Monthly Archives: September 2021

In the summer of 1870, an African American family from New Bedford rented a cottage in Oak Bluffs for the summer. They enjoyed their time here so much that they returned the following year, bought the cottage, and became regular summer residents. The Rev. William Jackson is the subject of a new exhibit in the Cox Gallery of the Marthas Vineyard Museum. His story illuminates some of the early history of the Oak Bluffs summer community, as well as the larger history of the times through his involvement with the Underground Railroad, the abolition movement, and in the Civil War.

Jackson and his wife Jane lived in tumultuous and difficult times. William Jackson was born free to manumitted parents in Norfolk, Va., in 1818. His father and grandfather were river pilots, and at age 9 William went to work on steamboats between Norfolk and Baltimore. There he would have seen heavy traffic of enslaved people along the river, being sent down South. I think that was one of the things that made an impression on him, says his great-great-granddaughter, Valerie Craigwell White, who works to preserve her familys history and to bring the significance of Jacksons life to light.

Around the time of Nat Turners rebellion in 1831, the family moved to Philadelphia because life was becoming increasingly difficult for free Black people in the South. William continued to work and to educate himself, and in 1842 he was ordained a Baptist minister.

Jackson led churches in Philadelphia, New Bedford, and other cities, where he was active as an abolitionist and as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. In 1850, he led a group of his parishioners to free one of the first men who had been captured under the new Fugitive Slave Act, and helped to see that the formerly enslaved man reached safety in Canada. Pastor Jackson was also arrested at the time, and although he was released, Philadelphia had become too unsafe for him, as a well-known opponent of the Fugitive Slave Act. He accepted a one-year appointment to a church in New Bedford, while his wife Jane and their children remained in Philadelphia. He and his wife regularly wrote letters to one another, and many of her letters to him have been preserved, one of which is on display in the exhibit at the M.V. Museum. The letter comes from a difficult time in their lives: Over the course of six months, while they were living apart, three of their five children died. Jackson was unable to travel back to Philadelphia to see his family because he had smallpox, so their only means of communication was through letters.

By the mid-1850s, the entire family had moved to New Bedford, where Jackson remained for most of the rest of his life, and where some of their descendants still live. He was the minister of a Baptist church there, and in 1863 he ministered to the 54th Regiment as camp chaplain and was commissioned chaplain of the 55th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, making him the first Black officer in the Union Army. After the war, back in his pulpit in New Bedford, he took a vacation to the Island. He and his wife kept working while they were on the Island she took in boarders, and he worked part-time as a town crier but it was a relatively quiet time in their remarkable lives. They also entertained friends here, including the renowned abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Valerie Craigwell White was born in her great-great-grandfathers house in New Bedford, but as a child she lived in many different places because her father was in the military. She developed a keen interest in history, and on visits back to see her aunts and uncles, she listened to their family stories. One such story was from her uncle, who said that Jackson was always sure to be back from the Vineyard by Thanksgiving during his retirement years. They would say, Grandpa didnt have a good season on the Vineyard, so were going to have Taunton turkey for Thanksgiving. (Taunton turkey was herring.) In later years, she learned that her famous ancestor wasnt so well-known outside of her family and the local African American community, so she has worked to preserve those family stories and bring them to the larger public while delving deeper into the historical records and setting them in their larger context. Her academic background is in the field of intercultural communications, and she is an experienced university teacher and speaker. She is currently working on a book about the Rev. William Jacksons life, which will be coming out some time next year.

Jacksons letters and other effects are now preserved at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The Marthas Vineyard Museums exhibit features documents and a hat on loan from the Whaling Museum, as well as Jacksons Bbible, which comes from the familys collections. White will be giving a talk in conjunction with the exhibit, which promises to enrich our understanding of this extraordinary life story. The talk will be held on Friday, Sept. 10, at 4 pm via Zoom. It will be pay what you will, with a suggested donation of $5.

For more information about the exhibit and Whites talk, visit mvmuseum.org/white.

Originally posted here:

From river pilot to reverend - Martha's Vineyard Times

This is a joint op-ed co-authored by the U.S. Ambassadors and Charg dAffaires, a.i. to Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zimbabwe.

