The People's Record

Meet The Red Brigade: formed in November 2011 to fight back against a growing number of sexual attacks on women in the city of Lucknow, India

The male tormentor of the young women of the Madiyav slum did not spot the danger until it was too late. One moment he was taunting them with sexual suggestions and provocations; the next they had hold of his arms and legs and had hoisted him into the air.

Then the beating began. Some of the young women lightly used their fists, others took off their shoes and hit him with those. When it was over, they let him limp away to nurse his wounds, certain that he had learned an important lesson: don’t push your luck with the Red Brigade.

Named for their bright red outfits, the Red Brigade was formed in November 2011 as a self-defense group for young women suffering sexual abuse in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, 300 miles south-east of Delhi. Galvanised by the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student in Delhi last December and the nationwide protests that followed against a rising tide of rapes, they are now gaining in confidence.

From a core membership of 15, ranging in age from 11 to 25, they now have more than 100 members with a simple message for the men who have made their lives a misery: they will no longer tolerate being groped, gawped at and worse. Their activities are a lesson in empowerment.

Men who fall foul of the Red Brigade can first expect a visit and a warning. Sometimes the Red Brigade will ask the police to get involved, but if all else fails they take matters into their own hands. Their leader, 25-year-old teacher Usha Vishwakarma, has her own experience of the daily danger faced by many young women in the country. She was just 18 when a fellow teacher tried to rape her. “He grabbed me and put his hands round me and tried to open my belt and trousers,” says Usha, sitting in the bare-brick front room of her small house. “But I was saved by my jeans because they were too tight for him to open, and that gave me a chance to fight, so I kicked him in the sensitive place and pushed him down and ran out of the door.”

No one at the school took her accusations seriously, telling her to forget it and stop causing trouble. The experience left her traumatized and for two years she did nothing. But little by little her confidence came back. In 2009 she set up her own small school for local girls in an outbuilding next to her family home. Yet all around her, she says, she saw more and more young women suffering the same abuse she had faced. And it was threatening to wreck the chances of her young female students.

“Parents were telling girls to stay in their homes so there would be no incidents. They said, ‘if you go to school, boys will be troubling you, so stay home and there will be no sexual violence’,” says Vishwakarma. “But we said no, and we decided to form a group to fight for ourselves. We decided we would not just complain; we would take a lead and fight for ourselves.” They bought red kameez (shirts) and black salwar (trousers) and began to plan the fightback. “We chose red because it means danger and black for protest,” says Vishwakarma.

There is much to fight back against. “It is in the minds of men that girls are objects and it has been like that always,” says Vishwakarma. “Religion shows women as very powerless and that whoever is strong can do anything.”

They have started martial arts training so that the men do not have a physical advantage over them. Pooja, Vishwakarma’s 18-year-old sister, laughs as she recalls the reaction of the boy they grabbed in the street when his taunts became too much. “We all stopped and turned round and we surrounded him and grabbed his arms and legs and he thought it was a joke, but we were not kidding and four of us lifted him in the air and the others started to hit him with their shoes and fists,” she says.

The rough justice the Red Brigade metes out might seem extreme to western sensibilities, but many Indian women are making it clear that they are no longer prepared to put up with endemic abuse. That much is clear from the crime figures: reports of molestation in Delhi are up 590% year on year and rape reports by 147%. The rape cases have hit tourist numbers, which were down 25% in the first three months of the year – 35% fewer women are travelling to India. The Red Brigade say sexual abuse is a part of daily life for young women like them. They all have stories of abuse, attempted rapes and daily harassment. “This is what happens in India,” says 16-year-old Laxmi, one of Vishwakarma’s lieutenants. “These things happen all the time. All of us know this, so don’t let anyone say otherwise. This is why we have formed the Red Brigade.”

Seventeen-year-old Preeti Verma nods in agreement. Her family are too poor to have a toilet in the house, so she has to go out into the fields, she says. Every time she went out, the man in the neighbouring house threw stones at her to try to scare her into jumping up. “He wanted to see my body,” she says. “I told him: ‘What are you doing? You are shameless, don’t you have a mother and sister in your house?’ But he replied that his mother is for his father, his sister is for her husband and that I was for him.” She told Vishwakarma, and the man received a visit from the Red Brigade and another from the police. She has had no trouble from him since.

