Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
Martes Media Minute : Roe v. Wade Anniversary, Medicaid Mama y Midwife Victory, Cervical Cancer Awareness month, & Mala’s Mami Closeup,
9:23 am By Maegan La Mala · Family|GLBT|Health|Women · No Comments
24 Jan 2012Happy Lunar New Year for those celebrating today. I have a few longer posts in the works but didn’t want to start a new week without somethings for our readers to reflect on.
Latin@ Reproductive Health, Access, y Justice
This weekend marked the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. But (re)defining access for Latin@s goes beyond a court decision. It involves internalized oppression, stereotypes, and access to not just birth control and terminations, but also to births the way we want them.
The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health recently released polling looking at the attitudes of Latin@s towards abortion. This polling, which also comes at a time when the GOP is courting the Latino votes on the basis of alleged shared values, reveals that the majority of registered Latino voters believe in keeping abortion legal and accessible.
Following last week’s liveblog of a conversation on cervical cancer and Latin@s, Bianca Laureano shares her ideas for Cervical Cancer Awareness Month 2012 on what really needs to happen to end the disease.
We are celebrating along with Mamas of Color Rising in Texas the decision of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to make a rules change that adds Licensed Midwives as health care providers under Texas Medicaid. All mam@s deserve the birth experience they want regardless of income.
And finally, yesterday I sat down with some of the mamis of Latina Mami for a wonderful conversation about the mami’hood. You can watch/listen to the interview here (please note the link autoplays the interview)
Today at 1 pm EST, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health is hosting a virtual cafecito/conversation on Latinas and cervical cancer. Since January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month and the incidence of cervical cancer for Latina women in the United States is highest amongst all racial/ethnic groups, almost twice as high as non-Latina white women, Dr. Mildred R. Chernofsk will be the guest speaker focusing on Latinas’ limited access to adequate cervical cancer screenings, barriers to access, and prevention.
I will be live blogging/tweeting the conversation and taking/sharing your questions and comments. Just join us here!
VL Digest
10:23 am By BiancaLaureano · Arts|Culture|GLBT|Health|history|Immigration|Justice · 3 Comments
13 Dec 2011Instead of me finding time to write about some of the news stories that are of interest (which seems to be a challenge these past few weeks) I’ve decided to share with you the stories. Yes! These are stories I would love to write more about, share my perspective, challenge our ideas, and forge a conversation about them with VL readers. Perhaps we can do that without individual posts for each piece? Perhaps not, either way, here’s a VL Digest. Have VL readers heard of these stories? What are your thoughts?
An Apology 30 Years In The Making: El Salvador Marks El Mozote Massacre
Yesterday I was reading about the apology the Salvadoran government gave for El Mozote massacre where over 800 women, children, men, people were killed by the Salvadoran military. The Massacre occurred 30 years ago in December. I remember growing up in Maryland and hearing about this massacre by the Salvadoran immigrants who migrated to the Takoma Park and Langley Park area. I remember my parents telling me that some folks who we met may not ever be able to go back home because of a Civil War. It all began to become more clear to me years later when I started reading more on the historical accounts and injustices that were occurring, especially the role the US played in training the military in the Americas.
There was a lot of buzz about TEDx San Juan, and I’m eager to see what video is available of our friend Larry La Fountain-Stokes’ presentation of the work, activism, and survival of Puerto Rico’s LGBTQ community. In attendance was Forbe.com blogger Giovanni Rodriguez who shares his ideas of Puerto Ricans as being exiles (inspired by Larry’s usage of queer Puerto Ricans as sexiles who use music, art, songs, and writing to share their testimonios). Rodriguez considers those Puerto Ricans who migrated from the mainland to the US as exiles as well (this would include my parents) who were searching for more secure and better economic opportunities. He argues that many Puerto Ricans leaving now are doing so reluctantly.
