No Name-Calling Week was inspired by a young adult novel entitled "The Misfits" by popular author, James Howe. The book tells the story of four best friends trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual orientation/gender expression. Motivated by the inequities they see around them, the "Gang of Five" (as they are known) creates a new political party during student council elections and run on a platform aimed at wiping out name-calling of all kinds. The No-Name Party in the end, wins the support of the school's principal for their cause and their idea for a "No Name-Calling Day" at school.
Motivated by this simple, yet powerful, idea, the No Name-Calling Week Coalition created by GLSEN and Simon & Schuster Children's publishing, consisting of over 40 national partner organizations, organized an actual No Name-Calling Week in schools across the nation. The project seeks to focus national attention on the problem of name-calling in schools, and to provide students and educators with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate name-calling in their communities.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is No Name-Calling Week?
No Name-Calling Week is an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.
Who should participate?
Anyone who wants to work towards eliminating harmful name-calling, harassment and bullying in their school can be a part of No Name-Calling Week, whether you are a teacher, student, guidance counselor, coach, librarian or bus driver. The curricular materials on this web site and in the Resource Kit are primarily aimed at middle school students, specifically grades 5-8, but may be modified for older or younger students. Feel free to download materials off this web site, or order the Resource Kit and create your own No Name-Calling Week initiative in your community.
How do I order a kit, how much is it, and how long will it take to get it?
You can order your kit by clicking here and filling out the order form. The resource kit is $129.95, and will arrive at your door within 3-7 business days from the time you place your order. Expedited shipping service is available upon request.
What are some things I can do to promote No Name-Calling Week in my school right now?
5 Tips from Minnesota's Campaign to Defeat Minnesota Marriage Amendment
Written by Jacob Woods
Monday, 23 January 2012 13:24
I have been closely following the Minnesota marriage amendment ever since it was on the minds of Minnesota representatives back in spring 2011 when I lobbied against it. This amendment aims to write discrimination into the state constitution by getting Minnesotans to vote yes on this amendment. The frustration being, it is already illegal for gay couples to get married in the state. The grassroots organization Minnesota United for All Families aims to be the first state to defeat such a proposed amendment. As many other states have failed to defeat similar proposals across the United States, what is the state of Minnesota doing differently to defeat this amendment?
1. Taking off the weight – A key component to the strategy is the grassroots organization Minnesota United for All Families. In some states, the established LGBTQ organizations tried to take on the amendment on their own. In Minnesota, an effort was made to create an organization that specifically focused on defeating the amendment. Instead of OUTfront, Minnesota’s primary LGBTQ advocacy group, taking on the amendment alone, Minnesota United for All Families is able to take on the amendment while taking the weight off from OUTfront.
Another teen, Phillip Parker, has committed suicide due to anti-gay bullying. This time it’s Tennessee, a state with some of the most aggressive anti-gay bills and laws in the country. They virtually don’t even want the word gay mentioned there.
Sadly, Parker's case follows a spate of LGBT-related controversy in the state of Tennessee. In addition to Rogers, the so-called "Don't Say Gay" bill, which would effectively prevent public elementary and middle schools from teaching or distributing material on human sexuality that deals with homosexuality in any way, gained traction once again, while the state's senate Republicans have also proposed a change to the state's anti-bullying law to exempt condemnations of homosexuality based on religion.
As WSMV is reporting, parents and grandparents found 14-year-old Phillip Parker's body last Friday, along with a handwritten note in his trash can reading, "Please help me mom." Family members say they had previously reported concerns about their son's treatment to Gordonsville High School but to no avail.
To any teens reading this who may be in a situation that seems hopeless please remember there are people that can help. The Fresno LGBT Community Center located at 1055 N Van Ness Avenue Suite A in Fresno, CA 93728 can help you find any help you may need. Our phone number is 559-325-4429. Below you’ll find numbers for suicide prevention where you can talk to someone 24 hours a day.
