On Law & Order

The emphasis on and call for "law and order" has often been synonymous with the suppression of social justice struggles in our society. Martin Luther King, Jr., realized that and spoke eloquently of it. Today, as some of us commemorate his birthday, I just want to quote relevant passages from his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and the "Statement from Alabama Clergymen" that prompted the letter.

The Alabama clergymen had already written a statement called "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense." They imagined themselves moderates, negotiating between southern segregationists and civil rights workers, each equally "extremist." See, there's a problem with proclaiming oneself a "racial moderate" or "neutral." Because the perspectives of dominant groups are normalized and regarded as the default, those perspectives are often viewed as “neutral.” In the case of social justice struggles in the United States, the so called “moderate” perspective, in reality, centers the feelings, thoughts, and ideologies of non-marginalized people. King wrote, for example, that white moderates took the same paternalistic view of African Americans as white southerners who were more overtly racist. As a result, he had been

...gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate.

King also pointed out how the moderates’ claim that the Birmingham protests were "unwise and untimely" revealed their privileged status as “white” in the racial hierarchy and their inability to fully understand African Americans’ perspective:

Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."

Unaffected by the "disease of segregation," clergymen composed a statement that insisted on the importance of obeying the law. They implied that the legal system and the institution of law were logical and just and that justice would be the result if people use them. The clergymen acknowledged no distinction, King claimed, between just and unjust laws. Segregation laws were unjust, examples of "dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

So, why did the Alabama clergymen, who imagined themselves moderate and even sympathetic to African Americans insist on "law and order" and define civil rights demonstrations as representative of disorder that "incite[d] hatred and violence?" Why did they suggest that African Americans pursue their cause via the courts--a suggestion not rooted in any historical or social context, as African Americans had received little redress in southern courts--instead of "in the streets?"

Obviously, the people who will or do benefit from the system in place have a vested interest in maintaining and/or prolonging the status quo through the use of "law and order." Order was more important to them than any semblance of justice, despite their claims:

[The moderate] ...constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; ...paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; ...lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

And, in the case of the "moderate" Alabama clergymen, King theorized they had a problematic definition of peace, that prioritized "a negative peace which is the absence of tension" over "a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

King called for moderates to shift their perspectives and to realize that the "calm" appearance of order often obscured the violence necessary to maintain it:

Before closing I feel impelled to mention one other point in your statement that has troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping "order" and "preventing violence." I doubt that you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its dogs sinking their teeth into unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I doubt that you would so quickly commend the policemen if you were to observe their ugly and inhumane treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you were to watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you were to see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys; if you were to observe them, as they did on two occasions, refuse to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I cannot join you in your praise of the Birmingham police department.

It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation.

I wish you had commended the Negro sit inners and demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer and their amazing discipline in the midst of great provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs, and with the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy two year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride segregated buses, and who responded with ungrammatical profundity to one who inquired about her weariness: "My feets is tired, but my soul is at rest." They will be the young high school and college students, the young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders, courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience' sake.

Do me a favor? Keep thinking of justice and positive peace, not "order," as the foundation upon which we should build.

Happy MLK Day!

DC Vigil for Lei Tyree Johnson

Via Kismet:

Ignore domestic violence as someone else's issue #youdothis.
Agitate and Conversate on the damage being done in your communities #idothis

Come out, come out, please! And RT/Repost this widely:

Because my writing has had to take precedent over other projects over the summer I haven’t been posting here as much as I would like. However I just received an email that bears posting:

On July 1, 2009, Lei Tyree Johnson with a male friend was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend, who also attempted to suffocate her 12-year old son. A vigil honoring Johnson and the cause of Domestic Violence will be held on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 from 7pm-9pm at UDC-Denard Plaza. The event is co-sponsored by the Beta Iota Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta (Johnson crossed at Beta Iota in 2000) and the UDC Pan Hell. If you are in the DC/MD/VA area PLEASE come out and help take a stand against domestic violence.

Attire: Members of Fraternities and Sororities wear paraphernalia

Bring a white candle & a friend.

For further information please contact dcdelta4life@gmail.com

Those on twitter PLEASE tweet this. Those on facebook please share this. Those who are simply blog readers, please share this however you can. In times like these I fear this will become even more common than it (unfortunately) already is.

Kismet linked here.

