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Socially distanced community organizing & dirtbag bro brigading about the supposed chasm between "real life" organizing and being "Very Online" has me thinking a lot lately about the myth of digital dualism and the ways the privileged deploy it against the marginalized.
Socially distanced community organizing & dirtbag bro brigading about the supposed chasm between "real life" organizing and being "Very Online" has me thinking a lot lately about the myth of digital dualism and the ways the privileged deploy it against the marginalized.
When I was newly an executive director at Philly Jobs with Justice, the national org (under the leadership of some great organizers, especially a wonderful late mentor of mine, Treston Davis-Faulkner) was working with @Drobsidian to develop an intensive nation-wide training.
That training is fantastic if you ever get a chance to do it, by the way.
It's gone through many revisions and lives, & while I can't speak to the details of its latest form, its most consistent trait was always an insistence on a clear-eyed understanding of power.
It's gone through many revisions and lives, & while I can't speak to the details of its latest form, its most consistent trait was always an insistence on a clear-eyed understanding of power.
We live in a world where those in power constantly tell us that power is bad, power corrupts, power is just no good and really all these powerful people are doing us a big favor by taking power away from us little people who would break under its bad influence.
One of the very first things the training demanded participants break down was what power is, exactly.
Power is from the the French "pouvoir," y'all.
It's a noun, but it's also the infinitive for the verb for "able to do," as in "I can."
"Je peux" is literally "I can."
Power is from the the French "pouvoir," y'all.
It's a noun, but it's also the infinitive for the verb for "able to do," as in "I can."
"Je peux" is literally "I can."
Power isn't abstract.
It isn't notional or theoretical.
It's literally just the ability to do things.
It's the ability to truthfully and accurately say, "I can" (or, better yet, "we can").
It isn't notional or theoretical.
It's literally just the ability to do things.
It's the ability to truthfully and accurately say, "I can" (or, better yet, "we can").
So the training said, okay, let's break it down.
What gives us the ability to do things in this world?
And when it comes down to it, it's organized people and organized resources.
What gives us the ability to do things in this world?
And when it comes down to it, it's organized people and organized resources.
That's where power comes from.
Once you have a meaningful combination of organized people and organized resources, you have the ability to do.
You can say, "we can."
You can get shit done.
You have power.
Once you have a meaningful combination of organized people and organized resources, you have the ability to do.
You can say, "we can."
You can get shit done.
You have power.
So okay, the training says, how do you do that?
How do you go from sitting by yourself to standing tall with organized resources and organized people?
And whether you're good or evil, the answer is always the same: you build relationships centered on your core values.
How do you go from sitting by yourself to standing tall with organized resources and organized people?
And whether you're good or evil, the answer is always the same: you build relationships centered on your core values.
If you value organized resources over the value of organized people, you start organizing by building relationships centered on your values of greed.
That's what business relationships are: organizing relationships built around a shared belief system that values organized resources (
) over organized people (
, since it's spring!).
They're a form of organizing, just a form that doesn't care about.
) over organized people (, since it's spring!).They're a form of organizing, just a form that doesn't care about
.
Those of us who organize in movement believe in building power.
We value, and we put the fact that we value at the center of our organizing.
We still need some because people can't live or thrive without resources, but our work centers power built through .
power.We value
, and we put the fact that we value at the center of our organizing.We still need some
because people can't live or thrive without resources, but our work centers power built through .
(I love this training and my only big critique of it is that it doesn't explicitly speak to the necessity of radical love and radical compassion in liberatory movement; [cont]
[cont] I've seen groups that value people power for power's sake and build that power very effectively, but lie to folks and throw them under the bus. We have to be clear that valuing means valuing 's individual and collective dignity, not just their power.)
means valuing 's individual and collective dignity, not just their power.)
Whether you're a business or a movement, your power hinges on values-based relationships, relationships you've formed with people who seek the same kind of power you seek.
Power is finite; there are only so many people and only so many resources available in the world.
Death politics-- capitalism, fascism, and other politics of totalitarian domination-- are politics of power-hoarding.
They hoard not just power but power, through militarization, appeals to party and/or brand loyalty, and/or the commodification of relationship.
