Here is the latest communiqué from United for Peace and Justice. This will be interesting ….

From: UFPJ Action Alerts
To: Charles Johnson
Date: September 14, 2006 5:39 PM

Please forward as widely as possible!

On Tuesday, Sept. 19, President Bush will be speaking at the United Nations as part of an election-year public-relations push on his disastrous Iraq War.

The New York City Police Department has refused to grant a permit to United for Peace and Justice to march anywhere near the United Nations. ]Based on feedback from our member groups and supporters][1], we have come to a decision: We are marching anyway. Permit or no permit, we will stand up against this immoral war and for our right to dissent.

While the Bush Administration has pursued its belligerent policy of preemptive war abroad, attacking a country that posed no danger to us, our Constitutional rights have been steadily eroded here at home, with peaceful protesters treated as security threats. In New York City, the NYPD and other agencies have systematically declared one location after another off-limits to protest — no rallies in most of Central Park, no marches on Fifth Avenue, no pickets in Times Square, and so on endlessly.

We know there are serious security issues to consider when the president and other heads of state are in town. But those needs must be balanced against protecting the right to assemble, the right to protest, and the right to dissent. The NYPD said no to every alternative we put on the table and simply refused to give us a permit for a reasonable location for our march next Tuesday.

Enough is enough. We are marching — marching to demand that the troops come home now, and to assert our right to peaceful protest. Marching without a permit amounts to nonviolent civil disobedience, and those of us who participate in the march on Tuesday will place ourselves at risk of arrest.

We also know and respect the fact that many people cannot participate in an activity that does not have a permit. And so we are seeking a permit for a rally starting at 8:30 a.m. in Herald Square, one of the busiest locations in Manhattan. This will enable anyone who wishes to protest the war and the restriction of our civil liberties to join us without risking arrest.

There are important details to work out, but this we know for certain: we will not be silenced, we will call for an immediate end to the war in Iraq, and we will be on the streets of New York City on Tuesday, September 19th!

WE NEED YOUR HELP:

1. Please share this email message as widely as possible. Help make sure that everyone knows about the rally and march on Sept. 19th and the denial of our request for a march permit.

2. Especially if you are in the NYC area, make plans now to join us next Tuesday morning. If you would like to participate in the march, please take a moment to call our office at 212-868-5545 so we can give you information about nonviolence trainings. We would rather take this risk than allow our rights to be undermined.

3. Check the UFPJ website for updates on the details for Sept. 19th, including the exact time and location of the rally and the plans for the march. If you are looking for or would like to offer a ride to NYC, please visit our ride board.

4. And, of course, all of this work takes money. Whether or not you are able to participate in person on Tuesday, you can show your support by making a financial donation today! Make an online contribution, call our office at 212-868-5545 to make a credit card donation over the phone, or send a check or money order to UFPJ, P.O. Box 607, Times Square Station, NY NY 10108.

Please let as many people know about this as you can.

Cleveland antiwar activist Carol Fischer is being held incommunicado in the psychiatric of the Cuyahoga County jail in on the orders of Judge Timothy McGinty. Fischer, who at 53 years old stands 5’4″ and weighs 130 pounds, was convicted of a felonious assault she allegedly committed against two Cleveland Heights police officers last year. The cops claim that Fischer bit and tried to hit them when they arrested her for posting Bush Step Down posters in violation of the city sign ordinance; Fischer and her supporters claim that she was cooperating and the police attacked her without cause:

According to her statements, Fisher was hanging posters announcing the World Can't Wait Cleveland action during the State of the Union, when a passing officer told her it was a $100 fine if she didn't take it down.

Fisher turned and walked toward the poster, in compliance with the officer's warning. But instead of allowing her to take it down or just issuing a citation, Downey and Frinzl were on top of her grinding his knee into [Fisher's] back and [her] face into the sidewalk.

Fisher said she told the officers she could not breathe. That didn't matter. Two more officers showed up, and they dragged her to a bench, shackled her legs, and handcuffed her tight enough to cause serious bruising.

