UV February 2005

UltraViolet April/May 2005

Sadie Throws Wimple in Ring
Last Rites & Wrongs of John Paul II
The MOCHA Column
Historic Palestinian Art Show Hits San Francisco
Boycott World Pride 2005 in Jerusalem
Peace and Quiet
SFPD Intimidation of Bay Area United Against War
You Have to Be Keuhl to Be Kind
Social Security – It's Not a Private Matter
Arnold's Coming Distractions
Going Nowhere Fast: Globalizing the War on Women

SADIE THROWS WIMPLE IN RING

San Francisco – Sister Sadie the Rabbi Lady has announced her candidacy to replace pope john paul II, saying that her decades of experience in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence uniquely qualifies her for that position. “In fact,” she said, “my decades of experience make me qualified in many positions, although admittedly not the missionary one.” Diane Feinstein, who said that she herself is not a candidate for pope, but would consider accepting if she were drafted, said that it was unfair for Sister Sadie to run for pope under an assumed name.

Meanwhile, kkkalifornia governator arnold schwarzenegger has taken advantage of the unexpected demise of JP II to declare his bid to become the next vicar of christ on earth, since there appear to be constitutional problems with his previous plan to be president. “I’m richer than the Kennedys,” he said, noting that the pope doesn’t need to take a vow of poverty. “I am not a girlie man and will be the first supreme pontiff to wear pants.” He has already made a preliminary deal with a local candy company to become the official sweet of the Holy See.

In other papal news, the Vatican has announced that the contract for producing the traditional smoke that announces the papal voting, has been awarded to U.S. cigarette manufacturer Phillip Morris, who plans to commemorate the event with a new brand, Holy Smokes. The company spokesperson explained that after each vote, “white smoke means they’ve elected a pope, black smoke means there’s no pope, and pink smoke means it’s Sadie.”

A Queer Afternoon at Made In Palestine
Sunday, April 17, 2005, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan (at 8th), San Francisco
Featuring performance and spoken word with: Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, Larry Bob Roberts, Lady Monster, Carla Schick and Jaime Cader
Talks by L.A. Happy Hyder and Maher Sabry
PLUS: "Estee Slaugher: The Video" – the true story of the fake cosmetics giant
Food, drink, schmoozing and a chance to see the amazing Made In Palestine Art Show
Sponsored by QUIT! 510-434-1304 www.quitpalestine.org

Last Rites & Wrongs of John Paul II

by Tom

In case you missed the nonstop media procession to and from the funeral of the Pope, let’s make one thing clear—he’s dead. It’s enough to make an atheist say, “Thank God!” You might think, I’m just not a mourning person, but I am in mourning for the victims of this man, the Church and his backers in the CIA.

He was born Karol Joseph Wojtyla in Poland. He saw the rise of Nazism and the fall of Communism. He left his footprints on history and on the backs of queers; liberation theologians in Central America and women who needed control of their own bodies.

The mainstream media portray the Pope as a symbol of endurance both for enduring his numerous health problems and his earlier years resisting Soviet-style communism in Poland. As a cardinal in Poland he was able to build a new church against the wishes of the Communist Party.

This made him popular with polish-americans, especially Zbiginew Brzezinski whom he met at a speaking engagement at Harvard in the 1970’s. By 1978, the Cardinal was now the Pope and Brzezinski was Carter’s National Security advisor. This initiated a lengthy (still classified) correspondence between the Baptist peanut farmer from Plains and the Vatican. The special relationship between the Oval Office and the throne of St Peter continues to this day.

The goal of this unholy alliance was to win the Cold War and topple those godless communists with the prayers of the faithful. In the case of Poland, The CIA and the Vatican apparently funneled $50 million into the coffers of Solidarity. Solidarity was originally a trade union movement with broad support (from both left and right) against the corruption and mismanagement of the Party elite. However, the Vatican and the CIA only wanted communism to be overthrown from the right. The movement became even more Roman Catholic than when it had started. At this same time the CIA began using religion as a weapon in Afghanistan by funding the mujaheddin. While Eastern Europe was a “success” for the CIA Pope, Afghanistan boomeranged in the form of Osama Bin Laden.

While Eastern Europe chose to go with God, Western Europe began to sleep in on Sundays. Vatican hostility to birth control, abortion, gay liberation and divorce caused the average parishioner to eschew the pews. Africa and Asia became new “markets” for Catholicism and South and Central America remained Catholic despite the conflict over liberation theology. The people of El Salvador and Nicaragua, tired of suffering at the hands of right wing military dictatorships, decided to fight back. Sympathetic priests and nuns believed that helping the poor meant supporting revolution. John Paul disagreed and told priests (including archbishop Oscar Romero) to get along with the government. Romero refused and was later assassinated while performing mass. LAGAI whose first incarnation began as Lesbians and Gays Against Intervention in Central America feels the blood of tens of thousands is on John Paul’s hands along with those of various right wing Americans.

John Paul II did nothing during the still ongoing child molestation scandal except remove one of the major conspirators (Cardinal Law of Boston) to the Vatican where he is safe from prosecution. Cardinal Law transferred known child molesting priests from one parish to another silencing parents of victims with confidential settlements. By continuing to condemn birth control and condoms as “intrinsically evil” he coerced women into forced motherhood and helped spread HIV throughout the globe.

The outgoing pope had a negative effect on his own church. By refusing to ordain women, he not only perpetuated male supremacy, but left a record number of churches without a resident priest. Many churches in the United States have been closed to the reduced attendance of the semi-faithful and the lack of shepards to lead the sheep—or at least pull the wool over their eyes.

Religion has always has a polarizing effect on people. The whole my god can beat up your god phenomenon has had a bloody role in history. John Paul changed the naturue of that conflict in the X-tian world. The division is not now between sects but between the observant and the nonobservant. Protestants and Catholics join forces against secular society. They went from wanting prayer in schools to prey on schools. They want to take public school funds and put them in religious institutions. And in much of the country they are creating an origin free of evolution. John Paul was the key player in unleashing god on the godless.

His Holiness, who originally wanted to be an actor, became a Pop(e) Star through his shrewd use of the media and his extensive travel schedule. Of the many places where the Pontiff gave the classic photo op of him kissing the ground (that still counts as celibacy) was the United States. He visited San Francisco where he conducted a mass at Mission Dolores to a full house (of God) including more than 50 People With Aids. This seemed more than hypocritical to the queers of the Bay Area. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who have a habit of opposing Church homophobia, led the protest against his papal bull.

It is appalling that both the mainstream and listener sponsored media are mourning the loss of this man. While Marx was right, religion is [one of] the opiates of the masses, I am not quite ready for a war on drugs. The Stalinist approach to religion simply created a backlash. We need to fight the agenda of religious fanatics without taking on their religiosity. But let’s take a moment to celebrate, the Pope is Dead!!!

