Reflections on Organizing towards Collective Liberation at Occupy NOLA

Over the last few weeks our students and advisors have been partipating in various aspects of Occupy New Orleans actions and working groups. Most centrally though, we have all been deeply engaged in the Anti-Racism Working Group meeting 3 times a week a diverse collective of anti-racism organizers and activists from participating in the Occupy movement and other longtime organizers from the community. Fellow member of the working group, provided great analysis and a look at the anti-racist organizing that is coming out of the Occupy Movement in New Orleans in her post published today on the Monthly Review Zine, and we are happy to share it here:


Reflections on Organizing towards Collective Liberation at Occupy NOLA
by Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

Over the past few weeks, I have been invigorated and moved by the energy surrounding Occupy Wall Street and its offshoots across the nation.  Yet, at the same time I've been faced with the tensions being articulated by so many folks on the Left: how can this energy be connected to and further long-standing organizing work for social and economic justice?

Here at Occupy NOLA, I have been excited about the potential of making these bridges through the project of the anti-racism working group.  In less than two weeks, this working group has been developing a collective analysis and strategy that I think has the possibility of contributing towards long-term movement building.

From Difficult Moments to Moments of Promise

This is not to say this work has been easy.  Many of these conversations are painful and difficult.  At the second General Assembly (GA), a debate emerged regarding the use of the livestream at the GA.  Since the initial planning meeting, Occupy NOLA had been posting photos and videos on Facebook without those in attendance's permission.  Myself alongside several others from the anti-racism working group raised the concern that having the entire area videotaped led to the space not being safe or secure for a variety of folks: immigrants, trans folks, queer folks, etc. and offered the proposal that 1/3 of the space not be included in the livestream.

In response, several white men got up and declared the purpose of the movement was to be recorded and that having folks on video couldn't possibly have the ramifications that we had explained such as immigration sweeps or people losing employment or housing.  Listening to these responses I was frustrated by concrete concerns being seemingly disregarded, but even more so at how privilege operates to convince individuals that their experiences within society are universal -- how security for some makes the lack of safety for others invisible.

Following the GA's inability to reach consensus on this subject, those of us on both sides of the debate were tasked with further discussing the issue.  Cynically, I found myself assuming the people we had been debating weren't actually committed enough to the process to enter into further conversation.  However, immediately after the meeting, one guy came over to continue the discussion.  Within a few moments, a group of a dozen people were talking about how power functions, how Latin@ folks are racially profiled as undocumented immigrants, the policing of trans folks (especially transwomen of color), the precariousness of service industry workers employment, and so much more.  Here we were, mostly strangers, spending our Friday night standing in Duncan Plaza engaged in political debate.

Did we end up agreeing on everything?  No.  Did we make steps together?  Yes.

Making these steps together is why I'm involved in the Occupy movement.  I recalled that my political analysis was not developed over night; rather it took investment from other activists.  I've had years of guidance and mentorship within movements for social justice that has gotten me to the place I am today.  Now is the time to offer the constructive encouragement to others that was offered to me when I was first becoming politicized.

But I also know about the rapid politicization folks can go through during moments like this -- moments that radicalize people's understanding of power, systems of oppression, the state, global capitalism, and empire.  These moments can literally transform people's understandings of not just what we are struggling against but also what we are dreaming about: what collective liberation can potentially be.

Building Strategies for Collective Liberation

For me, this is why it's so crucial to organize with the anti-racism working group to build a structural analysis within Occupy NOLA of how we got to this period of advanced capitalism.  Luckily, I think we have more resources to draw on for this than in pervious periods.  Even before the first GA to plan Occupy NOLA, white anti-racist folks here were reaching out to one another to discuss how to critically engage this moment.  Many of us had been moved by the writing coming out of OWS by activists of color on their struggles to build an anti-racist and anti-oppressive politic in New York.  Several of us were also encouraged by the conversations happening within the national US for All of US network of white anti-racists about the potential for catalyzing this moment.  Others of us were calling on our knowledge gained from our participation, both as local New Orleanians and outside volunteers, in anti-racist organizing at Common Relief following the storm.  Looking around the space of Occupy NOLA, instead of feeling lost and overwhelmed as I have so many times before in these spaces, I felt hopeful and inspired.

By the second day of Occupy NOLA, a multiracial crew of folks had come together for the first meeting of the anti-racism working group.  Gathered together was a group of people with a range of backgrounds: long-term organizers, folks new to activism, people who already knew and trusted one another, and individuals who came knowing no one but believing in the purpose of the group.

