Dangerous Ideas

Wow, this is big, fantastic news! The California Supreme court has just ruled in favor of marriage equality! This makes California the second state after Massachusetts to legalize same-sex marriage.

Of course, some people who believe in segregation may have succeeded in putting forth a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage for November’s ballot. If you believe in equality, please considering joining the effort to fight this attempt at enshrining discrimination in California’s constitution.

I’ll probably be volunteering with both ECQA, a general umbrella org. for marriage equality in CA, and API Equality to spread awareness of the issues and help get out the vote to defend our rights.

I just saw this on a mailing list I’m on. Anti-choice activists gather annually on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to protest a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. Reproductive freedom activists also stage a demonstration at this time, and are calling out for anyone who believes in the cause to join participate:

Defend Reproductive Freedom, Rally/ March Sat. Jan. 19, San Francisco

Please join community members and activists at the “Forward– Not Back! Reproductive Justice for All!” rally and march to counterprotest the anti-abortion “Walk for Life– West Coast.” Spread the word:

Resist the religious right! Protest their anti-choice march with a vibrant reproductive rights presence on the 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade! Saturday, January 19th, 2008. Assemble at Justin Herman Plaza, Market and Embarcadero streets in San Francisco at 10:30am.

This will be the 4th year that 10,000 right wingers will be bussed in to San Francisco for their annual “Walk for Life– West Coast.” Organizers of the “Walk for Life” want to strip women of their rights to a safe and legal abortion.

We need YOU to participate in forming a counter-demonstration by joining the January 19th Coalition. Your ideas, energy and outreach are urgently needed.

We demand: free, accessible abortion on demand; no forced sterilization; health care; pre- and post-natal care and childcare for all; safe and accessible contraceptives; the end of discrimination of GLBTQI and queer communities; sexual freedom and quality sex education.

The next January 19th Coalition meetings are Wednesday January 9th and Wednesday January 16th from 7:00-8:30pm at New Valencia Hall, 625 Larkin Street, Suite 202, San Francisco (a few blocks from Civic Center BART and on the Muni lines 19 and 31).

For more information, please call (415) 864-1278 or email the Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights at bacorrinfo@gmail.com. Or check out www.bacorr.org. Everyone is welcome.

If you can’t make a meeting just show up at 10:30am on 1/19/08, Justin Herman Plaza, SF.

I’m glad to hear that Hillary Clinton and John McCain won in Hew Hampshire. I hope the rest of the early primary states continue a trend of mixed results so that those of us voting later feel like we’re actually participating in the election (of course, states voting after Super Duper Tuesday might not be so lucky).

Absentee ballots are going out this week in California. Given that more than 40 percent of the voters for the last California election voted by mail, it’s possible that a huge number of Californians will vote before the results of the other early primaries are known. Which means that some voters in California might actually vote without using earlier primary results as a criteria.

For a while, it looked like once again a small number of voters would have a hugely disproportionate effect on the presidential race. Headlines kept reading like Clinton was almost out of the running and that Barack Obama was the new front-runner. I find this so disturbing. As John Edwards said today after his 3rd place finish, even after NH has voted, less than one half of one percent of the country’s voters have had a shot at this. Why should so few people determine who’s the front-runner and who isn’t? And they really can because in addition to the media, polls showed a marked difference before and after the Iowa caucuses. Fortunately, the polls did not accurately predict the actual votes.

I completely understand that the idea with staggered votes is to give smaller states a chance to have presidential candidates visit them, but is what we have now really better than a national primary? It’s always the same two states that vote first. And Iowa and New Hampshire are not exactly representative of the rest of the country (for one thing, both states have relatively few people of color voting).

Do John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden prefer white voters? Maybe that’s an unfair question, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I read that John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden pulled out of the Michigan primary because Michigan dared to move their primary into January. The Democratic Party has followed this up by deciding that Michigan voters shouldn’t matter:

Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.

In spite of the vote, some party leaders and officials said they believed the delegates would eventually be seated at the convention.

Michigan, with 156 delegates, has scheduled a Jan. 15 primary. Democratic Party rules prohibit states other than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina from holding nominating contests before Feb. 5. Florida was hit with a similar penalty in August for scheduling a Jan. 29 primary.

