Sisters shine at 3rd Empowered Womyn’s Health Workshop
Last Saturday, nearly 30 women of all ages came together for The Bloom Collective’s third annual Empowered Women’s Health workshop. Our time together was heartwarming, inspirational and informative.
We ate great food! The workshop kicked off with a brief presentation on good foods and bad foods, as relates to women’s health. Brief, because the wonderful aromas coming from the kitchen made everyone anxious to get on with Nancy Rutledge’s healthy foods cooking demo. She and her assistant, Stella, prepared Gluten Free Cornbread, Quinoa Salad w,Sweet Potatoes and Raisins, Ginger Vinagrette and Black Beans w/Greens and Brown Rice. Here is a .pdf of Nancy’s recipes.
We learned how birth practices impact our society. Next, Shannon Pawson presented a marvelous overview of American birth and what we can all do to change the obstetric practices that make the US almost the most dangerous place on earth to have a baby (in terms of both infant and maternal mortality rates). Sarah also shared how childbirth does not impact just the family but the whole culture. Embracing a home-birth/midwifery model will not only mean better outcomes but also a culture more prone to community and peace. To download Shannon Pawson’s Bloom Birth Presentation and handout, Things You Can Do To Make Birth Better, click here.
We made home brews. Next we moved back to the kitchen to brew our own herbal remedies. Miranda and Bethany facilitated as we mixed up brews of nettle, red raspberry leaves, alfalfa and red clover. Those down with colds added some mullein and ginger to their mixes. Claire AK also shared how weomen can get the specific vitamins and minerals they need from foods we eat.
We took a stand! We closed the instruction portion of the day with a skill-share where Kelsey Hakeem taught us how to pee standing up. We were surprised to learn that girls and women are indeed “equipped” to pee while standing, but cultural mores have prevented us from being taught as children in how to do so. Kelsey instructed us to stand with legs 
part, pull up on the crotch area on either side, thrust the hips forward a bit and go for it. She recommended practicing in the shower. She also mentioned women can buy funnels on-line that make peeing while standing simple—you don’t even have to take down your pants. She uses one when camping.
During this session, others shared more great advice around such topics as herbal birth control and handling urinary tract infections. As we listened, many women took opportunity to sew their own cloth menstrual pads, with guidance provided by Rachel Hamilton, who had presented on menstrual health the past two years.
Sister power! After closing with a restful yoga nidra meditation, we were invigorated, inspired and hopeful about creating more community and making our culture one where women’s wisdom is honored. In all, it was a time when we got to see our sisters shine. The light was bright, beautiful … and full of power.
LGBT organizing in the faith communities – Bringing Our Whole Selves to the Conversation
Yesterday, GVSU’s LGBT Resource Center hosted the 4th of five events this semester as part of their Change U program. Rev. Rebecca Voelkel with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force spoke to an audience during lunchtime about the importance of LGBT organizing in faith communities.
Voelkel is a pastor in the UCC Church, an author and part of what is called the Welcoming Church Movement. This movement of several decades works with faith communities in order to get them to adopt a community policy of being a welcoming and affirming place for people who identify as LGBT.
The pastor began her talk by telling her own story. Her journey began in part because of the TV show Little House on the Prairie, where she developed a “crush” on the actor Melissa Gilbert.
Melissa Gilbert, then played the role of Jean Donavan, the US Lay missionary who was raped and murdered in El Salvador in December in 1980. This led Rebecca to investigate Jean Donavan and then Archbishop Oscar Romero and the struggle for justice on El Salvador.
Rebecca then became involved in the US Sanctuary Movement and even began an Amnesty International chapter at her high school. Eventually, she went to El Salvador in 1987 as part of an accompaniment project of refugees who were returning from exile.
Rev. Volkel talked about the counter-insurgency movement in El Salvador, particularly Operation Phoenix, a campaign that resulted in the death of thousands of Salvadoran civilians. On this trip she met Salvadoran women and asked how they could continue to denounce the government even in the face of such risk. The woman said that she had lost children to the state repression, but she had faith in God, because God through the person of Jesus knows what a suffering body is like.”
