Noel Ignatiev - Occupy Boston Speech (2011)

Noel Ignatiev: Okay.

Speaker 2: The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series is continuing. We've had some great speakers, and we're having one now who was called by Rolling Stone one of the most dangerous historians in America. And so, we should be very glad to welcome him here. He's been a longtime political activist. He's the author of this wonderful book called How the Irish Became White. And he's a professor at University— at Massachusetts College of Art. And I'm pleased to introduce Noel Ignatieff. Thank you very much.

Noel Ignatiev: I am really more than honored to be asked to speak here. I am humbled. You know, as a I am so much— stand so much in admiration of the effort that people are putting in and the initiative they showed to develop this movement. You know, every revolution is always a surprise, above all to the revolutionaries.

Speaker 3: Right.

Noel Ignatiev: If you had gone around in Paris on July 1st, 1789, and asked people, was there going to be a revolution, they would have looked at you and shrugged their shoulders and said, They wondered, what are you talking about? It never occurred to them. I remember reading somewhere a speech that Lenin made in February of 1917, and he said, we of the older generation may not live to see the changes that are coming in the future. It'll be up to you young people to carry on. And 10 months later, he was running the country. Clearly, it was a surprise to him. Whatever he did with that running of the country, that's another matter. But certainly his position there, he was surprised by the movement, although he had been working for it for many, many years. And I myself have been involved in revolutionary politics for half a century. And I was surprised by this movement, and I'm gratified by it, and I'm deeply honored that people thought enough to ask me to come here. I hope to say one or two things that may be useful to you. And I offer them to you in a spirit of discussion. And I hope that you'll think about them. And perhaps some of you will find something of use, and others may not. I was asked to talk about the subject of race. I think that's the title, Race and Occupy. And, of course, that is a subject that I have written and thought about a great deal for many, many years.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Noel Ignatiev: And so, I want to say one or two things. You know, the United States, like every other country in the world, is divided into masters and slaves. The problem here has been, for many, many years, is that a whole lot of the slaves think that they're masters, because they think they're white.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Noel Ignatiev: Now, by that, of course, I don't— I'm not at all referring to color of skin or anything like that. Nobody had anything to do with that. That's purely an accident. But rather the thinking that they belonged to a certain group that somehow or other was represented in this society, and that even if they didn't always have everything their own way, at least they felt part of something that was called the political corporate body. And to some degree, there was a reason for that. People thought that, and it was not entirely an illusion. It is a fact. I mean, as we all know, there was a time of slavery that people of African descent found themselves in. And then, after that, there was another century or so of discrimination. And so, everybody knows about those old days. And after all, at that time, the white skin represented, you know, a badge of citizenship.

Speaker 3: Right.

Noel Ignatiev: More or less.

Speaker 3: Right.

Noel Ignatiev: And to some degree, that even carried over after that, so that even if one would stipulate, which is of course not the case, but even if one were to concede that all forms of explicit discrimination had been removed, the effects of the past would still be with us. As, you know, William Faulkner said, the past is never dead. It's not even past. And to put briefly, the person whose parents or grandparents had access to a college education or a skilled union job had an advantage over the person whose grandparents walked behind a mule or—

Speaker 2: I offended enough people already.

Noel Ignatiev: They're turning off the mic.

Speaker 2: Just tap it. Just tap it.

Noel Ignatiev: All right. Have an advantage over the people whose parents or grandparents walked behind a mule or a mop. Well, the tremendous turnout of people here and across the country in the Occupy movement, on the part of people who are nominally classified as white in America, is itself testimony that that old self-conception and that old understanding has in fact been eroded and has begun to fade. It seems as if people are no longer so convinced as they once were in the past that the white skin was the guarantee of a livable life. Now, of course, the white skin never in this country guaranteed freedom And dignity. It was, in fact, a substitute for freedom and dignity. It's what people got. It was the consolation prize. But now it's turned out that even the consolation prize is not sufficiently working.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Noel Ignatiev: And so, it seems to me that the old categories of race, Black and white, while I would not say that they have disappeared, as influences or factors shaping people's lives are no longer the absolute categories of determination that they once were. Nevertheless, their influence still exists, and it is that that I want to talk with you about today. And so I want to have a talk, as Malcolm X used to say, between you and me.

