United Nations 57th annual session of CSW: Day 3

Our United Nations CSW 57 week began with a bang on Day 3! Our Panel on Indigenous Women and Healing through the Sacred Circle was sponsored by US Women Connect. Domestic Violence survivor and Board member Ana Maria Sanchez spoke about her past abusive relationships, her book and how she found the courage to free herself. Another speech was about “Generation rocks” and described visually how generations carry violence and oppression within their cellular memories. It was powerful and we were shocked to see half of the audience crying!

Here are videos and photos of our panel:

Ana Maria Sanchez opening the circle in a healing ritual

Ana Maria Sanchez’s violence testimony

Ana with USWC Forum Convenor Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, USWC Co-Chair and Founder TEWA Women United.

Board Secretary Jessica Buchleitner at UN main building

During a later panel we witnessed the testimony of a woman who worked as a prostitute in Ireland. Her story was powerful and we were able to record a portion of it:

Is equal pay still an illusion?

According to a recent infographic compiled by the research team at Learnstuff.com, it most certainly is! We have along way to go before women are equally at the table. Even after the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, we women are still lagging behind our male counterparts, yet have higher education. What could be contributing to this phenomenon? Tell us in the poll below…

Lebanon advocate Ghida Anani talks TV media & how men can protect women

Elahe Amani – WNN Features

(WNN) Beirut, LEBANON: In an amazing coordinated campaign, a Lebanese advocacy group dedicated to protecting women  from violence shook up the media world by working closely with men as they asked them to act decisively and without hesitation to stop violence against women. Elahe Amani, special reporter from Iran for WNN – Women News Network, talks with Ghida Anani the Lebanese founder and director of  ABAAD – Resource Center for Gender Equality. ABAAD, based in Beirut, has been working to bridge the power of Youtube, Twitter and Facebook together with strategies to improve life in Lebanon and the Middle East region. ABAAD has been making a strong mark on youth. WNN recently interviewed Ghida Anani to find out how a campaign to improve the world and the lives for millions of women can work closely through television commercials, male advocates and hundreds of billboard banners throughout Lebanon. . .

_________

Elahe Amani for WNN: What are your thoughts on the impact of religious extremism (all religions) in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region? Do you think there has been a militarization of violence against defenders of human rights and gender rights in Lebanon?

Ghida Anani:

ABAAD was born in a time of transition. There is a revolutionary spirit infused to this day [in Lebanon] and it reminds us that our struggles remain highly politicized and multidimensional. And it is only through viewing our work in its myriad dimensions that we stand a chance of success.

So what about the Arab world – a region that has always highly politicized women’s issues, intertwining them with nationalist and religious struggles? What dimensions can we use here to generate the change we seek?

During the ‘so-called’ Arab Spring, women in the region have called for a broader definition of security to include [all forms of] human security, embracing human rights and equal rights. These democratic currents lend themselves not only to changed governments but also to a new socioeconomic and cultural landscape.

Traditional understandings of security only exist inside a militarized environment. Our ‘Arab Spring’ has shown us that individuals [first] should be the barometer through which security is measured. This people-centered paradigm is the only way to achieve national, and ultimately regional, security.

The power of people [today] – women and men – on Arab streets is palpable. We, the rights holders, are now holding our governments, the duty bearers, accountable. In so doing we are holding ourselves accountable as well. We are raising the standard and raising our expectations. If toppling a government is possible, what is not possible?!

This is an incredible time where a door has opened for us showing Arab women and men what is possible. And through this door lies a society that we build together founded on principles of human rights and gender equality.

This is not unique. Societies everywhere fight for the same principles. But in the Arab world we need the international political space to foment these peaceful revolutions in our own ways. The ‘Arab Spring’ not only renewed our own faith in what is possible, it also demonstrated to an often-skeptical world that we can ask for what we need; fight for what we deserve; and succeed. The principles of human rights and gender equality might be the same but the method and the means to achieve them must be indigenous. They will only work if they come from us and for us.

WNN: What are some of your major areas of concern for violence against women in Lebanon?  In what ways do women in Lebanon experience violence? 

Anani:

To better understand the regional dimensions of this global struggle we must broaden our understandings of human security. The security of women is an accurate measurement that acts a barometer for the security of a country as a whole. If women don’t feel safe – then no one is safe.

In the Arab world this means renewing our commitment to engaging with men in creative and meaningful ways. We are moving beyond stereotypes and clichés that bind us. We no longer accept the image of men as perpetrators, tyrants, oppressors. This is erroneous and irresponsible. It creates a rift between men and women; a void where real work could have been done.

An image of all men as perpetrators reduces all women to victims. Even women lose in this scenario. This simplistic dichotomy doesn’t resonate with the Arab world where women are protesting arm in arm with their brothers.

We need to liberate ourselves out of outdated stereotypes if we are to understand the dimensions that animate our struggle. We fought to level the playing field – and we are still fighting – but we have also come to realize that we cannot do it without the support of men as partners, advocates and champions.

ABAAD embraces the belief that human security involves engaging with men. In the Arab world this is a wellspring of untapped energy that can bring about positive sustainable change. Women in Lebanon continue to suffer from family, spousal and legal violence in all its forms.

WNN: What are the statistics?  How do you collect information on violence against women (VAW) and how do you remedy its consequences in the public and private sphere?

Anani:

Unfortunately there are no [official] national statistics on the size of this problem. A majority of the studies are done by NGOs through their centers. Most of the support of victims is done by civil society organizations that offer: forensic medical reports or social, legal & psychological counseling, psychotherapy services, court representation [and] socioeconomic empowerment.

WNN: Has ABAAD or other Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Lebanon initiated any reforms in the law? Like the Campaign for One Million Signatures did in Iran and Morocco?

