#making a significant change and so opposed neither would unless an extreme and specific situation presented itself and I’m SO fucking

[ziracona]

Obsessed with the way Two-Face talks about Harvey in the Arkham games like do I like all the choices? Not at all. Is the “Harvey might feel bad about this Batman, but we'll bring him around,” line alone rotating in my head since I saw it and one of the pillars of how I see and write Two-Face? Ye baby.

[beetlesister7]

Workplace Mediation, Fixing Problem At Work.

Exactly How To Use Mediation To Work Out Disagreements At The Workplace

Content

What Outcomes Can You Anticipate From Workplace Mediation?

Court Application Certifications Signed By An Approved Family Mediator.

What Is Mediation?

If your company has decreased your wages without your permission, you may have an insurance claim for illegal reduction of salaries and also/ or positive dismissal if you chose to surrender. Under mediation services reading , HMRC will certainly pay 80% of your salaries (based on a cap of ₤ 2,500). Given your employer does not have a legal right to lower pay in your employment agreement, if your employer means to only pay you 80% of your salaries, they would certainly need your arrangement to do so. Yes you require to be knowledgeable about these requirements if you use anyone of any age. They influence every location of employment as well as the employment as well as selection process.

Mediation is launched primarily by senior managers or Human Resources practitioners as opposed to the parties themselves. It tends to be utilized as a last hope, although earlier treatment was most likely in organisations with in-house mediation capability.

What Outcomes Can You Expect From Workplace Mediation?

The coming with course manual Workplace Mediation Skills is supplied free to all delegates, assisting you to plan for the training course and also further develop your abilities as a workplace arbitrator. The National Work and Workplace Mediation Certificate is Globis' front runner training course and runs in 2 systems over 5 days, broken down into a block of three days and a block of 2 days. It supplies delegates with the skills needed to come to be an approved workplace mediator.

Are mediators free?

At mediation, you can have a mediator that's appointed by the court, and in that case it is free of charge to all of the parties. Other times, you'll engage a private mediator. Often these are retired judges or people with a great deal of experience in the field.

The proof is that it will certainly conserve cash, boost productivity as well as employee relationships, and avoid lawsuits. Stephen Levinson looks at the benefits, obstacles as well as sensible problems involved in presenting an in-house mediation plan. You have to not undertake any kind of job that generates profits for your company or provides solutions to them. Unless your company has defined in your employment contract that it can minimize your wage, then no. If your employer suggests to decrease your pay, they should get your contract.

Court Application Certifications Authorized By A Certified Household Moderator.

Usually I have run into circumstances that events have felt were bhopeless however, due to the opportunities that mediation supplies solutions have been located. Usually individuals propose mediation in excellent belief as they can identify, as an event that it the chance for an outside celebration to offer an assisting hand to accomplish success within the circumstance.

Sarah England is a qualified moderator having actually obtained a nationwide certificate in mediation from the National Open College Network. Workplace conflict can wreck a well-established firm, sidetracking as well as upsetting otherwise solid as well as effective monitoring teams responsible for managing the repercussions.

This article is for general information objectives only and also does not comprise lawful or specialist guidance. It should not be utilized as a substitute for legal recommendations relating to your certain scenarios. Please note that the legislation may have changed because the date of this short article. It is very challenging to find up with excellent factors not to include mediation in employers' mechanisms for settling problem.

This can have considerable influence on both people and performance. official website of techniques can be utilized in this kind of circumstance, including neutral analysis, team facilitation and team mediation. We are taking actions to make sure that all our affiliates as well as clients continue to be safe during the pandemic and are providing all our services online. For further information on online mediation please see our extra guide.

Workplace mediation is not suitable for some situations, for instance where a discrimination or whistle-- blowing grievance has actually been raised as well as it has to be explored. Keep in mind that mediation might likewise not be ideal for scenarios that include sexual harassment which is a significant problem requiring specific handling. For extra on this, see our Company's overview to dealing with sexual harassment at work. Finally, guarantee that you secure the solutions of an internal or exterior conciliator trained in line with nationwide standards-- brand-new overarching requirements are because of be announced in 2014. If you have or are preparing an internal mediation team, recruit from as vast a series of ranking, function and also general diversity as feasible. The study recommends that, as an example, some senior events are reluctant to be mediated by a junior colleague. Covering discretion is unhelpful and also much more nuanced approaches are needed-- as an example, the mediator helping the events to word a joint statement for individuals that need to understand what the end results as well as activity strategies are.

