Showing posts tagged social justice

fuckyeahxicanapower:

“The Ovarian-Psycos Bicycle Brigade Make a Space for Women on the Eastside

Two months ago, when 22-year-old Bree’Anna Guzman was murdered in Lincoln Heights, the all-women bike group Ovarian-Pscyos Bicycle Brigade scrapped their previously planned ride to ride instead through the neighborhood to protest the killing.

“Whose Streets,” one woman called out.

“Our Streets” the more than 30 women riding answered.

While many recent bike groups are either bicycling for recreation, bringing awareness to bicyclists on the road, or use the bicycle for social justice movement events, the Ovarian-Psycos Bicycle Brigade is a community inspired women’s movement that does all of the above and then some.

In Los Angeles, fewer than 1 in 5 people cycling were female, according to preliminary data from the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition’s most recent bicycle count. While this trend has been the constant in cities across the nation, the number of female bicycle groups in Los Angeles has grown from just a couple a few years ago, to at least four.

The currently all-Latina collective with roots from various parts of the Eastside pride themselves with their exclusivity to women, with sticker slogans like “Ovaries so big, we don’t need no fucking balls.” Their monthly all-women Luna Rides, which takes its name from the moons connection with a woman’s menstrual cycle, bring up to 30 women riders each ride. For their two-year anniversary in July, the Ovarian-Psycos are also planning the first female version of the monthly Critical Mass, which will be called Clitoral Mass.

For many of the women it’s their first time being involved in an all-female collective. The oldest members are 33 and the youngest is 20. Some are artists that ride bikes, and some are pure bicyclists. Yet the Ovarian-Psycos has become a type of sisterhood that, for many, they have never had before.

“Being around women, learning that we can interact in a way that was not hostile or competitive; it’s been a very new experience,” said Magally “Maga” Miranda.

Though the group has found stability recently, the group’s continued existence was never a sure bet. On the very first Luna Ride in July 2010, Xela, the de facto leader of the group at the time, hit a pothole on the road and fell face forward off her bike, hospitalizing her for two weeks.  Andrea Ramirez, or “La Blackbird,” recalls that many bike riders didn’t come back after the first ride because they were scared.

Though one half left, and another came back for the second Luna Ride, Xela said, the group stagnated for the first year, never topping more than 20 riders.

“I was worried always that it’s going to die someday,” Xela said.

Yet, right before the Ovarians one-year anniversary, Xela started to recruit core members to better organize the group.  After the one-year anniversary at Solidarty ink, and with a fairly consistent 12 core members, the group finally started to take off. Like before, each ride had a theme. Specific workshops involved speakers, and teachers on a range of social issues, and bicycle issues. Some workshops talked about women’s health, while other covered self-defense. Yet, the groups were getting bigger, and the core members were helping spread the word.

Many of the women say they feel they are not taken seriously in the biking community because their rides aren’t as long as traditional rides, there are usually many first-time riders, and the ride will stop and wait for one person. But, these limitations, Ova member Natalie Fraire said, can be a positive.

“We are encouraging a lot more riders and that’s more important,” said Fraire.

Riding as a women group has also made the riders more aware of the difficulties of riding in the city as a woman. Individually, or in small groups, Ova Elvira “Ashes” Arvizo has been catcalled by men on the street, and during one Luna Ride, the group noticed a male motorist was trailing the group. The women stopped and started to yell at the motorist, which caused him to flee.

Creating Sisterhood

As the group has grown, the women have needed to get closer. Many of their biweekly meetings resemble the chaos of a family dinner. At a recent meeting, Maryann “La Fingers” Aguirre would belch across the room, giving many of the girls a laugh, and Fraire ran to the oven to find she burned the artichoke dish brought. If the meeting ever got out of order, a clit checker (meeting organizer) would bellow out a warning to get the meeting back on track.

Each Ova have brought various skills in community organizing, photography, graphic design and bike mechanics which they also share with the rest of the group. Gloria “GLoTography” Vasquez takes most of the photos that are on the groups websites, but she has also taken the time to teach Ovas like Fraire how to use a camera. The group has also helped Vasquez to break her shyness and talk more with women on rides.

“Now run into women across streets and able to converse with them than just pass them by,” said Vasquez.

Each season there are rotating leaders of the group called a left and right ovary, and many of the women are expected to step up to take care of a portion of their work.

Many of the women have never ridden with an all female bike crew, and let alone worked with an all-women group. Yet, the same reason Xela started the group is the same reason the women joined: they couldn’t connect with the rides already in LA.

Andrea “La Blackbird” Ramirez said she could never get comfortable riding with the Midnight Ridazz because men always outnumbered women. Aside from men outnumbering women during Critical Mass, Arvizo said will leave riders behind, and that can deter a young woman-rider to join a ride.

The Ovas offer a space for women, Xela said. And the rides though recreational, can become extremely personal, with some events bringing women to tears. During a stop on their ride that was themed on domestic violence, many women came forward about their experiences.

The personal nature of the rides, and the already numerous LA bike rides is the reason Xela said, why it’s exclusive to women.

“It’s just a time for women. If they are trying to open up, won’t be comfortable opening up if there are men around,” said Aguirre.

Xela, whose been a part of women collectives that have never lasted, said she knew the Ovarian-Pscyos was a different type of all woman collective at the one-year anniversary. Jocelyn “Joss the boss” Hernandez brought a cake she made and designed to the group at the end of an interview at the Boyle Heights online radio station Centro de Comunicación Comunitaria. The cake had a symbol of a car with a slash over it.

“You do that for your sister, your best friend, and she did this for the Ovas. “That’s nice”

For more information on the Ovarians, send an email to ovarian.psycos@gmail.com or go to their website at ovarianpsycos.com.

Thought a lot of you would enjoy this article.

(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)
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Five-year-old kindergartener A.J. Paches was kicked out of Brookside Elementary School earlier this year because his homeless mother used a friend’s address to register him in the wealthy district of Norwalk, Connecticut. After forcing A.J. out, Norwalk authorities charged his mother first-degree larceny for enrolling her son under a false address, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Sadly, A.J.’s story is not unique. He is one of several low-income students whose parents use the residence of a relative or friend to provide their children with educational opportunities that are severely lacking in poor districts. Meanwhile, wealthy school districts are cracking down hard on these families, going to extreme lengths to identify, force out, and increasingly prosecute the parents of kids like AJ.

20 Years in Prison for Sending Your Kids to the Wrong School? Inequality in School Systems Leads Parents to Big Risks | | AlterNet

Please read the entire article. It just makes me so deeply angry. Having been one of the children who went to an extremely poor school for elementary, worked as a teacher’s assistant through part of college in a very wealthy ‘blue ribbon’ elementary school, worked as a lead teacher at a very pricey preschool for 3 years and finally worked at an enrichment program for “at-risk” (which we all know is code for poor and probably minority) girls I can definitely attest to the fact that the differences in materials, class sizes, learning structure, and creativity in the class room is SO obvious and blatant is disgusting.

For those of you opening your mouths to argue with me that ‘learning structure’ and ‘creativity’ aren’t affected by funding because everyone can be creative and blah blah blah I’m a douche. YES learning structure (by which I mean do 8 year olds sit at a desk all day, do they get to go to stations, do hands on learning activities, do they have opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge beyond quizzes and practice tests that prepare them for the standardized tests that they have to pass because if they don’t they will get EVEN LESS funding etc. ) and creativity in the classroom are extraordinarily limited by funding.

A) they HAVE to pass those tests, what little funding, what few teachers they have are on the line, so yeah, they get taught the tests and they get taught HOW to take tests from age five. That’s fucked up. But tell me it’s not necessary, with the system that is in place in this country right now. It is all they can do.

