GABNet LA: FREE Political Fashion Art Show

In Commemoration of International Women's Day
GABNET LOS ANGELES PRESENTS

A MILE IN HER SHOES
Honoring Women Defenders
A FREE Political Fashion Art Show with Special Performances
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Pre-Show: 4:30pm
Show Starts: 5:00pm
Eagle Rock Plaza, Center Court: 2700 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90041

Join GABRIELA Network Los Angeles of the Mariposa Alliance as we commemorate International Working Women's Day by holding an event that will celebrate the brave and courageous journeys made by Women Defenders of human rights. We invite all peace loving, justice seeking and militant women to join us as we combine performance art and fashion with various women's organizations to proclaim our latest fashion statement: "Free Our Sisters, Free Our Selves!"

This March 14, 2009, we honor the journeys that Women Defenders have taken around the world and in our own local areas. We honor the road they have taken in advancing the rights and liberation of women and peoples everywhere. Though the rate of violence against women is most rampant; and though there is the highest rate of modern day slavery, especially of women, ever in history, Women Defenders have not given up. From Nepal to Venezuela to Kenya to the United States, women defenders have been organizing, demanding their rights, and fighting for countless others.

GABRIELA Network Los Angeles invites you to join us in this celebration of successes, of women who are true sheroes for their heroic acts of courage, compassion, and commitment. We celebrate women defenders past, present, and future who have never ceased to step up, stand up and perch high!


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 23, 2009
Amanda Martin, Gabnet LA Coordinator
losangeles@gabnet. org
Tel: 510-502-6522

GABNet LOS ANGELES TO COMMEMORATE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY WITH ITS 6TH ANNUAL POLITICAL ART AND FASHION SHOW

On Saturday, March 14th, Gabriela Network Los Angeles of the Mariposa Alliance will host "A Mile in Her Shoes: Honoring Women Defenders." The political art and fashion show will highlight the lives of women who defend women's and human rights, honor everyday sheroes in our communities, and comment on the plight of women and children today.

"A Mile in Her Shoes: Honoring Women Defenders" is the 6th of annual political fashion shows Gabnet Los Angeles has hosted; each year, different issues women face are addressed, ranging from sex trafficking, to workers' rights, to domestic violence. This year, as the global economy sinks deeper into crisis, political repression concurrently rises. Women who struggle to survive through poverty and marginalization turn to political activism as a vehicle to change their realities, and they are punished for their resistance. Gabnet and its community partners – women's, community, youth, labor, and non-profit groups - will honor the brave women who defend their rights and their people's rights.

Please join Gabnet and its partners at "A Mile in Her Shoes: Honoring Women Defenders." Admission is free, and all justice-loving people are invited to join us. A silent auction of all fashion show pieces will follow. Photo opportunities will be available.

EVENT INFORMATION:

Date: Saturday, March 14th

Time: Pre-Show 4:30pm; Show 5:00pm

Location: Eagle Rock Plaza, Center Court; 2700 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles, 90041

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>>Read more

Politics of the Plate: The Price of Tomatoes

If you have eaten a tomato this winter, chances are very good that it was picked by a person who lives in virtual slavery.

March 2009, Gourmet.com: Driving from Naples, Florida, the nation’s second-wealthiest metropolitan area, to Immokalee takes less than an hour on a straight road. You pass houses that sell for an average of $1.4 million, shopping malls anchored by Tiffany’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, manicured golf courses. Eventually, gated communities with names like Monaco Beach Club and Imperial Golf Estates give way to modest ranches, and the highway shrivels from six lanes to two. Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee. The heart of town is a nine-block grid of dusty, potholed streets lined by boarded-up bars and bodegas, peeling shacks, and sagging, mildew-streaked house trailers. Mongrel dogs snooze in the shade, scrawny chickens peck in yards. Just off the main drag, vultures squabble over roadkill. Immokalee’s population is 70 percent Latino. Per capita income is only $8,500 a year. One third of the families in this city of nearly 25,000 live below the poverty line. Over one third of the children drop out before graduating from high school.

Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.” Read the rest of Politics of the Plate. >>Read more

Facts on Abortion & Contraception

1.94 Million Unintended Pregnancies And 810,000 Abortions Are Prevented Each Year By Publicly Funded Family Planning Services

February 24, 2009: Six in 10 Clients Consider a Family Planning Center Their Main Source of Health Care. $4 Saved for Every $1 Invested; Expanding Medicaid Services to More Low-Income Women Would More Than Pay for Itself

By providing millions of young and low-income women access to voluntary contraceptive services, the national family planning program prevents 1.94 million unintended pregnancies, including almost 400,000 teen pregnancies, each year. These pregnancies would result in 860,000 unintended births, 810,000 abortions and 270,000 miscarriages, according to a new Guttmacher Institute report.

Absent publicly funded family planning services, the U.S. abortion rate would be nearly two-thirds higher than it currently is, and nearly twice as high among poor women.

Publicly funded family planning services are highly cost-effective. More than nine in 10 women receiving them would be eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal, delivery and postpartum care services if they became pregnant. Avoiding the significant costs associated with these unintended births saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent on family planning.

