A winter reflection redux: Seeking a (truer) "collective responsibility"
Two years ago, I began a reflection that, for all intents and purposes, has remained an evolving story (a winter reflection). Here, again, I sit in the front room of our now 108 year old shotgun (still chilly) house with the Christmas tree aglow behind me and the space heater at my feet. I continue my reflection on the state of things, sipping coffee, mesmerized by beads of rain suspended from the magnolia tree in the front yard.
These dangling beads provide an interesting background against which the Christmas tree lights reflect in the window, looking themselves like little droplets on the outside tree branches. This switching foreground/background provides an apt metaphor for my frame of mind—the perspective of inside/outside. Upon which canvas do I most want to do my work? That of reform from within or revolution from without? (And, figuring out where or if the two possibilities overlap.)
My impetus for expanding this reflection now stems from a panel I co-moderated not too long ago on the connections between religion and the war in Iraq. I have been helping construct a series of teach-ins, entitled Beyond the Sound Bites, in which we seek to hold deeper and more meaningful dialogues about the war through the lens of such issues as history, US foreign policy, religion, energy (consumption and policy), veteran’s affairs, media, etc. At this particular discussion, one panelist, who fervently favored the war, was asked to comment on his faith’s perspective on the death of innocents in war, what we have come to term, quite innocuously and unfortunately, as “collateral damage.” This panelist suggested that a nation’s people assume “collective responsibility” for their leaders. So, in the process of having a leader deposed (as the US war of aggression in Iraq has accomplished), that some innocents are murdered is ultimately the fault of the people who perished, since they did not oust said leader themselves. Taken to its logical conclusion, then, this line of reasoning claims that the seven-year-old incinerated by the indiscriminate US bomb is culpable for his/her own murder, since s/he did nothing to depose the dictator who seized power in their country. This also suggests that the seven-year-old Israeli child who is blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber or the immigrant janitor who died on September 11 in the world trade towers are somehow “collectively responsible” for their own deaths. To the extent that we are able to democratically choose our leaders and have input into our foreign policy, I can agree with some responsibility. But, to uncritically suggest it is each of our responsibilities, equally shared, is preposterous (mean-spirited, really), and misses the oppressive and rigid systems constructed to minimize our democratic participation and input (in Iraq, in Israel, in the US)—keeping us relatively ignorant and distracted by meaningless minutiae.
Our preoccupations and lack of access to (or desire for) information leads, then, to a more dogmatic dependence on someone else’s truth; a more simplistic, un-nuanced understanding of complexity; and (I mean to argue) a growing disconnectedness from the humanity of others.
During these last two years, my reflections have led me to ponder issues of community and its relative lack in our nation and world. More recently, I have begun to view this lack through the lens of five major events (what Naomi Klein would call “shocks”) that have marked the first decade of this century—the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the expansion of neoliberalism/globalization—which I believe successfully narrate the collapse of community in our world.
The “shock doctrine”—disaster capitalism
That we ever had community is a matter for considerable debate. But, as the new millennium gains momentum, a focus on rekindling this concept of community is central to the thesis of social justice. One need only look at the signposts of our new epoch, ruptures and upheavals that punctuate injustice: the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, the No Child Left Behind Act, and corporate globalization. While these events find their roots in years that precede the 21st century, I want to position them as pivotal points that dot the landscape of this first decade and possibly foretell the trajectory of this yet young era. I also mean to suggest that their occurrences/unfolding/aftermath are linked to an overall breakdown of community—that, counter-intuitively, as we have developed the technologies to reach out to nearly anyone in the world at any time and have access to more information than at any moment in history, we find ourselves (at least in West/Global North) more disconnected from others and with less understanding of what is happening to our brothers and sisters down the street, in our nation, and in our world.
In an earlier column (the revolution) I etched out initial thoughts related to these ruptures. Unfortunately, their impacts continue to be felt and, in most cases, worsen.
Coupled with this concept of community (or lack there of), I have more recently been influenced by Naomi Klein’s latest book: The Shock Doctrine. In it she develops the concept of “disaster capitalism,” which Klein claims forecasts and promotes the further breakdown of community and general destructiveness given that the economic structure helps create the disasters from which it can profit. In the October, 2007 Harpers Magazine, Klein argues, “After each new disaster [tsunami’s, hurricanes, war, etc.], it’s tempting to imagine that the loss of life and productivity will finally serve as a wake-up call, provoking the political class to launch some kind of ‘new New Deal.’ In fact, the opposite is taking place: disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of the public sphere has no place at all. . . .Every time a new crisis hits—even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free market ideology—the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic reengineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned.”
