organizing

Nine Gallons #2: True Stories by Susie Cagle

tina — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:00:00 +0000

In Nine Gallons #2: True Stories by Susie Cagle, writer and artist Susie Cagle recounts her experiences with Food Not Bombs. For those unfamiliar, Food Not Bombs is a "franchise activist non-organization dedicated to fighting hunger with vegetarian meals comprised mainly from wasted food.” Food Not Bombs chapters are all over the world, though predominantly in major cities.

Though this publication is small, Cagle covers a lot of ground. You learn that it’s not easy being involved with the non-organization. One will face working for free (not everyone can afford to volunteer), unreliable volunteers, and uncertainty over where food and resources will come from. The public responds to your work in varied ways, ranging anywhere from positive support to fevered rudeness. There are also issues of class and racial privilege that come into play. As the writer perfectly states, "a largely white monopoly on Food Not Bombs as a cultural institution is an impediment to people of color self-organizing.”

Though the artist didn't touch on weather being an issue, the climate in which you live greatly affects when and where you can serve food. One year, the Food Not Bombs chapter I was involved in served spaghetti at a park on the fourth of July. With little warning, there was a rainstorm that showered us and our hard work. We couldn't afford a tent or cover of any kind, so the food was flooded and had to be thrown away.

Susie's writing is skilled, her illustrations are well-formed and charming, and her characters are both believable and easy to relate to. The only qualm I had with the zine was her illustration style. The artist draws people from a two-thirds angle and they are usually facing the same way. I am unsure whether she is limiting her angles and facial drawings due to necessity or artistic choice. Either way, this repetition distracts us from good stories that deserve our focus.

Overall, Nine Gallons #2 serves as an easy to read, honest, and articulate recount of working with Food Not Bombs.

Written by: Jacquie Piasta, April 11th 2011

Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: Stories from Our Work

annette — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Margery Freeman, Lila Cabbil, Kimberley Richards, Jeff Hitchcock, Bonnie Berman Cushing

Inc., Dostie, Crandall, & Douglass Books

“Actively listen... You cannot help if you do not hear... Actively listen...” These words swirl across the cover of Accountability and White Anti-racist Organizing: Stories from Our Work. The book is a collection of eleven articles by white anti-racist activists reflecting on their experiences with accountability. Almost all of the contributors trace their activist roots back to Undoing Racism™ trainings from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), and in fact the book opens with a foreword by Ronald Chisom, co-founder and executive director of PISAB. Contributors also have ties to other prominent white anti-racist organizations, including the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop (CWS) and the White Privilege Conference.

What is accountability? In the book's introduction, the editors write, “Accountability in the traditional sense implies an underlying power that can administer sanctions, but if there are no sanctions, if one is in the power position, why be accountable, and who can hold you to it? So accountability as we view it in regard to white anti-racist organizing is about a willingness to share power.”

Some of the book's contributors focus on philosophies or systems of accountability. For example, Shelly Tochluk and Cameron Levin, of AWARE-LA (Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles) and RJA (Racial Justice Alliance) describe the model for accountability they have developed, entitled Transformative Alliance Building. They emphasize “two-sided accountability” (between white people and people of color) in contrast to “one-sided” models that emphasize white accountability to people of color without discussing the necessity for reciprocity. One-sided accountability, they claim, leaves white activists mired in white guilt, which causes them to believe that they are incapable of taking full responsibility for tasks they should shoulder (such as organizing other white people against racism). This in turn prolongs the burden of over-dependence on activists of color.

Other articles focus on “applied accountability.” Larry Yates writes about his long tenure with the National Low-Income Housing Coalition/Low Income Housing Information Service (LIHIS). Thanks initially to the conditions of receiving grant money from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, a majority of LIHIS Board members were people directly impacted by the issue at hand: current or former residents of public or assisted housing. “These funder requirements,” writes Yates, “gave the LIHIS Board a clear framework of accountability.” He describes how this, along with other aspects of the organization's institutionalized commitment to tenant self-determination, helped LIHIS develop a national grassroots base that was able to act effectively on both local and national levels to change HUD (Department of Housing and Urban development) policy.

