By Sue Davis
Published Nov 19, 2011 11:12 AM
Initiative 26 was trounced 58-42 percent by voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8. It would have outlawed all abortions, many forms of birth control, fertility treatments and stem-cell research and possibly have criminalized women who had ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages.
Known as the “egg-as-personhood” referendum, its defeat is an unexpected victory for women in the most conservative state in the U.S. It’s also a real setback for all who seek to deny women their full human rights by denying them control over their own bodies.
This pro-choice victory was not predicted even two weeks before the election. Polls showed passage was a done deal. The Oct. 26 New York Times reported both candidates for governor supported passage and quoted people in favor of or undecided about it.
What turned things around was a massive eleventh-hour, grassroots effort mounted by Mississippians for Healthy Families, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Feminist Majority Foundation and the NAACP. Mississippi now joins Colorado and South Dakota in rejecting “personhood” laws — twice in both those states. But new campaigns are said to be planned in Nevada, Georgia, Florida, Montana, Ohio, California, Oregon, Michigan, Wisconsin and South Dakota (yet again).
Meanwhile, anti-choice laws have spread like a rabid virus in many states. They include bans on insurance coverage for abortion; laws mandating that women who seek abortions must visit a “crisis pregnancy center” for an anti-abortion lecture by religious zealots; and laws that require a woman to view a sonogram of the fetus before having an abortion. Other laws seek to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood because it is the country’s largest abortion provider, even though millions of poor women rely on its facilities for their primary health care. Those who would be deprived are disproportionately women of color, young and living in rural areas.
But the most far-reaching attack on women’s reproductive rights occurred at the federal level on Oct. 13, with the endorsement and blessing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Family Research Council. By a vote of 251 to 172, the House of Representatives passed the horribly misnamed “Protect Life Act.” Among its many anti-women, anti-health and anti-life provisions was one that would allow doctors, other health care providers and hospitals to “exercise their conscience” and let pregnant women who need emergency medical care die.
No wonder women’s rights and progressive legal groups called it the “Let Women Die Bill,” while thoroughly opposing it. During debate before the vote, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) denounced the bill, saying that “had this law been in effect 20 years ago she might not be here, because she was one of those women who needed an emergency abortion to save her life.” (rhrealitycheck.org, Oct. 13)
Among its provisions, which would deprive millions of women of benefits they receive today, the law would force insurance companies to drop comprehensive coverage in state health insurance exchanges. This would prevent women from paying for health insurance, even with their own money, if it includes abortion coverage. And it would allow states to pass laws stipulating that health plans can refuse to cover preventive services, including birth control, even though the Department of Health and Human Services announced Aug. 1 that all preventive care for women, including birth control, should be provided at no extra cost in insurance plans.
All the major women’s health and rights organizations are fighting the good fight. For instance, the Center for Reproductive Rights won injunctions in Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas to stop anti-choice laws from going into effect. Planned Parenthood has mounted an information campaign asserting that though it is a major abortion provider, no government funding is used to pay for abortions.
United fightback needed
But more is needed to defend women’s rights and ensure reproductive justice for all women in this climate of political reaction. Nowadays, lawmakers would rather use state power to impose paternalistic, life-threatening limits on women’s right to life and health than to pass bills that create real jobs or that tax millionaires.
It’s instructive to note that in an essay posted Oct. 27 on rhrealitycheck.org, Loretta Ross, an African American who has devoted 35 years to the struggle for reproductive justice, advocated that the coalition fighting Initiative 26 link that struggle with the fight against Initiative 27, which mandated government-issued identification in order to vote. The Feminist Majority Foundation calculated that passage of similar laws nationally could prevent 35 million women from voting. Ross raised the slogan: “Two no’s make a right.” Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and the voter ID exclusion act passed.
After calling the defeat of Initiative 26 “a peoples’ victory, a triumph in which people of all backgrounds, races, professions and religions came together,” Ross wrote in the Nov. 9 rhrealitycheck.org, “Millions of dollars of staff and resources poured into Mississippi from around the country to defeat 26. … What if those same resources had been equally devoted to defeating 27? … Could we have saved the right to vote in Mississippi at the same time we saved (at least temporarily) the right to obtain an abortion?”
It’s time to link the fight for women’s rights with today’s fightback movement led by Occupy Wall Street, the unions and community groups. A broad-based, united struggle is needed to win justice on all issues for all people.
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sex. Show all posts
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Mass Rally Planned "For The Love of Egypt"
From: Al-Masry Al-Youm
On Sunday, 30 parties and political movements announced that they will participate in the rally planned for next Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The rally is called "Together for the love of Egypt."
A joint statement issued by the groups said the purpose of the rally is to call for a civil state, whereby all religious creeds are respected and all Egyptians are equal.
Hamada al-Kashef, a member of the Revolution Youth Union, said the rally is not a response to the mass rally staged by Islamists two weeks ago.
Among those who will participate are the National Association for Change, the April 6 Youth Movement, the Egyptian Communist Party, the Revolution Youth Union, Sufis, the Adl Party, the Egyptian Democratic Party and several Coptic coalitions.
Participants said they reject any attempts at dragging religion into politics or play on the Egyptians’ emotions.
The statement said the rally will be like a national carnival, opening with the largest collective iftar in the Middle East under the title "For the love of Egypt, together we break the fast and pray.” The banquet will extend from Abdel Moneim Riyad Square to Qasr al-Aini Street. Islamic and Coptic religious songs will be sung afterwards.
The statement said the objective is to call for completing the Egyptian revolution, which defended freedom, social justice and human rights.
It also called for a passing a law to criminalize discrimination, defending the rule of law, and drafting a constitution that safeguards the civil state.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Immigrant Worker(s) v. Capitalist Titan(s)
By Teresa Gutierrez
Published Jul 24, 2011 11:25 PM
On June 2 hotel housekeepers who are members of UNITE HERE launched a coordinated eight-city speak-out “to break the silence on the dangers of their jobs.” The workers stated that they were “inspired by the courageous stand taken by the housekeepers in New York against some of the most powerful men in the world.” (www.unitehere.org, June 2)
They were referring to the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of holding captive and sexually assaulting a housekeeper at New York’s Sofitel Hotel on May 14. DSK was the head of the International Monetary Fund at the time.
The union’s website says, “Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women. The majority are women of color and immigrants.” The workers point out in their union’s Hotel Workers Rising campaign that sexual harassment is a pervasive pattern in their work. Many workers have been subjected to indecent exposure and other types of assaults by hotel guests. (www.HotelWorkersRising.org)
As in all capitalist industries today, hotel workers are facing dangerous speed-ups, which lead to difficult working conditions and serious injuries. In most hotels, housekeepers must clean 15 or more rooms per day, often having to work off the clock and skip meals in order to finish. Chains such as Hyatt and Hilton are leading these speed-ups. Some of these hotels are being boycotted in places like Boston and San Francisco.
The union explains: “Most hotels have introduced new room amenities without reducing the number of rooms assigned to housekeepers each day. Luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, and extra pillows are increasingly common. Other add-ons like coffee pots, spa robes and large hard-to-clean mirrors make room cleaning more difficult and time-consuming.”
These conditions lead to an injury rate that is 40 percent higher for hotel workers than for other service sector workers, with sprains and strains being the most common injuries.
David vs. Goliath
Imagine the courage it took after hours of cleaning toilets for a housekeeper to accuse one of the world’s most powerful men — a potential president of France, a major European power, a man who could afford to pay $3,000 a night for the hotel room, a man whose sense of class privilege and entitlement was so great that he believed he owned the world and everyone in it.
One woman hotel worker, a housekeeper, a woman of color, an immigrant — in the midst of one of the most vicious anti-immigrant climates ever in this country — dared to stand up to the head of a global multibillion-dollar agency. She may have known nothing of his role as head of the IMF at the time, but her instincts must have told her he was on the other side of the class barrier.
It may not be known for decades — or it may never be known — if it was the overwhelming amount of incriminating evidence against Strauss-Kahn that forced law officials to debark DSK from his plane on his way home to France immediately after the housekeeper’s charges. Or whether it was interimperialist rivalry between the United States and France that led to his arrest. Or whether it was his enemies at home, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom DSK planned to challenge in next year’s presidential election.
But the evidence that DSK is a misogynist who believed he could do and say anything he wanted to women is beyond doubt. It does not matter if his spouse or his daughters stand behind him. The evidence is overwhelming that he views women as objects and commodities, to be used for his pleasure, at his will.
Blaming the victim
When DSK was arrested, many members of the public thought the case against him was strong. But suddenly the tables were turned. Once again, the victim of sexual harassment and rape was put on trial in a classic turn against female victims. Now it looks as if the charges could be dropped.
The National Organization for Women writes, “The mainstream media is trashing the ‘credibility’ of the housekeeper. They’re saying she lied on her immigration papers and has a boyfriend in jail — as if that means the rape charges should be dropped. Every day more than 600 women in this country are victims of rape or sexual assault. Routine victim-blaming and victim-shaming, like we are seeing in the case of these allegations against DSK, help facilitate this epidemic of sexual violence against women, and make it harder for women to report such crimes.” (youngfeministtaskforce.blogspot.com, July 11)
If one adds to this pervasive sexism the demonization and victimization of immigrants, then it’s clear that immigrants and women of color are being sent a message: Suffer in silence. Do not stand up to any injustice, no matter the severity.
The slander raised in the media against the housekeeper was leaked by none other than the prosecution’s office, indicating a decision made from high up that may mean: Hands off DSK. Let him loose.
The housekeeper is from Guinea, which is also the home country of Amadou Diallo, who was cruelly shot to death in a hail of 41 bullets by New York City police officers.
Even though Guinea has almost half of the world’s bauxite — which is what aluminum comes from — 70 percent of the population live on less than $1.25 a day.
Grinding poverty and contradictory social conditions led this hotel worker to come to the U.S. The media and law enforcement officials are saying that she embellished claims of abuse in order to gain asylum in the U.S., that she knows someone in prison, that she falsified tax returns, and so on. If any of this is true, her situation is about survival and not a test of her character.
Immigration experts stress that asylum claimants are asked to carry out a nearly impossible task to comply with requirements. Most asylum claims are denied.
However, none of this has anything to do with this case. Nothing at all.
Justice demanded
Some say that DSK was a more progressive thinker than some in the IMF and to the left of many. However, the IMF like any capitalist entity remains committed to the free flow of money and commodities. It remains committed to structural adjustment policies that fill banks’ coffers and restrict the free flow of humans as well as force an unprecedented wave of human migration.
The IMF has robbed and plundered Africa for decades. It owes the people of Guinea reparations. If it paid reparations, perhaps this housekeeper would not have been forced to migrate.
But rape is rape. Rape is forced sexual violence, and what happened in that hotel room on May 14 should not be removed from the realm of the reality of sexual violence. If DSK is guilty, he should pay for his crime.
Who will win this case? A powerful European man of extreme privilege or a West African hotel housekeeper?
Tabloids report on DSK dining at a New York Upper East Side restaurant where the bill was $700 for four people. They say he attended a concert in Tanglewood, Mass., and spent the night at a hotel where a suite can run to $2,000 a night on the July 15-17 weekend.
Yet, on July 17 several Black community leaders and organizations, along with women’s and immigrant rights’ groups, held a press conference and rally in Harlem called by State Sen. Bill Perkins to demand justice for the hotel worker. No U.S. press came, but the French press showed up and was not friendly.
If DSK is set loose, it will be an insult not only to the housekeeper but to all the people of Africa. It will send a message to women, immigrants and people of color that they should shut up and stay down.
At a time of reeling economic crisis, it will mean that the capitalist institutions that are forcing workers to pay for their crisis will feel emboldened and free to carry out their plunder. But the workers of the world — with women playing a fundamental role — will soon take center stage and victory will be ours.
For more information, see UNITE HERE’s hotel workers’ campaign at www.HotelWorkersRising.org.
Published Jul 24, 2011 11:25 PM
On June 2 hotel housekeepers who are members of UNITE HERE launched a coordinated eight-city speak-out “to break the silence on the dangers of their jobs.” The workers stated that they were “inspired by the courageous stand taken by the housekeepers in New York against some of the most powerful men in the world.” (www.unitehere.org, June 2)
They were referring to the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of holding captive and sexually assaulting a housekeeper at New York’s Sofitel Hotel on May 14. DSK was the head of the International Monetary Fund at the time.
The union’s website says, “Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women. The majority are women of color and immigrants.” The workers point out in their union’s Hotel Workers Rising campaign that sexual harassment is a pervasive pattern in their work. Many workers have been subjected to indecent exposure and other types of assaults by hotel guests. (www.HotelWorkersRising.org)
As in all capitalist industries today, hotel workers are facing dangerous speed-ups, which lead to difficult working conditions and serious injuries. In most hotels, housekeepers must clean 15 or more rooms per day, often having to work off the clock and skip meals in order to finish. Chains such as Hyatt and Hilton are leading these speed-ups. Some of these hotels are being boycotted in places like Boston and San Francisco.
The union explains: “Most hotels have introduced new room amenities without reducing the number of rooms assigned to housekeepers each day. Luxury beds with heavier mattresses and linens, triple-sheeting, and extra pillows are increasingly common. Other add-ons like coffee pots, spa robes and large hard-to-clean mirrors make room cleaning more difficult and time-consuming.”
These conditions lead to an injury rate that is 40 percent higher for hotel workers than for other service sector workers, with sprains and strains being the most common injuries.
David vs. Goliath
Imagine the courage it took after hours of cleaning toilets for a housekeeper to accuse one of the world’s most powerful men — a potential president of France, a major European power, a man who could afford to pay $3,000 a night for the hotel room, a man whose sense of class privilege and entitlement was so great that he believed he owned the world and everyone in it.
One woman hotel worker, a housekeeper, a woman of color, an immigrant — in the midst of one of the most vicious anti-immigrant climates ever in this country — dared to stand up to the head of a global multibillion-dollar agency. She may have known nothing of his role as head of the IMF at the time, but her instincts must have told her he was on the other side of the class barrier.
It may not be known for decades — or it may never be known — if it was the overwhelming amount of incriminating evidence against Strauss-Kahn that forced law officials to debark DSK from his plane on his way home to France immediately after the housekeeper’s charges. Or whether it was interimperialist rivalry between the United States and France that led to his arrest. Or whether it was his enemies at home, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom DSK planned to challenge in next year’s presidential election.
But the evidence that DSK is a misogynist who believed he could do and say anything he wanted to women is beyond doubt. It does not matter if his spouse or his daughters stand behind him. The evidence is overwhelming that he views women as objects and commodities, to be used for his pleasure, at his will.
Blaming the victim
When DSK was arrested, many members of the public thought the case against him was strong. But suddenly the tables were turned. Once again, the victim of sexual harassment and rape was put on trial in a classic turn against female victims. Now it looks as if the charges could be dropped.
The National Organization for Women writes, “The mainstream media is trashing the ‘credibility’ of the housekeeper. They’re saying she lied on her immigration papers and has a boyfriend in jail — as if that means the rape charges should be dropped. Every day more than 600 women in this country are victims of rape or sexual assault. Routine victim-blaming and victim-shaming, like we are seeing in the case of these allegations against DSK, help facilitate this epidemic of sexual violence against women, and make it harder for women to report such crimes.” (youngfeministtaskforce.blogspot.com, July 11)
If one adds to this pervasive sexism the demonization and victimization of immigrants, then it’s clear that immigrants and women of color are being sent a message: Suffer in silence. Do not stand up to any injustice, no matter the severity.
The slander raised in the media against the housekeeper was leaked by none other than the prosecution’s office, indicating a decision made from high up that may mean: Hands off DSK. Let him loose.
The housekeeper is from Guinea, which is also the home country of Amadou Diallo, who was cruelly shot to death in a hail of 41 bullets by New York City police officers.
Even though Guinea has almost half of the world’s bauxite — which is what aluminum comes from — 70 percent of the population live on less than $1.25 a day.
Grinding poverty and contradictory social conditions led this hotel worker to come to the U.S. The media and law enforcement officials are saying that she embellished claims of abuse in order to gain asylum in the U.S., that she knows someone in prison, that she falsified tax returns, and so on. If any of this is true, her situation is about survival and not a test of her character.
Immigration experts stress that asylum claimants are asked to carry out a nearly impossible task to comply with requirements. Most asylum claims are denied.
However, none of this has anything to do with this case. Nothing at all.
Justice demanded
Some say that DSK was a more progressive thinker than some in the IMF and to the left of many. However, the IMF like any capitalist entity remains committed to the free flow of money and commodities. It remains committed to structural adjustment policies that fill banks’ coffers and restrict the free flow of humans as well as force an unprecedented wave of human migration.
