Not long before Christmas, Sound Mental Health (SMH), the property managers of downtown Seattle’s Kasota apartments, began going door to door in the building trying to get tenants to sign a new lease. SMH houses both mentally ill ‘clients’ and roughly seventeen low-income tenants at the Kasota, but the new lease seemed to indicate that they wanted that to change. The terms of the new lease for SMH’s non-client tenants included rent increases of as much as fifty percent as well as a demand for further deposits. Many of the low-income residents of the Kasota are dependent on Social Security and other fixed incomes for survival and cannot afford to pay rent increases of this magnitude. They were outraged as it became apparent that the terms of the new lease would drive them from their homes and out into the street. For many residents the new lease would mean desperation and homelessness. It was at this point that one tenant saw a Seattle Solidarity Network (SeaSol) poster and decided to start fighting back. [Read more →]

Sponsored by WGRAC: Women & Gender Resource Action Center

Radical queer politics and anarchism have much in common. Queer theory argues against traditional identity politics, recognizing the social construction of “sexuality” and identity categories. Anarchism argues against any structured hierarchical arrangement of humanity that allows some members of society to systematically exploit and oppress others. Thus, both projects argue for a need to move beyond hierarchical and naturalized arrangements of socially constructed identities–though, at times, articulating those arguments in different ways. Nevertheless, despite these commonalities, little has been written about the deep connections between anarchism and radical queer politics. This edited volume is an attempt to fill that gap. [Read more →]

This book tour is happening in many places- come support the local Hartford date- January 27th, 7pm at Charter Oak Cultural Center (21 Charter Oak Ave, Hartford CT 06106). For more info email abbey.willis@charteroakcenter.org or call 860.249.1207. Listen to an interview with the author here.

Please re-post widely and wildly!

While Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez continues to capture headlines for his inflammatory remarks and controversial policies, a much larger story involving a wider cast of characters has gone largely ignored. [Read more →]

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/flaherty150110.html

Sex Workers Targeted in New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty

More than half of the people on Louisiana’s Sex Offender Registry — which was designed for rapists and child molesters — are indigent women convicted of sex work.

Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13.  Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner just outside of the French Quarter.  A small and slight white woman, she has battled both drug addiction and illness and struggles every day to find a meal or a place to stay for the night.

These days, Tabitha, who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has yet another burden: a stamp printed on her driver’s license labels her a sex offender.  Her crime?  Offering sex for money.

New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders.  The law, which dates back to 1805, declares it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation” — a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex.  Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences, and forced to register as sex offenders. [Read more →]

At the beginning of January, a court in Berlin, Germany, reaffirmed that the local federation of the Free Workers’ Union (FAU) is prohibited from calling itself a union or a grassroots union. If the FAU Berlin were to dare to do otherwise, it would face a fine of EUR 250,000 (USD 357,000) or a prison sentence.This legal attack on the freedom of unions in Germany is the result of a labor dispute, which the FAU Berlin and cinema workers have been involved in for months with the management of the Babylon Mitte cinema. In the FAU’s opinion, it’s up to the workers to decide what a union is or which union they want and not the courts.

The FAU is intent on defending itself against the de-facto ban of its Berlin federation in a variety of ways. Thus, it was announced that the ban would be taken all they way to the Court of the European Union, if need be. The strongest weapon of the worker is, however, not our trust in the judiciary but our international solidarity and direct action.
Global day of protest…

We call on all union members, friends and comrades to mobilize globally in support of FAU Berlin. For this purpose, a global day of action has been planned for January 29 and 30, 2010. Protests in front of German diplomatic missions and cultural institutes have already been scheduled in many countries for this date.
…and further mobilization

In the coming days, the FAU will post suggestions of different ways to show support at www.fau.org/verbot. Needless to say, a wide-scale dissemination of all information regarding the call to action is very important. Please be sure to refer to our special website, www.fau.org/verbot, in all publications and send messages of solidarity, reports about actions and any further questions to soli-faub@fau.org.

FAU-IWA International working group
English leaflet: http://www.fau.org/verbot/text/fau_01_29_en.pdf

Press release of FAU Berlin concerning the possible EUR 250.000 (USD 375.000) fine or alternatively 6 month of prison for the union secretaries: http://ainfos.ca/en/ainfos23540.html

Special page concerning the verdict against FAU Berlin:
http://www.fau.org/verbot

Blog of cinema Babylon Mitte workers:
http://prekba.blogsport.de <http://prekba.blogsport.de/>

Send e-protest:

http://fau.zsp.net.pl/send-a-protest-to-kino-babylon/emailpage/

Personalized e-protests to bosses:

grossman@babylonberlin.de, hackel@babylonberlin.de, timothygrossman@kinoundkonzerte.de, tgrossman@kinoundkonzerte.de.

