Yesterday was blog for choice day - but I guess I have a habit of posting too late for this kind of thing. Truth be told, I don’t know what to write too well.
Should be enough to say that women deserve the right to choose whther or not they’ll have children, because that sort of decision you’know would affect ‘er life. Important sort of stuff.
So I definetely beleive Roe vs Wade is a good thing, people should hve the right to determine what happens with their own bodies, and all that good stuff.
Still… I don’t know, I hear that black women in America were given forceful abortions and forceful sterilization,m and I think I’ve read the same sort of thing happened to Australian Aboriginals. Also, there are situations that happen like they did with Katie Thorpe, where her parents wanted to sterilize her ’cause she was disabled, and she shouldn’t have to deal with disability and motherhood at the same time.
Sterilization and abortion is great stuff when not forced on people without privilege, but when talking about reproductive health and choice I guess I want to mention that there are people who have had abortion and whatnot used against them, people who have not had free choice to have those things. So, when we focus on reproductive choices I don’t know, it would be good to talk about people who’ve had had them stripped away not just by not being able to have abortions when wanted and needed, but also who’ve had them forced on them.
I missed the international day of action against the NT invasion. I’d meant to write about it. I thought about it. But I forgot the date and let it slip by. If it affected me more I bet I would have never forgotten. My privilege. It be showin.’ Might as well write about it now ey? I don’t know to well what to write. I wrote something vaguely about policies in the NT here. (A “why aren’t they doing this to white communities” thing) but that doesn’t really say much…
It’s hard for me to know what to say. The policies they’re implementing are clearly racist and fucked up. What gets me is how… self righteous so many Australians are about these things. Like. There was this thing where Howard was saying something like ‘Many Australians would be offended at the idea that they should say sorry to the Aboriginal people’ and then I was watching something like Today Tonight. Some politician from New Zealand called Howard a racist bastard because of the policies he’s implementing. Shit went down and he apologized to Howard and people from New Zealand. The presenter of the show I was watching was asking angrily why he hadn’t apologized to the Australian people, since they were the ones he insulted.
Offended. Insulted.
There are a bunch of Australians that get offended and insulted when you start piping up about racism. In the last week I’ve had two angry exchanges with real life friends this week. One of them was talking about how the settlers brought great things to this country and that there was only a supposed genocide anyway. Supposed. Supposed?
The other one was talking about how he earned everything he’s done in life. That university degree. All earned. I asked him how he earned the privilege of being in a decent neighborhood and going to a good primary school when he was younger. Just because “your primary school” is surely an example of unearned privilege that he’d understand, which he apparently seemed to get. So passionate about things being right the way there are. “‘Supposed’ genocide.” “I earned everything I have”
Meanwhile ‘Ccording to that information sheet floating around the internet about the international day of solidarity against the NT invasion the government can take lands without compensation. Aboriginals who are doing alright under the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) will be pushed onto welfare. Aboriginal communities will be monitored by outside folks put into positions of authority over who stays and who goes. That and a whole slew of human rights abuses. S’fucked.
Ima copy that thing here. The day might be over, but the information is still good.
————–
Call for Solidarity with Aboriginal People in the Northern Territory Stop the Invasion!
International Day of Action, November 17th
In June this year, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that there would be a ‘National Emergency Response’ to combat child abuse in Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The measures announced included the quarantining of half of all welfare payments, the abolition of the Community Development Employment Program, the appointment of managers for 73 prescribed communities, compulsory sexual health examinations of children, and the abolition of the permit system, amongst other things.
These measures are a violation of human rights, and is obviously racist and authoritarian. The passage of the Emergency Response legislation is dependent on the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act, and the Northern Territory Native Title Act. Federal police and the military have been sent into the NT to enforce these measures.
Aboriginal people that work through the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) manage their own wages and money. Abolishing CDEP will push people onto welfare and the welfare income management system that allows for quarantining and tight control of how people’s money is spent. Many people running businesses on CDEP in remote outstations are already being forced to move into larger regional towns. The extraordinary measures give the Federal Government power to seize lands and property without compensation. The owners of those lands and properties have no right of appeal. Lands will be leased for five years, but the government has plans to extend these measures for 99 years. It is entirely up to ministerial discretion whether rent is paid on those lands or not.
