Thanks for the lucid response, and I hope I wasn’t too imposing in my inquiry. As for your last post, I agree for the most part. It’s a long and arduous road, balancing between letting oppression go unchecked and perpetuating guilt – which is not only unpleasant but extremely inefficient, and often dangerous in that it intoxicates and debilitates otherwise independently minded people, and causes reactionary thinking. One way I view guilt is as a shadow of pride, or in some cases ego. Where there is pride, guilt can’t be far away. In my view the best alternative to this self perpetuating cycle is to cultivate humility. I appreciate radical cockiness toward the prevailing establishment to a small degree, but if people start taking their arrogance as anarchists seriously, it can be a fatal problem. Radical Hubris, you could say.

You spoke of the danger of people worrying about being PC enough: that term PC, like white guilt, nobody explicitly condones as a good thing – but there has been little talk in comprehensive alternatives to it. Obviously much, if not most, of what the term implies is positive, and important, yet the term PC packages it all under an imperious, unappetizing, and ultimately square sounding social decree. The term was probably invented and spread by right wing think tanks who seek to find ways to convey us and liberals as the square worry-warts, who let expression and communication be stifled under our prim sensitivity. I listen to conservative talk radio sometimes, so I know this is a MAJOR tactic of the right.

They basically employ the linguistic trap of “PC”, to turn our attempt at anti oppressive conditioning into a box. Then they nail up the box, with us inside it. And unfortunately I don’t think we can completely blame them. I hate it when I find myself agreeing with right wing assholes on stuff like this, but to the extent that we relegate what is socially except able (aka, not “fucked up”) to the boundries of a pseudo objective “correctness”, we are marginalizing ourselves within the social and political arena. And there’s no easy answer.

I think of the Zapatismo slogan “One no. Many yeses”, and think: how can I contextualize all my politics so that the yeses outweigh the No’s, both in spirit, and in political appearance? It’s tricky and often paradoxical, but I think a reasonable imperative for people who believe in the impossible.

SYNDICAL CAT:

We need more people like you who are willing to point out the absurdity of simple binary distinctions and categorical fixation. Another extremely ironic thing about this eviction stunt is that any of the disruptors would love to talk to you about how we need to break down gender binary, but when it comes to race binary, they might as well be border patrol agents. At one point during the eviction one of my friends of mixed race was put on the spot by the disruptors – who weren’t sure whether treat him like a White Boy or not. They asked him very urgently if he identified as a person of color or not. He chose simply to leave.

So basically we have people who are into breaking down certain binaries, but not challenging binary thinking as a whole. We’ve rebelled against mainstream systems of categorization, but failed to attack our civilizations fixation on strict categorical thinking at its roots. This kind of shortcoming cannot be accepted. It may take less energy to discuss things in categories of either/or, but it is also less efficient. So much energy gets wasted, sucked into these rigid categories of POC/white, thisism/thatism, etc. which totally clog our brains.

my personal feeling is that just like the american anarchist movement have developed security culture as a direct response to external threats, we need to develope a culture to deal with this issues as a direct response to internal threats. we need to develope structures in our entire community that will help people call out oppressive behavior without feeling that the result will be their own marginalization or that they will have to deal with most of the respponsibility. we need to develope accountability processes for entire communities, not just individuals (one thing i liked at the convergence was the collective accountability process that happened at the end of it, which was an amazing example to witness). we need to create atmosphere in which people of marginalized identities will feel true solidarity and will feel encouraged to call people out. we also need to learn how to take these issues a little lighter, and not fall into the liberal trap of guilt and “oh my god… what did you do? did you just say something that isn’t p.c.?”. we need to come to an understanding that we all have things to work on, and working on them together will make us stronger as a community. we need to get to a point were we can see these processes as a part of our collective growing as a community,

So Mexican is a person of colour, and Panamanian, but not Spanish or Portuguese? And if not Spanish, why not Italian, Greek? If Arab, why not Turkish, Cypriot or Sicilian?

We have ‘Mediterranean’ in the definition, so I guess Spaniards, Portuguese, Italian, Greek and Turkish is ok. If not, why not? Spanish – colour, but Basque not? If Basque, why not French? If Italian, why not Macedonian? Bosnian?

But the countries of the Iberian peninsular are among the worsts imperialists in history. And the Italians occupied Libya and Eritrea, after their own long history of being colonised themselves for centuries!

Different history, I hear echo across the interweb?

Cyprus, Sicily – have a long long history as colonies. Sicily was dominated by the white powers like France and Austria. Greece conquered and occupied by the Imperial Ottomans, oppressed peoples. The Serbs and Croats victims of Austrian imperialism.

By African, do we mean Sudan Arab and Egyption and Moroccan as well as Zimbabwean or Angolan? The Moroccan and their cousins on the other side of the strait share much genetic material. Even the same colour, often.