Speaker 3: Yes.

Noel Ignatiev: us about this. Because I think— how do I put this? I say this with the deepest and the greatest respect, but it is easy to look around at the Occupy movement here and in a number of other places and see that it is really not— the participants are really not a representative cross-section of those who are suffering most in American society. The participants appear to be a little whiter, not to mention a little younger, perhaps a bit more educated, I'm not sure, than the general lower levels of American society, that is, even below the 99%, let's say the bottom 30% or 40%.

Speaker 2: Just tap it.

Speaker 3: Tap it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks.

Noel Ignatiev: It's— I say this not in order to pose a criticism or in order to— but simply as a contribution to help build the movement, because I think there is nothing more powerful in this country than an interracial movement. That is, if it is a movement of all Black people, it will be met purely with guns and tear gas. If it is a movement of all white people, It will not be taken seriously until it forces itself to be taken seriously. But if it's a movement that significantly embraces sections from all of American society, then it represents a serious danger to this society as it exists. And therefore, I would like to talk a little bit about how we can move in that direction. Because I would say this: in the past, In the American past, challenges to white supremacy, challenges to white power, have exercised a tremendous example and moral authority far beyond the immediate issue that they addressed. For instance, the abolitionist movement before the Civil War sparked an antiwar movement, a women's rights movement. And a number of others that took their inspiration and their example from him. The same thing with the movement against Jim Crow and the Black freedom movement in the 1950s and '60s. It sparked a women's movement, a youth movement, an antiwar movement, a gay rights movement, and a general counterculture. All of them grew out of and were sparked by, although they certainly had their own independent grievances, Nevertheless, they learned from and were spearheaded by the example that the Black folk gave. I think that that potential is still around. And what I want to try and do is figure how we can link to that in order to deepen and strengthen and make this movement more radical.

Speaker 3: Right.

Noel Ignatiev: Now, I do not think the answer is to come up with a list of demands. That are specifically aimed at a black constituency. I think the demands, or the— one of the nice things I like about this movement, by the way, is that it has so far refused to define itself by a series of demands. I think that's probably what most frightens the people in authority, that if they could persuade people to list a bunch of reasonable demands, Then they could say, well, now we can sit down and negotiate. And it is the fact people's refusal to define themselves by specific demands, but their commitment to building a new world, which is what gives me such hope about this movement. So therefore, I am not proposing that this movement reach out to Black folk with more demands. I think that there already exists within Black America a deep current of sympathy with what this movement represents. And it will not be assisted by formulating more specific demands. You know, during the Civil War, right at the beginning of the war, when the North and South began fighting, what did the slaves do? Well, they watched. They watched and they waited. Because they wanted to make sure that that was a serious war. First of all, at the beginning of the war, both sides denied that slavery was an issue. As Frederick Douglass said, you know, the South was fighting to take it out of the Union, and the North was fighting to keep it in the Union. And it was only the reality of the situation that compelled Lincoln and the North to confront the problem of slavery. So, at first, the slave population did not get directly involved.

Speaker 3: Right.

Noel Ignatiev: Du Bois describes this process very well in his great book Black Reconstruction. They kind of watched, waited, see what was going to happen. Now, I have not been authorized to speak on behalf of the Black community. I do not claim to be able to read the minds. I'm not sure that there is anything such anymore as a totally embracing, cohesive Black community. And so, I am not suggesting that I speak with authority on this matter, except that I do listen to people, and I try and hear what they have to say, and I do read the press. And my sense of it is that black folk are waiting to make sure that this movement is serious. And when they find out that it is serious, then they will start committing themselves to it in greater and greater numbers.

Speaker 2: Right. Successful revolutions focus on individuals, not group mentalities. I don't understand why you're trying to project group mentalities.