The Federal Government has appointed non-Indigenous business managers to the ‘prescribed’ communities. These managers have the power to decide who lives in a community and who must leave; they can observe any meeting of an organisation working at the community, they can change any local programme. Many Aboriginal communities consider these measures, often being administered by under-prepared military personnel, as an invasion rather than an intervention.
These measures return Aboriginal people to the days of mission stations, where life was tightly controlled by authoritarian managers. It is a return to times of colonial control on Aboriginal life, and the complete absence of any autonomy or self-determination. The removal of basic property rights as enjoyed by all other Australians, with the abolition of the permit system, is a gross violation of human rights. Even the Northern Territory police oppose this measure, for the likely adverse effect it will have on crime.
Some $570 million is being spent on these measures. Half of that money will be spent on the salaries of 700 new bureaucratic positions created to regulate this intervention. $88 million will be spent on measures to control the incomes of Aboriginal people on any government payment (including aged pensions and veterans payments).
This is an insult to the hard work of Aboriginal people who have been campaigning for basic services in remote communities. Roads, schools, health care, housing and social services are desperately needed by these communities. It is estimated that the housing backlog alone for Northern Territory Aboriginal communities is half a billion dollars. Moreover, with the publication of the Closing the Gap report by Oxfam earlier this year, it has been shown that Indigenous life expectancy is 17 years below that of non-Indigenous life expectancy.
A week and a half ago, the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the Federal election for November 24th.
This came shortly after Australia voted against the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples (along with Canada, New Zealand and the USA).
It is time to stand up for justice for Indigenous peoples everywhere, to demand either a change of policy, or a change of government!
One week before the Australian Federal election, on November 17th, various groups across Australia will be taking action to show opposition to the Federal government’s intervention into the Northern Territory. We hope that those outside Australia will join us in calling for an end to this government, an end to racist, colonialist policies towards Indigenous people, and support for the strong self-determination that Indigenous people demonstrate every day.
With allegations that the Australian Federal government is manipulating international media about the intervention, it is vitally important that information about the intervention and views of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory are widely disseminated through social justice networks. Please use your community and activist media to promote the interests of Indigenous Australians, and Indigenous people worldwide!
1. Organise a protest outside the Australian Consulate in your nearest city. Make it clear that the Howard government’s shameful opportunism on human rights is gathering international criticism.
3. Spread the news of this horrendous violation of human rights to as many people as possible. Write an article about it, post to your blog about it, send the news to your friends via email. Encourage your friends to speak out about it as well.
4. If you are part of a political organisation, collective, or group, please send your words of solidarity and support to the National Aboriginal Alliance. Send messages of solidarity to: secretariat at nationalaboriginalalliance dot org.
Prejudice + Power = Racism S’why the word cracker doesn’t have much weight as an insult.
The women the world needs.
WOC are %30 more likely to experience rape then white women. (As a note, I swear I’ve read that, but I can’t find the source for it anywhere! I feel uncomfortable with it being on there now, but its too late.)
C’mon govt. ‘O mine. Stop the paternalistic bullshit you keep tryin’ to pull. N’stop saying “we can’t apologize for past atrocities because we didn’t commit them” like the only racist policies existed in the past.
S’my moral fucking duty to learn about my unearned privilege, n’speak out against it. I have the privilege to not know or care about racial issues. I have to try & act against that conditioning.
Y’are women obviously. Like ol’ sojourner was sayin’ in that church. you = women women = people this movement NEEDS to work for you. Bringin’ things to people is what its about.
“The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month. 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 later charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences Stand up to violence against women Stand up to violence against POC” - Largely taken from the document the silence webpage, though I read it somewhere else and copied from that somewhere else. I can’t remember where it was.
That which does not affect you, you often do not see or understand. In other words, if you are white %99 of the time racism does not affect you. Therefore you may not see or understand racism when it happens. If you are a man %99 of the time sexism doesn’t affect you this goes for any -ism -ist or -phobia you can think of. WHAT DOES NOT AFFECT YOU PERSONALLY WILL OFTEN NOT IMPACT ON YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS UNLESS YOU’VE TRAINED YOURSELF TO SEE & UNDERSTAND. think when you declare something ‘non-sexist’ or ‘non-racist’ or ‘non-offensive’ do you feel that way because you’re not on the receiving end? Taken from Angry Black Woman here: http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/things-you-need-to-understand-6/
I was watching the news tonight, and I saw coverage of the civil rights protesters rallying about the Jenna Six. I saw the dude man talking, and the icon about the news item to be talked about came up, and there was a picture of a noose with the word ‘Jenna’ or something like that. I saw the icon and was like ‘WTF they’re covering this on real live television! That’s awesome’ so I sat down to watch it.