Third Party & Independent Candidates 2012
I am often exhausted with hearing only two party debates, discussions and media coverage. This week I went in search of who may be considering running as Third Party and Independent candidates for President of the US in 2012. This site was useful to give me an idea and remind me that there are always more than two options when it comes to voting, and knowing all of those options is what makes someone, in my opinion, an educated voter.
World AIDS Day and the Language of Status
1 Dec 2011Here at VivirLatino we write many posts about Latino representation in the media and about how identity politics play out within the policy realm. The theme of status is a recurring one, especially as the issue of immigration has garnered more attention in the last few years. There are campaigns to open dialogue and challenge how we talk about these issues and about how the words we use matter. “Undocumented” and “status” are words that appear over and over.
How do we apply this same language to how we talk about health in the Latino community? How do we challenge the way we talk about sexual behavior and the relationship it has with our whole health? How do we face ignorance and discrimination within our families and communities while envisioning and putting into practice models of real self-care and healing?
Today is World AIDS Day, and so many years since the HIV virus was discovered and named, to me it feels like we as a culture have regressed a little when it comes to talking about HIV status, sexual health, and AIDS. Perhaps it is out a sense of complacency. Medical technology has made HIV and AIDS feel less scary, less deadly while ignoring the basic issues of access to those technologies. Our children are given what passes for sex education and yet fail to understand the basics of how their own bodies work autonomously (forget about with other people). It’s not that I think we should be living in fear. It’s that I think we should be living in love and part of that is a self awareness and an awareness of shared community health.
I also think that we have gone back to thinking that HIV is something that “other” people get, and that othering is based on racial, sexual, gender, and geographical stereotypes.
Let’s not move backwards. Let’s face our fears about what could exist in our communities and inside our bodies. This can take on many forms including talking about these issues within our families, neighborhoods, communities, getting tested and knowing our status and sharing the experience with our friends and partners. Whatever small step is taken, let’s make sure it’s a step forward.
Make sure to follow VivirLatino’s twitter stream today as there will be tweets re: World AIDS Day. Also if you are in the NYC area, the Latino Commission on AIDS has a list scrolling on it’s homepage of local places where you can get tested today
Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice : The Real Problem with Choice
12:39 pm By Maegan La Mala · Health|Immigration|Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice|Women · 6 Comments
5 Aug 2011As part of the Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health asks participants in it’s blog carnival : What’s the REAL problem with scapegoating immigrant women?
I wrote a very brief intro yesterday, questioning how we frame the question even and who gets to speak for themselves vs. who is spoken for.
My family is an immigrant family. I have taken heat from other Latinas for claiming this, for claiming being the first generation in my Puerto Rican family to be born in the United States. It is often raised that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, so that the migration patterns of the women who came before me, my tias and later my abuela, who came to New York looking for work in the garment industries, mujeres who came before their husbands to work in sweatshops run buy famous fashion designers, mujeres who now can barely see – and not just because of age, don’t matter or worse, don’t exist. As amiga Bianca Laureano wrote in her submission to the blog carnival :
Many folks think those narratives are not worthy or important, when really they have impacted me! And don’t I matter? Don’t the women with similar testimonios and experiences matter?
Bringing this back to the issue of immigrant women and reproductive justice, the buzzwords, according to mainstream (read white led) feminism and non-profits, is choice and access. The choice of how to prevent and plan pregnancies, allegedly revolutionized by the birth control pill, used Puerto Rican women of my grandmothers’ generation as the perfect test subjects. When our uteri weren’t being experimented on, they were being forcibly sterilized. My tias and my grandmothers weren’t accused of harboring anchor babies in their wombs, turning the possibility of “poor brown babies” being born as U.S. citizens as threats because of the colonial occupation of Puerto Rico sure sounds pretty damn close.
