The Political Power of Narrative

Years ago, when I was working in the women’s health movement, I was fortunate enough to attend the last of the three UN Decade for Women conferences in Nairobi, Kenya. Ten years later I also attended the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. During the intervening years I was present at various other fora where women spoke, often giving testimony about their life experiences and sharing the challenges they had faced and overcome. 

Bearing witness to those moving testimonials was an unforgettable and moving experience. Whether through individual conversation or a particularly compelling speech, the impact of the stories those women told is still with me, and while I don’t recall many individual stories now, I still remember the profound effect of listening to those collective voices from courageous women bringing their reality to life for all the world to hear.

Their first-person accounts, painful as they often were to hear, gave me, and all who heard them, a far greater understanding, and a deeper empathy, than any speeches riddled with statistics could ever have done. One woman talking about her own experience with female genital cutting because of patriarchal-driven custom, or one woman relating her experience of spousal abuse or rape during war, sears itself into your soul as no official document can.

I thought about those conferences and about the importance and power of story, particularly as a writer, while watching the Democratic convention. The video of Humayun Khan, the brave soldier who died in America’s war, and the now-famous appearance of his parents at the convention, as well as Michelle Obama’s reflections on how she and her husband raised their daughters during the White House years, and other memories shared by speakers in the course of their remarks, all served to remind me of how compelling personal narratives are and of their importance in political discourse.

We all have stories to tell. And those stories are important. They matter – to us, and for others. As a British faith-based organization called Stethelburgas put it on their website, “Hearing the stories of others breaks down the fears that underlie prejudice, and opens us up to the perspectives of others. Through story we see more easily the unique challenges of every individual, and how their beliefs and attitudes make sense within the context of their own experience. We may still disagree with a particular perspective but begin to see how that view makes sense within the story of that person’s life. As a result, we tend not to argue with story as we might with opinion. Stories change the ‘contract’ with the listener.”

I can think of so many narratives, often shared through extraordinary oratory, that changed the contract with listeners.  Sojourner Truth, an illiterate slave who was a small woman with a huge heart and a big voice, told a story when she asked of her all white, male audience, “And ain’t I a Woman?” Martin Luther King, Jr. did it when he said to the world, “I have a dream.” Gandhi inspired his followers when he admonished, “be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Alice Paul, who fought so hard for women’s right to vote, shared a bit of political poetry and wisdom when she said, “When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.”

Vivian Gornick understood the central role narration – story - plays from a writer’s perspective. In her book The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative she points out that memoirists always explore a situation through the story embedded in it. “The situation is the context or circumstance; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” And she adds, “The memoirist must engage with the world…must convince readers they have some wisdom, and are writing as honestly as possible to arrive at what they know.”

Gornick’s words, it seems to me, are relevant for speakers and listeners as much as for readers, never more so than within a political context, especially during this unprecedented election.  The stories, and the oral narrative within which they reside, afford us an opportunity to break down fear, to open up to others, to truly listen, and to see the unique challenges ahead of us in new ways, ways that no doctrinaire speechmaking or facile sound bite can. 

The truth is we are all hungry for story, child and elder alike. The love of a good tale never leaves us, especially when it’s about someone’s dreams, the reclaiming of our better natures, or striving together for “the golden fleece” promise of a positive future. 

Whether those stories come to us by way of books, visual narratives or spoken words, we owe it to ourselves as never before to be paying attention to them, and to be seeking their gifts in this time of challenging governance.  

Time to Get Behind Hillary

Now that she is the Democratic candidate can we give Hillary Rodham Clinton her due?

She may not be perfect. What politician, or human being, is?  But she has taken more heat than anyone running for office should have to, and now the time is here to “put a sock in it,” as the British say.  Or as my high school typing teacher taught us, “Now is the time to come to the aid of the party.”

Like lots of others I’ve had issues with Hillary.  For a start I don’t like political dynasties no matter which side they represent.  I think she made a mess of health care reform during her husband’s tenure and I don’t like that she stood with him for punishing welfare reform. Some of her senatorial votes, especially regarding military intervention, were clearly questionable. Recently I could have throttled her as she pandered to AIPAC in her unconditional support of Israel with nary a mention of that country’s transgressions against the Palestinian people. I get that she sometimes acts as if she were exempt from the rules. And I wish she had donated her Wall Street speaking fees.

But Hillary is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, sound judgment, and experience that runs wide and deep. Her “skill set” is amazing. So is her patience and her cool in the face of contempt. (Think Benghazi and emails.)  Much of that contempt derives from her being a woman.  A lot of old white guys don’t like smart, powerful women, and sadly neither do some women.  Hillary has shown real fortitude as she’s faced unfounded attacks on her character, personality and ability.  It’s time we gave her credit for that.

I can say with some authority that she is also nicer than people give her credit for.  The first time I saw her up close and personal was at an event honoring the late, great feminist leader Bella Abzug. Hillary greeted the audience warmly, her big blue eyes and wide grin a portrait of genuine friendship.  She joked about Bella’s hats and told tales about their shared experiences. When her remarks grew serious she moved us all, speaking passionately about issues she and Bella cared deeply about, women’s rights and children’s welfare topping the list. We felt her real concern and commitment to these and other matters, witnessing how they moved her. We saw in her the ability to act forcefully on behalf of others less fortunate than those of us in the room that day. We left inspired.

Several years later I was in another room with Hillary.  It was an auditorium in Hairou, China, site of the 1995 non-governmental forum at the Fourth World Conference on Women.  She was America’s First Lady, but that didn’t stop her from speaking truth to power in Beijing’s political halls. A few days earlier she had declared to China’s leaders and the world, “Women’s rights are human rights! And human rights are women’s rights!” It was a stunning and courageous statement. When she came to the NGO forum to speak she was no less forceful and daring. Her words about the denial of women’s human rights all over the globe resonated to the 3,000 women lucky enough to have gained access to the auditorium, to the more than 35,000 conference participants who heard or read her speech later, and to all the world’s women waiting in homes and huts to learn what was happening at that awesome event.  The power and passion in that speech was unforgettable.

I’m not suggesting that I’m on Hillary Clinton’s Rolodex. I’ve never broken bread with her nor have we had personal exchanges. But having been in close proximity to her on a few occasions, I can say that she has been treated unfairly, mythologized, unduly doubted, diminished, and insulted without cause. It’s time for all that to stop.

For far too long now – indeed through the ages – women have been punished for revealing their intellect and their agency. They’ve been pilloried for being political, privately and publicly. Many have been silenced, tortured, murdered for daring to speak their minds or make their own choices. (Just a few days before I wrote this piece, a young Middle Eastern woman died in an honor killing for refusing to marry the man her father had chosen. Elsewhere a teenager died as a result of forced female genital cutting.)       

The world must come to realize that women, who constitute the majority of the earth’s population, deserve to have a seat at the tables of decision-making and conflict resolution, and to rise, with demonstrated competency, to positions of leadership. Here in our own country, we must acknowledge that women like Hillary Clinton deserve to be taken seriously, treated with respect and honesty, and recognized for their immense abilities, especially in critical, dangerous and divisive times.

It’s time now for us to have Hillary’s back, and to have her back in the White House. She may not be perfect, but she is perfectly capable of leading the country forward, and yes, carrying with her the best of the Obama legacy.

Who could possibly say that about her dangerous, and dare I say deranged opponent?

America's Many Faces of Mounting Fury

On the morning I felt compelled to write this commentary, I woke to the news that yet another Black man had been killed by a white police officer in Minnesota, just a day after a similar killing in Louisiana.  The Minnesota shooting was live-streamed by the man’s fiancé, Diamond Reynolds, and, like others, I wept to see it, incredulous at the actions of police officers yet again out of control as they racial-profiled a Black American. I grieved the loss of another innocent life. And I was reminded of how prevalent police violence is in this country and how pervasive racism remains here. I mourned how ineffectual our leaders are in addressing the crucial issues at the root of these tragic events, including fear of “the Other.” Then Dallas happened, and I mourned again.

But most of all I thought, with enormous sadness, about the overt and incipient violence that increasingly seems to be aroused in my country. I thought about the insensitivities of those who should know better: facile media talking heads and politicians whose mandate is, like physicians, to do no harm, among others. I thought about Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and gifted writer who had just died, and who once said, “…to tell the lonely person that I am not far or different from that lonely person, that I am with him or her, that’s all I think we can do and we should do.” I thought about an elderly, sensitive artist I met once in France named Francois Brochet who created a moving work called “The Slaughter of the Innocents.” It was comprised of a large group of carved figures depicting innocent people who had suffered during their lives.

 It wasn’t only the slaughter of Black innocents that drove me to awake that morning with an urgent need to put my feelings into words. It was also an open letter written by a woman named Dana Schwartz posted on Facebook the day before. Schwartz, a Jew like me, and like the owner of the paper she writes for, the Observer, wanted her boss to know why the meme that had been posted by Donald Trump in which Hillary Clinton’s face appeared with a six-pointed star juxtaposed on hundred dollar bills was so offensive. Her boss, Jared Kushner, is Donald Trump’s Jewish son-in-law. Schwartz said that the meme was blatantly anti-Semitic and had resulted in “mocking those like me” while “strangers on the Internet told me to put my head in the oven.”

 Here are just some of the tweets Schwartz received after posting her letter. “People are waking up to greedy Jews.”  “Your nose can wrap around a baseball.”  “Jews control money. They are Satan’s children.” “Pre-heat the ovens.” “Are you being Holocausted again?” “I survived the Holocaust and all I got was this lampshade.” “Another neurotic Jew.”

