That’s true of accounts of political awakening as well, especially for those of us born into unearned privilege as a result of systems of illegitimate authority. Not only do we love to tell stories in which we come out looking good, but we know how to decorate the narrative with the trappings of humility to avoid seeming arrogant.  We use our failures to set up the story of our transformation; even when we speak of our limitations we are highlighting our wisdom in seeing those limitations.

So when I got a request from a researcher to tell my story about how my political consciousness was raised, I was hesitant. I don’t like feeling like a fraud, and something always feels a bit fraudulent about my account, even when I am being as honest as I can. But, like most people, I feel driven to tell my story, mostly to try to explain myself to myself. So here I go again:

As a teenager coming of age in the 1970s in mainstream culture in the upper Midwest, I missed the United States’ radicalizing movements by a decade and several hundred miles. I developed conventional liberal politics in reaction to the conventional conservative politics of my father and his generation. But in a more basic sense, I grew up depoliticized — like most contemporary Americans, I was never taught to analyze systems and structures of power, and so my banal liberal positions seemed like cutting edge critique to me. After college I worked as a journalist at mainstream newspapers, which further retarded my ability to think critically about power; reporters who don’t have a political consciousness coming into the field are unlikely to develop one in an industry that claims neutrality but is fanatically devoted to the conventional wisdom.

The raising of my consciousness began when I started a journalism/mass communication doctoral program in 1988, a time when U.S. universities were somewhat more intellectually and politically open than today. After years of the daily grind in newsrooms, I felt liberated by the freedom to read, think, and talk to others about all the new ideas I was encountering. My study of the First Amendment led me to the feminist critique of pornography, which at the time was an important focus for debate about the meaning of freedom of expression. My first graduate courses were taught by liberal defenders of pornography, who were the norm in the academy then and now. But I also began talking with activists in a local group that was fighting the sexual-exploitation industries (pornography, prostitution, stripping), and I realized there was a rich, complex, and exciting feminist critique, which required me to rethink what I thought I knew about freedom, choice, and liberation.

As a result of those first conversations, I started reading feminist work and taking feminist classes, and I kept talking with folks from the community group, which led me to get involved in their educational activities. I didn’t make those choices with any sense that I was constructing a radical philosophical and political framework. I was just following the ideas that seemed the most compelling intellectually and the people who seemed the most decent personally. Those ad hoc decisions changed my life in two ways.

First, they opened up to me an alternative to the suffocating conventional wisdom, in which liberals and conservatives argue within narrow ideological boundaries. This exposure to feminist thinking, especially those people and ideas most commonly described as radical feminist, allowed me to step outside those boundaries and ask two simple questions: Where does real power lie and how does it operate, in both formal institutions and informal arrangements?

Second, they helped me realize the importance of always having a political life outside the university. Instead of putting all my energy into my teaching and research, I was anchored in a community project and connected to people who weren’t preoccupied with publishing marginally relevant research in marginally relevant academic journals. Although I had to publish scholarly articles for my first six years as an assistant professor, once I got tenure and job security I immediately returned to community organizing and ignored the pseudo-intellectual pretensions that dominate in most of the so-called scholarly world in the social sciences and humanities. I had developed respect for rigorous and relevant scholarship but had come to realize how little of it there was in my fields in the contemporary academy.

From those first inquiries into the sexual-exploitation industries and the role of a pornographic culture in men’s violence, I continued to think about how power is organized and operates around other dimensions of our identities and statuses in the world. After opening the gender door, it was inevitable that I would have to open the race door. From there, questions about the inherent economic injustice in capitalism and the violence required for U.S. imperial domination of the world became central. Finally, I began thinking more about how human domination of the living world is destroying the ecosphere’s capacity to sustain life as we know it.

All of those inquiries led me to the same conclusion: We live in a world structured by illegitimate hierarchies and based on a domination/subordination dynamic. For those of us with unearned privilege, the rewards for ignoring this conclusion are whatever status and money we can squeeze out of the system, while the cost of capitulation to power is a surrender of some essential part of our humanity. More than 20 years after embarking on this investigation, I can see that clearly. But when I first started confronting these issues, I only knew that the conventional wisdom seemed inadequate, that the platitudes uttered by people in power seemed empty, and that the rationalizations offered by the intellectuals in the service of power seemed self-serving. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew I didn’t want that kind of career or life.

All that seems clear to me now, but it wasn’t at the start. The researcher’s query that prompted this essay asked about my “earliest consciousness-raising memory.” I have no simple answer, because my awakening was such a gradual process. But there were some moments along the way, such as the day I read Andrea Dworkin’s 1983 speech entitled “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape,” in which she asked men for “one day in which no new bodies are piled up, one day in which no new agony is added to the old.”¹ In that speech she pointed out that feminists don’t hate men, but instead “believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.” ²

I also remember the crucial role of one friend in the anti-pornography group, a white man who was older than I and was a part of not only the feminist movement but the civil-rights, anti-war, and environmental struggles. He provided me with a model for how someone with privilege could contribute to radical politics in a principled fashion. In my book on pornography, I wrote about one particularly important moment with Jim Koplin, when we talked about my motivation in volunteering with the group:

“If you want to be part of this because you want to save women, we don’t want you,” he said. At first I was confused — wasn’t the point of critiquing the sexual exploitation of women in pornography to help women? Yes, Jim explained, but too many men who get involved in such work see themselves as knights in shining armor, riding in like the hero to save women, and they usually turn out not to be trustworthy allies. They are in it for themselves, not to challenge masculinity but to play out the role of heroic man in a new, pseudo-feminist context. You have to be in it for yourself, but in a different way, he said.

“You have to be here to save your own life,” Jim told me.

I didn’t understand exactly what he meant at that moment, but something about those words resonated in my gut. This is what feminism offered men — not just a way to help those being hurt, but a way to understand that the same system of male dominance that hurt so many women also made it impossible for men to be fully human. ³

Jim challenged me to ask myself why I was there and what I hoped to gain, and I came to understand that my interest in feminist politics was driven in large part by my own alienation from traditional definitions of masculinity. For me to tell a simple story about doing the right thing, implying nobility on my part, wasn’t going to cut it.

More than 20 years later, I’m still wrestling with these questions about why I make the choices I make. I am a man who is part of a feminist movement and a white guy who critiques the white supremacy deeply embedded in mainstream culture. I am an American who opposes U.S. imperial foreign policy and a middle-class academic working with a local group that organizes immigrant workers. For these efforts, I get attention and praise that is disproportionate to my effort and ability, a fact I point out as often as possible. People sometimes listen to me not because I’m smarter than feminist women, but because I am a man. My writing on race is not better than the work of non-white authors, but I’m appreciated because I’m white.

This is the tricky part of my awakening story. I was lucky to learn to see the world from the point of view of those who struggle against power, and I’m rewarded in many ways when I speak, write, or act in public in these movements. But I recognize that those rewards are unfair, and so my professed humility becomes another mark of my alleged sophistication. Yet if I were to refuse to use my privilege — if I dealt with this angst by fading into the background — I would be throwing away resources that come with my position in the world and which I can offer to these movements.

I am trapped, yet I am trapped in a system that makes my life relatively easy. Even when there is some threat of punishment for my political activities, such as during the fallout from critical essays about U.S. war crimes that I wrote after 9/11, I have so much support from outside the power structure and so much privilege as an educated white guy that I never really felt threatened. Even if I had been fired from my university position after 9/11, I likely would have landed on my feet.

I realize not all who adopt a critical perspective, even those in privileged categories, fare as well as I have. But in recent decades in the United States, in which dissent by people who look like me is mostly tolerated, there has been no widespread repression of people in the privileged sectors. People in targeted groups (particularly immigrants, Muslims, Arabs) have had to be careful, and there’s no guarantee that a more widespread repression won’t return to the United States, especially as U.S. power continues to decline around the world and elites get nervous. But for now, white men with U.S. citizenship are pretty safe. We may risk losing a job, but that’s trivial compared with the fates suffered by radicals in other eras in U.S. history or in other places today.

So, here’s my consciousness raising story summarized: I wandered through the first 30 years of my life mostly oblivious to the workings of power, protected by my privilege. For the past 20 years I’ve been struggling to contribute to a variety of movements for social justice and ecological sustainability, getting my consciousness raised on a regular basis whenever I seek out new experiences that push me beyond what I have come to take for granted (lately for me that has been happening at 5604 Manor, our progressive community center in Austin, TX). Although I love teaching and put considerable energy into my job as a professor, my community and political activities are just as important to me — and a greater source of intellectual vitality. If consciousness-raising is an ongoing project, it’s not likely to happen in moribund institutions such as universities but will come through engagement with people taking real risks in political work.

That’s as accurate an account as I can offer about how I became, and continue becoming, the political person I am. But telling this story always makes me a bit queasy; I have yet to find a way to describe my political development that doesn’t sound self-aggrandizing, as if I am casting myself as an epic hero.

That longstanding discomfort in telling my story is further complicated by new concerns in the past few years. More than ever I’m aware that no matter how high anyone’s consciousness in the United States is raised, there may be very little we can do to reverse the consequences of modern industrial society’s assault on the living world. I don’t mean that there is nothing we can or should do to promote ecological sustainability, but only that the processes set in motion during the industrial era may be beyond the point of no return, that the health of the ecosphere that makes our own lives possible may be compromised beyond recovery.

In contemporary left/progressive organizing, we typically focus on those small victories we achieve in the moment and on a vision for social change that sustains us over the long haul. With no revolution on the horizon, we pursue reforms within existing systems but hold on to radical ideals that inform those activities. We are willing to work without guarantees, bolstered by a faith that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” ⁴ That’s supposed to get us through; even if our movements don’t prevail in our own life time, we contribute to a better future.

But what if we are no longer bending toward justice? What if the arc of the moral universe has bent back and the cascading ecological crises will eventually overwhelm our collective moral capacities? Put bluntly: What if homo sapiens are an evolutionary dead-end?

That’s the central problem with my consciousness-raising story. When I was politicized 20 years ago, I made a commitment to facing the truth to the best of my ability, even when that truth is unpleasant and painful. My ideals haven’t changed and my commitment to organizing hasn’t waned, but the weight of the evidence suggests to me that our species is moving into a period of permanent decline during which much of what we have learned will be swamped by rapidly worsening ecological conditions. I think we’re in more trouble than most are willing to acknowledge.

This is not an argument for giving up on or dropping out of radical politics. It’s simply a description of what seems true to me, and I can’t see how our movements can afford to avoid these issues. I’m not sure I’m right about everything, though I am sure this analysis is plausible and should be on our agenda. Yet it’s my experience that most people want to push it out of view.

In trying to make sense of my political consciousness-raising, I try to avoid the temptation to cast myself as an epic hero who overcomes adversity to see the truth. That’s a struggle but is possible when one is part of a vibrant political community in which people hold each other accountable, and for all my fretting in this essay, I think I’ve done a reasonably good job of keeping on track. We can overcome our individual arrogance.

More difficult is facing the possibility that the human species has been cast as a tragic hero. Tragic heroes aren’t characters who have just run into a bit of bad luck but are protagonists brought down by an error in judgment that results from inherent flaws in their character. The arrogance with which we modern humans have treated the living world — the hubris of the high-energy/high-technology era — may well turn out to be that tragic flaw. Surrounded by the big majestic buildings and tiny sophisticated electronic gadgets created through human cleverness, it’s easy for us to believe we are smart enough to run a complex world. But cleverness is not wisdom, and the ability to create does not guarantee the ability to control the destruction we have unleashed.