I appreciate this collection especially for its focus on telling “Stories from Our Work.” This is not a book about pedagogy or identity development, about “how to get more white people to take on an anti-racist outlook.” This is a book about action, about implementing an anti-racist outlook in a sustained way in specific contexts. Additionally, it is not a book about individual white heroes or heroines. It is a book about movement-building, about creating and sustaining networks of people that can support each other in doing long-term coordinated work. These are stories that I want and need to hear as a young white anti-racist activist.

Additionally, it makes sense for a book about white anti-racist activism to focus on the concept of accountability. As each contributor describes in his/her own way, white privilege grants disproportionate access to systems, institutions, and resources. The task of white anti-racist activism is not to deny the truth of that access in order to seek individual absolution. Rather, the task must be to leverage that access strategically (or to put it more bluntly, to work within the system in one way or another) to bring about radical change. The key challenge, as this book hashes out in eleven different contexts, is to do that work without losing the focus on ending racism—in other words, to be accountable to people of color, and to each other as well.

Written by: Ri J. Turner, March 14th 2011

The Young Lords: A Reader

andrea — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Darrel Enck-Wanzer

New York University Press

Before reading The Young Lords: A Reader, I had never heard of the Young Lords Party. The original Young Lords were a loosely organized group that emerged from a street gang fighting the gentrification of Puerto Rican neighborhoods in Chicago. The New York chapter quickly dissociated themselves from their Chicago cousins, renaming themselves the “Young Lords Party” rather than the “Young Lords Organization.” The Young Lords Party, or YLP, are perhaps most famous for their takeover of a Methodist Church in East Harlem (“The People’s Church”) or their Garbage Offensive in the summer of 1969. Sanitation was nowhere near routine in the Barrio (East Harlem), so YLP officers pushed the garbage into the streets, forcing the city to clean it up if they wanted traffic to continue as normal. These types of actions, along with free tuberculosis and lead poisoning screenings, adult education classes, worker organizing, and a celebration of the many cultures of Puerto Ricans in New York were the backbone of the YLP.

As editor Darrel Enck-Wanzer states at the beginning of The Young Lords: A Reader: “This book offers a comprehensive collection of primary texts so that... you, the reader, can decide for yourself what the Young Lords might mean to us today.” True to his word, Enck-Wanzer presents many Young Lords’ original texts organized for the first time in one compilation. Although he clearly sympathizes with the original mission of the Young Lords Party, he presents the texts warts and all, including typos and dated language that a modern reader may not quite grasp.

Almost entirely youth-led, the Young Lords Party organized their friends, grandmothers, and neighbors to fight for rights that no one else was fighting for. Young organizers would do well to study this text, specifically Latino youth who may not identify with commonly lauded civil rights leaders. In one section on education, students describe the first-ever meeting of the Puerto Rican student union at Columbia University: “Workshops were held dealing with... the role of women in the revolution; high school students, college students, Latin American and Latin unity; the military... political prisoners; Third World unity; education, and the media...” This article was published in 1970 but easily could have described a conference held this year. If we are still battling the same demons, we would do well to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.

We should also give credit where credit is due. The YLP, more so than many similar groups, made an effort to recognize the intersectionality of different oppressions, an idea that is much more acceptable now than it was decades ago. They placed a special emphasis on the inclusion of women and the destruction of misogyny within their movement. This should be the norm by now, even though sadly it’s not. This anthology is a learning tool because most texts are presented honestly, with leaders candidly discussing their struggles, goals, progress, and failures. I cringe when older activists speak of the lack of passion nowadays, because I don’t think it’s any less prevalent today than it was in the sixties. The Young Lords: A Reader helps demonstrate part of that passion/frustration/ dedication, and helps guide young activists today with the same drive towards long-term change.

Written by: Colleen Hodgetts, March 4th 2011

Please Don’t Bomb The Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement

payal — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By William Upski Wimsatt

Akashic

Depending on your age and your social/political circle, you may not know the name William Upski Wimsatt. In his youth, Wimsatt was the youngest Utne Reader “Visionary” award winner. In the last two decades, he’s written several books about the suburbs, the prison industrial complex, white urban subculture, hip-hop, and graffiti. These days, he’s mostly known for political organizing and working with and supporting groups like Generational Alliance and Resource Generation.

