Email this pageWoman Power at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum
On day four of the USSF, a few of us from WILPF joined hundreds in celebrating the 95th birthday of Grace Lee Boggs. Grace is a philosopher, a feminist and a community organizer who has lived and worked in Detroit with her (now deceased) husband Jimmy Boggs, since 1953. (Grace is the same age as WILPF, and we wanted to give her a bouquet and claim her as a sister, which we did after the ceremony). It was through hearing the loving accolades and songs and poems that Grace has inspired that helped me understand the powerful culture of resistance and creativity that she has helped create within the shell of abandoned capitalism in Detroit. I would guess that the Social Forum might not have taken place in Detroit were it not for the long-term organizing and community building spearheaded by the Boggs.
Seated in a wheelchair in a large room at the Cobo Center, she traced her life, from the first birthday that she remembered, to today. One could tell that her studies of Hegel, her translations of Karl Marx, and her work in the 40’s and 50’s with the Caribbean writer CLR James were vivid experiences that continue to guide her thoughts and actions today.
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WILPF is exceptional among non-governmental organizations for the number and variety of opportunities it makes available for its members to involve themselves in its leadership at the national and international levels. That’s because our members are our organization, and our organization’s effectiveness depends—in every way—on the quality of our members.
Celebrate Jane Addams Birthday - Support Women Peacemakers!
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Celebrate Jane Addams Birthday - Support Women Peacemakers!
This fall marks the 150th anniversary of Jane Addams' birth and the 10th anniversary of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325. To mark this historic occasion, WILPF is launching a special project designed to bolster women's active engagement in conflict resolution and prevention. The new Advancing Women as Peacemakers (AWP) Project will educate citizens on the history of women as peacemakers, stressing the interconnectedness of gender equality and peace, and the unique roles women can and have played in peace negotiations. This fall, AWP will sponsor a national speaking tour and workshops featuring women peacemakers from conflict areas around the world. WILPF branches and other groups are encouraged to join this initiative and host a workshop. For more information, please contact Tanya Burovtseva, AWP Project Coordinator, at (617) 266-0999 or email: tburovtseva@wilpf.org.
WILPF is Going to the U.S. Social Forum – Are You?
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| USSF people representing at the May Day Immigration Reform Rally and March in Chicago. Another World is Possible// Otro Mundo es Posible ussf2010.org www.chicagoradicalendar.org/ |
The U.S. Social Forum is part of the vital World Social Forum movement started in Brazil 10 years ago. The Social Forum helps regular citizens explore ways to end wars, promote human rights, economic justice and environmental action. About 50 WILPFers participated actively in the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta in 2007. They joined over 17,000 women and men of many races and backgrounds working for peace and justice. WILPFers made important connections, contributed much, and learned even more.
Join us this year, when WILPF will be sponsoring several key workshops (and supporting many others). You can also choose from over 1,000 other workshops, participate in plenary sessions, the People’s Assemblies, cultural and artistic events, and a march of thousands through central Detroit. Members can also help with WILPF tabling or participate in (and help organize) WILPF workshops.
In, addition we are cooperating with workshops supported or organized by many of our WILPF issue committees, including the Cuba and Bolivarian Alliance, Save the Water, and the Middle East committee. We are also collaborating on workshops sponsored by our peace and justice allies.
Register now, online – it’s easy! Pay by credit card or check as instructed. To register as a WILPF member, write our complete name in the box provided: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom U.S. Section. If you need help or are registering under another organization contact WILPF member Terry Futvoye-Micus, our Detroit WILPFer and registrar, at terfutmic@aol.com.
Stay with WILPF members in shared hotel rooms at $22 to $36 a night.
WILPF Protests Testing of Nuclear Warhead Delivery Systems
Join Us on June 5 – International Nuclear Weapons Abolition Day
WILPF is proud to partner with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) to protest ICBM missile test launches and call for a real commitment to nuclear abolition through a Nuclear Weapons Convention.
Despite President Obama’s promises in Prague to pursue a nuclear weapons free future, the U.S. military is still testing and upgrading Minuteman III ICBMs designed to carry thermonuclear warheads.