“We’ve caught a lot of men recently,” says 17-year-old Sufia Hashmi. “I joined up because men always used to pass comments on me and touch my body, but now we beat them the men cannot do anything and they run away. You feel powerful and you feel good.”

On the way back to the slum, the rickshaws pass a public park and for a moment these tough young women show themselves for what they really are – children forced to grow up fast. They beg and plead to stop. “Please, please,” they say, their eyes gleaming in excitement. Shrieking gleefully, they race off towards the swings, slides and roundabouts. Later they stroll back through the market, eating ice-creams, heading for their homes. The sun is low in the sky, the shadows long. The men watch sullenly as they pass. No one risks a word.

Source

Saw this on Al Jazeera this morning. I’m sure it’s gone around Tumblr in some form before.

The role we all played in the Bangladesh tragedy
April 29, 2013

The first thing Shariful noticed was debris falling from the ceiling. Then he heard a crash as the factory floors gave way and the building crumpled. He fell from the seventh to the first floor‘faster than an elevator’s speed.’Next he heard people screaming: mostly women and children.

There were three crèches in the eight-floor factory. When Shariful gained consciousness he saw dust. He felt a sewing machine crushing his left leg and then he saw death. Everywhere. Dead pale bodies powdered with fine brown dirt. Shariful didn’t know this, but a pregnant woman went into labour around this time. Of course she shouldn’t have been at work. No-one should have been at work. Factory inspectors ordered the building be evacuated the day before but the owners ignored them. Workers who complained were threatened with dismissal. So the 3000 workers filed into the Dhaka factory last Wednesday against their will. As I write, the death-toll stands at 350, but is predicted to rise to 1000.

I learnt about the collapse of the Bangladeshi garment factory a few hours after it happened. I was lying in bed chatting on skype to a friend who is living in Dhaka. It was around 9.00 at night and I was already in my pyjamas: Benetton pyjamas in fact. My floor was its usual mess, strewn with clothes that I had proudly bought for ten dollars or less from Big Bargain Discounts as well as some more respectable work clothes: Gap, Zara, H&M and Levis. ‘It’s OUTRAGEOUS’ I railed, ‘the factory owners made them go back to work when they knew the building was unsafe.’ My friend agreed. We also tsked the government for doing so little to enforce basic safety standards for workers.

But as I hung up the phone the question of fault nagged me. There I was clothed in pyjamas that had been made if not in that factory then in one like it. The labels found inside the collapsed factory included Benetton, Mango, Joe Fresh, Primark and C&A. My floor was littered with dresses and tee-shirts that had been run through the sewing machines of people working in prison conditions or even possibly now dead.

The question of responsibility and what is to be done stretches from the global to the minutiae, from international labour standards to the clothes racks of Myer. It’s a question that stems from our commercial imperialist past and will continue into our neoliberal future. And it’s a question that centres on the lives of women.

We could start by blaming the illegally built building, although it’s certainly not the first. Five months earlier 112 workers died in a fire in the Tazreen garment factory. The workers burnt to death because the gates had been locked from the outside. We could also blame the fact that there are only 18 inspectors to monitor the 100,000 factories in the Dhaka area. Or we could blame the fact that all foreign retailers except Tommy Hilfiger, Tchibo and Calvin Kelin have refused to sign the Fire and Building Safety Agreement that would establish a system of independent factory inspectors. All this is true, and terrible, but there’s also a larger context.

The only reason why clothing companies go to places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, or the US-Mexican border, is because they’re on a hunt for cheap labour and they no longer want to invest in building factories. The minimum wage in Bangladesh is $37/month and there is an entire shadow economy that pays even less. The profit margin for Bangladeshi manufacturers is low so they subcontract out their labour to factories with illegal risky practices. While the foreign retailers report stellar annual profits, some Bangladeshi manufacturers often barely break even. The only way they can make profits is through increasing work hours often to 12-14 hour days, and avoiding building safety regulations and environmental standards.

As global capital sniffs like a ravenous wolf around the world in search of cheap labour, who are the workers who end up caught in its jaws? Liesbeth Sluiter from the Clean Clothes Campaign estimates that 84% of workers in the global clothing industry are women, which is 30-40 million women worldwide.

