Last night, I was lucky enough to be part of the audience for a taping of a segment for “The People Speak,” a new production based on historian and social activist Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States. An impressive cast of actors, writers, and musicians are involved with the project, which takes various speeches, poems, songs, and articles written by ordinary people and historic figures, and gives them new life. The miniseries will be split into four parts, according to the themes of class, gender, war, and race.

The War portion of the series featured Josh Brolin reading from Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 book Johnny Got His Gun, David Strathairn as Henry David Thoreau, the poet Staceyann Chin as a Hiroshima survivor, Viggo Mortenson singing a stirring a capella version of Bob Dylan’s “Master’s of War,” and Danny Glover reading a Martin Luther King Jr. speech denouncing Vietnam. And those were just a part of the evening. Marisa Tomei gave one of the best performances, as a convincing and heartbreaking Cindy Sheehan, railing against her son’s death in Iraq.

The night not only shed light on a less familiar side of historic icons (who knew Mark Twain was an outspoken opponent of war?), but spotlighted the entertainers on stage as something more than the roles they are best known for. Mike O’Malley, best known to my generation as the host of Nickelodeon’s test of adolescent endurance GUTS, gave a rousing rendition of a speech Abbie Hoffman gave at UMass in 1986; Darryl McDaniels (he puts the DMC in Run DMC) enacted a Danny Glover diatribe against the war in Iraq; and Josh Brolin dispelled his image as the older brother in The Goonies by giving some of the most passionate readings I’ve ever seen live on stage. The night even included a performance of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin On” by piano virtuoso John Legend.

Perhaps even more stirring than the performers’ renderings of the pieces was the eerie commonalities that ran through history’s greatest wars all the way to our current administration and war. It’s chilling just how little the culture and policies of this country have changed, from the time of Columbus enslaving the Native Americans to Abu Gharib.

Though the project hasn’t been officially picked up by any major network, the producer (Chris Moore, best known for his collaboration with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck on Project Greenlight) is optimistic that it will be broadcast in time for the election in November.

Here’s a holiday gift suggestions for those of you who are still shopping — check out Women for Women International’s bazaar, which sells crafts made bywomen survivors of war.

For those of you who don’t know, Women for Women is an award-winning nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lot of women in war-torn countries.

You can sponsor a woman, which entails a $27/month donation. $5 of this donation keeps the organization running, and the rest provides your sister with staples for her family, and pays for job and rights-awareness training. Depending on where and how educated your sister is, you may be able to correspond with her. At the end of one year, each woman “graduates”.

The upshot is this — the organization helps women in warn torn countries find each other, recover, start self-sustaining businesses, and apply for micro-credit. In my book that’s a worthwhile goal.

So consider getting me a set of those cutting boards(are you listening, Santa?), or better yet, sign up to sponsor a woman.

Come all ye fair and tender shoppers
Be careful how you spend your dough
It’s like a puddle after a rainstorm
It first appears, then there’s no more

Tralala, it’s Buy Nothing Day! If you’re in the US or Canada, that is; in other countries it’s November 24. Buy Nothing Day was founded in 1992 to help us think about how we consume; it’s no accident that it falls on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. There’s a lot of potential for preachiness with something like this, so I reckon it’s best to approach it in the spirit of having fun and raising awareness. Adbusters has some good ideas for stuff to do, as well as posters you can print out.

Adbusters also makes ads for BND every year, and then tries to get big networks to run them—with varying success. I like this one, which involves mittens (though the music, well, …).

Lots of places will have skillshares and other events, so if you want to get involved, check your local weekly to see what’s happening near you. And if taking your folks to the potluck at the anarchist bookstore sounds implausible, consider designating a surrogate Buy Nothing Day for yourself later in the week–that’s what I’ll likely end up doing.

For more info, consult Treehugger. Everybody now:

Oh stuff is handsome, stuff is charming
And stuff is pretty when it’s new
But so much stuff is made of plastic
And unlike money, it will never go away even when it is no longer useful or appealing or lovely to view

If you’ve already told the Postal Regulatory Commission you won’t stand for a sellout to big media (and if you haven’t yet, there’s still time to weigh in before their hearings on Tuesday, October 30), perhaps you’re feeling a little bored, a little blue.

