SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
#metoo
No, #MeToo Isn’t Over
Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
Apr 22, 2026
After serious allegations of sexual misconduct, Democratic California Rep. Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned from Congress on the same day. That same week, convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein went on trial for the third time in New York; the University of California, Berkeley removed the name of accused sexual abuser Cesar Chavez from its student center; and a federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump regarding his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
These consequences for powerful men credibly accused of sexual assault have people asking: Is the #MeToo movement back?
As a co-founder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which was launched in 2018 to provide legal funding and media assistance to support survivors of workplace sexual harassment and related retaliation, I can confirm: Even in Trump’s America, where lawlessness can feel like the norm, survivors are here, demanding that individuals and institutions treat sexual violence with the seriousness it deserves.
When #MeToo first went viral, it felt like the Earth shook. Women worldwide responded to bombshell New York Times reports by sharing their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. Quickly, it became clear that Weinstein was the tip of a massive iceberg. Allegations soon spread from Matt Lauer to Roger Ailes and beyond. But while big household names were capturing the public’s attention, something else was happening: People across the country were ready to take their abusers to court.
We have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo.
That’s why, three months after #MeToo went viral, the National Women’s Law Center joined with other advocates to create the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund, which helps survivors, no matter where they work, find justice. Over the last eight years, we have found a great deal of justice.
Since its founding, we have helped more than 12,000 people get the legal assistance they needed to hold their perpetrators accountable. From McDonald’s workers who were survivors of rampant sexual harassment by their bosses, to a female truck driver in Arizona who was sexually assaulted by her co-worker on the side of the road, the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund has fought for justice and accountability—and won.
In the years since we launched the fund, the #MeToo hashtag may have stopped trending (in part because people are less likely to use hashtags altogether), but the movement is still here, doing the work. In fact, 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws aimed at strengthening protections against workplace harassment. And we are not done.
We also can’t discount the immense cultural change that #MeToo’s created. For instance, Cheyenne Hunt, a Democratic creator and activist, used social media to draw attention to her story about abuse from Swalwell. She may not have used the #MeToo hashtag in her initial posts, but her courageous work follows the same playbook thousands of other survivors used to hold their perpetrators accountable. And the public was ready to respond, after nearly a decade of being grounded in Tarana Burke’s MeToo framework.
Yet we have seen from across the political divide people questioning whether the movement was successful, as evidenced by the alleged serial abuser now sitting in the Oval Office, who once said, “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” But these are the wrong questions to consider. Better ones might be: What would it take for women to feel safe in the places they work and learn? What support do survivors need? What is the cost of refusing to provide that support—the cost to survivors and to all of us, as women’s careers and contributions and opportunities are short-circuited by sexual violence?
What has happened in comment sections and court rooms has helped assure that this movement lives on in our laws and culture. Try as some might to roll back this progress—and some, particularly the president, are trying mighty hard—this reckoning will never simply be put back in the bottle.
That said, the latest examples make clear that this country still has miles to go. And given who is in the White House, the threat to survivor justice is as stark as it’s ever been. The Trump administration has spent the last year undermining survivor protections—in just over a year, it has refused to enforce harassment protections for transgender workers, blocked funding for domestic and sexual assault organizations, and weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment in schools.
But that is not evidence that this movement has failed; rather, it goes to show what many of us in the movement already knew: that there is always more work to do.
That work is, of course, made harder by people who think women’s bodies are theirs to possess, and that power means being immune to consequences. Still, we have seen consequences for powerful men over the last weeks that go to show that powerful movements don’t end, they echo. No matter how powerful you think you are, no one is above accountability.
So for anyone who thinks the #MeToo movement is over, I challenge you to look into the faces of the brave women whose stories are demanding and shaping change: Lonna Drewes. Ally Sammarco. Annika Albrecht. Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. Jessica Mann. Ana Murguia. Debra Rojas. Dolores Huerta. Annie Farmer. Virginia Giuffre. Survivors everywhere continue to speak truth—and because they do, #MeToo is as loud as it has ever been.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Shame Must Change Sides': Thousands March in France Against Sexual Violence
The protests were organized in support of Gisèle Pélicot, who has become a symbol of feminist defiance in the country when she chose to make the rape trial of her husband and 50 other men public.
Sep 14, 2024
Thousands of people took to the streets in 30 French cities and Brussels on Saturday to protest rape and sexist violence and to support Gisèle Pélicot, a woman in her early 70s whose husband of 50 years is on trial for drugging her periodically and inviting dozens of men into their home to rape her while she was unconscious.
Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France when she decided to make the trial of her husband and 50 other men public to ensure that "no woman suffers this."
"We are all Gisèle," protesters chanted in Paris, according to Le Monde. "Rapist we see you, victim we believe you."
The crime was discovered when her now ex-husband Dominique, a 71 year old who has plead guilty to drugging and raping his wife, was caught taking photos up the skirts of women in 2020. As part of that investigation, police uncovered a USB drive with a file labeled "abuse," which included more than 20,000 photos and videos of the attacks on his wife that were taken over a nine-year period. There was evidence that he had recruited more than 80 men to participate via an online forum. Police identified and charged 50 of the participants.
At the trial, which began September 2 and is expected to last four months, Pélicot described her harrowing experience. As The Guardian reported:
"My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years."
She said she had barely recognized herself in the images, saying she was motionless. "I was sacrificed on the altar of vice," she said. "They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag."
"When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed—of course the body is not cold, it's warm, but it's as if I'm dead." She told the court rape was not a strong enough word, it was torture.
