season of the bitch

I meant to blog this earlier, but today is Blog for Equal Pay Day. Specter kind of took over the news cycle, but I do have a few things to say about this.

Women still make only 78 cents to every dollar men make. From the National Women’s Law Center via Change.org:

Women are far more likely to live in poverty than men. Women working full-time, year-round are paid only about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. African-American women earn 69 cents and Latinas earn 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. This wage gap cannot be dismissed as the result of “women’s choices” in career and family matters. In fact, authoritative studies show that even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there is still a significant, unexplained gap in men’s and women’s earnings. Thus, even when women make the same career choices as men and work the same hours, they still earn less.

You can sign the petition for the Paycheck Fairness Act, blog about this, call your congresscritters, do whatever. You can also remember that unions are one of the best ways to raise the wages and benefits of working people, and that, as I wrote not long ago, the Employee Free Choice Act is a feminist issue.

From the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

*”On average, unionization raised women’s wages by 11.2 percent – about $2.00 per hour – compared to non-union women with similar characteristics.”

Finally, to tie all this back in with Specter and breaking news, even though Specter said his vote on cloture for EFCA would not change, in reality, winning a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania without union support will be tough–and apparently Specter had a meeting with Teamsters President Hoffa yesterday before deciding his party switch…

So. Support paycheck fairness for women, particularly women of color, and support the Employee Free Choice Act. Damnit.

From Immigration Equality:

Great News! Rep. Jerrold Nadler plans to reintroduce the Uniting American Families Act on Feb. 13!

You can make the bill a success by convincing your Representative to support the bill from Day One. Reintroducing the bill with as many cosponsors as possible will show powerful momentum for the rights of gay and lesbian binational couples!

Please call your Representative and ask them to be an original cosponsor of the “Uniting American Families Act of 2009”

Post-inauguration, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the role of the blogosphere and the Internet in general in left political action.

I wrote a piece for Global Comment in which I said:

We’ve spent so long arguing that government doesn’t have to be the enemy, but the fact is that we’re used to government being the enemy. We’re used to disavowing the actions of our president loudly, to practically shouting “Not in our name,” to writing screeds of why we’re disappointed that this is our country.

No wonder we have a hard time believing that someone could get things right.

I was reading The Nation over breakfast this morning and came across this piece (which is excellent and should be read in its entirety) by Jonathan Schell.

Schell writes:

Yet in addition to being interconnected, the crises have striking features in common, suggesting shared roots. To begin with, all are self-created. They arise from pathologies of our own activity, or perhaps hyperactivity. The Greek tragedians understood well those disasters whose seeds lie above all in one’s own actions. No storm or asteroid or external enemy is the cause. Today, the economic crash is the result of investment run amok: the “masters of the universe” are the authors of their own (and everyone’s) downfall. The nuclear weapons that threaten to return in wrath to American cities were born in New Mexico. The oil is running short because we are driving too many cars to too many shopping malls. The global ecosphere is heading toward collapse because of the success, not the failure (until recently), of the modern economy. The invasion of Iraq was the American empire’s self-inflicted wound–a disaster of choice, so to speak. All we had to do to escape it was not to do it. Here and elsewhere, the work of our own hands rises up to strike us.

I was trying to find a quote this morning in which someone complained of Obama’s call for a new age of responsibility and said that it wasn’t their fault and they didn’t want to take responsibility.

And I think about the liberal blogosphere and how much of it has been defined, as I wrote before, by disavowing the actions of our government. Like leaving the Kerry 2004 sticker on your car after the last election, it seems like a big “don’t blame me” gesture, an argument like the one I made each time I left the country in the Bush years.

“I didn’t vote for him! I couldn’t help it!”

Now that the guy we (most of us) voted for IS in office, we feel like his call for responsibility is roping us back into being a part of Bush’s America. But responsibility isn’t just that.

Obama is in office because millions of people gave money, and thousands upon thousands of people took it upon themselves to volunteer for the campaign. Here in Philly there was a controversy because the Obama campaign didn’t want to pay “street money” to the folks who worked on election day, but they didn’t need to; volunteers were everywhere.

We took responsibility. We didn’t say “It wasn’t my fault, why should I have to work to fix it?”

Obama’s presidency isn’t a fun party where we punish the people who screwed up, because we all are complicit in the screwups. Like acknowledging and dealing with any other form of privilege, whether it be racial, gendered, heterosexual, cisgender, Western, middle-class, or educational, it’s not about feeling guilty. It’s about looking forward and doing something to change it.

No, it’s not my fault that Bush was elected. But I’m not going to let it be my fault that Obama doesn’t get to do all he can do.