Anani:

Since 2007 a local Organization called KAFA, in partnership with a national coalition of NGOs, has been leading a campaign calling for the endorsement of a law that criminalizes family violence against women.

ABAAD is currently advocating for the application of  a law for the Personal Status Codes [for] Iraqi women [who are] residing in the country [and are] victims of domestic violence.

WNN: Could you outline ABAAD’s involvement with the U.S. based global 16 Days Campaign?

Anani:

I believe that a very well structured and managed coalition always brings more strength to activism for women rights issues, especially in light of the similarities of [many] women’s situations in the region.

[We have worked] in line with a general climate in Lebanon and the [Lebanese] public debate around the proposed Family Violence Bill. We believe that there is a great need to organize a public opinion campaign with a message that is not only peaceful and inspiring, but also comes from youth as ‘real agents’ of societal transformation [who are] focusing on the root causes of violence in a culture [that has been too] tolerant of violence against women.

ABAAD also provides group support to victims [of violence] through ongoing support groups with referrals to [lawyers who can help with] existing cases through different ‘Listening & Counseling’ centers operating in the country.

We are also in partnership with UK based International Medical Corps (IMC) that operates a mens center that provides rehabilitation services to men engaged in violent behaviors with anger management workshops.

WNN: We learned about you with your incredible advocacy work that has been using social media to get out your message. How has the use of social media been working for ABAAD?

Anani:

Media has become a major tool for activism and advocacy for social causes. It has reached every house with a widening and diverse population. Youth, as the number one users of social media, can be easily influenced by using [social media], rather than [going to] lectures or [reading] in-print publications.

Using different media tools reaches a broader and wider audience: the general public, stakeholders, NGOs & youth.

It is to be noted that the flow of our campaign (daily actions through different media tools) created a wide impact on [our] targeted audience, a matter that can be measured though the increase in the numbers of subscribers to the ABAAD Facebook page (from 2,618 to 4,257 to date). [We have also been showing close to an] equal gender balance [on Facebook] with 57 percent female to 43 percent male subscribers.

The numbers of signatures on [our] campaign’s petition: more than 1,454 to date with the number of views of our different TV Spots on our YouTube Channel (varies between 470-1400 views per video).

Contributions from a famous artist was also [provided] a great added value to the campaign as it conveyed a [one-line] message: A very well-known reputable artist stands against violence against women representing a great role model for youth.

Exclusive: Obama’s Epic #FAIL on Plan B

By Adele M. Stan

December 14, 2011

Out of patience with Obama Administration betrayals on health issues, a coalition has launched a petition demanding an agenda that is fair to women.

It wasn’t the first time that President Barack Obama played to a right-wing constituency at the expense of women’s interests, but the reversal last week of an expected decision on emergency birth control provoked perhaps the most critical reaction so far toward the administration by women’s health advocates and feminists across the nation.

When Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, recommended that Plan B, a contraceptive pill that when taken immediately after unprotected sexual intercourse prevents most pregancies, be made available as an over-the-counter medication to all at risk for pregnancy, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the unprecedented action of publicly overruling the FDA commissioner.

Sebelius’ reversal of Hamburg’s decision means that girls under the age of 17 will have to get a prescription for the drug, which for most girls means a visit to the family doctor—which means telling their parents. Those 17 and over will need to ask for the drug at the pharmacy counter. In a small town, that means telling an authority figure—one who may challenge your decision—that you might be pregnant.

Then Obama added insult to injury with a condescending statement about Sebelius’ maneuver. “As the father of two daughters,” the president said, “I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.”

The Paternal Prerogative

The callousness of Obama’s statement hit hard. His characterization suggested that Hamburg, a medical doctor who had reviewed the science, had made a nonsensical determination (silly her!), even as he asserted a paternal prerogative over the bodily integrity of every girl.

It’s the classic conundrum of nearly every female person on the planet: before she is of the age of consent and majority, a girl is subject to conditions that will shape her life ever after in ways that are simply not experienced by boys and men. Though couched in the language of protection, Obama essentially claimed that it’s up to a girl’s father to determine whether or not she will bear a child.

No other explanation pans out. The drug used in Plan B is progesterone, which has been shown safe for use by girls of child-bearing capability as young as 11. Other drugs sold over the counter hold the potential of worse side-effects than Plan B, noted Dr. Susan Wood, a former FDA assistant commissioner in an interview with the New York Times.

Speaking of the pain reliever best known under the brand name Tylenol, Wood told the Times, “Acetaminophen can be fatal, but it’s available to everyone. So why are contraceptives singled out every single time when they’re actually far safer than what’s already out there?”

Woods resigned from the FDA in 2005 because of the Bush Administration’s politicization of Plan B availability.

In fact, right-wing tactics increasingly reveal it’s not just abortion that anti-choice forces oppose: contraceptives, too, are in their sights. To make the case against Plan B, many right-wing opponents falsely claim the drug to be an abortion pill although, if taken immediately after unprotected sex, it expels the egg before it is fertilized.

Politics and Pregnancy

Just like Obama’s previous betrayals on women’s health issues, this one had politics written all over it. No one believed him when he claimed to have had nothing to do with the decision. Some wondered aloud if the Plan B reversal wasn’t the price paid to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (who oppose all forms of birth control) for the provision of no-co-pay contraception in the president’s health-care plan. That plan, ironically, is where the president’s penchant for flicking away women’s health concerns first made its appearance during the negotiations surrounding the infamous Stupak amendment, which, while defeated, ultimately led to the virtual removal of abortion coverage from the American health-insurance system (starting in 2013). At the center of that battle were men in mitres (as the bishops’ ceremonial headgear is called).

