Murder in the Margins: Global Systems of Exploitation Conference Report

an education and action conference
addressing the epidemic of murdered and disappeared women
in Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada
at City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University April 3-5, 2008

Yesterday we brought the dresses from the month-long ReDressing Injustice installation in for the night for the last time. We will mail the new dresses back to Irene Simmons for further participation in the project and will deliver the dresses that were eligible for and sold during the silent auction. Today is one month since the start of the conference. The activities and events surpassed our expectations. Best of all, we have plans to continue pursuing the goal of the conference to make the connections between the rapes, murders, and disappearances of women in Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada and the injuries to working class and communities of color in the United States through NAFTA, CAFTA, and drug and sex trafficking. (5/3/08)

This report will provide a summary of the events of the Murder in the Margins: Global Systems of Exploitation Conference, held jointly at City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, April 3-5, 2008, as well as a brief outline of follow-up activities. Nearly 300 people participated over the three days, many of whom learned for the first time about the details of the epidemic of the murders, rapes, mutilations, and disappearances of women in Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada, where indigenous women are targeted.

Conference Visual Art
Visual art honoring the victims and resisting the violence appeared throughout the conference. Painter and muralist Juana Alicia generously donated a detail from her mural, "La Llorona's Sacred Waters" (24th and York Streets in the Mission District), for the conference poster. This section of the mural features mothers in Ciudad Juárez mourning the loss of their daughters and protesting the rapes, murders, and disappearances. In the weeks prior to the conference, at the CCSF Mission Campus, artist Rosa María Valdez installed a portion of her exhibit "665 (seiscientos sesenta y cinco)," which refers to the feminicide figures for Guatemala in 2005 and also speaks out against the "the escalation of violence against women all over the world." Under the tutelage of Irene Simmons, creator of the "ReDressing Injustice" project, a dozen City College students and others created new dresses for the ReDressing Injustice exhibit.

Conference Brochure
Each person who attended the conference received a brochure with background information, the three day agenda, and a bibliography/webography/filmography, available at www.ccsf.edu/psurvive. Saturday workshop participants also received a copy of the essay "The Complexities of 'Feminicide' on the Border" by Rosa Linda Fregoso, which appeared in Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2006).

Thursday, April 3 at City College of San Francisco (CCSF)
On Thursday, April 3, the conference opened mid-day with a screening of Lourdes Portillo's film Señorita Extraviada in the CCSF Rosenberg Library. About 50 people attended.

In the early evening, another 35 people gathered for a candlelight vigil on Cloud Circle near the entrance of Rosenberg Library. Three people, stationed at either side of the vigil formation, passed out 1/4-page sheets that outlined the reason for the vigil, the events of the three day conference, and a sampling of websites for more information.

The participants of the vigil reconvened in a media room in the library where they were joined by 30 additional people to hear the keynote talk by Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano, chair of Chicana/o Studies at Stanford University and one of the lead coordinators of the May 2007 Stanford conference, "Feminicide=Sanctioned Murder," which inspired our conference. Speaking in front of a backdrop of slides of the installation of ReDressing Injustice at Stanford, Yarbro-Bejarano gave a moving report of the origins, planning, and implementation of their conference in order to provide support and ideas for the next two days of events and activities in San Francisco. The Stanford conference, international in scope, resulted in the establishment of "The Network without Borders for Women's Life and Liberty" and the passage of a series of resolutions, which included as a strategy "to organize a worldwide event in Juárez with simultaneous actions in different cities, to take place the first Thursday of each month." Yarbro-Bejarano acknowledged how gratifying it was to speak at our conference on the first Thursday of April as a testament to the work accomplished at Stanford last year. During her talk, the idea arose of taking a caravan of protesters to Juárez sometime in the next year. Though participants agreed we would need to address issues of both safety and cultural appropriateness, this discussion continued on Friday at the San Francisco State University student forum.

Thursday evening, at a small gathering of a few of the conference organizers along with artist Juana Alicia, Yarbro-Bejarano, and poet Lorna Dee Cervantes, Juana Alicia suggested that we might consider pursuing a foundation grant to explore how artists and writers have responded to and documented the feminicides. This idea also carried over to the next day's events.

Friday, April 4 at San Francisco State University (SFSU), 1:00-5:00 p.m.
Approximately 150 people attended the San Francisco State University segment of the conference, which included a lecture, panel presentation, poetry reading, and student forum.

"Globalizing Femicide: Maquiladoras and Misogyny on the U.S.-Mexico Border" (Lecture)
Naomi Quiñonez (Raza Studies) provided a historical perspective concerning how forces like colonization, the growth of capitalism, and the evolution of gender roles create an environment that allows femicides to continue. She argues that multinational corporations represent a capitalist, patriarchal, colonial project¬, or "corporatocracy," which has become the "new plantation," with workers oppressed into a kind of "indentured servitude." Quiñonez explained how the growth of the maquilas (50% of them in Juárez owned by United States corporations) has influenced gender roles in the area. She offered the example of how the provider role in the family has shifted: since women are sought after as employees in these maquilas, men have been pushed out of a large part of the job market. Quiñonez complemented her political analysis with the reading of some of her own poems.

"Global/Local Links: Contesting the Legacies of Gendered Violence and Inequalities" (Panel)
Sheila Tully (Anthropology and Labor Studies) discussed how some people are seen as exploitable and expendable resources, such as enslaved black women. Tully introduced Patricia Hill Collins' concept of "hegemonic masculinity," where masculinity does not mean equality among men because white, elite men subordinate other men. Tully discussed the idea of borders and questioned what they really restrict. She explained that capital crosses borders freely while people cannot. This model of exploitation makes profits, not people, central and leaves women vulnerable.

