experience

There is an argument that goes that we should vote for the person. A person's qualifications are more important than their race, their ethnic/religious affiliation, national origin, or anything else. It should be based on qualifications ... that is, unless it's a woman and then all that goes out the window.

Feminists used to whistle past the graveyard and came up with snappy one-liners such as "the best man for the job might be a woman."

I happen to remember how the term, "glass ceiling" was coined. During an informal meeting in 1978 of a group of Hewlett-Packard (HP) female middle managers, they collectively observed that while on paper, and in the policy manual, women were in the running for the top jobs, the trajectories were all out of whack.

Fresh graduates, men and women, started in roughly the same entry-level jobs and the first two promotions came along, until the title "manager." Men continued to progress, but none of the women had; not the fresh group nor the ones who had been at HP for a decade, could break past that. Men increased their area of responsibility. For the women it was a lateral series of jobs: manager, manager, manager, manager.

"It's like we're hitting a ceiling that no one seems to see - because it's made of glass ... a glass ceiling ..." It was the image of a balloon going up and hitting some unseen barrier, then skittering along.

Another woman at the meeting said that when she had been at the pharmaceutical giant, Merck, that she was a Manager, and she was invited to an annual meeting. There were about 20 men and two women and they broke for lunch. One of the more senior men said to her, "now you two women ... now don't sit together."

She gave him a warm grin. "We won't, if you men don't."

To many, this will sound like ancient history. Someone under 30 wasn't even born yet, yet something has happened and I think Penny Wit gave us some statistics that that are a touchstone to what has happened since the Women's Movement.

Penny Wit presents some data in his comment titled, It's already changing .... where he points to the gains women have made. This is encouraging.

In the mid-1970s, the top law schools were predominantly male. Depending on the exact school and exact year, women made up 15-25% of the enrollment. The number has moved up steadily until today the ratio is 50:50. In other professions, such as medicine, the number of female physicians has also followed this same trajectory.

It doesn't work to parachute a woman figurehead into a top slot. Carly Fiorina, whatever people might think over her decisions, was more or less accepted. She got a shot because people like Mary Cunningham paved the way and got crucified. Had a man been offered the same job and with credentials similar to Cunningham's, there would have been no flap.

We are coming along, and maybe one day we'll have more women on the Supreme Court. Maybe one day a woman who has, say, the qualifications of Clarence Thomas, will get a shot.

Until that day, we'll keep working our way up.

Equality under the law surely is an American value. Who, if they had the facts, would support a law that results in subjugation? Perhaps the oppressor might vote for such a law, but not those who are disadvantaged by the law. Yet, in the United States, women have not yet had the political will to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Its language is simple.

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

It outlaws sexism.

And yet, the amendment is still not part of the United States Constitution.

Women are governed by a set of laws that have evolved over time, which stem from issues around human reproduction. The sexual organ difference between men and women has led to two sets of laws and rights.

The megablogs, such as Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, are advancing an argument that the issue of women's reproductive rights is not important, and that if a Democrat wants to restrict a woman's rights, that is okay since women's reproductive rights are not as important as electing a certain slate of candidates.

If I chose to support another candidate, who supports women's reproductive rights, but who is not of the "correct" slate of candidates, I risk being accused of being a traitor and deserter of the cause. But what cause, pray tell?

Why would I care about a candidate who doesn't care about me? It's as simple as that and the machinations of megablogs like Daily Kos, Boomantribune, and mydd, come off as flummery - I am urged to vote against my own interests because it is in my interests. Huh?

The Democrats, of late, have abandoned women's rights as an issue as the Democrats swing ever rightward. I ask myself, why should I join this made race to nowhere, whose only promise is oblivion? Either way, the Democrats will lose. The megblogs tell us there will be few Democrats in power; fewer Democratic bodies in Congress. But that's one price I am not going to pay, no matter how many elections it might win, for in the end, the Democrats will have struck a bargain to win an election, only to find out that they have sold their souls.

Kind of them, at last.

They admit they saw this coming (who did not?), and today not even the most slavish Democratic exhortation site can muster the usual pro-leadership slobber.