Below are four of our group who are in charge of the day to day operating of the business.

Direct Mediation Services has among the largest networks of accredited household moderators across England and Wales.

What unifies us as a team is our commitment to helping families fix conflict through the mediation process.

They originate from a diverse variety of expert backgrounds consisting of family members solicitors, therapists, and social workers.

business mediation services northampton understand family mediation operates in many situations since we have efficiently helped over 3000 clients to date.

We have serviced many employment legislation instances as well as each private obtains the upmost treatment and factor to consider throughout the situation. If you have a work issue, usually it is something else for consideration within your instance, so it is always worth speaking to a work regulation solicitor and figuring out for certain. Mediation is a voluntary and confidential type of different dispute resolution. It includes an independent, objective 3rd party helping 2 or more people or teams to get to a solution that works and also is acceptable for every person. The goal of mediation in the workplace is to recover and maintain the working partnership if at all feasible.

Work mediation tends to tackle a much more commercial personality as it usually happens in the context of a feasible or real Employment Tribunal insurance claim. If arrangement is reached it usually takes the type of a Compromise Agreement.

The demands not just make it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds old but also harassment whether it be willful or unintended or to victimise a person. Once you have actually selected an appropriate employee make certain supervisors as well as staff are trained to check as well as avoid any kind of biased practices. Additionally ensure it is clear within any plans you have that discrimination in any form is unacceptable. Make certain managers are fully trained in variety concerns which they are able to manage discriminatory problems that develop within the workplace. I discovered her to be extremely educated, pleasant and she explained points clearly, and also used easy to understand language. Our expert employment regulation solicitors are extremely experienced as well as will certainly treat each case distinctively relying on your circumstances. Our employment regulation professionals attain remedies via personal settlements and are constantly handy to give assistance when dealing with work law issues.

Using mediation to deal with these circumstances can consequently have a substantial impact not only to employee connections and also well-being but inevitably to an organisation's bottom line. Yet the skills as well as procedures we make use of are similar, and the difference depends on the method we come close to the mediation day. David's starting point in the mediation was a demand for ₤ 860,000. His case in the Employment Tribunal consisted of settlement for impairment discrimination, damages for injury to sensations, exacerbated as well as excellent problems, rate of interest, costs and also settlement for loss of career revenues. The worker was sustained in the mediation by his union agent, as well as the company was advised by an internal lawful group. Both celebrations were considering leaving if the circumstance might not be worked out. They hesitantly consented to mediation but neither intended to change work.

Vietnam: Draft Decree guiding the Investment Law 2020 - Lexology

Vietnam: Draft Decree guiding the Investment Law 2020.

Posted: Wed, 06 Jan 2021 09:52:09 GMT [source]

In scenarios that are strained, it is challenging to trust the objectives and also motivations of the "opposite". This might be based upon experience so agreeing to mediation and also, certainly, a mediator comes to be tough. Nora Doherty as well as her team of experienced arbitrators offerIndependent Mediation sessions for individuals or teams at your very own location. Any kind of unneeded conflict can be bad for PR beyond business as well as bad for the morale of the workers who are no longer ambassadors for business but rather can spread out adverse PR.

[coldstarlightharmony-blog]

Survey: Acer's C7 Chromebook is $199 and feelin' fine (moderately) It's the least expensive Chromebook yet, yet is it a bit of junk?.

I have two major issues with Chrome OS and Chromebooks as an item classification. The first is I believe that Chrome OS, while a fascinating trial, is restricted by its extremely nature to a limited arrangement of utilization cases (generally people and private companies who depend overwhelmingly on Google and Google Apps for the majority of their work). The second issue is value: given how little Chrome OS does, the PCs running it have ordinarily been a bit excessively costly looked at, making it impossible to spending Windows portable workstations.