 How is it that such hatred, such discrimination, such vitriolic, violent rage and rhetoric, such disgusting ideology still flourishes in a country like ours? What has been unleashed, and sanctioned in some quarters, in our current politics to resurrect sentiments thought to have been overcome post lynchings, post-Civil Rights movement, post-McCarthyism, post Holocaust?

 How is it that so many of our elected officials act out their own violent tendencies and cruel beliefs with ugly slurs and slights, with laws meant to oppress human rights and to reject human dignity?   How do so many turn their heads the other way, exhibiting their own collusion with violence?

 Yes, there are the resistance fighters among us who speak out, who advocate and who bear witness. The principled are many and strong. Like Diamond Reynolds, they dare to speak truth to power. 

 But somehow, we’ve lost our way amidst the furor of white supremacists, of racists, of anti-Semites, of dangerous demagogues and demented, power-hungry politicians, of misogynists and small-minded people who have no time for compassion or courage or for simply doing the right thing.

 Now, somehow, before it’s too late, we must find our way back to what President Obama calls our better selves. We must return to the ideals we like to proclaim even when they prove hollow, return to kindness in the face of cruelty, return to our common humanity before it slips away from us forever.

 No one understood this better than Elie Wiesel, who wrote, “I know and I speak from experience, that even in the midst of darkness, it is possible to create light and share warmth with one another; that even on the edge of the abyss, it is possible to dream exalted dreams of compassion; that it is possible to be free and strengthen the ideals of freedom, even within prison walls; that even in exile, friendship becomes an anchor.”

 May we find our way back from the darkness, may we create light and share warmth, and may we dream again of compassion, freedom, and strength as we reach for the anchor of friendship. It is, in these troubling times, our only hope.

Getting Real About Guns

Post Orlando, let’s get real. The latest massacre in America, and its worst to date, was not about ISIS. It was not about Muslims or Islam. It was not about mental illness.

It was about guns and how easy they are to obtain in this country. It was about our incredible inability to effect legislation that would do something about what is now recognized as a national embarrassment as well as a continuing national tragedy, one that is finally acknowledged to be a major public health issue.

The shocking numbers support that claim. Last year 469 people died as a result of 371 mass shootings. So far this year at least 288 people have died in 182 mass shootings. Since Orlando, more than 125 people have been killed by guns, 269 were injured, and five mass shootings have occurred. We don’t even hear about most of these events, or the fact that nearly 10,000 American children are killed or hurt by guns every year.  Nationally, guns kill twice as many children and young people as cancer and 15 times more than infection according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Let that sink in.

Here’s another startling statistic. In 2010 there were 3.6 gun murders per 100,000 Americans.  In Canada and Portugal there were 0.5. Many other countries ranked even lower than that, including Australia at 0.2.  (Does anyone seriously think they have fewer mentally ill people per capita than we do?)

Lat month a story in Seven Days revealed that a reporter bought an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in South Burlington, Vt. for $500 cash with “no paperwork and no background check. [The seller] had no idea who I was or what my intentions were,” Paul Heintz wrote. “Nine minutes after I met the man, I drove away with the sort of weapon used 39 hours earlier to slaughter 49 people in Orlando.” A woman in Philadelphia reported a similar experience, beating Heintz’s time by two minutes.

Sadly, my home state of Vermont has the nation’s most permissive gun laws, so what took place when Heintz bought his gun, the same kind that killed all those children and their teachers in Newtown, Ct., was legal. The same kind of gun, by the way, also killed the people in Aurora and the people in San Bernardino.

What will it take to end the madness? One answer comes from a grassroots movement in Vermont, where gun laws have been nearly nonexistent and its politicians have waffled over the issue for years.

Gun Sense Vermont (GSV), an example for others, has been effectively moving reluctant politicians and prospective candidates toward action. Since startup three years ago, GSV’s track record is impressive. It first began a conversation about guns in the Statehouse. Then last year state senators received 1400 letters from constituents along with 12,000 petition signatures calling for action, all from Vermonters. Two Senate committees seriously considered gun-related issues and gun-owning groups announced a plan to lead a Vermont version of the suicide-prevention New Hampshire Gun Shop Project. The Vermont Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send a bill to the full Senate making it a state-level violation for felons to have guns, and to require court records of dangerous individuals be submitted to the National Instant Background Check System. And the governor signed into law a bill to prevent gun violence.

“Gun Sense Vermont is a growing, bipartisan, grassroots organization that focuses on closing gaps in Vermont’s gun laws that make it too easy for guns to fall into the wrong hands,” says Ann Braden, founder of GSV. “We come from all walks of life and 160 Vermont towns and every voting district. We are united in our call for common sense action that protects the rights of individuals as well as those of our communities.”

After Orlando, Vice President Joe Biden sent a letter to people who signed a petition calling on the government to ban AR-15-type assault weapons from civilian ownership. In it he addressed the thriving gun culture in this country that allows gun violence to continue.  “The President and I agree with you,” he wrote. “Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines should be banned from civilian ownership. … These weapons have been used to commit horrific acts. They’ve been called ‘the perfect killing machines.’”

Then he explained that the 1994 bill that banned assault weapons expired two years ago and was never renewed. How can that be, we might ask. The answer, in two words, is Republican Congress.

The vice president discussed other legal measures that could be taken which were debated and defeated in the Senate last month, a shameful event that resulted in a sit-in by House Democrats demanding action.

Faith leaders, law enforcement officials, businesses, public health experts, the majority of gun owners, and some legislators are calling for legislation that will help put an end to death by gun violence in this country. All over America millions of people are marching, pleading, praying, weeping for gun control. But pleading and prayers won’t do it. Neither will stigmatizing the mentally ill or spewing rampant Islamophobia or fear-mongering about ISIS.

Voting will help do it. That’s why this year is so important.  If we want to confront the gun culture that is ripping our nation apart, now is the time, once and for all, to get real about guns.

Days of Drought: A Landscape of Desperate Times

The photographs are difficult to see. Receded murky waters reveal river beds that resemble threadbare ancient shrouds. Earth once fertile lies cracked and brown like mosaics now devoid of their artful tiles, the missing grout leaving gaping. mazed striations.  In Thailand, India, African countries, even in Central America and Poland, the earth is browning, farmers are losing their livelihoods, thirst is taking hold, economies are struggling, political instability threatens. Societies are drying up.

In the wake of Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee, and the terrifying prospect that he could actually become president, the dark days of drought seem like a stark, strange and alarming metaphor for the browning of America, a phrase meant to allude to the brown-shirted storm troopers of fascist Germany. 

Take a hard look at what’s going on in America. 

We are now a nation in which legislation has been proposed or passed that discriminates against the civil and human rights of immigrants, the LBGTI community, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and women. Some states have moved to legislate where you can pee, or people to whom you can deny services.

Some have moved to criminalize or deny abortion, even though it is still a constitutional right, and some have proposed or enacted laws that can put a woman in jail for murder if she suffers a miscarriage. That’s a Draconian measure reminiscent of Romania’s (assassinated) 1980s dictator,  Nicolae Ceaușescu, who forced women to undergo monthly pelvic exams to ensure that pregnancies were carried to term. (It resulted in huge numbers of children abandoned to orphanages so poorly run that development disabilities were rampant.)

Gun violence, police brutality and other forms of institutionally sanctioned killings take place every day in this country, while the sponsor-driven media seems to be stuck in its own brain-dead “brand.”

 In short, we are witnessing the drying up of a society once thought (somewhat erroneously) to be a democratic icon as it approaches its own demise. It’s a society, and a once-proudly diverse culture, that now appears to be devoid of the ability to govern, to engage in civil discourse, to show compassion or intelligence, and to behave respectfully, let alone humanely. We are, it seems to many, decidedly on the brink and facing a disintegrating future as Donald Trump continues to spew invectives and to reveal his utter incompetence as his poll numbers rise.

There are those who are loathe to compare Trump’s victory and possible presidency to Hitler’s totalitarian regime, but look at their similarities: Both ran campaigns grounded in fear-mongering based on hate, economic frailty and stereotyped, scapegoated minorities, both were anti-woman (Hitler believed women’s national loyalty resided in bearing as many babies as possible), both fostered incipient violence, and both were authoritarian and dangerously devoid of reason.

There’s another comparison that some have called upon to sound a note of caution and that is the fall of the Roman Empire.  Scholars point out that the causes of the Empire’sdownfall included an antagonistic relationship between the Senate (their Congress) and the Emperor (President), rampant political corruption, heavy military spending, a failing economy, and a decline in ethics and values. It is also be worth mentioning that slave labor (income inequality) was a factor, as were natural disasters (like drought).  As one source put it, “Life became cheap … and judgments about what was valuable or important in life declined. There was a total disregard for human and animal life.”

As I was mulling this commentary over in my mind, I happened to read a sentence in a clever, somewhat bizarre novel call The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink. It’s a riff on everything from politics and social activism to sex, marriage and the quest for a meaningful life. The sentence that jumped out at me read:  “The injustice of mortal existence cried out with greed for euphoria.”  It was followed by, “Delicacy had no place in [his] world.”

Donald Trump is playing on people’s desperation for euphoria, it seems to me. But delicacy has no place in his world. Neither do facts, fair play, intelligence, good judgment or any of the other critical attributes required for sound, safe, humane leadership. 

Those attributes are like tributaries that flow into a flourishing river. When they go dry, so does the river that carries our commerce, feeds our fields, quenches our thirst, and keeps us civilized.  America simply cannot allow the river to become dry. Our future depends upon the metaphorical waters that give life, today and for a long time to come.

That’s why Donald Trump must not win in November.