US Officials Seize Seven Computers as Caravan to Cuba Crosses US-Mexico Border
9:11 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Cuba|Health|Justice|Politics · 1 Comment
21 Jul 2011Note: Some beloved mentors of mine are participating in the caravan this year so, like just about everything, this is more than political, it is also personal. – Mala
Dear Friends and Supporters,
At 12:20 PM on Wednesday, the 22nd Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba arrived at the US/Mexico border to break the US blockade against Cuba. The US border officials have again decided to interfere with our mission of breaking the US blockade, and have seized seven computers. More information is in the press release below. Although we are continuing on the caravan and taking the remaining 100 tons of aid to Cuba, our protest against the seizure continues! Your support is vital! We are asking you, our emergency response network, to spread the word:
Call your senators and congressional representatives, the White House, call your local media, and organize in your communities to demand that the US government:
- Return the 7 computers immediately!
- End the blockade and travel ban of Cuba now!
- Find your Congressional Representative here:
https://writerep.house.gov/
writerep/welcome.shtml Find your Senator here:
http://www.senate.gov/general/
contact_information/senators_ cfm.cfm Contact the Whitehouse here: http://www.whitehouse.
gov/contact Now is the time for action against this criminal blockade and in support of the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba!
You can support our work by making a donation here:
https://npo.networkforgood.
org/Donate/Donate.aspx? npoSubscriptionId=4382 Let us work together to end the blockade!
In solidarity,
IFCO-Pastors for Peace
US Officials Seize Seven Computers as Pastors for Peace Cuba Caravan Crosses into Mexico
US Customs and Border Patrol officers seized seven computers intended for Cuban hospitals, schools, and a veterinary clinic at the Pharr (TX) International Bridge on Wednesday.
The computers are part of the 100 tons humanitarian aid carried by the 22nd IFCO/Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba. Caravan participants observed officers X-raying and searching the vehicles. Customs officers then said that they were ‘detaining,’ not ‘seizing’ the computers, in order to determine whether the caravan needed to have a license to take them to Cuba. Three of the computers seized were the same ones that were taken from last year’s caravan in 2010, and were later returned to IFCO/Pastors for Peace.
While the brightly painted trucks and school buses were being searched, caravanistas chanted “Cuba is no threat to you; let our computers through!” and “Love is our license! Free the computers!” and held banners and signs reading “Cuba is not our enemy” and other slogans. Caravanistas then prayed and chanted together as they gathered around the pickup truck holding the seized computers.
Although IFCO/Pastors is protesting the computer seizure, we are continuing through the border to deliver to Cuba the 100 tons of aid that have crossed successfully through the border.
This year more than 100 North Americans and Europeans have joined the Caravan.
For updates check www.pastorsforpeace.org
and www.facebook.com/ pastorsforpeace
Lunes Libro : The Revolution Starts at Home
9:46 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Books|Family|Health|Justice|qtpoc|Violence · 2 Comments
18 Jul 2011
The Revolution Starts at Home, edited by Ching-In Cheng, Jai Dulani, & Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha and published by South End Press, is an anthology/handbook/reference based on a zine that breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the “open secret” of intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships, and in friendships—within social justice movements.
As an activist, a member of multiple communities, a survivor of violence, and as a mami, I was excited to sit and read this book after hearing and nodding along to excerpts at the packed NYC release at Bluestockings. My pareja and I also wanted to read it as a shared exercise in working through how some of the violence in our previous relationships (movement-wise and personal) impacted how we treated each other. Divided into four sections, the stories, strategies, interviews and poetry seek to confront what usually is spoken about in whispers – how we as people in social justice movements, especially women, transgender, genderqueer people of color deal and are dealt with when there is an issue of violence within our circles. There has been so much talk about safety, accountability and justice when we struggle against institutions and individuals outside of our movement(s) but not enough talk/action about what those same concepts look like, feel like, and how they play out inside. The Revolution Starts at Home seeks to change that.
