How We Got Here, with Suzanne Pharr

[00:00:00] SOT: This podcast is presented by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. 

[00:00:07] Suzanne Pharr: As Reagan first came in with him, came the evangelicals, came the moral majority. And I feel like those groups, those people were very manipulated. A right wing leadership to bring them from their beliefs around religion and church and practice to believing that was being threatened by what they were seeing that appeared new to them. 

[00:00:40] Scot Nakagawa: Welcome to the anti authoritarian podcast. Scott 

[00:00:46] Sue Hyde: and I first joined forces about 30 years ago to help defeat anti LGBTQ ballot measures proposed by Christian authoritarian groups. 

[00:01:00] Scot Nakagawa: It was as true then as it is now that those of us who believe in democracy make up a supermajority of people in this country.

[00:01:08] The challenge is, how do we go from being the majority to acting like the majority? 

[00:01:12] Sue Hyde: We dig into strategy questions like these and prescriptions for change. We talk with expert guests and commentators whose scholarship, political activism, and organizing is what we’re Define the cutting edge of anti authoritarian resistance.

[00:01:28] Thank you for joining us.

[00:01:35] Scot Nakagawa: Today we are exploring the question, how did we end up in the crisis of democracy we’re now in and what should we be doing about it? 

[00:01:43] Sue Hyde: Our guest is our friend, Suzanne Farr, who will celebrate her 85th birthday shortly. She’s lived through decades of struggle for social justice and human rights. Along the way, she’s done a lot of organizing in many social justice movements.

[00:01:58] She’s worked on historic campaigns against authoritarian attempts to exploit popular prejudice for political and financial gain. And she’s written some books you may find interesting. Homophobia, a weapon of sexism. is one of the groundbreaking books of second wave feminism published in 1988. Suzanne wrote In the Time of the Right, Reflections on Liberation, a book that helps to expose the threat to democracy.

[00:02:29] And wait for it, it was published in 1996. Talk about profits. Suzanne is also the author of Transformation Toward a People’s Democracy. She joins us today to share some of her experiences and the wisdom she has gained along the way. 

[00:02:47] Scot Nakagawa: We often talk about the rise of authoritarian movements and the takeover of one of our two political parties as a 60 year process.

[00:02:54] But, Suzanne, you were a frontline activist through all of those years. And one of the most astute and compassionate observers of the progress of authoritarian movements. And I don’t just say that because you’re my friend. You are also someone who has helped thousands of social justice activists better understand threats to democracy in what Dr.

[00:03:12] King termed mutual interdependence, the web of mutuality in which the fates of all of us are deeply intertwined. Thanks for joining us, Suzanne. 

[00:03:22] Suzanne Pharr: Thanks for having me here. 

[00:03:24] Scot Nakagawa: In this podcast, we’re going to be talking a lot about the authoritarian movement strategies and how they have evolved over time. But it’s equally, if not more important for us to know what we are for.

[00:03:35] Suzanne, you have been involved in social movements for a long time now. How did we get to this moment in which democracy in the U. S. is so threatened? 

[00:03:44] Suzanne Pharr: That’s a very big question because it covers a very long time that Some of us that we work with, some according to a generation, according to other things of when they came into movement work, think that it maybe happened just recently, maybe in the last 10 years or the last 15 years.

[00:04:04] What we know is that it has been going for about 60 years at a very steady speed that then accelerated. It’s not that there wasn’t something before that last 60 years before it started, but most of it, most of us, I think. I think it started around the time of Goldwater running for president and started moving on then.

[00:04:29] I would have to say that great numbers of us failed to recognize that it was happening. That we didn’t realize clearly or fully that this was a long term effort of a takeover and a transformation of the country. I think we recognized there was a threat. Knew many pieces. We knew, for example, that when people started attacking women and queers, around late 70s, 1980s, there was something in the air.

[00:05:07] There was something odd. Beginning to put that together with abortion, beginning to put that together with women’s rights. Those kinds of things that are so, so alive and vigorous now. We knew we’re threats, but it was hard in some cases, I think, to get the attention of the country.

[00:05:25] So the real attention, I believe, has become probably the clearest since Sept, the great September 11th attack that seemed, in some way, have opened the eyes of lots of people in odd kinds of ways, not because of the attack, but what, how the country responded to the attack. And so, with that eye opening, Instead of having 20 people who were studying this, or watching this, writing about this, we suddenly had a number of people who were able to bring it forward.

[00:06:00] And we began to as people began to give notice to it, all of us began to gather that it was indeed a threat to democracy. 

[00:06:09] Scot Nakagawa: So Suzanne you said that, many people over the course of those six years didn’t notice. Why do you think that is? 

[00:06:16] Suzanne Pharr: I think they were busy enjoying it. What Reagan was doing, which is an unfortunate, fortunate statement to have to make.

[00:06:26] I think there was not the attention because the attention was going elsewhere. There were other causes, but attention, much of the attention was drawn through the activities of Reagan. My partner and I were talking about this morning, that say there was a ladder. He took out the rungs of the ladder for every institution that he could, that offered justice.

[00:06:49] It began, right, right away with an attack on unions, led from that eventually to the racialization of every issue that you can imagine. This is the same time that he’s working on economics, he’s working on the political sector, and he’s working on economics at the same time.

