Born Wilbert Passerley in Jamaica, Berto Pasuka ignored his family’s wishes for him to become a dentist, instead following his own passion to dance. He studied classical ballet in Kingston, where he first saw a group of descendants of runaway slaves dancing to the rhythmic beat of a drum. Feeling inspired to take black dance to new audiences, he moved to London in 1939, enrolling at the Astafieva Dance School to polish off his choreography skills. Following his work on the movie Men of Two Worlds, he and fellow Jamaican dancer Richie Riley decided to create their own dance company. Les Ballet Nègres was born in the 1940s, bringing traditional and contemporary black dance to the UK and Europe with sell-out tours.
Following is an excerpt from BlackOut UK’s 2019 tribute to Berto Pasuka.
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Berto Pasuka was a Jamaican migrant before the sailing of The Windrush. A film actor, dancer, innovator and entrepreneur who came from a modest background, and founded Les Ballets Nègres with his compatriot Richie Riley; Europe’s first black-led dance company in modern times.
A leader, who enjoyed some celebrity in British and European post-war high society, Pasuka carved a new space in the story of British dance for Black people. The dance company was met with critical acclaim but fell apart only six years later, unable to access the public subsidy that other companies were deemed to be worthy of.
Pasuka’s story ends tragically early; after his return from a period seeking his fortune in Paris at the age of only 52.
Berto Pasuka is one of the few Black and queer men who feature in the National Portrait Gallery collection – a place he held well before Simon Fredrick’s excellent 2018 Black is the New Black exhibition at the gallery. His life story speaks to the creative outsider, determined innovator, radical convenor and visionary that is recognisable from the story of so many Black queer Britons.
Following is rare footage of Les Ballets Nègres’s appearance on BBC Television on June 24, 1946. Two ballets where performed, “They Came” and “Market Day,” though only snippets of each are shown in this 2-minute video, one that has no sound.
The name Les Ballets Nègres was actually a cunning artifice. Trading on sophisticated French cachet, it fitted perfectly into the post-war cultural milieu while also sliding the idea of “black” into the forefront in an era when the only word anyone used was “coloured.” But if this was ballet, it was not as anyone knew it. As Richie Riley notes in his history of the company, “negro ballet is something vital in choreographic art. As conceived by Berto Pasuka, it is essentially an expression of human emotion in dance form, being the complete antithesis of Russian ballet, with its stereotyped entrechats and point work.”
Drawing inspiration from Afro-Caribbean folk-tales and rituals, Pasuka and Riley were bringing dance out of their own cultural background, labelling it “ballet” as little more than a flag of convenience.
Audiences lapped up their rhythmic dynamism, a world away from the uptight formalism of European classicism. That they foundered, primarily on the rocks of financial mismanagement, represents a great missed opportunity for British dance.
It’s the third book by Jama that focuses on homosexuality within Muslim cultures around the world. Like Being Queer and Somali, Jama’s preceeding books – Illegal Citizens and Queer Jihad – feature insightful and moving profiles of everyday queer people living in various Muslim communities.
“Meeting all of these people in my books has been extremely enriching,” writes Jama. “I had the privilege to hear over and over again how our lives are just natural, just like everyone else's.”
I share this evening, as the fourth installment of The Wild Reed’s 2022 Queer Appreciation series, an excerpt from the introduction of Afdhere Jama’s Being Queer and Somali.
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Being queer and Somali is being part of two “different” groups. In the queer American community I’m different because I’m Somali and in the Somali community I’m different because I’m queer. I consider myself to be many things, I especially consider myself to be a global person. I have said to many people that being global is the only way I know to juggle my many identities.
The truth of the matter is that being Somali is not just based on what I say, it is also what others say. It is not just my life, but also the lives of others. Despite our common connections, and there are many connections Somalis have, not all Somalis see the world through the same lenses. I learned that through telling the stories of queer people in the Somali community.
Hamdi Suldan was my first queer Somali subject, and after hundreds and hundreds of other subjects in the years I have been writing about LGBT life in the Somali community, I had learned a few things. These things would help me over the years to be strong in my own personal journey, as the stories of these people showed me that I was indeed worthy of what I believed.
