Sonia Sotomayor's Background Will Affect Her Judicial Decisions -- and That's a Good Thing

By Jill Filipovic

AlterNet

Let's get this out of the way first: Sonia Sotomayor is not a perfect liberal judge. She is not astoundingly progressive or notably feminist. She isn't a tireless champion of civil rights or a first amendment absolutist. She is, however, a highly intelligent, fair-minded and experienced judge who will make a fine addition to the US Supreme Court, and who progressives should fully support.

Much has been made of Sotomayor's life story, and it is impressive. Born and raised into a Puerto Rican family living in a housing project in the South Bronx, Sotomayor earned a scholarship to Princeton University, where she graduated summa cum laude. She went on to Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal, and after graduating worked in the New York district attorney's office. She was nominated to the federal district court by George HW Bush and elevated to the second circuit court of appeals by Bill Clinton. In both cases, her confirmation went smoothly.

Republicans and conservatives will argue that her nomination is an exercise in affirmative action, and that Barack Obama has effectively posted a "White males need not apply" sign on the doors of the Supreme Court – a funny complaint about an institution that is almost entirely white and male. Democrats and liberals will predictably trip over themselves arguing that Sotomayor's race and gender don't matter, even while race and gender matter.

The reality, of course, is that every Supreme Court justice comes in with a set of life experiences that are shaped not only by race and gender, but by experiences both professional and personal – it's just that few people consider that whiteness and maleness are not neutral identities and may shape one's perspectives and legal opinions just as much as femaleness or non-whiteness. Sotomayor herself has said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." And she's right.

While that quote is sure to be brought up as evidence that she's a "liberal activist", it's more indicative of the kind of self-awareness and reflection we want in a Supreme Court justice.

Judges have a marked historical tendency to move left over their Supreme Court tenures. There remains quite a bit of debate over why there's such a pronounced liberal shift, and it is no doubt a complex phenomenon. But I suspect it has to do in part with a slow realization that the law has a real impact on peoples' lives, and that the law school classroom model of the law as a near-science and justice as consistency is fundamentally flawed and entirely unrealistic. "The law" as an academic exercise is certainly interesting, but one's view is bound to shift when, as Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy put it, "suddenly, there's a real person there."

Sotomayor is reflective and honest enough to recognize that her experiences – as a woman of color, as a prosecutor, as member of a working-class family, as a judge – inform her understanding of and her empathy toward whichever real person is standing before her. While other judges may downplay the role that their race, gender and experience play in their legal work, those things do exert influence. Sit on the bench long enough and it must eventually become clear that rigidly interpreting language, deferring to precedent and valuing consistency above all else often result in thoroughly unjust outcomes.

So far, Sotomayor has been the picture of moderation (albeit left-leaning moderation). She has had good first amendment decisions and one particularly bad one (Doninger v Niehoff,where her panel affirmed the right of a school to disqualify a student from running for senior class secretary after the student posted vulgar and misleading school-related comments on her personal website).

She is deferential to law enforcement, leading to decisions like United States v Howard,where she held that state troopers could lure suspects away from their vehicle in order to search it for drugs.

And the decision she wrote in Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v Bush, which held that a Bush-era law limiting reproductive healthcare aid to developing nations did not violate the first amendment, due process or equal protection rights, certainly did not please any reproductive justice advocates.

But those are hardly reflective of her entire body of work as a judge. She's very plaintiff-friendly in discrimination cases. She wrote a dissent arguing that the Voting Rights Act should apply when evaluating state felon disenfranchisement laws. She stood up for first amendment rights in a case where the protected speech/expression was bigoted and presumably not easy to defend. She supported the right of an inmate to bring a case against a private corporation for redress of constitutional violations (a position that was narrowly reversed by the Supreme Court in an opinion written by Rehnquist).

