UPDATE on meetings with Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler and the Syracuse Citizen's Review Board:

Just so that you readers are aware...

My partner Adam and I are the first case for the 'new' Syracuse Citizen's Review Board. On the night of the Occupy Syracuse eviction we were assaulted by a police officer for simply getting out of our car far from where the O.S. eviction was taking place. We decided to file a formal complaint with the CRB the week of the eviction and contacted Barrie Gewanter from the NYCLU to meet with Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler. Both meetings were this past Friday, so it's taken almost a month just to have the first meetings with both the CRB and Fowler.

I hope that our actions to speak out against the assault will make the people of Syracuse aware of the CRB and that the injustices that occur in this city every day will not go unnoticed. We know that police brutality, racial profiling, and the hyper-surveillance in the poor communities of Syracuse happen on an every-hour basis, but it's crucial to hold the police accountable for their behavior. They want us to think we are powerless. But we know change can only really happen if the people realize their voice is valuable and can make changes!

I will post the interview that I had once the PSL and/or the ANSWER Coalition posts it with more details on how the meetings went and our reasoning for filing formal complaints.

Here is the article written by our comrades (Syracuse ANSWER Coalition) right after the assault took place. This article includes a photo of what the cop did to my left arm.

http://www.answercoalition.org/syracuse/news/syracuse-police-attack-answer.html

Here is the first article that was put online after our meetings with Fowler and the CRB this past Friday 2/10 :

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=718678#.TzoBABwbsiY

Response ¡Chicana Power! Introduction:

1. What do you think about Maylei Blackwell’s approach in the book?

“The Telling is Political” is a perfect title for Blackwell’s introduction of her book. She discusses how what’s referred to as the Chicano Civil Rights Movement only tells one part of the story. Like many nationalist movements (especially of the mid-late 20th Century), the various role(s) of women within the movement are often forgotten or deemed unimportant. This is precisely why Chicana activists started branching off into their own organizations/groups that addressed women’s issues and recognized what Chicana’s brought to the movement as a whole. Blackwell focuses on archiving and retelling the experiences of Chicanas in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly on Chicana activist Anna NietoGomez and the members of the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc—one of the first Latina feminist organizations created. NietoGomez and the Hijas de Cuauhtémoc created a space for Chicanas, while the nationalist male-dominated Chicano Civil Rights Movement pushed their contributions aside. This all eventually led to the formation of Chicana & Chicano Studies programs within academia.

I feel it is important to share Blackwell’s definition of “Retrofitted Memory” to better understand what she is attempting to establish in the book’s entirety. “Retrofitted memory is a form of counter-memory that uses fragments of older histories that have been disjunctured by colonial practices of organizing historical knowledge or by masculinist renderings of history that disappear women’s political involvement in order to create space for women in historical traditions that erase them” (Blackwell 2). YES, YES, and YES. Blackwell isn’t only interested in re-telling the stories, experiences, and contributions of women that have been erased/untold within the Chican@ Civil Rights Movement, but also wants readers to understand the very political and systemic knowledge practices that produce them.

2. How may it be helpful in relation to the Occupy Movement and modern-day feminist activists?

The last half of the introduction, Blackwell writes about her experience and interview with Chicana activist and theorist Anna NietoGomez. I immediately saw the connections between involvement of women of color in revolutionary movements back then and now. NietoGomez described how many Chicanas became so involved in their activism(s) that they decided to quit school or found academia unnecessary because of the grassroots work they were doing in their communities. NietoGomez explained that much of this was because of the attitudes and treatment towards Chicana women in academia (as teachers and students), which led to many Chicanas voices/stories being erased or untold through academic research, lessons, and texts.

Although the gender divide is much more narrow now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s, it is much more hidden, subtle, and often harder to detect for those participating within movements. However, women are often still expected to take up space as the secretaries and cooks behind the scenes. From my experience as an activist in the Occupy Syracuse movement, I have been interrupted repeatedly, sexually harassed (online, not in-person), assaulted by a police officer, been told to “tone down my radical approach” numerous times. I also discuss in my first blog post my experience as someone who at first volunteered to take notes for the group, but was then quickly expected to. Still in 2011 and 2012, I had to work to make my voice heard and taken seriously within a modern-day social movement. As a “mixed” woman of color I am all too familiar with how males within nationalist/people of color movements can try to convince women of color that feminist issues only divide them from the movement as a whole and the males within them. Blackwell refers to this as “Double Militancia” or “Double Activism,” something that women of color activists/feminists often engage in. This is a perfect example of what Gloria Anzaldúa refers to as “constantly living on the borderlands,” having to deal with race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, etc...all at once.