Fisher objected to her arrest, telling the officers that as citizens we have the responsibility to stop the crimes of the Bush regime.

According to her statements, this inflamed the officers. One told her, I am sick of this anti-Bush shit, and they threatened to kill her. You are definitely going to the psych ward, said another. And that's where she ended up, incommunicado, even to her Power of Attorney for health care. University Hospitals personnel were forbidden by the police to allow visitors or for Fisher to make a phone call.

— Eric Resnick, Cleveland Independent Media Center (2006-02-16): Not Guilty, Carol Fisher arraigned this morning

Fischer was found guilty on all charges after a controversial trial in which the judge repeatedly blocked defense testimony. Now, I don’t have any particular knowledge of Carol Fischer, or the cops, or the case, so I have no particular way of knowing whether she is innocent or guilty. What I do know is that this is obscene:

According to World Can’t Wait, Judge Timothy McGinty has forcibly incarcerated Carol Fisher in the psych unit of the Cuyahoga County Jail in downtown Cleveland, for an undetermined period of time. McGinty is forcing Fisher to undergo a state psychological exam as part of her pre-sentencing investigation. During yesterday’s hearing, McGinty stated that Fisher’s opposition to the Bush regime indicates to him that she is delusional.

At the hearing held yesterday, McGinty wore a t-shirt which read: Wanted for Illegally Crossing Borders: The Bush Regime If you are going to insist that crossing borders illegally is a crime which cannot be tolerated, how about George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice (and yes, Colin Powell) and the rest of that gang, with their highly illegal, and violent, crossing of the border — into Iraq, among other places?! McGinty stated that Fisher’s t-shirt evidenced her delusion. When Fisher began to explain her opposition to psychological testing, McGinty stated: I do not negotiate with felons. World Can’t Wait reports that in a telephone conversation with Fisher yesterday, she stated she had inexplicably been put on suicide watch and her eyeglasses had been taken from her. If she continues to refuse the psych exam, she will be forcibly sent to North Coast Mental Institute for a 20-day evaluation.

— Heart, Women’s Space / The Margins (2006-05-11): Free Carol Fisher! Judge Orders Peace Activist to Jail Psych Unit

Hey, McGinty, Comrade Brezhnev sends his fraternal greetings. Lest we forget:

Thanks to [Vladimir] Bukovsky’s efforts, we know, among other things, what happened at the 1967 Politburo meeting which took place just before his own arrest. Bukovsky in particular was struck by how many of those present felt that bringing criminal charges against him would cause a certain reaction inside the country and abroad. It would be a mistake, they concluded, simply to arrest Bukovsky–so they proposed to put him in a psychiatric hospital instead. The era of the psikhushka–the special mental hospital–had begun.

… In the aftermath of the Thaw, the authorities began once again to use psychiatric hospitals to incarcerate dissidents–a policy which had many advantages for the KGB. Above all, it helped discredit the dissidents, both in the West and in the USSR, and deflected attention away from them. If these were not serious political opponents of the regime, but merely crazy people, who could object to their hospitalization?

With great enthusiasm, the Soviet psychiatric establishment participated in the farce. To explain the phenomenon of dissidence, they came up with the definition of sluggish schizophrenia or creeping schizophrenia. This, scientists explained, was a form of schizophrenia which left no mark on the intellect or outward behavior, yet could encompass nearly any form of behavior deemed asocial or abnormal. Most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure, wrote two Soviet professors, both of the Serbsky Institute:

A characteristic feature of overvalued ideas in the patient’s conviction of his own rectitude, an obsession with asserting his trampled rights, and the significance of these feelings for the patient’s personality. They tend to explit judicial proceedings as a platform for making speeches and appeals.

And, by this definition, just about all of the dissidents qualified as crazy. … In one report sent up to the Central Committee, a local KGB commander also complained that he had on his hands a group of citizens with a very particular form of mental illness: they try to found new parties, organizations, and councils, preparing and distributing plans for new laws and programs.

