Britons flee French island of Guadeloupe as rioters turn on white families

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 3:17 PM on 19th February 2009

Britons are among thousands of tourists fleeing Guadeloupe after full scale urban warfare erupted on the French Caribbean island.

Trouble broke out on the island earlier last month after protesters began rioting over high prices and low wages.

But the situation escalated this week after protesters began turning on rich white families as they demanded an end to colonial control of the economy.

The troubles come at the height of the holiday season, with thousands of mainly British, French and American tourists on the paradise tropical island.

Guadeloupe descends into full-scale urban warfare after demonstrators riot over low wages and white control of the island’s economy

 

Violence has escalated on the Caribbean island as protesters turn their attention to rich white families who they blame for their poor standard of living

Protesters were now targeting ‘all white people’, with the media in mainland France describing the situation as virtual civil war’.

Guadeloupe is a French overseas department ruled directly from Paris, and authorities in France have sent 300 extra riot police to the island in a bid to quell the violence.

Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters are roaming the streets of the capital Point-a-Pitre, looting shops and restaurants, burning cars and vandalising public buildings.

Holiday resorts along the coast have hired extra security to protect tourists, while the airport is jammed with visitors now trying to get out of the country.

Union leader Jacques Bino was the first man to die in the violence when he was caught in crossfire on Tuesday while driving a car near a roadblock manned by armed youths who had opened fire at police.

Six members of the security forces were injured during shoot-outs with the armed youths as they tried to help emergency teams who were trying to save Mr Bino’s life.

Dozens more police and demonstrators have also been hurt in frequent clashes on the capital’s streets – which one newspaper describing it as looking like a battlefield’.

Protesters ransacked shops and torched cars as the island descends into full-scale urban warfare

Most shops, banks, schools and government offices are now shut in Guadeloupe and the neighbouring French tourist island of Martinique – where protests are also mounting.

Guadeloupe’s socialist opposition leader Malikh Boutih said: ‘It is shocking to watch a police force which is almost 100 per cent white confront a population which is 100 per cent black.

‘All the same elements of the riots on mainland France in 2005 are present here.

A man holds a photo to pay tribute to Jacques Bino

‘We don’t have the same concrete buildings, there are palm trees instead, but it’s the same dead-end, the same “no future” for young people, with joblessness and a feeling of isolation.’ 

The first protests began a month ago when the left-wing union coalition, the Collective Against Exploitation, demanded a £180 a month pay increase for low-wage earners. 

President Nicolas Sarkozy sent his minster for overseas departments to the island to meet with union leaders on response to the demands.

But the racial tensions which have been simmering for decades exploded into full-scale rioting, with colonial descendants who own 90 per cent of the wealth becoming the focus of the violence.

The unrest was further aggravated last week when wealthy white landowner Alain Huyghues-Despointes publicly criticised mixed-race marriages and said he preferred to ‘preserve his race’.

In Paris, the violence has provoked divisions in Mr Sarkozy’s cabinet with black minister Rachida Data acknowledging that Guadeloupe suffered from ‘a problem with the distribution of wealth’.

Laetitia Delaprade, spokeswoman at Voyages Antillais, a Paris-based travel agency that specialises in French Caribbean, said: ‘People are scared. No one wants to go there and those that are there want to get out.’

Tourism Authority chief Madeleine de Grandmaison said: ‘Tourism is fragile. People are not only cancelling this week, but also for all the months of February, March and April.

‘We have a huge deficit of tourists ahead of us. At least 10,000 tourists have cancelled vacations in Martinique and Guadeloupe.’

Authorities struggle to contain the anarchy which has swept across the island

A youth carries a machete as trouble flares on the island

The Paris-based Association of Tour Operators has now classified Guadeloupe as a ‘red zone’, meaning it is not endorsing it as a destination.  

A spokesman said: ‘Most holidaymakers to Guadeloupe are British, American and mainland French.

