So I find the American political process completely mystifying. At this stage it seems apparent that you guys have reached the baroque stage of elections - a complicated, expensive edifice that references nothing but itself.¹ Both the Democrat candidates would probably be on the right of the National party (our right wing). I read blogs of people who seem to see similar problems with the world than I do, even if they generally have less radical solutions, and I don’t understand the way they view this electoral process. So I’m going to ask a question of liberal/left-wing/progressive commentators, because I really want to know.

Who has said more that you agree with and less you disagree with Obama or Reverend Wright?

PS - the other thing I’ve been wondering is for Americans who are anti-war which is the more pertient question:

“What’s Obama doing meeting with Bill Ayers”

or

“What’s Bill Ayers doing meeting with Obama”

1. unless I’ve got what baroque means wrong, in which case it’s something else (back)

1. I want to express my (very late) solidarity with Blackamazon, Adele and all the other women of colour who were ignored and dismissed by Seal Press. I want to express my support for the girlcott of Seal press. While there’s not a lot I can do personally, since I would neither buy books from Seal Press (can’t afford them) or write for Seal press anyway. But the whole point of solidarity is answering the question ‘which side are you on?’ I think women of colour activists are more important than a feminist publishing house. I know that my liberation is impossible while women of colour are enslaved, and that means that I have to make it clear that I stand with them against racism from feminist institutions.

2. I want to express my (equally late) solidarity with brownfemipower who will be missed. It is disgusting the way her names and intentions have been dragged and lied about across the blogsphere by people attempting to defend Amanda. Brownfemipower is amazing.

[There used to be bits of my opinion on appropriation in here, but I moved them to this thread. If you want good discussion on appropriation go there, or Holly , Daisy and Sylvia/M.

3. Finally, and less belatedly on my part, Amanda’s book itself. These images are racist.¹ They come from Amanda Marcotte’s book “It’s a jungle out there” that was published by Seal Press. I don’t just want to say ‘these pictures are racist and racism is bad’, but to talk about the harm that these sorts of images cause, because the racist ideas that they maintain are very specific. They are presenting indigenous people as a dangerous other. They are presented as things that must be conquered so that white people can live freely on their land. The idea represented in these images are one of the many ways colonialism is maintained and justified.

I live in a country where land has been stolen from indigenous people in the last five years. Amanda Marcotte lives, and Seal Press operates, in a country where the history of stealing land from indigenous people stretches back five centuries. We all live in a world where the distribution of wealth was established, and justified, by colonialism. The white woman, and man, in those pictures were stealing land and resources - everything Africa had that they could use (a century earlier, of course, they would have also been stealing people).

I’ve been writing this post for a week. Writing other posts about these issues for several weeks and not finishing them. I’m posting it now, rather than trying to make it better, because silent solidarity isn’t much good to anyone.

There have been a number of racist dynamics developing in various comment threads. Amanda, and her defenders, only talking to white people and ignoring people of colour. Re-centring the issue on Amanda by focusing on a very small section of comments and demanding that they be addressed first. These behaviours will not be welcome in this comment thread.

I am not interested in the pontifications of outsiders on this. So specifically Robert, RonF and Sailorman are not welcome, nor are anyone of their ilk.

1. note for Hugo Schwyzer the problem is not that they could be interpreted as racist. It is that they are racist (back)

The Union express, the paper of the National Distribution Union, is one of the better union newspapers in New Zealand. But there was an appalling article about climate change in their latest issue (not available on-line but it’s February-April 2008 with a Bunnings protest on the front cover). I think it typifies what is ridiculous about much discussion about the environment.

The article is called Be The Change and is based on the website of the same name.

My main objection is to the section called Save Money and the Planet, which gave all sorts of advice about what union members could do. Much of the advice assumed that you own your own home, and have capital to make upgrades, with suggestions to install insulation, and consider solar water heating. Then there’s the advice to turn off your heated towel rail and your second fridge.*

I am angry to read this nonsense in a union magazine, which is going to some of the lowest paid workers in the country. While some of NDU workplaces, such as mills, are well paid enough that workers might own their own home and a heated towel rail, many are not.

I regularly turn off my hot water heater, not for energy efficiency reasons, because it’s the only way I can pay my electricity bill. The idea that workers need to be lectured at how to save electricity is ridiculous. Low paid people know from saving money. What they don’t have is capital, some people can’t afford to buy a $6 light bulb now to save $20 over the course of the year.

There was nothing about landlords and government’s responsibility to provide better quality housing, and what unions are doing about that (which is probably because the answer is ‘nothing’). There wasn’t even any information about the schemes that some councils are running which subsidise landlords to install heat-pumps and installation.

I would expect a union magazine to be the one place you could find discussion of environmental issues that goes beyond individualistic moralising. That it didn’t, that all the Union Express had to say was the banal ‘be the change’ is a really bad sign. Recently discussion about climate change and carbon footprints have gone mainstream. Airlines and power companies want us to believe if we do our little bit then everything will be fine. Some environmentalists seem to see this as a victory, but it’s not, it’s distraction and co-option. Individuals can’t save the planet, anymore than they can end war. The way the world’s resources are used is not decided by consumers, but at by companies at the point of production. Action around climate change which ignores this isn’t so much rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic, but telling the passengers to lose weight so it’ll sink slower.

* It makes me want to write a whole series of climate change advice in a similar vein: “Turn off the heating system in your spa pool when you are going to be away for a few days. Consider an energy efficient air conditioning system for your second home.” etc.

