From John Scalzi:

“The Poor Suffer the Most”

Used, for example, in this news header today in a story about food shortages: “As a brutal convergence of events hits an unprepared global market, and grain prices go sky high, the world’s poor suffer most.”

Really? The poor suffering the most? It’s hard to imagine. Because, you know, usually when there’s a major global crisis of any sort, it’s the poor sitting there on the sidelines, going whew, dodged that bullet. How strange that the people the least economically, socially and educationally able to deal with wrenching change should suffer the most. How odd that the rich should so often be able to shield themselves from the ravages of events. It’s almost as if they have some advantage over poor people, although off the top of my head what it might be escapes me.

Read more.

A few weeks ago I walked into my local supermarket to see that a 10 oz. bar of cheese was “on sale” for $5.39. I did a double take–maybe they meant two bars of cheese for $5.39. Generally, the sale on that brand of cheese is 2 for $4.00 or 2 for $5.00, but sure enough this was somehow supposed to be a sale. I’ve been complaining about this since last year–the cost of food is soaring. Last year, I could generally get out of the supermarket paying around $65-85.00 for two people, now I’m paying $90.00 or more. The higher prices seem to apply across the board–fresh produce, canned foods, flour/rice, and most dramatically dairy. Of course, I’m fortunate to be able to suck it up and pay the higher prices, but many lower income folks in this country and other wealthy countries are struggling, and in poorer countries, people are taking to the streets in protest because they are unable to feed their families.

A quick search of Google news indicates that we really are in a world wide food crisis. I’m not so sure that there is an actually shortage of food, but the crisis appears to be the cost. Some of the countries where people are struggling with soaring food prices, include–Afghanistan, Haiti, South Africa, Namibia, New Zealand, Ivory Coast, and numerous others. The situation is getting so serious that the United Nations (and the World Bank) weighed in last week :

The head of the UN World Food Programme has warned that the rise in basic food costs could continue until 2010.

Josette Sheeran blamed soaring energy and grain prices, the effects of climate change and demand for biofuels.

Ms Sheeran has already warned that the WFP is considering plans to ration food aid due to a shortage of funds.

Some food prices rose 40% last year, and the WFP fears the world’s poorest will buy less food, less nutritious food or be forced to rely on aid.

Speaking after briefing the European Parliament, Ms Sheeran said the agency needed an extra $375m (244m euros; £187m) for food projects this year and $125m (81m euros; £93m) to transport it.

She said she saw no quick solution to high food and fuel costs.

“The assessment is that we are facing high food prices at least for the next couple of years,” she said.

Ms Sheeran said global food reserves were at their lowest level in 30 years - with enough to cover the need for emergency deliveries for 53 days, compared with 169 days in 2007.

Several factors have been cited as causes for the food price crisis including: rising fuel cost, the shift towards biofuels (e.g. ethanol), population growth, the growth of capitalist economies, and weather patterns. The greatest criticism in the range of articles I read has been reserved for government subsidies for bio-fuels, specifically ethanol. Many feel that the shift to ethanol and bio-fuels is environmentally harmful, but now we can add soaring food prices and hunger to the list of arguments against bio-fuels1.

1. If you want more information of about the food crisis, these graphs from the BBC website have useful information about the food price crisis. The only additional point I would add is that (see the chart of trade balances) while some countries like the US will benefit in the area of trade, I don’t think that the average American is benefiting from this. A few corporate farmers may be getting rich, but the vast majority of people are hurting. We’re not hurting anywhere near as much as poor people in poor countries. (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.

Comic book and animation writer Steve Gerber — most famous for creating “Howard the Duck” — died yesterday at the age of 60.

I loved “Howard the Duck” when I was a kid (I’m talking about the comic book Howard, the real Howard, not the awful movie that was made in the mid-80s).

But what makes Gerber especially notable for a political blog like “Alas” is the essential role his struggle for ownership of “Howard the Duck” played in changing how comic book creators in the US viewed issues of copyright and creative rights. The character of “Howard” was created as a walk-on gag character in an issue of “Man-Thing” Gerber wrote. It was thus “work for hire,” and the legal creator and owner of “Howard” was Marvel Comics.

