Historic Labor-led Campaign for Transgender Healthcare Launches in March

This month marks the launch of the first-ever National Month of Action for Transgender Healthcare, a campaign organized by Pride at Work, the Center for American Progress, the Service Employees International Union Lavender Caucus, Basic Rights Oregon, the Transgender Law Center, and the National Center for Transgender Equality. The goal of the campaign is to mobilize union members, students, non-union workers, and allies in an effort to make transgender-inclusive healthcare more common, accessible, and affordable. In addition, organizers of the campaign hope to educate the public about what it means to be transgender and the ways in which healthcare industries continue to exclude trans and gender variant communities.

In many workplaces, transgender individuals are denied access to many kinds of health-care and coverage that their non-transgender (cisgender) co-workers have without question. Whether through exclusions in health insurance policies or lack of access to competent healthcare providers, transgender individuals face extensive barriers to accessing appropriate, affordable healthcare.

A 2011 national study by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 19% of transgender and gender non-conforming people are denied healthcare, and 28% of transgender and gender non-conforming people postpone medical care for fear of discrimination. Key findings also reveal that respondents experienced double the rate of unemployment as the general population; near universal harassment on the job; significant losses of jobs and careers; and higher rates of poverty. Not surprisingly, the economic inequality experienced by so many transgender people often leads to a lack of quality healthcare options.

The fact that economic instability contributes to the marginalization of transgender people makes clear why the labor movement is an ideal place from which to struggle for transgender justice. Like historic LGBT-labor alliances of the past—including labor’s support of LGB teachers who fought against the Briggs Initiative, the LGBT-labor sponsored boycott against Coors, and, more recently, major union’s support of marriage equality—this campaign illustrates that injustice is intersectional and connected. The system that oppresses the working-class is the same system that oppresses LGBT people, people of color, differently-abled people, and immigrants (etc.). In order to fight against that system, all oppressed peoples must work together and recognize that, to echo labor leader Joe Hill, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”

Trans Month of Action will move the conversation on transgender healthcare discrimination forward by also discussing the critical need for insurance providers to include transition-related care in their policies.

The events taking place this month in conjunction with the month of action all aim to highlight these connections. So far, actions are taking place across ten cities, including Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York, Miami, Atlanta, and Sacremento. And, for you Chicago locals, check out the Open Forum on Transgender Health, Healthcare, and the Transgender Community at UIC on March 18th.

Although the campaign is a month of action, the struggle for transgender healthcare and other demands for transgender justice need to be ongoing. In their important novel about the challenges faced by trans and gender non-conforming people, Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg writes, “Surrenderin’ is unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival!”

That’s a lesson the labor movement knows all too well, and the transgender and allied organizers behind this campaign are committed to the struggle. If you want to be a part of this historic effort, consider organizing a local event, or, if you have personal experience dealing with transgender healthcare issues, consider sharing your story.  Visit www.transmonthofaction.org to learn more.

This piece was originally published at In Our Words.

Critically Acclaimed Imperlialism: The rise of pop cultural representations of the CIA

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” –Hannah Arendt

There is a notable theme that has emerged salient in the winners of Hollywood’s award show season. Showtime’s Homeland just won six Emmy’s, and Argo and Zero Dark Thirty have been collecting statues at the SAG Awards, Golden Globes, and will likely take home some Oscars. What do all these media have in common? They are all stories about the CIA, full of characters and scripts that are the champions of American imperialism.

As Rachel Shabi has eloquently argued, what is most compelling about these popular representations of the responses to terrorism is that producers and audiences alike insist that these are nuanced renderings.  Argo begins with a voice over that, when describing the events that led up to the Iranian Revolution, acknowledges the US government’s early support of the Shah. In Zero Dark Thirty, the graphic and horrific scenes of CIA agents practicing “enhanced interrogation” have been touted as evidence that the film is not blindly condoning torture. And in Homeland, our protagonist, Brody, is, at times, an al-Qeida operative.

It is the belief that these things could be considered valuable complexities that is most troubling. Or, more specifically, that these complexities are somehow exceptional. That is, for the depiction of torture to be taken up in public discourse as something that is controversial is to grant the US government of an always-already non-torturous disposition. This is perhaps why Argo gets left out of these conversations—Argo wasn’t about torture, just a CIA agent! This discourse assumes that there can be a separation. That there are good CIA agents and bad ones. An assumption that predicates a belief that the US is fundamentally “good” and just resorts to “bad” things in extenuating circumstances.

This is illustrated to an absurd extent on Homeland. Sure we get a sympathetic view of the desire to avenge a drone strike: we even see footage of dead children, murdered by a drone sent from the Vice President. But we also see episodes in which CIA agents are shown wrestling with the ethics of drone strikes, and even feeling remorseful for their actions. And in those moments, the Showtime drama feels more like a prime-time comedy.

Similarly, the closing scene of Zero Dark Thirty shows us an emotionally broken-down Jessica Chastain, seemingly distraught now that she has successfully completed her mission to kill and capture bin Laden. There are different ways we can interpret that scene; either it is showing her doing some moral self-reflection on the loss of another’s life, or it is showing her mourning the loss of her own life. The only life she’s known for a decade has been one that involved hunting a terrorist. Now what is she supposed to do? Both interpretations do the same work, though: both suggest that these political moments are somehow matters of unique individuals’ choices, rather than stories about an agency of the government that is designed to produce these exact kinds of outcomes.

