Labour rights are a critical social justice issue, and issues specific to the disability community are often ignored, perhaps under the mistaken belief that people with disabilities can’t work, don’t want to work, or won’t work. The unemployment rate is extremely high among people with disabilities, and attitudes about disability and work leave many employees extremely vulnerable to exploitation. It’s critical to integrate discussions about disability into larger conversations on the subject of labour, and to include people with disabilities in these discussions.

The turn towards sheltered workshops began in the wake of the First World War; prior to that, many people with disabilities were provided with training in useful trades, with the goal of allowing them to support themselves independently. Such programmes were funded and supported by governments as well as community organisations, providing opportunities for people with disabilities and placing a strong emphasis on independence and self-supporting work.

With a wave of disabled veterans, society began to turn towards the sheltered workshop, an environment where people with disabilities complete simple, repetitive tasks for low pay. Supporters of such programmes claimed they provided people with useful job training, but this hasn’t been borne out by looking at success rates for transition from sheltered workshops to the general workforce. Instead, these are effectively dead-end jobs which trap people in an environment where they don’t acquire skills they can apply to jobs outside the sheltered workshop. It is a form of segregation for people with disabilities, who have little chance of seeking employment elsewhere.

Employees in sheltered workshops also earn less than minimum wage:

Under current law, the Department of Labor authorizes select employers to pay less than the minimum wage to workers with disabilities if the employee is determined to be less productive as a result of their disability. In such cases, individuals are paid a percentage of the hourly wage a typical employee would earn for performing the job. (source)

There’s limited oversight here in terms of making sure people still earn a reasonable amount of money, which leaves the system ripe for abuse. Employers running sheltered workshops are well aware that they can get away with steeply undercutting minimum wage, paying much less than they would have to for nondisabled employees, based on an arbitrary standard of how much work a disabled employee can perform.

Sometimes far, far less, as in, less than a dollar an hour. Not only are workers trapped in positions with limited opportunity for advancement, but they’re also forced into poverty. This is a very different narrative than the one presented by supporters of sheltered workshops, who seem to think they provide workers with ‘independence’ and ‘self-confidence.’

Furthermore, such environments are also ripe for abuse. A particularly vile case was uncovered in 2010, when intellectually disabled workers at a meatpacking plant were discovered living in dangerous ‘employee housing,’ working excessively long hours and earning approximately $0.41 an hour courtesy of the contracting agency that oversaw their employment. Many disabled workers in such environments are not aware of their rights, aren’t sure about how to report abuses, or may not understand how to identify and discuss abuse. Employers can keep disabled workers in a state of fear, ensuring that unsafe, dangerous, and hostile conditions are allowed to persist for years. Not all sheltered workshops are like this, of course, but the system is structured in a way that makes it easy for them to become so.

A recent study and policy analysis from the National Disability Rights Network (.pdf) illustrates that sheltered workshops are effectively akin to institutions, because they isolate disabled people from society. This makes them a violation of numerous federal laws designed to promote full integration of people with disabilities into their communities; when possible, people with disabilities are supposed to live in their communities, receiving appropriate support services to help them stay there.

Considering these stark realities, it is clear that segregated and sheltered work no longer provides workers with disabilities an opportunity for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They may no longer be warehoused in institutions without meaningful daily interactions, but the change may merely be logistical. Segregation—whether it be in an institution or at work—is still segregation.

The Oregon suit demands that more emphasis be placed on community-supported employment, where people with disabilities are members of the regular workforce, with job coaches to provide support. Such positions provide people with more income as well as more opportunities; they can acquire job skills and apply for promotions. They can pursue careers, rather than being trapped in a sheltered environment where they are isolated and have limited chances for developing more independence and skills.

Incidentally, community-supported employment is also significantly less expensive to administer; approximately one third the cost of running a sheltered workshop, by some estimates. For those arguing that people with disabilities are ‘a drain on society,’ it’s striking that so many oppose community-supported employment and community-based living, because they are substantially less costly than isolation and institution. It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s also the economically sound thing to do.

Community-based living and employment also, critically, promote integration into society. People working in sheltered workshops have limited opportunities for interaction with nondisabled members of the public, which creates a sense of isolation and further segregation. By bringing people with disabilities out into the community, community-supported employment can promote more interaction between people with disabilities and nondisabled people.

Breaking down ableism and social attitudes about people with disabilities requires actual interaction with disabled persons. Not just reading about them or attending ‘diversity workshops’ or interacting with them in a limited sense at events specifically designed for the purpose. It requires seeing people with disabilities as members of the workforce, interacting with them in environments like retail stores, or in line at the grocery store, or in any number of locations.

This is why disability rights activists have fought so hard for a focus on community-based care for people with disabilities, rather than isolation in institutions and other facilities with limited opportunities for social interaction.

If you want to take action on sheltered workshops and support community-based care and community-supported employment in your area, talk to your elected representatives. Find out about their stances on these issues, and ask them to advocate for better community support services. You might also want to do some reading on the Community Choice Act; ADAPT kindly provides readings and talking points on the subject.

On 19 December 2011, an unnamed woman, aged 41, believed to be from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, died of meningitis hours after her admission to hospital from the Aluche detention centre, in the suburbs of Madrid. A ruling on the death from the Madrid court which monitors the centre was highly critical of the ‘manifest overcrowding’ suffered by inmates, who are held six or eight to a cell, the lack of washing and toilet facilities or an infirmary, all of which facilitate the spread of infectious diseases. The court, which described conditions at Aluche as ‘particularly serious’, ordered the centre staff to segregate those who had had contact with the deceased and to ensure appropriate hospital treatment for anyone needing it. A month earlier, the court had to order centre staff to put a stop to the practice of locking cells and denying access to toilets (which are in the corridors), which was forcing women to relieve themselves in plastic bags, bottles or the small sinks in the cells.

Unnamed. Alone and in conditions that go beyond those most Europeans reserve for their house pets. I searched frantically for her name. I believe in the politics of names, of naming, of subjects, of people who have faces and feelings, lives and dreams. I thought of the dreams of this woman who traveled half the world to die of a preventable disease in the “land of civilization”. Samba M. That’s all I could find. A final act of dehumanization, her family name reduced to just an initial, stripped of her singularity and her personhood. She traveled following what I can assume to be dreams of a better future only to become an unnamed body in a Spanish detention center.

And then I went down the rabbit hole of the European Union’s policies on the treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers. This is not the first time it happens. Last year I wrote quite extensively about the corporate profits behind the detention of undocumented immigrants. This time, however, I was interested in the policies and enforcement that lead to the abuses. People die. We forget. More often than not, we are not even aware of these deaths. Each of these immigrants, a person, a human being killed by State policies and the arm that executes them. I desperately wanted to understand why.

Frontex

I keep insisting on our responsibility as legal residents or citizens of the EU for the ill treatment of migrants. I do not make friends when I stress that all of this is done in our names and for our sake. Most people tend to think of the State as an abstract, a body that is beyond individual responsibility and they do not see how we are the ones who give the State the mandate to act in our supposedly best interest. Nowhere is this more clear than in the Mission Statement of Frontex, the European Union agency in charge of border control:

Frontex strengthens the freedom and the security of the citizens of the EU by complementing the national border management systems of the Member States.

Frontex exists to “protect” us. Their motto is “Libertas, Securitas, Justitia” (Freedom, Safety, Justice) And under that pretense, the agency allows deaths like those of Samba M. to happen. For me, for my neighbors, for my friends, for the girl who works at the supermarket check out. For you, if you are reading this from one of the countries that are part of the Schengen agreement.

Like many administrative, legislative or judicial bodies that operate and run the European Union, Frontex is a rather obscure initiative. It is rarely mentioned in mainstream media and it is certainly not in the minds of European people, even though it is one of the most important agencies in the continent, in charge of border security of the EU with regards to non EU countries. Frontex’ mission is to help EU Member States implement EU rules on external border controls and to coordinate operational cooperation between Member States in the field of external border management. While it remains the task of each member state to control its own borders, the Agency is vested with the function to ensure that they all do so with the same high standard of efficiency. It started operating in 2005 and from that point onwards, the Agency has been increasing its power and reach every year. In October of 2011, the Council of the European Union acknowledged this need for increased power and logistics by adopting new rules for Frontex. Namely, from that moment on, the agency was at liberty to:

• buy or lease its own equipment (cars, vessels, helicopters etc.) or to buy such equipment in co-ownership with a member state;
• a co-leading role for the agency regarding joint operations and pilot projects;
• the creation of “European Border Guard Teams” as the common name for teams deployed during Frontex operations (be it joint operations, pilot projects or rapid border interventions);

Here’s where things get even more obscure and less accessible for the average European. Who is this Council of the European Union and what is their mandate? At this point, it should be noted that there are three prominent European Union institutions, each with distinctive and different tasks, but all bearing similarly confusing names:

• The Council of the European Union
• European Council
• Council of Europe

Each of these are not related to one another and have completely different purposes. However, this is hardly ever clarified for average Europeans. I suspect even well educated people would be at odds to identify each. I know it took me a good amount of intentional research to realize these differences.