The first thing I learned was that there are a lot of queer Somalis who are in relationships they had not chosen for themselves. I met so may gay men and women who were in marriages arranged by their families. Over and over again that was a theme that kept showing up in these stories, some escaping it by running away from home and others disowned by their families.
“Sunni Muslims believe that marriage is half of your faith,” says Hadiyo Jim’ale, leader of the Queer Somalis organization. “Part of it has to do with tribalism, as that is another added pressure. Many Somalis are expected to marry members of their own tribe.”
My family has many issues, and trust when I tell you that I’m the first to say they are not perfect at all, but I never felt pressure to marry, let alone be forced to marry someone. Neither was my brother, nor my sisters. My family just doesn’t do that.
The second thing I learned was that a lot of queer Somalis have had negative experiences associated with their sexuality from family, friends, and the larger Somali community. I met many people whose families disowned them, or whose families have been very negative towards them, or whose families have impacted them negatively by the way they spoke of queer sexuality.
I grew up in a family where I heard my mother defend me as a child many times. There is a clear conversation that comes to my mind, and it is a conversation that has given me so much strength. I must have been seven or eight, something like that, when I overheard a conversation between my mother and older sister. My sister suggested that I was going to grow up being a homosexual, and my mother said that she loves me nevertheless. I knew the word qaniis meant something unkind, as it was a word used by kids to refer to each other as a weapon, but I don’t think my friends or I ever knew what it really meant.
I have never, ever, not even once heard negative things being said about queer sexuality in a religious way. Everything I heard about qaniisiinta, or homosexuals, was cultural related. That is, I did not grow up with a negative idea of being queer. I would go to the mosque often and never did I hear a Friday Prayer focus on that subject. That is perhaps because I grew up in a time in Somalia when Salafism had not taken root just yet, when music and dance was part of Islam, and the Sufi tradition had a big influence in society.
I had heard about the story of Lut, but it was never a focus and no one really ever explained what and who those people were. They sounded like a bunch of criminals, from what I gathered.
Therefore, I did not grow up with a negative association between my sexuality and my culture.
Did you notice how seamlessly I interwoven the Muslim part of the Somali into the story? I took the story of Lut, associations, and culture.
That brings me to the queer side of this book, which is just as personal as the Somali side. There are ethnic groups in some parts of the Muslim world who do not have to deal with the negative ideologies of being queer.
It wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I realized that just because I didn’t have any issues with my sexuality, it didn’t mean that others didn’t. When I was a teenager I met and fell in love with one Somali guy. Like me, he had no problems with what we were doing. We were doing it secretly, just as a man and woman were doing it secretly. The issue was that we were having a sexual relationship, not that we were having a homosexual sexual relationship.
Later that year I went to the United States and I again met and fell in love with another guy. I know, I know . . . I easily fell in love. This second man, who grew up in a semi-religious household, had issues with it. He would feel bad after we had sex, and one time even commented how he had hoped we would change.
You could say it was the first time I realized there was an issue with people about their sexuality, which of course made me want to understand the issue better.
This experience led me to question whether it really was the case that Islam sees sexual relationship between people of the same sex as negative, or if it was a cultural situation. Ultimately, I came to the understanding that it was indeed cultural, and that different Muslim cultures approached this differently. The cultural approach was, in my new-found understanding, the same way different schools of thought approached this issue differently.
My books about sexuality are, I would argue, my experiences of coming to that understanding. It was only natural that I started with my community, the first story I ever wrote being that of a Somali transgendered woman, but it was not long before I was onto the larger Muslim community. It was how the book Illegal Citizens came about. That book was about the everyday LGBT people living in Muslim communities in the global south. Most of the people in that book are not out.
Queer Jihad was about the people in Muslim communities, especially those in the safety of western countries, who are leading the fight for non-heteronormative inderstand of issues relating to sex and sexuality. With that book I interviewed people like the first openly gay imams, activists, artists, and people who are generally in the public eye. Most of the people in that book are out. Queer Jihad was the love song I would dedicate to a young Muslim anywhere who wonders if it is okay to be queer and Muslim. It answers that question from many different angles.
