Escorting at Clinics: 40 Days for “Life”
Via Bitch Ph.D.: Operation Rescue will be protesting women’s health clinics across the country from September 23 to November 1 for their self-proclaimed 40 Days for “Life.” What are the 40 Days for “Life”? Their website claims,
40 Days for Life is a community-based campaign that draws attention to the evil of abortion through the use of a three-point program:
* Prayer and fasting
* Constant vigil
* Community outreach40 Days for Life takes a determined, peaceful approach to showing local communities the consequences of abortion in their own neighborhoods, for their own friends and families. It puts into action a desire to cooperate with God in the carrying out of His plan for the end of abortion in America.
I am a clinic escort at Planned Parenthood and on top of the usual protesters that show up every Monday and Saturday, my clinic was already targeted for the 40 Days for “Life” earlier this year. I can tell you that the 40 Days for “Life” are less about peaceful Christian fellowship than about harassing, intimidating, and shaming girls and women for going to Planned Parenthood, whether it’s for their annual check up or for an abortion. The protesters at my clinic carry giant signs with pictures of what they claim are aborted fetuses (said pictures look like dismembered plastic dolls covered in kung pao chicken sauce, but that’s just my non-medical expert opinion), which are meant to horrify and scare women and girls. They yell at the top of their lungs that anyone who goes into Planned Parenthood will go to Hell. They hand out pamphlets proclaiming the lie that abortion causes breast cancer. They shout, “Adoption is a better option.” With the pictures, pamphlets, and physical intimidation, the protesters try to prevent girls and women from entering the clinic, so that they won’t receive the medical care that they have chosen and need. Additionally, after Scott Roeder murdered Dr. Tiller, when any person with a sense of compassion or two brain cells to rub together would have realized that clinic patients, workers and escorts would be feeling rattled and scared for their safety, the local protesters stepped up their harassment. In an email shortly after the murder, my clinic’s escort coordinator wrote,
Since the appalling murder of Dr. Tiller, our protesters decided to show up the Tuesday before last … And one staff member told us that because there were no escorts present they were fairly aggressive. We had escorts at this clinic this Tuesday and although one of our regular protesters drove by, he didn’t stop because we were there.
and in a later email,
I’m truly amazed at the right wing response to Dr. Tiller’s death – how outrageous can they be? I thought that our protesters would be kinder/gentler and its simply unbelievable that they’re getting more aggressive. I (mistakenly) thought that our protesters would behave.
In retrospect, I believe that the protesters stepped up their harassment because they knew that people would be frightened by the murder, and they wanted to capitalize on that. Hardly a Christian attitude.
ACTION ITEM: The 40 Days for “Life” are targeting clinics across the country. Their website has a list of the locations. Check to see if they’re protesting in your area, and if they are, contact the clinic to see if they could use your help. Search for volunteer opportunities at Planned Parenthood here.
The “peaceful” approach of the anti-choice protesters includes:
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “You’re killing your baby! Murderer!”
- Approaching girls and women and attempting to step between them and the clinic entrance, while shoving pamphlets about adoption and lies about abortion at them.
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “Do you know what they do in there? They kill babies! If you kill your baby, you will go to Hell!”
- Approaching girls and women and yelling, “Adoption is a better option!”
- Setting up a sidewalk altar near the clinic entrance with statues of Mary and Jesus. Kneeling in front of the altar and praying loudly.
- Standing near the clinic entrance in groups of three or more and loudly saying the rosary.
- Standing near the clinic entrance in groups of as many as six or more and yelling at the clinic escorts: “You will burn in the flames of hell! And when you have a baby, God will kill him because of your evil!”
- Setting up chairs and a stereo on the opposite side of the street and blasting anti-choice Christian music.
- Holding large signs with graphic images that purport to depict aborted fetuses.
- Repeatedly violating San Francisco’s bubble ordinance by approaching patients as they exit and enter the clinic.
Far from depiction of the small, lone teenager that protests the abortion clinic in Juno, the protesters at my local clinic range in number from three to more than fifteen, often arrive in shifts, range in age from teenage to elderly, are male and female, are vocal, are loud, are physically intimidating, and often gang up on clinic patients so that patients must physically shove through them to get to the clinic. Yes, they are ridiculous, but their intent is to intimidate any girl or woman who so much as passes by a Planned Parenthood.
If you can, please consider finding the time to help out your local clinic by volunteering as a clinic escort or in another capacity. Escorts present a welcoming face to patients and employees as they go in and out of the clinic; deter the protesters from escalating their intimidation and aggressiveness; and help patients avoid the protesters, inasmuch as it’s possible.
More reading: Think Progress on Operation Rescue and Roeder
Shakesville: Breaking the Silence: On Living Pro-Lifers’ Choice for Women – a guest post about giving a child up for adoption.
Prop. 8 Case
[I wrote most of this on Wednesday and hadn't finished it by the time the Court announced that it would be ruling on Prop. 8 on Tuesday, May 26 (PDF).]
So, head down in cooking, dance class, going out, and figuring out things with the +1, I’ve mostly put thoughts of Prop. 8 out of my head. The CA Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments back in March and had 90 days from that date to issue their ruling. Since all the protests last fall and winter, I’ve dropped out of the local activist scene entirely. When the oral hearings began, I marked down the 90th day out in my planner and then avoided thinking about it.
June 4: dinner for three at Maverick. June 5: Court ruling? Schubert's Great at the SF Symphony
June was tucked safely away behind many, many pages in my planner, but now, it’s nearly here. The Court normally publishes opinions on Mondays and Thursdays, with announcements of forthcoming opinion filings going up the Friday or Wednesday before. Next Monday is Memorial Day and so any opinion that would have been published on Monday will be published on Tuesday, with an announcement going up on the website on Friday. According to Day of Decision, the Court will rule by June 3, which leaves three possible dates for the ruling: Tuesday (5/26), Thursday (5/28), and Tuesday (6/2). God, we’re so close.
This decision will be a ruling once more on our humanity, on our dignity and our worth as equal human beings. Yes, the ruling is about marriage rights, but it’s apparent from looking at the ads and rhetoric of the anti-marriage equality side that the issue at hand is much broader. Are GLBTQI people indeed people, or are we monsters? By virtue of our nature, do we deserve to be shoved into the closet and hidden away so that we don’t corrupt the minds of (assumed to be straight) little children with our existence? Are our lives political footballs to be punted around for points until the election’s over and we’re told to just wait a little longer, our expectations are unreasonable and our demands unimportant?
I’m not married and never plan to be unless it’s fully legal everywhere in the country. At the moment, I’m going out with a straight man. And still, this ruling matters to me, because it’s a judgment on my very worth and dignity as a human being. I know that eventually, Prop. 8 will be repealed, if not in the next two weeks then in the next decade or so. That is cold comfort, though, and the legal justifications for upholding Prop. 8 are equally cold comfort. No matter how much I cherish rationality, logic, and the rule of law over emotions, there comes a time when the law is wrong and people of principle must not acquiesce to it.
I love this city and I love this state, but if the government decides once again that I do not have the rights to equality that are inherent to me by virtue of my humanity, if it decides once again to codify my second-class status into law, not content to leave it unspoken, assumed, and societally enforced, what place will there be for me here?
