Nora Dye's blog

Wanderlust Meets Reproductive Justice Activists in New Orleans

2008-06-06T08:00:00-04:00

On Monday, May 26th, the Wanderlust Bicycle Caravan rolled out of New Orleans, multicolored flags waving in the wind as passersby look on, awestruck at the sight of so many women on bikes. We wound our way through neighborhoods still devastated from Katrina, riding to bear witness to the beauty and resilience of the New Orleanians who are fighting to save their city, to recreate their communities in the face of overwhelming odds and government inaction. The story of the recovery from Katrina, and the lack thereof, has been well documented, but there was something profoundly moving about standing in the empty field next to the canal where three years ago, the levee broke, unleashing utter devastation on the Lower Ninth Ward. Even today, it is virtually empty. We were told that roughly 10% of the residents of the Lower Ninth have returned, and it is like a ghost town, new hopeful houses sitting lonely on otherwise deserted blocks. A few blocks in from the levee the Common Ground Collective has a big sign outside that says something along the lines of "Shame on you, tourists. Get out of your cars and help."

We talked that evening about feeling called out by that sign, feeling shamed. But we also talked about the importance of bearing witness, of carrying the story of New Orleans to the people who think that Katrina is over. If I learned anything from being in New Orleans, it is that Katrina is still very much alive and present in the lives of every single resident, whether they've lived there their whole lives or whether they came down to help after the storm and fell in love with the singular, joyful beauty of New Orleans. Leg 1 of the Wanderlust Tour!

In some ways, Katrina revealed stark inequalities that existed covertly before the storm, and the recovery has led to some amazing initiatives. The Women's Health and Justice Initiative is a women of color led reproductive justice organization that provides trainings, does community organizing, and provides reproductive health care services through the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic. Like so many of the post-Katrina initiatives, the WHJI is the product of the immense dedication, creativity, and energy of a small group of individuals. In the words of Shana Griffin, the Interim Director of the WHJI:

The purpose of the clinic is to improve low-income and uninsured women of color's healthcare access and to promote a holistic and community-centered approach to primary healthcare. At the same time we look at the oppression and violence that have impact on the health status of women and to improve those situations. It's more than providing healthcare services, it's also about challenging the conditions that limit our access and our opportunities, such as poverty, racism, gender-based violence, imperialism, and war. We see it as more than just a clinic -- we want it to also be an organizing center that can meet immediate needs while also working for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice. We see our clinic as a great opportunity to talk to people and discuss why these services and this approach is needed. We have the power to reinvent ourselves and create institutions that are equitable

You can read the entire interview here. These initiatives are always in need of support, and you can find ways to support the Health Clinic and the WHJI here.

From New Orleans, the Wanderlust riders rode out to Mobile, Alabama, through the place where the eye of the storm passed -- our own small tornado of women on bicycles. We've learned lots over the past four days about ourselves, about traveling in a group, changing flat tires, not leaving cream cheese over night, and believing the signs that say "bikes prohibited in tunnels." That sign precipitated our first accident, when a front tire eating grate loomed suddenly in front of us and we stopped short, bikes flying in the air as riders tumbled on top of each other. Luck was in our favor on so many levels - no one was badly injured, Becky was driving the SAG wagon behind us and managed to not run over the pile of bicycles, and the bike shop we went to to get the bikes fixed happened to have a spare derailleur hanger to replace Elizabeth's cracked hanger, without which she could not have kept riding.

Right now we're sitting on a dock stretched out over the Tensaw River, at Hubbards Landing fish camp, and we plan to spend the day building our community, strengthening our connections with each other and sharing our stories. Last night we realized that we've been spending so much time biking and eating that we haven't had a lot of time to just breathe, let alone get to know each other, so that's what today is for. To keep up with the Wanderlust ride on the road, you can check out our blog at wanderlustwithrhonda.com.

Follow Nora and Wanderlust from the Beginning!

