soih:

soih:

it pains me to even like, bring this up but the co-founder of black lives matter, alicia garza, made a tweet congratulating chicago dyke march’s anti-semitism by referring to the jewish activists who attempted to hold dialogue about this issue as trying to “push their own agenda” which you know, sounds a little too much like “jewish people and their world-dominating agendas” type conspiracy theories 

Can’t believe this has to be said / clarified but no where in this post did I encourage people to abandon BLM or disavow it as a movement – Black Lives Matter is a crucial civil rights movement that is not reliant on the actions of its founders. The intention of this post was not to damn the movement, nor was it meant to criticize anyone or anything other than Alicia Garza and highlight the importance of holding those around you accountable. On that note, there is both anti-semitic and anti-black sentiments and shit-slinging happening on and around this post, completely negating the whole reason we need to be having this discussion. You all should be ashamed of yourselves, for derailing this post about anti-semitism in leftist, activist communities to propagate your own hatred for Jewish people, and for implicating all black activists in Alicia’s actions. Shame, shame, shame all around. Let us learn and grow and listen.

What we as activists desperately need when it comes to dealing with this issue in our communities is an understanding of each others pain, an acceptance of each others flaws and a commitment to working honestly towards something better.

When we fight anti-semitism in radical spaces we are not fighting our usual opponents – ruthless powerful opponents driven by pure hate – instead we are trying to change vulnerable people like ourselves, driven by the pain of the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza that almost no one wants to admit.

Not long after the whole story about the CDM I spoke to an anti-racism activist who supported the CDM actions. As I tried to explain the meaning of the star of david, the way this behavior was anti-semitic, and the very real danger of anti-semitism radical spaces, she struggled with the fact that every time activists had tried to create an inclusive space that rejected anti-semitism, some jewish activist had at some point started defending the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza and the aggressive response to that had torn the activist community apart. It had been incredibly painful and in the end she had chosen to prioritize the figt against an active ethnic cleansing in the Gaza over the fight against a potential future one should antisemitism grow in strength. That this opened up her community to ever more aggressive antisemitism and far right rhetoric was difficult to recognize because in many ways it was subtle and the accusations often came from people who were far from perfect themselves.

Her opinions weren’t perfect, neither was my lack of understanding of her pain. What was very clear was that both of us wanted to do the same thing – prevent genocide – and we wanted to do it so desperately that we had trouble demanding anything less than perfection from our partners in activism. And that was exactly why we failed.