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City’s Menstrual Equity Laws Will Help Reduce Period Stigma


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A City Hall rally in support of menstrual equity


My period got me suspended from school. That should not happen to anyone. Yet in New York City and elsewhere, people who have periods—including transgender and gender-nonconforming people—still struggle to access menstrual products and the resources they need. This can hurt their ability to succeed academically, personally, and professionally.

New York just made history when the City Council approved the nation’s first bills of their kind to provide free tampons and pads in all public schools, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and correctional facilities throughout the city. Making menstrual products accessible is a simple matter of dignity and respect.

No one should have to go through what I went through. I started my period on graduation day from 5th grade when I was only 11. There was no way I could tell any of my classmates; the culture of female shame at my school was overwhelming. In middle school, I had very painful menstruation and ended up fainting in class in 7th grade. Of course my best friend told the whole class why, and my school made me leave to go see my pediatrician immediately - not fun. During 9th and 10th grades I missed exams a few times because of my period. My mom wouldn't allow me to see a gynecologist because she was against birth control, and sexuality overall was a problematic subject in our household.

Since I didn’t feel it was possible to talk to my mom and didn’t grow up living with my dad, I had to sneak off campus when I was 16 to speak to a Planned Parenthood provider about using birth control to alleviate the pain from my periods. Planned Parenthood was the only safe space I felt I could talk about my body. The fear I felt even going to a health clinic made me feel silent and alone, and too fearful to ask for a doctor’s note from the provider. I ended up getting suspended from school after the dean found out I left without parental consent.

This was an offense that would be reported and explained to every university I applied to—all because of period and reproductive health stigma!

Regardless of getting suspended and the aftermath, the experience was triumphant overall because it is why I am now interning for Planned Parenthood of New York City and passionate about menstrual equity. It's also why I supported Columbia's student council president on effective ways to push our administration to provide sanitary pads, rather than just tampons for students.

No one should get suspended or have to miss class because they don't have the resources to take care of their own health and body.

I'm thankful that City Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, and others are working tirelessly to ensure that individuals in city schools, homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and jails can access tampons and pads when they need them. I am grateful that Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to soon sign this legislation into law. Periods—a natural bodily process we cannot control—should not be a financial impossibility or emotional burden for anyone!

Making menstrual products accessible will help normalize conversations about menstruation and sexual health. This will help reduce the shame and embarrassment all people who menstruate, especially youth, have felt about their periods.

Eliminating period stigma has the power to change people’s lives. Everyone who has a period deserves access to the resources to meet their essential needs so that they can stay focused on their futures.

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Elle Wisnicki is a Health Center Advocate intern in Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood of New York City and has been a campus representative for Planned Parenthood at Columbia University.

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When is a 'raise' not a raise? The CUNY Faculty Union Deal


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photo: Murphy Institute


When is a “raise” not a raise? When the salary “increase,” adjusted for inflation, is below the base-year salary.

On June 17, after five years of working without a contract and six years without even a nominal raise, the Professional Staff Congress, the City University of New York’s faculty union, announced the main terms of a tentative contract with the CUNY Board of Trustees. Let’s examine how the salary increases in this agreement measure up against erosion from inflation.

In March I wrote a Gotham Gazette op-ed called “CUNY Faculty’s Lost Decade and the Risk Ahead,” pointing out that “In 2015, assistant and associate professors at the top salary step earned 92% in real terms of what they earned in 2006. Full professors at the top step did slightly better, taking home just under 96% of their 2006 salaries.”

These figures derived from my analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics cost-of-living data and from information on contractual salary increases that PSC-CUNY provided.

The “raises” in the proposed new contract don’t really constitute a raise, even for those of us at the top full professor salary step, who received a special increment in 2009 under the old contract. Most CUNY faculty will again earn in real terms what they took home in 2007. We full professors at the top step will receive slightly less inflation-adjusted salary than we did in 2010 (see table below).

So will I vote to ratify the proposed deal? Yes, but only while holding my nose. I won’t delude myself that I’m getting a real raise, but I would rather be earning almost what I earned in 2010 than 96% of my 2006 salary.

The agreement also contains other extremely important provisions. Adjuncts, for example, the most exploited sector of CUNY’s faculty, will now have the right to multi-year appointments. CUNY management has agreed to negotiate a plan to reduce the onerous teaching load (seven courses per year for full-time faculty at senior colleges) by one course per year. Graduate Assistants who become Adjuncts will receive health insurance. These are all important gains and, in the current context of permanent austerity and bloodletting in public higher education, it would be foolish to vote against them.

The proposed seven-year contract covers a period that has already mostly elapsed. It expires in little more than a year, on November 30, 2017. Wouldn’t it be great if next time CUNY management and the PSC-CUNY could negotiate an actual “new” contract before that date, one which provides raises instead of “raises”? Then, instead of having to spend years lobbying in Albany for a new contract, walking picket lines and testifying before the CUNY Board of Trustees, we could devote ourselves to advancing knowledge and serving the hundreds of thousands of students who attend the largest public urban university in the United States.