The sun was shining as I sat down at the Cenotaph. Like most war memorials it looks like a giant penis. No-one else was there, but I was I knitted a few rows, and the mother of kids I used to babysat for walked by. We talked a bit, mostly about knitting and she left. I knitted a few more rows; no-one else showed up. I packed my knitting away, and walked off. For ten minutes, I’d vigiled alone in solidarity with the people of Iraq.

That was the political action in Wellington on the fifth anniversary of the War on Iraq. Maybe the people who had called the vigil turned up after I left, I don’t know. It’s been a hard six months for many of us here - there are extenuating circumstances

But it’s not just here, the movement against the war in Iraq was at it’s peak in the first six months of 2003. I own this book:

I’ve always loved it, I flick through and look at the sea of placards in London, the shivering scientists in Antarctica, the incomprehensible naked demos and the mass of people in Santiago. I think back to what we were doing on the fifteenth of February 2003, and what a crazy chaotic time it was, and how much we managed to do.

But tonight, I thought different things at I looked at the photos of the young woman in Sydney who had written ‘Make Love Not War’ written on her arm and was making out with an equally young man; the school kids on strike in London, on the first day of the war; the soccer fan who ran on the pitch with “Stop Bush” written on his backs; the hundreds of windows in Milan with peace flags flying; the two women in Washington DC who had written Peace Womb on their pregnant bellies - their children would be five by now. I want to know where they all were on Thursday, the fifth anniversary.

Almost everyone in those pictures must still oppose the war, five years later. It’s not as if it’s gone better than planned. But in those five years they must have lost something, all those people who came out and took action in so many ways. They must have lost hope.

I think we, by which I mean the anti-war movements in the broadest sense, must have done something wrong, not to be able to build on that hope that existed in those months. I can tell you some of the specific things that I would do differently in Wellington. But those details are too specific to explain the world-wide shrinking in the anti-war movement (unless every anti-war group had massive disagreements around meat).

The fifteenth of February 2003 was amazing, but a war cannot be stopped in one day, even one day with millions of people. Anything we do must be sustained longer than the period where urgency overwhelms us. I think the question for those of us who took part is how we can build, next time.

In order to keep the discussion focused, comments on this post are only open to those who supported the goals of stopping, and then ending, the war on Iraq.

The first is at Pandagon, where Amanda wrote about Huckabee:

McCain has the Republican nomination, but Huckabee’s continuing ability to win certain states is still a major story. Now that he can’t get the nomination and the schadenfreude pleasure is over, it’s time for us to very carefully examine why an out-and-out ayatollah is so fucking popular in this great, modern nation.

That’s saying, pretty explicitly, this Christian is so misogynist he’s a misogynist as a Muslim.

The other is at The F-Word, a British site. This one probably needs some background. A while back The Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Church of England, the official religion of Britain) gave a speech where he discussed the role that Sharia law could take within civil law in the British legal system. If you’re interested in what he said I’m guess it’s a good idea to read it, rather than a summary, because to say the British Press frothed at the mouth in response to what he said is a vast understatement.* I was shocked at the response on the F-Word. The author of the post said that she wasn’t going to comment, because she didn’t know much about Sharia law, and then said that she thought this anecdote was relevant:

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a ‘no-go area’ for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: ‘The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn’t want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don’t you people write about this?’

Posting that story, in the context that she did, implies that the central fact here, is the religion of those involved. It treats these sorts of events as a horror which only occur in another culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Families with connections to the medical establishment have been able to do all sorts of things to women by claiming they’re mad(a famous example is Rosemary Kennedy, but it’s not as if she’s alone). Why didn’t the f-word present this story in that context?

I think it’s offensive when white feminists create an ‘other’, which is the . I think it is a vile misuse of feminism when the other they chose serves imperialist goals, as islamophobia so clearly does.

But I also find it mystifying. Feminist bloggers stare down the vile misogyny of the culture that we live in everyday. I don’t understand why any feminist blogger would need to invent an ‘other’, or how she could escape from the fact that her culture hates her.

* I’m personally too lazy to read what he said. I can see the arguments in favour in allowing people to pick the framework they use to decide civil matters. But I think limiting those choices to frameworks based on different religions prioritises religion in a way that I believe is totally unacceptable. In Britain, (or the US, or NZ) it would also leave all those without religion still suck with a framework that is based on Christianity. I don’t think the solution to a legal framework based on one religion is to say ‘we’ll let other religions have an influence in some parts of that framework’. Although I’m willing to be convinced if people want to argue about that issue in the comments.

I’ve loved Joss Whedon for going on ten years now. Sometimes my fangirl moments can be fickle and short lived, but my love for Joss Whedon has remained constant.

It’s helped that every so often Joss will surprise me by being far more awesome than I ever imagined (have you ever listened to the Innocence commentary? There’s a lot of awesome there). The first I remember was from the Onion AV Club, way back when I didn’t know that much about his politics:

don’t want it to have my name on it if it doesn’t reflect what I want to say. Because once you get to the position of actually getting to say something, which is a level most writers never even get to, and is a great blessing, you then have to worry about what it is you’re actually saying. I don’t want some crappy reactionary show under the Buffy name. If my name’s going to be on it, it should be mine. Now, the books I have nothing to do with, and I’ve never read them. They could be, “Buffy realized that abortion was wrong!” and I would have no idea. So, after my big, heartfelt, teary speech, I realize that I was once again lying. But I sort of drew the line. I was like, “I can’t possibly read these books!”

