Commentary

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Drill, Drill, Drill

Written by Eva Ensler, Playwright (Vagina Monologues)

September 5, 2008

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story -- connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is20here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everythingAmerica has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move to wards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?

Phil English's Strange Semantics

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Here is an excellent blog entry by a DWMC member.

Goodbye To All That #2

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by Robin Morgan
(submitted by Kathleen Paul)
February 2, 2008

Goodbye To All That  was my (in)famous 1970 essay breaking free from a politics of accommodation especially affecting women (for an online version, see this).

During my decades in civil-rights, anti-war, and contemporary women's movements, I've avoided writing another specific "Goodbye . . ." But not since the suffrage struggle have two communities---joint conscience-keepers of this country---been so set in competition, as the contest between Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) and Barack Obama (BO) unfurls. So.

Goodbye to the double standard . . .
---Hillary is too ballsy but too womanly, a Snow Maiden who's emotional, and so much a politician as to be unfit for politics.
---She's "ambitious" but he shows "fire in the belly." (Ever had labor pains?)
---When a sexist idiot screamed "Iron my shirt!" at HRC, it was considered amusing; if a racist idiot shouted "Shine my shoes!" at BO, it would've inspired hours of airtime and pages of newsprint analyzing our national dishonor.
---Young political Kennedys ---Kathleen, Kerry, and Bobby Jr. ---all endorsed Hillary. Senator Ted, age 76, endorsed Obama. If the situation were reversed, pundits would snort "See? Ted and establishment types back her, but the forward-looking generation backs him." (Personally, I'm unimpressed with Caroline's longing for the Return of the Fathers. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans have short memories. Me, I still recall Marilyn Monroe's suicide, and a dead girl named Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick.)

Goodbye to the toxic viciousness . . .
Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary's "thick ankles." Nixon-trickster Roger Stone's new Hillary-hating 527 group, "Citizens United Not Timid" (check the capital letters). John McCain answering "How do we beat the bitch?" with "Excellent question!" Would he have dared reply similarly to "How do we beat the black bastard?" For shame.

Goodbye to the HRC nutcracker with metal spikes between splayed thighs. If it was a tap-dancing blackface doll, we would be righteously outraged ---and they would not be selling it in airports. Shame.

Goodbye to the most intimately violent T-shirts in election history, including one with the murderous slogan "If Only Hillary had married O.J. Instead!" Shame.

Goodbye to Comedy Central's "Southpark" featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC's vagina. I refuse to wrench my brain down into the gutter far enough to find a race-based comparison. For shame.

Goodbye to the sick, malicious idea that this is funny. This is not "Clinton hating," not "Hillary hating." This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage ---as citizens, voters, Americans?

Goodbye to the news-coverage target-practice . . .
The women's movement and Media Matters wrung an apology from MSNBC's Chris Matthews for relentless misogynistic comments (www.womensmediacenter.com). But what about NBC's Tim Russert's continual sexist asides and his all-white-male panels pontificating on race and gender? Or CNN's Tony Harris chuckling at "the chromosome thing" while interviewing a woman from The White House Project? And that's not even mentioning Fox News.

Goodbye to pretending the black community is entirely male and all women are white . . .
Surprise! Women exist in all opinions, pigmentations, ethnicities, abilities, sexual preferences, and ages ---not only African American and European American but Latina and Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Arab American and ---hey, every group, because a group wouldn't exist if we hadn't given birth to it. A few non-racist countries may exist ---but sexism is everywhere. No matter how many ways a woman breaks free from other discriminations, she remains a female human being in a world still so patriarchal that it's the "norm."

So why should all women not be as justly proud of our womanhood and the centuries, even millennia, of struggle that got us this far, as black Americans, women and men, are justly proud of their struggles?

Goodbye to a campaign where he has to pass as white (which whites ---especially wealthy ones ---adore), while she has to pass as male (which both men and women demanded of her, and then found unforgivable). If she were black or he were female we wouldn't be having such problems, and I for one would be in heaven. But at present such a candidate wouldn't stand a chance ---even if she shared Condi Rice's Bush-defending politics.

