All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Partial Government Shutdown Delays Family Reunification Process

By Alexandra Mendoza

The partial government shutdown is causing delays in the family reunification case being heard in a San Diego federal court.

Judge Dana Sabraw, who is hearing the class-action suit brought on behalf of immigrant families separated at the border, has granted a request by the Trump Administration to pause deadlines related to the lawsuit originally filed in early 2018.

The suit, brought by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys, called for the reunification of minors separated from their parents as a result in great part of the “zero-tolerance” policy implemented against illegal immigrants.

As of the most recent report, submitted in mid-December, the government had 10 minors in custody who were about to be reunited with their parents. However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had an additional 151 children under their care who would not be reunited with their parents for a variety of reasons.

In the case of 84 of these children, their parents had been deported from the U.S. and had notified the government that they were waiving their right to reunification so that their children could remain in the U.S. and be released to a relative or guardian. The parents of 11 other children did the same, although these parents still remain in the country, according to the report.

It was also determined by Homeland Security (DHS) officers that 28 of the children had not in fact been separated from their parents, and the parents of 28 more were found to be a danger to the children’s well-being, mostly as a result of having a criminal background.

The Trump Administration was supposed to update the court as to the progress in the reunification process mid-January, but due to the government shutdown the attorneys assigned to the case are prohibited from working.

As a result, the Judge granted a pause in the process, with the condition that the Department of Justice (DOJ) legal team notify the court as soon as Congress reinstates funding.

The U.S. has started 2019 with 25 percent of federal employees furloughed after President Trump made good on his threat to shutdown the government unless he got $5 billion dollars in funding to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, a request that Democrats denied.

The family reunification case, made up of three class-action lawsuits, reached an agreement last November, when the Trump Administration agreed to reconsider the asylum petitions of families that had been impacted by the separation policy.

Since then, Judge Sabraw has been closely monitoring progress, and the government was supposed to submit progress reports every two weeks. The latest report indicated that 298 persons, 109 of them minors, had received documents – in most cases with a response to their petition, although the details were not included in the report.

One of the conditions being asked for by the attorneys representing these families is to establish a plan that guarantees that no more parents will be separated from their children without a path to reunification.

Indian women just did a remarkable thing – they formed a wall of protest | Snigdha Poonam

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They were asserting their right to enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala – and have given hope for women’s rights

On 1 January, in one of the biggest movements for women’s rights in India, 5 million women lined up across the length of the southern state of Kerala to “uphold Renaissance values”. What they were demanding was an end to violent agitations against women trying to enter Kerala’s Sabarimala temple, a popular Hindu pilgrimage site. This followed a ruling by the Indian supreme court in September, which forced the temple’s doors open to women of all ages in a sensational blow to religious tradition.

“Where a man can enter, a woman can also go. What applies to a man, applies to a woman,” the bench said in its judgment. Since 1991, the temple has accepted only men and older women, in their millions every year, to preserve the mythological celibacy of the ruling deity, Ayyappa. In theory, the court order only reinforced Indian women’s constitutional right to enter places of worship as freely as men, but in practice it wreaked mayhem. Between 17 November and 24 December, more than a dozen women of menstrual age, including reporters, tried to enter the temple but were stopped, shoved and stoned by mobs of male devotees. None of the women could make it in, despite police protection and prohibitory orders. Both sides are far from giving in. Protests have since continued, though most women who were sent back by the mobs have vowed to return.

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Kevin Spacey and Louis CK have been out in the wilderness. Please, let’s keep them there

your 15 minutes are up!

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In case anyone has forgotten what makes this twosome so gruesome, up they pop to remind us

Whatever happened to the wilderness? People used to stay there for ages. Did it turn out to be a really inhospitable place or something?

