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90-year-old Holocaust survivor arrested at Ferguson protest

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Image by Steven Hsieh via The Nation
Image by Steven Hsieh via The Nation

Ninety-year-old Hedy Epstein, who was one of several protestors arrested outside Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s office, is no stranger to state-sanction discrimination and violence. Epstein fled the Holocaust as a child. A true intersectionalist, she insists on applying the lessons of the past to the present, refusing to remain idle in the face of persecution, whether she’s protesting the demolition of Palestinians’ homes or police brutality and racism in Ferguson.

Epstein was born in 1924 in Freiburg, Germany, but was sent to England at 14 via the Kindertransport, which brought nearly 10,000 children from countries invaded by Nazis right before the start of World War II. Epstein’s parents died during the Holocaust in Auschwitz. Following the war, Hedy returned to Germany, where she worked on the Nuremberg medical trial, against doctors accused of performing medical experiments on concentration camp inmates. In 1948, she joined her only living relatives, an aunt and uncle, in the United States.

While the Holocaust is often invoked to justify Israeli policies, Epstein’s experience as a survivor makes her speak out against the government of Israel: “In 1982, I heard about the massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon — I wanted to know who was responsible for this, what had happened between 1948 and 1982. As I learned more, I became increasingly disturbed by the policies of Israel and its military.”

As she explains, “The Israeli government’s actions happen far too often in the name of protecting Judaism, thereby conflating Zionism with Judaism. As Jews, we must not let the Israeli government use our heritage to excuse its morally unexcusable actions. Our Jewish values will not let us.” So, Epstein started to visit Palestine, where she’s been several times, and taken part in protest against the Occupation, the wall, and the demolition of Palestinian homes and olive orchards. Epstein published an autobiography, Remembering Is Not Enough, and speaks around the world.

So, it makes sense that Epstein would join the approximately 125 people at a St Louis (where she lives) protest organized by the Organization for Black Struggle against the decision to call the National Guard into Ferguson. They marched to the Governor’s office, demanded a special prosecutor to investigate the murder of Michael Brown, a larger Department of Justice investigation and a withdrawal of the National Guard. They sang, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round,” and chanted “Hey hey! Ho ho! National Guard has got to go!” and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Epstein was among nine protestors arrested for failing to disperse. They were handcuffed, taken to a police station, given a court date and then released. Continue reading “90-year-old Holocaust survivor arrested at Ferguson protest” →

9 Most Homophobic Church Signs

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They’re not exactly preaching peace and tolerance.

Texan televangelist John Hagee called same-sex marriage supporters “counterfeit Christians.” A pastor in Tampa, Florida refused to perform a funeral service when he learned the deceased man had been gay, because that would have been “blasphemous.” And Pastor Steve Washburn of First Baptist Pflugerville, Texas, is warning that pastors will be imprisoned for speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage. And that was just this week.

Certain church leaders certainly seem to be re-prioritizing Jesus’ to-do list. They’ve decided to ignore the Bible’s minor points, like turn the other cheek and that whole Golden Rule thing. Also, they’re not going to worry so much about the poor. These shepherds, instead, demonstrate their love for Jesus Christ by hating on homosexuality. They instruct their flock by broadcasting messages of homophobia—literally—on church signs and marquees. Here are some of the worst church signs preaching against brotherly love.

1. Ménage a trois with God. This sign, which was placed in front of the Devon Park United Methodist Church polling site in Wilmington, North Carolina, may go down in history for being the first, and probably only, religious sign to push a threesome as an alternative to same-sex marriage. The sign’s message is so urgent, no time or plastic could be spared for punctuation: “A true marriage male and female and god.” The takeaway? Marriage exists between one man and one woman and the omnipresent voyeur known as god.

Ménage a trois with God

2. God good, gays bad! In this sign, on display at the Santa Clara Jesus Is Lord Baptist Church in California, the beauty is in its simplicity: “God is good/Gays are bad/vote Yes on Prop Eight.” If only all get-out-the-vote initiatives were this straightforward and Manichean, voting rates would go through the roof. Prop 8, the statewide ballot proposition in California to ban same-sex marriage, brought together churches, synagogues, Mormons, Catholics, evangelicals and Orthodox Jews, who were able to put aside their religious differences and come together in a beautiful interfaith collaborative effort to strip people of their civil rights. Because, at the end of the day, we may call him different names, but we all believe in the same god, who happens to be very homophobic.

God good, gays bad!

