B.J. Running for Secretary of State!

By, B.J. I mean, of course, Ben Nesselhuf, our hard-working District 17 Senator.  The contest is still a year away, but I’m guessing Ben is making his intentions known early enough for other possible candidates for his current seat to step up.

I’m interested to know who that will be.  And will Mr. Mining Equipment Jerad Higman be running again on the R side with his record of downtown economic development and revitalization (’cause lord knows we need more restaurants and apartments in this town–we don’t yet have one apiece for every man, woman, and child).

It’s starting to look interesting already for the Clay/Turner Senate District.  Keep your eyes peeled!

 

 

Battle for Whiteclay Showing This Week

USD campus, Churchill Haines 118 on Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30-10:45am.  Following the conclusion of the film on Thursday, one of the featured activists in the film, Frank LaMere, will be present to lead discussion.

From the website battleforwhiteclay.org:

Whiteclay is an unincorporated village of 14 people in northwest Nebraska bordering the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota (also known as the Oglala Sioux Tribe). The Pine Ridge lies almost entirely in South Dakota.

Whiteclay lies on disputed land, merely 200 feet from the official reservation border, and less than 2 miles from the center of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, the largest town on the reservation.

The number of people living on the Pine Ridge has long been controversial. The 2000 census reports 15,521 residents, but in 2005 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) revised the figure to 28,000. The Oglala Sioux tribal government maintains that the true population of the Pine Ridge is around 40,000.

Sale and possession of alcoholic beverages on the Pine Ridge is prohibited under tribal law. Except for a brief experiment with on-reservation liquor sales in the early 1970s, this prohibition has been in effect since the reservation lands were created.

Whiteclay has four off-sale beer stores licensed by the State of Nebraska which sell the equivalent of 4.5 million 12-ounce cans of beer annually (12,500 cans per day), mostly to the Oglalas living on the Pine Ridge.

If you’ve ever been to Whiteclay, you know exactly what Nebraska’s alcohol licenses have wrought. That all licenses are off-sale and Pine Ridge is a dry rez means there’s no legal place anywhere nearby for people who buy the beer to consume it. Nebraskans are making millions off illegal activity.

I wrote my M.A. History thesis on Whiteclay as an Executive Addition to the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2001/2002, spending time visiting the area and interviewing locals, as well as in the dusty stacks looking at primary documents, but I haven’t yet seen this important film.

Kudos to Professor Harry Freeman for bringing it to the USD campus.

 

Lack of Communication Hurts Dems

Down here in the Berkeley of South Dakota, you’d think we’d have a well-oiled lefty machine.  And while our votes tend toward that southpaw direction (certainly in the Central Ward), we seem to be missing some pretty essential organization and communication machinery.

Case in point: the McGovern/Abourezk Town Hall at the Buffalo Run Winery last night.  I’d post a link to some announcement of the event, but unfortunately, my Googling on “town hall mcgovern abourezk vermillion” comes up with exactly squat.

The only reason it’s even on my radar to bitch about is that yesterday in the early afternoon hours, I was working on cleaning out plots in the community garden, and one of our generous volunteers relayed the information to a couple I was working with–a couple that’s, generally speaking, much more in the loop than I am.

They hadn’t heard about it previously either, and commented that it was on the same night as our Farmers Market Harvest Dinner–an unfortunate scheduling overlap considering that many of our vendors and customers might have been interested in the winery event as well.

The reponse was that this Town Hall had been set up far in advance of the Harvest Dinner (indicating that perhaps we were at fault for the scheduling conflict?).  Well, that may be the case, except it’s awfully hard to schedule around an event no one knows about.

While our Harvest Dinner was scheduled pretty late (a couple of weeks ago), I’m thinking we did a pretty decent job of advertising in a mostly paperless, inexpensive, and earth-friendly fashion–through our blog, Facebook, our e-mail list and those of other organizations who helped out, a few phone calls, and handing out invites at the market itself.

Our turnout was great, our vendors who came to sell made money, and the food was fabulous.  We ended up having to set up a couple more tables to accommodate all the folks who showed up to share and eat great local food with their friends and neighbors.

It turned out there were at least one or two folks at the dinner who scuttled out around sevenish to drink local wine and talk politics, but the vast majority knew nothing about the important doings across town.

I had my son with me and was consigned to clean-up duty at the Extension Hall, so wasn’t able to make the Town Hall.  My partner, who served as County Dem Chair for years (years ago) stayed and helped too.

He was interested in the event (which he heard about from me yesterday afternoon), but figured since he wasn’t invited, he’d help where help was needed.  Was this an invitation-only event?  Or was this just lousy communication?

If the Democratic Party wants to be active and strong, it behooves the leaders to get the word out about these types of events well in advance, to avoid scheduling conflicts and to create buzz that brings others into the loop.

