Strength. Dignity. Power.

These are words that come to my mind in the images from Ferguson October, the recent days of action protesting the August 9 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

From Ferguson October we’ve seen images of thousands of people marching with signs saying “We Are Human,” “From LA to Ferguson,” and “Hands Up Don’t Shoot”… images of young Black women chanting and carrying “Racism Kills” signs in a suburban St. Louis shopping mall … images of Black and White people standing up to sing the “Requiem for Michael Brown” to a stunned audience at the St. Louis symphony … images of a “Black Lives Matter” banner televised nationally as it unfurled on Monday night football … images of young and old people boldly defying police through civil disobedience.

And Ferguson October gave us the unforgettable image of Nigel, the little boy in the red cap, standing proudly in the street, pausing as the historic Ferguson march begins.

Like all photographs, the Ferguson October images are also about the moments behind the moments: the years (and years and years and years) of Black organizing in Black communities that keep tiny sparks of justice glowing when no television cameras are there to film it; the hours (and hours and hours) of listening and dialogue and reflection that build the trusting relationships that make collective action possible; the lifetimes of unsung leadership by people who step up every day for their children, their coworkers, their neighbors.

Like #Black Lives Matter, an on-line forum begun after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin (and deeply engaged in Ferguson), Ferguson October is “rooted in grief and rage” –the logical, healthy, and necessary responses to the daily brutality and inhumanity Black people face and that we as a society allow and perpetuate. Ferguson October teaches us how this deeply rooted grief and rage can be, in the words of #BlackLivesMatter, “pointed toward vision and dreams.”

As I await the reflections of those who gave over their hands and hearts and minds to make Ferguson October happen, I offer my first thoughts on some of the lessons that their work demands us to learn and remember.

• Black Lives Matter. At its core, Ferguson October is about defending the humanity of Black people, recognizing Black experience and leadership, and understanding that, in the words of Scot Nakagawa, “anti-Black racism is the fulcrum of White Supremacy.” “When Black people cry out in defense of our lives, which are uniquely, systematically, and savagely targeted by the state,” writes Alicia Garza, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, “we are asking you, our family, to stand with us in affirming Black lives.  Not just all lives. Black lives.  Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down unity and a more active solidarities with us, Black people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend on it.”

• Organize Before the Moment. Ferguson October brought together local and state work by Hands Up United, Organization for Black Struggle, and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) with nationwide organizing efforts such as BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity), a national training program developed “to help rebuild Black (African-American, Afro-Caribbean, African, Afro-Latina/o) social justice infrastructure in order to organize Black communities more effectively and re-center Black leadership in the U.S. social justice movement.” Before Ferguson October came the Black Lives Matter Rides which brought Black communities and organizations together in Ferguson to support the people there as an extension and strengthening of the work they are doing in their own communities. To state what has been said, and ignored, over and over by so many people: continuous and on-going organizing creates the possibility for moments to become movements.

• Creativity Over Control. Ferguson October was striking in the diversity of its actions: those who wanted to march could march; those wanted to pray could pray; those who wanted to sing could sing; those who wanted to shut down city hall could shut down city hall. While I’m sure this array of action was incredibly hard work and rife with the conflicts found in any collective human endeavor, the movement building message it sends is one of creativity, not control.

• Synergy Across Movements. Ferguson October received the endorsement of the AFL-CIO and SEIU, galvanized a climate justice contingent, and spawned the shut down of a local Walmart to underscore the connection with the police shooting of Michael Crawford III in an Ohio Walmart in August.

• Expand Possibility and Hope. When police shot Michael Brown and left his body lying for hours on a neighborhood street, the ceaseless and excruciating police killing of Black men, women, and children had already left many overwhelmed with outrage. “Ferguson is our breaking point,” wrote Professor Robin M. Boylorn in August:

The death of Michael Brown, emblematic of countless others, and the collective loss, grief and justified anger of people (of color and allies) who are tired of being terrorized and victimized by injustice requires that we say something.  But I don’t know what to say.  I don’t know where to begin.

