Blurred Vision, a Canadian band comprised of two brothers originally from Iran, just released a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall, part II” with a slight lyrical twist that changes the song’s antagonist from controlling teachers to the repressive Iranian regime. The new chorus supports the many young people who protested Ahmadinejad’s reelection by demanding, “Hey Ayatollah, leave those kids alone.”

The music video goes a little further with its message, showing a fictional young Iranian woman on the run from what appears to be the Basij militia as she tries to upload footage from a protest on her iPhone. The video is inter cut with actual footage taken by Iranian protesters, depicting protesters getting beaten by government forces.

While it’s hard to criticize artists who clearly mean well and care more about their political message than their commercial appeal, there are a couple popular misconceptions being forwarded by this song and video. As we’ve written about before, the role of social media has been greatly overstated—not only does it provide questionable information from a small segment of the Iranian population (wealthy, educated city dwellers who dislike Ahmadinejad’s social welfare programs) but it’s also not a reliable way to organize protests given the government’s penchant for internet crackdown.

Like everyone else trying to follow Iran from afar, the members of Blurred Vision may be (pardon the pun) blinded by their desire to see Iranians win greater freedom and civil liberties to the point where they are overlooking and distorting key facts. In a CNN interview they refer to the June elections as “rigged”—something even the mainstream magazine Foreign Policy says is untrue, citing a recent report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

It’s important to point out these misconceptions because if furthered they could lead to several undesirable consequeences, such as the justification for a US intervention or the installation of a new president without the fundamental changes to Iran’s political structure necessary for real change. As discussed in previous posts, the only way the Green Movement can hope to be successful is to support radical reform that incorporates not just the social reform everyone in Iranian society desires but economic reform that meets the needs of the poor.

• Police in Venezuela used tear gas, plastic bullets and water cannons to scatter hundreds of students protesting against the government Thursday, while President Hugo Chavez’s supporters celebrated the 18th anniversary of his failed coup as an army officer.

• Hundreds of London Underground maintenance workers went on the first of a series of 24-hour strikes Friday morning in protest over new roster arrangements. They will continue to cause disruptions at the same time every Sunday from February 14th until the dispute is resolved.

• Dozens of Yemeni journalists, civil-society activists and members of parliament protested on Friday in front of the attorney general’s office in Sana’a against increasing harassment of journalists.

• The entrance to Kaiser Permanente’s Moanalua clinic in Hawaii was briefly shut-down on Thursday when protesters from Local 5 staged a sit-in. Kaiser employees and Local 5 members came to rally for a new contract that they say won’t out-source union work.

• In Calcutta, senior citizens staged a hunger strike on Saturday to protest against the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities.

• In Pakistan, political and social organizations continued a country-wide strike and protest this weekend against the deadly blasts in Karachi.

• Cuban police harassed and briefly jailed some 35 political dissidents last week in the eastern city of Camaguey, a Cuban human rights group said Friday.

• On Saturday, hundreds of Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) staff and their families staged a protest outside the company’s refinery in Ma’ameer over pay and working conditions.

• In Oslo, a thousand taxi drivers of Muslim background went on strike late Friday, early Saturday moring in protest of the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.

• More than 200 overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in Saudi Arabia have stopped working since Saturday in protest of alleged unfair labor practices of their employer.

Vredesactie (Peace Action), a “movement that radically acvocates a society in which conflicts are settled without violence or the threat to use violence,” posted this video on YouTube on Monday of a group of Bombspotters sneaking into the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium, where they say around 20 NATO nuclear warheads are stored.

According to their website:

April 3rd will be a European Day of Action to ban nuclear weapons. Mass actions will take place at every European NATO nuclear weapons base in Germany, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Belgium.

To learn more about the history of Bombspotting actions, which involve widespread “civil disobedience by trespassing and inspecting military bases and headquarters,” click here.

The news from Pakistan seems to be getting worse by the day. On Wednesday, a massive bombing in the Lower Dir district killed 7, including 3 US soldiers disguised as Pakistanis, and wounded at least 130 others.

