"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This show is syndicated in 85% of markets nationally! (Runs very early on Friday morning (2:30 am, 1/26) on Fox TV Ch 49 in the Portland, OR area.) And please pass the tape around if you can. After ten months of trash, sleaze, tabloid talk TV, we're getting back on. Thanks.
Please don't miss this chance to effect change. Thank-you very much.
The NCM Reproductive Rights Lawsuit was written up favorably in an article in the Hartford Courant. Ditto plus two favorable opinion pieces in the Boston Herald (but the BH did have an unfavorable editorial). As long as we can create an honest dialog we -- equality -- will win out eventually!
The next semi-annual Equality On The Equinox Rally will be Sat, March 23, in cities and towns all over the country! The last one in Portland, OR was a huge success, with rotating group of 100 people, with 300 to 400 total participants, and it made TV. How-To kits are going out, and you can get one (and get a rally going in your area) for $6. Contact us. National Center For Men, P.O. Box 6481, Portland, OR 97228-6481.
Our National headquarters will put out national press releases. The themes: shared parenting, reward cooperation, enforce visitation, equal protection. Kids need both parents. Make divorce less adversarial. Promote dialog, healing and harmony between the genders, for the kid's sake. Fairness and equality on all issues. Stop the gender war.
Many more calls, letters, faxes are needed to McLoughlin Group PBS TV Show. See item 5 paragraphs below.
"CHAMPS" is a new TV sitcom mainly about guys and bonding. (Most sitcoms have a woman theme.) It's on ABC TV, Tuesdays, 9:30 p.m., and just started 1/9/96 It stars Timothy Busfield, Kevin Nealon and Al Marinaro and others as an early forty-something group who won a state basketball championship in high school. Of course it takes the usual shots at men, but finally there is some decent stuff too. All we can do is watch and support its development and direction. My guess is to take the chance. Call ABC 212-456-7777 and sound off positively.
US News & World Report, 1/8/96, has great column by John Leo (p. 21) on the sick, stereotyping nature (of violent men) of TV movies ("Monday Night Political Football"). Leo states clearly that domestic violence goes both ways, and cites Straus and Gelles and 30 different studies. He concludes:
The evidence ... suggests that DV comes from unstable relationships and loss of personal control. The vast majority of it is household quarreling, not something so grand and ideological as patriarchal oppression. But don't look for this view to show up anytime soon in a Monday night movie.Stunning. We are making incredible progress. Much support to John Leo is needed. Call 202-955-2000; write 2400 N St., NW, Wash, DC 20037-1196; E-mail 71154.1006@compuserve.com ThanksThanksThanks.
DEAR ABBY, 1/8/96, printed a great letter from a divorced father. Dads are more than paychecks, often paying more than their legally required child support, get involved with the kids, suffer bad-mouthing from the ex and visitation interference. Abby has opened up a dialog on this subject. So long as there is a dialog, we will find success eventually. Thank her for the dialog!: write PO Box 69440, LA, CA 90069.
The Wall Street Journal, 1/5/96, has a Column One article on the attempts to repeal no-fault divorce in Michigan. Worth reading definitely.
The McLoughlin Group, PBS TV, 12/22/95. Host John McLoughlin ended the show with his macro-prediction: "The dominant 1996 social and political issue will be fatherhood. Fathers in America today. Not as perpetrators or delinquents, but as victims. Why has society shut out and cast aside fathers?"
No joke! So let's stop swooning and continue to show support. Call 202-457-0870, fax 202-296-2285, write 1211 Connecticut Ave, NW, Wash, DC 20036.
McCalls Magazine, February 1996, will have an article on men and health by the NCM. Look for it.
The American Association of University Women is waging gender war again, framing all issues as men versus women, thus dividing and ripping apart society and providing horrible role models for our children. Big ads in national weekly news magazines like TIME ("America Can't Compete Unless She Can," "When we shortchange girls, we shortchange America," etc.). Call their number, 1-800-326-AAUW and tell them to STOP the society-destroying, marriage-destroying, relationship-destroying, children-ruining, gender-partisan hate. It's their nickel -- so politely unload.
The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon ran my Op-Ed on welfare and family court reform. They put on it a fantastic title: "Joint Custody Would Help Keep Children Off Welfare."
Stop illegitimacy and reduce divorce through joint custody, shared parenting, rewarding cooperation, enforcing visitation. The ideal welfare reform. And more equality based welfare reform: before granting welfare, find the non-custodial (usually dad) and offer to him/her and family the chance to care for his/her own child, and allow the non-custodial the chance to day-care his/her own child. We scored here. Send a SASE and we'll send you a copy! (The Wall Street Journal editoress has refused to run the idea for three years now -- just can't fulfill our promises to conservatives that the WSJ will inform them of all credible ideas.)
