Laura Flanders | The Nation
One Billion Rising
There’s talk about union, and then there’s acting in unison. As the President was talking about the State of the Union this week, the organizers of V-day were working with activists all around the world to pull off what will doubtless be the most public breaking of the silence around gender violence that the world has seen.
One Billion Rising is the brainchild of Eve Ensler and the women and men of V-day. For fifteen years, the antiviolence mobilization V-day has used Valentines Day productions of Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues, to draw attention to violence against women and girls. As Ensler says, V-day’s goal was to stop the violence that, according to the UN, affects one in three women in the world. Fifteen years on, she decided it was time to escalate—and she put out a global call for one billion people to Strike Dance or Rise today, February 14, 2013.
Leo Gerard Is Rising
On February 14, 2013, 1 billion will rise. No matter where you are in the world, there will probably be a rising near you. With the addition of Laos, Liberia, Monaco and Palestine, the One Billion Rising campaign to stop violence against women and girls is now up to 197 countries and territories taking part in what organizers say will be the largest global day of action the world has ever seen. Starting in Samoa, the sun will rise on February 14, kicking off forty-eight hours worldwide of striking, dancing and rising. To send labor supporters into their final week of preparing for One Billion Rising, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard recorded this special video message.
Among the reasons Gerard lists for rising are: “To stop the violence… To end the governmental initiatives that restrict women’s rights… Because pregnancy from rape is not something God intended… In opposition to redefining how violence against women is prosecuted.”
From a Dream to Racial Justice: Seattle's Racial Justice Initiative [VIDEO]
It’s one thing to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to remember his most oft-quoted speech, “I have a dream.” But to get beyond racial inequity, Americans have to do more than dream.
“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way,” said Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
How About Gun Control for the Pentagon?
A U.S. Predator drone flies over the moon above Kandahar Air Field, southern Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
“There has to be a national conversation” about gun control, says Nancy Pelosi. The killing of school children and teachers in Newtown, Connecticut and other shootings since have turned up the heat.
Dangerous Rush to Legislate on Surveillance and Mental Health? Dean Spade [VIDEO]
With cliffs, abysses and deadlines on every front, the New Year’s shaping up to be a dangerous place for justice. Consider the pressure to do “something” on gun violence. Spurred by the horrific slaughter in Newtown, President Barack Obama has tasked his administration to get serious about legislation before the end of next month. “This time, the words need to lead to action,” he said.
But what action? On gun control, a battle royal is shaping up. On mental illness, action may come more easily, but it may be just the wrong sort.
Crime and Crisis: Think 'We' Not 'They'
Two interviews conducted over the past few weeks have been rattling around in my brain since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Neither one was conducted with school shootings in mind, but both have a strange new resonance now.
Take research psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove, whose work focuses on community cohesion and the psychic stresses of dislocation. When we spoke a few weeks back, our topic was Sandy Relief, not Sandy Hook, but her comments about “we” and “us” keep coming back to me in light of the shootings. The fetishization of Newtown continues apace. I’ve watched CNN anchors examine what seems like every square inch of the town as if looking for some special quality about the place, some distinguishing characteristic that once diagnosed could permit the rest of us to live at a distance from their tragedy. Fullilove said about disasters:
One of the fundamental principles of collective recovery is that there is no “them” and there is no “there” it’s “we” and it’s “here” we’re all involved. The scale of this is hard for the normal human, small mind like mine to grasp. I think we’re all dealing with dislocation and root shock and we can’t think of it as them over there.
In Drug War, Small Victories Are Not the Revolution. Director Eugene Jarecki [VIDEO]
Eugene Jarecki is an author and a filmmaker, the director of Freakanomics, The Trials of Harry Kissinger, Why We Fight and, most recently, The House I Live In.
The House I Live In, his documentary about the drug war, leaves one thinking that nothing will ever change, but recently something did. On election night voters in Colorado and Washington State voted to legalize recreational marijuana and voters in California passed a ballot initiative to end that state’s controversial mandatory minimum law, “three strikes and you’re out.” Jarecki sees possibility for more change to come but danger in imagining small victories will win the war-against-the-war.
After Sandy, Learning From New Orleans: D6 and Beyond
Apparently seeking post-Sandy advice, New York Mayor Bloomberg’s deputies recently paid a visit to New Orleans. According to The New York Times, Deputy Mayors Howard Wolfson, Linda I. Gibbs and Robert K. Steel met with New Orleans officials to discuss recovery and rebuilding. If New York’s development-minded mayor is consulting his equivalents in Louisiana, one can only hope that housing justice activists and especially public housing residents in this city are consulting theirs. When it comes to next steps after Hurricane Sandy, there are lessons to be learned from New Orleans after Katrina. The question is, Which ones will New York learn?
Seven years ago, as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, developers and their political allies were already seeing to it that minimum wage laws would be suspended in the name of urgency; they were. In the weeks following, thousands of public school teachers found themselves out of a job. The city’s free hospital was closed and every public housing development was either partially or totally torn down. Next, came a flood of eyes-on-the prize entrepreneurs with all manner of experiments for new models for housing, healthcare and schools. The results have been mixed, but by all available measures, the Big Easy’s more divided and, all these years on, longtime residents (especially African-Americans), feel more disenfranchised than ever.
Austerity: A Violation of Human Rights?
Have you ever wished there was a set of standards by which budgets could be assessed that didn’t have to do with deficit hawks and stimulus sparrows pecking each other’s eyes out in the constricted ring of corporate opinion?
A noble little park opened in New York City last month: Four Freedoms Park. In the coverage of the Louis Kahn structure (which seems to rise like a ship out of Manhattan’s East River), remarkably little was made of the title. From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address to Congress in 1941, “the Four Freedoms” are core requirements for humane political and economic existence:
Back From the Brink
Contrary to the views of Missouri Republican Todd Akin, women are not able to “shut down” conception after “legitimate rape” but women were able to shut down some misogynistic assaults, and that’s just what happened last night. The 113th Congress will convene with binders full of women: nineteen, the highest number of women senators ever, including Claire McCaskill who soundly defeated Representative Akin in a state that voted for Mitt Romney.
Four years ago, we were talking about the campaign of a long-shot candidate, Barack Obama for the presidency. President Obama’s re-election came about thanks to long-shot movements that pulled off victories against the odds and against many conventional “wisdoms.” Long-shot victories like Tammy Baldwin’s. A pro-labor, progressive “out” lesbian in Wisconsin defeated four-term former Governor, Tommy Thompson, one of the most powerful politicians in the state. Her victory was won by a fired-up grassroots field team comprised of labor, women, LGBT and immigrant groups who forged their alliance in the fight against governor Scott Walker’s draconian attack on public workers and voting rights. First-time candidate Elizabeth Warren defeated onetime Tea Party darling Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts. A champion of Wall Street reform, Warren was persuaded and supported to run by activists outraged by the power of the too-big-to-jail banksters. Warren will now join the same Senate that refused to confirm her to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Voters approved ballot initiatives that made history on issues no party would lead on. In Colorado and Washington state voters legalized marijuana for recreational use, becoming the first US states to do so and setting up a potential clash with the federal government. In Montana, voters overwhelmingly approved a measure that would limit corporate spending on elections, while Colorado voters also resoundingly approved a measure backing a constitutional amendment that would call for the same. Maryland, Maine and Washington voters became the first in this country to affirmatively approve marriage equality. Even ten years ago, nobody would have thought marriage equality was a winning issue. Elected leaders, even many movement leaders ran from the topic.
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