Saturday's protests were called by feminist groups in France.
"We thank her a thousand times for her enormous courage," Fatima Benomar of the feminist group "Coudes a Coudes" association told BFM TV.
34-year-old Justine Imbert, who attended a 200-strong march in Marseilles with her six-year-old daughter, told Le Monde, "It must have taken huge courage, but it was essential," for Pélicot to make the trial public.
"It allows people to see the faces of her husband and all the others, to see they are not outcasts but 'good fathers,'" Imbert said.
"I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
The men accused in the trial include a member of the local government, a civil servant, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, and more than one nurse.
"It's shocking… because we see that the [men on trial] are a bit like Mr Everyman. It goes against the idea that there is only one type of rapist," 21-year-old photographer Pedro Campos said, according to The Guardian.
Martine Ragon, 74, told journalists she had come to the demonstration in Marseilles to "denounce rape culture."
"This well-publicized trial will allow people to speak out about it, to raise awareness," Ragon said.
Anna Toumazoff, who helped organize the protest in Paris that brought around 700 people to the Place de la Republique, also emphasized the need to talk about "rape culture."
"After seven years of MeToo, we know that there is not a special type of victim. We are also collectively realizing that there is no special type of a rapist," Toumazoff told The Associated Press.
Magali Lafourcade, a magistrate and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, told AP that Pélicot's sharing of her story was important because 90% of women who are raped in France do not press charges and 80% of the cases that are brought forward are dropped.
Lou Salome Patouillard, a 41-year-old artist, who joined the demonstration in Marseilles, told Reuters, "I am here to support Gisele and all women as there are many Giseles, too many Giseles."
During the trial, Pélicot said that she began to have problems with her memory during the period when her husband was repeatedly drugging her. When she told her husband she was afraid she had Alzheimer's, he scheduled her a doctor's appointment. During the investigation, it was revealed that she had contracted multiple sexually transmitted diseases.
Through her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau, Pélicot explained her decision to make the trial public.
"It's a way of saying... shame must change sides," Babonneau said at the start of the trial, words that have been taken up as a rallying cry by France's feminist movement.
When supporters unfurled a banner from the Marseilles court building on Saturday, that is what it said: "Shame must change sides."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Section 230 Is a Civil Rights Statute
Without Section 230’s protections, Americans would know less about police brutality, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful, or the options for women seeking an abortion in states that allow them. The measure must be protected.
Feb 17, 2024
Black History Month is a powerful reminder that each American, no matter their stature, has an ability to affect great change. That’s due in large part to the free speech protections afforded us under the First Amendment. During the 1960s, social justice advocates exercised their free speech rights through rallies, protests, and speeches, paving the way for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.
Today, it’s far easier to advance social progress through online platforms, thanks to a federal statute that fosters open inquiry, debate, and commentary.
That statute—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—gives platforms legal immunity for what third parties post. For example, Yelp is not liable for anything written in its reviews, no matter how scathing they are. This immunity has allowed ideas on the Internet to explode, leading to breakthroughs that have improved our lives.
Yet Section 230 is now under bipartisan siege, with dozens of bills in Congress proposing to reform it and presidential candidates calling for its revocation because they believe online platforms have either become too political or engage in censorship.
In fact, the U.S. government allegedly threatened to revoke Section 230 immunity from social media platforms if they didn’t take down what the government deemed misinformation about Covid and vaccines. The charges are at the center of a legal dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear during their current session.
Section 230 is now under bipartisan siege, with dozens of bills in Congress proposing to reform it and presidential candidates calling for its revocation because they believe online platforms have either become too political or engage in censorship.
Advocates for reform or revocation of Section 230 should be careful what they wish for. The immunity they currently provide removes the fear of liability, resulting in more speech, which has been advantageous for three of the major civil rights issues of the current era.
The first is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Legal immunity for social platforms has enabled African Americans and other minorities to call attention to the sometimes-deadly realities associated with police interactions in their communities. In the wake of live streaming and online postings of police brutality and the accompanying Black Lives Matter protests, some states attempted to criminalize the recording or posting of encounters with law enforcement online. Thanks to Section 230 protections, users could continue posting video and commentary about policing and BLM.
The second is the #MeToo Movement. Section 230 has allowed women to raise awareness about workplace sexual harassment. In the absence of immunity, powerful alleged abusers could threaten the platforms with legal liability for defamation and have claims about them, even true ones, to be taken down.
Finally, there’s abortion. Just four days after the Supreme Court ruled that abortion is not protected by the federal Constitution, South Carolina legislators proposed a law making it “unlawful to aid, abet, or conspire with someone to procure an abortion,” including providing information about abortion “by Internet or other mode of communication.” Without Section 230, any social media platform, website, or Internet service provider that hosted such information could potentially be criminally liable under such a statute.
Consider what would happen if Section 230 did not exist. If the government or another powerful entity wanted to suppress speech it doesn’t like, it could either take legal action against the speaker themselves or the distributor of the speech.
In most cases, it’s far more effective to go after the distributor. Threatening the author of an offensive book might cause the author to self-censor, but there is no guarantee. Threatening Barnes & Noble or Amazon is more effective because there is little economic incentive for them to continue carrying the book with the threat of government action.
Further, because distributors disseminate the work of many authors, it can compound the likelihood that they will censor more speech on the same subject. The Supreme Court has recognized that permitting distributor-level threats gives the government a potential end-around the First Amendment since it results in censorship of the speaker.
