GREAT CONFERENCE! BirthKeeper Summit Report by Carol Downer

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Earth At Risk Conference, Pat Maginnis, Barbara Hoke, Molly Arthur, and Mary Lou Singleton

MEMORANDUM

NOVEMBER 25, 2014

TO: FRIENDS OF WOMEN’S HEALTH IN WOMEN’S HANDS

FROM: CAROL DOWNER

RE: TRIP TO EARTH AT RISK CONFERENCE, SAN FRANCISCO, 11-22 & 23-2014

BACKGROUND:  MARY LOU SINGLETON INVITED ME TO GO TO THE EARTH AT RISK CONFERENCE TO MEET MEMBERS OF THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION FRONT (WoLF).

SUMMARY:  DURING AND AFTER THE 2-DAY CONFERENCE, I VISITED THE WoLF TABLE.  I MET WITH MOLLY ARTHUR, MARY LOU SINGLETON, AND STOPPATRIARCHY.ORG.   I VISITED PAT MAGINNIS AND BARBARA HOKE IN OAKLAND,  AND PAT AND I ATTENDED A HEARING TO PROTEST CHILD ENDANGERMENT AND ANIMAL CRUELTY BY A LOCAL HAYWARD RODEO GROUP.

SUMMARY OF PROGRAM:
INFORMATIVE ABOUT 1) the extreme risk of ecological collapse: 2) the cause of collapse: capitalist system and its attendant -isms, colonialism, racism, patriarchy, militarism, masculinity; 3) power structure research about the way capitalism pathologizes our social relations, how the U.S. Constitution protects property rights over the people’s rights, 4) what to expect if and when the people challenge capitalist’s corporate rule.

THOUGHT-PROVOKING in presenting legal strategies to expose and force show-downs on basic legal protections of eco-cidal capitalistic behavior; in suggesting projects to directly transform our consciousness, our immediate environment, and the control of our lives.

INSPIRATIONAL in sharing indigenous culture’s example of how people can successfully live in cooperative, communal society that is earth-loving, in poetry performance to express our anger and sorrow; in exhorting us to build: 1) human connections with friendship, 2) human connections with nature “gardens of hope”, solidarity in defending and befriending mountains, rivers, insects, trees and other plants.

The 200-300 people that attended the conference all agreed that capitalism cannot be reformed and must be replaced with ways of organizing society that recognize the necessity of living in harmony with the earth and all its creatures.  They also all agreed that the strategy of influencing our elected officials and other governmental or business leaders is almost useless; that instead we have to build communities that take direct, dynamic and creative political action.

26 SPEAKERS PUT ON INDIVIDUAL OR PANEL PRESENTATIONS:
Keynote speakers:  
Vandana Shiva, (leader, author)
Alice Walker, (author)
Derrick Jensen, (author)
Chris Hedges, (author)

Panelists:
Dini ze Toghestiy, indigenous speaker
Freda Hudson, resistance leader, Tar Sands. Fracking
Caleen Sisk, Tribal Chief
Dahr Jamail, Journalist
Sarah M. Mah, anti-rape feminist
Yuly Chan, anti-rape, anti-prostitution feminist
Anne Keala Kelly, Hawaiian journalist, filmmaker
Diane Wilson, author, eco-warrior, fisherwoman
Dominique Christina, slam poet
Jeannette Armstrong, Okanagan Nation Knowledge Keeper
Sakej (James) Ward, teaches warrior societies
Vince Emanuele, Veterans for Peace organizer and spokesperson
Cherry Smiley, Indigenous Women Against Prostitution
Thomas Linzey, Attorney, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Gail Dines, Professor, Sociology and Women’s Studies, Wheelock College
Richard Manning, environmental author and journalist
Stephanie McMillan, author, Why Capitalism Must Die, cartoonist
Saba Malik, activist on racism, peak oil and anti-civilization
Charles Derber, environment, power structure author
Kourtney Mitchell, activist, anti-violence and pro-feminist
Guy McPherson, ex-professor, environment author
Stan Goff, ex-military, author anti-sexism, anti-capitalism
Doug Zachary, Veterans for Peace fund-raiser

