Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Indian LGBT Activists Outraged as Supreme Court Reinstates Gay Sex Ban

Jason Burke   The Guardian   December 11, 2013
A group of Indian activists hold a banner against section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalises homosexuality during a protest in Mumbai.
AP
First there was surprise, then shock, then anger. By nightfall thousands across India had taken to the streets in spontaneous protests against an unexpected supreme court decision on Wednesday reversing a judgment that had decriminalised gay sex in the country.
Activists had expected the court simply to rubber-stamp the original 2009 ruling. Now India will rejoin the more than 70 countries – mainly in Africa, the Middle East and south Asia – where homosexual relations are illegal.
The reinstatement of a 153-year-old law passed under British rule and based on 16th-century English legislation means "carnal intercourse" between consenting adults of the same sex is once more defined as "unnatural" and punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Waving multicoloured flags and wearing black bandanas, the crowd of protesters that gathered at the Jantar Mantar, a favourite point for demonstrations in the Indian capital, Delhi, was full of young men and women.
"I am gay, punish me," read one banner. "My love is not a crime," read another. The crowd cheered slogans of "My body, my rights" shouted by transgender protesters wearing bright traditional clothing.
For many the predominant emotion was disappointment. The 2009 decision of the high court in Delhi to repeal the law banning gay sex, known as section 377, was seen as a landmark in the campaign for equality in India.
"I was so disheartened by this judgment. It was supposed to be a first in a series of rights for the LGBT in India: property rights, marriage rights and so on," said Raja Bagga, a 25-year-old lawyer. "It would have been a precursor to a better, dignified life."
Few expected the legal challenge launched by conservatives – including Muslim and Christian religious associations, a rightwing politician and a retired government official turned astrologist – to succeed. The supreme court is known for its broadly progressive judgments that often order politicians or officials to respect the rights of the poor, disadvantaged or marginalised communities.
"It's a tremendous blow. It's unprecedented for a court with a long history of expanding rights to reduce dignity, not protect it," said Gautham Bhan, a prominent gay activist.
Among the supporters of the challenge was Baba Ramdev, a Hindu holy man with a mass following who has fought a long legal battle to maintain the ban on gay sex.
At a press conference following the judgment, Ramdev invited the gay community to his yoga ashram where he said he would "cure them of homosexuality", which he described as "unnatural, uncivilised, immoral, irreligious and abnormal". He said he would do so by "keeping them in a room with a heterosexual for a few days".
Tanuja Thakur, a Hindu spiritual leader, told the Guardian: "When two people of same sex indulge in a physical activity, it goes against nature. And anything unnatural is criminal in nature."
He said homosexuality was "happening because society is not doing enough spiritual practice".
The fierce debate – at least among metropolitan elites – prompted by Wednesday's judgment demonstrates how sexual relations have become a battleground in India, often revealing cultural splits between generations, between urban and rural dwellers and between those who invoke a "traditional past" contaminated by western influences and those who stress a local history of pluralism and tolerance.
Few now expect the beleaguered government, led by the Congress party, to risk limited political capital and sparse energy on a fight forgay rights.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata party, a Hindu nationalist party, has won a series of recent victories in state elections at the expense of the traditionally liberal, secular Congress, and though Indian society is changing very rapidly it remains profoundly conservative. The home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, said it was "not possible to legislate on anything now".
Gay rights activists say the community faces significant discrimination and police harassment, even if prosecutions for same-sex activity have been rare. Criminalising homosexuality makes them vulnerable to blackmail, they say.
Defenders of the supreme court decision said the objections of the judges to the repeal of section 377 were "constitutional and legal, not moral".
However, critics said that the wording of the judgment – which refers to the "so-called rights of LGBT persons", describes same-sex relations as "against the order of nature" and says that "lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgenders constitute only a miniscule fraction of the country's population" – reveals deep prejudice.
Gay activists say there is increasing support for their cause. Only about a dozen people attended India's first gay pride march, in the eastern city of Kolkata in 1999.
Now thousands gather there each year and similar events are held in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and other cities. Gay film festivals and university campus groups have also sprung up. "This is not the same community as 10 years ago. This is a real call to arms," said Bhan.
Vikram Seth, the Indian prize-winning novelist, said he was hopeful. "Today is a great day for prejudice and inhumanity and a bad day for law and love. But law develops and love is resilient and prejudice will be beaten back," he told the NDTV news channel.
"I wasn't a criminal yesterday but I'm certainly a criminal today … But I do not propose to take the permission of their lordships when deciding who to love and who to make love with."

