Filed under: Blogs, Civil Liberties, Community, Economy, Elections, Environment, Human Rights, Iran, Katrina, Media, Mississippi, Politics, Pro-Choice, Progressive, Strategy, war | Tags: activism, Alabama, New Media
If you want to be the New Media voice of the New Southern Left in Mississippi and Alabama you can be.
If you want a revolution in media affairs, right here where we live, you can have one.
Are you ready to show the nationwide progressive movement that we are just as committed to taking our country back as people in Philly and New York and L.A.?
I’ve got you’re compelling new media narrative, neatly framed and ready to roll. I’ve got your target audience. I know where to bring the traffic. I cannot release the story until I’m sure a few people are willing to trust me enough to say what I ask them to say and say it to the people I ask them to say it to. If enough people are willing to help, it shouldn’t cost anyone much of time or energy.
This moment is ours. If you want to join with me and seize it, leave a me a comment here and let me know you’re in. If you’re a registered Left in Alabama member, read this proposal, take the poll, and leave a comment.
I’m giving until it hurts here. I’m begging for support.
Left in Alabama? Cotton Mouth? WriteChic Press?
Alert Readers click links. They also leave comments and thank outstanding bloggers like MEC when they spotlight the issues we care about.
Filed under: Civil Liberties, Community, Economy, Elections, Environment, Human Rights, Iraq, Katrina, Media, Mississippi, Politics, Pro-Choice, Progressive, Religion, Surveillance State, war
First up: Mitt Romney!!!
His electoral strategy is to wow the ladies with his sex appeal. (via Echidne).
This guy thinks Mitt is a bigot. I haven’t paid enough attention to Mitt to know that for sure. But I do know he’s used racist language in a speech. To be fair, he later apologized, but the apology made it clear that he’s so secluded from the real world he didn’t realize his statement was offensive.
It seems he has had some very questionable financial dealings.
A company Romney co-founded owns Clear Channel, which everyone knows is a part of the right-wing noise machine and is opposed to free speech.
He said he supported reproductive freedom for most of his political career, but now he’s anti-choice. Is he simply pandering to the right-wing base of the Republican party, or has he been lying to the people all along, as one of his advisers thinks? You’ll have to judge that for yourself.
He thinks French marriages only last for seven years, which isn’t true.
As if all this weren’t enough, he doesn’t think capturing Osama bin Laden is worth the time and money it would take to do it.
Mitt Romney: He thinks women base their votes on looks. He’s so out of touch with the public he doesn’t know “tar baby” is considered a racist expression. He plays the same games with money all the other Republicans play. He won’t give us his honest take on reproductive freedom. He has a stake in a company that doesn’t want you to have first amendment rights. AND, he’s soft on terror.
GO MITT!!!!
this is part 1 of an occasional series.
UPDATE: Hilarity.
1. The government cannot be trusted to decide who should have an abortion, and under what circumstances. If you disagree with this statement, you should pay more attention to the news.
2. Women cannot be truly free unless they are able to make their own reproductive decisions.
3. Abusive men will often try to get their partners pregnant to keep them from ending the abusive relationship. (I have personal experience of cases where men have gone so far as to tamper with their partners’ contraceptives).
4. If abortions are not safe and legal, many women will attempt to terminate pregnancies themselves, just like they did before safe abortions were legal, or else will be preyed upon by untrained opportunists who will take their money and hurt or kill them attempting to perform the procedure.
5. If abortions are not safe and legal, some doctors will perform them anyway, and charge outrageous prices. Women who can afford to pay outrageous prices, or who know doctors willing to do the procedures, will still be able to have abortions. But women who are not so fortunate will not. So, criminalizing abortion is the same as government discrimination against people who earn little income, and against people who don’t have the right connections.
6. Sometimes complications with pregnancy are life-threatening. If abortions are not safe and legal, pregnancy will be a death sentence for some women.
7. The moment abortion is criminalized, the religious right will attack contraception, on the rationale that easy access to contraception encourages “promiscuity.” Contraception has only been freely available to all women since the early 1970s. Some people are already in favor of banning contraception.
8. Nearly every anti-choice person I have ever met has been in favor of the death penalty and an aggressive military. The “culture of life” rhetoric is a sham, designed to produce arguments which are impossible to counter. It’s another version of that old trick question: “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
9. The abortion issue isn’t really about “protecting the unborn.” If we examine the other positions that usually go along with being anti-choice, and if we talk honestly about them, we discover that criminalizing abortion is really about making it harder for women to make their own choices about when to have sex, and with whom. Criminalizing abortion is really about reversing the progress toward gender equality we’ve made over the last century. It’s about returning women to the status of second-class citizens. The real reason the religious right embraces the anti-choice stance is because they believe women should be submissive to men. But, saying that straight up would be political poison, so they talk about a “culture of life.”