Not every human society has gone down this road, but we live in a world dominated by those who not only exhibit that arrogance but embrace it, refusing to accept the reality of decline. That means our individual awakenings may be taking place within a much larger dying. To face that is to live in a profound state of grief. To stay true to a radical political consciousness is to face that grief.

1. Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone: Writings 1976-1987 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1988/Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books 1993), pp. 170-171
2. Ibid., pp. 169-170.
3. Robert Jensen, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Boston: South End Press, 2007), p. 9
4. “Where Do We Go From Here?” (annual report to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), August 16, 1967

In 1966, then University of Puerto Rico economics associate, Dr. Antonio J. Gonzales said:

The Puerto Rican Independence Party bases its struggle in favor of the independence of Puerto Rico on the conviction that we continue to be a (US) colony, thus being denied (our) right to freedom and sovereignty.

After taking over in 1898, America “never granted Puerto Ricans the total control of their lives and destiny. Sovereign powers have never been transferred to us in order to be able to decide in all those areas that affect the collective life of our nation.”

For over 112 years, America’s had total control, Puerto Ricans virtually none, forced to “accept the dispositions of laws imposed” by a colonial power. In its relationship with America, Puerto Rico is called “Estado Libre Asociado” (Free Associated State or Commonwealth). Under international law, it’s a colony, seeking independence. Therein lies the roots of its struggle, Oscar Lopez Rivera imprisoned for supporting it.

A collective 1981 statement by Puerto Rican Independentistas, convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” said the following:

Our position remains clear: Puerto Rico is a nation intervened, militarily conquered and colonized by the United States….We are prisoners of war captured by the enemy. Our actions have always been and continue to be in the nature of fighting a war of independence, a war of national liberation….The US interventionist government has absolutely no right, no say so whatsoever in regards to Puerto Rico, ourselves, or any Puerto Rican prisoner of war. The US interventionist government has only one choice….and that is to GET OUT! It is our right to regain and secure our national sovereignty. Nothing will stand in the way of achieving our goal.

The struggle continues, Rivera one of its victims. The web site prolibertadweb.com calls him and others like him:

“workers and professionals, students and teachers, community organizers, artists, mothers, and fathers of families. They are fighters (for) Puerto Rico’s Independence and social justice.” They reject colonization and exploitation. They’re committed  activists for justice, struggling to end it.

Each year for decades, the UN Decolonization Committee approved a draft resolution for Puerto Rican independence, the latest one on June 21:

calling on the Government of the United States to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence, and for the General Assembly formally to consider the situation concerning Puerto Rico, which the world body had not formerly taken up since the Territory’s removal from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1953.

….a majority of petitioners expressed dissatisfaction today with the commonwealth’s treatment by the United States, arguing that the administering Power was hampering Puerto Rican decolonization initiatives and those of civil society….(America) continue(s) acting as a colonizing Power over a country with its own cultural identity.

Background on Rivera

Born in 1943 in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico, he moved to America at age 12, then two years later to Chicago to live with his sister. A decorated Vietnam veteran, he returned home to his Puerto Rican community, plagued by unemployment, drugs, police brutality, and dire levels of healthcare, education, and other essential social services – issues he was determined to address.

He helped create the Puerto Rican High School and Cultural Center. He co-founded the Rafael Cancel Miranda High School (now called Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School). He worked for public school bilingual education, for universities to admit more Latino students and hire Latino faculty and staff, and for Chicago area corporations, like Illinois Bell, People’s Gas and Commonwealth Edison, to end discriminatory hiring.

He became an organizer for the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), ASSPA, ASPIRA, and Chicago’s First Congregational Church. He also helped found FREE, a half-way house for convicted drug addicts, and ASAS, an educational program for Latino prisoners at Illinois’ Stateville Prison.

He also worked for Puerto Rican independence. In 1974, he helped organize the committee to “Free the Five” (Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irwin Flores, Oscar Collazao, Lolita Lebron, and Andres Figueroa Cordero). In 1975, he was forced underground with other comrades after the Justice Department named him an FALN leader (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional – Armed Forces of National Liberation).

On May 10, 2001, FBI Director Louis Freeh described the organization as follows to the Senate Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Select Committee on Intelligence, under the heading: “Left-wing and Puerto Rican extremist groups,” saying:

….left-wing (domestic terrorists) generally profess a revolutionary socialist doctrine and view themselves as protectors of the people against the ‘dehumanizing effects’ of capitalism and imperialism. They aim to bring about change in the United States through revolution rather than through the established political process.

Terrorist groups (like FALN), seeking to secure Puerto Rican independence from the United States through violent means, represent one of the remaining active vestiges of left-wing terrorism….they view….acts of terrorism as a means by which to draw attention to their desire for independence….Acts of terrorism continue to be perpetrated (by) violent” separatist groups like FALN.

Rivera’s Arrest and Imprisonment

On May 29, 1981, he was arrested, the FBI calling him one of America’s most feared fugitives. Accused of being an FALN leader, he neither confirmed or denied it, affirming only his nonviolent activism. At trial, he refused to participate, declaring himself a “prisoner of war.”

In 1981, he was convicted of armed robbery, miscellaneous charges, and seditious conspiracy – sedition pertaining to actions to incite insurrection or rebellion; conspiracy by working with others to achieve it.

Initially sentenced to 55 years, 15 more were added in 1988, based on spurious charges of participating in a conspiracy to escape, that sentence to begin when the original one ends.

In 1999, the Clinton administration offered him and 11 other Puerto Rican nationalists clemency. He declined, saying it required him to serve 10 more years with good conduct. Had he accepted, he’d have been free a year ago.

His sister, Zenaida Lopez, said he refused because on parole, he’d be in “prison outside prison.” Incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terre Haute, IN, July 27, 2027 is his scheduled release date unless  paroled and accepts or gets unconditional clemency sooner.

Punitive Sentencing and Treatment

The “ProLIBERTAD campaign for the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war” called sentences given “Puerto Rican patriots excessive and punitive.” On average, men got 70.8 years, women 72.8, 19 times longer than average in the year they were sentenced, real criminals faring much better.

For example, from 1966 – 1985, average murder sentences were 22.7 years; rape, 12.5 years, and arms violations 12. Only 12.8% of all federal prisoners got over 20 years. Most often, only repeat offenders get longer sentences. No Puerto Rican “patriot” had a prior record at time of arrest.

Worse still, they’ve been harshly treated in prison, in violation of UN Minimum Uniform Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners (UNSMRTR), Rule A1 6(1). They’ve been held far from families despite facilities closer to home. Some have been sexually assaulted, Alejandrina Torres attacked in three different prisons, in one case by prison guards and a male lieutenant. She was then held in solitary confinement for complaining.

They’ve been denied adequate medical care. Some have been held in underground confinement, Rivera, in 1993, describing his treatment at Marion, IL maximum security as follows:

I am enclosed in a cell that is 8 feet wide by 9 feet long on an average of 22 hours each day. Today while I write this letter, I have been 36 hours without going out and tomorrow if they do not take us out it will have been three days without moving from this same space. In this little space I have everything. From eating my meals to taking care of my needs. So it is my dining room and latrine at the same time. My bed is a slab of cement. And the whole cell is painted the same dead yellow color. From an aesthetic point of view, it is as attractive as a jail for zoo animals.

In 1987, Amnesty International (AI) condemned Marion conditions, saying:

In Marion, violations of the (UN) Minimum Standard Rules (for treating prisoners) are common. There is almost no rule in the Minimum Standard Rules that is not broken in one form or another.

In 1988, AI called conditions in Lexington, KY’s Maximum Security Unit for women “deliberately and gratuitously oppressive.”

The same holds for all federal and state maximum security facilities and many others, prisoners routinely abused, especially political ones.¹

From 1986-1998, Rivera was held in punitive maximum security confinement, and remained in max facilities until 2008. Only then was he transferred to a medium security prison on condition he report every two hours to corrections staff, an unheard of stipulation. Currently at FCI Terre Haute, his mailing address is:

Oscar Lopez Rivera
87651-024
FCI Terre Haute
PO Box 33
Terre Haute, IN 47808

A Final Comment

In early January 2011, likely the first week, Rivera will appear before the US Parole Commission after nearly 30 years in prison. Supporters are urged to download, print and sign the attached letter and mail it to the following address:

Chairman Isaac Fulwood, Jr.
US Parole Commission
5550 Friendship Blvd.
Suite 420
Chevy Chase, MD 20815-7286

In addition, the National Boricua Human Rights Network urges signers to email gro.sthgirnamuhaucirobnull@rodracir so they can keep track of supportive letters.

“Together,” they say, “we can help free Oscar Lopez Rivera!”

1. Earlier articles explained here, here, and here.

Founded in a rural region of Maryland dominated by the poultry industry, the sanctuary provides a haven for hens, roosters and ducks who have escaped or been rescued from the meat and egg industries or other abusive circumstances, such as cockfighting. Not surprisingly, pattrice and company take things further than your average sanctuary. “We work within an ecofeminist understanding of the interconnection of all life and the intersection of all forms of oppression,” she explains. “Thus we welcome and work to facilitate alliances among animal, environmental, and social justice activists.”

As the sanctuary begins a move from Maryland to Springfield, Vermont, I thought it would be the perfect time ask pattrice a few questions, via e-mail:

Mickey Z.: What led you to such work? Why hens, roosters, and ducks?

pattrice jones: We found a chicken in a ditch. Seriously. Miriam Jones and I (then partners, and still family) were both experienced social justice activists when we inadvertently landed in poultry country, having moved “back to the land” with Green Acres dreams of going off grid. At the time, it was not uncommon for birds to flee to freedom by jumping from transport trucks, and “growers” for the poultry industry would sometimes let us rescue birds they were supposed to cull (the industry has since tightened its transport and security procedures.) One bird became two then five then thirty-five… within six months of finding the first bird, we incorporated the sanctuary.

MZ: Fortunately, there are many animal sanctuaries but I’m curious to know more about what you call the ‘gendered form of animal exploitation.”

pj: That first chicken was a rooster we originally mistook for a hen. I had to work hard to feel the same way about him once I knew he was a rooster. He was the same tenderly friendly bird he’d always been, but all of those “rooster” ideas — cocky, aggressive, etc. — were interfering with my ability to see him clearly. That got me thinking about the ways that people project gender stereotypes on animals and then read them back as evidence that traditional sex roles are natural, a process I have come to call the social construction of gender by way of animals. So, when we got an urgent call about 24 roosters who had been living together peacefully but all other sanctuaries had turned away under the theory that so many roosters cannot possibly get along, we said yes. Besides livening up the place, that colorful crew inspired us to try to figure out a way to rehabilitate roosters used in cockfighting, which we have done.

