Gays
Float War Boat
Join
the Free Bradley Manning Contingent at SF Pride
20th
Annual Dyke March
9th
Annual Trans March
Adrienne
Rich
Alan
DeWayne Blueford
Maurice
Sendak
Tumbling,
Fruit and Light
May
Day, Earth Day, Revolution Every Day
ACT
UP Roars Back
A
Year of Revolution in Bahrain
THE
MOCHA COLUMN
Gay
Marriage Hurts My Breasts
Keeping
Politics Out of Pride
Murder,
Self Defense, Mutual Aid, and The State
OUT
OF TIME
Gays Float War Boat
The
president has posed a hard question to the nation. “My fellow Americans,
what is long and hard and full of seamen?”
With that lead-in, the commander-in-chief announced the
commissioning of the first out gay ship in the nation’s history, though
there has long been speculation about the USS Abraham Lincoln. The submarine
is to be equipped with gaydar-controlled cruise missiles. It is to be named
for gay sailor Harvey Milk.
“Nothing could be more appropriate than to name a
battleship for an antiwar activist who had to be in the closet while in the
Navy,” the president said, with his trademark gaze into the distance.
The Pentagon explained that the president has evolved on
this issue since seeing the moving biopic, “Milk:
The Cleve Jones Story.” Hot Wiener, local politico and leader of the
GaysAreStraightToo Democratic Club, noted that he has a special affinity with
submarines. “It’s my favorite
sandwich,” he said.
The San Francisco-based Old Lesbian Dowagers Clamoring
Over War occupied the lobby of the Old Federal Building on Monday, demanding
that the nation’s stealth air craft program be christened after lesbian Del
Martin.
“Lesbians are, after all, proudly invisible,” said
OLDCOW spokesman and leader, Bob Braggert.
Join the
Free Bradley Manning Contingent at SF Pride
Sunday, June 24
Meet up at 9:30 am
Howard and Main Streets
20th
Annual Dyke March
Saturday, June 23
6:00 pm
18th and Dolores
9th
Annual Trans March
“Trans Generations: Define Your
Moment”
See & Be Seen @ Dolores Park
3:30 – 6:30 pm
March to UN Plaza @ 6:30
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne
Rich died in March of this year. She was 82 and the cause of death was
complications of rheumatoid arthritis. Rich was one of the most influential
poets of the last 60 years and she brought the oppression of women and
lesbians to the forefront. She was one of the most widely read poets in this
country and in her poems and essays, wrote about progressive issues and
especially about the disenfranchisement of women in a society run by men. The
personal, the political and the poetical were always linked in everything she
wrote.
When I lived in Portland in the 1970’s, as a younger lesbian in a
different world, I had friends who
wrote poetry and I went to poetry readings
and I tried to see what was good in all that. It didn’t come easily
but Adrienne Rich’s poetry was readable and I could even understand what she
was saying and appreciate the way she was saying it. Tho I haven’t read very
much poetry since, I can still remember the effect she had on me.
I know now that she had that effect on millions of people. I learned
that poems didn’t have to be obscure or abstract but they could affect how I
saw the world. Rich herself never thought that verse alone could change
entrenched social institutions. “Poetry is not a healing lotion, an
emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy,” she said in 2006, on
receiving its medal for distinguished contribution to American letters.
“Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard.”
But rather she saw poetry as a way women’s lives could be illuminated.
Rich became active in the civil rights and anti-war movements in the
1960’s and came out as a lesbian in 1976 in her book, ‘Twenty-One Love
Poems’; a book considered at the time “dangerous and disarming.”
For her part, she made no apologies for her writing or herself. “I
write as woman, lesbian and feminist,” she said in 1981. “I make no claim
to be universal, neuter or androgynous.”
Rich lived in Santa Cruz for years and taught at the university.
She never stopped writing and speaking about radical ideas and
movements, even if they were unpopular. She supported women political
prisoners in this country and in 2009, she signed on to the Cultural and
Academic Boycott of Israel. Her statement explaining her decision was so
eloquent that we are reprinting most of it here: “As an American Jew, over
almost 30 years, I've joined with other concerned Jews in various kinds of
coalition-building and anti-Occupation work. I've seen the kinds of organized
efforts to stifle—in the US and elsewhere-- critiques of Israel's
policies--the Occupation's denial of Palestinian humanity, destruction of
Palestinian lives and livelihoods, the "settlements."
Until now, as a believer in boundary-crossings, I would not have endorsed a
cultural and academic boycott. But Israel's continuing, annihilative assaults
in Gaza, and the one-sided rationalizations for them have driven me to
re-examine my thoughts about cultural exchanges. Israel's blockading of
information, compassionate aid, international witness and free cultural and
scholarly expression has become extreme and morally stone-blind. Israeli Arab
parties have been banned from the elections, Israeli Jewish dissidents
arrested, Israeli youth imprisoned for conscientious refusal of military
service…U.S. media, institutions and official policy have gone along with
all this.
To boycott a repressive military state should not mean backing away from
individuals struggling against the policies of that state. So, in continued
solidarity with the Palestinian people's long resistance, and also with those
Israeli activists, teachers, students, artists, writers, intellectuals,
journalists, refuseniks, feminists and others who oppose the means and ends of
the Occupation, I have signed my name to this call.”
In a 1984 speech she summed up her reason for writing. What she and her
sisters-in-arms were fighting to achieve, she said, was simply “the creation
of a society without domination.” How could anyone say it better?
Alan DeWayne Blueford
On May 6, police shot and killed 18-year old Alan DeWayne
Blueford near 90th Avenue and Birch in East Oakland. Initially, opd claimed he
had shot at the cops and wounded one in the foot, but it soon became clear
that the officer had been wounded by a police weapon. On May 12 over 100
people marched to the east Oakland police station to demand justice for Alan,
and on May 15 several hundred people, including people from Occupy Oakland and
Occupy the Farm joined the family in bringing the issue to the city council
meeting. Civil rights attorney John Burris is representing the family.
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak, the highly unusual children’s writer
and illustrator, died on May 8 at 83.
According to a New York Times article:
“His hatreds are fierce and grand, as if produced by Cecil B. DeMille.