FEATURED ORGANIZATIONS: Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, Code Pink, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, Deep Green Resistance, Elder Creek Center for the Land, Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry, Iraq Veterans Against the War, One Struggle, Place for Sustainable Living, PM Press, Stop Patriarchy, Stop Porn Culture, Survival International, Unis’tot’en Clan, Vancouver Rape Relief, Veterans for Peace, Warrior Sisters, Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Women’s Liberation Front

FERTILE GROUND ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE (FGEI), organized and sponsored conference. Founded in 2008 in Bellingham, Washington, national organization.
Primary focus is organizing and hosting events with focus on hard-hitting analysis of our current predicament and strategic planning for real victories. 

FGEI position: Every successful social movement in history has used force to achieve its goals.  There is a continuum of tactics that range from boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience to sabotage and outright revolution.  A serious ecological movement is based around communities that embrace and promote dynamic, creative political action.

HIGHLIGHTS OF PROGRAM (If there are few [or no] notes about a speaker or workshop, it means I couldn’t hear what was said).

COLONIZATION AND INDIGENOUS LIFE

• Women are leading the movement to save the earth.  Have to change water system. “We can live without electricity; we can’t live without clean water”.  Indigenous can teach us “what it means to be human”.  “It’s how you respond to living things; protect them”.  “Don’t have to be colonizer; come live with us, re-indigenize planet”.

• Many mountains losing water.  Mt Shasta, main spring going dry 2 months last 3 summers.

• Other culprit: RELIGION.  We’re regressing.  Things they say take us forward are taking us backward.

• Hawaii is an “illegal occupation” as per UN.  

• Hawaiians (natural, not people of color from other places) are fighting about it.”  Country under arrest (50-70% indigenous people incarcerated).  Economic terrorism and cultural genocide.  American Empire is spreading throughout Micronesia.  Overwhelmed with tourism-prostitution, pornography.  Largest U.S. Military command.

• Hawaii like woman being raped continuously.  “Aloha is a philosophy, not a tourist slogan”  It’s a way of sharing, valuing each other and the earth.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: DERRICK JENSEN
Has written 20+ books. 

• BAD NEWS: Oceans are dying; there’s no more fish.  People being murdered.  Movement being infiltrated, people are disappearing.  158 species going extinct every day.

• WHAT TO DO: “If you’re going to say the prayer, you have to be part of making the prayed for thing happening.”

INDICATORS OF ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE
Stages of Grief on Planet Dying: acceptance, rage, depression. We need new consciousness.

Diane Wilson: fisher-woman in Texas.  “Texans love tar sands”.  Texans lost faith, “You can’t fight city hall”.  You have to get involved when your home is destroyed in front of you.  Never say you’re not for progress.  It’s time to put yourself out there.  You have to work outside the box.  I kept waiting for someone with a better education, more abilities, more connections than me, to come along.  Finally, I realized I was the right person.  Need hope, have to get out of the box.

Green revolution a disaster for agriculture.  Destroying bio-diversity.  1/3 of  world suffering from “Hidden Hunger”.  People have enough calories, but deficient in nutrition.

“no way to grow food in monoculture and be sustainable.”

BUILDING RESISTANT COMMUNITIES

• “We (indigenous speaker) decolonized ourselves.  We refused to accept or comply and prevent destruction.”  We had to support the inherent ability of every organism to protect itself from harm.

• “Now is the time to do battle.”  We need hundreds and hundreds of groups, working together, to face down power.

• We must have structure, leadership, rules and norms.

• We must eliminate horizontal hostility.

• Women are the protectors of the higher nature.

• “We put the ‘Indian’ back in our children.  We decolonized their minds.”

• We changed our beliefs, and how we live.  We went to our homelands, wintered there.  We put away fish.  We kicked out a mining company, others.  We started managing our land.

• We need the warrior arts.  Daily practice to develop skill sets of self-defense.  We need to fall in love with earth again.  We need our ceremonies; we need to respect each other and earth.