Yesterday was the thirtieth anniversary of the White Night Riots (h/t Faith). This summer will see the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Activism and change are not always peaceful, are not always conducted within the stately halls of the legislature by calm, soft-spoken people who are expected to sigh, shrug philosophically, and accept it when their humanity is decried and they are accused of being perverts, child molesters, unnatural, disgusting, sick, sinners, and abominations that will destroy society. Homophobes unleash hatred and vitriol and attack GLBTQI people and batter and kill them. And yet, it is we who are admonished not to raise a fuss, not to defend ourselves, not to overreact, not to say a word about our lived experience of homophobia.
But how can you overreact to the persistent harassment and persecution? The admonishments to behave lest there be a backlash and the demands to go quietly into the good night, those are demands to keep heterosexism in place. Those are demands to not disturb the status quo and not disturb the illusion that things are OK and that queers will get our rights some day, if we only wait long enough and quietly enough, closeted enough. Those are demands to not make people uncomfortable with the fact that homophobia is a constant, active presence for most people who aren’t straight. Those are demands to hide our dead and our wounded.
Every time I go home to my parents’ house and see their old church friends, I get asked if I have a boyfriend. They assume I’m straight. They all voted yes on Prop. 8. I want to tell them that no, I don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and thus challenge their default assumption of straightness by making it clear that loving a girlfriend is an option for me. I have to weigh that against my parents’ reaction, though, because if I so much as mention Prop. 8, homophobia, queer rights, or anything queer-related, let alone suggest that I’m not straight, my mother will pitch a screaming fit. She’ll ask me why I have to be so “outspoken,” why I have to talk about “those people,” why I can’t just “get along,” why I have to make everything “political,” why I can’t just be “quiet.” She’ll sulk the rest of the weekend and potentially for weeks afterward. She’ll never acknowledge that by demanding that I not disturb the social peace, she’s demanding that I lie about myself and hide. She’ll never acknowledge that she’s flaunting her heterosexuality every time she goes somewhere with her husband, calls him “honey,” and invites people over to the home that they’ve made together, where there are pictures of our smiling family all around the house: female parent, male parent, and two kids. She’ll say that her old friends have “the right to have their own opinions,” not realizing or not caring that those opinions are hatred for her daughter. Sure, our family friends think queers are sick and perverted sinners, but in my mom’s mind, saving face and preserving the gay atmosphere of a dinner party is more important than how I feel about breaking bread and quietly sitting at a table with people that say that people like me are subhuman, enjoined to say nothing in my own defense. The church friends don’t know they’re talking about me when they say that gay couples will destroy marriage, but I’m not allowed to tell them they are talking about me. I’m out of the closet everywhere but at my parents’ house, even though I’ve come out to my immediate family. For the sake of the fragile peace with my mother, I’m a hypocrite.
I believe in the importance of being out and used to speak about it as the most important component of changing the hearts and minds of Prop. 8 supporters. They assumed they didn’t know anyone who was queer and so they voted for Prop. 8. If they knew that their daughters, parents, children, friends, colleagues, and neighbors were queer, that would do more to change their minds about GLBTQI equality than anything else. That is what I said. For the sake of family, though, I’m not living what I believe: I’m out to my friends, out to my family, and have no problem talking with homophobes, but the stress of parental relationships makes me a hypocrite at heart. I’d rather keep the peace with my mother than live according to my principles and correct their friends when they assume I’m straight or go on about Prop. 8. I dread going to my parents’ house if I know that their church friends will be around. And it’s all my fault, of course, for having the temerity to think that I deserve equal rights and for thinking that I should be unashamed of who I am, rather than hiding in the closet.
I think P#1 knows I’m queer, given that I’ve mentioned working with Marriage Equality and local activists on Prop. 8 protests. There are also pictures of me wearing an “IN love with my girlfriend” t-shirt floating around on Facebook. If I were in his shoes, I would assume queerness, but I tend not to assume that someone’s straight unless ze explicitly says as much. Whatever way the ruling goes, it’ll open up a chance for conversation–either way, I’ll call him up for drinks, whether it’s, “CELEBRATORY DRINKS W00T!!” or, “I need to cry on someone’s shoulder.” I hope he understands.
The mess that is my mother’s uncomfortable relationship with my non-straight sexual orientation is a major part of why I haven’t told them about P#1 and don’t plan to either, in the foreseeable future. My mother would be relieved that I’m seeing a straight man and would assume that it’d mean that GLBTQI rights don’t matter to me anymore and would assume that it makes me not-queer enough to not care about GLBTQI equality. As much as she yells at me now for so much as mentioning Prop. 8 in casual conversation with family friends, it would be even worse if I told her about P#1, because she’d think that, since I’m seeing a man, Prop. 8 and homophobia have no relevance to my life.
I can’t deal with this. The Court is ruling on Tuesday.
I’m still bitter that when I organized a protest against Prop. 8, not only did my mother try to convince me that I shouldn’t and couldn’t do it, neither of my parents bothered to show up or even wish me good luck. I think that that action, right there, said everything I needed to know about how they feel about me, despite all my mother’s pretty words about how it’s okay that I’m queer. When I came out to her and my father, she said that, and then she yelled at me because she thought I was having a hard time with the conversation–”Is it so hard to talk to us about this? Are you so scared?” Yes, mother, I was scared, because your words say one thing and your actions say something completely different. You lie.
If I can’t feel safe and comfortable in my own skin with my parents, what else is left? We’ve never been close, but I guess I just need to get used to having this icy patch between us: we’ll skirt around it but never broach the topic directly, because it just won’t be productive.
In Defense of Life
Womens’ lives, that is. Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two landmark cases that recognized that women are thinking, intelligent human beings capable of making decisions; autonomous human beings that have the right to bodily integrity, beings that own the flesh they inhabit. Women are human beings, not property, and it is their right to decide whether they’ll abort, prevent, or carry a pregnancy. No one else, not her pastor, her family, her politicians, or anti-choicers who’ve never met her, has the right to make or limit that decision.
Every year, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) introduces the Sanctity of Life Act:
H.R. 227: 1/7/2009–Introduced.
Sanctity of Human Life Act – Declares that: (1) the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human and is the person’s paramount and most fundamental right; (2) each human life begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent, at which time every human has all legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood; and (3) Congress, each state, the District of Columbia, and all U.S. territories have the authority to protect all human lives.
I’m not linking to it,* but Broun posted this statement on Redstate:
As we ring in the New Year and begin the 111th Congress, the need to protect the unborn remains front and center in the national political debate. Each year, in keeping with my promise to my constituents, the first bill I introduce provides Constitutional protections to unborn children.
His first bill, his trademark, his symbolic opening every year, is a bill that proclaims that women have fewer rights to their bodily integrity than corpses; that women cannot and should not make decisions for themselves; that women are worthless and unintelligent. He stakes his commitment not to human rights, or fighting poverty, or helping children get a good education, or ending war, or making healthcare affordable, but to degrading and infantilizing women. Broun is a symbol of the stubbornly misogynistic anti-choice movement and their determination to destroy our rights wholesale, if we do not remain wary and committed to fighting for reproductive justice.
The 2009 Blog for Choice topic is “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new Congress?”
My answer: Repeal the global gag rule immediately. I was hoping that Obama would do that via executive order today, as Clinton did on the 20th anniversary of Roe in 1993, or explicitly repeal the HHS rule change, but he’s failed to do so thus far.