He hates his uncle (who made a cruel comment about him when he was a boy); he
hates anything to do with God or religion, and Judaism in particular (“We
were the ‘chosen people,’ chosen to be killed?”); he hates Salman
Rushdie (for writing an excoriating review of one of his books); he hates
syrupy animation… ‘I hate people,’ he said at one point, extolling the
superior company of dogs, like his sweet-tempered German shepherd, Herman
(after Melville).”
He also hated Where the Wild Things Are, by far his
most famous book.
Sendak did not come out until 2008, one year after the
death of his lover of 50 years, a psychoanalyst named Eugene Glynn.
He told Stephen Colbert, in a hilarious interview
broadcast a few months ago, that his favorite of his books was the
controversial In the Night Kitchen. The
controversy is because it’s about a boy named Mickey who has a naked dream.
Sendak drew Mickey with a penis because … well, because boys have
them. Another of his favorites
(also beloved by members of LAGAI) was Higgledy Piggledy Pop, about a dog
named Jennie who goes off to join the circus and doesn’t come back.
Here’s an excerpt from one of our favorite Sendak
books:
PIERRE: A Cautionary Tale
There was once a boy named Pierre
who only would say, “I don’t care!”
Read his story, my friend,
for you’ll find at the end
that a suitable moral lies there.
CHAPTER I
One day his mother said
when Pierre climbed out of bed
“Good morning, darling boy,
you are my only joy.”
Pierre said, “I don’t care!”
Tumbling, Fruit and Light
By
Lisa
Tumbling makes rocks and sand shiny and smooth in rivers
and beaches or like the rock tumbler set a friend had that we meant to use but
never did. Now tumblr is a web-based blog site where people grab images and
words from places on the web and post them on their own site and then they get
re-posted again … on and on. And what gets posted most? Images of sex and
sexualized images, of course. Its
easy to add spice by re-posting images of lesbians or group sex or what we
used to call “kinky” sex in between the banal statements about life and
love and sadness. Each image is
its own context as they tumble by or converge in sense and nonsense.
The love that once dared not speak its name is rolling
across the internet and even tumbling off the tongue of the President.
But does this tumbling make it shiny and smooth? Or is it wearing the
images and words away until their meaning is gone?
When being lesbian or gay or trans or queer was transgression – we
had sharp edges and made the world around us squirm with discomfort and
sometimes change. Now as we are tumbled towards the mainstream where the
couple is the center of the world with marriage and divorce as prime demands,
sometimes it feels like other queers and their “supporters” are trying to
knock off all our rough edges.
Why seek liberation and create families of choice when you can be
accepted and live “just like” a nuclear family?
And on the other side of the screen, the stone fruits are
ripe – apricots and cherries tumbling into bags at the farmers market -- and
the light is getting longer still as we tumble towards summer solstice. When
we dared not speak of it, perhaps the long nights of winter tumbling between
the sheets were prime-time for queer sex? Or like Brokeback Mountain, were the
long days of summer the queerest if you could get far enough away from
civilization? And now that images
of queer sex are tumbling across the internet do the seasons matter at all to
those in thrall to the screen?
But the world cannot be ignored and the debris from
Fukushima are tumbling onto the shores along the west coast although no one
has a plan for cleaning them up. And
the radiation is still spilling into the ocean more than one year later—it
continues its tumbling course across the pacific—Brownian motion, currents
and tides all conspiring to bring us these gifts.
Perhaps hiding in the internet would be safer if it were only possible.
Some of our friends are tumbling into new homes and new
paths in wheel chairs and on skateboards and others are tumbling along
effortlessly as aikido rolls -- while I am still working on my handstand and
tumbling into walls still looking for ripe fruit, love, and revolution.
If you want to help track the debris heading for the
coast (most of which are likely not radioactive according to government
scientists), check out http://usresponserestoration.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/track-marine-debris-japanese-tsunami/
they even have an app for it!
May Day, Earth Day, Revolution Every Day
by Tory
Often I think of November 2, the first Occupy Oakland general strike, during
which massive numbers of people marched on the Port of Oakland after a day of
mass actions targeting banks, big corporations, capitalism, all that is wrong,
demanding everything that is good for all our communities.
The outpouring of people at the port in the evening felt like a
celebration, a carnival, a real rising tide of resistance.
Just for a minute I had the feeling that worldwide revolution,
insurgency, upheaval might really happen.
On December 12, OO targeted the port again with a second port shutdown,
in the face of an enormous criticism from the powerful, now becoming nervous
about repeated port shutdowns. Still,
in the face of this pressure, enough people went to the Port to shut it down
again, this most deserving of political targets, as no money from the port
goes to help Oakland, not for schools, for roads or other infrastructure.
Since that glorious time Occupy has been trying to find
its rebel way without the encampment to give a specific community-building
focus. A number of successful barbeques were held in various parts of Oakland,
bringing Occupy to those communities. Oakland
Occupy Patriarchy also had a vibrant BBQ. Recently there has been twitter
noise and even the odd article saying that Occupy Oakland is dead.
The last Oakland Occupy Patriarchy meeting discussed the feeling of
discombobulation in the movement after the fractious lead-up to May Day.
One person said they cry often over the loss of the encampment, but
went on to express optimism about new things ahead for this movement.
The Occupy movement as a whole put out a call for a
general strike on May Day: No Work! No School! No Business as Usual!
Locally, Decolonize Oakland called for a coalition to organize a mass
immigrant rights/labor May Day March in keeping with a long standing
tradition. Decolonize is a group
of Queer People of Color and People of Color who left Occupy Oakland in
December 2011 after proposing to the Occupy Oakland general assembly that the
name be changed to Decolonize Oakland because the word occupy evokes the
vicious historical occupations of indigenous land and people.
Decolonize Oakland also presented careful criticisms of Occupy Oakland
around racism sexism and homophobia. The
May Day coalition included immigrant rights groups, fired Pacific Steel and
American Licorice Company workers, other unions, people from Occupy Oakland
and Occupy San Francisco, as well as nonprofits and various left groups.
I represented Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism! (QUIT!) and LAGAI-Queer
Insurrection. I also started out
representing Occupy Patriarchy but that group became increasingly ambivalent
about the coalition.
Occupy Oakland also began its own May Day organizing
group. They planned three strike
stations with different themes: the anti capitalist, anti gentrification and
anti patriarchy stations. The plan
was to have different marches and direct actions with reconvergences
throughout the day. People from OO
also worked on a coalition to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, called Occupy
the Bridge, in support of ferry and bridge workers who have been working
without a contract.
