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Victim Compensation

2009-08-30T09:35:00.004-07:00

I was over at Shakesville, checking out their blogaround, and stumbled upon this post, about one of the Sodini shooting victims. She is uninsured, and she is putting on a car wash to raise money for her medical bills. Zuska's post is mostly about the implications for healthcare reform, and I'll leave it to you to read the post for that (it's good, and you should), but I wanted to raise awareness about crime victims compensation. This is a program about which not nearly enough people know, and that's a huge problem.

As a victim advocate in Arizona, I'm very familiar with our particular program. In all counties, except Coconino, the comp program is run through the victim services department of the County Attorneys Office. We run it through our agency, which is a standalone 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are the only agency of our kind in Arizona, as the rest are all housed within the county. To qualify for victims comp, you must be the victim or witness of a crime, you must have reported the crime to law enforcement within 72 hours (unless good cause exists, and exceptions are routinely made in cases of sexual assault and sexual abuse). If eligible, you apply for funds within two years of the crime occurring, meaning, even if you didn't find out about this program until just now, you might still be able to get money. It can cover medical bills, including bills for counseling, crime scene cleanup, funeral expenses, travel expenses incurred as a result of the crime (to and from court, the hospital, your therapist, etc.), lost wages incurred as a result of the crime, etc. The comp program will pay out up to $20,000. Our compensation director takes applications once a month before the compensation board, who reviews each case, and decides to either grant the claim in full, grant a reduced claim, or deny the claim altogether. If your claim is denied, there is an appeals process, and all you have to do is write a letter to the board stating that you want your case looked at again. It is not complicated or difficult.

All states have victim compensation programs. The rules may be different for each of them, but the Office for Victims of Crime has information about each program. If you are, or know someone who is a victim of crime, pass this information along. There is no reason for victims to be throwing bake sales to get their x-rays paid for. The programs exist for you, we are all paying for them, please use them! To find out more information about compensation in your area, check out the OVC's page on comp. They have a link to info about the program in general, as well as a link to a national directory of comp programs.

Running in Heels, or Why I Hate Shopping for Pants

2009-07-13T18:37:00.003-07:00

This will be a short bit of a rant, because I doubt that I will be able to articulate why this bugged me on a feminist level in any sort of a meaningful way. If you happen to be reading, and think you can help me make this clearer, please feel free to comment!

I am on an endless quest for pants. Not just any pants, and not jeans, though that is the cliché. I spend ridiculous amounts of time looking for dress pants that I can wear to the office, and that I can wear, more specifically, with flats. While I work in an office, I also spend a good chunk of my work days walking. As a victim advocate, I am constantly running back and forth between the office, the county courthouse, the city courthouse, the police station, the hospital, and various other sites where one might find a crime victim. This means, that while heels supposedly look more polished and professional, they are never very practical, and they cause a great deal of back pain, foot pain, blistering, and general discomfort. I know that this is not just a problem isolated to those of us who work in offices, as when I waited tables, and later slung coffee, I still needed dress pants to fit the dress codes, but couldn't be working in heels.

Given that a good deal of women in the world must work in pants, and that many of us can't work in heels, why is it so difficult to find pants that aren't a good three to six inches longer than our legs? I am a small woman; I am 5'4", but even the pants that fit on my little frame are much, much too long. And then, top that with the fact that many stores carry a tall line of clothing, or have long cuts (which are inches longer than "regular," which is still inches longer my legs), meaning that these super long legged pants are not even the longest out there. All pants that I come into contact these days seem to be designed to be worn with heels. Or to be worn only by supermodels, and, to be fair, tall, skinny gals need pants, too.

But why can't I find pants that I don't need to hem? I remember reading Susan Faludi's Backlash with utter amazement when it came to the chapters on fashion. Faludi said (and cited studies, if I remember correctly) that showed women's apparel needs were drastically different than what was being offered by clothing retailers. Women wanted practical clothing, and they were given micro-minis and pouffy cocktail dresses. For those who are constantly yelling about letting the market correct itself, it seems that occasionally, the market is far more interested in imposing its own ideas of what people ought want to buy, and in this case, what women should be wearing.

There are petite offerings, but so far, unless I want to go to a store specifically for petite women (and the clothes in those shops are too old for me; I feel like I'm trying on a costume), I have to purchase my clothes online. That means, I can't try them on, and I have to do quite a bit of guesswork, crossing my fingers that when my pants arrive they are the color promised onscreen, and that they actually fit. It's terribly frustrating.

I said this would be short. It was not. Neither is the inseam on my pants.

