First, I'm moving this event to the archive: August 6th@6pm, Robin's Bookstore, Philadelphia flyer. It was a cozy venue and small but fun audience. Two more to go, this weekend.

And I'm not going to write a lot about this topic, but I have been following the growing chorus of feminist voices in Latin America signalling their disgust with Daniel Ortega and calling for Zoilamérica, his sociologist, Sandinista stepdaughter, to have access to some sort of justice in Nicaragua.

He molested and raped her for eleven years, from the time she was eleven years old. Having read her entire lengthy, gutwrenching testimony (in Spanish--I don't know if it's been translated) I personally have no doubt she's telling the truth. And a lot of folks feel the same way. For example, he was uninvited to Lugo's inauguration in Paraguay last week for that reason. But Zoilamérica is being framed as a sort of Paula Jones (despite being politically on the left) by Honduran syndicalists, who are claiming that feminist groups who support her are anti-revolutionary imperialist tools (and yes, that is in fact the language being employed), and thus entirely untrustworthy. This gets complicated, because a lot of feminist groups are indeed anti-revolutionary imperialist tools, but that doesn't mean they're not right on this one. I got an email from SITRAUNAH, the union of the workers of the Honduran national university, to that effect last night, signed (by a good friend), "In Solidarity."

I am not in solidarity with any sort of syndicalism that sacrifices the truth. If you want an honest revolution, you can't go around giving rapists diplomatic immunity and expect women to be on board. Or, as Jean-Luc so eloquently put it, "You cannot explain away a wantonly immoral act because you think that it is connected to some higher purpose."