Friday, July 19, 2013
Origin of the Phrase "Women of Color" offered by Loretta Ross
** Origin of the Phrase, "Women of Color".
** Loretta Ross: SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective***.
** http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/
** January 28, 2011.
Y'all know where the term 'Women of Color' came from? Who can say that?
See we're bad at transmitting history….
In 1977, a group of black women from Washington D.C. went to the National Women's Conference that Jimmy Carter had given five million dollars to have as part of the World Decade for Women -- there was a conference in Houston, Texas.
This group of black women carried to that conference something called A Black Women's Agenda, because the organizers of the conference… had put together a three-page minority womens' plank…, in a two-hundred-page document that these black women thought was somewhat 'inadequate.' .
And they actually formed a group called Black Women's Agenda to come there in Houston with a black women's plan of action that they wanted the delegates to vote to substitute for the minority plank that was in the proposed plan of action. Well a funny thing happened in Houston. When they took the Black Womens' Agenda to Houston, then all the rest of the 'minority women of color' wanted to be included in the Black Womens' Agenda. Okay?… Well, they agreed, except that you could no longer call it the Black Womens' Agenda!
And it was in those negotiations in Houston the term 'Women of Color' was created. Okay? And they didn't see it as a biological designation -- you're born Asian, you're born black, you're born African-American, whatever…. It is a solidarity definition -- a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been 'minoritized.'
Now what's happened, you know, in the thirty years since then is that people see it as biology now. You know, like, okay… and people are saying, "I don't want to be definied as a woman of color, I am black, I am Asian-American, well that's fine, but why are you reducing a political designation to a biological destiny? That's what white supremacy wants you to do. You know?
And I think it's a setback when we disintegrate as people of color, you know, around primitive ethnic claiming. You know, yes, we are Asian-American, Native American, whatever -- but the point is when you choose to work with other people who are minoritized by oppression, you have lifted yourself out of that basic identity. Into another political being. Another political space. And unfortunately so many times, people of color hear the term 'people of color' from other white people that they think white people created it, instead of understanding that we -- we self-named ourselves this. This is a term that has a lot of power for us. But we've done a poor ass job of communicating that history so that people understand that power.
** Loretta Ross: SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective***.
** http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/
** January 28, 2011.
Y'all know where the term 'Women of Color' came from? Who can say that?
See we're bad at transmitting history….
In 1977, a group of black women from Washington D.C. went to the National Women's Conference that Jimmy Carter had given five million dollars to have as part of the World Decade for Women -- there was a conference in Houston, Texas.
This group of black women carried to that conference something called A Black Women's Agenda, because the organizers of the conference… had put together a three-page minority womens' plank…
And they actually formed a group called Black Women's Agenda to come there in Houston with a black women's plan of action that they wanted the delegates to vote to substitute for the minority plank that was in the proposed plan of action. Well a funny thing happened in Houston. When they took the Black Womens' Agenda to Houston, then all the rest of the 'minority women of color' wanted to be included in the Black Womens' Agenda. Okay?… Well, they agreed, except that you could no longer call it the Black Womens' Agenda!
And it was in those negotiations in Houston the term 'Women of Color' was created. Okay? And they didn't see it as a biological designation -- you're born Asian, you're born black, you're born African-American, whatever…. It is a solidarity definition -- a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been 'minoritized.'
Now what's happened, you know, in the thirty years since then is that people see it as biology now. You know, like, okay… and people are saying, "I don't want to be definied as a woman of color, I am black, I am Asian-American, well that's fine, but why are you reducing a political designation to a biological destiny? That's what white supremacy wants you to do.
And I think it's a setback when we disintegrate as people of color, you know, around primitive ethnic claiming. You know, yes, we are Asian-American, Native American, whatever -- but the point is when you choose to work with other people who are minoritized by oppression, you have lifted yourself out of that basic identity. Into another political being. Another political space. And unfortunately so many times, people of color hear the term 'people of color' from other white people that they think white people created it, instead of understanding that we -- we self-named ourselves this. This is a term that has a lot of power for us. But we've done a poor ass job of communicating that history so that people understand that power.