Joss has often suggested collective action as the solution for the big problems and recently that’s got a lot more overt (I’m thinking the Buffy series finale, and ‘The Chain’ comic)

But I still didn’t expect him to become a militant union activist. He’s just posted on United Hollywood. He said

Our negotiators have the specific task of forgetting the past and dealing only with the numbers before them. Their ability to do that impresses me greatly, but I maintain that it’s their job to treat the studios like business partners and it’s our job to remember who they really are. The studios are inefficient, power-hungry, thieving corporate giants who have made the life of the working writer harder from decade to decade. They are run by men so out of touch with basic humanity that they would see Rome burn before they would think about the concept of fair compensation. I maintain that they have never revealed their true agenda in the causing and handling of this strike, and to expect them to now is cock-eyed optimism of the most dangerous kind.

and

This is not over. Nor is it close. Until the moment it is over, it can never be close. Because if we see the finish line we will flag and they are absolutely counting on us to do that. In the room, reason. On the streets, on the net, I say reason is for the ‘moderates’. Remember what they’ve done. Remember what they’re trying to take from us. FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.

I have been mugged an embarrassing number of times, even for a New Yorker. I’ve been yelled at and chased, beaten down and kicked, threatened with a gun and the only mugger who still hurts my gut is the one who made me shake his hand. Until there is a deal – the right deal, not the DGA deal – held out, let’s keep our hands in our pockets or on our signs. Let’s not be victims. Let’s never.

He also did a radio show on the strike, which is of similar stuff.

I think ‘imperialist lapdog’ would be the nicest thing that I could say about Suharto, the former Indonesian Prime Minister who died recently. His government secured resources for capitalists, by systemic brutality of the people who lived there. Timor Leste has fought and won independence (of a sort), but West Papua and Acheh are still fighting for their freedom, having withstood decades of attack from the state.

Those who remain silent about his actions at the time of his death are making it explicit that they prioritise West Papua’s Copper and gold over its people.

I will say this at least the American Ambassdor is honest:

Cameron Hume, the US ambassador in Jakarta, said Suharto was a close ally who led his country through a period of “remarkable” development.

Nothing I could say about Palestinians forcing open the Gaza-Eygypt border at Rafah could possibly measure up to that action’s power.

Egypt is already trying to close the border. Maybe by the time I wake up tomorrow this relief will be shut off again, but maybe the Egyptian government will find it hard to shut people back in. It’s the world’s biggest prison break and should remind everyone of the possibility and power of resistance.

For more Raising Yosuf, brownfemipower has a great collection of links, and Al Jazeera is always good.

To conclude my three day Joss-a-thon I’m going to review Tales of the Slayers. This is a collection of short comics about the lives of 8 slayers in different points in history. Although my reviews are usually spoiler-ific this review will be much more spoiler free. The very shortness of the stories means they rely on their plot twists, so while I do talk about the set up, I’m not going to tell the endings.

What stands out from me, particularly compared to season 8, is how interesting the art is. Very different styles of art are used for different stories, and they reflect often reflect the times the stories are set in. This is particularly effective with the story set in 1930s Germany.

The quality of the stories is extremely mixed. Two of Joss’s story’s are brilliant. The first is very short, and is about the first slayer. It is just one moment in her life, and sets up the rest of the stories.

Joss’s second story, set in the middle ages, is written in verse (which I bet made Joss very happy). It is a simple story, told from the point of view of the Watcher, but is very effective

Jane Espenson’s Regency era slayer is beautifully done. The author’s voice is deliberately modelled on Jane Austen, and works perfectly. Jane and Joss were the only authors who used the literary forms of the time they were writing about, and it makes their stories much stronger. I think they also both understood the limits of the space, and had the right sized story for a very few pages. Really the authors only had time to set up two characters, and one plot turn, and Jane and Joss both do this very well.

The other stories, set in Revolutionary France, America at the time of colonisation, Nazi Germany and 1970s New York, are less successful. The most dire is Sonnenblume, set in Nazi era Germany. It’s slightly less subtle than being hit over the head with a mallet (which is a real shame, because, like I said, the art is very good). I found the Revolutionary France story similarly trite, possibly because it was trying to deal with something very big in a very small space (or possibly just because Amber Benson doesn’t have very interesting ideas about revolutionary France). The story set in America at the time of colonisation, works for the first few pages, but relies on simplistic statements as a substitute for character development, and in the end appears to be making an argument for assimilation. Nikki’s story is OK, but not particularly interesting.

The comic ends with another Joss story, this one about Fray. By itself this short piece isn’t even a story (and I was disappointed, because after several stories of in period or practical clothing, Fray is wearing a very short, loose, cut off top, which you absolutely wouldn’t be able to fight in. I guess I should be glad no-one found a place in the story to have a bath). But it ends with Fray finding, and reading the Watchers diaries of previous slayers.

In the end despite the mixed quality of the stories, I would definitely recommend this to any Buffy fan. Because what it does do so nicely is expand on the idea, implicit in the Buffyverse, that struggle has a history and each generation in that struggle is connected to those that have gone before it.

The latest Buffy comic has a backstory. Last year Darkhorse ran a competition inviting 100 word essays on ‘How Buffy Changed My Life’ - Joss would chose the winner who would then appear in one of the comics. The winner was Jarrod’s essay, he wrote about his wife’s schizophrenia, and how they’d watched Buffy as she was getting sicker and sicker. Robin appears in this story, she is a minder who has to guard unstable reality fields (or possibly demons). It’s well done, and the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Although I don’t know that much about schizophrenia, so I don’t know how well the storyline reflects reality.

Overall I liked this comic, although I remain unsure about the genre. I’m going to like any comic which has Buffy and Willow talk about their relationship. Of course, the bitter part in me, that does believe in showing not telling, would have rather that they’d had Buffy and Willow have a relationship in season 6 an 7, than explain to us with small words what’s going on.

