Straights for No on 8! bring you this opportunity to fight the momentum in favor of proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that will pass into law the California Marriage Protection Act. Counter to what it’s name implies, the California Marriage Protection Act will define marriage as a legal sanction only available to heterosexual couples. Refer to the California Official Voter Information Guide here.
Click here to visit the No on 8! site. Click here to read the Obama’s statement on 8 and why they are encouraging voters to vote against it on November 4.
To volunteer in the fight against Prop. 8:
A message from Bryan Safi and Amy Rhodes, Straights Against 8!
Prop 8 is now in very real danger of passing, which will ban gay marriage by changing the constitution to specifically discriminate against gay men and women. Gross.
You don’t have to be a homo to care, just a homosapein.
We need your help to spread the word and make sure this bullshit does not pass!
Bryan Safi and I are going to be volunteering at the following times/locations and we would love to have you there – BRING A CELL PHONE AND A CHARGER. Basically, you’ll be calling people to remind them to vote NO on Prop 8 – it’s easy and fun – and a lot more fun the more people that come. You can let one of us know you’re coming, or just show up! You do need to be there at the start time to go through a quick training session.
Sunday, October 26th
1 to 4 pm
The Gay and Lesbian Center at The Village
1125 N. McCadden Place
Los Angeles, CA 90038
PH: 323-860-7302
(street parking available)
Tuesday, October 28
6:30 to 9:30 pm
1268 N. Fairfax Avenue (at Fountain)
It’s a house – there is street parking and they will provide parking passes for you
Tuesday, November 4th – Election Day
ALL DAY – LOCATIONS TBD
We will be at voting polls when people enter reminding them to vote No on 8
If you want info on that, please email Bryan and he’ll put you in contact with the correct person – bryansafi@gmail.com
The Feminist Majority Foundation and the Bennett College for Women have collaborated to bring you this year’s two-day conference DEFINE THIS! YOUNG WOMEN OF COLOR CREATING CHANGE in Greensboro, NC. This is the second annual Women of Color Conference.
In the spirit and tradition of Black Feminist Thought, the conference creates the space for women to define themselves, speak their truth and shape consciousness. Feminist ideology does not seek to merely study and discuss the experiences of women but seeks to transform and empower. This is praxis. It’s not just about women, it’s FOR women. It’s for women to utilize in the alchemy of change personally and politically.
In a culture laden with constructed images generated by the mass media engine, the space to define one’s own experiences and transform those definitions into cultural dialogue, self-defined imagery and action is nothing short of revolutionary.
For complete details on the conference, click here.
This week you have lashed out against the “Feminist Left.” I understand your frustration. You see that women are not flocking to the McCain/Palin ticket and you don’t understand why. Allow me to illuminate you.
The truth is, Senator McCain, your candidacy is the worst for women in recent history. You thought that women would vote for you once you put a woman on your ticket. But women aren’t fooled by this tactic. Women, Senator McCain, vote on issues important to us, not on whether or not the candidate wears a skirt.
The problem, Senator McCain, is your voting record, platform, and policies. You have consistently voted wrong on issues that directly impact American women’s bank accounts, personal liberties and health.
• You voted 19 times against increasing the minimum wage (the majority of minimum wage earners are women) – before you finally voted for it because it included business tax cuts. You voted to gut the Family and Medical Leave act – and you oppose expanding its coverage.
• You oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would restore women’s ability to fight wage discrimination in the courts – telling women our problem was that we needed to get more education and training.
• You voted NO on the Violence Against Women Act and NO on funding for the Office of Violence Against Women.
• You voted NO on starting the Army’s Breast Cancer Research Program which has funded hundreds of millions in breast cancer research. You voted NO on reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and supported Bush’s veto.
• You oppose a woman’s right to choose, and your running mate Sarah Palin opposes legal abortion even in cases of rape and incest.
• You voted to terminate federal funds for family planning and you have ducked questions on contraceptive insurance discrimination.
• You have stated that you admire the voting records of Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and John Roberts, and have stated that you would like to put Justices like them – Justices who want to overturn Roe v. Wade – on the Supreme Court.
We have compared the votes and platforms of Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin on women’s issues and the record is clear. No matter how you look at it – Obama/Biden score close to 100% and McCain/Palin approach a zero on women’s rights and issues.
If credit should be given for consistency, you deserve such credit when it comes to voting against women’s interests. Twenty-six years of voting against women’s rights and issues and you think women, when given a clear choice, won’t notice?