She has written particularly progressive opinions in the area of disability discrimination. She has sustained claims of a hostile work environment in cases where female employees were subjected to sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

It's also worth noting that she is filling the seat of a moderate justice, and that if this confirmation fails, it will be because conservatives succeed in their smear campaign – not because she's unqualified and certainly not because she's too liberal. That means that Obama's next pick would likely be even more middle-of-the-road, and undoubtedly less appealing to feminists and progressives.

Sotomayor is far from a perfect progressive, and even further from the rightwing caricature of her as a liberal activist judge. But her breadth of experience, both professional and personal, make her a highly qualified jurist, and would lend the court much-needed diversity of perspective. She is smart, inquisitive and concerned with justice above all else. And that is precisely what a Supreme Court justice should be.

Deportan sin fundamento a docente colombiano

Comunicado de Estudiantes del doctorado en Estudios Latinoamericanos, UNAM

Rebelión

Queremos denunciar por este medio la vejación a la que fue sometido el compañero Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas, quien se encuentra realizando estudios de posdoctorado en el Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos, en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. El doctor Beltrán es conocido en el medio académico colombiano, puesto que ha sido investigador y docente de las principales universidades del país, como la de Antioquia, la Nacional de Colombia y la del Cauca. Después de habérsele negado su condición migratoria (FM3) durante un año, en que se estuvo presentando de manera sistemática en las oficinas de Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) en México, ayer, al mediodía (aunque el periódico El Tiempo de Colombia anunció que fue arrestado anteayer en la noche), fue detenido de manera arbitraria en el INM mientras solicitaba nuevamente respuesta a su condición migratoria e inmediatamente deportado. Se le acusa de ser integrante de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, lo cual es completamente falso, pues tiene una larga trayectoria académica y de investigación que demuestra su labor como maestro preocupado por la historia política y de la violencia en Colombia.

Los compañeros del doctorado de Estudios Latinoamericanos exigimos al gobierno colombiano que rectifique las acusaciones hechas contra el profesor Miguel Ángel Beltrán, y que pare la cadena de persecución y estigmatización política adelantada contra docentes y estudiantes de las universidades públicas, que aportan en la construcción de posturas políticas críticas y que no comparten el proyecto guerrerista del actual gobierno.



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Mourning the Victims of Empire

Day of the Dead

By CINDY SHEEHAN

I was on an airplane flying to Orange County from Sacramento to attend the al-Awda Conference; which is a Palestinian Right's Conference. Al-Awda translates to "The Returning, " when the Pilot's voice filled the cabin to make an announcement that I think went unnoticed by most of my fellow passengers, but I heard it.

As the plane was on the approach to John Wayne airport, the Captain came on the intercom to remind us all to "remember our brave troops who have died for our freedom." Even in this post 9-11 paranoid paradigm, if I wasn't belted in for landing, I would have popped out of my seat at 13D and charged up to the cockpit to let the pilot know that my son was killed in Iraq and not one person anywhere in this world is one iota more free because he is dead.

As a matter of fact, the people of Iraq, the foreign country thousands of miles away where my oldest child's brains, blood, and life seeped into the soil, are not freer, unless one counts being liberated from life, liberty and property being free. If you consider torture and indefinite detention freedom, then the Pilot may have been right, but then again, even if you do consider those crimes freedom, it does not make it so.

Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause and we can't even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport or walk through a METAL detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated "free speech" (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter) zones and oftentimes brutally treated if you decide you are entitled to "free speech" on every inch of American soil.

If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to "Remember our heroes," or some such BS as that.

Before Casey was killed, a message like that would barely register in my consciousness as I rushed around preparing for Casey's birthday bar-be-que that became a family tradition since he was born on Memorial Day in 1979. If I had a vision of how Memorial Day and Casey's birthday would change for my family, I would have fled these violent shores to protect what was mine, not this murderous country's. Be my guest, look at those headstones with pride or indifference. I look at them, now with horror, regret, pain and a longing for justice.

