Obama Champions Equal Pay

[Originally published at Hyphen on February 4, 2009]

After eight years of disappointment, my nihilistic veneer is cracking. It’s been less than two weeks since Obama’s inauguration but he’s already signed executive orders to close Guantanomano, seal CIA detention centers worldwide, end torture, institute transparency at the highest level of government, and repeal the Global Gag Rule — in effect, making the world a better place. Who knew that pen-wielding could have such superheroic implications? (says the journalist).

Last week, our new pres kept up his hyper-progressive momentum, with the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a bill that restores individuals’ ability to challenge unequal pay.

Upon signing the bill, Obama said:

“I sign this bill for my daughters, and all those who will come after us, because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams and they have opportunities their mothers and grandmothers never could have imagined.”

I found the reference to his daughters particularly moving since black women are one of the lowest paid demographics in the United States, second only to Latino women — which just emphasizes the point that this new law isn’t singularly a flashpoint in women’s history, but a stepping stone for all minority groups in this country.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

I don’t mean to underplay the significance of gender, however. After all, Asian Americans may be the highest paid demographic in the United States (and that’s across occupations, not just in math and science, people), but Asian American women still earn significantly less than their male counterparts — a fact that I have a hard time rationalizing, considering that, for the last 20 years, more women than men having been earning college degrees.

I guess even model minority status doesn’t trump patriarchy.

In any event, I’m finding myself getting incrementally less pessimistic about the state of the world every day that Obama is in office. Let’s hope that he keeps this up, and continues making our country a safe place for people of all demographics.

Good Friday

The Democrats are making my week (and I can’t help but feel a little smug about it, given how many people I know who refused to vote for him because “what difference does it make who’s in the white house?”).

Not only has Obama signed executive orders banning torture, and closing Guantanomo and CIA detention centers abroad  [read Amnesty Intl's Perspective on this], he’s also moved to increase government transparency and ethics.

He is also expected to repeal the Global Gag Rule (a policy that has long crippled health providers across the world, by denying U.S. governemnt funding to NGOs that provide abortion services or counseling) TODAY!! [Take a look at the UN's perspective on my the Global Gag Rule must be repealed].

The Senate hasn’t failed us either, passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a landslide yesterday, 61-36. The bill restores women’s ability to challenge unequal pay. It’s worth noting that every single Republican woman on the Senate voted FOR the bill; just more proof that, regardless of political party, women usually do what’s best for men – and men, regardless of political party, shouldn’t be making decisions about women’s issues.

But my joy over the nation’s new leadership is, unfortunately, tempered by my disgust at Arizona’s [Oh AZ, when will you cease to disappoint?!]:

• Kyl and McCain, of course, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
• Now that our beloved Janet Napolitano has left us for the Department of Homeland Security, Republican lawmakers are trying to roll back university funding provided by her while she was governor – meaning that, after the huge budget hit that ASU took a couple of months ago, we are looking at even larger one [read President Crow's statement] that will likely lay off thousands more employees (undoubtedly including myself), raise tuition and fees dramatically, and maybe even close one of our campuses. [More handiwork of Russell Pearce, mastermind behind last year's attempt to cripple public education in Arizona, Senate Bill 1108].

Two steps forward, one step back, huh?

Fair Trade and Hunger Strikes: My Day in Manila

Mabuhay! I’m in the Phils for a couple of weeks visiting my family for the holidays- and frantically trying to collect some interviews for a paper I’m writing on alternatives to current Philippine trade policy. Because I’m only gonna be here for a short time, I only had one day to spend in Manila for visiting relevant organizations. Fortunately I had a contact from Advocate for Philippine Fair Trade, Inc (APFTI), who freed up his whole day to take me around the city to meet with different groups.

The APFTI staff was wonderfully welcoming. Besides taking the morning to tell me about their programs and projects, they ordered in lunch for us, and spent the afternoon visiting fair trade businesses in Manila with me.
APFTI shares a space with another similar organization called Filipinas Fair Trade Ventures (FFTV). While APFTI provides small-scale producers and businesses with empowerment trainings, product development, market facilitation and coaching, FFTV works on constructing a network of fair trade businesses and organizations in the Philippines.

We met up with the Community Relations Officer from Rags to Riches, an org that is really similar to LOH in many ways – not only was it started with a grant from a social entrepreneurship competition, it’s managing committee consists completely of people under 25 and are less than a year old too! They have partnered with a group of nanays (mothers) from a slum in Quezon City who weave rugs from scrap cloth, and are working to form the women into a cooperative, develop more marketable products using the same recycled materials and weaving technique, and they market and sell the products so the nanays end up getting about a 100 % increase in income. Most of the nanays work from home, but the group we visited works together in an alleys between their houses. Upon some encouragement, I attempted to weave a rug but my work didn’t meet their strict quality control standards )

The two youngest nanays from Rags to Riches cut scrap cloth and weave a rug.

One of the nanays teaches Joy (from APFTI) how to weave.