Let’s consider the shocks that have befallen the first decade of this century:
The Iraq War
As the war gets ready to enter a 5th year of its devastation for Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the world, there are few signs of its let up. As President Bush continues to ask for more money (and the Congress rolls over and gives it to him); as the democratic presidential hopefuls trip over each other with minimally different strategies for our exit; as liberal journals like Mother Jones cynically ask “out of Iraq, how?”; as we continue to support dictator Musharaff in Pakistan (declaring martial law then reconstituting his Supreme Court to make sure he can stay in power, indefinitely); as we give Turkey unfettered access to the PKK rebels in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq; as military demographics continue to indicate that our armed forces are disproportionately made up of troops of color; and as the US decided to appoint and approve a new Attorney General who isn’t sure whether water-boarding is torture, but that expanded executive powers which stand outside the Constitution might be okay, we begin to understand the concept of a “ruthlessly divided world” and the “partition of the included and excluded” as global red and green zones get constructed in which some will be protected and most will not.
Genocide in Darfur
As the echoes of “never again” become fainter and fainter; as more and more Darfurians are displaced; as more and more Darfurians are murdered by state sanction; and as the world community drags its feet (and considers who might get Sudan’s oil), one already imagines the horrific narratives that will be written about this era—wondering how it could have happened, why no one stopped it, and what we will do to make sure this time it never happens again. The (ultimate) breakdown and disconnect of community, indeed—a world in which the relative wealthy receive the technical bread and circus of reality TV and the latest electronic gadgets while thousands of our brothers and sisters are murdered by relatively simple and unsophisticated implements: knives, machetes, and rifles.
Hurricane Katrina—an aftermath that refuses to recede
As the poorer sections of New Orleans continue to lie in ruins; as HUD prepares to destroy more public housing; as insurance companies figure out ways to deny losses resulting from the rain and/or the flood; as the public education system is dismantled in favor of charter schools (with less public oversight and more selective criteria); as the Saints demonstrate the revitalization of (or is it the evisceration of) the New Orleans spirit in the house (the Superdome) that served as tenement/morgue/refuge for the disenfranchised, symbolizing simultaneously the resiliency of human beings and the disregard for human life; as the public is quickly and quietly usurped by the private, creating residential red and green zones; and as the federal, state, and local governments (perhaps purposefully) perform grotesque political theater in which our faith in the public withers, we batten down the hatches, hoping our communities are not visited by such ‘natural’ disaster. And, with the subsequent incompetent response, we watch as the metaphorical midwife of corporate interests write their new prescription for “economic shock therapy.” Klein, in fact, speaks even more directly to this: “Not so long ago, disasters were periods of social leveling, rare moments when atomized communities put divisions aside and pulled together. Today, they are moments when we are hurled further apart, when we lurch into a radically segregated future where some of us will fall off the map and others ascend to a parallel privatized state, one equipped with well-paved highways and skyways, safe bridges, boutique charter schools, fast lane airport terminals, and deluxe subways.”
The No Child Left Behind Act—the decline of democracy
As No Child Left Behind continues to reveal its significant imperfections and its implausibility as educational policy (removing money from the kids who need it most); as critical thinking is routinely sacrificed at the alter of rote memorization and regurgitation of factoids; as the military gains unfettered access to the kids designed to fall through the cracks; as we avail ourselves to more and more police state like operations and tactics, characterized by cameras, rights reductions, prison-like discipline policies, and accrediting bodies who limit the potential of teaching and learning through heavy-handed, goose-step standards; and as we watch idly as the Supreme Court returns us to a state of educational Apartheid, we witness the spiritual demolition of perhaps the last place that might bring/assure us a viable democracy: public schools.
Corporate Globalization
Finally, as corporate globalization, aka “neoliberalism,” seeps its way into poorer and poorer countries; as the promises of revitalized economies in the Global South ring empty under the weight of structural adjustment policies which take from the poor and give to the rich; as the environment is raped of its resources and clean air is replaced with pollution the Global North would rather not have in its back yard; as we know the ‘people’ are continually duped by the global powers to jump on the corporate globalization bandwagon against their better interest (see Costa Rica); and as our attention is diverted from recognizing the link between producer (child in maquiladora making $0.50/day) and consumer (professional family living in 108 year old shotgun making $100000/year combined), we witness an evolving and cataclysmic economic crisis of free market ideology in which we/I have failed in our/my “collective responsibility.”
Shouldn’t we/I, as the relative privileged, shoulder more of the responsibility for this injustice than the relative oppressed? Should we blame the victims of systems constructed to create victims for their own oppression? Shouldn’t we expect (and actually hope for) resistance?