They hoard not just
power but power, through militarization, appeals to party and/or brand loyalty, and/or the commodification of relationship.
When we run a campaign taking on a corporate power, we try to break down their source of power-- their greed-based relationships.
We do it by making people in relationship with them scared that continued relationship will cost them what they value:.
We do it by making people in relationship with them scared that continued relationship will cost them what they value:
.
When those empowered by the politics of death feel threatened, they do the same thing to us.
They target the relationships that undergird ourpower, work to sow distrust and distance us from each other, to erode our relationship-based power.
They target the relationships that undergird our
power, work to sow distrust and distance us from each other, to erode our relationship-based power.
(That's another reason why radical compassion and love are such critical elements of liberatory movement, imho.
It's much harder to divide people who see their movement relationships as rooted in something deeper and more meaningful than just utilitarian self-interest).
It's much harder to divide people who see their movement relationships as rooted in something deeper and more meaningful than just utilitarian self-interest).
This is a long route to talking about digital dualism, but it's a critical one.
We can't ever forget that *all* power-- whether liberatory, capitalist, or totalitarian-- is built through organizing, & defended by disorganization of the relationships of power-holder's opponents.
We can't ever forget that *all* power-- whether liberatory, capitalist, or totalitarian-- is built through organizing, & defended by disorganization of the relationships of power-holder's opponents.
We can't forget that those who are empowered by death politics-- the politics of totalitarian domination-- have a vested interest in convincing the oppressed that our individualized powers should stay disorganized from each other, that collectivized power is bad.
When we're analyzing a specific type of organizing, we have to be asking ourselves:
- Can this organizing grow my movement's universe of values-based organizing? Can it dismantle those of our opponents?
- Can this organizing grow my movement's universe of values-based organizing? Can it dismantle those of our opponents?
- Are there ways this organizing makes our relationships vulnerable to our opponents? Are there ways this organizing makes their relationships vulnerable to us?
New organizing forms are innovations, not inventions.
Organizing will always be about building power through relationships rooted in shared values, & about dismantling the power-building relationships of your opponent(s).
It's a very stable and ancient thing in that sense.
Organizing will always be about building power through relationships rooted in shared values, & about dismantling the power-building relationships of your opponent(s).
It's a very stable and ancient thing in that sense.
"New" types of organizing are really just new tools applied to these core rules of building and defending power.
The way to evaluate them is to say, who do they hurt and who do they help.
The way to evaluate them is to say, who do they hurt and who do they help.
When I was in college, one of the sociology professors had an Audre Lorde quote on her door, and I hated it, just hated it.
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
It made no sense to me at the time (and, also, I hadn't done enough self-work yet to understand that it wasn't intended for me).
If the master has a chainsaw, why wouldn't you use it to demolish his house?
If the master has a chainsaw, why wouldn't you use it to demolish his house?
In my ignorance at the time, I read the decontextualized quote as a call to passivism, a call away from the tools we could use to win on the principle that someone bad had used those tools to win once.
I didn't know my intersectional theory, and to me it sounded to me like a call to guns-are-for-boys civility or head-in-the-sand Luddism.
As students of movement know, I couldn't have been more misguided in that reading.
Lorde wasn't calling for organizers to abandon militance; she was calling on white straight feminists to quit the "liberation through patriarchy-lite" bullshit and become intersectional.
Lorde wasn't calling for organizers to abandon militance; she was calling on white straight feminists to quit the "liberation through patriarchy-lite" bullshit and become intersectional.
It's only now, in taking the time to write about it, that I realize just how deep my lack of understanding went, how mired in white supremacist notions of property it was.
A gun in the hand of a person fleeing slavery is not the master's tool anymore.
A gun in the hand of a person fleeing slavery is not the master's tool anymore.
I describe my politics as liberatory movement politics.
I've called myself "left," I've been an anarchist, I've been a reformist, I've been a socialist in everything but name, but the labels always feel more reductive than helpful.
"liberatory" makes room for imagination.
I've called myself "left," I've been an anarchist, I've been a reformist, I've been a socialist in everything but name, but the labels always feel more reductive than helpful.
"liberatory" makes room for imagination.
I don't identify as anarchist, and many of my experiences of lived "anarchism" have been just endlessly frustrating, but there's also a part of it I love and will never let go of: its imaginative capaciousness, it's open-armed excitement for vision of a radically better world.