Over the course of our first meetings, we strategized together what the purpose and goals of our anti-racism working group would be.  Drawing on our collective knowledge gain from previous activism as well as our initial involvement with Occupy NOLA, we solidified together that our goals are based in the belief that this is a moment of possibility and potential.

We committed to working towards: Occupy NOLA being accountable to local community organizing and acting in solidarity with their local struggles; fostering an intersectional structural analysis of power through political education projects; encouraging both Occupy NOLA and the broader #Occupy movement to center both the US South and the Global South; deepening our analysis of how US financial power has been built off the ravages of slavery and colonialism; and continuing to build off the momentum of this moment over the next year regardless of the outcome of this occupation.

We have also committed as an anti-racist working group to be actively participating in other working groups and building with other potential allies.  Also, by participating in other working groups, we are able to share our skills in areas such as facilitation, media, and direct action.  For me, this is us moving beyond a critique from the sidelines to a structure that is focusing our efforts towards the success of other working groups.

Central to our strategy has also been the ongoing dialogue and discussion with long-time New Orleans organizers of color.   Folks from a range of organizations affiliated with the Greater New Orleans Organizers' Roundtable have generously entered into conversations with the anti-racism working group about how Occupy NOLA can be pushed in a strategic direction that furthers the aims of local economic and social justice movements.  This work has the potential to strengthen both Occupy NOLA and the work of already existing organizing by building a united front on the social justice issues in New Orleans.

It's also been incredible to be organizing collectively with folks who are dealing with the reality that we need to move quickly since we don't know how long this occupation will last while also thinking through how this work can make a long-term impact on movements for justice.  Instead of organizing in crisis, we are organizing for the long haul.

Moving Forward

We're still grappling with a lot of questions: How do we actively engage and support other working groups?  What are strategies for building an accountable Occupy movement here in New Orleans that supports and strengthens the long-term community organizing in the city around housing, police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and immigration?  Is our goal to build Occupy NOLA as a multiracial, multiclass movement or is there a benefit in leveraging the white and class privilege of the current formation in solidarity with community organizations?  How do we both embrace the spirit of participatory democracy while also recognizing how these processes can be alienating?

These are complicated questions for a complicated moment.  While I am sure that both the anti-racism working group and the broader Occupy NOLA will make mistakes along the way, I am just as sure of the necessity in critically engaging in this movement.  We're in the middle of a powerful opening to connect fresh new activists to radical political analysis, to develop their leadership skills, and to introduce them to the ongoing social and economic struggles here in New Orleans, across the US, and around the globe.  Getting down in this messy process is more than just a commitment to the present Occupy moment; it's an investment in our future movements for justice.

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Lydia Pelot-Hobbs is a member of and trainer at AORTA (Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance).

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We Are the 99%

Yesterday we participated in the first day of Occupy New Orleans, a solidarity protest and march with Occupy Wall Street. Check out New Orleans Liberation Academy student Anthony Johnson during the march:

Day 1 of Occupy New Orleans. Solidarity protest and march with Occupy Wall Street.

Here is also a great video that captures some of yesterday's actions:

As expected, the Occupy New Orleans actions have already proven to be an incredible, experiential learning opportunity for our students in civic engagement, social action, democracy and consensus building. We look forward to continuing to Occupy and engage in powerful conversations and learning across difference.

Occupy NOLA

New Orleans Liberation Academy believes that Occupy Wall Street is a profoundly important form of social action that is deeply connected to the struggle against the racial and economic oppression of poor, working, people and people of color. We are, as Leo W. Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers, said in a statement, “…fed up with the corporate greed, corruption and arrogance that have inflicted pain on far too many for far too long.”

Occupy Wall Street has become less of a movement for a specific cause and more of a space, a space in which people who feel a similar frustrations with the world as it is and as it has been are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate it.  Building from our school's philosophy of using the city as our school, and learning from the transformational events happening all around us in the world all the time, New Orleans Liberation Academy students and advisors will Occupy NOLA. As we begin today with a solidarity march and occupation, our goal is to create and maintain a space for true democracy, learning, growth, community and solidarity in opposition to the status quo that is destroying our lives, our neighborhoods and our cities. "It can't rain all the time."

