From Zoe in Belgrade--Complexities of Activism, the Solidarity of Activism

Lesbian Resistance

Unfortunately I don’t have good news – the Belgrade Pride has been banned again this year. Serbian authorities have shown once again that violence is legitimate and justified, and have shown just how much we are weighed down by fascism and intolerance. Regardless of the fact that I did not agree with the politics of the Pride’s organizational board and that I was once again brought to a situation where I had to weigh out the pros and cons of going or not going to the parade – the problem being, when you don’t talk about internal problems in a transparent manner then politics itself becomes confusing. but I guess that’s the point of the neo-liberal system – to fragment us to pieces. For the third year in a row the state has shown itself to be incapable of providing elementary rights, and that includes the right to life without fear – in short, the right to life. Tonight, we gathered in front of the government and marched to the parliament, and showed that the LGBT community can react and act in unison. That does not mean that I am very hopeful when it comes to the human rights situation in Serbia - a state which shows weakness when facing hooligans should suffer the consequences of their mistakes. and those mistakes are all around us in this country. Regardless of everything, what’s important is that I do not fear who I am and, in spite of the spineless wimps in our government, I love who I am – a lesbian, feminist, art activist and human being.

Now is not the time for silence--I am still here

So much beauty, and so much fear                                               Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia


Jews Condemn New York City’s Latest Incidents of
Racist Violence & Religious Bigotry
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Amy Helfant jaicpress@gmail.com
Donna Nevel denevel@gmail.com

Jews Condemn New York City’s Latest Incidents of Racist Violence & Religious Bigotry

September 26, 2013     Members of the Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition were angered and saddened to learn of the vicious bias-related attacks on Saturday, September 21, in New York City, and join with all
those who are fighting to ensure that we live in a city that is safe for all residents. Dr. Prabhjot Singh, a
professor at Columbia University, and a companion, a fellow Sikh, were assaulted in upper Manhattan by
about a dozen individuals who called them “Osama” and “terrorist” and broke Dr. Singh’s jaw. As part
of his Sikh faith, Dr. Singh was wearing a turban. According to a new report, Turban Myths, put out by
SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund) and Stanford University, 48% of
Americans mis-identify urban wearers as Muslim, and over 20% of Sikh schoolchildren suffer violence as
a “price for maintaining their Sikh identity." As Dr. Singh commented two days after the attack, “Our
turban and beard are a trigger for fear in the minds of many Americans” (NY Times, September 23,
2013).] Additionally, an individual assaulted a New Jersey woman wearing a hijab and called her a
“f**king terrorist,” as she attended a pro-democracy rally in Times Square.

    Even as we deplore these vicious attacks on individuals, we view them not as isolated incidents but as
part of a systemic assault on the rights and liberties of Muslim, South Asian, and other targeted
communities in NYC. While the police are investigating the attack on the two Sikh men as a possible
hate crime and have arrested the alleged perpetrator of the assault on the Muslim woman at the rally, the
NYPD and public officials, along with right-wing media and a network of anti-Muslim ideologues, must
share responsibility for fostering an anti-Muslim atmosphere that encourages people to view both
Muslims and those mistaken for Muslims as terrorists. A police department that has guidelines associating
those who wear a beard and other signifiers of religious observance with “terrorism,” and implicitly labels
all Muslims as terrorist suspects by its surveillance of New York City’s entire Muslim community,sends
a message of suspicion and bigotry that fuels such attacks.
      We urge members of the Jewish community and all New Yorkersto speak out strongly in our schools,
workplaces, community organizations and houses of worship against bigotry, wherever it may occur; and
to demand strong responses and action from government leaders and representatives that must include,
first and foremost, requiring that the NYPD abandon its anti-Muslim policies. We also encourage as
many of us as possible to join community actions and responsesthat are called by our allies during this
time. (Our website will list actions as we learn about them.) Attacks on individuals because they are
“walking while Sikh” or “standing on the street while Muslim” are simply unacceptable in our city.
The Jews Against Islamophobia Coalition (JAIC) consists of three groups: Jews for Racial and
Economic Justice (JFREJ), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Jews Say No! (JSN!)
http://www.Jewsagainstislamophobia.org/

Hellen Cook: A Woman for All Times

In homage to all the gray haired women who stand now and have for decades in so many cities in the world, the gray haired women who are supposed to be invisible but whose love of life and what it could be in a world without war or extreme nationalism, pushes them out into the streets, out of the decorum of aging into an activism for the ages.