This isn’t just sour grapes over my not having been invited; this is my complete bewilderment that virtually no one I know (good Dems, almost all) knew anything about this event until the day it was happening.  With all the free and effective tools we have available for communicating with a wide swath of people, what gives?

When the Dems hold a stealth event at the winery for “those-in-the-know,” they perpetuate the common stereotype of an elitist party that’s out of touch (and communication) with not only the mainstream, but with their own members.

 

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

While domestic violence and domestic abuse can happen to anyone, women are most often the victims.  And while October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, it’s a good idea to talk about domestic abuse as well–because it is often harder to spot, even for the victim.

Domestic abuse, also known as spousal abuse, occurs when one person in an intimate relationship or marriage tries to dominate and control the other person. Domestic abuse that includes physical violence is called domestic violence. [Melinda Smith, M.A.; Pat Davies; and Jeanne Segal, Ph.D., "Domestic Violence and Abuse." Helpguide.org. Updated Sept. 2009.]

It can be especially hard for a woman who has previously been the victim of domestic violence to recognize that she is a victim of domestic abuse because the previous physically violent relationship might seem so much worse than the current abusive scenario.

Sometimes it takes many years to recognize the abuse that is and has been taking place–it’s harder to name and describe emotional or psychological abuse than to point a finger at a bruise or scar.

Abusers often “sweep” the victim “off their feet” with grand romantic gestures, then press quickly for a commitment, and they often target women who are in a difficult physical or emotional situation already, so that their gestures seem like a “fairy tale” and the abuser might be seen as somewhat of a “savior” at first to the victim.

Abusers then attempt to control and manipulate their victims–to cut them off from their friends and family and to make them feel inadequate–that they are a bad partner, an incompetent mother, that they should be happier in their situation–making the victim feel guilt and shame.

Often the abuser will be rude to the victim’s friends and coworkers and will not get along with their family, while making it seem like they, the abuser, are being unfairly judged and maligned.

Sometimes the abuser will set up a “my friends are our friends” situation, where the victim is only allowed friends that are “loyal” to her spouse–meaning that if the victim leaves her abuser, she also stands to lose all of her remaining friends and support network.

Abusers often set up a scenario where they are the “underdog,” and that it is “us against the world,” implying that if the partner leaves, that the victim and/or the abuser will be completely alone.  They may try to make the victim feel sorry for them, and may threaten to commit suicide if the abused partner ever leaves.

If there are children in the relationship, the abuser may use them as a means of control and/or guilt–either by attempting to instill in the victim that they are the inferior parent or by using the children as a means of control: the abuser may threaten to take the children or attempt to make a case that the victim is unfit for custody should they leave.

Sadly, in some cases, the abuser is so successful in convincing the victim that they are not a good parent that the victim believes the abuser is better fit for custody, thus setting up a cycle for future abuse, with the children modeling the abuser’s behaviors.

While physical violence may not be present in the relationship, there are often threats of it–sometimes phrased as jokes that are oft-repeated.  The abuser may hit, kick, or punch other things in front of the victim in order to frighten the victim into compliance with their wishes, throw things toward (but not directly at) the victim, or make other physically threatening gestures.

Domestic abuse is about manipulation and control.  It is no less important an issue than domestic violence, especially since it is often the precursor to domestic violence.  Please take the time to educate yourself on the signs of this epidemic, and if you think you know someone who might be a victim, talk to them and offer your support.

Often, victims of domestic violence are in denial about their predicament–they know that something is wrong, but they don’t know how to talk about it or even what to call it.  Often they have been so isolated and shamed that they feel they have few options other than to continue enduring the abuse.

For more information on domestic violence and abuse, read HelpGuide.org’s site, which includes a good set of links for partners and friends in all kinds of relationships.

 

Oh My God! He’s Got a Gun!

Hat tip to Cory at Madville Times.

I can’t help but display a little snar-casm at the headlines about Tea schools going into lockdown over a guy getting ready for hunting season.

The man unknowingly caused the lockdown. He was apparently holding a gun while on his property, which is located by the school, preparing for duck hunting and that’s when someone called police. ["Tea Area Schools Experience Friday Lockdown." KSFY.com. 25 September 2009.]

Note to Tea: Yes, we should protect our children.  And yes, it’s important to have a policy in place to do so.  But please note that even though you are pretty close to being swallowed up by Sioux Falls, you’re still a part of South Dakota. And South Dakota is still largely a rural state with an extensive hunting tradition.

The freak-out was reported (trumpeted?)on KELO’s website as a great practice for locking down the school, with the following quote from Superintendent Jerry Shutz:

What we did, just how we prevented them from getting in, that’s very important. Actually, what I saw this morning just reinforces my comfort that we have security measures in place….[Johnson, Eric. "Tea Schools Get Practice in Lockdown Policy" 25 September 2009.]

