Read The Whole Thing

by Benjamin T. Greenberg on 13. Sep, 2005 in breaking news, human rights, katrina, labor movement, nola, politics, race and racism

Counterpunch

Weekend Edition

September 9 / 11, 2005

What is to be Done?

The American Left and the Battle of New Orleans

By STEVEN SHERMAN

While most of the predominantly white peace movement has been energetically preparing for an anti-war march on September 24, a massive natural’ disaster has unfolded in New Orleans and the Gulf Region. The horrible spectacle of tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, mostly African American, left behind to wither and die as they waited and waited for a rescue response has powerfully thrust the issue of racism back onto the American political radar. Once again, a predominantly white movement, mostly focused foreign policy issues, is challenged to respond to a domestic crisis involving people who don’t look much like those who come to our meetings and demonstrations. To put it bluntly, are we, like the neoconservatives around George Bush, more comfortable with struggles far from the shores of the US than with overcoming differences locally in order to remake and rebuild the American nation?

The initial response of the peace movement has been encouraging. . . . Still, this initial response, while laudable, is only the tip of the iceberg. . . .

Perhaps the most strategic group is Community Labor United, which is calling for grassroots oversight of the relief process. Their statement reads, in part, “The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants and the wealthy white districts of New Orleans like the French Quarter and the Garden District. We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a gentrified New Orleans. . . .”

Anyone who has followed grassroots mobilizations over the last decade cannot be surprised at the existence of Community Labor United. Similar coalitions of labor unions, church groups, non-profits, and other activist organizations have been forming all over the country. . . . The predominantly white groups often seem most energized about foreign policy issues; the community-labor coalitions often focus on things like living wage campaigns or education or housing issues. To the degree that people tend to hang out with those they are most comfortable with, there is a good deal of self-selection and homogenization. Although virtually all of the predominantly white peace groups I’ve participated in have had angst-ridden sessions lamenting the lack of diversity among our membership, I’ve never seen this situation dramatically change. . . .

There have already been some positive developments. Houston indymedia has begun to set up a radio station for the Diaspora. The liberals at True Majority have solicited donations for Community Labor United, a far more potent response than Moveon’s petition to George Bush asking him to stop blaming the victims (why not at least ask the Democratic leadership to come up with a really strong aid/anti-poverty package, as Michael Lerner has demanded?). Locally, people are talking about demanding that Durham bring some rundown houses up to code to facilitate the housing of evacuees, thus facilitating better living conditions for evacuees and general improvement in the city.

(Whole thing.)

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View Comments to “Read The Whole Thing”

Jonathan 13. Sep, 2005 at 9:38 am #

I guess my only problem with Sherman’s CounterPunch article (a great publication by the way) is the identification of the peace movement as “predominately white” and the manner in which the author’s very writing narrows the pitch of his message to apparently privileged white peace movers who must now bring their attention to downtrodden blacks.

What peace movement is predominately white and where? Just because Steven Sherman hasn’t interacted with a lot of blacks for peace (or other non-whites, for that matter) does not mean that blacks and indeed many nonwhites are not actively thinking, writing, and working for peace. And, in consideration of the fact that whites in many major cities are becoming voting minorities as latino/a and hispanic populations rise, it is incredibly important that we interrogate the problems inherent in dichotomous discourses of “majority/minority.”

Nor are the black poor of New Orleans without agency (meaning, the power to act). While they may not be economically powerfull, it is imperative that we consider their power to vote, and their power on a number of spiritual and intellectual levels.

Ben, that’s why your own posts on the FRAUD of the black Republican-turned mayor were so apt. There may be people who are actually afraid of those poor New Orleans blacks’ power–the same power that put that fraud of a black mayor into office in the hope that he would do something, anything, for them–the hope that as a black person he would somehow empathize with the blistering, entangled racism and classicism that informs so much of everything Southern-style. Exposing the complexity of simultaneous power and powerlessness…that’s what I got from those recent posts on the New Orleans mayor, the walking “race-card.”

There is a quiet undercurrent of “saviorism” (to coin a term) in Sherman’s otherwise strong and well-meaning rhetoric. In truth, blacks’ commitment to peace in the face of racism and violence has defined peace movements in so many ways in 20th century America:

Baynard Rustin developed concepts of peaceful activism from satyagraha and applied them to his early socialist and anti-racist activities. Ella Baker and Martin Luther King, Jr. then further refined satyagraha for the civil rights movement and, of course, King was killed at the height of his agitation against the Vietnam war. Many of the agitation protest strategies employed by peace movers everywhere are constructed in the spirit of the kinds of protests that these black women and men designed. We must not forget how black workers essential contributions inform peace movements.

So, even if in your town, you only see white peace workers at your meetings, their activities contain the presence of black cultural workers as well as many different people all over the world who have sacrificed so much for peace.

The first step for any progressive movement is not to ever think that it is “predominately anything” but to reconceive of their movement as stretching beyond the bounds of people who individual workers within specific locales see in their day-to-day activities. Fundamentally, there is a level of consciousness-raising that is necessary within us as well as outside of us so that we interrogate the silent colorlines that inform our quotidian social realities and make us think that our movements can be defined within majority/minority polarities.