The day before, the US launched the largest coordinated drone strike inside Pakistan to date. According to Pakistani authorities, 9 drones fired 18 missiles, killing at least 31 people. This strike was the latest in an unprecedented wave of recent attacks. Just last month, for example, there were a record 12 strikes in the country, a nearly threefold increase over last year.

To protest the increasing use of drones in war, a group of activists with Peace of the Action unfurled a banner last month (video above) at a military unmanned aerial vehicle exhibit in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC, reading “Drones Kill Kids.” This action is but the latest in a growing campaign against the drones, which we’ve been keeping close tabs on.

• More than 250 Washington State University Vancouver students staged a “mass walkout” to protest budget cuts to academic programs, the elimination of crucial financial aid, and continued tuition hikes.

• Canadian anti-Olympic protesters are promising a series of protests starting this weekend, culminating in a march on the opening ceremonies Feb. 12.

• Anti-US demonstrations in several Iraqi cities coincided with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit this week.

• Chinese artists have been staging flash mobs to protest the bulldozing of their studios.

• Chinese activist Feng Zhenghu ended his 90-day sit-in at Japan’s Narita International Airport on Tuesday when Chinese officials finally agreed to let him return.

• Customs officials and tax inspectors in Greece are holding a two-day strike to protest government austerity measures, including wage cuts.

• Workers at Fiat plants across Italy held a four-hour strike on Wednesday to protest plans to shut a factory in Sicily.

• Life remained crippled for the fourth day on Thursday in the Kashmir valley due to a general strike protesting the death of a 13-year-old boy by police on Sunday evening in down town city.

One of our good friends, Sr. Anne Montgomery told Kairos – a local peace group that I’m a part of in New York City – at our last meeting about this great satirical video that the Seattle Times made about the Disarm Now Plowshares action that she participated in, along with four others, at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base in Washington State.

For a brief recap of their action:

They entered the base in the early morning hours of November 2, 2009, All Souls Day, to call attention to the illegality and immorality of the existence of the first strike Trident weapons system.  They entered through the perimeter fence, and walked through the base for four hours.  During that time they made their way to the Strategic Weapons Facility – Pacific (SWFPAC) where they cut through the first chain link fence surrounding SWFPAC. They then walked to and cut the next double layered fence, both chain link and barbed wire, and entered the grounds of SWFPAC.  This bunker area holds the largest nuclear weapon stockpile in the United States.

As they walked they held a banner saying…… “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident: Illegal and Immoral”.  The Plowshares activists knew that they were in a shoot to kill zone, but they also remembered the many people who live in shoot to kill zones all the time because of US occupation of their country.

The unarmed activists were then held on the ground face down, handcuffed and hooded for over three hours. They were carried out, still hooded, through the very holes in the fence that they had made, and questioned by FBI and NCIS for several hours.

Although they gave only their names, they were given Ban and Bar letters and citations for trespass and destruction of government property.

The last I’ve heard on the status of their case is that the misdemeanor charges were dropped, but the government is currently exploring whether it should file felony charges against the group. To learn more about their action, follow their case as it develops or show your support, visit their blog.

A ground-based interceptor launched Sunday afternoon from Vandenberg Airforce Base in California.

One of the most infuriating retorts I hear from police, guards and counter-demonstrators is that we, as demonstrators, must be at least somewhat grateful that we live in a society in which we can come out with signs and banners and espouse our views without being shot. Somehow, we are a testament to the freedom they are stifling. They see themselves as protecting our right to assemble and speak freely, even as they are not letting us speak, arresting us or worse. And they do it all capriciously, creating and then ignoring designated protest areas on a whim. They don’t let us talk to “the opposition” even when they are acquaintances. They don’t even respect their own lines and fences.

At Vanbenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in Lompoc, California there is no longer any pretense of the right to peaceably assemble. Last Sunday, eight members of Vandenberg Witness were arrested for a “Violation of Security Regulation” and three more were given “ban and bar” notices even though they never entered the base. In fact, they stayed in the designated protest area and identified themselves as instructed. They were simply carrying letters of opposition from six different international organizations.

