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| Today I wear a button in New York City: Justicia en el Trabajo in support of UTW |
I am listening to Stanley Abronowitz today in New York City on WBAI speaking in support of the strike in the second day today of the transit workers UTW. It seems everywhere I go there is another front of people fighting the neoliberal agenda, which is the reason that this is the frontline of the fight against it. The neoliberal agenda insists that countries fight labor, end social programs, protect the wealthy and private property and create a climate perfect for foreign investment. That is why New York City is in support of the strike: because we know that the transit workers are standing up for all our rights! Stanley Abronowitz is now speaking about cooperatives as the answer to the neoliberal agenda. Support cooperatives! Form a babysitting cooperative! Support your local food cooperative! Support farmer cooperatives!
| World Social Forum to be in Caracas, Venezuela for 2006 |
December 11, 2005: This is the year to go to Venezuela for the World Social Forum in January. For more information go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Social_Forum
Oh, how I'd like to be in those numbers!
The word is out that those incorrigible Saint Patrick's Four are up to more protests against war, the abuse of prisoners and other such objections of which there are many! Their sentencing trial is scheduled for January in which they could get the maximum of 18 months. For more about their trial last Fall see blog archive here.
| Support for education for teen moms coming from (gasp!) Elizabeth Dole!!!!! |
Interesting to note that the Republicans are supporting a bill to support equal rights to education for mothers because they are pro-life. While I will always stand for pro choice, I find this sudden turn of events interesting, after years of trying to get the left to recognize the problem to no avail except for some great work from Paul Wellstone, bless his soul. It's a wierd, wierd world we live in!!!!!!
| No Women Cartoonist at Hammer Museum Show, Los Angeles, "Fatherless" children increasing in Botswana and the world over. |
Today on NPR on a section of Good Morning America about how the Bushman of Botswanna are being forced out of a Nature Preserve in the Kalahari Desert, a Bushman being interviewed said that most of the Bushman are going to refugee camps or to the cities where they are facing unemployment, addiction to alchohol, and the increase of fatherless children. Interesting that he did not say an increase in single parenting, or single mothers, but an increase in fatherless children. Yes, single parenting, fatherless children is a direct result of globalization all over the world, as the figures rise. The answer being mentioned over and over is education which is why I wrote my book, The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom and why I provide college information for college moms on this website.
| More on the Neo-liberal agenda |
The minute that Bush was elected I knew that the universities were going to be in trouble, that the conservatives would never allow liberal professors to stay on the payroll, if they could find a way to end it. Where there is a will there is a way. When he was in for his second term it seemed obvious.
More on the neo-liberal agenda to end welfare as we know it:
CongressDaily PM 10/31/05
BUDGET
Governors Balk At Cuts In Child Support Enforcement
The National Governors Association has come out against a plan by House Ways and Means
Chairman Thomas to reduce federal funding to states for child support enforcement and
other proposed spending cuts.
| Why I Think Counter Recruitment is a Single Mom and Teen Mom Issue |
October 27, 2005
Paul J. Frazier will be conducting a Counter Recruitment Training Session and Workshop in Hop Bottom, PA in November.
While I was painting the mural to the right which was at the Howl Festival around Tompkins Square Park in 2004, many single moms came to me and told me that their children had signed up for the service against their desires and pleadings. "My son was seduced by the recruiting," they told me. How many of the people in the armed services were raised by single moms or are single moms? Does anyone know how we could get these statistics? In the meantime, I am advocating that mothers organize like the Dominican mothers have in Washington Heights, New York City to get the recruiting out of our schools. For now, we can at least learn how we can offer counter recruitment in the schools. For more information, please contact Paul Frazier or the Indymedia group in your area. For coverage of day of protest go to: 'Bush
Lied, 2,000 Died' New Yorkers take to the streets in protest of the war in Iraq by Sarah Ferguson October 27th, 2005 12:32 AM http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0544,ferguson,69491,2.html
DRAFT INFO WORKSHOP : TOPICS COVERED IN A WORKSHOP
INCLUDE:
* Selective Service rules, regulations, and procedures;
* Registrants' rights, responsibilities, and options
* Conscientious objection
* Outreach efforts
THE TRAINER
Paul Frazier has trained draft counselors in the '60s, the '80s,
and now. He has written "How to Train Draft Counselors"
and "Catholic College Students and the Draft." He has
worked with the catholic peace fellowship, AFSC, churches, dioceses,
and community organizations throughout the Northeast. He has
worked for ten years as a psychotherapist and presents the training
material as a way to "teach choice."