The May Day coalition began planning a large mass
march. People from the immigrant
rights groups insisted on applying for a permit from the city, feeling it
would make it easier for the undocumented community to participate.
People from these groups spoke eloquently and with great feeling about
that the community of undocumented people has been left out of the political
process for far too long and if it took a permit to help make participation
more possible, then we needed to get permits.
Occupy Oakland, on the other hand, took a principled stand against all
permits. A protracted set of
negotiations went on between the Dignity and Resistance March/May Day
Coalition and Occupy Oakland. Occupy
Oakland agreed to put time and space between more militant actions which might
bring police repression and the Dignity and Resistance march.
The OO General Assembly passed a resolution to support the march.
No agreement was reached about permits, including a permit for the use
of Oscar Grant Plaza. People in OO
felt strongly that no permit should be taken on the plaza because it was the
contested place of the encampment. Some feared that a permit for some part of
the day would give the police more license for brutality when the permit
ended. There was also much
discussion of maintaining solidarity against the idea that there are
“good” protesters and “bad,” an idea constantly pushed in the
mainstream media. The immigrant
rights people in the coalition wanted to work with OO and at the same time did
not feel comfortable letting go of any part of the permitting of the march and
the rally at Oscar Grant Plaza. A
brief abortive attempt was made to put out a joint statement, but in the end
the groups worked separately. It
is important to note that the coalition included a number of people from OO
who attempted to bridge the political gap throughout the process.
Other complicated relationships existed between the
Dignity and Resistance Coalition and Oakland Sin Fronteras, a nonprofit who
has organized the immigrant rights march in Oakland for the last five years.
They were actively invited to participate in the coalition,
particularly because they had been doing this work previously.
They came to one meeting early on, then came to the last meeting right
before march saying they would provide security if they could be the lead
contingent. The coalition had
already made a decision to have the Pacific Steel workers lead the march and
had been working on a plan for security. While
the coalition wanted the support of Oakland Sin Fronteras, who were bringing a
flat bed truck, a community of young Latino activists and a lot of experience,
they could not agree to this very last minute proposal.
Oakland Sin Fronteras participated on May Day but left
the march just as it arrived at San Antonio Park, before it went to Oscar
Grant Plaza. They left when a group of people from Occupy Oakland, some
dressed as black bloc, tried to get into the front of the march.
There are varying descriptions of this event; some people say that the
“black bloc people were rude and hostile,” others from OO saying that this
group wanted to join the march in support. Oakland Sin Fronteras may have
always been planning to leave the march at this point, but the black bloc
people were the reason they gave for leaving when they did.
May Day, in part because of the previous eight months
of organizing and political work spurred by Occupy Oakland, for the first time
in my memory entered the consciousness of the mainstream.
ABC actually felt compelled to explain the history and worldwide
importance of May Day to workers and immigrants.
The California Nurses Association struck sutter hospitals on May Day
and any nurse who went on strike was subsequently locked out for the next four
days. The International Longshore
Workers Union which has a contractual right to suspend work for one day a
month for a union meeting chose to do it on May Day so the Port of Oakland was
shutdown on the day shift. The
Golden Gate Bridge District employees including ferry operators went on strike
on May Day causing a disruption of the morning commute.
The unions stopped short of supporting the call to close down the
golden gate bridge (there’s a shock).
Although the organizing for the Dignity and Resistance
March seemed arduous, the march was quite wonderful. Somewhere between
7-10,000 people came, and in spite of the permits it felt like a militant
community uprising thronging the street. It
was led by the Pacific Steel workers. There
was a contingent from the American Postal Workers Union and Aztec dancers.
Decolonize Oakland made a boat-shaped float which said FREE THE LAND,
denouncing the colonization by Columbus. LAGAI
carried our QUEERS FOR OPEN BORDERS banner, which people really liked.
The march was big, strong and militant but got little coverage in the
mainstream press who favored showing police repression of Occupy Oakland.
The police, of course, were out in force, riding around in their
homeland security grant funded armored personal carrier and these dune buggy
affairs (your federal tax dollar at work).
They spent the day doing snatch and grab forays into OO demos, beating
and arresting people, with their usual single-minded anti occupy viciousness.
While May Day was unfolding, on April 22 -- Earth Day,
a group of people now known as “farmers” took over what is call the Gill
Tract, land owned by the University of California.
The farmer activists arrived with rototillers and 15,000 seedlings
which had been growing in various green houses just waiting for this radical
farming opportunity, and planted a two acre farm in the grand tradition of the
Brazilian landless peasant movements. The
Gill Tract is 10 acres of class 1 agricultural landed located in Albany
California. It was used for
agricultural research but in November of 2011 uc berkeley stopped the research
and announced that the land was to be used for a whole foods store, a
for-profit senior housing complex, ball parks and a dormitory.
In short, they want to pave it over!
Community people in the area have been fighting UC for the last decade
trying to use the land as an urban garden resource.
I made a number of visits to the farm, as did many from
the neighboring community, including the graduate student housing next door.
It is a big expanse, bordered with a wild patch of gone-to- seed fava
bean plants belonging to uc researchers who cooperated with the
farmer-activists. Within a couple
of weeks, the guerrilla farm was complete with scarecrows, chicken coops, a
mobile school house, a children’s garden and 70 rows of new vegetable
plants. I was greeted at the
entrance to the land by the welcome tent and a sweet person who brought my old
dog water. There was a huge
kitchen tent serving food to the farmers, staffed by many people from Occupy
Oakland, escaping the disagreements of the political organizing fray.
One said to me “I love it here; it is so peaceful”.
People were camping, playing music and a lot of people were watering
the little plants by hand, as immediately after the take-over the university
had shut off the water so irrigation was down by trucking in huge containers
of water and then hand watering. The
farm felt like a rest cure for the movement, something sufficiently militant
but noncontroversial, direct action urban farming everyone could support.
Three weeks later uc police locked the gates, arrested
nine people both inside and out of the farm, served 14 people with lawsuits
and named 150 john/jane doe defendants. This
was after constant police harassment with daily visits by the uptight
uniformed uc police reading dispersal orders and threatening farmers with
trespassing charges. First they
locked the gates so that water brigades had to be formed to get the water over
the fence and to the plants. A
slide was built so that children and others could slide into the farm.
