Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive

From RH Reality Check, by Margo Kaplan

In May, 2009, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock sentenced Quinta Layin Tuleh, who was about five months pregnant, for the crime of having fake immigration documents. While both the federal prosecutor and defense attorney urged the judge to sentence Tuleh to 114 days, which would allow her to leave prison with time served, Judge Woodcock doubled the recommended sentence and exceeded federal sentencing guideline recommendations for the sole purpose of keeping Tuleh in prison until she gave birth. Judge Woodcock's sole justification for the extended sentence is that Tuleh is HIV-positive. The judge felt that - despite the fact that Tuleh had arranged for care outside the prison - keeping her in prison would best ensure that she would take anti-retroviral medication to reduce the chances of transmitting HIV to her child in utero. In issuing this decision, Judge Woodcock has created disturbing precedent that could allow the state to keep people in jail based solely on the fact that they have HIV or are pregnant.

To understand how misled Judge Woodcock's decision was, it is useful to understand a little about how HIV can be transmitted from mother to child, or "vertically." HIV can be transmitted during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. While all babies born to women living with HIV will have HIV antibodies when they are born, 75% of those babies will "serorevert" and will not develop HIV infection. Thus, without any medical intervention, the rate of transmission is, on average, 25%. Taking antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy and birth or opting to have a cesarean section can reduce the rate of transmission to less than 2%. The best course of treatment to ensure the health of the mother and her child always depends on the individual woman's medical history and circumstances, and should be a decision she makes after consulting with her physician.

Judge Woodcock's decision ignores the complex factors involved in a pregnant woman's medical treatment decisions - as through being HIV positive makes one incapable of reasonable decision-making - and glibly equates being HIV-positive and pregnant with committing a crime. When reading the sentence, he makes clear that his sole reason for keeping Tuleh in prison was that she was HIV-positive and pregnant, and that, had she been pregnant and not HIV-positive, he would release her with time served. He reasons that he could keep Tuleh in jail "to protect the public from [her] further crimes."

Judge Woodcock bends himself into bizarre logical contortions to justify his decision. He states, "I don't think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is technically a crime under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault." Frustrated with what the law actually forbids, Judge Woodcock invents a new category of actions that, while not "technically" crimes "under the law," he still has the authority to punish with imprisonment. However, if judges could hold people in prison for any "direct" and "likely" action they found morally reprehensible, they would have unlimited discretion. This is precisely what the rule of law is intended to prevent.

While some states do, indeed, criminalize HIV exposure, Judge Woodcock does more than this - he imprisons a woman for the mere possibility that she might transmit HIV in the future. His reasoning essentially criminalizes being HIV-positive and allows the state to jail anyone with HIV simply because they have HIV and are capable of transmitting it to another. It classifies anyone with HIV as a threat to society who can be incarcerated at the whim of the state to protect public health. As Regan Hofmann eloquently explained in her May blog, criminalizing HIV transmission contributes to the stigmatization of HIV and actually harms prevention efforts. The imprisonment of those with HIV based on the mere fact that they might transmit it to others is even more abhorrent as a matter of law and policy.

Some might be tempted to think that the judge in fact is helping Tuleh by ensuring she at least has access to medications. This argument might have some merit if Tuleh were asking the judge to keep her in jail because she was concerned about deportation or her ability to access care. But the fact is-and Judge Woodcock recognized-Tuleh did not want to remain in prison, much less give birth in prison. Her attorney stressed that Tuleh had arranged for medical treatment outside of prison at a facility-unlike the prison system-specifically equipped to meet her medical needs.

Whatever Judge Woodcock's protective intentions, using imprisonment to coerce pregnant women to make the medical care choices we think best is an outrageous abuse of the system. By keeping her in prison because he felt it would be best for the fetus, Judge Woodcock was unable to see and treat Tuleh as a competent adult with the ability and the right to make her own medical decisions. Instead, he reduced her to a fetal container-an obstacle to providing the care he wanted for the child she was carrying. Not once in the transcript of the sentencing proceeding does Judge Woodcock consider Tuleh's own medical care or her health interests. She is guilty of being HIV positive, while her fetus is, in his view, "a wholly innocent person."

Judge Woodcock's decision perpetuates the myth that people with HIV are somehow "other"-more reprehensible, less responsible, and deserving of whatever state intervention helps protect the "innocent" remainder of society. It also furthers the view that pregnant women lose their autonomy and their rights by virtue of their pregnancy, and that pregnancy should enable the state to detain a woman if the state disagrees with the care she is choosing for her own body. While Tuleh may have had counterfeit immigration documents, having HIV and being pregnant does not make her any less "innocent" or any more deserving of punishment.

Does Abortion Prevent Child Abuse?

“Does abortion prevent child abuse? In 1973, when abortion was first legalized, the United States child abuse cases were estimated at 167,000 annually. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 903,000 children were victims of abuse during 2001, a number more than 5 times greater.”

-from Life Report Podcast


Correlation is NOT causation. The population of the US increased from 211,909,000 in 1973 to 285,669,915. While those numbers are not enough to explain the difference, perhaps a shift in social attitudes can. Even just a generation or two ago, it was common to use more negative force and excessive discipline on children (for example, how common was spanking while you were growing up vs. now?). Mandated reporters (people who, due to their close work with children, are legally obligated to report suspected abuse) were not established until 1974 when the Child Abuse and Treatment Act passed. This act also begun federal funding to all 50 states to prevent, investigate and assess child abuse cases.

Further, it would be interesting to see how these statistics define “child abuse.” Unfortunately, some children deemed victims of child abuse are ultimately victims of poverty. Stories come to my mind of families torn apart due to unsafe living conditions that were a direct result of landlord neglect and the ghetto-ization of low-income people or parents who were working but poor and couldn’t afford all their bills and to put food on their table.

Lastly, any person who would claim “abortion prevents child abuse” is not clearly thinking through their pro-choice logic. Yes, in some select cases a continued pregnancy would have resulted in the child being abused, but ultimately this claim is anti-woman, assuming there are some women who just shouldn’t be parents- almost mandating abortion in certain cases. Hard to prove tangents just take away from our message. If we are to ever have a truly united force for reproductive justice, we must squarely keep the focus for abortion on the woman and what she wants for herself, her family (if applicable) and her future.

" 'Pro-Life', that's a lie."

Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the USA who performed late abortions, was shot and killed while attending church this morning.

"The chilling fact of Dr. Tiller's death comes after years of being terrorized: he'd been shot before (in both arms); had his clinic bombed, flooded and vandalized; received decades of death threats; wild lawsuits; and was the unfortunate target of conservative media that hounded him. He'd also been stabbed--and went back to work the next day." -Anna Clark for RH Reality Check

Personally, I just want to say condolences to Mrs. Tiller, Dr. Tiller's family and friends with hope and love for the people affected by and organizing for reproductive justice and abortion rights.

We may be entering scary times. Much love to all you out there.

Starbucks

Deadly Intersections- by pattrice jones

From the blog, superweed.

The Huffington Post reports that Glen Beck and other conservative media personalities are blaming undocumented immigrants from Mexico for the spread of swine flu into the United States. Given that the true vector — tourists returning from Mexican vacations — has been widely publicized, there’s no way to read this other than as racism and jingoism.

It’s easy to laugh off Glen Beck tearfully portraying flu-weakened residents of Mexico City rushing to cross a border hundreds of miles away, but the potential repercussions are not so funny. What if people in the U.S. do start dying of swine flu and Glen Beck fans swarm out to beat up Mexicans in retaliation?

Here’s another problem: As long as people are fired up about allegedly infectious “illegal immigrants,” they’re not looking at the true source of the problem: factory farming.

This is an example of what feminist scholars call the “intersection of oppressions.” When different kinds of oppression intersect, they tend to compound and fortify each other, sometimes leading to hybrid forms of oppression, just as different strains of flu virus can comingle and mutate to create a more virulent and intractable disease.

In this case, racism and national chauvinism are shields for speciesism and environmental despoliation. Even if this particular pandemic panic fizzles out, the problem of virus mutation on factory farms will remain. Many virologists and public health experts believe it’s a matter of “not if but when” an influenza pandemic will strike. By not looking at factory farms, we not only leave literally billions of animals in anguish but also neglect a public health crisis that, when it hits, will fall most heavily on people living in poverty. Which, because people of color represent a disproportionate share of people living in poverty, brings us back to racism.

See how it works?

We’ve seen this before with disease, most notably with HIV/AIDS. First, prejudice against low-income injection drug users kept public health officials from investigating the epidemic of “junkie pneumonia” in the 1970s. As I wrote back in 1992:

Here’s how I imagine things would have been different if such an investigation had occurred back in the 1970s: (1) researchers would have discovered the HIV virus and its routes of transmission many years before they did, and (2) this earlier discovery would have saved many lives now lost; (3) no one would have wasted energy on inane and homophobic concepts such as GRID (Gay-Related Immuno-Deficiency - the first name given to the syndrome now called AIDS); (4) otherwise rational researchers would not have investigated “the gay lifestyle” as a potential causal factor; (5) the media would not have been able to label AIDS as “the gay disease;” and (6) increased anti-gay violence would not have resulted.

