no borders | Void Network

Nazi Govern USA: 10,000 migrant children at 100 concentration camps in 14 states

crystalzero72 — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 11:05:39 +0000

We try to follow the news but its not easy. Nazi govern USA and the federal government using police and the army for building concentration camps all over AmeriKKKa. For one more time in history as in in previous decades in Africa, in Australia (with the Aboriginals) and in Europe (with Roma, communists, anarchists, disabled people and Jews) the USA government take the kids of the people in custody, steal the children from the mothers, separate families, giving drugs to the kids to keep them calm and imprison the adults . Immigrant Children Separated From Parents At The Borders? This is genocide! We Will STOP USA NAZI Government. Smash the Borders! Smash the detention centers- Void Network

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Over 10,000 migrant children are now in US government custody at 100 shelters in 14 states

The number of migrant children held without their parents by the US government has surged 21% since last month to 10,773 children, the Washington Post reported.
The uptick comes after the Trump administration imposed a new “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute migrants who cross the US border illegally.
The policy means that migrant parents who cross the border with their children are forcibly separated while they await criminal prosecution.

The Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy toward migrants who cross the US border illegally has driven up the number of migrant children held in government custody without their parents, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The US Health and Human Services Department said it was holding 10,773 migrant children in custody as of Tuesday — up 21% from the 8,886 it was holding a month earlier.

The surge comes in the wake of the Trump administration’s new tactic to criminally prosecute every person who crosses into the US illegally, which requires them to be separated from any children they brought with them while they’re detained.

But it’s unclear exactly how many of the 10,773 children being held in government custody were actually forcibly separated from their parents — a Customs and Border Protection official told lawmakers at a hearing last week that 658 children had been separated from 638 adults between May 6 and May 19 under the new zero tolerance policy.

Many of the other children may have arrived at the border unaccompanied. They’re typically held in government custody briefly before being placed with “sponsors,” who are usually parents or immediate relatives of the children.

The shelters the children are staying in are at 95% capacity and are expected to add thousands of bed spaces in the coming weeks, one HHS official told the Post.

To house migrant children, HHS relies on “an existing network of approximately 100 shelters in 14 states.”

HHS has also reportedly weighed housing migrant children on military bases, but the HHS official told the Post that measure is being considered only as a “last option.”

The Trump administration has come under fire in recent weeks for its policies toward migrant children. The family separation policy sparked an uproar, particularly after the White House chief of staff John Kelly dismissed concerns that the policy was “cruel” during a recent interview with NPR.

“The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever,” Kelly said. “But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.”

Anger over the issue reached a boiling point last week, when a month-old piece of news resurfaced, prompting Trump critics to assail the government for losing track of 1,475 immigrant children who arrived at the border alone.

But both the Trump administration and immigration advocates have sought to tamp down concerns about those children, many of whom may have deliberately chosen not to tell the federal government where they are.

Michelle Mark May. 30, 2018

source: http://www.businessinsider.com

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Trump Administration And Advocates Clash Over What’s Next For Migrant Children

June 11, 2018

There are now more than 10,000 migrant children in U.S. government custody.

These are teenagers who fled violence in Central America. And children who were separated from their parents after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

How the children should be cared for and what happens to them is part of a growing clash between the Trump administration and advocates.

One of these young migrants made the long trek from El Salvador last year and turned herself in to U.S. authorities at the border.

She wanted to live with her aunt in Texas. She always believed that’s what her mother would have wanted.

Her mother died when she was nine months old, and her grandparents raised her. She’s 17 years old now.

“She’s a very intelligent girl,” says her aunt, who asked that we not use their names. She worries that speaking out could hurt her niece’s asylum claim.

“She always goes to church,” the aunt added, as she sat in her small apartment in San Antonio, describing the many months she spent trying to win her niece’s release.

Typically, children asking for asylum are held by the Office of Refugee Resettlement for less than two months. Then they are released to a sponsor. That can be a parent, a close adult relative, or foster parents.

Her niece didn’t have an official birth certificate, so she was detained for 16 months.

“I gave them every proof that I could, everything they asked for,” says the aunt.

The aunt says she provided U.S. authorities with proof that she and her niece were related, including fingerprints, many documents from El Salvador and even a DNA test.