The news report was _not_ awesome.
They basically said that six black students had been accused of assaulting a white student, and that black protesters were upset about racism. It used phrases like “Jena was filled with a sea of black faces” noting that one the day “all businesses in the small town had been closed.” It felt to me like fear mongering. Be afraid of these black protesters, or at the very least, mock them.
The whole thing about white students hanging nooses from trees that the black students decided to sit under one day? Not mentioned. The fact that a white guy drew a gun on a bunch of men of colour? Not mentioned. The fact that black students had been harassed and intimidated? You guessed it. This news article didn’t mention any of that.
All it said was that 6 black students had been accused of assaulting a white student, and that a sea of black faces had come to protest racism.
THEN: They talked to some white peeps who lived in Jena. One white guy said something like it was just humans sweating, or something, and that the black people in Jena don’t even care about this trial. Some other white lady was also most displeased.
Why did they get a _white guy_ to talk about how the _not white guys_who live there think? They couldn’t ask people of colour what they think themselves? We have to get these things filtered by white guys who seem to know all? Grr.
“What language do I have to speak in for you to take notice of what I’m saying, a girl is being beaten and raped …” was what a witness reported to the emergency services in February 2001 in the case of Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, after the police failed to respond to an earlier call. Three days later Lilia Alejandra was found dead in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
In Mexico and Guatemala women are being killed at alarming rates but the perpetrators are overwhelmingly never brought to justice. This scandal has led family members of the victims to refer to the problem as a “femicide,” the most extreme expression of gender based violence accepted culturally and by the State when its laws don’t criminalize violence against women and whereby negligence or the lack of political will results in almost total impunity for the perpetrators of such brutality.
According to comprehensive analysis by Amnesty International, approximately 400 young women have been murdered or abducted in the cities of Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico since 1993. In Guatemala, over 2,500 women and girls have been murdered since 2001. In Mexico, the brutality with which the assailants abduct and murder the women goes further than the act of killing in a significant number of cases. Many of the women are held captive for several days and subjected to humiliation, torture and the most horrific sexual violence before being killed. In Guatemala some of the victims had their throats cut, were beaten, shot or stabbed to death. Many of their bodies showed signs of rape, torture, mutilation or dismemberment. A range of motives are reflected and both state and non-state actors are involved, but in all cases the victim’s gender is a significant factor, in both the kind of violence perpetrated and in the level of response by authorities.
While Amnesty International recognizes that some positive steps have been taken to prevent violence against women in Mexico and Guatemala, those advances are often undermined. Under the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox a special federal prosecutor reviewed 205 cases in Ciudad Juárez and confirmed Amnesty International?s findings that there was evidence of negligence on the part of local officials. She recommended that the Chihuahua state prosecutor consider administrative or criminal proceedings against 177 state officials who were negligent in the handling of these cases. Amnesty International is aware of arrest warrants being issued for only two officials. They were later dropped.
In early 2006 the Guatemalan “Rape Law” (Article 200) whereby a rapist could escape charges by offering to marry his victim, was deemed unconstitutional. However, legislation addressing violence against women in Guatemala remains severely deficient. For example, Guatemalan law prohibits domestic abuse, but does not provide prison sentences for cases of domestic abuse and prevents abusers from being charged with assault if bruises do not remain visible for at least 10 days. The Guatemalan Special Prosecutor for Crimes Against Women reported that her office receives approximately 800 reports of domestic violence per month, with some of those cases ending in murder and that those murders could be prevented if Guatemalan law provided for prison sentences in cases of domestic violence. As of June 2006, of the over six hundred cases of women reported murdered in 2005, to Amnesty International’s knowledge, only two convictions had taken place. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA RECOMMENDATIONS:
* Cosponsor House Resolution 100 expressing sympathy to the family members of the women and girls killed in Guatemala and urging the Department of State to take specific steps in helping to address this problem with the Guatemalan government. * Press the Secretary of State and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico to implement specific recommendations of the Concurrent Congressional Resolution on Juarez, which passed unanimously in May 2006, including steps to ensure that addressing these horrendous murders becomes a part of the U.S.-Mexico bilateral agenda.
