Fucking US Criminal Fucking Administration

[maeve66]

Not that I am leaving the Dems off the hook, but this article from CommonDreams about a particular disservice to International Women's Day just makes me so fucking angry. This link is thanks to rootlesscosmo.

Fuck.

An event with these Iraqi women would have been an absolutely classic, and useful, antiwar event for March 8th, International Women's Day.

By the slightly relevant way -- I saw Nine Parts of Desire with a friend last week and it was nowhere near as good as I wanted it to be. A one-woman show made up of interlocking stories of Iraqi women gathered over ten years. The politics were very muddy; the question of the current war was barely addressed -- just by the character who keeps vigil over a bombsite from the first Gulf War, where her family and more than 200 other civilians died in a bomb shelter/bunker which was hit by an experimental bunker-busting bomb. Parts of the play were affecting and/or interesting, but the acting was pretty weak, which is a severe problem for a one-woman show. A shame.

IWD (not to be confused with WMD) is one of those American holidays celebrated far more internationally, I think, like May Day, aka International Workers' Day. International Women's Day was a major holiday for me in my youth -- peñas, panels, parties, potlucks, political plays, fundraisers. More celebrated on the left than May Day, actually, or at least productive of more competing events. I miss that.

One of my students last week (we were learning days of the week, months, numbers, and thus, birthdays) revealed that her birthday was May 1st, and then surprised me by telling me it was an international holiday for workers, but it always made her angry because her father has to WORK that day! Oh, I love the Mexican diaspora.

Comments

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Apparently, in the Slavic republics of the ex-USSR, IWD has degenerated into a secular Valentine's Day. Better or worse than being ignored?

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Worse. Better to be pure in principle and unregarded, isn't that the Trotskyist way? To which I can sometimes succumb, even now. If they want a Valentines Day, they can import it from Hallmark along with the rest of their new, shabby capitalism -- they don't have to link it to the different date system of Eastern Orthodoxy or whatever. Bah, humbug.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Better to be pure in principle and unregarded, isn't that the Trotskyist way?

No, that's the Oehlerite way.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Ha!