I can guarantee what you won't see this holiday weekend are images of the over one million Iraqi dead. Say we assign, in an arbitrary way for purely illustrative purposes, an average height of 5 feet for every person killed in Iraq and then lined those people up from head to toe. That gruesome line would stretch from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon…950 driving miles up Interstate 5. If we count the Iraqis who have been forced to flee, we would have to go back and forth between L.A. and Portland another four times.

There are obscene amounts of people who have been slaughtered for the US Profit Driven Military Empire who do not count here in America on any day. People in Vietnam are still dying from the toxins dumped on their country by the US, not to mention the millions who died during that war. Let the carnage escalate in Afghanistan while we protect our personal images by turning a blind eye to Obama's war crimes. Are you going to feel a lump of pride in your bosom when the coffins start to be photographed at Dover for this imperial crime of aggression? Will you look at those flag-draped boxes of the lifeless body of some mother's child and think: "Now, I am free." Is it better to be dead when Obama is president?

A tough, but real, aspect of this all to consider is, how many of the soldiers buried in coffins in military cemeteries killed or tortured innocent people as paid goons for Empire? To me, it is deeply and profoundly sad on so many levels. If I have any consolation through all of this, I learned that my son bravely refused to go on the mission that killed him, but he was literally dragged onto the vehicle and was dead minutes later before he was forced to do something that was against his nature and nurture.

Casey will always be my hero but he was a victim of US Imperialism and his death should bring shame, not pride, as it did not bring freedom to anyone. I will, of course, mourn his senseless death on Memorial Day as I do everyday.

However, we do not need another day here in America to glorify war which enables the Military Industrial Complex to commit its crimes under the black cloak of "Patriotism."

From Palestine to Africa to South America, our quest for global economic domination kills, sickens, maims or oppresses people on a daily basis and about 25,000 children per day die of starvation. I am not okay with these facts and I am not proud of my country.

I will spend my reflective time on MD to mourn not only the deaths of so many people all over the world due to war, but mourn the fact that they are the unseen and uncared for victims of US Empire.

Las mujeres nicaragüenses entre la situación de pobreza y los reclamos de ciudadanía

María Teresa Blandón Gadea

Pueblos

Muchos de los problemas que afectan a la mayoría de la población nicaragüense son consecuencia directa de políticas macroeconómicas impuestas por gobiernos del Norte y aplicadas entusiastamente por una clase política doméstica con un anémico interés por reducir la pobreza y las brechas de iniquidad. Baste recordar que, de acuerdo con fuentes oficiales de información, de cada diez personas, cuatro viven con menos de un dólar al día y más del 75 por ciento de la población sobrevive con menos de dos dólares al día. En consecuencia, de cada diez familias nicaragüenses, cuatro son receptoras de remesas, las cuales financian el consumo de dichas familias hasta en un 93 por ciento. En el caso nada particular de las mujeres, éstas representan la mayoría de trabajadores del sector informal (80 por ciento) en donde laboran 87 de cada cien trabajadores empleados. El cuarenta por ciento de estas mujeres son "jefas de hogar".

A la situación de pobreza antes descrita debemos sumar, o más bien multiplicar, otras dimensiones de la discriminación acumulada por las mujeres en Nicaragua. La violencia, el no reconocimiento de sus derechos sexuales y reproductivos, los evidentes retrocesos en materia de participación en instancias de toma de decisiones; son datos expresivos de la gravedad de un problema estructural que tiene su origen, evolución y actualidad, en la existencia de un orden social sexista, machista y racista.

Según datos de una reciente investigación realizada por UNICEF en Centroamérica, el 26 por ciento de las mujeres nicaragüenses ha sufrido abusos durante la niñez. Tan sólo durante el año 2007 la Policía Nacional recibió 91.500 denuncias por violencia perpetrada contra mujeres, niñas, niños y adolescentes. El número de denuncias bajó drásticamente durante el 2008, en parte como consecuencia de los altos niveles de impunidad con los que el sistema judicial "revictimiza" a quienes se atreven a denunciar y estimula a los agresores.