3. Homophobic haiku. This short and catchy “Gay Is not Okay” sign appeared outside of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ in South Des Moines, Iowa. Pastor Mike DeMastus was merely using the church’s illuminated marquee to advertise the theme of his upcoming Sunday sermon, something he does for every sermon every week. Besides being an effective promotional tool, the minimalist text is just 12 syllables shy of being a homophobic haiku. Continue reading “9 Most Homophobic Church Signs” →

If only The Church cared as much about pedophiles as porn stars

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Church porn photos

A woman filmed herself exposing her breasts and touching herself in an Austrian parish, in June. She also was holding a bible and rosary, in case you were worried about her going to hell.  A church-going-porn-fan was trying to enjoy some secular online porn, when he recognized the interior of his church. Like any church-going-porn-watching-upstanding-tattle-tale, he informed his local priest, in what I imagine must have been an uncomfortable discussion.

In a compliment to the woman’s handwork, the church expressed outrage that, in addition to her sneaking herself in, she had snuck in a crew and cameras. According to the Austrian Times, “Local police confirmed that no permission had been requested or given for the church to be used to shoot the movies….” I’m sure the church would have been more than happy to sign a release form authorizing the woman to shoot a porn in their house of worship. The Austrian Times also reported that The ”Diocese of Linz said police are still investigating how the crew and actors were able to get into the church.” Then, the police realized that the quality and angles suggested this had been a DIY project, in a few aspects, actually.

But what could be done? Because, although the seductress showed off certain impressive attributes, she was careful not to film her face. In an attempt to apprehend the heretic, the authorities screened the video on local television. (It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.)

Continue Reading at RawStory

Argentina imprisons woman for getting an abortion, along with the friends who helped her

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In Argentina, three women have been incarcerated. One for having an abortion, two for accompanying her to get the procedure.

Susana D, as she’s referred to in the press, went to the hospital in June because of severe abdominal pain. It turned out she had sepsis, a blood infection, and was in intensive care for weeks. Her doctor suspected that the sepsis had been caused by an abortion, which is illegal in Argentina, except for in cases of rape, incest or when the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk. The doctor reported her to the police, who arrested and incarcerated Susana along with the two women who had accompanied her to get the abortion. According to Manuela Castañeira, director of the Argentine women’s group “Las Rojas,” the three women have been in jail for two months, in a cell with no water, no electricity, and one mattress for the three of them.

Susana wasn’t charged with abortion, but rather with homicide of a blood relative. This crime applies to people who kill their spouse, sibling, parent or child. In an e-mail, Castañeira described the situation:

Susana D. is in jail in Jujuy, a province in Argentina with a disastrous record on women’s rights… [It is] the province with the highest number of rapes of women, and the lowest number of people imprisoned for rape in all of Argentina. Susana wanted to terminate a pregnancy and she had an abortion and [she and two more women] are now in prison for helping Susana.

Susana is now in jail not for having an abortion, but for aggravated homicide of a family member, which is illegal, since this crime only applies to killing a husband, a sibling or an immediate relative. This is scandalous! Nor is this a case of infanticide, since she didn’t kill a newborn baby but rather had an abortion.

This is a total violation of women’s rights, an injustice that has been committed by the state and all of its institutions from the public health system to criminal justice system.

This woman is the expression of the necessity of the legalization of abortion in Argentina. Today there is still no legal justification for incarcerating these women, it’s a totally illegal situation, since they are holding them in what is called “preventative prison” because of the possibility that they will flee and let’s remember that there isn’t a single rapist or murderer in Argentina being held in in “preventative prison,” so the real criminals are always free, but women aren’t.

In the above video, Verónica Cruz, director of the Center of Las Libres, Manuela Castañeira, director of the women’s group “Las Rojas,” and Marianne Møllmann from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission demand the release of Susana D., María G. y María C. Castañeira says, “We are launching this campaign with the release of this video which invites everyone to join and help spread the message so that the authorities in Jujuy free these three women.”

Support the campaign by using these hashtags: #SusanaLibertadYa (#FreeSusanaNow) #MaríasLibertadYa (#FreeMariaNow) #Jujuy

Also, make sure you see the movie Las Libres, about the fight to free women incarcerated for having abortions in Argentina and Mexico.

Related: 
“Las Libres” film on Mexican women convicted for homicide for abortions is coming to a theater near you

New documentary: Mexican women incarcerated for “homicide” after aborting gain their freedom

 

Orignally posted on Feministing

3 things you might not know about the badass feminist icon Lauren Bacall

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Actress Lauren Bacall, who died Tuesday at the age of 89, was famous for her films, memorable lines, husky voice, and marriage to Humphrey Bogart. But she also challenged gender norms on screen, and was an advocate for freedom of speech and unapologetic liberal. Here are a few things you might not know about about her.