Without Section 230’s protections, Americans would know less about police brutality, allegations of sexual abuse by the powerful, or the options for women seeking an abortion in states that allow them. Social media users, particularly those in underserved, underrepresented, and otherwise resource-poor communities, would be less able to discuss those issues online.
Social media is not perfect. But the immunity provided by Section 230 makes it better, not worse.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'A Decade of Stagnation': UN Report Shows 9 in 10 People Still Hold Biases Against Women
"This is truly alarming and explains why the world is completely off track in achieving gender equality by 2030," an Oxfam Great Britain researcher said.
Jun 12, 2023
A United Nations report revealed Monday that despite "powerful" global movements such as #MeToo, Ni Una Menos, Time's Up, and Un Violador en Tu Camino, about 9 in 10 people worldwide still hold biases against women.
The new Gender Social Norms Index report covers 85% of the world's population and incorporates data from 2017-22. It follows the 2020 edition, which covered over 80% of the global population and relied on data through 2014.
According to the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), which produced both publications, the latest report shows "a decade of stagnation" across four dimensions explored by researchers: political, educational, economic, and physical integrity.
"Nearly half the world's people believe that men make better political leaders than women do, and two of five people believe that men make better business executives than women do," the publication states, highlighting how few women hold roles in both areas.
"Only 11% of heads of state and 9% of heads of government are women, and women hold only 22% of ministerial posts," while "in the paid economy women hold only 28% of managerial positions," the document details. "Even when women reach leadership positions, gender biases lead to unequal treatment and judgment."
"All biased gender social norms are potentially harmful, but perhaps none has a more direct impact on women's agency and well-being than those leading to violence against women and girls," the report stresses. Over a quarter of people "believe that it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife," and a similar share of women and girls over age 15 have endured intimate partner violence.
The document also warns that "the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030," which is among the 17 sustainable development goals adopted by the U.N. in 2015. Targets of the gender equality goal include ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls, including violence and harmful practices such as forced marriage, ensuring access to economic resources and reproductive healthcare, recognizing underpaid domestic work, and boosting female leadership in politics and beyond.
Anam Parvez, head of research at Oxfam Great Britain, responded with alarm to the new UNDP report's key figures.
"This is truly alarming and explains why the world is completely off track in achieving gender equality by 2030," she told The Guardian. "In 2021, 1 in 5 women were married before they turn 18, 1.7 billion women and girls live on less than $5.50 a day, and women continue to take on three times as much unpaid care and domestic work as men around the world."
"At the current rate of progress it will take 186 years to close gaps in legal protections," Parvez pointed out. "It also explains why, while there has been some progress on enacting laws that advance women's rights, social norms continue to be deeply entrenched and pervasive."
The report says that "the gender-based biases we carry into voting booths, board meetings, interview panels, and assemblies present barriers to women's ability to fulfill their full potential. Policies to achieve comprehensive gender equality have to be designed and implemented to address biased gender social norms."
Raquel Lagunas, director of UNDP's Gender Team, explained that "an important place to start is recognizing the economic value of unpaid care work. This can be a very effective way of challenging gender norms around how care work is viewed."
"In countries with the highest levels of gender biases against women," Lagunas noted, "it is estimated that women spend over six times as much time as men on unpaid care work."
Pedro Conceição, head of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, emphasized that "social norms that impair women's rights are also detrimental to society more broadly, dampening the expansion of human development."
"In fact, lack of progress on gender social norms is unfolding against a human development crisis: The global Human Development Index (HDI) declined in 2020 for the first time on record—and again the following year," he said. "Everyone stands to gain from ensuring freedom and agency for women."
The U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
Keep ReadingShow Less
E. Jean Carroll and Other Survivors Don't Need an Excuse for Not Screaming
The millions of sexual assault survivors deserve our respect, support, and empathy, but never our pity.
Apr 28, 2023
The E. Jean Carroll vs. Donald Trump rape trial is, no doubt, eliciting a lot of understandable reactions in sexual assault survivors.* I'm a psychotherapist who, for years, has been privileged to work with many survivors. I used to consult to a rape crisis center. I don't need to hear one word of a trauma story to do trauma work, but I've heard countless stories. Stories of hope, of shame, of fear, of anger, of grief and betrayal. Stories of atrocious violence. Stories of glorious resilience.
I've watched police be respectful and kind to someone as they're reporting their assault. I've also seen police be dismissive and blaming and horrible, forcing a person, often still in what is colloquially known as shock, to prove that the "encounter" was not consensual or that she was no somehow "asking for it." I've witnessed people become "disgusted" with their partners who were assaulted, and so they leave or divorce such "damaged goods." I've heard how friends no longer know how to talk to a person, treating them like they're fragile beyond measure or as if they're contagious and if you get too close then you'll somehow become infected. I've known employers who fired their employees because they didn't have a "legitimate" reason for taking time off from work to process and integrate such a fragmenting experience. I've heard how people have been excommunicated from previously close-knit families or neighborhoods because they dared to name that an uncle or a brother or a woman down the street was their perpetrator. There have been beautiful stories of solidarity and support, too. But all too often, contending with the shaming, cruel reactions from others adds very real trauma on top of trauma.
On the stand, E. Jean Carroll talked about what happened after she publicly accused Trump: "Oh. My God. The force of hatred coming at me was staggering."
Even more trauma comes from being judged for what one did during the assault or right afterward. "Why didn't they run?" "Why didn't he fight?" "How could she possibly laugh??" Those questions all belie a total and complete ignorance of the mechanisms of trauma and millennia of nervous system evolution. Our survival strategies kick in, and, more often than not, we don't have time for conscious decision making; it just happens. In a split second, our nervous systems assess the threat and take the best course of action available. (This is why we don't take a moment to think through the pros and cons of, say, jumping out of the way of an oncoming car, or we'd be toast. We just automatically do it.)