You have to be pro-choice every day, or the anti-choicers will win. This Saturday, 1/24, the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR) is staging a pro-choice, pro-GLBTQI, pro-immigrant rights rally at Market & Embarcadero, to protest the Walk for “Life” WC.* The Walk for “Life” brings tens of thousands of anti-choice misogynists to San Francisco’s Embarcadero to demonstrate against the humanity of women. The anti-choicers have historically outnumbered the pro-choicers, so please come out! There will also be a pro-GLBTQI “Pieces of 8″ performing arts street fair along Embarcadero, celebrating creativity, love, and civil rights.
* As part of general SEO strategies and not driving traffic/revenue to offensive sites, I’m not going to link to sites I find offensive. In the interests of citing and being accountable, though, I will provide enough information that anyone interested in doing so will be able to find the original post or image herself.
Frivolity
I’ve been busy ever since … since sometime before the election. Actually, it became more intense after the election, because I’ve been volunteering with some of the GLBTQI rights efforts that have been going on since Prop. 8 passed. So, since off- and on- line stuff is eating up my life and upping my stress levels and blood pressure, I’m going to mostly be posting amusing and lighthearted stuff here. For nuanced, informed social commentary, I suggest you look elsewhere.
This is what my schedule looks like:
week one: volunteer volunteer volunteer
week two: collapse into burned out state, retreat from online world, and read food books as escapist pseudo-vacation
week three: volunteer volunteer volunteer
week four: contemplate giving up the volunteer thing in state of burnout and wonder, “I put grad school off for this?”
etc. Also add “neglect friends, family, letters, cooking, laundry, regular showering, blogosphere, flist, and renewing library books” to weeks where I volunteer rather than hide in my flat with the French Laundry cookbooks and Ruhlman’s entire oeuvre.
Of the good: I’m going to see Lang Lang with the symphony tomorrow night, and the Adler Fellow Gala Concert on Saturday.
Of the bad: No one is coming to the Adler concert with me. Someone was supposed to come and bailed for Tahoe. >:O
Of the worse: Having increasingly difficult time not telling some other volunteers to boil their heads with root vegetables and fuck off with their “I think someone should do XYZ” comments, which are inevitably followed up with someone else saying, “That’s a great idea, can you organize that?” and the original speaker staring at their shoes, being silent, and then saying, “Well, it’s very difficult and so I think someone [else] should do XYZ.”
So, just in case y’all have been wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been buried in either activist work or in reading The French Laundry Cookbook concurrently with The French Laundry At Home.
Protesting
One of the things I like about SF is its active activist (ha!) culture…in other words, don’t forget about the marriage equality rally this Saturday at SF City Hall. Looks like stuff is going on all over the Bay Area, nationwide, and INTERNATIONALLY O_o, actually!
I’ll be at the rally this Saturday, hope to see you there, although I doubt we’ll be able to find each other in the crowd. :/
Protest8SF: Prop. 8 Protest 11/15, 10:30 A.M. City Hall
JoinTheImpact (their servers have been overloaded, so the site might be down) is organizing a national day of GLBTQI rights protests: Saturday, Nov. 15, 10:30 A.M. Pacific / 1:30 P.M. Eastern at your city hall. There’s quite a long list of protests at the site and lots of people are stepping up to organize protests in various cities and states across the nation. Check it out – there might already be a protest in your city and if there’s not, you can start one! I think this could be really powerful. The anger and energy coming out of the GLBTQI + allies community is astounding and although it’s in immediate reaction to the anti-marriage equality bans, we can make it much bigger than that: marriage equality, a fully inclusive ENDA, a GLBTQI hate crimes act (that absolutely must include transpeople, since they are so often the victims of vicious violence that is ignored or turned into joke fodder), the repeal of DADT, insert your hopes and dreams here. This movement is our movement: yours and mine and everyone else’s. This is a big grassroots movement and grassroots movements are led by ordinary citizens-turned-activists that grab megaphones and take a step forward, leading everyone else with them.
As Redstar points out, one of the side effects of the Obama campaign and, indeed, the many political campaigns that just concluded is that there are now thousands, if not millions of people that are trained in grassroots organizing. There are people that know what a campaign needs, people that know how to organize people, people that know how to organize events, people that know how to organize publicity, people that know how to phonebank and distribute fliers and spread publicity online and go door to door and fundraise. All of these people can take their skills and turn them to social justice and civil rights causes. I got my training from recruiting volunteers in person and phonebanking for the No on 4 and No on 8 campaigns and seeing how they organized their statewide and local strategy. The Yes on K campaign did an amazing job of building coalitions with local political parties, clubs, social justice causes, reaching out to minority communities, and getting their message out in local, national, and alternative media. Years ago, I managed online and offline publicity for a nonprofit cause. I can use these tools and experiences and so can the many people that got their first tastes of activism in this election cycle. The question is how to harness their energy, knowledge, and experience for social justice causes? Personally, I’d like to get more involved in the immigrant rights movement and I’ll have to look into that. But I digress.
In my own fabulous city of SF, on Friday night there was a great, spontaneous, grassroots & netroots march from Hallidie Plaza through the Castro to Dolores Park and then back to the steps of City Hall, where drag queen Pollo Del Mar spoke and charged everyone present to go back into their communities and spread the word. I have lots of great pictures from the march and I’ll put them up sooner or later. Probably later and probably on Picasa or flickr – uploading a lot of photos to WordPress is both timeconsuming and annoying.
Upcoming protests: I mentioned JoinTheImpact at the beginning of this post, and I’ll end with them. There is a JTI protest scheduled for 11/15, 10:30 A.M. at San Francisco City Hall (google map address). The folks at Protest8SF.wordpress.com are working on organizing it: they have a preliminary to do list, fliers for publicity, and a googlegroups list serv that anyone can join to help with the organizing. If you’re in SF, check out the website to see if you can help and definitely come to the rally! If you’re not in SF, please pass the links along and spread the word.
Web organizing techniques + community organizing techniques + campaign techniques = much easier to organize social justice movements? Y/N? I’ll have to think about this.
ETA: thatonegaykid says that there is a JoinTheImpact protest 11/15 in Orange County, 1 P.M. at Irvine City Hall. Please get in touch with her (thatonegaykid.wordpress.com)to find out more!
Prop. 8 Protests
The Equality California calendar has protest events listed:
Today, Friday:
Costa Mesa
9 p.m. | South Coast Plaza
Bristol Street & Town Center DriveLong Beach
6:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. | Broadway and RedondoMerced
6 p.m. | Veterans Park, M Street
Contact: Leslie or Eileen, PLFLAG Merced 209.725.1140Mission Viejo
4 to 7 p.m. | 200 Civic CenterPalm Springs
5 p.m. | Palm Springs City HallSanta Barbara
5 p.m. to 6 p.m. | De La Guerra Plaza Street
700-756 De La Guerra PlazaSan Diego.
9 p.m. | Laurel and Sixth Avenue
March to City Hall (202 C)San Francisco
5:30 p.m. | Civic Center
Market and 7th to Dolores Park
Saturday
Beverly Hills
6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. | LDS Temple
10777 Santa Monica BoulevardHuntington Beach
2 p.m. Huntington Beach PierLaguna Beach – Faith has more information
5:30 p.m. | City Hall
505 Forest Avenue
Marching to Main BeachLos Angeles
6 p.m. | Sunset Junction
Silver LakeRancho Cucamonga
11 a.m. | Heritage Park
5546 Beryl Street
Please bring a chair with you! You may also bring a dish or desserts, drinks, cups, paper plates, etc. if you want.