The MOCHA Column

by Chaya, Deni and barks from Mocha

MOVIE REVIEWS

Millions (reviewed by Chaya and Deni)

We were only able to see 1 movie, so we carefully considered. “Millions” got great reviews --“One of the best films of the year” (Roger Ebert); “No film lover will want to miss” (Ruthe Stein, SF Chronicle) so off we went. Apparently the version playing here was different than the one reviewed, because this was a film we certainly could have missed. It did have some humor and originality, but they were subverted into a tacky feel-good, do-good Christian message with a stunningly racist ending.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (reviewed by Deeg)

A pretty good movie, if you like birds. [Would you go see a movie with this title if you didn’t? asks Deni.] The hippie bird man was a little annoying, as was the filmmaker but overall it was interesting and entertaining. [But were there any cardinals?!! See popester item below.]

We wished we could have seen The Best of Youth (La Meglio Gioventu). This 6-hour Italian import, divided into Part I and Part II, got stellar reviews. Also about 2 brothers, it starts in the 1960s when the brothers are young and involves a lot of modern Italian history. See them if you can before they go away and let us know what you think.

Other Movie Disappointments: The Ballad of Jack and Rose (Daniel Day-Lewis, written and directed by his wife Rebecca Miller) doesn’t sound as great as we had hoped, and neither does Ethan Mao, a low-budget indie drama about a gay Chinese American teen rebel struggling with identity and family issues by director Quentin Lee (although an interview with the filmmaker was interesting). Did anyone see it?

BITS AND PIECES

Love Those Southern California IMAX Science Center Theater Owners: They care, they really care. They care that movies like “Volcanoes of the Deep Sea,” “Cosmic Voyage” and “Galapagos” have evolutionary content that may offend fundamentalists, so they’re not showing those movies. But hey, they don’t need a weatherman… Bushie himself ordered flags all over the u.s. at half mast for the pope, and only those pesky atheists protested.

Love Those Gas Prices, or How Far Will You Drive to See a Movie: So ChevronTexaco bought Unocal for 16 billion dollars. There is speculation that this happened because of peak oil. The peak oil theory is that when the peak of world-wide oil production is reached, oil reserves will forever decline from then on. Since demand continues to rise, prices will also continue to go up. Did ChevronTexaco buy Unocal now because it believes peak oil is near, and it wants to own as many reserves as possible?

Love That College of Cardinals: The conclave to pick the new pope starts April 18 and features only cardinals less than 80!! First of all, how did this whole bird rip-off thing get started? And, how ageist is that? Traditionally the “elector cardinals” meet in secrecy to select the new popester. (Just like a scene out of Hitchcock’s “The Birds!) Many worry that with cell phones and lap tops, the Vatican will not be able to maintain secrecy and lack of interference. Cardinals who break the sacred oaths of secrecy will receive the severest of punishments – including excommunication and “grave penalties” meted out by the pope himself (the new pope? or the old one from heaven?). John Paul cared so much he produced a document in 1996 that outlined the penalties (and they call us kinky).

And some folks are upset that former Boston Archbishop Bernard Law is officiating at one of the masses in honor of the pope. After all, Law resigned as archbishop in disgrace because of his role in the clergy sex abuse crisis, and now, as a Cardinal, he’s in a plum honorary role. Oh well, when has the catholic church ever been accountable for its mass murders and other abuses (oops we mean naughty misdeeds).

WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF

Historic Palestinian Art Show Hits San Francisco

by Daniel

San Francisco was the scene of an historic event Thursday, April 7. The spectacular opening reception of the "Made in Palestine" art exhibit should put to rest any doubts that support for the cause of freedom for Palestinians in the Bay Area is vigorous, enthusiastic, broad, and dynamic. Upwards of 1,000 people gathered at SomArts gallery to celebrate and appreciate the show. "Made in Palestine" is the first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Palestinian art in the u.s.

The exhibit was collected and curated by the Station, a contemporary arts museum in Houston. Gabriel Delgado, James Harithas, and Tex Kerschen travelled to Palestine and other places to put together the show. It was first shown to the public in 2003. An estimated 20,000 people saw the exhibit. Since that time, despite approaching more that 90 museums and galleries in the u.s., canada and Mexico, Station museum has been unable to find a place willing to take the show. A fundraiser scheduled in Westchester county, in New York, generated such strong opposition to the idea of the exhibition that the fundraiser had to be cancelled.

In 2004 the show was brought to the attention of the Justice in Palesine Coalition. Several artists, including Susan Greene of Break the Silence Mural Project made the offer to donate the time and space they had for their own show to "Made in Palestine" if JIP would undertake to bring the show to San Francisco. The arts and culture subcommittee of JIP came together to work directly on this project. The only assets held by the subcommittee going into this project were no money, lack of time and several boxes of the singularly beautiful catalog of the exhibit produced and donated by the Station. Prodigious effort from a host of people resulted in a stunningly successful fundraiser at Cafe Medjool on March 13. This was accompanied by a series of "house party" fundraisers, including one held by QUIT! on April 2.

Made in Palestine is a museum quality exhibition. The 23 artists represented in the show work in different mediums and styles. Abstract painting, tent, furniture, and sculpture have all been rendered into art form. The artists are Zuhdi Al-Adawi, Tyseer Barakat, Rana Bishara, Rajie Cook, Mervat Essa, Ashraf Fawakhry, Samia Halaby, John Halaka, rula Halawani, Mustafa Al Hallaj, Jawad Ibrahim, Noel Jabbour, Emily Jacir, Suleiman Mansour, AbdulHay Mussalam, Abdel Rahmen Al Muzayen, Muhammad Rakouie, Mohammad Abu Sall, Nida Sinnokrot, Vera Tamara, Mary Tuma, Adrian Yahya, Hani Zurob

At SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan (8th St.). April 7-21 2005. Gallery hours (for this show only) to accomodate as many people and schedules as possible Tuesday and Wednesday 12-4pm. Thursday, Friday, Saturday 12-7pm, Sunday 12-6pm.