Obama is redefining responsibility with that inaugural speech and its follow-up actions, just like he’s redefining the center. He’s taken the word away from conservatives who use it to gut welfare spending, and made it part of our vocabulary by coupling it with his famous quote from his keynote speech back in 2004, when his election to the Senate was a lone bright spot in a horrible election cycle, where Democrats were crouching defensively, letting the Right define the argument.

“It’s that fundamental belief — I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper — that makes this country work.”

That’s responsibility. It’s not covering your own ass and then crying out to punish the other guy. It’s looking at your own involvement and seeing what else you can do.

So on the “What Now” subject: The economic stimulus bill is up before Congress this week and it’s going to have a rough time in the Senate. The House has the votes along party lines, but the Senate, well, you know the score.

If you’re like me and you live in a state with a rational Republican senator, email/call/picket his or her office (I’m thinking Specter–my Senator–the two from Maine, Voinovich…you know what I mean.) Harass the hell out of ‘em. Flood their offices. We need this passed and we need it now.

I’d prefer if we could get this back in, but Obama had to at least look like he was willing to compromise. If the Republicans keep stonewalling, we need to remind ‘em who won this election.

We all do a lot of talking and writing, some of it can certainly go in the direction of elected officials. If one of those people isn’t your Senator, fake some sort of a connection and go for it. State you were born in? State where your grandma lives? State you slept in once on an all-night booty call? Whatever.

Let’s do this.

http://www.senate.gov/

Blog for Choice Day

It’s officially Blog for Choice day again, and in the afterglow of the Obama administration, it might be easy to think that we don’t have to worry about Roe v. Wade anymore. That things are great, time to go back to being happy.

Not yet.

The balance of the Supreme Court is still weighted in the wrong direction. We still have a lot of work to do, and yes, we’ve taken a step in the right direction.

Choice also means more than maintaining Roe v. Wade. As Sylvia wrote, we need to fight for comprehensive sex education. We need the right to choose not only when we will or will not have a child, but when and how we will be sexual, and we need to know that no one but ourselves has the right to judge us for those choices.

My top pro-choice hope for the Obama administration is of course overturning the global gag rule. We’ve seen and heard much about it, but it remains undone–for the moment. And I can hope that moment won’t last much longer.

But I want much, much more than that.

I am celebrating still, beaming at the television at the mention of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But I do not forget that there is still work to be done, that the inauguration of Obama was the beginning of a journey, not its end, and a call for us to work harder, because look, after all, at what we’ve already achieved.

So today, I think about the choices that have opened up to us in the past few days, and about the ones that are still in danger. And I prepare for the fights ahead.

It’s a mouthful, but it’s also important.

Millions of women around the world make their living through sex work. Some do it by choice, some do it because they have no choice, and some are forced into it.

In any case, supporting laws that allow more harm to come to women whether they be trafficked or willing participants, does no good. A policy of harm reduction, outlined by Renegade Evolution at Feministe a while back, is a far better way to make sure that women are safe and supported.

I want for sex workers what I want for every woman and man on the planet–safe working conditions, fair wages, and the ability to choose what kind of work they will do to support themselves and their family. I don’t believe that sex work is fundamentally dirty, wrong, or exploitative, but that just like working at Wal-Mart or a meatpacking plant or waiting tables, it damn well can be.

Whatever your stance, though, on sex work, I hope we can all agree that allowing violence against sex workers to continue, that a sentence of one day for murdering a “hooker” (yes, that’s from an actual headline) and allowing the rape of sex workers to be written off as “theft of services” has to end.

Check Bound, Not Gagged for much more today. And thanks to Amber Rhea for reminding me to write about this.

Around the country today, at coordinated times, people took to the streets to protest the passing of Proposition 8 and other gay marriage bans across the country.

I’ve been in my Obama-victory haze and have admittedly not written as much about this as I should, other than recommending Olbermann’s comment on the subject.

But Karthika and I headed down to City Hall in Philly today to join the fun, and took some pictures on the way.

It’s always amazing to me to see the diversity at events like this. I absolutely love the energy, the straight parents bringing little kids, the older parents holding signs that say “Proud Father of a Gay Son.” The “str8 against 8″ signs were particularly prominent today. And despite the stupid coming from some sectors, people of all ethnicities were represented.

That’s the thing no one tells you about public protest, collective action, etc. How much fun it all is. I’m not happy that Prop 8 passed. But the response to it around the country has been amazing.

For those Obama organizers and volunteers who are genuinely befuddled as to “Now what?” I offer these events as an idea. Electing Obama was a beginning, not an ending. We still have much work to do.

And while I’m talking about Prop 8, I’d like to remember Duanna Johnson, a transgender woman murdered in what is all too common a manner. While we fight for marriage equality, we need to remember that not everyone’s life will be made OK by granting marriage rights.

We still have a way to go, indeed.