Hellen on the streets

With her WILPF banner, Marg in the background

A wonderful photo taken by a passing photographer, 2009

I received the unwanted, unexpected word last night. Our Women in Black comrade Hellen Cook had died. So quietly she left us, and the Us is huge. I will write more when night falls here.

Di, Geraldine and Hellen

For many years now, a group of us have stood vigil once a month outside the old post office here in the heart of Melbourne, like so many other groups of women around the world involved in the Women in Black movement against militarism, against war and occupations. Our names are Sue, Marg, Esme, Joan, Geraldine, Sandra, Alex, Hellen and others who know where to find us the first Saturday of every month.This is old news, gray haired women standing in the streets for almost over a 100 years one way or the other, trying to catch the eye of passer-bys, handing out leaflets, talking, talking, taking abuse and still talking.

A special comradeship is born in these groups, over cups of tea, here, making banners, preparing leaflets, filling each other in on other actions for peace, for dialogues of all kinds against social exclusions, long talks about what should national security really mean--work, health, care for children, respect for human life and the environment and the end to nationalistic bullying. We are a mixed lot, Christian, Jewish, Atheist, Radical Feminist, lesbian and straight, from several different countries . From time to time Muslim women join us, speak with us in the street and say they did not know such a voice existed, Lebanese families take our leaflets and stop to talk about hope as do some of the long time Jewish residents of Melbourne.

Hellen speaking with Alex

And always Hellen, travelling from Frankston on the train, slight, smiling indefatigable Hellen carrying her latest WILPF document (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) along with her banner. No matter what happened on the streets, Hellen was calm and gentle, not in a Pollyanna way, but in the way of someone who has seen much of life and struggle and has her eyes on a different vision. If life had not shifted so for me in 2001, I would never have met Hellen or indeed, any of these women, would not have entered into their history of resistance going back for some, Marg, for instance, to the 1980s or Alex who was part of the original Women in Black stand in Haifa. And Hellen. Little by little she told me about her life, about her Chinese grandfather who came to Victoria to work in the mines of the gold rush in the early  20th century, about her husband who died on the edge of a volcano he had made his life's work to study, about her children and their children and about her garden. When I returned from my third cancer surgery to the group, she had  homeopathic help for me,  but the most healing of all was simply Hellen herself, playful with difference, quiet in the face of my New York bombast, her steadiness of purpose without self righteousness, her optimism built on deep despair of what the world was doing to itself. I think, simply put, Hellen was a good person, a goodness that she gave freely of. Once after a good vigil, I took Hellen into my lesbian arms and we danced a little in the streets.  We are all still taking in her loss. Not Hellen, please, not Hellen. We need her so.

Esme, Alex, Geraldine, Marg, Hellen, Joan, Savan, Karen

In Honor of Eric Ohena Lembembe; In Honor of David Kato; In Honor of Noxolo Nogwaza

David Kato. Noxolo Nogwaza. Eric Ohen Lembembe. They fall, lesbians and gay men who meet in rooms and on the streets to speak with each other, to give hope to each other, to organize, they fall, but not from our collective memory which spans continents, ordained divisions. Your bodies must be in our ken, we must respect your histories, but our queerness will be another history of comrades. In honor of Eric Ohena Lembembe and his fallen comrades, lesbians and gay men, who stood in the street and sat in rooms, turning their backs on preached hatreds, and lost their lives as they looked towards another future.

In honor of David Kato from Uganda and Noxolo Nogwaza from South Africa, who fell to hatred but who stand tall in our struggle for human dignity. With deep respect for all those who now mourn the loss of their friends.

From Cameroononline.org:

A prominent gay rights activist in Cameroon was tortured and killed just weeks after issuing a public warning about the threat posed by "anti-gay thugs," the Human Rights Watch said.

Friends discovered the body of Eric Ohen Lembembe at his home in the captial, Yaounde, on Monday evening after he was unreachable for two days, the rights group said in a statement Tuesday.

One friend said Lembembe's neck and feet looked broken and he had been burned with an iron.
Lembembe was among the most prominent activists in one of Africa's most hostile countries for sexual minorities.