Healthcare Reform

2009-07-12T19:58:00.003-07:00

While healthcare reform legislation is moving forward, opponents in the house and senate are gearing up to make the legislation as meaningless as possible, especially for women.

According to this article, while President Obama insists that he still wants reform completed by August, he seems not to believe that his role is one of leading reform.

Despite a lack of consensus over cost, funding and whether to provide a "public" government insurance plan that would compete with private companies, Obama's Health and Human Services secretary said Sunday that the White House will not micromanage Congress. Any plan to overhaul the system "needs to be owned by the House and the Senate," Kathleen Sebelius told CNN's State of the Union.

Like the analysts mentioned in the article, I really question this kind of strategy. Though Pres. Obama states that his job is to inspire confidence in the American people regarding this reform, polls show the majority of Americans support for universal healthcare, with some polls putting that support at 72%. It seems clear that President Obama ought focus his energies on the house and senate, and even some in his own party, when embarking on a campaign to inspire confidence in healthcare reform. And if he is truly concerned about support from American citizens, he might inspire confidence in me if he started standing up for the reproductive rights of women. Cara puts it succinctly:

[I]t would be an enormous tragedy to finally have health care reform passed, only for access to vital services to be kept out of the deal — leaving some who will need to switch to a government plan for cost reasons with less coverage than they had before...And lastly, because we can’t expect elected officials to follow the poll numbers if they don’t even know about them. The pressure that they usually end up feeling comes from anti-choicers because, well, unfortunatley anti-choicers are really good at that sort of thing. This time around, they absolutely need to hear it from us, too.

I'll repeat my call to action from yesterday's post. Please, please, look up your representatives, and speak up! You can find your reps here.

Cruel and Unusual

2009-07-11T20:54:00.005-07:00

So... I've only posted things every now and again, and it is well within the realm of possibility that no one checks on this page at all, BUT, I don't mind throwing posts out into the ethos. Here goes:

I've been reading quite a bit recently about the horrific conditions under which incarcerated women give birth in the United States. Several articles, both in the mainstream media and on blogs, have come out to shed light on this issue, and I'd like to join the chorus. Shackling a woman when she gives birth is a clear violation of the Eight Amendment, and should not be tolerated. Women who have undergone childbirth in these conditions detain the practice as humiliating, and in some cases it causes injury. The following is taken from the linked article, on RH Reality Check.

Consider the case of Shawanna Nelson.

When Nelson was six months pregnant, she was incarcerated in Arkansas for passing bad checks. She went into labor during her short sentence. A correctional officer shackled her legs to opposite sides of the bed that transported her to a delivery room, removing them briefly during a nurse's examination. Nelson was re-shackled immediately after giving birth to her nine-pound son.

"She suffered both mental anguish and injury to her back, intense pain because she couldn't move or adjust her position through her birth process," said Dana Sussman, legal fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Nelson later had surgery to treat symptoms resulting from the delivery of her son, according to The Arkansas Times.

Please take the time to contact your representatives, and tell them that this is unacceptable.

I Suck At This Blogging Thing...

2009-02-06T13:45:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in forever, and I'm still not doing a real post right now. I saw this on Feministe, and wanted to post it here. Enjoy!

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

2008-10-27T22:11:00.002-07:00

So, I'm about six weeks into my brand-spanking-new dream job, and while I really do love it, it can be incredibly depressing. I'm the volunteer coordinator for a victim advocacy organization, and we see everything. Literally. Every single police report made in the county comes across our desks, and it can be frightening. My coworkers and I have worked with victims of some of the most horrific crimes imaginable. We respond to crises 24 hours a day, and we help people through the criminal justice process afterward. Because of how much we see, the staff is made up of some very compassionate people, but some of the other agencies we work with are not.

This is what truly blows my mind. There are attorney's that tell our DV victims that they don't take DV cases, because they don't understand why the victims keep going back. There was one particularly egregious case in which an attorney told a sexual assault victim that her case was being declined, because, "Sometimes sex hurts. That doesn't mean you were raped." One of the foremost detectives in our law enforcement agency speaks incredibly articulately about the dynamics present in DV situations, and especially about how traditional gender roles and beliefs in them are many times present in such situations, and then in the same breath, speaks about how he is a "good Christian," who believes that he is the head of his wife. How do these people work so close to such violence, and not see how they enable, contribute, and at the very least, how they do nothing to help stop it?