[00:07:07] And so we’re seeing a radical change in how we live. And I think we were distracted by that. And so it is conservatism. At work rather than what was actually at work. Which is what we now call authoritarianism.

[00:07:26] SOT: Hello, I’m Marcy Ryan and I’m the print editor for Convergence. If you’re enjoying this show like I am, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Convergence. We’re a small, independent operation and rely heavily on our readers and listeners, like you, to support our work. You can become a subscriber at convergencemag.

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[00:08:26] Sue Hyde: Suzanne I’m glad you mentioned the Reagan administration because in my mind, that was a pivotal time politically. For the, I’m going to call it the white Christian movement to ascend to a kind of political power. I’m not really sure they ever had before the Reagan administration. And it was also a petri dish of anti LGBTQ poison.

[00:08:59] And I know you’ve thought a lot about this, and I’m curious if you could speak about the authoritarian movement’s intense focus on LGBTQ people and communities. What are they getting out of this? What are they mobilizing? What’s behind it? 

[00:09:19] Suzanne Pharr: Well, I think they’re mobilizing a number of things, and I’m thinking about, as Reagan, Reagan first came in, with him came the evangelicals, came the moral majority, and I feel like those groups, those people were very manipulated.

[00:09:41] Right wing leadership to bring them from their beliefs around religion and church and practice to believing that was being threatened by what they were seeing that appeared new to them. The liberation that appeared new to them. And so. Reagan and others were able to build on that, to make that, that grow into a political base that fear and that, that antagonism.

[00:10:09] I think the other thing in that is always think back to Hitler, and the persecution of gay men. And that takes me to the whole idea of the strong man. What we witness now in our politics, that search, search for the strong authoritative leader, not only in this country, but in other countries that are moving toward authoritarianism.

[00:10:34] And I Reagan was that strong man, the beginning of that. I believe I don’t think in the, And the time before that, we were really having that person as president. I think that, that grew. And so gender not just queerness, but gender became the issue where the attack was because what was moving in gender was homosexuality as it was, as we, the language we use then and basically gender freedom for women and equality.

[00:11:10] It’s hard to have a strong man with those components out there. In the world and so there had to be some attack on that and then that use that to build a base build that base on fear. Build that base on threat, particularly build that base on if these people have freedom, you are going to lose something.

[00:11:32] It’s not just you’re going to have a sense that it’s illegal, it’s not just you’re going to have a sense that it’s immoral, you’re going to lose something from them. And I think, certainly, those who were leading it were of the strongman kind of leadership, seeking that through, authoritarianism.

[00:11:48] And I think where we failed, Was that we should have focused, focus in on what was being liberated in that, which, in the way of gender, and also to see that the strongman, how authoritarianism is builds, as far as I’m concerned, its earliest base. It’s the family, that strong man structure of the family that has to be fought for, maintained, or else we could lose control of everything.

[00:12:17] So that becomes the structure that is built and is replicated into political leadership. So queers became just a money pool for them, for the building of fear and the building of confusion and the building of anguish and uncertainty. And always that sense. That, that you’re going to lose something if other people gain freedom, you’re going to lose something.

[00:12:44] And in the political specter of that, what you’re going to lose is authority. But on the ground, you’re going to lose control. You’re going to lose control of your families, you’re going to lose control of these women. Women are going to be able to do whatever they want to. Who are we going to get to work?

[00:12:59] Who’s going to take care of our houses? Who’s going to take care of our children? Who are, who’s going to maintain this? And of queers. I think the it’s fascinating to me that prior to the 30s, there was a fair amount of freedom for queers, a lot of joy, joyousness, and that joyness, joy, that sense of we can seek freedom and have pleasure in ways that are not considered the way to have that pleasure was embraced strongly by people, I think, in the 20s, and then people were trained to be terrified of 30s.

[00:13:38] To me, it’s a very complicated thing, but I always think about, if we’re going to make change, we have to think about the family and how we rethink it. And not only rethink it, we’ve got to reshape it. But, broaden it extraordinarily. And also still use it within the structure. Of how we live in society 

[00:14:03] Sue Hyde: and the AIDS crisis raised, they weren’t new questions, but many very pertinent questions about families, family structures, who is included in families, who is not included in families who gets to decide where a person We’ll be buried.

[00:14:23] Or in what way? Gosh, it was really quite a, it was quite a struggle for many people both people who were dying and people who were taking care of people who were dying. As to where did they fit in their family of origin? Where did they fit in their chosen family?

[00:14:42] What’s interesting to 

[00:14:44] Suzanne Pharr: me, Sue, is that gave us more opportunity to examine family than anything else I can think of in that period. And the marriage effort denied us a lot of that opportunity to examine family. In the AIDS crisis, you saw all the configurations of family, people who became family in the most intense ways.

[00:15:07] After that we used the word family within the queer movement over and over. We still do. Our joy for it our wish for it, our hope for it, our protection of it. But once we decided that marriage was the, signature issue for the queer community, it became more talking about what was already there.

[00:15:28] That you marry, that you may have children or not have children, you have divorces like everybody else. It clamped in the idea of family even more so, I think, instead of busting it open. On some level, it opened it up. And that, everyone who sees me with my partner at the doctor’s office asks me, do I want my wife to come in?

[00:15:50] And I say, no. I don’t have a wife. I don’t believe in marriage, but here is my 35 year long partner. It’s shocking to me, but they have made progress that they ask me. So, I’m like, I’m standing on one hand. This is great. They ask me, is this my wife? We’ve gone somewhere. And then I think, Suzanne? Are you sure?

