fight injustice

looks so cool. Want to try to bring it to my city.

http://www.praythedevilbacktohell.com/v2/

I know most people might be surprised that I would write about forced abortions in China. After all, I’m a US abortion activist. Don’t I want everyone to have an abortion?

Well, no. I want everyone who wants an abortion to be able to get one safely, legally and well, pretty easily. It’s about reproductive choice. I woman should be able to have as many children as she wants and when she wants them.

But that’s not the case in China. They have very strict policies about how many children you can have. And when you’re pregnant with one too many, you are forced to have an abortion.

What an awful thing. Arzigul Tursun is more than six months pregnant with her third child. I found an article about her on ABCNews.com. As of November 17, she is under guard in a hospital in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, scheduled to undergo an abortion against her will because authorities say she is entitled to only two children, according to the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

This will no doubt be used by conservatives in the US to argue to defund the United Nations Population Fund family planning program, arguing that they support organizations in China and therefore, by association, abortion.

That is profoundly ridiculous. UNFPA programs fund family planning programs that include prenatal care, clean birthing kits for refugess, birth control options for women who do not want to get pregnant, condoms for preventing the spread of HIV and other STis and oh, yeah, sometimes abortion. Come on people!

Perhaps if there were enough resources being put into family planning programs, women and families would choose to space or limit their children in China without having to force abortions. Perhaps, empowering women is just what we need to do to fix the craziness in this world.

But of course white, male power would have you believe otherwise. Abortion is the problem. Well, actually guys, it’s a symptom. Unintended pregnancy is the problem. Fix the problem, prevent the symptom.

One of my deepest hopes is that Arzigul can have her third child because she wants this child. Another hope is that world leaders come together with the common sense to figure it out and empower women and fix the problem. Period. It’s not rocket science.

Why did I never read anything like this from Laura Bush in all 8 years!?

500,000 women a year die in childbirth ..you can save them
From the Mirror UK

By Sarah Brown Wife Of Prime Minister Gordon Brown 16/09/2008

In Victorian Britain, women in the late stages of pregnancy would traditionally make up their last will and testament, because it was such a common hazard to die when giving birth.

Thankfully, while it is always a terrible tragedy when it happens, it is very rare for mothers to die in childbirth in today’s Britain.

But in many parts of the world, it is still the tradition for an expectant mother to say goodbye to her husband, her other children and her neighbours when she goes to give birth, understanding that she might not see them again.

Across the world more than 500,000 women will die in pregnancy or childbirth over the next year, the vast majority in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia.

That’s almost one woman dying every minute as she brings another life into the world. And, in some parts of the world, one in eight pregnancies end in a mother’s death.

Worst of all, despite all the promises made by world leaders over recent decades to tackle the problem, the number of deaths is the same now as it was 20 years ago.

Last year I visited a hospital in Uganda and met a mother called Sylvia who was holding her newborn baby after a successful delivery.

She told me with a sense of relief how much she was looking forward to returning home to her husband and her five older children.

But next door to Sylvia, I looked through a window into a room to see eight little babies alone in their cots, none more than two days old. The doctor told me how, in each case, the mother had died in childbirth, from causes ranging from bleeding and infection to high blood pressure and failure to survive a Caesarean section.

It hit me hard that most of these deaths could be avoided with the most basic of healthcare provision we take for granted at home.

Just a couple of pence-worth of magnesium sulphate would stop thousands of women dying from high blood pressure.

Basic clamps and sutures to stop bleeding or penicillin to treat infection would save thousands more lives. The White Ribbon Alliance, a global advocacy group campaigning to address maternal mortality in 91 countries, is trying to make successful births like Sylvia’s the norm, even in the world’s poorest countries.

It provides that missing voice for mothers and young women who do not have access to the healthcare they need.

In Africa, they are working to provide courses to teach young consultants essential obstetric and newborn care.

I met a young doctor in an antenatal clinic in Tanzania who had completed the course two months before, and he thought his training had already helped him save many lives.

This is a problem we know how to solve. The most basic need is to get skilled birth attendants out there in every community and in every country that needs them. In a country like Sierra Leone, there is only one nurse for each 8,600 people, and across the world we have a shortage of four million birth attendants.

Next week, Gordon and I will travel to New York, where world leaders will meet to discuss what can be done to tackle this shortage.

And I’m proud Gordon will be able to say it is Britain leading this fight.

But governments cannot do this on their own. Our great anti-poverty and children’s charities are increasingly making the health of expectant mums a priority.

They are working with organisations such as the White Ribbon Alliance, to ensure that there is access to essential healthcare and skilled health workers everywhere.

They recognise that this will not only save the lives of thousands of mothers, but transform the lives of millions of children who, instead of being orphaned at birth, will have a mother to feed them, get them vaccinated and get them into school.

We can all play our part in this great mission, from individuals campaigning for change to leaders like Gordon working to deliver it.

After 20 years without progress, let’s make this the year of change.

Every minute..

380 women get pregnant

110 have pregnancyrelated complications

40 women have unsafe abortions

1 woman dies in childbirth

It is tradition for an expectant mother to say goodbye to her husband.

Again from feministing.com (I love that site!)

At The RNC: Terror on Robert Avenue

Deep black-clad troops thick with riot gear and anonymizing helmets, no distinction between them save color-coded duct tape between the shoulders and the slightly differing gait in the thudding of their boots against the cold and hard pavement marched, god I’m not kidding you, Gestapo style up the middle of Robert Avenue in St. Paul last night around 8:45 p.m., straight up toward the Capital building, where they young girls I’d just interviewed were headed because, as they explained, the Poor People’s march “was getting too rowdy.”