CONTACT:
Paul Frazier
Draft Information Project
208 Slocum Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13204
(315)475-2811
pauljfrazier@yahoo.com
| Globalization and Women: Single Mothers |
October 15, 2005
Single parenting is increasing the world over. In Malaysia 18% of the population are now single mother families, an increase over the last decade (Aguilar, 44). In Mexico, the percentage of the workforce that is women has increased. Forty percent of Mexican families live in poverty and 18% of all families are headed by women (Aguilar, 127). In Haiti, in 1994, 90% of all foreign investment is from the US, mostly textile assembly plants where the workers are 90% women. In a country where the average wage is a dollar a day, these women who earn $2 a day are in a higher income bracket. Still, they cannot afford indoor plumbing, or electricity and spend 50% of their wages on food to feed their families(Aguilar, 160). (Aguilar, Delia D, and Anne E. Lacsamana, Women and Globalization. Humanity Books: New York, 2004.)
I have heard it suggested that there is now a huge societal shift from nuclear families to single parenting in the United States. All the marriage incentives in the world cannot stop this trend anymore than a hand can stop a tidal wave. Just like in the move from extended families to nuclear families it was women and children that suffered, so, too, with this shift, those early on in this shift meet with the most suffering.
To me the key is education. If women with children do not have equal access to education, then how can poverty be eliminated? This is one place to start in our efforts toward a more equitable distribution of wealth.
How can you help: Act locally. Does your local college have adequate accomodations for a woman with a child? What can you do to help the decision makers at the college begin to get this right? How can we lift these institutions up to our own level of responsibility?
| Single Mother Student Faces Discrimination |
Yesterday I heard a story of a student who is a mother who, in order to go to college, felt she had to leave her child with her parents in another state. What kind of society are we that we would allow a mother and child to undergo this type of suffering just to have equal access to education? On this college campus, SUNY Binghamton, all freshman are required to live on campus and yet, of course, there is no housing for a mother and child. Is she thinking that if she can just get through the first semester, she can then go to off-campus housing and be re-united with her child? But at what cost to mother and child? What unnecessary cost? Title 9 states that all educational opportunities if provided for one gender, must be provided to the other gender. I consider child bearing a gender characteristic. Therefore, that mother and child has a right to be on the campus. A legal right to not have to abandon her child. Simple as that!
Please Mothers!! We have much work to do!!
| Gordon Lish |
I am very grateful to have studied with the great writer and writing teacher Gordon Lish for many years. Those that were there, and I saw many greats in class: Amy Hempel, Mark Richard, Noy Holland, Therese Sovoda, Victoria Redel, Christine Schutt, Lilly Tuck, Gary Lutz, Kate Walbert, Sam Michel, Ben Marcus, Dawn Raffel, and Will Eno (congratulations on that Guggenheim, Will). We sat and heard about swerve and recursion and that our audience was God and only God. Did we want to make history or did we want to buy a potato?
I took my Master's at City College where I took class with Fred Tuten, Edna O'Brien, Mark Mirsky and feminist lit with Jane Marcus. Walter Moseley was in class with me. We both won the DeJur Award and the Henfield TransAtlantic Fiction Award at City. After that I studied with Gordon Lish for many years and wish I could more. Unfortunately for the world he is no longer teaching. I still believe that I will make literary history. I still believe that true change is in the form. I still believe in the sentence, that a sentence is worth all the time in the world to get it right. The great writer Tillie Olsen, who is an inspiration to all artists and writers who are mothers, made art history with one short story. What a joy to have known Tillie and Gordon and many others who have believed in living a life of art, a life of meaning, no matter what.
| Globalization and Women and Children: Feminist Perspective |
I am a Third Wave Feminist, I have just been told. Great. Finally I am included.
If the Neoliberal agenda, all the rage with conservatives the world over, is about forcing countries to develop market-friendly policies which include lowering public deficits (cutting social programmes, welfare, etc), lowering taxes, privitazation, and using the military as a global riot control, then how do these policies effect women and children, especially teen mothers, single mothers and other women who struggle to feed their children? You guessed it! Not good. We saw Clinton sign the Welfare Reform Act, we see the devastation of natural disasters as money is diverted from infrastructure to maintaining the military, and we see what happens when (mostly) women work in the factories in Asia, along the border of Mexico and the United States and in Haiti. How are women doing in Venezuela, the one country to stand up to the neoliberal agenda and say no? Vamos a ver, we will see.
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The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom by Katherine Arnoldi |
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| Saint Patrick's Fourblog archive: Saint Patrick's Four |
copyright by Katherine Arnoldi