Concerned about violent crime in ATL?
Then be sure to check out this event at Charis tonight!
Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative Dialogue
Thursday, March 12, 7:30-9:00pm
Over the past three years, a collaborative of Atlanta based organizers have been building a framework of transformative justice focused on transforming state, communal and interpersonal response to violence. From local neighborhood violence to international genocidal violence, from Gaza & the West Bank to intimate partner & family violence, the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative (ATJC) seeks to transform the responses and conditions that perpetuate all forms of social control and violence. Join ATJC organizers Mia Mingus, Cara Page, Sonali Sadequee & Stephanie Guilloud at Charis as they discuss ways to engage communities through transformative justice and deepen cross-movement conversations within southern based strategies.
I just now found out about this, and as such won’t be able to make it tonight. But I can assure you these four ladies are all kinds of awesome, and the ATJC is the kind of organization I can get behind. I would encourage ATAC folks to attend and participate.
Classy
Here’s the progression of how things went. Apparently Courtney wrote a post at Feministing talking about what a typical day for her looks like. Lauren at Faux Real wrote a post in response, saying she’s tired of hearing about people having too much email and how it’s soooo hard for them, when people in her community are struggling to keep their jobs, if they haven’t been laid off already. She then wrote another post, which expanded on some of the stuff in the first post. Aunt B wrote a post linking to Lauren’s second post, and Daisy linked to Aunt B in her post about WAM being elitist, which I took issue with.
I didn’t see any of the posts until I read Daisy’s, and then I went in reverse-chronological order trying to catch up (and was still left wondering what WAM had to do with any of it – I guess Daisy just wanted to try to tie it in).
I agree w/ this comment Amanda left at Lauren’s:
There’s kind of no way to write about your life if you’re lucky in any way without becoming a lightening rod for envy on the blogs, though. I can see your point, but I also worry about the way women have been socialized to compete with each other on whose life sucks the most. It’s a lot like the, “You’re not fat, I’m fat!” game. Women aren’t permitted to be happy with themselves, and so writing something that insinuates that you are pretty happy with yourself automatically generates bad reactions. I can see how Courtney is trying to fight against that.
Predictably, another commenter (someone called evil fizz) comes along and says:
But is is possible to write about your own successes and privilege without being bone-crushingly oblivious to the fact that not everyone enjoys such things. It’s not necessarily about envy as much as it is awareness that one’s corner of the universe is not the quintessential experience.
Well, I really wish someone would tell me what that way is, because I’m getting the feeling there really isn’t such a way, unless you devote nine-tenths of every post to self-flagellation. Because that wouldn’t become tedious to read, oh no.
As Lisa said recently…
I’m tired of writing disclaimers of my privilege. I’m tired of apologizing. Even as I write that, I’m sure it reads RESISTANCE to acknowledging my privilege. But it’s like, no matter what I write about, no matter how much I paint the elephant a traffic cone orange color and acknowledge it, point at it, sit next to it, and then I write my thoughts – someone, somewhere (usually “anonymous”) comes in and reminds me, “don’t forget – you’re a privileged person of color. You don’t have that much experience in oppression.” Here’s the thing: I don’t know how to acknowledge it any more than I already have. And if I stop acknowledging it, I’m sure someone will call me a “leftoid cunt” again. I don’t want to spend my life writing about privilege. That would be a sardonic tragedy all on its own.
EXACTLY.
I mean, how many times do you have to spell it out to people? At a certain point, you just can’t be responsible for other people projecting their own drama and hangups onto your writing about your life. And on a blog, especially! Evil fizz goes on to say that (s)he doesn’t care about Courtney’s day. Well, then don’t read about it. Get on with your life and find something you do care about to occupy your time. Does every blogger exist simply to satisfy what you personally want to read about?
I get that on a large group blog like Feministing, the lines are less clear – and indeed, this is what people spend entire social media conferences talking about. Know your audience, write stuff they’ll be interested in, etc. But I just keep coming back to the fact that blogs started as people writing about their own lives, and guess what, an audience showed up, eventually.
In Lauren’s “Context” post, she says:
And I wonder too if those making feminism their career change her message to remain marketable? Does the new Professional Feminist have to set aside some of her feminist beliefs to keep the paycheck rolling in? Will she self-censor?
This is always a problem. The difference is, feminist bloggers did not START with the goal of being ‘professional feminists’ – they were just writing, doing their own thing, and they got recognized for who they are. (A modicum of success; say it ain’t so!) Now, if they’re expected to change… -but this is the same thing as all bloggers. At social media conferences bloggers are so concerned w/ their “image” and how to be “professional” and present themselves online. But they forget that the first bloggers who are now relatively famous – Scoble, etc. – took risks, and that’s why they were noticed. Yes, a lot of ‘em are assholes, but this isn’t about the characteristics of their individual personalities; the point is that they weren’t sanitizing everything they said. They were writing in their own voice – sometimes even writing as if no one was reading.