Se plantean en este panorama algunos interrogantes que saltan a la vista de cualquier ciudadano o ciudadana medianamente consciente de lo injusto de la situación antes descrita. ¿Cómo hacen las mujeres para sobrevivir ellas y sus descendientes? ¿De dónde sacan energías para seguir viviendo esas vidas? ¿Qué tipo de estrategias desarrollan para no sucumbir? ¿A quiénes recurren? ¿Qué tipo de apoyo reciben y por cuánto tiempo? ¿Cuáles son los actores locales, nacionales e internacionales que muestran disposición a invertir en mujeres pobres para que salgan de la pobreza?

No hay respuestas fáciles, ni unívocas. Tampoco podemos limitar nuestro análisis al accionar público de determinados actores, aunque cada cual tiene un peso específico. La situación de discriminación que padecen la mayoría de mujeres nicaragüenses se ve constantemente agravada por la cómoda complicidad, las actitudes "tolerantes" y hasta la negación con que diversos actores abordan esta realidad tan evidente.

Desde la década revolucionaria pasando por tres períodos de gobiernos autodenominados liberales, las mujeres pobres han ensayado una multiplicidad de estrategias que en la mayoría de los casos les han asegurado la supervivencia y que, en otros, les han permitido avanzar de manera sostenida hacia la mejora de su calidad de vida.

La profundidad de los cambios en la vida de las mujeres ha dependido de diversos factores, entre los que se destacan la capacidad de resistencia de las propias mujeres y su vocación de cambio, los apoyos deliberados de las activistas feministas, y el aporte de algunas agencias de cooperación al desarrollo. Por su parte, los principales poderes del Estado en general van a la zaga de los conocimientos, críticas y demandas construidas desde las propias mujeres, desde el movimiento feminista, las agencias del Sistema de Naciones Unidas y otros actores comprometidos con los objetivos de igualdad y desarrollo.

En el mejor de los casos, desde algunas instituciones públicas se han promovido programas focalizados dirigidos a mujeres pobres, más por cuidadoras de otros/otras, que por ser mujeres con derechos. Tal fue la esencia del programa de asistencia social desarrollado por el anterior Gobierno y los programas "Hambre cero" y "Usura cero" desarrollados por el actual Gobierno de Nicaragua.

A continuación dedicaré algunos párrafos al análisis de tres ámbitos prioritarios en la ciudadanía de las mujeres, a saber: la violencia, los derechos sexuales y reproductivos y la participación en la toma de decisiones.

Violencia y derechos sexuales y reproductivos

En el ámbito de la violencia, antes como ahora, las políticas, planes y programas para prevenir la violencia contra las mujeres han sido obra de las organizaciones de mujeres con apoyo financiero de la cooperación internacional. La tendencia de los últimos años es hacia el debilitamiento de los mecanismos institucionales creados para la prevención, la atención a las víctimas y la sanción a los agresores. Tal es el caso de las comisarías de las mujeres, actualmente desprovistas de recursos humanos, técnicos y financieros para poder ejercer su labor con eficacia. La percepción generalizada es que las mujeres están cada vez más en una situación de indefensión producto de la falta de voluntad política del poder judicial. Así lo revelan estudios recientes realizados por la Red de Mujeres Contra la Violencia y diversas organizaciones de mujeres que acompañan a las víctimas de este flagelo.

En materia de derechos sexuales y reproductivos la situación no ha sido favorable para las mujeres, dado el sesgo conservador y oportunista de la clase política y de los gobernantes. El dato más emblemático es la penalización del aborto terapéutico, que niega a las mujeres la interrupción de un embarazo por indicación médica, como única alternativa para preservar la salud y hasta la vida de las mujeres. A lo anterior debemos agregar la negativa de los gobiernos anteriores y el actual a desarrollar programas de educación sexual en los centros públicos de enseñanza, que afirmen la sexualidad y la reproducción como Derechos Humanos universales. Por el contrario, la tendencia invariable de los gobernantes ha sido la de otorgar poder de veto en este ámbito a los grupos más conservadores de la sociedad, destacándose entre estos la jerarquía de la iglesia católica.