The bit about Michigan maybe getting their votes back later sounds good except that Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Biden aren’t even on the ballot, so Michigan voters will have fewer checkboxes than voters in most other states. Something similar has happened to Florida for pushing up their primary, too.

Why is it so important to preserve the historical role of Iowa and New Hampshire as the first in the nation caucus and primary respectively? According to Wikipedia, Iowa only about 4 percent of the population includes people of color, and New Hampshire is even more unbalanced at only about 3 percent people of color. This compares with Michigan where about 17 percent of the population are people of color and Florida at about 19 percent. True, the Democrats have allowed Nevada (same neighborhood of POC as MI and FL) and South Carolina (which has even more POC at about 31 percent) to move their primaries forward. But, of course, following IA and NH.

I can understand the Dems wanting to try to keep states in line, but is disenfranchising voters really the right way to do it? Especially since both MI and FL have much more diverse populations than the favored states of NH and IA?

I’m mad not just because the candidates have pulled out, but because they aren’t fighting for the voting rights of Michiganders and Floridians and pointing out the obvious racism inherent in the system. And people wonder why people are drawn to 3rd parties. Argh!

Maybe a national primary would introduce issues of its own, but the current system just sucks. If we had to have some smaller states go first to give them more attention, why shouldn’t we put states like South Carolina, New Mexico, and Hawaii first in line? Hawaii’s population is about 59 percent POC and, heck, it was a sovereign nation not that long ago!

Anita Borg had a dream: by the year 2020, half the graduates of computers science programs would be women. That’s a lot easier than having half the people in high tech be women, but it’s still a tall order. Anita passed away in 2003, but she still inspires people to work for the equality. She started a group called Systers that was one of the first online communities for women. Systers is a women-only group that provides an important network for women in science and technology. The Anita Borg Institute carries on some of Anita’s work. Recently, the Anita Borg Institute was given an anonymous challenge grant – every donation will be matched up to $15,000 through December 6. Here’s the message posted by Robin Jeffries of ABI to the Systers mailing list:

Systers,

The systers list is sponsored and supported by the Anita Borg Institute (ABI), a non-profit devoted to improving the lives of women technologies and helping technology improve the lives of women everywhere.

Like every other non-profit, they exist on the donations of others. Those donations provide systers with technical support (thanks, Kathy, for all you do), computing power, spam protection, support for pass-it-on grant reviewing, and may other things. In addition to systers, ABI runs the Grace Hopper celebration, administers several awards for women in computing – so that the male dominated industry will know who the brilliant women are, provides leadership training for women at various stages of their career, and a host of other things.

ABI has just been offered an anonymous challenge grant. From now until December 6, your individual donations will be matched dollar for dollar (up to $15,000), thanks to a generous grant from an anonymous donor. If they meet this goal, it will result in $30,000 in funding toward their many programs.

Please, consider giving to the Anita Borg Institute NOW (before December 6), while this challenge grant is active. I already have. Your donation makes a difference to our field, to many of the women working in it, and to women all over the world who want to better themselves through technology. Please pledge whatever you can (even $5 or $10) to help meet this $15,000 goal.

To learn how you can donate, go to http://anitaborg.org/get-involved/donate/

Thanks,

Robin Jeffries Her Systers’ Keeper

One of my first personal close experiences with injustice in our society was the murder of Vincent Chin. My mom worked for General Motors at the time (she never met him in person) and was involved early in the fight for justice for him. Until activists made an issue of it, the murder of Chin by two white laid-off auto workers didn’t make waves.

Bigotry-motivated murders are still happening regularly, and still being underreported. Although the brutal murders of Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo are well known, the Transgender Day of Remembrance Web site notes that more than one person a month has died because of their gender expression:

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgendered — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgendered people.

We live in times more sensitive than ever to hatred based violence, especially since the events of September 11th. Yet even now, the deaths of those based on anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are largely ignored. Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

Given the recent news about stripping gender identity protection from ENDA and that the stories of Brandon Teena and Gwen Araujo it’s almost surprising that the Day of Remembrance isn’t more widely covered. The Day of Remembrance has been going on for nine years. I’m on several LGBT mailing lists but only only one of them – Equality North Carolina – sent out a mailing mentioning the event. Of course, the HRC is one of the other organizations whose mailing list I’m on. They’re the organization I think of first when people talk about how same sex marriage is a rich gay white person’s issue. I don’t think that’s true, of course – marriage equality affects everyone – but I can see how people might come to think so if they see the HRC as a leading LGBT org.