Happily, there’s a cure for such listlessness, and it even involves the mail. You can support the people of Burma by sending your panties to the SPDC! Dunno about you, but the image of hundreds of pairs of panties, lacy, frilly, variegated, winging their way through the postal system carefully packaged in envelopes and boxes, destined to freak out officials worldwide, just puts a smile on my face.

Andrew Buncombe writes in the Independent:

Activists seeking to pressure the Burmese regime are targeting the superstitions of its senior generals by asking for people around the world to send women’s underwear to the junta.In what may be a first, campaigners based in Thailand have called for supporters to “post, deliver or fling” the underwear to their nearest Burmese embassy. They believe the senior members of the junta – some known to be deeply superstitious – could be made to believe they will lose their authority should they come into contact with the lingerie.

“The Burma military regime is not only brutal but very superstitious. They believe that contact with a woman’s panties or sarong can rob them of their power,” says the website of the Lanna Action for Burma group, based in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. The group says that Burmese embassies have already received underwear from people in Thailand, Australia, Singapore and the UK.

Lanna Action for Burma kicked off this campaign on October 16. You can find the nearest SPDC embassy here. Read more about ongoing protest efforts here. Happy panty-flinging!

This video on safe sex and condom usage is from Nrityanjali Academy, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.

I have to say, I wish Americans would let condoms be this friendly…

I’ve written before about the U.S. Post Office’s misguided (read: guided by TimeWarner) plot to raise postage sky-high for small periodicals and simultaneously lower it for huge ones. The Postal Regulatory Commission voted to put these new rules in effect on July 15; a massive petition effort has caused them to hold hearings on the new rates. They’re scheduled for next Tuesday, October 30. Kudos if you spoke up and signed that first petition…

…now let’s all sign it again! To ensure that those hearings have the biggest possible impact, you can sign the new petition—and simultaneously have a message sent to your congressperson—to repeal the new rates. Also at freepress.net, you’ll find an excellent essay by Peter Rothberg, reprinted from the ActNow blog at The Nation. We’ve got to stop this bad idea before it’s too late and the pages of dead periodicals start fluttering from the backs of mail trucks like sad little elegies.

If supporting small journals isn’t enough to convince you that this is an issue, remember that, if those journals go out of business—which many will surely do under the new rates—that means less mail volume and, as a result, fewer decent-paying post office jobs. Also, remember love notes. Subscriptions to Ranger Rick for 4th graders. The postcard your friend sent from vacation, where she couldn’t remember your address so she just wrote the street but misspelled it, but it arrived in your mailbox anyway. The time you put stamps and an address label on a coconut and sent it to your friend—and it got there. Be warned! You know once you let TimeWarner make the rules, it’s gonna cost fifty bucks to mail that coconut.

I have a love/hate relationship with anniversary issues, particularly when they are celebrated in quarterly ones like Ms. Magazine. The issue quickly diverts from present day feminist politics to a historic trajectory of where we’ve come and where the heck we’re going. A who’s who list is cultivated to show the breadth of feminist leaders—which inevitably falls short.

But, I dutifully read through my Fall 2007 issue of Ms., feeling a twinge of guilt when I remember how I literally squealed when the last issue of Bitch hit my door, because surely I have much to learn from women who raised female wages, exposed the ad industry, deconstructed the definition of marriage, put more women in politics, title IX—the list is endless. (My favorite fun fact from the issue compares Pat Summitt’s salary in 1974, which was $8,900, to 2004, when she became the first collegiate women’s coach to be paid over $1 million).

