How We Are Fighting Back

WomenCount Pac placed a full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times emphasizing that Hillary Clinton is still very much alive in this race. I am proud to report that I was of the contributors for this ad. There is a spontaneous movement to confront the sexism behind the assumption that Obama will be the nominee. Groups across the country are creating websites and blogs and raising money to purchase ads. WomenCount is just one of many. I am working with a PAC in Newton, MA, CounttheVotes, to place ads in regional papers. Women are mobilizing to lend support to Hillary Clinton, whose campaign is becoming a feminist issue. I have pasted below a statement about the ad from WomenCount Pac and a letter by Dr. Lynette Long about the politics of race and gender. I could paste much more information, as I am receiving several notices a day about new efforts to fight back!

Team Hillary - please read the email below and if possible please send acontribution by following the directions below. Kay Khan _____ From: Susie Buell [mailto:susie@buellofficesf.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 2:38 PMTo: Belinda V. Munoz; Baribeau, ElizabethSubject: Today's New York Times, page 9 Dear WomenCount PAC Supporters: Have you seen the ad on page 9 in today's New York Times? It's been another HUGE day for WomenCount PAC and the work we're doing forHillary and her supporters around the country. Our "Not So Fast" ad ran thismorning in the New York Times, and once again the response has beenenormous. Already today the ad has been featured on The Today Show, GoodMorning America, and CNN. We have interviews lined up with ABC, FOX, andothers. It's all over the web and print press and the calls are still comingin. All of which ONCE AGAIN underscores the passion, the strength, and the sheerforce of the voices of women all around the country. Now, WE MUST NOT REST.We must continue to spread our message that every vote must be cast, andevery vote must be counted before this race is over. In addition to the NewYork Times, our ads have also run in USA Today and local papers throughoutKentucky and Oregon.We are currently working on new ads to run at the end of the week. We willkeep you updated about the content and placement of those ads. For now, weneed your support to keep our message going by supporting the costs of theseads. WILL YOU HELP US? PLEASE DIG DEEP AND CONTRIBUTE TO WOMENCOUNT PAC sowe can shout out to the world that our voices count and must be heard. Wehave attached a contribution form. Just print it out and fax it back withyour credit card information. It's so easy. You just need to do it! To contribute using a credit card, please fill out the attached form withyour signature and fax it back to: (415) 732-7701To contribute with a check: please make it payable to WomenCount PAC andsend it to:WomenCount PAC c/o: Megan AsmusThe Sutton Law Firm, PC 150 Post Street, Suite 405 , San Francisco, CA 94108t: (415) 248-7825; f: belindavm@buellofficesf.com Here's some more exciting news. Our web site is up!!!! Check outwww.womencountpac.com <http://www.womencountpac.com/> . Thank you for your continuing support for this very important effort.Last but not least, below is a letter by Dr. Long that we'd like to sharewith you. Read it if you want to be moved into action! (NOTE: The lastparagraph of this letter has been omitted.) From: Dr. Lynette LongFirst I want to thank each and every one of you for writing to me. I wantto apologize for sending a group email, but I got hundreds of letters. Iwant you to know you are not alone. There are millions of women who feel asyou do, that the Democratic National Primary Campaign uncovered thepervasive and insidious sexism that runs rampant through our country. ThatHillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate, and that she is beingcheated out of the nomination by the good old boys network, the DNC and theMainstream Media. You are angry. You are in a rage. I am too. Underneath that rage is sadness, sadness that we are second class citizensin a country where we are the majority. What's especially disquieting to meis that many young women are blind to the sexist nature of the world inwhich we live. It's our job, each and every one of us, to educate them.Economically, women earn seventy-seven cents on the dollar for the same workcompared to men. Women are in significantly fewer managerial positions, areless likely to own a business and more likely to live in poverty.Politically, women comprise fifty-two percent of the population and an evenen larger share of the voting public yet only sixteen of the current onehundred Untied States Senators are women. Similarly, only sixteen percentof the current members of the House of Representatives are women. There isonly one female Supreme Court Justice on a nine member court and mostremarkably America has never had a female president or presidential nominee.Women did not get the right to vote in the United States until 1920. Theglass ceiling is real on both economical and political fronts. Men wantparity for their daughters and granddaughters but not for the women sittingbeside them. They are not going to give us the power that should be ours,we have to take it. Are we ready? Women have no sense of their own power. White women are the largestrace/gender voting block in the country. White men compose the secondlargest voting block, black women the third largest block, and black men arethe smallest race/gender block. White and black women together womencomprise more than fifty percent of the electorate and if were fullycommitted to a single candidate, we could determine the outcome of anyoffice in the country. It is our turn. Are we ready? I am sad that black women do not support Hillary in greater numbers. Manymembers of the black community wrote to me and said they were afraid tostand up for Hillary. They explained how black radio is pressuring it'slisteners to vote for Barack Obama. White men and women alike wrote me andtold me that they were called racist for supporting Hillary Clinton. I wantto remind each and everyone of you that, in 1969, Shirley Chisholm the firstblack woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives said, "Of my twohandicaps, being female put more obstacles in my path than being black."The impact of the "handicaps" of race and gender has not changed in the last40 years. As women we need to come together, and take the power that couldbe ours. Racism and sexism are both terrible barriers, but one is notworse than the other. On average, a black man with a college degree earnsmore than a white woman with the same degree, and a black woman earns lessthan both. Black male physicians earn more than white women physicians, andblack male professors earn more than white female professors. Yet ninetypercent of black women voted for Barack Obama indifferent to the impact ofgender on their struggle or how electing a female president might help them. I want to change the world. I think we can. I think by electing femaleleaders we can create a gentler America. We need to be counted. We needto stand up and let the DNC know we will not get in line. As one woman whowrote me so eloquently put it, the DNC thinks we will vote for Obama becauselike abused women we have nowhere else to go. To be removed from this list, please send an e-mail with "remove" in thesubject line.The Office of Susie Tompkins Buell & Mark BuellP.O. Box 29921San Francisco, CA 94129-9921t: 415.248.7820 f: 415.441.6381