The Democratic push began in earnest on the last weekend of April 2001, when 42 of the 50 Democratic senators attended a retreat in Farmington, Pa., to hear from experts and discuss ways they could fight a Bush effort to remake the judiciary.

Emmett Till and his mother,
Mamie Bradley, 1955
[NAACP photo]

But why plan early (they claim they did) when later they willingly state the following:

Democratic aides said there had been even less strategy than usual in trying to coordinate the questioning by the eight Democratic senators. The situation was complicated because senators and staff were out of Washington before the hearing.

Selma to Montgomery march, 1965
[NY World Telegram and Sun collection]

As I read the Nagourney article in the NYT yesterday, the pale walls around me turned to blood, blood red. I was shocked at my anger.

"By Any Means Necessary"
Malcolm X, d. February 21, 1965

All I ask is this: please box the party up, give the carcass a burial. From CNN, Jonathan Turley on Saturday:

NGUYEN: Yes, going through the motions, but what are we truly learning?

Jonathan, let me ask you this very quickly.

Do you think he will be confirmed?

TURLEY: I think he will, and he will owe that to the Democrats. I think they have done a perfectly horrible job in advancing their interests here.

They lacked strategy, direction, discipline. There's little evidence of a Democratic Party.

And I think most of us are very surprised about it. If they can't muster their troops on this one, I don't understand when they could.

NGUYEN: Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, thanks so much for speaking with us this morning.

Edmund Pettus Bridge, Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965

Not much to say.

I, and many others, have spent years railing at the party for lack of strength, lack of cohesion, lack of purpose, lack of real and therefore visible belief in the great civic changes that they had been privileged to assist into being. Yes, those who fought and died needed a political partner, however fractured.

Edmund Pettus bridge March 7 1965
[Estate of Martin Luther King, jr]

Across decades, they have walked away, abandoned, left town, turned away, did not show up. Finally, as a party they just morphed, became the lesser versions of the modern Republicans.

Bush is outcome, but so is Reid.

"ABC News interrupted the network's Sunday night movie, the premiere showing on television of Judgment at Nuremburg (a movie about bringing to justice the Nazis guilty of war crimes in World War II), to show 15 minutes of raw and dramatic footage from the attack on the Edmund Pettus Bridge."
[Isserman and Kazin, America Divided, p. 136]

What the Democrats walked away from (above all else, the list is long) is the vote. People died in this country for the vote, it is the truth... They were imprisoned for the right to organise to register others to vote. Women were beaten and tortured in prison for the vote. Blacks and whites died, side by side, for the right to vote.

Chaney Schwerner Goodman,
Philadelphia MS, August '64

If you abandon the right to vote, you have abandoned the electorate and, further, you have abandoned the citizenry. There is no worse crime committed in office.

The Democrats need to stop talking about Bush... and look to themselves.

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in support of striking AFSCME sanitation workers
at Mason Temple, Memphis, April 3, 1968

When NYC shut down this week due to the transit strike, there was a lot of namecalling and blame placed upon the TWU (transit worker's union) for daring to strike during the holidays, holding out for more money than they deserved and daring to strike at all.

Mayor Bloomberg went as far as to call the TWU and its leaders *thugs* to further label a group of people fighting for their rights to better pay/benefits and the rights of future hires to those same benefits. The media reported all the things the union wanted, with special emphasis on what many Americans would consider more than enough. $50K? Yes, in most areas of America this is plenty to live on, but it isn't here in the city. Raising a family on it is a small advantage over the poverty level. Someone has to work the subways/buses and those someones have families to raise.

By this coverage, the TWU suffered a huge hit to their image, but hardly anyone reported that two years ago, the MTA (metropolitan transit) kept TWO SETS OF BOOKS!! and cried poor to the people in order to raise the rates. Recently (about two months ago) it was found to have a BILLION dollar surplus. This is city organization that gets grants from the state and city to rebuild the subways. If anyone was a *thug*, it would be the robber-barons of the MTA earning a profit off the commuters, money from the government to rebuild and trying to withdraw money from its workers. It should also be noted that the MTA did not show up to the bargaining table until one hour before the contract expired.

This fascinating blog takes Bloomberg to task for his unlawful practices while making his fortune.