‘None have been hurt yet but there is the threat of violence in the air and staying there no longer feels comfortable.’ 

Guadeloupe’s Tourism Committee said that the main airport had also been temporarily closed yesterday because of a lack of worker, but had now reopened.

A spokesman added: ‘It is very busy. Every flight leaving the island is is full.’

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“These are America’s condemned, who bear a stigma far worse than ‘prisoner.’ These are America’s death row residents: men and women who walk the razor’s edge between half-life and certain death.” —Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live From Death Row

This fall the CEDP is launching a national tour, “Live From Death Row,” featuring the voices of death row prisoners, live from their prison cell. Death sentences de-humanize the condemned, justifying the state-sponsored murder of the poor, the innocent and people of color. Death rows isolate those sentenced to die, denying them human contact and hope for justice. In our “Live From Death Row” tour, the voices of death row prisoners will reach from behind the walls to share their stories of loss, injustice, struggle, and hope for an end to the death penalty. At a time when the national chorus against the death penalty continues to grow, these voices are critical for the movement on the outside.

The tour features death row prisoners speaking live over speaker-phone, including:

• Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, author of numerous books, including My Life in the Party and Live From Death Row
• John Booth-El, on death row in Maryland for 25 years, whose case was heard by the US Supreme Court in 1987
• California death row prisoner Kevin Cooper who came within 3 1/2 hours of being executed before he won a stay of execution
  

  

• Troy Davis, on death row in Georgia, who came within hours of execution last year

• Former death row prisoner and torture victim Stanley Howard, still imprisoned in Illinois, and contributor to the New Abolitionist

• Renaldo Hudson, former Illinois death row prisoner, now sentenced to life without parole
  

*artwork by Renaldo Hudson

• Tennessee death row prisoner Timothy McKinney whose case was recently heard in the TN Criminal Court of Appeals

Other Tour speakers will include Martina Correia, sister of Troy Anthony Davis, Innocent on Georgia’s Death Row; Barbara Becnel, who witnessed the execution of her long-time friend and collaborator California death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams; former death row prisoners Lawrence Hayes and Darby Tillis; Yusef Salaam, CEDP Board Member and exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; Derrel Myers, Board Member of the CEDP and Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, and the father of murder victim JoJo White, and the New York based hip-hop collective, the Welfare Poets.

Endorsers: Amnesty International USA, Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights, Prison Radio, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network, the Welfare Poets, Witness to Innocence

UPCOMING TOUR DATES:

*Pace University, Student Union, 1 Pace Plaza, New York City – February 24, 5:30 – 7:30 pm With Lawrence Hayes and Yusef Salaam

*University of Maryland-Baltimore Law School - March 2, 12 Noon

*City College, NAC Building Ballroom, 137th St. & Amsterdam Ave. - March 10, 7 pm With Lawrence Hayes and Yusef Salaam

*Towson University, Towson, MD - March 10, 6:30 pm With a call-in from John Booth-El on Maryland’s death row and Barbara Becnel

*Mount St. Mary College, Emmitsburg, MD - March 11 With a call-in from Vernon Evans on Maryland’s death row and Barbara Becnel

*Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY - March 17 With Lawrence Hayes

*Peace Center, Albuquerque, NM – March 25

*Rowan College, Glassboro, NJ - March 25 With Lawrence Hayes and Darby Tillis

*University of Texas-Austin - April 15

*Left Forum, New York City - April 17 With Lawrence Hayes

*Atlanta, GA – April

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Chicago’s Pakistani-Americans not on the Obama bandwagon

February 16, 2009

by Sergio Barreto, Chicago Progressive Examiner

Back in the fall of 2007, Sen. Hillary Clinton was ahead of Sen. Barack Obama in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination; Clinton had labeled him as naive on foreign policy, and opinion polls indicated that the label stuck. Under pressure to show some moxie, Obama said that if elected president, he would be willing to launch an attack inside Pakistan without approval from the Pakistani government under certain circumstances: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

The statement landed like a bomb to many Pakistani-Americans, including Chicago’s Ifti Nasim. “First off, we’re against war in Iraq,” said Nasim, who serves his community as editor-in-chief of the Weekly Pakistan News and host of the Sargam Radio program on WSBC. “Then Obama says he would bomb Iran, and now Pakistan. The guy is a warmonger.”

