The Ruckus Society holds "Democracy Action Camps" for training protestors in nonviolent civil disobedience. During a recent camp, there were some emotional moments in one of the workshops that evolved into a discussion of privilege and race within the movement and society as a whole. Our cameras were not allowed to film the workshop, so we spoke with the workshop leader and a participant for their impressions on what happened.
Jim Ace attended Ruckus' second Action Camp in 1996 as a participant and has participated in many camps since then as both trainer and director of programming.
Hop Hopkins is an organizer from the Brown Collective in Seattle. This was his first Ruckus Action Camp.
You have been involved with Ruckus since 1996. How have you seen the issues change over the years?
Jim: In some ways my work with Ruckus is kind of the culmination of everything I have done so far. Ruckus essentially provides a stage for people to come together and share skills. And talk about issues, but at the same time talk about the strategies and tactics that will get us where we want to go. Every camp I come to I am blown away by the amount of not only just intellectual and campaign thinking work that we have done, but the amazing emotional processing work around issues of race and class and gender and sexuality. And there has actually been a commitment by the Ruckus staff to continue this work and have it be part of every training.
You were a participant in the nonviolent workshop Jim led that triggered an emotional string of events. What happened?
Hop Hopkins: Well, that is kind of a story that has been a long time coming for me personally. This camp in and of itself is a manifestation of what has needed to happen, and people recognize that. This camp has, I think from everyone's perspective, more folks of color here than attended any other Ruckus camp. So we were having a nonviolence versus violence workshop. For me, what I felt that was important for the movement at this point was to discuss some of these practical issues that revolved around racism and White privilege and basically White supremacy and how that operates in this context of violence versus nonviolence. When I as a person of color step out of my house every day [or] when I put myself on the front lines of a demonstration, the police are going to treat me differently than they would a White protestor. So what does that mean in terms of my personal safety when I am in a situation, whether I am in a blockade or marching down the street with other activists? How are they going to respond when I, a Black male, get attacked by the police? That nonviolence is to some extent for White folks, it's a privilege to even think that way because they are not automatically a target on any given day of their life. And my point was in these conversations they talk about the theory and practice of nonviolence -- but we very rarely really get into the theory of it -- and then how that translates into our movement as it stands right now.
When the people of color said they did not want to integrate, was it hard for some people to hear?
Jim: People were frustrated that some of the White activists were insisting that we have diversity in our groups and that people of color integrate with White folks. And guilt and a lot of pain came up from some people in particular who felt for the first time they tapped into the enormity of our history.
It was hard for me as a White man to hear that men of color and women of color need to have their own space because I want to work with them. Because they are great activists and they care about the issues that I care about. And so it was hard to hear, but a great wake-up call for me to really get a real guttural sense of what it means to be a person of color in this society. I am leaving this camp shaken up -- shaken up, stirred up, and asking a lot of questions, and really searching, looking inside for answers.
Jim was saying it was emotional. Can you describe that?
Hop: There were tears that were shed, voices were escalated. It was very passionate. I imagine there was probably some responsibility and guilt, whether they were misplaced or not. It was a very emotionally charged period of time for everyone involved. For me personally, it was exactly where the class needed to go in order for people to realize that this just isn't like summer camp, that this idea of nonviolence, direct nonviolent action, is for real. I think people actually had to really reflect on these issues of how things might be different for them as a woman, as a queer person, as a person of color, as a young person, as an activist, on all these different levels at what type of persecution or oppression they might meet while doing this. So I kind of think it was different than just regular kind of nonviolence history practice: techniques; how to de-escalate a situation; whatever the agenda might be. So I think it really went to that gut level that people really needed to feel in order to actually move to the next level outside of what was on the agenda, but actually forming these close, tightly bound relationships with people when they move into a situation like we are facing in the DNC [Democratic National Convention].
|
|
Jim Ace
Hop Hopkins
Additional Reading
Color Lines
"Where Was the Color in Seattle? Looking for Reasons Why the Great Battle Was So White"
by Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez
|