Two ICBM test launches (with dummy warheads) are scheduled for June 2010 from Vandenberg Air Force base / Space Command near Lompoc, California to the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands. The exact date of the launch tests are not known, and June 5 provides a great opportunity to expose them; most of the world is unaware that these tests are still being carried out routinely.
Exit Afghanistan? You Make the Call
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Women voting in Afghanistan |
The evidence that the war in Afghanistan is a catastrophe just keeps piling up. Despite General McChrystal’s efforts to reduce civilian deaths, we just learned that so far this year the number of civilians killed by NATO has more than doubled.
This includes a botched raid where special operations forces killed five innocent civilians – including two pregnant women – and then tried to cover it up. Just last week, troops fired into a bus full of civilians, killing as many as five people and causing a firestorm of protest. The Associated Press (4/12/10) has reported that: “With troop levels rising amid heightened violence, at least 2,412 Afghan civilians were killed in fighting last year, an increase of 14 percent from 2008, according to the United Nations … NATO earlier this month confirmed that international troops were responsible for the deaths of five people, including three women, killed Feb. 12 in Gardez, south of Kabul. An Afghan government report on the incident claims U.S. special forces had mistaken their targets and later sought to cover up the killings by digging bullets out of bodies, according to investigators who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.”
Earlier this month, the WikiLeaks website released a harrowing video from 2007 of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter opening fire on a group of civilian men in Bagdad, two of whom were journalists working for Reuters.
Five Days That Will Shake the World: WILPF Joins U.S. Social Forum
This June, WILPF members will join thousands of activists to make the slogan “Another World is Possible” come to life. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom is on the official program and our members Edith Bell and Odile Hugonot Haber are also involved in additional workshops.
This gigantic, grassroots forum will address the key issues WILPFers work on, so it is a good place to make connections, spread WILPF’s name, and have an impact. Members can register at the official U.S. Social Forum website or if you want to use WILPF’s official registration password, contact carol.disarm(at)gmail.com.
There is a space on the registration form to indicate your organizational affiliation; write in WILPF and it will help us coordinate getting together in Detroit.
The Bolivian Example: How WILPF Can Work for Water and a Clean Earth
By Nancy Price and Theta Pavis
The First People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth recently took place in Bolivia. Yet this historic conference was also a reminder that the work for a healthy planet, and clean drinking water for everyone, is far from over.
During the gathering in Bolivia, activists also held a water conference, Feria Internacional del Aqua, which featured an outdoor fair where villagers showcased the work of local water councils. The fair included food, information about water-related organizations and a number of workshops.
Rivers of Regeneration
The WILPF project Women and Water Rights took months of planning, but the ripple effects will be felt for years to come. Check out the fantastic media coverage they’ve received.
This week the project continues to build momentum, with a “World Water Day Film Screening.” What’s next? None other than Vandana Shiva will make a major presentation on the closing day of the exhibition. If you couldn’t see the exhibit and catch the programming, don’t worry. You can listen to a Podcast about their work on the KFAI website – just look for the clip on International Women’s Day with host Dixie Treichel on the radio show Fresh Fruit. The exhibit will also be going on tour. Check their website for more details.
WILPF Supports Walk for Nuclear Disarmament and Abolition
By Ellen Thomas, Co-Chair WILPF DISARM Commitee
International peace activists – from New Jersey to Japan – will leave Washington on April 8 to walk through Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Princeton and points in between, before arriving in New York on April 30. There we will join thousands of international supporters (and three other peace walks converging from different directions) at an international disarmament conference on April 30 and May 1. We’ll follow it up with a mass demonstration and march through Times Square on May 2.
“For the first time since the 1980s, we have aggressive leadership toward nuclear abolition. We will carry that energy and hope from the U.S. capital to the United Nations in New York, hoping the world will recognize that a majority of Americans--like the vast majority of world citizens--want nuclear weapons gone,” says WILPF member and walk co-coordinator, Jay Marx.
After the NPT events in New York, WILPF branches will have an opportunity to sponsor events and home stays, as the campaign heads north into New England.
Originating from a 1993 voter initiative in Washington, D.C., the “Nuclear Disarmament and Economic Conversion Act” (HR-1653 in 2009-2010) has been introduced into the U.S. Congress nine times so far, but remains stuck in committee. Its aim is to convert money fueling the war machine into funds that provide for human needs. We want to see solar panels and windmills, not missiles and bomb-dropping drones.