Nasim’s blood pressure soared even higher when he found out a few days later that Obama was coming to his neighborhood for a fundraiser lunch with Pakistani-American and Indian-American leaders. He got wind of the plans just two days before the event, but that gave him enough time to send out a flurry of e-mails and dial his way down his contact list calling for a protest against Obama.

Nasim lets it fly

Then he got a phone call from Tariq Sidiqqi, the Pakistani-born real estate developer who organized the fundraiser. “He said Obama made the comments [about Pakistan] after they invited him. He said, ‘Why don’t you not do the rally and instead come in and talk to him directly?’” Nasim refused to play ball and called 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore, asking him to make sure police would cooperate with the rally.

The morning of Aug. 7 came along, and about 60 protesters started gathering across the street from Mysore Woodlands restaurant around 11 a.m.; Obama was whisked in through the back of the venue, avoiding the sound of “Obama, hypocrite” chants and diatribes spewed into a loudspeaker by Nasim and others — not to mention the sight of signs such as “Sen. Obama, Good speaker. But no clue what to speak.”

Shortly after noon, when the fundraiser was scheduled to start, the protesters spotted Ald. Moore about to walk into the restaurant and started to chant his name as waved his right hand wildly in the air, entreating the alderman to come across the street.  Moore waved at the crowd as he opened the restaurant door, then held it open for a moments, searching for a way to reconcile his political loyalties with the demands of his agitated constituents.

Moore crossed the street, shook hands and made small talk with entrepreneur Arshad “Sony” Javid, who was holding a “War is not the answer sign.”  And then he was surrounded. “We love you, Joe,” Nasim blurted out through the loudspeaker that was soon in the alderman’s face. “We know you’re anti-war. Can you say a few words?”

Ald. Moore on the spot

Looking about as comfortable as a man who’d just had his toes crunched into shoes three sizes too small, Moore tried to give the people what they wanted. “Well, I can only speak for myself, I can’t speak for anyone else. I’ve been a long opponent of using war as a solution to our problems …”  The crowd liked what they heard; there were loud cheers. Then they implored Moore not to go into the restaurant. He went, sheepishly — and two days later, his e-mail list sent out a request for volunteers to circulate nominating petitions for Obama and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-10th).

Despite the failure to get Moore on his side, the rally left Nasim in good spirits. “The Obama protest was very successful,” he said. “It was on the news all over the world, including Pakistan. We’re making it clear that we’re not giving anyone an easy pass because they say they’re progressive. They have to show it.”

Chicago’s Pakistani-Americans not on the Obama bandwagon, Part 2

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American Indian activist Robideau dies at 61

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 19, 2009

PORTLAND, Ore. — Robert Robideau, an American Indian activist who was acquitted of killing two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout in South Dakota, has died. He was 61.

Robideau had been living in Barcelona, Spain, where authorities said that his death Tuesday may have been related to seizures caused by shrapnel left in his head from an accidental explosion.

Robideau, a Portland native, was the cousin of Leonard Peltier and a member of the American Indian Movement who had occupied the reservation town of Wounded Knee, S.D., for 71 days in 1973, two years before the shootout.

His son, Michael, told The Oregonian that Robideau attended Roosevelt High School and received a degree in cultural anthropology from Portland State University.

The newspaper said that Robideau left for South Dakota in the early 1970s with several family members, including Peltier, to join AIM and its protests against poverty and corruption on tribal reservations.

In June 1975, two FBI agents followed a man wanted in the theft of a pair of cowboy boots onto the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The agents soon came under heavy rifle fire and were killed.

