You move too slow

May 18, 2021 by Leave a Comment

You move too slow

You move too slow
I get to hear
from a greyhead
behind me

not in the pecking order
not at the feeding trough
but in a shopping queue

You move too slow
clipping my heels
as she veers 
to the right

to another queue
where the grass is greener
and there is more
on offer

You move too slow
the over 60s are urged 
(on evening etv news)
not to rush to centres 
for their vaccine shots

so I am just
practising my slowness
my lack of speed
or slothfulness even

amused once was I
to hear two queueing locals
pondering which service
was the more slothful
(we won’t say which)

You move too slow
could be said to be

The state we are in

(By David Kapp)

(Photo Credit: Health-e News / NW Health Department)

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Blackness, Gender Violence, and Colonialism in Puerto Rico’s Feminicidios

May 16, 2021 by 2 Comments

After Hurricane María, the number of femicides in Puerto Rico started increasing at an alarming rate. Disappearances and femicides of women are ongoing issues in Puerto Rico, which has one of the highest femicide rates in the Western Hemisphere. But it was not until two years later, in 2019, that this was brought to public attention (in the continental United States). Gender-based violence calls to attention the consequences and history that colonialism, transphobia, racism, and sexism have on the island. Currently, women and feminists’ group like La Colectiva Feminista en Construcción have repeated their demand for a declaration of a State of Emergency against gender violence on the island but the Puerto Rican government has only recently acted on these demands, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common.

History is important and can be an act of resistance, but it is also about power; how it upholds the victories of the colonizer, not the colonized. Within the social contexts of Puerto Rico, heteronormativity is colonized by religious principles and gender-based perceptions that in recent years have caused an escalation of violence against transgender women and reports of anti-transgender violence, especially femicides. Along with the temporal displacement of Blackness and Black bodies that is closely connected to State modernizing agendas, Puerto Rico’s police has a history of marginalizing Black people without any consequences within the law, especially when it comes to racial profiling and recent police killings of Black (including LGBTQ+) Boricuas.

The history of colonization in Puerto Rico is not as buried as some are led to believe. By being aware of the history and current ways in which colonization is incorporated, there is resistance and a foundation for radical freedom on the island. Conversations about race and gender, however, need more work. Ethnicity and nationality are focal point in conversations about race, therefore causing erasure. Consequently, as a way to not talk about race, Latin America pushes its citizens to think of themselves in terms of their ethnicity and nationality. Puerto Rican’s acknowledge their history of Blackness; however, it is along admitting their Spaniard and Indigenous roots first, and Blackness last. Awareness about the danger trans women faced during the femicides is there, but no discussion as to why or how transphobia plays a part in it. Instead, trans women are placed into a generalized “all women in Puerto Rico are in danger” category, equating their fear and likelihood to femicide to cis women, which is highly problematic. 

And the government needs to be held accountable. As of January of 2021, the Puerto Rican government has issued a State of Emergency due to gender violence, yet these efforts have not been sufficient; killings and disappearances of women on the island keep increasing and becoming common. In order to take accountability, the government should provide more resources (including legal protection, housing, and financial support) to survivors of femicide, domestic violence, and any form of gender violence. A relationship and conversation between the State, survivors, community organizers, and the people of Puerto Rico must be formed in order to hold the Puerto Rican government accountable and responsible.

 

(By Glorimar Mariño)

(Image Credit: Michelle Dersdepanian / TodasPR)

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Memorial Day in Manitowoc Wisconsin

May 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Memorial Day in Manitowoc Wisconsin

I took an inhalation and like Bashō I traveled North 
Returning to native soil only to find my mother gone
Though unlike the hair in Bashō’s haiku
The silver strands caught in my mother’s hair brush 
Did feel as though they would melt in my fingers
She was Wisconsin strong 
And so was her hair
And it still smelled like her

I exhaled and traveled south to find my father gone
He had left to chase my mother’s ponytail into eternity
I inherited his sense of humor 
And wore a giant plastic wedge of cheese on my head
As I gave my father’s eulogy in a bright green sari 
His favorite color

Here I see my Mother 
Here I see my Father 
Here I see my brothers and sisters
And the line of my family reaching back through beginning-less time
We left coins on my parents tombstones 
Safe passage Mom and Dad for crossing both the rivers Styx and Lethe