In the case of Frontex, their mandate comes from the first of these three: The Council of the European Union. The Council of the European Union (sometimes just called the Council and sometimes still referred to as the Council of Ministers) is the institution in the essentially bicameral legislature of the European Union (EU) representing the executives of member states, the other legislative body being the European Parliament. The Council is composed of several configurations of twenty-seven national ministers (one per state). Basically, the Council of the European Union is the executive arm that represents the different countries’ executive, elected, democratic governments.

Coincidentally, a day after I came across the death of the Congolese woman in a Spanish internment camp, I received via email, through a newsletter I am subscribed to, Frontex’ Program of Work for 2012, which has just been released. (Link goes to PDF). From the manual:

Activities carried out by Frontex have been identified as ongoing and recurring delivery of products and services. For the next years those activities will remain within Frontex’ operational portfolio. During this time some of them will remain unchanged whereas others will see slight adjustments, dependent on the stage of the life cycle they have reached. Aligned with the internal security strategy the focus of Frontex’ operational activities also includes targeting organized crime at external borders.

Notice the language of corporate administration? We’ll get back to that later, but it is worth noting that even though this is a multi State operated Agency, the entire operation is seeped in corporate speak. There are no references to immigrants’ humanity, their rights as subjects or their freedom. The text does make vague statements about “upholding human rights” and “the values of human rights” but it is in such hazy and ambiguous terms that they might as well ditch the pretension altogether.

Strengthening freedom and security, one battered body at a time

In September 2011, Human Rights Watch released a report that certainly didn’t mince words: The EU’s Dirty Hands. Frontex Involvement in Ill-Treatment of Migrant Detainees in Greece (link to PDF).

The Guardian reported on the abuses:

Europe’s fledgling border police force has been knowingly aiding and abetting the serial abuse of migrants during its first major deployment on EU frontiers, Human Rights Watch said.

In a 62-page report on conditions in Greek asylum and detention centres, widely known to be disastrously dysfunctional, the organisation on Wednesday accused Frontex, the EU’s external borders agency, of turning a blind eye to the torture, beating, and systematic degradation of illegal migrants detained after crossing the border from Turkey.[…]

The European Commission confirmed on Wednesday that the Frontex guards were turning over arrested migrants to the Greek authorities, but denied all responsibility for what happened to the detainees.

“Frontex should not be held responsible for the failings of a member state, in this case Greece,” said Michele Cercone, the commission spokesman for internal affairs.

Around 200 Frontex officers were deployed on the Greek-Turkish border late last year because the EU felt the Greek authorities had lost control – it is thought 90% of people entering Europe illegally were arriving though this channel.

Of course the EU commission found no wrong doing. However, Human Rights Watch was adamant in their report. They held Frontex accountable for turning a blind eye on the abuses and for refusing to address the complaints and grievances expressed by the interviewed immigrants. From the report:

In December 2010, during the Rapid Border Intervention Teams deployment, Human Rights Watch visited detention centers in the Evros region of Greece and found that the Greek authorities were holding migrants, including members of vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied children, for weeks or months in conditions that amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment.

We found overcrowding to be a common problem in detention facilities in the Evros region. In Tychero, Feres, and Soufli, women were held in the same cells with men. The Feres police station held 97 detainees at the time of our visit, though the police said its capacity was 30. A 50-year-old Georgian woman detainee said, “You cannot imagine how dirty and difficult it is for me here….It’s not appropriate to be with these men. I don’t sleep at night. I just sit on a mattress.”

In Fylakio, by contrast, the authorities separated men from single women but detained unaccompanied children together with unrelated adults in large, overcrowded cells. Sewage was running on the floors, and the smell was hard to bear. Greek guards wore surgical masks when they entered the passageway between the large barred cells.

and then this:

Soufli is a municipality in the Evros region very close to the Evros River. In our visit to the Soufli police station, we once again found an extremely overcrowded, filthy and poorly lit facility, in which men and women were not separated. One of the Greek policemen there mentioned to the Human Rights Watch interpreter that two days previously a woman was raped in a cell by another detainee.

Human Rights Watch inquired if Frontex knew about the allegation. We received the following answer:

Frontex had got the information from the field about a case of alleged rape around 5/6 November 2010; Frontex immediately approached the Hellenic Police and asked them for internal investigation which was agreed. Frontex received a report stating that the alleged rape case was not confirmed by the investigation.[…]

At times, women were placed in the detention facility together with the men. Similar conditions existed at almost all the police premises visited by the [EU’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture] delegation. In the purpose-built Fylakio special holding facility for foreigners in the Evros region, irregular migrants, including juveniles and families with young children, were kept locked up for weeks and months in filthy, overcrowded, unhygienic cage-like conditions, with no daily access to outdoor exercise.

This operation, which lasted for more than four years, was dubbed Operation Poseidon. And for those interested, there are more press releases and technical information at Frontex’ site.

Each of these women, these children, these men… each of this people has a name. But just like Samba M., we will never know anything about them. Just unnamed stories in a report by one of the very few organizations who documented these cases. To give some more perspective into the numbers of nameless people who are part of this systematic policy of detentions and abuses of undocumented immigrants across the EU, I turned to the Global Detention Project. The data is, once again, scarce and the figures are not up to date. Moreover, I contend the disperse nature of this information is intentional. If we could group all these figures together, if we could present them in a comprehensive way, we would be witness to a human rights violation of catastrophic proportions. Just some examples:

Netherlands:

• In 2005, a total of 12,485 were detained;
• In 2006, 12,480;
• In 2007, 9,595;
• In 2008, 8,585

France:

The increase in the rise of deportations has led to a concomitant rise in detention capacity, which was 1,724 in 2007, up from 739 in 2003—an increase of 133 percent. The number of persons detained per annum rose from 28,220 in 2003 to 35,008 in 2007. The legal maximum length of detention was raised from 12 days to 32 days in 2003, albeit the average length of detention in 2007 was 10.17 days

Spain:

In 2009, Spanish authorities authorized the detention of 11,573 persons on immigration-related grounds (Ministerio de Justicia 2010, p. 888). 55 percent of these were apprehended and detained while attempting to enter the country. An additional 1,930 migrants were held in detention centers in order to facilitate their expulsion from the country, in lieu of fulfilling a penal sentence of less than six years (Ministerio del Justicia 2010, p. 888). The total number of immigration-related detainees registered in Spain during 2009 was 16,590, down from 26,032 in 2008. 90 percent of these were male, and 53 percent were expelled from the country (Ministerio de Justicia 2010, p. 889).

Belgium:

A total of 6,902 persons were detained in Belgium in 2008, down somewhat from 9,101 in 2003 (OE 2009, p.122). This amounted to an average of 520 persons being held in detention on any given day in 2008

Italy:

According to the 2007 De Mistura Commission report, some 25,000 non-citizens were detained in immigration detention centres between 2005-2006[…] In the year 2005, the Interior Ministry registered the deportation of some 26,985 undocumented migrants from Italy

Greece:

The number of irregular immigrants apprehended in Greece was reportedly very high at the turn of the century, peaking at 259,403 in 2000. The numbers then purportedly fell dramatically to 66,351 in 2005. However, apprehensions appear to be on the rise once more, as 146,337 immigrants were reportedly taken into custody in 2008. In 2005, the Greek government issued 40,649 expulsion decisions and removed 21,219 persons from the territory

Overwhelming data, right? Are you drowned in numbers already? And these are the figures of only six EU countries. To give a further idea of the magnitude of the detentions, I searched for a detailed map of internment camps and detention centers across the EU. I could not find an up to date one. The most recent one I could find, courtesy of Migregroup, a French NGO that documents issues of immigration across the EU, is from 2009 (click on the image for full size):

A map of the European continent and surrounding areas across the Mediterranean Sea. The map portrays the number of detention centers and internment camps for undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers

[Image description: A map of the European continent and surrounding areas across the Mediterranean Sea. The map portrays the number of detention centers and internment camps for undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers]

The number of such detention places in Switzerland was so high that Migregroup could not mark them all, as they would exceed the borders of the country in the map. It is also worth noting that several of these centers are outside the EU, in places like Morocco or Libya as part of what in the EU is known as “European Neighborhood Policy”, to prevent people from reaching EU borders altogether and imprison them before they are able to reach the continent.

