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You Can’t Fight Child Abuse Without Fighting Ableism

Posted on Monday, November 7, 2011 by s.e. smith

The Internet was abuzz last week with the Hillary Adams case; a young woman bravely videotaped her father beating her as a teen, and uploaded the video to YouTube several years later, sparking an international discussion about child abuse. It’s a horrible video to watch, made more chilling when you realise the level of planning and thought that must have gone into it.

Fighting child abuse is challenging on so many levels because it can be hard to identify the victims, especially when they are too terrified to speak. It’s telling that Adams didn’t come out about her abuse until she was in a safe environment, outside her home, many years later. Clearly she lives with the memories not just of what she experienced, but the systems that failed her and allowed that abuse to continue, because people thought her dad was a good guy, a stand-up kind of fellow, reputable, because he was a judge.

In the ample analysis of the video and discussions about how Adams’ father should be punished, one element of the case has been minimally examined: Hillary is disabled. She has cerebral palsy. This is a key aspect of the story that shouldn’t be left out, because it’s central to a larger discussion. You cannot talk about child abuse without addressing, specifically, the abuse of children with disabilities. A UNICEF report in 2005 stressed that any action on child abuse needs to fully integrate children with disabilities. Disability-specific interventions are critical because of the disability-specific issues children experience globally, and 10% of the world’s children are disabled or will become disabled by age 19, which makes them a nontrivial population.  (Continued)

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I’m the Patriarchy and your War on Drugs keeps me healthy

Posted on Thursday, November 3, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

I.

There was once a Mazatec curandera, Maria Sabina, living in the mountains of Southern Mexico. She sang of other worlds and she made poetry with her songs. She sang like this:

Because I can swim in the immense
Because I can swim in all forms
Because I am the launch woman
Because I am the sacred opossum
Because I am the Lord opossum
I am the woman Book that is beneath the water, says
I am the woman of the populous town, says
I am the shepherdess who is beneath the water, says
I am the woman who shepherds the immense, says
I am a shepherdess and I come with my shepherd, says
Because everything has its origin
And I come going from place to place from the origin…

Maria Sabina spoke of “the holy children”, the spirits that visited her during her “veladas” (she didn’t use the word “ceremonies” for what she did, instead, calling them vigils). In these veladas, Maria Sabina shared her ancient knowledge of healing and other worlds. People from all over her village visited her for help and guidance. They would sit at night, and she would sing and the holy children would come and speak to her. These children she saw after she ate Psilocybe mexicana mushrooms. The magic mushrooms brought them to her.

And then there was a man from the US. This man was the vice president of J. P. Morgan & Co. This man, R. Gordon Wasson, an investment banker who fancied himself an “ethnomycologist” in his free time. He traveled around the world documenting substance use in religious settings. Then, one day, while in Mexico, someone mentioned that there was a Mazatec woman who used mushrooms, something that nobody had heard of before in the American continent. And of course, Wasson had to see this firsthand. In 1955, Wasson finally met her and sat in a velada. He, too, met the holy children.

(Continued)

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Unionbusting at Qantas Causes Global Travel Nightmares

Posted on Monday, October 31, 2011 by s.e. smith

On Saturday, chaos erupted at airports across the world as Australian airline Qantas declared that it was grounding all flights ‘until further notice,’ stranding tens of thousands of travelers who scrambled to make alternate arrangements with no advance warning. Why, one might ask, would an airline do such a thing? Was there possibly a critical safety concern that required evaluation of the entire fleet? Maybe a credible terrorist threat? A need to reroute aircraft for humanitarian reasons, perhaps to carry loads of goods to Turkey, which was recently rocked by a severe earthquake? Why would an airline make a move that would cost it $20 million AUD per day?

