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Racial tensions at Occupy Philly? Our analysis: maaaybe. And other news from the City Hall occupation
Occupy Philly (and boy is it getting hard to write that without the # sign) had a few interesting developments over the past few days.
Racial tensions at Occupy Philly? Our analysis: maaaybe. And other news from the City Hall occupation
Occupy Philly (and boy is it getting hard to write that without the # sign) had a few interesting developments over the past few days.
One, that will be racing across the blogosphere by the time you read this, involved race. A group of women claim to have been harrassed and called racial epithets a few days ago. The incident, according to a Tumblr page created afterward, invovled two white people from the "tech committee" tent calling the women "niggers," and used other racist language.
Last night, that tension simmered during the group's "general assembly" meeting during confusion over the creation of a People of Color Committee.
Arturo Castillon, found sitting atop a concrete buttress with a White Allies Committee sign, told CP that he had personally witnessed the incident in question, though his story poses not a few questions about what actually happened.
"I was with two of my friends, two black women, and we were talking shit on white people," says Castillon, who is white. "These two guys got really offended and they started calling these black women 'nigger' ... because in their mind, it's the same thing to talk shit on white people as on black people." Castillon claims he then punched one of the offending men in the face. CP was not able to verify any of these details.
Before tonight's meeting, the People of Color Committee could be seen talking near Dilworth Plaza's Southwest corner. Whites approaching the group were asked — politely, though bluntly — by one member whether they "identified as people of color." If not, they were asked to step back.
That person, a 23-year-old man who goes by the name The Voice, spoke to CP afterward. "We felt like the minorities were not ... I hate to say this, but it felt like it was an all-white movement at first," he said. "We felt like the minorities in this group were not being well-represented and so we decided to start a working group."
"A bunch of white members stood up against what we [the People of Color Working Group] were talking about, he added. "They tried to preach this one-ness. ... These issues just started affecting white middle-class people. They have always affected the black community."
That said, The Voice emphasized not division but unity of purpose: "We're not divided," he said. "I repeat: This movement is not divided. We just have our own agendas. You're probably not going to put this in the paper, but the media is looking for us to divide ourselves — especially sleazy papers like City Paper and the Philadelphia Weekly [after instinctively raising an eyebrow, The Voice added, 'any group that puts pornography numbers on the back of their papers.']. They look for division, but we're not here to divide the movement. We're here so our voice can be heard."
The Voice has a point. Despite whatever happened this weekend, the Occupy Philly movement remains — whatever else you want to say about it — markedly diverse, and a followup meeting tonight featured (among leadership of various hues) no mention of the supposed racial divide. Instead, members of every race debated over the business of the night: notably, whether or not to dissolve the group's "police liaison committee," a subject that deserves its own blog post.
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