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No Justice and No Peace: A Critique of Current Social Change Politics (2 of 8)
In our attempt to understand what it means to live here, we are constantly questioning our role in movements towards social justice. From watching gentrification condos being built outside our window, and throughout the city, to intervening in a domestic violence situation on the street in front of our house (and the ensuing interaction with police) – we are in a position of both acting, and acted upon. Knowing that simple solutions to these problems are not available, we also recognize that, in complex ways, we play a role in contributing to the problems that effect us and others.
This ranges from being a part of the process that prepares neighborhoods for gentrification, to working for the non-profits that we critique. In this way, we are simultaneously resisting while also conforming. This leads us to another aspect of social change that we are both highly critical of, and also at times working for: mass protests.
As one of the main tools that is used in this country to address the government, street protest needs to be critically analyzed beyond an evaluation after each demonstration, with participants debating whether it was boring, dynamic, inspiring, or whatever. Some of the questions that we ask instead are: What does it mean that organizers are compelled to use so much of their resources, in the name of social justice, to bus in people from across the U.S. and abroad, while half a million people here, a majority of them the most disenfranchised in the country, continue to be ignored? Does it make sense that the majority of people that travel to DC to “let their dissent be heard” are white, when the majority that lives in the city where they are protesting are people of color? And most importantly, what's the point? This is not to say that mass mobilizations are inherently pointless, rather, what is the larger strategic framework that they happen within, and also who makes the decisions about such frameworks and placing big protests as the priority? The many anti-globalization protests organized by the Mobilization for Global Justice exhibit this tendency, bringing thousands of protesters from around the country to demonstrate in downtown while not tapping the enormous resentment in the city towards the disenfranchisement of DC. Similarly, the March for Women's Lives in 2004 boasted of putting close to a million people on the streets, but again, the vast majority were white women, and even women organizers of color expressed dismay at the failure to better include them and their communities in the organizing and messaging. DC has some of the worst indicators of reproductive health, from HIV and STD rates to high infant mortality, yet, black women from DC were never central to the demonstration.