Ancient history through a very modern lens *

Archaelogists believe they may have found the site that holds Cleopatra’s tomb. Among the treasures found at nearby digs are coins that bear Cleopatra’s image and a bust of her.

You’d think these coins would be treasured primarily as priceless ancient artifacts or mementoes of a beloved queen. But they are valuable for another reason. A couple of years ago,** scholars examined another coin bearing Cleopatra’s image and determined: “The popular image we have of Cleopatra… that of a beautiful queen,” was wrong. Apparently, the news that Cleopatra might not have looked like Elizabeth Taylor was shocking to some.


Thus, we have the problem of figuring out what to do about Cleopatra--when you tie most of a woman's achievements/activities to her "incomparable" beauty, how do you now, when she is (ridiculously) judged by current standards to be "ugly," tell her story? How does it change? To what do we attribute Caesar's and Antony's "weakness" (as affection or regard for a woman is so often called)? Surely, Cleopatra's intelligence or cleverness or personality could not have been enough?

These new coins rescue us, again, from those questions.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said the coins found at the temple refuted "what some scholars have said about Cleopatra being very ugly".

"The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive," he said.

So she is, indeed, worth our continued fascination.
________________________________________
*Though ancient cultures had their own beauty standards and such ephemeral things as beauty standards are subject to change.

**Though the debate about Cleopatra's beauty predates this.

It Does Matter

crossposted at Shakesville

My mom is visiting, which means my T.V. has been on some. I'm having quite the experience. On Sunday, she was watching Keyshia Cole's "The Way It Is." "The Way It Is" is a reality show centered around singer Keyshia Cole's life, but more broadly about a black family reconnecting after having been torn apart by poverty and addiction. Keyshia's sister, Neffie, was speaking to a group of black girls who were pregnant and possibly had high risk exposure to STDs. Neffie shared the story of her own repeated sexual abuse and assault that had begun when she was nine, then encouraged the girls to value their bodies and their sexuality.

One of the girls asked, "What do a female supposed to think, if they've already been touched by eight different people, so it don't matter if I have sex?"

That question, for me, embodied a number of issues, primarily the fetishization of virginity and the horrible silence surrounding the sexual assault of black women.

That girl, 18 and pregnant, believed that because she had "been touched," she no longer had the autonomy, the right to say no. Her "value" was significantly lessened because she was not "innocent."

Every black woman that the camera cut to in that room had tears in her eyes. A symbol of a collective knowing: According to the National Black Women's Health Project, 40% of us "report coercive contact of a sexual nature" by the time we're 18. (Note that's just what is reported.) And no matter our age, we are less likely than white women to report the assault, less likely to seek medical and psychological help.

There are a number of reasons for those facts. Black women have been characterized as "unrapeable" in our society, a stereotype that goes hand in hand with the one that paints us as "insatiable"—always sexually ready and available. These are characterizations that have a long history in the U.S., beginning with the classification of black women as (sexual) property during slavery.

In the aftermath of emancipation, white men justified their continued assault of black women by developing pseudoscientific theories that claimed African Americans were prone to "sexual madness and excess." Thus, while any sexual relation between black men and white women would "damage" white women (because of black men's aggressiveness and large penis size), black women, with their "deep" and "wide" vaginas and their voracious sexual appetites, could not be physically or emotionally hurt by rape.

Rendering black women unrapeable excused the widespread sexual assault and terror that black women and their families experienced during Reconstruction and afterwards. It also thwarted "emancipation"; as Tera Hunter asserted in To 'Joy My Freedom, "Freedom was meaningless without ownership and control over one's own body."

For black women, then, there was no legal definition or protection: "'Rape,' in this sense," noted Angela Harris, "was something that only happened to white women; what happened to black women was simply life."¹

This historic lack of legal recourse is but one factor that discourages us from seeking legal justice. Inviting police into our communities is an attempt fraught with danger—they might disrespect us, paint us as liars, dismiss the significance of our assaults, act violently against community members.

Then there are the barriers that African Americans experience in attaining medical and psychological care—our complaints are not taken seriously, many of us don't have health insurance, we are part of a community that has been regarded as "dirty" or "diseased," treatments and interventions have been typically based on the experiences of white women.