When asked why she was given two tickets, longtime organizer MacGregor Eddy of Salinas, CA was told by an arresting officer, “One is for showing up and one is for being here.” Another woman, Jude Evered of Goleta, CA, was held on the ground by two security guards, despite being in her eighties, with a soldier’s knee in her back. Her booking was interrupted because she had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance (notably, without police or MPs) for a shoulder injury she sustained after she was in custody.

Such harsh action against protesters at military bases has been on the rise, largely because there has never been a court ruling on whether the military can take obstructive action outside the fenced area of the base. Furthermore, no prosecutor or ACLU lawyer has taken any such case to court.

Read the rest of this article »

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley doesn’t feel that he needs to do a whole lot these days. Over the past week, as indignation and frustration has swelled with city truck drivers, Daley has refused to so much as meet with Teamster officials. Meanwhile, the union is threatening to strike, which would cause a massive stoppage in city services; the Daley administration has claimed that a strike would be illegal and won’t give an inch.

According to the Teamster contract, the city is obligated to employ a workforce and pay them when there isn’t any work. The trouble started at Chicago airports, where plow drivers are accustomed to getting paid even when there isn’t any snow, and thus no work. This cost-cutting measure would reportedly save the city $1 million annually.

The issue here isn’t about money. When looking at the overall financial picture of Chicago, $1 million is loose change. It’s the $20 debt your friend asks you to repay while your house is being foreclosed. The city’s finances are grim, and $1 million isn’t going to help it.

In 2009, Chicago reported a deficit of over $500 million. Not only that, but the payments for Daley’s $86 million loan to purchase the decrepit Michael Reese hospital (slated to be converted into an Olympic Village—so much for that) are about to kick in, and the billion that was brought in through the absurd parking-meter deal to cover the city’s massive shortfalls is already dried up.

But it’s easy for Daley to point fingers at these workers and get the public behind him. They are, after all, getting paid good money to not work, while so many are laid-off.  Daley can work his spin and divert the attention from what a strike would truly represent: an organized challenge to Daley’s limitless power.

Last week, Daley said that “these are very difficult times and we all have to share in that pain.” True, yet it’s hard to recognize what Daley is doing to alleviate this pain.

Read the rest of this article »

Yesterday, Dr. Carol Paris – a psychiatrist from Maryland who was part of the Baucus 8 – wrote a nice reflection on her experience protesting and getting arrested in front of the Harbor Hotel in Baltimore last Friday, where President Obama was scheduled to give a speech. While she held a banner that read, “Letting you know: Medicare for all,” with Dr. Margaret Flowers, and spoke with the police and Secret Service about why they were there, many thoughts were running through her head:

“How do I get myself into these things?”

“This is crazy.”

“This is pointless.”

“I can’t even make sensible statements; I know what I want to say but I’m so nervous.”

“Other people are so much more knowledgeable and speak so much more eloquently.”

“But I am doing it!”

These thoughts are no doubt familiar to anyone who has risked arrested for a cause they believe in. It’s indeed difficult to overcome the fear in such situations, and I appreciate her candor in discussing these feelings.

Read the rest of this article »

• On Saturday, some 6,000 people gathered at a rally in Tokyo calling for the withdrawal of U.S. Marine base stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa.

• Russian police broke up anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg on Sunday, and detained more than 100 demonstrators, including several opposition leaders.

• More than 150 inmates at a prison in Spuz, outside Podgorica, Montenegro launched a hunger strike last Wednesday, claiming guards are abusing them. This is the second such protest in ten days.

• In India, 10,000 teachers from 35 central universities began a two-day strike last Thursday, demanding changes in the regulation on service conditions which seeks to link their promotion to output.

• Dozens of students at Little Miami High School in Cincinnati walked out of class Monday morning on the eve of a critical levy vote. The walkout was followed by a sit-in at the school.

• A large number of staff at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport, including security personnel, walked off the job yesterday and attended union meetings in protest against plans to outsource two employee canteens. Other employees who have downed tools include baggage handlers, the fire department, cleaning crews, technicians and drivers.

• Immigrants held in a South Texas detention center have begun an indefinite hunger strike. Its the second mass hunger strike in a year. Some of the detainees say they’ll refuse to eat until they are released.

• The Sheikh Yassin coalition organized a protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Paris on Saturday, demanding that Egypt stop building an underground steel barrier on the border with the Gaza Strip.