Being Queer and Somali, therefore, is only different from those books because it combines the everyday and the activists, and it focuses on just my own ethnic community or people whose ethnic backgrounds are in the Somali communities of the Horn of Africa. Most people in this book are not out, even though most of them are out of the Somali communities of Africa. If Queer Jihad was my love song to the queer Muslim, then Being Queer and Somali is my love song to the queer Somali.
Following is the trailer to Afdhere Jama’s 2015 film, Hearts.
Described as a “global project of love, poetry, and men,” Hearts “presents short, stand-alone images and poems set in various parts of the world. It celebrates ‘the love that dares not speak its name’ in a world where love between men is often ridiculed, denied, and abused.”
Above: Funeral ceremony held for the return of the remains of Patrice Lumumba. (Photo: Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
I’ve written previously of my interest in and admiration for the life and legacy of Patrice Émery Lumumba (1925-1961), a leader of the Congolese independence movement who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Republic of the Congo). Throughout much of his adult life Lumumba resisted colonialism and corporatism, a defiant stance that, without doubt, led to his murder during a coup backed by Belgium and the U.S.
“Lumumba lived and died fighting for the liberation of African people from the shackles of colonial powers,” notesGauri Lankes News. “His legacy lives in the struggle of African nations against neo-imperialism.”
Last week the only known remains of Lumumba were buried in his home country, 61 years after his assassination. Following, with added images and links, is the Latin American-based teleSUR news network’s coverage of the burial ceremony.
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Congo Buries Remains
of Independence Martyr
Patrice Lumumba
teleSUR
June 30, 2022
In 2000, a former Belgian police officer recounted that he had cut up Lumumba’s body and dissolved it in acid because he had received orders to make the corpse disappear.
In an official ceremony held on Thursday, the family of the martyr of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, buried his only known remains, a tooth, in the mausoleum built in his honor in Kinshasa [right].
Hundreds of people came together to remember Lumumba, who was assassinated by secessionist rebels backed by Belgium and the U.S. Waving national flags, they carried a photo in which he appears with his characteristic tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses.
Lumumba was killed by a firing squad on January 16, 1961 in the province of Katanga, in the southeast of the country. This happened after he was overthrown as prime minister in 1960, a few months after the Congo’s declaration of independence.
“Finally, the Congolese people can have the honor of offering a burial to their illustrious prime minister. We are ending a mourning that we began 61 years ago,” DRC President Felix Tshisekedi said during the 62nd anniversary of his country’s independence.
On June 20, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo recognized the “moral responsibility” of his country’s authorities for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and apologized to his family. After assassinating the pro-independence leader, the Belgian mercenaries dissolved his corpse in acid so that he could never be found.
“In 2000, Gerard Soete, a former Belgian police officer, recounted that he had cut up Lumumba’s body and dissolved it in acid because he had received orders to make the corpse disappear,” the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia recalled.
“He kept two of Lumumba’s teeth. . . . Soete died that year, but much later, in 2016, the justice seized a tooth attributed to Lumumba in a registry at the house of the Belgian policeman’s daughter, who also had not resisted the temptation to show that ‘trophy’ in public.”
It’s Independence Day here in the United States. My thoughts, though, given the ongoing climate crisis, are not on independence but on the need for interdependence.
THIS WE KNOW
We are the earth, through the plants and animals that nourish us.
We are the rains and the oceans that flow through our veins.
We are the breath of the forests of the land, and the plants of the sea.
We are human animals, related to all other life
as descendants of the firstborn cell.
We share with these kin a common history, written in our genes.
We share a common present, filled with uncertainty.
And we share a common future, as yet untold.
We humans are but one of thirty million species
weaving the thin layer of life enveloping the world.
The stability of communities of living things depends upon this diversity.
Linked in that web, we are interconnected – using, cleansing,
sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life.
Our home, planet Earth, is finite; all life shares its resources
and the energy from the sun, and therefore has limits to growth.
For the first time, we have touched those limits.
When we compromise the air, the water, the soil and the variety of life,
we steal from the endless future to serve the fleeting present.
THIS WE BELIEVE
Humans have become so numerous and our tools so powerful
that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction,
dammed the great rivers,
torn down ancient forests,
poisoned the earth, rain and wind,
and ripped holes in the sky.