Fauzia Ahmed says factories prefer women because they’re excluded from male-dominated union movements and so are less likely to strike. And because they’re women they’re paid less, even in instances where they do the same work as men. Most of these women are young, poor and rural. They are as Sluiter describes: ‘women whose children sleep beneath the sewing machine and begin to help out as soon as their fingers can manage to thread a needle; some who wear nothing but black clothes to work when menstruating, because toilet visits are restricted and stains on their clothes will shame them; pregnant women who stand all day; women who are sexually harassed and psychologically intimidated…’

Surely there is no other issue where first world women’s consumerism collides so dramatically with the conditions of third world women. I mean, I wonder what Sex and the City would have looked like if Carrie turned her mind to these issues. But leaving Carrie’s ethics aside, let’s think about a feminist response.

Firstly, I think we should demand that labels be placed on clothing so that we know what we’re buying. Secondly, we try to buy locally and to buy less. Thirdly, we campaign with the many feminists from the global south who have demanded that labour standards be established by the International Labour Organisation and enforced with sanctions by the World Trade Organisation. Capitalism is a prowling, salivating beast that needs to be tamed with regulation and personal ethics.

Source

#4… & most importantly: Let’s not tame capitalism; let’s destroy it.

Kurdish men in Iran have launched a cross-dressing campaign to redress outmoded concepts of masculinity & femininity and outlandish, sexist punishment administered by the government.
April 24, 2013

Over the last week, over 150 Kurdish men have posted photographs of themselves in women’s clothing to campaign against the sexist nature of a court sentence which led to the public humiliation of a man by dressing him in women’s clothing.

The campaign, entitled Kurd Men for Equality is a response to a sentence given to a convicted man by the Marivan County tribunal court on 15 April. The campaign’s tagline reads: ‘Being a woman is not a way for humiliation or punishment.’ According to Saman Rasoulpour, the convicted man was paraded down the streets of Marivan in a red tchador (traditional Kurdish women’s clothing).

Rasoulpour stated that public humiliation is a common punishment for troublemakers. Rasoulpour told us: ‘[In] this way, authorities are able to both demean the accused and deliver a warning to the public.’ However, Rasoulpour emphasized: ‘This is the first time in Iran that an accused is paraded in women’s clothes in the streets to humiliate him. It is unprecedented anywhere in Iran.’

In response to the judge’s sentence, a local feminist organization of Marivan called the Marivan Womens’ Community held a protest against the misogynistic punishment. The protest brought one hundred women on the streets of Marivan in a civil resistance campaign for gender equality.

In solidarity with the women’s protest, a man named Massoud Fathipour posted a photograph of himself dressed in women’s clothing. According to Rasoulpour, ‘he ignited the spark’. Since the Kurd Men for Equality campaign has been launched on 18 April, it has quickly gained an international following of over 7,000 fans. Over 150 men have submitted photographs of themselves in women’s clothing to emphasize the message that being a woman should not be considered humiliating.

In parliament 17 Iranian MPs have signed a petition addressed to the Justice Ministry which decries this sentence as ‘humiliating to Muslim women’. Supporters of the campaign have written messages in support of the gender equality on the Facebook wall.

Ala M writes: ‘For many years, women in my country have been side-by-side with men, wearing men’s clothes, struggling. Tonight I am happy and honored to wear women’s clothes and be even a small part of the rightful struggle of people to express gratitude and excellence to the women of my country.’

Another supporter, Namo Kurdistani writes: ‘We should gather together and condemn this stupidity, brutality and inhumanity against women. This is the least I can do to support women.’

In one of the protest images posted on Facebook, two LGBT rainbow flags can be seen on the wall in the background. People have commented on the image supporting homosexuality. Women have also supported the campaign by posting photographs of themselves wearing men’s clothing.

Iran claims it treats transgender people well but an expert told GSN the punishment in this case also indicates the stigma and discrimination trans people still face in the country as well as being a sign of simple sexism. According to Rasoulpour, no public apology has been made by authorities and security forces in Iran have strongly criticized the campaign.

Source

Topless Tunisian activist Amina Tyler: ‘Femen have insulted all Muslims everywhere and it’s not acceptable’
April 10, 2013

A Tunisian activist, who was threatened with death by stoning for baring her breasts online, has broken her silence to condemn the “topless jihad” that was organised in support of her. Amina Tyler posted images of herself with the words “Fuck your morals” written across her chest to the Femen-Tunisia Facebook page, earning calls for her death from a local preacher who feared her act “could bring about an epidemic”.

