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Grameen Bank; Queens Branch
from Thomas @ Feministe 07 May 2008 11:55 amThe most diverse county of the United States will have the first US branch of the world’s best known microcredit lender.
Truth in advertising
from Rad Geek @ Rad Geek People's Daily 03 May 2008 2:22 pm(Link thanks to David Houser.)
May Day 2008
from Rad Geek @ Rad Geek People's Daily 01 May 2008 3:22 pmThere will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!
—Last words of August Spies (1887-11-11), immigrant, anarchist, and Haymarket martyr
Fellow workers:
Today is May Day, or International Workers’ Day, a holiday created by Chicago workers—most of them anarchists—to honor the memory of the Haymarket martyrs and to celebrate the struggle of workers for freedom, for a better life, and for control over the conditions of their own labor. It was created during the radical phase of the struggle for an eight-hour day: after legislative campaigns by the Knights of Labor and the National Labor Union failed, labor radicals in Chicago — organizers like Albert Parsons, Lucy Parsons, August Spies — declared that workers should take matters into their own hands, in the form of direct action on the shop floor. Workers would no longer try to get an eight-hour day by promising a useful and compliant voter base in return for patronage from politicians. To get an eight-hour shift, workers would make their own: in many shops, workers in the International Working People’s Association would bring their own whistle to work and blow it at the end of an eight hour shift — at which point most or all of the workers on the floor would just get up and just walk off, like the free people they were, whether or not the boss demanded more hours of labor. At the height of the struggle, they organized a General Strike, in defiance of the bosses and in spite of repeated violence from the Law.
Today is also the third annual day of rallies, strikes and marches against the criminalization of immigrant workers. A day which immigrant workers have chosen for actions against the bigotry of nativist bullies, the violence of La Migra, and the political system of international apartheid, as contemptible as it is lethal. A day to proudly proclaim We are not criminals
and We are not going anywhere,
to demand the only political program that recognizes it — open borders and unconditional amnesty for all undocumented workers.
And it is a joy for me to read that today is also a day of strikes against the bosses’ war in Iraq, which will shut down all the sea ports on the west coast of the United States, as an act of defiance against the State war machine and against the worthless political opportunists who promise to end it while voting, over and over again, to sustain it:
Amid this political atmosphere, dockworkers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have decided to stop work for eight hours in all U.S. West Coast ports on May 1, International Workers’ Day, to call for an end to the war.
This decision came after an impassioned debate where the union’s Vietnam veterans turned the tide of opinion in favor of the anti-war resolution. The motion called it an imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a
no peace, no workholiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks.
The Longshore workers have the explicit support of postal workers in New York and San Francisco, and I hope this will be only the beginning of ongoing, widespread industrial action to end a war that political action — even after two election cycles, after hundreds of millions of dollars, after countless hours of lobbying and electioneering, after a change in government, and with the backing of an overwhelming supermajority of the populace — has proven completely incapable of ending.
This is May Day as it is and ought to be. A Day of Resistance against the arrogance and power of bosses, bordercrats, bullies, and the Maters of War, who would harass us, intimidate us, silence us, exploit us, beat us, jail us, deport us, extort us, and do anything else it takes to stop us from coming into our own. A day to celebrate workers’ struggles for dignity, and for freedom, through organizing in their own self-interest, through agitating and exhorting for solidarity, and through free acts of worker-led direct action to achieve their goals, marching under the banners of We are all leaders here
and Dump the bosses of your back.
A day to remember:
There Is Power In A Union
There is power, there is power,
In a band of working folk,
When we stand
Hand in hand.—Joe Hill (1913)
Radio Bilingüe has a list of immigration marches and rallies across the country today. I plan to be at the mitin in Las Vegas tonight:
Meanwhile, in the news, some useless idiot is wandering around Washington proclaiming Law Day
, accosting hundreds of millions of complete strangers to tell them to put on ceremonies
in praise of his own power to do the beating, jailing, deporting, etc. In Istanbul, organized workers marched to Taksim Square in defiance of the Turkish government, which has declared their free assembly illegal,
and which has deployed government riot cops to attack them with firehoses and tear gas. In Harare, organized workers are holding rallies today to call attention to the devastating effect of the government’s hyperinflationary money monopoly on workers’ wages—and an apparatchik of the Zimbabwean government—one of the most violently anti-worker governments in the world—is taking the opportunity to wear a concerned expression and assure that Government would at all times endeavour to make sure that workplaces were monitored through inspections to minimize hazards that might injure or kill them.