There is often a hesitance to bring negative attention to our communities. No, not because we're "obsessed" with appearances or not airing our dirty laundry, but because we know that we will be treated as a monolith, all cast as violent or criminal. And, so often, black women remain silent, even as Aishah Shahidah Simmons noted, at our own expense. (Also see related video at her site.)

Finally (though this list is not complete), there is the persistent stereotype of the black woman as somehow superhuman—able to "take it," tough, affected differently by assault than other women. Within my community, for example, assault and incest are cast as something that black girls and women just have to deal with. It is not just the victims of sexual assault remaining silent, but whole families and communities. It's as if it is "normal," it happens, there's little we can do, so we must learn to cope.

I wonder how much of that this young woman had internalized, this idea that it "just happens," that it's not a big deal.

And I wonder how much she has internalized the idea that her worth as a sexual being is totally defined by her status as "non-virgin."

When her mother was asked what she had taught her daughter about sex, she replied, "Not to have it." That is a response, I believe, rooted in the influence of religion in African Americans’ lives and a defense mechanism, an attempt to combat the persistent Jezebel stereotype that haunts black women. For example, in the first two minutes of this clip from "Luke's Parental Advisory, Luther Campbell not only tells his daughter to abstain under threat of disease, but also explains to her how many partners will put her in "H-O territory," delivering a double-threat of fearmongering and slut-shaming.

So, what happens when we do "have it?" How many of our parents tell us simply not to have it and leave it at that? I mean, there are plenty of people out there telling girls that having sex makes them "used" or "soiled," that virginity is a gift, something that belongs to a future husband long before they've even met him. Once it is gone, they are dirty and have nothing to offer. They are less desirable as partners.

They are worthless.

It's not as if exemptions are made for rape victims. Sure, people speak of rape as more traumatic, more damaging if the victim was a virgin, but survivors of rape are often characterized as damaged or irreparably harmed, less than whole.

Less, in general.

And, as has been so frequently discussed at Shakesville, the persistent conflation of rape with consensual sex means that young women, in particular, who have been told to "hold onto" their virginity and associate their personal value with it, don't make any distinction when they are raped before consenting to sex. They view themselves as diminished not only by virtue of their victimization, but also by having lost their highly-valued virginity. And they are left with no reason to abstain—because no one's ever given them any reason other than fiercely guarding their virginity.

So, what happens when we do "have it?" My black mother told me, "not to have it," too. But that is a woefully shortsighted reaction, especially given that kids who take chastity pledges tend to break them. For black girls, who are sexually active at an earlier age than other girls and who have higher rates of STIs, we need to answer the question.

We need to help them break the silence surrounding sexual assault.

We need to help them negotiate hostile health care institutions—black girls don't report engaging in riskier behavior than their peers, but barriers to health care prevent diagnosis and treatment of STIs in black communities.

We need to talk to them about healthy, guilt-free sex—when I read that teenagers who take chastity pledges are less likely to use birth control methods, it made perfect sense. Birth control requires forethought, an admission that you plan to have sex, something many teenagers who have simply been told "don't have it," can't do.

We need to tell them that no matter how many times they've "been touched," or how many partners they've had, they still have bodily autonomy, the right to say yes or no. That the language used to fetishize virginity—"saving it" or "giving it" to someone—is not accurate. Their sexuality, their bodies are their own.

We need to tell them that their worth is not tied up in their virginity.

I never want to hear another black girl say, "It don't matter."

--------------------

¹ Angela Harris, "Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory," Stanford Law Review, February 1990.

Support The New Orleans Women's Health Clinic!

I'm going to put a section of the e-mail here with pertinent details about donating, but the text of the entire e-mail is below the fold.

Please help the New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI) and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (NOWHC) to continue prioritizing the needs, experiences, and leadership of women of color and low-income women in the region. We ask for a donation that will:

* Expand the Clinic’s ability to continue to support and subsidize the cost of care and medication for uninsured women who access services at our Clinic through our Women’s Health Access Fund.

* Build the Clinic’s Sexual Health Youth Advocacy Institute – focusing on comprehensive sex education, sexual violence prevention, sexuality, and STI education, and HIV prevention justice advocacy

* Open the WHJI Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center to serve as a resource and organizing hub to end violence against of women of color and gender variant members of our community

* Develop our joint Action Kits and Toolkits, including informational pamphlets, posters, and fact sheets on safe forms of birth control, STIs, breast health, fibroids, environmental toxicants & reproductive health, gender violence prevention, alternative health and healing remedies

We are asking you to further our work this holiday season by giving a gift of justice.

