Is Vagina Probing Sexual Assault???

In light of recent police brutality cases and suspicious deaths of Black [female] Americans while in police custody, is vagina probing sexual assault??? 21 year old Charnesia Corley says, "I felt like they sexually assaulted me." Please read about her case in Texas.

-Kesha Johnson-Clark, Founder of SisterHood Inc/Green Afro Honey
San Francisco, California



A woman has accused sheriff’s deputies in Texas of sexually assaulting her at a gas station by stripping her and conducting a body cavity search without her consent during a traffic stop.
Charnesia Corley, 21, who is African American, said officers with the Harris County sheriff’s department held her down in a Texaco parking lot and probed her vagina in a search for marijuana.

“They did a manual cavity search. It’s the most serious search you can do under our constitution and should be done in a sterile environment. You sure can’t do it in public by the side of the road. It’s unbelievable,” her attorney, Sam Cammack, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

Corley, who has no criminal record, will file a complaint to the Internal Affairs Division, her attorney said. “I’m doing it right now,” Cammack said, adding that he hoped there was video of the incident.

 

Corley was pulled over at around 10.30pm on 21 June near Ella Boulevard and Barren Springs Drive in Houston while driving to a store in order, she said, to fetch something for her sick mother.

According to the Harris County sheriff’s office, a deputy pulled her over for running a stop sign. Upon smelling what he believed to be marijuana he handcuffed Corley, placed her in the back of his patrol car and searched her vehicle in vain for the drug.

Upon returning to the patrol car he then allegedly smelled marijuana, concluded Corley had it hidden on her person, and summoned female deputies. One was African American, the other white.

One ordered her on the ground and ordered her to pull her trousers down, Corley told ABC13. “I told her, I said: ‘Well ma’am, I don’t have any underwear on.’ She says: ‘Well that doesn’t matter. Pull your pants down.’”

Corley said she was ordered to open her legs but said she did not wish to do so. “So she says: ‘Well if you don’t open them, I’m going to break them,’” Corley said. “All I could do was just lay there. I felt helpless.”

She told KTRK she felt violated. “I feel like they sexually assaulted me. I really do. I feel disgusted, downgraded, humiliated.”

Corley was charged with resisting arrest and possession of marijuana after deputies allegedly found .02 ounces of marijuana.

The Harris County sheriff’s department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But a spokesperson told local media the deputies did everything as they should and that Corley had assented to a strip search.

Cammack disputed that and said an officer’s report of the incident, which he had obtained, corroborated his client’s version. The attorney declined to say where the marijuana was found but said police claimed to have found it on Corley’s person. Police usually chose not to prosecute for such tiny amounts of marijuana, he added.

Regardless of what was found, the search violated privacy and the constitution, said Cammack. “They could’ve found a kilo of cocaine insider of her and still should not have done it.”

Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director of the ACLU of Texas, said a cavity search without a warrant was a “blatant” violation of the fourth amendment, and that an orifice probe was the most invasive search possible.

“A body cavity search without a warrant would be constitutionally suspect. But a body cavity search by the side of the road ... I can’t imagine a circumstance where that would be constitutional,” she told the Houston Chronicle.

She noted previous controversies over cavity searches in Texas. In 2013, the Department of Public Safety was forced to pay $185,000 to two women who alleged troopers had conducted cavity searches by the roadside, illuminated by patrol car headlights, in full view of passing traffic.

Police in Texas came under renewed scrutiny last month over the case of Sandra Bland, an African American woman found dead in her Waller County jail cell after being detained during a traffic stop.


Source: The Guardian

Psst...Planned Parenthood Is Not Selling Baby Parts!!!

http://youtu.be/DUT1u8ePmVY

It’s weird for those of us with two brain cells to rub together, that this is even a thing. Because first of all, obviously Planned Parenthood doesn’t sell BABY PARTS. Jesus fucking christ, get a hold of yourselves. Baby parts!

3% of all Planned Parenthood’s activities are abortions, and more than 90% of those are in the first trimester when it’s about size of a kidney bean, so they do see some pieces of fetal tissue. Which are just going to be thrown away in the garbage, but which the patient can instead choose to donate to important medical research.

HOW DARE THEY! How dare Planned Parenthood allow women to aid in the research and treatment of conditions like H.I.V. and Parkinson’s disease, when instead those women could just be throwing that tissue in the garbage!

So yeah, there’s the fact that Planned Parenthood obviously isn’t “selling baby parts.” And then there’s the fact that the group releasing this video are some of the same people who worked for the group Live Action, which is best known for…editing together misleading videos attacking Planned Parenthood.

So despite the fact that this is an obviously made up and ridiculous accusation, actual politicians are taking it seriously. If you live in the US, your tax dollars are now going toward Congressional Republicans calling for a formal investigation, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee has announced they’ll launch a probe. A probe for baby parts! Good luck, guys!

