Suggestions for President-Elect Obama's To-Do List
The Economy...
National Security...
Health Care...
The Climate Crisis...
See any mention of women's rights? Representation of women in government? Empowering women?
While I cannot say I am surprised by this, I can say I am outraged. I can also say that I think "official" progressive voices are acting incredibly stupidly. I think they are blinkered and blindered and have no idea how many Americans will not join their enthusiasm for the President-Elect so long as he and they continue to be silent on the double-standards that continue to render women second class citizens in our own country let alone around the world.
I also know, unfortunately, that in the short term, as "official" progressives bask in the Democratic victory there is almost nothing that can be done to get an Obama administration to take women's issues, rights, and empowerment seriously (let alone gay rights or the rights of D.C. residents to be represented in Congress. We knew that an Obama victory would be taken as license to ignore women's voices; that it would not matter how many women or women's organizations sold their souls (in my opinion) to put a Democrat in the White House. We knew this because we watched an entire primary and general election campaign unfold in which Senator Obama made no commitment to women's empowerment and never once spoke out against the misogyny that ran rampant through this election cycle.
I am ever more convinced that Americans who care about the problem of misogyny and sexism are going to have to use the same methods - resistance, demonstration, noncooperation - that forced white Americans to heed the moral unacceptability of racism and bigotry to get male Americans to heed the moral unacceptability of sexism and racism.
That this level of struggle is required is a tragedy. It is particularly tragic because Senator Obama and the "official" progressive crowd had a golden opportunity to spare us all. This year a progressive woman candidate, who also happens to have stood up repeatedly for women's rights, a woman who has the respect of millions of Americans could have been asked to play a prominent role in Obama administration or in the incoming Senate session. Her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton. But rather than ask her to play a prominent role, Senator Obama's surrogates have in fact told Senator Clinton that she is out of order for seeking a leadership role on an issue that DOES make the "official" list of progressive causes: health care. (Apparently, it is just too, too presumptious for somebody who won more votes to become the Democratic Party's candidate than any other person in the history of the Democratic Party to expect to be empowered to act in the name of a cause in which she has major expertise. Odd, because it was not considered presumptious by his fellow senators for Senator Obama to run for president as the junior Senator from Illinois with less than 200 days of experience in that position. Oh wait, not odd - Senator Obama is a man, so he was just being a brilliant politician.)
Senator Clinton says her only goal is to be the best Senator from New York she can be and to do what she can to aid Senator Obama's administration. Good for Senator Clinton. She has set goals that she will attain easily - she will be, as she has been, great for the people of New York; and she's proven that she can be of tremendous assistance to Senator Obama, helping him win voters he would otherwise have been likely to lose.
Now, the rest of us will have to set some goals, without the sure knowledge that we can achieve them, without yet even a sure path to how to achieve them. My list:
- Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept that we must live with a politics awash in private money;
- Resolved: to hold the media accountable and demand that they provide full information regardless of the editorial tilt of owners, editors, or reporters.
- Resolved: to continue to refuse to accept so-called progressive or liberal leaders who do not make the issues of sexism and misogyny front and central in the fight for a more just America;
- Resolved: to demand reform of the Democratic Party and particularly its leadership, or, in the alternative, work to form a rival to the current DNC if reform is unattainable;
- Resolved: to make sure that the pipeline to elected political leadership is flooded with talented women, so many that eventually no major party will be able to refuse support for a woman at the top of the ticket;
- Resolved: to use the skills and connections forged this season, including the fundraising skills, to support the aforementioned goals.