The IMF has robbed and plundered Africa for decades. It owes the people of Guinea reparations. If it paid reparations, perhaps this housekeeper would not have been forced to migrate.
But rape is rape. Rape is forced sexual violence, and what happened in that hotel room on May 14 should not be removed from the realm of the reality of sexual violence. If DSK is guilty, he should pay for his crime.
Who will win this case? A powerful European man of extreme privilege or a West African hotel housekeeper?
Tabloids report on DSK dining at a New York Upper East Side restaurant where the bill was $700 for four people. They say he attended a concert in Tanglewood, Mass., and spent the night at a hotel where a suite can run to $2,000 a night on the July 15-17 weekend.
Yet, on July 17 several Black community leaders and organizations, along with women’s and immigrant rights’ groups, held a press conference and rally in Harlem called by State Sen. Bill Perkins to demand justice for the hotel worker. No U.S. press came, but the French press showed up and was not friendly.
If DSK is set loose, it will be an insult not only to the housekeeper but to all the people of Africa. It will send a message to women, immigrants and people of color that they should shut up and stay down.
At a time of reeling economic crisis, it will mean that the capitalist institutions that are forcing workers to pay for their crisis will feel emboldened and free to carry out their plunder. But the workers of the world — with women playing a fundamental role — will soon take center stage and victory will be ours.
For more information, see UNITE HERE’s hotel workers’ campaign at www.HotelWorkersRising.org.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Women & The Right to Education
By LeiLani Dowell
Published Mar 23, 2011 9:52 PM
Taken from a talk to a Workers World Party International Working Women’s Month forum in New York City. Dowell is a Fight Imperialism, Stand Together organizer and WW managing editor. Listen to entire talk at www.workers.tv.
At Hunter College women make up 70 percent of the student body — a trend that is being reproduced throughout the country, with more and more women attending college. This makes any struggle for education a women’s issue. Almost half of the women attending my school — 48 percent — are women of color.
And yet in the halls of my school today, posters created and posted by students in women and gender studies classes at Hunter are demanding a Women and Gender Studies Department.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who campaigned on a promise to bust up the unions — is now trying to cut funding to the City University of New York system, of which Hunter is a part, by $95 million, as well as the State University of New York by $100 million and community colleges by $62 million. The schools will respond by raising tuition and fees for students, making it harder and harder for poor, working-class folks to attend.
Free tuition at CUNY was a reality during some of your lifetimes. I can’t imagine going to college for free now.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous and economically most powerful state in Germany with more than 25 percent of Germany’s student population, the regional parliament just abolished tuition fees. An activist in this struggle stressed that “only huge waves of protests over a long period of time could take us to this kind of rollback.”
A series on public education has been running in Workers World newspaper written by retired teacher Gene Clancy. He discusses what public education meant to the capitalists in the beginning of the 20th century: a means to train the next generation of workers. A century later with the onset of imperialist globalization, the capitalists no longer have a need to train skilled workers. Moreover, they’ve found they can profit from it, rather than giving it away for free. That’s what the charter school movement is all about.
School remains a place where students are trained in the ideology of capitalism. It’s where we’re taught that capitalism is the best system, the only sustainable, logical system. That’s a bunch of lies, essentially. Therefore, it’s so very important that we engage with students, that we provide an alternative to the propaganda they’re force-fed in the classrooms.
Students interacting with and showing solidarity with workers is a momentous step forward. The fact that an alliance of students, community and labor has been formed can be decisive in turning back austerity budgets, but also in fighting, in general, against sexism, against war, against racism and anti-lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer bigotry, against the system itself. Being involved in the battle against austerity in alliances will sharpen all these forces politically.
We’ve recently seen the effects of the student movement on a global level. The student movement was the first sector to rise up in response to the attacks on the public sector, both here in the U.S. and in Ireland, Britain, Italy, Pakistan, France, Greece and Puerto Rico. Students continue to play important roles in the anti-imperialist revolts sweeping the Middle East. And of course there’s the role of students in Wisconsin — another beautiful instance of unity among students, labor and the community. At Hunter students recently waged a successful campaign to save childcare there.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Mar 23, 2011 9:52 PM
Taken from a talk to a Workers World Party International Working Women’s Month forum in New York City. Dowell is a Fight Imperialism, Stand Together organizer and WW managing editor. Listen to entire talk at www.workers.tv.
At Hunter College women make up 70 percent of the student body — a trend that is being reproduced throughout the country, with more and more women attending college. This makes any struggle for education a women’s issue. Almost half of the women attending my school — 48 percent — are women of color.
And yet in the halls of my school today, posters created and posted by students in women and gender studies classes at Hunter are demanding a Women and Gender Studies Department.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who campaigned on a promise to bust up the unions — is now trying to cut funding to the City University of New York system, of which Hunter is a part, by $95 million, as well as the State University of New York by $100 million and community colleges by $62 million. The schools will respond by raising tuition and fees for students, making it harder and harder for poor, working-class folks to attend.
Free tuition at CUNY was a reality during some of your lifetimes. I can’t imagine going to college for free now.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous and economically most powerful state in Germany with more than 25 percent of Germany’s student population, the regional parliament just abolished tuition fees. An activist in this struggle stressed that “only huge waves of protests over a long period of time could take us to this kind of rollback.”
A series on public education has been running in Workers World newspaper written by retired teacher Gene Clancy. He discusses what public education meant to the capitalists in the beginning of the 20th century: a means to train the next generation of workers. A century later with the onset of imperialist globalization, the capitalists no longer have a need to train skilled workers. Moreover, they’ve found they can profit from it, rather than giving it away for free. That’s what the charter school movement is all about.
School remains a place where students are trained in the ideology of capitalism. It’s where we’re taught that capitalism is the best system, the only sustainable, logical system. That’s a bunch of lies, essentially. Therefore, it’s so very important that we engage with students, that we provide an alternative to the propaganda they’re force-fed in the classrooms.
Students interacting with and showing solidarity with workers is a momentous step forward. The fact that an alliance of students, community and labor has been formed can be decisive in turning back austerity budgets, but also in fighting, in general, against sexism, against war, against racism and anti-lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer bigotry, against the system itself. Being involved in the battle against austerity in alliances will sharpen all these forces politically.
We’ve recently seen the effects of the student movement on a global level. The student movement was the first sector to rise up in response to the attacks on the public sector, both here in the U.S. and in Ireland, Britain, Italy, Pakistan, France, Greece and Puerto Rico. Students continue to play important roles in the anti-imperialist revolts sweeping the Middle East. And of course there’s the role of students in Wisconsin — another beautiful instance of unity among students, labor and the community. At Hunter students recently waged a successful campaign to save childcare there.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
British Communists Review "Made in Dagenham"
From: Proletarian Online, publication of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
Interviewed in Leicester Square, London, as he came out of the world premier of Made in Dagenham, actor Bob Hoskins, one of the stars of the film, remarked that, following the strike of the women machinists at the Ford car factory in Dagenham, Essex in 1968, Barbara Castle, the employment secretary in the Labour government of the day, had, in 1975, steered into law The Equal Pay Act, giving women the same pay as men. But, he said, 35 years later, it still hasn’t happened: women are still not getting equal pay with men. “It’s a liberty!” was his verdict.
The film tells the story of the women machinists who made the seat covers and door linings for the cars produced at the massive Ford factory in Dagenham. At the time of the events portrayed, there were 55,000 people employed on the Dagenham site.
The strike in question was sparked when Ford managers arbitrarily redesignated the machinists’ jobs as ‘unskilled’. The most cursory acquaintance with what was involved in making the vinyl coverings (and, indeed, any sewing-machine work) would show how ridiculous was that designation and how far from the reality of the women’s jobs. It becomes clear in the film that the management did it because it would result in lower wages for the women – and because they thought they would get away with it; the women might grumble but they would not make trouble.
The story of the film is the story of the women’s struggle to get that grading reversed, and how they developed in strength and understanding through the struggle. Quite soon, their demand became one for equal pay with the male workers: “for pay based on the work done, not whether you’ve got a dick”, as one of the characters succinctly puts it.
The women had to face opposition from the corrupt leadership of their trade union, who, apart from a sympathetic shop steward (Bob Hoskins’ role), were more interested in enjoying the perks of their jobs and preventing trouble than in representing their members’ interests (an all too familiar story, both then and now).
They also had to face difficulties at home, where their domestic responsibilities either made the tasks of negotiating and campaigning difficult or impossible, or meant that they could only carry out these tasks to the extent that their husbands individually supported them. And that support wavered considerably when the persistence of the women in continuing their strike until their demands were met eventually led to the plant being closed and all the men being laid off when the initially abundant stocks of finished seat covers and linings ran out.
Eventually, both the US chief executive of Ford and government minister Barbara Castle became involved in an effort to resolve the strike: the CE reminding Castle of Ford’s ability to move their operation to another country where the labour force would be cheaper and more compliant. The strike was settled and the women returned to work on the agreement that they would be regraded and awarded 80 percent of the men’s pay.
Before the credits roll, the film ends by recording that, in 1975, Barbara Castle introduced into parliament the Equal Pay Act, which then passed into law.
The film has been meticulously researched, is well written and beautifully acted by an accomplished cast. It is enjoyable, entertaining, amusing and (for those of us alive and in the movement at the time) not a little nostalgic.
The filmmakers had the help and cooperation of the surviving women machinists who participated in the strike. As the credits roll, there are tantalising glimpses of interviews with the women today, which left our reviewer hungry to see and hear more of the women’s own reflections on their strike, the struggle and its achievements – and how they view these things now, in the light of their subsequent working lives and of national and international events.
Interviewed on radio, the women explained that the predominant perception of women working at the time was that they worked for ‘pin money’, to buy optional extras, whereas in fact the reality for many working-class women was that either they were the sole breadwinner or their wages were essential if their families were to make ends meet.
The women also said that they enjoyed working as, although the work could be hard (and the film showed the appalling working conditions provided for the women by this mega-rich international company), they had the benefit of each other’s company and they managed to ‘have a laugh’.
Made in Dagenham is a very polished production, and it is pleasing to see such a subject both treated seriously and as part of the mainstream. This itself is a tribute to how much has changed in the intervening years, in no small part owing to the actions and courage of the Dagenham women. Since the strike, women have increasingly penetrated into spheres of work totally barred to them in 1968, such as the production side of the film industry itself.
Interestingly, reviewers in both the Times and the New York Times, while giving the film in the main favourable reviews, ended by saying that the ‘feel-good’ emotions generated by watching the film (and it is a heart-warming story as depicted, with regard to the individual characters as well as the women’s struggle as a whole) do not last long after leaving the cinema.
Neither critic explained this rather cryptic comment, but perhaps Bob Hoskins’ comment referred to earlier provides the key: the film ends in the glow of victory, but our knowledge of just what has and has not been gained by women in the intervening years qualifies that sense of uplifting achievement.
In the first place, there is the question of equal pay itself. The first Act introduced by Barbara Castle, and passed, provided for ‘equal pay for equal work’. It was soon apparent that this would make little difference to pay inequality, as women then were generally working in spheres that had become almost exclusively theirs – ‘women’s work’ – such as nursing, typing/secretarial, cleaning, textile and garment making and food processing, which meant there were no men doing the work with whom their wages could be compared and to whose pay the women workers’ pay could be made equal.
This led to an early amendment to the original legislation requiring ‘equal pay for work of equal value’, which at least made possible negotiations over the appropriate grading of women’s work and the level of pay for it. But legislation does not automatically equal reality. Enforcement had to be by the women themselves: by unions supporting their women members.
Here, the compromised leadership of many unions found it no easier than it had at Dagenham to support female members, either collectively or by individual negotiation, especially when strong cultural forces come into play on both sides. The result is that women overall get 60 percent of men’s wages even today.
It took until this decade for local authorities, who generally have been among the best employers of women and minorities, finally to grant parity between refuse collectors and school cooks, with much handwringing as to the disastrous consequences for the authorities’ budgets, their liability for their former workers’ pensions and the depressing effect, long term, on their male employees’ wages.
What the film does not touch upon is one of the most important legacies of the Ford women’s struggle, namely, the reinvigoration of women’s centuries-old struggle for equality, and the birth of its latest incarnation in the form of the women’s movement of the 1970s.
We see the film’s heroine, Rita O’Grady, having been elected leader of the strike, travel around the country, talking to meetings and rallies of other women, workers and supporters, but in an impressionistic way, without any detail. The film is a bourgeois entertainment, concerned with the stories of the individual strikers rather than the history of the working-class movement.
In fact, galvanised and inspired by the Ford women’s struggle, there grew up a network of women’s groups forming the ‘Women’s Equal Rights Campaign’. Those women’s groups held meetings, raised funds and distributed leaflets in support of the Ford women. They united women from all sections and none of the working-class movement: trade union, Labour and Communist party (in all its incarnations) members, members of Troskyite and anti-revisionist groups and members of no group or organisation at all.
The agenda was strictly reformist to start with, and along established trade-union and party lines: campaign for changes in the law by the Labour government. The purpose and inspiration of these groups did not end when the Ford women’s strike ended, and in 1970 there was a coming together of many women at the Oxford conference, when the National Women’s Coordinating Committee was formed in order to provide a loose confederation of these various groups and enable women from all areas and all types of groups and areas of struggle to meet and share experiences and learn from each other.
By then, there were many feminist groups, who were not concerned with the struggles of working-class women or of the working class for socialism, but only with their own personal ‘liberation’ from the ‘oppressors’, whom too often they identified simply as ‘men’, rather than as the capitalist ruling class and the system of exploitation that had reached its apogee in imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.
The women’s movement of the 1970s became increasingly polarised between those with a socialist and proletarian perspective and the feminists. Sexual ‘liberation’ became the theme of one strand of the feminists. Although their chief propagandist, Germaine Greer, has since recanted her advocacy of women becoming ‘liberated’ by sexual promiscuity, this view of ‘freedom’ found favour with many branches of capitalist society and permeates it still, to the profit of some, but to the detriment of young women and men alike.
Other strands of feminism pursued the reformist agenda of legislative change or concentrated on particular areas of work/professions – Women in Media, for example. Later in the 1970s, Barbara Castle also introduced legislation outlawing discrimination on the ground of gender: the precursor of all subsequent anti-discrimination legislation.
It is not the purpose of this article to review the history either of the recent women’s movement, or of the changes in the position of women since 1968, although some of the latter are obvious as one watches the film’s accurate representation of the prevalent attitudes towards women and the realities of their daily lives.
In passing, however, we would make just one further point. In 1970, the Union of Women for Liberation (UWL) was formed with the aim of studying, propagating and campaigning for women’s emancipation on the basis of a proletarian analysis. While campaigning for changes in the law, the group’s main aim was to show that the only true liberation of women will be be found once individual domestic labour has been socialised.
Not on an individual level or a profit-making basis, as happens now, meaning that few working-class women can afford to use the various services (from child care to restaurants), but collectively. This in turn will only happen if the means of production are owned by the working class, since they alone have the motivation to provide universally available, good-quality services that put people’s needs, rather than profits, first.
Forty years ago, the UWL pointed out that whatever facilities women and families might achieve in the way of nurseries, etc, could be easily lost, as could any benefits won by the working class as a whole, so long as they were dependent upon the superprofits obtained by the imperialist ruling class from their exploitation of the peoples of the developing world. As soon as those profits were squeezed, or as soon as the ruling class felt confident, it would have no hesitation in worsening both the pay packets and the social wages of the working class (ie, in driving down pay and cutting social services) and so increase profits.
Subsequent events, above all the collapse of the socialist regimes in the USSR and East Europe, which had provided a model of another way apart from capitalism to organise production and society, and the cyclical, ever deepening economic crises of imperialism, culminating in the banking crisis of 2007, all of which have led to the reduction in actual wages as well as a drastic cut in the social wage of the working class in Britain, have only confirmed the correctness of this analysis.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Rape, Racism, and the Media
By Shelley Ettinger
Published Mar 17, 2011 9:16 PM
This article is based on a Read Red blog at http://tinyurl.com/4dvz7ap.
The New York Times ran an appalling March 9 story about a gang rape in east Texas that left me sickened and shaken. The victim was an 11-year-old girl. There were, reportedly, 18 rapists. Eighteen! They included some star high-school athletes as well as some sons of locally prominent families. At least one of them videotaped the assault with his cell phone. The video was shown around by the bragging rapists, and that’s how the crime eventually came to light and they were brought to justice.
These facts weren’t the only appalling thing about the Times piece. The story itself descended into the worst despicably sexist terms in its characterization of the child who was so terribly brutalized and defiled. The newspaper found it necessary to comment that she was known in the neighborhood for wearing inappropriately mature clothes and makeup and for hanging out in the wrong places. Yes, that’s right — the report implies that this 11-year-old child was a slut; she was asking for it; she deserved to be destroyed. This aspect of the report was picked up quickly by a number of commentators, who have denounced the Times for its disgusting blame-the-victim insinuations.