One way of talking about embodying this vision, a way that still quickens my pulse a little bit, is the idea that direct action creates moments of autonomous space outside of capitalism, sites of protest and/or occupation where we get to try and live our dreams a bit.
A caveat: I've seen this taken way too literally.
(There was a legendary Philly Abolish ICE moment where insurrectionary anarchists managed to piss off the entire occupation by insisting everyone should risk arrest over protecting the Autonomous Space Couch on principle.)
(There was a legendary Philly Abolish ICE moment where insurrectionary anarchists managed to piss off the entire occupation by insisting everyone should risk arrest over protecting the Autonomous Space Couch on principle.)
I've seen literality result in young white anarchists insisting that they don't have to listen to the people who actually organized the action that created the space because "no one owns autonomous space," and ignoring the fact that no space is truly autonomous for the oppressed.
For folks who have a more mature, more seasoned, more intersectionally-informed sense of what that autonomous space means, though, there's a nuance of understanding that recognizes that "autonomous space" is space allows us to explore visionary imagination.
The street in front of the ICE building never functionally stopped belonging to the federal government and existing under state power (as my arrest record very much shows).
The culture we created inside was never magically free of the constraints of capitalism.
The culture we created inside was never magically free of the constraints of capitalism.
There's something indescribably special about taking a street without permission.
You're displacing authoritarian control.
You're re-creating the street's traditional role as a commons, if just for a moment.
You're all very literally on the same level, on the same asphalt.
You're displacing authoritarian control.
You're re-creating the street's traditional role as a commons, if just for a moment.
You're all very literally on the same level, on the same asphalt.
A taken street is a very fundamental proof-of-concept for liberatory movement.
It's evidence that authority is not all-powerful, that organized people can attain tangible results, that liberatory movement can liberate actual space and move even powerful authoritarians.
It's evidence that authority is not all-powerful, that organized people can attain tangible results, that liberatory movement can liberate actual space and move even powerful authoritarians.
One of my favorite works of all time is Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto.
If you haven't read it, you should.
It's about how we idealize an imaginary "natural," a feminized "organic" purity that's never existed.
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~vanlondp/wgss320/articles/haraway-cyborg-manifesto.pdf
If you haven't read it, you should.
It's about how we idealize an imaginary "natural," a feminized "organic" purity that's never existed.
http://people.oregonstate.edu/~vanlondp/wgss320/articles/haraway-cyborg-manifesto.pdf
Especially within anarchist strains of liberatory movement, there's a tendency to wax nostalgic about "the commons," this imaginary historical anarchic space in old Europe that belonged to everyone & no one, where all could graze their flocks and none were beholden to authority.
There's wonderful imaginative and critical work done around the idea of the commons (Sylvia Federici in particular has done wonderful stuff), but as with the street, there's a danger to looking at that autonomous space metaphor and taking that past too literally.
It was a never not a contested space.
Its existence may have been legislated, but in real terms common space is only preserved by the threat of resistance.
Spaces where authoritarian power are even slightly displaced are always contested.
Its existence may have been legislated, but in real terms common space is only preserved by the threat of resistance.
Spaces where authoritarian power are even slightly displaced are always contested.
It wasn't an organic space.
The domesticated animals, the shepherd's crook, the basket the peasant used to collect wild mushrooms?
All of that is technology, however strange that may sound now.
The domesticated animals, the shepherd's crook, the basket the peasant used to collect wild mushrooms?
All of that is technology, however strange that may sound now.
It wasn't a space accessible to "everyone," either.
It may not have had a gate or a fence.
But people burned as witches? Killed for their queerness? People dead for lack of access to medicine or shelter or food?
Their deaths kept them out of that space.
It may not have had a gate or a fence.
But people burned as witches? Killed for their queerness? People dead for lack of access to medicine or shelter or food?
Their deaths kept them out of that space.
When we take the fantasy of a wholly pure, organic, open, and uncontested commons too literally, we make ourselves prisoners to the standards of a past that never was.
There is no such thing as a fully "autonomous space" in social spaces existing under authoritarian domination.
There is no such thing as a fully "autonomous space" in social spaces existing under authoritarian domination.
