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Now that the Democrats have chosen a nominee, it's time to focus on reversing the damage done by the Supreme Court.

Corrupted by years of dark money, political attacks, and propaganda, the United States' democratic institutions aren't holding, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the protracted lead-up to the 2024 election. In the last couple weeks alone, Donald Trump was shot at, Hillbilly Elegy’s JD Vance was announced as his running mate at the Republican National Convention, and President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection after a geriatric debate performance led to weeks of bullying from media, donors, and party leadership, all demanding he drop out. What's worse, all of it happened under the backdrop of the extremist, unaccountable Supreme Court taking a sledgehammer to rule of law right before summer recess.

Despite a bleak election year thus far, there’s been a surge of new hope and enthusiasm amongst Democrats after Biden immediately endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination, spurring a flurry of endorsements from party leaders and potential opponents, and a record-setting $81 million spike in small donations in the first 24 hours. By Monday night, Harris had garnered enough delegates to clinch the nomination—and thank fuck she did. Contested conventions are good for ratings, but historically, they’re also election losers, and it was far from obvious we’d avoid the chaos of a mini-primary, which was supported by heavy hitters like Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg, and the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards, plus a slate of pundits with inflated egos and billionaires with their own personal preferences. (Obama has since given Harris his endorsement.)

Safely on the other side, the party will inevitably face questions about how this went down come November, but for now, time is precious, and the looming, ongoing threat to democracy remains. Biden's withdrawal was, for all the rifts it created, the right move, and seemingly, a calculated one. For a man alleged to be incompetent, he deftly outplayed Republicans and the media by timing his announcement after the RNC and Sunday morning talk shows, depriving them of a splashy platform to respond. In one afternoon, he orchestrated his succession, neutralized GOP and media attacks against him, and reinforced the most fundamental of democratic norms—the peaceful transition of power. Coup-loving Republicans are furious and scrambling, having wasted their convention trashing a candidate that's no longer running. They have also recommitted to a convicted felon who, with Biden out of the race, is now the oldest candidate in history, with zero plans for how to face an energetic, younger, Black and South Asian woman who intends to run on protecting abortion. Trump, hilariously, has asked for his money back.

It comes as a huge relief that the public infighting among Democrats is largely over, because it allows us to focus on the bigger story of the past few weeks, which is the far-right entrenching itself via the judiciary and gutting the state from within. What the extremist hacks on the Supreme Court have accomplished at the behest of their fascist mega-donors this summer has virtually remade our government overnight: The Federalist Society just delivered a judicial coup, and didn't even need the executive branch to do it.

Thankfully, there's fresh hope now that with a Harris candidacy, various factions on the left and center will align, as France just did, to rebuke the far-right. But even if the Democrats win in November, and Republicans don't start a civil war in response, it’ll be a long road to undo all the damage that’s been done in the last couple months alone. The decisions in Trump v. United States and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in particular, are two of the worst opinions in Supreme Court history—which is wild considering the Roberts era already has so many doozies to choose from, like Dobbs, Shelby v. Holder, and Citizens United, along with more recent disgraces like Grants Pass v. Johnson or Snyder v. United States.

I've been raising the alarm about plutocrat-funded Christian nationalism for close to a decade, but there's no satisfaction in being right, only sorrow that we're here. Political instability is an eater of dreams and a threat to people's lives. The uncertainty of this moment is overwhelming, the losses too large to digest, and it's created a rush to prophesize and pronounce definitive outcomes. Deniers, doomers, and accelerationists have all entered the chat, and all of them risk self-fulfillment. Our only option is to form a unified front against them and get to work.

In Trump v. United States, a case most legal experts thought the Court would dismiss outright, the far-right majority delivered their delayed decision on Trump's coup, inventing presidential immunity from criminal liability for official acts, while retaining the right to decide what counts as "official." It's a self-destructive move that undermines the most basic tenet of rule of law, which is that everyone is subject to it. The majority's reasoning focused entirely on hypotheticals, deliberately ignoring the very real January 6th coup attempt that precipitated the charges, and greasing the way for more far-right political violence, particularly as trigger-happy Republicans warn in advance of the 2024 election that they won't accept a loss.

Years spent reading Soviet legal documents prepared me for the smug, dishonest, means-to-an-end mindfuck that is Trump v. US, though we don't have to look outside American legal tradition for our own authoritarianism. The United States is infamous for treating people as property and corporations as people: We're seeing the active legacies of the Fugitive Slave Act, Jim Crow, and the Comstock Act in the GOP's endless voter suppression efforts, attempts to ban abortion medication by mail, and tracking of people seeking abortions across state lines. And still, Trump v. US lowers the bar. The opinion is a grotesque power grab that fundamentally upends the Constitution by magically bestowing criminal immunity on a criminal president, effectively making it legal for a (Republican) president to stay in power by any means “officially” necessary. (Richard "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal" Nixon was ahead of his time.)

It's a curious feature of American exceptionalism that headlines on the decision jumped immediately to monarchy, not autocracy. It suggests a romanticism about domestic authoritarianism as something British we defeated in the 18th century—a period piece rather than a contemporary dystopia. In reality, we're poised to elect an autocrat for the second time, not crown a king or queen for the first.

As I've written about before, the US brand of white Christian fascism is both unique and on trend: Demonizing migrants, trapping women, and persecuting the LGBTQ community is the glue binding the global anti-rights movement. Republicans have been open about their desire to emulate far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban's success at purging Hungarian universities, media, and business sectors. The people who wrote Project 2025, the 900-page Heritage Foundation manual for dismantling the country, looked explicitly to other autocrats for strategic advice on how to better end democracy.

King George is certainly self-referential, but he's far less relevant to our situation than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress to a standing ovation with Elon Musk as his guest, Orban visiting Mar a Lago earlier this month, or Jared Kushner promoting ethnic cleansing while drooling over Gaza's "waterfront property." President Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov are openly celebrating Trump's pick of JD Vance for VP because Vance has loudly advocated for letting Russia devour Ukraine and, relatedly, letting husbands abuse their wives. Former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Sherrilyn Ifill recently posted on Threads about the formative influence of apartheid South Africa on the grievance-driven tech billionaires Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and, again, Elon Musk—all of whom have thrown in for Trump, not that Musk's support lasted long. Trump himself has been the least subtle of all, shouting out President Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un at rallies, and ominously referencing Nazi talking points about Weimar Germany's inflation in his acceptance speech at the RNC.

The influence of oligarchs like Harlon Crow and Peter Thiel—who personally nurtured Vance—is especially insidious within the judiciary. If the immunity case demonstrates the Supreme Court's open alliance with Trump, they similarly delivered for their billionaire backers with the end of Chevron deference last month and the corruption of our federal regulatory system. Loper Bright covers less sexy subject matter, but its impact on the functioning of our government is arguably as tremendous as the immunity case. Decided in 1984, Chevron created a separation of powers between the judiciary and federal agencies, who employ thousands of career civil servants to administer the vast majority of federal rules that affect our lives, whether related to food and drug safety, air quality, or any number of rules that prevent corporations from preying on people. Under Chevron, courts deferred to agency interpretations of statutes for policymaking purposes. Now, thanks to Loper Bright, the judiciary has the last word on even the most minute agency rules, and any schmuck with enough money can sue and ask a judge with limited staff and zero technical expertise to veto federal regulation. If you think the US is scammy now, just wait.

The challenges we face from Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo and Justice Sam Alito wouldn’t feel so daunting if corporate media weren't also on their side. David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, the parent company to CNN, was recently quoted saying that what mattered most in this election is that the next president is friendly to business. "We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate," Zaslav told reporters in Sun Valley, Idaho. How embarrassingly short-sighted to throw away the rule of law, and to treat press freedom as a nice to have, not a necessity. Does he expect to survive autocracy intact?

The hypocrisy is not new. At the same time that Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to another 16 years in Russian prison for doing his job, the WSJ editorial board was copying Putin's playbook and accusing Democrats who pointed out Trump's dictatorial ambitions of being responsible for his getting shot by a fellow Republican. It's hard to trust that the same corporate media that has soft-pedaled fascism and developed tunnel vision a la Hillary's emails over Biden's debate performance won't also find new ways to tear down Harris, who will face horrifying levels of misogynoir and disinformation that, for obvious reasons, other candidates will not. Media coverage of Harris’ campaign launch has so far been positive, but already there are rumblings of people who "just don't like her for some reason," not to mention a birther campaign, reviving all the greatest hits from Clinton ‘16 and Obama ‘08 and ‘12, respectively. The conservative mediasphere is taking the cheapest shots, accusing her of being a DEI candidate, of sleeping her way to the top, and, horror of all horrors, of laughing too much.

It's generally bad news for democracy when the far-right captures essential institutions, staffs them with loyalists, and threatens political violence, all while aligning with big business and media for profit. Republicans are also itching to make legal trouble over any changes to the ballot, with Rep. Andy Ogles filing articles of impeachment against Harris, and Speaker Mike Johnson threatening to sue to keep Biden in the race. Considering the switch happened before the convention and before state deadlines have passed, this seems to be mostly posturing. That said, there's still real concern that any case arising from this election ends up before a corrupt SCOTUS, giving them another opportunity to hand down a breathtakingly bad decision. The last thing we need is another Bush v. Gore, but on steroids.

So what can be done? A lot, actually. The goal in drawing attention to rising fascism has always been to catalyze opposition, precisely because resignation is so tempting. Harris, who is already walking off to Beyonce's "FREEDOM" at her rallies, has provided a much needed contrast to the gerontocracy, and is generating the excitement American voters look for. Her campaign has moved quickly to calling out her opponents as creepy losers, delighting Democrats who've longed for the party to stop pulling their punches. And she’s gaining momentum. The Divine Nine Black frats and sororities are mobilizing for their AKA sister. Singer Charli XCX tweeted "Kamala IS brat." Zoom's Indian American COO, Aparna Bawa, made it possible for 44,000 Black women to join an organizing call the night Harris announced. Young people are signing up to vote for the first time, and the campaign has already seen an influx of over 100,000 volunteers. With Harris set to secure her party’s nomination at the DNC, the future feels less grim today, which is good because the fight is so far from over.

The Democrats’ sudden return to life brings to mind Miracle Max from The Princess Bride: "There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead… Mostly dead is slightly alive." The boring truth is: Harris can win if people vote for her. She has a lot going for her as the incumbent VP, and as the prosecutor taking on an aging gangster, and as a woman running on reproductive rights against a rapist. Crucially, she and Biden both take court reform and expansion seriously—a necessity for us reversing the damage wrought by an extremist Supreme Court, and for preventing it from happening again in the future. She can also take credit for Biden's strong legislative record, low unemployment, rising wages, and record-low violent crime rates—conditions that get incumbent administrations re-elected.

Harris is, like any political candidate, an imperfect one; her prosecutorial record has earned her the leftist badge of "imperialist cop," and uncommitted voters who’d been boycotting Biden for Gaza have vocalized outrage with Harris following her meeting with Netanyahu this week. Others are concerned that she's been set up to fail via the so-called "glass cliff," where women are only given responsibility in a crisis after men have made a mess of things. Because we are still a democracy, voters can and should be able to vocalize these concerns without fear, and to hold our representatives to account. But as even some of her critics have pointed out, Harris has the chance to not just be a strong candidate, but a genuinely decent one, simply by addressing voters’ concerns directly, righting the wrongs she can, calling out the far-right’s bullshit, and delivering on her campaign’s promises in order to preserve our democracy. Our job is to support her in these efforts and get us through November. Then we can fall apart.

The far-right is taking a victory lap, but it’s premature. Republicans are overplaying their hand after their court victories, with the Heritage Foundation president announcing a second American revolution and threatening violence unless the left rolls over. How quickly the creators of Project 2025 forget how much they’ve relied on plausible deniability, credulous institutionalists, and media normalization to get this far. As Harris said of Project 2025 in Milwaukee last week, "Can you believe they put that in writing?"

Let them mistake arrogance for invincibility. Abortion bans have been destroying Republicans electorally, including in red states. Trump is now saddled with an unpopular, brutish, 900-page manifesto that is penetrating popular consciousness across generations—on TV, social media, in conversation—and a thirsty VP "with the integrity of a Boeing 737" whose primary contribution to his campaign is more white male resentment and unpopular views on ending no-fault divorce. Even Appalachia doesn't claim him. As Kentucky Governor and VP hopeful Andy Beshear said of Vance, "He ain't from here." And let's never forget that Trump needed a new VP because he tried to have the last one murdered. Even Kim Jong Un won't be his friend. Nobody especially cared that Trump almost got assassinated, either.

The bigger issue is not that Trump is poised to win, but that Republicans are unwilling to lose. They've already shown their support for coups and stochastic terror, and they've captured the court. If we're going to have any shot at undoing their grip and saving what's left, court reform and expansion have to be the highest priority. And to have any hope of that, we have to vote our people in while we still have the chance, because with democracy on the line, the right to vote itself is on the ballot, too. So is bodily autonomy, and LGBTQ+ rights, and concealed carry laws, and Obamacare, and countless other policies that people depend on to live. We already exist in a violently racist status quo: Sonya Massey's murder by police is a heavy reminder that Black people and other communities of color are especially vulnerable to state violence. A second Trump administration would further politicize the Justice Department to target prosecutors who investigate police abuse. Trump himself is personally promising to deport 20 million people who are "poisoning" the country via expulsions and camps.

When I saw Masha Gessen speak several months ago, they described people lining up for Alexei Navalny's funeral with power banks, water, and food, expecting to be arrested for expressing condolences. It was a bleak reminder that things can always be worse. We don't have to end up that way, but that requires us to not be fucking stupid about dictatorship. Look at French voters who turned against Marine Le Pen once the threat of a far-right government sunk in. Last year in Poland, voters ousted the Law and Justice party and began trying to heal the damage, including plans to restore independence to a stacked judiciary. It's harder to rebuild the rule of law once it's gone, so it's essential we prevent further backsliding. It’s doable for us to stave off fascism and reinforce our democracy, but only if we can keep the presidency, regain the House, and expand the Supreme Court. We have no choice but to aim big—and to demand that our representatives deliver on what they’ve promised.