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Protest shuts down Sixth Street


November 08, 2013 7:00 pm  •  
RACINE — Twelve Racine women effectively closed a block of Sixth Street for an hour Friday afternoon after they sat in the middle of the street in front of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s office, 216 Sixth St., to push him to take action on immigration reform.
Police blocked off the street at Main Street and allowed the women to address a crowd of several dozen that gathered in front of the Racine office for Ryan, the Janesville Republican who represents Racine County in Congress.
The women-led protest, organized by the Milwaukee-based immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, called on Ryan to work for speedy immigration reform and stop deportations.
Police wrote down each woman’s information and told them that they would be cited for the incident, according to Joe Shansky, a representative of the organization.
One of the women, 77-year-old Racine resident Luz Maria Hernández, said some of her children have been waiting in Mexico for 17 years for their visas to be approved.
“I have no fear because I’m fighting for my children and for many families who also suffer and are saddened,” said Hernández, who has nine children, 31 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Hernández, her one daughter who has been able to move to Racine, 57-year-old Sofia Anguiano, and her granddaughter Cecilia Anguiano were three of the women cited during the protest.
Hernández and her granddaughter were arrested together in a protest in Washington, D.C., in September, but Sofia Anguiano said that Friday was the first time she has ever been ticketed in the United States.
Another protester, Luisa Morales, 25, said that deportations are of particular concern for her because she was raised in Racine by two parents who were always at risk of being deported.
“I feared everyday in my childhood because they came to this country undocumented,” she said. “I had to grow up much sooner than most kids.”
Shansky said that the organization has held similar protests in front of the offices of Ryan, Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Ron Johnson in the past to spur action on immigration reform.
The protest began at about 3 p.m. and lasted for about an hour, until the women concluded the protest and willingly moved out of the street.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Charlotte Bunch pays tribute to Sunila Abeysekera (1952-2013)