What’s in a name? (Jewishness): Lauren Bacall was actually Betty Joan Perske, born to Jewish parents, a Polish father, William Perske, and Romanian mother, Natalie Perske, née Weinstein. Bacall lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her parents divorced and she and her mother moved to Manhattan. Her mother changed their last name to Bacal. Bacall would ultimately add another L to the last name, and in Hollywood, she exchanged Betty for Lauren. But her friends and family never stopped calling her Betty.

But her Jewish roots were kept a secret. A Warner Brothers press release claimed Bacall was the “daughter of parents who trace their American ancestry back several generations.” Bacall recalls being fired from a modeling job as a teenager after telling a colleague she was Jewish; being dumped by a boyfriend after her religion came up; and concealing her Jewish identity from director Howard Hawks because ”he was anti-Semitic and scared the hell out of me…He made me so nervous so I didn’t say anything. I was cowardly, I must say. I was not proud of myself.” Her husband and co-star Humphrey Bogart raised their children Episcopalian because “with discrimination still rampant in the world, it would give them one less hurdle to jump in life’s Olympics.”

The L-Word: Bacall was s staunch liberal. During the McCarthy era, she and Bogart joined the Committee for the First Amendment, which included Danny Kaye, John Garfield, Gene Kelly, John Huston, and Ira Gershwin, among others, and flew to Washington DC to protest the House UnAmerican Activities Committee’s attempt “to smear the motion picture industry.” Bogart stated: “I am an outraged and angry citizen who feels that my basic civil liberties are being taken away from me.” Over thirty years later, Bacall would reflect, “It helped those of us at the time who wanted to fight for what we thought was right and against what we knew was wrong. And we made a noise — in Hollywood, a community which should be courageous but which is surprisingly timid and easily intimidated.” In 1952, she campaigned for Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson and convinced Bogie, who had initially supported Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, to get on board. In 2005, she told Larry King, she was “anti-Republican… A liberal. The L-word. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”

Her own person: Bacall was a trailblazer who literally revolutionized how women were presented on the silver screen. She challenged gender norms with looks that were considered unconventional in Hollywood, a husky voice — which she practiced keeping low by reading out loud — and a no-nonsense but suggestive attitude, which had no place in the cookie cutter era of the 1950s, when her career went through a relative dry spell. She was picky with her roles, which earned her a reputation as being “difficult.” As blogger Jill Filopovic explained in an e-mail to me today, “Bacall exuded a confidence in her sexuality and herself, and her characters were self-assured and sexual without being just sexy. She was plucked out of obscurity by a man who wanted to mold her into his perfect woman; she didn’t let that happen.”

Indeed, Bacall was frustrated by being defined be her relationship to her husband, as she told Vanity Fair in 2011 “My obit will be full of Bogart, I’m sure. I’ll never know if that’s true. If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.” But she was also sure of her own worth: ”I think I’ve damn well earned the right to be judged on my own. It’s time I was allowed a life of my own, to be judged and thought of as my own person, as me.

There have been some Bogie references, for sure, in this post and in the other obits published since her death. But she is already going down in history as her own person. She damn well earned it.

Originally posted on Feministing

Fox doctor who called Michelle Obama Fat should read his own book, “Projection”

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Screen Shot 2014-08-12 at 3.20.32 PM
Keith Ablow, the failed TV host, endocrinologist psychiatrist, infamous misdiagnostician, The New England Journal of Medicine Good Housekeeping contributor, and Glenn Beck co-author made the following medical assessment unoriginal, contrived sexist comments about the First lady at the Annual Conference on Obesity on the trashy Fox News show Outnumbered on Tuesday:

What is she eating? She needs to drop a few…. We’re taking nutritional advice from who? Let’s be honest. There’s not French fries? That’s all kale and carrots? I don’t buy it.

Out of respect for the doctor, let us follow his lead and ask the rhetorical question, “we’re taking nutritional advice from who?” (In his hurry to speak the truth, Dr. Ablow omitted the “m” at the end of “whom. But I digress.) Here is my Ablovian Assessment (an assessment made without having met, or examined a patient, based on political agenda, rather than medical training or knowledge):

Specialty: Ablow is not a nutritionist. Nor is he an endocrinologist. He is a psychiatrist with no special training in anything related to Michelle’s body weight whatsoever.

Track Record: Ablow has an impressive record for getting things wrong. He claimed, for instance, that Joe Biden’s performance in the 2012 vice-presidential debate suggested signs of dementia or drunkenness…..

And he argued that Newt Gingrich’s history of marital infidelity made him a great presidential candidate:

1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.