The official position of the EU regarding the internment camps in Africa is that they are not part of EU policy. However, as we will later see, an official delegation of Frontex visited them in Libya to strengthen cooperation. From the history behind these camps outside the EU:

In 2003, given the growing number of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced a “new vision for refugees”. This consisted of two key points: the establishment of reception centres for refugees outside EU territory, and military intervention into crisis areas to nip in the bud refugee movements in the direction of Europe.

Although EU interior ministers and the European Parliament officially rejected such plans, the EU summit of European leaders in June 2003 in Greece quietly gave the green light to Blair’s plan to establish refugee camps. Within 12 months, the first pilot projects were begun.

In 2003, EU officials claim to have rejected these plans. However, during my research of Frontex and the scope of their authority and initiatives, I came across a document that suggests otherwise. In “External Processing – conditions applying to the processing of asylum applications outside the European Union”, dated december 2010, The Dutch Advisory Committee on Migration Affairs (ACVZ) actually offers two conclusions that are in line with the 2003 proposal by Blair (moreover, Blair’s cabinet proposal is cited in the document as prior works on the subject). This advisory committee consists of ten experts on migration affairs and it is an independent consultative council that was established by law in The Netherlands. The committee offers recommendations to the government and parliament on migration issues. Their recommendations were:

• If the decision is taken to develop external processing, it should be done at EU level.
• Until there is clarity concerning the legal basis for EU action in the area of external processing, focus on achieving the conditions for external processing, including harmonisation of European asylum policy and a quota arrangement for the distribution of persons in need of international protection.

“Distribution of persons”, an euphemism to mean that asylum seekers should be assigned to countries within the European Union on a “quota” basis (i.e. 20 for Spain, 28 for France, etc.).

Hermes, the god of migrants and travelers

From Global Detention Project:

As part of the 2008 Italy and Libya “Friendship Pact”—the Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between the Italian Republic and Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya—Italy agreed to provide Libya $5 billion in infrastructure projects over 25 years to compensate for abuses committed during its rule over the country. It calls for “intensifying cooperation in fighting terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration,” and includes an agreement to strengthen Libyan border controls, 50 percent of which is to be funded by Italy, and 50 percent by the EU. […]

Human rights organisations and media reports have alleged that Italy provides significant funding to Libya for the construction of immigration detention facilities (Brothers 2007), and that “once the Italian government has expelled foreigners back to Libya, it also pays for charter flights for Libya to send the people home,” including some fifty charter flights that transported 5,668 people between August 2003 and December 2004.

And about the abuses that transpired in these camps, I revert to the World Socialist Website for some more details:

As early as 2000, racist pogroms claimed the lives of some 150 black Africans. Conditions are appalling in the 15 refugee camps in the country, in which up to 60,000 refugees are crammed. There are not enough beds or food for the inmates. Migrants are subjected to torture and ill treatment and expulsions are carried out regardless of the legal situation of those affected.
Living conditions in the camps were so catastrophic that in some cases inmates gave their last belongings to the guards to be able to escape. For many, the journey to Niger ended with death in the desert. Human rights groups say there have been more than 1,600 deaths in the Sahara.

Despite this, since 2003 Italy has regularly flown refugees who were stranded on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa back to Libya. Between 2003 and 2005 it also provided finance for the Libyan authorities for an additional 60 deportation flights. The close collaboration at an economic level and in stemming the flow of refugees led Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to praise Gaddafi in October 2004 as “a good friend and freedom-loving prime minister” at the inauguration of a gas pipeline from Libya to Italy.

In 2007, a delegation from the European border agency Frontex visited Libya. Its report once again documents massive human rights violations. Nevertheless, Frontex recommended the supply of command posts, radar surveillance, patrol boats and other equipment to Libya.

Once the uprisings across the Middle East popularly known as “the Arab Spring” started, thousands of people flee in an attempt to reach the EU. That is when Frontex started what is known as “Operation Hermes”. As a continuation of the “outsourcing” and “externalization” of the administration of European Borders, the EU deployed a massive operation to ensure that migrants and asylum seekers could never pass the “fortress” around Europe. This operation was a natural continuation of the policies I mentioned above, to keep migrants in internment camps around North Africa. Moreover, Frontex guards were in charge of delivering the detainees to such camps, just like in the case of the Greek abuses documented by Human Rights Watch. From State Watch:

Operation Hermes involves ‘focusing on organising return operations to the countries of origin’. This will be organised jointly between Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Malta and Spain (who are providing the naval and aerial aspects for Operation Hermes).

I could not find an end date for Operation Hermes and some sources suggest that this is still ongoing. The NGO Boats4People states on a press release from last week:

Every single day, small boats are getting lost and sink in the Strait of Sicily, off the Apulian coast or in the Tunisian, Maltese and Italian waters. The migrants on board are sometimes being rescued in tragic circumstances. They continue to leave the African continent, in spite of the political stabilization in the Maghreb-Mashrek area. Each shipwreck and each tragedy adds to the more than 2000 migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since early 2011, as recorded by the UNHCR.

It is also noticeable that the Search And Rescue operations (SAR) are often taking place too late. They demonstrate a lack of will from the EU to welcome and assist the exiles, whereas it has a wide range of means available to do so. Frontex, in particular through its Hermes operation in the Strait of Sicily, along with to the NATO, the navy and air forces, as well as fix and mobile radars are controlling everything that happens in the Mediterranean Sea.

A recent news release from Frontex points to the success of these border controls (and incidentally, leads to an unintentionally hilarious example of “proactivity” on their behalf on another news release from the next day). On January 19th, Frontex released their Analysis of Migratory Trends at the EU External Borders for Q3, 2011:

Following the fall of the Khadafy’s regime migrants came mostly from Tunisia and Egypt. Migrants from Tunisia remain the most significant nationality with 3370 detections, followed by some 3000 Nigerians. The growing number of Nigerians detected at the European borders suggests that Nigerian facilitation networks are becoming more sophisticated and the numbers of migrants are likely to increase.

And then, the next day, on January 19th, we are treated with this item, Frontex signs Working Arrangement with Nigeria:

Specific exchanges between Frontex and the Nigerian authorities are foreseen with Frontex’s Risk Analysis Unit, with the participation of the competent Nigerian authorities in relevant meetings. Capacity-building measures may also be undertaken with the aim of enhancing integrated border management, including in the areas of training as well as research and development activities.

The language of corporations and the administration of human beings

I mentioned at the beginning of this piece that all operations manuals related to Frontex are marred with corporate speak. I was puzzled by this rhetoric, mostly because it is not usually part of the bureaucratic tone of government agencies or different governing bodies. More often than not, those adopt a tone closer to legalese than to corporate utterances of “growth”, “service”, “stakeholders” and “customer focus”. And then I came across this document, from December 2009, which dispelled all my doubts. From Study on the feasibility of establishing specialised branches of Frontex. Final Report:

Frontex invited external consultants to take part in a competitive tender procedure to award the contract for the study on the feasibility of establishing specialized branches of Frontex.

And the coup de grace:

As a result of the tender procedure, Deloitte has been awarded the contract to perform the study.

Because nothing says democratic governance than outsourcing the treatment of people to a New York based corporation involved in accusations of fraud and lack of transparency. A company that some point as partially responsible for the collapse of the financial system in the US, showing a total disregard for the consequences of said collapse in the lives of every day Americans also serves in an advisory/ consulting role on topics of the administration of European borders and the treatment of immigrants. This outlandish, exasperating mixture of corporate affairs already suspect of unethical behaviors, with the very concrete lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world is what passes for European democracy?

It is not clear how many of the recommendations in Deloitte’s report have been implemented, however, I have noted a few notable coincidences. In the 2009 report, Deloitte recommends the creation of a Mobile Operations Project Teams (MOPT), to act during temporary assignments. From the document:

Mobile Operations Project Teams (MOPT) would be specialised branches created in the areas of planned operations only for the period of the operation. The main purpose of these branches would be to support planning and execution of operations. MOPTs would be a pool of experts – Frontex employees and experts from Member States (MS) having broad experience in planning and coordinating of operations as well as in gathering information for risk analysis and situation monitoring purposes during operations. MOPTs would be fully responsible for delivering detailed operations plan to HQ (as a final deliverable of planning stage). During operations, tasks performed would involve bringing local authorities to work together, supporting hosting officers in managing all officers taking part in operations (briefing, making sure all officers are assigned to tasks according to their field of expertise), assuring proper allocation and use of equipment in the most effective way according to planning assumptions.

Cue in 2010, and the border operation in Greece that I mentioned above regarding the damning report from Human Rights Watch. From Frontex press kit:

The basic idea of Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABIT) was to create such a mechanism that could allow, in case of urgent and exceptional migratory pressure, rapid deployment of border guards on a European level. Rapid Border Intervention Teams are intended to provide short‐term assistance. The responsibility for the control and surveillance of the external borders remains to lie with the Member States.