Ironically, as Lambda Legal notes, removing protection for gender identity from ENDA cripples the act not just for transfolk, but for many others:

Lambda Legal’s preliminary assessment of the revised version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act shows the bill to be riddled with loopholes in addition to failing altogether to protect transgender people against discrimination.

“Leaving out protections for transgender people is unacceptable, and passing a bill riddled with loopholes will make it harder to achieve equality on the job,” said Kevin Cathcart, Executive Director at Lambda Legal. “You can’t be fired for being lesbian, gay or bisexual but you can be fired if your boss thinks you fit their stereotype of one.”

FYI, one creative way some artists have marked the day is the Transgender Day of Remembrance Web Comics Project.

From CPA:

Dear Allies,

Tomorrow, Thurs. Nov. 15! Please join us in supporting the Parc Hong Kong workers in their first public protest. We will start promptly at 11 am and end by 11:45 am, so please try to arrive by 10:30 or 10:45.

thank you for your support!

Shaw San Liu Worker Organizing Center Chinese Progressive Association

“Parc Hong Kong” Immigrant Restaurant Workers Protest Wage Theft,

Seek up to 3 Months Backwages

Rally and Press Conference

11:00 am, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2007

San Francisco City Hall Steps

On Thurs., Nov. 15, “Parc Hong Kong” restaurant workers are standing up to protest wage theft and demand justice.

Join Chinese immigrant restaurant workers, community supporters and members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at a rally on Thurs. Nov. 15, from 11 am to 12 pm.

They will protest wage theft of up to 3 months backwages owed, demand that the employer pay all back wages and penalties, and call upon the city government to enforce labor laws in San Francisco.

The Parc Hong Kong Story

Over 40 Chinese immigrant workers are owed up to 3 months of wages (estimated total over $100,00) from the Parc Hong Kong restaurant, a dim sum and seafood restaurant in the Richmond district. Many are new immigrants who did not get a penny for their work.

Time and time again, the employer has offered workers bounced checks instead of paying their wages. In August they shut their doors and have resisted efforts by federal, state and city labor departments to reclaim workers wages.

At the press event, Parc Hong Kong workers will deliver wage claims forms totaling over $100,000 to OLSE and give testimony to the injustice they have experienced. Join us to tell Parc Hong Kong and other irresponsible restaurant owners that the elected leadership and community will not tolerate further wage theft in San Francisco!

For more information, please contact Shaw San Liu at (415) 391-6986 ext. 313 or reply to shawsan at_ cpasf _dot org.

There are a lot of sexist jokes that go around, either verbally or digitally. Women in male-dominated fields, like computing, experience this regularly. When we complain, we’re often told that it’s “just a joke” or to “have a sense of humor about it”, or “it’s bad, but it’s not a really big deal”. Now there’s research that shows that sexist jokes encourage more tangible discrimination:

“We found that men with a high level of sexism were less likely to donate to the women’s organization after reading sexist jokes, but not after reading either sexist statements or neutral jokes,” Ford said.

In the second experiment, men were shown video clips of sexist or non-sexist comedy skits and were then asked to participate in a project designed to determine how funding cuts should be allocated amongst select student organizations.

“We found that, upon exposure to sexist humor, men higher in sexism discriminated against women by allocating larger funding cuts to a women’s organization than they did to other organizations,” Ford said.

“We also found that, in the presence of sexist humor, participants believed the other participants would approve of the funding cuts to women’s organizations,” he said. “We believe this shows that humorous disparagement creates the perception of a shared standard of tolerance of discrimination that may guide behavior when people believe others feel the same way.”

I like that the lead researcher, Thomas Ford, is a man. It’s good to have allies! Sometimes men ask how they can help women in computing, and being good allies is a great start. Not just by doing studies like this, but also by speaking out when someone says something stupid.

