A Rainbow Flag Over Habana Marina Sitrin We are on a main city block early Saturday morning. People gathering are high spirited, almost giddy. As people begin to form a line I exhale deeply, imagining it is just one of many lines that are the Cuban reality. This line, however, is different. This line begins to shift, snake, jump and dance. This is a conga line. There are hundreds of us, perhaps even a thousand, and we are dancing in a conga line down one of the most central streets in Havana. And we are not just some random group of people, we are a group of lesbians, gay men, transvestites, transsexuals and bisexuals, along with heterosexual friends and sometimes even families, all gathering for the International Day Against Homophobia. For over a week activities have been taking place throughout Havana, as well as in a few provinces in the country to educate about sexual diversity, and, to celebrate it. While the events that have been taking place have the feeling of Gay Pride, they are also Cuba’s version, meaning it is organized for people, not by the people. But this is Cuba. A place where all passions cannot, and are not, controlled from above. I felt the contradictions that are Cuba surface in a palpable way on the Saturday of the conga line. I saw some of the things I love most about this contradictory island, and some of the things I like least.

A response to the Feminist Political Education Project by Grace Kwinjeh, 17 April 2008 I was just sent a copy of this statement by the Feminist Political Education Project [pasted in below] and must admit to being more than a little bewildered and shocked by what is suggested in light of recent events in Zimbabwe, by sisters whom I know very well – who are part of the Feminist Political Education Project.

Here is my own offer for ending the conflict (originally written almost 3 months ago, right after shmanapolis): Fellow Leftists...

Pollutants Change 'He' Frogs into 'She' Frogs

Marlowe Hood

PARIS (AFP) — Frogs that started life as male tadpoles were changed in an experiment into females by estrogen-like pollutants similar to those found in the environment, according to a new study.

The results may shed light on at least one reason that up to a third of frog species around the world are threatened with extinction, suggests the study, set to appear in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in May.

In a laboratory at Uppsala University in Sweden, two species of frogs were exposed to levels of estrogen similar to those detected in natural bodies of water in Europe, the United States and Canada.

The results were startling: whereas the percentage of females in two control groups was under 50 percent — not unusual among frogs — the sex ratio in three pairs of groups maturing in water dosed with different levels of estrogen were significantly skewed.

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Caliban and the Witch:
Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation

Silvia Federici

6 Session Class Begins

Tuesday, October 10

5:30–7:30 PM

The class will read and discuss Silvia Federici's latest book,Caliban and the Witch:
Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation, a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici shows that the birth of the proletariat required a war against women, inaugurating a new sexual pact and a new patriarchal era: the patriarchy of the wage. Firmly rooted in the history of the persecution of the witches and the disciplining of the body, her arguments explain why the subjugation of women was as crucial for the formation of the world proletariat as the enclosures of the land, the conquest and colonization of the ‘New World,’ and the slave trade.

Silvia Federici, a long-time feminist activist and teacher, is co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and the RPA (Radical Philosophy Association) Anti-Death Penalty Project.

Federici’s published work includes: Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and its ‘Others (editor) and A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities (co-editor).

Sliding scale: $65/$85

The Brecht Forum

451 West St. (Betw Bank & Bethune)

New York, NY 10014

(212) 242- 4201

A Caring Strike – Precarias a la Deriva

Tuesday, August 22 – 7pm – Bluestockings Books, Café, and Activism Center

172 Allen Street, NYC – $5 to 10 donation

Precarias a la Deriva is a Madrid based activist research project which has worked for the last few years to map and to explore the changing life and work situations of its participants, seeking those fragile moments and places of aggregation which allow us to break the solitude and the impotence of our individual—and very different—lives and imagine relevant forms of organization and collective resistance. Recently we have focused on the notion of care, both as a common ground of universal necessity and as a specifically feminized and unregulated sector of work: What would it mean to organize care? What would a care strike look like? How might care be structured differently? Maggie Schmidt will speak briefly about the history and methodology of Precarias a la Deriva as a collective research-action project and within the emerging European discussions on precarious work, present some of the debates around care, and introduce the current project which has arisen out of Precarias: the ‘Agency of Precarious Affairs,’ a center for resources, organizing and mutual aid. She looks forward to getting in touch with similar projects and processes in the US.