[00:16:15] You don’t think that’s great? But it is that recognition and that effort is there. It’s a little like the effort toward pronouns being there. Is a good thing. Does it get us where we want to go is another question. 

[00:16:29] Scot Nakagawa: It’s quite a pivot, isn’t it? From, you should never get married to, why aren’t you married?

[00:16:35] It really speaks to what you’re talking about, which is that the same gender marriage struggle really didn’t challenge the rigid and authoritarian structure of families, right? And didn’t get to that really, that nut of what I think some people call systemic authoritarianism. So not political authoritarianism, like a takeover, but systemic authoritarianism in the way that authoritarianism.

[00:16:57] organizes our daily lives and the ways in which we normalize that. 

[00:17:02] Suzanne Pharr: It’s a systemic authoritarianism that maintains the other authoritarianism, it’s what makes people ready to accept what they’re hearing that holds the higher authority in it. 

[00:17:21] Scot Nakagawa: It is the original authoritarian arrangement that we all learn of, right?

[00:17:25] One in which the children are incompetent to make decisions and so the adults must decide for us. That makes authoritarianism actually appealing to a lot of people. And, you were in the battered women’s movement. Which, by the way, for our audience, was one of the most underrated mass social movements of our time.

[00:17:43] But the battered women’s movement which started out as a liberation movement, according to the story you’ve told me many times, Suzanne and then evolved, a part of it at least, into a kind of a law and order movement. Largely as a result of succumbing to this sort of authoritarian idea, right, that in a vulnerable situation where people are being harmed, where people feel they are in danger, that they are willing to accept one form of authoritarianism over another in order to be able to be safe.

[00:18:10] And in our very increasingly, toxic and conflict filled time, it seems to be a direction a number of people are going in. So, what lessons can we learn from the Battered Women’s Movement that would be helpful to us now in terms of that pivot and where the movement has gone since its early days as an anti violence movement led by women bent on liberation?

[00:18:32] Suzanne Pharr: I would like to note that some of our most brilliant analysis and writing has come from women who were part of that movement, particularly The writings of black women in the 90s and after in this century has been extraordinary because of one, the organizing from within that movement, which was tough, to have from 1977 or so to gain recognition and then to be able to have any kind of power in the movement.

[00:19:02] It is the leadership of black women that led the movement to know that this turn to the police. Was really wrong and a bad move and that was helpful So I think there’s something to be said about Who leads who’s listened to whose messages are there at the center of what you’re talking about?

[00:19:25] And we always said we listen most of those who experience the violence But we didn’t necessarily listen to the most who had the largest numbers experiencing that violence and support that leadership happening. But when that happened, this is a significant change. The other thing that happened to the the movement, Was we’re going to go back to what you said, you know that it was in the beginning It was a very much based not in money and not in you know Even having a place but figuring out how to make a woman safe how to move her from one safe house to another how to Create a shelter, you know how to create a hotline that they could call very much based from people’s work on the ground and then Finally organized in a coalition and that coalition I think was significantly important because it was representatives of women from every state coming together and work, sharing ideas and conferences, sharing ideas and workshops.

[00:20:25] But then there’s always this issue of money. And I think this is true of organizations now when you’re, when you’re that sort of community based, free organization and then you try, to get your. Get your property, get your pay, salaries, get your whatever. It becomes more conservative because people, one, are seeking ways to get that money.

[00:20:51] Not to be too far out on the line with feminism, not to be too far on the line with this. And I think the same thing is happening in our non profits now, or has happened, that the battle for money has made them more conservative and less, less out on the, they’re out on the, more out on the front lines when it comes to protests.

[00:21:11] But not out on the front lines when it comes to strategy. And I think that’s where we really have a problem that. That we’ve got to find that place where we don’t worry all the time about our funders and we don’t worry all the time about our competition with each other. But instead that we have collective work.

[00:21:33] To take on the right, which we, many of us have been doing for years, but we need a very broad base of people who are linked in some way, connected in some way, have some degree of shared values. Yes. Maybe not all the same strategies, maybe not all the same tactic, tactics, but you know in some sort of real connection with one another that they have a common threatening issue that becomes more and more, I want to say a life and death issue, but.

[00:22:03] It’s a little bit heavy, but it is. That’s why. 

[00:22:07] Scot Nakagawa: A little bit heavy, yes. 

[00:22:09] Suzanne Pharr: Yeah. Ever since I started working on the, watching the rites, studying the rite, writing about the rites. People are like, Suzanne, you are awfully dark. 

[00:22:21] Scot Nakagawa: Oh, they don’t know the half. 

[00:22:25] Suzanne Pharr: I run with Scott Nakagawa.

[00:22:26] What do you expect? 

[00:22:29] Scot Nakagawa: I did not teach you that. You taught me that.

[00:22:39] This podcast is presented by the 22nd Century Initiative, a hub for strategy and action for frontline activists, national leaders, and people like you. 

[00:22:49] Sue Hyde: At 22ci. org, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can learn from our anti authoritarian playbook, which includes resources on how to block rising authoritarianism, bridge across the multiracial majority, and more.

