I’m burned out after months of nonstop reading blogs/news/nonfiction books/etc and need a break. No mystery that this also comes with the last bit of warm weather, bringing on perpetual crankiness, an understanding of animals that hibernate, and no desire to censor myself at the moment. I can’t resist a few parting shots with the things I’ve been kicking around before the blog goes silent for a bit. So I guess this is kind of messy and unpolished, but whatever. And who knows, maybe tomorrow I will be miraculously motivated again.
I feel remiss that I did not acknowledge the historical significance of Obama’s presidency at all, despite having a number of fundamental problems with him.
I am bitterly amused that continued outrage is being leveled towards Michael Vick for his torture of dogs, yet we continuously honor men who are rapists and abusers. If I had a dime for every time someone blew off a man’s abuse of a woman to wax poetic about him I’d be rich. (And no, I don’t condone what he did, I think it’s abhorrent. I just wish there was some parity here.)
The conversations going on around me about the auto industry all have to do with those “greedy” auto workers who get paid “too much” for such an “easy” job and how unions need to be weakened. It strikes me as incredibly odd that our remaining factory workers, lionized as models of class mobility and the American Dream, are now bearing the brunt of the blame for reaping the benefits that make those things possible. I feel more like an alien than I thought I could.
The ongoing fight over auto is not about saving jobs and communities, or converting the industry to sustainable mass transit. It’s about whether the bankruptcy of the Big Three would be one of those moments of “creative destruction” so dearly beloved by free-market ideologues, whose own lives of course aren’t at stake. It’s about whether the companies will go bankrupt anyway – so why postpone the inevitable? – or whether the impact of their precipitous collapse on the system as a whole is too enormous to risk.
I am frustrated and disgusted at a culture of learned callousness. Going into the city and seeing homeless, the performances they need to put on to solicit people’s kindness, the way people ignore them anyway. If the victim isn’t perfect we knee jerk and withdraw our support. I see this in my own thought patterns when I give them money and hear their stories.
The “it’s my paycheck” bullshit. I abhor this. Your paycheck is earned on the backs of others. You are not a monolith, a person all by yourself that you earn your paycheck in a vacuum, that it is not linked to a local and global community of people. And I do believe that this is one of America’s greatest failings - this teaching of such extreme individualism that so many couldn’t care less about others outside of “their circle”, having no understanding of community and the way one’s actions ripple outward.
I did not drop from the womb with a desire to wear makeup. As someone who was born with a vagina it is not a biological imperative that I put on lipstick. This is not intended to shame women who do so, it is directed towards people who seem to think they can tell me I should do this because I am a woman.
I just finished Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks and well, damn if she isn’t brilliant when it comes to discussions of the way power works.
I have finally put an actual name to that ethereal thing I’ve wanted to study for years and this makes me kind of excited. (Sounds much better than “I am interested in economic tyranny and the way development is a vehicle for neocolonialism.” - which is NEVER this concise when I get asked to describe my primary interest. I feel a little dense that it took me this long to actually find a discipline that has the potential to explore this.)
And a link I meant to quote but never did. I thought there were more, but oh well:
The Sanctuary >> Hate Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum - A post that details the rhetoric and the hate crimes towards immigrants that have been occurring in the Long Island area. I’m shocked that it’s this extensive in my area and had no idea. I like the way the post emphasizes the importance of the way we speak about issues and how this can create an environment where these things occur - too often we devalue language and its impact.
Sleep and I are no longer acquainted (Started pulling this together at 3:30am yesterday. Ugh!). And so continues my prolific quoting of other people. Entries pertaining to the election which I really enjoyed:
I read the other day that Toni Morrison will be voting for Obama. A couple of weeks ago it was Alice Walker writing what I described as “driveling bullshit.” and one more example of the mainstreaming of the progressives - Rosa Clemente has a more definitive list here. Obama talks about bringing “fundamental change” but the only fundamental change is his colour and when one looks more closely even his colour is not that fundamental afterall. Obama is intrinsically tied to the mainstream, pro-Zionist war mongering American superstructure. Though disappointing it is not so surprising that so many millions all over the world have been drawn in by Obama who panders to black and white notions of a “post racial” America and world. An imaginary world of convenience particularly for the millions of white people who will vote him into the White House.
