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Women

Labor For A Permanent Ceasefire Now!

The Coalition of Labor Union Women president Elise Bryant and Executive Director Virginia Rodino recently spoke at a press conference for a Permanent Ceasefire.  President Bryant told the crowd in front of the White House, "When armed conflict erupts, it is women and girls who pay the highest price. "We in CLUW and the entire labor movement are relieved to see Israeli civilian hostages and Palestinian political prisoners returning home to their families. We are fighting for a world in which all families can be together. The only way to actually achieve that—to stop this violence—is through a permanent ceasefire now.

Ukraine Mobilizes Women, Elderly Amid Failed Counteroffensive

The month of October 2023 marks four months since the beginning of a Ukrainian counteroffensive. The counteroffensive was widely publicized in the West at its beginning. U.S. and British generals pinned high hopes on it, stepping up their weapons supply and training of the Ukraine Armed Forces. But after four months, the counteroffensive has yielded no results. Ukrainian forces are stuck before the Russian defense lines with no way to break through. Huge losses during Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive are behind the first attempts to formally mobilize women for military service. Of note is that Ukrainian authorities are looking favorably at “Israel’s” experience with female military personnel.

Project Provides Housing And Tech Training For Young Women Of Color

The quaint, Victorian-style house where social entrepreneur Bridgette Wallace chose to bring her vision to life looks like any other home in Boston’s historic Garrison Trotter neighborhood. Built in 1900 and nestled in the heart of Roxbury, this unassuming property on Boston’s Hutchings Street houses an innovative co-living and co-learning model to curb the effects of tech industry-driven gentrification. Welcome to G{Code} House, a place where women and nonbinary people of color ages 18-24 can reside as they complete a two year coding course that prepares them to enter the workforce.

The Childcare Movement Is Rediscovering Its Power

Last month, hundreds of childcare workers, families and children gathered in front of City Hall in Philadelphia for a Day without Childcare and a demand for better wages. It was a rousing, passionate event. A lead organizer of the event — and a third-generation childcare provider — Shineal Hunter, was thrilled. “This is a grassroots effort,” she said. “It’s just a beginning, a starting point to educate as many providers, parents and stakeholders and get them to jump on board. This whole opportunity is allowing me to see how much power we have to make change happen. We just have to join together and speak up.”

Black Brazilian Movement Leaders Lead Delegation To The US

From May 29 to June 8, 19 Brazilian Black movement leaders traveled to the US to meet with major international organizations to fight for an end to racist violence. These leaders, all of whom are women or people with diverse gender identities, have over 30 years of experience in Brazilian social movements. The delegates are all part of various groups within the Black Women Alliance to End Violence (Aliança Negra Pelo Fim da Violência), which aims to support “the strengthening of the national and international actions of cis and transgender Black women in their fight to end violence towards Black people.” 

Report On Incarceration And Women Outlines The Gender Disparities

Women represent about 9 percent of all incarcerated people in the United States, but data about their circumstances is spotty at best. We do know that in recent decades, imprisonment rates for women have increased dramatically, growing at twice the pace of men’s incarceration. A report published this month by the nonprofit think tank Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) provides one of the most comprehensive recent assessments of the realities facing women and girls held in the country’s prisons and jails. PPI teamed up with the American Civil Liberties Union to pull data from several government agencies, which can often be fragmented or out of date.

Transit Agencies Are Taking Small Steps Toward Family-Friendly Systems

In 2006, a transit agency serving the communities adjacent the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta claimed to be the first in the U.S. to provide a dedicated space for people to park strollers as they rode a bus. Tri Delta Transit, which serves northeastern Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area, created the zone because it noticed more families riding with strollers. “We recognized the difficulty they encounter when required to fold their strollers and felt there was more we could do to make their experience easier and more enjoyable,” said the agency’s outgoing CEO Jeanne Krieg, herself a parent, in a press release issued that year.

Women In Nicaragua: Power And Protagonism – Delegation Report-Back

Hailing from all corners of the United States and Canada, 22 delegates ranging from the ages of 10 to 80 traveled to Nicaragua from January 7-16, 2023 to investigate the conditions and the lives of Nicaraguan women on a delegation organized by the Jubilee House Community – Casa Benjamin Linder and Alliance for Global Justice. We had the opportunity to meet with a plethora of community organizers, workers, and public officials: from peasant feminist farmers to self-employed unionists; from urban community health workers to nurses and doctors; from battered women’s program directors to women leaders in the police, National Assembly, and Ministry of Women. We met with Nicaraguans from all walks of life and heard their stories of resilience and empowerment despite two hundred years of imperialist aggression and efforts to undermine their sovereignty.