[00:23:04] So,

[00:23:10] Scot Nakagawa: You mentioned money and we talked about Reagan earlier, and I do think it’s important to note for people in the audience who didn’t live through it as Sue and Suzanne and I have, that up until the Reagan administration, the world looked somewhat different. And since the Reagan administration and the introduction of neoliberalism into our politics, a lot of what we used to think of as government services have devolved to nonprofits and now today, many years after the election of Reagan, we have so many nonprofits, too many by my account.

[00:23:36] And they’ve become the primary means through which people try to achieve social justice, at least, The most sustained consistent efforts are housed in non profit organizations. And so the big money question is a big question in all of that, right? Because we are forced to compete with my for money in that sector.

[00:23:53] And then we call ourselves democratic organizations, but let’s be real, it’s not like a neighborhood election is held to decide who runs. The community food bank in your neighborhood. And so we find ourselves having to use very imperfect tools in order to achieve the ends that we’re trying to achieve and in the middle of a kind of an emergency.

[00:24:11] So, it’s just really helpful to hear your reflections. 

[00:24:15] Sue Hyde: I wanna take us back to work that the two of you did together in Oregon on the No nine campaign. Voters were presented with a state constitutional amendment that would have described LGBTQ people as abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse.

[00:24:35] It would have made LGBTQ people the social equivalent of pedophiles, and it would forever ban civil rights protections for people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. And yet, You won. Can the two of you reflect a bit on the positive outcomes of that very important and historic campaign?

[00:25:01] Suzanne Pharr: Yeah, I think we could probably go on an hour or two. I just want to say when I was in the campaign and when I think back on the campaign, I have never had such joy politically as that. And then that is, I think that’s an extraordinary thing to hear someone say that about something that, that was long and hard work and had conflict and violence, had so many aspects to it.

[00:25:33] I think it had so many things that it gave us, that we were able, and I give a lot of credit to Scott and I worked hand in hand through much of that campaign. It was Scott who asked me to come to Oregon and spend time there because I had met him at a conference at Center for Democratic Renewal where we were talking about issues such as this.

[00:25:56] And then we met up at a Creating Change conference. So I think one of the things that, that we did together, and I may, other people may say they did these together too was to move the link of racism and homophobia together. To actually see this campaign as an attack on something larger than the queer community.

[00:26:22] To move it to where it had, was basically being able at that time to talk about it. An answer to the question you had earlier about how did people learn about things. This was one of the things that the campaign did was offer that opportunity for people to learn about what we are facing and where it’s going.

[00:26:41] And we spent a lot of time, which I think is the great success of the campaign, on the ground constantly talking with people, talking with church people, getting them involved, talking with labor, getting them involved, and then just doing constant living room. Our kitchen table conversations. With people, which was mainly about political education.

[00:27:05] There was a lot of strategy in the campaign, but it was a tremendous amount of political education. And I think that the fact that we were insistent From day one and there’s a little bit of other history that could come in another time of there’s two campaigns basically a official campaign and then another one that ran within that but that we took on the and went Deliberately into rural areas to do organizing to engage not just people who live in rural areas along the interstate, but to engage people on the ground throughout the state.

[00:27:45] So, the result of that, I think, was the expanded progressive base, that we brought in, that then knew what, what was being talked about, knew the threat, and was able to, and then we as a campaign were able to move this, our understanding from the state to nationally, to internationally. We got press that moved through all of those so that we were able to talk on a larger platform that you would have expected.

[00:28:18] So I think it in some ways this campaign prepared the country for this right-wing strategy because it was a hotspot of attention. And part of that was our doing is, was that our, deliberate using the press, using workshops across the country u work, making speeches everywhere we could with outside of the state of Oregon to constantly move this mess message.

[00:28:48] It was I think one of the, one of the. Significant moments in movement history. The way in which people came together at that time in such a large way, and such a diverse way of, some people were workers, some people were people who had lots of money, some people, it was like getting everybody to understand this is about you, and this in particular is about people of color, and it has a larger strategy.

[00:29:18] Okay. and the larger strategy is about dismantling things that are already in place for protections, taking them away, which is exactly where we are now, looking at the protections and organizing, organizing to take those protections away. And so, we need that kind of collectivity and that arm to arm working together.

[00:29:39] Scot Nakagawa: Well, for context, because this was 32 years ago, it was a long time ago, not in the lived experience of many people who may be listening to this podcast. Oregon faced a similar ballot measure in 1988, similar in that it attacked queers. In 1988 Governor Neil Goldschmidt of Oregon signed an executive order into being that banned discrimination against public employees on the basis of sexual orientation and identity.

[00:30:06] That particular executive order was rolled back by ballot measure. by a group called the Oregon Citizens Alliance, what we would nowadays call a Christian Nationalist group, but we then thought of as an Evangelical Conservative group. The Oregon Citizens Alliance basically placed this question on the ballot about whether or not public employees should enjoy this protection, and used ads that characterized gay men as sexual predators of young boys in order to make their case, and then they won.

[00:30:35] Right, they lost in court subsequently around First Amendment issues, but they did in fact win at the ballot box. And so four years later, they came back, having learned that attacking queers by ballot could earn you a lot of money for your political action committee, and also help you to build bridges to power throughout Oregon 1992, they came back with the abnormal behavior’s initiative.

[00:30:59] The early polling showed that we were in a pretty tight situation in spite of how extreme the question was. And that really put the fear of God into us. We brought Suzanne because we knew that Suzanne would be able to help us and bring perspectives that we didn’t have in Oregon and help to expand our understanding.

