Reproaction is a left-flank culture change organization with deep chops in strategic communications, fearless opposition research, and community organizing, including but not limited to non-violent direct action.
Another rich, white boy.
Recently a 20-year-old man in Lewistion, NY, was sentenced to eight years’ probation. Christopher Belter had pleaded guilty to two counts of second degree sex abuse, third degree attempted abuse and third degree rape, all involving multiple 15- and 16-year-old girls in his home.
Because Belter was 17 at the time the assaults occurred, he was initially sentenced to a two-year interim probation with the understanding, if he successfully completed probation, he would be granted Youthful Offender status. Prior to the recent sentencing hearing Niagara County Judge Mathew Murphy ruled that Belter would be sentenced as an adult and denied Youthful Offender status. Judge Murphy said of Belter ”we now know from his documented failure to follow the rules imposed by the court about abstinence from pornography that this defendant does not hesitate to ignore the rules when they compete with his own carnal appetites.”
Despite Belter’s failure to comply with the restrictions of his 2-year probation, Judge Murphy explained, “It seems to me that a sentence that involves incarceration or partial incarceration isn’t appropriate, so I am going to sentence you to probation.” This even after the judge had said “the Defendant still poses an ‘above average risk’ to reoffend after two years of counseling.”
The judge did issue a lengthy list of probation rules for Belter and did issue a strong warning about following the rules. In addition, Belter will have to register as a sex offender. He returns for a Sex Offender Registration Act hearing on December 2. There it will be decided if he is a level one, two or three sex offender.
Steve Cohen, attorney for one of the victims, made the following statement: “Justice was not done today. There were ‘zero consequences’ for violating his previous probation. He is privileged. He comes from money. He is white. He was sentenced as an adult, appropriately – for an adult to get away with these crimes is unjust.”
Winona LaDuke (1959 - )
Winona LaDuke, a Native American activist, economist, and author, has devoted her life to advocating for Indigenous control of their homelands, natural resources, and cultural practices. She combines economic and environmental approaches in her efforts to create a thriving and sustainable community for her own White Earth reservation and Indigenous populations across the country.
Winona LaDuke was born in Los Angeles, California on August 18, 1959 to parents Vincent and Betty (Bernstein) LaDuke. Her father, also known as Sun Bear, was Anishinaabe (or Ojibwe) from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. He was an actor, writer, and activist. Her mother was an artist and activist. LaDuke is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibwe) enrolled member of the Mississippi Band Anishinaabeg. Her father brought her to powwows and other tribal functions, events that made a deep impression on the young LaDuke. LaDuke’s parents divorced when she was five and she moved with her mother, who was of Russian Jewish descent, to Ashland, Oregon. LaDuke visited White Earth frequently and, at her mother’s encouragement, spent summers living in Native communities in order to strengthen her connection with her heritage.
LaDuke attended Harvard University and graduated in 1982 with a degree in rural economic development. While at Harvard, LaDuke’s interest in Native issues grew. She spent a summer working on a campaign to stop uranium mining on Navajo land in Nevada, and testified before the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland about the exploitation of Indian lands.
After Harvard, LaDuke took a position as principal of the reservation high school at the White Earth Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota. She soon became involved in a lawsuit filed by the Anishinaabeg people to recover lands promised to them by an 1867 federal treaty. At the time of the treaty, the White Earth Reservation included 837,000 acres, but government policies allowed lumber companies and other non-Native groups to take over more than 90 percent of the land by 1934. After four years of litigation, however, the lawsuit was dismissed.
The lawsuit’s failure motivated LaDuke’s ensuing efforts to protect Native lands. In 1985, she helped establish and co-chaired the Indigenous Women’s Network (IWN), a coalition of 400 Native women activists and groups dedicated to bolstering the visibility of Native women and empowering them to take active roles in tribal politics and culture. The coalition strives both to preserve Indigenous religious and cultural practices and to recover Indigenous lands and conserve their natural resources.