Mentor is a great mythopoetic men's newsletter published in Oregon. "A quarterly journal about men and their journey of discovery." It's very gentle, warm and fuzzy, and touchy-feely, and will have both feminist and masculist views in an attempt to be fair. I personally know the editor and publisher, and we hand it out everywhere. Send $5 to them and get a sample issue: PO Box 11381, Portland, OR 97211.
I have a live Radio call-in show. Please call in from everywhere! ThanksThanks. See Oregon section below.
National Center For Men Activism Line is 503-727-3686. National and local activism alerts, new info at top, dated, for efficiency of time and money. Please call!
Are you being forced into fatherhood? The NCM Reproductive Rights Project may be able to help you. Contact change@nas.com , or address/phone at end.
Sorry I forgot this item from last month. The Oregon chapter of the NCM had a fun, warm and cheerful Christmas Party on 12/21/95. Thirty adults and children had a great time. Much camaraderie. Little Drew, age 6, beat me in checkers! But I downed more pizza. His Dad earned everyone's respect re the brew... And the Grand Central Bowling Alley didn't throw us out or ask us not to come back! A template for next year.
We met with the public editor of The Oregonian around Thanksgiving after years of pressure! A dozen men and women admirably made the case that all of these equality issues must be covered and done so fairly. Men, women, families, society and our children are all being hurt. Did we wow them!
The Oregonian then ran a huge article on joint custody on 12/28/95. The first time ever the subject was actually discussed! It had its weak points, but we have now made it an issue! Thanks to all of you who have helped pressure this paper over the years. Equality and fairness and cooperation between men and women will win out in the end! Call 503 221-8138 and thank the editor.
KPSU radio 1450 AM, goes on each Thursday, 6-7 p.m. live (father's and family issues, more, fun). Please call in from anywhere: (503-725-5945), especially at 6:15 p.m., Pacific time. You know the rough topic! (and I subtly review for long distance calls). On 1/25 is our homelessness show; on 2/1 is attorney Ivan Vesely of the Multnomah County Bar Assn's Committee On Equality; on 2/8 is the Maya Coffee Company International on starting and running a family business; on 2/15 is Tim Criswell, Ph.D., licensed professional counselor, on preventing social problems by having cost-effective crisis lines for men; on 2/22 is social service group "Outside In" on youth homelessness; on 2/29 is leap year day and a fun show on sky-diving, bungee-jumping and rock climbing and how to now explain to your kids that they, unlike you, can't do it!; on 3/7 is financial planning for a family and retirement; on 3/14 is Lynnette Barkowski, Oregon's top family court reform lobbyist, on just that; on 3/21 we plug our 3/23 semi-annual "equality on the equinox" rally; on 3/28 is an opening!
The Family Violence Intervention Steering Committee meets the 2nd Friday of each month, at 12:15, at the Portland Building (1021 SW 5), Second floor. They define men as batters and women as victims. This prejudice then results in fathers having less rights. Please get on their mailing list, as that alone pressures them: 503-248-3691 ext. 7806. And tell them to knock off the disgusting sexism and bigotry while you are at it, as they are only making violence worse. If enough people jam up this telephone line...
Multnomah county commissioners meet each Thursday, 9:30 a.m., room 602, Mult Co. courthouse. Open mike, 3 min. Great opportunity to speak out against Family Services Division's unethical behavior (they belong to the bigoted Family Violence Intervention Steering Cmte -- how can they be fair to fathers?). Runs on MCTV cable TV that evening, to boot.
CABLE TV Show live 1st and 3rd Thursday of month, 8 p.m., at Portland Cable Access. Repeats following Monday, Channel 11, 5:30 p.m.
Please send to Jim activism opportunities and brief information, from all over the country, and Jim will put it up on this report!! Please include details on phone, fax, Internet and address. Thank-you very much!!
National Center for Men, National headquarters: 516-942-2020, P.0. Box 555, Old Bethpage, NY 11804. James Pierce Whinston: 503-727-3686, P.O. Box 6481, Portland OR 97228-6481. Activism/message line: 503-727-3686.
PS -- NCM needs your support, contributions of time, energy and money, and membership. Men are brought up to be independent and self-reliant. So they forget to join. And as a result, there is little political clout for men's, father's and non-custodial issues. And everyone is getting hurt. We cannot do it without your support. Our children are going AWOL without two parents. Our marriages are failing because all issues have been framed as men versus women for 30 years, which is extremely divisive. A gender war abuses our children, and provides devastating role models. Fight to protect our children and our children's right to two parents and a system that rewards cooperation, and our children's right to healthy role models.
Please join. Membership in the NCM is $60, $40, and $30 low income.
Reprinted with permission from the Activism Report of the National Center for Men
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