And I’m sure that such voters as those in Ohio are on the president’s mind, as well, as he heads into the 2012 election. In Ohio, Catholics who oppose women’s rights can sometimes be convinced to vote Democratic for economic reasons, and Ohio is a make-or-break state on the electoral map.

The response from feminists came fast—and furious. Wrote Jodi L. Jacobson at RH Reality Check:

[A]pparently helping teens actually prevent unintended pregnancies isn’t an authentic a goal of this administration. Perhaps it was among the topics on which President Obama came to “understand the concerns of Catholics [read the 281 bishops],” as Archbishop Timothy Dolan assuredtheNewYorkTimes after his private meeting with the president.

At The Nation, Katha Pollitt took offense at the president’s statement:

Who died and made Barack Obama daddy in charge of teenage girls? Would he really rather that Sasha and Malia get pregnant rather than buy Plan B One-Step at CVS? And excuse me, Mr. President, thanks to your HHS, acquiring Plan B is prescription-only not just for 11-year-olds but for the 30 percent of teenage girls between 15 and 17 who are sexually active…

Redress of Greivances

Others decided to do more than vent, applying a more organized form of political pressure through a petition.  US Women Connect, a national umbrella group of state coalitions that work on women’s social justice issues, launched a petition (which you can sign here) under the heading, “President Obama: We are BEYOND CRANKY!” The petition reads, in part:

It’s time to Occupy Ourselves. To say this isn’t okay. For young women, especially, to say, “You’re playing with our future and we’re not going to take it. Do not take our support for granted.”

Among the petition’s signers is Gloria Feldt, author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power (and a WMC board member). Feldt, an activist who works with US Women Connect, and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, added this to the petition’s comments section:

I respect the president and the office he holds. But I have been increasingly concerned about the many ways this supposedly pro-choice White House has been going back on campaign promises to protect women’s reproductive rights, health, and justice….We deserve better than we’re getting but politicians can only do the right thing if we make it impossible for them to do otherwise…

Others advocate more radical action than a petition.

Linda Hirshman, author of the forthcoming book, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution (HarperCollins), suggests the women’s movement take a page out of the movement for LGBT rights.

“We already know how the LGBT community deals with the president when he sells their interests out because of his own political calculation,” Hirshman wrote me in an e-mail exchange. “They pound him relentlessly and effectively, using the trifecta of political techniques: reveal what your adversary is really doing; invoke the assumptions of our secular, democratic republic; and assert the morality of your cause.”

As an example of the movement’s success, she notes how gay activists got the administration to decline to defend the Defense of Marriage Act—which denies same-sex couples the spousal benefits afforded those in heterosexual marriages—before the federal courts, even though it is customary for the Justice Department to defend laws passed by Congress. Taking a cue from the slogan of the early gay-rights movement (“Gay is good”), Hirshman suggests adopting a similarly effective slogan: “Teenage Pregnancies Are Not Good.”

The question remains whether Obama’s betrayal on this critical area of women’s health will affect his chances at the ballot box. Enthusiasm for the president among young people—a critical constituency for him in 2008—is already dampening. Women, too, could be turned off by the calculations of the president at the expense of their daughters and themselves. And in what is expected to be a closely contested race, the president can’t afford to have a single voter decide to sit this one out.

Many have said that women provided the president with his 2008 margin of victory. Most weren’t looking for a reward; they were just counting on him to keep his promises and defend their rights. Some are still waiting. Others may have already given up.

The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author alone and do not represent WMC.  WMC is a 501(c)(3) organization and does not endorse candidates.

To support women journalists who are changing the conversation, donate to the WMC here.

To read other recent WMC Exclusives, click here.

This entry was written by Adele M. Stan, posted on December 14, 2011 at 1:24 am, filed under *Feature*, Exclusives, Exclusives Articles, Girls, Politics, Reproductive Rights, Uncategorized and tagged abortion, Adele M. Stan, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, Gloria Feldt, Obama, Plan B, reproductive justice, US Women Connect. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

Cuts that are a matter of life and death

Disabled people in the US say they are losing their independence due to cuts in Medicaid and they are fighting back.

 

 