[00:31:14] sense of what the options were for what we could do. But one of the key things, as Suzanne mentioned, was to make this a bigger issue than queer, right? In 1988, when the Oregon Citizens Alliance attacked Oregon the campaign opposing their ballot measure basically suggested that the queer community quiet down until election day.

[00:31:33] A national coming out day event actually got canceled or was attempted to be canceled in order to be able to avoid polarizing things before election day in a way that would be unfavorable to queer people. the queer community. By 1992, we learned that was wrong, that we would never debate at any point whether or not queer people should be visible, loud, proud.

[00:31:54] We just began in every conversation with the assumption that queer is good and that we weren’t going to debate it. But We did make the argument that whether you like queer people or didn’t, whether you held prejudicial views or your religious affiliation caused you to think of queer people as beyond the pale, you still needed to ask yourself a question.

[00:32:14] Do you want that attitude? To become the law, and in fact to become a constitutional matter in the state that would change the way that civil rights were understood and protected for everyone. And that seemed to have a big impact. And it opened the door to so many things happening. African Americans voting no on nine, people of faith voting no on nine, people of color voting no on nine, the emergence of network of rural organizations now under the leadership of the Rural Organizing Project and the eventual emergence of Oregon’s first statewide political organization Basic Rights Oregon, which now is one of the most effective LGBTQ organizations in the country.

[00:32:58] It took the place of something, just to give you some sense of this historical trajectory, of something called the Right to Privacy PAC, which chose that name specifically in order to avoid putting the words lesbian, gay, bisexual, etc. on envelopes, on mailers. And so that was a big shift that happened.

[00:33:17] A lot of different things changed. And I think you will agree with me, Suzanne, it was as if the religious right in Oregon, had awakened a sleeping giant. They had no idea that the queer movement was cross class, cross race, from every walk of life, and that we were connected to so many different kinds of people, including our families, but also the people we worked with, the people we played with, that we were not the isolated beleaguered, marginalized community that they imagined us to be, that we were, in fact, everywhere.

[00:33:50] And I think that they may find that now, as they are attacking queers all over the country. I don’t know what you think about that, but, it is one of the things that I take away from this moment, or from that moment, in 1992, that gives me hope now. 

[00:34:03] Suzanne Pharr: I agree with you that, on that, I think we might need a little more push for people to understand that we’re the sleeping lion, that people in our movement are very well aware that there are queers everywhere, but understand, if we get to the point where people don’t know People understand not only are there queers everywhere in great numbers.

[00:34:24] They’re all standing up. It’s the standing up part. I think we’re at the edge of now that we need to make happen 

[00:34:32] Sue Hyde: And we did we did learn to do that Via both the aids crisis and I think in some ways the marriage equality movement. Yes, there were There was immense solidarity across all kinds of lines in both of those movements.

[00:34:49] So, yeah, I think it’s time for some more of that, eh? 

[00:34:54] Suzanne Pharr: Yeah, and I think it can’t be, I there was a time when it was, there was like a queer movement, a thing of itself. Right now we need to be in full alignment around the body, I think. About our own bodily autonomy, the idea that we own our bodies.

[00:35:12] And because there’s a large coalition waiting to be made there with tremendous power, I think. Because it’s one of the, the key elements of authoritarianism is to manage and control that body. And Lord knows we, we see it around the world right now, as well as here. So I think there’s tremendous power in that.

[00:35:33] I don’t think we have great power if we don’t connect. Then we’re just, we’re singers and intellectuals and whatever. But this, to say, we have one thing that we know is at the center. It’s more than one thing at the center, but we know this one thing is at the center as well, which is that bodily autonomy and who owns one body, one’s body, who controls that body.

[00:36:00] Sue Hyde: And they want to control a majority of people in this country. That’s right. 

[00:36:07] Suzanne Pharr: So it’s a great, it’s a great place for alignment. And the question is, how would we move to that alignment? And I urge it on the local level, in the smaller, in a smaller city or a smaller town. You don’t have many, many people to stand up for your singular cause.

[00:36:25] So it becomes a little clearer that if you don’t get with the others, you’re going to get kicked in the butt. Yeah, and I also think that we can align around the family, because there, there are plenty of people looking for not just a redefinition of family, but an affirmation of those shifts in definition and having the same rights.

[00:36:49] Scot Nakagawa: Yeah, that family question’s a big one, isn’t it, especially now because of the changing economy that we’re in. So many of us have to migrate for work and fewer of us all the time now who have families live in situations where we can expect our children to live in the same community and work in that community that we have always lived in.

[00:37:07] And so, so many things threaten the family and as a source of comfort, it makes it more and more appealing. 

[00:37:14] Suzanne Pharr: I think we, we are working hard to replace it with a sense of community, because we don’t have our blood kin or the people we were raised with near us. I would love to see the stats on that.

[00:37:27] I’m sure it’s enormous separation. But always within the queer community there’s been that desire for community. We use the language of family among us. And 

[00:37:37] Scot Nakagawa: there’s enough, right? That in these contexts where we redefine family in the context of community what is the role of the patriarch?

[00:37:47] Suzanne Pharr: Patriarch’s in trouble. 