Thoughts From a Disillusioned Democrat

It’s hard being a news junkie and something of a political activist, especially in an election year. Despite my daily resolutions to divert from rehashed polls reported ad nauseam on CNN and MSNBC to the pleasures of Turner Classics, or recordings of Jon Oliver’s brilliant show Last Week Tonight, I still can’t resist channel surfing back to presidential pundit-speak and crawlers, which invariably get my dander up.

One thing that drives me bonkers is the frequency with which major news stories from here and abroad are totally overlooked, or texted in crawlers by American networks and cable news outlets. You’d think there was no world out there. With Aljazeera America gone, there’s only the BBC to turn to, and often their coverage is questionable.

Here’s an example of something that unnerves me when I click on the news, which segues with my disillusionment with Democrats. A crawler reads, “Toddler kills mother with handgun.” The next day it’s “Four-year old shoots two-year old sister.” Gun violence is a major crisis and an urgent public health issue in this country. So why aren’t the Dems – and media’s talking heads – addressing the issue more urgently? Why haven’t interviewers held Bernie’s feet to the fire on the matter? We already know he has a D- rating with the NRA. That’s irrelevant to the question of why his voting record on gun legislation is so inadequate, nor does it tell us what he plans to do to address gun violence if elected.

Why, too, does Bernie keep harking back to Hillary’s Wall Street speeches along with other redundancies? How about they cut a deal: she releases her speeches when he releases his tax records, so we can all move on to the really important issues. (According to Facebook, Jane Sandersproposed this idea last month, putting the onus on Hillary first.)

And where was Bernie’s condemnation of his spokesperson’s term “Democratic whores”? Or his strong statement admonishing supporters for throwing dollar bills at his opponent? Given that his adversary is a woman, these were particularly insulting and troubling terms and actions; they smacked of the kind of misogyny Hillary Rodham Clinton is routinely subjected to and they should be roundly rejected by anyone vying for leadership.  It is not going too far, I think, to suggest that such language and actions smack of Trump tactics.

Hillary Clinton also has some explaining to do to this Democrat. Why, for example, did she make no mention of Israel’s responsibility toward peace in the Middle East when she addressed – or pandered to – AIPAC? It’s one thing to be a supporter of or an ally to Israel, but surely their government should be called out by ours for continuing to build illegal settlements, and for their brutal behavior toward Arabs living in ghettos in Gaza and the West Bank.

Further, according to many of her supporters, she has donated her Goldman Sachs speaking fees. Why then has she not been able to say that during the debates? If it’s true I’d also like to know to whom funds were donated. And while I agree that it’s important to support “down stream Democratic candidates,” how smart was it to hold a Hollywood fundraiser in primary season that cost over $300,000 to sponsor and over $30,000 to attend?  Could you shout “one percent” any louder?

The escalating negativity and hostility on display during recent Democratic debates was also deeply troubling. What ever happened to the promises of civility and mutual respect that both candidates promised and deserve? I’m tired of sandbox politics overall, but I’m especially distressed to see two people I respect in my party behaving like children throwing temper tantrums, being on the shady side of the truth, making false or hyperbolized accusations, and generally acting as if they are willing to win at the cost of their own integrity.

This election is, I believe, one of the most important ones we will have faced in our lifetimes. Its outcome matters deeply, dramatically and for the long term. Nothing illustrates that more than the Democracy Spring movement that emerged following the Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter movements.

Something is happening in America, as in other countries that will shape our individual and collective futures in ways we have yet to realize.  Not since the Populist movement that followed the Gilded Age have Americans seen such a frenzied plea for social justice and social change.

 It is the responsibility of all politicians, but especially Democrats – as well as the media – to hear what is being articulated by the 99 percent, to understand the critical underpinnings of their call for meaningful reform, and to respond to such calls with intelligence, compassion, clarity, honesty, strategy, and the sense of urgency the message demands.  There are vital connections to be made with respect to class, race, gender, poverty and more.  That leaves no time or taste for nasty attacks, minimalist crawlers, or meaningless and repetitive banter.

The time for mean-spirited exchange, empty slogans, and dumbed-down discourse is over. It’s time for civility and sensible action.  The question is: Can the Democrats, and the news media, rise to it? 

A Frightening Move to the Right in the US and Elsewhere

Anyone who saw Donald Trump asking for a Hitler-like salute to accompany a vote pledge from his supporters, or watched an angry follower elbow-punch a protester in the face, should realize that if he were to take the White House, we would all be in deep trouble. Trump’s behavior, ideas and political rants are outrageous and alarming.

But make no mistake: we’d be in trouble if any Republican candidate were to win the election. Trump’s opponents espouse much of the same policy claptrap when pressed; they just use softer language and forego violently throwing protesters out of the room with the Stalinist vigor of the frontrunner. The party of the right has helped fuel the escalation in violence and vitriol we are experiencing. They’ve done nothing to put a lid on what’s happening and they continue to support Trump in the election. They have never disavowed his accusations about the President’s birthplace. They’ve refused to pass legislation the president proposes and they have never treated Mr. Obama with respect.

Even more worrying than the fascist machinations of the authoritarian Republican poll leader is the numbers of people flocking to his events cheering on his stereotypical scapegoating.  The hate inherent in Trump supporters is a scary reminder that a lot of Americans stand on shaky ground.

We are not alone in the fact that about half our population is dangerously right wing.

Recently Spain’s conservative government strengthened laws originally aimed at controlling separatists. The laws resulted in the arrest of puppeteers who used a political play on words at a Carnival show and the prosecution of a musician and a poet whose work suggested criticism of the government, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Maximum prison sentences for such infractions have been increased and a new “gag law” penalizes unauthorized public demonstrations.

Even before the Paris attacks in November last year France reinforced a similar gag law to punishes statements deemed to be inciting terrorism. Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, French authorities have moved to enforce the law and have been accused of rushing to convict people who may have spoken provocatively outside the realm of terrorism.

Other European nations, both east and west, have also enacting broad and troubling laws, some aimed at maintaining a leader’s control, others at limiting political speech as fears of Islamic extremism rise. Germany, for example, is showing serious signs of moving right in view of the Merkel government’s welcoming of refugees.

In Turkey, the Erdogan government recently seized the largest circulation newspaper in the country which had been critical of his leadership. Within 48 hours it was publishing pro-Erdogan propaganda. In shutting down the press police acted after a court in Istanbul placed the paper under the administration of selected Trustees without explanation. The editor of the paper was fired and Turkish sources reported that the paper’s online archive was being eradicated. This action is just the latest move by the authoritarian Erdogan, who has imprisoned critics, jailed journalists, and gone back to war with the Kurds. Oh, and it’s now illegal to insult Mr. Erdogan. Nearly 2,000 cases for that crime were filed over the last year and a half.

The New York Times, in reporting events in Turkey, noted that “it is unsettling that the US and Europe have responded so meekly to Mr. Erdogan’s trampling of a free press.” It’s also unsettling that EU countries are not willing to bear any responsibility for trapped refugees. The challenges of resettlement are huge, of course, but part of the reason no country wants to help the teaming masses is an almost hysterical fear of terrorism, which seems to have trumped (no pun intended) human rights and compassion.

In Poland, the ultra-conservative government has cleared the way for hard line legal changes, including a likely total ban on abortion and further curbs on gender and human rights. Their constitutional tribunal, the country’s highest legislative court, is losing its independence thanks to the Law and Justice Party’s win last year – a Party aligned with hostility toward migrants.

Meanwhile, Israel continues its trek right. A Pew Research Center report issued in March found that almost half of all Israeli Jews want to see the transfer or expulsion of the country’s Palestinian population. For the past decade or more racist ideas have gained power in Israel, scholars point out, powered by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and other fundamentalists. This attitude has led to attacks on Palestinians as well as women and gay activists, some of which have resulted in barely punished homicides. And still the illegal building of settlements continues, basically assuring that a two-state solution can never prevail.

As we grapple with our current political landscape as well as the debate over First Amendment rights vs. national security spawned by Apple’s refusal to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone, we need to be mindful of the full picture, and the real threats, surrounding civil rights here and elsewhere. Never has it been truer that “no man [or country] is an island.” The shift right in so many countries, possibly including ours, is perhaps the most important issue we will be forced to grapple with in coming days. Let’s not think, as many Germans did, “It could never happen here.”  It could. And it well might if we are not both vigilant and smart.  

Time for a Second Look at the Second Wave

In light of emerging demographics within the American electorate, by which I mean the growing youth vote, and the fact that young women are flocking to Bernie Sanders - and in view of the brouhaha about remarks made by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright – I’m concerned.  I’m not as bothered by the Steinem and Albright remarks as others are, although I was shocked by both utterances. Anyone, in a moment of frustration or fatigue, can make thoughtless or insulting comments they regret the moment the words leave their mouth.

My cri de coeur is about how Hillary Clinton and her spokespeople are failing miserably in addressing a fundamental point that needs to be made to young, idealist women because none of them has one clue about what life was like for females before HRC and other Second Wave feminists crawled into the trenches and fought like hell for women’s rights. They have no sense of women’s history and how it affects them.

Alice Paul and other women were tortured trying to secure women’s right to vote. How dare young voters, especially women, say they will stay home if Bernie isn’t the Democratic candidate? Contraception was illegal in Connecticut, even for married women, until the 1960s. Want to think about what it was like to miss a period before Roe v. Wade? (If you were wealthy you flew to Puerto Rico for an abortion; poor women used hangers.) Know what it was like when nursing, teaching or being a secretary were your only options? It goes on and on. For a full picture, read Gail Collins’s book When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (2009), which begins with a young woman being sent home from traffic court because she was wearing crisply ironed trousers and includes stories like the one about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was told she should give up law school and make babies.

