[NYC] Mystery Donor Gives $5M to Hunter College and other colleges run by women

suggested by Brittany, re-posted from NY Post

So kick ass! Now I only hope they use the designated scholarship money for students who really need it (versus as a recruitment tool for Ivy Leaguers)... --ianna.

Mystery Donor Gives $5M to Hunter College
Associated Press

A mystery donor has given millions to at least 14 colleges run by women.

Hunter College said Monday it received $5 million in the fall and realized only recently that more than a dozen other colleges nationwide had received similar donations.

Hunter College President Jennifer Raab says the money "couldn't have come at a better time."

The City University of New York school says the donor earmarked $4 million for scholarships. The school will use the rest to update its library and give students more group study space.

The gift is Hunter College's largest-ever donation.

At least 13 other schools with women presidents have received anonymous donations ranging from $1 million to $10 million in the last two months. The gifts total at least $74.5 million so far.

[West Virginia] The Art of Being a Neighbor

re-posted from NPR: Weekend Edition/This I Believe

The Art of Being a Neighbor
By Eve Birch, 04/12/09

I used to believe in the American dream that meant a job, a mortgage, cable, credit, warranties, success. I wanted it and worked toward it like everyone else, all of us separately chasing the same thing.

One year, through a series of unhappy events, it all fell apart. I found myself homeless and alone. I had my truck and $56.

I scoured the countryside for someplace I could rent for the cheapest possible amount. I came upon a shack in an isolated hollow, four miles up a winding mountain road over the Potomac River in West Virginia.

It was abandoned, full of broken glass and rubbish. When I pried off the plywood over a window and climbed in, I found something I could put my hands to. I hadn't been alone for 25 years. I was scared, but I hoped the hard work would distract and heal me.

I found the owner and rented the place for $50 a month. I took a bedroll, a broom, rope, a gun and cooking gear, and cleared a corner to camp in while I worked.

The locals knew nothing about me. But slowly, they started teaching me the art of being a neighbor. They dropped off blankets, candles, tools and canned deer meat, and they began sticking around to chat. They'd ask if I wanted to meet cousin Albie or go fishing, maybe get drunk some night. They started to teach me a belief in a different American dream — not the one of individual achievement but one of neighborliness.

Men would stop by with wild berries, ice cream, truck parts and bullets to see if I was up for courting. I wasn't, but they were civil anyway. The women on that mountain worked harder than any I'd ever met. They taught me the value of a whetstone to sharpen my knives, how to store food in the creek and keep it cold and safe. I learned to keep enough for an extra plate for company.

What I had believed in, all those things I thought were the necessary accouterments for a civilized life, were nonexistent in this place. Up on the mountain, my most valuable possessions were my relationships with my neighbors.

After four years in that hollow, I moved back into town. I saw that a lot of people were having a really hard time, losing their jobs and homes. With the help of a real estate broker I chatted up at the grocery store, I managed to rent a big enough house to take in a handful of people.

It's four of us now, but over time I've had nine come in and move on to other places from here. We'd all be in shelters if we hadn't banded together.

The American dream I believe in now is a shared one. It's not so much about what I can get for myself; it's about how we can all get by together.

[India] Pink Sari Gang

suggested by Gaurav, re-posted from BittenandBound.com

Pink Sari Gang: Gulabi Gang, by Andrea 11/24/08

The Pink Sari Gang, or Gulabi (pink) Gang, is a group of several hundred vigilante women in India, committed to protecting women against social malpractice, corrupt administrators, and abusive husbands.

A revolutionary movement in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state’s Banda area, the Gulabi Gang is striking fear in the hearts of wrongdoers and earning the grudging respect of officials.

Leader Sampat Pal Devi, wife of an ice cream vendor, mother of five children, and a former government health worker, says, “we are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice.”

Two years after giving themselves a name and uniform, the women in the Pink Sari Gang have thrashed men who have abandoned or beaten their wives and unearthed corruption in the distribution of grain to the poor.

Shunning political parties and NGOs, because “they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us,” Sampat Pal Devi says, “Nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and the police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law in our hands. At other times, we prefer to shame the wrongdoers.”

According to 25-year-old gang member Aarti Devi, “Men used to think the law didn’t apply to them but we are forcing a huge change.”