We will be assembling at noon today at the intersection of Tulane and Broad in front of Orleans Parish Prison to highlight the continuing crisis of the prison industial complex that wreaks havoc in New Orleans and around the country.  We will be marching past Lafayette Square and the adjoining Federal Reserve Bank of New Orleans to call attention to the greed of the Federal Reserve and corrupt financial institutions that have caused so many to suffer.  Following the march, participants will establsih an encampment at Duncan Plaza near City Hall which will be a space where we work to practice true democracy in contrast to our current political system. Read the full press release from Occupy NOLA HERE.

We hope you will join us! Occupy together! We are the 99%! We stand in solidarity!

Undoing Racism

This weekend, New Orleans Liberation Academy student Anthony Johnson is participating in the Undoing Racism workshop at Tulane University facilitated by the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.

The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond focuses on understanding what racism is, where it comes from, how it functions, why it persists and how it can be undone. Our workshops utilize a systemic approach that emphasizes learning from history, developing leadership, maintaining accountability to communities, creating networks, undoing internalized racial oppression and understanding the role of organizational gate keeping as a mechanism for perpetuating racism.

Anthony is participating alongside Students Organizing Against Racism, a multiracial, multicultural Tulane University student organization dedicated to antiracist organizing at an individual, institutional and cultural level. Their goals are to analyze and organize around issues of race and racism at Tulane, as well as to respond to specific problems on campus while also striving to forge meaningful relationships between Tulane and the greater New Orleans community.

How Can We Undo Racism?

The fabric of racism is inextricably woven and constructed into the founding principles of the United States. Racism was done and it can be undone through effective anti-racist organizing with, and in accountability to the communities most impacted by racism. The People’s Institute believes that effective community and institutional change happens when those who serve as agents of transformation understand the foundations of race and racism and how they continually function as a barrier to community self-determination and self-sufficiency.

This nation has always reflected rich diversity from the innumerable multitude of indigenous cultures that inhabited and sustained this land prior to arrival of European explorers to our present composition. Yet, unequivocally, whites continue to fair significantly better than all people of color. In our workshops, we analyze power and how it is used to maintain this racial divide, in hopes of achieving equity and equality across all cultures and races.

Through dialogue, reflection, role-playing, strategic planning and presentations, this intensive process challenges participants to analyze the structures of power and privilege that hinder social equity and prepares them to be effective organizers for justice. We look forward to sharing updates and reflections on Anthony's experience and his antiracist community organizing to come.

Wishing John Taylor Gatto a Quick Recovery

Recently we received the sad news from our friends at the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) that John Taylor Gatto has had a serious stroke.  Gatto has an incredible inspiration to us in our work to develop a learning environment for New Orleans youth that is not manipulative and doesn’t follow the familiar pattern in compulsory education of dumbing us down and programming us conform to economic and social norms rather than being really taught to think. Please join us in wishing him a speedy recovery.

 

From Jerry Mintz at AERO: Last night I talked to his wife who told me that John was in the hospital for a week and has been in a rehab center for three weeks. He has speech problems and problems on his left side. But she said he can walk 40 steps now and his speech is getting better. We need John to return to full health! If you would like to send some good words to John you can write to me and I’ll put them together and get the messages to him. Send to JerryAERO@AOL.com

 

Schooling is not Education - part 1

 

About John Taylor Gatto:

 

John Taylor Gatto climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year in 1990 after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. He quit teaching on the OP-ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was no longer willing to hurt children (click here to read his full OP-ED).

 

Schooling is not Education - part 2

 

Later that year he was the subject of a show at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto," which launched a career of public speaking in the area of school reform, which has taken Gatto over a million and a half miles in all fifty states and seven foreign countries. In 1992, he was named Secretary of Education in the Libertarian Party Shadow Cabinet, and he has been included in Who's Who in America from 1996 on. In 1997, he was given the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for his contributions to the cause of liberty, and was named to the Board of Advisors of the National TV-Turnoff Week.

 

Schooling is not Education - part 3

 

Recently, John Taylor Gatto has launched what he calls an “open conspiracy” to destroy the standardized testing industry. This “conspiracy”, is being called the Bartleby Project. "The Bartleby Project begins by inviting 60,000,000 American students, one by one, to peacefully refuse to take standardized tests or to participate in any preparation for these tests; it asks them to act because adults chained to institutions and corporations are unable to; because these tests pervert education, are disgracefully inaccurate, impose brutal stresses without reason, and actively encourage a class system which is poisoning the future of the nation." Read John Taylor Gatto's full statement on the Bartleby Project.