The niece’s lawyers say they got the runaround. The lawyers also say they’re not alone and that other kids have been detained longer than necessary. The lawyers say the delay violates rules on how the children should be treated.

Those rules are contained in what’s known as the Flores settlement, a federal court agreement dating back to 1997, said Leecia Welch, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law based in Oakland, Calif.

“At its core, the Flores case stands for the common sense proposition that children should be raised by families and not government facilities,” said Welch.

Her legal group is one of two California nonprofits fighting in court to make sure the Flores settlement is followed.

Under the settlement, the government agreed to release migrant children from custody “without unnecessary delay.” Until then, the government agreed to detain them in the “least restrictive” setting possible.

But Welch said the government isn’t living up to these promises. She said children are being detained too long and that too many are being detained in secure, jail-like settings, even psychiatric facilities.

“We’re also seeing the Office of Refugee Resettlement place some children in facilities where they’re administered very powerful psychotropic medications for weeks, months or even years without first obtaining parental or judicial authorization,” Welch said.

In court declarations, some children said that they have been told they have to take the medications if they ever hope to leave detention. Others claimed they have been forcibly injected.

In a legal response, the government said children can be sent to more secure facilities if they are a danger or an escape risk. It also said psychotropic drugs, or medications used to treat mental illness, are used in compliance with state laws and regulations.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Trump administration has made it clear that it wants to end the protections laid out in the Flores settlement.

“We urgently need Congress to pass legislation to close legal loopholes that are being exploited to gain entry into our country,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said on Capitol Hill last month.

“We need to get rid of the Flores settlement,” she added.

Nielsen and others in the administration believe that the current system creates a magnet for migrant children, including members of the violent MS-13 gang. They say the kids know they can come to the U.S. illegally, get released in short order, and then disappear to live here undocumented.

“I think this is essentially disinformation that’s being put out,” said Bob Carey, who directed the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Obama administration. It is the agency that runs the shelters and detention centers for migrant children.

“Disinformation to state that the Flores agreement in any way, that it’s bad law or that it compromises security when it largely relates to how children in custody are cared for,” he added.

A court hearing on the future of the Flores settlement and the rules for treating migrant children is scheduled for later this month.

RICHARD GONZALES

source: National Public Radio

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Trump Admin to Indefinitely Detain Migrant Families Together; No Plan to Reunite Separated Children

Undocumented Mother: Stop Separation of Migrant Children by Dropping Charges Against Their Parents

best source for following the news: Democracy NOW:

https://www.democracynow.org/topics/immigration

The post Nazi Govern USA: 10,000 migrant children at 100 concentration camps in 14 states appeared first on Void Network.

“Gated Communities for Rich and Poor” by Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores

voidnetwork — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 10:38:00 +0000

Sociologist Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores discusses how the concentration of class and racial privilege in gated communities takes place alongside the spatial concentration and confinement of the poor. She argues that gates help sort and segregate people, physically and symbolically distinguish communities, and cement inequality.

“You drive to the gate. The community is in the shape of a U. You come in one gate and leave through the other. When you get to the gate, you will have a dial pad. You have to dial my number. Here is the number. Wait for me to answer. I will ask you who you are. You will tell me. Once you talk to me I will push the button to open the gate and let you in. The gate will open. You will be allowed in. You will drive to my house. I will be outside waiting for you.”

Following Ramiro’s careful directions, I entered Extensión Alhambra a subdivision of colorful, concrete, one and two-story single-family homes located in Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second largest city, in the southern part of the island. Extensión Alhambra which looks like a mid-century American suburb, was intended to be an exclusive community for middle- and upper-middle-income families, its name evoking Spain’s famous Moorish castle, the Alhambra. When it was built in the early 1970s, Extensión Alhambra was open to all. But in 1993 residents took advantage of a 1987 law (Ley de Cierre, or “closing law”) that permitted communities to build gates for protection. With that law, many previously open and private middle-class housing subdivisions were gated—part of the vast array of communities worldwide that form neighborhood associations, erecting fences and fortresses, and taking protection into their own hands.