In 1989, LaDuke completed a master’s degree in community economic development at Antioch University. That same year, she founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP), using funds the Reebok Foundation awarded her for her human rights work. WELRP is an organization that seeks to buy back reservation land previously purchased by non-Native people to foster sustainable development and provide economic opportunity for the Native population. It is now one of the largest reservation-based nonprofits in the country.
WELRP’s sustainable development initiatives include renewable energy efforts, indigenous farming and local food systems, and improved sanitation measures. They use the land they buy to generate wind energy; they have helped protect the local wild rice crop from patenting and genetic engineering; they encourage the consumption of traditional foods to combat rising rates of Type 2 diabetes in the community; and they run a diaper service that saves money and alleviates waste from disposable diapers. The organization raises money through the sale of traditional crafts, jewelry, and food to fund these programs.
Though busy with the WELRP, LaDuke continued her advocacy work with the Indigenous Women’s Network. In the early 1990s, LaDuke arranged a national concert series with the musical group Indigo Girls to raise awareness among young people about Native issues. In 1993, LaDuke and the Indigo Girls co-founded Honor the Earth, an advocacy and fundraising group that works on behalf of Native environmental organizations. Honor the Earth has granted over two million dollars to more than 200 Native American communities since its founding.
In 1996 and 2000, LaDuke served as Ralph Nader’s running mate on the Green Party presidential ticket. The Green Party describes itself as an independent party that emphasizes grassroots democracy and the ecological health of the planet. LaDuke’s ticket won 0.7 percent of the vote in 1996 and 2.7 percent in 2000. LaDuke returned to electoral politics in 2016 when she ran for chair of the White Earth tribal council, though her bid was unsuccessful.
LaDuke has received many honors for advocacy work. In 1994, Time magazine named her one of the Fifty Leaders for the Future. In 1998, Ms. Magazine named her one of their Women of the Year. In 2015, she received an honorary doctorate from Minnesota’s Augsburg College and in 2017, LaDuke won the University of California’s Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance.
LaDuke has authored and co-authored numerous books concerning issues facing the Native American community. Her work Native Struggles for Land and Life (1999, reprinted 2016), for instance, tells of Native resistance to cultural and environmental threats.
LaDuke stepped down as the executive director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project in 2014, but continues to fight for Native Americans’ environmental interests. She was a leader at the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests that sought to protect water access and sacred Indigenous lands in North Dakota. Today, the mother of six grown children (three biological and three adopted) devotes much of her time to farming. Located on the White Earth reservation, her farm grows heritage vegetables and hemp. LaDuke tries to publicize hemp’s environmental advantages: it requires less water to grow than cotton; can replace petroleum-based synthetics in clothing and other products; and absorbs carbon from the atmosphere, rather than releasing it. Winona’s Hemp & Heritage Farm is her latest endeavor; a farm and nonprofit agency, its mission is to create an Indigenous women-led economy based on local food, energy, and fiber, that is kind to the Earth.
Published April 2021.
MLA – Brandman, Mariana. “Winona LaDuke.” National Women’s History Museum, 2021. Date accessed.