MZ: What do you mean when you say “rehabilitate roosters”?

pj: Roosters confiscated from cockfighting operations used to be automatically euthanized, on the presumption that they were too aggressive to ever live peacefully with other birds. But that’s the propaganda of cockfighting enthusiasts, who argue that they are just watching roosters doing what comes naturally. In fact, chickens — like the wild jungle fowl from which they descended and to whom the birds used in cockfighting are very nearly genetically identical — naturally live in flocks in which multiple roosters coexist peacefully. Roosters in the wild fight to the death only against predators, not against each other! They sometimes will have highly stylized fights with each other, but these are not the pitched battles to the death that we see in cockfighting.

MZ: Why do fighting roosters fight?

pj: Raised in isolation and constant frustration, they never learn the social signals by which roosters resolve their conflicts and figure out their places in flocks. Prior to cockfighting bouts, they are often injected with testosterone and methamphetamines. In the bouts, they face opponents who, like themselves, have had their combs shaved (so they look more like a hawk than another chicken) and their spurs augmented by sharp blades. It’s kill or be killed. What we do is give former fighters the chance to learn, by observation and gradual participation, the social skills they need to coexist peacefully with other birds. We give them a safe space from which to do this and, over time, recover from the trauma to which they have been subjected.

MZ: Your approach with the roosters sounds like a logical, compassionate strategy for any living thing that has undergone trauma.

pj: Right. We all — or at least all social species — need the same things when we’ve been traumatized, including safety or sanctuary and the chance to restore the relationships (with others and within ourselves) that have been strained or severed by trauma. I talk about that, for people, in my book Aftershock. In relation to animals, I’m happy to be working with Gay Bradshaw of the Kerulos Center and other members of the new International Association for Animal Trauma and Recovery; we’ve all been thinking hard about how to apply what we know about trauma and recovery among people to the task of helping animals who have suffered human-engendered trauma.

MZ: So now you’re bringing this approach to a new location?

pj: Our move to a larger property in Vermont, a small state with 33 factory farms serving the dairy industry and adjacent to Maine (the home of the infamous DeCoster egg factory) will allow us to expand our bird rescue capacities and also expand our activism to include dairy, which — like cockfighting — is a gendered form of animal exploitation.

MZ: How can readers help and get involved?

pj: Because we were founded in one rural agricultural area and are now moving to another, we depend entirely on support from afar to fund our programs. Because we are a small and chronically underfunded sanctuary, even small donations make a big difference. And we fall all over ourselves with gratitude for those who can afford to give more and do. Folks can find donation information on our website.

If you live in a big city, another way to help out with money is to hold a vegan pot luck fundraiser at your house. Eat, watch a movie like Peaceable Kingdom or Chicken Run, and then pass the hat for the sanctuary.

In terms of volunteering, folks who live near our new location in Springfield, Vermont might want to pitch in on coop cleaning and grounds maintenance. We need folks in our original locale, on the Delmarva Peninsula, to occasionally help out by driving local birds to sanctuaries in Maryland and Virginia. As we expand our rooster rehab program, we’ll be needing folks up and down the east coast to sign up to sometimes drive birds to us from wherever they might be confiscated by authorities after a cockfighting bust.

We need everybody to have a look at the information and ideas on our website and then subscribe to our blog so that they will receive action alerts as we continue and expand our efforts to fundamentally reform food and agriculture while building bridges among social justice, environmental, and animal liberation activists. We’re going to be coordinating a new, explicitly feminist, campaign concerning dairy later this year. Watch for it!

You can e-mail pattrice at: gro.sdribevarbnull@yrautcnas.

Website: http://www.bravebirds.org

Diana Block’s recently published book Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back is the personal tale of one such supporter. A white North American women involved in the feminist, lesbian and gay rights and new left movements in the United States of the 1970s primarily as a member of the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC), Ms. Block joined forces with other white North Americans to support the endeavors of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN ) in its endeavor to free Puerto Rico. Her support resulted in several years underground as the result of her partner’s entrapment in an FBI sting operation. The tale she tells in these pages is the story of those years and the decisions and circumstances that brought her to them. It is also the story of her family’s lives underground. For those who were involved in or at least paid attention to the left in the 1970s and 1980s there will be descriptions of moments that jog the memory. For those that didn’t, this will open their eyes to the reality that existed within Ronald Reagan’s morning in America.

This is a very political book. It is also a very personal book. It is about lives determined as much by one’s political beliefs as they are by personal emotions and about the juncture between the two. It is about very political people in an apolitical time. Many of those who had been involved in the antiwar and antiracist moments of the 1960s and 1970s were moving their lives into more conventional arenas that involved making money and buying things. Others, meanwhile, had drifted deeper into the life of the street and poverty, leaving their political personas behind in the daily struggle to survive. Meanwhile, the men and women involved in leftist groups like Prairie Fire Organizing Committee were existing on the fringes of US society trying to figure out how to maintain a political relevance. It may have been that existence on the outside that colored the decisions they made: going underground when they maybe should have involved themselves in a more public type of organizing; adopting immovable positions that alienated them from other groups with similar agendas, to name a couple such decisions.

Block’s memories of that period are consistently evocative and occasionally emotionally wrenching, compelling the reader to stay glued to the text. Her reflections on the thoughts about how the decisions made by her and her partner Claude Marks affected the lives of their children and families reveal caring and thoughtful parents whose politics are motivated by a love as deep as the love they have for those closest to them. They also provide an insight into the difficulties involved in living a life of resistance inside the belly of the imperial beast that is the United States. To put it succinctly, it is safe to say that Arm the Spirit is about the multitude of forms love takes: familial, romantic, comradely and revolutionary. It is also about the difficulties we face trying to meet the ideals these loves represent, especially when they come into conflict with one another.

Besides the aforementioned political and emotional realities revealed in this book, there are the descriptions of daily life on the run. Periods of normalcy when you and your family are as normal as the neighbors next door interrupted by days and weeks of uncertainty tinged with fear after your picture makes the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted. Joy and tears as you wrestle with how much information you should share with your maturing child.

Genuine friendships made under assumed names that must be broken when the presence of the law gets too near. The frustrations felt because your political self can not speak out when the Empire attacks for fear you will be recognized and taken away in chains. The decision to finally give up your underground status and face the courts. The period of adjustment to once again using your family name and living as the person you couldn’t be while underground.

Politically, Block’s experiences as a revolutionary and a woman lead her to a conclusion perhaps best expressed by the writer and revolutionary Margaret Randall: that the inability of almost all twentieth-century revolutionary movements to develop a feminist agenda contributed to their failure to evolve new and equitable forms of power sharing that might have helped keep them alive. The period of adjustment mentioned in the previous paragraph provokes some other interesting observations by Block. Foremost among them are her observations regarding the changes in the progressive movement in the 1970s and the movement today, especially her remarks that much of the work formerly done by organizations with no financial portfolio now being done by what she calls the nonprofit industrial complex.

The shortcomings of this movement are even more apparent today as funding for these nonprofits dries up in the wake of the economic shocks throughout the capitalist world. This factor doesn’t even touch the political timidity of many of today’s organizations–a timidity certainly influenced by their need to gather money from beneficiaries of the very system whose excesses and wrongs they hope to remedy.

One other insightful observation is that, despite the multitude of single issue movements and organizations, many of the groups and individuals involved have no underlying philosophy to bind these issues together and present a systemic analysis that would propel the struggle for economic and social justice forward. Although Block does not examine this much further, it is clear that she sees the need to develop and provide that analysis as part of the role of her and others involved in the struggles of the latter half of the twentieth century. After all, the fundamentals of that analysis are the same as those the left has always referred to. The economic crisis of capitalism and the wars of Washington make that clear.

Fortunately for Republicans, the timidity and “good manners” that served Democrats so well in 2004 are still on full display. The Obama camp appeared paralyzed before the senator himself curtly cut short further talk about the biggest Palin pop-up: the pregnancy of her unwed 17-year-old daughter.

But do these attempts to preserve the moral aura of Sarah Palin serve America’s interests?

Consider Palin’s stance on abortion. In her view, rape and incest are insufficient reasons for granting a woman the right to choose — even, as she has said, if that woman was her own daughter.

From a safe remove, some may admire Palin’s apparently uncompromising stance on the sanctity of life: here is a woman who sticks to her principles.

But is this an honest assessment? While Americans and others around in the world heatedly debate whether life begins at conception, delivery, or somewhere in between, everyone can agree that children and adults are living beings.

Therefore, it is prudent to ask a crucial question: why is Palin so fond of unborn life but so contemptuous of those who have exited the womb?

Palin’s loyalties lie with a party that stands against health care for poorer Americans, against relief for indebted homeowners, and against tax breaks for the working and middle-classes. Why do these lives not matter?

Also standing in striking contrast to the GOP’s professed respect for unborn life is its open contempt for dark-skinned life in various corners and crevices of the globe. In Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, Palin’s party has cheerfully dropped or supplied bombs that have erased thousands of children from the montage of mankind.

So while Democratic centrists stay silent, they pass up a peerless opportunity to ask why the “culture of life” honors those who aren’t yet alive while making sure those who are alive don’t stay alive.

It’s also useful to compare Palin’s position on abortion with that of the next slated target in the Republican war plan: Iran. In 2005, the Iranian parliament passed a law to allow abortion of fetuses up to four months old if they exhibited signs of physical or mental handicap. But the unelected mullahs of The Iranian Guardians Council took the same view as Palin and rejected the move.

In early 2008, Iranian Grand Ayatollah Mazaheri issued a decree allowing unwed mothers the right to choose — a right Palin seeks to abolish for everyone here in America.

On the question of sexual education and resources, the Islamic Republic appears enlightened compared to the GOP’s new darling. In Tehran, Iranian citizens can find vending machines with cheap condoms and needles (AIDS is a big concern). Meanwhile, Palin is on the record as saying she would fund abstinence-only propaganda. The mullahs promote sex education in schools and for soon-to-be-brides, and state programs offer sex advice to women that would make Palin and her Christian fundamentalist admirers squeamish.

Despite Palin’s backward positions, some people are overawed by the pull of her personal dramas. Palin, they say, should be applauded for going through with a pregnancy despite a Down Syndrome diagnosis, and should be afforded privacy for her daughter’s personal affairs.

Which is all well and good — except that Palin is running on a platform of subjecting everyone else’s personal affairs to her own judgment, which she seeks to codify into federal law.

Palin’s pregnancy decision may be noble, but her attempt to deny other women the right to make their own decisions is not. Her daughter’s pregnancy may be a private matter, but her plan to deny other children real sex education would leave them and their parents facing the same “private” problem.

The reluctance of Democratic gatekeepers to pounce on Palin’s fundamentalism reflects a level of foolishness that makes John Kerry’s windsurfing adventures appear wise by comparison.

It is not necessary to trash Palin’s private life to point out the perniciousness of her politics. It is only necessary to observe that a morally “perfect” American who works to the public’s detriment is far worse than a flawed American who promotes the general good.

During a recent community conversation in Louisville, KY, Loretta Ross, the National Coordinator of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective offered what I think is a far more productive framework for discussing the abortion issue. Ross posits that abortion is only part of the issue of reproductive health and rights, which she points out include not only the right not to have a child but also the right to have a child.