Rose Aguilar Last Modified: 05 Oct 2011 18:25

On September 19, 54 disability rights activists, most in wheelchairs, were arrested for filling the offices of Republican Congressmen Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Dave Camp of Michigan. The demonstrators are members of ADAPT, a national grassroots disability rights group that organizes nonviolent direct actions, including civil disobedience, to assure people with disabilities have the right to live in freedom. That week, hundreds of ADAPT members traveled to the nation’s capitol from all over the country for six days of ‘My Medicaid Matters!’ rallies and actions. Activists targeted Representatives Hensarling and Camp because they both favour Medicaid cuts and sit on the 12-person “Super Committee,” which is tasked with proposing even more drastic spending cuts to reduce the deficit. This committee will determine whether people with disabilities can live independently in their own communities and have access to health services. Medicaid, a healthcare program that relies on federal and state funding, allows 27-year-old Nichole Villavicencio to live in her own apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota. A passionate disability rights advocate, Villavicencio travelled to Washington DC to tell her story. Live like everybody else “Medicaid pays for my personal care attendants who help me get up, get dressed, help me with my food, and help me get to bed at night,” she says. “Medicaid pays for my prescriptions and allows me to go to the doctor. We just want to live like everybody else. We want to start families. We want to live in our homes and be independent.” Villavicencio has arthrogryposis, a rare condition that causes muscle weakness and stiff joints. Several of her arm muscles never fully formed so she uses a wheelchair and does everything with her feet. She receives food stamps, $674 a month in Social Security, which is also under threat, and lives in subsidised housing. The health insurance industry, which continues to post record profits, got a front-row seat during the 2009 healthcare debate. People with disabilities got arrested less than an hour after entering Rep. Hensarling’s office for simply wanting to express their views. Villavicencio was held in the Rayburn House basement from 4:30pm on Monday to 9am the next day. It was her first arrest. “I was surprised they held us so long,” she says. “They had a machine that was supposed to scan our hands for fingerprints, but it wasn’t working, so they did nothing for three or four hours. They gave us some baloney in the middle of the night and 20 minutes later, I had to puke it up.” The offices of Reps. Hensarling and Camp didn’t return my calls, but I did hear back from Sergeant Kimberly Schneider, spokeswoman with the Capitol police. Why were 54 citizens, most in wheelchairs, charged with unlawful entry? “They were asked to leave the office and refused,” she said. “Law enforcement had to be called.” ADAPT organisers told me that the quick arrests were unusual. When members usually occupy politician’s offices – and they do it often – they make their voices heard for several hours before the arrests begin. But this is our new reality. Speak your mind. Use your voice. Do it nonviolently. And you’ll get arrested, even if you’re in a wheelchair. This video shows a cop forcefully pulling a man in a wheelchair out of Rep. Hensarling’s office. For millions of low-income people living in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, this is a life or death issue. Medicaid recipients are being hit by budget cuts in every state across the country. Federal cuts on top of the state cuts would be devastating for the most vulnerable segments of our society. If it weren’t for Medicaid, nearly 60 million low-income Americans, including children and seniors, would be uninsured. If the Republican leadership had its way, Medicaid would be decimated. President Obama recently proposed $320bn in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. “Cutting Medicaid is all the rage. What most people don’t realise is that small changes can make a huge difference in someone’s life,” says Chris Hildebrant, a 35-year-old from Rochester, New York. When Hildebrant was 14, he had a spinal cord injury caused by a diving accident. He was the first person arrested in Representative Camp’s office. “This is about reform,” he says. “This system is institutionally biased. It’s flawed. So much money is spent on nursing facilities where people don’t want to be. That money can go a lot further in the community. We’ve been saying this for decades.” But who’s listening? When is the last time you’ve seen a person with disabilities interviewed on TV? Long-time ADAPT member and media outreach coordinator Janine Bertram told me that I was the only reporter who bothered to call to set up interviews with people who were arrested. Unlawful conduct On September 21, ADAPT teamed up with over 90 disability, aging and civil rights groups for the ‘My Medicaid Matters!’ rally. It was the largest gathering of disability advocates in the nation’s capitol since the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed in 1990, and yet it received scant media coverage in both the corporate and alternative media. “We are so used to them not covering us,” says Bruce Darling, ADAPT organiser in Rochester, New York. “We can do a lot because people look right through us. They don’t even see us. We can march into offices and they won’t see us until the entire place is filled. That’s what happened last Monday.” Part of the problem is that the disability rights community doesn’t fit the corporate media’s predictable left-right paradigm and these issues can’t be explained in 30-second sound bites. “Historically, we’ve focused on the institutional bias in nursing homes,” says Bruce Darling, ADAPT organiser in Rochester, New York. “The people on the right tend to own and invest in the facilities. They don’t want to get rid of them. And the people on the left tend to organise the unions that work in the facilities. I refer to us as collateral damage. I watch us get run over by both sides. We’re the land of the free unless you need personal assistance. Then you can be removed from your home and thrown in a building where people don’t have to look at you. If you did this to any other group, there would be outrage.” There is outrage and it deserves to be heard, not silenced. Rose Aguilar is the host of Your Call, a daily call-in radio show on KALW in San Francisco. She’s the author of “Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland.” Follow Rose Aguilar on Twitter @roseaguilar The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera’s editorial policy. Source: Al Jazeera

WIN and GAE community roundtable and call to action!

JOIN WOMEN’S INTERCULTURAL NETWORK (WIN), and GLOBAL ARTS AND EDUCATION (GAE) for conversation and action on issues that matter at a COMMUNITY ROUNDTABLE AND A CALL TO ACTION!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 6:00 – 9:00 PM

African American Arts and Culture Complex • Hall of Culture
762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
on

WOMEN, CULTURE, RACE AND POWER

Rose Aguilar, Host of ‘Your Call’ on KALW, will moderate the first of four Roundtables with a stellar panel:

CARYL ITO

Caryl Ito has been a passionate advocate and volunteer for women’s equity and participation at all levels of the community for over 30 years. She was one of the founding members of a national Asian pacific women’s movement in the late 80′s which resulted in the development of the local bay area group, pacific Asian American women bay area coalition(PAAWBAC). a 30 year old nonprofit organization.

Caryl served under 3 mayoral administrations, as president of the San Francisco commission on the status of women and helped to reconstitute this commission in 1989. She played an integral part of the citywide ballot measure to ensure that this commission was part of the city charter.

Caryl recently completed 3 terms as a San Francisco airport commissioner under both the Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom  Mayoral administrations.  She received the “Unsung Heroine Award”  at the March 8, 2011 International Women’s Day Summit, San Francisco

DEV MAJOR

Born and raised in California but traveling throughout the United States and Europe, Asia and parts of the Caribbean Devorah Major served as San Francisco Poet Laureate 2002 through 2006. In addition to being a poet she is a performer, lecturer, fiction and creative non-fiction writer, and editor. A trained actress and former dancer, she approaches poetry as both a written and performing art.