Jillian Sandell (Women and Gender Studies) argued that cultural activism serves as a valid and necessary means of protest, especially when political and legal efforts have failed. As an important intervention in human rights violations, art helps generate other meanings and solutions and calls all of us to "imagine and create the conditions of possibility." According to Sandell, cultural activism reframes the issue in four ways: 1. it changes our ideas of what is normal and disrupts the master narrative by bringing violence and recognition of it into the public sphere; 2. it honors and humanizes victims and their families while critiquing the aestheticization of violence; 3. it opens up space to grapple with the complexities of issues with no simple answers or quick fix solutions; 4. it produces shifts in consciousness.

Juana Flores from Mujeres Unidas y Activas gave some brief history of her organization, where Latina immigrant women work together to decide which issues they want to focus on. Mujeres Unidas y Activas addresses three areas of activism: labor rights, health rights, and domestic issues. Flores noted that it is important for women to be familiar with the legislative process. At the same time, she highlighted the usefulness of building coalitions by making links and connections with other grassroots organizations. Kathleen Coll served as translator for Flores.

Following the panel, Lorna Dee Cervantes and four CCSF and SFSU students read their own poems about violence against women, Juárez, and cultural identity. Then, four students from SFSU's student club Feminism in Action facilitated a lively open forum about the femicides. Together, faculty, students, and others discussed both root causes of the murders and potential responsible actions we can take.

Saturday, April 5 at City College of San Francisco, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
After light breakfast snacks, participants divided into two workshops. Twelve people signed up for the "ReDressing Injustice" workshop facilitated by Irene Simmons, and eighteen chose to attend the "Making the Connections Locally and Globally" workshop, co-faciliated by Alma Avila, director of the CCSF Community Health Worker Program, and Brenda Molina, coordinator of the CCSF Women's Resource Center.

Irene welcomed the participants to "ReDressing Injustice" and then made a Power Point presentation of the project's history. After giving general instructions for dress adornment and reminding the participants that the goal is to celebrate the lives of the victims, she put everyone to work. Participants created nine new dresses to add to the project and to hang on the third floor of the college's Cloud Hall during the remainder of April, Rape Awareness Month. Themes of justice, mourning, innocence, festivity, and reconciliation emerged as the dresses took shape.

At the "Making the Connections" workshop, Brenda welcomed the participants, and then Alma introduced them to how policy gets developed, through an icebreaker and mini-lecture. Both facilitators led a large group discussion on the purpose of the conference and possible actions/solutions. After a card game that explored types of actions and the roles of individuals as well as groups, and an Internet activity on government representatives, participants split up into three groups assigned with the task of making contact with a legislator, each in a specific way: writing a letter; phoning; making a personal visit.

After lunch, all participants reconvened in the "ReDressing Injustice" workshop room, where they heard the stories of what inspired each adornment¬: the quinceañera dress for a young woman who wouldn't live long enough to experience that traditional Mexican celebration; the dress of a baby never born; the dress of a religious young woman; the party dress draped in bright yellow "CAUTION" tape. After the presentation of the dresses, everyone walked back down the hall to the "Connections" workshop room where "Connections" participants offered strategies for contacting legislators through a sample letter, a mock phone call and a role-play of an office visit.

ReDressing Injustice Installation, Third Floor Cloud Hall at CCSF (April 7-May 2)
The month-long installation of twelve dresses and an accompanying informational bulletin board brought new attention to the issue. At most times during the day, when the dresses hung on the walls, a single person or small groups of people examined one or another of the dresses and read the placard explaining its purpose for hanging there. Some people picked up "How You Can Help" sheets from the bulletin board. CCSF instructor, Marcos Gutierrez saw the dresses and gave conference organizers a spot to talk about the issue on his show on the Spanish language radio station KIQI La Grande 1010-AM in San Francisco on April 15.

Conference Follow-up
Though the problem involves, as stated in the sub-title of the conference, "global systems of exploitation," and so can seem overwhelming, it's clear that each step we take to raise consciousness on the issue and to make the connections between economic globalization and gender, race, and class abuses can have a positive impact.

Promises and Proposals:
1. Information-We will create a "Murder in the Margins" blog, connected to the Project SURVIVE website, www.ccsf.edu/psurvive, which will include an update of activities in the SF Bay Area and of The Network without Borders for Women's Life and Liberty.
2. Advocacy-We will contact Nancy Boyda, representative from Kansas who has authored legislation that requires the President to renegotiate NAFTA. One specific part of the bill relates to Mexican democracy and human freedoms. (Phone: 212-225-6601 to get more information and voice your support.) The CCSF "Latinas in the U.S." class will continue other advocacy options.
3. Financial Support-We will continue to raise money for Casa Amiga, the Ciudad Juárez rape crisis and activism center, through sales of ReDressing Injustice cards and silent auctions of new dresses created at future CCSF-facilitated workshops, sponsored by the CCSF "Politics of Sexual Violence" class. The 2008 conference raised over $1,000 for Casa Amiga.
4. Cultural Activism-We will research the idea of creating a teaching tool/workbook for lower division college students on cultural activism focused on the issues of the conference.
5. Political Action-We will explore the possibilities of demonstrating continuing solidarity with the ongoing protests in Mexico via a caravan to Ciudad Juárez and/or Mexico City.

Lijia Lumsden and Leslie Simon (May 2008)