Labels: amplifying voices, anti-oppression, anti-racism, sacred texts, women, Women's Rights
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Reproductive Justice and other Frameworks
This method of understanding different frameworks was from La'Tasha Mayes of New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Choice, also here on Facebook. She presented to our congregation at the most recent Sunday morning forum, and opened us up!
Since the picture I took is a little fuzzy, here are the contents of the chart:
From a quick review of this chart, I think many of the terms ought to be fairly clear with a little reflection or conversation with others. However, a few that I think could require a little learning curve (for someone like myself) may include:
Human Rights: UN Universal Declaration. Pittsburgh Human Rights Network.
Movement-Building: The Gamaliel network is one example. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is another. There is more than one way to build power, and a good start is leaders who are themselves organized, and can organize masses of people, masses of money, or both.
Systemic Oppression: Here's a static definition from pcc.edu:
Self-Help:
Since the picture I took is a little fuzzy, here are the contents of the chart:
FRAMEWORKS
|
|||
Reproductive Rights
|
Reproductive Health
|
Reproductive Justice
|
|
Mode of Delivery
|
Legal Systems
|
Healthcare
Delivery
|
Movement-Building
|
Issues
|
Abortion;
Contraception; Informed Consent; Privacy
|
Access to full
range of reproductive health services; low/no-cost, and
culturally-competent care; comprehensive sex education;
contraception; pre-natal/pregnancy care; abortion services;
cancer prevention; health insurance
|
RR + RH +
Human Rights; systemic oppression; self-help; intersectionality
|
Key Players
|
Lawyers,
judges, policymakers, elected officials, advocacy groups
|
Healthcare
providers, medical professionals, community and public health
educators, researchers
|
Community
organizers, Women of Color, marginalized groups, social justice
organizations, Allies
|
From a quick review of this chart, I think many of the terms ought to be fairly clear with a little reflection or conversation with others. However, a few that I think could require a little learning curve (for someone like myself) may include:
Human Rights: UN Universal Declaration. Pittsburgh Human Rights Network.
Movement-Building: The Gamaliel network is one example. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is another. There is more than one way to build power, and a good start is leaders who are themselves organized, and can organize masses of people, masses of money, or both.
Systemic Oppression: Here's a static definition from pcc.edu:
Institutional Oppression is the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.
Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions.
Institutional Oppression creates a system of invisible barriers limiting people based on their membership in unfavored social identity groups. The barriers are only invisible to those “seemingly” unaffected by it.
The practice of institutionalized oppression is based on the belief in inherent superiority or inferiority. Institutionalized oppression is a matter of result regardless of intent.And here's a dynamic definition of systemic oppression.
Self-Help:
Central to several key women of color organizations has been the self-help model. Using a process of dialogue and active listening as a way of demystifying the health problems communities faced, the self-help model assumes that collectively participants can thread through the difficult problems — including racism, poverty, low self-esteem and stress — and use their intelligence to find meaningful solutions. This approach is central to sparking self- healing as well as social action.
Intersectionality: My understanding of this is that pretty much every one of us fits into some categories of privilege and some categories of oppression. Sometimes, the intersection can be seen as a multiplier (as in being female and a person of color), and sometimes a mitigator (as in being female and white, or female and able-bodied, etc. Noting the link just above from the WWHATSUP training on white supremacy, "arguing hierarchies of oppressions is not helpful."
And here again, Tumblr is a great resource for providing a conversation on a crowd-sourced definition.
Allies: My understanding of an ally is somebody who is outside of an oppressed social identity group, and who stands with others who are bearing the brunt of that oppression -- because often people in privileged categories are more likely to hear folks from their same categories, rather than writing somebody "different" off as "just acting on their own self-interest." This can be in the form of a group of men who speak up for women or third-gender folks. This can be a white person who marches with people of color. This can be an able-bodied person, or a cisgender person, or a heterosexual person, or anybody who could be identified as outside of certain oppressed social groups, who is there to work together with people within those groups, and use their voice as an amplifier. Note with intersectionality, it is possible for ally-ship to be multi-directional or reciprocal, so working together helps us all.