The story of the United States of America is the story of its workers, whose enduring contributions we recognize annually on the first Monday of September. Throughout our history, the American worker has labored not only to erect buildings and cities but also to raise the standards of workers worldwide. Through protests and picket lines, by organizing and raising their voices together, workers have won small and large victories that have pushed the United States closer to ensuring safer and healthier workplaces for all.

The Biden-Harris Administration supports labor rights at home and abroad, including the freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, the abolition of forced labor and child labor, acceptable conditions at work, and freedom from discrimination. The administrations foreign policy promotes broad-based, equitable growth where all workers can work safely, assemble freely, and earn a fair wage. Labor policy is key to implementing our shared vision of a democratic and prosperous Southern Africa centered on a growing middle class. And workers and trade unions are critical pillars to making this happen.

The Biden-Harris Administration believes that unions across the Southern African region play a significant role in addressing income inequality and creating a more equitable and democratic economy key ingredients to establishing the cornerstones of middle-class security. When unionized workers are compared with their nonunionized counterparts, studies show that union wages are usually significantly higher. Union participation has also been shown to help address the gender pay gap: Hourly wages for women represented by unions are significantly higher than for nonunionized women.

The United States bolsters workers rights across the region through technical assistance. In Lesotho, for example, the U.S. Department of Labors Better Work project partnered with export apparel factories, trade unions, the government and others to boostfactories compliance with labor law. For workers, this meant better compensation and improvements in contracts, occupational safety andhealth and work hours.

Through its worker-centered trade policy, the Biden-Harris Administration seeks to deliver equitable growth and shared prosperity to all workers and communities in Africa. It also supports worker rights through U.S. trade preference programs, such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program. That is, for countries to remain eligible for the benefits of the AGOA and GSP program, they must establish or make continual progress establishing protection of internationally recognized worker rights. Through AGOA engagement, the U.S. government has worked with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to prompt action tackling a variety of labor issues, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers, trafficking in persons, and capacity-building of the labor inspectorate. This contributed towards the DRCs ultimate reinstatement into the AGOA preference program in 2021, and the U.S. Department of Labor will soon be launching a technical assistance project in the DRC to further support progress on international labor standards.

African laborers form the backbone of the Southern African economy and for far too long African women have worked in environments that failed to protect them from harassment and violence. They deserve a better economic present and future that is free of violence and harassment. We stand in solidarity with the many trade unions and worker associations in their call for action on this issue, taking into account the provisions of ILO Convention C. 190.

As the United States works with its African partners to stand up for workers, we are especially committed to protecting the most vulnerable workers, including child laborers. Every year the U.S. Department of Labor issues its Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor report, which highlights key child labor challenges in countries around the world, including our partners in Southern Africa. The report also spotlights efforts these countries are undertaking to eliminate child labor through legal protections, enforcement, policies, and social programs and makes recommendation for further action. Namibia, for one, saw significant advancement in the 2019 report, including its enactment of the Child Care and Protection Act.

We also provide technical assistance to support our African partners in their efforts to combat child labor. In Zambia, for example, the U.S. Department of Labors EMPOWER program provided entrepreneurship and leadership training to more than 1,400 adolescent girls at risk for child labor, many of whom went on to start their own businesses, generating income and avoiding child labor. And in Madagascar, the U.S. Department of Labor is providing funding to reduce child labor in mica-producing communities, including support to increase the capacity of government officials to address child labor in the mica supply chain. Additionally, partnerships between USAID Madagascar and U.S. and local businesses in vanilla, cocoa, and aquaculture that are focused on improving livelihoods and conserving biodiversity, have clauses banning child labor and monitoring systems to ensure the ban is enforced throughout the supply chain.

Our commitment to the worlds children stems from our belief that all children should have the opportunity to grow and learn and that economies are stronger when labor rights and human rights are protected. We recognize the important contributions governments, companies, unions, and civil society have made to eliminating all forms of child labor and look forward to strengthening our partnerships across the region to ensure that child labor is eradicated.

The U.S. similarly protects additional vulnerable worker populations through the U.S. Agency for International Developments (USAIDs) Global Labor Program (GLP). In South Africa, for example, USAID through GLP supports farm workers, domestic workers, and migrant workers to overcome long-standing exclusion from core labor rights and protections, while building the capacity of committed representatives of these populations to become union leaders.