The answer? A labour dispute; the airline abruptly halted operations in a bid to heighten the stakes in negotiations over wages and working conditions. Qantas helpfully provided multiple unionbashing updates over the course of the day to keep passengers apprised of the situation:

This is in response to the damaging industrial action by three unions – the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), the Australian International Pilots Association (AIPA) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU)…We understand that this will have a significant impact on our customers and apologise for the inconvenience that the damaging union action has caused. (Emphasis mine.)

(Continued)

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Occupying Europe, when the colonizer reclaims wealth

Posted on Thursday, October 27, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

I have a fondness for the spirit behind the Occupy movement. I suppose my fondness is based on potentials. The potential to change something, to move in a different direction, to create new forms of organization, to engage young people politically in ways that resonate with them. I guess I still like the idea of a space for utopia. After the mostly jaded ‘90s and early ‘00s, the return of a potential for utopia is, for me, the potential for hope. I know, such an outdated and unfashionable notion, one that was even outdated by the time I came of age. But you can say that, in spirit, I might be a child of the ‘60s. So, I see these popular assemblies as picking up where the ‘60s left, not imitating or reproducing the spirit of the 60s, but using some of those ideals as part of a historical continuum. And for that alone, I root for the movement.

So, when this week we discussed with the other editors that we would devote Tiger Beatdown to different views of the Occupy movement, I cheered. I pointed out my frustration at the unexamined replication of American slogans that have little or no value in the European Union, namely, the tirelessly repeated “We are the 99%”. Which, let’s face it, is a great catchy phrase. From a marketing perspective, it contains everything great bylines are made of: short, descriptive, vague enough to be used in different contexts while still retaining its original intent, easily remembered. Except that, when repeated on European territory, as it is the case in most Occupations currently taking place across the continent, it is complete nonsense. Just to offer one example, at Occupy Amsterdam’s website, you can see, on the left side of the screen, the Official poster repeating this 99% meme. This, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, is a lie. At a quick glance, this Wikimedia map illustrates my points pretty clearly. There is no point of comparison in wealth distribution between any European country and the US. Even Turkey, which is not even considered part of Europe, has more income and wealth equality than the US. To put it in layman terms, European wealth is in the hands of a bigger group than a nominal 1%. The problem with basing your movement on a lie, on a catchy slogan imported from some place else is that your opponent can easily dismiss you. Facts, when in the hands of people with power, win discussions. And this, I am afraid, is not to be overlooked because the Occupy fight is not against one institution or one specific group, but against an entire system. If this movement is honest, then it will have to acknowledge that the fight itself is a struggle against kyriarchy, even if, in the interest of simplifying discussions, they prefer not to use such an obscure term. And because of that, the language we use, the facts we lay down on the table, the points we make need to be impeccable and impeachable. Which so far hasn’t happened at all.

(Continued)

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Who Exactly IS The 1%?

Posted on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 by s.e. smith

There’s considerable confusion circulating over who is in the top 1% in the United States, with a constant barrage of numbers that seem to shift depending on source, agenda, and timing. These are often used as derails, and it’s easy to derail with arguments about how to define the top 1% in the United States, because there are a number of different ways to look at it, all of which are valid. In all the discussion, people do generally seem to agree that the inequality is staggering, and there are a number of very colourful and stunning charts to point this out and argue about precisely how staggering it all is.

For the chart-lovers among us, incidentally, many of the links in this post will lead you to a panoply of delightful, stark, illuminating charts on the state of wealth, income, and inequality in the United States. You’re welcome.

It’s important to define who is in the 1%, and who people are talking about when they mean the 1%, because there’s a lot of rhetoric flying around this idea. Some people are identifying as members of the 1% when they are not, and they’re usually doing so for the purpose of berating people who are protesting income inequality, like this dude, who seems to think that bootstrapping (and taking advantage of government benefits paid for by my taxes and possibly yours), will get you into the 1%. Dude also seems to think, although it’s a bit unclear from framing, that making $100,000 a year puts you in the top 1%.

Others are identifying as 1% in supportive pieces saying they’re ‘with the 99%,’ not understanding that they are the 99%. Which illustrates a touching lack of understanding about the depth of income and wealth inequality in the US. So, who’s in the 1%? How do we define the 1%?