10. If abortion is criminalized, a lot of women will still seek abortions. The government will prosecute thousands of these women to show that they mean business about enforcing the law. The women prosecuted will come overwhelmingly from minority and lower income segments of the population.
(And I haven’t even mentioned incest or rape)
Fellow-Mississippians: Check out what a wonderful governor you have.
As usual, Digby has something intelligent to say about religious voters, social issues, and the shifting electoral demographic in the U.S. What he says about the abortion issue is very close what I was trying to say in my quixotic letter about the anti-choice language in the Mississippi Democratic Party’s platform. What he says about the Democratic base and swing voters near the end of that post goes very nicely with the point I was trying to make the other day about winning elections with people. A lot of smarter people than me have been saying this stuff for a while.
The most troubling thing to me about the unwillingness of congressional Democrats to risk a showdown with the administration on habeas corpus and the looming Blue Dog sell-out on Iraq (links in my previous post) is that we have so many representatives in congress who are clueless to the fact that there is no center any more. They are representing a section of the population which simply does not exist. They didn’t learn the valuable lesson they should have learned from the Gang of 14 fiasco that put Alito on the Supreme Court. Many of them are sitting on their hands and expecting anti-Bush sentiment to bring them some respectable gains.
The problem with that strategy is that it is going to result in modest, short-term victories. It’s going to leave the 2008 Republicans in a position to hobble the Democrats’ policy initiatives from day one, Clintonize the new president, and blame all the disastrous effects of the irresponsible leadership we’ve had since 2000 on the next administration.
The country cannot afford for the Democrats to play for modest, short-term gains. The Democrats need two or three landslides. That’s the only thing that will demoralize that hard-core, easy-to-mobilize GOP base. It’s the only thing that will keep the Republicans from continuing to whip their base into a frenzy with issues like gay marriage and running a close enough race to win by stealing swing states.
So, the questions I’m asking myself at this point are:
1. What will it take to energize that emerging Democratic majority to the point that they’ll turn out in massive numbers to vote?
2. Can it be done before the GOP radicals break the republic entirely?
The answer to the first question is, I think, to stop equivocating and take strong stands on reproductive freedom, restoration of our constitutional rights, and the unmitigated disaster in Iraq. I don’t think the Democrats are going to be in a position to engineer those landslides unless they get serious about the Constitution and the rule of law. Nothing mobilizes voters quite like emotional appeal. Very few things inspire strong emotion as easily as an underdog who takes a big chance and shows some real backbone. The Democrats need to be saying:
“Mr. President, you are not the king. Mr. President, neither you nor your minions are above the law. Mr. President, you and your party must be accountable for your dishonesty and disregard of the people of our great country.”
They need to be saying it every day from now until the election with one voice. It’s a message people will understand, and it’s a message that will win big. It’s a simple message, and a pretty easy case to make. But a winning strategy is not about making the case. It’s about repeating the message until it sticks, and about doing some things in the interim to prove that Democrats are willing to take the gloves off and be tough. They have to defeat the perception that the Democratic party of today is following the same old compromise-and-complain strategy. Whether or not that perception is fair is beside the point. It’s out there, and someone has to start working to change it.
The answer to the second question? I’m cautiously optimistic. Right now, I am not seeing enough Democrats showing the willingness to take the big risks and go for the big gains. Some are (Waxman and Reid come immediately to mind). But not enough of them are. I hope the rest will take a good look around and get their heads screwed on straight before the end of the summer.
Of course, I’ll be happy for any Democratic victory at all, but a close victory and a thin majority isn’t going to put us in a position to actually start fixing things. I wish I could find a way to get this through their thick skulls: Bipartisanship in this country is dead, and the Republicans killed it.
Update: See? I am really not the only one who thinks so. But, what do to do about it?
Thursday, May 3, 2007
An Open Letter on the Urgent Status of Reproductive Freedom in Mississippi
TO: Leadership of the Mississippi Democratic Party
CC: Executive Director, Communications Director, Coordinated Campaign Director
Dear Fellow Democrats:
Thank you all for the hard work you have been doing to move the state party in the right direction and to oppose Governor Barbour’s short-sighted policies. I am writing to ask you and the party to stand up for the right of women in Mississippi to make their own reproductive health decisions. As a lifelong supporter of Democratic candidates in this state, I feel as though I have a right to be heard on this issue by my fellow Democratic voters. I am asking you to read what I have to say, give it serious consideration, and pass it along to the state executive committee, the county chairs, College Democrats, and the party’s e-mail contacts across the state.
