Archive for October, 2007

31
Oct

carnival of 16 days of activism against gender violence

By vegankid 0 Comments
Categories: carnivals, gender & sex and take action

from Black Looks:

stop violence against womenThe 16 days will run from November 25th to December 10th and will incorporate the following:

November 25th: The International Day Against Violence Against Women
November 29th: International Women Human Rights Defenders Day
December 1st: World Aids Day
December 10th: International Human Rights Day

To participate please fill in the Carnival form or email me at info at blacklooks dot org with the link to your post before December 6th. The post can be anything from a personal story, images, thoughts, a link anything that highlights and informs violence against women.

This year’s theme is “Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles: End Violence Against Women”

Challenges and obstacles have been identified by activists in all regions of the world, and we have chosen to highlight a few of those here. These can be addressed both as demands to be made on the state or other institutions and as actions that we must take in our own work in order to achieve better results. A few suggestions for focusing advocacy in this year’s campaign include:

* Demanding and securing adequate funding for work against VAW;
* Calling for greater accountability and political commitment from states to prevent and punish all forms of violence against
women in practice not just words
* Increasing awareness of the impact of violence against women, including engaging in measures to end it by men and boys;
* Evaluating the impact and effectiveness of work to prevent violence against women;

31
Oct

be bold. be brave. be red.

By vegankid 0 Comments
Categories: gender & sex, race and take action

Be bold

Today, like any other day should be, is a day of solidarity with women of color. But today is a specifically organized day of action to support women of color in the fight against violence. Today, you can show your solidarity by wearing red, attending an event, or otherwise taking action. You can find out more at Document the Silence. Here’s a snippet from that site:

Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:

  • The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.
  • Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.
  • A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home
  • Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.

I was also excited to find this poem from Ursula Rucker on the site (she been a favorite of mine for a number of years now).

30
Oct

legality does not encourage abortion

By vegankid 0 Comments
Categories: reproductive freedom

When I first read this article in The Nation stating that wimmin have abortions whether or not it is legal, I thought, is this news? But I quickly thought back to my trip to the Hell House and realized, to many people, it probably is. So, here is the story from The Nation:

For years feminists and prochoicers have pointed out that women have abortions whether or not the procedure is legal.

That was true here before Roe v. Wade, and it is true today in countries where abortion is restricted or banned. The difference is that when abortion is legal it is a remarkably safe procedure; when it is illegal, women are injured, women die, children are left motherless. (True, these are already-existing, sinful children, not embryos or fetuses, but still.) This simple public health argument has gotten lost in a thicket of theology, sexual morality, “family values,” politics, spin and outright disinformation. The coat hanger has become a political cliché, a relic of the ’60s, like the peace sign. Oh, that old thing.

Now comes an article in The Lancet that shows in cold hard data how right we’ve been all along. “Induced Abortion: Estimated Rates and Trends Worldwide,” a study conducted by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute, is the first global analysis of abortion incidence since 1995. It finds that rates of abortion (the number of abortions per 1,000 women) are relatively unaffected by whether it is legal. Thus, in South America, where abortion is largely illegal, the rate is 33; in northern America, where it is legal, the rate is 21. “The legal status of abortion doesn’t predict whether abortions occur,” study co-author Gilda Sedgh told me by phone. “It predicts whether they are safe. South Africa liberalized its abortion laws in l997, and maternal deaths from unsafe abortion have plummeted by 90 percent.” Around the world 48 percent of abortions are unsafe–that’s more than 20 million. Some 67,000 women die from unsafe abortions–13 percent of maternal deaths, almost all of them in the developing world, where abortion is mostly restricted or banned. Many times that number are injured or maimed.

read the full story at The Nation

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