Women’s movement Femen, which celebrated its fifth birthday on Wednesday, responded by organizing bare-breasted rallies across the world, touting them as a cry against the “lethal hatred of Islamists – inhuman beasts for whom killing a woman is more natural than recognising her right to do as she pleases with her own body.”

Since the event – which inspired the creation of a group of Muslim women fiercely opposed to Femen’s work – Amina has remained out of sight. Amid fears for her life, the 19-year-old was rumoured to be in a psychiatric hospital, while attorney Bochra Bel Haj Hmida insisted Amina was well and with her family.

Now footage of Amina has surfaced on French TV channel Itele, in which the teenager said she does not want to be associated with Femen’s recent actions.

She told CAPA journalist Benoit Chaumant: “I am against [it]. Every[one] will think that I encouraged their actions. They have insulted all Muslims everywhere and it’s not acceptable.”

When asked what she thought of the reaction to her topless photograph, Amina replied: “At the moment I don’t regret what I did. But I do not know what the future holds.”

As to whether she supports Femen “whatever happens”, she says: “Until I’m 80-years-old. Because they are true feminists.”

Chaumant says that for her own safety, Amina hopes to leave Tunisia soon.  “They [her family] believe she is at risk of death – she is at risk of death. So they want to keep her with them, at their house.”

In what was believed to be her last interview before she went underground, Amina told Frederica Tourn she she believed she would be beaten or raped if the Tunisian police found her. But she insisted she was not afraid: “No, nothing they could do would be worse than what already happens here to women, the way women are forced to live every day. “Ever since we are small they tell us to be calm, to behave well, to dress a certain way, everything to find a husband. We must also study to be able to marry, because young guys today want a woman who works.”

As for what the reluctant poster-girl’s comments will mean for Femen – and indeed for Muslim Women Against Femen, this remains to be seen.

Source

Just in case any of you racists out there still believe that your support of Femen’s racism is justified because of Amia Tyler.

Like everyone has already been telling you, the action was racist & insulting & it is really obvious that your condescending, eurocentric bullshit is not reaching out to help, is not being an ally & is not following the lead of the oppressed group & individuals you are pretending to stand for. Instead, it is projecting your European racism on a group of people who do not need you to mock their culture.

Happy Birthday, Dolores Huerta (April 10, 1930 - present)!

Huerta is a labor & civil rights leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union in 1972, and directed the groundbreaking, five-year National grape boycott that won the first-ever contract for a grape grower.

She has been a tireless advocate for women’s rights, organizing against the Welfare Reform Act and California’s Prop 209.

She is also a 101 Changemaker: 101 Changemakers: Rebels and Radical Who Changed US History

For more on the Farmworkers movement check out Fields of Resistance by Silvia Giagnoni: http://bit.ly/11TcrPr

All images on The People’s Record Facebook page for sharing there.

With Greg, I can’t even. Respond here.

Bahrain police attack anti-government woman protesters with stun grenades and tear gas
April 1, 2013

Tensions are once again high in Bahrain after police dispersed anti-government protesters with stun grenades and tear gas. The police intervention came after a demonstration by women was banned.

They were on the streets of the west coast town of Malkiya in support of jailed political prisoners and against the upcoming Formula One race in April.

It is the latest in a series of protests on the Gulf island, led mainly by Shi’ite Muslim groups demanding equality with the Sunnis, as well as political reforms.

There were major turnouts two weeks ago on the second anniversary of the intervention by a Saudi-led force which helped crush a pro-democracy uprising.

Bahrain’s opposition and government negotiators resumed reconciliation talks last month for the first time since July 2011, but little progress has been reported.

Source

On New Delhi street, protest simmers nonstop
March 31, 2013

The massive protests that swept India after the gang rape of a paramedical student in the capital last year may seem to have disappeared from the headlines here.

The young woman who was assaulted died; the government gave her family a new apartment and financial compensation. The accused are on trial, and a new law has toughened the penalties for sexual assault.

But on one street in New Delhi, the movement — dubbed the 16 December Revolution after the date the gang rape occurred — is still alive, kept in the public eye by bandanna-wearing, placard-wielding activists who sleep in plastic tents and hold daily candlelight vigils.

Jantar Mantar, the capital’s official protest street, is the place where much of the anger and dissent in this teeming democracy finds a voice. On Friday, the anti-rape protesters sat in the rain next to people demanding cleaner rivers, affirmative action, pension funds, disability grants and a corruption-free government.

