Post by lil bit o che on Feb 16, 2004 2:37:54 GMT -5
JS: The other thing is -- and I really remember this of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and ‘70s -- people really practiced solidarity between oppressed peoples that you hear some people talk about, but sometimes is more lip service than real. When AIM [American Indian Movement] did the takeover at Wounded Knee, and got surrounded by the U.S. Army and then the siege? The largest demonstration in the U.S. was in Denver supporting them. The only large one, and it was the Crusade for Justice, it was mostly Chicano.
When Affirmative Action first started getting attacked in California in the early ‘80s -- the law school I think it was at Berkeley -- ended the quota for Asian Americans, and the Chicanos offered to give part of their slots to Asians to fight for the principle of representation. And a lot of that spirit has been lost.
This thing that’s happening; what used to be militant politics against systemic injustice, against capitalism as a system, has turned into ethnic politics for a lot of people, with the veneer of seeming to be militant, protesting about this and that, but underneath it is an attitude of ‘we should just look out for ourselves. We really shouldn’t care about anybody but ourselves. And as for everyone, we should say nice things, but potentially they could be an enemy, so we really should only think of us.’ I know that Asians are told that by conservative forces in our communities, and certainly Black people are told this, because it’s the American way your subvert militant consciousness in people’s movements by trying to make them more capitalist.
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