In Frontex we trust

I do not have enough words to convey the gravity of this situation. I am overcome by impotence and by grief. All I can do is offer these disjointed ideas with the intention of raising the alarm. I insist, people die under our watch. Women are raped, beaten, abused because we have given the State the power to do so on our behalf. If you read this far, you might be perplexed, bewildered that this is happening in a continent that praises itself for representing “human civilization”, “dignity” and the upholding of human rights. I shall remind you of this from one of the opening paragraphs:

… authorities separated men from single women but detained unaccompanied children together with unrelated adults in large, overcrowded cells. Sewage was running on the floors, and the smell was hard to bear. Greek guards wore surgical masks when they entered the passageway between the large barred cells.

This is why we must care. Children in such conditions that the guards who are supposedly watching over them have to enter the space wearing surgical masks. And we do this because we need to “protect” our standard of living, “protect” our jobs, our access to lives worth living. However, when protecting our well being comes at the expense of others, whose lives are as worthy as ours, every bit as deserving of human dignity and respect, then we have become monsters. This upholding of values only in nominal terms is not “civilization” neither does it represent respect for humanity. This is outrageous and we should be ashamed.

Because, you know. Fetal tissue in food is a pressing public health issue that requires immediate action.

We’ve just been reminded by Rick Santorum that pregnancy after a rape is ‘a gift from g-d,’ indicating the extreme to which some anti-choicers will go to protect ‘the sanctity of life.’ For people who think life is a gift from the heavens, though, they’re surprisingly cavalier with the lives of people providing reproductive health services:

Since 1977, the National Abortion Federation has documented eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 41 bombings, 175 instances of arson, 391 invasions, 100 butyric acid attacks, 662 anthrax threats, 523 instances of stalking and 418 death threats against clinic workers. (source)

Message received: If you provide reproductive health services, including abortion, you wear a target on your back. Abortion providers and the staff who assist and support them, from receptionists to nurses, do things like wearing bulletproof vests to work. Consulting with security services to discuss safety issues. Making sure their numbers are unlisted.

Meanwhile, people seeking abortions and reproductive health services are forced to run a gauntlet to get them, while clinic escorts do their best to protect them from the abusive and horrific tactics of protesters trying to limit their access to reproductive health services. You should not have to look at pictures of dead fetuses to pick up a prescription, people, any more than you should have to go to work in a bulletproof car.

Abortion providers and their support teams care so much about making sure people get access to the health care they need that they are willing to risk their lives to provide it. Dr. Tiller was threatened and shot at before his assassination, for example, enduring the kind of abuse that would make most people throw their hands up in despair and go ‘okay, enough.’ Abortion providers have stepped up to fill gaps in reproductive health services, to cover for people who  have been murdered or terrorised so much that they can’t work.

Which is why the latest from Operation Rescue gives me chills. The extremist organisation is creating a database of service providers, their locations, and personal information, which is basically like a Rolodex for stalkers, protesters, and of course readers who will decide to put the violent rhetoric of the anti-choice movement into violent action. Recent years have seen an escalation in violence against reproductive health care providers and this website represents a very real threat, one that appears to be under evaluation by government agencies and law enforcement to determine if it violates the law.

This is terrorism. Seriously:

1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.

While reproductive rights organisations have long been labeling it what it is, the media seems more reluctant. These attacks on reproductive rights are not just ‘radical,’ they are not the work of ‘activists,’ they are not ‘worrying,’ they are terrorism. And they need to be reported as such, because we need to start talking about why only some things are defined as domestic terrorism in the United States, and why only some people are held accountable for acts of terrorism.

It is not coincidental that the people behind terrorism aimed at shutting down access to reproductive health care are usually white, Christian, and middle class. That plays a significant role in why their actions, which involve things like threatening people with death, attempting to bomb facilities, and suggesting they have access to bioweapons, are apparently not considered terrorism. Quite simply, a failure to label domestic terrorism as such when it involves white, middle class Christians is a reflection of racism and the other -isms that dominate social attitudes in the US, because you can damn well bet that if the people involved were nonwhite or people of colour, low-income, and/or non-Christian, they would be treated as the enemy, and the government as well as the media would be vilifying them.

Instead, the vile tactics of the anti-abortion movement have been tolerated for an extended period of time, and this has given members of the movement a considerable degree of boldness and bravery. Dr. Tiller was shot in broad daylight in church. This is terrorism. And it’s time for everyone, not just the reproductive justice movement, to start talking about it like it is. This is terrorism. This is terrorism. This. Is. Terrorism.

It’s also time for everyone to stop distancing themselves from the effects of violent rhetoric by attributing violent action to ‘crazy people.’ Members of the anti-abortion movement are not crazy. They are domestic terrorists who are willing to stop at nothing to achieve a political aim, and they use their rhetoric to inflame their movement, justify their actions, and draw followers. This is terrorism.

I love chances! I do! I do! Especially when they vindicate the downtrodden, the ones that have been beaten up, those who are finally rewarded with a possibility, with an opportunity. Anne Sinclair, newly appointed editorial director at The Huffington Post in France got a chance. Anne Sinclair, the wife of former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is now under public scrutiny because of how the silent support of her husband reflects on her new role as head of a major media outlet.

In the days preceding the press event where Arianna Huffington introduced her to media, Ms. Sinclair gave an interview with French magazine Elle. She didn’t have many kind words for those she described as “self proclaimed feminists”:

“I am a feminist, I always have been; I always will be. I have been part of all of the battles, on abortion, on equality at work, on the dignity of women here and elsewhere, on the role of women in public life. I think I have done at least as much as packs of ‘feminists’ for the advancement of women in men’s fields…

“To be feminist is to battle for all that; it is not to interfere in the private life of other women, to decide in their place what is or isn’t moral.”

Raise your hand if you are a self proclaimed feminist! Or have you been appointed in your feminism by a higher authority? How does this even work?! I am now confused! But leaving aside my confusion, I tend to agree with Ms. Sinclair on the “not judging women for their private choices”. So, I am not going to judge her for sticking to a husband who has been involved in a very controversial accusation of rape. However, I do have to ask how someone who is, to use the same rhetoric she poses on us, “a self proclaimed feminist” and a socialist, able to support a man who used to head one of the most noxious financial institutions in the world? I will not judge her because of what she deems to be “private matters”, but I have to ask how she manages to reconcile her personal politics with her husband’s (and her own) praxis.

Moreover, Ms. Sinclair is now in charge of a media outlet with a global reach that has to be measured in the millions of readers per day. She is now, officially, managing mainstream world views, our mainstream world views. Back in July, amid the peak of the Strauss-Kahn case, I wrote about “Systems that force us to lie”:

Why is nobody holding Dominique Strauss-Kahn accountable for the lies that the IMF told those of us who were subjected to their policies and adjustment plans? Those lies that promised prosperity, development and abundance but instead led to misery, broken lives and even death? Why are the survival related lies of a chambermaid punishable by denial of justice whereas the lies of the alleged perpetrator are rewarded with a political career?

Back then, when I asked “Why is nobody holding Dominique Strauss-Kahn accountable?” I was specifically talking about mainstream media. This management of mainstream world views, of ideology and rhetoric is not innocent, nor is it removed from the consequences it carries on our daily lives. So, I have to wonder about the ethical constructions that allow someone like Ms. Sinclair, one of such managers of ideology, to remain married to the guy who brought so much suffering to vast regions of the Global South. How does someone who claim to be concerned with matters of “the dignity of women here and elsewhere” reconcile her politics with the fact that she is married to a man who has been, for the most of his career, in the business of spreading indignity. In the interview for Elle quoted above, she proclaims:

Under the headline “Anne Sinclair: ‘I am neither a saint, nor a victim. I am a free woman’”

These systems that force us to lie in order to survive carry the implication that some people are free while others are permanently bound by their oppression. Those who must lie in order to survive are bound to the consequences of their lies if they are ever found out. Of her ordeal dealing with the treatment of the rape accusations by media, Ms. Sinclair had this to say:

“To be an object of speculation, of permanent harassment to know what is happening in my home, has something about it that is Orwellian, totalitarian.”

I would tend to agree with her, especially considering how European mainstream media promotes these exact same tactics to control immigrants and ethnic minorities. Those, too, are the permanent object of speculation (is X group a threat to our culture?!); permanent harassment (should burqas be banned and the women who wear them punished accordingly?) and a vigilant attitude towards what happens in people’s homes (which language does X group speak at home? Should this be forbidden?). But obviously, the new head of The Huffington Post France is only affected by these tactics when they impact on her personal life. According to her world view, she should not be bound by the systems that force us to lie.