Whom did you prevent from getting in, Mr. Superintendent? And why was it necessary, after making sure you prevented “them” from getting in, to have the police then sweep all three schools to “look for anything suspicious”?

Was it really necessary, I wonder, to scare the bejeebers out of a whole bunch of students and parents by locking down the schools and checking IDs and continuing to limit access to the building after the lockdown expired, and after it became clear the reports were nothing to be concerned about?

I’m a parent, and I’m concerned about my child’s safety.  I’m also concerned about people who are in positions of authority freaking out instead of remaining calm when there’s a possibility of something amiss.

Now, I wouldn’t do this or recommend doing this to anyone else.  But is there anyone else who feels at least a little temptation to call the Tea Schools hotline and report a guy with a fishing pole?

 

Marriage and Partnership, Part II

I posted a little over a week ago on a term I found on the blog Fastidious.  While the post was somewhat of an excoriation of Fastidious’ use of the term, for the most part, it was an exploration of “shack-up whore” from a feminist perspective.

Among the responses to the post was a lengthy comment from Fastidious herself, to which this post is a lengthy reply.  Quoted material in this post is from Fastidious’ comment except when otherwise noted.

To read the original “Shack-up Whore” post, click here.  To read Fastidious’ comment on that post, click here.

__________________________________________

First, the things you got from my post:

1) The label “shack-up whore” is not particularly “unnerving” to me, it’s simply abhorrent to me.  I do have “feminist leanings” because I am a feminist.

2) I was not upset that cosbysweater08 didn’t discern a rant from an argument (it was pretty clear he’d not read my blog before, so he was unfamiliar with my stylistic inclinations); I found your blog when I was researching/responding to his trackback on my blog, and I read deeper into your blog while I was there.

3) I was unfamiliar with the term “shack-up whore,” found the phrase obnoxious, and found only one definition during my search, which was the one I shared in my post.

In your definition, which is different from the one I found, “shack-up whore generally refers to young women who fall prey to the idea that living with a young ‘man’ without marriage is the same as living with a husband in wedlock.”

Semantically speaking, your definition is full of pitfalls.  What age range do “young women” fall into?  Why is “man” in quotes?  The language and use of quotation marks seems to indicate that while they may both be in the same age range, the “man” isn’t really a man (if he doesn’t marry the young woman?), and that “young women” are more easily “prey” than young men.

Once again, there is the (semantic, anyhow) assumption that women are powerless, or that their power and security come from marriage to a man.

No, living with a man or a woman without marriage is not the same as living in wedlock.  For one, it’s a helluva lot easier to extract oneself from a simple living arrangement than it is to extract oneself from a marriage.  And for the “young,” or even the “not-so-young,” this may be a more desirable arrangement for that reason, and/or for a host of others.

“Boyfriend has no obligation, really, to care for girlfriend, see her through illness, sacrifice for her, provide for her, etc. He’s only made some sort of agreement with her, and she’s agreed.”

And neither does “girlfriend” have obligation, really, to care for, sacrifice for, and provide for “boyfriend.”  Again, semantically, you’re putting the woman in the subservient and needy role. He has “made” the agreement, and she has agreed to the agreement he’s made.

What makes an ideal partnership, IMHO, is that both partners care for and provide for their partner, period.  Without the necessity of swearing that they’ll do it forever and ever (which, frankly, is an impossible promise to make, even if you mean it very sincerely at the time).

And, in my humble experience, a marriage contract is no real guarantee of these sorts of provisions, nor are these provisions, in reality, enforceable under a marriage contract.

If a woman, a “shack-up whore” as you say, is “middle-class, educated, and economically independent,” then why should she feel the need to obligate a man to do these things for her?

Certainly, one hopes that she can find a positive and long-lasting partnership if she desires it, but should she try to parley it into marriage at the earliest possible moment in order to avoid being labeled a “shack-up whore”?

Or should she protect her economic independence by carefully weighing whether or not marriage makes sense?  After all, a bad choice–or even a good choice that goes bad over time (for a host of predictable or unpredictable reasons)–could just as easily cost her that economic independence as improve upon it.

Too, people who have amassed a certain amount of property or family or debt or other situations in which they might not wish to entangle their partners may feel that it’s a better arrangement to remain unmarried than to enmesh their beloved in their affairs or to go through the webwork of legal fees and paperwork to sort everything out just so that they can have a certificate from the Clerk of Courts saying they’re hitched.

It might simply be easier and more desirable to have a Power of Attorney for the really important stuff.

