Monday, July 27, 2020: Suffering from Three Viruses: Occupation, Corona, and Traditional Patriarchal Culture with Margo Okazawa-Rey

Today I continue what has turned out to be a series on colonization, militarism, and their impacts on women. Today also marks the 67th anniversary of the armistice that ended the war on the Korean Peninsula so let’s keep that in our hearts.

On past shows, my guests discussed Memorial Day, and US colonization and occupation of Okinawa and the Pacific. In our show titled Suffering from Three Viruses: Occupation, Corona, and Patriarchal Culture, we broaden the earlier discussions by shifting to Afghanistan and Palestine. In interviews recorded on July 22, my guests Sima Samar and Faiha Abdulhadi shared what’s happening in Afghanistan and Palestine respectively. Next month, we’ll hear about Sudan.

As you are listening, please ask yourselves these questions: How has it been possible to forget about Afghanistan and Afghan women? What do you know about Palestine and Palestinian women? And again, I am urging you to make the connections between “here” and “there”, the relationships between domestic policy and foreign policy, and ultimately to imagine what real security--all the way from in your lives and communities, to the entire country, and the world-- would look and feel like. Especially for women.

The latest in Afghanistan and Palestine, reported by wonderful feminist activists, women and human-rights defenders, visionaries, and my dear friends, Sima Samar and Faiha Abdulhadi. Given what you heard, as US-based feminists, what is the “common context of struggle,” as Chandra Mohanty asks, with Afghani and Palestinian women? How are our destinies bound up with theirs?

Dr. Faiha Abdulhadi has extensive experience as a writer, poet, oral-historian, researcher and research-consultant, community activist, and lecturer, and has been working on gender and other issues of human interest. She is the founder and director of Al Rowat for Studies and Research, which seeks to rewrite social history by documenting stories of marginalized groups and of witnesses to key historic events. She is a member of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian Central Council, the deputy Commissioner General for the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Palestine.

Dr. Sima Samar is a medical doctor for poor people by profession, and a women’s and human rights activist. She was the first Minister for Women’s Affair after the fall of the Taliban. Since 2004, she is the Chairperson of Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the first established in the country, which holds human rights violators accountable, a commitment that has put her own life at great risk. She has established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization that, in 2012, operated more than one hundred schools and 15 clinics and hospitals dedicated to providing education and healthcare, particularly focusing on women and girls. She was the recipient of the Right Livelihood Award in 2012.

Resources:

Free Women Writers https://www.freewomenwriters.org/2016/09/14/afghan-women-history-post-taliban/

Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling www.wclac.org

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

Monday, June 22, 2020: Paradise Militarized hosted by Margo Okazawa-Rey

We begin with special tribute to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sandra Bland, and Eleanor Bumpurs dating back to the 1980s, all killed by the police. ABSOLUTELY Black Lives Matter! I hope y’all are taking part in the massive organizing and activism that we are seeing. Special shout-out to my friends Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, Carissa Lewis, Charlene Carruthers, Alicia Garza, and all the other Black women leading the struggle on the ground.

The International Women's Network against Militarism

Today’s show is titled “Paradise Militarized.” In my show on Memorial Day, my guests discussed the importance of remembering all the unrecognized and unknown casualties of US wars and militarism. We talked about the lands that the US military is currently occupying and devastation to both human and natural life as a direct result. Today we deepen that discussion by sharing more details about three sets of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Okinawa was first colonized by Japan in the 19th Century and now is home to 75% of US military presence in Japan. Guahan, known by most people outside as Guam, is a current colony of the US, and Hawai’i was colonized by US also in the 19th century and was annexed as the 50th state in 1959. 

As you are listening, please ask yourselves these questions: What do Guahan, Hawai'i, and Okinawa have to do with colonization and imperialism, with anti-Blackness and liberation of  Black and other people and communities of color in the US?  We’ll be asking you to rethink the various aspects of the military apparatus in the US, from the war-based economy and military spending, to environmental impacts of wars and military operations, and the systems, tactics, and cities’ budgets for policing. Most important, we’ll  be urging you make the connections between “here” and “there”, the relationships between domestic policy and foreign policy, and ultimately to imagine what real security, all the way from in your lives and communities to the entire country and the world, would look and feel like. Especially for women.