It's important to note that speaking up for somebody is NOT the same as speaking FOR somebody. It's pretty much always best to speak from one's own experience, and be clear about when you're speaking from your understanding of another's experience. In other words, it's important to work on self-differentiation. And note that being an ally is most effective when it's in collaboration and conversation, on common ground, in community and accountability, with people you are allying with.
And finally, an ally is somebody who comprehends deep-down that the privilege they've been (arbitrarily) afforded is less valuable than the right-relationship of common ground, and willing to do the hard work of dismantling the privilege/oppression paradigms, thereby turning that which each of us inherently *deserves* into RIGHTS.
Back to the importance of the presentation itself, and what I see as a clear call to work for the larger vision of holistic justice: I believe that when women and girls of color (all colors actually -- from 2B1505 to F5F1E9 to 4D7BD1) achieve/receive/perceive equity and justice, we will ALL be free in an age where we each can be our authentic selves. ALL justice is connected, and the human rights (or lack thereof) in this area is a clear indicator of the condition of justice at present.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Labels: 1st UU principle, 2nd UU principle, anti-oppression, classism, Community, education, equal rights, oppression, sexuality, universal health care, women, Women's Rights
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Ladies, Is it Time to Rock out with your C**k out?
To all my women/female friends, to their allies, and to those
whom I've never met... After the abuse you've endured recently,
including ongoing desires by some powerful men in congress to
undo the recent Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which
provides a lot of important women's health assistance, especially
for the poor), along with proposed bills to make laws
requiring doctors to insert ultrasound wands into your vaginas if
you want or need an abortion, it's time to take action.
While I don't advocate actually doing (without consent) what this picture seems to imply, and recognize that you may even be offended by the imagery below or the title above (the term is, of course, figurative, and implies full-on rock and rolling) of this post, I know this: There are far more offensive things in the world (including the idea of regressing our codified system of law toward something akin to the fifties). It's time to make sex and gender a non-factor when dealing with human relations, and with laws. I do think it's REALLY time to assert full equality. To do that, we need to remove these men from power and replace them with woman-friendly representatives, or greatly diminish their voices to the margins.
It's been forty years since the ERA was originally brought up for a vote, and it did not pass. I say let's revive the Equal Rights Amendment, and make sure women's rights are a major issue in November. Here is the process for getting an amendment proposed and passed. We need to make every state come alive, and pick representatives who will support women's rights. Women are half of the population, and I am hoping that a sleeping giant has been awakened in the last year.
While I don't advocate actually doing (without consent) what this picture seems to imply, and recognize that you may even be offended by the imagery below or the title above (the term is, of course, figurative, and implies full-on rock and rolling) of this post, I know this: There are far more offensive things in the world (including the idea of regressing our codified system of law toward something akin to the fifties). It's time to make sex and gender a non-factor when dealing with human relations, and with laws. I do think it's REALLY time to assert full equality. To do that, we need to remove these men from power and replace them with woman-friendly representatives, or greatly diminish their voices to the margins.
It's been forty years since the ERA was originally brought up for a vote, and it did not pass. I say let's revive the Equal Rights Amendment, and make sure women's rights are a major issue in November. Here is the process for getting an amendment proposed and passed. We need to make every state come alive, and pick representatives who will support women's rights. Women are half of the population, and I am hoping that a sleeping giant has been awakened in the last year.
|
| Original image from Scandinavia and the World comic here. |
Labels: equal rights, Women's Rights
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Nudity is Vulnerability, yet Vulnerability can be Empowering
Labels: 1st UU principle, angry at organized religions, anti-oppression, Islam, sexuality, women, Women's Rights
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Excellent List of Demands for the #occupywallstreet Protest
Before we get too far into this post, I will say that I've been checking out some of the YouTube footage of the protests so far, and the thing most striking (since the police brutality is kind of expected in this culture nowadays) is the astounding amount of venom in the comments. Two things come to mind: First, that there is a segment of our culture who have been highly brainwashed to believe that people who would protest against this paramount injustice are somehow subhuman and that the banks and corporations are still doing good things (or these commenters are paid plants with plenty of time for trolling and seeding disparaging opinions); and Second, that the protesters must be doing something right, as the vitriol usually increases in intensity when something important is being defended.
