And now, Obama has once again tossed women to the curb.  You may remember that back in March, when he signed the new health-care legislation, Obama also conceded to the opposition by signing an Executive Order which forbade any federal money to be spent on abortion.  Reproductive freedom activists were furious at yet another loss in this increasingly conservative climate.  Obama painted a narrative that the agreement to take away choice from women who desperately needed assistance was a necessary evil to get the entire legislation passed.  Yet Obama only appeased anti-choice representatives such as Bart Stupak in order to allow other representatives to vote ‘no’ on the bill.  Reason?  These gents (and a few congresswomen) are facing reelection in the fall.  In other words: hurt millions of women to save a few seats in Congress.

In any case, quite a fuss was made when Obama made the deal with the devil.  Yet what about recently?  The Obama administration is at it again, this time banning abortion coverage in “high risk insurance pools.” The kicker is that he is absolutely not required to do so and such a measure is not in the original health care bill. The ban forbids women even from using their own money to pay for plans that cover abortion.  The only exclusion is for women who have been raped or in cases of incest.  RH Reality Check reports: “Women entering these plans are, by definition, those who have experienced serious medical conditions—so serious that insurers are unwilling to sell them insurance.”  The ACLU explains that “under the ban a woman with heart disease or diabetes might be compelled to carry a pregnancy to term despite its potentially damaging effect on her future health. “

Furthermore, Colorlines notes several other concerns.  High risk pools include individuals who have cancer, but they also include those suffering from diabetes or heart disease, “conditions that are prevalent in communities of color, where seeing a doctor or getting the right meds has long been a luxury.”  In another Colorlines article, Michelle Chen observes, “The plague of racial health disparities—including both poor health and a lack of insurance—has found a new breeding ground, ironically in a federal program designed to remedy those very inequalities.”  In short, Obama’s ban continues to make abortion a luxury and not a basic right.

We now know with certainty that Barack Obama is an anti-choice president.  Even when given the option to let women spend their own money on a policy that covers abortion, he has failed.  The power was fully in his hands: allow it or ban it.  He chose to ban it, and in doing so has given us all the opportunity to rev up and get organized.  Reproductive freedom is far from achieved in the U.S., and each year seems to bring more bad news.  It’s time to call out Obama and his anti-choice, anti-women policies and give voice to actual radical voices that the mainstream media silences.

They are currently still accepting answers to the questionnaire, which can be found here.  There are other ways to participate in the conversation, so visit their site for more information!

Of course the need for crisis and counseling services for survivors of sexual violence and intimate partner violence still exists. Project Envision’s work comes out of a lack of work towards primary prevention, that is a change is the social conditions that permit and promote sexual violence. To this end each coalition, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and the South Bronx, conducted a participatory action research study to determine what folks in their neighborhood thought would be the most effective route to prevention. For their results please click here.

Despite the need for prevention, as is made especially clear by recent findings that the New York City police department regularly downgrading charges of sexual violence, the New York City Council elected to cut prevention services in their budget for fiscal year 2010 -11. Although I agree that the burden for supporting such programming should not fall solely on a city council, this does send the message that programming aimed at larger social change is not as important as programs for those who have already experienced violence. Should we not all be invested in working towards a world in which violence is not as accepted in the first place.

If you would like to find out more about Project Envision, their history as well as present and future work please attend the Lower East Side coalition’s open house this Thursday from 5:30 – 7:30 at the 6th Street Community Center. Further, to support the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault in the wake of City Council budget cuts please go here.

THE BIG SHE-BANG V
SATURDAY, AUGUST 14TH, 2010
11AM-10PM

@ CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH
129 RUSSELL STREET, LOWER LEVEL
GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN 11222

Please join us as we anticipate a bunch of really great participants this year, as always.

If you have yet to get in touch about doing a workshop, speaking on a panel, playing music, performing spoken word, tabling, showing your artwork, volunteering, or participating in any way, PLEASE DO! Keep in mind, we can always use more volunteers.

CLICK HERE for the call out for participation! (Or see below).

The Big She-Bang is an annual event that takes place every August. It was originally the brain child of the Long Island Womyn’s Collective, an amazing group which included several current For the Birds members. This will be the third year that the Big She-Bang takes place in New York City and we hope you can join us!!

We are currently working out the logistics of the event, and will post more details as it comes together. If you want to explore, brainstorm, or dialogue about a way you would like to participate, please get in touch to collaborate with us!

Our theme for this year reflects and builds upon a lot of the experiences we have had organizing among ourselves and in collaboration with other people and groups in New York.  As a group of womyn-identified organizers, we quickly found that our socialization often left us ill-equipped to communicate authentically with each other. It was often difficult to talk through disagreements, to balance participation and tasks among members, and to form meaningful alliances with other feminist groups.

Since the Big She-Bang IV in August of 2009, we have been working to develop frameworks that help us to use conflict for growth, to challenge each other in a caring and patient way, and to explore our privileges, oppression, and the diversity of experiences that makes a group so powerful.

At the same time, we have been continually inspired and motivated in this process by the insightful and daring feminist communications all around us: whether through music, writing, speech, art or social justice projects that have tremendous impact on improving peoples’ quality of life and challenging the system.