The FBI identified Peltier as a suspect in the shooting and placed him on their most wanted list.

Months later, Robideau was driving Peltier’s station wagon through Kansas with other AIM members when ammunition in the car accidentally exploded.

Robideau, who was seriously injured, was arrested and tried for the FBI agent killings, but was acquitted.

Peltier was arrested by Oregon State Police troopers while driving through Oregon and later convicted of the FBI shootings. He is serving two life sentences.

Robideau appeared in “Incident at Oglala,” the 1992 documentary about the Pine Ridge shootings narrated by actor Robert Redford and directed by Michael Apted.

Robideau later became a painter, concentrating on tribal themes. He led a committee seeking a pardon for Peltier and served as director of the American Indian Movement Museum in Barcelona, which displayed some of his paintings.

He is survived by his wife, Pilar of Barcelona, Spain; and sons, Michael of Portland and Bobby of South Dakota.

——

Information from: The Oregonian, www.oregonlive.com

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Maximum Support to the Women and Water

ZACF

On Thursday 12 February 2009 members of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front participated in a protest-march held in Johannesburg as part of the Coalition Against Water Privatisation’s Women and Water Campaign. The protest went from Library Gardens in central Johannesburg, a historic meeting point for protests in the city, to Mayor Amos Masondo’s office in Braamfontein, near Constitution Hill. The march was to demand that Masondo withdraw his appeal of the pro-poor Johannesburg High Court ruling of Judge Tsoka, which ruled that the forced installation of pre-paid water meters and the prepayment water system is unlawful and unconstitutional, and that City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg Water provide residents of poor townships with 50 litres of free water per person per day.

The Women and Water Campaign is an important campaign seeking to highlight the fact that, although all poor people in Southern Africa suffer from a shortage of water due to lack of basic service delivery and the privatisation of water, which makes it unaffordable to most, this suffering is felt most acutely by poor women. Living as we do in a sexist society it is almost always women that have to do all the cooking, cleaning and laundry. All of which they need water for. It is therefore women who have to walk long distances to collect water from rivers and queue, sometimes for hours, at communal taps. It is women who risk being attacked and raped when they have to go out alone, sometimes in the morning before the sun is up or late into the evening, to get water so they can prepare meals for their boyfriends, husbands and children. As women are very often the only breadwinners in families in South Africa, often employed as domestic workers, it is they who feel the double-edged oppression not only of having to work for a wage, but of having to do all the unpaid housework at home which, in the majority-white suburbs where they work, they are paid – albeit too little – to do. This is made worse by the fact that water privatisation means they can only get a measly 25 litres per person per day, far less than adequate, and have to go to great lengths to get water if they cannot afford to pay for more than that.

Water, as we know, is life. Without clean and adequate drinking water we could not survive. The privatisation of water, therefore, is the privatisation of life. It is an attempt to commodify human existence, and those who seek to turn human life into a commodity should face the full wrath of the people. The privatisation of water, most painfully experienced by poor women, is intolerable. So too is the oppression and exploitation of women. To have a strong working class, one that can stand up to those that are trying to install pre-paid water meters in poor communities and make us pay for the right to life, we need to be united. Men and women need to stand together against privatisation, cut-offs and the installation of pre-paids and demand free water, education and basic services for the poor. This is why it is vital that we afford the Women and Water Campaign the maximum support it deserves. Because it is not just a campaign for the freedom and dignity of women, as important as that is to the freedom and dignity of all, it is a campaign for the freedom to live.

Unfortunately the march to Masondo did not receive this maximum support, and the turnout was less than desirable.

An interesting aspect of this protest was that the vast majority were women. One bus was women only. The usual male speakers and singers remained in the background throughout the protest. There was no male speaker or main singer, and even at the march men remained in the background. They were there to show their support for women in struggle, but they knew that this struggle should be led by the women themselves.

The memorandum was to be handed over to Masondo on dirty old panties, and many women were wearing these old panties over their trousers. Others had pads stuck on their clothes.

