Not always old....

The next time you look at an old woman, just remember... she was not always old....and when she was young, she might have been a burlesque dancer!



The next time you look at an old woman, just remember... she was not always old....and when she was young, she might have been a burlesque dancer!

the dancer Pat Flannery. See the NYTimes for a burlesque dancers' reunion; photos by Nicole Bengiveno.

Mothers and peace

A day late, as usual-- I'm a member of Bloggers Unite and yesterday was the day to blog about the Mothers' Day for Peace event. But I didn't get it together to write Saturday and Sunday I was with my own kids. I've been working on coming to terms with how some things will never change, other things are worth the work, while the rest is too good to mess with.

When I stopped over at Arise for Social Justice today, I asked two of the women who were there that I knew were mothers how their day was yesterday.

"Don't ask," one woman said, and then proceeded to tell me her car adventure. The car needed some repairs, so she brought it to a backyard mechanic. Later that night, he "loaned" it to somebody he owed a favor to. That person drove it through a McDonald's where her brother worked, who recognized the car and then reported it as stolen to the police. The car was left in the lot and she came and got it, and then was promptly stopped by the police for driving a stolen car.

This is the kind of chaos that comes with not having enough money and having to cut corners.

The second woman asked if she could talk to me in the back office. Turned out a longtime friend-- who was not even currently a boyfriend-- had blown up at her and then pummeled her with a pillow from the couch.

"It wasn't a soft pillow, either," she said. "I've got a headache and a stiff neck."

So I worked all the PC options into the conversation-- if he did it once, he'll do it again, you should think about getting a restraining order-- but the truth is, life is much more complicated. Her longtime friend had just behaved in an inexplicable way and she saw the possibility of a ten year friendship going down the drain. Without his friendship, her life would also get harder, because he helps out-- not with money, but picking one of her kids up after school if she's working.

"Well, let me make a really white suggestion", I said.

She laughed.

"You know you have to tell him that that can never happen again," I said. "What about asking him if he'd be willing to see a counselor with you-- or even a mediator, just to work out the terms of what's acceptable in your friendship and what isn't?" I could see her running my suggestion through her mind to see if it could even possibly make sense in her situation.

Later she told me she'd called him-- didn't quite catch what she'd said to him-- but his answer was, "That's not your choice to make."

"Well, that about says it all, right?" I said.

We'll have to talk more later. This is the kind of chaos that comes with....well, the life of a single mother with not enough resources, among other things.

This week the local Springfield, MA forum MassLive burned with cruelty and pettiness-- maybe even envy-- because of a very small state-funded program that gives cars to families on welfare that get a job. The program also pays the cost of insurance and AAA for one year, but those payments cease if the working family member loses her/his job or stops working. They get to keep the car, although, seeing as the car is donated and repaired through a Vermont program called the Good News Garage, they're probably no great shakes. Only 65 cars have been donated so far in the $400,000 a year state budget.

Much of the criticism of this program and others such as cash assistance, childcare subsidies and food stamps (now SNAP) seems to come from a basic misunderstanding of what fairness is.

"It's not fair that someone on welfare should get subsidized childcare when I pay $120 a week!"

Yup, not fair. So why not make it available to both instead of taking it away from one? Or is that too hard to imagine?

I could talk about how successful capitalism has been at creating a great divide between the classes.

But sometimes I just want to send people for a brainwipe. Maybe the second time around some people would learn some compassion.

Support workers at the YWCA and its battered women's shelters

I was talking to an old friend of mine the other day, Nancy Lyman-Shaver, about whether she still was planning to write a book about the development of the battered women's movement in Western Massachusetts, which so closely parallels efforts around the country. Unfortunately, much of Nancy's material was lost in a flooded basement, but a very abridged version of the story goes like this: back in the late 60's and early 70's, if a woman was being battered at home, she had virtually no options. There were no battered women's shelters and the 209A restraining order laws did not yet exist. In Springfield, working class feminists rented a house for women who needed a place to flee to, and they staffed it with volunteers for a number of years. It was an effort women undertook willingly, but without funding, it eventually became too much. When the MA Department of Public Health decided to offer funding to agencies willing to operate battered women's shelters, it was, in many ways, the beginning of the end of the battered women's political movement, bureaucratizing essential services to they could be "delivered" more efficiently.

Maybe it was inevitable and necessary, but that bureaucratization has been a mixed blessing. We've replaced a political analysis with one that tends to treat women as part of a social pathology, and that brings with it all the concomitant mandatory "services.". And some battered women's services have even become the oppressors of their women employees.

Springfield's Young Women's Christian Association, which operates the ARCH and New Beginnings battered women's shelters, has been under criticism for some time by many in its workforce. This Thursday, the Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice Workers' Rights Board will be holding a hearing on labor relations at the Y. The following is a press release from Jobs with Justice.

YWCA WORKERS TO TESTIFY TO WORKERS’ RIGHTS BOARD

On Thursday March 12, a panel of the Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice Workers' Rights Board will take the testimony of workers at YWCA of Western Massachusetts and issue a report on labor contract bargaining there. The hearing will be 3:00-5:00pm in Room 220, City Hall, 36 Court Street, Springfield. The public, the press, and the employer are invited to attend. Attendees are asked to come fragrance-free.

The YWCA’s workforce – predominantly women, many of whom are of color – claim it is not living up to its mission of “eliminating racism and empowering women.”

The United Auto Workers Local 2322 has been bargaining a new contract at the YWCA since May 2008. The employer is showing an anti-worker and anti-union animus at the bargaining table and has shown such animus since the workers organized in 2003. Despite being a non-profit social service agency subsidized by tax dollars and tax benefits and public and private donations, the YWCA has spent in excess of $300,000 on the well-known anti-union law firm, Skoler, Abbott & Presser, and has given sizable raises to its Executive Director, Mary Reardon Johnson. It claims there is no revenue to grant its employees decent raises.