“I do hope that from the lists there, you can see that I do have my tongue firmly in my cheek. If a woman chooses to co-habitate with her boyfriend/lover/non-husband, no problem. I’m not going to shun her or say that she needs to wear a scarlet letter.”

No, you’re going to call her a “shack-up whore.”  Which isn’t particularly nice, either.

Getting back to the definition I found:

I commented on how a woman who is in a difficult economic situation and who is either on the street or sees that as a real probability, might consider “shacking up” with a man as a safer, better situation.  Your response:

“I’d hate to think that a woman would somehow needs a man in order to survive if she finds herself in difficult economic situations.”

Well, you can hate to think it, but my point is that a woman’s choice to “shack up” may, in this case, be a survival mechanism—and it may seem like the best decision (among, perhaps, many unpleasant choices) in certain situations.

So, it is hard for me to see how a person in a much more fortunate position can pass judgment on that decision.  That you were referring not to homeless women, but to women who simply choose, out of their own free will and not under duress, to live with their partners without a marriage contract makes the relative position from which you pass that judgment different, but doesn’t make the judgment more valid.

That you generally don’t like “women who live as shack-up whores” then becomes a matter of simple prejudice.

But about marriage and partnership:

I am not against marriage per se, but I do think that many (if not most) people who get hitched have a pretty romantic view about how smoothly life will sail them along.  Marriage, as it stands, is a contractual arrangement into which people ought to enter with the hardest noses they have–for both their and their partner’s sake.  But they don’t.

This may seem cynical, but it’s a view based on 1) the current divorce rate, 2) the older age at which, statistically, people are getting married, and 3) my own experience.

Latest marriage and divorce figures from the CDC show, in 2008, 7.1 marriages per 1,000 total population and 3.5 divorces. The divorce rate, of course, never applies (in a couple’s view) to an individual couple–at least not when they’re in the throes of romantic ecstacy.

But it is a fact based on not just the supposed “loose morality” some like to use to explain it, but because of economic and social factors as well.  It’s harder to have a “traditional” arrangement now.

Do I have to explain “traditional arrangement”?  A married heterosexual couple–”man and wife,” with the “wife” staying at home to raise the kids in a nice little house in the ‘burbs with the man making the money and the wife doing the childcare, housework, and shopping.

The older age at which people marry (median age for 2007: 27.7 for men, 26.0 for women–US census figures through infoplease.com) gives them more time to establish their own households with their own household goods and possessions.

Not everyone acquires a ton of property during those years as a single person, but it’s (I hope) a pretty easy idea to swallow that people living on their own for a greater amount of time acquire more property than do sweethearts who get married out of high school and their parent(s?) households.

And property is a pretty significant aspect of marriage because, while property laws are different in different states, separate property often ends up becoming at least partially marital property, either through joint work/investment on that property during the marriage or through claims during a divorce.

For my own experience, I’ll call upon my own writing on the subject from my journal files:

When I was in my late twenties, I married a guy who seemed normal and stable and whom I thought would never leave me.  We had a child a couple years later because the time seemed right and that’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re married.  It ended in divorce after 6 ½ years because I felt like I had two kids—after the first year [after our son was born], when I was able to stay home, I was always working to support us, plus doing the majority of the housework, and my husband would berate me about being a crappy mom because I was always tired and frustrated…

Society also tells you that you should get married—as if a piece of paper and the nod of church and/or state authorities will guarantee a happily ever after.  I heard all the advice that marriage takes work—I worked like hell and that’s all I did.  My brother, raised in the same home as me, ideal by society’s standards, is on his second marriage and is helping his new wife raise her kids by her previous marriage to a deadbeat.

Traditional societal roles haven’t been workable for some time, but they are still called upon in order to judge people.  It is almost impossible for either parent to stay home and raise the kids, and it’s not necessarily [emphasis added] the best thing for the kids.  Many marriages end in divorce—other couples stay together for the kids and some of those give their kids a great example of a crappy relationship to emulate.  If we want our kids to be happy, perhaps it is our job to show them how to find healthy and stable relationships without the pressure of being right on the first try.

If we want our own lives to be happy and healthy and stable, perhaps we should do what works for us and our families and our kids instead of relying on outdated ideals that, statistically, hardly work for anyone.  We could also work on reducing our prejudice that if something worked for us (or didn’t, but we stuck with it anyway), it ought to work for everyone else.

While we may have a societal prerogative to promote stability in relationships–especially those that involve children, that stability is not guaranteed by or enforced through the marriage contract as much as some might like to believe.

I have lots of friends who are married: I’m happy for their happiness, and I worry for them when they hit rocky times, and I’m sad for them when things don’t work out.  Just like I do my unmarried friends.