There is nothing exceptional about torture, violence, and conquest on behalf of the US government. Whether or not individual members of the CIA are “good” people or “bad” people is of little significance, as it certainly wouldn’t impact their complicity in structural violence. They are part of a system that is currently running on the blood, oil, and land of Third World nations. Any discussion of ethics that might take form in those spaces does so with an always-already US-centric, skewed definition of the “ethical.” One that is constructed by and through a white supremacist, capitalist nation.

Admittedly, as pieces of entertainment, I loved Argo, and am hooked on Homeland (even though: WTF, the last half of Season 2?). I didn’t like Zero Dark Thirty, but that was due in large part to the inability of Kathryn Bigelow’s direction to make me forget about all my aforementioned critiques. So perhaps, politically, Zero Dark Thirty is the “best.” At least it didn’t trick me into rooting for US domination.

This piece was originally published at In Our Words.

On Paul Ryan, Class Warfare, and “The Moral Case for Capitalism”

This piece was originally published on In Our Words:

Last year—(probably right around the same time of the now widely-distributed Time magazine workout photo shoot)—Vice Presidential Republican candidate Paul Ryan told an interviewer for the conservative news site Human Events that, “we should not shy away from class warfare.”

During their discussion, the interviewer stated that the Democrat’s agenda is to “shake down the rich,” and asked Ryan if Republicans “are doing a successful job making the moral case for capitalism.”  “Not enough,” Ryan responded, then continued:

“We should not shy away from class warfare. We should take this head on, which is, the president is preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment, and he’s speaking to people in America as if they’re fixed in some class. That’s the European model. That’s the model our ancestors left to come create an opportunity society, equality of opportunity, equal protection of the law — not equality of outcome. Government’s role is not to equalize the results of our lives. And we should take that on in a moral way and defend the system of upward mobility.”

Of course, this is not a shocking quote to hear from a Republican. During the past few years, accusations of “class warfare” have been filling the media. Those on the Right tried to bring this concept into the lexicon as a way to scare the nation about the inevitable horrors of having a Democrat in the White House. The term caught fire not only in response to Obamacare, but also during the public worker labor dispute in Madison, WI (Ryan’s home state), and as a label for the efforts of Occupy Wall Street. For many conservatives, “class warfare” has become code for anything that remotely threatens the wealth of the super-rich.

My problem with this phenomenon is not about a distaste for the term “class warfare,” but rather that it’s far too generous a label to place upon any of the aforementioned examples. And, unfortunately, it’s a concept that would never be a goal of the Democratic Party. Class war implies some actual challenge to the status-quo, and Ryan misleadingly suggests that Obama is doing just that by fomenting the revolutionary spirit of the non-rich. (If only!)

No, class warfare is not alive and well in the Democratic Party because, Mr. Ryan, Barack Obama would go to the same lengths as you to make “the moral case for capitalism.” That Democrats are being painted as anti-capitalists is laughable—raising taxes and funding PBS does not a radical overhaul of the system make. And for Ryan to suggest that Obama is “speaking to people in America as if they’re fixed in some class,” couldn’t be farther from the truth. I spent a good chunk of my time in graduate school analyzing the use of the terms “working-class” vs. “middle-class” in the media and in political rhetoric, and let me assure you that the only time class is evoked by politicians is to say they want to make things better for the middle-class. This alone illustrates the exact opposite of Ryan’s claim, since inherent in “bettering the lives of middle-class people” is the implication of upward mobility and “The American Dream.” Democrats love that shit as much as you do, Paul Ryan, I promise. Don’t forget that Obama is the best real-life example of Horatio Alger we’ve ever had.

Historian Alan Berube discusses the danger in privileging the term “middle class” over “working class,” writing:

“‘middleclass’ is used as a code word for ordinary Americans…Middleclass is the neutral ground where there is no class warfare, no class division, no class struggle, no class consciousness….It instills within us both the desire and the language with which we can erase ourselves as anything other than middleclass.”

“The middle-class” is the target audience for both parties because this allows the very real class system to seem simultaneously both natural and innocuous. Everyone from fast food workers to doctors consider themselves part of the middle class, and in the current political climate, the middle class should be feeling pretty good because everyone in the government seems to have their back.

Out of curiosity, I did a word find for the word “class” in the transcript from the VP debate. Every hit I found referred to “middle class” Americans, and both Biden and Ryan were espousing their faith in and commitment to this apparently ubiquitous group of people.

Neither side talks about the working-class, and the term “poverty” is rarely uttered. If Paul Ryan’s accusation that Obama was fueling a class war was correct, I believe we’d be hearing a lot more of those terms propagated by the Dems. Instead, the myth of the classless society is perpetuated through “middle-class” oversaturation, a term that now feels almost void of meaning.

Now, I don’t want to end this with on a totally cynical note. I don’t think the mainstream Right and Left are exactly the same, and I do plan to vote for Obama, whose administration I believe will make better choices than Romney’s. But I think it’s important for us to remember that “the moral case for capitalism” is presented by both the Democrats and Republicans on a daily basis. The immoral case for capitalism is lived by people across the globe on the daily basis. And if Ryan wants to champion “upward mobility,” he need look no further for support than his friends across the isle.