Monday, January 25, 2021: The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan

There has been little or no coverage in the US about the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over this disputed region. The territory is inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians and the seven surrounding districts were inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis. The present conflict began in back in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded that Karabakh be transferred from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. That conflict escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After a period of relative stability, the situation deteriorated into several periods of outright war. On September 27, 2020,  Armenia was attacked jointly by Azerbaijan and Turkey, deploying Turkish armament. Turkish partnership in the current war is set against the backdrop of the genocide of the Armenian people by Turkey and the rise and collapse of the Soviet Union and the so-called Cold War.

Click on the link below for the recorded interview with Professor Gohar Shahnazaryan speaking to us from Armenia discussing the current situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the history of Turkish genocide of Armenian people, the role of Stalin and the Soviet Union in the region, and the central military and ideological instigation by current Turkish regime of President Recip Erdogan. She also describes the work of women and feminists on the ground. They are holding the communities and families together during the crisis. The feminists are also practicing feminist diplomacy as happened between women in Kosova and Serbia during the war in the Balkans.

Dr Gohar Shahnazaryan is the Co-Founder and Director of Women’s Fund Armenia. She is also the Director of the Center for Gender and Leadership Studies at Yerevan State University. She holds PhD in Sociology from Yerevan State University. Professor Shahnazaryan was a visiting scholar at the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University and at the Institute of Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies at UC.

For the past ten years Professor Shahnazaryan coordinated a number of large-scale projects on women and gender issues (such as projects on women’s leadership, development of referral mechanisms for the survivors of gender-based violence, educational projects on women’s rights, women and peacebuilding, development of feminist movement in Armenia, etc), and participated at various international, regional and local conferences, trainings and workshops on women’s rights and gender equality. She is an author of more than twenty publications on gender issues in Armenia.

Click here to listen to today's show. 32:39 min

Monday, January 18th, 2021: Support opposition to desecration of Mauna Kea

This Monday, January 18 at 1 pm PST! Learn how you can help stop the UC’s proposed colonial project of building the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) on the sacred site of Mauna Kea.

Support Native Hawaiian community opposition and pressure the UC Board of Regents to DivestTMT on January 19-21, 2021.

For information on how to make written or spoken public comments, templates and talking points, see: bit.ly/ucdivesttmt

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min 

Monday, January 11, 2021: Fuifuilupe Nieumeitolu and Indigenous Women and the Land, and Lisa Fithian and strategies for activism

  Today we talk to  Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu to celebrate the inauguration of her new podcast that will be featured on women’s magazine starting next month and will also be available online. It is called  "From Moana Nui to California Indigenous stories of the Land" which will explore the importance of the land to all indigenous people to resist and over come colonization and to find healing.

Fui is a Tongan/ Pacific Islander scholar and community organizer. She has a PHD from UC Berkeley in Ethnic Studies and her dissertation work was on  “The Mana of the Tongan Everyday.’ 

 Fui is on the founding committee of the Moana Nui Pacific Islander Climate Justice Project and (OCNC) Oceania Coalition of Northern California, a community organization working for Pacific Islander self determination through facilitating groups and Ceremony with Indigenous  prisoners here in California as well as organizing teach-ins and protests to protect Indigenous Sacred spaces in the Pacific and here in California. Fui is currently working with the Sogorea Te Land Trust an Urban Indigenous women’s land trust located in Oakland, California.

A 2000 article in Mother Jones called her “Professor Occupy” and recently a radio host suggested that if you looked up protester in the dictionary, you would likely find her picture.Then Kate Raphael speaks to Lisa Fithian author of the new book "Shut It Down: Stories from a Fierce, Loving Resistance”. Lisa Fithian who has been an organizer, trainer and strategist for dozens of creative action campaign, she of the people responsible for the  continuity of resistance methods that  were passed down from the anti-militarist movements of the 1980s through the global justice movements of the early 2000s to Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. 

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min.

Monday, January 4, 2021: What are your deepest yearnings for 2021?

Margo Okazawa-Rey aka DJ MOR Love and Joy (HAHA) broadcasts a LIVE CALL-IN show on Women's Magazine, substituting for Vylma V. Friends CALL the KPFA Call-in Number: +1800-958-9008 

Margo says: "What are you hoping for in 2021? More deeply, what are your yearnings—“things” that flow from the deepest parts of your being and existence. Today's your chance to share some of what’s in your heart. I want us to speak together about our dreams, hopes, and visions. Join me in my first call-in broadcast 1:00-2:00PM KPFA Radio 94.1FM.  +1800-958-9008.  Don't leave me hangin'. "

Hear great music and what KPFA listeners had to say about their hopes for the coming year.

