We are deeply saddened and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider in Wichita, Kansas.  As one of the handful of doctors who provided late-term abortions in the U.S., Dr. Tiller was constantly harassed, threatened, and survived a shooting by an anti-abortion demonstrator.

We join activists, organizations, and providers across the country and specifically in the South and South East to stand with our comrades in the Midwest, as many of our states have very similar stories to tell when it comes to reproductive violence and oppression.  We condemn the oppressive normalized violence that our communities endure; from protests outside of clinics, shootings, stalking, to the daily overt and covert messages that abortion is wrong or shameful.

We call on our allies and partners in other social justice movements to not shy away from abortion and join us in connecting abortion and reproductive justice to all of our struggles.  There is not one issue that abortion is not a part of because at its core the fight over abortion access is about control over our bodies, sexualities, reproduction, families and communities.  Controlling our reproduction is about controlling populations, neighborhoods and communities in many of the same ways that police brutality, prisons, militarization, the gender binary system and economic exploitation operate. These systems are rooted in control, power and political, material and economic gain.

As a reproductive justice organization, we understand abortion to be an integral part of reproductive justice and know that women of color across the board bear the brunt of the impact from the abortion debate.  Abortion cannot be separated from sterilization, unsafe forms of birth control, birthing, adoption, foster care, family, sexual violence, parenting, pregnancy, sexuality and sex.  Abortion is a women of color issue and cannot be separated from sexual violence, police brutality, health care, domestic violence, war and militarization, racial justice, gender justice, environmental justice and poverty.

We cannot continue to allow abortion to be stigmatized and framed as a polarizing issue, divided by “pro-choice” and “pro-life;” or peg abortion as a “women’s issue.”  We know that abortion and all of the conditions (i.e. oppression; violence, militarization and war; money and wealth; access to food, water, air, health care, good and safe schools; etc…) surrounding the decision (or need) are far more complicated and real.  We acknowledge that our lives are incredibly complicated and can never be boiled down to “right and wrong” and that for many of us “choice” has never existed.

The murder of Dr. Tiller is painful, scary and enraging; and again, places many of us at the mercy of a criminal justice system that we know to be corrupt, yet oftentimes is our only option.  We hold the complexities and contradictions of the loss of a doctor who spent his life providing desperately needed health care to women; with the push to seek justice from a system that has been responsible for, perpetuates and acts in collusion with innumerable forms of violence against our communities. How do we, as a mourning community, advance conversations about alternatives to imprisonment and true transformation of those who cause great harm?

We invite hard, continued and broader conversations about Dr. Tiller’s murder, abortion, and reproductive justice across our movements.

We continue to work for a world where we can truly create safety, care, healing, wellbeing and liberation for all of us.

In struggle,
SPARK Reproductive Justice Now

Happy 15th SONG!!!

 

Hope you felt the Love as much as we did.

While friends blared monster ballads in the front seat, I not knowing the lyrics gleefully lay in the backseat full of delightful anticipation driving up to the SONG 15^th Anniversary Homecoming Celebration. And what a phenomenal celebration it was! It was just really incredible to witness and understand how LOVED SONG is….how over time and in the last 2 years SONG has tapped into and become a central, adored part of so many people’s life. As many have said before SONG is about building family, something that queers know how to do best, and then politicizing it. To celebrate 15 years of queer and trans, Southern multi-racial, multi-issue organizing in the South and to celebrate it through celebrating Elders, current Staff and Family though intense political conversation, performance and dance parties was perfect.  A potent thing, a dangerous thing, a delicious thing. Organized queers, organized Southern queers are a threat to power structures by nature of our survival and collectivized and distinct experiences or politic making us that much stronger. In many ways I respect and honor SONG and SONG’s work so deeply because it is family.  In my experience were able to enter Durham and SONG spaces with hearts fully open and our bodies -luscious, longing, lustful-fully present. And with SONG we are finding our folks and reaching wholeness in community even if we only see each other a few times a year or less. Cheesy.? Maybe, but so deeply true to my experience.  