My family takes so many photographs and movies
Among them 
Photographs of smiling children dancing on tombstones and graves sites
Like little Śivas and Kālīs
The older generations tell stories of posing in taffeta funeral dresses
Next to the caskets of the departed for stiffly posed pictures
Or cradling departed siblings in their arms to create final mementos

Photographs like these inspired my sister to become a photographer
And a Wisconsin State Treasure
But by the time Julie had died 
We had forgotten how to practice some of the old rituals
The rituals that had once allowed us to embrace Death like a lover

Now the younger generations call the old ways
“Wisconsin Death Trip”
Once we knew our rituals of life were true 
Because our rituals of death were true
Large gravestones baring the family name 
As certain as hand and footprints on a certificates of live birth

Here I see my Mother 
Here I see my Father 
Here I see my brothers and sisters
And the line of my family reaching back through beginning-less time
And when my time comes 
Leave coins for me, too
Two rivers to cross 
Same as it ever was

American Gothic
There they all lay in a Manitowoc cemetery 
My cradle named after Algonquian Demi-gods that rule nature
Though not death
The ancestors continuing to teach us
Even from the grave
Teach us about time 
And the folly of the vehement dreams and nightmares we choose to live
They are dust to dust
And they are the native soil 
On which I was nurtured 
And from which I drew my strength

Sing of Carl Sandburg and the Midwestern bread basket
Corn ripening and falling to the earth only to rise again
Become the popcorn my nieces and nephews eat while watching Disney movies
Become cows
Become milk
Become cheese
Become butter
And the bodies of the farmers that plant and replant crops generation after generation
Stalwart sunburned men, women, and children whose graves we pass 
On the way to our family plot
For the annual Memorial Day picnic

The cookies are made from molds taken from tombstone imprints
Children  merrily fight for particular flowers shapes
Or the letters that begin their given names
And the adults spill a little beer
Some because of clumsiness
And some on purpose

From time to time Memorial Day coincides with my oldest brother Phil’s birthday
And then there is birthday sheet cake too
It is cut into perfect squares and served on paper plates 
Waiting for the greedy tiny finger to take it 
From the top of the largest granite family headstone 

Sing of graveyards on Memorial Day and family picnics 
Celebrating the generations past and present 
Variations  on a singular theme
Experiencing a counterpoint in well kept bone orchards 
Proving that Omar Khayyam was right

Sing of Bashō’s cicada
And it’s song that showed no concern for imminent death
Like the children eating snicker-doodles, brownies and bars
That have been neatly packed in old shoeboxes saved for just such occasions
Carefully arranged in layers separated by wax paper

One day my breath will merge with the atmosphere 
Let me cover my body with this good rich earth 
Into which my ancestors have merged
In which they now rest
And on which the children are now playing
Their bodies too will someday become the loam that feeds America

Immortality is a song passed down from generation to generation 
Always changing 
And never changing
It can be heard in the lowing of cows waiting to be milked 
And in the sound of seed corn and wheat filling silos at harvest time

Life giving grain falling like rain

Let my body become this good earth too
The first of many who will follow me 
And in the midst of all who have preceded me
Let me remember all of my deeds 
Good and evil 
So that I can say
I have learned

Let me remember 
Let me remember 
Let me remember 

It momentarily died again to became me 
Now let me live again to become It all

 

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Cicada, by Hobun Kikuchi / Ukiyo-e)

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Who is a citizen?

May 10, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Lindsay Hecox

Who is a citizen?

Hey Siri, who is a citizen?
[sit-uh-zuhn]: a member,
inhabitant,
native—
one who owes allegiance, 
and is therefore entitled to protection.

A citizen. 
Pledge allegiance to the flag,
league or commission,
knowing that cisness
means entitlement to competition.
If gender identity matches certificate of birth,
Better suit up! In their eyes you have worth. 
You can focus on your game
and mold your craft,
“stick to sports”,
even perfect your autograph.
When “ball is life”
each day may be a grind,
and if gender fits the script,
the game can dominate your mind.

Meanwhile… 
trans athletes await
as officials sit and debate
if their status as humans 
should let them cross home plate.
Clubs and boards fret about funding,
and do everything they can
to keep Lindsay Hecox from running. 
They cite “fairness”, “safety”, and “integrity”,
as if hyping women up 
isn’t something of rarity. 
Aim to keep the binary at all costs
even if that means 
so much talent is lost. 