Since no one reading this column is likely to run out and get Collins’s informative book, here are a few examples of what life was like for females in my day. When I bought my first car in the 60’s the bank insisted my father – who was in bankruptcy to the same bank, sign my loan agreement. Once I got married, only my husband’s credit mattered. And when I went to graduate school I was assessed out-of-state tuition fees by the University of Maryland because although I met every criteria for in-state fees, I didn’t earn half our family income, so legally as they saw it, I was my British husband’s dependent, just as if I were his child.

Why don’t Hillary and her deputies respond to media questions about why women aren’t voting for her by noting that young women don’t know any of this stuff, and don’t realize how threatened their futures are if the wrong man wins? Do young voters know that women have been arrested for feticide following miscarriage in this country, or that even if raped they could be forced to carry a pregnancy to term? Do they get that lack of pay equity means they will have substantially smaller pensions or social security checks in old age than men? Do they even care that there is a tax on tampons or that Viagra was covered by medical insurance when birth control wasn’t?

When late term abortion comes up why don’t Hillary’s folks tell it like it is: Third trimester abortion happens very rarely when a woman (and her partner) find out, after 20 weeks of pregnancy, that their much wanted unborn child has a horrific anomaly, perhaps a missing brain or other organs. These parents have made the agonizing decision to terminate out of a very deep love for that child and the quality of its life. No woman – not one – flippantly decides she doesn’t want the kid that late in pregnancy, and it reveals the deepest disrespect for women to accuse them of such mindlessness.

Don’t get me wrong: This is not a pro-Hillary vs Bernie argument. It’s a plea to young women and to the political campaigns that want to include them.  The idealism driving young women voters to the Sanders campaign is a good thing. But Bernie, too, needs to speak to these issues, at least once in a while, so that his female followers can think through their voting decisions with a full deck of cards.

On the Clinton side, young women need to know about and appreciate the direct experience, skill set, and yes, scars that Hillary brings to the arena, especially if they are concerned about their future as females in an extremely challenging time, economically, socially and politically.  This could be the most important election of their lives. The time leading up to it should not be reduced to simplistic sound bites, silly squabbling, incomplete or out-of-context information, or serious omissions of fact and history. There is just too much riding on knowing as much as we can and voting wisely.

As for Gloria and Madeleine, give them a break. What they said was inappropriate and in the fullest analysis troubling. But they have given us all – women and men – so much to appreciate and be thankful for and they’re basically terrific role models. Let’s not diminish them, outstanding elders both, on the basis of a bad day or an unfortunate slip of the tongue.

What's Missing in Dialogues About Poverty?

When six Republicans met in South Carolina recently to discuss combating poverty their focus was predictable. Marco Rubio talked about broken families, dangerous neighborhoods, substandard housing, failing schools, and drug dealers, all while rejecting the idea of raising the federal minimum wage. He argued that welfare should be turned over to states, especially those that have recipient work requirements.

Jeb Bush, who agrees with Rubio on states taking over welfare, blathered about giving Americans the “right to rise.” Ben Carson said that “some people hate rats, some hate roaches, I hated poverty.” And Chris Christie warned against drug addiction as the gateway to incarceration.

Rubio invoked his parents, a bartender and a maid, to extol rising above poverty. But they had jobs which presumably they could get to without too much hassle, steady incomes, and, it would seem, someone to watch the kids.  Bush’s comments smacked of not wanting the problem in his neighborhood, and Carson seemed to equate poor people with vermin.

It reminded me of Paul Ryan and the accolades he received when he said he “could not, and would not, give up [his] family time” to serve as House Majority Leader. But does he hold to that ideal for people who spend hours waiting for several buses to get to two or three minimum wage jobs, worried that there is no “angel in the house” to take care of the kids, and no decent day care? Does he realize, as Judith Shulevitz pointed out in a recent New York Times op ed., that there are more than four times as many American families run by single moms as by single dads, and that a third more households are headed by women on welfare than those run by men?

The fact is the competing Republicans don’t get the reality of poverty. They’ve never lived it and they don’t like it. The only emotion it seems to raise in them is pity. God knows it’s never empathy. Nor do they get the interconnections between major federal issues in need of urgent attention and poverty alleviation.  Shove punitive, top-down, us/them welfare problems back to the states is their mantra. They don’t want to see it and they don’t want to deal with it, because dealing with it means addressing really big issues, and then funding them.

Transportation infrastructure is one example. None of the naysayers has ever had to get to work without a car (and often a driver). How willing would they be to rise in the wee hours of the morning to catch several buses in any kind of weather? How many of them have ridden sophisticated transportation systems in other countries, where wait times are almost nil and connections are well planned so that people who really work for a living can be moved about by the millions with relatively little hassle?

How many of the Horatio Alger guys have had to worry about quality, affordable, accessible daycare? Hey People on the Hill: Poor folk don’t have nannies!  They don’t have stay at home spouses. They don’t even have enough food to feed their kids half the time and some of you want to cut food stamps?

Speaking of nutrition, it’s a big part of staying healthy so you can work. So is affordable, accessible, quality healthcare.  It might be worth factoring that into the equation for ending poverty while you’re trying to gut Obamacare or avoid universal health care.

I wish Republicans who talk in clichés would understand important connections like these.

Judith Shulevitz raised an interesting approach in her Times piece. She pointed out that a number of countries are contemplating a “universal basic income” or U.B.I. A proposal in Finland, for example, would experiment with giving every adult 800 Euros (about $870) a month. Switzerland and Canada are among other countries calling for similar experimentation.

The rationale is that it’s a way to reimburse people who lead productive lives, like mothers and other caregivers who don’t receive money for what they contribute to society.  (About thirty years ago a social scientist figured out that if women were remunerated for all they do their worth would be something like $40,000 annually. Imagine what that is in today’s economy!) The U.B.I. also reflects “a necessary condition for a just society,” as Shulevitz puts it. It’s seen as a general entitlement in this framework. It’s also been called “a floor below which nobody need fall.”  

Basic income proposals like this one from both right and left are not new but they are complex. It’s something to think about while good folks genuinely strategize around ending poverty in our rich country. Of course, the Republicans who flap their cake holes about poverty would never consider such an idea.

The thing is, maybe it can help move them toward more rationale, responsible thinking about poverty alleviation. At least they might not dump it all on the states as nothing more than a local problem loaded with society’s detritus.

Overcoming the Politics of fear

Sometimes when I am contemplating a commentary events conspire to help me reflect more deeply on the subject at hand. Such was the case when, after Donald Trump’s outrageous suggestion that Muslims in America should be registered and no more Muslims should be allowed to enter the country, I began to write about the politics of fear. 

I first recalled what Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans during World War II: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” the president said. He was cautioning a frightened population against fear-induced paralysis. It was an especially important message given that considered, decisive action and not passivity was urgently needed to defeat evildoers like Hitler. Perhaps he was also warning us not to cower in the face of demagogues and not to yield to unacceptable language that serves to fuel heinous deeds. Quite possibly he was also cautioning against becoming inured to a kind of evil that can invade our collective psyche so that seemingly innocuous words like “normal,” “necessary “and “needed”  begin to justify a nation’s dangerous, destructive, shameful behavior.

While I was thinking about this I happened to be reading an extraordinary novel by the Russian-born writer Paul Goldberg. The Yid is about Stalinism, anti-Semitism, racism and more in 1950s Russia and it struck me as incredibly relevant. Goldberg’s protagonist, for example, compares political purges to epidemics that “start out with a small, concentrated population, then expand their reach nationally, even globally.” Epidemics of infectious diseases, he says, “can reach a peak” before inevitably receding. He concludes that Fascism is an infectious disease and Stalinism is a plague. Neither can survive, but in their long brutality many people suffer and die.

I can’t be the only one to read this book and think of Donald Trump’s vicious talk and insidious proposals when it comes to Muslims or immigrants and refugees.

Goldberg’s character was right to say that epidemics – even political ones - can become global. The growth of France’s right wing party or for that matter the far right voters in the UK, Poland, and elsewhere demonstrate that. Never has there been a more urgent time to ask ourselves, as Goldberg does, “What are we dealing with? Is this outburst of ignorance and hatred akin to systemic disease? What if you could find a way to intervene and neutralize it?”

Then something else happened as I was tossing all of this around in my mind.  I attended an amazing non-denominational religious service in which a gifted minister spoke about fear and what it can do to us. Without ever mentioning refugees, immigrants, Republicans, or Muslims, and using only Good Samaritan stories to make his point, this good, compassionate, intelligent man hit the nail on the head. 

Fear, he said, leads to hate and hate leads to demonizing people who may be different than we are. We need to see past those differences. We must be global citizens and good neighbors. We must recall and reclaim our national shame in remembering what America did to Native Americans, to Japanese Americans during the war, to the Jews we turned away when they were desperate to escape Nazi atrocities, to the multitudes of Black Americans who died hanging from trees or attacked by dogs when they fought for civil rights, to HIV/AIDS or Ebola victims – all because we saw these human beings as “they,” The Other, the Outsider, the threat that fueled our fear. We need also to reclaim our own Good Samaritan stories if we are to survive, the minister reminded us. We must reject the fearmongering of Biblical literalists who often forget that to be human is to behave humanely.

So, no more polemicists like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson who preach fear and hatred from their pulpits.  No more demonizing of others by right-wing zealots in Congress or elsewhere. No more Trump travesties or political poison born of bigotry. No more foul-mouthed, unfounded accusations. No more letting fear dominate our decisions and behavior. No more fear defining our national character so that other nations no longer want to engage with us.

