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Actions Action Alert - CodePink Women for Peace On December 4th, our own Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry were arrested at gun point in Pakistan during their visit to support pro-democracy activists. Upon leaving a student rally at the Lahore Press Club with a group of journalists, their car was pulled off the road. Armed policemen lept out of cars and off motorcycles and surrounded their car, guns drawn. They forced the driver and journalists out, beat passers-by looking at the scene, hijacked the car with Medea and Tighe inside, and raced recklessly through the crowded streets of Lahore to the police station. Medea and Tighe were never charged with anything but they were forced to leave the country on the next flight. Their brutal arrest and deportation was just a glimpse at what activists in Pakistan go through as they struggle to bring democracy to their country. Medea wrote: "In our ten-day visit, we met lawyers who had been brutally beaten and thrown into prisons with rats and murderers. We met judges who had dedicated their lives to the rule of law, only to find themselves unceremoniously thrown off the bench and even physically evicted from their homes. We met students who had been beaten with batons and face expulsion for participating in pro-democracy rallies. We met journalists whose programs had been yanked off the air and tossed from their jobs for criticizing the government. But despite the repression, the lawyers, students and journalists are back out on the streets every day. We left Pakistan shaken by our treatment but in awe of the heroism and courage our Pakistani friends." To read Medea's blogs and find out more about the situation, please click here. The Pakistani activists are calling for the release of all political prisoners, no press censorship, and restoration of the independent judges who Musharraf had fired. Our government should freeze its economic assistance to Pakistan until these conditions are met. Call the Pakistan Desk at the State Department: 202-647-9823. Tell them you condemn the brutal treatment of Pakistani civil society and CODEPINK activists, and demand that the US government suspend any financial aid until the rule of law is restored. You can also sign our petition here. Thank you for helping us promote peace worldwide. With peace and determination, even in the face of brutality, Pledge to have a Peaceful Holiday Season! We hope you have joined our December pledge to have a peaceful holiday season! If not, please sign up now to commit to taking action with our 10 Ways to Have a Peaceful Holiday Season in 2007. This week, we want to highlight two actions from our holiday list -- educating our friends and family, and shopping responsibly.
Action Alert From the Phoenix/Scottsdale Chapter of NOW Joan Fitz-Randolph Here is an ACTION ALERT that we are working on with our NOW chapter: Hello all, Kaysi, our Program Coordinator, has asked me to pass on the following message regarding the uninformative sex ed courses our state currently provides for students. As you may know, the ACLU has been working with a coalition of other organizations to advocate for an **end to the censorship of sex education in our schools**. Every year, the State of Arizona (through the Governor's office) applies for and accepts a Title V grant to support abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that prohibit the distribution of any information on the benefits of contraceptives to prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. **The deadline for this application is September 26th!** We have already had many meetings with the Governor's advisors, and are going to continue having these meetings in the next month. But, we feel that they need to hear a little more directly from their constituents. Here's how you can help: The coalition has agreed to collect 200 individually written letters, especially from teachers, parents, and medical folks, that ask the Governor to stop taking this federal money that restricts the way Arizona can teach sex education. Each organization in the coalition is supposed to **collect 30 letters before September 10th!** As ACLU leads this coalition, **we need to go above and beyond** - the best way to lead, after all, is by example. We want 30 letters by this weekend and even more after that! It doesn't have to be long - a paragraph or two will do, and there is a template attached to get you started. Please send these letters by e-mail (kholman@acluaz.org), fax (602-650-1376), or mail (CHAT c/o ACLU-AZ, PO BOX 17148, Phoenix AZ 85011) as soon as you can, and get all your friends to write letters too! Remember when you're writing, that this is a letter from you, the individual, rather than from ACLU, the organization. Make it personal, make it powerful! Kaysi Holman Thanks! Andy Halterman, Field Coordinator Action Alert Tell Congress: "Stop Denying Emergency Contraception to our Servicewomen!" With over 350,000 women serving in our nation's armed services, it is reprehensible that this administration will not allow them complete access to emergency contraception. You can help. Last year nearly 3,000 military women reported sexual assault while on active duty. Part of the recommended regimen for treating survivors