Fear runs all
and preserves the status quo
so states like Tennessee
can stop the next Patricio. 
Where’s the logic
in claiming fairness is dealt,
when they’re the very ones
supplying blows below the belt?
Texas ain’t Cali 
Mack’s begs fell short,
so all his state titles
deemed wins to abort. 
Fighting each day just to play the game
but they’re all stuck on still debating your name. 

Inclusion’s better
but not a perfect solution,
when inclusion still means
checking hormone distribution.  
The issue isn’t really about you and me,
it’s about the assumptions plaguing our society.
The system believes 
that men are always better
but if a woman tries to challenge 
no way they’re gonna let her. 
They see gender 
as black or white,
they say any other view
isn’t worth the fight.

They see anomaly 
and hone right in,
boost views they support
like those of Caitlyn Jen. 
They say, “See, look!
I’m not transphobic”,
as if banning hopeful athletes  
is somehow heroic. 
Industries’ bigotry 
outweighs social advancement,
they give more grace to using 
performance enhancements. 
I guess their greed might have a limit,
‘cause transactions 
involving trans action
they’ll always prohibit.

So Siri, let’s talk.
Can you tell me again?
Is an athlete a citizen,
as long as they try to win?
If loyal and devoted,
shouldn’t they be protected?
Or is citizenship for athletes
exclusively selected? 
At the end of the day,
we all just want to belong
so how come trans athletes’ 
belonging is so prolonged?

(By Hannah Stein)

(Photo Credit: Teen Vogue)

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BTS as a model for solidarity

May 4, 2021 by Leave a Comment

To call BTS a global phenomenon is an understatement. If you are unfamiliar with the boy band from South Korea, a quick Google search reveals numerous headlines that document their record-breaking successes. As music artists, they have attained a number of accolades that signify their impact on music and as a collective of seven men, they have had great impact on social movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate. It is this latter movement that reveals their symbolic status as successful Asians that have made it, by all definitions of Western musical success, in America. It is a success story that many Asian Americans, including myself, can relate to: the successes of Asian children validate the sacrifices of their parents. All too often these accomplishments in social, cultural, and political life erases the enduring trauma of hate and racism that Asians and Asian Americans continue to experience. This is most evident from the racist rhetoric about the coronavirus, the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and the tragedy of the Atlanta shootings.  This new political reality calls for a new collective awakening that dismantles the Western definition of success and the antiquated model minority myth. 

Bangtan Sonyeondan or BTS, the globally recognized moniker, is a seven-member boy band from South Korea. If you ask fans or ARMYs what BTS means to them, answers vary from the impact of their music to the joy of their non-musical content that perhaps figures in fans’ real lives cannot produce. This is not just because the seven members are representative of the age group of their fans but also their telepathic understanding of their fans’ wants and likes from them as musicians and entertainers. That communication explains their global success, an accomplishment that many artists, Korean or Western, only hope to achieve in their musical careers. Furthermore, BTS has inspired social change with their messages against prejudice and violence. In June 2020, at the height of the racial protests over the murder of George Floyd, the septet donated $1 million US dollars to Black Lives Matter, which was later matched by their fans. Since 2017, the band has partnered with UNICEF for their LOVE MYSELF campaign to stand against hate directed towards youth and promote love. That social power is significant, and in a global world with arbitrary borders, BTS are model and productive global citizens. Thus, BTS transcends their significance as musical talent and can be reimagined as symbols for the Asian American experience. 

For some Asian Americans, cultural and social expectations of success are high because something is always sacrificed for it. My parents gave their all to give my sisters and I the best opportunities, and we took them to excel and succeed. By a Western definition of success, many Asian Americans have made it: they are doctors, lawyers, scientists and other white-collar occupations with multiple higher education degrees. This proximity to whiteness is the Achilles’ heel: Asian Americans are conveniently white and non-white. For example, the model minority myth perpetuates a harmful image of Asians as academically superior with great musical capabilities. It erases differences across nationalities within the Asian American category and creates a monolithic image of Asian Americans. When an Asian individual lives up to this stereotype, they become the model Asian American for all others and more importantly, for white Americans to ignore their racism and prove the American Dream is alive and well.  

