It’s been a while since I’ve been made to feel uncomfortable at an anarcho thing. During the discussion tonight after the films, there was some mention of the fact that most people in the room were white and university-educated. Good point. I have no problem acknowledging the privilege that I have had in my life. My grandfather (on Dad’s side) was a working-class immigrant (and sort of a refugee, if you think about the sort of persecution he left behind in Ukraine in 1913 or whenever it was) but thanks to my Dad’s hard work, I had a pretty cushy childhood.
However, I have always been committed to issues of social justice and I don’t think I’ve taken that privilege for granted. Tonight’s films were about precarity: the uncertainty of casual, contract and under-the-counter labour. As a contractor and sessional tutor, those issues of precarity are very familiar to me, even though I am much more highly paid than the kids in McJobs. So, after someone brought this up, I acknowledged that my situation was not similar to theirs but that I hoped I had empathy with their situation.
Wrong word apparently. The guy made some comment about “alarm bells” going off for him when privileged people go on about their guilt for those less fortunate… well, hang on! Someone else piped up and mentioned solidarity and all seemed okay…
So, I wonder: how does solidarity differ from empathy? Is there actually an issue in my approach? That is, am I in fact being condescending? If solidarity is acting alongside others, one thing I’d like to note is that it’s hard to have solidarity with people who aren’t there: there were no McKids in the room, organising autonomously for themselves.
Anyhow, I probably wouldn’t be as perturbed by the whole thing if there weren’t some truth in it, so I’m a little uncomfortable.
The films were good and I’m getting a copy so I can have a screening here sometime. The McDonald’s Strike one is only about five minutes long and is fairly simple, just a record of what’s happening; the Chain Workers one is about 12 minutes long and is analytical Italian autonomist stuff with some very interesting approaches to media actions and how to build a network with precarious workers; and the French Cultural Workers one is really good, half-an-hour long, some great subversions of ads and a good coverage of the strikes of les intermettants du spectacles which was happening around when I was in Paris in 2003. I particularly liked the subverted mobile phone ads although I can’t remember the slogans right now. There were quite a few subverted situationist-style slogans throughout this one too: the old situationist slogan was “run, the old world is behind you”; this one had “run, the new world order is behind you”.
And apart from the run-in with that one guy, the discussion was really good too and there’ll be another screening on May Day. (Oh, and thank you to girlofmystery for coming along on such short notice.)
Who wants to help me organise a performance action for the May Day march?