… If diagnosed as mentally ill, patients were condemned to a term in a hospital, sometimes for a few months, sometimes for many years. … In both the ordinary and the special hospitals, the doctors aimed, again, at recantation. Patients who agreed to renounce their convictions, who admitted that mental illness had caused them to criticize the Soviet system, could be declared healthy and set free. Those who did not recant were considered still ill, and could be given treatment. As Soviet psychiatrists did not believe in psychoanalysis, this treatment consisted largely of drugs, electric shocks, and various forms of restraint. Drugs abandoned in the West in the 1930s were administered routinely forcing patients’ body temperatures above 40 degrees centigrade, causing pain and discomfort. Prison doctors also prescribed tranquilizers [antipsychotic neuroleptics, such as Thorazine and Haldol –R.G.] which caused a range of side effects, including physical rigidity, slowness, and involuntary tics and movements, not to mention apathy and indifference.

… Eventually, the issue galvanized scientists in the Soviet Union. When Zhores Medvedev was condemned to a psychiatric hospital, many of them wrote letters of protest to the Soviet Academy of Scientists. Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist who was, by the late 1960s, emerging as the moral leader of the dissident movement, made a public statement on Medvedev’s behalf at an international symposium at the Institute of Genetics. Solzhenitsyn, by now in the West, wrote an open letter to the Soviet authorities protesting Medvedev’s incarceration. After all, he wrote, it is time to think clearly: the incarceration of free-thinking healthy people is SPIRITUAL MURDER.

— Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History (2003), pp. 547–550.

Here’s what World Can’t Wait suggests you can do to support Carol Fischer:

• Donate to Carol’s legal defense. It costs a lot of money to get transcripts, file appeals, etc. Make checks payable to Carol Fisher Defense Fund and mail to NION/WCW PO Box 609034 Cleveland, OH 44109.

• Call Judge Timothy McGinty and express your outrage: 216-443-8758

• Join us at a Speak Out! for Carol Fisher — Saturday, May 13 at 7pm at the corner of Coventry and Euclid Heights Blvd in Cleveland Heights.

• Get your legal organization to be part of Carol’s defense: make statements, file friend of the court briefs, etc.

• Have your church group, school group, organization or club join this battle by sending statements of support, donating funds, etc.

• Request radio stations play any of the following songs, dedicate it to Carol Fisher and explain what is going on with her case:

  • Tom Petty's Won't Back Down
  • Pearl Jam's World Wide Suicide
  • Pink's Dear Mr President
  • Neil Young's Let's Impeach the President

• Write letters to the editor of:

  • The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Go to website: http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/lettertoeditor
  • The Cleveland Free Times. Email: editor@freetimes.com
  • The Sun Press. Email: sun@sunnews.com

• Send this article to your list serves and post to blogs.

Of course, WCW also wants you to join up with World Can’t Wait. I wouldn’t advise it, unless you like hanging out with well-intentioned peaceniks being steered by creepy Maoist cultists. But McGinty’s efforts to build his own psychoprison system must not stand. Free Carol Fischer! Free all psychiatric prisoners!

The Eighth Annual Southern Girls Convention will be held June 23-25, 2006, in Houston, Texas. Spread the word to anyone you think might be interested!

SGC is an unapologetically feminist, bottom-up, grassroots meeting. Each year for the past seven years, it’s brought out hundreds of rad folks to a different Southern community, with the help of a new set of local organizers, working together with organizers from years past (if you didn’t know, I’m one myself; together with my friends Claire Rumore and Ailecia Ruscin, I helped put on the third annual Southern Girls Convention, which drew about 600 radical activists to Auburn, Alabama). SGC is a space to meet and to talk and to learn from each other–learning skills for activism and everyday life, sharing our experiences organizing deep in the heart of the so-called Red States, and taking it home to raise hell and work together to make our homes freer, safer, more just, and more loving places to be. It’s a place for Southern feminists to find each other, get together, work out our plans and our priorities, and begin to build the communities we want to live in, right in our own hometowns.