A Gift of $50
* Subsidizes a well-woman annual exam, including a pap smear, to an uninsured low-income woman
* Funds the expansion of the WHJI Women of Color Lending Library

A Gift of $100
* Subsidizes the lab cost of uninsured patients at the Clinic, and
* Develops WHJI sexual and reproductive justice organizing tools and materials

A Gift of $250
* Supports the involvement of youth in the Clinic’s Sexual Health Youth Advocacy Institute
* Contributes to the planning, coordination, and convening of WHJI Organizing Institutes

A Gift of $500
* Bolsters the Clinic’s Women’s Health Access Fund
* Supports the opening of the Initiative’s Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center

A Gift of $1000
* Supports the salary of a full-time paid executive director and medical staff for NOWHC
* Strengthens the long-term sustainability of the Clinic’s ability to provide safe, affordable, non-coercive holistic sexual and reproductive health services and information

Financial contributions should be made out to our fiscal sponsor: Women With A Vision, with NOWHC and WHJI listed in the memo line. All contributions will be split evenly between NOWHC and WHJI, so your donation will support the work of both organizations. Checks should be mailed to the:

New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic
1406 Esplanade Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70116

Your gift is tax-deductible and you will receive an acknowledgement letter with the Women With A Vision Nonprofit EIN#.

Full text of the e-mail:

December 2008

Dear Friends and Supporters,

With 2009 rapidly approaching, the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (NOWHC) and the New Orleans Women’s Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI) would like to wish you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season, and thank you for all of your support this past year. Thank you.

As NOWHC and WHJI continue to work together to equip marginalized and underserved women with the means to control and care for their own bodies, sexuality, reproduction, and health, while developing community-based strategies to improve the social and economic health and well-being of women of color and low-income women, we ask you to support the ongoing efforts of our organizations by making a donation this holiday season. This appeal presents accomplishments of both of our organizations for your giving consideration.

New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic
The women we serve at NOWHC are the women we stand with, the women we are – women of color and low-income women most affected by disasters (natural and economic), women whose bodies are blamed and used as decoys for systemic injustices. We recognize that the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic cannot simply end at addressing immediate needs through services delivery. NOWHC works to integrate reproductive justice organizing and health education advocacy into our clinic to address root causes of health disparities and sexual and reproductive oppression. Our programming acknowledges intersectionality and addresses the social and economic determinants of health disparities, while challenging punitive policies around social welfare, housing, and reproductive health.

With the support of hundreds of donors like you, in just 19 months, NOWHC provided safe and affordable comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care services and information to 3,040 women from throughout the Greater New Orleans Metropolitan area as follows:

* 618 unduplicated women accessed direct medical services, 432 of which had repeat visits
* 820 additional women accessed health information and counseling services.
* Approximately 1600 referrals for service were provided over the last 5 months.
* Subsidized the cost of direct medical services for hundreds of women through the Women’s Health Access Fund
* Partnered with the B.W. Cooper Housing Development Resident Management Corporation, enabling NOWHC to advocate and organize directly in the communities where many of our constituents live.
* Launched a Sexual Health Youth Advocacy program, focusing on comprehensive sex education, sexual violence prevention, sexuality and gender identity, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) education including HIV prevention justice advocacy

The women accessing and utilizing services at the clinic and the need for safe and holistic sexual and reproductive health services and resources, paint a portrait of the unique vulnerabilities that women of color, low income, and uninsured women face in accessing health care. Take for example, the demographics of our clinic patients:

* 65% of our patients who access care at the Clinic lacked health insurance. Without our support, most of these women would have gone months or even years without receiving safe, affordable, and unbiased care.
* 72% reported annual incomes of less than $24,999 –nearly 40% earned less than $10,000 a year
* 60% identifies as Black/African-American, and nearly 20% identifies as Latina/Hispanic – many of whom are undocumented. The Clinic provides a safe space to alleviate this fear of deportation for many undocumented women.
* 70% identified their housing status as ‘renting’ and
* 84% were between the ages of 18 to 40 years of age

With your continual support, NOWHC can expand our integrated approach by improving the sexual and reproductive health of low-income and underserved women and their families.