But there’s another aspect. After my first read and my first reaction, which was rage and horror, I cooled down a little and started to think, started wondering. I referred above to “facts” — but I know better than to rely on the bourgeois press for the truth. I used the phrase “brought to justice” — but I know there is no justice under capitalism, and especially not in rape cases, not for the victims of sex assault, nor for the young men who might be arrested and charged whether they did it or not. Yes, I’m talking about race: What I started wondering most of all was just who these 18 alleged rapists were. So I did a quick search and found some other, earlier, local articles about this case.
Almost immediately, a series of mug shots appeared on my screen of young African-American men. The victim’s picture of course isn’t available, but I guessed that she too is Black because if she were white we’d have heard much more about this case much sooner; quite possibly we’d have heard about a lynching. Later reports say that the victim is Latina. As it is, knowing that all the alleged rapists are Black makes this a story not only about what we Marxists call the woman question, but also about the national question.
Now reread this from the Times piece: “The video led the police to an abandoned trailer, more evidence, and, eventually, to a roundup over the last month of 18 young men and teenage boys.” A roundup of African-American youths.
The rape of this child was a heinous crime. It’s almost impossible for me to believe that this roundup by the Cleveland, Texas, police, a force made up overwhelmingly of white men, is not another crime — a racist crime. That is, that some of those arrested are innocent, picked up for the crime of being young Black men. And that they’ll be railroaded into prison where they’ll join so many other young Black men locked up for the crime of being poor and oppressed. So now there will be two crimes: that against the child and that against those who had nothing to do with it, but were rounded up.
This is not the Glen Ridge rape. That case was beautifully analyzed in the 1997 book “Our Guys” by Bernard Lefkowitz. In 1989 in Glen Ridge, an affluent white New Jersey suburb, a bunch of star athletes gang-raped a mentally challenged girl — and almost the whole community united to defend and protect them. The victim and her family were made pariahs. The rapists were treated as heroes or, at worst, good guys who made a minor mistake. Not one of them ever served serious time.
Here, in contrast, we have cops rounding up Black youths. If there have been confessions, we have the likelihood that they were coerced. That some of them might be false confessions. That some of those rounded up didn’t do it. This is the United States. There is no way that justice will be done. (Nor do I think that any trials, convictions and imprisonments of those who actually did commit the rape will constitute justice, for none of that will address or redress any of what’s wrong with this society, any of the real causes of these crimes.)
Don’t get me wrong. I remain enraged and shaken about the unspeakable crime that was committed. I can’t stop thinking about the 11-year-old girl and how she’ll manage to survive on into adulthood — if she’ll manage to survive. Both the brutal misogyny of the crime and the sexist reporting of it make me want to scream and shout. But I won’t join the rush to judgment against those accused. Because when Black men are accused of rape, especially in a case like this when so many are accused at once, and in small-town Texas [with a sordid history including the KKK and police brutality — WW] no less, you can be assured that racism too is involved. There is a long history of Black men being made into poster images for rape, whether the victim is Black or white, and of rape charges being used to justify racist violence and scapegoating. This goes back to slavery times and then the Klan and Jim Crow in the terrible lynch-law era. Then there was the Scottsboro case back in the 1930s. And more recently, the case of the Central Park jogger, for which the New York Police Department rounded up a bunch of Black youths who were demonized and caricatured as, basically, animals who had carried out what the media called a “wilding” — and who, despite their protestations of innocence were tried, convicted and imprisoned only to be exonerated years later after losing most of their youth to prison.
I recently read Jeffrey B. Perry’s excellent book on Hubert Harrison, the first of a projected two-part biography of this great Black radical of early 20th-century Harlem. In the book Perry repeatedly returns to the lodestar of Harrison’s political life: the principle (and practical necessity) that fighting racism must be paramount; that as long as white supremacy reigns, there can be no class unity. A socialist revolutionary must always remember this. The Cleveland, Texas, rape case is the latest reminder.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Law Exposes "Pregnancy Centers"
Published Mar 13, 2011 10:42 PM
Special to Workers World New York
On March 2 the New York City Council voted to regulate so-called "crisis pregnancy centers." These are centers set up to look like a doctor's office or clinic where pregnant women can seek care for pregnancy, abortion or contraception, including the morning-after pill. But their only mission is to convince women not to have abortions. ??
These centers usually have no licensed medical personnel on site and, until now, were not licensed or regulated in any way. Privacy laws safeguarding the confidentiality of patient information do not apply to these centers. Women who go there have to perform their own pregnancy tests -- using a pregnancy test kit sold over the counter in pharmacies -- because the centers are not licensed to do medical tests or procedures. ??
The new law requires that these phony centers notify clients whether or not there are licensed medical personnel on site; clearly state that they do not provide or offer referrals for abortion care, the morning-after pill or any form of contraception; and ensure confidentiality of all information collected from clients. The law requires this notification at the centers and in all advertising, both in print and online. Taking into account the special vulnerability of non-English speakers to the deceptive tactics used, all notifications must be in Spanish as well as English.?
These sham centers are often located near or even in the same building as Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers in order to lure women with unintended pregnancies and subject them to anti-abortion propaganda. They do not provide medically accurate information about pregnancy, contraception or abortion and promote discredited notions about links between abortion and breast cancer. ??
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says abortion foes' free speech is not curbed by the new law. "But they don’t have the right to dress up as doctors and masquerade as health care providers and deceive women into thinking they’ve been to the doctor when they have not.” (New York Times, March 2)
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Special to Workers World New York
On March 2 the New York City Council voted to regulate so-called "crisis pregnancy centers." These are centers set up to look like a doctor's office or clinic where pregnant women can seek care for pregnancy, abortion or contraception, including the morning-after pill. But their only mission is to convince women not to have abortions. ??
These centers usually have no licensed medical personnel on site and, until now, were not licensed or regulated in any way. Privacy laws safeguarding the confidentiality of patient information do not apply to these centers. Women who go there have to perform their own pregnancy tests -- using a pregnancy test kit sold over the counter in pharmacies -- because the centers are not licensed to do medical tests or procedures. ??
The new law requires that these phony centers notify clients whether or not there are licensed medical personnel on site; clearly state that they do not provide or offer referrals for abortion care, the morning-after pill or any form of contraception; and ensure confidentiality of all information collected from clients. The law requires this notification at the centers and in all advertising, both in print and online. Taking into account the special vulnerability of non-English speakers to the deceptive tactics used, all notifications must be in Spanish as well as English.?
These sham centers are often located near or even in the same building as Planned Parenthood or other abortion providers in order to lure women with unintended pregnancies and subject them to anti-abortion propaganda. They do not provide medically accurate information about pregnancy, contraception or abortion and promote discredited notions about links between abortion and breast cancer. ??
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, says abortion foes' free speech is not curbed by the new law. "But they don’t have the right to dress up as doctors and masquerade as health care providers and deceive women into thinking they’ve been to the doctor when they have not.” (New York Times, March 2)
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Fight to Protect LGBTQ Youth
By Martha Grevatt
Detroit
Published Feb 21, 2011 6:25 PM
In Michigan there is currently a struggle over whether or not to pass “anti-bullying” legislation. To define its opponents as “bigoted extremists” would be an understatement. Who could possibly stand in the way of protecting a child from assault, harassment and intimidation?
Michigan is one of only five states that do not have some sort of legislation that mandates local school districts to adopt a model anti-bullying policy. Physical violence, harassment, intimidation, and verbal, written and graphic gestures — including those that are electronically transmitted — fall under the umbrella of bullying. While the word “bullying” is itself a euphemism for the violent and hate-motivated terror that has led to a spate of widely publicized youth suicides, the push for anti-bullying legislation has spawned a progressive movement uniting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities with teachers and their unions and parent survivors of “bullycide.”
Named for Matt Epling, who took his life at the age of 14 after being repeatedly tortured by his classmates, “Matt’s Law” has been introduced and reintroduced in the Michigan Legislature over the past 10 years. A version passed by the House in 2006 defined bullying as abuse “that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; or a mental, physical, or sensory disability or impairment; or by any other distinguishing characteristic.” Under the Model Policy, school boards must institute “appropriate remedial actions for a student or staff member who commits one or more acts of harassment or bullying [which] may range from positive behavioral interventions up to and including suspension or expulsion, in the case of a student, or suspension or termination in the case of an employee.” (www.michigan.gov)
The Republican-dominated state Senate has repeatedly blocked passage. The bill’s most vocal opponent has been Gary Glenn of the American Family Association’s state chapter, who objects to protecting LGBTQ youth. “Public school officials have a legal duty not to put children at risk by in any way legitimizing or encouraging homosexual behavior,” this bigot stated in 2007, “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” (Michigan Messenger)
The LGBTQ movement is split over whether to support a compromise bill eliminating “enumeration” of the various well-documented hate motives, referring instead to acts “motivated by animus or by an actual perceived characteristic.” Some activists believe that the substitute language would still give targeted youth a measure of protection; others demand enumeration, citing studies showing that harassment and physical abuse of LGBTQ students are less frequent when their oppression is spelled out. Hundreds representing both viewpoints came out for a Jan. 26 public hearing sponsored by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, joining in outrage at the failure to pass any kind of legislation protecting youth not only from anti-LGBTQ bigotry, but also from racist, sexist and anti-disability bigotry.
Glenn remains opposed even to the tame version of Matt’s Law. In 2009 he argued that “ ‘characteristics’ language does not define bullying. It defines one of innumerable motivations for bullying. Of all possible motivations for bullying, what makes that one so special that it’s the only one cited by the legislation?” He favors a version that merely defines bullying as “bad.” (Michigan Messenger, March 2, 2009)
Some conservative bigots have taken an even more extreme position, opposing any anti-bullying legislation. In Minnesota, where progressive voices are calling for the strengthening of that state’s weak law, unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer stated last year that “it’s up to the parents ... how they handle that situation. ... I don’t want the government doing that for us.” (Minnesota Independent, Sept. 8) Others are parroting the old racist “states rights” line, using Michigan’s “home rule” law to encourage local communities to oppose state mandates designed to protect youth.
Safe schools are a right!
According to The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s 2009 School Climate Survey, 84.6 percent of LGBTQ students had been verbally harassed, 40.1 percent physically harassed, and 18.8 percent physically assaulted; LGBTQ youth were reportedly bullied at a rate four times that of non-LGBTQ youth. They had the second-highest rate of reported abuse overall. Frequent attacks also occur against youth of color, girls, immigrants, religious minorities and disabled youth. A majority of youth overall experienced some kind of so-called bullying; the number one bullying motive cited was “appearance.”
Emboldened by Tea Party advances, the religious right is willing to shove young people into the lion’s den for the crime of being different.
The torment all these precious children and youth face under a patriarchal and racist, capitalistic system — where those deemed “beautiful” are exploited to sell products and those deemed “ugly” are ridiculed for profit by the entertainment industry — is criminal. These brutal statistics are another reason to fight for a world where no child will go to school in fear or commit “bullycide” to escape a life of ridicule and terror.
E-mail: mgrevatt@workers.org
Detroit
Published Feb 21, 2011 6:25 PM
In Michigan there is currently a struggle over whether or not to pass “anti-bullying” legislation. To define its opponents as “bigoted extremists” would be an understatement. Who could possibly stand in the way of protecting a child from assault, harassment and intimidation?
Michigan is one of only five states that do not have some sort of legislation that mandates local school districts to adopt a model anti-bullying policy. Physical violence, harassment, intimidation, and verbal, written and graphic gestures — including those that are electronically transmitted — fall under the umbrella of bullying. While the word “bullying” is itself a euphemism for the violent and hate-motivated terror that has led to a spate of widely publicized youth suicides, the push for anti-bullying legislation has spawned a progressive movement uniting the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities with teachers and their unions and parent survivors of “bullycide.”
Named for Matt Epling, who took his life at the age of 14 after being repeatedly tortured by his classmates, “Matt’s Law” has been introduced and reintroduced in the Michigan Legislature over the past 10 years. A version passed by the House in 2006 defined bullying as abuse “that is reasonably perceived as being motivated either by any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; or a mental, physical, or sensory disability or impairment; or by any other distinguishing characteristic.” Under the Model Policy, school boards must institute “appropriate remedial actions for a student or staff member who commits one or more acts of harassment or bullying [which] may range from positive behavioral interventions up to and including suspension or expulsion, in the case of a student, or suspension or termination in the case of an employee.” (www.michigan.gov)
The Republican-dominated state Senate has repeatedly blocked passage. The bill’s most vocal opponent has been Gary Glenn of the American Family Association’s state chapter, who objects to protecting LGBTQ youth. “Public school officials have a legal duty not to put children at risk by in any way legitimizing or encouraging homosexual behavior,” this bigot stated in 2007, “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” (Michigan Messenger)
The LGBTQ movement is split over whether to support a compromise bill eliminating “enumeration” of the various well-documented hate motives, referring instead to acts “motivated by animus or by an actual perceived characteristic.” Some activists believe that the substitute language would still give targeted youth a measure of protection; others demand enumeration, citing studies showing that harassment and physical abuse of LGBTQ students are less frequent when their oppression is spelled out. Hundreds representing both viewpoints came out for a Jan. 26 public hearing sponsored by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, joining in outrage at the failure to pass any kind of legislation protecting youth not only from anti-LGBTQ bigotry, but also from racist, sexist and anti-disability bigotry.
Glenn remains opposed even to the tame version of Matt’s Law. In 2009 he argued that “ ‘characteristics’ language does not define bullying. It defines one of innumerable motivations for bullying. Of all possible motivations for bullying, what makes that one so special that it’s the only one cited by the legislation?” He favors a version that merely defines bullying as “bad.” (Michigan Messenger, March 2, 2009)
Some conservative bigots have taken an even more extreme position, opposing any anti-bullying legislation. In Minnesota, where progressive voices are calling for the strengthening of that state’s weak law, unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer stated last year that “it’s up to the parents ... how they handle that situation. ... I don’t want the government doing that for us.” (Minnesota Independent, Sept. 8) Others are parroting the old racist “states rights” line, using Michigan’s “home rule” law to encourage local communities to oppose state mandates designed to protect youth.
Safe schools are a right!
According to The Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s 2009 School Climate Survey, 84.6 percent of LGBTQ students had been verbally harassed, 40.1 percent physically harassed, and 18.8 percent physically assaulted; LGBTQ youth were reportedly bullied at a rate four times that of non-LGBTQ youth. They had the second-highest rate of reported abuse overall. Frequent attacks also occur against youth of color, girls, immigrants, religious minorities and disabled youth. A majority of youth overall experienced some kind of so-called bullying; the number one bullying motive cited was “appearance.”
Emboldened by Tea Party advances, the religious right is willing to shove young people into the lion’s den for the crime of being different.
The torment all these precious children and youth face under a patriarchal and racist, capitalistic system — where those deemed “beautiful” are exploited to sell products and those deemed “ugly” are ridiculed for profit by the entertainment industry — is criminal. These brutal statistics are another reason to fight for a world where no child will go to school in fear or commit “bullycide” to escape a life of ridicule and terror.
E-mail: mgrevatt@workers.org
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The "Wonder Years" of the 1950s, A Rotten Capitalist Lie!
by Caleb T. Maupin
Imagine going to your local public library and asking for a book by Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, or maybe a book of sociology dealing with homosexuality or feminism. Imagine then being told by the librarian that these books were locked in a cabinet, and before getting them out, you had to present your I.D. so the librarian could then write down your name and present it to the FBI at the end of the day.
Does this sound like Freedom? Does this sound like “the great years of the Republic” or “Morning in America?” But this was typical in the 1950s United States.
Contrary to the mythology that has been constructed, the 1950s, so idealized by the right-wing and to some extent the capitalist left was a horrific period. It was period in which the U.S. was very much a totalitarian police state.
In the 1950s, homosexuality was a crime that resulted in imprisonment or forced psychological treatment and hospitalization. Feminists and non-conforming women were also subject to forced hospitalization and torture with “electrical shock therapy.”
In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a huge public relations campaign bearing the slogan “The FBI is as close to you as your telephone.” People were encouraged to call the FBI if they saw people taking petitions for leftist causes, or criticizing U.S. foreign or domestic policy.
Employers required their employees to sign “loyalty oaths” stating that their political opinions were suitable to the boss.
Religion was forced on the public through mandatory prayer in public schools, and the adding of “Under God” to the pledge of allegiance.