SGC’02 organizer Natasha Murphy

The convention’s started in Memphis, Tennessee, and has been held in Louisville, Kentucky; Auburn, Alabama; Athens, Georgia; Asheville, North Carolina; in Memphis, again; and in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This year the seventh annual Southern Girls Convention will be held on June 23-25, 2006, in Houston, Texas. We’re working to remember, and to join, the radical tradition of the American South–the cradle of the Confederacy and the birthplace of the Klan, yes, but also–lest we forget–the home of the modern Civil Rights movement, the birthplace of SNCC, and the home of women like Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Casey Hayden, Ti-Grace Atkinson, and Rita Mae Brown (just to name a few). In that tradition, we’re working to build an infrastructure for women’s liberation in the South — because the South is our home, it needs to change, and by God we’ll be the ones to do it.

There will be a weekend of workshops and social events for sharing skills, learning from each other about issues and campaigns, and just meeting and talking (or networking, as they say) with each other. There will be music shows, free food, and a free arts and crafts fair to enjoy. There will also be childcare for children over the age of one, incidentally, and children will also be welcome in the convention space. Interested? Consider registering to attend. While you’re at it, if you have a skill you’d like to share or an issue or organization you’d like to talk with radical folks from across the South about, you should consider proposing a workshop! Part of the point of Southern Girls Convention is that we can all learn from each other; we don’t need professional activists coming in from the North to lecture us about how to organize ourselves. (N.B.: this doesn’t mean that professional activists from the North will be unwelcome at SGC; if you are one, we’d love for you to come. Just don’t expect it to be all about you!)

Here’s the announcement from this year’s organizers. Be sure to spread the word.

We are counting on you to spread the word for us! Please forward this message to any friends, family, colleagues, bulletin boards, listservs, or web pages that might be interested in the event!

---

Eighth Annual Southern Girls Convention

June 23-35, 2006
Houston, Texas

WWW: http://southerngirlsconvention.org/2006/

WHAT IS SOUTHERN GIRLS CONVENTION?

The Southern Girls Convention is an annual grassroots meeting for networking, organizing, educating, agitating, and activism, devoted to empowering women, girls, and transfolks in the South, and to furthering the struggle for social justice. Each year’s convention is hosted by a different Southern community and facilitated by local organizers. Past conventions have brought together hundreds of folks in Memphis, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Auburn, Alabama; Athens, Georgia; Asheville, North Carolina; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

This year, Southern Girls Convention invites activists from across the country to meet in HOUSTON, TEXAS on the weekend of June 23-25, 2006. Hundreds of activists will meet for discussion, action, and entertainment devoted to building a feminist community in the South.

WHAT CAN I DO THERE?

Southern Girls Convention is based around discussions, workshops, and presentations which give participants the opportunity to share skills, share ideas, discuss important issues, organize campaigns, and have fun as a ommunity. All workshops are organized and facilitated by the participants themselves–that means you! (Have a great idea for a workshop? Fill out our online form at http://southerngirlsconvention.org/2006/workshops.)

Other events will include an arts and craft fair, nightly music shows, and tables for participants and organizations to display information, zines, art, and things they have made.

SGC also allows hundreds of activists from across the country to meet, network, strategize, and organize in their efforts on behalf of social justice. Feel free to bring video projects, zines, writing, and anything you are interested in sharing to the convention.

Childcare will be available at the convention space. Housing will be provided for those who register in advance.

Past workshops at SGC have included:

• Group discussions on fatphobia, abortion rights and access, radical parenting, “100 Years of Revolutionary Wimmin,” the criminalization of women, “Queer and Trans Youth in the South,” gender bias in schools, sexism in the activist community, “Marginalization and Tokenization within the Grrrl Movement,” roles and strategies for boys in the struggle against male supremacy, and “Radical, Southern, and All Fired Up–Where Do We Go From Here?”

