Filipino intellectual and Representative of the Akbayan Party Walden Bello was an invited guest of the Gaza Freedom March international steering committee. He came to Gaza under the auspices of a mobilization that he did not organize. And he has now chosen to write an analysis of the organizational flaws, organizers’ foibles, the failures, mis-steps, and political mis-judgments that he feels marred the mobilization. This is his privilege, and we all have the right to choose our politics and decide when, or if, purity of principle will lead to paralysis, or, on the other hand, whether a politics of pragmatism shades off into a politics of palliation. Those are core political choices. Hard ones. But before proceeding with analysis, it seems proper to at least have an honest accounting of the facts, and so a reasonable chronology of the sequence of events that led up to the decision-making processes in Cairo and Gaza. There, I think Bello has mis-stepped.
Bello writes, “The steering committee of the GFM initially endorsed the plan. However, in a meeting that went till 4 am on December 30, the steering committee consensus fell apart.” This is factually incorrect. A portion of the GFM steering committee initially endorsed this plan, under nothing resembling a consensus. Some people who “endorsed” the plan had never been affiliated with our mobilization, and had done none of the organizational work in the months-long lead-up to the GFM. A more representative cross-section of the steering committee decided not to let the buses leave in deliberations that went considerably later than “4 AM,” as Bello writes.
Bello adds, “One reason” that we changed our minds “was that the Egyptian foreign ministry released a statement characterizing the 100 that were going as the “good elements” of the GFM while the ‘bad ones’ were those left in Cairo.” Again, this is untrue. We had changed our decision well before we had heard about the Egyptian foreign ministry’s statement, because we felt that it was too divisive, too damaging to our cause, to the broader international solidarity movement.
With that in mind, it seems seriously mis-leading to describe those pushing hard against the decision to send the buses with the tone and cadences Bello deploys. He writes,
These participants in the Gaza Freedom March were demonstrating against those of us who were supposed to represent them in Gaza! That we were a solidarity delegation put together to help break Israel’s siege of Gaza was completely forgotten. We were suddenly vilified as pawns of the Egyptian government.
Bello seems to have forgotten that representation implies selection. People who are represented, or ostensibly represented, choose their representatives. They do not unwillingly have their representatives chosen for them. Were the decision-making processes Bello endorses as “representation” replicated in another sphere, taken and reproduced from the solidarity movement and copied in electoral processes, it would repulse Bello, no question. Odd, then, that he is so happy to accept them for others, especially others he had such little role in organizing.
This is really the crux of the issue. At no point did CODEPINK or the North American-dominated steering committee of the Gaza Freedom March properly consult either the majority of the marchers through anything resembling a delegative process or, in fact, Gazan civil society. We—some of us—found out about the Egyptian offer by 10 or 11 AM on the day before the buses were to have departed. It would have been frenetic, but we could have had enough time to consult with a great majority of the delegates. Their answers would have been helpful. The 30-strong South African delegation would never have accepted such an offer, and never did. Nor the 300-person French contingent, with more élan than any of us. Nor the 80-person New York area-group. A Canadian delegation, one of its members from Palestine, refused to join the buses.
The Gaza Freedom March was surely not 19 names on an executive steering committee, notwithstanding awesomely time-consuming logistical efforts by some of the core members of that committee. It was a political mobilization that consumed some part, larger or smaller, of the efforts, the days, the lives of 1400 people plus countless thousands more in active support, a political mobilization enchanting tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more. It was never the place of a handful of people to make a political decision that would decide for them how they would be represented, how their efforts would be delegated.
And then (and then?) there is the issue of Gazan civil society. Our partners there never knew the conditions attached to the offer: the buses arriving under the banner of CODEPINK and not the GFM. No Middle Eastern passports. The buses marked as a humanitarian and not a political mission. When they did find out, they were disgusted, and urged the buses not to leave when they had a moment to assess and consult with one another. Some didn’t listen. Some didn't listen when Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein got on a platform to address them. They didn't listen when we told them precisely what Palestinian civil society had asked of us. They didn't listen when we put our partners' voices directly into a loudspeaker for them to listen to. And those who didn't listen included Bello, until he was shamed into doing so. Divisiveness in the solidarity movement helps no one, least of all the Palestinians. But when you cast the first stone, using reputation to place an article in various prominent fora, you're being divisive, raising the trap laid by the Egyptian government to the issue of tactical debate within the left. That's weird.
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CODEPINK struck a deal that would result in more publicity for itself? I’m shocked, shocked, particularly since Medea Benjamin has done the same thing in the past with Global Exchange, and Benjamin plays a prominent role in CODEPINK as well. But, as you suggest, there is a larger question here of the sort of hegemony practiced by North American activists in its relations with people from elsewhere, a replication of the hegemony practiced by finance capital that they supposedly oppose.