Less than half a mile from Extensión Alhambra is a very different kind of gated community. Here, in a development called Dr. Manuel de la Pila, twenty low-rise multiple-dwelling buildings, totaling 906 units, comprise the largest public housing community in the city of Ponce. Dr. Manuel de la Pila is one of 337 public housing projects built in Puerto Rico as part of the massive post-war U.S. federal public housing push that by the second half of the twentieth century had furnished Puerto Rico with more public housing units than any U.S. city—after New York.

Like Extensión Alhambra, when it was first built Dr. Pila was an open community. But early one November morning in 1994, two years after a private firm had taken over its management, three helicopters carrying national guards and police descended upon the project, officially occupying it. Operation Centurion, popularly known as Mano Dura Contra el Crimen (Strong Arm Against Crime), had dictated that the largest, presumably most dangerous public housing projects should be gated in order to reduce crime. Over the course of four years, nearly a quarter of
Puerto Rico’s 337 public housing developments were “rescued” or “occupied,” leading to arrests of residents, the establishment of police outposts, and the erection of fences to control movement. Dr. Pila became a gated public housing development.

Gates and guards have typically been ways for privileged communities to “defend” themselves, creating secure residential environments. In their quest for security, gates symbolize “withdrawal [from the city]” and they also produce fear, according to
Teresa P. R. Caldeira, professor of city and regional planning at the University of California. Promising to protect residents from crime, as well as from fears of declining property values and loss of prestige and exclusivity, gated communities enable affluent residents to imagine that they can leave the unruly, dangerous spaces of cities behind.
The concentration of class and racial privilege in suburbs, fortressed enclaves, securitized buildings, and private islands takes place alongside the spatial concentration of poverty in ghettos, favelas, and barrios. Residential gates for the rich have also led to the rise of gates for the poor—in favelas in Brazil, South African townships, peripheral urban migrant settlements in China, and even in some public housing developments in the United States. The built environment sorts and segregates people, physically and symbolically distinguishing communities from one another. Whether one is locked inside or kept outside is determined by one’s race, class, and gender. In both kinds of gated communities, controlled access points restrict movement in and out. However, living in gated communities of the rich and poor are vastly different experiences.

The privileged gates of Extensión Alhambra offer a retreat into a secure, idyllic community; newly privatized street and sidewalks are restricted to sanctioned, paying community members, who can decide who is allowed inside. In the impoverished community of Dr. Pila, in contrast, government and private overseers control the movement of residents. So while the gates of Extensión Alhambra permit their affluent residents to exert greater political and social influence over their home turf, in Dr. Pila they have the opposite effect, diminishing residents’ power. In privileged communities, gates lock undesirables out; in poor communities, they lock them in. In both cases, gates are erected to serve the interest of the upper classes, who are primarily white. In other words, gates reproduce inequality, and cement or—to use Michel DeCerteau’s term—“politically freeze” social distinctions of race and class.

In And/Or Out

Ramiro greeted me warmly. To enter the well-appointed homes and interior gardens of Extensión Alhambra, where he lived, I had to find people who would vouch for me and arrange for me to gain entrance. Once inside the gate, I had to justify myself and answer their interrogations about who I knew, what I was doing, and why. I came to understand that the residents of Extensión Alhambra were suspicious or confused about me because of my brown skin, which contrasted with the light-skinned people depicted in the photographs sitting on Ramiro’s living room coffee table. According to the 2000 Census, most residents of these privileged communities racially identified as “Caucásico” (Caucasian) or “Blanco” (white)— “race symbols,” in the words of economist Glen Loury, which are enlisted to help navigate these newly privatized community spaces. Negotiations of membership and belonging occur; outsiders and insiders are sorted and profiled.

