The Politics of Protest

On Thursday January 26 2012, I attended the University of Toronto’s panel discussion entitled The Politics of Protest: Bridging the Local and Global in Emerging Social Movements, organized by the Women and Gender Studies Student Union. Six activists sat on the panel, each describing their own experience with their respective movement, problems facing modern activism, and how they feel that their cause is impacted by the unequal distribution of power, both political and social.

Though each individual’s experience obviously varied, a common issue that was identified as problematic was the homogenization of the oppressed in any social movement. Several speakers mentioned that differences in outlook, circumstance and opinion among members of a movement resulted in discontent, disorganization and discouragement. Alex Felipe, spokesperson for BAYAN-Canada, for instance, used the Occupy Toronto movement to illustrate this point. He explained that the members of the 99% are also diverse and divided and therefore experience the current economic system differently and have different interests at heart, hindering the movement’s success. LIFT activist Josephine Gray commented that she herself found herself in between movements when first starting out as an activist due to her race, social class and marital status. This problem is one that is prominent in the writings of Kimberle Crenshaw who noted that an intersectional analysis, one that represents society as a framework of intersecting identities and recognizes “the complexity of belonging simultaneously to several groups”(Crenshaw, 1991, p.200) is necessary to understand and address the needs of individuals.

Another prominent topic among speakers throughout the discussion was the way in which power is acquired and exercised in society. One speaker asked listeners to think critically about inequality to consider who is creating it, preserving it and capitalizing on it. Lorel O’Gorem, participant of the Occupy Toronto movement and the victim of a harsh article by Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail, gave great insight into the way that the media is controlled in order to preserve the current social hierarchy which stratifies society with the affluent on top. The narratives of blame that are evident in Wente’s article, O’Gorem pointed out, are clearly intended to vindicate the 1% for the economic inequality and to blame those struggling with poverty for their own problems in order to justify their suffering and pacify the public. It is obvious that newspapers, as they are owned and run by the wealthy, present facts in a light which benefits their own interests. This type of discourse is not uncommon and resonates with much of the critique exercised in introductory Women and Gender Studies classes, as we are asked to consider who is constructing and spreading knowledge and why. This is paralleled in H.M. Fraser’s article The Madres of the Plazo de Mayo and the Reframing of Victims in which he explains how the media and authorities, controlled by the government in power, presented missing victims of the Argentine kidnappings as the deviant parties through diction and propaganda, calling them “terrorists” and “subversives” to justify their kidnapping. It was left to the Madres to reframe “the subversives” and to “deconstruct the demonized amorphous enemy that the military relied upon to maintain control” (Fraser, 2009, p.36)

Works Cited

Crenshaw, Kimberle. (1991). Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In An introduction to women’s studies: Gender in a transnational world. New York: McGraw- Hill.

Fraser, H.M. (2009). Los desaparecidos: The madres of the plaza and the reframing of victims. In Canadian women studies/ Les cahiers de la femme. Inanna Publications.

#protest #politics #feminism #womenandgenderstudies