I just heard from an organizer at SEIU Local 1877 (whom I do work with) that some of their members were pepper sprayed at a union rally. I can understand when two sides have a difference of opinion, but it’s really bad when a company resorts to physical violence when confronted with protests. Here’s a newspaper article on it:

Kevin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the union, said the demonstrators at the mall were there to voice grievances regarding alleged civil rights abuses committed by General Growth Properties againstemployees. “In the course of forming their union, they’ve been met with interrogation, intimidation, discrimination, censorship. You’ve had mall janitors who have been prohibited from talking to union organizers.” O’Donnell said that as a result of the scuffle with the security guards, janitors Maricela Flores and Sonia Sharwood and union organizer Raul Cardenas were taken to Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Hayward to be treated for impaired vision, pain in the limbs and difficulty breathing.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the terrible events in Burma. There will be a protest in San Francisco tomorrow (Friday, October 4, 2007) starting with a rally at 2 p.m. There’s more info at the Burmese American Democratic Alliance Web site:

• Rally and meditation at Chinese Consulate, 1450 Laguna Street (2 pm - 5 pm)
• Peace March to United Nations Plaza, Market Street Between 7th & 8th (5 pm - 5:40 pm)
• Multi-religion Prayer Vigil at United Nations Plaza (6:00 pm - 8:00 pm) Outraged by the brutal crackdowns and killings of monks and peaceful people of Burma, let’s come together and crate a big event in San Francisco. Therefore, please join/help organized the Peace for Burma Protest, March and Prayer Vigil on Friday, October 5 from 2 pm to 6 pm in San Francisco. Together, let’s recreate in the streets of San Francisco what we have seen in Burma – Monks and lay persons marching peacefully holding Sassana flags and reciting Metta Sutta. To get involve call Nyunt Than 510 220 1323 or email nyuntthan@gmail.com.

Chin Jurn Wor Ping (CJWP) and our allies are organizing an event to commememorate the 4th anniversary of fight to keep affordable housing at Chinatown’s Pacific Renaissance Plaza. Here’s info from the pdf of the flyer. The East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC) has put together a PDF showing the time line of the PacRen struggle.

Pacific Renaissance Struggle … 4-Year Commemoration ————————————–

• Pacific Renaissance Plaza
• Oakland Chinatown
• 9th St, between Webster + Franklin
• Saturday, April 28, 2007
• 10:30 am

For more information, contact Eric Chang :: wokwhiz@sbcglobal.net :: 650.580.7719

Dear Community Ally,

Four years ago, Oakland’s social justice community came together to support the Pacific Renaissance Plaza families who were being evicted from their homes. Please join us as we commemorate the fami- lies who stood up for housing rights and as we recommit to realizing justice for the Pacific Renaissance tenants and Oakland Chinatown.

It’s been four years since tenant families, community groups, and the City of Oakland sued the Pacific Renaissance developers. Last May, the parties entered into a tentative settlement agreement that would have resulted in preserving the 50 affordable housing units as permanently affordable housing for the Chinatown community. Yet the wheels of justice currently turn slowly, while many of the Pacific Renaissance families face uncertain futures.

The Pacific Renaissance units represent the last remaining option for affordable housing in Chinatown—a community that is experiencing a serious affordable housing crisis. It also represents unmet promises made to Chinatown. Beginning in the 1970s, community leaders fought to secure community benefits from the Pacific Renaissance project, which received over $30 million in public subsidies. With the docu- mented loss of thousands of Chinatown’s affordable housing units due to redevelopment, affordable housing at Pacific Renaissance was a key community demand.

With your continued help, we will write a different chapter of history on the treatment of Chinatown residents and realize justice for the Pacific Renaissance families. We look forward to seeing you on April 28th.

In peace and solidarity,

Chin Jurn Wor Ping, Oakland Tenants Union, Just Cause Oakland, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, East Bay Asian Local Development Corp, East Bay Asian Consortium, ACORN, East Bay Community Law Center, East Bay Housing Organizations, Movement Strategy Center, Alameda County Central Labor Council, Urban Strategies Council, Siegel & Yee; California Affordable Housing Law Project, Paul, Hastings, Janofsky, & Walker LLP; Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, SEIU Local 1021, League of Women Voters, East Bay Alliance for Sustainable Economy

Kathy Sierra, author of the Creating Passion Users blog, posted today that she’s going to stop blogging, maybe for a while, maybe forever. The reason is because some people have crossed the line from offering immature criticism to making death threats and suggesting sexual violence.

