Utility Strike & Fighting Ecofascism
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Position On The Adirondack Pregnancy Center
Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or CPCs, are anti-choice organizations that masquerade as health facilities in order to trick women who are considering abortions. The goal of these centers is to plant themselves in close proximity to real abortion providers and divert potential clients away with deceptive advertising. Once inside a CPC, people are lied to, shamed, and pressured about their reproductive health decisions, often delaying their procedure or pushing them past the deadline for a legal abortion altogether.
One such center is on its way to Saranac Lake. Partnering with the notorious anti-choice organization Heartbeat International and approved by the Village Development Board to do business just one block away from the local Planned Parenthood, the Adirondack Pregnancy Center has all the tell-tale signs of a crisis pregnancy center (CPC). CPCs are unethical entities that employ deceptive, politically motivated practices, and the current project in Saranac Lake should be shuttered immediately.
This should not be a contentious issue in Saranac Lake. In addition to Carolyn Koestner’s comprehensive letter to the editor about CPCs in the March 10, 2020 issue of the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, there’s plenty of evidence that CPCs do not provide women with objective medical counseling on pregnancy options. The goal of these organizations is specifically to dissuade women thinking of having abortions by any means necessary, including false information about pregnancy and abortion.
In 2018, the American Medical Association (AMA) Journal of Ethics published an article titled “Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical.” Drawing on multiple undercover surveys of CPCs and detailed reviews of the centers’ promotional materials and websites, the study reports on how women who sought counsel at CPCs across the country were falsely told that abortions are linked to mental health issues and breast cancer. They were also told contraception is an ineffective means of preventing sexually transmitted infections.
In a segment on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver covers how CPCs often mislead women into waiting to get an abortion until it’s too late in their term to do so. Yet, because CPCs are not medically licensed facilities (Adirondack Pregnancy Center received a “Certificate of Incorporation” from New York State), they are able to give their clients misinformation without legal ramifications because of a “free speech” loophole.
That the Adirondack Pregnancy Center will be any different from these kinds of CPCs looks more and more unlikely the more digging you do. Their partnership with Ohio based Heartbeat International is particularly incriminating, given the sheer number of Heartbeat’s existing partner pregnancy centers worldwide that have been exposed for their disinformation practices. What’s the common denominator? Heartbeat International provides a handbook to their partners with “suggested scripts” that center workers can use to coerce their clients (see Last Week Tonight).
Not only does the APC have access to these harmful materials, their board members recently attended Heartbeat International’s Annual Conference, which is designed for those involved in “life-affirming” centers and provided the board with “invaluable training”. The keynote speaker for APC’s upcoming banquet is a paid speaker for the anti-choice movement.
It gets even worse: the owner of the domains www.adirondackpregnancycenter.com and www.adkpregnancycenter.com were both registered by an Ohio based company that on their own about page admits they “are experts at making sure your website is attracting the abortion-minded client.”
The company is currently in hot water for potentially exploiting personal medical information of pregnancy center clients. Clearly, the APC is backed by large, multi-national interests more invested in pushing an anti-choice propaganda campaign than actually helping women with unwanted pregnancies and allowing them to make their own decisions regarding their bodies.
If the proponents of the Adirondack Pregnancy Center are actually interested in providing quality care to pregnant women, they should obtain a medical license and engage in 100%-truthful, full-disclosure healthcare. Or they could help single mothers and other economically disadvantaged parents take care of and pay for their children, giving women with unwanted pregnancies a resource they can rely on should they choose to give birth.
Until either of those things occur, High Peaks DSA calls on the Village of Saranac Lake Development Board to take all available evidence on the unethical behavior of CPCs into account in a reconsideration of the board’s initial approval of the Adirondack Pregnancy Center. Failing that, we call on the people of Saranac Lake—the same community that stopped Walmart—to say “NO” to this entity and its deceptive practices that will bring harm to our community.
Additional Resources
- “The Adirondack Pregnancy Center – An introduction”
- Carolyn Koestner, “Protect reproductive rights; stop Adirondack Pregnancy Center”
- Laura Cunningham, “Women’s choice doesn’t seem to be pregnancy center’s priority”
- American Medical Association, “Why Crisis Pregnancy Centers Are Legal but Unethical”
- John Oliver, “Crisis Pregnancy Centers”
- openDemocracy, “Exclusive: Trump-linked religious ‘extremists’ target women with disinformation worldwide”
- Rewire.News, “How Anti-Abortion Organizations are Exploiting Personal Data”
- FactCheck.org, “Born Alive Baloney”
The post Position On The Adirondack Pregnancy Center appeared first on High Peaks DSA.