En el mismo sentido, poco han hecho los gobiernos para desarrollar programas que contribuyan a prevenir embarazos no deseados, embarazos en adolescentes, propagación del VIH y de otras infecciones de transmisión sexual. Prueba de ello es que Nicaragua continúa siendo el segundo país en América Latina y el Caribe con la más alta tasa de embarazo en adolescentes (uno de cada tres nacimientos se da en adolescentes) y que el patrón de propagación del VIH está afectando de manera severa a las mujeres heterosexuales en edad reproductiva.

Participación en la toma de decisiones

En cuanto a la participación de las mujeres en la toma de decisiones, la tendencia es más bien de claro retroceso en el actual contexto nacional. Al respecto diremos que frente a la misoginia y autoritarismo de las elites partidarias, las mujeres con aspiraciones de optar a cargos electivos se han visto en la necesidad de renunciar a la defensa de ciertos derechos, sobre todo, de aquellos que afirman la ciudadanía plena de las mujeres.

Lo anterior explica por qué las feministas no contamos con "aliadas" en los partidos ni en las instituciones públicas para promover derechos como los sexuales y reproductivos. Peor aun, la mayoría de diputadas de la Asamblea Nacional votaron a favor de la penalización del aborto terapéutico.

El actual gobierno del FSLN, a pesar de haber prometido la conformación de un gabinete paritario, de forma reiterada ha nombrado y despedido de forma arbitraria a mujeres en puestos de dirección. Son ejemplos expresivos los despidos de directoras, subdirectoras y ministras del Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer, el Instituto Nacional de Cultura, el Instituto de Transferencia Tecnológica, el Ministerio de Salud y el de Agricultura y Ganadería.

A nivel local la tendencia predominante fue la de "seleccionar" (ya que no hubo un proceso democrático de elección a lo interno de los partidos) a hombres como candidatos a alcaldes y mujeres como vicealcaldesas o concejalas, en el mejor de los casos.

Amenazas al movimiento de mujeres

Probablemente uno de los ámbitos más problemáticos en torno a la participación de las mujeres en la toma de decisiones en el ámbito público, es la relación conflictiva entre el actual Gobierno y diversas organizaciones feministas con participación protagónica dentro del movimiento de mujeres. Hechos promovidos desde el partido gobernante permiten afirmar que el actual Gobierno tiene entre sus objetivos la desarticulación de un movimiento de mujeres que durante las últimas dos décadas se afirmó en su carácter autónomo.

La aceptación por parte de la Fiscalía de la República de una acusación sin fundamento legal presentada por una organización fundamentalista en contra de nueve feministas; la campaña de desprestigio en contra de destacadas activistas del movimiento feminista a través de los medios de comunicación del FSLN; el allanamiento ilegal a las oficinas de una organización de mujeres (MAM); las intervenciones selectivas en contra de algunas organizaciones de mujeres realizadas por el Ministerio de Gobernación, son parte de los hechos ocurridos durante los dos primeros años del Gobierno encabezado por Daniel Ortega.

Asimismo, el partido gobernante hace esfuerzos por despojar al movimiento feminista de las movilizaciones emblemáticas que se vienen realizando en las últimas décadas. El 25 de noviembre, día internacional de lucha contra la violencia, el diputado y coordinador del oficialista Frente Nacional de los Trabajadores (FNT) llamó a las mujeres simpatizantes del FSLN a marchar por la misma ruta por la que lo harían las diversas expresiones del movimiento de mujeres, por lo que la Policía Nacional presionó a las organizadoras de la marcha para modificar el rumbo originalmente acordado.

La hostilidad del Gobierno hacia el movimiento se expresa de forma contundente en el no reconocimiento de las redes y otras formas de articulación constituidas desde el movimiento de mujeres en los espacios establecidos por ley. Éste es el caso del Consejo Nacional de Planificación Económica y Social, el Concejo Consultivo del Instituto de la Mujer y los Comités de Desarrollo Local.