On their website, SisterSong defines reproductive justice as an intersectional theory that integrates reproductive health and social justice emerging from the “experiences of women of color whose communities experience reproductive oppression. It is based on the understanding that the impact on women of color of race, class and gender are not additive but integrative, producing this paradigm of intersectionality.” The site also points out that,

“The intersectional theory of Reproductive Justice is described as the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social, environmental and economic well-being of women and girls, girls, based on the full achievement and protection of women’s human rights. It offers a new perspective on reproductive issue advocacy, pointing out that as Indigenous women and women of color it is important to fight equally for (1) the right to have a child; (2) the right not to have a child; and (3) the right to parent the children we have, as well as to control our birthing options, such as midwifery. We also fight for the necessary enabling conditions to realize these rights.”

Obviously that language goes far beyond the run-of-the-mill pro/anti abortion rhetoric. By using this framework, we can start to see abortion not as an isolated issue of choice, but part of a far more complex set of issues. And the truth is, despite Roe v. Wade, “choice”, like so many other choices is a right of privilege. If you are poor, or live far from a clinic, there is not much of a choice.

Ross also stressed that abortion needs to be seen as a human rights issue and points to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares the right of every person to live free of slavery. And being forced to bear children is most certainly a form of slavery as Ross is quick to point out.

The flip side of the abortion rights issue, the right to have children is every bit as important a matter within the framework of Reproductive Justice. Although it is an issue in this country, it is even more so in less developed nations that have high maternal mortality rates.

Every year, more than half a million women die of complications of pregnancy and childbirth as a result of economic, cultural and political injustice. More than 99% of those deaths are preventable. Jane Roberts, co-founder of 34 Million Friends of UNFPA points out that. “Lack of family planning commodities and of health care workers to educate about and furnish family planning to eager consumers is the root cause of the 40 million abortions which take place every year, half of which are risky, illegal, unsafe. If the world really cared for its women, this would not be happening. About 70,000 women die during the abortion or the immediate aftermath, millions more suffer temporary or permanent disability. Then they are “compassionately” offered PAC (post-abortion care) by our government and others.”

Yet as a recent UN report points out, the “sharp decline in international funding for reproductive health is threatening global efforts to reduce poverty, improve health and empower women worldwide.” According to Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population (UNFPA), “The result is increasing numbers of unwanted pregnancies, rising rates of unsafe abortion, and increased risks to the lives of women and children.” Obaid also noted that, ”research indicates that ensuring access to family planning alone would reduce maternal deaths by 20 to 35 percent and child deaths by 20 percent.”

As Ross points out, it isn’t that choice is not an issue, but rather that it is one of many connected reproductive justice issues that need to be addressed. And that is the conversation we should be having.

In Kenya, women are being gang-raped in refugee camps. In Afghanistan, young girls are forced into marriage. In Mexico and Guatemala women continue to disappear, the victims of brutal rapes and murder. In Iraq, women are being indiscriminately killed in the name of male honor. In the U.S. military, women are more likely to be assaulted by their fellow soldiers than by any enemy. The list, truly, is endless.

While International Women’s Day is, and rightly should be, a day to celebrate the lives and accomplishments of women, a recent statement by the Gabriela Network is correct in pointing out that IWD is, and also must be, more than that:

We need to return our Day and our Month to their rightful and correct significance in both national and international arenas. Though March was meant to be a celebration of women’s achievements, International Women’s Day and International Women’s Month were also meant to be the time when the women’s voice regarding national and international events was meant to be the loudest. State violence has been foremost in women’s minds, as this has been the most destructive of life and the conditions for the well-being, not only of womankind, but of the entire human species.

March 8th has been co-opted and turned into a so-called commemoration of women’s achievements, as though there were no more need for further achievements. It is time to return March 8th to its historic role as the day women challenge government decisions and policies inimical to peace, justice and the preservation of the human species. It is time for March 8th to be known as the day when women unite and march against state policies dangerous to the health and safety of the nation.

This must be a day when we name and acknowledge the atrocities that are daily perpetrated against women throughout the world. It must be a day to honor our strength and wisdom and renew our commitment to ending these assaults on our lives.

On International Women’s Day we must indeed insist on being, as Alice Walker so eloquently put it, the ones we have been waiting for. International Women’s Day is a time to stand in the place that we are, and in that place to stand with and for the women of the world.

As you observe International Women’s Day, please hold a special place in your hear for women who will be gathering despite the grave danger of doing so, particularly the women in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan who are planning a march and the brave women celebrating in Iraq who tell us, “There will be no civil society without liberated women.”

With strength, with wisdom, with solidarity.

Happy International Women’s Day.

(Note: You can learn more about IWD and find comprehensive coverage of this year’s celebration on the Feminist Peace Network website.)

“If George Bush is pro-life, then why is Casey dead?” She could not give me an answer and did not see the hypocrisy in someone who is supposed to be “pro-life” sending thousands of our young people to die and kill other innocents in foreign aggressions based on lies and for profit.

I have always been for a women’s reproductive freedom over her own body, even in the years that I was a Roman Catholic. I never appointed myself judge or jury over a woman who had to make a very difficult choice. However, the pro-choice issue is not the only “women’s issue” in our world today…obviously!

A columnist for one of this country’s self-proclaimed “progressive” magazines talked to my campaign manager, Tiffany Burns, the other day about our trip to Egypt to protest against the client dictator of the US, Hosni Mubarak, trying civilians in a military court. Using military tribunals is forbidden under international, regional and national law in Egypt and our government is doing the same thing in Guantanamo. But the columnist kept trying to get Ms. Burns to say that I supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to take over the government of Egypt to make it an Islamic state that would not recognize women’s rights. Tiffany could not say it because it is not true, and the columnist finally said: “Does Cindy care about women’s issues at all?” When Tiffany said: “Of course, even in Egypt we met with wives and mothers…” The columnist cut her off and said: “I said women, not mothers.”

Hmm…the last time I checked, not all women are mothers, but all mothers are women. Who does Ms. Columnist think gets hurt the most in our nation’s wars for profit? I never felt more acutely a woman than when I fell on the floor screaming for my son when he was killed in Iraq. My son, the flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. The one that I carried in my woman’s body for nine months; nourished him for 14 months more with the fluid that was manufactured in my woman’s body and tried to protect his body from harm until he was 21 and was entrapped by the US Military Industrial Complex. Would my “issue” of being a woman hurt by violence been more acceptable or palatable to Ms. Columnist if I had chosen to abort Casey rather than give birth to him?

Our illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq has not “liberated” women who were highly educated and worked as doctors and other trained professionals under a tyrannical regime. Now, after almost five years of US occupation, in many instances women are being forced to wear veils or are being forbidden from attending school. Women in Iraq are not only having to deal with daily violence and the primal fear of worrying about children and other loved ones but also they are dealing with daily primitive conditions of water, food and power deprivation. Our aggression in Afghanistan has not improved the condition of women either, and if possible, has made their lives harder. Hundreds of thousands of women (married, single, with children, or not), have been killed, displaced, wounded, raped and oppressed under the Bush regime’s destructive foreign policy agenda. Does Ms. Columnist think that my tireless efforts to end the occupations are “women’s issues?”

According to Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, one of the three trillions that this bloody occupation have cost US taxpayers could rather have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America’s social security problem for half a century. A peace economy is inherently more just for women, children and families, than a permanent war economy. I believe that whether one is a “woman” or a “woman who also happens to be a mother,” peace and prosperity would benefit us all.

In my efforts to call attention to humanitarian crises all over the world and in my Independent run for Congress, I have tried to deconstruct the labels and pigeonholes that we all put ourselves and others into. After creating our own personal segmentation, it is so easy for us to allow the fascist-elite of government and media to compartmentalize humanity so as to first demonize, then oppress, kill, or impoverish certain segments.

Ms. Columnist self-identifies as a “feminist” and has endorsed Obama over Clinton. Why? Does she think that Obama will be better on “women’s issues” than Clinton? I do not know and I really do not care why she chose to endorse Tweedledee over Tweedledum, but the choice seems a little strange-ish to me. If Ms. Columnist identified herself as a humanist, then I could better comprehend her choice and it would not be controversial.

I self-identify as a “humanist” and I have a fundamental hatred and disgust of oppression and violence wherever it happens or whomever it happens to.

All people who are in the human category deserve the rights to: good paying (union) jobs; a living, not minimum, wage; healthy food; clean water; warm shelter; health insurance; and good and accessible (for all) education. All people have the fundamental human rights to live in environments that are also healthy and free from war and violence or to marry or partner with whomever they choose as consenting adults.

Segmented killing and hatred will only stop when we enlarge our personal, national, and international circles of concern to include all six billion people on this planet: not just the white ones, Christian ones, American ones, female ones, or any ones.

Simply put: every one.

Also in the news recently was beleaguered Islam debunker Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her ongoing troubles due to her involvement in the 2004 Dutch film Submission. Ali has been sought after since contributing the screenplay to director Theo van Gogh’s exposition of the common atrocities inflicted upon Muslim women in the name of Mohammed. The reward was twofold: Van Gogh was brutally murdered in broad daylight by an offended Muslim, who was thoughtful enough to stab a death threat intended for Ali into Van Gogh’s barely cooled corpse; Ali has suffered continued harassment, to the point that she requires state funded protection from the Dutch government. Her financial support was recently rescinded, with the government claiming they are not beholden to her while she resides in the United States (although one would be excused for suspecting their burgeoning Muslim population’s distaste for apostates has something to do with it). The US government claims they are unable to support her due to regulations on protection for non-citizens. France has recently expressed interest in offering her financial support, one would assume in honor of free expression, while other countries continue to treat her like an insubordinate stepchild.

Shouldn’t gadflies like Ali and Van Gogh be afforded hero status in the freedom worshipping west? Ali’s horrid situation evokes Salman Rushdie’s plight after releasing The Satanic Verses. A fatwa (sort of like the Muslim kiss of death) was issued for Rushdie because he dared pen a book of fiction in which he lambasted the religious tenets he was raised with. In a bit of serendipity, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time lamented that British blasphemy laws should be extended to cover all religions, in the wake of furor elicited by Rushdie’s book. Many were too quick to chide Rushdie for his disrespect of Islam, and in turn justify the rabid desire for his head on a sliver platter. Those religious types who openly blamed the author for the death threats were being extremely selfish. These people, supposedly bastions of peace and goodwill, were rationalizing murder for the most ridiculous reason possible.

I suspect that religious leaders are quick to defend other religious beliefs because the Big Three are inexorably linked. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all share the figure of Abraham, who you may remember from such ditties as trying to sacrifice his own son in the name of god, that comedian. While Archbishop Williams claims his intent was to quell rising Muslim discontent in the UK , he is also attempting to cover his ass, so to speak. He is affording these hackneyed beliefs respect because he knows just what it feels like to be on a losing team. No other ideology is afforded this much leeway and nothing could be more dangerous. The devout seem unable comprehend that automatic deference to deities leads to hucksters to claiming authority over a large segment of the population. How can you remain skeptical of those wishing to take advantage of you when your belief system claims that skepticism is evil? How can you maintain stability when your holy book is brimming with god’s tricks and tests with the sole purpose of separating the goats from the sheep?