Our science has brought pain as well as joy;
our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.
We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin,
and we now build a new politics of hope.
We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water and soil.
We see that economic activities that benefit the few
while shrinking the inheritance of many, are wrong.
And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever,
full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.
We are one brief generation in the long march of time;
the future is not ours to erase.
So where knowledge is limited, we will remember all those
who will walk after us, and err on the side of caution.
THIS WE RESOLVE
All this that we know and believe must now become
the foundation of the way we live.
At this turning point in our relationship with Earth,
we work for an evolution: from dominance to partnership;
from fragmentation to connection;
from insecurity, to interdependence.
It has become clear that the efforts Donald Trump oversaw and engaged in [on January 6, 2021] were even more chilling and more threatening than we could have imagined. . . . Donald Trump attempted to overturn the presidential election, he attempted to stay in office and to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
He summoned a mob to Washington, he knew they were armed on January 6, he knew they were angry and he directed the violent mob to march on the Capitol in order to delay or prevent completely the counting of electoral votes. He attempted to go there with them and when the violence was underway he refused to take action to tell the rioters to leave. Instead, he incited further violence by tweeting the Vice-President, Mike Pence, was a coward. He said “Mike deserves it” and he didn’t want to do anything in response to the “hang Mike Pence” chants.
. . . The reality that we face today as Republicans, as we think about the choice in front of us, we have to choose. Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution. . . . We are confronting a domestic threat that we have never faced before. And that is a former president who is attempting to unravel the foundations of our constitutional republic. And he is aided by Republican leaders and elected officials who have made themselves willing hostages to this dangerous and irrational man. . . . They’re enabling his lies.
The secret, darling, is to love everyone you meet, from the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from a position that they are lovely and that you will love them. Most people will respond to that and be lovely and love you back and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things.
The Wild Reed’s 2022 Queer Appreciation series continues with an excerpt from Gabbi Pierce’s insightful June 18 Lavender Magazinearticle that explores and celebrates the “evolution of gender.”
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The deep struggle that comes with being trans is undeniable, but where there is struggle, there is resilience in the perseverance of life, and where life perseveres, the whisper of a better world can still be heard. Mae, a trans woman with a powerful disposition and a passion for helping others, offered her vision of the kind of world she wants to see won.
“One where we’re free to be ourselves without having that fear of retaliation, or that fear of being physically assaulted just for being trans. One where we’re able to go to the doctor and get our HRT [hormone replacement therapy] and everything like that without having to jump through so many hoops. Yeah… It would be really cool to live in that world.” she said, before adding: “It feels like I’m asking for the bare minimum which is really sad, but that’s – I mean – honestly that’s all I can ask for.”
Invited to share their thoughts on what a gender liberatory world would look like, Ag [a passionate non-binary organizer] expressed that they “thought about free trans inclusive healthcare, public housing, mass transit, worker owned systems . . . basically just a world that’s rooted in caring for one another – cis or trans. Going through that world would just be so euphoric, and I feel bubbly when I think about it. I get butterflies in my chest kind of, thinking about a world where we can all just, like, exist and care for one another.”
Margot [who identifies as a trans woman] responded that she just wants a world where being trans isn’t a big deal before speaking to the things about being trans that feel positive.
“The more positive stuff is I guess just to do with my life and rebirth and, like, being able to be myself and put my life into a place that I feel very excited about living every day.” she reflected out loud.
Margot’s ideal world is to “be able to access the amazing, transformative, life giving parts of being trans, without the stigma and the – oh my god – just the ravid hatred, or the more structural issues that are in place to keep us in our zones.”
Upon obtaining the vision of a better world, a new challenge is presented, the challenge to make that world a reality. Agency must be embraced in steering the struggle, the evolution of gender, along the proper course to the end destination.
Ag illuminated an approach that emphasizes cis and trans people standing together, deep community organizing, and building political power.
“We really need cis people to be very committed to the vision of trans liberation and to actually put the work in . . . actually like fighting alongside us to build this world of liberation that we’re fighting for. That looks like organizing our communities, electing people into office who are also going to fight for us, having cis people alongside trans people in building this world.” they stressed.
