Meyer Matt - White lives matter most: and other little white lies

Praise for White Lives Matter Most

If we want a world free of colonialism, one that could be more just, healthier, and environmentally protected, we need a new internationalism. We know that even when a colonized nation gains its independence, the nefarious and deleterious vestiges of colonialism continue affecting its citizens. Because they havent been able to transcend their colonized mindset, the colonizer or colonizing nation takes advantage of this reality and transforms the former colony into a neocolony, thus perpetuating colonialism and continuing the exploitation of its former colony. Only with a new internationalism, free of colonies and of exploitation and oppression by the imperialist nations, can we hope to live in a world free of wars and in harmony with each other and with the environment. We must dare to make our planet a place where everything that makes life possible is protected and where the human race lives in harmony, peace, good health, and happiness. Lifelong solidarity organizer Matt Meyers new book helps usdares usto move in this direction.

Oscar Lpez Rivera, Puerto Rican national hero, human rights organizer, and former political prisoner

In this provocative call to action, Matt Meyer asks that we rise to the challenge of our moment. He offers a beacon not a blueprint: a light onto the urgency of doing all we can to undermine empire and the racism on which it stands.

Dan Berger, associate professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, author of Captive Native: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era

This book is a call to move our antiracist politics off Twitter and into spaces of real comradeship and struggle. Meyer draws on the lessons of the civil rights, anti-war, and Black Power movementsspecifically around questions of white solidarity and nonviolencenot for absolutist instructions but to bring strategy and nuance to current organizing. Meyer encourages us to move from identity politics to radical politics that can end white supremacy with accountability, inclusion, and love.

Francesca Fiorentini, journalist, comedian, and producer and host of Al Jazeera Media Networks Newsbroke and the National Geographic Channels Explorer

With passion and depth, Matt Meyer has led a fully engaged life as a white antiracist for decades as an educator, author, activist, and organizer. No matter how much you know about opposing racism, you, like I, will learn a tremendous amount about analyzing white supremacy, building our struggle against it, and reclaiming the humanity of all of us by reading this book.

David Gilbert, anti-imperialist political prisoner, author of Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond

Longtime organizer and academic Matt Meyer adds new insights to the challenges and potential for white people in multiracial left movements. A key read for a deep understanding of lessons and mistakes from the pastand how leaders from these movements and all of us are learning from Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights movements, and the current fight against white supremacy.

Dara Silverman, founding director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) and former executive director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice

White Lives Matter Most and Other Little White Lies

Matt Meyer

Matt Meyer 2019

This edition PM Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher

PM Press

PO Box 23912

Oakland, CA 94623

www.pmpress.org

Cover design by John Yates/stealworks.com

Layout by Jonathan Rowland

ISBN: 978-1-62963-540-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931518

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I N ADDITION TO ALL MY COAUTHORS, THIS BOOK WOULD not even have been conceptually possible without the mentorship of Mawaina Sowa Kouyate, Papa Bill Sutherland, and Luis Nieves Falcn. From conception to implementation, my practice has been shaped and matured through decades of struggle within the War Resisters League, with special memories of my brother Jon Cohen, and through the comradeship of Resistance in Brooklyn. Constant and current central committee leadership comes, as ever, from Meg Starr, Michael Meyer-Starr, Molly Soo Meyer-Starr, and Elspeth Nene Meyer. They are my harshest critics, my most beloved community. Craig OHara of PM Press has had a gentle touch, an encouraging voice, and a wise balance between business and family that makes radical possibilities within the U.S. empire seem just a bit less impossible; his and my PM colleagues Ramsey, Jonathan, Steven, Michael, and so many others help remind and reassure me through their words and incredibly stalwart work that writing and reading are still worthwhile pursuits. Poet, copyeditor, and organizer Steve Bloom of the Old and New Project has been a steady and thoughtful contributor to my thinking. Finally, from the idea to the final page, comrade, friend, and copyeditor extraordinaire Betsy Mickel whipped this manuscript into shape.

S ONIA S ANCHEZ

Matt Meyer poignantly points out that

America has Always Meant White Lives Matter Most.

And Matt, along with Oscar Lopez Rivera and Ana Lopez, with Fred Ho,

and with Natalie Jeffers, and David Raglands Ferguson Truth

Tellers

Tell us

that it will never change

unless we organize.

Decolonize our minds.

Organize.

Wipe out white supremacy.

Organize.

Put an end to patriarchy,

Racism,

Greed,

Wars,

Poverty,

and ignorance.

Unless we

Organize.

Organize.

Organize.

Poet-protester-prophet extraordinaire Sonia Sanchez, in her commencement address to the Swarthmore College Class of 2018, challenged the young leaders in this way: You my brothers, my sisters, must finally answer the most important question of the twenty-first century: What does it mean to be human? In Sister Sonias contribution to this book, she agreed that we reprint this older reflection, An Anthem (for the ANC and Brandywine Peace Community), previously published in Under a Soprano Sky (Africa World Press, 1987) and Shake Loose My Skin (Beacon, 1999).

(for the ANC and Brandywine Peace Community)

Our vision is our voice

we cut through the country

where madmen goosestep in tune to Guernica.

we are people made of fire

we walk with ceremonial breaths

we have condemned talking mouths.

we run without legs

we see without eyes

loud laughter breaks over our heads.

give me courage so I can spread

it over my face and mouth.

we are secret rivers

with shaking hips and crests

come awake in our thunder

so that our eyes can see behind trees.

for the world is split wide open

and you hide your hands behind your backs

for the world is broken into little pieces

and you beg with tin cups for life.

are we not more than hunger and music?

are we not more than harlequins and horns?

are we not more than color and drums?

are we not more than anger and dance?

give me courage so I can spread it

over my face and mouth.

we are the shakers

walking from top to bottom in a day

we are like Shango

involving ourselves in acts

that bring life to the middle