Here’s a link that Amnesty International provides with actions: http://www.amnestyusa.org/Bordertown/Take_Action_for_the_Women_of_Juarez/page.do?id=1101544&n1=2&n2=22&n3=795
Here’s another link based on actions you can take: http://www.lourdesportillo.com/senoritaextraviada/links.html
Just a note: The vast majority of victims would have been WOC and the people who treated the cases negligently are meant to be white folks. Entwined sexism and racism leading to the murders of thousands of women. THOUSANDS of women murdered. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I showed up at university for a three hour tutorial that apparently isn’t on, and then I have another class later which I’m waiting for. Basically I have several hours free at university today, so I’m going to blog. Here we go.
Point of interest one: My group for digital video and special effects is doing a dark Alice in Wonderland video, sort of based loosely on American Mcgee’s Alice, but with variations and such. Going through the original source, and the parts of American Mcgee’s Alice that we’re apparently going with I’ve started to feel rather uncomfortable about the disablism involved. Alice starts off in a mental institution and “wonderland” is all in her head, because she’s mad you see. Mad as the hatter. There’s that line “But I don’t want to be around Mad people” Alice says to the mad hatter who responds with something like “but we’re all mad here” I asked my group if we could do something to say that there’s nothing wrong with being “mad” and that the darker side of Alice’s personality have to do with something other then madness. I was basically told that they’d be fine to have the hatter answer the “I don’t want to be among mad people” with “There’s nothing wrong with being mad, we’re all mad here” and asking for more then that concession is asking too much. I think it’s too little and I doubt the “madness” isn’t bad message will come through from that line. I’m playing Alice, and I’m not sure how I feel about it now. Is this what cognitive dissonance feels like?
I ended up having a big conversation about race the other day in a circle full of white peeps. I’m not going to go into the details of the conversation like I often do, though I felt less stupid then I did with the “stupids” conversation. I felt like I had a grasp of what I was saying (sort of) and I think I got the idea across that aboriginals aren’t getting unfair favoritism regarding scholarships and tutoring. Now at one point I said something like “Sounds like she just had a shitty tutor who did all the work for her. That’s got nothing to do with race.” All the people in the conversation looked at me, and one of them even gasped. Apparently I should have said “heritage” and not “race” and that saying race is in itself racist. I said that race might not be a biological construct, but it’s definitely a social construct and that denying race is denying the voice of people who have had problems because of their race. I don’t know. Everyone in the conversation (there was about five people) seemed to think saying the word race is racist. I’ve never heard this one before, I’m open to the idea that I’m wrong. Does anyone know what this is all about?
Errm. Also. You know that dress I said I wanted ages ago? I umm… bought it, with some other things from the same company. It should be arriving in a day or two. The pleases me so damn bad.
Ohohohoh. My best friend who I love and adore, she and I had a bit of an upset conversation when I suggested white people don’t experience racism. She said that at her primary school she was beaten up, and followed home (then beaten up.) by a group of aboriginal students, and that the school wouldn’t touch it with a stick because of their race. She said if she were bullied by white kids (and she was) that they’d deal with it, but they ignored what the black kids did to her. She left school at grade nine despite being so damned bright. She’s no good at maths, but damn that girl is sharp as a tack. (Technically leaving school before grade 10 is meant to be illegal, but she did it anyway.) She said that the bullying was one of the major reasons she couldn’t stand school. She heard the racism = prejudice + institutionalized power, but she’s not sure how what happened to her wasn’t more then tolerated in the institution, and wants to know more about what “institutionalized” means. She says she knows that more then %90 of racism doesn’t happen to white people, and what racism to non white people is extremely rampant, and she knows that a black kid calling a white kid a cracker doesn’t have as much weight as a white kid throwing racial epithets about, but she can’t think what happened to her wasn’t racism. I don’t know how to answer any of her questions so I’m throwing them up here, so hopefully someone can help me know what to say to her, because I totally don’t.
Errm…
If I can think of anything else to say I have three and a half more hours of sitting at uni doing nothing. I’m sure it’ll all come to me.
