Misogyny in the news, at last

Editor’s Note: There are few if any links in this post about the recent mass murderer because we have to stop sensationalizing perpetrators instead of sympathizing with the victims.

[Unfortunately]. . . we don’t see misogyny as an ideology, we see it as a given for young men.

— Jessica Valenti, Author, Guardian columnist, and founder of Feministing.com (@JessicaValenti)

God bless the most recent mass shooting victims. Their senseless sacrifice may mark the beginning of a serious discussion about the evils of misogyny, and Valenti is among the few journalists to hit the nail on the head about the root cause of this tragedy, and all the proceeding tragedies, not just mass murders but the 8 youths murdered every day in this country and the thousands of honor killings in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and, of course, rape.

Flickr/CreativeCommons

The roots of racial, sexual, and gender oppression are both overly established and overly ignored, and delaying The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Misogyny is so endemic in our culture, such a root cause of so many ills (wars, starvation, inequality), women don’t even realize they are unknowingly (and often knowingly) themselves instrumental in strengthening these suffocating roots. Mothers teach their toddlers what their mothers taught them about deference to males. Even ardent feminists might not curtail this deferential behavior in every instance of child-rearing. That is our sad state of affairs, and activists working on all fronts have to keep this subject on the front burner now that it has a running start no matter what their special focus is because each one can trace its roots to misogyny and sexual and racial oppression at the core.

While ignoring the enlarged picture of how much sexual oppression permeates and is ruining society, most media coverage of this recent mass shooting has shown so little restraint in glamorizing the young and good-looking man that is responsible, much more than for his young and not-so-camera-ready predecessors who didn’t leave behind long manifestos and polished YouTube selfless.

Media is just another corporation commercializing the misery of the powerless after all, but still. Even liberal media are fawning over this kid and making his victims practically invisible in their coverage, because, shucks, he’s so attractive-looking.

But there’s something different this time. In the California shooting we are presented with a shooter directly from central casting, a beautiful, erudite boy at war with himself, whose actions are not summarily damned but analyzed in a way to explain his heinous behavior. This is so much more interesting than profiling any of his victims. What’s the matter with us?

Organizations such as Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are there educate us and deserve our support, by why do we continue having so much trouble galvanizing grassroots action, boots on the ground, to challenge the notion that 8 children can be murdered everyday in this country because its just the cost of being an open (and armed) society. This daily tragedy and shame is only highlighted when there is a mass shooting because there is an expected and familiar script, a storm of consumer interest then radio silence again.

In a world we we care for each other and understand the implications of our action, male privilege is no longer a given, it doesn’t exist at all. Like any other privilege it is something only to be selflessly bestowed on those with less privilege. Those that don’t yet understand this essential truth are impoverished in a way that no conquest or accomplishment can ever rectify, so we must god bless them too, and pray that they someday soon obtain the values to understand their own behavior and change it, for their sake and for the rest of us.

Also see:

VIDEO: Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes (@ChrisHayes) discuss misogyny embedded in our culture

A Gentleman’s Guide to Rape Culture

“If I Can’t Have Them, No One Will”: How Misogyny Kills Men

Science is teaching us all about Lipophilia

Always Hungry? Here’s why

[T]he increasing amount and processing of carbohydrates in the American diet has increased insulin levels, put fat cells into storage overdrive and elicited obesity-promoting biological responses in a large number of people .

. . . obesity rates . . . for adults, are almost three times what they were in the 1960s.

Addressing the underlying biological drive to overeat may make for a far more practical and effective solution to obesity than counting calories.

The latest frontier in nutritional research is revolutionary and important to every person, especially activists who wants to be more effective in changing the world. This ground-breaking information embraces our mission at VenusPlusX to help put an end to coercive systems that delay or otherwise interfere with the New Age of Sexual Freedom, such as the food industry that’s driven solely by greedy corporate interests supported by governments and your tax dollars.