Ferguson October gave many the support they needed to say something and the strength to begin again. As Peniel E. Joseph wrote today, “There’s a social-justice movement taking hold across the nation. Michael Brown’s death, which turned Ferguson, Mo., into a battleground this past summer, has helped catalyze a larger struggle for racial and economic justice in America.”

• Demand Support for Black Communities, Organizing, and Infrastructure. Ferguson October moved forward with an outpouring of small grassroots donations, but few significant donations and no foundation grants – at an extraordinary level of volunteer leadership and self-sacrifice. There are important lessons in philanthropy still waiting to be learned.

“We are in a movement moment,” proclaims Ferguson October and I believe it.

We have been here before, when Black communities have risen up with strength, dignity, and power to assert their basic humanity. “The Emmett Till case was a spark for a new generation to commit their lives to social change,” scholar/activist Robin Kelley observed in a documentary film interview. “They said, ‘We’re not gonna die like this. Instead, we’re gonna live and transform the South so people won’t have to die like this.’ And if anything, if any event of the 1950s inspired young people to be committed to that kind of change, it was the lynching of Emmett Till.”

Moreover, says Kelley, “Black people in Mississippi itself were the ones who were going to make that change. And the great thing is that the change that they made, the extension of citizenship to all people, is a change that affected all of America, not just black people, but whites, Latinos, Asian Americans. It extended democracy to the country when democracy had never been extended to everyone before.”

“We will gather in Ferguson,” says Ferguson October. “But the world will hear our call for change.”

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Feature photo by Koran Addo

This past July I went to Netroots where I was honored to attend powerful sessions like “The Resurgence of Black Feminism” and “Ain’t I an Organizer? How Women of Color are the Future of the Women’s Movement”, as well as the closing talk by Rinku Sen, publisher of Colorlines and director of Race Forward.

In the 5 minutes allotted for a Netroots “Ignite” presentation, Rinku challenged all of us to become more effective in our work for racial justice. Rinku listed three responsibilities everyone needs to consider:

1. Accept yourself,
2. Tell the truth, and
3. Focus on structural inequity.

In this brief interview, I asked Rinku to share some highlights from her talk.

Julie Quiroz: What does “accept yourself” mean and why did you put it first?

Rinku Sen: In building cross-racial relationships, organizations and alliances, people can cause a lot of drama by not being clear about who they are and by not being okay with who they are. That kind of denial makes us defensive when we are challenged around those identities, like being an Asian person in the midst of a black or Latino community. Defensiveness closes doors rather than opening them. I think I’m much more effective cross racially now than I was in my youth because I don’t feel the need to deny or hide anything about who I really am.

At Race Forward we do a training called Identity Facets and Assets, which is geared toward imagining how every aspect of us — the oppressed and the privileged — gives us an asset in racial justice work. At Netroots I said that building bridges requires a strong foundation, and that foundation can’t come from anything outside of your self.

JQ: Telling the true story seems like what we’re all trying to do.  Where are we going wrong?

RS: My second principle for multiracial communities is to be explicit about our racial justice commitments so it’s clear that we have them, and to be explicit about who would be affected by them.

I especially note the need to name actual communities rather than using proxies like “inner city” or “disadvantaged.” There’s far too much fear of race talk that makes it easy for  the right wingers to control the conversation, partly by accusing those who favor racial justice of being the “real” racists.

If race conservatives are the only people willing to be frank, then the rest of us are talking around, across and over each other and the public. Also, we can’t use jargon that only makes sense to people who write grant proposals out of non-profits. If you want to reach everyone else, you have to talk in everyday language.

JQ: People often think that focusing on structural racism is really hard.  Is it?

RS: It’s really challenging talking about systems in our exceptionally individualistic society, so yes, it is difficult. But it is no more difficult than talking about systemic problems in unemployment, domestic violence or any other social issue.

One problem with a structural analysis is that it can really make people feel powerless to change anything. If things get decided thousands of miles away from me, or systems are churning along based on decisions made 100 years ago, then what is my role in making it different? Another problem is that it’s hard to hate a system the way you would hate an individual villain, or to love a system that’s working the way you’d love an individual protagonist.

JQ: How does Race Forward talk about structural racism?