Saturday there were a number of studios facilitated by SONG staff, board and family –all organized around the 4 themes that SONG’s organizing school follows: Land, Work, Body Spirit and while in some ways, at first glance this might appear basic it kind of recalibrated me to participate in Saturday’s studios through these areas.  It was incredibly powerful to organize thought, intention and our bodies and work through these themes together. We become whole cloth. Elemental, in the most powerful of ways.  I went to one studio with Suzanne Pharr around Land- where she briefly outlined some of the ways SONG is talking about land and the history of land in the South — from colonization-slavery and Reconstruction, through WWII, military installments, continuous development and deforestation and globalization.  Running through this brief, brief timeline was really, really useful to me in terms of tracking just some of the benchmarks around how land, land use, land ownership and displacement inform how things are the way they are.  Who owns the land? Who is free on the land?.  This conversation almost immediately morphed into talking about the Economy — for how can we talk about our relationship to land, access to land and resources without talking about the economic crisis. How do we begin to understand what this economic crisis means? We decided we really need a sheet of talking points or opportunities to get trained up so we can bring this information back to our communities in a way that makes sense and isn’t so overwhelming and confusing.  So a couple of brilliant queers, elders and peers met for the rest of the afternoon putting those pieces together! Yes! 

The 15^th was formally closed out on Sunday with the questions What is possible?

What does it take to move queers? And then Wendy from FFLIC led us in this incredible 2-part song (I think she adapted and made parts of it up on the spot) and then we were out on the grass in a big circle and with half of us singing one refrain and half of us singing the other and then we twisted ourselves up into this spiral, tighter and tighter, closer and closer.  

The days in Durham were beautiful. Politically profound and powerful as well as nourishing. Filled me up to remember that we are. And that we are moving forward. Together. Remember when they played Journey’s  ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ on Saturday night and the room, full of exquisite, beautiful queers were all ecstatically singing and dancing, some yelling and thrashin’ around — I thought my heart was going to explode. 

-Kate Shapiro

 

Homecoming: Southerners on New Ground’s 15^th Anniversary

 

The months leading up to SONG’s 15^th Anniversary couldn’t have possibly prepared me for the kind of space that SONG staff, members and volunteers would tirelessly create for their community.

 

It was incredible to see turn out and variety of people that came together for Friday nights Queer Quinceanera.  As locals and nearby folks traveled into Durham that evening, others came from as far away as New Orleans, Tennessee, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Atlanta, New York, Ashland and Washington D.C.  The kick off event really did feel like a homecoming. 

Even for me, a northerner by birth and a resent transplant to the South, I did feel on some level as if I had “arrived”.

Many gathered, fabulously adorned with heartfelt smiles and out stretched arms which greeted and embraced old friends and new generations. 

Elders, leaders, and organizational pillars spoke to a crowed of friends and family who were there to show their absolute love, respect and support for 15 years of SONG’s work.  The evening concluded with celebratory cake AND the electric slide. Really, does it get any better than that!?!

 

Saturday morning offered people the opportunity to learn and politic with one another during skill shares and conversation circles. SONG also made it possible to look good while doing so as they sold their super hot SONG hoodies, t-shirt and yes, whitey-tighties. In this intergenerational space, people took pause to honor both elders and young people.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Saturday night they hosted, Gender Fabulous! A benefit and dancing. 

 

Wrapping up a very busy and very jam packed SONG staff and board led a SONG visioning conversation.  In that discussion participants were given the room to say what directions they would like to see SONG’s work to move in.  We closed the day and the homecoming weekend with a powerful call and response song. As the sun shined on us that morning, we walked together hand in hand, working ourselves into a spiral while looking into each others eyes and singing, “We’re here, we’re queer and we ain’t goin anywhere!”                      Now as much as I like to sometimes pretend I’m not all “touchy feely”… the truth is, those kinds of things usually tend hit me right where it counts. Hearing people sing those lyrics as we all carrying the weight of whatever complicated life experiences we hold and REALLY meaning “…we ain’t goin anywhere”, made my arm hair stand on end. It made me feel full and connected to something bigger than me. I felt so grateful and so honored to share that kind of spirit with a group of other people. 