And, of course, besides inhibiting scientific research and sparking gay-bashing, the homophobic designation of AIDS as a “gay disease” made straight people, including the sexual partners of injection drug users, initially resistant to AIDS-prevention education. While HIV transmission rates declined among gay men, they shot up among people living in poverty and especially among heterosexual women of color.

See how it works? Gay men of all races were hurt by the racism that led doctors to ignore junkie pneumonia. Then straight women of color were hurt by the homophobia that branded AIDS as a “gay disease.”

It gets deeper. We now know that HIV (human immodeficiency virus) evolved from SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) in much the same way that the flu virus now sickening people evolved from swine and bird viruses, initially making the jump to people in Africa. But, given the same kind of invective we’re seeing now about swine flu, anti-racist activists were understandably skeptical of and justifiably worried about the repercussions of an African origin of AIDS. Thus racism made the quest to understand the evolution of a virus a political powder keg.

It gets deeper. Stereotyped associations of Africans and monkeys combined with the taint of sexual perversity attached to AIDS by virtue of its imagined association with homosexuality, leading to truly sick racist depictions of AIDS originating in bestiality. This made many of us even more unwilling to even consider the possibility that HIV evolved from SIV in Africa. I’ll admit that, at the time, I was one of the ones arguing that we ought to just quit trying to figure out where HIV came from and concentrate on arresting its spread.

Let’s break it down. In fact, what happened was that SIV got into human bloodstreams easily and regularly because people who hunt and butcher primates for what’s known as “bush meat” get scratched and cut in the process. The blood of the butchered animal gets into the cuts and scratches, setting the stage for the comingling of viruses. This is just one more instance of animal diseases making the jump to people because of our penchant for killing and eating members of other species. But we couldn’t see that because of the psychedelic kaleidescope of racist-speciesist and homophobic imagery swirling around HIV/AIDS.

Sweep that away, and we could look, perhaps productively, at how the exploitation of animals always turns back to bite us. We could look not only at zoonoses (animal-based diseases) but also at how the construction of the category “animal” as an inferior creature without rights creates the circumstances that allow us to “dehumanize” people in order to exploit them. We could look, perhaps productively, at the poverty and environmental despoliation that lead people to go into the bush looking for chimps to butcher for meat.

To solve big problems, we have to be able to look dispassionately at all of the facts. But intersecting oppressions makes it difficult to look at some connections.

More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN for The New York Times

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Two months after the local atheist organization here put up a billboard saying “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone,” the group’s 13 board members met in Laura and Alex Kasman’s living room to grapple with the fallout.

Loretta Haskell, a board member of the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, is also a church musician. “I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing,” she said.

The problem was not that the group, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, had attracted an outpouring of hostility. It was the opposite. An overflow audience of more than 100 had showed up for their most recent public symposium, and the board members discussed whether it was time to find a larger place.

And now parents were coming out of the woodwork asking for family-oriented programs where they could meet like-minded nonbelievers.

“Is everyone in favor of sponsoring a picnic for humanists with families?” asked the board president, Jonathan Lamb, a 27-year-old meteorologist, eliciting a chorus of “ayes.”

More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out — even here in South Carolina, home to Bob Jones University, blue laws and a legislature that last year unanimously approved a Christian license plate embossed with a cross, a stained glass window and the words “I Believe” (a move blocked by a judge and now headed for trial).

They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.

They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.

“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.

Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the “nones” are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.

Local and national atheist organizations have flourished in recent years, fed by outrage over the Bush administration’s embrace of the religious right. A spate of best-selling books on atheism also popularized the notion that nonbelief is not just an argument but a cause, like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy.

Ten national organizations that variously identify themselves as atheists, humanists, freethinkers and others who go without God have recently united to form the Secular Coalition for America, of which Mr. Silverman is president. These groups, once rivals, are now pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state.

A wave of donations, some in the millions of dollars, has enabled the hiring of more paid professional organizers, said Fred Edwords, a longtime atheist leader who directs an umbrella group, the United Coalition of Reason, which plans to spawn 20 local groups around the country in the next year.

Despite changing attitudes, polls continue to show that atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or religious group when Americans are asked whether they would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member of that group.

Over lunch with some new atheist joiners at a downtown Charleston restaurant serving shrimp and grits, one young mother said that her husband was afraid to allow her to go public as an atheist because employers would refuse to hire him.

But another member, Beverly Long, a retired school administrator who now teaches education at the Citadel, said that when she first moved to Charleston from Toronto in 2001, “the first question people asked me was, What church do you belong to?” Ms. Long attended Wednesday dinners at a Methodist church, for the social interaction, but never felt at home. Since her youth, she had doubted the existence of God but did not discuss her views with others.

Ms. Long found the secular humanists through a newspaper advertisement and attended a meeting. Now, she is ready to go public, she said, especially after doing some genealogical research recently. “I had ancestors who fought in the American Revolution so I could speak my mind,” she said.

Until recent years, the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry were local pariahs. Mr. Silverman — whose specialty license plate, one of many offered by the state, says “In Reason We Trust” — was invited to give the invocation at the Charleston City Council once, but half the council members walked out. The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity would not let the Secular Humanists volunteer to build houses wearing T-shirts that said “Non Prophet Organization,” he said.

When their billboard went up in January, with their Web site address displayed prominently, they expected hate mail.

“But most of the e-mails were grateful,” said Laura Kasman, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina.

The board members meeting in the Kasmans’ living room were an unlikely mix that included a gift store owner, a builder, a grandmother, a retired nursing professor, a retired Navy officer, an administrator at a primate sanctuary and a church musician. They are also diverse in their attitudes toward religion.

Loretta Haskell, the church musician, said: “I did struggle at one point as to whether or not I should be making music in churches, given my position on things. But at the same time I like using my music to move people, to give them comfort. And what I’ve found is, I am not one of the humanists who feels that religion is a bad thing.”

The group has had mixed reactions to President Obama, who acknowledged nonbelievers in his inauguration speech. “I sent him a thank-you note,” Ms. Kasman said. But Sharon Fratepietro, who is married to Mr. Silverman, said, “It seemed like one long religious ceremony, with a moment of lip service.”

Part of what is giving the movement momentum is the proliferation of groups on college campuses. The Secular Student Alliance now has 146 chapters, up from 42 in 2003.

At the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, 19 students showed up for a recent evening meeting of the “Pastafarians,” named for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — a popular spoof on religion dreamed up by an opponent of intelligent design, the idea that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them.

Andrew Cederdahl, the group’s co-founder, asked for volunteers for the local food bank and for a coming debate with a nearby Christian college. Then Mr. Cederdahl opened the floor to members to tell their “coming out stories.”

Andrew Morency, who attended a Christian high school, said that when he got to college and studied evolutionary biology he decided that “creationists lie.”

Josh Streetman, who once attended the very Christian college that the Pastafarians were about to debate, said he knew the Bible too well to be sure that Scripture is true. Like Mr. Streetman, many of the other students at the meeting were highly literate in the Bible and religious history.

In keeping with the new generation of atheist evangelists, the Pastafarian leaders say that their goal is not confrontation, or even winning converts, but changing the public’s stereotype of atheists. A favorite Pastafarian activity is to gather at a busy crossroads on campus with a sign offering “Free Hugs” from “Your Friendly Neighborhood Atheist.”

Edward Abbey quote

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."

Happy Earth Day!

"Earth Day is the first completely international and universal holiday that the world has ever known. Every other holiday was tied to one place, or some political or special event. This day is tied to Earth itself, and to the place Earth in the whole solar system."

-Margaret Mead

Helping Women Reach Their Potential in Math

This New York Times Article is now member-only, so here's the full text! By Tanya Mohn

THE explanations vary, but the fact remains: Many women are not reaching their full potential in math, and that can hold them back in the job market. Allannah Thomas is working to change that through Helicon, a nonprofit group in New York specializing in math instruction for low-income women.

“You’ll get better jobs, better pay, more interesting work and have a future” by improving math skills, Ms. Thomas recently told a group of two dozen women. She was about to review fractions, mixed numbers and other basics to help them with tests for job training programs. The class was part of a program at Nontraditional Employment for Women, which trains women for skilled jobs in construction and other industries.

Ms. Thomas formed Helicon in 1999 to address a lack of math proficiency among low-income women. As the sole instructor, she has taught more than 5,000 women (and many men, too) about basics of bookkeeping and has helped them prepare for G.E.D. tests. She has instructed prospective retail workers about percentages, for example, and offered other industry-specific math for job seekers who hope to work as bank tellers or in health care.

Her clients include trade unions, job training and placement organizations, social service agencies and hospitals. She also teaches many classes pro bono.

Nationwide, women are underrepresented in many jobs that require strong math skills. Women comprise only 13.5 percent of workers in architecture and engineering occupations, and only 2.5 percent in construction-related occupations, according to 2008 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Beth Casey, professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at Boston College, who studies gender differences in math, says research suggests that boys start to gain a small advantage in math in middle-school years, and that the advantage increases in high school, though by smaller amounts in recent years.

Gender differences are greater in math that depends more on spatial reasoning, such as geometry, measurement and calculus, Dr. Casey said. This may affect job choice, with men more likely than women to enter fields like engineering and carpentry.