Following up his 1994 book Bomb the Suburbs, which garnered him a bit of a cultish progressive following, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs is Wimsatt’s older (if not much wiser) take on adulthood, organizing, and personal politics. The book’s basic premise is this: Get power, get corporate power, use it for good. If you don’t agree with that message from the jump—or you’re not already a fan of Wimsatt’s grandstanding and youth minister-esque appeal—you may not get a whole hell of a lot out of Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs.

From the jump, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs is a bit confusing for folks new to the activist’s work. Written as one man’s account of what has been important in the last thirty years of American progressive organizing, it’s anything but comprehensive or objective. Mixing storytelling and action plans in a somewhat haphazard fashion and at times reading like a who’s who of modern progressive activism, Wimsatt shamelessly name-drops seemingly everyone he’s ever known or worked with, from Van Jones to Adrienne Marie Brown. While that’s not inherently bad, it’s terribly insular and not very interesting—especially to the outsider, non-activists Wimsatt claims to want to reach.

Wimsatt writes that his audience for the book is two groups: seasoned forty-two-year-old businesspeople and curious seventeen-year-olds just learning about progressive movements. That said, he also wants desperately to identify with people across this entire spectrum of age and experience. By Wimsatt’s definition, he and I share a generation—he claims both Gen X and Gen Y as “his”—even though he’s more than ten years older than me, and I’m one of the oldest in the Millennial club. This sort of confusing, broad, and aimless reaching to include people is the ultimate weakness of the book, when it was no doubt intended to be its strength.

Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs isn’t an analytical dissection of movements and organizing. If anything, it’s one man’s self-congratulatory journey through youthful transgressions to his late thirties, when he realized, as he writes in the book, “Adulthood hits you like whoa.” That same tone, carried throughout, makes the book feel more like a blog than an actual literary accomplishment. I’m sadly not post-print enough to think that turning blog-like ramblings into a bound publication is a good idea; nevermind whether I agree that adulthood “hits you like whoa.”

Wimsatt covers a lot of topics without nuance. He praises the work of non-profits without addressing the non-profit industrial complex. He warns of how overpopulation is pushing humanity to the brink of disaster, and on the same page, questions whether or not he’ll have children. Wimsatt blindly embraces new media, excited about the potential for change using online tools, without considering the drawbacks and legitimate reasons why Facebook is not part of a truly progressive revolution.

It’s incredibly difficult to write a book that appeals to a thirty-eight-year-old suburban homeowner with nephews and a sixteen-year-old urban blogger who’s just learning about environmentalism. It’s also difficult to explore nuance and history when you believe your own experiences and your own self-selected version of history takes precedent. As much as I’d like to believe in the collectivism of a movement necessary for the generation- and experience-breaking organizing that Wimsatt tries to hawk in Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs, this conversational plea to remain relevant didn’t sell me on anything.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, December 22nd 2010

Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Tiffany M. Gill

University of Illinois Press

In Beauty Shop Politics, Tiffany M. Gill documents the central role that Black beauticians played in the struggle against Jim Crow laws. Beauty shops were one of the few industries that offered Black women some economic stability and upward mobility in the face of segregation. The industry also offered Black women a respectable alternative to domestic labor, as well as a chance to not work for White people. As political tensions rose, civil rights organizers increasingly turned to Black beauticians for disseminating social and political information.

Initially, White English and French men dominated the hair care industry. Black men slowly worked their way in, serving as hairdressers for White women, but that period was short-lived, as the stereotype of Black men as sexual predators began to emerge. During the antebellum period, Black women began to emerge as hairdressers in greater numbers; the early twentieth century saw the emergence of Black female entrepreneurs, namely Annie Malone and Madame C.J. Walker, who played an integral role in expanding Black beauty culture.

Through hard work and sheer perseverance, the women fought for beauticians to gain the respect of the general public. The women had to fight charges that they were inhibiting racial uplift, particularly because their products appeared to straighten Black women’s hair at a time when it was culturally looked down upon. Still, the women fought to have beautician courses established at Black colleges, arguing that the industry provided Black women economic stability. They also fiercely promoted themselves to the public by contributing to various philanthropic causes.

In times of economic hardship, the beauty industry offered Black women an opportunity to enter a respectable profession that entailed a steady income and entrepreneurial opportunities. On the national level, women worked to create a national organization that would legitimize their profession. In 1912, Madame Walker argued that “hairdresser” was a derogatory term, and insisted on the use of the term “beauty culturist.” With their economic and professional status now in place, beauty culturists were quickly gaining a strong foothold and establishing their place within their communities.