Religion addressed the unknown and explained the unexplainable in our intellectual infancy. We no longer labor under pre-science illusions such as the sun revolves around the earth, or that demons are the cause of illness. The fact that faith garners so much respect, to the point that we wish to subvert law and order, one of the bastions of civilization, is absolutely inexcusable. What about the legions of Muslim women living in the UK who would feel the acute effects of this simple minded multiculturalism? Who will speak for them? Not their husbands, many of whom consider their wives to be akin to chattel. Progressive thinkers, such as Ali, get reproached for doing just that, all in the name of respecting religion. And the proprietor of love and peace wishes to put these dire decisions in the hands of tyrants, the same people who find it acceptable to stone a woman for adultery (whether or not she had a choice in the matter), or see amputation of limbs a suitable punishment for theft. These are not thoughtless stereotypes or racism. These are actual instances of “justice” enacted at the hands of sharia law. Sharia law in the UK would be a huge a step backward for civilization and all that it supposedly represents.

And so it seems fitting that Jamie-Lynn’s older sister Britney personifies women’s role in the modern music business. Britney Spears’ present function is not so much to be heard as seen (more like ogled). Only in a society where women are viewed, first and foremost, as sex objects could such an artist become one of the highest-selling female singers of all time. Never has there been a more pressing need for a new women’s rights movement in music and the world at large. Never has there been a more pressing need for the return Rock 4 Choice.

“Rock For Huh?” “Who For Choice?” Perhaps I should back up a little. Let’s go back about fifteen years to the early nineties (do you feel old yet?). The Soviet Union had fallen, and the US had taken its place as the world’s only superpower. An economic boom was underway, and all the mouthpieces were shouting about how lucky we are to be living in such a superpower. And those same mouthpieces had finally found the perfect label for the generation coming of age: “Generation X.” Thinking back, the moniker still leaves a bad taste. That “X” was their way of writing us off as the do-nothing generation. We were lazy, self-centered, apathetic, and simply didn’t appreciate “all the things we had.”

Such platitudes were pure bollocks. If the same pundits had bothered to scratch beneath the surface, they would have found very palpable anger, and some very good reasons for not wanting to buy into the system. Young people were the last to share in the new economy. They were the first to be sent to Iraq in America’s first post-Soviet war. They were the first to take to the streets of LA in the outrage following the Rodney King verdict. And many of the gains made by the movements of the ’60s, which young people would have benefited from, had been rolled back during the ’80s.

This was just as true for the gains of the women’s movement which had fought through the 1970s. Susan Faludi, in her book Backlash, describes the phenomenon beginning in the ’80s: “Just when women’s quest for equal rights seemed closest to achieving its objectives, the backlash struck it down. Just when a ‘gender gap’ at the voting booth surfaced in 1980, and women in politics began to talk of capitalizing on it, the Republican party elevated Ronald Reagan and both political parties began to shunt women’s rights off their platforms. Just when support for feminism and the Equal Rights Amendment reached a record high in 1981, the amendment was defeated the following year… Just when women racked up their largest percentage ever supporting the right to abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court moved toward reconsidering it.”

It was in this atmosphere of trying to shake off all the repression of the ’80s that Rock 4 Choice came into being. If credit were to be given to one band for its existence, it would no doubt be the all-female punk group L7. L7 were the kind of group that completely shook up the accepted notions of women in music. They were tattooed, loud, brash, and man could they rock! Uncompromising feminists, they were the kind of group that wore the enmity of the Christian right as a badge of pride.

In 1991, they told LA Times journalist Sue Cummings that they were horrified by the rash of clinic bombings by anti-abortion groups. In typically in-your-face fashion, they announced they were organizing a “Rock for Coat Hangers” benefit, the proceeds of which would go to a local pro-choice group. Cummings was inspired, and encouraged the group to bring other artists on board. After meeting with the Feminist Majority Foundation, the idea found enthusiastic support, and the first Rock 4 Choice show was held in LA in October of ’91 with L7, Sister Double Happiness, Hole, and Nirvana.

The inclusion of many of grunge’s biggest names wasn’t accidental. Grunge’s raw intensity and back-to-basics, DIY approach had pushed the decadence of hair metal and synth-pop to the sidelines. In doing so it also had created space, a pressure release valve for all the frustrations of Gen-Xers. Even groups like L7, who weren’t technically considered part of the genre but shared in its confrontational spririt, began to find the recognition they had been denied in the ’80s. For that reason, Rock For Choice sought to tap into grunge’s anger and incorporate it as a platform for their message.

Donita Sparks, L7′s lead singer, elaborated the need to mobilize young people with their own music: “It used to bum me out as a kid when I would go to peace or ERA rallies with my mother, and there would be people singing ‘Kum Ba Ya, my sister, Kum Ba Ya,’ it was so unmotivating. So we decided that we just had to rock the house. That was a good way to get more people involved…”

Rock 4 Choice grew in the ’90s. Eddie Vedder’s outspoken support for abortion rights pushed Pearl Jam to become early supporters. “[A]ll these men trying to control women’s bodies are really starting to piss me off,” Vedder told Rolling Stone. “They’re talking from a bubble, they’re not talking from the street, and they’re not in touch with what’s real. Well, I’m fucking mean, and I’m ugly, and my name is reality.” It actually was impressive how many male rock bands were willing to lend their voice. Along with Pearl Jam and Nirvana, there were alternative mainstays like Stone Temple Pilots and Red Hot Chilli Peppers, punk groups like Rancid and Fugazi, even Iggy Pop wanted to–and did–play Rock 4 Choice benefits.

But because the group was dedicated to fighting for and protecting women’s rights, it rightfully incorporated female acts that could rock just as hard as (if not harder than) the guys. Along with L7, Babes in Toyland, 7 Year Bitch, Liz Phair, Joan Jett and many others were front and center in promoting Rock 4 Choice. This wasn’t so much a tactic as a center-piece of R4C’s politics: women’s voices in favor of the right to control their bodies. It was so effective that R4C was often mentioned in the same breath as the burgeoning Riot Grrrl movement. Though Bikini Kill were the only band from that sub-culture to regularly play shows for Rock 4 Choice, such a connection speaks volumes about the common mission of both movements. As the decade progressed, artists from outside the “alternative rock” crowd became involved. Sarah McLachlan became a proponent. Inlcusion of the newly out-of-the-closet Melissa Etheridge illustrated a common interest between women’s rights and those of the LGBT community.

If one criticism could be levelled against the group, it would be that it was almost lily white. Just as grunge had galvinized the discontent of white youth, so had the insurgent sounds of hip-hop in the black community. Though rap was hardly a new concept, it had taken over a decade to shake the mainstream perception of of the music as a novelty. The gutter-level racism that characterized the Reagan ’80s had certainly given rap artists a great deal to lash out against. But aside from the inclusion of Salt n’ Pepa, the best-known female rap group of the time, the potential for making Rock 4 Choice into a multi-racial musical force was barely explored.

Nonetheless, Rock 4 Choice had clearly found plenty of artists willing to, well, rock for choice. The LA show in ’91 became an annual event, bigger and more dynamic each year. The concerts were covered and debated in Rolling Stone and on MTV, leading music fans to ask themselves why some of their favorite artists were supporting this cause. At its height, R4C wasn’t just a collection of artists, it was a platform. Such groups, though, can only be truly effective when allied with a strong movement. Rock Against Racism had been vastly successful fifteen years before, but that was because it had teamed up with the Anti-Nazi League, who had as its mission the literal elimination of fascist groups from the streets of England.

An in-the-streets movement to protect abortion rights was definitely needed in the ’90s. Bill Clinton’s election to the presidency had rightly been welcomed after twelve years of Reagan and Bush the first. However, Clinton began backing down on many of his campaign promises from the very beginning. His Freedom of Choice Act, which had earned him the endorsement of the biggest women’s groupts, was never even mentioned after he took office. This emboldened the anti-choice right to chip away at Roe v. Wade, passing one restriction after another. In the last days of the Clinton administration, it had become more difficult for a woman to have an abortion than it had been under twelve years of Republican rule.

Unfortunately, most of the mainstream women’s rights groups did not mobilize for fear of alienating the president. Even as a wave of “partial birth” bans swept the country, opening the door for even more restrictions, groups like the National Organization for Women and NARAL Pro-Choice America urged the movement not demonstrate. By the end of the 1990s, much of the pro-choice movement had switched tactics to finding “common ground” with abortion opponents. As the movement became drawn further away from the streets and deeper into the back-rooms of congress, Rock 4 Choice faded from public view.

Today, the group still exists, though it limits itself to small, local concerts, and even then only as a fundraiser for Feminist Majority. Indeed, the last annual concert Rock 4 Choice held was in 2001. The irony of this is that while the group made its voice heard the loudest under a nominally pro-choice president, they have remained totally out of the spotlight under a very openly anti-choice one. George W Bush’s presidency has seen even further erosion of abortion rights. His two nominations to the Supreme Court have stated openly their willingness to overturn the Roe decision. Today, 87% of US counties have no abortion provider. Despite the very real possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman president this election season, abortion rights haven’t even been mentioned on the campaign trail. And mainstream pro-choice groups are so withdrawn from the streets that when thousands of anti-abortion protesters marched in Washington on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, no call was made for a counter-demonstration.

When women are denied the right to control their bodies, the repercussions are felt throughout society. They are felt in the workplaces, in the homes, and, yes, in our music too. Today the airwaves are choked by dime-a-dozen divas: the Britneys, the Jessicas, the Mariahs. The dominance of such artists sends the message that if women want to make in music, then their talents come secondary to their waistline, bust-size, and their willingness to pose in front of the camera. In other words, they are commodities first, artists second, human beings a distant third. When this is the standard, we all suffer… if for no other reason than the fact that the music sucks.

This does not mean that strong woman’s voices in music have disappeared, though. Though we may not hear them on the radio or television daily, they are still out there. From the Gossip’s Beth Ditto, to Erykah Badu, to the ever-notorious Ani DiFranco, there continue to exist women who are willing to rock out, and would be more than happy to lend their voices to a renewed push for women’s rights. If Rock 4 Choice, and the movement it seeks to inspire want to make a comeback, then now’s as good a time as any.

Some 57 percent of the record primary turnout were women, and 47 percent of them cast their ballots for Clinton, more than reversing her narrow loss of women’s support to Barack Obama in Iowa five days before.

Analyses of the voting and exit polls show that Clinton is winning support especially among older women — like Ruth Smith, an 87-year-old who drove 160 miles to Des Moines from Buffalo Center, Iowa, to go to Clinton’s first rally in Iowa.

“I told her that my grandmother was the first person in town to vote, and my mother was the second,” Smith told the New York Times. “And I told her I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.”

In speeches, Clinton invokes her candidacy as great step for women, as she confronts “the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in America.

This image of Clinton as the “candidate for women” has become more prominent in her campaign in the last week — an example being a prominent opinion article in the New York Times by feminist writer Gloria Steinem.

On the day of the New Hampshire primary, Steinem advocated a vote for Clinton because “[t]his country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: ‘I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.’”

Clinton also has the backing of the establishment liberal women’s organization, the National Organization for Women, whose political action committee launched a “Make History with Hillary” campaign in March 2007.

But the question remains: Will a Hillary Clinton presidency really stand up for women and the issues that effect their lives?

If there was any question that sexism still permeates U.S. society, the treatment of Clinton and her campaign for president certainly shows the answer. Sexism does exist.

Take the South Carolina campaign event for John McCain, where a woman asked McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” to wild laughter. Or the Clinton campaign stop in Salem, N.H., where hecklers yelled, “Iron my shirt!” at her. Or the conservative Web sites that feature the sexist, anti-Clinton T-shirt “Life’s a bitch, so don’t vote for one.”