Samsung's ARM-based Chromebook tended to the second point by offering a moderately nice tablet for $249, a considerably more sensible cost than the $449 Series 550 Chromebook presented not long ago. Presently Acer has limboed even lower, offering its new Intel-fueled C7 Chromebook for just $199. Doubtlessly this tablet, which is basically a rebranding of its $329 Windows-running Aspire One AO756-2641, is being sold at an engaging cost. Be that as it may, are the exchange offs inborn to any tablet this modest worth making?

Body and fabricate quality

This Chromebook is evaluated at $199, yet the construct quality is sensible, certainly not as awful as some $199 and $299 netbooks discharged in the course of the most recent couple of years. It's somewhat chunkier than Samsung's ARM Chromebook; it's 1.08 inches thick, up from around 0.66 inches, and measures three pounds as opposed to the ARM Chromebook's 2.4 pounds.

As is not out of the ordinary, the body is all-plastic—the top and palm rest are a smooth dim plastic, and the base of the cover is a finished dark. The PC is little and firmly sufficiently built that there's hardly any bowing or flexing, even in the show. This isn't construct quality that they'll compose tunes about, yet it's very tolerable considering the price.The tablet's port choice is vigorous, yet not front line. There are three USB 2.0 ports, two on the privilege and one on the left. USB 2.0 is somewhat frustrating, since the tablet's Intel HM70 chipset gives four USB 3.0 ports locally, however it's famously excusable in a $199 Chrome OS tablet. Joining the USB ports are a 100 megabit Ethernet port, a VGA port, and a HDMI, sufficiently port to associate the tablet to both systems and outside showcases new and old. An earphone jack, and a Kensington bolt space round out the cast. While I had a few issues getting the ARM-based Chromebook to yield video over HDMI when I checked on it, both the VGA port and the HDMI port filled in as expected on the C7. A current designer channel work of Chrome OS really empowers an augmented desktop mode without precedent for the working framework's history. That is something that ought to stream down to the steady channel inside the following few weeks.The portable PC's greatest staying point is presumably the show, a 11.6-inch 1366x768 number. The shading and brilliance are in reality entirely great. Be that as it may, as is basic in the low-quality TN shows utilized as a part of low-end tablets, the differentiation proportion is awful and the survey points are more awful. With a 11-inch show you ought to as a rule have the space to open the screen as much as you need regardless of the possibility that you're on a prepare or plane. On account of the C7, this is fortunate on the grounds that taking a gander at the screen from something besides the ideal point totally washes it out in a rush. A stuck pixel on our Google-gave survey unit may likewise be demonstrative of not as much as immaculate quality control on Acer's part, however this is hard to find out from utilizing just a single machine.Not all is ruddy with the console either. It's the standard chiclet-style console you'll get in any purchaser portable workstation nowadays. As you'd anticipate from the C7's value point, the console is emphatically average and has nice key travel yet with somewhat of a soft vibe. The most exceedingly bad thing about it may be its format, however the issues go past Acer's peculiar molded return key. The single greatest issue is certainly the bolt keys, which are half-tallness on a level plane and additionally vertically. This renders them small and hard to touch-sort in case you're utilized to standard bolt key layouts.The trackpad is a standard-issue buttonless multitouch undertaking. Clicking and dragging, utilizing two fingers to right-click, and different movements like two-finger looking over all filled in as expected. I didn't have any issues with palm dismissal or lethargy. These sorts of trackpads are just essential in the event that they don't work legitimately and, at any rate in my use, I observed the C7's trackpad to be wonderfully unremarkable.

At last, the C7's legacy as a Windows portable workstation makes it somewhat unique in relation to other reason fabricated Chromebooks. The Caps Lock key is as yet a Caps Lock key as opposed to a Search key—rather, a Search key is found where the Windows key would be on a standard PC console. There's likewise no equipment "engineer change" to impair the safe bootloader. On the C7, you can get to designer mode by squeezing the escape key, the F3 key, and the power catch at the login screen to enter reestablish mode, then Ctrl and D to flip engineer mode.Compared to the ARM Chromebook, Samsung's putting forth is marginally more slender, lighter, and more appealing, however the screen quality is about the same as the C7. It's likewise fanless, which is desirable over the C7's single, in some cases whiny framework fan. Be that as it may, the C7 has the better determination of ports, and as we'll see, it really outflanks its more costly cousin in most significant measurements.