The time for proclaiming with our voices and our vote that we are not going to do it anymore is now. The time is here to say clearly that we reject fear as our future. Instead, let us see past challenging times in order to survive as a unified, dignified nation. Let us be a country whole and healthy. Let the fearmongers slink away and find their own place in the world, but let it not be ours.    

Shut Up and Put Up: A Military Culture of Retaliation When Rape Happens

Sometimes as a journalist one thing leads to another and you suddenly find yourself going down a dark rabbit hole that you hadn’t planned to visit. That’s what happened to me recently when I was writing a piece about how the Veterans Administration’s mental health system and the military in general were failing women in need of care following sexual assault.

I interviewed a lot of women veterans who had suffered military sexual assault while serving their country for that piece and what I heard wasn’t pretty. Nor were the things they said about what had happened to them when they sought help, or when they tried to tell their stories. That’s the part that led me down the rabbit hole, because the truth is retaliation is rampant in the military against those who tell the truth about what happens to victims of abuse.

“It’s a culture of silencing,” one source who’d been warned not to talk to the media told me. “They take away your First Amendment right to free speech.” Then he called me, twice, in a panic.  “Don’t use my name,” he said. “I still work for the VA.” Soon afterwards I got a call from another source who asked that I water down her comments. “My husband still gets his care at the VA,” she explained.

But don’t take my word for it. In May 2015 Human Rights Watch released a report called “US: Military Whistleblowers at Risk” in which it detailed retaliation for reporting sexual assault. “Military service members who report sexual assault frequently experience retaliation that goes unpunished,” the report said after its 18-month investigation in partnership with the human rights organization Protect Our Defenders. “Despite extensive reforms by the Defense Department to address sexual assault, the military has done little to hold retaliators to account or provide effective remedies for retaliation,” the report said, adding that “the Military Whistleblower Protection Act has yet to help a single service member whose career was harmed.”

Let’s put a human face on this travesty. “A Sergeant told me he would kill me if we ever went into Afghanistan because ‘friendly fire is a tragic accident that happens’,” a female soldier told Human Rights Watch.  Another reported that she was assaulted by a cook whose colleagues harassed her so much she couldn’t eat in the mess hall. She “lived off of cans of tuna” for seven months. In another case a female Marine’s name and photo were posted to a Facebook page where other Marines could comment. “Find her, tag her, haze her, make her life a living hell,” someone wrote. Another soldier said she should be silenced “before she lied about another rape.”

Is it any wonder that one advocate I interviewed said she advises women who come to her for help to “get out right now because you life is on the line.” She told me “it’s not unusual for women to go missing” or to have their deaths called a suicide.

A study conducted by the Rand Corporation in 2014 revealed that 62 percent of women who reported unwanted sexual conduct to military authorities experienced some form of retaliation. The study also found that 35 percent of women reporting sexual assault suffered an adverse administrative action, 32 percent suffered professional retaliation and 11 percent were punished for infractions after reporting. It didn’t count the number of women who receive pseudo-psychiatric diagnoses like “Borderline Personality Disorder” which is often used to damage or end a victim’s career.

“These sickening stories of retaliation against survivors should make every American angry,” Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY) has said. “We keep hearing how previous reforms were going to protect victims, and make retaliation a crime. Yet there has been zero progress on this front and this mission is failing. Survivors will not be able to get the justice they deserve until we change this business-as-usual climate without any real accountability and create a professional, non-biased and independent military justice system.”

Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, agrees. “When no one is held accountable for retaliation, it creates a hostile environment for all survivors, and sends a message to criminals that they can act with impunity. When a survivor who reports sexual assault is 12 times more likely to suffer retaliation than they are to see their rapist convicted, it demonstrates the military has a long way to go to fix this problem.”

After talking to so many brave women who have suffered terribly, first by being raped and then for telling the truth about it, I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’ve written their stories here and elsewhere, which has led me to wonder occasionally if I will be retaliated against in some way. So if my column doesn’t appear next month please come looking for me. Maybe you should start with that ultimate black hole – a military brig – where someone who bears an uncanny resemblance to Al Capone may well be watching over me.

Got Chutzpah?

It’s one of my favorite Yiddish words. Chutzpah. It means guts, balls, a touch of arrogance, courage. To be full of chutzpah is to be a risk taker, a speaker of truth to power, a pain in the butt, a winner, a cool dude, a person who gets things done. Even then, there are nuances to the word that are hard to convey whenever you try to translate Yiddish words into English, even when they’re part of the general lexicon.

A joke may help. An old woman gets on a crowded bus. Standing in front of a seated young girl hand held to her chest, she says, "If you knew what I have, you would give me your seat." The girl gives up the seat. The girl takes a fan and fans herself. The woman says, "If you knew what I have, you would give me that fan." The girl gives her the fan. Minutes later the woman says to the bus driver, "Stop, I want to get off here." The driver says he must stop at the next corner. Hand across her chest, she says, "If you knew what I have, you would let me out here." The bus driver pulls over and lets her off. "Madam, what is it you have?" he asks. "Chutzpah," she replies.

The first time I realized I the rewards of chutzpah I was in eighth grade. In those days girls had to take sewing while boys enjoyed shop. To this day I can barely sew a button back on so having to make a nightgown was unbearably challenging, especially since the sewing teacher only helped girls who liked sewing. One day I said as much to her in a pique of frustration while struggling to thread a bobbin. The sewing teacher was black; next thing you know I’m hauled into the principal’s office accused of making racist remarks having to do with a nightgown. Stunned, I faced the principal and said, “I never did any such thing. What I said was, ‘You only help girls who like to sew.’ Then I drew myself up and continued. “I’m a minority myself. I’m Jewish. Do you think I would make nasty remarks to another minority?” The nonplussed principal stared at me. “You must apologize!” he demanded. “I’m sorry but I cannot apologize because I did nothing wrong,” I countered. Then, in the absence of a response, I left the room. And that was that. Score one for chutzpah.

There have been many more incidents since then when chutzpah held me in good stead. On my first job interview I pretended to take shorthand when in fact I was remembering what the man said before racing to the typewriter to tap the words onto paper. Later, after I had worked some months for him (and taken Speedwriting), he said, “I knew what you were doing. I figured anyone who could pull that off deserved the job!”  

 I’ve played the chutzpah card in Bali when a cop tried to con me out of money for a faux traffic violation, and in Chiang Mai when an optician overcharged me for glasses. Chutzpah trumped passivity when I reserved a 16-pound turkey for Thanksgiving at a well-known Washington, DC food emporium and was given a 22 pounder instead. It happened again at Christmas; I got my turkey and two bottles of wine free. The ultimate chutzpah, I suppose, is that I married a gentile man in the days when you could get disowned for such a thing.  

But here’s the really important thing about chutzpah. It’s not just something you call upon for fun or to flex your muscle, and it’s not something you use solely to get what you want.

Rather, it’s a strategic way to stand up for yourself, like Gandhi did in order to free his Indian nation from British rule. It’s what you draw upon in certain circumstances so that you are not duped or diminished. Chutzpah well-demonstrated is an effective way to remind people that you matter and that you are not going to be ignored, trivialized, disrespected or rendered invisible. It’s a way of saying, “Don’t mess with me because I’ve got your number!”

Yiddish – derived from German and Hebrew – is a marvelous language. Some of its words are so filled with nuanced meaning we just couldn’t get along without them. How else can you convey the fatigue of a long schlep or the aggravation of someone else’s mishagoss? How can you describe all the joy embedded in a Mazel Tov? What better conveys a complainer than someone who qvetches endlessly?

Still, for me, chutzpah rises to the top of my limited Yiddish tongue. It serves my inner rebel, reinforces me in my convictions, and most happily of all, renders me a force to be reckoned with. Who could ask for more than that in a single word?

He Said, She Said: An Election Dilemma

Like a lot of other politically active liberal Democrats, I’m in a pre-primary quandary. Hillary or Bernie? One day I’m for one candidate, the next I’m leaning toward their contender. Both make a lot of sense to me and represent my world view. But both have done things (or not) that make me wonder about their ability to lead the country (and the world) in a way that makes me feel totally comfortable and confident.  

I’d love to see a woman president in my lifetime, but I voted for Barack Obama the last time Hillary ran because I have reservations about her that persist, and I don’t like political dynasties. And I like what Bernie stands for, but he’s troubled me on a few issues, and I wonder if he has the personality, patience and negotiation skills required to get things done on the Hill and around the world, progressive ideology notwithstanding.

The Democratic candidate who emerges will have my full and active support. I will go to the mat to ensure that whichever Republican is nominated has no chance of wreaking the havoc each of them has promised. But here are some things I need to see in a Democratic frontrunner in order to be a proud American again, and to feel that there is hope for the future of our country, our world, and our planet.

First, at the national level, I need to know that serious, enforceable gun control legislation will be among the new president’s priorities.  I need to stop seeing daily reports of senseless gun deaths, reports so ubiquitous that we are no longer shocked by them because they are as common as a bad weather report. We have become our own killing field and an enigma to the civilized world. It’s time to understand the 18th century intent of the Second Amendment and to question its relevance today. It’s time to tell the NRA to take a hike.

I also need to see reforms within our justice system, our prison-industrial complex and our approach to incarceration overall. Enough of people like Carlos Mercado, a 45-year old diabetic man who died after 15 hours at New York’s notorious Rikers Island for lack of medical attention as guards stepped over him as he lay dying. Enough of women like Sandra Bland dying in prison for not using a turn signal. Enough of white- collar criminals walking away while black boys and men waste away in lockup. Enough of the torture of solitary confinement and of innocent people incarcerated for years and sometimes put to death by the state. Enough of police brutality, bad lawyering, powermongering parole boards, and judicial corruption. Enough of swat teams in place of community-based policing and sufficient mental health services.