I was celebrating the pivotal power at last focused on African American women deciding on which of two candidates to bestow their vote ---until a number of Hillary-supporting black feminists told me they're being called "race traitors."

So goodbye to conversations about this nation's deepest scar ---slavery ---which fail to acknowledge that labor- and sexual-slavery exist today in the U.S. and elsewhere on this planet, and the majority of those enslaved are women.

Women have endured sex/race/ethnic/religious hatred, rape and battery, invasion of spirit and flesh, forced pregnancy; being the majority of the poor, the illiterate, the disabled, of refugees, caregivers, the HIV/AIDS afflicted, the powerless. We have survived invisibility, ridicule, religious fundamentalisms, polygamy, teargas, forced feedings, jails, asylums, sati, purdah, female genital mutilation, witch burnings, stonings, and attempted gynocides. We have tried reason, persuasion, reassurances, and being extra-qualified, only to learn it never was about qualifications after all. We know that at this historical moment women experience the world differently from men ---though not all the same as one another ---and can govern differently, from Elizabeth Tudor to Michele Bachelet and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

We remember when Shirley Chisholm and Patricia Schroeder ran for this high office and barely got past the gate ---they showed too much passion, raised too little cash, were joke fodder. Goodbye to all that. (And goodbye to some feminists so famished for a female president they were even willing to abandon women's rights in backing Elizabeth Dole.)

Goodbye, goodbye to . . .
---blaming anything Bill Clinton does on Hillary (even including his womanizing like the Kennedy guys ---though unlike them, he got reported on). Let's get real. If he hadn't campaigned strongly for her everyone would cluck over what that meant. Enough of Bill and Teddy Kennedy locking their alpha male horns while Hillary pays for it.
---an era when parts of the populace feel so disaffected by politics that a comparative lack of knowledge, experience, and skill is actually seen as attractive, when celebrity-culture mania now infects our elections so that it's "cooler" to glow with marquee charisma than to understand the vast global complexities of power on a nuclear, wounded planet.
---the notion that it's fun to elect a handsome, cocky president who feels he can learn on the job, goodbye to George W. Bush and the destruction brought by his inexperience, ignorance, and arrogance.

Goodbye to the accusation that HRC acts "entitled" when she's worked intensely at everything she's done ---including being a nose-to-the-grindstone, first-rate senator from my state.

Goodbye to her being exploited as a Rorschach test by women who reduce her to a blank screen on which they project their own fears, failures, fantasies.

Goodbye to the phrase "polarizing figure" to describe someone who embodies the transitions women have made in the last century and are poised to make in this one. It was the women's movement that quipped, "We are becoming the men we wanted to marry." She heard us, and she has.

Goodbye to some women letting history pass by while wringing their hands, because Hillary isn't as "likeable" as they've been warned they must be, or because she didn't leave him, couldn't "control" him, kept her family together and raised a smart, sane daughter. (Think of the blame if Chelsea had ever acted in the alcoholic, neurotic manner of the Bush twins!) Goodbye to some women pouting because she didn't bake cookies or she did, sniping because she learned the rules and then bent or broke them. Grow the hell up. She is not running for Ms.-perfect-pure-queen-icon of the feminist movement. She's running to be president of the United States.

Goodbye to the shocking American ignorance of our own and other countries' history. Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir rose through party ranks and war, positioning themselves as proto-male leaders. Almost all other female heads of government so far have been related to men of power ---granddaughters, daughters, sisters, wives, widows: Gandhi, Bandaranike, Bhutto, Aquino, Chamorro, Wazed, Macapagal-Arroyo, Johnson Sirleaf, Bachelet, Kirchner, and more. Even in our "land of opportunity," it's mostly the first pathway "in" permitted to women: Representatives Doris Matsui and Mary Bono and Sala Burton; Senator Jean Carnahan . . . far too many to list here.

Goodbye to a misrepresented generational divide . . .
Goodbye to the so-called spontaneous "Obama Girl" flaunting her bikini-clad ass online ---then confessing Oh yeah it wasn't her idea after all, some guys got her to do it and dictated the clothes, which she said "made me feel like a dork."

Goodbye to some young women eager to win male approval by showing they're not feminists (at least not the kind who actually threaten thestatus quo), who can't identify with a woman candidate because she is unafraid of eeueweeeu yucky power, who fear their boyfriends might look at them funny if they say something good about her. Goodbye to women of any age again feeling unworthy, sulking "what if she's not electable?" or "maybe it's post-feminism and whoooosh we're already free." Let a statement by the magnificent Harriet Tubman stand as reply. When asked how she managed to save hundreds of enslaved African Americans via the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, she replied bitterly, "I could have saved thousands ---if only I'd been able to convince them they were slaves."

I'd rather say a joyful Hello to all the glorious young women who do identifywith Hillary, and all the brave, smart men ---of all ethnicities and any age ---who get that it's in their self-interest, too. She's better qualified. (D'uh.) She's a high-profile candidate with an enormous grasp of foreign- and domestic-policy nuance, dedication to detail, ability to absorb staggering insult and personal pain while retaining dignity, resolve, even humor, and keep on keeping on. (Also, yes, dammit, let's hear it for her connections and funding and party-building background, too. Obama was awfully glad about those when she raised dough and campaigned for him to get to the Senate in the first place.)

I'd rather look forward to what a good president he might make in eight years, when his vision and spirit are seasoned by practical know-how ---and he'll be all of 54. Meanwhile, goodbye to turning him into a shining knight when actually he's an astute, smooth pol with speechwriters who've worked with the Kennedys' own speechwriter-courtier Ted Sorenson. If it's only about ringing rhetoric, let speechwriters run. But isn't it about getting the policies we want enacted?

And goodbye to the ageism . . .
How dare anyone unilaterally decide when to turn the page on history, papering over real inequities and suffering constituencies in the promise of a feel-good campaign? How dare anyone claim to unify while dividing, or think that to rouse U.S. youth from torpor it's useful to triage the single largest demographic in this country's history: the boomer generation ---the majority of which is female?

Old woman are the one group that doesn't grow more conservative with age ---and we are the generation of radicals who said "Well-behaved women seldom make history." Goodbye to going gently into any goodnight any man prescribes for us. We are the women who changed the reality of the United States. And though we never went away, brace yourselves: we're back!

We are the women who brought this country equal credit, better pay, affirmative action, the concept of a family-focused workplace; the women who established rape-crisis centers and battery shelters, marital-rape and date-rape laws; the women who defended lesbian custody rights, who fought for prison reform, founded the peace and environmental movements; who insisted that medical research include female anatomy; who inspired men to become more nurturing parents; who created women's studies and Title IX so we all could cheer the WNBA stars and Mia Hamm. We are the women who reclaimed sexuality from violent pornography, who put childcare on the national agenda, who transformed demographics, artistic expression, language itself. We are the women who forged a worldwide movement. We are the proud successors of women who, though it took more than 50 years, won us the vote.

We are the women who now comprise the majority of U.S. voters.

Hillary said she found her own voice in New Hampshire. There's not a woman alive who, if she's honest, doesn't recognize what she means. Then HRC got drowned out by campaign experts, Bill, and media's obsession with everything Bill.

So listen to her voice:

"For too long, the history of women has been a history of silence. Even today, there are those who are trying to silence our words.

"It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls. It is a violation of human rights when woman and girls are sold into the slavery of prostitution. It is a violation of human rights when women are doused with gasoline, set on fire and burned to death because their marriage dowries are deemed too small. It is a violation of human rights when individual women are raped in their own communities and when thousands of women are subjected to rape as a tactic or prize of war. It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide along women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes. It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the right to plan their own families, and that includes being forced to have abortions or being sterilized against their will.