Rebecca said that both of her parents were ministers, but she had never heard such a powerful faith testimony until this Salvadoran woman shared hers. She continued to work on Central American issues in the US and on additional trips to that part of the hemisphere. She also investigated Liberation Theology and it was in this investigation that she found the strength to come out as a Lesbian woman.
Rebecca talked about how there is no monolithic representation of religious beliefs, which is why she sees no contradiction with being part of the LBGT movement and the Welcoming Church movement. Some of the religious traditions, like the UCC Church, see it as their duty to work for justice with those in the LGBT community.
Her work takes places in three main arenas. First, she works within specific denominations, which can create space as a welcoming community. The second arena is to get people across all sorts of Christian backgrounds to have a discussion and to work towards justice around LGBT issues. Rebecca says it is important for this to happen because it is the Christian community that has been the main opponent of LGBT issues around the country. The third arena is with leaders from a variety of religious traditions throughout the US.
Lisa Weiner Mahfuz, an organizer within the LGBT community with experience in movement building, then joined Rebecca at the podium to talk about the work they have done together around Proposition 8 in California.
Both women then talk about the fight around Proposition 8 in California that passed in 2008, which was an anti-marriage equality proposition ironically named the Marriage Protection Act. The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force was asked to do some assessment of the outcome of Prop 8 and Rebecca and Lisa shared some of the findings of that work.
Some of the findings from this assessment are:
- Proposition 8 and most of the anti-LGBTQQIA measures are rooted in conservative religion, therefore religious opposition requires a religious response.
- Pro-LGBTQQIA secular-religious partnerships are critical to future success.
- A narrow political campaign frame hinders pro-LGBTQQIA religious work.
One of the reasons that Prop 8 passed, according to the presenters, was because the campaign did not connect to people of color and people of faith. In other words, the campaign was not rooted in specific communities, but applied a cookie-cutter approach that did not take into account specific communal identity.
One of the unfortunate consequences of Prop 8 was that the Right was able to further divide the African American community and the LGBT community by pitting them against each other around the issues of “rights,” which has been a strategy for the past three decades.
Another flaw of the anti-Prop 8 campaign is that it tended to push those most marginalized out of the conversation so that the immediate win is more important than the long-term goal……building relationships and a viable movement.
Therefore, it is critical to build strong alliances with religious folks and the LGBT movement. There are 900 welcoming communities in California, but of those 900 few of the denominations did a good job of mobilizing people to defeat Prop 8.
A model that both Rebecca and Lisa now use, based on what happen in California, has expanded to include LGBT sectors, economic justice sectors, communities of color, the disabilities community and faith communities when developing a campaign. However, when they first attempted this it was a disaster, which taught them it wasn’t enough to get people together to talk but to organize an inter-sectional gathering.
They kept asking themselves how were they going to build trust in relationship with each other? What became clear is that people in the LGBT community, a predominantly secular community, did not know the folks in the Welcoming Church Movement, which meant there was a lack of relationship.
Once they recognized this, they developed a common vision statement that reflected their collective desire for what they wanted the world to look like. Once they had this vision they wanted to talk about their collective values for the conference they were planning. Lisa then quoted Gandhi who said that, “every step along the way must have a step towards liberation.”
A good example of what this kind of work looks like is the document Beyond Marriage, which significantly broadens the discussion about who benefits from marriage equality. Rebecca says that this document moves beyond just same sex marriage to look at how immigrants could benefit from changes in marriage laws or even widowed senior citizens who are taking care of grandkids who they could claim as dependents with the health care.
The point that both speakers were emphasizing was the need to always be more inclusive and expansive when organizing around a particular campaign. This is important both because if means more people have a stake in working on the campaign, but more importantly is has the potential to build capacity for long-term movement building around social justice issues.
This Day in Resistance History: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and Union Protections
On this day in 1911, New Yorkers watched in horror as young women and children leaped from the upper floors of a garment sweatshop engulfed in flames. Just east of Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was located on the upper floors of a commercial building and was run by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Aside from the owners and some male supervisors, all the employees were women. The seamstresses were mostly young immigrants, with the youngest employee being 10 years old. Most were between 16 and 25.