I need to see serious attention being given to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure before it literally falls down around us. Whether its endangered bridges, potholed roads, a ridiculous Amtrak system instead of high speed rail and mass transit like the rest of the developed world has, or up-to-date air traffic control technology, it’s time we stopped gluing ourselves back together, or ignoring altogether disasters waiting to happen. Instead of building walls to keep people away or devising ways to take a one-way trip to outer space perhaps we could make life safer and more comfortable for folks moving around in our own neighborhoods and cities.

With a view to the wider world, I need to know that the next president grasps the reality and urgency of climate change. It’s imperative that he or she gets the fact – the indisputable fact - that we are on the cusp of extraordinary, irreversible disaster if we don’t act now to save our planet. Reports by multiple, credible scientists of sea changes and weather events driven by global warming - including water shortages that could result in insufficient food, new migrations and conflicts over water - are already here. What will it take for naysayers to get the severity of the issue? One answer is a president who prioritizes climate change and acts responsibly along with other global leaders.

Clearly, anyone in the Oval Office needs to be absolutely dedicated to human rights – which include women’s right to agency over their own bodies and lives – and to making such dedication clear and operational.  That means ensuring that quality health care and education is accessible and affordable for everyone. It means having a viable strategy for helping the world’s refugees, people of color, and those from other ethnic or religious backgrounds to feel safe and to live dignified lives.

Finally, I need the president to be absolutely savvy about foreign affairs and to have the kind of experience, advisors, and negotiating skills that give all of us the best chance of living in a world in which armed conflict is reduced and terrorism is eliminated without the slaughter of innocents.

It’s a tall order. But Hillary and Bernie have a year in which to convince me which one of them is up to the job. Until then, I’ll just have to live with uncertainty. 

A Glimmer of Hope

Listening to Donald Trump’s continuing trash talk, watching the climate change-induced infernos burning on the west coast, hearing Republicans medieval take on women’s rights, and suffering reports of continuing gun violence, it’s hard to find anything positive to say about the future of the human race. 

Still, there have been glimmers of hope on the horizon. One of the biggest examples is individuals’ response to the heartrending refugee crisis - and let’s be clear about that term: Migrants leave home for economic reasons; the thousands of people fleeing war, starvation, persecution and death in countries like Syria and Afghanistan are refugees.  While some countries (like Germany) have behaved better than others (like Hungary) in trying to offer a humane response to a human tragedy the proportions of which we have not seen since World War II,  it’s really what individual people have done that offers hope for the better side of our nature.

In Germany, for example, hundreds of peopled signed up on the website Refugees Welcome to offer accommodation in their private homes. Described as an “Air B’n’B for refugees,” the Berlin-based site has helped people from Africa, Syria and elsewhere. Many other EU countries have followed their example. According to The Guardian, the group has been overwhelmed by people in various countries wanting to help.

Another strategy assisting refugees is the wide petitioning of governments to accept more people, as Icelanders, Brits and others have done. And many groups have formed or joined the attempt to help too. Calais Migrant Solidarity, for instance, organized aid from the UK and delivered clothes and food to stranded refugees in France. Doctors of the World have been providing care to vulnerable people with health risks. Folkstone United helped get donated goods and volunteers to makeshift refugee camps. Individuals have also driven to refugee sites from all over Europe, bringing supplies and in many cases driving exhausted refugees to borders.

One notable individual who offers hope for the future of the world in most people’s minds is Pope Francis, who before traveling to Cuba and America presided over the marriage of nearly two dozen couples from Rome in St. Peter’s Basilica. What made this ceremony exceptional was that one bride was already a mother, some of the couples had been living together, and others had been married before. 

The Pontiff, who has yet to fully address women’s issues and the pedophilia disaster in the Church has, to his credit, convened an Extraordinary Synod to take place this month, only the third such meeting since the Synod of Bishops was created in 1965.  The topic of discussion is how the Church can be more compassionate with respect to modern views and practices regarding sexuality.  Pope Francis has also encouraged people to imagine a more hopeful future with his push for greater action on climate change, his utterly humane view of the poor, and his endorsement of the Iran deal.

Those of us who value negotiation over armed conflict and war can take some hope from the Pope’s position on Iran nuclear disarmament and from the Senate’s defeat of Republican efforts to kill the deal. We can also take solace in the fact that attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and to end the constitutional right to abortion at 20 weeks were defeated in the Senate. And some Republicans are now espousing criminal justice reform, including ending solitary confinement, while Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who once called for “tougher sentences for repeat offenders” and “three strikes and you’re out” policies” are calling for police reform and an end to “mass incarceration.”

Talking about politicians, what could auger hope more than the paralleled political lives of presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders in the U.S. and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK? The comparison between the two men - one an avowed Social Democrat, the other a card-carrying Socialist who just became Labour Party Leader - is stunning: they are both people whose campaigns were not taken seriously at first, they both vigorously defend putting principles above political expediency, and they both believe that we need, as Corbyn has said, “a force for change in the word, a force for humanity in the world, a force for peace in the world, and a force that recognizes we cannot go on like this…”

Whether or not either of these left-leaning, newly emerging politicians can make it in their respective forthcoming elections is something we will have to see. For now, we can leave their chances to analysts and pundits. What’s important and relevant here is that people like Sanders and Corbyn are making it to the world’s political podiums.  They are being heard and applauded and believed as they bring a new and better vision of a sustainable world to us.

Happily, they are like the good people flocking to help thousands of refugees find hope in a frayed world. They embody the spirit and the possibility of a negotiated future. And perhaps most important of all, unlike Donald Trump, they talk truth, not trash, to their adoring crowds.

The Fine Art of Listening

When I was a communications major in graduate school, “active listening” was a big piece of the curriculum. It seemed a light weight subject at the time. Later, when I taught listening skills to my own students, they too assumed it was a ho-hum ‘no brainer’ largely because the literature on paying attention to others - really hearing them - seemed to belabor the obvious: People need to be heard, validated and appreciated.

But the fact is that listening – giving our full attention to another - does not always come naturally. And the value of full attention, which leads to understanding and therefore appropriate response (which in some cases is no response, just listening), is often overlooked.

I was reminded of this on several occasions recently.  The first was when a young woman I know told me how much she appreciated the fact that I always listen to her. It was a simple statement of gratitude but one laden with meaning. What she was really saying was that she valued the fact that I took her feelings seriously and offered genuine support, which made her life easier and provided comfort in difficult circumstances. That was deeply important and helpful to her, and it was important to me too.  I felt the reward of knowing that by “simply” listening I had made someone’s journey a little bit easier.

That sense of easing someone’s journey through totally silent, wholehearted listening is part of an initiative called The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project launched by psychologist and writer Paula J. Caplan.  As Caplan explains, “Through free, voluntary, private, and respectful listening sessions, volunteer listeners help to reduce the common chasms between veterans and non-veterans through the simple act of a non-veteran listening to a veteran from any era. This helps veterans through the power of human connection.”

Listeners who volunteer to “Listen to a Veteran” are not therapists and they are not engaged in active listening that allows listeners to speak, Caplan explains. Except for speaking two sentences, one at the beginning and one sometime during the session, they do nothing but listen. “But they do so with 100% of their attention and their whole hearts. This model works beautifully,” says Caplan. And according to research conducted by Harvard University, veterans describe the listening sessions as helpful while listeners say it is wonderfully transformative for them.

"When I came back from Afghanistan, hearing the words “Thank You” from people who didn’t know what I did or saw was an empty gesture,” one Afghanistan army veteran reported. “More than anything, I wanted my community to listen to the stories of veterans like myself—to participate in that moral struggle, and gain a deeper awareness of the meaning of war. The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project understands the important role that civilians can perform simply by listening to veterans actively and without judgment, generating new opportunities for veterans to serve their communities by educating them about the nuanced reality of war." 

The third time I thought about the incredible importance and impact of active listening came from a training workshop that was part of a collaboration between two community-based theaters and a multi-generational performance project called Race Peace, developed in the south “to create a space where people form diverse backgrounds can safely and aggressively challenge the realities and myths of racism in America.” Race Peace also considers “how art can engage people in noteworthy dialogue about challenging social issues.”

Race Peace worked with Next Stage Arts Project (NSAP) and Sandglass Theater, community-based theaters in Putney, Vt., to conduct a training workshop that included Story Circles in which people sat in small groups and shared their stories. They were stories of humanity being stripped away. They were tales of wounding behavior. They revealed moments of humiliation and injustice. The participants, including actors, police officers, and a theater director among others, listened – really listened – to each other. They were, they said, deeply moved and changed by the experience, as were community members who saw their stories performed, by coincidence, the week of the Baltimore riots.

“The workshop made racism tangible,” Eric Bass, co-founder of Sandglass Theater, noted. “Real emotions were awakened, there was true honesty and bridges were built.”

“The training was unorthodox by law enforcement standards,” Brattleboro Police Chief Michael Fitzgerald said. “It was amazing what emerged when we examined personal prejudices.”

“When creative expression of the human experience is shared we are all present for each other in the moment. It’s extremely powerful,” adds Maria Basescu, executive director of Next Stage Arts Project.

These reactions from a variety of arenas testify to the importance and power of active listening in numerous contexts. I wish someone had shared them with me when I was a student, as I would like to have shared them with others when I was teaching.

Perhaps they have even more meaning in today’s world, where the need to listen to each other, to validate and bring comfort, grows ever more vital. Indeed, it seems fair to say, it has never been greater.
                                   