Now, from a comment here (credit goes to Lloyd J Hart) in response to the the rhetorical post about "Our one demand"....
This is very radical. It is also what must be done. Right about now, much of the numbers that used to indicate how much money a person has have been manipulated by leveraging in the debt industry, and also by political corruption where $100k to members of the US congress turns into tens or hundreds of millions.
At this point, it's impossible to tell how much money any person should have, also because the leverage and corruption has caused your average Joe Plumber's life savings to be cut by a third or a half in some cases. We need to reconnect people to actual resources, and not gum up the system by means of all of the money (and supposed lack thereof). There's plenty of money to go around.
The problem is that the people with the MOST money are afraid that they're not going to keep all of it, or are not going to be able to gain more money fast enough, and so they're being very tight with it. This includes banks, who are not loaning money out. There's plenty of housing for everybody. There's plenty of food for everybody. There's plenty of clothes for everybody. But apparently there's not enough money to actually purchase any of it.
A caveman or alien who showed up on the scene would be bewildered by the state of this world. They would walk into the grocery store and walk out with food to hand to the person begging outside. They would cut the lock off the door of the foreclosed house and invite the homeless person in. They would go into Macy's and grab carts of clothes and hand them to the people dressed in rags. AND THE WORLD WOULD NOT END as a result of doing so!
Sadly, the radical solution above will not be entertained by those in power. It will not be mentioned in the media, and it will be repressed until either there is no other option, or until it's too late.
BTW, I think his numbers of "one trillion" in points six and seven are a little high. I think we could get the job kick-started well enough to be maintained with about five-hundred billion toward each.
lyrics: "The revolution starts now." by Steve Earle
colors: Still red, white, and blue.
mood: transparent.
chant/prayer/mantra: There there be light.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Now, from a comment here (credit goes to Lloyd J Hart) in response to the the rhetorical post about "Our one demand"....
The above are good demands but they are not going to reinstate the living wage in America. Demands must also be easy for the public to get behind.
Public financing would be great but American elections are run at the county level where it is very easy to bribe elections supervisors to allow the theft of elections with electronic Jim Crow voting machines.
- Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
- Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
- Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
- Demand four: Free college education.
- Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
- Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
- Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
- Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
- Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
- Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
- Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.
- Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
by Lloyd J Hart
Labels: economics, environment, politics, restorative justice, universal health care, USA, Women's Rights
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Black Women are Beautiful. All Shades of Brown, Tan, and White Women as Well
May you know this in your heart of hearts. Enough said.
Labels: anti-oppression, racism, Women's Rights
Friday, September 19, 2008
Christian Egalitarianism
.
...
...is acceptable to me.
Makes reference to
"There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male [a]and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." from Galatians 3:28. That and Romans 8:18-25 are about all the Paul I can take, however. Too toxic. Paul gets two points for two good pericope samples. Although this one kind of has a yonic invasive quality to it, it might be difficult to deal with for some folks who've been through certain Christian damage events, or who simply don't appreciate the violation of being hoovered into a giant wicker basket.
lyrics: Eddie Izzard, talking about the Stoics, on "Circle".
colors: blue, orange, and yellow, for an angel education picture i drew earlier today.
mood: metatronic, bionic, embryonic
chant/prayer/mantra: be. do. have (only a little). enjoy.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
...
...is acceptable to me.
Makes reference to
"There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male [a]and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." from Galatians 3:28. That and Romans 8:18-25 are about all the Paul I can take, however. Too toxic. Paul gets two points for two good pericope samples. Although this one kind of has a yonic invasive quality to it, it might be difficult to deal with for some folks who've been through certain Christian damage events, or who simply don't appreciate the violation of being hoovered into a giant wicker basket.
lyrics: Eddie Izzard, talking about the Stoics, on "Circle".
colors: blue, orange, and yellow, for an angel education picture i drew earlier today.
mood: metatronic, bionic, embryonic
chant/prayer/mantra: be. do. have (only a little). enjoy.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Labels: anti-oppression, Book of Romans, classism, coursework, equal rights, freedom versus freedom, heaven on earth, Multitheticalism, parousia, racism, theological sources, Universalism, Women's Rights
Monday, June 2, 2008
U.S. Drug War and Incarceration System are Themselves Criminal
Look at these charts and graphs.