[00:37:49] Scot Nakagawa: Yeah, patriarchs are in big trouble, right? Too many I’s. We forget that, for instance, that whole idea of domestic violence as a horrible crime and one that needed to be subject to public action came about partly as a result of urbanization. That suddenly people were forced to live closer together.

[00:38:10] And so the sounds that came from homes in which people were violently being assaulted were heard by everyone. And raise the moral question for the community, right? That was a direct challenge to the authority of the patriarch. And similarly, I think we face some of those kinds of things now as arrangements shift the way that we relate to each other, how we are arranged in families, how we are arranged in communities shift.

[00:38:31] That status threats are ignited for those who have always been the qualified one, right? The ones who’s naturally in charge. And may ignite their desire to characterize the rest of us as far less qualified, in fact, maybe incompetent to run things, as women have been characterized for so long, and as children always are characterized.

[00:38:53] All of these things seem to just keep going back to the family. 

[00:38:56] Suzanne Pharr: I think so as well. 

[00:38:58] Scot Nakagawa: So, Suzanne, over we’ve known each other since 1990 because I remember longer than you do. I actually met you because my organization of the time, the Coalition for Human Dignity, brought you to Portland State University to speak at a very seminal international women’s day event.

[00:39:14] You came in and you kicked ass. Many things got catalyzed by that speech. But that’s a long time to be rolling together. And over that time, I’ve always seen you as a person who plays social change as a game of chess, not checkers, right? And especially when countering the authoritarian movement.

[00:39:35] So, one of the ways that I have seen you evolve and where I’ve seen you do some really good work is with the Southern Movement Assembly. You are in touch with people who are doing work all over the place, and having spoken with somebody from the Southern Movement Assembly this morning, I can tell you, the Southern Movement Assembly in May will be in Nairobi, meeting with people there, bringing people from the African diaspora to Nairobi to develop strategies.

[00:39:59] So it’s really come to scale in a really remarkable way. So, Tell us some about that. Like, what are what are you winning? And what’s giving you hope in the context of all of this remarkable work you’re involved in? 

[00:40:12] Suzanne Pharr: I would say the winning part is gathering in people who are disconnected from one another in terms of movement work.

[00:40:22] So when I talk about the competition among organizations, the Southern Movement Assembly brings those groups in. We call it organizations and formations that, are not nonprofits. And place them in the same room with one another or the same gathering, gathering place with one another.

[00:40:40] And it’s not our job to be in the kind of win and lose category of, taking on an issue and fighting together to win it. That it’s more about figuring out governance is one thing. And that it started with Katrina, after Katrina, when we realized government and governance as we know it was nonexistent.

[00:41:05] And that was a shocking, shocking wake up for all of us. The recognition from that was that Wal Mart and churches were doing more for New Orleans than our movement people were across the South, because we were not in place. We were not geared up to do that. So this is more approaching. How do you gear up?

[00:41:33] How do give people access to training and political education and connection so that they are ready? And, when things do occur, we can move together, but we’re not always looking. Let’s just figure out, a goal to take down this. Like, like we’re not all focused on Cop City, but many of our folks are focused on Cop City, but the SMA itself is not focused on that.

[00:42:05] So, so we get news from the front lines across the South. We’re, so we, we share work, we share intel, we share skills, and then this whole notion of practicing how you do governance outside of the systems. That we have set up. And we, so we hold. Every Monday we meet. This is for 11 years now.

[00:42:30] Except for holidays, we meet and we’re in discussion of what’s happening in the South and in, in the governance of that. And we’re held together by principles of unity. So together we created those, and that’s how you come in, is under an agreement and an acknowledgement of the principles of unity, which leads to a shared politic, not a single politic, but a shared, and it’s not a nonprofit.

[00:42:59] And the tools that we’re working on now are, is the, what you mentioned people’s movement assemblies. So an example of that is we’re having a organizing school. We’ll be at a place that has this historic meaning. And we’ll take about 50 people. It’s the first time for us, but it speaks to our goals very well.

[00:43:22] And we’re going to, we’re going to spend a day when talking about the history of the, part of the history of what we’re doing. The place we’re in, and a lot of that will be about citizenship schools, which are almost, to me, almost a perfect model of how you do organizing, that you do it, you meet people where they are, you meet their needs that they have, all of that it’s like a step by step thing and some conversation about how the, how those came out of a workshop, that idea, workshop at Highlander, and then How they were able to develop from that, which is remarkable.

[00:43:57] At the end they had, toward the last days, they had 20, 000 teachers trained who were just ordinary people, not school teachers, to do these. And a bazillion people were ready in 1969 to vote. So we’ll do that, we’ll have, we’ll have scenarios. Which are dark, because I was in charge of writing the scenarios, you can imagine, and so forth.

[00:44:22] Then we’ll focus on the use of the People’s Movement Assembly as a tool. How you use that as a way to gather people that’s, that’s outside of the non profit system, even though non profit organizations would be involved in. It will be, it’s a tool for gathering and making decisions, and then the next day of organizing will be a lot about how you get yourself in a place to be able to act on those decisions.

[00:44:48] So, and then the summer, we’ll have a summer of PMAs, that there will be groups around the South. That will hold them in their communities and then in late September, we’ll have our big assembly, which will be a couple of hundred people coming for three days to both talk about share what they have done and build on that, but also to lay out what they would like for us to be focusing on in the next year.