RS: At Race Forward we work a lot to connect stories of individuals to systems, but we have to think about how to sustain an emotional resonance evoked by the individual through the systems portion of the story. Learning to talk about race is a creative, intellectual process. We need to learn what works by continuing to do it in as many different ways as we can and by taking time to reflect and pull out the lessons of each attempt.

Accept yourself. Tell the truth. Focus on structural inequity. Reflect. Repeat.

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Feature photo: Steve Stearns

In the past four months, more than 15,000 Detroit households have had their water shut off, generating a crisis the United Nations calls “a violation of the human right to water and other international human rights.” “When there is genuine inability to pay,” says the UN, “human rights simply forbids disconnections.” Water rates have more than doubled over the past decade while the city’s poverty rate rose to nearly 40 percent, making the cost of basic running water unaffordable for tens of thousands of families.

Yesterday, as volunteers helped unload 1,000 gallons of water brought on a truck by West Virginians to support Detroiters impacted by the shut offs, the “hot mess” was turned over to the Mayor of Detroit because, in the words of Detroit People’s Water Board representative Tawana Petty, “thousands of people have embarrassed the [emergency city manager] and Governor Snyder by standing with the people of Detroit, protesting in the streets and rallying with Canadians who stood up for families in need.”

If you’re not freaked out by what’s going on in Detroit, you should be. The Detroit water shut offs are gentrification on steroids. (“Gentrification is a profit-driven racial and class reconfiguration of urban, working-class and communities of color that have suffered from a history of disinvestment and abandonment,” explains a recent report.)

The Detroit water shut offs are where all our cities are headed unless we wake up and see the larger pattern, take our own local action, and powerfully connect all our local action together.

To understand more about the Detroit water shut offs and what all of us can do, Let’s Talk spoke by phone with Tawana Petty, mother/organizer/author/poet/activist , representative of the People’s Water Board, and an organizer with the Boggs Center and for the upcoming New Work New Culture Conference in Detroit.

Let’s Talk: What created this situation in Detroit?

Tawana Petty: The water shut offs are part of an intentional, strategic plan by bankers and corporations to uproot poor, predominantly black people from Detroit. It is a direct result of emergency management, what Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management calls a “siege of financial dispossession, massive unemployment, elimination of basic welfare supports, and suspension of democratic rights.”

Criminalizing people is key to all this: we see it in how people who are behind on water bills are being treated. We see it our schools where state-controlled schools punish thousands each year with out of school suspensions.   Everywhere we turn we are being funneled into an increasingly privatized prison system.

LT: A 15-day moratorium on shut offs was announced last week. What’s happening with that?

TP: There is no moratorium. Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) is continuing to pursue 9,000 families whose water has been turned off during what they are conveniently calling a pause. Two days ago, they shutoff a 40 unit apartment complex, Historic Palmer Park Apartments, and were forced to turn the water back on after public and activist outcry. They are also using the media to paint families as criminals and accusing most people they intended to shut off of stealing water.

Additionally, they are co-opting the words of grassroots organizers and duping the public with “water affordability fairs.” DWSD set up a water hotline with very little staffing, which keeps residents on hold for over an hour before they reach an operator, then tells people they have to go into the office to get their water turned back on.

I recently did a radio program with Darryl Latimer, Deputy Director of DWSD, and I asked him how an 80 year old, disabled woman is supposed to go stand in line at the DWSD? He couldn’t provide an answer, because he has no solution.

LT: The water department had been controlled by the city’s Emergency Manager, but was turned over to the Mayor yesterday. Can you tell me about that?

TP: Because of the constant media scrutiny and the global spotlight on the inhumane treatment of Detroiters by the Governor and Emergency Manager, the DWSD was turned over to the Mayor. Many have celebrated this as a victory for Detroit, but those on the ground working tirelessly to prevent privatization of the city’s water under emergency management see through the sleight of hand. Our demands remain the same.

LT: What needs to happen?

TP: We need immediate restoration of water to thousands of Detroiters who have had their water service cut off.   We need an end to all the water shut offs.

We need immediate enforcement of the People’s Water Affordability Plan that was put forth by Michigan Welfare Right’s Organization in 2005 and adopted by the City Council in 2006. The Water Affordability Plan caps water rates based on income.