• Present system designed to separate us from natural world.  We must teach our children to fall in love with trees, soil; that every living being has spirit; the mountains have spirit.

• We may have to defend our land, but we’re not going to encourage that, but, if necessary, we will fight for all that we love.  If does result in violence, so be it.

• We reject the idea that the state can dictate whether or not we can defend ourselves.

• Resistance may mean hierarchy-different forms of leadership-persuasion rather than orders-structure is action-based.

LINZEY-KEYNOTE SPEAKER

• The problem is the U.S. government, not the corporations.  The environmental laws are good, but it’s a waste of time trying to enforce the law, because, under the Constitution, it’s not permissible for a governing body (usually municipal) to pass laws to restrict legal uses (factory farms, fracking).

• The only thing environmental regulations regulate are the environmentalists.

• “Taking amendment says you can’t ban corporate business for doing something legal without being sued for loss of business.

• Constitution establishes property rights above people’s rights.  Constitution not necessarily democratic.

• Example: community laws banned corporations from factory farming, Then corporations went to State legislators to enforce corporate rights..  Ultimately lost at federal level.

• Still thinks this process can be useful because it forces corporations to show how unfair the law is to the community-“the system illuminates itself!”

• How to force change: now 200 municipalities are going up against the federal government.  People are beginning to see that the Constitution doesn’t protect peoples’ rights.

ECO SYSTEM RIGHTS are not property, but have rights to exist on their own.  In Ecuador, wrote new constitution giving eco system rights.  The River is the Plaintiff.  A Watershed can be a plaintiff.

• In Nepal, there’s a Right of Nature Network.

• The problem of liberal politics is that it’s “pressure politics”.  The real problem is the government itself.

CAPITALISM AND SOCIOPATHOLOGY
7 Pillars of Capitalism:  Anti-social values & practices created by ruling elites.

1. Individualism
2. Competition
3. Ecoside-violence against nature
4. Militarism
5. Class violence, inequality
6. Profits over usefulness
7. Fictive democracy

Carol’s note:  He asked audience how many of them were sociopaths.  Nearly all raised their hands.  I did not, because I believe that mental health comes from battling one’s oppression every day, and, whether or not I am lessening my oppression, I am somewhat protected from falling into being sociopathic.

Stephanie McMillan: People need a collective organized class struggle. Capitalism comes from surplus value.  Proletariat class needs to take over.  Capital treats living things as objects.

• 95% of environmentalists think solution is more capitalism. They believe that it’s FATHER CAPITAL PLUS MOTHER EARTH

• Capitalists do cooperate.  They just have antagonistic relations with the rest of us.  The antagonism is between 1% of us and 99% of us.

• We, (the revolutionary working class) need to organize collectively, get rid of system and the new system will be developed in the revolutionary struggle.

• We need to find a way to speak to people on visceral level about the discontent people have about their lives. 

• Example: abused child will cling to abusive parent; it can’t leave parent unless there is an alternative.

• To win, one must destroy enemy’s ability to wage war.

(Carol: In Iranian revolution, even though Shah had world’s 5th largest army, he couldn’t stop revolution, because the army refused to attack its own people.)

CHRIS HEDGES: KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Capitalism has no internal check.

• Crushing the Occupy movement is a danger sign.  Means rulers can only speak through force.  They are preparing.  They’ve already passed Draconian regulations.  They can now hold someone indefinitely, including at offshore prisons.

• Inverted totalitarianism.  Corporate state has all the levers of power.

• We must go back to mass movements and fight the fascists.

• Resistance is a way to affirm life.

• Greatest evil isn’t radical—it has no roots.  It asks no questions.  It can spread over the whole world. 

RAPE, MILITARISM AND MASCULINITY
Masculinity sees female body as permeable-coitus, lactation, menstruation, birth.  Transgression of female boundaries is thrilling.

• Can lead to mass incarceration, genocide, and mass addiction.

• Many vets are dying from suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction and CANCER.

• Masculinity is a script, and a performance.