From the feature at The New York Times:

She dodged a question on whether she would support the Socialist candidate François Hollande for president of France and denied that she had played a role in her husband’s plans to run for president on the Socialist ticket. “I wasn’t invested in the candidacy of my husband,” she said.

From Anup Shah’s analysis of Structural Adjustment as a cause of poverty:

As detailed further below, the IMF and World Bank provide financial assistance to countries seeking it, but apply a neoliberal economic ideology or agenda as a precondition to receiving the money. For example:

• They prescribe cutbacks, “liberalization” of the economy and resource extraction/export-oriented open markets as part of their structural adjustment.
• The role of the state is minimized.[…]

Governments therefore must:

• spend less
• reduce consumption
• remove or decrease financial regulations

I do not have enough caps locks to emphasize how this is THE OPPOSITE OF SOCIALISM! (moreover, this is the point where my frustration reaches such a peak that it could only be adequately expressed with an animated GIF of my head hitting the desk repeatedly).

These are the economic measures and structural adjustments that her “self proclaimed socialist” husband was promoting as head of the IMF. So, while Ms. Sinclair would like us to think that she is beyond judgement for private matters, I believe we owe it to our “self proclaimed feminism”, to hold her accountable for remaining with a man who has done nothing but spread inequality for the women she so claims to defend and support. While she seems to operate under the assumption that we should be guided by the principle of “Private vices, public virtues”, I have to point out that while she has the privilege of declaring herself “a free woman”, many do not as a result of her husband’s policies. And those will continue to be judged on the basis of the world views that Ms. Sinclair will now be managing and promoting on behalf of The Huffington Post. If these world views are as “socialist” as her husband’s politics have been, we might need to re-define the word altogether. And since we are there, we might have to redefine feminism as well, for it surely does not fit Ms. Sinclair’s egoist demands for privacy and respect for her choices while she remained married to the man who had no respect for the dignity of people who live in nations of the Global South.

The law, enacted in 2011, requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound on pregnant women, show and describe the image to them, and play sounds of the fetal heartbeat. Though women can decline to view images or hear the heartbeat, they must listen to a description of the exam…unless she qualifies for an exception due to rape, incest or fetal abnormality.

This is not the first state with such a law and I fear it’s going to become a growing trend in the US, right along with dismembered fetus anti-abortion ads on television. The right wing is bent on making abortions as difficult to access as possible through every possible means, and that includes coercive, invasive, and unwanted interference from their medical providers. As spelled out under the law, this is yet another hoop in the series people with unwanted or dangerous pregnancies must jump through to get access to medical care, and it’s a humiliating and shaming one.

It’s also, as was argued by reproductive rights advocates, a potential free speech infringement on abortion providers, who would be required to comply with the law even if they didn’t agree with it. The court felt this was not the case; apparently, if you want to be a doctor, nurse, or other care provider involved in the provision of abortion services, you need to comply with laws you vehemently disagree with. The government, affirmed by the court, can order you to shame and humiliate your patients before you can proceed with the treatment they are requesting.

Laws of this nature literally put mouths in the words of abortion providers. I cannot even begin to understand how this does not violate free speech rights; making someone say something is just as bad as denying someone the opportunity to say something. Legal scholars among us, I suspect, will have more insight into this aspect of the decision and I’d be curious to hear their thoughts.

Meanwhile, pharmacists can refuse to dispense medications because doing so would violate their beliefs, claiming a “conscience clause.” Care providers can refuse to participate in abortion services (including treatment for miscarriages) under the same “conscience clause” protection. But people who feel subjecting a patient to an invasive and cruel proceeding can’t refuse because it violates their conscience. There is a clear double standard here, and one I am not terribly impressed with.

Sparks [a US District Judge who originally put enforcement on hold] wrote the law “compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree, regardless of any medical necessity, and irrespective of whether the pregnant women wish to listen.” (source)

Texas, and other states with coercive pre-abortion sonogram laws, has written ideology directly into the law books. And it’s an anti-reproductive justice, anti-autonomy, anti-sound medicine ideology. It’s an ideology that directly endangers patients, partners, and family, and it constitutes a significant interference in the practice of medicine. It’s curious that many of the people advocating for such laws make a lot of noise about “state’s rights” and “independence,” except, apparently, for any circumstances involving pregnancy and medical services related to it.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, “routine ultrasound is not considered medically necessary as a component of first-trimester abortion.” The only reason to have such a law, in other words, is to attempt to coerce people into not getting abortions. Advocates for such laws, of course, claim that people don’t know what they really want, and thus need one last chance to back out of the procedure; this despite the fact that at facilities offering abortion with a reproductive justice focus, patients are provided with counseling, opportunities to talk, and numerous chances to decline the procedure and pursue alternatives, in a pressure-free environment. The goal is not to churn out abortions, but to make sure patients get the medical care they need, whatever that might be.

Guttmacher also points out that ultrasound laws add substantially to the cost of abortion, making it further inaccessible to low-income people. Yet another tactic to make it harder for people to get the safe and compassionate health care services they need. It doesn’t just create problems for patients, but also for providers, some of whom may be effectively forced out of business by increasingly byzantine regulations that make it harder and harder for them to operate within the law. This, too, is deliberate; lawmakers claim it is to protect the public, but of course what they really want is to make it impossible for people to get abortions by closing down abortion providers and creating an endless series of obstacles for patients that limits their access to the few providers available.

The fight for full access to safe and compassionate abortion services has never really stopped, but 2012 is going to be particularly vicious. As Akiba Solomon points out, it will also be heavily focused on women of colour, as indeed the war on reproductive rights has been all along. We cannot allow anyone to become a casualty of a vicious political agenda that is designed to dehumanise and turn pregnant people into a second class, and it looks like we’re going to be putting out fires in all corners of the country this year.

I value access to health services for all, and that is something we should all be fighting for, which means considering the complex intersections involved in reproductive rights at the same time we don’t lose track of the larger picture. That means talking about disability, talking about race, talking about class, talking about gender, in the ongoing efforts to protect access to reproductive health services for everyone. These things are not divisive and they are not side issues. They are central to the fight. We cannot erase people in our haste to oppose ideological, agenda-driven laws, and that means listening closely, valuing all voices with a stake in this conversation, and working together to ensure that everyone who needs sex education, or birth control, or adoption counseling, or abortion, can get it without shame or judgment.

Here’s Presidential candidate Rick Perry on the law, pandering to his base:

“The sooner we start providing sonograms to those considering abortions, the more lives we can save,” Perry added in a statement. “The Fifth Circuit’s decision requires abortion providers to immediately comply with the sonogram law, appropriately allowing Texas to enforce the will of our state, which values and protects the sanctity of life.”

This is what we’re up against. All of us. Together. Excuse me while I vomit violently for a moment, and then go donate to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

A female student turned to the guy who’d brought up the topic of semen and validation and asked him, “So you’re saying that when a man comes on a woman’s face, it’s not about making her dirty — it’s about making him feel clean?” The young man blushed, the class tittered. “Yes,” he said, “that’s it. And that’s what makes it so hot.”

Only oh, I forgot to mention, the purifying act is not for you, feminist woman, target audience of Professor Feminism’s column. The cleansing is for him!

Wait. Cum again? Exactly how is this defense of the act feminist? Or how is this justification for the act based on its benefits for women? Or how is this a pro woman stance?? HOW DOES THIS JUSTIFICATION PUT THE FEELINGS, WELL BEING AND SEXUALITY OF THE WOMAN INVOLVED AHEAD OF THE “PURIFYING” PROPERTIES FOR THE JIZZER? It doesn’t. And that’s because in spite of all his claims, all his protestations and even his academic position, Hugo Schwyzer is not a feminist. He is a feminist poseur. Which is a very different beast.

I suppose most people are, by now, aware of the very first blogging opprobrium of 2012 involving Hugo Schwyzer and Clarisse Thorn. For those who might not have followed it, it started at Feministe when Clarisse Thorn published an interview with Schwyzer. Harsh criticism over the figure of Schwyzer poured in the comment section; specifically, over his past attempted murder of a former girlfriend. Ms. Thorn closed the thread and a very vocal disagreement over her silencing followed. Caperton published an apology on behalf of all writers at Feministe and allowed the comment section to remain open so that people could continue discussing the issue. Maia posted a response to these events at Alas! and some subsequent discussion ensued there as well.

So, one would expect that this would have died the natural death that follows such storms in the feminist blogosphere. I thought nothing else could be added to the topic by now. However, because Schwyzer strives for the spotlight; and because he seems to need the spotlight, is that I feel compelled to challenge his latest post at Jezebel. Because I am a woman and a feminist, and a writer to boot, it is that I must challenge his androcentric, cis-centric, heteronormative, chauvinist, faux feminism. After all, I am as equipped as he is to claim the label, even if I lack the institutional and media backing that is afforded to him.