Gerber found that he was able to express himself effectively though “Howard the Duck” in a way that was both satisfying to himself and resonant with an audience; soon Gerber was writing both a “Howard the Duck” daily newspaper strip and a “Howard the Duck” comic book. But Marvel Comics fired him from writing the “Howard” newspaper strip and then, when Gerber announced he was going to contest Marvel’s ownership of “Howard,” fired him from writing the comic book. A series of replacement writers proved unable to make “Howard” concept work, and the newspaper strip and then the comic book were canceled.

From The Comics Reporter:

“What disgusts me even more, though, is that I think the writers and artists have largely brought this on themselves,” [Gerber wrote] in 1978. “They don’t want to know about the business end of comics. They prefer to remain ignorant. They’ve allowed the publishers to convince them that they’re a bunch of no-talent bums surviving on the goodwill of the companies. Very few people in this industry really believe that their work has any artistic merit, or that it’s sale-able elsewhere. Or that they deserve more than they’re getting. You will actually hear them defend the publishers’ ownership of their creations, the low page rates, the cowardice of the companies to explore new markets. That’s why it’s startling when someone like Gil Kane or Neal Adams or Don McGregor or Barry Smith — or Steve Gerber — shoots his mouth off. People in the industry find it disturbing that one of their number might actually take his work seriously, take pride not only in being fast and dependable, but in the work itself.”

Steve Gerber did not win back Howard the Duck. He settled with Marvel and even returned to the company by the mid-1980s, although not in as devoted or prolific a fashion. Although the terms of the settlement were sealed, he told Art Cover in 1985 that, “It’s no secret how mad I was during and before the lawsuit. The terms of the settlement are such that I am no longer angry.” […]

The notions that Marvel would take a character away from a creator, even the one best suited to it, and that a creator might fight back, became powerful ideas among a growing tide of younger creators asserting a series of creators’ rights in regards to their work with big, mainstream comic book companies or their moves to smaller companies or self-publishing where rights might be attained. One element of the cautionary story was that Marvel was more interested in keeping and controlling the character than it was in fostering a relationship with the creator, even when the benefits were obvious to both. Also, the fact that Gerber had created Howard in an offhand manner but that the character had come to be a valuable mouthpiece for the creator became a key part of the thinking of a lot of creators rights advocates, and spoke as a powerful counter to an argument often expressed that some characters you created for the big companies and some characters you kept for yourself. As many have cautioned in a thousand hushed conversations since, you never know.

And from a 1986 panel discussion with Gerber, Mark Evanier (whose obituary of Gerber is here), Frank Miller, and Jack Kirby:

EVANIER: One of the reasons Steve settled when he did - he’s too modest to mention this - is that the comics industry at the close of the suit was not the same as at the beginning of the suit. One of the things that prompted Steve’s suit in the first place was that at one point he wanted to try and work out a settlement with Marvel on parts of his contract that had been left dangling. I sent him to an agent of mine, and the agent phoned the appropriate people at Marvel, and they said, “We’re not going to deal with you.” They didn’t recognize the rights of people to speak on behalf of artists and writers.

MILLER: We’re talking about an industry that until maybe ten years ago, a contract could not be negotiated in the office of the publisher of a major comic book company, because the writer showed up with his attorney. The publisher just got up and walked out. This is a true story; I know the writer, I know the attorney, and I know the publisher. We’re talking about the Dark Ages here.

EVANIER: It was 1978, I believe. (laughter) Largely because of Steve’s lawsuit, and because of other people who said, “We’re not going to take it anymore,” the comic book companies grew up a little. They have yet to make proper redress on all of the old offenses, but they’re now dealing in a more mature manner. They will talk to attorneys, and they will draw up legitimate contracts. They now realize they can not conduct major comic book company business like a lemonade stand. Steve’s lawsuit was one of the main reasons for that.

Current comic creators — especially those who work for big, mainstream companies — owe a lot to Gerber’s work and activism.

Marvel has done a reprint of some of Gerber’s “Howard” comics, although unfortunately they expunged the ones with swear words and nudity. I read somewhere today that Image Comics is going to reprint “Destroyer Duck,” the protest/fundraising comic Gerber and Jack Kirby* created (Kirby, who co-created almost all the core Marvel comics characters, was also engaged in a nasty legal struggle with Marvel Comics).

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.

From an article about MLK Jr in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day,” King told the congregation of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968, two months before his assassination, “I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize — that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards — that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.”