"Bloomberg is a total hypocrite

It's ironic to hear the mayor, for one, bleating about the rule of law and how "no negotiations should proceed until this illegal, selfish strike ends." This is the same law-abiding civic leader who bragged in "Bloomberg on Bloomberg" (p. 59-60) that breaking the law was just part of his inspired path to riches.- The New York City Transit Strike: It's About Respect...and Solidarity by Michael Hirsch..."

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2005/12/bloomberg-is...

Trying to describe what it's like to be under the spell of depression or come out from under is difficult. The best I can describe depression, from moderate to severe is this: The love of your life just broke up with you 7 hours ago (once the shock is over) and then 3 months later, when you are sort of stable, you run into him/her with someone else and s/he couldn't look better or happier.

Depression is severe, intense and a fucked up way to be all the time. You can't shake it off, you can't function sometimes at all and when you can, the effort is so freakin' tiring, you spend the rest of the day sleeping. You don't know there is no real cause for the pain so the only rational way to synthesize it is to understand that *you* are at fault. *You* are the problem and *you* are the cause. You are too fat or too old or can't do anything right and you can't contribute and everyone hates you for being alive anyway.

Sleep is your only escape, so you learn to think about and long for death. Suicide becomes an option, then a goal. And you try so hard, you go to therapy and to the doctors and you take all the meds they give you and put up with the side effects, even the one where the possiblity your left arm may severely shorten overnight because you want soooo badly to feel well. Then after so much effort you think, this is the best I'm ever gonna get. That's it, it's all god has in store for me. And quite frankly, it's not good enough.

Recently my psych doc put me on Abilify on top of the three other meds I was taking. I wasn't responding well to all the variations and experiments and was still all over the place with my *moods*. We must come up with a better word. Suicidal depression isn't a *mood* and having your brain race so fast you think if you start pushing people down and rage really loudly in there, you might quiet it down or being so severely overwhelmed with sight and sound and smell, like a bad acid trip without the acid, is not a *mood*.

I looked up Abilify and found it was an anti-psychotic which rattled me. But then I realized that certainly, the day I had that one clear thought while my brain was out of control that if I pushed this guy in front of a train, I would feel better, was in fact a slightly psychotic break. I don't want to be that person. I don't mind hurting myself, but others do not need to suffer for my problems.

I took 50mgs of the drug for a week and within two days, I was waking up. At the end of the week, I went up to 100mgs and within two days after that, I was completely, entirely awake and unpained and the sun was shining in a way that wasn't berating me for not enjoying the day for the day itself and I felt amazing. Just friggin' amazing. I've never felt like that. Ever since, I've been wondering where I've been my whole life. And it wasn't hypomania, which I've had over the last few months, which is a pretty good feeling, but it's like being on cocaine. A lot of cocaine. No, this feeling was peace. No pain of a pretend broken heart, no self-blame. I got right up in the morning and worked thru the day and evening and just felt really good.

However, during my psych doc's two week vacation, I realized I didn't have enough Abilify to last me until he returned. I cut down to 50mgs a day b/c I couldn't afford it (my money woes have been recorded here) as it's a drug that goes for $5/pill and my union doesn't carry it. My doc gave me samples and promised to supply me. I called and left a message telling him that I was cutting down and he called to tell me he'd get in touch with the drug rep and have her bring it in before our appt. this Wed.

Meantime, starting 2 days after the cut-down (last Wed) I'm backsliding. It hurts for no reason and I'm tired and I can't get things done and I'm pushing myself and this is in high relief now that I've felt what better means. I even had a slight suicide thought earlier today which I knew to deflect (thank you therapy) and I realize I just have to deal with it and not beat myself up for not being up to par. I get the meds on wed, can start with the whole dose right off and by Sat, I should feel totally well again. I start work on Thursday, but if everything needs to be kicked to the wayside in the meantime, so it does.

This is for anyone who suffers or anyone who thinks depression is an invention for attention.

