Wonderful Women Of The World
Posted by Michelle Moquin on March 31st, 2012
Good morning!
Well, I don’t think that once since I have been blogging about wonderful women of the world, have I written about a woman that has already passed away. But, what can I say – there is always a first.
I was intrigued this morning when Dahlia posted about Shirley Chisholm. I had never heard of her. Then when Barbara chimed in I was inspired to do a little digging. I found several interesting writes about her. Chisholm is definitely a woman of mettle and no doubt had my blog been around when she was alive, and had my readers mentioned her, I would’ve named her a wonderful woman of the world.
Well…it’s never too late…The moment I started reading I knew that Chisholm would be the woman to blog under my title this morning. Thanks to Dahlia and Barbara for the introduction and the inspiration!
Who cannot love a woman with this tagline: “Unbought and Unbossed”.
Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 Presidential Campaign
by Jo Freeman
February 2005
In July of 1971 Shirley Chisholm, Member of Congress from New York’s Twelfth District, began to explore the possibility of running for President. When she formally announced her candidacy the following January 25, she became the first woman and the first African-American to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party for the nation’s highest office. A few other women and other blacks had run on minor party tickets, and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R. Me) had campaigned for the Republican Party’s nomination in 1964, but Chisholm’s candidacy was a double first for the Democrats.
As soon as I heard that she might run, I knew that I had found my candidate. I quickly learned that Chisholm was running a grass roots campaign, in which it was up to the grass roots to figure out what needed to be done and to do it. What was needed in Illinois, where I lived while attending grad school at the University of Chicago, was to get her name on the ballot for the March primary.
That was easier said than done. Not liking the Daley machine which ran the Democratic Party in Chicago, I had not been active in the local Democratic Party. I soon found out that Illinois would not have a Presidential preference primary in 1972; individuals would run for delegate to the Democratic Convention from each Congressional District, committed to a specific candidate or uncommitted. Only those Presidential candidates who had delegates running in a specific District committed to that candidate would appear on a District ballot. The Daley machine would run a complete slate of 59 in all of Chicago’s Congressional Districts that was officially uncommitted. Unofficially, the Daley delegates would vote the way Mayor Daley wanted them to; controlling a bloc of votes gave him a lot of power at Democratic Conventions.
Shirley Chisholm had been breaking barriers and challenging conventions for many years. Born in Brooklyn, NY of West Indian parents, she was the first black woman to sit in Congress. Prior to her election in 1968 she had served in the New York Assembly for four years, following a professional career in child care and early childhood education. To be elected from her mostly black Brooklyn district, she had defied what was left of the Brooklyn Democratic machine. “Unbossed and unbought” was her slogan. On entering the House she had refused a place on the Forestry Subcommittee of the Agriculture Committee because she thought it was irrelevant to someone with her background from a poor, urban district. She was reassigned to Veterans Affairs; eventually she added a seat on her Committee of choice, Education and Labor. She deliberately hired a staff of young women, half of whom were black, for all of her office positions, not just the lower level ones usually occupied by women. Her first term she sponsored a bill to finance day care facilities; it passed Congress only to be vetoed by President Nixon.
It’s unusual for any Member of the House to run for President, especially after serving only three years, but Chisholm was used to doing the unusual. Of course, she didn’t run with the expectation of being nominated, or to increase her clout in Congress. She ran “to give a voice to the people the major candidates were ignoring.”
Although Chisholm made a point of saying that she was not the women’s candidate, she had always been a strong supporter of women’s rights. 
One of the four founders of the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971, she often said that during her twenty years in local politics “I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.” Indeed Shirley Chisholm was so outspoken in favor of women’s rights that she was often criticized for not paying enough attention to black issues.
I encountered this negative attitude toward Chisholm by black leaders when I went to Operation PUSH, headed by Rev. Jesse Jackson, for help getting on the ballot. Its headquarters was in the First Congressional District, on the other side of the University of Chicago from where I lived. I found no support, just mild disdain.
Relying largely on my fellow grad students for help in petitioning, I was one of four people in the state of Illinois to get enough signatures to appear on the primary ballot committed to Shirley Chisholm, and the only one from a majority black district. When our campaign wrote her that she would be on the ballot in the First District of Illinois, she sent us 100 buttons, 20 bumper stickers and nine position papers on foreign affairs. Everything else we created ourselves. We used an initial $200 in contributions to buy 1,000 buttons, and the money from selling those to pay for ads and to print literature.