(Continued)

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Why do we need an Occupy Australia?

Posted on Tuesday, October 25, 2011 by Emily McAvan

The Occupy movement – itself sparked by the Arab Spring and the indignado protests in Spain and Greece – has quick spread across the United States and other countries including my own beautiful, ugly, homeland of Australia.

Many Australians have questioned the need for an Occupy movement of our own. In contrast to the US, we’re not struggling in quite the same way, economically, having never slipped into recession or been caught up in the Eurozone debt crisis. There are no largescale cuts to public jobs as in Europe or the U.S. At The Referral, Kimberley Ramplin points out that the Australian economy is quite healthy, comparatively speaking:

5.2 per cent unemployment in September 2011. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Measures of Australia’s Progress 2011 report shows, pretty much everything (barring productivity) has improved since 2000. Including unemployment. The bad news? That increase applies to threatened animal species due to climate change. The average weekly income per full-time employed adult is $1,305. The average hourly income is between $29.70 and$33.10 (the disparity? Female wages c.f. men) (Source: ABS)

I’ve lived in Australia and the U.S and I know from personal experience that the substantially lower standard of living in the U.S is something few Australians can truly understand. Things are not perfect in Australia economically – not with the astronomical housing prices – but we can’t say that the middle class has collapsed in the same way as in the U.S.

We do ourselves no favours when we uncritically mimic American models without changing them to suit local conditions. The cultural cringe is no more useful in activism than it is in other areas. The 99/1% slogan is powerful stuff indeed but doesn’t adequately address the income distribution of Australia as accurately in the United States.  Activism must respond to local needs to be successful.

So it’s that bad news in the middle of that quote that I want to focus on. Climate change. Because that’s not incidental to the problem that Occupy addresses as a whole, a state of crisis that affects every sphere of human life, and Australia’s good fortune to have a crapload of natural resources disguises the fact that there is still a slowly exploding crisis in the heart of Australia.

(Continued)

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You Do Not Get Any Candy This Halloween, Sorry

Posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 by Sady

Hey! U.S. readers: Who wants to be that awful neighbor who hands out pennies on Halloween? The one all the kids hate? You do, you do! Unfortunately. Because here’s the problem: due to some, er, choices made by the Hershey Candy Company, you basically cannot buy or eat candy now without accidentally funding the process of FOOLING PEOPLE INTO INDENTURED SERVITUDE. 

“Pleas hellp,” wrote the student, Tudor Ureche. He told them about “the miserable situation in which I’ve found myself cought” since starting a job under the program in a plant packing Hershey’s chocolates near the company’s namesake town in Pennsylvania.

Students like Mr. Ureche, who had paid as much as $6,000 to take part in the program, expected a chance to see the best of this country, to make American friends and sightsee, with a summer job to help finance it all.

Instead, many students who were placed at the packing plant found themselves working grueling night shifts on speeding production lines, repeatedly lifting boxes weighing as much as 60 pounds and financially drained by low pay and unexpected extra costs for housing and transportation. Their complaints to the contractor running the program on behalf of the State Department were met with threats that they could be sent home…

The group, known as Cetusa, placed nearly 400 foreigners from 18 countries, many of them graduate students in medicine, engineering and economics, in physically arduous jobs at the Palmyra factory that were overwhelming for some.

The students, who were earning about $8 an hour, said they were isolated within the plant, rarely finding moments to practice English or socialize with Americans. With little explanation or accounting, the sponsor took steep deductions from their paychecks for housing, transportation and insurance that left many of them too little money to afford the tourist wanderings they had eagerly anticipated.

Program documents and interviews with 15 students show that Cetusa failed to heed many distress signals from students over many months, and responded to some with threats of expulsion from the program.

