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Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strike Only Kind of Over. Support Still Needed!

9:57 am By Maegan La Mala · Activism|California|Justice|Prisons|Violence · 4 Comments

23 Jul 2011

There has been some confusion over the last few days as to if the weeks old hunger strike which began at Pelican Bay California State Prison is over. The hunger strike was started specifically to protest the conditions inside the entire prison system but also very specifically the treatment in so-called Security Housing Units. You can read the entire list of demands of the strikers here.

It has been confirmed that inside Pelican Bay, the strike leaders have accepted an offer from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The leaders confirmed CDCR’s announcement that immediate changes in SHU policy are the opportunity for some educational programs, provision of all-weather caps (beanies) and wall calendars. More substantially, the leaders explained the CDCR has agreed to investigate changes to other policies including the gang validation and debriefing processes, and it is now up to supporters outside prison to make sure the CDCR upholds their promise.

Lunes Libro : The Revolution Starts at Home

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.

Lunes Libro : Hey, Shorty!

7:55 am By Maegan La Mala · Books|GLBT|New York City|Violence|Women · 2 Comments

16 May 2011

As a mother with a teenage daughter about to enter the NYC Public High School system, as a woman of color with daughters of color living in New York City sexual harassment and violence is always somewhere on my mind. Sometimes these thoughts determine how I dress, what time I go out, where I go out to, and what streets to walk through or not. As a radical tutor who works with young women of color who are learning inside the NYC public school system and as a daughter who clearly remembers walking home from school in my neighborhood feeling a gauntlet of eyes and words against my body and the shame I felt when receiving my first piropo/catcall while walking with my mom, I was excited and feeling grateful for the release of Hey, Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment ad Violence in Schools and on the Streets by Joanna N. Smith. Mandy Van Deven, And Maegan Huppuch of Girls for Gender Equity.

The book follows two paths. One is a narrative path that looks at the process of organizing young woman, primarily of color, first in a public school in Brooklyn and later NYC wide around the issues of sexual harassment and violence experiences daily from the moment they leave their homes to go to school until they return home. The second path, which crosses and overlaps with the first, contains concrete strategies for understanding, confronting, and preventing sexual harassment and violence.
Read more…

Tonight in NYC, Tomorrow in Amherst : The Revolution Starts at Home

14 May 2011

A book that should probably be used as a reference and jump off for critical conversations and growth, The Revolution Starts at Home : Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is out and on tour.

The anthology took 7 years to pull together and even 7 years ago was long overdue as there are so many struggles within so-called activist spaces about how we treat each other.

“Was/is your abusive partner a high-profile activist? Does your abusive girlfriend’s best friend staff the domestic violence hotline? Have you successfully kicked an abuser out of your group? Did your anti-police brutality group fear retaliation if you went to the cops about another organizer’s assault? Have you found solutions where accountability didn’t mean isolation for either of you? Was the ‘healing circle’ a bunch of bullshit? Is the local trans community so small that you don’t want you or your partner to lose it?

“We wanted to hear about what worked and what didn’t, what survivors and their supporters learned, what they wish folks had done, what they never want to have happen again. We wanted to hear about folks’ experiences confronting abusers, both with cops and courts and with methods outside the criminal justice system.”

— The Revolution Starts at Home collective

Long demanded and urgently needed, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the secret of intimate violence within social justice circles. This watershed collection of stories and strategies tackles the multiple forms of violence encountered right where we live, love, and work for social change — and delves into the nitty-gritty on how we might create safety from abuse without relying on the state. Drawing on over a decade of community accountability work, along with its many hard lessons and unanswered questions, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.

For more information:
http://southendpress.org/2010/items/87941
http://revolutionathome.tumblr.com/
revathome@gmail.com

For all of you Northeast Coasters, there are opportunities to meet some of the editors, hear from the book, and engage in conversation about why this book and where from here. Mala will be at the NYC release tonight so please stay tuned to our twitter account for live-tweets (as permitted). Read more…

Accusations of Sexual Aggression Against Police Arresting Students in Puerto Rico

9:15 am By Maegan La Mala · Puerto Rico|Violence|Women · 4 Comments

31 Jan 2011

From Indy Media Puerto Rico

The Caribbean Peace & Justice Project, el Grito de las Excluidas y Excluidos de Puerto Rico (The Cry of the Excluded of Puerto Rico), and the Pro-Haitian/Dominican Childhood Committee issued a press release yesterday denouncing and demanding an investigation into inappropriate touching (or toqueteo/feeling up) of women by the riot police in Puerto Rico who have been arresting those UPR students engaged in civil disobedience.

A video on Indymedia Puerto Rico shows an officer, on two clear occasions, touching the breasts of a young woman he is arresting and restraining in a police van. No doubt the police and Gov. will defend the actions saying the officers were merely restraining the protester and that they may have had accidental contact. From my perspective it looks like the officer took an opportunity to “cop a feel” (pun intended) not once but twice.

As we think of what is happening in Egypt, Tunisia, Puerto Rico and globally really wherever young people are gathered, especially those that identify as women, we have to wonder and know that once incident caught on video likely represents countless more incidents not documented.

Quick Hit: White Supremacy and the Spokane Bomb

12:14 pm By la Macha · Violence · 1 Comment

22 Jan 2011

I wrote about the Spokane bomb scare that just happened this past MLK day over at Global Comment!