Florida was the first state where Chisholm actively campaigned, largely because it had “blacks, youth and a strong women’s movement” and there were a lot of people in Florida eager to organize for her. However, she didn’t have enough money to hire professionals and the volunteers often competed against each other rather than working together. Since she also had to attend to Congressional duties in Washington, Chisholm could only make two campaign tours in Florida before the March 14 primary. A Southern state, the big issue was busing “to correct racial imbalance” in the schools, an issue about which the candidate was ambivalent. Despite large and enthusiastic crowds wherever Chisholm spoke, she got only four percent of the vote.
Chisholm continued her campaign wherever she could get on the ballot and had enough volunteers to set up speaking events. She campaigned in New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan and North Carolina. There were some states in which Chisholm was on the ballot but never had time to visit (e.g. Wisconsin). And others in which she won delegates despite a single appearance (Minnesota). And still more in which she received write-in votes, or votes via delegate candidates (e.g. Illinois). Overall, people in fourteen states voted for Shirley Chisholm for President, in some fashion or other. After six months of campaigning in eleven primaries she had twenty-eight delegates committed to vote for her at the Democratic Convention.
California was a special case, because state law gave all of the delegates to the winner, despite national Democratic Party rules requiring that they be apportioned. McGovern won California; Chisholm came in third with a tenth of his votes— enough to entitle her to twelve of California’s 271 delegates under the national rules. The primacy of state law would be challenged at the convention.
Chisholm made only one appearance in Chicago, where she spoke at Malcolm X Junior College on the west side of the city on March 6. Her two Chicago delegate candidates were running in districts on the north and south sides of the city, but no free venue could be found in either place. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, which owned its own building (a former synagogue) on the South Side, had declined to invite her to speak there, even though it regularly had some of the best speakers of a liberal persuasion (black and white) in the country.
The Illinois primary was one week after Florida’s. Of course I didn’t win; the Daley machine’s uncommitted candidates won all eight delegate slots in the First District. But in a field of 24 I came in ninth, beating people committed to Sens. George McGovern and Edward M. Kennedy. The next day I read about a challenge to the Daley delegation, which had made no attempt to comply with new Party guidelines requiring that delegations reflect the composition of their districts by race, sex and age. I immediately joined in.
Meeting in June, the Credentials Committee voted that national rules trumped state law in both California and Illinois; the challenge delegations would be seated. However, when the Committee report and recommendations went before the full convention on Monday night in July, the recommendation on California was reversed and all of the McGovern delegates were seated. That decision gave McGovern a lock on the nomination. All the candidate nominations and speeches after that were just window dressing.
I was not a delegate at this convention, but an alternate. Since the election could not be held over again, the decision about who the Chicago challenge delegates should be was made at meetings of the people who had run for delegate in each District. When I arrived prepared to argue that Chisholm was entitled to at least one delegate because she had received more votes in the First District than anyone else, I found that a pre-meeting had been held and the delegates already agreed upon. Under the affirmative action rules only one of the eight First District delegates could be white, and that slot had been given to the head of the McGovern slate. Six of the seven blacks chosen had run committed to different candidates. One, Jesse Jackson, had not run at all. However, the three alternates had not been pre-selected, so I became the first alternate from the First District.
At the convention I lobbied the eight First District delegates to give one vote to Chisholm, but without success. All eight wanted to feel like they were part of the winning team, and a token vote for a losing candidate was not the way to do that. When the role call was held on Wednesday, Shirley Chisholm received 151.95 votes, including 4.5 from Illinois. None came from Illinois’ First District, even though she had received more votes in the primary from those voters than had McGovern, who got all eight delegate votes. Many of Chisholm’s 151.95 votes came from people who had come to the Democratic convention committed to other candidates, and become disenchanted when the race for the nomination ended on Monday. Ohio delegates gave her 23 votes, even though the Ohio voters hadn’t given her any.
In the primaries and at the convention Chisholm received stronger support from grassroots feminists and blacks than she did from those identified as leaders. Reps. Ron Dellums (CA) and Parren Mitchell (MD) supported her. Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem ran as Chisholm delegates in New York, but lost. Other Members of Congress and prominent people, both blacks and feminists, ignored her candidacy or opposed it. When Chisholm spoke at a National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana in March, she felt like she was treated like an intruder. However, at the Democratic Convention in July, the Chisholm meetings were full of feminists and the final meeting of the caucus of black delegates voted to support her. Most of those attending and voting were not delegates; those who were, were not bound by a caucus decision.