In the Southern U.S. Blacks were barred from voting, and those who rallied to change this were labeled “subversive” and often arrested. The Ku Klux Klan had free reign, and its terrorist activities against Jews, African-Americans, and other oppressed people were openly supported. Emmit Till, a 14 year old Black youth was tortured to death for whistling at a white woman. His killers were acquitted in court, and later bragged about it in a national newspaper.
Catholic Schools mobilized youth to attack protesters in the New York City, providing them with placards reading “Kill A Commie For Christ" and permission to use violence.
The government created a network of concentration camps, and had a list of 2 million people who would be placed in them if a “state of national emergency” was declared by congress, under the McCarran Internal Security Act.
Each police department had a wing called the “Red Squad” or the “Anti-Subversive Squad” which openly stated its goal as the suppression of certain political ideologies and beliefs.
Women frequently died from illegal, thus unregulated, abortions.
It was a crime to own a condom in many states, and likewise, in many states receiving a pornographic magazine through the mail was a felony, punishable with jail time.
A military draft was in effect, and countless young men who did not attend college were conscripted into the military against their will.
Teachers beat students in public schools frequently, without question.
Battered women’s shelters and prosecution for domestic violence were both unheard of.
This is all undisputed historical fact about the post-war United States, much of it not even being changed until the mid-1970s.
Why, I must ask, is the 1950s portrayed in the public consciousness “the wonder years?” There is hardly any "wonder" in the accurate portrait painted above of the 1950s United States.
A Bribe for "Labor Aristocrats, Gone!"
The myth of the 1950s as being a joyous episode of “Leave It To Beaver” is a deceptive, ugly myth.
The only thing about the 1950s that makes it seem better than now is that there was economic prosperity. For certain sectors of the working class there were unlimited job opportunities at union wages. A “family owned home”, something only available to the upper class before, became a staple of many white workers life in the U.S. A “family car” was common as well.
A family could survive on a single income from a “bread-winner.”
It was because of these bribes granted to so many white workers, that the harsh political suppression heaped on the population at large was allowed to continue, without the massive resistance that eventually erupted in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the post-war period, the U.S. was the only industrial country that had not been reduced to rubble. U.S. capitalists were now the undisputed “top dogs” of world capitalism, and in order to make sure no strikes, protests, and worker’s uprisings took place on the “home front” they handed out a lot of goodies in exchange for class peace.
Lenin referred to this concept as the formation of a “labor aristocracy.” A section of the working class was given so much prosperity by its ruling class that it shed class consciousness, and began to be “bourgeosified”, thinking in line with the ruling class and identifying with its interests.
The 1950s was the “honey-moon period” for workers, granted by their capitalist oppressors, following the great depression.
During the 1930s and early 40s, the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the trade unions, the Civil Rights Congress, and countless other leftist and progressive movements sprung up. A whole culture devoted to fighting for a new socialist future existed.
The 1950s was the period in which this was killed with bribes and jackboots; both carrots and sticks at the same time, so to speak.
The prosperity enjoyed by workers in the U.S., of course, did not apply to Black workers, or Latin@ workers. The Jim Crow south left millions of Black workers without indoor plumbing or reasonable employment, in addition the apartheid conditions.
Indigenous and Latin@ workers in the western U.S. and elsewhere were also brutalized and abused, as well, sharing the position of “last hired, first fired” with other oppressed nations.
However, since the 1950s, this “labor aristocracy” is rapidly vanishing. Unions have been virtually destroyed, and wages have declined beyond belief. As Fred Goldstein documents in his groundbreaking book Low-Wage Capitalism, the lifestyle of all U.S. workers has declined dramatically since then.
The “Family Owned Home” has been foreclosed by banks. The factory jobs paid less and less, until they were shipped off to another country. The college education so many thought was their hope for social mobility now costs something like $100,000, and will leave those who get it with massive debt, and much less economic advantage along with it.
We Must Fight Back!
The answer for U.S. workers is not to long for the years of a totalitarian state during economic boom like the 1950s. The answer is to form our own organizations, and struggle and fightback. The answer is not to look at the past, but at the future.
The Workers at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City are the example to follow. When faced with the threat of layoffs, they have announced that they will fight back. They broke with the company union and as a “band of brothers” joined the Teamsters. They have openly told the bosses that they will not accept their terms or be intimidated by their threats of layoffs.
Leave Beaver in the Dust Bin of History. The “Leave it to Beaver” world is a lying fantasy, and it is also long gone. Rather, let us workers embrace heritage of William Z. Foster, Harry Bridges, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and all others who fought back for justice and freedom.
As poverty and misery grow in the U.S., it pretends to be heaven. If this is so, let us be like the heroic workers of Paris Commune, and storm heaven itself, claiming the riches and gold for the we who built it with our blood and sweat.
Capitalism offers no way forward. Only we can carve out a better future.
Imagine going to your local public library and asking for a book by Karl Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, or maybe a book of sociology dealing with homosexuality or feminism. Imagine then being told by the librarian that these books were locked in a cabinet, and before getting them out, you had to present your I.D. so the librarian could then write down your name and present it to the FBI at the end of the day.
Does this sound like Freedom? Does this sound like “the great years of the Republic” or “Morning in America?” But this was typical in the 1950s United States.
Contrary to the mythology that has been constructed, the 1950s, so idealized by the right-wing and to some extent the capitalist left was a horrific period. It was period in which the U.S. was very much a totalitarian police state.
In the 1950s, homosexuality was a crime that resulted in imprisonment or forced psychological treatment and hospitalization. Feminists and non-conforming women were also subject to forced hospitalization and torture with “electrical shock therapy.”
In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a huge public relations campaign bearing the slogan “The FBI is as close to you as your telephone.” People were encouraged to call the FBI if they saw people taking petitions for leftist causes, or criticizing U.S. foreign or domestic policy.
Employers required their employees to sign “loyalty oaths” stating that their political opinions were suitable to the boss.
Religion was forced on the public through mandatory prayer in public schools, and the adding of “Under God” to the pledge of allegiance.
In the Southern U.S. Blacks were barred from voting, and those who rallied to change this were labeled “subversive” and often arrested. The Ku Klux Klan had free reign, and its terrorist activities against Jews, African-Americans, and other oppressed people were openly supported. Emmit Till, a 14 year old Black youth was tortured to death for whistling at a white woman. His killers were acquitted in court, and later bragged about it in a national newspaper.
Catholic Schools mobilized youth to attack protesters in the New York City, providing them with placards reading “Kill A Commie For Christ" and permission to use violence.
The government created a network of concentration camps, and had a list of 2 million people who would be placed in them if a “state of national emergency” was declared by congress, under the McCarran Internal Security Act.
Each police department had a wing called the “Red Squad” or the “Anti-Subversive Squad” which openly stated its goal as the suppression of certain political ideologies and beliefs.
Women frequently died from illegal, thus unregulated, abortions.
It was a crime to own a condom in many states, and likewise, in many states receiving a pornographic magazine through the mail was a felony, punishable with jail time.
A military draft was in effect, and countless young men who did not attend college were conscripted into the military against their will.
Teachers beat students in public schools frequently, without question.
Battered women’s shelters and prosecution for domestic violence were both unheard of.
This is all undisputed historical fact about the post-war United States, much of it not even being changed until the mid-1970s.
Why, I must ask, is the 1950s portrayed in the public consciousness “the wonder years?” There is hardly any "wonder" in the accurate portrait painted above of the 1950s United States.
A Bribe for "Labor Aristocrats, Gone!"
The myth of the 1950s as being a joyous episode of “Leave It To Beaver” is a deceptive, ugly myth.
The only thing about the 1950s that makes it seem better than now is that there was economic prosperity. For certain sectors of the working class there were unlimited job opportunities at union wages. A “family owned home”, something only available to the upper class before, became a staple of many white workers life in the U.S. A “family car” was common as well.
A family could survive on a single income from a “bread-winner.”
It was because of these bribes granted to so many white workers, that the harsh political suppression heaped on the population at large was allowed to continue, without the massive resistance that eventually erupted in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In the post-war period, the U.S. was the only industrial country that had not been reduced to rubble. U.S. capitalists were now the undisputed “top dogs” of world capitalism, and in order to make sure no strikes, protests, and worker’s uprisings took place on the “home front” they handed out a lot of goodies in exchange for class peace.
Lenin referred to this concept as the formation of a “labor aristocracy.” A section of the working class was given so much prosperity by its ruling class that it shed class consciousness, and began to be “bourgeosified”, thinking in line with the ruling class and identifying with its interests.
The 1950s was the “honey-moon period” for workers, granted by their capitalist oppressors, following the great depression.
During the 1930s and early 40s, the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, the trade unions, the Civil Rights Congress, and countless other leftist and progressive movements sprung up. A whole culture devoted to fighting for a new socialist future existed.
The 1950s was the period in which this was killed with bribes and jackboots; both carrots and sticks at the same time, so to speak.
The prosperity enjoyed by workers in the U.S., of course, did not apply to Black workers, or Latin@ workers. The Jim Crow south left millions of Black workers without indoor plumbing or reasonable employment, in addition the apartheid conditions.
Indigenous and Latin@ workers in the western U.S. and elsewhere were also brutalized and abused, as well, sharing the position of “last hired, first fired” with other oppressed nations.
However, since the 1950s, this “labor aristocracy” is rapidly vanishing. Unions have been virtually destroyed, and wages have declined beyond belief. As Fred Goldstein documents in his groundbreaking book Low-Wage Capitalism, the lifestyle of all U.S. workers has declined dramatically since then.
The “Family Owned Home” has been foreclosed by banks. The factory jobs paid less and less, until they were shipped off to another country. The college education so many thought was their hope for social mobility now costs something like $100,000, and will leave those who get it with massive debt, and much less economic advantage along with it.
We Must Fight Back!
The answer for U.S. workers is not to long for the years of a totalitarian state during economic boom like the 1950s. The answer is to form our own organizations, and struggle and fightback. The answer is not to look at the past, but at the future.
The Workers at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City are the example to follow. When faced with the threat of layoffs, they have announced that they will fight back. They broke with the company union and as a “band of brothers” joined the Teamsters. They have openly told the bosses that they will not accept their terms or be intimidated by their threats of layoffs.
Leave Beaver in the Dust Bin of History. The “Leave it to Beaver” world is a lying fantasy, and it is also long gone. Rather, let us workers embrace heritage of William Z. Foster, Harry Bridges, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and all others who fought back for justice and freedom.
As poverty and misery grow in the U.S., it pretends to be heaven. If this is so, let us be like the heroic workers of Paris Commune, and storm heaven itself, claiming the riches and gold for the we who built it with our blood and sweat.
Capitalism offers no way forward. Only we can carve out a better future.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Defend Legal Abortion onthe 38th Anniversary
By Sue Davis
Published Jan 15, 2011 9:53 AM
Jan. 22 marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Tens of thousands of women have been saved from death and serious injury since abortion became legal in 1973. Women who chose to have safe, legal abortions ever since have felt enormous security and relief as they went about their lives.
However, the new Congress is ready to mount a frontal attack on legal abortion — the most serious in its history since the 1976 Hyde Amendment.
Joined by more than 50 new anti-choice representatives, Rep. John Boehner boasts of being the most anti-abortion House Speaker in history. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act seeks to codify the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicaid-funded abortions for poor women.
It would also impose such stiff conditions on private health insurance companies that none would offer abortion coverage. Being forced to pay for abortions would be like a tax on the 62 million U.S. women of childbearing age.
Given that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn and that women have been hit hard by the jobless recovery, many more women would share the financial desperation and emotional misery women on Medicaid have experienced for 34 years.
That anguish was portrayed in the 58-page study entitled “Whose Choice: How the Hyde Amendment Harms Poor Women,” published last September by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the National Network of Abortion Funds. Fifty-eight percent of women on Medicaid reported “serious hardships” due to Hyde, including having had to deprive children of food, pawn wedding rings and take out high-interest loans to pay for needed health care. As of 2001, 18 percent to 35 percent of Medicaid-eligible women reported having to carry unintended pregnancies to term because of Hyde.
However, the Hyde Amendment wasn’t implemented without a struggle in the streets and in the courts. The fight to stop Hyde in the 1970s is instructive with regard to defending legal abortion now.
Eighty groups of progressive pro-choice women, many who called themselves socialist-feminists, organized nationally as the Hyde Amendment was set to take effect. As they spoke out, wrote, marched and rallied to stop Hyde, they also theorized about women’s rights.
In order for women to be able to control whether, when and with whom to have children, the activists compiled a list of rights that included — in addition to legal abortion — access to birth control, sex education, daycare, health care, jobs and housing; and freedom from sexist, racist and anti-lesbian oppression; sterilization abuse; sexual harassment; incest; and domestic violence.
To describe these prerequisites for women’s liberation, they coined the term “reproductive rights” and discussed “reproductive freedom.” This now includes the call for “reproductive justice.”
Meanwhile, women lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights, led by the world-renowned legal activist for women’s rights, Rhonda Copelon (1944-2010), filed a nationwide class action lawsuit that stopped Hyde from taking effect in 1976.
Defeat Hyde in the streets
After the Supreme Court overturned the injunction in 1977, Federal District Court Judge John F. Dooling Jr. heard testimony from doctors, theologians and poor women, and received more than 500 exhibits on the medical and religious aspects of the case.
After 13 months of deliberation, Judge Dooling invalidated the Hyde Amendment in 1980 as violating the First and Fifth Amendments. CCR stated: “His decision documented the health impact of denying poor women abortions; the major religious traditions which support the conscientious choice of abortion; and the pervasively religious character of the anti-abortion position that the fertilized egg is equivalent to a person.” (Past Cases at ccrjustice.org)
Later that year the Supreme Court, in a highly contested 5-4 vote on Harris v. McRae, reversed that decision, “ignoring [Dooling’s] comprehensive findings of fact as well as the principle that the state must respect the constitutional rights of the poor in distributing or limiting welfare benefits.”
The majority opinion stated that a woman’s freedom of choice does not include “a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices” and “poverty does not qualify as a ‘suspect classification’” protected by the Fifth Amendment.
Justice Thurgood Marshall defended poor women’s rights in his eloquent dissent: “The denial of Medicaid benefits to individuals who meet all the statutory criteria for eligibility, solely because the treatment that is medically necessary involves the exercise of the fundamental right to choose abortion, is a form of discrimination repugnant to the protection of the laws guaranteed by the Constitution. The Court’s decision today marks a retreat from Roe v. Wade and represents a cruel blow to the most powerless members of our society.”
The Hyde-30 Years Is Enough! Campaign, an NNAF project, says, “For more than 30 years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the 7 million women of reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income women’s human rights.”
It is crucial that the federal government guarantee equal, comprehensive health care to all women, and provide funding for those who need it.
Pro-choice activists and their supporters must rally to stop the “cruel blows” that today threaten all but rich women. Only a widespread, united fightback, in the streets and the courts, can defend women’s right to legal abortion and advance the struggle for reproductive justice.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Jan 15, 2011 9:53 AM
Jan. 22 marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Tens of thousands of women have been saved from death and serious injury since abortion became legal in 1973. Women who chose to have safe, legal abortions ever since have felt enormous security and relief as they went about their lives.
However, the new Congress is ready to mount a frontal attack on legal abortion — the most serious in its history since the 1976 Hyde Amendment.
Joined by more than 50 new anti-choice representatives, Rep. John Boehner boasts of being the most anti-abortion House Speaker in history. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act seeks to codify the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicaid-funded abortions for poor women.
It would also impose such stiff conditions on private health insurance companies that none would offer abortion coverage. Being forced to pay for abortions would be like a tax on the 62 million U.S. women of childbearing age.
Given that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn and that women have been hit hard by the jobless recovery, many more women would share the financial desperation and emotional misery women on Medicaid have experienced for 34 years.
That anguish was portrayed in the 58-page study entitled “Whose Choice: How the Hyde Amendment Harms Poor Women,” published last September by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the National Network of Abortion Funds. Fifty-eight percent of women on Medicaid reported “serious hardships” due to Hyde, including having had to deprive children of food, pawn wedding rings and take out high-interest loans to pay for needed health care. As of 2001, 18 percent to 35 percent of Medicaid-eligible women reported having to carry unintended pregnancies to term because of Hyde.
However, the Hyde Amendment wasn’t implemented without a struggle in the streets and in the courts. The fight to stop Hyde in the 1970s is instructive with regard to defending legal abortion now.
Eighty groups of progressive pro-choice women, many who called themselves socialist-feminists, organized nationally as the Hyde Amendment was set to take effect. As they spoke out, wrote, marched and rallied to stop Hyde, they also theorized about women’s rights.
In order for women to be able to control whether, when and with whom to have children, the activists compiled a list of rights that included — in addition to legal abortion — access to birth control, sex education, daycare, health care, jobs and housing; and freedom from sexist, racist and anti-lesbian oppression; sterilization abuse; sexual harassment; incest; and domestic violence.