It was a Saturday, the “short day” of the week, and the weather outside was beautiful. The seamstresses were looking forward to their day off. They worked 5 nine-hour days. On Saturdays, they were allowed to leave an hour “early.”
But on some days, they were required to stay much later—some workdays stretched to 14 hours. No breaks for allowed—not to eat, not to go the bathroom, not to get a drink of water.
Their maximum pay, for a 14-hour day, was $2. In addition, Blanck and Harris made the women pay for the needles they used, the thread needed to sew garments, and the electricity that their machines used per day. Plus, they had to pay for any shirtwaist they made that was not perfect. Meanwhile, the two bosses were making approximately a million dollars a year.
The fire broke out at 4:45. Blanck, Harris, and the office workers fled. Neither Blanck nor Harris thought to send someone up to the factory floors to warn the workers there…or to unlock the doors. During the day, the women were locked into the factory with their sewing machines. This was a policy Max Blanck had instituted to prevent theft; each bag was checked as the workers filed out one by one. The doors were never unlocked until quitting time.
It was not until the seamstresses saw smoke and flames coming from underneath the doors that they realized what was happening. A few managed to get to a factory floor freight elevator, but they were hand-cranked lifts and were only able to make three trips total to rescue workers. Some women, trying to leap onto the top of elevators as they descended, died in the shaft.
The only fire protection provided by Blanck and Harris for the sewing rooms was 12 buckets of water, six for each floor. There was also a fire escape, weakened with rust and missing screws. It needed replacing. But the owners did not want to spend the money to do that.
Some women climbed out the windows to the roof, but then had nowhere to go. A few managed to get out to the rickety fire escape staircase. It collapsed as the first group of women went down it, killing 20 of the seamstresses.
Most remained on the factory floors, trapped by the locked doors and the encroaching flames. Many burned alive. Others leaped, some on fire, out the windows of the building. Approximately 146 employees died, most burned beyond recognition.
New York garment workers, including the employees of the Triangle factory, had gone out on strike two years before to protest these working conditions and form a union. At that time, the public was indignant and unsupportive. Blanck and Harris hired thugs to follow their young employees. They were beaten, and some were falsely charged with prostitution. One striker, dragged into court with a cracked skull and wearing a blood-soaked bandage, was told by the judge, “You are on strike against God.”
But this time, New Yorkers could not turn a blind eye to young women and children leaping out of windows to the street because they had been imprisoned in a locked sweatshop. Details of the fire and the abuses that led up to it shed a hard light on the conditions in the garment industry.
In April of 1911, Blanck and Harris were charged with manslaughter charges. In a classic her-word-against-his trial, the judge found that the surviving workers were unable to prove that Max Blanck knew that the sweatshop floor doors were locked. The two were acquitted, and collected a large amount of insurance, including $400 for each worker who died. In turn, they paid $75 to the family of each fire victim, pocketing the rest for themselves—and that was only after they appealed the court to pay nothing.
Two years later, Blanck was charged with locking the doors at a new factory he’d started with his insurance money. The judge made him pay a fine of $20.
But the New York State Legislature took a less lenient view of the issue. It created the New York State Factory Investigating Committee, which in New York City alone found 200 sweatshops with conditions as bad or worse than the Triangle factory. Labor laws were reformed throughout New York State.
And another outcome of this tragedy was that the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union was finally allowed to form without additional harassment. About 90 percent of the garment workers in the city joined. The ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995.
This and similar unions were the ones who fought every step of the way to eliminate the capitalist abuses that the Triangle employees had suffered. Today, we have a five-day work week, overtime pay, breaks, days off for illness, fire alarms, sprinkler systems, and safety measures. We don’t have them because our benevolent employers value us or want to protect us; if left in their hands, we’d still have 14-hour days and water buckets. We have better working conditions because young immgrant women burned alive to help earn those rights, their deaths jumpstarting the union movement and labor reform laws.