After it was over Chisholm said that if she had to do it over again, she would, but not the same way. Her campaign was under-organized, under-financed and unprepared. She calculated that she raised and spent only $300,000 between July 1971 when she first floated the idea of running, and July of 1972, when the last vote was counted at the Democratic Convention. That did not include the $2,000 that my campaign raised and spent on her behalf, and a lot more by other local campaigns.
By the next Presidential election Congress had passed the campaign finance acts, which required careful record keeping, certification and reporting, among other things. This effectively ended grass roots Presidential campaigns like those in 1972.
Chisholm quotes from her book on the campaign The Good Fight, Harper and Row, 1973.
PBS also aired a film about Chisholm called “Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed
Film Description
1972 was an extraordinary year. Richard Nixon was president, running for his second, ill-fated term. The voting age had just changed from 21 to 18, and millions of new voters were expected at the polls. The Vietnam War was in full swing, as were anti-war protests, a burgeoning women’s movement, and the rise of the Black Panther Party. Into the center of this maelstrom — shocking the conventional political wisdom — stepped Shirley Chisholm, a determined, rather prim and unapologetically liberal black woman with a powerful message: Exercise the full measure of your citizenship and vote.
Announcing her candidacy for president on the evening news, Walter Cronkite quipped, “A new hat — rather a bonnet — was tossed into the presidential race today.” As revealed in Chisholm ’72 — Unbought & Unbossed, a new feature documentary having its world broadcast premiere on public television’s POV series, this first-ever run by a woman and person of color for presidential nomination was no laughing matter. Nor was it a polite exercise in symbolic electioneering. The New York Democratic congresswoman’s bid engendered strong, and sometimes bigoted opposition, setting off currents that affect American politics and social perceptions to this day. Shirley Chisholm died at the age of 80 on January 1, 2005, at her home in Florida.
Featuring stirring archival footage, period music, interviews with supporters, opponents and observers, and Chisholm’s own commentary — then and now —Chisholm ’72 is a remarkable recollection of a campaign that broke new ground in politics, and truly reached out to ‘the people.’ Among those interviewed are author/activist Amiri Baraka (then known as LeRoi Jones), Black Panther founder Bobby Seale, authors Susan Brownmiller and Octavia Butler, former Congressmen Reverend Walter Fauntroy and Ronald Dellums, and journalist/historian Paula Giddings.
Chisholm championed the causes of the poor, the young, minorities, gays, women, and other marginalized Americans. In doing so, she prefigured Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition campaigns, not only in substance but in style. Chisholm saw the presidential race itself as an opportunity to draw people to politics who traditionally did not participate. In her words, “I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.” In a race with 12 other candidates, Chisholm’s ultimate goal was to reach the Democratic National Convention in 1972 with a strong show of support.
At a time when Americans were just beginning to contemplate the possibility of a black man running for president, Chisholm was black and female. Chisholm ’72describes her formative years, from modest roots in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and a childhood in Barbados, to winning election to the New York State Assembly and then, in 1968, to become the first black woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress. Although she was no stranger to controversy, the documentary reveals the visceral opposition and blatant disregard to the Congresswoman’s candidacy that came from the establishment and the media.
Many reporters assumed she had no chance of winning and felt she was a spoiler. Feminists, who agreed entirely with Chisholm’s politics, preferred a different strategy, looking to Senator George McGovern as the realistic Democratic candidate. (McGovern eventually won the nomination.)
All the while, Chisholm remained the “Unbought and Unbossed” candidate, poised and determined to direct the debate and news coverage of her candidacy to her stands on education, employment, health care, and the rights of minorities, women, and gays to full participation in American life. She won a Federal Court order to break the front-runners’ lock on televised debates, winning the chance to talk directly to a national television audience. Chisholm, in fact, struck a populist progressive chord with many Americans. Managing surprisingly strong showings in some state primaries, she carried 151 delegates at the severely divided 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami and won the right to speak from the main podium.
“I had something important to explain,” recalled Chisholm about her historic speech. “I ran because somebody had to do it first. I ran because most people thought the country was not ready for a black candidate, not ready for a woman candidate. Someday — it was time in 1972 to make that someday come.”
Chisholm ’72 recaptures the times and spirit of a watershed event in American politics, when a black woman dared to take an equal place on the presidential dais.
“Our goal was to make a documentary as passionate and powerful as Chisholm herself,” says director and co-producer Shola Lynch. “Her story is an important reminder of the power of a dedicated individual to make a difference.” It also reminds us that the country belongs to each of us only if we dare to claim our place in it.