“The national family planning program is smart government at its best,” says Rachel Benson Gold, the study’s lead author. “Publicly funded family planning is basic health care that empowers disadvantaged women to decide for themselves when to become pregnant and how many children to have. It reduces recourse to abortion. And it saves significant amounts of taxpayer money.”

More than nine million women received publicly funded contraceptive services in 2006. Most (7.2 million) received their care from the national network of family planning centers. Another two million women received Medicaid-funded family planning care from private doctors. Six in 10 women who get care at a family planning center, including three out of four who are poor, consider the center to be their usual source of health care, according to the report.

“Many low-income women get their basic health care for the year during an annual visit to a family planning center,” says Gold. “The package of services they receive not only includes contraceptive counseling and the provision of a contraceptive method. It also includes pelvic and breast exams, tests for HIV and other STIs, screenings for reproductive cancers, high blood pressure and diabetes, and referrals to other health providers when necessary. This is essential, preventive health care for disadvantaged women.”

Public expenditures for family planning in 2006 totaled $1.85 billion, with 71% of those funds coming from the joint federal-state Medicaid program. The role of Medicaid in funding family planning has risen dramatically since the 1980s. The increase was driven by efforts in 21 states to expand eligibility specifically for family planning for low-income women who otherwise would not qualify for Medicaid.

“States as varied as Texas, New York, South Carolina and Missouri have decided to undergo the cumbersome and time-consuming process to seek federal permission, known as a waiver, to expand family planning services to more women who need them,” says Gold. “It’s a popular policy because it helps women while saving public dollars. It more than pays for itself.”

The report recommends that Congress eliminate the waiver requirement. Instead, states should be allowed to use the same income criteria to determine eligibility for family planning under Medicaid that they use to determine eligibility for pregnancy-related care.

“Cutting through the red tape and doing away with the waiver is a crucial first step that should be a high priority for policymakers,” says Gold. “Our report recommends other policy changes to help the national family planning program maintain and increase its effectiveness. These include increased funding for the federal Title X program, which provides critical support to the national family planning provider infrastructure. Policymakers also need to take a more comprehensive look at how Medicaid and Title X can best complement and strengthen each other.”
>>Read more

4th most illegal migrants in US from RP

Filipinos make up the fourth largest group of unauthorized migrants in the United States as of January 2008, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a report released Tuesday.

MANILA, Philippines -- Filipinos make up the fourth largest group of unauthorized migrants in the United States as of January 2008, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a report released Tuesday.

Of the 11.6 million unauthorized migrants believed to still be in the US, the DHS said Mexicans comprised the most, with 7.03 million.

After Mexico came El Salvador (570,000), Guatemala (430,000), the Philippines and Honduras (300,000), Korea (240,000), China (220,000), Brazil (180,000), Ecuador (170,000), and India (160,000).

“The ten leading countries of origin represented 83 percent of the unauthorized immigrant population for 2008,” the report said.

North America, including Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America, accounted for 8.8 million of 11.6 million unauthorized migrants in the US until last year. Asia follows with 1.2 million, and South America with 850,000.

The DHS also tracked where most of these illegal migrants are, with California hosting the most, with 2.85 million.

By Veronica Uy, INQUIRER.net. Posted date: February 24, 2009. Read more at http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20090224-190773/4th-most-illegal-migrants-in-US-from-R
>>Read more

LAY DOWN THE NEW WOMEN’S AGENDA FOR FULL WOMEN’S LIBERATION!

As we commemorate the enduring legacy of the global women’s movement this 2009 International Women’s Day, GABNet of the Mariposa Alliance calls for the laying down of a New Women’s Agenda attuned to the tactical needs of our time and the strategic requirements for full liberation for womankind. LAY DOWN THE NEW WOMEN’S AGENDA FOR FULL WOMEN’S LIBERATION!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2009
Jollene Levid, GABNet Secretary-General
secgen@gabnet. org
Tel: 323-356-4748

BAY AREA, CA: As we commemorate the enduring legacy of the global women’s movement this 2009 International Women’s Day, GABNet of the Mariposa Alliance calls for the laying down of a New Women’s Agenda attuned to the tactical needs of our time and the strategic requirements for full liberation for womankind.

In this era of impending profound social transformation, when class society faces crisis upon crisis, and imperialism itself is reeling from the very catastrophe it has wrought upon the world, GABNet, in consonance with the cooperating organizations of the MARIPOSA ALLIANCE, calls for the coming together of all the disparate elements and forces of the women’s movement.

The changing demographics of our societies make this imperative. We are witnessing the rise of transnational women and their communities, with their own special cluster of issues. Women and men of two passports, of two cultures, of two or more languages and who are bi-racial are slowly becoming the majority population in the US. Indeed, within less than a decade, the US will become bi-lingual.

And because we are women of action, GABNet is spearheading the start of this discourse, with the founding congress of the Mariposa Alliance this Fall, in the Bay Area, California, with a gathering of individual women and representatives of women’s organizations to launch a higher level of cooperation among women of diverse origins and backgrounds.