LT: What can people outside of Detroit do to help?

TP: People can sign on to the Color of Change petition: Tell Detroit to Turn the Water Taps Back On!

Organizations can sign on to the letter to Barak Obama and Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Mathews Burwell.

People can use social media like twitter to generate public outcry: #PeoplesWaterBoard #WageLove #StopTheShutoffs

And people can donate to the People’s Water Board Coalition!

LT: What gives you hope?

TP: If there was ever a silver lining to this, it has been the world’s opportunity to witness the resilience of Detroiters, as we combat the narrative of our city, and struggle to become more self-determinate. This has definitely been an opportunity to “grow our souls”, as Detroiter and revolutionary activist Grace Lee Boggs would say. And the support of national and international allies during this process has been invaluable.

Last week I went to Voices of Our Nation, the week long program for emerging writers of color that co-founder Juno Díaz wrote about in his New Yorker article “MFA v. POC.”

A former VONA participant told me about the program a few months back. Standing by the buffet at a foundation reception for racial justice organizations, we got to talking about racial justice and cultural transformation and our own creative practices.

Of course it’s a good buzz any time you get to talk about writing. But it’s great buzz when you trust that the person you’re talking to is grappling with structural racism and hegemony and climate sirens going off in Richmond and a mom talking to her kids on skype because she just got deported.

So when I got home I put my daughter to bed and found the VONA website with all these gorgeous photos of writers of color. Then I read VONA’s values — artistic excellence, social justice, and empowering the community of writers of color — and who had founded VONA and why and I wondered how on earth I hadn’t heard of this amazing program before. With two weeks to go before the deadline, I decided to take the crazy leap — and pull a few all nighters — to polish up my short stories and apply.

In my application I told them that I hoped VONA would help me develop effective strategies for telling individual stories in their structural context, to surface — and create opportunities to challenge — the nuanced brutality of exploitation and oppression that shape our individual stories. I told them that I believed VONA would give me the opportunity to explore and reveal the experience of racialization and the construction of race with people who could challenge me to do that honestly and accurately. I told them that I wanted VONA to help me increase my capacity and responsibility to support other writers of color.

Then I got in.

And then I went, taking a week off from my social justice job to walk over to a dorm at Cal each day for my first-ever formal creative writing training.

What I got was Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously where she asks how we write for the reader facing oppression, danger, or death, who “finds the courage to open that book.”

What I got was M. Evelina Galang explaining that the literary world calls my stories “associative” not “linear” — and I understood right away what that meant (and why I had no trouble following the plot in 100 Years of Solitude, why I hated literature classes in high school, and possibly how my daughter learns math).

What I got was Chris Abani demanding that we go through our manuscripts and delete every adverb and adjective.

And, along with all the literary language, craft, and tough love I got, I also got movement building, “the long-term, coordinated effort of individuals and organized groups of people to intentionally spark and sustain a social movement.” This writing program explicitly rejects individualism and the myth of post-racialism, nurturing a loving multiracial, multigenerational community of people painfully wise in the ways of oppression and marginalization, skilled in the transformative practice of writing, and filled with the I-would-die-4-U kind of love that makes unimaginable change imaginable — and possible. Like Culture Strike, Creative Change, Zilphia Horton Cultural Organizing Project, MAG-Net (Media Action Grassroots Network) and others, this arts program is an essential part of the infrastructure we need for deep, powerful, and lasting social change.

The struggles I saw at VONA mirrored the struggles we’re going through in the organizing/activist world: How do we define our communities by our values, not our oppression? How do we heal individually and collectively in order to lead the whole of society? How are we in our bodies — not just our minds — as we do our work? How do we fuse together an analysis of race, gender, and ecology? How do we not just tell our stories, but teach people the way to read the book?

More Than We Imagined, a 2013 report based on interviews with 158 social justice organizers and activists around the country, found most are starving for political imagination,

.. frustrated by their own inability to express a holistic and systematic vision of their better world. Some participants suggested that “a better world” seemed so far off that they thought it was better to think about “winning” as building a strong movement, and a few said that “it’s so far away it seems almost silly to talk about it.”

