We need to see humans, not just hate groups.
Enjoy our February newsletter, published February 26, 2021.
Protecting the Rights of
People & Nature From
the Local Up
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Hello to all in the CommunityRights.US network.
I’m very happy to join the team as the new director, and I look forward to helping to expand and deepen the work of CRUS, and to growing the national Community Rights movement during this critical time. I’ll contribute to many CRUS newsletters, in addition to Founding Director Paul Cienfuegos who will continue in a leadership role. For my first entry, he suggested a really controversial topic! I agreed, in the hope of advancing more inclusive, compassionate, and open-minded conversation. Enjoy!
Solidarity,
Tyler Norman
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January 6 Was About Much
More Than White Supremacy
Since I’m new here, let me introduce myself by using this space as an opportunity to clarify some core ideas of my analysis—we may or may not agree, so I look forward to learning alongside all of you as we march onward together in movement.
The big one right now, is that I’m really, really tired of hearing about Trump. And I’m already sick of Biden, just another corporate crony like very nearly all of them at the state and federal levels. Instead, I want to talk about We The People—what all of US are doing at the community level, our aspirations and explorations, our struggles and successes. It gets clearer every day that Democrats and Republicans are just two wings of the Corporate Party, “Good Cop, Bad Cop.” We negotiate with them sometimes, while remembering that the real work happens at our grassroots level.
But it’s more than just the electoral circus… I’m telling you all, I’ve just got to put my foot down—I’m so tired of this “Right v. Left” debate, and I think we should quit those unclear categories just as fast as we quit gossiping about Dishonest Donald.
I’ll reserve my long-winded thoughts about “Culture Wars” and the toxic tribalism encouraged by social media (watch for a future newsletter). For now, let me just say that “conservative” and “liberal” attitudes are natural, simple emotions, not convoluted concepts like “The Right” and “The Left.” These antiquated notions from 18th century Europe are dogmas so far removed from the particular nuanced problems of real life that both have become sprawling self-contradictory messy memes. They replicate themselves but no longer correspond to their original symbolism, nor relate to any specific movement or on-the-ground reality here in the USA…they are distracting us from real issues and opportunities. We are all complex people, and many communities are in movement and transition right now in myriad ways.
Much of this change is hard, unwanted, traumatizing. A great many in this country are really hurting. Events of 2020 pushed many beyond their endurance, but the injury has been chronic. Corporate Colonialism, now in its extremist “Neoliberal” form since the ‘80’s, has undermined every strength that we had, stealing every speck of wealth its many tentacles could grasp. Especially since 2008, many formerly dignified working- and middle-class homeowners, renters, entrepreneurs, students, and others have dropped into hopeless despair.
The events of January 6 were not motivated primarily by ignorance and white supremacy, as is claimed in much of the corporate media and echoed ad nauseam on social media. Obviously, there were some white supremacists present, as we have seen reposted zillions of times. But as far as I can tell, active white supremacists have been very vocal, yet they are actually a minority of the Trump crowd. Of course, I understand that deeply embedded and truly dangerous racism exists within and between individuals and communities. But racism is a colonial ideology integral to the very concept of the USA, continually evolving throughout history. Trump didn’t make this mess, he just capitalized on it.
Of course, it must be said that our neighbors didn’t make it either, and yet too often white folks reproduce racism unintentionally. It is our responsibility to change that. But my point here is that racism is relevant to every conflict in the USA – we’re all swimming in a fundamentally racialized and violent culture, doing our best to navigate with whatever maps we can find. We should be discussing racism and learning how to stop acting it out, not using the label as relationship-shattering ammunition hurled relentlessly against whole categories of unwanted others.
We will learn more by focusing on economic motivations for those who stormed the Capitol. A WaPo report notes that 60% of those arrested fit within the demographics of despair: 18% of them had filed for bankruptcy, 25% had been recently sued by creditors, 20% had lost their homes to foreclosure. If you’d rather watch than read, see this segment from The Hill.
These individuals were rebelling against bankers and corporate elites—Goldman-Sachs with their bailouts, Bezos with his $80B Covid profits. For millions of Americans, a vote for Trump was a vote against Wall Street–groomed career politicians, against so-called “free trade agreements” and their race to the bottom, and against endless wars burning up our taxes. These motivations don’t sound terribly stupid and racist to me. Those who stormed the Capitol showed poor judgment on January 6, but much of the anger and outrage among their ranks is legitimate. Many see their movement as anti-establishment, anti-elite, anti-empire. Though I disagree with much of the messaging on display at their rallies, I empathize with their emotional refusal of Biden’s “return to normal.”
Imagine how many Trump voters would have happily picked Sanders if they had been given the chance. Look past the attention-seeking flag-wavers that are endlessly recycled on media, and see that on either side most are complex people, abused by a greedy economic system and frightened by lifelong propaganda, not maliciously trying to ruin “our America,” but simply longing for fairness while struggling to survive inside our profoundly unequal society.
Let’s acknowledge how incredibly difficult it is to make wise decisions about justice…and then let’s sit down together, patiently determined to work it out. The Community Rights movement demonstrates many successful examples of progressives and conservatives finding common ground in rights-based ordinance campaigns to protect their communities from corporate harms. Local non-partisan organizing builds grassroots strength for a more sustainable future, and reweaves the threads of a new society.
You see, the old categories are no longer useful. We are all complex peoples, in movement now more than ever. “Right v. Left” narratives are eroding our grassroots power by pitting us against each other, just like classic “divide and conquer” tactics used by the original British colonizers. I will never deny the serious disagreements between different world-views, and I recognize challenges and dogmatic assumptions on all sides, but I also feel very confident that if we reach out and talk to those with different perspectives, we can learn from each other, we can see our collective needs and desires and unite to secure them, and we can grow into our eternal potential as a diverse, vibrant, contradictory, yet compassionate, courageous, dignified We The People.
Reply to Tyler <at> communityrights <dot> us with your thoughts and comments.
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Want to help further the work of Community Rights US?
Over the next couple weeks and months, we at Community Rights US will be introducing more ways to support our work protecting the rights of people and nature. You can still donate via our PayPal as you did previously, but now we also have a new Action Network fundraiser! Through this link, you can sign up for one-time or monthly recurring donations quickly and easily. Check it out and consider supporting Community Rights US, so together we can take our country back from corporate rule, and reclaim our rightful authority to govern ourselves (from the local up).Photo credit: “Male Cardinal with bluebird nearby” by alans1948 is licensed under CC BY 2.0