Encinitas You Need Us: Women

Showing posts with label Women. Show all posts

Sunday, May 12, 2013

About Mothers Day . . .

Published on Sunday, May 13, 2012 by Common Dreams by Medea Benjamin

Celebrating On the Commons returns next Sunday.

Don’t Send Me Roses for Mothers Day

What happened to us mothers? We allowed this holiday to get away from us. We allowed it to become commercialized, individualized, commodified, unpoliticized. We allowed it to be about superficial symbols of love—flowers and chocolates and store-bought cards. We allowed it be a time when we, as mothers, sit back and receive personal recognition, instead of a time when we, as mothers, stand up together to make collective demands.

Let’s be clear about what Mothers Day was supposed to be, before it fell out of our grip. It was the brainchild of a brilliant woman, Julia Ward Howe, who was horrified by the carnage and suffering during the Civil War and the economic devastation that followed. She was also heart-broken by the outbreak of war between France and Germany in 1870, with its ominous display of German military might and imperial designs. She used her poetic gift to pen a proclamation against war, a proclamation that birthed Mothers Day.

"Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause," Julia wrote. "Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. " Her solution? Women should gather together to "promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."

So here we are, more than a century later, still in the throes of wars abroad and violence in our communities. But instead of coming together to say “Disarm, disarm,” we are content with trinkets and breakfast in bed. Isn’t it time to get out of bed, out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the streets? We should be demanding that our government stop pillaging our treasury by spending $2 billion a week on an unwinnable war in Afghanistan. We should be demanding good education and forgiveness of our children’s college loans, not more money for the bloated Pentagon. We should be demanding that the guns that kill over 30,000 of our sons and daughters every year here at home be banished from the store shelves. We should demand that our nation stop locking up our children for nonviolent crimes, just to feed a disgraceful private prison industry. We should demand that conflict resolution be mandatory in our schools to stop bullying and prejudice, and that diplomacy be mandatory in our foreign relations.

This is our day, moms. Let’s reclaim it and embrace its origins. Our day should not be solely about us, as individuals, but about us embodying the collective desires of mothers around the world—to stop our children from killing and being killed by others mother’s children. No one is going to bring that to us on a breakfast platter; it’s something that we women demand.

Happy Mothers Day.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org), cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control. Her previous books include Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart., and (with Jodie Evans) Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide).

Monday, March 11, 2013

Quote of the Day

"What can men do? Men do not just need to stop being violent. The vast majority of men are not violent. But men do need to stop being silent. Calling violence against women, whether street harassment or sexual harassment or rape or murder, a 'women's issue' allows men to ignore it as if we have no responsibility for it or stake in ending it. We all have grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters and female friends and colleagues. Our lives are inextricably interwoven; women's issues of safety and equality directly affect our lives as men. Beyond that, women are humans, with the same rights to safety and freedom as men. It is therefore our moral responsibility to not remain silent or passively on the sidelines, but to be actively engaged in confronting this problem in every corner of homes, communities, and societies."

—Former NFL quarterback and current feminist Don McPherson

Read the whole op ed, where CNN invited men to join in anti-violence advocacy. Avoid the comments - a sewer.

Via Shakesville

And An Observation from the blogmistress of Shakesville:

The difference between "all men are rapists" and "a woman cannot tell by looking at a man whether he is a rapist" is vast and readily discerned. And I am really tired of reading rape apologists conflate the two, as if they are easily confused. Failing to distinguish between the two is not a mistake; it's an agenda.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Seeds

It is planting time all over Encinitas. There is so much in the world of seeds that has changed dramatically within this last decade. Did you know that Monsanto has bought most every single seed company? It is a horror story and growing more frightening each spring.

Speaking of women and growing things, the following interview with Vandana Shiva is an opportunity to hear one of the world authorities on growing food and healthy biodiversity. Shiva founded Navdanya (meaning 9 seeds) in 1984. From the website:

"Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change.

Navdanya is a women centred movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity."

Two Options from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo. (This is also a plug for the Perennial Plate videos from a fan.)

If you know of someone who saves their own seeds in Encinitas, you have a good chance with vegetables that grow well in our coastal microclimate.

It is so difficult for we who are up against these gigantic companies. But, there are seed companies you can trust for heirloom quality, including Baker Creek and Territorial Seed Company. And their catalogs are gorgeous! Here is some background from a highly successful and passionate Seattle gardener.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Women Feed the World

In honor of the women who feed the world . . .

From Katherine Gustafson of Sustainable Food Blog:

Women grow more than half of the world's food and the lion's share (as much as 80 percent) of the food in developing countries, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Despite their majority contribution, however, women only own 2 percent of the world's land, according to UN WomenWatch. Around the world, women are deprived of legal rights to the land they toil over day after day.

Zainab Salbi, founder and CEO of Women for Women International, pointed out to me that this is a bigger problem than simple unfairness. "We cannot address environmental issues, sustainable farming issues, industrial agriculture issues, food crisis, if we are going to ignore [the fact that women are over 80 percent of the world's farmers and they own about 2 percent of land in the world]," she said. "How can you have a policy that ignores the people that are doing the work on a daily basis?"