This is the latest in a serieson the use of the race card for political gain:
#OccupyWallStreet has been the subject of numerous posts here, including the NY Times’ poster child who wasn’t, the influence of big labor, and the now-obligatory video of the anti-Jew guy.
But this story (h/t Publius) caught me by surprise, although in hindsight, it’s no surprise.
In the mist of Zuccotti Park, progressive white males are dominant (hence, the mocking of the protesters as “overwhelmingly white“).
That has not sat well with a number of activists, as noted by OWS reporter Allison Burtch who complained that even the Occupied Wall Street Journal was composed of white males:
(For you LI trivia buffs, yes Burtch is tweeting to that Allison Kilkenny, of Nork card fame.)
Since having white males dominate was unacceptable, the participants came up with a solution, a race and sex-based pecking order, with white males speaking only after others have spoken:
Here’s how Burtch explained it at Feministing Blog:
Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly operates under a revolutionary “progressive stack.” A normal “stack” means those who wish to speak get in line. A progressive stack encourages women and traditionally marginalized groups speak before men, especially white men. This is something that has been in place since the beginning, it is necessary, and it is important.
“Step up, step back” was a common phrase of the first week, encouraging white men to acknowledge the privilege they have lived in their entire lives and to step back from continually speaking. This progressive stack has been inspiring and mind-boggling in its effectiveness.
The most interesting thing about the progressive stack is not that it is racist or sexist, or that it is a caricature of racial and feminist critical thinking.
What is most interesting is that the progressive stack is an acknowledgement that women and “people of color” at the protests are not able to stand up on their own to the dominant progressive white males in their midst. Only through the distinctly non-anarchist structure of a progressive stack are the dominant progressive white males held in check.
It also is a charade. The movement still is run by the dominant progressive white males, the progressive stack just makes it seem otherwise.
Final note: Mama Grizzlies don’t need a progressive stack to make their voices heard.
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If you haven’t seen this video yet, take a look. It’s John Lewis at the OWS event in Atlanta:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3QZlp3eGMNI
Yes, the Occupy crowd clearly failed to read the Diversity Guide by which the Tea Parties are judged.
Interestingly, at our Tea Party events, it has always been a woman who has been the lead-off speaker — as the SoCal Tax Revolt Coalition was founded by 3 women. We didn’t need any “stack” to get effective speakers of a wide variety of backgrounds to represent, either.
Robert Duvall is a Republican.
My advice to the RNC: Make a TV ad showing clips of the pleasant people and atmosphere at tea parties with ludicrous quotes depicting them as monsters from the MSM … and then show scenes of the people at the Occupy protests with supportive MSM quotes flashing …
… then, at the very end of the ad, it’s morning and Wall Street is covered with trash and all the greasy protestors are using McDonald’s bathroom when the line is too long at the police car …
… and suddenly there is Robert Duvall taking in the scene … the panorama of filth and disorder, and he says, “I love the smell of B.O. in the morning … it smells like victory.”
Well, it was a white male who was defecating on the cop car: ‘Occupy Wall Street Unleashes Beast of Radical Progressivism’.
These people are freaks. The amazing thing is how the MSM’s all down with ’em…
If I knew anything about Twitter, I’d want to tweet Allison Burtch and tell her:
“When you get to the white guys, it’s WASPs before Jews, Sephardi before Ashkenazi.”
This could be even more finely micromanaged … but that would bring it to the point of being silly, wouldn’t it?
Mark Steyn on OWS. Delicious
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279534/american-autumn-mark-steyn
What’s amazing is that tea party voters in the Florida Straw Poll came up with a “progressive stack” on their own without taking any orders.
So I suppose the next time libs complain about conservative/tea party tokens, we’ll tell them it’s “progressive stacking.”
Then why does the left have such a problem with assertive tiger moms? Tea party=America’s Tiger Mom, OWS=Perpetual adolescence. Tiger moms don’t follow progressive stacks.
Maybe a proper Legal Insurrection collaborative progressive stack should be created. Luke Hand Cool started it off pretty well. Should black people be progressive stacked by shade with the darker shades in front? Maybe have a color chart available for use in proper stacking? What about the people who put “mixed” on their paperwork. Should they suffer a penalty and moved to the back of the line for that? Asians are sometimes considered non-white, but Asians have the highest incomes, college acceptances and test scores in the US. Shouldn’t Asians be penalized in the progressive stack? LukeHandCool shouldn’t the WASPs be at the back of the stack because of multiple penalties.