Argh! You know how ages ago I was annoyed because I got in this big old fight with a friend who told me that the image from 300 of the white guy kicking the black guy down the well with the phrase “go back to Africa” on it wasn’t racist, because it was just taking the sentiment from the movie, and wasn’t intended to be a racist phrase?
Well, today he told me the term “bitch” isn’t sexist, because you can call men and women bitch.
I’m going to write this in full writing, though the words might not come out right, because I’m doing this by ear. Writing it out in text should make it more accesible to people who can’t hear so well.
“Yellow Rage”
Two Asian women are standing on stage. They are speaking at the same time, it is quite hard to make out what they are saying.
Woman on the right: “listen asshole my words were meant to be mentioned in meticulous and “indecipherable word” manner, yet your mispronouncing and manhandling mouth fucks it all up! My meaning is misused for miscommunication. Misconstrued, misinterpereted, mispoken, mistake. Mother fucker. It makes me mad.
Woman on the left: *sentence that I cannot make out* You picked the wrong Asian woman to mess with. Because my tongue is split. It is forked and steel tipped, and it will puncture and bleed you, and if you don’t know, now you know. Asshole.
*speaking seperately now*
Woman on the left: Listen asshole, stop trying to guess what I am.
Both: Stop trying to tell me what I’m not.
Woman on the left: I was born in Seoul which makes me Korean. These slightly slanted eyes aint just for seein’bitch, I see right through you. You expert on me with your:
Both: Fake asian tattoo
Woman on the left: You expert on me with your:
Both: Tae-bo and Kung-fu
Woman on the left: So what you try and *words I can’t make out* on the menu?
Woman on the right: So what you’re a fan of Lucy Liu?
Both: So what, you read the Joy Luck Club too?
Woman on the left: That makes you an expert on how I should look? Fuck you!
Both: What the fuck do you know about being Asian?
Woman on the left: I’m about to put you in your place son! What do you know about:
Both: Napalm and Saigon?
Woman on the left: About Hiroshima and Nagaaki?
Both: About Ghandi?
Woman on the left: What do you know about demilitarized zones zones and No Gun Ri?
Both: About Milai (likely spelled wrong again) and the military?
Woman on the left: What do you know about the killing fields and the signs they wield?
Both: “No Chinese and dogs allowed”
Woman on the left: What do you know about comfort women and geisha girls? About colonization all over the Asia world?
Both: What do you know about the great wall?
Woman on the left: I could school you on each and all, motherfucker I’m about to get raw!
Woman on the right: You picked the wrong Asian woman to mess with!
Woman on the left: “You picked the wrong Asian woman to mess with! Because my tongue is split. It is forked and steel tipped, and it will puncture and bleed you, and if you don’t know, now you know.
Both “Asshole”
Woman on the right: Listen, don’t ask me what I’m saying in my native tongue. You wanna know so badly, so learn it yourself.
Both: Twenty years!
Woman on the right: It took me to perfect the language my mothers and her mothers spoke
Both: Twenty seconds!
Woman on the right: it took you to ask what me and my sister spoke about? If I said I wasn’t talking to you, why don’t you stop bothering me all up in my business?
Both: How dare you step to me!
Woman on the right: Invade my privacy! Waste my time to ask me if I’m able to relay you the contents in my conversation? What nonsense is this?
Both: Do I look like your private translator?
Woman on the right: Nosy motherfucker! You probably though the dialogue was centered around you, and you just wanted to make sure. Is that because you’re paranoid and insecure, or just jealous because my tongue has got more… skills then yours? So you wanna learn how to say “I love you” and “hello?”
Both: Why you need to know?
Woman on the right: You think of me as some Asian ho? Ready to turn around at your calls of:
Woman on the left:”Hey baby! Anyung Hasaiyo, Anyung Hasaiyo!” (Again, likely spelled wrong due to personal ignorance)
Woman on the right: Or:
Woman on the left: Ni hao ma, I love you china doll.
Woman on the right: Please, your shit doesn’t impress me at all because my words were meant to be mentioned in meticulous and “indecipherable word” manner, yet your mispronouncing and manhandling mouth fucks it all up! My meaning is misused for miscommunication. Misconstrued, misinterpreted, misspoken, mistake. Mother fucker. It makes me mad, so you better have listened to me asshole, and listened well. Don’t talk to me anymore, don’t fuck with me anymore, because I am done talking to you!