• Skill-sharing on radical cheerleading, community access television, gun safety and self-defense, workplace union organizing, screen printing, sexercises, Internet organizing, and how to start a consciousness-raising group.

• Organizing meetings for campaigns from Amnesty International, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and Planned Parenthood, and state-by-state caucuses for people to meet fellow organizers in their own area.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

• Website: http://southerngirlsconvention.org/2006/
• E-mail: SGC’06 Organizers organizers@southerngirlsconvention.org

PLEASE FORWARD THIS E-MAIL FAR AND WIDE! Send it to friends and e-mail lists, post it on your website, blog, or bulletin board… we are counting on YOU to help us spread the word. A fresh copy of the e-mail can be sent from our website at: http://southerngirlsconvention.org/2006/spread-the-word

Thank you, and we hope to see you there!

Southern Girls Convention 2006 Organizers
Houston, Texas

I’m doing my part with this note and a banner at the top of the page. If you’d like to support SGC, here’s some things you can do to help out:

• Forward an e-mail of the announcement to friends, and to any activist groups you’re a member of
• Put up a banner on your own website
• Put up a post about it on your own website, blog, or bulletin board
• Get in touch with me or with the Houston organizers to find out more about what you can do to help out
• Volunteer to put on a workshop!
• Just come on down to Houston!

Further reading:

• GT 2005-04-27: A feminist shindig in the Dirty South: Southern Girls Convention 2005 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• GT 2002-07-24: SGC’02 rocks the South from Athens, Georgia
• GT 2001-07-27: Southern Girls Convention builds pro-woman community in the Deep South
• Southern Girls Convention: History
• Southern Girls Convention Blog 2005-06-22: SGC 2005 Recap
• Kate Zernike, New York Times 2002-07-22: Where a Southern Girl is also a Feminist
• Ashley Sayeau, The Nation 2004-11-18: Southern Ms.

From GT 2006-03-08: Abortion on demand and without apology (Dakota Remix):

What you need to realize is that we are facing off with people (and, let’s be clear, most of them are men) who have absolutely no compunction with commandeering real women’s lives, livelihoods, and bodies in the name of their theologico-political power trips, because their victims are women and women are (in the minds of the bellowing blowhard brigade) made for the Culture of Life’s use, even if that means involuntary servitude enforced at the point of a pro-life bayonet. Meanwhile the sanctimonious politicos (and, let’s be clear, most of them are men, too) supposedly on our side bite their lips and palaver about [the tragedy of necessary gynaecological surgery][Pollitt] and generally act as though their brothers’ claims of dominion over other women’s bodies deserved something less than contempt and resistance. We are the new abolitionists, and it is long past time for the Clintonian hand-wringers and the take-one-for-the-party doughfaces who claim to be part of this movement to shut the hell up and get to the back. If they refuse to, I suggest that it’s our duty to jeer them into silence until they do. Can we get some moral outrage here? Some feminism? Some creative extremism?

A couple days later, Dain commented:

So just what is the decentralist and libertarian response to this move by South Dakota?

Well, here you go. First:

In the 1960s and early 1970s, when abortions were illegal in many places and expensive to get, an organization called Jane stepped up to the plate in the Chicago area. Jane initially hired an abortion doctor, but later they did the abortions themselves. They lost only one patient in 13,000 — a lower death rate than that of giving live birth. The biggest obstacle they had, though, was the fact that until years into the operation, they thought of abortion as something only a doctor could do, something only the most trained specialist could perform without endangering the life of the woman.

They were deceived — much like you have probably been deceived. An abortion, especially for an early pregnancy, is a relatively easy procedure to perform. And while I know, women of South Dakota, that you never asked for this, now is the time to learn how it is done. There is no reason you should be beholden to doctors — especially in a state where doctors have been refusing to perform them, forcing the state’s only abortion clinic to fly doctors in from elsewhere.