Washington State, which has had domestic partnerships since 2007 and an “everything but marriage” law since 2009 is now on the precipice of becoming the 7th U.S. state (New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Iowa) to legalize same sex marriage. With the announcement of support by a Democratic Senator who would become the 25th vote, securing the issue in the legislature, it’s all starting to look like a “done deal”.
The announcement by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, that she would cast the 25th and deciding vote in favor of the issue came has hundreds of people filled the Capitol to advocate for and against gay marriage.
"I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage," Haugen said in a statement. She said she took her time making up her mind to "to reconcile my religious beliefs with my beliefs as an American, as a legislator, and as a wife and mother who cannot deny to others the joys and benefits I enjoy. This is the right vote and it is the vote I will cast when this measure comes to the floor."
With a governor who has publically supported the passing of same sex marriage, the typical opponents are already rattling their cages…
"You are saying as a committee and a Legislature that you know better than God," said Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church.
"I want to re-emphasize that we fully expect that this issue is going to end up on the ballot," said Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle and sponsor of the House bill, said at a news conference following Haugen's announcement. "People should not be complacent."
My mom sent me this video in one of the many, many, many emails she sends me each week. Mom is one of those sweet retired ladies who sees every “forward” (as I call them) as a potential source of new and great wisdom and actually reads them all. She does. Then she lovingly decides who would benefit from which and forwards them on. I finally told her, “Please don’t be offended, but I honestly don’t have time to read them all and usually I just delete them.” Mom then developed a code that tells me which ones have personal notes to me inside them so I don’t delete the ones where she is actually asking or telling me something. (And my friends wonder where I get my analytical tendencies.) But sometimes the subject lines intrigue me and I admit to looking at a select few. Today I got this one called "Farmers Tribute: So God Made A Farmer" from Farms.com:
I have to say I have enjoyed some of Paul Harvey’s monologues or diatribes over the years. I’m sad that he’s gone; while I did not always agree with him, I did respect him as a news-person. And frankly he was a comforting voice and reminder of what my mom would call the good old days (which my grandma always told me were not really so good.) The narrative of this video piece is a bit too religious for my personal taste, but I get the sentiment for farmers and I’m sure many people will love its references to God and his/her love for the farmers. Now that I am closer to farmland and farming than I ever dreamed I would be, I see a lot more of what goes into it, and I would not even pretend to think I truly have more than an inkling. What I have witnessed while driving around country roads or overheard at the local coffee shop or listened to Wanda’s farming and farm-worker friends talk about is still impressive: work that never ends but simply shifts from one crop or harvest to the next, dealing with Mother Nature’s inconsistencies and turmoil, or simply hard and often back-breaking work. The sometimes poetic description in the video is probably a good representation of what the farming life involves. I respect it. It is humbling; not only for the amount of work that most modern workers would not willingly sign up for, but also for what it means to the rest of who just wake up and know there is going to be fresh food at the supermarket or farm stand with very little thought about what it takes to get it there. What must it feel like to be a farmer and knowingly work to feed people? Rewarding? Unappreciated? Where would we be without them?
What jumped out at me in watching it and maybe it did for you too, is…with one exception right in the beginning, all of these farmers are white. What the hell? This video certainly was not filmed around here. The Central Valley has a lot more diversity in their farmers. I’m sure there is still a preponderance of farm owners that are white, but there are plenty of farmers that are more diverse than this little “slice of Americana” would have you believe. Also, if we step away from the idea of who actually owns the farm since in many cases even around here that could be a corporation, where are the actual farm workers in this video? Can most farms be worked by just dad+mom+2 kids these days? I don’t think so. When I drive around here, the workers I see farming lettuce, almonds, cotton, corn, and more include a lot more brown faces than white ones. Can you say Cesar Chavez? Why don’t the brown people show up in the film?