******
Readers: What’s not to admire – Chisholm was an amazing woman. I wish she was still around inspiring women. But I have to say, just watching a few moments of the trailer, and listening to the strength, determination and commitment in her voice…I was certainly inspired and moved. If you’re intereted in seeing the entire film, you can purchase it on Amazon.
Peace & Love…
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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March 31st, 2012 at 9:43 am
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michelle, What a fantastic read.
March 31st, 2012 at 9:44 am
This white woman had never heard of her. Thanks Michelle for the info.
March 31st, 2012 at 9:45 am
This Latina had never heard of her either. Thanks for being the educator you are to all of us Michelle.
Juanita
March 31st, 2012 at 9:54 am
In Praise of Potatoes
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, THE LOWLY SPUD PACKS A POWERFUL NUTRITIONAL PUNCH.
Potatoes have received a lot of bad press over the years, probably because they’re often prepared in unhealthy ways—deep-fried in oil…
smothered with high-fat condiments, such as cheese and sour cream…or layered with butter, cream and Parmesan.
But, in fact, an average potato—about seven ounces, or roughly the size of a woman’s fist—contains only about 150 calories.
With the increasing popularity of high-protein, low-carb diets, consumers also started to believe the myth that carbs are always bad.
True, potatoes are starchy and high in carbs. However, while any food with carbohydrates will increase blood sugar, paying attention to portion size and pairing it with healthful fat and a protein will help slow the rise in blood sugar.
Why you should give potatoes a second look…
PACKED WITH POTASSIUM
Whether white, Yukon gold, purple, sweet or red, potatoes are excellent sources of potassium, essential for healthy blood pressure.
Most people come up woefully short—men and women need about 4,700 mg of potassium daily to help their bodies get rid of excess sodium.
One average potato contains 400 mg to 900 mg of potassium.
Recent research showed that eating six to eight golf ball–sized purple potatoes twice a day for a month caused study participants’ systolic (top number) blood pressure to drop by 3.5% and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure to fall by 4.3%.
Just as noteworthy, none of the study participants gained weight. Researchers believe that white potatoes (such as russets) and red-skinned potatoes might have similar effects on blood pressure, possibly because all types of potatoes have phytochemicals in their skins.
RICH IN VITAMINS
Potatoes are excellent sources of vitamin C, which we need for fending off bacteria and viruses as well as for wound repair.
Sweet potatoes differ from white, gold, red and purple in that they possess huge amounts of vitamin A, critical for eye and skin tissue health.
Vitamin A is also a powerful antioxidant, cleaning up cell-damaging free radicals.
HIGH IN FIBER
Emerging research has been investigating a specific type of fiber called resistant starch, which is thought to promote a feeling of fullness, stabilize blood sugar levels and enhance fat burning.
Naturally present in potatoes, this starch resists digestion in the small intestine, where most nutrient breakdown occurs, and gets passed along to the large bowel where it’s fermented, creating beneficial fatty acids that may block the liver’s ability to burn carbs for fuel.
As a result, the body is forced to rely on fat instead. These fatty acids are also thought to affect the appetite-control hormones ghrelin and leptin.
To tap into resistant starch’s powers: Eat potatoes at room temperature or slightly above (this is the temperature at which resistant starch forms). So, rather than digging into a steaming hot potato, let it cool down first.
POTATO PREP
When it comes to cooking your potatoes, you want to be sure to preserve the most nutrients. Avoid boiling, which leaches out precious vitamin C and vitamin B-6.
Try steaming or baking: To steam, poke a few holes in a well-cleaned potato with a fork, place in a dish with one to two tablespoons of water to add moisture,
cover to prevent the potato from drying out, and microwave about six minutes for a small potato…10 to 12 minutes for average and larger.
When baking, wrap your potato in foil to keep it moist and bake for at least an hour at 350ºF. With either method, you’ll know your spud is done when a fork easily slides in and out.
And don’t forget to eat the skins—many of a potato’s nutrients reside there. Two simple recipes…
Chunky Smashed Potatoes: Scrub six potatoes with a vegetable scrubber to remove soil and rinse.
Dice into small chunks, leaving the skins intact, and microwave until soft enough to mash easily. Place in a large bowl along with a clove of raw garlic (or more, if you like).
As you begin mashing with a wire potato masher or electric mixer, add enough skim milk or nonfat Greek yogurt (about one-half to three-quarters cup)
to achieve desired level of creaminess, along with one tablespoon of butter or soft-tub margarine (look for a margarine that lists vegetable oil as the first ingredient) for flavor. Season with a hint of salt (less than one-quarter teaspoon) and black pepper to taste.