Sometimes we're able to run away when someone tries to sexually assault us. Sometimes we can fight or scream, but often that isn't the best survival strategy because that can escalate life threatening violence and retaliation. And so, it's a really bad idea. Or maybe it's so ingrained in us to be a "good girl" that screaming doesn't even occur to us, especially if the assailant is someone we know, which is most often the case.
Much less talked about are the survival responses of compliance and appeasement. Those have saved many a life, and thank God for that. I hope all of us have access to those survival strategies, if needed. To judge those last two as "weak," or decide a survivor is partly to blame because they were compliant or appeasing, or to insist you'd do [fill in the blank] were someone sexually assaulting you, is preposterous. Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn't. Again, our nervous systems automatically kick into gear and do what they have to do to survive: fight, flee, comply, appease, or even all-but collapse or "play dead." In this instance, you might totally check out, go passive and limp to get through it. And so, you barely remember what happened, cognitively, but somatically you sure as hell know. Again, hooray that our nervous systems have that survival strategy available, too!
Then there's what happens right afterward. You might not go to the police (especially if you're part of a group that has historically been oppressed by them). You might not call a rape crisis center or a friend. Maybe you laugh uncontrollably, disoriented, incredulous at the surreal thing that just happened. People anxiously or disconnectedly laugh at horrible things that have happened to them. I see it all the time in my practice. Maybe you go back to a party, ignoring for the moment what just happened. Maybe you go shopping for dinner. "Everything's cool. Yup, all normal. Just fine." Maybe you pick a huge, screaming fight with your partner in an unconscious effort to fend off the feelings of vulnerability. None of that is "weird" or unexplainable. You're in shock. Your nervous system hasn't had near enough time to integrate or process what just happened. You're on auto pilot. You might do things that seem to make no sense. But they do if you understand trauma.
Given all these layers and sequelae of trauma, I get why many survivors never come forward. It's a big risk. Once your story is out there, it's out there. Even supportive people tend to look at you through the filter of: The One Who Was Raped. On the stand, E. Jean Carroll talked about what happened after she publicly accused Trump: "Oh. My God. The force of hatred coming at me was staggering." That onslaught is, again, more trauma on top of trauma. So is, potentially, Trump's lead counsel Joe Tacopina's line of questioning about Carroll not screaming as she was being sexually assaulted. "He raped me, whether I screamed or not. I don't need any excuse for not screaming."
Indeed, she doesn't. I can't say this too many times: Wondering or questioning why Carroll didn't scream or run or why she laughed or soon went back to work shows a total ignorance of trauma and how nervous systems work. We can't override evolution as much as we might try. Full stop. I get that in a courtroom you need a jury to believe you, but generally you don't need to justify anything to anyone. If people don't believe you, that's about them. And their ignorance or fear or discomfort.
As Carroll has, many do come forward years or decades later. Again, the accusatory cries of, "Why didn't she come forward earlier?" are absolutely uninformed. Maybe that's the time your nervous system needed to work through the trauma be it via trauma-informed therapy or self-exploration or gardening; or maybe the perpetrator finally moved or died; or maybe enough time has passed where your family is able to be supportive and not abandon you for calling out your uncle; or maybe enough is enough and you just can't stay silent a day longer. Many finally felt the validation and the safety in numbers of the #MeToo movement that allowed them to come forward. All the doubting questions ignore that in 2023 we still live in a patriarchal culture. It's a culture that continues to judge and shame and doubt and blame women for their sexual assault, or those questions would never be asked in the first place. And when other genders get assaulted, that comes with its own kind of judgment. And if you're a person of color, add another layer on top of that.
It can take a huge amount of bravery and fortitude just to get up and face a run-of-the-mill day after such a disorienting, devastating experience that robs one of a sense of safety no matter where you are because your body is the scene of the crime. Confronting a perpetrator requires its own kind of bravery. I can't pretend to imagine what it must be like to do it on the national stage.**
E. Jean Carroll and the millions of sexual assault survivors deserve our respect and support. They deserve our empathy, but never our pity. To all the sexual assault survivors out there, I see you. I believe you. And even if at times it feels all-but impossible to access, know that you're resilient beyond measure.
*If you're triggered and need support and/or resources, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1.800.656.HOPE (4673); or go to www.rainn.org.
**If you're a survivor, please hear this loud and clear: You are NO less brave if you don't confront your perpetrator. That is a deeply personal decision and sometimes it's the very best, smartest, and most strategic and self-caring decision to never, ever call out your assailant. Trust that.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Bill Banning Forced Arbitration of Harassment Claims Heads to Biden's Desk
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said the bill would bring about "one of the most significant workplace reforms in the last 50 years."
Feb 10, 2022
Workers' rights advocates on Thursday applauded the U.S. Senate's passage of a bill to keep workplace sexual harassment victims from being forced into private litigation of their claims rather than taking them to court--a reform called "long overdue."
"The arbitration process not only allows the corporations to hide sexual harassment and assault cases in this secretive and often biased process, but it shields those who committed serious misconduct from the public eye."
Three days after passing in the House with a 335-97 vote, the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act was passed by the Senate in a voice vote and was expected to be signed by President Joe Biden, who has said he supports the legislation.
The bill will bring about "one of the most significant workplace reforms in the last 50 years," lead sponsor Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said, noting that an estimated 60 million workers have signed mandatory arbitration agreements at work--many without realizing what they are agreeing to.
