2. Outline
• Dominique Thomas - Understanding Oppression and
Working With Identity Politics, Thinking About
Oppression and Liberation Key Contributors
• Zanetta Green- Understanding Division, A Path to
Solidarity
• Kiandre Nichols - Campus Organizing, Tensions on
Campuses, Significant Movements on Campuses, Labor
Organizing
• LaSandra Rivera - Reproductive Justice, Lessons
Learned, Privilege
3. Understanding Oppression and Working
With Identity Politics
Identity Politics
• is often used pejoratively and
may invoke negative ideas about
political correctness, conjuring
images of diverse groups of
people battling against one
another about who is the most
oppressed.
Identity Politics
• refers to a wide range of political
activity and theorizing founded
in the shared experiences of
injustice of members of certain
racial, ethnic, sexual orientation,
and other social groups.
Without community, there is no liberation...
Audre Lorde (1981, p 99 (165) )
4. Thinking About Oppression and
Liberation
Key Contributors
Iris Marion Young
• Identified the “five faces of
oppression”
• exploitation
• marginalization
• powerlessness
• cultural imperialism
• violence
Patricia Hill Collins
• Noted that the oppressions (5)
often take an interlocking form
• meaning that for women of color
face issues as a result of their
gender , race and ethnicity
• Causing the manifestation of
negative feelings that can result
in negative actions and a variety
of problems
5. Understanding Division
• What is division in a social context?
Social divisions refers to regular patterns of division in society that are
associated with membership of particular social groupings, generally in
terms of advantages and disadvantages, inequalities and differences.
Social divisions are important for individual life experiences and life
chances in the context where social characteristics provide the basis for
differential treatment, unequal access to resources and judgmental
evaluations. Social divisions are associated with inequalities and a
hierarchical order between categories or groups of people, theorized
through the concept of stratification.
6. Understanding Division
• Activist Suzanne Pharr discussed the idea of “horizontal hostility,”
which manifests itself as the fighting that sometimes occurs between
oppressed groups. Rather than working in solidarity, sometimes
marginalized groups may perceive each other group as the enemy.
• Aspects of Division “Divide and Conquer”
1. Race and Ethnicity (Working class)
2. Privileged and Less Privileged Groups
3. Marginalized Groups (People of color and the Welfare system)
7. A Path to Solidarity
• What is Solidarity within social organizing?
• Solidarity is the unity or agreement of
diverse oppressed groups to work as allies
on diverse issues and common interest.
The linkage between the groups can
expand the vision for both movements
until a point of collaboration is reached.
8. A Path to Solidarity
Examples of Groups Organized by Solidarity
• The National Women Conference
• Worked to make visible the common interests of third-
world women that can serve as the basis for organizing
across racial/ethnic differences and national boundaries.
There is a real benefit to publicly present themselves as a
group with commonalities and similar interests. Though
privately there may be differences, publicly the group
chooses to present themselves as similar. "
• The term “women of color” was coined by diverse women,
including African American, Native American, Latina, and
Asian women at the 1977 National Women Conference.
9. Campus Organizing
• During the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement, some of
the most vital organizing took place on college campuses.
• In the diverse environments of college campuses, students are
becoming aware of the importance of addressing the difficult issues of
interlocking oppressions, diversity, and identity politics within the
work they do.
• A group known as the Sexual Assault Task Force(SATF) confronted
issues of sexism. They found it difficult to discuss the connections
between sexism and racism.
• Researchers have written that the group members were resistant to
the discussion of diversity, stating that consciousness raising
related to their own racial, cultural, and sexual diversity was not a
priority for them. This attitude created a barrier to the involvement
of woman students of color and international student in SATF.
10. Tensions on Campuses
• Meyer’s (2004) study of LGBTQ organizing on a college campus
identifies tensions in their organizing practices.
• Authors articulated these tensions as unity and difference,
commitment and apathy, and empowerment and disempowerment.
Sisters of Dissent Out Daily INC
Lesbian issues Space for students who are
coming out
Issues of oppression and
attempted to build alliances
with other groups to contest
homophobia, sexism, and
racism
11. Significant Movements on Campuses
• At Pennsylvania State University, 1992, gay, lesbian, and
bisexual students held events to pressure the university to add a
clause concerning sexual orientation to its official
nondiscrimination statement.
• The movement to elevate the Chicano Studies program to
departmental status at the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA)
• Tactics such as sit-ins and a 14-day hunger strike were used.
• Protest at Michigan State University by Native American
students against a proposition by the governor of the state to end
the state’s tuition program for Native American students.
• Emerged from the Comstock Agreement of 1943, which
exchanged land for free education
• “Give us the waiver or give us the land.”
13. Labor Organizing
• Student/Farmworker alliance (SF) group
attempted to eliminate sweatshop
conditions in the fields and engaged in
campaigns for fair food.
• SF victory included an agreement between
the Coalition of Immokalee workers and
Burger King to improve wages and
working conditions in Florida tomato
pickers.
• Student Labor Action Project
(SLAP), hold the belief that
intentional leadership development
of students of color is a key
component of antiracism work.
• SLAP leaders work at making their
leadership development strategies
sustainable, including making sure
that students of color organizations
get resources within their
universities.
14. Reproductive Justice
The National Black Women’s Health Project(NBWHP)
• The 1st ever women-of-color reproductive justice
organization to address these discrepancies in
approaches.
• These organizations would reflect the fact that the
fertility of women of color had been continually
undermined by U.S. policies
15. Lessons Learned
Cultural Expression
• Can be a useful mechanism for
bringing seemingly disparate
groups together.
• Youths have shown this to be
the case by building bridges
through hip hop, spoken word,
& other performances.
• Food
• Dress
• Music
• Theater
• Can be ways to “liberate our
alliance- building energy and
talents”
16. Privilege
• The unearned advantage that some people in society
have by virtue of their gender, race/ethnicity, and so on.
• Privilege allows a person from dominant classes’ greater
access to societal institutions.
• Progressive organizers may choose to foster personal
and organizational awareness of privilege in their
practices.
17. References
• ASK A SLAVE Ep 2: Abolitioning. (2019). Retrieved 30 October 2019, from
https://youtu.be/AEaNduN88DQ
• On Division and Solidarity. (2015). Retrieved 30 October 2019, from
https://rhoadestoreality.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/on-division-and-
solidarity/
• Heitman, D., Moyer, S., Dyson, M. E., & Hindley, M. (n.d.). A New
Documentary Casts a Light on the 1972 Tragedy at Southern University.
Retrieved from
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2018/winter/feature/new-
documentary-casts-light-the-1972-tragedy-southern-university.
• Pyles, L. (2014). Progressive Community Organizing (2nd ed., pp. 167-
169).
