International Women's Day 2020

International Women's Day every year brings both celebrations of global progress and new efforts against continuing discrimination against women and lack of investment in their health and economic well-being. Today I remember the women I worked with in

Koutiala Mali. We celebrated IWD day two years in a row. Coming together to dance on a day dedicated to talking about women’s issue. One of these is the only day in Mali I heard talk of family planning out in the open.

The United Nations theme this year “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.”  The United Nations expects more than 730 events in 50 countries to mark the 99th anniversary of the drive for equality for half the planet’s population – at home, under law, at work and in government. Conceived at a women’s conference in Copenhagen in 1910 as a way to celebrate women’s contributions, the day gained momentum during the suffrage movement and became a worldwide celebration.

It wasn’t until 1994 in the US when Congresswoman Waters of California introduced and arranged passage of a bill in the US Legislature that gave a national and political mandate to recognition International Women’s Day.  This national recognition has not trickled down to communities across our nation.

Even today in the United States where we hardly celebrated it at all.  What evolved out of the same sentiment here in the United States has become March, Women’s History Month. During March civic buildings and libraries all over the United States display important woman in our history and how they helped to shape our world of today.

Worldwide IWD  is an official holiday in Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.

Many see that women and girls today enjoy better health, more rights and longer lives than their grandmothers did, but the average disguises serious disparities. Yet today in 2020 the global consensus is that despite this progress, real change has been agonizingly slow for the majority of women and girls in the world. Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality. Multiple obstacles remain unchanged in law and in culture. Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices; and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces. Many of us believe there is a significant rollback of hard-won feminist gains.

We remember then First Lady Hillary Clinton when she spoke at the UN’s fourth world conference on Women in 1994 held in Beijing, where she gave her controversial speech declaring that Women’s rights are Human rights. The ridicule that followed echoed around the world and yet we women remember her for this insight. We also rtecall the ridicule she endured during her historical presidential run. Many of us see women’s rights moving backwards not only here in the United States but around the world.

AIDS has reversed gains in life expectancy in some areas: 17.5 million women are living with HIV, and three of every four of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet more than 200 million couples do not have access to contraceptive services that could both prevent HIV infection and help them space their children at healthier intervals.
Life for women continue to be hard. In Nigeria, for example, one in every 18 women has a lifetime risk of dying from complications of pregnancy and delivery, among the world’s highest rates. Only one in every 4,800 U.S. women will die of such causes. The global toll is more than 536,000 women every year – one per minute – nearly all in developing countries.
Around the world today women came out to the streets to voice their opinions. A number of Mexican women are  protesting against femicide in Mexico. A demonstration is taking place in the capital of Baghdad to call for gender equality.
The Prime Ministers of Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden have released a joint statement reaffirming their commitments to gender equality. These countries took what some called extreme measures by passing strict anti-discrimination or affirmative action laws in the last couple of years. These laws succeeded in bringing gender equality closer to a reality. In California The statement also highlights their “grave concern over the current pushback against women’s and girls’ rights” and calls on other world leaders to reject this.
In the United States Fargo ND, Kansas City MO, Cook Co IL, Murray, UT and Oklahoma City, OK, just some of the unlikely places celebrating International Women’s day today just to name of same the place that surprised me.

Today I celebrate the Women on Boards (Senate Bill 826) law  signed into law to advance equitable gender representation on California corporate boards. California is now leading the way as the first state in the nation to require all publicly held domestic or foreign corporations whose principal executive offices are located in California to have at least one female director on their boards by December 31, 2019. The change was brought by a convergence of factors, including a law passed in California in 2018 and mounting pressure from financial firms. Moreover, the mandate has inspired proposals in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, New York and Illinois. Even if those similar ideas don’t turn into binding laws, the California mandate was “a real wake-up call,

Today on IWD we can only hope for a better future.

Sanders and Socialism; But Does he have a heart

No clarity exists in the inter-dependencies of democracy and human rights. This can also be true in the concepts of democracy and capitalism. If you think about these two systems separately it’s hard to see how these two systems can coexist in harmony.

Democracy is about the people; Capitalism is about winner takes all. This is why what Sanders is saying about communist countries has some merit.