When it comes to grievances, India is a buffet. And anybody with a cause can find slogan-shouting time and space at Jantar Mantar — as powerful an advertisement for free speech as Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, only more crowded and more littered.

As public outrage over corruption and sexual violence grew in the past two years, it appeared for a while as if the India Gate boulevard that runs past Parliament, the prime minister’s office and the president’s residence would again become the demonstration hub it had been until the 1980s. But the protest-wary government imposed curfews on India Gate and herded activists back into the tiny street, named Jantar Mantar after the nearby 18th-century astronomical observatory of the same name.

Protesters describe Jantar Mantar evocatively. “Temple of democracy,” one said. Another likened it to the bell that citizens rang to alert the king of their grievances in olden times. One man said it was like the “anger palace” of the Hindu epics to which queens withdrew to indicate to the king that they were sulking.

But Ram Shankar Ojha, 56, who was protesting the condition of the city’s polluted Yamuna River, said the street could also be seen as “a jailhouse for protesters.”

“The government has set aside this street for us to come, shout, vent our anger and leave,” he said. “The government wants to contain our anger within Jantar Mantar so that it does not spill out into the rest of the city.”

Anti-rape protesters said they will not leave the street until all those accused in the Dec. 16 incident, including the juvenile defendant, are hanged.

“The so-called fast-track court is taking too long,” said Mohammad Faiz Khan, 32. “Today it is three months since the woman died.”

In another tent, a mother was protesting on behalf of her daughter, who she said was raped by a policeman in the northern state of Punjab in 2010.

“The police have not even filed a complaint,” said Mahinder Kaur, 60. “It has been nearly three years.” Buoyed by the anti-rape protests in the capital, Kaur and her daughter have camped in Jantar Mantar since January. Activists helped her write letters to the government’s human rights panel and women’s commission.

Policemen stand around on the street all day, keeping an eye on things & plainclothes intelligence officers speak to protesters in the evening and take notes.

Meanwhile, ideas and activists circulate and sometimes meld.

Several auto-rickshaw drivers demanding speedier vehicle registration and a new fare schedule wore white caps bearing the slogan “I am the common man,” the signature protest prop of the anti-corruption movement that began in Jantar Mantar two years ago.

One driver said he had volunteered at the office of the anti-corruption crusader Arvind Kejriwal, who is now on a hunger strike in a distant slum to protest electricity prices. Kejriwal was invited to speak a few days ago at the Jantar Mantar protest tent of activists demanding a separate state for the ethnic Gorkha community in eastern India.

“He said he supports our cause for a separate state because of our distinct Gorkha ethnic and linguistic identity,” said Bhushan Rai, 37.

A law student protesting against rape said he had also taken part in the anti-corruption drive: “In a way, the anti-corruption movement gave me the first exposure to activism, then the rape protests took place and I went to that, too,” said Mohit Ranjan, 21. “I am still here because I don’t want that spirit to die out.”

Source

The real history of International Women’s Day
March 8, 2013

Do you have $100+ to spare? Then you could attend an International Women’s Day luncheon hosted by the Chamber of Commerce or various business organisations. But, although IWD has become mainstream in recent years, it was historically a socialist event and that is how we commemorate it

Clara Zetkin, a leading member of German Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the early 1900s, argued that the working class would never win its battles without women and raised the issue of special party work among women. Under her leadership a working women’s movement grew rapidly in Germany, and the female membership of the SPD rose from 10,500 in 1907 to 150,000 in 1913.

Zetkin proposed the establishment of an international women’s day at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen in August 1910, inspired by American socialists who had held women’s demonstrations and meetings the year before. The slogan for IWD was to be: “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism.”

In 1911, more than a million women and men took up the idea of IWD enthusiastically, with rallies and marches in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark and other major industrial cities of Europe. According to the Russian revolutionary socialist Alexandra Kollontai, “Germany and Austria were one seething, trembling sea of women… Meetings were organised everywhere – in the small towns and even in the villages, halls were packed full.”

In subsequent years and throughout World War One, IWD continued to provide a focus for activists. In 1913 and 1914 women across Europe held peace rallies on or around 8 March. In 1915, socialist women held a march in Bern, Switzerland, in opposition to their own countries’ war effort, which was treason in wartime. They took a manifesto home to be distributed secretly in their countries. In 1917, female socialists in Turin hung posters addressed to women throughout the working class neighbourhoods protesting rising food prices. And in 1918 in Austria, 3,000 women, despite the ban on demonstrations, marched in small groups past the parliament and the Palace of Justice demanding peace.