Way back in 1908, a German internist named Gustav von Bergmann coined the term, Lipophilia, meaning love of fat, the first signal that metabolic disorder (rather than calorie imbalance or lack of willpower) causes overeating.

At last, new research picks up on this long-ignored theory and has been able to show a direct connection between sugar and modern processed foods and now epidemic rates of obesity (or even just weighing a little more than you would like too). These modern-day medical research heroes are showing us how stored fat inhibits our ability to absorb healthy calories and causes the overproduction of insulin, a vicious cycle that results in a compensating and progressively increased appetite, and, sadly more stored fat.

As it turns out, many biological factors affect the storage of calories in fat cells, including genetics, levels of physical activity, sleep and stress. But one has an indisputably dominant role: the hormone insulin. . . And of everything we eat, highly refined and rapidly digestible carbohydrates produce the most insulin. . . chips, crackers, cakes, soft drinks, sugary breakfast cereals and even white rice and bread.

Setting aside for a moment our urges for sugar and processed foods (including “diet” and “low fat” items), the only true enemy to this enlightenment is the food industry itself which literally banks on making all calories equal thereby justifying its mass production of super-profitable processed foods from corn, rice, and wheat, all of it from farms subsidized by tax dollars. Always calling for calorie balance and more and more personal willpower is the food industry’s first line of defense of their tax subsidized goldmine, all at the expense of our future health and the trillion-dollar obesity problems (diabetes, heart disease, etc.) that every tax payer is and will for some time be financially responsible for.

So you pay, first giving farm subsidies to produce the raw materials (corn, wheat, rice), then with our health after eating sugar and processed food from pesticide-ridden agribusiness (obesity, diabetes, and more) , then paying trillions in healthcare for millions of people with otherwise avoidable conditions. A lose-lose-lose situation we have solve very soon.

There will be numerous by-products of this research in the years to come, aside from making us all more healthy and effective. For example, we may finally see the end of “fat shaming,” that claims it is ignorance or lack of adequate will power causing people to be overweight. And, it will force a still closer look at corporate agriculture’s role in destroying our health through the mass use of pesticides, products like Monsanto’s RoundUp, now shown to have a direct connection to increased Autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and other ailments.

As more and more is understood how much we have been enslaved and manipulated by corporate interests, we uncover knowledge and get busy taking better care of each other.

Tip: Fed Up, a movie now playing in theaters from An Inconvenient Truth
producer,Laurie David, is all about revealing biologic truth
to the masses about what we are eating. Check it out.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 25 May 2014 0 comments

Eric Holder explains it all, now it’s your turn

Holder confronts racial issues in address as White House puts discrimination at the fore

Attorney General Eric Holder has withstood savage attacks from his detractors but he has hung on and has emerged as our explainer-in-chief when it comes to racism in this country, really racism everywhere. His recent commencement address at Morgan State University was his most bold and erudite attempt to educate the world, particularly America, on the insidious and subtle nature of racism.

Holder rightly points out that the recent high-profile episodes of racism often mask systematic prejudice and discrimination.

“These [recent] outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done,” Holder said.

“The greatest threats,” he continued, “are more subtle. They cut deeper. And their terrible impact endures long after the headlines have faded and obvious, ignorant expressions of hatred have been marginalized.”

In 2009, during Black History Month, Holder began this dialog by calling us “a nation of cowards” without the stomach for an actual conversation about racism. Gradually, with loving care, he (and President Obama) have led us through an increasingly more overt and candid discussion about race, the substance of which will live on as guide to all of us who have the courage to listen, take to heart, and put into action, much like the lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr.

So the next time that the likes of Bundy or Sterling take over the news cycle, it is up to all of us to draw the distinction Holder illustrates to begin a conversation with someone, anyone, about the deep roots of racism that still have stranglehold over our society, and what we can do together to overcome.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 19 May 2014 1 comments

Winning (so far). Net Neutrality Protest Tomorrow

Grassroots efforts to save Net neutrality may be working

. . . more needs to be done to ensure the Internet is protected.