Charlotte Bunch pays tribute to Sunila Abeysekera (1952-2013), a courageous feminist and human rights advocate within Sri Lanka, and a leader in South Asia and globally.
Sunila at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre 2005. Credit: Susanna George
The world lost an extraordinary, brave and articulate voice for human rights when Sunila Abeysekera (1952-2013) lost her battle with cancer on September 9th in Colombo. For many of us, we lost one of our most trusted and beloved friends and feminist thinkers who was a beacon of insight and commitment always prodding us to examine a different angle on an issue, learn from another movement or book, devise a new strategy, and never give up.  She also had a playful relish for life - its joys as well as its contradictions - with a love for the arts and popular culture, for pistachio ice cream and string hoppers as well as for politics and gossip.  Even amid the difficulties of a defender’s life, she snatched time to watch the latest movies and read voraciously – discarding used pot-boilers in airports and pondering post-modern feminist theory to discuss in our “free time”. She gave birth to two children on different continents, and adopted several more as the need arose,  incorporating them seamlessly into what her daughter Subha hailed at her funeral as her “unconventional” life of activism and love.
A courageous feminist and human rights advocate within Sri Lanka, Sunila was also a leader in South Asia and globally. She was at the forefront on many issues, fighting relentlessly for justice and human rights on behalf of all who experienced discrimination and persecution, whether on the basis of their politics, race-ethnicity, nationality or culture, class, gender or sexual orientation.  Sunila embodied both an intersectional analysis and the connection between the local and the global. Deeply grounded in her national context, she also participated in international movements, and walked the halls of the UN in Geneva and New York on behalf of all her causes.
A singer and actress by training, Sunila began her work as a Human Rights Defender in the mid 1970’s in a nonpartisan interethnic organization protecting leaders in her country’s youth movement. She become a key figure in numerous Sri Lankan civil society groups over the ensuing decades - as a founder of the Women and Media Collective, as an advocate for women workers in the free-Trade Zones and the tea plantations, and then in support of the Mothers Front and Women for Peace that stood up against state repression in her country’s long and deadly ethnic conflict.  
In 1990, as violent repression and terrorism in Sri Lanka increased, she assumed  leadership of INFORM Human Rights Documentation Centre. Over the next two decades, she worked across deep ethnic divides in seeking accountability for human rights violations by all sides in the war and demanding a negotiated political solution.  Like her father, Charles Abeysekera who died in 1998, she became a leading voice for human rights in her country and in her work at the UN.
While her island was always home, Sunila had an abiding curiosity about the world and  traveled widely. She spent a high school year in California as an exchange student where she developed a vast knowledge of US popular culture and folk music, which she often sang. She studied “women and development” at the Institute for Social Studies in The Hague in 1977, where she moved into an apartment with a Jamaican and a Peruvian instead of sticking with her national group. In 1994, she worked in Peru with Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan as part of a feminist South-South exchange program. She lived several times in The Hague and in Kuala Lumpur when she needed to escape her homeland. She traveled endlessly for events everywhere, including the World Social Forums where she helped organize Feminist Dialogues.
Sunila and Lala Huarou, China 1995. Credit: Fatima Jaffer
I met Sunila when we were both exploring feminist connections globally at the 1985 NGO Forum held with the UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi. The following year, I traveled to India and Sri Lanka with Roxanna Carrillo – her Peruvian roommate and now my life partner - as part of a cross-cultural feminist team that experienced the intensity of her work and the dynamism of South Asian feminism first hand. 
Our long friendship was forged during the Global Campaign for Women’s Human Rights in the 1990’s that sought recognition of women’s rights as human rights at the UN World Conferences in Vienna, Cairo, and Beijing and advocated for gender analysis at the World Conference on Racism in Durban in 2001.  With her knowledge of the UN Human Rights system and her experience in mainstream human rights movements, Sunila taught  us much about this work in her gentle and uncomplicated way. Her presence has been crucial to bringing feminist analysis to human rights work in many areas such as peace and security, refugees, and sexual rights to name only a few.    
Sunila also knew the movement had to be multi-generational and sought to keep up with new ideas and younger women. She was a resource person in leadership institutes at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers, as well in our joint institutes with the network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML) in Istanbul and Lagos.  She was a frequent presence at many leadership workshops and activities held in the Asian region; her generosity with her time and knowledge is noted by many groups throughout the world who have held tributes to her.  
One of Sunila’s major contributions over the last decade was building awareness of and support for women’s human rights defenders. As a defender and feminist who lived with threats to her life and in exile, she led with great authenticity and could bring feminist and human rights organizations together.  She spearheaded the first International Consultation held on this subject in Colombo in 2005, and guided the work of the Women’s Human Rights Defenders International Coalition, an advocacy network that formed out of that meeting.  She also served as chair of the Board of the Urgent Action Fund that supports women activists in crisis. 
Sunila at an Urgent Action Board meeting in 2007
November 29th was declared International Day for Women Human Rights Defenders at the end of the 2005 Consultation on that date.  This is part of the16 Days of Activism Against Gender Based Violence Campaign (Nov. 25-Dec 10), and in 2013, we will honour Sunila and other defenders who have died this past year.  
In this 20th anniversary year since the Vienna Human Rights Conference in 1993, the loss of Sunila is particularly poignant. We miss her profoundly, but the impact of her work and vision lives on in the many women and men who she touched and her spirit will accompany us forever.
Read Sunila writing on openDemocracy 50.50,  A brutal manifestation of patriarchy and Challengung ourselves at Beijing+15
To read a collection of memories of Sunila go to www.Sunilaabeysekera.com  and further tributes at AWID:  Remembering Sunila: A tribute to the life and work of Sunila Abeysekera

Monday, October 14, 2013

Monday, September 23, 2013

Pictures from the Bread and Puppet Museum by Karen Ranucci

Elka Schumann runs the print shop of Bread and Puppet, printing banners, posters
and small books.
The Bread and Puppet Farm was owned by the Dopp Family. Daisy Dopp was
a writer for the local paper, doing a column on farm life.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The Women of Fukushima


Over a year since three reactors went into meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a broad, disparate anti-nuclear movement is growing in Japan. Nowhere is that more apparent, perhaps, than in Fukushima prefecture, where a group of local women boldly protest the deafening silence of the Japanese government over the worst nuclear accident of this century. Largely ignored by their own media, these brave women brush aside their cultural shyness and share their brutally honest views on the state of the cleanup, the cover-ups, the untruths and the stagnant political climate in today’s Japan. Supported with rare footage from inside the exclusion zone, as well as from abandoned neighboring towns, the Women of Fukushima (“Fukushima no Onnatachi”) offers startlingly candid insights, in the women’s own voices, about what has become of their lives, homes, and families in the aftermath of 3/11. 

