(Source: purplebuddhaproject, via rainbowlotus)
(Source: overidealism, via rainbowlotus)
Fosters.com: State rep. starts petition against UNH sex workers conference
DOVER — New Hampshire state representative Joe Sweeney, R-N.H., has started a petition to raise support and start asking questions as to who approved using student activity money for a mini-sex workers conference at the University of New Hampshire in April.
“I think it’s an atrocity that our students brought prostitutes to our campus,” said Sweeney, who represents Rockingham County District 8.
Sweeney posted the petition on his Facebook page and the petition was also sent to media outlets by Americans for Prosperity’s state director, Greg Moore, who wrote in an email that he “couldn’t agree more,” with Sweeney.
The mini-conference spanned throughout the day on Tuesday, April 16, starting with a documentary and ending with a 7 p.m. panel discussion on the rights of sex workers.
Moore sent a Right to Know request to the university earlier this week to make public the cost of the event and is expecting to receive documentation from them on Monday.Meanwhile, Kitty Stryker, one of the conference speakers, has started a counterpetition against the state rep. “I think it’s an atrocity that our students brought prostitutes to our campus,” said Rep. Joe Sweeney, despite the fact that only one of them may have been a full service worker, and the fact that one of them was a current UNH student and one a former UNH student, so no one really went out of their way to “bring” them to campus.
I went to high school with him. At first, I was really shocked he would say such offensive and ignorant things, but I checked it out on Facebook and he seemed to eat his words. He claims to just want answers, but promoting the discussion of the difficult challenges faced by sex workers and recognizing that they have rights is NOT something that I believe is a waste of the school/fundraiser contributors’ money. His closing statement on Facebook was super-politically correct. He blabbered on about how we need to protect the sex workers from the high degree of violence they experience and recognize their rights and how he knows this because he just finished a women’s studies class here. Oh yeah? Then don’t fucking say that putting on a conference about this issue with experienced people present is an “atrocity”.
“Bic For Her” pens
The Student Nondiscrimination Act would ban discrimination of LGBT students in U.S. public schools and require schools to take this harassment and bullying seriously. Sign a petition from the ACLU to tell members of Congress to cosponsor this bill
14-yr-old Bayli helped stop LGBT bullying at her middle school. Now she’s fighting for the first ever law to make sure all LGBT kids in the country are protected. Will you stand with her again? https://www.aclu.org/secure/bayli-SNDA
photo by Michael Nichols @nickngs. A sneak peek #serengetidiaries (IG exclusive) a story on Serengeti lions coming in the August 2013 issue of @natgeo magazine. by natgeo
Saudi Arabia: End Prosecution of Human Rights Lawyer
Saudi authorities should immediately halt the 18-month prosecution of a Jeddah-based human rights lawyer. The charges against Walid Abu al-Khair, which include “offending the judiciary” and “attempting to distort the reputation of the kingdom,” are based solely on the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression.
Abu al-Khair told Human Rights Watch that he believes that the case against him is in retaliation for statements he made in 2010 criticizing Judge Abdullah al-`Othaim’s handling of the case of Samar Badawi. The judge had ordered her sent to prison for “disobeying” her father. Badawi, who alleged that she suffered many years of physical and psychological abuse by her father, had been attempting to transfer her guardianship from her father to another male relative at the time of her arrest. Despite a ruling in her favor by the Jeddah Public Court in July 2010, authorities did not release her until October 2010, following the intervention of the governor of Makkah province, Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud.