CUNY Faculty Salaries and Inflation under Proposed New Contract, 2006-2017

cuny faculty salaries inflation proposed contractjpg

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NOTES: Three factors understate the salary erosion estimates in the table: (1) Future inflation is unknowable; the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 2016 annual inflation at 0.9% for the period through May; I use this figure for 2016 and 2017 even though inflation for key areas (housing, healthcare, food) and overall inflation in 2016-2017 could be higher (because of pending interest rate hikes by the Fed, rising energy prices, financial instability in the European Union and other reasons); (2) The raises in the new contract kick in on April 20 of the respective years; for simplicity I have them covering the whole calendar year; and (3) the lump sum retroactive pay and signing bonus will be taxed in one calendar year.

One assumption in the table overstates the salary erosion estimates. The table does not include the $1000 per full-time employee “signing bonus,” since this will be a different proportion of salary for employees at different ranks and on different salary steps. Taken together, these negative and positive factors are unlikely to alter the salary erosion estimates significantly.

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Marc Edelman is professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Another Legislative Session Ends with Thousands Still in Solitary


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photo: Bob Jagendorf


Earlier this month, I saw Mariposa & the Saint: From Solitary Confinement, A Play Through Letters. Actress and activist Julia Steele Allen plays Sara Foneseca, or Mariposa, as she is referred to in the play, and uses Mariposa’s own words to express her experiences in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at a women’s prison in California. For the past ten years the two women have been corresponding through letters; the play is a collaboration that grew from this communication.

In one of the most disturbing parts of the play, Mariposa shares in a letter to Allen that a woman in the prison has committed suicide. Mariposa seems frantic and in shock at the calm response from the prison personnel. She exclaims there was no sense of urgency. It seems, she says, as if they were saying, “nothing to see here folks, just your average, run of the mill, scheduled suicide.” Mariposa tries to keep her spirits up although it is evident that she is slowly fading. At one point in the play she explains she refused to leave her cell -- even to shower -- for eight months.

The performance was followed by a workshop discussion on the issue of solitary confinement during which Regina, who was incarcerated in Albion Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, shared horror stories of her own experiences in “the box.” She noted that many of her peers were not even allowed to send or receive letters, practices considered privilege and meted out by the guards, despite being one of the only forms of human communication they had left.

There are 2.5 million people incarcerated today in the United States, and while it’s rare for the experiences of these people to be given a public viewing such as Mariposa provides, public demands to reform prison conditions and to end mass incarceration are growing. As are calls to end the torturous practice of solitary confinement.

Allen has brought “Mariposa & the Saint” on a national tour of eight states, including New York, which all have active campaigns and pending legislation to end or reform the conditions of solitary confinement. Humane Alternatives to Long Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act (A. 4401/S. 2659) is a piece of legislation that has yet to pass through the New York State Legislature, despite being introduced for years. This bill would create substantive alternatives to solitary confinement, place strict limitations on the use and permitted durations of confinement, and improve due process protections for people facing disciplinary infractions.

The Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement in New York (CAIC), a community group consisting of advocates, legal service providers, formerly incarcerated community members, and family members, has supported the HALT Solitary Confinement Act since 2014.

Last month, “Mariposa & the Saint” was performed for members of the state Legislature, hosted by the Women of Color Sub-Committee of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, & Asian Legislative caucus including Assemblymembers Maritza Davila and Latoya Joyner, along with Assemblymember Jeffrion L. Aubry, and state Senator Bill Perkins. Additionally, in early May, CAIC organized a lobby day which resulted in HALT now boasting more than 60 sponsors in the Assembly. Despite this support, the bill did not pass this year and remained in the Assembly’s Crime Victims, Crime and Correction committee until the end of the session. What was left out of the final Albany deals earlier this month was prison reform for thousands in solitary confinement, which has been denounced by Pope Francis, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, and President Obama.

The play was performed on Friday, June 10 at The New Settlement Community Campus in the Bronx, located in Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s home district in hopes of adding pressure to the Speaker so that he would use his authority to bring HALT to a vote before the session ended.

Solitary confinement is torture and can lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences such as depression, alienation, suicide, and withdrawal. Solitary Watch estimates 80,000 to 100,000 incarcerated people are held in some form of isolated confinement at any time in the United States, most spending 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Dr. Terry Kupers told The New York Times, “many [formerly incarcerated individuals] still carried the psychological legacy of their confinement.”

New York State legislators did not act to reform the torture happening in their state prisons. Governor Cuomo, state legislators, and all New Yorkers must see and say that solitary is torture. It is time that we all demand reforms to end, or at least significantly limit, the use of solitary here in New York.

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Jennie Encalada is a Brooklyn-based social worker and activist. On Twitter: @jenjeno07. Mariposa & the Saint completed it's 2015-2016 national tour this June, but has further plans. Learn more about the Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement (CAIC).

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