The Sexism No One is Reporting

I have been meaning to publish a post about my encounters with sexism as a volunteer for Hillary Clinton. I have been involved in visibility actions throughout New England and in Pennsylvania. "Visibility" refers to standing at busy intersections with Hillary signs waving at passing cars. I've spent days doing this, encountering thousands of people driving by busy intersections in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. No matter where I've been, whether in very progressive Newton, MA, or in Pennsylvania, white men have screamed the most vile invectives at me about Hillary. The most humorous rant, which I've already reported in my blog about campaigning in Bristol, PA, is worth repeating here: "Gold-digging, carpet bagging, bitch." Occasionally, comments have been extremely mean-spirited and misogynistic, and a few comments have combined sex and violence, with vivid references to rape. The most common and far more frequent negative comments refer to Clinton as a "bitch," a word I must have heard a thousand times. A couple of times men have tried to spit at me from their cars. Why someone would try to spit at me from the Mass Pike on a windy, wintry day is beyond me. Some reactions to Hillary signs have been extremely aggressive and threatening.

I have also encountered aggressive behavior by Obama volunteers, especially at Maine caucus sites, where I witnessed voter intimidation. (I have already mentioned that there is a clear gender gap among volunteers; active Hillary supporters on the ground are overwhelmingly female, but Obama volunteers tend to be white and male.) One Obama campaign worker, a young, white man (I believe he worked for the campaign because he was giving instructions to Obama supporters) in Maine, called us and the women entering the caucus at Lewiston High School "girls." The same volunteer pulled male Bates College students aside to tell them to "pressure" the "girls." A Maine State Representative, at the site to greet participants and to get his re-election petitioned signed, took this young man aside and told him to stop acting so badly. The elderly male state rep. told the young man that he shouldn't refer to women as girls.

Obama volunteers organized counterdemonstations at Clinton events in Philadelphia in an effort to intimidate people standing in line to enter rally sites. Obama supporters also picketed the entrance to the hotel where Clinton's victory party was held in downtown Philadelphia. It would have never have occurred to us to go to an Obama rally with the purpose of shouting down his supporters. Of course, the behavior of male volunteers in Obama's campaign hasn't been covered by the media. They have taken our signs down on many occasions--I experienced this first-hand in Maine and PA and have heard reports from reliable sources about voter and volunteer intimidation in Texas, Iowa, and Indiana. Should the Obama campaign be held accountable for this? YES! The Clinton campaign organizes frequent training sessions with canvassers and visibility volunteers. We know that we are representing the candidate and have been instructed by the campaign staff to stay positive at all times.

Below is a nice overview from one of the few journalists seriously reporting on the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton by the media.



By Marie CoccoThursday, May 15, 2008; A15As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one , told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan , the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film , Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle , also on MSNBC).But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."Most of all, I will not miss the silence.I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen.Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven't publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women's basketball team.Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.Marie Cocco is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com .Post a CommentView all comments that have been posted about this article.

