| June 3, 2005 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Watch your language, asshole!
In last week’s Red Alert column, I let the adjective “asshole,” used to describe the political behavior of three Alaska legislators, survive a draft. I know. I can be more creative and less vitriolic. How, then, should we identify this enormous polyp of right-wing puss festering in our nation’s media, in our legislative and executive branches of government, and, now, in our judiciary? Let’s try this word instead: sectarian. Brazilian Paulo Freire, in his seminal Pedagogy of the Oppressed, compares sectarianism to its counterpart radicalization. Sectarianism comes from the word sect, of course, and describes an intolerant group dogmatically committed to a set of principles. “Sectarianism, fed by fanaticism, is always castrating. Radicalization, nourished by critical spirit, is always creative. Sectarianism mythicizes and thereby alienates; radicalization criticizes and thereby liberates,” Freire wrote. “Sectarianism in any quarter is an obstacle to the emancipation of mankind.” Freire warns that revolutionaries can become reactionaries themselves if they give in to a sectarian mentality, but that tendency shouldn’t discourage us into become complacent “pawns of the elites.” “Engaged in the process of liberation, he or she cannot remain passive in the face of the oppressor’s violence,” Freire wrote. As a Latin American—or, as Che Guevara would call him, as an American—Freire has seen the evidence of oppression first hand, as when he witnessed a rural family pulling an amputated human breast from a landfill to eat for their lunch. Hunger, as a form of oppression, isn’t exclusive to the “third world.” In Anchorage, I remember a crowd appearing from the shadows in the darkened alley behind Lydia Darby and Michael O’Callahan’s place to scavenge through boxes of leftover grocery store food. Instead of honoring them as the civic heroes they are, the municipality continually fought Michael and Lydia’s free-food alley, complaining that the food didn’t meet handling standards. The sectarian mentality does not understand hunger. Freire wants to combat oppression with “authentic education,” dialogue, and “decoding.” “It is not our role to speak of people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue with the people about their view and ours,” Freire wrote. “We must realize that their view of the world, manifested variously in their action, reflects their situation in the world.” For Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, this means that, “the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 percent of American families, whose incomes range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. ... If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right.” We need to communicate, then, with those people in the shadows. This is one important reason for the populist movement to protect the Permanent Fund Dividend. The sectarian haves see the Permanent Fund as citizen political power and want to take it away. The have-nots understand $1,500 in cold cash, entitlement, and democracy. On a plane to Kotzebue, I was talking rather loudly with a friend about the politics of Big Oil. A guy sitting in front, who turned out to be a board member for North Slope Borough School District, no doubt could hear us. On our next flight to Pt. Hope he told me what he thought of the “assholes” in power. He used the word when I saw him another time in the small whaling community to describe someone. I guess a central message, thus, of Alinsky and Freire is this one: understand the importance of communicating creatively and understandably in taking back power from the sectarian assholes piloting our political agenda. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southeast Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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2005
Insurgent Media. All Rights
Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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