RSVP: patrickmilliner@yahoo.comSacramento
7 p.m. | Capitol Building (west steps)
Bring Signs, Wear Protest Shirts. People from SF will be showing up at the West Steps to show support with us.San Diego
12 Noon | Hillcrest
1st & University
Marching to 30th in North Park.
Sunday
Rancho Santa Margarita
5 p.m. to 8 p.m. | Lake Santa Margarita
Santa Margarita Pkwy
Please bring candles.
Contact: teenageanthem@gmail.comVilsalia
5 p.m. | College of the Sequoias
915 S. Mooney Boulevard
March down Mooney Boulevard to Caldwell Avenue and back.
Park in Lot 3 off Meadow Lane.
Leave signs at home and bring a candle instead.
This is history in the making. This is civil rights. This is standing up and publicly showing support for GLBTQI people, marriage rights, fairness, and equality for all. Come and be present.
Yes on Prop. 8: The Aftermath
Yes on Prop. 8: the Aftermath
Yes: 5,387,939 / 52.5%
No: 4,883,460 / 47.5%
Difference: 504,479
Total: 10,271,399
I’ll put up county-specific data later.
Via Spectrum Blue, Protest 8, a blog organizing protests in SF. There’s one tonight at 5:30 at Market and 7th. Be there and bring your old window signs.
BBC Video of LAPD beating an anti-Prop. 8 protestor – via someone, I lost the link.
Faith is pulling together a list of Yes on Prop. 8 donor-run businesses to boycott. Before anyone gets all het up about freedom of speech, let me say this: I absolutely support peoples’ rights to vote yes on Prop. 8 and for any other Godforsaken, appalling initiative or campaign. I absolutely support their right to donate as much money as they like in accordance with their bigoted, disgusting beliefs. The corollary to that is that I have every right to boycott their establishments and remove my support from their businesses. This is not censorship. This is freedom of speech x 2 – their freedom of speech and my freedom of speech. There is nothing that requires me to give my money to people that turn around and give that money to causes I find reprehensible. A boycott is an act of free expression counteracting another act of free expression, and banning, censoring, or repressing boycotts is the true instance of repression and censorship.
Besides, a lot of you Yes on 8 voters are probably free market types. Boycotts in response to the political donations of businesspeople are a classic example of consumers freely exercising their abilities to choose where to take their business, after a particular establishment proves unsatisfactory. It’s the invisible hand at work! Wrap your head around that.
Pam on the Religious Right’s probable next steps. From the President of the Christian Coalition of America:
“It will be the goal of Christian Coalition to ensure that the other 20 states adopt similar amendments banning homosexual “marriages” including the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut which also had two judicial decisions, by one vote margins, legalizing these abominations.”
Robert @ Calitics: Pledge to Repeal Prop 8: Restore Marriage Equality
Via aaa, a press release from CAMPAIGN for Children and Families: they intend to make sure the initiative applies retroactively.
“Today, marriage licenses can only go to whom they were originally intended — a man and a woman, a bride and a groom. The people of California have successfully overruled the judges and politicians and restored marriage licenses to a man and a woman. Now the false marriages done this summer must be declared null and void. California law now says the only valid or recognized marriage ‘is’ between a man and a woman. The ballot arguments specify that the only marriages are between a man and a woman, ‘regardless of when or where performed.’ It is time for all Californians to respect the new marriage law, which has restored an age-old institution, whether they voted for or against Prop. 8.”
They are also pissed off about losing on Prop. 4. I will post my thoughts about Prop. 4 later.
Via Elena Perez, the CA NOW blog has two posts up on Prop. 8: Prop 8 Postmortem, Part 1: Dissecting History covers the legal arguments behind the SF, LA, Santa Clara County, Lambda Legal, and National Center for Lesbian Rights lawsuits.
“But, Meredith,” I hear you say, “this is a constitutional amendment — aren’t the Supreme Court’s hands tied?” Actually, due to the approach the plaintiffs are taking, the CA Supreme Court does have the ability to consider this. The legal reasoning behind the lawsuits is interesting, and if you live in California, it’s worth your time to understand it.
Prop 8 Postmortem, Part 2: Dissecting the Present: looking at the impact of Prop. 8 on married couples.
ACLU Press release on the lawsuits. Includes a link to request for a stay on Prop. 8.
ACLU Press Release: argues that Prop. 8 does not apply retroactively. Fortunately, State Attorney General Jerry Brown is on our side.
SFChron: Same-sex marriage issue back to state top court. More on the lawsuit. I hope to God that this doesn’t come up before the SCOTUS anytime soon and stays in the state courts. I do not trust Kennedy on this and it’s going to be a 5-4 vote at the best, with three strict constructionists and one follows-Scalia-ist on the court. Korematsu has been much on my mind of late – another civil rights case originating from California – and it stands as a stark reminder that the court is not infallible, it is not all-knowing, it is not always just, and it most certainly is not always liberal or non-partisan. If anything, Bush v. Gore should remind us all of that.
SFChron: 2,000 gather in SF for same-sex marriage vigil – article about the Wednesday protest.
Julia @ Calitics: Prop 8: Questions about what went wrong, so we can fix it for next time. I do have to say that during the campaign season, I thought the No on Prop. 4 campaign was much more organized than the No on Prop. 8 campaign, although it had much less money and much fewer volunteers (the biggest day of phonebanking for No on 4: 150 volunteers statewide. A regular No on 8 phonebanking night in October: 110 volunteers in the SF office alone.).
Dear Speaker Pelosi
What are you declaring off the table now? Progressivism? Liberalism? Reform? (SFChron)
“the new president must take the country down the middle”
In other words, women, GLBTQI, non-millionaires, vets, members of the military, and the environment: don’t bother trying to crawl out from underneath the bus. Pelosi intends to keep steering it right over our bodies.
A Democratic candidate just won the popular and electoral votes and the Democrats picked up seats in the House and the Senate, and you use your bully pulpit as a leading Democratic politician and Speaker of the House to essentially concede the strength and PR capital of those victories? Shame on you. Shame.
Sincerely,
PD
The results of CA Congressional District 8:
| Candidate | Votes | Percentage |
| Nancy Pelosi (D, Incumbent) | 126,073 | 71.6% |
| Dana Walsh (R) | 16,149 | 9.2% |
| Philip Z. Berg (Libertarian) | 4,024 | 2.2% |
| Cindy Sheehan (Green) | 29,951 | 17.0% |
Looking at those results, it appears that Cindy Sheehan got crushed in a landslide. Well, she did. However, Sheehan ran a grassroots campaign without the backing, guidance, and infrastructure of an established political party. She was a stranger to the political landscape of San Francisco, with its many political clubs, groups, and unions. She was almost completely ignored by the mainstream press, except when they wanted to paint her as unhinged, paranoid, and dare I say it, hysterical candidate on a vanity run, completely overlooking and hiding her policy goals and criticisms of mainstream Dems, Pelosi, and the media. And yet, despite all those obstacles, Sheehan received nearly twice as many votes as the Republican candidate and far more than the Republican and Libertarian candidates combined.
Cindy Sheehan received a mere 17.0% of the vote, but here’s the kicker: until yesterday, Nancy Pelosi had never received less than 76% of the vote in any general election race for Congress. Cindy Sheehan received 29,951 votes, which is more than any of the non-Dem/Repub candidates have ever garnered against Pelosi. It’s more than seven out of Pelosi’s 11 Republican challengers have ever received, including Dana Walsh. Jennifer DePalma received 31,074 votes, which was 12%, back in 2004, and in 1994, Elsa Cheung received 18%, with 30,528 votes.