The article gives a brief overview of some of the scholarly books about Dr. King, and emphasizes how his radically left views — not just on racial justice, but also on economic justice (two subjects that I doubt MLK saw as separable) — have been obscured by the safe, saintly image of MLK that predominates. Obscured also is the fact that MLK was part of a mass movement that long preceded him, not a sole Great Man creating change out of whole clothe.

There are too many interesting bits to quote, but here’s another sample:

Never was King’s full agenda more visible than after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In his last years, King struggled to devise tactics suitable to challenging economic injustice, a target more amorphous than Jim Crow. In 1966 he launched an ill-fated challenge to Chicago’s slums and residential segregation. In 1967, in a speech against “racism, materialism, and militarism,” he described the United States as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” placed America “on the wrong side of a world revolution,” and blamed the “need to maintain social stability for our investments.”

In 1968, King visited a bare-bones elementary school in rural Mississippi. As he watched, the teacher provided each child with a few crackers and a quarter of an apple for lunch. “That’s all they get,” his friend Ralph Abernathy whispered. King nodded, his eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with the back of his hand. That night, King conceived the notion of a Poor People’s Campaign. To open the eyes of the nation to poverty, he would lead a Washington encampment of poor people whose civil disobedience would compel a shift of funds from war to social priorities such as full employment and a guaranteed annual income.

Opposition instantly greeted the Poor People’s Campaign. King’s advisers privately doubted its wisdom. Former allies criticized it publicly. As King soldiered on undaunted, he was called to Memphis, where garbage workers requested his presence.

Curtsy: Crooked Timber.

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)

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)

Great article in Mother Jones by Elizabeth Larson, whose daughter was adopted from Guatemala.

For those of you who don’t know, there’s been a lot of pushback against the “saving children from the benighted countries they were born in” narrative, led by those who were adopted.

The article covers much too much ground for me to sum up, so I’ll just quote the article’s comments on open adoption.

“One of the ways that wrongdoers hide their child-laundering schemes is by the closed-adoption system,” says David Smolin, a law professor who’s written extensively on corruption in transnational adoption. He and his wife adopted two sisters from India only to find out that they had been stolen from their birth family. Last March, a Utah adoption agency was indicted in an alleged fraud scheme involving 81 Samoan children whose parents were told that they were sending their children away to take advantage of opportunities in the United States—that there would be letters, photos, and visits, and that the children would return when they turned 18.

Openness, Smolin notes, would also make it harder for parents to think of adoptions as “rescuing” children. “There are cultural reasons why people give up children for adoption,” he says. “But when you have a situation where money alone, in relatively small quantities, would allow the birth family to keep the child—under current law you are allowed to take the child and spend $30,000 when $200 would be enough to avoid the relinquishment.”

As it stands, families who have forged relationships with birth parents often find it impossible to turn their backs on their economic needs. Some send a monthly stipend; others pay for the education of their child’s siblings, help finance businesses, or buy computers or cell phones to make it easier to stay in touch. And while all this is legal once the adoption is finalized, it’s a lot messier than writing a check for Save the Children. “We need to be careful what kind of impression that makes with other people in the village or area,” says Linh Song, the president of Ethica, a nonprofit organization that advocates for transparent adoptions worldwide. “Will they receive aid if their child is sent abroad?”

If you’re interested in reading further about Transnational Adoptions, there are a bunch of excellent blogs that write about this issue. Harlow’s Monkey is a great place to start, both because the blog is excellent and for the blogroll.

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)

From A Tiny Revolution, the Daily Show writers explain the premises of the writer’s strike with their usual flair and humor.

Click on the cartoon to see a larger version…

I really don’t like the way the art came out in this one; the figures look stiff and overworked. Oh, well; the next one will be better. (I hope.)

I’m a little hesitant to post this, because — although Campos never actually blames white women for the obsession with weight loss (in fact, Campos describes it as something done to white women — he describes anti-fat “neuroses” as something “middle- and upper-class American white women… are taught from a very early age”), he doesn’t do much to cut off that reading either.

Read the rest of this entry »

Update: I wrote this post this afternoon before the announcement that prosecutors will not bring hate crimes charges in this case.  I’ll make a more detailed update tomorrow. 

So I guess that some of the people in the West Virginia case have long histories of violence, including killing people. Check this out from the New York Times:

The Brewster family and their trailer has a history of violent crime, the police said.

Mr. Brewster killed his stepfather there when he was 12, the authorities said, and served time at a juvenile correction facility.

