Hampshire College, Amherst, MA: At CLPP Conference:
"From Abortion Rights to Social Justice:
Building the
Movement for Reproductive Freedom"
ALERT! Condemn CLPP's Use of Police to Shut Down Critical Debate
CLPP Called on Police to escort StopPatriarchy.org
organizers out of conference under threat of arrest.
THIS DECISION MUST BE REVERSED AND REPUDIATED!
April 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On the evening of Saturday, April 13 at the CLPP (Civil Liberties & Public Policy) conference, several conference attendees approached the StopPatriarchy.org table with our Call to Action in hand to argue against our condemnation of the sex industry and pornography. We welcomed this argument and got into a lively debate. However, instead of engaging our critique of the social harm caused by pornography and the selling of women's bodies for sex (how reducing women to sex objects through porn is the "mirror opposite" of reducing women to breeders through denying abortion), these people took offense to the fact that we dared to make this analysis.
If they didn't want to hear this critique, they were free to leave our table. They chose not to simply do this. Instead, they went to the CLPP organizers and complained that they felt the conference was no longer a "safe space" for them - merely because a table existed putting forward (and advocating to those who visited it), the position that the sex industry and pornography are horrifically harmful to women and humanity as a whole.
Outrageously, CLPP organizers did not investigate or ask a single organizer from StopPatriarchy.org - or others who had witnessed the debate - about what had happened. Nor did they attempt to facilitate principled participation and dialogue between people with divergent viewpoints. Instead, they showed up within minutes with campus police and insisted that StopPatriarchy.org immediately leave the campus under threat of arrest.
FOUR REASONS WHY THIS ACTION SHOULD BE CONDEMNED:
- In any serious movement against oppression, it is essential that there be the broadest unity among people from different understandings, backgrounds and perspectives. This requires space for principled and substantive debate over the source of the problems and the necessary solutions.
- As a basic and bedrock principle: IT IS ALWAYS WRONG FOR PEOPLE WHO CLAIM TO BE FIGHTERS AGAINST OPPRESSION TO RELY ON THE POLICE AND OTHER FORCES OF THE STATE TO REPRESS AND PHYSICALLY THREATEN OTHERS WHO ARE FIGHTING FOR LIBERATION.
- This decision by CLPP organizers must be broadly and widely condemned by conference-goers and others, and it must be reversed by conference organizers. (Contact us at email below.) It is an unacceptable precedent for a conference which is looked to as - and which claims to be - a space of inclusivity in the fight against oppression and injustice to render a critique of the sex industry "beyond the pale" and to utilize the repressive organs of the state to enforce this policing.
- Any movement that is serious about ending the enslavement and degradation of women must confront - or at minimum engage and include a critique of - the horrifically violent, degrading, enslaving and oppressive institutions of pornography and the sex industry and their devastating effects on women. Every person who takes seriously both the liberation of women and the maintaining of basic standards in movements of opposition must take the time to read for themselves the Call to Action from StopPatriarchy.org which CLPP has officially censored. It is below.
If you agree that this removal by police is illegitimate, write in to StopPatriarchy@gmail.com to add your voice to this objection.
Contact: StopPatriarchy@gmail.com
StopPatriarchy.org
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.