First Circuit Court Upholds Ruling that DOMA is Unconstitutional

Today marks another successful step towards dismantling the federal ban on marriage equality as the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional. A unanimous decision from a three-judge panel ruled that DOMA denies same-sex married couples the federal rights and privileges afforded to heterosexual couples across the United States despite the recognition of same-sex marriages in certain states. This decision responds to two cases; one brought by the state of Massachusetts and the other, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, by Overbrook Grantee Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).

GLAD is a New England-based organization using legal advocacy to fight discrimination against Americans based on sexual orientation, HIV status and gender identity and expression. The Overbrook Foundation specifically supports the organization for its work to challenge the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Today’s decision is a victory for the movement to advance the freedom to marry in the United States. It is another important step as the momentum of support for same-sex marriage only continues to expand in 2011 and 2012.

While, as reporters, advocates and allies have recognized, this is only the first decision in the federal appeals process for the cases. Nevertheless, it does represent one more step towards these cases reaching the Supreme Court and the eventuality of the highest court ruling on the constitutionality of DOMA. Beyond advocacy work on the state-level to recognize and allow same-sex marriage, repealing DOMA continues to be an extremely important objective for the movement. We are proud to support GLAD as it continues with its excellent legal work and its determination to eventually eliminate this discriminatory federal law.

For more information, GLAD has published a press release and the court’s written decision after the case was decided. Mainstream media outlets, such as the New York Times, have also picked up this news of this decision and I am sure there will be more opinion and news coverage in the next few days.

New 2011 Catalyst Fund Evaluation Released

The Overbrook Foundation’s grantee, the Catalyst Fund, has released its annual evaluation (conducted by Korwin Consulting) of the fund’s activities and those of its partners and grantees in 2011. This report provides an analysis of the work of the Catalyst Fund to expand the amount of available funds going to support grassroots Women of Color-led reproductive justice organizations. In doing so, the report also provides a sense of the challenges and opportunities facing the reproductive justice field as a whole across the country. It explains the diminishing funds going to support this work even though the impact of the groups has been higher in 2011.


The report lays out the model for the fund. 26 national foundations support Catalyst which then gives grants to 12 women’s foundations around the country. In turn, these women’s foundations must raise the money to match the grant from Catalyst and then use both of these amounts to grant to 96 grassroots reproductive justice groups. In spite of the economic downturn, the Catalyst Fund has encouraged donors, including many individual donors, to move $8.6 million in new money to support the reproductive justice field since 2008.

Beyond the explanation of this exciting funding mechanism this gives a great overview of the reproductive justice movement and the field. It introduces the issues being addressed by these groups (ranging from abortion access to parenting rights to environmental justice) and the communities being served. It also reports the number of organizations that are engaging in different strategies like alliance building, policy advocacy, community organizing and more.  As the report states, “Collectively, Catalyst grantees in 2011 were instrumental in the passage of 10 laws and 10 non-legislative policies while blocking passage of 28 harmful new laws and protecting two existing policies from repeal.” The evaluation also addresses the challenges to the fund’s work and in the field as a whole. It highlights the fund raising, communications and capacity difficulties for the groups as well as the current political environment which can be both helpful and harmful to their efforts.

In addition to the quantitative data on policy victories, opinion leaders influenced and alliances built, qualitative interviews and stories of the grassroots groups’ work reveal why foundations and other partners, including Overbrook, have been so excited to be a part of this project. The evaluation reveals that this work is not easy, but these groups are continuing to demonstrate impact. From our perspective, supporting local grassroots groups working on the issues most important to their communities and led by those who are most impacted by reproductive health inequities is essential to expanding access to reproductive justice here in the United States.

Please click here to read the report’s summary and here to read the full evaluation found on the Groundswell Fund’s (which houses the Catalyst Fund among two other reproductive justice funds) website.

Two Overbrook Grantees Help Establish Clearwater, an Indigenous Ecuadorian Initiative to Provide Communities with Clean Water

Flowing from the February 14 2011 decision by an Ecuadorian court finding Chevron guilty of dumping oil and contaminants in the Amazonian rainforest over decades, indigenous Ecuadorian communities and a coalition of non-profits - including Overbrook grantees Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch - founded ClearWater in late 2011. This initiative aims to provide clean water in areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon hardest hit by years of oil pollution.

In early October, 2011, the ClearWater pilot project broke ground in the community of Cofan Dureno, with the community-led installation of 52 rainwater catchment systems (please see here for an example of the installation of a catchment system).

The basins are intended to reduce dependency on river systems for water, which have been heavily polluted through oil extraction activities. They cost about $1200 per family, but are also easy to install and can last up to 50 years if maintained properly. Further, not only are the systems ideal for rural areas, but the specially designed filtered catchment units will enable families, health clinics and schools to have clean water. 

Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network are key partners in this effort and are active in helping to raise awareness for the project, which not only offers Amazonian communities safe drinking water, but highlights their decades-long struggle to achieve recognition and reparations for destruction of their environment and way-of-life. 

Overbrook Grantee 350.org helps introduce the End Polluter Welfare Act into Congress

On May 10th, Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) and Rep. Keith Ellison (MN), joined by Overbrook Grantee 350.org, introduced the "End Polluter Welfare Act" legislation into Congress. The bill aims at cutting billions in federal subsidies currently given to the oil, coal, and gas industries.

The bill notes that fossil fuels are subsidized at 6 times the rate of renewable energies: $72 billion in 2002-2008, compared with $12.2 billion for renewables. By contrast, in 2011 alone, the five largest oil companies earned a combined $137 billion. Furthermore, the new bill would not only prevent millions of tons annual carbon emissions, it would save billions of dollars. For example, $12 billion would be saved by repealing a 2004 law that allows fossil fuel corporations to take deductions by claiming they are manufacturers, one of many such exemptions.