Because the Black beauty industry was owned and supplied by Blacks, and catered to the Black community, Black beauticians had some insulation from the economic hardships that their peers faced. Thus, they were able to participate in civil rights activism without the fear of losing their jobs or their customer base. Some, for instance, established literacy schools so that their students would be able to pass voter registration tests. Others distributed information through their beauty shops, which had become central locations for community organizing. Gill also extends her research to the present day, noting how the focus has now shifted from civil rights to women’s health initiatives.

Perhaps the best thing about this book is its accessibility to a wide audience. Gill writes in a clear and engaging style that makes the book an excellent choice for a non-academic reader who is interested in the subject. She includes noted figures in Black women’s history such as Madame Walker, Annie Malone, and Septima Clark, and uses compelling anecdotes about women such as Mahalia Jackson and Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi. Most importantly, Gill introduces the reader to a roster of lesser-known figures who also played important roles during this period. The book is an invaluable resource for women’s history and African American history scholars.

Written by: Melissa Arjona, July 6th 2010

Women, Gender and Disaster: Global Issues and Initiatives

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Edited by Elaine Enarson, P.G. Dhar Chakrabarti

Sage Publications

Women, Gender and Disaster provides a comprehensive overview of the role gender plays in various disaster situations. Case studies and essays are divided into four parts—Understanding Gender Relations in Disaster, Gendered Challenges and Responses in Disasters, Women's Organised Initiatives, and Gender-Sensitive Disaster Risk Reduction—to further develop the myriad of issues within gender and disaster. Women, Gender and Disaster brings together cross-cultural and grassroots perspectives on both response and reduction, examining what is being done now and what could be done in the future.

While the 380 page book does not keep the reader at the edge of her seat wondering what will happen next, it does provide several concrete examples and contexts that illustrate the importance of maintaining an awareness of gender in preparing for, during, and after disaster situations. The book gives important case studies and examples for those working in the disaster management field, policy makers, academics, and students alike.

In a forward by Salvano Briceno, the Director of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, he discusses the expected rise in disasters in the coming years. Briceno also highlights the fact that women and men are affected differently by disasters, and suggests that Women, Gender and Disaster be used as a movement. While it is difficult to make a movement out of stagnant words, the stories, themes, and lessons learned from the case studies prove to be intertwined and interdependent, prompting even myself, a mere novice when it comes to disaster-risk management, to learn more.

Beginning with a foundational analysis, part one looks at gender and how it is differentiated from sex and sexuality. In addition, gender is examined with relation to sustainable development, and a history of conferences and workshops is provided to give the reader a greater understanding of the context. Part two looks at specific challenges, drawing from various case studies including, but not limited to: Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua, floods in New Zealand, and Hurricane Katrina in the US. Part three focuses on specific initiatives by women’s groups. One author looks at peer learning in the aftermath of earthquakes in both Turkey and India. A case study of India’s Self Employed Women’s Association is also used to show the evolution of women responding to disasters. Part four takes a closer look at theoretical and operational concerns by examining three case studies and providing two action plans for mainstreaming gender in disaster risk management.

While Women, Gender and Disaster explicitly discusses women and gender, there is still more to be explored. A comprehensive study of power dynamics within disaster, going beyond the gendered dichotomy of male and female, and taking into account socioeconomic status, race, caste, and other overlapping systems of domination could greatly contribute to examining disaster with a truly feminist lens.

Written by: Lakshmi Saracino, March 3rd 2010

2010 Slingshot Organizer

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Slingshot Collective

AK Press

It warms my heart that the Slingshot Collective is still producing this legendary anarchistic day planner. Although this is the sixteenth year that the Slingshot organizer is in print, I am pretty sure that the first time I ever saw one was after the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. Unfortunately I didn’t go to the protests (because I was in high school and my parents wouldn’t let me). Luckily, my boyfriend at the time brought one back for me as a protest souvenir. While I would have preferred to have been in Seattle getting tear-gassed with the White Overalls and Sea Turtle Defenders, it made me feel a little less left out. I am pretty sure that I had a Slingshot Organizer every year after that until the last couple of years.