Nowhere is the spirit of partnership between our countries stronger than in our joint efforts to combat COVID-19. Since the pandemics outbreak, the United States has worked hand-in-hand with health professionals across the region to prevent, detect, and respond to COVID-19. Weve contributed approximately $125 million USD in COVID-19 specific funding and have provided almost 11 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to the 12 countries where we serve as representatives of the United States , which has helped to ensure vulnerable workers are protected and can do their jobs safely. This is in addition to our $4 billion USD contribution to Gavi in support of COVAX.

Even in the United States we still have work to do. The dreams and goals of our current labor movement remain unfinished and unrealized by many. As much as we hope to impart, we also have even more to learn and gain from our partners. We understand that while workers across the region may share similar challenges, the African continents narrative is multidimensional and diverse. U.S. engagement in the region is based on a shared hope and belief that the prosperity narrative led by African workers is one we can build together by building a partnership of equals. When African workers can work in greater prosperity, harmony, freedom, and dignity, the United States and the world is better off.

By U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe | 6 September, 2021 | Topics: News, Press Releases | Tags: OP-ed

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Labor Day Message to Workers and Trade Unions - US Embassy in Zimbabwe

Under the first three presidents, various ways to make the free market economy more efficient were proposed. During this period, there has been no true political opposition in the Republic of Armenia, Melkonian states, which could deal with the deeper problems of the economy. The opposition parties were similarly supporters of neoliberalism, implying privatization of public property, cutbacks in state provision of healthcare, education, public transportation, and removal of environmental and other regulations. The overall effect, Melkonian said, in Armenia as elsewhere, has been an enormous transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.

The reason, he concludes, is that successive administrations have been dominated by cliques that have in common the fact that they own and control a large part of the countrys productive wealth. In other words, he said, a class that comprises a tiny minority of the population has come to wield a near-monopoly on economic and political power. In turn, these plutocrats use public institutions to advance their own interests and power.

Shrill nationalist rhetoric of groups like Sasna Tsrer, he stresses, is not an alternative to neolibleralism but too often camouflage for the same ideas.

Velvet Revolution Merely a Change in Administration

Melkonian does not find the Velvet Revolution to be a true revolution, as it did not bring a new economic class to power. He exclaimed in 2018: What has taken place in Armenia since [Serzh] Sargsyans resignation was neither a revolution nor a counterrevolution; it was just a change of administration, and predicted that primarily stylistic changes would be made.

In his books introduction, written a year or two later, Melkonian quotes Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in January 2019 assuring businessmen in Zurich that Armenian citizens do not want more redistribution of income. They have seen enough of that. He observed, But Pashinyan has turned reality upside down, since in Armenia, as elsewhere, redistribution has not taken place from the rich to the poor; on the contrary, in the past decades the wealthiest minority has massively expropriated the poor and working-class majority. Armenia has become one of the most unequal countries on earth during its period of independence. Consequently, he sarcastically points out, Armenians have indeed seen enough of such redistribution.

Pashinyan, he concludes, is prescribing the same neoliberal policies of his predecessors, the results of which are plain to see.

How to Improve Economic and Political Conditions

The only broad solution to these woes that Melkonian offers is to organize resistance to free market reforms which hurt the majority of the population. He cites the resistance in the US to the attempts of politicians such as Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin as an encouraging example. Traditional constituencies with independent organizational presence, like labor unions, played an important role in this, he adds, just as in the past popular resistance led to the abolition of child labor, the eight-hour work week, universal suffrage, consumer safety legislation, and many other achievements.

In a chapter written prior to the Velvet Revolution, he said, the best counterforce against the ongoing abuses by Armenias plutocrats is resistance from the bottom from the streets, social media, offices, factories, and public squares. The next step would be to build a common vision and a common organization to fight against plutocracy altogether and to fight for workers power. Melkonian finds that militant unions and a party of labor is necessary to force the ruling class to give up state power. A mass-based democratic opposition that has built a sustainable institutional presence on the ground and that presents a realistic way forward is necessary.

Instead of the market model of democracy that ratifies the existing control of Armenia by wealthy oligarchs, Melkonian proposes deliberative democracy, through which open discussion and debate transform personal preferences, creating new conceptions of the greater good.

He hoped for a generation of working-class Armenians who will break with the delusions of their parents and grandparents as thoroughly as the counterrevolutionary generation twenty-five years ago blotted the lives and hopes of their Soviet Armenian predecessors. His ultimate goal is the replacement of capitalist rule by socialism, or workers power.