Then there’s the patronizing tone adopted toward Clinton by the media establishment after her defeat in Iowa — symbolized by nonstop replay of video from the moment in New Hampshire when her eyes filled with tears in response to a question about the difficulties of her campaign.

Clinton’s main opponents didn’t speak up against any of this. Obama made no comment on the media’s ridiculous double standards in judging Clinton’s “likeability” — and Edwards chose the moment after Clinton’s supposed “breakdown” to emphasize that he thought a commander-in-chief needed to be strong.

All this underlines the fact that few men face the same type of scrutiny regularly paid to Clinton — about her clothing, her makeup, her weight, whether she cries or not, whether she prefers diamonds or pearls, whether she is soft and tough.

No matter how few expectations there may be that Clinton will be a force for real change, there is no denying that it is a social sea change to see a woman as a presidential frontrunner. And while the Clinton campaign denies that it’s trying to make gender an issue in the campaign, it has. As Clinton recently joked, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And I’m very much at home in the kitchen.”

At the same time, it should be said that Clinton and her supporters have also used issues of oppression in a backward way. Steinem’s op-ed article, for example, plays at ranking forms of discrimination — Clinton’s gender versus Obama’s race, with women trumping African Americans in Steinem’s eyes.

“[T]he Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change,” Steinem argued. “Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).”

If the candidate, Steinem continued, “had been just as charismatic but named, say, Achola Obama instead of Barack Obama, her goose would have been cooked long ago.”

This is a cynical attempt to play on divisions in society, to the benefit of her preferred candidate — and the Clinton campaign itself has been implicated. In mid-December, the chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, Bill Shaheen, publicly speculated about whether Obama had ever been a drug dealer.

Clinton herself didn’t help matters last week when she suggested that Martin Luther Kings Jr.–like Obama, in her implied analogy — was mere bluff and bluster, and it took a Southern Dixiecrat to finish the job that the civil rights movement started.

“I would point to the fact,” she said in an interview with Fox News, “that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964–when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do . . . [I]t took a president to get it done.”

Not only does Clinton relegate King’s historic role to that of a “dreamer,” but she also belittles the role of thousands of Blacks whose sit-ins and other organizing forced the government to do something about Jim Crow segregation. Clinton would rather identify herself with Johnson, a Southern politician who was unrelentingly hostile to the civil rights movement as he came to power.

In contrast to the cynical maneuverings of Clinton supporters like Steinem, however, many women who support Hillary Clinton do so in the hopes that issues which affect their day-to-day lives will actually be addressed. But what is Clinton’s actual stance on these issues?
Her campaign is hardly frontloading the issues ordinarily associated with improving conditions for women, such as reproductive rights. The word “abortion” does not actually appear in her “A Champion of Women” page in the “Issues” section of her Web site.

So while Clinton supports women’s right to choose, she is not going to make it a prominent part of her platform — because this might alienate conservative voters.

Clinton is notorious in arguing for the need to find “common ground” with the right wing on the question of women’s reproductive rights. In 2006, she joined forces with anti-choice Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to promote the “Prevention First Act.” While the measure included some good provisions that make contraception easier for women to obtain, by and large, the focus of the bill was downplaying the importance of women’s access to abortion.

Clinton’s stance is that abortion is a “sad, even tragic choice” — as she told an audience of New York state abortion providers in 2005 — for women, not a fundamental right that only the woman should have a say in deciding. “Yes, we do have deeply held differences of opinion about the issue of abortion,” she said. “I, for one, respect those who believe with all their hearts and conscience that there are no circumstances under which any abortion should ever be available.”

If women are going to put their hopes in a new Clinton White House to defend the dwindling right to choose, they might want to look at the last time a Clinton occupied the Oval Office.

Hillary Clinton certainly wants you to. At the 2004 pro-choice “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, Clinton touted the record of her husband’s administration. “We didn’t have to march for 12 long years,” she bragged, “because we had a government that respected the rights of women.”

The truth of the matter, though, is that more restrictions on abortion rights were put into effect during Clinton’s eight years than the 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr.

Clinton emphasizes the idea of furthering women’s advances into positions of power — more women holding government office and sitting on the boards of corporations. Meanwhile, the issues that affect working-class and poor women are left in the dust.

From 1986 to 1992, Clinton sat on the board of directors of Wal-Mart — she was the first women to do so. During all that time, however, Clinton never lifted a finger to defend the rights of women workers at Wal-Mart, a viciously anti-union company with a history of discriminating against its female employees.

Hillary Clinton supported her husband’s Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which “ended welfare as we know it,” effectively destroying the social safety net and throwing millions of poor people to fend for themselves. In 2002, she joined Republicans like Orrin Hatch to support a bill that increased already punitive work requirements imposed on welfare recipients.

Clinton makes a priority of “fiscal responsibility.” She said in a December debate, “We don’t have to go back very far in our history, in fact just to the 1990s, to see what happens when we do have a fiscally responsible budget that does use rules of discipline to make sure that we’re not cutting taxes or spending more than we can afford. I will institute those very same approaches.”

Translation: deep cuts in social spending in the name of a responsible, balanced budget policy–and workers and the poor will pay the price for a bloated military budget.

One face that’s been seen flanking Clinton on the campaign trail is Madeleine Albright — one of those women Clinton talks so much about, who carved out a place for herself among the seats of power.

During her tenure as secretary of state, Albright oversaw some of the bloodiest military campaigns of the Clinton-Gore administration, including sanctions and air strikes against Iraq.

The support of this “great woman leader” tells you a lot about what will be in store for the people of Iraq — women and men alike — if Hillary Clinton makes it into the White House. Clinton is an unapologetic hawk who voted to give Bush the go-ahead for war on Iraq, and then later Iran.

Having Hillary Clinton in the White House won’t be better for women — or anyone who is concerned with these issues. She, like the other leaders of the Democratic Party, is committed to preserving the status quo.

The key to winning real change isn’t relying on politicians like Hillary Clinton, but organizing at the grassroots to give concrete expressions to the hopes that so many people have for change in Washington.

To me, I confess, [countries] are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world.

– Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, speaking about Afghanistan, 1898

I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was RAWA, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.

RAWA is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of women and girls in that country. There is no organization on earth like it. It is the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year after year, RAWA agents have traveled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls’ schools, ministering to isolated and brutalized women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime’s implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

Indeed, RAWA’s understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news, now reduced to a drama of British squaddies besieged by a demonic enemy in a “good war”. When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her identity. Marina is her nom de guerre. She said: “We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorize, yet they hold seats in [Hamid] Karzai’s government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands.”

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was “to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11″. The women of RAWA say this is false. In a rare statement on 4 December that went unreported in Britain, they said: “By experience, [we have found] that the US does not want to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realization of their economic, political and strategic interests in the region.”

The truth about the “good war” is to be found in compelling evidence that the 2001 invasion, widely supported in the west as a justifiable response to the 11 September attacks, was actually planned two months prior to 9/11 and that the most pressing problem for Washington was not the Taliban’s links with Osama Bin Laden, but the prospect of the Taliban mullahs losing control of Afghanistan to less reliable mujahedin factions, led by warlords who had been funded and armed by the CIA to fight America’s proxy war against the Soviet occupiers in the 1980s. Known as the Northern Alliance, these mujahedin had been largely a creation of Washington, which believed the “jihadi card” could be used to bring down the Soviet Union. The Taliban were a product of this and, during the Clinton years, they were admired for their “discipline”. Or, as the Wall Street Journal put it, “[the Taliban] are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history”.

The “moment in history” was a secret memorandum of understanding the mullahs had signed with the Clinton administration on the pipeline deal. However, by the late 1990s, the Northern Alliance had encroached further and further on territory controlled by the Taliban, whom, as a result, were deemed in Washington to lack the “stability” required of such an important client. It was the consistency of this client relationship that had been a prerequisite of US support, regardless of the Taliban’s aversion to human rights. (Asked about this, a state department briefer had predicted that “the Taliban will develop like the Saudis did”, with a pro-American economy, no democracy and “lots of sharia law,” which meant the legalized persecution of women. “We can live with that,” he said.)

By early 2001, convinced it was the presence of Osama Bin Laden that was souring their relationship with Washington, the Taliban tried to get rid of him. Under a deal negotiated by the leaders of Pakistan’s two Islamic parties, Bin Laden was to be held under house arrest in Peshawar. A tribunal of clerics would then hear evidence against him and decide whether to try him or hand him over to the Americans. Whether or not this would have happened, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf vetoed the plan. According to the then Pakistani foreign minister, Niaz Naik, a senior US diplomat told him on 21 July 2001 that it had been decided to dispense with the Taliban “under a carpet of bombs”.

Acclaimed as the first “victory” in the “war on terror”, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect caused the deaths of thousands of civilians who, even more than Iraqis, remain invisible to western eyes. The family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbor. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal. “Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents,” Gulam Rasul told me. “Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt.”

There was the wedding party in the village of Niazi Qala, 100km south of Kabul, to celebrate the marriage of the son of a respected farmer. By all accounts it was a wonderfully boisterous affair, with music and singing. The roar of aircraft started when everyone was asleep, at about three in the morning. According to a United Nations report, the bombing lasted two hours and killed 52 people: 17 men, ten women and 25 children, many of whom were found blown to bits where they had desperately sought refuge, in a dried-up pond. Such slaughter is not uncommon, and these days the dead are described as “Taliban”; or, if they are children, they are said to be “partly to blame for being at a site used by militants” — according to the BBC, speaking to a US military spokesman.

The British military have played an important part in this violence, having stepped up high-altitude bombing by up to 30 per cent since they took over command of NATO forces in Afghanistan in May 2006. This translated to more than 6,200 Afghan deaths last year. In December, a contrived news event was the “fall” of a “Taliban stronghold”, Musa Qala, in southern Afghanistan. Puppet government forces were allowed to “liberate” rubble left by American B-52s.

What justifies this? Various fables have been spun — “building democracy” is one. “The war on drugs” is the most perverse. When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001 they had one striking success. They brought to an abrupt end a historic ban on opium production that the Taliban regime had achieved. A UN official in Kabul described the ban to me as “a modern miracle.” The miracle was quickly rescinded. As a reward for supporting the Karzai “democracy”, the Americans allowed Northern Alliance warlords to replant the country’s entire opium crop in 2002. Twenty-eight out of the 32 provinces instantly went under cultivation. Today, 90 percent of world trade in opium originates in Afghanistan. In 2005, a British government report estimated that 35,000 children in this country were using heroin. While the British taxpayer pays for a £1bn military super-base in Helmand Province and the second-biggest British embassy in the world, in Kabul, peanuts are spent on drug rehabilitation at home.

Tony Blair once said memorably: “To the Afghan people, we make this commitment. We will not walk away . . . [We will offer] some way out of the poverty that is your miserable existence.” I thought about this as I watched children play in a destroyed cinema. They were illiterate and so could not read the poster warning that unexploded cluster bombs lay in the debris.

