Thoughts Upon Release From Jail After Sunday's Abortion Rights Protest Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral

It's been just a few hours since I was released from jail in New York City. I was arrested yesterday and charged with “criminal trespass” and another lesser trespass charge as I was leaving St. Patrick's Cathedral after a group of women and men shouted out the following statements during a break in the service:

“Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!”
“Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement!
“Stop the War on Women!”


Outside St. Patrick's Cathedral -Sat Aug 11, 2012

St. Patrick's is, of course, home of Cardinal Timothy Dolan – head of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, a lifelong staunch opponent of abortion rights, and the person who spearheaded the U.S. Catholic church's recent political and legal revolt against birth control.


As I and one other woman, Alice Woodward, spent a long night each alone in a filthy cell, looking out between fourteen bars to cold flourescent lights, a dingy wall, and a window that revealed only the dirty bricks and tarp of the next building (no green and no sky), I thought of the women in El Salvador staring out of similar cells after being arrested out of the emergency room and imprisoned if the doctors suspect they are bleeding due to botched abortions. I thought of the women who are imprisoned in Afghanistan if they fall in love with the wrong man or end up pregnant while still unmarried. I thought of Dr. Pendergraft who had spent seven months in jail for illegitimate charges leveled against him by anti-abortion fanatics seeking to put him out of business.


There is a real war going on against women. Around the world, under the cover of religious authority, women's dreams are extinguished, women's bodies are treated like mere vessels for men's sperm and the incubation of fetuses, and women's lives are foreclosed. Around the world, women and men face not only the church, but also the state, if they dare to defy thousands of years of tradition's chains.

Read more »

Conservative, my ass, these people are Nazis

Revolutionary Communism and the Liberation of Women -- WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!    

#6

"As I have said a number of times: These reactionaries should not even be allowed to use 'conservative' to describe themselves. We should say, 'Conservative, my ass, these people are Nazis.'"

Bob Avakian 

Chairman of the

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

BAsics 1:26

Protest Catholic Church AND Obama's capitulation FORCED MOTHERHOOD = FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT

Protest & March for International Women's Day -- March 10th NOON

End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!   Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!   Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!

Saturday, March 10th Celebrate International Women's Day 12:00 Noon  Protest and March against sites of women's oppression!   Gather near St. Patrick's Cathedral (near Rockefeller Center, exact location TBA):   ►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 (TBA) 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!

PLANNING/MOBILIZING MEETINGS - THURSDAYS @ 7 PM   If anything in this call resonated with you... If you care about the conditions of women... If you want to do something that can really make a huge difference - not only for yourself, but for women (and all people) worldwide and for future generations... CONTACT US! stoppatriarchy@gmail.com

3 things you can do right away: 1. Invite us into your class, club or dorm. 2. Spread this on FB and Twitter. 3. Spread this announcement for IWD everywhere

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