I loved the little details of this story, the ever developing ‘Anywhere but Here’ was really fun (and a nice little bit of continuity). I loved that we found out where the money was coming from, because it really annoys me when fiction ignores economics. I love even more that Buffy is stealing from Swiss banks, not being particularly fond of banks and all.

I wasn’t so happy about the Dawn revelation, if this is the final twist (and it may not be) it does bear a striking resemblance to her being punished for having sex. I love giant dawn; I love her giant suitcase of clothes. I don’t love punishing female characters for having sex.

The comic ends with Buffy and Willow walking off separately. It’s clear that this season is going to be about stripping Buffy of her allies. I can’t help but feel that we’ve seen that before and, like I said in my last review, these plotlines would be anchored better if we had more idea what normal was for the relationships between these characters.

On the art front, this is the first story arc in a Buffy comic which hasn’t involved a female character taking a bath. It was almost comical how hard the artists appeared to work to draw Robin so that she didn’t look like a comic book girl.

It’s going to be a long year in electoral politics. There’s an election in NZ, an election in the US, possibly even an election in Britain. Unless I somehow limit myself I could spend every day making fun of the awful things New Zealand politicians say (Judith Collins and Sue Kedgley I’m looking at you) or pointing out how far right the US Democratic candidates are (none of them would be the most left wing person in the the National party caucus - and National is the more right wing party in NZ). That’s not what I think matters in politics; I think what matters in politics is resistance.

I’ll still criticise government actions every day of the week. But the shit that comes out of politicians mouths while campaigning, and the promises they make - that’s not that important. This is particularly true in America where elections have reached their baroque period - very intricate affairs that don’t reference anything outside of themselves. It makes them oddly fascinating, which is why I will be following it, but not a place where progressives, let alone radicals, can expect to get change.

So to kick off my new tradition I will say Shut Up Gloria Steinem.

I’d also like to recommend a fantastic talk by Gary Younge Katrina to Obama: Black Leadership in the Post Civil Rights Era. Gary Younge is black and lived and started writing in Britain, but now he lives in America and is the Guardian correspondent. Any of his stuff is well worth checking out (he wrote a wonderful book about travelling in the path of the Freedom Riders). This talk looks at some of the issues discussed in this thread and Grace Boggs post. I should warn peoplethat the questions are of the sort that will have you reaching for your taser,* but Gary Younge answers them brilliantly.

* Remember that much publicised film of someone being tasered at a John Kerry rally? My friend Larry argued that if tasers do exist there are much worse uses for them than stopping people who ask ridiculously long, annoying, self-important questions at public meetings. I was initially shocked by his callousness, but have since through a few public meetings and became almost convinced.

So I’ve got behind on my Buffy comic reviews, so I’m going to review the last three episodes of the Faith arc together. As expected Faith becomes close with the evil slayer who is a member of the English aristocracy (mostly by fighting the gargoyle), and then (again not suprisingly) Gigi is trying to kill Buffy.

It was well done, Faith was well captured, and Gigi worked as a character. Gigi’s Warlock friend seemed very much a cardboard cut-out, but that’s all he needed to be I guess.

And in the end the story wasn’t about Gigi at all, but Faith, Giles & Buffy’s relationship. But there were serious problems in the execution. This plot-line lost a lot of its power because we had no idea of what Buffy and Giles or Buffy and Faith’s relationship had been like since Sunnydale hit into a hole, so it wasn’t anchored to anything.

I think maybe it’s a problem with the genre, because there seems to be a lot of ‘telling’ rather than showing going on. Characters explain exactly what their motivations are, whether it’s Twilight or Faith. The ratio of fight scenes to conversations is so much higher than it was in the TV, so there doesn’t seem to as much space for character, which I miss. I do enjoy the comics, and like the ideas, and where the characters are, but I’m just not convinced by the way it’s told.

Talking of problem with comic books. The baths! Never in the history of literature have female characters been so disproportionately cleaner than their male counterparts. Why do Faith and Gigi make plans in the bath?

No, I know the answer, it just pisses me off.

Tomorrow I’ll review the ‘Anywhere But Here’ and then maybe I’ll review Tales of the Slayers (which I got ages ago). I’ve been remiss in the Joss content for a few months.

There’s been a brilliant discussion about Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti’s Call for Submissions for ‘Yes means Yes’.Firefly, BlackAmazon, Sylvia, Tekanji, Chris Clarke, Sudy, Magniloquence, and Theriomorph are just some of the people who have written about the original Call for Submissions (and when the discussion became about the criticisms of the proposals there were more fantastic posts Sly Civilian, brownfemipower and Ilyka Damen for a start). The discussions has been far-ranging and it’s well worth tracking through the links, following the trackbacks and reading the comment threads.

So it seems a little ridiculous for me to be responding to a revised call for submissions for Yes means Yes. The debate has well and truly gone beyond that, and some women of colour have, rightly, cried enough. But I stopped blogging in a timely manner a few months back, and I have a tangent I want to dart off in. A tangent much informed by the posts above.

There’s a new sentence in there that’s response to criticisms like Firefly’s:

The use of sexualised violence to dominate and control people isn’t addressed by consent-based activism, and often there’s no legal protection against this kind of assault because it occurs in government institutions or is otherwise mandated by the state. For instance, women in Australian prisons are subjected to daily strip searches and cavity searches, where no hygiene is observed. Evidence shows that these women exhibit similar symptoms to rape survivors. Sisters Inside, a women’s prison advocacy group, have a research paper about it here.