The reason that men and women differ in math skills is a matter of debate. It is not a clear-cut issue, as biological and environmental factors interact, Dr. Casey said. “Women are not universally worse than males in math,” she said.

What often holds girls back is self-confidence; it drops sharply in middle school and is considered a reason that so many women don’t choose math-related fields, she said. [Emphasis mine]But “many girls and women have the potential to improve their spatial skills to the point of being very successful" in fields that require those abilities, she said.

Ms. Thomas first observed these issues as a high school math teacher two decades ago. And when she worked in a variety of social service jobs in the 1990s, she came into contact with many women who struggled with math, which prompted her to start Helicon.

While working in social services, she met women who wanted to start or expand businesses; some who could breeze through the verbal part of business plans were stymied by the math sections in market research and fiscal analyses. Other women — nurses’ aides and home health care workers who hoped to become nurses — often had their dreams dashed by an inability to do the math required for training entrance exams. (Test takers might be asked to convert adult doses of medicine to various doses for children, based on their weight, for example.) And she saw women who had difficulty with the math section of the G.E.D. test compared with the other sections. In New York, women’s failure rate on the math section is consistently higher than men’s, according to data from the state Department of Education.

In her current work, she says she has found that while individual abilities vary, almost everyone can improve. She recounted how several years ago, a woman whose math skills were at a fourth-grade level came to one of her classes. After taking an eight-week intensive review of basic math and several other math prep classes, she got a score of 98 percent on the entrance test for Carpenters’ Union, Local 608 — the highest in the class, Ms. Thomas said.

Ms. Thomas’s style of teaching has been called math boot camp because it emphasizes traditional basics: memorization of multiplication tables, for example, and the use of timed quizzes and tests. By mastering fundamentals in rote learning, she said, math becomes second nature and inspires confidence.

One former student, Roselyn Colón, 31, of the Bronx, said: “If her first attempt doesn’t work, she tries other strategies until you learn it.” Another former student, Heather McHale, 36, of Queens, said, “She’s old school. You do it again and again until it sticks.”

Both women took several of Ms. Thomas’s classes last year and in September became apprentices in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3, making $11 an hour with yearly raises. After a five-and-a-half-year apprenticeship, they will earn about $47 an hour, they said. .

SOME women who take the classes have strong math skills that may just need polishing. One of Ms. Thomas’s former students, Matilde Santana, 45, of Queens, said, “I was pretty strong in math,” but hadn’t used some of the skills for about 20 years. She worked in the fashion industry for 13 years, but was unemployed for two before taking Ms. Thomas’s classes a few years ago.

She has worked at Consolidated Edison since September 2006 as a general utility worker and was promoted in March. “I strongly believe if I had not taken her course,” the situation would have been completely different, Ms. Santana said.

New Hope to End Genocide

From Huffington Post, by Andrew Slack

Andrew Slack is Executive Director of the the Harry Potter Alliance, which takes a creative approach to activism by mobilizing thousands of kids to spread love and fight for justice in the spirit of the Harry Potter novels. The HP Alliance has been featured in over 200 US publications including Time Magazine, the LA Times, and the front covers of both the Chicago Tribune Business Section and Politico Newspaper.

In the 1977 classic Star Wars: A New Hope, Obi Wan Kenobi shudders just moments after Darth Vader destroys the planet of Alderaan. When Luke asks his mentor what's wrong, Obi Wan replies, "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

A real world disturbance happened in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 innocent people. In the last week we have reached the fifteenth anniversary of this horror when Bill Clinton and his administration did hear those "millions of voices crying out in terror" and allowed them to be silenced.

These calculated decisions by our leaders in Washington coupled by a media obsessed with OJ Simpson led to the perverse reality that a good friend of mine from Rwanda lived through. At the time, her one source of news for what was happening in her country was phone calls from family members saying goodbye and asking why the international community had abandoned them. Some of them were murdered while they were on the phone with her.

While 1994 was the summer after Schindler's List won best movie, the Clinton administration and our allies showed great disregard to the memory of those killed in the Holocaust by failing to protect the millions at dire risk and the more than 800,000 that were killed in Rwanda.

On this fifteenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, will the Obama administration show similar disregard to those killed in Rwanda by failing to protect the millions at imminent risk in Darfur? In short, does the Obama administration plan to commemorate the Rwandan genocide by letting another innocent 1,000,000 Africans die?

When I read the testimony of Rwandan survivorsat this site, such as the story of a young Rwandan woman who was infected with HIV after being gang raped at the age of five, of young men who as children laid next to their parents' corpses pretending to be dead, I am reminded that none of these people are mere statistics. Their tales of horror and their ongoing courage to rebuild their nation is a humbling reminder to prevent these stories of brutality from continuing in Darfur while honoring these brave survivors of genocide in Rwanda.

In order to show Rwandans the world over that the international community of young people will not forget what happened while sharing their hope for their nations future,
the Harry Potter Alliance partnered with a pretty interesting group called the Nerdfighters, and in one week our members made over 300 videos in which they lit a "candle of hope" for Rwanda. Through Candles For Rwanda, these videos will be shown alongside a video of celebrities, world leaders, and leading activists (their video can be seen here) lighting candles of hope as well. Rwandans the world over will see these videos and the best of them will be shown on July 16, during the closing ceremony of the fifteenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in Rwanda's capital of Kigali.

Through these videos and thousands of book donations meant for a youth village in Rwanda I have seen first hand young people across our world taking the small steps within their power to commemorate the genocide in Rwanda and support the survivors. President Obama can do much more. Putting forward a comprehensive plan to work with our allies to apprehend the killers from the genocide who are hiding in the US, UK, France, and who continue their killing spree in Congo with plans to return to Rwanda to 'finish what they started' is an essential step. But another essential step is that the President authenticate his April 7 statement on the fifteen year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide where he says "the memory of these events also deepens our commitment to act when faced with genocide and to work with partners around the world to prevent future atrocities." As of now, John Prendergast and Jim Wallis have noted that the US policy towards Darfur leaves a great deal to be desired:

What has been missing is America's leadership in forging a coalition that can both negotiate with and pressure Sudan to seek peace in Darfur as well as implement the existing peace agreement for the South. Building this coalition for peace should be Mr. Obama's objective.

In the last month, the genocide in Darfur has shifted to a new phase of horror for the Darfuri people. Over 13 aid groups have been evacuated and over 1,000,0000 lives hang in the balance. Further, as Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir continues his current attempt at mass murder, he is once more rallying the support of radical terrorists, meaning that Sudan could easily become a hotbed of terrorist recruitment as it housed Osama bin Laden in the nineties. So to those isolationists who can stomach watching innocent children die under the pretense that we need to care about our own country first, acting now on Darfur is not only a moral imperative, it is a strategic one as well.

But as we look to the fifteenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, there is also a historical imperative. To his credit, President Obama has acknowledged activists for their work on Darfur, finally appointed a special envoy to Sudan, and now Senator John Kerry has arrived in Darfur. But with the exception of Kerry, these were all steps that George Bush took for years. An occasional statement here and there about how "Darfur is in a crisis" is not going to get them out of this new stage of genocide with 1,000,000 lives in imminent danger. The people of Darfur need the US to not forget them as they had Rwandans. In the face of this fifteenth anniversary, the US needs to show what we have learned by leading a coalition of allies to do whatever it takes to get the aid workers back into Darfur and find a point of leverage for peace in all of Sudan. As Prendergast and Wallis note, while this is a moment of potential horror, it is also a moment of great opportunity should the President decide to show that he cares enough, not just to talk, but to act.

The Harry Potter Alliance is working to wake up the President to ending the genocide in Darfur the way Dumbledore's Army woke the world up to Voldemort's return in the Harry Potter novels. Thankfully we are part of a growing worldwide movement. You can join this movement by signing up with us, with the Genocide Intervention Network, and the Save Darfur Coalition. Hopefully the actions of these groups will influence action from advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org as well as attention from the blogosphere -- it's time that some of this country's most politically engaged public health activists and intellectuals start prodding our President to take leadership on a public health crisis of over one 1,000,000 innocent people.

Here are some more simple steps that you can take toward showing our president that he has the political capital to take necessary leadership on this matter of great urgency:

1- Call 1-800-GENOCIDE

2- Text 90822 to send a message about Darfur to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton! Create your own message or text "Take immediate action to restore aid to Darfur!" Send a text every day.

Further, each of us today can help Rwandan survivors with their homes and medical expenses by donating at candlesforrwanda.org where you can also upload a video of yourself lighting a candle of hope.

In order to honor these heroic individuals who survived the Rwandan genocide and that part of humanity itself that was lost as we watched yet another genocide and did nothing to counter it, it is time for us to find appropriate ways to commemorate the fifteen year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide by allowing "the millions of voices [that had] suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced" to finally be heard.

I imagine that if we continued to listen to the whispers of those voices that were silenced in 1994, we may be reminded that people's spirit and love cannot be done away with by machete or starvation -- and that we will allow their spirits to guide us in love toward working towards a world where each of us is revered, not forgotten and left to die needlessly.

