Stop the FTAA and White Paternalism
In the aftermath of the Seattle N30 protests four years ago, there was a lot of healthy discussion about the role that racism and white paternalism played in inhibiting effective organizing. While no one may have to write “Where was the color in Miami?” after next week, the question may be how people of color and poor people participated in the FTAA protests, especially while simultaneously organizing against the day-to-day problems that corporate globalization has created.
This issue still boils down to how much white power there is in social justice movements; decision making power, informal hierarchies, access to funding and visibility in the media all contribute to this. White power does not only take the form of the Nazi-style brutality of the Bush Mafia. Another version is the white paternalism that still creeps around our movements for justice and needs to be dealt with before more damage is done.
The FTAA is all about globalizing the corporate agenda so that people have no sovereignty over the forces that affect their lives. Since THEY are pushing their power to these untouchable global levels, WE should prioritize the local. The low-income communities of Miami and South Florida who stand to be most adversely affected by the FTAA are an extraordinary microcosm of the western hemisphere. Already swamped by lack of public services, environmental racism, poverty and police brutality, local community residents know well what it is like to live under the heel of the empire. The most realistic and articulate analysis of what the FTAA means for all of us may come from the local grassroots. And local organizing efforts will be affected by fallout long after the pepper spray has cleared.
What muddies up the debate is when white professional activists come in from out of town to join the fray and, unfortunately, bring some of their baggage with them. A recent incident at a Miami Police Community Relations Board meeting should raise a yellow flag for anti-racist organizing. With community groups, local residents and the media present, a number of prominent white activists dominated the discussion with police over how the protesters would be treated by cops come next week. Instead of deferring to local activists and residents who have had direct, day to day relationships with the police, the white activists made themselves and their experiences at numerous other protests the center of attention. This gave the Miami police an exit strategy to tell the media that while these protesters had been brutalized in other cities, there would be no precedent for that in Miami. Of course, this absurd comment was made in front of a number of people who have been dealing with police brutality and corruption for years. It is in moments like this, by failing to let the people speak for themselves, that white paternalism falters most decisively. In the process it alienates allies, hurts carefully crafted coalitions and in this situation, loses an opportunity to publicly predict how the Miami cops are going to deal with protesters. It is also ironic that one of the mouthpieces at that CRB meeting had told me only the night before how wonderful it was that local groups were taking such a lead in this organizing.
Another situation like this came to my attention. One of the local coalitions that will be participating in a march next week had asked a colleague to look into what kind of security they would need to protect their membership. This activist passed the question onto one of the national direct-action oriented , who, without notifying the local organizers or asking for any of their input, used the name of the coalition to secure a grant for themselves in order to provide security for the march. Whether or not the local folks would even want that kind of participation from mostly white, non-local activists was never broached, and neither was the use of the coalition’s name to acquire funding.
From what they have said in their interviews and press conferences, it seems that leaders of the anti-globalization movement played right into the hands of the bloodthirsty media by announcing their intentions to disrupt the ministerial meeting however possible. It is pretty well known that the cops, like the press, are out for blood, and will take any opportunity to crack skulls and lock people up, so why give them a heads up? Some people to need to refresh on their Sun-Tzu, Clausewitz and othet theoreticians of strategy.
These protests against the FTAA ministerial are a unique opportunity for local residents to organize and have their concerns heard by the world. If the grassroots are highly active and visible then pundits like Thomas Freidman cannot justify saying that the protesters are spoiled rich kids preventing the world’s poor from gaining access to a Lexus and an olive tree. This is especially important because as a 34-country trade agreement, the vast majority of people most affected by the FTAA will be people like those who work 14 hours a day picking tomatoes for Taco Bell, or who live in shantytowns where the privatized price of water is more than they make in a week. We may all be fucked by the FTAA, but some of us are going to get it a lot harder than others.
One of the strengths of the Civil Rights Movement was that the lead was taken by the grassroots. Once they were needed, white radicals were called upon to assist in helping people of color gain the freedoms they wanted. This is likewise for current social movements around the world. The farmers and workers in Bolivia undertook autonomous, directly democratic actions this month to deal with their government as they saw fit. They were joined by middle class students and intellectuals, but the moment was theirs. The social movements of the richest industrialized country in the world have a lot to learn from the actions of our allies in the poorest.
Most of us just do not want to stop the FTAA, but also want to have a better way of life, one that we hope the spontaneity and common empowerment -or Eros Effect- of these mass protests may help bring into reality. But first, we have to ditch the elitism, white supremacy and power-tripping that we are all taught by western civilization.
And so, welcome to Miami. Please check your white paternalism at the door. And lets stop the FTAA, anyway we can.
In solidarity,
Errol Schweizer
The author is from a working class background and has done community organizing on social and environmental issues for almost a decade.