So gather your courage, your rage, your despair, and channel it into something for your community. Don't be scared of good news, or to feel hopeful about the future. It's in imagining better that we grow and move forward. Get active locally when national politics feel like too much. Sign people up to vote, knock on doors, and tell your people about the dangers of Project 2025. We have momentum against the threat of autocracy. Let's get this done.

[post_title] => The United States v. The Rule of Law [post_excerpt] => Now that the Democrats have chosen a nominee, it's time to focus on reversing the damage done by the Supreme Court. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => kamala-harris-2024-election-nominee-democrats-republicans-supreme-court-rule-of-law-trump-loper-bright-autocracy-democracy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7086 [menu_order] => 52 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

July 29, 2024August 28, 2024

The United States v. The Rule of Law

by Anna Lind-Guzik

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7073 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2024-07-18 21:17:51 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-07-18 21:17:51 [post_content] =>

The short answer is yes—but it hasn't proven easy.

When the all-organic frozen food company Amy’s Kitchen went into the fast food business in 2015, it seemed like the industry was primed for a major shift.

That year, McDonald’s had given customers the option to have a salad instead of fries with their meals for the first time, even adding a baby kale and spinach blend to its menu. The “signs point to a sea change in consumer demands when it comes to fast food,” read one article in Civil Eats—and Amy’s’ founders, husband and wife team Andy and Rachel Berliner, were ready for it.

“We’ve just reached a tipping point in a whole new level of interest in eating better,” Andy Berliner told TIME. In July, they opened their first Amy’s Drive-Thru location in Rohnert Park, California, a small city north of San Francisco. From the start, they sought to do things differently. Workers made $12 an hour—at the time, well above the state minimum wage of $9 an hour, the standard pay for starting workers at most California fast food restaurants. The way Amy’s purchased ingredients for its all-vegetarian menu was different from the big fast food chains, as well: The restaurant’s suppliers were the same small and medium-scale organic farmers they worked with on the frozen food side of the business.

By 2021, Amy’s had opened two more drive-thru locations in Northern California, with plans to open 25 to 30 more in California, Oregon, and Colorado over the next five years. The idea was to show everyone from Wall Street to McDonald’s that organic, plant-based fast food could be profitable, and that people accustomed to eating mass-produced beef burgers would gladly eat an alternative made from fresh vegetables as long as it was convenient, tasty, and cost around the same price.

But then, last February, less than two years after announcing its expansion plans, Amy’s closed a store near Sacramento, then another near Los Angeles. Their entire drive-thru business seemed to be scaling back. To some, it seemed as though Amy’s’ grand ambitions for a more ethical fast food chain had been mislaid. This wasn’t exactly the case—but looking under the hood reveals some of the challenges that come with creating an industry more focused on the wellbeing of its employees and suppliers, instead of just perpetual growth.

Perched next to a freeway exit right alongside an In-N-Out and a Chik-fil-A, Amy’s’ flagship drive-thru in Rohnert Park looks a lot like its fast food peers, but with a few differences, like a plant-covered “living roof,” a water tower to collect rainwater, and a dining room and patio filled with recycled wood furniture. At 4,000 square feet, it’s a big restaurant, but even at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon—typically one of the slowest hours of the week for any fast food joint—there were quite a few people dining in, and even more lined up in their cars outside to grab a bite from the drive-thru window.

“When we first opened, there were cars up the street,” Rachel Berliner told me as she and Amy’s president Paul Schiefer showed me around. The customers aren’t overflowing like they were on that first weekend, she explains, but there are plenty still coming in.

With her long white hair and grandmotherly demeanor, Berliner looks nothing like the typical fast food executive, for whom a family farm—let alone the farmers themselves—would be about as familiar as the surface of the moon. But over the last few decades, she’s grown used to standing out. When Rachel and her husband started Amy’s Kitchen in 1987, organic food wasn’t a consumer trend, much less a standard enshrined in federal law. But they believed access to it was important, and as certified organic food—meaning food grown without pesticides or genetically-modified seeds, among other criteria—boomed, the Northern California company spearheaded its entrance into grocery and convenience stores across the US with a line of vegetarian pizzas, burritos, and frozen entrees, now sold in nearly 50,000 stores in twelve countries.

After more than two decades in business, expanding into fast food wasn’t necessarily an obvious choice. But for the socially-minded pair, it made sense for the same reasons frozen food had years earlier: It was a way to bring the virtues of vegetarian organic food to the masses by giving it to them in a form that was familiar and accessible.

That sense of familiarity permeates throughout Amy’s’ flagship store. Inside the kitchen, flatscreen monitors list the current orders for staff, just like they would at any fast food restaurant. All the way in the back, there’s a walk-in freezer for storing patties and buns, made in the same factories where Amy’s makes its frozen foods. A long row of flat-top griddles churns out these “burger” patties, made from organic soy, bulgur wheat, oats, and a few kinds of vegetables, and “chik’n” patties, made mostly from soy. Salads are made to order. Whereas most fast food kitchens receive their lettuce prewashed and chopped, each of Amy’s’ now three drive-thru locations receives daily produce deliveries, complete with whole heads of lettuce, which staff tear and wash by hand each morning—a characteristically old-fashioned way of preparing food in an otherwise high-tech environment.

In an industry that’s constantly looking for ways to speed up service, and pushing staff to their limits in the process, Amy’s’ often low-tech but labor-intensive methods stand out. So does its commitment to paying staff above the industry standard: While a statewide boost to the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 an hour threw most fast food companies into a panic earlier this year, the move hardly affected Amy’s, which had been paying workers above minimum wage since its inception. (Better pay is also one reason why Amy’s says it retains employees at a higher rate than the industry at large.)

But what is most radical about Amy’s compared to its fast food peers is its model for sourcing raw materials. Instead of buying ingredients from the massive, intermediary corporations that dominate the food system in the way virtually any fast food company does today, it works directly with the farmers that have long supplied its frozen food business: For its burger alone, Amy’s says it sources ingredients from 30 farmers.

“We’re definitely deeply embedded in the small, mid-size farming network as a long-term partner,” Schiefer said on our kitchen tour. “A lot of these farms… want someone who’s stable and consistent and who will be there for each crop cycle.”

A supply network built on small-scale farmers is unique within the fast food industry today, but it’s not entirely without precedent. When it started in Southern California shortly after the Second World War, even McDonald’s sourced most of its beef from local ranchers. In the early 1950s, the company went as far as experimenting with raising cattle itself on a ranch in Grass Valley, California—a fact it proudly announced to customers.

By the 1960s, McDonald’s had locations all over the country and relied on a network of up to 200 different beef producers to supply them. But with the advent of cryogenic freezing technology at the end of the decade, the deliverable range of beef increased dramatically. Instead of buying from a network of small producers, McDonald’s went to a handful of big ones, like OSI, JBS, and Tyson Foods, to provide the vast majority of its beef, both in the US and around the world. Since they dominated the industry, these companies could keep their prices down, usually to the detriment of the ranchers who raised the cattle.

While different fast food companies have adopted their own tactics over the years, the biggest have all turned to the same playbook, pressuring suppliers to grow exponentially alongside them to keep costs down, or risk getting replaced. It’s an arrangement that’s given fast food companies massive influence over the food system. But some environmentalists have argued that such concentrated power isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it comes to sustainability. Writing for Wired, Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg say a concerted effort by fast food companies to bring meat alternatives to the masses, for example, would lower the cost of fake meat and “propel research and development that could slash GHGs and improve [their] nutritional profile.”

“Unlike foodies’ delusional nostalgic agrarianism and unrealistic calls to ‘deindustrializ[e] and decentraliz[e] the American food system,’” the pair added, “pragmatism tells us that big problems demand big solutions.” (Dutkiewicz and Rosenberg will elaborate on that argument in an upcoming book, Feed the People!.)

As more people start to see their dietary choices as ethical ones, fast food companies, new and old, are already plotting ways to get just as big as the major chains, but with more “ethical” menu offerings. One newcomer is Kernel, a high-tech vegetarian chain launched in New York earlier this year by Steve Ells, the founder of Chipotle. Though not a vegetarian himself, Ells says he was inspired to scale vegetarian fast food after reading about the climate impact of animal agriculture. Itsu, a British chain serving Asian-esque food, is considerably older, having launched in 1997 by Pret a Manger founder Julian Metcalfe, but still dynamic. Once known for selling sushi to London office workers, as it started expanding outside the UK two years ago, the company shifted more of its menu over to vegetable dishes made with rice and noodles. Unusual for a chain that still sells a lot of sushi and poke, Itsu even banned yellowfin tuna from its menu entirely in 2022—a move Metcalfe called both “ethical and economical.”

While vegetarian menus have some inherent environmental and ethical benefits, many of the problems that have made the food system so ethically flawed in the first place are tied to its opacity rather than its choice of protein, and thus run deeper than menu changes can fix. When McDonald’s vowed to stop sourcing beef raised inside the Amazon biome in 1989, activists all over the world cheered the decision. More than three decades later, McDonald’s’ promise has proven more easily made than kept. In 2022, an investigation by Réporter Brasil and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that a McDonald’s supplier in Brazil had purchased cattle raised on land deforested just months before.

In a statement, McDonald’s said it disagreed with Réporter Brasil’s findings and that it was “focused on conserving forests and supporting the people and communities around the world who depend on them.” But as the original investigation found, “There are no comprehensive mechanisms in [McDonald’s] supply chain to track—from birth to slaughter—the origin of cattle arriving at slaughterhouses” and eventually going into their burgers. In other words, McDonald’s knows which suppliers it’s purchased its beef from, but not who raised the cows.

There is also no reason to believe a big move towards fake meat would make its ingredients’ origins any easier to account for: The grains and vegetables that go into popular meat alternatives, like Burger King’s Impossible Whopper, are just as untraceable as McDonald’s beef. Regardless of what it’s selling, the fast food industry’s interlocking system of suppliers is almost too large to manage or even monitor—much less reform.

Amy’s’ supply chains are, in some ways, more complicated than either McDonald’s or Burger King’s, but the complexity is a conscious choice. Since the company buys directly from farmers instead of on commodity markets, it knows exactly which farms supply the ingredients for everything it sells, both in the frozen aisle and at its drive-thrus. (Traceability is also one of the requirements of the federal organic certification which Amy’s adheres to.) Some of those relationships have persisted for more than a decade, Schiefer says, with suppliers that grew produce for Amy’s Kitchen's frozen foods fifteen or twenty years ago now growing food for Amy’s Drive-Thrus. Amy’s even dispatches representatives to visit its partner farms at various stages of the crop cycle, from planting until harvest, to check on their supplies.

In another contrast to the big fast food chains, Schiefer adds that Amy’s doesn’t pressure suppliers to scale alongside it. By continuously buying organic produce, he says, the idea is to encourage more farmers to grow organic food and join it as suppliers instead of pressuring existing suppliers to get bigger.

“It’s harder, but it’s also more rewarding,” Schiefer says. “It means getting involved with agronomy researchers and seed breeders, working in partnership with growers. You can’t think of it as a commodity business. When you accept that complexity, you find your way there.”

Of course, getting raw materials is only one part of the fast food business. Labor is another part, as is real estate.

This last part is one that Amy’s turned out to be less prepared for. After Rohnert Park took off, the company opened other locations that were equally sizable. Business was good, Schiefer says of the store near Sacramento, but not good enough to stay open.

“We had hoped that it would be just a big trending thing everywhere,” Rachel Berliner says after our tour. Instead, Amy’s learned that the appetite for organic, vegetarian fast food was stronger in some areas than others. In the short term, Schiefer says, future restaurants will be smaller, and the company will be more particular when choosing where to open new locations. Once they master their “core demographic,” he says, Amy’s will be ready to pursue a more ambitious expansion plan once again.

The company’s founders don’t seem to mind pressing pause. In fact, Rachel Berliner sees a parallel between the drive-thru business and the company’s early days. “We grew very slowly when we started Amy’s because there were no organic farms,” she says, recalling they had to turn customers away for lack of supply. With more successes, more farms started growing certified organic food, widening the base of suppliers without farmers having to scale relentlessly, as they would working for most processed food companies. Now that the drive-thru business is growing, Berliner says, they’re following their own model and adding new stores gradually, paying workers a decent wage and maintaining their rigorous standards as they get bigger.

The difference is now there are plenty of farms to supply them.

[post_title] => Is An Ethical Fast Food Chain Possible? [post_excerpt] => The short answer is yes—but it hasn't proven easy. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => ethical-fast-food-supply-chain-amys-mcdonalds-vegetarian-organic-frozen-food-drive-thru [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:10 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:10 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=7073 [menu_order] => 53 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

July 18, 2024August 28, 2024

Is An Ethical Fast Food Chain Possible?

by Alex Park

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6921 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2024-06-24 12:23:28 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-06-24 12:23:28 [post_content] =>

Two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, an honest assessment of how things could get worse.

Nine months before the 2016 presidential election, I declared in an op-ed that if a Republican were to win in November, Trump would be “the best-case scenario for American women, not the worst.” Having covered politics and abortion rights for years, I’d been wrong in my predictions before—but never quite as spectacularly as I was about that.

It’s not that I thought the plainly misogynistic Trump would be good for women, but rather that Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—two of the highest-profile GOP alternatives to Trump at the time—would be worse. I wasn’t alone in thinking so: That February, a left-leaning columnist for Glamour had labeled Trump the “Best Republican Presidential Candidate on Women's Health Issues” because he was noncommittal on abortion and had taken less extreme positions overall than other Republicans in the race. Trump was and remains amoral and unprincipled, but, at the time, he was considered somewhat of a wild card, whereas Cruz and Rubio were running as ideologues with carefully cultivated right-wing brands. Both wanted to force women to carry their rapists’ babies to term, and Cruz vowed to prosecute Planned Parenthood if elected president. I was surprised that Trump—who was pro-choice for years and never cared about abortion, except as a means of shoring up support from the religious Right—turned out to be the most ruthlessly effective of the three at rolling back women’s rights nationwide.