I’m also careful with my language around my son in terms of relationships–I don’t say, “when you get married,” I say (on the rare occasion I talk to my seven-year-old about marriage) “if you get married.” Because I don’t want him to believe, as I did, that you’re supposed to get married or that marriage is inevitable.

What annoys me is when married people (or even unmarried people) refuse to accept the validity and stability of a relationship when there’s not a state and/or church sanction involved. I was told second-hand about someone on the board of a local organization who questioned my right to a “family membership” together with my partner and my son.

His comment?  “Let’s see the marriage certificate.”  The funny thing is–there are quite a few gay and lesbian couples who have family memberships in that organization–but I guess they have an “excuse” not to be married?

My ex-husband fought to enter a clause in our divorce agreement that neither of us could live with another person that we were not married to until our son was eighteen years old.  I fought against that not because I wanted to (as he claimed) “expose” our son to a string of “boyfriends,” but because I thought it was dangerous to enforce marriage as a condition of cohabitation when marriage is frankly not always the best arrangement.

Finally, I don’t know nor do I really care if I qualify for Fastidious’ general dislike by conforming to her version of the label “shack-up whore.”

What counts, in my book, is not a certificate from the state or sanction from a church, but the fact that my partner and I have a kind, loving, and stable relationship that has made and continues to make both of our lives easier and better.

 

Fastidiousness, Feminism, and Homelessness

Trundling about the internets Sunday morning, I noticed I had a trackback from a blog I hadn’t seen before: Fastidious.

So, I clicked on over to see what this blogger had to say about what I’d said.  Actually, it turned out that it was not Fastidious herself, but her “dear husband” cosbysweater who’d blogged on the appalling lack of facts and statistics in my rant and some of the other progressive bloggers’ posts on healthcare and the public option.

After responding to his post and providing some quotes and a link, I explored further into the blog of this “young, married, female right-winger” to try to ascertain exactly who she is and where she’s from.

Well, I still don’t know, but I do know that something I read in Fastidious’  “About” section stuck in my craw all day, so I’m going to post about it here (she’ll see all my link love and come visit, I’m sure).

Fastidious celebrates the anonymity of the ‘nets by declining to reveal her identity, and she has a long list of things she likes and an even longer list of things she doesn’t like.  She doesn’t like the following:

generally, folks who refuse to read, folks who aren’t interested in learning, that every game for the Wii MUST use the Wiimote gimmick,[...]caged animals as pets (birds, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc.), big cities, Air America, Marxism, socialism, big government, “green” life-styles, anything “save the planet,” leaving messes around the house, romance movies, chick-flicks, psychology, ignorance, laziness, liberalism, militant feminism, energy saving light bulbs, MTV, Katy Perry, the amount of time I spend in front of a screen on a daily basis (TV, computer, projection, etc)…, and Keith Olbermann

OK, so we’ve established that she doesn’t like many of the things that I believe in, but I’ll admit I don’t like MTV or keeping caged pets either.  So we’ve got at least a little in common.

But you see that little bracketed section that I’ve omitted?  I’ve done that precisely to keep up the suspense.  The other thing she doesn’t like is this:

women who live as shack-up whores

I’ll admit I’d never heard that phrase before, but it set off my feminist alarm.  There are a lot of -isms in that passage of dislikes, and there are a few “folks,” but this is just plain “women” who do something, and the young, newly-married right-wing  Fastidious doesn’t like them.  And there is no corresponding dislike of men who do whatever that thing is.

So, I Googled “shack-up whore” to find out exactly what it is those women-disliked-by-Fastidious do.  Here’s the Urban Dictionary definition:

When a dunbass ho gives up the pussy only because she needs a place to live to get off the street.

I banged he bejeebers out of Claire and the next thing I knew her ass was moved in to my hizzhouse with all dem kids! She is nuttn but a shack up whore!

Misspellings aside, here’s my translation: a woman in a desperate situation moves in (and has intercourse) with a man to get herself (and possibly also her children) off the street.  Apparently, in the new urban lingo, that makes her a whore rather than a woman making a choice that she hopes will protect her and her family.

That’s totally a person to dislike.  A person making a desperately hard choice.  Maybe a young, newly-married, twenty-something right-winger can never imagine that she, herself, could ever get into such a dreadful, shameful situation, so she doesn’t like women who do.

Isn’t it nice to be that privileged?

But, you know, I’m sure if the man of property in the above scenario deigns to marry this woman, then she’s no longer a “shack up whore,” she’s a respectable member of the community.   A wife!  Huzzah!

I’m trying to think if there’s a corresponding derogatory phrase that applies to men who do this sort of thing, but all I can think of is “deadbeat boyfriend.”  As in, My deadbeat banjo-pickin’ boyfriend hasn’t paid his share of the rent in five months!

(This is by no means meant to vilify banjo players.  It could just as easily be “drummer.”)