We have reasons to celebrate the past year: the passage of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which recognizes gender discrimination as a continuum, the defeat of Proposition K for the legalization of prostitution, the extension of the International Marriage Brokers Regulatory Act (IMBRA), the impending passage of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York, the full surge of women’s participation in the last elections that wrote finish to the Bush/GOP administration, the rise of women’s voices the world over activism over a great range of issues, from reproductive rights to right to historical signification.

GABNet of the Mariposa Alliance can boast of two decades of consistent work for the emancipation of women of Philippine ancestry. Among its accomplishments for the past year alone are:

• Holding four national meetings of GABNet membership and leadership;
• Organizing ten school-based committees working on the Purple Rose Campaign Against the Traffic of Filipinas;
• Engaging, on a national basis, on daily activities to commemorate 16 Days of Activism on Violence against Women;
• Launching a mini-campaign on a Divorce Bill for the Philippines;
• Holding a Los Angeles to San Diego Caravan Against the Trafficking of Women;
• Holding a concert against the Trafficking and Violence against Women;
• Organizing a rally of women in Los Angeles on International Women’s Day which earned the support of the West Hollywood City Council;
• Organizing women’s delegations to all anti-war marches;
• Organizing new GABNet high school units;
• Holding a Feminist Valentine Dinner in commemoration of the Purple Rose Anniversary;
• Initiating and deepening the organizing committee for the Mariposa Alliance.

In addition to this, all GABNet members participated in theory-building sessions and educational activities to enhance their understanding of women’s oppression and social activism.

This rich and long-standing experience in work for the liberation of women of Philippine ancestry is the solid foundational basis of the Mariposa Alliance, a coalition of individual women and women’s organizations in formation.

We have reasons as well to be upset: the same-sex marriage ban in California which deprived thousands of a basic human right, the emphasis on male-dominated industries in the stimulus package passed by Congress, the huge gender-gap in political and economic leadership which continues the pervasive masculinist rule in class society that women should be “responsible but with no power; accountable but with no authority;” the continuing redaction of women’s social and political roles to being place-holders of power for others, their political work deemed of no historic value, the continued violence against women which rests on the denial of their right to historical significance, and the patriarchal surge that enables their transformation into commodity under imperialist globalization.

It is time. Machismo is so obsolete; authoritarianism is passé and women considering their collective interests as secondary went out with whalebone girdle. The need for a new women’s agenda grows greater each passing day, the imperative for coming together more urgent. Let us begin lest we be left again holding the bucket – and an empty one at that -- as women have been in the past. The Future begins Today.

To the Bay, this Fall, to lay down the New Women’s Agenda!
Liberate women, liberate all!
Free ourselves, free our sisters!
End war and all violence against women!
Dismantle gender-based oppression and exploitation!
Equality in Unity, Justice in Strength!

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Access Denied

Countless women are sexually assaulted as they attempt to immigrate into the United States. What happens to their reproductive rights when they wind up in U.S. custody?

When sexual-assault counselor Elia Alvarado first met Maria in 2007, Maria was wearing a blue prison uniform, sitting in a doctor’s office at the Port Isabel Detention Center. She was in her early 30s, but looked haggard, Alvarado recalls, older than her age. Two months and more than 1,500 miles after leaving Honduras, she had been detained at the border and taken to the immigration holding facility north of Brownsville.

Maria, a single mother, had left her 8-year-old daughter at home, she told Alvarado, and paid a man to take her to the border. Her ultimate destination, she said, was the Northeast, where a friend had promised to find her work as a housekeeper. “I went to send money home for my daughter,” she told Alvarado in a subsequent counseling session. “This was how I planned to support my family.”

Maria and several other Hondurans were guided on a journey by car and train, she said. At night, they stayed in ramshackle homes, sleeping on crowded floors. One of those nights, just before she reached the border, she said that a man grabbed her near an abandoned shack where the immigrants were staying. He forced himself on her, leaving Maria defenseless, the only witness to the violent act. Afterward, Maria blamed herself. She wondered if this was what she deserved for leaving her daughter. Read on at http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2963. By Kevin Sieff | February 20, 2009 | The Texas Observer. >>Read more

2 US sailors charged with prostitute's murder, attempted murder of another in Mexico

Feb. 11, 2009, AP: Two U.S. sailors have been charged with the murder of a prostitute and the attempted murder of another in this northern border city, Mexican state prosecutors said.

Witnesses and a hotel camera place the two men at the same hotel where a 19-year-old prostitute was smothered to death on Jan. 17, the prosecutors said Tuesday.

On Feb. 4, prosecutors say, police found the men in a bloodstained hotel room with a prostitute and a hotel employee, both of whom had suffered stab wounds.

The sailors were taken into custody and charged with attempted murder. Authorities say they later found evidence linking them to the January killing.

A U.S. Navy statement on Wednesday said that Jarrett Monzingo and Joshua Dockery, active-duty petty officers assigned to the San Diego area, face murder and attempted-murder charges in the death of a Mexican citizen and are being held at La Mesa Prison in Tijuana.

The statement did not elaborate on the alleged crime but said that the Navy has hired Mexican lawyers to represent the petty officers. >>Read more