February
15, 2002
Front-Page
News
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PHOTO:
FRED LEBLANC
Jane
E. Alexander '80
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Comfort Food and
More The February 8 issue of the Boston Globe featured a story
titled "Warmth, Love, and Daily Bread: Shelter in Back Bay
Offers Women Solace" that focused on the Women's Lunch Place.
Described by Globe reporter Brian MacQuarrie as "an oasis
of empathy that has bubbled in [a] church's rented basement for
twenty years," the Lunch Place was cofounded in 1982 by South
Dakota native Jane E. Alexander '80, who was twenty-five at the
time and "appalled at the homelessness that [she] found in
the urban East," writes MacQuarrie. Alexander is also the
organization's director. "No sign hangs outside its door,
no buzz rises to the street, but the Women's Lunch Place here
continues to harbor the homeless, the mentally ill, the elderly
poor, and the emotionally starved," writes MacQuarrie. Open
from 8 am to 2 pm six days a week, the Lunch Place serves dozens
of "vulnerable Boston women on the fringes of society breakfast
and a home-cooked lunch at long communal tables adorned with bright
tablecloths and fresh-cut flowers," according to the article.
In addition to meals, "guests" of the Lunch Place have
access to doctors, a washing machine, a shower, a telephone, toiletries,
housing advice, and basic clothing. "They also sample an
eclectic range of escorted outings: skating lessons on the Frog
Pond, for example; classical music concerts; even a whale watching
excursion," according to the Globe.
Around The World
Politics professor Christopher Pyle was tapped by The World, a
BBC/NPR worldwide radio news collaboration, to speak about issues
surrounding the detention of Taliban and Al Qaeda members at Guantanamo
Bay. In a January 29 interview, Pyle asserted that the United
States government should apply the Geneva Convention to its treatment
of this growing number of prisoners. If not, Pyle said, the United
States could damage its credibility as a champion of human rights
and deprive its soldiers of their rights under the convention,
especially if they are captured out of uniform, as some of our
Special Forces could have been. Also interviewed for the segment
were a Pentagon spokeswoman and a senior fellow from the Council
on Foreign Relations. On February 7, the Bush administration announced
that it will apply the Geneva Convention to the detainees.
The Greater of
Two Evils Professor Emeritus of Politics and Women's Studies
Jean Grossholtz was quoted in an article titled "Biotech
Weapons Worse than Nuclear Arsenal" that ran in the January
28 issue of Dawn, a leading daily English newspaper of Pakistan.
"Governments concerned about nuclear proliferation should
be more worried by the greater potential for mischief that biotechnology
holds in military and criminal minds, say members of an international
panel of scientists involved in shaping the biosafety protocol,"
writes Ranjit Devraj. The panel, which included Grossholtz, was
in India January 22 for a strategy session before the Second World
Social Forum in Porte Alegre, Brazil, held last week, which focused
on alternatives to globalization. Devraj writes, "Worst of
all is the refusal of governments that are backed by the same
TNCs [transnational corporations] to accept the international
regulation of little-understood areas of biotechnology, notably
genetic engineering, despite its potential for mass destruction,
intended or otherwise, said Professor Jean Grossholtz, feminist
and global campaigner for cultural and biological diversity. Grossholtz
said the United States government was taking advantage of the
September terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the
anthrax scare, to restrict the rights of citizens to information
about its biological defense programme. She said that the United
States government was clearly more interested in defending the
interests of TNCs than in protecting citizens from biological
warfare, and was also moving away from commitments under the Biological
and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) not to develop or stockpile
biological weapons." Grossholtz is a member of Diverse Women
for Diversity, a movement begun with the aim of creating diverse
solutions to economic globalization at the local level and building
a coalition of women for a common defense against the process
at a global level.
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