The Jeff Farias Show

Thursday, March 5 2009

We spoke with Margo St James, who in 1973 founded the first prostitutes rights organization in the US, Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE), lives in San Francisco and is available as a guest lecturer for public and private institutions. In spite of laws that render organizing prostitutes a felony in California, Margo continues to advocate on behalf of women and all marginalized people. Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, she testified before state and international governments on trafficking and violence against women, and the social effects of prohibiting adult consentual behavior. Locally, she was a member of the Women’s Advisory Committee to the Chief of Police, helping integrate women into the department, and worked with the Department of Public Health and the County Sheriff to reverse City policy that mandated penicillin injections and quarantining of all women arrested for prostitution. While attending the 1974 UNESCO Conference in Paris, Margo and other activists met with Simone deBeauvior, who later convinced them to form the International Committee for Prostitutes Rights (ICPR). Eleven years later, this international network of women’s rights activists coalesced at the first of two World Whores Congresses in Amsterdam. The second in 1986, was held at the European Parliament in Brussels, both of which Margo organized. A Vindication of the Rights of Whores, the transcribed version of the Congresses, with a forward by Margo St. James, was published by Seal Press in 1988 and reflects the tenor of both global conferences, complete with inspiring solidarity and fear of official reprisal. At the Congresses, women with nothing left to lose “came out” as sex workers and testified about working conditions and official as well as unspoken policies in their countries, consequences for which could have rendered them nationless. The Hooker’s Ball, an annual event Margo is well known for, served to fund COYOTE over the years. After an eight year hiatus in the South of France, Margo returned to San Francisco and in 1995, brought back the Hooker’s Ball. The 1996 Hooker’s Ball was held at the Maritime Hall on October 26, 1996 and was dedicated to the pioneer women of the Barbary Coast whose heroism and contributions to taming the West were under represented in History. Recently, Margo ran for San Francisco Board Supervisor, placing 7th in a field of 27 candidates vying for 6 open City-wide seats. She has been a guest lecturer at Stanford University, Chabot College and debated the chief proponent of the anti-immigrant measure, proposition 187. Over her career, Margo has lectured at Hastings College of the Law, Harvard University, San Francisco University, UC Berkeley, University of Western Washington among others, and been guest speaker at American Bar Association conferences.

At 6 PM Josh Tickell filmmaker and author. We will discuss his film FUEL an insightful portrait of America’s addiction to oil and an uplifting testament to the immediacy of new energy solutions. Josh shuttles us on a whirlwind journey to track the rising domination of the petrochemical industry – from Rockefeller’s strategy to halt Ford’s first ethanol cars to VP Cheney’s petrochemical company sponsored legislation – and reveals a gamut of available solutions to repower America. http://thefuelfilm.com

At 6:30 PM David Montgomery University of Washington Professor of Earth and Space Sciences and author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth’s soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

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