Over the past couple of months here at Traction’s website, we’ve been writing and writing about voting rights and the dangers of electronic voting machines. Over at DailyKos this morning, diarist reprehensor has a little nugget for you to chew on. He digs into the archives at VerifiedVoting.org and offers up a “sample of the thousands of ‘anomalies’ that were reported to the [Election Incident Reporting System] during the 2004 election.” (He also invokes Mark Crispin Miller who wrote an absolutely essential essay in Harper’s last year for anyone who’s worried about the integrity of American elections. Make sure you read it if you’ve not yet had the chance to do so.)

Click through to read a fuller report at DKos.

Tonight several of us went to hear Marge Piercy read. She’s a feminist, a progressive activist and a phenomenal poet.  We’re grateful to the mysterious Committee for Art and Justice, who brought her to the Triangle to commemorate and celebrate the life of Deborah Greenblatt.  What a gift.

Here’s a classic Piercy poem, about the power of solidarity:

The Low Road

What can they do to you? Whatever they want.
They can do anything you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop them? 

Alone, you can fight.
You can refuse. You can
take what revenge you can.
But they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, and sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge.
With four, you play bridge and start an organization.
With six, you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no seconds,
and hold a fund-raising party.

A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred can fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity
and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time.
It starts when you care
to act. It starts when you do
it again after they said “No.”
It starts when you say “We”
and know who you mean and
each day you mean one more.

From The Moon Is Always Female, by Marge Piercy
Copyright (c) 1980 by Marge Piercy

April 10, 2006

you down with O.P.P.?

Filed under: Civil Rights, Health Care, Events — Lanya @ 11:33 am

Heads-up, Tractivists:

You could be denied healthcare if your sexual behavior (or orientation) doesn’t mix well with someone else’s values.

If you’d never thought about it before, you’ve got another think coming: religious restrictions to reproductive health care are on the rise. You’ve got pharmacists who refuse to sell the pill. You’ve got hospitals who won’t snip, clip or tie tubes. And infertility specialists and sperm banks who pick and choose who gets to play mommy based on their own “family values.”

Sex is personal. Faith is personal, very. The personal is political. And the political is sexy. (Okay, now we’re being silly but you know it’s true.) But what happens when individual and institutional values conflict with your right to health care access and/or treatment?

Bottom line: Who has the right to get all up in your business?

Join Traction, Planned Parenthood of Central NC and Jill Morrison of the National Women’s Law Center for…

Below the Belt: Religion, Reproductive Rights and O.P.P.* — a conversation about the growing issue of religious restrictions to reproductive health care.

Tuesday, April 11th 8pm
Joe & Jo’s
427 W. Main St. in downtown Durham
688-3322
And it’s FREE!

Jill C. Morrison is Senior Counsel at the NWLC and author of “Don’t Take ‘No’ for an Answer: A Guide to Pharmacy Refusal Laws, Policies and Practices.” She speaks with community activists, medical professionals and state officials throughout the nation on strategies to protect and expand access to health care. Her issue areas include STDs and HIV/AIDS, racial and ethnic disparities, socioeconomic status and violence against women. Ms. Morrison is a graduate of Rutgers and Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism and President of the Black Law Students’ Association.

*If you DON’T know, O.P.P. is classic oldschool hiphop (You down with O.P.P.? Yeah, you know me.) and it means Other People’s, well, Property.

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