I admit I’m going off half-cockadoodle-dooed here. This is not a piece I spent a week researching for you; I’m just calling it like I see it and videos or commercials like this that want us to pretend all the farmers are white hetero-normative family units is ridiculous. I tried to figure out how old the video piece is. According to Farms.com YouTube channel it looks like they made the video and posted at in June 2011. The Paul Harvey voice-over may be years older (it's credited in several places as being from an essay he delivered in 1978 to the National FFA), but the video's photographic images are what bugged me. Where are the Latino/Portuguese/Black people in this picture? The queers? Yes…there are LGBT farmers out there. How about women farmers (that are not standing next to their Central-Casting-looking husbands)? One of the toughest people I know around Chowchilla is an amazing woman farmer. I did look up a couple statistics and found a graph from a report by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2007) that showed tremendous growth in both women and Hispanic farmers. While White male farmers have been the traditional operator, growth by non-Whites and females have been outpacing for several years.
I guess before I drive my blog “tractor” over the edge here, I really just want to say that I’m tired of the misrepresentation. It is easy to blame the media and the corporations and whomever else we like to blame for that kind of thing. But it is up to us to question it. I am one of those people who proudly wore a button around San Francisco for like 10 years that said “Question Authority.” You’re probably not surprised by that; since then I’ve learned to expand that to “Question Everything.” In these days of CGI usage in daily commercials and government cover-ups and hypocritical evangelist ministers with mistresses and/or tapping their feet for boy-sex in public restrooms, and magazines photo shopping cellulite off of everyone over 15 so we all think we are supposed to be something we’re not….yes. Question Everything. If something doesn't look or sound right to you, like a charming little video about farming that tries to sell you a load of bullshit and subliminally or brazenly shows you that perfect picture of farming is a white opposite-sex type of family where everyone’s hair blows in the breeze, don’t buy it. Get mad. Challenge things. Do some research and find out the truth. If you are reading this then you have the power at your fingertips. Farming is not, nor has it ever been, just for white people.
Superstar Etta James has passed away at the age of 73. James was hospitalized in January 2010 to treat an infection caused by MRSA. She was diagnosed with leukemia in early 2011. The illness became terminal and she died on January 20, 2012, just five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside, California.
Big News! Gay Central Valleyhas worked for months to bringthe NOH8 Campaign and things have finally worked out so GCV and NOH8 can come together. Gay Central Valley will host the NOH8 Campaign in Fresno on Friday, July 13th for an open photo shoot. The event will take place at The Big Red Church, also known as the First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ (While the event is being held at the church, it is not a church or religious related event)
We’d like to send out a special thank you to Justin Kamimoto and My LGBT Plus for collaborating with us and donating the cost of the hotel rooms.
On FRIDAY, JULY 13TH the NOH8 Campaign will set up our mobile studio at THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF FRESNO (THE BIG RED CHURCH) in FRESNO, CALIFORNIA!
The photo shoot on FRIDAY at THE BIG RED CHURCH is scheduled to begin at 5:00PM and end at 8:00PM. The NOH8 Campaign would like to thank GAY CENTRAL VALLEY and THE BIG RED CHURCHfor helping to coordinate our first photo shoot in FRESNO!
You do not need to make reservations; it's first come, first served - and we move quickly! When you arrive, you will receive a numbered model release to fill out, followed by receiving your NOH8 tattoo. We will call numbers throughout the day, and your corresponding release number will signal your time to line up to have your photo taken.
The costs of doing a NOH8 portrait break down as follows:
SOLO PORTRAITS .......... $40.00
COUPLE & GROUP PORTRAITS ........... $25.00 per person
The NOH8 Campaign accepts cash, most major credit cards, and checks made out to 'NOH8Campaign'. Fees cover services & processing for one retouched digital print only (made available through www.NOH8Campaign.com) and do not include physical prints.
The lines moves quickly, so don't let the RSVP's intimidate you! We always do our best to make sure that everyone in line by 8:00PM has a chance to pose for their photo - and up to this point, we haven't ever had to turn anyone away! Anyone that would like to join the NOH8 Campaign is asked to wear a plain white shirt to match the look of the signature NOH8 photos.