Internals, execution, and battery life

Most Chromebooks to date have incorporated some kind of energy productive, low-end processor, simply enough RAM to get by, and a little measure of strong state stockpiling. Chrome OS' concentrate on spilling and distributed storage implies that a little measure of quick stockpiling is for the most part desirable over a lot of moderate stockpiling.

The C7 proceeds with the custom of utilizing shoddy processors and little measures of RAM—a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 and 2GB of DDR3 RAM drive the vast majority of the activity here. Be that as it may, it utilizes a substantial and moderate (yet cheap) 5400RPM 320GB hard drive for capacity. Since the Chromebook C7 is truly only a rebranded Aspire AO756-2641, it's plausible that it was less expensive, less complex, or both for Acer to keep utilizing an indistinguishable drive from the Windows form as opposed to swapping it out.

The drive's speed doesn't generally influence execution much, except for the still-moderately fast boot time. When it's stacked, Chrome OS doesn't get to the circle regularly enough to make things feel obviously slower than in a strong state-based model.

As usual, the tests we can keep running on Chrome OS are overwhelmingly just JavaScript benchmarks. JavaScript scores are for the most part futile for contrasting execution unless you're measuring them on two frameworks that are running the same working framework and program. For the reasons for this article, we'll simply ahead and stick to measuring it against Samsung's $249 ARM Chromebook.The C7 ought to offer interruption to anybody yammering on about things like the likelihood of ARM-based MacBooks: ARM's present bleeding edge design, the 1.7GHz double center Cortex-A15 utilized as a part of the $249 Samsung Chromebook, is quantifiably and reliably slower than a 1.1GHz double center Celeron processor from Intel. Making an already difficult situation even worse, that Celeron processor depends on the year-old Sandy Bridge engineering as opposed to the speedier, more power-productive Ivy Bridge. Anybody expecting ARM contributes a mid-or top of the line note pad still has a considerable amount of time to hold up.

ARM still holds a power utilization advantage, be that as it may. Samsung's ARM Chromebook is appraised at more than six and a half hours of battery life (we got around seven in our testing), yet the C7 is evaluated at a piddly four hours—we got around three hours and 45 minutes perusing the Web and playing Pandora music with the screen splendor turned as far as possible up. That is marginally down from Google's assessments yet certainly inside the ballpark. The C7's battery life is fundamentally more awful in spite of having a somewhat bigger battery—37Wh contrasted with the 30Wh battery in the ARM Chromebook. Intel's up and coming Haswell processors and present and future Atoms are as far as anyone knows really forceful about shutting this power utilization crevice, however this specific Celeron is generally control hungry.

Repairability

The C7 isn't exactly as svelte or appealingly worked as the ARM Chromebook, yet the upside is it's repairable and upgradeable not at all like any of the Ultrabooks and convertible PCs we've concentrated on throughout the previous couple of months. Simply be cautioned: opening this PC up in any capacity voids Acer's guarantee, most likely since Chromebooks aren't generally intended to be worked on.

Popping one of the Phillips take screws off the base of the PC gives you prepared access to its two RAM openings (just a single of which is being utilized) and 2.5-inch hard drive—neither of these things truly should be updated on the off chance that you anticipate utilizing the C7 as a Chromebook in the long haul. Be that as it may, on the off chance that you anticipate doing some tinkering with the PC, the capacity to supplant the significant parts so effectively is certainly an or more. Take note of that in case you're overhauling the hard drive, the C7 utilizes a thin 7.5mm high model instead of the more customary 9.5mm size.

Conclusions

Chrome OS is still somewhat of an intense offer, however the C7 and the ARM Chromebook are both sufficiently shabby to at last make it attractive. Nor is a particularly amazing portable PC, however at these value focuses they're a huge stride up from the little, modest netbooks that have been sold by these same producers at these same value focuses. In case you're going to play a part with the working framework's confinements and the corners that were sliced to slice the costs, the greatest question is which one to purchase.