Forced arbitration clauses in employment contracts bar employees from suing their companies in court over allegations of sexual harassment or abuse, requiring them to settle claims privately. People who sign are also often barred from talking about their experiences, preventing employees from finding out if their colleagues have also faced harassment or abuse.
Several U.S. Supreme Court decisions in recent decades have made forced arbitration more common. In 2001, the court ruled that workers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce can be forced into arbitration, amending the Federal Arbitration Act on 1925, which had explicitly exempted these employees. In a 2011 case involving AT&T, the court ruled that companies can insert a clause into arbitration contracts that would ban class action lawsuits.
The legislation "will help us fix a broken system that protects perpetrators and corporations and end the days of silencing survivors," Gillibrand said. "The arbitration process not only allows the corporations to hide sexual harassment and assault cases in this secretive and often biased process, but it shields those who committed serious misconduct from the public eye."
The median award for a plaintiff in a private arbitration case is $30,000 versus $217,000 in a case that goes to court, according to news outlet The 19th.
The bill will apply not only to future employment contracts but will also be retroactive, said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), nullifying forced arbitration agreements that have already been signed and potentially allowing many workers to hold their employers accountable for past workplace abuse.
Forced arbitration clauses gained national attention in 2017 as a result of the #MeToo movement.
The legislation was passed with strong bipartisan support, with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) joining Gillibrand as cosponsors. In the House, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) was among the lawmakers to introduce the bill.
All votes against the legislation in the House were from Republicans.
"This is great news for workers everywhere!" tweeted women's rights group UltraViolet after the bill was sent to Biden's desk Thursday. "Ending forced arbitration will prevent the silencing of workplace survivors."
While welcoming the measure as a "crucial first step," Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women's Law Center, called it "admittedly an incomplete solution, as no one should be forced to waive their ability to fully enforce their rights to be free from other forms of unlawful harassment, discrimination, and exploitation, whether as workers, as consumers, as patients, or as students."
"We urge Congress to continue to build on today's important progress," she said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
McDonald's Workers Join 'Striketober' and Walk Out Over Sexual Harassment
One striker participated because "McDonald's still refuses to take responsibility for the countless women and teenagers who face harassment on the job at its stores across the globe."
Oct 26, 2021
Amid of wave of worker walkouts that supporters are collectively calling "Striketober," McDonald's employees in at least 12 U.S. cities took to the streets Tuesday to raise concerns about how the fast food giant has handled sexual harassment and to demand a union.
"No matter what McDonald's says, not much has changed for workers like me."
Though McDonald's in April announced new sexual harassment training standards that all of its restaurants worldwide will be required to meet by January 2022, workers still joined the one-day walkout from Chicago and Detroit to Houston and Miami, charging that the company has not done enough to keep employees safe on the job.
"I'm going on strike because despite years of protests, McDonald's still refuses to take responsibility for the countless women and teenagers who face harassment on the job at its stores across the globe," Jamelia Fairley, a McDonald's employee in Florida said in a statement ahead of the walkout. "No matter what McDonald's says, not much has changed for workers like me."
"I do believe that we're in a moment where workers are standing up more for their rights," said Fairley, a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit accusing McDonald's of systemic sexual harassment. "I have met others who have experienced sexual harassment... We want a union to prevent it from happening."
The strike comes after a civil lawsuit filed against McDonald's in September alleged that Walter A. Garner, a 42-year-old manager previously convicted of sexual assault, raped a 14-year-old employee in the bathroom of a franchise restaurant operated by Rice Enterprises in Pennsylvania.
Michele Rice of Rice Enterprises said last month that the manager was fired "as soon as we learned about a complaint against him." Garner was charged with rape but his attorneys negotiated a plea of indecent sexual assault and corruption of a minor, according to KDKA in Pittsburgh. He was sentenced last week to four to 10 years in prison and five years probation.
McDonald's--which has over 39,000 locations across 119 countries--said in a statement to the Associated Press that it expects all of its restaurants including franchises to meet its harassment training requirement and investigate all allegations.
The company's statement added that every employee "deserves to feel safe and respected when they come to work, and sexual harassment and assault have no place in any McDonald's restaurant."
Tuesday's action also comes after the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, at the end of September, sued another McDonald's franchisee, AMTCR, for subjecting young employees at 22 locations in Arizona, California, and Nevada to "egregious sexual harassment" that included "unwanted groping and touching, offensive comments and gestures regarding male genitalia, unwelcome sexual advances, sexual ridicule, intimidation, and insults."
AMTCR declined to comment to the Chicago Tribune, which reported on the Tuesday walkout in the Windy City, home to the fast food company's headquarters.
"It's time for McDonald's to address the pattern of sexual harassment in its stores," Adriana Alvarez, a 29-year-old who said she has worked at a restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Cicero for a decade, told the Tribune.
Alvarez said she hasn't experienced sexual harassment while working at McDonald's but has seen it happen to co-workers. She added that the new standards can't hurt, as long as the company doesn't "keep trying to brush it under the rug."
According to the newspaper, Alvarez and other activists at the Chicago protest also called for a union "to ensure our voices can be heard."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Progressives Demand Probe After Revelations About FBI Investigation of Kavanaugh
"Survivors deserve justice, and the country deserves to know the full truth of this situation, as well as the lengths the Trump administration was willing to go to cover up the truth."
Jul 22, 2021
Rights groups and other progressives are demanding a probe of the FBI's rushed and limited 2018 background investigation into U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after seven Democratic senators on Thursday revealed new details about the bureau's actions.