Events at SomArts in conjunction with Made in Palestine:

Sunday, April 10 2-5:30pm
Arab Youth Artistic Social/Political Gathering
Arab Community Cultural Center, ADC, Arab American Recritment/Retention Center
isakhaleel@yahoo.com

Tuesday, April 12 6:30-9pm
From Palestine to Guantanamo and Pelican Bay
JIP, Jericho, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Critical Resistance, Jews for a Free Palestine
sumoudtourbayarea@yahoo.com

Thursday, April 14 7-9pm
The Right to Resist Occupations, From Iraq to Palestine.
International Socialist Organization
tawfiq_haddad@yahoo.com

Friday April 15 8-10pm
A Tax Day Soiree
Break the Silence Mural Project, Anarchists Against the Wall, ADC, SUSTAIN, Anti-Advertising Agency
susangreene@mindspring.com

Saturday April 16 6-10pm
Piano concert by Rami Khalife
Arab Community Cultural Center, Middle East Children's Alliance
luluazzghayer@yahoo.com

Sunday, April 17, 3-5pm
Queer Afternoon for Palestine.
Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism
dewey@netscape.com

Tuesday, April 19
Labor Night at Made in Palestine.
JIP, Arab American Union Members Council
jiplaborcommittee@yahoo.com

Wednesday, April 20 6-9pm
Producer Screening and discussion of "Until When", a film by Jess Ghannam.
American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC-SF)
ghannam@itsa.ucsf.edu

Thursday, April 21 6:30-10 pm
Closing event $15-$20
ADC-SF
adcsf@hotmail.com

Boycott World Pride 2005 in Jerusalem

Israel, Land of “Love Without Borders”

The theme of World Pride is “Love Without Borders.” Israel may indeed be the place to celebrate the theme, as it is the only country in the world that has never declared its borders, taking lands from the Palestinian people and neighboring Arab states at will. Their latest vehicle for appropriating Palestinian Land is the Segregation Wall. In Jerusalem, where “Love Without Borders” will be celebrated by queers at World Pride in 2005, Israel’s Wall will cut off approximately 200,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem from their families, neighbors, jobs and schools in the rest of the West Bank. The love Palestinians have for loved ones living in the West Bank will have a strictly enforced border, while foreign queers come to celebrate “Love Without Borders.”

According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, “Since 1967, Israel has created a ‘greater’ Jerusalem which controls the entire central portion of the West Bank and cuts economic heart out of Palestinian state. While constructing 90,000 housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem, the municipality has intentionally created a shortage of 25,000 housing units for Palestinians. The goal is three-fold: (1) to maintain a 72%-28% majority of Jews over Arabs – a racist policy that no Jews in the world would accept; (2) to confine the Palestinian population to small islands – the Arabs make up a third of the Jerusalem population, but only have access to 7% of the urban land; and (3) to ultimately force them out of the city.” Straight and queer Palestinians alike will be subject to racist policies designed to keep them a minority and force those who cannot build homes out of the city. This while queers celebrate “Love Without Borders.”

The reality of the location for “Love Without Borders” is separation, land theft, and the apartheid policies of Israel in the Occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan Heights. It’s time we ask InterPride and Jerusalem Open House, co-sponsors of World Pride 2005, how they will address this contradiction:

With the Israeli military setting up scores of checkpoints throughout the Occupied Territories, making travel into Israel nearly impossible, will “love without borders” be available to Palestinian queers? Contact Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of Jerusalem Open House and ask how JOH plans to guaranty safe passage for queer Palestinians wishing to travel from the West Bank or Gaza to World Pride in West Jerusalem, to hagai@joh.gay.org.il

Contact InterPride’s Co- President, Suzanne Girard, and ask her how Interpride plans to explain “Love Without Borders” in a country building a massive wall and stealing Palestinian territory in the process. Will World Pride address this with occasional liberal rhetoric on stage, or will Interpride and JOH encourage attendees of World Pride to take the World Pride theme to the Israeli Government, and demand the Wall be torn down as a first step towards realizing a real “Love Without Borders.” Will they ask them to join Black Laundry and Aswat for their March to the Wall, or will they be dancing in the bars while the radical queers are out getting teargassed? Suzanne can be reached at suzanne.girard@interpride.org

Let’s make “Love Without Borders” a reality, not a marketing slogan. Boycott World Pride 2005. Demand the United States government stop all military aid to Israel. Demand an end to illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Occupied Territories. Demand equal rights for all peoples living in Israel/Palestine.

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, LAGAI – Queer Insurrection, Middle East Children’s Alliance, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee-San Francisco Chapter, International Socialist Organization, Queers for Peace and Justice, Jews for a Free Palestine, Queers for Peace and Justice, Queers for Palestine
www.boycottworldpride.org

Peace and Quiet

By Lisa

Peace, well that’s obvious, we all (Ultraviolet readers that is) want peace. I was cleaning out some old storage and ran across an anti-war poster from 1981. Yes even in 1981 we were demonstrating for peace—against the cold war and the hot wars, against military build-up and arms sales. That poster — ‘sac’ Survive and Continue: an anti-war ceremonial — commemorated a women’s caravan across the US stopping at strategic air command sites (sac) and other military and nuclear weapons sites collecting bags of earth and bringing them to New York and the UN for a big rally on June 12. I wasn’t on the caravan but several friends of mine were. As with so many creative peace actions, we could make the same journey today, starting here on the west coast at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs, pausing in Nevada at Yucca Mountain, at the Nuclear Test Site, on to Utah and Colorado stopping a uranium tailings piles leaching into the rivers, north to Idaho and Wyoming, south to Texas and the Pantex plant (where they both assemble and disassemble nuclear war heads), to Georgia for the School of the Americas (renamed but still a training facility for death squads), and on and on.

What is the point of this reverie? Does it mean we haven’t moved forward at all? I don’t think so. If anything it’s a spiral, moving forward in a cyclical fashion like the seasons. I think it means that we have been, and have to continue to be, consistent and endlessly creative in our position against war, preparation for war, and the human and environmental devastation of war. While consistency in itself is not all ways laudable, creativity keeps us from falling into despair, brings personal satisfaction, and provides us as a community (“the culture of resistance” as I recently heard it called) with moments of peace, joy, and sometimes even laughter amidst the destruction. A recent example, discussed elsewhere in this issue, is the Made in Palestine art show, a wonderful and moving collection of artwork by Palestinians. Creativity in the face of devastation and war.

Quiet is quite rare in our lives these days and electronic media is very common. The last week of April is “TV TURN OFF WEEK”. This is a social experiment—no TV or video games or internet (unless required by your work) for a week. While the main thrust of the week is for families with children (gee, what did people do with their time before TV and video games? Talk, play games, read, play music, listen to the radio or music?). It is an interesting experiment for anyone to try. Just contemplating a week without these media may be enough to change your life in some small way. I heartily recommend it as an experiment. For some it may become a weekly or monthly practice or even a lifestyle. Others will rededicate themselves to their love of media. Either way it’s worth thinking about.

