Controlling Our Communities through Our Bodies

Poetic Speech given at SisterSong Conference Spring 2007
By Cara Page

National Director of the Committee on Women Population and the Environment; she is a queer of color artist, organizer, and healing arts practitioner. A recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship (2000 – 2001) and awarded for her leadership and contributions as an artist and activist for human rights by the National Center for Human Rights & Education. She is founder of Deeper Waters, a company providing reflective and creative practice as tools for organizing and individual and collective transformation. (cara@cwpe.org or deeperwaters@gmail.com)

Blessings Everyone!

I want to give thanks for the land we are standing on and the ancestral burial ground we are most likely standing above. I want to give testimony to those who have lost their bodies and lives in our communities through being commodified, criminalized, sexualized, colonized, and stigmatized.

I dedicate this piece to all of their lives and the lives of the maquiladora workers dying at the borders of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico for profit and drug money wars.

I want to give thanks for our bodies that we are healing, recovering, regenerating and transforming in this work that we do for reproductive justice.

What is our communities relationship to being controlled through our bodies for sex?

For having sex we are criminalized based on who we do it with and how we do it.

For being sexual we are eroticized and objectified.

For some of us getting paid for sex, we are still inappropriately blamed and shamed as committing a crime.

For some of us our bodies are used like artillery, through colonization and war crimes.

And still we are the ones being pathologized…

For even being sexual and having children in our queer bodies, women of color, disabled bodies, trans bodies, immigrant and refugee bodies. Our fertility is targeted as being shameful and unnecessary and we are only seen as breeders instead of parents and families.

For all of us; it is the sum of money, and war, capitalism, slave labor and corruption that we have become commodities of.

By existing in our bodies and loving our erotic selves we are redefining our justice and our power over the sovereignty and the autonomy of our bodies.

We need to be on a need to know basis with our bodies and lives:

Not to rely on state mandates and the medical industrial complex or government to tell us what is wellness and health.

Not to let pass immigrant and refugee law that take over borders and our sovereignty.

We need to be on a NEED to KNOW BASIS ABOUT OUR BODIES & LIVES.

The Committee on Women Population and the Environment (CWPE) is mapping our stories to tell the truth of our bodies, and sexual lives being targeted and controlled. In the ‘What You Need to Know about your Birth Control Campaign’ we are seeking to expose and stop coercive reproductive practices, dangerous contraceptives and contemporary uses of sterilization abuse. Please come to us and tell us your stories of being controlled by cumulative adverse effects of birth control.

Help us get out the word about the rampant and disproportionate use of depo provera on young women, poor women, women with disabilities, women of color, and trans people.

Support us in tracking and stopping the distribution of sterilization pills like Progesterex and Quinacrine on immigrant and refugee women.

Help us oppose the state mandates of Gardasil by Merck and campaign paid state legislators.

Join us in critiquing and changing the re-emergence of new hormonal and invasive birth control procedures that still put our lives at risk.

Help us fight for the justice of our bodies and lives. This is not justice when we are, for generations after generations, still exposed to adverse effects and high risk unethical testing. It will only be justice when we are able to hold our bodies, embrace our bodies, love our bodies, own our bodies and be in our bodies present and whole…

Here at this SisterSong conference we are not just talking about sex, sexuality, gender based violence; we are talking about being pushed into using hormonal contraceptives whether your lesbian, gay, gender queer or straight, being involuntarily forced to use birth control that has our hair falling out, stops our sex drive, gives us depression, and paranoia. We are not only talking about sex as a taboo we are fighting for knowing our bodies and knowing our own geographies.

We need to find the compass to map our own territories and borders of our sex, sexuality, gender, and our erotic.

In talking about sex today we are risking our lives here, by redefining our relationship to our bodies and spirits, perhaps even to love, and (in the words of Audre Lorde, a fierce Caribbean Lesbian Poet) defining our erotic as power. When we are able to be sexual voluntarily and consensually we are able to have the freedom of choosing to receive touch and to give it, to receive energy and life and to give it, to possibly even receive love and transform it.

I want to push past the boundaries of sex, and think about transforming our own vision of our erotic selves inside of this reproductive justice movement; our erotic being defined as political, and spiritual. How can we push back against preconceived notions of our bodies as land to be conquered, or borders to be climbed and mounted? Making these our own geographies where we have the power and the choice to resist the notions of state, communal, and intimate violence on our bodies, and to re-imagine ourselves.

How do we take back images and mythologies of who we are?

We are controlled by being told how to love, who to love, who to parent, and who not to parent.

We are told and controlled what to put inside ourselves by state mandates and privatization of food, water, medical care, and technologies.