In 2009 she completed a historical novella and accompanying non-fiction essay Freedom’s Harvest: The Peter Smith Story that is now traveling the nation looking for a publisher.  2009 also saw the release of two new chapbooks, Black Bleeds into Green and Amour Verdinia/Verdinia Amour, a two-poet flip book with Opal Palmer Adisa.  That was also the year that she completed and gave her first performance of Black Classic: African American VOices from 19th Century  San Francisco. 

She finds talking about herself in the third person to be very tedious.  Although the bio slips back to 2005 in the next paragraph she in fact wrote, performed, traveled, loved and cared for friends and fmaily during each of the years from here til then.

 In 2005 Trade Routes, a symphony commissioned by the Oakland East Bay Symphony composed by Guillermo Galindo, with spoken word and chorus by devorah major was premiered at Oakland’s Paramount Theater.

devorah major has performed solo, with jazz musicians, and as a part of Daughters Yam with Opal Palmer Adisa. In 2006 ms. major participated in an International Poetry Festival and Conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia. In 2007 she made a fourth trip to Italy to be a part of an international poetry festival presented by Casa della Poesia, (http://www.casadellapoesia.com). In 2007 she was also featured poet in Miami-Dade’s Asili Poetry Festival. In 2004 she presented her one woman show The Logics of Love in AfroSolo’s Summer Arts Festival. In the Spring of 2004 she toured the Northeast United States and also performed in Jamaica’s annual Calabash International Literary Festival. In 2002 she performed at the Dodge Poetry Festival, Litquake, and the Webbies. She has performed in several venues in Southern Connecticut over the last four years. In September and October of 1996 major toured England and Wales as a performance poet. In Spring of 1990 she was an actress in the Eureka Theater’s production of Lewis Jordan’s “But Time Will Take You Out…”. In 1993 and 1994 she was the featured poet in the modern Afro-Cuban ballet Si Como No which was produced at several Northern California theaters. In 1995 she worked as a performance artist with Beatriz Ross Cultural Dance Ensemble’s production of Creative Visions of Ourselves. She also presented a one-woman show as a part of California State University’s 1995 Summer Arts Festival. Among the venues in which she has performed in the last three years are The Noh Space, National Poetry Week at Fort Mason, the Eureka Theater, Footworks Dance Studio, New Performance Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Life on the Water, the Intersection, Koncepts Cultural Gallery, Kimball’s, Great American Music Hall, The Upper Room, the Elbo Room, the Kennel Club, the Oakland Museum’s James Moore Theater, as well as a host of libraries, bookstores and university and college poetry centers around the country. In August of 2005 Daughters of Yam (a poetry performance duo with Opal Palmer Adisa) were featured at Lincoln Center’s La Casitas Festival. In April of 2003 they were featured at the San Francisco Jazz Festival. In January of 2001 Daughters of Yam wrote and presented “World Affairs”, a poetry performance ritual with music, at Venue 9. In May of 1996 Daughters of Yam wrote and starred in “Jump the Sun,” a full length poetry/drama presentation produced by the Oakland Ensemble Theater. devorah major is featured on a number of poetry recordings including Daughters of Yam’s Fierce//Love, and poetry compilations including Wild Poppies, Who Sane Who Sane and America Fears the Drum. She has also shared her work on radio and television stations in Northern and Southern California, Southern Connecticut, New York, New York, and Atlanta, Georgia.

ms. major continues to perform her work in clubs, theaters, and cultural centers. She is currently an adjunct professor at California College for the Arts and poet-in-residence at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums .

CHARLIE TOLEDO

Charlie Toledo is a Towa descendent, native to New Mexico. She is the Executive Director of the Suscol Intertribal Council a community-based organization (501©3) incorporated in 1992 located in Napa, California.She is past Chair of the Women’s Intercultural Network and Regional Representative to the California Women’s Agenda from Napa and Pope Counties.  She also has been in private practice as a certified masseuse, certified hypnotherapist and meditation teacher since 1982. She has extensive experience as public speaker, presenter and community organizer in regional, statewide, national and international forums. She has over twenty years in alternative healthcare fields, as well as background in consultation for problem solving and stress reduction for individuals, families, and organizations. She has been an organic gardener since 1978. She has a lifelong commitment to social justice and international work on Human Rights.

RESERVE YOUR SEAT AT A TABLE at:

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Utter Madness…Will this be the month that tips us into action?

- Ellen Shaffer
Original post found here: http://bit.ly/jfqJBm

We can’t get jobs, live in our homes, educate our kids. Get out of the way of the tornadoes. Or, apparently, influence substantially the policy decisions imposed by an increasingly vicious and mean-spirited minority.
n California advocacy has been reduced to documenting the rubble. Medicaid is cutting doctors’ visits to 7 a year, for the seriously chronically ill who can still manage to qualify. To his credit, I think, the Governor just vetoed a budget that has been a disaster for decades because no one can wrench control of the process from the 1/3 of the legislature whose most animating vision is to drown the government in a bathtub. We cannot add $70 a year to our car registration fees as a downpayment on staunching the demise. You might have missed this story because there was a sex scandal this week, and some baseball games. (I like baseball; not the point.)

Some other states are dealing with the crisis by fomenting mobs who probably do not quite get the biological links among contraception, pregnancy and abortion, but are convinced they’re against all of it, whatever it is.

Congress will not tax a cent of a billionaire’s gains from gambling on the stock market, but voted to cut the Women and Infant Children program that gets some minimum level of nutrition to indigent kids. The Administration of course is taking a strong lead in rallying the nation to hold off on arbitrary cuts to the Social Security benefits of the 50% of seniors who subsist on meager incomes, and to keep Medicare out of the clutches of the vampires in the insurance industry. Aren’t they? I thought they were; or intended to; or might at some point; or will promise to if re-elected.