Noel Ignatiev: Well, groups are made out of individuals.

Speaker 2: But individual freedom comes directly from power to an individual, not groups.

Noel Ignatiev: Yes, but individuals express themselves by finding affinity with other people with whom they share a great deal in common.

Speaker 2: It's not a question of trying to get blacks, trying to get whites, trying to get these people, those people. It's a matter of individuals, and we should have demands.

Noel Ignatiev: Just excuse me. We're going to take Q&A afterwards.

Speaker 2: Is that cool?

Noel Ignatiev: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Can we get twinkles on that? All right, thanks.

Noel Ignatiev: So what I was trying to think of— see, as I say, if the strength of this movement is its boldness and its audacity. And one of the damaging, crippling effects of whiteness is that it undermines the imagination. In a certain way, what we're really trying to do is expand the authority and the power of the imagination. And so, what I've been trying to think of is, what could there be? How could I help project a vision, perhaps one that already a number of you have thought of?

Speaker 3: Yes.

Noel Ignatiev: That ties together the issue of race, which I was asked to speak about, and the general issue of bringing out the maximum potential in this movement. And it occurred to me I wanted to address the problem of prison. Prison is probably the single institution, most important institution, in the life of Black America. Now, I don't think I— I don't have to tell you all the statistics, but the fact is there are more Black folk now under penal supervision than there were slaves in the United States 10 years before the Civil War. And, of course, Black folk go to prison even now at a rate, you know, 5 to 10 times as quickly as whites. Now, this you all know about.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Noel Ignatiev: What I wanted to propose is that people begin to think. And as I say, you know, my favorite slogan is from years ago, where it said, be realistic, demand the impossible. That I want to project to you that this movement should morally affirm itself to be in favor of the abolition of prison.

Speaker 3: Whoo!

Noel Ignatiev: And, I mean, Unconditional.

Speaker 3: Unconditional.

Noel Ignatiev: Unconditional, immediate, uncompensated abolition of prison. I don't mean prison reform. I don't mean some substitute program that puts people with bracelets and electronic scanning devices. Prison is an evil institution. And again, I go back to the cause of the anti-slavery movement. See, everybody knows that. I think anybody who thinks about it knows that prison is a problem. It's been proven. You know, after 200 years of prison reform and they keep getting worse and worse, it's time to conclude that it's not an institution that's going to be made better. But many people say, well, what would happen without them? How could we manage To organize a society? How would we control, regulate, or prevent antisocial behavior without prisons? Well, one of the things that occurred to me— I see the sign that you have up here on the wall where you have decided that this is a drug-free and alcohol-free zone, for reasons that you have decided after discussion, and therefore you are maintaining a certain internal discipline by requiring that participants live up to that rule. It seems to me that is an alternative way of dealing with what a community decides is unacceptable behavior. It is an alternative to prison. Now, many people think that it's unrealistic. But see, I go back again to what I regard as the most successful radical movement in the history of the United States, the anti-slavery movement.

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

Noel Ignatiev: And they began by saying slavery is immoral, destroy it. And many people said, well, of course. Most people knew that it was a bad institution, but they could not imagine a country in which Black people were not slaves. What were you going to do with that population who were not, for instance, ready to take part in democratic representative institutions? What about the problem— what about the problem of labor competition? What about a number of different problems? And the abolitionist position was, those problems we will not allow to distract us from the larger question, that slavery is evil, and the first thing, therefore, is to destroy it. Now, I am asking you to make the same kind of commitment To the abolition of prison. I do not deny that there are real concerns and people have issues. But what I am saying is, to make that commitment to the abolition of prison means to make a commitment to think about and undertake the process of building an entirely new society, because I do not believe that prisons can be abolished and leave everything else intact the way it is. And therefore, the very moral— when people begin to take seriously the need, the urgency, the imperative requirement to abolish prisons, it is not something that I expect to happen tomorrow, although I think it should, but rather it is something that the process of undertaking that movement and that process of thought will compel people —to think about different ways of organizing their lives. I've been speaking on this a number of years, and people have raised all sorts of objections to me. Well, what about all the people whose livelihood depends on the maintenance of the prison system? Well, it's a good point, you know. What is there, 2.5 million people in prison and jails now? I think that's the figure. Yeah. Well, there's probably almost an equal number of people who are involved directly or indirectly in keeping them there. And it sort of reminds me of being a sailor on board a slave ship. The slaves were slaves, but the sailors were also victimized, as well. I mean, how would you like a job guarding prisoners for what you do all day long? And yet— well, and I say, precisely, it is precisely because there are so many people and institutions and businesses and a whole variety of structures in the society That are engaged in the maintenance of the prison regime. Therefore, that is why I go to that and say, all right, let us undertake to abolish it all, and in the process transform the entire society that we're living in.