The next time you listen to Rick Snyder or Scott Walker talk about dissolving union contracts and freeing capitalists, to “get out of their way” so they can make more money, think about these women and children and the thousands of others who died so that we have the right to form unions and protect workers.
Whirlpool’s Windfall
(This article is re-posted from Open Secrets.)
“Whirlpool Corporation, which had global sales of $18 billion and turned a $619 million profit in 2010, likely won’t pay a dime of corporate income tax this year,” write the watchdogs over at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), “or for years to come, thanks in large part to an expensive lobbying blitz.”
Thanks to a 2005 energy law that allowed corporations to claim tax credits for manufacturing energy-efficient appliances, Whirlpool has collected more than $500 million in credits, a fact first reported by Bloomberg News. And last year, the company and other supporters of the tax credits went to the mat for language to extend the provisions again. Lobbying on H.R. 4853, the bill that extended the tax credits, was part of Whirlpool’s $940,000 lobbying operation in 2010, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s nearly a nine-fold increase since 2005.
Since that time, the company has also greatly expanded its roster of hired guns. In 2010, Whirlpool hired 15 lobbyists, most of whom have passed through Washington’s famed “revolving door” between public service and the private sector, including one former congressman: ex-Rep. Martin Russo (D-Ill.) of Cassidy and Associates, who left the firm in December.
Rewards = More Consumption: Questions about MyGRcitypoints
Beginning in late April, the City of Grand Rapids will offer a new incentive program to increase recycling and citizen engagement.
The program is called My GR City Points and it includes two partnering entities, CEOs for Cities and Local First. The first phase of the program will kick in around Earth Day and it is designed to reward people who participate in the City’s recycling program. If you register with the City your recycle bin number, every time the City picks up the bin you get points. These “points” can then be redeemed at local businesses where you can get a discount on products or with enough points not have to spend a cent.
Sounds pretty good, right? Well, before we get all excited about home many free coffees we can get because we are doing our part to save the planet, let’s take a moment to think a bit about what this all means.
People who have studied the policies and practices of recycling acknowledge that recycling in general is problematic. This is not to say that we shouldn’t recycle, it means that recycling as it is generally practiced in the US doesn’t really address the root of the problem, only one of the symptoms of the problem.
The problem is that as a society we generate entirely too much waste. Author Heather Rogers, in her book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, talks about how there was a major shift after WWII in the manufacturing sector to create more packaging for products. This shift in generating waste became a huge problem for municipalities and when there were efforts to put pressure on manufacturers to reduce packaging waste the manufacturing industry pushed back.
The National Association of Manufacturers lobbied hard to defeat any restrictions on how companies packaged their products. In addition, they began a major campaign called Keep America Beautiful, which put the emphasis on personal responsibility for disposing of waste and diverting attention from those who manufactured it.
Not all countries have gone that route and there are numerous European countries that engage in what they call source point waste reduction. In this model consumers can bring unwanted packaging back to the store they bought it from so that the retailer has to deal with the problem, which puts pressure on the manufacturers and retailers instead of the consumer. This actually provides a major incentive for reduced packaging.
However, these examples are still an inadequate response to the problem. The real problem is over consumption, particularly in countries like the US where the average person consumes 40 times more than most people in developing countries.
This over consumption brings us back to the My GR City Points program. People will now be rewarded with the opportunity to consume more if they recycle more. Let’s rephrase that. People will be encourage to consume more, thus creating more waste, if they recycle some of the waste.
It seems that such a program inherently does not seek to push the two other components of the 3 R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. As a society, we really need to reduce the amount of waste we generate and reuse resources as often as possible. Think of all the energy used in recycling programs – plastic bins that are manufactured, fossil fuel energy used to make the bins, trucks to pick the material up, fossil fuels burned to transport the trucks, energy used to sort and recycle the material at recycling facilities, energy used to melt plastic down for reusing in some other form for more consumer goods.