Two election cycles later, I’m relieved that that op-ed was never published. But being so wrong about the former president taught me an important lesson: What Trump believes, says, or avoids saying has little bearing on what he does—and countless people will suffer as a result of his whims. He is a creature of impulse, guided by an outsized ego and often sharp political instincts. Barring some unforeseeable and extraordinary event, he will be his party’s nominee in November. But what matters far more than “who” leads the GOP ticket is how life would change for abortion seekers with a Republican in the White House next year.

We already know the consequences of anti-abortion laws and policies because we’ve been witnessing them for years, more commonly but not exclusively in red states. Thanks to our shockingly inadequate healthcare system, millions of pregnant people are already suffering—and not just those who need abortions. States with the cruelest abortion bans have the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the country: Give birth in Alabama, for example, and you are more than four times as likely to die during or shortly afterward than you would be in California. In states like Idaho, Missouri, and Texas, abortion is a felony in nearly all circumstances; and with Roe overturned, healthcare providers across the country must now weigh their responsibilities to their patients against the risk of being sued, stripped of their medical licenses, or jailed—a choice with deadly consequences for patients. A 2022 survey of medical students found that a majority, around 58 percent, were unlikely or very unlikely to apply to residencies in states that restrict abortion, meaning we’re on the brink of a serious shortage of qualified OB/GYNs in the states where they’re needed the most. We’ve already seen the consequences of this play out: A January New Yorker story posed the question, “Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life?”—and, as the author’s extensive reporting makes clear, the answer is a resounding “Yes.” Yeniifer Alvarez-Estrada Glick, the young woman in question, died while pregnant in 2022. After trying and failing to save Glick’s life, a doctor attempted to deliver her baby prematurely via C-section. The baby died, too.

Glick’s health problems, coupled with the poor care she received as a low-income, uninsured, undocumented Mexican woman in a small rural town in Texas, all contributed to her death. But according to the four outside experts The New Yorker asked to review her medical file, doctors likely could have saved her life by explaining how risky it was to continue her pregnancy and, if she wanted one, performing an abortion. Texas’ cruel abortion law made them afraid to do so.

If a Republican wins the presidency in November, the landscape will be even bleaker. While Congress is unlikely to pass federal legislation banning abortion nationwide, a Republican presidential administration wouldn’t need a law to accomplish that goal. As with the repeal of Roe, anti-abortion activists have been laying the groundwork for a backdoor ban for decades. And while Trump recently claimed that he would not support a federal abortion ban (a stance he’s likely to waffle on), anti-abortion activists don’t need him to. Below are the three main strategies they are pursuing—despite stiffening opposition from a passionate but fragmented pro-choice movement—to make a national ban a reality:

A Republican HHS Secretary could override the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs most often used to induce abortion. Mifepristone was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000; but in 2022, anti-abortion activists, hoping to curb access to the drug, filed a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approach to regulating it. The Supreme Court’s June ruling in that case preserved access to mifepristone for now, but left the door open to further challenges down the road. And the next president’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary could still override the FDA’s approval of the drug, effectively ending what has become the most common method of abortion nationwide.
An anti-abortion administration could resurrect the Comstock Act. Comstock is a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law which prohibits using the mail to send or receive “obscene” items, potentially including anything that could be used to perform an abortion. Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Comstock applies to the internet, as well, meaning that even discussing abortion online could lead to up to five years in prison, $250,000 in fines, or both. Medical abortions performed via telemedicine, wherein providers consult with patients online and send the necessary pills by mail, are just as safe and effective as those performed in person; but Comstock would prevent doctors from sending the pills at all, severing a lifeline connecting women in red states and remote, rural areas to needed care. (Between April 2022 and August 2022, around 4 percent of total recorded abortions in the U.S. were performed via telemedicine; as of May 2024, that figure had risen to 19 percent.) Because Comstock is a federal law, it would most likely invalidate state laws, which means a Republican Department of Justice could federally prosecute doctors and drug companies nationwide. It could also shut down all U.S. abortion clinics by barring them from receiving any abortion-related materials via mail.

An anti-abortion Republican president could reinstate the global gag rule. The rule bars foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from using any funds, including non-U.S. government funds, to provide abortion services, information, counseling, referrals, or advocacy, effectively forcing NGOs outside of the U.S. to choose between receiving U.S. global health assistance and providing comprehensive healthcare. It has largely been in place under Republican administrations since 1984, but the Trump administration expanded it to apply to an unprecedented range of agencies and public health programs, many of which serve poor women in rural areas. When women desperate to end a pregnancy are kept in the dark about their options, they have more abortions, not fewer—and many end up dead or seriously injured as a result. The International Women’s Health Coalition wrote in a 2019 report that the rule “contributes to arbitrary deaths by impeding the provision of life-saving care.” Marie Stopes International, one of the largest global family planning organizations, estimated in 2017 that Trump’s expanded gag rule would increase abortions in Nigeria by 660,000 over four years, and that 10,000 women would die as a result. Precise figures are difficult to come by, but it’s clear that women have, as predicted, died as a consequence of this cruel and pointless policy. (Healthcare providers also expect the repeal of Roe to continue harming women worldwide.)

Whether or not the above scenarios come to pass—and there is little doubt that, if a Republican wins the White House in November, the last one will—the harm already caused by state abortion bans shows that a national ban would be an unmitigated disaster. Nor would it stop people from getting abortions. Women end pregnancies for a myriad of reasons, some more common than others. They do so whether it is safe, legal, and accepted, or dangerous, criminal, and condemned. And they do it whether or not their parents, lovers, spouses, friends, neighbors, religious leaders, strangers, or elected officials approve. The only difference is how many will get the quality care they need, and how many will suffer and die.

Forcing a person to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth against their will is a brutal act under any circumstances. But in a country like the U.S., with its threadbare social safety net and policies that vary wildly by state and region, it often means forcing them into poverty, as well. As Bryce Covert explained in 2023, “The states that have banned abortion are the same ones that do the least to help pregnant people and new parents make ends meet.” Most states with abortion bans offer little help to pregnant workers; none guarantee any control over work schedules, paid family leave, or paid sick days. When Lationna Halbert of West Jackson, Mississippi, found herself unexpectedly pregnant in 2022, she told In These Times, she cried and cried. She was earning just $8.50 per hour and already had a four-year-old son. She and her partner were not ready for another baby, nor could they afford to raise one. When Roe was overturned, an abortion ban automatically went into effect in Mississippi, shutting down the state’s last remaining clinic. By the time Halbert realized she was pregnant, it was too late: She couldn’t afford to travel to another state to get an abortion, and it was impossible to get one safely and legally in Mississippi. She delivered her second baby in a hospital with no hot water.

As I have written for The Conversationalist before, the same officials who worked so tirelessly to overturn Roe have also fiercely resisted using public funds to help vulnerable women like Halbert. This is because the same politicians who romanticized her fetus have nothing but contempt for Halbert herself, and for all the other people—who are, not coincidentally, mostly women—being forced to have babies they do not want and cannot provide for. That contempt is matched only by their sociopathic indifference to the children who make it out of the womb—the kind who already exist, only to be routinely denied housing, healthcare, and basic nourishment by their state governments. (Nor do these politicians have any empathy for living, breathing children facing crisis pregnancies of their own.)

If pregnant women are the primary and intended victims of U.S. abortion policy, which is rooted in a desire to control and punish them, their children, partners, and families are collateral damage. It is bad for babies to be unwanted; bad for already existing children to be deprived of needed resources; and bad for the couple experiencing an unexpected pregnancy to be forced to have a baby that one or neither wants. It is delusional and insulting to pretend otherwise. Anti-abortion zealots’ cozy fantasies of domestic fulfillment have nothing to do with the daily lives of women forced into motherhood.

Even under a Democratic administration, women are already being investigated, prosecuted, and punished for various pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriages. In 2023, Brittany Watts, a 33-year-old Black woman in Ohio whose water broke prematurely, leading to a miscarriage, was charged with abuse of a corpse—a felony punishable by up to one year in prison and a $2,500 fine. Doctors told Watts her fetus was nonviable, and she spent a total of 19 hours in a local hospital over the course of two days, begging for supervised medical help. Concerned about the potential legal ramifications, the hospital repeatedly delayed her care. Watts ultimately gave up and miscarried alone in her bathroom. When she returned to the hospital for follow-up care, a nurse rubbed her back and told her everything would be okay—then called the police at the behest of the hospital's risk management team. As Watts was lying in the hospital recovering, police searched her home, seized her toilet, and broke it apart to retrieve the remains of her fetus as “evidence.” Watts’ charge was dismissed after a grand jury declined to indict her: Her prosecution was meant to shame and punish her, not protect her fetus. But prosecutors have always been more inclined to target women of color, immigrants, and/or poor women in these types of cases—because it’s easier to win against someone who can’t fight back. Watts’ experience also specifically demonstrates how little our healthcare system values the health and well-being of Black women, who are three times more likely than white women to die from a pregnancy-related cause.

One of the bitterest ironies of conservative reasoning on abortion is that, followed to its logical conclusion, it will impede tens of thousands of people who desperately want to become parents or expand their families from doing so. When the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) are children, three of the state’s IVF providers suspended their services, fearing legal repercussions. (Alabama voters in a longtime Republican stronghold were so alarmed that they elected a pro-abortion rights Democrat to Congress a few weeks later.) A number of prominent Republicans, including Trump, have since affirmed their support for IVF, but that hasn’t stopped many of them from co-sponsoring the Life at Conception Act, a piece of federal legislation that would ban nearly all abortions nationwide and does not include a carveout for IVF. Nor has it stopped those same Republicans from blocking a recent bill that would have protected the procedure. Leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, Southern Baptists, have recently voted to condemn the use of IVF, as well.

While Republicans’ support of openly fascist and deeply unpopular abortion policies has become a political liability for the GOP, it’s simultaneously become a human nightmare for the rest of us. Trump’s failed attempt to contain the political fallout from Arizona’s recent revival of an 1864 ban is an object lesson in locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. If abortion is the same as infanticide, as most anti-abortion activists insist that it is, then no person seeking one would be exempt from prosecution, whether you’re 9 years old and a man rapes you, 11 years old and your grandfather rapes you, 12 years old and a man rapes you, 33 and desperate to end your pregnancy, 33 and suicidal, a married mother who doesn’t want another child, or unexpectedly pregnant at 45. Even white, married, heterosexual moms are not exempt. The state of Texas recently forced lifelong Texan Kate Cox to travel out of state for an abortion she needed to protect her life and fertility. Cox, a married mother of two who wants more kids, was told that her third pregnancy was nonviable: The fetus was unlikely to survive, and the best-case scenario was that she might give birth to a baby who would live in anguish for a week or less. Alternatively, she could experience a life-threatening uterine rupture and need a C-section and/or a hysterectomy, potentially losing the ability to have more children in the future. Forced sterilization, which is one outcome Texas’ barbaric denial of care could have imposed on Cox had she lacked the means to travel out of state, is internationally recognized as a human rights crime. No wonder she fled.

It’s a sad truth that things can always get worse, even for relatively privileged Americans. Until it did, many legal experts considered it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe, upending nearly 50 years of precedent and stripping American women of a right guaranteed to us for half a century. But many U.S. residents, particularly in rural areas and throughout the South and Midwest, have been living under de facto abortion bans for at least the last decade. A right is only guaranteed when it can be freely and easily exercised by all; for many U.S. residents, the cost of abortion—the procedure itself, the travel, the lodging, the childcare costs, the ability to request and take time away from paid work—is too high. One in five U.S. women must travel more than 40 miles one way to access care; in some rural areas, that distance is 300 miles or more. Under a national abortion ban, the situation will only grow more dire. People have taken and will continue to take risks that range from reasonable but frightening (crossing the border to buy pills from a pharmacy in Mexico) to desperate and potentially fatal (shooting themselves in the stomach). Denying care to women who need it permanently alters their lives, most often not for the better.

There is no reason to believe that the proudly anti-democratic GOP will uphold democratic norms or respect the popular will, and little reason to trust the Democratic Party, which has, in recent years, canceled elections, failed to defend abortion rights, and repeatedly defied its own voters. But focusing on how abortion politics are hurting the GOP or improving Biden’s chances misses the point. Like miscarriage, abortion stops an embryo or a fetus from becoming a baby. Restricting it tortures women, children, and families and rips holes in communities. Policies that harm actual, living people must be stopped, and those who promote them held to account. Voting is one fragile, inadequate tool. With so many lives at stake, we’ll need more.

[post_title] => The Reality of a National Abortion Ban [post_excerpt] => Two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, an honest assessment of how things could get worse. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => national-abortion-ban-republican-gop-president-election-roe-v-wade-womens-rights-united-states-policy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6921 [menu_order] => 54 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

June 24, 2024August 28, 2024

The Reality of a National Abortion Ban

by Raina Lipsitz

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My Nai Nai dressed my Ye Ye every morning for over sixty years. The last time she dressed him was for his funeral.

The coroner comes and goes. The Taoist shaman comes and goes. But the family stays. There are many things left to be done.

Nai Nai is gathering Ye Ye’s belongings, the clothes that he is to be burned with, his favorite shoes, the paper fan he’d use to cool himself with during sweltering Taiwanese summers. The coroner has told Nai Nai it is best to dress Ye Ye in his funeral clothes now. Before the body gets cold and hard. Their daughter, the shamanic authority of the family, doesn’t like this idea.

“If you touch him immediately after death, he’ll feel intense pain,” she insists. “We must dress Ba Ba without touching him at all.”

Nai Nai looks at Ye Ye, what would have been an exchange of knowing looks. Her husband says nothing.

