So, unbeknownst to me, last week was the first-ever national week of action for reproductive justice (note to organizers:  please get the word out better next year!).  The RJ Network, organized by the very cool Third Wave Foundation, seeks to get youth involved in advocating for reproductive justice around the country. In honor of the week, here’s an awesome video:   

I think this video gets right to one of the keys of the RJ movement: the emphasis on the community, on community-building, and on strength through organizing. As lawyers and law students, it’s easy to forget sometimes that the courts are not the only — or even the best — way to effect social change. Especially now, when the federal courts are particularly unreceptive to civil rights and social justice, and when many states have similarly conservative state supreme courts. But even in an era of friendlier courts, organizing is not just a good tactic, but a vital one — one that is key to the success of the RJ movement. For a long while, the civil rights movement, and particularly feminist causes, have been seen as being very top down. And they have been. Feminist lawyers have pushed an aggressive litigation agenda, but sometimes without checking with their very constituencies. Reproductive justice reminds us that we can’t do that, and that we shouldn’t do that. Our movement will be stronger and our claim more powerful when it is diverse racially, ethnically, geographically, in terms of age, and in terms of education level and work status and immigration status.

So my hope for the (now past) official week of action and for the future many weeks of unofficial action is that we can keep in mind the importance of diversity of tactic in our movement, and that we can act with the knowledge that our legal precedents are only as strong as the communities they affect.

(via Feministing)

On the campaign trail this weekend, Senator Obama touched on what is perhaps the most explosive question in an already-explosive issue:  whether abortion is ever a good thing.  Here’s what he said, addressing his support from many to the right of political center:

“It may be that those who have opposed abortion get a sense that I’m listening to them and respect their position even though where we finally come down may be different,” he told reporters at a news conference.

“The mistake that pro-choice forces have sometimes made in the past, and this is a generalization so it has not always been the case, has been to not acknowledge the wrenching moral issues involved in it,” he said.

“Most Americans recognize that what we want to do is avoid, or help people avoid, having to make this difficult choice. That nobody is pro-abortion, abortion is never a good thing.” 

I’d agree that the abortion rights movement has gotten itself in trouble sometimes by refusing to acknowledge the complexities of a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy. But, really, Senator Obama, has the other side done that complexity thing any better? And do we gain anything by starting to accept and repeat their talking points? I think not.  What’s more, saying — as many on the anti-choice side of things do — that abortion is never a good thing obscures the myriad reasons that women get abortions. Yes, abortion is often a fraught decision for women. But it is often a good decision — and the availability of abortion is a good thing.  It’s a good thing for the already-living children of a woman who decides to get an abortion because she is struggling financially and wants to be sure that she can still put food on the table for her kids. Legal and accessible abortion is a good thing for the college student who decides to get an abortion because knows that she will not be able to finish her coursework and maintain her work-study job if she is pregnant or parenting — or for the high school student facing the same dilemma and having the same thoughts.  Legal abortion is a good thing for the professional woman who — in large part because of the societal sexism that we have not yet figured out how to escape — accidentally becomes pregnant and feels that she has to choose the career she has always dreamed of or the child she wants some day but not right now.  And abortion may be a good thing for a couple who are facing a long and painful labor to deliver an unviable child.  Abortion is certainly complicated for many, many people. But that doesn’t mean it’s never a good thing. Obama betrayed his convictions by speaking that way on the trail today. (via zuzu).  

Last week, I wrote about why prisons are a feminist issue. This week, another feminist takes on feminists’ complicity in the mass incarceration movement. Writing in Make/Shift Magazine and reposted on AlterNet, Jessica Hoffman calls out white, wealthy feminists (who have long been the face of the movement) for their (our?) reliance on police and notions of community safety — an impulse that has devastated the black community. Hoffman writes:

In recent years, members of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence have incisively and repeatedly critiqued the white-feminist-led antiviolence movement for its reliance on (and, thus, complicity with) the U.S. criminal-legal system, which uses the rhetoric of “safety” to destroy communities of color, squash dissent, and create profit for private corporations. Yet the primary macro-level strategies of the white-feminist-led movement against domestic violence and sexual assault continue to rely on this system, with a major focus on legislation such as the Violence Against Women Act and the push for hate-crimes laws to include gender and sexual orientation.[3] On the micro/personal level, I have repeatedly seen white, class-privileged feminists unhesitatingly call upon police to protect and serve them; have listened to white feminists advise each other on which “authorities” to go to for protection from stalkers and other abusers; and so on.[4]

At both the macro level of feminist movement strategy and the micro/personal level of individual actions, I’m struck by the apparent lack of awareness of the prominent critiques made by feminists of color of law-and-order approaches to ending (or, even, finding “safety” from) violence. To be a self-identified feminist activist apparently unaware of (or, worse, deliberately skirting) the current work of not only INCITE! but also feminist icons like Angela Davis and numerous other voices calling for abolition of the prison industrial complex as a key element of social change seems to me to be part of a movement that is not only disconnected from but also damaging to some of the most vibrant and potentially liberating social-justice organizing happening today.

There’s no doubt that Hoffman’s rhetoric is inflammatory. And it’s not limited to talk of our prison nation — she indicts white feminists’ responses to immigration too. While it would be a mistake to say that I endorse everything Hoffman has to say (and I am sure that LSRJ would not organizationally echo her anger), she is very right to point out that at the moments where mainstream feminism and the rights/interests of other, marginalized groups have intersected, we as feminists have often not taken these other groups into full account.

Perhaps this is the affliction of every activist group — that its interests should always come first. But if feminism is to stay current in the fluid and intersectional world that is the present moment (see: Barack Obama), feminists have to do a better job of considering the complexities of our society before putting our significant political capital into action.