It’s been a crazy, vegetableful week. My girlfriend and I joined the Sunnyside CSA—just one of about a hundred neighborhood-based community-supported agriculture distribution centers around New York City. This week’s box (our first!) held strawberries, arugula, green-leaf lettuce, red-leaf lettuce, baby bok choy, radishes, turnips, beets, and rhubarb.
It has been a week of highs and lows. Mostly highs, topped by rhubarb cobbler. I barely knew what rhubarb was a week ago, and now I’m a rhubarb enthusiast—evangelist, even. And all the organic, local, oh-so-fresh beets, turnips, bok choy, and strawberries from the box of surprises made me jump with healthy joy!
But today we hit the low: those “southern style” turnip greens I cooked up today will be sitting in a tupperware in the fridge (along with way too much unused lettuce) until one of us reluctantly chews them or tosses them.
While I’m simultaneously nervous and excited for our next batch of veggies, I’m definitely looking forward to meeting our neighbor who we met through the listserv and agreed to split the share with. Sharing these surprise boxes of vegetables does seem like it would forge some kind of unbreakable bond.
Viva7 just sent me the link to a new blog called Hope for Choice, which includes “a message to those that believe that murder is a way of enforcing a political agenda”:
WE’RE NOT SCARED OF YOU.
WE WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR CHOICE AND HELP WOMEN WHO FIND THEMSELVES IN THE POSITION TO CHOOSE.
WE WILL EAT UP YOUR HATE LIKE IT IS LOVE, AND USE IT TO FORTIFY OUR STRENGTH.
WE WILL NEVER CONDONE OR USE VIOLENCE AS A MEANS OF ENFORCING A POLITICAL AGENDA.
WE STAND FOR EQUALITY. WE STAND FOR TRUSTING WOMEN.
HOWEVER, WE WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS BULLSHIT.
If you’re reeling from the news about Dr. Tiller’s murder:
If you’re on Twitter, use the #Tiller hashtag and please leave suggestions in the comments box for who to follow. Right now I’m learning from @veronicaeye, @nerdette, and @JillMZ, among others.
You know what that does? It takes me back to my days in South Africa, where I got to volunteer with Treatment Action Campaign. (TAC has been called “the world’s most effective AIDS group” by the New York Times. At TAC, they are all about condoms.) I even marched in a parade wearing one of the trademark “HIV Positive” shirts.
Do I feel tech’ed out sometimes and do my eyes hurt from staring at a computer screen all day? Yes.
But it’s really cool to work and live in a universe where one can collect similar examples of this interconnectedness / innovation / idealism / howmanybuzzwordsstartwithi? are everywhere.
3. Once upon a time, I met some people and we talked about starting a writing center. (Our secret: we never once talked like it wouldn’t come to life.) And now I live far away but—thanks to the magic of the internet and sometimes even a friendly mainstream media nod—I get to follow along as they pull off a hair- and money-raising spectacle too delightful and ridiculous to NOT be true.
4. Remember library cards? I just got one of those.
Our own Elissa Bassist has been having a rollicking good time over at TheRumpus.net, “an online magazine focused on culture with some politics.”
In her interview with Michael Showalter, the brilliant Bassist poses such questions as “How do you feel about grammar?” and “You co-wrote Wet Hot American Summer with David Wain. Is writing like sex in that it’s better with another person?”
“The United States is embarrassingly the only democracy in the world that denies the citizens of its capital city from representation in the national legislative body.”
Elissa describes the powerful coming-of-age moment that many U.S. citizens take for granted: the day she cast her first ballot, just weeks after her 18th birthday:
…I thought about my four grandparents, not one of whom was able to vote at the age of 18 – disenfranchised by Hitler’s laws and by the citizenship laws of Poland that forbade Jewish participation. I pushed the stylus through the ballot and with great pride, I voted with the knowledge that my vote, meant that I had a voice – that because I voted, I counted.
