Friday, April 13, 2012 – 3:00pm to Sunday, April 15, 2012 – 12:15pm
From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom
26TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
FOR STUDENT AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISTS
CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PUBIC POLICY (CLPP)
HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE, AMHERST, MA
PS is a proud sponsor… for another year!
Click link fror schedule/more info:
http://clpp.hampshire.edu/2012-conference
Open House
Friday, April 27, 7:00-8:30pm
Social Therapy Group
106 S. Oxford St. (between Fulton and Lafayette)
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Experience the power of group therapy
Join Dr. Hugh Polk and staff of the Social Therapy Group at an Open House at our community therapy center in Fort Greene. You will have the opportunity to observe the performance of an ongoing social therapy group and participate in a post group discussion with therapists and patients.
Social Therapy, at the cutting edge of humanistic, developmental approaches to psychology, has helped thousands of clients create new possibilities for themselves, their families and their communities. Our positive, group therapeutic process helps adults, families and children create with others and in doing so, to grow emotionally.
Please RSVP to Ryan Freeman at rfreeman@socialtherapygroup.com or 718-797-3220.
CHELSEA CLINTON, CHRISTINE QUINN AND OTHERS DISCUSS WOMEN IN POLITICS AT 92Y
Co-Presented with Cindi Leive and Glamour Magazine, Panel Guests Include Republicans and Democrats
Wednesday, March 28, 8 pm
New York, NY: March 14—In 2008, a woman almost won the Democratic presidential nomination and another won the Republican vice-presidential nomination. It was a high-water mark in national politics. Four years later, the presidential campaign is currently an all-male affair, but what’s happening with with Senators, Representatives, Governors and state legislators? How have things changed – or not – for women involved in politics? 92nd Street Y, in partnership with Glamour magazine, presents a special panel discussion on Wednesday, March 28 at 8 pm: Running in Heels: Where Are the Women Candidates for 2012 And How Can We Get More of Them? Chelsea Clinton moderates a discussion with five women from across the political spectrum about the successes and challenges for women in government. Here’s the line-up:
Introductions: Cindi Leive, Glamour’s editor-in-chief
Moderator: Chelsea Clinton, Board Member, Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative. She is also a special correspondent for NBC News.
· Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council.
· Nicolle Wallace, bestselling author of Eighteen Acres and It’s Classified, political commentator and former White House communications director under President George W. Bush.
· Abby Huntsman Livingston, daughter of former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman. She most recently worked on his campaign and previously worked for ABC News and for Good Morning America.
· Stephanie Schriock, President of EMILY’s List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics.
· Amy Holmes, former CNN contributor and news anchor for The Blaze and GBTV.
WHO: Chelsea Clinton, Christine Quinn, Nicolle Wallace, Stephanie Schriock, Abby Huntsman Livingston, Amy Holmes & Cindi Leive on Women in Politics
WHEN: Wednesday, March 28, 8 pm
WHERE: 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York, NY
TICKETS: www.92Y.org <http://www.92y.org/> or 212.415.5500
Limited press seats are available. Please contact Sarah Morton, smorton@92Y.org or 212.415.5435
Dear Supporters,
We are working hard on planning Truth and Justice: The 2012 Summit on Military Sexual Violence and wanted to inform you of an important change.
We just heard from congressional offices that our original conference dates coincide with the week when the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will be debated in the House of Representatives. The NDAA is the key piece of legislation that pertains to defense issues, including military sexual assault reforms. Last year, SWAN worked with Representatives Mike Turner (R-OH) and Niki Tsongas (D-MA) to get life-saving victims’ protections put into the Act. SWAN is working closely with this bi-partisan team to introduce key sexual assault reforms into this year’s NDAA, putting the focus now on changing the military judicial system.
Due to the scheduling of this important NDAA debate, we need to move our Summit. Fortunately, this change will give our movement an enormous advantage–by coming to Washington, DC and sharing your stories with elected officials the week before this debate, you will have the opportunity to directly influence the outcome of military sexual assault reform.