Well, where is the hope?
These shocks that jolt our 21st century consciousness could certainly render us hopeless. Indeed, it leaves me cynical. Yet, I hold onto some thread of hope—some moment of creation that might yet be born despite the concerted efforts of the shock therapists. In this moment, perhaps we can begin to (re)write some of the narrative—turning it around, flipping it over—recognizing that history is not already determined, that it is constantly being made.
Practically, and more locally, I think about the continuously evolving work of the PrESS Network in which we create a supportive circle of students, teachers, social workers, and community activists, launching professional developments on critical literacy and green education, serving the local community, and promoting a more critical consciousness about the system of injustice that structures schooling in America.
I think about the work my partner and I have developed in the Global South over the last decade, particularly in schools and children’s homes in Montego Bay Jamaica. Specifically, I reflect on the work of one of our close teacher friends who has just begun full time coursework for her official teaching credentials (and how she balances full-time schooling, full-time teaching, and full-time parenting as the mother of four children). Our financial assistance pales in comparison to her strength and tenacity to overcome conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation in the world of corporate globalization I described above. As well, I consider the possibilities of the forthcoming partnership we have forged between the physical therapy school at my university and one of the private (under-funded and under-resourced) children’s homes in Montego Bay, which houses and serves children impacted and disfigured by physical disabilities.
I think about my fall 2007 students and their blossoming potential—(1) graduate students who demonstrated the real possibilities of an educative community: discovering and constructing knowledge together, serving the local community, and committing to the ongoing struggle in their future classroom, and (2) undergraduate students who helped launch the second Beyond the Sound Bites teach-in, who had a voice in the development of their university community and who inspired fellow students to respond so critically (with their own voices at the teach-in and in follow-up reflections/editorials) to the relatively uncritical comments of some of the panelists.
I think about the Rouge Forum and their work to keep alive discussions of the war and to hold unions accountable for the protection and promotion of workers. This March, students, scholars, teachers, performers, activists, and others who work on the better behalf of their local and global brothers and sisters will descend on Louisville for an international conference which investigates whether (and/or to what extent) education in America can/should be reformed or revolutionized.
Internationally, I think a lot about the examples of solidarity provided by our neighbors in the Global South, particularly the block of nations that Hugo Chavez is coordinating. I am particularly reminded here of President Correa’s recent comments. In a November edition of The Nation, Naomi Klein reported: “In less than two years, the lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the country's leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease ‘on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami--an Ecuadorean base. If there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.’” May we all possess such clarity and such courage.
Working for reform or revolution (am I inside or outside?):
Alongside these practical considerations and possibilities (of which I know there are numerous additional examples), I also want to reflect on more theoretical potentialities and frameworks toward which we can articulate our future work and trajectories. This work is not random. It is coordinated and intentional. To this end, then, I propose three possible concepts/frameworks which might help direct our future intentions: Paul Farmer’s “pragmatic solidarity,” Michael Lebowitz’s “revolution of radical needs,” and Paulo Freire’s “dialogical action.”
Farmer, in Pathologies of Power, develops a mode of living which he terms “pragmatic solidarity”—the desire to make common cause with those in need. In his development he suggests we must connect sentiment with work, that goods and services must accompany our claims of solidarity with the oppressed. Thus, how do we balance a “being with” and a “doing for?” And, how do we ultimately bring ourselves closer—economically and spiritually—in the ways we live and struggle together?
Lebowitz, in Build it Now, evolves his thesis of the “revolution of radical needs”—the simultaneous changing of (structural) circumstances and self-change. He argues, “By simulating the solidarity that comes from an emphasis upon the interests of the community, rather than self-interest, a model based on this radical supply side theory rooted in human development will allow a government to move forward with the support of the community”—that the free development of each equals the free development of all. So, how does/can our work lead to self-change (consciousness, life-style, etc.) and to a change in material conditions (that improves the economic and spiritual lives of all)?
Finally, Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, talks about the concept of “unity for liberation” as an integral component of dialogical action. He pleads, “In order for the oppressed to unite, they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. To achieve this indispensable unity the revolutionary process must be, from the beginning, cultural action.” That is, the oppressed must first recognize themselves as subjects in the historical process rather than objects of a history that someone else constructed and has foisted upon them. The relative privileged must come to this same consciousness, as well. Therefore, how do we shed our socialization to demystify our existence and understand the structure? How do we deconstruct the narrative myths created to distract us and domesticate us into believing our resistance is futile?