“After five years of engagement,” reported James Fergusson in the London Independent on 16 December, “the [UK] Department for International Development had spent just £390m on Afghan projects.” Unusually, Fergusson has had meetings with Taliban who are fighting the British. “They remained charming and courteous throughout,” he wrote of one visit in February. “This is the beauty of malmastia, the Pashtun tradition of hospitality towards strangers. So long as he comes unarmed, even a mortal enemy can rely on a kind reception. The opportunity for dialogue that malmastia affords is unique.”

This “opportunity for dialogue” is a far cry from the surrender-or-else offers made by the government of Gordon Brown. What Brown and his Foreign Office advisers willfully fail to understand is that the tactical victory in Afghanistan in 2001, achieved with bombs, has become a strategic disaster in south Asia. Exacerbated by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the current turmoil in Pakistan has its contemporary roots in a Washington-contrived war in neighboring Afghanistan that has alienated the Pashtuns who inhabit much of the long border area between the two countries. This is also true of most Pakistanis, who, according to opinion polls, want their government to negotiate a regional peace, rather than play a prescribed part in a rerun of Lord Curzon’s Great Game.

On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life … Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life.
– George W. Bush in 2002, linking abortion rights with terrorism, as he declared the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”

Bush has used his Oval Office years to limit reproductive freedom and stack critical posts with right-wingers bent on rolling back the clock.

And now it appears yet another reactionary Bush appointee is on track to get a lifetime position as a federal judge…

Bush nominated Wyoming lawyer and former state representative Richard Honaker to the US District Court back in March, but the reproductive rights group NARAL believes he may soon get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Honacker authored a 1991 bill which would have outlawed most abortions and has said that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.”

If the nomination goes through, Honacker will stay on the bench long after Bush is out of office, and he’ll join a growing list of appointees eager to regulate your sexuality.

A Top Ten list, so far…

1. Patricia Funderburk Ware

In 2001, Bush named abstinence-only proponent Patricia Funderburk Ware to be Executive Director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Ware’s qualifications for the job of promoting “effective prevention of HIV disease” included criticizing condom use and lobbying against HIV/AIDS being in the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Two years later, Ware recommended that a controversial character named Jerry Thacker join the PACHA panel. Thacker has called AIDS a “gay plague” and homosexuality a “deathstyle.” Amid public protest, Thacker soon withdrew his nomination and Ware left her PACHA post.

2. Tom Coburn

Bush nominated then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to be PACHA co-chair in 2003. Coburn supports mandatory reporting to public authorities of the names of those testing positive for HIV/AIDS.

He favors “the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life.”

According to Coburn, the gay community “has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power … That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.’

Who else would you want advising the Bush administration on AIDS?

3. David Hager

Hager was one of three religious conservatives that Bush put on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in 2002 and only public outcry prevented him from becoming its chairperson. Critics argued that in his gynecology practice, Hager had refused to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women and had recommended Scripture readings to alleviate headaches and premenstrual syndrome.

A memo which Hager wrote helped persuade the FDA to overrule its own advisory panel in 2004, thus preventing the emergency contraceptive “Plan B” from being made more easily available. Critics assailed the FDA’s decision as ignoring scientific evidence, but in Hager’s assessment: “Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good.”

A downright criminal side of Hager emerged when his former wife went public with the fact that he had been emotionally, physically and sexually abusive during their 32-year marriage, forcibly sodomizing her on a regular basis. As Hager’s ex-wife told The Nation magazine in May 2005, “it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible.”

Hager left the FDA committee soon after The Nation article was published.

4. & 5. Lester Crawford and Norris Alderson

As Acting Commissioner of the FDA, Lester Crawford was notorious for blocking over-the-counter access to emergency contraception (EC).

Democratic senators initially halted Crawford’s confirmation to head the FDA, but gave approval in June 2005 after he promised to take action on EC by September 1, 2005. Once sworn in, however, Crawford stalled yet again, despite the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee’s having voted 23 to 4 in favor of making EC available over-the-counter.

Dr. Susan Wood, the well-respected head of the FDA Women’s Health Office, soon resigned in protest — and that’s when things got really bizarre. Weeks after Wood stepped down, the FDA Women’s Health Office sent out a mass email announcing that she would be replaced by Dr. Norris Alderson, who was duly listed on the FDA site as: “Acting Director, Office of Women’s Health, Associate Commissioner for Science.”

One small problem. Alderson is a veterinarian.

The administration appointed an animal doctor to be in charge of women’s health. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

After predictable outcry, the FDA tried to pretend that Alderson had never been appointed in the first place. Recipients of the initial mass emailing, of course, knew otherwise.

To make things even weirder, Crawford himself suddenly resigned as head of the FDA in September 2005 (just months after having been confirmed), amid allegations of not having properly disclosed his financial holdings to the Senate.

In August 2006, the FDA finally approved making the EC “Plan B” available over-the counter to consumers 18 years and older.

6. John G. Roberts

Progressives balked in September 2005 when Bush put forward far-right extremist John G. Roberts to head the US Supreme Court. In Robert’s illustrious career, he had fought against minority voting rights, argued against women’s educational rights, and tried to limit the rights of women prisoners. A legal brief Roberts contributed to said that Roe vs. Wade was “wrongly decided and should be overruled.”

Roberts became Chief Justice within weeks of his nomination, and as expected, has dragged the Supreme Court to the right. In the past two years, for example, the Roberts’ court upheld the constitutionality of a federal anti-abortion law (the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act) and decreased public school students’ rights to free speech.

7. Samuel Alito

In January 2006, the stridently anti-choice Samuel Alito was sworn in to the US Supreme Court. Alito had previously argued that the strip-search of a mother and ten-year old girl without a warrant was constitutional and that women should be required to tell their husbands before getting an abortion.

Alito stated in a 1985 application to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General: “I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.” For good measure, he added, “I am and always have been a conservative.”

Alito replaced the moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the nation’s high court. The obvious shift to the right caused by the addition of Roberts and Alito led Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to observe: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.”

8. Paul Bonicelli

In October 2005, Paul Bonicelli was appointed as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the US international development agency’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA). Bonicelli’s main prior claim to fame was being Dean of Academic Affairs at the fundamentalist Patrick Henry College, where the Student Honor Code mandates: “I will reserve sexual activity for the sanctity of marriage.” Patrick Henry College also has a 10-part Statement of Faith which says that hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.”

Bonicelli’s current office at DCHA is responsible for: ”strengthening the rule of law and respect for human rights; promoting more genuine and competitive elections and political processes; increasing development of a politically active civil society; and implementing a more transparent and accountable governance.”

In other words, a guy who thinks that non-believers “shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity” has been put in charge of promoting human rights across the world.

9. Eric Keroak

In 2006, Bush tapped Eric Keroack to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs at the Health and Human Services Department. Keroack opposes contraception, has described premarital sex as “modern germ warfare,” and espouses the bizarre, unscientific belief that casual sex depletes “bonding” hormones. He was previously medical director of a Christian pregnancy counseling service which described contraception as “demeaning to women.”

And that’s who the Bush administration chose to oversee the distribution of $283 million in family planning funds for the nation.

Keroack resigned in March 2007, after state Medicaid officials began taking action against his private medical practice.

10. Susan Orr

Keroack was replaced by Susan Orr, who had been “Senior Director for Marriage and Families” at the anti-gay, anti-reproductive rights Family Research Council. In her prior career, Orr had opposed the emergency contraception RU-486 and gushed that Bush was “pro-life … in his heart” for withholding funds from international family planning groups which even discussed abortion.

Orr has claimed that contraception is “not a medical necessity.” Yet she now is in charge of facilitating access to both contraception and sex education for low-income families across the nation.

—–

While presidential candidate George W. Bush insisted that he would put “competent judges on the bench, people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy,” his judicial and other appointments have proven otherwise. And these appointees will not leave office when Bush does.

Take Action

1. Oppose the nomination of Richard Honaker

NARAL Pro-Choice America has made it easy for you to urge your Senators not to support a lifetime judgeship for Richard Honaker. Check it out here:

2. Learn more about reproductive rights

How does your state stack up when it comes to reproductive rights? NARAL Pro-Choice America has a quick and easy way to find out via its “In Your State” index. For example, if you choose Wyoming, you’ll find that the legislature is considering two anti-choice bills including one requiring women to receive a “state-mandated lecture, which may include medically inaccurate information, prior to obtaining abortion services and prohibits abortion unless women wait an additional 24 hours after receiving lecture.” If you choose Tennessee, you will also find four separate anti-choice bills, including one “proposing a constitutional amendment to restrict low-income women’s access to abortion.” The site also lets you to see your Congress members’ reproductive rights voting records. Definitely worth a visit.

* “Bush in the Bedroom” is partially excerpted from The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now.

The Women’s Studies Association (WSA), formed by Dr. Gordon Solie, identifies its mission as “helping people — all people, every one of us — to better understand women, their place in society, and what they could and should be.”

Solie is Professor of History, Psychology, and Sociology at Harvard University. He has three Ph.D.’s (one in each discipline) and has been a long-time champion of women’s rights.

“It’s important that every single human being in this society devotes at least some of his time to understanding the effect our society has on women, and what we all can do to improve their situation,” Solie said.

WSA’s Board of Directors consists of many well-known and prominent persons including Benjamin J. Hunnicut, William Gannon, Oliver W. Douglas, Dwayne F. Schneider, David Crabtree, and Larry H. Summers.

Solie, who also serves as WSA President and CEO, said “We have assembled the best and brightest talent, and with it we will provide critical papers, hold seminars and conferences, and create e-mail lists designed to foster greater understanding of women’s issues in the United States.”

Solie says he got the idea for the WSA from the Working Class Studies Association (WCSA). “If you look at the WCSA’a organizational make-up, they are ideally suited to understanding working-class life in America. We have used their work as a model in an effort to do the same with women’s issues.”

WSA Vice President Terrance Taylor concurs: “There is a crying need in this country for an organization of devoted people like ourselves to help improve conditions for women.”

American Association for Women (AAW) President Jill Sandee welcomed the WSA onto the revolutionary-left scene of radical activism: “Any effort to raise consciousness of these important issues can only result on positive outcomes.”

Speaking via telephone from her winter home in Barbados, Sandee did however caution that she “hopes the WSA won’t cut into AAW’s own fundraising.”

Some people were hostile to the WSA’s efforts, however. Speaking from her Swiss chalet, well-known pundit Ann Coulter said, “Why is something like this even necessary? The United States is already a meritocracy. It can be tweaked, perhaps, but not improved. So why try?”

WSA Treasurer Richard Morton said he understood the criticism, but he felt that “People haven’t done enough. We must do more. That’s why we hope people will support this effort to help women.”

WSA Secretary Thomas Rich said all people are welcome to join the WSA and help the WSA’s efforts. Rich said people could purchase yearly memberships in the WSA for as little as $20.

“Just think,” Rich said, “for the cost of a cup of coffee, you can help a woman. We hope every member of humankind will avail himself of this important opportunity by calling the number on our website.”

Solie stressed there was nothing sexist about the WSA’s mission, its organizational structure, or its actions. “We’ve copied the WCSA down to the minutest detail. There’s nothing at all even remotely classist about a group of coordinator-class folks utilizing a coordinatorist organizational structure to deal with working-class issues.

“So how can it possibly be sexist to have a group of men concerning themselves with women’s issues in a framework that assumes women’s second-class status?”