No textbooks or guides existed at that time to help them, and the equipment was hard to find. This is no longer true. For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman’s anatomy you will not put anyone’s health or life in danger, even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.

Today, I will discuss dilation and curettage — what used to be the most common abortion procedure before vacuum aspiration took its place. Vacuum aspiration is an easier method, but sometimes remaining fetal/placental material necessitates doing a cleanup D&C anyway, so you should know how to do this procedure first. …

— Molly Saves the Day (2006-02-23): For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual

And reader, she does. Read the whole thing. Save a copy on your own computer. I hope you never need it, but do it anyway.

Secondly, here’s another good suggestion, and some even better news:

This might be the time non-Indian South Dakotans might want to carefully and respectfully approach their neighbors on sovereign Indian reservations and discuss funding good quality private health clinics which also include access, for tribal members as well as reservations visitors, to reproductive services. … However, since Indian reservations are not subject to state regulations and since abortion, according to the federal government, is still legal nationally, South Dakota could not regulate such private, Indian-owned clinics on tribal land.

— MB, commenting at Pandagon (2006-02-23)

And:

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

To me, it is now a question of sovereignty, she said to me last week. I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction.

Strong words from a very strong lady. I hope Ms. Fire Thunder challenges Gov. Rounds and the state legislators on this law that is an affront to all independent women.

— Tim Giago at Indianz.com (2006-03-21): Oglala Sioux president on state abortion law

The story is thanks to Hopelessly Midwestern (2006-03-22), who also relays this:

If you want to mail donations to the reservation, you may do so at:

Oglala Sioux Tribe
ATTN: President Fire Thunder
P. O. Box 2070
Pine Ridge, SD 57770

OR: and this may be preferred, due to mail volume:

ATTN: PRESIDENT FIRE THUNDER
PO BOX 990
Martin, SD 57751

Enclose a letter voicing your support and explaining the purpose of the donation. Bear in mind, the Pine Ridge Res is not exactly dripping with disposeable income, so do consider donating funds directly to the tribe as well as specifically for this effort.

ETA: Make checks out to OST Planned Parenthood Cecelia Fire Thunder. This will ensure that the funds get routed properly.

For email contact, you can contact the president at:

firethunder_president@yahoo.com
cc: vbush@oglala.org

For the sake of record keeping, do cc: the listed address on all correspondence; that’s her official secretary.

— Hopelessly Midwestern (2006-03-22): Quick post: Show love!

Do it. Seriously. Now.

I can’t think of a better direction for the pro-choice movement than this: defiance, direct action, and polycentric law. These are grim times that we face, but this is the way that hope lies.

CounterPunch (2006-03-17): Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia:

Since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo joined the US global War on Terrorism, the Philippines has become the site of an on-going undeclared war against peasant and union activists, progressive political dissidents and lawmakers, human rights lawyers and activists, women leaders and a wide range of print and broadcast journalists. Because of the links between the Army, the regime and the death squads, political assassinations take place in an atmosphere of absolute impunity. The vast majority of the attacks occur in the countryside and provincial towns. The reign of terror in the Philippines is of similar scope and depth as in Colombia. Unlike Colombia, the rampaging state terrorism has not drawn sufficient attention, let alone outcry, from international public opinion.

Between 2001 and 2006 hundreds of killings, disappearances, death threats and cases of torture have been documented by the independent human rights center, KARAPATAN , and the church-linked Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research. Since Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 there have been 400 documented extrajudicial killings. In 2004, 63 were killed and in 2005, 179 were assassinated and another 46 disappeared and presumed dead. So far in the first two months of 2006 there have been 26 documented political assassinations. …

… On February 23, 2006, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship, Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency, banning all rallies, demonstrations and closing opposition media. She issued orders for the arrest of 59 individuals including members of the Congress, military officers and social critics, on charges of rebellion against her regime. Rallies were planned to commemorate the end of the Marcos dictatorship and to protest the electoral fraud, corruption, economic mismanagement and human rights violations of the Macapagal Arroyo regime. Some rallies defied the President’s decree, went ahead and were violently repressed.