(No word yet on whether the hazards
the inspectors will be inspecting for include the Zimbabwe Republic Police or the Central Intelligence Organization.) We must never forget what this band of creeps and fools is doing their best to remind us of — that the State is the most deadly weapon of our enemies, and that it is a weapon that we will never be able to wield for ourselves without chaining ourselves to politics and destroying the very things we meant to fight for.
In this season and in these days, in the midst of Babel during its most raucous festival—when so much of what we see and hear are the endless shouts of professional blowhards who know of no form of social change other than political change, and who know of no site of political change other than the gladiatorial arena of electoral politics, and who seem to know of no form of electoral politics other than polling, horse-trading, and endlessly shouting about a series of nomenklatura-contrived issues,
which boil down to little more than a media-facilitated exchange of racist, sexist, ageist, and authoritarian barbs among the nomenklatura-approved serious candidates
—it’s important to remember that, in spite of all the noise and spectacle, the most significant events for labor and for human freedom are happening in the streets of cities all over the country and all over the world, where workers are organizing among themselves, demanding their rights, fighting for their lives, and defying or simply bypassing the plutocrats and their so-called laws. In the U.S.A., while the punch-drunk establishmentarian labor movement reels from one failure to another, some of the most dynamic and successful labor struggles in the past few years have been fought by a grassroots union organized along syndicalist lines without NLRB recognition, using creative secondary boycott tactics which would be completely illegal if they had submitted to the regulatory patronage of the Wagner-Taft-Hartley system. There is a lesson here—a lesson for workers, for organizers, for agitators, and anti-statists. One we’d do well to remember when confronted by any of the bosses—whether corporate bosses or political, the labor fakirs and the authoritarian thugs styling themselves the vanguard of the working class, the regulators and the deporters and the patronizing friends of labor
all:
Dump the Bosses Off Your Back
Are you cold, forelorn, and hungry?
Are there lots of things you lack?
Is your life made up of misery?
Then dump the bosses off your back!—John Brill (1916)
Happy May Day, y’all.
Mayday!
We need government cops because private protection forces would be accountable to the powerful and well-connected instead of being accountable to the people.
from Rad Geek @ Rad Geek People's Daily 25 Apr 2008 4:44 pmNEW YORK — The wail that came up from the crowd was as if they heard that Sean Bell had died again.
No!they shouted, while dozens of people, wearing Bell’s face on hats, T-shirts and buttons, burst into sobs.The scene unfolded outside the courthouse Friday as three police officers were cleared of all charges in the 2006 shooting of Bell, who died in a hail of 50 bullets on his wedding day.
Hundreds of friends of Bell and others wanted vindication for what they called a racially motivated shooting, and they reacted with tears and explosive anger to the officers’ acquittal.
Many people in the predominantly black crowd began reciting other cases where black New Yorkers were shot by police, and the officers, they said, got away with it.
This was a disgrace, what happened today,shouted Calvin Hutton, a Harlem resident.We prayed for a different result, but we got the same old bull——.Inside the packed Queens courtroom, gasps could be heard when Judge Arthur Cooperman acquitted the officers. Bell’s mother cried; her husband put his arm around her and shook his head. Bell’s fiancee, Nicole Paultre Bell, left the courtroom immediately. […] Scores of police officers formed lines in the middle of traffic to block the crowd from charging the courthouse.
[…] Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said the judge sent a message to officers that
when you’re in front of the bench, that you will get fairness.[…] William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. […]
I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times,Hardgraves said.But of course, it wasn’t.
Damn the facts—full speed ahead!
from Rad Geek @ Rad Geek People's Daily 24 Mar 2008 2:33 pmAs far as I can tell, Jamie Kirchick, assistant editor for The New Republic,[*] has devoted most of his young professional life to becoming exactly the sort of bright boy at the The New Republic whom Randolph Bourne had in mind when he wrote The War and the Intellectuals, and who, decades later, would make the best and the brightest
into a bitter national joke. In any case, here’s something from his latest, a TNR blog post on Barack Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his recent speech on race:
Finally, what concerns me most about the Wright controversy isn’t the Pastor’s racist statements or even his unhinged views of Israel. I don’t think Obama agrees with any of that nonsense. What concerns me is the sort of comment that Wright made about Harry Truman’s ending World War II, that
We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.This smacks of the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky/Nation magazine wing of the American left that Democrats serious about this country’s security (and winning in November) should not want within 100 miles of the next administration.—James Kirchick, The Plank (2008-03-21): Thoughts on a Speech
Let’s set aside, for the moment, Rev. Wright’s confusion about personal pronouns. I didn’t bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and I don’t think that he did, either. But that’s apparently not what Kirchick has a problem with. What he has a problem with is what such statements about the U.S. government smack of.
