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New York’s Family Court System fails brown women and children

6:55 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Family| New York City| Women| children · 1 Comment

19 Aug 2009

PLEASE FOREWARD WIDELY.

On March 3rd, 2009, Aniysah was taken from her mother’s arms by New York’s Family Court System and placed in the care of Aniysah’s father who has a history of domestic violence offenses. Furthermore, there were no records verifying that she would be taken to a safe living environment or that she was enrolled in school. Questions about her health and well-being went unanswered. That was over 150 days ago. To date, Aniysah remains lost in the family court system. A system where black and brown children go missing every day. A system where black mothers like Aniysah’s are often left to fend for themselves in a brutal, dogged battle just to make sure their children are safe. On the surface, this case appears to be a simple custody dispute, however, if one digs deeper it is a story about the injustices of New York’s Family Court System and how it fails brown women and children daily and how it can be used to further terrorize and re-victimize survivors of domestic violence.

Read more…

A Tragic Story of Continual Violence against Women of Color: Anyisah’s Mother’s Story, Angeline

7:48 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Family| Justice| New York City| Women| children · Comments Off

11 Aug 2009

Earlier this month I wrote about how one mami is being kept from her daughter by a justice system that claims to think of the best interest of the child. As the next court date approaches and a mother and her supportive family struggle to garner support and attention from the community and media, many have asked for some background on the story of Anyisah.

Many people have emailed us asking, “How did Anyisah end up in family court system?”

Answer:

* Angeline separated from Aniysah’s father because he was physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive. Angeline has documentation of his abuse and the court orders forcing him to take anti-battering classes. Judge Fernando Camacho issued an Order of Protection for the father to stay away from Angeline and Aniysah, May of 2005.

* Even though Angeline separated from Aniysah’s father, he continued to harass and terrorize Angeline and Aniysah by fabricating lies to Child Protective Services (CPS) and filing for full custody of Aniysah. June 2005 — October 2006 Judge Morgenstern issued several Orders of Protection for the father to stay from Angeline.

* Judge Morgenstern granted the father unsupervised visits on the weekend with Aniysah at the father’s mother’s house. However, just as the unsupervised weekend visits begin, Aniysah begins to display unusual behaviors. She told the social worker that someone named “grandpa” touched her inappropriately. Aniysah developed a rash between her legs and Angeline takes her daughter to the doctor and the doctor reports the rash to CPS as a possible issue of child abuse. At this point, the doctor at the emergency room reported on the possibility of Aniysah being abused while in her father’s care.

No Room at the Inn for Detained Immigrant Families

7:53 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Family| Immigration| children · Comments Off

10 Aug 2009

Article_6326405 Seems like there are problems with the closing of T. Don Hutto as an immigrant family detention center. Under the announced restructuring of oversight of immigrant detention centers, the controversial Hutto center will no longer be used for families with children and will only be used to house women immigrants. Families were to be transferred to another immigrant detention center, Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesburg, Pennsylvania. Except no one checked with Berks, which apparently has no room for more immigrant families.

County Commissioner Kevin S. Barnhardt, who is chairman of the county prison board, said he was unaware of the move by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Kenneth A. Borkey Jr., executive director of the Bern Township facility, which houses families awaiting immigration hearings, said the center is at capacity.

Where’s Aniysah?

5:56 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Family| Women| children · 11 Comments

2 Aug 2009

Women of color are not paranoid when we say that we fear our children being taken away. It happens all too often.

It happens again and again:

On March 3rd, 2009 six year old Aniysah was taken from her mother’s arms and thrown into a legal shuffle of unaccountability, instability and discrimination. There were no records verifying that she would be taken to a safe living environment or that she was enrolled in school. Questions about her health and well-being went unanswered. That was 150 days ago. To date, Aniysah remains lost in the legal system. A system where black and brown children go missing everyday. A system where black mothers like Aniysah’s are often left to fend for themselves in a brutal, dogged battle just to make sure their children are safe.

How Can Mami Movements Move Forward and be Resourced

27 Jul 2009

Crossposted from la Mamita Mala

100_0133

This is a continuation of this post, based on conversations had at the Women’s Equity Media Summit with Noemi and BFP.