Thank you SONG for helping me feel revitalized, inspired and a believer in the endless possibilities of what it looks like when you take the time to put Love first. 

–gabriel foster

 

My relationship with the recently concluded gathering Critical Resistance 10: Strategy and Struggle to Abolish the Prison Industrial Conference began last year when I was invited to work with the folks from Regeneracion Childcare in NY to build an abolitionist children’s program. Having met and worked with some of the Regen folks through the Children’s Social Forum process at the USSF we immediately began splashing around with expansive and textured plans for the Children’s Program. We agreed from the beginning that we wanted it to be magic — to create a space where we were all engaging together through story, song, imagination while also recognizing and holding all of the different places and experiences we were —it is not that we wanted to suspend reality but rather create realities within our realities — with the goal that everyone participating in the Children’s Program would understand or relate to the prison-industrial complex in different ways that were grounded in legacy, resistance, creativity and hope.

In many ways I was thrilled to participate — to begin to push farther these conversations around movement building and abolition through play and political education and body with young people to push forward the thinking and knowledge we developed when building the Children’s Social Forum at the USSF ( but to have a year instead of 3 months, to have 15 brilliant minds and bodies instead of one or two, to have a budget! What!). As well I was politically intrigued to learn more about the work of Critical Resistance and hoped to strengthen and string together what often feel like disparate pieces of my life and work and politics-organizing, youth work and childcare!

What we ended up creating was a play –the play was sort of the frame for the program– and in this play we all went on a magical adventure with each other where we met a number of different young people:

Akila: A Black American whose grandmother was a Black Panther. Akila’s power is that of knowledge–knowing the histories of oppression and resistance.

Luna: A Navajo girl living on the Reservation whose mom was taken by the PIC monster because they thought she was crazy. Luna’s power is that she can create anything from the earth.

Jadu: Is mixed Black, Chinese and Indian from Trinidad, living in Mississippi. Jadu’s power is that he is a dreamer who has powerful visions.

Esperanza: A Latina transwoman who hangs on The Pier of NYC with a community of other queer and genderqueer folks of color. Esperanza’s power, along with her community, is that they are shape-shifters.

Eli: A white genderqueer Jewish person. Eli is an ally whose special power is empathy and feeling, and as one who knows that it is important to bring people together.

Each of the characters we met over the day and a half of the play all have a specific power as well as a specific relationship with the Prison Monster, who represents the prison industrial complex. Akilah gets put into juvenile detention after a night of nightmares haunted by the prison monster — while in Juvie she sees that the prison monster is collecting everyone dreams and locking them into a huge vault. One of the dreams of a magic carpet exscaped the vault and Akilah quickly scoops it up and ESCAPES — she then meets to rest of the characters and they share stories– Jadu’s family was deported in ICE raids, Luna’s mother was taken away for being ‘crazy’ and she was put into foster care and Esperanza and her friends are policed and criminalized for being trans and gender non-conforming. After we met each new character in the play we would all stop and do an activity –some full group and some more age specific –and then would come back together for the next scene of the play.

What was also an exciting departure from what we created with the Children’s Social Forum was that while a particular politic infused the entire Children’s Social Forum much of the ‘political education’ happened in specific, measured blocks of time (more like school or camp) but with the CR10 children’s program different ideas were woven throughout the play performance as well as all the activities– and it had an amazing tone! AND I think folks got it. Everyone loved the prison monster — and the dots were connected. The 2^nd part of the program was devoted to strengthening our powers — healing the land and each other and eventually we all dismantled the prison monster together!

During CR10 I was pretty sick, feverish and also overwhelmed at all of the loves who were all in the same place at the same time–I wasn’t present for the whole program as I was helping to hold down some of the logistical pieces since I was sick and not wanting to infect any little ones….ALSO there were about 10 or 11 folks from Regeneracion childcare and SF Childcare Collective supplied many of the volunteers so it was a lovely, informal fusion or meeting of the minds and there was another young lovely person from a newly started DC childcare collective. There was a powerful fluidity in the group over the weekend as we all worked to balance out our individual needs and responsibilities to ourselves, our wellness and other folks/events at the conference….and that it was almost as though the program took on a life of its own, with individuals able to flow in and out without stress or guilt as they needed too.