 

Schooling is not Education - part 4

 

We support the Bartleby Project the rights of students and parents to opt-out of standardized tests. Just say: I would prefer not to take your test.  Learn more about the growing movement to opt-out of standardized tests by visiting United Opt Out National: The Movement to End Punitive Public School Testing.

 

Schooling is not Education - part 5

We encourage you to join us in sending your well wishes as he recovers, and please, check out some more of our favorite works from John Taylor Gatto:

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation Into the Prison of Modern Schooling

A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Comulsory Schooling

We Speak for the Trees

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not!" - The Lorax

The Lorax, written by Dr. Seuss in 1971, focuses on environmentalism and the consequences of increasing industrialization.  Published the same year as the founding of green peace, this children’s story marks the beginning of the environmental movement.  Using colorful and animated characters, Seuss personifies big industry in an entrepreneur, the Once-ler, and the stereotypical environmentalist in the Lorax. The Lorax is a mysterious character who attempts to protect animals’ habitats from the Once-ler's destructive and greedy actions.  The message Seuss portrays about the detrimental effects of environmental apathy is one that resounds strongly still in today’s world and we think it is a great book to teach students of all ages about the power they have to make a difference in our world and our environment.

Learning Objectives:

• Students will understand the symbolism of both main characters
• Students will analyze the environmentalist theme of the story
• Students will discuss parallels from the story to our own society
• Students will understand the interconnectedness of elements of the natural environment
• Students will search for potential solutions to the growing problems represented in the story

Lesson:

1.  Together, read the book aloud and give all students get a chance to read at least a page or two.

2.  Start class discussion with open ended questions such as:

a.  Was it fair for the Once-ler to destroy natural habitats for his business?

b.  Could the Once-ler have kept his business going without cutting down every Truffula Tree?

c.  What destruction of natural habitats have we seen in New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, and/or the rest of the country? Where does it happen?

d. How does the destruction of natural habitats affect humans?

3.  Transition into a class activity by dividing the class into groups.

4.  Give each group ten plastic cups and tell them to stack the cups in a pyramid shape.

5.  Next instruct each group to choose one cup from the bottom row and try to remove it without knocking any of the others down.  When the pyramid collapses tell them to try it again but choosing a different of the four bottom cups.

Evaluation:

1.   Lead a class discussion based on the observation that removing one cup automatically affects the entire pyramid.  Prompt the class to find the connection between the pyramids’ dependence on every one of its cups, to an ecosystem, where every change in some way affects the whole ecosystem.  Discuss the effects of specific man made changes, big and small, to the environment as a whole.

2.   Divide the class into groups and assign each group a section of the story to act out for the class (e.g. the section describing the land before the Once-ler came, the scene where the Lorax appears in the story, when the different animals are forced to leave their homes).  At the end, have the class discuss possible ways the Once-ler could have continued his business without damaging the environment as much.

Follow-up: activities

1.  Students develop independent or small group service-learning projects in the community based on the themes of The Lorax. Examples of projects may include (but are not limited to) working to preserve and restore the natural environment of Louisiana's Gulf Coast, developing an advocacy campaign to put pressure on businesses to be environmentally friendly, teaching The Lorax to younger children at the Lower 9th Ward Street Library, and many, many more ideas.



    Check out The Lorax Project for more ideas of what you can do to help protect our environment.

Multiple Lines of Defense

Last Friday, New Orleans Liberation Academy student Anthony Johnson had the opportunity to go on a boat tour with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development (CSED), the Gulf Restoration Network, and other local community leaders.

It was his first time ever on a boat and he says that at first it was a little scary, but eventually had a great time and even learned a lot too. After all, this was "Science Class"

CLICK HERE for more pictures of Bayou Bienvenue, the Mississippi
River Gulf Outlet (MR-GO) and Lake Borgne from the Multiple Lines
of Defense Boat Tour. Photos courtesy of Sarah DeBacher.

The purpose of the trip was to highlight the Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy, not just relying on the levees to protect us. The strategy works on the premise that coastal Louisiana must be protected from storms and flooding by both man-made features, such as levees, and by the natural coastal wetland buffer along the Louisiana coast. Levees alone will not work.

By building up the 11 lines of defense and restoring the historic wetland habitats to thier past natural health, we can protect our region.


Lopez, John A., 2006,  The Multiple Lines of Defense Strategy to Sustain
Coastal Louisiana, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, Metairie, LA January 2006