I thought I'd pass this on:

Contributors wanted for an anthology of writing by sex trade workers to be published by Soft Skull Press. All genders are encouraged to submit, as are current or former workers from any area of the sex industry: survival workers, strippers, whores, hustlers, pro dommes, film or print models, escorts, etc. All kinds of takes on the industry, positive to negative, are welcomed. Essays, narratives, and comics are all acceptable, fiction or non. Unpublished writers welcomed. We are looking not only for accounts of personal experience, but also for pieces that reflect the unique position sex trade workers occupy on the front lines of struggles with race, class, gender, ownership, and desire. Deadline: October 15, 2005 Length of submissions: 1500-3500 words Send submissions as word or .txt attachments to: swas3@juno.com Editor: Annie Oakley Payment: Fee and copy of the book www.sexworkersartshow.com

The people of the Gulf Coast are refugees, even if Bush, the lesser (love it, media girl!), says otherwise.

Refugees are people who have been abandoned by their government. My parents, who survived Dachau, spoke of "concentration camp refugees" and a gracious American government and Allied Armies that were greeted as liberators.

The old Movietone newsreels recall a "visibly shaken" General Eisenhower touring the death camps. The Allies made the local citizenry tour the camps to see what had been done in their names. Many of the Nazi guards were summarily shot on the spot by the Allies.

But then the blame game started. "I was merely following orders." Or "I was merely giving orders." But a government that turns its back on a segment of the population has made war on its people and those upon whom it has made war are refugees. No wonder it stings Bush, the lesser, so much and that he thunders that these are "Amurikans."

I recall post-war Europe - I was VERY little, but the images are so stark. The Eighth Air Force had done one hell of a job, emphasis on hell. I saw the news cast from Biloxi where the reports tells of the progress - how the streets were cleared. It was like that in bombed-out Germany, too, but the rebuilding took a long time. I can attest from personal experience that the children will carry the images to their dying day.

We have had but a tiny taste of war and the results are not that different from conventional war, let alone nuclear with radiation sickness and fall-out clouds. The ripple effect of one city taxes, literally and figuratively. A Representative to the House can vote against people in another state, only to find the results of that vote sitting on his door step. The extra money we now spend to deal with an influx of population - would it not have been better spent upfront, so that there would be no need for refugee centers and displaced persons camps/centers as we now have?

My parents passed away not long ago and I thank God that they were spared the sight of American herded into all-but concentration camps - held against their wills without adequate food and water amid rotting bodies.

No. To them the Americans were the greatest people on earth and in the sadness of their deaths, at least I am comforted that they did not live to see otherwise.

I watched A Bunny's Tale on Lifetime the other day. I've seen it before and as a made-for-tv movie, it's pretty good. Kirstie Alley plays Gloria Steinem undercover as a Playboy bunny and wrote a two part article on it which stirred up some shit and even generated a response from heffner himself, who eliminated the GYN exam from the interview process.

So, I decided I'd like to read Steinem's article as I haven't yet. I googled it and come up with several references to the movie. I read one criticism that said by the time the movie was made, these issues weren't important any more. As I'm sure any new movies on slavery in American are irrelevant. PS: I choked on his review as I am a cocktail waitress and no, it hasn't changed very much. Not really. I won't even go into it unless someone asks.

Eventually I find the National Women's History Project and look up Steinem
which had no copy of the article and barely a mention other than it embarrassed her for some time as she lost many future serious journalist assignments. So I wrote the site asking where I could find a copy of the article and received this response: "I suggest you go to a search engine like google.com and see if you can find a copy or at least a reference on line."

!!!!!!

I wrote back that I did google it and that's how I found them.

A friend suggested I get a copy of "Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions" which apparently has the article.

Still, how is this article, a major cornerstone and the beginning of Steinem's life as a feminist not recorded here at this Women's history Project? WTF???

On my way home from Wegman's today to buy fruit for what will undoubtedly be a fabulous fruit salad, I was stopped by two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mormons.
Now, they seemed friendly enough, so I stood and chatted (in the blistering sun) with them for a few minutes.
I told them I was a Baha'i (not entirely true, since the Faith doesn't technically accept homosexuality as a lifestyle...yet...but it is for the most part true).
They had no f-ing clue what the Baha'i Faith was (you'd think they'd require missionaries to be a little more informed on the world's major religions, of which the Baha'i Faith definitely is), so I informed them.
They claimed that their beliefs were similar to the Baha'i Faith (lie), and said that they'd love for me to join them at their church. (At this point, I realized they were travelling missionaries, because they had to look up the location of the church. So I decided to have a little fun with them and their not-acquainted-with-Ithacan-etiquette.)