On the dark side of this coin is the history of anti-Asian racism reveals a record of otherizing and dehumanizing Asians. Stereotypes about Asians were anchored in the image of disease carriers with questionable morals and intellectual inferiority to support narratives that they would degrade racial and social purity in the United States. These stereotypes are reproduced today in the rhetoric of Kung-Flu and China Virus. Unsurprisingly, as these narratives were espoused by political leaders, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased by 169%. This unchecked racism culminated in the violent and racist attack on massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia where six of the eight victims were of Asian descent. Therefore, Asian Americans simultaneously approximate whiteness and occupy racial imaginations. 

BTS represents this in-between: as artists, their musical successes exceed all Western standards and expectations, and as Asians, they still face prejudice for their identities. They shared this reality in a group statement against the number of increasing violent incidents against Asian Americans. This straddling between two racial categories is an issue because it erases experiences of hate and racism for Asians. On the one hand, the proximity to whiteness almost offers relief from experiencing racism. If you succeed, then you can escape experiencing hate. On the other hand, Asian American experiences of racism are not too serious until it becomes too much in terms of the number of reported cases and in degree of violence. At the center of these determinations are familiar systems that dictate the American experience for minority individuals, that distinguish between the fortunate and less fortunate. Therefore, Asian Americans should follow BTS’s lead and show solidarity and community with other minority groups that are oppressed under the same systems.   

 

(By Michelle Nguyen)

(Photo credit: Hype)

 

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Mitochondrial DNA

May 1, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Mitochondrial DNA

Mama told me a story

She said:
You are an ocean and I am a river that feeds you and makes you grow.

If I’m an ocean now; then what will I be when I grow up, I asked?
That’s easy, she said, you’ll be a river that will feed an ocean just as I do.

Choose those that choose you.
Not every eye can see your coat of many colors
Nor can every ear hear your plaintive cries desiring belonging

Not all fingers can touch the wounded places and the scars
Nor offer the healing touch of consolation.
Not all skin folks are kin folks
And strong enemies contribute to ones growth, too.
Rivers lose their identities once they reach oceans.

Lose their identities 
And their contradictions.

Who is my mother and father asks the ocean?
Child of many streams
And many rainstorms
Where is your home 
And where will you lay your head?

What floodgates open because of intrepid questioning?
And, what Jerichonian walls crumble because of courageously blown conch shell horns?

Funeral Pyres blaze in India
Telling two stories
One ancient
And one new
Tell me who I am as I inhale deeply
As the dust of the dead mingles and enters my nostrils 
reminding me that I am a sleeping god.

Pandora’s curiosity brought forth both plague and hope.

Who is my family in all of this?
Like calls to like; but, can that call be answered?
All of this is mission; but, can it be accomplished?

My brothers and sisters have many names.
They ask questions as I do
And are not afraid of the answers that they receive.
By their curiosity my Family of Choice is known.

In Tibet they are called Vidyādhara because they want to know
And knowledge is their seat.

Among the Lakota they are called Heyoka — contrarians for whom night is day and day is night
And, Reality is only just when and if it can be questioned.

In India they are called Brahmins because they seek the truth.
This cannot be achieved merely through bloodlines and birth within a family.

Among Yoruba Orishas, my family calls on Shango
And the Wise Women in my family venerate Yemaya.

American Griots,
Fearlessly tell your stories and sing your songs
And teach the children to sing, too.

Sing the songs that Grandma sang in the kitchen
Or as she danced on the laundry with her blessed feet.

Sing work songs and war songs
That helped men survive chain gangs 
And oppressive assembly lines.

Sing bawdy songs and love songs 
That foment perilous rendezvous.

Sing new songs of Hope and learn to call on The Mothers once again.

How many more Mothers of Exiles can be named 
In this melting pot called America?
That hasn’t yet finished melting

Not even close.

But the Gods came here to these shores with the people who brought them
Listen for the answers that they whisper
Even though we vaguely call upon them 
With dimly remembered prayers.

Let your peace fall upon all of those who will listen to you and receive you
But if they shun you
Shake off the dust of your sandal on their threshhold
As a testament against them and their house
Then walk on.