Yep Viator, I think it can be done. With a color wheel and some intricate historical-grievances accounting (not sure if Excel spreadsheet provides enough columns) we can put everyone in order.
As a man of 50% German, 25% Czech, 12.5% Jewish, 12.5% French color … may I be so bold as to assert my ethnic whiteness (not a single drop of British blood) and jump ahead
(accidently hit submit, I guess)
… and jump ahead to the front of the white (only?) line to suggest that our bumper sticker read:
“Support OWS: Crap on a police car!”
LukeHandCool (who would also like to suggest that the police-car defecation be considered the movement’s first pop-art statement … or poop-art statement).
Not at all, I assert my Scotch-Irish background, being under the heel of the Brits for hundreds of years, as a legitimate grievance. You get a penalty for your 50% German heritage.
This is nothing new. During the protests and sit-in’s etc in ’68 here in Berkeley, the organizers were overwhelmingly white and male. Stories I’ve heard from people who were there say that the women who tried to participate were treated like groupies and there was a lot of racial animosity between the white organizers and the minority groups.
I’ve always thought there was a great social history to be written of that era, entitled: “1968: When the Revolution came, they asked me to make the coffee.”
That reminds me of an interview with a British musician I read awhile back (maybe Rolling Stone). He was commenting on the 60’s San Francisco scene. Something to the effect that the quintessential American Hippy “chick” would go to bed with a guy, then mend his blue jeans, while baking up some lasagne for him.
It is really kind of pathetic — but also funny. Reminds me of the hilarious scene in Life of Bryan when the Monty Python guys are arguing fine points of their revolutionary politics and one, dressed in drag, insists that while he can’t have a baby, he should have the right to have a baby.
The American Rouge tells Congressman John Lewis to take a hike…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QZlp3eGMNI
Pol Pot is the godfather spirit of this progressive goat rope. I have no trouble believing that, given the power, many of these mindless drones, would turn this country into Killing Fields ver 2.0.
Nah, you need to look to Rousseau to find the godfather of these idiots. Left to their own devices, they’d make this Paris, 1789 again.
According to 2010: People and Families in Poverty by Selected Characteristics the individuals who are classified as living “below poverty” are:
white, white = 20 (million)
white, hispanic = 13
black = 11
asian = 2
The only possible conclusion is that liberals/progressives overwhelmingly denigrate individual dignity and are, in fact, prejudiced, and may very well be psychotic.
Unfortunately, our government is populated with individuals who, by all accounts must be left-wing ideologues, as the policies it endeavors to normalize are reflective of their progressive dementia.
So much for enlightenment. It is, once again, “progressive” to assign superior or exceptional dignity by an arbitrary classification.
“Stack”? Stack?! How dare Allison Burtch and the gender traitors at F’isting use such sexist language about our Vagino-American superiors? And what kind of “feminist” can someone named “Allison” be, anyway?
The OWS protesters do have a point, though. All those Grievance Studies majors are really pissed off that they can’t find jobs in their chosen fields.
I have a legal question. I’m pasting this from an earlier in the day:
I used the WH clip of Obama from this December 2010 appearance in my recent video. This is the third time I’ve used it and listening to the audio something dawned on me. Move over Fast and Furious, I found the newest cover-up from this WH.
A little factoid about when Obama said scoop the poop to second graders…*eye roll*. The White House lowered the audio on the word “poop”. This is interesting because what they did is illegal. The word poop is in the White House transcript. Here’s the video with the audio lowered @20:40 to barely audible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259626bx3CU
They were actually embarassed for Obama. We pay for the transcripts and videos. They are in the public domain. They aren’t allowed to edit them to make him look better. This isn’t the former Soviet Union….well
They didn’t have to worry because I was probably the only one who noticed and used the clip in videos.
This seems more scary than Alinsky methods. More like Khmer Rouge. Take off your spectacles, teachers go first. Listen to the words Rosanne Barr is saying. (Ha Ha ha) Kill the rich. Obama winks.
(I see now, that Viator and Anchovy had this idea also. From Robespierre to Pol Pot. Scary)
A.) This reminds me of Obama’s speechwriter groping the Hillary cutout, Favreau, was it?
