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A New York subway ad campaign tells women “Abortion changes you.” Lori’s take says it all — forced pregnancy changes you, too.
Elsewhere in New York, one of our many worst New York nightmares came true – a woman was out at a bar, turned down a man who wanted to dance with her, and then he followed her into the bathroom and beat the shit out of her. According to the New York Times, “The attack was so vicious, according to the police, that the woman sustained a broken eye socket and a broken nose, and possibly a fractured skull.” And the guy who did it still hasn’t been found.
Is banning abortion about “morals,” or is it about theocratic intrusions into our personal lives? Amanda says it’s theocracy, in a very compelling piece.
Nickels for Change: College students Cassie and Rebekah are adding nickels to their jars every time they hear bigoted language around their school. At the end of the year, they’ll be donating all the money to a social justice organization. Head over and see how you can help.
Missionary Position: Yup, Christian evangelists actually call their strategy for converting Muslims “the camel method.” Not to mention the offensiveness of this kind of missionary work in the first place.
O Canada! You won both Olympic hockey events and walked away with the most gold medals, all amidst a sea of misbelievers. The time for moving forward is now, you say? With a triumphant spotlight on our wintry homeland, our nation has once more been inspired to step up to the plate and lead, rather [...]
The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women, after the measure stirred two days of political chaos that could whittle the governing coalition’s majority to a dangerously thin margin.
[...]
Tuesday’s vote was the first of four hurdles the measure must clear. The lower house of Parliament, the Lok Sabha, must pass the bill, then the proposed amendment will need to win approval from at least half of India’s state legislatures. Then India’s president, a largely ceremonial post, must sign off.
Click through for some context and criticisms of the bill, for instance there’s concern ‘that it will favor wealthy upper-caste women at the expense of the lower castes and Muslims’.
Thursday, March 4, a group of UC Davis students marching through campus began to approach a freeway on-ramp for the purposes of occupation, and Yolo County Sheriff's Department officers blocked the route. They shot pepper balls at students' feet as the marchers continued to approach the on-ramp. Abruptly, the police pulled Laura Mitchell, a student and queer leader at UC Davis, from the front of the crowd, dragging her along the ground, ripping her shirt off, and holding her hostage until protesters agreed to dissipate. Police alleged no injuries were sustained by any in the crowd. The video clearly demonstrates otherwise.
Below is a video account of the afternoon ordeal. **Trigger Warning: Police violence at 6:43**
Additionally, more than 100 Bay Area protesters shut down the 880 and 980 freeways for hours on Thursday afternoon, creating gridlock. All were eventually arrested, including the student journalists among them. Many were beaten (video).
Mainstream portrayals of student activism tend toward stereotyping
movements based on their place of origin. Berkeley, still widely known
as "Berserkeley," or "The People's Republic Of Berkeley," lacks some
agency on the national stage because of assumptions that all students
are politically active. Along with Berkeley's legacy of activism around
the Free Speech Movement is the legacy of administrative overreactions
to protests. In fact, the administrative building on campus which hosts
the offices of Vice Chancellors, California Hall, has "protest-proof"
doors with two essential anti-protest features: first, they lack door
handles so as to prevent any protester from chaining anything to the
doors. Second, a backup pair of doors automatically swing shut and lock
in case of protest or political activity outside.
The harder a campus works to shed its stereotype of activism, by
repressing protest movements and student voices, the more radically
students push back to gain press and attention from an administration.
This builds a longer legacy of activism. The campus of UC Davis lacks
that legacy of activism-- their mascot is the Aggies, short for the
"Agriculturalists." But just as a generation of UC Berkeley students
first witnessed police brutality on November 20, 2009, a generation of
UC Davis students witnessed police brutality Thursday.
Hate Update:
UC San Diego Student Satire Publication goes too far
The Koala, which will receive more press for this hate than it
deserves, published a joke issue entirely themed around mocking the
Black Student Union and opponents of the Compton Cookout.