Lastly, Blackwell emphasizes the importance of oral histories and living memories. She goes on to explain what she calls the “repertoire” of oral knowledge and memory by describing it something that can be performed. “Perhaps oral history is a hybrid that fits somewhere in between the archive and the repertoire, depending on how the narrator narrates, how the listener listens, and how the researcher wields the apparatus of objectivity that records or captures this performance” (10). As a scholar-activist, I find Blackwell’s valuing of not just oral histories, but the performance of them essential in the retelling of Chicana historie(s).

Maylei Blackwell, ¡Chicana Power!: Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

Occupying the "Occupy Olympics!"

Hello everyone.

Another week has gone by. So much to say, so little time!

Last week my focus was on archiving all hard-copies/physical documents I have collected since Occupy Syracuse started last October. I am still in the process of collecting and organizing all of my digital/electronic documents, photos, articles, etc... And by the looks of it, I can write a whole book on my experiences as a women of color activist within the Occupy Syracuse movement.

One recurring topic of conversation between local activists and/or Occupy Syracuse supporters in the community has been the issue of power dynamics within the movement and danger to render certain work within the movement as invisible. This can be connected to what I wrote about in my last post, the “Occupy Olympics.” Native American Feminist and Author Andrea Smith coined the term “Oppression Olympics” in her well-known work entitled, “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy” as a sort of competition among all oppressed people(s) that diverts them from finding solutions to the root of the problem. It essentially turns the oppressed masses against each other, as opposed to having the groups work in solidarity with one another to expose the real problem(s) like capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy...to name a few.

Simply put, the “Occupy Olympics” represents those within the Occupy movement (this can mean as whole, not necessarily just Syracuse), who feel they deserve to be more physically present than others because of their personal circumstances, who feel their presence and/or work within the Occupy movement is more valuable than others, or who still use language, expressions, or actions to gain power over those who are least represented or not represented at all within the movement. The internal politics of race, class, gender, age, (dis)ability, citizenship, sexuality, etc...have created tensions within an otherwise peaceful Occupy Syracuse movement.

Questions I’d like to ask:

What I am interested in is analyzing how different bodies occupy space within this movement. Who is represented more visuably within the media? Who takes up the most space physically (including speaking)? What voices are heard? Whose opinions are legitimized and whose are scrutinized? Who takes up more space cyberly and how might that be different/same from who takes up more physical space?

Three Issues I Have With “Occupying” a Physical, Public Space:

1. As a Chicana Feminist, the term “Occupy” can be considered a problematic one. I will interchangeably say, “the Occupy movement” or “99% movement,” for this very reason. However, “Occupy” when referring to the “99% movement” is for a political purpose, to stand up against and take back our land from the 1% (filthy rich people and our government). Sure, it will be taken out of context by many who critique the term (or movement as a whole), but because of the actions the movement has taken (to occupy certain, symbolic public spaces), the term can be considered fitting.

1. “Occupying” physical spaces becomes the main issue. Since the beginning of Occupy Syracuse in early October, there has been an ever-apparent divide between the O.S. campers who many refer to as urban campers, and the O.S. supporters and activists who organize teach-ins, marches, protests, and more direct action—often referred to as the G.A. people by the O.S. campers. G.A. is short for “General Assembly,” as in our meetings.

This divide is the Occupy Olympics. The Occupy Wall Street movement started to empower the public and encourage them to not only support the movement by occupying certain public spaces physically (like New York City), but engage in any kind of constructive direct action that will ignite political change(s) all over the world.

1. The vast majority of those physically occupying are disproportionally white males between the ages of 18 and 45. Despite a few votes to bring more “racial and ethnic diversity” to the movement, Occupy Syracuse still looks very much like a bunch of white men urban camping—only now without the expensive tents because they aren’t allowed to have them there anymore. The few people of color, and even fewer women of color who have been involved are not as involved physically as they were in the beginning of the movement (myself included). Although the movement claims to be “leaderless” and a “safe space” for everyone, there have been issues with allowing for everyone to have time (equal) time to speak, males interrupting females, use of racist or sexist language, and heteropatriarchal behavior—including the naming of “mama” and “papa” within the camp.

What many of the physical occupiers do not realize is that people of color and the poor are not going to spend their spare time (if they have any) to sleep on concrete, march behind an American imperialist flag, or praise the Syracuse Police who threaten, kill, rape, accuse, and incarcerate them. There must be more effective outreach and openness to the 99% who make up the poor, people of color, and immigrants in the Greater Syracuse community.

As I delve more deeply into my research I will reflect on different experiences I have had as a woman of color, a feminist, a university student, and a local Occupy Syracuse activist by archiving my memories until I have enough data to put together a research paper. I encourage your participation and hope to hear from you with any questions, comments, or suggestions.

In Solidarity,

Risa