Queer Notes: July 2024

July 26, 2024

Queer Notes columnist Elise presents a bird’s-eye view of the advances and retrogressions in the struggle for freedom of LGBTQI+people worldwide, from Uganda and South Africa to Indonesia, from Poland and Czech Republic to the U.S. and Canada.

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UK mail software robs postal workers

May 16, 2024

In 1999, new Horizon software was installed in post office branches across the UK. Immediately, sub-postmasters and postmistresses experienced inexplicable shortfalls from their branches. It has been called “the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.”

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Women World Wide: November 2023

November 18, 2023

Takes up: International Safe Abortion Day; elections in Poland; ‘Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK, 1970–1990’, the first major art museum show covering the feminist art movement; and El Salvador’s anti-abortion laws.

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Handicap This!: September 2023

September 21, 2023

Takes up: Disability Pride Month; inaccessibility in Montreal’s light-rail stations; proposing cuts to disability payments in the UK, and Case Dominique School in Congo-Brazzaville for children with autism and Down Syndrome.

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Queer Notes: October 5, 2022

October 5, 2022

Rainbow Migration demanded the UK Prime Minister “end immigration detention for all LGBTQ+ people,” “scrap the Rwanda plan” and “reverse changes to the standard of proof for LGBTQ+ people’s asylum claims”; Twelve Republican-led states banned Transgender girls and women from competing in sports; and a long awaited center serving LGBTQ+ people opened on Chicago’s South Side.

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Women Worldwide: July-August 2022

July 21, 2022

No Birth Behind Bars “feed-in” in London; Cross-Border Network of Mexico and U.S. abortion rights groups formed; Montreal protest of the prostitution common at Grand Prix auto race; study finds women less likely to receive credit for their scientific work.

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Queer Notes: June 2022

June 3, 2022

Takes up: UK waffling on protecting LGBTQI+ people from so-called conversion therapy; reviewers are calling ‘Badhaai Do,’ Harshavardhan Kulkarni’s Indian dramedy film about Lesbians and Gay men, bold and refreshing; Gay man Venton Jones won the Democratic runoff primary for Texas’s 10th House district against queerphobe Sandra Crenshaw; and a teacher in Florida created a template letter that cleverly works around Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hate-filled Don’t Say Gay Bill, HB 1557.

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Women WorldWide: June 2022

May 30, 2022

Takes up: in a groundbreaking ruling a Tokyo Court ordered Juntendo University to compensate women because they were rejected from medical school which had tampered with their exam scores and set stricter requirements for women; women in refugee camps in Somalia created their own credit lending system; Sandbach High School’s feminist club in Cheshire, UK, launched a petition calling for the government to ban sales of school uniforms in sex shops and their use in porn videos; and the girls’ track team at Albany High School in New York launched a petition to “Stop Gender Biased Dress Codes: Allow the Girls Track Team to Wear Sports Bras.”

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Handicap This!, January-February 2018

February 1, 2018

Santa Barbara’s jail system and sheriff are sued; Texas caps the number of students who can receive special education services; people with disabilities criticize Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary in the United Kingdom.

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LALIT confronts colonization of Diego Garcia

November 26, 2016

A member of LALIT in Mauritius speaks of their Action Conference on the situation of Diego García Island, which Britain has refused to give back to the original inhabitants after more than 50 years of struggle, and which it rents to the U.S. for a military base.

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Britain’s recognition of Palestine

November 24, 2014

London—You could be forgiven for being surprised at the recent UK Parliament vote last month, with a sizable majority, to recognize Palestinian statehood. After all, when the Palestinians won a hard-fought campaign for recognition at the UN last year, Britain joined a chorus of nations ambivalent or hostile to their efforts. Look beneath the surface, however, and it becomes clear that the British government has little intention of putting words into action….

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Comments from the new News & Letters website

From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters

Regarding “New York City and Ferguson, Missouri, police show pattern of violence against Black people” (Aug. 11 N&L web statement): In 2009 in the UK we saw something similar. Police officers killed a man in the vicinity of a political protest, then told the press [=>]

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Right wing wins in Europe

July 8, 2014

It’s been dubbed a “political earthquake” that has struck the heart of the European Parliament. Yet this surprising victory for the right—where Britain’s own United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) made unprecedented electoral gains–signifies not merely disillusionment with mainstream politics, but growing intolerance across Europe.

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Massive London march against austerity

December 9, 2012

London, England—The leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband, was heckled on Oct. 20 at a mass demonstration here against austerity cuts.

The Labour Party leader had addressed the crowd to garner support for his stand against the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic and Conservative parties. Mr. Miliband claimed the government’s cutbacks were “too far and [=>]

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Assange: Law, politics and human rights

October 4, 2012

London—Protest can be violent. Yet whilst violence towards demonstrators often goes unremarked even in an avowedly democratic nation such as Britain, police violence towards foreign officials, as may have occurred during an attempted storming by British police of the Ecuadorian Embassy, seems a little too much to handle.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has since attempted to [=>]

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World in View: British youth revolt

September 22, 2011

by Gerry Emmett

The killing of 24-year-old Mark Duggan by London police on Aug. 6 set off the largest urban rebellion in Britain in decades. The situation was made worse by police lies that Duggan had pointed a gun at them, and by their rude, smirking response to family and community members who came to the [=>]

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