Archives for June 2015

Ireland’s “Pill Train” X2

June 30, 2015 By Pam

In 1971, no one could have imagined that Ireland would have a pro-contraceptive female president (Mary Robinson) by 1990, or that she would be succeeded by another female president in 1997 (Mary McAleese).

At the time, divorce was constitutionally prohibited. Husbands were the legal heads of their households. Ireland still outlawed contraception, not to mention abortion. In the fight for women’s rights, challenging the ban on birth control seemed a good place to begin.

The plan was for several women to cross the border to Northern Ireland, buy contraceptives in a pharmacy, and smuggle them back into Ireland. They hoped to grab headlines by allowing themselves to be caught, arrested with the contraband, and hauled off to jail.

On May 22, a small group took a train to Belfast and headed for the nearest drugstore. Born and raised Catholic, their understanding of birth control was sorely limited. When they boldly demanded coils, loops, and birth control pills, the pharmacist coolly explained that medical consultation was required for those forms of birth control. The women had to settle for condoms, creams, and jellies. They also bought lots of aspirin.

Back in Dublin, they were met by customs officials and cops. As onlookers gaped, the women waved tubes of contraceptive creams and jellies over their heads and read aloud from an article on birth control they’d clipped from a magazine. Then, for dramatic effect, they scattered what they hoped looked like birth control pills (the aspirin) on the floor. The condoms, however, they kept for themselves.

With national and international television reporters in tow, the women marched to a police station. The cops, however, played it cool and refused to arrest the women, thus minimizing headlines. Two days later, the Prime Minister assured members of parliament that the contraceptives had been confiscated and all was well.

SPARKING DEBATE, DISLODGING A BOULDER

Despite the lackluster response by authorities, the Pill Train action sparked debate, an essential tool of any nonviolent revolution.

Throughout the next decade, a number of bills concerning birth control were debated and voted on, allowing small concessions here and there. The Health Act, passed in 1985 and amended several times, went a long way toward making contraceptives available in Ireland. Censorship laws were reformed to allow mention of family planning.

The 8th Amendment to Ireland’s Constitution (1983), however, criminalized abortion, even when the pregnancy is forced by rape or incest and or when carrying the fetus to term is a threat to the woman’s mental or physical health. The only exception is for a risk (narrowly defined) to the actual life of the woman. Ireland ranks with Afghanistan, Chile, and Somalia when it comes to attitudes about a woman’s right to control her own body.

SAVITA’S DEATH

In October, 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old married dentist, began to miscarry due to a bacterial infection. At the University Hospital Galway, she begged for a medical abortion, but, since the fetus still had a heartbeat, she was denied one. According to one report, an assisting doctor, when asked why they couldn’t intervene, said, “You are not dying enough.”

By the time the fetal remains were removed from her body, Savita was in septic shock. She died a few days later with her husband by her side. News spread through social media outlets. Tens of thousands mourned and protested at rallies and vigils in Ireland, England, and India.

2014 “ABORTION PILL TRAIN”

Two years later, on October 28, 2014, while candlelight vigils were held across Ireland in Savita’s memory, a small group of pro-choice activists again boarded a train in Dublin and headed to Belfast.

They returned with “abortion pills” ordered through WoW (Women on Web), an online organization that assists women seeking safe abortions.

Participants from groups including Action for Choice and ROSA (Reproductive rights, against Oppression, Sexism & Austerity) rode the train and explained their actions to the media. In the train station, ten women swallowed some of the pills to demonstrate their safety, an act of civil disobedience. Once again, the police looked the other way.

✔ MARRIAGE, ✘ REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS

On May 22, 2015, the Republic of Ireland became the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, not by an act of legislation, but by popular vote. It was celebrated as a remarkable shift in public opinion because homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1993.

Why are LGBTQ rights, especially those which expand and strengthen the institution of marriage, winning in Ireland (and the U.S.), while women’s reproductive rights are so severely lagging?

Feminist author Katha Pollitt has some ideas. Marriage, she says, is about love, commitment, and settling down. People of all genders, classes, and sexual identities are invested in it as a right.

Reproductive rights, on the other hand, have to do with sexual activity, sexual freedom, and women’s control of their own bodies. As Pollitt explains, it’s about replacing “the image of women as chaste, self-sacrificing mothers dependent on men with that of women as independent, sexual, and maybe not so self-sacrificing.” For some, the debate pits the pure potential of fetuses against the complicated lives of grown women. Fetuses are considered innocent; women are not.

The struggle continues.

TO GO DEEPER

Books:

This River of Courage: Generations of Women’s Resistance and Action by Pam McAllister, New Society Publishers, 1991

“IRELAND(S): Coping with the Womb and the Border,” by Nell McCafferty in Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan, Anchor Press/ Doubleday 1984.

Articles:

“Law, Disobedience, and ‘the Abortion Pill’” by Mairead Enright, Human Rights in Ireland, Nov. 1, 2014.

“International Women’s Day 2015: The Continued Struggle for Reproductive Rights in Ireland” by Irish Forum for Global Health, Global Health Writes, March 5, 2015

“Pregnant Woman’s Death Sparks Abortion Debate In Ireland” by Krishnadev Calamur, NPR.org, November 15, 2012

“The Future of Abortion Is Here — No Clinic Needed” (about Women on Web) by Allegra Kirkland, AlterNet, August 29, 2014.

“There’s a Reason Gay Marriage Is Winning, While Abortion Rights Are Losing” by Katha Pollitt, The Nation, April 22, 2015

Video Clip:

“Prochoice activists bring illegal Abortion Pills into Ireland, 28th October 2014” (2:05 mins)

Swimming Together

June 17, 2015 By Pam

By now we’ve all seen the video — a white cop goes Rambo on black teens at a pool party, curses them, wrestles one girl to the ground, draws his gun and waves it at the unarmed kids.

IT’S NOT ABOUT ONE COP: IT’S ABOUT US

This happened in McKinney, Texas on Friday, June 5, 2015. Once again, cellphone activism was used to alert the nation. The video went viral. By that Sunday, Officer Eric Casebolt was off the job. Some commentators said he was a “bad apple.” Others said was a good cop having a very bad day. Both miss the point. This is not about a lone officer’s failure to do the “right” thing or even the “helpful” thing. It’s about us.

It’s been hard to pin down exactly what sparked this confrontation. By some reports, a black teen who lives in the area and had a legit pass to the pool threw a party and invited friends, both black and white. Some friends with legit invitations brought other friends. At some point, two white women began hurling racist slurs and one yelled, “Go back to your section 8 housing.” As tensions escalated, several people called the police, including the mother of one of the black teens.

WE SINK OR SWIM TOGETHER

St. Augustine, FL wade-in confrontation, June 25, 1964

Since the clash in McKinney, much has been written about the U.S. experience of swimming together — or not. (See recommended articles below.) Here’s the gist:

Phase 1. In the North, municipal pools were built in the 1880s as places for unwashed immigrants and laborers of all races to swim for health and cleanliness. Women had access to pools on alternate days from men.

Phase 2. By the 1920s, women and men, working class and middle class, were swimming together for fun. As bathing outfits got skimpier, public pools and beaches became increasingly racially segregated, with blacks forcibly excluded, legally or extra-legally.

Phase 3. Blacks and their white allies began to challenge segregated swimming areas in the 1950s, along with lunch counters, libraries, and other public arenas. One nonviolent tactic was the “wade-in.” When pools and beaches became racially integrated, many whites put pools in their backyards and abandoned public swimming areas.

RAINBOW BEACH WADE-IN

Velma Murphy Hill

There were no laws keeping the Chicago-area beaches racially segregated in 1960, but there might as well have been. Velma Murphy decided to challenge this by organizing a wade-in. She was the 21-year-old president of the Southside NAACP Youth Council.

On August 28, she led thirty activists, all but a quarter of them black, to Rainbow Beach where white families sunbathed, swam, and picnicked. She heard one man snarl, “You niggers are on the wrong beach,” but the activist group bravely laid out their beach towels, and tried to act nonchalant. They swam and waded in the water, dried off, tried to concentrate on games of checkers.

Two hours passed when they suddenly realized that all the white women and children had left the beach. A knot of young men surrounded them. When the white mob began hurling rocks, one hit Velma in the head. It required 17 stitches, causing temporary paralysis and a permanent limp. She was unable to attend the “wade-in” the following week, which was larger and had better police protection. The following summer, a number of groups joined the NAACP in trying to integrate the beach, including the Catholic Interracial Council and the Jewish Board of Rabbis.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” In 2011, Velma returned to Rainbow Beach with a coalition of civil rights and labor groups to dedicate a historic marker commemorating the “wade-ins.”

HOW DO YOU SEGREGATE AN OCEAN?

Acid attack on Civil Rights activists

Another early challenge came in Biloxi, MS with a series of “wade-ins” beginning in 1959. Two weeks after the assassination of Medgar Evers, in June, 1963, protesters planted black flags on the beach in his memory, but they were met with a violent white mob of over 2,000.

The U.S. Justice Department sued the city for denying black beach-goers access to public space and, after a long fight, won. By 1968, the beach was open to all.

Dramatic news photos documented a similar struggle on the whites-only beaches in St. Augustine, FL. Rev. King became involved and was arrested there. But it was what happened on June 18, 1964 that made history. When young activists jumped into the whites-only pool at the Monson Motor Lodge, the hotel manager poured acid in the water. No one was hurt, but the photo of his barbarity shocked the nation. The very next day, the Civil Rights Act was passed in the U.S. Senate, after an 83-day filibuster by the “Southern Bloc.”