There has been lots of discussion regarding the fear mongering scare tactics used among the right-wing ticket and many of it’s supporters in recent weeks. Claims that Obama is a terrorist. A scary Socialist. Muslim. Arab. It’s a dangerous world in a dangerous time. Spreading and condoning this culture of fear has generated racial slurs and hate crimes. Following hot on the heels of the Obama effigy, verbal threats, vandalization and assault have become familiar.
Against a backdrop of GOP-backed allegations that it is involved in voter registration fraud, the activist ACORN group has been targeted with emails and voicemails threatening its staff as well as Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
One of the aggressive messages, secured by HuffPost’s OffTheBus, says that “all the ni**ers,” including Obama, are going to get “assassinated” and “hung.”
The threats come at a time when the McCain-Palin campaign has been publicly linking the non-profit Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now directly to the Obama campaign while suggesting the group is engaged in a coordinated effort to register ineligible voters.
In addition to the verbal threats and racially offensive messages, ACORN offices in two cities were recently vandalized, and a 58 year old Obama campaign volunteer wrongly assumed to be associated with the group was assaulted Saturday.
In a conference call with reporters Monday, ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring said numerous employees of the group nationwide have started receiving threatening telephone calls, voicemails and emails and described the intimidation as “a byproduct of [the Republican] voter suppression campaign” and “what happens when you pursue the politics of fear as your electoral strategy”
Click here to read the full story and hear the audio clips.
This is U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s solution. What’s next? Blacklisting? This is treading in some deep, dark waters.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So this is a character issue. You believe that Barack Obama may — you’re suspicious because of this relationship — may have anti-American views. Otherwise, it’s probably irrelevant to this discussion.
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN.: Absolutely. I absolutely…
MATTHEWS: Do you believe that… Barack Obama may have anti-American views?
BACHMANN: Absolutely. I’m very concerned that he may have anti- American views. That’s what the American people are concerned about. That’s why they want to know what his answers are. That’s why Joe the plumber has figured so highly in had the last few days…
MATTHEWS: OK. I just want to get off this…
BACHMANN: What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an expose like that.
COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: If you are an American, you’re an American and this business, for example, the congressman from Minnesota who is going around saying “let’s examine all congressmen to see who is pro- America, and who is not pro- America.” We have gotta stop this kind of non sense. Pull ourselves together, and remember that our great strength is in our unity, and in our diversity. That was really driving me, and put this on people like Mr. Ayers, are trivial issues, for the purpose of suggesting that Mr. Obama would have some kind of terrorist inclinations. I thought that was over the top. It was beyond just good fighting back and forth. I think it went beyond.
Amidst claims, that she’s just like all the other working class folks, it has been revealed that over $150,00 has been spent on the Palins’ wardrobe.
“It shows that Palin ain’t like the rest of us,” Tom Matzzie, a Democratic strategist told the Huffington Post, when asked how the party would or could use the issue. “It can help deflate her cultural populism with the Republican base. The plumber’s wife doesn’t go to Nieman’s or Saks.”
In the spirit of the upcoming elections, stay informed at: The Culture Wars: Abortion Edition. Laura continues to bring together the important variables.
This is the new ad from the “yes for life” campaign in South Dakota. It’s a minute and 40 seconds of a whole slew of (white) doctors sharing their support for measure 11 and imploring the viewer to “stop abortion from being used as a form of birth control”…funny, I thought the bill was a ban on all abortions statewide. Oh I get it, they think ALL abortions are being used as birth control. I guess, in their estimation, no responsible person ever gets pregnant when they don’t want to. I must admit I’m personally offended by this assumption.
My favorite part is the use of a cardiologist, an allergist, and a otolaryngologist (fancy name for an ear nose and throat doctor) to speak out for measure 11. How are these people relevant at all? They happen to be doctors, but their expertise is completely irrelevant. How is a pediatrician relevant for the matter? Abortion is about women’s health, which is not in a pediatrician’s job description.
It just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser as we slide deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.
Ohio resident, Mike Lunsford, claims that the United States is a Christian nation and that only white Christians should run the country. He also stated that Barack Obama is not a “full-blooded American.” As a public statement, he hung an Obama effigy from the tree in his front yard reminiscent of the Obama effigy hung from a tree at the Christian College, George Fox University, in Oregon this past September. Read full story here.
China’s booming economy means that factories are popping up all over the country. Makeshift cities emerge around these factories for the poor villagers that stream in looking for work.
“It’s chaos,” says author Leslie Chang, who explores life in these cities in Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. “And the most striking thing is that everyone is young.”
As Naomi Klein notes in No Logo, not only are most of the workers in these factories young, they are young women. Young women that moves hundreds and thousands of miles from their home provinces lack the support networks and are more easily intimidated and controlled as they work under intolerable conditions for low wages so that the industrialized nations can but cheap shirts at Walmart.