Socialism

Melkonian sketches out how he sees a possible non-capitalist state with workers in power as a class controlling the state. Economic planning exists in any state today, but if workers are in control it will benefit the poor, and those in the middle instead of just a small minority of the rich. The means of production do not have to be owned by the state, he explains, to have a socialist system. Private ownership by self-employed workers is possible, but some large sectors like energy, transportation, mining, banking, finance and insurance should be socialized. Eventually production for the market will decrease and be replaced by production for use value. Land also should be removed gradually from private ownership. He wants a multiparty representative democracy within the workers state. Cuba is one of the states which Melkonian holds up to Armenians as a socialist example despite decades of US obstruction and embargo.

Rare for an American-born Armenian, Melkonian remains a staunch defender of the early period of Soviet communism, though a critic of its many flaws in its later decades. On the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917, Melkonian penned an article of praise on its spurring of workers rebellions, ending Russian participation in World War I. Its heirs, he observes, hastened the end of colonial regimes, liberated women, defeated fascism, fed the hungry, extended lifespans, pioneered scientific and technological research, and so forth. He defends Lenin against blame for Stalins brutalities. Melkonian looks to the revolution as a source of inspiration for the future, stating: Perhaps the best and brightest of a rising generation will reclaim the vibrant spirit of the October Revolution.

Foreign Policy Issues

While primarily focusing on domestic Armenian politics and economics, Melkonian occasionally touches on foreign policy issues. He notes that Foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy, and gives the examples of the large roles played by USAID and Western-funded NGOs in Armenia. Furthermore, he finds the promotion of civil societya distraction from the struggle for freedom.

He warns of US intervention with financial aid to strengthen trust in the Armenian electoral process through new technical processes, pointing out that many American voters themselves do not trust the American electoral system. He wrote about the US embassys announcement about its program, stating that it is not really about improving Armenias electoral system. We know that it is just another propaganda stunt, a tit-for-tat against Moscow, another lesson in obedience for the instruction of the natives. Melkonian also in a separate chapter wrote about US intervention in the elections of other countries, including in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election in Russia in support of Boris Yeltsin.

Melkonian presents the destruction wreaked in Iraq and Syria since 1990 by the US, which also largely destroyed the local Armenian communities, turning most Armenians there into refugees. In fact, he notes that among the 30,000 Iraqi Armenians uprooted, some had fled to Syria, where they were made refugees a second time. He then criticizes Armenia for sending its own soldiers as part of the Coalition of the Willing, thus giving some additional legitimacy to the plans of American neoconservatives to destroy the armies of Syria and Iraq, despite their harmful results for Armenians. Ominously for Armenia, Melkonian wrote, Iran was the next country in the sights of the US neocons.

For the Republic of Armenia too, Melkonian finds that the growing Russophobia in the Armenian opposition prior to the Velvet Revolution, was contrary to Armenias vital security interests, while the US agrees in general with Turkey that Armenia and the rest of the South Caucasus should be integrated into the dominant imperialist system as Melkonian calls it, within Ankaras sphere of interest. He warns readers of the old dangerous fantasy of Uncle Sam as Armenias savior.

While many readers may not agree with Melkonians admiration of the early Soviet Union and Cuba, or his ultimate goal of socialism, they still can benefit from his revealing analysis of the effects of the practice of neoliberalism in Armenia. Understandably, there is a bit of repetition in the books chapters, which after all were initially written as independent articles, and the language could use additional minor editing.

The English edition is available from Abril Bookstore in Glendale and various online vendors, while an Armenian-language edition, . (2021) is available from Zangak Publishing House (www.zangak.am) in Yerevan.

Read more from the original source:

Woes of Capitalism in Armenia Exposed in Markar Melkonian's Book The Wrong Train - The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Chuck Culhane is traveling to Attica Prison Thursday to participate in a vigil honoring those who lost their lives 50 years ago within the prisons walls.

He does not believe the vigil will garner any headlines.

That's emblematic of the attitude towards prisoners, he said. Towards people inside, that they don't exist. They weren't killed. And so a few of us are going to go out there and just read the names of individuals at the prison. The names of all the people, including the guards.