All it takes to make stone soup is
A pot
A stone
a story
And the willingness of Families of Choice to bring the rest of the ingredients.
All seasonings and flavors blend in a stew.

And all oceans eventually become rivers that feed other oceans
Losing both their identity and their contradictions

I am just a ghost driving a mitochondrial DNA machine made of:
Blood
Fat
Bone
Marrow 
Tissue
Ovum
And Sperm

Why am I even afraid?

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(Image Credit: Metropolitan Museum)

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The eviction rate is too damn high everywhere … especially in Alexandria, Virginia!

April 28, 2021 by 1 Comment

Remember the rent is too damn high? It was, and it still is, in many areas actually getting much worse. You know what else is too damn high? Rates of eviction. Numbers of eviction are too damn high, and rates of eviction are too damn high. Take Alexandria, Virginia, nestled in the leafier part of what is known as the DMV, DC – Maryland – Virginia. 

According to the most recent report from the Eviction Lab, at Princeton University, in the 5 states and 27 cities the Lab tracks, last week, landlords filed for 5,460 evictions. That’s up from 4,937 in the previous weekly report, and the numbers have been rising lately.

In Virginia, according to the most recent Quarterly Report from the RVA Eviction Lab, directed by Kathryn Howell at Virginia Commonwealth University, even though eviction filings and judgements have been down these past three months (and the year prior), primarily thanks to federal and Commonwealth moratoria, there are still “high levels of housing instability and eviction pressures”, especially, and predictably, in Black and Brown neighborhoods, also most devastatingly hit by the pandemic. Who is particularly targeted by evictions, nationally, in Virginia, prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic? Women of color.

While the report notes that, of the northern Virginia jurisdictions, Fairfax County ranks fifth in eviction filings and eighth in judgments, there’s another tale of numbers in Northern Virginia. Fairfax County’s population is 1,146,000; Arlington County’s Population is 236,842; Alexandria’s population is 157,613.  In the first quarter of 2021, Alexandria had 129 filings and 35 evictions; Arlington had 73 filings and 31 evictions; Fairfax County had 288 filings and 84 evictions. 

Relative to its population, Alexandria’s rate of eviction filing is four times that of Fairfax County, and almost three times that of Arlington County. Why? Residents of Alexandria, ask your City Council, why is the rate of eviction in our city so damn high? The rent is too damn high. The rate of eviction is too damn high. 

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Photo Credit: New York Times / Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

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A Lazy Sunday For Her

April 26, 2021 by Leave a Comment

A Lazy Sunday For Her

The single mother
Raising two busy children alone
Unable to find half a minute
In her day
to sweat and scrub down
the manky bathroom.
To your pristine whims.
Today is for her.
A lazy Sunday,
Just washing her own hair.
And sitting in the Sun.

For the woman.
Young of years.
Aged by everything.
Working two and a half baked jobs
To pay for her degree.
And keep.
Today is for her.
A lazy kind of Sunday,just clipping
and painting
her chipped toe nails.
In the shade of a tree.

And her,
The always hurried sister.
Living on the edge
of perpetual panic.
Who’s learnt to make three pieces
Of chicken stew
From one drumstick.
And not distress.
Because yes, she’s the bread maker.
No.
The bread winner.
Both.
Today, the sink full of dirty dishes.
That’s hers.
A lazy Sunday.
Doing nothing.

For the mother,
Daily kept busy at covering up.
Her unexpected joblessness.
Wearing it over and over,
in threadbare dignity.
Averting your mean spirited judgement
Of living in her unfinished dream home.
Where, every May winter moves in.
uninvited.
And settles itself fat and cold.
On gravel floors,
Un-plastered walls.
Today’s lonely, dust free broomstick is her
lazy Sunday.

And so you see,
How your very many slurs
Of disorder.
Wait, instability.
All those other churls.
Chortling too.
About her different kinds of mess.
Is how life
Has refused to let her be
Everything
She imagined
For all of her many selves.
Including
A woman
with a very little bit of some laziness.
In her Sundays.

(C) Isabella Matambanadzo – April 25, 2021 (*written on a Sunday).

(By Isabella Matambanadzo)

(Image Credit: Naume Chaota / National Gallery of Zimbabwe)

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Crisis after crisis, the dead bodies look the same.