WikiCommons

There’s no time to waste in feeling gratified even though advocacy organizations such as Free Press, CREDO, and MoveOn.org, along with tech companies such as Google and Facebook, and rank-and-file grassroots activists are so far holding back attempts to commercialize the Internet in ways that would impede the otherwise free flow of media and data.

Corporate special interests will not relent and neither must we. They want to secure fast lanes, the cost of which will be absorbed by everyday consumers, and simultaneously destroy the inherent democracy and equality of access that makes the Internet such a powerful tool of economic growth and social change.

We urge you to participate in a public protest at the Washington, DC, headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission (445 12th Street, SW), tomorrow, Thursday, May 15, at 9 AM. And, to keep the pressure on.

“We absolutely think this is a fight we can win . . . This time people are wiling to fight in a way they weren’t willing to in 2010. People realize what is at stake now. And they don’t want the Internet turning into Comcast.” (Becky Bond, CREDO)

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 14 May 2014 0 comments

Re-envisioning the future: A personal call to action

VenusPlusX re-envisions the future as A New Age of Sexual Freedom because that is a state of being the heralds the end of racism (at its root sexual oppression) and the end of nationalism for the purposes of war (at its root racism)and other forms of inhumane exploitation. In connection with our recent relaunch, a manifesto for this new age was offered up for comment and critique. It included a working formula to bring about peace, and some of the obstacles in our way. Using this tried and true, non-violent formula (systematically replacing coercive systems with humane voluntary associations), we can bring about universal solidarity (world peace) and justice.

We purposely frame the conversation about peace and justice in terms of Sexual Freedom because, in part, it corresponds to the end of racism, sexism, nationalism, etc., and also because it makes us more visible as emissaries along the way towards this better future. We work in the present not for this future but as this future, now in this moment, the here and now of making things better for the largest number of people, starting now. When we take action, any action, based on application of this formula, it serves as a guide to enhancing productivity and a confidence in our purpose because in this way we are able to stay fully conscious and balanced in choosing the next steps that would be appropriate.

Of course, I apply this formula for peace to the equality rights movement, both nationally and globally, and it turns out to be a personal call to action.

If we are truly relentless in trying to free our movement of its own coercive systems, we have to take a frank look at how we are ourselves obstacles to our goals, and show a ready willingness to escape the status quo. If we look at our movement in terms of what’s good now that can be preserved, what should be left behind as a coercive system within our movement, and what new voluntary associations can we make to more fully realize our joint goals in the shortest amount of time, two problems to work on right now quickly emerge.

First, while it’s a given that we support organizations whose mission we agree with, we must ask ourselves why we have what is almost comically referred to as “Gay, Inc.”? Nurturing and training the leaders of the future is by itself a noble enterprise, and we certainly need some cadre of people to insure compliance with better lawmaking, but should not these 700 organizations in the United States alone, all with more or less overlapping agendas, have as its number one goal be instead planned obsolescence?

Haven’t we already deduced that coalitions are more effective and worthy of greater donor support than more and more separate and often competing organizations? Why do we hold so dearly to this model when so much more progress is possible by merging most of these organizations into just a few that reflect higher goals shared by more people?

Let’s stop ignoring the fact that those who would enslave us to their unjust ideologies just love that we have so many organizations, are so disjointed, we even brand ourselves with letters, L, G, B, T, Q, I, etc., to display our disjointedness.

An apt analogy is that national borders and barriers would instantly become extinct if suddenly earth had visitors from another planet. Friendly or unfriendly aliens, we would immediately put down our nationalistic impulses in favor a world united in responding to such an “invasion.” Likewise, the equality rights movement has to strategize and develop our agendas in a transparent way that encourages rather than discourages the coalescing of organizations for a mutual purpose, folding these hundreds of organizations into just a few with a clearly stated and complementary agenda. It seems needless to say this would be a power block in today’s politics.