What is the lasting legacy of Attica a landmark event that encapsulates a generation of social progression, yet an event that also left at least 43 incarcerated persons and prison guards dead? On the 50th anniversary of the uprising, the conversation around its legacy is varied.

Culhane serves as a Prison Task Force Coordinator at the Western New York Peace Center:

I was back in prison, he says. I was sent to a maximum security place and it was, I recall, low grade terror. I did quite a few years inside. I never experienced anything like that. I mean, people were just terrorizing and really ways every day, and it was very dispiriting to see that kind of behavior with the guards.

Culhane said lessons regarding the rights of incarcerated people have yet to be learned.

And unfortunately, the vast majority of the changes have been for the worse, not for the better, he said.

The prison population has shrunk to just under 32,000 in New York State in the last 50 years, but the conditions the men living within the walls of Attica advocated for improvements to food and medical care, religious freedom and wages were abandoned in Atticas aftermath, said Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of Alliance of Families for Justice.

Sadly though, most, if not all of those improvements have now disappeared, she said. So the concerns and the demands that the men raised 50 years ago are still major concerns today.

Elijah was formerly the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York. Her insight on the plight of incarcerated people leaves her believing more can be done to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into society.

I would say when it comes to incarcerated people, we can clearly see that we're not living in a more enlightened society, she said.

Elijah points to how hard it has been to get incarcerated people supplies to fight against contracting COVID-19 as an example of how little attention is paid to their welfare.

From not giving them PPE, from not giving them tests, not providing for vaccines," she said, "advocates had to work day and night to push for those things, advocates and family members of incarcerated people.

And racism within a prison system where a majority of the incarcerated are non-white is a problem.

The racism amongst staff, the virtual lack of any Black and brown staff members and most of the Upstate prisons, Elijah said. That was a problem back in 1971 and remains a problem to this day.

One lasting legacy of Attica that both Culhane and Elijah agree on is growing prison reform and prison abolition movements in the state.

The advocacy groups on the outside have been somewhat successful, Elijah said, and reaching out to elected officials to bring these concerns to their attention so that more members of the New York State Legislature are aware and have been using their role as legislators to visit the prisons, to inquire, to question and to challenge what's happening inside the prisons.

A recent example of the success of these movements is the signing of the HALT bill by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in April. The bill bans long-term solitary confinement in prisons and jails across the state.

Culhane said the push towards rehabilitation programs and restorative justice practices within the prison system are ways to keep people out of prison for good.

Well in New York, he said. I would say, yeah, just in numbers, getting people out, you know, not sending them to prison for offenses that are not, you know, particularly nonviolent and where there's alternatives like restorative justice programs that do something for victims of crime and do something for society instead of this punishment ethic thats insane.

Elijah still believes the prison system as a whole is rotten and must be abolished.

I don't believe at this point you can do this form any more than slavery could be formed, she said. I think it has to be completely destroyed. I think it is incumbent upon all of us in society to figure out a much more people-centered approach to addressing aberrant behavior by human beings.

In a society still separated by the haves and have-nots, Elijah said these issues can be solved if we all worked together.

If we can put human beings on the moon and other planets, she said. Then we can figure out how to level the playing field so that everybody's dreams and aspirations has a fair chance of being realized.

The legacy of the Attica uprising has given us many teachable moments to reflect and improve on.

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50 years later: The legacy of the Attica uprising - WXXI News

Its been 31 years since the release of Gender Trouble. What were you aiming to achieve with the book?

It was meant to be a critique of heterosexual assumptions within feminism, but it turned out to be more about gender categories. For instance, what it means to be a woman does not remain the same from decade to decade. The category of woman can and does change, and we need it to be that way. Politically, securing greater freedoms for women requires that we rethink the category of women to include those new possibilities. The historical meaning of gender can change as its norms are re-enacted, refused or recreated.

So we should not be surprised or opposed when the category of women expands to include trans women. And since we are also in the business of imagining alternate futures of masculinity, we should be prepared and even joyous to see what trans men are doing with the category of men.

Lets talk about Gender Troubles central idea of performativity. This remains a controversial view of how gender works, so what did you have in mind?