We are told not to bleed, not to survive, not to live.

We are shamed to not to be sexual in our own right, not to be powerful in our own right, not to be righteous, sexy and self loving in our vision of ourselves.

We are fed views of only being enslaved bodies, or disenfranchised bodies and displaced bodies. Often seeing ourselves as disembodied from our hearts, minds and intellect, voices, bodies, and spirits

We are blamed for being the root cause of environmental degradation and burdening all natural resources; instead of the top 1% of the wealthier population being accused for the amount of resources they waste or the devastation of war, or toxic waste of weapons.

We are falsely accused of ‘over population’ and being ‘unfit breeders’ based on capitalist, racist assumption with imagery often scape goating women of color and poor people as the reason for: abject poverty, and natural disasters like Katrina and the tsunami.

We are targeted for racist fertility control programs instead of the government being defied for wasting our natural resources; bottling up and selling our water back to us, and re-developing our lands to sell it back to us on toxic waste dumps.

Under the guise of national security we are shamed for having children of color. Blamed by the ‘youth bulge’ mythology that purports terrorism is on the rise because of single mother households, and young males being raised on their own in Africa and the Middle East. Instead of looking at terrorist acts of imperialism, and domestic international militarization on communities of color and developing nations; or the systems of trauma and violence manifested in the prison industrial complex, or the impact of Christian fundamentalism, war, and generational eugenics.

We are vilified for addiction through programs such as Project Prevention (other wise known as Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity CRACK) that uses a national media campaign to compare women of color substance users to puppies ‘breeding addicted babies like litters’. They are giving us $300 incentives in exchange for tubal ligations; instead of seeking recovery and support for the livelihood of our communities.

We are stigmatized by not being able to raise babies in queer and transgender households based on myths and stereotypes of sexual perversion and binary gender norms.

We are punished by welfare reform through family caps and medicaid administering high risk birth control causing cumulative adverse effects to poor women, incarcerated women, women with disabilities and women of color’s bodies.

We continue to be controlled by US and international law and policies that mask state control through false pretenses of ‘gender sensitive’ policies to create NEW women’s prisons (Don’t we have enough already?) that insinuate incarcerated women should have the ‘choice’ to be sterilized----- when it was never a choice to begin with.

And we are commodified as new testing grounds for surrogacy, egg donation and scientific research of genetic contraceptive technologies that are market driven and not tested for our safety and well being.

Yet, amidst all of this craziness we have a compass to navigate; and we have and must find places and spaces of healing, recovery and transformation that look like ourselves.


Our erotic is our power…and our sex and sexuality should be in our control.

Our erotic is our power…and our love should be in our control.

Our erotic is our power…and our erotic should be in our control.

Thank You.


Please do not print or distribute without permission.

Dear Allies,

Thank you for signing on to Justice Now & Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment's Gender Justice Statement Opposing Prison Expansion and Eugenics! This alert gives you an update on the Gender Justice campaign and has several follow up requests.

The good news is this: because of your support, along with over 2,700 people in California's women's prisons and other organizations and individuals across California opposed to AB 76, we've forced the bill author to request more time for the policy committee hearing! AB 76 was originally scheduled for committee hearing this TUES 2/27, so we have ten days until the rescheduled hearing on TUES 3/13 to continue to mobilize and grow opposition to expansion of the women's prisons. Thanks to everyone's hard work, the committee chair is still undecided on how to vote and has not issued a recommendation to committee. This means what we do the week of 3/5 is crucial!

What we need from you now is, in order of importance:

1. ASAP BY WED 3/7: If you haven't already done so, copy and paste the below text of the GJ Statement (you can delete the organizational and individual endorsements except your own) onto your organization's letterhead. Print, sign, and fax the letter to California Assembly Public Safety Committee at (916) 319-3745 and CC Justice Now at (510) 839-7615 (for our records). Apologies for this paper chase; the committee has informed us that they do need letterhead and signatures to verify authenticity.
2. ASAP BY THURS 3/8: If you haven't already done so, call California Assembly Public Safety Committee at (916) 319-3744 to confirm that they've received your AB 76 oppose letter and that your organization will appear under registered opposition in the bill analysis for the hearing 3/13. Once you confirm, shoot me an email to let us know -- thanks!
3. FOR TUES 3/13: Do you have staff, members, or volunteers who can come to testify in Sacramento as a "me too" in opposition to AB 76? Your oppose letters are crucial, and showing up in committee carries that much more weight. If someone from your organization can come, please get in touch with me ASAP. We're holding an info session tentatively WED 3/7 at Justice Now for folks who haven't testified before, about the process, etc. We can also arrange carpools for the day of the hearing.
4. FOR FRI 3/9 and MON 3/12: Do you have staff, members, volunteers, family, friends, who can make calls? If so, have them call Erika Contreras, public safety staffer for Jose Solorio, chair of California's Assembly Public Safety Committee to alert her that your organization has formally submitted an oppose letter to AB 76. Urge Solorio to vote NO on AB 76 and recommend the same to the committee. Solorio's office number is (916) 319-2069 -- ask for Erika. The message is simple (and feel free to adapt based on your work, and why you signed on): "AB 76 is a fraud reform! Rather than helping people in women's prisons, this bill would expand the prison system by adding a new system of mini prisons threatening to harm thousands more women and children. Lead California in the right direction by stopping policy that would track more people into prison and developed by a commission also proposing to offer sterilization to people during labor and delivery as "medically necessary"!"
5. Scroll all the way down for the current list of organizations and individuals who have asked us to submit the GJ Statement on their behalf in opposition to AB 76. Are there folks we should reach out to for the statement? Please forward the GJ Statement (attached as PDF) or let us know who we should be in touch with!

Thanks so much for all your work!

Assembly Member Jose Solorio, Chair
Attention: Nicole Hanson
Assembly Public Safety Committee
LOB Room 111
Sacramento, CA 95814
via facsimile (916) 319-3745

RE: AB 76 OPPOSE

To the Honorable Assembly Member Solorio,

We, the undersigned individuals and organizations committed to justice for women and girls from across the United States, call on legislators, community members, activists and academics to join us in stopping prison expansion and the reinstitutionalization of state-sponsored eugenicist practices defining who is “fit” and “unfit” to reproduce in the United States. Accountability to communities of color and low-income communities demands your opposition to these practices and your commitment to true gender justice.

There is a dangerous new movement in the United States that threatens to radically expand the reach of imprisonment and its harms on women, girls, transgender and gender non-conforming people, and their communities. Using a theory of “gender responsiveness” purportedly aimed at improving women’s lives, this movement seeks to exploit the grave needs of people in women’s prisons and their families in order to foster public support for prison expansion. This “gender responsiveness” movement has launched itself in California with the creation of a “Gender Responsive Strategies Commission” of the state’s corrections department. The commission is pushing to expand the women’s prison system by adding a new system of mini prisons dressed as “community-based” and “alternatives to incarceration”, increasing the number of women’s prison beds in California by up to 40% in two years. Proponents of prison expansion now are exporting this “gender responsive” model across the country.

Over the last few decades, the number of people in women’s prisons has grown by almost 500%, reflecting an increase in imprisonment for “crimes of survival” resulting from poverty. Mass imprisonment has had a devastating impact on women, girls, transgender and gender non-conforming people, and families from communities of color and low-income communities, where people are disproportionately targeted for surveillance and imprisonment. State violence through medical neglect, brutality, and sexual abuse occurs regularly in prison, and the harms of imprisonment have long-term reach by ripping apart entire families and communities.

Today, the stakes of United States’ reliance on imprisonment have been raised. With its “gender responsive” prison expansion plan, California's Gender Responsive Strategies Commission has proposed to affirmatively offer sterilization during labor and delivery as a “necessary” medical procedure.

This exact tactic of affirmatively offering the “choice” of sterilization during the pain and stress of labor was often systematically performed as an involuntary procedure by the United States government for decades. This includes the forced sterilization of over a quarter of indigenous women in the United States in the 1970s and the state campaign resulting in over a third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age losing their reproductive capacity between 1930 and 1970. These are but two examples of the eugenicist programs developed by the United States to control the population growth of communities it deemed unworthy—usually people of color, LGBTIQ people, and people with disabilities—the same programs which informed the eugenicist programs of Nazi Germany. These shameful historical and contemporary practices are ones we cannot afford to forget. Further, it is particularly tragic that such policy would be recommended so soon after California formally apologized for its eugenicist programs impacting 20,000 people in state hospitals in the early part of the 20th century.

It is shocking that sterilization in a coercive environment like prison would even be suggested. Sterilization is a permanent procedure with a eugenicist history; it is precisely because of this history that the federal government and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have adopted regulations prohibiting postpartum sterilizations at times of stress, undo pressure, duress, or undue influence. Sterilizing women in state confinement without access to outside sources of healthcare or information runs afoul to these regulations.

What's worse is that it was recommended by a commission purportedly created to improve women’s lives. When the state denies people in prison access to other elective, “non-necessary” medical treatment such as preventative dental care, reconstructive plastic surgery following gross injury, and special diets for people with serious medical conditions such as diabetes, while affirmatively offering “medically necessary” sterilization to women in labor, its motive is clear.