Again, the point here is to raise questions about what such an incentive plan will do. Recycle when you can, but more importantly lets consume less and put the responsibility of waste generation on those who manufacture it instead of offering an incentive program which encourages people to create more waste.
New Media We Recommend
Below is a list of new materials that we have read/watched in recent weeks. The comments are not a “review” of the material, instead sort of an endorsement of ideas and investigations that can provide solid analysis and even inspiration in the struggle for change. All these books are available at The Bloom Collective, so check them out and stimulate your mind.
Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States, by Vicki Eaklor – This new addition to the People’s History series is a refreshing contribution to a history that has been suppressed and marginalized. The author does a good job of providing a broad history of the LGBTQ movement in the US, its evolution and its struggle. Eaklor not only follows a chronological timeline of the history of this movement, she highlights the tensions within the movement, particularly between those within the movement that simply wanted to be accepted by American society and those which want liberation. This is an ongoing tension in the LGBTQ movement, which is why the history of this struggle, highlighted in Queer America, is so important for those who care about this issue in the present.
Art in Public: Politics, Economics and a Democratic Culture, by Lambert Zuidervaart – As we noted last week in our interview with Lambert Zuidervaart, this new book was launched in Grand Rapids. Art in Public is an important contribution to our understanding of the role of art in society, but also important because it challenges us to this about civil society and the failure of free market capitalism. Zuidervaart gives us some very useful analysis for reframing discussions around art, public space, funding, and commercialism. In fact, the book is a great vehicle that could be used around the ongoing debate about ArtPrize.
Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, by Suzanne Ashworth – This book is an excellent contribution for those who not only want to save money, but preserve the genetic diversity of seeds that are being threatened by the likes of Monsanto. The book provides very practical tips on seed saving and seed planting for vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers. Seed to Seed is an extremely valuable resource for the future of sustainability, particularly now that the US government has made it a criminal act to save seeds based on the influence of Argi-business in passing what is called the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011. Like much of what happens with the DIY movement, those in power are threatened by the public’s desire to have autonomy.
American Outrage (DVD) – This film is a powerful story about two Native American sisters who have been fighting the US government for decades. Carrie and Mary Dann, who are members of the Western Shoshone Nation, have been fighting the US government over land use issues and the devastating effects of mining on their land. In many ways this film embodies the more than a century-long struggle to move Native people off of their lands in order to have access to natural resources that fuels the US imperial project. The film is both informative and inspiring and is a great resource for those who want to be allies in the struggle for Native American autonomy.
(This article by Andy Kroll is re-posted from Mother Jones.)
Last week, Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed into law a fiercely contested bill giving unelected “emergency financial managers” unprecedented power to shred union contracts, privatize city services, and consolidate or dissolve local governments, all in the name of saving struggling cities and school districts. Dubbed “financial martial law” by one approving state GOP lawmaker and “disaster capitalism” by critics, Snyder and his bill have become a target for Wisconsin-like protests. Several thousand demonstrators marched on the Michigan Capitol in the days before Snyder signed the bill. But gone unmentioned is a little-known Michigan think tank that for years has been pushing for the most controversial provisions in Snyder’s bill—and that’s bankrolled by some of the same right-wing millionaires and billionaires that backed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union legislation.
Since 2005, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has urged reforms to Michigan law giving more power and protection to emergency financial managers, state-appointed officials who parachute into ailing cities or school districts and employ drastic measures to fix budgets on the brink of collapse. In January, the free-market-loving center published four recommendations, including granting emergency managers the power to override elected officials (such as a mayor or school board member) and toss out union contracts. All four ended up in Snyder’s legislation.
“The Mackinac Center has been tied at the hip with the Republican Party establishment for years,” says Doug Pratt, public affairs director at the Michigan Education Association. “It goes to their funding sources; it goes to their ideology.”
Mackinac is part of a network of state-based groups associated with the Heritage Foundation, the influential right-wing think tank in Washington. Its past and present board members include Robert Teeter, a GOP strategist and ’92 campaign manager for George H.W. Bush; Margaret Rieker, a former vice chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; and Joseph Lehman, a former vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.