I am in conversation today with long-time feminist activists and professors Lisa Natividad speaking to us from Guahan, and Kim Compoc who is in Honolulu. We will also listen to a recorded interview with professor Kozue Akibayashi in Japan. They are all members of the International Women’s Network against Militarism along with their respective organizations.

Dr. Kozue Akibayashi is a feminist researcher/activist and has worked on issues of gender and peace. She is a professor at Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, and a member of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Dr. Kim Compoc is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of Hawaiʻi at West Oahu. Her research focuses on U.S. empire in the Philippines, Hawaiʻi and Oceania; Asian/American Studies /literatures, as well as diasporic Filipinx Studies with an emphasis on Indigenous, Feminist, and Queer critique.

Dr. Lisa Linda Natividad is Professor in the Division of Social Work at the University of Guam. She is also the President of the Guahan Coalition for Peace and Justice. She has delivered interventions to the United Nations on issues of militarization, colonization, and indigenous peoples’ rights.

All three guests are members of the International Women’s Network against Militarism.

Resources:
Watch as Thousands Protest in Downtown Honolulu in Support of Black Lives Matter

Nihi! KIDS TALK about Self-Determination| KIDS TALK | Nihi! on YouTube 

Where will you be? Why Black Lives Matter in the Hawaiian Kingdom by Joy Enomoto

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

Monday, July 1, 2019: Women Confront the Crisis in Haiti

In this episode of KPFA Women's Magazine we talk about how women are coping with an escalation of government-sponsored violence in Haiti, and a political crisis we hear little about but which has been going on for over a year. Judith Mirkinson, president of the SF Bay Chapter of the National Lawyers' Guild and the Comfort Women Justice Coalition and Leslie Mullin, long-time member of the Haiti Action Committee, talk about what they learned on recent trips to Haiti. Haitians have been in the streets for almost a year protesting government theft of millions of dollars. In November, paramilitaries associated with the Haitian army and police massacred dozens of civilians in the neighborhood of LaSaline, as UN troops did nothing to protect the people.

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

Also on today's show:
Toni Morrison Comes to Film

Naila and the Uprising at Jewish Film Festival

Kate Raphael talks to Julia Bacha, director of the film, Naila and the Uprising, about the central role of women in the First Palestinian Intifada. Julia and executive producer Suhad Babaa will be present at two screenings of the film at the Jewish Film Festival, on Sunday July 29 at 5:00 pm at the Castro Theater, and on Monday, July 30, at 3:25 pm at the Albany Twin.

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

Also on today's show:
Middle Schooler’s organize Feminist Club

Monday, July 10, 2017: Occupation: Palestine

Colonialism - Past, Present and Future

Find this book at your local bookstore or online.

Fida Jiryis, a Palestinian born and raised outside of Palestine now living in Ramallah, discusses the experience of returning from exile to live inside Israel's borders, the differences between writing in English and Arabic, and why she chose to write a women's fiction book with a Canadian non-Palestinian protagonist.

Fida is one of the contributors to the best-selling new book, Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, a partnership between the Israeli project Breaking the Silence and U.S.-based authors Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon.

Listen now or Get MP3. 22:29 min

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

Find more articles by Fida Jiryis below:

Diary: London Review of Books

One Border, Two Worlds

Amidst Fragmentation and Dispossession: Which Palestine?

It is only 20 minutes from my village to the ruins of Iqrit — but 63 years of dispossession

A Taste of Freedom: Palestinians who Have Returned from Abroad and Their Desire to Leave Again

Why Land Day still matters

Palestinians in Israel: The Struggle for Rights

Also on today's show:
Occupation: America

Monday, November 16, 2015 – A Murder (Mystery) in Palestine

"...they both have a very keen sense of justice..." Kate Raphael talks about her novel, Murder Under the Bridge

Nina Serrano interviews Women’s Magazine producer and Palestine solidarity activist Kate Raphael about her debut novel, Murder Under the Bridge.

Listen now or Get MP3. 22:58 min.






Kate Raphael is a San Francisco Bay Area writer, activist, journalist, and clerical worker. She spent eighteen months as a peace worker in Palestine and spent six weeks in Israeli immigration prison because of her activism. She has won a residency at Hedgebrook writer’s colony and was once elected grand marshal of the San Francisco LGBT Freedom Day Parade.