Chicago – Brandman, Mariana. “Winona LaDuke.” National Women’s History Museum. 2021. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/winona-laduke
Works Cited
Photo Credit: "Renowned environmentalist Winona LaDuke speaks at PSU" by Sustainability at Portland State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“About Us.” Honor the Earth. Accessed March 30, 2021. https://www.honorearth.org/about
Hage, Dave. “Intelligent and idealistic, Winona LaDuke turns to hemp farming, solar power to jump-start the 'next economy'.” The Star Tribune. June 22, 2020. Accessed March 30, 2021. https://www.startribune.com/intelligent-and-idealistic-winona-laduke-turns-to-hemp-farming-solar-power-to-jump-start-the-next-economy/571418762/?refresh=true
"LaDuke, Winona." In American Environmental Leaders, by Grey House Publishing. 3rd ed. Grey House Publishing, 2018. https://search-credoreference-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/content/entry/ghael/laduke_winona
"LaDuke, Winona (b. 1959)." In From Suffrage to the Senate: America's Political Women, by Suzanne O'Dea. 4th ed. Grey House Publishing, 2019. https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/ghssapw/laduke_winona
Sonneborn, Liz. "LaDuke, Winona." In A to Z of Women: American Indian Women, by Liz Sonneborn. 3rd ed. Facts On File, 2016. https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/fofiwte/laduke_winona
St. Anthony, Neal. “Winona LaDuke leads the hemp crop movement around Minnesota's White Earth Reservation.” The Star Tribune. August 24, 2019. Accessed March 30, 2021. https://www.startribune.com/winona-laduke-leads-the-hemp-crop-movement-around-minnesota-s-white-earth-reservation/557992032/?refresh=true
Walljasper, Jay. “Celebrating Hellraisers: Winona LaDuke.” Mother Jones. Jan./Feb. 1996. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/01/celebrating-hellraisers-winona-laduke/
“Welcome.” Green Party US. Accessed March 30, 2021. https://www.gp.org/about
“Who We Are.” Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm. Accessed March 30, 2021. https://www.winonashemp.com/who-we-are
“Winona LaDuke.” Iowa State University Archives of Women’s Political Communication. February 24, 2020. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/winona-laduke/
“Winona LaDuke.” National Women’s Hall of Fame. 2007. Accessed March 29, 2021. https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/winona-laduke/
Once More, with Feeling: The ERA
by Robin Morgan Nov 15, 2021
In 1923, on the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, Alice Paul introduced the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.”
The National Women’s Party and professional women like Amelia Earhart, the great pilot, supported it. But other reformers, particularly in the labor movement, who had worked hard for protective labor laws for women, were afraid the ERA would wipe out their progress. (This could have been solved by mobilizing for the extension of protective labor laws to men – like not lifting items over a certain weight or doing especially hazardous labor — but it became a huge sticking point for those protectionists who exploited class divisions within the women’s movement.)
By the early 1940s, both the Democratic and Republican parties had added support of the Amendment as a plank in their political platforms, although opposition was building: social conservatives, who considered equal rights for women a threat to their existing power structure, joined with labor and with leftists fighting for protectionist workplace laws to hinder the amendment. Eleanor Roosevelt agreed with them, and the ERA stalled.
Nevertheless, in 1943, after two World Wars that had seen women pouring into the labor force, the Amendment was reintroduced, this time reworded to reflect language in the 15th and 19th Amendments: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” That’s the whole of it, even today – 24 words
Still, the left and the right remained fairly united in opposition. By the 1960s, young women active in the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement (I was one) began to examine their/our own lives politically and shake the dust of the male left off our boots. We organized as citizens, and politicians started to react to the power of women’s voices in new ways. Mainstream groups joined the call for the ERA–this time including organized labor.
Whew, you exhale. Yes! It was passed by the Senate and the House on March 22nd, 1972, and the proposed 27th Amendment to the Constitution was sent to the states to be ratified! But wait. Congress placed a seven-year deadline on the ratification process. Still, the ERA hit the ground running and got 22 of the necessary 38 state ratifications in the very first year.
Yet as opposition coalesced, the pace slowed. All through the 1970s, ERA opponents like Phyllis Schlafly, right-wing leader of the Eagle Forum’s Stop ERA group, played on fears that had generated opposition back in women’s suffrage days. She and her followers claimed that women would be sent into combat, that contraception use and abortion rights would be required, that same-sex marriages would be upheld, that unisex bathrooms would be mandated, and that the ERA would destroy the family.
State’s rights advocates added that the Amendment was a federal plot, and corporations — particularly the insurance industry — strongly opposed the measure, which they believed might cost them money. Not surprisingly, the ERA was also vociferously opposed by most evangelical and/or fundamentalist religious groups.
Nevertheless, The National Organization for Women (NOW) and ERA America, a coalition of almost 80 mainstream organizations, mobilized skillfully and that same year, Indiana became the 35th state to ratify the amendment. Whew again!