In this world, the validity of a trans person’s humanity is the subject of mainstream debate, and in this world, cis-normative patriarchal dominance continues to fight to maintain its grip over all aspects of gender oppressed life. However, the dream of a better world lives boldly, growing in power as it’s carried from one generation to the next in the long struggle toward liberation. That struggle drives forward the evolution of gender, forcing down the walls that were built to lock away all outside of the cis-normative binary, to expand the ways in which gender is understood, communicated, and lived. It is that evolution, that struggle, that paves the path from the world that currently is to the world that needs to be, and it is through collective power and a shared vision of hope that the struggle is won. Hardship permeates trans life, but so too does the essential dream of a better world, and that world – the world where gender lives unconfined – is ready to be claimed.
Last Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court officially and effectively ended abortion access for people in about half of the United States.
The court’s ruling was 6-3, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting. “With sorrow – for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection – we dissent,” they wrote.
The majority opinion in Dobbs is virtually identical to the draft leaked last month.
Following is a compilation of progressive perspectives on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ending of nearly half-a-century of legal precedent safeguarding abortion access as a constitutional right. By progressive perspectives I mean informed points of view that recognize the importance of – and thus advocate for – ever-expanding circles of inclusion, compassion, justice, and civil & human rights.
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With this decision, the Supreme Court’s extreme right-wing supermajority has struck a tremendous blow to our fundamental freedoms. It is undeniable proof of how broken our nation’s highest court has become.
Our court has been overtaken by out-of-control political appointees with an extreme right-wing agenda. If we don’t do something to stop them, they will continue to attack our most basic rights, until we no longer recognize the country we live in.
– Christina Harvey Executive Director of Stand Up America
June 24, 2022
Research has shown that when abortion is banned or restricted, abortions do not cease, they just move underground. This increases the risk both of unsafe procedures and that people will be reported to police or prosecuted for suspected abortions. This is likely to particularly affect people who have historically had less access to health services due to discrimination and other systemic barriers, including adolescents; Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; people living in rural communities or in poverty; and people discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.
The U.S. – which shockingly already has the highest maternal mortality rate among at least 10 other wealthy countries – should brace for maternal mortality and morbidity to rise, particularly among Black people and people living in poverty.
On Friday, June 24, an extremist majority of the U.S. Supreme Court overruled more than 50 years of legal precedent, taking away a previously recognized fundamental right for the first time in the court’s history. In doing so, it unleashed the full force of a regressive, coordinated state-by-state attack on the already perilously eroded right to access an abortion, on women’s rights, the human right to bodily autonomy, privacy, and control over our own lives and dignity, and to life-saving healthcare and freedoms.
[The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health] puts at risk any rights that were not already in place more than 150 years ago when the 14th Amendment was ratified.
We are not sounding a new alarm. The nation’s 140 million poor and low-income people, including 74 million women and girls, have been declaring this emergency in the face of an all-out-attack in courts and extremist legislatures across this country, particularly in the South.
The immediate and long-term impact of this decision in Dobbs v. Jackson will be disproportionately felt by poor women, women of color, transgender, and gender non-confirming people, all of whom already face increased healthcare disparities and economic insecurity. In over 20 states today, women have lost or are likely to lose the right to control their bodies and reproductive health. In 13 states, abortion will be banned within 30 days, as “trigger bans” designed to take effect as soon as Roe was overturned are already in place. In five states, courts have recently struck down legislation banning abortion; the Dobbs’ decision means that legislation will likely take effect in mere weeks or months. In another 10 states, the Washington Post has declared that “the fate of abortion rights remains uncertain.”
Even before this decision, states with more restrictive abortion laws had higher maternal mortality and infant mortality rates. Without adequate and universal healthcare available to all women, we can expect these disparities to climb even higher: experts are predicting at least a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths.
Once again, poor and low-income women, especially in the South and in states that did not expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage, or otherwise enact laws and policies that ensure we can thrive outside the womb, will be hit first and worst by this decision.