The autonomous space, the completely liberated street, the perfect commons: these are useful imaginations, but we lie to ourselves when we pretend we can "return" to the fictional past where they were pure and complete.
Techno-utopianists like to talk about the "digital commons," but there's never been a true digital commons.
There's never been a moment where the internet wasn't mediated in some way by telecoms, by the government, by corporations.
There's never been a moment where the internet wasn't mediated in some way by telecoms, by the government, by corporations.
Those same techno-utopians love the stories of the old Wild West Days of the internet, but that internet was only accessible to those who could afford the expensive technology and expertise that connection required.
It was a playground for the entitled, not a commons.
It was a playground for the entitled, not a commons.
The internet has always been social, and the technorati and the online gated communities they create have always used fear of democratization to generate profit.
AOL sold a more respectable, more gated version of the world wide web.
AOL sold a more respectable, more gated version of the world wide web.
The proto-social media environments of my teen years-- Livejournal and Xanga and Makeout Club and AIM and Palace-- their central innovation was offering users an increasing level of control of who could and couldn't be in our personal online gated communities.
Facebook started as an incredibly elite Ivy alternative to overly-democratic social media and proto-social media in general, but also increasingly specifically as a tightly controlled, "clean" alternative to the chaotic populist energy of MySpace.
Young white people didn't flee Facebook because boomers started logging on.
That didn't happen until much later.
Young white people started leaving Facebook because it wasn't elite enough anymore.
The year Facebook opened to the public?
That's the year Jack started Twitter.
That didn't happen until much later.
Young white people started leaving Facebook because it wasn't elite enough anymore.
The year Facebook opened to the public?
That's the year Jack started Twitter.
Young white professionals fled from Facebook to Twitter for the same reason young white professionals left MySpace for Facebook.
They fled to because the gates had opened, and they didn't like it.
They fled because Black people started joining. They didn't even hide it.
They fled to because the gates had opened, and they didn't like it.
They fled because Black people started joining. They didn't even hide it.
Twitter got its start and its ascendency as the new gated community, a place where supposedly everyone would get their identities verified and be nice and civil to each other because no one would dare say bad things under their real and verified name.
That was the vision.
That was the vision.
Of course, like Facebook and most of its proto-social media predecessors, Twitter cottoned on to the fact that internet money comes from ads, & very few companies want to spend a lot of money on ads that only get seen by the occasional strolling gated community member.
That's how we got the Cricket Dogwhistle Debate of 2010.
See, Twitter long delayed releasing an Android version of its iPhone app.
Why?
Because Android was the "cheap" OS.
It was the Cricket OS, the poor OS.
The (whispered) Black OS.
The Twitter community was iGated.
See, Twitter long delayed releasing an Android version of its iPhone app.
Why?
Because Android was the "cheap" OS.
It was the Cricket OS, the poor OS.
The (whispered) Black OS.
The Twitter community was iGated.
That Android app launch-inspired "Black people with Cricket phones are ruining Twitter" controversy happened in May 2010.
Want to guess what year Instagram launched?
Want to guess which mobile platform its creators chose to launch it on?
Want to guess what year Instagram launched?
Want to guess which mobile platform its creators chose to launch it on?
People forget that the blue checkmark was first explained by @jack as a mechanism that would be accessible to everyone, so everyone could prove their identity.
It was supposed to be about "trust," but at its heart it was a Voter ID-style tactic, a way of building in exclusion.
It was supposed to be about "trust," but at its heart it was a Voter ID-style tactic, a way of building in exclusion.
With the blue checkmark, Jack built an ad revenue-generating enterprise while still maintaining Twitter's core identity of gated eliteness.
He ended the pretense of trust-generation and fully bifurcated the site into the (Twitter-decided) elite worth hearing, & the rabble.
He ended the pretense of trust-generation and fully bifurcated the site into the (Twitter-decided) elite worth hearing, & the rabble.
This is why folks roll their eyes sometimes when people seem shocked that Jack might allow nazis on his platform.
Jack literally segregated his site in response to white outrage about Black "invasion," and that segregation very obviously staked out Team Checkmark for white men.
