Monday, April 25, 2016: Environmental Gender Justice

Exploring the intersections of the environment and gender justice.

Memorial rally for Berta Caceres

Dipti Bhatnagar

Across the world, women are at the forefront of grassroots environmental movements, resisting land grabs and displacement from the state/extractive industries to fighting the wrath of environmental toxins impacting the health and well being of their communities. We talk to two inspiring women activists from the global south.

First, Preeti Mangala Shekar talked to Honduran environmental activist and indigenous leader, the late Berta Caceres, when she was in the bay area to accept the Goldman Prize in 2015 for her incredible activism fighting her community’s displacement from the world’s largest dam builder. The Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, Berta Caceres was murdered by the right wing Honduran government , barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project. Since Honduras’s right wing coupe it has become one of the most violent places in the world. In an interview two years ago, Cáceres singled out Clinton for her role supporting the coup.

Later in the show, we talk to Dipti Bhatnagar an Indian organizer with Friends of the Earth International based in Mozambique, who discusses how both grassroots mobilizing and strategically using international spaces like the UN Climate Forum / Conference of Parties (COP) are strategic feminist approaches in the fight for environmental justice.

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

Due to a power outage in Berkeley on April 25th only part of the interview with Dipti Bhatnagar was broadcast.

Monday, June 29, 2015: LGBT History and the Creation of Gay Identities

The threat of violence is the single most common issue that unites most LGBT people across lines of difference.

Order this book at your local bookstore

Gentrification, policing and the creation of gay place-based communities: a conversation with Christina Hanhardt. Hanhardt is professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and the author of Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence.

Listen now or Get MP3. 40:08 min.






Safe Space. Winner, 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies. Now available as an ebook.

Since the 1970s, a key goal of lesbian and gay activists has been protection against street violence, especially in gay neighborhoods. During the same time, policymakers and private developers declared the containment of urban violence to be a top priority. In this important book, Christina B. Hanhardt examines how LGBT calls for "safe space" have been shaped by broader public safety initiatives that have sought solutions in policing and privatization and have had devastating effects along race and class lines.

Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic research in New York City and San Francisco, Hanhardt traces the entwined histories of LGBT activism, urban development, and U.S. policy in relation to poverty and crime over the past fifty years. She highlights the formation of a mainstream LGBT movement, as well as the very different trajectories followed by radical LGBT and queer grassroots organizations. Placing LGBT activism in the context of shifting liberal and neoliberal policies, Safe Space is a groundbreaking exploration of the contradictory legacies of the LGBT struggle for safety in the city.

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

Also on today's show:
Women's Empowerment Day at Hip Hop for Change

Monday, January 12, 2014: Community Rights

Starting at the Local Level; Civil Disobedience at its Core

Click here to get MP3.

Is corporate takeover of our political system a done deal? Not according to the women in today's interview. Kate Raphael of KPFA Women's Magazine asks the hard questions.

We discuss the Community Rights framework for local citizens taking back control over their food supply, their environments and their values with Michelle Holman from Lane County, Oregon Community Rights Network and Linda of the Community Rights Network of Mendocino County.  In November, Mendocino passed California's first community rights ordinance, banning fracking.

Empowering the People:
"Point to a harm in your community whether it be fracking, GMO foods, pesticides, prisons... and follow it back. It's a corporate decision made somewhere else. All of the state's constitution give the people the right to design their lives. The system is not broken, it's rigged." says Michelle Holman.

There are over 200 communities that have passed rights-based ordinances. Community Environment Legal Defense Fund helps people work on ordinances.

In November Mendocino County passed the first anti-fracking law in California to prevent any entity from using fracking in the county. The Community Bill of Rights Fracking and Water Rights Ordinance is really a Community Rights ordinance not an anti-fracking law. Fracking is a symptom of the problem of corporations taking control over our communities. With this ordinance we have begun a process to take away control of our communities from the corporations. Community Rights Network of Mendocino worked with Community Environment Legal Defense Fund and Global Exchange and hundreds of volunteers to pass Measure S. Also check out Paul Cienfuegos.

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

Also on today's show:
Islamophobia
Remembering Maha Abu Dayyeh

communityrightslanecounty.org