million packets of birth control pills due to a packaging error and dosage strength, McDonald’s publically tries to eliminate a pink slime in its hamburger meat known as Ammonium Hydroxide, and Pepsi disputes a lawsuit over a mouse found in its products with a reply that their products are too acidic that a mouse would have dissolved before reaching the shelves; corporate business continues with limited sweat and limited outcry. When will the majority of the public get active enough to stand up? At this rate, most likely never, because the public has been passive for so long they would not know what to do.

Back in October 2011, Pfizer had briefly made the news with their taxpayer USAID funded Depo-Provera vaccine for HIV used in mostly African nations, where studies reflected that the drug actually may have increased the risk of women and their male partners becoming infected.  Now with the massive recall of birth control pills in the US, one has to wonder, where will the line of negligence stop?  

C.L.R. James questions in his Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, how does a society of free individualism give birth to corporate totalitarianism and be unable to defend against it? Why is there a ‘modern inability to judge’? (James).  I ask myself those same questions today. When reading Ralph Nader’s newest book Getting Steamed to Over Come Corporatism, he reflects with factual evidence how reckless and corrupt our capitalist elites have gotten. His suggestion is that in order to overcome this we must build together to win. 

Herbert Marcuse in an essay entitled Struggle Against Liberalism in Totalitarianism states: “A total activation, concretization, and politicization of all dimensions of existence is demanded. The autonomy of thought and the objectivity and neutrality of science are repudiated as heresy or even political falsification on the part of liberalism. ‘We are active, enterprising beings and incur guilt if we deny this essence: guilt by neutrality and tolerance” of the negligence is our crime, whether we are oblivious or apathetic (Marcuse).

Myles Horton and Paulo Freire state jointly in their conversations between one another: “We Make the Road by Walking!” We don’t build anything if we remain tolerant of repression and oppression. We create history through participatory education.