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Last weekend I attended my first Sunday School—the Sunday school put on by the School for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) to be specific. The 3 hour long session was called “Lesson’s in Moving the 99%,” and over 80 people packed into SOUL’s offices to participate. If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been there, I imagine he’d have been humbly and intently listening to the next generation of organizers and youth, while of course silently celebrating his 83rd birthday.
Sitting at the front of the 9-story high room in downtown Oakland were panelists Maria Poblet of Causa Justa Just Cause, Shaw San Liu of Chinese Progressive Association (CPA), Brooke Anderson of East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and Tina Bartolome of SOUL—four powerful women with deep insights and experience in organizing movements for social and economic justice.
Many important topics were covered, and here are some of them.
SUCCESSES OF #OCUPPY
Anderson laid out five successes of #occupywallstreet: “1) It changed the national conversation from being about the debt ceiling and how much to cut services to bank accountability, class inequality, and wealth redistribution. 2) It has taken away the stigma of struggling economically. 3) It has named bigger targets, like Wall St., when we are so often only targeting middle-men. 4) It as put direct action at the forefront; marching can be more accessible than lobbying officials in Sacramento. 5) It’s gotten us out of our campaign silos.”
LABOR
Anderson educated us about the 2000 truck drivers at the Port of Oakland, 97% of whom are immigrants, who work 12-14 hour days often below minimum wage and without access to bathrooms. They are fighting for the right to unionize, as was highlighted in their open letter released during the Port of Oakland Shutdown on December 12th.
In general, “Labor needs Occupy,” Anderson said, reminding us that unions are severely limited because they can get sued and essentially destroyed for breaking laws. (Davey D reported for example, that Goldman Sachs threatened to sue ILWU if they endorsed the port shutdown.)
Citing the book Solidarity Divided, Anderson said that when asked who they were accountable too, U.S. union leadership said “our members,” but South African union leaders said they’re accountable to the entire working class.
Shaw San Liu spoke about the base she organizes with CPA: service sector workers and the unemployed in SF Chinatown. “Only 20 years ago, San Francisco had a large garment and manufacturing industry, the outsourcing of which dislocated mostly limited-English-speaking Chinese immigrant women. Now you have many families living on very low incomes. It’s the norm make only $1000-1200 per month working crazy hours. Yet when you bring up minimum wage and overtime laws, many workers will tell you, ‘That doesn’t exist. I don’t want to lose my job. I am a foreigner in this country.’”
She spoke about how CPA organizers are sometimes perceived as the “left-wing nuts in China town” when they’re not even fighting for anything radical—just the enforcement of labor laws that already exist. The #occupy moment has allowed them to put on turbo all the work they’d already been doing, she said, but amidst the euphoria that some of the #occupywallstreet actions have brought, “we’ve gotta keep fighting for the crumbs because people gotta eat.”
WHITENESS and RACISM
Maria Poblet broke it down: “Communities of color have known these issues for a longtime—joblessness, cuts to the safety net, a lack of democracy or control—this is the product of an international economic system.” She challenged the whiteness of the #occupy movement that too often acts as if the movement for economic justice is a new thing. “People in the global south have been waiting for the U.S. to show up,” she said. And closer to home: “Black people can tell you what long term divestment and unemployment can do to a community.”
She brought up the crucial role of the white working class, “which has traditionally been bought off by whiteness,” she pointed out. “I am happy that the white working class now has a choice between the Tea Party and Occupy. I hope they choose Occupy. Can white working class people be involved in an antiracist movement?” she asked. “The challenge is also for people of color to work with them. This is a debate and development that needs to happen in the progressive movement. What can we say that represents everyone yet is still radical and antiracist?”
One teenage girl expressed the raw and honest concerns of many when she said, “It just seems really white…People are talking about these problems like they’ve never existed.”
Shaw San Liu offered one constructive approach when she said, “We’ve also got to push past the discomfort. A lot of people just haven’t been exposed. A lot of people at the SF encampment were open to being schooled.” Perhaps, it’s a more optimistic outlook, but important, especially, I’d say, for white antiracists, who have the responsibility of educating fellow white people.