The new Call for Submissions lists a potential topic for the anthology as:

Beyond consent: state-sanctioned and institutional rape that even the healthiest sexual culture won’t stop

The most obvious problem with this statement, that I might charitably call a wording problem, is that implies that you could have a healthy sexual culture and still have state-sanctioned and institutional rape. I don’t believe that’s true, and I hope that Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti don’t either. But I think this wording problem reveals a problem with analysis. Institutional and state sanctioned rape are part of our sexual culture. ¹ Some stories:

A thirteen year old girl in a logging town walked past a police station. She knew the police officer, he worked on search and rescue with her parents. He called her inside. He raped her.

A woman went to the police to make a report about being sexually abused by a relative. The male police officer interviewed her alone in his car, he put his hand on her knee. Then, years later, he rang her up at 1am, told her he’s coming over and demanded sex. He forced her to perform oral sex and left.

Or, we’ll move to another time and place. A woman grew up in a revolutionary movement in exile. She was raped when she was 13 by the men involved in those movement all friends of the family. She grew up the movement won, or sold out, and one of those revolutionary friends of the family became vice-president. She was at his house and he raped her.

Brad Shipton, Jacob Zuma and the Murapara police officer who still has name suppression all wielded institutional power granted by the state and they were also all acquaintances of the women, or girl, that they raped.

Police officers, politicians, employers, border guards, soldiers, priests, and prison guards* have huge power over so many women’s lives. They can demand sex in a way that makes it clear that the answer must be ‘yes’; they can all ignore ‘no’. They can do this to women they know and to strangers. The more power a rapist has over a woman the easier it will be for him to rape her, the more entitled he will feel to her body.

These are not a side category of rape - our understanding of rape must include an understanding of power. I think that means that rape is, by definition, beyond consent. If a man has the power to force a woman to have sex with him, and is prepared to use that power if she does not give consent, then that limits her ability to say ‘yes’ as well as ‘no’.

I might put things in a different order than they did in the call for submissions. I would also say that until we build a society that doesn’t give men the power to rape, female sexual pleasure is always going to be constrained by the fact that our ‘yes’ may be irrelevant.

There’s a Möbius strip involved, obviously, and I do believe that one of the things that give men the power to rape is the belief that women’s sexual pleasure is irrelevant. But it’s not the only place men get power from, and, most importantly, there are intersections between the different sorts of power men have - they can’t be understood in isolation.

* not intended to be an exhaustive list

1. In this post I am writing I am writing about women who are raped by men. I didn’t acknowledge that in the original post. I think the circumstances under which the majority of rape against males happens underscores the relationship between rape and power. But that wasn’t what I was exploring in this post (back)

This piece by Grace Boggs linked, widely, by bloggers I respect. I agree very much that viewing Obama’s candidacy in the context of the movements that made it possible is vital, and will show Obama lacking. Although I disagree with some of Grace Boggs’ interpretation of that struggle.* But the paragraph of her argument that was mostly widely quoted, is the one I disagree with most strongly. Maybe I’ve interpreted her in a way differently from what she intended:

But neither Obama’s ethnicity or Hillary’s gender is enough to earn my support. Neither is calling on the American people to confront our materialism and militarism or challenging and proposing alternatives to corporate globalization. At this critical period in human history that is what we should be requiring of ourselves and of any presidential candidate, whatever their race, gender or religion.

The American people are not a problem that could be solved by a president calling them to be more virtuous. Yes we must organise to fight and resist capitalism and imperialism, but the President is the enemy in that fight, not the standard bearer.

Capitalism and militarism are systems that are the job of the American president to maintain. Holding American presidential candidates up to ideals they would never meet is far better than pretending, or believing, than a multi-millionaire lawyer is an ally of the working class. But if you create an image of the ideal American Presidential candidate then you are propagating the idea that the right American president could make things better. We make our own history, it is not made for us by our leaders. Democratic party candidates for president are not our leaders in building another world.

Whether or not we win the writers strike, how strong the movement for housing in New Orleans becomes; whether the protests over what happened in Jena were a one off or a springboard; whether the strikes in Buenos Aries continue to grow; how so many other protests, strikes, and movements develop over the coming year. Those questions are critical to how far we get towards liberation over the next four years, which Democrat and Republican candidate wins the nomination for president is not.

Vote, don’t vote; support don’t support; endorse, don’t endorse. But don’t limit the world you dream about tothe crumbs promised by Clinton, Obama, or Edwards, and don’t expect anyone better to come along. The work we need to do isn’t done anywhere near the voting booth.

* In particular, the characterization of the sit-ins as ’small groups’ - the freedom movement was a mass movement in cities and towns across the south, and it wasn’t small in the North either.

I would have expected to have written more about the writers’ strike, because it involves two of my favourite things: industrial action and Joss Whedon. The Writers Guild of America have been on strike for over two months now, and there’s lots of information out there and good blogs by striking writers. There are also several websites set up by fans who support writers. There was a Mutant Enemy Picket day, where Joss and the writers and actors from Firefly, Buffy & Angel all picketed together. Some fans came from as far as England and Australia to join the picket.¹

The writing for the Golden Globes and the Oscars is usually done by WGA members. THe Guild has announced that it will refused waivers to allow these ceremonies to be written by Guild writers, and will picket the ceremonies if they go ahead without the writers.² Now actors, the sort of Actors who get nominated for Golden Globes and Oscars, have unanimously announced that they will not cross a picket line if the ceremonies are picketed. The first thing Katherine Heigl (to choose one random example, because I have an inexplicable fondness for her) said when she was nominated for a Golden Globe, was that she wouldn’t cross a picket line. Without stars there isn’t much appeal to an award ceremony. What I thought was particularly awesome, was that the actors apparently took this decision themselves:

SAG decided not to pressure its A-List actors about attending or not attending the WGA-struck Golden Globes on NBC. So I’m told the decision not to cross picket lines came from the thesps themselves. In fact, SAG leadership took a meeting with all of Hollywood’s publicists (with a similar collection in NYC via video conference) who told the union that the clients they represent will not cross the WGA picket line for the Golden Globes without exception.