Some of the questions that I have as we move forward building — is what does it mean to come together for short amounts of time, often as strangers (thinking about the participants of the children’s program) into this overwhelming and overstimulating environment, and then return to our homes? How do we build continuity and momentum as we continue to collaborate on these magical politicized, often transient, young people centered spaces. This is the work!

And while I did not attend very many workshops it was powerful to primarily understand or interact with the conference through the Children’s Program. In some ways I think I might prefer it. For it helped me stay somewhat grounded. And while it is not that I don’t love grown folks! I do, but conferences in my experience are often very fractured and buzzy— everyone shuttling around to different two hour sessions…..Similar to what many of the SONG folks speak to (http://www.southernersonnewground.org/?p=197 ) when thinking and engaging in skill transfer one or two hours together doesn’t always provide an opportunity to go deep in addressing challenges or political strategies, skills or thinking. So I often leave not feeling filled up. Well often what does fill me up is the conversations-often way to late into the night- with new friends, informal mentors and other random brilliant folks. I was disappointed a little bit that in my experience at CR10 I did not witness much time or energy devoted to principled, intentional or deep reflection around the first ten years of Critical Resistance and the prison-abolition movement overall. Where are we going, where have we been? I also craved some large scale visioning, recognizing the challenges and limitations of a weekend gathering with thousands of people I still hoped that we would find means and ways to communicate and transmit our long term visions for prison abolition for this is long term work! Strategy! We need it! Lets build it! Together. And of course that is what we are doing.

I intend to write and post more soon, once I synthesize my ramblings and thoughts on us here in the South and our strategies, the one workshop I attended, the southern caucus and CR overall! Yes!

Below is a poem written and read by FIERCE! Palestinian/American poet Suheir Hammad — a poem she read at the CR10 Big Session/Plenary on Friday night. Brilliant.

“letter to anthony (critical resistance)” suheir hammad

I.

this is not a pre paid

call this is not a poem

this is not a letter written from a woman

on the inside this is a

dear nazik aka nymflow-9 aka

bronx bomber aka anthony aka

42851-054 5812

hey brother i hope

this finds you well and safe

i have carried these words for

months through ports and air

and i still have a hard time

five years later writing

you when i travel

but your letters i take

with me the graffiti you throw

at the end of a dozen

handwritten double sided single

spaced muslim oil scented legal

sheets offer me a home

in polyester hotel rooms

you have never been on an airplane

i think of tht often when i try

to help women place words together

into rhymes or lines these women

try to make sense of their lives

what makes me different i mean

people actually pay you they say to

read some poems and talk? shit i got a lot

say let someone pay me to talk. fuck that

just get me out of here and i’ll talk sing dance

shut up if they want

i don’t tell them i get

paid just enough for rent

rent means a home even

if you broke it’s home

we workshop poems and their stories

are not original or fictional

a woman will tell you

every home she has ever inhabited

has been broken into

starting with her body

i never leave a prison

without my head splitting

down my spine an iron

hand on my lungs

when you call anthony

and that woman’s voice says

this is a pre paid call press 5

to accept this call i press 5 count

to 3 take a deep breath and pray

we talk and when the voice

interrupts any intimacy

we’ve embroidered via phone wires

with this call is from a federal prison

we pick up the shards

of our conversation desperate

to finish before the next

II

i have always loved criminals

i tell people who try to shame

me into silence

with words like television conjugal

college libraries they say

can you imagine a library in a nigerian a chinese a

colombian prison do you know what happens in the world americans are spoiled no idea