As Prendergast and Wallis say:

"When the dust clears and the bodies are buried, burned or left to rot in forsaken camps, the world will mourn for what it did not do. What Darfur needs is not a future apology, but steps today that offer hope."

Hope, a New Hope, is what Obama promised our country and our world. He has until July 16 to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide by showing the world that there will no longer be millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror and then suddenly silenced. The "force" of our world must be restored by listening deeply and acting for the millions of voices crying out in Darfuri refugee camps.

While "Change We Can Believe" includes Obama's wish to change humanity's twentieth century style relationship with the environment and nuclear weapons, it must include changing the twentieth century's pattern of inaction toward the mass murder of civilians and toward a reverence of life and love that speaks to all of our most deeply held values.

Time is of the essence Mr. President. Despite all the problems at home and abroad that you and the leaders of both parties are grappling with, now is the time to look to the people of Rwanda and the people of Darfur and say, Yes We Can. Yes We Can Honor the memory and rebuilding of Rwanda. Yes We Can End Genocide in Darfur.

Writing About Values Boosts Grades for Middle Schoolers

Interesting study.... article by Serena Gordon

When children write about their values, these self-affirmation exercises can help boost grades, new research suggests.

However, the positive effect seems to only translate into higher marks for black students, according to the study, which appears in the April 17 issue of Science.

"This psychological intervention can have a long-term positive impact on children's academic performance and help to close the racial achievement gap," said study author Geoffrey Cohen, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

But, added Cohen, "This is not a silver bullet. The improvements came from the psychological interventions paired with good resources and good teachers."

For this study, Cohen and his colleagues had three groups of seventh-graders: European-American children, high-performing black children and low-performing black children. Each group was split into two, with half receiving the intervention and the other half serving as a control. Each group had between 65 and 75 children.

The intervention was a series of structured writing assignments where the kids were asked to select a value and then write about that value. Each writing assignment took about 15 minutes to complete, and was repeated between three and five times throughout a year.

"What we found is that African-Americans who received the intervention did better academically over the two-year study. Grades improved almost a half a grade point for low-performing African-Americans. The intervention consistently closed the racial achievement gap," said Cohen.

For blacks, the rate of remediation or grade repetition dropped from 18 percent to 5 percent for those children who received the intervention.

One of the ways this type of intervention helps children, according to Cohen, is by reducing stress. "If I have a moment to think about my family, to reflect on what matters to me during an important performance situation -- such as before a test -- the stressful performance situation becomes less stressful, and I think of myself as capable and good," he said.

This type of change in thinking might be especially important for minority students, he said, because they may feel that they'll be judged in a stereotypical way.

"African-Americans might have more stress in school, because they have the extra burden of a stereotype threat. They may worry that they'll be seen by teachers or peers through the negative lens of stereotyping," said Cohen.

And, more good news from this study was that the benefits of the intervention persisted for at least two years. Cohen said that's likely because the intervention breaks the negative downward spiral that's often seen in middle school.

"Because it's a recursive cycle, early outcomes make a huge difference. Recursive cycles are sensitive to initial outcomes, and early experiences have a lasting impact," he said.

Dr. Debra Hollander, chief of psychiatry at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Mich., wasn't surprised that the intervention helped some children improve their grades. "The kids were being asked to be more reflective, to think about what's important to them and what they value. This can help reset where they want to be, and it can empower them," she said.

But, Hollander said she was surprised that the positive effects were only seen in black children, and added that it's something that should be explored further in research.

What's important for parents and educators to take away from this study, she said, is that, "how we interact with one another, and the subtle messages we send, can have a huge impact on children."

For example, Hollander said, when children are struggling in school and their parents just sign them up for tutoring, the kids may interpret that to mean that they can't do well on their own. A better way, she suggested, is to ask your children what they want to accomplish and how you can help them get there.

"You Can Be Good Without God"

http://inatheistbus.org/

Fighting Sexism, part 2

Former Seattle Police Chief Organizes for Marijuana Legalization (and talks a little bit about the Seattle '99)

Soybean Leaders Join Fight Against Animal Rights

From Change.org (thanks for posting the link, Melissa!).

Those whose direct business is raising and killing animals aren't the only ones in agriculture with less-than-loving feelings toward animal rights advocates. Organizations representing crop farmers are preparing to take on animal rights (and animal welfare) activists and organizations too, alongside animal ag interest groups. Is this just a matter of those in the broader business of agriculture sticking together? Not quite. The interest is a selfish one. How so? I'm so glad you asked.

A frequent jab thrown at vegans has to do with the environmental problems that accompany modern soybean farming, the erroneous assumptions being (1) that all vegans eat massive amounts of soy (no, not all do) and (2) that most soy being grown goes to make vegan foods. And this second assumption couldn't be further off-base: 90-some percent of the soy crop goes to feed livestock. Really.

-Continue after the jump-

All that soybean meal is going toward "production" of the flesh, dairy, and eggs eaten by most humans. And the primary cause of Amazon deforestation is cattle ranching, with the soybean farming that supports animal ag contributing too--in other words, the Amazon is being destroyed on behalf of omnivores, not because of vegans' ethical dietary choices. And most of the corn crop serves the same animal-feed purpose.

As if to drive this point home, the soybean industry is now standing firmly beside its animal agriculture comrades in their battle against scary vegans and animal rights advocates. The American Soybean Association is getting into the fray because, of course, not all soy is grown in the Amazon. We're growing loads of it--and supplying it to animal ag--right here in the United States too. So to protect its own interests (to make sure there are still as many animals as possible being fed its product), the American Soybean Association is developing anti-animal rights plans too and has designated a leader for those plans. Following are the fun details from an ag news piece (including, as has come to be expected, agribusiness's portrayal of HSUS as a radical animal rights group, of course):

The president of the Nebraska Soybean Association—Debbie Borg of Allen—says she is encouraged by how the ag industry is responding to the animal rights movement.

At last month’s Commodity Classic conference in Texas, the American Soybean Association asked Borg to lead its efforts in the area of animal rights. Since then, she has been talking to ag leaders, government officials and others. Borg says she wants them to understand the seriousness of the threat posed by the Humane Society of the United States and other animal rights groups. . . .

“Yes, I got to meet with the governor and he is very interested and concerned about this movement,” says Borg, “and he wants to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to get the truth out.”

Borg has also launched her own “letter to the editor” campaign and encourages other farmers and ranchers to do the same. In a letter sent to the Lincoln newspaper, she encourages consumers to reconsider their support of HSUS, PETA and other groups which she calls “vegan animal rights activists.”

Native American/Native Alaska Women Suffer Epidemic Rapes

A Congressional subcommittee held a hearing earlier in the week featuring testimony by a leading expert on sexual violence against Indigenous women in the U.S. Charon Asetoyer, executive director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center addressed a disturbing epidemic of sexual violence affecting one out of three Native American and Alaska Native women and stressed the need to create Sexual assault Nurse Examiner programs in all Indian Health Service hospitals. According to the US Dept. of Justice’s own statistics, Native American and Alaska Native women are nearly three times more likely to be raped than women in the US in general. Too often Native American victims of rape have to go through a maze of federal, state, tribal and local laws to achieve any justice at all, while the agencies responsible for seeking justice on their behalf are severely underfunded and inadequate. Federal law limits the criminal sentences that tribal courts can impose and prohibits tribal courts from trying non-Indian suspects – even though data collected by the Department of Justice shows that up to 86% of perpetrators are non-Indian.

GUEST: Charon Asetoyer, Executive Director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center.

Read Amnesty International’s Report, Maze of Injustice here: http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/maze/report.pdf.

Email messages to Senator Dianne Feinstein can be sent here: http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe. Or call Senator Feinstein at (202) 224-3841.

Listen to it here.

AALDEF Demands Justice for Iowa Student Disciplined for Protesting English Proficiency Testing

This press release was found at Angry Asian Man, I learned about the story via the Addicted to Race podcast.

Honor student deemed an English Language Learner for declaring Lao as her home language

New York, NY - The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), which is representing Iowa honors student Lori Phanachone, has called for the removal of all references to disciplinary action from her school record after she refused to take an English Language Learner (ELL) test. Ms. Phanachone was mislabeled an English Language Learner (ELL) after naming Lao as her home language.

Khin Mai Aung, the AALDEF staff attorney representing the student, said: "Lori Phanachone is an honor student who has excelled in mainstream classes throughout her life, and happens to speak Lao as her home language. Storm Lake has improperly conflated my client's knowledge of Lao with lack of fluency in English."

The Storm Lake School District, which did not assess Ms. Phanachone's English level when she enrolled two years ago, has since subjected her to a yearly test for ELLs. The 3.98 GPA senior did not receive English as a Second Language or other ELL services before moving to Storm Lake as a sophomore. Since matriculating in Storm Lake, Ms. Phanachone has excelled in advanced courses–all of which were taught in English. This year, she boycotted the yearly ELL test in protest. As a result, Ms. Phanachone was suspended for 3 days and threatened with the loss of National Honor Society membership, exclusion from school activities including the track team, prom and other extracurricular activities, as well as further disciplinary action.

Lori Phanachone said: "Storm Lake labeled me an English Language Learner when I enrolled without even bothering to test me. All I want is to continue my education without the school labeling me unfairly."