I have moments when I am so heartbroken. Listening to the stories our clients tell us. Seeing their shame and humiliation on top of their feelings of betrayal and visceral pain, shame and humiliation given them, not by their abusers or attackers, but by the very people in the system who claim to work to help them.

I know change is slow, but sometimes it's so painfully slow that it knocks the wind out of my chest.

I Got A Grownup Job! (and other updates)

2008-08-27T19:42:00.005-07:00

It's been a very long time since I've posted, and I feel bad, because I don't even have anything important to post. I've been very busy this summer, mostly with visiting family in Indianapolis. Mr. KMP and I spent a lot of time traveling between Indy, his parents, and Michigan, so we were exhausted when we got home.

My grandmother gave us a fig tree to plant in Mr. KMP's parent's yard a while back, and we found that it is doing quite nicely! I was surprised, because there was so much flooding in Indiana, I thought most of the plants would have been destroyed. This fig tree is a trooper!

We also had a great time in Michigan. Walloon is one of my favorite places in the world, and it was really nice to get out on the water with Maggie (she's the one in the life vest.)

After we got settled back in Flagstaff, my brother and sister came out to visit. We went to the Grand Canyon and ate a massive amount of Jelly Bellies and watched Ren & Stimpy and Daria. It was lovely!

More recently though, I quite my job at Starbucks, and got a position at Victim/Witness Services for Coconino County. I'm their new Volunteer Program Coordinator, and I love it. Now that I don't have crazy hours (and I'm winding up my Masters...!!!), I should have more time to write, and given my new job, I'll have a different perspective on issues where I was previously doing a lot of speculating. I hope everyone else had a great summer!

Milestone

2008-04-18T12:47:00.001-07:00

Happy Anniversary to Cara at the Curvature!

Equal Pay Day!

2008-04-18T12:16:00.006-07:00

It's Blog for Equal Pay Day, and there's already a lot of information going up all over my favorite blogs about the actual law on pay discrimination, negotiation techniques, general musing, etc. It's hard to see what I could add to the topic, so I've made a really little list of some places that might help you to find out what you should be making. I think one of the biggest barriers to pay equity (besides, oh, asshole employers), is that people are discouraged from talking about their respective pay rates. It's very difficult to find out what other people where you work make! Even if there isn't a company gag rule on salary comparison, many people feel that it's rude and an invasion of privacy to be asked.

So! Here are a couple websites that I hope will help!

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Job Star
Salary Scout
Economic Research Institute

White Privilege and Responsibility, Pt. 1

2008-04-17T12:38:00.003-07:00

It's amazing how much this topic has come up in my life lately. I mentioned in the previous post that I ended up talking about white privilege and responsibility at a recent dinner party, and just last night at work, responsibility was the watchword again. A coworker of mine is in a same-sex relationship, and she said that she can't be angry anymore. That if she spends all of her time fighting people who treat her as though she is something horrible, fighting people who want to keep her from being able to enjoy the rights that those in opposite-sex relationships enjoy, fighting people who would stamp her out of existence if they could, then all she will do is be angry all the time and it would destroy her. This came up, because I was talking about it being a responsibility to confront "isms" when they meet you, and I then had to clarify. It is not the responsibility of the oppressed group to do the confronting. They hold up that end every day by simply being who they are. It is the responsibility of the group in power to speak up and stand up. Silence is alliance. Pure and simple.

Today, Brownfemipower posted this, which I think sums up my feelings on the Marcotte debacle:

white feminists bear a responsibility (that they are NOT accepting and in fact are actively rejecting) to negotiate power and create spaces (while working alongside or a step behind marginalized communities) in which power is de-centralized

Of the blogs that I love, very, very few of them have responded in a way that I think comes close to addressing the issue here. Feministing has to be my favorite blog ever, and I was crestfallen at the response by the bloggers over there. By continuing to focus on plagiarism, which was never, ever, the issue, they dodge any real responsibility. Is Marcotte a plagiarist? No. Was that the problem? No. Anyone who paid attention to what BFP was saying would know the issue was responsibility and feminist community. We failed her. Miserably. And now there is one less brilliant feminist in the world. We turned our backs on a woman who needed us, choosing instead to give Marcotte a pass. I understand that Marcotte with the same publisher as a lot of feminist bloggers. I understand that she's a colleague. But, why wasn't BFP a colleague?

I also have a lot of trouble with all of the patting on the back that white feminist bloggers are getting for half-assed non-responses that were posted after the fact. BFP has pointed out that without community, there is no movement. When you don't stand by your fellow feminists, when you don't take on the responsibility to back the underdog, you collapse any sense of community there was, and you collapse the movement. I see here that we are repeating the same mistakes that we call earlier generations of feminists out on and it's heartbreaking and embarrassing. I can't imagine the level of betrayal felt.