In July 1994, Mrs. Brewster shot and killed an 84-year-old woman she was looking after, also in the trailer, according to court records.

Mrs. Brewster, who was charged with first-degree murder, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and served six years at a state correctional facility. She was paroled in 2000.

In 2005, two men got into a fight outside the trailer, the police said, ending with a fatal stabbing.

In January, the police were again called to the trailer, where they found a man who had been slashed across his abdomen; the man survived, according to court documents, and Mr. Brewster was a witness in that case.

Also being held in the case of the young woman were Danny J. Combs, 20, who was charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding; George A. Messer, 27, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery; Karen Burton, 46, who was charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony; and her daughter, Alisha Burton, 23, who was charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery. The four were being held in $100,000 bond each.

The Brewsters were being held pending bond hearings.

The authorities said they were still deciding whether to file additional charges, of hate crimes, against the defendants.

“The whole family is shocked,” a sister of the victim said.

Relatives said the victim has mild learning disabilities but graduated from high school. The relatives would not comment on whether the victim was living at home or had a job.

It would seem to me that the fact that the victim has learning disabilities also makes the release of her name more suspect, and if you watch this video, it does not appear that the victim is in any shape to consent to have her name released to the whole world.

On a side note, clearly these people are dangerous, violent, and disgusting, but they didn’t do this because the are Appalachians, rural whites, or poor whites. They did this because they are criminals, thugs, and racists, so I will not be accepting any comments or commentary like these:

Hillbilly Hell in West Virginia

West Virginia: No Thanks

Mama! Mama! Look At The White Trash!

Six Held In Rape, Stabbing of Woman in WV

Despicable Deeds

I know plenty of hill folks and poor whites, and the vast majority are not at all like these wackos.

When I post New Zealand centred posts here I usually do a lot of translation, explaining things that aren’t well known outside of this corner of the world. I’m not going to do that this time, it’s just too complicated to explain, but I do think it addresses some ideas that might have some resonance outside New Zealand. The only thing you really need to know before reading is that in New Zealand the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980s were carried out by the supposedly left-wing Labour party.

**********

A couple of weeks ago John Minto gave a talk called Gender, Race and Class - and the greatest of these is class. I really admire the work John Minto has done, of course. But I disagree with a lot of the arguments, and assumptions behind this talk, just as much as I disagree with the title.

In this post I am concentrating on John Minto’s comments on gender and feminism. Not because I believe that ‘the greatest of these is gender’, but because I know far more about the women’s liberation movement than the Tino Rangatiratanga movement.

The talk began:

Those of us active in politics in the 1970s and 1980s will recall the interminable debates about race, sex and class within all manner of progressive organisations, protest groups and social agencies.

Anti-apartheid meetings could be dominated by debate about patriarchal processes, peace groups about institutional racism, union meetings about representation of women.

John Minto appears to be implying this was a problem, or at least that these discussions were a distraction from the main aims of these groups. I think all groups need to look at ensuring women can participate, and I think anti-racism and peace work are completely intertwined, but it his the third example that, to me, showed a stunning lack of analysis.

Women and union members are not two discrete groups; women are now the majority of union members. To talk as if the representation of women is a side-line issue for unions is to say that only half of union members matter. The first thing to acknowledge in any discussion about gender, race and class is that our world is not just made up of working-class white men, middle-class Maori men and middle-class white women.

Another problem I have with his talk is what I’d call ’straw-movementing’. I can’t talk with any knowledge about the Maori sovereignty movement, but I think the feminist movement he is describing (and critiquing) in his speech, never really existed in NZ.

Feminism sought to empower women in their own right (a bit like the black consciousness movement sought to empower black South Africans through pride in their race) and to gain equality of opportunity with men.

That’s a really limited description of what feminism is. The women’s liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s certainly went far beyond empower and equality of opportunity. I’d say even in these moribund times we’re talking about a lot more than that. Here’s another example:

Where is the focus for the struggle of women and Maori today? The former seems to be within the equal opportunities and equity arguments while the latter is largely focused on the Treaty of Waitangi process.

The feminist groups that were set up within the equal opportunities/equity framework in the 1970s - NOW and WEL - have all folded.* The biggest, organised, feminist groups are in response to violence against women - rape crisis, refuges. I don’t think I’m giving disproportionate attention to the activities I’ve been involved in when I say that the focus for the struggle of women in New Zealand over the last few years has been police rape.