The women compromise, agreeing to dress him quickly, skin touching skin as little as possible. But while the daughter rushes, Nai Nai takes her time. She straightens the collar of her husband’s shirt and checks that the waistband of his pants hugs his belly comfortably. She runs her fingers through his now sparse, white hair, brushing it tenderly. As if by instinct, she licks her finger and smooths the unruliest strands.

The daughter grows impatient. “Mom, you’re too slow. You’re hurting him. Just let me…”

Nai Nai does not budge. She rubs Ye Ye’s hands between her own, searching for something; feeling the familiar grooves of his palms and the veins of his wrist. She continues with their routine, carefully checking the seams of her husband’s trousers, the pair she steam pressed just last week. She moves on to his socks, stretching them with her fingers so they don’t restrict his circulation during the long journey ahead.

Suddenly, Nai Nai leaves the room, and returns with her husband’s favorite gold-rim glasses, the ones that always made him look so smart and charming, like a senator.

He’ll need these to see, she thinks to herself. She reaches over her daughter’s busy arms to place the glasses gently across Ye Ye’s face.

Later, Nai Nai will tell me over the phone how she leaned back, admiring her work. I savor every detail, wishing I could have been there, too. Instead, I will send him off over video chat. During the funeral, I wonder if my grandfather can hear me calling to him from across the ocean, whether my laptop can transfer my grief; if he knows his granddaughter’s heart is breaking.

Long before Nai Nai, Ye Ye was dressed by his mother. The only son of wealthy landowners in a small village in Jiang Su, he rarely had to lift a finger. When Ye Ye entered school, each morning, his mother would place his clean uniform at the foot of the bed, freshly washed of the stains he’d acquired the day before. As he got older, Ye Ye eventually dressed himself—although it wasn’t always a choice. While hiding from Japanese soldiers during the war, he was forced to go for days at a time without washing or changing. In the deafening silence each night, he dreamed he’d wake up the next morning to his mother’s gentle voice, back in his childhood bedroom, his clean clothes folded at his feet.

Ye Ye eventually found his way to Taiwan, where he met his would-be wife, a woman so beautiful a large portrait of her hung in the window of a photography studio in the neighborhood where he walked his beat as a young cop. At 30 and 22, respectively, Ye Ye and Nai Nai married; and of her many household duties and chores, Nai Nai made it a point to help her husband get dressed every morning—not because he asked her to, but because it brought her pride. Both she and her husband agreed: how a man dressed was critical to his career and reputation. So it was important he dressed well.

When they first married, it was the police uniform. Though Ye Ye was only a beat cop, Nai Nai thought it was crucial he looked presentable to his superiors, carefully steaming his uniform every night, gently folding it over the nice wooden hangers she’d purchased on sale. She was young; the only thing she’d ever steamed before had been the gown she’d worn when she snuck out of her mother’s house to compete in a local pageant at 18. Still, she did her best, and so did he. As Ye Ye slowly rose through the ranks, his uniform became adorned with new medals, and Nai Nai’s responsibilities grew. Soon, they had children, and she dressed them, too. But their morning routine stayed the same: The least I could do is make sure my husband looks good.

Nai Nai and Ye Ye. (Image courtesy of the author.)

Three kids later, Ye Ye left the precinct to start his own leather goods business. Nai Nai was supportive; their kids were getting older and household expenses were only growing. Together, they purchased him a good suit, one that cost a little more than they could afford, but that made him look smart and trustworthy. Nai Nai helped her husband into the suit every morning, and Ye Ye would smile and kiss her goodbye before heading off to work. When there were small rips and tears in the seams, Nai Nai would sew them back together after putting the kids to bed at night. She didn’t mind the added work. The silence of the night, interrupted only by the rhythmic hum of her sewing machine, became a familiar lullaby that belonged to her alone.

When the business took off, Ye Ye and Nai Nai bought a new home, and Ye Ye’s first good suit proudly gathered dust in the back of its largest closet. They hired a housekeeper. Because of this, Nai Nai no longer had to wash and tailor her husband’s clothes, but each morning, she would pick out a perfect suit for his scheduled meetings from a wardrobe filled with color.

The life they’d built made her proud, and she held her head high, always moving through the world with grace. Even when the business failed and the debt collectors came knocking, Nai Nai would take a deep breath, puff up her chest, and open the front door with a smile. She would walk to the busiest street corner at 6 AM every morning and sell homemade bento boxes to pay for the children’s school tuition, even more expensive now with her fourth child entering school. When Ye Ye had to go door to door begging relatives and neighbors for help, Nai Nai made sure he looked dignified while doing it.

The tough times passed, and the kids grew older, soon with children of their own. Nai Nai dressed them—dressed me—too, in one-of-a-kind sweaters she knit by hand so we never clashed outfits with anyone on the playground. Ye Ye’s daily uniform became a simple polo shirt and loose khakis, comfortable enough to play on the floor with his grandkids, but presentable enough in case Nai Nai wanted to snap a picture. As a child, and their eldest granddaughter, I loved to play lion, and Ye Ye would join me proudly, the two of us crawling around and roaring at each other like it was our own secret language. Nai Nai, meanwhile, would smile to herself from the living room couch, thankful she had time to mop the floors in the morning.

She would continue to dress him for the rest of his life, and after it. Even after her children had no longer needed her, and the grandchildren had gone to college, Nai Nai had never felt like an empty-nester, precisely because of this: Her husband had continued to need her, and to love her. And she’d been happy to be needed, and to be loved.

A week before Ye Ye passed, Nai Nai woke up in the middle of the night to her husband staring gently at her, the corners of his lips curled into a smile. With his dementia, Ye Ye often drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes alert and sharp, other times blissfully unaware.

“Still so pretty after all these years,” he said softly. “I feel content and at peace, I’ve lived a fulfilling life.”

“Aiya, it’s so late. Go back to sleep.” Nai Nai dismissed him with a wave of her hand as she repositioned her back, sinking deeper into their bed. But she felt a tightness in her chest as his words, too, sank in—something about them felt so final.

After a few moments of silence, Ye Ye tried again, this time with a hint of urgency: “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Afraid of hearing what might be her husband’s last words, Nai Nai shut her eyes even tighter, and let out a light, fake snore.

Ye Ye lingered for a moment before rolling away to face the opposite wall, where an old photo of his wife at 18, in her pageant gown, smiled back at him. He sighed. Unable to control herself, Nai Nai awoke from her fake slumber to smooth out the wrinkles of his pajama shirt with her wrinkled fingertips, memorizing the warmth of his body.

Nai Nai. (Image courtesy of the author.)

The next morning, Nai Nai would wake up before her husband, wash up quickly, and prepare his clothes, just like she had every morning for the last 60 or so years. And of course, she would dress herself, too, from a wardrobe that had changed just as much as her husband's over the years. When she’d first met him, she'd dress in her flirty floral dresses and her baby blue skirts with the ruffles; and as she got a little older, in her matching tweed skirt suits—always color coordinated with her husband’s outfit for the day, and embellished with a tasteful brooch or earrings from her collection. Today, she would wear her purple t-shirt and stretchy gray pants—a suitable uniform for a woman in her 80s with a day of cleaning and cooking ahead. She had no time or energy for jewelry now, but still put on the same rose-pink lipstick she’d worn every morning since she was 18, just to feel like herself. Satisfied, she’d turn again to their shared closet and begin her day’s work.

Dressing him for his funeral, Nai Nai knows it is the last time; the last time she will look at her husband’s face so closely, the last time she will smooth out the wrinkles of his shirt with her warm palms in a downward sweeping motion, the last time she will check that all his buttons are buttoned correctly. She wants to make sure she remembers it.

Nai Nai is calm and deliberate. Everything about this routine is familiar to her. Everything about his body is familiar to her. Every scar, every vein; and every thread that adorns it.

[post_title] => If Clothes Make the Man [post_excerpt] => What does that make the woman who dressed him? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => clothing-nainai-yeye-grandparents-spouse-gender-roles-husband-wife-marriage-death-grief-funeral [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-09-13 19:27:03 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-09-13 19:27:03 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6925 [menu_order] => 55 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

June 12, 2024September 13, 2024

If Clothes Make the Man

by Vanessa Hsia

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In her new memoir "Rebel Girl," riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna reckons with her mistakes.

When I first saw Bikini Kill perform live in 2022, it felt like a long time coming. The groundbreaking feminist punk band hadn’t toured in two decades, and in the intervening years, legions of listeners like me had become devout fans, and frontwoman Kathleen Hanna something of an unwitting feminist icon. Most of us figured we’d never actually get the chance to see her, Kathi Wilcox, Billy Karren, and Tobi Vail together on stage again—at least, not like in the band’s heyday. Bikini Kill’s live shows were the stuff of legends: brash refutations of macho-dude punks, where the band tore through fierce odes to feminist solidarity, and Hanna yelled into the mic about wanting “revolution, girl-style, now”—famously demanding, at every show, that the crowd make space for young women to come up to the front of the room.

But that was 20 years ago. The three women I watched on stage in New York (Karren didn’t join the reunion tour) were not the same young punks who’d played in grungy basements in the ’90s. They were a couple decades older and wiser; still committed to their feminist principles, but changed, years of experience and new perspectives now coloring their rallying cries. At the show I saw, Hanna’s slogan—“Girls to the front!”—got an overdue, if slightly clunky, corrective. It wasn’t just girls who deserved space at these shows, Hanna explained. Nonbinary people deserved to occupy that space, too, as did trans men—anyone who usually got shoved aside. It made sense to me that Hanna would reject—or at least reframe—her original sentiment, even if it temporarily robbed the iconic phrase of some of its power. The context around Hanna had changed, and punk had, too: Where she used to look out from the stage and see only a handful of young women, their views blocked by a moshpit of guys, she now saw a respectful, diverse crowd who didn’t have to be asked to make space for each other, because they’d already done it themselves.

I thought about this shift in punk feminism while reading Rebel Girl, Hanna’s new memoir, released last month. It’s a dense, often chaotic book that careens through Hanna’s fascinating life: her difficult childhood, her entrée into the punk scene, her early days on tour with Bikini Kill, then later as a solo artist and with Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. Throughout, Hanna grapples with what it means to be an artist and an activist, and how the sexist conditions for women in rock music have—and haven’t—changed since she first started making music. Hanna makes it clear that she never set out to become a feminist icon (she started a band, she writes, simply because she wanted “to be heard”), and that riot grrrl was always intended to be an anti-hierarchical movement, without a clear, singular leader. Maybe this is why what struck me most while reading Rebel Girl wasn’t Hanna’s righteousness, or her many triumphs, but the way she acknowledged her shortcomings—and the failures of the riot grrrl movement she helped pioneer.

With startling honesty, Hanna reflects over and over on the ignorance afforded to her by her privilege, a rare thing to witness from a celebrity of her magnitude. In one incident, she writes about offending Kurt Cobain, whom she’d initially befriended over their shared feminist politics. He’d gotten icy after she gifted him a copy of an inflammatory manifesto, and Hanna realized he may have felt like she was lording her expensive college education over him—“acting like Ms. Smarty Pants College Girl who had come to educate dumb working-class Kurt,” as she puts it, despite having worked as a stripper to make ends meet when she was a student. It was a crucial moment in her early understanding of intersectionality. “Being constantly put down as a woman,” she writes, “had blinded me to my own power to hurt people.”

Eventually, she’d witness this same lack of awareness in her peers. On one occasion, she writes about organizing a workshop called “Unlearning Racism” at a riot grrrl conference, and quickly realizing how few of her fellow white feminists had begun to think about—never mind concretely take action against—the intersecting oppressions women of color faced within the punk scene and more generally. Again, Hanna acknowledges her ignorance. “I realized that day that many BIPOC women were as disappointed in white punk feminists as I’d been by white male punks,” she writes. “And that was the problem…I hadn’t seen how so much of our punk feminism was really just white feminism.”

It’s not an entirely self-recriminating book. Hanna, too, has suffered plenty under the patriarchy, and more than anything else, her main nemesis throughout Rebel Girl is the unending violence she’s experienced at the hands of men: the abusive behavior of her father, betrayal and assault from trusted friends, and all manner of stalkers, creepy sound guys, and violent showgoers on tour. The book, too, is filled with moments of joy: Hanna finding her voice as a singer, witnessing her music connect with young women around the world, falling in love, starting a family. Hanna has long sat among my personal pantheon of feminist heroes, and it was enthralling to encounter the magic and power of her art throughout the book, and to peek behind the curtain of a creative life I’ve long admired.

But it’s the moments of tension, disappointment, and misjudgment in Rebel Girl that I still keep returning to. When I first fell in love with the moral certitude of Bikini Kill’s lyrics, it was easy to assume a certain kind of ethical perfection on the part of their author. These stories—laced with choices I didn’t always agree with—reveal a bigger, more complicated picture, one that was deeply humanizing and, in its own way, comforting to me as a reader. Over the years, I’ve loved Hanna’s creative output and been inspired by her commitment to feminism. But like her, I’ve made plenty of my own mistakes and failed to live up to my values innumerable times. Rather than absolution, Hanna’s confessions function as an honest acknowledgement of an uncomfortable truth: staying true to your values in a world that doesn’t always align with them means constantly making hard decisions. By her own admission, she didn’t always get it right.

When I finished reading Rebel Girl, I thought again about that moment when Hanna talked about “girls to the front” in New York. The fact that times have changed doesn’t mean the slogan had been unimpeachable in the ’90s; if anything, Hanna’s relatively tame qualifiers of today would have been far more punk if she’d said them then. But just because her rallying cry wasn't perfect doesn’t take away from the many people it inspired—and just because Hanna didn’t notice its limits then doesn’t disqualify her from seeing them and changing things now. Riot grrrl was a flawed movement, and Hanna a flawed person. Any version of history that ignores that fact erases the reality of what the feminist struggle actually looks like: exhilarating and empowering, yes, but also messy and filled with mistakes, both individual and collective. Rebel Girl feels all the more encouraging for its admissions of imperfection, as a humanizing reminder that even the most luminous icons have their flaws, and that striving for perfection at any cost can grind momentum to a halt. Instead, maybe it’s more powerful to take the mic when we have it, admit when we didn’t get things right, and make our way to the front, where we all belong.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna is available now.