The Koala's newest issue satirizes the demands issued
by the BSU in the recent weeks, by introducing a mock program-the
Coalition of Outreach and Opportunity for Negro Students, or C.O.O.N.S
for short. The "program" proposes such things as "Special All Black
Housing" and "Special Classes Just 4 U!" including "SOC20N: Blame it on
Whitey" and "Swimming 101: It's not actually that deep!"
UC Berkeley logs its own anti-Black hate crime Monday
Monday morning, a 31-year-old Black woman said "Good morning" to a man
exiting the Recreational Sports Facility. He spat on her and called her
"n****r." She reported it to the UC Police Department, and it has been
classified as a hate crime.
--
Between the hateful incidents of February and March, the racial
tensions on campuses across the United States, and the exhausting March
4 Day of Action for Public Education, students, faculty, and workers
are now experiencing a high level of burnout. How can we possibly
tackle hate crimes, budget cuts, admissions policies, and midterm
season at the same time?
Some students have spoken up
in opposition to linking the hate crimes with the college affordability
struggle. What implication could isolated incidents and copycat racism
really have on the climates of the ten unique University of California
campuses? But Laura Mitchell, dragged along the ground nearly shirtless
and held hostage, is an intern at the same UC Davis LGBT Resource
Center that was vandalized
in February. And the black student leaders mocked by the Koala are the
same ones who demand that public education should be not only
affordable, but safe. And the many LGBTQIA and Black organizers who are
facilitating townhalls across the University of California system to
respond to hateful acts represent two of the many communities who,
under the new fee increases and admissions policies, will continue to
be denied access to higher education.
In a recent Berkeley campus email responding to the hateful
incidents, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau deferred to the work of the
Vice-Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion on campus. I was reminded of a
recent conference I attended, whose planning committee contained just one
member who was the "Chair of Diversity." When only one person's job
description includes creating a safe environment for students from
communities of color, multicultural or LGBTQIA backgrounds, or
economically disadvantaged situations, then those issues will be absent
from the minds of everyone else.
Congratulations to the UC Davis protesters for piercing the "Davis
Bubble" with the realities of fee increases and police brutality, and a
speedy recovery to the thousands of burnt-out California activists this
week.
In response to male-dominated politics throughout the country’s history, India has just approved a bill that would reserve 1/3 of all legislative seats for women candidates. The news comes just in time for International Women’s Day, on March 8th.
The country faces specific problems relating to women that have not been appropriately addressed up to this point. The World Economic Forum has ranked India 114 out of 134 countries based on gender disparities. Female infanticide is responsible for an unequal number of men and women in the country. Proponents of the bill hope that a critical mass of female legislators will solve this problem.
“Issues like female infanticide will no longer be seen as a soft subject but will become the core of the nation’s political agenda,” said Brinda Karat, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), during the debate in the upper house.
Many are very resistant to the idea of a quota, even though it’s been done with success in places like Norway. I am in support of such a measure. It’s not even a 50% quota; it is 33%. I believe this can encourage more women to get involved with politics and feel empowered to put in the time and effort into running for office.
But some of those who opposed the bill claim they didn’t oppose it for sexist reasons. Instead, Laloo Prasad Yadav, leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal party, said that he is against the legislation because it does not contain certain provisions for women of lower castes or religious minorities. Therefore, he claims, the bill won’t do enough to counter inequalities in Indian politics. As he puts it:
“We are being unfairly defamed as anti-women. All we want is that the women from real India, like those toiling in the farms and villages, are brought forward.”
Women currently have about 11% of the seats in Parliament in India. The United States isn’t a huge improvement over this number, where about 17% of Congress is female.
At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I’ve come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.
I’d like to think this was a one-off thoughtless comment, but it’s not. It’s just a slice of the “wimminz are for babiez” pie. I’d like to share with you another slice, one Rudd might have thought of before making his comment, as this kind of sentiment is heaped on his deputy all the time.
