organizing – Antidogmatist

We’re all to blame, but some more than others.

This is my mantra lately. I keep it in mind because I sense a danger in taking on too much guilt around the many fucked up things going on in the world. It’s true we’re all to some degree implicated in many of these things, and so I acknowledge there is also a danger in not feeling responsible for some of the negative aspects of the state of the world. But responsibility is not the same thing as guilt, and guilt is a worse foundation for action of the two feelings.

An example that’s very present from my life is in gentrification. I grew up in San Francisco, and sure enough, due to the “hypergentrification” the City has gone through, I no longer live there due to being displaced from my last apartment.[1] Displacement is something I know experientially—it’s not some abstract thing. Most of my friends from growing up and early adulthood can no longer live in the city.

I spent my youth coming up in arts, punk music, and urban farming scenes. All three of these areas of urban activity—and those involved in them—have been called out as contributing to gentrification. You may recall the basic argument: generally white(r) populations move into down-and-out areas of disinvested cities, making them “nicer” by dedicating their time to (generally non-paying) pursuits like making art, green space, social/cultural spaces. Their hip tastes and whiteness attract new and wealthier residents who now feel “safe” and welcome where they once didn’t. … Soon rents are going up, and the original residents are forced out by elevating prices or by efforts to get them out (e.g. evictions), since there is more profit to be made serving the newer, richer and whiter populations.

I’m not saying this narrative is completely untrue. But as I’ve covered elsewhere, the narrative ends up placing blame on and directs attention to those who are in a “buying” position in the economy. These are not the people who drive gentrification through choices of investment, disinvestment, and policy-making, but those who play an important but subsidiary role. Neil Smith and others have made this point before.

Another sphere where we’re all responsible, but some more than others, is as regards the state of “the environment”. As Utah Phillips (supposedly) said “The Earth isn’t dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses”. Yes, I myself have killed the earth by eating take-out, by driving occasionally, by taking planes, by throwing things “away” in a landfill (somewhere)—guilty as charged. You probably kill the earth too, on a daily basis. But we are not meaningfully in control of the underlying material processes that lead to this impact: the extraction of minerals from the earth’s crust, the extraction of fossil fuels and their processing and trading, the financing of these processes, the policy-making that fails to constrain these processes or prevent their damaging impact. We too are in buying positions, which are important but not central.

It seems nonsensical to put you, Exxon CEO/U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and me on the same plane in any political analysis of the environmental problem. A political vision that focuses too much on individual behaviors risks forgetting how much these behaviors are structurally determined, and thus could misdirect political energy away from those are more so responsible for structuring such behavior.

A similar argument can be made regarding the continued harmful white supremacy that pervades everyday life. Certainly, as critical race theorists and antiracist activists have pointed out, white supremacy is “re-inscribed” in everyday life by the individual actions of “everyday” people. We can see this in the overt racism and outward hate emboldened and made even more visible in the post-Trimp era, as well as the more subtle forms of white supremacy common among self-identified “liberals”, like microagressions (forms brilliantly parodied in the smash hit movie “Get Out”).

But just as important are the actions performed by individuals who play vital roles in organizations that structure white supremacy into our lives and enforce it: political bodies, corporations and companies, policing and war-making organizations, and so on. This form of racism is less about individuals and their personal attitudes as the function their (daily) activity fulfills.

I’m thinking for example of government officials (whether executive, legislative, or judicial) making policy, and the decisions made by heads and stockholders of profit-making companies. Politicians make white supremacist laws and police enforce them. Companies pollute and exploit communities of color and get away with it. Real estate investors and their friends in planning departments make plans to displace communities of color in favor of the profit-making opportunity of neighborhood “revitalization” (i.e. gentrification). Individuals in these positions are key points where white supremacy is maintained, even if none of them show outward attitudes of racism.

Sure, we all play a role in these complex political, economic, and ideological processes that lead back to white supremacy—and so we all need to play a role in resisting, subverting, or redirecting these processes. Yet, simply stating “we are all responsible” tends to downplay that some people operate in positions of relatively greater capacity to shape the lives of others. Recognizing this greater capacity should inform more targeted and perhaps strategic political intervention. We can and should fight white supremacy in all its forms and embodiments, but we might want to prioritize fighting against people and organizations that are the most implicated.

…

Doing so also leaves more space for the uncomfortable and long-term process of changing the everyday ideologies and behavior patterns of people away from white supremacy. That is, if we approach everyone as part of the problem, we have a much harder time gathering a meaningful force towards solutions. This would go for environmental and anti-gentrification movements too. Sometimes, this process is difficult, as those who form the cutting edge of gentrification and white supremacy are sometimes masked by their identities and powerful “it’s not me” defenses.

The case of the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD) in L.A. is instructive here: in response to obvious indications of arts-led gentrification, with art forming a wedge by which to force open the neighborhood to new colonizers, BHAAAD targeted galleries which were investor’s playthings, but were fronted by queer and otherwise self-described ‘marginalized’ people. While not sparing any harsh words of critique for the process, BHAAAD made it clear: if these gallerists involved wished to avoid being implicated in this unjust process, they needed to close their galleries and leave the neighborhood.

Offering history to explain the gallerists’ role in displacement (unacknowledged by the gallerists, or possibly just too uncomfortable to recognize), BHAAAD explains this role in terms of investment, capital, and (collective) political power—not just individual behavior based on individual “values”. Thus they leave the door open for implicated folks (who were not necessarily “the most responsible”) to choose sides and see themselves as political actors with potentially better choices.

We need to hold a space for self-critique and calling out negative patterns we experience in our immediate environment (e.g. school, home, workplace, social life, etc), but we need to focus our political analysis and oppositional efforts on the structures that are primarily responsible for material conditions, and the people who are directing those structures. To the great middle—those participating in but not directing injustice—activism must be critical, firm, but offered with a structural analysis that leaves an opening for those targeted to be self-reflective and align their actions with their stated politics.

[I suppose this piece needs an accompanying one to explain why police, politicians, and investors should not be considered part of this ‘great middle’, and should be treated instead as the enemies they are. Next time.]

[1] I have things pretty good, relatively speaking: I received a buy-out payment for my eviction, and my mom was lucky enough to buy one of the last affordable houses in the 1990s so I now benefit from that class privilege.

This’ll be a hard post to make short, or sweet.

I’ve been struggling since the election’s results to reconcile feelings I have as an “antidogmatist” interested in a strong and broad anti-systemic social movement to remake our political-economic system.

My struggle is mainly between two issues: my longstanding positioning as a “radical”—meaning someone interested in addressing the root of political issues (namely, capitalism) and not merely reforming oppressive systems to make them “less bad”; and my commitment to keeping an open mind with folks who don’t have radical analyses, take radical positions, or participate in radical action—that which I truly believe is necessary to make any substantial transformation in society.

These ideas are coming into conflict because throughout this election and since the election of Trump, U.S. liberals (i.e. non-radicals) around me and in cyberspace have remained stubbornly committed to their existing politics—politics that not only have proven unable to make progressive change, but are also (at least in part) responsible for the horrible situation we find ourselves in, and are now even endangering an effective response to Trump and his ilk.

For those who might identify with the term liberal, and are confused how it might be getting thrown around as a pejorative, please understand that I am using the term in a specific way. I’m not referring to those who believe in the right to maintain and uplift social diversity (e.g. gender, sexual, racial, age, etc). I’m not really referring either to those who abide by the conventional (i.e. British-origin) definition of liberal: those concerned with individual liberties, and a politics based on the notion of individuals converging and hashing out differences in the public/governmental sphere (although that version of liberal definitely overlaps with the one I’m talking about).

What I’m talking about is the liberal who essentially is invested in the political-economic system we have. Liberals believe this system perhaps requires some tweaking in order to achieve more robust outcomes of justice, but ultimately is “the best of all possible worlds”—largely because revolutionary change is dismissed as impossible. Liberals rejecting revolution often also downplay criticism of capitalism and oppose (or at least fail to participate in) action that moves beyond established channels of social choice-making (such as voting, government, or consumer choice).

The liberal I describe is someone who (in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., a go-to for liberals in many an argument, even if many don’t bother to read him directly or understand his history or analysis):

is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro [read: any activist] to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

It is high time that liberals start trying to deepen their understanding of radicalism. In this time of Trump and reactions from below—when violent state suppression is likely to increase and responses from the frontlines likely to radicalize—to hold on as a liberal to liberal thinking is to take sides with the status quo.

I’m over trying to act as a peacemaker between liberals and radicals: this is a time to choose sides and fight, not to have an endless and useless discussion where liberal assumptions are made the baseline (e.g. elections are democratic) upon which radicals have to defend our vision, perspective, and approach. This is the bulk of what I see on “Leftbook”—liberals who don’t actually listen, don’t actually question their own assumptions, don’t seem to read (critical) histories, and don’t seek to look themselves in the mirror.

And please consider: I’m not arguing these are character flaws. I certainly like many of the people who are posting entreaties to convince the Electoral College to change to Clinton, or to demand a recount, or what have you. I’m not saying these people suck—I’m saying their politics are wrong and ill informed, and quite possibly their efforts move counter to their stated values.

As many smarties have said: don’t do the same thing over and over and expect different outcomes.

For those who might think of themselves as liberals but interested in or inching towards radical, I’m offering up below some resources I’ve recently found. The biggest push back I’ve gotten from liberals is the argument that there are not alternative, effective ways of action beyond their suggestions. This is not true, if you’re willing to do the research.

There’s more of this out there than these two links, of course, and I am not vouching for everything within (I’ve barely been able to read much in either link), but these two lists of resources are good starts for those who want to understand radical historical analysis, radical tactics and strategy, and the radical rejection of liberalism.

#TrumpTheRegime: Resources and Ongoing Resistance to Trump and the Far-Right

http://thenewinquiry.com/features/a-time-for-treason/

An excerpt from the latter:

“WE studied and pursued methods for revolutionary social change before Trump came to power, and our core focus remains the same: abolishing the ever-enlarging systems of hierarchy, control, and environmental destruction necessary to sustain the growth of capital. With the ascendance of White nationalist ambition to the upper echelons of empire, we have given special attention to struggles waged and endured by marginalized people for whom the fight against capital has always been a concurrent fight against Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

Although there are bleak times ahead, we must remember that for most of us America was never paradise. Democrats and liberals will use this time to revise history. They will present themselves as the reasonable solution to Trump’s reign and advocate a return to “normalcy.” But their normal is a country where Black people are routinely killed by police and more people are imprisoned than any other place in the world. Their normal is a country where millions are exploited while a handful eat lavishly. Their normal is the opposite of a solution; it’s a threat to our lives.”

I want to believe that liberals can become radicalized. At least, I’d like to see a more concerted “inside-outside” strategy that aligns more radical movements with more liberal ones. But I’ve been seeing that even in this historical moment—with the apparent non-functionality of “democratic” politics, the continued rule of a political-economic elite class, a climate crisis that capitalist states refuse to confront, and the resurgence of populist ideas—liberals don’t seem to be changing much, and are instead largely clamping down on bad ideas (like voting for lesserevilism and continual investment in Democratic Party politics).

More disappointingly, many liberals are into gaslighting radicals as “unrealistic”, “naïve”, “foolish” and “unsophisticated” whenever they present alternative views or critiques. This belittling position, coming often but not always from people of relative privilege in society, is what compels me need to write this blog. In opposing violence (i.e. resistance from underclasses) “on principle” such liberals allow state-sanctioned (e.g. anti-black) violence to go on unimpeded. In redirecting righteous anger back towards reformist avenues that do little to nothing to change the structure of society, liberals prevent the change they supposedly desire. In blaming the victim (often the poorest, the black and indigenous, the most marginal in society) for the outcomes of failed electoral efforts, liberals consolidate the rightward drift of U.S. politics.

In particular, now that Trump has won, emboldening the radical right of white supremacists, xenophobes, and other reactionary social forces, we need more unity to push back from “the Left”. But if “the Left” remains dominated by liberals who oppose street actions, direct actions, protests that interfere with business as usual, property destruction, strikes, occupations, and so on, this push back will fail.

We anti-capitalists and radicals can count on the government to suppress uprisings and dissent, but with liberals as agents of the state, “peace policing” such dissent and insisting on a “more reasonable” return to business as usual, we need even more than ever to assert radicalism and deny the “poverty of liberalism“.

I sincerely hope that some ex-liberal friends join in this effort.

Topic: organizing

We’re all to blame, but some more than others.

The Liberal/Radical split in Post-Election Organizing