What’s wrong with The New World?

After seeing The New World in theaters with some friends, I just couldn't sleep. I had never seen a movie that I found so artistically brilliant but, at the same time, so politically repugnant. At 3:00am I started writing, both to get clear to myself what was wrong with the movie, and to craft a document describing my conflict to friends who loved the film. By the end of the night, I'd come up with the section below. It's the first of what will, eventually, be a 3-part article covering colonialism, male supremacy and noble savage mythology in Malick's movie. Let me know how it's coming.


What’s wrong with The New World?

Of course, the question isn’t really fair; what we should be asking is: “what’s wrong with any story similar to that found in The New World?” But since that’s a pretty long sentence, let’s go ahead and ask what The New World does wrong – but with an understanding that:

• Terrence Malick didn’t invent colonialism, and outing the distasteful elements of The New World won’t dismantle it, either.
  


• But like any other work of art (or work of anything) The New World is a product of its context.
  


• By examining the rotten parts of the film, we can uncover aspects of our own context. Learning how to do this is important, because things aren’t just “oppressive” or “not oppressive.” Anything, art included, can embody both tendencies at once – and it’s useful for anyone seeking liberation to be able to pick things apart, saving what’s helpful and discarding the hurtful.

Going with that, let’s try to name some of the things that are troubling about The New World, in the hopes that someday we can make movies that are as brilliantly-constructed as Malick’s film – while being more conscious about what we choose to tell, and what change it will bring into the world. Let’s start with a simple list.


It’s told, overarchingly, from the colonizer’s point of view.

We know it from the first ten seconds of the movie. As music and wild sound wash over us, the credits appear in a colonial-era map that spreads across a blank piece of parchment. Coastlines materialize, followed gradually by hills and rivers as the map pushes inland, and the metaphor is clear: we are entering into Malick’s film as one might enter an unknown land. All the mystery and fascination that a colonial explorer might project onto the unknown landscape around him, we are invited to project into the world of the film. Right off the bat, we’re made to feel like colonizers. Why? Because there’s something romantic about it. To the degree that our society is still a colonialist one, the myths created during conquest and exploration will continue to enthrall more than the mundane familiarity that indigenous peoples – as yet unrepresented in Malick’s film except through lithograph-style graphics – must have had with their land. The fetish continues to fascinate.

But let’s step back. What does it mean that, for most of The New World, we’re grounded in the subjectivity of the colonizer? For starters, it means we spend far more screen time watching characters interact and themes play out from inside the colonizers’ community than in the indigenous community. As a result, we have a fairly comprehensive sense of Smith’s background, the roles of the supporting characters in the Jamestown colony, and the internal politics that unfold between those characters. Most of the plot twists that affect our story take place in the colony, through the actions of white people.

From what we see of the indigenous community, by contrast, we have very little sense of the young woman’s background, and know nothing about her past or her current motivations besides finding true love; maybe the only indigenous supporting character whose action affects the development of the story is her father; and the internal politics of the indigenous community are skeletal at best – we have no idea, for instance, how they fare the winter, why they decide to bring the colonists food, or how different indigenous people are rationalizing the presence of white people in their land. This unequal representation makes it so that all the important decisions affecting the world of the protagonists come from the colonizers – they are made the think-ers and the do-ers, while the indigenous people are made set pieces, or at best, inconsequential.

“So what if the representation is unequal?” I find myself thinking, “It’s not supposed to be a political story of two communities. It’s supposed to be a love story about two people.” For the sake of a good romance, we’re asked to go from what we know, which is a white, English-speaking, colonial context that we all read about in Social Studies and therefore doesn’t require complicated exposition. For Malick, the politics and power dynamics of first contact are peripheral to an intimate story of two people, and the movie asks us to “fill in the blanks” on all the unimportant stuff to make way for that romance.

And that would be all fine and good, if it weren’t for the fact what the movie asks us to accept as important and unimportant is a reenactment of colonialism. Read: the colonists’ society is important, while indigenous society is not – that is, unless it makes our female love interest idyllic, mysterious, or exotic. White people have personal histories, aspirations and ambitions, while indigenous people emerge from nowhere (or out of the tall grass) and remain hopelessly reactionary. The colonizer’s context is the center, and the indigenous context is the periphery. And when we as an audience accept this point of view unquestioningly, we’re participating in one of many rituals in which we practice ignoring the hideousness of colonialism. We’re stepping, comfortably, into the shoes of the conquerors.