Once the protest arrived at the Mayor’s office everyone lined up in front of the building and shouted for Masondo to come out. Struggle songs were sung and speeches made, some of them very radical. Women spoke against pre-paid water meters and water cut-offs, accusing Masondo of being a criminal because women don’t have enough water for sanitation. The dirty panties were a symbol of not having enough water to wash them. Another reason why Masondo is a criminal is because so many babies die every day because of bad sanitation. After a while a woman, Shirley Mguli from the petition’s office came out, not Masondo, to accept the memorandum she thought would be given to her. After more fiery speeches, in which the police and Masondo were ridiculed, many women took off the panties they wore over their trousers or had in their pockets and threw them, all at the same time, at the police and Mguli. There was no memorandum, only dirty panties. A strong statement of poor women.

Altogether it was a very strong message that was sent at this protest, showing how important women are in the struggle against privatisation and for service delivery. Let the struggle not stop there. Protest-marches and delivering memorandums can be a good way to raise awareness and to give the authorities an ultimatum, but the only way to win the struggle for service delivery and dignity is through popular mass direct action and confrontation.

Maximum support to the Women and Water Campaign! Destroy the meters and enjoy free water for all!

Source: A-infos

ainfos.ca/en

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anonymous communique (translation):

“Autonomous individuals for the abolition of tauricide claimed acts of sabotage and vandalism during the February 1st march at the ‘monumental’ Plaza de Toros México:

- The painting of a police van with the words Torturers!, at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the inquisitorial plaza.

- Muriatic acid bombs were thrown inside it, which shocked the accomplices of bullfighting.

- Bulbs of red paint and oil were thrown on the walls.

- Rotten fruit was thrown at people who were prepared to enjoy themselves at the cost of the humiliating death of an animal.

- And finally a couple of reporters from the mainstream media of misinformation were bathed in urine.

We hit the walls of the plazas de toros!”

———————————————-

anonymous communique (translation):

“During the demonstration on February 5 (the date on which the bullfighters celebrate the anniversary of the largest bullring in Mexico) various direct action groups demonstrated that the radical movement for total liberation is growing day by day.

The riots began when police attempted to arrest one of the activists; after getting away from the police ring, the walls of the arena were stained with red, black, green and other colors of paint thrown in glass bottles; the windshields of bullfighter’s cars were smashed by stones and sticks; ‘Shitty speciesists!’ was painted on one of the arena’s great walls; the walls of the square shook with the roar of a large homemade bomb, excrement was hurled at a barbecue that was being held by animal torture sympathizers; one of those anthrocentric bastards was physically attacked; there was a small clash between activists and the repressive police force; much later in the bullfighting museum their ‘beautiful’ decorations were attacked, smelly rotten fruit was thrown into the building and stones were thrown at one of the imbeciles dominating the earth and its inhabitants.

At the conclusion of the demonstration, 13 activists had been arrested and deprived of their liberty, so it is because of this that in this communique we express our full solidarity and support.

Freedom to people arrested for animal liberation!

Fire to the police, the bullrings and the prisons, along with their jailers!”

———————————————-

Communiques reported to Bite Back Magazine – directaction.info

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By Tamara K. Nopper
February 14, 2009

I have been preoccupied by the recent news of music artist Chris Brown’s arrest for making criminal threats against a woman, presumably his then-girlfriend, music artist Rihanna. Chalk up my interest in the issue to both my love of popular culture and my concerns about domestic violence and violence against women.

As a woman who has been thrown up against a wall by my neck and punched in the stomach by a boyfriend, I am acutely aware of what it’s like to survive domestic violence and to have to negotiate all of the assumptions about how women “cause” violence against them. As such, I am of course frustrated and saddened by claims made that Rihanna probably “instigated” the violence against her.