The residents of Dr. Pila know that they are the ones affluent Alhambra residents wish to keep out. “The controlled access in Extensión Alhambra allows people from that area to enter,” one woman explained. “They think people from public housing want to go there to rob them. For them, we are society’s scum.” Another Dr. Pila resident agreed: “When they put up that gate in Extensión Alhambra, it was so that the people from public housing would not go there, so that the vermin would not enter.” Residents of both private and public communities told me that a race credential was required for someone to enter community spaces. A resident of a nearby private upper-middle class community that had been unsuccessful in putting up gates said that her whiteness prevented her from entering Dr. Pila: “I would be in a panic,” she said, “because I feel different even physically [as a] a blonde woman!”
Gates separate adjacent neighborhoods, freezing race, class distinctions, and demarcating social distances; they segment identities and mark the “unmarked.” Gates position and remind specific bodies of their rightful place, delineating identities and neighborhood limits, and discouraging movement. They also remind people that public housing is dangerous. Together with media representations of crime, they reinforce the idea that dark young males, in particular, are unemployable, dangerous, and criminal.
Rafa, a dark-skinned, bored young man who lived in Dr. Pila, explained, “You go and ask if they have [any work] and they say they don’t. And then they give the job to the favorites.” Residents of public housing projects often spoke about being turned down for jobs, which they saw as related to their place of residence. Don Ramon, an employer at a job fair organized by the social workers in Dr. Pila, said he was there to offer job opportunities that were typically denied to residents of public housing. Dinora, a resident, described a job interview. When she got there, the supervisor asked her where she was from. “When I told him I was from Dr. Pila,” she said, “his attitude changed to ‘I’ll call you if anything comes up.’ He went from an attitude that the job was for-sure to an attitude, once I said where I lived, of ‘I’ll call you later.’”
The physical and symbolic meaning of the gates were obvious to public housing residents. As one woman told me: “By putting up our gate,” they’re not interested in “protect[ing] our community, or its residents.” What they are doing, she said, is “isolat[ing] public housing from wealthy people. They have no reason to think they’re better than us. We’re all people.” The gates cement physical separation. Public housing residents resent not being able to take their children to trick-or-treat during Halloween in the more privileged areas. Opportunities for engaged contact are practically nonexistent.

Getting Inside The Gates

Getting inside Extensión Alhambra takes careful planning. Ramiro’s screening interrogation gave him decisive control over my entry and presence in the public streets and sidewalks of the community, much like the power he and his neighbors wield to make decisions about who enters their private home spaces. With the Closing Law that allowed private communities to gate themselves in the interest of safety, security technology came to facilitate the control rich people exercise over private spaces. Private guards follow orders through telecoms or telephones; electronically-powered gates allow owners to exert control through remote beepers, security spikes and electric currents, administering entry and exit as they see fit. In private communities, residents and visitors are welcomed into safe havens protected from outside perils. Whether one is welcome depends on who is seeking entry, and who is doing the credentialing. This credentialing is done by residents; in public housing, in contrast, the government makes such decisions, seizing control from residents. The gate in Extensión Alhambra “is private,” a resident of Dr. Pila told me: “here it is controlled.” When a temporary fence was first built, residents of Dr. Pila thought their own gate would function similarly to that of Extensión Alhambra, with residents controlling entry either through remote access or granting approval to the guard. But in time, their ability to control entry diminished. Rather than work in the service of residents, a police sentry with a one-way mirror came to control residents, federally inspired zero-tolerance regulations demanded that residents be screened, and the government appointed social workers to organize community activities. Residents, not visitors, came under scrutiny. As one woman explained: “I have been stopped, and asked what building I am going to, what am I going to do. They see the face of a crook in me.”

To enter the gated caserío (public housing) was, as one resident said, to lose the capacity to “move freely,” and instead to be controlled, isolated, and actively barred from freedom of contact both inside and outside. Just as residents’ movements were restricted, so were mine. Upon entering Dr. Pila, visitors and residents are signaled to stay out or wait by a sign in front of the guardhouse that reads: “Residential zone with controlled access. Any resident or visitor without identification must identify himself at the entry. Visiting cars are subject to search. Housing Administration.” The sign is a reminder that entering public housing makes one suspect.
As they block access to outsiders and turn public spaces—the street, the sidewalks—into private community property, these gates expand the power of privileged insiders over urban space and development. The gates that lock some in and others out hand control over the city to the privileged, giving the poor little recourse, little control, and less and less power.