And, B.) I just watched The Undefeated, and am even more furious at how we have been robbed. How a person with such spirit and promise can be debased by the filth that is behind #OccupyWallStreet.
Please tell me lies will not stand.
The other problem with American progressives is their selective nature. For example:
Muslims are murdering, raping, torturing, and enslaving unbelievers, but primarily Christians, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, throughout Africa, etc., and yet these “high-minded”, even “enlightened”, individuals, do not hold all Muslims accountable for their extremely regressive behavior.
Then there are the Chinese communists who have normalized, and even coerced, sacrifice of virginal human life. In that context, they are even more “progressive” than America’s left-wing ideologues. And again, they do not regard all Chinese as deranged.
Finally, most violent crimes committed in America are by Blacks. Most violent crimes committed against Whites are by Blacks. Most violent crimes committed against Blacks are by Blacks. And yet the “well-intentioned” do not hold all Blacks accountable for this deviance in the majority.
How is it that people who subscribe to left-ideologies, who pursue consolidation of wealth and power through authority, promote involuntary exploitation, denigration of individual dignity, and devaluation of human life, are capable of rationalizing so many deviant behaviors? They should surely experience a psychotic break.
If the majority of psychiatrists were not predisposed to the same psychotic thinking and behavior, these lunatics would already be restrained for their protection and for the protection of all right-thinking (i.e., normal) people.
Anyway, it’s not a coincidence that the greatest number of people throughout history, and throughout the world, were murdered and enslaved by left-wing ideologues. With their wholehearted acceptance for denigrating individual dignity and devaluing human life, it is within their capacity to accept and ignore genocidal behavior on massive scales.
Well, not all of them. Most are in it for redistributive change. They merely tolerate the rest as they support individuals who are extremely regressive and promise them a return on their investment.
“Muslims are murdering, raping, torturing, and enslaving unbelievers, but primarily Christians, in Pakistan, Afghanistan, throughout Africa, etc., ”
This sentence is factually incorrect. Muslims SAY they are at war with “unbelievers,” but they mainly kill other Muslims. The result of all the Muslim warfare , purportedly against the Jews and the Great Satan, has persistently, in theater after theater, resulted in the murder of Muslims.
That’s why the rest of the Muslim world views Hamas with such dismay: Hamas is a weapon that has turned on them.
Only women would think of men as an enemy to be defeated and subjugated.
They should look around at their younger sisters’ dilemma these days; men refusing to get married until later if at all, older men refusing to get remarried. Some men not even getting married once.
Meanwhile family and divorce courts get bigger and meaner and the party most aggrieved, blamed, lied about and required to supply a level of support that precludes them having a life or future or family? Men.
Men are being fired and are unemployed at a higher rate than women. Why? Because the jobs women hold are dominated by them and are local service jobs or in health care. Jobs that require intense focus and long hours are jobs that create other jobs and men were the ones willing to put in the hours.
Those jobs have been outsourced to China or no longer exist. Service jobs by their nature are local, low paying, low benefit and require real time presence.
Men are also leaving those jobs and not seeking others like them as it only makes them a target of family/divorce court and of women who are so easily dissatisfied (women file 60% of all divorces, 90% if she’s college educated) when the life they lead isn’t to up to their dreams (but may be all they can get) and who is responsible (or at least gets the blame) in their eyes? Men. Men shoulder all blame in their eyes while they can find no fault in their own behavior.)
This “blame white males” has resulted in a low birth rate, low marriage rate, eventual increase in poverty for women and children and dependency on the government as the men can’t find work, are discouraged from seeking work and are discriminated against both in court and in the jobs market.
Is it any wonder that white men are getting frustrated and angry?
What we have here is an evidence of discrimination among people on the basis of trivia — and in our country, race, creed, color, and sex are trivial differences with respect to citizenship. This is not just stupid, it is pernicious.
The most murderous of the tyrannies of our time used discrimination on the basis of trivial differences among citizens as a means of encouraging their agents to do things they otherwise would recognize as immoral. This notion is deadly to civil society.
The problem is that, once people accept the logic of discrimination for trivial differences (some people call this injustice), individuals will take the concept and run with it, often for their own personal gain at the expense of others.
Nothing new about Leftist pimps and their political “working girls”. It’s all about appearances.
In many cultures, the place of honor is last. Totem poles, for instance. We look at and assume the higher up the figure the more important, but the opposite is true – the bottom position is most honored.