SWAN is moving the Summit to Tuesday, May 8th and compressing our activities into one day, with panels in the morning and congressional visits in the afternoon.
Our mobilization will send Congress a strong message at exactly the right time. We will also be pressing forward with a national media strategy to push these issues and this historic gathering even further across the nation. Additionally, the Military Sexual Assault Prevention Caucus, co-chaired by Reps Tsongas and Turner, has agreed to officially sponsor the Summit. We are grateful to both congress members for taking leadership on these issues in the past and continuing to lead into the future.
We sincerely hope you will be able to join us (register now!), and regret any convenience this re-scheduling may have caused you. Even if you cannot make it, there are lots of ways to participate and lend your support. Check out our sidebar to the right for a few opportunities. Thank you for your courage, dedication and support!
Sincerely,
Anu Bhagwati
Executive Director, Service Women’s Action Network
Former Marine Captain
SWAN is a civil rights organization founded and led by women veterans. SWAN’s vision is to transform military culture by securing equal opportunity and the freedom to serve in uniform without threat of harassment, discrimination, intimidation or assault. SWAN also seeks to reform veterans’ services on a national scale to guarantee equal access to quality health care, benefits and resources for women veterans and their families.
On February 13th, 1969, New York’s legislature held a hearing on the matter of abortion reform. Under what conditions would abortion be permitted, if any? Fifteen witnesses were called to help answer this question: fourteen of them were men; the fifteenth was a nun. Then, young radical feminists, the “real experts” broke in, and seized control of the conversation. These women testified to their own experiences with abortion and called for the repeal of all laws.
At last month’s birth control coverage hearing, the Senate’s row of white male contraception experts didn’t even bother with a nun. Representative Darrell Issa turned law student Sandra Fluke away on the grounds she was unqualified to speak about the subject at hand, which was not contraception or reproductive health but, as one male speaker after another agreed, “religious freedom.”
The time has come to take back control of the conversation and foreground women. The present is unacceptable; so let’s make it impossible. We can begin by reclaiming our radical past, by learning from the women whose voices forever changed the tone of the dialogue about abortion in the United States, and from the activists, artists, and health care providers who have kept up that tune even when others tried to drown it out.
Keynote panels at Urgent! will feature veteran radical feminists and pioneer abortion activist Rosalyn Baxandall; abortion activist and provider Merle Hoffman, founder of Choices; Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women; Miriam Perez, aka Radical Doula; Loretta Ross, co-founder of SisterSong; Alix Kates Shulman; Barbara Winslow; and Nona Willis Aronowitz.
Scheduled breakout sessions include a conversation with The Doula Project, a workshop on manual aspiration abortion led by the Reproductive Health Access Project, film screenings, skill shares, and much more!
Saturday, March 17th
The New School // 66 West 12th Street
10 AM – 6 PM sponsored by the New School’s Gender Studies Program
Produced by the I Had an Abortion Project/Soapbox Inc. and the n+1 Research Collective //
All Urgent! events are free and open to the public; advance registration is encouraged (although not required).
Email: urgentconference@gmail.com
Website: freeabortionnow.tumblr.com
Twitter: twitter.com/freeabortionnow
Facebook: facebook.com/freeabortionnow
The Festival of Conscience Presents Women And Resistance
In conjunction with Women’s History Month, prominent feminist activists Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, War Resistors League organizer Kimber Heinz, and eco-feminist Ynestra King will lead a discussion on women’s role in the movements’ against militarism, nuclear weapons, war, and torture.
Festival of Conscience is being run in conjunction with the play, “Another Life”, about the collective trauma post-9/11, greed, war and the ensuing U.S. torture program. Both events are produced by Theater Three Collaborative, Inc. with the Irondale Center, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; March 8-24, 2012.
All panels will take place following the performance of “Another Life”.
For more information and to purchase tickets:
Irondale Center is located at 85 South Oxford Street in Brooklyn, NY.
