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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2001Women step out and speak-out
Chicago - The Chicago International Women's Day Planning Committee hosted a Fall
Speak-Out at the end of October at Roosevelt University. Toni Bond of Chicago
Abortion Fund (CAF) and African American Women Evolving kicked off the meeting.
Toni focused her discussion on what she called "the perverse relationship
between race and reproduction," giving a history of this relationship from
slavery to today. She included in this history the limitations within the
pro-choice movement and challenged it to operate from an "anti-racist,
human-rights framework."For example, while CAF is confronted daily with the consequences of the Hyde
Amendment which denies women on medicaid abortion services, forcing them to sell
everything from their TVs to their bodies, the pro-choice movement largely
focuses on abortion rights, not access. Toni declared, "I want to know when
we're going to reverse the Hyde Amendment? I hear pro-choice activists say it's
not possible to win so they don't bother trying. It speaks volumes to their
value of women of color. When you don't work to overturn Hyde, you collude with
the anti-choicers and maintain a connection between race and reproduction." Alissa Hull of the Young Women's Empowerment Project spoke next on the sexual
trafficking of women and girls, saying that the U.S. government's estimates that
50,000 per year are trafficked into the U.S. are low. She stressed the need to
make a distinction between sexual and labor trafficking, noting that sexual
assault is more than a labor issue. She said that what is needed in this time of
globalization is to "globalize dignity." Maria Gonzoles of the Day
Labor Organizing Project, and a day laborer herself, was the third speaker. She
said, "Women arrive at the day labor agencies at 5 a.m. after dropping
children off at a babysitter's around 3 a.m. Sometimes you stand in line for
hours not knowing if you'll get work or what kind of a job you'll be sent to.
You have to take anything you can get." She talked about discrimination from agencies that only hire men for certain
jobs and "the offers to exchange sexual favors for work. You have to be
nice to them if you want to work." Maria asked, "How can women come
together to create alternatives? People talk about 'rights' but we just can't
find them." The thoughtfulness of these three speakers can help us rethink not only where
the Women's Liberation Movement is headed, but where other movements need to go
as well. Sonia Bergonzi |
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