Renee Morgan-Saks is a 24 year old native of Washington Heights, New York and a member of NOW-NYC. She is currently working at a women’s rights legal advocacy organization and plans to attend law school to study public interest law.
Don Imus is back on the air. Not that I need to remind you, but here’s a little recap of what lead to the Imus debacle:
IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and—
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos…
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there…. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute…
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing…
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes — that movie that he had.
“That movie that he ...

Sonia Ossorio is the president of NOW-NYC, a position she has held since elected in 2004.
I know a woman from South America who spent her first night in the Big Apple in a brothel overlooking Roosevelt Avenue in Queens. With a timer at her side she “serviced� 19 men – a veritable United Nations parade of taxi drivers to restaurant workers who literally queued up for a turn to have 15 minute sex sessions with the women at this brothel.
If you never had a picture of what the low-budget, factory-style prostitution that makes up much of the local NYC sex industry, this is it – up close, uncomfortable and a mockery of sex and all it stands ...

Maureen Shaw is the Chair of NOW-NYC’s Reproductive Rights Action Committee. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in Human Rights at Columbia University.
For years, Emergency Contraception, or Plan B, has been a hot topic of debate. Does it cause abortion? Should it be available by prescription only? Should minors have access to Plan B?
A quick run-down on Plan B will teach you that no, it does not induce abortion, but rather prevents pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. And while I believe that it should be available to all women regardless of age, the FDA recently made Plan B available over the counter for women 18 years and older. And by “over the counter,� I ...

Bryn Taylor is a member of NOW-NYC’s Women and Girls in the Media Committee. She lives and works in New York as a freelance fashion writer and stylist.
With sex and violence running rampant throughout the entertainment industry, one might think (or hope) that regulations would become increasingly more strict as the entertainment becomes raunchier. Sadly, this is not the case. In fact, Hollywood’s guidelines are becoming more lenient by the minute, and everything seems up for interpretation.
A recent report by NOW-NYC’s Women and Girls in the Media Committee (WAGM) uncovered the startling fact that a number of films in circulation today fail to accurately warn against the sexual content they contain. The Motion ...

In our last “Voices of…” series in 2007, NOW NYC will be contributing posts this week!

The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the nation’s largest organization working to advance women’s rights. The New York City chapter of NOW (NOW-NYC) is the largest chapter in the country and works to protect women’s reproductive choices, end violence against women and eliminate sex discrimination in our schools, workplaces and the justice system in New York.

Stay tuned for posts throughout the week from NOW-NYC activists on issues like LGBTQQ rights, contraception, human trafficking and more!
Thanks to Maureen Shaw for putting this all together!

Thank you to everyone (and Jessica and the ladies of Feministing particularly!) for reading our Voices of the Latina Institute series. The work that is being done on the ground and in the non-profit community rarely gets shared with the general public and we love any opportunity to talk about our work outside of conferences and grant proposals.
The work of the Latina Institute is only a small part of a broader movement for reproductive justice, just check out the Feministing blogroll for more of the awesome organizations doing this work. For change to happen in our lifetime, we all have to find ways to contribute to social justice movements, so pick an org and find a way to ...

By Grace Kaissal, Summer Intern, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
“!Aye Mija! ¡Hablemos de eso otro día! ¡De eso no se hable! Cuando estes casada, okay?� These are the phrases and responses my friends and I have shared and laughed about when recounting the stories of our first family conversations about sex. I remember vividly when I was a scrawny ten year old pre-pubescent girl watching TV with my mother one evening and a “sex� scene came on in the movie we were watching. I remember getting so nervous and to my surprise, looking over to my mom and noticing she was really nervous as well. As she switched the channel she told me, “Hablare contigo acerca ...