Toward a truer collective responsibility
What I want is to reshape our understanding of a “collective responsibility.” What I want is for us to stop blaming the oppressed for their oppression and to begin to find ways to make more meaningful solidaristic connections that might bring about lasting change. What I want is for us to coordinate our efforts, challenge ourselves away from too-easy-dogma and away from fundamentalism toward criticality, nuance, and an appreciation of complexity. What I want is to attack injustice at its source—not in the actions of individuals, but in the mechanics of systems that are (1) designed to render a few fortunate and many disenfranchised, (2) manufactured to justify the imbalance, and/or (3) made to keep our attention on some future life rather than on the immediate needs of our brothers and sisters. What I want is some moment of creation in which we can act as midwife to something more beautiful, more humanizing, more liberating.
As the Christmas tree lights and the beads of rain continue their dance in the window, I remain unsure of my desire for an inside or outside position. I recognize that most of my work is that of reform and, thus, work that emanates mainly from the inside (in the PrESS Network, in Jamaica, in the Rouge Forum, as a professor, etc.). This work has meaning, but I wrestle with its effect and (usual non-)immediacy of results. Then, I consider the work from the outside (where those with whom I desire to be in solidarity almost always perform their work) and wonder what type of revolutionary spirit I might muster given my relatively privileged life. What will make this solidarity more pragmatic? How can I at once work inwardly on my own consciousness and outwardly on the dismantling of unjust structures? How can I seek a truer collective responsibility for which our accountability is more dependent upon our ability to preserve life than to take it, to unlock the human potential of all than to bind it up in fundamentalist narratives that ultimately serve the interests of the elite, and/or to bring about an emergence (or renewal) of community than to help tear us into further disconnected neighborhood and individual silos? Whether we can do it through reform or revolution makes little difference (although I’m getting a better idea which is more promising). That it must be done is more compelling and is, indeed, our collective responsibility.
These dangling beads provide an interesting background against which the Christmas tree lights reflect in the window, looking themselves like little droplets on the outside tree branches. This switching foreground/background provides an apt metaphor for my frame of mind—the perspective of inside/outside. Upon which canvas do I most want to do my work? That of reform from within or revolution from without? (And, figuring out where or if the two possibilities overlap.)
My impetus for expanding this reflection now stems from a panel I co-moderated not too long ago on the connections between religion and the war in Iraq. I have been helping construct a series of teach-ins, entitled Beyond the Sound Bites, in which we seek to hold deeper and more meaningful dialogues about the war through the lens of such issues as history, US foreign policy, religion, energy (consumption and policy), veteran’s affairs, media, etc. At this particular discussion, one panelist, who fervently favored the war, was asked to comment on his faith’s perspective on the death of innocents in war, what we have come to term, quite innocuously and unfortunately, as “collateral damage.” This panelist suggested that a nation’s people assume “collective responsibility” for their leaders. So, in the process of having a leader deposed (as the US war of aggression in Iraq has accomplished), that some innocents are murdered is ultimately the fault of the people who perished, since they did not oust said leader themselves. Taken to its logical conclusion, then, this line of reasoning claims that the seven-year-old incinerated by the indiscriminate US bomb is culpable for his/her own murder, since s/he did nothing to depose the dictator who seized power in their country. This also suggests that the seven-year-old Israeli child who is blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber or the immigrant janitor who died on September 11 in the world trade towers are somehow “collectively responsible” for their own deaths. To the extent that we are able to democratically choose our leaders and have input into our foreign policy, I can agree with some responsibility. But, to uncritically suggest it is each of our responsibilities, equally shared, is preposterous (mean-spirited, really), and misses the oppressive and rigid systems constructed to minimize our democratic participation and input (in Iraq, in Israel, in the US)—keeping us relatively ignorant and distracted by meaningless minutiae.
Our preoccupations and lack of access to (or desire for) information leads, then, to a more dogmatic dependence on someone else’s truth; a more simplistic, un-nuanced understanding of complexity; and (I mean to argue) a growing disconnectedness from the humanity of others.
During these last two years, my reflections have led me to ponder issues of community and its relative lack in our nation and world. More recently, I have begun to view this lack through the lens of five major events (what Naomi Klein would call “shocks”) that have marked the first decade of this century—the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the expansion of neoliberalism/globalization—which I believe successfully narrate the collapse of community in our world.