A manera de conclusión diremos que en un escenario de pobreza creciente que afecta de manera rotunda a las mujeres, y de tensión entre las organizaciones de mujeres y los poderes del Estado, de hostilidad y acoso hacia aquellas expresiones del movimiento de mujeres que reclaman ciudadanía plena para todas las mujeres, es posible prever el recrudecimiento de enfoques discursivos y políticas públicas que asumen a las mujeres únicamente en su condición de pobres necesitadas de ayuda y las despojan de su condición de ciudadanas con derechos.

Bajo esta lógica, el Gobierno y los partidos políticos seguirán disputándose a las mujeres, ya sea para ganar adeptas o para utilizarlas como punta de lanza en las contiendas patriarcales que les permitan hacer nuevos arreglos de poder, al margen de los intereses estratégicos de las mujeres.

El desafío que hemos asumido las organizaciones autónomas de mujeres es el de profundizar procesos iniciados hace más de treinta años, gracias a los cuales ha sido posible construir un entramado político y organizativo vital, desde el cual desarrollamos múltiples formas de resistencia y de cambio a favor de la igualdad. Frente a tanta adversidad contamos con un acumulado de fortalezas en miles de mujeres dispuestas a no renunciar a una Nicaragua sin discriminación ni pobreza.

Es hora de volvernos a preguntar quiénes mantendrán la disposición de acompañarnos en este particular trayecto de un camino que estuvo y está plagado de obstáculos; de conflictos entre necesidades perentorias y demandas emancipatorias; entre aspiraciones de libertad y reclamos de justicia social; entre la situación de pobres y la condición de ciudadanas.

María Teresa Blandón Gadea es activista del Movimiento Feminista de Nicaragua. Presidenta del Programa Feminista Centroamericano "La Corriente", y miembra honoraria de la Fundación Entre Mujeres (FEM).

Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

What the Dark Lord Doesn't Say

By WALTER BRASCH

CounterPunch

Dick Cheney has apparently been on a magical mystery media tour.

He has sought out and been interviewed by more TV journalists and talk show hosts during the past month than during the eight years he was vice president.

The topic is always the same. Torture was done during the Bush–Cheney Administration, and it was effective. Persons held at Guantanamo Bay are evil and should never be released. President Obama's actions are a threat to national security. Cheney claims that because of the actions he and George W. Bush took after 9/11, there were no more attacks upon the United States.

Here's what he doesn't say.

Prior to 9/11 his administration rejected pleas by the FBI to increase funding and manpower for counter-terrorism. He doesn't say that CIA intelligence reports told the President that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack, probably by air. He doesn't tell us that following 9/11, the Administration carried out a systematic shredding of six Constitutional amendments in the mistaken belief that somehow snipping away at America's fabric would protect us from further harm. He doesn't tell us that although torture was used, contrary to every international law, it did not, according to senior officials at both the FBI and CIA, produce valuable intelligence. He doesn't tell us that it was probably his paranoia and fears that pushed the nation's military and intelligence communities to use torture.

He doesn't tell us that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction or ties to al-Qaeda and 9/11. He doesn't say that by diverting America's military forces from Afghanistan to Iraq, his Administration probably allowed Osama bin Laden and a significant part of al-Qaeda to remain at large for almost eight years, while more than 4,000 Americans were killed and another 30,000 wounded, many with injuries that will never heal.

Here's another thing that Dick Cheney doesn't say. According to major independent research polls, only 20 to 22 percent of Americans now identify themselves as Republicans. Does anyone wonder why four-fifths of Americans don't want to be tainted by the actions done by the Bush–Cheney Administration and the direction the Republican Party has taken the past couple of years to eliminate any Republican who is not in lock-step with its extreme right-wing agenda?

Dick Cheney can spin the truth all he wants. But the reality is that 9/11 occurred on his watch.

Walter Brasch is the author of Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush.