[post_title] => Imperfect Feminists to the Front [post_excerpt] => In her new memoir “Rebel Girl,” riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna reckons with her mistakes. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => kathleen-hanna-rebel-girl-my-life-as-a-feminist-punk-memoir-review-bikini-kill-riot-grrrl [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:15:10 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:15:10 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6971 [menu_order] => 56 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

June 4, 2024August 28, 2024

Imperfect Feminists to the Front

by Marissa Lorusso

WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6919 [post_author] => 15 [post_date] => 2024-05-23 17:24:38 [post_date_gmt] => 2024-05-23 17:24:38 [post_content] =>

Since October, over 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the IDF. They deserve our endurance—and our diligence.

War rages on in the months since Hamas’ assault against Israel and its ongoing retaliatory punishment of the blockaded Gaza Strip. It has been agonizing to witness. As of May, Israeli military actions are estimated to have killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children. Almost the entire population of Gaza has been displaced from their homes. A quarter of the population—more than half a million people—are at imminent risk of catastrophic famine, a number projected to surpass one million by July. For the average outside observer, myself fully included, it is impossible to track the dizzying onslaught of information emerging from the warzone without feeling some degree of despair, and even harder to do so with reliable accuracy. Social media is awash with falsehoods, mainstream American media demonstrably biased, and foreign press barred from entering Gaza independently. Further preventing vital access to information is the disproportionate number of Palestinian journalists who have been killed during the conflict so far, particularly compared to other instances of conflict reporting: Since October 7, at least 105 Palestinian journalists and media personnel have been killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), more than any other country at war.

At the moment, Gaza is the most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter—and also one of the most consequential. As this war continues, it only becomes clearer to me that we must do everything in our power to protect these journalists and their work.

Since the war’s beginning, now the deadliest conflict of the 21st century, I’ve been reflecting on the word “indiscriminate,” on what it highlights and hides. It’s the word most reached for when attempting to describe the scale of civilian destruction in Gaza, a blanket term that fails to capture its intentionality in full. If you are well-versed in international human rights law, you know there are rules that distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate military actions, and these rules dictate what makes a death “indiscriminate.” These rules are governed by principles of proportionality: Warfare cannot result in the loss of civilian life excessive to the marginal military advantage it might achieve. Translated for the layperson, warfare is not open season, and a warzone is not a shooting range. Measures must be taken to mitigate civilian casualties. But even casual observers of this war have largely come to an uncomplicated understanding: It is difficult to describe what is happening in Gaza as anything but indiscriminate. Too many children are being killed. Too many civilians. Too many aid workers. Too many medical staff. Simply put, too many protected classes of noncombatants.

In the case of journalists killed, however, the word “indiscriminate” also obscures something alarming. It’s an axiom of conflict reporting that death is an occupational hazard. But what is happening to journalists in Gaza goes beyond the normal range of risk. The watchdog group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has decried the behavior of the IDF, declaring this war “the deadliest conflict for journalists it has recorded since it started collecting data,” with more journalists “killed in the first three months of the war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” The CPJ has also brought charges against the IDF for the alleged killing of journalists’ families as retribution for critical reporting. And although Israel denies deliberately targeting members of the media—a war crime—they have been sharply criticized by the UN for failing to ensure their protection, and for failing to create real or meaningful safety measures to prevent further deaths.

They’ve also openly attacked the media in other ways, and not just in their attempts to ban it. Journalists are noncombatants protected by international law, and their reporting serves a fundamental public interest. They must be able to report freely and without fear of retaliation, not just for the sake of a free press, but more importantly, to provide Gazans access to life-saving information. This work has been made all the more difficult by Israel’s targeted destruction of the infrastructure necessary to disseminate it. We tend to forget that the internet is rooted in the physical, and that direct attacks on journalists aren’t the only way to measure acts of aggression against the media. Cables, cell towers, internet and telecom networks; all these components are necessary for a story to reach the rest of the world. But many have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, causing communications systems to collapse—and what the world cannot see dies in the dark.

With telecommunications compromised, on-the-ground journalists have collectively turned to social media as the primary vehicle for their work. It is, in many ways, their last connection to the outside world, and the outside world’s last connection with Gaza. Using donated eSIMs and shared phone chargers as lifelines, Palestinian journalists have fearlessly persisted in sharing what the Israeli government seemingly does not want us to see. But with such high stakes, I’ve found myself thinking about how we can engage most ethically with their work when our main platform for consuming it—social media—has the power to do as much, if not more, harm as it does good.

Much has been rightly criticized about the pernicious role of social media in disseminating misinformation over the years. Social media is designed to sustain users’ attention in order to maximize advertising revenue, encouraging and rewarding us for sharing whatever posts elicit the most engagement—regardless of accuracy or potential for harm. But over the years, it has also become the internet’s town square; an accessible means of sharing information and finding first person perspectives that fill the gaps mainstream media often leaves behind. It would be reductive to cast social media as simply a peddler of falsehoods, particularly when it comes to what is occurring in Gaza. Social media now plays the role of historical record, collecting and preserving invaluable primary source material from journalists and civilians alike.

As users of these platforms, particularly for Americans, it should be our duty to bear witness responsibly—which, at minimum, means utilizing basic media literacy and being mindful of what we choose to post and share. According to the Pew Research Center, half of U.S. adults get their news from social media at least some of the time; but four in ten of those same adults cite inaccuracy as their biggest concern when doing so. At a time of extreme and unrelenting dehumanization, social media has an outsized influence on the way this conflict has been interpreted abroad, and what we choose to share matters. For the ordinary online user, there is an almost emotional peer-pressure to rapidly engage on social media in the face of tragedy and injustice. Posting, after all, can be a necessary catharsis. We post in spite of and because of our utter helplessness in a world that seems indifferent to large-scale human suffering, railing against the seeming futility of our protests. In this case, Palestinians have also explicitly asked us to do it, to bear witness to their suffering, to not allow them to be forgotten, and to tell their stories of joy and resilience—largely via social media. Journalists, too, have made it clear: Our continual engagement with their work is what motivates them to keep reporting in the face of this incalculable tragedy. But when the abstract act of sharing online has direct consequences on real human lives, it becomes essential that we treat it with care.

To be clear, I’m not advising you to stop posting, or even to post less. On the contrary, please post, please amplify, please share—so long as it’s done with a critical eye to impact. In moments of crisis, it can become easy to slip into what might be called pathos posting, posting that comes from the gut and not the mind. I see it in my followers and I, too, feel its lure. It’s the instant, unthinking tap to repost when confronted with images of the latest unbearable atrocity. It’s the incredibly human impulse to alchemize all our anguish, grief, and rage into action, however small it might be. Little to no caution is exercised in checking for doctored footage, manipulated video, or false contexts. In fact, the emotional weight behind these posts leads to an unwillingness to entertain the possibility of error or your own complicity in the potential spread of misinformation. Cries of caution are met with accusations of disloyalty. This unforgiving attitude siphons nuance and compassion from the public discourse, and further silences attempts at honest reporting. It also puts the people most affected by this conflict at risk of greater harm. Researchers and watchdog groups warn that in this moment of hair-trigger violence, misinformation will result in greater acts of aggression and potential escalations of violence against innocent civilians. We should be doing everything in our power not to contribute to it.

Social media has the potential to bring out the best of our online selves, but so often instead summons our worst, most tribal, unreflective, and hardened. To honor the Palestinian journalists that are risking life and limb to report (only to not even be honored by name), I believe that we can and must push ourselves to engage with their work in ways that are principled, empathetic, and judicious. We achieve this by holding ourselves to account, and asking simple, but difficult, questions: Why are we sharing this? Is it from a reliable source? If the post contains misinformation, could someone believing it result in harm to someone else?

Right now, caution can feel impotent and vastly unequal to the scale of the human tragedy unfolding. It feels right to post totalizing messages of condemnation and rage without a second thought. But this online posturing is myopic and counter-productive: Civilians, including journalists, are not served by misinformation that foments further aggression. I know that it can be tiring to constantly separate fact from fiction, but as the Palestinian-American activist Hala Alyan put it, we owe Gaza endurance. When language and rhetoric pose existential threats to the safety and security of Palestinians and Israelis alike, there is a moral obligation to do better. To not engage indiscriminately.
The duty of the journalist is to clarify the stakes; the duty of the reader is to respect them. But when journalists are literally putting their lives on the line to report from Gaza, we owe them more than our respect. It can be challenging to thread the needle of engaging with emotionally charged content while remaining discerning. It can be hard to treat posts with intelligence and sensitivity; and impossible to sniff out bad faith actors among the good. All these are tasks easier described than accomplished, but this doesn’t mean we should cease our efforts to achieve them. We have to try for the journalists risking their lives to report, and the over 100 journalists who have died doing the same. We owe all of them our endurance.

[post_title] => What We Owe Gaza's Journalists [post_excerpt] => Since October, over 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the IDF. They deserve our endurance—and our diligence. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => gaza-palestine-israel-journalists-killed-idf-war-conflict-reporting-media-literacy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2025-08-11 22:23:17 [post_modified_gmt] => 2025-08-11 22:23:17 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6919 [menu_order] => 57 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

$A collage on a fuzzy black background, with a disembodied hand holding a white cutout in the shape of a phone. There are fractured pieces scattered over the image, including one green triangle, one red triangle, and two triangles that show pieces of a keffiyeh. There is a fractured shard of an eye layered over the phone.$

May 23, 2024August 11, 2025

What We Owe Gaza’s Journalists

by Safiyah Zaidi

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In hiring a babysitter of my own, have I become the mother I used to nanny for?

When the young woman appeared at my door, braless, pink-haired, and smelling faintly of cigarettes, the only thing I could think about were my shoes.

My daughter had recently gone from being a baby to a toddler, and for the first time in her short life, I’d landed a dream job that would require me to return to the office after a year off. As preparation, I’d spent hours looking for a specific pair of clog boots, the exact shoes I believed I needed to walk into my new office as a new(ish) mom, newly 40, finally in her power era. They had to be either Swedish Hasbeens or from the No. 6 Store—the ones with the shearling on the inside that came to the top of the ankle. Even though I couldn’t really justify spending $400 on a pair of shoes, I was obsessed. Something deep inside me told me these boots would complete a vision of myself that I had been fantasizing about for over a decade: practical but stylish, sophisticated but understated. I felt a primal need to have them.

Then, this manic pixie dream babysitter, complete with the prerequisite tattoos and dyed hair that changed color every week, knocked on my door, and showed me all at once where my girl boss fantasy had come from. I hadn’t put it together until that moment, but my new shoes were the exact same clogs that belonged to the mother I used to nanny for when I was my sitter’s age. Instantly I was transported back to the long oak table in their dining room, the one where I’d linger after my duties for the day were completed. For years, I’d watched this mom strut around Brooklyn in those clogs, living the life I’d desperately wanted. And somewhere in my subconscious, the boots had buried themselves as a symbol—of adulthood, of success, of stability. All the things that seemed so far away from me in my early twenties, when I first started working for her.

And in a way, they were. Fresh out of drama school in London, I had moved to New York at 23 with hopes of becoming a working actress, but instead had become what I call a “professional auditioner.” On average, I would go to something like four auditions a week, but nothing ever stuck. I was terrified of failure, terrified of everything—but more than anything else, paralyzed by what I would do if I actually got any of the parts I went in for.

Like most struggling actors, I was also broke. To make rent, I worked as a babysitter for a family in Brooklyn Heights, watching their two boys over the course of three years. Really, I was their nanny, but that word was verboten in the wealthy creative enclave that I worked under. The title would have legitimized my work, and no one—not the parents who paid me under the table, not the children I watched, and especially not me—wanted to admit that it was an actual job.

To be honest, the kids and I were never a great match; they were devoted to sports, obsessed with talking about soccer and basketball, while my athletic acumen was limited to a two hour yoga class. This didn’t seem to matter much, and the kids didn’t seem to mind, either. I would shepherd them from whatever practice they’d begged to sign up for to whatever music lesson they were being forced to take, make them dinner, give them their bath, kiss their scraped knees—and the whole time, I’d wait for her to come home.

Whenever I babysat, whether I was making broomsticks for a quidditch match in the park or listening to the same joke for the hundredth time, I was mentally elsewhere; rehearsing lines, begging my agent to get me an audition, texting some boy. But the moment Mom walked through the door, I was present; and suddenly, I never wanted to leave. At seven each night, she would swoop in from her job as a commercial producer, dressed in clothes that were always subtle but expensive, on trend but never tacky. She’d kiss the tops of her boys’ heads, take her coat off, and start telling me about her day.

Her stories about office life, about school meetings, her gossip about other parents, left me enraptured. I would study her with a mix of curiosity and fear; I wanted a version of her life, and at the time, it felt painfully unattainable.

When she was at work and the boys preoccupied, I’d spend my days gazing at the awards on her shelves, the artwork on her walls, the beautiful crown molding in her apartment. But it was more than that. As she showed me the secret corners of an adult woman’s existence, I in turn revealed my own desires, not only to her, but to myself. She listened to my ideas with respect and responded to my opinions with interest, allowing me the space to begin to think I might have some big potential I hadn’t yet realized. That maybe I, too, was in possession of the same exceptionality that I saw in all the parents at pick up at her children’s fancy alternative elementary school: the playwrights, the performance artists, the Pulitzer winners. I wanted to make something that mattered to the world—because I wanted to matter, and felt like I didn’t.

It was in those thrilling ten minutes that I spent with her each night, trying to soak up everything, that I felt like my life could finally have direction. In those brief interludes between her taking off her coat and me putting on mine, she was a confidante, a mentor, a hopeful oracle giving a glimpse of my future—and, I realize now, a mother to me, as well, in a time where I needed it.