See this link for more photos and video: http://www.bittenandbound.com/2008/11/24/pink-sari-gang-gulabi-gang-photos-and-video/

[Vancouver] Women Athletes Challenge Gender Barrier in 2010 Olympics

re-posted from NPR.org

Gender Barrier Persists at Vancouver Olympics

By Howard Berkes, 12/29/08

All Things Considered · No man or woman has flown farther than American Lindsey Van off the K90 ski jump built for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Van holds the distance record at the K90 hill in Whistler, British Columbia.

But Van and other women contend they are barred from the 2010 games simply because they're women.

Ski jumping is the last Winter Olympics sport closed to women. So Van and nine other women from six countries are suing to get into the 2010 games. They argue that the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games is violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by staging ski jumping competition that excludes women.

"[It's] just pretty painful to watch [men] I grew up training with be able to have that opportunity and me sit there knowing that I don't even have that opportunity because I'm not a male," says Van, of Park City, Utah, who has been ski jumping since she was 7. "It's depressing to tell young girls that you don't have the same opportunities just because they're girls."

The Technical Mark

"If the men are going to jump the women have to jump. And if the women aren't going to jump then the men can't either," says DeeDee Corradini, who served as the mayor of Salt Lake City during its bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics and is president of Women's Ski Jumping USA.

Corradini describes the legal reasoning behind the ski jumpers' lawsuit, which is now before the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

"VANOC is a quasi-governmental entity. If you look at the composition of their board [and] if you look at who's funding all of the venues in the Olympic Games, it's the federal and the provincial and local governments," Corradini contends. "And therefore, under Canadian law, [VANOC] is subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits discrimination."

VANOC declined interview requests for this story, but its officials have blamed the International Olympic Committee, which voted two years ago to keep women out of the Vancouver ski jumping competition.

"We have, obviously, put the IOC in a position that they could, if they'd made a decision to put this on the program, we would have attempted to accommodate it," said VANOC CEO John Furlong in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in May. "But the frustration is it's not our area of jurisdiction at all."

That is not a credible argument to Margot Young, a professor of law at the University of British Columbia.

"The games have to be run according to Canadian law when they're on Canadian territory," Young asserts. "I don't think VANOC can say 'Well, the International Olympic Committee made us treat women unequally.' So, I think the IOC and what it believes is essentially irrelevant if the event's being held in Canada."

The International Olympic Committee did not respond to interview requests for this story. But IOC President Jacques Rogge spoke to the CBC during a visit to Vancouver in May.

"To become an Olympic sport, a sport must be widely practiced around the world, universal, and have a big appeal," Rogge explained. "This is not the case for women's ski jumping. So there is no discrimination whatsoever. They did not pass the technical mark. That will change in the future. We have no doubt about that. But today they're not ready for it."

Corradini says Rogge and other IOC members are grossly misinformed. She says more than 80 women from 14 countries were competing at the elite ski jumping level when the IOC's executive board voted in 2006 to keep women's ski jumping off the 2010 schedule.

"If you look at the facts of ski jumping versus other sports that we should be compared to, which are luge, skeleton, bobsleigh and ski cross, in particular, we have more women and more nations competing at the elite level than any of those sports did when they were admitted," Corradini adds.

'They're Not Good Enough'

The IOC's rejection angers Anita DeFrantz, one of the few women on the IOC and chairwoman of the committee's Women and Sports Commission. She's an African-American and former Olympian herself who has tried to open more Olympic sports to women. And she doesn't understand why her fellow IOC members won't include women in the Olympic ski jumping competition.

"The words I heard were, 'They're not good enough,' " DeFrantz recalls. "I've heard that before. I understand discrimination very well. And this is a nearly textbook case of discrimination."

Some believe the IOC chose the new Olympic sport of ski cross for the 2010 games, and passed over women's ski jumping, because ski cross will attract younger television viewers enticed by so-called extreme sports. Television is the biggest generator of revenue for the Olympics, and young people immersed in extreme sports are coveted by television sponsors and Olympic organizers.

Ski jumpers consider their sport one of the original extreme sports. And it's long been part of the Olympics. Men have been jumping in the games since the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix-Mont Blanc in 1924.