The larger question is what interests me too. JSF had a decent post up a week ago about the politics of solidarity an what it means and how you can always find someone from “elsewhere” to support any sort of political position. The trouble is finding ones with legitimacy.
If you talked to each of the 1400 people there, they’d have 1400 versions of how this played out. Personally, I’m from NYC and wasn’t included in the NY “consensus” not to go — and I met that Canadian-Palestinian in the line to get on the bus. We both got off when we found out about the “good/bad” distinction (and heard it out of the mouth of the Egyptian security guard on our bus — creepy!). I think the larger issue was that there wasn’t a clear decision-making process with clear decision-making authority and representation BEFORE all this came up. The smaller-delegation plan idea came up the first day and was decided against as an initial bargaining position but certainly not rejected altogether by a decision making group of representative delegates in front of the UN. So it wasn’t unforeseeable, and it wasn’t as shocking as it was made out to be later. Anyway, in the end the people who went were individuals compelled by their own consciences to go — and who are we who didn’t make that choice to judge them? I still believe in the good faith of everyone there, and wish we could focus on the incredible, historical fact of our presence and commitment in Cairo.
Sally,
You are right that one of the larger issues was the lack of transparent decision-making processes. One issue. Another was that people didn’t respect the voices of our partners in Pal. civil society. That’s what solidarity work entails–listening. Not “good faith,” or our “own consciences,” which isn’t much help when we with good faith make bad decisions, our when some crazy moral pull from our conscience leads us to think an effort like this is an individual charity mission meant to make us feel good. We had a political goal. It was not consensual but nothing is.
The buses undermined it. Bello supported this undermining in the name of a “pragmatic” symbolic solidarity–tokenism, according to racist guidelines [no Middle Eastern passports!]. Doesn’t that trouble you?
Well, the email that was read to me said that our partners said they didn’t think we should come but “would welcome us with open hands and open hearts.” And there was a woman on my bus sobbing because she couldn’t see family there — so it’s not quite that clear (listening/not listening), although I personally agree with you about the prioritization of our political goals. But people signed a nonviolence pledge when they signed up, not a “put the political goal before charity and personal conscience” pledge.
As far as the racism — yeah, it does trouble me that there were no middle eastern passports allowed. Just as the original restriction the egyptian government put on the whole trip, which was prominently displayed on the sign-up website, “no egyptian passports” troubled me (but everyone there agreed to it in the interest of having the march go forward) — I mean, it was a deal with the devil, right? We make them every time we participate in a shitty system we don’t believe in (every day, several times a day, until we hit one we can’t stomach).
When I got off the bus I ran straight to Bernardine Dohrn (who also got off) and Bill Ayers, who looked at all the yelling and crying people (including me) and told me, “the only people who are wrong are the ones who are 100% certain that they are right and the others are wrong.” And I agree.
By the way, the hegemony issue is also deeply troubling to me. I think especially the South African delegation should have been given a special place of respect because of their history, and building that kind of consideration into leadership structure is something code pink and all western organizers (and organizers) really need to work on. But really, given the emergency circumstances everyone was under for five days, I still feel really good about the trip, and I think it’s defeatist to dwell for too long on these internal politics.
OK I’m done! I’m not usually a commenter but hopefully it’s at least a little helpful to have another perspective.
Comments are always welcome.
(1) People did not sign up to join a political mobilization but confronting police repression as a group mobilization creates its own moral economy. We did sign on to end the siege of Gaza, implicitly, in any case, as far as I know. That was the whole point of the GFM. Not a safari.
(2) Again the issue of personal conscience vs politics vs morality is both relevant and in a way irrelevant. The point was Bello’s coercive dividing line between HIS pragmatism and OUR “all or nothing.” But accepting the most pathetic compromises in the name of pragmatism isn’t too pragmatic, in the long run. It says you can be bought, and that was what I was responding to.
(3) On defeatism and infighting, and the success of the GFM. I think the GFM was a spectacular success. When’s the last time anyone coordinated 1400 activists to drive to the core of an authoritarian government to protests its policies? That’s not the point. The point is how to discuss how to move forward–tactically, strategically, and in terms of vision. In terms of vision there’s something intolerable about “compromising” Palestinian rights, again and again, don’t you think? They should have the right to determine who visits them. Once you mediate that right through a foreign government, you haven’t weakened it. You’ve lost it. So to put 100 people on that bus with all the symbolism is entailed would have been a poor choice, I think.
But that’s not the point. The point is process and Bello’s article. Process, crappy. Bello’s article, arrogant and crappy.