Even so, I found myself battling a dark depression for about a year, flailing and miserable, grappling with the fact that my career wasn’t going anywhere. Eventually, it began bleeding into my work. There was a devastating moment when the nine-year-old, home sick with a stomach bug, caught me crying over yet another rejection. I thought he’d been asleep, and when he walked in on me, it seemed so taboo, I told him I was only practicing for an audition. I felt guilty, like I might have introduced something dark and scary into his perfect childhood—but truthfully, I was humiliated. I could have been so many things, and in that moment, I was a failed actress who wasn’t even allowed to call herself a nanny.

Eventually, I decided to go back to school, to change course. I gave up on acting at the same time I stopped working for the family. Leaving was fine, healthy even, for all of us. The kids, their parents—especially Mom and me—had quickly discovered that we had outgrown the need for each other.

Still, she left her mark. Eleven years later, I’d walk into my new job as a TV producer, in a secondhand version of her clog boots; in a way, a secondhand version of the woman I believed I was supposed to become. I’d amassed my own awards, my own crown molding—but it hadn’t really hit me how much I’d replicated my former boss’ life until my own babysitter showed up, a mirror image of my younger self, now reflecting back who I’d become on the other side.

I was working from home when our sitter first started with us, and watching her sleepy, wrinkle free eyes gaze upon my child was jarring. Not only because it’s always strange to watch someone else mother your baby, but also because I’d only ever played the babysitter’s part, and now, I’d been cast in the titular role, the one I’d always wanted. I suddenly found myself performing a kind of character, speaking a little too loudly when I was on a work call, hoping to impress the 22-year-old rocking my daughter to sleep in the next room.

Each night, before she left, I began to ask her about her life. How long had she been with her boyfriend: Several years, and they planned to get married. What did she want in the future: To work with kids in a small town away from the city. She told me she couldn’t wait to live without roommates and asked my opinion on her next tattoo. Once she gave me a handmade bracelet made of special crystals she had sourced herself. They’d help me through my next big pitch meeting, she said. I almost cried at the thoughtfulness. (She never gave my husband anything.) Was I becoming to this young woman what my former boss was to me, I wondered? Did I even want that?

While I mostly feel grateful towards my previous employer, I still harbor some resentment towards her, too. It was clear to me that while she’d likely had her own salaried caretaker when she was little, the mother I’d worked for had never taken on that job herself. She hadn’t needed to. As such, she’d never given a second thought to the intricacies of my well-being once I stepped foot outside of her apartment, and hadn’t ever really cared for me beyond those ten minutes she gave me each night. I made $20,000 a year working for her, and never had health insurance the entire time. She never offered it to me, and I couldn’t afford it. She trusted me with her children’s safety, with their lives—and yet there was no one I could trust with mine, no one to cover my urgent care bill when I got the flu, no one I could turn to when I needed someone to take care of me.

Of course, my relationship with my sitter is imperfect in its own ways. Like all 20-somethings, she’s subjected to her own hardships; friends let her down, great apartments pass her by, she works a second job catering while her peers all seem to get full time jobs with benefits. Sometimes she arrives at our home with a cloud of sadness that I know too well. Once settled, however, the fog disappears, replaced with a supernatural ability to be present with our baby; then, the next week, she’ll be wishy-washy, often canceling right before she’s supposed to come over.

Recently, she flaked on us again during a stressful moment when she was very much needed. My mother in law told me that there was always something a little off, something a little “unreliable about the kinds of girls drawn to these jobs.” Even though in part, I agreed with her, I was also offended—not only on her behalf, but on behalf of my younger self, too. I knew intimately how precarious this time in a young person’s life could be; how, for me, being “the babysitter” was fun and easy at first, then slowly became a twisted reflection of the life I didn’t have, the life that felt so far away, no matter how hard I tried to get to it.

So I try to extend some grace to the girl who has come to look after my child. Whenever she’s late, I remind myself that this is not what she felt put on this earth to do, that for all of us, this is temporary. While I can’t give her the opportunities she’s chasing, the life she’s running towards, I hope to give her the same ten minutes a day that, with enough accumulation, might make their own kind of guidance, draw their own kind of map, like the one that had been given to me. Sometimes I wonder if one day she might go through the same thing I’m experiencing now, and hire a babysitter of her own, continuing this cycle of nannies and mothers, mothers and nannies.

Often I find myself surprised by the largeness of these maternal feelings—how far they can extend out from my daughter towards everyone around me, how they extend to her, too. Once, I came home and found the babysitter asleep on our bed, the baby tucked against her, both of them breathing peacefully, their eyes flickering back and forth beneath their lids. I was almost dizzy looking at her, a vision from my past come to sleep in her future self’s bed. All these versions of who I was, who I am, and who I have yet to become, were suddenly in the room with me, asking me to take off my clogs before finding a way to nestle against these tender bodies. But of course, I did not do that. Instead, I covered them both with a blanket, closed the door gently behind me, and let them sleep.

[post_title] => The Babysitters Club [post_excerpt] => In hiring a babysitter of my own, have I become the mother I used to nanny for? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => babysitter-nanny-mother-mom-relationship-childcare-motherhood-care-work-labor [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-09-13 19:24:34 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-09-13 19:24:34 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6915 [menu_order] => 58 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

May 10, 2024September 13, 2024

The Babysitters Club

by Lacy Warner

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When reading the news feels like staring into the sun, restorative narratives provide a lens to bear witness without burning our eyes.

On April 8, the moon will pass directly between the Earth and the sun, shrouding parts of the world in darkness, and creating a tempting void we're told not to look at directly. It’s a relatively rare but well understood phenomenon, full of portents; the sun and the moon aligning just so—a haloed, shadowy abyss that is astonishing to behold, but harmful to observe without the right protection.

Going out on a limb here: The eclipse is not the only collective experience that's currently harming us without the right lens with which to see it.

To read the news today is an exercise in patience, in heartbreak, and in fury. It is overwhelming. Each day we bear witness, however shallowly, to rising authoritarianism and declining democracy, to climate crises, to war, mass death, human-made famine. All variables aligning at once to create a total eclipse of despair. Meanwhile, we are expected to continue life as normal, to pretend the void isn’t there, tempting us to lose ourselves in it—all while the people responsible for its existence insist it isn’t there at all. Is it any wonder so many people are losing their bearings? How are we supposed to look at what’s in front of us when it feels like staring directly into the sun?

Trying to engage with what's happening in the world—in a time where media layoffs are constant, where publications are shuttering, where suppression is rampant and journalists are killed and jailed with impunity—is a fraught exercise, even for those who pride themselves on media literacy and sourcing good journalism. Cowardly headlines, rampant disinformation, and clickbait crap are exhausting people to the point of nihilism. When the NYT is normalizing witness tampering, and Elon is openly promoting race wars and eugenics on X (née Twitter), as 30,000 Palestinians, killed by the IDF, die in passive voice, it can feel maddening trying to figure out where to turn without losing yourself in toxic sludge. Cory Doctorow calls this the "enshittification" of the internet, the transformation of social media platforms from user friendly to user abusive, ultimately harming both its consumers and its bottom line. All the while, endless ads and propaganda continue to short circuit our brains.

None of this means we're doomed. But it does mean that we can't allow ourselves to check out. On the contrary, we have to keep finding stories of hope, and truth, and resilience if we want to sustain ourselves in the fight for democracy, our communities, the planet, and each other. The real balancing act we face when absorbing and coping with the news isn’t between observable reality and alternative facts. It is emotional: How do you stay engaged with the world, while also maintaining the hope necessary to stave off nihilism?

It can be hard to see it, but there are still substantive reasons for hope: You just have to put on your protective glasses first.

There's a backlash to the backlash, and it's happening all around us. Following the targeted killing of seven humanitarian aid workers from World Central Kitchen in Gaza, President Joe Biden finally threatened to condition US support to Israel. In India, rural women driven home from the cities by COVID are reviving drought-stricken farmland with the help of NGOs, and making a sustainable income for themselves and their families. At last month's Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, the current and all former Special Rapporteurs on violence against women and girls—together with four nations (Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Costa Rica, Antigua and Barbuda)—called for a new global treaty to end gender violence, citing the global crackdown on women's rights as impetus for moving forward immediately.

Restorative narratives like these are essential: They are a way to help regulate our emotions around the news, rebuild trust in good journalism, and stoke hope for a better tomorrow. This is because these stories are focused on people, resilience, and solutions—communities making progress despite the bullshit. Restorative narratives help us differentiate fact-based trends from moral panics, and genuine threats from trauma responses. They're a means for collective engagement with the world, but with the right tools to protect us. Because who doesn't want to see the eclipse? People are traveling from all over the world to get closer to totality, tracing the eclipse's path from Mexico to Canada. It's a striking phenomenon, and worth our attention. Just don't burn your eyes when you see it.

[post_title] => Total Eclipse of Despair [post_excerpt] => When reading the news feels like staring into the sun, restorative narratives provide a lens to bear witness without burning our eyes. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => eclipse-2024-metaphor-news-restorative-narratives-protection [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-09-13 19:28:30 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-09-13 19:28:30 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6857 [menu_order] => 59 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

April 5, 2024September 13, 2024

Total Eclipse of Despair

by Anna Lind-Guzik

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Women from one of Turkey's most affected regions share how little has changed—and how much still needs to be done.

Inside a prefabricated house atop a hill in Antakya, Turkey, Saniye Yılmaz is sitting on a beige velvet sofa, charging the beeping pill installed in her heart. She is shaking, and struggles to speak.

“Everything got worse after the earthquake,” she says, adding that the stress has made the symptoms of her Parkinson’s disease even more unbearable. “We’re the living dead.”

It’s been over a year since the Hatay region of Turkey, where she lives, faced a colossal trauma: On February 6, 2023, two catastrophic earthquakes initiated the collapse of over 160,000 buildings across 11 provinces in Turkey’s south and southeast, killing more than 50,000 people, injuring more than 107,000, and directly impacting over 13 million. The two earthquakes—with a magnitude of 7.8 and 7.5, respectively—happened only nine hours apart, with many aftershocks in between and after.

Shortly following, ahead of the centennial elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised to “mend the scars” of this devastating tragedy while on a tour of the quake zone, telling his citizens: “Give me a year.” With the anniversary come and gone, he has so far failed to deliver on his promise—and many are outraged over it.

“We were left out in the cold and rain for five days, and I couldn’t charge my pills,” Saniye says, still stirred by the memory. “I nearly died.”

Her anger for having been abandoned by the government can be felt in her gaze, her brown eyes dark and furious. It is a feeling shared by many, especially in Antakya, where rescue workers first arrived three days after the quakes, as thousands froze or bled to death under the rubble. It has felt impossible to regain any sense of normalcy since.

“It’s very difficult, being a woman,” Saniye’s 76-year-old mother, Sakine Yılmaz, says. “But after the earthquake, everything became much harder.”

Because Saniye’s father also has Parkinson’s, Sakine is the sole caretaker of their household. The family lost their house and all their belongings to the earthquakes, and as Sakine speaks, she’s washing donated dishes by hand, as her husband eats the bulgur balls she’s prepared with yogurt. When she’s finished, she will start on the laundry. Her exhaustion from the last year is legible in the many lines on her face.

Saniye Yılmaz (left) and her mother Sakine Yılmaz (right). Photo: Can Erok

The desperate mood seen in their cramped living quarters is reflective of the almost 700,000 other people living in temporary shelters across what’s today called “the quake zone.” According to Hatay’s governor, Mustafa Masatlı, nearly 200,000 people live in “container cities” in Hatay alone. Thousands more are living in plastic tents, which you see set up on side streets and in the yards of cracked houses.

“My children can’t shake out their energies,” a distressed 31-year-old Yazgın Danışman says. “They don’t sleep at night. Their sleep and eating schedule is messed up.”

Danışman is a tired mother, housewife, and survivor, who lives in a container with her husband and three of her children. As we speak, she tries to soothe her 1-year-old to sleep in her lap. She is upset with the government for not keeping them safe against the earthquakes by promoting rapid gentrification, and for only acknowledging their hardships prior to the elections, when it could benefit them politically. “I will not vote,” she says, referring to the local elections on March 31. Her newfound friends—her neighbors—share her fury and resolve. They say they don’t want to “have to wait in these [containers]” for an unseeable future.

Still, it remains unclear just how much longer they will be trapped there. Before last year’s presidential and parliamentary selections, President Erdoğan initially vowed to totally solve the housing problem by “constructing quality and safe structures” for all affected by the earthquakes within a year. When he spoke again in August, the number was reduced to 319,000 safe new homes to be built—again, “in a year.” So far, he has only been able to deliver 46,000, according to the Environment and Urbanization Minister Mehmet Ozhaseki.

Yazgın Danışman drinks tea with Kadriye Zaran (center) and Mevlüde Aydın (right), her neighbors and now close friends. Photo: Can Erok

Critics, including the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), have accused the government of favoring political motivations over sustainable solutions in this crisis, and have pointed out it’s making unrealistic promises to the public. Many citizens, meanwhile, blame the government not only for their lack of response to the tragedy, but for directly contributing to the extent of the damage in the first place. Although officials, including President Erdoğan, have repeatedly described the earthquakes as “the disaster of the century,” attempting to pin responsibility on divine forces, scientists suggest it was in fact the corruption and greed of local and central governments that killed the masses. Turkey had been expecting an earthquake of this magnitude for well over two decades, yet the government continuously moved forward with building projects that lacked the proper techniques, inspections, and planning to withstand the inevitable disaster. One notable example is the 2018 zoning amnesty granted by the Erdoğan government ahead of the elections, which condoned many illegal structures in a highly seismic country—a move seen as a way to gain votes over his opponents. In another case, the mayor of Hatay, a member of the main opposition party, received $200,000 worth of bribes to allow a lush apartment complex to be built three years before the earthquakes, only for it to collapse, killing more than 60 residents.

It would be one apartment complex of thousands: Lale Korkmaz, 50, lost both her husband and her 22-year-old son, Isa Baris, when their building collapsed, its foundations failing against the 4:17 AM earthquake. At the time, she had been at the hospital with her 26-year-old daughter, Buket, who was being treated for leukemia; Isa had been her marrow donor.

