Awesome Woman: Flor Molina

Flor Molina is a survivor of forced labor in the garment industry in Los Angeles, California. She was forced to work 14 or more hours per day, was told she owed her trafficker thousands of dollars, and was even required to live within the garment factory and was not allowed to go out without escort. Sadly, this is all typical in the world of human trafficking. What is unusual about Molina is that within 40 days of her arrival at the Los Angeles factory in 2001 she found a way to escape, immediately placed a phone call to a (non-enslaved) co-worker, and blew the whistle in spite of threats that her three children and mother back home would be harmed. Her phone call initiated a process that ended with the conviction of the human trafficker who had brought her to the United States and kept her enslaved.

Molina's coworker picked her up, took her to a restaurant, and contacted the FBI who were already investigating the trafficker. The FBI connected her to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), who helped her find shelter and get back on her feet. She then became a member of the CAST Survivor Advisory Caucus, one of the groups that worked hard to pass a bill in California (that will go into effect in 2012) that requires manufacturers and retailers in the state to disclose their efforts at making sure their supply chains are free of slavery.

Molina offered the final testimony in the California legislature while Governor Schwarzenegger's pen was poised over the bill:

I and other members of the caucus speak up against slavery not because we are not afraid but because we want to make sure that what happened to us doesn't happen to anyone else.

The CAST Survivor Advisory Caucus fought hard for this bill to pass. We testified at hearings, we wrote letters and got signatures for our petition. Our voices were heard and action was taken, action that will, hopefully, protect others from falling prey to traffickers like we once did. I am proud to stand here, not as a victim of slavery but as a powerful agent of change.

Please, Governor Schwarzenegger, will you please sign the legislation?

There was applause, and the Governor signed.

http://www.szone.us/f76/governor-highlights-legislation-combat-human-trafficking-51387/

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/05/i-was-enslaved-for-40-days/

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Kudos: Stonyfield Farm (kinda sorta)

Due to my rapidly deepening anti-plastics obsession and my recycling OCD, I check the bottom of every plastic container I need to dispose. While #1 and #2 bottles are the only plastics collected by New York City's municipal recycling program, #5 plastics can be dropped off at Whole Foods customer service desk to be recycled by Preserve's Gimme 5 program.

So yesterday I bought some organic Stonyfield yogurt for my daughter who needs some probiotics after running a high fever for a couple of days.

I turn over the cup and see the welcome news that it is not #anything plastic, it is "Made from plants":

My initial reaction was, I am thrilled, thinking that someone finally invented an enviro-friendly degradable bio-plastic food container that can hold liquids. I guess that was a bit illogical, huh, since liquids ought to degrade anything that is truly degradable ...

I headed off to Stonyfield's site and read their PR about these containers. The plant-based plastic they are using is called PLA (Polylactic Acid). Turns out that ...

• PLA is used only for their small multi-pack cups. Their larger containers use #5 polypropylene plastic (see link at top of post for how to recycle these)
• While Stonyfield claims to have examined various options for yogurt packaging including glass, poly-coated paper, they then go on to explain why they decided against glass and in favor of lightweight #5 or plant-based plastics. They do not explain why they do not just use coated paper. For so many years all yogurt or sourcream etc. containers were made from waxed or otherwise coated paper and there was no problem I ever noticed with this material!
• Their PLA is not really compostable. Further, there is some kind of double-speak going on about why composting is not a good idea:
  

  While PLA itself can be composted, the particular blend used in our multipack cups is too thick to be considered compostable under American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) international standards. And, surprisingly, the independent review of PLA’s environmental impact found that composting is not the best option for disposing of the cups. Why? Because composting would release the carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the plant-based plastic (CO₂ absorbed by the corn when it was growing) back into the atmosphere where it would contribute to global warming.

• The PLA is "recyclable" but only in our dreams:

  The good news is that PLA is recyclable. The bad news is that, right now, the recycling infrastructure for PLA is in its infancy, so this technology is available in only two places, Wisconsin and Belgium, and these facilities aren’t equipped to separate paper labels, adhesives or lidding from our PLA multipack cups to enable recycling.

• The PLA can contain GMO corn! Actually, they sort of get a pass on this. Cargill, the container manufactuer, is working via an offset program to ensure that -- while their procured corn may include GMO kernels -- an equivalent amount of non-GMO corn is grown (somewhere, by somebody, if we trust this).