Among other things, AALDEF demands that the Storm Lake School District:

* Remove all references to Lori Phanachone's suspension and other disciplinary action from her school records;
* Assure in writing that it will not impose further disciplinary action on her;
* Clarify Storm Lake's procedures for classifying students as ELL upon enrollment;
* Explain how and why Lori Phanachone was classified as an ELL under Storm Lake's classification procedures; and
* Reclassify Lori Phanachone, and other affected students if appropriate under Iowa and federal law, as English proficient.

Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers' Choice for Women

From Shakesville:

Hey, Shakers, Liss has graciously allowed me to yell in her forum. Many thanks, Liss. I have no other outlet for what I'm about to say. I want to tell you first: at least one of you knows me in person. What I'm about to say is something you do not know about me. If it's not you, then one of your friends might be like me.

I'm the birth mother of an adopted child, vehemently pro-choice, non-Christian, very unsuited to motherhood, and after over a decade, have got some things to tell the world about adoption. It's been stewing since I heard about the recent rash of pre-abortion ultrasound legislation. While I am touched that so many men in such various states are so deeply worried about women possibly being all sad from having an abortion, I wish to point out to these compassionately bleeding hearts that the alternatives are not exactly without their own emotional consequences.

...

I have given a baby up for adoption, and I have had an abortion, and while anecdotes are not evidence, I can assert that abortions may or may not cause depression - it certainly did not in me, apart from briefly mourning the path not taken - but adoption? That is an entirely different matter. I don't doubt that there are women who were fine after adoption, and there is emphatically nothing wrong with that or with them; but I want to point out that if we're going to have a seemingly neverending discussion about the sorrow and remorse caused by abortion, then it is about goddamn time that we hear from birth mothers too.

Read the rest of the amazing piece here.

A message from the team at MomsRising

This came to me via the Anti-Racist Parenting blog:

At MomsRising we’re always looking out to make sure that mothers and families are treated fairly in our nation. The other day I saw a video that shocked me: Two young children crying, alone in a car, reaching out for their mother who’d been taken away by deputies wearing ski masks after being stopped for a minor traffic violation.[1] The images haven’t left me. A nightmare, right? Never in America? Wrong.

A local NBC news report described the incident through the eyes of a witness, “…the deputies were wearing ski masks and detained the children’s mother for about an hour while her children watched, crying.”[2]
Who’s in charge of these deputies!?

It turns out that the person in charge knew exactly what was going on. Sheriff Arpaio has been cited repeatedly for gross civil rights violations and racial profiling of both citizens and non-citizens in the name of immigration enforcement, and when questioned about his tactics, he said that under his jurisdiction, “it was not unusual for law enforcement officers to wear ski masks while on duty.”[2,3]

In the video the young girl is asked, “What did the sheriff tell you?” The little girl said, “To be quiet, but I couldn’t ’cause I wanted to go with my mommy.” [2] And here’s what Mary, a MomsRising team member said after seeing the video, “We may not all be on the same page about immigration policy, but we do all agree that children and mothers shouldn’t be treated this way.”

Regardless of where immigration policy stands, no one should be treated that way. We’ve all got to stand up against this inhumane treatment of families. This type of treatment of women and families simply isn’t acceptable.

*Watch the video and join us in urging the Department of Justice to investigate Sheriff Arpaio’s tactics at: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

-Please forward this [post] to friends and family now so they too can take action too. We need to put a spotlight on this inhumane treatment with as many people paying attention as possible in order to get an investigation.

Together we can do something about this. Sheriff Arpaio is out of control in Maricopa County, Arizona, and it’s going to take all of us, and then some, standing up to say that this type of treatment has got to stop.
With over 2,700 lawsuits against him, a history of virulently anti-Latino and anti-immigrant tactics, and 40,000 felony warrants outstanding in his jurisdiction, Sheriff Arpaio has fostered a climate in which real criminals roam free while his deputies cross the line by using tactics that violate civil rights in the name of immigration enforcement.[4]

The voices of mothers are needed right now to say clearly that all mothers and children need to be treated with respect and fairness.

*Don’t forget to watch the video and sign on now to urge the U.S. Department of Justice investigate Sheriff Arpaio at: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

Mothers taken away from young children by men in ski masks, and people being marched in shackles through town to electric fenced “tent cities” in the desert [5] crosses the line of humane treatment. Let’s help put a stop to this.

Thank you - Kristin, Joan, Katie, Dionna, Mary, Ariana, Anita, Ashley, Donna, Roz, Julia, and the MomsRising Team

[1] See the video and take action: http://www.momsrisingaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26817

[2] February 5th, 2009: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2009/02/05/20090205motherarrested02052009-CR.html

[3] From “Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America’s Children”: Approximately five million children have an undocumented parent; however, the vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens and under the age of ten. Despite efforts to mitigate harm to children by changing the manner in which raids and other immigration enforcement actions are conducted, children continue to be placed in harm’s way.
[4] http://www.americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff
[5] February 5th, 2009: http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2009/02/05/20090205motherarrested02052009-CR.html, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/opinion/04wed2.html , http://vivirlatino.com/2009/03/04/thousands-protest-racist-sheriff-joe-arpaio-in-arizona.php

p.s. MomsRising joins the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (http://www.ndlon.org), National Council of La Raza (http://www.nclr.org), America’s Voice (http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/sheriff), and many others in calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to begin a federal investigation into Sheriff Arpaio’s tactics.

DN! Video: Decades of Disparity: New Study Underscores Severity of Racial Bias in Drug-Related Law Enforcement

DN! Video: New York Legislature to Vote on Overhauling Draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws

Living while being a man of color

According to the Department of Justice:

Black and brown men are 2 to 3 times more likely then white men to have their cars stopped and searched for drugs or other illegal contraband but white men, when searched, were 4 times more likely to have the illegal goods in their car.

paraphrased from Free Speech Radio News.

Valentines Day Tips

Obama lifts Global Gag rule against abortion-2/2

Obama lifts Global Gag rule against abortion-1/2

Unfortunately, the sound is a bit off.

It's the End of the World as We Know It & I Feel Fine- "Ohhhhhhhh bama"

Frustrating comments from the abortion wars

There are so many frustrating comments flung back and forth between the pro-choice and anti-choice movement.

Part of the reason I love my work at CAF is, we cut out that crap (at least, most of the time ;) ). On our show, we just cut off the anti-choice callers. We don't engage too much with the "other side." We're too busy protecting and helping the women that call us in their desperate, vulnerable moments and who are willing to contact us to help them empower themselves and improve their lives.

Recently, while reading the comments of an article in the Washington Post about a medical student's weighing of whether or not to become an abortion doctor, I wasn't surprised about the slinging of insults, facts, and fantasy back and forth between people. Quite frankly, both sides annoyed me. But the most ridiculous argument was:

"By that line of reasoning, shall we wonder why pro-choicers only start caring about children when they leave the womb?"

(in response to "[anti-choicers] only care about fetuses, not children")

Some judgmental pro-choice people might follow that line of thinking, but no reproductive justice activist (of which I am) would ever not care about the health of a pregnancy. Us reproductive justice activists care about the first environment (the womb) and fight for reproductive health and environmental health (a major reason women and reproductive organs are unhealthy). We are often the ones fighting for more (FREE) pre-natal care, access to alternative birthing means*, better food in neighborhoods, etc. etc. From what I've read, states with the most liberal abortion laws often have the healthiest children and most programs that improve the lives of families, especially women and children.

At CAF, we place a series of follow-up calls with the women who use our services. Sometimes women decide to go through with their pregnancies or are forced too because they were too far along (both outcomes have many reasons behind them). We offer to send them an informational package with many resources (helpline numbers, programs, informational brochures)- on parenting, pre-natal health, birthing options, breastfeeding, newborn and infant care, support groups and more.

I care about and fight for the rights of women and children. The only difference for me, however, is I don't consider a pregnancy a child unless the woman does. I am sensitive enough to use whatever language the woman and/or would-be mother wants to use to pull myself up to her level. Because I'm not in her situation. This is a sensitivity- nay, a conviction- anti-choice people seem to lack.



*Doulas, for instance, consistently improve parental-newborn bonding and with all parties'- mother(s), child(ren), father(s), etc.- overall health and satisfaction with the birth.

3 Prisoners' Birthdays coming up- write!

Josh Harper (SHAC 7) and Jonathan Paul (Green Scare) both have birthdays coming up on January 31st. Jake Conroy (SHAC 7) has a birthday on Feb. 3rd. Please take a few minutes to send them a card, letter, or photos!

Joshua Harper
#29429-086
FCI Sheridan
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 5000
Sheridan, OR 97378
http://www.JoshHarper.org

JACOB CONROY
#93501-011
FCI TERMINAL ISLAND
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
PO BOX 3007
SAN PEDRO, CA 90731
http://www.SupportJake.org

Jonathan Paul
#07167-085
FCI Phoenix
Federal Correctional Institution
37910 N. 45th Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85086
http://www.SupportJonathan.org

Celebrating Coretta, Who Celebrated Nonviolence--and Stopped Eating Animals

by Stephanie Ernst

This is the day when we annually celebrate the life, spirit, contributions, and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. But I'm not going to write about MLK today. I'm going to write, just briefly, about Coretta. Those opposed to the idea of animal rights, those who consider the fight for animal rights to be distinct from and lesser than other social justice movements, and--most clearly--those who consider veganism extreme could learn something from Coretta Scott King.