There is something comforting to once again hold the classic pocket-sized Slingshot in my hands again. I love how almost everything is written and illustrated by hand. I also love that there are reminders of radical activist history, a menstrual calendar, a list of info-shops across the world, and an address book in the back.

The cover this year features a giant mushroom in a forest with a group of people overturning and destroying a car in the background. One improvement from past years is that the cover now comes slightly laminated. I remember in the early years when we would all laminate them ourselves using clear packing tape in order to preserve their utility. 2010 Slingshot Organizers come in about a dozen colors ranging from Smash the Pumpkin State (orange) to Food Not Lawns (light green). Proceeds from the sale of the organizers all go towards making sure that the Slingshot newspaper stays in production. I highly recommend the slingshot organizer, whether this is your first or your sixteenth.

Written by: Liz Simmons, January 28th 2010

A Community Organizer's Tale: People and Power in San Francisco

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

By Mike Miller

Heyday Books

A Community Organizer’s Tale: People and Power in San Francisco is a radical history with a heap of theory folded in and a touch of imagery. It would be fascinating and informative to anyone interested in community organizing, housing issues, ethnic and labor struggles, civil rights, the history of San Francisco, or community-friendly city planning. The author, a San Francisco native, has been deeply involved in community organizing in the area for most of seventy-two years. He has a long resume of primary and supportive positions with communities, many central to famous movements and connected to famous organizers in San Francisco and other cities. He touches on details of his experience during the '60s in significant famous events in the civil rights and labor movements and the climates that developed into one another consecutively.

Major connections are revisited several times, which was helpful for me since I am a reader without a lot of previous understanding of the timing or significance of all the events, as well as terms like urban renewal and model cities. Strategies of urban renewal and model cities, for example, have had different outcomes for each city, depending on how the greater number of individuals and cohesive organizations in the communities responded. If you are wondering what Miller’s opinion of those strategies is, it’s not all good, at least not historically. He presents the simple, logical, and real reasons why.

In addition to describing what was going on nationally and how the top organizers worked, Miller tells of his experience as an organizer, emphasizing his various organizations goals and what political and economic decisions meant for middle class workers, minorities, unemployed, and homeowners and tenants in various communities. If you live in or are familiar with San Francisco, you might be tickled or heartbroken by truths revealed about causes of change in particular neighborhoods. Individual churches, blocks, restaurants, and business people are painted in a favorable light. One of my favorite lines depicting neighborhood politics is where he states, “We were regulars there, so the owner didn’t mind his cook taking breaks to be a community leader.” My other favorite line is a quote before the introduction, a former New York Governor on community organizing: “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer... I don’t even know if that’s a job.”

This would be a great educational piece for interested students, or workers in the field. That is, anyone wanting to get up to speed on what has happened in community organizing in San Francisco, Chicago, and nationally. I recommend it to anyone wanting to be part of the future of this movement, because history really does inspire greatness.

Written by: Heather Irvine, December 23rd 2009

2010 Slingshot Desk Organizer

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:08:00 +0000

By Slingshot Collective

AK Press

I am an INFJ, which means that among my other characteristics is the somewhat innate desire to plan. Since discovering them several years ago at the Lucy Parsons Center, I have been hooked on Slingshot planners. They’re an affordable, radical way to keep my Type A tendencies balanced with my subversive sensibilities.

In addition to radical historic dates and holiday listings, Slingshot planners contain a multitude of information and artwork, including unusual and beautiful drawings, quotes, and tips on every page. For the third week of June, for example, I am told to “exploit code, not people,” “learn hexadecimal,” and directed to hackbloc.org, a website that is the homepage of Hack This Zine and offers an IndyMedia feed and hactivist information about Tor, for starters. A section of November dates include drawings of a still and admonish, “Fuck Corporate Beer! Brew it Yerself.”

Each planner is handmade, and since I'm running two businesses of my own this year, I need more space to write than ever before. A previous supporter of the pocket planner, I took it up a notch for 2010. Thankfully, both editions carry the same basics: a measurements conversation chart (perfect for my expat self), a global radical contact list, and blank recycled paper in the back for additional notes, doodles, conspiracies, and action plans.