But stepping away from bloggers specifically, let’s get back to the larger issue of class in more general terms. I agree w/ much of what Lauren says here. I share her frustration w/ “get ahead” solutions that are aimed at people who are beyond the access point of many people looking for advice. I’ve been there. Suggestions to buy less Starbucks and refinance your home ring hollow to someone who doesn’t go to Starbucks at all and rents instead of owns. It pisses me off that this passes for “solutions” in some people’s eyes, and I wonder how they can be so blind to others’ reality. Do they REALLY think everyone owns a home, has a 401k, can afford a new car or even has a car at all?
I agree that the NY Times piece about not being able to live on $500k in NYC is insulting. It’s the same thing I was talking about in this post from October 2006, where I criticize a Creative Loafing article that purports to explain why the younger generation is having a hard time economically. People who behave like Mr. Whitey McPrivilege (as I lovingly dubbed him) make the rest of us look bad. It’s an irresponsible piece of journalism because it falls into the old trope of casting as irresponsible anyone who isn’t middle class, so we can all attribute their situation to personal failings, wipe our hands and be done w/ it, rather than have to examine underlying, systemic issues. This goes back to the points raised in Stephanie Coontz’s book The Way We Never Were.
And yet… I do take issue w/ the rest of the stuff referenced here and here.
Putting aside the fact that I become very skeptical of anyone who uses the term “the intelligentsia” with any degree of seriousness, I’m frustrated that “the intelligentsia” is cast as upper class – always is and always has been upper class. Whereas the poor cannot be well-read (even tho Lauren’s friend mentions her mother, we’re to understand that she’s a curious outlier). Yes, it’s more likely, but it strikes as a dichotomy, that there’s one right “way” to be poor, and it strikes as insulting to those from poor backgrounds who are interested in “intellectual” things.
I guess I am annoyed because (going back to Lauren’s post) I have seen both sides of it, so I GET IT. Also – I have a distrust for people who have never experienced what it’s like to *not* have a safety net. I think they don’t get it, don’t really appreciate the double bind the working class and poor are often in. That’s why their solution is always the offensively simplistic “get a job,” and it’s so much BS.
Now, to respond to a few comments.
Aunt B’s comment on Lauren’s “Context” post:
And it pisses me off-it seems so “let them eat cake”-ish-to read feminists talking about a feminist day that is basically “La la la, here’s my wonderful life.”
Yeah, I get where she’s coming from, but this also reads to me a bit like: Shut up. It’s too similar for my comfort to what Ren hears all the damn time. It feels like a game of oneupsmanship: who’s the most oppressed, who gets to speak.
Yes, it’s helpful to have perspective. Some people are just self-centered, non-self-aware assholes who really do seem to think their email problem is the worst problem in the world. And they complain all the freaking time. (I think we’ve all had the misfortune of knowing at least one person like this.) They need to be smacked upside the head with some reality, reminded, “Hey, at least you HAVE A JOB, and this is a luxury thing to worry about for many people.”
I mean, just yesterday, there was a guy at work complaining about how high his HOA fees are, but at least they pay for the tennis courts. Obnoxious!
But most of the people in question here do not lack that perspective. They simply write about their lives, and if their life includes the frustration of a lot of email, then maybe they write about that. I don’t see any of them saying this is THE WORST THING EVER. But do they have to repeat that at every other sentence for people not to assume it?
Like Aunt B in her 2nd comment on Laurent’s “Context” post, I don’t know quite how to talk about my experiences, either. It wasn’t until I started reading Bitch|Lab that I had any of the words necessary to begin trying to describe class-related experiences – and I’m still not very good at it at all.
In the past couple of years I feel like I’ve been slowly entering a new world – one that was always there, going on right under my nose, but I never knew about. Is this the *real* middle class? It seems “upper class” to me, but I have a feeling upper class involves even more. What do people MEAN when they say “middle class?”
It’s why I felt so uncomfortable when that shitty financial planner asked, “When you retire, how much money would you like to have to live off of each month?” What is the right answer? X amount of dollars… is that too much? Too little? I have no frame of reference.
And from the other end, I was embarrassed when I bought my car last January, and I handed the salesperson the paperwork and upon seeing my salary, she said, “Wow, that’s a good job! I wish I had that job!” How am I supposed to respond to that?