Not only is that bad enough, but this has been happening on blogs where prominent bloggers participate, and they haven’t been criticizing these comments while continuing to participate in sites like meankids. So it’s not just what’s being said, but also what’s not being said. It seems like this behavior is accepted in the blogosphere, and Kathy doesn’t want any part of that any more.

From Kathy’s (last?) blog post:

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).

[Note: This post includes disturbing language and a picture beyond anything I’d normally say here, so some of you might not want to continue reading. But I felt it was important to be specific about as much as the police investigation will allow.]

Sorry about the last minute notice, but there’s a vigil this evening for Ruby Rodriguez, who was murdered in San Francisco one week ago today. The press release mentions two other murders of transwomen of color in the past six months just in the Bay Area, which is a crazy high number.

This is from CUAV’s (Community United Against Violence) press release, which I saw on APIQWTC:

Community Mourns Murder of Latina Transgender Woman —————————————-

Requests Attendance at Vigil to Demand Change

San Francisco, California (March 22, 2007) – A Nicaraguan transgender woman, Ruby Rodriguez, 24 years old, was murdered on Friday, March 16, 2007. Her body was found on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Indiana Streets in the Mission District of San Francisco. The murder is currently under investigation by the San Francisco Police Department. Community United Against Violence (CUAV), EL-LA, San Francisco LGBT Community Center, TRANS Project, allies, and community members will hold a community vigil in her honor on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 6:00PM, on the corner of 24th Street and Mission Street in the Mission District.

Organizers request that the community bring a white candle to the vigil. There will also be an additional altar set up on Cesar Chavez and Indiana Street, and community members are encouraged to bring flowers, photographs, cards and good wishes to this site. Let us not forget Ruby. She was an exceptional woman who was intent on improving her life. Ruby participated in various support groups and language classes, and idolized Chicana singer Selena.

This murder comes at the heels of at least two other violent deaths of transgender women of color in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past six months. Transgender people, particularly low-income transgender women of color, are disproportionately poor, homeless, criminalized and imprisoned as a result of systemic discrimination in our daily attempts to access safe housing, healthcare, employment, and education. Unfortunately, Ruby’s murder is not an exception, but an everyday fear for many transgender people who are targeted and brutalized by institutions and society at large. Our communities mourn Ruby’s death and ask for a renewed commitment to real safety for transgender communities. It is vital that the Mayor’s Office, the San Francisco Police Department, and the District Attorney’s Office work to end the cycles of criminalization, poverty, and violence in transgender communities and communities of color.

Please direct any questions about the vigil to Tina D’Elia or Alexandra Byerly. If anyone has any information regarding Ruby’s murder, please contact Inspector Karen Lynch at (415) 553-1388 or Inspector Tom Cleary at (415) 553-9569 of the SFPD Homicide Unit.

I like humane text formats like Markdown (which I use for this blog) or Textile for writing things like blogposts. I find that the WYSIWYG editors like FCKeditor or Kupu sometimes don’t generate markup as clean as we’d like. Of course, from a user perspective, a WYSIWYG editor is a lot easier to learn. So it’s been a tough choice, sometimes, to decide what to use. Now it looks like there might be a happy medium! While browsing Open Source Web Design, I saw a link to a new editor called WYMeditor (it takes its name from the last three letters of WYSIWYM – What You See Is What You Mean). It feels like a WYSIWYG editor, but it keeps formatting out of the way so that people can see the markup. It looks like a great idea!

The next protest against Monster Cable is this Wed., Feb. 21, 2007, at Union Square (San Francisco). Among others, you can see Hei Gu (Chinese drumming group) there with big red drums. From CPA’s Justice for Monster Cable Workers blog (slightly reformatted for clarity; I think this must have been pasted from another medium):

Weekly Boycott Action

Chinese New Year’s, But No Red Envelope for Workers

Wed., Feb. 21, 12 pm - 1:30 pm

Meeting at Union Square, dowtown San Francisco

Come spend your lunchtime with laid-off workers, community allies and musicians!

BOYCOTT MONSTER CABLE! After months of protests and no progress with Monster Cable, laid-off workers have launched a boycott of Monster Cable products. Support the boycott and Monster Cable laid-off workers in their demands that the company:

• Provide us with a just and fair compensation package which recognizes our years of service
• Contribute to a Community Transition Fund to support laid-off workers in vocational training and job development