Kavanaugh was nominated to the court by former President Donald Trump and narrowly confirmed by GOP senators in October 2018, despite allegations of sexual assault, which Kavanaugh has denied. A newly released letter to lawmakers from the FBI sheds light on--but also raises more questions about--how the bureau handled its investigation of those allegations.
In August 2019, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) sent a letter (pdf) asking FBI Director Christopher Wray to provide a full picture of the bureau's 2018 supplemental background investigation of Kavanaugh. On June 30, 2021, they finally received a response (pdf) from Jill C. Tyson, an FBI assistant director.
The FBI's letter, which the senators made public, says in part that:
Justice Kavanaugh's nomination was the first time that the FBI set up a tip line for a nominee undergoing Senate confirmation. It was established at the direction of the FBI's Security Division to centralize and manage incoming information related to the nomination. The FBI received over 4,500 tips, including phone calls and electronic submissions. The Security Division section handling the BI and supplemental background investigations provided all relevant tips to the Office of White House Counsel (as the requesting entity).
In a joint statement Thursday, Whitehouse and Coons, along with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), revealed they sent Wray another letter (pdf) Wednesday evening to request more information.
"The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information 'highly relevant to... allegations' of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored," the senators wrote. "If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all."
Whitehouse was more blunt in remarks to The New York Times, suggesting that the FBI ran a "fake tip line that never got properly reviewed, that was presumably not even conducted in good faith."
Progressive activists and advocacy organizations were similarly critical and demanded action from Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice.
"Three years ago, our nation watched as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez shared their painful stories with the world about Brett Kavanaugh's abusive behavior. Today, we learn that our institutions failed them both," said Shaunna Thomas, executive director of the national gender justice group UltraViolet.
Thomas called the recent revelations "deeply troubling" and said that "the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a public hearing on the handling of the investigation by the FBI and interference from the White House Counsel and release those findings publicly."
"We owe it to survivors to ensure that they have systems of justice that treat their accusations seriously--and the failure to do so in this case is not only a betrayal of these survivors' trust, but of our nation's justice system as a whole," she said.
Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, similarly recalled witnessing "incredible courage as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford shared her truth with the world."
Henderson continued:
Today's revelations confirm and make more dire what we knew at the time--the allegations by Dr. Blasey Ford and Debbie Ramirez against Brett Kavanaugh were grossly mishandled. The Trump White House and Senate Republicans shamefully stifled an investigation to rush the process and guarantee their nominee a seat on the Supreme Court. These unconscionable actions undermine the Senate's constitutional role and continue to cast a shadow on the integrity of the court.
There are still numerous unanswered questions in the absence of a full and comprehensive investigation that should have taken place. We call for a full investigation into the large number of tips the FBI received about Justice Kavanaugh, how this process came to be, and who was involved. There must be full accountability.
Alliance for Justice president Nan Aron concurred, noting that "we have said since the beginning that the FBI's investigation during Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation process was a sham designed to protect his reputation instead of investigate credible allegations of sexual assault against him."
Aron called for the Justice Department to "immediately reopen its investigation into the past behavior of Justice Kavanaugh and determine if he intentionally misled Congress and the American public during his confirmation hearings."
She said the DOJ should also "conduct an expeditious review of how this investigation was conducted and share the details with the public."
Applauding the senators who continue to push for answers, Aron added that "survivors deserve justice, and the country deserves to know the full truth of this situation, as well as the lengths the Trump administration was willing to go to cover up the truth about Kavanaugh's behavior and ensure his confirmation."
Like Aron, Demand Justice executive director Brian Fallon highlighted his organization's long-standing critiques of Kavanaugh's elevation to the Supreme Court and declared that "the public deserves to know the truth about the cover-up that took place in 2018 and what the Trump administration may have concealed."
"Unlike in the fall of 2018, Democrats now hold the gavels in both the Senate and House," Fallon noted. "With so much credible evidence that Kavanaugh committed perjury, the relevant committees should be mounting their own investigation by directly interviewing the witnesses the FBI never spoke to, collecting the tips the Trump White House tried to bury, and insisting on the records from the National Archives that were withheld in 2018."
Ford's attorneys, Debra S. Katz and Lisa J. Banks, also responded to the revelations in a statement. The FBI's letter, they said, "confirms what we knew"--that the bureau's investigation into Ford's allegations against Kavanaugh "was a sham and a major institutional failure."
"This never should have been an ordinary background check," Katz and Banks continued, noting that the FBI refused to interview Ford or the corroborators listed in their letter to the bureau's director.
"The FBI should have referred the evidence it was receiving to the Criminal Investigation Division. FBI Director Wray must answer the question as to why he failed to do so," the pair added. "Because the FBI and Trump's White House Counsel hid the ball on this, we do not know how many of those 4,500 tips were consequential, how many of those tips supported Dr. Ford's testimony, or how many showed that Kavanaugh perjured himself during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Our nation deserved better."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Advocates Stand With Bill Cosby's 60 Accusers After Sexual Assault Conviction Overturned
"Today is a blow to survivors everywhere, who deserve so much better than this."
Jun 30, 2021
Women's rights advocates expressed solidarity on Wednesday with the 60 women who came forward to tell their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of Bill Cosby after the actor's conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
The seven-judge panel ruled that Cosby should not have been convicted in 2018 on three counts of aggravated indecent assault of his former mentee, Andrea Constand, due to a "non-prosecution agreement" he had reached earlier with a former prosecutor.