A strong statement of support for reproductive freedom in Mississippi right now would be good for the people of our great state. It would be also be good politics. The public is as dissatisfied with Republican policies as it has been in more than a decade. The GOP is overreaching, and people are suffering for it.
This is not the time to be concerned about alienating a small sliver of the so-called “center.” This is the time to define the center for years to come. This is the time to build a stronger, more committed Democratic base by bringing thousands of voters who feel that neither party is representing them into the democratic process. The first step toward doing this is sending a clear message on issues such as reproductive freedom. This will demonstrate to the people of Mississippi that Democrats are not afraid to stand up for our citizens when they are threatened by unwarranted government intrusion.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart is a maneuver in a concerted legal strategy to criminalize abortion in this country, not by overturning Roe v. Wade outright, but by establishing a series of new precedents which will allow that decision to be effectively regulated out of existence.
Carhart is a major step toward eviscerating Casey. Justice Ginsburg is correct to point out in her dissent that the majority bases its decision in part on erroneous Congressional findings. She has done us a great service by noting that the majority justifies its opinion by appealing to patently sexist assumptions about the impact of abortion on women’s mental health. The statute upheld by the Carhart ruling allows no exceptions for cases where a woman’s life is in danger.
Continued restriction of reproductive freedom will accomplish one thing. It will place a large number of women at risk of unnecessary physical harm. There is a case to be made that the ill-effects of continued restrictions will fall disproportionately on women who have no medical insurance, women living in rural areas, and women who earn very little income. These women constitute a sizeable percentage of the people that we are supposed be standing up for.
History and the American people will judge the Roberts court harshly for Carhart. I urge you to investigate this issue for yourself and to encourage other Mississippians to do the same. We have retreated too far on this issue already. I implore you to carefully consider a new approach.
The statement on choice in the state platform does little to distinguish us from our opponents. While I applaud the language on inclusion, I do not see a logical connection between a ‘belief in the sanctity of life’ and choice. I do not see what this statement does to move us forward or position us to win elections over the long term. The state party should not use the language of radical anti-choice activism in its platform. It should say instead:
Democrats believe women should be free to make personal decisions about their reproductive health care in consultation with qualified physicians, and without interference from activist judges.
By all means, let us make it clear to voters that we value life. But let us not use language perfected by the extreme wing of the Republican Party. Let us choose our own words. Let us separate our statement on choice from our statements on inclusion and on the value of life. While I understand this is a difficult issue, I urge you to consider standing in solidarity with Democrats across the country on reproductive freedom. It is time to define this issue in our own terms. It is not a “cultural” issue. It is not a “women’s” issue. It is a healthcare issue and an issue of personal freedom. If we do not take a stand on reproductive freedom soon, we abdicate our responsibility to ensure that government works for the well-being of our fellow-citizens.
I will be very pleased to receive your responses. I am especially interested in any input you can offer on how to strengthen the case I have laid out above. Please let me know whether or not the leadership is willing to take the small amount of time required to pass this letter along to the Democrats of Mississippi as I have requested. We have always been an independent lot. In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, I think everyone deserves a chance to educate themselves and make an informed decision about where we stand on this issue.
Thank you again for the many things you are already doing to protect Mississippians from ill-conceived GOP policies on other fronts. I look forward to the coming election season. The next two election cycles will present historic opportunities for Democrats across the country. I pray we will make the most of those opportunities.
In order to facilitate dialogue on this issue of pressing public importance, I have placed this letter on a publicly accessible Web page at http://geneo.wordpress.com. Please feel free to pass the link along.
Respectfully,
Gene’O Gordon
Congressional District 4
A few moments ago, I pasted the full text of the letter above into the bodies of 11 separate e-mails. I flagged those messages high priority. Then I mailed them to the eight officers of the Mississppi Democratic Party and to three staff members. I requested receipts. I have tried very hard to be honest and reasonable with my words.
Please take a few moments of your time to ask the leadership of the Mississippi Democratic Party to stand up for reproductive freedom.
Please tell them in your own words why you think it is urgent that the party pull together to resist the nationwide Republican assault on reproductive freedom right now.
Ask the leadership of the party to help me bring my letter to the attention of Democrats and disengaged citizens and persuade them to read it.
Direct links: Officers. Staff. County Chairs.
If you know any Mississippians who are concerned about this issue, please help them find my letter. I welcome comments, e-mails, copies of your letters, and any advice you can offer on how to effectively advocate for reproductive freedom in Mississippi.
If you are as alarmed as I am, and you want to stand up for reproductive freedom, I will do my very best to help you stand up. Communicate with me. I will answer you.