DeFrantz notes that some women used to jump disguised as men, and some have dominated the sport, sometimes jumping farther than men. In fact, American women do so well in international competition that the U.S. Ski Jumping Team does not include any men.

None of that may matter to the judge at the Supreme Court of British Columbia, who will hear arguments in the lawsuit in April. The case will come down to interpretations of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and whether it applies to VANOC and the 2010 Olympics, says law professor Margot Young.

"When it comes to organizations like VANOC, it's just not clear," Young says, despite government funding, government control and the staging of the Olympics as government policy. "The case law is contradictory and unpredictable. … It's not a slam-dunk. It's a complex argument. … I wouldn't bet on the result myself."

DeFrantz is usually reserved when she speaks of the IOC, where she has represented the United States since 1986. "It makes me feel embarrassed that our organization, which is built on mutual respect and fair play, is doing this to a group of women," DeFrantz admits. "It's just wrong."

Ski jumper Van is hoping the IOC or the Supreme Court of British Columbia will still open the 2010 competition to women, so she can fly into history as one of the first women to break the final gender barrier in the Winter Olympics. Van is 24 now, and 2010 is her last chance at the Olympics.

"I grew up expecting to be in [the] '98 [Olympics]," Van recalls. "And then 2002. And then 2006. So, the expectation's always been there. The dream's always been there. But there's no reality to that dream at this point."

[Pakistan] Dancers Protest Ban of Mujra

re-posted from Independent.co.uk

By Patrick Cockburn and Issam Ahmed

Dancing Girls of Lahore Strike Taliban Law

LAHORE -- The dancing girls of Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan, are on strike in protest against the tide of Talibanisation that is threatening to destroy an art form that has flourished since the Mughal empire.

The strike, which is supported by the theatres where they perform, was sparked by the decision of Lahore High Court last month to ban the Mujra, the graceful and elaborate dance first developed in the Mughal courts 400 years ago, on the grounds that it is too sexually explicit.

"The Mujra by its very nature is supposed to be a seductive dance," says Badar Alam, a cultural expert. He recalls that attempts were made to ban it during the 1980s. "Gradually, it returned to commercial theatre, mostly by paying off officials. The question remains: does the government have the right to engage in moral policing?"

The government and High Court in particular have no doubt about their right to do just that. They have tried to encourage "family friendly" dances, but once-packed theatres are now near empty, despite dropping their prices from 300 rupees to 25 rupees a seat.

In the face of the strike and the lack of enthusiasm for alternative entertainment, the court has suspended its ban. It has, however, ordered dancers to cover their necks with shawls and wear shoes (they used to dance barefoot but the court deemed that too erotic). "Do they expect girls to dance in a burkha?" asks stage manager Jalal Mehmoud. "Mujra has been going on for so many years it is part of our culture."

The dancers are also distressed by the situation. "Theatre needs dance like food needs water," says Rabia, a dancer and actress. "Some girls were making up to 15,000 rupees in one night. Hundreds of these girls from poorer backgrounds will be out of the work if the crowds do not come back."

The ban on dancing is a symptom of a more dangerous trend in Pakistani society. "If the government engages in moral policing," says Badar Alam, "it gives vigilantes licence to do the same. It fuels intolerance and de-secularisation by violence and intimidation and opens the door to extreme Jihadi Islamic movements."

Over the past few months, there has been a crescendo of violence in support of fundamentalist morality in Lahore. In the middle-class Garhi Shahu neighbourhood, young men and women used to meet in fruit-juice bars. There was nothing particularly salacious going on but, two months ago, three bombs exploded among them, killing one man and wounding others.

One bomb went off in a juice bar called Disco, where Mohammed Zubair Khan said he doubted if his customers would ever come back. "Everybody's frightened," said Saeed Ahmed Afiz, the owner of a another bar. Asked what he thought of those who had ruined his business, he declared surprisingly: "They were not terrorists because they did not kill anybody. They did the right thing." Asked about the man who died, Mr Afiz added unfeelingly: "Maybe he was just here to see the show."

A striking feature of those suffering persecution from fundamentalists is not their fear but their acceptance that, if they had encouraged immorality, they deserved punishment. The main centre for selling CDs and DVDs in Lahore is Hall Road. But when one of the tough-looking shopkeepers received a threatening letter accusing him and others of selling risqué films, the mood was not one of defiance, but of submission. The traders heaped up the forbidden DVDs and CDs in the middle of Hall Road and made a giant bonfire. "I swear we sell no pornography," said one nervously.

