Women

A Message from Tanguay Women’s Prison: Against Capitalist Austerity

All United Against Austerity !

Slashing public services, the Couillard government is taking one more step to advance the neo-liberal capitalist project. It aims to make waged labour more precarious and to privatize essential services, like healthcare and education, by submitting them to the market and throwing the burden on to families. Austerity measures are embedded in a reorganization of the world-wide capitalist economy, designed to increase the profit rates of the ruling class and investors. In doing so, the economy is shifting away from the Quebec model of capitalism, which the State used in the 1960s as a tool ...........READ MORE

Jailbreak Out of History, Second Edition

In Jailbreak Out of History, revolutionary Amazon theorist Butch Lee shows how the anticolonial struggles of New Afrikan/Black women were central to the unfolding of 19th century amerika, both during and “after” slavery.

The book’s title essay, “The Re-Biography of Harriet Tubman”, recounts the life and politics of Harriet Tubman, who waged and eventually lead the war against the capitalist slave system. As Lee explains, “Harriet Tubman was a radical political figure, someone totally involved as a player in the great political ideas and military storms of her day. She was a guerrilla. Someone who lived and taught others ...........READ MORE

Eyricka Morgan RIP

Another Black/New Afrikan transwoman has been murdered, more business as usual in this horrible world.

As a 2012 study by GLAAD revealed:

People of color, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people continued to experience higher rates of homicide in 2012. LGBTQH people of color represented 53% of total reported survivors and victims of all hate crimes, but 73.1% of homicide victims. Black and African-American people were particularly overrepresented in the homicide rates: over half of reported hate murders had Black or African-American victims, even though Black and African American people made up only 15% of total survivors and victims ...........READ MORE

Orange Is Not New, and Prison Is Not Our Best Color [Susie Day]

[Reblogged from MrZine; see the original here]

Twenty-five years ago, I, a hapless reporter on assignment, went to the DC Jail and met the woman who was to be my life’s partner. I interviewed her about her political bombing case; we fell in love; I visited her in various prisons for 11 years; she was released; we’re now spending the rest of our lives working out our relationship, which has much to do with politics and everything with what she went through in prison.

Whatta story, right? I haven’t written much about this because I’ve found it impossible to ...........READ MORE

What’s Killing Poor White Women?

Everything about Crystal’s life was ordinary, except for her death. She is one of a demographic—white women who don’t graduate from high school—whose life expectancy has declined dramatically over the past 18 years. These women can now expect to die five years earlier than the generation before them. It is an unheard-of drop for a wealthy country in the age of modern medicine. Throughout history, technological and scientific innovation have put death off longer and longer, but the benefits of those advances have not been shared equally, especially across the race and class divides that characterize 21st–century America. Lack of ...........READ MORE

Important Stats about New Afrikan Transwomen

A year ago, Ebony magazine published a useful article about CeCe McDonald, the 23-year-old Black transgender woman who was sentenced to 41 months in prison for second-degree manslaughter despite clear evidence that she was simply defending herself from a violent racist and transphobic attack.

It was a good article, and included facts and information of relevance both to McDonald’s case, and more broadly. For instance, that

Studies show that, despite comprising only 8 percent of the LGBTQ community, transgender women account for nearly half of all LGBTQ hate crime murders. Among this group, transgender women of color are nearly ...........READ MORE

“And so, I am an instrument who will take vengeance”

Stories going around Ciudad Juarez about a woman killing rapist bus drivers, superheroine style, and going by the name Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers, have gone international, now being reported on in the LA Times, the Guardian, and elsewhere. As BBC reported on Monday:

Mexican police investigating the murder of two bus drivers last week are examining claims the killer was a woman seeking to avenge sexual abuse.

Two drivers from the same company in Ciudad Juarez were killed last week.

A woman who identified herself as “Diana the huntress” sent emails to newspapers and posted messages on ...........READ MORE

Remember the NJ4? Support Patreese Johnson!

On August 18, 2006, seven Black/New Afrikan lesbians from Newark, New Jersey went to Manhattan’s West Village for a night out on the town. As is all too typical, while they were out minding their business a male bystander began to harass and finally assaulted them, making sexist and homophobic comments as well as lewd advances and telling one of the women that he would “Fuck her straight.”

The women defended themselves, and a fight ensued. It ended with all the young women being arrested.

After a hellish year-long trip through the legal system, three of the women took plea ...........READ MORE

Fear Of The Shivers Of Freedom

The following text was written by West German feminist Ingrid Strobl in the 1980s. It was translated into English and published in the European anti-imperialist magazine Clash #6 and was subsequently reprinted in the North American anti-imperialist magazine Breakthrough #23 – Fall 1992. Note that much of the historical data on which Strobl bases her claim that between 9 and 30 million women were killed in the European witchhunt has been called into question: see Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt by Jenny Gibbons.

Though we only know a bit about matriarchy and about ...........READ MORE

OUT OF OUR SHELTERS! OUT OF OUR LIVES!

An important public service announcement regarding police invasions of women’s shelters in canada, from the fine folks at No One Is Illegal Toronto:

OUT OF OUR SHELTERS! OUT OF OUR LIVES! was the message delivered
to the Canada Border Services Agency on March 8th, International Women’s
Day, by the 120 plus women and trans-folks who poured into the Toronto
Rape Crisis Centre for an Emergency Assembly.

The Assembly was called after it came to the attention of the Shelter |
Sanctuary | Status campaign that in Feb. 2010 an Immigration Enforcement
officer went into a women’s shelter, looking to deport ...........READ MORE