The “shock doctrine”—disaster capitalism
That we ever had community is a matter for considerable debate. But, as the new millennium gains momentum, a focus on rekindling this concept of community is central to the thesis of social justice. One need only look at the signposts of our new epoch, ruptures and upheavals that punctuate injustice: the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, the genocide in Darfur, the No Child Left Behind Act, and corporate globalization. While these events find their roots in years that precede the 21st century, I want to position them as pivotal points that dot the landscape of this first decade and possibly foretell the trajectory of this yet young era. I also mean to suggest that their occurrences/unfolding/aftermath are linked to an overall breakdown of community—that, counter-intuitively, as we have developed the technologies to reach out to nearly anyone in the world at any time and have access to more information than at any moment in history, we find ourselves (at least in West/Global North) more disconnected from others and with less understanding of what is happening to our brothers and sisters down the street, in our nation, and in our world.
In an earlier column (the revolution) I etched out initial thoughts related to these ruptures. Unfortunately, their impacts continue to be felt and, in most cases, worsen.
Coupled with this concept of community (or lack there of), I have more recently been influenced by Naomi Klein’s latest book: The Shock Doctrine. In it she develops the concept of “disaster capitalism,” which Klein claims forecasts and promotes the further breakdown of community and general destructiveness given that the economic structure helps create the disasters from which it can profit. In the October, 2007 Harpers Magazine, Klein argues, “After each new disaster [tsunami’s, hurricanes, war, etc.], it’s tempting to imagine that the loss of life and productivity will finally serve as a wake-up call, provoking the political class to launch some kind of ‘new New Deal.’ In fact, the opposite is taking place: disasters have become the preferred moments for advancing a vision of a ruthlessly divided world, one in which the very idea of the public sphere has no place at all. . . .Every time a new crisis hits—even when the crisis itself is the direct by-product of free market ideology—the fear and disorientation that follow are harnessed for radical social and economic reengineering. Each new shock is midwife to a new course of economic shock therapy. The end result is the same kind of unapologetic partition between the included and the excluded, the protected and the damned.”
Let’s consider the shocks that have befallen the first decade of this century:
The Iraq War
As the war gets ready to enter a 5th year of its devastation for Iraq, the greater Middle East, and the world, there are few signs of its let up. As President Bush continues to ask for more money (and the Congress rolls over and gives it to him); as the democratic presidential hopefuls trip over each other with minimally different strategies for our exit; as liberal journals like Mother Jones cynically ask “out of Iraq, how?”; as we continue to support dictator Musharaff in Pakistan (declaring martial law then reconstituting his Supreme Court to make sure he can stay in power, indefinitely); as we give Turkey unfettered access to the PKK rebels in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq; as military demographics continue to indicate that our armed forces are disproportionately made up of troops of color; and as the US decided to appoint and approve a new Attorney General who isn’t sure whether water-boarding is torture, but that expanded executive powers which stand outside the Constitution might be okay, we begin to understand the concept of a “ruthlessly divided world” and the “partition of the included and excluded” as global red and green zones get constructed in which some will be protected and most will not.
Genocide in Darfur
As the echoes of “never again” become fainter and fainter; as more and more Darfurians are displaced; as more and more Darfurians are murdered by state sanction; and as the world community drags its feet (and considers who might get Sudan’s oil), one already imagines the horrific narratives that will be written about this era—wondering how it could have happened, why no one stopped it, and what we will do to make sure this time it never happens again. The (ultimate) breakdown and disconnect of community, indeed—a world in which the relative wealthy receive the technical bread and circus of reality TV and the latest electronic gadgets while thousands of our brothers and sisters are murdered by relatively simple and unsophisticated implements: knives, machetes, and rifles.
Hurricane Katrina—an aftermath that refuses to recede
As the poorer sections of New Orleans continue to lie in ruins; as HUD prepares to destroy more public housing; as insurance companies figure out ways to deny losses resulting from the rain and/or the flood; as the public education system is dismantled in favor of charter schools (with less public oversight and more selective criteria); as the Saints demonstrate the revitalization of (or is it the evisceration of) the New Orleans spirit in the house (the Superdome) that served as tenement/morgue/refuge for the disenfranchised, symbolizing simultaneously the resiliency of human beings and the disregard for human life; as the public is quickly and quietly usurped by the private, creating residential red and green zones; and as the federal, state, and local governments (perhaps purposefully) perform grotesque political theater in which our faith in the public withers, we batten down the hatches, hoping our communities are not visited by such ‘natural’ disaster. And, with the subsequent incompetent response, we watch as the metaphorical midwife of corporate interests write their new prescription for “economic shock therapy.” Klein, in fact, speaks even more directly to this: “Not so long ago, disasters were periods of social leveling, rare moments when atomized communities put divisions aside and pulled together. Today, they are moments when we are hurled further apart, when we lurch into a radically segregated future where some of us will fall off the map and others ascend to a parallel privatized state, one equipped with well-paved highways and skyways, safe bridges, boutique charter schools, fast lane airport terminals, and deluxe subways.”