[00:45:19] And so, so it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s it’s been a, it’s been a slow bill. We learned it as we went and but it has, I think, lifted the political skills and political awareness and political connected movement awareness skills and connectedness in the South. 

[00:45:41] Scot Nakagawa: Suzanne, you and I have learned together over many years now that authoritarians have basically drawn it.

[00:45:48] A gender and race line between liberty and justice for all, to use a phrase too often used perhaps given our situation in the United States about ourselves. But, um, it’s just really impressive to me how early on you recognized that and set your eyes on liberation and didn’t give it up.

[00:46:11] Nowadays, the polling shows that we should be talking about freedom, and not just rights. But you have always been that person to me, so thanks for that. 

[00:46:20] Sue Hyde: You bet. Suzanne, you are one of the sages of the South. You live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Can you talk a little bit about the ways you see the authoritarian strong man, strong woman practices and philosophy on the ground?

[00:46:41] In Arkansas and what the ERs. I just learned that word, Arkansas, you’re all right, I won’t ever use it again, but can talk a little bit about what’s happening there on the ground and. What’s the resistance? 

[00:47:05] Suzanne Pharr: I wouldn’t just give a little list of, before I start to, so that people don’t think, ah, Arkansas is a hell hole.

[00:47:13] Arkansas actually is a grand place. It’s a beautiful scenery and the outdoor life is awfully good and people work really hard here. So I was going to start. I had some, my little notes for this, that it’s the land of Daisy Bates, Johnny Cash. Bill Clinton and Maya Angelou.

[00:47:33] That ain’t bad. One might be more questionable than others. And it’s also the land of the heroic, and I think it is heroic integration of Central High School. And it is the land of the Elaine Massacre, which was an attack against a black forming labor union. And it killed the most black people in one location in the U S so it is that land, that combination of extraordinary people and our current governor.

[00:48:09] So, and I’d also say that the integration of central Heine in 1957 was, it helped off. It was helped and created. by the work of in the NAACP and a Black owned newspaper. And Daisy Bates and her husband owned that newspaper. So, I think in terms of lessons to be learned about organizing, that’s very well positioned to have a local, a national organization that has strong local roots.

[00:48:49] And a newspaper that is for the people and represents the people who are fighting. So, and I don’t know if that’s ever emphasized enough, but I think that’s really important. So it was not one woman. There’s always a lot of conflict here about, what her role was and everybody else’s role. Lots and lots of people had roles in that.

[00:49:11] But Daisy herself, Ms. Bates, was an extraordinary woman. extraordinary woman. So we are, just a good state to study, I think, in seeing how authoritarianism spreads, and spread. It already had roots here, but it spread to the state through a president and the selection of governors to carry out specific goals, which is around the country now in large number of places.

[00:49:46] So we got the press secretary, we got Sarah Huckabee Sanders. whose father had been a moderate, mostly moderate, I think, Republican here as governor. And she came in like a firestorm, with plans already in place that would decimate public schools and promote private schools, that they would take down any of the gender discussions or liberties.

[00:50:18] So they would attack both, libraries and schools and trans kids and the Freedom of Information Act to take away a big chunk of that, particularly a chunk that relates to her, to have an act to criminalize librarians, the immediate signing of a all abortion, all the time bill. So able to do that with a significant vote in her favor that.

[00:50:52] Hardly had to do, and just piles of money, hardly had to do any, election work to make it happen. And I’m happy to say the state, people in the state are standing up. I went to a rally this Sunday about abortion, and it’s because a group of people have, are putting it on the ballot. And to do that is a huge amount of work, because in this state you have to get signatures from all 90 something counties.

[00:51:24] And That’s hard to do to have a certain number of signatures by that. But the rally is organizing, that alley was part of the organizers who have been working for some time now, but this is true for every one of these bills. You have to go to every county. And so, there’s big stop gaps.

[00:51:41] Then there’s another group that’s working on to save the Freedom of Information Act. And there’s another one that’s fighting. There’s a criminalization of librarians. There’s a group that and then there’s people doing stuff like trying to maybe stop her order that And God we trust has to be up in every classroom in the state.

[00:52:07] In her order that public funding from our taxes will go to private schools. So, there’s a fight back. More than there was last year and the year before. So, I think it’s significant that’s happening and it’s why. I think never give up on a place like Arkansas and never give up on the South.

[00:52:30] I think that we have made really critical mistakes in our organizing. That we lost, before COVID, well before COVID, we lost the conviction and belief that you have to work with people on the ground and you have to talk to them about things that are essential to them and essential to there. Their beliefs, their values, their needs, particularly their needs, you can’t ignore them.

[00:53:02] You can’t either just keep yourself in offices or just do protests. And that, that, that is how the right was able to rise. We were not having the counter conversations. We did not develop a counter strategy. For me, it’s important to acknowledge that. That when I tell the story of working against the right and my involvement coming gradually out of the women’s project, as we, we faced the good news Methodists who were, that’s the church that was, they were our 501c3, they managed our money for the first five years.

[00:53:39] And the good news Methodists were trying to take us out of that and take us apart. And then facing the Klan and, watching all of that develop over the 80s. And so coming into my work. And understanding of the rights slowly, writing about it from the late 70s, just chucks, it took time to get the chunks of it put together in my mind.