Why Corporations Want Chiapas
Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - 7:30pm
La Peña Cultural Center
3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley
Wheelchair Accessible
Near Ashby BART Station
Direct from Chiapas, Gustavo Castro Soto will discuss why Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Bayer and many more are risking confrontations with the Zapatistas in Chiapas; what these corporations are doing and what they want. Music and Poetry by Arnoldo Garcia
Brief Update on Chiapas
Chiapas Crafts Available
Requested Donation - $5-10 (Sliding Scale) A Benefit for the Pharmacy in San Manuel, Chiapas
Sponsored by: Chiapas Support Committee
For more information: (510) 654-9587

Concert to FREE MUMIA
Featuring: Michael Franti, Lynne Stewart, Robert Bryan, Mumia’s defense attorney
April 24 (Sun)
2pm, Mission High, 18th & Dolores, SF
($20; $15 seniors & students) More info www.freemumia.org
Sponsored by Fee Mumia, National Lawyers Guild – SF Chapter, and the Vanguard Foundation

SFPD Intimidation of Bay Area United Against War

Saturday, April 2, as we entered Centro del Pueblo for the meeting of Bay Area United Against War (B.A.U.A.W.), two S.F. police officers were waiting for us. They asked questions such as: how many people were expected to attend the meeting and how many people were expected to the "demonstration" at Washington H.S. They said that their commanding officer, Lt. Lynch, from the Richmond Police Station, had sent them to the meeting and when we told them that they didn't belong there, they claimed to "be part of the community," and therefore their presence was appropriate claiming it was a public meeting in a public building.

Police Officers do not have a right to attend and ask questions at an antiwar meeting! Their presence is intimidating. (When this was mentioned to Lt. Lynch in a conversation on Sunday he said it reflected our negative attitude toward the police.) In this case they said they were trying to gather information. But, they could have easily called us up and asked their questions. We informed them that whenever we plan an event that needs permits, etc. we have always followed proper procedure so they had no cause to even question us.

There is no demonstration planned by B.A.U.A.W. at Washington H.S. What we are planning is a counter-recruitment information table at a career fair at the school Tuesday, April 5, where there will be military recruiters present. (When we told this to the two officers, they proceeded to ask what material we were having on the table and if any material will have our name on it and what other groups will be listed on the material.)This activity is part of B.A.U.A.W.'s campaign to implement Proposition N, the ballot measure in which S.F. voters approved a resolution to bring all the troops home now from Iraq. B.A.U.A.W. is campaigning for the school district to cut all ties with the military including direct military recruitment on campus as well as the Junior ROTC program. Our purpose is to urge students not to join the military, not to volunteer to fight against the Iraqi people as part of this illegal, immoral war.

Our purpose is to attempt to recruit students to participate in the antiwar movement. We are perfectly within our constitutional rights to conduct this work and to demonstrate if we so choose, even though at this time, we are not calling for a demonstration. And if we did call for a picket line on the sidewalk without a sound system, no permit is required anyway so there would be no reason to notify the police.

The police have no right to show up at our meetings where we discuss our antiwar work. We have filed a formal complaint against the police for this intrusion on our rights and are seeking legal advice to prevent them from doing it again without good cause.

Citizens have a right to hold meetings without police presence.

For info: Bay Area United Against War, www.bauaw.org 415-824-8730

You Have to Be Kuehl to Be Kind

By Tory

The only answer to the horror called health care in ths country is a universal single payer health care plan. All other attempts to ameliorate the situation produce only incremental changes, a few more kids getting lousy coverage here, a couple of low income women get mamograms there. Nothing changes, as various programs try to make up for a deficient system based entirely on making money off the misery of illness. People are dying because they have no health insurance. In fact lack of insurance is the seventh leading cause of death in this country. Half the people declaring bankruptcy do it because of medical debt. Currently in California there are seven million uninsured people and many more under insured. The emergency rooms are overflowing, the health care of last resort. Existing managed health care is nothing more than a system of rationing.

Sheila Kuehl California state senator and lesbian (we in LAGAI prefer to remember her from Dobie Gillis days) has introduced a second version of her single payer bill to the legislature, now called SB 840 the California Health Insurance Reliability Act (CHIRA). This bill, a new version of SB921 introduced in 2004, would provide one health care plan for all residents of California. Resident is defined as anyone living in the state for 90 days and includes undocumented people. Because coverage is based on residency, not employment or income, no one would ever lose health care coverage because they lost a job or had a preexisting medical condition.

The plan would cover ALL HEALTH CARE PRESCRIBED BY THE PATIENT’S HEALTH CARE PROVIDER, including all hospital, medical surgical, mental health care, dental and vision care. It includes substance abuse treatment, rehabilitative care, hospice care. It includes one hundred days of skilled nursing after hospitalization. People can choose their own providers. While couched in many terms used by the rabid greedy health care industry such as “consumer” and “insurance” it seems to be a comprehensive single payer bill. Two issues remain unresolved. One is long term care past the included 100 days, which has been dropped in response to the inevitable political pressure. Sue Bergman from Health Care for All California and Vote Health feels that Sheila Kuehl did this because the financial cost would be a deal breaker. Apparently Sheila Kuehl hopes to get it put back in a later time. The other issue that is being left out is workers’ compensation. Again Sheila Kuehl feels that to include workers’ compensation would be opening a can of worms which would prevent it from getting passed.

The financing is based on combining all state and federal money now going to health care into one coffer that would be administered by a state health care fund. This will supply about a third of the funding. The remaining money would come from a state health care tax which would replace current insurance premiums. Numerous studies on single payer plans have repeatedly shown that the cost of such a plan is much less than our current for-profit system. If California were to institute such a plan, the plan would be able to negotiate huge cut rate deals with drug companies.

A California Health Insurance Agency would be formed with ten local regions to ensure local decision making in the planning process. The bill sets up a governance structure with an elected health commissioner for eight year terms and a two-term limit. There are numerous boards and offices, i.e., The Health Insurance Policy board, the Office of Consumer Advocate, and the Public Advisory Committee set policy, establish benefits, and monitor for fraud.

Health Care for all --California, http://www.healthcareforall.org, the statewide organization working on single payer universal, has finally come to the conclusion that a strong grassroots campaign is the next step. To that end they have hired a professional organizer Andrew Maguire, apparently best known for organizing Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Of course organizing for universal health care, while supported by most people, will be under attack by big insurance business and will be a far more difficult task than organizing the all amerikkan mothers against drunk driving.

Excitement and new vigor has erupted from an otherwise despondent Vote Health who has called for a coalition to form for the express purpose of working on this bill. SEIU local 616, CAPA (California Physicians Alliance ), Wellstone Democratic club, Nate Miley’s office, the Green Party, the Grey Panthers are among the groups expressing interest in such a coalition. The first Meeting is Wednesday, April 19th 6:30 PM at the Over 60 Health Clinic, Alcatraz and Sacramento in Berkeley. The idea is make use of the network built from the recent Measure A organizing. A large number of people worked on the winning campaign to raise a half cent sales tax to fun the county hospital.