These are not truths. Nor do I think it is an accident that the first Black president of the USA will be a Black man who is not historically tied to slavery and the Black American experience. Facts like these are what makes the Obama’s presidency so dangerous because the establishment will use his Blackness to press the notion of a post racial society, of a fairer society, a more just society - all of which are big white lies. He will be held up as a pure example of the lie that is called the American dream along with Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell at the expense of the people in most need. This is already happening as we watch the so called progressives launch a double edged sword of complicity by jumping on the cultist bandwagon of unquestioning worship along with the likes of Powell and Hitchins. Whilst on the other hand silencing the voices of two women of colour who represent the real fundamental change.
A couple of days ago I wrote about the need to put people, all people before profit - Obama will not even come near to meeting that need. What will Obama do for the DRC - will he be calling for the prosecution of corporations buying the “blood soaked” minerals? Obama supported the bail out of the Wall Street gamblers and thieves. He like all the other candidates and Western politicians conveniently avoid making any connection between the financial crisis, increasing global hunger and the trillions of dollars being spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
You are defending an outmoded, ineffectual, nonrepresentational system of government that rose to prominence during times when there were far fewer people on the planet?
None of our governmental systems are actually equipped to deal with the reality of over 6 billion people on this planet, many of whom have interests that can’t possibly be represented by nationalistic, zenophobic, hierarchical, elitist governments run by powerful cabals headed by figureheads so distanced from the true needs of the people that all they can do is craft lying, manipulative, surface speeches that present them as able to deal effectively with the needs of the many, when in actuality all they are capable of doing in controlling the masses by telling them that voting this charlatan candidate or that charlatan candidate into power will make them happy or sad, bring back the good ole times or stave off the reality of an unavoidable future.
Pulling out my favorites from here but there are a number of them accompanied with links to their articles and an awesome political cartoon.
Andrew Gebhardt:
“But ’support’ until now has not translated into organizing, into changing the institutions we currently tolerate, or starting new ones.”
“Waking up to the possibilities of real hope and change means challenging leaders, and daily, difficult local work that some, but not yet enough of us do. The most hopeful aspect of Obama’s “hope and change” message might be that people see those words for what they are, and demand that whoever assumes office, some real policies justify those fragile, necessary emotions so many of us cling to.”
Joshua Frank:
“What will happen to the movements that have been sidelined in order to help get the Democrats elected? What will become of the environmental movement after January 20? Will it step up to oppose Obama’s quest for nuclear power and clean coal? Will the antiwar movement work to force Obama to take a softer approach toward Iran? Will they stop the troop increase in Afghanistan?”
“[Some 'progressives' seem] to believe he’ll magically move left once inaugurated and is only running to the right in order to win the election. That position is a non sequitur and not worthy of real discussion as it’s based on wishful thinking.”
“We deserve more than lofty rhetoric about ‘action’ and ‘hope.’ ”
Yesterday on the radio Steve Malzberg was talking about how they’re no longer educating students about Veteran’s Day in schools - I guess it’s some “liberal plot”, as usual. Great idea Steve. Let’s talk about Veteran’s Day. Let’s talk particularly about the issues that women veterans face. Will you be talking about that?
• A 2004 study of veterans from Vietnam and all wars since, conducted by psychotherapist Maureen Murdoch and published in the journal Military Medicine, found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving.
• In 2003, a survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the first Gulf War by psychologist Anne Sadler and her colleagues, published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military.
• And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, also conducted by Murdoch and published in Archives of Family Medicine, reported that 90 percent had been sexually harassed, which means anything from being pressured for sex to being relentlessly teased and stared at.
• A 2007 survey by the Department of Veterans Affairs found that homelessness among female veterans is rapidly increasing as women soldiers come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Forty percent of these homeless female veterans say they were sexually abused while in the service.
Defense Department numbers are much lower. In Fiscal Year 2007, the Pentagon reported 2,085 sexual assaults among military women, which given that there are about 200,000 active-duty women in the armed forces, is a mere fraction of what the veterans studies indicate. The discrepancy can be explained by the fact that the Pentagon counts only those rapes that soldiers have officially reported.
Having the courage to report a rape is hard enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and the fear of reprisal prevent some 60 percent of rapes from being brought to light, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.