A snippet:

Spokane human rights activist Tony Stewart has stated about the bomb scare that, “here we are facing something that is not to be taken lightly.” He knows, just like those of us working on immigration in Arizona know, that even if this bomb has nothing at all to do with politics, it emerges from an atmosphere of heated racist rhetoric and violence. Violent white supremacy has not only been on the rise, but has become normalized in the mainstream. It is imperative to put these incidences into a national context in addition to a local context, and to look at them from the perspective of infiltration of the mainstream by blatantly white supremacist organization rather than as a few fringe radicals acting “crazy.”

Susana Chavez is Una Mas : The Murder of a Ciudad Juarez Activist

7:29 am By Maegan La Mala · mexico|Violence|Women · 4 Comments

19 Jan 2011

***Post may contain triggers due to mentions of violence against women*****

She is credited with making the phrase “Ni una muerta mas,” (not one more dead woman) but 36 year old Susanna Chavez, an activist and poet who struggled for justice for the countless dead and disappeared women of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico became una mas when her body was found on Dia de los Reyes, January 6. She had been strangled and her left hand had been cut off.

What has happened since her body was found and identified follows the pattern of what some have called cover-ups to outright indifference regarding the death and disappearances in the Juarez region. Mexican officials say that Sanchez’s murder was not related to her activism or drug violence. Rather, Mexican officials seem to be engaging in some victim blaming.
Read more…

Parents of Mexican Teen Killed by Border Patrol File Suit

9:25 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|mexico|U.S.-Mexico Border|Violence · 5 Comments

18 Jan 2011

When 15 year old Sergio Adrian Hernandez-Huereca was shot and killed by the U.S. Border Patrol last summer, there was a rush to kill the Mexican youth again, by killing his reputation, by saying he deserved what he got, that is bullets to meet rocks that in all likelihood he didn’t even throw. There was a rush to label him a smuggler, a criminal, as if that justified an extralegal shooting into Mexican territory. The name of the agent that fired the lethal bullet has never been released, just like the name of the Border Patrol agent who shot and killed Ramses Barron Torres has not been released. Well the parents of Sergio Adrian Hernandez-Huereca just filed a lawsuit against the United States and this could be a step towards justice.

Justice is not the $25 million dollars asked for in the civil suit, but rather the process that goes with the civil suit that could force information from the U.S. Government, who has gone out of it’s way to protect Border Patrol Agents who kill unarmed Mexicans, perhaps in Mexican territory.

“Part of this lawsuit seeks to require the government to turn over the border camera video and see it and get a better look at it,” said Bob Hilliard, attorney for Sergio’s family.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in El Paso, names the Department of Homeland Security, The U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and an “unnamed agent” of the U.S. Border Patrol as defendants.
“The parents are hopeful that the main thing they get is an accounting of the Border Patrol’s conduct,” Hilliard said, adding he is hoping that criminal charges will be filed against the agent.

Martin Luther King Jr. : Peace Appropriation

8:46 am By Maegan La Mala · history|Violence · 2 Comments

17 Jan 2011

On this morning, the 25th anniversary of the King Holiday, I am watching the count of how many articles mention the name of the slain civil rights leader. Dr. King is known most well for leading non-violent acts of civil disobedience and delivering rousing speeches as a path in the struggle for justice, especially, although not just for, African American communities across the United States. The Clergyman, who would have celebrated a birthday on January 15th, is held up as an example of the “right” way to do struggle and yet over the past few days, reflecting on the moment we find ourselves in and what school children and adults are taught about the Rev. King, I wonder about the appropriation of his legacy and work to fit sanitized reform agendas.

I am thinking about the horrifying shooting in Arizona and how Dr. King’s message of non-violence will me used to justify a certain level of complacency and turning a blind eye to state violence. I am thinking of days in jail and young bodies against water hoses, batons, fists, dogs and guns. All too often, when the work of Dr. King is mentioned it is in the context of non-violence and peace as if those words equaled no violence. As if the struggles before him, the struggles contemporary to him, and the struggles after him have not cost lives, blood, freedom.
Read more…

Violence Targeting Transgender Women in Honduras Continues

11:23 am By Maegan La Mala · GLBT|honduras|Violence|Women · 2 Comments

13 Jan 2011

*****May be triggering due to discussion of extreme violence**************

In the last four weeks the bodies of five transgender women in Honduras have been found. The murder of women, especially transgender women, has been on the rise following the June 28, 2009 coup. According to the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, prior to the most recent murders, there have been 31 deaths of LGBTI people in Honduras in the last year and a half.

In the most recent incidents, the media is reporting that these women showed signs of physical and sexual assault. According to Planet Transgender :

On December 22, 2010 in Comayagüela, 23-year-old Lorenza Alexis Alvarado Hernández was found dead, her body visibly beaten and burned. There were also signs of rape and she was beaten so badly, perhaps even stoned, that it was difficult to recognize her.

The same day, Lady Oscar Martinez Salgado, age 45, was found burned to death in her home in Barrio El Rincón of Tegucigalpa. Her body showed multiple stab wounds.

Less than two weeks later, on January 2, 2011, a young transgender woman known only as Cheo was found murdered on the main street of Colonia Alameda in Tegucigalpa. Her body was left without legal documentation. She appears to have died from a severe stab wound to her chest.

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