True, we might be able to fill in the political blanks in Malick’s movie with a complex understanding of imperialism, balancing out the film’s unequal representation with our own. But we have to acknowledge that the film could work equally well for someone who just wants to see an Indian princess in form-fitting deerskin fall in love with a hard-working, powerful man. The movie doesn’t require you to know anything about these issues to get swept up in the love story, and doesn’t prompt you to ask any of those kinds of questions. That makes The New World a political don’t-ask-don’t-tell, which translates from pig latin as “let’s accept the status quo as a given for this one.”

(Okay chill out, you’re saying, not all stories have to be political. And you’re right – but depending on what a given story asks us to ignore, we might start to worry. For instance, would we accept a movie about the epic romance of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, in which the Holocaust served as little more than a convenient backdrop? Clearly, some apolitical love stories are more justifiable than others. The tricky part is not saying whether The New World is justifiable or not, but being clear about which parts are which.)

Deep Organization - A Call to Possibility

Sam and I wrote the following article (our first ever) trying to describe the disconnects and possibilities between typically "activist" networks and historically oppressed communities. Though it rapidly became clear that you could write a book on the subject, we tried to make what we had stand on its own two, spindly legs.

ABSTRACT:
While many activists complain of a decline in intensity surrounding street demonstrations, communities of color around the world are engaging in active and often violent resistance. This article explores the interactions (and lack thereof) between direct action networks and historically oppressed communities through two case studies: the mobilization around a Nazi rally in Toledo, Ohio; and the development of the Common Ground Collective in post-Katrina New Orleans. We suggest that there is an enormous and largely untapped potential for transformative social action in long-term collaboration between groups typically labeled “activists,” and those termed “rioters.”


Deep Organization – A Call to Possibility

In a recent letter to the magazine Fifth Estate, a contributor from Michigan wrote that “the next generation is unprepared” to fight for radical change in our nation and world. “Where are the huge mass gatherings of rage and indignation?” the author demanded. “Where are the fliers, the meetings, the banners and protests?” While youthful radicals might bristle at the claim that they lack “rage and indignation,” a little concern isn’t out of the question; in fact, most of us have harbored similar doubts at times.

Many would agree that the years since 9/11 have brought with them a grinding uncertainty. For the authors of this article, at least, the apparent decline of the “anti-globalization” movement in a world defined by war, electioneering and fundamentalism is a disturbing sign. Perhaps more disturbing are the responses to these developments from segments of the American left. For those of us who see the Iraq War as one manifestation of a global system of violent economic and social relations, the most shortsighted aspects of the antiwar movement – its top-down organization, symbolic protest and legislative goals – make one question the possibility of effective resistance in the present climate, and whether direct action in the street is a healthy hobby.

But even as some sit shaking their heads, the headlines are teeming with confrontation. In recent years, and particularly in 2005, some of the most active challenges to the status quo came not from broad activist coalitions, but from mobilizations that some even refuse to call “political”: the riots and civil unrest which captured national and international attention on multiple occasions. In Benton Harbor and Toledo, in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sydney, the contradictions of our global society are giving rise to riots and insurrections of a scale and notoriety not seen in decades. Communities of color are mobilizing around the “developed world,” and exposing the failure of powerful states to create equality, be it of opportunity or resources. In a world characterized by violence and oppression, resistance – even spontaneous and in some cases violent resistance – is an everyday fact.

All this presents a contradiction, to say the least. While many in “activist” circles lament the stagnation of broad-based progressive movements, those in power seem increasingly terrified that generalized rebellion could ignite in the hearts of their cities. Recall Jacques Chirac’s astonishment when rioting spread from a Paris suburb to the entire country, and then beyond its borders; or that a month later, public outcry for Tookie Williams so worried the City Council of Los Angeles that its members pleaded for calm as the date of his execution approached. If it’s true that contagious rebellion is of growing concern to the powerful, then how can one speak of “the movement” being stalled – when cities are burning, when communities are literally fighting the powers-that-be?

The fact is that there remains a troubling gulf between networks that are generally recognized as “activist,” and communities that often rebel and refuse authority as a matter of survival. When the authors of this article searched out news from the Paris riots, for example, precious little was carried on the Indymedia network – far less than your average G8 demonstration, anyway. Even the historically militant French left seemed conspicuously tongue-tied about what one Parisian police officer called “a civil war”; and for too long, the only available English translations of alternative news or first-person accounts from Paris were put out by a lone Quebecois blogger.