Next we visited a group of women living in the same area who make beads from old newspapers and magazines. Thanks to APFTI, they are now connected to buyers from all over the world and fill orders for fair trade retailers like 10,000 villages. When we visited them, the 25 women were filling an order for 30,000 decorative bottles wrapped in their paper beads — meaning that each woman has to make 40 bottles per day to meet their deadline. They work out of their homes, as well, with their children nearby.

This woman is from Daet, the same town my mom is from. Here, she's gluing strings of beads she made to a glass bottle that will be shipped to a retailer in the Netherlands.

As we drove around the city, we passed by the House of Representatives where farmers and activist groups were protesting the end of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, which has redistributed farm lands from the government and land-holding elite to small farmers in an effort to alleviate poverty and ensure food security in the country. The protesters were hunger striking at the time I was there (many hadn’t eaten anything for as long as 18 days) because the program was ending before all tenable lands had been redistributed. In addition, a joint resolution that had been introduced into Congress with the intention of “extending” CARP actually privileges wealthy land owners by giving them the option of redistributing their land or not.

Protestors in front of the house of representatives

Two days after I left Manila, the House had passed the unjust Joint Resolution 19 despite the hunger strike and pressure from progressive lawmakers who promptly issued a statement saying:

We have decided not to be a party to the landlord-dominated House of Representatives’ pretension and deception of the Filipino peasantry and the people in extending the bogus Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). [...] This sham joint resolution further strengthens the landlords’ monopoly and control over vast tracts of agricultural lands in the country and will surely lead to the massive eviction of peasants and land-grabbing in the countryside.

It will also open the floodgates to the proliferation of various non-land distribution schemes like the Stock Distribution Option in Hacienda Luisita and the corporative scheme in the Cojuangco-controlled lands in Negros.

We call on the Filipino peasantry to intensify the struggle for genuine land reform in the countryside, in the parliament of the streets, and in Congress.

Junk the pro-landlord and bogus CARP!

Expose and oppose the anti-peasant Joint Resolution extending CARP for six months!

Struggle for genuine agrarian reform! Enact House Bill 3059!

Read more about this at Manila Indymedia.

I have a few more groups to try and visit when I’m back in Manila on Dec. 29 – hopefully some people will be there despite the holidays!

What we have at stake: Why you MUST vote!

In the weeks leading up to this day, I’ve heard a lot of people proudly announce that they will abstain from voting because both candidates are rich/Christian/out of touch — or because So-and-So’s campaign manager is affiliated with some corporate villain or because neither candidate is taking a progressive enough stance on a single issue, or just because people think that – regardless of who’s in office – their lives won’t be affected.

And every time I hear it, I’m newly saddened and offended. Because while *I* have a problem with the fact that both candidates are rich/Christian/out of touch/affiliated with so-and-so/and not progressive enough on a lot of issues I care about — *I* also have a lot at stake personally and politically, depending on who’s in office.

Knowing that, it seems to me that those who say they have nothing at stake are not so much making a statement about their politics, as much as a statement about their privilege.

As a woman, an ethnic minority, a student, a low-income citizen, here are just a few of the things I have at stake:

•    As a woman, I need and use more health care than men do, but lack insurance that covers my needs – ALL of my needs, including birth control and other reproductive health coverage. Even on ASU’s discount health program, my (unpaid) student health fees are at about $900 right now as a result of birth control, HPV vaccinations, women wellness exams, colposcopies and testing – all standard, frequent procedures for women.

•    As a woman, I make up part of the U.S. Labor Bureau’s statistic states that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar paid to men…and yet I see laws protecting against pay discrimination being weakened and my ability to challenge sexual harassment and other job discrimination being threatened.

•    I also see men of color earning significantly less than white men for comparable work – that’s fact: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.t02.htm
•    As a student and low-income citizen, I have seen millionaires get a whopping tax cut of over $130,000 this year while funds were cut for student loans and Medicaid. I’ve seen my financial aid, in the way of federal grants, decrease.

•    As a woman, I have seen my right to determine whether/when/how I should have a child be chipped away slowly.

•    I see women – and specifically women of color – disproportionately underrepresented in Congress, in local governments, in the legal system…this is troubling because time has shown us that women –regardless of political party – are more likely to be progressive on women’s issues than even very liberal men.

I’m sure if everyone took a minute to think about it, they could generate a list very similar to this one, specific to what they personally have at stake here.

ALL of these issues can be addressed within the current system we have, however corrupt or unjust (or lamentably unsocialist) it is. These are all things that have a huge impact on my life and the lives of those around me, and they are all things that our elected officials have the power to change — and have changed in decades past. This isn’t about anarchy, or romanticized revolution or even exalted idealism. It’s about what we deserve, what our fellows deserve, in all of our everyday lives. Revolution can come later. Right now, let’s just try to make sure that people who are here now – those who were born here and those who came here seeking new opportunities are taken care of.

And to those privileged few who still maintain that they are unaffected by politics: The moment when you see your own rights comprised is a really bad time to figure out you had something at stake all along. Own your privilege. Vote for the candidate who is more likely to ensure that everyone else has the same rights you already enjoy!!!

Vote Obama!