In Russia Alexandra Kollontai played a leading role. She brought the idea of IWD to Russia and helped organise events in the pre-war years. In Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1913, Bolshevik women workers organised a “scientific morning devoted to the woman question” (this sort of subterfuge was necessary under tsarism). Kollontai wrote:

“This was an illegal meeting but the hall was absolutely packed. Members of the party spoke. But this animated ‘close’ meeting had hardly finished when the police, alarmed at such proceedings, intervened and arrested many of the speakers.”

In 1914 police again intervened and arrested many people. Some women were nonetheless able to celebrate IWD with flash meetings around the city, and similar small actions were possible in 1915 and 1916.

Peace and bread

By 1917, deteriorating living conditions had resulted in strong feelings. Frustration with food shortages and interminable queues had already produced food riots, and the large number of women workers in large factories had already carried out many strikes.

What happened in Petrograd combined food riots, economic strikes and a political strike. And it was all sparked by women determined to celebrate International Women’s Day.

The local Bolsheviks judged the time unripe for militant action. So when a group of women from the Vyborg district asked for advice on how to celebrate IWD they were told to “refrain from isolated actions and follow only instructions of party committee”.

The women decided to strike anyway. In spite of all directives, women in Petrograd chose to protest and strike for “Bread and Peace” on 23 February (8 March on the Gregorian calendar). Demonstrations organised to demand bread were supported by the industrial workforce. Women textile workers in several factories went on strike and sent delegates to metal workers for support. The women workers marched to nearby factories bringing out over 50,000 workers on strike.

By 25 February, the strike had spread to 240,000 workers. Mass demonstrations surged through the town. The following day large parts of Petrograd were in control of the insurrection and when soldiers went over on 27 February, the tsar abdicated.

General Khabalov of the Petrograd Military District summarised the problem facing the authorities: “When they said, ‘Give us bread!’ we could give them bread and that was the end of it. But when they said, ‘Down with the autocracy!’ we could no longer appease them with bread.”

Full article

Happy International Women’s Day! 

Pictured: Si Se Puede by Robert Valadez, Chief Theresa Spence, Dr. Angela Davis, Vandala Shiva, Amy Goodman, Malala Yousafzai, Leila Khaled, Pussy Riot & Zapatista women.

dentonsocialists:

Speakout on victim blaming on campus

Follow dentonsocialists  They’re pretty cool people irl & I hope to see them active & adding original content/engaging with the tumblr left. Doing a few reblogs to welcome them to tumblr (it’s the page’s first day).

Sexist cannibal NYPD cop was ‘dying to taste some girl meat’
February 27, 2013

Cheerful written exchanges between a police officer and women from his past appeared in a sinister new light when an FBI agent described at the officer’s criminal trial how he talked on the Internet about killing and eating the women.

“I’m dying to taste some girl meat,” Agent Corey Walsh testified Tuesday that New York Police Officer Gilberto Valle told one of the online friends he met who shared an appetite for human flesh.

The testimony came on the second day of testimony in federal court in Manhattan for the 28-year-old Queens resident charged with conspiring to kidnap women and illegally accessing a government database to research potential victims. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

To prove the plots involved real women and to counter defense claims that it was all fantasy, the government summoned several women to testify about their dealings with Valle before prosecutors say he wrote about them as potential targets and, in two cases, potential meals.

Source

These people are entrusted with bizarre & supreme powers - they have the trigger, the ability to say ‘your life ends now’ & all they have to do is say ‘I thought he might have had a deadly weapon’ even & especially when the victims of the police don’t have any weapons on them. 

And this is who they recruit to their force for the positions of ultimate authority - sexist cannibals with malevolent master plans. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you wanted to.

Barely 16-year-old white model poses in ‘African Queen’ editorial
Feb 25, 2013

Here we go again. Here’s 16-year-old white model Ondria Hardin; she’s doused in a very deep bronze in an editorial for Numéro magazine called “African Queen”. Ugh. Foudre makes the excellent point/sums it up with, “why hire a black model when you could just paint a white one!”