At the time I was interested in a set of debates in the academy about speech acts. Performative speech acts are the kind that make something happen or seek to create a new reality. When a judge declares a sentence, for instance, they produce a new reality, and they usually have the authority to make that happen. But do we say that the judge is all-powerful? Or is the judge citing a set of conventions, following a set of procedures? If it is the latter, then the judge is invoking a power that does not belong to them as a person, but as a designated authority. Their act becomes a citation they repeat an established protocol.

How does that relate to gender?

I suggested more than 30 years ago that people are, consciously or not, citing conventions of gender when they claim to be expressing their own interior reality or even when they say they are creating themselves anew. It seemed to me that none of us totally escape cultural norms.

At the same time, none of us are totally determined by cultural norms. Gender then becomes a negotiation, a struggle, a way of dealing with historical constraints and making new realities. When we are girled, we are entered into a realm of girldom that has been built up over a long time a series of conventions, sometimes conflicting, that establish girlness within society. We dont just choose it. And it is not just imposed on us. But that social reality can, and does, change.

Todays queers often talk about gender being assigned at birth. But your meaning here seems pretty different?

Gender is an assignment that does not just happen once: it is ongoing. We are assigned a sex at birth and then a slew of expectations follow which continue to assign gender to us. The powers that do that are part of an apparatus of gender that assigns and reassigns norms to bodies, organises them socially, but also animates them in directions contrary to those norms.

Perhaps we should think of gender as something that is imposed at birth, through sex assignment and all the cultural assumptions that usually go along with that. Yet gender is also what is made along the way we can take over the power of assignment, make it into self-assignment, which can include sex reassignment at a legal and medical level.

Arguments around identity have become central to much of our politics these days. As someone who is sceptical of stable identity categories, what do you make of that?

I think it matters a great deal how we understand that centrality. My own political view is that identity ought not to be the foundation for politics. Alliance, coalition and solidarity are the key terms for an expanding left. And we need to know what we are fighting against and for, and keep that focus.

It is imperative that we work across differences and that we build complex accounts of social power. Accounts that help us to build links among the poor, the precarious, the dispossessed, LGBTQI+ peoples, workers and all those subject to racism and colonial subjugation. These are not always separate groups or identities, but overlapping and interconnected forms of subjugation that oppose racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia but also capitalism and its destructions, including the destruction of the Earth and indigenous ways of life.

Theorists such as Asad Haider have adopted your theory to address racial divides in the United States. Haider emphasises your view of identity formation as restless and always uprooted. But dont the right wing usually score victories by pushing a much more fixed vision of identity?

The right is seeking desperately to reclaim forms of identity that have been rightly challenged. At the same time, they tend to reduce movements for racial justice as identity politics, or to caricature movements for sexual freedom or against sexual violence as concerned only with identity. In fact, these movements are primarily concerned with redefining what justice, equality and freedom can and should mean. In this way, they are essential to any radical democratic movement, so we should reject those caricatures.

So what does that mean for the left? If we base our viewpoints only on particular identities, I am not sure we can grasp the complexity of our social and economic worlds or build the kind of analysis or alliance needed to realise ideals of radical justice, equality and freedom. At the same time, marking identity is a way of making clear how coalitions must change to be more responsive to interlinked oppressions.

Today we often hear about the importance of listening to those with a lived experience of oppression. Political philosopher Olfmi O Tw has warned that noble intentions to decentre privileged perspectives can easily backfire.

Yes, it is important to acknowledge that, while a white person cannot claim to represent Black experience, that is no reason for white people to be paralyzed on matters on race, refusing to intervene at all. No one needs to represent all Black experience in order to track, expose and oppose systemic racism and to call upon others to do the same.

If white people become exclusively preoccupied with our own privilege, we risk becoming self-absorbed. We definitely dont need more white people making everything about themselves: that just re-centralizes whiteness and refuses to do the work of anti-racism.

How has your own gender identity informed your political theory?

My sense is that my gender identity whatever that is was delivered to me first by my family as well as a variety of school and medical authorities. It was with some difficulty that I found a way of occupying the language used to define and defeat me.

I still rather think that pronouns come to me from others, which I find interesting, since I receive an array of them so I am always somewhat surprised and impressed when people decide their own pronouns or even when they ask me what pronouns I prefer. I dont have an easy answer, though I am enjoying the world of they. When I wrote Gender Trouble, there was no category for nonbinary but now I dont see how I cannot be in that category.