Still, all in all, kudos to Stonyfield Farm for reducing their carbon footprint, "by 1,875 metric tons of CO₂ a year. That’s equal to the CO₂ emissions from 4,360 barrels of oil, or the greenhouse gases from the energy used in 160 homes for an entire year." And, of course, the elimination of toxins leaching into ground water when the containers end up in landfills is huge, too.

Awesome Woman: Chef Anne Cooper

Todays very Awesome Woman is Chef Ann Cooper, a.k.a. The Renegade Lunch Lady.

Cooper is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, and was among the first 50 women to be certified as an Executive Chef by the educational arm of the American Culinary Federation. She had a strong career going as a noted chef, having held positions with Holland America Cruises, Radisson Hotels, the Telluride Bluegrass and Film Festivals and the Telluride Ski Resort where she catered parties of up to 20,000. She has been featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, radio show, and television shows, has given seminars at Smithsonian Institute ... the list of honors is long.

But rather than pursue this path to a pinnacle of riches, Cooper's focus shifted to the need to feed our children properly, and to care for our planet wisely. No longer could the environmental and health facts be ignored when it came to producing food in this country. Cooper’s career shifted from primarily cooking to a path of cooking, writing, and public speaking – all advocacy work for a healthier food system.

Cooper uses her skills and background to create a sustainable model for schools nationwide to transition any processed food based K-12 school meal program to a whole foods environment where food is procured regionally and prepared from scratch. In 2009, Ann founded Food Family Farming Foundation (F3) as a nonprofit focusing on solutions to the school food crisis. F3's pivotal project is The Lunch Box - a web portal that provides free and accessible tools, recipes and community connections to support school food reform.

In adidition to writing books about food, cooking, health and sustainable practices, Cooper has also penned "A Woman's Place Is in the Kitchen," in which she discusses both traditional and current vantage points of women involved in the food service industry. Some of the historical issues discussed include: the influences of sociological change emanating from the transfer of power from matriarchal to patriarchal emphasis and the effects of the implementation of the brigade system which was developed from all-male military institutions.

A database of 6500 women and the compilation of 500 surveys provide statistics for the contemporary discussion. Women culinary professionals of today express passion for food while having to balance choices between professional and family obligations; what are the ramifications of these choices and how do they effect the culinary industry and the decisions made by colleagues, mentors and staff?

This is the first book that has been written exclusively about women chefs and restaurateurs; A Woman's Place is in the Kitchen provides an informative, insightful and objective portrait of the role of women working in the multi-faceted culinary field.

A TED Talk by Ann Cooper is available here, given in 2007 when she was the Director of Nutrition for Berkeley Unified School District, heading up an operation that provided 7100 meals a day to schoolchildren, and successfully introduced healthy, safe food into the system.



Ann Cooper's web site is at http://www.chefann.com/

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Awesome Women: Bel Kaufman

The Awesome Woman of the Day is *Bel Kaufman* (born May 10, 1911) who at 100 years old is still an active and teaching a course in Jewish Humor at Hunter College, her alma mater (in the City University of New York system).

Bel Kaufman is the granddaughter of the famous Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem, described in a recent New York Times article about Kaufman as "a writer who was able to squeeze heartbreaking humor out of the most threadbare deprivation and wove the bittersweet Tevye stories that became the source for 'Fiddler on the Roof.'"

Kaufman emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States at the age of 12 and was forced to start school in the first grade. Only 11 years later she had graduated from Hunter, and then pursued a master's at Columbia University. She began to teach in New York City Schools, and worked part-time as a writer for Esquire and other publications.
In 1965 her book Up the Down Staircase was published, a novel that deals with the experience of a new teacher's experience dealing with both the other teachers and the educational system, and the students. The book was based upon Kaufman's own teaching experiences.

Kaufman has carried on the tradition of distinctly Jewish humor her grandfather was known for. The Times article opens with this example:

When Bel Kaufman sits you down on her sofa and asks, “Are you comfortable?” the right answer, she reminds you, requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.”

In explaining the origins and particular flavor of Yiddish humor, Kaufman explained to the Times reporter:

“It goes back to immigration from the shtetl, from that poverty, and because the Jew was the object of so much opprobrium and hatred,” she said. “The jokes were a defense mechanism: ‘We’re going to talk about ourselves in a more damaging way than you could.’ ”

When asked about the secret to her longevity in a New York Post article earlier this year, Kaufman answered, "I'm too busy to grow old."