Conservatives Need to Make Up Their Minds Regarding Our Wombs
6:14 am By Maegan La Mala · Controversia|Health|Immigration|Los Angeles|Politics|Women · 1 Comment
9 Jun 2011
Gracias to Andres, my ‘hood vecino of Blabbeando, for tweeting last night information about the latest assault on Latinidad using the wombs of some Latin@s (not all Latinas have wombs not all wombs belong to women). Following in the footsteps of ads targeting African-American and black communities that claimed that abortion access amounted to eugenics, now the Latino Partnership for Conservative Values is getting in on the game, sponsoring a billboard with the above image saying “The Most Dangerous Place for a Latino is in the womb.” in English and Spanish.
The ads, which allegedly are slated to go up around Los Angeles, are part of a wider anti-access campaign claiming that Latin@s get more abortions than others and that this is the big problem because it seeks to erase us On the Board of the org behind the ads are novela actors Eduardo Verastegui and Karyme Lozano, as well as Puerto Rico’s governor Luis Fortuño.
Makeshift RecLAmation in Southern California Featuring Many VivirLatino Friends and Mala!
7:33 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Arts|Culture|Health|history|Justice|Los Angeles|Media|media justice · 1 Comment
19 Apr 2011
I am so excited to write about this because the Southern Cali portion of the tour includes so many people I love…yes myself included. So blessed that this will be my West Coast debut in such an amazingly well curated space.
For those that don’t know:
Makeshift Reclamation: New Feminist Art and Activism
A multimedia event showcasing how contemporary feminists are resisting and creating alternatives to not only gender-based oppression but also a collapsing economic system, climate crisis, and more. Featuring live readings, performances, and video works by artists and activists including Jessica Hoffmann, coeditor/copublisher of the independent, transnational, antiracist feminist magazine make/shift; Hilary Goldberg, whose new project, recLAmation, is a Super 8 experimental documentary/narrative film in which queer superheroes navigate a future beyond capitalism; and others.Upcoming Southern California Tour Dates 2011
Friday, 4/22, 8 p.m.: Echo Park Film Center
1200 N Alvarado St. (@ Sunset Blvd.) Los Angeles, CA
Feminist Media Night with imMEDIAte Justice
Live performances by Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR MagazineSaturday, 4/23, Time TBD: Cal State Long Beach
Chicana Feminisms Conference, USU Beach Auditorium,
1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA
Live performances by Irina Contreras, Fabiola Sandoval, tk karakashian tunchez, Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann; Film/Video/Audio works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte justice, POOR MagazineMonday, 4/25, 3:15 pm, Cal State Los Angeles
U-SU Theater, Student Union, 5151 State University Drive, LA, CA
Live performances by Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, Maegan “la Mala” Ortiz, Fabiola Sandoval, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR MagazineTuesday, 4/26, 7:30 pm, UC Santa Barbara
Multicultural Center Theater, 1504 Santa Barbara, CA
Live performances by Irina Contreras, Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR Magazine
On Friday, the Pence Amendment passed in the House of Representatives 240-185. This bill prohibits all Planned Parenthood health centers from receiving any federal funds to provide affordable cancer screenings, birth control, HIV testing, and testing and treatment for other sexually transmitted infections. Of course all Pence, the GOP Congressman from Indiana talks about is abortion.
There has been little talk of the other services that Planned Parenthood provides and from the GOP/conservative side there has been false pontificating on how the measure helps to save the lives of “babies of color” by blocking access to abortion. This of course is an attempt to take the racist history/theory of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, and attach it to what Planned Parenthood does now. Except it’s not a good fit.
The Pence amendment is more than about Planned Parenthood. It is about attacking access to healthcare for poor women, especially woman of color. The House Republican leadership’s latest
proposal to completely eliminate the national family planning program, called Title X (ten).
In 2009 alone, Title X providers performed 2.2 million Pap tests, 2.3 million breast exams, and over six million tests for STIs, including nearly a million HIV tests. In 2009, 28% (1,447,422) of users identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino, including 28% (1,336,324) of female users and 30% (111,098) of male users. Yes, men in the Latino community are also impacted by the proposed cuts.
So being against the Pence Amendment is not about pro-Planned Parenthood, it is about being for access for reproductive health care for men and women.
Hola!
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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