Jack literally segregated his site in response to white outrage about Black "invasion," and that segregation very obviously staked out Team Checkmark for white men.
Cultural capital is a commodity, a very real resource.
Those who hoard commodities use gatekeeper elitism to defend the relationships that help them accumulate that power.
The more oppressed people enter elite space, the more they can threaten the relationships within.
Those who hoard commodities use gatekeeper elitism to defend the relationships that help them accumulate that power.
The more oppressed people enter elite space, the more they can threaten the relationships within.
Even more dangerously:
Any time oppressed people start to enter any social space together in big numbers, they have the potential to form organizational relationships with each other.
Any time oppressed people start to enter any social space together in big numbers, they have the potential to form organizational relationships with each other.
Digital dualism is just the latest flavor of a very old line of attack, one that the politics of authoritarian domination has always used to keep the mechanisms of power hidden behind curtains, to prevent the masses from gathering and potentially whispering about revolution.
The bourgeois always cluck angrily when the peasants begin to acquire technological accessories that used to be markers of status.
TV started to "rot brains," home phones began to "destroy manners," headphones became "antisocial."
TV started to "rot brains," home phones began to "destroy manners," headphones became "antisocial."
Cell phones weren't "dooming us to isolation" when they were accessories of Wall Street, of private schoolers checking in with parents on clamshells, of wealthy college kids who got 1st gen iPhones.
Social media wasn't a scare quote TV news story until Black people arrived.
Social media wasn't a scare quote TV news story until Black people arrived.
Until cheap Android devices arrived, the social functions of the internet and the web were largely reserved for those with the means to both buy expensive PC and/or iPhone equipment, and the luxury of spending time using them to build and maintain relationship.
To use "real life"-centered social media, you had to have the equipment and time.
Your friends and family and coworkers had to have those resources and time, too.
It wasn't just about you having resources; it was about your entire social network having resources.
Your friends and family and coworkers had to have those resources and time, too.
It wasn't just about you having resources; it was about your entire social network having resources.
In other words?
It was the ultimate gated online community.
It was the ultimate gated online community.
There's a reason that hot digital dualism pearl-clutching takes about phone use escalated in the early 2010s, long after smartphones became normal for the privileged.
There's a reason the social media gatekeeping wars happened when they did.
There's a reason the social media gatekeeping wars happened when they did.
In 2008, (under the Bush administration), the federal government began to expand the Reagan-era Lifeline assistance program to cellular phones.
It was the same year Google rolled out its open source Android OS to anyone who wanted it in a bid to undermine iOS market dominance.
It was the same year Google rolled out its open source Android OS to anyone who wanted it in a bid to undermine iOS market dominance.
The racist attacks around Black "Obamaphone" (Lifeline subsidy-receiving) users in 2012 didn't happen in a vacuum.
Lifeline's expansion to cellular & Android's cheapness together had begun to put sustained internet access increasingly in reach of those previously excluded.
Lifeline's expansion to cellular & Android's cheapness together had begun to put sustained internet access increasingly in reach of those previously excluded.
You know, in the organizing worlds I've inhabited and worked in, it's not like we've never had critiques of digital organizing.
There were folks who just didn't want to learn to use the tech.
There were Very Grumpy Alinsky Organizing Director types who treated digital as some silly toy the young intersectional children should stop playing with.
Mostly, though, the critiques were of digital done badly.
There were Very Grumpy Alinsky Organizing Director types who treated digital as some silly toy the young intersectional children should stop playing with.
Mostly, though, the critiques were of digital done badly.
These were workers saying, "I'm tired of getting email blasts when my shop steward never even bothers to talk to me."
These were young labor organizers saying, "please please do not group-text us jokes about Speedos at conferences, senior-level AFL-CIO officers"
These were young labor organizers saying, "please please do not group-text us jokes about Speedos at conferences, senior-level AFL-CIO officers"
These were union members saying, "I don't give a fuck if my local's Twitter game is on point, everyone always talks about 'reaching young people' through social media, but no one ever listens to me and our two-tier contract sold out all the workers that lacked seniority forever"
During the heady days of certain 2016 former Sanders staffers' self-promotional book tours about their supposed Alinsky-level digital genius, it was pretty much every electoral field organizer I know being like "NO OMG DIGITAL IS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR FIELD WHAT IS HAPPENING"
The internal organizing critiques and frustrations I hear around digital have never been, "the internet is Satan and I hate it."