Nora Dye and Shelby Knox, Pedaling into Local Reproductive Justice Activism

Wanderlust: A Bike Tour of Reproductive Justice

2008-03-28T09:49:00-04:00

In April of 2007, I set off from Princeton, New Jersey on what would become a fifteen week, 4,600 mile bicycle trip across the United States. The trip began as an idea that was hatched, as so many good ideas are, sitting around a kitchen table with friends, wondering about the world.

I'd been working in the field of reproductive health and rights as an educator and organizer for five years, and I'd gotten to know the challenges and opportunities that were facing advocates in California. I'd experienced first hand some of the political divisions that have split our movement - from the generational divide to the lack of representation from people truly impacted by restrictions on access to health care within the volunteers I worked with.

I'd also been inspired and awed by the ability of activists from across the political spectrum to come together in the face of anti-choice attacks, and I will never forget sitting at a table with activists from Radical Women, the League of Women Voters, and many other organizations to plan a counter-demonstration against the anti-choice "Walk for Life".

But more than anything, I was curious about the rest of the country. How were the politics of sexual freedom playing out in Massachusetts? What about Indiana and Wyoming?

I knew that there were people working to create the political, social, and economic conditions that would enable women to make healthy decisions about their bodies and their lives, and I wanted to know who they were and what they were working on. How did they characterize the work they did? How connected did they feel to the larger movement?

So last April, I set off by myself, on my bicycle, to discover the answers to those questions. In Ithaca, I learned that when Planned Parenthood sex educators ask their students what they think the educators want to teach them, the students overwhelmingly, universally answer, "don't have sex."

I learned that most of the reproductive health care providers I visited were incredibly dedicated, overworked, and underpaid. I also learned that health care providers rarely, if ever, talk about sexual pleasure with clients. There are very few programs in medical schools that train providers to talk about sex in a positive way, and not really time during client visits to do so even when the providers want to and feel comfortable doing so. Providers are also fighting against a broken health care system that doesn't value the time providers spend with patients, and defines health as the "absence of disease".

I learned that many teen peer health educators don't identify as activists, even though they're doing incredibly powerful work to help their peers advocate for themselves in their relationships.

I learned that many of the people who run and work in sex-positive sex stores (like Toys in Babeland and Good Vibrations) used to work in reproductive health, but were frustrated by the lack of space and time to talk about sexual pleasure with clients. I also learned that many of them didn't identify as activists either, or see their work as political, even though laws restricting the possession of vibrators are still on the books in Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia.

I learned that it is possible to combine sex education, conversations about pleasure, AND medical knowledge, and that places like A Woman's Touch in Wisconsin are creating new paradigms for promoting sexual health and sexual pleasure.

And more than anything, I learned that all of our struggles are interconnected. You can't talk about reproductive health without talking about education, and the kinds of jobs people have, and the opportunities afforded them, and the circumstances in which they're making decisions. Over and over again, I was struck by how radically different people's world views can be, depending on what part of the country they're in. If there's one thing I learned about America, it was that it was much, much bigger and more diverse than I ever imagined.

Last summer was such an amazing experience that this year, I'm doing it again, and this time you're invited! Applications are now available for Wanderlust 2008, a reproductive justice bike tour from New Orleans to New York City. This year, I chose to focus specifically on reproductive justice because I believe that the reproductive justice framework enables us to have conversations about how access to reproductive health care is connected to not just comprehensive sex education but environmental health, preventing violence, living wages, the prison industrial complex, welfare policy, and more.

I invite you to join me on the tour - as a participant, as a host, as a member of a community organization in the places we pass through, and as a supporter. For more information about the trip and ways to get involved, please visit PEP's website.

The application deadline for participants is April 1st, so apply today!

Sex Ed Year Round

2007-05-24T09:00:00-04:00

At long last, I bring you the full and unexpurgated recounting of my time in Philadelphia. Whee! Wednesday and Thursday were chock full of meetings with all sorts of people working to facilitate women's control over their bodies and their lives.

I started the day off at Choice, an organization dedicated to increasing awareness of and access to reproductive health care, especially among under-served populations who traditionally experience barriers to care. At Choice, I met Jackie, who coordinates their 4(!) hotlines, and walked through the bustling hotline reception room on our way to her office. I'm always interested in the posters and paraphernalia that people choose for their offices. There are a few things that are nearly ubiquitous—the "Just do it" condom stickers, various incarnations of the Rosie the Riveter poster, a rainbow of buttons.