The No Child Left Behind Act—the decline of democracy
As No Child Left Behind continues to reveal its significant imperfections and its implausibility as educational policy (removing money from the kids who need it most); as critical thinking is routinely sacrificed at the alter of rote memorization and regurgitation of factoids; as the military gains unfettered access to the kids designed to fall through the cracks; as we avail ourselves to more and more police state like operations and tactics, characterized by cameras, rights reductions, prison-like discipline policies, and accrediting bodies who limit the potential of teaching and learning through heavy-handed, goose-step standards; and as we watch idly as the Supreme Court returns us to a state of educational Apartheid, we witness the spiritual demolition of perhaps the last place that might bring/assure us a viable democracy: public schools.
Corporate Globalization
Finally, as corporate globalization, aka “neoliberalism,” seeps its way into poorer and poorer countries; as the promises of revitalized economies in the Global South ring empty under the weight of structural adjustment policies which take from the poor and give to the rich; as the environment is raped of its resources and clean air is replaced with pollution the Global North would rather not have in its back yard; as we know the ‘people’ are continually duped by the global powers to jump on the corporate globalization bandwagon against their better interest (see Costa Rica); and as our attention is diverted from recognizing the link between producer (child in maquiladora making $0.50/day) and consumer (professional family living in 108 year old shotgun making $100000/year combined), we witness an evolving and cataclysmic economic crisis of free market ideology in which we/I have failed in our/my “collective responsibility.”
Shouldn’t we/I, as the relative privileged, shoulder more of the responsibility for this injustice than the relative oppressed? Should we blame the victims of systems constructed to create victims for their own oppression? Shouldn’t we expect (and actually hope for) resistance?
Well, where is the hope?
These shocks that jolt our 21st century consciousness could certainly render us hopeless. Indeed, it leaves me cynical. Yet, I hold onto some thread of hope—some moment of creation that might yet be born despite the concerted efforts of the shock therapists. In this moment, perhaps we can begin to (re)write some of the narrative—turning it around, flipping it over—recognizing that history is not already determined, that it is constantly being made.
Practically, and more locally, I think about the continuously evolving work of the PrESS Network in which we create a supportive circle of students, teachers, social workers, and community activists, launching professional developments on critical literacy and green education, serving the local community, and promoting a more critical consciousness about the system of injustice that structures schooling in America.
I think about the work my partner and I have developed in the Global South over the last decade, particularly in schools and children’s homes in Montego Bay Jamaica. Specifically, I reflect on the work of one of our close teacher friends who has just begun full time coursework for her official teaching credentials (and how she balances full-time schooling, full-time teaching, and full-time parenting as the mother of four children). Our financial assistance pales in comparison to her strength and tenacity to overcome conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation in the world of corporate globalization I described above. As well, I consider the possibilities of the forthcoming partnership we have forged between the physical therapy school at my university and one of the private (under-funded and under-resourced) children’s homes in Montego Bay, which houses and serves children impacted and disfigured by physical disabilities.
I think about my fall 2007 students and their blossoming potential—(1) graduate students who demonstrated the real possibilities of an educative community: discovering and constructing knowledge together, serving the local community, and committing to the ongoing struggle in their future classroom, and (2) undergraduate students who helped launch the second Beyond the Sound Bites teach-in, who had a voice in the development of their university community and who inspired fellow students to respond so critically (with their own voices at the teach-in and in follow-up reflections/editorials) to the relatively uncritical comments of some of the panelists.
I think about the Rouge Forum and their work to keep alive discussions of the war and to hold unions accountable for the protection and promotion of workers. This March, students, scholars, teachers, performers, activists, and others who work on the better behalf of their local and global brothers and sisters will descend on Louisville for an international conference which investigates whether (and/or to what extent) education in America can/should be reformed or revolutionized.
Internationally, I think a lot about the examples of solidarity provided by our neighbors in the Global South, particularly the block of nations that Hugo Chavez is coordinating. I am particularly reminded here of President Correa’s recent comments. In a November edition of The Nation, Naomi Klein reported: “In less than two years, the lease on the largest and most important US military base in Latin America will run out. The base is in Manta, Ecuador, and Rafael Correa, the country's leftist president, has pronounced that he will renew the lease ‘on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami--an Ecuadorean base. If there is no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States.’” May we all possess such clarity and such courage.
Working for reform or revolution (am I inside or outside?):
Alongside these practical considerations and possibilities (of which I know there are numerous additional examples), I also want to reflect on more theoretical potentialities and frameworks toward which we can articulate our future work and trajectories. This work is not random. It is coordinated and intentional. To this end, then, I propose three possible concepts/frameworks which might help direct our future intentions: Paul Farmer’s “pragmatic solidarity,” Michael Lebowitz’s “revolution of radical needs,” and Paulo Freire’s “dialogical action.”