I think we all have to ask as the huge caravan of men returning from exile threatens to overwhelm us. Over the past week, it has been difficult to turn on the internet without seeing reports detailing this alleged crimewave’s progress. “My life is over,” declaimed comedian Louis CK to … hang on, where are my reading glasses? … a sold-out audience in Long Island. He owns a multi-million dollar estate on nearby Shelter Island, so I guess it feels as wastelandy a spot as any to unleash a set shitting all over school shooting survivors and people asking to be referred to by pronouns of their choice. But we’ll come to the courage of this material shortly.

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What Women Wore to the Women’s Wall in Kerala

By Nisha Susan

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On 26 December 2018, right-wing Hindu groups in Kerala organised an event called Ayyappa Jyothi in anticipation of the ambitious Women’s Wall/Vanitha Mathil protest against patriarchy that the LDF government had scheduled for January 1, 2019. Thousands of people turned out with diyas and chanted in praise of Ayyappa. As always, I am filled with admiration for anyone who can get middle or upper middle class people out of their homes for anything so you know congratulations to all parties concerned for engaging in excellent photo-op warfare. I did have mild nausea when I saw some of the media coverage though. It was as if the pages had been designed by Raja Ravi Varma’s ghost. The lamp-lit, adarsh nari or adarsh baby photographs at dusk was even captioned on Malayala Manorama’s front page (Bangalore edition) like Ravi Varma would have. Waiting for Papa while defending Hindu Pride with a Serene Smile.

The genuinely pretty photos seamlessly fit into a certain kind of upper-caste Hindu pop culture Kerala sees plenty of on television and in cinema. Old grandma come down in the world addressing her granddaughters as kutty in a trembling, long-suffering voice as Kutty in starched sari prepares to go to office to support the crumbling tharavad. Savarna Culture as Malayali Culture. As Gentility. As Normal. The appearance of 80s good girl movie actors Jalaja and Menaka at this protest only added a little more feels. (If you have read or watched any MT Vasudevan Nair then you will know what I mean when I said the photos felt like #OppolRedux.) It was what my good Malayali friend likes to call Dignikutty. What my good Punjabi friend likes to call Performing Politics as Matrimonial Ad. Really few of those Ayyappa Jyoti photos would have been out of place on a matrimonial site.

Luckily, my tiny home state even in these genteel times continues to have lots of bloody-minded non-genteel instincts. So on January 1, 2019 when the Vanita Mathil rose it looked like anything but suitable girls. In all, 50 lakh women are said to have turned up in a chain stretching from 620 km. What women wore at this event were working clothes. Saris. Salwars. Since the Wall was the coming together of many organisations, lots of photos included women in uniform saris. Nurses in white. Nuns in Habits. Women in Hijabs. Actor Rima Kallingal in a white sleeveless top and dark pants. Many wielded umbrellas, caps and dupattas on their heads to deal with the afternoon sun. Small girls in their best, voluminous frocks and kannmashi-lined sceptical gazes in the afternoon. A sari-wearing woman striding forward with her fist in the air and a baby at her hip, never mind the government’s mumbling that children should not be brought to the Wall. In the Malayalam equivalent of As If: pinnale!

 Now if you are wondering why I am talking about what women wore at a major political event as if I was an E!News reporter at the red carpet, come on! You know that what women wear is a major political event. Major anti-caste struggles in Kerala were borne out of women’s protests about humiliation via clothing. In Vaikom Basheer’s best-known novel Mathilagal (Walls), Basheer and Narayani are madly in love but always separated by the wall of their adjoining prisons. Now those walls were literal but some bricks in our metaphorical gender prisons are clothes, folks. When women’s clothes and bodies cease to be political we won’t have to line up in the afternoon Kerala sun to mark our humanity. And Prime Ministers won’t try to sound deep and knowledgeable about Gender Equality Vs Tradition.