of assault is to inform them about and offer them emergency contraception, yet it is only sporadically available to servicewomen at their base pharmacies and medical facilities in the U.S. and overseas. The Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act (S.1800/H.R.2064), sponsored by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Representative Michael Michaud (D-Maine), requires full access to emergency contraception for servicewomen at all U.S. military health care facilities around the world. Ask your members of Congress to co-sponsor the Compassionate Care for Servicewomen Act which will require that all military health care facilities stock emergency contraception. Tell them to support this health care version of "body armor” which will protect the reproductive health and human rights of women serving our country in the armed forces. Background: Emergency contraception (EC), also known as the morning-after pill (brand name Plan B), is a safe, effective, FDA-approved pharmaceutical. EC is simply a high dose of hormonal birth control pills which can be used to prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse. While EC is sold without prescription for women ages 18 and older in all 50 states, U.S. servicewomen are not guaranteed access to the drug on military bases in our country and abroad, including fields of combat. Resources:
Take Action NOW! CODE PINK 7/26/07 Can't you smell them? The impeaches are ripe and ready, sending their sweet fragrance of justice into the air. Don't you want to take a huge bite and feel that satisfying Constitutional juice drip down your chin? Impeaches are a summer fruit -- they're perfectly in season. Let's dig in while the getting's good -- it's up to the people to bring them to the table in all their organic glory. As political journalist John Nichols said on Bill Moyers' must-see program, Tough Talk on Impeachment, "Thomas Jefferson and others, the founders, suggested that impeachment was an organic process. That information would come out. The people would be horrified. They would tell their representatives in Congress, 'You must act upon this.' Well, the interesting thing is we are well down the track in the organic process. The people are saying it's time. We need some accountability." A group of impeachment activists, including many CODEPINKers, marched with Cindy Sheehan to John Conyers' office on Monday, July 23rd to demand such accountability, to demand that Conyers fulfill his promise to start impeachment proceedings. Read Medea Benjamin's account of the event, which led to the arrest of dozens of peacemakers, here. She ends with this rallying cry: "With the Democratic leadership refusing to rein in an administration run amok, it is crystal clear that we, the people, must uphold the Constitution. People's power, like the kind in evidence today in the normally solemn halls of Congress, is our only hope." The reasons for impeachment continue to mount -- the disastrous war in Iraq, the pardoning of Scooter Libby, the abuse of "executive privilege", the warrantless wiretapping, the indefinite detentions in Guantanamo. If we don't impeach now, the next president will inherit all the expanded powers we have left unchecked. Here are some organic ways you can demand accountability and strengthen the power of the people today:
Thanks for helping us bring these ripe impeaches to the table. Our mouths are watering at the thought of holding the crooks in office accountable for shredding our Constitution. Who knew justice could be so delicious? With peace and hope, P.S. Check out our 9 reasons to Impeach Dick Cheney and hear our CODEPINKers sing our "Impeachment is On the Table" song. On Equal Pay Day, NOW Wants Women to "Get Even" April 25 is Equal Pay Day -- the day when women's average earnings finally catch up with the amount men earned on average in the previous calendar year alone. At our founding in 1966, the National Organization for Women identified the wage gap and its negative impact on women. Forty years later, the gap remains wide and progress has slowed to a crawl. Now, women working full-time, year-round, are paid only about three-quarters as much as men, and African-American women and Latinas receive even less. Women are still not receiving equal pay for equal work, let alone equal pay for work of equal value. According to data from the Department of Labor, women are paid less than men in every occupation for which sufficient information is available -- more than 300 job classifications. This disparity not only affects women's day-to-day spending power; it also affects their retirement by penalizing them through gaps in social security and pensions. In spite of the passage of the Equal Pay Act in 1963, the pay gap remains, having closed by an average of less than half a penny per year since the act was passed. That is why NOW proudly joins with the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project and other women's rights allies in launching WAGE Clubs -- an exciting new nationwide grassroots movement forged to help grow women's wages. WAGE clubs will provide women with a forum where they can discuss wage discrimination and strategize about how to right this wrong. NARAL - WWW.NARALPro-choiceArizona.org
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