They've been about hotshot consultants and tech bro snake-oil salesmen pitching digital as a magical solution for any and every organizing ailment.
They've been about hotshot consultants and tech bro snake-oil salesmen pitching digital as a magical solution for any and every organizing ailment.
Those internal organizing critiques are about organizers and politicians who think they can use tech as a superficial band-aid to cover deep wounds.
The digital will never be that.
The digital will never be that.
The digital is not a bandaid.
The digital is a set of tools that can both expand and contract our social reality.
It is an array of technology that can open up new dimensions of the space we already inhabit, or contract and shrink our experience, depending on how it is used.
The digital is a set of tools that can both expand and contract our social reality.
It is an array of technology that can open up new dimensions of the space we already inhabit, or contract and shrink our experience, depending on how it is used.
When I see white male "leftists" yell at women and Black people to get off the internet, "do something useful," and canvass, what I see is those white men recognizing the fact that oppressed people are effectively using tools that they believe belong to them.
The chauvinistic advice to do get off the internet and do "real" organizing is just a recent descendent of men telling women that the vote would cheapen our noble, natural womanhood, to go pursue the far greater calling to cook and conceive and birth children barefoot.
It's a descendent of the same attitude that white men would assume when they preached about the nobility of savagery, about how the enslaved and imprisoned and sharecropped were like noble animals, "naturally" suited to work the earth.
It's bullshit, a manipulative lie.
There's no respect for the oppressed in here.
It's a denial of dignity, not an affirmation of it.
If they believed that logging off and canvassing was the quickest way for organizers (or anyone) to build power, they'd be doing it themselves.
There's no respect for the oppressed in here.
It's a denial of dignity, not an affirmation of it.
If they believed that logging off and canvassing was the quickest way for organizers (or anyone) to build power, they'd be doing it themselves.
They know that Twitter is a space where the oppressed and the silenced have been able to regular overcome @Jack's various bullshit attempts at insulating his elites from the masses.
They know that those of us who are able to build a follower count here wield actual power.
They know that those of us who are able to build a follower count here wield actual power.
They don't want us offline because they think we'd be more effective there.
They want us offline because oppressed people are actually finding and wielding power here.
They don't care about turnout.
They want to prevent another #timesup or another #BLM or another #metoo
.
They want us offline because oppressed people are actually finding and wielding power here.
They don't care about turnout.
They want to prevent another #timesup or another #BLM or another #metoo
.
People talk about "hashtag activism" like these hashtags come from out of the blue, like magically they emerge fully-formed and perpetuate themselves spontaneously.
That's bullshit, too.
That's bullshit, too.
For every surprise trend, there are twenty hashtags that made their way into the public consciousness as a result of hard, long term relational work.
They're like mushrooms.
If you understand mycology, you understand that underneath them, there's a powerful, deep network.
They're like mushrooms.
If you understand mycology, you understand that underneath them, there's a powerful, deep network.
When I started paying more attention to Twitter and using it more often in the early 2010's, it wasn't because I thought it was useful for basebuilding.
It was because even minor Twitter engagement scared the shit out of campaign targets.
It was because even minor Twitter engagement scared the shit out of campaign targets.
We could protest and make signs and call and all of those things were good and useful and necessary, but just a small amount of effort on Twitter could provoke personal rage from a mayoral administration, scare officials into policy reversals with breathtaking speed.
It became a space to connect in a meaningful with folks in the press, too, for having conversations and building rapport with reporters who'd previously seemed like distant arbiters of the headlines (or lack of headlines) that could make or break a campaign.
Through fits & starts (most small, some big in ways that I never would have imagined), it's become a place where I can not only move good work but actually speak up and claim the value of my experience, speak truth as I know it, and be heard in ways I never expected to be, ever.
21k is a big audience compared to any audience I built as a local organizer.
Numerically, it's far, far bigger than the email blast list I spent years painstakingly building from business cards and petitions and donation forms and my own inbox.
Numerically, it's far, far bigger than the email blast list I spent years painstakingly building from business cards and petitions and donation forms and my own inbox.