Cemented Distinctions

Puerto Rico illustrates the ways social inequalities are physically and symbolically articulated in residential urban built environments throughout the world, underscoring differences in power and agency. Throughout the world, security policies have become a popular way to address feelings of insecurity in urban areas. Gates in residential areas and public spaces, security guards, security cameras, and metal detectors sort and divide city residents. In China, for example, new urban migrants are being locked in enclaves in the city’s periphery. There, as in Latin America and the rest of the developing world, as well as in the United States, grave social inequalities are spatialized in residential neighborhoods, new technologies delimit insiders and outsiders, and the rich exert power over the poor.
Community gates signal and reconstitute deep social inequalities, both imagined and real. For the rich, the public is increasingly privatized; for the poor, the private sphere is increasingly subject to public surveillance. For both, social activities are limited to the family unit and to intimate and exclusive spaces. Those who can afford to do so “bowl alone” and live alone. Those of lesser means are subjected to monitoring, control, and surveillance in their places of residence. This bunker mentality diminishes the spontaneity of public life.
Although the gates of Puerto Rico’s public housing are not in operation today, the fences are still there. The police no longer patrol the grounds, and only a boarded-up guardhouse remains. Entry and exit is no longer formally monitored, but the remains of the public gates continue to interfere with everyday routines, segregating and re-inscribing social inequality. Meanwhile, the gates around the private enclaves continue to be fortified by technology. The gates of the poor and the rich face each other, turning residents away from the city and its salutary social promises.

Recommended Resources

Atkinson, Rowland and Sarah Blandy. Gated Communities: International Perspectives (Routledge, 2006). Provides a wide array of gated community case studies.
Blakely, Edward J. and Mary Gayle Snyder. Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Brookings Institution Press, 1999). The first book-length work on gated communities, it provides an account of how gated communities emerged in the United States.
Caldeira, Theresa P. R. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo (University of California Press, 2000). Examines gated communities and their relationship to crime and class segregation in Brazil.
Costa Vargas, João. “When a Favela Dared to Become a Gated Condominium: The Politics of Race and Urban Space in Rio de Janeiro,” Latin American Perspectives (2006), 33(4): 49–81. One of the few examinations of gates in poor communities, it explores the relationship of gates to urban poverty and race in Brazil.
Low, Setha. Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (Routledge, 2003). Provides a historical background of gated communities and uses ethnography to see how privilege is contained behind gates.
Safa, Helen I. The Urban Poor of Puerto Rico: A Study in Development and Inequality (Rinehart and Winston, 1974). The first and only book-length study examining life in Puerto Rico’s public housing.

>>>
Zaire Zenit Dinzey-Flores is in the sociology and Latino & Hispanic Caribbean studies departments at Rutgers University. She is the author of Locked In, Locked Out: Gated Communities in a Puerto Rican City, from which this article was adapted.

source: American Sociological Association
http://contexts.org/articles/fall-2013/gated-communities-for-the-rich-and-the-poor/

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No Borders Groups Call to Action for Copenhagen Climate Change

voidnetwork — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:59:00 +0000

This is a call out to action to international no borders groups during the
COP 15 in Copenhagen!

Starting December 7, 2009

Climate change is now the ULTIMATE Shock
and Awe. It encompasses all of
life now, and is the new spectacle.
The climate change spectacle is the
complete reconstruction and
revitalization of capitalism and all of its
domination, hierarchies, exploitation,
racism, sexism, patriarchy,
heteronormativity, commodifications,
privatizations, oppressions,
repressions, murders, lies, and greed.
Climate change will be used to
terrorize us in every way we have been
terrorized before, but encompassing
all the single factors into one.
In the name of security,
Everything that living things
depend is on its way to being
commodified and privatized,
to push us even further and possibly
completely into pure Milton Friedman
´Chicago School´
of fundamental capitalist corporatism.
We cant not just think of this as
a climate issue,
it is much much more.
Water, air, food, and genetic life
is being privatized before our eyes.
And these human rights are and will be used
under the climate change banner to put up
borders and go to war.
Complex surveilance systems are being
put in place to keep the people from
below away from its privatized riches.
Indigenous, small farmers and people
from below are being pushed off their lands
by corporations, and massive natural
disasters that are making people escape
to safer regions.
Also, their is the prospect of
military intervention in the future
to deal with the effects
of violent storms, drought,
mass migration and pandemics.
Military experts are saying that
climate-induced crises could topple
governments, feed terrorist movements
or destabilize entire regions.
Sections of the political and military
establishment are planning
for the consequences
of climate change and are
developing military strategies
to deal with it.