The supportive researchers from uc tried to get in to start this
year’s research but were stopped by the police.
Finally it ended. The
police could be seen driving over the beautiful rows of vegetables for the
people, although the farming collective continues to resist uc and was last
calling for people to build planter boxes outside the farm gates.
Many from LAGAI went to the reconvergence march to the
Farm after the police crackdown. It
was spirited, militant, moving through the streets chanting FUCK THE COPS,
GROW CROPS. There was a rally
outside the gates of the farm and then the people were urged to get on the bus
or bicycle down to the Oakland city council to demand an end to police
violence and protest the murder of Alan Blueford, a young African American
murdered by the police in Oakland on May 6.
Many in the crowd did so.
While May Day was more recognized and bigger than ever
and as such was a success, the Oakland organizing suffered from never being
able to agree on a joint plan. In
New York the same political disagreements about permitted marches went on
between Occupy and the immigrants rights march, but they were able to work
together and had a really huge demonstration well attended by unions.
This fracturing leaves us open to COINTELPRO tactics and
scandal-mongering by the mainstream media, who are not interested in the real
issues but love controversy.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
ACT UP Roars Back
On April 6, about 250 Bay Area AIDS activists
commemorated the 25th anniversary of ACT-UP (New York) by marching from the
wells fargo bank in the Mission to the Mission Dolores, and then to Harvey
Milk Plaza. (The name ACT-UP was not used in San Francisco until 1988.)
At the church we threw the ashes of Stephen
Fish, a member of LAGAI, ACT-UP, and Stop AIDS Now Or Else. Waiyde Palmer, who
helped organize the march was quoted by Pride at Work in an email as saying
that the church’s regulations on sexuality, contraception, and a woman’s
right to choose “are mirror images of its attitude and policies toward
HIV/AIDS… If you oppose contraception on every level beyond the rhythm
method, as they do, then HIV is going to spread and unwanted and unplanned
pregnancies will occur. Both can be avoided if one has adequate access to
health care that isn’t shrouded in shame or religious doctrine.” Stephen
hated the church, the government, and all the other institutions that have
condemned millions in this world to die of AIDS, poverty, and oppression.
ACT-UP chapters still exist in a few cities
including New York, but ACT-UP/SF exists no more, after going through several
dysfunctional phases in the mid 1990s that included misogynist attacks and
AIDS denial.
Some of the activists who organized the
commemoration announced a meeting to re-start ACT-UP. Unconfirmed rumors have
them meeting some Thursday evening at Muddy Waters.
A Year of Revolution in Bahrain
by Kate
Bahrain is a tiny island kingdom in the Persian Gulf.
I never understood what a desert island was before I went to Bahrain.
It’s surrounded by water, dotted with palm trees and boasts miles of
beaches (which are off limits to most of the people), but the land is mostly
sandy and saline. Less than 1% of
the country’s GDP is from agriculture; they import nearly all of their food.
It’s an oil state and also the finance capital of the Arab world.
Of the 36 islands making up the archipelago, only 5 are
inhabited, and on those, the majority of the land is set aside for the king
and his cronies, making it one of the most densely populated countries in the
world.
Legend recounts that almost 5,000 years ago, Gilgamesh,
the epic hero, landed in Bahrain in search of paradise, where he is said to
have found the “flower of eternity,” aka the pearl.
Bahrain became famous for its pearls, which have a particular luster
due to the combination of freshwater springs and ultrasaline sea.
The country was colonized by the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the
Persians. It was conquered by
Portugal in 1521; the Portuguese were thrown out in 1602 by Iranian rulers,
who declared Shia Islam the official religion.
The Khalifa, a Sunni Muslim family from the Arabian
peninsula, has ruled Bahrain since 1820, mainly through an agreement with the
British Empire, which held it as a “Protectorate” until 1971.
In 1972 a constitution was enacted, providing for the election of a
National Assembly. The electorate
was defined as “native-born male citizens aged twenty years or older.”
After one election, the emir (king) suspended the constitution and
ruled the country under martial law until he died in 1999.
In 1994, partly inspired by the Palestinian intifada,
the Shia majority launched an intifada. Leftists,
liberals and Islamists joined in a sustained campaign of protest and civil
resistance, demanding the restoration of the constitution, democracy and
equality for all Bahrainis. Forty
people were killed and thousands jailed during the six-year uprising.
When Prince Hamad ascended to the throne on the death of his father,
Issa, he agreed to restore the constitution and institute democratic reforms,
leading to the end of the Intifada.
On February 14, 2001, he introduced a National Action
Charter, which was overwhelmingly ratified by the electorate (which included
women but not foreign nationals, who make up almost half of the population).
Under the charter, the National Assembly would include an elected lower
house which would have total legislative authority, and an appointed upper
house which would be strictly advisory. In
2002, however, Hamad unilaterally imposed the constitution, giving equal power
to the two houses, in effect allowing him and his appointees to override
decisions of the elected assembly. In
response, the leading opposition parties boycotted the elections.
On February 14, 2011, the anniversary of the National
Action Charter referendum, Bahrainis launched the first (and to date only)
Arab Spring uprising in the Gulf. Between
February and March, as many as 100,000 Shia citizens took over Pearl
Roundabout, the center of the city, which featured the iconic Pearl Monument,
built in 1982. (The Shia make up
about 70% of the Bahrini population of roughly 650,000, which means nearly one
in five Bahraini Shia actively participated in this intifada.)
On March 16, 2011, 1,000 Saudi Arabian troops and 500
police from the United Arab Emirates helped the Bahraini riot police – who
are nearly all foreigners from South Asia or Yemen – drive the people out of
the square using tanks, water cannons and massive amounts of tear gas.
On the morning of March 18, 2011, the government tore down the Pearl
Monument, announcing on state broadcaster BTV that the monument had been
“violated” and “desecrated” by the “vile” anti-government
protests, and had to be “cleansed.” In the government's haste, a migrant
crane worker was crushed to death by a falling cement arch.
In the aftermath of the brutal suppression of the
protests, the government arrested 20 doctors, nurses and medics who worked at
the main hospital, Salmaniya. They
were accused of various crimes including “using the hospital for a political
platform” and “inviting foreign media and other non-medics into trauma
areas.” They were also accused
of stockpiling weapons in the hospital. The
medics, many of whom were not actively involved in the uprising before their
arrests, believe they were arrested because they had witnessed the injuries of
those chased away from the square. After
six months of hearings and trial, some were sentenced to death, others to life
or twenty years in prison. In
response to an international outcry, the convictions were overturned and a new
trial ordered. The retrial is
currently in progress. All but one
of the medics were fired from their positions, as were many other government
workers. Hundreds of people were
imprisoned, most of those beaten and/or tortured.
Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, cofounder of the Bahrain Center
for Human Rights, was arrested along with his brother and two sons-in-law.
Abdulhadi was eventually sentenced to life in prison; his brother was
sentenced to seven years. Abdulhadi’s
jaw was broken during torture. On
February 8, he began his fourth hunger strike, demanding his freedom and that
of all political prisoners. He is
a Danish citizen, having lived there in exile between 1990 and 2002, and the
Danish government has requested that he be released to them, but the Khalifa
regime has not responded to their request.
In early May, the Bahraini high court ordered a new trial for fourteen
political prisoners including al Khawaja, but did not order them released on
bail. When he was on the brink of
death, after 70 days on hunger strike, the government began force-feeding him.
Zainab al Khawaja, a leading activist in her own right and the mother
of a two-year-old daughter, has been arrested several times for trying to
visit her father in the prison hospital.
Bahrain is a close ally of the united states.
The u.s. fifth fleet has been based there since the buildup to the
first Gulf war in 1990-91. In
2010, the U.S. gave Bahrain $19 million in military aid. In 2011, the aid was
held up by Patrick Leahy because of the government’s human rights
violations. Leahy chairs the senate appropriations subcommittee in the
Department of State and Foreign Operations.
Some u.s. media, especially the Washington Post, have also pointed out
the obvious double standard of helping to suppress a democracy movement in
Bahrain while professing support for the movements in other Arab countries.
I arrived in Bahrain on February 7, 2012, part of an
international group of witnesses invited by the Bahrain Center for Human
Rights and other local activists. The
many grassroots pro-democracy movements, which have continued demonstrating
daily over the last year despite the crackdown, were planning massive protests
to commemorate the one-year anniversary of what they call their ongoing
revolution. The people were
determined to return to Pearl (Lulu) Square on February 14, 2012.
Ahead of the planned protests, the government denied visas to all
international human rights organizations and most foreign journalists.
Even al Jazeera was forced to cover the protests from Qatr because they
could not get anyone into the country.
The activists feared that the government was planning a
bloodbath and wanted to avoid having any witnesses, so they reached out to
some people from the International Solidarity Movement whom they had met
through Palestine solidarity work and asked if we could come as observers and
citizen journalists. Voices for
Creative Nonviolence (formerly Voices in the Wilderness) and Code Pink also
recruited volunteers. We ended up
with a group of 12 internationals in the country by February 13.
By February 18, every one of us had been arrested and deported.
They used teams of undercover agents to track us down individually; the
Bahraini activists also suspected they were monitoring cellphones of those of
us who had put our numbers on press releases.
On February 14, as armored personnel carriers lined the
roads leading from the villages to the capital city, and tear gas filled the
streets outside the fancy hotels and banks in the center of town, I and five
others were arrested in three separate operations involving dozens of cops
armed with our names and photos. Some of us were accused of having
participated in “illegal” (unpermitted) gatherings.
Others were told they were being deported for the crime of not spending
all their nights in the country in the same hotel, or participating in
“nontourist” activities while on a tourist visa.
I had planned to spend about twelve days in the
country, but was deported after only one week.
During that time, I fell in love with the spirit of the people.
I went to demonstrations almost every day; some held at night in
villages after people got off of work, some during the day in the center of
the capital city as people made attempt after attempt to get back to Lulu
Square. Some of the demonstrations
were completely nonviolent on the part of the crowds; others involved a
diversity of tactics, including Molotov cocktails and stone-throwing.
The biggest, permitted marches I attended drew tens of thousands of
people, perhaps as many as 50,000. The
smallest involved a few dozen people.
All but one of the protests I attended was attacked by
riot police with tear gas; some were also attacked with water cannons, rubber
bullets, buckshot or birdshot. The
organizing groups buy gas masks by the case in advance of major
demonstrations.
People have developed creative forms of protest.
At the protests, they chant, “Down, down Hamad,” but it is illegal
to say that, so when people are in smaller groups, they beep out the rhythm on
their air horns or car horns. For
ten days leading up to the February 14 anniversary, people went up on their
roofs every night, in every village, and chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is
the greatest) for ten minutes. A
friend, Mohammed, explained that it is not really a religious chant, but
rather represents purification before a battle or test.
(You can hear this powerful expression of solidarity in the al Jazeera
documentary “Shouting in the Dark,” about last year’s uprising, which is
available online.)
Every demonstration I witnessed was at least half
women, and women were very active in organizing.
The movement in Bahrain does not seem to be gender segregated at all.
Most of the Shia women I met worked outside the home, many as lawyers,
doctors, engineers, journalists. I
met a woman – the sister-in-law of a friend – who runs a domestic violence
counseling program. Not everyone
was participating in the movement, but all of them supported it.
Someone who has not actively participated told me that she believes 50%
of the Shia supported the intifada in the 1990s, but 90% support the current
one. I also talked to the Filipina
maid who works for Nabeel Rajab, director of the Bahrain Center for Human
Rights, one of our hosts. She was
very supportive of the movement herself, saying, “We [the Philippines] won
our freedom in 1987. This is their
turn.” The taxi driver who drove
me from the airport, who was South Asian, also expressed support, though I did
not see any foreign workers participating in the demonstrations.
The government portrays the movement as orchestrated by
Iran and Syria to impose a Shia Islamist government.
The people are adamant that it is not about religion; they just want
equal rights for everyone in the country.
Zainab al-Khawaja said that at the beginning of the uprising last year,
one of the chants was “Shia and Sunni are brothers.”
Even when I asked people what they thought should happen to the king,
they said, “Well, he’s Bahraini, he should be able to live here like
anyone else. We are against the
regime, not the person.”
In early May, Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Center for Human
Rights and one of the people who hosted our delegation, was arrested at the
airport after a trip to Lebanon. Nabeel was charged with “insulting the
statutory bodies”. The charges were based on tweets deemed “insulting”
to the Ministry of Interior. Nabeel is one of the leading tweeters in the Arab
world, with over 140,000 followers. On
May 12th, Mr. Rajab was again presented before the Public Prosecutor, who
informed him of a new case against him for charges of “calling for and
participating in an illegal gathering”.