It’s hard to say what will happen next and what this election means. Most likely, it means nothing as far as making Pelosi realize that a large number of her constituents are liberal and pissed as hell with her performance. As far as Sheehan is concerned, according to an email the CindyForCongress campaign sent out a few weeks ago, she’s renewed the lease on her office and is planning on continuing her antiwar advocacy work and running again in 2010. As far as I’m concerned, Sheehan’s candidacy is terribly inspirational. It’s a reminder that although this country was not founded on the ideal of participatory, equal democracy, where any citizen theoretically has the right to mount a campaign and take an active part in the governing of her society, it has evolved so far as to think that it was founded on that ideal. Sheehan reminds me of Senator Murray and former Governor Madeline Kunin, women who were just ordinary women–”just a mom in tennis shoes,” and a professor and mom that entered her first political race by accident–until they believed that they could do a better job of running their states than the people in power at the time, and went on to be great public servants and politicians.
To me, Cindy Sheehan’s campaign represents faith in the people, in the democratic process, and in participatory democracy, and a burning desire to make the world a better place. Although she lost, she put her ideals into action through her campaign and that’s fully something I can understand and get behind.
When You Have Something To Lose / The Fragility of Hope
I’m nervous, excited, and sick to my stomach. I want to campaign all day and watch the results come in once the polls close. I want to go to sleep or hide under my desk until November 5, when the city and state results will have been confirmed. I’m afraid that we’ll lose on 4, 8, and K. I’m excited that we might, we just might win.
I was at Election Day training for No on Prop. 8 last night and the room was packed. There were easily over 100 volunteers there, many of them first time volunteers ready to learn how they could reach out to voters on Tuesday and get every vote possible. The organizers said that they had Election Day volunteers in every county in California and they were trying to fill 7,500 shifts. Each volunteer is expected to reach 100 voters per shift. 7,500 shifts x 100 voters/shift = 750,000 voters reached = “The biggest LGBT election event in history.” The energy and excitement in that room was palpable. Hundreds of people came together to learn what they could do to raise their voices and hands on Tuesday and take part in our participatory democracy.
Later
No on Prop. 4 had its biggest phonebank yet tonight, with 150 volunteers making calls statewide and 82 of us at the SF site. The goal was to reach 24,000 voters identified as No voters during previous phonebanks, and we did that by 8:15.
Tomorrow, I’m doing voter outreach with No on Prop. 4 and No on Prop. 8 and either squishing in Yes on K outreach during the afternoon or doing more phonebanking with No on 4.
This election is the first time I’ve been heavily involved, both as an observer and as a volunteer. It’s been an education and I finally hammered out a liberal, progressive, activist personal philosophy that’s been a year in developing. The influences of writers, bloggers, campaigns, my personal liberalism, and historical examples built on each other to bring me to who I am now.
The knowledge that poll lines close at 8 P.M. tomorrow looms as a relief and a deadline; I want it to come and yet, I dread it. Every moment between 7 A.M. and 8 P.M. tomorrow is a chance to talk to voters and persuade them and make a difference. It’s a chance to live my liberal ideals and my belief in the democratic process, and do what’s right. For everything comes down to those three words. Do what’s right. Why? Because I can. I have the ability to stand on a sidewalk and wear my No on Prop. 4 tshirt and hand out fliers and talk to voters during rush hour, and so I must. I have the opportunity to vote and convince other voters and so I must.
I have the chance to make a difference and make a better world and so I must.
There’s no other reason, in the end.
Prop. 8 and Prop. 4 are tight races; depending on which polls you look at, Prop. 8 and Prop. 4 are winning by small margins or losing by small margins. Every vote absolutely matters in the down ticket races, so if you can spare a few minutes for phonebanking, talking to anyone that hasn’t voted, or wearing your No on 4 and No on 8 paraphernalia, please, please, for the love of god and my civil rights and the health and safety of teenage girls, please do it.
I’m not aware of any objective, statistically valid polls for Prop. K, but the campaign made the New York Times in a favorable article! (It also made The Economist, but in an anti-slanted article.) Vote YES on Prop. K to support sex workers’ rights!
All these races are uncertain. They might lose. They might win. The fragile, timorous feeling beating away in my chest must be hope. We might win, but the margin is so thin going into Election Day that I’m scared that we’ll lose. I will do everything I can to make sure we win, but until the votes are counted and the results are certified, I won’t know if we succeeded. I have so much more to lose when I have hope. It’s a delicate, frail thing and it only sprouted because we’ve come so close to the end: tomorrow, we will know if we succeeded or failed.
The feeling of panic fluttering in the back of my mind urges me to do everything I can. I have hope and so now I have so much more to lose–and so much to win.
No on 4. No on 8. Yes on K.
Yes on Prop. K Town Hall!
Yes on Prop. K is holding an historic town hall and discussion panel today, 7 P.M. – 9 P.M., at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin St. (Franklin between Geary & O’Farrell).
Already support Prop. K? Come out and show your support! Meet the organizers and learn about easy ways to volunteer during the days of the campaign. Undecided about Prop. K? Come out and listen to sex worker activists, criminal attorneys, public health experts, local politicians, labor activists, and members of church, LGBTQI, and neighborhood communities speak for themselves about Prop. K. It’s a great opportunity to ask questions and get answers straight from the source, unfiltered by journalists (and bloggers, heh!).
For the last century, year after year, sex workers in SF have been hounded, arrested and jailed, evicted, raped and even murdered, their children taken away. Those of us who have least – often women of color – have received the brunt of this persecution. Why has our city famed for being open minded allowed this injustice to continue? Now we can make a change and win greater protection, well-being and safety for all. Join a cross section of communities who want to make this happen!
Speakers include: sex workers and sex worker organizations, criminal attorneys Nedra Ruiz, Stephanie Adraktas, Stuart Hanlon and David Bigeleisen, Conference of Delegates of California Bar Association, Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner, SF Green Party, neighborhood residents, church representatives, candidates for board of supervisor and other politicians, the LGBT community, labor representatives, and others.
- Prop K was put on the ballot by more than 12,000 San Franciscans to ensure that basic human and civil rights are extended to sex workers. It follows the recommendations of the path breaking SF Task Force on Prostitution.
- Prop K calls on the police to prioritize sex workers’ safety by vigorously enforcing coercion, extortion, battery, rape and other violent crimes.
- Prop K will end the criminalization of sex workers, many of whom are mothers trying to support their families in increasingly hard times. Criminalization traps sex workers in prostitution, increases vulnerability to violence and sets sex workers apart from the rest of the community.
- Prop K is an anti-racist initiative. Women of color are disproportionately arrested under the prostitution laws and make up the majority of women in prison.
- Prop K will not stop the prosecution of traffickers but will protect immigrant women from being targeted for arrest. According to the Public Defender, not one trafficker has been prosecuted in SF. However, many sex workers of color have been rounded up and deported.
Hope to see you there!