I was particularly interested to visit Choice because in San Francisco I was a Board Member at ACCESS, an organization that does similar work in California. Pennsylvania, it turns out, has some of the most restrictive laws in the area—there is a parental consent law for abortion that is enforced, and state Medicaid funding for abortions is restricted to women who are pregnant as a result of rape of incest or for whom carrying the pregnancy to term would pose a "life risk", defined as threatening her mental or physical health. (In California, for instance, women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy who aren't able to afford an abortion can get emergency Medicaid to cover the cost of the procedure, although the number of providers who accept Medicaid is decreasing).

Incidentally, Pennsylvania follows federal guidelines which were enacted by the Hyde Amendment in 1977. The Hyde amendment bans state use of federal Medicaid dollars to pay for abortions unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or the abortion is "necessary to save the life of the woman." States can use their own funds to cover other medically necessary abortions—usually defined by states as those to protect the physical or mental health of the woman—for Medicaid recipients. These restrictions leave thousands of low-income women vulnerable to delayed care, financial burden, and unsafe, illegal abortion by requiring them to come up with the money for their procedures.

Choice advocates for women seeking reproductive health care on a number of levels, including with health care providers. It turns out that the biggest barrier women face to getting Medicaid funding for procedures is the providers themselves. In order to qualify for the funding, doctors have to sign a form stating that a woman meets one of the three requirements set forth by the Hyde Amendment, and many doctors, even at reproductive health clinics, are reluctant to sign the forms. Many women get their initial pregnancy test from their general practice doctor, who would be the logical person to sign form enabling them to get Medicaid funding. Those doctors give a variety of reasons for their reluctance to sign the waiver, from religious objections to abortion to fears of scrutiny from medical boards. Jackie related that one doctor told a woman "We don't deal with women's issues." Can you imagine being faced with an unplanned pregnancy and having a doctor tell you that?

I asked Jackie how they incorporated advocacy into the work they did—certainly a huge part of their mission is dedicated to helping women advocate for themselves personally, but I was curious if they positioned that work in a political context, if they talked to the women they were helping about the need for political advocacy to remove barriers to accessing care. She raised what has been a particularly thorny problem—that many women who are having trouble accessing health care are also dealing with numerous other issues in their lives, and writing a letter to their member of Congress isn't a high priority given everything else they've got going on. Choice does make a concerted effort to educate women about their role within the medical system and what rights they have within that system.

During this conversation Jackie said "you know, some people don't believe in access to some kinds of medical care", which really struck me, not because it's not obvious from all the laws and restrictions they've passed, but because I'd never heard it put in quite that way before. I mean, I get not agreeing with some of the choices people make, but to not BELIEVE in their right to access care is a pretty horrific idea, if you ask me.

My next stop was Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania, a formidable affiliate best known for their role as the plaintiff in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states could impose restrictions on access to abortion like parental consent laws and mandatory waiting periods as long as they don't pose an "undue burden" on a women's ability to access abortion. I met with Karen Fitchette-Gordon, the Vice President for Education and Professional Development.

Karen runs a truly extraordinary Education department—they have nearly a dozen different programs that include Youth First, a year round program in Philadelphia schools that serves over 1700 students each year in sixth and eighth grade. Yup, you heard that right. Year round. Most sex education happens, at best, for a day or two once or twice during middle and high school. These students get one period of sex education a week for their entire sixth and eighth grade years. Oh-la-la. I have long despaired at the brevity of sex education classes, knowing how long it takes to really have conversations about safer sex and positive sexuality, so I was delighted to learn that there were places where the importance of maintaining a conversation about sexuality with youth was acknowledged and encouraged.

And guess what? The students who participate in Youth First in sixth grade are less likely to be sexually active in eighth grade and more likely to have safe sex if they are sexually active. Well, doesn't that just beat all. I'm reminded of the Waxman report, a Congressional inquiry led by Congressman Henry Waxman which found that students who take virginity pledges are less likely to use contraception when they have sex (which 88% of them do, before marriage, according to Columbia University researchers), and are less likely to seek STD testing despite comparable infection rates.