There are beautiful pictures of her at Sholem Alecheim's 150th birthday celebration In the blog of Joan L. Roth, a photographer and writer who has done much documentary work about Jewish Women. See http://joanlroth.blogspot.com/2009/03/bel-kaufman-theodore-bikel.html

Other links:
NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/nyregion/bel-kaufman-at-100-still-a-teacher-and-a-jokester.html

NY Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/prof_shticks_to_her_guns_18F6lFUm9wG983kyjevRgP

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Kaufman

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Sitting is Killing You

This excellent infographic originated on the Medical Billing and Coding website. The researcher(s) and artist(s) are not named there.


Via: Medical Billing And Coding

Awesome Women: The Barefoot Solar Engineers of Africa

The Awesome Women of the Day are the "Barefoot Solar Engineers", women who left their African villages to spend six months at Barefoot University in India learning to create solar energy installations to power their villages. They brought their skills home, electrified their villages, and share their knowledge with others.





From the video narration:

This is about simple women in Africa who have made an extraordinary difference to their own communities, from Ethiopia to the Gambi, from Mauritania to Tanzania, a quiet revolution is taking place. Illiterate & semi-literate women, most of them grandmothers who have never left their villages in their lives, let alone going to another country several thousand miles away, they are making the impossible possible. They are baffling high-powered engineers, universities, donors, development planners and qualified experts by demonstrating incredible sophisticated skills and exposing the fundamental inadequacies of the formal educational system.

And a special shout-out to the woman who birthed and raised Sanjit “Bunker” Roy -- a man who recognizes that the best candidates for his project are women because of their superior patience and natural motivation to share what they have learned with their communities. Roy's Barefoot College has trained more than 3 million people for jobs in a bottom-up, social entrepreneurship approach to fight poverty and deprivation.

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Awesome Women: Phyllis Rodriguez & Aicha el-Wafi

It is Mother's Day many countries around the world. Today I  honor TWO AWESOME WOMEN OF THE DAY, Phyllis Rodriguez, whose son was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, accused, tried and convicted by the United States of being the missing "20th hijacker".

Women can bridge vast rifts. Women can heal the world. Only women. Happy Mother's Day to all of you. Regardless of how many children you do or don't have, your powers of love and care and action and courage are what the world needs now. ♥



My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Quote of the Day: Suggested signs for Tea Partiers

Andrew Kimbralls excellent piece "The Empty Pulpit: The Obama Problem" in Tikkun criticizes the lack of ballsy action taken on the very issues Obama all us progressive types fired up about during his campaign. The piece is a stand-out because it illustrates ways in which the opinions and slogans of the reactionary right can be countered with common-sense points that might actually change some hearts and minds (rather than capitulation to the right and rather than dissembling in the name of political realism, as has been the case).

In his point about countering the "Government is the problem" meme, Kimbrall suggests:

To be true to their “anti-big government” message, Tea Party rallies should have been festooned with signs such as “Fire the Fireman,” “No More Police,” “Bite the Postman,” “We Support Fewer Teachers and Overcrowded Classrooms,” “Collapse our Bridges — No More Infrastructure,” “We’ll Pave and Build Our Own Roads,” “Citizens for Salmonella,” “Unsafe Drugs for Everyone,” “Americans for a Weak Defense,” “Senior Citizens Against Medicaid and Medicare.” These signs were missing, of course, and instead we have the endless brow furrowing over “big government” in both parties as the discussion remains conveniently abstract.

OK, you rugged individualists out there. Get out your steamrollers and line-painting equipment. Self-sufficiency, right?

Awesome Woman: Limor Fried

Today's AWOD is Limor Fried. She is an engineer, artist & hacker ("Ladyada"). She received her M.Eng in EECS from MIT where she developed and built subversive electronic devices, including a pair of glasses that darken whenever television is in view and a jamming device that disables people's annoying cell phone conversations at the press of a button. (see http://www.ladyada.net/portfolio/2004/index.html )

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

of the corporations, by the corporations ...

Maine's Republican governor Paul LePage ordered a large mural depicting the illustrious history of unions in this country to be removed from the state's Department of Labor's premises.

"The mural has been removed and is in storage awaiting relocation to a more appropriate venue," said LePage press secretary Adrienne Bennett in a prepared statement. "We understand that not everyone agrees with this decision, but the Maine Department of Labor has to be focused on the job at hand."

... Administration officials said the change was needed to reflect a new image for the department, one not tilted toward organized labor. They said visitors to the lobby had complained that the mural is anti-business.