She goes on to describe her shock when she moved to the District for college, only to find that
Despite my personal radical take on the issue (read below), I am blogging today for marriage equality. This week is Freedom to Marry Week and I am proud to be a part of the blogswarm to promote this cause. According to the Freedom to Marry website, “By ending sex discrimination in marriage, much as we ended race discrimination in marriage a generation ago, we are building a better America, protecting and supporting families, children, and the freedom of choice for all.”
I can work with that. Just remember that this is one very small way that we can work toward eliminating inequalities. Let us use the energy around this issue to move forward on so many others!
I believe in marriage equality. More than that, I believe in equality. So while I think everyone should have the freedom to marry whoever they want without judgment, I also believe that everyone should have the freedom to not get married at all – that unmarried people should still enjoy the same rights and respect as married individuals, that everyone should be able to live a life that fits them without fear of judgment or discrimination. All people, queer or not, should not feel that their lifestyle—partnered, single, married, poly, or anything that fits in between—is any more or less legitimate than any other because it is or isn’t sanctioned by the state or church.
Pretty soap-boxy, but I needed to say it. Most of you who know me have heard me rant about how I, like Bob Ostertag, think marriage is the wrong issue and that the queer community is focusing too much energy on marriage when there are many other types of discrimination that need to be addressed.
This is a picture of my friend Sadena and me from Inauguration Day. In the past year-and-a-half since law school began, we have spent inordinate amounts of time together (not always but usually in the library or various coffee shops where we study). Sadena is someone who makes me happy to be in law school, who always knows how to talk me down when I get overly stressed about life; I have been known to refer to her as “my person,” akin to Christina and Meredith on Grey’s.
So you can imagine how upsetting it is to know that she hasn’t eaten in seven days.
Sadena, along with seven other Americans, began fasting last Monday in order to draw attention to the Sri Lankan government’s genocidal campaign against Tamil civilians. More than 300,000 Tamil civilians are currently trapped in a war zone , and the government has ordered all international aid organizations out of the region. Humanitarian groups are reporting that the entire trapped population is facing a food crisis.
It’s really been bothering me that a corporation like Goodyear that reported profits of $602 million in 2007 (its most current annual SEC filing) most likely spent much more on attorneys’ fees than the $360K it could have paid Lilly, trying to convince us it didn’t practice gender discrimination. According to its 2007 annual report, Goodyear did, however, pay millions to settle other types of lawsuits. So I thought, wouldn’t it be refreshing if Goodyear would do the right thing and pay Lilly Ledbetter the back wages it should have paid her in the first place?
Why not take a couple of minutes this weekend to get the scoop from Punditmom and then take her suggestion and send a note to Goodyear via their online form? She even includes a template you can crib if you’re short on time/not feeling creative.
Today, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act became the first bill signed into law by President Obama.
On a personal note, President Obama’s action today more than makes up for my anger towards him over my purple ticket nightmare trying to get into his swearing-in ceremony.
Seriously, though – what a difference a president can make! From President Obama’s remarks at the signing today:
“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign … we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” Obama said at a ceremony in the East Room of the White House.
“If we stay focused, as Lilly did, and keep standing for what’s right, as Lilly did, we will close that pay gap and ensure that our daughters have the same rights, the same chances, and the same freedom to pursue their dreams as our sons.”
Ledbetter worked for Goodyear for 19 years before discovering that she was paid significantly less than her male counterparts with the same or less experience. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the complaint had to be filed within 180 days of the initial salary decision even if the victim is unaware of the discrimination until much later.
The law signed today overturns the Supreme Court’s decision in the Ledbetter case.
It’s also worth mentioning that the law covers discrimination claims on the basis of not only sex, but race, religion, national origin, disability, and age.
A pretty solid pick for the first of what I hope is many more pieces of pro-justice, anti-discrimination legislation.
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Posted by juliacsmith 
Our own Elissa Bassist has been having a 
This is a picture of my friend 