But within the military, reporting is much riskier. Platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, so any woman who reports a sexual assault has little chance of remaining anonymous. She will probably have to face her assailant day after day and put up with resentment and blame from other soldiers who see her as a snitch. She risks being persecuted by her assailant if he is her superior, and punished by any commanders who consider her a troublemaker. And because military culture demands that all soldiers keep their pain and distress to themselves, reporting an assault will make her look weak and cowardly.
For all these reasons, some 80 percent of military rapes are never reported, as the Pentagon itself acknowledges.
McKinney has kind of a political tourette syndrome, you know, she just can’t stop herself from saying the truth no matter how much trouble it gets her in. - Greg Palast
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WORK IN PROGRESS!! I just wanted to get it posted before tomorrow. Adding stuff to it gradually.
I’m voting Green. Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente. The past 2 elections I voted Democrat despite not being enthused with the candidates. They do not represent my views but I was swayed by the argument that the elections were “too important” to lose. Finding myself grappling with the same mindset this year left me frustrated. How many more elections would it be - how many more before I can safely choose to vote for someone who I can be proud of and excited to endorse??
I’m sick of this idea that I need to put aside my beliefs to elect the “viable” candidate. I’m sick of settling. I want to help build a new movement. I want to stand up and be counted, vote AGAINST the two party system we have now, all while actually voting for a candidate that closely represents my views.
If the Greens get 5% of the vote they qualify for federal funding. My vote is not wasted.
McKinney responded to The Sanctuary’s questionnaire on immigration in a manner that I had hoped to see from Barack Obama when I cast my vote for him in the Democratic primary. Trade was the issue I had voted on primarily and I had hoped that he would be different. No one ever talks about the underlying reasons for the massive immigration that the United States is experiencing. Then everyone wants to throw immigrants out when it was our trade policies that caused them to come here in the first place.
Reading this was a turning point from being nervous about whether I was making the right choice to being excited and feeling good about my voting decision. It’s an amazing feeling. I’ve NEVER felt this way about voting before.
1. Could you please articulate what you think are the most pressing issues for the U.S. immigrant community, at home AND abroad, and how you would hope to address those issues as President?
One of the most pressing issues for immigrants is the effect of corporate globalization. The so-called “free trade” agreements, NAFTA, CAFTA, Fast Track, the Caribbean FTA, the U.S.-Peru FTA etc., have undermined labor and environmental rights and caused the loss of living-wage jobs both here and abroad. Massive agricultural imports into developing countries have displaced an estimated two million farmers, as subsidized grains from the United States take over their local and regional markets. With few new jobs in manufacturing or other sectors, many of these former farmers now work in fields and low-wage jobs across the U.S. As a legislator I authored the No Tax Breaks for Runaway Plants bill in Congress; the TRUTH Act, requiring disclosure of the whereabouts of subsidiaries of U.S. corporations operating overseas; and the Corporate Responsibility Act, to force U.S. corporations operating overseas to abide by U.S. environmental and labor standards. As president, I would continue the fight against corporate globalization and require corporations to be held publicly accountable and socially responsible.
Global warming is another pressing issue. As islands disappear and indigenous. ways of life are threatened, entire populations are displaced. Food production and water supplies are at risk. The United States can no longer justify denial by blaming weather fluctuations or claiming the science is unclear. We need air, land, water, climate, production and consumption policies that reflect the real limits within which we all must live. It is impossible to discuss the issue of so-called “illegal immigration” without addressing the reasons millions of people are forced to flee their countries to come to the United States No human being is an “illegal alien.” What is illegal is the way U.S. economic policies treat workers in this country and throughout the world. I support immigration policies that promote fairness, nondiscrimination, and family re-unification, not preferential quotas based on race, class and ideology.
2. Do you support comprehensive immigration reform?
Yes. Immigration reform should be based on human rights, compassion, and fairness.
The documentary American Blackout brings to light the disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida, Cynthia McKinney’s participation in uncovering what happened and her own troubles because she had the nerve to seek justice. VITAL to see.
McKinney grills Rumsfeld about a number of things INCLUDING - The fact that the United States repeatedly gives contracts to Dyncorp, a corporation that is known to TRAFFIC women, as well as 2.3 trillion dollars that went “missing” from the Pentagon.
Many people are hungry for a third party (or more) in our elections, but are fearful of voting for one because they are convinced their vote won’t count, or will help the Republican Party. While disillusioned with the Democratic Party, they vote the lesser of two evils. What will it take to persuade voters to support a strong third party?