For more than the last decade of her extraordinary, compassionate, and passionate life, Coretta Scott King was a vegan. Really. Not an "extremist," not a "fanatic," not a "one-note," "single-issue" zealot--just a vegan.

In addition to fighting against racial injustices, Coretta Scott King fought openly and loudly for LGBT rights. She opposed war and violence and championed peace. And for the last 15 years of her life, she improved her own health and life and saved hundreds of animals' lives by refusing to eat their bodies or what came from their bodies.

On her health, she said in Ebony in 2003, "I feel blessed that I was introduced to this lifestyle more than 12 years ago by Dexter. I prefer to eat mostly raw or 'living' foods. The benefits for me are increased energy, a slowing of the aging process, and I have none of the diseases like hypertension, heart disease and diabetes that many people my age seem to get." And Coretta and Martin Luther King's son Dexter, also a vegan and, as noted, the one who introduced his mother to the lifestyle, considers veg*nism the "logical extension" of his father's philosophy of nonviolence, reported Vegetarian Times in 1995 in the write-up of the magazine's interview with him.

Every time someone remarks or implies that vegans are nothing but animal rights "fanatics" or health-obsessed neurotics who care about nothing else, who are vegans to the exclusion of caring about or fighting against any other injustices, one of the many people who comes to mind as proving this wrong is Coretta Scott King. So today I remember and honor not only Martin Luther King Jr. but Coretta Scott King as well. If I must be an extremist or a fanatic simply because I am a vegan, then I am at least happy with the company.

From here.

Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf. -Dick Gregory

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. -Martin Luther King Jr.


Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?"
Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?"
Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?"
But conscience asks the question, "Is it right?"
And there comes a point when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -Martin Luther King Jr.

Palm oil frenzy threatens to wipe out orangutans

From Yahoo! News.

TANJUNG PUTING NATIONAL PARK, Indonesia – Hoping to unravel the mysteries of human origin, anthropologist Louis Leakey sent three young women to Africa and Asia to study our closest relatives: It was chimpanzees for Jane Goodall, mountain gorillas for Dian Fossey and the elusive, solitary orangutans for Birute Mary Galdikas.

Nearly four decades later, 62-year-old Galdikas, the least famous of his "angels," is the only one still at it. And the red apes she studies in Indonesia are on the verge of extinction because forests are being clear-cut and burned to make way for lucrative palm oil plantations.

Galdikas worries many questions may never be answered. How long do orangutans live in the wild? How far do the males roam? And how many mates do they have in their lifetime?

"I try not to get depressed, I try not to get burned out," says the Canadian scientist, pulling a wide-rimmed jungle hat over her shoulder-length gray hair in Tanjung Puting National Park. She gently leans over to pick up a tiny orangutan, orphaned when his mother was caught raiding crops.

"But when you get up in the air you start gasping in horror; there's nothing but palm oil in an area that used to be plush rain forest. Elsewhere, there's burned-out land, which now extends even within the borders of the park."

The demand for palm oil is rising in the U.S. and Europe because it is touted as a "clean" alternative to fuel. Indonesia is the world's top producer of palm oil, and prices have jumped by almost 70 percent in the last year.

But palm oil plantations devastate the forest and create a monoculture on the land, in which orangutans cannot survive. Over the years, Galdikas has fought off loggers, poachers and miners, but nothing has posed as great a threat to her "babies" as palm oil.

There are only an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 orangutans left in the wild, 90 percent of them in Indonesia, said Serge Wich, a scientist at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa. Most live in small, scattered populations that cannot take the onslaught on the forests much longer.

Trees are being cut at a rate of 300 football fields every hour. And massive land-clearing fires have turned the country into one of the top emitters of carbon.

Tanjung Puting, which has 1,600 square miles, clings precariously to the southern tip of Borneo island. Its 6,000 orangutans — one of the two largest populations on the planet, together with the nearby Sebangau National Park — are less vulnerable to diseases and fires.

That has allowed them, to a degree, to live and evolve as they have for millions of years.

"I am not an alarmist," says Galdikas, speaking calmly but deliberately, her brow slightly furrowed. "But I would say, if nothing is done, orangutan populations outside of national parks have less than 10 years left."

Even Tanjung Puting is not safe, in part because of a border dispute between the central government, which argues in favor of a 1996 map, and provincial officials, who are pushing for a much smaller 1977 map. If local officials win, the park could be slashed by up to 25 percent.

Galdikas, of Lithuanian descent, was an anthropology student at the University of California in Los Angeles when she approached Leakey, a visiting lecturer, in 1969. She follows on the heels of Goodall, who today devotes virtually all of her time to advocacy for chimps, and Fossey, who was brutally murdered in her Rwandan hut in 1985.

Two and a half years later, she and her then husband, Rod Brindamour, arrived in Tanjung Puting and settled into a primitive thatch hut in the heart of one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet, with millions of plant and animal species.

Twice featured on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, she wrote an autobiography, "Reflections of Eden," describing how she fell in love with the sound of cicadas, and marveled at the sudden shifts of light that in an instant transformed drab greens and browns into translucent shades of emerald.

Her first challenge was simply finding the well-camouflaged orangutans in 100-foot-high trees. But eventually she was able to track them, sometimes for several weeks at a time.

She discovered that female orangutans give birth when they are around 15 and then only once every eight or nine years, making them especially vulnerable to extinction. They also have one of the most intense maternal-offspring relationships of all mammals, remaining inseparable for the first seven or eight years.

While orangutans are at first very gregarious, as adults they live largely solitary lives, foraging for fruit or sleeping. Orangutan" means "man of the forest."

One of her main projects today is her rehabilitation center in a village outside Tanjung Puting, overflowing with more than 300 animals orphaned when their mothers were killed by palm oil plantation workers.

With forests disappearing, the red apes raid crops, grabbing freshly planted shoots from the fields.

"Many come in very badly wounded, suffering from malnutrition, psychological and emotional and even physical trauma," says Galdikas, as she watches members of her staff prepare six young orangutans for release one overcast Saturday afternoon.

It is a three-hour journey along bumpy roads to the release site. By the time they arrive, it is raining and the last gray light is feebly pushing its way through the deep canopy of trees.

After years of being cared for, fed and taught the ways of the woods, the young orangutans scramble nimbly to the tops of trees. Branches snap as they make their nests for the night.

"It is getting harder and harder to find good, safe forest in which to free them," says Galdikas, who today spends half her time in Indonesia and most of the rest teaching at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

Forestry Minister Malem Kaban says the government is committed to protecting Indonesia's dense, primary forests and that no permit should be granted within a half-mile of a national park. Even so, one palm oil company has started clearing trees within Tanjung Puting's northern perimeter, leaving a wasteland of churned-up peat and charred trunks. Four others are seeking concessions along its eastern edge.

Derom Bangun, executive chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Association, says while his 300 members have vowed to stay clear of national parks, others have been known to operate within areas that should be off-limits. Sometimes it is not their fault, he notes, pointing to the need for better coordination between central and local government on border issues.

Galdikas, a passionate field researcher, says one of her great regrets is that she does not share Goodall's skills in raising awareness and funds for the great apes. But she is happy Tanjung Puting has over the years grown into a popular tourist destination. She says there's no better advertisement for conservation than being in a rain forest.

Some visitors are even lucky enough to come face to face with an orangutan on a slippery jungle trail.

"As he passes you, you nod and he nods back to you and continues on his way," she says, adding that looking in the eyes of a great ape, it instantly becomes clear that there is no separation between humans and nature.

"If they go extinct, we will have one less kin to call our own in this world," says Galdikas, who is also president of the Los Angeles-based Orangutan Foundation International. "And do we really want to be alone on this planet?"

In addition, much palm oil is produced under slave labor like conditions, forces traditional people out of their homes and cultivated in a environmentally unstable fashion. What does this mean for us vegans? Check out the Vegans of Color blog entry about Earth Balance, a popular substitute for animal-based-butter.

On Huey P. Newton and Martin Luther King, Jr.

On this, the would-be 80th birthday of Martin Luther King, I would like to link you to a 3 minute speech by Mumia Abu Jamal.

Listen to it here.

TVA Disaster Spreads Far and Wide

From Huffington Post, by Erin Brockovich and Robin Greenwald

As a result of a 1.1 billion gallon spill of contaminated fly ash, there has been discussion, press reportage and blogging about the environmental disaster in eastern Tennessee Most of us have seen the pictures -- a 300+ acre area strewn with black and brown muck as far as the eye can see. Houses lifted off their foundations and thrown across the road, yards filled so high with ash that people can't leave their homes without stepping in it, roadways littered with the ash from trucks going to and from the site, and an eerie still where active life once existed. While this story continues to unfold -- as more samples are taken that delineate the true toxicity of this mess, as TVA makes plans to contain and abate the disaster -- there is a story that has not been told. It is a story that must be told. And that story is the lives of innocent bystanders that have been turned upside down by this avoidable disaster.

