As many of you know, i’ve been preparing for awhile now for the workshop that i facilitated last night. As of the last update, i was trying to narrow down the topic. Given that yesterday was A Day Without Latin@s (a day of action for immigrant rights) and i thought that i wasn’t going to get to participate in local actions, i decided to focus on racism in the environmental movement. Specifically, i planned to talk about the environmental movement’s recent history with immigration. I’ll talk more about this in a later post.

However, i prefer to go with the flow of things instead of living strictly by what i write down. All day i thought about how i wish i were able to travel the hour and a half to the large protest organized by migrant workers and latin@ communities. Then, as i was biking to where the workshop was being held, i passed a group of about 50 people (almost all Latinos, almost all wearing white). They were gathered downtown in solidarity with the larger actions an hour and a half away. I knew then that my plans were going to change.

You may say, “50 people, big deal!” In this small city, it is a big deal. The largest demo i’ve seen here consisted of about 30-50 people and that was back in 2002. And despite the fact that our city is about 40% people of color, i’ve NEVER seen a demo with a majority people of color. There are a number of reasons for this which i won’t get into right now, but all i knew right then was that there was no way i was going to spend the next four hours talking about solidarity and pass up a real opportunity to exemplify solidarity.

Let’s go back. A couple of weeks ago i received an email from someone saying that there was some local organizing efforts around a solidarity event with the immigrants rights marches in town. I pushed it aside because of my past experiences with the people whom sent me the email. *flashback* Actions organized by White people in this town have consistently been the following:

1) a small group of White people standing silently on a street corner downtown (i tend to be of the camp that we are silenced enough and don’t need to be silencing ourselves)

2) a small group of White people standing loudly on a street corner making promises that they don’t carry out. This was the case at the last demo i attended in this town. Myself and six others said to the organizers, “fuck you, you said we were going to be marching through the streets, so we are sticking to your promise.” A friend and i ended up in jail. I am tired of White people making promises of solidarity that they don’t intend to keep.

Since the persyn sending me the email was White and of the silent vigil camp, i decided to pay it no mind. I also found it a little ridiculous that an event was being organized through email. But apparently, some folks from the local Bascillica were doing some organizing of there own. So when i showed up to the workshop space i announced that i would rather show solidarity for immigrants rights than talk about immigrants rights. So i suggested that we spend the first two hours of the workshop going to the demonstration instead. There were 20 people there at the time. 15 voted to go, 5 voted indifference. Two people left and never showed up again (one of them i knew and we’ve disagreed on everything we’ve talked about - he’s an “anarcho-primitivist”, i HATE anarcho-primitivism). Before leaving, someone said they weren’t going to go because they felt it wouldn’t do any good and that it would be awkward rolling up with a group of White people. My response was that i wasn’t going to force anyone to do anything. We are all capable of making our own decisions, but for anyone who decides not to go, i ask that they think about this: “White people are always finding reasons not to support people of color. What are your reasons?” That persyn didn’t go, but they did participate later in some great discussion.

So i get on my bike and head back down to the demo. The crowd had swelled to about 150 people, about 20 of them (including the 15 with me) were White. There was a very large showing of mami’s mothers with their kids. And the only persyn that i recognized was one of the students from my class (he was embarrassed to see me there, but then bragged about it at school today:). I was both enlivened and greatly saddened to see a demonstration with a majority of latin@s. Saddened because not one of the “radical” folks in this town cared to show up. Saddened because not even the White persyn who initially emailed me showed up. In fact, outside of the people that came with me, there wasn’t one White persyn under the age of 50. And people wonder why i left the local anarchist collectives after i tried to talk about White Supremacy within the collectives and was threatened. Hmm. What can i say, some days White people really are great. But i’m generalizing again. And getting off topic.

For about an hour, in the hottest, sunniest day this southern city has seen this year, we marched around, listened to music, and listened to people speak (almost entirely in Spanish). My favorite signs were “Immigrants contribute $23 billion dollars to NC” and the one from the sole counter-demonstrator, “Americans support America.” Apparently that dumbass didn’t realize that all the immigrants there were from America: El Salvador, Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua are some of the places folks that i talked to were from. Yup, all in America. Both Americas, actually.

The title of this post is from a line of one of the songs that was sung at the demo. It reminded me of the pictures from the civil rights movement in the sixties - where lines of Black people were carrying signs that read “I AM a man”. This will be another post in the near future.

On a sorta side note, i overheard one of the few White wimmin at the demo say, “you know they are calling this the next civil rights movement.” Well, hun, they also said that a few years ago regarding the same-sex marriage movement. But calling it the next civil rights movment doesn’t make it so. That requires persynal responsibility, but that’s coming later in the post. Besides, i hate to say this is the next civil rights movement. To me, that denies the uniqueness of the movement. Sure, they are very connected, but this is new. New tactics will need to be used. New models of leadership (which we are already seeing). New goals. Besides, I hope that this movement will not die with a piece of legislation. Because legislation has never given anyone power. That is something we have to take, something we have to create. That’s the movement i’m working to create. And i hope it doesn’t result in mutliple assassinations. I hope that White people don’t get bored again and move on to anti-war organizing. I hope for something greater than any civil rights movement we’ve ever seen. No disrespect to all the great work that was done, it brought us this far. Its time for us to go further. Now back on track.

So we go back to the workshop space and get ready for the dinner break. I sit with a group of the folks to discuss how folks felt, etc. The first and only thing that people cared to talk about were the form letters to the Senators. The letters were written by members of the Catholic Church. The folks in the workshop were White anarchists. Apparently the two are like oil and water. In the letter, there is a paragraph that goes something like:

“I have a job as a _____. I pay taxes. I own/rent a house. I own a car. I have a family that I love. And I am a believer in the Christian faith.”