Justice for Public Housing feat. Julia Salazar
You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM.
Fighting the Cuts at UVM
The following is a lightly edited transcript of a talk given for the CVDSA Webinar, “Fund Vermont’s Future: Join the Fight for Public Education” May 6 2020
After endless messages thanking us for our hard work and dedication during these challenging times, last week the administration at the University of Vermont announced budget cut plans that show nothing but callous disrespect for the lives and work of faculty.
The cuts are billed as reasonable “shared sacrifice” in face of inevitable looming crisis: as my dean said, “these measures will impact nearly every member of our community in some way.”
But nothing about this plan is fair or reasonable or equitable. Like the worst of regressive taxation, it protects the university’s wealth, while imposing undue hardship on those who earn the least. It would inflict great harm on educational quality, because it targets faculty—award winning, experienced, beloved faculty— who teach multiple sections of courses that are essential to students. For example, in my department, English, we would lose more than 20 course sections next year. And even on their terms, it makes no financial sense, because the positions being cut are so low paid, relatively little money will be saved
It is very clear that the impact of the cuts will not be evenly felt. Our dean and some other top administrators will “take an 8.3% reduction in salary.” This is in line with an earlier announcement that the University President would forego his pay for the month of April. President Garimella’s “generous” sacrifice is on a base salary of $480,000—plus stipend and benefits. My dean’s salary is $270,000, plus a stipend of an unpublished amount. At the same time, all Non-Tenure Track faculty—typically lecturers who teach four courses a semester—are slated for an involuntary reduction in their workload to 75 percent.
Now I want to take a moment to read from yesterday’s Burlington Free Press, quoting President Garimella: "The university has not imposed any pay cuts on any faculty," he said, explaining this is the time of year when each college assigns workload based on anticipated need. "It's a question of change in FTE (full-time equivalency), which is, you know, the amount of time they teach. It's their workload and it's not a pay cut."… However, he acknowledged reduced workloads will correlate with less pay.
In case there’s any confusion: when your workload is reduced, so is your pay. So, to be crystal clear, this will mean is a 25 percent pay cut for lecturers. And this would bring the average lecturer’s salary in the college of arts and sciences down to below $43,000.
So, after this “shared sacrifice,” lecturers will be below a livable wage, pushing many of them and their children into food and housing insecurity, while the president will be making more than ten times their salary and the dean more than five times. And at the same time the budget plan imposes a hiring freeze on staff and part time faculty. As a result, non-teaching staff, many of whom already earn well below livable wage, will face further uncertainty and precarity.
Part time professors are a vital sector of the university who routinely teach essential courses for little compensation, keep programs running and ensure continuity for students. Part timers are paid between $6000 and $7000 per course, without benefits, and contingent on enrollment. So, the savings for the university here are paltry. As one of my colleagues wrote on our union discussion list: “If you think of the budget as a container of large boulders, they are frantically picking out the pieces of gravel.”
The Rutgers University faculty union came up with the perfect name for this approach to budget uncertainty: “Maximum pain for minimum gain.” While the cuts hit non tenure track and part timers the hardest, they are bad for all faculty. First, because they mean that tenure track faculty will take up the slack and work more for less.
Second, because they will have a devastating impact on the university as a whole. For example, the administration plans to take away course releases and cut stipends held by faculty who run programs. Those programs include Jewish Studies, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, and Sexuality, Gender and Women’s Studies. So much for the university’s commitment to equity and diversity.
And third, because these cuts are just the beginning; more are coming, as can be seen in other universities, such as Ohio State. As a faculty member there put it: “we are canaries in a very toxic mine. Many other schools are probably going to go through this.” If we accept the logic of these cuts now, it will be harder for us to stave off worse attacks in the future.
Although the pandemic is the catalyst for these measures, they are part of a far longer pattern, and in that way are something of a wish list for the administration. The faculty union, United Academics, has documented consistent underfunding of education, and along with it squeezing of faculty at all levels, in favor of administrative bloat, marketing and branding, expensive amenities, and any number of boondoggle initiatives. Their “budgetary crises” are really a question of misplaced priorities.