This claim is being promoted on websites and blogs by a variety of Brown’s supporters. As many Brown fans point out, we don’t know what happened just yet. Indeed, we don’t know if violence was perpetrated by Brown and if so, who he victimized, even though unidentified police sources have claimed it was Rihanna. Yet many commentaries suggest that we can not pass judgment on Brown but that we can bet that Rihanna “instigated” the violence.

For example, in the following comment, left on the Los Angeles Times blog, “Whitney” states: “I’M STILL GOING TO SUPPORT CHRIS BROWN UNTIL THE END. I DONT CARE IF HE DID IT OR NOT. OBVIOUSLY SHE PROVOKED HIM AND EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES SO, IM NOT GOING TO DOWN TALK HIM NOR TRY TO BRING HIM DOWN LIKE THE WHITE MEDIA IS GOING TO. HE’S STILL A KID. KIDS MAKE DUMB CHOICES EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. GIVE THE KID A BREAK IT’S HIS FIRST TIME IN HIS 4 YEAR CAREER.”

There is so much to unpack here but Whitney’s comment is troubling for some key reasons. First, it suggests that “racial justice” (here operationalized as defending Black men against racist media) is more important than violence against Black women by Black men. While we should always be vigilant of how Black men are treated by the media and criminal justice system, Whitney’s comment suggests that supporting Black women is not an act of racial justice. It reminds me of how, as film maker and feminist activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons points out in an interview, challenging violence against Black women is often thrown under the bus if a Black man needs to be “saved” from racist media interpretations. As Simmons puts it: “I feel as a community we’re always trying to stop a lynching. And as a result we can’t even sort out the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, because we’re just trying to save somebody, almost always a Black man, from being lynched, metaphorically, by the media or even literally, by the state/white supremacy.”

Second, Whitney’s comment suggests male-identification will persist even if it’s revealed that Brown did commit violence. While Whitney is willing to acknowledge that she/he/they doesn’t know if Brown perpetrated the act, somehow it is “obvious” that Rihanna provoked Brown. A few comments down from Whitney’s on the L.A. Times blog, another echoes this sentiment. Referencing Brown’s purported experiences witnessing his (now former) step-father’s violence against his mother, “Benitz Lapor” argues: “Poor Chris. His life wasn’t easy and I understand his step dad beat his Mom which he hated. Clearly, Chris has some very deep scars that he thought he had a handle on, but doesn’t. He will need to get help so he will learn how to control his temper (if he did hit her). I’ll bet Rhianna was the one who hit him first and then he flashes back to childhood, and before you know it Rhianna has a black eye and a scratch on her face. I blame both parties for letting an argument escalate to that point. Sometime it’s best to just close your mouth(Rhianna). Takes two to argue. Plus, if you can’t get along then you shouldn’t be together in the first place.”

I am not surprised by these conclusions, but they are nevertheless disturbing because they treat violence against women as a “spectacle,” i.e., as some aberrant aspect of U.S. society instead of endemic to it. Thus, we are expected to search for a reason that will “explain” specific incidents of violence perpetrated by men, rather than consider how violence against women–from both men and women– is routine and normalized in U.S. society through physical and verbal acts of aggression as well as popular culture, expressions of religious ideology, and every day language (think of the term “wife beater” as short hand for a white tank top undershirt or the glorification of pimping when complimenting expressions of masculinity). Yet while men suspected of violence against women are often treated by male-identified supporters (such as Whitney and Lapor) as individuals whose lives and behaviors need to be put into “context,” the women who accuse them of, and are perhaps victims of their violence are treated as part of a suspect class of people that can not be trusted, even if the men are found to have committed violence. Indeed, in the case of Lapor, we need to condemn violence against women if it might cause “flashbacks” for other men but not when these men commit acts of violence against other women. Such gestures end up treating the actual violence against women as a side issue. They also allow people to separate the norms of U.S. society, including the racism that Whitney is concerned about, from the reality that the U.S. is a patriarchal society that has extreme hostility against women of all races, but particularly Black women, despite its ostentatious “reverence” for body parts that are associated with females and categories of women that are viewed as appropriately supportive of men, i.e., mothers and “wifey.”