Oops. As the 1970s drew to a close, Illinois changed its rules to require a three-fifths majority to ratify an amendment, thereby ensuring that their previous simple majority votes in favor of the ERA “didn’t count.” Other states proposed or passed rescission bills, despite legal precedent that states lack the power to retract a ratification. All the while, the original 1979 deadline was approaching and, although some groups, like the League of Women Voters, wanted to retain 11th hour pressure as a political strategy, most ERA advocates appealed to Congress for an indefinite extension of the time limit, and NOW coordinated a successful march of 100,000 supporters in Washington DC. Congress granted an extension until June 30th, 1982.
Is that a tentative “whew” I hear? Nope.
The political tide would turn much more conservative, and in 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected president), the Republican Party removed their support for the ERA from its platform. Distinguished Republican feminists walked out of the convention in protest when the party took that plank out of the platform, and Betty Ford denounced the action.
Meanwhile, Reagan never named Phyllis Schlafly to a promised cabinet position, after all.
So, given machinations by the states plus the sharp right political turn, and despite increases in massive pro-ERA lobbying, petitioning, walkathons, hunger strikes, fundraisers, White House pickets, and civil disobedience, on June 30th, 1982, the ERA fell three states short of the necessary 38 for full ratification. It was a significant defeat.
But you can’t keep a good woman down. Two weeks later, the Equal Rights Amendment was reintroduced in Congress, and it’s been reintroduced before every session of Congress since then. In 2017, Nevada became the 36th state to ratify, followed by Illinois and then Virginia made history to become the 38th ratifying state.
Now, attention is focused on removing the deadline. There are also after-the-fact ongoing efforts in several states — North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida — to ratify. Now, gee, everyone claims they want to ratify because after all who could be against equality? Well, the opposition could!
Because the deal is not yet done.
We ourselves were partly to blame in the past: we didn’t fully grasp how state legislatures work, and the importance of redistricting. Wow, were we naïve–the public, not only feminists. Also, we failed to impress sufficiently on Americans the concrete changes that the ERA would bring. Even today, some people say, Don’t women already have equality? Why is an ERA necessary? I’m indebted to Jessica Neuwirth for her excellent book Equal Means Equal: Why the Time For An Equal Rights Amendment Is Now for the clarity and concision of the following examples:
In the absence of an ERA, targeted federal legislation has been used to try to close the gaps, so we women have squeaked in, doing things piecemeal, relying on the Commerce Clause, the Equal Pay act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendment, the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. While this has helped, these federal laws are neither comprehensive nor fully inclusive (one has been partially struck down by the Supreme Court for lack of a constitutional foundation). Most critically, none of these laws has the force of a constitutional amendment, which means they do not cover everyone and they can be rolled back at any time by a simple congressional vote. Poof! There goes every form of misogynistic attitude and act against women let loose on us–terrifying.
Moreover, the United States is one of only seven countries in the world (along with Iran, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and two small Pacific Island nations, Palau and Tonga) that have not ratified the United Nations Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women, otherwise known as CEDAW. It’s the international Bill of Rights for women, and it has been signed and ratified by 187 countries, virtually every nation in the world except the U.S.
President Jimmy Carter did sign it in 1980 but it must be ratified by a two thirds vote of the Senate to enter into force, yet apparently the United States can’t (or won’t) ratify it since the ERA has not yet passed.
What will the ERA really do? It will enshrine in the Constitution the value judgment that sex discrimination is wrong, require the federal government and each state to review and revise all laws and official practices to eliminate discrimination based on sex, and ensure that governments do not enact future laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. It will be the basis for recognition of the principle that the homemaker’s role in marriage has economic value and that marriage is a full partnership; it will ensure that non-monetary contributions to a marriage, such as household work and childcare, must be considered when a couple’s household goods are divided as a result of divorce; it will ensure that married women can engage in business freely and dispose of separate or community property on the same basis as married men, and it will give the same rights to a woman as to a man in marital law and allow a married woman to maintain a separate domicile for voting purposes, for passports, for car registration, etc. It will ensure equality of opportunity in public schools, state colleges, and universities, employment training programs of federal, state, or local governments, and in governmental recreation programs.