But I’m not ashamed. I’ve worked too damn hard to allow somebody to lay a guilt trip on me out of what often seems like – and this will not win me any friends, but I’m calling it like I see it – good old-fashioned jealousy. Hell, at least Aunt B comes out and admits that she is jealous – but that still doesn’t excuse her nasty finger-pointing and line-drawing, deciding who’s the real feminist and who’s not, who’s sufficiently guilty about their success and who’s not. Shit like this props up a nasty system of shaming women out of economic achievement. Oh, you can do it, but only if you FEEL REALLY BAD about it!
Back to comments. Daisy comments and says:
You are talking Class Consciousness 101, and according to THAT, the people on top will never be nice to those of us on the bottom, because they are too busy congratulating themselves that they are not us. Why would they listen to people that they believe are inferior?
Personally? I feel uncomfortable with “the people on the top” AND “the people on the bottom.” I have problems in both directions. Both seem so blind in their own ways.
Sometimes I think we need to remember, being poor doesn’t give you some special insight into How The World Works. But neither does being rich, of course.
I don’t think there is anything wrong in telling privileged people to be more aware of their privilege when they speak.
This sets up a dichotomy, as if there are two kinds of people: privileged and not privileged. It also, once again, casts privilege in solely economic terms, which is why a lot of people not versed in the academic language of privilege get defensive and misunderstand it – e.g., I’m white and poor, how do I have “white privilege?” We need to do much better at avoiding falling into this trap.
There’s always been an “introduction to intersectional feminism for comfortable college students” feel to the blog, which is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that it is a blog, and, as such, is very much bound up in the lives of the people who write there (almost all of whom seem to come from very comfortable backgrounds, have MAs, and are getting their names out as a way of getting their books published).
The key word here? SEEM. Yep, it happened again. Why assume??
THIS is the kind of shit that pisses me off. You don’t know shit about their backgrounds. Yes, I know humans make assumptions to fill in the blanks about the things we don’t know. To an extent that’s human nature. But then at a certain point, stereotypes take over. The woman Daisy mentioned assumed there were no feminists in the welfare office; Casey assumes the Feministing bloggers have always had an easy-peasy life.
And for the love of god, can someone tell me WHY so many people think writers live a life of luxury??
For another example, just recently I got into it with Renee in a thread at her blog (link forthcoming when I dig it up), where I called her out for being judgmental and making assumptions about people who shop at Wal-Mart. You want to talk about privilege? There’s a hell of a lot of unexamined privilege going on in those types of judgments. She tried to tell me that the poor have more opportunity to “produce within the home”… give me a fucking break. I was incensed at that point and asked her how, exactly, when my mom was working from dawn to dusk and simultaneously trying to care for her dying, uninsured husband, she was supposed to “produce within the home?” I reminded her that for people with schedules like that, who don’t live in metropolitan areas, Wal-Mart is often the only place that’s open when they are able to go shopping! Not to mention the prices. “Going green” is a luxury for many, many people. Oh and if you live in a more rural area, Wal-Mart if often the only store around, period!
Bottom line: You don’t know someone’s situation.
On a completely different note, Catherine’s comment captures exactly the problem I have with ATACC (or is it just ATAC now?)…
I can’t tell you how many times I have listened to members of my peace group gripe about it being all white. (and, I have to say, majority middle class and above). why aren’t black people in our group? Why aren’t poor people in our group? Umm, maybe they have other, more pressing things to worry about? Maybe they are wondering, how come we aren’t at the protest of the latest cop-killing of an unarmed black male youth. Maybe, black people in particular are wondering why they, who were already against the iraq war long before most white people caught on, should be marching to stop that, when very few if any white people, are marchign to stop something that is much more insidiously destructive to many black communuties; the drug war, and instituionalized and racist sentencing disparties.
Finally, on another unrelated note – and to end on a more positive note – I really enjoyed this post by BFP. I don’t often read her, but I’m glad I clicked over to her blog, because that post was a jewel.
Trying to un-muddy the waters just a little
I want to attempt to clear up some muddying of the waters re: my feelings on the ATACC thing. I realized that in some posts and comments, and particularly my post from last night, it comes off as if I’m conflating two separate issues. I want to address this because it’s the kind of thing that bugs me when I see other people doing it, and in my haste to just write my thoughts w/ little or no proof-reading, I’ve ended up doing the same thing.
Is crime a problem in Atlanta? Does it need to be addressed post-haste? Is it a good thing for people to organize and mobilize their communities, using the tools that work best for them? Do people have a right to defend themselves against robbery, burglary, etc.? Should people feel safe in their neighborhoods?