Turns out that almost no one signed these letters because of that paragraph. Fucking ridiculous. Diversity of tactics only when convenient, huh? They went on and on about how they weren’t going to sign anything that said 1)they had a job, 2)they paid taxes and, most importantly, 3)they were Christian. A little lesson in solidarity for Whitey: the majority of catholics in the world are latin@. The majority of latin@s are catholic. If you are going to work in solidarity with latin@s, you will find yourself 1)inside a cathedral, 2)talking about God, and 3)signing a piece of paper that says you are Christian. I’m not Catholic. I’m not even christian. But i didn’t hesitate to sign that paper. You know why? Because the fucking point of the letter wasn’t to convert the world to Christianity, it was to tell Senators Dole and Burr that there are a lot of reasons not to vote for a seriously fucked up bill. If we are going to stop our solidarity when we find one small point of contention, we are never going to get anything done. I can tell that now. My response to this conversation (given the audience) was this: “i figure its not the first time that i lied to the government.” These are people who pride themselves on how anti-government they are. You would think that they would jump on the opportunity to lie to the government in the service of the greater good, but instead Whitey makes another excuse not to support people of color. See a pattern yet?

At this point its time for me to leave the discussion and start setting up the workshop. Because we spent the frist two hours at the demo, i had to make some last minute changes. Orginally, we were going to have an intense discussion about how White Supremacy plays out in radical environmental movements and how not confronting that White Supremacy and including an analysis of Whiteness into radical environmental organizing ultimately disables the effectiveness of the movement. We were going to spend some time talking about how to recognize White Supremacist patterns in our organizing as well. The last two hours were going to be spent looking at moving into action, how to hold ourselves, our co-organizers, and our organizations/collectives accountable.

But due to the fact that we now only had two hours, i decided to do an exercise i created awhile back called the Web of Justice (its based off the Web of Oppression exercise, if you are familiar, if not, i’ll post the outline sometime soon). Its a great visual exercise that gets people thinking about how different issues are interconnected and how when we don’t make those connections, we aren’t doing what needs to be done. It was really interesting to see people making connections between trans liberation, animal lib, housing rights, prisoners rights, immigrants rights, feminism, counter-globalization, appalachian struggles, indy media, and so forth. People really seemed to get a lot out of it and it generated a lot of really good conversation. In summary, people seemed to get the point.

From there we did some self-reflection writing, which some people shared with the group. Then read some of Catherine Jones’ What I Wish I Knew: My Own Goals for Anti-Racist Practice. Then we wrote at least ten persynal goals each for how to make the connections that we discussed in the earlier exercise and how to make our organizing efforts anti-oppressive. There was some really good stuff. And a few people seemed to have added “learn spanish” (to which someone responded, “its important to learn spanish, but i also encourage you to learn other languages like ASL.” So glad that was said!).

The same persyn who mentioned ASL, actually, talked about a specific goal in her community in WV. Last week, a group of White coal miners burned down a bar where immigrant coal miners hang out. There is also rumor that White coal miners have threatened to (or may have already) burn down the homes of the immigrant workers. Their reasoning for burning them down? “They don’t speak english and they’re taking our jobs.” They burned the bar because the owner refused to kick the immigrants out. Apparently burnings are still popular in WV. So anyway, the participant (one of the few people i knew before this workshop, since most of them seemed to have come from New Orleans), said her goal was to create a dialogue between laid-off White coal miners and immigrant coal miners to talk about how their struggles are connected, but they are being pitted against each other. A great (if not vital) goal! After the workshop, the two of us talked for awhile about how such a conversation may come about without risking the jobs and lives of the immigrant workers. The conversation sparked an idea for a series of posts on the interconnectedness of struggle, which i’ll be publishing over the next few weeks.

So folks shared their many goals and then we moved into accountability. People seemed to be at a loss on this one. Some folks had some good ideas: find friends who will share the goal with you, keep the goals listed in a visible place, that’s all i can remember right now. Which got me to thinking, young White people (especially middle-class White people) aren’t really held accountable. So its no wonder that the topic of accountability would be so difficult. In retrospect, i would have added a question to the workshop: to whom are you accountable?

The attitude of many young White “radicals” seems to be simple: i’m accountable only to myself. This especially seems true in many of the anarchist communities of which i’ve been a part. This attitude is not only self-centered, it is destructive and greatly privileged. We aren’t islands. No on can survive on their own. If a baby is dropped in a forest alone, chances are that baby dies within a few days. I’d agree that we must hold ourselves accountable, but if we are merely holding ourselves accountable to ourselves, then we can pretty much do whatever we want and feel justified. However, if we recognize that we are social creatures and emotional creatures and that we are responsible for and accountable to all those around us, then we find that there are certain behaviors that are destructive to our community (and, in turn, self-destructive).

Overall, i’d say the workshop went really well. Despite some rocky starts, folks really dove into it. Of the twenty particants, over half gave me their email addresses so that i could send them more info (and the outline for the first half of the workshop). One participants, who i would guess to be about 18, pulled me aside as i was leaving to thank me and say that he had thought about a lot of things that he had never thought about before. He said he had never been to an anti-oppression workshop but that he was excited to attend more in the future. That’s why i haven’t given up on White people yet. We may say and do some fucked up things, but some of us honestly care about making a difference. Its great to find those others throughout life. And for that, i’m thankful.