Republished with permission. Read more about Nora's journey at Wanderlust with Rhonda.

Choice USA's "Outstanding Organizer" Pedals for Politics, Sex and Culture

2007-05-17T08:30:00-04:00

As I roll down rural New York roads pitted with faded construction marks, I think about how what we've built is beautiful, and I think about how what we've built is failing us.

I am three weeks into a solo bicycle trip across the country to explore politics, sex, and culture across America and to learn about how people are working to gain autonomy over their bodies and their lives. I travel from city to city, relying on the kindness of friends I haven't met yet for showers, kitchens, and a place to rest my head. In each place I visit I'm learning about my history, the premises that I operate under as I work for autonomy over my body and my life. This trip is aimed at discovering if my premises are shared by others, and what people are doing to try to change the ways in which we think about and talk about sexuality in our culture.

In San Francisco, I worked for a variety of organizations concerned with reproductive health and justice. Although my work was primarily focused on organizing and advocacy, I came from a background of sexuality education — a background I brought to the organizing I did. Working as an organizer, I observed a curious phenomenon. Although reproductive health care, sexuality education, and advocacy are inextricably linked in the struggle for reproductive justice, in practice there is often very little overlap between educators, advocates, and health care providers. They exist in their own spheres and don't — or can't — integrate the disciplines. In my experience, this means that the people involved with advocacy efforts are the people who already see reproductive health care in a political context. These advocates are seldom the same people who are most affected by restrictions on access to services. Educators work to provide information about sexuality, setting boundaries, healthy relationships — how to advocate for yourself personally, but rarely make the connection to political advocacy. And health care providers are trained by medical schools to deal with all the negative consequences of sex — unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, etc, but aren't given the tools or the language to help their clients be sexually healthy and enjoy sex.

What is to be done? What is being done? So far I have circled the Eastern seaboard, met with organizers and educators at Planned Parenthood, midwives, sex therapists, healers, educators, sex store employees, and lots of other people who don't spend all day talking about sex but have taught me about how their sexuality was formed and influenced and how that influences the relationships they have.

Right now I am full of more questions than answers, but each premise I challenge leads me to more premises and deeper into the ways we deal with power and autonomy. Many conversations lead to the ways in which two systems form our understanding of personal ability to make decisions about our lives — our medical system, and our educational system. The more I look into it, the more I realize that both systems are set up in ways which are fundamentally disempowering for the individuals within them — and that it doesn't have to be that way.

Organizations like Choice USA are working to empower and engage the next generation of pro-choice activists through leadership training and development, which is at its core teaching people how to recognize and use their power as individuals to create change. There are countless other organizations that are doing similar work, from the peer education programs at Planned Parenthood to doulas working to help women advocate for their right to give birth naturally. But all of this exists outside our mainstream educational system. Is it possible to create an educational system that works to help children and young adults recognize their power and their worth?

There are many parallels between the medical and educational systems and many ways in which the medical system seems designed to prevent people from being truly healthy — from the focus on disease and pregnancy prevention to the failure to combat stigmas around talking about sexuality openly.

So far, I have had the privilege to meet many incredible people working in organizations and as individuals to challenge these systems and the premises they're built on.

Over the next few months, I'm traveling to Washington DC for the Choice USA Generation Awards, where I will get the opportunity to talk with other fierce, groundbreaking activists about why they do what they do. From there I'll be in Chicago for Sistersong's conference "Let's Talk About Sex" — examining the intersection of sexuality and reproductive justice. From Chicago I'm heading West across the prairie and back to California. I will be posting to http://wanderlustwithrhonda.com about my conversations and observations as I go.

I have been inspired by the depth of passion and vision I have encountered from the people I've met so far, and I will continue to explore and challenge my premises about sexuality and autonomy. I welcome your thoughts and experiences and if I'm rolling through your part of the world, I'd love to stop by and say hello.