Given that his view of the feminist movement is so limited, it’s no surprise that he argues:

So while the feminist struggle has largely impacted on the middle-class women the benefits for working class women have been illusory.

I don’t think the benefits of the feminist movement for have been illusory for working class women. If asked what the gains of the NZ feminist movement were I’d say:

• The ability to decide when and whether to have kids (before the feminist movement you often couldn’t even get the pill unless you were married or pretending to be)
• Equal Pay and the DPB - as well as being important gains in themselves, they both make it more possible for women, particularly women with children, to live without a male partner.
• Women’s refuges, the right to say no in marriage, rape-shield laws, the fact that 95%* of the country believes Clint Rickards is a rapist, and any understanding that rape and domestic violence are not ok. The size of the problem of violence against women is over-whelming, but compared to how much worse things were 40 years ago we’ve won a lot (including the possibility of surviving without a male partner).
• Making sexism less acceptable

I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve left out - but that’s not a list that only impacts on middle-class women.

I’d agree with part of what he’s saying - women now have access to all sorts of jobs they didn’t have before, thanks to the feminist movement. If your brother was never going to be able to be a lawyer (for example), then opening up the lawyer profession to women isn’t going to make much difference to you (although women also have more access to the relatively well-paid working-class male jobs - there was a huge fight to get on the meat-works, for example).

But there is so much more to feminists’ aims, and the gains feminism has won, than that sort of formal equality. John Minto he has a very narrow view of the feminist movement - so he argues the feminist movement is narrow.

The crux of his discussion is about the 1980s, and how the hell it happened. John Minto appears to be offering two related explanations:

It reached a climax in the mid 1980s with many erstwhile stable groups and sensible people imploding or exploding, unable to hold together because the conflicting views within them developed greater strength than the political glue which bound them in a common cause.

While all this angst was going on a revolution took place. Almost while our backs were turned, while most of us were distracted perhaps, Rogernomics ripped the heart out of our economy and in a few short years destroyed what two generations of the welfare state had established.

I don’t dispute that the NZ left was imploding, or exploding, in the 1980s, although I’d want to do considerable more research before speculating on a cause. But if it was the ideas of women’s liberation and Maori sovereignty that were causing groups to implode, then surely the problem was primarily sexism and racism on the left, not people pointing out this racism and sexism.

The other explanation John Minto offers is basically that the left was bought off:

The question has often been asked as to how this process could have been driven through by a Labour government. The answer is because Labour is a middle class party. This middle-class constituency was rewarded by David Lange with social policy changes such as anti-nuclear and gay rights legislation while Roger Douglas hammered the hell out of working New Zealanders. The impact of these new right economic policies was felt by working class families while the middle class – the heart of Labour activism – was largely protected.

Firstly, I’m not entirely sure why middle-class people benefited more from anti-nuclear legislation and homosexual law reform. Working class gay men exist and Don Franks has done some really good work to point out that nuclear ships wasn’t just a middle class issue.

More importantly I think the amount of progressive legislation out of the fourth labour government has probably been over-estimated (particularly if you take into account that they didn’t pass pay equity legislation in time to make a blind bit of difference to anyone). For example, there was at least as much, if not more, feminist influenced out of the following National government (as well as some vile anti-woman legislation, but that’s true of both governments). Domestic violence, rape and censorship** laws all got reformed by the Bolger government’s, and as far as legal codes go they’re as feminist as you get.

I wasn’t there*** so I don’t know if people really were bought off, but I do know that doesn’t really discuss the most important reason why people didn’t fight back in the 1980s: The union movement’s loyalty to the Labour Party. It wasn’t the lack of class analysis which stopped people fighting back, it was a really bad class analysis.

But I have a more fundamental objection to John Minto’s argument - I don’t think we have to choose. I think choosing, pitting causes against each other, is inevitably going to weaken our ability to fight back, rather than strengthen them. In this country capitalism, colonialism, misogyny and sexism are intertwined like one of those parasite plants that is slowly strangling a tree. You can hack away at one branch, try to clear a section, get some breathing room and sunlight on a piece, but we have to attack the whole thing if we’re going to get any kind of freedom.

* I’d argue that they didn’t always operate within those frameworks but now is neither the time or the place.