In all honesty, I don’t even quite remember the questions we were answering pero I know that BFP primarily came up with this:

Multiple Media tools politicized for transformative justice

Are those our resources? Our goals? Part of our vision? Sounds like a plan of attack to me, a way to use our weapons of media, media as defined as how we communicate ourselves to others.

And how are mamis of color movements resourced?

501c3’s are not the only way we seek/need resources or want to be resourced as. We are more than charity cases, communities to be served.

BFP gave an excellent example about how in her hood the only way families, especially Latino families could get services like coats for the winter, was if they fit a certain mold, that is cleaned up and made themselves more presentable, looked deserving of services.

We should not be resourced based on our education but rather on our history of work

Education is a privilege. I personally have two years of college under my belt pero most people won’t even consider me for jobs or my opinion because I had to drop out to take care of my child. Forget the years of experience or how I have personally have helped others get their degrees. Without letters after my name on a piece of paper, I don’t fit in.

We should be resourced in terms of the role we play as part of larger struggles, as part of a continuation of historical lines of struggle.

We should not be tokenized

We should not be expected to compromise our values

We should not feel the need to compartmentalize ourselves

Resourced doesn’t just mean money, it means, especially within the context of online work, linking, citing

we should be resourced by the community, as we are part of the community

How are you resourced vs how you would like to be resourced?

What Do Mami Movements Need?

25 Jul 2009

Cross Posted from la Mamita Mala

100_0149 One of the first spaces I wa in in Detroit was at the Women’s Equity Media Summit. To say that it was an uncomfortable space would be too simple. There was a sense among many of the women of color I was with that we HAD to be there, since many of has had been given some money to help defray our travel costs. We would have been in Detroit anyway for the Allied Media Conference and truth be told we weren’t sure why we had been invited into the WEMS space? What was the mission and what was expected of us radical women of color media makers.

We all conglomerated in one corner of the room, close to the door, forming a protective circle of love and support around each other as other women spilled their female creds on the table, leaving many of us feeling marginalized. What of us who didn’t claim the word woman or the word feminist? What made one a “woman” in that space? Was it being born with a white vagina? Did bringing up these issues make us automatic enemies of the space of chairs and tables that wound around the conference room? What of us who had no interest or desire to be part of a non-profit structure? What of us who didn’t want their money?

What did come out of that space however and many other spaces in the days that followed at the AMC and after, were the gathering of mamis. That’s right, mamis not mommies. I even had to correct the spelling as it was written on butcher paper at the front of the room because for the last almost 12 years (carajo I feel vieja) it has been made clear to me that my experiences are not the ones being blogged about or written about in books. After all it was my mami’hood, with all the sex/gender/race/class/language issues you can pull from that word, that started me seeking others like me through blogging and organizing on the ground.

One of the first exercises I did in my small caucus of three, that included bfp and Noemi, was what do we need in order to do our work, which we translated as what do mami movement’s need. Here is a list of what I came up with:

mami’hood
justicia
not speaking for people
comunidad
multi-lengua’ed
access
accountibility
amor
apoyo
collective
seguridad
multiple points/ways of entry
poesia
arte
sexo
child-inclusive
childcare
sustainability
flexibility

What does your list look like?

Let the Custody Crap Begin

2:08 pm By la Macha · Celebrities| Family| children · 2 Comments

29 Jun 2009

michael_jackson_young Huffington Post published a link to an old interview given by one of the mother’s of Michael Jackson’s kids, Debbie Rowe. It reminded me of how incredibly screwy that whole situation of Michael having kids really was:

Debbie (who lives on a farm surrounded by animals) said, “”I was just the vessel. It wasn’t Michael’s sperm. Just like I stick the sperm up my horse, this is what they did to me. I was his thoroughbred.”….

After Debbie gave birth to second child Paris, she couldn’t have kids again, “The delivery was so hard. My insides were all torn up and I was barren. When he knew I couldn’t have any more babies he didn’t want anything to do with me.”

Debbie says she will not fight for custody of Prince Michael or Paris, “I know I will never see them again. I was never cut out to be a mother – I was no good. I don’t want these children in my life. My children are my animals now.”