I learned of this disaster on the news just as we all did. Usually I receive an email from someone in the community where there has been an environmental problem. At first, it was all quiet. About 10 days after the tragedy I got the first email, then another one and another one and another one, and they kept coming. I also started receiving anonymous tips. It occurred to me that maybe more was going on than what I could gather from the news. With an invitation from the community, I decided to make the trip.

Let's be honest. Usually when I am called into an environmental disaster, I anticipate that industry isn't going to step up to the plate and do what's right by the people. Lawsuits almost always ensue; it would be foolish for me to walk into a situation like this without an attorney. Besides, I consult with two law firms in the United States: Girardi & Keese in Los Angeles and Weitz & Luxenberg in New York. I traveled to the area with an attorney, Robin Greenwald from Weitz and Luxenberg, along with some experts. In many instances such as this disaster, government agencies are absent due to lack of funds and can only rely on the information that industry gives them; and industry generally operates under concealment.

When I first arrived on the site, I was pretty quiet. It took a while to absorb what I was looking at. I knew there was a lake but an entire area was gone. I kept wondering "Where did the water go?" I couldn't decide if it looked more like a tornado had gone through, a mudslide, landslide, maybe a volcano erupted or a tidal wave. It is now a "moonscape." The landscape has completely changed. It is almost unidentifiable.

Watching TV never gives you an idea of the extent of damage. It's only when you stand there that you can actually feel the magnitude.

It struck me that I had an unusual taste on my lips and in my mouth. I asked others if they noticed that, and they did. Some experienced scratchy throats, respiratory problems, itchy and burning eyes and tasted what one expert believed to be sulfuric acid. If we were experiencing this much discomfort after a few minutes, what on earth are the people who live here feeling?

The other thing that stood out in my mind was how fortunate it was that this event took place when it did.

What would it have been like had this occurred in the summer during the middle of the day? Hundreds of people boat on this lake. Children swim and play in these waters. I was struck by the number of deaths that might have occurred but didn't.

This corner of Roane County Tennessee is off the beaten path. It is remote, distant from any main street and city noise. It is easy to see the beauty of rolling mountains, lakes, rivers, comfortable family homes. It is serene, a piece of heaven on earth. This was a safe place to raise kids, to teach them to fish and swim, to enjoy family and have barbecues or sit quietly to watch the sunset on warm summer nights. I could see why people live there. Over the past couple of weeks we have had the opportunity to speak with people about life both before December 22. Life in the Kingston/Harriman area was idyllic. It was a place people chose as their home. It was a place that, even if jobs took people away in their youth, they awaited the day they could return and did so as soon as possible. It is a beautiful place, with water bodies everywhere. There are green meadows laced among the waters. These shared memories come to life in the "before" photographs that residents showed us. The pictures show children diving from docks into the lake, people canoeing along the rivers, families tubing in the hot summer sun and children and their dogs walking along the shore. A favorite scene of many residents is the sunset over the water, with the soft nighttime colors glistening on the lake. It went from pristine to profaned overnight.

The "after" picture is nothing but a sludge-filled lake, dead fish and miles and miles of contamination flowing out of control. And what cannot be captured by photographs is the human toll of this disaster. The child who wakes up nightly with nightmares; the woman whose cough is so severe she can hardly speak and has been diagnosed with acute asthma from the ash spill; the tri-athlete who can no longer train in his environs; the families scared to death to go outside for fear they breathe in the toxic ash in the air; people realizing that TVA's recommendation to boil their water before drinking it in the wake of the disaster was a false comfort and bottled water, at their own expense, is the only solution for drinking; and the couple who lives downwind of the disaster who, following walking their dog on a hilltop on a windy night, suffered severe nose bleeds. This is a very frightening time for the people of this community. This community is incredibly brave, but it is also rightfully fearful -- they love their community, their homes, their environment and they don't want to leave, but they also don't want to stay at the risk of their health. They want answers and they can't get them. Many people have the same tale: they call the TVA hotline for answers and help but no one answers or returns their calls. Why does this happen? What did they do to deserve such treatment? I can only imagine the sadness of the families. The whole area looks like a wound on the land. To heal it, it's going to take more than a band-aid and a squirt of Bactine.

The next day of my visit we did a fly over of the site, which showed the big picture. Extending for at least 5 to 6 miles downstream, we could see a plume of this toxic ash floating down the river, resting on the banks. We saw the remaining refrigerator and patch of roof where the now demolished house once stood. We saw a child's trampoline, once in someone's backyard, now buried in TVA's toxic sludge. We saw miles of ash, still traveling down river, contaminating riverbanks along the way. In truth, there are no words to describe the scenes of devastation from this disaster. The pictures are powerful, but they simply cannot capture the panorama of devastation. This was a sludge tsunami -- but one caused by corporate neglect, not natural occurrences. And what it left behind from this tsunami are mounds of toxic rubble where a lake once existed, where rivers flow and where children used to play.

We all wonder what will happen to the ecosystem: the fish and wildlife. The human life. How far reaching is this event? What does the future hold for the public health and safety? Overnight a whole community's lifestyle is gone.

It is bad enough that TVA mismanaged this 50+ year old waste pile of coal ash. But to put salt in the wounds of its neighbors by failing to provide critically important answers and aid is incomprehensible. TVA should have mobilized hundreds of medical experts to go to peoples' homes and answer their questions. They need to be honest and transparent about their knowledge of the make-up of the sludge, what they plan to do with it and how they intend to return life to what it used to be, if that is even possible. TVA should have a hotline that is manned sufficiently so that no one is ever put on hold or, worse yet, not answered at all. The residents of this community deserve to be treated with honesty and respect, and that is not happening. Even local elected officials are letting residents down, spending their time telling residents not to work with attorneys instead of camping outside TVA's doors demanding honest and fast answers to critically important health questions. As you know, we work on the legal side. While we cannot fully appreciate the pain and fear of those who are living the fall out of this disaster on a daily basis, we saw and heard enough to understand that our presence and our voice is critically important to ensure that this community is treated fairly and provided the truth about the present situation and their future. We will continue to aid this community as it struggles through the haze that TVA has created and continues to fuel.

So many questions come to mind but there aren't any answers. My motto has become "Prevention rather than Rescue."

Hindsight always shows how these tragedies could have been prevented. If history teaches us anything, it shows us that yesterday is our "crystal ball." In the now famous case, Pacific Gas and Electric knew that their contamination was affecting innocent people yet did nothing but try to convince people that the poison was good for them.

If TVA knew of leaks years before this disaster and sat and waited, is "oops" we're sorry" going to be enough?

The infrastructure handling coal fly ash in the U.S. is old and needs to be replaced. Can we worry about the cost of replacing the old with the new when health and safety and the environment depends on it? We can see that contamination moves through air, land and water. Can we sit back and wait for communities to get sick when we can prevent it now?

Science usually lags behind the law. But in this case, law lags behind science because coal fly ash handling is not regulated as it should be. And we have a pretty good grasp on the fact that Coal Fly Ash is not healthy.

A poison is a poison. It certainly can't be good for you. Does anyone believe that the arsenic in the fly ash along with other heavy metals won't leech into the groundwater? 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic compounds unleashed into the garden. We don't need a crystal ball to see the rough road ahead.

10,000 Gallons of Slurry Spills Out at Coal Plant in Alabama

In environmental news, there has been another accident at a coal plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. 10,000 gallons of slurry have spilled from a retention pond at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama. Some of the waste escaped into the Tennessee River. The spill comes less than a month after more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash leaked out from a retention pond at a TVA plant in Tennessee.

Reported today on Democracy Now!

It's the End of the World As We Know It & I Feel Fine- "Greece os the Word"

Honoring Your Menses

This was sent to me via the Sistah Vegan Project

Here are some EASY ways to start:

1. Self-awareness is the first step toward HONORING our blood. We must explore our beliefs, views and feelings about menstruation. How do you feel about your blood? Explore where your beliefs came from and why do you feel or believe what you do. Are your views positive, neutral, negative? Do you need to release some beliefs?

2. Next we have to learn our cycles (whether we have a 25, 28 or 31 day cycle). It is important to know approximately know when you should expect your menses. Mark the first day of your bleeding on a calendar with a distinct mark (maybe use a red mark to mark the day). Noting the day allows us to calculate our ovulation, the following menstruation day, and schedule activities according to our physical and emotional state. During menstruation we have less physical energy but heightened intuition but if we are running around DOING instead of just BEING we will likely miss the enlightenment. I don't plan big activities during my menses. I consciously pull back from the world.

3. Absorption matters! Every woman might be ready for the menstrual cup also known as the Diva cup, but we can easily switch to chemical free pads or tampons (I'm not a advocate of tampons but I know that change is a process). Cloth pads are the bomb, we get to collect the blood thru soaking the pads, we save money and support the planet thru reducing our use of disposable products. Going GREEN ain't really optional sistahs, we gotta get better at taking care of the mother (earth) that takes care of us.

4. Tell your Menarche story - When did you get your period? Who was there? Where were you? How did you feel? Let's tell the stories of our first menses. Call up a homegirl or find a young sistah and share your story (No matter what the story is). As we tell our menarche stories we bring validity back to menstruation, we both normalize and
honor our blood and womanhood!

