Tag Archives: Feminism

I don’t need to enumerate the newspaper headlines that make the world feel like a dark and calamitous place right now. Everyone I know is struggling to keep from sinking under the weight of so much cruelty and venality. One case in point is the leaked draft decision indicating that the Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning Roe v Wade, which would undo 50 years of legal precedent and allow the banning of abortion by any state government with the will to do it. Alito’s draft decision states that “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” so if the all white, all male drafters of the constitution hadn’t intended it at the time, we are afforded no protections by the document. If that isn’t scary enough, some legal analysts say that Alito’s draft opinion, by referring to fetuses as human beings, grants them rights that could give momentum to efforts to enact a federal ban on abortion. And to be clear, that is the stated goal of the forces behind this decision.

An interesting piece in The Lever shines a light on anti-abortion zealot Leo Leonard who has been working for many years to undermine Roe. His Judicial Crisis Network and its anonymous donors have toiled long and hard to build an ultra-conservative majority in the Supreme Court that could now rule for decades. The piece goes on to detail the dithering of the Democrats that allowed this to happen, but then offers strategies for what that party might yet do to protect reproductive freedom. One promising tactic is federal protection for and expanding the reach of medication abortion.

In this week’s Special Edition of the At Liberty Podcast Brigitte Amiri, the Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, recommended that each of us connect with our local reproductive health, right, and justice organizations, as well as practical community support groups and abortion funds. She further suggested that now is the time to contact our elected officials to let them know where we stand on this issue. While I will certainly support electoral organizing to put progressive and leftist candidates into office, much of my attention will be focused on radical grassroots groups such as New York City for Abortion and mutual aid efforts such as the New York Abortion Access Fund and the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. On The Cut, Bridget Read and Claire Lampen put together a helpful annotated list of abortion funds in states with the most restrictive abortion laws.

Yesterday I read a beautiful and scary piece by Grace Paley about what life was like before Roe. Paley wrote, “I think women died all the time when abortions were illegal. The horrible abortions were one way; the other was the refusal of institutions—medical, church, and state—to care for you, their willingness to let you die.” The upcoming Supreme Court ruling will not outlaw abortions altogether throughout the entire country at this time. Access to this essential medical care will be determined by where you live and how much money you have, which is already the case in many places, and on our battle to maintain and even expand this access. As Melissa Gira Grant points out in this excellent piece The Real Fight for Abortion Rights Is Not in the Courts or Congress, even before the court strikes down Roe 89% of U.S. counties do not currently have a clinic that provides abortions.

Melissa Gira Grant concludes her piece with this paragraph:

As true as it might be to say, “If they come for Roe tonight, they’re coming for marriage equality tomorrow,” there are plenty of people they have come for already, from trans kids seeking health care to people giving birth in jails to sex workers sharing harm-reduction information to criminalized survivors of intimate partner violence. If you are today feeling for this first time like the government is demanding control over your gender and sexuality and bodily autonomy, you are, sadly, in numerous company. But that also means that there are countless people around you who already know that freedom, certainly now and maybe always, will not come solely from what the law can recognize. Either the law must be pushed to recognize those rights, or those rights must be won despite the law.

Abortion rights were won in this country because tens of thousands of people took to the streets and millions of others were organized to support the cause. We must continue the fight because as Angela Davis put it, “Freedom is a constant struggle.” But our organizing can’t be narrowly focused on abortion—it must include all those vulnerable to concerted right-wing assaults on autonomy and dignity. As Reverend Jacqui Lewis put it, “Liberation is collective. We only get free when we fight for all of us.”

I recently listened to a podcast interview with geographer and prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore in which she said, “And while I think a feeling of despair in this day and age is not difficult to understand, I also feel that, as my grandparents taught me, that despair was a luxury that I didn’t get to sport.” Let’s shrug off the coat of mourning and get to work.