People who care about reproductive freedom have two choices. Either we persuade the Democratic Party to resist the assault, and then reward the party by registering and turning out to vote, or we lose. I don’t know how to be more clear. It is inconceivable that I am the only Mississippian who refuses to let this go on without at least asking the party to fight.
If you have been voting for a third party or not voting at all because you feel alienated from the Democratic Party but just can’t stomach the Republican Party’s graft, hypocrisy, perversion of truth, mockery of human dignity, and disregard of their oaths of office, please stay tuned. I value your opinion. I hope you will read what I have to say and share your thoughts with me. If you know anyone who fits that description, send them my way. I will do my best to help them see how the two parties are different.
I will have more to say over the weekend.
Do not be snookered into going on the defensive by statements such as “can’t we be more civil to one another?”
When someone on the other side voices that plea, they are being passive-aggressive and they are being disingenuous. They are not saying what they mean. So you have to read between the lines. What they are really saying is
“You are rude/making me uncomfortable/showing me that I can’t really defend what I am saying. So let’s just not talk about this.”
Here is your response. Say (civilly, of course):
I am not being rude. I am being assertive. I have no choice but to assert my opinion. Because the Supreme Court and the extreme anti-choicers have left me only two options. Either I talk about this, right now, or a lot of women are going to die.
If you know anyone who might actually be persuaded to abandon their anti-choice position by rational argument, this page is very useful for learning how to respond to the most common anti-choice arguments.
I can’t count the number of times I have heard this statement:
I believe abortions should be available, but I don’t think they should be used as birth control.
First of all, this line of reasoning is a canard foisted on the unsuspecting by the anti-choicers as a way of emotionally manipulating people into doing what they say.
More importantly, people are trying this very moment to make all abortions illegal, for any reason. They are not going to stop. We take a side and defend ourselves without any “buts,” or we lose.
So just say this:
I believe abortions should be available. I am pro-choice.
Make eye contact when you say it. Don’t stammer. Don’t equivocate. Don’t compromise. There is nothing shameful about being pro-choice, and there is nothing sinful about expressing your conviction in an assertive, no-nonsense way.
If you hear someone else equivocating, explain these four things to them, in a friendly manner:
1. The Supreme Court no longer sees a need to consider the viability of a fetus when determining the legality of abortion.
2. The Supreme Court sees no problem using biased, misleading data and rejecting honest evidence offered by experienced physicians in determining which procedures should be used and which ones shouldn’t.
3. A majority of our Supreme Court justices have concluded that abortions are psychologically damaging to women in all cases, even though there is no evidence to back up what they say. Add in that obviously, those (Republican-appointed) justices must believe all women to be weak-willed and weak-minded.
4. We take a side, without any “buts,” or we lose. And if we lose, a lot of women will be injured or will die seeking abortions or will be prosecuted by our out-of-control national government.
We need to find some people – and especially some young adults – who are pro-choice, and teach them to assert their view on the issue to friends and authority figures without adding any “buts.” We need to do it quick.
Justice Roberts and his posse are galloping down on us, whether we like it or not.
Anyone who is still advocating for more restrictions on the availability of abortions is anti-choice. They should not be allowed to get away with continuing to label themselves “pro-life.” Activists in other parts of the country have been calling the anti-choice movement what it is for quite some time.
Proof: The abortion ban upheld by Carhart makes no exceptions for cases where a woman’s life is in danger. The Carhart opinion does not acknowledge the previously well-established distinction between a viable fetus and a non-viable fetus.
So, the law places more value on a fetus which may not even be viable than on the life of an actual, living, breathing human being. A human being with dreams, ambitions, a family, and just as much right to a good life as anyone else.
Don’t let anyone who supports this law or additional restrictions get away with calling themselves “pro-life.” Call them out and tell them just how dishonest they are being when they use that term. Encourage them to come clean and admit that they are anti-choice. It might make them stop and think about what they are really saying for a minute. If they won’t respond to reason, try sarcasm.
We need to fight them here. We aren’t going to win many victories in the sexist Supreme Court for a while. Let’s get a huge megaphone and advocate women’s reproductive rights in Mississippi.
Let’s rip away the veil and reveal the so-called “Right to Life” movement for what it is: a misbegotten relic of our vicious past. A pack ideologues who are happy to tell pregnant women that they cannot have a safe, legal medical procedure, but who couldn’t care less whether your 18-month-old baby has health insurance. That’s exactly what they are.
Don’t buy the culture of life rhetoric they’ve been selling all these years. If they were serious about promoting a “culture of life,” they would be saying something about the alarming infant mortality rate in this state.
