BBC NEWS | Bolivia leader quits amid protest

His national approval ratings run between 50% and 60%, our correspondent says.

Roh and Toledo barely started thinking about resigning when their approval rates reached 10%. why the rush?

sunday feb 27, 10:45am-12:00pm

present: josh jorgensen, david boehnke, michael barnes, molly bowen, trudy rebert, ryan from MAPA (he takes spanish classes at the RCTA?), another guy from AFSCME, daniel schwartzman, elana wolowitz, me, a few others

discussed several ongoing campaigns (need-blind, center for global citizenship, institutioanl responsibility, etc)

okay, someone said “the diversity center”. now it’s called “Department of Multicultural Life”. that term is quite telling in what kind of space in your mental priority racial diversity occupies in the minds of young white liberal organizers.

institutioanl responsibility committee and the issue of proxi purchasing (investments) SRC was not given direct access to college’s investment records but they can request what they want and obtain it indirectly, which slows down the entire process.

in 1998 when SLAC was just getting started, a math professor who ran the investments was not willing to give out info but said that most of the investments go to mutual funds, which cannot be controlled, and only 25% today is through individual stocks (over which you can control social responsibility of the respective company policies), but it’s still not much

michael talked about establishing an archivist, i talked about getting alumns to just come and talk about their perspectives (was this too weak?) like federico helfgott did with his antiwar activism last fall.

told the group about SoC recruiting and how lorne robinson sucked at mulitcultural admissions, and particular local high schools, how they weren’t even getting applications, and how he got smashed during the alumni of color reunion but it was too anedotic, i didn’t work in the front lines in this issue, and my impression is that the people were listening to it just out of respect for the one (out of two) people of color in the room.

also commented a bit on the website and what these guys need is something a lot simpler than what civispace provides. even the facebook might accomplish their level of organizing, the only drawback being that they would need to go all the way back to the alumni office to get their mac alumni email addresses. (they just need to be able to CONTACT other students/alumns, for godssake)

the alternate funding project seems a bit divisive at htis point, several questions arising. what daniel points out is that we won’t ever really reach a level of funding at which the school administration will have to negotiate with us just in order to get the money. no real power. hmm

K: that group shouldn’t have left
Y: but if they want to split apart, that should be fine!
K: the two groups didn’t talk to each other, there was no communication!
Y: that’s a problem but still, if they want to split, that should be fine!

after the meeting

Y: you know why the dems lost in the 2004 elections? because those stupids thought that by getting everyone together they would get more votes and win! they actually lost people who steered away because there wasn’t anything interesting going on, everyone knew kerry would never say anything that stuck him out too much, and see what happened
K: i don’t think that splitting in many parts is good. see, we learned the other day that the European political system was superior because there were so many [countries? parties?] of them, and China was weak because it was a one party system, but look now where china is economically despite the one-part system..
Y: what! and you even care to refute that!
K: bah, i won’t talk to you

afterthought: who the hell says these days that europe was strong because there were many of them? they were all together in the business of colonizing the world! what was the berlin conference about? who the hell needs to refute that kind of crap? wait wait, people teach that at mac? oh my.

outline of argument to be posted the class discussion list as a critique of frederickson, as soon as we get the group paper done

1. frederickson argues that white supremacy was borne out of large scale global forces of capitalist accumulation of capital & subsequent industrialization, and that white supremacy was a byproduct of this. therefore, the case can be made that if white colonizers were not operation under a capitalist mode of exploitation/production, they would not have engaged in policies of white supremacy. (white supremacists happen to be victims of capitalism) hence, comes the argument that fighting capitalism is the first “stage” or more “fundamental” than engaging gender or race discrimination, as they are all byprodructs thereof.

2. jesse interprets robinson to follow frederickson’s line of thought. “Robinon … complements… Frederickson.. and deeper theoretical background” (Goldman, 2005 freedommovements.blogspot.com/2005/02/linking-racism-and-capitalism-robinson.html) I disagree with this reading. What Robinson engages in is the kind of practice encouraged by Malcolm X’s prison mentor ( in the film) where all texts produced by white men (including dictionaries, bibles and encyclopedias) are to be reinterpreted/recontextualized and used against them.

