Women Suffrage

94th Anniversary Of Woman Suffrage Amendment 19! And Women’s Equality Day!

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Today, August 26, commemorates the 94th anniversary of the Woman Suffrage Amendment 19, and is celebrated as Women’s Equality Day.

Women had to fight for the right to vote since the Equal Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, a full 72 year battle!

And yet, there are those, such as Ann Coulter, the conservative ideologue, who calls for the abolition of the 19th Amendment, because the majority of women vote Democratic!

There are one third of women who are strongly Republican, anti abortion, anti feminist, anti promotion of more laws to benefit women in their daily lives. You see this in the GOP House women members, who one has to wonder about their sanity!

But women have come too far to allow their hard earned rights, not only voting, but controlling their own destinies, without the interference of right wing forces who would love to put them back into the bedroom and the kitchen, stop working, stop being educated, and being the dutiful wife and mother as their only role!

The vast majority of women will continue to assert their basic human rights, as well they should!

Conservative Right Wing Attack On The Constitution: The Threat Of Another Constitutional Convention Wiping Out Constitutional Amendments!

Ronald 1 Comment

The Founding Fathers gave us a Constitution, admitting in the process that there would always be room for improvements, so made clear that amendments were appropriate over time.

So we have had 27 Amendments, including the first ten that make up the Bill of Rights.

When one looks at the amendments, particularly those that came after the Bill of Rights, one realizes that the vast majority of them were “progressive” in tone, designed to expand democracy in America, or else, amendments dealing with the office of the Presidency.

So the “progressive” amendments included the 13th (ending slavery and involuntary servitude); the 14th (promoting due process and equal protection and making African Americans citizens); the 15th (guaranteeing the right to vote for African Americans and others which had been denied that right); the 16th (providing for a federal income tax to raise revenue to deal with mounting social and economic issues); the 17th (granting the people the right to elect their two United States Senators by popular vote); the 19th (guaranteeing women the right to vote); the 23rd (guaranteeing residents of Washington, DC the right to vote); the 24th (preventing a poll tax for voting); and the 26th (guaranteeing young people 18-21 the right to vote).

So nine of the seventeen amendments after the first ten of the Bill of Rights promote progressive change, while the 12th, 20th, 22nd and 25th deal with the office of the Presidency.

The only amendment that was ever passed to limit the freedom of Americans was the 18th (prohibition of liquor), but later repealed by the 21st Amendment.

Now we have the real threat by right wing conservatives, including the Tea Party Movement, who want a new Constitutional Convention to wipe out these “progressive” amendments!

They do not like voting rights for African Americans, other minorities, women, residents of Washington DC (mostly African Americans) and young people; and they are unhappy that African Americans are considered equal under the law, and if they had the ability to do so, they would love to re-enslave poor people, which by corporate power is occurring in an informal way for many minorities, as well as white lower class people struggling every day to survive!

And they wish they could restore the US Senate elections to the corrupt state legislatures, taking away the popular vote. Finally, they hate the federal income tax, even though many of them avoid substantial taxation by having investments, rather than working for a living like most of us do. So they would prefer a sales tax, which is regressive, and would hurt the middle class and the poor much more than the wealthy elite!

But that is exactly the extremist right wing intention—to restore the “good old days” when they were in charge, and everyone had to kowtow to them!

We must not allow such a threat to develop, so the battle for progressivism is never ending, as a result!

165th Anniversary Of Seneca Falls Equal Rights Convention: A Time For Women’s Rights Advocates To Plan Strategy For Future!

Ronald 5 Comments

165 years ago this week, specifically on July 19 and 20, the momentous event known as the Seneca Falls Convention took place in upstate New York.

300 men and women gathered, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and including the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, demanding equal rights for women, including the right of suffrage, participating in voting.

That fight for suffrage took 72 years, until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, and the move for the Equal Rights Amendment proposal of 1972 fell short by three states, and was declared dead in 1982.

But now there is an urgency to fight for that proposed amendment, despite the odds against it being ratified in the political climate we live in now, if for no other reason than to declare that the strategy of the future is that women are not going to allow backtracking on basic rights that have now been the law for years, specifically the Roe V. Wade decision on Abortion Rights forty years ago, plus the push for equal pay, equal treatment in the military, fighting against acceptance of rape by many politicians of the Republican Party, and the Religious Right desire to send women back home, not working, cooking and being available for a man’s desires in the bedroom!