Speaker 2: That's right.

Noel Ignatiev: In any case, I hope that you take that to be in accordance with what I hear to be the spirit coming out of the Occupy movement. It's not a spirit of being reasonable so that the reformed sections of the Democratic Party will find a way to incorporate you in their voting machine, but rather people who do not— who are not afraid to dream. And so with that, I would close. And I again say, be realistic, demand the impossible. I guess now there's time for questions, comments. Do you want me to call on people, or would someone else like to come up here and moderate?

Speaker 2: Uh, Jacob, can you do that? Yeah, I'll moderate. Go ahead.

Noel Ignatiev: Um, what do you think right now, would people in prison now should get represented by a union or some kind of organization, and so they can make enough money and have enough money put away to want to get out of prison? They can start a new life. Well, as I say, I'm in favor of that. Of course, my maximum program is to abolish prisons, so there's not even a question. But if one is talking about immediate steps, then I would say, one— I mean, I hate to suggest this, because I hate to think, you know, that this movement will not carry itself through to fruition and accomplish everything that it hopes to do. But in the back event that it does not, given the view, you know, that reforms are what the revolu— are what's left on the beach after the revolutionary tide has receded, I would say that a union or votes for prisoners or rights of representation for prisoners are things that people who may not yet be ready to commit themselves to a total change might be willing to undertake in a practical sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Any other questions? That's some pretty heavy stuff, the abolishment of prisons. Does anybody have any questions about the abolishment of prisons, or are we just going to start that today?

Noel Ignatiev: Today! I would just add, you know, nobody knew on the 1st of July in Paris that on the 14th of July there was going to be the storming of the Bastille. Nobody knew that. Keep it in mind. Keep hope, keep hope alive.

Speaker 2: We got a question over here. Oh, here you go.

Speaker 3: So thanks so much, thanks so much for your talk, especially as someone who's been very close to someone who's recently been incarcerated. I really appreciate hearing what you have to say. I mean, this person had an enormous amount of support, which most people in prison do not have, and it still was deeply traumatizing to him and has made it virtually impossible for him to move forward with his life. It's really— and it makes sense of recidivism, and it makes sense of prison reproduces prison. It's really devastating. I thought maybe I could just ask you to expand a little bit more on the 2 different pieces of your talk, the first part being that the beauty of Occupy is not making demands. That resonates really powerfully for me. But then the second part of your talk being about We should demand the abolition of prisons, or maybe we should work towards abolition. I, I like both of those pieces, but I wonder how they go together, and I wonder what we at Occupy Boston could do to take those lessons to heart for our own work.

Noel Ignatiev: Thank you. It's a very good question, and I'm not sure I have a satisfactory answer. I've been thinking about that for a couple of weeks, ever since I was asked to speak here, and I said, well, obviously I do appreciate The kind of the moving spirit of this movement. And so I thought, well, what could I say that would project and deepen the vision, spell out the ideas of what a new— or encourage people to think about what a new society would look like? And so it's in that way that I put forward the abolish prison. And I'm not sure how those 2 parts fit together.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Noel Ignatiev: It's not— I haven't quite resolved that tension in my own mind, and I think it's something that we'll just have to live with.