Illinois Will Be The First State To Eliminate Cash Bail

Springfield, Illinois - On January 1, Illinois will become the first state in the country to officially eliminate its cash bail system when the Pretrial Fairness Act goes into effect. Under the new system, a person will only be detained before trial if a judge determines that they pose a threat to others or have a likelihood of being a flight risk. The measure — part of a 2021 omnibus criminal justice reform bill — was the fruit of years of organizing and advocacy work, much of which was led by women in the state who understood that ending money bail is a gender issue. The cash bail system plays a role in the United States’ growing jail population. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the nation’s jails hold more than 400,000 people awaiting trial, a number that has nearly quadrupled since the 1980s.

Berks County Detention Center Is Shutting Down

The Berks County Residential Center, a facility that has been the subject of much scrutiny and protests over its previous housing of migrant children and now migrant women, will be shutting down, according to an announcement from Berks County Officials issued on Wednesday, Nov. 30.  County officials were informed by the federal government that it will be ending its contract on Jan. 31, 2023. The public relations officer for the county, Stephanie Weaver, issued a statement that management and staff had been made aware of the government’s decision to shut down the center.  It was not specified if employees would lose their jobs or not. According to Weaver, they employ 60 people. Federal government officials have not responded to questions about the decision to close the facility. 

Film Recounts Latina-Led Fight Against Military Sexual Abuse

Two years ago, city hall plaza in our hometown, Richmond, CA., was the scene of a protest vigil organized by Estefany Sanchez and her two sisters. Estefany is a Richmond resident and an Army veteran whose experience of sexual harassment in the military led her to identify strongly with the tragic case of Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year old soldier at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Guillen was sexually harassed by fellow soldiers, at a base with one of the highest rates of sexual assault, sexual trafficking, suicide, and murder anywhere in the military.  Her complaints to superior officers were repeatedly ignored before she was killed while at work in an armory on the base. Guillen’s assailant, Aaron Robinson, then secretly moved, dismembered, and buried her body, with the help of a civilian accomplice still awaiting trial.

Haitian Women Mobilize On November 25 Against Political Violence

On the occasion of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, peasant women, political activists, social activists, feminists, from across Haitian territory, will unite their voices on the streets. In their mobilizations to be held on November 25, they seek to publicly and internationally denounce the political violence against them, the repression and silencing of women of the working class sectors by paramilitary forces and instruments of the Haitian government. Following in the footsteps of the three Dominican Mirabal sisters, whose brutal assassination in 1960 inspired the commemoration on the November 25, they will denounce the racist, anti-Haitian and xenophobic violence against Haitian refugee women by the Dominican government and its public policies so similar to those of the former dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina.

The Disappearance Of Meghan Marohn

A few days before Meghan Marohn, a 42-year-old English teacher at Shaker High School in Latham, New York, disappeared, she confided to friends that she had gone into hiding to escape from a man who had “brutally harassed and intimidated me because I wouldn’t sleep with him.” She said she was too afraid to stay at home, especially when she saw him drive by her house. She was granted a leave from teaching and camped out at The Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She was last seen on March 27. It was cold, snowy, and windy. Her black Subaru was found at a trailhead on Church Street in South Lee at the 46-acre Janet Longcope Park about two miles from the inn. Her car was unlocked.

United Nations Women And Blackrock

An open letter signed by 700-plus feminist groups and activists sent on Aug. 8 to UN Women, protesting a recently announced partnership between the agency and BlackRock, a United States-based hedge fund, resulted in the cancellation of the arrangement. The letter pointed out that BlackRock personifies “crisis-prone speculation-based capitalism” and that the May 25 joint press releases announcing the partnership by both parties offered no useful or explicit details on what it would accomplish. Such vagueness, the letter writers contended, could give UN Women the appearance of “pinkwashing” BlackRock, since there was no clear benefit for gender equality stated in the partnership goals.

Does The World Economic Forum Measure Up To Nicaragua?

In that uncertain context, when a report like this year's World Economic Forum Report on the Global Gender Gap appears, people living in the majority world naturally look twice at its underlying principles, moral vision and assumptions. This is especially so in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela or other countries around the world similarly under attack from the same Western corporate and political elites who control the World Economic Forum itself. An important feature of the WEF report is its dependence on the data and presupppositions of diverse Western institutions and organizations. But despite this ostensibly unfavorable context, the WEF report does indeed recognize the tremendous advances in equality for women in Nicaragua
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