. . . [W]e call on Congress to expeditiously and absolutely end the filibuster and take legislative action immediately to codify Roe v. Wade, ensure universal, single-payer healthcare, including the expansion of Medicaid in every state, and ensure the full protections of the Voting Rights Act in every election. We call on President Biden to take immediate action to guarantee reproductive freedoms and use the power of his executive authorities to unabashedly fight for the heart and soul of this country, especially the 140 million poor and low-income people.
The Supreme Court has now mandated forced pregnancy, taking away an intensely personal freedom for pregnant people to make decisions about our own bodies with a doctor or loved one, and instead bringing politicians into your decision and your bedroom. Every woman, every family, every pregnant person should fear what this means for their futures.
It is important that Americans understand that this Supreme Court and Republicans in Congress will not stop here. In the opinion, the [conservative] justices say explicitly that the court should reconsider “all substantive due process precedents,” including the right to contraception, to same-sex marriage, and to same-sex relationships.
A day at the Supreme Court that shakes America to its core.
What to say that hasn’t been said but needs to be said again, and again, and again: This is not a court of humble jurists who are bound in any way by fidelity to precedent, the law, or common sense. There is nothing “conservative” about these damaging decisions, or the men and woman who have imposed their extreme views upon the American populace.
Right-wing politicians decry “elitism,” but what is more elitist than unelected and unaccountable activists using the language of legal argumentation as a fig leaf for their naked exercise of power?
There is no way that these decisions would pass a vote of the American public. Indeed, a majority of the justices were installed by presidents who lost the popular vote. And the polling on the issues these rulings tear asunder suggests that what these justices are doing is unpopular – in many cases, very unpopular.
But they sneer from their echo chamber of extremism. They are emboldened by a system that has been fixed, with the complicity of Mitch McConnell and others, to advantage minority viewpoints by leveraging a branch of government not designed to be a political actors’ stage in order to circumvent the legislative and executive branches.
Where to begin, and where will it end? . . . The Supreme Court depends on its legitimacy, and today that is as tattered as the constitutional rights on which it has trampled.
Abortion will remain a fundamentally personal decision grounded in self-determination and bodily autonomy that can never be revoked by religious tyranny or the patriarchal indifference of the state. By overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court has abruptly ended nearly half a century of legal precedent safeguarding abortion access as a constitutional right. Life for millions of women, nonbinary, and trans people seeking abortion as a matter of reproductive health has turned into a nightmare.
Anti-abortion laws set to trigger in lieu of a ruling striking down Roe have now gone into effect throughout the US – making abortion illegal in 13 states. Providing or seeking out an abortion has become a criminal offense in Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Lousiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Many provisions in states where abortion has been criminalized impose heavy fines for those seeking out the procedure (up to $4K), including doctors performing it (up to $100K), and several omit longstanding exceptions for abortions in cases of incest, rape, or health of the mother. Numerous other states are set to swiftly enact legislation codifying abortion as a criminal offense, prohibiting the procedure for half the country.
This is the culmination of a right-wing dream to criminalize any personal, romantic, or sexual activities threatening the class-based privilege enshrined by heterosexual marriage. Restricting the bodily and sexual agency of millions has nothing to do with freedom, or state’s rights, and everything to do with systemic patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, exploitation, racism, and capitalism, endorsed by the state.
Today we must strategically organize for a movement that confronts a political system operated by a ruling class prioritizing its own self-preservation – defending existing abortion protections, approaching voting as a tool for building power instead of coronating saviors, strengthening and supporting the National Network of Abortion Funds and local affiliates like the Baltimore Abortion Fund (BAF) while creating new communal networks of care to fill the void of legally provided abortions.
Our collective agency is our greatest power. Ultimately, it cannot be derived from the state but is something we innately possess as members of the human family. I mourn and stand in solidarity with everyone affected by Roe's demise, remaining committed to working for a world transcending patriarchal exploitation.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Sunday that right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justices who “misled” senators during their respective confirmation hearings about whether they supported overturning Roe v. Wade should be impeached for lying under oath.
During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, Ocasio-Cortez told host Chuck Todd that the high court’s reactionary majority “dramatically overreached its authority” when it struck down the 1973 legal precedent on Friday, imperiling access to abortion care throughout the U.S.
“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue – without basis, if you read these opinions – rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” the progressive lawmaker said when asked if the House Judiciary Committee should launch an investigation.
“There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “What makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations.”
. . . Ocasio-Cortez stressed Sunday that the high court’s assault on hard-won rights is a “crisis of democracy” and a “crisis of legitimacy” that President Biden must address.
Yet despite the recent spate of decisions by the Supreme Court’s deeply unpopular right-wing majority to end the constitutional right to abortion care, weaken gun restrictions, undermine the separation of church and state, and erode Miranda rights – with more attacks on equality and federal regulatory power expected – the White House on Saturday reiterated the president’s opposition to rebalancing the court by adding seats.
On June 24, author, activist, and former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson was a guest on Australia’s Sky News network, where she said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling is a “disturbing” attack on women’s agency.
For the full 7-minute interview, see below.
The anti-abortion right frames the overturn of Roe as an act of democracy, “returning the decision to the states,” and correcting federal overreach. This is misleading at best. The states in which abortion is now illegal are heavily gerrymandered and undemocratic themselves; it is simply not true that abortion bans reflect the will of the people. In fact, a majority of Americans – about 60 percent – believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
The consequences of abortion restrictions in red states prior to this moment have been disastrous as residents have been forced to travel out of state to access care at significant personal cost. Texas’s notorious Senate Bill 8 law resulted in a significant number of patients from Texas with a gestational age past six weeks traveling to Oklahoma for abortion appointments – until Oklahoma passed a total abortion ban, leaving Texans seeking abortions with even fewer options.
We can expect this situation to spread further across the country, with abortion patients forced to travel even longer distances to access abortion. Of course, this will place an undue hardship on patients without the means to travel out of state – whether that be due to the financial burden, lack of access to child care, sick leave, or other reasons.
More grotesquely, abortion patients will not only have to face undue financial and logistical hurdles to access essential health care – but they will also have to brave the police, or in some cases, state-funded vigilantes, in order to do so. Texas’s SB 8 law allows literally anyone to file suit against someone who “aids or abets” in an abortion – though not the abortion patient themselves. Someone who drives a patient to a bus so that they can receive an abortion out of state could be sued, and the plaintiff would be awarded $10,000 in damages. Abortion patients themselves cannot be sued.
. . . [T]he criminalization of providing abortion care and aiding and abetting abortion puts pregnant people in grave danger. Some states may make “life of the mother” exemptions. But most United States hospitals are either for-profit or religiously affiliated nonprofits with ideological opposition to abortion. There is seldom a clearly demarcated point at which an abortion becomes absolutely, unambiguously medically necessary. A private health care facility may not risk criminal charges in order to save a patient’s life. Notoriously, Savita Halappanavar died of sepsis in an Irish hospital when doctors refused to perform an abortion because, though her pregnancy was no longer viable, a fetal heartbeat was still detected. As of this writing, an American woman, Andrea Prudente, is set to be airlifted out of Malta, the only country in the European Union with a total abortion ban. Even though her pregnancy is no longer viable, and without an abortion, she risks the same fate, a fetal heartbeat is still detected and doctors refuse to provide an abortion. Of course, the U.S. leads the developed world in mortality during childbirth. With the end of Roe, it will become even more dangerous to give birth in the U.S.
Following are author, lawyer, and political commentator Robert Reich’s thoughts on “what’s coming next” in light of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Rove v. Wade.
I think [Justice Clarence Thomas is] the only one on the court or in the majority that is willing to tell the truth [about going from here to overturning other rights and protections]. . . . Justice Samuel Alito seems to backpedal and say, well . . . the only rights that are affected are abortion rights. Well, that’s just bunk. I mean, the rationale that the court used to overturn Roe and Casey is equally applicable to a whole range of what are called unenumerated rights, or rights that aren’t specifically listed in the Constitution but derive from our notions of liberty and equality. And that includes contraception. That includes gay rights. It includes trans rights. It includes end-of-life care. It includes the ability to make decisions about one’s child’s education. There’s a host of liberties — the right to travel isn’t mentioned specifically in the Constitution. So there’s a host of interests that are at play here.
Interestingly enough, Justice Thomas didn’t mention the right to marry a person of a different race, maybe because it affects him personally, as opposed to all these others that are just, you know, people he doesn’t care about.
But the reality is, I do think that this ruling is extremely, extremely broad. It is written in a way that can expand. And frankly, state legislators are already attacking us, attacking contraception, attacking trans people, attacking gay marriage in a host of ways. Those attacks will make their way to the Supreme Court and, frankly, I think this court is likely to expand the ruling significantly.
Following last week’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down federal protections for abortion rights, major companies, including a number of Silicon Valley giants, publicly broadcast their intention to assist their workers in traveling out of state to obtain an abortion. Meta, Apple, Disney, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Condé Nast were among them, the New York Times noted, joining companies that had made similar pledges in May, when a leaked memo revealed that the Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. These companies include Reddit, Tesla, Microsoft, Starbucks, Yelp, Airbnb, Netflix, Patagonia, DoorDash, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss & Co. and PayPal, the Times reports.
Meanwhile, Google pledged to allow workers to apply to relocate “without justification” if they live in states that do not allow abortion. Uber reiterated that its “insurance plans in the U.S. already cover a range of reproductive health benefits, including pregnancy termination and travel expenses to access healthcare.”
On its face, these gestures by employers may seem like a good thing. As Levi Strauss & Co. put it in a statement: “Protection of reproductive rights is a critical business issue impacting our workforce, our economy and progress toward gender and racial equity. Given what is at stake, business leaders need to make their voices heard.” And perhaps such gestures are preferable to the alternative: offering absolutely nothing to workers who have been stripped of their core rights overnight.
But this response opens up another door to hell: The reality that workers will be even more reliant on capricious and self-interested employers to provide basic, necessary healthcare, handing bosses even more power, while giving workers one more thing to fight tooth and nail to protect.
Let’s look at how this approach has worked out for general health coverage. In a country that, unlike other industrialized nations, does not provide free and universal healthcare to its people, individuals rely on employers for this vital good. This means that a worker’s boss has control over their ability to get emergency heart surgery without going bankrupt, to pay for a child’s leukemia treatment, to get preventative healthcare to ward off serious complications, to afford insulin in order to not die from diabetes, etc. In other words, workers’ ability to keep themselves and their loved ones alive is decided by the whims of their bosses.
Routine, day-to-day matters – like asking for time off, or asking a boss not to sexually harass you, or even banding together with your coworkers to organize a union – have higher stakes under this system. What if a boss retaliates? What if you were already on thin ice? What if layoffs are coming down the bend and the slightest perceived act of defiance puts you on the chopping block? If you lose your job, you lose your healthcare. And if this healthcare is extended to your dependents and spouse, so does your family.
And what of other, more-difficult-to-quantify matters, like personal happiness and fulfillment at work? According to a May 2021 survey from West Health and Gallup, one out of six adults who receives employer-provided healthcare is staying in a job they don’t want because they’re afraid of losing these benefits. Of people making less than $48,000 a year, 28 percent are staying in a job they don’t want for this reason. And for Black workers, it’s 21 percent. It’s difficult to overstate the significance of these findings. In a capitalist society, work is how we spend our lives. Squandering our one precious life in an unwanted job is a tragic waste.
Of course, the best way to protect one’s health benefits, short of winning universal healthcare, is to organize a union. Union workers are significantly more likely than their non-union counterparts to have health benefits at all. But imagine all the things workers could win if they didn’t have to spend their time at the bargaining table negotiating over their members’ ability to survive. If healthcare were off the table, because it was already provided by the government, maybe we would have stronger common good wins, or clauses protecting the right to strike under any circumstance, or 30-hour work weeks.
Now, apply this principle to the realm of abortion. To think of having to add protection of one’s ability to get an abortion to the list of things employers provide, and can therefore take away, is terrifying. First, no one should ever be in the position of having to talk to an employer about their need to travel out of state for an abortion. But secondly, some of the companies that are publicly claiming they will protect abortion rights are among the most viciously anti-union employers of our time. How will they use this new form of leverage to crack down on workers’ rights to demand better conditions?
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
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