It is generally hard to get very excited about what goes on in the California legislature, especially since most of it seems so dependent on being a Hollywood movie star. Somehow Sheila Kuehl’s Dobie Gillis fame doesn’t seem to have much cachet anywhere other than in LAGAI. However the reality of the matter is that unless we build a strong grassroots movement demanding true comprehensive health care nothing is going to change. This bill is a tool to be used to bring crowds into the streets leaving the legislature no choice but to pass a single payer universal health care bill and forcing that dreadful governor to sign it. If people want to get involved in building this movement, call Tory at 510-434-1304

HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT!

Social Security – It's Not a Private Matter

By Deeg

I have been paying into social security now for 38 years, so forgive me if what follows seems a little personal, and a little bitter. I mean, I started working in tax-paying jobs towards the end of high school, and the law was that when I was 65 I was going to get to retire, come hell or high water. And although 65 seemed an incredible distance away, and I had no real hope of achieving that phenomenally old age (I didn’t think I’d survive to be 21, but that’s another story), that was the deal.

I paid social security taxes which supported my grandmother and later my parents, and they supported your grandmother and your parents. My social security taxes supported Murph and Clancy, two old dykes who, when I was 20, lived upstairs from me, even though one of them was in a wheel chair and therefore had been stuck in that upstairs apartment for 20 years. My social security taxes support several lesbians I know, who are disabled, and they supported many of my friends in ACT-UP. Even though social security taxes are regressive (i.e. the rich pay less), they are the only taxes I pay that don’t primarily fund the military or the police.

And now bush is going farther than any president ever has to attack social security. His proposal to privatize it, to turn into a series of individual retirement accounts, is clearly an attempt to steal more money for his corporate pals through securities frauds like enron, arthur andersen, and world com. But at its root, the proposal it is an attempt to destroy the social(ist) nature of social security.

Social Security is the fundamental social welfare program of this society. In addition to old-age pensions, it provides income support for people who are disabled, and for the survivors of workers who die. The fight for social security, unemployment compensation, aid to low-income families, workers compensation, etc. that occupied the years from 1880 through 1950, was a fight to recognize that the reorganization and urbanization of society under capitalism required the state to guarantee a minimum income to all people. In earlier times, people who could not support themselves through work were expected to be cared for completely within the extended family, or when that failed, within the church, or later, voluntary institutions.

This radical concept, that the society as a whole has a responsibility to the individuals living in it independent of family relationships, is a cornerstone of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) liberation.

As early as 1880 several european countries had adopted some form of social insurance, including old age and disability pensions. But in the u.s. the capitalist ideology of individualism, the readily available labor pool, and the protestant ethic which proclaimed that poverty was your fault, prevented much progress from being made until the Great Depression. As late as the 1920's, the supreme kourt had declared several state attempts at mandatory pensions to be unconstitutional.

The Great Depression did much to dispel the Great Myth of individual ability to withstand or triumph over economic forces. Actually starting before the famous stock market crash of 1929, the unemployment rate climbed to over 25 percent and stayed in the double digits for almost 10 years, until the economic expansion brought about by World War II. It was estimated that in 1933, 13 million out of 52 million people in the workforce were unemployed. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not exaggerating when he said in 1936 that one third of the nation was ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed. The response to this impoverishment was a movement that was larger and in some ways more radical than any movement seen since. This movement, which included eviction resistance, unemployed organizing, union sit-ins (from Woolworths to General Motors), and mass marches, forced a “structural readjustment” on the u.s. which the ruling class has been working for the last 50 years to reverse.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was literally the least that they could do. There were far more popular and far-reaching proposals. During the Depression, people argued that old age pensions were an excellent way to create more jobs for younger workers by moving older workers out of the workforce. Also, putting money into circulation would stimulate the economy.

Francis E. Townsend, a California doctor, proposed that everyone over 60, regardless of their work history, be provided a pension of $200 per month, on the condition that all the money be spent during that month, and that the person have lived a life free of “habitual criminality.” Given that the average wage at the time was $100 per month, this provided more than subsistence, and would be the equivalent of about $2500 to $3000 per month today. Within two years, 7000 Townsend Clubs formed across the country. In 1935 petitions were submitted supporting the program, which are reported to have had anywhere from ten to twenty-five million signatures. Upton Sinclair helped to form the EPIC movement (End Poverty in California). One of their proposals was a $50 a month pension to be paid to all “needy” people over 60, with a 3-year residency requirement. Sinclair got the democratic nomination for governor in 1934, and the party adopted the EPIC 12 point program. Because the Progressive Party also ran a candidate, the republican won, with 48% of the vote, as compared to Sinclair’s 37% and the Progressive candidate’s 13%. Another California movement, started by Robert Noble, nicknamed “Ham and Eggs,” called for the state to pay every unemployed Californian over 50 $30 a week. The movement had more than 300,000 members, and narrowly lost a ballot proposition by a vote of 1,143,670 in favor to 1,398,999 against.

So compared to that, the Social Security Act was a paltry compromise. First off, it initially was scheduled to take effect in 1942 (the first pay-outs were later moved up to 1940). And it required a work history of paying in, which meant that people who were already retired, including many of the people who had fought for old-age pensions, were excluded from the plan. The benefits were based on salary and ranged from $10 to $84 per month. Eventually disability and survivor benefits were added by amendments in 1939, and medicare was added in the 1960's.

As currently configured, social security is primarily supported by a tax on employers and employees, on wages up to a certain cap (now $90,000). “Self-employed” people pay both parts of social security (called self-employment tax). People who make their living through dividends or interest do not pay into social security. Which is one reason why it is particularly appalling that finance capital, like charles schwab, is trying to get their greedy little paws on our money.

Which is why one long-time lesbian activist says, “If they’re going to reopen Social Security, let’s reopen it. I could think of a few things.” Like getting rid of the salary cap, making the employers pay for the whole program, and establishing a benefit system, that would guarantee all recipients a comfortable life, free from homelessness, eating out of garbage cans, and choosing between medicine and food. Is that too much to ask?

And yet the gay press and the mainstream LGBTIQ institutions are alarmingly silent about this basic queer liberation issue. There was a media blip, when it looked like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) was going to support social security privatization in exchange for social security recognizing same-sex couple survivorship rights. Then the hrc backed off of that little leaden trial balloon, and we’ve heard not much ever since. If you go to the websites of the mainstream queer organizations, and search for social security, virtually the only mention you will find there is of extending survivor benefits to gay married couples or domestic partners. This is not surprising, as most of those organizations sat on their hands as the welfare system, another cornerstone of LGBTIQ liberation, was decimated by successive waves of democrats and republicans.