If I haven't said it enough: Responsibility, Responsibility, Responsibility. If you have power. Any kind of power. And you don't use it to stand in solidarity with those who don't? You are a coward. You uphold racism. You perpetuate it. You reap the benefits of it. I'd like to echo Melissa McEwan here: You can't shirk this responsibility and be progressive. And you damn sure can't shirk this responsibility and be a feminist.

White Privilege and Responsibility

2008-04-15T13:18:00.006-07:00

Ooookay, so it's been months since my last post, and I have, like 4 people who ever read this blog, but I have stuff to say now, and I hope those 4 people will enjoy it. :-)

I'm going to be writing a few posts on race, b/c with the recent events in the feminist blogosphere concerning BFP and Amanda Marcotte and Seal Press and the WOC bloggers who are justifiably nonplussed by the kid gloves with which the situation is being handled by some of the big blogs, combined with Traister's recent article that really articulates some of my issues with the Obama campaign, to ABW's call for allied posts, and Jay Smooth's reaction to Alicia Keyes' comments, and a conversation I found myself having at dinner the other night (no link for that one, I'll be discussing it later), I just think it's important to be talking about this. I mean, holy cow that's a whole lot of linkage right there that's happened in the last few days!

So, I have to be getting to work right now, but I wanted to get these links up there so that any of you 4 (and I do love that I have even 4), who missed any of this can get caught up, and then discussion can begin.

See you soon,
KMP

Stupid Question: Torture Edition

2008-02-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

From the NYT:

If F.B.I. agents were able to get the detainees to talk without harsh interrogation methods, did the C.I.A. have to use them?

Answer: No.

Weim Fever

2008-02-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Mr. KMP is out of town for the week, and it's making me miss my puppies back home very much! I kept telling my parents that I was going to throw GrayC in the back of the truck, and they'd never know I'd taken her to Arizona with me. It gets lonely around the apartment by myself (which is perhaps why I decided to work a double tomorrow?), and wanted to post a video my dad made of our dogs since I can't have them here to snuggle me.

The lumpy one you see waddle by was Eva. She passed away the Thanksgiving before this most recent one, and she was the most awesome dog on earth. She was totally a feminist. You could just tell.

Once More With Feeling...

2008-02-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as "Grey Rape." The latest psychorapeapologistevilmythperpetuator is a young woman writing for the Campus Word, and her disgusting article can be read here. My response (which can also be read in the comments to the articles) was this:

Absolutely disgusting. There is nothing a woman can wear, nothing a woman can do, nothing a woman can say, and nothing a woman can drink that will ever, ever, ever excuse rape. If she says no, you stop. Not in a second, not when you're done, right then and there. You want to think she's a tease or a bitch? You're problem. Sex is not the same thing as rape. There is no blurry line. Unless you get enthusiastic consent, and maintain enthusiastic consent, do not proceed. The only people who are responsible for rape are rapists. You don't want to be accused of rape? Then don't rape. If she looks too drunk to stand, don't have sex with her. If she can hardly talk, don't have sex with her. If she looks like she's unconscious or falling asleep, do not have sex with her. If you do, it's rape, regardless of how you feel about it. If she changes her mind, and you continue, it's rape. If she stops and you don't, she stopped but you didn't, if she STOPS, but you DON'T, it is RAPE. It doesn't matter if she had your penis in her mouth two seconds ago. It doesn't matter that she went up to your room with you. It doesn't matter that she took off her own clothes. If she stops, and you don't, it's rape. Not sex. Rape.

While, for once, the comments section was taken over by people who actually know what they're talking about, I'm really interested in why women are so ready to blame other women for their victimizations. Is it because it's too scary to admit that if it can happen to her, then it could happen to you, too? Is it because they've bought the idea that women are worth less than men, and so what a man wants is what he gets? Or have they bought the myth that rape is sex? And that these women are tempting their fathers/brothers/uncles/husbands/boyfriends, and deserve punishment for it? What is it? Why is it so hard for some women to stand by each other? More importantly, how can we change that?

Settling In...