In the United States in 1900, less than 0.1% of the population was in prison. Now, its close to a full 1%, nearing 3 million people in prison or jail. An astonishing number of them are for non-violent drug-related offenses. Note the percentages in this graph -- more than five times as many people are incarcerated for non-violent drug-related offenses than for violence.
Read some of these heart-wrenching stories of normal women who've had their lives taken away by a system created by and for people who value mandatory minimum incarcerative sentencing and punitive justice more than they value recovery, rehabilitation and the power of restorative justice. The context in which these women are guilty of crimes worthy of incarceration still fails to convince me of its correctness in any way. It is a context of oppression, against the lower class, against African Americans and Latinos, and against those who choose personal freedom, plain and simple. Our system of legislation, law enforcement, and incarceration, is one of the key elements that is making the United States LESS FREE for common people, only retaining freedom for those who have certain privileges among the upper class. Note that certain celebrities and politicians get away with these same crimes, but the women above do not.
I see just and reasonable alternatives to this system, which require a change of assumptions. Making a change of assumptions is something that conservative folks do not easily do, but I guess that's what I'm asking. When somebody gets caught in a non-violent drug offense, they should go through rehabilitation and counseling, not just get thrown into the cogs of an inhuman penal system. We could and should have significantly less resources in the U.S. going toward prisons and law enforcement, if we focus on true crimes where people are killed, robbed, or raped. This has been said thousands of times before, and the people who make the laws don't listen and don't make changes. God damn it! God damn you people! What does it take???
We live in a society that glamorizes violence in the movies, and makes the violence of war look like video games. We live in a society where there is constant violence against every individual because social structures and networking are discouraged, or difficult to build when living hand to mouth. Every individual must run on their treadmill to be exploited for investor's gains, or get caught in the cogs, or tossed out of their homes onto the street.
And people who want to escape from all that violence get mandatory minimum sentencing laws. And people who could be productive members of society, caring for their parents and children, having children while still in their reproductive years, are instead wasting away in prison cells for 10-20 years.
Its about making angels illegal, damning them in a way. In the U.S. you have freedom. But you're not free to do the things that are declared illegal. You're free to question why things are illegal, but not free to avoid examination for asking questions, and not free to get a reasonable answer. A long time ago when I was in college, I saw Lou Reed on an interview saying (I paraphrase) "You're free to smoke cigarettes and alcohol, but not marijuana or cocaine." "Why?" "Because we say so." Oh." To me, it really seems like that. Here's another statement that's been said thousands of times. Alcohol and cigarettes cause more deaths than all other drugs combined, by far. Why are they somehow legal, and marijuana is not? Its just another form of prohibition, and many people are wondering, "Who benefits?" Certainly not the peaceable non-drug-using people of America, because there's still plenty of violence and other crimes going on, not to mention the general rat-race. In fact, its easy to argue that the drug laws themselves CAUSE violence.
The U.S. war on drugs, and the incarceration system, and those who continue to advocate for them are standing against love and justice, and are themselves criminal.
lyrics:
The truth in right and wrong
The boundaries of the law
I think you missed the point
Arresting for a joint?
From Fucking Hostile, by Pantera
colors: sigh.
mood: so tired of this. soul tired.
chant/prayer/mantra: going to go out and breathe some fresh air.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
In the United States in 1900, less than 0.1% of the population was in prison. Now, its close to a full 1%, nearing 3 million people in prison or jail. An astonishing number of them are for non-violent drug-related offenses. Note the percentages in this graph -- more than five times as many people are incarcerated for non-violent drug-related offenses than for violence.
Read some of these heart-wrenching stories of normal women who've had their lives taken away by a system created by and for people who value mandatory minimum incarcerative sentencing and punitive justice more than they value recovery, rehabilitation and the power of restorative justice. The context in which these women are guilty of crimes worthy of incarceration still fails to convince me of its correctness in any way. It is a context of oppression, against the lower class, against African Americans and Latinos, and against those who choose personal freedom, plain and simple. Our system of legislation, law enforcement, and incarceration, is one of the key elements that is making the United States LESS FREE for common people, only retaining freedom for those who have certain privileges among the upper class. Note that certain celebrities and politicians get away with these same crimes, but the women above do not.