• Palestinians took part in a protest in Gaza City yesterday, calling for the release of their loved ones imprisoned in Israeli jails.

In a recent Guardian op-ed, Jessica Reed wrote about Jeudi Noir, a group of Parisian housing activists, who—for the past two-and-a-half months—have been squatting in a piece of real estate fit for a king, literally. Place des Vosges, located in the chic neighborhood of Le Marais, is the oldest square in Paris. Originally named Place Royale, this beautifully-manicured square was built by Henri IV to celebrate the wedding of his son Louis XIII. Jeudi Noir has taken over 1 Place des Vosges, which has been vacant for over 40 years. Their goal is to bring attention to the housing crisis as well as bring light to the fact that one out of 10 buildings in Paris are vacant, many of which could be used for low-income housing, student housing, or for the number of homeless Parisians who have recently started building tent villages along the Seine.

Jeudi Noir has gained attention through their surprisingly-festive actions. After clicking around their website I found several videos of the activists, along with a guy dressed up as some sort of Disco Stu, showing up at marches, real estate agencies, and apartments for rent and throwing impromptu parties. Maybe this fun, creative protest is what has gained them support from not only the public, but also from members of France’s Green and Socialist parties (both of which may sound like small-potatoes movements here in the U.S, but are veritable political parties in France.)

Perhaps this is the sort of action we should be taking at home. New Yorkers, like myself, could put Jeudi Noir’s suggested party kit to good use. In 2006 Picture the Homeless conducted a survey of vacant property in Manhattan and found that there are 24,000 potential apartments in vacant buildings and lots in Manhattan alone. (Keep in mind, that that number does not include all five boroughs.) Picture the Homeless believes that the vacant property that they’ve assessed could house the city’s entire homeless population, which according to Friday’s Department of Homeless Services Daily Report is at roughly 37,487 people.

Jeudi Noir’s mission statement rightfully points out that the right to housing does not coincide with the right to property. What kind of right do landlords with vacant properties have to keep people in need of shelter locked out? Or banks to kick families out of their homes? As Reed eloquently points out in her piece:

It might be hard to immediately sympathise with squatters—the right to own property runs so deep in modern western society that anything challenging the status quo is bound to make waves. I would, however, question the intentions and principles of those willing to let their own buildings decay uninhabited for 40 years while homeless people die every winter from exposure. How to rationalise that? I struggle to find any excuse for leaving the most impoverished section of the population out in the cold, when buildings go unused and unlet for very long periods of time.

• Hundreds of Notre Dame University students and faculty members gathered on campus yesterday to demand more equality for LGBT students. The protest was in response to an anti-gay comic strip which appeared in the student paper a few weeks ago.

• Climate activists in South Lanarkshire closed down one of Scotland’s main coal terminals yesterday when one of the protesters chained himself to a digging machine. This led to 11 coal trucks queuing at the terminal’s gate and prevented a coal train being loaded.

• Dozens of people gathered in front of Camp Phoenix, an ISAF military base in the eastern part of Kabul, to protest the death of a civilian by NATO forces. They blocked the road that links the Afghan capital to eastern provinces.

• Roughly 100 members from the UAW and Teamsters unions and their supporters gathered outside the Japanese Embassy in Washington yesterday to protest Toyota’s decision to close a California plants and hire nonunion carhaulers.

• Hundreds of students and alumni packed the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson yesterday to show their support for higher education funding and their opposition to proposals that call for merging some Mississippi universities.

• About 1,400 construction workers defied a court order to end their strike at the $13 billion liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia. The strike started Jan. 22 to protest Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s plans to make the workers change accommodation every month instead of providing permanent housing.

• Five concerned parents barricaded themselves inside a primary school in Glasgow this week to protest proposals to shut down the school. It was the latest in a series of school occupations which have taken place over the past year.

• Thirteen people were arrested Tuesday at a protest outside the White House against US militarism abroad. The activists lay down on the sidewalk after reading the names of Americans, Iraqis and Afghans killed in US wars.