Actors support has gone beyond not getting dressed in pretty gowns and telling their publicists to talk to their union, Actors have picketed, they’ve used their media pull, they’ve appeared in a video campaign.

The reason actors are doing this isn’t just because Hollywood is full of liberals (or radicals in a few cases). Even Patricia Heaton who thanked the troops when she won an Emmy in 2001 supports the writers. The reason the actors, who are all union members, do this is because it’s in their own best interests. The main issue that writers are striking over - payment for work broadcast over the internet is one that is as important for the actors as it is for the writers. If the writers lose then there’s no way the actors would get their residuals. The actors solidarity obviously make the writers stronger (the absense of the nominees for best screenplay wouldn’t torpedo an award ceremony.

In this case, the urgency of that solidarity is really clear. The contracts expire within months of each other and the issues are identical. But the principle of solidarity works the same way whether the workers are half a world away (solidarity of German dockworkers helped win the recent wharfie strike in Napier) or a completely different industry (wharfies helped win the Progressive lockout last year).

The concept of solidarity isn’t hard (it’d be unkind to suggest that if it was people who send their publicists to talk to their union probably wouldn’t be able to grasp it so I won’t), but often it can seem abstract. Which is why such a show of solidarity, even over an event as ridiculous as the Golden Globes, is pretty damn powerful.

On a less solid note, I’m was sad to see that The Daily Show and The Colbert report will be returning tomorrow without their striking writers. I understand that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are under contractual obligations; I understand that they have been very supportive of the strike, I understand that there are lots of other people employed by these show, but crossing a picket line is crossing a picket line.

I do want to say something about editors, grips, craft services, and all the other workers who are involved in making a television show. Those who worked on a television series that has stopped production because of the strike aren’t working and aren’t being paid.

The situation of those workers, while difficult, is not a stick to beat the striking writers with. It’s an obligation of solidarity. When the writers win they, and the actors, need to stand solid with the editors, grips and craft services. Those workers need to know that their picket lines will be honoured, that the actors and writers will stand on the picket line with them. Writers and Actors need to do that because solidarity is a mutal obligation, but also beause it’s in their own best interest. Unless solidarity extends across the industry the gains that are won with this strike will just temporary.

1. I’m more than a little jealous that, odds are, the only people who could afford a twelve hour flight to support a picket line with Joss, probably aren’t as into the picket line as much as they’re into the Joss. (back)
2. It’s a little more complicated than that, it’s always a little bit more complicated than that, but that’s enough to get the point. (back)

A few weeks ago, Jacob Zuma was named the new head of the African National Congress. This is part of a larger struggle in South Africa against the policies of the ANC, which has been carrying out a neo-liberal agenda ever since it gained power. Zuma is the left-wing candidate; Zuma’s supporters sang Lethu Mshini Wami (bring me my machine gun). I haven’t read much discussion of this on the blogs I read, which surprised me. I don’t know enough about South African politics to offer any analysis of the ANC. But I wanted to comment on the discussion of Zuma’s election, or the lack of it. There’s definitely been more attention among the socialist blogs I read than the feminist blogs, and the analysis is a little bit like the paragraph above. From Lenin’s Tomb:

Zuma is far from the ideal man to lead such a fight, burdened as he is with corruption charges over bribes from a French arms company, and he is actually doing his best to present his policies as pro-business. He is in all probability an opportunist who has harnessed a unique chance based on the unrest. However, the fact that he has successfully channelled the energy of this revolt into a leadership bid which may lead to him taking power in the ANC (but not the country) is itself significant. And however disappointing Zuma is likely to be (Chavez, he ain’t - even Chavez isn’t always Chavez), the very fact of ousting the wretched Mbeki may give further confidence to the already insurgent working class.

There’s something missing from these stories. Zuma is a rapist. He was acquitted - they always are. But in 2005 he raped 31 year old woman who was a friend of the family. I wrote about the trial last year:

The trial sounds hideous, and familiar. She was put on trial and her sexual history, including other times she had been raped, was put into evidence. When Zuma took the stand he argued that she consented by wearing a knee-length skirt and complaining that she didn’t have a boyfriend: “She had never in the past come to my house dressed in a skirt. Including times when I was living in Pretoria. When she came to me in a skirt after those talks I referred to earlier on, well, it told me something.”

This has been treated as a side-note by many different people. From AP Zuma was acquitted of rape last year, but could still face bribery charges in a multimillion-dollar arms deal. From WSWS “Zuma was sacked from office as deputy president by Mbeki and then faced a further trial on rape charges last year, in which he was acquitted.”

Maybe it’s just that the New Zealand left has developed some clarity on these issues, but if a powerful man is accused of rape and is acquitted that doesn’t mean he’s not a rapist. It means he is a rapist.

The inability to call a rapist a rapist displays an indifference to rape as a political issue. When asked in 1999, 1 in 3 Johannesburg women said they had been raped in the last year - they deserve more than one line in an analysis of the political meaning of Zuma’s victory.

The week after I first visited Rimutaka, I visited Arohata - the women’s prison. I’d gone to the prison half a dozen times already, to drop off books, letters, newspapers and visitors forms; I knew the prisons were different. At Arohata they weren’t set up for supporters. At Rimutaka there were signs, forms and boxes for anything we might want to do. At Arohata they weren’t as rigid, but after a week they wouldn’t let us drop any more newspapers off, because they’d never seen this number of newspapers.