how lucky we are here

even you often write how

your time has offered reflection

meditation deepened your faith

but you 27 and have 10

years to go nowhere how much deeper

you going to get until a system based

on money deems you rehabilitated

i have always loved criminals

and the way you bomb my tag

butterphoenix all across your letters

reminds me our affirmation is

considered vandalism

i have always loved

criminals and not only the thugged

out bravado of rap videos and champagne

popping hustlers but my father

born an arab baby boy

on the forced way out

of his homeland his mother exiled

and pregnant gave birth in a camp

the world pointed and said

palestinians do not exist palestinians

are roaches palestinians are two legged dogs

and israel built jails and weapons and

a history based on the absence of a people

israel made itself holy and chosen

and my existence a crime

so i have always loved criminals

it is a love of self

and i will not cut off any part of

me and place it behind fences and bars

and the fake ass belief

that there is a difference between

the inside and the outside

there is no outside anywhere

anymore just where we are and

what we do while we are here

and there

are people anthony who make a connection

between you puerto rican rhyme slayer beautiful man and

young girls twisted into sex work and these

people nazim they are working to stop prisons

from being economically beneficial to depressed

communities and these people

bronx bomber they imagine a world

where money can’t be made off the hurt

of the young the poor the colored the

sexualized the different and these people

nymflow they never heard you

spit lyrics and they won’t

see the brillians from these mere words

but these people

42851-054 5812

they believe human

beings can never be reduced

to numbers not in concentration

camps or reservations not in

refugee camps not in schools

and not in jails

these people

brother they resist

i will share these words

with them and i will

in your name and in the names

of all who imagine

stay well

and safe

resist

and love

suheir

–Kate Shapiro

Looking back, Moving forward- CR10 in perspective

Hundreds of folks from around the world joined in a 3 day conference for not only the prison abolitionist movement,
but also for our souls.
I think what is most clear- the lesson of these days of politicking, connecting, and learning- is this need to
see ourselves reflected in each other, to be together before, during, and after the storm, and dare to believe
that our collective freedom and liberation is possible.
The pre- meeting convened by INCITE Women of Color and Critical Resistance set an incredible tone and perhaps with those
gathered and conversations had was the highlight of the conference weekend. Meeting with women of color-primarily queer- to expand on how we
think about the Prison Industrial Complex and to include other systems that are used to police, surveillance, and control(i.e. medical system, education,
mental health, etc) was powerful and necessary.
The following days were filled with representing the South, having new conversations with old friends, and deepening conversations with new folks, thinking about the
intersection of prison and reproductive justice beyond the need of doulas to attend births.
And while I am thinking about the intersection of these movements and what the time at CR10 gave, I also think about what was missing. Something I see missing too often from our movements is the inability to be critical- too look back, ask hard question, learn from them and move forward with a tangible vision that can reach those beyond the activist type. Both the opening and closing plenary, lacked the introspection and visioning I believe necessary to help us grow. You could see the new generation of prison abolitionist but where are the folks who were doing the work before and attended the 1st convening. The convening was overwhelmingly white- and clearly the impact of the PIC is within communities of color. And the high dollar question- how do we vision prison abolition with clear plans for the here and now- when violence happens around us.
All of these questions rest as I think about SPARK’s work, the power complexity of reproductive justice, and intersections that brim with possibilities.

–Paris Hatcher

Thursday night was Sex, Wine and Chocolate 2008. It was AMAZING. Already I’m looking forward to Sex, Wine and Chocolate 2009!

It was at the Park Tavern this year, which, if you’ve never been, is a beautiful venue. And the place was packed. I got there at around ten after seven, thinking I’d get there early and beat the crowds. Silly me…

Speaking of PoleLaTeaz, they brought down the house just like last year. I can’t even convey to you how much they rocked. Every time I see them perform, I feel myself almost bursting with joy, cheesy as that might sound. And I was thinking… Click here to read more!

Attending Sex, Wine, and Chocolate was an exciting extravaganza!  Being in a space with the most hard core Atlanta social justice hotties was very creative and liberatory experience.  The all gender inclusive bathrooms, the body art, the dancing, the live art, the array of dancers, delicious wine and tasty chocolate all fused together to create an open, safe, and expressive environment in which the individuals present had the opportunity to claim ‘the power of their erotic’ as Audre Lorde has encouraged us all to do.  I want to thank the organizers and stress my anticipation for next year’s celebration.

-Monique

Sex, Wine and Chocolate 08 was seriously the event of the season.  So much love from the crowd, so many great vendors and services–bodypainting, The Girlfriend experience…then I got to the Food as Art table and my fat, queer self realized I was home.  Chocolate delights served off of a scantily cladd lady….what?!?!?
 
