Handy Reference Guide to Identifying Oppressive Silencing

To assist you in identifying and resisting dominant and unequal power relationships in your life, we’ve compiled a list of common phrases people in historically dominant roles have been conditioned to and may use to try to silence oppressed others, particularly when they perceive their dominance to be challenged.

The quotations below were used by men against women and are thus patriarchal; however, one could expect to find similar strategic dismissals and silencing of the accounts and concerns of people of color, working class and poor people, queer and LGBTQI people, young people, fat people, disabled people, and other marginalized folks in the discourses of those who discriminate against them. The simultaneous and intersecting nature of oppression is also considered here.

These strategies, and others we may have missed, can be found in any order, but from our experiences attempts to silence us commonly go something like this:

Assert authority
Question your knowledge/judgment
Delegitimize your response
Delegitimize you
Enforce dominant point of view
Shut down debate or conversation

The End of Poverty? (2008 film)

For our final post of 2011, we would like to thank all of the readers who have made Sisters of Resistance a success in our first year by sharing with you this important film that we believe captures or touches upon many of the issues of injustice currently facing the world at large.

How to Stop the #UKRiots #LondonRiots

Written by Fahim Ahmed and originally posted on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/notes/fahim-ahmed/how-to-stop-the-riots-10-point-program/10150334265811979 Please share widely.

1. We must get out on our streets and make sure that no one is brutalised by the police or our young people, that no homes are threatened by fire, and that the elderly, disabled, sick, pregnant and young are protected.

2. We, the community, must take RESPONSIBILITY for solving our problems.

3. We must promise our young people that we will listen to them and nurture them, and build hope for the future.

4. We must demand that the police drop charges against everyone being prosecuted, and declare an amnesty on all those who are being investigated. It will be a disaster if we let hundreds of children and teenagers go to prison. It is not a safe or positive place for them.

5. We must demand that the police stop killing our people, and end the culture of lying whenever they do kill our people.

6. We must demand that the police publicly admit the unlawful killing of Mark Duggan, Smiley Culture, Kingsley Burrell, Demetre Fraser, Ian Tomlinson, Jean Charles De Menezes, and the hundreds of others they have killed over the years. They must apologise to the families & pay reparations.

7. We must help the police to purge themselves of racist and ageist attitudes. We must encourage people to come and criticise the police constructively. We must hold the police accountable to the community.

8. We must demand funding for youth projects, youth clubs, better education, and investment in industry and infrastructure regeneration projects. This must be provided by the financial industry, especially the banks bailed out by public money.

9. We must demand the prosecution of politicians for engaging in illegal wars and committing expenses fraud, bankers and brokers for massive financial fraud, the tabloid media for phone-hacking, and police officers for killing people unlawfully and colluding with the tabloid media in phone-hacking.

10. We must believe in our strength, our ability to solve our problems, and our ability to negotiate these demands from the government, financiers, media and police.

US Day of Rage #USDOR #Sept17 #Occupywallstreet

In light of the current #UKriots, we will be posting an in-depth article tomorrow. In the meantime, let us direct our energies and anger at those who caused the currect economic crisis and thus are directly responsible for the unrest on the streets tonight.

US Day of Rage is a mass mobilization scheduled for September 17th in New York that will bring people to occupy Wall Street and turn it into the next Tahrir Square. The event page is here: https://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=144937025580428 Concurrent events are being planned in London, Spain and Cairo.

Please help by showing your support for the event by spreading the word across Facebook and Twitter. Let the world know that  US citizens are united with global struggles against police brutality and political repression, and ready to speak truth to power.

March for the Alternative

Sisters of Resistance are partaking in the March for the Alternative, London, 26th March, 2011.

Sisters Resisting!

Sisters of Resistance are dedicated to defeating the ideologically motivated cuts. We will not forget who got us in this mess – greedy bankers gambling away our money with the complete immunity afforded to them by this corrupt, unjust and unsustainable capitalist system.

We will fight! We will win!

We will fight their cuts. We will fight their system. And we will build something better. You just wait and see.

Pics of the placard in action coming soon!

Back of the placard