You know who agrees with me about the significance of women’s clothes? Shefali Vaidya, a confident woman you’d know about only if you are on Twitter. On January 2, 2019 two young women entered Sabarimala, a full three months after the Supreme Court gave the green signal and a day after Kerala Chief Minister demonstrated the Malayali buy-in with Women’s Wall. Promptly came the temple priests wanting to faint, rise and wash everything with Dettol because everything now so dirty, I will arise and go live in Innisfree. Shefali Vaidya was concerned but cautious because she suspected the two women were burkha-clad heretics not disrespectful Hindu women bent on sacrilege. (Once not so long ago Pakistani security expert Zaid Hamid, engaged in sartorial political analysis like me and Shef, was convinced that 26/11 was done by Sikh RAW agents called Amar Singh and Hiralal because Ajmal Kasab aka Amar Singh wore a orange thread on his wrist) Friends and foes had to reassure Vaidya that the two women’s black clothes were not burkhas and just the black gear worn to Sabarimala.

 Images of actual burkha clad women at the Women’s Wall were a major source of moral fibre and roughage for online critics. Hijabi women were frequently mocked for having the gall to protest patriarchy when they were wearing ‘garbage bags’ or ‘dressed like penguins’. The troll gold-standard emoji of laughing-till-tears was very much on display. The photo of a hijabi woman holding up a poster against Brahmanical Patriarchy was particularly held up as fodder of comedy and unintended irony. Now who is to explain at length that the metaphor of Brahmanical patriarchy is an affliction that affects women in every religious community. If only in the last two decades we had watched 300 Malayalam/Hindi television shows of women in hijabs leaving their house to support the family then perhaps it would be clearer that the Noble Feminine with a Mind of Her Own is not limited to the white Trivandrum sari and the heirs of Menaka and Jalaja.

In case you worried that the trolls were only going after Muslim women, not to worry. There were plenty of equal opportunity attacks against Christian women. The presence of groups from churches and the presence of nuns triggered lots of darkly knowing conversations about ricebag converts, paedophiles and rapist priests. Meaning that Christian women from whichever denomination should not publicly protest anything until every Christian denomination has been cleansed of every last sexual predator (not just Jalandhar diocese Bishop Francis Mulakkal) like presumably the tantri is cleansing Sabarimala right now. Not to be repetitive or anything but pinnale! Also this is the time to discuss Sister Lucy.

If you are saying Sister Who, guys come on! Sister Lucy Kalapura. She has been a vocal supporter of the nuns battling Bishop Mulakkal and has faced a lot of criticism, abuse and institutional reprimands for her clarity. Yesterday Sister Lucy wrote a Facebook post in support of the Women’s Wall. In the accompanying photo Sr Lucy who is usually seen in a habit was wearing a green salwar kameez or as Malayalis like to call this favourite ensemble — Churidar. Sr Lucy took time to address that important detail. Her clothes. She says, “I am travelling. For convenience I am wearing a common Indian outfit. I don’t want any priests to see my clothes and wrinkle their brows or beat their chests or go running to our superiors. [After all] priests can wear anything they want. Unlike nuns who decorate the altar with flowers, or sweep and swab or wash clothes, for whom [regular clothes] is banned.”

Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister, churidar sister, wall sister. Or as aforementioned Punjabi friend translated: Tum Chup Raho/Chanta Laga.

Co-published with Firstpost.com

 

 

 

The post What Women Wore to the Women’s Wall in Kerala appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

Bernie Sanders Offers Tepid Response to Report That His 2016 Campaign Was Plagued by Sexual Harassment

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It’s no surprise that sexual harassment is rampant in political campaigns, where powerful men (and the occasional powerful woman) can directly or indirectly foster an environment that focuses on results at all costs and allows bad behavior to flourish. While that may be changing, the stories emerging from Bernie…

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‘For All Those People Who Wondered If They Could’: Black Women Judges Make History in Texas 

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On New Year’s Day, as we all said our final fuck off to 2018, 17 black women judges were sworn in in Texas’s Harris County. The judges, many of whom ran on criminal justice reform platforms, are taking office in a political landscape where the Trump administration is stacking federal courts with conservatives and…

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