Julia Gillard is Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister. And the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and also the Minister for Social Inclusion. She became the first woman to run the country (well, you know, apart from the Queen) when in 2007 she assumed the role of Acting Prime Minister while Kevin Rudd was overseas. I don’t like everything she’s done, but you’ve got to hand it to her, Gillard is an accomplished politician. Yet her short red hair is a constant topic of national conversation. In fact, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail has a whole gallery of her changing hairstyles! There’ve been rumours and jokes that she’s a Sekrit Lesbian because apparently some people (read: straight men) can’t deal with the idea of a powerful woman who doesn’t take shit and thus must, um, well, the logic fails, really. (I must say I am rather amused that my blog’s the number one result on google for the search term ‘julia gillard dyke’.) But the thing that has disgusted me the most have been the assertions that she’s not fit to lead and that her opinions don’t count because she hasn’t any children.
Recently there’s been a national discussion, shall we say, about virginity. This was sparked by an interview given to the Australian Women’s Weekly by Tony Abbott, who is the Federal Opposition Leader. (That is, the head of the Liberal Party. The role of the opposition party is to act as an alternative government, pushing against the government and being the rival party during elections. Liberal and Labor are the two main Australian political parties, so one is always in power or in opposition. The Liberal Party is actually the primary conservative party, and Labor is more to the left but not actually to the left. Anyway, back to Tony Abbott.) He discussed his advice to his daughters about virginity and his thoughts on abstinence in general; you can read a bit about it here. His remarks could take a post all on its own, but I want to talk about a chain of responses that ensued. Julia Gillard said, ‘Australian women want to make their own choices and they don’t want to be lectured to by Mr Abbott’. To which Liberal Senator George Brandis replied ‘the vehemence of her reaction in fact shows that she just doesn’t understand the way parents think’.
‘I think that although Julia Gillard is a very clever politician, she is very much a one-dimensional person and I do think her reaction, her over-reaction to the, in my view, quite unexceptionable remarks Tony Abbott made as the father of daughters, is not something she would have said if she were herself the mother of teenage daughters.’
Emphasis mine. Gillard continues to be treated as though she’s a person of fewer dimensions than some because she doesn’t have children. Less worthy of being in power, of having an opinion. She’s being held to different standards than a male politician without children in her position would be. Implicitly, she’s not worthy as a woman, because she’s not fulfilling women’s roles: she’s politically powerful and she’s not a mother. The way Gillard is treated is pretty disgusting, and it’s shameless and public, too.
We need to make it okay for women to be in public life; to be prominent, and powerful, and successful, and a woman all at the same time. We need to make it no big deal to be a woman with no children in the public sphere, and we need to make it viable to be a woman with children in same. We need to accept all women as proper women irrespective of whether they reproduce or not (which isn’t, as Brandis seems to think, a choice for everyone). We need to make it okay.
I salute Ms Gillard for holding her head up through all the bullshit she has to deal with.
WHERE:Left Forum, Pace University, One Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038
What Does the Left Need to Know about Prison? (a panel at Left Forum)
Placated by TV-cop-show justice, worried about economic survival, most of the U.S. Left – like the U.S. mainstream – ignores the ongoing reality of prison in the lives of poor people and revolutionaries, alike. Yet prison in this country is the basis for the creation of new forms of increasing government/corporate control. The prison system has already played a critical role in ensuring that popular rebellions, like those of the mid-20th century, do not occur again. What do people who do support work for political and social prisoners have to teach us about building a more viable and oppositional Left?
Panelists: Vikki Law, Asha Bandele, Cleo Silvers, and Laura Whitehorn, moderated by Susie Day.
Asha Bandele: Journalist, editor-at-large of Essence magazine, mother, and author of The Prisoner’s Wife, her memoirs of her relationship with a New York State prisoner with whom she had a daughter. She is also the author of other books, including Daughter, a novel about the impact of police brutality. Asha continues her writing and work as a prison activist.
Laura Whitehorn: Political activist who was incarcerated for more than 14 years on political charges, Laura now does support work for U.S. political prisoners. At the request of Wonda Jones, daughter of former Panther, political prisoner, and prison activist Safiya Bukhari, Laura edited a compilation of Bukhari’s writings and speeches, just published by the Feminist Press.