There may be women who are willing to accept the Republican view on women in 2013, but they are NOT a majority, and if Betty Ford, the First Lady with President Gerald Ford, were alive and well today, she would be leading the fight for women’s rights, as she did when she was in the White House!

Having visited the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids yesterday, it reminded the author of how far the GOP has moved from the Ford Presidency experience, and remember that turn to the right began when Ronald Reagan challenged President Ford for the Presidential nomination in 1976, helping to cause his defeat, and the ultimate takeover of the Republican Party by the Right Wing led by Reagan!

So women, and men who agree that they deserve equal treatment, need to organize and fight for women’s rights, even now, 165 years after Seneca Falls!

The Centennial Of Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency: A Time For Debate Over His Legacy

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A century ago day, Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated as the 28th President of the United States,and helped to transform the Presidency in massive ways, some good and some bad.

Wilson has been under attack in the present climate of conservative attacks on reform oriented Presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Barack Obama.

The facts are that Wilson, FDR, and LBJ were the three most accomplished Presidents in domestic affairs, but with plenty of criticism about their handling of wars and the domestic relationship to those wars.

Wilson accomplished the most domestic reform of any President before him, taking on parts of Theodore Roosevelt’s New Nationalism agenda on the Progressive Party line in 1912, adding it to his own New Freedom legislative ideas.

So Wilson’s time saw the following:

Underwood Simmons Tariff

Federal Reserve Act

Clayton Anti Trust Act

Federal Trade Commission

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act

La Follette Seamen’s Act

Adamson Act (eight hour work day in interstate transportation)

Federal Farm Loan Act

Some of this did not work out well long term, and additionally, Wilson had major negative policies dealing with:

Woman Suffrage—opposing an amendment (although it came about despite him in 1920, via the 19th Amendment).

Race Relations—clearly racist policy of imposing Jim Crow segregation in Washington, DC; unfair treatment and recognition of African American sacrifices in the World War I effort; and endorsement of an openly racist film, D W Griffith’s BIRTH OF A NATION, which portrayed the Southern view of Reconstruction, a myth of long standing, which finally was proved inaccurate in the past half century of historical research and writing.

Civil Liberties Violations— including arrest and imprisonment of Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs for opposition to the draft and American involvement in World War I; the Espionage and Sedition Acts; and the Palmer Raids after the war.

In foreign policy, Wilson engaged in “Missionary Diplomacy” including interventions in Haiti, and more significantly in Mexico, attempting to pursue Pancho Villa for a raid across the border into Columbus, New Mexico, the worst incursion in American territory since the War of 1812. And of course, the controversy over Wilson and our entrance into World War I continues even today, and the whole debate and divisiveness over the Versailles Treaty and League of Nations in 1919-1920.

Additionally, being incapacitated by a stroke, but being unwilling to hand over temporary power to Vice President Thomas Marshall, and allowing his wife to run cabinet meetings, is another major issue in assessing Wilson’s Presidency.

So Wilson is a “very mixed bag” as a President, but usually is ranked in the bottom of the top ten of our Presidents, specifically because of his long range influence on America, rare among Presidents, for good or for bad, and there is clearly plenty of both!

The Dangers Of Proposed Amendment One In North Carolina Constitution: Denial Of Equal Rights Returning To The South!

Ronald 3 Comments

There is great fear that the majority of voters in North Carolina tomorrow will institutionalize discrimination, prejudice, and hate in the state constitution with the expected passage of Amendment One, endorsed by Franklin Graham, and his distinguished father, the Reverend Billy Graham, who should be totally ashamed of themselves!

North Carolina and other Southern states used to deny racial intermarriage, and institutionalized hate, prejudice and discrimination in the state constitutions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

One would think we are beyond this in the 21st century, and that we should not allow the ignorance of people to become law!

It is shameful to let people VOTE on basic human rights, including gay rights and gay marriage rights.

When it comes to personal human rights, there should NOT be any vote, as those personal human rights should be guaranteed in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

If we had a vote on whether women should be denied the right to vote; blacks should be segregated; job discrimination against Jews, Catholics, and others should be reinstituted; workers should be denied collective bargaining; and many other social advancements that people gave their “blood, sweat and tears” for, it is possible that the masses would vote to deny basic rights.

But that is not what a democracy is, to allow prejudice, hate, and discrimination to rule the day!

We have come too far in our national history to allow this to happen, and to sit idly by!

If North Carolina adopts Amendment One, we all should hold our heads in shame and weep!

Why Not The Equal Rights Amendment For Women 40 Years After Its Origin?