First as a journalist and later as executive director of CAMAIDS, a Yaounde-based human rights organization, he documented violence, blackmail and arrests targeting members of Cameroon's gay community. He was also a regular contributor to the Erasing 76 Crimes blog, which focuses on countries where homosexuality is illegal, and he wrote several chapters of a released in February on the global gay rights movement, From Wrongs to Gay Rights.

Race and Real Estate: America's Deadly Partnership

Over Australian radio came an American woman's voice, muffled by the distance between us, but the words grew in menace, their certainty of power over- reaching the 23000 miles of ocean they had to travel: "he had every right to shoot, we hired him to protect our property and that was what he was doing." Race and real estate, gated housing estates and stand your ground home protection laws, conservative money pouring into think tanks that come up with laws that ensure America's apartheid will have deadly force behind it. For all the years of my American life, I have seen what happens when protective capitalism claims its exclusiveness, what bodies fall at the gate, at the wall. The jungle out there, white paradise in here. A teen-age boy in a hoody, his face bare, runs into a hired mercenary who himself would not be allowed to live behind the walls he is so fervently protecting, with a gun in his pocket that burns against his thigh, this time I will get you, thug, he says, this time I will carry out the ethnic cleansing I was hired for and maybe, I will be one of them and not one of you. Six white women, like an American tragic chorus, perform their ordained racial script and other mothers grasp their sons and warn and warn and rage and rage. Obama is trapped in his political skin, a King Lear who can only scream his anger, his sorrow on a solitary plain blasted by national winds.

Too much, too much, too many, too many--the dismantling of the Voting Rights protection laws is a national version of the gated community that condones the killing of Trayvon Martin. Property rights and white race rights, property rights and wealthy protection concerns--big cities do it by pricing living spaces in the millions and billions.

Who might you have become, Trayvon, the lawyer who along with others dismantles once and for all the legal privileges of the corporate class, the father of daughters and sons who took the sun full on their face and laughed into life, the lover of many or of one, the poet who still dreams of rivers as deep as our souls. American crumbles a little more, its history shot through with betrayals of its own stated principles, from the death of Allende, the CIA support for the apartheid regime and its arrest of Mandela, once a young boy himself who was not allowed into his own streets. Build your prisons higher and higher for those who manage to survive their teens but it is yourself that is imprisoned--violence stalks your dreams, national and internationally, between citizens and between countries. Race and real estate, conservative dreams of who is really human--but we still dream of rivers as deep as our souls, rivers of refusal.  

Translated by Edith Rubenstein La race et l’immobilier: un partenariat mortel en Amérique  La voix de la femme est arrivée au milieu de nous assourdie par la distance, mais les mots devenaient de plus en plus menaçants, leur certitude de pouvoir dépassant les 23.000 miles d’océan qu’ils devaient parcourir : « il avait absolument le droit de tirer, nous l’avions engagé pour protéger notre propriété et c’est ce qu’il faisait. » La race et l’immobilier, des lotissements de maisons entouré d’un grillage et des lois de protection permettant à une personne faire usage de la force en autodéfense sans obligation de se retirer d’abord, de l’argent de conservateurs arrosant des groupes de réflexion pour proposer des lois pour assurer que l’apartheid d’Amérique aura derrière lui une force mortelle. Pendant toute les années de ma vie américaine, j’ai vu ce qui arrive quand un capitalisme protecteur prétend à l’exclusivité, j’ai vu quels corps tombent devant la grille, devant le mur. La jungle dehors, le paradis blanc ici à l’intérieur. Un adolescent portant une capuche, le visage découvert, tombe sur un mercenaire payé qui ne serait pas autorisé lui-même à vivre derrière les murs qu’il protège avec tant de ferveur, avec un revolver dans la poche qui lui chatouille la cuisse, cette fois, je t’aurai, voyou, dit-il, cette fois-ci je vais exécuter l’épuration ethnique pour laquelle j’ai été engagé et je serai peut-être, l’un d’eux et pas l’un d’entre vous. Six femmes blanches, comme un chœur américain tragique, accomplissent leur copie raciale dictée et d’autres mères attrapent leurs fils et les mettent en garde, les mettent en garde et se déchaînent et se déchaînent. Obama est piégé dans sa peau politique, un Roi Lear qui peut seulement crier sa colère, son regret sur une plaine solitaire anéantie par des vents nationaux. C’est trop, c’est trop, ils sont trop nombreux, ils sont trop nombreux – le démantèlement des lois de protection des droits de vote est une version nationale de la communauté à l’intérieur des grilles qui excuse le meurtre de Trayvon Martin. Les droits de propriété et les droits de la race blanche, les droits de propriété et les préoccupations pour la protection de la richesse – de grandes villes le font en fixant le prix d’espaces de vie en millions et en milliards. Qui aurais-tu pu devenir, Trayvon, l’avocat qui avec d’autres démantèle une fois pour toute tous les privilèges légaux de la classe d’entreprises, le père de filles et de fils qui ont pris tout le soleil sur le visage et ont ri à la vie, l’amoureux de beaucoup ou d’une seule personne, le poète qui rêve encore de rivières aussi profondes que nos âmes. L’Américain se désagrège un peu plus, son histoire atteinte par des trahisons de ses propres principes d’état, de la mort d’Allende au soutien du régime d’apartheid par la CIA et l’arrestation de Mandela, autrefois un jeune garçon lui-même qui ne pouvait pas aller dans ses propres rues. Construisez vos prisons plus haut et plus haut pour ceux qui s’arrangent pour survivre à leur adolescence mais c’est vous-mêmes qui êtes emprisonnés – la violence règne dans vos rêves, nationaux et internationalement, entre citoyens et entre pays. La race et l’immobilier, les rêves conservateurs de qui est vraiment humain – nous rêvons encore toujours de rivières aussi profondes que nos âmes, des rivières de refus. Posté par Joan Nestle (une Américaine qui vit en Australie ER)    *******************************************************     _______________________________________________ Click here to Reply or Forward 4.21 GB (28%) of 15 GB used Manage ©2013 Google - Terms & Privacy Last account activity: 10 hours ago Details

