I�m
sharing this thought-provoking correspondence received
today. Before answering the question of whether Obama
deserves women�s votes, there are many considerations
that come to mind.
Recollections:
The
efforts of too many women of color in support of the election
of Barack Obama were responded to by having our presence,
Justice 4 All Includes Women of Color, removed from the
Obama website just before his election. Despite a written
commitment by Presidential Candidate Obama to issues of
women of color, our group and other grassroots, working
class women of color have had no access to President Obama
during his presidency, while some of those who fought
against him, including some who put out objectionable
material, amazingly have garnered high level appointments
and all kinds of inclusion. There is no evidence that
the lack of substantive or meaningful attention to concerns
of women of color by the majority of US political parties
or political incumbents at all levels will be remedied.
Note:
up until now, I have been advocating a write-in campaign
for Barbara Lee for President and Dennis Kucinich for
Vice President in the primaries with messages to the Democrats
that the same write-ins will occur in November if the
Presidents and all the Democrats don�t deliver on promises
before the election if they want our votes.
The Email Received:
The news is buzzing with stories about
the Democratic Party trying to woo women voters. Here
is a fabulous message that addresses what Obama�s policies
have actually done (or not done) for women. It�s from
the Freedom Socialist 2012 Durham/L�pez Presidential Campaign.
Radical
Women endorses this campaign, because we want more
than hollow election-cycle promises. Read the alert below
and you�ll see...
For those who don�t know these candidates,
check out their biographies:
Stephen Durham for president, Biography
Christina L�pez for vice president, Biography
Durham/L�pez campaign statement:
Obama to women voters:
Ask not what the president can do for you,but what you can do for the president
The Obama presidential campaign has recently turned its full attention
to women voters and the fact that they are none too happy
with the administration�s waffling on reproductive rights
and other issues. Hence the idea was hatched to do a one-million-woman
mailing targeting three groups-mothers, young women and
older women-backed up by phone banking and a web site.
The president is re-selling his privatized healthcare plan (which
specifically excluded abortion) as a feminist coup in
hopes he can lure women back into the fold, after they
narrowly went for the Republicans in the 2010 midterm
election. You can read the Durham/L�pez statement on the
president�s plan at www.VoteSocialism.com.
But what exactly has the president done for women and how much better
is it than what the Republican patriarchs offer? If you
are a working woman, you may remember that one of the
first bills Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair
Pay Restoration Act. The act gives victims of wage discrimination
more time to file suits. That�s helpful-as long as you
can afford an attorney, your house isn�t underwater, and
you haven�t run out your unemployment. Reforms like this
create the legal means to fight discrimination but not
the basis to win. In fact, Obama has been a much better
friend of the discriminators - the banks, Wall Street,
industrialists and union-busters - than of women workers.
If you are lesbian, you know that the president still doesn�t support
gay marriage, although after a long delay he endorsed
repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. He also took two
years to end �Don�t ask, don�t tell,� waiting until December
2010 to sign the bill. His military chiefs then dragged
their feet on implementation, claiming they needed more
time to figure out how the change would affect military
operations.
If you are a young woman, you may be feeling vulnerable since the
White House overruled the Food and Drug Administration
proposal to make emergency contraception available without
a prescription to under-age women.
If you are an undocumented immigrant, you are probably worried about
being separated from your U.S.-born children because the
president gave ICE $600 million to hire 1,500 more agents,
among other things, and has deported more people than
G.W. Bush. His administration has deported nearly half
a million, many of them mothers, in the last year alone.
If you work for a well-heeled university, hospital or school operated
by a religious institution, Obama signed a deal that exempts
your employer from paying for insurance to cover your
reproductive services. (Who is imposing whose beliefs
here? Is the government �oppressing� wealthy, tax-exempt
churches or are pastors and priests imposing their beliefs
on women? We think the latter.)
If you are a unionist or a public worker, you probably noticed that
Obama was completely invisible during the intense labor
battles raging in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee-despite $200 million dollars
poured into his 2008 presidential campaign by the AFL-CIO.
(On March 12, the AFL-CIO announced
it would endorse the president again.)
If you are female and you care about free speech and the First Amendment,
Obama�s signing of H.R. 347, the misleadingly named Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement
Act of 2011, and the National Defense Authorization Act
should be cause for deep concern. H.R. 347, also known
as the �Trespass Act,� makes protest of any type a federal
offense if it occurs in the presence of the Secret Service,
with penalties of one to 10 years in federal prison. The
National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president
on December 31, 2011, authorizes indefinite detention
of U.S.
citizens and foreigners anywhere in the world, without
charge or trial, by the U.S. military.
Finally, if you are an Iraqi, Afghan, Palestinian, Caribbean or Latin American woman, Obama�s four-year reign has not brought
you and your children peace or security. Rather it has
meant more U.S.
military bases, more killing, more sophisticated methods
of extermination, more arming of your enemies, more fanning
the flames of destruction.
President Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, has simply continued
the policies of G.W. Bush in a less bellicose and more
charming, but none-the-less imperialist, manner, by arming
and embracing reactionary regimes that repress their own
people.
It is an illusion to think that any man or woman in Obama�s position
is going to rise above the desires of the capitalist class
that rules this country. The president of the United
States, regardless of color or gender,
is the leader of the most privileged 1% on planet Earth.