“Renew Our Political Culture” was the report’s top recommendation:

Since the systems of oppression and exploitation permeate all aspects of our lives, we must also transform the culture in which we operate. This cannot simply be a task that we take on after we win.

I know I’m late to the arts party and I know I’m saying what my activist/artist friends like Anasa Troutman and Melanie Cervantes have been saying for years. But count me in as a born again cultural worker and supporter.

I may or may not get into VONA next year (but will bust my writer’s bootie trying). If I don’t I know I’ll still be standing up cheering the sisters and brothers who did. Because that’s what we do in movements. We help each other and we cheer each other on.

And I’ll be loving VONA always because, you know, the half-life of love is forever.

—

Feature photo: urban_data, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The original version of this post appeared in Earth First! Newswire.

There is a war against women, and men and boys are trained every day to be the soldiers. Misogynist violence isn’t the biological imperative of men. Misogyny, the worldview that engenders, validates, and normalizes violence against women, is beaten into boys and woven into the fabric of “successful masculinity”.

While very few men consciously choose to be horrible to women, the reality is, every day “respectable” and “acceptable” norms of how men interact and treat women are infused with male entitlement and male privilege. Together, these norms contribute to a culture of misogyny, rape, assault, and emotional abuse. A hallmark of this culture is the tragic indifference of men to women’s lives, leadership, dreams, needs, wants, and futures. Everyday sexist norms include constant interruptions of women speaking, catcalls on the street, regular comments about women’s appearance rather then their contributions and character, communicating in subtle and blatant ways that men see women as there to serve men’s needs, zoning out when women speak so as to formulate your own thoughts or to sexualize them, ignoring women’s ideas and then repeating them back later as your own ideas, and taking up emotional, verbal, energetic and physical space in ways that silence and push women out.

And when women complain about any aspect of the enormity of patriarchal culture or daily threats and realities of violence, such as the recent explicitly misogynistic and racist mass murderer in Santa Barbara, men overwhelming respond in a chorus of “but not all men act that way”, rather then expressing a profound sadness for the reality of patriarchal culture and violence, followed by a commitment to learn more and take action to change it. Fear of being implicated, in any way, is greater for far too many men, than fear of what the reality of patriarchal culture and violence means for women in their lives. But just like soldiers, men aren’t born this way. They are trained.

In workshops on “Men and Feminism” with thousands of men around the U.S. and Canada, I often use an exercise developed by Paul Kivel and the Oakland Men’s Project. I ask men, “Who here has been told ‘act like a man?’” Almost all the hands go up. What does that mean I ask? Typical responses include: “don’t cry,” “always be in control,” “suck it up and be tough,” and “don’t be emotional.” When I ask what emotions men are allowed to express, I hear: “anger,” “jealousy,” and “resentment.” I then ask what the men are called when they step out of the “act like a man box,” and a long list of slurs intended to degrade men and boys as either gay or feminized is given.

This training to “act like a man” is intended to turn boys into soldiers – soldiers deeply detached from their emotions, except violent rage and anger, and to internalize misogyny and homophobia as a basis for their masculinity. I then ask men to raise their hands if they were ever beaten up by male family members or by boys in school for “not acting like a man.” At least half of the hands go up. “How many of you have ever experienced depression, anxiety, or low self-esteem?” I inquire; almost all the hands go up. Nearly every hand is raised when I ask, “How many of you have been afraid to tell anyone?” The exercise ends with a few additional questions. How many of you have used drugs or alcohol to escape? How many of you have used violent or dangerous behavior to escape? How many of you have contemplated suicide? I raise my hand for many of these, including the last one.

This is the nightmare of patriarchy in the lives of men, and it is a nightmare we perpetuate in subtle and profound ways. This is the training of soldiers in the war against women, and it is pervasive. But this is not how it has always been. Throughout the world, throughout history, there have been societies and cultures that were far more egalitarian, without the strict gender roles, where misogynistic violence wasn’t the norm. To understand why boys are trained to be soldiers, we must look at the other wars they have been trained to be part of.

