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

["bob brown" <vacirca@xxxxxxxxx>]

--
"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

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From: "bob brown" <vacirca@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [BRC-ANN] Statement on New York Festival Attacks
Date: Wed, Jun 21, 2000, 6:39 PM


  i'd like to know a lot more about the context of the Audre Lorde proect
statement on Central Park who are they,who were they addressing? and a text
of the whole statement before we debate it.
    As for debating the responsibilty of Hip Hop for these attacks the male
attackers were not all hiphoppers, according several ny times stories those
arrested so far "came from all walks of life". they belong to no specific
social group, they're not even all from ny state. the one common denominator
is that they were young and male, misogynist and violent, and most likely
drunk.

     all i really know about Hip Hop culure is that it's a predominantly
male black, latino, and asian working class alternative youth culture.  to
debate the cultural politics of the hip hop nation, of which, most of us on
the list,  i suspect , know little about, won't get us any closer to
understanding Central Park.

 Rather, let's try to put the misogynist lynch mob  attacks on over 50 women
in Central in historical and political and cultural context.  What is new
about central parkis that is part of an overall qualitative change in the
nature of male violence against women.
incidents of mass male violence against women are escalating around the
world.  Reports of "Rodeos" or gang rapes of college women by fraternity men
have been growing for years. the rates of rape and domestic violence against
women remain very  high in this country and else where. increasingly women
are being socially pressured by men to show their breasts in public mass
gatherings, like Rock concerts and the Preakness infield, sexual assaults on
women in punk rock mosh pits are rife as is increased use of mass rape in
current warfare. wherever men gather in large numbers mysogynist behavior
seems to be  becoming  a male ritual, an affirmation of maleness thru the
mortificaion of female flesh. all this is very fascist. Fascism historically
was and is a highly mysogynist anti-feminist movement about celebrating male
power and incidentally protecting male privilege (and male capitalist power)

while historically capitalism has used fascism to destroy feminism and
socialism, it did not create fascism, middle class men in Italy and Germany
did,  a sizable number of them actually having been leftists originally.


The Central Park attacks have reopened  a lot of  difficult questions  for
this list and the Left in general. the  political splits and gender, race
and class contradictions between  black and white feminists, hip-hop culture
and older generations, between men and women,white nation and black nation,
working class and middle class both in society and the Left are real,
materially, culturally and historically rooted divisions, not just a
capitalist trick, and they cannot be erased by generic calls for left unity
and class struggle  against the ruling class. on the other hand stan is
right about the  destructive style and tone of left debates. we do not need
more divisive, self righteous polemics , we're divided enough already what
we do need is a lot more information and solid class analysis;  of hip-hop
and youth culture generally, the culture  of male violence today and the
role and relationship of imperialism and the state in  fostering and
exploiting this emergent male fascist youth culture .

bobv brown

"solidarity means sharing the same risks" - Che
( la solidarita significa correre gli stessi rischi)

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>From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>
>To: M-Fem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: Fwd: [BRC-ANN] Statement on New York Festival Attacks
>Date: Wed, Jun 21, 2000, 9:40 AM
>

> 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
>