Second, by tapping into this peace formula to root out our movement’s own coercive systems, we have to ask why our goal to end discrimination is tarnished because of the disunity our alphabet soup floats on? We go to conferences led by respected national organizations and find sexism, racism, and homophobia and especially transphobia as obiquitous as the cocktails. When are we going to get our act together? Why don’t we get rid of the bullies in our midst that are the progenitors of homophobia and transphobia once and for all?

In order to end the need for a Gay, Inc., to protect us, to instead arrive together at a time and place where everyone is free from discrimination, racism, and social injustice, we have to today become the thing we want by starting to reflect that as fact with the brightest light we can muster. If we are incessantly competing for the attention of donors and the media, if we can’t end homophobia and transphobia among our own ranks, if we cant demonstrate to the rest of the world how to do that, it defeats our integrity as a movement, and, sadly, it means that lots of donations have been sought and spent for spinning wheels.

But there is even a more important reason to consolidate and to institute zero tolerance of homophobia and transphopia in our own ranks (and to continue to examine our movement in terms replacing our own coercive systems in our movement with more humane and focused voluntary associations). When we reflect in real time and in unison our jointly-held, hoped-for future, where discrimination is no longer legal, and education and advocacy are complete, we arrive at a clarity of purpose wherein lies the only rational basis for deciding what to do next. Then, there will be no stopping us.

Simply, if you can see the future, you can know what to do next, and not be an obstacle yourself on the road to The New Age of Sexual Freedom.

in Campaigns / Grassroots / Key Issues / Op-Ed / Public Information by Alison Gardner 06 May 2014 0 comments

Donate: The New Center Against Religious Extremism

I was so heartened to see yesterday’s press release issued by Wayne Besen’s Truth Wins Out (TWO) regarding the funding of TWO’s new Center Against Religious Extremism (CARE, or TWOCARE).

“If you’re like me, you are tired of American extremists literally getting away with murder from Uganda to Russia,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “The Center Against Religious Extremism is designed to monitor, counter, and ultimately serve as a bulwark against an ignoble enterprise designed to drag the world back into the Dark Ages.”

It would be a wonderful service to humankind if TWOCARE can disarm and dissolve organizations that are actively spreading hate, especially of women, and queer people. Most notable and deserving of such scrutiny, in my opinion, is The Family/Fellowship, a secretive organization of politicians, military officers, attorneys general, and business people operating within the borders of most countries.

Bless those who are helping fund this important research that will unveil to the world some of the most, if not the most, vile international conspiracies ever known, just as bad as any terrorist organization which happens to have unending billions of dollars at their disposal. Learn more about this work, and if you can, make a donation however small.

There is no hyperbole that could shock you more than the reality of these nefarious organizations, especially because if you went to the best Hollywood scriptwriters, you couldn’t come up with a more devious plan to strangle the course of history. These groups are not trying to take us back to some archaic way of doing things that rejects modernity, but attempting to create a dystopian future devoid of personal choice and human happiness, based on the extreme rightwing agenda of a relative handful of old white men.

The Family has existed pretty much under the radar until the last 5 or 6 years, when it was skillfully unmasked by Jeff Sharlet’s two books, The Family (2008) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy (2010). These two books comprise a case study in religious extremism, and what made global human rights and equality advocates start to take notice of The Family and related organizations. These two volumes are must-reads for anyone interested in this issue, although the more attention The Family received, the more scrubbed their website and public face became until every detail was secreted away.

Besides Sharlet’s ground-breaking expose, organizations such as the Center for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), have from time to time tried to expose The Family, famously by bringing ethics charges against certain members of US Congress, who, along with a few US governors, accepted unreported gifts from The Family/Fellowship by virtue of their low-cost residency in a well-known Capitol mansion known as the C Street House. This mansion is one of numerous properties owned and operated for the benefit of The Family’s worldwide network of 10,000 cells operating more or less independently, but this one happens to also be infamous because a good portion of its recent residents have been caught and disgraced by sex scandals (Mark Sanders, John Ensign, etc.).