Cleo Silvers: Former Black Panther Party member and South Bronx community worker, Cleo has worked for years as a union and labor organizer and has done extensive work on behalf of U.S. prisoners. She is currently a member of the Safiya Nuh Foundation for the Support of Political Prisoners.
Vikki Law: Writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars-New York City, an organization that sends free radical literature and books to prisoners nationwide; editor of the ‘zine Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison, and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009).
Susie Day: Assistant editor at Monthly Review, writes a regular satire column and has, since 1988, written about political prisoners and prisons.
at Left Forum
Pace University, One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038
Sunday, March 21st, 3 to 5 pm, W-504
One of the very good things to come out of yesterday’s International Women’s Day was a call from NOW for President Obama to support ratification of CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women). CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979 and is the most complete international agreement on basic human rights for women. It “promotes not only women’s empowerment, but is also a foundation for peace and justice around the world.” (NOW has a very good set of information about CEDAW, showing the importance of why the U.S. should ratify it.)
Since CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, 185 countries have ratified it. However, even though the U.S. helped draft the treaty, it is the only industrialized country not to have ratified it. It is another of the many failures of the United States to fully participate in important world-wide treaties. CEDAW is extremely important for women’s rights. But, in addition, since a large part of the reason that President Obama was elected was to improve relations with the rest of the world, his support of CEDAW would be a very good step to show that he is engaged internationally. CEDAW absolutely needs to be ratified by the U.S.
While our nation has made an undeniable progress in advancing women’s rights in recent decades, we still have a long way to go. One significant milestone on our way to the equality will be the ratification of Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Women’s Rights Treaty.
Women continue to be targets of sexual and domestic violence — at home and abroad. We are discriminated against in the workplace and elsewhere. Women in the U.S. and every other nation suffer from more poverty, less access to health care, less access to a liveable wage, and barriers to equal education. The Women’s Rights Treaty is a valuable instrument for combating these wrongs. CEDAW embodies the basic democratic values of fairness and equal opportunity. Ratification does not require any federal appropriations. Moreover, women across the political spectrum support CEDAW’s ratification.
I urge you to take leadership on this critical women’s rights issue. The public and the U.S. Senate must hear that you support women’s human rights and that ratification of CEDAW should wait no longer.
The numbers are provocative. But there’s something odd about the billboards. The child who appears beside the text is fully born. Abortion doesn’t kill such children. What kills them, all too often, is shooting. If you wanted to save living, breathing, fully born children from a tool of extermination that is literally targeting blacks, the first problem you would focus on is guns. They are killing the present, not just the future. But the sponsors of the “endangered species” ads don’t support gun control. They oppose it.
Two months ago, the Violence Policy Center issued an analysis of black homicide rates based on the latest FBI data. The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among whites, it’s 3.1 per 100,000. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82 percent of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73 percent of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.
The report calculates that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, blacks were 13 percent of the U.S. population but suffered 49 percent of all deaths by homicide. And the problem has been getting worse: From 2002 to 2007, the number of young black males killed by guns increased by more than 50 percent.
Maybe that’s why blacks, unlike whites, strongly favor gun control. In a Pew poll taken last year, whites said by a plurality of 50 percent to 44 percent that it was more important to protect the right to own guns than to control gun ownership. But an overwhelming majority of blacks, 72 percent to 20 percent, said it was more important to control gun ownership.
Saletan highlights the hypocrisy of anti-choicers raising a stink about race, when gun fanatics have pretty solid Klan roots — or, as he so beautifully phrases it, “People who live in glass hoods shouldn’t throw stones.” Indeed.
This post is a part of the Blog for IWD BLOG.
Today is International Women’s Day, and we‘ve asked you to blog about your thoughts about equal rights. Here’s what some of you are saying:
At Eugenia de Altura, a graduate student studying in Bolivia, explores the different cultural perceptions of machismo and sexismo, which she argues [...]
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