Beltway Area Indymedia

I first attended the National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) in 2005, and then there was an Anarchist People of Color (APOC) caucus gathering at NCOR, a conference that then - and now - had very few folks of color. In 2006, there seemed to be less of a presence, and this year, it seemed much whiter than American University.

DC is 66% people of color (According to Wikipedia, 61.96% Black, 0.86% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 3.17% Asian), and American University, which is inside DC, exists as a relative sea of whiteness - 70% White, according to collegeboard.com. NCOR, which happens at American University, seemed to be far more white: I didn't see the demographic survey data, but it struck me as very, very white... at least 80%, possibly as high as 90-95%. I'm basing this on the folks in the room who were tabling, the folks who were standing in line to be registered, and the folks who were in the workshops.

It seems as if American University is doing a better job retaining people of color than a conference supposedly on "organized resistance."

I think there's a lot wrong with how NCOR runs itself which creates this environment, and I would like to see the people who organize NCOR starting to at least publicize their concern - if it exists - for the fact that NCOR is not a gathering of resistance, but rather a gathering of a predominately white, predominately (college kids and punk) crowd. I would like to share some of my thoughts about what NCOR gets wrong:

• Location. Tenleytown and other communities west of Rock Creek Park are white enclaves in DC. In fact, "west of the park" has become a euphemism for white neighborhoods precisely because of this divide. Holding NCOR in Tenleytown and expecting a people of color turnout is about as bizarre as holding a conference for the Iraqi resistance... inside of a US military base: inaccessible, foreign, and unwelcoming.
• Conference selection process: the means. Who sets the NCOR agenda, and why? What is this process? Where is there a list of rejected workshops? Some good friends of mine proposed a workshop entitled Listen Honkey: Why NCOR Shouldn't be At American University, about the race and class divides in DC and current gentrification issues in DC. It was rejected by the NCOR committee. I met someone at NCOR this year and started chatting with him, and when I told him this story, he said that it wasn't a surprise that it got rejected because it wasn't the type of "navel gazing" that NCOR usually hosted. NCOR needs to start being accountable to its attendees: everyone needs to know how the NCOR committee operates, and perhaps more importantly - what they reject.
• Conference selection process: the ends. Every year, there seems to be fewer and fewer workshops that strike me as related to organize resistance, and even fewer that turn out excellent. This year's NCOR had a workshop about the violence of circumcision and two workshops on animal rights: Animal Liberation 2007, Animal Rights and Human Wrongs, yet the only workshop on police brutality focused on tasers and less-than-lethal weapons -- an important issue, no doubt, but only one facet of police brutality, and one that's mainly interesting to people who aren't already accustomed to the idea of the police using lethal force to get their way.
• The conflating of "punk culture" and organized resistance. Punk culture and art may be interesting to a demographic of folks who are organizing, but it's just one segment, and there are also lots of punks who don't do shit other than live on the cutting edge of gentrification. Art galleries and music shows are often part of the problem, not part of the solution. People who don't identify with punk culture - and there are a lot of us, and we are a more racially diverse group than those who do identify as punk - are alienated by punk culture.

  From rap to reggae to calypso, we don't all like punk music. Yet NCOR fosters a culture of "see you at the [punk] show" and people who have gone -- presenters, even --- who aren't punks have told me that they felt that people judged them because they weren't punks, that people didn't view them as "one of them" if they weren't dressed as a punk. I know I've felt that way before.

• Who wants to be the only person of color in a room? I sure don't. Sounds like a catch-22, but realize, I admire the folks who are comfortable desegregating spaces because they are brave, and while sometimes it goes well, often times it's met with racism: yes, there is racism in a room filled with white NCOR attendees. For as long as NCOR is so shockingly white, you might get a few people of color to attend, but I doubt you'll be able to make people comfortable.

NCOR needs to start trying something new - partner with another group to hold the conference jointly, move from American University, have a more diverse workshop schedule - and if those aren't options, they should seriously consider if they are in need supporting organized resistance in the US: because from where I'm sitting, it appears that most of their contribution seems to be towards groups of white folk.