Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: Stories from Our Work

annette — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Margery Freeman, Lila Cabbil, Kimberley Richards, Jeff Hitchcock, Bonnie Berman Cushing

Inc., Dostie, Crandall, & Douglass Books

“Actively listen... You cannot help if you do not hear... Actively listen...” These words swirl across the cover of Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: Stories from Our Work. The book is a collection of eleven articles by white anti-racist activists reflecting on their experiences with accountability. Almost all of the contributors trace their activist roots back to Undoing Racism™ trainings from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), and in fact the book opens with a foreword by Ronald Chisom, co-founder and executive director of PISAB. Contributors also have ties to other prominent white anti-racist organizations, including the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop (CWS) and the White Privilege Conference.

What is accountability? In the book's introduction, the editors write, “Accountability in the traditional sense implies an underlying power that can administer sanctions, but if there are no sanctions, if one is in the power position, why be accountable, and who can hold you to it? So accountability as we view it in regard to white anti-racist organizing is about a willingness to share power.”

Some of the book's contributors focus on philosophies or systems of accountability. For example, Shelly Tochluk and Cameron Levin, of AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles) and RJA (Racial Justice Alliance) describe the model for accountability they have developed, entitled Transformative Alliance Building. They emphasize “two-sided accountability” (between white people and people of color) in contrast to “one-sided” models that emphasize white accountability to people of color without discussing the necessity for reciprocity. One-sided accountability, they claim, leaves white activists mired in white guilt, which causes them to believe that they are incapable of taking full responsibility for tasks they should shoulder (such as organizing other white people against racism). This in turn prolongs the burden of over-dependence on activists of color.

Other articles focus on “applied accountability.” Larry Yates writes about his long tenure with the National Low-Income Housing Coalition/Low Income Housing Information Service (LIHIS). Thanks initially to the conditions of receiving grant money from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a majority of LIHIS Board members were people directly impacted by the issue at hand: current or former residents of public or assisted housing. “These funder requirements,” writes Yates, “gave the LIHIS Board a clear framework of accountability.” He describes how this, along with other aspects of the organization's institutionalized commitment to tenant self-determination, helped LIHIS develop a national grassroots base that was able to act effectively on both local and national levels to change HUD (Department of Housing and Urban development) policy.

I appreciate this collection especially for its focus on telling “Stories from Our Work.” This is not a book about pedagogy or identity development, about “how to get more white people to take on an anti-racist outlook.” This is a book about action, about implementing an anti-racist outlook in a sustained way in specific contexts. Additionally, it is not a book about individual white heroes or heroines. It is a book about movement-building, about creating and sustaining networks of people that can support each other in doing long-term coordinated work. These are stories that I want and need to hear as a young white anti-racist activist.

Additionally, it makes sense for a book about white anti-racist activism to focus on the concept of accountability. As each contributor describes in his/her own way, white privilege grants disproportionate access to systems, institutions, and resources. The task of white anti-racist activism is not to deny the truth of that access in order to seek individual absolution. Rather, the task must be to leverage that access strategically (or to put it more bluntly, to work within the system in one way or another) to bring about radical change. The key challenge, as this book hashes out in eleven different contexts, is to do that work without losing the focus on ending racism—in other words, to be accountable to people of color, and to each other as well.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, March 14th 2011

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

brittany — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Directed by Yony Leyser

Inc., BulletProof Film

Growing up, I latched on to the writers of the Beat Generation for dear life. I loved them all, from the poets and women writers who lived in their shadows, to the heavy hitters like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and of course, William S. Burroughs. Truth be told, Burroughs was always the least accessible to me growing up. Whereas I identified with Ginsberg’s spirituality and Kerouac’s bruised sensitivity, Burroughs just seemed downright bizarre. From his three piece suits and demented banker looks to the nightmarish scenes that played out in his novels, I’ve always struggled to identify where he fit in with the Beats. That’s just the thing, though; Burroughs didn’t fit in, and in Yony Leyser’s directorial debut, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, we learn that he was just as alien to himself as he was to society.

Anyone at all interested in Burroughs’ story will find Leyser’s film intriguing and for those unfamiliar, it will certainly provide an excellent overview of one of the most important writers to come out of the movement. As someone in the film says, Burroughs was probably profoundly mentally unstable, but for many disaffected youth, this will only make him seem more interesting.

As a feminist, I make myself uncomfortable with my profound love for writers like William S. Burroughs. Yes, he was subversive and groundbreaking, openly queer at a time when no one even discussed homosexuality, but he also shot his wife in the head, had a penchant for sex with young boys, and really, really loved blowing shit up with guns. As Leyser perfectly illustrates, Burroughs was unclassifiable; he fit into no mold, no box. He was a walking, talking contradiction.

Burroughs was older than Ginsberg and Kerouac, but they managed to get their most groundbreaking works published first. Despite their head start, Burroughs would prove to be the most enduring figure, becoming a counterculture icon during his later years. He was, after all, the Pope of Dope, a title bestowed upon him after decades of heroin abuse. That said, Burroughs may have been one of the most productive, functioning addicts of all time. As we learn in A Man Within, Burroughs was also considered the Godfather of Punk because of his close proximity to New York’s iconic rock club CBGB’s, his Crawdaddy! magazine column, and the way young musicians flocked to him. Towards the end of his life it wasn’t unusual for bands like Sonic Youth to make the trek to his Lawrence, Kansas home for a visit. Even at the age of seventy-eight, Burroughs was punk as fuck, collaborating with equally troubled soul Kurt Cobain on “The Priest They Called Him.”

All of his life, William S. Burroughs was an outcast, even in the burgeoning literary scene he helped create. Leyser’s documentary suggests that there was a lot bubbling under the surface of Burroughs’ stiff façade. He was a man capable of intense, perverse love, which he illustrated in a number of interesting ways, such as severing the last joint off his left pinky finger as a way of impressing a man he felt deeply for.

This was Burroughs, supremely self-contained and wholly unstable; a scheming, thieving addict and a functioning member of society; a respected writer and a lover of young, male hustlers, many of whom were not quite adults. Burroughs was the type of man you either accepted or were told to fuck off. I have to admit, I really admire him for that, and like all bad influences, you can decide whether or not you let them into your life. After all of these years, I’m still quite under the influence of William S. Burroughs, and I’d even say that Leyser’s documentary only intensified my urges.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, December 17th 2010