The debate over climate change
and global warming management
at the UN is a struggle
among the national ruling establishments
for their own interests
on the international diplomatic stage.
While there is concern
that climate change can have unforeseen
political and economic consequences,
these competing capitalist states
have no means of seriously addressing
the issue, other than making
preparations for cracking down on
social unrest.
So, in closing.
If we don´t start attacking climate change
from its roots, and seeing that
the system we are in cannot and never
intended to solve climate change,
then we will be doomed to even more
repressive and oppressive regimes,
and even a rollback on the rights that were
worked so hard for by our comrades in the past
and it is already happening!
They have divided and conquered us
for a long time!
But now we have a chance to come together
and fight this under the same banner
to stop the revitalisation of capitalism
and the borders in which it creates.

See You On The Barricades!
climate_no-borders09@lists.riseup.net

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Maintaining the Borders: Identity & Politics by Jamie Heckert

voidnetwork — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:49:00 +0000

Maintaining the Borders: identity & politics

Jamie Heckert

30 October 2002

Identity is the process of creating and maintaining borders, creating different kinds of people. This keeps the world packaged in tidy little boxes. These boxes, in turn, are necessary for the violence and domination of hierarchical societies. There cannot be masters or slaves, bosses or workers, men or women, whites or blacks, leaders or followers, heterosexuals or queers, without identity.

Social movement, both past and present, often attempts to use identity as a tool of liberation. Movement based on gender, sexual orientation, class, ethnic and ability identities all have some success in challenging hierarchy and oppression. By no means do I mean to diminish the impact of past and present activism. Personally, my life would have been much more difficult before feminist and gay liberation/equality movement arose. I argue that identity politics is inherently limited in its ability to challenge hierarchy because it depends upon the same roots as the system it aims to overthrow. ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

Does that mean we should all be the same?

Identity is also the answer to the question, ‘who am I?’. This is different from answering, ‘what kind of person am I?’. Labels like ‘woman’, ‘white’ and ‘heterosexual’ tell us about someone’s position in various hierarchies. These positions, these identities, are significant to how a person thinks of themselves. But, they don’t answer the question, ‘who am I?’. Each of us is unique, both similar and different to everyone else in various ways. Working to eliminate identity in the hierarchical sense (e.g. some animals are more equal than others) isn’t the same as eliminating identity in the individual sense (e.g. I’ll still be Jamie). When I talk about the problems with identity, I mean the ‘boxes’ rather than individuals.

Let me use ‘sexual orientation’ as an example. Supposedly people can be put into three boxes, depending on whether they fancy women, men or both. While this is a popular idea, it seems to cause an awful lot of suffering. People worry a lot about their image, and try very hard to make sure that others realise ‘what’ they are. We also worry about ‘what’ other people are – are they like me or are they different? Some people are so unhappy and anxious about these things that they attack others, either physically or verbally. Even people who think of themselves as heterosexual can be attacked. Finally, people suffer when they desire others of the ‘wrong’ gender, or if they worry that others think they do. One alternative is that we all try to be ‘equal opportunity lovers’ and fancy everyone. Those who succeed could then feel superior to those whose desires are less politically correct. Another alternative is that we try to give up thinking of people (including ourselves) in terms of sexual orientation and instead recognise that everyone’s sexual desires are complex and unique. This would mean being yourself rather than a heterosexual, a queer or whatever, and to recognise people as people instead of members of categories. We could never all be the same, even if we tried!

What is wrong with political identity?

Identity separates people. It encourages us to believe that ‘we’ are different from ‘others’. Identity can also encourage conformity. How else do I show that I am one of us other than conforming to the accepted codes prescribed to that identity? This construction of similarity and difference exists whether we are talking about traditional identity politics groups like ‘disabled people’ or political identities like ‘environmentalists’. This separation of us from them has serious consequences for political movement.

Identity encourages isolation. Political ghettos cannot exist without political identity; and their existence reinforces it. Not only are the ‘activists’ separated from the ‘non-activists’, but within a broad political ghetto, anarchists, feminists, and environmentalists (amongst others) often see themselves as involved in separate struggles. People who consider themselves politically active are separated both from each other and from others who do not share an ‘activist’ identity. Effective movement for radical social change cannot be based on such divisions.

