Re: Fwd: [BRC-ANN] Statement on New York Festival Attacks

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

I think the following message was meant for the list, not me, so I'm
posting it here.   Yoshie

X-Sender: sherrynstan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 06:55:39 -0400
To: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
From: bon moun <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: [BRC-ANN] Statement on New York Festival Attacks

At 09:16 PM 6/20/00 -0400, you wrote:
> Daniel Davies wrote:
>
> > This looks like a call to action, but it's actually a call to *inaction*.
> > We're being called on to "struggle with contradictions", a damnably
> > pointless activity if ever there was one.  The problem here is that the
> > group wants severe penalties for offences, but doesn't want them to be
> > inflicted on people.  Or more likely, that this sentence represents a
> > consensus between people who want to chop the knackers off the Central Park
> > mob and people who don't want anyone to be arrested for anything ever.
>
> No, the problem is that while feminists of color want those who
> committed sexual assaults to be arrested for their crimes, we don't
> want this incident to be used as an excuse for looking at all young
> men of color as if they were criminals or potential criminals and for
> continuing the policy of zero tolerance & war on crime and drugs.
> Two legitimate desires, if you ask me.  The manner in which the
> attacks on women in the Central Park get discussed should concern all
> of us who see a problem in the growth of prisoners in America,
> because it will have an effect on more people than the actual
> attackers in this case.  In case you are not aware of how the media,
> police, & politicians may use the Central Park assaults, see below:

Seems like two critical issues are being highlighted right here.

One, a tendency among many on the left (a destructive one, I think, rooted
in individualism) to spend more energy attacking others on the left than we
do attacking the ruling class.  I'm not trying to dis you, Daniel or
Michael (I'm not sure which), but the kind of sneering you engaged in did
nothing to advance any discussion, was gratuitous in many respects, and
could have raised any points you had based on whatever reasoning and-or
evidence you had, instead of your bile.  Comrade, this is not the tone we
should be taking with our comrades and allies.  I respectfully suggest you
reflect a bit on this, and think before you hit the send key.

Two, the efficacy of wedge issue situations (like the one pointed out by
Yoshie) in creating potential divisions among us.

Strategy matters, if we are serious about contesting for political power,
and there is always the question of how to maintain our strategic
initiative.  We lose it every time we allow ourselves to be diverted from
our challenge to the ruling class by these wedge issues.  There is surely a
way to simultaneously condemn the cops for their studied inaction, condemn
the perpetrators of the violence aginst women, and condemn the racist
criminal justice system at the same time.  But we can't hide our class
analysis and committment to class struggle and accomplish that.  Which
means we can't be afraid of the inevitable red-baiting that goes with that.

So long as we, in the interest of short term acceptability, cleave to
simple (liberal) bipolar moral pronouncements to make our fight, we are
still, as Audre Lorde said, trying to use the master's tools to dismantle
the master's house.  The dominant morality, like all manifestations of
superstructure, has a class character and serves a class interest.  We owe
the Public (masses) an account, not a rebuttal using ruling class categories.

The "contradictions" in this situation are explicable.  But the thesis and
antithesis, as it were, will only be synthesized by aiming at the enemy who
creates both aspects--property and profit.  We can't explain that on a
bumper sticker, but that's not who we are, is it?

The ruling class gets very comfortable when we stop to begin endlessly
elaborating on anything.  What they can't abide is when we consistently
refuse to get tangled up in these apparent contradictions and consistently
point to them and say, "There goes your problem."
"If insurrection is an art, its main content is to know how to give the
struggle the form appropriate to the political situation."

			-Vo Nguyen Giap



"Rather than seeking comparabilities in statistical terms among what are
all too often superficial features of different situations, comparabilities
must be sought at the level of determinate mechanisms, at the level of
processes that are generally hidden from easy view."

			-Eleanor Burke Leacock



"Every day one has to struggle that this love to a living humanity
transform itself into concrete acts, in acts that serve as examples, as
motivation."

			-Ernesto "Che" Guevara