The Cruel Paradox of American Intersectionalities: We Can Marry but We Can't Vote

Paula Grant



How cruel fortune can be. Langston Hughes knew this when he warned in his epic jazz poem, "Ask Your Mama," about cultural exchanges, acceptances that come at a price so high they tamper with the soul. My friend Paula Grant, journalist Charles M. Blow and others have pointed out that amidst the Gay Pride celebrations of this weekend,with their sense of national victory, there must be recognition  that the conservatives of the Supreme Court have judged some Americans not American enough to have the right, the ability, the certainty of the vote.

Intersectionality means different histories of exclusion living side by side within the same skin, the same body, different histories of power as well. The American legal system,as Kimberle Crenshaw, wrote in her essay, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics," almost 20 years ago now, has a hard time knowing what to do when these histories are in the same body demanding equity. Her example is the invisibility of Black women in either gender or race legal decisions and in some feminist thinking where the white woman and her histories  stand for the history of gender. (HeinOnline, 1989,U. Chicago Legal Forum)

The judicial decisions are coming thick and fast and lives are being changed. DOMA gone and Proposition 8 repelled; the Voting Right's Act with its protection of the voting rights of those traditionally disenfranchised by
entrenched power blocks is struck down. The poor, the newly arrived, folks of color and accent, the easily intimidated by official power and those who would in many cases vote for economic and social justice rights have been pushed back into the hands of the authorities who for years have turned them away--a time of celebration? Yes, gay people who marry are more and more becoming like the majority; high ranking conservatives call for our right to marry, it is healthy, it tames the wildness of queer desire, it reinforces the principles of family and home, of known ways of life that look more and more like the sitcoms of the 50s.

But the danger lies else where, so gerry mander the voting rolls, making it in Texas hard to even be a voting Democrat, I heard on PBS National News last night. Replot the maps of citizenship so those who are angry or in need or have different ideas of what communities deserve in terms of service find it harder and harder to prove they deserve the right to vote. Plans for identification cards are flooding forth in the zones of discrimination some of us know so well from the Civil Rights campaigns of the 60s. I think of the Voter Registration work we did in the back roads of Alabama, of Mississippi, Louisiana, I think of the floating bodies found in small overgrown rivers, the bodies of civil rights workers whose killers where good upstanding civic men. To be gay and black, to be gay and poor, to be gay and Hispanic, to be gay and left, to be lesbian and black, to be lesbian and poor, to be lesbian and a single mother, to be lesbian and left--how will we celebrate these decisions? What dances will be do, now that the wide doors have been opened to that institution of control known as marriage but the doors to the voting booth where control can be questioned have been closed to those who most need representation?