More than 50 years ago, The Family concluded that the model for spreading a worldwide christianized theocracy (a theocracy based on their all too human and profane imagination) was not progressing well or fast enough through traditional missionaries. Instead they embarked on a program to develop in-country missions by recruiting natives, business leaders and politicians such as Uganda’s President Museveni (and his wife), and especially youth to be educated at The Family’s expense and trained as its future organizational leaders to bring about the organization’s megalomaniacal vision of world domination. Membership is open to christianists and non-christians alike, Muslims especially are shown a way to align with The Family, in a conspiracy to shackle the world’s natural resources under the guise of “doing it for Jesus” but it’s actually all about money.

Make no mistake, except for paying lip service to Jesus, there is nothing whatsoever religious about this crusade because anyone can join, even if one’s sole purpose is gaining access to the important business contacts and political leaders and the global natural resources they control. You can be a cynical, non-christian businessman and also a member of The Family for the sterling contacts alone, as long as you support The Family’s agenda to rule the world based on their personal and distorted resurrection of christendom, often termed dominionism.

Wayne and I, along with Jeff Sharlet, have talked now for a number of years about getting big media to finally pay attention to The Family’s secretive world wide movement and its singular goal to supplant established and nascent democracies with theocratic rule based on (their own version of) “God’s Law.” This new center, CARE, will no doubt help expose The Family and other organizations like it for what they actually are.

Right around the time Jeff Sharlet’s first book was published, we executed several very visible protests. The first protest was about the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a function fully funded through The Family although presented to the world and foreign dignitaries as an official US government event, much to the chagrin of our own State Department. Although The Family has operated its international machinations under a shroud of secrecy, it has nonetheless made this Breakfast practically a national institution, on a scale that every sitting US President and a fair share of the US Congress attend every February — so why wouldn’t foreign visitors think this is an officially sanctioned function. But it’s not. It’s a time and place each year when The Family comes together to celebrate, not prayer, but its broadening reach around the world.

Next, local DC activists staged a non-violent civil disobedience action on the C Street House’s doorstop, protesting The Family’s wholesale exporting of hatred of LGBT people in places such as Uganda. This relatively small protest received national attention, and shortly thereafter, The Family’s website was scrubbed clean of any evidence of its deep tentacles wrapped around the US government and nations abroad. To this date, it is only Sharlet’s two books that see into this organization.

I started researching and occasionally writing about this subject at the time, and in the process uncovered a congressional caucus called the Values Action Caucus. Here, members of both houses of congress convene at tax payers expense to set legislative goals. This Caucus’ goals were to forward anti-abortion, personhood legislation and to work towards putting the Ten Commandments in every Federal building in America. By comparing membership in this organization and those reported by Jeff Sharlet to be members of The Family, I found a lot of overlap. This Caucus was, in effect, a government body being led by The Family right under our noses, and we were paying for it.

It’s time for me to pick up my research and write more about this on VenusPlusX, so stay tuned. We now have this new Center for Against Religious Extremism to help focus our efforts in rooting out this theocratic conspiracy and ending its influence on world affairs once and for all. Please do your own research and help support this worth new endeavor.

in Campaigns / Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Key Issues / News of Note / Op-Ed / Public Information / Uncategorized by Alison Gardner 03 May 2014 0 comments

Introducing our upcoming book, The Unseen Journey (working title)

Photo courtesy of Larry D. Moore
Wikimedia Commons

This is a newly carved out space to periodically share excerpts
from our new book prior to its publication later this year.
We welcome (we crave) your comments, suggestions, and critiques.

Shortly before Dan Massey hung up his keyboard and departed for cosmic shores, he and I had more or less finished the manuscript of what we had only referred to during the previous 30 months as the book. But it is also something that has been in the making through our entire 40-year relationship.