This is particularly appalling because struggles over social security disability programs have been core to the AIDS movement. Income maintenance is as important to survival with HIV as is appropriate medical care, and the two often can’t be separated. Poor and homeless people with AIDS die faster. At the beginning of the AIDS crisis, in the mid 1980's social security was the only option for PWA’s. Most didn’t have private disability insurance. In California, there is state disability insurance for a limited period of time, and most states don’t have that. A lot of private disability insurance didn’t cover AIDS, or had such restricted definitions or benefits that it provided little support. So the struggle moved to the Social Security Administration. Better access to social security, particularly for people with what was then termed “AIDS Related Complex” was a core demand of the 1986 AIDS vigil in SF Civic Center. In addition to demanding timely processing of applications, AIDS activists have demanded more inclusive definitions of HIV disease, and better policies regarding provision of benefits to people who intermittently return to work. Social Security has been less than perfect for PWA’s but because it is a public entitlement program, that can change to meet political demands. An exception to the lack of involvement on this issue by queer organizations is ACT-UP NY which is opposing privatization.

Many unions are organizing to save social security and pension rights, and locally the Gray Panthers are also very active. People who are interested in working on this issue from a queer perspective should contact us at (510)434-1304, or e-mail lagai@bigfoot.org.

Arnold's Coming Distractions

Was it only 17 months ago that schwarzenegger breezed into office, based on his body-builder/terminator image and california’s profound disgust over the purchasability of the davis administration?

Ten months after californians fell for a would-be fascist costumed as a grade-b movie actor, arnold took his homophobic, misogynist “girly-men” comment to a national stage at the republican convention, and it looked for all the world like he would be next in line for the presidency, just as soon as a little matter of amending the xenophobic constitution was taken care of.

In his first year in office, voters eagerly mortgaged the state’s future to the tune of a $10 billion deficit spending bond, rather than raise taxes on the rich (who had just gotten a whole other set of tax breaks on the national and state level). Budget cuts last year weren’t as draconian as some had feared, though don’t tell that to people on medi-cal, who found benefits cut yet again, or people in health care, or the schools, from whom he stole $2 billion. He worked almost exclusively with business interests to complete the California Performance Review, which recommended a radical restructuring of state government. Just coincidentally the CPR recommended eliminating most of the environmental boards, and reducing even further the visibility of worker protection programs.

But his second year has gone differently. The budget tricks have been played out. It turns out arnold has raised more money from his buddies in big business than davis did. He declared an emergency and attempted to get rid of the requirement for workers’ lunch breaks. He declared another emergency and tried to abolish the minimum nurse staffing ratios. To distract from his violation of Prop 98, which establishes minimum funding levels for schools, he has attacked teachers, first with his demand for “merit pay” and then by his wholesale attack on public employee pensions. On his chopping block for this year are in-home support services for the disabled. He has attacked medi-cal funding, which is now in a race to the bottom with school funding, we’ll see which one of them ends up 50th out of 50 states first.

As we write this in early April, schwarzenegger has had to absorb his first set of defeats. He had to withdraw his first set of CPR proposals because even many businesses didn’t support them. The courts decided eliminating rules requiring lunch breaks that have been in effect for decades, wasn’t an emergency, even though walmart stood to pay over a million dollars in penalties for violating them. They decided that eliminating nurse staffing ratios that have been scheduled for two years also wasn’t an emergency. Arnold is still trying to push through a repeal of nurse staffing ratios, but repeatedly, the California Nurses Association has beaten him in court.

The lunch break regulations, however, have been proposed through regular rulemaking. Over a thousand people protested these regulations at the three state hearings. That will not stop the California Department of Industrial Relations, charged with protecting workers rights and safety, from promulgating these regulations to allow workers to “voluntarily” work up to 10 hours without a lunch break. The chamber of commerce’s line on this is that workers want this “flexibility.” No doubt, we would also like the flexibility to work overtime for free, and to work without all those pesky safety regulations that slow us down. But that’s next year’s agenda.

The California Nurses Association and the California Teachers Association have joined forces to pursue arnold across the state, pointing out who his special interests are. And it’s having an effect. A recent poll had 49 percent feeling that he spent too much time with gimmicks and staged events. His approval rating fell from 59 percent in January to 43 percent in March.

On April 5, the governor held a fund-raising dinner for his November special elections and the big-four initiative attack on workers at the ritz-carleton in SF. The minimum price for a seat was $1000, with some donating as much as $89,000. Outside about 5,000 people demonstrated, surrounding the hotel and taking over the streets. George shultz’s car was momentarily delayed by demonstrators. The next day, the governor announced that he was going to postpone the initiative that would have gotten rid of defined-benefit pension plans for all new public employees. This still leaves three other attacks – redistricting, which he hopes will decrease the democratic majority, “merit-pay” for teachers, which he hopes will for once and for all ensure that no teachers will teach in low income schools, and a ban on union money for political activity, a long-standing part of the republican wish-list. After withdrawing the pension initiative, arnold broadcast a statement on conservative radio stations throughout the state, reassuring his supporters that he would not back down on the rest of his agenda, and that he would continue his attacks on public employees.

Going Nowhere Fast: Globalizing the War on Women

by Kate (with Mirk)

I spent December and January in an immigration prison in israel. I was the only person there who was a political activist. In fact, none of the other 120 women in my prison had been arrested for any crime, other than not having a passport or visa. In israel, they are all lumped together under the designation “foreign workers,” a benign sounding phrase. Some of them had come to work under official programs like the old “bracero” program, which imported Mexicans to work semi-legally in U.S. agriculture. At least half of the women I was incarcerated with, probably more like three-quarters, were part of the huge and growing category of “trafficked humans.”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary doesn’t have a definition for trafficking, but does have “traffic” as “the business of barter, buying and selling,” which is straightforward enough but doesn’t necessarily sound like you’d be talking about people. Trafficking, as in the movie, “Traffic,” has traditionally referred to criminal conspiracies to move drugs, weapons or stolen goods, especially cars. But in the new world of global capitalism, entire economies are based on the movement of people, internally or externally, by “threat or use of force or coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability….” This is the definition provided in the U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. The “especially Women and Children” is important, because out of an estimated 5 million people trafficked every year, by (probably low) UN estimates, 75-90% are female, and as many as 50% are under 18.

Trafficking comprises a wide variety of practices. About half of my fellow inmates had come to israel on planes, with valid work or tourist visas. The other half hiked through the Egyptian desert in groups of women led by Bedouin guides. Either way, they pay someone thousands of dollars for the visa (if they have one) and the arrangement of travel and work, money they borrowed from friends at home. Tsong from China, said it costs $9,200 to come with a visa and $8,400 without, a small savings for enormous added risk. In addition to the landmines they have to dodge on their way across the border, many women have reported being beaten and raped by the guides, and this is usually only the first of many abuses they will suffer once they start to work. In many cases, according to Nomi Levinkron of the israeli Human Rights Hotline for Migrant Workers, in China it is common for an entire village to pool their money to send one person abroad, based on the promises of huge salaries – commonly $800 or $1,000 a month, most of which they will send home to enrich their communities where the average earnings might be $3 a month.

