Within the formation called Occupy Oakland, cracks have appeared because of political immaturity, fear of failure, “experience greed,” and Marxian mistaken-analysis. All of these and other challenges to the unity, expansion, and progress of The Movement are predictable and result from social-psychological thought and discernment handicaps that result from White, Western, European cultural history. These handicaps afflict most residents of the US regardless of skin color or national origin.

We all “swim” in the linguistic and cultural values and belief paradigms that channel our perceptions, emotions, and ways of relating to one another and our ways of relating to institutions. This is much like fish that swim in water but do not hold conscious its ubiquity and profound entanglement in the nature of their lives. Not experiencing nor knowing of other’s experiences of sustaining mental environments free of Western imperialist foundational concepts, we subconsciously recoil and fear other paradigms and ways of relating to each other and to institutions. We, too quickly, fall victim to the cultural-centric conceptualizations and assumptions about who we are and what we can do. We are too comfortable with the underlying worldview of imperialism.

My latest encountering with this phenomenon was when the indigenous residents, White allies, members of the Ohlone First People of Oakland, and the People-of-color/Queer-People-of-Color Caucus brought a proposal to the Occupy Oakland General Assembly to change the formal name to “Decolonialize Oakland.” The debate took place – online – over many weeks and was emotional in the moment. The proposal failed, receiving only a 68% vote when 70% was needed for reconsideration with friendly amendments and 90% was needed for acceptance. [Despite the description of this voting system as a modified consensus, it is not. It does not start with the underlying values and approaches of consensus; it starts with the competitive, combative, dis-unifying system of individualized representation and twists it into a super-super majority system that empowers a disciplined minority rather than facilitating community consensus decision making. This voting system itself is another example of an inability to change the imperial paradigm.]

For Indigenous Peoples in the US and all over the world, “occupy” is what the imperialist do to us. We joined with the challengers to Wall Street and the 1% NOT to adopt their tactics, strategy, and belief systems but to clearly reject them. The DEEDS of the Occupy Movement are important – that is what brings us into “the room” – but the name is also important as prior revolutionaries from Malcolm X to Mohamed Ali found when they insisted on dropping their “slave names.” Let there not be any confusion; the names of individuals and the self-chosen title for movements is important, also.

Some speakers pointed to the Occupy Alcatraz indigenous peoples’ land take-over. Others defined The Movement’s goal as the occupation of the “seats of power.” These speakers (hopefully unconsciously) express their foundational alignment with imperialism’s ideology. Michael Horse and others are clear that the indigenous action at Alcatraz was intended to be a land take-over to demonstrate the injustice of land take-overs; NOT to justify it as a strategy or tactic. To do so would be to buy-in to and to mentally acquiesce to the Western concept of permanent, private, heritable land ownership. Conscious indigenous people and their allies have not done that, yet. And the Occupy Movement itself has moved beyond the simplistic power conflict of land control; so The Movement’s deeds have moved beyond imperialist land occupation. This ideological shift in The Movement should include moving beyond the concept of occupying the “seats of power.”

The revolutionaries of Oakland, the Black Panthers, “killed” this foundational imperialist ideological strategy when they called for “Power to the People!” It is not about occupying the “seats of power;” it is about empowering the people. That is why – I thought – the Occupy Movement has eschewed traditional leadership structures. Given the existing colonial, racist, gender-biased, homophobic foundational thinking in the minds of US residents and the minds of activists in the Occupy Movement, it is extremely problematic to choose conscious representatives to sit in the “seats of power” who are going to do justly for all of us. It is only in the people’s power that justice is found.

The politically ignorant and immature have no idea what people’s power looks like. They are desperate and greedy for revolutionary experience. This is an individualistic greed not a community hunger. It is the imperialist that believes that associations with the forces of today are more important than associations with ancestors and justice fighters of the past. Some Occupy activist feared that Oakland’s name change from Occupy to Decolonialize would lose Oakland's connection to a national movement. These activists failed to recognize that “decolonialize” would connect this movement to 500 years of struggle in the US and current struggles around the world. Wall Street is named for a wall intended to keep indigenous people out of the occupied area of New York. Wall Street is named for a system that was first used to sell debt instruments used to finance slave ships. And what conscious activist would not want to stand against Wall Street propagated US neo-colonial occupations around the world.

Other Occupy activists have been intellectually blinded by the Marxian dismissal and placement of race and gender in to secondary status for justice to class considerations. These misguided leftist think that unity can only be forged through a Western either-or paradigm that only sees power through individual material means and discounts community power as integral to all of our success. The indigenous people of Oakland are asking us to decolonize our minds as well as the occupied spaces of this movement and this country.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Wilson Riles, is a former Oakland, CA City Council Member. Click here to contact Mr. Riles.