Boy, were they likely surprised when 300 storm troopers in black black riot gear showed up to the party, that had already been shut down and quiet for hours.

It was easily the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen: When I watch videos of the Khmer Rouge moving in on cities in Cambodia, a place I love second only to America, I try to access what the feeling must be like of watching your people invade their own with intent to harm in mass, faceless numbers. Before last night at 8:45 p.m., I could not for the life of me imagine it. And now I saw it, in the very city I’d been told since birth was immune from the evils of the world.

I know it’s too late to lose my innocence, again, but I took a moment to meditate beside a lake this morning in Chanhassen where we’re all staying, the great pink horde of us, far far away from the clamor of the streets (too far if you ask me, but some of the ladies here are content with that). As I looked out over the gently moving lake, waking up with the 8 a.m. winds, rocking against the shore, I hit sorrow in the pit of my stomach like I haven’t felt before. I thought it might be the aggravation of 20-hour days spent fighting, documenting, worrying, running, sorting through the miscommunications of a group constantly on the go, and just plain old waiting for something to happen. It wasn’t aggravation. It was a single image.

The image of American troops dressed in black moving in with intent to harm young American civilians.

Reports will roll in today about what exactly went down and where and when and why. Anarchists will be blamed for “bomb-making” – these reports aren’t, by the way, to be believed – and stories of National Guardsmen and St. Paul Police and Sheriffs and undercover cops going rogue and lashing out at people will flood the Midwest like the Mighty Mississippi. What I know is that dump trucks were called in to blockade entire streets. Hundreds of troops suited up before the Rage Against the Machine Concert and waited for them to start. Two lines of troops surrounded all sides of a peaceful march just winding down – put on, by the way, by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign – and threw tear gas, released flash grenades (at least four of them), intimidated, harassed, and roiled a crowd standing up for their right to speak out against a damaging administration into a frenzy they then had to control, through further intimidation and harassment.

Pictures are going up here.

Follow me on twitter for regular updates: superanne

Check here for updates or whatever I can find.

I am deeply disappointed in your lack of coverage given to the police actions taken by the St. Paul Police at the Republican National Convention.

There is plenty of proof of police misconduct on YouTube including pre-convention raids of peacefully assembled journalists. Even award-winning journalist Amy Goodman and two of her producers were arrested for trying to film the police actions.

I always believed that people who feel they are being heard are less likely to shout, less likely to become aggressive. Perhaps if anti-war protesters were given a voice, were given a platform in mainstream media the way the protesters at the Democratic Convention were given, they would not feel a need to take such drastic action.

I’m ashamed of the mainstream media and of the Times Union. I sometimes have to wonder what country I live in. It’s not the America I was taught about in my history class.

This is an unbelieveable story. Where on earth do I live anyway? The story broke on Monday where I first read about it on feministing.com. This was after I saw footage of her heroic attempt to find out why housing for journalists were being raided in St. Paul prior to the RNC.

But Democracy Now! does a great job reporting the whole RNC riots in it’s Sept 2nd show. At least watch the first third of this incredible video. It’s gripping.

I’m writing a latter to the editor now.

Lapriss Gilbert was forced to “leave a federal building”: after a guard in the Social Security office told her that her “lesbian.com” shirt was offensive.

She said the guard, who works for a private company hired by the Department of Homeland Security, demanded that she leave the building or face arrest.

“As an African-American and a lesbian, I haven’t been through one day without facing some sort of discrimination … but this is just shocking,” said Gilbert, 31.

A witness, Paul Dumont said, “For her to be told to leave was completely unnecessary, especially considering how peaceful and quiet she was responding the the security officers.” In his statement to police Dumont noted that the guard’s “loud, unreasonable, aggressive and angry approach to the situation almost caused chaos.”

Via the f word.

I would have been arrested if I had been there.

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been a “war against women” in which thousands of women and girls have been raped with the intent to destroy their families and communities. All parties to the conflict have committed this violence but an overwhelming number of these crimes have gone unpunished. Last year, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women noted that “impunity for rape is massive” and that “soldiers or police who commit these acts amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes are rarely held to account.” The United States Congress must condemn this ongoing violence against women and girls, and must work to end impunity in cases of sexual and gender-based violence and provide greater assistance to survivors.

Learn more.

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G8 ‘must make birth safe’  

Date: Sunday, July 06, 2008
Source: BBC News

As the G8 summit in Japan opens, Carolyn Miller, chief executive of the medical aid agency Merlin, argues for a push to cut deaths during childbirth in the developing world.

It is often said the health of a nation can be measured by its women. Yet one woman dies in childbirth every minute.

Half a million women die in childbirth each year, entirely unnecessarily – nearly all of these deaths could be prevented if the women had access to a skilled birth attendant.

The leaders of the world’s richest countries at the G8 summit have an opportunity to change this.

Click here for full article.

No, this isn’t a human rights sort of post. I’m just so steamed by Chrysler’s new campaign to sell off their gas guzzlers.

They are offering $2.99 gas for three years if you buy their cars. And the bigger the guzzle, the larger the allotment of gas.

So if you buy a heavy duty truck that gets 15 MPG, you can take advantage of the offer with 2,500 gallons per year. If you get their most fuel efficient car at 24 MPG (that’s it?????) you get 1,500 gallons.

I’m just disgusted.