Cosby struck an agreement--of which there is no written record, according to the Associated Press--in 2005 with former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor Jr. As he was being investigated for drugging and sexually assaulting Constand, Castor gave Cosby an assurance that he would not be prosecuted if he testified in a civil case brought by Constand.
"His release means that Cosby, a sexual predator, was incarcerated within a criminal legal system that has as little regard for its own rules and procedures as Cosby does for his victims."
--Marc Lamont Hill, Temple University
The assurance led Cosby to testify that he had given quaaludes to women in order to rape them--a testimony that was used by Castor's successor to charge Cosby in 2015, days before the statute of limitations expired in Constand's case.
"In light of these circumstances, the subsequent decision by successor D.A.s to prosecute Cosby violated Cosby's due process rights," the state's high court said in its ruling.
The ruling will allow Cosby to leave the maximum-security facility where he's been imprisoned after serving nearly three years of his three-to-10 year sentence. The justices barred prosecutors from attempting to retry the case in Pennsylvania.
The anti-sexual assault campaign No More was among those expressing support for dozens of survivors who came forward to accuse Cosby of a pattern of abuse and violence that was exemplified by Constand's case.
Temple University professor and author Marc Lamont Hill emphasized that the court's decision did not exonerate Cosby, but rather revealed the inner workings of an unjust legal system.
Josie Duffy Rice, former president of criminal justice publication The Appeal, blamed "prosecutorial misconduct" for the outcome of Cosby's case, in which the former TV star vowed to serve all 10 years of his sentence rather than express remorse or admit wrongdoing despite his earlier admission that he had drugged and raped women.
A number of observers linked the ruling to the fact that more than two-thirds of sexual assaults are never reported to the police, with survivors reticent to try to convince law enforcement, the court system, and in cases like Cosby's, the broader public, that their experience really happened.
"We stand with all 60 survivors of Cosby's actions, who bravely came forward with their experiences, which include being drugged, raped, assaulted, threatened, and gaslighted, only to find their abuser let off the hook," said Shaunna Thomas, executive director of women's advocacy group UltraViolet. "Today is a blow to survivors everywhere, who deserve so much better than this."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Changing the Way the Military Handles Sexual Assault
How not to leave the fox guarding the henhouse.
May 24, 2021
Given the more than 60 Democratic and Republican votes lined up, the Senate is poised to move forward with a new bill that would change the way the military handles sexual assault and other felony crimes by service members. Sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), the new law would assign decision-making on sexual-assault cases and a host of other felonies, including some hate crimes, to a specially trained team of uniformed prosecutors. While the bill will indeed inch the military away from its antiquated practice of allowing commanders to decide whether to prosecute their own officers and soldiers on sexual-assault allegations, it baffles me that it's still allowed to handle its own violent crimes rather than having them dealt with through our criminal justice system.
Why should our troops enjoy such protected status, as though they exist in a separate reality from the rest of society? Arguably, in these years, the face of America has indeed been militarized, whether we like it or not. After all, we've just lived through two decades of endless war, American-style, in the process wasting significantly more than $6.4 trillion dollars, more than 7,000 uniformed lives, and scores of health- and safety-related opportunity costs.
Meanwhile, it's taken years for the public and members of Congress to begin to recognize that it matters how the military treats its own--and the civilians with whom they interact. (After all, many felonies committed by such personnel against civilians, at home and abroad, are prosecuted within the military-justice system.) That Congress has taken so long to support even such a timid bill in a bipartisan fashion and that few think to question whether felonies committed by American soldiers should be prosecuted within the military, suggests one thing: that we're a long, long way from taking responsibility for those who kill, maim, and rape in all our names.
I'm a military spouse. My husband has been a U.S. Navy officer for 18 years. During the decade we've been together, he's served on two different submarines and in three Department of Defense and other federal staff jobs in Washington.
In many ways, our family has been very fortunate. We have dual incomes that offer us privileges the majority of Americans, let alone military families, don't have, including being able to seek healthcare providers outside the military's decrepit health system. All this is just my way of saying that when I critique the military and my experiences in it, keep in mind that others have suffered so much more than my family.
The Military Criminal Justice System
Let me also say that I do understand why the military needs its own system for dealing with infractions specific to its mission (when, for instance, troops desert, defy orders, or make gross errors in judgment). The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is federal law enacted by Congress. Analogous to our civilian legal system, it is of no small importance, given the potential cost to our nation's security should the deadly equipment the military owns not be operated with the utmost sobriety and discretion.
In such cases, the standards listed in the UCMJ are implemented according to procedures outlined in another document, the Manual for Courts-Martial (MCM). Essentially, the MCM provides a framework for trying alleged offenses of various kinds within the military, laying out the maximum penalties that may be imposed for each of them.
Included in this are procedures for nonjudicial punishments in which a commanding officer, rather than a court-martial judge and a panel of other personnel (functionally, a jury), determines what penalties are to be imposed on a service member accused of a crime. Crucially, the results of such nonjudicial punishment do not appear on an officer's criminal record.
Sexual assault in the military is a pandemic all its own.
Among other things what this means is that a commanding officer can decide that a soldier accused of sexual assault will be subjected to nonjudicial punishment rather than a military trial. In that case, the public will have no way of knowing that he committed such an act. No less crucially, the MCM leaves it entirely up to the commanding officer of a soldier's unit whether or not such allegations will be dealt with at all, no matter the format. That's why the Senate bill under consideration is of importance. At least it will remove the decision-making process on prosecuting reported assault cases from officers who may have a vested interest in covering up such assaults.