When I've tweeted, "come protest the nazis tomorrow at 1," though, maybe 3 people turn up because they see it here.
Two are usually folks I've talked to, DMed with, invested in some level of relational work.
Two are usually folks I've talked to, DMed with, invested in some level of relational work.
When I was at JwJ and we blasted out a rapid turnout ask through that >4k list of people I and other organizers had spent the time talking to and getting to know and building trust with around shared values, though?
We could get 50 or 100 people in less than 24 hours sometimes.
We could get 50 or 100 people in less than 24 hours sometimes.
Back when a real estate heiress was converting a shuttered public school into a manic pixie dreamer's disaster tourism beer garden, I sent out an email to that list suggesting folks leave a Yelp review for her restaurant.
The pro-gentrification groups in Philly LOST THEIR SHIT.
The secret internal chat for young political "insiders" exploded about my "demogogery" and my disgusting lack of respect for Yelp's terms of use.
The heiress called me to sweet talk me, then threatened to sue me.
The secret internal chat for young political "insiders" exploded about my "demogogery" and my disgusting lack of respect for Yelp's terms of use.
The heiress called me to sweet talk me, then threatened to sue me.
This was over maybe 12 satirical Yelp reviews!
The gentrifiers were apoplectic that union workers and other working folks DARED enter and alter their digital space.
You would just not believe the outrage, the sputtering moral disgust, the hundreds of angry Facebook replies.
The gentrifiers were apoplectic that union workers and other working folks DARED enter and alter their digital space.
You would just not believe the outrage, the sputtering moral disgust, the hundreds of angry Facebook replies.
"But you organized your base offline!"
Except, no.
The folks that wrote those protest reviews, the folks who came out to march and buy fundraiser tickets?
So much of those relationships were mediated by Facebook.
So many of my check-ins and turn out asks happened by DM.
Except, no.
The folks that wrote those protest reviews, the folks who came out to march and buy fundraiser tickets?
So much of those relationships were mediated by Facebook.
So many of my check-ins and turn out asks happened by DM.
So much of them connecting with each other and building deeper network happened not just on the street but seeing each other and recognizing each other's names from Facebook events.
So much of that relationship- building happened on 2010's Facebook even as yuppies took flight.
So much of that relationship- building happened on 2010's Facebook even as yuppies took flight.
These social media environments, they're like streets.
We can and should imagine a liberated digital commons, but we should remember that this is visionary thinking, aspirational science fiction we hope to make real.
We can and should imagine a liberated digital commons, but we should remember that this is visionary thinking, aspirational science fiction we hope to make real.
There's never been a liberated digital commons, not in the sense of intersectional liberatory movement.
There's never been a digital commons that's accessible to everybody.
There's never been a commons that's accessible to everyone.
These are romantic fictional pasts.
There's never been a digital commons that's accessible to everybody.
There's never been a commons that's accessible to everyone.
These are romantic fictional pasts.
There's never been a fully liberated street, not in the sense of intersectional liberation.
Sites of liberation are always spaces we've seized, tools we have made our own for now, tools that the masters of authoritarian domination will always strive to reclaim.
Sites of liberation are always spaces we've seized, tools we have made our own for now, tools that the masters of authoritarian domination will always strive to reclaim.
Like the streets, like the bodies of the oppressed, these digital spaces are shaped by violence, a violence created and executed to serve the needs of those who benefit most from the politics of our world, the death-politics of authoritarian domination.
Like those streets, like our bodies, they are never fully ours and never truly liberated.
They won't ever be fully free until we all are free, not until the life-affirming politics of liberation wins out over the capitalisms and fascisms and dictators and their death cults.
They won't ever be fully free until we all are free, not until the life-affirming politics of liberation wins out over the capitalisms and fascisms and dictators and their death cults.
We are told these spaces exist outside the reality of politics, but that is a lie.
It is a lie meant to keep us from seizing useful and dangerous tools from the death cult, from refusing to respect their claims to ownership, from deciding to use them as our own.
It is a lie meant to keep us from seizing useful and dangerous tools from the death cult, from refusing to respect their claims to ownership, from deciding to use them as our own.
No serious political student can look at Occupy and deny the grassroots organizing power of social media.
