Recent Opinion Pieces
Ku Klux Klan, Then and Now
SayHerName: Police Killings of Black Women
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Police Violence and Police Unions
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Anti-Woman Terrorism
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Some Hopeful News for a New Year
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Race, Class, and Women's Bodies: Historical Legacies
Thoughts on the Movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel
I’ve been immersed in discussions about the campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel (BDS) for its occupation and repressive rule over Palestinians, and many have become quite heated, even though almost all my friends are critical of Israeli policy. The heat comes from shrillness and exaggeration on both sides—calling Israel fascist, calling BDS supporters anti-Semites, for example. I want to offer here the perspective of a scholar of social movements. I see BDS as a strategy for applying global pressure in the hopes of changing Israeli policy, a strategy that I support because it is having an impact. In fact, it is the only nonviolent strategy that has had an impact thus far. Here are two arguments for supporting it—and for making exceptions and trying something else as well, something that may be more productive for those of us in the US.
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No Shame: Abortion as an Honorable and Child-Centered Choice
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Immigrant Women and Violence
Three true stories, with names and locations changed: Brazilian immigrant Virginia da Loma worked for a cleaning service in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The owner of the service came to find her one day as she was cleaning an empty house and got her to submit to his rape by threatening to fire her if she said no. Claudia Gomez’ boss at the vegetable packing plant where she worked in Florida began by telling her how attractive she was, that he simply couldn’t resist her; he repeatedly gave her tasks that put her alone with him. Then he threatened not only to fire her if she didn’t submit, but also to turn her in to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for finding and deporting undocumented immigrants.) When Angela Feliz, who cuts and packs lettuce in California, refused her foreman’s advances, he began harassing her by referring to her publicly as a dyke.
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Innocent “Womenandchildren”
“Collateral Damage” in the Israeli War on Gaza
When the Bosnian Serb Army attacked in Srebrenica in 1995, they murdered all the men and older boys but not the women and children. The Army claimed that because they had not murdered innocent women and children, they were in compliance with international standards. Today, journalists who show any sympathy to the Palestinian cause tend to feature the awful casualty toll among “innocent women and children,” while the Israelis, defending their bombing, blame Hamas for women’s and children’s deaths. Political scientist Cynthia Enloe has referred to this common equation of “innocence” with women and children by coining the term “womenandchildren” as a single merged concept. This line of thinking and writing has been repeated over and over in reporting on the Israeli Gaza war. It is as if the greatest wrong done by the Israelis has been the “collateral damage” among womenandchildren.
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