Tag Archives: Occupy Seattle

Teaching and bias

Posted on by
Reply

Teaching the Gender and Geography course is … well … exhilarating. For a Geography course that is so heavily theoretical, we have a surprising diversity of personal frames of thinking in the class. It’s both delightful and frightening. I also have a surprising number of young men in the class – they make up a substantial proportion (maybe 25%?).

Yesterday, i could not have been more proud of them. We spent the first hour talking about the Occupy movement. I had planned a lecture around Gramsci and the early Marxian debates (particularly between Lukacs and Rosa Luxembourg) about the difference between (and the different ideological attachments to) spontaneity and vanguardism. Instead, i opened the floor to let those of my students who have been heavily involved in the Occupy Seattle protest to explain to the class what the movement is about. One of them pulled out the formal statement from OWS and three of them read it aloud to the class.

What ensued turned into a heated debate about “appropriate” ways to protest or to try to get things changed in Congress and in the laws. I’d say the class was 1/3 for, 1/3 against and 1/3 completely unsure about where they stood. What i admired about their debate was the way in which they helped each other to remember to be polite – let people finish before jumping in, raising hands to make sure that people were aware of who wanted to speak next, not speaking for too long at a time, taking notes so they could respond point by point. We had some incredibly tough moments, but they made it through rather swimmingly. What i appreciated most was their ability to catch each other and start laughing at their own frustrations.

I pulled the conversation short when the room got so heated that we headed down the normative judgment path – when students started making statements like, “Poor people are lazy” and “I know someone who…” We took a break, washed our hands, took a deep breath and started on the second hour looking at news articles (each week, students bring news articles that are gendered in nature and discuss them together). And then Slut Walk and issues of women being told that dressing suggestively (whatever that means) leads to rape.

Bless him, one of my male students ventured to mention that it was “kind of like advertising when you wear a short skirt” … i don’t think he got to finish his thought. And that’s about the time i shut down. *sigh* … thank goodness the bell rang, but not before i thanked them for being so willing to put themselves in the line of fire and to ask the really hard questions. Really, if we were all of like minds, the class would be very boring and not very useful to anyone.  I just hope they understood.

The issue i have been having is that i want the students to have an open forum in which to discuss their ideas. The lowest marks i get in teaching is that i don’t make enough room for students’ opinions. I know that when i start soap-boxing, i can be extremely silencing. So how to balance the push for critical thinking without shutting down students who disagree with what i’m teaching? In the entry level courses, i’ve always been able to frame it as offering a new way of thinking for the toolbox. But in a 400-level course, i feel that they should have the tools and don’t need to be beaten with them.

Maybe i’m being to lenient. I suppose that i’ve given them enough time to start understanding that i’m not shutting them down, and now i have to really start pushing them harder – asking the difficult questions… I absolutely abhor confrontation (unless i’ve had a glass of wine or two – then i have no problem pulling out the velvet bat and bopping people on the head), and yet, here i am teaching a rather controversial course in a very controversial time. But i’m still trying to break some of them off the habit of using normative judgment adjectives as truths…

One of my older students approached me after the bell rang asked if we could start drinking in class… i hear you, sister! I think i might be slipping a flask into my bag on Mondays and Wednesdays, too…

Race, Gender, and Occupy

Posted on by
8

I just read the most beautiful piece called Pinto Beans, Wall Street and Me at JoNubian.

I also hold a bit of disdain for the Occupy movement, but i have also been disappointed in the claims against it. I’ve been equally perturbed by its whiteness and yet fiercely protective of what it is that the movement is attempting to accomplish. I am ambivalent – drawn by the promise of a new experiment in an un-led dis-organization and perturbed by the whiteness, maleness, and apparent middle-classness (who has time to protest?).

I think this partially comes down to who has the privilege to protest? Who has the political language? Who has the populace language? Who is included and who is excluded? And while the movement has worked furiously to make room for “all voices”, does it make room for all histories?

Yesterday, when i finally went down to Occupy Seattle at Westlake, i found that a Latina woman was MCing the open mic, a South Asian was organizing speaker order, and a young African American man was speaking about the war on people of color that is happening in America.  Behind the stage, a Native American woman began banging on a trashcan, screaming angrily and crying. A group calling themselves the Peace Team quickly moved in and offered her kind words, space to speak.

This is not meant to be a tally of The Number of People of Colour i saw yesterday. I just happened to walk up at a strangely diverse moment – particularly strange as it was in downtown Seattle. So what is my point?

I avoided the marches and protests, even as my colleagues went en masse from the university campus to downtown, and again as they tried to organize amongst departments and schools. I wondered where my people were – the brown folks whose land was stolen to make this country. Where are the women of color – where are the working mamas, the grandmothers who will never retire? Where are the disenfranchised – my brothers and sisters who make up 16% of the US population and only 5% of the graduate programs at my school?

So… do we make this our movement? Do we take up this struggle, or do we turn away and simply wait it out? What is that balance in the ambivalence?

I decided that there is one thing i can do: teach. It turns out that there are a number of people who feel the way i do and are organizing a teach-in. Many of the people i met yesterday had no understanding of the histories of oppressions that have occurred in this country or by this country. Many of their histories reach back three years to the economic collapse. Their frustrations are based on anecdotes and charts, shocking numbers and liberal soundbites. And that is not to take away from the absolute enormity of what we are facing as a nation and as individuals. But what can we do to make it more meaningful, to last longer, to have a greater impact?

We are the 99%, but we are also the 14%, and the 16%, and the 35%, and the 51%.

Occupy

Posted on by
Reply

This was sent to me today through a listserv set up by graduate geographers. The list is growing as we find coalition across the campus.

In the past few weeks, we, more and more, are being forced to confront who we are, what we want, and how we want it. For all of the complaints i’ve seen and heard about the ability of anyone (and i do mean, ANYone) to speak at Occupy Seattle and the lack of demands (or even a cohesive set of complaints) coming from the Occupy movement, i’m actually quite uplifted by the movement as a whole.

People should be able to speak. All of our voices need to be heard. The lack of a leader is not due to lack of leadership, rather, is a reflection of a new kind of organization, a new way of organizing ourselves.

A visiting scholar from Hungary once told me that she was so surprised and in awe of how organized and orderly everyone is in America. Yes, it is very orderly here – we are well-trained to be hyper-organized, to follow rules (motility! keep right!), to be quiet, acquiescent, polite, and orderly. This movement is the infantile steps toward a new maturity – one that makes room for every voice and collective decision making. One that makes room for the organic intellectual to emerge, for collectivism to take root.

And of course people are complaining – we’re not used to it. We are afraid of what we don’t know. But we’ll never know if we don’t try. This is the moment of spontaneous revolution – and it is messy and unruly, yet peaceful. I was particularly heartened by the words of Francis Scott Piven, a woman whose academic and activist work i have long admired.