Identity reduces social phenomena to individuals. Concepts like anarchism and racism are social. They are not embodied by individuals as terms like ‘anarchist‘ and ‘racist‘ suggest. Rather, they exist as ideas, practices and relationships. In most societies, racism is inherent in our institutionalised relationships and ways of thinking. We can and should be critical of racism, but to attack people as ‘racists’ can only further alienate them from our efforts. Besides, it is a dangerous fantasy to believe that ‘racists’ can be separated from those of us who are non-racist. Likewise, anarchism exists throughout every society. Every time people co-operate without coercion to achieve shared goals, that is anarchy. Every time someone thinks that people should be able to get along with each other without domination, that is anarchism. If we only see racism in ‘racists’, we will never effectively challenge racism. If we only see anarchism in ‘anarchists’, we will miss out on so many desperately needed sources of inspiration.

Identity encourages purity. If we believe that concepts like feminism can be embodied in individuals, then some people can be more feminist than others. This leads to debates about ‘real feminists’ and how feminists should act (e.g. debates regarding feminism and heterosexuality). Feminist purity allows for hierarchy (e.g. more or less and thus better or worse feminists) and encourages guilt (e.g. asking yourself ‘should real feminists think/act like this?’).

Political identity simplifies personal identity. A related problem for feminist identity, for example, is that it demands we focus on one aspects of our complex lives. Feminist movement has often been dominated by white middle-class women who have a particular perspective on what is a ‘women’s issue’. Many women have had to choose between involvement in a woman’s movement that fails to recognise ethnicity and class issues, or in black or working class politics that did not acknowledge gender. But, the alternative of specialised identity politics could get very silly (e.g. a group for disabled, transgender, lesbian, working-class women of colour). Likewise, if I describe myself as a feminist, an anarchist, and a sex radical, I am suddenly three different people. However, if I say I advocate feminism, anarchism and radical sexual politics I am one person with a variety of beliefs.[iv][iv]

Identity often imagines easily defined interests. Feminism is often presented as for women only; men are perceived to entirely benefit from the gender system. Many men do clearly benefit from the gender system in terms of institutionalised domination. If we perceive interests as inherently stemming from current systems, we fail to recognise how people would benefit from alternative systems. If we want to encourage and inspire people to create a very different form of society, we should share with each other what we see as beneficial. We must recognise that different value systems (e.g. domination versus compassion) result in very different interests.

Identity discourages participation. If people are worried that they might be excluded through labelling (e.g. racist or homophobic), they won’t feel welcomed and won’t get involved. Likewise, people do not get involved if they believe that it is not in their interests. If we pepetuate the idea that feminism is for women, men will never see how it could also be in their interests to support feminism. Or they might support feminism, but feel guilty for their male privilege. Either way, men are not encouraged to be active in feminist movements. Radical social change requires mass social movement. Identity politics, by definition, can never achieve this. Political identities, like ‘environmentalist’, can likewise become a basis for minority politics.

Identity creates opposition. By dividing the world up into opposing pairs (e.g. men/women, heterosexuals/queers, ruling class/working-class, whites/blacks), identity creates opposite types of people who perceive themselves as having opposing interests. This opposition means that people fail to recognise their common interests as human beings. The opposition of two forces pushing against each other means that very little changes.

Identity freezes the fluid. Neither individual identity (the ‘who am I?’ kind) nor social organisation are fixed, but are in constant motion. Political identities require that these fluid processes are frozen realities with particular characteristics and inherent interests. In failing to recognise the nature of both identity and society, political identity can only inhibit radical social change.

It may not be perfect, but can’t it still be a useful strategy?

It is a very good strategy if you don’t want to change things very much. Identity politics fits in nicely within the dominant neo-liberal ideology. Groups created around oppressed identities can lobby the state for civil rights. This idea of trying to protect individuals without changing relationships or systems of organisation is compatible with the individualistic basis of capitalism and representative ‘democracy’. I would never argue that a strategy has to be ‘perfect’ to be useful, but it must be consistent with its aims. Ends and means can only be separated in our minds. If the aim is to reduce or eliminate hierarchical social divisions (e.g. gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, class), a strategy which depends upon those very divisions can never be successful.