The internationally praised Executive Orders signed by President Obama on his first day in office to close the illegal prison in Guantánamo missed its deadline last week.  But that was old news.  It was clear from early on that the closing of Guantánamo, as well as the ending of other Bush era policies in the “War on Terror,” were not going to be much more than a face-lift.   An Obama-appointed Task Force, led by the Justice Department, just finished a collaborative effort in re-reviewing (including the men at Guantánamo cleared for release by the Bush Administration’s standards) the cases of all the remaining men at Guantánamo.  What did they find?  The results are quite staggering and depressing and confirm the continue need for action, witness and pressure against torture and the condition that allow it to happen.

Of the 198 men (now 196 after two Algerian men were released on January 22, 2010) it was reported that “nearly 50 should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war,” according to The Washington Post. As Andy Worthington correctly notes, such indefinite detention is not only legally dubious, it “rubs salt in Guantánamo’s wounds” by announcing such findings on the anniversary of Obama’s missed deadline.  And yet, 110 men are cleared for release, many for the second time, but remain indefinitely detained as the question of where these men are “allowed” to go is resolved.  Repatriating or resettling these innocent men – letting these men go free – is difficult because the United States refuses to take any of them and is stringent in allowing men to return to the Middle East because of unsubstantiated claims of “recidivism.”  Succumbing to the fear-mongering, the U.S. Congress has barred the settling of innocent men from Guantánamo into the United States.  The vote, which passed the Senate 79-19, effectively tied Obama’s hands from making the simple gesture to primarily European nations that the United States is willing to clean up its own mess.

And that is why we continue to protest against torture and indefinite detention.  Waging Nonviolence (here, here, and here) reported some of the activities and civil resistance from Witness Against Torture’s Fast and Vigil for Justice, particularly the 42 women and men arrested at the U.S. Capitol last week mourning the deaths of the three “suicides.”  Most of those arrested spent close to 30 hours in jail, identifying themselves only by the name of a prisoner cleared for release.  After a fast from solid foods for a week and a half, it was a difficult experience for those who spent the day and a half in jail with little water to drink.  But we realize the 12-day, liquid only fast is a small, humble attempt to bring the human face of and suffering reality of the men in Guantánamo (and Bagram) to the United States.  The stories and poems that are related to us by the men in Guantánamo (and through their lawyers) draw us into their humanity in ways that only fasting can do.  Through our own experiences of suffering during the fast, albeit miniscule in comparison, our hearts and imaginations are cracked open and we are able to feel the tears and pains and sorrows and hope (the little there is left) of the men in Guantánamo.  Although we are kept many miles apart, with borders and walls and barbed wired and armed guards and land mines separating us, during moments of our fast, we are drawn into compassion for even those we are told are our enemies.  For some reason, and Gandhi certainly knew this, when you fast, the layers of judgment, fear, and violence are shed and you are able to love even the “worst of the worst.”

We fast because it makes us more human, makes them more human.  Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker, often extolled the “weapons of the spirit, [the] denying of ourselves and taking up our crosses” as the foundation for radical social change.  Gandhi urged his followers to fast to reiterate the need to be nonviolent. We fast because it draws us deeper into nonviolence and emboldens us for public action and civil resistance. Throughout our 12-day fast, many of us expressed a deeper solidarity with the men at Guantánamo than we had experienced before. Only a handful from Witness Against Torture have traveled to Cuba to try to visit the prison. Very few of us have been able to share in dialogue and community with the men imprisoned there, as we are not lawyers.  We fast and protest because indefinite detention, torture and extraordinary rendition are always wrong.  We fast and protest because we want to live in a world not ruled by fear but by courage. And so, while our bodies may be weakened by the fast, our spirit and our resolve are strengthened to hold on, to keep fighting, to keep protesting because one day justice will flow like a mighty river and our brothers at Guantánamo will be welcomed at our table.

A number of commentators have questioned the accepted logic that disasters bring out the worst in people, directly challenging the pervasive “looters run amok” imagery often perpetuated by the media and held out by lawmakers as a rationale for military occupation. Having done relief work following Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, I have found that people are more likely to work together – even if only out of necessity – when severe hardship strikes. In fact, it is precisely the isolation and individualism of ordinary daily life that tap into our worst instincts, while the removal of these impediments can actually liberate our better qualities.

