rights – Don't Gel Too Soon

Damn! Scary Days Ahead!

My son called tonight to ask me if I was finished packing and ready to leave the country. He was kidding… Sort of. And I joked back at him… Sort of.

This is a tough night. So much was at stake and so much has been lost. I’m not certain how grotesque the new government of our country will be, but it will be hard to watch. Right now Joni Ernst is making her victory speech and it’s all I can do not to throw something at the TV. She, Cory Gardner in Colorado and several others hold views so extreme and benighted that it is painful to imagine what our lives will be like for the next two years

Of course they didn’t win in a vacuum. Democrats made mistakes, ISIS and Ebola didn’t help and the deep damage done to President Obama by the Republicans from the day he took office didn’t help either, nor did the long years of gridlock or the disproportionate number of Democratic seats up this year. But they won, and excuses won’t change that. I think I’m giving up MSNBC for Netflix for a while.

BLOG AGAINST SEXISM DAY: CAN YOU BELIEVE WE STILL NEED TO DO THIS?

March 8 is Blog Against Sexism Day – and as I began thinking about what to write, this is what came out:

Once I met Betty Friedan – actually more than once – but the first time was at the 1967 National Student Association convention. It was obviously a turbulent time: the Vietnam War was everyone’s obsession – at the conference and in the world outside; the Civil Rights movement was moving toward racial separation, Ramparts Magazine had just revealed that the CIA had been funding NSA and lots of other student activities.

I wrote about this on the Ms. website when Betty died, so I’ll just repeat it here: She spoke about inequities in pay, power and sense of self between women and men. I was irritated. Didn’t she know there was a war going on? Didn’t she know how many kids went to bed hungry? Didn’t she know about racial injustice?

During Q and A I asked her "How can women worry about themselves when there is so much more abject misery in the world? " I asked. She drew herself up as only she could, looked me square in the eye and said "My dear, don’t hide behind the poor."

She was right, of course. Over the years — I just realized that it’s 40 this year — we’ve struggled and grown. The consciousness raising groups of the 70s were just that: they genuinely raised our awareness of the vast disparity in pay, rights and attitude between women and men. The world today is unimaginably different. But not finished.

There’s a sad split between old school feminists like me and younger, equally committed women. I don’t feel it personally but see it as a real political loss – we should be working together and for many younger women the groups of my generation seem staid, old and disinterested in their younger sisters. If we’re fighting sexism we shouldn’t be fighting each other!

Beyond that, pay equity is closer but not all the way there; many major businesses and executive jobs still sport major glass ceilings, working mothers at all levels still have real problems – more in the hourly kinds of work than white collar. Divorce, domestic abuse, child custody and support — all of these issues are still without resolution. And in many areas, like abortion and federal protection of rights, we’ve slid badly under the current administration.

What gives me hope though is to think of my sons and the sons of my friends, and of the young people who share our lives in our community. These men wouldn’t dream of assuming certain tasks belong to women; wouldn’t dream of treating a female colleague or employee with less than appropriate dignity and can’t imagine another way to live. Systemically we still have a lot to do, but I do think that as we move forward these sons of feminists, raised with respect to respect their moms and sisters, classmates and friends, will not only de-fang sexism but also provide shining examples of how much better life is without it. Amen.

AMERICAN ME

Yesterday I went to appeal a parking ticket. I had not received my tags from the DC government and was ticketed because they were out of date. The DC police are notorious for ticketing marginal cases – I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten tickets at broken meters or tree-concealed No Parking signs. I work for myself so it costs me money when I go to appeal ; usually I just pay. THIS however was a $100 ticket so there was no alternative.

I was pretty sure they would blow me off. I had an Internet receipt indicating timely payment of the fees but was afraid that wouldn’t matter — after all the adjudicating official probably makes a third of what I make even consulting and I’ve experienced class-like responses in the past. But Ms. Cindy and her snotty preconceptions were foiled, quite wonderfully.

At the desk in the hearing room was Mr. Carter, an African American gentleman with half-glasses, beard, white shirt, tie and a jacket and beret on the coat hook. There were about ten of us sitting around the edges of the small room, in the center of which was a table perpendicular to Mr. Carter’s desk. On his desk: a computer, our pile of appeal documents and a printer. One by one he called us to the chair at the far end of the table. One by one we told our stories. "Guilty with an explanation — the tree hid the no parking sign — I am a transit cop and even though I showed my badge they ticketed me — I drive a construction truck and the lane was marked "construction vehicles only" so the no parking sign did not apply — etc." Each time Mr. Carter read and re-read the ticket – reading the information aloud — then asked for corroborating evidence. Most of us had documents or photos proving our case. One by one he dismissed the tickets – ONE of which he didn’t even rule on because the dates were wrong and therefore the "ticket is defective." Then he called me.

As I sat down he took off his glasses and wiped them on his tie. No good. Held them up to the light. Rolled his chair over to a file cabinet, opened a drawer, opened a zipper case in that drawer, pulled out some eyeglass cleaner, cleaned his glasses, put the cleaner back in the case, put the case back in the drawer, shut the drawer and rolled back to his desk. I though "Oh boy – he’s feeling orderly – he’s going to tell me it’s my fault and I should have gone to pick them up if they hadn’t mailed them in time." He asked for my plea. "Guilty with an explanation." He asked for the explanation – that the tags never arrived. He asked for my evidence. I walked over and gave him the receipt from the date of online payment – well before expiration date.

He read everything carefully — went into his computer. "Damn," I thought, "he’s going to see all those photo speeding (2-5 miles over the limit – for the record) tickets and damn me to ticket hell." Nope.

He looked up. "You did what you were supposed to do. We’re not going to punish you because the government didn’t do what IT was supposed to do. Ticket dismissed." He signed the release and handed it to me. That was it. Done.

NOW. I’m not telling this story because this examiner was so perceptive about my sweet law-abiding self. I sat there during the entire proceeding – with people of varying degrees of education, articulateness, race, dressed-upness and other differences — all free to appeal the actions of their government. For some reason this small proceeding reminded me in a very tangible way what I love about this country even in the midst of its terrible mistakes and what I see as a wrong-headed and disastrous domestic direction: The right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. [The end of the First Amendment.] Whatever has (in my view) been violated in the past six years, we have that right and most of us take it for granted. For today anyway – thanks to Mr. Carter and the DC Department of Motor Vehicles – that "most of us" does not include me.