Another time, 1980s, Demonstration, NYC

Translation by Edith Rubenstein

Comme le sort peut être cruel. Langston Hughes le savait quand il a mis en garde dans son poème épique de jazz « Ask your Mama, » sur les échanges culturels, des acceptations qui coûtent un prix si élevé qu’elles altèrent l’âme. Mon amie Paula Grant, le journaliste M. Blow et d’autres ont souligné que parmi les festivités du Gay Pride de ce week-end avec leur sentiment de victoire nationale, on doit reconnaître que les conservateurs de la Cour suprême ont jugé que certains Américains ne sont pas assez américains pour avoir le droit, l’aptitude, la certitude du vote.

L’intersectionalité signifie différentes histoires d’exclusion, vivant côte à côte avec la même peau, le même corps, ainsi que différentes histoires de pouvoir aussi. Le système légal américain comme l’a écrit dans son essai Kimberle Crenshaw, « Démarginaliser l’intersection de Race et de Sexe : Une critique de féministe noire de la doctrine d’antidiscrimination, une théorie féministe et une politique antiraciste, » il y a près de 20 ans maintenant, a beaucoup de difficultés pour savoir quoi faire quand ces histoires sont dans le même corps exigeant l’équité. Son exemple est l’invisibilité des femmes noires dans les décisions légales concernant et le genre ou la race et dans certaines pensées féministes où la femme blanche et son histoire représente l’histoire du genre. (HeinOnline, 1989,U. Chicago Legal Forum)

Les décisions judiciaires viennent en grande quantité et rapidement et des vies sont changées. DOMA (Défense de loi sur le mariage) supprimé et la Proposition 8 repoussée ; la loi sur le droit de vote avec sa protection des droits de vote de ceux qui en étaient traditionnellement privés par des blocs de pouvoir retranchés est anéantie. Les pauvres, les nouveaux arrivés, les gens de couleur et avec un accent, ceux qui sont facilement intimidés par le pouvoir officiel et ceux qui voteraient dans beaucoup de cas pour des droits économiques et de justice sociale ont été repoussés dans les mains d’autorités qui pendant des années les ont rejetés – un moment de célébration ? Oui, les gens gay qui se marient deviennent de plus en plus comme la majorité ; des conservateurs de haut rang appellent à notre droit au mariage, c’est sain, domestique l’impétuosité du désir queer, renforce les principes de la famille et du foyer, des modes de vie connus qui ressemblent de plus en plus aux comédies de situation des années 1950.

Mais le danger se trouve ailleurs, remanier si arbitrairement les tableaux électoraux, fait qu’au Texas, il est même difficile d’être un électeur démocrate, ai-je entendu la nuit dernière sur PBS National News. Retracer les cartes de citoyenneté de sorte que ceux qui sont mécontents ou dans le besoin ou ont des idées différentes sur ce que les communautés méritent en terme de services trouvent de plus en plus de difficultés de prouver qu’ils méritent le droit de vote. Des plans de cartes d’identification continuent à submerger les zones de discrimination que certains d’entre nous connaissent si bien des campagnes pour les droits civils des années 1960. Je pense au travail d’enregistrement de votants que nous avions fait sur les routes de l’Alabama, du Mississipi, de la Louisiane. Je pense aux corps flottant trouvés dans de petites rivières recouvertes, les corps de travailleurs pour les droits civils dont les assassins étaient des hommes civiques en bonne position. Etre gay et noir, être gay et pauvre, être gay et hispanique, être gay et de gauche, être lesbienne et noire, être lesbienne et pauvre, être lesbienne et mère célibataire, être lesbienne et de gauche – comment célébrerons-nous ces décisions ? Quels bals allons-nous faire, maintenant que les portes ont été largement ouvertes à cette institution de contrôle connue comme le mariage mais que les portes pour l’isoloir électoral où le contrôle peut être remis en question ont été fermées à ceux qui ont le plus besoin de représentation ?

LHA: From 215 to 484--40 years of Holding on to Connections and Disruptions

Setting out for NYC Gay Pride, 1980s: Georgia, Mabel, Jan, Beth, Joan, Deb, Nancy Lucinda, Eileen, Judith

Opening of 484, the new home of LHA, Brooklyn, 1993 with Deb, Paula, Maxine and many more

Getting 484 ready for its history--Sam, one of the volunteers who have made the 40 year life of LHA possible, without fanfare but endless generosity