why the special white lady handwringing over OccupyWallStreet is on my last nerve:
Because I spend all day ranting and raving and reporting on all sorts of spaces (the media, for one) where women and people of color are literally excluded, where I cannot go into the space and make some noise but rather am stuck clawing at the outside and feeling like I’m shrieking and turning into the wicked witch of the East Coast. And I know a lot of Feminism does too. We are used to it, being the people howling on the outside.
But my experience with the Liberty Plaza occupation (understandably other places may be different) has been that it is open to you coming in and making your noise there. More than that, it is a space designed for you to do so. Every time I have been there for the last two weeks there has been a table right by the kitchen—not consigned to the fringes of the park, but at the literal center—where there are two Native American men sitting under a sign that says Decolonize Wall Street, talking to people around them. There has been a woman of color either facilitating a GA or taking stack.
There are still lots of young white male faces and I’ve had to personally tell some of those white men to sit down and shut up.
But I’ve had a much bigger struggle in the so-called progressive media trying to get my voice and other women reporters’ voices heard over the din of white dudes trying to make their rep on OWS than I have actually getting my voice and the voices of women and people of color’s voices heard in the actual space.
So when I see handwringing and discussion of whether OWS would benefit from this or that particular person’s particular brilliance in their brilliant book or whatnot, I want to ask: Have you actually been to your local occupation and have you actually talked to women in that space about what they need and want? Or have you simply read another report from another white male reporter that ignored the people who don’t make his story easy and simple?
The space is designed for accountability, but it is also designed for people who are in it and using it.
No one has to be part of it, of course. But I am so tired of having to say “it’s not perfect” because nothing is perfect. But it is working. And I mean that in two ways: One, that it is working to change the discourse in this country, and two, that it is a space in which people are working, all day, each day, to make it better. You will not like or agree with all of them, you may decide that your energies are best spent elsewhere, you may prefer to not have to raise your voice in a crowd, join a working group, talk to strangers, leave the house, get off the Internet. That’s cool, and it’s your choice.
But it is not a blog, it is not a photo on the Internet, it is not understandable in those terms, and they probably don’t just need to read your book or your blog to suddenly become enlightened.
