"The movement has had dramatic effect in Black America. By virtue of its whiteness, the OWS has been allowed to exercise citizenship rights that have been effectively denied to African Americans in their militarized communities. A Black-occupied Zuccotti Park, or Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, or any of the other occupation sites, is unthinkable under the New Jim Crow. It would invite massacre, as virtually every African American knows. White privilege – in this case, the privilege not to be summarily shot or beaten to a pulp en masse when confronting authority – has been on televised display for the past six weeks. Black perceptions of the spectacle were mixed. There was, of course, deep resentment of the ease with which young white kids from “wherever” could flaunt petty public assembly laws and, for the most part, get away with it, while Black youth are routinely accosted, humiliated and falsely imprisoned by police while simply walking or standing in their own neighborhoods. Black activists who have labored for decades in the urban trenches recoiled at the media exposure garnered by even relatively small groups of white OWSers at their downtown encampments.
But, there is another side of the racist coin. The mostly white OWS movement had, in a sense, legitimized civil disobedience and confrontation with the cops in the current era – an opening that could be exploited. And, if the cameras followed the white people like drones on the kill, then Black outfits should take advantage of the new publicity. After all, African American audiences get most of their information from the same corporate media as whites. If white people could take over a city site and proclaim themselves the Occupation, why not “occupy” Black neighborhoods? In a matter of weeks, Occupy the Hoods proliferated, quite often generating more neighborhood organizing activity than had previously existed, and this time with the cameras rolling."