April 2, 2012
Museum of Motherhood (MOM)
New York, NY
8:30am-6:30pm
www.spiritualityofmotherhood.com
This 1-day conference on April 2, 2012 aims to highlight the largely unacknowledged spiritual dimensions of motherhood. Presenters will share their personal and professional insights into the spiritual life of mothers and the growth-producing potential of parenting. Together we will re-imagine pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering as an initiation into a new way of being— an opportunity for spiritual awakening where children are also empowered as true catalysts of transformation. Experiential exercises, lectures, discussion groups, and lunch are included in this groundbreaking all-day intensive on a unique subject. Please come and make history with us!
Sponsored by Museum of Motherhood (MOM)
Organized by Aurélie Athan Aurélie Athan, PhD
Presenters: Leading scholars and practicioners in the field who integrate spiritual perspectives into their daily work with (and lives as) mothers.
Aurelie Athan, PhD
Marin Bach-Antonson
Buffy Bernhardt, LMSW
Jerilyn Brownstein, MSW
Lisa Miller, PhD
Lisa Rafel
Meg Richichi, MS, LAc
Ellynne Skove, LCAT, BC-DTR, RPP, NCC
Elizabeth Visceglia, MD
When: Monday, April 2nd 2012, 8:30am-6:30pm, Lunch included.
Where: MOM Museum, 401 East 84th Street (1st Ave) Lower Level (Map)
Price: $30 advanced ticket/$40 same day [Student: $15 advance/$20 same day]
Full Info & Tickets: www.spiritualityofmotherhood.com
Welcome to the Third Annual National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon!
New York Abortion Access Fund: NYAAF is joining funds from across the country to raise money to make reproductive rights a reality for women who can’t afford to pay for an abortion—and we want you to join us!
Check out some pictures form Last Year’s Bowl-a-Thon!
This year our Bowl-a-thon will be on April 29th!
We are shooting for 40 teams of 8! So get 7 of your Pro-Choice Pro-Fun friends and register now!
http://bowlathon.nnaf.org/nnafbowl/fundevent.asp?nnaffundid=28&eventid=102
Announcement:
Saturday – March 10th – 12:00 noon
For International Women’s Day: Protest & March against the War on Women!
We’re going to sites of women’s oppression to say:
— Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!
— Abortion on Demand & Without Apology!
— Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!
** Announce this to your group & come out on March 10th.
** Find us on facebook
** Donate to help make this happen!
Here’s where we’re going and why:
STARTING at St. Patrick’s Cathedral – Fifth Avenue btw 50th-51st Sts:
►The Catholic Church’s approach to women, gender, science and sexuality – like that of many religions – is a Dark Ages disaster! The Pope has condemned condoms (causing millions of HIV/AIDs deaths). The Church condemns homosexuality and insists that “divorce is a sin” (contributing to women staying in abusive marriages). Recently, Catholic Bishops urged “non-compliance” with new regulations requiring health insurance to cover birth control!
MARCH to TIMES SQUARE:
►Protest the objectification of women! Women’s near-naked and rail-thin bodies are displayed, often in subservient poses, and used to sell everything from clothes to cars to “American culture” to the entire world.
►Protest the U.S. Military Recruiting Center! The U.S. Military concentrates violence against women! This includes its quasi-official reliance on brothels as a “perk” to male soldiers; the role of military forces in trafficking women and girls; and the epidemic of rape, harassment and violence against female soldiers.
MARCH to and PROTEST STRIP CLUBS in the area!
►U.S. men spend an estimated $15 billion annually on strip clubs, as compared to $4 billion on baseball. Strip clubs have always objectified and degraded women. But with women entering – and fighting for increasing respect in – the public sphere, strip clubs have become the new “all male preserve” and an enclave for male chauvinism and entitlement towards women’s bodies. Further, strip clubs prey upon the desperation, abuse and addiction of many women, including women who’ve been kidnapped and trafficked.
ALONG THE WAY: Protest “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” & Celebrate Abortion Provider Appreciation Day:
►Crisis Pregnancy Centers are fake “clinics” that knowingly prey on women for whom being pregnant is a crisis. However, they are driven by an anti-abortion agenda. They often have no clinical staff, spread lies, guilt-trip women, and enormously delay and complicate women’s ability to access abortion.