But “deadbeat boyfriend” just doesn’t have the same ring as “shack-up whore,” does it?  It doesn’t indicate a shameful sexual compromise on his part, does it?

But it pretty much boils down to the same situation: One person is paying the bills; the other person is sleeping with that person and living in their house and (supposedly) not paying the bills.  Basically, trying to stay off the street.

OK–now let me pose this question: is it more dangerous for a woman to be on the streets or for a man to be on the streets? Conventional wisdom suggests that it is more dangerous for a woman to be on the streets, and both male and female panhandlers agree with that assertion in the interviews linked to at left.

However, it’s difficult to find studies that quantify the differences, though one study has shown that homeless women tend to spend less time on the streets and unsheltered than homeless men. The suggestion in a number places on the web is that there are more resources available for homeless women, especially those with children.

Another study (in Canada) found that death rates among younger homeless women (<45) were close to the same as those of younger homeless men, though death rates of older homeless women were less than that of older homeless men.

The study linked to in the last paragraph only followed women who were not caring for minor children.  One might reasonably assume that a woman with children might be more likely to seek shelter more quickly–whether through friends, family, state or local shelters, if available, or a kind-enough-seeming man who allows her and her children to move in.

Also in the course of my research, I also came across a travel site discussing gender differences in travelers’ experiences.  While many of the female commenters said they used more caution than men did, especially while traveling solo, a number of them also said they felt they received more help and more hospitality on their travels because of the perception that, as women, they needed “protection.”

While obviously being homeless and traveling solo are not the same, they do present some similar circumstances, and the resources out there (especially the myriad “safety tips for women travelers”) suggest that there’s a deep-seated belief [PDF alert!] in both genders that women are in more danger when they’re out on their own than men are.

While I realize I’m getting into psychology now (which, remember, Fastidious also doesn’t like), my theory here is that, by-and-large, women are raised and enculturated to view being homeless or even just out on their own as a dangerous situation–something to be avoided or, if unavoidable, prepared for and/or gotten out of as soon as possible.

It’s possible (not probable, but certainly possible), that in certain circumstances, women who are homeless or are traveling solo may be somewhat more safe because of the perception that they are less so.

As a feminist, this presents an interesting discussion–an unequal society (as well as other factors) generates a lack of safety for women that, in turn, generates a perception of danger for unaccompanied/unsheltered women that, in turn, may generate a backlash of sympathy/support for these women that men in similar circumstances don’t receive.

But let’s get back to the “shack up whore.”

When the message  that it is extremely dangerous for a woman to be homeless and/or on her own is constantly reinforced (and, of course, it IS dangerous–whether or not it’s more or less so than a person’s perception), that perception of danger may be a big reason why women seek what seems like a safer situation than the streets or the shelters–especially if they have children they’re responsible for.

That perceived safer situation may be a man who is willing to allow the woman (and her children, if any) to live in his house or apartment, perhaps with the tacit understanding that there will be intimacy between the two of them.

It seems to me that the shame is not in the woman’s choice; the shame is that she is forced to make the choice out of fear and desperation.

And further, it’s shameful to–from a position of extreme privilege–single out  for “dislike” a group of women who are in the difficult position of making that choice.

 

Farmland buy-ups and political instability

A short post because I’m heading out to the Elk Point Farmers Market in a few minutes, but this article, shared by a friend on Facebook, caught my eye.

Remember that discussion about the newest and scariest speculation in farmland?  As predicted, it IS causing political instability–especially when it’s a multinational buying up farmland in another country where food is already too scarce or too expensive for the local populace.  Take Madagascar as an example:

The urban poor were angry at the price of food, which had been high since the massive rise in global prices of wheat and rice the year before. Food-price rises hit the poor worse than the rest of us because they spend up to two-thirds of their income on food. But what whipped them into action was news of a deal the government had recently signed with a giant Korean multinational, Daewoo, leasing 1.3 million hectares of farmland – an area almost half the size of Belgium and about half of all arable land on the island – to the foreign company for 99 years. Daewoo had announced plans to grow maize and palm oil there – and send all the harvests back to South Korea.

Terms of the deal had not originally been made public. But then the news leaked, via the Financial Times in London, that the firm had paid nothing for the lease. Daewoo had promised to improve the island’s infrastructure in support of its investment. “We will provide jobs for them by farming it, which is good for Madagascar,” a Daewoo spokesman said. But the direct cash benefit to Madagascar would be zero – in a country which can barely produce enough food to feed itself: nearly half of the island’s children under the age of five are malnourished. [Paul Vallely. "Wish You Weren't Here: The Devastating Effects of the New Colonialists." Independent/UK 10 August 2009]

I hate to be a doomsayer, but the article goes on to report that deals like this are going on all over the world–with large investors–multinationals and governments–buying up land in impoverished areas in countries Ethiopia, Tanzania, Brazil, and Russia. Some of the land is for food farming; some is for fuel-farming.