This lack of cohesion between communities in resistance and radical “activist” networks comes as a surprise and disappointment, given how remarkably similar they can be. One finds in both an aversion to declarative manifestos or clear lists of demands, a focus on youth participation and youth culture, and a defiant refusal to elect leaders. Both movements are prime examples of horizontal organization in action. It’s true they may not be models of egalitarianism; on the contrary, one could expect a great deal of misogyny and racism in any mass action. But in terms of structure and style, many riots across the globe resemble more closely the work of direct action networks than either guerilla armies or liberal protest groups.

Of course there’s plenty that differentiates decentralized street protests from community uprisings. The former often bases itself on an explicit or academic critique of the status quo, while the latter is compelled by shared experiences of oppression. The one is often criticized for its largely white, middle class makeup, while the other is composed mostly of people of color and the poor.

Yet both models share a powerful, if incomplete, promise. The recent riots have been strikingly effective at unmasking the abuses of capitalism and colonialism, but have been less successful at sustaining alternative systems – say, distributing services and expropriated goods within the community. Similarly, activist-led uprisings like those at major world trade forums have raised consciousness about trade inequality and environmental injustice, but often aren’t rooted in the communities and politics of the areas in which mobilizations occur.

What if the two models were brought together? What has happened when they collided, and what could happen if they colluded regularly? At issue here is who defines “activism” – and at stake is the possibility for new kinds of resistance movements, both diverse and unified, with the potential to dismantle hierarchies and impact lives.


The Ashes of Toledo

Toledo is burning, and has been for quite some time. The national news crews have left since the riots of last October subsided; the activists who swarmed the streets have returned home, and recounted their actions in the pages of Clamor and Workers World. But Toledo is still in flames, engulfed by the same mix of racism, working poverty and police brutality that caused it to erupt in the first place.

Toledo is a small, ethnically diverse city in Northern Ohio. It was also the target of a recent campaign by the National Socialist Movement, or “America’s Nazi Party,” who planned to rally outside a local public school and a march through a predominantly black neighborhood on the city’s north side.

There were two reactions on the part of community members to the Nazi’s impending invasion. City politicians and community leaders staged a forum called “Erase the Hate” in a local church, and scheduled it to coincide with the Nazi’s events. Their idea was to take people off the streets, embrace the general notion of tolerance, and allow daily life to continue uninterrupted.

Members of Anti-Racist Action and the International Socialist Organization, two national leftist organizations with divergent platforms, planned a different type of action. Both groups decided to enter Toledo and agitate for direct confrontation with the Nazis. After a few days of ARA and ISO leafleting, the word of a counter-demonstration had spread through the mostly black community.

The idea of a counter demonstration proved popular in Toledo. Along with the largely white, young, and non-Toledoan ISO and ARA organizers were crowds of local sympathizers – mothers and children, working class blacks, whites and Latinos, and, purportedly, a large number of proud gang members. The Nazis chose to remain behind police lines and rally without a march. They hurled insults at the crowd, until someone in the responded with rocks. Suddenly, several protesters were throwing debris, trash, shoes, and more. In a quick and random retaliation, mounted police officers kicked into the mass of demonstrators and arrested a young black man wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat.

Rather than silence the community, the police response further enraged them; bottles and rocks were now directed at police, in addition to the Nazis. With overwhelming force, the police launched “knee-knocker” wooden bullets, mace, percussion grenades and a thick cloud of tear gas into the streets. “Which side are you on?” cried one woman. “I don't see you pushing any Nazis back!” In fact, the police would soon escort the Nazis to safety outside the city limits, while continuing to drive community members from their own streets.

Wounded but empowered, the crowd dispersed throughout neighborhood. Gangs huddled together and planned actions. Groups of young black males smashed windows and emptied stores. Town leaders and the organizers of “Erase the Hate” gathered at a local intersection, and urged the increasingly militant protesters to go home. Fire Chief Mike Bell, flanked by Mayor Ford and Reverend Mansour Bey, shouted, “for the last couple of hours, we have tore up our own neighborhood ... The Nazis are gone!”