“I Want You To Be Nice To Sex Workers”
Last September, sex worker, pleasure activist, and artist Sadie Lune (NSFW) took first place at Tony Labat’s I Want You project at SFMOMA. As part of the contest, the five winners had their images and slogans turned into posters. I’d actually forgotten about that, but I can’t wait to see them go up all over the city. For one thing, it’s great, free publicity for Yes on Prop. K. For another, Sadie Lune’s poster looks fabulous and combines the personal, the political, and the artistic into a provocative political request:
I love that line, “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me.” I think a lot of the prejudice in society comes from a lack of imagination and an inability or an unwillingness to empathize with other people. That ignorance and lack of understanding results in fear of the unknown and then hostility, trying to keep the unknown as far away as possible. When it comes to sex work, that hostility manifests as criminalization, which drives sex workers underground and tries to lock them into jails, where they’re kept out of sight and thus out of mind. It’s the attitude of, “I can’t imagine being a sex worker and so I’ll punish them for making me think about it and feel uncomfortable–I’ll push them away so I don’t have to think about them–I don’t want to think about the issues and so I’ll just vote no on K to preserve the status quo.” “I want you to stop punishing me because you can’t imagine being me” looks that attitude of hostility, fear, ignorance, or just plain apathy in the face and says, “Stop. Think.” The combination of the image and the slogan says, “Stop. Think. I’m a real person, and your decisions affect me.”
“I want you to be nice to sex workers” is another powerful line, because it raises the question of what exactly it means to be nice to sex workers. How does one go about it? Does it mean being a good customer, respecting a sex worker’s rules and paying them well? Does it mean not harassing them? Does it mean not making dead hooker jokes? Does it mean supporting programs that help sex workers transition out, if they want to? Does it mean giving a damn when someone murders, rapes, or robs a sex worker and gets off with a slap on the wrist? Does it mean advocating for sex workers’ rights? Does it mean realizing that sex workers are no more a monolith than any other group of people? Does it mean not privileging the voices of non-sex workers over the voices of sex workers?
Does it mean listening to sex workers when they say what they want?
Questions, questions. The poster challenges the viewer and raises lots of questions. I love that.
Sadie Lune’s “I Want You,” video by activist, artist, and sex worker Scarlot Harlot (video NSFW):
Transcript:
[Organ grinder music]
[Applause]
I want you. I want you to listen to me, even if you think you’ve heard it before or don’t think I know how to speak for myself. I want you so bad, so bad right now–to respect me, and pay me, and understand that I do not sell myself, because I’m still here, and I’ve always been here.
I want you to know that I have your money. And your coworker’s money, and your father’s money has fed my family, and my rent, and my studies, and my habit, and my poverty, and my extravagance. And you might think that you don’t know me, but it’s more likely you just don’t know that you do.
I might want this job or hate it, but your condemnation and your ignorance and your accusations and your locking me down for my living, and your turning your back on my rape, and your knocking me off because you think no one cares, and your using me as the inhuman butt of your jokes–I want you to stop.
I want you to stop punishing me just because you may not be able to imagine being me.
I want you to be nice to sex workers. I want you, I really do. Please vote yes on Prop. K.
[applause]
———————————
I’m not a sex worker, and so although I can write about Prop. K, I’m trying to navigate the boundaries of privilege such that I don’t appropriate the sex worker activist movement or claim to speak for it. On the one hand, I’m writing about Prop. K the way I would write about any other ballot initiative–opining, navel-gazing, and analyzing–but I realize that in our anti-sex work society, my voice is privileged over the voices of actual sex workers. That’s wrong and I’m trying not to replicate that same power structure when I write, so if I fuck up and put my foot in it, please call me on it and I’ll fix it (I realize that asking for that guidance is in itself an act of privilege, but I’m not sure how else to say that I will inevitably fuck up, despite trying not to, and I welcome being told how I’ve fucked up. Perhaps the writer’s tag, “constructive criticism always welcome” would work?)
Out and About: Political Signs
A cafe window at Market and Castro.
Yes on Prop. K fliers on a pole on Market, near Embarcadero
Ferry Building Farmers Market: complete with McCain and Palin cutouts!
Ferry Building Farmers Market: opposite the McCain-Palin table, Obama-Biden (sadly, no cutouts).
Cindy Sheehan for Congress sign in an apartment window on Carl and Hilway.
I wanted photos of signs and political materials from around the city, but since I haven’t seen any No on Prop. 4 signage anywhere, here’s my window.
Schedule: T-19 Days
Week of Oct. 12
Monday: precinct dropping with Yes on Prop. K (dropping fliers at all the residential buildings in a precinct)
Tuesday: phonebanking with No on Prop. 8
Wednesday: Idomeneo at SF Opera!
Thursday: phonebanking with No on Prop. 4
Friday: precinct dropping
Saturday: pick up fliers for precinct dropping, pick up MUNI greeter stuff for No on Prop. 8
Weekdays mornings, M-F, 7-9: MUNI greeter for Prop. 8
Week of Oct. 19
Sunday: precinct dropping, Whores Against Wars: March 4 Sweeping Change
March 4 Sweeping Change
Sunday, October 19th
Gather at SF Ferry Building at 12:45pm
Community stroll will end by 3:00pm @ SF City HallBreak out your comfortable walking shoes and join sister maeJoy B. withU, Whores against Wars, sex workers for Prop. K, and other allies at the SF Ferry Building this Sunday, October 19th for a community stroll/penny drive in support of San Francisco’s Proposition K. The informal walk will begin at 1pm, travel down market street, and conclude by 3pm at SF City Hall. Bring drinking water and friends.
Monday: Phonebanking for Prop. 4
Tuesday: Phonebanking for Prop. 8
Wednesday: Boris Godunov at SF Opera
Thursday: Phonebanking for Prop. 8
Friday: Night off?!?!
Saturday: pick up fliers for precinct dropping
Weekdays mornings, M-F, 7-9: MUNI greeter for Prop. 8
Week of Oct. 26
Sunday: precinct dropping for Prop. K
Monday: Phonebanking for Prop. 4
Tuesday: Phonebanking for Prop. 8
Wednesday: L’Elisir d’Amore at SF Opera
Thursday: Phonebanking for Prop. 8
Friday: Night off?!?!
Saturday: pick up fliers for precinct dropping, Joshua Bell at SF Symphony
Weekdays mornings, M-F, 7-9: MUNI greeter for Prop. 8
Week of Nov. 2
Sunday: precinct dropping for Prop. K
Monday: Phonebanking for Prop. 4
Tuesday: ELECTION / visibility for Prop. 4
M-T, 7-9: MUNI greeter for Prop. 8
Among all that, there’s work, blogging, and apps. -headdesk-
Why do I care so much? Phonebanking is actually fun, but precinct dropping is exhausting and it’s easily two solid hours of walking and climbing stairs while lugging pounds of fliers. The idea of waking up in time to get to a MUNI station for rush hour at 7 A.M. so that I can stand and hold signs for two hours before going in to a full day at work, followed by more volunteer work, makes me cringe.
I care because I can’t not. No on Prop. 8 – this is my life. No on Prop. 4, Yes on Prop. K – they’re the right thing to do. This election matters; I won’t repeat the tripe that it’s the most important election of our lifetime because every single election is hyped as “the most important election of our lifetime.” That begs the question, anyway; the election is important because it matters, so why does it matter to me?
Equality. Justice. I learned when I was little that no one would recognize my rights if it was to their advantage not to. I learned the outlines of sexism and I didn’t see how much progress feminists had made; I saw how the same things that Laura Ingalls Wilder fought against were still present in the thoughts and actions of the society around me. I learned to be stubborn and to work; I learned that I could seethe and cry against injustice or I could fight back against it and change things for me and for every person to come after me.