One page encourages activists and organizers—with graphics of a gourd and street sign, respectively—to “squash patriarchy” and “stop driving.” (Every Slingshot shipment to a distributor is taken to the post office on bicycle, after all.) I have stopped driving in the past year, despite the fact that my 1987 Mercedes is parked in a garage in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Until my partner and I move back to the States, I join forty percent of my current home’s population and get everywhere on my Danish bicycle.

Their yearly section on dealing with police is also invaluable information—from what to do about cop harassment to how to avoid problems for non-citizens. I happen to be hitched to one of those for the rest of my foreseeable future. Gotta know our rights, and so do you!

The Slingshot reading list, dubbed “Discover the Romance of,” offers suggestions from Bayard Rustin and Susan Sontag to Diablo Cody and George Orwell to fiction titles for children and young adults.

Best of all, Slingshot planners are full of pro-lady health tips. Included every year is a menstrual calendar, and this year, the booklet closes with acupressure points. Two full pages explain the subversive nature of great sex, complete with tips for navigating personal boundaries and why laughing is important during intimacy.

My large desk organizer came with a pre-laminated cover to withstand inevitable wear and tear. It offers important reminders as I put my personal and professional commitments in order: The revolution will not be spontaneous. Better get ready to pencil it in.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, November 28th 2009

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:37:00 +0000

By Victoria Law

PM Press

Of the many staggering statistics in Victoria Law’s eight-year study, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women, the following fact will make your jaw drop: the number of incarcerated women in United States prisons has almost doubled from 68,468 to 104,848 between 1995 and 2004.

Like their male counterparts, this population of women is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans and Latinas, which can be largely attributed to racial profiling—not, as popular mythology might suggest—an ad hoc increase in crime amongst these ethnic groups. Law’s fascinating text is born from her personal experience as a teenager who narrowly avoided incarceration herself, and the friendships she cultivated with women who were not so lucky. As Law raised her own consciousness about the prison-industrial—complex, she began investigating incarcerated women’s involvement in prisoners-rights movements and was told flat-out by other activists that “Women don’t organize.”

Resistance Behind Bars is a compelling testament to the untruth of this statement, and offers innumerable examples of women’s prison uprisings. One such instance is a 1975 sit-down demonstration for improved medical care at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women, in which women fought back against prison guards attempting to beat and herd them into a gymnasium. Creatively, these prisoners used volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete and anything else immediately available, causing the state to invoke the aid of over 100 guards from other prisons to pacify the rebellion.

Law’s exhaustively researched text includes anecdotal information she harvested from interviews, letters, and conversations with prisoners as well as government reports and major media sources. Most importantly, Law highlights the deeply gendered nature of women’s prison experiences, which cuts across virtually all aspects of incarcerated life. Sexual abuse, motherhood, physical labor, education, medical care, and the extent to which women prisoners’ activism receives media attention are all areas that Law treats with a distinct sense of urgency. What’s more, Resistance Behind Bars has bonus features that underpin Law’s activist project: a list of resources organized according to region for how readers can get involved in the prisoners-rights movement, and an annotated list of recommended readings.

Written by: Heather Brown, July 5th 2009

Gender Violence in Russia: The Politics of Feminist Intervention

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:05:00 +0000

By Janet Elise Johnson

Indiana University Press

In periods of rapid social change, the poets of one ideological system or another rush to find the cogent metaphor or, more recently, the winning soundbite, that will interpret the change to suit their own ends, to control meaning. To find and sell the right descriptive phrase is to raise the flag of possession over a historical event. For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union—or, even more stridently, the U.S. victory in the Cold War—spins the end of the 1980s, the end of history, as some proclaimed it, as a triumph of righteousness, rendered even more morally spectacular by the supposed “coldness” of the conflict, and the ushering in of a new world order. That’s why a book like Janet Johnson’s Gender Violence in Russia is so badly needed.

The book lacks the poetry of impassioned argument, and it is heavy with charts and appendices and social science-y apparatus, but it makes a couple of very painful and crucial observations. One is that the end of the “evil empire” actually made social conditions for Russian women considerably worse. The incidence of violence against women demonstrably worsened as official attitudes, in spite of increasing international pressure, actually resulted in changing criminal codes to the detriment of women’s rights. Trafficking in women, rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence all got worse in the 1990s, and the Russian government relied on age-old sexist lies to justify their apathy.