Buket would lose her life just one week after Korkmaz lost her husband and son. But, she says, Isa had been her daughter’s support system until the very end—not just as a donor, but as a poet, a vivid storyteller, and a bright spirit.

“He loved the Beatles; we would watch movie after movie,” Korkmaz says, her eyes tearing up. “We even had a WhatsApp chat that included only us three. One of us would message to let them know when the coffee was ready. I just really miss our conversations.”

Now, Korkmaz lives with her older daughter’s family in one of the prefabs, mounted by a private Turkish company and given to the government’s emergency and disaster management agency, AFAD. “[My granddaughter and I] blow kisses at the stars when they stand aligned,” she says, in hopes that her two late children are on the receiving end.

Korkmaz finds a small sliver of solace in her daily coffee dates with other women neighbors, each going through their own tragedies. She also holds out hope that a hospital somewhere will name one of its rooms after her daughter, and that the purple tulips she’s planted in her honor will bloom in the near future. That’s what her daughter’s name means—tulip.

Lale Korkmaz shows the flowers she grew in memory of her son and daughter. Photo: Can Erok

But besides these brief moments of peace, the future is bleak both for her and for millions across the deprived quake zone, and in Antakya’s case, it is especially horrific. Prior to the earthquakes, it had been known around the globe as a culture and gastronomy hub, and as a prime example of coexistence, with Sunnis, Alewites, and multiple different Christian communities all living in harmony. Now, the earthquake’s name is all over the wrecked city, first called Antioch in the Bible, its many unique historic heritage sites almost totally wiped out.

Today, the city is so dusty, you see tired people covering their noses and mouths as they walk amidst what seems like a doomsday plateau. You can physically see the high risk of asbestos in the layer of dust that gathers on your clothes and your car. Out of 911,000 apartment units and homes, more than 266,000 were destroyed or severely damaged in Antakya, according to Mayor Lutfu Savas. The city feels like a giant construction zone, with excavators still scooping away mountains of rubble that once stood as buildings made of feeble concrete, some of which had been approved to be mixed with sand, per court documents. Where the rubble has been cleared, large patches of empty land remain, haunting locals while silently breaking their hearts.

But while everyone suffers deeply in Antakya, for women, the toll is even heavier, according to Canan Gullu, president of the Federation of Women’s Associations of Turkey, who’s been traveling between the quake-stricken provinces over the past year to implement various projects focused on helping women.

“Turkey already ranks very low on the Gender Gap Index,” Gullu says, referring to the 2023 World Economic Forum report, which puts Turkey at 129 out of 146 countries. “So, we are seeing this divide deepen further here now.”

Part of the problem is the lack of space, leading to pressure cooker domestic situations. “Imagine a life that fits 21 square meters [or about 225 square feet],” she explains, referring to the containers. “Women lack their private spaces. In that tightness, women are expected to cook, do the laundry, look after the children, serve the rest of the family.”

She has called for immediate psychosocial rehabilitation in the region, and for more training and employment options for women. The federation has also opened 30 “Purple Sites,” containers among the temporary settlements, where women can meet with psychologists, midwives, and child education specialists. They are seeing a rise in the number of girls dropping out of school, girls and women forced into marriage due to economic reasons, and of child abuse, Gullu says. “Children must be able to go to school or kindergarten,” she urges, noting that educational costs remain sky-high. She has also called for the government and private funding to help bring small businesses back on their feet as quickly as possible to help alleviate this, but there is a long way to go.

One of the "Purple Sites." Photo: Can Erok

Turkey’s crippling inflation rate stands at around 83 percent, independent economists say. And in Hatay, many items are more expensive than ever due to lack of resources. According to the Treasury and Finance Minister, the cost of the damage from the earthquakes stands at $104 billion US dollars; but so far, only around $30 billion has been spent. And the clock is ticking for female freedoms under these destitute conditions.

“We are up against a tremendous increase in cases of violence, as well, because of poverty and unemployment,” Gullu says.

Aysel*, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, has experienced this firsthand.

“He beats me all the time, for any reason,” she says, referring to her abusive husband. She says she married him when she was 48, and that he has been violent throughout their marriage, choosing to spend almost all of their retirement stipend on drinking all day. But after February 6, her life only got worse.

“I want to get out,” Aysel says. “I built a little hut, and I’m going to move there, and wait for him to divorce me.” She hopes he will have to pay her alimony if that happens.

Still, Aysel is afraid that he could track her to her new home, and assault her there, and is considering trying to get a restraining order against him—but is also scared of what might happen if she does. “He’s been sleeping with a knife under his pillow for the last two months,” she says, sobbing.

What Aysel has survived is heartbreakingly common in the region, even before last year. “According to the official data on domestic violence against women, available from prior to the earthquakes, the affected regions have a relatively lower rate of reporting to authorities and higher level of acceptance in cases of violence,” a recent UN Women report says. But Aysel is determined to get out.

Now over 60, she wants to start over, if she’s able to find the opportunity to do so. She hopes to begin working soon, but is worried about the lack of opportunities in the city, and knows she will struggle finding a job. “I’m willing to do any work just to stay away from him,” she says. Her resolve is reflective of many other women in the region, in spite of all that has been taken from them.

For hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of women and girls, the obstacles of the earthquakes’ aftermath stand tall, and brighter times lay too far out in the horizon to be seen. But without the government coming to save them, each will continue doing all that they can to persevere on their own.

A woman sits on a bench in front of an expanse of prefabricated homes. Photo: Can Erok

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March 15, 2024August 28, 2024

One Year After the Earthquake

by Nimet Kıraç

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Meet the women creating new life from arid land in India.

It was a day of joy and relief for Kamla: Her daughter was getting married—and the night before, it had rained.

Far from a bad omen, the downpour had been ever welcome. Kamla is a farmer, whose livelihood is directly dependent on the land she cultivates, the land that gives her and her family a variety of vegetable crops to eat and to sell, like beetroots, tomatoes, beans, and chilis. For much of the year, however, the weather works against her: She and her family live in Khajraha Khurd, a village in the Jhansi district of Bundelkhand, Uttar Pradesh—an otherwise drought-prone region in India’s most populous state.

In Kamla's home that morning, preparations were being made for the wedding. Women were singing folk songs and cleaning the freshly picked vegetables from her farm to prepare meals for their guests. Young girls were making roti on the earthen stove burning with a wood fire. Other children were jumping in muddy puddles as cows grazed in a nearby pasture. The entire scene resembled a Satyajit Ray film, portraying their small, Indian village as a mosaic of intertwining agrarian lives.

Kamla was overjoyed. Because of the savings she’d earned through farming, she would be able to gift her daughter two heavy, embroidered sarees with matching glass bangles, heels, and bindis as a wedding gift. She wouldn’t have been able to afford them otherwise. “When I got married, nobody asked me about my choices,” she says. “But today, at my daughter’s wedding, I have made sure her choices are taken care of.”

Farming is a path that has opened many new doors for Kamla, one she first chose to walk in 2020, when the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the imposition of a country-wide lockdown. In cities across India, migrants who worked as daily wagers—Kamla included—suffered the most, as their jobs were eliminated overnight. Their very livelihoods came to a complete standstill, and few to none could meet their personal needs, let alone those of their families.

At the time, Kamla was working as a construction worker on a site in New Delhi. After the lockdown was announced, she stuffed her things into a sack and started the journey back to Bundelkhand—where she was born and raised—along with her three children and husband. Without employment, the couple had to exhaust all their savings simply to return home.

Once in Bundelkhand, Kamla was desperate for work. She was not alone: During the pandemic, Uttar Pradesh experienced one of the largest reverse migrations in India. More than 3 million workers returned to their villages from the cities, many of them living below the poverty line—and for women freshly out of work like Kamla, their options were especially limited.

Even before the pandemic, women had been at a disadvantage. According to the dozens of people that I spoke to for this piece, women in India often work more than men, keeping households and raising children in addition to some form of employment outside of their homes—all while being paid less than their male counterparts. In cities, women frequently worked as concrete mixers, diggers, stone breakers, and brick haulers; climbed unstable scaffolding carrying bricks; and were exposed to pollution at their work sites—as were their children, who they often brought to work because there was no one at home to provide childcare. Despite these women doing equal (if not more) work, the people I spoke to estimated that a male laborer usually makes up to 500 Indian rupees (US$7) a day at a construction site, while a woman only makes up to 300 (US$4).

This disparity in pay and promotions, along with regular sexual harassment, a lack of maternity leave, and the absence of toilets, are all an everyday reality for most working women in the informal and unorganized labor market in India. These factors are predominantly driven by patriarchal norms, as well as social, economic, and cultural restrictions, and often feel impossible to avoid. Overworked and underpaid—and now facing a global pandemic—many women didn’t want to migrate to new cities where they would again be forced to compromise on the health, hygiene, and education of their children, or to continue living without community support. With a pandemic at their doorstep, there had to be another option.

Luckily, at home in Bundelkhand, women like Kamla had access to a resource they did not have in the cities: land. Many of their husbands were in possession of inherited land once ripe for farming, but long abandoned in the past due to drought.

Historically, farming in the region had been a challenge. For the past several decades, Bundelkhand has faced a crisis due to uncertain rainfall patterns, causing severe crop damage and sometimes total crop failure. If they could revive this land, however, it could be a tremendous opportunity for financial security. Putting their heads together, these women regularly met three or four times a week to share their household and financial troubles, brainstorm ways to address their issues, and identify how to achieve their financial goals. Farming quickly became one of them.

Kamla expressed an early interest in farming for two reasons: She wanted a sustainable source of food for her family, and she wanted a fair way to earn a livelihood. This is why, in 2022, she decided to join the Basant Mahila Farmer Producer Organisation, a collective of about 3,000 women entrepreneurs across forty villages in the Jhansi, Mahoba, and Lalitpur districts in Bundelkhand. The program was founded in 2020 by ActionAid India through Work4Progress India to create and promote more livelihood opportunities for women, especially those pushed to migration due to the effects of climate change.

The majority of farming-related policies and programs in Uttar Pradesh are not women-friendly, but Basant aimed (and aims) to change that. Rajendra Nigam, a district coordinator at Basant, tells me, “We trained women like Kamla to produce organic seeds, and they successfully produced seeds of wheat, groundnut, pea, and urad (black gram), which are always in high demand in the region.” Through Basant, Kamla learned how to grow her own organic vegetables and fruits, how to prepare cow manure as organic fertilizer, and how to grow multiple crops on the same land in a year. Soon after completing her training, Kamla also received about eleven types of vegetable seeds and some farming tools, spray machines, drums with which to prepare fertilizers, and material for farm fencing to continue farming independently.

“I came back from Delhi tired and empty handed,” says Kamla, who in the past often hid her face in front of local village elders as a mark of modesty and respect when in the presence of men. Now, she fearlessly calls herself “an organic woman” who has successfully and continuously grown vegetables and grains on her 1.5 acres of land since 2022.

It wouldn’t be the only skillset that Kamla gained from Basant. The program isn’t just about teaching women the skills necessary to begin farming, but also to give them the financial literacy and independence necessary to make financial decisions of their own—in India, a realm traditionally dominated by men. To that end, Basant has worked as an intermediary between the government and farmers to educate the latter on various insurance protection plans and credit opportunities specific to their work. These local solutions, according to Khalid Chaudhry, an associate director at ActionAid India, contribute to helping women reach financial independence, some for the first time. And Kamla is just one of many women benefiting from it.

Deva. Photo courtesy of Aliya Bashir.

“I didn’t know how to grow home-grown food. It felt like a dream,” says Deva, a mother of three sons, who recently began farming a “nutrition garden” on her 1.5 acres of land. She decided to join Basant after she’d seen some women in her community benefit from it, and was particularly interested in learning about the cultivation of various vegetables and fruits, what plants to grow in what season, how to prepare manure and a compost pit, and how to save her produce from pests. Before long, she could do all of this herself.

“Now, I teach women to prepare organic manure, pesticides, and fertilizers at a very low cost by using the material usually available on our farms,” she says.

Prior to returning to Bundelkhand in 2020, Deva worked for three years in the brick kilns of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Now, she grows organic beetroot, bottle gourd, tomato, fenugreek, cucumber, brinjal, and other vegetables, and is able to sell them at fair prices compared to commercial farming. In addition, she hopes to begin selling her organic manure in the market to better maintain the soil health of other local farms.

Equipped with so much new agricultural knowledge, Deva has become an advocate for nutritious food in her village, and takes great care with her family’s diet, always feeding them a variety of fruits and vegetables. In 2022, she was also able to purchase six chicks and four goats from her earnings.

“Earlier, we would always have less availability of food. But now, we are not only having chemical-free food, but also eggs and chicken and dairy at home,” she says.

Her care has proven profitable: In a recent harvest, Deva earned a profit of 66,600 Indian rupees (~US$800) by cultivating a wide variety of vegetables and fruits in her garden. When she was working as a manual laborer, she wasn’t able to save anything—but now, she hopes to give her grandchildren the good education she couldn’t afford to give to her children before them.

Kamla has similar hopes and dreams. Although she couldn’t afford her elder daughters’ education due to limited financial resources, she is determined to pay for her youngest daughter’s schooling, and farming has allowed her to save more money than she could have ever imagined when she was working in construction. “In Delhi, we would work for almost ten hours a day and would earn 20,000 Indian rupees (~US$240) per month,” Kamla says. “The place is very costly to live in—around 15,000 (~US$180) would go into rent and other expenses. Saving a few thousand rupees was difficult.” In comparison, in the past three months, Kamla has sold 30,000 Indian rupees (~US$365) worth of eggplants alone; the cost for cultivation for which was just 5,000 rupees (~US$60).

“We are expecting the eggplant production to increase three times in this season,” she adds.

Over the last few months, Kamla has sold 80,000 Indian rupees (~US$965) worth of produce through multiple vegetable cultivation, growing high yield vegetables like beetroot, bottle gourd, chickpeas, and cucumber simultaneously. The overall expenses were 13,000 Indian rupees (~US$155), which meant a profit of 67,000 Indian rupees (~US$810), much of which she has been able to put into savings.