The efforts of Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison were supported by 350.org, a global grassroots coalition that seeks to curb carbon emissions by using social media and online campaigns to catalyze public protests. For instance, in the wake of the Heartland Institute's billboard attacks likening climate change believers to the Unabomber, it immediately organized online counter-protests. The backlash resulted in the pull-out by several high-profile funders from the Institute. 350.org also offers a host of resources on organizing events, protests, workshops, and campaigns.

While the bill will certainly face daunting challenges in both the House and the Senate (where climate change deniers grow ever more vocal), its introduction signals a new willingness to tackle entrenched energy interests. And, by partnering with next-generation grassroots organizations like 350.org and harnessing broad-based public support, such bills may finally have a chance to succeed.

National Advocates for Pregnant Women in the New York Times Magazine

This past weekend, the New York Times Magazine ran an article, “Mommy Had To Go Away For A While", and its website published it under the title, “The Criminalization of Bad Mothers”.  In the article, Ada Calhoun tells the story of several women who have been arrested under Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law, a law which requires the prosecution of mothers abusing substances that might harm their children or fetuses.  She traces the cases and family backgrounds of several women impacted by this law.  She also provides background on both the groups supporting this law and fighting it. Beyond covering an issue of importance to the Foundation’s grantee, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, and extensively relying on information from its Executive Director Lynn Paltrow and  Director of Policy and Advocacy Emma Ketteringham, this article is remarkable for its exploration of the complexities around this law and the criminalization of several women who have used drugs during their pregnancies.  

It soon becomes clear that these are tough cases to get involved with because the women are not always that sympathetic; they can be bad mothers and they may be engaging in illegal activity.  On the other hand, the article exposes that these cases are often more complicated.  These women do seem to care about their children and they have often struggled with addiction so abandoning drugs during pregnancy proves quite difficult.   

Regardless of your feelings towards these women, one thing remains clear.   Advocates, like NAPW, continue to take on these critical cases because they are extremely important for defending women’s rights and fighting fetal personhood laws that have appeared around the country.  In fact,  

[Ms. Ketteringham] argues that applying Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law to pregnant women “violates constitutional guarantees of liberty, privacy, equality, due process and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.” In effect, she says, under Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law, pregnant women have become “a special class of people that should be treated differently from every other citizen.” 

They also argue that criminalizing these behaviors is neither appropriate for the families nor the health of women.  Alternative measures need to be created that respond in a way to encourage healthy behaviors rather than take away the rights of women in favor of fetuses.  We truly recommend you read this article.  It offers a nuanced examination of an extremely complicated set of issues that bring about these laws and why it is important to support NAPW’s challenge, despite personal feelings towards the mothers.  Again, to read the article, please click here.

Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules to Keep Unconstitutional Personhood Measure Off Ballot

This past month, the ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a legal petition against efforts to put a personhood initiative onto the ballot in Oklahoma in November.  This week, the state’s Supreme Court ruled on this legal challenge upholding the constitution and earlier rulings of the US Supreme Court by unanimously deciding to bar putting this measure to a public vote.  This ballot initiative would have proposed giving a fertilized egg “personhood” and the affiliated rights that are afforded to a person.  Despite appearing in many US states over the past five years, these personhood measures have dangerous implications for the safety and rights of pregnant women and women seeking abortions or fertility treatments. It would have banned abortion under any circumstance, banned several contraceptive options and could create legal challenges for medical care providers serving pregnant women and the women seeking this health care. 

Many of Overbrook’s reproductive justice and domestic human rights grantees, including those listed above, have worked to defeat these measures through legal challenges (i.e. Oklahoma) or through grassroots mobilization and coalition building (i.e. Mississippi). We are glad to hear that the court has recognized the constitutional rights of Oklahoman women and that many organizations continue to successfully fight for the rights and health of American women in spite of these personhood strategies. For more information, click here to read an article from the Wall Street Journal, here to read an article from the Tulsa World, here to read the Center for Reproductive Rights’ press release on the victory and here for its description of the petition against ballot measure.  

US Human Rights Fund Launches New Racial Justice Website

The Overbrook Foundation is pleased to share the US Human Rights Fund’s news of the launch of a new website - www.racialjustice.org. This site includes resources and stories from human rights advocates present at the US Human Rights Fund’s We Shall Overcome: Using Human Rights to Achieve Racial Justice Convening held in Philadelphia last November. Not only does this site explain the human rights framework that united the interested funders, activists, artists and journalists who attended the meeting, but it also includes convening-related and external resources for those who are interested in learning more about the Human Rights movement in the United States. 

Highlighted stories from leaders in the field on the importance of human rights and their experiences with human rights-based campaigns also have a place on the site.  For example, leaders at NESRI, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the ACLU share their experience with using human rights frameworks. In addition, it draws attention to the story of the 2011 Human Rights Hero Award Winner, Jessica Lenahan. Ms. Lenahan is an American human rights defender who brought her case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to fight for government accountability for the human rights abuses she faced here in the United States.  (Her story was actually featured on this blog in November - click here to view it.)  

The organizations and the convening lessons covered on this site address a variety of issues that intersect with racial justice ranging from education reform to immigrant rights, from criminal justice reform to health care issues.  Despite this wide array of focuses, these individuals and their organizations see how their work can be connected through human rights.  They view the fight for racial justice in our country as a fight for the human rights of all. We hope you can check out www.racialjustice.org to explore and learn from the exciting tools and resources found on this new site!