The U.S. Social Forum = Neo-colonialism?

[counterblast]

Last weekend, around 20,000 people (including a large number of communists and anarchists) came to my hometown Detroit for the U.S. Social Forum.

First off, Detroit was chosen to host the forum, not because any local people wanted to host it, but because the organizers behind the USSF (the National Planning Committee) saw Detroit as a symbol of the problems of America. So they flew in an organizer from Boston, and put him up in a luxury hotel downtown a few weeks prior to the event.

Despite a nationwide campaign to encourage activists ranging from liberal peace activists to anarchists to attend; most average people here in Detroit, didn't even know it was happening.

This makes me question whether they really care about the plight of people in Detroit or if they were just tokenizing Detroit for their own uses. Why are Detroit and its people being seen as the model of failed capitalism; and not as the model of resilience? Why is this Black urban city of local businesses, tight-knit community and resistance seen as the "failure"? Why isn't the gentrified white suburb filled with chain stores and isolation seen as the "failure"?

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Secondly, contrary to the USSF website (http://www.ussf2010.org/node), where they exhibit the handful of non-white people who attended as if to say "look how diverse we are"; the overwhelming majority of attendees were white, and from out-of-state. The "local" Detroit contacts were all white people from the suburbs of Detroit.

This makes me question why white people think they have a right to come to a 90% non-white city to host a conference? It also makes me wonder if they made an effort to ask local Black residents or the original indigenous occupants of this land if they were welcome?

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Thirdly, the USSF's platform is "Another US is possible". I don't think I even need to explain why this is problematic.

Why is the assumption made that the colonized people of Detroit, would ever want ANOTHER FORCE OF COLONIZATION AND SLAVERY? Why are communists and anarchists contributing money to attend a conference that supports the creation of another U.S.?

[counterblast]

Do you think that they do not have the right? If they were not displacing anyone or causing problems for communities then I don't see why you should be able to say people can't all go to a city to have an event, even if they were tokenizing it.

I think at some point this sort of white trans-nationalism "we belong anywhere we want to be" rhetoric becomes colonial; especially when it is coming from an organization who claims to oppose racism.

At some point anti-racists must turn inward, by examining the ways in which their whiteness and the homogeneity associated with that whiteness has historically been used to erase the cultures and ideas of people of color.

And one of the ways this erasure continues to happen, is by fetishizing and commodifying the "other" (in this case Detroit, a place simultaneously associated worldwide with Blackness, crime, and poverty). And pair this with some of the more troubling suggestions by different groups at the Forum:

A white liberal: "We must invest in Detroit! Wouldn't it be great if we opened up more food co-ops?"
A white communist: "So much apathy here! We must recruit the people of Detroit for our revolution"
A white anarchist: "There are hundreds of abandoned homes that we could squat!"

All of these suggest Detroit's "problems" (some of which we in Detroit do not consider problems) could be fixed, if only the great white leaders were able to change things.

The story is a common one. White people exploit people of color and their culture for their own benefit, while justifying it by suggesting it is "benfitting people of color".

But if we're to learn anything from history, such as the forced conversion of indigenous people to Christianity by white American missionaries -- its that such actions have nothing to do with helping people of color. It is simply a half-hearted attempt by white exploiters to justify their actions.





I thought it was "another world is possible"?

Sorry, I misquoted it, it is;

Another WORLD is possible, another US is necessary.

Which is even more problematic, imo.

[Hiratsuka]

Which is even more problematic, imo.As you said, the attendants were not just anarchists. That implies the majority of people involved in the forum support a nation-state as a matter of practicality (based on what they believe). It's not too strange of an expression to say that people must first focus on their immediate community to see global changes occur. In fact, for people who are born and raised in one part of the world, with little connections outside of their borders, anything else more often than not just amounts to social posturing.


I think at some point this sort of white trans-nationalism "we belong anywhere we want to be" rhetoric becomes colonial; especially when it is coming from an organization who claims to oppose racism.Only if the same whites become defensive about blacks doing the same. Gentrification is a two way street. I don't see anything wrong with whites organizing in predominantly black neighborhoods out of what they perceive to be solidarity. I just dislike the general practice of civil rights activists going somewhere and leaving the next day, but this has been popular since the 1950s when the SCLC came under fire for the exact same thing.

Which leads to...


It also makes me wonder if they made an effort to ask local Black residents or the original indigenous occupants of this land if they were welcome?That's a dangerous precedent to establish. I wouldn't want to see black activists having to ask 'permission' from whites to host an outreach conference in a predominantly white community. Your language has a strong emphasis on "ownership" or "domain" over regions.


All of these suggest Detroit's "problems" (some of which we in Detroit do not consider problems) could be fixed, if only the great white leaders were able to change things.Sounds like more of an issue of income than race. I believe you're framing the entirety of this argument around the presumption that these activists are devilish white imperialists who are mindlessly trying to press their thumb on the local community, when it's clear that poor urbanite whites would have more in common with poor urbanite blacks than someone like Michael Powell.

[gorillafuck]

Somehow I accidentally got rid of all but a half sentence of my post and couldn't get it back, so I deleted it because I didn't want to retype my post.


I think at some point this sort of white trans-nationalism "we belong anywhere we want to be" rhetoric becomes colonial; especially when it is coming from an organization who claims to oppose racism.
There's a difference between a lot of white people going to a conference in a city and colonialism. It could be comparable if they all moved to Detroit in an organized effort that tried to force a different culture on residents, and displaced residents. From what I know, they were just a bunch of professional activists who thought that Detroit would be a good place to hold their event (even if they were tokenizing it, which they very well might have been). That's not colonialism and to be 100% honest I think it's a bit distasteful to compare a bunch of white people going to a city for an event to something that is completely genocidal.

[Wolf Larson]

i would think it's for the obvious reason...Detroit is a good example, a microcosm of the larger problem of capital flight/unemployment. it's happening on a larger scale in america all together. manufacturing jobs going where the capitalists can maximize profits. in the meantime local workers are either left in debt or squalor :) on a larger scale americans are on average $10,000 in credit card debt alone.

Marx's discussion of the concept (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour#Marx.27s_discussion_of_the_ concept)