** I don’t think I’ve ever heard any complaints about our censorship laws from the left/feminist perspective. All I know about them is that in the 1990s they changed the criteria censorship is based on from one of obscenity to one of harm. Even the obligatory fractious pornography discussions, are generally void of any discussion on what the law is, let alone what we want them to be. Is this because our censorship laws are generally OK? It seems a bit unlikely.

*** Much - I went to a few demos, even organised one, but I hadn’t started secondary school so I didn’t keep up with internal politics.

I have very fond memories of teachers’ pay negotiations. My sixth form maths teacher was a staunch unionist and also very distractable. We could get a good half hour off calculus with a well-timed question like “What’s happening with the teachers pay negotiations?” Teachers didn’t go on strike when I was in High school, but more recently they did, and students took some really awesome support action. A Secondary teachers’ strike has a real potential to radicalise young workers.

So I’m really excited that New Zealand secondary teachers have voted to go on strike in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there.

* Has anyone else ever seen a video called Mom’s on Strike? It featured a young Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa). The basic plot-line is pretty self-explanatory. A woman left to do all the housework for her family goes on strike (with a picket line and everythign). Then the father left all the work to the two daughters, and they joined the picket-line too. We watched it in a Social Ed class in high school - which led to a pretty cool discussion about girls’ experiences with housework in their families (I went to an all girls school).

I sleep walk.

I don’t actually sleep walk - I sleep run. I have these dreams where a bomb is about to go off in my flat and I have to get out now. So I get out of bed and run out of the house. These dreams come in different intensities, but at their worst I know I’m about to die, and I’m terrified of that death.*

When I was small I lived in Thatcher’s Britain, the Britain of Protect & Survive. I was terrified of bombs. When we moved to New Zealand I was five, and I listed one of my favourite things about this country that their were no bombs.

I don’t think my terror dreams come from those years in Britain. I think they’re a stress or anxiety response. But I think it’s because of Margaret Thatcher and her pals that I dream of bombs. If I lived in different times I might be running from Wolves, or communists. I’d probably be just as scared, but that’s small consolation when I can still taste the adrenalin from believing that I was about to burn to death.

As far as Thatcher’s casualties go - my experience is nothing. The miners lives weren’t ruined in their dreams, they were ruined in reality. While she never dropped a nuclear bomb, she did drop other bombs. Her economic policies led to redundancies and unemployment - those aren’t just abstract ideas - they kill people. Poverty kills, hoplessness kills - the year after the miner’s strike saw many more than the usual number of suicides. It’s not just economic policies either Section 28, passed by the Tories, made it illegal to promote the teaching in state schools “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”

So when someone responds to me posting the lyrics to Merry Christmas Margaret Thatcher with: “Nothing Margaret Thatcher did is worth hoping for her death” - that really depends on what, and who, you value. People have died because of Margaret Thatcher.

I don’t think individuals are the driving force for politics, if Thatcher hadn’t been there, it would have been someone else. I don’t particularly hope for her death any more, she’s old and out of power, and probably a little bit out of it anyway. But when she does die you better believe that I’m going to celebrate. I’m going to dig out my parents old anti-Margaret Thatcher t-shirt and put it on, I will play anti-Margaret Thatcher songs all day, and I will write a post on this blog, maybe about Women Against Pit Closures.

My favourite phrase in Solidarity Forever is ‘we will break their haughty power’. The power to ruin people’s lives by remote control and sit back with a cup of tea is a haughty power indeed. To suggest that people shouldn’t be angry about what is done to them, and other people, shouldn’t be angry at that haughty power, is telling them their lives don’t matter.

I have a new favourite Christmas song. I’m not sure what my old favourite Christmas song was, but there’s no way it can be as awesome as Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher from Billy Elliot: The Musical. This is the chorus:

So merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
May God’s love be with you
We all sing together in one breath
Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher
We all celebrate today
‘Cause it’s one day closer to your death

I wasn’t particularly fond of the movie Billy Elliot. I felt it wasn’t particularly well written, and the mining strike was too far in the background. I wouldn’t have expressed any interest in the musical, but my sister has just come back from the UK, and she brought the Cast Recording with her.

I’d consider a song about celebrating Maggie Thatcher’s death enough to make a musical anyway, but there’s more. There are songs of solidarity and struggle, which give workers’ struggle weight and importance.

I’ll probably never see the musical, for all I’m loving soundtrack and I’m still a little unsure about the idea. I believe passionately that we need to tell the stories of our struggles. Knowing about fighting and winning, even fighting and losing, is the hope in our history. I don’t know much about the miner’s strike, and I’m a trade unionist and historian, who was born in Britain. Billy Elliot: The Musical will keep the history of the miners strike alive.