TO GO DEEPER

Book:
Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America by Jeff Wiltse, The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Articles:
“Who Gets to Go to the Pool?” by Brit Bennett, The New York Times, June 10, 2015

Satirical comic by laloalcaraz

“McKinney, Texas, and the Racial History of American Swimming Pools” by Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic, June 8, 2015

“America’s Swimming Pools Have a Racist History” by Jeff Wiltse, Washington Post, June 10, 2015

“Our Segregated Summers: The Police Misconduct in McKinney, Texas, is part of America’s long, fraught history of race and swimming” by Jamelle Bouie, Slate, June 9, 2015

Audio:

“Swimming Pools and Racial Tension” on The Kojo Nnamdi Show, Monday, June 15, 2015, radio discussion with guests Jeff Wiltse, Jamelle Bouie, and Brit Bennett.

YouTube:

“Texas Community Questions Police Use of Force at Pool Party” PBS NewsHour, June 8, 2015 (5:58 mins.)

“The Daily Show: Jon Stewart Finds ‘Progress’ in McKinney: ‘Nobody Is Dead’” 6/8/15

Mary Dyer, Martyr for Religious Freedom

June 1, 2015 By Pam

On June 1, 1660, Boston’s Puritan patriarchs, minds snapped shut like oyster shells, executed Mary Dyer. They had come to the New World in search of the freedom to impose their own intolerant theocracy. Dyer had a wider vision, a New World of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience.

THIRD IN LINE AT THE HANGING ELM

Puritan fathers, lips stiff as church pews, arrived in the New World with worthy dreams. They would build a shining city on the hill, a New Jerusalem of parks, libraries, and schools, and tend lovingly to the poor and ill.

But along with new dreams, the Puritans brought Old World tools — hellfire and damnation, branding irons and prison cells. Before long, they claimed a tree in the center of their Eden as the Hanging Elm. By the mid-1650s, Quakers were outlawed in the Massachusetts colony, their books burned, their bodies whipped and branded, their tongues mutilated.

Repeatedly throughout 1659, Mary Dyer and other Quakers disobeyed the law by entering Boston, pitting their belief in the “Inner Light” against the Puritan’s “wrath of God.” For this act of civil disobedience, they were imprisoned. In mid-October, they were found guilty of breaking the laws of Quaker banishment and sentenced to hang from the tree at Boston Neck. Upon hearing this judgement, Mary cried out defiantly, “Yea, and joyfully I go!” as if it were her decision, her choice, her moral triumph over unjust laws.

On October 27, the three Quakers walked hand-in-hand to the Hanging Elm, Mary in the middle. They tried to address the crowd, but drummers had been ordered to maintain a steady beat and drown out their voices.

Dyer stood stoically, third in line. She watched one friend hanged, then the other. Then Mary herself was led to the tree, up a ladder, and a noose put around her neck. How furious the theocrats must have been that she acquiesced so calmly, as if she were waiting in line for strawberries at the market.

At the last minute, her execution was cancelled. The noose was removed from her neck, and she was sent back into exile, devastated, to her husband’s custody.

DYER’S DEATH, A TURNING POINT

Mary Dyer waited out the long winter on Shelter Island, no doubt grieving the friends she’d watched die before her. And then one day in May, she returned to Boston clothed, as it were, in disobedience, once again defying the law of “Quaker banishment.”

Some say she came back carrying her own shroud. Certainly this was true metaphorically, if not literally. Committed, body and soul, to upholding the right to freedom of conscience, she knew what she had to do. As she put it, “My life not availeth me in comparison to the liberty of the truth.”

The next morning, she was paraded through the streets once again, this time alone. At the tree, she was given a chance to repent and save herself, but she refused, believing that her death would heighten public awareness of the “unrighteous and unjust law of banishment.”

Mary Dyer statue in Boston, by Sylvia Shaw Judson

When her neck snapped, many wept. One of the officers, moved by the sight of Dyer’s slight body swaying in the breeze, became a Quaker convert.

Back in England, King Charles II was, finally, shocked into action and used his power to put an end to the execution of Quakers, although persecution (imprisonment and torture) by Puritans continued for more than a decade.

No one remembers the executioners who carried out the orders, but today in Boston, Philadelphia, and at Earlham College in Indiana there are statues of Mary Dyer, who is remembered for her courage in the fight for freedom of religion.

TO GO DEEPER

“Top 10 Things You May Not Know About Mary Dyer” by Christy K. Robinson (Excellent information and fun to read, written by a Mary Dyer scholar.)

This Day In History, June 1 (53 seconds)