Troubling Times in the Bush, and in Media's Back Rooms

Everyone now recognizes Cecil, the majestic lion who roamed the Zimbabwean savannah until he was lured into danger by an American hunter who paid megabucks to kill him. Cecil’s death set the Internet on fire and garnered huge amounts of mainstream media attention.  The Doris Day Animal League demanded “Justice for Cecil” and the Empire State building put his regal face on its urban façade as if he were part of a guerrilla marketing campaign. A bill introduced in Congress named after Cecil aimed to extend U.S. import/export restrictions on animal trophies that are threatened or endangered.

All the attention about poached, murdered African animals is good and necessary; what’s happening to these magnificent creatures is horrifying and reprehensible. Anyone lucky enough to have visited Africa and seen its animals knows how small our own place on the planet can seem.

Still, as attention paid to Cecil grew, I wondered why it was that everyone knew a lion’s name and face while virtually no one knew the name or face of a Palestinian baby burnt alive by an Israeli zealot or of a young woman stabbed to death because she attended Gay Pride in Jerusalem. (The baby’s name was Ali Dawabshe. Shira Banki was the sixteen year old murdered in Jerusalem). 

Writer Roxane Gay captured this troubling situation in The New York Times. “I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot people will care,” she wrote, while acknowledging the brutality of Cecil’s death. But, she said, while “some people also mourn the deaths of Sandra Bland and Samuel DuBose, this mourning doesn’t seem to carry the same emotional tenor. A late-night television host did not cry on camera for human lives that have been lost. … He did, however, cry for a lion and that’s worth thinking about.”

When Cecil’s picture lit up the Empire State Building, I thought, why not Sandra Bland or one of the other 678 Black men and women killed in the last seven months at the hands of law enforcement? Why not that Israeli baby or teenager? Why not one of Boka Haram’s captured girls or one of the women suffering unfathomably at the hands of ISIS?

Then MSNBC announced that it was cutting several journalists: Ed Schultz, Alex Wagner, and four hosts of The Cycle, liberals all. (Joy Reid had already been demoted to “national correspondent”). 

That’s when I began to feel like I was watching a drama that was bizarrely like Out of Africa meets Citizen Kane. (Kane, you will recall, began a career in the publishing world because he was idealistic but he gradually became ruthless in his pursuit of power.)

What, I wondered – if not profit and market share - was going on with mainstream media (which now includes cable news)? Why were TV talk shows and news programs barely covering heartbreaking stories of people in distress (immigrants, refugees, captives, disaster victims) and instead cuing up footage of Cecil interspersed with true crimes stories, weather disasters, and replays of a piece of MH 370? Why were they bringing back bad boy Brian Williams and giving ho-hum Chuck Todd more talk time in place of journalists who are unafraid to do their homework or ask tough questions? In short, why are media moguls allowing Fox News to set the nation’s media agenda?

Out of curiosity I did some research. Google turned up a number of stories about females suffering in the grip of ISIS but with one exception none was more recent than 2014. (Been there, done that?) And none of them delved into the personal stories of the enslaved women. At best, there was a cursory quote or two, but nothing like the heartrending testimonials to be found via alternative sources.  The New York Post did run a story in 2015; it was about “Why are girls flocking to ISIS?” (Borderline sensationalism?)

Meanwhile, Cecil still roams on in our imaginations, kept alive by pundits, reporters and news readers whose editors and producers want to avoid tackling tragedies with a human face because their sponsors know that all the world loves a lion.

Another movie, The Wizard of Oz, also has a lion.  He longs for courage while his friend the Scarecrow wants a brain and the Tin Woodman desires a heart.

It seems to me that we are all in need of courage, intelligence, and a heart in our daily news cycle. Journalists need the courage to ask hard questions without fear of reprisal, and the people who own their outlets and employ them must exhibit intelligent judgment and a sense of priority and balance as they determine the day’s top stories. Working together, they must draw upon what we must hope remains on the road to power, and that is compassion.

As for news consumers, we need to care as much about human beings as we do about animals like Cecil. Only when we demand a more courageous and compassionate media will we have brought home our collective, truly important trophy.

Ferguson, Feminism and Faith Offer Lessons for Our Common Future

In colonial America and beyond, men, women and children, stolen from their native countries, were stripped naked, beaten, chained and sometimes caged, then sold to the highest bidder.  Fathers watched helplessly as their dark-skinned sons were humiliated by potential buyers. Mothers witnessed their beautiful black daughter’s forced to endure virginity tests before they were torn from them forever.

Today, in Iraq and Syria, women and girls are also kidnapped, beaten, caged, forced to undergo virginity tests, and sold to their captors for as little as the price of a pack of cigarettes in some cases. (Virgins sell higher while children under twelve garner the best price.)

Atrocities are taking place in our own time just as they did long ago. Injustices are occurring in Baltimore, Ferguson, and elsewhere in America reminiscent of other travesties (including lynchings) that have occurred in our lifetimes. Black boys and men (as well as girls and women) are being gunned down for walking down the street, playing in the park, selling cigarettes, wearing a hoodie, driving a car.

Recently, in the south, in the 21st century, nine amazingly good people were shot to death by a stranger whom they had welcomed with open arms. Their brutal deaths gave us pause to remember three little girls in another southern church, three young, murdered civil rights workers, Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

Most of the deeply moving stories of the people in these scenarios we will never hear. But this much we do know: Racism, human chattel, misogyny and stereotyping continue unabated in a country that insists upon seeing itself as a self-righteous model, and in a world growing ever darker, while these blots on our collective soul continue to destroy our common humanity.          

I think about this because of a speech I read given by Carlton Turner, executive director of Alternate Roots, an Atlanta-based non-profit arts organization that calls for social and economic justice and works through the arts to dismantle all forms of oppression.

In his speech Turner challenged people to examine how cultural beliefs and practices find their way into personal behavior as well as national policies propagated by a dominant majority.  “Categorization and separation [are] long-standing tactics of those in power,” Turner said. “They produce a tangible system that promotes inequity and inflicts deep psychological damage.” Individuals and institutionalized systems that play on these constructed differences, he argues, are complicit in perpetuating harmful dichotomies that encourage, and in some cases condone, violence.

Turner posits that the arts can play an important role in raising awareness and changing social norms. He cites Martin Luther King, Jr. as “a true twentieth century artist” because Dr. King was “adept in his understanding of the Southern oral traditions…masterful in his use of theater…to create dynamic responsive spaces…in the form of public spectacle.” King, he explains, would have understood that the people of Ferguson  and elsewhere who mounted  the Black Lives Matter campaign were demanding to be seen and heard in the public square, in order to declare to the world, ‘we are human!’”

That is exactly what women of the world were saying when, during the UN Decade for Women, they declared, “We are here. We are there. We are everywhere, and we are not going away!”

It is what slaves sang to each other in their soulful spirituals as they picked cotton in their masters’ fields.

It is what nine good people spoke wordlessly when they welcomed Dylan Root into their church and what one of them said as he was about to be killed: “We welcome you here. You don’t need to do this.”

The testimonials that emerged during the civil rights and women’s movements of the 20th century had much to teach us about the power of truth-telling in public arenas. They and the oral traditions of the African-American community taught us that we are not very different from each other in matters of the heart and spirit. Our journeys are all fraught with pain but they are often filled with stories of hope as well.

The narratives we know, whether they are slave tales, stories of violence against Blacks and women’s oppression, or expressions of faith and kindness in the face of horrific fear help us to realize each others' humanity. They engage us, free of learned judgment, as we begin to realize our common bond in the human struggle for freedom and dignity. They say to us all, “We are human!”

The narratives we don’t know - the stories that are still waiting to be told and which will move us to a place of unity – are urgently in need of telling, because nothing less than our common humanity is at stake.  Surely the time has come when we must begin listening – really listening to each other - with open hearts and minds -  so that we can be “free at last” from the myths that have burdened us for so long.

Where Are Women's Organizations in the Fight for Reproductive Rights?

In 411 BC, a comedy by Aristophanes rocked Greece. Lysistrata was a play about one woman’s mission to end the Peloponnesian War by persuading other women to withhold sex from their husbands and lovers until they had negotiated a peaceful settlement.

More than two millennia later, on October 24, 1975, 90 percent of women in Iceland went on strike for a day in the name of economic and social justice. They refused to go to work, to cook or to take care of children. It called to a halt every sector of the country.

On April 25, 2004 the national Mall in Washington, DC witnessed the March for Women's Lives which drew over 800,000 people. Organized by the Feminist Majority, NARAL Pro-Choice America, NOW and Planned Parenthood Federation of America among others multi-generational attendees focused on reproductive rights alongside entertainers, politicians and icons of the feminist movement. The press had a field day.

Each of those events represents a strategy for social change that helped shape history. I’m wondering where such strategies are now among women’s organizations.

Following the recent Black Lives Matter marches that were so effective in garnering media attention and which helped push President Obama to call for renewed efforts to enact new gun-related regulations, I began to wonder why there isn’t a more visible, strategic presence among women’s organizations given the growing attacks on women’s reproductive rights at both national and state levels.

While I recall the power of the many marches I participated in during the 1980s in which issues such as abortion, women’s privacy and their human rights were captured through sheer numbers, compelling personal testimonies, and a responsive media, I’m not necessarily making a case for such mass protests as the best strategy. I understand that from police protection to publicity to Porta-potties, such events involve extraordinary organizational skills and plenty of personnel. They are also hugely expensive. I also know that many of the marches of my day had less than the desired impact on legislation.

I get as well that social media and the Internet have changed the way organizations do things in major ways. But beyond asking people to sign petitions and donate money what is their impact in the absence of human-face, big numbers activism? What exactly is the social media strategy? And what is being done to augment it? (I ask these questions while acknowledging Planned Parenthood’s impressive use of social media under the leadership of Cecile Richards.)