Ok, it’s not their job; when the people lead the leaders will follow. We are the majority, who support the idea of having an actual society, will lend our neighbor a hand, believe in the right to reproductive health care, above all know there’s something terribly wrong when so many can’t find work while so few bask smugly in obscene excess. I’ll write again soon about the people, organizations and campaigns that are trying to corral us close enough to each other so that we can make a difference. We’re out here. But right now, it’s time to take a moment and call a travesty a travesty.

–
Ellen R. Shaffer, PhD MPH
Co-Director, Center for Policy Analysis/EQUAL/CPATH
San Francisco Presidio
P.O. Box 29586
San Francisco, CA 94129-0586
Phone 415-922-6204
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Pro-Choice Demonstrators Join Budget Battle Today

TO: WIN NETWORKS
FR: MARILYN FOWLER, WOMEN’S INTERCULTURAL NETWORK
RE: THE WAR ON WOMEN
This is where I came in. My Mother-in-law took me to a Planned Parenthood meeting in 1964. She had been involved with PP since it was the Margaret Sanger Birth Control League and had picketed General Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri because they wouldn’t give women birth control information. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and others are taking us back to those dark days for women who become pregnant because they didn’t have access to birth control or legal abortion (see paragraph 4 below “grant hospitals permission to deny abortion care to women even in life-threatening circumstances.”)

Are you standing by for this? Or are you calling your Congressional Representatives and Senators TODAY?
Pro-Choice Demonstrators Join Budget Battle Today
By WeNews staff – WeNews correspondent – Thursday, April 7, 2011

Pro-choice demonstrators and a variety of allied interests will demonstrate on April 7 as part of the major budget battle taking place in Washington. With a federal shutdown looming, GOP lawmakers are pressing a radical reshaping of health care policy.

(WOMENSENEWS)–More than 20 organizations are demonstrating today at the U.S. Capitol in a show of support for Planned Parenthood, the family-planning group in the crosshairs of the budget battle blazing in Congress, where a federal shutdown is looming.

Members of Congress, civil rights leaders and a broad coalition of groups are joining the Stand Up for Women’s Health rally. Executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union Anthony D. Romero will be among rally speakers, alongside Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Ed Harris and Amy Madigan are among the actors scheduled to speak.

Access to abortion became a key bargaining chip in last-minute budget negotiations to avert a federal shutdown. The Republican one-week stop-gap funding measure declined by President Barack Obama on Tuesday included a policy amendment preventing Washington, D.C., from spending its own money on abortion services, according to The Washington Post’s blog.

In addition to protesting the Planned Parenthood defunding effort in the 2011 budget bill, protest organizers are also focused on other measures to ban private insurance coverage for abortion and grant hospitals permission to deny abortion care to women even in life-threatening circumstances.

GOP and Democratic lawmakers are divided by roughly $30 billion in cuts. The White House on Wednesday argued that Democrats had conceded to the initial figure for cuts demanded by Republicans and now the party was pushing too far in asking for cuts in the range of $60 billion.

While cuts to both national and international family planning were passed in the House, that’s far less likely in the Senate, Craig Lasher, government relations director of Population Action International, told Women’s eNews on Wednesday. Still, he says providers of family-planning services should all brace for some funding loss.

“What we’re concerned about is there not be disproportionate and ideological cuts to family planning,” said Lasher, whose Washington-based lobbying firm focuses on international reproductive health.

GOP 2012 Budget Plan Unveiled
In the middle of the standoff over the current budget, the House GOP unveiled its budget plan for 2012 Tuesday. It outlines other major losses for women in what is being widely described as a fundamental reshaping of the U.S. health care delivery system.

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Budget Committee chairman, is proposing cutting trillions to Medicare and Medicaid, programs upon which women disproportionately rely. He is also seeking to defund and dismantle the health reform law passed in 2010.

Ryan’s proposal drew plenty of media favor. “Tuesday, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, released the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks.

In contrast, Robert Greenstein, president of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, called the Ryan budget cowardly.

“Its proposals would produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history,” Greenstein wrote on the group’s Web site, “while increasing poverty and inequality more than any measure in recent times and possibly in the nation’s history.”

The Ryan budget would likely get about two-thirds of its more than $4 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from low-income programs, including Medicaid and related health care programs, food stamps and low-income housing, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“It would have a devastating impact on older women and especially those who are low income and in poverty,” Susan Rees, director of national policy for Wider Opportunity for Women, said in an interview with Women’s eNews on Wednesday. “The proposal would abolish Medicaid and replace it with a block grant to the states that would be funded at two-thirds the level that it is and that would inevitability cause states to have to reduce benefits and people eligible.”

Rees says that currently 12 percent of women ages 18-64 receive the Medicaid benefit, and 20 percent of women in this age group have no health insurance at all.

Proposal ‘Politically Driven’
The National Partnership for Women and Families called Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal politically driven. In an April 5 press statement the organization’s senior advisor Judith L. Lichtman said it would cause deep and painful harm to women, who live longer, earn less, rely more on Social Security and receive smaller Social Security benefits.

“The Ryan proposal ignores the fact that Medicare returns more in benefits per dollar than private health insurance,” Lichtman said in the statement. “While there is no question that Medicare could and should be more effective and efficient, turning it into a voucher program would put millions of future retirees — many of whom will have multiple chronic health conditions — at huge financial risk.”

Alan W. Houseman, executive director of CLASP, the Center for Law and Social Policy , called Ryan’s proposal cynical and Orwellian for describing itself as a way to strengthen the social safety net when it in fact slashes it.