But it’s never simple. “It’s challenging to engage the masses when parts of the 99% are exploiting other parts of the 99%, when poor people are oppressing poorer people. We’ve got to deliberate in not getting caught up in one action after another, but making sure everyday people have an understanding of and ownership of the movement.” Speaking to a majority people of color audience, Shaw San Liu emphasized, “We need to be engaging our folks so our folks can help shape the direction of Occupy.”
LONG TERM ORGANIZING vs. SHORT TERM UPSURGES
Poblet also centered the relationship between spontaneous upsurges and conscious, long-term community organizing. "The first is vibrant. It names what is wrong. It feels like it’s coming from everywhere and going everywhere. It rising and it falls; I know because of my involvement with the immigrants rights mobilizing in 2006.”
“The second is based around campaigns, naming the solutions as well as the problems, long-term base building, and developing leaders. “
“Neither are enough by themselves. They both need each other.”
Both Shaw San Liu and Poblet shouted out the mental health medicine that Occupy has been. “It makes you feel like you’re not crazy,” Poblet laughed. Shaw San added, “It vindicates the movement building we’ve been sticking out our necks for for so long.”
HOUSING
More than half of Oakland residents in danger of foreclosure are longstanding neighborhood residents, Bartolome pointed out.
Poblet shouted out the house that Causa Justa helped occupy at 10th and Mandela in West Oakland (which was raided at the end of December) as a pilot project for housing rights organizations nationwide. “Housing shouldn’t be sitting empty with families are being evicted en masse.”
INTERNATIONALISM
“This is the failure of the neoliberal economic model coming home to roost. This system has been causing massive migration, informal economies, mass social movement all over the world. People in the global south are waiting for the U.S. to show up. We’re got to remember that we still are the 1% to most of the world,” said Poblet, reminding us that her home country of Argentina went to a major financial crash 11 years ago that was worse than the current one in the U.S.
CULTURE
We unfortunately didn’t get to talk about this much, though Shaw San brought it up. Let me just link you here.
ELECTIONS
How do we creating policy, such as taxing the 1% and a moratorium on foreclosures, without co-optation? How do we have a systemic critique without disengaging from traditional structures, like the electoral system? These were tension Poblet put on the table.
While the speakers didn’t mince words about the injustices perpetuated by the Obama administration, they warned against disengaging from the Democrats too much. “People who always vote will vote. People who have a critique always disengage…We have more and more correct ideas [on the left], but less people doing anything about them,” Poblet said. She spoke about pushing elected officials with movements from below, especially having a strategic understanding of elected progressives. Former community organizer John Avalos pushed SF mayor Ed Lee first as a supervisor, but then as mayor candidate, to enact millions of dollars worth of public services, Poblet said. “Electoral politics is a tool—one of many tools.”
DISCUSSION & ENCOUNTER: TOWARDS A UNIFIED MULTIRACIAL WORKING CLASS
“We need places for discussion, in addition to the convergences. We need to be aligned. What would an International Working People’s Union of the 99% look like?” Poblet challenged the group.
Shaw San Liu spoke about the Progressive Workers Alliance, an alliance between black, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and queer workers she helped form in SF last year.
What would it take to include the white working class on that list?
In the end, Poblet warned against disengaging from the movement that has swelled nationally: “Anyone who puts blast on Wall St. can be on our team. This is a laboratory for our development as a movement. As funky as the dynamics can be, stay involved, write, reflect,” she said.
Foreward movement.
UPCOMING ACTIONS
Join the Ella Baker Center Book Club. This month we are reading “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power.” It’s about multiracial, working-class coalition organizing in the 1960’s between the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots (poor whites).
Friday, January 20
ALL DAY
SF Financial District (meet at Justin Herman Plaza at 6am, noon, 5pm)
THIS IS NEXT BIG BAY AREA OCUPPY WALL STREET ACTION. Come out and hit the streets any time of the day. The big action at 5pm (for those getting out of work/school) will be anchored by the folks I’ve quoted in this post!
Saturday January 21st
Bank of America, Oakland Chinatown
10am (meet at Lincoln Park, 11th and Harrison)
It’s the weekend before the lunar new year, and the time to “clean the crap out of your house, life, and Wall St.” It will also be extremely cute!
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