To describe these prerequisites for women’s liberation, they coined the term “reproductive rights” and discussed “reproductive freedom.” This now includes the call for “reproductive justice.”
Meanwhile, women lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights, led by the world-renowned legal activist for women’s rights, Rhonda Copelon (1944-2010), filed a nationwide class action lawsuit that stopped Hyde from taking effect in 1976.
Defeat Hyde in the streets
After the Supreme Court overturned the injunction in 1977, Federal District Court Judge John F. Dooling Jr. heard testimony from doctors, theologians and poor women, and received more than 500 exhibits on the medical and religious aspects of the case.
After 13 months of deliberation, Judge Dooling invalidated the Hyde Amendment in 1980 as violating the First and Fifth Amendments. CCR stated: “His decision documented the health impact of denying poor women abortions; the major religious traditions which support the conscientious choice of abortion; and the pervasively religious character of the anti-abortion position that the fertilized egg is equivalent to a person.” (Past Cases at ccrjustice.org)
Later that year the Supreme Court, in a highly contested 5-4 vote on Harris v. McRae, reversed that decision, “ignoring [Dooling’s] comprehensive findings of fact as well as the principle that the state must respect the constitutional rights of the poor in distributing or limiting welfare benefits.”
The majority opinion stated that a woman’s freedom of choice does not include “a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices” and “poverty does not qualify as a ‘suspect classification’” protected by the Fifth Amendment.
Justice Thurgood Marshall defended poor women’s rights in his eloquent dissent: “The denial of Medicaid benefits to individuals who meet all the statutory criteria for eligibility, solely because the treatment that is medically necessary involves the exercise of the fundamental right to choose abortion, is a form of discrimination repugnant to the protection of the laws guaranteed by the Constitution. The Court’s decision today marks a retreat from Roe v. Wade and represents a cruel blow to the most powerless members of our society.”
The Hyde-30 Years Is Enough! Campaign, an NNAF project, says, “For more than 30 years, the Hyde Amendment and other funding restrictions have affected the poorest and most vulnerable of low-income Americans, with a disproportionate impact on women of color and immigrant women. The Hyde Amendment denies abortion access to the 7 million women of reproductive age who are currently enrolled in Medicaid. These funding restrictions are the most detrimental of all attacks on safe, legal abortion care, and represent a clear violation of low-income women’s human rights.”
It is crucial that the federal government guarantee equal, comprehensive health care to all women, and provide funding for those who need it.
Pro-choice activists and their supporters must rally to stop the “cruel blows” that today threaten all but rich women. Only a widespread, united fightback, in the streets and the courts, can defend women’s right to legal abortion and advance the struggle for reproductive justice.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Smash Sexism in Dagenham! Only Proletarian Women Can!
Women workers lead victorious struggle in ‘Made in Dagenham’
By Sue Davis
Published Jan 8, 2011 7:31 AM
Called a “British Norma Rae,” the recently released “Made in Dagenham” tells the story of how 187 women workers, who sewed seat covers at a Ford plant employing more than 55,000 workers outside London, stopped production with their 1968 strike and won huge raises. Their victory led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970.
This inspiring working-class story begins when the women find out they’ve been reclassified as unskilled workers at lower pay. After they vote unanimously to stage a one-day strike, there’s a meeting between union and management. Shy but determined, Rita interrupts a class-collaborationist union bureaucrat trying to derail the strike and defiantly details the kinds of skills the women need to sew seat covers.
Flush from the strike, Rita upgrades the issue from skill levels to equal pay, and the strike continues. Soon the plant shuts down because cars can’t be sold without seats. During a union meeting to vote on whether to support the women’s strike, Rita again interrupts the bureaucrat and appeals to the all-male delegates: “We are the working class. We’re men and women, and we are in this together. We are not divided by sex, only by those willing to accept injustice.” Her militant appeal works — 79 in favor, 48 opposed.
A Ford bigwig, dispatched to London, threatens Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson: Either end the strike or we’ll move the plant to Europe. Wilson so instructs his Employment Minister, Barbara Castle. But Castle, both demeaned in her position and won over by the women, negotiates behind closed doors with the Ford boss, who agrees to a compromise: The women will be paid 92 percent of men’s wages. Castle adds the promise about sponsoring the equal pay bill.
Made with a star-studded cast, the movie has been called timely, stirring, entertaining, but Hollywood predictable. A few scenes seem far-fetched, like the upper-class spouse of a Ford executive encouraging Rita to keep fighting for all women and then lending her an expensive dress to wear to meet with Castle.
Is the movie accurate? Did a male shop steward have to persuade Rita, a composite of several women leaders, to demand equal pay? There’s also the question: Were all the women white? A few men of color are in some scenes.
A big question is: Why was this film made in 2010? U.S. and British reviewers see it differently. In a Nov. 18 New York Times review, Stephen Holden calls it “a grown-up feel-good movie plunked in a feel-bad age” and writes that it’s “so smoothly written and well acted that its humanity and good will leave you with a 1960s buzz of hope that social justice might be at hand; that feeling wears off quickly.”
British reviewers take a more class-conscious approach. In the Oct. 4 Daily Mail, Chris Tookey describes the movie as “ordinary people finding their voice” and notes that it “has pertinent things to say to the modern generation about standing up for your principles.” Writing in the Oct. 3 Independent, Nicholas Barber observes that it’s “fairly radical for a contemporary film to be so squarely on the side of the strikers.”
This reviewer wishes the movie could be shown around the clock on television so all working and oppressed people could be inspired to unite and fight back.
Articles copyright 1995-2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Gay Senior Wins Legal Battle
Published Sep 2, 2010 9:32 PM
The Sonoma (Calif.) County Board of Supervisors finally surrendered on Aug. 5. The board agreed to settle with Clay Greene, and he was awarded $650,000. Clay Greene and his partner Harold Scull had been forcibly abducted by the county in April 2008. Their possessions had been auctioned off after the city terminated the lease on their home.
Greene and Scull established legal rights for themselves as a couple despite bans on lesbian and gay marriage and other efforts to prevent legal recognition of same-sex unions. The couple had been together for 25 years and granted each other power of attorney in emergency situations.
When Scull fell ill in April 2008 and was taken to the hospital, Greene was denied the right to visit his partner, despite having legal power of attorney. When Greene attempted to gain his legally established rights, he was forced into a nursing home. Greene’s claims of unjust hospitalization were labeled “dementia,” and negative stereotypes about the elderly were used to remove his credibility and keep him locked away.
The couple were held against their will in separate hospitals. Scull died four months later, leaving Greene locked away and not even informed of his longtime partner’s death. Greene had tried to leave the nursing home where he was held, but was continually recaptured. (Bay Area Reporter Online)
In the meantime, the county confiscated and sold all the personal items inside the home that Greene and Scull had amassed together. Their collection of valuable artwork, furniture and even their two cats were auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Sonoma County. Finally, with the help of a lawyer, Greene was released from the nursing home after being held against his will for two months.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights provided Greene with three attorneys to represent him in his struggle for compensation. One of them, Gregory Spaulding, described the process of winning justice as “very expensive.”
Fifty witnesses sent affidavits to the court and were prepared to testify on Greene’s behalf. In addition, seven expert witnesses were paid to give their input on the case and testify at trial if need be.
Claims of domestic abuse that the county used to justify the abduction were admitted to be “unfounded” by officials.
Anne Dennis, Greene’s lead attorney, commented on how Greene had become “fragile” since the death of his partner. Now that a settlement has been reached, Greene will be able to enjoy what the legal director of the NCLR, Sharon Minter, described as “the secure environment he deserves.”
The struggle to obtain justice for Greene was galvanized around the U.S. by publicity garnered on Facebook, where over 19,000 people signed on for “Justice for Clay Greene and Harold of Sonoma County, CA.”
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
The Sonoma (Calif.) County Board of Supervisors finally surrendered on Aug. 5. The board agreed to settle with Clay Greene, and he was awarded $650,000. Clay Greene and his partner Harold Scull had been forcibly abducted by the county in April 2008. Their possessions had been auctioned off after the city terminated the lease on their home.
Greene and Scull established legal rights for themselves as a couple despite bans on lesbian and gay marriage and other efforts to prevent legal recognition of same-sex unions. The couple had been together for 25 years and granted each other power of attorney in emergency situations.
When Scull fell ill in April 2008 and was taken to the hospital, Greene was denied the right to visit his partner, despite having legal power of attorney. When Greene attempted to gain his legally established rights, he was forced into a nursing home. Greene’s claims of unjust hospitalization were labeled “dementia,” and negative stereotypes about the elderly were used to remove his credibility and keep him locked away.
The couple were held against their will in separate hospitals. Scull died four months later, leaving Greene locked away and not even informed of his longtime partner’s death. Greene had tried to leave the nursing home where he was held, but was continually recaptured. (Bay Area Reporter Online)
In the meantime, the county confiscated and sold all the personal items inside the home that Greene and Scull had amassed together. Their collection of valuable artwork, furniture and even their two cats were auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Sonoma County. Finally, with the help of a lawyer, Greene was released from the nursing home after being held against his will for two months.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights provided Greene with three attorneys to represent him in his struggle for compensation. One of them, Gregory Spaulding, described the process of winning justice as “very expensive.”
Fifty witnesses sent affidavits to the court and were prepared to testify on Greene’s behalf. In addition, seven expert witnesses were paid to give their input on the case and testify at trial if need be.
Claims of domestic abuse that the county used to justify the abduction were admitted to be “unfounded” by officials.
Anne Dennis, Greene’s lead attorney, commented on how Greene had become “fragile” since the death of his partner. Now that a settlement has been reached, Greene will be able to enjoy what the legal director of the NCLR, Sharon Minter, described as “the secure environment he deserves.”
The struggle to obtain justice for Greene was galvanized around the U.S. by publicity garnered on Facebook, where over 19,000 people signed on for “Justice for Clay Greene and Harold of Sonoma County, CA.”
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Old Lesbian Group Fights Racism, Ageism
By Sharon Danann
Cleveland
Published Aug 29, 2010 10:27 PM
Racism and ageism were themes for the keynote speakers at the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change national gathering here in July, and for the speakout sessions done in a format known as “fishbowls.” The 150 participants ranged in age from 59 to 87.
Women attended from all corners of the U.S., and there was a strong delegation from Australia. Workshops had participants develop organizing strategies for the top-priority issues. Ongoing discussions of racism will continue in several regions of the U.S.
Two significant resolutions were passed (see related article). One stated OLOC’s solidarity with immigrant communities facing the “devastating effects” of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and pledged to boycott Arizona and other states with similar laws in scheduling organizational events. The second memorialized 11 Black women murdered on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland and called for stepped-up efforts to stop the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the U.S. and worldwide.
Among the many participants who shared their talents in the evening entertainments was Alix Dobkin, an OLOC board member. Dobkin read from “My Red Blood,” her memoir of growing up communist and coming out during the women’s liberation movement.
Most of the participants had been activists for many decades and were builders of services such as rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. One of the resolutions makes it clear that “we will be quick to defend these vital institutions against onslaughts waged in the name of the economic crisis.”Racism and ageism were themes for the keynote speakers at the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change national gathering here in July, and for the speakout sessions done in a format known as “fishbowls.” The 150 participants ranged in age from 59 to 87.
Women attended from all corners of the U.S., and there was a strong delegation from Australia. Workshops had participants develop organizing strategies for the top-priority issues. Ongoing discussions of racism will continue in several regions of the U.S.
Two significant resolutions were passed (see related article). One stated OLOC’s solidarity with immigrant communities facing the “devastating effects” of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and pledged to boycott Arizona and other states with similar laws in scheduling organizational events. The second memorialized 11 Black women murdered on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland and called for stepped-up efforts to stop the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the U.S. and worldwide.
Among the many participants who shared their talents in the evening entertainments was Alix Dobkin, an OLOC board member. Dobkin read from “My Red Blood,” her memoir of growing up communist and coming out during the women’s liberation movement.
Most of the participants had been activists for many decades and were builders of services such as rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. One of the resolutions makes it clear that “we will be quick to defend these vital institutions against onslaughts waged in the name of the economic crisis.”
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Cleveland
Published Aug 29, 2010 10:27 PM
Racism and ageism were themes for the keynote speakers at the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change national gathering here in July, and for the speakout sessions done in a format known as “fishbowls.” The 150 participants ranged in age from 59 to 87.
Women attended from all corners of the U.S., and there was a strong delegation from Australia. Workshops had participants develop organizing strategies for the top-priority issues. Ongoing discussions of racism will continue in several regions of the U.S.
Two significant resolutions were passed (see related article). One stated OLOC’s solidarity with immigrant communities facing the “devastating effects” of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and pledged to boycott Arizona and other states with similar laws in scheduling organizational events. The second memorialized 11 Black women murdered on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland and called for stepped-up efforts to stop the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the U.S. and worldwide.
Among the many participants who shared their talents in the evening entertainments was Alix Dobkin, an OLOC board member. Dobkin read from “My Red Blood,” her memoir of growing up communist and coming out during the women’s liberation movement.
Most of the participants had been activists for many decades and were builders of services such as rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. One of the resolutions makes it clear that “we will be quick to defend these vital institutions against onslaughts waged in the name of the economic crisis.”Racism and ageism were themes for the keynote speakers at the Old Lesbians Organizing for Change national gathering here in July, and for the speakout sessions done in a format known as “fishbowls.” The 150 participants ranged in age from 59 to 87.
Women attended from all corners of the U.S., and there was a strong delegation from Australia. Workshops had participants develop organizing strategies for the top-priority issues. Ongoing discussions of racism will continue in several regions of the U.S.
Two significant resolutions were passed (see related article). One stated OLOC’s solidarity with immigrant communities facing the “devastating effects” of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 and pledged to boycott Arizona and other states with similar laws in scheduling organizational events. The second memorialized 11 Black women murdered on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland and called for stepped-up efforts to stop the epidemic of violence against women and girls in the U.S. and worldwide.
Among the many participants who shared their talents in the evening entertainments was Alix Dobkin, an OLOC board member. Dobkin read from “My Red Blood,” her memoir of growing up communist and coming out during the women’s liberation movement.
Most of the participants had been activists for many decades and were builders of services such as rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters. One of the resolutions makes it clear that “we will be quick to defend these vital institutions against onslaughts waged in the name of the economic crisis.”
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
U.S. manipulates women’s condition to build war support
By Joyce Chediac
Published Aug 13, 2010 10:11 AM
It is shocking and disturbing. Time magazine’s cover has a picture of a young Afghan woman whose nose has been cut off. The headline reads, “What happens if we leave Afghanistan.” (Aug. 9)
Time’s story claims the Taliban ordered 18-year-old Aisha’s nose and ears cut off because she left her husband and fled abusive in-laws. She is now living in a Kabul women’s shelter run by an American nongovernmental organization, and will come to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery
Surely, this cruel and abusive treatment of women must not be permitted anywhere. Time’s implication, however, that the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is the only barrier preventing further horrendous treatment of Afghan women is a lie. The article is manipulating the feelings of well-meaning people, while exploiting Aisha’s plight, in order to further Washington’s genocidal war, which has hurt Afghan women the most.
Time’s goal? Answering WikiLeaks
The recent WikiLeaks publications showed “How coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. ... How a secret ‘black’ unit of special forces [death squads] hunts down Taliban leaders for ‘kill or capture’ without trial. ... How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada,” and how there has been a steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on NATO troops. (The Guardian, July 25)
A separate editorial in the Aug. 9 issue of Time entitled “What’s hard to look at” admits that its cover picture and story are meant to counter the WikiLeaks publication. The magazine pitches its cover story as “emotional truth” and “something you cannot find in those 91,000 documents” of the leaked information.
Priyamvada Gopal, professor of English at Cambridge University who specializes in women and postcolonial theory, more accurately described the strategy behind what Time is doing. The WikiLeaks documents, she writes, “reveal CIA advice to use the plight of Afghan women as ‘pressure points,’ an emotive way to rally flagging public support for the war.” (The Guardian, Aug. 3)
Time has dropped all semblance of objective reporting. The magazine has taken the CIA’s “advice” and exploited Aisha’s plight to build war support. Truthfully, the more than 30 years of war in Afghanistan that Washington fueled and abetted has locked many rural Afghan women into the worst of both worlds: a medieval social structure and the destruction and dislocation of imperialist war.
Afghan women’s advocate Suraya Pakzad recently described the desperate situation for women in her country and its cause. “Three decades of war, displacement, warlordism, gun trafficking and narcotics trafficking,” she said, “come together and create a really hard situation for women. When there’s no security and continuation of war, there’s no guarantee for women’s rights.” (Politics Daily, March 10)
CIA’s war erased women’s gains
The U.S. press gets nostalgic about the freedom women in Kabul enjoyed before the Taliban. They fail to mention that the only government that brought significant gains to Afghan women took power in 1978 and sought to build socialism in Afghanistan.
Working under difficult conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world, the women and men in this government achieved the following: Feudal laws restricting women were abolished, and women became professors, attorneys, judges and government ministers. Seventy percent of the teachers, 50 percent of the government workers and 40 percent of the doctors were women. This government also sought ways to reach out to rural Afghanistan to develop it socially and economically.
Washington opposed this government from day one and courted the same rural feudal elements who found women’s new authority unacceptable. For its own ends, the U.S. exploited these feudalists’ misogyny as much as their anti-communism. The rural rulers who saw women as property would have been swept into the dustbin of history had U.S. imperialism not given them a new life and more than $3 billion in weapons.
The warlords overthrew that progressive government in 1992, after 13 years of vicious war financed by the U.S. and organized by the CIA. Soviet intervention to aid the progressive government was also thwarted. Even the New York Times admits, “The mujahedeen leaders who forced out the Soviets in the late 1980s were as conservative as the Taliban in many places, keeping women at home in order to preserve family honor instead of educating them or integrating them into the government.” (July 30)
U.S. empowered anti-women groups
The U.S. government was not promoting Afghan women’s rights when it installed the Northern Alliance, which ruled Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. This clique was seen as “a symbol of massacre, systematic rape and pillage.”(The Independent, Nov. 14, 2001).
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, but the U.S. raised no objections for five years. When the Bush administration invaded the country in 2001 and defeated the Taliban, it installed in its place the misogynist Northern Alliance. The current Kabul government still contains many members of this group, which are as reactionary on women’s rights as the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has played it both ways. Beginning in 1979, Washington used the gains made by women under the progressive Afghan government to provoke reactionary forces into action against that government. Today, for U.S. domestic consumption, Washington claims it is “rescuing” Afghan women from the very same reactionary forces it armed and empowered.
An imperialist occupying army can never improve women’s conditions in a country it occupies. The best thing for the women of Afghanistan is for the U.S. to leave completely and unconditionally and cease all covert and overt interference in this tortured nation. Only then will Afghan women and men have the chance to build a safe and stable environment where they can make their needs known and have them met.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Aug 13, 2010 10:11 AM
It is shocking and disturbing. Time magazine’s cover has a picture of a young Afghan woman whose nose has been cut off. The headline reads, “What happens if we leave Afghanistan.” (Aug. 9)
Time’s story claims the Taliban ordered 18-year-old Aisha’s nose and ears cut off because she left her husband and fled abusive in-laws. She is now living in a Kabul women’s shelter run by an American nongovernmental organization, and will come to the U.S. for reconstructive surgery
Surely, this cruel and abusive treatment of women must not be permitted anywhere. Time’s implication, however, that the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan is the only barrier preventing further horrendous treatment of Afghan women is a lie. The article is manipulating the feelings of well-meaning people, while exploiting Aisha’s plight, in order to further Washington’s genocidal war, which has hurt Afghan women the most.
Time’s goal? Answering WikiLeaks
The recent WikiLeaks publications showed “How coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. ... How a secret ‘black’ unit of special forces [death squads] hunts down Taliban leaders for ‘kill or capture’ without trial. ... How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada,” and how there has been a steep rise in Taliban bomb attacks on NATO troops. (The Guardian, July 25)
A separate editorial in the Aug. 9 issue of Time entitled “What’s hard to look at” admits that its cover picture and story are meant to counter the WikiLeaks publication. The magazine pitches its cover story as “emotional truth” and “something you cannot find in those 91,000 documents” of the leaked information.
Priyamvada Gopal, professor of English at Cambridge University who specializes in women and postcolonial theory, more accurately described the strategy behind what Time is doing. The WikiLeaks documents, she writes, “reveal CIA advice to use the plight of Afghan women as ‘pressure points,’ an emotive way to rally flagging public support for the war.” (The Guardian, Aug. 3)
Time has dropped all semblance of objective reporting. The magazine has taken the CIA’s “advice” and exploited Aisha’s plight to build war support. Truthfully, the more than 30 years of war in Afghanistan that Washington fueled and abetted has locked many rural Afghan women into the worst of both worlds: a medieval social structure and the destruction and dislocation of imperialist war.
Afghan women’s advocate Suraya Pakzad recently described the desperate situation for women in her country and its cause. “Three decades of war, displacement, warlordism, gun trafficking and narcotics trafficking,” she said, “come together and create a really hard situation for women. When there’s no security and continuation of war, there’s no guarantee for women’s rights.” (Politics Daily, March 10)
CIA’s war erased women’s gains
The U.S. press gets nostalgic about the freedom women in Kabul enjoyed before the Taliban. They fail to mention that the only government that brought significant gains to Afghan women took power in 1978 and sought to build socialism in Afghanistan.
Working under difficult conditions in one of the poorest countries in the world, the women and men in this government achieved the following: Feudal laws restricting women were abolished, and women became professors, attorneys, judges and government ministers. Seventy percent of the teachers, 50 percent of the government workers and 40 percent of the doctors were women. This government also sought ways to reach out to rural Afghanistan to develop it socially and economically.
Washington opposed this government from day one and courted the same rural feudal elements who found women’s new authority unacceptable. For its own ends, the U.S. exploited these feudalists’ misogyny as much as their anti-communism. The rural rulers who saw women as property would have been swept into the dustbin of history had U.S. imperialism not given them a new life and more than $3 billion in weapons.
The warlords overthrew that progressive government in 1992, after 13 years of vicious war financed by the U.S. and organized by the CIA. Soviet intervention to aid the progressive government was also thwarted. Even the New York Times admits, “The mujahedeen leaders who forced out the Soviets in the late 1980s were as conservative as the Taliban in many places, keeping women at home in order to preserve family honor instead of educating them or integrating them into the government.” (July 30)
U.S. empowered anti-women groups
The U.S. government was not promoting Afghan women’s rights when it installed the Northern Alliance, which ruled Afghanistan from 1992 to 1996. This clique was seen as “a symbol of massacre, systematic rape and pillage.”(The Independent, Nov. 14, 2001).
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996, but the U.S. raised no objections for five years. When the Bush administration invaded the country in 2001 and defeated the Taliban, it installed in its place the misogynist Northern Alliance. The current Kabul government still contains many members of this group, which are as reactionary on women’s rights as the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has played it both ways. Beginning in 1979, Washington used the gains made by women under the progressive Afghan government to provoke reactionary forces into action against that government. Today, for U.S. domestic consumption, Washington claims it is “rescuing” Afghan women from the very same reactionary forces it armed and empowered.
An imperialist occupying army can never improve women’s conditions in a country it occupies. The best thing for the women of Afghanistan is for the U.S. to leave completely and unconditionally and cease all covert and overt interference in this tortured nation. Only then will Afghan women and men have the chance to build a safe and stable environment where they can make their needs known and have them met.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Pro-Choice Activists Drive Right-Wingers From Clinic
ublished Aug 6, 2010 11:00 AM
Pro-choice activists successfully defended the Family Reproductive Health clinic for a week in July in Charlotte, N.C. The facility, which provides a wide range of medical care for women, including check-ups, testing and treatment, family planning and abortions, has been under siege for eight years by the right-wing Operation Rescue/Operation Save America.
OR/OAS not only opposes women’s reproductive rights but rails against lesbian/gay/bi/transgender individuals and people living with AIDS. Their bigotry has extended to protests outside of mosques where they harass Muslims.
On July 24 the strength of pro-choice activists caused the right-wingers to pack up their bus and leave. The National Organization for Women, which helped to organize the clinic defense, reports that this was the first Saturday in eight years when the clinic was “free of harassment and terror threats from the extreme anti-abortion rights group OR/OSA.” (now.org)
Following is an eyewitness report written by Cathey Stanley and Scott Williams, activists with Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), who traveled to Charlotte to defend the clinic and women’s reproductive rights on July 24.
“Trust women,” “Keep abortion safe and legal,” and “This clinic stays open” were among the signs we saw bordering the entrance of the Family Reproductive Health clinic on July 24. The facility is one of many in Charlotte that have been under attack.
Operation Rescue/Operation Save America had targeted Family Reproductive Health for attacks from July 17-24 and culminated its weeklong convention in Charlotte on July 24. For the entire week, these right-wingers, who aim to end abortion rights for women across the United States, harassed clinic staff and the women who depend on that facility.
In anticipation of their arrival, 80 advocates for women’s reproductive rights gathered in solidarity at Family Reproductive Health on July 24 to support the patients and clinic workers.
Members of groups, including the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women, Raleigh FIST and University of North Carolina-Charlotte Students for a Democratic Society, were there. Many of the groups also helped defend the clinic throughout the week.
Reporting from Charlotte, Cathey Stanley said she traveled to support this clinic because “Women’s reproductive rights are an indication of where we stand in society. The right to choose indicates that we are adults who are fully capable of making decisions about our bodies and lives. Taking that choice away suggests that we are like children, incapable of making such decisions about what is best for our own lives. Taking away reproductive rights takes away our autonomy as fully functional human beings.”
Mary Johnson, who lives in Charlotte, explained to these reporters that she was there because “I had a friend who didn’t believe in abortion and she had one. I’m out here so that every woman has the right to choose like her. For her, the baby wouldn’t live after birth, so I thought that it was important that she should have the right to choose. So now I’m here to defend every woman’s right to an abortion. In the past few decades, North Carolina went from having some of the most pro-woman abortion laws to limiting abortion services for women, especially minors.”
These reporters also spoke to Francisco Chavez from Mexico, who is a member of UNC-Charlotte SDS and Feminist Union at UNCC. He expressed his solidarity with women activists and said, “We need total equality through awareness, education and action with men and women. In a men-dominated society, women’s issues are connected to all issues of oppression. It’s very scary that people are so against reproductive rights. These people are attacking women seeking medical services and only contributing to the oppression of women.”
We saw that morale was high among clinic supporters as a steady crowd of people remained at Family Reproductive Health from early morning to late afternoon. We noted that although pro-choice activists had signed agreements of “non-engagement” and “non-violence,” they were ready to stand their ground if there was opposition from the right-wingers. Although we saw a few individuals walk through the pro-choice crowd or stand on the sidewalk opposite the clinic holding signs or spewing anti-choice rhetoric, the women’s rights activists far outnumbered them.
As they defended the clinic with their bodies and their signs, the pro-choice advocates spoke with one another, made contacts for future events and shared their own stories of how they came to fight for reproductive justice. The pro-choice protest at Family Reproductive Health was a successful event that fostered an environment of solidarity and continued action to promote women’s reproductive rights.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Pro-choice activists successfully defended the Family Reproductive Health clinic for a week in July in Charlotte, N.C. The facility, which provides a wide range of medical care for women, including check-ups, testing and treatment, family planning and abortions, has been under siege for eight years by the right-wing Operation Rescue/Operation Save America.
OR/OAS not only opposes women’s reproductive rights but rails against lesbian/gay/bi/transgender individuals and people living with AIDS. Their bigotry has extended to protests outside of mosques where they harass Muslims.
On July 24 the strength of pro-choice activists caused the right-wingers to pack up their bus and leave. The National Organization for Women, which helped to organize the clinic defense, reports that this was the first Saturday in eight years when the clinic was “free of harassment and terror threats from the extreme anti-abortion rights group OR/OSA.” (now.org)
Following is an eyewitness report written by Cathey Stanley and Scott Williams, activists with Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), who traveled to Charlotte to defend the clinic and women’s reproductive rights on July 24.
“Trust women,” “Keep abortion safe and legal,” and “This clinic stays open” were among the signs we saw bordering the entrance of the Family Reproductive Health clinic on July 24. The facility is one of many in Charlotte that have been under attack.
Operation Rescue/Operation Save America had targeted Family Reproductive Health for attacks from July 17-24 and culminated its weeklong convention in Charlotte on July 24. For the entire week, these right-wingers, who aim to end abortion rights for women across the United States, harassed clinic staff and the women who depend on that facility.
In anticipation of their arrival, 80 advocates for women’s reproductive rights gathered in solidarity at Family Reproductive Health on July 24 to support the patients and clinic workers.
Members of groups, including the Feminist Majority Foundation, the National Organization for Women, Raleigh FIST and University of North Carolina-Charlotte Students for a Democratic Society, were there. Many of the groups also helped defend the clinic throughout the week.
Reporting from Charlotte, Cathey Stanley said she traveled to support this clinic because “Women’s reproductive rights are an indication of where we stand in society. The right to choose indicates that we are adults who are fully capable of making decisions about our bodies and lives. Taking that choice away suggests that we are like children, incapable of making such decisions about what is best for our own lives. Taking away reproductive rights takes away our autonomy as fully functional human beings.”
Mary Johnson, who lives in Charlotte, explained to these reporters that she was there because “I had a friend who didn’t believe in abortion and she had one. I’m out here so that every woman has the right to choose like her. For her, the baby wouldn’t live after birth, so I thought that it was important that she should have the right to choose. So now I’m here to defend every woman’s right to an abortion. In the past few decades, North Carolina went from having some of the most pro-woman abortion laws to limiting abortion services for women, especially minors.”
These reporters also spoke to Francisco Chavez from Mexico, who is a member of UNC-Charlotte SDS and Feminist Union at UNCC. He expressed his solidarity with women activists and said, “We need total equality through awareness, education and action with men and women. In a men-dominated society, women’s issues are connected to all issues of oppression. It’s very scary that people are so against reproductive rights. These people are attacking women seeking medical services and only contributing to the oppression of women.”
We saw that morale was high among clinic supporters as a steady crowd of people remained at Family Reproductive Health from early morning to late afternoon. We noted that although pro-choice activists had signed agreements of “non-engagement” and “non-violence,” they were ready to stand their ground if there was opposition from the right-wingers. Although we saw a few individuals walk through the pro-choice crowd or stand on the sidewalk opposite the clinic holding signs or spewing anti-choice rhetoric, the women’s rights activists far outnumbered them.
As they defended the clinic with their bodies and their signs, the pro-choice advocates spoke with one another, made contacts for future events and shared their own stories of how they came to fight for reproductive justice. The pro-choice protest at Family Reproductive Health was a successful event that fostered an environment of solidarity and continued action to promote women’s reproductive rights.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Elderly gay couple faced horrors in Calif.
By Caleb T. Maupin
Published May 7, 2010 7:34 PM
Hate crimes against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are far from rare in the United States. In many cases, it is not just hate-filled bigots who commit these crimes, but the government itself.
A recent case in Sonoma County, Calif., shows how a local government disregarded its own laws in order to terrorize, repress and rob two elderly gay men.
Clay Greene and Harold Scull established legal rights for themselves as a couple despite the bans on LGBT marriage and other efforts to prevent legal recognition of same-sex unions. Scull and Greene had lived together for 25 years and granted each other power of attorney in emergency situations.
In April 2008 Scull tragically fell and was taken to the hospital. Despite having legal power of attorney, Greene was denied even the right to visit his partner.
When Greene attempted to gain his legally established rights, he was forced into a nursing home. Greene’s claims of unjust hospitalization were labeled “dementia,” and negative stereotypes about the elderly were used to remove his credibility and keep him locked away.
While Greene was confined in the nursing home, the county confiscated and sold all the personal items in the home that he and his partner had amassed together. Their collection of valuable artwork, furniture and even their two cats were auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Sonoma County. The lease on their jointly rented home was declared void by the county, and their home of 25 years was rented to someone else.
After being released from the hospital, Scull was taken to a separate nursing home and not allowed to see his partner. Scull died shortly afterward.
Finally, with the help of a lawyer, Greene was released from the nursing home after being held against his will for two months. The Gay People’s Chronicle of Cleveland noted how Greene recalled being mocked by county workers for the grief he felt over his dead partner. (April 23)
Greene is currently suing Sonoma County for the mistreatment, discrimination, theft and illegal confinement carried out against him. But a victory in court will not return the last moments of Scull’s life, when Greene was legally entitled to stay at his partner’s side and provide him with comfort and love. Nor will it return the possessions the partners held together.
The case of Clay Greene exposes the oppression of the LGBT community and the elderly that is part of the very fabric of capitalism in the United States. In addition to fighting for full legal, economic and political rights for the LGBT community, we need to make our goal smashing the economic root of LGBT oppression and all repression — the profit-hungry capitalist system itself, which promotes discrimination and all forms of abuse in order to serve a few profiteering elites.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published May 7, 2010 7:34 PM
Hate crimes against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are far from rare in the United States. In many cases, it is not just hate-filled bigots who commit these crimes, but the government itself.
A recent case in Sonoma County, Calif., shows how a local government disregarded its own laws in order to terrorize, repress and rob two elderly gay men.