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min

Monday, December 28, 2020: India, Farmers, and Democracy

 As we are broadcasting today, and despite the threat of COVID, hundreds of thousands of Sikh and other Indian farmers are protesting in the nation’s capital New Delhi. In this largest organized protest in world history, over 250 million farmers, workers, and their allies are demanding the government to rescind the neoliberal “reform” laws that will basically hand over farming to agribusinesses, thereby destroying the livelihoods of more than half of 1.3 billion Indian people who depend on agriculture. 

Women protesting against farm bills

The so-called reform is aimed at workers in general as well. The protesters are also demanding that Prime Minister Modi rescind a diabolical new law that basically criminalizes dissent and opposition to the government. Yet another threat to democracy in India and worldwide. The violation of Sikh people’s land, rights, and dignity is part of the Indian caste system and has a long history.

Margo Okazawa-Rey produced today’s show with Jagmit Kaur Dhami, one of the youth leaders in the Sikh Indian diaspora organizing to support the farmers movement. She is a second-generation Punjabi American from Bellingham, WA and a recent graduate of Occidental College.  Her roots as a Punjabi and Sikh make her incredibly passionate about the Kisaan Ekta movement. Her parents were farmers in Punjab and she has family currently in India who would be directly affected by the new laws. Jagmit sees social justice, identity, and storytelling as avenues to uplift voice and create change. I agree!

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min 

Further Information:

Video overview of protest in India: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CIjDeIrp_xN/?igshid=1dq84ev8lx7uk

Thread describing more in detail the situation: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIQagMrBhJj/

Actions to take:

Email US Congress members to condemn the human rights violations in India: bit.ly/farmers-protest

Text to send emails:

Instagrams to follow with more info:

@sikhexpo

@sikhcoalition

@himmatco

Monday, December 14, 2020: Examining the crisis of the child care system in the US

This Monday December 14th on KPFA Radio’s  "Women’s Magazine" we look at how racial Capitalism and Patriarchy have created a punitive underfunded child care system in the U.S. where the  the average hourly wage of child care workers is $10.72 per hour,  many of the women in need of child care are black and brown women and few get any government support in accessing child care.  This system is informed by the history of slavery in the U.S. where women’s job to reproduce the work force is required but never supported.  And the reality in our neoliberal economy is that many women especially women of color are the essential workers during covid and are working 2-3 jobs just to survive and yet rarely getting any government support for child care.

Today we talk to Marcy Whitebook from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, Clarissa Douthard with Parent Voices Oakland and Loira Limbal director of the award winning documentary about child care “Through the Night” that shows how caregivers balance the demands of “women’s work” while navigating systemic racism, sexism and classism in the U.S. today. This beautiful film is available online at https://www.throughthenightfilm.com/ and is also showing at the Roxy Theater locally.

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min 

This week is fund drive for KPFA  so please call  KPFA Radio at 1.800.439.5732 or online at KPFA.org and donate any amount you can to help keep voices like this and stories about women on the frontlines stay on the air.  It is because we are a listener sponsored station that we can have these radical and unheard  voices on the air.  So please call and support KPFA.  And please share this announcement with others. 

Thank you 

Lisa Dettmer 

Monday, November 30, 2020: Imagining a Post-“45” US and the World with Vylma V, Jovelyn Richards, and Margo Okazawa-Rey

Welcome everyone to Women’s Magazine!  I’m Margo Okazawa-Rey, your host. Today is the 5th Monday so three of us hosts of WM Jovelyn Richards, Vylma Ortiz, and I decided to team up.  

We’re here to discuss our observations about the incoming administration and most important, share our vision of a feminist future under Harris and Biden. We will be answering three questions during the show. At the end, we will invite you to share your thoughts via email to Women’s Magazine. In the meantime, think along with us your answers to the questions.

• What are our reactions to the  presidential transition and, based on what you see, what can we expect from the incoming administration?
• What do we want the Biden-Harris administration to create that will ensure women will  thrive? 
• What signs will show us we are on the right road to our vision? What should be our underlying values?

Click here to listen to the show. 59:50 min