Not So Fast

The PAC WomenCount has purchased ad space in USA Today, Thursday, May 15, and in this Sunday's New York Times as well as two newspapers in Oregon to set the record straight. The ad, "Not So Fast," emphasizes that Clinton is still very much in this race.

Here are the numbers from the NY Times website politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/votes/index.html

The total primary votes are: Clinton, 17,492,003; Obama, 17,181, 783. Clinton leads in the popular vote in primary states by 310,220. Only 521,630 people voted in all caucus states combined! Obama's caucus lead is 248,317. If you add the caucus and primary votes, Clinton leads by 61,903. This number includes the popular vote in Florida, votes that were registered by the Secretary of State and cannot be voided. There you have it.

Why, then, has the media pronounced that the race is over? Why have several male leaders of the Democratic party asked Clinton to drop out? This is an outrage. Gee, no one demanded that Edward Kennedy drop out against Jimmy Carter even though he had only 795 pledged delegates.

Women are organizing to address the blatant sexism at work here. A group from Massachusetts, Massachusetts Women Democratic Leaders, met with Senators Kennedy and Kerry and with Howard Dean. They asked Dean to show some leadership and address the misogynistic attacks on one of the leading Democratic candidates. I went to a meeting on Monday to discuss where we go from here and heard several women who attended the meeting with Dean talk about his unwillingess to do anything to address the concerns of women in the Democratic party. The DNC is going to pay a price for allowing the punditry to hand the nomination to Obama. Dean did not win any friends when he stated that he finally understood women's concerns when two of his staff burst into tears. I guess we have to cry to get attention.

According to one person at the meeting, women have been tearing up their voter registration cards and sending them to the DNC. I might do the same. This isn't over.

Run, Girl, Run!

Once again, Hillary Clinton had to explain why she is not dropping out of the race. During a press conference this afternoon in West Virginia she provided several reasons for not conceding the nomination at this point. As always, she marshaled the evidence to support her point of view, explaining to reporters that the dramatic increase in voter registration, a result of this exciting race, was good for the Democratic party. She also mentioned that her supporters have asked her to stay in the race, and that they "have an investment" in her candidacy. Of course, this comment can be characterized as the usual campaign spin. But there is some truth in her remarks. I sent Hillary an email this morning urging her to remain in the race. You bet I have an investment in her campaign! She has done extremely well despite biased media coverage and vicious attacks from the media and Obama surrogates, and while being out spent. Obama hired people to canvass in Ohio and Pennsylvania (the New York Times reported on this in Ohio). On the other hand, Hillary has inspired women to travel from state to state to campaign. Why should she step down?Octogenarian George McGovern decided to pile on, switching his endorsement from Hillary to Barack Obama, with a plea for her to drop out. I don't think a male candidate would be asked to leave the race this way. Really, would Bill Richardson or George McGovern ask John Edwards to drop out of a close race? I don't think so. Hillary Clinton has run a flawed but marvelous campaign and deserves more respect and recognition from the men in the Democratic party. From the beginning Hillary was treated as a less than legitimate candidate. See Chris Mathews. She has had to prove herself over and over again.Run, Girl, Run!

Data on Voter Registration

The following study from the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota confirms my impressions on the campaign trail.

The Big Mobilization: Increased Voter Registration in 2008

The 2008 contests for the Republican and Democratic Party presidential nominations have been a boon for American democracy. The intense competition for nomination combined with investments in mobilizing voters for primaries and caucuses has fuelled an historic surge in voter registration compared to its level during the 2004 nomination contests. A study of official voter registration records by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute reveals the following:
Record voter registration was produced in 43 out of the 44 states for which there are official data during comparable periods in 2004 and 2008.
North Carolina registration in April 2008 is 14 percent higher than in the comparable period in 2004 and Indiana is up 20 percent. The unusually wide-open competition for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations has fuelled this remarkable jump in voter participation.
About a quarter of the new voter registration records were set in purple states, perhaps altering the electoral landscape in these states since 2004.
Although Democrats fear that the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may weaken their Party’s chances in November by alienating some voters, it may also have helped by increasing voter registration. Seventeen of the 43 states set records during primaries or caucuses that were held after Super Tuesday when the Republican contest largely came to an end. These voters may be a new and important pool of voters for Democratic candidates to recruit in November, offsetting perhaps voters that they lose because of lingering ill will. The study was conducted by Lawrence R. Jacobs (Director, Center for the Study of Politics and Governance) and by Melanie Burns (Research Analyst). A full copy of the study can be found at: http://www.politicsandgovernance.org/reports/2008/The_Big_Mobilization.pdf Contact: Professor Lawrence Jacobs (612) 625-3384