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This week on Uprising:

* Violence On the Rise As Mexican Elections Draw Nearer
* The Impact of Spain’s Bank Bailout on the Euro
* Former Scientologist and Gender Activist Shares Her Life Story in a New Memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger

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Violence On the Rise As Mexican Elections Draw Nearer

The election for Mexico’s president is less than two weeks away and a new poll puts Enrique Pena Nieto ahead of Manuel Lopez Obrador four days after Sunday’s presidential debate. A voter survey published yesterday shows front runner Nieto’s popularity has risen slightly, with nearly 38% of voters backing him, while Lopez Obrador’s support fell 1 point to 24%. The results come after the Guardian newspaper substantiated claims by activists that Nieto and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, are benefiting from biased coverage by Televisa, the Spanish speaking world’s largest communications company. The Guardian also found State department cables released by Wikileaks that reveal the US was aware of Nieto benefiting from favorable and disproportionate airtime when he was a governor in 2009. Also revealed was evidence that Televisa sold Nieto positive coverage.

A Mexican journalist in Veracruz was found dead early Thursday morning just hours after he was accosted by armed men. According to the LA Times, “[j]ournalists in Veracruz have said they think they are being targeted before the July 1 vote because the long-dominant …PRI, fears electoral losses in the region and doesn’t want coverage of campaign shenanigans.”

Before Sunday’s debate 90,000 people gathered in Mexico City to protest against front-runner Nieto and the PRI. The large demonstration was called for by the Yo Soy 132 movement – I am the 132nd movement – sparked by a group of 131 students at a private university who confronted the Presidential frontrunner Enrique Pena Nieto. Nieto dismissed them as a small group of shills for Obrador. Turnout on Sunday included Mexicans from all walks of life who are opposed to a return of a PRI candidate to the Presidency, an office the party held from 1929 to 1982.

GUEST: Manuel Perez Rocha, Associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies

The Impact of Spain’s Bank Bailout on the Euro

Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced a 100 billion Euro bank bailout this week, just two weeks after he dismissed speculation of a bailout. Rajoy called it a “bailout without humiliation,” and claimed the deal was a victory not just for Spain, but for all of Europe, declaring, “[t]he credibility of the Euro won, the future of the Euro won, the European Union won.”

However his jubilation was undercut by reports from the Guardian that sources with the European Commission on Sunday said Rajoy’s spin was a “domestic political” act, and that Spain’s economy will be subject to much scrutiny. Germany’s Finance Minister said the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, commonly referred to as the Troika will be visiting Spain. Greek protestors demonstrating against austerity measures singled out the so-called Troika for criticism. A visit from the big three institutions has signaled a loss of financial sovereignty for a nation.

While observers are saying the picture is not as rosy as Spain’s Prime Minister describes, the terms of the bank bailout did not include the austerity measures imposed on Ireland and Greece. Rajoy credits this to austerity measures already implemented to decrease the deficit from 8.9% of the nation’s GDP to just 3%, which have caused nearly a year of sporadic protests across Spain. There is now speculation that the bailout will affect Greek elections held on Sunday and spur the Greek and Irish governments to demand more favorable terms on loans they have received.

GUEST: Marshall Auerback, a Fellow at Economists for Peace and Security, and a Research Associate at the Levy Institute.

Former Scientologist and Gender Activist Shares Her Life Story in a New Memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger

Al Bornstein was born in 1948, into a Conservative Jewish East coast family. He went to college at the prestigious Brown University, graduated in1969, and in the summer of 1970 stumbled onto a Scientology center in Denver, Colorado. There Bornstein began taking classes, and was swiftly recruited into the Scientologists’ elite sailing crew, the Sea Org. Al signed a “billion year” contract to serve the organization along with the woman who would be his first wife and the mother of his only child, a daughter they named Jessica. Eleven years later Al was excommunicated from the Church and shortly thereafter gave into a lifelong desire and began transitioning to living life as a woman named Kate.

Katherine Vandam Bornstein lived much of her life on the fringes of society. She felt uncomfortable living life as a male since the age of 4. The feeling was not extinguished by her father, a proud and self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” so concerned with his son’s masculinity, he forced the teenage Al into a rendezvous with a prostitute. Kate continued to harbor fantasies of being a woman during the years she lived as a rising male heterosexual star within the Church of Scientology, which didn’t condone alternative sexual or gender identities. After being forced from the structured and cloistered life of a full-time Scientologist in 1982, Bornstein began anew, eventually changing her name, her body, and her entire social circle. She moved to Seattle, spent a lot of time in therapy, got tattoos, dreamed of being a star, and advocated for others like herself.

A pioneer in raising awareness of the transgender community, Kate Bornstein authored the groundbreaking 1994 book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, followed by a number of acclaimed books that challenge the traditional belief that there are only two genders, male, or female. Her newest work is A Queer and Pleasant Danger, a no-holds barred memoir and an open letter to her estranged daughter and grandchildren.

GUEST: Kate Bornstein, author of A Queer and Pleasant Danger

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“I found that all roads in life lead nowhere. So you might as well choose the road that has the most heart and is the most fun.” – Kate Bornstein from A Queer and Pleasant Danger