Misogyny has been and is a weapon of colonization against Indigenous peoples and nations – not only attacking the power of women in Indigenous societies, but forcing patriarchy into those societies to divide and conquer them. Gender violence was central to the development and organization of the Atlantic slave trade and the system of plantation slavery on the South – using rape to both populate the slave system as the child of a slave is born into slavery, but also again, to dehumanize enslaved women to and further suppress the power of women and fracture the overall community. Misogyny was and continues to be central to the development and expansion of capitalist economic relationship. Across the globe, communities were uprooted from the land, and gendered divisions of labor hardened: men forced into paid labor to make someone else rich, women into unpaid, unvalued reproductive labor at the same time as men were granted social permission to unleash the rage and misery of their own exploitation and disempowerment on their wives and children.

Learning this history is key for men to help end the war against women. From Andrea Smith’s analysis of sexual violence as a tool of genocide, to Maria Mies and Silvia Federici’s writing on violence against women as a tool to divide European peasant and working class communities to construct capitalism, to Angela Davis’s formulation that women in enslaved African communities and in all oppressed communities have been at the forefront of resistance and liberation struggles and therefore, “the slave master’s sexual domination of the black woman contained an unveiled element of counterinsurgency.”

Today, the war on women is the massive number of women who are raped and assaulted. It is the fact that domestic violence support services get more then 75,000 requests for assistance on a typical day; that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44, and the leading cause of death for Black women of the same ages. It is the crisis of over 1,200 missing or murdered Indigenous girls and women in Canada over the past 30 years. It is the disproportionate amount of violence transgender women face from street harassment to police violence.   It is African-American mother Marissa Alexander currently serving 20 years in a Florida prison for firing a warning shot, in which no one was hurt, to scare away her abusive husband –while George Zimmerman was found justified in killing unarmed Black teenager Trayvon Martin based on the same legal argument.

The war on women is the U.S. government’s forced sterilization of Indigenous, Black and Latina women over hundreds of years, with sterlization continuing to happen to incarcerated women. It is the austerity measures of the U.S government gutting publicly funded institutions such as schools, welfare, food stamp programs, and early childhood learning programs, while redistributing money, via tax policy, from working class, poor, and middle class communities to the richest people on the planet. Austerity measures further put the burden of unpaid labor of maintaining life and society on the backs of women, particularly women of color. Along with colonization and hundreds of years of the Atlantic slave trade, the unpaid reproductive labor of women is the foundation of capitalism. The war against women is the gender-based violence of husbands, boyfriends and the state to maintain the structures of unpaid women’s reproductive labor.

While men, in general, reap a wide range of male privileges (with access to those privileges differentiated unequally by race, class, sexuality, ability, citizenship, and nationality), it’s time for men in the millions to declare that we will no longer be the soldiers in the war against women. That we will no longer perpetuate sexist attitudes, cultural practices and public policies that undermine women’s leadership, dignity, and power in society. That we will work against the long term impacts of white supremacy, colonization, homophobia, and economic exploitation in society and all of our communities.

Throughout history and today, women have resisted. As men, we must learn from and join with feminist movements to redefine what it means to act like a man, so that we can act like many kinds of men – or other genders entirely. Some of us can build on our ancestors’ traditions of different kinds of masculinities. In many cases we already have models of masculinity upon which we can draw and find inspiration. But we must collectively, along with women and people of other genders, redefine masculinities in ways that replace misogyny and homophobia with love and compassion. We must collectively redefine masculinities in ways that center visions and values of economic, racial, gender, disability and environmental justice. As men, let us work to heal from the training we’ve received to be soldiers in the war against women, let us look to feminist women’s leadership for vision and guidance of the society we want to live in, and let us join with people of all genders to end the violence and exploitation of all of these wars. Beyond the nightmare of patriarchy is a world of possibility. Let us be courageous, and go there together.

For Further Reading:

• Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks
• Men’s Work: How to Stop Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart by Paul Kivel
• The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks
• Boys Will Be Men: Raising Our Sons for Courage, Caring and Community by Paul Kivel
• Conquest: Sexual Violence and the American Indian Genocide by Andrea Smith
• Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis
• Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale by Maria Mies
• Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici

Note: Thank you to Andy Cornell, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Jardana Peacock, and Chanelle Gallant for feedback.