One group of thankful voices in the issue comes from the Girls Editorial Board, editors ages 8-14 of New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams. My faith in feminism is further restored. New Moon is an ad free publication, where 80% of the content is written by girl readers. Now, I know Fringe readers are more likely to pick up a copy of The New Yorker rather than New Moon but how inspiring it is to see our youngest cohorts have a place where one is “Free to Be…You and Me.” I’m still a proud reader of New Moon even though I’m much older than 14 and not because I’m nostalgic for my youth (trust me, those weren’t my best years). I continue to read feminist publications because I want you and me to be free.

There is a fantastic benefit the dames at LUPEC Boston have created this September: a number of area bars and restaurants are donating the proceeds from a specific woman-themed cocktail to Jane Doe, Inc, the MA Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. So naturally, when Julia, Janell, Joanna and I met up after work last night, we went to participating restaurant No. 9 Park, to splurge on a fancy cocktail and know the proceeds were going to help a great organization.

We had a lovely time. And then at the end of the night, someone from the restaurant approached Julia and me to ask how our drinks were. There was some awkward banter, and then he asked why we were there. Well, we like the idea of cocktails for this cause. Our literary magazine, Julia pointed out, is run by all women.

“Hopefully not battered women!” he quipped.

Ha ha, it’s a safe joke, guys! Because everyone knows battered women don’t drink cocktails at No. 9 Park! It’s not their scene. Battered women don’t go out in public. In fact, I don’t know a single woman who’s been physically or psychologically abused by a partner or parent, or witnessed the abuse of a mother, sister, friend… It’s a them issue, not an us issue. And it certainly doesn’t touch the editorial staff of Fringe.

I think this was an isolated case, as No. 9 Park is woman-owned and operated and known for civic engagement. So chalk it up to awkwardness, insensitivity or ignorance on this one employee’s part. But I left feeling a little angry, and conscious of how much more work we need to do to build awareness of violence against women.

For more information about LUPEC Boston and Jane Doe, Inc, please click
here:http://lupecboston.blogspot.com/
and here:http://janedoe.org/

Follow the LUPEC Boston link to find out which bars are doing the cocktail promo in September. The Jane Doe site has info on how to donate directly.

It saddened me greatly to hear that Grace Paley, a talented writer and social activist who championed women and anti-war movements among other things, died yesterday at her home in Vermont at the age of 84.

Ms. Paley’s short stories, for which she won much acclaim, focused on women’s lives – not glamorous portrayals of the social elite, but the grittiness of everyday life for the single mother, the ex-wife, the “women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind,” says her obituary in the New York Times.

I first read Ms. Paley in a course called Contemporary Short Fiction, which, in this case, meant postmodern fiction and included a thick anthology with that label on the cover. The tale was “The Pale Pink Roast,” written in 1959, and told the story of a woman and the estranged father of her child, with whom she had still slept with behind her new husband’s back. I was surprised at the stark honesty of the story; she portrayed her characters with all their flaws and contradictions, leaving the reader to sort it all out, with an ear for dialog that is spot on.

Ms. Paley did not rest on her literary laurels, but worked tirelessly to effect change for underrepresented groups, and to lobby for peace in the face of war – exactly the kind of author and person Fringe Magazine aspires to publish and profile. Had she written novels instead of short stories, she’d certainly have been part of the Pool for the 25 Books Project we’re running. I urge our readers to seek out her work, learn about her life, and carry on her vision.

A few headlines for social justice…

• Are farm subsidies causing obesity? Yes. US farm subsidies mostly go to big corporate farms that grow corn, making unhealthy food cheaper. Kim O’Donnell of the Washington Post suggests that we subsidize fruits and vegetables. Sounds like a good idea to me. I know, Nancy Pelosi already signed off on the Bill, but it’s never too late register your dissent. Write your senator or congressperson.
• India elects its first female president! Granted, they are a parliamentary democracy, so the role of president is mostly symbolic, but still, pretty cool — I hope she’ll use her clout to improve the lot of women in India. Of course, not everyone is excited. But from a purely stats standpoint, Pratibha Patil is joining this proud list of women presidents and prime ministers. Who knows? Maybe the US will be next.
• Short on numbers for your next rally? Too busy to picket? Hire protesters!