The only reasons that I can even think about legalizing same-sex marriage and post No on 8 signs in my windows and announce that I’m queer on Facebook for everyone to see and talk about opposing Prop. 8 over coffee at work are the tireless work, the dedication, and the courage of the GLBTQI activists and allies that came before me. Their work, their resistance, their persistence are why I can stand in a MUNI station holding a No on Prop. 8 sign without even considering that I might be harassed when only four years ago, I most certainly would have been.
The only reason that I can argue for protecting a girl’s right to choose and argue that she has the right not to be considered the property of her parents, and that she especially deserves to protect herself from abusive parents, is the determination of the feminists, pro-choice activists, supporters, and doctors that refused to back down in the face of violent opposition. Their work, their resistance, their persistence are why I can call Republican voters for No on Prop. 4 and speak with women that say, “What’s Planned Parenthood saying? No? Planned Parenthood tells me to vote no on Prop. 4, that’s good enough for me.”
I honor my radical ancestors and the legacy they left to every person, which was to carry on their work and shape a fair, equal world. I volunteer for them, to change the world for myself, and to build up the foundations of justice and equality so that the people that come after me will start from a better place than I did.
There is injustice everywhere and it’s tiring to look at it day after day and run into obstacles, such as the man that told me, “I don’t think my wife needs to speak to anyone from Planned Parenthood! -click-” and the ex-friends that earnestly believe that Prop. 8 doesn’t take any rights away, it’s about protecting the children of heterosexual marriages! I get that. It’s tiring as fuck and you’d better believe I know it and that sometimes I see the allure of stepping back and not caring. I’m single. I’m over 18. I’m able-bodied, I’m not a sex worker, and I have a high-paying job. I’m a Korean-American, queer woman, but I have money and that gives me enough privilege that I could afford not to give a shit about anything if I didn’t want to. I don’t have to care about Prop. 4, Prop. 8, Prop. K, or anything else on the goddamned ballot if I don’t want to.
But I can’t not care. I can’t sit by and do nothing. The sacrifices of my predecessors, the hard work of my parents, and my work and class privilege put me in the comfortable position that I’m in now, and I have to use that to shape a world where everyone can have the option of that comfortable safety and freedom.
I know that the majority will never recognize the rights of a minority of their own volition, whether that minority is GLBTQI people, teenage girls, women, sex workers, or the people that exist at the intersections of those identities. The march of time is not inherently politically progressive and it only looks so in retrospect because of the people that pushed for progress every step of the way. The suffragettes thought that equality was around the corner any day now and that after the 19th amendment, the ERA would of course pass and shortly there would be no need for feminism. Yet earlier this year, the Senate blocked the Ledbetter Act, which would have required equal pay for equal work.
Time is not inherently progressive. The majority is not inherently progressive. And so I work.
MIA from Social Life
Yeah. The election’s Nov. 4 and I have quite a few ponies in the race. So, I’m just going to be upfront and say that I’m going to be bad at keeping in touch, phone calls, emails, IMs, and hanging out until Nov. 4, because not only is politics taking over my brain, it’s taking over my planner. I keep thinking that there’s not enough time to do everything I need to do and want to do, and all of it has to be done before Nov. 4., all of it has to be done asap for maximum exposure before the elections, it’s all time-intensive, blah blah blah raaghhh: that’s what the inside of my head looks like right now.
If you’d like to hang out, I’m phonebanking with No on Prop. 8 every Tuesday and No on Prop. 4 every Thursday, and I’m doing precinct walks (dropping off fliers) for Yes on Prop. K on various days/nights every week. I would love some company. Anyone up for precinct drops? It would be good hanging out time, and it’d go much faster with another person. -watches friends flee- Also, I forgot that October was the Month Of Music, so if anyone’s interested in coming along to Idomeneo, Boris Godunov, L’Elisir d’Amore, or Joshua Bell, let me know. -watches people run away even more quickly-
Kickass voter registration status tool for San Francisco-registered voters. It lets you check your registration status online.
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(my windows look something like that, minus the No on 8 sign, which I haven’t picked up yet)
No on Prop. 8: The Greatest Of These Is Love
Via Sarah in Chicago:
The election is in 26 days. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME ARGH -RUNS AROUND IN CIRCLES-
Okay, first things first. California voters: you have until Oct. 20 to register to vote. You have until seven (7) days before the election request a vote by mail/absentee ballot. If you vote absentee, you can return your ballot to any polling site or you can return your ballot by mail. If you mail your ballot, do so before Nov. 4, because it has to arrive by the end of the day, Nov. 4, in order to be counted.
Everyone else (sorry, I’m not looking up voting requirements for the other 49 states): you can find your state’s voting deadlines, forms, and contact information at Project Vote Smart’s state voter registration information page.
Read the rest of this entry »
Historic Sex Worker Campaign Event Lit Launch Party: Yes on K
Prop. K kickoff event this weekend in SF! Show up to show your support for sex workers’ rights! Info below:
Dear Friends,
This is not JUST a party or campaign lit launch. This is a crucial media event where we very much need your presence so that the public understands that we are a truly strong movement in San Francisco! Please attend if you are able.
Sincerely,
Carol LeighHistoric Sex Worker Campaign Event Lit Launch Party
Sex workers and their friends and allies will soon bring our message to the people of San Francisco. After a kick-off event featuring speeches and performances by sex workers and our allies, the Yes on Prop K campaign will hit the streets on October 4th to distribute our new literature.
This is an historic launch and a very important event. After seeing us turn out at Democratic County Central Committee and hearing from us through the campaign, many people are beginning to see that we are a thriving community and we are getting more and more organized as we join together for this historic campaign. Your support is most important for this event, to help us show our strength and passion as we work for the end the criminalization of prostitution in San Francisco.
If you want to volunteer to get the word out to invite others, please email us at propkvolunteers@gmail.com. We need help sending emails around and posting our notice around the web. But if you can’t volunteer in advance, just come down for the lit drop and we will plug you in!
DECRIM SEX WORKERS IN SF!
Saturday, October 4, 2008 1:00-2:00 (Please come close to 1:00, as many will be leaving en masse)
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission St., San Francisco
(between 11th St. & S. Van Ness)Join us for the kick-off of our flyering campaign for a party in support of Proposition K! Enjoy tasty treats and good company before heading off to spread the word on sex worker safety, public safety, and public health! Join our great supporters, folks from Center for Sex & Culture, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, SWOP, US PROS, BAYSWAN, IWW, The Harvey Milk Democratic Club and many, many more.
You can RSVP or get info: propkvolunteers@gmail.com
RECENT MEDIA ABOUT PROP K
SF Chronicle’s Violet Blue praises Prop K (SF Chron)
Ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution divides liberal San Franciscoo (LAT)
KFOG Interviews (.mp3; right-click to save or click through)
The Bay Guardian is very excited abut Prop K. Listen to our discussion with the SFBG on their website. (Bay Guardian)
Yes on Prop K, Sadie Lune, Artist and Sex Worker wins 1st place at the Museum of Modern Art! (Youtube)
I Want You…to Vote Yes On K
At Tony Labat’s I Want You project, sex worker, activist, and artist Sadie Lune (NSFW) took first place with her performance “I Want You”! Congrats!