Speaker 2: Any other questions?

Noel Ignatiev: I mean, if you'd like to follow that up, I'd be perfectly happy to hear from you more.

Speaker 3: I'm thinking about a follow-up.

Noel Ignatiev: Okay.

Speaker 2: Hi.

Speaker 3: Hi.

Speaker 2: I just got here recently. You may have already addressed this, but I'm seeing in what you're talking about right now, maybe One thing we can talk about that is part of the message already with a lot of the Occupy protests is about corporate influence and about the expanding corporate power in the prison system and the privatization of prisons, how that's been a key factor in expanding the prison population in the U.S. and encouraging incarceration as an outcome of arrest in the end rather than anything else, basically throwing people in jail because it makes money for folks. Right.

Noel Ignatiev: Yeah, I think that that's a factor, but I don't regard that as the underlying driving factor of the prison system. I think that's sort of a spill-off. It's sort of like anytime there's something evil going on, there'll be somebody figuring, how can I make money off of it? You know, child pornography or whatever. Somebody will try and figure out a way to make money. But it seems to me the prison system grows out of and really reflects the fundamental sickness of society as much as or more than the particular prison profiteering agencies that have latched onto it and said, well, there's gold in them thar hills.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Noel Ignatiev: I think it was Dostoevsky who said, you know, you can judge every society by the state of its prisons. I mean, it really is. A vision, an intense expression of the values of this society, that it keeps a couple of million of its own people in cages, in cages, and has a couple million other people who earn a living in the whole miserable criminal justice, legal, you know, prison system, the whole business of it. It's all of it is social garbage.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I was wondering if you had any sort of suggestions for, from the vantage point that you're looking at the movement, do you have any suggestions for sort of rhetorical tactics that Occupy might sort of adopt to sort of have a broader impact?

Noel Ignatiev: Off the top of my head, no. I mean, you've been so good at that. You collectively have been so good at that that I would, you know, hesitate to try and promote. What I would say is this, though. There have recently been prison strikes in California and elsewhere. And I do think it would be a good idea for people to pay attention to those, to those strikes, and to try and find some way of expressing solidarity and sympathy with them. While I said earlier I am not in favor of us composing a list of demands or anything like that, I do believe that when people are in That we should find a way of linking with them and giving them whatever moral, political, and physical support that we can.

Speaker 2: Is anybody else? There we go. I'm sorry, I missed the very beginning of where you were speaking, so maybe you've already talked about this, but I'm just wondering, have you talked very much with the people of color from Occupy Boston who are working on Occupy the Hood? which is their own initiative to address exactly that sort of stuff. Have you talked with those people, or what do you think about that?

Noel Ignatiev: I missed the— I was out of town when the thing happened, and I have not followed that up. It seems to me they've raised a very good question, and I think that it's something that probably you are in a better position than I to figure out how to relate to that. Is it something sustained, or was it merely a one-day kind of And so I would be open to learning more of that. I know that in Chicago the Occupy people have set up connections with other people who were fighting evictions, and now with bus drivers in Chicago who are waging a big struggle for the right to have a break so that they can pee. And so they've taken— people from Occupy Boston have gone out. And so they've taken— And done that sort of thing. I'm not sure what would be most appropriate for you here, and I'm very hesitant to say.

Speaker 2: Yes, sir. I got here late myself. I just had a question. What are we supposed to do with the people that break the law?

Noel Ignatiev: Well, my starting point is, of course, the law serves the 1%. You know, law is itself an ideologically Right. —inflected category. You know, it's against the law for both the rich and the poor to beg in the streets. But, you know, that's clearly a class law. So I would say the first thing we have to do is— I'm against law. I'm not against regulations. I'm not against agreements that help human beings understand how to relate to each other. But I would like those to be collectively developed and then collectively maintained.

Speaker 2: It's positive.