Conferencia reúne mujeres en busca de una democracia más justa e igualitaria

Guatemala

Más de cien mujeres de diferentes regiones del mundo están reunidas en Guatemala para examinar los desafíos de la democracia y de la democratización a través de la lente de sus experiencias. La conferencia internacional "Mujeres Redefiniendo la Democracia para la Paz, la Justicia y la Equidad", que comenzó el domingo (10), y finalizará hoy (12) bajo la organización de la Iniciativa de las Mujeres Premio Nobel y la colaboración de la Asociadas por lo Justo.
La intención de la conferencia es aprovechar el momento para que las mujeres compartan experiencias, desafíos y perspectivas en la profundización de la democracia y establezcan nuevas alianzas entre ellas y organizaciones que trabajan por el fortalecimiento de la democracia. Las experiencias, soluciones y alternativas desarrolladas durante el evento serán incluidas en un informe final que estará disponible en el sitio web de la Iniciativa de las Mujeres Premio Nobel (http://www.nobelwomensinitiative.org).

El evento cuenta con la participación de las premiadas con el Nobel, además de mujeres importantes en la creación de políticas institucionales nacionales e internacionales, activistas, comunicadoras, políticas y defensoras de los derechos de las mujeres. Entre los asuntos discutidos, se destacan: la participación y la representación de la mujer; el conflicto, los escenarios post conflictos y la militarización; y la violencia contra la mujer.

Actualmente, Guatemala, conjuntamente con otros países como Colombia y México, tiene una de las situaciones más alarmantes en relación con la sistematización y expansión de las violaciones de los derechos humanos de las mujeres. Durante el año 2001, más de 2.500 casos de mujeres asesinadas fueron denunciados a la policía en Guatemala. Entretanto, de los casos investigados hasta 2006, solamente 14 habían llegado a una condena. Según las estadísticas de la Red de No-Violencia contra la Mujer, hasta ese mismo año, otras 825 mujeres fueron violadas y más de 10 mil sufrieron agresiones físicas.

Por eso, además de la Conferencia, Guatemala es sede de otras actividades que involucran el mismo asunto, como la reunión de la Plataforma de Artistas contra la violencia de género, que tiene lugar en la misma fecha, y el Observatorio Virtual de la Transgresión Feminista, que se realizará entre los días 13 y 15 de mayo.

El Observatorio Virtual de la Transgresión Feminista estará organizado por la Radio Internacional Feminista y pretenderá documentar lo que le sucede a las mujeres, expresar solidaridad con sus luchas para eliminar la violencia, y activar la coordinación de iniciativas para denunciar y desarrollar acciones de presión para poner fin a la impunidad de los casos denunciados por las mujeres.

Todas las actividades pueden seguirse por la Radio Internacional Feminista, a través de la siguiente dirección: http://www.radiofeminista.net/.

Traducción: Daniel Barrantes - barrantes.Daniel@gmail.com

How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Rampant Police Violence

By BEN ROSENFELD

CounterPunch

A suspect crashes his car after leading El Monte, CA police on a dangerous, sometimes high speed chase and flees into a residential neighborhood. Soon cornered, he gives up in a backyard and lies face down, arms and legs out, surrendering. An El Monte police officer runs up, gun drawn, and kicks him full force in the head. He is inert after the blow, possibly unconscious. This does not stop a second officer from punching him repeatedly in the ribs. A third officer arrives and lets a police dog bite him once on the leg. The first officer slaps the K-9 officer a high five. All of them, the three officers and the dog, have their extra-judicial treat for catching a bad guy. In court, it would be the scofflaw’s word against three sworn police officers, except a news helicopter catches the whole incident on live video.

The suspect goes to the hospital, and the officers goes back to work, while the ACLU calls vainly for placing the officer who dealt the kick on administrative leave. (He has since been reassigned to desk duty.) Los Angeles, which has in the past erupted in riots over such brazen police abuse, is mercifully quiet. The El Monte Police Chief Tom Armstrong responds measuredly that he is withholding judgment pending the facts. “I worked internal affairs for four years and I have learned that you do not make a decision in a vacuum,” Armstrong explains. “I do not know what was in the mind of that officer, as to why he did that. I saw the individual turn his head toward the officer.”

