[Peace-discuss] a friend: Haiti's problem is overpopulation

[Ricky Baldwin]

Indeed.  ... and our use of their bodies, too, in various unsavory ways: cheap labor and slavery, including child and sexual slavery, and so on.

Women, particularly poor/downtrodden ones, should control (their) birth rates.  The poor in general should control their use of land and other resources.  The unemployed should control their joblessness, as the homeless their homelessness.  Workers should control their wages and working conditions.  Faculty, staff, and students should control the universities.  Communities should control their governments, and in particular  (especially the poor/black neighborhoods) their police forces.

You can read these two ways, can't you?  As admonition or manifesto.

It's one thing to say it, another to realize why it's so difficult to make it real and work on it.  The best way to work on any of these, in my opinion, is not to dream up the solutions for other people - perfection, clarity, etc. - and then advocate these fine ideas, but to support the people themselves in their efforts to organize and improve their lot - even where we may sometimes disagree a bit - to the best of our abilities.  We never have to pick out a movement or a group of people and make them into saints or heroes.  In fact, we shouldn't, in my view.  

Don't the poor and the abused have a right to be human, to make mistakes, as much as those with a little more power?  Life is crueler to these when they do fall short, but their supporters don't have to be.

In Solidarity,
Ricky



"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn

--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] a friend: Haiti's problem is overpopulation
To: "Jenifer Cartwright" <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 1:57 PM



On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

Well... it's not so tenuous when Catholics (and others in power) prevent accessibility to birth control. As I recall, back in the day, CT permitted the sale of condoms only for the prevention of disease... and then there are the fights currently raging about the morning after pill...
 --Jenifer  
George W. Bush was not Catholic, but he made it so that the African countries suffering from high HIV/AIDS could only get help from the US if they did not give out condoms. 

Abstinence is a great form of birth control. But most of us see the problem with that.
So, I come back to Bob Illyes and say, we must educate men as well. Overall, I say:
Educating women in a society where women are already a bit empowered is a darn good thing.  Demanding that developing countries control their populations is ridiculous when we cannot control our consumption of their natural resources and our use of their land as our kitchen midden (garbage dump).

-karen medina 

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