"Women's rights are human rights. Among those rights are the right to speak freely ---and the right to be heard."

That was Hillary Rodham Clinton defying the U.S. State Department and the Chinese Government at the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing (look here for the full, stunning speech).

And this voice, age 21, in "Commencement Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of Wellesley College Government Association, Class of 1969."

"We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands. . . . searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living. . . . for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. . . . Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it."

She ended with the commitment "to practice, with all the skill of our being: the art of making possible."

And for decades, she's been learning how.

So goodbye to Hillary's second-guessing herself. The real question is deeper than her re-finding her voice. Can we women find ours? Can we do this for ourselves?

"Our President, Ourselves!"

Time is short and the contest tightening. We need to rise in furious energy ---as we did when Anita Hill was so vilely treated in the U.S. Senate, as we did when Rosie Jiminez was butchered by an illegal abortion, as we did and do for women globally who are condemned for trying to break through. We need to win, this time. Goodbye to supporting HRC tepidly, with ambivalent caveats and apologetic smiles. Time to volunteer, make phone calls, send emails, donate money, argue, rally, march, shout, vote.

Me? I support Hillary Rodham because she's the best qualified of all candidates running in both parties. I support her because her progressive politics are as strong as her proven ability to withstand what will be a massive right-wing assault in the general election. I support her because she knows how to get us out of Iraq. I support her because she's refreshingly thoughtful, and I'm bloodied from eight years of a jolly "uniter" with ejaculatory politics. I needn't agree with her on every point. I agree with the 97 percent of her positions that are identical with Obama's ---and the few where hers are both more practical and to the left of his (like health care). I support her because she's already smashed the first-lady stereotype and made history as a fine senator, because I believe she will continue to make history not only as the first US woman president, but as a great US president.

As for the "woman thing"?

Me, I'm voting for Hillary not because she's a woman --- but because I am.

An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political analyst, journalist, editor, and co-founder of the Women's Media Center, Robin Morgan has published 21 books, including six of poetry, four of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful, Sisterhood Is Global, and Sisterhood Is Forever.
Her work has been translated into 13 languages. A founder of contemporary U.S. feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women's movement for 25 years. Recent books include A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999; Saturday's Child: A Memoir; her best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, updated and reissued in 2001; and her novel, The Burning Time. Her nonfiction work, Fighting Words: A Took Kit for Combating the Religious Right, came out in September 2006.

Comments on Goodbye To All That #2

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by Carole Starz
February 10, 2008

I understand the source of Ms. Morgan’s anger.  Being a woman of ‘a certain age’, I lived through and remember the 1960’s-1970’s feminist movement.  It was not the first and sadly will not be the last attempt to achieve equal treatment at least by legislation.  I am exasperated when I hear younger women dismiss the efforts that afforded them privileges they take for granted.  We all have had issues to deal with, just because we are female. 

Yes, Hillary Clinton is loved and hated by many.  Yes, she has had to endure criticism that many male candidates have escaped.  Yes, she is a favorite target of the far right.  She has been a good senator and has a fine record on most issues.  She is qualified to be the next president.  

What I do not understand is the direction of Ms. Morgan’s anger. Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy or even Bill Clinton is not the enemy.  The enemy protects life until the day of birth, and then ignores the poverty and violence surrounding the lives that are ‘saved’.  There are more ways than one to leave a child behind.  The enemy would rather issue a death sentence to spinal cord injury patients and victims of degenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease (my sister), than allow research on stem cells discarded as medical waste.  The enemy has killed and maimed thousands of our young soldiers both male and female (not to mention many, many innocent civilians) for the control of Iraqi oil wells.  The enemy condones torture, domestic spying and has stacked the courts in order to bypass the Constitution.  The enemy ruined our economy, sent jobs overseas and made our country a target of hatred. 

Let’s play a game of word association….Enron, Exxon, Halliburton, global warming, 9/11, Harriet Miers, Terri Schiavo, Scooter Libbey, Walter Reed, Alberto Gonzales, swiftboat, made in China, waterboard, Rove,  Rumsfeld…..Good job Brownie!   Need I go on? 