And the show.  One word. AMAZING!  Of course I killed it, cuz that’s just what I do ;-)  But the beautiful aerial work of Entaglement Circus/Liana Repass, the modern dance from Millicent and Crew and of course those Pole-a-teaze dancers, yowza!  Also, how awesome was it the spoken word lineup?  From youth like Eshe to veterans like Theresa Davis.  From Jazmin’s hard edged piece about fucking as a revolutionary act to Yolo’s smoother piece about a purple universe that celebrated a range of sexualities and genders.
 
I had a wonderful time.  And if folks missed it you better add SWC as your friend on myspace and keep up/keep informed. Because SPARK and Project South know how to throw a party!  Here’s a link to video of my performance last night, check it out!   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O6QM1mo5_g 

Exes and Ohs,
-Vagina Jenkins

Friday September 26, 2008

Today marked the beginning of the CR10 Conference. I arrived with much excitement and anticipation. The very first workshop I was scheduled to attend was a workshop put on by the Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FLICC). Their group goals are to close Louisianans’ Youth prisons, push the state to redirect funding from prisons to funding alternatives to incarceration in communities that support and educate children and families, lower the overall number of youth caught up in the system, transform communities into powerful and loving forces of change, and my personal favorite, to srop the “school to prison pipeline”. They started the session with an activity. They wanted us to close our eyes and think of our High School experiences. To think about what, our school cafeteria smelled like, think about our teachers and staff and principals. They told us to also recall our experiences of when we would get in trouble, what some of the repremandations were.  After a while they asked us to talk about what we thought. I said that I remembered the cafeteria smelling like these little square pepperoni pizzas. On the part about what would happen if we got in trouble, the only thing that came to mind was going to the principal’s office, him fussing at us for 15 minutes, then me going back to class feeling bad for what I did. A few others shared their stories, which were all kind of similar. After a while, the moderators explained that when it came to punishment, a lot of schools in Louisiana would require more stiffer punishment. Punishment like school suspension or even being required to spend some days in an actual detention center. Their goal was to convey to us that the way punishment is administered now is more conducive to that of a criminal. Post Katrina, the schools in Orleans Parish failed and began to establish recovery school districts in New Orleans. Here in these new school districts, there was the presence of National Guards and armed security guards. Children would be arrested on site by police and would be considered being willfully disobedient. Zero tolerance laws continued to perpetuate the prison to pipeline system.

Saturday September 27, 2008

The second part of the session focused on our feedback from the previous sessions. I replied to the lectures with a bias of me working with my young men in the Regional Youth Detention Centers. Every day I witness the prison to pipeline system. Many of the young men are in prison for very small offenses. Instead of rehabilitation, the guys see it as a badge of honor that has to be worn by all inner city Black males. What drove this point home was the sit down stand up activity the moderators asked us to participate in. We were asked to stand up if we had committed any of the offenses they mentioned. The offences ranged from skipping class to chewing gum during class. In many schools today this is considered reasonable actions to be placed in school to prison pipeline. I’ve taken a lot from this workshop. I realize that in order for this pipeline to discontinue in communities there must be advocacy for this cause through, parents, teachers and politicians. These groups have to make efforts to save their children that are put in the system and become victims of Americas Prison Industrial Complex.  This needs to be addressed from principals to superintendents so that many of our young African American boys and girls can get away from the idea that it’s ok to be a part of the system that leads them straight to prisons.

–Will

Click here for the Calendar of Events

So we pretty much experienced the time of our lives today…coming from Baltimore, i’d never up close and personally experienced confronting the people that are most against me, and that fuel my activist fire, until today. This pro-life, right-wing, ultra-Christian, anti-gay, anti-abortion anti-(fill-in-the-blank-with-your-oppression-here) group Operation Save America came to Atlanta to spread the good ol’ backwoods news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, topped off with a cherry of “Jesus is the standard.” They’ll be here for all of next week, July 12-19, in their attempt to “save” us from the evils that, I’m assuming, they’re saved from themselves. I’m not too certain what Jesus they praise, or partner with in their personal (and private) lives, but I doubt he’d wail around posters with dead fetuses on them to rub in people’s faces. Really, it’s all so sensational.