The Sudan Arab political elite oppress the Sudan Christian Africans. Whose side are you on?

The Egyptian and their cousins in Sicily and Greece have much in common, along with their cousins in Turkey.

There is more in common between people of colour and (a significant portion) of the white boys in terms of history and genetics than simple divisions give credit for.

Are the Irish white after 700 years of fighting imperialism?

Are the Japanese people of colour after occupying Korea between 1910 and 1945, committing rape and genocide?

An analysis based upon ‘skin colour’ and simple dichotomies such as privilege and oppression are poor at best, and potentially very dangerous – as the “APOC” activists actions clearly demonstrate.

You’re right that the exclusion policy developed as a concrete response to situations around security and sexual assault, and hadn’t actually been tried out in reference to issues around oppressive (or similarly difficult) behavior. We’re learning all these things the hard way, as we experiment year by year. Here’s hoping the movement won’t lose this ground and have to start all over again, making these same mistakes once more.

on a more general level, i am guessing that since a few people felt uncomfortable during the convergence with issues involving oppression, maybe the exclussion policy was not as clear as it should have been. i felt that during the presentation the first day, the exclussion policy was not represented as wide-themed as it should have. i think that the impression was that the exclussion policy was more about sexual assault/security issues than a general policy directed towards anyone called out for abussive/oppressive behavior (even though to me specifically it was clear that the policy applied to other situations as well). i also think that there wasn’t enough emphasis on the importance of calling people out and on the existance of strcutures to mediate accountability processes (so it will be clear that the responsibility for demanding accountability would not fall upon the person pointing out/suffering from the abussive behavior). i am not saying this as a criticism towards any of the organizers, all of whom did an amazing job as far as i am concerned, but as a beginning of what will hopefully become a collective thinking process about how to turn public anarchist spaces that contain people from many different levels of experiences with anarchism into safe and inclussive spaces.

It seems like this is close to the crux of the matter, for a couple reasons. First, because the behavior many people have cited as most frustrating can largely be traced to just a few people (at least, in terms of the examples that keep coming up), while everyone at the convergence suffered for it. Second, because policies are useless unless they are employed. So it’s not necessarily a question of building up even more protocol, but of figuring out how to make sure that information and frustrations and desires are being communicated in such a way that everyone can get what they need.

i know that i wasn’t the only poc that was offended by this during the convergence, but it is true that different people get offended by different things.

what i meant by talking about exclussion policy is that if poc, trans people or whoever else, feels excluded it deserves a firm response from us as a community. we need to find a good model to allow people to be called out and taken through an accountability process around issues.

i do not think that exclussion is a good way to go, but… during the convergence i had a conversion with someone who have acted in a white supremacisit and sexist way the entire convergence, in which i tried to get them to stop doing something many others found offenssive. we had a 30 minutes conversion that was very nice and calm but that basically led nowhere. maybe an hour later i hear him publically repeat things that were said in our conversion and response to things i have said in, again, a very white supremacist and sexist way, saying things he felt he could say in the “safe space” of being serrounded by white people. i honestly do not know what would be a good way to deal with such individual, other than to demand that they take accountability or be excluded.

I know we met at the convergence but I don’t know exactly who you are.

I’m appreciating all your comments though I have a different attitude to some of these issues. Though I see how it might be prudent for most whites to stay out of issues between poc, I’m a bit put off at whites who think it’s not their place to question and criticize POC actions simply because their white.

I also see your point about tighter exclusion policy, but I see this as a facile and myopic way to deal with racism within radicalism. It might make it easier for the organizers, and would probably reduce the number of offensive things heard, but it wouldn’t deal with the issue in the community at large. I didn’t show up until Thursday though so I missed many of these conversations and comments, and don’t feel any need or qualification to speak on them. One thing I love about conferences like this is that anybody could be at them. It adds a fun unpredictable element to it all. Also strict exclusion policies can intimidate newcomers, especially random anarcho sympathetic folks from the city who might show up out of curiosity and discover something new.

I admit it’s kind of a catch 22 though: there is no perfect balance between being too insular and being overly tolerant of oppressive tendencies. Chances are we’re all perpetually guilty of both.

One thing that struck me in your comments was your statement about being offended when people ask you your ethnicity. I can understand where your coming from – as an Asian I find it irritating sometimes when asked a bunch of times in a row, but I’ve never found it offensive, and usually feel more like giggling at people who are all intimidated when they ask. I’m not trying to criticize you on this, just expressing a different sentiment.

It should probably said that it is a good thing we don’t all agree on a solid objective criteria for what’s racist and not, that these debates are natural consequence of that.. And t we must remember offensiveness is entirely subjective so there’s only so far we can go in constructing standards toward it.