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Acronym TV

The Catholic War on Women {aTV 005}

DISCUSSED: Abortion, Pope Francis, Patriarchy, Does the choice movement need an “it gets better” campaign to empower women to not hide/ apologize about their abortions?, Roe v. Wade, Clinic defenders, Abortion stories, How the Bible teaches women to abort unwanted pregnancy, Bad Choices, Being a target of a pro-life “wanted” poster, Abortion as a local issue, Single women who love sex and don’t want babies. Kelly Carlin frames her experience of being a woman in the current cultural and political climate in the following way: “The bottom line is, as a woman, I don’t feel safe in the world. I feel like an object. I feel like I could be raped or beaten at any moment. And I feel like I don’t have real control over my destiny and my future. And I have to feel ashamed of my body and who I am. If I could wake up and know that my culture no longer thought those things about me, the world would be such an incredible place because women could actually feel the power they have to help solve the problems that this planet is facing right now.” Katie Klabusich relates her harrowing experience as a target of a “Wanted Poster” campaign from the Pro-Life Action League. “They decided for Lent this year to put together an Internet meme asking people to pray for (three people): me, (and also) an abortion doctor, and a pro-choice journalist. They put the three of us, with our names, cities, where we work, etc., (and published) it in the blog post and told people to ‘pray’ for us.” This was a major concern because, as Katie says,” the anti-choice movement has used wanted posters to kill people. It has lead to assassinations.”

Should Women Apologize for Abortion?

It’s been over 40 years since the Supreme Court decided, in Roe v Wade, that women have a constitutional right to abortion. The legal argument was based around the concept that women had a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, and that right extended to their right to have an abortion. Perhaps no time in the 40 years since Roe v Wade have female reproductive rights been so under attack. From Texas to Alabama to Congressmen saying that women can’t get pregnant when raped because their bodies have a way of shutting that sh*t down, men (usually white conservative men with ties to patriarchal religious institutions) are working their balls off trying to control women; specifically a woman access to birth control and abortion. In the United Sates, one out of every three women has had an abortion. If you are a women living in Texas, and a growing number of states, access to this basic, simple, and safe procedure has been severely restricted with the passage of hundreds of new laws in the last several years that strip a women's right to privacy, limit access to abortion, and shame women into thinking that their choice about what to do with their bodies is wrong.

A Month of Resistance To Stop Mass Incarceration

In this clip form Acronym TV’s full show on the call for a month of resistance To Mass Incarceration, Carl Dix and Juanita Young call on people to recognize the injustice of the system of Mass Incarceration and join the resistance to put an end to it. Watch the full episode here. Learn more about the Call For A Month Of Resistance To Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression And The Criminalization Of A Generation here.

Orange is the New Black (Genocide)

In October, 2014, our resistance to mass incarceration must reverberate across the country and around the world. There must be powerful demonstrations nationwide on October 22, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Throughout October there must be panels and symposiums on campuses and in neighborhoods; major concerts and other cultural expressions; ferment in the faith communities, and more -- all aimed at taking the movement to STOP mass incarceration to a much higher level. October, 2014, must be a month that makes clear that thousands and thousands are willing to stand up and speak out today and to awaken and rally forth millions. It must be the beginning of the end of the mass incarceration in the U.S. To that end:

The Cops Killed Her Son. That Did Not Stop Her.

In this clip form Acronym TV’s full show on the call for a month of resistance To Mass Incarceration, Juanita Young talks about the death of her son, Malcolm Ferguson, a 23-year old man murdered by NYPD officer Louis Rivera. In June of 2007, a jury awarded Ms. Young $10.5 million. At the time of the verdict, Young told the New York Daily News: “the award was vindication that her son, Malcolm Ferguson, 23, was wrongfully shot during a struggle in March 2000 in an apartment building at 1045 Boynton Ave. - three blocks from where Amadou Diallo was gunned down a year earlier.” According to reporting at Revcom.us: “The Bronx jury of six issued a resounding “yes!” to the charges that plainclothes police officer Louis Rivera had used excessive force while stopping Malcolm, that his conduct had been a substantial factor in causing Malcolm’s death, that he had handled his weapon in a negligent manner, and that this mishandling was a substantial factor in causing Malcolm’s death. The six jurors also issued a resounding “no!” to the cop's claim that Malcolm had engaged in conduct that might have contributed to his death.

Why the Capitalist Elite Love Mass Incarceration

In this clip from Acronym TV’s full program, to discuss a planned month of Resistance To Mass Incarceration, Carl Dix breaks the war on drugs and the war on crime as proxy wars for the war on black, Latino, and oppressed people. This war, according to Dix, has been going on for decades amongst a backdrop of are the globalization of industry. With production moved from the United States to many other parts of the world where they can find workers that they can exploit much more viciously in much worse conditions and pay them much less than they could here generating more profit for the people who run this country, that leave generations of young people with no legitimate ways to survive and raise families, and Incarceration becomes the program for dealing with that.

With Mass Incarceration, U.S. is Guilty of a Slow Motion Genocide

If this were happening anywhere else in the world, Americans would be justifiably horrified: 1 out of every 100 adults are living behind bars in the United States, with 1 in 31 in some sort of correctional control, including prison, jail, parole, and probation. The United States, with 5% of the world’s population, has 25% of the worlds prison population. Private prisons are operating around the country at the local and state level, and a majority of them include “occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full.”

Occupy Founders Launch The After Party in Detroit

Some of the founding members of the occupy movement are launching a new political party – THE AFTER Party. Carl Gibson is among them. He says, “What sets The After Party apart is that 365 days out of the year it is a humanitarian organization. The way we organize politically, what sets us apart is that we are finding needs within the community, and then working to meet them using the community's assets.” And, so is Radio Rahim, another After Party founding member and, yes the real life persona behind the character in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing says the following:

Cutting off H2O to the NSA


1. 4th Amendment Protection Act. Our signature model legislation, the 4th Amendment Protection Act, would ban a state from taking actions which provide "material support" or assistance to warrantless federal spying programs. This includes provisioning of resources, and banning the state from using data obtained without warrant in state court.
States should pass this legislation whether they have a physical NSA facility or not, banning the warrantless data in court will have an immediate effect. And, since the NSA rarely publicizes its plans in advance, it's essential to ensure that their ability to expand with more data center facilities around the country is restricted before they get off the ground. (learn more here)

 2. Electronic Data Privacy Act. For those states where legislators are not yet willing or able to get the full 4th Amendment Protection Act passed, the Electronic Data Privacy Act is a powerful first step. By banning the use of warrantless data in court, this state legislation can thwart some of the practical effects of federal spying programs. (learn more here)



Austerity Is Crap: A Brief History of the ‘#USM Future’ Protest Movement

For this round of cuts and consolidations, a solidarity between students and faculty had been well established, and grew and flourished under the recognition that we had shared goals in preserving the University of Maine System, not only for their jobs, or for our quality of education, but for the broader benefit of society that a liberal arts education provides, in allowing all working class people to lift themselves up into an intellectual realm that had until only recently in human history been reserved for priests and nobility. A vote of no confidence was issued forth from the Faculty Senate, and Selma Botman resigned, only to be replaced by President Theo Kalikow, who has continued forth advancing the austerity agenda on the University of Southern Maine. Selma Botman, while vacating the seat of the President, was allowed by administrators to continued to draw her salary for the duration of her term, and was in fact hired back as a consultant, and paid an additional $300,000 to write a paper, putting her annual earnings well into the realm of the top 1%. As though to thumb their noses at the student protestors, Administrators gave themselves a raise of $20,000 and upwards.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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