He is scheduled to return to court next week.
Just as I arrived in Bahrain, the obama administration
had sent to Congress a request for $54 million in arms sales to Bahrain.
Partly because of the publicity we were able to do about the repression
of the demonstrations, working with sympathetic journalists at home, that deal
was put on hold. However, the
administration made plans to go ahead, by breaking up the deal into smaller
ones that do not require Congressional approval.
Two weeks ago, when the crown prince was in washington, hillary clinton
announced that the u.s. would be resuming arms shipments to the Bahraini
regime.
The regime receives more than arms from the u.s.
They have also hired a u.s. public relations company, Qorvis, to manage
their spin. Qorvis’s other
clients include the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Sugar
Association, the Smithsonian, Adobe and GQ magazine.
The khalifa regime has also hired John Timoney, former police chief of
Philadelphia and Miami, as a consultant in crowd control.
Timoney was the chief during the republican convention in Philadelphia
in 2000, when police broke into activist convergence spaces and ransacked them
for puppets, and arrested organizers preemptively for talking on cellphones.
Working with John Yates, a former London police commissioner, Timoney
was the architect of the plans for suppressing the demonstrations around
February 14 as well as the recent Formula One Grand Prix, an annual car race
which was met by large protests.
Timoney explained to u.s. press that it is legitimate
to use violence to quell demonstrations if they threaten to tie up traffic or
interfere with business. (Sound
familiar?) I couldn’t help
wondering if they didn’t think that shooting onto the highway and filling
downtown with tear gas might be more disruptive to business and traffic than a
peaceful demonstration.
But as our dear departed friend Joan Kaye used to say,
“They don’t make them bosses because they’re smart.”
We continue to send international observers to Bahrain.
Check out www.WitnessBahrain.org (@WitnessBahrain) for news, interviews
and video.
THE MOCHA COLUMN
By Chaya and Deni
MOVIE REVIEWS
The Hunger Games: When we first heard about The Hunger
Games, it sounded violent and weird (teenagers forced to kill each other and
it’s all televised), but Deni knows some progressive teachers who have read
it with their classes and recommended it. So out of curiosity, we read the
book. The story takes place in Panem, a futuristic country (formerly North
America before the apocalypse). The wealthy Capitol controls the surrounding
12 poor districts with a brutal, repressive, Big Brother style, as punishment
for a failed rebellion against the Capitol. Our heroine is 16-year-old Katniss
Everdeen, played in the film by Jennifer Lawrence. Katniss winds up as one of
the representatives from her district to fight to the death in the annual
games, for the amusement of the Capitol. Author Suzanne Collins, who
co-produced and co-wrote the screenplay, says that her inspiration came from
flipping by a reality show on one t.v. channel and the invasion of Iraq on
another; this juxtaposition "began to blur in this very unsettling
way" and the idea of a ruthless government forcing people to fight to the
death as popular entertainment was born.
Chaya: I liked the book and I
liked the movie, and I tried not to hold it against the movie just because
it’s the successor to the blockbuster adolescent franchise after Twilight
(we abandoned the first Twilight movie about half way through). Unlike
Twilight, Hunger Games has some interesting political themes about government
control, authoritarianism, and use of economic class (keep the people poor and
starving) as a political strategy. When Collins was asked in an interview what
she hoped readers of the book would come away with, she said, “Questions
about how elements of the book might be relevant in their own lives. And, if
they're disturbing, what they might do about them.” The violence was there,
but it wasn’t much compared to your average episode of CSI.
Jennifer Lawrence is the best
actor to come down the pike in a long while (we loved her in Winter’s Bone).
As with all novels that get made into movies, most of the details and
backstories have to be cut, which makes the movie shallower than the book. But
the movie had a few other things going for it besides Jennifer Lawrence.
Collins (you can see some of her previous work if you watch Clifford the Big
Red Dog on PBS, no violence there) has a spare style, and the book was not
terribly descriptive about what District 12 (an Appalachian coal mining area),
or the Capitol looked like. Taking a cue from Oz’s Emerald City, the
movie’s visual creation of the Capitol was pretty spectacular, with its
fantastical styles and colors. The movie also did a really good job of
depicting how the Gamemakers manipulated the games as they progressed. And
Collins has created a very strong, self-sufficient, pro-active character in
Katniss Everdeen. Which is why it was a tad crushing that Collins also created
not 1 but 2 male love interests for Katniss. Oh well, you can’t have
everything and I guess Collins didn’t share my idea that Katniss was the
second coming of the Amazons.
The movie provoked many controversies. Some reviewers
felt that Jennifer Lawrence was miscast as Katniss because she didn’t look
like she had been starving her whole life. Oh my. First of all, the body
standard for female actresses seems to have no bottom, they just can’t be
thin enough no matter how very very thin they may be. Jennifer Lawrence is
definitely thin, but she’s very athletic (“toned” as they say about
women) and she has curves. She could be a real woman! L.V. Anderson of Slate
pointed out that nobody complained about Lawrence’s buff male co-stars.
Responses to an audience poll by MTV reported that most found criticism of
Lawrence's weight “misguided.” Lawrence herself said, “Girls should
never put their health at risk just because they feel they must attain some
ideal of beauty that is both ridiculous and risky. It’s not right and it’s
not healthy. I’m just so sick of these young girls with diets. I remember
when I was 13 and it was cool to pretend to have an eating disorder because
there were rumors that Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie were anorexic. I
thought it was crazy. I went home and told my mom, ‘Nobody’s eating bread
– I just had to finish everyone’s burgers.’ I think it’s really
important for girls to have people to look up to and to feel good about
themselves.” Sounds like Amazon material to us!
