Posts from — June 2009

From the First Lady’s address to the first graduating class of UC Merced:

…And as the students who helped build this school, I ask you, make your legacy a lasting one.  Dream big, think broadly about your life, and please make giving back to your community a part of that vision.  Take the same hope and optimism, the hard work and tenacity that brought you to this point, and carry that with you for the rest of your life in whatever you choose to do.  Each and every single day, some young person is out there changing the ways — the world in ways both big and small. [Read more →]

The New York Times has an excellent series on maternal mortality in Tanzania, that touches on several problems common across Africa.

1. Death in Birth: Where Life’s Start is a Deadly Risk
2. The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs
3. Fragile Tanzanian Orphans Get Help After Mothers Die
And this photography series

Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.  Most of the deaths are preventable, with basic obstetrical care. Tanzania, with roughly 13,000 deaths annually, has neither the best nor the worst record in Africa. Although it is politically stable, it is also one of the world’s poorest countries, suffering from almost every problem that contributes to high maternal death rates — shortages of doctors, nurses, drugs, equipment, roads and transportation. [Read more →]

..In the suburbs, girls’ participation in sports is so commonplace that in many communities, the conversation has shifted from concerns over equal access to worries that some girls are playing too much. But the revolution in girls’ sports has largely bypassed the nation’s cities, where public school districts short on money often view sports as a luxury rather than an entitlement. [Read more →]

by Linda Holmes

Dear Pixar,

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I’m not complaining; I’m asking. I’m asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

Read the full letter at NPR: Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees.

San Jose Pride is this weekend. Look for the SJSU Float contingent!. Details here

The 5th annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival (QWOCFF)
is a 3-day Film Festival, featuring 35 films in 4 screening programs,
the majority of which are brand-new QWOCMAP films!

This year’s Festival includes a focus on Queer Women of Color and Immigration, four Q&A sessions with filmmakers after the films, and a Community Convening and panel about queer immigration.

QWOCMAP Film Festival is eco-friendly – we recycle and compost for the duration of our three-day Queer Women of Color Film Festival. Please bring your REFILLABLE WATER BOTTLE with you to the Festival and help us be even more eco-friendly!

Admission is FREE to all film screenings.
PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY TO ENSURE SEATING!

Details here – Sponsored by the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project.

By Jacques Steinberg
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/harvard/

Harvard University will endow a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies, a position that, it believes, will be the first endowed, named chair in the subject at an American college [Read more →]

Rachel Maddow on the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller:

There’s an anti-abortion terrorist movement in the United States that operates relatively openly.  They advocate and their members commit acts of violence including murder against Americans who are not breaking the law, who are engaged in protected legal activity on  American soil.  These acts of violence are politically motivated.  They are designed to change American policies and to terrorize Americans.

They have succeeded in making providing abortion services to American women so dangerous, so intimidating, that there are only a handful of doctors in the entire country who provide late-term abortions, as Dr. Tiller did, abortions late in pregnancy.

In other words, this terrorism…is working.  Violence as a political strategy is working to make abortion so unsafe for doctors, that they are unwilling to bear the risk of performing it….so women can’t actually get one, regardless of whether or not it’s legal.

It’s the same outcome if abortion had been outlawed. They’re winning.  What’s the strategy to stop them?

See full commentary at Rachel Maddow website

From an American Psychological Association Press Release. An interesting study, though they don’t really discuss how/why it is that “colorblindness” is not a productive strategy for addressing racial inequality.

White people—including children as young as 10—may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this “colorblind” approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.

These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School….. [Read more →]