Southwestern Spud: Bake a whole potato, then slice open and top with onions and red and green peppers that have been sautéed in olive oil, along with cooked, rinsed and drained black beans.
You could also add shredded chicken or browned ground turkey. Top off with an extra drizzle of olive oil.
Source: Lona Sandon, RD, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Sandon is a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association).
March 31st, 2012 at 11:47 am
Gracias Michelle, that was a very informative article. I have lived in Florida all my 31 years and I never heard of Shirley Chisholm.
Carmen
March 31st, 2012 at 11:52 am
Howie did you really take your ball and go home? I honestly thought you were a bigger man than that? I bet you took of with Carr somewhere to bring back some first hand accounts.
This guy is waiting. I have managed to complete my project. To no one’s surprise, if I may say, it was a very very big hit. I want to thank you for a great start and a lot of help along the way.
Kent
March 31st, 2012 at 12:20 pm
How could you describe Sharpton, Jackson, the Black Panthers and the left media any differently than a “lynch” mob?
March 31st, 2012 at 3:38 pm
This was big news in 72′ I remember dear old daddy being up in arms, can you say: sexist/racist? (that was the beginning of the ZL disillusionment with my daddio, a woman for pres, a black woman, hmmm, how could you be so against her and be FOR me? I’m a girl, too…smart kid, huh?) and the Black Panthers endorsed her, I really can’t remember what Sharpton or Jackson’s take on her was…maybe you could research that and enlighten us, Larry : ) (how are you, you’ve been off blog for awhile)
Off to a Jamaican party. I’ll try to keep my maracas where they should be : ) though I guarantee nothing. Hahaha…
Enjoy your weekend, Luv, Zen Lill
April 1st, 2012 at 6:46 am
Kent, just so you know. My uncle used some of Howie’s script to make a bang up super alien character with some of the blog characters to give it the human touch.
I finished reading the final re-writes last week. It was FANTASTIC. Several studios are bidding on it. Wanna bet yours isn’t one of them?
I’m talking blockbuster 9 figures. The french and the arabs are fighting to back this one. Zach Snyder wanted to direct but my uncle said no way, after he saw what he did to his new Superman.
I like the cast you put together for the screen test. DT called us to say he knew where you got most of your stuff, but so are a lot of others getting theirs there too. No body is pointing fingers.
Love this blog even though it has gotten kind of silent lately with all the bitch stuff. Call me Claire said you and CJ were no longer an item. Guess she figured out you like the boys too much. (-:
This girl still likes you.
SG
PS: I really liked
April 1st, 2012 at 7:03 am
I Remember Shirley. The ladies in my group went on to enter politics because of her. We figured that since we were white we should have only half the trouble she was having.
True and not.
Corey
April 1st, 2012 at 7:06 am
A Bigger, Better MRI
It’s true that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can reveal tumors and other abnormalities with tremendous clarity, often at a very early stage.
However, up to 30% of people who undergo MRIs experience some degree of anxiety and/or claustrophobia.
If you or a loved one needs an MRI but is anxious about the procedure, ask whether the imaging center has a large-bore machine.
These machines, which produce high-quality images, can be used to diagnose abnormalities in many parts of the body and have extra-large (more than two feet across) openings, which help patients with anxiety/claustrophobia feel less confined.
The machines can also more easily accommodate obese individuals.
Other options…
Open-field MRIs are more spacious than traditional, tube-like models. However, the image quality isn’t as good and, as a result, may not be acceptable for all purposes.
Prism glasses, available at most centers, allow you to see out the opening and watch a movie while lying on your back in a traditional machine. This is also useful for those who are claustrophobic .
Also helpful: Tell your doctor when scheduling your test if confined spaces make you nervous. That way, sedation can be used to ease your discomfort.
Source: James Borgstede, MD, radiologist, University of Colorado Hospital, Aurora.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:23 am
Talk about corrupt police. Last Monday I was stopped by an Illinois cop and he took cash for my ticket. And I wasn’t speeding.
It this can happen to a white man. I feel sorry for any of you OTWs traveling the I-70 section passing through Illinois.
It is highway robbery and the robbers are the cops.
Tony
April 1st, 2012 at 7:28 am
Let’s hope this holds up.
WASHINGTON — On Friday evening, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling that could begin the process of revealing the identities of secret donors to groups connected to Karl Rove and the Koch brothers.