►In contrast, we’ll celebrate abortion providers because March 10th is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day!
Read the call to action that started this whole campaign.
Call to END PORNOGRAPHY AND PATRIARCHY:
THE ENSLAVEMENT AND DEGRADATION OF WOMEN!
We are told that “equality for women has been won” and that “there are no limits to what girls can achieve.” BULLSHIT!
Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten. Every day three to four women are killed by their partners. One out of four female college students will be raped or sexually assaulted while in college.
In recent years, pornography has become increasingly violent, cruel, degrading towards women; women are referred to as “cumdumpsters” and “fuckbuckets”; the “money shot” (ejaculation in a woman’s face) is standard; humiliating cruelty-like violent “ass-to-mouth” penetration-is normalized, and racist bigotry is sexualized. Meanwhile, the broader culture has been pornified: pole dancing is taught at gyms, “sexting” is a national phenomenon among teens, and the strip club is the accepted backdrop to “male bonding.” All this is tied in with, and reinforces, the trafficking of millions of women and girls as literal chattel in the international sex industry.
This is NOT society becoming more comfortable with sex. This is society becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women. If you can’t imagine sex without porn, you’re fucked.
At the same time, a Christian fundamentalist-driven assault is imperiling abortion, birth control, real sex education and women’s lives. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who do not conform to traditional patriarchal gender and sexual norms are demonized and threatened. Abortion doctors are killed. Women who seek abortions-or even birth control-are stigmatized. 2011 saw the largest spate of legal restrictions on abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
ALL THIS MUST BE STOPPED!
Fetuses are not babies. Women are not incubators. Abortion is not murder.
Women are not objects. Women are not things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men NOR are they breeders of children. WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS CAPABLE OF FULL EQUALITY IN EVERY REALM!
It is long past time that this new generation stand up, reject, and RESIST this culture of rape and pornography; this culture that labels women “selfish” if they choose not to become mothers; this culture that reduces women and girls to sexualized objects while denying their full multi-dimensional humanity (including their right-as one essential part of this-to explore their sexuality without shame or stigma); this culture that demonizes and bullies LGBT people.
Our purpose is NOT to lobby for new legislation to ban pornography (“decency laws” have always served to further repress homosexuality, boundary-challenging art, and scientific sex education). We oppose the criminalization of women in the sex industry. Our mission is to challenge the new generation in particular to reject this culture of rape and pornography, to resist the shaming of women who have sex and/or abortions, to wage fierce cultural and political resistance to wake others up, and to bring forward a liberating culture that celebrates the full equality and liberation of women.
contact: stoppatriarchy@gmail.com
Join the Largest Unemployment Line
http://youngfeministtaskforce.blogspot.com/2012/03/tue-march-6-8am-830am-join-largest.html
WHAT: Come and show your support for your unemployed and underemployed sisters and brothers. Get the attention of those running for President. Become a part of the largest unemployment line – from Zuccotti Park to Times Square.
WHEN: Tuesday, March 6, 2012, from 8 am to 8:30 am (total time half an hour) — at the latest must be there 14 minutes after 8 am to wave pink slip.
WHERE: Meet on Broadway between 11th and 12th Street. A person there will hand out pink slips to participants.
Please dress in business attire, if you can. Please come at 8 am on Tuesday morning so that we can form a dramatic but silent protest line by 8:15 AM. The press is interested in this event and may show up.
Economic inequality and uncertainty are women’s issues. Single mothers, teenage girls, recent college graduates, and women near retirement have high unemployment rates.
Only 25% of new jobs created since 2008 have gone to women.
National Organization for Women (NOW) NY State is proud to join with HERE Arts Center and Working Theater in collaboration with Occupy Congress, Upper West Side MoveOn, and culture groups in protesting the lack of action in solving the Nation’s unemployment and underemployment problem.
Please contact Info@nownys.org if you plan to participate in this important event.