Question from audience: Are men victims?  Panelist answer: No, they’re damaged, but not victims.

CONFRONTING MISOGYNY
Third Wave Feminism: Example: Jennifer Baumgardner “What is feminism is individual to each woman”.  Does not see structural inequality within a racist/sexist global capitalist economy.  Men are missing as a class.

• This is all coming from the Academy.

• Post-modernism meets Post-Structuralism.

“There’s no such thing as It”, Feona Attwood 2012-example

Pornography facts:
36% of the internet is porn.  She listed all the features of the internet, including privacy, payment online, etc. as having been developed by pornography industry.

• Porn has driven the net.

• In January, they’ll have a Pornography meeting in Las Vegas.

• We need to go from “empowerment” to “liberation”.

• We are not living in the same world.  But, as Gramse said in 1929, we need a Pessimism of Intellect and a Optimism of Will.

• Indigenous, Asian Women Against Pornography (Canada) are fighting a Global system of imperialism.  Patriarchy is part of national oppression.  Sexual conquest is part of war.  Involves World Bank, International Monetary Fund.  Part of privatization, tourist industry.

• Under Mao, China had no prostitution. Now, in the 1980’s, prostitution is in every city.

• Prostitution undermines indigenous communities.

VANDANA SHIVA-KEYNOTE SPEAKER
The world economy, organized as it is, has become a CATASTROPHE!

• GNP is the only measure, meaning the measure of that which is commodified, is all that counts.

• The commodification of women, prostitution and porn, is now counted in the GNP.

• Environmental damage is not measured.

• Soil, water degradation is not measured.—only products produced.

• Industrial farming is our biggest threat.

• Next year is “THE YEAR OF THE SOIL”.

• Patenting of seed is commodification.  We have seed monopolies.

• Anniversary of Bhopal is coming up.  

• GMO crops –toxic systems of agriculture.

• Eliminating insects who are the best controllers of insects.

• We have only 22% biodiversity.

• “Species have intelligence as they evolve.”

• By 2050, ½ of American kids will be autistic.

• We must create commons, stop privatization.

• Cited Ghandi and Rosa Parks as examples of how we have to affirmatively take action to take what is ours. (Ghandi-salt, Parks-seat on bus).

• We must each create a “garden of hope”, and be free (not commodified) creative beings.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: ALICE WALKER
We need to recover our friendships.

MY REACTIONS AND THOUGHTS FROM THE CONFERENCE

I avoid learning about the damage to our environment because it is so depressing, because 1) my consciousness is already raised; I believe that global warming is real and serious and 2) other than making modifications in my own lifestyle and working to help women to learn about our bodies and to love them, I don’t know what else to do at this time.  In this conference, I was able to get past the depression, because I was among friends, looking at these hard facts together, and I was learning about concrete actions that are taking place and also get suggestions on projects I could do.

Ultimately, I realized that I, at base, am an optimist.  No matter how bleak it looks, I keep remembering being in Iran after their revolution.  I also think about how although globalization is hurting people and the earth, it is also linking us more together, and that gives me great hope.

I think the main message I received was “we must fall in love with the earth”.  My own addition to that is, “we must fall out of love with industrialization”.

Also, everything that we do in self-help, which is having positive interactions amongst women, learning to trust each other, bonding, rejoicing in our bodies and getting acquainted with them, as well as learning how to control our fertility, to ease menstrual cramps, nurse our babies.  All this is entirely consistent with the goals of building communities, respecting nature, rejecting authoritarianism, seizing control of our lives.

Of course, I can’t help but be sad that the same individuals who are putting out this strong message seem to be unable to apply it to their own physical sexual and reproductive ownership.  The self-help movement should be on that stage, because we have learned how to gain power, both psychologically and physically through mutual help and the use of simple tools.