The founding fathers - Jefferson, Franklin and Madison - cautioned in the Declaration of Independence,

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

Amendments change the Constitution - hence the government. It is a big deal - or it ought to be or we risk trivializing the Constitution. After the ten articles of the Bill of Rights, the United States Constitution has been amended only 17 times - and two amendments cancel each other - when liquor was banned and then the ban lifted. That means only 15 Amendments. And what are they mainly about?

The Amendments abolished slavery, gave women the vote, lowered the voting age to 18, repealed the poll tax, allowed for the direct election of Senators (and not by state legislatures), and worked out some Presidential succession issues and limited the number of times a person could be President and how Congress was paid.

The founders wanted to limit what the government could do, not what the people could do. The Amendments usually clarify that the people have more power than before and/or they curb the government - amendments about liquor and income tax the notable exceptions. This is in keeping with limiting the government.

The Constitution by and large limits the powers of the government, not of the people.

It seems to me, amending the Constitution over flag desecration is an Amendment of "light and transient cause." Defending the flag? When did this start? Actually it was during the original battle between the Red and Blue States - the American Civil War. It was a remnant of the attempt to bind the nation's wounds.

When George Walker Bush was in elementary school, the last of the people who fought in the American Civil War were dying - by then old men who had once been drummer boys. As we all know, the Red States had left the Union. A pledge was required for all, but aimed at the Red States - those that tried to secede from the Union and the purpose of the pledge was to get the Red States to declare they were part of an indivisible union. Their seats in Congress depended on it. Their right to vote depended on it. The Red States had to renounce their allegiance to the Confederacy and to come back into the Union by forswearing other flags - like the Stars and Bars. They had to give up the idea of slavery. This is the purpose of the pledge. It went,

I pledge allegiance to the flag and the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

When George Walker Bush was in elementary school, the Civil War was part of living memory for some of the oldest people, still alive. Many of the Southerners thought the pledge of allegiance to be odious.

When George Walker Bush was in elementary school, the words "under God" were inserted into the pledge and the cadence of the pledge - to this very day! - has that pause when "teacher" re-taught us to remember to slip that phrase, "under God," in.

This may have been the time that a generation of children were indoctrinated into believing that our allegiance was to a flag of a nation under God. Some of us old enough to remember the inclusion of "under God" simply do not say that part of the pledge. They recite the older pledge - but that's an aside.

When George Walker Bush was in elementary school, some children came to believe our republic was a theocracy, not understanding - still being elementary school children - that the term "under God," as used by the founding fathers (many of whom were atheists), was to refute the theory of "divine right of kings." Instead, the founders argued that people do not get power from what the king allows people to have, but rather - as the Declaration of Independence states -

all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

Freedom is a "natural" right - a natural state of man. The Constitution is a contract between the people and the government. Again from the Declaration,

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

The Constitution and the Amendments is when the people control the government, not the other way around. Loyalty to the United States is to the Constitution, not to the President or the Flag or the party in power, no matter how many electoral votes they got, no matter what God they worship, and no matter how much they believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Let us look at what Americanism is. It has to do with upholding the Constitution, not as George W. Bush said to the school girl in the Frontline episode, "The Jesus Factor" that there was a higher law than the Constitution.

The oath of allegiance which the military, naturalized citizens, our government officials adhere to is different from the pledge to the flag and promising not to secede and own slaves. The oath of allegiance does not even mention the flag, even once, and the one reference to God is the idiom "so help me God," which is equivalent to repeating "I swear under oath." It is an oath to uphold the Constitution.

But that does not seem to be the mind-set among many who think it is the flag that is in more danger than the Republic for which it stands.

Again, the same founding fathers in the same venerable document wrote, in 1776, some of the reasons they had to break with the mother country and declare independence. Among the abuses of King George III and his government,

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Any of this sound familiar?