UAW Local 2322 President Ron Patenaude will conduct the testimony by YWCA workers and also provide basic information including the YWCA’s many violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

The Western Mass. Jobs with Justice Workers' Rights Board consists of two dozen “public citizens” in Western Massachusetts. The following are on the March 12 panel:

Irene Kimball, Chairperson of the Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice Workers' Rights Board; retired Regional Director, Massachusetts Office for Children

Anne Awad, President/CEO, Caring Health Center Inc, Springfield; Health Systems Consultant; former Amherst Select Person

Kathryn Buckley-Brawner, Director, Office of Peace & Justice, Catholic Charities Agency, Diocese of Springfield

Frances Borden Hubbard, Project Director, Springfield Adolescent Health Project; Retired Professor of Black Studies, Labor Studies, and Public Administration at several universities

Prof. Stephanie Luce, Acting Director, Labor Relations & Research Center, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Benjamin Swan, Massachusetts State Representative from Springfield and civil rights activist

William R. Toller, Deacon, Holy Cross Church, Springfield; Consultant, Hampden County Sheriff’s Department

E. Henry Twiggs, Chairman, Springfield Inner City Rehab Inc.

Across the U.S., Workers’ Rights Boards act as “the conscience of the community” regarding labor relations, exposing employers' misconduct and also helping workers form unions and reach collective bargaining contracts. There is more information at http://www.jwj.org/projects/wrb.html.

More information about law firms like Skoler, Abbott & Presser is at http://www.americanrightsatwork.org/the-anti-union-network/for-profit-union-busters/for-profit-unionbusters.html.

Jon Weissman, Coordinator,Western Mass Jobs with Justice,640 Page Blvd #101, Springfield MA 01104, (413) 827-0301

Photos: Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone, two Massachusetts feminists.

Today is International Women's Day, and my post is as part of a coordinated effort on the part of Bloggers Unite!,an attempt to harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place. By asking bloggers to write about a particular subject on 1 day of the month, a single voice can be joined with thousands to help make a difference; from raising awareness for cancer, to an effort to better education systems or supporting 3rd world countries. if you're a blogger, check it out!

CNN's Rick Sanchez uses the language of violence

Irony of ironies....this afternoon on Rick Sanchez' show on CNN, he read aloud from the filing documents released by the Los Angeles police that described the "alleged" beating of singer Rihanna by her boyfriend Chris Brown. The literally blow by blow description of the assault was chilling and and graphic.

After reading the filing documents, Rick addressed one of his guests, Ashleigh Banfield from In Session.

"There's talk..that she's gonna go back to him and all that jazz..and as a guy, as a human being, you can't help but wonder why. And there's talk now, that there's some people who know her who are gonna try to knock some sense into her. What are you hearing?"

Hold on! Isn't that what Chris Brown probably believes, that he was "knocking some sense into her?"

Is he next going to call the assault a "crime of passion?"

Photo from Dvux's photostream at Flickr.

Compare and Contrast

From The F Word, Contemporary UK Feminism

Sex workers aren't "asking for it."

On December 27th, two police officers on foot patrol discovered an unconscious woman under a bush in Springfield, Massachusetts' South End. She had been raped and severely beaten, and in the frigid weather, her body temperature had fallen to 80 degrees. She was the third woman since October to be found raped and beaten into unconsciousness.

"If it were a half-hour later, we would have been investigating the city's 15th murder," said Sgt. John M. Delaney, aide to Police Commissioner William J. Fitchet.

The victim is a white woman with a long history with police, Delaney said, though he did not detail her arrest record.

"I hate to say it, I don't want to make her a victim twice," Delaney said, while cautioning the public that the attack did not bear the marks of a "typical" serial rapist.

"The general public should know that this was a woman who engaged in risky behavior, not someone who was abducted at random," he said. Stephanie Barry, Springfield Republican.

What Sgt. Delaney was trying to say, without coming right out and saying it, was that the woman was a prostitute. Similar statements made in October about the other two victims implied the same thing. What Sgt. Delaney was careful not to imply was that in spite of her "risky behavior," the woman was "asking for it." That particular judgment will be made by far too many others in the community.

Women's advocates know that no woman is safe from rape and murder. One out of every six women in the U.S. has been the victim or a rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, and the murder rate for women is 1.35 for every 100,00 women.

But yes-- violence against sex workers is way out of proportion to that of the general population.

The most recent victim's brutalization took place exactly ten days after the 6th Annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The event was initiated to commemorate the more than 90 victims of the Green River killer Gary Ridgway, who targeted prostitutes because "I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught."

"Violence should not be an occupational hazard!" The Sex Worker Outreach Project, along with many others, believes that laws that criminalize prostitution help to put women in harm's way. Perpetrators often count on sex workers not going to the police for protection (there are occasional exceptions: see my post on Officer Jacobson) and the stigma creates the idea that sex workers, especially street prostitutes, are a disposable class of people.

Sadly, as women as a whole experience less discrimination and greater possibilities, the women's movement, if it even still exists, shows little or no solidarity with women who use their bodies to make a living. Radical movements to prevent violence against women have turned into service providers with close ties to the state. I have heard no outcry from the YWCA, no word from any battered women's shelter or rape crisis center. My own organization, Arise for Social Justice, , used to frequent places where we would find sex workers and pass out flyers about safety and resources, but our own resources have been very thin of late. Thinking about this, I have to ask myself if we could have done something to make these womens' assaults less likely.

The real question, though, is what can we do now?

Photo from SWOP-Tuscon.