MEETING WITH PATRICIA MAGINNIS

Pat and I went out to breakfast, then later she, Barbara Hoke and I had dinner.  After that, Pat and I went to a board meeting of the Hayward Department of Recreation and Parks.  They were considering removing their approval of some events put on by a rodeo group.  The events consist of putting a very young child on the back of a sheep to try to ride it, milking a cow in the arena, the use of a electric prod on horses. 50 people from the rodeo community came out to support these activities.  About 10 of us opposed it.  Eric Mills heads up the protest.  Although there were women and children there, the testosterone level in the room was palpable.  Also, this group is 100% white.  Some are ranchers, others run the rodeo.  The rodeo people won.

Pat and I made copies of some of her cartoons at the local copy place, and we talked about some of the events in the late 1960’s that prompted her to create them.  They are really great.  Pat loves to have people use her cartoons.  If you’re interested in using any, I recommend you write her or call her.  She is hard of hearing, so e-mail or snail mail is probably better.

Also, Pat would like to compile her cartoons.  If anyone wants to help in such a project, there are people in Northern California that have worked with Pat to create her website and I’m sure she and they would like to hear from you.

Barbara Hoke continues her 20-year coordination of the defense of an Oakland abortion clinic that is harassed each weekend.

CONTACTS:
Molly Arthur Birthkeeper Summit (April 30-May 3, 2015)
Molly6@pacbell.net
(415) 435-8031

Mary Lou Singleton
enchantedfamilymedicine.com

Suzanne Jay
Asian Women’s Coalition Ending Prostitution
awcep.info@gmail.com
(604) 760-1175

FOLLOW-UP:
Gail Dines
Professor of Wheelock College

• I need to get in touch with her by e-mail.  What does she know about the Academy and how the post-structuralism and queer theory and pro-pornography movement developed?  Who funds it?

Molly Arthur-Molly has friend who uses herbal contraception

• Plan for conference.  Perhaps go to Sacramento to speak.

Suzanne Jay
e-mail, maybe go visit.

IDEAS:

• Article on commodification
• Get in touch with herbalists to track down people using herbal contraceptives and spreading the knowledge of it.
• Write Gail Dines to find out more about how post-structuralism and queer theory have affected the women’s studies departments.

REPORT - TRIP TO NEW YORK CITY, BROOKLYN, N.Y. AND WASHINGTON, D.C.

October 26 to October 28, 2014

By Carol Downer

Background: StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee met one day and the next day a planning meeting for the January 22, 2015 events in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. took place.  I met with Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch.  Becky Chalker and I attended the National Women’s Health Network (NWHN) Awards Event.

Summary:

1. 10-26-14: Meeting of StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee
2. 10-27-14: Meeting of members, Advisory Committee and community activists
3. 10-27-14: Meeting with Silvia Federici
4. 10-28-14: National Women’s Health Network 7th Annual Barbara Seaman Awards for Activism in Women’s Health; Meeting with Adriane Fugh-Berman
5. 10-29-14: Meeting with Ninia Baehr 

New York City 10-26-14 - Meeting of StopPatriarchy.org Advisory Committee: Members present were myself, Mary Lou Singleton, Merle Hoffman; also present were Sunsara Taylor, initiator of Stop Patriarchy, and Mary Lou Greenberg.  We had a free-ranging discussion: (1) to deepen our understanding of the objective situation we confront--where we are in the war on women with a particular focus on the concentrated battle over abortion, and (2) to get off the losing trajectory and forge the kind of politically uncompromising, mass independent political resistance.

No one else is doing this on a national level.

Discussion:

Topic: The main slogan of Stop Patriarchy, “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology”. The members that were present had consensus on this slogan, and have found many people in the movement and in the public who wholeheartedly respond favorably to it, but we discussed the concerns that some have made that the slogan may be too strong.  I reported that many abortion providers are dedicated to abortion rights, but do not want to offend those who have mixed feelings about abortion in their communities, and they want the support of the Democratic Party which has a pro-choice platform, but sometimes endorses candidates who are anti-abortion.  Without more members at the meeting, we couldn’t fully explore these concerns.

Topic: Slogan - “Enforced Motherhood is Female Enslavement”.  This slogan drew fire from the ad hoc group, “Texans for Reproductive Justice”, because it is not the type of slavery that American Black slaves experienced, but the Committee does not agree that this slogan is racist.