I got to Arohata half an hour early - just like I did at Rimutaka. When I rang the bell they told me that visiting didn’t begin for half an hour and I’d have to wait outside. About ten minutes later another woman came, she was Maori and there to visit her mother. She’d come down from Palmerston North and we talked a little bit as we waited. I leaned against the fence, and she sat on the grass. She was pregnant, and needed to pee. I wanted to fight for her to get in and get a proper seat, but I’d already spent long enough in the prison system to know that it would just make me tired and get us nowhere.

Theoretically women prisoners on remand have much more visiting time than male prisoners on remand. Visiting time was in two hour blocks, rather than one hour blocks. All visiting time is cut into by the slowness of the prison system, but at the men’s prisons they at least seemed to be expecting visitors. At the women’s prisons they didn’t even realise we were coming, until visiting time began.

As I said, from 12pm Monday 15 October to 4.01pm Thursday 8 November my happiest hours were spent prison visiting. While I was visiting I knew that they were really there, and that they were still them and fears that I couldn’t even acknowledge dissipated.

But visiting at Arohata made me so sad, sad and angry, because the other female prisoners didn’t seem to get visitors. The woman I’d waited on the grass with was the only other visitor the day I was there, and when other friends had visited the day before, none of the other remand prisoners at Arohata had got visits.

There are fewer remand prisoners at Arohata than there are at Rimutaka (18 vs 81 in the 2003 prison census). There are only three women’s prisons in the country, so women as far away as Gisborne would be held in Wellington. But even taking the numbers into account there were five times as many visitors over two days at Rimutaka, than two days at Arohata.

I don’t think that I can extrapolate out total support from two days of visiting, but there’s other evidence that implies this is a pattern. Three times as many women as men had custody of children immediately before they were locked up (35.5% vs. 12.1%). For men, almost 80% of the children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner. Whereas for women less than 25% of children were looked after by their partner or ex-partner (full figures here. Instead it’s immediately family, larger whanau or CYFS.

Women do the work when men go to prison, and when women go to prison there isn’t necessarily anyone to fill the gap.

When I knocked on the door at 7.15 that morning Anura was still asleep. Anura, aka the frog, is two, and his godless father was in prison. It was the first day any of us could visit Thomas,¹ and I wanted him to be able to see his godless son.

The visit didn’t start until 8.30, but Rimutaka prison is half an hour’s drive from Wellington and I was told to get there half an hour early. So Anura’s mother woke him up, and I strapped a grumpy, sleepy baby into his carseat. We talked about the visit on our way up, me and Anura. “We’re going to visit Thomas” I said; “Yeah” he said”. “He’s in prison” I said; “Yeah” he said. But mostly I just drove.

I’d heard that you could take property (which is corrections lingo for stuff) into the prison while you were visiting. I had my bag of baby stuff in one arm and my bag of prisoner stuff in the other as we went from the visitor’s carpark to the gatehouse. We were a little late, and he was walking really slowly so I slung him on my hip, with my two bags. “Takahe” said Anura - although actually it was a Pukeko.

When we got to the gatehouse it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to take anything in - everyone was putting everything they had into lockers. So I did too and we were the last to go through the metal detector. “One at a time” the guard said - so I sent the baby through first. Neither of us set off the metal detector - I’d worn my black pants rather than my jeans to make things easy. After searching my bag he let me take my nappies and a museli bar down to visiting. I wouldn’t let Anura walk to visiting, but carried him instead - I wasn’t going to cut into our hour.²

When we got there the guard made me go back and leave my bag in the entranceway. I could see everyone else hugging their prisoner, but I couldn’t see Thomas. The guard told me that they would get him and I should sit down.

Visits at Rimutaka were in a prefab - bigger than the ones at school - but the same basic shape. In one corner was a small fenced in area - like it should have been for children to play in, but there were no toys.

Then Thomas was there in a bright orange Guantanamo bay jumpsuit and I was hugging him and he was OK. The next fifty minutes weren’t how we’d normally talk, and not just because the guards would come over and tell him to put his feet on the floor. Although when Anura got bored (even a prison visit hour is a long time for a two year old) he came over and grabbed my face - just like he would have in any other conversation (although he’s a better talker now so when I wasn’t paying attention to him yesterday he just said “Stop Talking”).

Prison visits are too short - they tell you it’s over and you try and get one last hug, and say one last thing, and then another last hug, and then it really is over.

The prisoners were taken away and we were sent to the entrance way. They don’t let you out of the visitors centre right away. While waiting in the I got a nappy from the bag they hadn’t let me take in. Anura had needed changing for a while. I put my hand under his head as he lay down and changed his nappy just outside the door to the visitors centre - there was nowhere else.

Once they let us out we walked back to the gatehouse at two year old pace - he wouldn’t be carried.

But in the end, my experience was as borrowed as the baby. When I was waiting to visit the following week,³ I noticed a woman who visited every day. Later she pointed me out to a friend - “She’s with the terrorist” and glared at me. I don’t know what her problem with me was, but I would think part of it is that I was so obviously there temporarily.

I saw people I knew when visiting, and I wasn’t surprised to see them, although they were very surprised to see me. I don’t belong to any of the groups whose existence is criminalised or for whom jail is a life hazard. I visited five times in four different prisons before I saw other pakeha⁴ visiting pakeha.

So I don’t want to talk as if I know anything about having people you love in prison - because twenty-five days is nothing - people are on bail for months and are sentenced to years in prison. There are families and communities, poor and non-white families and communities, where people in prison isn’t a horror or an aberration, but a fact of life.

I kept coming back to how much I had, when working to support people in prison. Most important was that there were heaps of us doing this together. I was in a good position for other reasons I had a car, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a child, English is my first language. While I love my friends who were arrested, their disappearance did not change the fabric of my life. I wasn’t trying to live without their income, or what they did around the house.