As Dustin Howes recently observed, “the vast majority of people in Haiti responded to the earthquake with the apparently just as natural of an impulse to help one another.” The New York Times has uncovered a widespread ethic of “communal rationing” in Haiti, in which “no matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.” As the article explains, many Haitians “are finding ways to share. In several neighborhoods of Carrefour, a poor area closer to the epicenter, small soup kitchens have sprung up with discounted meals, subsidized by Haitians with a little extra money…. [Three women there] started cooking for their neighbors the day after the earthquake. On many mornings, they serve 100 people before 10 a.m. Smiling and proud, the women said they did not have the luxury of waiting for aid groups to reach them in their hilly neighborhood.”

This is the untold and largely unreported state of the crisis in Haiti. Amy Goodman filed a series of reports for Democracy Now! from places where relief had yet to be delivered. In Leogane, the epicenter of the quake where perhaps 90% of the city had been destroyed, Mayor Santos Alexis noted that aside from people occasionally taking food from destroyed stores, “there’s no violence really in Leogane.” Still, the mainstream relief agencies remain obsessed with security concerns, to the extent that they will drop small amounts of food from above rather than land and talk with the people on the ground. As Mayor Alexis lamented, the people “feel humiliated, because of the airplane flying and dropping some bread to them. They feel very embarrassed by that.” Haitian expatriate blogger Wadner Pierre likewise reflects on these unfortunate realities, and how they stand in contrast to baseline Haitian values:

My beloved country is one where people know how to do ‘konbit’ (put their hands together) to help their brothers and sisters. But because so many of the organizations now involved in the relief effort do not know Haiti well and do not have Haitian employees who speak the local languages, the situation may worsen… Why are American relief organizations… humiliating people by dropping food and water to them by helicopters? Would they treat American citizens in this manner?

When we consider the practice of nonviolence, one of the foundational premises is humanization, of both self and other. In Haiti, the chasm between survivors and most of the aiders prevents the discovery of a mutual humanity from which empathy may spring, making truly “humanitarian” relief efforts problematic if not impossible. A key aspect of grassroots work in the region has been to reclaim this basic humanity, providing a voice to the Haitian people themselves so that we can see, across the chasms of distance and status, that they are people with the same complexities and desires as ourselves. (A 2008 grassroots video project called “Looking Through Their Eyes” effectively captures this sense of commonality.)

Read the rest of this article »

“Prison officials don’t need a gun; they already have full control over you,” said a former Michigan prisoner who was raped by a correctional officer. She shared her experience with Just Detention International (JDI), an organization working to end the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons and jails around the globe.

The horror of prison rape has been well-documented by Human Rights Watch (hat tip, Te-Ping Chen at change.org). But in American popular culture, the issue of prison rape (when it’s not being ignored), is somehow considered funny, the subject of late-night, drop-the-soap humor. Humor can bring relief to conversations of uncomfortable facts, but it can also dehumanize and trivialize.

Just Detention International (note the name’s double entendre) seeks to change that dynamic with a moving new campaign. JDI prepared three sets of images.

The first set challenges the view that prison rape is somehow not really rape:

The second highlights the health of rape victims:

The third targets the alleged humor of people being raped:

Prison rape has reached epidemic proportions in US jails and prisons. Some 60,500 (4.5%) of the 1.3 million people in federal and state prisons were sexually abused in 2006, according to a 2007 Department of Justice study. By one account, one in five male prisoners is sexually abused at some point during his incarceration. Meanwhile, HIV is four times more prevalent, and Hepatitis C is eight to 20 times more prevalent, in US prisons than in society overall.

Among juveniles in U.S. youth prisons, according to a just-released Department of Justice study, one in eight reported being sexually victimized in the past 12 months (or if they were incarcerated for fewer than 12 months, since they were admitted). Eighty percent of these victims were abused by prison staff.

Kudos to Just Detention International for humanizing people in prison by depicting them in something other than prison garb. Rape is awful whether it happens to women or men, free or imprisoned. “No matter what crime someone has committed,” says JDI, “sexual violence must never be part of the penalty.”