This eugenicist plan exposes the fraud behind “gender responsiveness” in the criminal legal system—policies coming from this dangerous movement have nothing to do with improving women’s lives. Legislators in California and beyond should know better than to consider returning to a shameful eugenicist past wherein the government sterilized thousands of women of color, low-income women, women with disabilities, and LGBTIQ people and instead stand up for what we all know is right: communities where everyone is worth caring for.

No one who cares about women of color and low-income women, racial justice, or reproductive rights can sit by and allow the “gender responsiveness” movement to spread nationally.

What we need is a true gender justice response to the harms of imprisonment. Prison expansion—even if cloaked in rhetoric proclaiming to improve women’s lives—has everything to do with the gender and reproductive oppression of women, girls, transgender and gender non-conforming people from communities of color and low-income communities.

We must radically reduce the number of people in prison, beginning with a moratorium on new prison construction and staffing. We can then redirect funds saved from prison expansion into the local services that women, girls, and transgender and gender non-conforming people need, including housing, healthcare, education, employment, and community-based responses to interpersonal violence—independent of the criminal legal system. Only then can we have true gender justice.

We call on legislators, community members, activists and academics to join us in stopping prison expansion and the reinstitutionalization of state-sponsored eugenicist practices in the United States. California’s “gender responsive” prison expansion plans in Assembly Bill 76 must be stopped; its Gender Responsive Strategies Commission must be dismantled; and any state employee who fails to oppose policy or practice involving the sterilization of women in prison must be fired. All state and federal legislators must know that “gender responsive” prison expansion and eugenicist strategies are unacceptable anywhere. Accountability to women’s healthcare, reproductive freedom, and racial justice demands nothing less.

Sincerely,

Organizations

• A New Way of Life Reentry Project
• Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice
• Asian Prisoner Support Committee
• The Birth Attendants Prison Doula Project
• Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Hampshire College
• Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment
• Communities Against Rape and Abuse
• Community Reveille Productions
• Creative Interventions
• Critical Resistance Oakland
• Georgians for Choice
• Health Initiatives for Youth
• INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
• Justice Now
• Latinas Organizing for Reproductive Equality
• National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum
• National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
• National Lawyers Guild at Golden Gate University
• New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice
• Queer Progressive Agenda
• Population and Development Program, Hampshire College
• Sewanee Women’s Center
• Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective
• Sylvia Rivera Law Project
• The Catapult Corporation, Inc.
• Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project
• Young Women’s Empowerment Project