Those charged with rebellion included six Congress people from leftwing political parties, a human rights attorney, retired and active military officers and social activists. Most of the charges have no substance and are totally arbitrary. For example, Anakpawis (Toiling Masses) Congressman Crispin Beltran, age 73, veteran labor leader and anti-Marcos activist, was arrested shortly after the Emergency Rule declaration, at first on the basis of a 25-year-old charge made during the Marcos dictatorship. When these charges were shown to have been dropped decades earlier, he was charged with rebellion.

This is the latest of a series of attacks on the part of the Macapagal Arroyo regime aimed specifically at destroying class-based political parties and trade union activity, including Bayan Muna and its coalition partners. The campaign of assassination and disappearances of 80 members of this party alliance between 2001-2005, including mayors and provincial elected representatives has finally reached the top elected representatives in the Philippine Congress. In 2006, repression turned from the countryside to the capital, from peasant leaders to Manila-based Congress people, media, working class and left party leaders. Of the 26 political assassinations in the first 10 weeks of 2006, 3 have been Bayan Muna officials. …

… In the face of the disintegration of the economy and society, and the regime’s use of force to sustain its hold on power, plus its gross incompetence in the face of several ecological disasters, popular resistance has spread from the countryside to the cities. The popular mass organizations, involving peasant and indigenous minority farmers, industrial workers, teachers, journalists, civil servants, students, women, artists, human rights workers, lawyers and clergy have grown despite the campaign of state terror. On the 20th Anniversary of the 1986 overthrow of Marcos, tens of thousands defied the State of Emergency and marched in Manila and in cities throughout the country. Over 10,000 women defied police bans to march on International Women’s Day.

— James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya, CounterPunch (2006-03-17): Philippines: the Killing Fields of Asia

Women’s Media Center (2006-03-16): Media Silence on Major Asia Story: Philippine Congresswoman Charged with Rebellion; Women’s Movement Declared Illegal:

Why the media blackout on a major story from the Philippines? Filipino papers are not permitted to cover it but whatever happened to free press in the west?

On the 20th anniversary of the 1986 People Power uprising that toppled the Marcos dictatorship, the current president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, issued Presidential Proclamation 1017, declaring a state of national emergency. The phraseology of PP1017 and Marcos’ martial law proclamation was close enough to cause the late dictator’s daughter, Imee Marcos, now a congresswoman, to exclaim that Macapagal-Arroyo was (badly) mimicking her father. PP1017 was followed by General Order #5 which enabled the military and police to conduct raids and arrests sans warrants; disperse and ban demonstrations, rallies, and mass assemblies; occupy and close down media offices; and threaten everyone with charges of rebellion and/or sedition. Arrests were made, one newspaper, the Daily Tribune was closed down, a television station, ABS-CBN, was threatened with sedition charges, Congressman Crispin Beltran of the Anakpawis Party was imprisoned and five others marked for arrest.

Among them was Representative Liza Largoza Maza of the Gabriela Women’s Party, Asia’s only all-women political party and one of only a half-dozen of its kind in the world. Rep. Maza was the main author and sponsor of the Philippines’ Anti-Trafficking Law and the Violence Against Women Act. Last year, she filed a divorce bill. A thorny issue for a predominantly Catholic country, divorce was becoming a necessity as hundreds of thousands of women departed to work overseas. Rep. Maza, with her four colleagues on the to be arrested without warrants list, obtained sanctuary at the congress building, asserting their constitutional immunity from arrest while congress was in session. As the five hunkered down on sleeping bags, the military and police ringed the building in a strange standoff that continues to date.

