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NEWS & LETTERS, July 2002
Gays target racism
Chicago—The Chicago Anti-Bashing Network (CABN), a
queer direct action group, held a meeting on June 21 to confront anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim racism post-September 11. Connections were made by the four speakers
about how this new racist climate can be understood by non-Arab and non-Muslim
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) forces who know what it feels
like to be hated and brutalized for who they are. Andy Thayer of CABN stated that the best tradition of
the LGBT struggle has been that it understands itself as part of the movement
for total human liberation, and as such, it cannot act in isolation or in a
narrow fashion, that is, solely along the lines of LGBT liberation. Mubarak Dahir, a gay Palestinian-American journalist,
gave a detailed and moving history of his life growing up as gay, Arab and
Muslim in the U.S. He talked about the painful racism he has faced not only from
straight people, but from within the LGBT community—the one community where he
said he had "felt most at home" before September 11. "Today"
he said, "Arabs and Muslims have become the new communists, the ones to
fear, to loathe." Nevertheless, there was no discussion about what human
liberation is and how to develop it globally, nor a frank discussion about
fundamentalism within the Middle East or in the U.S. Mubarak said that among Palestinians there is a
widely-held view that for now there is only one struggle, the fight for national
liberation. Thayer added that because feminist and queer liberation
struggles have historically come out of national liberation struggles here and
abroad, it is the national liberation struggle that must come first! This argument is one that feminists have fought against
for decades. It is the same argument that feminists in groups like the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan have had to endure in the
face of recent alliances between some left tendencies and fundamentalists who
have joined together in the name of "fighting U.S. imperialism." Doesn't it make sense that national liberation,
anti-racist and anti-war movements broaden themselves to include LGBT, feminist
and other liberatory concepts offered by those subjects of revolution?
While it's important to grasp freedom movements as part of the whole, it is
equally crucial to see that each particular freedom movement has something
unique and necessary to offer humanity. That said, it was an important meeting in addressing
the new racist stage the U.S. has reached. Working out the contradictions within
liberatory movements so that a perspective of freedom can develop is the only
way to ensure that they succeed. —Sonia Bergonzi |
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