Because, unlike him, I do not refer to my participation in feminism as “Herding sluts”. I do not view women as cattle or as receptacles for a man’s semen in some faux empowering act that gives prevalence to a man’s sexuality. Because unlike Schwyzer, I do not seek to profit from a movement towards whose members I show, again and again, nothing but racist contempt.

And since we are on the subject of racist contempt, I’d like to point out a bit of contextual background here. Jezebel was founded by Anna Holmes, a Woman of Color. The Jezebel stereotype often wielded against Black women, portraying them alternatively as sex starving sluts, dangerous, oversexualized and a whole host of other negative characteristics. The fact that Schwyzer published this trite on a site bearing such name, without including any kind of racial context in his promotion of “cum in the face” sexuality is doubly offensive. Because such denigrating acts have been used on WoC for centuries, and while members of the dominant culture can now reclaim it as “empowering”, there are still entire groups of people trying to battle the stereotypes associated with the “Jezebel” label. However, Professor Feminism does not need any racial or sociocultural context in his ideology. Because, as he has already informed us, he is WASPiness incarnated! (and he also has contempt for non WASPs appropriating signs of his culture)

This is also the man who wrote a column nonchalantly outing a woman’s infidelity and his possible paternity of a young boy who is being raised by someone else. PROFESSOR FEMINISM IS REALLY PRO-WOMAN! At least for as long as women can serve his self centered purposes.

That someone who has a predatory past, who has on numerous occasions displayed very racist ideas and who called his participation in women’s rights events as “herding sluts” is allowed to lecture people on what constitutes a healthy expression of sexuality is alarming. And it is shameful that more feminists are not clamoring for his silence on these topics. And if we had any doubt about the nepotism operating in contemporary, mainstream feminism, in his Jezebel article he rewards Clarisse Thorn for the grief she endured through the recent scandal by referring to her as an authority on the subject of female sexuality. Because Professor Feminism wants us all to know that those who stick for him will be rewarded with exposure in mainstream media.

Some feminists cannot understand why many people refuse to be affiliated with feminism. They cannot possibly conceive why someone would feel that they do not belong to a movement that is supposed to be about empowerment, equality and utopia. For as long as we collectively allow someone like Hugo Schwyzer to take central roles as spokespersons for feminism in mainstream media, we should not be surprised when people have nothing but disdain for our movement. If this is the face of feminism that is allowed to lecture women on what constitutes rights, sex and relationships, then we might as well close shop and call it a day. Because we have collectively failed. When someone like Professor Feminism is allowed to declare himself a “leader”, then we might as well acknowledge that the patriarchy and the kyriarchy are running our movement. And nothing would please the patriarchy more than to jizz on our faces.

Voting while disabled. Yes, we vote!

The exact number of inaccessible polling places in the United States isn’t known, although this undated article puts the number at around 20,000, in direct violation of multiple laws. Various clauses which enforce accessibility in polling places to some degree can be found in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984, the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. That’s a whole lot of legislation. 22 years after passage of the ADA, we’re still struggling to make polling places accessible, let alone address full access and inclusion in society for people with disabilities. 

Accessibility is a process and a continuum, not an endpoint; many checklists of polling place accessibility focus on things like ramps, lowered voting booths, stalls with audio voting systems for people with visual impairments so they can vote privately, an accessible parking space near the polling place, and other strategies to accommodate most people with physical disabilities. None of these things would actually help me vote, although I still firmly believe they should be available at every polling place.

I need a quiet place to vote. This is not provided at polling places. Other people may need other accessibility modifications, and most Secretaries of State freely admit that their goal is to make most polling places accessible to most people with disabilities. This is not everyone, and considerable leeway is permitted with decisions about accessibility needs. They are required to send notifications if an assigned polling place is not accessible, but those notifications rely on a narrow definition of ‘accessibility’ and also on reports from poll workers and inspectors who may not catch accessibility problems.

If a voter doesn’t ask to be reassigned to an accessible polling place or ask for an absentee ballot, that voter may arrive on voting day only to find out that it is not actually possible to vote. Or a voter may not be able to go to a reassigned voting location; maybe paratransit is too busy on election day. Maybe there’s no bus route. Maybe all the accessible buses are ‘broken.’ Maybe no cab will pick up a wheelchair user to head to the polls, and ridesharing organizations aren’t prepared to accommodate a disabled voter who needs a ride to cast a ballot.

At the polls themselves, disabled voters encounter disenfranchisement and privacy violations, and I hear about it with every election. Blind voters told no ballots are available for them but a polling place worker will mark their ballots for them. Wheelchair users who are forced to vote in the middle of a crowd of people because there’s no lowered polling station for them to use. Voters with intellectual disabilities told they can’t have an aide help them fill out the ballot.

These things are not just violations of the law; they are also acts of voter suppression. The disabled population of the United States is extremely large, and many people with disabilities want to be politically active and engaged. We want to vote, we want to participate in the political process, we want to submit comment on public events. We are often turned away from our polling places, put in a position where we need to justify our presence at the polls, or told we can’t vote unless we are willing to do so in public, a profound violation of the premise that ballots should remain secret.

Systemic voter suppression in the United States targets a number of populations and it is usually tangled up with multiple -isms. In this case, ableism plays a significant role in disabled voter suppression. There’s a belief that we don’t vote or shouldn’t be allowed to; there are some people who believe that voting rights shouldn’t be extended to people with mental illnesses, intellectual disabilities, cognitive disabilities, or developmental disabilities. There is an attitude that we ‘contribute nothing to society’ and thus our voices don’t count at the polls and we shouldn’t play a role in electing the officials who shape the policy that has a profound impact on our lives. We are treated as ‘drains on the system’ because some of us rely on government benefits to survive, and on those grounds, we are told that we should not be ‘allowed’ to vote. As though voting is a privilege, and not a right.

People with disabilities are also more likely to be poor, caught in the whiplash of voter suppression tactics aimed at people in poverty, like voter identification requirements and restrictions on early voting. The disabled community includes nonwhite people and people of colour, both of whom are targeted by racist voting legislation, as well as prisoners and ex-convicts, disenfranchised by law in many states and trapped in a highly racist ‘justice system’ in the process. This is a case where the intersection of voter suppression activities can become truly dizzying.

There are a number of measures people can take to protect voting rights for the disabled community, as well as other communities commonly impacted by civil rights violations at the polls.

If you are a poll worker. Check to see if your polling place is accessible. If you don’t know if it’s accessible, contact a local disability rights group for advice and assistance. Consider asking if someone is available to speak during the poll worker orientation on disability topics, accessibility, and the law, to make sure everyone is on the same page. If there are accessibility problems, bring them to the attention of the government agency that handles voting in your area. Ask them to consider moving the polling place to an accessible location, and make sure notices are sent out to alert voters to the problem.

If you are a voter. Be watchful at the polls (without violating voter privacy!). Watch for signs of fishy behaviour and don’t be afraid to report them to the Department of Justice as well as organisations like Election Protection. Organisations like Disability Rights Texas also maintain voter hotlines and there may be one in your area as well.  What’s fishy behaviour? Seeing voters turned away, poll workers not allowing voters to use aides to help them vote, lack of disabled voting equipment, clear access problems like lack of ramps and parking, service animals turned away, people forced to vote in public because there is no accessible private space. Just for example. Civil rights violations at the polls are sometimes subtle, so be alert.

If someone appears to be having a hard time, approach discreetly and ask if the person needs assistance. If the person says “no,” accept that answer.

Write letters to the editor pointing out accessibility concerns at the polls in advance of primaries and the general election. Write followups reporting on problems at the polls after the election. If you see reports of civil rights violations, signal boost them to make sure they don’t fall out of the public eye, whether it’s a person of colour turned away on a spurious ID mismatch or a disabled voter kept out of the polling place by a flight of stairs.

Don’t let disenfranchisement by default happen on your watch!

The military has been struggling for some time with a growing suicide rate among veterans and soldiers, along with general mental health problems in the military community. Stress of participating in extended military conflict tends to put people at risk of, or exacerbate, mental health conditions. While aware of this, the military hasn’t figured out an effective way to deal with it. Perhaps because the most effective way to deal with it is to take soldiers out of combat, which isn’t being presented as a viable option.

Trying to find a way to address the rising rates of mental health problems, and the negative public associations that come along with it, the military has cast about for a variety of solutions. The latest is a real doozy. Welcome the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Programme, which aims to change everything for military mental health both by assessing soldiers more fully when they join the military and providing them with discussions about mental health issues as part of their training.

In theory, this might seem like a good idea, but of course the execution is something very, very different. It’s boostrapping supreme, as the poster child of the programme illustrates, and before we go on, be advised that this article, and what I am about to quote, have a strong content warning for rape. 

Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum found out what combat stress was in the back of a pickup during the first Gulf War in 1991 when one of her Iraqi captors unzipped her flight suit and, as she lay there with two broken arms and an injured eye, sexually assaulted her.

The reed-thin Army physician, whose Black Hawk helicopter had been shot down, became a symbol of everything America was worried about in sending women to war. Her successful return home — sane and not that much the worse for her ordeal — became a powerful argument for the irrelevance of gender in conditions of indiscriminate violence.

…The most important of them she learned as a prisoner, she said, “is Put It in Perspective: PIP” — understanding that although a situation might be bad, it could be worse.

She argues that her ability to survive the experience was the result of preexisting ‘mental strength,’ effectively, and the military seems to agree, pointing out that 80% of soldiers weather combat well, suggesting that the remaining 20% must just have flawed personalities or something, apparently. Brig. Gen. Cornum is traveling through the military as part of the program, providing instruction and mentoring to soldiers, but it’s raising, for me, rather a lot of questions. Like whether it’s really an awesome thing to have a rape victim telling people to put it in perspective, given the huge number of sexual assaults in the military, and the fact that some of the women she may be talking to are probably also rape victims, who may not have returned from it as successfully as she did.

There’s something deeply upsetting about women who are put forward as role models because of ‘strength’ when ‘strength’ involves responding to something like rape in a socially approved way. Her story is about how tough she is, how resilient she is, how she’s bounced back, and how you can too, unless you’re a total weakling. Other women in the military also have more complex, less cut and dried, situations when it comes to their rapes; because they are being raped by fellow soldiers, by officers, they are being raped in nebulous and difficult situations. They are being denied abortion services and told they’re lying and being reminded that they could ruin careers by speaking out. They are not brave captives who survived an ordeal: They are trying to survive an ordeal right now. 

Because what’s being implied by this and other aspects of the programme is that normal reactions to trauma are actually signs of weakness and something wrong with you. It argues that many people come back from war ‘mentally stronger,’ as though the experience of war is somehow personally improving, except for those pesky people who don’t react as expected. The military seems to be convinced that it’s possible to teach people how to react to trauma more ‘competently,’ rather than addressing the root causes of that trauma and maybe getting some action done in that area, and it’s embarked on an extremely ambitious project to do just that.

A project that has some psychology professionals worried, because it’s also a very large and potentially very dangerous experiment. Psychological experiments in the civilian world require institutional review board approval and careful monitoring, but that’s not the case here; APA endorsement or not, this is an experiment on a very large scale, and these are real human lives. If the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Programme helps people deal with trauma more effectively, that will be fantastic…

…but will it? Or will it only shame people who don’t approach trauma in approved ways, and who have difficulty reintegrating after military service? Will it be a reminder to people already struggling that they are weak, failures, useless? This programme is about ‘toughening up’ and bootstrapping your way out, not about examining how and why it is that soldiers are under such immense psychological stress.

The military is tasked with obeying the commander in chief, which means that it sends troops where the President says to send them. Those troops are facing harsh conditions in a protracted war, and know that they may not come home to much; Congress threatens to stop their pay while slashing benefits for veterans, partners are using food stamps to survive because their allowance from the military is not enough, and Arlington’s records are so hopelessly tangled that it’s hard to tell who is in which grave, at this point. It’s pretty hard to see how people are supposed to toughen up and bootstrap their way out of these conditions.

1.  Nicki Minaj – “Super Bass”

Minaj’s consummate craftsmanship as an artist—in image, flow and production choices—makes her nearly anachronistic among contemporary hiphop acts.  Originally thrown onto last year’s Pink Friday as a bonus track, “Super Bass” .  The constant minute shifts in intonation showcase Minaj as one of the year’s most compelling personalities, sounding like no-one else around.  “Somebody please tell him who the eff I is…”  as if it could be anyone else but Nicki Minaj.

2.  Bon Iver – “Calgary”

Bon Iver is one of many in a lineage of similar-sounding male songwriters.  With his sexy beard and flannel shirts revealing just a hint of chest hair, Iver has built quite a fanbase, drawn to his good looks and sultry crooning.  Despite his narrow focus on men’s issues, Iver somehow overcomes the limitations of his sex and triumphantly pulls together an anthem for all of us.

3.  Lana Del Rey – “Video Games”

Sounding like the missing link between Nancy Sinatra and Timbaland, newcomer Lana Del Rey has emerged with a fully formed, distinctive artist in her own right.  “Video Games” reflects on a relationship.  The self-directed video adds another layer of meaning, forming a poignant elegy for the faded glory of America.

4.  Lykke Li – “Sadness is a Blessing”

Like a postmodern one-girl Shangra Las, Lykke Li singlehandedly reworks the lost love song into an ode for depression itself.  Though steeped in the cerebral tradition of theorists like Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler, Li’s song, as the video makes clear is just as clearly interested in the visceral world of dance.  A better invocation of loss and melancholia there has no been for years, perhaps ever.

5.  Jojo – “Marvin’s Room (Can’t Do Better)”

This, Jojo’s masterwork, is not a comfortable listen, but it’s endlessly compelling—a jealous, vindictive, bragging, sad, tender drunk dial of a song.  It’s not particularly feminist friendly (“fuck that new girl that you like so bad”) in the way it viciously sees an ex’s new partner as a target (“a dancing little Barbie doll”.  But that’s immediately undercut with the brutally honest reflection (“she’s not crazy like me/I bet you like that”).  I believe her when she brags that she’s a better fuck than the new girlfriend (“when you’re in her I’m in your head” – ouch).  Like a messed-up EveryPerson, the narrator’s more drama than she’s worth–and self aware enough to know it–but still not able to break out of that compulsive cycle of paranoia, lust, and power.  “I’m just saying, you could do better….”

6.  James Blake – “Limit To Your Love.”

Having bubbled under in 2010, this was the year that dubstep pin-up James Blake finally broke.  Here Blake, who sometimes even writes his own songs sometimes, covers Feist’s “Limit to Your Love” to great effect.  Relying on just a piano, a sparse beat and a cute sub-bass, Blake’s fantastic effort almost makes you forget the original.

7.  St. Vincent – “Cruel”

In this razor-sharp ode to the alienation of domestic drudgery, the iniminatble St. Vincent pulls together a startling original palate of sounds, flipping between airy 40s musical interludes to jagged guitars and a driving disco beat.  On top of this, she pulls out the year’s most distinctive guitar solo, a dirty sludgy blast of distortion.  In an age of video-game wannabes, Annie Clark is the real guitar hero.

8.  Beyonce – “Countdown”

On this criminally overlooked single, Beyonce reinvents rnb once again, riding the horn-stabs and staccato drums as confidently as she ever has.  “I’m still falling” she croons, and by the time the Boyz II Men sample, you will have fallen too.

9.  Florence and the Machine – “Shake it Out”

A transcendent slice of churchified roch, Florence aims for the stadiums in this amazing slice of power pop.  As the organs swell, Florence impels us to shake it off, whatever devil may be on your back.  She might be “looking for heaven” but like every great mystic, she’s already there by the time the stunning cooed last minute is over.  A true devotional for a secular age.

10.  Radiohead – “Lotus Flower”

Thom Yorke is not a very talented singer, but the clear tone of his voice works well enough for his indie-electro records.  Over a soundscape clever crafted by his producer, Yorke dances through the videoclip like an ethereal, beguiling pixie.

Methodology note: Ok, Sady’s pointed out it might not be immediately clear what I’m doing here if you don’t read as much music criticism as we do.  So basically, I used a lot of small cut n pastes from actual reviews – using the reviews of men for the women, and vice versa – then finessed to make them artist-appropriate.  I wanted to spotlight the way that music criticism minimises women’s achievements through using  ”objective” aesthetic criteria that work to privilege male artists as a whole.

I set myself up for failure. I know. I like big, unachievable goals that I will, all on my own, conquer. Because I am a sucker for failed end of the year balances. Because when this time of the year rolls by, I sit and ponder on what I have not yet achieved. To that purpose, I start every year with some big, unattainable resolution. For 2011, I had set two such objectives (probably to ensure failure at least on one account), and it seems I managed to fall through on both: I did not succeed in making anti racism a mainstream component of Western feminism and I failed at defeating racism as an institutionalized practice in The Netherlands. And it hasn’t been through lack of trying, that much I can tell.