But nothing changed. It wasn’t just about Nazis anymore. As the protests grew to a full-scale riot, and the balance of power shifted from the ISO and ARA organizers to militants within the community, the target shifted from Nazis to local elites. Seen as the armed guards of white supremacy, the Toledo police became the real recipients of the community’s long-suppressed aggression. In a final, highly symbolic act of rebellion, Toledoans set aflame Jim & Lou's Bar, a local establishment seen by some as a white-only hangout for cops and politicians. Gang members successfully kept the fire department out until the bar burned to the ground.

At the end of the day, police had arrested over 120 Toledoans. The national media swarmed around the ashes of Jim & Lou’s, and spun a tale of young black gangsters unleashed on a passive police force. By this time the activists who had originally encouraged active resistance had scattered; the community was left prey to the police, and subject to the same factors (far beyond the Nazi activity) that had planted the seeds of rebellion in the first place.

So what happened last October in Toledo? Two major activist organizations brought their agendas and analyses to Toledo and found a surprising amount of support in an enraged and divided community. But as quickly as they arrived, they were gone. There was no long-term community involvement, no effort to learn from the people they were organizing. Intentionally or not, they exploited a split in the local community, rather than contributing to a consensus within it.

The “activists” brought their analysis to Toledo; they did not bring Toledo into their analysis in any meaningful way. Perhaps most importantly, while encouraging a community to risk its safety and stability, outside participants failed to invest their whole selves – their bodies, minds and spirits – in the struggle for more than one afternoon of demonstrating.

The “activists” were shortsighted; they came to stage a mobilization against an almost cartoonishly obvious enemy. But the so-called “gangsters” of Toledo took the long view. They linked the one-time presence of Nazis to the every-day realities of white supremacism in their community and country, and they took violent action. And it is they who will suffer the consequences alone – arrest records, community divisions, and an undeserved reputation as the perpetrators of inexplicable violence.

Some would argue that the main error committed in Toledo was the decision to focus primarily on a Nazi rally, instead of the structural inequalities it represented. Provocations like those attempted by the National Socialist Movement are often just the tip of a much larger iceberg, and can bring into bold relief the systemic brutality that lies below. But so long as mobilizations only deal with the iceberg’s tip, they will continue to unite activist networks and street organizations temporarily at best. To bring groups together across boundaries of race, class and geography often requires more than an initiating event; it takes an openness to dialogue, and a commitment to long-term engagement.

The much-discussed Common Ground Collective in New Orleans is one such example. Common Ground, founded in part by former Black Panther Malik Rahim, has already turned heads in activist networks for its speedy and diverse response to hurricane Katrina and the institutionalized white supremacy it exposed. Collective members claim to have distributed over 75 tons of food, clothing and health supplies to over 40,000 people in the Lower Ninth Ward and Algiers neighborhoods of New Orleans. The Collective’s list of projects and facilities is also celebrated – the organization coordinates (among others) a free medical clinic, a guerilla radio station, home repair teams, legal support, a community gardening and bioremediation project, and a women’s center complete with self-defense courses.

Yet crucial to these accomplishments is the manner in which they’ve been achieved. The enthusiasm surrounding Common Ground stems not just from its achievements, but also from the perception that the collective successfully joins broad activist networks and a self-organized, historically oppressed population. In so doing, Common Ground must balance the needs and leadership of its community with the input and solidarity of outside activists – generating a tenacious resistance where, many thought, it had been destroyed.


De-Molding and Direct Action in New Orleans

In January, authorities proposed the mass demolition of flood-damaged properties across New Orleans. Thought by many to be a state-sponsored land grab and corporate handout, the plan eventually came to target over a hundred homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, many of whose owners are still living as refugees in neighboring regions. Critics insisted that the act was technically illegal – city policy stipulates that “all demolition will require permission from the property owner.” Even legal arguments seemed irrelevant, though, as heavy machinery bore down on houses marked with a spraypainted “X”.

With its community under attack and time of the essence, Common Ground found itself with no program in place to confront the bulldozers. The plethora of projects already adopted by the collective were aimed mostly at providing immediate relief and long-term repair. Until this point, members had maintained civil relationships with authorities like the National Guard, who in the hurricane’s aftermath had asked to borrow some of the collective’s medics. Were Common Ground structured more like a political party or nonprofit organization, its members might well have plodded forward, executing a predetermined political program or focusing its energies on a narrow range of services. But grassroots rebellion is nothing if not spontaneous.