“I grew up with the thought that a woman can’t have big dreams,” she says—but still, she’d always refused to give up on them. Customs and tradition taught her that only men have the capability to manage food security in a rural Indian family, and she’s already proven this doesn’t need to be the case. “My family is very happy with my farming work,” she says. “When I am busy on the farm, my husband not only takes care of the children, but also helps in preparing meals.”

This domestic bliss feels prescient. One of the founding members of the Balant program, Laxmi Devi, chose its fitting name upon its founding: In Hindi, basant means happiness and prosperity. With their new skillset, Kamla—and Deva, and so many other women—seem to have found just that.

[post_title] => A Farm of One's Own [post_excerpt] => Meet the women creating new life from arid land in India. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => india-women-farmers-basant-bundelkhand-farming-agriculture-climate-change [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-09-13 19:24:53 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-09-13 19:24:53 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=5947 [menu_order] => 61 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

March 7, 2024September 13, 2024

A Farm of One’s Own

by Aliya Bashir

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I worried that coming out would further ostracize me from other feminists. Instead, it reinforced why I became one in the first place.

The reason why I waited so long to come out as nonbinary was because I thought it would ostracize me even further from other feminists. As a person disabled by chronic pain and fatigue from fibromyalgia, I’d already been made to feel out of place within feminism for the entirety of both my professional and academic careers. I'd also developed my writing voice during the so-called heyday of feminist blogging—a heyday that unfortunately wasn’t as utopian as people might suspect—and had experienced firsthand the complicated dynamics that arise when one’s platform makes them a target. Not wanting to separate myself further from other feminists, I chose to keep my complex feelings about my gender identity to myself. Until eventually, of course, I couldn’t.

It’s a bit of a cliché for people in the LGBTQIA community to say that they always knew they weren’t straight, or that they weren’t cis. But a part of me always knew I was nonbinary, even before I’d fully admitted it to myself. One of the defining features of my childhood and adolescence was my inner “eh…no” when people—mostly adults, but often my peers, as well—would try to label me as a “girl” or “young woman.” It would happen at school, and at home: As a child, I was prone to slouching, and my mom would encourage me to improve my posture by insisting, “Stand up straight! Like my dad used to say, ‘Be PROUD you’re a woman!’” Each time, a tiny voice inside my brain would whisper but I’m not a woman in response.

As my adolescence chugged on, I began receiving even more unwanted attention and scrutiny from peers regarding my “manly” voice—a direct quote from one of my bullies—as well as my rapidly changing body. I was not a fan of this attention, nor of the insistence that I was a girl, its implication that I should adapt myself to better seem like it. What was so great about being a girl, anyway? Or for that matter, being a boy? I just wanted to be myself.

It was around this time that I first discovered feminism. As a seventh grader, I read Dr. Mary Pipher’s book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls and started quietly identifying as a feminist. Despite the difficulties I still faced from being bullied, Pipher’s book, and the idea of feminism, made me feel less alone. I daydreamed about finding a feminist community that I could contribute to and feel valued by in return—one that included a wide variety of perspectives from people with different life experiences, all working together to make a world where oppressions like sexism, ableism, racism, classism, and anti-fat bias were no longer the norm. In high school, I began openly identifying as a feminist, and eventually, got better at ignoring my peers’ asinine comments. But I still yearned for something more—something I couldn’t yet put my finger on.

I eventually found a community of feminist friends when I started college and chose to pursue a major in Women’s and Gender Studies. Needing a break from academic writing, I also started my own blog in 2005. I quickly noticed that most of the feminist blogs with the largest audiences tended to cover issues that catered to young, educated, white, middle/upper class, cis women. Sexism, body image, popular culture, media representation, sexuality, and reproductive rights are, of course, all subjects that deserve coverage, but the ways in which they intersected with disability never seemed to be covered in any depth. Despite the use of the word “intersectionality” from some of the more popular feminist bloggers, it seemed to me that few actually practiced it.

As it happened, I was not the only one to notice the absence of disability from the feminist blogosphere. In 2009, I collaborated with a group of disability bloggers to form a site called FWD/Feminists With Disabilities as a response. The tipping point had come when several of us noticed that one of the most popular feminist blogs had never published a post specifically about disability and feminism; and when disabled readers had raised their concerns in the comments, other commenters had piled on, insisting disability and feminism were two separate things, and that the disabled commenters were being “bullies.” FWD ultimately only lasted for two years; the amount of threats, derailing, and angry e-stomping we received—in our comments, inboxes, and elsewhere—mostly from other feminists, all ostensibly on our side, proved to be enough to burn us out.

Having to repeatedly explain what feminism and disability had to do with each other—and that disability and chronic illness are feminist issues—was grating. It was isolating. This isolation got worse when I entered a Master’s program for Women’s and Gender Studies, where I was the only physically disabled person in my grad cohort. I faced pushback from multiple professors in the department for supposedly not being energetic enough. Another professor, the department head at the time, threatened to fail me when I missed more than the allotted two classes due to pain and fatigue from my fibromyalgia, on the grounds that it “wouldn’t be fair to the other students.” I later found out that I was not the only disabled person whom she had treated this way.

Throughout this period, I kept wondering if I was a failure as a feminist because I was not performing youthful, sisterhood-uplifting feminism the right way. I was repeatedly made to feel “difficult,” just for pointing out how feminism was leaving disabled people behind. Yet resolutely declaring I am a disabled woman, and I belong here didn’t feel right, either. I had this slippery, niggling feeling in the back of my brain that the reason this was the case was that I was not a woman at all. But at the time, I was in close contact with enough feminists eager to tell me how I was doing both feminism and academic work wrong, that keeping quiet about my weird gender stuff was easier than further othering myself.

Eventually, in my mid-30s, the discomfort of performing as someone I was not outweighed the comfort of avoiding negative attention or questioning from people skeptical as to whether the nonbinary identity is real. Surprisingly, on the other side, I became even more of a feminist than ever before, not because my core beliefs had changed, but because coming out had allowed me to be my authentic self. I no longer felt like I needed to identify as a woman to be a good feminist, because, of course, I didn't.

Since coming out, I’ve realized that I have better ways to spend my time and energy than trying to make nondisabled feminists care about disability issues. In fact, I likely would have come out sooner if I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to get (mostly white and nondisabled) women in the feminist movement to acknowledge that disabled women exist, and that many disabled people of all genders are feminists. While it’s irritating that I still get misgendered by TERFs on social media sometimes, the block button is there for a reason: I can’t be anyone other than myself, and if “feminism is for everybody,” as bell hooks once wrote, then it’s for nonbinary people, too. In a time where nonbinary and trans people of all ages are being smeared as predators, simply for being who they are—and, in the sad recent case of high school student Nex Benedict, being threatened or killed due to the moral panic surrounding trans existence, fueled by the specter of “safety” for cisgender kids—it is crucial that feminists welcome people of all gender identities in the ongoing fight for gender equality. It only benefits all of us when we do.

[post_title] => Feminism is for Nonbinary People, Too [post_excerpt] => I worried that coming out would further ostracize me from other feminists. Instead, it reinforced why I became one in the first place. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => feminism-nonbinary-coming-out-disability-intersectionality [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:14:01 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:14:01 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6701 [menu_order] => 62 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

March 1, 2024August 28, 2024

Feminism is for Nonbinary People, Too

by Anna Hamilton

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Nearly three months after COP28, are we actually delivering on its promises?

The day before COP28 began in the UAE last November, a damning report was released by the Centre For Climate Reporting, confirming what many had already suspected: COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber had taken multiple meetings with various oil-producing countries throughout the year, likely swaying his priorities for the conference ahead. While Al Jaber’s legitimacy had already been in question, this latest report put his credibility on a cliff. As such, COP28 began with damage control: The first move of Al Jaber’s presidency was to operate the Loss and Damage fund based on recommendations from the Transitional Committee, achieving its passage with unanimous support.

It was an easy win, but not a big enough one—and just a couple months into 2024, I worry what was and wasn’t achieved at COP28 might be an arbiter for climate action in the year to come.

Although the fund’s operation was a step in the right direction—facilitating financial resources for countries already suffering the impacts of climate change—as written, many factors could prevent it from working as intended. Most notably, the Transitional Committee’s (questionable) recommendation to name the World Bank as the operation entity, and the absence of the equity principle, would both affect the fund's ability to assist the nations most vulnerable to climate inaction. To help with this, after the failure of an agreement at SB58, COP28 agreed on the Santiago Network as the fund’s host, operationalizing technical assistance for these countries in loss and damage matters. But it’s unclear if it will be enough.

It also wouldn’t be the only agreement reached during the conference that left something to be desired. After enabling the Loss and Damage fund, the parties focused on the most pressing matter of COP28: the global stocktake decision. In Article 14, the Paris Agreement defined a period of five years for reevaluating the treaty's implementation and projecting priorities for the following period, with COP28 designated for the first assessment. This year, the most polemic aspect of this negotiation focused on the phrase “fossil fuel phase out” (FFPO), an expression embraced and proposed by the Least Developed Countries (LDC) at COP23, in hopes of more ambitious climate action. Regrettably, based on the strong opposition of various oil-producing countries, the initial presidency draft of the global stocktake did not include the phrase FFPO anywhere in the text, causing upset among those supportive of its inclusion. This latter group comprised 127 parties, including the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC), the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), the EU, and even the US. However, despite overwhelming support, universal consensus is vital for adopting new decisions at COPs—and oil-producing countries did not give in to their demands.

Eventually, compromise was reached between the two opposing sides, and instead of using FFPO, the language was changed to include "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems" and “phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies,” enabling the parties to reach an agreement. Although this small move towards ending fossil fuels is valuable, the latest draft of the stocktake leaves much room for interpretation as to what those two phrases mean—its language too vague to hold many parties accountable. For example, the text only calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels when used in energy systems, thus excluding some industries, such as transportation, from being asked to the same. There has also been talk of "transition fuels," which would be very favorable to the interests of polluting actors, allowing greenwashing commitments to take the place of actually transitioning away from fossil fuels. Ultimately, all of this suggests that although the revised text of the global stocktake decision was an improvement from the first draft, it does not ensure that polluting states and companies will not continue to exploit fossil fuels: It is merely a first step towards a better horizon, but still a very fragile one.

Helping to fortify that step, it was also decided that the Just Transition program—which advocates for shifting from an extractive to a regenerative economy worldwide, and is likely to be a vital part of the next global stocktake in 2028—would go into operation "immediately after" the end of COP28. But regarding climate finance—in other words, the means by which climate action is funded—it was decided a draft decision would be written later this year, the same year in which three workshops and three work program meetings will be held. The substance of what’s to come will remain for SB60 and COP29, and is perhaps the most impactful element of the upcoming negotiations.

In the interim, there is much that must be done—with a few key factors standing in the way. Consensus is a crucial element in climate negotiations, requiring broad agreements across parties to implement the objectives of the UNFCCC. But it remains unclear how exactly “consensus” is defined at these conferences, as Article 42 of the UNFCCC’s procedural rules—which present two alternative means to reach consensus—has not yet been adopted, leaving much space for interpretation and thus, conflict. At COP16 in Cancún, for example, Bolivia interpreted consensus to mean unanimity, and tried to block the agreed decision, believing it wasn't ambitious enough. In response, the COP16 presidency insisted that "the consensus rule does not imply unanimity, much less does it imply the possibility of a delegation exercising a right to veto after years of hard work and sacrifice [of the other parties]." Without an explicit definition, the possibility that some groups or states will attempt to block other agreements remains open.

For the climate regime's success, decisions adopted by the COP must be widely supported and legitimized. Currently, multilateralism and civil society both help ensure this is possible. At COP28, when oil-producing states opposed including FFPO in the decision text, both developing and developed nations joined forces to create the language in the current draft. But they were able to achieve this compromise, in part, because of outside support. Usually, the role of civil society is especially relevant in each stage leading up to every COP. Reports, statements, and advocacy are vital for influencing state agents in pursuing, prioritizing, and incorporating climate ambition into their decisions. At COP28, the typical preambular role of civil society was extended into the very conference itself. After receiving the presidency draft of the global stocktake decision, several demonstrations were organized within the venue in an attempt to pressure delegates to make improvements to it, and to make evident the public opinion that the original presidency draft would entail a regression for climate action. I believe these last minute demonstrations were crucial for the parties who wanted more climate ambition: Without their work and effort, the final version of the decision text would likely not have even mentioned fossil fuels at all.

Still, more consistency and clarity are needed to continue advancing climate action in the right direction, both in 2024 and beyond. The gaps in the "transitioning away" formula adopted by the parties will require immense caution moving forward. It is essential not to repeat COP26’s and COP27’s mistakes, where the former merely mentioned fossil fuels but the latter did not deliver any progress. The prospect of COP29 will not be easy, with another oil-producing host country and a former oil industry CEO as President of the Conference. All of the elements that prevented COP28 from being a fiasco are required and must be maximized in Azerbaijan. Achieving the phase out of fossil fuels depends on developing countries, especially, increasing climate action, and at COP29, developed countries should demonstrate their willingness to achieve the FFPO by committing and effectively transferring the necessary resources to these developing nations. As such, climate finance must be a priority. The fragile progress of COP28 requires a growth curve in the following COPs, setting ambitious targets and equivalent means for achieving them. Let's dream of a COP30, with the background of the Amazon in Belém do Para, actually establishing and moving towards the FFPO.

[post_title] => The State of Climate Action in 2024 [post_excerpt] => Nearly three months after COP28, are we actually delivering on its promises? [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => climate-action-2024-conference-of-the-parties-cop28-oil-ffpo [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-28 21:11:27 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://conversationalist.org/?p=6660 [menu_order] => 63 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw )

February 26, 2024August 28, 2024

The State of Climate Action in 2024

by Pedro Cisterna Gaete

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