[00:54:00] So by the time Scott and I met, I, he showed me the video, Gay Rights, Special Rights, and I was like, ah, this is not about queers, this is about civil rights. And now I understand it’s more than that. So I think that we have missed a lot. So I think we had to pivot. And figure out how we work on the ground and how we work in the respect and development of community.

[00:54:24] I think we can do that, but I think that we can’t depend entirely on tech, because we’re not working with people who have a lot of tech, have to find ways. And I think these PMAs are an example of that. I think there are many other examples. Part of it is just participating in other people’s issues.

[00:54:45] But I’ve been a little distressed to see such an attack against libraries and not see a queer strategy on that nationwide. I that, that’s astounding to me that nationally we’re not talking about that, I don’t have an intersectional strategy where we take that on. We would say, like, how are you going to take our students in schools?

[00:55:12] And limit them from the kind of education that they deserve in these particular ways that you’re, attacking. I think there’s just a lot of work, a lot of work for us right now. And we got enough people to take it on. We need to round them up. 

[00:55:32] Scot Nakagawa: You reference the struggle at Little Rock Central High School, which was in 1957.

[00:55:37] A long time ago now, right? The year I graduated from high school. Well, I remember it. Okay. Well, when Little Rock Central High School was integrated and the Little Rock Nine was sent to be the front line the governor of the time, Orval Faubus opposed it, right? And it took Dwight D.

[00:55:58] Eisenhower to force Faubus. the school district to allow those students to attend school, right? Yes, we had at the time leverage at the federal level. We may not have that kind of leverage nowadays, and there is a danger of preemption, right, at the local level, so that all the things that we’re doing locally could be threatened under the wrong kind of federal administration.

[00:56:24] So what’s your advice to people organizing in this time about the what’s durable, what can last, what will serve us going forward into what could be a much more repressive future?

[00:56:38] Suzanne Pharr: Well, you mean, what’s durable given the potential of destruction all the time? I think the one thing that has been durable for me all my life is collective deep relationships with individuals, but also with organizations that have depth, so it’s basically, I think it’s basically having a sense of That what that your relationships have such depth that they were going to be able to sustain themselves, like given a terrible scenario where we will not maybe be able to communicate each other with one another, not that if the grid goes down to be.

[00:57:30] And the deep kind of relationships with those you live around and among, whether it’s city or small town, that there’s someone to turn to, I think that’s where the durability comes from. And I think that takes work. I think that, that takes, talking about real issues, real things, and being willing to, come to some sort of agreement.

[00:57:52] But also think, that’s the way. You brought up the battered women’s movement. That’s the way it started. A few women saying, Oh my goodness. And the way many of us learned about it was because of consciousness raising groups. Those were phenomenal and have sustained, those relationships, some of them now for 40 or 50 years.

[00:58:21] That’s the first time many of us ever heard people say out loud, I’ve been raped. Very, first time we heard people say, he beats me, beats the Children. I had to go to the, I go with broken bones to the hospital. But out of that, we built something that we could have kept out of the, I think, out of the hands of the government.

[00:58:45] But I don’t know any of this, whether we can have any success if we’re not finding Some extraordinary ways to replace capitalism in our daily lives. There’s the big picture capitalism, but there’s the way capitalism has us in its grasp. How can we force that loose and free ourselves?

[00:59:06] So that common combination of things, that, and the change of culture when you’re under that grasp so terribly as we are in this country, it’s hard to think that you can do things. Without a sum of money. Yeah You get you know stopped all the time by thinking But we would have to have this and this and this and we’d never be able to do it Whereas I think with the starting of the women’s anti violence movement was you come to my home It wasn’t can I get a grant to keep you?

[00:59:41] You come to my home and i’ll see what I can do for you and then realizing, you know We’re all putting ourselves in danger, too How can we create something? That won’t put everyone in danger, but we can still participate in it.

[00:59:59] So I think, for me that’s not on a, that’s not on a huge level. That’s on a, that’s on a small level. But I’m pretty convinced that’s how we have to move now. Link the best we can in large ways, but if we’re not moving in those small ways, it’s, it doesn’t matter too much. Well, that’s a pretty negative way to end, isn’t it?

[01:00:22] Scot Nakagawa: I love that you referenced the Battered Women’s Movement because, it was a movement that started off trying to restore the victim and not to, and not primarily to punish the victimizer, right? That’s right. To figure out how to come up with solutions in the context of community. And all of that begins with trusting people and being able to form deep, lasting relationships And as a final word, that’s a great one because it’s something everyone can do.

[01:00:48] Suzanne Pharr: Right. So thank you for making me a part of your first podcast. 

[01:00:53] Sue Hyde: Thank you. Thank you for being our first guest. 

[01:00:57] Scot Nakagawa: Yeah, we put you first because we were not scared of you. 

[01:01:00] Sue Hyde: Hey, thanks again for listening Find more episodes of the anti authoritarian podcast on all of your favorite platforms and also at 22ci.

[01:01:24] org and convergencemag. org. Direct links to these and other resources referenced in this episode are in the show notes.

[01:01:40] SOT: The Antiauthoritarian Podcast is created by the 22nd Century Initiative and published by Conversions Magazine. Our theme music is After the Revolution by Carsey Blanton and is licensed under Creative Commons. The show is hosted by Scott Nawa and Sue Hyde. Executive producers are James, mom and Tony Esberg.

[01:01:58] Our producer is Josh Elstro and Yong Chan Miller is our production assistant.