You have often been the target of protesters across the world. In 2014, anti-gay marriage protesters in France marched on the streets denouncing thorie du genre gender theory. In 2017, you were burnt in effigy by evangelical Christian protesters in Brazil chanting take your ideology to hell. What do you make of that?

The anti-gender ideology movement, a global movement, insists that sex is biological and real, or that sex is divinely ordained, and that gender is a destructive fiction, taking down both man and civilization and God. Anti-gender politics have been bolstered by the Vatican and the more conservative evangelical and apostolic churches on several continents, but also by neoliberals in France and elsewhere who need the normative family to absorb the decimation of social welfare.

This movement is at once anti-feminist, homophobic and transphobic, opposing both reproductive freedom and trans rights. It seeks to censor gender studies programs, to take gender out of public education a topic so important for young people to discuss. And to reverse major legal and legislative successes for sexual freedom, gender equality and laws against gender discrimination and sexual violence.

Youve always stressed that your gender theory is not only informed by scholarly debate but also your own years participating in lesbian and gay communities. Since the early 1990s youve become a uniquely influential thinker within these circles. How much has changed since you came out?

Oh, I never came out. I was outed by my parents at the age of 14. So, Ive been identified variously as butch, queer, trans* for over 50 years.

I was certainly affected by the gay and lesbian bars I frequented too often in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and I was concerned then as well with the challenges faced by bisexuals to gain acceptance. I met with intersex groups to understand their struggle with the medical establishment and eventually came to think more carefully about the difference between drag, transgender and gender in general. Ive always been involved in non-academic activist groups, and that is an ongoing part of my life.

What kind of issues were being addressed by radical gay and lesbian politics before the word queer emerged?

The demonstrations in my youth were certainly about the right to come out, the struggle against discrimination and pathologization and violence, both domestic and public. We fought against psychiatric pathologization and its carceral consequences. But also we fought for a collective right to live ones body in public without fear of violence, the right to grieve openly over lives and loves that were lost. And this struggle took a very dramatic shape once HIV arrived and Act Up emerged.

Queer was, for me, never an identity, but a way of affiliating with the fight against homophobia. It began as a movement opposed to the policing of identity opposing the police, in fact.

These protests focused on rights to healthcare, education, public freedoms and opposing discrimination and violence we wanted to live in a world where one could breathe and move and love more easily. But we also imagined and created new forms of kinship, community and solidarity, however fractious they tended to be.

I went to dyke demonstrations but also worked on international human rights, understanding what those limits were. And I came to understand that broader coalitions equally opposed to racism, economic injustice and colonialism were essential for any queer politics. We see how this works now in queer Marxism groups, Queers for Economic and Racial Justice, queers against apartheid, alQaws, the Palestinian group against both occupation and homophobia.

How does political life today compare?

Today I appreciate especially queer and feminist movements that are dedicated to healthcare and education as public goods, that are anti-capitalist, committed to the struggle for racial justice, disability rights, Palestinian political freedoms, and which oppose the destruction of the Earth and indigenous lifeworlds as evident in the work of Jasbir Puar, Sara Ahmed, Silvia Federici, Angela Davis the work of Ni Una Menos and abolition feminism. There is now a broader vision, even though this is a time of great despair as we see global economic inequalities intensify under the pandemic.

Many gender theorists have written on your works direct impact on them, from Julia Seranos sheepish recounting of your attending a poetry reading that included the line Fuck Judith Butler!, to Jordy Rosenbergs immersive reflection Gender Trouble on Mothers Day. What has becoming an intellectual celebrity felt like for you personally?

I have found a way to live to the side of my name. That has proven to be very helpful. I know that many queer and trans folks feel strongly about their names and I respect that. But my survival probably depends on my ability to live at a distance from my name.

Jules Joanne Gleeson is a queer historian. She is also the co-editor of Transgender Marxism

This article was amended on 7 September 2021. One section of the Q&A was removed by editors because the interview and preparation of the article for publication occurred before new facts emerged regarding an incident at Wi Spa in Los Angeles. The consequent lack of reference in the relevant question to this development, in which an arrest was made for alleged indecent exposure at the spa, risked misleading readers and for that reason the section was removed. This footnote was expanded on 9 September 2021 to provide a fuller explanation.

The rest is here:

Judith Butler: We need to rethink the category of woman - The Guardian