Now, leaving snark aside, I would say that, as both a writer and an activist, those are my main two goals. Not half joking hyperbolic new year resolutions but the kind of issues I center every day when I decide what I am going to write about. These are also the issues I try to bring forth in every political meeting I attend. Selfishly so, perhaps. As a Non Western foreign woman living in The Netherlands, I find both issues to be very personal and very political. I am a feminist, even though I struggle with some of the most damning aspects of mainstream feminism. Even though I sometimes angrily express my disappointment, I still claim the label. Perhaps because I grew up in an environment where such label was subjected to disgust, derision or contempt. Because I was socialized to believe that feminism was alienating and only the realm of “sluts” and “man hating” women. So, one day, I decided that’s what I was. Probably because it was one of the most offensive labels I could inflict on my reactionary surroundings. To me, the label preceded the politics. It took me years to learn the more theoretical aspects of feminism (which I don’t even know as well as people who learned them in a more structured manner). I read Sartre way before I even knew who de Beauvoir was. Back home, when I was a student, we didn’t have “women’s studies”, at least not in the institutions I frequented. If such a thing existed (and I am sure it did), it was certainly not mainstream. Post dictatorship Argentina was not exactly a progressive place prone to discussions of equality or gender matters. It took a couple of decades for these topics to take a center stage. But I digress.

I named myself a feminist even before I understood the contentious aspects of gender theory. My theoretical ignorance did have an upside though: had I been introduced to feminism through the works of some of the most controversial figures in the Second Wave (like Dworkin, to name only one such example), I would have never called myself one. I naively believed feminism was just a simple idea: women (not just cis, White women, because in my world, those were not the only women, even though I had no word to define cis) deserved equality and a life free from fear to pursue their dreams. Shoot me, I was young and somewhat naive, as to me, that was all feminism was about.

And then I moved to Europe.

II. “Only neurotic Americans think that we are racist”

I woke up today to read exactly this headline in one of the top three Dutch newspapers (top three in reach, circulation, influence and political presence). In an ironic twist, the newspaper in question is named De Volkskrant, which translated means “The People’s Newspaper”. In this piece, the writer, Rutger Bregman, a blond, blue eyed Dutch man who has never in his life experienced the daily effects of racism, devotes in excess of seven hundred words to explain to his readership that “only neurotic Americans believe that The Netherlands is a racist country”. I gasped when I read, not only the ableist title, but the content of this self serving nonsense.

I did not write about the episode involving Rihanna in a Dutch glossy magazine because almost every other blog was already reporting on it. What could I possibly have to add to the topic? I figured people already knew what had happened, they were discussing the facts in question and I had nothing new or original to say. I was ashamed of the publishing house retracting the apology, claiming they had nothing to be embarrassed for. I was very upset. I took it personally, as it is always bound to happen in these instances. To me, these are deeply personal and political subjects. This is the most current example I can find to illustrate why I demand my feminism to be intersectional, why it also needs to be actively anti racist. For the most part, Dutch media downplayed the issue. They did the usual “foreign influence! cultural imperialism! nothing offensive in our language!” white washing that they always do when minorities demand a stop to these offenses. And today, I read the coup de grace: one of the main newspapers in the country sees fit to publish a piece calling any anti racist efforts “misguided” and unnecessary as this is absolutely not a racist country. The writer insists on the fact that neither Black Pete nor the offensive language addressed at Rihanna are symptoms of racism, but that they are part of a culture where “skin color no longer matters”.

I wrote in excess of half a million words this year (spread across all platforms I publish). At least half of those words have been devoted to the toxic effect of racism across Europe. At least a quarter of those were devoted specifically to The Netherlands. To be more precise, to the effects that such racism has on the lives of non White people living in this country. I will go even further, since it seems I need to prove if not my commitment to the topic, at least the existence of institutionalized racism: I believe I was the first person who wrote in English about the arrests of activists during the Black Pete protests. It was only after I published a detailed account of the incidents that English speaking mainstream media picked it up (it helped that some very high profile people like Baratunde tweeted a link to my piece). And yet, a national newspaper obturates any possible society wide discussion by allowing a member of the dominant culture to inform us that “Only neurotic Americans think that The Netherlands is a racist country”. And this guy in question has the nerve to tell me, on Twitter, that my disagreement is nothing but “bullshit” and I should “learn how to read”.  My relentless documenting of institutionalized racism sweeping the country, my hundreds of thousands of words devoted to the subject are “bullshit”. Because a native, blond, blue eyed Dutch man said so. I might be neurotic (not that I have a diagnosis, but I can suspect that much) however, I am not American (well, technically, I AM American, but from the Southern Cone) and unlike his claims, I do live in this country. So, how am I supposed to take his blanket statement? Should I pack my anti racist toolkit and call it a day?

The rape and death threats from Dutch White supremacists on this very blog (which I documented on Tumblr out of frustration) are surely the result of a “non racist country”. The commands to “go back to the shithole I came from” written by Dutch people surely are not racist. The hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of offensive racial slurs left here that we persistently deleted are most certainly the “delusions” of “neurotic Americans”, right? And this is just a small tip of the iceberg. An iceberg made of the unaddressed colonial past, the welfare state built on the back of the slave trade, the State division of people in enforceable categories of foreignness. All of these and the daily, eroding insults that minorities put up with, some of them State endorsed are, according to one of the biggest Dutch newspapers, the results of the machinations of “neurotic Americans”.

And then I wonder why I fail at my unattainable New Year’s goals?

III. “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?”

Springsteen sang “Hey bus driver, keep the change/ Bless your children, give them names”. And indeed, blessed be the children of the Dutch bus drivers at Connexxion, the Amsterdam based line that called the police to report on “dozens of suspicious African women who took the bus every day to go to work at a fancy town”. Blessed be those children for their fathers are racist and they are likely to pass those “values” on.

Every day, “African women” (Sic from the article in Dutch) took the bus and they got off at Bloemendaal and Heemstede, two towns outside of Amsterdam populated by expensive and fancy houses. The women, singled out because of their appearance and the color of their skin, raised the suspicion of the bus drivers who started to document their daily comings and goings. The drivers stated that they found it “unbelievable” that obvious migrant women would travel every day to such fancy locations. The drivers insisted that they had to be undocumented workers. They called the police. However, because as our major Dutch newspaper has informed us, “there is no racism in The Netherlands”, they weren’t just happy to call the police and snitch on immigrant women, they also helped mount an intelligence operation to have these women followed across their daily route for weeks. Once it was established that these obviously “poor looking non White women” had no other reason to be in the area than to work illegally, they were detained by the police. I insist, with the aid, willing cooperation AND initiative of these Dutch bus drivers. Of the thirty detained women from countries like Ghana, Uganda, Brazil and the Philippines, twelve have already been deported and the rest are in detention centers pending the resolution of the Council of State who is investigating if the bus drivers and police incurred in unfair “racial profiling” when they notified the authorities.

But “only neurotic Americans believe that The Netherlands is a racist country”.

IV. And I set myself up for failure in 2012

I write about The Netherlands and about Europe because this is where I live. I see, on a daily basis, the urgent need for change. I see an alarming raise on incidents of hatred and associated crimes. This month a report by British think tank “Institute for Government” released their annual Global Ranking of Soft Power. In international politics, soft power is the ability of one state to achieve preferred outcomes by changing the preferences or behaviour of another state through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuasion and positive attraction. To put it in more layman terms, this index measures how Nation States can achieve their goals without resorting to war and, instead, using Businesses and Innovation, Culture, Government, Diplomacy and Education to influence other nations. In this index, The Netherlands ranks in the top ten of all countries in the world. The US is at the top and five other European countries, aside from The Netherlands, share the top spots (UK, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland). This is why, the social issues afflicting The Netherlands, also matter on a global scale. Not to mention the collective political, institutional, economic and social power of the European Union. This degree of power is the reason we should not give in to destructive notions peddled by mainstream media about certain issues being “irrelevant”.

And yet, in spite of all my rage, snark and incidental arguments, this is a labor of love. I believe we can do better. Not just as feminists, but as people with ideas of equality (regardless of our political labels), as people who believe in Social Justice, we can and SHOULD do better. In what might as well become my personal slogan, earlier this year I wrote that my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit. I point at anti racism as one of the many facets of such intersectionality but certainly not the only one and certainly not in detriment of all others. Because I write from personal experience and from personal conviction, this is the one I can share. However, I truly hope that 2012 is not a year where I have to see yet again, racial mishaps such as this one. I hope 2012 is the year I do not have to convince people that certain social struggles are not the result of my “neurotic delusions” but urgencies that we need to fix because not doing so results in loss of lives. I hope 2012 is the year we can claim as ours, if not to parade the big changes we all hope for, at least to celebrate a new awareness and some steps on the road to transformation.

And I wish you all will share at least some of these expectations with me. Because as 2011 has proved, I obviously won’t be ending these ills on my own.

NOTE: I have linked to some articles in Dutch, however, for non Dutch speaking readers, I have checked all the links on Google Translate and while the translations might not be grammatically perfect, they are definitely readable.