福島第一原子力発電所で3基の原子炉がメルトダウンを起こしてから1年以上。さまざまな人々による大がかりな反原発運動が日本国内で拡大しつつあります。この運動がもっとも顕著なのは、おそらく福島県でしょう。そこでは地元の女性グループが勇敢にも立ち上がり、今世紀最悪の原発事故に対する日本政府の沈黙に抗議しているのです。国内メディアにほとんど無視されてきたこの勇敢な女性たちは、内気な県民性を脇へ押しやり、現在の日本における汚染除去の現状や隠ぺい、嘘、そして停滞した政治情勢について包み隠さぬ率直な意見を公表しています。立ち入り禁止区域内や周辺の荒れ果てた無人の村々の貴重な映像と共に、「福島の女たち」は3・11によって彼女たちの人生、故郷、家族がどのような影響を受けたのかについての驚くほど率直な見解を、彼女たち自身の声で伝えます。


Women of Fukushima-English subtitles from Paul Johannessen on Vimeo.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

VERMONT YANKEE TO CLOSE FINALLY!!!!















Some lines from an interview with Grace... speaking about
how the affinity group from Vermont Yankee demos came
to Washington to support those who were arrested during
the Women's Pentagon Action.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Washerwoman Concert in the Bread and Puppet Museum


The Washerwomen were created in the 1980s for a show about resistance to war and as a tribute to Grace Paley.

















Photo by Charles Steckler

From an essay by John Bell "Grace Paley's Political Arts:
Text and Ritual Performance in the
Women's Pentagon Action (excerpt) 2009

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

AWAKE by YOKO ONO



ARISING

A CALL

WOMEN OF ALL AGES, FROM ALL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD:
YOU ARE INVITED TO SEND A TESTAMENT
OF HARM DONE TO YOU FOR BEING A WOMAN.
WRITE YOUR TESTAMENT IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE,
IN YOUR OWN WORDS, AND WRITE HOWEVER OPENLY YOU WISH.
YOU MAY SIGN YOUR FIRST NAME IF YOU WISH,
BUT DO NOT GIVE YOUR FULL NAME.
SEND A PHOTOGRAPH ONLY OF YOUR EYES.
THE TESTAMENTS OF HARM AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF YOUR EYES
WILL BE EXHIBITED IN MY INSTALLATION ARISING,
JUNE 1 – NOVEMBER 24, 2013, IN THE EXHIBITION,
PERSONAL STRUCTURES, AT PALAZZO BEMBO IN VENICE,
AS PART OF THE 55TH VENICE BIENNALE.
A BOOK WILL ALSO BE PREPARED OF THE ARTWORK,
AND A SELECTION OF YOUR TESTAMENTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THIS BOOK.
THE INSTALLATION ARISING WILL CONTINUE TO GROW
AND WILL BE EXHIBITED IN MANY COUNTRIES.
I VERY MUCH HOPE FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.
yoko ono
April 29, 2013



Send your testaments and photos just of your eyes by post to:
ARISING c/o Global Art Affairs Foundation – Palazzo Bembo
Riva del Carbon 47930 -­ 30124 Venezia -­ Italy
ARISING is an ongoing project that will continue to grow and be exhibited in many countries.
The deadline for submissions is open.




YOcropped2

RISING

Listen to your heart
Respect your intuition
Make your manifestation
Thereʼs no limitation
Have courage
Have rage
Weʼre all together
Follow your heart
Use your intuition
Make your manifestation
Thereʼs no confusion
Have courage
Have rage
Weʼre rising

Friday, July 19, 2013



Mystery Grandma Stuns Drum Shop Staff with Killer Skin-Slapping Skills

It was just another day at the Coalition Drum Shop in La Crosse, Wisconsin, when in came a mysterious grandma who proceeded to blow everyone away with her unexpected skin-slapping prowess.
"We have no idea where this lady came from, what her name is, or where she went," a shop rep says, "but she rocked our faces off!"
Here she is allegedly using double bass pedals for the very first time. Rock on, memaw!:

Friday, June 14, 2013

Mothers of Istanbul Defend the Protesters


















Dozens of mothers formed a human chain in Taksim between the protesters and the police,
showing their support to the Gezi Park demos. 
AA photo
Istanbul Governor Hüseyin Avni Mutlu today called on the mothers of the Gezi Park protesters to "bring their children home." However, instead of following the governor's order, many mothers joined their children at the demonstration, marking the latest instance of protesters turning the authorities' statements on their head. 

Dozens of mothers held hands and formed a large human chain to show their support to the protests, which have entered their 17th day, by standing guard around the park. 

Earlier, Mutlu had said that no police intervention was foreseen in the next 24 hours, despite reports that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had instructed otherwise. Mutlu also gave his own cell phone number during a broadcast by the private NTV channel, calling on the young people at Gezi Park not to hesitate giving him a ring. He also said that he intended to visit the park soon.



June/13/2013
  
An average Turkish mother nowadays. She is preparing an anti-teargas solution for her daughters who go and resist for Gezi Park.