Women’s Health & Justice Initiative
Much of the work of the clinic is done in concert with our sister collective, WHJI. WHJI impacts the reproductive and sexual health lives of women of color and low-income women, by mobilizing our communities to engage in racial, gender, and reproductive justice activism that challenges the legislation and criminalization of women of color and poor women’s bodies, sexuality, fertility, and motherhood. As a predominately all volunteer collective, WHJI has:

* Launched organizing efforts to establish a Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center, to serve as a resource and organizing hub to nurture grassroots organizing and activism to end violence against women of color, linking struggles against the violence of poverty, incarceration, environmental racism, housing discrimination, economic exploitation, medical experimentation, and forced sterilization. The Center will house a Radical Women of Color Lending Library, a cluster of computers for community access, meeting space, and a host of movement building and leadership development programs and resources.

* Sponsored a series of Organizing Institutes, focused on examining and challenging gender and sexuality-based violence against women of color and queer and trans people of color. The Organizing Institutes have both facilitated community building conversations between grassroots social justice organizers and health practitioners, and created a space for developing grassroots strategies to equip those most disenfranchised by the medical industry in exercising their agency to take control of the their bodies, reproduction, and sexuality, while organizing for racial, gender, and reproductive justice.

NOWHC and WHJI COLLABORATIVE WORK

* Led a coordinated effort to respond to the particular vulnerabilities of women of color, low income women, and women headed households (including women with disabilities, seniors, undocumented immigrant women, and incarcerated women.) We made over 700 calls, assisting our constituency and their families develop and implement evacuation and safety plans as communities across the Gulf Coast region prepared for Hurricane Gustav. Ironically, this occurred on the eve of the 3 year anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent government negligence.

* Immediately following Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, WHJI and NOWHC took the lead in responding to the eugenic and racist legislative plans of Representative John LaBruzzo (R) of Louisiana to pay poor women $1,000 to get sterilized under the cloak of reducing the number of people on welfare and those utilizing public housing subsidies. Our organizational responses to Representative LaBruzzo’s eugenic agenda, and the outcry of social justice organizations and community members around the country, resulted in LaBruzzo being removed from his position as vice chairman of the House Health & Welfare Committee.

Please help WHJI and NOWHC to continue prioritizing the needs, experiences, and leadership of women of color and low-income women in the region. We ask for a donation that will:

* Expand the Clinic’s ability to continue to support and subsidize the cost of care and medication for uninsured women who access services at our Clinic through our Women’s Health Access Fund.

* Build the Clinic’s Sexual Health Youth Advocacy Institute – focusing on comprehensive sex education, sexual violence prevention, sexuality, and STI education, and HIV prevention justice advocacy

* Open the WHJI Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center to serve as a resource and organizing hub to end violence against of women of color and gender variant members of our community

* Develop our joint Action Kits and Toolkits, including informational pamphlets, posters, and fact sheets on safe forms of birth control, STIs, breast health, fibroids, environmental toxicants & reproductive health, gender violence prevention, alternative health and healing remedies

We are asking you to further our work this holiday season by giving a gift of justice.

A Gift of $50
* Subsidizes a well-woman annual exam, including a pap smear, to an uninsured low-income woman
* Funds the expansion of the WHJI Women of Color Lending Library

A Gift of $100
* Subsidizes the lab cost of uninsured patients at the Clinic, and
* Develops WHJI sexual and reproductive justice organizing tools and materials

A Gift of $250
* Supports the involvement of youth in the Clinic’s Sexual Health Youth Advocacy Institute
* Contributes to the planning, coordination, and convening of WHJI Organizing Institutes

A Gift of $500
* Bolsters the Clinic’s Women’s Health Access Fund
* Supports the opening of the Initiative’s Women of Color Resource & Organizing Center

A Gift of $1000
* Supports the salary of a full-time paid executive director and medical staff for NOWHC
* Strengthens the long-term sustainability of the Clinic’s ability to provide safe, affordable, non-coercive holistic sexual and reproductive health services and information

Financial contributions should be made out to our fiscal sponsor: Women With A Vision, with NOWHC and WHJI listed in the memo line. All contributions will be split evenly between NOWHC and WHJI, so your donation will support the work of both organizations. Checks should be mailed to the:

New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic
1406 Esplanade Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70116

Your gift is tax-deductible and you will receive an acknowledgement letter with the Women With A Vision Nonprofit EIN#.

