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- Definatalie ”Occupy my pie in the sky”
IMPORTANT REMINDER. it wasn’t until 5 or 6 years of organizing and protesting that a close friend of mine called me out on shouting a slogan like “stand up fight back” as being ableist. i had really considered other discriminatory factors around protests and privilege in the past, but noticing how entrenched oppressive discourses were in the chants shouted at nearly every protest was kind of the final nail in the coffin, or should i say the brightest lightbulb?
it helped me figure out a lot of my own problems with protests (as empowering as i have found many of the ones i have chosen to participate in). but that’s the important thing: it felt like my choice to participate or not.
going to protests shouldn’t be like a merit badge in order to be considered a “good” activist, a “good” progressive leftie. it shouldn’t be prescriptive… but that’s slightly another topic.
here are two good articles on that note if you’re interested in more:
- left of the body hatred
- ‘stand up’ for exclusion? by danielle peers
(via garconniere)
yep. this attitude is pretty widespread. i think tumblr sj bloggers hear it a lot too. i certainly do… “go out and DO something instead of just blogging.”
(via youarenotyou)
At least one trans man has faced incredibly discriminatory treatment by hte police after being arrested with 70 other protestors at the NYC “occupy”, I would not be surprised to hear that people of color have as well, obviously immigrants have reason to avoid anything that will likely get them arrested, the protests may not always be held in accessible places and that’s assuming that PWD even have the spoons/etc to get there. Oh, and this is all assuming that they have the money/live near enough to get there & don’t have a job or can afford to take off of said job or don’t have things like family who need them more than the protest.
People do what they can. Deal with it.
(via scar-lip)
I keep fighting an internalized version of this, it’s that common. And harmful. Disabled people also might not be able to (physically or mentally) deal with the crowded conditions and possibility of injury, much less the punitive and abusive kettling which has become inevitable in the UK. (ATM, I’ve got fragile bones, for example.) Does this make us less committed to improving things? Hardly.
(via duyukdv)
I’m reblogging this for the excellent commentary supplied by all the above tumblr folk, but also to say that I wrote this a week ago and it’s like I’m shithot at predicting the future… Occupy Brisbane is a joke.
I tried to engage the people doing the livestream, I tried to ask them how they were going to take action, the things that people were concerned about, whether they were inclusive, but they knew NOTHING. They stood for NOTHING.
And on top of that? The old “shame on you for not being here” schtick. Exactly how I wrote it.