The Gabriela Women’s Party is known for its unflinching advocacy of women’s rights and freedoms. Launched in 2003 amidst predictions of failure, it garnered enough votes to merit one congressional representative. It is backed by the women’s mass organization GABRIELA Philippines–born in 1984, after 10,000 women marched in Manila, defying a Marcos decree against demonstrations. GABRIELA Philippines unites some 200 women’s desks, institutions, and organizations; its membership reflects Philippine demographics: peasant women constituting the largest number, worker women next and then youth and students, professionals, and religious women. Ms. Maza was formerly GABRIELA’s secretary-general and is currently its vice-chair.

The state of national emergency, claimed the government, was occasioned by a coup attempt of a hodgepodge alliance of military factions, right-wing groups, and left-wing opposition. All the accused denied the accusation. The military men said they only wanted to declare non-support for Macapagal-Arroyo; the civilian groups said they only wanted to commemorate People Power 1986; the left-wing opposition said it didn’t believe in coups. The state of national emergency quickly spun down to farce. It was lifted seven days later, with not one military man charged with rebellion. Instead, the list of “leftists” accused of either rebellion and/or sedition grew longer and longer, as military and police even in far-flung provinces drew up lists.

Several more women ended up in the rebellion list, including Carol Araullo, chair of BAYAN (The People); Eliza Lubi, founding vice-chair of the Gabriela Women’s Party; Julieta Sison who lives in Holland, and several a.k.a.s and Jane Does. Emmi de Jesus, secretary-general of GABRIELA, made it onto another list while both GABRIELA and Gabriela Women’s Party were included in a list of organizations to be rendered illegal. While the fight for women’s rights and freedoms has always been fierce, a NEW LOW POINT has certainly been reached under this government. In the last five years, 15 women organizers, connected with GABRIELA, its allied organizations, or Gabriela Women’s Party, have been assassinated. All told, some 500 activists, organizers, media people, church leaders, and opposition politicians have been killed.

At stake are two issues.

First, the Philippine Constitution. Critics say Macapagal Arroyo wants to remove (a) provisions that enable the marginalized, like women, workers, and peasants, to have congressional representation; and (b) provisions that ban foreign troops from the country. The Philippines hosted the largest overseas US military bases until 1992 and was a major rest-and-recreation center for the US military. Plans to bring these back hit a snag when four US marines allegedly raped a Filipina in November 2005. GABRIELA was the loudest to call for ending further hosting of US troops because of, among other things, the impact of military r&r on fostering prostitution.

Second, control of the country’s main export : women. Last year, some 700,000 women were exported to 168 countries, following the government’s stated intent to export a million workers each year. In 1992, women comprised only half of exported workers; in 2005, they were 75 percent. One-third work as domestics while 30 percent are entertainers and dancers, hidden under the category professional and technical workers. Assuming women contribute only 65 percent of total remittances from overseas workers, they sent home half a billion dollars in January 2006 alone. Where a national economy depends on disguised sex-trafficking and labor -trafficking, the fight for women’s rights and freedoms can become threatening to the status quo indeed.

If Sen. Barbara Boxer or Rep. Maxine Waters had to seek sanctuary in Congress to avoid being jailed for sedition, while the New York Times was closed down and if the National Organization for Women was outlawed, would it be considered newsworthy? Yet the Philippine government is modeled after the US and considered a strong ally. So the question remains: why the media silence?

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Ninotchka Rosca is a Philippine-born novelist and writer. She was the recipient of the 1993 American Book Award.

— Ninotchka Rosca, Women’s Media Center (2006-03-16): Media Silence on Major Asia Story: Philippine Congresswoman Charged with Rebellion; Women’s Movement Declared Illegal

Solidarity

GABRIELA Philippines has a Philippine-U.S. solidarity organization, the Gabriela Network. They are organizing demonstrations against the reign of terror in the Philippines. I can’t find a working donations page on their website, but you can send checks to:

GABRIELA Network
PO Box 403, Times Square Station
New York, NY 10036

The human rights organization KARAPATAN can be contacted by e-mail at krptn@philonline.com, and by post at:

KARAPATAN–National
23-D Mabuhay St., Bgy. Central, Diliman,
Quezon City
1101 PHILIPPINES