The New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic and the Women’s Health & Justice Initiative warmly thank our network of donors and volunteers for your continued generous support. Please support this essential work with the most generous donation you can give. Our ability to provide needed services, maintain autonomy and organize to build power and a healthy community is made possible through the support of individuals and organizations in our community and nationwide.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic Board of Directors
Women’s Health & Justice Initiative Collective

South Texas Civil Rights Project (continued)

Via Noemi (see here also)

The South Texas Civil Rights Project is a non-profit public interest organization which provides free legal services to those in the Valley's low-income community whose civil rights have been violated. A major part of the Project's work is helping abused immigrant women.

The project will soon host an online auction to raise funds. Please check it out.

Actually, if at all possible, do more than just check it out!

Join/Organize Protests at YOUR local I.C.E. Offices

via BFP

EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION

FRIDAY, AUGUST 22ND at 4:00 PM

JOIN US IN PROTESTS AT I.C.E. OFFICES ACROSS THE NATION !

In DETROIT: Joins us in front of the I.C.E. Office At East Jefferson Ave
& Mount Elliot at 4:00PM

It is imperative that we send a message to I.C.E., President Bush and the upcoming Democratic Party Convention that there must be AN IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM ON ALL RAIDS, DEPORTATIONS, INCARCERATIONS AND SEPARATION OF FAMILIES.

On the defensive after congressional hearings that raked I.C.E. over the coals for the cruel, abusive and “Gestapo like” raids in IOWA, I.C.E. responded with a so-called “humanitarian” way to deport half a million people – AND THEIR U.S. CITIZEN FAMILIES!..

I.C.E. announced that it has OVER 100 TEAMS of agents working full time to seek out and arrest these 500,000 people who, even accord ing to I.C.E., have done nothing wrong except come to this country, accepted employment from U.S. companies, pay taxes and support their families.

Already we have witnessed I.C.E. agents waiting outside of schools and day care centers to track down parents. I.C.E. has enlisted police in some states to set up road blocks as people come to church on Sunday. I.C.E. agents are coming into our neighborhoods in the dead of night and knocking on our doors, terrorizing our children.

THIS MADNESS MUST STOP!

On Friday, August 22nd, we call on all organizations and concerned individuals, but especially LATINAS, to organize protests in front of your local I.C.E. office at 4 p.m. (at your local time) to demand an immediate moratorium

on raids, deportations, incarcerations and separations of families until comprehensive immigration reform is finally agreed on in the next Congress

Ask your delegates and especially members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to stand with you on Friday, August 22nd, in front of I.C.E.

We call on Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama to make clear their commitment to our community by joining in this call for an immediate moratorium on the convention floor!

FOR MORE INFORMATION IN DETROIT CONTACT:

Latinos Unidos de Michigan

Hypatia (818) 427- 4223 Rosendo (313) 580 - 5474 Ignacio (313) 587- 9285

Pro-Immigration Awareness Movement
Evelyn (313) 258 - 24 86

Things Seen 4

Sometimes, when I'm in pure procrastination mode, I get to clicking the "next blog" button on the blogger navigation bar. Last night, I ran across this on a blog post about "funny ads."



So, I did a little research and found this ad listed on the Ads of the World site that features "the best and most interesting creative work worldwide."

Yes, indeed.

Somewhere, I'm sure, someone had a good intention. But the execution of said intention leaves MUCH to be desired. Here is the logic behind the ad:

Men in Czech Republic consume the most beer in all of the Europe. Unfortunately, the beer changes many of them into aggressors upon arriving home. In order to stop this domestic alco-violence, we redesigned the trademark beer mugs of our client Bernard brewery to preventatively warn its beer drinkers to not lose control over their drinking.

Because the one thing that will stop a drunken abuser is having already had his fist pressed to a woman's face all night.

This feels like a ready made excuse to me--"Honey, you know how I get when I drink. That's not the real me." People always search for ways to rationalize and justify men who are assumed to be "good" except for that little abusive streak.

I don't think beer "changes" you. I know there are people who are exceptionally mean when they drink, and I know alcohol can exacerbate a situation, but abusers don't need validation for one of their most common ways of shifting responsibility for their actions.

Besides, I think the post on which I found the ad says a lot--I get the creepy feeling lots of people would find this mug funny, a sort of kitschy/novelty item, a "ha-ha, you get to punch that bitch over and over!"