“At the same time, the budget proposal cuts taxes for the richest households and sets an arbitrary cap on revenues below the levels needed to meet the nation’s priorities,” Houseman said in a press statement Tuesday.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, joined the outcry in an April 5 press statement. “Chairman Ryan’s slash and burn budget proposal is not a budget at all. It is an all out assault on children, seniors and the disabled. It is a distorted, dramatically lopsided proposal that fundamentally restructures programs that millions of Americans rely on while giving the corporations and the wealthy another tax break.”

Potential Global Family Planning Cuts
In addition, family planning cuts in the proposed GOP 2011 budget lop off roughly $200 million from $648 million in U.S. annual family-planning foreign aid, according to an April 1 press statement by the New York-based Guttmacher Institute research group. Guttmacher forecasts that the cuts would cause about 10,000 maternal deaths, 1.6 million more abortions and 2.8 million more unwanted pregnancies globally.

The United Nations Population Fund, which saw its U.S. funding cut under President George W. Bush, was happy to see it reinstated under Obama, organization spokesperson Abubakar Dungus told Women’s eNews April 6. Many nations rely on U.S. aid for family planning, maternal health, HIV prevention and poverty reduction, he added. These nations have looked up to the United States as a leader, following the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt, in which participating nations concluded that maternal mortality reduction and access to reproductive health services and family planning should be a future goal for all, Dungus explained.

“We are hoping the United States will maintain its position as a leader in funding family planning,” he said.

Legal Momentum, the New York-based women’s advocacy group, is urging lawmakers to reject all such amendments or riders in subsequent 2011 spending bills, rather than negotiating one harmful rider against another.

“There have not been any hearings related to these extraordinarily far-reaching proposals,” the group wrote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “This back-door means of legislating does not allow for adequate debate about the merits of such sweeping policy changes, which deserve full deliberation by both chambers in the course of the normal legislative process.”

The March 31 letter from Legal Momentum is signed by 154 organizations representing a coalition of groups that find themselves under common attack in the GOP’s budget version: worker-safety, consumer rights, civil rights, labor rights and environmental protection. Additional signatories include the AFL-CIO, 9 to 5, National Association of Working Women, the NAACP and Union of Concerned Scientists.

The War on Women

New York Times
The War on Women
Editorial

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning.

The budget bill pushed through the House last Saturday included the defunding of Planned Parenthood and myriad other cuts detrimental to women. It’s not likely to pass unchanged, but the urge to compromise may take a toll on these programs. And once the current skirmishing is over, House Republicans are likely to use any legislative vehicle at hand to continue the attack.

The egregious cuts in the House resolution include the elimination of support for Title X, the federal family planning program for low-income women that provides birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. In the absence of Title X’s preventive care, some women would die. The Guttmacher Institute, a leading authority on reproductive health, says a rise in unintended pregnancies would result in some 400,000 more abortions a year.

An amendment offered by Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, would bar any financing of Planned Parenthood. A recent sting operation by an anti-abortion group uncovered an errant employee, who was promptly fired. That hardly warrants taking aim at an irreplaceable network of clinics, which uses no federal dollars in providing needed abortion care. It serves one in five American women at some point in her lifetime.

The House resolution would slash support for international family planning and reproductive health care. And it would reimpose the odious global “gag” rule, which forbids giving federal money to any group that even talks about abortions. That rule badly hampered family planning groups working abroad to prevent infant and maternal deaths before President Obama lifted it.

(Mr. Obama has tried to act responsibly. He has rescinded President George W. Bush’s wildly overreaching decision to grant new protections to health providers who not only will not perform abortions, but also will not offer emergency contraception to rape victims or fill routine prescriptions for contraceptives.)

In negotiations over the health care bill last year, Democrats agreed to a scheme intended to stop insurance companies from offering plans that cover abortions. Two bills in the Republican House would go even further in denying coverage to the 30 percent or so of women who have an abortion during child-bearing years.

One of the bills, offered by Representative Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, has a provision that would allow hospitals receiving federal funds to refuse to terminate a pregnancy even when necessary to save a woman’s life.

Beyond the familiar terrain of abortion or even contraception, House Republicans would inflict harm on low-income women trying to have children or who are already mothers.

Their continuing resolution would cut by 10 percent the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers, and infants each month, and has been linked in studies to higher birth weight and lower infant mortality.

The G.O.P. bill also slices $50 million from the block grant supporting programs providing prenatal health care to 2.5 million low-income women and health care to 31 million children annually. President Obama’s budget plan for next year calls for a much more modest cut.

These are treacherous times for women’s reproductive rights and access to essential health care. House Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to drastically scale back both even as abortion warfare is accelerating in the states. To stop them, President Obama’s firm leadership will be crucial. So will the rising voices of alarmed Americans.

Original article posted here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/opinion/26sat1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=war%20on%20women&st=cse

The Egyptian Revolution engenders values and a new social decade

http://www.siawi.org/article2356.html

The Egyptian Revolution engenders values and a new social decade
Saturday 12 February 2011 by siawi

by Nawal El Saadawi

(Translated By Dr. Rabia Redouane, Dept of Modern Languages, Montclair State University)

I have lived to witness and participate in the Egyptian Revolution from Jan 25, 2011 until the moment of writing this essay in the morning of Sunday, Feb 6, 2011. Millions of Egyptians, men and women, Muslims and Christians, from all doctrines and beliefs, are united against the current oppressive and corrupt regime, against its revered top pharaoh who “still holds on to his throne even if shedding his people’s blood”, against its corrupt government and the ruling party which hire mercenaries to kill the youths, against its cheating and fake parliament whose members represent illegal properties, women, drugs, and bribes, against its elites who are called ‘the educated elites’ who sold their conscience and pens , destroyed education, public and private morals and culture, and misled the public and individual opinion to gain temporary interests and ruling positions, be small or big ones.