I, along with five other beautiful ladies from and affiliated with SPARK (Mia, Paris, Ally, Erin, and Darlene), wanted to make our presence MORE than known to them in their comfy abodes at the Best Western Hotel. We started out at an intersection in front of a Denny’s, draped in our fabulous pro-choice sweat and pink blankets of “WELCOME TO REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE SUMMER, OSA”, in addition to other “Honk for Reproductive Justice” and “Sex/Justice is the Standard” signs. After near fainting, we realized we should relocate across the street from the hotel in the shade, where our impact would not only be seen, but heard. We didn’t even give them a chance to wrap their cold, heartless bodies in the hotel towels for a quick post-travel shower without them hearing our chants from the megaphone across the streets of “SAY YES TO JUSTICE!!! SAY NO TO OSA!!!!” and “SAVE US FROM POVERTY!!! SAVE US FROM IGNORANCE!” and the like.

It wasn’t before long we gained the attention of one kind fellow named John from OSA, who continued to reiterate his Puerto-Rican heritage to us, so as to demonstrate how much he loathed racists and racism. Nevertheless, we reiterated to him numerous times that his organization, despite HE not being racist, was avidly racist in its approach.
There’s a thin line between being nice and coming to speak, and trying to distract us from our agenda at hand, which is to protest the presence of ignorance, oppression, and control on our bodies and our city. So, Mia kept her finger on the megaphone button, and continued to shout through to the balconies of the hotel.

Soonafter, we drew quite the numerous crowd of zealots–all donning their electric red “Jesus is the Standard” t-shirts, and overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, and male. The one female carried the gold-paged, coffee-table Bible in her hands, as an armour against us demonic folks. Many of them didn’t say much, but they liken their presence to be intimidating at the least, which…just doesn’t work for six loud-mouthed, passionate queer women (sorry!). One came over to me, and began to interrogate about my presence here, as well as my stance being pro-choice…he loved when i broke down the terminology and described fetus as a “latin” term, stating that “baby” was more appropriate. Though diplomatic, the conversation continued on, he reiterating that “the rights of the poor, innocent baby had no right to be thwarted”, my “the rights of the poor, oppressed woman had no right to be thwarted”. At some point, I felt severely surrounded, but nevertheless spoke loudly and explicitly that i’m SICK of people telling me what to do with my body. Then, I look over to the left and there’s Flip, the classic religious NUT who’s been in OSA since jump (who doesn’t mind getting arrested), telling us how “pathetic” we were that it was only six of us in attendance. Fortunately, I wasn’t around to hear much of the verbal holy diarrhea he had to spew, with the other ladies catching the bulk of it.

 

On the way out, after announcing we’re headed to a Dyke, Dick, and Drag Derby in the Park, with Paris giving them DETAILED directions of how to get there just in case they wanted to shake up some funnnnnn, one of the old white guys shouted we needed to save our souls, yadda yadda yadda…my response being “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Now why did i say that…you say one scripture, they have 100 coming back at you. He even questioned my Jesus, assuming it was some other Jesus I worshipped…honestly, it must be.

Then…the cops came. And we weren’t the ones they were after. You should’ve seen ‘em scatter across the streets! No conversation, just movement…the disturbingly alarming dead fetus photo even crawled across, at the hands of the woman holding it.

I just honestly can’t believe people like this exist. They’ll be around all next week, protesting clinics like a swarm of locusts, holding daily Bible studies, as if they need to remind themselves ANYmore of the same 24 verses they’ll throw at us, and most of all, disguising their oppressive behavior as “rescue”. Well, we’re woman enough for ‘em. They might’ve gotten away with murder (ah! murder!) twenty years ago when they came to Atl, but this go ’round, it’s not that easy. We, women of color, queers, pro-choice, women who go to those clinics, any and everybody else who’s down with standing up for our bodies…are a force to be f***ed with. Come check us at the press conferences on black women and abortion (Monday @ 9am), film festivals, and of course, in the streets. With signs and church fans. Holluh.

-Unique

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