The Mackinac Center does not disclose its donors. But a review of tax records shows that the group’s funders include the charitable foundations of the nation’s largest corporations and a host of wealthy conservative and libertarian benefactors. Between 2002 and 2009, the Mackinac Center’s donors included the Charles G. Koch Foundation ($69,151), founded by the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, who, with his brother, David, is a major backer of conservative causes; the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation ($80,000), the charity tied to the son of the co-founder of Amway, the multibillion-dollar direct marketing company; the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, established by the parents of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who serves as the foundation’s vice president ($195,000); and the Walton Family Foundation ($100,000), established by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center’s fiscal policy initiative, says the Center is never influenced by its donors: “We are happy to take checks from people who don’t agree with us, but they’re not the ones sending us money.”
Political action committees and non-profit groups linked to some of these same donors also helped fund Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign and his push to eliminate collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions. Koch Industries’ PAC gave $43,000 to Walker’s 2010 campaign, while Wal-Mart’s PAC chipped in $15,000. Dick DeVos and his daughter, Elisabeth, also individually donated to Walker’s campaign.
The Mackinac Center’s is a fervent advocate of privatization—its scholars support outsourcing everything from public school districts to Amtrak to state prisons—and backs anti-union legislation for Michigan. In 2007, the center published “A Collective Bargaining Primer,” advocating against mandatory unionization and automatic dues deductions for public school teachers and other public employees. Collective bargaining for teachers, the Center claims, “has become a significant deterrent to educational quality.” In other words, if you outsource as much as you can and kneecap the unions, the quality of education—and presumably city services—increases.
That position is in line with the beliefs of its donors. In 2009, Amway and Wal-Mart were among the 3,100 businesses that signed a letter opposing the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would’ve made it easier for employees to unionize; that same year, Wal-Mart spent $7.4 million on lobbying, much of it to defeat EFCA. (The law failed.) The Koch brothers, meanwhile, fund an array of organizations opposed to unions, including the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and the Reason Foundation. With the Mackinaw Center, it seems, their investment is paying off.
Obama and the Legacy of Salvadoran Archbishop Romero
Yesterday, US President Barack Obama was finishing his 5-day tour of Latin America and while in El Salvador he visited to tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Some may see this visit as a good will gesture that means the US is now on the side of justice, but this would be a naïve view of the significance of Obama’s visit to the tomb of the slain archbishop.
Romero was not only an advocate of the poor, but a spiritual leader who condemned militarism in El Salvador and the role that the US played in that militarism. In fact, Romero sent a letter to then US President Jimmy Carter just 5 weeks before he was assassinated and called on the US to stop sending weapons, military advisors and to not intervene diplomatically, economically or in any other way that would “determine the destiny of the Salvadoran people.”
The US did not listen to Romero’s plea for justice, instead they funded the bloody counter-insurgency war in El Salvador for the next ten years averaging a $1 million a day in military aid that resulted in an estimate 80,000 dead Salvadorans, most of which were murdered by the Salvadoran armed forces according to the UN Truth Commission Report.
In addition to the US role in militarizing El Salvador it has continued to intervene economically by brokering the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2006. Five years later the impact of CAFTA on workers and civil society in general has been devastating for the people of El Salvador.
One concrete example of how bad CAFTA is for El Salvador is the case of the Pacific Rim mining company, which has sued the government of El Salvador for $77 million because the government denied mining permits to Pacific Rim. The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) has been engaged in a campaign in conjunction with Salvadorans to fight Pacific Rim for years.
In addition to visiting El Salvador, Obama also made stops in Brazil and Chile on his four-day tour of Latin America. In keeping with the spirit of Archbishop Romero one could conclude that the President has not promoted more democracy and justice in the region. In fact, this administration has continued decades long policies of isolating progressive governments and supporting militarism.
The Obama administration continues to support the embargo against Cuba, the covert war against Venezuela, the militarizing of Colombia, and the coup in Honduras.
The group SOA Watch particularly thinks that Obama’s visit to Romero’s is dishonest because of the US role in the Honduran coup and their commitment to training Latin American soldiers.