So I decided to put these questions to more than half a dozen key women’s organizations – including the very ones that had organized the 2004 March for Women’s Lives. It breaks my heart to report that with one exception none of them even bothered to answer my repeated calls and emails, even though I’m a bona fide journalist with a certain amount of name recognition among these groups. (Perhaps, like the National Organization for Women they’re too busy promoting “pink Viagra”). The one organization that responded after much prodding was Naral Pro-Choice America; they sent me a bit of canned PR stating that they were “committed to amplifying the voices of Americans who believe that women should be in charge of their own healthcare choices.” The piece mentioned “in-person rallies” and “online petitions” and “getting Google and Yahoo to remove their false advertising.” It said they had challenged TED Talks “to change their policy from one that excludes abortion talks to one that embraces them.” 

 Excuse me? That’s it?

One woman I did talk to was Donna Dees-Thomases, who organized the highly successful Million Mom March in 2000 calling for an end to gun violence. The march, which boasted 750,000 people in Washington, DC and 250,000 others marching in satellite rallies in over 70 American cities on Mothers Day that year, led to a highly successful grassroots movement in which chapters were established around the country. Now united with Handgun Control, Inc. and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and known as the Brady Center, their chapters continue to advocate for gun violence prevention legislation primarily at the local and state levels, resulting in many legislative successes. That’s strategy at work.

“Women are organizers,” Dees-Thomases told me, explaining the successes the Brady Center has had. “They’re out in front and they’re making an impact.” At the same time, she thinks too many women in leadership may have become “institutionalized thinkers.” They don’t realize, she explains, that, for example, simply organizing and assisting a few women to visit their state legislators, to testify, to write letters can have a big impact. In other words, it seems to me, they no longer think strategically, or put effort into that kind of activism.

They don’t even bother talking to feminist journalists anymore, it seems, and that gives me pause (especially when I pull out my checkbook.) It also leaves me wondering where the women’s movement goes from here. I guess I won’t be waiting for a callback on that.

Policing Post Mortem: What Needs to Happen Next?

Ever since the indictments came down against six Baltimore police officers after the death of Freddie Gray there’s been a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking and political punditry about what should happen to correct the epidemic of police brutality aimed largely at young Black men. 

But talk is cheap and action speaks louder than words: In the aftermath of Newtown, Ct. we have yet to pass sensible gun laws or to close dangerous loopholes. And when it comes to the horrendous backlash against women’s rights, even the rhetoric is missing.

Having listened to the gaggle of talking heads on TV news shows, it seems to me that several things are needed if change is to happen.

First, let’s listen to people who really understand the problems we face and have good ideas about how to fix them. Some awesome voices and astute analysis came out of Baltimore from within the Black community; “experts” need to listen to them. Among them were the Mamas who head households and raise kids, youth, clergy, and neighborhood leaders. They have a lot to say about what people in the trenches need to survive with dignity. Talking with grassroots folks is at the heart of qualitative research about community problems and how to tackle them and the process works best when it isn’t based on top-down assumptions or value judgments. Where were those voices in the public arena?

Then we have to stop the Blame Game and own the problem, because it belongs to all of us. It’s easy for pundits to blame unions, welfare, single mothers, absent fathers (many of whom are incarcerated) and lack of training (for nonexistent jobs). But the reality is that responsibility for an epidemic of police violence and the reaction to it lies within institutions, governments, corporations, businesses, and with individuals who must recognize the prejudices they harbor.  As economist Paul Krugman pointed out, lagging wages, poor health care, failing education systems, false assumptions and deifying middle class values have all contributed to the crisis.

Telling the truth about what happened and why in cities like Baltimore is urgent. Further, we must be innovative, perhaps even risk-taking, in thinking of ways to address urban America’s problems, not in the future, but now. We must answer hard questions: What needs to happen immediately? Where will necessary resources (human and financial) come from? Where is money invested and what’s the measurable outcome? How can we work strategically, collaboratively and productively and avoid competition or duplication?

Then there’s White-Man-Speak. Are others are as tired as I am of listening to political rhetoric from people (usually male) who have no first-hand experience of the problems about which they pontificate? I’m tired of the Us/Them dichotomy reflected in superficial statements presented as “analysis” from “experts.” I’m fed up with folks who can’t say “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong,” as the mayor of Baltimore couldn’t when she referred to young, frustrated citizens as “thugs.” I’m tired of people like Martin O’Malley, former governor of Maryland and a potential Democratic presidential candidate, using their media time for campaign pitches thinly veiled as solutions.

Frankly, I’m tired of media establishment journalists who don’t have the guts to ask hard questions and press for answers. Why didn’t hosts of Meet the Press and Face the Nation ask the retired detectives they dug up about the legality of locking up hundreds of people in heinous conditions without charge or bail for 48 hours in Baltimore? Why not one question about the millions of dollars paid in reparations for police brutality in Baltimore? Why not hold Speaker Boehner’s feet to the fire when he pouts and ignores questions?

The fact is that superficial talk, assumptions framed as gospel, and blaming vs. getting to the bottom of behavioral precipitants are no substitute for communicating with each other – cops, business people, parents, teachers, kids, clergy, local officials, community opinion leaders. (Attorney General Loretta Lynch made a good start.)  Key questions need to be asked: “What are the biggest obstacles to change? How can we work together to overcome them? Where are we getting it wrong? What do YOU need to feel you have a chance at life? How can we get there together? What are top priorities and how should we begin to approach them? When should we talk again about how we’re doing?”

That approach is labor-intensive and costly in both human and financial terms. It requires a deep commitment to getting things right and seeing things through, no matter how challenging. It means compromising and yielding ego. It means learning to trust others, no matter where they come from or what credentials they hold, or lack. It’s never easy but it is always worthwhile.

Wes Moore, a Black Baltimore resident, retired veteran, and author appearing on Meet the Press said, “People need to think you care before they care what you think. Everyone needs to feel safe. It’s a matter of human intelligence.”

His statement seems like a fine place to start talking before translating words into action.

A Vote for Hillary May be Hard but Consider the Alternative

Last year when author Marianne Williamson posted an open letter to Hillary Clinton, many left-leaning Democrats nodded in agreement.  “I want a woman president,” Williamson wrote, … “and you’d know what to do from Day 1. … But none of that is enough to get the vote of a lot of people …Stop cozying up to the banks, the chemical companies, the military-industrial complex, the party machine, and all the various financiers who make up the plutocracy now ruining this country,” she continued. “If we have a sense that you’d be just another puppet of the elite, then I don’t believe you will win.”

Williamson’s message resonated. I’d chosen Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton when he won his first term, much to the consternation of my feminist friends. But in addition to being against political dynasties, right or left, there was too much about Hillary that worried me, including her relationship to corporations, Wall Street, and an inbred group of “experts” who would likely become her advisers.

I was reminded of that time of testy political discourse during a recent online conversation with a group of women I hold in high regard. One woman wrote, “We’ll never get out of the two-party system and we’ll never get out of big-money politics unless we can demonstrate that we will no longer play their game. I get frustrated hearing that I ‘have’ to vote for the Dems or else the Reps will win. It just continues to support the current paradigm. We have to re-frame the game…”

Another woman added, “Not even entertaining the idea of another party, or independent, is why we are in this mess. If we don’t change how we do things, we are doomed to the same result. Change is needed: Truth to Power!”

I appreciate the point these women are making. But as I responded, “I just shudder to think of having one of the Republican Neanderthals as president. I would like to see Hillary get elected [if she is the Democratic nominee now that Bernie Sanders is running] and then hold her accountable to the choices she makes as President. In light of current realities, that’s the time to hold her feet to the fire, in addition to asking tough questions when she is campaigning, but we just can’t lose this one!”

After more comments ensued, I added, “I really get scared when progressives (like me) divide the vote because of what I will call ‘political posturing’ at crucial times, thus handing the result to Republicans. That’s how we got a Republican governor in Vermont, and it’s how we got a disastrous Republican president when Gore lost.

“It’s so important to be realistic about the political world,” I continued. “Yes, we need to change the system and I hope we can somehow, but the fact is that we are a two-party system (controlled by big money). In light of that reality we must be smart about how and when we work for change. A desperately important election is not the time to take risks because we always lose ‘the game!’ Please, let’s be careful. In my view neither Bernie Sanders nor Elizabeth Warren has a chance of winning and we need to keep the White House!”

To those arguments I would add that we are living in a time when dangerous demagogues are rattling sabers, revealing incipient racism and other prejudices, and exerting a newly malicious misogyny. The actions of some Republican governors and members of Congress during recent weeks and over the course of the Obama administration shine a terrifying light on what would likely become law in America should a Republican win the next election. And it’s not just about the legislative branch of government. We would be choosing federal judges and Supreme Court justices. We would be voting on the future of the planet. We would be deciding not if but when to go to war, and where. And that’s just for starters.

That’s why I am pleading with my progressive friends to be realistic and to get behind Hillary assuming she does emerge as the Democratic candidate. This is not a time for political polemics. Neither is it a time to be divided among ourselves or to engage in brinksmanship. Rather it is a time to be forward thinking, street–smart, united and decisive. That may be an argument for the lesser of two evils but we don’t have a lot of choice right now. The time to take on Hillary and her party will come, and it should. I just hope we don’t end up shooting ourselves in the foot yet again before then.

Like Marianne Williamson, “I’d love to clamor for [Hillary], to work for [her], to cheer [her] on,” and to see her “name the real problems so we can trust [she’d] provide some real solutions.” But I too have reservations. 

I just have a lot more of them when I envision any of the Republicans on the horizon moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The very thought of it chills me to the bone.