This is a backup of Queeranarchism.Tumblr.com. —- Due to the back-up process this site currently includes almost everything I have ever reblogged, so click the text 'posts by queeranarchism tumblr' in the menu option if you want to go directly to posts I have written myself.
Probably the saddest sign of our times is how many people respond with complete bewilderment if you mention direct action. Cutting border fences? punching nazis? sharing resources? blocking arms transports? building alternatives? They’re not even outraged, they’re just confused.
It’s like they’re so caught up in the spectacle of petitions, calling senators, ‘awareness’ and media visbility that they’ve completely forgotten that you can also just do shit without begging for permission.
Seriously, we’ve been so conditioned to seek permission for literally anything that the idea of just doing something yourself is seen as utterly unfeasible, pie in the sky, nonsense.
I for one am a huge believer in direct action and just making the changes we want to see instead of asking the powerful to implement them.
Want to house the homeless? Occupy some abandoned buildings. Want to replace your yard with a vegetable garden? Get you hands on some seeds and plant that shit. We can accomplish so much more by doing instead of begging.
I have to strongly disagree with the above two posts because they set up a binary choice with an incredibly simplistic cause and effect chain. Signing a petition does not make one less likely to punch a Nazi. Calling a Senator does make one less likely to cut a fence. In fact, they’re on the same continuum, and a lot of times, people who start off with one relatively mild indirect action end up doing more strong direct ones. These things aren’t mutually exclusive and setting them up as mutually exclusive has the following damaging effects:
1) discourages people who are too poor and too vulnerable to assume the huge legal and financial risks of direct action.
2) encourages people who CAN take those risks to sneer at and look down on the people who can’t.
3) upholds an obsolete, heroic-individualistic-masculinity model of left activism which means that people drop out of it as soon as they get older or become parents or become disabled.
You know, I agree.
When I reblogged it I thought it had an interesting point, that a lot of people my age don’t consider more direct actions, but something bugged me that I couldn’t put my finger on. Like, as someone with a mental illness, sometimes signing those petitions is all I have the mental energy for. And the way OP framed that like that was nothing was a bit hurtful.
😦 sorry. Yeah the cavalier disregard for disability bugs me a lot. And the sad thing is, it doesn’t have to be that way!!!! ADAPT, for example, has had a number of actions that combine electoral politics with uncompromising in-your-face, fuck-the-police resistance.
(CNN) Ten people were arrested Thursday night after staging a two-day sit-in at the Denver office of Republican Sen. Cory Gardner over the health care bill.
As police removed them, the protesters, many with disabilities, chanted they’d “rather go to jail than die without Medicaid,”according to CNN affiliate KMGH-TV.
I need to do a separate post because I don’t want to hijack this one, but ADAPT had a great communique where they explain exactly how they organize these actions. And there’s an incredible amount of behind-the-scenes work and coordination. For every activist who actually puts their disabled body at risk, there are numerous others who do things like jail support, media relations in order to maximize the dreaded media visibility, logistics planning, fundraising, legal representation, etcetera. And that kind of labor, while largely invisible, is absolutely crucial and very much appreciated by the people on the front line.
Seeing these responses to my original post is really weird to be honest. There’s a lot of good stuff in here but to me it seems like they mistake the content of my post for something it is not. I was talking about one very specific issue:
That for some people, activism that doesn’t focus on awareness raising is COMPLETELY UNIMAGINABLE and its very existence is confusing.
A lot of people seem to be reading a lot more innto it but that was really ALL that short post was about.
Not about disability in activism, which I have written a lot of posts about.
Not about privilege in activism, which I have written a lot of posts about.
Not about mental health in activism, which I have written a lot of posts about.
Not about a diversity of tactics, which I have written a lot of posts about.
Not about the massive support networks behind direct action, which I have written a lot of posts about.
If you want conversations about all those things, maybe spend a little longer on my blog or look for content that isn’t a 60 word post about one very specific thing.
I was ONLY talking about a specific group of people who can not imagine an activism that isn’t about convincing those in power, regardless of whether it is safe or accessible, because they have convinced themselves that convincing those in power is all activism can ever be.
I’m glad your blog talks about that but I can’t react to the words you meant, just the words that you typed. If you’re taking constructive criticism, the original post doesn’t mention a specific group of people, it’s a broad “what’s wrong with the youth of today” that posits a fall from grace from a radical leftist Eden that never even existed. And then you answer “what’s wrong with the youth of today” by saying in the next paragraph that it’s because they’re too busy signing petitions and contacting their Senators. Problem, diagnosis. It’s impossible to read that in any other way than that direct action and participation in the electoral process are mutually exclusive! And the mutually exclusive thing is an incredibly common misconception so whether you mean to reinforce it or not, a lot of those 27000 people who reblogged or liked the post just got that idea reinforced. “If it’s not immediate direct action, fuck it, I might as well not bother” becomes the ultimate takeaway.
This is a problem with left culture that I desperately need more people to address and I’m going to be a merciless bitch pointing it out wherever and whenever I see it, regardless of etiquette. I’ve seen other of your posts and liked them because I agreed with them and thought they were good. This one wasn’t.
Well, I’m gonna have to disagree because that is just NOT WHAT I WROTE. It’s not in those words. It’s just not in there.
I am specifically talking about people who show up in my notes all the time with comments like ‘but that would be illegal here’ about an action that’s clearly illegal anywhere and ‘but that’s not going to convince anyone’ about an action that’s clearly not about reaching the public or just ‘what’ and expressions of confusion. And who, no matter how many times I try to explain, just don’t seem to get it.
If responding to direct action with
confusion is not something you do then this post is just not about you. And I’m not even angry at those people. I just think it’s a sign of how information is distributed that the concept of direct action is completely new to them.
But people do do this all the time and those people are generally very heavily involved in the ‘call your senator’ and hashtag type of activism. Which yes, is not mutually exclusive from direct action.
But the spectacle of electoral politics and awareness politics can definitely distract from direct action and can definitely be used to pull people into polite, passive action in cooperation with political parties and to keep them there. I’m not claiming that direct action and signing petitions are mutually exclusive by talking about that.
And I’m not doing a ‘kids today’ thing. It’s definitely not a generational thing at all. When I speak of
the sign of our times, I am speaking of the success awareness-focussed movements have had in dominating the internet and that distraction-through-spectacle is far more effective today than it was before hashtag activism became a thing. If anything, ‘kids today’ seem more aware of this politics of distraction than 30-40-something-year-olds online.
QueerAnarchism 