We have learned that engaging with the task of communication is required by our quest for empowerment. Thus, this year’s Big She-Bang seeks to acknowledge, explore and celebrate this task within and across feminisms.

Back in April, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniela Capistrano, Jane-of-all-trades and founding member of the POC Zine Project for an online publication I edit called RE/VISIONIST. As if I hadn’t loved POC Zine Project and Daniela’s mission enough, I learned even more about her/their rich history of activism through the interview. Recently, at the screening of Afro-Punk we co-hosted with POC Zine Project, Daniela debuted her new zine, BAD MEXICAN!! #1.

Bad Mexican is about Daniela’s family, upbringing, and how her history affects her life now. She gracefully touches on issues like abuse, racism, and being a woman of color with white privilege – all while maintaining her sense of humor. She brings her own experience to the table and sprinkles each story with advice gleaned from her life. Her advice is both for us as individual people and as witnesses within a racist culture. Bad Mexican is in the lineage of perzines by women of color that are at once personal yet have larger implications for the ways we view history and the world around us.

I really love the way that Daniela incorporates family, history (personal and political), and her own life into one telling document; it is a reminder that these experiences are not separate, that in actuality, they are really fluid.

Bad Mexican is available for purchase directly from the author. Daniela is capping this release at 100 copies, so get yours while it’s hot at her Etsy store!

Notable participants included curators Camille Morineau (Musee national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris) Ivet Curlin (What, How & for Whom Collective, Croatia) Catherine Lord (author of the forthcoming Art and Queer Culture, 1885-2005), and Connie Butler (Chief Curator of Drawings at MoMA) along with artist Sonia Khurana, and author Michelle Wallace, among others.

While an effort was made to convey the slowly changing tide of feminist politics within mainstream art institutions, overall I felt there was a tangible lack of pushing the political boundaries therein and even some of MoMA’s curators admitted to suffering from self censorship. However, the mere existence of these panel discussions signals a hopeful note for the expansion of more radical examinations of gender, sexuality, patriarchy and feminist politics both at MoMA and other venues within the US and abroad.

One participant, Emily Roysdon, spoke specifically about the artistic freedom of working outside major art institutions in LTTR, a feminist genderqueer artist collective.  Founded in 2001 and recently disbanded, the group produced an annual art journal along with various events and collaborations that highlighted “radical communities whose goals are sustainable change, queer pleasure, and critical feminist productivity.”  Though they often collaborated with MoMA and other galleries on specific workshops and presentations, the collective sought to be a radical outlet for artists to speak uncensored about relevant feminist/queer topics.

Since the dissolution of LTTR as a formal group, Roysdon has continued working as an artist and curator.  She has written about and developed projects around the concept of Ecstatic Resistance, which seeks to re-imagine both what is possible and what political protest looks like.  It is partially inspired by a statement in Kathy Acker’s essay Seeking Gender, which I think is appropriate to the ways in which feminism and dismantling patriarchy play into Roysdon’s creative practice.

“I am looking for the body, my body, which exists outside its patriarchal definitions. Of course that is not possible. But who is any longer interested in the possible?”

You can read more about her work and Ecstatic Resistance here.

It was inspiring to see that while radical feminist politics are only slowly gaining a foothold in more mainstream creative venues, groups such as LTTR can successfully function outside of them.  During one panel discussion, the question was asked if artists and curators can reclaim institutions by being anti-institutional.  Judging by Roysdon’s continued work both in and out of LTTR, challenging these institutions is certainly a step in the right direction. Through their collective work, LTTR was able to produce projects, exhibitions and journals which looked critically at feminism and the dismantling of patriarchal, binary cultural structures.

Though For the Birds seeks to foster creative spaces for feminist voices in broader ways than solely visual art, I am encouraged by LTTR as an example of using artistic resources to discuss and examine feminist and queer politics. Stay tuned for more upcoming events and please get in touch if you have possible opportunities and collaborations!

Shop owners Bonnie Thunders and Danielle OMG WTF are both members of Gotham Girls Roller Derby and are using their experience/expertise to bring you the finest goods available for all your eight-wheeled speed smashing needs!

Their opening party was May 21st at their store location @ 30-90 14th Street in ASTORIA, QUEENS. With their hours of operation posted on their Facebook, Five Strive Skate Shop is open for business and offering Rookie Packs and special deal events such as “CATurday” which offered 5% off to anyone who came in wearing a cat shirt! The warmth in my heart is melting ice-burgs as i write this.

For more info you can check out their Facebook page, and Official Website, which seems to still be in the works at the moment.  For specifics, i will re-post what Danielle recently wrote on a derby forum:

So without further ado, i send you off from the blogosphere out into the reaches of Astoria to get your skates and shred the track with New York’s finest brutal bashers!  Just don’t forget your helmet…

1. The Doula Project is recruiting! The Doula Project is an NYC-based organization that provides free compassionate care and emotional, physical, and informational support to people across the spectrum of pregnancy. Applications are due June 1, 2010. Click here to apply!

2. The Last Internationale is looking for a bass player. From Edgey: I’m writing to ask you if you know any bassists who would like to join our band. We’re a radical, female-fronted garage rock/blues/punk/folk band… the garage rock/punk stuff in unreleased, in case you get confused when you listen to our songs.