Peak oil? How about “Peak Food”?

 

Road Trip Review: Madison, Milbank, and Food, Inc.

It was a wild weekend (at least by South Dakota farmer standards)–H., my fellow farmer, and I all hit the road for the South Dakota Blogger Picnic hosted by our friend and ally in the blogosphere, Cory Heidelberger and his gracious wife and fellow blogger Erin.

There were other bloggers there besides me and Prairie Highway author Kelly Fuller–Matthew “Hubba” Trask was there (a more complete list of attendees is available from our host), as well as a few MSM folks–real, live honest-to-goodness print journalists–including one who served as a delegate to the SD Dem Convention with H way back when I was just a babe.

Lively discussion was had about the roles of bloggers and the importance of actual paid investigative journalists (I just read somewhere that publicists now outnumber them 4:1).

Yes, it’s true–even us independent-minded bloggers care about the state of the dead-tree (and radio, and TV) press–we all get ideas for posts there, and journalists’ paid positions give them the ability to pursue stories we might not have the capacity to cover.

Another part of the conversation revolved around the best and most effective uses of Twitter and peripheral applications. I should give a hat tip, by the way, to Todd Epp for bringing Twitter to the forefront of our blogger consciousness at last year’s blognic, though he was conspicuously absent from this year’s event after the Babe War kerfuffle.

After good food and brain-pickin’ on the shores of Lake Herman, our little Vermillion crew headed north again to the little town of Milbank for the South Dakota debut of the documentary film, Food Inc. We pulled into a parking spot just across from Mill Theatres 1-2-3 just about two minutes to show time, bought our five dollar tickets, and sat down to enjoy the film.

Food Inc. is an important movie.  Everyone’s been saying that, but I’ll say it again because it’s true. It hits the center of a bullseye other books and films have been circling around for the past few years.

Food Inc.  takes some of the messages of films such as The Future of Food, Fast Food Nation, and King Corn, along with books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The End of Food, and (again, because it’s nothing like the film so-named) Fast Food Nation, and rolls it together with additional information and great cinematography.

In fact, the visuals are so good and so clever (especially in the beginning of the film), I found myself ooh-ing and ahhing over them.  It’s a great tactic to pull you in for a sometimes rough, sometimes outrageous, sometimes stomach-turning ride.

While I won’t do a full critical review here, I will say that the thing that scared me most–the thing that made me cry– the thing that froze my guts into a hard little ball was the segment on Moe Parr, a custom seed cleaner who was sued and put out of business by Monsanto–not for saving seed, but for providing a way for others to–that is, by “encouraging” farmers to break patent law.

There is a segment where Moe is being questioned by Monsanto’s attorney about all his business dealings–they’ve seized his records, his computer, and they’re running through a list of names–asking him about all his customers, his neighbors–figuring out who they’ll investigate, sue, and ruin next. It’s a killer.

Luckily, the film ends on positive words about what consumers can do to make change.  If it didn’t, it’d be hard to recommend the film without the warning, “prepare to be depressed.” You still might be, but at least there’s some hopeful and sound advice about local food, farmers markets, and supporting farmers through CSA and the like.

After the film, the six or eight of us who’d watched then adjourned to the lobby with our gracious hosts and settled down for a good discussion of the film, food activism, coal plants and CAFOs, and all manner of other concerns on both sides of the western MN/eastern SD border, as well as issues without such tight borders.

The thing about rural activists of all stripes is this–you tend to make friends fast, and you tend to stick together and offer help whenever you can. Realizing that we hadn’t gotten dinner nor arranged a place to stay, the owners of the theatre not only offered dinner, but beds and breakfast as well.

And what great local food it was–a relief after seeing that film, and worrying that Taco John’s might be the only dinner we’d find. Instead we feasted on locally raised meats, vegetables, and homemade bread while chatting amiably around the farmhouse table. Breakfast was eggs, sausage, fruit, and toast slathered with organic butter–oh, my-my good.

After hugs and handshakes all around (plus making sure we’d got all the farm cats out of the car), we hit the road south again–stopping to check out the tiny town of Twin Brooks (where, we learned, the Gunslinger Bar–now for sale!–hosted their annual “Coon Pecker” contest) and pausing to view the lovely Blue Cloud Abbey–whence you can just make out Big Stone Coal Plant on the horizon.

All in all, the trip–even with the somewhat scary and depressing film–had a definite uplifting feel.  There’s so much on the broader stage of state, national, and global affairs to be reckoned with–to be fought against or preserved from or simply to shake one’s head in wonder at–that it was a real treat to meet up with passionate and hopeful people working to make things better.