Those who could not raise the money, or who come from countries where the operations are run differently, such as Uzbekistan, Madagascar and Moldova, can expect a period of indentured servitude, during which the “agency” which recruited theme takes all or nearly all of their earnings to repay the costs of their trip and arrangements, plus a fee and interest, and of course room and board. Someone who is arrested when her three-month visa is up, like Cristina from Bolivia, or who gets sick and cannot work, like Melanie from Madagascar, will go home owing thousands of dollars, which will not be forgotten by the traffickers, who know where she lives and her most vulnerable family members. Their employers, or the agency that hires them out, will keep their passports, if they have them, to ensure they do not escape before their debt is paid, or their contract is up, or until the employer decides they know too much about their rights and have picked up too much Hebrew to be good workers any more and they want someone new. Then the immigration police will show up at the woman’s house, with their passports in hand. This is what happened to two Thai women in my cellblock, conveniently at the exact time that they had been told they would actually start to get paid.

Most of the women became domestic workers, so legally they are not considered trafficked by israel, which covers only prostitution and other forms of overt sexual exploitation under its anti-trafficking laws.

u.s. Government to the Rescue?

I should back up and say that five years ago, israel had no law against trafficking at all. Following the fall of the USSR, israel jumped to the top of the list of destinations for trafficked women. Its strategic location makes it a prime transit point for women from Eastern Europe and Asia headed for the Gulf States. But israel also has a thriving sex trade of its own, estimated by an israeli study on the subject at 1,000,000 (one million) visits to brothels every month. Nearly all the women in these brothels, an estimated 3,000, are immigrants, and most of them are slaves. (“Women As Commodities: Trafficking In Women In israel 2003”) According to Levinkron, they are actually sold at auctions, and men who cannot afford a whole woman might team up to buy pieces of one.

In May 2000, Amnesty International issued a stinging report charging israel with doing almost nothing to stop trafficking. In response, israel quickly adopted a law imposing a maximum sentence of 16 years for sex trafficking, but according to a report by the Human Rights Hotline, “Enforcement of the law was minimal.” Presumably pressured by Amnesty’s findings, the U.S. State Department, which “is required by law to submit a report each year to the Congress on foreign government efforts to eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons” (2004 Trafficking In Persons Report), bumped israel down to “Tier 3” in its 2001 report.

The annual trafficking report lists foreign governments in four categories: those which are doing well in controlling trafficking, those which are doing something, those which are doing almost nothing, and those which are doing nothing or might be trafficking themselves. Those aren’t the formal designations, which are Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 3. Currently, a high number of Tier 3 countries (of which there are few) are on the u.s. government’s “enemies list,” (Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela) as compared with Tier 1, which includes all of western Europe except Switzerland and Greece. And of course, no one is rating the u.s.’s performance in discouraging trafficking within its own borders, which the government itself acknowledges is a huge problem, though not as huge as organizations like San Francisco’s Asian Anti-Trafficking Collaborative (AATC) find that it is.

A Tier 3 rating carries a possibility of penalties, including loss of u.s. aid. On the other hand, by initiating certain programs to fight trafficking, israel, as I’m sure you all know, already by far the largest recipient of u.s. aid, qualified for a special grant of $500,000, which helped them hire 500 new immigration police, build three new prisons to house immigrants pending their deportation, and convert Nazareth’s massive hilltop Renaissance Hotel, which was built to capitalize on the Millennium but sitting empty because of the Intifada, to a locked facility for trafficking victims.

Catch the drift? Like most u.s. government policies, the cure is often worse than the disease. In the u.s., federal anti-trafficking programs require trafficked people to cooperate with law enforcement in order to get services. According to israeli human rights organizations, “The women are still viewed in most cases as criminals rather than victims: there are still cases in which women who have chosen to testify against the traffickers are incarcerated.” My friend Anya, a 21-year-old from Uzbekistan, started out cooperating with the police and then decided she didn’t want to testify. After two months in prison, her israeli boyfriend came to visit her on the last visiting day before she was deported. The police at the prison tried to say that she was not allowed to have visitors because she had come into the country from Egypt, a made-up rule to punish her for not working with them. We encouraged her boyfriend to call the hotline, and after his six-hour hitchhiking trek from the north, they were allowed to see each other for five minutes, even though normal visits on visiting day were 20 minutes.

The state department’s 2004 report commends foreign governments for “a number of innovative anti-trafficking efforts.” One of these came from the United Arab Emirates, which in order to counter a trafficking racket using fake parents to smuggle Bangladeshi and Pakistani children into the country, performed DNA tests on 446 children, “and exposed 65 false claims off parenthood.” So that means that several hundred parents and children who were not engaged in any illegal activity had to undergo DNA testing because of their nationalities. Incidentally, the UAE, which is ranked Tier 2, is one of the prime importers of women from Asia. In one of the most egregious cases, Sarah Belakangon, who killed the man who raped her, only escaped death by stoning because of an intense international campaign.

Shortly after I returned to the States, I went to a presentation on trafficking in israel. Nomi Levinkron was there speaking, and most of the audience were liberal Jews who, I suspect, take some sort of sadomasochistic pleasure in hearing stories of israeli atrocities. We heard plenty, and of course people were shocked, but not nearly as shocked as they were by the speaker from the AATC. When she said, “I can tell you that someone is being trafficked into San Francisco tonight,” I heard a gasp go around the room.

She started with a story of a young Malaysian man who was recruited to work in a restaurant, promised a salary of $1,000 a month, only to learn after he got to San Francisco that $800 of that was taken to cover room and board and $150 to pay back his flight, leaving him $50 for himself and to send home. He was imprisoned in the back of the restaurant and beaten when he tried to run away. She said that she used that story as her case study, because the media only covers high-profile sexploitation cases like the discovery of preteen slaves held by Balireddy Lackireddy, owner of the popular restaurant Pasand in Berkeley, which is inexplicably still thriving five years later.

The u.s. government “estimates that over half of all victims trafficked internationally are trafficked for sexual exploitation,” which means the new israeli law is covering at most half of the cases of “21st century slavery” in that country. GABRIELA Network works against trafficking in the Philippines, where in the last ten years people, and especially women, have become the nation’s leading export. The government depends on the “remittances” these “foreign contract workers” send home to pay its huge debt to the IMF and World Bank. Nora, a Filipina friend in jail, told me that the government sold fertile banana growing land to israel for cultivation, in exchange for the exclusive right to export women to work as "metaplot," officially caregivers for elderly people but often expected to do a range of domestic chores as well. Two years ago, before israel started its massive deportation effort, there were 60,000 Filipinas officially working in israel.