So: Here are the names you’re looking for, on your wrapper, when you decide not to buy candy. Hershey’s has the right to manufacture and distribute Cadbury-brand products in the US, and has acquired “the Canadian candy and nut operations of Nabisco Brands,” including Breath Savers and Life Savers. It’s also licensed Kit-Kats and Rolos from Nestle. It owns the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut corporation, Scharffen Berger, Joseph Schmidt Confections, and Dagoba Organic Chocolates. Actually look for the brand on the wrapper: It’s not just Hershey Bars and Hershey Kisses that are, um, enslaving people. Aside from the above, it’s all of the following products:

5th Avenue

Almond Joy

Bliss

Bubble Yum

Good & Plenty

Good & Fruity

Heath Bar

Ice Breakers

Jolly Rancher

Krackel

Milk Duds

Mounds

Mr. Goodbar

NutRageous

Oh Henry!

PayDay (HA HA HA HA HA, no seriously, don’t buy “Pay Day”)

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Reese’s Pieces, and the other “Reese’s” products

Skor

Snack Barz

Take 5

Twizzlers

Symphony

Whatchamacallit

York Peppermint Pattie

Zagnut

ZERO

And if I am missing anything, let me know! Blog posts can be amended and corrected! This isn’t the first time Hershey has been boycotted — they’ve also been boycotted on the grounds that they use forced child labor in other countries, too, and some of those are ongoing. But the whole “who wants to come to America to work on their Ph.D.? GREAT, HERE IS YOUR BOX, you will be carrying these, also if you do not want to sleep in the box you will give us money” facet is one I find intriguingly outrage-worthy! So, yes. You will not be buying any candy this Halloween, and you will be giving the children pennies. Or, um, sound advice. About how indentured servitude is wrong, perhaps. Who said social justice wasn’t fun?

 

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It’s All For A Cause, You Know: Breast Cancer, Pinkwashing, and Objectification

Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 by s.e. smith

October, as many readers are no doubt aware, is ‘breast cancer awareness’ month in the United States. The tide of pink-branded products, courtesy of a campaign started in the early 1990s by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, might have been a tipoff. Of course, pink branding is also spilling over into other months of the year—it really started to ramp up in September this year, but you’d be hard-pressed not to find some pink-branded products, or witty ‘breast cancer awareness’ slogans, at other months of the year as well.

This term, ‘awareness,’ is very nebulous. Awareness is not action, and it doesn’t necessarily translate into action, depending on how such campaigns are framed. Many people, at this juncture, are aware of breast cancer. They know it exists and they know that some people are more at risk of getting it than others. What they may be less sure of is what to do about it; some campaigns do promote early diagnosis through screening, for example, but not all do. Fewer campaigns discuss what people can do for breast cancer patients and people in recovery, although some organisations (including Komen) are actually very active in providing support to breast cancer patients through activities like educational resources, grants, and other assistance. There’s also the vague idea of researching for a cure, which also raises the spectre of the ‘funding race’ and debates about whether some cancers are overfunded.

(Continued)

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Come one, come all! Feminist and Social Justice blogging as performance and bloodshed

Posted on Monday, October 17, 2011 by Flavia Dzodan

Master of puppets I’m pulling your strings
Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams
Blinded by me, you can’t see a thing
Just call my name, ’cause I’ll hear you scream
Master
Master

Metallica, Master of Puppets

Introduction: in which I walk into the stage, with dimmed lights, and I explain my love of performance in a hushed and agreeable tone to create an intimate rapport with the audience