OK, then, so the new image for Maine's Department of Labor has been laid on the table in plain view: It is NOT there to encourage fair wages and safe working conditions. Seems like Maine is laying the groundwork to become the next state to attack public worker unions.

Some panels in the mural that LePage wants removed.

The Commissioner of Labor has also announced a contest to rename conference rooms that are currently dedicated to Labor heros such as Cesar Chavez and Frances Perkins. Hmmm. I can just see conference rooms in the Department of Labor named for Sam Walton and David Koch.

Awesome Women: Geraldine Ferraro

The Woman of the Day is Geraldine Ferraro, born in 1935 and died today. A  savvy New York Democrat, she was an attorney, a Democratic Party  notable, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (New  York/Queens). In 1984 she was embraced as a symbol of women's equality  when she became the first Italian-American and first woman to be a  major-party Vice Presidential nominee, selected by Walter Mondale who  tried to unseat Ronald Reagan.

My Awesome Woman posts were first written for and published to a closed Facebook group, and are republished here.

Billboard Liberation

We at the BLF have been assisting fatigued advertising copywriters to strengthen their corporate messages for over thirty years. Advertising is the language of our Culture, as BLF CEO Jack Napier noted almost as many years ago. And the primary use of language is to to communicate ideas. The most efficient and direct communication of an idea comes through the most elegant use of the least amount of words to communicate that idea. It’s quite clear from the image in this Stella Artois billboard ad what the message IS. The BLF merely wishes to assist this campaign by paring down the words in order to match that message most perfectly. - BLF Education Officer, R.O. Thornhill.
The improvement can be seen at 38th St and 8th Ave in midtown New York.
The BLF (www.billboardliberation.com) has been improving outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.

 See more examples of liberated billboards on BLF's "clients" page.

Comment of the Day: Lethal Ejaculation

Commenting on the below video on YouTube, MultiChrisjb says:

Every time I ejaculate, I kill millions of potential humans. So I should be in Jail! This makes every man a mass murderer. I'll turn myself in tomorrow....

 

Comment of the Day: The Poor Koch Brothers

All the people in this "ad" are socialists, communists, nazis, subversives, and "tera-ists".The real PATRIOTS are the persons who stand up for the Koch brothers. Last time I heard, the poor bros were down to their last 18 billion. This is not acceptable. These greedy teachers should give it up now, for the good of the Koch bros.

-- YouTube comment on this well-done ad by Bold Progressives and Democracy for America by "Gallagherfreak100"
 

Parsifal, Women, and the future of Iran (and everywhere)

PBS/WGBH have published a really lovely piece of writing by an anonymous "Arts Correspondent" via Tehran Bureau. The writer ruminates on Iranian society and the role of women, how things stay the same, how they are shifting, all painted in words on a multilayered canvas spanning cultures and eras (as per the headline: "Iranian Women and Wagner's Parsifal"), and moving with supreme grace from intimate personal perspectives, both first- and third-person, to the broader social picture.

The conclusion:

...beyond the reach of government oppression, women work to transform the many cultural contradictions of contemporary Iran into generosity and tolerance. The future of this country will have women at its heart and this is a fact.

The "Iran" Facebook "public profile" page is worth following for the superior mix of material coming out of Tehran Bureau. I only wish more of their authors could post with a by-line instead of anonymously.

Every Time ... that you put bleach in your washing machine

... consider capturing some of the water that drains from the first rinse cycle and using it to wash your kitchen and bathroom floors and fixtures.

The first rinse contains very little dirt, and enough soap and bleach to clean and disinfect. Why send all those harmful chemicals down the drain, only to fill a bucket with more to clean floors, tiles, sinks, toilet?

(... and PLEASE use as little bleach as possible. It's deadly stuff to us and to marine life (all life, in fact). In our apartment we have a mold condition that I have never been able to clean up other than using chlorine bleach. And we do not purchase disposable sponges, but instead use squares ripped from old bathtowels to wash dishes, wipe down food prep surfaces, etc. Killing bacteria on these cloths is important. I have tried boiling them to disinfect but they just look so dirty and dingy with coffee & grease stains that anyone besides me would think I'm using filthy rags to wash dishes and wipe the cutting board. So I use perhaps 1/4 cup of bleach per week and then reuse some of it for surface cleaning)

D'oh of the Day

Survey of online access finds digital divide: "A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities."