Maybe it’s because the magazine just couldn’t find a black model? Maybe there are none, and it’s just not a profession that appeals to anyone but young, tall, skinny, white girls? They’re probably the only ones who enjoy traveling around the world and getting paid tons of money to be pretty? I know, I know, modeling is much more than that — don’t listen to me, I can barely smize! — but you get the point. It appears diversity also floundered at NYC’s fashion week this year, with over 82 percent of the models being white.

However, the same agency that represents Ondria Hardin has several black women in their pool. It’s a much (MUCH) tinier pool than the amount of white models they represent, but it does exist. And if none of those women are quite right, there are about a gazillion other places to look. There’s no excuse for using a barely 16-year-old white girl in an “African Queen” spread.

It’s impossible to look at this and not ache for young women of color who want to pursue careers in modeling (and arguably, fashion by extension). When they don’t see themselves on the runway or in magazines, it could be very easy for them to think, “huh, I guess modeling isn’t for me.” Then the status quo remains, and the runways remain monotone. If jobs for “African Queen” photo spreads aren’t going to black women, what hope is there?

Source

Indian feminists/activists respond to Harvard kids attempting to help the less fortunate ‘third world’ feminists
February 25, 2013

Globally, from the U.S. to the developing world, rape and other forms of violence against women remain at shockingly high levels. Focusing on the horrifying case of a 23-year-old Indian student who was gang-raped and beaten to death in Delhi in December, the Harvard College Women’s Center announced it would create a Beyond Gender Equality task force, “convened to offer recommendations to India and other South Asian countries in the wake of the New Delhi gang rape and murder.”

The group ignored the long history of Indian activists themselves fighting to end rape and sexual violence—including recent mass protests of South Asian women and men calling for a systemic fight against rape. And the Harvardites had nothing to say about the ample evidence of the problem of rape in the U.S.—from the sickening gang rape and subsequent cover-up at Steubenville High School in Ohio, to the systematic downplaying of rape and sexual assault at Amherst College and other universities.

In response to this “white (wo)man’s burden” take on the issue of sexual violence in South Asia, a group Indian feminists wrote the following response, first published at Kafila.org, detailing their own years of work fighting to end rape and gain justice sexual assault victims.

— — — — — — —

Dear sisters (and brothers?) at Harvard,
WE’RE A group of Indian feminists and we are delighted to learn that the Harvard community—without doubt one of the most learned in the world—has seen fit to set up a policy task force entitled “Beyond Gender Equality” and that you are preparing to offer recommendations to India (and other South Asian countries) in the wake of the New Delhi gang rape and murder.

Not since the days of Katherine Mayo have American women—and American feminists—felt such a concern for their less privileged Third World sisters. Mayo’s concern, at that time, was to ensure that the Indian state (then the colonial state) did not leave Indian women in the lurch, at the mercy of their men, and that it retained power and the rule of the just.

Yours, we see, is to work towards ensuring that steps are put in place that can help the Indian state in its implementation of the recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee, a responsibility the Indian state must take up.

This is clearly something that we, Indian feminists and activists who have been involved in the women’s movement here for several decades, are incapable of doing, and it was with a sense of overwhelming relief that we read of your intention to step into this breach.

You might be pleased to know that one of us, a lawyer who led the initiative to put pressure on the Justice Verma Committee to have a public hearing with women’s groups, even said in relief, when she heard of your plans, that she would now go on holiday and take a plane ride to see the Everest.

Indeed, we are all relieved, for now we know that our efforts will not have been in vain: the oral evidence provided by 82 activists and organizations to the Justice Verma Committee—and which we believe substantially contributed to the framing of their report—will now be in safe American hands!

Perhaps you are aware that the Indian state has put in place an “Ordinance on Sexual Assault” that ignores many recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee? If not, we would be pleased to furnish you a copy of the Ordinance, as well as a chart prepared by us, which details which recommendations have been accepted and which not.

This may be useful in your efforts to advise our government. One of the greatest things about sisterhood is that it is so global—feminism has built such strong international connections, such that whenever our First World sisters see that we are incapable of dealing with problems in our countries, they immediately step in to help us out and provide us with much needed guidance and support. We are truly grateful for this.

Perhaps you will allow us to repay the favor, and next time President Obama wants to put in place legislation to do with abortion or the Equal Rights Amendment, we can step in and help, and, from our small bit of experience in these fields, recommend what the United States can do.

Source (with signatures)