On March 9, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors meeting was filled with a couple hundred Santa Cruz County residents to advocate for Gay Marriage. Santa Cruz County locals have been asking the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors to follow the lead of San Francisco and join the lawsuit being filed against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment banning same-sex marriages.

The community members present were happy when the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously (4 yes, 0 no, 1 absent) in support of asking Richard Bedal, the Santa Cruz County Clerk, to join the lawsuit being filed against the proposed ban on same-sex marriages. The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors has no authority to order the independently elected clerk to act.

Same-Sex Marriage Testimony

more photos: [ 1 - 2 - 3 ]

[ Same-Sex Marriages Break Barrier in America I Indybay's LGBTI / Queer Page I The Diversity Center I Santa Cruz Pride I GLBTI Resource Center at UCSC I Manifesto News ]

The Global Women's Strike was born in 1999, when women in Ireland decided to welcome the new millennium with a national general strike. They asked the International Wages for Housework Campaign to support their call, and called on women all over the world to make the Strike global on March 8, 2000.

The Strike came out of a long grassroots history, starting in 1952 with a little pamphlet called A Womans Place and continuing with Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, now a classic, in 1972, and Sex, Race and Class in 1973. All three pamphlets made the case that the work women do for wages is a second job, and that the work women do in the home and in the community without wages were invisible but central.

Since 2000, the Strike has been a great success. It has brought together women in over 60 countries, including grassroots organizations with impressive track records, who also demand a world that values all womens work.

We are often told that in order to win we must unite, but we don't hear much about how to do that (except from political parties that want to lead us). We use the Strike as a framework for unity -- among sectors of women, between women and men, within and among countries -- because it is based on each sector accepting and enriching the independent struggle of every other. The Strike is not party political, nor is it separatist. It is ambitious for the movement for change but it stands against personal ambition that undermines mutual accountability.

Meet at the townclock (Pacific and Water) in Santa Cruz on Monday, March 8 at 5:30 PM.

International Women's Day at UCSC from 8:00 - 10:00 PM

Audio and Text: What Half the World Wants, by Mumia Abu-Jamal

[ 5th Global Women's Strike I International Women's Day I International Women's Day Background and Resources I All Women Count I Refusing to Kill ]

The BIG - Body Image & Gender Event is a Sex-Positive event on Sexual Politics taking place on Sunday Feb. 29 from 4:00 - 10:00 PM at the Vets Hall.

The 2nd annual BIG Event brings sex to the foreground while addressing issues of sex work, alternative relationships and sex practices, safer sex, and reclaiming sex for survivors and partners. BIG features Daisy Anarchy (an activist with Sex Workers Organized for Human, Labor, and Civil Rights) and local community activist Monica Morales of Santa Cruz AIDS Project.

Ultimately, we hope to further our understanding of what it means to be sex positive.

Audio: Daisy Anarchy Speaking at the BIG Event

[ Gender Funk Collective I I Deserve To Be Safe I Download the .pdf Flyer! ]

29th Annual Santa Cruz PRIDE took place on Sunday June 1 to kick off a month of Pride and Celebration, Debuting GENDER FUNK COLLECTIVE!

Gender Funk is a new non-profit, social change organization that seeks to deconstruct the many socio-political inequalities that have over time been normalized in mainstream society to become acceptable simply due to their presistent presence and continual practices, such as classism, racism, ageism, hetero-normativity, assimilationist politics, economic globalization, environmental exploitation, etc.

You are invited to the 9th Queeruption in Tel-Aviv, August 2006!

Breast implants for 18-year-olds? Hymen reconstructions? Rape-themed fashion collections? Don't tell Sheila Jeffreys these are signs of female liberation. The radical feminist talks to Julie Bindel

Not a terrorist but a target.

U.S. policy makers should make their decisions based upon clear objectives and sound research. This article questions the efficacy of a new policy that requires international HIV Prevention Agencies to condemn prostitution in order to receive federal funding.

About a dozen young people organized a leaflet action on June 12, to encourage a boycott of Urban Outfitters. They're upset that company CEO Richard Hayne, is a major contributor to the Republican Party, and specifically to Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum, one of the most rabidly anti-gay US Senators.