[pjw] Analysis: We're asking the wrong questions about Orlando (AFSC 6/15)
Peace and Justice Works
pjw at pjw.info
Wed Jun 29 18:27:47 EDT 2016
Hi
While this piece by the American Friends Service Committee was posted two
weeks ago, I only just came across it a few days ago. It does a much
better job than I could do looking at the massacre in Orlando through the
lens of what the author calls "structural violence." The author is a
member of the LGBTQ community which I think adds a layer of credibility to
the focus on the violent society we're all part of, and those
institutional structures (war, police violence and the death penalty) that
PJW stands against.
I also think we'll probably talk a bit at the summer quarterly meeting
about the culture of violence question-- while I know I personally would
love to see all guns melted down for plowshares including those of the
military and police, I'm always cognizant of the fact that the genocide in
Rwanda was mostly carried out by people wielding machetes...
Anyway, here's the essay, I hope you find it useful.
dan h
peace and justice works
http://afsc.org/blogs/acting-in-faith/orlando-was-act-hate-massive-hate-crime-or-act-terrorism
On Orlando: Was this an act of hate, a massive hate crime, or an act of
terrorism?
Acting in Faith | By Kay Whitlock, Jun 15, 2016
It's the wrong question based on a wrong set of assumptions, and it's
already leading to the wrong responses, responses sure to keep the
violence flowing: anti-queer violence, anti-Muslim violence, racist
violence. And it's sucking up all the air in the ether right now.
I'm on the road in Iowa with my partner and members of her family
scattering the remains of her parents who both died last year - in an
order and with timing we didn't expect. So memories and grief and
powerful love are all in the mix. I've not been on social media much
and seen literally no TV these few days, so I came later than many of
you to the news. When the words "Orlando" and "Pulse" entered my
consciousness, along with an overwhelming surge of shock and anger,
along came the grief and powerful love and memories. All of it flowing
from chosen relationships tracing to the outlaw and fantastical gifts
of queer community and relationships so necessary to my impulse toward
liberation and creative wholeness.
How do we understand what took the lives of so many queers, so many
young queers of color - young queers and transgender/gender
non-comforming people of color are most likely to be criminalized
generally in the U.S. - and injured so many others? How do we make
sense of a man, come of age in a society permeated with suspicion and
animosity directed toward Muslims, who knew a lot about violence and
security and weaponry, who somehow felt compelled to enter a gay club
and start shooting?
We have to get outside "the hate frame" to have any hope of
understanding these things in new ways and begin to fashion new, better
responses. Essentially, the hate frame says: 1) Violence is the
province of extremists, fanatics, and deranged loners; 2)"Hate
violence" directed against marginalized groups is unacceptable to and
not tolerated by decent, respectable people and society; 3)Violence is
the result of the irrational prejudice - the "hate" - of individuals
and groups; and 4)Hate is hate; we need not concern ourselves with the
historical and contemporary specifics of how particular groups are
targeted for violence. We are told it's possible to address all of its
manifestations with the same tools, primarily more intensive policing,
prosecution, and punishment.
The hate frame, then, not only obscures but erases the foundational
kinds of violence, fueled by supremacist ideologies and built into the
major structures of society, that provide the model for
individual/group expressions of "hate" violence. The colonial/American
genocide directed against Indigenous peoples, chattel slavery, the
massive and ongoing violence of all aspects of policing and the prison
industrial complex, the daily violence of economic exploitation - these
are the templates. They are not irrational: they seek to consolidate
white supremacy, patriarchy, profiteering for the few at the expense of
the many, certain forms of religious hegemony. This consolidation
ALWAYS advances under the rubric of "safety," "security," and a
terrible form of competitive claims to victimization.
The hate frame is a distancing strategy that works to convince people
that it's always "someone else" who is responsible for great violence.
It's "them," the dangerous ones. And who is dangerous in the moment
shapeshifts over time, although the roots in white supremacy,
patriarchy, and capitalism remain the same. A constant iteration of
"enemy, enemy, enemy" against which we must defend ourselves becomes
the central framework of society. And so we help to produce the
mentality and the means that continue to constrain, control, and kill
us.
Thirty-odd years of the hate crime template has produced safety for no
marginalized peoples but has led to competitive claims to the need for
more policing. It has not helped to ignite serious, ongoing,
cross-constituency, cross-movement, cross-issue discussion of
structural violence and the supremacist ideologies (hate is a symptom,
not the cause) that provide its foundation. And tragically, because
this is so, the production of violence, and the foundation of supremacy
from which it arises, continues.
To dismantle this ideological and structural vortex, we must employ
radical imagination to think differently, more boldly, about our shared
humanity - and about what justice could mean in this society, and how
it arises or flounders on the integrity of social, economic, cultural,
and religious relationships. Laws and courts alone will never produce
justice, but will always find ways of leaving structural violence
intact; we need cultural strategies, too. To create a different
society, we can no longer support the ideologies and structures that
demand demons and enemies and wars as the organizing principles for
justice.
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