And this continues to be the case even in the context of a genuine crisis for higher education. The university is a microcosm of the broader capitalist system: the staff and faculty who do the most, struggle to make ends meet, while board members and the president and a phalanx of vice presidents—and no one is quite sure what they even do—rake in six figure salaries. The university has a reported endowment of $467.7 million, yet they are eliminating part time faculty who make less than $6000 per course. As a petition against the cuts launched by students puts it “the university apparently has enough money to pay millions in branding and consultants, but no money for its students or faculty.”
The logic of austerity is that there is not enough to go around, so we are forced to compete with each other for the crumbs, rather than demanding more access to the wealth that is there. And that logic constantly pits us one against the other: Tenure Track against Non-Tenure Track; full time against part time; and on a bigger scale, K-12 education against state colleges against the University of Vermont.
We have everything to gain by standing in solidarity with each other to defend public education at all levels. For all these reasons and more, we at the University of Vermont have just launched a public campaign against the cuts. Inspired by the faculty, staff and students of the Vermont State Colleges, we refuse to accept that “there is no alternative.” There were 55 people at our first meeting, and we are planning a car protest to coincide with the next Board of Trustees meeting. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know that if we do nothing, we will all lose, but if we fight back, we might win.
Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón on the Latinx Community, Sexuality, and the Churches
Dr. Edgar Rivera Colón sobre la comunidad latinx, la sexualidad, y las iglesias
Justice for Ahmaud Arbery
The Metro Atlanta DSA mourns the tragic death of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was senselessly murdered while jogging through his own neighborhood in Glynn county three months ago. No parent should have to watch their child be slain in such a disgusting way, for no reason other than racist hate. There is no question about it: this was a modern-day lynching.
This murder, and the subsequent refusal of the capitalist state to take action against the killers, reflects the despicable systemic racism that plagues our whole country. The fact that this crime has gone unaddressed for 3 months provides a glimpse into what black americans face in an environment built on racial profiling and white supremacy.
We unequivocally stand with the NAACP in demanding the resignations of District Attorneys Jackie Johnson and George Barnhill. We echo their call for justice for Ahmaud Arbery. We encourage our members and supporters to participate in the distributed Dedication Distance Run planned for this Friday, May 8th, in his honor.
REST IN POWER
What is a Strike? Reflections on May Day
You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM
May Day 2020: Atlanta Car Parade & Protest
Every Human is Essential
On May 1, 2020, Metro Atlanta DSA joined with a massive coalition of Atlanta-area unions and activist organizations to put on a car parade and protest against the unacceptable handling of COVID-19 by the Georgia state government.
Protesters’ demands included:
- State-funded paid sick leave for all essential workers
- State-funded hazard pay for all essential workers
- Expanded unemployment benefits
- Expanded medicaid coverage
- Expanded food stamp subsidies
- Moratorium on rent
- Decarceration of jails and ICE detention facilities
The showing was incredible! Upwards of 100 vehicles participated in the caravan.
DSA members erected a mock guillotine along the parade route and in front of the state capitol building. Their signs read, “WE ARE NOT PAWNS FOR YOUR PROFITS.”
“Cars in the caravan all drove by blasting their horns with their fists raised, as did quite a few people who were not demonstrating,” said DSA member Rachel K, who worked closely with other organizers to make the mock guillotine stunt a reality.
More photos from the car parade and protest:
Atlanta’s 2020 May Day demonstration was organized and sponsored by:
- Concerned Members Of ATU Local 732
- United Campus Workers Of Georgia
- Shift Change Atlanta
- Southern Workers Assembly
- National Nurses United
- Black Alliance For Just Immigration
- Community Movement Builders
- Atlanta Industrial Workers Of The World (IWW)
- Metro Atlanta Democratic Socialists Of America
- Science For The People – Atlanta Chapter
- Georgia Detention Watch
- Black Workers For Justice
- Workers World Party
- Georgia Peace And Justice Coalition
- Georgia Workers Alliance
- Housing Justice League
- New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance
Get involved with Metro Atlanta DSA
Never forget — the wealthy elites need us more than we need them. Without our labor, they would have nothing. When we stand together, we are unstoppable.
JOIN METRO ATLANTA DSA — SUPPORT OUR WORK
Rent Strike! featuring Marcela Mitaynes
You’re listening to Revolution Per Minute on listener sponsored WBAI in NYC broadcasting at 99.5 FM and streaming on your favorite podcast app. To connect with us after the show you can email us at revolutionsnyc@gmail.com. You can find us on our website revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com or on twitter @nycRPM