(more photos below the fold)

» Read the rest of this entry «

I’ve been contemplating just why Obama’s victory seems to have had such an effect on my mood, my cynicism, my outlook on life.

I’ve been political for a while now–I can’t tell you really how it started. I took poli sci classes for fun in college, and always had a vague distaste for Bill Clinton that might’ve been shaped by my parents but came around to the other side of it, critiquing him from the left before I was even conscious of it.

I suppose that I didn’t just take the system–and especially violence–for granted.

In any case, I voted for Nader in the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in. That was 2000. I lived in New Orleans but voted in South Carolina. I didn’t like Al Gore, was an angry punk rock chick, and so screw it, I’m voting for the guy who says things I agree with instead of one of the two guys onstage who’re basically agreeing with each other.

Flash to 2004. Colorado. We’ve all learned from 2000, and I’m sure I’m voting Democrat. But which one? I was a Deanie, traveled to New Mexico to attend Dean parties, stood on a corner in the snow holding up a Dean sign.

We lost.

I went to Philly to volunteer for John Kerry. At the end of an endless election day, we heard the news that Pennsylvania went blue and I left happy, only to get more and more miserable as the rest of the results came rolling in.

And so, 2008. Well, 2007 really. I wanted Russ Feingold to run, but one day I got a call from my friend Jill telling me that Obama had declared his candidacy. She was determined to–and succeeded in–get a job with his campaign.

I did my research. I watched the debates. And over my Christmas break I went to Charleston to volunteer with Jill.

When we started winning states–well, it really felt like WE were winning.

When we won the nomination, it was amazing. And then FISA. Combined with an internship in New York and a need to relax after a hellish year, it meant I didn’t do much all summer.

A couple of guys came to my door one day and very sweetly tried to get me to come volunteer. I should’ve, but I put it off. And worked. And wrote.

And I think it was partly out of fear. If I wasn’t so involved, it couldn’t hurt so much if we lost, right?

But of course the opposite is true, too. So I gave up my Halloween and got out the vote all weekend. And monday. And E-day. And we won.

Which is why I get a bit annoyed with people who tell me they know how I feel now.

No, most of them don’t. And there are others who have far more right to this than I do–Jill and countless organizers who gave up their lives for over a year to do this full-time.

Yes, he is the first African-american president and that is amazing.

But my feelings are about more than that.

They’re about finally having the right guy win. About all those hours and days and people I met along the way.

In a way I envy the younger organizers, the ones who don’t know how badly 2004 hurt and who barely remember the cynicism of the Clinton years.
I didn’t have a lot go right for me, personally, between graduating college and starting grad school. I’d gotten so much more cynical and yes, scared to invest myself in anything because it always seemed to blow up in my face or fall apart.

I kept working, kept writing, kept fighting. But I always felt that it’d be for nothing.
But this is different. And yes, it is personal. I helped do this. People like me and yet so different. Hundreds of people I’d never have spoken to otherwise.

It means something.

It’s not just a moment that I’ll remember seeing on TV like my parents remember Kennedy.

I remember working for it.

And that work finally paying off.

Pass it on. (via bastard.logic via shakesville)

Say NO to Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary.

This was my note:

I, along with thousands of American women, worked tirelessly to elect Senator Obama. I campaigned against the possible first woman president because I did not want a return to Clinton-era policies that contributed to our current economic crisis.

To appoint Larry Summers to the treasury would be a slap in my face and a slap in the face of all the women who campaigned for Senator Obama. Not only a return to Clinton-era economic policy, but a man who thinks that women are inherently less gifted than men.

There’s got to be somebody better.

These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. -Abigail Adams

Ok, so I’m not calling myself a genius. But I just heard this quote on Meet the Press, and it reminded me of the decision I’ve been struggling with for the last few months. And it just crystallized for me.

I’m not going to apply to Ph.D. programs this fall.

Quite simply, I want to go out and DO things now. I’ve been in school and I’ve been sitting behind a computer when I should’ve been out on the street, working, paying attention. This summer when I was out and about, meeting people, doing things, arguing and debating and having a life, I was happy.

There’s a temptation for me always to bury myself in books, to stay home and sit behind the computer, to study things. I can hide out anytime.

The economy is scary, and I know that I could get into a Ph.D. program and get an assistantship and  work my tail off for another four or five years without having to think about the job market. Hell, in some ways after Tuesday’s victory it’s even more tempting, to be happy with what we’ve done and allow someone else to have that responsibility for a while.

But I’m not going to do it.

I want, like so many other people, to be a part of fixing this country.

And so in May I’ll take my degree and hit the job market. And I’ll find something. No hiding in the ivory tower because I’m afraid of what might be out there.

Look what we just did. We can do anything. I can do anything.