Individuals*

• Abby Lippman, Professor, McGill University
• Alegra Edelman
• Alene Smith, ACLU Santa Cruz
• Alexander Lee, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project
• Alexandra Szcepanski, J.D. Candidate, Golden Gate University
• Aline C. Gubrium, Assistant Professor in Public Health, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Alisa Welleck, LGBT Community Center
• Alison Alkon, Graduate Student Instructor, University of California, Davis
• Alka Arora, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington Department of Women’s Studies
• Ama R. Saran, Principal, The Catapult Corporation, Inc.
• Amber Kutka, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Amy Oliver, Population and Development Program, Hampshire College
• Anne Olson
• Angela Davis, Professor of History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Anita Brakman
• Anjali Venna, ACLU Santa Cruz
• Barbara Horn, Women’s Studies, Nassau Community College/SUNY
• Betsy Hartmann, Director, Population and Development Program, Hampshire College
• Beverly Gaston
• Cara Page, National Director, Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment
• Cara Saleska, Director, Community Reveille Productions
• Cember Picconi
• Chandra Waring, University of Connecticut Women’s Center
• Charity Crouse, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Chela Delgado, INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence Bay Area Chapter
• Chloe Montgomery
• Cindy Ibarra, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Crystal Middlestadt
• Deepali Gokhale, Founder, Queer Progressive Agenda
• Diana Nikkel
• Dora Rosen
• Dyana Prince
• Dominique McKinney, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Dulce Garcia
• Elena R. Gutierrez, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois
• Elizabeth Kennedy
• Esperanza Macras, Executive Director, Health Initiatives for Youth
• Ilana Turoff
• Iraya Robles
• Jamia Wilson, Graduate Student, New York University
• Jeffrey Allen Collins
• Jennifer Nelson, University of Redlands
• Gael Guevara, Sylvia Rivera Law Project
• Genevieve Heth
• Genevieve M. Brackins, Florida State University
• Georgia Tyrrell
• Gopal Dayaneni, Communications and Campaign Strategy Consultant
• Heidi Hengel, Co-Chair, Law Students for Choice at Golden Gate University
• Isa Villaflor, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Kimberly Robertson
• Isabel D. Kang, Korean Community Center of the East Bay
• Jade Souza, Labor and Postpartum Doula
• Jalan Washington, Graduate Student, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
• Jamarah Amani
• Jamia Wilson, Graduate Student, New York University
• Jamie D. Brooks, Staff Attorney, The National Health Law Program
• Jamie Roberts, Assistant Public Defender
• Jane Mee Wong
• Jeffery Collins, Oglethorpe University
• Jennifer Nelson, Assistant Professor, University of Redlands
• Joyce Brodsky, ACLU Santa Cruz
• Julia Sudbury, Professor, Mills College Department of Ethnic Studies
• Julia MacMillan
• K.W. Shanley
• Kaila Morris
• Kate Villarreal, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice
• Kathryn Akagi
• Kerrie Lynn, Charis Circle
• Kimberly Robertson
• Lara Estrada
• LaTasha Mayes, Founder, New Voices Pittsburgh: Women of Color for Reproductive Justice
• Latrina Rhinehart, Teacher
• Laura Benson
• Laura Kent-Morning, J.D. Candidate, Golden Gate University
• Laiwa Wu, Smith College
• Lisa Jervis, Founding Editor and Publisher, Bitch Magazine
• Lisa Sun-Hee Park, Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego
• Lisabeth Castro-Smyth
• Loretta Ross, National Coordinator, Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective
• Luke Newton
• Maria Nakae, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice
• Mariela Alburges, Founding Member, Latinas Organizing for Reproductive Equality
• Marlene Fried, Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program, Hampshire College
• Martha Escobar, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, San Diego
• Martha Vanessa Saldivar
• Mateus Chavez
• Mavel Armijo
• Megan Rogers
• Melinda B. Manlin
• Mia Mingus, Co-Executive Director, Georgians for Choice
• Michael A. Manlin
• Michael Flynn, J.D. Candidate, Golden Gate University
• Mimi Kim, Executive Director, Creative Interventions
• Miriam Traore
• Monica Martin, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of California, Davis
• Nancy Ordover, Author, American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism
• Nancy Stoller, Professor of Community Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz
• Nat Smith, Chapter Organizer, Critical Resistance Oakland
• Natalie Sokoloff, Editor, The Criminal Justice System and Women
• Nicole Erny
• Nicole Lencioni
• Nicole Perez
• Olga Euben
• Olga Herndon, Common Ground Athens
• Patricia Willis, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
• Rachael Snow, Sewanee Women’s Center
• Rachel Marcus
• Rita Valenti, Registered Nurse
• ‘Ron Daniella Anglon, Cultural Worker
• Rosa Wong-Chie, Chinatown Community Development
• Ryanna Adams, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Samantha E. Erskine, Legal Momentum: Advancing Women's Rights
• Sara Siegel
• Sarah Paynter, Simon Fraser University
• Seaira Smith
• Sepida Aghdaee, Health Educator, Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center
• Serena Huang, Board Member, Agape Foundation
• Shawna Scott
• Shira Hassan, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
• Simon Knaphus, J.D. Candidate
• Stacy Boyer
• Stephanie Gilloud, Program Director, Project South
• Tema Okun
• Tenayne Hable-Michael
• Travis Upright
• Veronica I. Arreola, Board Member, Chicago Abortion Fund
• Yaya Raiz
• Yvette Cooper
• Zoe Hammer, Northern Arizona University Department of Criminal Justice

*organizational affiliation listed for identification purposes only

CC:

• Erika Contreras, Office of Jose Solorio, Chair, Assembly Public Safety Committee (916) 319-2169
• Gail Delihant, Office of Greg Aghazarian, Vice Chair, Assembly Public Safety Committee (916) 319-2126
• David Yow, Office of Joel Anderson, Assembly Public Safety Committee (916) 319-2177
• Glenda Corcoran, Office of Hector De La Torre, Assembly Public Safety Committee, (916) 319-2150
• Carlos Machado, Office of Mark Leno, Assembly Public Safety Committee (916) 319-2113
• Bill Barnes, Office of Fiona Ma, Assembly Public Safety Committee (916) 319-2112
• Philip Horner, Office of Anthony J. Portantino, Assembly Public Safety Committee, (916) 319-2144

CWPE is going to the U.S. Social Forum.

Are you? Join thousands of activists who will come to share space to learn, inspire, envision and act on what it takes to realize another world.

Source:

New York Times Magazine, April 15, 2005