Let’s look at the history of Nicaragua. When the Somoza dynasty started its rule in Nicaragua, and even though it was a military dictatorship, the US government backed the regime. During the Somoza regime there was no move towards democracy or human rights. How could a country that was instrumental in writing the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 support a government like that?

After the Sandinista revolution democracy and the realization of human rights, that both depend on citizens’ willingness to exercise personal responsibility, their desire to participate, and their sense of identity, made headways because Nicaraguan citizens participated. The result; the people made reforms in Nicaragua’s institutions and the economy resulting in significant gains in literacy, medical facilities, women’s rights, and human rights contrary to the prevalent believe that the better the democracy the better the human rights.

The pitfall in Nicaragua was not socialism, not communism, it was Ortega himself and his thirst for power. In his third run for presidency he political manipulated the election by suppressing his opposition and changing the constitution to allow the president to hold office which assured that Ortega can be president until 2021. Ortega also consolidated power within the Ortega family blurring a separation of powers. Sound familiar.

What happened in Nicaragua can happen in any country, democracy, communism, monarchy and in my opinion is happening here in the United States today. I pose the question to all of you, what is the connection between government and social wellbeing; between the government and the economy? I wonder if people are better off with a leader that has a heart no matter what system of government. What we need is someone who cares. As Ron Howard said in a recent blog post “A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected.”

The United States has berated countries for their treatment of women, children, for working conditions, for torture, for legal and prison discrimination. What we need to as citizen’s is look inward to our own country that has only ratified only three of the nine core Un treaties.

Don't Pigeon Hole Me

Laurie Anderson’s message to young artist; Be loose. She goes on to say that the label of multimedia artist is meaningless. Hearing Laurie Anderson, someone I admire, gave me the freedom to make my blog diverse. Most blogs I read have a central theme, cooking

blog, food blog, travel blog but this isn’t me. I am someone diverse, someone who wants to tell stories, and there are all kinds of stories that take place in my life. Stories of people I admire that I want to share with you or my response to those stories. Consider this blog a rainbow of experiences.

I’ve heard Laurie Anderson describe her work as words and stories. She says the stories themselves aren’t as important as how they’re told. This is true for me too. It’s how words and images are gathered together to create a new vision. Laurie Anderson’s latest art installation Mohammed el Gharani: Habeas Corpus exemplifies the importance of how a story is told. Mohammed el Gharani was the youngest prisoner in Guantanamo and Laurie Anderson collaborates with him to tell his story in an exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory. Laurie captures Gharani’s prisoner persona of both being there and not being there at the same time. The exhibit gave Gharani a platform to tell his story in away that overwhelmed his audience. (if your interested in hearing about this exhibit here’s a YouTube to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfuvAG_gXUM)

Bell Hooks, also affirmed that I can have a blog with stories on a range of topics. She talks in an interview about how people are framing her as a public intellectual. She doesn’t see herself as a public intellectual and she doesn’t want to spend time trying establish on how she sees herself as opposed to how other people try to define her. She explains that this would take her away from her tasks. It

would take her way from her work, and it’s the work that she wants to focus on. Mixing activism or politics with art and writing, people frame you as an activist in total. I see my writing as public art, with a private vision. I think if you read through my blog posts you will get a sense of consistent ideas in conversations that are rare, they are encounters that don’t necessarily happen every day.

I get inspired by a trip to a museum, watching the news, taking a walk in the forest, swimming in the ocean or doing political work and it’s these inspirations I want to write about, that’s the kind of thing I want to share. Other people frame me but the work I do does have a purpose but may not seem that way with just one read. I feel passionate about the intersection of ideas. No single outlook defines me, I’m a rainbow of inspirations. There is a refrain that holds my writing together and that defines it as my writing.

 

So, I ask you not to pigeon hole me or my blog as travel blog, political blog, feminist blog. Just enjoy the many forces in the world drawing me in from day to day. Our society wants to pigeon hole people because it helps people who want to get known to label themselves, to market themselves. I’m not here to market myself, I’m here to tell stories, to share experiences.

I do see my writing as an art. From journaling, to poetry, to storytelling, to essay, I try to create an ambience to convey a feeling that will surround you softly, or sometimes grab you and shake you into what I see as a reality, to get you enraged to stand up for something, or minimally to talk about it and maybe even write something yourselves.