Because here's the grim reality, folks: sexual assault in the military is a pandemic all its own. According to a 2018 Defense Department survey across five branches of the armed services (the most recent such document we have), 20,500 assaults occurred that year against active duty women and men. Yet fewer than half of those alleged crimes were reported within the military's justice system and just 108 convictions resulted.
What this tells us is that commanding officers exercise a stunning decision-making power over whether allegations of rape get tried at all--and generally use it to suppress such charges. Consider, for example, that, of the 2,339 formally reported sexual assaults that military investigators recommended for arbitration in 2019, commanders took action in only 1,629 of those cases. In other words, they left about a third of them unexamined.
Of the ones brought to the military justice system, fewer than half were actually tried in front of a judge through the court-martial system. At worst, the remainder of the accused received nonjudicial punishments from commanders--extra duties, reductions in pay or rank--or were simply discharged from the service. And all this happened entirely at the discretion of commanding officers.
Those same commanders, who have the power to try (or not try) allegations of violence, generally have a vested interest in covering up such accusations, lest they reflect badly on them. And while you might think that sexual-assault survivors would have a say in command culture, as it happens their "anonymous" contributions to such reports sometimes turn out not to be anonymous at all. In smaller units, commanders can sometimes figure out who has reported such incidents of violence and misconduct, since such reports regularly include the gender and rank of those who have come forward.
All of this explains why the Gillibrand-Ernst bill is a welcome departure from a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. At least those with less of a conflict of interest and (hopefully) more than just a token amount of training when it comes to sexual assault, harassment, and other forms of violence will be assigned the job of deciding whether or not to try alleged felonies.
Let's Take This Further
And yet, while that bill is far better than nothing, it's distinctly a case of too little, too late. The real problem is that Americans generally view the military just as the military views itself--an island apart from the general populace, deserving of special allowances, even when it comes to sexual crimes.
I recently spoke with a young female Air Force recruit who saw the military as her sole means of paying for a four-year university without carrying crippling debt into middle age. What struck me, however, was how much more she feared attacks by male airmen than the possibility that she might ever be wounded or killed in a combat zone. And in that ordering of fears, she couldn't be more on target, as the stats on combat deaths and reported sexual assault bear out.
In addition, these days, new recruits like her enter the military in the shadow of the bone-chilling murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old Army soldier. She went missing in April 2020 from Fort Hood, Texas, shortly after reporting that a superior officer had sexually solicited her, repeatedly made an example of her after she refused him, and finally approached her while she was taking care of her personal hygiene. Her dismembered body was later found in a box on the base. Her alleged killers included a soldier who had been accused of sexual harassment in a separate case and his civilian girlfriend. An Army report on Guillen's murder and the events that led to it concluded that none of her supervisors had taken appropriate action in response to her allegations of sexual harassment.
The murder sparked public outrage, including among women in the armed services who quickly coined the Twitter hashtag #IamVanessaGuillen, and went public with their own accounts of being assaulted while in the military. Her case would, in fact, be a major catalyst driving the Senate bill, which has attracted support from a striking range of sponsors, including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Though I never thought I'd find myself quoting Ted Cruz, let me echo his reaction to the bill: "It's about damn time."
A Small Start
Yet Guillen's murder and the legislation it sparked begs this question: If it took the death of a young woman who reported sexual harassment to launch such a relatively timid bill, what will it take to move the judging of violent crimes entirely off military bases and into the regular court system? I shudder to think about the answer to that question.
The morning I went into labor with my daughter, my husband was on a military base a few minutes away, carrying out his duties as executive officer on a ballistic missile submarine. As the pains grew stronger with each passing hour, I phoned the base to let him know that I was in labor. I was eager to reach him in time to be taken to the hospital before a pending snow storm made driving through the foothills of the Cascade Mountains treacherous.
His colleagues repeatedly insisted that he was unavailable, even to them. Finally, I said to one of them between gasps, "Oh for Christ's sake, just tell him I'm in labor and I need him to drive me to the hospital!"
Four hours later, having heard nothing from the base, I watched my husband, looking beleaguered and sad, walk through the door. No one had even bothered to give him my message. As I sat up on the floor where I was trying to cope with the pain, he slumped momentarily on the couch in his blue camo uniform and told me that he'd been called upon to assist in the hearing of a sexual-abuse and possible rape case involving the daughter of one of his sailors. I listened, while he prepared to take me to the hospital, as he described what he had dealt with. I could see the stress on his face, the drawn look that came from hours of listening to human suffering.
At least, that case was heard. However, another point is no less important: that a group of men--my husband and other commanding officers with, assumedly, zero knowledge about sexual assault--had been placed in charge of hearing a case on the possible rape of a child.
In scores of other cases I've heard about in my years as a military spouse and as a therapist for veterans and military families, I've been similarly struck by the ways in which male commanders without training have treated the survivors of such assaults and women more generally. I've seen some of those same men joke about how women's behavior and moods, even abilities, change depending on their "time of the month" or pregnancy status. I've heard some make sexist or homophobic jokes about female and gay service members or heard about them threatening to "rip them another asshole" when fellow shipmates failed to meet expectations. Within the military, violence is the first thing you notice.
That day, trembling with the pangs of late-stage labor as my husband rushed me through the falling snow to the hospital with our daughter about to be born, I thought: Where will she be safe in this world? Who's responsible for protecting her? For protecting us? I hugged my belly tighter and resolved to try to do my part.
And today, years later, I still wonder whether anyone beyond a group of senators and military advocates will show an interest in holding service members accountable for respecting the dignity of the rest of us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy