Brown Power at Occupy Wall Street! 9/29/11
The protestors at Occupy Wall Street have been saying that there will be efforts to reach out to people of colour, to have communities of colour engage and be a part of the protests, to help create real change – because, let’s face it, the protests have been very white and people of colour need to be present, and need to speak up. Well, that’s exactly what we were doing, and I realized that we were helping to make that change happen.
The facilitators asked if our issue was an ethical concern – if it was, then it would have to be addressed. I said, yes it was, meaning, we were blocking the document in order for this ethical concern to be addressed. Manissa then read out what we felt the change should be to the phrase, after thanking the crowd and facilitators for working with us. The change was instead of “formerly divided by” to have it be “despite” or “despite the divisions of…etc”.
The change was accepted by the general assembly. Our impromptu crew/bloc turned to each other to discuss what just happened, and people listened in and expressed their agreement with what we did. We still felt however that the paragraph as a whole needed to be changed, and Sonny pointed out that the language left invisible or attempted to erase the dynamics of power. An Iranian man who had been at Occupy Wall Street for a number of days remarked that as a group we were conspicuous. Sonny noted that as a group of 5 brown people, with a hijabi and one wearing a turban, of course we grabbed attention in this still-mostly white crowd, and “how real can you get?”
The GA finished and we immediately proceeded to the impromptu meeting being held to address the document. Note, our proposed changes about the language to the sentence I mentioned above had already been accepted, but we still felt the document did not address or ignored issues of power. This is extremely important because a document being shared by Occupy Wall Street to the so-called 99% should not be ignoring or erasing issues of power. We found the guy who had been the main facilitator (and who also had been visibly frustrated with us) and started to discuss the paragraph.
Unfortunately though, there were many who tried to cut us off, and as we sat down on the ground, with Thanu bringing out her laptop, these people gathered nearby, pointed fingers at us, and made me feel very uncomfortable, as if we weren’t welcome. They clearly didn’t like what we were doing, but what we were doing was participating and engaging with Occupy Wall Street, and making ourselves heard – after all, isn’t that what the organizers want? The facilitator who had earlier attempted to shut us down, came and said we should come back the next day to finish our discussion. We said no, let’s do this right here and now, and hammer it out in 10 minutes, which we did. A white woman came up to me and asked, why didn’t we leave the main facilitator alone? I told her he wanted to listen to us and chose to sit down here with us, we didn’t force him. These were the unfortunate distractions and disruptions we had to deal with. I realized that change on the ground is hard, messy, and painful, and we could feel all of this.
This discussion was around the wording of the 2nd paragraph, which I won’t quote here, because like I said, this document is being changed and is unpublished as of right now. We didn’t like the language of how we are all one human race. The facilitator said that that is scientific fact, that we are all one race. We agreed, but had to explain that socially, there is inequality. It was highly problematic that we had to break down systems of oppression to this man who seemed to have the final say on this document, this document that will be shared with the world, that is supposed to represent Occupy Wall Street, as well as supposedly the 99%. Manissa had to explain that he as a white man had more power and privilege than her as a woman of colour. That racism isn’t about feelings, as he thought, but about power and oppression, as Sonny and Thanu explained. It boggled our minds that we were discussing power and privilege while at the same time we could feel this man’s power and privilege over us, and that he is a facilitator/organizer for Occupy Wall Street! Clearly there needs to be a lot of self-education workshops at Liberty Plaza.
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