“While Obama tries to portray a change in the dismal history of US relations towards Latin America, nowhere is it clearer than in neighboring Honduras that the past is the present. Last Friday, Honduran teacher Ilse Velasquez became the latest victim of the repression unleashed by the illegitimate regime of Porfirio Lobo. She was hurled unconscious onto the pavement, then hit by a car, after being struck in the head by one of the many tear gas canisters shot by police into the peaceful crowd. Ilse was the sister of Manfredo Velasquez, a student leader tortured and killed by the Honduran military in 1981 who was the subject of a landmark trial at the InterAmerican court that led to the founding of COFADEH and significantly improved the ability of victims of human rights violations to demand justice from their governments
The common denominator in all of these incidents is the leading role of SOA graduates. The repressive Lobo came to power via illegitimate elections following a coup led by two SOA graduates against President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. One of SOA’s most notorious graduates, General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, was the head of the Honduran Armed Forces at the time of their murder of Manfredo Velasquez. He was also the founder of the brutal Battalion 3-16, whose tentacles continue to penetrate current Honduran repression. The person responsible for ordering police repression against peaceful protesters that led to Ilse’s death on Friday is none other than the nephew of General Alvarez: Security Minister Oscar A. Martinez Guerrero, and a 1991 graduate of the SOA.”
If US President Obama really wanted to honor the memory of the slain Archbishop from El Salvador he would not continue to support militarism and war throughout Latin America and the rest of the world. In fact, Obama would do well to learn a lesson from Romero and follow the spirit of one the Archbishop’s last public words in 1980 where he calls on Salvadoran soldiers to lay down their weapons:
“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. … In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.”
Media Alert: AT&T wants to become a virtual monopoly
(This Media Alert is re-posted from Save the Internet.)
AT&T, the nation’s second-largest mobile phone company, has announced its plan to buy T-Mobile, the fourth-largest carrier.
This deal would form a communications colossus not seen since the monopoly days of Ma Bell. Two companies, AT&T and Verizon, would control nearly 80 percent of the mobile market in America.
AT&T’s takeover of T-Mobile would take away choice for users. And a lack of choice means higher prices, poor service and less innovation for everyone.
Free Press and our allies are determined to protect the public from this train wreck of a deal. We need to act before Washington can cave in again to industry — and raise thousands of voices in protest.
Sign on to this action and urge your friends on Facebook and Twitter to join in.
Fact v. Fiction
AT&T says the T-Mobile takeover “strengthens and expands U.S. mobile broadband infrastructure,” and that it helps us “achieve policymaker goals of deploying broadband to 95 percent of the country, including smaller, rural communities.”
Reality: According to recent Commerce Department data, wireless services are already available to 95 percent of Americans. If this merger goes through, analysts speculate that AT&T will decommission upwards of 40,000 wireless towers, reducing the quality of coverage for hundreds of thousands of Americans.
AT&T says the overall average price-per-minute for wireless services has declined 50 percent since 1999, “during a period which saw five major wireless mergers.”
Reality: That figure is highly misleading. While the cost to consumers for voice services has dropped, the sum total of charges on mobile phone bills has dramatically increased. Added costs include spiraling rates for texting and data services as well as hidden handset subsidies. With less competition among carriers, we can expect AT&T to charge you even more.
AT&T says the merger “enables the next era of American innovation and continued growth of U.S. high tech industry.”
Reality: The merger would allow AT&T to exert even greater gatekeeper control over what happens on the wireless Web. The company has a long history of blocking competing services — like Skype, GoogleVoice and Slingbox. And AT&T’s expanded control over the handset market will stifle innovation in devices. In the past, AT&T has crippled handheld phones that can do more than what the company wants.
AT&T says the merger will expand the American workforce by moving thousands of new jobs to the United States.
Reality: When was the last time a merger actually created jobs for Americans and not more pink slips? This merger puts the jobs of nearly 40,000 U.S. T-Mobile employees at risk. Many of the jobs at retail stores and call centers will be eliminated, and there will be more jobs lost as the effects of this merger ripple through the broader economy.