I know that these old interviews are coming up now because our culture as a whole is really enjoying making fun of Jackson and continuing the “weird” discourse it had created around him. But I also think that this interview is coming up now because we’re going to be treated to years and years of of custody battles over Jackson’s kids, and this is the first step in that battle.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the lawyers of one group who has an investment in getting custody thought it would be a good idea to remind the public of this interview.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Until then, read this post by Elle PhD and her conflicting complicated emotions she is feeling about Jackson’s death.

Raid in Sheriff Joe’s Country Leaves a 9 Year Old Girl Without Parents

10:35 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Family| Immigration| arizona| children · 6 Comments

19 Jun 2009

I cannot wrap my mind around a few things at play here.

One, how anti-immigration activists can dehumanize the children of immigrants and immigrant children to the point that leaving a child without parents is ok. Or that a 9 year old’s murder is ok.

I also cannot understand how President Obama can keep postponing meetings on immigration and legislators drag their feet as if people are not being killed and children aren’t being left as defacto orphans by immigration enforcement.

Brisenia Flores : Nuestra Hija

15 Jun 2009

60arivacainvasionjpeg When Brisenia Flores and her father Raul were shot to death by Shawna Forde and Gunny Bush, two anti-immigrant activists with ties to the Minutemen, they weren’t asked for their papers. The goal wasn’t to observe, document and report as Jim Gilchrist, the leader of the Minuteman Project, has said in trying to distance himself from his associates charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one count of first-degree burglary and one count of aggravated assault. The goal was to use violence against a family viewed as expendable to help further their cause of using violence against those viewed as expendable.
Read more…

Solitary Confinement: Torture?

9 Jun 2009

I’ve made my views on prisons in the U.S. pretty clear since I’ve been blogging at VL. I don’t think prisons help to solve crime, and 99% of the time, I think they make crime worse. I also think that the prison industrial complex is highly racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, abelist, nationalistic and any other horrible ‘ism it could possibly be. Which leads to not just high rates of imprisonment of legitimate criminals–but high rates of innocent people as well. Far too many black men (for example) “look” guilty and therefor must be. So I’ve definitely got my issues with the U.S. prison system and work towards its abolition.

But while I work towards prison abolition, it’s important to question what prison conditions are like *now* in the real world. Which leads to this question that this organization poses: Is solitary confinement torture?

Again, I’m posed to say yes, without even listening to the arguments for or against–but I must say, after having listened to “pro” arguments, I think even my libertarian next door neighbors would give pause to think about it a little. One of the stories highlighted by the Project was the story of Timothy Joe Souders, a mentally ill man that was thrown into solitary confinement.

From the Detroit Free Press:

Souders, 21, spent most of his last four days naked, without physician or psychiatric care, his arms and legs bound to a steel bed in four-point restraints. He was in a bare, all-steel isolation cell about the size of a walk-in closet.

He went to the cell Aug. 2 because of unruly behavior. He lay in urine — “agitated, disoriented, psychotic” — as the cell felt close to 106 degrees at times, according to a report written by a federal monitor assigned to scrutinize medical care for Jackson prisons.

Souders was found dead on his bed around 4 p.m., two hours after staff had removed his shackles. The death of the severely mentally ill inmate is a glaring example of a troubled state prison health care system, riddled with misdiagnoses, delayed or denied treatment and inadequate accommodations for people with disabilities.

The Jackson prison complex, including the Southern Michigan Correctional Facility where Souders died, has been under federal oversight for more than 20 years.

As his mother says on the National Radio Project, only the nation/state could shackle a human being, leave that person to urinate/defecate on him/herself, offer no food or water, and then call it an ‘accident’ when the person dies. If one citizen had done that to another citizen, it’d be called torture.

But of course, it’s possible to dismiss solitary confinement as “acceptable” and an “accident” because in this society, people believe that when you wind up in prison you “get what you deserve.” Or that prison is “not supposed to be fun.” Which, of course, is based on the very convenient dehumanization of human beings–it’s cheaper, easier, and makes us all feel really self-righteous and good to “stick it to” prisoners. Because there will never ever be a day when *we* are in the position of Timothy Souders, will there? We’re too good for that, right? So let ‘em suffer!

What do you think about all this? Should human beings be locked into solitary confinement? Is there ever a justifiable reason for it?

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