The answer to all those questions is a resounding YES!
That part, I really shouldn’t have to say. But I felt it best to just be explicit about it. I do understand that in an emotionally-charged environment, things that aren’t personal or aren’t meant a certain way can be taken that way, and really piss people the fuck off.
And that’s maybe the hardest thing about trying to sort this all out in writing: I can see how it must look from the eyes of someone who lost a loved one. I’ve always been good at putting myself in other people’s shoes, sometimes even to my detriment. But ultimately I believe it’s a good thing, because we need more sympathy and compassion in this world.
If I were a close friend or relative of John Henderson, for example, I’d most likely say something like, “Are you fucking kidding me?? He is DEAD and you’re wanting to prattle on about this privilege bullshit and looking for root causes. Well excuse the hell out of me, but no amount of identifying root causes is going to bring him back.”
I get that. Which is why I want to be clear.
When all the Full Frontal Feminism crap went down in the blogosphere, the reason it annoyed me so much was that legitimate frustration with a systemic problem was getting played out as criticisms of an individual. People were pissed off at a system that privileges certain voices over others, but what ended up going around were a lot of personal attacks on Jessica Valenti. The systemic problem is not her fault. The book is a good thing. And if she hadn’t written the book or it had been a massive flop, that wouldn’t have magically made more WOC authors get book deals.
It’s also an all-too-familiar trope in conversations about the sex industry. Instead of criticisms of the way the industry is constructed, we get personal attacks on individual sex workers – denying their choices, questioning their feminist creds, and so on.
So back to ATACC: the formation of the group is a good thing. The press attention it’s getting is a good thing.
But that’s not where my main quarrel lies.
It’s a systemic problem. Why does this group and this set of events get coverage? Why don’t you see coverage of peer-on-peer violent crime in southwest Atlanta? Why is it considered “business as usual” in certain areas of town – even if, as Karsh and others have pointed out, often that’s more perception than reality? Where does that perception come from? Why are some lives tacitly designated as more important than others? Etc., etc.
And remember, none of that has anything to do with intent.
Admittedly, the waters are getting muddied too because I have major concerns about the way the group is turning out. As I said before, I know many individuals involved and know that they have good intentions and truly want what’s best for their community. But when an organization reaches a certain point, it takes on a life of its own (whole vs. sum of parts, and all that); and the racism, classism, pro-police mentality and encouragement of vigilantism I’ve seen from its ranks make me want to run far away from associating myself with ATACC. -And, too, at a certain point, good intentions aren’t enough. For example, I’m sure in his mind Steve Gower has good intentions; but his actions are harmful, and the MNA and MPSA are dangerous groups with significant economic pull.
Getting to the root of a systemic problem does not equal absolving people of responsibility for their actions. An explanation is not an excuse. But without explanations, where would we be? It’s how we learn and make informed decisions. If we never modified our actions based on the results of deep analysis, we’d never get anywhere. Now I’m going to pull out the 9/11 analogy. The attackers who crashed those planes bear full responsibility and blame for their actions and should be punished accordingly. No amount of “the middle East distrusts America” makes what they did okay. However does that mean it’s not important to look at what circumstances may have fostered an environment that ultimately led to them doing what they did? That’s what we must do, unless we want to stick our heads in the sand and wait for our society to either get blown up or blow itself up. I repeat: an explanation is not an excuse. Analyzing is not condoning.
Reading back over this, I feel like I still haven’t done a good job of explaining what I mean. With this issue, I seem to be better at it when I talk about it w/ people face to face, but hey at least I tried.
Latest happenings and thoughts
I know I’ve alluded to it before, but lately I’m seriously wondering if I’ve reached my tipping point w/ social media. It’s true that I’ve been really busy in the past week, but come on, everybody’s busy, that’s not much of an explanation. Like I mentioned in a podcast a while back (would link but our site is down at the moment), I wonder if it’s finally gotten to the point where there’s just too much to keep up with. I haven’t been spending as much time on Twitter, and certainly not attempting to read everybody’s tweets. I haven’t checked Bloglines in days and have given up trying to read all my feeds – and I don’t even subscribe to an insane number of feeds, and certainly not the kind of blogs that post 20+ times a day! Then I end up reblogging shit on Tumblr and half the time I don’t know why, other than it’s a convenient way to help me wake up in the morning or unwind at night without using too many brain cells. I’ve been meaning to write Jenny and Niki an email for weeks now – and of course trying to find time to blog. It all seems so ridiculous, but more and more everything for me seems to be moving to quick little updates of 140 characters or less, no time to sit and write anything of substantial length.
(more…)