But this a West End musical, with seat prices to match. At what point do people telling their own stories become the commodification of resistance? Does it matter that the creators don’t see themselves writing about someone else’s life, but feel resonances in their own life for the story that they tell?

Do ex-miners and their families get in free?

Note for Comments No derogatory comments about the miners in the strike in particular, or workers more generally.

1,000 service workers in New Zealand hospitals have gone on strike, and then been locked-out. Service workers are some of hte lowest paid workers in any hospital. In this case the workers have been trying to get one contract to cover orderlies, cleaners, and so on, at public hospitals throughout New Zealand. They’ve got agreement with the Hospital Boards, and all but one of the companies that subcontract this work, but one company, Spotless, is still holding out. Hospital workers at Spotless have gone on strike.

Any time 1,000 workers get locked out it’s important that we win. The fight for a single pay scale for service workers in the hospitals is an important one. Raising the starting rate of these low-paid workers to $14.25 an hour would be a great victory. But this is also a fight against contracting-out, and it’s a fight we have to win.

Theoretically businesses, and government organisations, contract out services. They contract a company to clean, or to perform a certain task. But in reality they’re contracting out employment.

Cleaning is a really good example of this. It’s a low capital industry, and large cleaning companies don’t get huge economies of scale. Companies get their printing done by a contract because they don’t print enough to justify having the equipment sitting around all day. It takes about the same amount of equipment to clean a hospital whether the equipment is owned by Spotless or the Hospital, and neither of them can use the equipment elsewhere. In fact, by contracting out companies, and government organisations have to pay extra, to cover the profit that any cleaning company is going to make.

So why do hospitals (or businesses or anyone else) contract out their cleaning? Because they can use the tendering process to drive down the cost. To win tenders, and bid lower than other cleaning companies, the winning company has to either pay their workers less, or get their workers to do more cleaning in less time.

Contracting out is so effective, because everyone can claim that they’re not responsible. The cleaning companies aren’t responsible, because they can’t afford to pay any more than they’re given. The hospital that contracts out its cleaning isn’t responsible because it’s up to the sub-contractor how much money to pay.

It’s a vicious way of keeping wages and conditions down, and the only way workers can fight it is by organising. Hospital workers in the SFWU have fought really hard to get this far. An agreement with the DHBs, and all but one of the contractors is a huge step forward. But it will be meaningless unless they can get Spotless to agree to the same terms and conditions, otherwise Spotless will be able to undercut other companies up and down the country, and wages will go on a downwards spiral again.

Contacting out can affect all workers. Although low-paid workers like cleaners are the most vulnerable, all sorts of jobs can be done on a contracting out basis. So it’s really important that all workers support the hospital workers in this battle against contracting out, and for one wage scale for all workers.

Or, what she said:

All amounts are in NZ dollars, so I don’t want to hear anything about how it’s a reasonable amount of money - because it’s not.

I’d like to thank everyone who has posted and commented about James and Clint Heine’s comments.

Clint Heine appears to be claiming that he thought James was talking about masturbation (he also claims to know that James was only talking about masturbation too, although I’ve no idea how Clint could know that).

He seems to think that this would mean that there was no implications of non-consensual sexual activity in what James wrote.

He’s wrong.

James does not care about me as a person, he has no knowledge of, or interest in, my desires. His prescription of a dildo - whatever he imagined was done with it, was based on him, and what he wanted, not on me. To talk about sexual acts in a way that renders women’s desire invisible and irrelevant is to promote rape culture. To talk of ‘fixing’ a woman with a sexual act and ignore her desires is to threaten rape.

I’m aware that James, and Clint had no intention of taking any action, that discussion of sexual violence is just words to them. But the effect, and the intention, is to police women’s behaviour, with threats about what will happen if we don’t conform.

I promise to get back to things that aren’t about me tomorrow. I’ve still got a report on Angela Davis’s talk to write (although I’m afflicted by a kind of curse, whereby if I ever mention that I’m planning on writing a post on this blog then it’s guaranteed that I never actually get around to writing it).

* The post that Clint Heine and James were responding to was about an Australian unionist who called a boss a thieving parasite dog, and was expelled/suspended from the Australian Labor Party because of it.