Technologists and teachers by trade, we two strode through decades, hand and hand as close as two souls could be, looking at the cosmos and all its possibilities. We ruthlessly stripped away millennia of mysticism and superstition, and as much as possible applied the scientific method, measurement, and experimentation to evaluate the social consequences of our personal experiences with the interacting personalities and systems that we refer to as cosmic technology.

Like everyone else, we seek enhanced living, a state of being that is transhuman and surpasses, or cures, the stagnation of homo sapien man. By unpacking cosmic technology, we uncover an energy and connection to the entire universe, a living state of joyful immortality in the here and now, and can at last uncover the spiritual basis of all things erotic.

There are no tricks or gimmicks, no religion or even an order of doing this or that, but rather the direct access to the secrets of the universe though a built-in physical connection. This human aspect to cosmic technology is so deeply embedded and available to each individual that it is a wonder civilization isn’t already further along because of it.

Although known or variously ignored though the ages, a relative few have yet realized that our erotic senses (our love senses) are the conduit of this cosmic knowledge and new energy, whether asexual, as in your friend’s comforting hand upon your shoulder when you needed it the most, any simple act of doing good to others, or the rush of sexually explicit touch sometimes leading to ecstatic orgasm, and practically every bio-chemical and -electrical feeling in between.

It’s all about Love actualized as Truth (consistent realities), Beauty (orchestrated or accidental harmony), and Goodness (motivation to do good to others). No matter what your station or situation in life, true freedom and immediate enhanced living are here for the taking, if you let nothing but Love rule your heart.

The underlying fundamental absolute of the universe in which we live is the power we recognize in the desire to do good to others, which we properly name Love. Love is expressed in and bestowed upon every level of universe reality, from the most perfected, absolute, or final, qWa to the most primitive human-like person able to make moral decisions.

Love is expressed and perceived differently at each level of progressive maturation and perfection, in a manner uniquely significant and appealing to the esthetics and values of each level.
If divine love is manifest on every level of being, then it must be apparent in our direct, sensory, physical world, and not be limited to the domain of the super consciousness.

Where is this?
The most direct, basic, physical manifestation of the reality of Love is experienced in erotic joy, in the intense experience of neurological orgasm, or even the warm feeling of pleasure of a friend’s hand on your arm when you need comforting. Sexual or not, pleasure activates the very same erotic senses. In any case, the stimulated sensorium explodes with joy as the individual consciousness briefly impinges on the reality of absolute Love.

And what should be our attitude towards this experience of momentary contact 9O’ with maximum joy? Certainly not fear, though that is the reaction of far too many who have been told and/or come to believe that they are unworthy of pleasure.

What is the appropriate action of any person confronted with a vast goodness beyond any other human sensory experience? There can be only one answer.

Worship.
Worship erotic joy.
Worship the living experience of orgasm and every simple pleasure.
Worship the most basic sensory experience of Love.
Worship is the conscious act of surrendering one’s mind, one’s will, to the object of worship. Worship makes the worshiper more like that which is worshiped.
Worship of the orgasmic spirit of Love defeats barriers to interpersonal expression of Love through service. Worship opens the door of the mind to Truth, which directs our action.
Through erotic worship the human spirit is progressively attracted to higher levels of understanding, enjoyment, and service.
Those who would deny this first great step, this open and personal acceptance of a physical gift of Love, place a barrier between the human state and the progressive expression and experience of Love.
When worship of Love is only invoked in the abstract or in deep meditative states, extreme focus is required to experience enlightenment. By comparison, when the first step in the path of Love recognition and worship is taken in the erotic, growth of the consciousness to experience greater enlightenment is simplified and expedited for most people.
All humanity knows erotic joy. The time has come for all humanity to acknowledge the supremacy of erotic joy and join in worship of this amazing, far too long ignored, gift of Love to humanity.
Join me today and forever in the worship of the power of erotic joy.

© VenusPlusX, 2013. All rights reserved.