2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.

3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible.

Conclusion: When three women want to sign on for life with a man who is now running for president, I worry more about whether we’ll be clamoring for a third Gingrich term, not whether we’ll want to let him go after one.

Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton’s one and only marriage made her unfit for public service. As he stated, “her entire reputation as a national figure came from living in the White House and sleeping with the president.”

Continue reading at RawStory.com

Why there will never be a right wing Robin Williams

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David Weigel described the liberal politics of Robin Williams as “forgettable,” arguing that the comedian’s most politically informed routines were among his worst, not his best. Though it may be true that Williams’s most literal and directly political sets weren’t his best, his progressive, liberal point of view was part of his comedic genius. And though Rush Limbaugh was (spoiler alert!) incorrect and disrespectful to attribute the actor’s suicide to his “leftist world view,” Williams’s politics did shape his life and his comedy. There could never be a right wing Robin Williams.

You may have noticed that conservatives dominate talk radio. That’s because talk radio, in large part, works by oversimplifying, stretching, distorting and/or ignoring the truth, eschewing nuance and boiling things down into easily digestible sound bites. (If the generalizations I just made reads a little bit talk radioish, it’s because… I’m not just telling, I’m showing, of course.) The left, however, have comedy. And that’s because, though it’s not often brought up, comedy, or good comedy, at least, is based on empathy, something the right, in general, lacks (see: immigration, affirmative action, rights of any disenfranchised groups). And that is why the right will never produce their own version of Robin Williams.

All good comedy requires empathy. Because a good comedian cares enough about people to observe them and their behavior and get into their heads. And in no area of comedy is empathy more needed than in impersonations, which requires a comedian to literally become someone else. A bad comedian impersonates someone in a way that merely makes fun of them. A good comedian can do it in a way that humanizes the person. That’s also why you don’t see too many conservatives performing one-man-shows. (Thank goodness! Though a one-man-show about a right wing one-man-show could be great.) Also, right wing comedy bullies the underdogs, while progressive comedians use comedy to speak truth to, or make fun of, power.

Robin Williams was a genius mimic. And in his performance in The Birdcage, for instance, we don’t see an over the top homophobic rendering of a gay character. We see an impeccable rendering of an over the top gay man. It’s a character someone truly homophobic could never play.

Continue reading at RawStory.com

The next time a ‘pro-lifer’ says something bad about immigrants, show them this

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So, maybe the conservative “pro-life” movement isn’t exactly at the forefront of the immigration reform movement… yet. But they could be! And, if they’re not totally full of it, should be.

The truth is anti-immigrant and anti-choice (pro-life) legislation and sentiment often go hand in hand. If that feels a little inconsistent and hypocritical, that’s probably because it is.

All you need to do is show a self-identifying pro-lifer this pretty clever meme created by Political Loudmouth.

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Continue reading at RawStory

Morning Jew Ep 42: Circumcision Debate, Aushwitz Selfies & Auschwitz Wall Art

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Comics Heather Gold (@heathr) and Katie Halper (@kthalps) look at the headlines and ask: Is it good for the Jews? This week we talk to Michael Wex again about the one issue Heather & Katie can’t see eye to eye on: the origins of circumcision. Plus why are people taking selfies at Concentration Camps and why were Walmart and Sears selling concentration camp decor?

Infographic of the day: why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a feminist issue

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incite_bds_page_1

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t just a human rights issue. It’s a feminist one. Here’s why. Monday, I posted about the #JewsAndArabsRefuseToBeEnemies social media campaign. But why does a post about something involving peace in the Middle East belong on a site like Feministing? As our own Anna Sterling once wrote, after covering immigration issues,  ”Many commenters on Feministing asked why immigration is a feminist issue. Feminism is strictly gender, right? Equal pay, glass ceiling, abortion and all that? Well, no, actually.”

Those of us who like our feminism intersectional, see issues of gender, race, ethnicity, class, culture , sexuality etc as inextricably related, as are struggles against oppression based on these categories. But sometimes, the connections are more explicit. As I wrote yesterday, an Israeli academic actually said that the only way to deterr a Palestinian terrorist was by raping his sister. And as Amnesty International wrote in a report,

Palestinian women have borne the brunt of the escalation of the conflict and decades of Israeli occupation, while in Palestinian society they are subjected to a system of laws and norms that treats them as unequal members of society.

Some handy infograhics that show how the conflict is relevant to feminism have been posted by  INCITE!, “a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against our communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots organizing.” The first infographic was made by BCU Palestinian Society and the other two were made by INCITE:

Image via INCITE

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Originally posted on Feministing