Riggsveda got me thinking about this with this post at the American Street.
This nugget is especially on the mark:
Clean up your own houses, you fools and jesters of the right-wing, before you start telling the rest of us how to live. Your priorities are showing.
Riggs points to this article byEric Alter which informs us:
Even China’s infant mortality rate is less than half of that of the Southeast United States, as well as that of our national capital.
Before you jump to the conclusion that Riggsveda is being too hard on our poor, maligned Southern politicians and so-called “Right-to-Lifers,” take a look at this information that Frontline was nice enough to provide us in 2005.
The important bit:
The pro-life movement has dramatically changed the landscape of abortion politics. In Mississippi alone, they helped pass 10 laws regulating abortion. And in the last two years, the state has passed legislation on fetal homicide prosecution, new clinic regulations, requirements to report abortion complications, rights of conscience, and a law that would prohibit the state’s last abortion clinic from offering abortions beyond the first trimester.
Americans United for Life (AUL), the nation’s oldest national pro-life organization, considers Mississippi an example for the nation . . . Our goal is to see that other states pass the type of legislation that Mississippi has passed over the past decade, and we see a lot of legislative activity.”(emphasis added)
If you are an anti-choicer who thinks that abortion is just too icky to think very much about and can’t wrap your mind around the idea that criminalizing abortion equals mandating forced pregnancy (and if you’re still with me at this point), all this probably makes you proud.
But, if you believe our government is allowing a minority of the country to prevent women from making intelligent, independent health care decisions, and doing it in an entirely irrational way, I hope you will stick around and help me figure out what to do about it.
The so-called ‘Right-to-Life” movement really would be more aptly named the Anti-Choice, Forced Pregnancy movement. They are not going to stop until abortion is illegal in this country. They don’t care whether Roe v. Wade is overturned or not. What they want is to criminalize all abortions, for any reason. If you don’t believe me, go and read this.
Don’t count on being able to go to Louisiana or Florida to get an abortion if the anti-choice movement continues to have its way.
As the Frontline piece makes clear, Mississippi has been a a pilot program for a national political strategy aimed depriving every woman in this country of the right to make intelligent, independent decisions about their health.
If you really don’t know where your leaders stand on the issue, you can get some info from NARAL here.
Note that, according to NARAL, even your state Democratic party is anti-choice. Maybe if we could convince the party to adopt a more freedom-friendly attitude, we might start winning again.
Now it’s time to see if we can find a little hope. It may surprise you to know that an organization named Pro-Choice Mississippi actually exists. And they have an up-to-date website! I just discovered it. If you scroll down to the article about Gov. Barbour signing the latest anti-choice bill, you’ll notice that it was denounced by Planned Parenthood of Alabama. I thought that was curious, so I dug around on the internets for a couple of minutes, and found this, which will give you a partial explanation for why the Alabama chapter of Planned Parenthood feels obliged to work in Mississippi.
Here’s something for you to think about between now and the next post. The Anti-choice Con isn’t the only pilot program the reactionary wing of the GOP is running in the Magnolia State. Mississippi is the Beta version of their 21st Century Transcontinental Dystopia.
The big money and the red state theocrats think they own this place. They think they own you and me. The only way to put the brakes on their 50-year plan for a stupider, more bankrupt America is to fight them where they live. And they live right here in the Deep South. Things won’t change until some people who live here decide it’s time to make the GOP spend some real money to steal our elections.
More Thursday. In the meantime:
1. See what a real economist has to say about the state of things for the people of Mississippi.
2. Abortion does not cause breast cancer
3. Demographic info on reproductive health services in the state.
4. Progressives!! In Mississippi!!
5. Lottalinks to blogs on the recent Supreme Court decision here.
5/01 UPDATE: After reflecting on my comment about NARAL and the state party, I think a note is in order. I don’t think I am going to take NARAL’s word for that. So, I will be drafting a letter to Chairman Dowdy in the next day or so asking him to clarify the state party’s position.
I am in fact a Democrat, but I am a Democrat who is tired of losing and tired of seeing candidates get elected as Democrats and switching parties immediately thereafter. I must also give credit where credit is due here: both my local party and the state party seem to be taking candidate certification very seriously. There have been two certification controversies here in recent weeks surrounding candidates with ambiguous party affiliations. I am happy to give the state party a 
for finally deciding that only Democrats should run on the Democratic ticket.
MORE UPDATE:
The Platform of the Mississippi Democratic Party:
CHOICE The Mississippi Democratic Party is the party of inclusion and we believe in the sanctity of life.
That answers that, I suppose. Guess I’ll just have to write a different sort of letter hehe.
And, they blog (well, sort of).