Something else I thought about upon seeing the picture? Her bland, semi-smile does little to communicate how devastating someone's fist to the middle of your face can be.

Fighting Violence against Black Women

Via Nora at The SAFER Blog:

The following letter was forwarded to me by a fellow student, and I then asked the author if I could share it on our blog. Thanks to Kendra Tappin, Stanford University, for asking others to join her in taking a stand to combat sexual violence against black women.

The text of the letter:

Dear Friends,

On Wednesday, June 25 a 20-year-old black woman was raped and robbed in her apartment in Philadelphia. A man forced himself into her apartment and once he was inside he called up two of his friends. After four hours the three men left. The victim was left to walk a mile alone to the closest police station where she reported the crime. The woman’s next-door neighbor has said that she saw the initial intrusion and heard the screaming but that she went to bed and did nothing. Other neighbors reported that they also heard the woman’s screams but that they did nothing.

Twenty-four hours before this incident a 48 year-old woman was raped just a few blocks away. She was lying in her bed when an unknown man intruded into her home. He raped her and he stabbed her in her neck. Police say that they do not believe the two crimes are related or that any of the same men are involved.

I have been silent on this issue, but this morning I woke to a note from a friend who reminded me of the powerful ways in which our silence condemns us.

I am writing you this letter because I know we must do the telling even if we feel afraid, anxious or alone. I am writing this letter to urge you to take up this issue as though you or your family member were the victim, and because I am troubled.

I am troubled because there seems to be an epidemic of violence, sexual violence, against black women. I am troubled because this country’s history is replete with instances of violence against black women, denigration of black women, sexual violation of black women and then turning a blind eye those crimes. Presently I am reminded of:


• The acquittal of R. Kelley

• Megan Williams, a 20 year old black woman in West Virginia who was kidnapped and gang raped by 6 other people, three of whom were women, forced to eat animal feces and insulted with racial slurs.

• A 35 year old black woman in Miami, Florida living in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects who was gang raped by up to 10 men. For three hours the men beat and raped her. They also forced her to perform oral sex on her 12 year-old son whom they also beat and doused with household chemicals. Several months after the crime 4 teenagers, aged14-18, were arrested and charged in relation to the crime.

• The New Jersey 4, black lesbians ages 19, 20, 20 and 24 who were sentenced to prison terms ranging between 3 to 11 years because they defended themselves against a physical and sexual assault from a man who held them down, choked them, spat on them, pulled out their hair from their scalps all because these women are lesbians.

• A conversation with a friend who was distressed because she had heard signs of domestic violence in her neighbor’s apartment but did not know what to do. She was anxious about calling the a hotline because she didn’t think they would offer real alternatives, and she was anxious about calling the police because she thought they’re presence would exacerbate the situation.

• My interaction with a visibly pregnant woman in East Palo Alto with whom l sat and spoke on the street corner after seeing her walking and sobbing, hearing her engaged in a public shouting match with her boyfriend, and noticing black and blue bruises on her arms.

I am troubled by these cases because they reflect, I think, what seems to be an epidemic of violence against black women, little action on the part of our communities and the police/judicial system to protect them, and few strategies for how we might respond.

I am troubled because of the rate at which crimes of sexual and physical violence against black women seem to be occurring. Thinking about it I wonder:

• Why are these crimes happening?

• Is it that black women are being sexually assaulted with more frequency or is it that more cases are being reported?

• Why is it that crimes of sexual violence against black women, particularly as they are happening in such high instances, do not spark movements in our communities like the one to free the Jena 6? See for instance see the case of the New Jersey 4.

• Do these cases just serve as flash and puff for the media but nothing else?

• Is it that black women are quite simply expendable?

• What are we to do?

• For instance, I am for abolishing the prison industry, but how do we hold our communities and these men accountable in the interim when we do not as yet have the means set in place to do so?

I am deeply frustrated, traumatized and pained by the continued disregard for black women’s lives. But a sister-friend has reminded me that it is imperative that we transform our rage and frustration into a vision for action and that it is the power of all of us together that makes us brave.

I am asking you all to be courageous.

