Occupy Empire
Kimberly and I made the trek out to Harrisonburg for the Occupy Empire conference at EMU this weekend. I heard about the conference from the Young Anabaptist Radicals blog and thought the intersection between occupy and anabaptism would make for some really interesting discussion and practices.
The organizers worked very hard to put together a great lineup of speakers and make the conference happen, but I still came away feeling like this was a missed opportunity. I did not take into account that the conference was coming out of the seminary and was not prepared for it to be entirely knowledge focused. Speakers presented papers and had rebuttals. I’ve never really been in academia, so this seemed foreign to me.
There really were a number of things stacked against me with this conference. First, it was very culturally Mennonite. The worship was inaccessible if you didn’t know the songs or read music/know how to sing in parts. Plus there was quite a bit of insider talk about culture and history that was mostly noise if you weren’t Mennonite. Also, we didn’t know anyone there, and while everyone was very nice and sweet when we talked to them, no one went out of their way to talk to us. That combined with the academic focus made it just not be the conference I was hoping for.
I found myself wishing the conference was held over at Our Community Place, and included local practitioners like Ron Copeland, and involved group discussions instead of academic presentations. I find myself wishing it focused on the practice and experience of activism and Occupy from an Anabaptist perspective. Having a GA meeting, for example, would have been really interesting. Sadly, the only part that had any of an occupy feel was the 20 minute presentation from Occupy Harrisonburg.
One moment is sticking with me. It was during a Q&A time with one of the speakers and an attendee asked about the theological framework involved with opposing corporate personhood. Another attendee or two chimed in about the importance of theological frameworks. Unfortunately, this is how the church normally works. They will start working on a theological framework for something 6 months after it becomes a public issue, and come to some agreements about it a year or two from now. And then they will go look to be a part of it, and it will be gone already. We need to move faster. When we seem something that is causing harm, we need to be willing to jump in and help stop the harm. That is all the framework you need.
So, the conference wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the conference I was hoping for. I find myself longing for something that is a mix between occupy and anabaptism, but unfortunately this wasn’t it.