First, I don’t consider it progressive if you blindly accept the Democratic Party. I’m personally not trying to persuade anybody. If you want to be a Republican or a Democrat, that’s fine. I’m trying to get at the 49% who don’t vote; the millions of African American and Latino young people who are not registered to vote. I’m trying to get to the young people who aren’t caught up in the Obama hype. I’m trying to persuade working-class white people who are not caught up in the Republican hype, and have disengaged from the system. So I’m not trying to persuade somebody to vote differently.
As far as the “lesser of two evils,” I think that says it right there. I don’t understand why we have to have an evil, period. Both parties are corporate parties. In every policy that one puts forth, one might be less devastating, but eventually it will hurt you. That’s what we’ve seen with Democrats and Republicans. I don’t think my generation can afford the lesser of any evil at this point.
Part of your platform focuses on the prison-industrial complex. Can you explain what that means - many people don’t understand that term - and describe its economic and social impact? How you propose changing the current system?
It’s based off President Eisenhower’s use of the term “military industrial complex.” It is the idea of corporations and the state - particularly corporations - controlling how prisons are run and operated. It also includes any aspect of policing. The phrase was coined in the early 1990s when organizers like myself began seeing the connection between private corporations owning and operating prisons and the goods and services produced by prison labor in these prisons. Then Bill Clinton passed the Juvenile Justice Crime Bill, which made young people eligible to be sentenced as adults, expanded mandatory minimum drug laws, allowed 16 year-olds to be on death row, and got rid of the right of the writ of habeas corpus for many people in prison to be able to challenge their sentences. This has created a system where at any given time over 3 in 10 African American men and 1 out of every 8 Latino men are either in prison, on probation, or on parole. In this past year, we surpassed 2 million Americans incarcerated. 1 out of 100 Americans are either in prison, on parole, or on probation. I’ve been intimately involved in that struggle - fighting against the death penalty, stopping mandatory minimum sentencing, and not imprisoning people for non-violent felonies, particularly drug charges.
This is related to NAFTA and CAFTA - it’s all interconnected. Once the borders were opened up for “free trade,” when manufacturing industries started leaving in greater numbers during the 1980s and 1990s and corporations started shipping jobs overseas, communities became blighted. There were no jobs. So, as a Senator from New York said, if we build the prisons, they will come. Particularly in upstate New York and parts of rural Ohio, prisons provide some of the biggest job opportunities for communities where people lost manufacturing jobs with good benefits and good wages. Now they are working on incarcerating other human beings. Economically, that impacts the communities from which the incarcerated young men and women come from. For example, many in prison come from urban areas, and the Census doesn’t count them where they actually live, but instead counts them where they are incarcerated. That helps those rural communities where prisons are built get more money and funding.
Since the beginning of what we call civilization, when men’s dominance over women was firmly established until the present day, our history has been marred with oppression of and brutality to women. The Green Party deplores this system of male domination, known as patriarchy, in all its forms, both subtle and overt - from oppression, inequality, and discrimination to domestic violence, rape, trafficking and forced slavery. The change the world is crying for cannot occur unless women’s voices are heard. Democracy cannot work without equality for women that provides equal participation and representation. It took an extraordinary and ongoing fight over 72 years for Women to win the right to vote. However, the Equal Rights Amendment has still not been ratified.
We believe that equality should be a given, and that all Greens must work toward that end. We are committed to increasing participation of women in politics, government and leadership so they can change laws, make decisions, and create policy solutions that affect and will improve women’s lives, and we are building our party so that Greens can be elected to office to do this. In July 2002 the Women’s Caucus of the Green Party of the United States was founded to carry out the Party’s commitment to women.
Acknowledges continued racial discrimination (And also environmental racism in their Environmental Justice section!!!) and that this country was built on a foundation of genocide:
The development of the United States has been marked by conflict over questions of race. Our nation was formed only after Native Americans were displaced. The institution of slavery had as its underpinnings the belief in white supremacy, which we as Greens condemn. In slavery’s aftermath, people of color have borne the brunt of violence and discrimination. The Green Party unequivocally condemns these evils which continue to be a social problem of paramount significance.
That the war on terror has been used to rollback rights:
The so-called war on terrorism must not become an assault on the civil liberties that are enshrined in our Constitution. The price of freedom is not the loss of liberty. Constitutionally protected rights - fought for by American patriots - are rights the Green Party patriotically holds in the highest regard. Greens demand that the Justice Department cease and desist its wholesale rollback of constitutional protections and its daily dismantling of legal safeguards.