Other topics: Planned Parenthood’s (PP) taking over leadership of National Abortion Federation; it’s negative impact on independent abortion providers; its domination of community “pro-choice” coalitions.  I told the group that, although I have known of PP’s negative impact on the abortion movement; that I, along with other feminists and abortion providers, have kept silent, because “we didn’t want to give the anti’s more ammunition”.  But now, as I see how disastrous this course has been, I feel compelled to speak out and share the information about PP’s harmful activities.  Others did not dispute the truth of my specific allegations, but did not want to attack PP, but rather to chart our own course and put forth a more feminist, aggressive strategy.

Role of Advisory Committee Members: We wrestled with and developed a clearer sense of what it means to be on the advisory board of Stop Patriarchy.

Bill Baird called and shared his advice on what Stop Patriarchy should be doing.  Bill, who is a pioneer in the abortion rights movement, continues to be active.  As always, Bill is inspirational and his comments helped up to get perspective on the battle, especially with the Catholic Church.

We all felt that the opportunity to meet and discuss things in a relatively unstructured setting allowed us to have vigorous discussions, especially where we had minor differences in our political views, which reinforced those areas where we were in total agreement.  We did get to know each other better, and I’m sure it will help me on our future conference calls.

New York City, October 26, 2014: Community Planning Meeting for Actions on January 22, 2015 in San Francisco, CA and Washington, D.C.
Attending: Stop Patriarchy Advisory Board Members, others within the abortion provider community, activists with Stop Patriarchy, other women's liberation activists, and several students.  We had lively discussions around such questions as:

If we have a low turnout at our events, might this show our opponents our weakness and be counter-productive? 

We know that we will be outnumbered, because the anti-abortion movement annually brings busloads of church members from several states to their rallies.  They have about 10,000 marchers.  So, how many do we need to have to create a credible force.  My thinking is that we only require the number of people it takes to stage a dramatic event that puts forth a powerful message.  Others speculated 100-200 people.  Of course, we’ll get out as many as possible.

Many good ideas were suggested for building for the march and using signs and other visual materials and socio-dramas that would make our points.  Since this report is going out online, I will not be specific, but I can say that I was impressed with the creativity.  Various tactics were discussed to make sure that our message would be clear.  So, great progress was made.  It was wonderful to be working with these women.

A future meeting date was selected – November 21st.  If you’re interested, please contact me or stoppatriarchy@gmail.com.

I talked with Fran Luck, of WBAI and others about Planned Parenthood.  They were surprised and shocked at some of the specifics.  I will be following up on those contacts.  The independent providers in attendance were not surprised at the facts I was reporting.

Brooklyn, N.Y. October 26, 2014 - Meeting with Silvia Federici

Federici graciously agreed to meet with me, Becky Chalker and Kinyofu Mlimwengu, on short notice, even though she had spent the weekend at a conference.  She served a wonderful repast of soup, bread and salad and delicious cheesecake!  Any fears I had that somehow we wouldn’t hit it off disappeared, because our dinner conversation showed how much we all agreed on a variety of topics.  Because our time was limited, I kept bringing back the conversation to how Caliban and the Witch provided the historical explanation of how women’s knowledge about our bodies was purposely and systematically destroyed, and that I believe that the self-help movement emerged as a powerful antidote to the poisonous effects of patriarchal capitalism.  Silvia completely respects our work, but she wanted to know more of how I saw self-help being used to turn around the subjugation of women’s bodies.  She gave us autographed copies of her book, Revolution at Point Zero, and Becky and Kinyofu left with copies of Caliban and the Witch.  I proposed we three start a book club!

Silvia is well-travelled.  She told us about how Italian social welfare agencies take away immigrant women’s children, put them in “group homes” until the women can prove that they have enough money to maintain them.  I’m going to get more specifics.  If you’re interested in learning about this, let me know.