His or her job is to protect the interests of this class.
At the same time, Obama is continually the target of vile attack
by racists. These character assassinations are abominable,
and socialists condemn them. At the same time, these assaults
serve to mask the fact that Obama does not actually represent
the interests of the oppressed group to which he belongs.
Neither would another establishment president who happened
to be female, or Black, or another person of color. Racism
and sexism are key to keeping the working class divided
and profits up, and are routinely practiced by all the
factions within the ruling class depending on their usefulness
at a particular time.
So what has President Obama - spokesperson for and defender of Wall
Street - done for women? Not enough to warrant an endorsement
from women voters. For that matter, neither does any of
the Republican candidates who range somewhere between
�Father Knows Best� and �Onward Christian Soldiers� on
women�s issues.
Better to hang onto a sense of self-respect and register a protest
at the polls by voting socialist feminist. Write in Stephen
Durham for president and Christina L�pez for vice president. You�ll
be casting your ballot for the greater good, rather than
the lesser evil. The question is not what Obama or Romney
(or dare we contemplate Santorum?) has done for women,
but what women can do for themselves by standing together
across lines of nationality, immigration status, color,
gender and disability to fight for freedom and peace in
our troubled world.
Reflection:
These
recommendations - the candidates and the platform - especially
for the primaries, are food for thought. However, though
the writings are clearly intended to be as inclusive as
possible, disappointingly, with one exception in the section
on Women�s Liberation, the words �women of color� are
absent. This is not unusual. It stems from the frequent
lack of understanding that the experience of racism plus
sexism, only experienced by women of color, is unique
and not experienced by any other groups and is responsible
for the overwhelming majority of women of color on the
socio-economic bottom of society, marginalized to invisibility.
When women of color raise this issue, it is resisted by
too many white women and men of color, probably because
it requires admissions of white female racism and men
of color sexism. This is not to declare all white women
and all men of color to be racists or sexists, anymore
that every white man is asserted to be racist and sexist.
However, as long as women of color cannot even be mentioned,
let alone having our issues and concerns receive
positive action, there can be no real or lasting social
solutions.
Detailed
information about women of color is needed so that the
facts of women of color getting 48% of the housing foreclosures,
dying at the highest rates from every curable disease
and the staggering statistics about the rates of women
over 65 who cannot meet basic life expenses (51% of European
American women, 61% of Asian American women, 74% of African
American Women and 75% of Latina American Women) are understood
as more than numerical data. Without specific women of
color issues identified and included, overwhelmingly,
women of color will not respond positively to the question
of whether women should vote for Obama, because just as
�people of color issues� don�t include us equitably, neither
do �women�s issues.� The issue most often presented by
women of European American heritage is reproductive rights.
The issue of most importance to women of color and our
unique experience of racism plus sexism is minimized.
The
nation is at a crossroads. If the responses and suggestions
of women of color are not understood and fully and immediately
embraced, there is no way that most women of color will
see socialist, progressive, Democrat or Republican efforts
as meaningful for us. When mention of women of color is
rejected, it means that women of color are not intended
beneficiaries of the efforts underway and that no matter
the outcomes for others, we will remain on the bottom
of society. This was not understood in the last presidential
election by the many white women who especially insulted
grassroots and working class women of color when we did
not accept Hillary Clinton as a candidate, notwithstanding
her alliances with some women of color allies that she
had but who do not represent the majority of us, regardless
of their previous civil rights work or other credentials
perceived by those who are not women of color. This circumstance
was repeated, over and over again, before the 2008 election
and since Obama�s election. Even the effort to have Obama
establish a President�s Council on Women and Girls refused
to include the racism + sexism issue or to use the words,
�women of color� with any issues specifically associated
with us.
What
is at stake is the US empire as we have experienced it
in varying ways and whether, as the empire sits on the
edge of the world undergoing fundamental changes, the
nation will come free of denial and seek a place in concert
with more of the world�s people or will persist in its
old ways and be left out or behind. In the midst of these
precarious circumstances, white women and men of color
need to make their own critical decisions on a grand scale
- whether to pursue emulation of the while male-dominated
system via token representatives, or whether more than
a small fraction of progressive white women and men of
color can be persuaded to collaborate with the masses
of women of color who now and in the future will outnumber
them. Sort of reminds of a biblical prediction that �the
last shall be first, and the first last� at some time
of reckoning. The time for ending the minimalization of
women of color is now. To achieve this, the Jim Crow domination
strategies used against most of us by a power elite, for
their benefit, resulting in fighting among those who should
be allies, must be ended. There can be no hesitation in
reaching out to each other for mutual benefit. Justice
delayed is justice denied. With each denial, the possibilities
of unity and trust are diminished. It will not forever
be possible to reverse the damage.
Women
of color cannot wait any longer for full equity and justice.
We cannot envision ourselves as among the �women� being
discussed or �people of color� being discussed without
specific mention of the words �women of color� and without
specifically addressing the issues that we identify as
having the greatest importance to us all.
BlackCommentator.com Columnist Suzanne Brooks is the founder
and CEO of International Association for
Women of Color Day
and CEO of Justice 4 All Includes Women
of Color. Click here
to contact Ms. Brooks.
