Some Links on the Police State

More Biased Than Realize

The Thing About White Privilege

FBI report of officers killed and assaulted

If you don't want to get raped, don't speed.

What cops do to cops that don't band with the brothers

You’re more likely to be murdered simply by living in about half of the largest cities in America than you are while working as a police officer in America

#CrimingWhite

When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims

The American Justice system is not broken?

Eric Garner:

John Stewart reacts to Eric Garner

Eric Garner video: "All he did was break up a fight"

Eric Garner's widow responds to Officer's apology

Cops not indicted

Man taking video of Garner murder indicted

Cop chokes a white student and gets fired.

Ferguson and Michael Brown:

Why it is hard for whites to understand Ferguson

Demographic make-up of St. Louis

The historical making of Ferguson

Cops lie about distance in Brown shooting

Acoustic experts detail purported Ferguson shooting

Federal judge finds Ferguson police violated the constitution

Communique from Ferguson

Wilson's key witness lied

Ohio Shit:

Ohio cop terrorizes family

Ohio cop shoots 5 kittens and later a raccoon?

5 Ohio racist cops

John Crawford III shooting in Dayton

No charges pressed after Crawford killing.

Columbus man responds to mugshot.

And the list will grow....

oops---i don't think the link i posted works. try looking for that street harassment pamphlet here.

Charlie sent me this street harassment pamphlet put out by the Women of Color Against Violence.

I found this article about the legal failure to effectively prevent street harassment, Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women by Cynthia Grant Bowman, on the Holla Back NYC blog. Their blog lists a lot of useful resources, including other groups fighting street harassment, news articles, and the New York Harassment Statute.

One thing that I think we need to keep in mind while putting together this pamphlet is that even after we figure out what it is we want to convey, I think it is (almost) equally important to figure out how to convey the information in a way that street harassers will actually read it, and be affected by it. Which seems difficult to me. It's difficult for me to imagine that a person who is compelled for some reason to make the statement "Girl, I'd so fuck you" to a stranger, would then be compelled to change his behavior if we handed him a pamphlet of our feelings. At the same time, I do think that it's important to convey how this kind of thing makes us feel.

I think that what I'm trying to say is that it should be stated as if we are in a position of power, if that makes sense, rather than as if we are making a plea for street harassment to stop. This is probably an obvious idea, but nonetheless.

Not only would I like to convey that this is degrading and uncomfortable to me, but also that it makes the street harasser come off, to me, as intellectually underdeveloped i.e. stupid. I would like to pose the question, what do you hope to achieve by yelling offensive, yet somehow mundane and simple, epithets and verbs at me? What is the point of this behavior, and how does it make the harasser feel? Is that power? To me, this kind of behavior can be explained by a lack of communication skills, social skills, experience operating within a modern civilized context, and/or cerebral development.

I think we should also include Ohio's Harassment Statute.

I think we should address the issue from a lot of different angles, including that street harassment is degrading and how that makes us feel, that it is idiotic and a turn off and makes harassers appear stupid, that it is outdated, that it is or should be illegal.

Street Harassment Leaflets--assignment

Yesterday, Sarah and I were taking pictures throughout the construction zones of north high street for a project of hers. In the span an hour-plus, we had received well over 15 honks, jeers, catcalls, etc. These ranged from, "I'd take pictures of you, baby" to my favorite, "Girl, I'd so fuck you." Why is this deemed to be in the least bit okay? Why is the structure of society entirely constructed in a way where I feel violated nearly every time I walk down a street? I went to work after the fact feeling terribly downtrodden.

The biggest question with street harassment: How can we express our feelings without perpetuating the cycle? In my case, I know that I immediately respond with anger and this anger prompts me to want to use some sort of expletive to combat the situation, but I don't think this helps. I do appreciate those who use violence in response to catcalls, but I also think that it could end up worsening the situation. An example of physically fighting back can be found in Consequence: Beyond Resisting Rape by Loolwa Khazzoom.

Anyway, the point is that we should be discussing what types of arguments we should present in our leaflet/pamphlet. The link I posted a few days ago to the street harassment project in New York may help, but I think that we should definitely add more to it. My hope is to distribute these to women on campus as well as in the community. Maybe we can organize with the university to distribute these to upcoming freshmen in the dorms. We can put copies at the infoshop, kerouac, other local spots. Any other thoughts?