Clay Greene and Harold Scull established legal rights for themselves as a couple despite the bans on LGBT marriage and other efforts to prevent legal recognition of same-sex unions. Scull and Greene had lived together for 25 years and granted each other power of attorney in emergency situations.
In April 2008 Scull tragically fell and was taken to the hospital. Despite having legal power of attorney, Greene was denied even the right to visit his partner.
When Greene attempted to gain his legally established rights, he was forced into a nursing home. Greene’s claims of unjust hospitalization were labeled “dementia,” and negative stereotypes about the elderly were used to remove his credibility and keep him locked away.
While Greene was confined in the nursing home, the county confiscated and sold all the personal items in the home that he and his partner had amassed together. Their collection of valuable artwork, furniture and even their two cats were auctioned off, with the proceeds going to Sonoma County. The lease on their jointly rented home was declared void by the county, and their home of 25 years was rented to someone else.
After being released from the hospital, Scull was taken to a separate nursing home and not allowed to see his partner. Scull died shortly afterward.
Finally, with the help of a lawyer, Greene was released from the nursing home after being held against his will for two months. The Gay People’s Chronicle of Cleveland noted how Greene recalled being mocked by county workers for the grief he felt over his dead partner. (April 23)
Greene is currently suing Sonoma County for the mistreatment, discrimination, theft and illegal confinement carried out against him. But a victory in court will not return the last moments of Scull’s life, when Greene was legally entitled to stay at his partner’s side and provide him with comfort and love. Nor will it return the possessions the partners held together.
The case of Clay Greene exposes the oppression of the LGBT community and the elderly that is part of the very fabric of capitalism in the United States. In addition to fighting for full legal, economic and political rights for the LGBT community, we need to make our goal smashing the economic root of LGBT oppression and all repression — the profit-hungry capitalist system itself, which promotes discrimination and all forms of abuse in order to serve a few profiteering elites.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Pope, pedophilia & the class struggle
By Sara Flounders
Published Apr 25, 2010 7:31 PM
More than 150 years ago Karl Marx explained that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Patrician and plebian, lord and serf, in a word oppressor and oppressed.” The struggle is an “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.” With modern society come “new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle.”
A fierce struggle has gripped the Catholic Church for the past 25 years as some of the most oppressed survivors of childhood sexual abuse have increasingly demanded an accounting against individual priests and ultimately against the powerful church hierarchy, including bishops and cardinals who consistently protected the abusers.
This demand for justice erupting from below has now done the unthinkable. It has exposed the role of the present pope, Pope Benedict XVI, in a monstrous international criminal cover-up.
Marxism is a science for understanding the class issues that underlie social developments which can seem obscure and far from the immediate workers’ struggle. The present controversy, although hidden in clerical garb, is in every way a class struggle within the Catholic Church. It is one small part of a global class struggle for full equality, rights and empowerment.
What was once accepted, because there seemed to be no recourse, has become intolerable. Thousands of the survivors raising the charges of pedophilia were loyal working class believers who were utterly powerless until years later to resist or even tell their own families of the crimes being committed. They were abused as children in orphanages, reform schools, schools for Deaf and disabled, local parish schools and churches.
This challenge from below against secrecy and repression was a sharp break from the past. Abuse had been unchallenged because religious authority was unchallenged. In many parish schools, although sexual abuse was hidden, physical and psychological abuse and humiliation were so routine that they seemed part of the curriculum.
As survivors began to speak out, any priests who sided with the abused were silenced and removed from teaching or positions of authority. But the church hierarchy, a small grouping that holds absolute religious authority, has not been able to silence or stop this movement.
Almost every exposé has come not from the outside or from secular authorities, who were fearful of offending such a powerful institution, but from presumably powerless Catholics within the church who refused to remain silent. They filed grievances, depositions and finally lawsuit after lawsuit. They called press conferences, set up websites, organized demonstrations and support groups, and leafleted Sunday services. Whether they see themselves as part of the larger struggle for rights and dignity or not, they have used many of the same tactics that countless other struggles have used.
The church hierarchy, in fighting to defend its undisputed authority, wealth and privilege, has demanded absolute silence, threatened excommunication of those raising the charges and demanded that secular officials comply. This effort to maintain the absolute authority of the priesthood is part of a larger internal struggle over whose interests this powerful religious institution should serve.
This international scandal rocking the Catholic Church now involves detailed evidence of tens of thousands of cases of child rape and sexual abuse, committed by thousands of priests. The charges span decades. The struggle erupted in its fiercest form in cities that previously had the strongest religious believers in the U.S. Next it broke out in Ireland, followed by Italy and then parts of Germany with large Catholic populations.
What is new and now receives almost daily media coverage is the evidence seeping out from every side showing the personal responsibility of the present Pope Benedict XVI in decades of suppression, cover-up and quiet reassigning of sexual predators. The strongest condemnations are coming from those who still consider themselves part of the Catholic Church.
Liberal Catholic theologian Hans Keung described Pope Benedict XVI’s role in allowing the abuse to flourish, covering it up and ordering silence: “There was not a single man in the whole Catholic Church who knew more about the sex-abuse cases than him, because it was ex officio (part of his official role). ... He can’t wag his finger at the bishops and say, you didn’t do enough. He gave the instruction himself, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and repeated it as Pope.”
The National Catholic Reporter editorialized on March 26: “The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role — as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) — in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.”
Before his elevation to the top of the Catholic hierarchy in April 2005, Pope Benedict XVI was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His opponents referred to him as a pit bull and as “God’s rottweiler.” Ratzinger was an extremely right-wing political appointee of Pope John Paul II, who was determined to enforce discipline, conformity and church authority in an institution in the midst of a profound upheaval.
For 24 years Ratzinger headed the most powerful and historically repressive institution in the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This body was known for centuries as the Holy Office of the Inquisition. It was the church institution responsible for establishing religious courts for the charging and torture of tens of thousands of people accused of witchcraft and heresy. It led the pogroms and mass expropriations of Jews and Muslims. Through this office within the church Pope John Paul II tried to install a modern-day Inquisition.
Documents expose vast cover-up
The scale of the criminal international conspiracy of silence to protect serial molesters and to put church interests ahead of child safety and well-being was fully revealed over the past year in the handling of sexual abuse in Ireland, an overwhelmingly Catholic country.
After years of demands by abuse survivors for church action and government prosecution, and a series of exposes in the Irish news media, the Irish government commissioned a study that took nine years to complete. On May 20, 2009, the commission released a 2,600-page report.
The report drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. The commission found that Catholic priests and nuns had terrorized thousands of boys and girls for decades and that government inspectors had failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. The report characterized rape and molestation as “endemic” in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages. (www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/)
The scale of the abuse in Ireland and the force of the movement demanding an accounting forced Pope Benedict to issue a weak apology on behalf of the Catholic Church that blamed local Irish bishops. This abdication of all responsibility for his own well-known senior role that had insisted on silence enraged millions of sincere and believing Catholics and further inflamed an opposition that has grown inside the church for decades.
Preaching in Springfield, Mass., a long-time critic of the church cover-up, Rev. James J. Scahill, responded to the weak apology by describing some in the clergy as “felons” and calling for the resignation of Pope Benedict.
“We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him or even falling on the sword on his behalf. It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood,” said Scahill. (New York Times, April 12)
Scahill said he began to speak up after his own parishioners came to him in 2002 during the exposure of decades of sexual abuse in Boston and told him that something had to be done.
Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese clearly played a role in protecting child-molesting priests from punishment by religious or secular authority and quietly transferring them. This became a national scandal in 2002 when a judge in Massachusetts permitted the release of thousands of pages of documents, memos and legal depositions. The documents showed a clear pattern of cover-up, protecting perpetrators and marginalizing victims, revealing that more than 1,000 children had been abused by 250 priests and church workers in the Archdiocese since 1940. Cardinal Law was forced to resign his post in disgrace and the Boston Archdiocese was ordered to pay a settlement of between $85 million and $100 million to settle 552 cases.
This multi-million-dollar settlement, growing scandals in other cities and the media coverage forced the U.S. bishops to issue a “Charter for the Protection of Children and the Young People” that declared a “zero tolerance, one strike and you are out” policy for offending priests. It did not propose any action against bishops who covered up the crimes.
Even this modest effort to develop a clean-up policy by U.S. bishops was opposed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Vatican. He demanded that all abuse charges be referred to the office he headed — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — before priests could be expelled from the priesthood. One of his first acts as Pope was to elevate Cardinal Law of Boston to a prestigious Vatican post.
In an often quoted, infamous letter sent to bishops in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger used his position to order that sexual abuse allegations be kept secret under threat of excommunication. Priests accused of sex crimes and their victims were ordered to “observe the strictest secret” and be “restrained by perpetual silence.”
Former Vatican lawyer Father Tom Doyle denounced this top Vatican policy by saying: “What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another.”
Negligence or criminal complicity?
How extensive are the sex abuse crimes committed against youth? Are the church hierarchy guilty of ignoring the problem — meaning criminal negligence? Or are they guilty of criminal complicity by refusing to take action even when crimes were brought to their direct attention?
A memo personally signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, when he headed the powerful Vatican office where all charges of abuse were centralized, was exposed this April and has aroused a new outcry. Ratzinger overrode and stopped any action against the predator priest Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy.
Reverend Murphy was accused of sexually abusing more than 200 boys at a Milwaukee School for the Deaf, despite appeals for his expulsion even from his bishop. For decades the former students had used sign language and written affidavits in meetings with bishops and secular officials to demand that Father Murphy be charged and prosecuted.
At the same time, the story broke in Italy that 67 former pupils of another school for the Deaf in Verona had accused 24 priests, brothers and religious laymen of sexually abusing them from the age of 7 years.
In Germany, more than 250 suppressed cases of abuse have surfaced in the last two months, including in districts directly overseen by Pope Benedict when he had been the bishop.
International publicity surrounding the Boston suit over sexual abuse of children and the multi-million-dollar settlement gave many other victims of abuse the courage to also speak out and seek justice. More than 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950 and the Catholic Church here has paid out more than $2 billion in settlements to victims of abuse. In 2007 the Los Angeles Archdiocese announced a $600-million settlement to about 500 plaintiffs. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy and many dioceses have been forced to sell substantial church assets to pay settlements.
Many of these cases are detailed by an organization called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SNAP describes itself as the oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.
Not only children have been the victims of abuse. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Jan. 4, 2003, a national survey conducted by researchers at St. Louis University was paid for, in part, by several orders of Catholic nuns. It estimated that a “minimum” of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.
It is important to take note that overwhelmingly the testimony, lawsuits, inquiries and exposés of sexual abuse have come from within the Catholic Church itself, from survivors of abuse. Many other ordinary, but outraged, Catholics have joined in demanding an accounting from a privileged, clerical hierarchy bent on protecting their position, authority and wealth and not on protecting children.
Throughout Europe there is a growing call to criminally prosecute Pope Benedict at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that protecting the church, not its victims, is a criminal offense. Geoffrey Robertson, U.N. Justice Council member and president of the Special Court in Sierra Leone, says he believes it is time to challenge the pope’s immunity.
In an article in the London Guardian of April 2 headlined, “Put the pope in the dock,” Robertson wrote: “Legal immunity cannot hold. The Vatican should feel the full weight of international law. Pedophilia is a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state — and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action — cannot stand up to scrutiny.”
Of course, it is important to remember that the International Criminal Court has to date brought charges only against four African countries that are targeted by imperialism.
U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Israeli crimes against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been ignored by the ICC. A bulwark of U.S. imperialism on a global scale, it is unlikely that the Vatican will face charges any time soon.
War on global movement for justice
What role does the Vatican play in class society that is of particular value to U.S. imperialism?
While absolving, covering up and transferring thousands of priests who were guilty of child abuse, Pope Benedict XVI used his position for 25 years as head of the most powerful church institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to remove from parishes, schools and all positions of authority thousands of priests, bishops and religious persons who were in any way progressive or concerned with advocating for the rights and dignity of poor and oppressed people.
Dissident Catholic theologians, teachers, writers and intellectuals were prevented from writing, publishing and teaching in church institutions. Bishops who attempted to use their authority for social change were investigated for loyalty and forced to resign. They were replaced by the most politically reactionary clergy who were concerned mainly with preserving religious authority and dogma.
This was a right-wing effort to stamp out a progressive religious current known as “liberation theology,” which sought to align the church with the liberation movements and anti-colonial and revolutionary struggles sweeping Africa, Asia and Latin America and the civil rights movement in the U.S.
Priests such as Father Camilo Torres in Colombia, who wrote, spoke and organized around the effort to unite revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism, were considered a direct threat to capitalist exploitation. Father Torres joined the armed struggle against the U.S.-supported dictatorship and died in combat.
Activist nuns who led the sanctuary movement to provide assistance and safe transit to Salvadoran immigrants fleeing death squads were targeted. So were Philip and Tom Berrigan, priests who continually risked arrest and served jail time with a militant Catholic grouping opposed to the Vietnam War.
Liberation theologians, such as the charismatic Leonardo Boff of Brazil, were prohibited by the Church from speaking or writing. Priests who sought to serve the poor, like Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, were expelled from their religious order and forced to resign for the crime of “glorification of class struggle.” Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, Mexico, was ordered to refrain from “Marxist interpretations.”
It was a witch-hunt and a purge that targeted anti-racist and social justice activists. Yet the reactionary breakaway Bishop Richard Williamson, who publicly denied the Holocaust, was welcomed back into the church.
Faced with growing opposition on every level, this powerful institution that has for centuries protected the property and privilege of the Western ruling classes increasingly chose to elevate the most fanatically reactionary forces to do battle with those urging change, opening, equality and attention to the needs of the poor and oppressed.
Under Pope John Paul II and then Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church was a staunch ally of U.S. imperialism opposing socialist construction in Eastern Europe. In turn the powerful U.S. media played an active role in promoting and giving favorable coverage to the church while demonizing Muslims and other religions of oppressed people.
In 2006 Pope Benedict gave Catholic support to the anti-Muslim propaganda that Washington had consciously enflamed in order to justify war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a major papal address he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said that the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman things.”
The alliance with U.S. imperialism forced the Catholic Church to revive the most reactionary excesses of its own dark past. Members of groupings tied to death squads and military dictatorship throughout Latin America and to fascism and extreme reaction in Europe, such as the secretive Opus Dei and Legionnaires of Christ, were promoted to top offices in the Vatican and around the world.
Two fascist clerics, Josemaria Escrivá, who sided with Hitler during World War II and organized fascist gangs to hunt down communists and revolutionary trade unionists in Franco’s Spain, and Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac of Croatia, who helped establish extermination camps for Jews, Serbs and Roma people, were proposed for sainthood.
It is not a contradiction that priests who abused children were protected and hidden while those religious forces who sought to defend the rights of the oppressed and ally with their movements were forced to resign. Leniency to criminal thugs and harsh repression of progressives are two sides of the same class policy of defending the authority of the established hierarchy. The same approach played out on every social issue.
Repressive view of all sexuality
From the Roman slave state to European feudal society and then as a major instrument of imperialist conquest, this is a religious institution rooted in class society and patriarchy. This patriarchal heritage is the basis of its repressive views toward all forms of human sexual expression. Gay or straight, married or unmarried, the Catholic Church asserted the right to legislate to society as a whole all forms of human sexual expression.
While taking no action against sexual predators because this threatened the authority and sanctity of the priesthood, Ratzinger was the leading enforcer of archaic religious doctrines on sexuality and the subordinate role of women in the church and in society as a whole. No liberalization on issues of birth control, abortion, divorce or recognition of homosexuality was allowed. Within the church these rules were enforced through focus on sin and guilt. Gay Catholics, Catholics who remarried, practiced birth control or had an abortion were denied the sacraments, barred from the church or excommunicated.
The full weight of Church institutions with large amounts of funding and political leverage were aggressively used in secular society to oppose liberalization of divorce laws and a woman’s right to birth control and to abortion. The Catholic Church organized and funded political campaigns against same-sex marriage and adoption of children by gay couples. But while proclaiming their religious duty to protect the “unborn child,” they refused to protect children directly under their control.
As the storm of protest over the attacks on children under their care grew, this reactionary grouping tried to turn its criminal cover-up into a struggle against gay people by linking pedophilia, meaning sexual abuse of young children, with homosexuality between consenting adults.
On April 14, Pope Benedict’s top appointee, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, blamed pedophilia on homosexuality, which he called “a pathology.” Pope Benedict in a well-known letter to bishops in 1986 described homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil.” He went so far as to justify and even encourage violent attacks on gay people by stating that “neither the church or society should be surprised if irrational and violent reactions increase” when gay people demand civil rights.