You Get What You Pay For 2010
WILPF members attending the 54th meetings of the Commission on the Status of Women push to reallocate government dollars from military expenditures to basic human needs. A pamphlet produced as the result of our strategizing at the International Board meeting about how to unify WILPF's talking points is available: Click here to view or download the pamphlet as a pdf file.
Bringing the “Most Dangerous Women” to Life:
Bringing the “Most Dangerous Women” to Life:
An Interview with author Jan Maher
Jan Maher, director, professor, author and workshop leader is the co-author of the play Most Dangerous Women and author of the book Most Dangerous Women: Bringing History to Life Through Readers’ Theater. The book is about “Reader’s Theater” as a teaching and organizing strategy. Maher is currently teaching writing, multicultural education, feminist theater, gender and women’s studies at Plattsburgh State University, NY. We caught up with her to talk about her work, past and present.
Tell us a little about your book.
Maher: The book puts the play in context … about how to work with the material that is in the play in a community, and in classrooms. It tells you about how to teach it and how to produce it.
Let’s talk about how this evolved. The idea for the work first grew out of a request [WILPF member] Sylvia Lunt made. She asked Nikki Nojima Louis, your co-author, to develop something for WILPF’s 75th anniversary and then Nikki asked you to help on that project?
Maher: Right. We ended up with the first version of it in 1991, and that was done as a benefit performance in Seattle with a professional cast. And Sylvia and others Seattle members said ‘this is too important to not have it keep going.’ We then went to the national [WILPF Congress] in Bryn Mawr.
Boycott Companies Supporting the Occupation of Palestine
Building the Movement for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions
How Do Companies Further the Palestinian Occupation?
Corporations further the Occupation either by operating in or supporting the Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law, or by supporting the apparatus of control and oppression which is the hallmark of the Occupation.
That apparatus includes the Separation Wall, the hundreds of checkpoints set up to impair Palestinian travel, the system of Administrative Detention (imprisonment without trial for periods of six months, renewable without review), night raids that frighten children and disrupt normal life, a permit system imposing restrictions upon travel and normal building for Palestinians, the confiscation of homes and lands, and the demolition of houses, among others.
Defend Democracy: Join with us to Abolish Corporate Personhood
The Situation
The Citizens United decision has been called the "worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott."
Untold amounts of corporate and special interest dollars already make free elections difficult and keep otherwise good people from running campaigns that demand obscene amounts of money and media connections.
Corporate Power is an issue that undergirds and creates obstacles for all the issues important to WILPF branches and members. It will take a concerted and strategic approach from all of us towards a unified response in order to move each of our issues forward, through the walls of corporate personhood.
Many are saying that with this decision American citizens will see their civic engagement in the voting process as both unnecessary and irrelevant, since corporate CEOs will be able to hand select our candidates, our priorities and our policies. No further voting or political contributions from ordinary citizens will be required, since none will be
effective against the billions of dollars corporations will be unleashing on our so-called democracy.
Pundits on both the conservative and progressive sides are calling it a dangerous threat to democracy. Even Tea Party founders are recognizing the negative impact this decision will have.
Read Jean Verthein's Report on WILPF at the UN
Jean Verthein, NGO Representative for WILPF, US to the United Nations, has written an excellent report on WILPF activities at the United Nations, where WILPF has official consultive status.
To view and download this report, click here.
Here is an excerpt from that report:
" WILPFers and Friends of WILPF at UN DPI/NGO Conference, Mexico City
Nuclear disarmament strategies, military budgets and gang use of small arms stirred about 1300 attendees at the recent UN conference for NGOs. Such issue panels prepared the groundwork for the Review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in May 6 through May 26, 2010.
The whole peace effort to back the NPT, other treaties and initiatives sprang out of the August 6 and 9 US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
As diplomats convene on the NPT itself, side events will occur in buildings around the closed UN building under repair. Governmental disarmament agencies will track developments under the existing NPT.
NGOs and their coalitions will host thematic meetings. Torchlight parades and marches will pass through many countries and end up in New York City.
To prepare for the NPT Review in May 2010. six WILPF members participated in this process at the annual United Nations Department of Information this past fall in Mexico City on disarmament."
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