You can find the book at many local bookstores, including Diesel and Laurel in Oakland, Books Inc. (Castro and Opera Plaza), Borderlands, Dog Eared, Modern Times, and Book Passage in San Francisco. Friends have found it at feminist bookstores in Atlanta and Tuscon, so it well might be at one in your city.  You can also buy the print or ebook through any online retailer: Indiebound, Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble.




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





Also on today's show:
Transgender Native Hawaiians
Singing to Stop Climate Change



Events:

This Thursday 

 Nov. 19, 7:30 pm

Book Celebration for

 Kate Raphael's Murder Under the Bridge

 La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley

 With special appearances by political comedian Karinda Dobbins

 and radio host Malihe Razzazan

Cupcakes from Angel Cakes

 Book sales benefit for Middle East Children's Alliance  

Friday, Nov. 20, 6:00 pm

 Post-work happy hour

 Book Passage

 San Francisco Ferry Building

 Reading, Discussion

 and schmoozing

View event on their website  

For more readings by Kate look for her calendar on www.KateRaphael.com

July 21, 2014: Palestinian Women Take Aim with Cameras

KPFA summer fund drive has begun.  Please help us keep the station alive.

We speak with filmmakers Judith Montell and Emmy Scharlatt about their film, "In The Image," which features footage shot by half a dozen young Palestinian women working with the Israeli human rights group, "Btselem" to document daily life under occupation. Not just human rights violations but also graduation parties, shopping, falling in love, resisting by existing - they tell it like it is.

Listen now or Get MP3. 25:03 min.





In the Image is showing at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on Wednesday, July 30 at 1:50 PM at the Castro Theatre, and on Sunday, August 3 at 4:45 PM at the California Theatre. For tickets and more information go to SFJFF.org.

We are two Jewish women filmmakers interested in women’s rights, non-violent activism and social issues throughout the globe. We are excited to be telling a different story about the relationships between Jews and Arabs.

Judith Montell has produced and directed documentaries dealing with issues of social justice, history, and education. Among them are Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, nominated for an Academy Award; A Home On The Range: The Jewish Chicken Ranchers of Petaluma with Bonnie Burt; Timbrels and Torahs: Celebrating Women’s Wisdom with Miriam Chaya., Professional Revolutionaary: The Life of Saul Wellman and First Amendment On Trial: the Case of the Detroit Six. She directed and edited a series of 16 half hour dramatic programs in Esperanto, “Pasporto al la Tuta Mondo” for the purpose of teaching the language to aspiring Esperantists around the world. In The Image: Capturing the Struggle for Human Rights is in the spirit of these films, encouraging and teaching activism and featuring “ordinary” individuals working for a common good.

Emmy Scharlatt, started her film career as an assistant editor in Hollywood. Her feature film credits include: Year of The Dragon; Karate Kid II; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles; Steel Magnolias. She has worked as an editor, researcher, writer, and producer on documentaries and feature films since 1982. She edited Taino Maida’s Peace is Every Step, The Life and Work of Thich Nhat Hahn, and was Consultanting Editor and Associate Producer on Mark Eisner’s film on the life of Pablo Neruda, The Poets Calling. Emmy co-produced Four Questions For A Rabbi by Stacey Ross and Jay Rosenblatt, an 11-minute film that won the Directors Cut award at the 2008 Black Maria film festival. In the Image is her directorial debut. She holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from San Francisco State University.

Click here to listen to the entire Women's Magazine show from today. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
The Life of Valerie Solanas

California Coalition of Women Prisoners is sponsoring a caravan and rally on July 31st to protest the re-opening of McFarland prison, to be run by the GEO Group, a private company with an abysmal reputation. Low level women offenders qualified for release are being transferred to McFarland for a brutal program falsely entitled Enhanced Rehabilitation and Recidivism Reduction Campaign. The caravan will meet at MacArthur BART at 11 AM and link up with Trail for Humanity. A rally at 5 PM will be held at McFarland Park. For more information contact CCWP at 415-255-7036 ext 4 or email notomcfarlandgeo@gmail.com. To find out more about Trail for Humanity you can find them on Facebook.