Lies: A Journal of Materialist Feminism - Libcom

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envision the jobs and upward mobility they desperately want. Don’t get us wrong — there can be a lot of good in indignation, discontent, disillusionment. But we need to exorcise the living ghost of the middle class: the spirit of not giving a fuck who you fuck over. Why say “99%” when you really mean “me”? 8 And you know how it goes: the neutral “me” is the white dude with all the time in the world (we have to say it: the ideal occupier). At Occupy Baltimore, whiteness and maleness have been duly reinforced as the not-so-secret standard at this occupation, in many ways. One example: an announcement made by a young white man at a GA that “everyone is accountable when they speak to media, because they represent the occupation as a whole” (FYI: there is no literature, no point person, no infrastructure to guide new members; only judgment). The countless snaps and twinkles in support of such a statement demonstrated clear consensus. Those twinkles expressed a range of assumptions that people who are largely comfortable in their own skin tend to make. Being present in a space makes you in charge of its representation; most everyone agrees with you (and should). Those of us that have daily to prepare ourselves for an imminent bash, an imminent fight with hostile, privilege-denying strangers, an imminent insult (intended or not) — we take issue with this coercion into representation. We don’t ask you to represent us (please god no). Don’t fucking assimilate us into your views, and then make us responsible for them. We won’t even mention how much and how loud white dudes have been speaking. Rather than policing the radical voices taking anti-capitalist, revolutionary, and anti-police positions, we should give these voices space to be heard and listened to seriously. The anarchist in-joke “Make Total Destroy” is true: the real political agenda consists in destroying state power, capitalism, and all its forms of coercive social control. 8 It is true that over the course of the occupation, the demographics of occupy Baltimore shifted to include more people experiencing homelessness; however, the many eruptions of resentment towards homeless people “taking over McKeldin” or “abusing occupy for the food” signal the sharp difference between loudest voices at occupy and the poor. 120 W.&.T.C.H.
Why was this phrase deliberately excluded from the agenda cards read out during a GA, while such platitudes as “We are All One” and “Peace on Earth and Good Will to All” were deemed worthy to be shared? The liberal-or-else reformism of Occupy Baltimore is perfectly encapsulated by the imposition of goals of peace and love. Fuck peace: we need to formulate a coherent political analysis and a revolutionary agenda to destroy capitalism and dismantle state power. Rejecting outright the eventual need for an armed uprising reflects an unwillingness to pursue the logic of our own (proto)demands to their full extent. Don’t tell us to be “pragmatic,” to focus on piecemeal reforms and wait for our day in the revolt. Because not revolution, but reformism is idealistic: reformism believes in democracy under capitalism, in the possibility of redistributing wealth that is systematically dispossessed from its producers. Our revolutionary desire to destroy capitalism is not at all utopian. Nor is it inactive: this aim is embodied in a multitude of actions towards different immediate and faraway ends. To us, this means that the revolutionary aim is not pure negation or destruction: we work to confront racism, sexism, and class war in our community as an immediate goal, without forgetting that we ultimately cannot live like this anymore. For Occupy Baltimore, this means the 99% must relinquish its presumed equality and acknowledge division if it is to grasp the real conditions of society, and what must actually be done. “THE 1% ARE WINNING EVERY TIME WE FIGHT AMONGST OURSELVES.” When the excluded call out a movement, we are often told to put aside our differences: it’s only common sense that to accomplish anything, we need unity. But this equality is only the thinnest commonality — the democracy of consumers — an abstraction that masks society, that papers over the distribution of violence with images of citizenship and rights. Already, in conversations with supposed comrades, our critiques have been met with concern that the ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIONS 121
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LIES JOURNAL liesjournal.info liesj
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TABLE OF CONTENTS LIES COLLECTIVE 9
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LIES COLLECTIVE EDITORIAL NOTE They
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our oppression. Rather we turn our
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NOT-SEX AND SOCIAL RELATIONS
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eclaimed your natural pleasure. The
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point in a relationship which is co
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of being and self definition, as in
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Whereas earlier radical feminism ad
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Perhaps more subtly, this politic r
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eyond this register of suppression
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to discover it, to liberate it, to
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liberationist, proposing instead of
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production that brought it into bei
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the structural position of silence
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ut only as an object for an active
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such excess is meted out sparingly
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itself. Loneliness, which is really
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me or ask them to stop or yell at t
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CLÉMENCE X. CLEMENTINE AND ASSOCIA
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systematically excluded women from
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of mitigating her alienation and in
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the couple, not its destruction. Ca
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plants and animals. Get into space.