I am an older, educated white woman who refuses to be reduced to a demographic.  Do not give me a label or pretend to know what I think.  I find it insulting that someone would assume that I am shallow enough to cast my vote based on gender, race or a $300 haircut.  I am ashamed of and sorry
for those who do.  

The Democrat party is fortunate to have excellent candidates.  Back the one you like in April, but beware and be aware of anything or anyone who might divide us before November. We do not need venomous rhetoric that energizes some while antagonizing others.  It serves no good purpose. We must join together and back our candidate whomever he or she may be.  It is our election to win…or lose.

Amish Being Unfairly Targeted

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Friends,

Some of our neighbors here in Western Pennsylvania are under a very aggressive and unfair attack by the Public Utility Commission (the PUC). The PUC has begun to vigorously enforce a 1937 law governing "paratransit"drivers--individuals who transport people for compensation (PUC press release, July 12, 2005). Unfortunately, it appears that they are specifically targeting vehicles that transport the Amish ("Amish Taxis"). There is a very strong element of profiling and harassment involved, as vehicles carrying Amish have been pulled over and the drivers threatened with large fines. The law as currently written requires all individuals who transport the Amish for any compensation (even "a piece of pie," according to one PUC spokesperson) are required to obtain a paratransit certificate and commercial vehicle insurance--the cost of which can exceed $6,000/year (Pgh. Post Gazette, Dec. 30, 2007). This is an undue hardship for many people who transport the Amish, often neighbors or retired folks on a very part-time basis. In fact, many of these drivers are now afraid to transport their Amish neighbors at all, fearing fines and retaliation by the PUC. As a result, the Amish are finding it increasingly difficult to find rides to medical appointments, shopping centers and other locations a distance from their homes. They're very concerned and feel justifiably upset that their ability to peacefully co-exist in this society is being unnecessarily threatened.

Rep. Mark Longietti (D-Mercer) has gotten involved with this issue and is working with legislators on both sides of the aisle to find a solution that doesn't unfairly punish the Amish and those who transport them.

Please help by signing the following petition (found here). At the bottom of the email (below the petition), type your name and full street address (including city, state and zip). Forward the "signed" petition to me at amishfriends@gmail.com. I'll forward all of the returned petitions that I receive to Mark, the PUC and Gov. Rendell. If you would like to forward the unsigned petition to your friends so that they can sign & return it to me, please feel free to do so. Thank you so much for your help!

Kathleen Cowles Paul

NOTE:  The Petition is here.

 

Interviews with David Cay Johnston

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 Mr. Johnston is a very provocative speaker.  He had recent interviews with Bill Moyers and NPR.  It would be worth the time spent to listen to him.

Infrequently Asked Questions

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 Donald Knuth is well-known in the field of Computer Programming.  As a citizen, he is sending a call for action.  Here are his version of InFAQs.

  1. Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?
  2. Why should my country not support an international court of justice?
  3. Is my country not strong enough to achieve its aims fairly?
  4. When the leaders of a country cause it to do terrible things, what is the best way to restore the honor of that country?
  5. Is it possible for potential new leaders to raise questions about their country's possible guilt, without committing political suicide?
  6. Do I deserve retribution from aggrieved people whose lives have been ruined by actions that my leaders have taken without my consent?
  7. How can I best help set in motion a process by which reparations are made to people who have been harmed by unjust deeds of my country?
  8. If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions like these, won't the good people of my country be guilty of making things worse?

Letter to John Edwards from Martin Luther King, III

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The Honorable John R. Edwards
410 Market Street
Suite 400
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
January 20, 2008

Dear Senator Edwards:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father's legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father's legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don't have lobbyists in Washington and they don't get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.

I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father's words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Sincerely,

Martin L. King, III

Food for Thought about Gender and Race in National Politics

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This was a very thought-provoking piece that we should all consider as we seek to encourage more women and citizens of color to seek elected office.