Ronald 1 Comment

The Republican Party has actively been promoting amendment after amendment to the Constitution in the past two years, and the thought has emerged that it is time to re-introduce the failed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed through Congress in 1972, reaching 35 states ratification by 1976, and then collapsing, with no more support, and failing of ratification by 1982, three states short of adoption.

Women have seen their fortunes change amazingly these past four decades, and are now the majority of the work force, attending universities at a higher percentage than men, and entering all of the professions in tremendous numbers, with them being the majority in more and more occupations.

Women have been “liberated” from the old controls that religion and conservative values put on them, and there are even many Republican women in the House of Representatives and a few in the US Senate.

So why not promote the adoption of the amendment which would put women into the Constitution directly, for only the second time, after the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote after a 72 year battle in 1920?

Even the arguments used by evangelist Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, among others, no longer have any validity, as if they had justification at the time of the ERA!

These and other critics argued that passage of the ERA would:

1. Promote Lesbian marriage–which now exists in six states and Washington, DC.
2. Advocate Unisex public toilets–which now exist all over the nation in shopping malls and many hotels and other public restroom locations.
3. Allow the involvement in combat situations of women in the military–which now occurs on a regular basis.

With all of the great advancements of woman in the past two generations, this is the time to institutionalize what has happened by laws and by natural evolving over that time!

We should put Republicans on the line for a modern Equal Rights Amendment, make them stand up for human rights for women, at a time when Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin are potential future Presidents! They, the other women in the Republican party in Congress, and the men of the party, need to show that they believe in true EQUALITY for women and have no problem making it a permanent part of the US Constitution, that they claim they revere!

The Wisconsin Capitol Demonstrations: Men, Women And Children To Be Honored For Their Principles And Sacrifices!

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Conservative talk show hosts on radio and Fox News Channel have been portraying the men, women and children involved in the Wisconsin Capitol demonstrations for the past two weeks as “losers”, “slobs”, “radicals”, “left wingers”, “free loaders”, and many other insulting and disrespectful terms.

The fact that 70,000 to 100,000 people at a minimum have been dedicated to these peaceful protests, marches and demonstrations, and have sacrificed their salaries, their comforts, and their peace of mind to commit themselves to a cause they believe in, and that they know is justified and moral, is extremely inspiring!

If these people were not certain of the righteousness of their cause, the retention of collective bargaining, they would not be spending two weeks on the cold floor of the state Capitol in Madison. It is not something they would recommend to anyone, but just like the marchers for civil rights in the 1960s, the woman suffragettes in the early 20th century, and the abolitionists in the preCivil War period, they will not give up, and even if they lose for now, the battle will go on until the dastardly evil intent of Scott Walker and the Republicans is repudiated by the voters!

Already, polls indicate both in Wisconsin and nationally that the demonstrators have an overwhelming public support for the continuation of collective bargaining for public service workers who have devoted their careers to a commitment to service for the citizens of their states!

The Long Range Significance Of Wisconsin! Survival Of The Middle Class, Public Education, And Democracy!

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The Wisconsin labor struggle is a battle against corporate interests who wish to destroy the working middle class’s right to collective bargaining and labor representation. It is a calculated attempt of conservatives, Tea Party Movement, and Republicans (who have always hated and opposed labor rights) to diminish the middle class and destroy public education, the only way for upward social mobility in this society!

The labor movement helped to create the middle class, but it had to face entrenched business and conservative interests in the 19th century and in the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it faces new attempts to take away the hard earned rights and benefits that generations of workers struggled for, earned by the sweat of their brow, and deserve respect and dignity for their commitment to their work.

Every social movement in this country has required marches, demonstrations, lawsuits, and civil disobedience to win support–including the anti slavery movement, the women suffrage struggle, the recognition of labor rights, the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, and the gay rights battle!

It is appropriate that Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854 at Ripon, and which had a platform of opposition to the expansion of slavery and included abolitionists in its midst; and also the birthplace of the progressive movement in Madison with the election of Governor Robert LaFollette, Sr in 1900–is the “ground zero” location of the new fight for labor rights and the survival of the middle class and public education!

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin might be intransigent, but those opposed to his use of fear and hysteria–just as the GOP has always been good at utilizing, as in the Red Scare led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the manipulation of September 11 to promote the Iraq War–must not give in, and must continue the struggle, and it must be fought in Florida, Ohio, New Jersey and elsewhere with no surrender, as it will determine the future of the American middle class and the survival of a society that can still be termed a democracy!