Already available now as a companion reference, A Course in Immortality (and in Spanish, Un Curso En Inmortalidad), which will be published as an included Appendix in the new book.

in Campaigns / Cosmic Citizenship / Key Issues / Public Information / The Unseen Journey (working title) / Transhuman Erotic Freedom by Alison Gardner 22 Apr 2014 0 comments

International Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC

This month’s official DC Transgender Day of Remembrance honors all of those who have died in the strucggle for equality, and their families, as activists rededicate themselves to help answer today’s community concerns.

Celebrated internationally, the Transgender Day of Remembrance in DC will take place at 6 PM, Tuesday, November 20, 2012, at the DC Metropolitan Community Church, 474 Ridge Street NW (just north of M Street, near the Green and Yellow Mount Vernon Square Metro Station), and organizers hope the public will attend.

Earline Budd, Executive Director of Transgender Health Empowerment (THE), and Day of Remembrance planning group member, notes, “Each year this event proves to be better and better, and more empowering for the community.”

Ms. Budd is happy to report, “Also this year, just a few days before the DC Transgender Day of Remembrance, Whitman-Walker Health, Casa Ruby DC, DC Trans Coalition (DCTC) , and THE are co-hosting a community conversation on improving transgender health,” at 7 PM on Thursday, November 15, also at the DC Metropolitan Community Church. Presentations by health providers, advocates, and public policy experts will focus on the significant challenges Transgender individuals have in accessing culturally competent health care, including primary medical care, HIV/AIDS care, mental health care, and addiction services.

in Campaigns / Events / Global Sexual Freedom Watch / Grassroots / News of Note / Public Information / Transunity & Transleadership by Alison Gardner 06 Nov 2012 0 comments

Blow the Whistle on Stop and Frisk Today

The Stop Mass Incarceration Network will be blowing the whistle on the NYPDs “stop and frisk” program. It is estimated that every day 2,000 New Yorkers 2000 of color get unconstitutionally stopped by police in the war on drugs. Organizers Carl Dix and Cornel West are calling on thousands of people in New York and nationwide to respond to the NYPD’s racial profiling by blowing a whistle. On September 13, whistles and palm cards will be distributed with instructions for people to blow whistles when they see the police violating the rights of citizens of color.

Get yourself a whistle and do the same in your city. I’m going to, I see it all the time.
Police bias and profiling of all sorts must be stopped. The result is that a person of color is 5.6 times more likely be become an ex-felon for a minor offense that his white counterparts do with impunity. VenusPlusX has been writing about stop and frisk, mass incarceration, and the for-profit prison industry that feeds on this in Mass Incarceration: Follow the Money, Part 1 and Part 2.

in Campaigns / Events / Grassroots / Key Issues / News of Note / Public Information by Brenda 13 Sep 2012 0 comments

Mass Incarceration: Follow The Money (Part 2)

America’s unconstitutional militarization of local and state law enforcement,
based on racial hatred and racial politics, and the training, munitions,
and financial incentives that support it, has created a new Police State.

Slavery ended, and reactionary Jim Crow laws replaced it, and now Mass Incarceration, called The New Jim Crow by scholars, is imprisoning people of color for minor offenses at a savage rate in reaction to the strides made through civil rights and voting rights legislation passed 50 years ago.

The U.S. Constitution bars the government from any militarization of local and state law enforcement (with few exceptions) for good reasons, but that all ended with the so-called War on Drugs (1971). This methodical (and nefarious) tactic of stripping disproportionately brown and black felons’ constitutional rights has succeeded and is succeeding today because it is imbedded in the Republican party, started by President Nixon with his racist “Southern Strategy,” and codified by President Reagan’s War on Drugs.

This war has utterly failed: prices have decreased while drug usage has increased, the exact opposite of its public mission. But the War on Drugs goes on and on in spite of its failure because it is filling the greater political imperative of disenfranchising as many people of color as the government possibly can. President Nixon designed the racist Southern Strategy specifically to exploit racial hatred and fear for political gain. It has worked masterfully to cement power for a select group of white people who are draining any hope of a free society that can live up to its own lofty constitution.

This is racial politics at its worst. The current spate of unnecessary and punitive voter rights restrictions and increased incarceration of immigrants come from this very same playbook.

Our enslavers have re-imagined America’s criminal justice and prison systems
to separate the races as surely as slavery and the era of Jim Crow ever did.

Like the Southern Strategy, the War on Drugs successfully capitalizes on undereducated and/or willfully uniformed white social hatred in order to anchor the right wing base, its core in the American south. Just as surely as the “Redemption” movement following the abolition of slavery brought forth this hatred through late 19th and early 20th century Jim Crow laws (voting restrictions, exclusion from sitting on juries, and segregation), the War on Drug’s Mass Incarceration is a colorblind Jim Crow that grew reactively to the racial equality gains obtained during the 1960s.

The more informed you become about the breadth and depth of this wicked conspiracy, how your money is being spent every day to uphold American’s new caste system, the more you may want to work at the grassroots to stop these racist lawmakers and judges who roam free in our seemingly colorblind society. A huge target of our activism is the corrupt, multi-billion dollar, corporate, for-profit prison industry that conspires with the government and banking industry to facilitate this systematic and permanent disenfranchisement of people of color in this country. The U.S. incarcerates more of its citizens than any country, 730 in the prison population per per 100,000 of its national population population compared to countries like Norway (75 per 100,000) or even Uganda (92 per 100,000).

Organizations such as The Prison Divestment Campaign and The Sentencing Project have been leading the way in disrupting this mean-spirited profiteering that is powered by the War on Drugs. The corporate gains derived from Mass Incarceration represent a conflict of interest that is so large it cannot be seen with an uneducated eye.

Consider that up to $200.oo of your hard-earned money paid as taxes is being spent today and everyday on each of the 99,000 individuals housed in a for-profit prison. And, while we pay and pay to put people in prisons for the most minor offenses, we allow these corporations free access to lobby lawmakers, judges, and police unions for longer and harsher sentences, as well as tax deductions to build more and larger for-profit prisons.

As long as our government continues to federalize local and state law enforcement, and offer financial rewards to local drug task forces for maximizing arrests and convictions, this multi-billion dollar industry prospers and grows.

Sadly some of these bankers (e.g. Wells Fargo) and lawmakers (e.g. Gov. Jan Brewer) become investors in these same corporations, that last year reaped $74 billion in profits. They have blood and suffering on their dirty hands.

We have DEA agents and the Pentagon involved in bringing this federal program to your neighborhood by encouraging local drug task forces with huge amounts of federal money, equipment, training, arms and munitions, totaling billions of dollars each year. This breaks legal limits on the federal government’s involvement in local law enforcement, and tremendous power is granted to these task forces. They even profit from the spoils of their arrests, including cash, cars, houses, etc., seized during these arrests, even when the victim is found ultimately to be not guilty. As long as they make arrests and show results, the lucrative gravy train continues to flow into local and state budgets.

Take one example: SWAT. The number of SWAT vehicles and teams, formerly only used in to assail violent criminals, has increased. Where there were once 2 or 3 SWATs there are now 20. SWAT is now routinely, and primarily, used by these drug task forces to break down people’s doors in the middle of the night based on suspicions of drug possession. We can only hope these militarized teams are never turned on the entire population with some other justification because they are in place to terrorize whole communities.

This wholesale militarization of local and state law enforcement is an unlawful usurpation of our rights under the U.S. Constitution, and should make us all get off our couches and do something about it.

Look for more on this subject, soon. Also, see Mass Incarceration: Follow the Money (Part 1).

Anastasia Person contributed to this post.

Image Source (SWAT enters CII RPI): Simon Sarris

Image Source (Nash SpecOps Equipment): SD Lewis

in Campaigns / End Police Bias / Grassroots / Key Issues / Public Information / Transunity & Transleadership by Alison Gardner 25 Aug 2012 0 comments

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