I left Silvia’s with a head full of ideas about how to carry my new understanding that even though Patriarchy has a long history, the creation of capitalism in Europe depended on wiping out the traditional knowledge that women then had, making “modern women” especially alienated from our bodies and dependent on the medical profession.  Furthermore, this primitive accumulation of capital enabled the European nobility, the church and the capitalists to expand their “empires” over many other peoples, along with using many of the same techniques to destroy women’s knowledge, in addition to plundering the resources by forcing those peoples into slavery to extract the resources.  Just realizing this history doesn’t ensure that we European white women will make the necessary effort to unite with the descendants of colonized peoples to fight against imperialism and capitalism, but I think it will give us a sound basis to do so.

Kinyofu told me about the upcoming Reproductive Awakening program.  This is part of a series of meetings she is curating.

Washington, D.C., October 27-28 - National Women’s Health Network 7th Annual Barbara Seaman Awards for Activism in Women’s Health  

I attended with Becky Chalker.  Becky’s most recent book is The Clitoral Truth.  She is an adjunct professor at Pace University in New York City.  It was a reception.  We were late because it had no readable signage for an out-of-towner to see.  Food and drink were provided.  The presentation had started.  We couldn’t see the program and I couldn’t hear it, unfortunately.  Afterwards, we were able to chat with old friends.  I saw Clare Feinson, who was in the Women’s Caucus at the American Public Health Association (APHA) during the time the health centers were active in that organization.  Clare is free-lancing, doing proposals, writing and research, etc.  She also works part-time at a synagogue; Clare has done amazing work in a Jewish group bringing an awareness of women’s health issues and sexuality issues to the community.  Unfortunately, Clare has some mobility problems, but otherwise she is very vital and involved.

Meeting with Adriane Fugh-Berman: After the reception, we walked with Adriane, a board member of NWHN and a reporter to a nearby Chinese restaurant.  Adriane is an associate professor at Georgetown University and a director of PharmedOut.org.  The reporter is focusing on information about the FDA and the regulations of pharmaceutical companies.  Adriane has written a book, Alternative Medicine: What Works: A Comprehensive, Easy-to-Read Review of the Scientific Evidence, Pro and Con.  I told her about Holly Grigg-Spall’s book, Sweetening the Pill.

10-29-14:  Meeting with Ninia Baehr
Ninia Baehr is on the board of the NWHN.  She is Deputy Director of the ACLU in Montana, and she wrote the pamphlet, “Abortion Without Apology, a radical history for the 1990’s”.  She wrote about Lana Phelan, Pat Maginnis and Rowena Gurner, and she also wrote about the Self-Help Health Movement.

Presently, Ninia is working on her PhD.  She is interested in comparing the politics and approach of the Self-Help Health Movement and the Right-to-Die movement.  She sees many parallels, in that they both are movements demanding body autonomy.  She, Becky and I had breakfast; our meeting actually consisted of a discussion about how “gender politics” has taken over women’s studies and is creating a direct challenge to radical feminists, especially those who want women-only spaces for women to explore their common oppression and to develop anti-male supremacy strategies.  We also talked about pornography and whether there can be a feminist position to support pornography.

I asked Ninia (as I have also asked Becky and other associates I have who are in academia) if she knew how Women’s Studies departments came to become “Gender Studies” departments.  She didn’t know, as do none of the other people I’ve talked to.

Ninia will be interviewing me in the near future regarding early history of self-help.

Sharing of Resources:

• Abortion Without Apology, a radical history for the 1990‘s, Ninia Baehr, South End Press, Pamphlet No. 8, 1990 amazon.com
• Revolution at Point Zero, Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle.  Silvia Federici, PM Press, P.O. Box 23912, Oakland, CA 94623 pmpress.org
• Stop Patriarchy - www.stoppatriarchy.org
• Caliban and the Witch, Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Second, Revised Edition, 2014, autonomedia.org, info@autonomedia.org

Contacts:

• Stop Patriarchy - www.stoppatriarchy.org
• Clare Feinson, Blackbird Development Solutions,1752 Hobart Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20009; (202)302-1823
• Adriane Fugh-Berman (Director) - www.pharmedout.org
• Kinyofu Mlimwengu - reproductiveawakening.com

About Us

womenshealthinwomenshands.org is a project of Women’s Health Specialists in Northern California. Carol Downer heads up the project.