But, Mr. Kirchick, no matter what it may smack of
to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Hiroshima?
No matter what it may smack of
to mention it, isn’t it true that the United States Army bombed Nagasaki?
No matter what it may smack of
to mention it, isn’t it true that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed somewhere around 210,000 civilian men, women and children — about 70 times the number of civilians killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?
As far as I can tell, nothing that has provoked Jamie Kirchick’s outrage here is actually, you know, false. Perhaps he thinks that these are facts which it is rude to mention in public. But if being taken for serious
about this country’s security
(which is TNR-speak for this government’s wars
) requires not mentioning them—that is, if being taken for serious
requires silence or dissembling about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people for the sake of a shared vision of American power
, then it is well worth asking just who the hell these assholes are who we’re supposed to prove our seriousness
to. And what their notion of seriousness
really amounts to. And why anyone should think she has to prove a damned thing to them.
(Via David Gordon, via Lew Rockwell 2008-03-23.)
* You may remember Kirchick from an earlier piece he published in TNR during the late unpleasantness. ↩
Decriminalization, ending demand, and choice: Feministe interviews the Sex Workers Project
from Holly @ Feministe 17 Mar 2008 9:16 pmAs the Spitzer scandal burns down into its coal-like embers, there’s been a lot of discussion about the nature of sex work as well as what society’s response to it should be. Legalization? The Swedish model? Or something else? Should we be looking at sex work as another kind of labor in which people–especially oppressed people–are victimized, coerced, trafficked and usually unable to exercise control over their work and their pay? Or is it somehow inherently different and deserving of different treatment? I don’t pretend to have all or even any of the answers to all of this. I’m not a sex worker myself, and since it seems clear to me that sex workers themselves are especially marginalized and victimized from multiple sides (traffickers, coercive environments, the dangers of a black market, bad clients, the hostile anti-prostitute stigmas of our culture, and not least law enforcement) I tend to think we should work to give sex workers–especially the most marginalized and silenced–more political voice and agency in how this industry is affected by theory, laws, policy, and practice. The most I can do on that front is try to be an ally to the current and former sex workers in my life, and to organizations that are run by and for sex workers and former sex workers.
One such organization is the Sex Workers Project here in New York City. Interestingly, they not only provide legal services to criminalized sex workers and victims of trafficking, but also worked with Elliot Spitzer and his office on the new laws aimed at stopping trafficking. The most ironic tidbit? Spitzer actually pushed to increase penalties for those who buy sex, such as himself. The Sex Workers Project actually opposed those penalties, and I wanted to know their thoughts on the Swedish model for reducing demand and other current hot topics. Last Wednesday, I got in touch a friend of mine: Sienna Baskin, who’s one of the attorneys there. It’s not the usual kind of thing for Feministe, but I thought I’d post our interview. It may raise more questions for many readers than it answers, of course–but in my book, that is never a bad thing, and of course it’s why we have the comments.
Holly: First off, tell me a little about the Sex Workers Project and what you guys do?
Sienna: Sure. We are a non-profit that provides free legal services to sex workers and victims of trafficking. We’re part of a larger organization—the Urban Justice Center, which has 8 different projects all supporting poor people’s rights. Clients come to us with questions about their immigration status, housing, criminal arrests, custody of their kids, employment problems, all of the legal problems that flow from being part of a stigmatized and criminalized community, We also connect them up with social services if necessary, do know your rights trainings for sex workers and work in close alliance with sex workers groups.We also do policy work on state, national, and international levels.
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I officially hate St. Patrick’s Day
from Jill @ Feministe 15 Mar 2008 8:22 pmNYU’s spring break always starts on St. Patrick’s Day, and I usually leave as soon as I can, so I’ve never been in the city for St. Patrick’s Day before. Like most of you, I thought the holiday was on Monday. I was wrong. It apparently starts today. And the entirety of Murray Hill — a neighborhood that amounts to Greek Row in Manhattan — and what appear to be large swaths of New Jersey and Long Island have descended upon my neighborhood.
