Project Economic Refugee

January 22nd is Blog for Choice Day 2010 and I’m supposed to blog about this question: “what does the slogan Trust Women mean to you?”  But if I just did that blindly, I’d be doing a disservice to the pro-choice movement that has helped safeguard the dignity of American women.  Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on where the “pro-choice” movement is at.  For the record, let me first state that I’ve always thought the frame “choice” (as in “it’s my body it’s my choice” mantra) has always seemed like a total loser to me.  I mean “loser” in terms of how it actually hurts the cause of women’s reproductive rights and also works against the overall strategy of keeping abortion legal because it fails to connect with a modern populace.

The messaging problem stems from multiple failed strategies, the likes of which were analyzed over at DailyKos on an aptly titled “Feminism Fail” post.  Setting the frame of abortion and reproductive rights purely as a matter of “choice” always sets liberals up for failure because it plays right into the hands of the conservatives’ stereotypes about them of “men and women using abortions as a lazy/irresponsible method of birth control”.  Not only that, but the frame “choice” runs counter to progressive identity.  C’mon fellow ‘pro-choicers’, for once, let’s be honest here: arguing in terms of “me, me, me, MY choice My body My decision” only communicates to the average person an individualist, dismissive, seemingly selfish, and ironically quasi-conservative (in the traditional sense) position, which is diametrically opposed to the sense of community, social, and mutually bonding responsibility that progressive ideals are supposed to uphold. 

Don’t get me wrong: I do not for a minute believe that the majority of women who choose to have an abortion are selfish or any of the things that I just described above.  In fact, I agree with Jessica Valenti of feministing.com on what she said back in 2007 in this piece that appeared on AlterNet.org:

Trust women to know what’s best for themselves and their families. Many women who choose to have abortions do so out of concern for their existing children. It’s time to put to bed the bullshit stereotypes of women having abortions out of “convenience” or selfishness. 

However, I think Jessica overlooks something key in terms of “trusting women”: there’s a difference between doing that in isolation and in doing that as a community that cares.  What do I mean by this?  Well, Rabbi Michael Lerner said it best in his “The Left Hand of God” book:

 …we should seek to create an ethos in which women feel invited to consult and receive support from others affected by their decision to abort, and conversely for those involved to offer support and comfort should such a decision be taken by the pregnant woman.

I just simply do not understand why ‘pro-choice’ groups do not co-opt the “life” slogan from the conservatives and expand their brand to frame abortion in terms of a healthy quality of life, which would include health care for all-especially for children, access to constraceptive education, and the fostering of pro-working family policies that give parents the support to provide a better quality of life for their children.  The middle class is under attack by our society’s modern obsessions of corporate materialist bottom lines of greed.  Yet, the ‘pro-choice’ groups fail to grab onto this narrative and run with it, opting instead to dig their heads stubbornly into the sands of stagnation.  It’s time for them to abandon their tired and isolating slogans of “choice” and instead embrace the slogan of being pro-HEALTHY families, meaning, as Rabbi Lerner put it: keeping abortion legal, safe, rare, and cultivating a culture that rewards the parents that opt to undertake the beautiful task of raising children.

And Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Mark 10:14.  What would Jesus say about denying toys to children? Would he check for “legal” status before welcoming them into his arms?

Folks, meet the real “War on Christmas“:

Did you hear about how the Salvation Army is denying toys to children if their parents are not “legal”?  Regardless of how you feel about the humanitarian crisis of our current immigration system, it is absolutely astonishing that an organization like the Salvation Army that claims to do charity is betraying the spirit of Christmas by punishing innocent kids.

I heard about this story first a couple of weeks ago on the Mike Malloy Radio Show on my drive home from work.  So as soon as I got home I looked the story up online because I was livid with anger.  I found that ThinkProgress had reported on it earlier on this post about what was going on in Texas.  However, ThinkProgress also reported on an update that this Texan Salvation Army had reversed its policy due to the bad publicity that it had received:

The Houston Chronicle is now reporting that the charities will not be using immigration status to deny gifts to the children of undocumented immigrants. The charities explained that while they do request identification, it is only to prevent fraud and if parents could not provide such identification, they would not be turned away.

“Fair enough”, I thought, perhaps this was an isolated incident and the Salvation Army’s intentions were not truly as evil as they first appeared and the whole thing was a cultural misunderstanding.  I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. 

Oh how wrong I was!

Surprise, surprise, it turns out the Texas incident was not an isolated one but rather part of a disturbing pattern.  I just got tipped off by a member of the Project Economic Refugee community to this story in Tennessee involving the Salvation Army’s Angel Tree program:

Nashville charities reject immigrants’ kids

If you’d like to contact the Tennessee Salvation Army to complain about this, here’s the link to several offices in that city.

Do you know if your local Salvation Army is doing the same thing?  Here’s a list of contact information for several national offices.

Update: I just got the following note from a professor in Tulsa, OK:

We had a sort of similar challenge 3 years ago in the Tulsa Salvation Army.  They would not give gifts to those children who were undocumented.  Some parents had both, born here and undocumented.  Only those who were born here could receive gifts.

It has been fixed, many Latino leaders sent letters requesting that ALL children receive gifts.  It took a long time, but I am so glad it got fixed.

So, this is definitely not the first time the Salvation Army has pulled something like this.

Here’s a rustic print ad I did with the help of my friend Saira who modeled for me-thank you Saira! (this was part of an assignment that I did for a Communications class I’m currently taking):

Paper AND plastic are BOTH bad choices for your health

These are the basic elements of the ad:

Attention grabber: bright colors in the fruit and vegetables

Appeal: fruit, healthy living, relatable to you (you could see yourself doing what Saira is doing).

Narrative: the ad asks the question that you often hear at the grocery store: “paper or plastic?” It then urges you to be different, to “step outside of the box” and to support and pick “the better choice”: reusable bags.

Call to action: it asks you to reject the use of paper AND plastic bags so you can instead use reusable bags; it also invites you to visit the site www.healthebay.org/store  so you can get your own reusable bag.  In the future, the site could change to something like healthebay.org/healthyfuture (Heal the Bay does not have a site that has such a name … yet) that could be a centralized online center for people to take action (like send letters of support to newspapers and legislators or the like) on various issues dealing with marine debris.  Ideally, the center would reinforce the idea that it’s going to take all of us to solve the problem of plastic bags polluting our environment, working together: 1) through legislation that taxes the use of plastic and paper bags to discourage usage, 2) cleanup efforts, and 3) reclycling campaigns; and that if you take one element out (because of pressure from powerful moneyed interests), the efforts will most likely fail to solve much. 

I’m also trying to frame the situation very clearly with this ad with some long-term messaging:

• Plastic AND paper bags = bad for your health (because it impacts your quality of life).
• Reusable bags = healthy living, promising future, protecting your children from pollution.

Sure, the ad is not commercial-quality, but I think it gets the point across very effectively nevertheless.

  PS Don’t forget to click on the picture of the print ad above: it takes you to a video that CurrentTV aired about the problem of plastic bag pollution in our rivers and ocean.