On short notice, Common Ground adapted a preexisting plan designed to challenge community-wide curfews, and launched a series of housing occupations and protests. The strategy unfolded so quickly that, during an interview on Berkeley’s KPFA, Common Ground’s Brandon Darby was caught on-air as residents physically blocked bulldozers from toppling one home. By cellphone, Darby relayed to listeners that volunteers “physically put themselves around the heavy equipment” as “the police beg[an] to show up, the federal agents beg[an] to show up, and the military helicopters beg[an] to circle overhead.”

Despite repressive posturing from the authorities, collective volunteers and community members stood their ground, driving bulldozers out of the neighborhood and halting demolitions for the day. Improvising alongside residents and other relief organizations, Common Ground established a continuous bulldozer watch, and stalled the city’s plan with direct action and litigation. By the end of the KPFA interview on January 5th, residents were providing Common Ground with written permission – sometimes on scraps of paper and napkins – to defend and de-mold their homes.

The collective’s spontaneity is typical of an organization that responds to the changing needs of its community, as well as to a continuous flow of volunteers. Dictated by local needs, Common Ground applies the skills and resources of outside activists to projects that might not be possible otherwise.

Of course, this meeting of activist networks and a communities-in-resistance will give rise to all the blunders, offenses and reflections that accompany the meeting of outside radicals – many of them from a background of privilege – with members of a historically oppressed community. On the one hand, outside input has helped build many diverse responses to the Katrina crisis; on the other hand, collective members must continually question whether outside contributions are dictated by local needs, or by a well-intentioned but misguided mix of guilt and entitlement.

In order to maintain a line between solidarity and charity, Common Ground pushes its volunteers towards reflection and self-criticism. While activists from outside New Orleans are encouraged to attend anti-racism workshops before traveling south, and are cautioned to “take leadership from the community” upon arrival, the experience of working alongside an oppressed community prompts many to reflect on their own politics.

Molly McClure, a white activist from Philadelphia, recently published an essay entitled “Solidarity not Charity: Racism in Katrina Relief Work” to reflect on her experience at Common Ground. The piece was later posted on the collective’s website, and in it McClure questioned “the ways that we white folks, no matter how well-intentioned, bring our white privilege and our racism with us wherever we go, and how this really hijacks solidarity projects and imperils our capacity to be true allies.” By the article’s end McClure had come away with a renewed commitment to working alongside oppressed communities in her own region, where the action might not be as exciting or attention-grabbing – but where it would plant the seeds for continued resistance.


By the Deed

If questions always lead to action, then a critical look at our own movements should always propel us onward. Looking critically at the movements and rebellions of the last few years, a need for sustained action becomes apparent – rebellions that last longer than hours or days, and demonstrations that are more than dates on a calendar. The headlines tell us that our society is continually punctuated by brief outbursts and insurrections, only to return to the fragile equilibrium maintained by those in power. If a grassroots rebellion is to be successful, it must be born of a sustainable energy, and bring together the forces that could challenge oppressive systems by collaborating across divisions. It must be a tapestry of resistance in which “the community” and “the demonstrators” are one entity; in which allies engage in constant dialogue, and children play behind the barricades.

Imagine the possibilities of “deeply organized” communities, of a better and stronger way of integrating “activists” and “intellectuals” into communities. Imagine organizers submitting to the direction of their “other,” and becoming the organized. And finally, imagine the “activists” being organized in their own homes, without packing their baggage and touring exoticized locales. In these cases and, perhaps, in the case of Common Ground, the typically “activist” networks would collaborate with “indigenous” organizations to produce a cornucopia of resistance, from de-molding basements to blocking bulldozers; from toppling regimes to building a better world.

Deeply organized partnerships are praxis. They don’t shun ideology necessarily, but they don’t excessively intellectualize it either. They come to theoretical conclusions not through tortured isolation or formal discussion, but through action, reflection, and re-action. Members of Common Ground came to anti-authoritarian conclusions (horizontal organization, mutual aid, independence from and mistrust of the state) through their work, without getting bogged down in factionalism or dogma. In a sense, their deep organizing fulfills what anarchists called for over a century ago: propaganda by the deed.

This kind of organization holds an enormous, unborn promise. There is, in fact, little potential in the “activist” world without it. A revolution built from the sweat and love of every day life may not be romantic or grab headlines, but it will mean far more than any born of sporadic street actions or rootless ideology. It is a call to possibility for those who will work in its service.