This all reminds me of a course I took in college on heresy. I remember learning about how multiple times throughout human history, various groups of people have been accused of the very specific act of gathering together and hosting orgies, and then taking the resulting babies from any past orgies and burning them into ashes, which are then formed into cakes, which are then eaten. Usually it’s supposed to be the Jews doing this but plenty of other marginalized groups have been accused as well. And it always baffled me to think that people could really, truly believe that their fellow humans were doing something so obviously stupid and made up.

Well, now it’s 2015 and an organization that is mostly responsible for making sure poor women have access to basic medical care including cancer screenings, checkups, and birth control, are accused of convincing women to abort their babies and then tearing them into parts and selling them on the black market.

And I realize, that if it helps you achieve your goals — whether they be persecuting people of a different faith or cutting funding for poor women’s health care — it becomes surprisingly easy to believe something unbelievable.


Source: Skepchick

Celebrating 50 Years of Legal Birth Control

Fifty years after the landmark Griswold decision, birth control has become a staple in the lives of American families, yet is still anchored in legal controversy.  As we celebrate Griswold’s powerful legacy and the important steps taken to make birth control access a reality, we must also hold our breaths that the courts do not undermine this tremendous progress. In the meantime, we also must continue to work to ensure that every woman in America has access to the birth control she needs. 

Source: Planned Parenthood

Pics: I Stand in Solidarity with Baltimore Speak Out 5/30/15

Please click here to view more photos from the San Francisco, California location. A special thank you to W.O.R.D, ANSWER and all the supporters who attended on Saturday, May 30th.

Action: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (San Francisco)

Demonstrators took to the streets of San Francisco to draw attention to the police-related deaths of black women. The movement was spurred by the recent report “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women.” Nearly 300 protesters on Thursday gathered in San Francisco’s Financial District to draw attention to unarmed black women who have been killed by police in recent years. And, in an unexpected departure from the rest of the nationwide movement, many of the activists did so topless.

The Bay Area protest was just one of at least 17 other movements taking place in other metropolitan areas, including Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. Chinerye Tutashinda, a founding member of the BlackOUT Collective, told BuzzFeed News that the decision to carry out the protest by exposing their bodies was a local one, and that she did not expect other demonstrations in other cities to follow suit. She added that the reasons behind the bold choice ranged from ancestral homage to social critique. “We wanted to be able to say ‘enough is enough’ and draw on traditions from Nigeria, Gabon, Uganda, and South Africa, from women who bare their chests and other parts of their bodies in protest,” she said.

Exposing their breasts also served as a statement on the societal tendency to fixate on black women’s physical bodies, but not when those same bodies face violence. Rose Berry works for the local chapter of the Black Youth Project 100, and described the disconnect to BuzzFeed News. “When it’s in the name of pop culture, and what’s expected in mainstream society, people applaud it, but when it’s in the name of peace and justice and liberation, they ignore it,” she said.

The organizers also talked about the third, more personal impact of protesting topless: For black women who had been victimized by various forms of violence to reclaim their bodies in public space. Tutashinda said some of the women who removed their shirts “were women who’ve been survivors of rape, who’ve had abortions, who’ve lost children.” “Putting yourself out there makes you very vulnerable,” she said. As someone who also protested with her chest exposed, Tutashinda said she was terrified.

According to Berry, the protest, while relatively small compared to other related demonstrations, still made a sizable impact. “There were black women on their way to work who stopped and cried, thanked the women who were protesting,” she said. Some men joined the demonstration, and while they experienced a few unpleasant words from frustrated commuters, the police were cooperative, Berry added. “We wanted to kick off the day, give them a dose of black women’s liberation with their morning coffee,” she said. “We won’t be ignored anymore. We’re not invisible. We’ve never been invisible.”

Source: BuzzFeed UK

#SayHerName

International Women's Day 2015

Observing International Women’s Day 2015

As I acknowledge and join fellow W.O.R.D SF members in celebration of International Women’s Day with the theme of “Still Fighting for Our Rights & Equality”, I look to the women around the globe who struggle every day for justice in countries such as El Salvador where reproductive freedom and access to abortions are forbidden back to right here in the United States where human rights and the legal system are not equal from Florida with the Stand Your Ground Law to California with Yes Means Yes. Also let us not forget that in 2015, this celebration also encompasses our comrades within the transgender community and those who identify as such to provide an array of international diversity.

Specifically, as I speak of Carmen Guadalupe Vasquez Aldana’s case, Marissa Alexander’s case, Meggan Sommerville’s case and the SB967 Student Safety Sexual Assault Bill-let us rally together loud and proud to “say no to the status-quo…full equality for all women”…thank you!!! -KJC


For those wanting to participate in International Women's Day in the Bay Area:

San Francisco, CA
Still Fighting for Our Rights & Equality
Sunday, March 8, 2 p.m.
24th and Mission Streets
Sponsored by W.O.R.D SF

Action: Sign Petition to Make Sexual and Reproductive Health a Priority!!!

Do you support the motto "My body, My Choice"??? Help tell world leaders to make sexual and reproductive health [of women] a priority. Click here to sign the petition and spread the word!!!



#mybodymychoice