Celebrity Photographer & NOH8 Co-Founder Adam Bouska will be working around the clock to photograph 5-10 frames for each person that comes through. The final selection he chooses will be retouched and made available to you in about 8 weeks through the website:
Once you arrive, the NOH8 Campaign will apply the NOH8 temporary tattoo to your face, and we will also supply you with the silver duct tape for the photo.
If you are between the ages of 18-27 and would like to help a college student achieve her Master’s and would like to have your story heard then please participate!
My name is Danielle Gonzalez and I am a Master’s student at Fresno State in the social work department. I am basing my thesis/project on people who identify as LGBTQ, and their experiences in high school. I would like to discuss your opinions and feelings of your high school experience and recommendations.
This would be a face to face interview and take no longer than an hour in a quiet, secluded room. Your identity will remain confidential and will not be disclosed to anyone related to the center or CSU Fresno, and will be helping a master’s student complete her thesis/project.
For completing the interview you will receive a $5 gift card to Starbucks.
Please call me at (559) 287-2177 if you are interested and we can set up a time to conduct the interview.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Jennifer Crow – Arne Nixon Center
Written by Chris Jarvis
Wednesday, 18 January 2012 15:11
Jennifer Crow has taken over as Librarian at the Arne Nixon Center in the Henry Madden Library at Fresno State, after Angelica Carpenter retired. I visited her to speak about the Student Empowerment Project. The Project, in its infant stages, hopes to get LGBT books, along with speakers and video presentations into all local high schools.
Chris Jarvis: Can you give me an overview of what the Student Empowerment Project is all about?
Jennifer Crow: Let’s start from the beginning. We acquired about 500 LGBT themed books , which are now here in the library. Anyone can use them, but because we’re a special collection, they don’t get checked out. So they’re not very accessible to a lot of people who could best use them, primarily high school students.
CJ: So what prompted the idea of the Student Empowerment Project was to get LGBT books out of the closet, so to speak, and into the hands of students?
JC: Right. These will be here, they’re not censored, they’ll always be here. They’re an archive. But we would like to reach out and share these books with people in the 16 metropolitan high schools. Fresno Unified, Clovis Unified and Central Unified. What we’d like to do is to place the 20 best books that we choose in the schools.
CJ: And how will you choose the books?
JC: Experts in the field will help us choose them. People like Michael Cart and KT Horning, who were two of the original donors. So we, along with the experts will choose the books to place in the schools.
CJ: Will those books be coming from your collection?
JC: They won’t actually be coming from our collection. We plan to raise the money to purchase the books we want to place in the school libraries. We’re also going to be working with the schools to make sure we’re not just leaving books there. We want to involve their GSA’s if they have a GSA, and certainly librarians and counselors. Our plan is to let the GSA’s choose another 20 books, all titles that we own as well.
CJ: So you’ll provide a list and students can pick 20 from there as well.
JC: Or if they have a book they love and they’ve read and they say they’d like to have that in the library, we can do that as well. It’s really important to have the students have some say about what goes into their library.
Click on Read More below for the rest of this interview...
The weather around here has been pretty nice this week. I’ve made multiple comments on the Facebook pages of my friends in Reno saying how much I do NOT miss the snow. Except for looking out the window at while I curl up with my wife someplace warm with a Hot Apple Pie cocktail in my hand. While I admit she and I had some pretty outrageous late night drunken snow angel-making adventures, for the most part I like it much better here in the Central Valley farm country for winter.
I inherited a lovely 40+ year old garden started by the woman who owned the home we rent. I wish I could have met her and learned exactly how to take care of each and every plant she lovingly placed in my garden haven. I guess I could call myself The Reluctant Gardener, but I’m really not all that reluctant about it, just uninformed. I’ve never had the opportunity to grow a dozen rose bushes, lily’s and other bulbs or the other 897 plants (I might be exaggerating but perhaps not, it’s hard to count them all) I’ve become the caretaker of. I’ve been told by the current owners not to worry about all those plants; that if I want to rip some out or if some happen to die, that it is okay. Maybe for them, but of course I take it as a personal challenge to keep each of the original owner’s “babies” alive and well. So far, I’m doing pretty good (pats self on back.)