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is pleased to present Tony Labat’s I WANT YOU, the latest installment in the newly launched program series Live Art at SFMOMA. Beginning on September 4, 2008, artist Tony Labat invites denizens of the Bay Area to make their own demands of the public. Riffing on the iconic “I Want You” army recruitment campaigns of World Wars I and II, he asks what you would do if you had only one minute to seize the voice of authority, to be the finger-pointing Uncle Sam. How would you fill in the rest? I Want You . . . to do what? And what if your demands were performed before and voted on by a live audience? – SFMOMA
The video of Ms. Lune’s winning performance is by activist, artist, and sex worker Scarlot Harlot. (Video is NSFW, and I’ll put up a transcript later.)
I thought it was a great performance. It touched on the reasons why people should vote yes on K in a direct and simple manner, and I think the simplicity of it provokes deeper thought. “I want you to be nice to sex workers” sounds simple on face, but it challenges the assumptions that many people have about sex workers as inferior, disposable human beings (how many dead hooker jokes have you heard?) or as people that don’t deserve the same justice and presumption of basic humanity and equality as non-sex workers. Why aren’t people nice to sex workers? Why shouldn’t they be? What does it mean to be nice to sex workers? By phrasing her desires in the language of ordinary concerns and leaving “Vote yes on Prop. K!” until the end, Lune made suggestions that seem like common sense (oh, being nice to sex workers – well, sure, why not?) and then tied them to political action. Ding ding ding, the light bulb goes off: Oh! That’s why Bayswan is pushing to pass K! She emphasized that politics is about real people and real concerns. How can you be nice to sex workers? Vote yes on K. Every measure and every law affects real people.
More on the I WANT YOU project and the other winners here. SFMOMA will print and put up posters of Lune’s slogan and those of the other winners all around the city prior to the elections. An awesome performance and awesome, free (well, paid for by SFMOMA) campaign advertising all at once!
The I WANT YOU project is interesting in that it repurposes an iconic piece of WWI- and WWII- era advertising to encourage people to speak up and insert their own voices into the public sphere. Rather than being on the receiving end of Uncle Sam’s demands and pointing finger, they get to speak back to him and say what they want. I like that and I like that the project responds to current political issues with art, then takes the results and puts them up around the city, injecting peoples’ voices into the public realm. Politics meets arts meets individuals speaking up and reclaiming politics through art.
Yes on K: “Sex Work Is Not A Crime”
For SF residents, Measure K is on the city ballot this November (one of 22 SF measures): “Changing the Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers.” Simply put, Measure K would decriminalize prostitution:
Proposition K would prohibit the Police Department from providing resources to investigate and prosecute prostitution. It would also prohibit the Police Department from applying for federal or state funds that involve racial profiling to target alleged trafficking victims and would require any existing funds to implement the Task Force’s recommendations.
Proposition K would require the Police Department and the District Attorney to enforce existing criminal laws that prohibit coercion, extortion, battery, rape, sexual assault and other violent crimes, regardless of the victim’s status as a sex worker. It also requires these agencies to fully disclose the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against sex workers.
Proposition K would prohibit the City from funding or supporting the First Offender Prostitution Program or any similar anti-prostitution program.
The Board of Supervisors would be able to amend this measure by a two-thirds vote if it found the amendments would reduce criminalization of prostitution and violence against sex workers. [emphasis mine]
Ultimately, K would increase the safety of sex workers by enabling them to access health care, report crimes (whether as witnesses or victims, and sex workers are disproportionately likely to be victims of assault, rape, and other violent crime), and work without fear of being jailed. Whether you support, oppose, or don’t have an opinion on sex work, K would lead to a better, safer situation all around.
In today’s SFGate, Violetblue gives some background on the history of sex work in SF and interviews Patricia West, activist and sex worker. It’s a good read that clarifies some of the arguments for K while addressing the opposition arguments: Sex Work Is Not A Crime
VB: Anti-K pundits seem to think that all sex workers are victims, and seem to be muddying the issues by saying that Prop K would make human sex trafficking harder to stop. What’s the difference between sex work and human trafficking, and why can’t anti-K people seem to be able to tell the difference?
PW: Sex work is consensual adult sex for pay. Human trafficking is done by force and coercion. Proposition K will not prevent law enforcement from investigating and prosecuting human traffickers. Additionally, when Proposition K passes, workers and clients will then feel free and safe to report abuses in our own industry without fear of prosecution. The opposition is using the term as a scare tactic; their hope is to associate Proposition K with this reprehensible practice. This is their dishonest campaign strategy and it does a disservice to the voters of San Francisco.
VB: So, will there be legal brothels in SF if it passes?
PW: No, there will not be legal brothels in San Francisco when Proposition K passes. Proposition K is about the decriminalization of prostitution, not legalization. Decriminalization is a reasonable balance between legalization and criminalization. Proposition K will stop the city’s prosecution of prostitutes. It requires that the Police Department and District Attorney’s office vigorously enforce laws against extortion, battery, rape and other violent crimes; regardless of the victim’s status as a sex worker.
VB So, if a sex worker is raped or beaten, as it stands now she/he/they are afraid to report the crime and seek help. San Francisco’s past showed that decriminalized access to health care for sex workers over 100 years ago had an enormously positive impact. Does Prop K have anything to do with sexual health in the city like that?
PW Proposition K will improve public health by lessening the stigma that prevents many workers from seeking basic health-care services. Also, possession of condoms is currently used as criminal evidence against workers. In my experience as a Street Outreach volunteer, I have had some workers refuse condoms for fear of arrest.
Between Spitzer and David Vitter, sex work and sex workers are much in the media this year. Hopefully, Yes on K will be able to capitalize on that attention and pass in SF. For more information on the proposition, see the Yes on K website. To volunteer, email info@yesonpropk.org.
HHS Rule Change: 21 Days
“Alternatively, what kind of advertisement would you develop, considering these factors?
I’d love to see the Dems go full force against HHS’s upcoming policy that equates birth control with abortion. Senators Clinton and Murray have been fighting pretty much alone on this front, and a full court press against it from the entire Democratic Congressional Delegation, including Senators Obama and Biden, would show the Democratic commitment to choice.
I’m talking ads, speeches, some sort of Dem Leadership march on Secretary Leavitt’s office that’s carefully planned, meticulously scripted, thoroughly publicized on every talk show with lots of zingy talking points. Plus the Dem leaders in each state could hold related press events, building the Dem brand for downticket races too. If Senator McCain and Governor Palin are forced to go on record either for OR against birth control, their ticket’s rep as “Mavericks” is going to sustain some serious damage with either evangelicals or moderates. Heads we win, tails they lose.
Most Americans want access to birth control and would be horrified to learn that this policy may put their access in jeopardy. Even many anti-choice voters are pro-contraception. And this could be an easy way to win some points with independents and moderate Repubs, plus reminding Dems what side fights for them, since it doesn’t involve waiting on a court decision or until election day. All we have to do is make Leavitt so uncomfortable that he pulls the policy. We have less than 30 days.
Originally posted as a comment by eleanora on Shakesville using Disqus.
That? Is a fantastic idea. You know the drill: call, email, and write your senators and representatives and call up the Democratic candidates, too.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-4965 (DC)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: 202-224-3542 (DC)
Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama: 202-224-2854 (DC)
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden: 202-224-5042 (DC)
Senators: Senate.gov
Representatives: House.gov
Comment on the rule change at Regulations.gov, providing “Provider Conscience Regulation” as the subject.