Farmer, in Pathologies of Power, develops a mode of living which he terms “pragmatic solidarity”—the desire to make common cause with those in need. In his development he suggests we must connect sentiment with work, that goods and services must accompany our claims of solidarity with the oppressed. Thus, how do we balance a “being with” and a “doing for?” And, how do we ultimately bring ourselves closer—economically and spiritually—in the ways we live and struggle together?
Lebowitz, in Build it Now, evolves his thesis of the “revolution of radical needs”—the simultaneous changing of (structural) circumstances and self-change. He argues, “By simulating the solidarity that comes from an emphasis upon the interests of the community, rather than self-interest, a model based on this radical supply side theory rooted in human development will allow a government to move forward with the support of the community”—that the free development of each equals the free development of all. So, how does/can our work lead to self-change (consciousness, life-style, etc.) and to a change in material conditions (that improves the economic and spiritual lives of all)?
Finally, Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, talks about the concept of “unity for liberation” as an integral component of dialogical action. He pleads, “In order for the oppressed to unite, they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. To achieve this indispensable unity the revolutionary process must be, from the beginning, cultural action.” That is, the oppressed must first recognize themselves as subjects in the historical process rather than objects of a history that someone else constructed and has foisted upon them. The relative privileged must come to this same consciousness, as well. Therefore, how do we shed our socialization to demystify our existence and understand the structure? How do we deconstruct the narrative myths created to distract us and domesticate us into believing our resistance is futile?
Toward a truer collective responsibility
What I want is to reshape our understanding of a “collective responsibility.” What I want is for us to stop blaming the oppressed for their oppression and to begin to find ways to make more meaningful solidaristic connections that might bring about lasting change. What I want is for us to coordinate our efforts, challenge ourselves away from too-easy-dogma and away from fundamentalism toward criticality, nuance, and an appreciation of complexity. What I want is to attack injustice at its source—not in the actions of individuals, but in the mechanics of systems that are (1) designed to render a few fortunate and many disenfranchised, (2) manufactured to justify the imbalance, and/or (3) made to keep our attention on some future life rather than on the immediate needs of our brothers and sisters. What I want is some moment of creation in which we can act as midwife to something more beautiful, more humanizing, more liberating.
As the Christmas tree lights and the beads of rain continue their dance in the window, I remain unsure of my desire for an inside or outside position. I recognize that most of my work is that of reform and, thus, work that emanates mainly from the inside (in the PrESS Network, in Jamaica, in the Rouge Forum, as a professor, etc.). This work has meaning, but I wrestle with its effect and (usual non-)immediacy of results. Then, I consider the work from the outside (where those with whom I desire to be in solidarity almost always perform their work) and wonder what type of revolutionary spirit I might muster given my relatively privileged life. What will make this solidarity more pragmatic? How can I at once work inwardly on my own consciousness and outwardly on the dismantling of unjust structures? How can I seek a truer collective responsibility for which our accountability is more dependent upon our ability to preserve life than to take it, to unlock the human potential of all than to bind it up in fundamentalist narratives that ultimately serve the interests of the elite, and/or to bring about an emergence (or renewal) of community than to help tear us into further disconnected neighborhood and individual silos? Whether we can do it through reform or revolution makes little difference (although I’m getting a better idea which is more promising). That it must be done is more compelling and is, indeed, our collective responsibility.
posted by adam at 9:55 AM
1 Comments:
As always, this blog emerges as valuable tool of introspection, reflection, and questioning. The metaphor of the midwife provided the accurate and hopefully symbol of change, understanding, resilience, and responsibility.
Beginning with Klein’s Shock Doctrine, your connections and my own reflections on the value, avoidance, and misuse of information-the concept of selective connection (via the internet to those that we choose to have a remote connection with) and overt disconnection seems to ensure that the “shock” effect is properly harvested. In this way, our general decision to maintain a cyber community instead of an actual, tangible one maintains a relationship close enough to the local scene (“brothers and sisters down the street”) but also far enough to overlook the global scene as a foreign, even mythical land. As Klein observes, many of the social and political events of Chile and other countries of the South American continent, were shaped by the United States and many of these actions and continued economic activities continue to shape our perceptions and policy decisions today.