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M. SANDOVSKY LETTERS TO L: PARANOIA
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Dear L, I’m learning to hold my t
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Our anger is experienced by others
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The beatings do not work, the accou
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SOGUMI SALT WEDGE (EXCERPTS) (UNTIT
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(UNTITLED) — did it for revenge
Page 67 and 68: JOMO CARING: A LABOR OF STOLEN TIME
Page 69 and 70: after the purported grandeur and tu
Page 71 and 72: airy room is not for us, the immigr
Page 73 and 74: and I bonded over many episodes of
Page 75 and 76: upper management. According to Sabr
Page 77 and 78: Back in the dining room later that
Page 79 and 80: Before this, break times were somet
Page 81 and 82: The never-ending series of question
Page 83 and 84: including experiences that we may n
Page 85 and 86: only a reflection of the way the el
Page 87 and 88: We blame the bosses. Once, twice, a
Page 89 and 90: others not so. They saw this as a u
Page 91 and 92: I refused to sign. I wrote explaini
Page 93 and 94: others said it in a respectful and
Page 95 and 96: I wasn’t fired but our gains were
Page 97 and 98: None of this is easy, and all the m
Page 99: NOTES ON STRUGGLE
Page 102 and 103: I spent no more than 15 hours in a
Page 104 and 105: I met 3 women who were still in hig
Page 106 and 107: I was 1 of at least 2 women who had
Page 109 and 110: W.&.T.C.H. ON THE RECENT #OCCUPATIO
Page 111 and 112: 16% of Blacks that are “officiall
Page 113 and 114: the injuries of unemployment and un
Page 115 and 116: Whatever this occupation is, it is
Page 117: And it’s not only about police br
Page 121 and 122: actions. Drawing a moral line betwe
Page 123 and 124: BARUCHA CALAMITY PELLER WOMEN IN UP
Page 125 and 126: fought back the police, ultimately
Page 127 and 128: was spawned, despite the fact that
Page 129 and 130: Women’s labor in the globalized d
Page 131 and 132: “personal” became a site for re
Page 133 and 134: not as actions strictly within the
Page 135 and 136: that had been taken over by women.
Page 137 and 138: sector be women, because many had v
Page 139 and 140: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS STATE REPRESSION
Page 141 and 142: other social or political implicati
Page 143 and 144: JACKIE WANG AGAINST INNOCENCE RACE,
Page 145 and 146: the patterns that structure politic
Page 147 and 148: our strategies reinforce a framewor
Page 149 and 150: Black convicts, initially a part of
Page 151 and 152: The spatial politics of safety orga
Page 153 and 154: The engineering and management of u
Page 155 and 156: were quick to purge and re-articula
Page 157 and 158: decidedly white, for it asserts tha
Page 159 and 160: defend the police after an “occup
Page 161 and 162: cion of articulated/explicit politi
Page 163 and 164: them peace of mind amidst the state
Page 165 and 166: ingly, less likely to seek counseli
Page 167 and 168: not fit into a non-violent model of
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that can be displaced for the sake
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uniformity. “No more mothers, wiv
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FROM TEA LIGHTS TO TORCHES: DELINQU
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On the night of June 5th in Minneap
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Dean Schmitz was not the first and
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Jurors in the US were polled as to
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them all in favor of a better world
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MAGDA LLWHISK DON’T TRY TO DIG YO
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knives or kisses to the throat? wol
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such a project is a “single syste
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“Gender - Class - Dynamic” and
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are intense pressures on population
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TC writes: The sexed character of a
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for gender in capital. In so doing,
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women’s oppression. The problem w
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nist theory of capitalist social re
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We live in this world, but exist ou
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through racialization, and that rac
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I. FRAMING WHAT’S AT STAKE We are
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This is not to mention the consiste
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III. QUESTIONS How do we assess exi
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... “ALL THE WORK WE DO AS WOMEN
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class and the entire capitalist sys
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an isolated, unique form of exploit
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A stronger analysis would also inte
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money. We women are expected to be
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towns, women who work in big cities
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are to “give it” for free for o
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e able to choose where and how we w
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with men altogether, or as straight
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SUZAN COOKE “WE REFERRED TO IT AS
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Well this was just sort of standard
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They had also been picking up women
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and the very stereotypical ghettoiz
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We referred to it as coming out. Th
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REVIEWSEW
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discrimination and hate-bias have b
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the extension of these struggles. S
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