I don’t resent people going out and having fun. I do resent them having screaming drunken fights outside my window and puking on the street. I do resent trying to walk to the gym at 1 in the afternoon and being hollered at by loud-ass frat boys who can’t do any better than “Hey hottie!” — which they’re only yelling because I don’t look like I’m having St. Patty’s Day fun. I deeply dislike not being able to walk down my street because it’s swamped with people in green shirts yelling “Woo.” And yes, I am whatever the St. Patrick’s Day equivalent of a Scrooge is.
But really — there are lots of white hats. Some of them are on backwards. I suspect most of them say “COCKS.”
It’s going to be a long night.
Kill them to kill part of yourself
from Holly @ Feministe 17 Feb 2008 3:21 amEarlier this week there was an update in the death of Sanesha Stewart: apparently the man who is suspected of killing her — let’s be clear, he was dragged from her apartment early in the morning, covered in her blood — had known her for quite some time. That doesn’t seem to fit with his claim (and the media’s original lurid story) that he was shocked to find out that Stewart was trans and flew into a homicidal rage as a result. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised to hear this at all.
Most Feministe readers will agree that the “trans panic” defense is bogus, and that one’s own fear or disgust of queer or trans people is hardly an excuse for violence or murder. But a lot of these “panics” are suspicious on more levels than one. In similar killings in the past, there’s been evidence that suggests the murderer knew very well that the victim was trans, and may have killed her in order to erase the association between them. The revelation in Stewart’s case brought to mind the aptly titled 2003 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Disposable People.” Washington DC activist Earline Budd, who’s dealt with her own share of transphobic violence on top of fielding more than a dozen calls a month about other trans people being assaulted, sums it up well:
Budd, like many transgender activists, believes the “discovery crime” motivation is often bogus. Most transgendered people are up front with potential sex partners about their identities and anatomies, she says — and even in cases where they’re not, “how can you say that’s an excuse for killing somebody or beating them up?”
Bella Evangelista’s murderer, Antoine Jacobs, is reportedly considering a “panic defense” when he goes to court.
According to Sgt. Brett Parson, head of Washington’s GLLU police unit, Jacobs told police he and Evangelista “were engaging in sex for hire, he liked it, the act was completed, they parted ways, and some of his friends said, ‘Hey, man, that’s a dude,’ and he returned and shot her.”
Budd suspects that Jacobs simply got embarrassed when his friends found out he’d been with Evangelista, who was well known as a transgendered woman in the neighborhood where Jacobs lived.
“This was all to show off for the guys,” she says. “He came back and confronted her, and when she turned around to walk away, he pulled out a gun and shot her and just continued to shoot her. In the back. And that’s a panic defense? Come on now.”
We are the champions, my friends
from Holly @ Feministe 16 Feb 2008 11:04 pm
From the “why not start the shameless self-promotion early” department:
Devout Feministe readers may remember a post from a while back where I talked about becoming obsessed with drumming in the game Rock Band, where you and up to three of your friends sing into, strum or pound on little plastic instruments that make your television play awesome rock hits. Well, I went a little overboard… when I heard that the Virgin Megastores were having a Valentine’s Day Rock Band tournament, I decided I needed to put a band together.
The last time I competed in a tournament like this, I took second place for playing Guitar Hero II; that time, a bunch of my opposition in the middle of the tournament were obnoxious drunken guys who kept trying to intimidate me (or maybe they were just being idiots) by yelling about how they weren’t going to get beaten by a girl, how I really wanted to sleep with them, etc. etc. the usual. I destroyed them. So this time I thought, maybe we should have an all-girl band, hmm? Thus was born… Glittürminætor!
We only managed to practice together for one night, although our guitarist is my roommate (and a calendar pinup to boot) so we’ve had some practice playing in sync. So this is the weird part… we won the tournament. And came away with a bunch of prizes: a $500 gift certificate, another copy of Rock Band (which we inadvertently gave away to a random teenager), and a bunch of other random gizmos.
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Why I *heart* NY
from Jill @ Feministe 03 Feb 2008 10:08 pm
Because you don’t even have to watch major sports games to know who wins — you can just sit in your apartment and you hear everyone either screaming and honking or groaning and booing as soon as it’s over.
I take it the Giants won tonight?
UPDATE 5 minutes later: This whole yelling/honking/ringing a cowbell thing could get old.
I once asked my German room mate what he thought of Americans. He considered it for a minute before responding, “You guys yell ‘Woo!‘ a lot.” That would appear to be accurate.