Minorities as majority

Minorities are majority population in Montgomery County, reports WashPo in today's Metro section.

As recently as 1990, seven out of 10 Maryland residents were white. Now, they are barely a majority, at 55 percent of the population.

Y'know, in a world that is what, 10 or 15 percent white, given that apart from the pitifully few who have chosen to retain identity as Native Americans everyone else in this country is an immigrant "from the rest of the world", 55 percent white population in any area of this country is still hugely disproportionate.

We may not be headed for a country full of Chocolate Cities so much as salt-n-peppa-and-spice-and-everything-nice. Watch out for the White Fear Backlash but the optimist in me believes that is temporary, once people have the chance to live closer together with "others" and just, well, get over it.

What about Jordan?

Is al Jazeera's English-language site going the way of the U.S. MSM?

I've seen plenty of complaints, and have made them myself, on Facebook walls and in Diaspora aspects regarding the heavy focus on Egypt in the MSM when there is in fact very widespread regional dissatisfaction, upheaval and revolt going on in the Middle East. The understandable interpretation of that tight Egyptian lens is that it stems from U.S.-centricism. Egypt is, of course, the States' "second most important ally in the region" and also receives the second-highest amount of foreign aid from the U.S.

This morning I notice a news feed somewhere pointing to a Reuters blurb that follows up on recent protests in Jordan and recent promises made by King Abudullah II to make immediate changes to the government. Yesterday Abdullah swore in a new government. This is an important bit of news, the first instance in the region of an incumbent making immediate changes without huge upheaval, but only more like "vocal unrest", sparking the event.

But what we should want to know is, Did Abdulllah make good choices? Are the people satisfied? Is he also perhaps making good on his old "soft promise" of moving power away from his own monarchy and into the hands of Jordanians? It looks like Abdullah's choices for replaced officials have little to do with any democratic process, and it looks like the newly instated officials are not likely candidates for supporting a truly fresh and democratic future for Jordan:

U.S. ally Abdullah appointed Marouf Bakhit, a conservative former premier drawn from the ranks of the powerful security establishment, last week to replace Samir Rifai, who was dismissed after just over a year in the job.

But it sure is hard to tell from this tiny blip of a Reuters item. It's one thing for the New York Times and Washington Post to have written nothing yet on this event. But nothing on Al Jazeera?

Which really leaves me to wonder if at least the English version of aljazeera.net is now catering to what they think U.S. readers want to hear about. Or is this news organization (for which on most days I actually have a good measure of respect) in general, in any language, giving Jordan scant coverage? Jordan, the country that is housing millions of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees? The country that attacked Israel and thus lost the West Bank years back, but has since cultivated (and perhaps earned) a reputation as being a fairly rational and moderate state? No coverage?

Here is al Jazeera's English home page this morning. Note the choice of articles highlighted in the bullet points below the top story:

Let's summarize those bullet points:

• Egypt
• Turkey (another strong U.S. ally)
• Israel
• Egypt
• Obama
• Egypt
• Egypt

A search for Jordan on the site turns up only stale and slim news.

(I will try to remember to search again later and update as necessary if al Jazeera has added any fresh coverage of Jordan)

tanks, bowties and banking standstill - Jon Snow in Cairo

UK's Channel 4 News is in Egypt, with International Editor Lindsey Hilsum reporting from Alexandria and others from Cairo.

Jon Snow writes from Cairo:

I have had the surreal experience of entering Egypt’s Finance Ministry. A grand white marble structure ringed with palm trees. Drawn up outside are not only tanks but rows and rows of bulletproof security trucks that are usually used to cart cash around the country. But there is no cash. The banks are closed. Shutting down the internet and mobile phones has not only disrupted the protesters’ communication it has bought banking to a complete standstill. Egypt is now not only in political crisis, but financial crisis too.

I went up to the 16th floor in the Finance Ministry to interview the new Minister of Finance Samir Radwan. We were greeted by men in bowties and dinner jackets. The elegant secretary in the outer office was clad in Gucci black. The minister himself is a delightful intellectual with no previous political experience. He is in fact Egypt’s leading academic on unemployment, poverty and regeneration. He is perhaps Mubarak’s only appointment who actually knows how to handle his portfolio.

Channel 4 is also providing live video and a liveblog feed at http://www.channel4.com/news/live-blog-egypt-protests-a-million-march-against-mubarak and, true to the embedded info in that link, it does look like a million people in the streets.