The US Response to Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, Honduras and now Haiti is simply business (be it military or corporate) as usual for an imperialist and capitalistic regime.  The following is a statement from the International Action Center on Justice for Haiti.

Also there are some excellent informational pieces at Commondreams.org such as Please Don’t Superdome Haiti,  US Accused of Occupying Haiti as Troops Flood In, Disaster Profiteering: US ‘Security’ Companies offer ‘Services’ in Haiti.

Statement from the International Action Center

Justice for Haiti means immediate aid, reparations, debt cancelation, restoration of President Aristide, asylum for all Haitians and self-determination not military occupation.

The International Action Center expresses its full solidarity with the Haitian people at this time of greatest crisis following the devastating Jan.12 earthquake. In the Haitian capital, tens of thousands of lives have been lost and the lives of hundreds of thousands of additional people are at stake. It is essential that there be an all-out effort for immediate and massive humanitarian relief effort.

Tons of supplies could be parachuted to desperate people in immediate need of food and especially water. The delivery of this essential aid, plus the placement of rescue and medical teams must be the priority. Dozens of countries from all over the world, rich and poor, immediately sent hundreds of doctors and emergency medical teams and search and rescue teams and supplies. Cuba already had 344 health workers in Haiti and is ready to send 152 more. [Read more →]

I came across this great photo from the first Gay Pride March in NYC on 28 June 1970.  This picture shows the Hartford Kalos Society/GLF contingent marching in the parade.  Photo taken by John Lauritsen and found at the following link

The Fourth Annual Transgender Lives: The Intersection of Health and Law Conference is being held on Saturday, April 17, 2010 at the UConn Health Center from 8:00 AM till 5 PM. This all day conference is geared towards Community, Service Providers, Medical and Legal Professionals, Trans and Gender non-conforming individuals, allies and all those interested in the Health and Law issues facing the Trans and gender non-conforming communities.

Please continually check our website at, TransgenderLives.org, for detailed and evolving conference information.

Sincerely,
Organizing Committee
Transgender Lives Conference

From Daly’s Wiki page:
“Also in Gyn/Ecology, Daly asserted her negative view of transsexual people, whom she referred to as “Frankensteinian.” She labels transsexualism a “male problem” and claimed that post-operative transsexuals exist in a “contrived and artifactual condition.”[13] Daly was also the dissertation advisor to Janice Raymond, whose dissertation, published in 1979 as The Transsexual Empire, is critical of “transsexualism.” Transsexual activist Riki Wilchins has accused Daly of being transphobic.”

Find the article on her death below:

http://ncronline.org/news/women/mary-daly-radical-feminist-theologian-dead-81

Mary Daly, radical feminist theologian and a mother of modern feminist theology, died Jan. 3 at the age of 81. She was one of the most influential voices of the radical feminist movement through the later 20th century.

Daly taught courses in theology, feminist ethics and patriarchy at Boston College for 33 years. Her first book, “The Church and the Second Sex,” published in 1968, got her fired, briefly, from her teaching position there, but as a result of support from the (then all-male) student body and the general public, she was ultimately granted tenure.

[Read more →]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html

Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

[Read more →]

All are invited to the Queers Without Borders monthly meeting this coming Sunday, January 10, 5 pm at MCC/Hartford, 155 Wyllys Street, Hartford, CT (in basement of Parish House, look for MCC signs in back of Parish House).  Please feel free to come join us at our January monthly meeting to share food and discussion in a welcoming and queer environment.

Topics for discussion this month are:

• QWB Queer Valentine event in coalition with the Wrench in the Works
• Continued discussion and planning around our queer homeless work
• Reproductive Freedom “conference” and subsequent work
• Queer Revolutionary Voices update
• QWB’s engagement with the Hartford Mayday planning
• Planning/discussion around a monthly QWB movie night
• Tabling at the 4th annual NYC Anarchist Book fair
• US Social Forum in Detroit on June 22-26
• Add your topics to our agenda

For information cal (860) 680-7876 or drop us an email at queerswi@queerswithoutborders.com