Noel Ignatiev: You know, there have been— all human societies, people have never acted like a savage horde falling on each other. All human societies have found it necessary to regulate conduct in a way that was acceptable while allowing the greatest degree of individual variation. Prison is a relatively recent institution. The American Indians, the Iroquois, did not have courts, judges, police, lawyers, prisons, the whole rest of that And yet they had a well-regulated society. So what I'm saying is, I'm not saying that anybody is free to do whatever he wants or act in an antisocial way that harms the interests of others, but I'm saying we have to find other ways of dealing with that, because the prison system is a proven failure. It's a university of crime. What, what's your opinion on exile?

Speaker 2: There was a gentleman over here who had a question.

Noel Ignatiev: Thank you.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's kind of a follow-up question. I was just wondering, you know, the problem of antisocial elements when they do exist and how you avoid, you know, something like mob rule and attack of collectives against, you know, replicating systems of power where they would attack minorities who don't agree or, you know, things like that. I wonder how you get around that, or what your thinking is on that.

Noel Ignatiev: Well, you know, I'm not— to quote a greater, much greater thinker than I, I can't give you recipes for the cookshops of the future. What I can say is, though, I don't know exactly how that problem will be solved. What I think— look at what you yourselves are doing. I said this before, but you maybe didn't hear this. The example of the way you have to The way the Muslims decided to deal with the problems of drugs and alcohol in this space seems to me a kind of a beginning model of how an effective community would maintain standards and order within itself. And I don't see that as an example of mobs or attacking minorities. I'm quite sure that large— people are able to make mistakes now and then. There's no doubt in my mind that. I think that's a very important point. But it's better to make a mistake in the process of trying to do something right than to have a system that was absolutely criminal from the very beginning. You know, you can find some examples of this. Right? You know, in World War II, when the Germans were invading France, I think at one of the French mental hospitals, they knew that the Germans would kill all the people living there. And so they released them. They simply let them out. There was nothing else they could do. Well, after the war, They had the records, and they went and they found them. Well, it turned out they were living lives no different from the average Frenchman and Frenchwoman at the time. You know, that— I mean, I don't know. I think that a criminal society both labels people as criminals and creates criminal behavior. I think a healthy society will do away with an awful lot of that stuff. And I think people will be able to find We have to find creative ways of maintaining human decency with each other that do not depend on having gangs of uniformed armed thugs who are in particular responsible for doing that. You know, a fig for the— as Robert Burns said, right? A fig for those by law protected. Liberty's a glorious feast. Courts for judges were erected. Churches built to please the priest. Right.

Speaker 2: Anybody else? Do you believe that a successful society— do you believe that a successful society will grant— I don't know. I'll give— I'll just want a second to talk after you. I can't— I don't really want to pose it in a question.

Noel Ignatiev: What do you think of an alternative for murderers and people with violent crimes, instead of being put in prison, to have them put in exile?

Speaker 2: I don't know.

Noel Ignatiev: Figure it out. I'm not here to give you all these answers. I'd like to know what you think, you collectively. I think the commitment to a Abolish prison will force people to rethink other ways of dealing with social problems. That's pretty much what I have to say. Beyond that, I don't have much to offer.

Speaker 2: I know that used to be the way of the past.

Noel Ignatiev: Yeah. Well, that was the American Indian way. If you can't live with us, go away and live with yourself. I have a response.

Speaker 2: I actually have a response to— well, I have a comment on people asking, what are we going to do with all these problems? A lot of people are in prison because they're broke, they're starving, they don't have education. So that's the reason the gangs rise and things like that, is because there's a need for them, because the society in which they live in doesn't provide for them in the way that they need to survive. So they do what they can. So I think if you abolish prisons and you invest that money back in education and things that are going to actually And help the people that really need it, you're going to see a serious decrease in crime and things that are going to warrant people being put in prison.

Noel Ignatiev: If I could just respond. I agree in the spirit with that. But, you know, I'm— after we get rid of prisons, I'm also in favor of abolishing schools. I'm not in favor of doing away with education. I think life should be a lifelong education. But any high school kid knows That what he spends 6 or— she spends 6 or 7 hours doing in school, he or she could learn in an hour on his own. Those schools are just prisons for the young. I teach at one. I earn my living that way. Life is full of contradictions.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much for your work. Can you hear me now?

