Feminism

By 1925, manufacturers were aware of the toxic effects of radium, but said nothing to their employees and took no precautions. Many of these workers died agonizing deaths from the effects of radium poisoning. They say that if you pass a Geiger counter over their graves in the Catholic cemetery outside Ottawa it will still tick a warning.

Seven of the dying Ottawa women initiated a lawsuit against the company in 1934. They were dubbed the “society of the living dead,” racing the clock against a slow and cumbersome legal system for their justice. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the women’s favor.

By Bushra Khaliq, August 5, 2011

The floodwaters that ravaged the southern parts of Pakistan in the summer of 2010 have long receded. Gone are the makeshift tent camps on roadsides, however the revival of normal life still remains a challenge. Thousands continue a daily struggle to support their families and re-establish livelihoods. As a new monsoon season is in full swing, last year’s trauma and economic pain still linger. While last year’s victims struggle to recover, others now worry that changing world weather patterns will cause renewed flooding.

The devastation caused by the 2010 floods was the worst in Pakistan’s history; almost 2,000 deaths, nearly 20 million displaced or affected and one-fifth of the country went under water. The deluge inflicted unprecedented catastrophic damage on a country already reeling from the effects of US-led war on terrorism. A year later, the picture is dismal.

Although many flood refugees have returned home, little is known to the world about their miserable conditions and stories of struggle. Particularly the women who are the worst-hit still facing multiple challenges after one year. Their work burden is multiplied. While husbands and male members in poor families, being daily wagers, are struggling to find sources of income, women remain busy in rebuilding their damaged shelters and dwellings.

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.

I ignored the Slutwalk in Toronto. It only caught my attention when my friends and fellow activists started debating the nature of the walk. The critiques began immediately - that this was yet another white feminist project excluding women of color. There were articles written about the leadership's colorblindness and charges that the only reason the media was reporting it was because scantly-clad white women were involved. My initial thoughts were to sympathize with demonstrators while questioning the leadership and the tactic of reclaiming of the word “slut.” In the back of my mind, I considered how the word "slut" elicits natural solidarity among women.  Every woman knows the intention of being called a “whore” and a “slut,” and many experience it one time or another. 

After hearing the debates for days, I checked my Facebook and saw that there was a La Marcha de las Putas (“March of the whores”) in Mexico against sexual harassment that was inspired by the Slutwalk in Toronto. The rally-goers protested how the term “whore” is used against women when they are assertive and challenge male authority. The message of the march confronts the double-edged sword used against women (sometimes called the Madonna/whore complex, or Marianismo): women are thought to be morally superior to men and at the same time considered over-sexed and untrustworthy. It was La Marcha de las Putas that really pierced me and made me pay attention.

Court is still in session and access to the capitol is restricted for the fourth consecutive day. About eighty people continue the sit-in inside the capitol, for hope that the combination of popular pressure and favorable judicial order will force the DOA and police to step aside and let the occupation of the capitol resume in full; if they leave, their understanding is that the capitol will be unrecoverable for the movement.

The resolve of people inside is nothing short of heroic. Many of the activists holding the floor at the capitol have been there for days, since last Friday even, committed to staying for every night that it was rumored people would be pushed out. But unlike last week where activists would go to meetings, get food, clean up and rush back to the capitol before being locked out, they have been basically unable to leave since the doors closed Sunday afternoon. Morale has had its highs and lows, higher at the start of the week and lower every day since as the isolation and feeling of powerlessness sets in. I got a call from a comrade inside yesterday and I said to them, "Its like you're in fucking prison," to which they responded, "Well actually in prison you could come visit me."

When addressing the important question of scale--"how big or broad do we really need to be in order to start calling some shots in a meaningful way"--some of us on the left are fond of approvingly paraphrasing Lenin's idea that "politics is millions." ["Politics begin where millions of men and women are; where there are not thousands, but millions."]

This is a truism that few would contest, but it's also a good reminder of the real mammoth task at hand. Before we can realize the "another world" that so many will be imagining in Detroit next week, we have to think about what it will take to get there. When I think about this, I envision millions of people who identify with social movements and are directly engaged by them. We would be able to recognize this phenomenon in the conversations of strangers at a bar, the lyrics of pop songs, a politicization of sports, and so on. These people are from all walks of life and carry eclectic, diverse, and often contradictory political positions. The left is there, but only as a midwife to the struggle--leading by example and careful not to undermine its influence by mandating political orthodoxy on an array of points for every campaign or by exhibiting insensitivity to cultural and religious traditions that may have reactionary elements about them (as well as radical potential, in some cases).

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.

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