Deni: I liked the book in the beginning but about half
way through, it began to bother me, and this same unease carried over to the
movie. There was something slightly shallow/manipulative in the writing of
plot and characters that left me vaguely on edge. Also, the “love
interests” were annoying in the book, and worse in the movie. Though I did
feel that the book described District 12 and gave me a picture of Katniss’
home, the visuals in the movie made the contrast very pronounced between the
poverty of District 12 and the wealth and abundance of architecture, food, and
clothing in the Capitol. I followed the “racial controversy” that arose
through blogs on racialicious.com, the controversy being the racist reaction
of some white fans of the book to the casting of three black characters in the
movie, two of whom are clearly described in the book as black. Through back
and forth online commentary, one can hope that these fans will actually learn
from their racist reactions and be willing to challenge their own
preconceptions. As for the movie, I wanted it to hit as hard as Winter’s
Bone, to get deep inside in that way. I think the characters are fighting a
slight glibness of writing and Hollywood, in addition to the Capitol…
Monsieur Lazhar: This excellent French Canadian film
takes place at an elementary school in Montreal. A teacher kills herself in
the classroom, and the school is in grief and shock. Bachir Lazhar, an
Algerian immigrant, is hired to take over the class. He tells no one that he
himself is in grief and shock from his own personal tragedy. He has a few
other secrets also. Engagingly played by Mohamed Fellag, Mr. Lazhar tries to
adapt to the cultural differences between Montreal and Algeria, but often he
isn’t even aware that he has done something wrong (for example, on his first
day at the school, he has the students rearrange their desks from a semicircle
back into more traditional rows). The movie explores the themes of loss,
cultural differences, educational techniques and teacher-student relationships
with depth, but director-screenwriter Philippe Falardeau avoids the big cheesy
Hollywood moments that would have detracted from the charm of the film. Great
acting from the supporting cast including Sophie Nélisse as Mr. Lazhar’s
favorite student, Alice. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.
This stunning film stayed with us for days after. See it!
The Last Mountain (review by Cole): Appalachia is
pretty much off the national radar screen, which may explain why the mountain
top coal mining that's decimating the region doesn't get much attention.
This documentary points out why our myopia needs to be corrected. Communities
adjacent to the sites are subject to shocking rates of cancer, autism, and
asthma -- all of which is serving to de-populate the area - but the impact
reaches further to poison large segments of the water supply in the South. The
film chronicles residents' efforts to organize against the coal companies and
highlights women's leadership in the struggle. The description of the
depth and breadth of the companies' influence is chilling and it's
acknowledged that Democrats share the blame with Republicans. The
locals are successful in developing a proposal for a wind turbine project that
would generate more energy than the coal, create more jobs than mining and
significantly increase county tax revenue (not surprisingly, the coal
companies enjoy a special tax break). While it's unclear whether
this project will come to fruition, the organizers' courage, dedication
and creativity are heartening. Seeing this movie is a priority!
Habibi (review by Deni): Director-screenwriter Susan
Youssef's film won the best Arab feature award at the Dubai Film Festival for
this film drama that she’s been working on since 2002. The movie, shot in
Occupied Palestine, was based on an ancient Sufi parable with a “doomed
lovers” theme. Political issues throughout the film range from the effects
of the Israeli occupation on life in Gaza (where the two main characters
lived), political tensions/differences within the Palestinian community, to
the feminist struggle of Layla to control her own life, opposed by her family
and the community at large. Unfortunately, the film was quite disappointing on
many levels. The writing and script were more trite than challenging and the
film was poorly edited, with some important scenes chopped and less important
scenes dragged out. The character Qays (Layla’s lover) was annoying and
naively jeopardized both families’ safety in a way that didn’t seem
believable. The film’s ending was unnecessarily confusing. Despite some good
acting by Maisa Abd Elhadi (Layla), we hoped for a more forceful film. This
wasn’t it.
Autumn Gem: This documentary about Qiu Jin (1875-1907), a
Chinese radical women’s rights activist, has been shown internationally, on
Chinese TV in the U.S. and in many Bay Area locales. The film was made by
local artist-filmmaker-media workers Rae Chang and Adam Tow. It tells the
story of Qiu Jin who defied traditional female roles and became the first
woman leader of a revolutionary army, attempting an armed uprising against the
Qing dynasty. Her role in this uprising was discovered and she was executed in
1907. She was part of the nationalist struggle that put Sun Yat Sen in power
in 1911, and worked with him in exile in Japan. She was an eloquent orator who
spoke out for women's rights, such as the freedom to marry, freedom of
education, and abolishment of the practice of foot binding. She was also an
accomplished poet, fond of martial arts, and known by her acquaintances for
wearing Western male clothing, and for her left-wing ideology. Qiu Jin is a
well-know heroine and martyr in China, but largely unknown in the U.S. When
the filmmakers themselves (both American born Chinese) realized they’d never
heard of Qiu Jin, though their parents (born in China) were familiar with her
story, they decided to make this first documentary in the U.S. about her. With
a combination of dramatic recreations, archival materials, and interviews with
scholars, Qiu Jin and her struggles are illuminated. There are striking
performances by Li Jing, a martial artist and Hollywood stunt actor who
portrays the adult Qiu Jin, and by Melissa Chin, a martial artist who plays
Qiu Jin as a child, which add to the strength of this film. Check out the
website autumn-gem.com for more info. We leave you with a first line from one
of her poems: “Don't tell me women are not the stuff of heroes…”
In Time (review by Cole): Science fiction has the
potential to raise political issues in a creative fashion; In Time achieves
that goal. Perhaps as homage to Bladerunner, the movie is set in a
near-future Los Angeles where time has replaced money as the medium of
exchange. Everyone is guaranteed the first 25 years of life; after that,
you must earn, borrow, steal or beg time to ensure your continuing
existence (how the human race arrived at this point is never explained, but
I'm a big fan of artistic license). Inequities in time possession have
become the substitute for uneven distribution of money, with
usurious time lending institutions serving as a comment on check cashing
centers' pay day advances. Justin Timberlake (who does a better job than
you might think) is the beneficiary of a rich guy's generosity and
decides to go full throttle in beating the system. While the film may not
be great art, there's a good enjoyment level and a popular culture
display of undisguised anti-capitalist sentiments provides a pleasant
surprise.
BITS AND PIECES
DOLL (Dangerous Older Lesbians Leafleting): Ok, truth in
reporting compels us to admit that only one of the lesbians (Deni) is
“older,” but we couldn’t resist the acronym. QUIT (Queers Undermining
Israeli Terrorism) started a leafleting campaign at Cliff’s, the
ever-popular hardware/all-purpose store in the Castro.
The campaign (which is not a boycott of Cliff’s) is aimed at
encouraging Cliff’s shoppers to tell Cliff’s to stop carrying SodaStream.