I started going to music concerts when I was fourteen. It was popular music, of course. My first concert was an Argentinian pop band which you most likely never heard of. But I was a fan. Oh yes, what a fan! I wrote a letter to the front man even! AND HE RESPONDED! and later, much later, as a matter of fact after he had already passed away (one of our first well known AIDS related fatalities), I found out that it was indeed his handwriting and that he had indeed responded personally. I suspect he responded personally because when I wrote to him, they weren’t yet as massively famous as they would later become. And I was fourteen and in love with this guy. He was also the sweetest, and much older than me (already in his late 30s); he had been in exile in Spain because of the dictatorship and he took the time to write to this wide eyed teen with nice and thoughtful words of encouragement. I had sent him a poem; laugh at me if you will, but I had been inspired by his lyrics which, in turn, were inspired by very well known Latin American poets that I had also been reading. And since I had struggled with words since I was eight, when I remember scribbling my first poem, I felt a kinship towards this musician, or so I thought at the time. (Incidentally, for some weird reason I still remember the first few lines of that first poem; it was horrible, don’t ask). This guy was also, at the time, a very original performer. I remember seeing him on stage, wondering what that performance was all about. His moves, his way of articulating words, the way he would sometimes stare at the audience. It was the first time I consciously noticed performance.

And I fell in love with it. So much so that later on I went to school to learn how to write for theater. I wanted to see my words on stage. I wanted to see words, not just in text form but performed, in movement. To me, words were actions. Then life happened and I did not pursue a career as a playwright, but that’s another post, this one is about performance. Which to this day is something I still love. Theater, dance, music. I go to as many events as my budget permits. I love music and particularly live music, with passion. If I can afford it, on a given weekend I can be found at a hiphop/breakdance opera and on the next day, at a concert by a Jazz Fusion Quartet, or Prince (talk about performance!). I guess you can say I am a big fan of the performing arts.

(Continued)

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Delicious linkspam

Posted on Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by Emily McAvan

So we thought it was about time for another round-up of links of Things We’ve Done and various other things of interest on the internet by people who are not us but still pretty good.

Sweet internet glory

Sady’s been nominated for a Social Media Award by the Women’s Media Center.  You can go vote for her here, and you should!

Pop culture

At the Huffington Post, a mum writing about her six old son telling her about a crush he has on one of the boys on Glee, and the reactions she got from blogging about it.  Also on the parenting tip, Arwyn Daemyir wrote about representations of fatherhood (and disappearance of motherhood) on the recent season of Doctor Who.

At Bitch, Kristin Rawls wrote a great piece on the use of religious music in Buffy, as well as a whole bunch on country music, gender, sexuality and religion.

And Sady at the brand-new Emily Books, talking the legacy of feminist writer Ellen Willis.  Emily Books’ mission is both unique, awesome, and put together by some folks with really killer taste, and so we encourage you to check that out as well.

I also have a piece in this month’s paper edition of In These Times on the London riots and how London’s underground music scenes reflect some of the frustrations of the rioters.  You’ll have to find it somewhere offline.  If such a place exists.

Politics

Back when the world was young (ie three weeks ago), I wrote at In These Times about the first few days of Occupy Wall Street and its potential to create political change.  At Think Progress, 5 facts you should know about the 1%.  And at Alternet, Anna Lekas Miller on how unpaid internships perpetuate rampant inequality.

Also back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth (ie nine days ago), Sady wrote a piece on Slutwalk. At Feministing, Maya lets us know that Topeka, Kansas has decriminalised domestic violence.  And s.e wrote a piece on how anti-immigrant laws are creating farm worker shortages in several U.S. states.

A computer virus has hit the U.S drone fleet, which is quite disturbing.  To me, the culprit is clear: Gaius Baltar.

An interesting piece in The New Republic about how Greece, Ireland and Spain aren’t to blame for the Eurozone debt crisis.  In Australia, there’s a stupid fight over the carbon tax, with rent-a-crowd protesters interrupting the House of Reps to have a sooky-la-la about companies being taxed.  Class war, it’s not just for America.

Bodies, identities, etc

At Rookie, Sady wrote a hilarious guide to the various terrifying secrets of teenage bodies.  At xojane, s.e  wrote about having always been genderqueer.  Remember y’all, ou is the correct pronoun for our s.e.

 

And that is about that.  Feel free to drop your own links in the comments, or marvel at the extraordinary amount of work Sady’s being doing lately…

 

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