B&P assignment of the week: Identify what it is about street harassment that affects you: use I-statements. (Ex: I feel degraded when... I do not like it when...) If you were to have a rational conversation with someone who harassed you, what would you want to convey? Also, in what way do you want to convey all this to the aggressor: as an impersonal collection of thoughts or an account of individual feelings? both? The responses to these questions are not just for putting on the leaflet but also so that we, as a group, can discuss and understand eachother's perspectives on the issue.

Street Harassment Project examples:
"Women Turn-Offs-
Any kind of street harassment, anytime anywhere!
- Crude remarks by strange men!
- Hearing men rate our bodies like "nice ass"!
- Being groped or rubbed up against!
Women feel only HATRED for the weak, stupid men who treat us this way.We won't take it anymore!!!
Women Turn-Ons
- Being treated with respect!
- Being treated as equals!
And remember guys, NO means NO !"

“Productive Exchanges: Experiences from the Gender and Emancipation Project”

Monday, May 18, 2009

3:00pm at the Smith Seminar Room (1080) in the Physics Research Building

Graduate Students across a variety of disciplines at OSU will share their experiences working in North/South collaborations with men and women from Germany, Sudan and Syria to develop transnational feminist awareness and alliances. Students will present on the Gender and Emancipation Project, from its initial stages of conceptualization and drawing together of collaborators, to the Spring quarter coursework that drew participants together online, and finally to the culminating ten-day summer school in Berlin that brought over forty participants together in the same space for the first time. Presenters will focus on the highlights and stumbling blocks that such collaborations engender, including the negotiation of difficult national, racial, class, gender and religious hierarchies that presented themselves in unexpected ways throughout the Project’s journey.

Refreshments will be served. Kindly RSVP to Christy Holmes (holmes.489@osu.edu) if you are planning to attend.

Alex forwarded me an e-mail he received about this. This sounds like something we could be interested in attending.

On their website they have some questions that they are investigating:

What type of impact does gender have on one's day-to-day experiences and opportunities?

What do activists from Syria, the Sudan, Germany, and the USA share?

And what are the possibilities for building a transnational activist vision that places gender politics at its center?

This reminds me a lot of what we were talking about two Mondays ago.

Project Mission Statement:

Our vision is to build and expand on existing and nascent networks of feminist activists and scholars through collaborative research endeavours. Through our exchange project, we seek to interrogate embedded power relations within transnational feminism and encourage a creative and self-organized learning process about gender issues. We wish to forge genuine alliances across geographic and academic bounds, creating a space for agency, voice, and mutual respect.

http://genderandemancipation.org.ohio-state.edu/index.html

An interesting review of a book by Laura Maria Agustin entitled, Sex at the Margins. The review examines sex workers' rights:

"Makes me think of brownfemipower’s recent attempts to maintain solidarity among women of color bloggers. Yes, her actions seem admirable to me, but reading this passage again, and seeing how solidarity can be imposed on different groups of people, and how it can be wielded in the name of some sort of common essence of what women are about or ought to be about if only they were free of patriarchal society… it makes me question solidarity as a value that doesn’t need problematizing. Maybe such solidarity feels imposed to other groups of women. Maybe, like the Nigerian sex workers, other women in bloglandia are feeling manipulated by the demand to be solidaristic in the name of some ultimate goal they may not share. As Agustin and others have shown, this solidarity isn’t necessarily an unproblematic way of dealing with conflict or organizing or political action."

An actual excerpt from the book:

"The social constructs its own objects in order to study, organize, manage, debate and serve them. Regimes may appear completely benign on the surface: medicine – healing, the alleviation of physical suffering; teaching – enlightenment of the ignorant; rehabilitating offenders; protecting the vulnerable from abuse; rescuing victims from violence; reducing risk and harm. But terms like harm, enlightenment, rehabilitation and so on are defined by would-be helpers. Those who are to be helped may well not define these terms in the same way, but their opinions are rarely taken into account."

Quick random pondering:

In trying to create such a thing as womyn solidarity or healing, enlightenment, rescue, etc. comes the issue that no longer is the goal centered around actual individuals and the community but has turned into a goal towards the abstract idea of "good" or "mutual understanding." A doctor heals in order to produce the result of health which can easily make the individual the intermediary towards that end, rather than part of the end in itself. How do we not lose sight of the individual in our search for the creation of a "better" social environment?