A different sort of ideological poetry, one also confronted painfully in this book, is the emergence of global feminism in the 1990s. The movement is inscribed in the U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) and in the Beijing Declaration on Women (1995) and in a new level of worldwide feminist activism aiming to confront injustice and make the world see that women’s rights are human rights. As if the pronouncement the other day by a Saudi judge justifying “slapping a spendthrift wife” weren’t warning enough, the very mixed picture of the women’s rights movement in Russia should warn us against triumphant rhetoric concerning the record of global feminist intervention. Clearly there has been a powerful “push-back,” not only from the old guardians of patriarchy but from those identifying global human rights movements as forms of neocolonialist western interference that must be resisted.

The conclusion Johnson’s study reaches is a rather dreary one: that what really works, in terms of feminist intervention, are “alliances between global feminists and large donors.” Money talks, apparently; or rather its use in creating organizations for women’s advocacy is the best agent for social change. What Johnson calls “flexible and responsive funding” is the key, targeting funds where they are most needed and can do the most good to protect women and to begin to change cultures of violence which have proven fearfully resistant to change.

Written by: Rick Taylor, July 2nd 2009

Maquilapolis: City of Factories

admin — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 18:22:00 +0000

Directed by Vicki Funari, Sergio de la Torre

California Newsreel

Who made that pen you’re using? Who put your television together? Who sewed your pants? And what does any of this have to do with women in Mexico? Well, thanks to the initiation of NAFTA in 1994, big US corporations can make maximum profit off of the cheap labor of women in other countries. In the brand new documentary Maquilapolis, two female maquiladora workers document their lives and struggles as factory workers in Tijuana, and show why and how women are exploited for their cheap labor in the border towns of Mexico.

Following the daily routines of Carmen and Lourdes, the film depicts every feature of their lives. From having to pick their steps carefully as they walk through their shanty towns - because life-threatening, shoddy electricity zaps and sizzles near polluted water, to sending a son to buy a five gallon jug of water that costs the same price that these women are paid at the maquiladoras for two hours of work - the film doesn’t leave out one aspect of these women’s personal lives. The film, however, never asks for the viewer’s pity. Just as you think it’s going to turn into a commiseration about the harsh life realities of the marginalized Other, Maquilapolis weaves in another narrative—that of these women’s political life.

Carmen and Lourdes are both aware of how their bosses treat them. Viewed as ignorant women who do not understand what human rights are, the patrons of the maquiladoras overwork the women, underpay them and provide unsafe working conditions for the young female workers. Carmen’s political battle with her former bosses is over denied severance pay. When the company decided to move their operations to Indonesia, because of cheaper female labor overseas, all of the women working for the company in Tijuana were fired without being given any severance pay. Carmen understands that “in globalization, woman worker is like a commodity,” but that due to the multiple injustices slapped upon her by the hands of big corporations, she “can’t stay quiet anymore.” With these powerful words Carmen organizes her fellow workers. After a large legal battle the women are finally paid the thousands of dollars that was owed to them.

Lourdes also understands how, through globalization, women are “just objects, objects of labor.” Her battle, however, is one about the aftermath of a factory closing. One corporation that left Tijuana did not take any of the necessary precautions with demolishing their factory, so all of the metal and factory bi-products were left to rot and corrode. This abandoned factory sits on a hill above the maquiladora workers’ neighborhood. All of the chemicals from the corroded building, as well as those from the factories that are still functioning near by, run off into a creek that flows through the workers’ neighborhood. The entire shantytown is polluted with harmful chemicals, and the effects of these pollutants can be seen on the workers’ bodies in the form of the rashes and spots. Lourdes’ battle against the government and corporations to clean up its waste is a long battle that has yet to be fully won. But the incessant Lourdes and the environmental group that she organized have made small victories in this overwhelming war.

Maquilapolis is a film that does not attempt to create any pity. While it does show the horrific living situations that female maquiladora workers have to negotiate along with their physically stressful and low-wage jobs, it is also a film of angst, rebellion and unrelenting political action. Maquilapolis is both a call to action and an eye-opener for anyone who has never considered what, exactly, goes in to making their pens, their television, their clothes and all of the cheap, plastic crap that no one really needs. In a world where globalization is seen by the privileged as a blessing, Maquilapolis exposes how globalization functions in the lives of marginalized women.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, July 3rd 2007