SS is a product that fizzes up water and there’s an international boycott
against it because the product is made in illegally occupied Israeli
territories, (though labeled Made in Israel so it can continue to get the tax
breaks). Prior to leafleting, we spoke with the housewares buyer at Cliff’s
to give him the info and the choice to stop carrying the product on their own.
The housewares buyer said that “Israel seems to be working within the
relative rules of an occupying country.” (Whew… kind of a low bar!) The
first time we leafleted, Cliff’s warned us we were violating the law by
standing on “their” sidewalk and threatened to call the cops. When we told
them to go ahead and call, they did! The cops (both women, of course –
we’ve come a long way, baby) came and (surprise surprise) finally decided we
were in fact legally allowed to hand out leaflets. However, one cop strongly
warned that we were blocking the sidewalk when we engaged in even a 1 minute
conversation with someone about the leaflet, so we had to STAND BACK or be
cited. What an advance in the defense of our civil liberties! But keep track
of the main issue here: go into Cliff’s – whether you shop there or not
– and tell them to STOP carrying SodaStream!
And Speaking Of Boycotts: Actress Emma Thompson (loved her
in Sense and Sensibility and Angels in America) and director Mike Leigh
(Secrets and Lies, Vera Drake – two of our favorites of his many films) were
among a number of leading British actors, directors and authors challenging
the Globe to Globe World Shakespeare Festival, part of the London Cultural
Olympiad. GTGWSF invited an Israeli theater company, which performs for
settlers on illegally occupied Palestinian land. In an open letter published
in The Guardian (a major British newspaper) the signers say the Israeli
National Theatre, Habima, “has a shameful record of involvement with illegal
Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
They call on Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London to
withdraw the invitation “so the festival is not complicit with human rights
violations and the illegal colonization of occupied land.” Habima is
scheduled to perform The Merchant of Venice in Hebrew at the Globe on May 28
and 29 as one of 37 Shakespeare plays in 37 world languages during the seven
week festival. The Globe’s response to appeals from Israeli, Palestinian and
British campaigners to withdraw Habima’s invitation has been a resounding
no, with the tired chestnut that the World Shakespeare Festival “must be
inclusive and keep channels of cultural communication open.” David Calder, a
British actor who’s played many Shakespearian roles there, said that Habima
“placed itself outside the general case of ‘bridge-making culture’ by
being prepared to play before a segregated audience of illegal settlers in a
theatre from which Palestinians themselves are barred.” Calder said that
leading Israeli company Habima is part of “a cultural fig leaf” for
Israel’s daily brutality. We really like that “cultural fig leaf” phrase
– you may see it again in the MOCHA column…
Cultural Fig Leaf Hits Philly Queer Community: About 20
people gathered outside the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Philadelphia on May 3
to demonstrate against the decision of the “Equality Forum” (a group which
coordinates LGBT month in Philadelphia) to have Israel as this year’s
“featured nation.” Equality Forum is also partnering with the Israeli
Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Brand Israel and
Pinkwashing were targeted at the protest. It was truly nauseating to look at
the website for this event and see the Israeli flag shining on a globe filled
with rainbow flags. Wait! We still have some stunning “No Pride In
Occupation” bumper stickers left over from QUIT’s campaign against holding
“World Pride” in Tel Aviv in 2005. Perhaps our queer Philly Palestinian
supporters could use them…
Spin This One, George Orwell: On May 8 and then again on
May 19, both Israeli authorities and Zionist settlers uprooted olive trees and
leveled fields in the Palestinian villages of Beit Ula and Beit Amar near
Hebron. Bulldozers demolished stone terraces and uprooted irrigation networks,
claiming that the land was Israeli state property. The MOCHA column is
wondering if perhaps this will be the next exhibit site for a current
exhibition at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum entitled “Do Not Destroy:
Trees, Art, and Jewish Thought.” The exhibit’s online description says
that “The tree is a universally potent symbol with particular significance
in Judaism, especially now as global environmental concerns have begun to
impact contemporary Jewish practice. The title of the exhibition Do Not
Destroy (Bal Tashchit in Hebrew), is taken from a commandment in the Torah
(Deuteronomy 20:19) that forbids the wanton destruction of trees during
wartime. This concept has been broadened to encompass humanity’s
responsibility to shield all of nature from unnecessary harm.” We guess
“all” really means “ABP” – all but Palestinians.
You Win Some, You Lose Some: The list of honorees of the
Presidential Medal of Freedom was announced at the end of April. Some of the
honorees are truly amazing people, like Toni Morrison, the author of so many
stunning, heart-rending books, and Gordon Hirabayashi, who openly defied the
forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
However, Israeli president Shimon Peres is also on the list (he left his own
party in 2005 to support Ariel Sharon, the butcher behind the 1982 massacres
in Sabra and Shatila). Sharon is joined on the list by Bob Dylan, who in 1983
wrote a horrible Zionist song “Neighborhood Bully” and just this last
summer ignored the cultural boycott of Israel to play a concert in Tel Aviv.
Clearly, these two will have a lot to talk about.
Stand-Your-Ground Not Just for Florida: We’ve all been
appalled by the justification of the murder of Trayvon Martin under
Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law, but did you know that California has a
similar rule? Court decisions going back 100 years have held that you can use
whatever force in self-defense is needed if you reasonably believe that you
are threatened with death or serious injury from an attacker. If you’re on
your front porch, you don’t even need to go in the house! Just shoot first,
ok? Deriving from old English law, this Castle Doctrine (no duty to retreat)
will protect you. Your home is your castle, after all (well, it was back in
merry old England if you were a white, male landowner). Since 2005, over 20
states have passed laws expanding the right to use deadly force in
confrontations. Go ahead, make my day, and overturn these laws.
LAGAI Leads Lesbians: Some years ago, LAGAI held a great
Queer Divorce rally at Harvey Milk Plaza. (You remember Harvey Milk – the
gay anti-war supe who may have a battleship named for him!) Though not a fan
of “gay marriage,” the rally anticipated how much fun/fury could be had at
the sure-to-be divorces. Now, taking its cues from LAGAI, the state of
Maryland’s highest court has just ruled, in a case brought by two lesbians
married in California, that gay couples can divorce in Maryland, although the
state itself does not permit same-sex marriage. (Got it?) Ok, let’s see you
evolve to that, Obama! That’s yes on divorce, no on marriage…
WOOF
WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF
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