“We hope this will once and for all lay to rest all the untoward claims made by the ignorant that sexism still exists in the United States,” said the group’s statement. “It is quite clear to us, as learned and well-educated specialists, that all remaining differences between men and women are due totally, completely, and utterly to the unalterable influence of man’s genetic material.”

The report was hailed across all sectors of society for the definitiveness of its conclusions and the rigorousness of its approach.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “The sky is blue, the grass is green, the Earth is round, two plus two equals four, the Sun rises in the East, sugar and spice, snips and snails, men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said, “Giving my daughter away will be the greatest honor my life.” When it was pointed out to Romney that he does not have a daughter, he said without blinking, “I’ll adopt one.”

First Lady Laura Bush said, “While the Taliban’s methods are extreme, we certainly understand and appreciate the good place they’re coming from.”

Democratic presidential candidate and current front-runner Hillary Clinton vowed, “I will defend the right to abortion up to the point that it starts costing me votes.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said, “Women, the working class, children — what’s the difference?”

In their findings, the panel of distinguished experts noted that research like the Human Genome Project had proved conclusively that male and female behavioral differences were hard-wired into our DNA.

“For example,” said the report, “we have unassailable and iron-clad proof that women change their names upon marriage — and men like it that way — because of genetic compulsions. It turns out that Genesis 3:16 isn’t that far off after all!

“But the important thing to note,” the report said, “is that this is all genetic. The role of socialization plays absolutely no part here. Peer pressure does not exist — certainly not for adults — and society never rewards or punishes people based on their behavioral conformity or lack thereof. We have proved all this just like a mathematician proves a theorem.”

It was difficult to find any one who disagreed with the report’s findings. Even liberal anti-war activists conceded privately that they liked women better who were “pretty, young, thin, and white.”

One notable exception was the well-known and highly-respected thinker and scholar Ann Coulter. Coulter blasted the report for what she called its “excessive liberal bias.”

“This report is a sham,” she said. “It did not call for foot-binding. It did not call for the repeal of the viciously man-hating ‘rule of thumb’ — Crissake, a man has the God-given right to use a Louisville Slugger on his old lady if he wants! And it totally ignored the strong arguments in favor of bringing back the dowry.

“This report was obviously written by a bunch of soy-eating vegans who comb burrs out of their fourteen-inch beards while walking barefoot through flower gardens, picking azaleas to sell at airports for cash to buy pot with.”

A spokesman for the panel responded to Coulter’s comments by saying, “While we don’t disagree with the thrust of Miss Coulter’s sentiments, we must point out that until a new Innocent III ascends to the papacy we will, sadly, be somewhat constrained.”

Leading Democratic defenders of women’s rights have already moved to codify at least some of the report’s findings. The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the senator was going to introduce legislation offering tax breaks to women who purchase burkas.

President Bush has threatened to veto Reid’s legislation, however, unless it includes a provision to repeal the capital gains tax for husbands whose wives don’t work. Reid is expected to accede to the White House’s request.

In addition, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has suggested a unique new way to bolster a U.S. economy currently threatened by a bursting housing bubble he helped create: “If beer companies were allowed to run ads with naked girls wrestling in an inflatable pool filled with baby oil, with the winner getting the right to use a beer-bottle dildo on the loser, then beer sales would increase one thousand percent, thus saving the US economy forever and all-time!”

Liberal anti-war activists pledged to include Greenspan’s idea as part of their platform since, “What we’re doing now’s not working too well.”

The panel’s findings are expected to provide a major boost to gender relations, increasing the already high level of security and self-worth felt by the majority of American women.

“Some small minds might think we’re rolling back the clock,” said the report. “But time is a circle, and by moving backward we move forward. It’s so obvious, even a little girl can understand it.”

“Man Is Stabbed in Attack After Admiring a Stranger,” wrote the comparatively well-mannered New York Times last August 19th.

The Manhattan district attorney says Patreese Johnson, one of the four, was the stabber. He charged her with attempted murder, and Johnson, Renata Hill, Venice Brown, and Terrain Dandridge with felony assault and gang assault. The man assaulted was Dwayne Buckle, 29, who, seeing the “gang” on the corner of 6th Avenue and 4th Street in Manhattan’s West Village, singled out Johnson because she was “slightly pretty.” He claimed he said, “Hi, how are you doing?”

Johnson, Hill, Brown, Dandridge, and three other women — a “seething sapphic septet,” according to the New York Post — had just gotten off the train from Newark, looking for a little fun. Being young, they knew the odds of fun were better in the Village; being lesbians, they knew fun was not to be had in the streets of Newark, where, four years earlier, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn was knifed to death by men who thought she was cute — until she told them she was gay.

Although what happened between these women and Dwayne Buckle was caught on surveillance cameras, there isn’t one newspaper account that doesn’t, somehow, conflict with the others. Dwayne Buckle, a “filmmaker” or “sound mixer” or “dvd bootlegger” -– depending on your news source -– evidently said more than “Hi”. The women contend he pointed to Patreese Johnson’s crotch and said, “Let me get some of that.” When Johnson answered, “No thank you, I’m not interested,” he told Johnson that he could fuck her and her friends straight.

Buckle says the women called his sneakers “cheap,” then slapped and spit at him, while he put his hands over his face to ward off the blows. The women say he spit at them and threw a cigarette. Buckle later admitted he called Venice Brown, because of her size, an elephant, and told one of the lesbians in a “low haircut” she looked like a man. Depending on your life experience, you’ll probably believe one side over the other. In any case, a melee ensued in which two or three male bystanders jumped in, either, says one side, as “good Samaritans” to defend the women, or, says the other side, because the women “recruited” them in the beating.

Naturally, there are details the press didn’t cover. Susan Tipograph, an attorney representing Renata Hill, supplies the fact that, at some point, Buckle pulled off one woman’s headpiece and tore out a patch of another’s hair –- which may be what he is seen swinging on the videotape, as he advances on the women.

According to Tipograph, Johnson, seeing that Buckle had Renata Hill in a choke-hold, took a 99-cent steak knife from her purse and swung it at Buckle’s arm, to get him to release Hill. After things quieted down, the women, with no apparent intent of fleeing the scene, went to the McDonald’s across the street, visited the bathroom, and got something to eat. Twenty-five minutes later, they were arrested a few blocks away, unaware the man they’d fought was injured. Buckle had, in fact, sustained stomach and liver lacerations, and was to spend the next five days in St. Vincent’s Hospital, recuperating. Interestingly, news media barely noticed that Dwayne Buckle is, himself, Black –- given his demonstrable heterosexuality, he has become, for purposes of the press, Everyman.

The trial did little to elucidate what happened. The videotape, played repeatedly, was, says Tipograph, highly inconclusive. At 95 pounds, 4 feet 11 inches, Patreese Johnson may not have had the strength or leverage to inflict much damage. Johnson still doesn’t know if she actually stabbed Buckle. One of the men who jumped into the fight may have done it, but, since the NYPD never tested Johnson’s knife for DNA evidence, we’ll never know. Long story short: the jury didn’t believe it was self-defense, and convicted the women.

Now it’s June 14, 2007. Johnson, Hill, Brown, and Dandridge are in State Supreme Court, being sentenced. The Times reporter notes how Judge Edward J. McLaughlin shows “little sympathy” as he lectures the defendants, saying “they should have heeded the nursery rhyme about ‘sticks and stones’ and walked away.” The judge “scoffs” at Johnson’s explanation that she carried a knife because she worked nights at Wal-Mart and needed protection getting home; he’s saying that Johnson’s “‘meek, weak’ demeanor” on the stand has been “an act.”

He sentences Johnson to 11 years in state prison; Renata Hill to 8 years, Terrain Dandridge to 3½, Venice Brown to 5, and the courtroom erupts. The defendants scream, “I’m a good girl!” and “Mommy, Mommy, I didn’t do this!” Brown and Hill, mothers themselves, will leave behind an infant and a 5-year-old.

“He lectured them as if he knew what their lives were about; he didn’t have a clue,” says Susan Tipograph. “Patreese Johnson is a 19-year-old kid. I’m sorry she’s not as forceful and together as a white, middle-aged man who’s been a judge for 20 years. He accused them of lying, of not being remorseful, of being predators. What happened that night was stupid, frankly. They should have walked away. But the sentences McLaughlin gave were off the charts.”

“PACK HOWLS – JUDGE WON’T BEND,” blares the New York Daily News. Some people say Justice was served. After all, you want to watch out for Black dykes with knives. But people who believe in this kind of justice talk like they know what prison is. Prison is about anything but justice, especially for the young, the queer, the African American.

Dwayne Buckle –- or anyone that night –- should not have been physically hurt. But, embedded within the charges and sentences these women received is an imploded violence that will damage lives deeply, years after the body’s wounds are healed.

No mention of Charles Gibson’s past on Good Morning America and of course Rather stipulates that he has the highest regard for Katie Couric. Uh huh. As columnist Ann Althouse pointedly asks,

1. Is Rather insinuating that having a female newscaster is part of the process of “tarting up” the news? I know he doesn’t precisely make that connection, but, to me, it’s just glaring that the word “tart” means prostitute.

2. Why on earth does it matter what time the news is on? If something is wrong for the evening news, why isn’t it just as wrong for the morning news? I think what is unstated is that only women are watching those morning shows, so the standards are lower.

It is worth remembering that when Couric was hired, there was all this hoopla about her credentials and America being ready for a woman news anchor. And now CBS’ Les Moonves says that numbers show that just a few months later we’re not? Oh and by the way, let’s also not forget that CBS’s numbers were already in the toilet when Couric took over the evening news slot.

We will probably never know if Katie Couric is a creditable news anchor because she is attempting to survive in an atmosphere where the white male powers that be in newsrooms everywhere consistently sensationalize the news, asking us to believe that Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton are just as important as the Iraq war and global warming. As Jon Stewart recently pointed out on The Daily Show, CNN cut away from a story about General Peter Pace’s resignation to go live to the courtroom where Ms. Hilton was getting in a car, they even went so far as to call in an expert, Tommy Chong (as in Cheech and..) to comment on the case. Not a shining example of having your priorities straight.

So are the news gatekeepers pushing tartiness? A recent AP piece proclaimed “Porn is becoming the ideal of what’s sexy,” explaining, “(T)he message is clear: In today’s world, sex doesn’t just sell. The pervasiveness of porn has made sexiness — from subtle to raunchy — a much-sought-after attribute online, at school and even at work.” If that isn’t blatant enough, try the new “Anchorwoman” reality show that will, as Jenn Pozner explains on the WIMN’s Voices Blog, “feature a busty blonde bikini model and former WWE wrestler as an on-air anchor of KYTX Channel 19, a local CBS affiliate in Tyler, Texas.” Not much room for doubt there.

Nonetheless, there is a case to be made that despite the language used, the key point is that the dumbed down tripe that passes as news these days is unacceptable. But it is also true that media sexism is alive and well and tartifiction, as Mr. Rather so (dis)gracefully put it, is hardly the only form of media misogyny which has many guises including ridicule, exclusion, discounting, discrimination, etc. Not only is that damaging to women but it creates a deliberately distorted view of the world that harms us all. And that is a crucial issue and to lose sight of it in the discussion of ‘yes, but what he really meant to say . . .’ only perpetuates the misogyny.