No student of justice should look at the early 2010s economic opening of the internet without seeing its connection to the world-shifting organizing of Black Lives Matter.
No student of justice should look at the early 2010s economic opening of the internet without seeing its connection to the world-shifting organizing of Black Lives Matter.
When we use Facebook to organize resistance, Facebook will claim that it owns our digital space and our online work.
That does not make it theirs.
That does not make it theirs.
If one of John Brown's men takes a gun off a slaveholder and uses it to charge Harper's Ferry, that gun is no longer a gun of the slaver.
Its ownership may be contested, but it's a gun of the resistance unless and until the slavers manage to steal it back.
Its ownership may be contested, but it's a gun of the resistance unless and until the slavers manage to steal it back.
As long as we find ways to take these tools and reconfigure them to help us live and fight for our values, these tools are ours, not theirs.
When we take the street, there's no magical transfer of property rights.
That doesn't mean it isn't ours.
When we take the street, there's no magical transfer of property rights.
That doesn't mean it isn't ours.
Refusing to use the master's tools doesn't mean refusing to use those tools ever, on principle.
It doesn't mean waiting patiently for the master to sign them over in a deed of ownership.
It doesn't mean waiting patiently for the master to sign them over in a deed of ownership.
As I read and understand her now, Lorde wasn't preaching civility, or advising a patient wait.
She was saying very much the opposite.
She was calling bullshit on the master's very claim of ownership of those tools.
She was saying, our revolution doesn't happen on his terms.
She was saying very much the opposite.
She was calling bullshit on the master's very claim of ownership of those tools.
She was saying, our revolution doesn't happen on his terms.
In that spirit, I call bullshit on the idea that these digital spaces we hold aren't ours already, sites of resistance that are ours as long as we can keep them.
I call bullshit on the idea that they are anything less than a powerful dimension of our full lived experience.
I call bullshit on the idea that they are anything less than a powerful dimension of our full lived experience.
I call bullshit on reactionary white men's efforts to claim the digital as some aethereal realm that only they are brilliant enough to inhabit and populate with ideas.
I call bullshit on the suggestion that oppressed activists vacate these asshole white dudes' digital drawing room, on the notion that "real" organizing is us leaving them to opine here over brandy and cigars, silently contenting ourselves with the field gruntwork & nothing else.
Should we work to create our own tools, tools ideally suited to our purpose?
Absolutely.
We should design and imagine and experiment and create.
We deserve instruments of liberation that are beautiful and bespoke.
Absolutely.
We should design and imagine and experiment and create.
We deserve instruments of liberation that are beautiful and bespoke.
Should we recognize that contested space is always under fire, that this space is only hours for as long as we can hold it?
Should we develop contingency plans, knowing they want nothing more than to seize it back?
Of course.
It would be irresponsible if we didn't.
Should we develop contingency plans, knowing they want nothing more than to seize it back?
Of course.
It would be irresponsible if we didn't.
Social media institutions built to gatekeep for the elite is not structures built to house the liberated.
That does not mean there aren't times that occupation of the gatekeeper's house isn't strategic.
Occupation is one of the most effective tactics in power's arsenal.
That does not mean there aren't times that occupation of the gatekeeper's house isn't strategic.
Occupation is one of the most effective tactics in power's arsenal.
The "leftist" white dudes telling us to get offline because social media is anti-revolutionary?
He may tell us peasants to abandon the seized castle because castle occupation is monarchist.
Really, though?
He just wants the castle to himself.
He just wants to be the monarch.
He may tell us peasants to abandon the seized castle because castle occupation is monarchist.
Really, though?
He just wants the castle to himself.
He just wants to be the monarch.
So, let's start to build our own space.
Let's make sure we have solid contingency plans.
Let's storm the warlord's fortress, plan to do new things with the stone once it's dismantled.
Let's make sure we have solid contingency plans.
Let's storm the warlord's fortress, plan to do new things with the stone once it's dismantled.
But the wolfs in sheeps' clothing who show up at the door after we've fought and sacrificed, the smug white boys who claim to be our rightful generals, who mock us for having seized a fortress in hostile territory?
They have no home in this space.
Their lies don't, either.
They have no home in this space.
Their lies don't, either.
(the end)
