So Long, Farewell

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

So my month has come to a close here at the Nation and I want to thank Peter Rothberg for this opportunity and his amazing support and Kristina Rizga from Wiretap Magazine for recommending me! If you have not checked out Wiretap Magazine please do so for the freshest and bravest in youth voices and activism.

Actively creating space for the voices of women of color is imperative for progressive publications. I currently work at the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, CA where we fight for the media rights of disenfranchised communities and support grassroots organizers in accessing the media in ways that support their organizing goals. In doing so, the theme of misrepresentation of people of color comes up again and again. Historically marginalized communities have never had access to traditional media, both in terms of representation and in having their voices heard. Progressive news has suffered a similar trajectory, so it is on all of us to actively advocate for the communication rights of disenfranchised communities. At CMJ we do this by supporting grassroots organizers with their strategic communications, along with building a movement for media justice. You can read more about us here.

I bring this up because advocating for the voices that may disrupt common ideologies in ways that are often difficult and challenging is part of creating a just and fair media. The change we want can only happen if we centralize those voices which have been most denied.

Read More »

April 1, 2008

Making Connections

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

As my blogging stint at the Nation draws to a close, I think it is important to draw some connections between the issues I've been writing about. In the last few weeks I have blogged about two studies that came out recently, the first about the rate of incarceration in the United States and the second about the rate of STD cases in teenage girls. Activists and organizers recognize the complexities of the issues and campaigns we work on. In order to build stronger movements we have to talk between sectors and build alliances that further push our theories of change and our collective agenda.

Sounds like idealistic talk for those that are not part of the movement for social change, but as someone who spends day in and day out working with people on these issues, I see how talking each other about our differences is sometimes the only way to make connections between our issues. Specifically, the feminist movement and the anti-incarceration movement need to be talking to each other. Thanks to a reader, who saw my article on STDs and on prisons, I was sent a study that came out years ago on the connections between rate of STD cases and the rate of incarceration. The conclusion? Women in communities with higher rates of incarceration are more susceptible to high rates of STD exposure, even when they are engaging in low risk behavior.

An op-ed in the Washington Post titled, "An Epidemic No One wants to Talk About," elaborates,

Read More »

March 26, 2008

Reporting on STDs

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

As thoughlast week's report about 1 in 4 girls having contracted an STD was not startling enough, the New York Times last Thursday led with this as the title:

Sex Infection Found in Quarter of Teenage Girls

This characterization of young women conjures several different issues for me.

Read More »

March 20, 2008

The Only Way Forward

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

"Black men born in the US and fortunate enough to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many blackmen to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments."

Soledad Brother --George Jackson

A study released last week by the Pew Center detailed just how many Americans are currently incarcerated. According to the study, 1 in 100 Americans are behind bars. Via NYT. The prison industrial complex refers to the imprisonment of certain sectors of society to maintain economic and social order. However, state budget problems in Texas and California, to name but a few, have caused some to turn their attention to the amount of spending that goes into maintaining the prison industrial complex . I also like to think that the ground-breaking HBO series, The Wire, has helped spur consciousness but that is probably wishful thinking.

Read More »

March 14, 2008

Politicians and Prostitutes

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

I think I saw at least three different bloggers (including myself) refer to yesterday's admission by NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's hiring of a sex worker with just the word "wow." Understandable given Spitzer's legal history wherein he has gained recognition for successfully prosecuting prostitution rings. Quite a contradiction it seems, but alas we see time and again, political power--which often manifests as hyper-masculinity--produces powerful men that just can't keep it in their pants. It makes sense to descend into the preconditioned response of chastising a politician for abusing power and trying to (stupidly) get away with paying for sex, not to mention transporting a human for the purpose of paying for sex. I think we can all agree that if a sex worker is going to get prosecuted, he should as well. No questions.

What I don't want to do is chastise a man for potentially having a sexual kink (I'll let the wing-nuts hypocritically take care of that), not because I am all for protecting Eliot Spitzer's sexual kinky rights (ew, barf, ew), but because I think it tells a bigger story of patriarchy, heterosexuality, legalization of sex work and the ethical treatment of sex workers. As Ann Friedman recently pointed out on Feministing, as progressives, we shouldn't jump to attack politicians when we find out that they committed a sexual "indiscretion." As someone who supports the decriminalization of sex work (hello prison nation!), I don't think we need anymore fodder for the right-wing"I hate sex" machine to use in their purity crusades.

The over-reliance in the US political system for our politicians to be heterosexual and vanilla in the bedroom is like a recurring nightmare of puritanical ethics that continually allows for anti-sex, anti-gay, and anti-kink legislation to continue. If anything what these "outing" episodes should teach us is that everyone should be allowed to have the kind of sex they want and have the proper education about it, so we should stop pretending we are all "Republicans" in the bedroom. This story in particular, along with the DC Madam drama, for me is an opportunity to talk about the rights and conditions of sex workers. Spitzer may get a slap on the wrist and be asked to step down, but sex workers nationwide will continue to be subjected to harsh criminal proceedings, high incarceration rates, drug use, violence, lack of health-care and no protection from violent, retaliatory pimps.

Read More »

March 11, 2008

The Black, the Female and the Invisible.

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

The recent media obsession with identity, centered on presidential candidates who represent constituent groups other than white men, has created a public conversation about race and gender. The hope for those of us working in the justice sector is that the conversation pushes past the humdrum of the oppression olympics, but most of the talk to date has gone wasted on a battle of who has it worst--black men or white women. The loss is that at a time when concern and interest by voters is focused on issues of race and gender and we have a key opportunity to push the conversation in new directions, we are stuck with the terms set in stone in the post-Civil Rights language of oppositional identities.

Sentiments expressed in Maureen Dowd's misfire of a column the other day about "shoulder-pad" feminists supporting HIllary Clinton's nomination, is a perfect example of this obsession gone bad. We have come to expect the worst from Dowd, but assuming that racism and misogyny are in the past is a new low.

With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts.

Read More »

(184) Comments

March 7, 2008

Confessions of a Hip-Hop Feminist

By Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Hello Nation!

It is so exciting for me to get the opportunity to blog at the Nation for a month and thanks to all that have made this a possibility. The Nation was a pivotal publication in the formation of my political awareness, so to be asked to write here is pretty amazing.

In the summer of 1999, it was a Nation article that prompted me to write about a topic that went on to become one of my favorite issues to explore in the blogosphere. Hip-hop. I did a quick search at TheNation.com to find the article and found it was in fact online (isn't that fun!) and brought back nostalgia of my days in college, as an activist, feminist and hip-hop head, looking for words to express my new found political self. The article, "Rhyme and Resist: Organizing a Hip-Hop Generation," by Angela Ards delved into the need to connect to young people through hip-hop.

Read More »

March 4, 2008