The Samsung Chromebook is marginally more costly however general it's the better-made of the two PCs. Its fanless plan, lighter weight, and better battery life are all advantageous additional elements. The C7 sparkles in different zones.

[saltandsalves]

The Combahee River Collective: ‘A Black Feminist Statement’

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.

We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black feminist issues and practice.

1. The genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

Before looking at the recent development of Black feminism we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women's continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women's extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Davis points out in "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.

A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women's movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).

Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and I970s. Many of us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives Were greatly affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men.

There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women's lives. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being "ladylike" and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we grew older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. However, we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us, what we knew was really happening.

Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people. The post World War II generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to Black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.

A combined anti-racist and anti-sexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capItalism.

2. What We Believe

Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's may because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever consIdered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g. mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive, Indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.

We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.

Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx's theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white women's revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our Black women's style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black women's lives. An example of this kind of revelation/conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly Black males. We discovered that all of us, because we were "smart" had also been considered "ugly," i.e., "smart-ugly." "Smart-ugly" crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our "social" lives. The sanctions In the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper classes.

As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women's oppression, negating the facts of class and race.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white women's movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective.

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black women's psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an early group member once said, "We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being Black women." We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women. In "A Black Feminist's Search for Sisterhood," Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:

We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world. [2]

Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black feminists' position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.

Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s:

We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house. He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this information is wiser... After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home... Women cannot do the same things as men—they are made by nature to function differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, i.e. ability, experience or even understanding. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and women are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life. [3]

The material conditions of most Black women would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent some stability in their lives. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both.

The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs. They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hardworking allies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing Black women. Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women's movement.

Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the three-year existence of our group. And every Black woman who came, came out of a strongly-felt need for some level of possibility that did not previously exist in her life.

When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an intense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in Lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work, Third World Women's International Women's Day activities, and support activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inéz García. During our first summer when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of opening a refuge for battered women in a Black community. (There was no refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become an independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO's bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear politIcal focus.

We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.

In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were first conceptualized as a Lesbian-straight split but which were also the result of class and political differences. During the summer those of us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who had not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us had written papers on Black feminism for group discussion a few months before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are planning to gather together a collectIon of Black feminist writing. We feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and distributing our work. The fact that individual Black feminists are living in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other groups.

4. Black Feminist Issues and Projects

During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to Black women. The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare and daycare concerns might also be a focus. The work to be done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.

Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black feminism on college campuses, at women's conferences, and most recently for high school women.

One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women's movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women's movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.

In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving "correct" political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice. In her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan writes:

I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power.

As Black feminists and Lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.

[1] This statement is dated April 1977. [2] Wallace, Michele. "A Black Feminist's Search for Sisterhood," The Village Voice, 28 July 1975, pp. 6-7. [3] Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist Woman), Newark, N.J., ©1971, pp. 4-5. THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: "The Combahee River Collective Statement," copyright © 1978 by Zillah Eisenstein.

I sourced this from:

http://circuitous.org/scraps/combahee.html

The original post was sourced from the book Home Girls, A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith, ©1983, published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, Inc., New York, New York.

[veryfeministish]

The Combahee River Collective Statement

Combahee River Collective

We are a collective of Black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974. [1] During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As Black women we see Black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.

We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) the genesis of contemporary Black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing Black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) Black feminist issues and practice.

1. The genesis of Contemporary Black Feminism

Before looking at the recent development of Black feminism we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women's continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women's extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Davis points out in "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves," Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been Black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who have had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary Black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.

A Black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women's movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973, Black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate Black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).

Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for Black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and I970s. Many of us were active in those movements (Civil Rights, Black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives Were greatly affected and changed by their ideologies, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was anti-racist, unlike those of white women, and anti-sexist, unlike those of Black and white men.

There is also undeniably a personal genesis for Black Feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual Black women's lives. Black feminists and many more Black women who do not define themselves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence. As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being "ladylike" and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people. As we grew older we became aware of the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men. However, we had no way of conceptualizing what was so apparent to us, what we knew was really happening.

Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming conscious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and most importantly, feminism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most Black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression. Our development must also be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of Black people. The post World War II generation of Black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to Black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalistic economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.

A combined anti-racist and anti-sexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capItalism.

2. What We Believe

Above all else, Our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that Black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else's may because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever consIdered our specific oppression as a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attributed to Black women (e.g. mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldagger), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive, Indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation are us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.

This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.

We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in Black women's lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of Black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.

Although we are feminists and Lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive Black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as Black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with Black men against racism, while we also struggle with Black men about sexism.

We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe that work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products, and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinced, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and anti-racist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of Black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx's theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that his analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as Black women.

A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white women's revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our Black women's style of talking/testifying in Black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters has ever been looked at before. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of Black women's lives. An example of this kind of revelation/conceptualization occurred at a meeting as we discussed the ways in which our early intellectual interests had been attacked by our peers, particularly Black males. We discovered that all of us, because we were "smart" had also been considered "ugly," i.e., "smart-ugly." "Smart-ugly" crystallized the way in which most of us had been forced to develop our intellects at great cost to our "social" lives. The sanctions In the Black and white communities against Black women thinkers is comparatively much higher than for white women, particularly ones from the educated middle and upper classes.

As we have already stated, we reject the stance of Lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly Black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As BIack women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether Lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women's oppression, negating the facts of class and race.

3. Problems in Organizing Black Feminists

During our years together as a Black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around Black feminist issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are Black feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white women's movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective.

The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual, or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess anyone of these types of privilege have.

The psychological toll of being a Black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon Black women's psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an early group member once said, "We are all damaged people merely by virtue of being Black women." We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change the condition of all Black women. In "A Black Feminist's Search for Sisterhood," Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:

We exists as women who are Black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world. [2]

Wallace is pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of Black feminists' position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.

Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of Black people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that sex should be a determinant of power relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a Black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s:

We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house. He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this information is wiser... After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home... Women cannot do the same things as men—they are made by nature to function differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, i.e. ability, experience or even understanding. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and women are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life. [3]

The material conditions of most Black women would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent some stability in their lives. Many Black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives, cannot risk struggling against them both.

The reaction of Black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. They are, of course, even more threatened than Black women by the possibility that Black feminists might organize around our own needs. They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hardworking allies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing Black women. Accusations that Black feminism divides the Black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous Black women's movement.

Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the three-year existence of our group. And every Black woman who came, came out of a strongly-felt need for some level of possibility that did not previously exist in her life.

When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an intense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in Lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work, Third World Women's International Women's Day activities, and support activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inéz García. During our first summer when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of opening a refuge for battered women in a Black community. (There was no refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become an independent collective since we had serious disagreements with NBFO's bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear politIcal focus.

We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.

In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were first conceptualized as a Lesbian-straight split but which were also the result of class and political differences. During the summer those of us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who had not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us had written papers on Black feminism for group discussion a few months before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a Black feminist publication. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are planning to gather together a collectIon of Black feminist writing. We feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other Black women and believe that we can do this through writing and distributing our work. The fact that individual Black feminists are living in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing Black feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other groups.

4. Black Feminist Issues and Projects

During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to Black women. The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting back on already inadequate heath care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a Black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare and daycare concerns might also be a focus. The work to be done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.

Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape and health care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on Black feminism on college campuses, at women's conferences, and most recently for high school women.

One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women's movement. As Black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and Black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women's movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.

In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving "correct" political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice. In her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful Robin Morgan writes:

I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white heterosexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary-vested-interest-power.

As Black feminists and Lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.

[1] This statement is dated April 1977.

[2] Wallace, Michele. "A Black Feminist's Search for Sisterhood," The Village Voice, 28 July 1975, pp. 6-7.

[3] Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist Woman), Newark, N.J., ©1971, pp. 4-5.

THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: "The Combahee River Collective Statement," copyright © 1978 by Zillah Eisenstein.