It will ensure equal opportunity, privileges, and benefits in all aspects of government employment. It will ensure that families of women workers receive the same benefits as families of male workers under the Social Security law, government pension plans, and workers’ compensation laws.
What will the ERA not do? Well, fortunately or unfortunately, it will not destroy the family. Neither will it mandate contraceptive use, or insist on abortions for women who don’t want to have them.
Public opinion charged way ahead of Phyllis Schlafly, because women are already in combat, performing with valor. Public opinion also left Phyllis at the starting gate in approving same-sex marriage. Nor will it require coed bathrooms, although when flying 35,000 feet in the air, people willingly use unisex bathrooms, anyway.
And frankly, I would wager that if you ask the average American woman if she would enjoy being discriminated against while pregnant or in case she might become pregnant, if she liked being battered by a violent partner, if she was content to sacrifice equal education, never even to aspire to equal pay, and would guffaw at the notion of equal sports access, she would get damned cranky. Even a great many American men might share that reaction.
As for being informed that the United States ranked with Iran, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Palau, and Tonga, sharing the humiliated status of not ratifying an international Bill of Rights for the majority of its citizens, again I’d wager that every “red blooded American” would fume with outrage.
I know. We’re tired. The last thing we need is a new cause. But you see, this is an old cause, unfinished. I know that we’re exhausted from COVID and lock-down and climate change crises, and years of Trump and the dreadful aftertaste he leaves in our mouths that still have to swallow some of his Big Lie Republican Party poison. We just want to curl up, squeeze our eyes shut, maybe suck on our thumbs, and listen to a nice fairy tale.
Well, your sunbeam sister here is telling you that the fairy tale will come when all women in this country live free, empowered, and protected by our Constitution. This is one fairy tale we can make come true.
So pick up or order a copy of Jessica Neuwirth’s excellent, thorough, and easily accessible book, and brandish it during Thanksgiving dinner arguments with certain members of that family that has not yet been destroyed. Then drop an email or call your senator, to weigh in as one of what I hope will be many voices saying Now!
Look, if we don’t do it this time, you and I both know we’ll just have to do it all over again, which will really be a drag. Hell is repetition without movement. This is a chance to strike a great blow for democracy in general and for women specifically.
So do it for Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony and the great Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Do it for all those hunger strikers and civilly disobedient girls and women who acted on their outrage. Do it for daughters and granddaughters–and sons and grandsons, too. But most of all, do it for yourselves.
Hell, yes! Put yourself in The Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America.
The post Once More, with Feeling:
The ERA appeared first on Robin Morgan | Author, Activist, Feminist | NYC.
With all the issues we are facing now and have struggled with these past few years, the one that may be the most important is redistricting. If we can't stop gerrymandering and ensure fair redistricting, the next ten years will be as bad, if not worse than, the kind of corruption, the failure of government, and the control of big business we have had to contend with the last four years or more.
It behooves each of us to consider it our responsibility in doing something about it as our HOMEWORK. The following excerpt from the Indivisible website further explains the urgency. I implore you to read it; then go to their website to lay the groundwork for completing your homework assignment.
The process by which congressional district lines are drawn dramatically impacts the fairness of our political process. In 35 states, the state legislature controls how district lines are drawn in a process known as redistricting, which occurs once every decade following the census. Gerrymandering is the practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries in favor of a political party or incumbent.
The redistricting process is already underway. It’s important that we do everything in our power to ensure a fair redistricting process because we will be stuck with the next round of maps for a decade. If we allow state legislatures to gerrymander the maps like they did in 2010, it will lock voters into another decade of unfair and unresponsive representation. So what can we do in our own states?
We can do this if we all do our share.