These crimes against all movements of oppressed peoples must be included in the anger directed at the church hierarchy.
The years of repression, witch-hunts and organized bigotry have given the Catholic hierarchy less and less a basis of support. They are more out of touch with their own congregation and totally out of touch with the values of society as a whole.
Despite every effort, they cannot go back to their absolute hold of 500 or even 100 years ago, when priests and bishops did not have to account for crimes against women or against slaves, serfs, peasants or illiterate workers.
Carefully crafted apologies that accept no blame and scripted public relations meetings with a few selected abuse survivors will not solve the crisis facing the reactionary leadership of the church.
Today those who have suffered abuse have found their voice and have found allies.
The writer attended/survived 14 years in Catholic schools.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Published Apr 25, 2010 7:31 PM
More than 150 years ago Karl Marx explained that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. Patrician and plebian, lord and serf, in a word oppressor and oppressed.” The struggle is an “uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.” With modern society come “new conditions of oppression and new forms of struggle.”
A fierce struggle has gripped the Catholic Church for the past 25 years as some of the most oppressed survivors of childhood sexual abuse have increasingly demanded an accounting against individual priests and ultimately against the powerful church hierarchy, including bishops and cardinals who consistently protected the abusers.
This demand for justice erupting from below has now done the unthinkable. It has exposed the role of the present pope, Pope Benedict XVI, in a monstrous international criminal cover-up.
Marxism is a science for understanding the class issues that underlie social developments which can seem obscure and far from the immediate workers’ struggle. The present controversy, although hidden in clerical garb, is in every way a class struggle within the Catholic Church. It is one small part of a global class struggle for full equality, rights and empowerment.
What was once accepted, because there seemed to be no recourse, has become intolerable. Thousands of the survivors raising the charges of pedophilia were loyal working class believers who were utterly powerless until years later to resist or even tell their own families of the crimes being committed. They were abused as children in orphanages, reform schools, schools for Deaf and disabled, local parish schools and churches.
This challenge from below against secrecy and repression was a sharp break from the past. Abuse had been unchallenged because religious authority was unchallenged. In many parish schools, although sexual abuse was hidden, physical and psychological abuse and humiliation were so routine that they seemed part of the curriculum.
As survivors began to speak out, any priests who sided with the abused were silenced and removed from teaching or positions of authority. But the church hierarchy, a small grouping that holds absolute religious authority, has not been able to silence or stop this movement.
Almost every exposé has come not from the outside or from secular authorities, who were fearful of offending such a powerful institution, but from presumably powerless Catholics within the church who refused to remain silent. They filed grievances, depositions and finally lawsuit after lawsuit. They called press conferences, set up websites, organized demonstrations and support groups, and leafleted Sunday services. Whether they see themselves as part of the larger struggle for rights and dignity or not, they have used many of the same tactics that countless other struggles have used.
The church hierarchy, in fighting to defend its undisputed authority, wealth and privilege, has demanded absolute silence, threatened excommunication of those raising the charges and demanded that secular officials comply. This effort to maintain the absolute authority of the priesthood is part of a larger internal struggle over whose interests this powerful religious institution should serve.
This international scandal rocking the Catholic Church now involves detailed evidence of tens of thousands of cases of child rape and sexual abuse, committed by thousands of priests. The charges span decades. The struggle erupted in its fiercest form in cities that previously had the strongest religious believers in the U.S. Next it broke out in Ireland, followed by Italy and then parts of Germany with large Catholic populations.
What is new and now receives almost daily media coverage is the evidence seeping out from every side showing the personal responsibility of the present Pope Benedict XVI in decades of suppression, cover-up and quiet reassigning of sexual predators. The strongest condemnations are coming from those who still consider themselves part of the Catholic Church.
Liberal Catholic theologian Hans Keung described Pope Benedict XVI’s role in allowing the abuse to flourish, covering it up and ordering silence: “There was not a single man in the whole Catholic Church who knew more about the sex-abuse cases than him, because it was ex officio (part of his official role). ... He can’t wag his finger at the bishops and say, you didn’t do enough. He gave the instruction himself, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and repeated it as Pope.”
The National Catholic Reporter editorialized on March 26: “The Holy Father needs to directly answer questions, in a credible forum, about his role — as archbishop of Munich (1977-82), as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1982-2005), and as pope (2005-present) — in the mismanagement of the clergy sex abuse crisis.”
Before his elevation to the top of the Catholic hierarchy in April 2005, Pope Benedict XVI was known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His opponents referred to him as a pit bull and as “God’s rottweiler.” Ratzinger was an extremely right-wing political appointee of Pope John Paul II, who was determined to enforce discipline, conformity and church authority in an institution in the midst of a profound upheaval.
For 24 years Ratzinger headed the most powerful and historically repressive institution in the Catholic Church, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This body was known for centuries as the Holy Office of the Inquisition. It was the church institution responsible for establishing religious courts for the charging and torture of tens of thousands of people accused of witchcraft and heresy. It led the pogroms and mass expropriations of Jews and Muslims. Through this office within the church Pope John Paul II tried to install a modern-day Inquisition.
Documents expose vast cover-up
The scale of the criminal international conspiracy of silence to protect serial molesters and to put church interests ahead of child safety and well-being was fully revealed over the past year in the handling of sexual abuse in Ireland, an overwhelmingly Catholic country.
After years of demands by abuse survivors for church action and government prosecution, and a series of exposes in the Irish news media, the Irish government commissioned a study that took nine years to complete. On May 20, 2009, the commission released a 2,600-page report.
The report drew on testimony from thousands of former inmates and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions. The commission found that Catholic priests and nuns had terrorized thousands of boys and girls for decades and that government inspectors had failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation. The report characterized rape and molestation as “endemic” in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages. (www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/)
The scale of the abuse in Ireland and the force of the movement demanding an accounting forced Pope Benedict to issue a weak apology on behalf of the Catholic Church that blamed local Irish bishops. This abdication of all responsibility for his own well-known senior role that had insisted on silence enraged millions of sincere and believing Catholics and further inflamed an opposition that has grown inside the church for decades.
Preaching in Springfield, Mass., a long-time critic of the church cover-up, Rev. James J. Scahill, responded to the weak apology by describing some in the clergy as “felons” and calling for the resignation of Pope Benedict.
“We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him or even falling on the sword on his behalf. It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood,” said Scahill. (New York Times, April 12)
Scahill said he began to speak up after his own parishioners came to him in 2002 during the exposure of decades of sexual abuse in Boston and told him that something had to be done.
Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Archdiocese clearly played a role in protecting child-molesting priests from punishment by religious or secular authority and quietly transferring them. This became a national scandal in 2002 when a judge in Massachusetts permitted the release of thousands of pages of documents, memos and legal depositions. The documents showed a clear pattern of cover-up, protecting perpetrators and marginalizing victims, revealing that more than 1,000 children had been abused by 250 priests and church workers in the Archdiocese since 1940. Cardinal Law was forced to resign his post in disgrace and the Boston Archdiocese was ordered to pay a settlement of between $85 million and $100 million to settle 552 cases.
This multi-million-dollar settlement, growing scandals in other cities and the media coverage forced the U.S. bishops to issue a “Charter for the Protection of Children and the Young People” that declared a “zero tolerance, one strike and you are out” policy for offending priests. It did not propose any action against bishops who covered up the crimes.
Even this modest effort to develop a clean-up policy by U.S. bishops was opposed by then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Vatican. He demanded that all abuse charges be referred to the office he headed — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — before priests could be expelled from the priesthood. One of his first acts as Pope was to elevate Cardinal Law of Boston to a prestigious Vatican post.
In an often quoted, infamous letter sent to bishops in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger used his position to order that sexual abuse allegations be kept secret under threat of excommunication. Priests accused of sex crimes and their victims were ordered to “observe the strictest secret” and be “restrained by perpetual silence.”
Former Vatican lawyer Father Tom Doyle denounced this top Vatican policy by saying: “What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another.”
Negligence or criminal complicity?
How extensive are the sex abuse crimes committed against youth? Are the church hierarchy guilty of ignoring the problem — meaning criminal negligence? Or are they guilty of criminal complicity by refusing to take action even when crimes were brought to their direct attention?
A memo personally signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, when he headed the powerful Vatican office where all charges of abuse were centralized, was exposed this April and has aroused a new outcry. Ratzinger overrode and stopped any action against the predator priest Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy.
Reverend Murphy was accused of sexually abusing more than 200 boys at a Milwaukee School for the Deaf, despite appeals for his expulsion even from his bishop. For decades the former students had used sign language and written affidavits in meetings with bishops and secular officials to demand that Father Murphy be charged and prosecuted.
At the same time, the story broke in Italy that 67 former pupils of another school for the Deaf in Verona had accused 24 priests, brothers and religious laymen of sexually abusing them from the age of 7 years.
In Germany, more than 250 suppressed cases of abuse have surfaced in the last two months, including in districts directly overseen by Pope Benedict when he had been the bishop.
International publicity surrounding the Boston suit over sexual abuse of children and the multi-million-dollar settlement gave many other victims of abuse the courage to also speak out and seek justice. More than 4,000 priests have been accused of molesting minors in the U.S. since 1950 and the Catholic Church here has paid out more than $2 billion in settlements to victims of abuse. In 2007 the Los Angeles Archdiocese announced a $600-million settlement to about 500 plaintiffs. Six dioceses have been forced into bankruptcy and many dioceses have been forced to sell substantial church assets to pay settlements.
Many of these cases are detailed by an organization called SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. SNAP describes itself as the oldest and largest support group for clergy abuse victims.
Not only children have been the victims of abuse. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of Jan. 4, 2003, a national survey conducted by researchers at St. Louis University was paid for, in part, by several orders of Catholic nuns. It estimated that a “minimum” of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.
It is important to take note that overwhelmingly the testimony, lawsuits, inquiries and exposés of sexual abuse have come from within the Catholic Church itself, from survivors of abuse. Many other ordinary, but outraged, Catholics have joined in demanding an accounting from a privileged, clerical hierarchy bent on protecting their position, authority and wealth and not on protecting children.
Throughout Europe there is a growing call to criminally prosecute Pope Benedict at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the grounds that protecting the church, not its victims, is a criminal offense. Geoffrey Robertson, U.N. Justice Council member and president of the Special Court in Sierra Leone, says he believes it is time to challenge the pope’s immunity.
In an article in the London Guardian of April 2 headlined, “Put the pope in the dock,” Robertson wrote: “Legal immunity cannot hold. The Vatican should feel the full weight of international law. Pedophilia is a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state — and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action — cannot stand up to scrutiny.”
Of course, it is important to remember that the International Criminal Court has to date brought charges only against four African countries that are targeted by imperialism.
U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Israeli crimes against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians have been ignored by the ICC. A bulwark of U.S. imperialism on a global scale, it is unlikely that the Vatican will face charges any time soon.
War on global movement for justice
What role does the Vatican play in class society that is of particular value to U.S. imperialism?
While absolving, covering up and transferring thousands of priests who were guilty of child abuse, Pope Benedict XVI used his position for 25 years as head of the most powerful church institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to remove from parishes, schools and all positions of authority thousands of priests, bishops and religious persons who were in any way progressive or concerned with advocating for the rights and dignity of poor and oppressed people.
Dissident Catholic theologians, teachers, writers and intellectuals were prevented from writing, publishing and teaching in church institutions. Bishops who attempted to use their authority for social change were investigated for loyalty and forced to resign. They were replaced by the most politically reactionary clergy who were concerned mainly with preserving religious authority and dogma.
This was a right-wing effort to stamp out a progressive religious current known as “liberation theology,” which sought to align the church with the liberation movements and anti-colonial and revolutionary struggles sweeping Africa, Asia and Latin America and the civil rights movement in the U.S.
Priests such as Father Camilo Torres in Colombia, who wrote, spoke and organized around the effort to unite revolutionary Marxism and Catholicism, were considered a direct threat to capitalist exploitation. Father Torres joined the armed struggle against the U.S.-supported dictatorship and died in combat.
Activist nuns who led the sanctuary movement to provide assistance and safe transit to Salvadoran immigrants fleeing death squads were targeted. So were Philip and Tom Berrigan, priests who continually risked arrest and served jail time with a militant Catholic grouping opposed to the Vietnam War.
Liberation theologians, such as the charismatic Leonardo Boff of Brazil, were prohibited by the Church from speaking or writing. Priests who sought to serve the poor, like Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti, were expelled from their religious order and forced to resign for the crime of “glorification of class struggle.” Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Chiapas, Mexico, was ordered to refrain from “Marxist interpretations.”
It was a witch-hunt and a purge that targeted anti-racist and social justice activists. Yet the reactionary breakaway Bishop Richard Williamson, who publicly denied the Holocaust, was welcomed back into the church.
Faced with growing opposition on every level, this powerful institution that has for centuries protected the property and privilege of the Western ruling classes increasingly chose to elevate the most fanatically reactionary forces to do battle with those urging change, opening, equality and attention to the needs of the poor and oppressed.
Under Pope John Paul II and then Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church was a staunch ally of U.S. imperialism opposing socialist construction in Eastern Europe. In turn the powerful U.S. media played an active role in promoting and giving favorable coverage to the church while demonizing Muslims and other religions of oppressed people.
In 2006 Pope Benedict gave Catholic support to the anti-Muslim propaganda that Washington had consciously enflamed in order to justify war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a major papal address he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said that the Prophet Muhammad had brought the world only “evil and inhuman things.”
The alliance with U.S. imperialism forced the Catholic Church to revive the most reactionary excesses of its own dark past. Members of groupings tied to death squads and military dictatorship throughout Latin America and to fascism and extreme reaction in Europe, such as the secretive Opus Dei and Legionnaires of Christ, were promoted to top offices in the Vatican and around the world.
Two fascist clerics, Josemaria Escrivá, who sided with Hitler during World War II and organized fascist gangs to hunt down communists and revolutionary trade unionists in Franco’s Spain, and Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac of Croatia, who helped establish extermination camps for Jews, Serbs and Roma people, were proposed for sainthood.
It is not a contradiction that priests who abused children were protected and hidden while those religious forces who sought to defend the rights of the oppressed and ally with their movements were forced to resign. Leniency to criminal thugs and harsh repression of progressives are two sides of the same class policy of defending the authority of the established hierarchy. The same approach played out on every social issue.
Repressive view of all sexuality
From the Roman slave state to European feudal society and then as a major instrument of imperialist conquest, this is a religious institution rooted in class society and patriarchy. This patriarchal heritage is the basis of its repressive views toward all forms of human sexual expression. Gay or straight, married or unmarried, the Catholic Church asserted the right to legislate to society as a whole all forms of human sexual expression.
While taking no action against sexual predators because this threatened the authority and sanctity of the priesthood, Ratzinger was the leading enforcer of archaic religious doctrines on sexuality and the subordinate role of women in the church and in society as a whole. No liberalization on issues of birth control, abortion, divorce or recognition of homosexuality was allowed. Within the church these rules were enforced through focus on sin and guilt. Gay Catholics, Catholics who remarried, practiced birth control or had an abortion were denied the sacraments, barred from the church or excommunicated.
The full weight of Church institutions with large amounts of funding and political leverage were aggressively used in secular society to oppose liberalization of divorce laws and a woman’s right to birth control and to abortion. The Catholic Church organized and funded political campaigns against same-sex marriage and adoption of children by gay couples. But while proclaiming their religious duty to protect the “unborn child,” they refused to protect children directly under their control.
As the storm of protest over the attacks on children under their care grew, this reactionary grouping tried to turn its criminal cover-up into a struggle against gay people by linking pedophilia, meaning sexual abuse of young children, with homosexuality between consenting adults.
On April 14, Pope Benedict’s top appointee, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, blamed pedophilia on homosexuality, which he called “a pathology.” Pope Benedict in a well-known letter to bishops in 1986 described homosexuality as an “intrinsic moral evil.” He went so far as to justify and even encourage violent attacks on gay people by stating that “neither the church or society should be surprised if irrational and violent reactions increase” when gay people demand civil rights.
These crimes against all movements of oppressed peoples must be included in the anger directed at the church hierarchy.
The years of repression, witch-hunts and organized bigotry have given the Catholic hierarchy less and less a basis of support. They are more out of touch with their own congregation and totally out of touch with the values of society as a whole.
Despite every effort, they cannot go back to their absolute hold of 500 or even 100 years ago, when priests and bishops did not have to account for crimes against women or against slaves, serfs, peasants or illiterate workers.
Carefully crafted apologies that accept no blame and scripted public relations meetings with a few selected abuse survivors will not solve the crisis facing the reactionary leadership of the church.
Today those who have suffered abuse have found their voice and have found allies.
The writer attended/survived 14 years in Catholic schools.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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