On Oct. 8 at the Occupy protests in Philadelphia, two women were told to “go back to Africa,” and that “each white man should own a slave.” Volunteers used the n-word to describe them. When the women called security to address the situation, security asked them, not the volunteers, to leave.
In response, a Black Out! counter-protest was formed at the demonstration, which was met with considerable resistance from the Occupy Philadelphia contingent. Blogger Complex Brown reported that, “We spoke out about how nobody was talking about the racist foundation of corporate greed.” However, Occupiers used silencing tactics to dismiss these concerns. “Many of the people there to support Occupy Philadelphia came to us to tell us that all of us are people and that race is behind us! They told us that we were being divisive.”
A People of Colour Committee was formed on Oct. 10 to address the ways that racial issues have been ignored in Philadelphia. “For white people or middle class people, they’re just feeling the recession. It’s not because of the recession for us,” said Channel Andrews in an interview with Philadelphia Weekly. “Blacks have been the 99 percent forever—since we’ve been in America. So we don’t identify with the same reasons. Solidarity is important, people should support each other. But it’s not just about class for us.”