As a police misconduct civil rights lawyer, I can say that what was in the officer’s mind is probably the same as what is evidently going through his Chief’s head: What can I get away with here, while the public isn’t looking? In my ten years of practice, I have seen scores of ordinary officers accused of brutality insert their cover stories into the gaps in the video and other evidence. It is in such gaps that they often blame the victim by pretending that s/he reached into a waistband for a weapon, or reached for the officer’s weapon – veritable police clichés. But there are no gaps in this video. It is shot from overhead, clear, continuous, and unmistakable. The officer lost his cool and punished the surrendering suspect on the spot with a potentially lethal kick to the head. That much is painfully obvious. If he stopped to think first, it was only to calculate, incorrectly, that no one was looking.

But are we looking? What possesses a Police Chief, who is responsible ultimately for the safety of both his officers and the public they come in contact with, to let such an unhinged officer return to work and to dither so before condemning his actions? Why should he not be arrested forthwith and charged with felony assault or attempted murder like any civilian in his shoes would be?

The self-evident answer is that Chief Armstrong is not interested in accountability but in cover-up – notwithstanding his pious intonations that he worked in internal affairs. An honest internal affairs investigator does not supply an excuse for the officer under investigation by saying, as Armstrong did, “I saw the individual turn his head toward the officer...” Look for that dot dot dot to form the foundation for the official excuse – unless the absurd excuse supplied by the police union’s lawyer Dieter Dammier gains traction first: that the kick was a justifiable “distraction blow” to thwart the suspect from getting up or reaching for a weapon in case he might try to do so. But if the video did not depict his complete surrender, it is hard to imagine what that could ever look like.

Chief Armstrong may equate such excuse-making with the wellbeing of his police family. If so, it is a dangerous equation. A good and sensible police chief would instead consider what the lack of swift condemnation of such brutality spells for the dynamics between police and the public. Countless people in this country live amid an epidemic of police violence. Rare videos like this one only serve to assuage the mainstream that brutality is rare, is addressed when it arises, and therefore does not demand systemic reform. On the contrary, rampant police abuse is creating a widening gulf of mistrust between police and the public they putatively serve. Common to many but alien to the rest of us, it may help explain why someone like the 23-year-old evader in this case would run from police in the first place.

On the police side, the failure to prosecute assaultive officers only exposes responsible officers to danger by an incensed public robbed of any reasonable hope for official accountability. John F. Kennedy famously warned: “Those who make peaceful protest impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” Officers, made more fearful as a result, turn even more aggressive. So goes the vicious cycle. Have we learned nothing from the Rodney King beating and riots?

But who could expect responsible local government action when the federal government sets such an atrocious example? The President inveighs that prosecuting the architects and executors of U.S. torture policy, and releasing photos evidencing torture, may undermine agents’ morale and expose soldiers in combat zones to retribution or death. But have we calculated the cost, in potential future attacks, of failing to show the world that we can police ourselves and abide by our own standards, let alone the cost to our own moral fiber? No arrested criminal, or victim of U.S. torture, gets the benefit of such nuanced, exception-based analysis. These double standards will undo is. It is not for the perpetrators to let bygones be bygones and only look ahead, as the President counsels. The victims do not soon forget.

William Brandeis, a wiser Supreme Court Justice than most, observed: “Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.” (Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)).

Unless we are willing to apply consistent legal standards, we will only spin further to the edge of our moral compass, and will find ourselves putting down ever more justifiable rebellions by ever increasing excessive force.

Each extra-legal kick to the head which does not jar us to our senses becomes one more intolerable exception to democracy. We only get so many exceptions before we simply cease to be.

Ben Rosenfeld is an attorney in San Francisco.