WHWH director, Carol Downer

Carol co-founded the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Los Angeles in 1971. The FWHC pioneered the “self-help clinic”, a type of meeting in which women learned vaginal self-examination using a plastic speculum. They travelled around the country sharing the self-help clinic concept forming a loose network of on-going self-help groups. After Roe v. Wade, self-help women across the country started women-controlled abortion clinics and joined together in the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers. The Federation clinics influenced most abortion practitioners to abandon the old-fashioned “D&C” (dilation and curettage) procedure for the less traumatic vacuum aspiration method using smaller, flexible plastic instruments. They also fought TRAP laws (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) that would have blocked the establishment of abortion clinics.

The Federation has produced slide shows and films, and has published several women’s health books, A New View of a Woman’s Body”, “How to Stay Out of the Gynecologist’s Office”, “Women-Centered Pregnancy and Birth” and “A Woman’s Book of Choices”.

Women’s Health Specialists, WHWH Sponsor
WHS has six sites in northern California, which provides an array of women’s health services, predominantly birth control and abortion and adoption since 1975. WHS was a co-founder of the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers in 1975.

Chico FWHC 1975

WHS, originally the Chico Feminist Women’s Health Center, was formed by 8 women in Chico. The immediately successful health center quickly gained acceptance in the rural community where the California State University at Chico is located, however they fought a legal battle against local physicians to force them to provide back-up for their clients who may experience complications requiring hospital facilities. Later, the staff successfully defended itself against charges of fraud from the Republican administration of Deukmajian. Some of the later attacks are well-publicized, like the ongoing raucous, hate-spewing protests from anti-abortionists and violent attacks like stink bombs and arson which destroyed the Redding WHS twice. Others, like repeated ill-founded investigations by the State Department of Health and Welfare attract less notice from the media, but require vigorous, lengthy and expensive defense efforts by the staff, its legal counsel, its board and its supporters. Throughout this tumultuous history of attack and victory, the Chico FWHC has expanded to become the Northern California WHS with 6 sites and enjoys the respect of pro-choice legislators, law enforcement agencies, other providers of women’s health services, and women in the community.

Many other women-controlled clinics, including most of the FWHC’s, closed during the 80’s. Today, Feminist Women’s Health Centers are located in Washington State, California and Georgia. There are 13 women-controlled clinics in the Feminist Abortion Network, FAN.

REMAKING THE WORLD WITH A FEMINIST VISION

This website is designed to provide women with the information to control her own body, to counter centuries of systematic attack by patriarchal institutions against women’s freedom to enjoy their sexuality and to control their reproduction. When women share our sexual and reproductive experiences frankly and openly in a supportive environment, we cast off the invisible shackles caused by shame and ignorance, and are empowered to remake the world according to feminist values, such as equality between all people, social justice, and promoting a society that creates a healthy environment and nurtures our children.

A Gentle Revolution
WHWH believes that it is a revolutionary act for a woman to learn to use a speculum, a mirror and a light to look at her own cervix, and to share this knowledge with other women. “Women’s Health in Women’s Hands” means educating ourselves about our bodies and our healthy functioning, and helping each other, so that we are empowered consumers. WHWH also means establishing women’s clinics to provide abortions and birth control or birth centers; it means using self-help principles to become midwives, doulas, and lactation consultants to rebuild the knowledge and lore of natural childbirth.

FULL SPECTRUM
womenshealthinwomenshands.org has a Pro-Woman Agenda which comes from the perspective that in order for a woman to control her sexuality and reproduction, she must enjoy the full spectrum of her sexual and reproductive rights. womenshealthinwomenshands.org opposes all state restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, whether it be laws prohibiting or forcing abortion or those prohibiting pregnant women choosing work or lifestyles that might pose risks to her fetus, or laws limiting women’s options in the birthing process.