Freedom Dreams: Activism and Radical Traditions

Week 3 - 9/12/2019

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for the final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us”

- Audre Lorde, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” p. 44

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Summary

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“Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.”- Audre Lorde Mural is titled “Monuments: Our Immigrant Mothers” by Yehimi Cambrón -KL

A post shared by Activism Beyond the Classroom (@actbeyondtheclass) on Sep 9, 2019 at 7:27am PDT

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A post shared by Activism Beyond the Classroom (@actbeyondtheclass) on Sep 12, 2019 at 7:48pm PDT

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Learning this week about "Activism and Radical Traditions" has really pushed me to think about what it takes to articulate ideas and share your perspectives. Not everyone's idea of a 'better' world lines up. But there is a degree of unity required to make meaningful change. So how do we get there? Who's words do we use? How do we protect ourselves from the fear of doing more harm than good? ✍@me_is_rey

A post shared by Activism Beyond the Classroom (@actbeyondtheclass) on Sep 12, 2019 at 12:27pm PDT

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What is activism and how else might we theorize political action?

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Paradigms of political action

• Audre Lorde. 1984. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Sister Outsider. Ten Speed Press.

• Carol Mueller. 2004. “Ella Baker and the Origins of ‘Participatory Democracy’” in Jacqueline Bobo et al. (eds), The Black Studies Reader, pp. 79-90.

• Susan Stall and Randy Stoecker. 1998. “Community Organizing or Organizing Community? Gender and the Crafts of Empowerment.” Gender &Society. 12(6): 729-756.

• Astra Taylor. 2016. “Against Activism” The Baffler: http://thebaffler.com/salvos/against-activism

• Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization is not a metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), pp. 1-40.

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What kinds of freedom dreams and horizons of political possibility do these approaches open up or foreclose?

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Manifestos of/for the Moment

• “The Combahee River Collective Statement” and “Barbara Smith” in Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (ed.). 2017. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, pp. 15-28 and 29-71.Haymarket Books.

• The Council of the Red Nation.2015.“Native Liberation Struggles in North America: The Red Nation 10-point Program.”

  • See also: #StandingRockSyllabus. 2016. 

• Alyson Escalante. 2016. “Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto.”

• Johanna Hedva. 2014. “Sick woman theory.”Mask Magazine. 

• “The Queer Nation Manifesto.”1990.

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Do these ways of theorizing political action presume particular kinds of subjects or political projects? If so, how?

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Movement Cultures

• Alicia Garza. 2017. “Our cynicism will not build a movement. Collaboration will.” Mic.

• David Graeber. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Ch. 5, “Direct Action, Anarchism, Direct Democracy” and Ch. 6, “Some Notes on ‘Activist Culture’,” (focus on 239-256 of Ch. 6).

• Loretta Ross. 2019. “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture is Toxic.”NY Times. Aug. 17, 2019. 

•  “Transformative justice in an era of mass incarceration with Mariame Kaba and Victoria Law” episode of Center for Constitutional Rights The Activist Filespodcast. March 14, 2019. [56 min] Episode website and link to episode on Apple podcasts.

• Aja Romano. 2018. “Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism.” Vox.

Class Recap

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“We can build a movement in the millions, across difference. We will need to build a movement across divides of class, race, gender, age, documentation, religion and disability. Building a movement requires reaching out beyond people who agree with you. Simply said, we need each other, and we need leadership and strategy. We can tell people a hundred times over that because they haven’t been here, they have no right to be here right now. But I promise that the only place that will get us is nowhere.” Interesting thoughts from “Our Cynicism will not build a movement. Collaboration will.” by Alicia Garza It’s hard to simultaneously hold on to anger and hold on to our identities, while reaching across difference. This is an inner conflict I’m consistently battling with. Where do we find the balance? How do we reach across opinions and backgrounds yet create a very cohesive movement? -SJ (🎨 by @rachel_grant_art )

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Quotes from Class Notes

• Where is there space for anger and validating yourself, if we recognize the need to bring people into where they haven’t been, especially if that is a space we are in the process of reclaiming. 

• What is ideologically pure vs practically [possible/pragmatic/implementable in the short term].

• Decolonization is not only a thought exercise, but about tangible returns (i.e. land) that enable (new) ways of thinking. What has coloniality done to us in the present to make us who we are? And what does it mean for us to undo this? 

• How do we differentiate between genuine learning processes (e.g. late joiners to a movement, inclusion of POC in predominantly white spaces) and reproductions of inequity (e.g. forgiveness for white late joiners, tokenism, respectively)?

• Body politics - we cannot separate mind, body, and spirit, but these movements expect us to. “I theorize with my body. We have to live this everyday.” How do we engage in a process of healing?

• Tension between pessimism and optimism. How do we support the belief that systems can actually change? Or if we don’t believe that systems will actually change, how do we continue to push and advocate? How do we make space for hope and engagement?

• Activist vs. Organizer

  • Organizer - strategic planning, setting up logistics, community education, facilitation. Organizing includes activism

  • Not every activist is an organizer. Activists are not necessarily involved in the creation of space.

• Radical lover

  • Choosing to love and loving holistically

  • Loving in a particular way that requires self-reflection, requires work