April 23, 2021 by Leave a Comment

They drown; they were about 42 this time, maybe more; no one came to the rescue, at least not when they were alive. They wanted to leave behind the conflict in Yemen. 

Yemen has been the theater of power and control struggles far beyond the region. In fact, the country became another victim of the war on terrorism waged by the United States after 9/11. The war was waged from a cave-type military compound in Colorado. Under President Obama’s watch, the military drone program had become a way to attack without being in danger and without accountability. It demonstrated one more time that it does not matter who the president is, there will be a war in a third world country, and the empire would administer the war and precipitate the start of a conflict.

As a result, Yemen is a place where children and women suffer gravely, imagine giving birth with malnutrition and war around; women die in childbirth from preventable causes. In all these conflicts whose origins are related to the constant state of crisis,  Women may disappear, and it is fine with the current profiteers of this money-making machine de-territorialized and dehumanized. 

The 42 plus young people drown off the coast of Djibouti. The UN report called them migrants and states: “we do not know why the vessel has capsized.” As long as the wrangling over the reasons for these deaths goes on; as long as refugees are labeled migrants; as long as we do not recognize our responsibilities and the responsibilities of this system of profit-making in creating these crises, including the Covid 19 crisis that is part of the same vision of the world, the violence over bodies will continue, and we will live in fear. 

The Covid 19 epidemic/pandemic, interestingly, brings a new level of crisis. The official discourse claims to do everything to save lives, while the link between the occurrence of the virus and deforestation, massive killing of species, and the corporate-agriculture and its Monsanto-like companies are not part of the overall conversation. The virus has revealed the pitiful state of health of modern society. 

Vanished also from public discourse is the discussion about the industry of war that has impoverished people from Yemen and elsewhere. Also vanished the relationship between the dreadful war weaponry, which includes drones, and the dematerialized, de-territorialized digitally organized and tax-free investors.  

These countries are the battlefields of this intricate system: the fight for natural resources, globalized markets, cheap markets, discarding cheap labor and its expendability by any means, a steril digital market, and so on.

As long as we ignore our symbiotic relationship to our planet, we will be living in fear. We all need to find the way back to ancestral technics and traditions to understand that we lost that relationship due to de-territorialization. Meanwhile, the very few pulling the neoliberal strings that dehumanize our society are eager to use fear tactics to get more power. We have to liberate ourselves from these fear-tactics if we want to find back the power of solidarity.

 

(By Brigitte Marti)

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Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio stop shackling women (prisoners) in childbirth … and beyond!

April 18, 2021 by 3 Comments

In Arkansas, on March 23, 2021, the Governor signed Senate Bill 84, the Dignity for Incarcerated Women bill, into law. This law will ban the shackling of women in childbirth and ban solitary confinement for pregnant women. The new law will also allow women and newborn children to stay together for three days. In Ohio, a new law went into effect Monday, April 12, 2021: “Law enforcement and corrections officers can no longer handcuff, belly chain, shackle, or confine a pregnant teen or woman, including during their postpartum recovery.” In Mississippi, on Wednesday, April 14, the Governor signed the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act into law. The law, which goes into effect July 1, prohibits the use of restraints on women giving birth in prisons and jails, prohibits the use of leg restraints on pregnant women and on women for 30 days after giving birth; prohibits shackling pregnant women to other people; prohibits shackling women to other people for the first 30 days after childbirth. The new law will allow mothers and newborn children to remain together for three days. Currently, the baby is spirited away the moment it is born. As one advocate put it, “This was a huge win for Mississippi and definitely incarcerated women.” This was a huge win for Mississippi, for incarcerated women, for all women, for all people.

In 2014, Maryland and Massachusetts stopped shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In 2018, North Carolina ended shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In 2019, Utah and Georgia banned the use of shackles in childbirth. Last year, South Carolina stopped shackling women prisoners in childbirth. In each state, the bill was termed a Dignity for Women bill. Every win for women’s dignity anywhere is a huge win for everyone. It’s time, it’s way past time, to ban shackling women in childbirth, to ban shackling pregnant women, to ban shackling women postpartum. It’s time, it’s way past time, to beat our shackles into ploughshares. Abolish shackles now.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit 1: Radical Doula)  (Image Credit 2: New York Times / Andrea Dezsö)

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