Robinson is being careful in handling the material, as in the 80’s, when the book “Black Marxism” was published, to talk about differentiating class and race was a contentios political issue (e.g. how should labor unions respond to outsourcing and/or the new influx of colored immigrants under the 1965 IIRRA reform and the early signs of the rise in competitive edge of the service industry over manufacturing ones)

The first point of departure is the spatiality of the first bourgeois in european mercantislim and the european civilization manifesting itself through capitalism. Traditional marxist discourse as used by Frederickson claims that the bourgeoisie rose up as a new class that engaged in a power struggle with the existing feudal aristocracy during the late mercantislit and early industrialist periods.

It also claims that the bourgeoisies constituted a continuation of the old world order – they did not form as a response to late middle age economic and environmental crises, but rather survived the 14th/15th century crises of the state. ” the bourgeoisies of the sixteenth century accumulatied in the interestices of the state. (Robinson, 20)

Robinson argues that external labor – able bodies coming from outside national, city or racial borders constituted a core part of european economic structure: “there has never been a moment in modern european history (if before) that migratory and/or immigrant labor was not a significant aspect of european economies” (Robinson, 22)

The bourgeoisie thatled the development of capitalism were drawn from particular ethnic and cultural groups; the European proletariats and the mercenaries of the leading states from others; its peasants from still other cultures; and its slaves from entirely different worlds. The tendency of European civilization through capitslim was thus not to homogenize but to differentiate – to exaggerate regional subcultural, and dilaectical differences into “Racial” ones. (robinson 26)

In the first sentence, Robinson is emphasizing the need for capitalism to draw upon labor from the big pool of “other”, be it peripheral, rural or black.

He also criticizes Immanuel Wallerstein for engaging in studies that only advanced his particular agenda of the core and periphery as nationally defined boundaries:
“Wallerstein … can devote a mere page to this phenomenon, including a single paragraph on the ethnic division of sixteenth-century immigrant labor.” (Robinson, 22)

A second point of departure is to claim that european civilization did not rise up as a result of capitalism, but the other way around: european civilization created capitalism in order to fullfill its needs of targetted ethnic/racial hierarchization within

so there’s all this tendency towards generalizing, right?

the art prof (forgot name) says that you desire to “own” the space/idea represented in the space. so maybe generalizing is a manifestation of how individuals in a capitalist society try to “own” more ideas than their immediate experiences. thus, you generalize and extend your knowledge (a property according to sheller, or without going so far, just use “cultural capital”) over entire societies or epistemic dimensions. even though it might a rhetoric device for your own jouissance.

now isn’t racism a form of particularized “knowledge” about racial hierarchies and relations in a given society? so the racist individual is trying to expand upon your individualized white supremacist prejudices over a more generalized theory (trying to orthodoxize it, following Bordieu) that you can apply over subaltern discourses as well. so that you can override alternate knowledges with your racistalized knowledge. so, racism is a manifestation over how the white man in society feels this unending need to keep on “owning” more and more material and intellectual artifacts. if your motivation driving racism is thirst for property, isn’t this another aspect of how capitalism and white supremacy are intrinsically intertwined in the syntactics of public discourse? or, a reactionary measure to the impending “disowning” or “disenfranchisement” of the wages of whiteness among whites? (so in this second sentence my argument becomes middle-class specific)

now, my argument is generalizing as well. so, you can deconstruct it and say that all I am trying to get at is to engage in a power grabbing struggle against the white supremacist orthodoxia with just another competing heterodoxia. or, catching on Gramsci, just another privileged hegemonic discourse. this is true, but I don’t think deconstructig my argument (or any) disproves an argument, but rather contextualizes it giving it a more critical focus. you can’t criticize a discourse by just pointing out the outer edges, without engaging directly with it .

(based on a memo at the principles of art class feb 22)