Jewish author critical of Zionism Speaks in Grand Rapids
About 50 people attended an event yesterday co-hosted by the Christian Reform Church and Healing Children of Conflict. The event was a presentation by a Jewish writer and anti-Zionist, Mark Braverman. Braverman is the author of the book Fatal Embrace: Christians, Jews and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land and is part of a growing number of Jews who are critical of the State of Israel.
Braverman began his talk by sharing his own story, which is the story of a Jew who grew up with a Zionist narrative in a very traditional setting. Braverman says that he grew up in Philadelphia in a family that practiced conservative Judaism.
This type of theological Judaism is not only conservative it also embraces Zionism, according to Braverman, which is a more recent phenomenon. Braverman was taught that he was very fortunate because he has grown up in a time where the Jews have been redeemed based on the modern creation of the State of Israel.
Braverman also said that he grew up with this belief that all non-Jews were not to be trusted. Christians were seen as people who either wanted to convert you or kill you. However, when he went to Palestine in 2006 and saw what the Israeli occupation was doing it radically altered his worldview. When he heard the story of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own lands, it had a profound effect on him.
As he spent more time in Palestinian communities and saw the contrast between the Jewish areas and the Palestinian area he felt more at home amongst Palestinians. Then came the Israeli “separation” wall, which Braverman says is a death sentence for Israel, because it makes them more desperate and more like the historical oppressors.
However, what eventually turned him around in how he now sees the world was the time he spent with and the relationships he developed with Palestinians. He says that the Palestinians were completely open to discussing the difficult issues around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, much more so that Israelis.
He then told the audience about the visits he would make to the Sabeel Center, where a Palestinian Christian liberation theology is discussed and practiced. He told everyone about a conversation he had with a Palestinian woman named Nora whose family used to have a house in West Jerusalem. Braverman asked her how she copes with living under occupation.
Nora said that she copes because she is a follower of Jesus. She believes in non-violent resistance and that this testimony for Braverman is what gave him direction as a Jew. He realized that the Judaic tradition, particularly the prophetic tradition, says that one has to speak truth to power and advocate for justice and peace.
Braverman said that in the last day of this particular visit he was with a Quaker tour and saw young Jewish people near to a major Jewish center of worship. He said to one of the Palestinians that this was him 40 years ago and that these kids would just as soon kill the Palestinians in the group. His Palestinian friend said that he knew that and Mark asked what do I do when I go home to my people? He was told to go back to the US and change that belief among Jews and Christians.
Now he speaks in churches throughout the country, many of which welcome his perspective on the issue of Israel/Palestine. He says that the resistance to his message is strong and Christians tend to fear being labeled anti-Semitic, but Braverman says we have to have the courage to challenge this attitude.
He then says that often this issue is framed as a religious war, between Jews and Muslims, but Bravermen says this is not true, it is a struggle for social justice. “Zionism is not Judaism. The state of Israel does not represent the Jewish people,” said Braverman.
Braverman says that there are plenty of Jews in Israel who do not support the policies of the State of Israel. He says some of them have communicated to him that they support the Boycott/divestment campaign, because they do not want to raise their children in a culture that is so toxic with hate.
The author said this is an important global issue because of how it impacts people’s perception of the US. He says that many people have told him they hate the US because of what they are doing to the Palestinians. It is about deconstructing the whole American narrative of supposedly bringing this Judeo-Christian form of democracy to the world.
Braverman ended his presentation by debunking some of the mainstream narratives about US policy towards Israel/Palestinian, which insists the conflict is about the security of Israel. Braverman says this is absolutely not true and what the policy is about is the US maintaining hegemony in the region, which is why they back Israel.
“The churches have a history of working on these changes,” said Braverman. He then gives the example of the US Civil Rights Movement and the global anti-Apartheid movement against South Africa, both of which included the faith community.
Braverman seemed optimistic that people in the US can change their views on Israel/Palestine and that we can build a movement that will result in a lasting and just people for both Israelis and Palestinians.