One of the great things I’ve learned about on my gardening “path” is the beauty of a pair of chanclas. First I must tell you that I only recently learned this term. When I first saw a pair I thought they way too boyish for moi, and in fact, the people I knew that wore them were gay guy friends in LA. When I would visit there, I admired how cute they looked with their socks and chanclas but didn’t really see myself wearing them. And they always looked really convenient and comfortable; very LA. I didn't know they had a name, I since I have a penchant for making up terminology, I called them “slippee-slidee shoes"; made sense to me.
Below is the full text of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech...
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
CLICK ON READ MORE BELOW FOR THE REST OF THE SPEECH...
Boycotts, boycotts, boycotts. I’m not a boycott person. I’ve lived long enough and worked for enough corporations that I understand the level of inequity that permeates virtually all of them, to one degree or another. Still, in the last couple of years I’ve had to hear many in the LGBT Community recommend and stand by protests and boycotts of such corps as Walmart and Target. Talk to them about it? Pointless. Those who jump on boycotts often do it with a handful of facts at their disposal, with a willing ignorance of what may be wrong at the places they shop.
Virtually everyone I know who urges and participates in boycotts all own Apple products, often many of them. They also replace them year after year, even though the reasons to do so are getting smaller and smaller so as to be almost non-existent. Still, you just have to replace your iPhone every year or two, don’t you?
Try this…try to talk to someone who will boycott Walmart without taking a breath, about the practices in place that support their Apple addictions. There are lots of interesting facts…
Last week, NPR's "This American Life" did a special on Apple's manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," and The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, whose wife is from China.
You can read a transcript of the whole show here. Here are some details:
Foxconn, one of the companies that builds iPhones and iPads (and products for many other electronics companies), has a factory in Shenzhen that employs 430,000 people.
One Foxconn worker Mike Daisey interviewed, outside factory gates manned by guards with guns, was a 13-year old girl. She polished the glass of thousands of new iPhones a day.
The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn't really check ages. There are on-site inspections, from time to time, but Foxconn always knows when they're happening. And before the inspectors arrive, Foxconn just replaces the young-looking workers with older ones.
In the first two hours outside the factory gates, Daisey meets workers who say they are 14, 13, and 12 years old (along with plenty of older ones). Daisey estimates that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage.
The workers stay in dormitories. In a 12-by-12 cement cube of a room, Daisey counts 15 beds, stacked like drawers up to the ceiling. Normal-sized Americans would not fit in them.
Unions are illegal in China. Anyone found trying to unionize is sent to prison.
Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using "hexane," an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.
Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers' hands no longer work, obviously, they're canned.
One former worker had asked her company to pay her overtime, and when her company refused, she went to the labor board. The labor board put her on a black list that was circulated to every company in the area. The workers on the black list are branded "troublemakers" and companies won't hire them.
One man got his hand crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. Foxconn did not give him medical attention. When the man's hand healed, it no longer worked. So they fired him. (Fortunately, the man was able to get a new job, at a wood-working plant. The hours are much better there, he says — only 70 hours a week).
In many factories in China, which is where most of our “stuff” comes from, large nets have had to be placed around high rise companies because of all the worker suicide jumps.
So a great number of the things we love in this country are produced in a country with these horrendous conditions. Still, most of us prefer to condemn a couple of mainstream department stores instead of looking at the big picture. Of course, you can still start a boycott of Target right now by texting your friends on your iPhone…
I don't really like Suze Orman. I don't think she ever offers any practical advice for those without the means to just "hang onto your savings". She really has no idea what people without loads of money go through in trying to make ends meet. That being said, this is the first logical thing she's said. And watch how Barbra Walters twists it afterwards, back to "social issues" rather than listening to Orman who explained that the social injustice results in a financial injustice. Those of us (same sex couples) who are legally married under state law understand how screwed we are under federal law. And those same sex couples who can't even get married in their own states? They're screwed all the way around...