Noel Ignatiev: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh, excellent. Thank you very much for your talk so far. I pose a question to you and anyone else who can hear me, which is that all— the prison system is a system that was an alternative to ways of punishing people that existed beforehand, like executions.

Speaker 3: And expulsions.

Speaker 2: And the reason why, well, the Iroquois didn't have prisons was because if someone committed a crime, they were simply expelled. In a modern society, where do you expel people to if you were to do that? Because now everywhere is inhabited. And the reason why Europe didn't have prisons until modern times is because every crime was a capital offense. Prison is, in fact, a reform of an earlier legal system That was worse. So—

Noel Ignatiev: Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure it was worse. I'm not sure whether a lifetime of torture in an institution is worse than capital punishment. But I would say also that there is a nice history of prisons written by Otto Ruscha and something Kirchheimer— I can't remember the title— in which they connect the rise of prison to the rise of a manufacturing, commercial, capitalistic society. That in fact, before that, people were not necessarily executed. They were sent to work on the galley ships. And the rise of the sailing ship eliminated that need. I think it's much more connected with the rise of the kind of society than simply sort of a well-intentioned reform to try and figure out how to deal with deviance. What about driving them to the front line?

Speaker 2: What? Did somebody else have— I thought I saw some hands over there. Well, if we have— go ahead. If we have no more questions— there's a— oh, if we have a question. Okay. Well, if we have—

Noel Ignatiev: It doesn't have to be questions. If you all want to, as the teachers say, you know, talk among yourselves.

Speaker 2: We're not stopping anything, but I got, um, I got a comment from the food tent. They just wanted us to, uh, wanted you guys to let you know that there was still hot, plenty of hot food down there. So that's their announcement. Please back on with the show.

Noel Ignatiev: They got shrimp.

Speaker 3: Indian. I don't have a question per se, but I wanted to add to the things you were saying about thinking about new worlds and also connecting with people of color communities. There's actually been lots of work done in lots of places in this country and elsewhere to think about how to address what we call criminal behavior in ways that don't use incarceration, from truth and reconciliation commissions that have been used in war-torn societies to There's lots of— there are many radical organizations of color in this country who try to think, especially feminist organizations, that try to think through, well, what do we do about wife battering? What do we do about domestic violence? What do we do about rape when we don't want to turn to the cops to arrest the people in our communities because the cops aren't friends of people of color communities? And so there's work going on in this direction. And maybe this goes back to the theme of what you addressed, having to do with race and Occupy, like, how can— Occupy is whiter than the 99%. And how can we connect with those people? Well, maybe we can join in this work of thinking through a new way of living, which is actually work that's already going on. When we are friends with the criminal legal system, we're not friends with the people who are not friends with it. So we're not friends with people of color, I think, is one lesson to draw.

Noel Ignatiev: Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2: If there's nothing else, anybody else have a comment? Yeah. I just had an observation. I just had an observation about increased social alienation or isolation. That's part of the problem, you know, where we don't know each other, we're not involved with each other, we can't, you know, have relationships. I think that's the model that's evolved, is everybody needs to stick to themselves. I think this kind of movement is so important because we, you know, it's about, you know, repairing some of that, working together.

Noel Ignatiev: I don't know if you heard what she said, but I think it's worth— I'd like to say that one of the things that the society does, it isolates us from each other, alienates us, and that this movement is about building community. I think that's crucially important. I mean, what we have— one of my favorite posters, political posters that I've ever seen, years ago, I think it was from France, was an aerial photograph of a soccer match. And the caption was, 22 players, 90,000 spectators, modern society. And I think What we are in— what this movement represents, and similar efforts represent, is an effort to overcome that alienation and to develop community. And I think therein lies the hope of the future. We collectively can solve all these problems. Individually, none. Drops of water turn the mill. Singly, none.