Category: Patriarchy

Self Defense Against White Supremacy: Finding a path towards community-based self-determination

One of the greatest barriers to community-based self-defense has been a very powerful shift towards pacifism and non-violence as a primary means of political expression in Europe and the USA.

By: el pinche simón

January 30th, 2017

Patriarchy and white supremacy have been the forerunners and continue to be the underpinnings of the economic, military and political system of U.S. imperialism, which is devoted to making money by any means necessary, including brute force and the legitimized use of violence. Its imposition is exposed by a glance at those who have money, power, and influence and those who do not. The price of things, places, food, labor, and people are all glaring pieces of evidence exposing the cruelty of a failed global economic model and the decline of the U.S. Empire.

We live in a military-political economy that has consistently overvalued the lives of white men above all other lives. As a matter of fact, the natural resources that are extracted from this earth to maintain white and male dominance over the planet, are considered more valuable than all lives. Most human life has become just another disposable variable in this economic equation.

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Women Confronting Feminicide: ‘We don’t want to live in fear’

Fed up with heightened violence, Mexican women joined in the mobilization against feminicide convoked from Argentina after the violent rape and murder of young Lucía Perez.

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It’s getting more dangerous all the time to be a woman (or girl) in Mexico, where seven sisters, friends, comrades, mothers or daughters are killed every single day with impunity — and with a level of hatred and scorn once unthinkable. Living breathing people, now tortured to death, become a cast of characters in a macabre spectacle: There’s the girl that’s dismembered, another beaten bloody, another impaled, another stuffed into a suitcase, yet another drowned in a sewer. Virtually all have been raped. This is the face of feminicide.

Fed up with this alarming situation, women in Mexico City and the states of  Guerrero, Guadalajara, Michoacán and Oaxaca, joined in the global mobilization against feminicide convoked from Argentina after the vicious rape and murder of 16-year-old Lucía Pérez, last October 8. The young girl was drugged and attacked by at least three men —Juan Pablo Offidani, Matías Farías and Alejandro Alberto Masiel— who left a pile of used condoms before raping her anally with a pole. According to the district attorney who investigated this crime, “extreme pain caused her death through stimulation of the vagal nerve,” prompting a heart attack.

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Yakiri: “I love life; that’s why I fought and that’s why I’m alive.”

Hundreds march in Mexico City to free Yakiri and support her right to self defense.

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“ . . .I have faith in you. You’re like my family that never gives up. And I have faith that I’ll soon regain my freedom. But it also makes me furious to be in here, locked up for fighting and defending my life against the man who was attacking me, while there’s a motherfucker walking around out there like he hasn’t done a thing. I’m petitioning the Supreme Court to grant me my freedom because I love life; that’s why I fought and that’s why I’m alive. And I want to live my life and enjoy it with my family and people that I love. I want to believe that justice exists for women in my city and that it exists in our Mexico. Just as I fought for my life, I’m now fighting for my freedom, and I want you to keep on supporting me, because by doing so, you’re supporting your own daughters as well. . .”

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When a Woman Steps Forward

Documentary film about amazing Indigenous Female Hip Hop Artist from Oaxaca, packed with music videos and an amazing world view from a rarely heard perspective.

Cuando Una Mujer Avanza – When a Woman Steps Forward

Hello Friends and Family!!!!!

We are extremely excited about the latest Manovuelta film Cuando Una Mujer Avanza, which is about a young Oaxacan woman who is an absolutely amazing Hip Hop / Rap artist. This sister not only rhymes and sings in verse about real life situations faced by a young native woman from southern Mexico, but she also speaks to the entire world from a rarely heard perspective on life and community liberation.

This is Manovuelta’s first attempt at an Indiegogo fundraising campaign. Please check out and spread the word about the film trailer and the Indiegogo campaign itself to support this project. Thank you so much.

El Enemigo Común

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Anti-Mumia “abolitionist” Renny Cushing tries to clean up image in Mexico

For Renny Cushing: May the light and shadow of Mumia Abu-Jamal follow you all the days of your life.

[ Renny Cushing ]

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For Renny Cushing: May the light and shadow of Mumia Abu-Jamal follow you all the days of your life. May you vomit every time you look in the mirror. And may your portrait be hung in the gallery of the Fraternal Order of Police forever.

For 29 ½ years, the North American State ––its police, district attorneys, courts, news media–– have sought to silence the revolutionary African-American journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal once and for all. Now they have some accomplices who call themselves “abolitionists” to help them do their job. One of them is visiting in Mexico in an apparent attempt to polish his tarnished image by tagging onto the movement for Peace and Justice with Dignity sparked by the esteemed poet Javier Sicilia and embraced by the EZLN and thousands of Mexican people. His name is Renny Cushing. Several questions arise, and the first is this: How can a person who has lost all dignity offer anything to this movement?

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Death in the Palace

By Lydia Cacho
December 20, 2010
[Spanish original]
Translated by Scott Campbell

I received a message on Thursday: “It’s December 16, they murdered Marisela Escobedo. What do we do now, Lydia?” The shock was immense; I knew Marisela, an admirable woman, as one of the mothers and sisters of women who for more than a decade have dedicated their lives to getting to the bottom of the crimes that have snatched their loved ones away from them.

The day that her sixteen-year-old daughter Rubí turned up dead, Marisela and her family knew that the killer was her boyfriend, Sergio Rafael Barraza Bocanegra. He himself admitted to having killed her “out of jealousy.” Ever since, Marisela had devoted her days and nights to tracking down evidence like the best criminologist (which she wasn’t); to finding witnesses and corroborating facts like the best prosecutor (which she wasn’t). Like a force of nature in the face of every failure of the justice system, Marisela and her lawyers knocked on doors that never opened. And so, with that closed door as a symbol of what has happened to Mexican society, an assassin shot Marisela three times in front of the state government building. Two days later, while Governor Duarte gave vacuous speeches of indignation, criminals burned down her husband’s business and kidnapped her brother-in-law.

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Statement from Women in Resistance from the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala

TO THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD
TO ALL THE WOMEN OF THE GREAT TRIQUI NATION
TO ALL THE COMPAÑERAS OF SOCIAL AND CIVIL ORGANIZATIONS
TO THE BRAVE WOMEN OF OAXACA
TO THE BROAD WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

We are the women of the red huipil who have always remained silent when the powerful has sent pain and death to our soil, those who have seen a son, a father, a brother, a comrade die without saying a word. This has been convenient for those interests who have turned our silence into a great business, filling their pockets with money, while our communities, in the midst of the 21st century, continue to be marginalized and forgotten with hundreds of women caring for their children by themselves because our men are murdered, persecuted or in the best of cases have to migrate in order to maintain their family.

We as women have decided to raise our voices and to become a part of this great autonomous project. Today, we are also in resistance, with much pain and hurt, and introduce ourselves to you in order to communicate to you that the first great action called for and coordinated by us, alone, as Triqui women has not been allowed to happen.

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