Finally, Whitney’s emphasis of Brown’s youth is striking for a couple of reasons. First, while we don’t know Whitney’s age, the overall comment combines a paternal defense against “untrustworthy” women with a sexualized protection of Brown that is often embedded in fan’s support of young male performers. Second, Whitney’s phrase “he’s still a kid” ignores that violence is committed by male teenagers against adult women and men. It also suggests that domestic violence between teenagers is not a problem because such violence is an adult issue.

A 2006 report by CQ Researcher on domestic violence challenges this assumption. As the report states (and this, like most statistics regarding domestic violence, is surely an undercount), “teen-dating violence touches more than 30 percent of young men and women.” Cited in the document, a survey of over 650 teenagers found that 25 percent of the boys and 31 percent of the girls reported knowing other young people who had been “punched, kicked, pushed, slapped, or choked” and that “nearly one-in-three teens knows friends and peers who were assaulted by a boyfriend or girlfriend.” Other studies found similar results. For example, the Department of Justice reports that teen violence in dating relationships is a problem for both boys and girls: “According to the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, approximately 10 percent of adolescents nationwide reported being the victim of physical violence at the hands of a romantic partner during the previous year. . . As for perpetration rates, there are currently no nationwide estimates for who does the abusing, and state estimates vary significantly. . . Interestingly, the rates of reported victimization versus perpetration in the state were similar for boys and girls. However, when it comes to severe teen dating violence — including sexual and physical assault — girls were disproportionately the victims.” While many studies may emphasize heterosexual relationships, violence between gay couples and lesbian couples is also, of course, a problem.

I am sure my friends who work with high school students in their non-profit work or teaching can speak to some of these patterns. While I know many women who have been raped and/or beaten by men, in terms of knowing teenagers involved in such incidents, a distant teenage relative of mine was beating up his girlfriend, to the point where his mother called the girlfriend’s parents and told them not to let their daughter date her son, who, years later, was charged with attempted rape of a family member of the mother of his child. As a college professor, I often teach students who are in their late teens. In my years of teaching I have met many young women students who were around Rihanna’s age who were dealing with violence committed by men. For example, one student had to take out a restraining order against the father of her son, another was being stalked by a man (who came to her apartment and attempted to rape her and continued to stalk her even after she pressed charges), and another was being stalked by a person (who she suspected was her ex-boyfriend) who was constantly vandalizing her apartment and car and her mother’s car. Not only are these situations disturbing, but so too are the types of comments that many students make when we address the issues of sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and violence against women in my sociology courses. Many young people have a deep hostility to women who claim they experience domestic violence and are not afraid to express it quite openly in some of the most cruel and careless ways. In the process, they apparently don’t think that some of their peers in the class have experienced violence and have probably perpetrated it.

Overall, it is unclear what will happen with the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation. Some suggest that the “positive” aspect of it is that it forces a conversation of domestic violence into the public sphere. The obvious issue is that we did not have to wait for two celebrities to find themselves in this situation for us to have such an “opportunity.” The other is that if Rihanna (or whomever) did experience violence, she will have the scrutiny and hostility targeted toward women survivors put on full blast and will most probably be condemned by many for bringing down a “successful” Black man. If this situation must be turned into a learning moment, hopefully the issues of violence among young people as well as the deep hostility to women that has informed the defenses of Brown will be put on the table for discussion.

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1st Zine of the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities
Primera Revista Zine de las Comunidades Autonomas Revolucionarias

Download it Here (English PDF)

Pueden Conseguirla Aqui (Espanol JPEG):
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/02/224696.php

Correction Cop Watch LA Free Number is 1 (877) 8 NO COPS
Correccion el numero gratuito de Cop Watch LA es: 1 (877) 8 NO COPS

revolutionaryautonomouscommunities.blogspot.com/

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