Chloe's blog

Nigel Cole, director of Made in Dagenham, commented in the Socialist Worker, "I hope that people come out of the film thinking, maybe we don’t need to be pushed around, maybe we can stand up for ourselves."

Last year's release may have been perfect timing for us here in the US: the intensifying attacks on the public sector, declining union density and limited (if inspiring) fight backs, made it a good moment to reflect on accomplishments of workers movements and on collective action generally. Now, the Verizon strike, which involves 45,000 workers up and down the east coast, gives us another reason to contemplate our political moment.

Made in Dagenham recounts the 1968 Ford sewing machinists' strike in England. The strikers, who sewed car seats at the world's largest Ford plant, were galvanized by management's effort to classify of their work as unskilled. While this resulted in lower wages, the issues of respect and workplace control were the driving factors. Ultimately these women, a tiny minority of the plant's workforce, were able to halt production entirely.

The film has plenty of Hollywood-esque qualities. For one, it attributes a lion's share of the strike's leadership to single individual: the protagonist, Rita O’Grady played by Sally Hawkins). In fact, her character is a composite of several real-life strikers.

The film's depiction of O'Grady's personal transformation is predictable at times.

This year, Hampshire College’s annual reproductive justice conference --held from April 9 to 11-- seemed to come at a ripe moment. Just two weeks earlier, President Obama had signed an executive order affirming that the new health insurance exchanges would have to conform to the existing rule prohibiting federal funding from being used for abortion. Feminists -- from those who had advocated compromise to others who were continuing to fight for single payer -- were debating the worth of the healthcare reform bill.

In the opening plenary, Marlene Fried, Director of Hampshire’s Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, which hosted the conference, called for activists to “demand that President Obama rescind the executive order…[and to] demand that we get a Justice [to replace Supreme Court Justice Stevens] who stands for justice,” but for the most part Obama’s policies and the right in the US figured far less prominently than they might have.

Instead, the conference focused broadly on the ongoing struggles that simultaneously confront intersecting oppressions, such as better treatment for women prisoners, health justice for immigrant communities and reproductive self-determination for teenagers.

Of all the miserable aspects of the healthcare bill – the lack of a public option, the exclusion of undocumented immigrants, and lack of real insurance company regulation – the anti-abortion provision is near the top of the list.

On Sunday the White House released the text of an executive order reaffirming the bill’s consistency with the Hyde Amendment. Hyde, passed in 1976, prohibits federal funding for abortion, thereby preventing Medicaid recipients from accessing this essential service. President Obama’s order satisfied virulent anti-abortion Democrat Bart Stupak and brought 6 more Democrats in line behind the bill, ensuring its passage.

Less than three years ago, in July 2007, Obama shared these words these words with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund:

In my mind, reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose. Essentially what we're doing is, we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance.

An organization called Irish Queers protested the St Patrick's Day Parade - which bans gay groups - yesterday in New York City. Despite the illegality of anti-gay discrimination, the NYPD, FDNY and public officials like Mayor Bloomberg participate in the parade. Irish Queers is pursuing a civil rights lawsuit.

The protest was covered by Europe's Pink News and was mentioned in WNYC's parade coverage.

I recently attended an event at Bluestockings organized by the Rock Dove Collective, which coordinates a network of radical health practitioners who

Yesterday’s NY Times article about the US Marines’ “female engagement teams” was a good reminder that, despite the war’s

On December 16, Jamal Juma, coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was arrested by the Israeli police.

The June 24th New York Times reported that, in yet another effort to apply a “market based philosophy” to the problems of the poor, NYC's Bloomberg administration would seek to decrease funding

The cold-blooded murder of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller on May 31st sent shockwaves across the United States.

I just came across a post on one of my favorite feminist blogs, www.feministing.com, discussing how the New Hampshire state legislature