2008-02-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

So, I'm finally in Arizona. Mr. KMP and I have mostly unpacked (mostly, b/c I own way too much stuff, and some will have to stay in boxes until we move again this spring), and I'm doing my very best to settle in. My new Starbucks is all sorts of crazy, I have to wear a headset for the drive-through (I never thought I'd have a job with a headset), and it's insanely busy, and I don't have any friends yet. And Mr. KMP is out of town for the week for work. So I'm by myself. And did I mention, I don't have friends yet? So with all this extra time on my hands, I'll hopefully be updating this page so much that the two readers I have will worry. :-)

Back the Fuck Up Off of Jamie Lynn Spears

2007-12-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

That is all.

Hostage Situation at Clinton Campaign Office

2007-11-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

via CNN.

If I hear more, I'll be posting it.

**Update**

The two hostages have been freed, though CNN reports that the gunman is believed to remain in the building.

Like It Could Have Been Anything Else...

2007-11-28T00:40:00.001-07:00

Your Inner European is Italian!

Passionate and colorful.
You show the world what culture really is.

Who's Your Inner European?

Disgusting.

2007-11-27T17:53:00.000-07:00

We've all seen the women-as-urinals, the headless, bolted-down woman as pencil sharpener, the breasts-as-hunting-trophy. Lusty Linda just might take the cake. She has a switch; you can turn her to "good mood" or "bad mood." When she's in a good mood and you insert your pen into her, she moans with pleasure. When you switch her to bad mood, she yells for help, cries for you to get out of her, and moans in pain. Besides the obvious misogyny in having a switch (I can just hear the stupid jokes now), there is no other way to interpret this item as anything other than something that promotes rape.

Cara, over at The Curvature, is much more eloquent than I.

I want to make something else, clear, too, and it’s something that could be highly unpopular:

This promotes rape.
If you buy one of these things, you are promoting rape. If you laugh at one of these things, you are promoting rape. If you don’t laugh but still think that it’s a harmless joke, you are promoting rape. If one of your friends has one, or thinks it’s funny, and you don’t say anything about it, you are promoting rape.

Check out her post. It gave me goosebumps.

Great Fires of Hestia!

2007-11-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Gail Simone! She has the honor of becoming the first woman to be an "ongoing writer" for the Wonder Woman. Ms. Simone coined the term "Women in Refrigerators," to describe the brutal treatment female characters receive in comic books.

Who's Your Daddy?

2007-11-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

As reported by the New York Times, paternity tests are becoming available in drug stores. After reading the article, I have to admit that I'm confused. It seems like the kit is just cotton swabs and plastic jars, both of which you could purchase for less than the suggested retail price of $29.99. Besides which, the samples still need to be sent in to a private company for testing, which would cost around $119, and then you wait for five days for the results. Can someone let me know how that is different from how you would normally get a paternity test?

In any case, the OTC availability is controversial, due to the concern that most people would have trouble understanding the results of a test without a genetic counselor. I would understand that concern if one was testing for the gene mutation that causes breast cancer, but a paternity test seems like a straightforward yes-or-no sort of a thing. When I read the headline, I was much more concerned about the validity of results obtained outside of a lab, but since the samples must be sent to a lab anyway, I guess that resolves that issue. The company that makes the tests did note that the results would not be admissible in court.

Thoughts?

You Too Can Live the American Dream! (unless you're black.)

2007-11-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Or if you're parents are poor. And, if you're female. Probably. November 13, The Economic Mobility Project published a report detailing the rates at which people move along the economic ladder. As it turns out, if you're black or poor, you're chances of moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky are exceptionally slim. Women actually do pretty well for themselves, unless they fall into either (or both) of the aforementioned categories. Some fun* statistics:

"In every income group, blacks are less likely than whites to surpass their parents' family income and more likely to fall down the economic ladder."
"Only 31 percent of black children born to middle income parents make more than their parents' family income, compared to 68% of white children."
"Almost half (45%) of black children whose parents were solidly middle income end up falling to the bottom of the income distribution, compared to only 16% of white children."
"Forty-seven percent of daughters born to parents on the bottom rung stay on the bottom rung, compared to 35% of sons."

Thrilling.**

*By fun, I mean un-fun.
**And by thrilling, I mean completely disappointing.

First Day On The Blog

2007-11-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it took some arm twisting, but I've finally created a blog. The final tip was that I'm moving to Arizona in about six weeks, and wanted a way to keep people in the loop, in case any of you care what I'll be up to out in Flagstaff. (Probably a lot of coffee making.) I also love to vent. So, there will be that.

At the moment, I'm terribly busy with trying to finish up the semester, my internship at the Julian Center, working full-time at Starbucks, and attempting to pack to leave. So...I probably won't have much up until around Christmas, but am hoping to keep this updated regularly after the move.

Let me know what you think!