 

Lack of Information and Support has a Chilling Effect on Farmers Markets in South Dakota

Looking at the state’s local food website and even at the Dakota Rural Action local foods directory, you’d think there just aren’t that many farmers markets in South Dakota.

But in my travels throughout the state in the past few weeks, and through the e-mail requests for help and information from beginning or established markets over the past few months, I’ve discovered this just isn’t the case.

In fact, there are scores of little markets all throughout the state. It seems that almost every little town–even ones with no traffic lights and only one paved road–even ones with populations under 500 people–have lively little local markets with diehard vendors and loyal customers.

On my visit to the extreme northeastern part of the state this past weekend, I learned about four more markets within a fifty-mile radius of each other, none of which is advertised in any larger publication on farmers markets in the state.

Why don’t we hear about these markets? Why aren’t they publicized, and why don’t they join together with other, larger markets to collectively bargain for better regulations, more customers, and to share vendors?

Because they’re scared.

They don’t know the health code. They don’t know who to talk to, and they’re afraid of surprise visits from the Department of Health that might shut them down.  The locals know about these markets, and they have regular customers, but outside of that community circle, the markets are somewhat of a secret.

Last year at the Black Hills Farmers Market, the SD Dept. of Health and Clark Hepper, Office of Health Protection administrator, on reading in the Rapid City Journal that Joel Schwader was making and selling hundreds of kuchen (South Dakota’s state dessert), came to the market and shut him down.

While kuchen is not a shelf-stable baked good (it contains a custard filling), and Schwader did need to make the dessert in a commercial kitchen with all the appropriate licenses, the incident has, according to reports from markets throughout the Black Hills, had a chilling effect on the number of vendors who come to sell.

While the customer base is still there, and in fact is still growing, the feeling among vendors and market managers is that if you get big, if you get press and you are popular, you run the risk of the Health Department coming in and shutting you down.

While the little local markets scattered throughout the state are hidden from outside view, that doesn’t mean their vendors don’t read the news, or hear about incidents such as this through the producer grapevine. Heck, even some customers I’ve talked to relate that they don’t write checks at markets anymore, for fear that could get their favorite producer in trouble.

Managers are concerned even about selling the markets’ mainstay: fresh, homegrown produce.  The Rapid City Journal article on Joel’s kuchen had Hepper stating that, “Any time you have food for sale or service, you’re required to obtain a food service license.”

Obviously, for fresh produce at farmers markets, that’s just not true. Selling homegrown tomatoes or potatoes does not require a license–or does it?

While the article also relates that Hepper “concedes that the state and the hundreds of community farmers market associations throughout the state could better educate and enforce these regulations and standards,” the question is how? (And by the way–hundreds? He must know about more markets than all of the rest of us combined.)

How can farmers market boards and even individual vendors educate on and enforce regulations that seem to be amorphous, subject to change, and impossible to get hold of in any layperson-usable form? These problems, coupled with generalizations and misinformation spread by state employees themselves, is serving to hamstring South Dakota’s burgeoning local food economy.

Regular readers of this blog know that I identify a strong local food economy not only with helping to save family farms and boosting the local economy as a whole, but also with food safety and security in uncertain times.

Unfortunately, our state government seems still to be languishing back in the “bigger is better” days, where small producers who actually grow or make food for people to eat get no (positive) attention, no respect, and no real support.

It’s true there are some really helpful people in state government, but what’s also true is that a lot of officials, faced with situations they’ve never encountered before, are making things up as they go along, and instead of taking a “let’s work this out together” approach, are falling back on an enforcement-only, “just shut the ‘problem’ down” tactic.

When I get yet another, “I don’t know what to do,” “they won’t call me back,” “we are losing vendors,” “we don’t want to be listed” e-mail from a farmers market manager or vendor, I wonder if state or local governments will ever figure out what folks in many other states did long ago–that farmers markets and local production are a huge benefit to the local and state economy.

I say it’s time for us vendors and customers and market personnel to go to Pierre and demand real support–support that doesn’t relegate us to a side-line or sub-title or add-on to some Dept. of Ag employee’s already over-filled plate. Yes, we need regulation–regulation that comes in an easy-to-read and readily accessible format–but we also need support.

We need support from people who have experience with building, growing for, and selling at markets, who know the rules, and who are willing to lobby on our behalf for regulations that encourage rather than discourage local production and marketing.

We need support that welcomes small producers and markets into the fold, instead of forcing them to hide out and hope they won’t be discovered–helping their local economies, providing safe and sustainable food for their friends and neighbors, and improving our state’s food security.

And if you want to get in on the process of drafting new regulations that support rather than discourage small producers and markets, contact Dakota Rural Action at 605.697.5204.