I am asking you to read Audre Lorde’s essay “Need,”* a trenchant call to end violence against black women, and her poem ”A Litany for Survival,” a reminder that our silence will not save us. I have attached both pieces. Audre Lorde wrote “Need” in 1979 when 12 black women in Boston were killed in the space of 4 months, but the police and the media ignored the killings claiming that these women were mostly prostitutes. Audre Lorde’s essay and poem are tools for our liberation and creation of a space for community action and healing to protect black women. Her powerful essay provides creative ways that we can respond to gendered violence.

Please read these pieces and share them with at least one other person.

Please sit and talk with people in your community to strategize and brainstorm ways that you could respond to sexual violence or any other kind of violence in our communities.

Please create ways to end gendered and sexual violence against women.

With love, love and more love,

Kendra

Kendra Tappin, Stanford University

_______________________________________
*I remember, as I struggle with the same issues, Lex recommended this piece to me as well. And I highly recommend it to you.

Be RED

From Document the Silence:

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence.

I want to help break that silence (my own story, posted sometime ago, is here). But I want to write about what happens when people do break the silence--not to stop the violence, but to perpetuate it.

I've written here about how the discourse surrounding well-known cases of violence against black women is so heartbreakingly, overwhelmingly negative in the attempt to lessen the impact (and even deny the fact) of that violence. And about how the language used about the so-called "immigrant problem" shapes opinion and policies that deny immigrant women their status as women, mothers, family and community members, human beings.

There is so much more to be said. But today I wanted to focus on the negative language, the language that hurts our spirits and sustains the violence, that I hear daily, intimately.

This is my Claudia and her girlfriend.

*****picture redacted*****

Now, while I love Claudia in her own right, one of the things for which I have so much respect for her is the fact that she is openly out and unapologetic in small town Louisiana. There are, of course, the hateful whispers and slurs. But what I hear most are the faux-sympathetic-tone comments, the "if-onlies"--she is smart, beautiful, determined, funny, if only she... lived her life according to someone else's expectations. And then there are the concerned members of our church, who aren't biased or hateful or judgmental or just damned nosey--they are just worried about her eternal soul. Nevermind if they make her life hell.

Her experiences are one of the reasons I wholeheartedly disbelieve the old "sticks and stones" line. Because these words do hurt; they are spoken to crush her spirit, to shame her, to make her be someone that she is not.

This is Felicia. Everyday in October that I passed the civic center in a nearby town, I had to see a memorial, a red silhouette, on the lawn for Felicia and too many other women and children killed by relatives.

Felicia was murdered a few years ago by her estranged husband as she was attempting to move on with her life. She was vibrant, lovely, and unapologetic about the way she lived her life--a source of much talk in a small town.

Felicia was married three times. My best friend, her goddaughter, teased her about the fact that she wore white each time. She told us, she was going to wear white each time--until she got it right.

She believed her third marriage was the right fit. It turned out not to be so. Felicia and her husband were separated and she had begun dating someone else.

Her husband shot her in the parking lot of a local Wal-Mart, went home and killed himself.

For a short while, there were sympathetic outpourings, respectful silences. And then, the breaking of the silence, again negative, began. For some people, Felicia had caused her own death.

Because she, as wife (and thus property), had been with another man.

Because she was not afraid to move on from situations that made her unhappy.

Because everyone knew, **wink, wink** her reputation.

And even some people who condemned him based it on the observation that, "he knew what he was getting."

And I hated those words, imbued as they were with the attempt to justify, rationalize, excuse what happened to her.

In fact knowing, feeling, experiencing the ugliness of words, as so many women have, is one reason I support documenting the silence. Because I want the silence broken. And I want it broken by words we have learned to use to support, build up, nurture, preserve, love each other.

Because I am worn out by the alternative.

Stopping Violence Against Women of Color

From Document the Silence:

Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:

The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.

Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.

A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home.

Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.

Join us and stand up to violence against women!

• Be bold, be brave, be red. Wear red on October 31, 2007. Take a picture or video of yourself and friends wearing red. Send it to: beboldbered@gmail.com. We’ll post it!
• Take Your Red to the Streets! Know of a location where violence occurred against a woman of color? Have a public location where you feel women of color are often ignored? Make violence against women of color visible by decorating the space in red. Be sure to send us pictures and or video of your display!
• Rally! Gather your friends, family, and community to rally. Check out the Document the Silence website for the litany we’re asking participants to read together on October 31st. Be sure to send us pictures and/or video of the event! You could even gather where you created a display!

More details here.