Category: Civil Rights
Circles of solidarity
Following from the Oakland’s peaceful demonstration, Seattlelites gathered around Green Lake holding hands in a sign of “peaceful protest against President-elect Donald Trump and the fear, hate, racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia that was brought on by the recent election.”
Two fundamental reasons to be optimistic about and support Hillary
In any election, there are two fundamental aspects in selecting a candidate: qualifying experience and credibility; and ideological alignment and commitment to the issues.
I’m optimistic about Hillary Clinton’s presidency, and fully support her candidacy, for exactly those reasons: she’s experienced, competent, and has for her entire life been dedicated to the issues that I define as progress, from civil, women’s, and children’s rights to health care.
Experience
For half a century – since the early ’60s – Hillary has been involved in public affairs and public policy, serving public office for 13 of those years, including the Senate and Secretary of State. That matters. She’s smart, knowledgable, well-versed, well-traveled, and also weathered, beleaguered, and still persevering. That matters, too. A lot. Especially in this political climate.
Dedication to the issues
She’s also committed to the issues, and not just in rhetoric.
- Children and Healthcare: She’s been championing children’s rights and healthcare since the beginning of her career. She chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Arkansas Legal Services and the Children’s Defense Fund in the 1970s.
The 1993 Health Security Act, or HillaryCare as was sometimes quipped, didn’t muster the support from conservatives, libertarians, pharmaceutical companies, and even some of her own Democratic Party, but it did lay the foundation for the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, twenty years later and is certainly an indication of her commitment to people’s health and well-being and universal health care.
- Women’s Rights: She is a champion of women’s rights and has personally contributed to advancing them, including through her global initiative, “No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project.” Her own 2008 presidential candidate concession to Obama captures some of those sentiments:
“Although we were not able to shatter that highest and hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it has 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time, and we are going to keep working to make it so, today keep with me and stand for me, we still have so much to do together, we made history, and lets make some more.”
- Civil Rights: Most impressively, she is a life-long advocate for Civil Rights, and has been since a teen! As the DailyKos reports:
“At age 21, unknown Hillary Clinton made headlines. She and her [Wellesley commencement] speech were featured in a Life Magazine article about the activist ideals of the class of 1969. She had led protests to protect black civil rights. She had accomplished civil rights goals. She advocated active civil disobedience to better African-American lives, to make the changes that passive compliance and blind trust had failed to make.”
(You can listen to excerpts of that speech here.)
Something interesting I only learned about Hillary is that she had been an active young Republican in the 1960s until hearing a Martin Luther King speech in Chicago and then attending the 1967 GOP convention (at 20 years old) where she denounced the Republican party as being racist. She has, since then, been committed to the Democratic party.
I realize for some that stokes the critique that she is opportunistic, fluctuates in her policies, or ‘flip-flops.’ And my rebuttal to that oft-invoked critique is that this is exactly the kind of admirable pragmatism that she has demonstrated since she was a young activist and upcoming politician.
The Republican Party of the 1950s and early 1960s was the more supportive of Civil Rights. As the table below highlights, only 19, or 10% of Republican House Members and NO Republican Senators voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act bill, compared to 107 (nearly 50%) and 18 (35%), respectively, of their Democratic Counterparts.
As many know well, the Democratic Party of that era was largely propped up by southern Democrats, or Dixiecrats, who despised the Republican Party of Lincoln (who had freed the slaves). By the mid and especially the late 1960s, essentially once President Johnson fully endorsed the Civil Rights Movement, the Dixiecrats defected and Civil Rights became a key component of the Democratic platform, which continues into present day. And Hillary had the pragmatism to move with the more progressive party.
Responding to North Carolina’s discriminatory laws
First it was Google, Apple and Disney, then the NBA pulled the Allstar game from Charlotte, and just last week, the NCAA pulled 7 championship events from North Carolina, all in criticism of the state’s surprising transgender law that was hastily passed in March.
The House Bill 2 (HB2) has been widely criticized as limiting anti-discriminatory protections for LGBTQI individuals and potentially violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act; beyond, some argue that:
It’s encouraging to see some of the country’s most powerful institutions uncompromising on civil rights.
DNC: the true LiberalOptimist venue
The Democratic National Convention was brimming with optimism, hope, pragmatism, and the theme of “Stronger Together.”
Barack Obama may have captured these sentiments best, delivering an inspirational speech:
“The America I know is full of courage, and optimism, and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous… America has always been about what can be achieved by us, together, through the hard, slow, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately enduring work of self-government. And that’s what Hillary Clinton understands.”
More substantively, he spoke of what’s been accomplished during his presidency: jobs, healthcare, etc. This blog post captures 371 accomplishments under his presidency, accomplishments easily overlooked in today’s political climate.
Other highlights from the Democratic National Convention:
The Pope
As one of the most influential people in the world, the leader of some 1.2 billion Catholics, the Pope has exhibited humility among the poor; concern for the environment; and acceptance of gays and lesbians. In this most recent act, he asks for forgiveness from those who have been wronged by the Church. Some highlights below.
On civil rights and human dignity:
“I think that the Church not only should apologize … to a gay person whom it offended but it must also apologize to the poor as well, to the women who have been exploited, to children who have been exploited by (being forced to) work. It must apologize for having blessed so many weapons… We Christians have to apologize for so many things, not just for this (treatment of gays), but we must ask for forgiveness, not just apologize! Forgiveness!”
On the environment:
Rich countries are destroying poor ones, and the earth is getting warmer. “The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa, where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved devastating for farming.”
Technocratic domination leads to the destruction of nature and the exploitation of people, and “by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion.”
Individuals must act. “An integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness,” he writes. We should also consider taking public transit, car-pooling, planting trees, turning off the lights and recycling.
Christians have misinterpreted Scripture and “must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.”
On equality and concern for the poor:
Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say “thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality.
The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase. In the meantime, all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.
In this context, we can understand Jesus’ command to his disciples: “You yourselves give them something to eat!” (Mk 6:37): it means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor, as well as small daily acts of solidarity in meeting the real needs which we encounter.
The dignity of each human person and the pursuit of the common good are concerns which ought to shape all economic policies.
Utah conservative apologizes to L.G.B.T.Q.I. community
Spencer Cox, a conservative Utah politician, gave this moving speech about his change of heart. We are all human after all. And he reminds us that calling each other “communists”, “fascists” and “bigots” isn’t going to change hearts and minds, let alone policy.