I see just and reasonable alternatives to this system, which require a change of assumptions. Making a change of assumptions is something that conservative folks do not easily do, but I guess that's what I'm asking. When somebody gets caught in a non-violent drug offense, they should go through rehabilitation and counseling, not just get thrown into the cogs of an inhuman penal system. We could and should have significantly less resources in the U.S. going toward prisons and law enforcement, if we focus on true crimes where people are killed, robbed, or raped. This has been said thousands of times before, and the people who make the laws don't listen and don't make changes. God damn it! God damn you people! What does it take???
We live in a society that glamorizes violence in the movies, and makes the violence of war look like video games. We live in a society where there is constant violence against every individual because social structures and networking are discouraged, or difficult to build when living hand to mouth. Every individual must run on their treadmill to be exploited for investor's gains, or get caught in the cogs, or tossed out of their homes onto the street.
And people who want to escape from all that violence get mandatory minimum sentencing laws. And people who could be productive members of society, caring for their parents and children, having children while still in their reproductive years, are instead wasting away in prison cells for 10-20 years.
Its about making angels illegal, damning them in a way. In the U.S. you have freedom. But you're not free to do the things that are declared illegal. You're free to question why things are illegal, but not free to avoid examination for asking questions, and not free to get a reasonable answer. A long time ago when I was in college, I saw Lou Reed on an interview saying (I paraphrase) "You're free to smoke cigarettes and alcohol, but not marijuana or cocaine." "Why?" "Because we say so." Oh." To me, it really seems like that. Here's another statement that's been said thousands of times. Alcohol and cigarettes cause more deaths than all other drugs combined, by far. Why are they somehow legal, and marijuana is not? Its just another form of prohibition, and many people are wondering, "Who benefits?" Certainly not the peaceable non-drug-using people of America, because there's still plenty of violence and other crimes going on, not to mention the general rat-race. In fact, its easy to argue that the drug laws themselves CAUSE violence.
The U.S. war on drugs, and the incarceration system, and those who continue to advocate for them are standing against love and justice, and are themselves criminal.
lyrics:
The truth in right and wrong
The boundaries of the law
I think you missed the point
Arresting for a joint?
From Fucking Hostile, by Pantera
colors: sigh.
mood: so tired of this. soul tired.
chant/prayer/mantra: going to go out and breathe some fresh air.
pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel
Labels: anti-oppression, Capitalism, drug war, freedom versus freedom, oppression, personal religion, politics, Women's Rights
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Iron Jawed Angels, ERA, Girl Genius, BBWW
Hi All-
My sweetie and I just got done watching Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank, Anjelica Huston, and Francis O'Connor. It's a movie about suffragettes during the 1910's who fought tooth and nail for women's rights, and how hard they had to struggle and the jail time they did, just to get the right to vote and to try to get an Equal Rights Amendment for women's equality (still waiting almost 90 years later for that to be ratified by enough states, BTW). See this movie-- it's stunning and inspiring.
Also, while I'm in the mood, here's Girl Genius comics, Big Beautiful Wonder Woman, and Wapsi Square.
lyrics: Something by Velvet Underground.
colors: Pink.
mood: Beat.
chant/prayer/mantra: Make mine Code Pink please.
pax hominibus,
joel
My sweetie and I just got done watching Iron Jawed Angels, starring Hilary Swank, Anjelica Huston, and Francis O'Connor. It's a movie about suffragettes during the 1910's who fought tooth and nail for women's rights, and how hard they had to struggle and the jail time they did, just to get the right to vote and to try to get an Equal Rights Amendment for women's equality (still waiting almost 90 years later for that to be ratified by enough states, BTW). See this movie-- it's stunning and inspiring.
Also, while I'm in the mood, here's Girl Genius comics, Big Beautiful Wonder Woman, and Wapsi Square.
lyrics: Something by Velvet Underground.
colors: Pink.
mood: Beat.
chant/prayer/mantra: Make mine Code Pink please.
pax hominibus,
joel
Labels: BBWs, war and peace, Women's Rights