Nancy Kricorian

New York City

Yesterday when I started drafting this blog post, I ended up spending two hours writing about the December 11th killing of Barnard Freshman Tess Majors in Morningside Park and the subsequent NYPD Security Theater outside my kitchen window. I realized there was nothing edifying, informative, or helpful in what I had written, although it was cathartic for me, and so I put it in the failed drafts folder.

We made it through a turbulent 2019, and we’re now into a new year that started with an illegal and provocative assassination of an Iranian General and, if anxiety and incertitude are a measure of length, this very long year will continue with the longest Presidential election cycle in human history. So herewith is my “listicle” of ways to maintain sanity and equilibrium in 2020, which was composed in part in the middle of the night as I turned in my bed like a rotisserie chicken.

1. ORGANIZE: Housing is a Human Right

Read about #Moms4Housing in Oakland, and how community organizing turned a violent eviction into a big win. This is an inspiring story, and something to build upon.

2. ORGANIZE AGAIN: Why We Need A Green New Deal

Listen to The Dig Podcast Episode “Planet to Win,” a detailed and hopeful discussion about how the Green New Deal might change America for the better.

3. WATCH A GOOD FILM

Go see Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a brilliant and dark film about one day in the life of the junior assistant of an abusive boss. It’s not just about predation—it’s also gimlet-eyed view on capitalist exploitation of young people. The film is poised to become part of a movement to change the culture of Hollywood. Watch the trailer here. Opening in NYC and LA on January 31, theaters and show times may be found here.

4. MAKE COMFORT FOOD

Order a copy of Lavash: The Bread That Launched 1,000 Meals, Plus Salads, Stews, and Other Recipes From Armenia, and cook an Armenian meal for your loved ones. You can read more about the book and try sample recipes here and here.

5. ORGANIZE SOME MORE: #NotMeUS

Read this Jacobin piece about why Bernie Sanders is the candidate who can beat Trump, watch this moving campaign video, and join the #NotMeUs movement.

6. LAUGH

In response to the New York Times’ ridiculous double endorsement of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren for president, read Alexandra Petri’s hilarious takedown, “In a Break From Tradition, I am Endorsing All 12 Democratic Candidates.”

7. LISTEN TO MUSIC

Onnik Dinkjian’s many decades of performing Armenian folk music is covered in this piece from Houshamadyan, and it includes recordings of some of Dinkjian’s most beloved songs.

8. SEEK OUT WISDOM

Listen to Grace Paley read her short story “Traveling”, and read Walter Mosley’s loving remembrance of Toni Morrison. Read also these beautiful poems from Kurdistan.

9.  LEARN SOMETHING NEW

American linguists have recently voted the singular “they” as the word of the decade. And Ivan Coyote’s 2014 piece “Fear and Loathing in Public Bathrooms” helped expand my thinking about the tyranny of the gender binary.

10. LOOK FOR BEAUTY

Last week I went to the Whitney Museum to see Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019. There were a lot of great pieces in the show, but I was absolutely bowled over by Liza Lou’s KITCHEN, a life-sized beaded room filled with furniture, appliances, pots, pans, cereal boxes, and more that took the artist five years to produce. The show is up through January 2021, and a new show of Mexican muralists will be opening at the Whitney in February so you could take in both.

11. GO FOR A WALK IN THE WOODS

I’ve been reading out-of-print books by naturalist and writer Alan Devoe, who lived down the road from our house in the country from the 1930’s to the mid-50’s. In the middle of World War II, which was a time of destruction, violence, and despair on a global scale, Devoe wrote, “It is good, for instance, just to shut off the radio for a while, throw away the newspaper, and go out into the warm darkness of a country night and listen to the frogs.” He also recommended listening to the wrens singing, and said, “They are singing directly into our aboriginal ears, an information that all the pessimists and pedants are mistaken, and the life adventure is a greater and gladder thing than mere learnedness might ever surmise.”

Nancy Kricorian