Action Alert: Help farmworkers

From the United Farm Workers:

Tell your Senators to support citrus freeze relief provisions in supplemental bill on floor
Senate Vote this week…Send your e-mail today!

The Fiscal Year 2007 Emergency Supplemental bill should reach the senate floor this week. Thanks to the hard work of Sens. Feinstein and Boxer, this bill includes millions in emergency assistance for California farmers and farm workers impacted by January’s freeze.

It’s been two and a half month’s since January’s devastating freeze impacted thousands of lives. Approximately 28,000 citrus farm workers may be left jobless—just in Calif.’s San Joaquin Valley alone. These frozen out workers are having difficulty feeding their families and paying their rent or mortgages. These low paid workers who have very little savings are expected be out of work for the next 9 to 12 months. They desperately need this federal emergency aid to survive.

Please e-mail your senators today and tell them to support for Senator Boxer and Feinstein’s provisions in the emergency supplemental bill S. 965. Tell them it’s vital to provide relief for the tens of thousands of farm workers affected by the citrus freeze.

This situation is critical. Please send your e-mail today.

I wrote a little about the citrus freeze in my personal blog, but haven’t mentioned it here yet. My county wasn’t as hard hit as down south, but it was still pretty bad, and now there are too many workers and not enough jobs here as everyone who lost citrus work looks for other farm jobs up north. Between that and Colorado’s crackdown, we need all the help we can get to keep people afloat until next season.

If you can’t donate, at least send an email to your senators to support this. The state can only do so much.

Creating their own revolution: Part II

First Iranian women protesters risked imprisonment to protest for women’s rights. Now Pakistani women have shut down an Islamabad brothel and are demanding the closure of adult video stores. But wait, isn’t Islam oppressive to women? Apparently not so much:

Dozens of young women from a religious school in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, have broken into an alleged brothel and kidnapped the owner.
The women, from the nearby Jamia Hafsa madrassa, burst in late on Tuesday, demanding the premises be shut down.

The women say they have a right to end immoral activity under Islamic law.

…

Correspondents say prostitution is widespread in Pakistan, even though it is illegal.

The women who led Tuesday night’s raid near the city centre included teachers and students incensed, the school says, by reports the house was being used for immoral purposes.

They were later joined by male colleagues from the men’s section of the madrassa.

When the alleged brothel’s owner refused to shut the building, the raiding party forcibly shut it themselves and took the woman, her daughter and daughter-in-law back to the madrassa where they are still being held.

…

(S)tudents then kidnapped two policemen from a nearby patrol. They too are being held in the madrassa and were allowed to speak to reporters.

“They have not mistreated us, they have served us tea and allowed us to keep our mobile phones,” one of them, constable Hamad Raza said, the AFP news agency reports.

“We are told that negotiations are under way and we hope the matter will be over soon,” he said.

School officials also say that two other teachers have been missing since early on Wednesday morning and that they believe they were kidnapped by intelligence agencies.

Their whereabouts is unclear. [Full story]

This kind of thing must really burn those who think that all Muslim women need to be saved. Click the link, and notice that all of those women students are wearing niqab, and it hasn’t stopped them from standing up for women’s rights.

This kind of thing is beautiful. More power to the women working to change their own world instead of waiting for someone else to rescue them.

EDIT: Of course, standing up against a brothel must mean you’re a violent Islamic extremist who wants to be a man. It’s not bra niqab burning, so it must be women oppressing themselves! It couldn’t possibly be the brothels that oppress women, and the students who are the good guys. They’re Muslim, they have to be oppressed, and if they aren’t, it’s because they’re helping the patriarchy.

Sometimes Broadsheet pisses me off, you know? Not to mention she gets her facts wrong (at least, according to the many stories I saw on the wire today); there were cops there, and all of the girls’ captives were supposedly treated quite well.

Link Roundup: 28 March 2007

Blog Links
Save MTV Chi, K and Desi — “These weren’t channels that I personally had access to, but it was on these channels that Jin the MC returned with the song ABC, That’s Me, and Beau Sia’s powerful statement against Rosie O’Donnell was aired. Earlier this year, MTV announced that they were cancelling speciality channels MTV Chi, K and Desi that were specifically geared towards Asian American content.”

Suburban Neo-Nazis I Knew — “Imagine having an argument with a close friend who you have known for years in which he subscribes to a philosophy that deems you non-human, or lesser-human, and being told that you must respect his opinion. Then having all of your friends side with him, a NAZI, instead of you. Can you believe this?” [It's kind of creepy how casually, hypocritically racist some people can be.]

Harvard’s dirty little hands. — “Just wanted to post this up even while i’m on my blogging break just because it’s very important and so fucking infuriating.” [The post is about Harvard's work in Oaxaca ... on behalf of the Mexican government. Gah.]

April 28th, 2007: A Call to Action — “…join us on April 28th, 2007, in Durham, North Carolina, as we come together—across divisions and disempowering silences—to create a world full of the safety, possibility, dignity, justice, and peace that we all deserve. Stand with us as we dare to imagine a world free from sexual violence and ALL forms of oppression.” [The Primary Contradiction is spreading the word on "Creating a World Without Sexual Violence."]

New Yorkers, heads up — “SUNY Upstate Medical University’s hospital is in grave danger of being privatized. If it’s privatized, and taken out of SUNY, it’s likely that any services that don’t turn a profit will be shut down - and that would include the only level one trauma center in the 14 counties surrounding Syracuse and the only burn unit serving the surrounding 27 counties.” [And Fetch Me My Axe is spreading the word about a push to privatize SUNY hospitals that could be disasterous.]

News Links
The world’s least alike twins — “With every possible explanation as to why was one of their babies was so dark, there remained the one nagging fear that no one wanted to say out loud. … Wilma had long ago fallen hopelessly in love with her baby boys, and was haunted by the prospect that one of the boys might not be hers.” [One of the twins turned out to be biologically both hers and her husband Willem's, while the other twin was hers, but the sperm was a black man's. They both consider the twins their children, though. This is a really neat counterpoint to the Andrews case that has been getting a lot of blog coverage lately. Similar issue — the Stuarts are Dutch and white, though both have non-white ancestry — but totally different reaction to a mix-up at the fertility clinic.]

Sweeps in Iraq Cram Two Jails With Detainees — “In one of the detention centers, in the town of Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, 705 people were packed into an area built for 75, according to Maan Zeki Khadum, an official with the monitoring group. The other center, on Muthana Air Base, held 272 people in a space designed to hold about 50, he said, and included two women and four boys who were being held in violation of regulations that require juveniles to be separated from adults and males from females.” [705 in a space for 75? What the hell? Is there anyone the U.S. isn't trying to imprison?]

Protest disrupts slavery service — “A lone protester has interrupted a commemorative service at Westminster Abbey marking the 200th anniversary of the act to abolish the slave trade. The event, attended by the Queen and Tony Blair, was almost over when human rights campaigner Toyin Agbetu began shouting: ‘This is an insult to us.’”

Ex-wife becomes a man; ex-husband seeks end to alimony — “Roach and his wife, Julia, divorced in 2004 after 18 years of marriage. The 48-year-old utility worker agreed to pay her $1,250 a month in alimony. Since then, Julia Roach, 55, has had a sex change and legally changed her name to Julio Roberto Silverwolf.”