The use of Homeland Defense monies to spy on citizens exercising First Amendment rights is particularly onerous, as are “sneak and peek” provisions of the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act that allows surveillance of libraries, readers, the Internet, and computer users. Basic rights ensuring individual privacy are under attack. The U.S. government’s use of high tech tools, including intrusive monitoring, data mining and analysis to identify and disrupt citizen activists, should be seen as an attack on fundamental rights of an engaged, active citizenry.
I wanted to quickly highlight a post by Cara over at The Curvature that put exactly into words what I’ve been struggling to explain when it comes to Sarah Palin:
Via Sociological Images — a truly great blog I discovered recently — comes this story about a Sarah Palin lookalike contest held at Vegas strip club (oh, sorry, “gentleman’s club”). Lots of bikinis, sexualized use of guns and sexism abound. You can view more photographs of the event here.
The saddest thing is that it’s not the most offensive display of sexualized misogyny that has been directed a Palin. The sex doll came close, but I’d say that award goes “Nailin’ Paylin,” the Larry Flint pornographic film starring yet another Palin lookalike, the existence of which all of us should have seen coming.
There are two problems with both the porn film and this strip club contest, and neither one of them is about porn and stripping in general. The first issue is consent. Sarah Palin did not consent to having her image used in this way. Portraying her sexually like this without her consent is a violation — and contrary to what many people apparently think, existing as a woman in public is not the same as consenting to use of your body as public property. This isn’t satire or parody; it’s just sexist and degrading.
Which brings us to the next issue. The entire reason that anyone gets to hide behind the parody and “all in good fun” arguments is precisely because portraying Sarah Palin sexually is intended to be mocking towards her. It’s taking a powerful woman and working to make her non-threatening by turning her into a sexual object. And it’s the very opposite side of the coin as calling Hillary Clinton ugly and denying her sexuality. Both reinforce the ideas that women exist to sexually pleasure men, and that sexuality is the only power we have (or should be allowed). Whether revoking or affirming that “power,” the result is an attempt to render the woman inferior and powerless.
Why am I doing this? Because I have learned that those very basics have become so obscured that many men and women no longer see them at all, no longer regard sexism a problem and no longer think that misogyny is a serious matter. I learned this during many recent discussions about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, about sexism and racism in politics and about the post-feminist era we supposedly now inhabit.
In one of those discussions this was said:
Which is why, if I had to choose simply on this basis and no other, I’d rather see a black man in the White House than a woman.
Women don’t get stopped in their cars by cops just because they are women.
The reference here is to racial profiling, and it is a serious problem. So is religious profiling of Muslims or those who are suspected of being Muslims or Arabs. It’s not my intention to downplay the particular problems of racial, religious or even gender-based (read: male) police profiling. But I was dumbstruck by this comment, just dumbstruck, because my first reaction was that women would be a lot less likely to be out driving their cars in the first place, especially alone or late at night. My second reaction was the realization that people mostly don’t see that female fear of the outside as a civil rights issue or a human rights issue. It’s just How Things Are.
Yet the difference in our ability to go out, alone and fairly safely, is highly dependent on whether we are men or women. In some societies women are not allowed to go out alone at all, but only in the company of a male relative. In other societies women may be allowed to go the stores and such on their own but cannot travel abroad without their husband’s permission. In many societies women who go out alone are regarded as prostitutes or fair game for any sexual molester. In most societies women who go out alone at night are at greater risk than men who go out alone, because women have to deal not only with the risk of getting mugged but also with the risk of getting raped. They are seen as prey. So women adjust to this, accommodate themselves to this, stay at home and agree to live lesser lives because of their sex.
Original Essay: The Not Rape Epidemic at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture2008/12/23 This is how the Not Rape epidemic spreads - through fear and silence, which become complicit in perpetuating the behaviors described here. Women of all backgrounds are affected by these kinds of acts, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class. So many of us carry the scars of the past with us into our daily lives. Most of us have pushed these stories to the back of our minds, trying to have some semblance of a normal life that includes romantic and sexual relationships. However, waiting just behind the tongue is story after story of the horrors other women experience and hide deep within the self behind a protective wall of silence.