Despite all this trying to support people in prison took everything I was able to give. Even prison visiting - which was the high point of my weeks - is work, doubly so if done with a two year old. The work of having people in prisons, and keeping families and communities functioning while they’re away, is done by women. Female visitors outnumbered male visitors three or four to one. It was mothers, sisters, daughters, girlfriends and friends who were there, with or without kids, to do what needed to be done.

I’m not pointing out anything new when I say this makes prisons a feminist issue. The invisible work women do is even further from the public eye when it is to serve an institution designed to hide and conceal.

There are different ways of knowing. I’ve believed in prison abolition for years, but I believed it different on Tuesday 16 October when I stood outside barbed wire fences and thought about people on the other side. And I knew that prisons were a feminist issue when I changed a nappy at the entranceway to a prison visitors centre.

1. I have a car, and in a crisis situation I like nothing better than I really long to-do list, so I’d gotten myself approved first. (back)
2. that’s the guard’s job (back)
3. A visit that never happened - but the way the corrections department at times seems deliberately set up to make your life worse is a topic for another post. (back)
4. white NZer (back)

I don’t imagine most readers of Alas follow Australian politics particularly closely - neither do I. The main political issues I’ve followed have been union issues, racism against immigrants and indigenous issues, particularly the invasion of the Northern Territories. The common theme in all this is that Australian Prime Minister is an evil racist troglodyte.¹

Australia had elections yesterday and after eleven years in power the Howard government was finally defeated. I’m not really celebrating that - not being a huge fan of the Australian Labour party. But I do take some small joy, because it looks like John Howard lost his seat, and won’t even get back into parliament. Assholes losing their jobs is the highlight of any election.

1. The other theme is that the opposition Labour party also sucks beyond the telling of it (back)

On October 15 the police raided over 60 houses throughout New Zealand. They arrested 16 people on jointly possessing a number of firearms, and one person on drugs charges. From the very first day the police were talking about charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The raids were brutal, a 12 year old girl had a gun pointed at her head, and when her grandmother tried to comfort her the police yelled at the grandmother to shut up and moved closer to both of them (you can view the 12 year old’s comments here). In Ruatoki, a they put a roadblock on the line where the land had been confiscated so many years ago, and anyone who went in and out had to have their photo taken by their car. When one house was raided, the children were locked in a shed for hours by the police while the search was being carried.

Four people were arrested in Wellington; three of those were friends of mine - people I loved. They didn’t get bail; they went into the prison industrial complex.¹ Suddenly prisons stopped being an abstract concept to me, and became a reality that I attempted to navigate while trying to visit the prisoners and get them books and money.

But we didn’t, couldn’t, just do prisoner support, we also needed to stand in solidarity of people who had been attacked, particularly Tūhoe, the iwi ² that had been targeted in these raids. The four weeks that followed was prisons and driving and meetings and court and protests and meetings and supporting each other and meetings and prisons and court and driving and hugs and tears and and anger and love.

At 4pm, Thursday 8 November almost four weeks after people had been arrested, the Solicitor General announced that no-one would be charged under the terrorism suppression act (these were the first charges ever attempted by the police under the Terrorism Suppression Act). The following day all my friends got bail, and all 16 defendents are now free

I don’t think I could describe the sustained joy that started at 4.01 and continued for a week. They were released eleven days ago and I’m smiling right now, because they’re out and I can see them whenever I want.

It’s joy and a respite, but we’ve got so much work to do. All 16 are still facing charges under the Arms Act. The Terrorism Suppression Act - which allowed extensive bugging, has just been strengthened. While our friends are out of prisons, those vile instituations still stand, with far too many trapped inside. ³ I still live in a colonised country, where demands for Tino Rangatiratanga and Mana Motuhake⁴ are ignored.

I couldn’t write much. I was in too much of a whirlwind to know what to say. I’m looking forward to writing more regularly, but what’s happened over the last 6 weeks has affected me, and will affect what I write.

I’ve been promising to write more about feminism in prisons for a while now. While my analysis hasn’t changed much, your understanding changes as issues stop being abstract and distanced and become part of your reality, and the reality of those you love. So I imagine those posts will take a slightly different form than they might have two months ago, but will probably be stronger because of it. Most importantly, in the next few days (or weeks) I hope to write an introductory post that’ll cover some of the very basic history of colonialism in NZ, and Maori resistance, that I can use a reference point if I want to write more on Alas. I’ve generally avoided cross-posting what little I do write on Alas, but I think writing about colonialism where I live has resonances beyond, so that I should do the background work to make what I write intelligible.

I can answer questions if people have any, it can be hard to write about what’s going on here for another audience, but I think it’s worth doing.

Updated I realised I didn’t do any sort of explanation of the charges under the Arms Act. 16 of those arrested were charged under the Arms Act. These charges related to events that the police claim happened in the Urewera Mountains. Almost all the charges are joint charges - so 16 people are charged with co-possessing a rifle, or whatever.⁵ Most defendents are facing several charges under the arms act - the weapons they were alleged to possess were not found on their property during the raids. Just two people have additional charges - in relation to four guns the police claim to have found during the raids.

1. Being remanded in custody is much rarer NZ than America, and there is no such thing as money bail, so you never have to put up a bond (back)
2. tribe (back)
3. Please hold the inevitable ‘what about the rapists and murderers’ comments until I write a proper post about this and have time to reply (back)
4. I’m not going to try and translate - but I think land and freedom best conveys the meaning (back)
5. I’m the worst person in the world to try and explain this, because my knowledge of guns is so supremely limited that (back)