GABRIELA considers all trafficking of women sex trafficking, whether it is for “sex work” or for domestic work, because it is all based on the increasing commodification of women and women’s bodies. Moreover, says Levinkron, women working as maids or in child care or elder care are often raped by their employers and even by their employers’ friends, their lack of documents leaving them extremely vulnerable to threats or overt force. Women and children are transported for a range of activities from sweatshop labor to stripping to panhandling – a group of deaf Mexican women was trafficked to the u.s. to panhandle on subways.

A University of California study published in 2003 “identified 57 forced labor operations in ... California … involving more than 500 individuals from 18 countries.” Most of the workers were from Thailand, Mexico and Russia, but 5% were u.s. citizens.

Femicide in Mexico: An Unnatural Disaster

The problem with the u.s. government’s approach to trafficking, as with its approach to almost everything, is that it is viewed as an individual “criminal justice” problem of the type you would see on “Law and Order.” “In addition to the individual misery wrought by this human rights abuse, its connection to organized crime and grave security threats such as drug and weapons trafficking is becoming clearer.” (State Department TIP Report 2004) Its report lists the causes of trafficking as “criminal elements, economic hardship, corrupt governments, social disruption, political instability, natural disasters, and armed conflict,” and says that “the 21st century slave trade feeds a global demand for cheap and vulnerable labor.”

So who exactly is it who demands “cheap and vulnerable labor”? Is “economic hardship” a naturally occurring phenomenon, like aphids or something? And who is the main perpetrator of "armed conflict" tbese days from Sudan to Iraq? It doesn’t mention the global corporations who prowl the globe looking for new sources of even lower waged workers, destroy native pigs to replace them with ones that will only eat Monsanto corn, thus wiping out the ability of communities to sustain themselves, or the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment programs which force the prices of formerly lucrative crops such as coffee to nothing while demanding that countries like Vietnam promote “tourism” (read “sex tourism”) in order to qualify for loans.

They certainly do not mention the backlash against women in every sector of the u.s. and the institutions it controls.

Chihuahua State in northern Mexico has had between 500 and 5,000 women disappear in the ten years since NAFTA went into effect. The higher number actually comes from a government source, according to a speaker at a recent event featuring Patricia Cervantes, whose daughter, Neyra, was one of 400 women found raped and murdered in Chihuahua. The Mexican government has for the last five years refused to seriously investigate the deaths and the disappearances. Instead, they have looked for individual men to blame for specific murders, including Neyra’s cousin, David, who confessed under torture. Many of the disappeared women are believed to be trafficked to the u.s. or other destinations. Patricia explained how the destruction of the Mexican economy by NAFTA created the conditions under which Neyra and the other women have been murdered.

The neoliberal economic policies imposed by NAFTA and enforced by institutions like the World Bank and IMF are destroying the traditional sources of income in the Mexican countryside. NAFTA forbade the Mexican government to protect the price of rice, while the u.s. government can offer massive subsidies to u.s. rice producers. So the traditional financial base is wiped out, and women as well as men must go to the cities to find work in factories, where they are much more vulnerable to abuse. 70% of the workforce in Ciudad Juarez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, are women, mostly young and the principal supporters of their families, because of multinational corporations’ preferences for a docile workforce. Under NAFTA, the southern state of Chiapas has lost 30,000 workers a year to the u.s., a total of 300,000, almost 10% of its population. Corn, which has been the center not only of Mayan economy but also of its culture, has been devastated, and that in turn undermines women, who have been traditionally the keepers of the culture. In the Philippines, ancient rice fields have been converted to golf courses or production of cut flowers.

The u.s. military does not condone prostitution but demands that prostitutes outside its bases in the Philippines be tested every other week for STDs and prevents soldiers who rape Filipinas from being prosecuted by that country. While the state department takes such a strong anti-trafficking stance in other countries, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2003 (IMBRA) provides a 90-day return policy for mail order brides in the u.s.

People inundated with “Sex and the City,” where lawyers and journalists only care if they have enough shoes and big enough breasts, may not see the tragedy in women from the former Soviet Union with advanced degrees in economics or biochemistry going to israel or the u.s. to work as maids and strippers.

Women Are Organizing

Women are organizing around the world to demand serious action by their own governments and by the global powers which often control their governments and their economies.

-- The Association of Mothers in Juarez and Chihuahua, of which Patricia Cervantes is a member, is campaigning to pressure both their own government and the u.s. government to stop the rash of femicides and disappearances. They point out that there is a bilateral commission to investigate trafficking of stolen cars, but not one to investigate the trafficking in women. To learn more about the femicides and disappearances in Juarez and Chihuahua, and how you can help, see http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/Juarez%20and%20Chihuahua/, http://www.backspace.com/notes/2003/11/04/x.html.

-- Stop CAFTA! The Central American Free Trade Agreement, patterned on the ever-so-successful (at devastating local economies) NAFTA, is being pushed through the Central American governments right now. See what you can do to stop it: www.stopcafta.org.

-- GABRIELA Network mobilizes to support women’s autonomous organizing in the Philippines and around the world. To get involved, schedule a speaker or get information, see www.gabnet.org.

-- For more information about trafficking in israel, see http://www.adva.org/WomenasCommoditiesEngPR.htm. For more on trafficking in California, see http://www.hrcberkeley.org/download/freedomdenied.pdf.

BECAUSE …

8000 Palestinians are currently being held as political prisoners by Israel, including around 370 Palestinian children and 100 Palestinian women. These prisoners face forms of torture and mistreatment during their arrest and detention, and are consistently denied family and lawyer visits.

… April 17th is the International Day in Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners.

… The International Committee of the Red Cross is responsible for maintaining contact with prisoners, delivering clothes and other essential items and monitoring the conditions of detention and ensuring compliance with international laws regarding rights of prisoners. The International Committee of the Red Cross in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is not carrying out frequent visits to central Israeli prisons and has failed to deliver urgently needed supplies.

… Eighteen-month-old Nour Ghanem and his mother, Manal Naji Mahmoud Ghanem, are currently imprisoned in Telmond Prison and are denied needed medical care and adequate nutrition. Nour’s relatives are not allowed to bring toys for him to play with.

PROTEST TO FREE ALL PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
MONDAY, APRIL 18
noon – 1:00 p.m.
Bay Area Red Cross Office
85 Second Street, SAN FRANCISCO
This action called by the Justice In Palestine Coalition in solidarity with 100s of actions to be held around the world that day
For info Kate 510-381-1287

Teach-in on Torture
April 28, 2005
Noon-10:00 p.m.
UC Berkeley
12:00 – 1:00 p.m. rally against Torture, Sproul Plaza (upper level)
1:30 p.m. Does US promote torture?
4:00-6:00 Legal & political battle against US-sponsored terror
7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Building a national movement against US-backed torture and war crimes
For complete schedule, speakers and locations, www.tortureteachin.org