Young men and children, men and women have spontaneously gone out of their houses, led and protected by themselves , after the security and policemen have failed and the controlling elites of culture and media have crumpled down. After the collapse of the rich and powerful and the self-interested party leaders who have explicitly and implicitly supported the regimes of corrupt dictatorships for about 50 years, opportunism and double-standard and deceiving moral values have fallen down; such values have corrupted both the family and the individuals, spreading chaos under the name of safety, dictatorship under the name of democracy, poverty and unemployment under the name of improvement and prosperity, prostitution and marriage betrayal under the name of morals and freedom of choice, humiliation by and submission to the American and Israeli colonization under the name of aids, partnership, friendship and peace process…such a regime which has jailed those with sincere and creative pens inside cells to separate them and taint their reputation, or send them in to exile inside or outside the country.

Millions of Egyptian, men and women, went out in the streets in all provinces, cities and villages, in Aswan, Alexandria, Suez, Bour Said, and all parts of the homeland. In Cairo, the capital, we have encamped in Meidan al-Tahrir for 11 days, day and night till now. Meidan al-Tahrir has become our land and our camp. We settle on its asphalt and inside tents as a solid entity of men and women…we will never leave our place even though the police, disguised in civilian clothes, attack us and even if al-Meidan is attacked (like what happened on Feb 2) by mercenaries hired by the regime. Those were given bribes (50 EGP and a chick for a soldier, and the bigger one’s rank the bigger the bribe is).They stormed into al-Meidan riding horses and camels, armed with various weapons (red, yellow, and white ones). One of the horses was about to trample on me while I was standing in al-Meidan with the young men. They carried me away from this primitive attack; I saw them with my own eyes moving around in al-Meidan, shooting everywhere. Amid the dust and smoke which surrounded al-Meidan and its surrounding buildings, I saw firing flames flying in the sky, young men falling, and blood shedding. A semi-military war broke out between the regime’s henchmen and the peaceful Egyptian people who were calling for freedom, dignity and justice. But the defense committee of the revolutionary young men managed to fight back those mercenaries and captured some horses and camels and 100 mercenaries with their IDs, among them were state security officers, central security officers, policemen, and some of them were jobless and criminals who were released from prisons. Some of them confessed that they were bribed with 200 EGP and promised with 5000 EGP if they managed to scatter the youths in al-Meidan by using their swords and sharp weapons. They described the youths who led this revolution as “the kids who made the disturbance” using the language of Mubarak’s big heads who gave orders and money.

The young men built their tents in the square to get some rest. Women with their infants lied down on the ground in the cold and rain. Hundreds of ladies and girls, never harassed by anyone, walked proudly feeling freedom, dignity, and equality among their fellows. Christians are participating in the revolution side by side with Muslims. I was surrounded by some young men from Muslims Brotherhood: they said to me “We disagree with some of your opinions in your writings but we like and respect you because you have not acted hypocritically with any regime or force inside or outside the country.” During my walk in the square, people were coming to me, men and women, from different directions, embracing and hugging me saying “Dr. Nawal, we are the new generations who have read your books and inspired by your creativity, rebellion and revolution” I swallowed my tears and said “This is a happy occasion for all of us, a celebration of freedom, dignity, equality, creativity, rebellion, and revolution.”

A young woman, named Rania, “We ask for a new constitution, a civil one, which does not segregate between races, gender, and religion.” Another young man, a Christian named Butrus Dawood, said “We want a civil personal statute which does not segregate between people in terms of doctrine, gender or religion.” A young man named Tariq al-Dimiri declared, “The young men made the revolution and we have to select our interim government and a national committee to change the constitution.” A young man, Mohamed Amin, said “We want to open the People’s Assembly and Shura Council and proceed with honest elections to choose a new president and new popular councils.” A young man named Ahmed Galal said, “We are a popular revolution that puts a new social contract, not just demands, slogan of our revolution.” Free equality, and social justice, who makes revolution is one who puts the new government rules, chooses the transitional government, selects National Committee which changes the constitution, establishes a committee of governors of the revolution so that opportunists (the owners of wealth and power) are not imposed on us. Committees of governors did not participate with us in the revolution, but comes now to us by plane from Europe or America. Among the Egyptians who lived their lives outside or inside the country now come to become leaders of the revolution. We say: “Who did the revolution are the ones who are leading the revolution. Among us governors from young people of thirty years, forty or fifty years of age. We have competencies in all scientific political and economic fields. We are the ones who form a committee of our governors and our government in transition, and the National Committee to change the constitution and laws. A young Mohamed Said said “I feel proud for the first time in my life because I am Egyptian. Despair and depression were gone and defeat was turned into victory. We paid the price of freedom with the blood of our martyrs. There is no power to bring us back.

Al-Meidan turned to an entire city with its facilities, and in the hospital thereabout sleep injured and wounded, doctors and nurses from the masses of young people volunteered, residents volunteered with blankets, medicines, cotton and gauze, food and water, something like a dream and fantasy, I am living with the young men and women day and night. Committees were formed among these young men and women to handle all chores from sweeping the Meidan to transporting the injured to hospital, providing food and medicines, taking over the defense of the Meidan and responding to the lies of the system in the media to nominate the names of the Transitional Government and the Committee of governors, and others. Walls for the houses, institutions and taboos that distinguish between citizens, women and men, Muslim and Christians or others faded. We become one nation, no divisions on the basis of sex, religion or other, all demanding the departure of Mubarak and his trial and his men in the party and the government, the bloodshed on Wednesday, 2 February and all days since 25 January, corruption and tyranny over thirty years of rule […].