jueves, octubre 20, 2011

Occupy War Street

In the last days I kept thinking about the movilizations all over the world. Can we really think that all the forms of protest and movilization have some common features? I kept thinking on what's going on in the USA, now they have realized that they also have the power of mass-occupation and mass-movilization, and they are playing with the idea that they are now the forefront of the "occupy movement"... (Please, check Greece and other places first.) I was wondering why thye waited so long? Why they didn't do it in the midst of the 2008 crisis when the Obama's administration was giving billions to the mega-corporations that now they find as the main aim to blame, when people were loosing their houses and jobs? It seems it takes time for the middle-class to feel the hit. The government-corporations did what they do best: they made gains private and debts public. They could had just staticized all the car companies and banks... Everyone has to paid for their gambling. If not, that was said back in 2008, the whole world would had collapsed. Yeah...
I was also thinking that it resembles the 2001 movement in Argentina in that at least in what I've read the majority of the people are white-middle-class, one could add, heterosexual, able-bodies with some forms of social capital. It seems similar the comparison between Argentina and USA in that only when the white-middle-class felt the finger inside their asses is when they jumped to do something, before that was someone else's problem. Where are the "visible minorities" here? Can we really talk about the 1% vs. the 99%. I take the point that at the beginning the movement was made to shake the american consciousness but can we really keep talking about this major simplification? I bet that the top 5% and the bottom 5% have nothing, but nothing at all in common. Many people that are being interviewed in the Occupy movement in different cities in the USA are white students who can't pay their tuitions, or skilled workers, but where are the Afroamerican working in the lowest jobs, the Latinos, the disabled people, where are the really screwed? Many are also young people who are in fact really screwed, but they may still have some connections, or money from other family members, or something. Where are the people that live in the streets and have nothing?
This takes me to think that in reality what they need is to occupy war street. The right wing call the occupy movement a "class warfare" well I don't think it is, unless they want to go to the roots of the problem: the pentagon-oil-mining-financial-war-capitalism. The warfare is everywhere. And it sucks all our energies. Unless americans overcome their "white standard universalism" and recognize all the systems of oppression used to dominate people given their skin color, gender orientation, capacities of the body, religion, age, etc.; there will be war for ever within the USA and outside in the rest of the world.
I want to be clear: I like the Occupy movement and all the social movements that are looking for a more inclusive, democratic and less unequal society. But it seems that the occupy movement in the USA needs to recognize this war in their own movement, they need to de-colonize their own movement. If not check this great place: DisOcuppy. For instance, La Mala critiques the OWS by pointing to the same things:
I also saw a lot of signs based in the idea of privilege and the bullshit notion of who deserves what. Young people held signs lamenting not being able to pay their student loans and how having gone to college didn’t bring the jobs and success they expected. I thought about the high Latino high school drop out rates and my own lack of a college degree. Were we included in this dialogue/narrative or even within this “movement” were there some who weren’t worth fighting for – some who don’t deserve the “American Dream” because of not following the prescribed order of things.

No hay comentarios.: