Good Morning Shameless readers! Thanks to our reader Nikita for alerting us all to the fact that Morgentaler has been among those named to Order of Canada. Good morning indeed!

Now 85, Morgentaler, a Polish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Montreal after the war, opened his first abortion clinic in 1969 and performed thousands of procedures, which were illegal at the time.

Morgentaler, a trained family physician, argued that access to abortion was a basic human right and women should not have to risk death at the hands of an untrained professional in order to end their pregnancies.

Morgentaler’s clinics were constantly raided, and one in Toronto was firebombed. Morgentaler was arrested several times and spent months in jail as he fought his case at all court levels in Canada.

His victory came on Jan. 28, 1988, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s abortion law. That law, which required a woman who wanted an abortion to appeal to a three-doctor hospital abortion committee, was declared unconstitutional.

This is a huge victory, one that Shameless has believed in for a long time, and such a wonderful piece of Canada Day good news.

Feminist and author Judy Rebick told the Globe and Mail on Monday that it is about time Morgentaler is honoured for his long battle.

“Dr. Morgentaler is a hero to millions of women in the country,” she said. “He risked his life to struggle for women’s rights … He’s a huge figure in Canadian history and the fact that he hasn’t got [the Order of Canada] until now is a scandal.”

Agreed. Now go read this Feministing community blog piece, “Juno Lied,” written by a teenage girl in the US about trying to find out how to get an abortion for her best friend. It really does emphasize how important it is to honour people like Morgentaler in this country.

Photos by SMN.

I’m back in the US but not without a story to tell yet again from what it was like to cross the U.S. border as a Native-black-haired-darker skinned-young-woman-travelling-alone.

To give you some background, I have been stopped and questioned repeatedly in higher security levels when I bothered to tell the whole truth about why I was crossing. And let me tell you, they sure don’t like fighting for reproductive freedom or working for Native American rights.

In fact, last year when I actually said that I was going to do some work with the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center, I was told to move to the next security level where I was fingerprinted, photographed, and had to explain my ancestry and why I would want to do “work like that”.

So I’ve learned to say the lesser activist reasons as to why I’m going to be in the US.

This time around I’m driving, and what do I see when get down to the long lineups for border crossing but 3 border patrol officials who are standing around amongst the plethora of cars, looking all stern and serious. This is new to me, I thought if you were going to be “randomly searched” it would happen when you at least get to the official in the booth.

Not anymore.

(more inside…)

Women on Waves, the amazing Dutch abortion activism group, has hit a snag, but isn’t letting that stop them. We wrote about WOW in the last issue: the group captains a ship called Harmony, which drops anchor in international waters off the coast of countries where abortion is illegal, and gives women access to safe, medical abortion. In doing so, they have been successful at getting reproductive rights back on the public agenda (and Portugal, where Harmony was met by warships four years ago, finally legalized abortion last year).

After dealing with bureaucratic mess where the ship lost its Dutch license, Harmony was back on the water, headed this time to Ecuador, where the World Health Organization estimates that 95,000 illegal and dangerous abortions take place every year. Unsafe abortion leads to 30,000 hospitalizations and is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in Ecuador.

Unfortunately, the ship ran aground in a tropical storm. But they’re not letting that stop them. (more inside…)

The Save Our Net coalition and Campaign for Democratic Media are hosting an event this weekend to discuss net neutrality and to strategize ways to prevent the internet from being tightly controlled by telecommunications corps, which are trying to limit what information we can access online.

Steve Anderson, national co-ordinator of the Campaign For Democratic Media, will speak about the issues, including: how these companies have already been caught throttling or slowing internet traffic to businesses and consumers, blocking access to websites that criticized them for doing so, and crippling consumer devices and applications.

Details:
Sunday, June 22
5:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Windward Co-op, 34 Little Norway Crescent Lake-view room (one block west of Queen’s Quay)
BYOB, vegetarian refreshments provided
RSVP: saveournetcanada at gmail.com

So now that I’ve crossed the border back to my friendly, eccentric home in Kensington Market, Toronto (although not for long) I’m having some pensive reflections on the awesomeness that is the ACLU Minnesota and Wisconsin that I had the honour of discovering at this year’s membership conference.

A 24-hour bus ride to and from Washington D.C. and shared hostel saw both our groups intermingling and activisting to the max. Most of us didn’t know each other and I can safely say now that in just four days we’ve not only learned a lot, but been sincerely inspired and greatly moved by each other’s presence and being.

I heard tales of prejudice, realities of oppression, and musings of forward-thinking by these brilliantly tuned-in young people. Interesting nights out coupled with ridiculously fun “truth-telling” games were the recipe for some of the best activist times had by all.

I want to thank all the participants for their honesty, candor, and all-around amazing selves that definitely made this trip an adventure I’ll never forget. We write off the US too often in Canada for the backwards policies that obstruct their international image and forget about how much good work is going on there by determined people like these who are refusing to give up and fighting back for what they believe is right.

More partnerships can be made across our borders and we’d be crazy not to remember that the extreme U.S. right-wingers have a direct affect on Canada (ahem, Bill C484, no-fly list anyone??) This is a great example of how we can get together and make change happen, even if it’s just amongst ourselves.

It’s important to recognize when cool young people you’ve just met are inspiring you, that’s definitely news I want to hear more often.

Anyone do that to you lately?

The “best group” as named by attendees of the 2008 ACLU membership conference!

If I wasn’t chained to the Toronto ‘burbs for the next month pet-sitting, I would be at the Allied Media Conference in Detriot from June 20-22. And, of course, I would offer to take all of you with me!

Check out the program, which is all that the Women, Action and the Media conference that I attended in March (sadly) couldn’t be. They’ve got sessions like Transporting Silenced Voices Through Interviews For Film/Video, Revolutionary Parenting, Women Of Color With Disabilities Organizing And Building Community, and yes, a session on the media coverage/grassroots organizing lessons of the Jena Six and the Jersey Four (also mentioned in Issue 11 of Shameless). I’m in awe!

What I love about the way they have organized the conference is that sessions for/about people of colour are integrated within the overall conference design, and aren’t designed as a “space apart.” (Can you guess who must have organized this thing? You got it - a pretty diverse group of people - it sure helps.) Of course there are important times in the agenda for people of colour to get together in a safe space and talk shop. But what sometimes happens is that when sessions that deal with issues that directly affect people of colour ARE open to all, white folks never show up! This creates the ol’ conference colour divide (seen countless times in feminist conferences, circa 1971 all the way to the present). And everyone gets righteously angry because folks who are already multiply marginalized get remarginalized at conferences because of this low attendance and low awareness. And that makes me angry, too.

So, in conclusion, hooray for conferences that don’t divide and conquer, and boo to pet-sitting.

My heart, mind, and soul are brimming with excitement and awe at all the amazing youth activist work that is going on in the U.S. that I will hopefully find a way to break down and type out to share with all y’all, but for now one thing that is sticking out in my mind here at the ACLU conference is this:

The New York Civil Liberties Union (or NYCLU for short) has developed the Schools to Prisons Pipeline Campaign which addresses the extremely high rate of youth who are being sent to prison straight from school. Many of these young people aren’t even being given the chance to tell their side of the story and are being arrested for crimes that the average adult would easily get away with.

These are racialized, marginalized, and systemically oppressed youth in case you had any doubts about who we are talking about. One of the fantastic youth presenters described her school in Brooklyn which basically has its own custody setting on the second floor of the school.

There is a WEALTH of great information about the project on the website and the youth actually produced 3 films that are incredibly educational and powerfully moving.

Check it out and spread the word! We want education, not jail!

Borders should not stop us from reaching out and being informed.

I’m here in Washington D.C. reporting live from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 2008 Membership Conference!

If you’ve never heard of the ACLU, they are a kick-ass national organization here in the United States that protects the civil rights and freedoms of our neighbours south of the border.

It’s 2:42 a.m. and I’m here in the youth hostel where I’m staying with the Minnesota and Wisconsin crowd, listening to a debate on public health systems for food and childcare. It’s hardcore activism, upping the political ante by the minute.

“STAND UP FOR FREEDOM” is the motto, with the focus on mobilizing youth under the age of 25. We will be blogging here on the conference space to give you the hottest news and events served up fresh from the progressive whisims we are cooking up.

Be sure to check the blog out this Tuesday which is LOBBY DAY, where many of us will be meeting face-to-face with state representatives and hitting the ground running for change.

We need more of these kind of partnerships across our borders, especially when the current leader of Canada often tries to copy the right-wing agenda next door to us.

If I get a chance (and that means if I decide to forgo more sleep) I’ll post more stuff and a wrap-up on Shameless.

So for now I’ll leave you with some timeless Bob Marley:

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don’t give up the fight!

So, I have some mixed feelings about this. It’s an article about campaigns like Nothing But Nets that ask for donations of $10 to buy a mosquito net to guard an African child against malaria, and how they’ve captured the imaginations of young people in the States (I did some research into why the nets are so expensive - they’re also treated with insecticide).

The $10 mosquito net campaigns have caught on with younger folks because it’s a small amount that many of them can afford, that equates to a tangible result - one child gets a mosquito net - rather than that money sinking into a charity’s coffers to be used towards some more fuzzy end. So far, so awesome. A seven year-old (with the help of her mother and five year-old brother) has raised a total of $43,000, and it’s hard to quibble with that.

Still, you kind of have to wonder if it could really be that simple. It sounds a lot like those Buy A Village A Goat campaigns that were disputed in the current issue of This Magazine. Economist Chris Blattman also takes issue in his blog with the New York Times‘ use of phrases like “a hip way to show you care” and “making charity cool.”

But maybe this is unfounded cynicism. After all, “hip” and “cool” is frequently the language that gets used in descriptions of trends among young people (because obviously that’s the only motivator for doing anything if you’re under 20). Just because something can be couched in these terms doesn’t make it automatically frivolous and empty.

The usefulness of a mosquito net against malaria is certainly less questionable than the usefulness of a goat against poverty. And if you look beyond the magazine copy, tons of young people are raising thousands of dollars for charities. That’s nothing to sneeze at.