5. Rest & Solitude. We must make rest and solitude a priority during our menses. Our energy level is at its lowest during this time. Rest feels good. As we better learn our cycles we can schedule rest more strategically and not over schedule ten million things the week we are bleeding. Time alone allows to hear our spirits, minds, and
bodies. Whether we are the mother of five, single or a wife we have to make solitude a part of life. Even if its just a hour to two.

Honoring our BLOOD is a process but everything begins with one step... Happy Bleeding!

Green Revolution: Farm to Food Bank Project in Washington State

Despite dire news about the economy, a positive development in the "green revolution" is taking place across the country. Many cities and states have begun contracting with local farmers to grow produce for food banks. FSRN's Martha Baskin has this report on Washington State's "Farm to Food Bank" project.

Click this link to hear the 4 minute broadcast.

BBC acts over light-skinned doll

The doll (right) differs from how Upsy Daisy appears in the show (left).

The BBC is to replace a doll based on the Upsy Daisy character from CBeebies TV show In the Night Garden following complaints it is too light-skinned.

Full article here.

Typical white-washing of culture and aiming it at children. Because, they're just kids, yaknow? They're not gonna notice.

Watch A Girl Like Me if you think young girls don't internalize the messages society send them every day. It's only 7 minutes long, but a big damn eye opener if you've never though of it before.

The video can be seen for free here.

Five Things White Activists Should Never Say

What do people think of this write-up? I got it from a livejournal post via facebook.

If I'm to be a white ally, I figure I should take some of the burden off people of color to explain what's wrong with some of the things white people say. With that in mind I've decided to compile a list of things that white people -- specifically, white activists -- should never say.

While reading this list, keep in mind that I'm drawing heavily from my own experience. There are plenty of fucked up things white people can say. However, with one exception I've decided to focus on blatantly racist comments that I've heard first hand. Also, I tend to mention anarchists a lot, because I used to be an anarchist, so I organized with other anarchists. This does not mean that white anarchists have a monopoly on racism. In many cases one could substitute the term social liberal or socialist for anarchist, and the point would still be applicable.

1. "They belong to that religion."

I have yet to visit an activist group with religious homogeneity. That said, in my experience certain religious views are more acceptable among activists than others. If a disproportionate number of the people who hold a religious stance are European or of European descent, the stance is acceptable. So it's okay to be an atheist, a pagan, or a Quaker. If a religious stance doesn't meet this criterion, it tends to be viewed with suspicion.

In the US white activists reserve scorn for the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) that they have for few other religious institutions. It would be outside the scope of this piece to argue that the RCC is good or bad. But I will point out that it's folly to treat Catholics as a monolithic, univocal group that stands opposite of everything activists believe in. Individual Catholics have differences of opinion on pretty much everything, and often membership to the church (as is the case with so many other religious institutions) has more to do with wanting to preserve family or community ties than with adhering to a certain set of doctrines. If white people don't want to alienate people of color from their organizing, they're going to have to learn to show more tolerance for the religions they adhere to.

2. "All nationalism is bad."

The idea that all nationalism, including ethnic nationalism, is bad is often rooted in anarchism, an ideology that was first propounded by European men in the nineteenth century and which since then has drawn more than its fair share of white thinkers. Even if we set this aside, white people who raise the "all nationalism is bad" objection often miss the point that the essence of ethnic nationalism has nothing to do with what anarchists mean by state and everything to do with racial or ethnic identity.

It's important to keep in mind that some people link themselves to a nation in order to express racial or ethnic identity rather than allegiance to a state. If white people can avoid doing this, this doesn't mean that they're all awesome anti-statists; rather it means that they have the privilege of being part of the group that is seen as the default racial or ethnic group. When white activists forget this, it's a disaster in the making. For example, I once saw an activist remove a poster from a wall, simply because it said (when translated), "I am as Puerto Rican as the coquí." The message, which should be obvious to anyone who claims to be anti-racist, has nothing to do with a particular state; it is that one's ethnic identity is something to be proud of.

3. "I know what it's like to face racist oppression; I face oppression too."

No, unless you've experienced racism you do not know what it's like to experience racism.

I used to find this response somewhat confusing. Surely, racist oppression isn't completely disanalogous to other kinds of oppression, right? After all, don't we use much the same vocabulary -- words like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality -- while discussing all kinds of oppression? And can't someone who faces one sort of opression gain insight into another by making a comparison? I think the answer to all these questions is a very cautious yes -- cautious because there's a danger lurking just around the corner. If comparing racist oppression to your oppression helps you realize that something you said or did was racist, then it's probably a good thing that you made the comparison. Even so, before you share your insight with the world you should run it by someone who faces both kinds of oppression, because no matter how oppressed or well-intentioned you may be, you're still coming from a perspective of white privilege and you may be wrong about something crucial. Better yet, start reading the works of people who face multiple kinds of oppression and let them guide you into appropriate analogies.

The danger of white people's comparisons is that often the only "insight" gained from analogy is that because the white people making it are oppressed, they can never be racist. This denies one of the central components of anti-oppression work which is that the oppressed have unique insight into their oppression by virtue of having experienced the oppression, including the ways in which it is disanalogous to other kinds of oppression. This is important, because it may be that it was just these disanalogous elements were at play when you said what you did five minutes ago and that what you said is therefore racist for reasons you don't understand. Not incidentally, the unique knowledge that an oppressed group has is known as the epistemic privilege of the oppressed. If your goal is to eliminate inequality, you don't want to appropriate one of the few kinds of privilege that oppressed people have, do you?

Though many examples of analogies gone wrong could be listed, I'll give only one here -- one that's limited to activist circles. Some activists are inclined to make statements like, "I know what it's like to be black; I'm an anarchist." I think what often happens is that white activists identify one sort of oppression, such as state oppression, as the Big Evil. They don't see that other oppressive forces besides the Big Evil are at work and therefore they fail to see that some people face oppression that they don't comprehend. If you're white and have gone to jail for political reasons, that is unfortunate, but this does not mean you know what it's like to be a person of color. As a white person, you have the privilege of choosing whether or not to engage in political activities that may land you in jail; people of color can abstain from such activities and still end up in jail simply for being people of color. As a white person, you will probably be treated better in jail than a person of color who is your counterpart. As a white person, you don't know what it's like to experience the racist oppression people of color experience outside of jail. As a white person, you don't know what it's like to be a person of color in white activists' space, hearing white people say that they know exactly what it's like to experience racist oppression. In short it is incredibly myopic to think that one point of (apparent) commonality gives white people insight into what it's like to be people of color.

4. "If we focus on this other kind of oppression, racism will disappear."

In the previous section I noted a tendency of white people to fail to see any oppression outside of the oppression they consider the Big Evil. In a related phenomenon white people will, while perhaps acknowledging that orther kinds oppression exist, argue that without the Big Evil other forms of oppression would not exist. Therefore anyone who confronts other kinds of oppression is only treating symptoms; the only cure for society's ills is to fight the Big Evil. The Big Evil could be statism, sexism, or any number of other things, but I'd like to focus on classism, because in my experience it's named as the Big Evil in activist circles more than anything else.

If this piece were about the oppressions I face, you'd see I have a lot to say against classism. However, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to focus on it here. All too often white activists derail conversations about racism by bringing up classism. The problem with white activists' saying that racism reduces to classism is that it is an attempt to keep people of color from directly confronting their oppression so that they will instead confront an oppression that directly affects white people.

To support the claim that racism reduces to classism some white activists point out that in the US at least racist institutions were established as a part of divide-and-conquer scheme to keep the working class from rising up against the upper class. Setting aside the fact that this gives an account of only some racist insitutions (the expansion that drove Native Americans west, for example, was already well underway), the argument presupposes that if working class white people had not bought into the view that they were superior to their black counterparts, they may have succeeded in revolting against the upper class. In other words white people's racism prevented the demise of classism. I do not mean to say that we should make a reversal and say that generally speaking classism is reducible to racism. However, I do mean to say that racism is a problem in its own right.

5. "There are no people of color in our activist group; let's go to a meeting of people of color and invite them to join our group."

Many white activists have the impression that they have arrived. They think they no longer have any racist bullshit they need to work on. Therefore if people of a particular racial or ethnic group don't want to work with them, it must be because they have yet to be informed the awesomeness that is their group of white activists.

There's a reason I'm putting this remark last. I hope that after even a small sampling of racist comments white activists make -- there are many others that aren't included here -- it's apparent just how ridiculous it is to think that the only matter keeping people of various ethnic and racial minorities out of a given activist group is a lack of information. If an organization has disproportionately few people of color as members, it's often because people of color don't see how it benefits them, and that is often because the organization has racist tendencies that it has yet to address.

Perhaps the bigger problem with this remark is that it's blatantly tokenizing. The people who make it aren't primarily interested in forming a diverse coalition to confront the problems that people of color face; if they were, they'd visit the meeting of the people of color regularly and ask them how they could help without expecting glory for themselves or their organization. Instead they want to use people of color to make their activist group more diverse. They are making one more thing -- segregation itself! -- the responsibility of people of color.