If political identity is such a poor strategy, why is it so common?

On a personal level, political identity makes us feel part of something larger at the same time that it makes us feel special were different. In the short-term, this can be very successful defence mechanism. For example, I’m sure I would have been a lot more damaged by the sexist and homophobic environment in which I grew up if I had not been able to convert stigma into pride. However, feeling yourself to be different and separate from other people is not a successful long-term strategy, either psychologically or politically.

What’s the alternative to political identity?

If borders are the problem, then we must support and encourage each other to tear down the fences. Two crucial tools for dismantling borders are systematic analyses and compassionate strategies.

We should recognise oppression is not simply a practice of individuals who have power over those who do not. Instead, we could see how forms of organisation (including institutions and relationships) systematically produce hierarchies and borders. People will only see an interest in getting more involved if they realise that their individual problems – anxiety, depression, exhaustion, anger, poverty, meaningless work,unsatisfying sex lives, etc – are not unique, but are systematically produced. Furthermore, their action will only be effective if they work to reduce all forms of hierarchy and domination. Constructs including gender, sexuality, capitalism, race and the nation state are interdependent systems. Each system of domination serves to reinforce the others. This doesn’t mean we have to solve every problem instantly, but we must recognise that all issues are human issues. At the same time, we must not imagine that a particular system of domination (not even capitalism!) is the source of all others.

Radical politics is rarely appealing because it focuses on the evils of the world. This offers little that is hopeful or constructive in people’s daily lives. If we want to see widespread social movement for radical change, we have to offer people something they value. Listening to people’s concerns, caring about their problems and encouraging and supporting them to develop systemic solutions requires compassion. Offer people a better quality of life instead of focusing so much on depressing aspects of our current society.

We should also recognise that people positioned in more privileged categories may in some ways suffer. At the very least, people who feel a strong need to dominate and control must suffer deep insecurities, the results of competition and hierarchy. Insecurity, domination and control are not conducive to fulfilling and meaningful relationships with other people. Attacking people in ‘privileged’ positions does little to dismantle these systems. It also gives entirely too much credit to people in those positions – they are both products and producers of systems, just like the rest of us.

To radically reorganise our society, we should aim to both diminish systematic domination and suffering and encourage systematic compassion. Just as apparently disconnected and often incoherent forms of domination can reinforce and maintaining each other, so too can a compassionate organisation of society become systematic and self-sustaining.

Encouraging people to be more comfortable with sexuality in general has been a key focus of my own political efforts[v][v]. But, sexuality is only one area in which a compassionate and systematic approach has much more radical potential than politicising identity.

Find sources of suffering, whatever they are, and support and encourage people to find ways of relating to themselves and others that reduce that suffering. Help build compassionate, co-operative institutions (e.g. social centres, support/discussion groups, mediation services, childcare support, food not bombs). Tell people when you admire or appreciate their efforts. Support people trying to change their environments (e.g. workplace resistance). Offer alternatives to people who are involved in or considering authoritarian positions (e.g. military, police, business management).

Demonstrating the pleasures and benefits of co-operative, compassionate organisation offers a strong threat to the world of borders and guards. I suspect that fragmented groups, anti-whatever demonstrations, unfriendly, exclusive meetings and utopian ‘after the revolution’ lectures will never be quite as enticing to people outside the activist ghetto.

Further Reading:

Anonymous (1999) Give Up Activism in Reflections on June 18^th. Also at http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no9/activism.htm#

Begg, Alex (2000) Empowering the Earth: Strategies for Social Change. Totnes, Green Books

CrimethInc. (2002) Definition of Terms. Harbinger (4) http://crimethinc.com/library/terms.html

CrimethInc. (2002) Why We’re Right and You’re Wrong (Infighting the Good Fight). Harbinger (4) http://crimethinc.com/library/right.html

Edwards, David (1998) The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism. Totnes, Green Books

Heckert, J. (2003) Sexuality | Identity | Politics in J Purkis and J Bowen (eds) Changing Anarchism. Manchester, Manchester University Press

hooks, b. (2000). Feminism is for Everybody: passionate politics. London, Pluto Press

LeGuin, U. (1999/1974). The Dispossessed. London, The Women’s Press

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