Interestingly, the symbol of the midwife addresses, in my opinion, the accurate roles we play as citizens and people of the world. Whether or not we are serving corporate interest (the insurance adjustor, politician, etc) or consumer position (supplying the capital for resource acquisition), it seems we are aiding in the production of something not of our labor, but equally enough our assistance of participation implicates us to that which is produced. We must decide which ideas are worthy of our energies that serve to give birth to ideals and actions that serve the whole person not the whole dollar, which in itself seems fundamentally simple and universal, but if a critical history is any indication, this humane ideal is not always held or enforced.
My last comment on disaster capitalism, is there any other form of capitalism?, attempts to recognize the importance of economics. The neoliberalism ideology is a very real one. Not that reality adopts labels, but the over concept of empires and our dangerously, if not already adopted, close ties to becoming an empire beckons us to see social justice on the global scale as one oppressively enforced and economically carried out by the desire for resources at all costs. John Perkins the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Secret History of the American Empire identifies this alarming empire status by recognizing the attributes of such: (1) Exploits resources from the lands it dominates, (2) consumes large quantities of resources , amounts that are disproportionate to its population relative to those of other nations, (3) maintains a large military to enforce its policies when more subtle measures fail, (4) spreads its language, art, literature, and various aspects of its culture throughout its sphere of influence, (5) taxes not just its own citizens, but people in other countries, and (6) imposes its own currency in lands under its control. This definition was formed with many university students during Perkins book tour. His position based upon his work as an economic hitman, provides his opinions and observations rooted in historical events and policies show how him and those like him have facilitated the foundation of neoliberalism. Later, Perkins recognized a seventh characteristic of an empire: (7) an empire is ruled by an Emperor or King who has control over the government and the media, who is not elected by the people, is not held accountable, and whose term is not limited by law. This is point is not immediately applied to the United States, but as Perkins proves, the corporatocracy completes this characteristic by corporate infusion into all things political and economic through foreign policy and global aid institutions such as the IMF and the “world” bank. What arises out of all this identification of empire is the issue of power and the misuse of such.
Compounding upon all this is the tradition of power that reinforces the motivation to think global exploitation for national preservation. What is remarkable is that this type of us vs them strategy works upon a culture that relies upon, is reinforced by the media, or is too consumed with survival to identify the implications. There is hope, as Perkins cites, that we have been able to correct some the wrongs of corporate mistakes and injustices as in the case of many environmental damages, it was the corporations that caused the problem and the corporation corrected it. But not because they felt the responsibility to, rather the people told them they had to. We are seeing in the global South the (more) democratic governments running on anti-corruption platforms and an overall liberation of the simple need for the government to care for its people and for the people in turn to voice just how that materializes.
As we turn to domestic issues of the “after-shocks” of the un/natural demolition of New Orleans, NCLB, corporate globalization, the solution does revolve around reform or revolution. As complex as the thought becomes between the two varied methods of change, the very simple consequences of inaction are great. This country is lauded based on our historical documents of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence, but as we can witness, many other countries in the past and currently function in socially responsible ways without such documents. Perhaps they have become just that-documents. It might be the case that no longer do we understand and internalize the ideologies of freedom and liberty but expect others to fulfill this understanding of us through government and those in power. This is one example which addresses the question that each privileged individual should shoulder more of the responsibility for the injustice than the relative oppressed. We should also expect and hold corporations to the same personal responsibility that the most privileged and privilege maintaining institutions have. Not necessarily a governmental political socialism, but an individual sense of society and philosophy; which in action requires oppositional resistance.
If we are to ask ourselves to anticipate resistance we must also ask what follows. There were many oppositional groups which organized and voiced their opinions against the Germany of Hitler, yet they were bogged down by the question of what type of government would fill the void? Economic reasoning lead many in Germany to adopt his social party, but the effects of power and desire for empire building lead to the horrid events we speak so much against today. The hesitation came from and still comes from the inability for those of status to relinquish some so that many can live. This of course is never seen as black and white with the aid of foresight, but it is also not the excuse to maintain oppression or the environment to do so.
Cuba under the leadership of Fidel Castro can be used as a living example of how life outside the graces of the US functions. Overthrowing a US back dictator Batista, establishing a government that represents the people, directly opposing the US and suffering the consequences through an unnecessary embargo, Castro has enabled the country to become totally independent of the US which only exposes the global oppression power the US can inflict. The reasons for the struggles of Cuba are apparent but what is vital to the redistribution of justice can be found in the success and continued maintenance that Cuba engages in to remain independent.
In closing, it has become my interest to discover the processes that produce or continue cycles of inequality as well as the necessity to remain in the moment via action, reflection, and reaction. Change occurs at its pace and our allegiance to maintain a critical outlook through education, self-awareness, community, and dialogue.
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