[California] Couple Marching from LA to SF to Repeal Prop 8

re-posted from Indybay.org

by Revoke 8!

Couple Marching Through California to Revoke Prop 8

Valerie Paget and Tracie Jones, a Los Angeles couple affected by the passage of Proposition 8, will arrive in Santa Cruz Tuesday on a march through California to demonstrate their conviction that the California Supreme Court should revoke Prop 8. They are marching from West Hollywood Park to the California Supreme Court in San Francisco. In coordination with Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign, they will deliver a petition to revoke Prop 8 that has been signed by over 250,000 people.

As they march, Valerie and Tracie are carrying their message through every community along their route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, collecting signatures, rallying communities, and gathering personal letters and video testimonies from Californians to bring to the courthouse.

"We will carry the demands for full equality from our streets to the steps of the California Supreme Court, gathering support as we go," they said.

"Valerie and Tracie's walk to the Supreme Court will move Californians to recognize the importance of equal marriage rights. Their march across California will help to sustain the tremendous grassroots movement for marriage equality that we've seen in our communities," said Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign.

The public is invited to walk with Valerie and Tracie along this historic 450-mile, five week march for equal rights. Supporters can encourage Valerie and Tracie and follow their progress online at http://www.Revoke8.blogspot.com and http://www.Revoke8.com.

ABOUT Tracie & Valerie - Valerie and Tracie met in 1998 while working at a group home for disadvantaged children. They soon fell in love and exchanged wedding rings. They filed for Domestic Partnership in 2001 to ensure some basic legal recognition and protection. Then, on their 10-year anniversary, in April 2008, they were married in Vancouver, Canada.

On May 15th, the California Supreme Court ruled that marriage between same sex couples is protected by our state constitution, declaring Tracie and Valerie’s marriage valid and recognized by the state of California. Immediately, the threat of Prop 8 became apparent. On May 18th, the couple began working in their community to defeat Prop 8, donating their time through Election Day.

Although devastated by the passage of Prop 8, which invalidates their marriage in California, Valerie and Tracie are inspired by the groundswell of protest against Prop 8. With the status of their own marriage hanging in the balance, they have vowed to fight this discrimination and continue the battle for equal rights. Taking leaves of absence from their jobs, they will bring the message of Equal Rights all the way to the State Supreme Courthouse in San Francisco …on foot.

[Paraguay] New Tactics: Women Crucified for Housing Demands

I was very hesitant to post this article on a "good news" blog but I decided to for several reasons, which I thought you should know. This article is not being posted because women allowed themselves to be crucified but because of the clear innovation in symbolic tactics and engagement with consciousness. It is significant that this action was performed in a clear majority (90%) Catholic country, as opposed to an atheist country or one with a lower ratio, etc. It is important to remember that not all good news is uncomplicated. For example, my friend Gaurav said, Obama's election.

Long live critical analysis.

re-posted from Huffingtonpost.com


Women Nailed To Crosses In Paraguay To Demand Housing

ASUNCION, Paraguay -- Two women let themselves be crucified on wooden crosses and carried around Paraguay's capital on Friday as part of citywide protests demanding President Fernando Lugo grant funds for low-income housing.

Members of various homeless organizations nailed the women's hands and bound their feet to crosses in a plaza to pressure the Social Action Secretariat to give them $1 million to purchase land and build homes.

The women were identified as Laura Raquel Ramirez, 37, and Naida Villaverde, 41. One of them fainted from the heat and pain, said Blas Vera, one of the movement's leaders.

Several men heaved the crosses on their shoulders and bore the women through Asuncion, joining dozens of other protesters.

Nearly 90% of Paraguay's 6 million citizens are Roman Catholic.

Social Action head Pablino Caceres said the funds will be made available, but the agency will control them.

"The resources are there, but we will administer them," Caceres said. "We are changing the assistance model. In previous governments the leaders of the homeless groups controlled the money, but not now."

Leftist ex-bishop Fernando Lugo assumed the presidency in August, ending 61 years of single-party rule. He promises to end the extreme poverty in Paraguay, but some of his supporters say he is not acting fast enough.