B) They don’t have enough funding for new/up to date text books. You think that they have funding for hands on stations, manipulatives, and other learning tools? They’re lucky if they have money for new crayons once a year and teachers buy a LOT of class room necessities (tissue, soap, crayons) out of their own pockets.

C) Creativity in the classroom and varies learning structure allows children to absorb and remember more of their lessons. Poor districts don’t have the funding to allow these types of lessons, and they’re forced to teach the tests as we already discussed. Which means their children are less likely to retain the information that they learn, putting them further and further behind each school year and force teachers to spend a large amount of time reviewing old concepts (from previous years) which are building blocks to learning new concepts.

Most anyone would want their child to have the best possible learning environment. And yet these parents are being prosecuted and made examples of. often forced out of their homes, jailed, fined ridiculous amounts of money. they lives are being ruined for having the audacity to be poor and want a better education for their children.

(via heavenearthandhoratio)

(Reblogged from jonathan-cunningham)

Slavoj Žižek speaks at Occupy Wall Street: Transcript?

rumagin:

“What do we perceive today as possible? Just follow the media. On the one hand, in technology and sexuality, everything seems to be possible. You can travel to the moon, you can become immortal by biogenetics, you can have sex with animals or whatever, but look at the field of society and economy. There, almost everything is considered impossible. You want to raise taxes by little bit for the rich. They tell you it’s impossible. We lose competitivity. You want more money for health care, they tell you, “Impossible, this means totalitarian state.” There’s something wrong in the world, where you are promised to be immortal but cannot spend a little bit more for healthcare. Maybe we need to set our priorities straight here. We don’t want higher standard of living. We want a better standard of living. The only sense in which we are Communists is that we care for the commons. The commons of nature. The commons of privatized by intellectual property. The commons of biogenetics. For this, and only for this, we should fight.”

—Slavoj Zizek at Liberty Plaza

(Reblogged from rumagin)

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

rumagin:

This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on september 29, 2011

Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that…

Want to know what Occupy Wall Street has been busy doing? Want to know what their demands are? This is a good starting point.

(Reblogged from rumagin)
rumagin: I would go further and say this is the universal history of the world, that includes the development of Europe and North America - and white settler nations, and the underdevelopment of the rest of the world

rumagin:

I would go further and say this is the universal history of the world, that includes the development of Europe and North America - and white settler nations, and the underdevelopment of the rest of the world

(Source: butseriously1)

(Reblogged from rumagin)

Don’t forget this feeling.

caracaracara:

Don’t think for a second that this miscarriage of justice is a one-time thing. 

Don’t think for a second that your voice has meant nothing. We may not have been able to stop this execution, but the support of millions has certainly meant a lot to Troy and his family. And bringing any ounce of comfort or hope to them makes it all worth it. 

Don’t give up. We have to keep fighting this shit if we ever want to put an end to such injustice.

We have to keep doing what’s right. 

This. Exactly this.

(Reblogged from caracaracara)

Internet. It's Time To Talk.

kiriamaya:

meloukhia:

There’s a thing I would like to talk about. It’s a big thing.

I described it recently as a key, saying, “I feel like I am trapped inside a room and I want to swing the door open and say ‘look, there’s more stuff here,’ but I can’t turn the key and I hate myself…

Go read this important post on bullying, and more importantly, bullying within the social justice community. I’ve seen this happen. We need to talk about it, and more importantly, we need to stop it.

(Reblogged from panasonicyouth)
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This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
Elie Wiesel (via mohandaskgandhi)
(Reblogged from mohandasgandhi)
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The rich talk about the rise of socialism to divert attention from the fact that they are devouring the basics of the poor and everyone else. Many of those crying socialism the loudest are doing it to enrich or empower themselves. They are right about one thing – there is a class war going on in the US. The rich are winning their class war, and it is time for everyone else to fight back for economic justice.
Bill Quigley (via azspot)
(Reblogged from azspot)
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Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.
Nelson Mandela (via ne-plus-ultra)
(Reblogged from )