so I’m currently in Guatemala City working on the website for this online, multi-lingual, transnational feminist art mag we’re starting with friends from here. The idea is for it to be a truly international collective effort. The website is set up in both English and Spanish, everything will be consistently translated into the other. The idea is for it to be multilingual in the sense that every contributor can write in their own language, in whatever language they feel most comfortable in. And then we translate it to English and Spanish.
The reason that we think this is important is because there are a lot of feminist magazines/resources on the internet but they are mostly in English. But it being in only Spanish would kind of defeat the purpose. In true transnational feminist practice, or at least our understanding of it, we want to connect people and ideas from all over, without having one truth. We are not all the same, we do not all need to agree. But we can exchange and share and talk and get to know each other’s situations better and learn.
We want it to be of art and about art because art is a way to express ourselves, outside of the highly inaccessible world of academics. We believe that art can bring people together in their truest expressions of self. At the same time a transnational feminist critique of the art that is being made in the world can teach us more about the world around us and about our own visions of the world. There are so many wonderful people doing wonderful things, as well as wonderful people doing not so wonderful things that could use some decent critiquing. So we’re looking for both contributions in the way of art as contributions in the way of writing about other people’s art.
There’s different levels of getting involved, you decide how involved you wanna get. All the way to the decision making or just sending posts now and then to one of the administrators who will translate and post it for you.
Next week I’ll be back in Europe (I’m Belgian), but I’ll be working together closely still with the crew here in Guatemala City as well as contributors that have already committed to the project from all over Europe and North America. For the magazine to be a living thing we need contributors from all over, with different backgrounds and different interests. I am working on finding contacts in other parts of the world.
If anyone feel like getting involved on any level, please do get in touch! Or if you just wanna talk about the concept a little more, have more questions, or anything else, let me hear it!
For now you can e-mail me at lauradevos@gmail.com. And share this with your friends and followers if you think you might know someone who is interested in being a part of this!
xoxo
"[TW: Rape] According to statistics from the United States Department of Justice, for every white woman who reports a rape, there are at least five black women who are raped but do not report it. For every black woman who reports her rape, at least 15 black women’s sexual assaults go unreported."
— Race is a feminist issue (via sparkamovement)
(via seattlegrrrlarmy)
![sinidentidades:
Immigrants Held in Solitary Cells, Often for Weeks
On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data.
Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 days.
While the records do not indicate why immigrants were put in solitary, an adviser who helped the immigration agency review the numbers estimated that two-thirds of the cases involved disciplinary infractions like breaking rules, talking back to guards or getting into fights. Immigrants were also regularly isolated because they were viewed as a threat to other detainees or personnel or for protective purposes when the immigrant was queer or mentally handicapped.
The United States has come under sharp criticism at home and abroad for relying on solitary confinement in its prisons more than any other democratic nation in the world. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement places only about 1 percent of its jailed immigrants in solitary, this practice is nonetheless startling because those detainees are being held on civil, not criminal, charges. As such, they are not supposed to be punished; they are simply confined to ensure that they appear for administrative hearings.
After federal immigration authorities caught up with him, Rashed BinRashed, an [undocumented] arrival from Yemen, was sent to a detention center in Juneau, Wis. He was put in solitary confinement, he says, after declining to go to the jail’s eating area and refusing meals because he wanted to fast during Ramadan.
Federal officials confined Delfino Quiroz, a gay immigrant from Mexico, in solitary for four months in 2010, saying it was for his own protection, he recalls. He sank into a deep depression as he overheard three inmates attempt suicide. “Please, God,” he remembers praying, “don’t let me be the same.”
As lawmakers in Washington consider an overhaul of the immigration system, Congress faces thorny questions not just about what status to grant immigrants already in the country, but also about how best to increase enforcement efforts and what rights to ensure [undocumented] immigrants during their detention.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/31753bcfb3d1a0512dde22c59399a2fa/tumblr_mkrt6sMkgW1qcujoko1_500.jpg)