The court ruled in Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission that the FEC rules that restricted campaign donor disclosure are not valid and must be changed to provide for disclosure.
“We are very happy to see the judge got it right,” says Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog that was a part of the team challenging the FEC rules.
================
The republican have use the bigotry and racism of the majority of the white race to usher in draconian laws that will set back liberty in this country to the “good ole” days when only white men had any semblance or rights.
What is so ignorant about that group is that in order to be America’s Affirmative Action Beneficiaries they were willing to live in a police state controlled by a crooked FBI and and every asshole with a badge.
Jackie
April 1st, 2012 at 7:29 am
It’s scathingly wrong that elected officials do not recuse themselves when voting on legislation that can effect a corporate entity that has given money to the candidate.
When it was recently voted to continue giving subsidies to oil companies, it was also disclosed that the people who voted to protect the subsidies had also received money from the oil companies.
Hw can we proclaim to the world that we are a model of democracy when we succumb to such obvious abuse of power via clear and obvious conflict of interest in our highest levels.
http://medillonthehill.net/2012/03/oil-lobby-gasoline-prices-may-kill-momentum-on-oil-subsidies/
http://www.politicususa.com/john-boehner-keystone-xl/
http://gratewire.com/topic/paul-ryan-and-family-benefit-from-the-45-billion-in-oil-subsidies-in-his-budget
April 1st, 2012 at 7:36 am
I would like to Yay…the judge got it right, but we all know the Koch brothers will continue to drag this to court until they find judge they can bribe or pay off to get their way.
They know that since STARK has been bought and paid for they have a good chance of buying the lower judges in the Federal court system.
It is nice to know that some of us understand Citizens Unite (AKA Citizens Against America) needs to be overturned and stopped.
I would like to think that My Country is NOT for Sale!
Rodney
April 1st, 2012 at 7:47 am
September 11th was a tragedy made into a legal and economic opportunity by the military and law enforcement across the country.
With the republicans help they wasted no time in eroding every American’s Right to Privacy in the name of “national security”, and beefing up their equipment and salaries while America was in a mood to give them every single thing they asked for.
The only important question now is how does the average American regain the privacy they still have a constitutional right to?
April 1st, 2012 at 7:51 am
Out here in the Midwest, the Chief of the South Bend, Indiana, Police Department was just pushed to resign as the department is under federal investigation for wire tapping of phones without warrants. It is causing quite a ruckus with racial overtones.
Our Founding Fathers labored long and hard, with compromise along the way, to fashion a Constitution and structures to protect citizens from their government.
We citizens must elect leaders who understand and honor that. Too many politicians pander to people’s fears and baser instincts.
The sad thing is we whites looked the other way when the cops were doing it to OTWs, now that they are doing it to us, it may be too late to get a handle on it.
Paula
April 1st, 2012 at 7:52 am
In my opinion the USA Patriot Act, passed with such reckless abandon and disregard for our Constitution after 9/11, ushered in the era of “sneak and peek” along with other violations of our 4th Amendment rights by law enforcement agencies.
Warrantless GPS tracking on cellphones is just another abuse of the 4th Amedment. How deeply alraming that cellphone companies are so cooperative and in such collusion with law enforcement.
Clearly the only thing they care about is the almighty dollar. But alas, these are just more sign posts that our democracy is transforming into a benign form of inverted totalitarianism where whether we believe it or not we’re under so much surveilance 24/7 we’re literally living in a “techno gulag”.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:52 am
Think about this. Some old grandma is being blocked from voting by these new right wing republican voting identification rules, and corporations can buy elections in total secrecy.
Why aren’t Americans boycotting everything the Koch brothers have money in?
April 1st, 2012 at 7:54 am
I wish more people realized what is happening. The Koches and other plutocrats and working and spending hard to get the far right into key political positions. Why?
The Paul Ryan budget approved by the House will essentially do away with Medicare, taking the money spent on it and using it to give large tax cuts for the wealthy.
This is what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin, who started out with a large tax cut for wealthy corporations and then cutting funding for public schools, government employees, etc., to pay for it, claiming the state was broke.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:56 am
This is just one instance of a rapid loss of personal privacy under a technology assault from industry, government and individuals.
Through the creation of smart phones, facial/voice recognition software, easy uploading of video, video drones, electronic money tracking etc, etc privacy is rapidly disappearing.
Even science fiction is having a hard time keeping up with the possibilities of the changes we are experiencing.
I simultaneously love the information explosion and regret the loss of personal privacy.
April 1st, 2012 at 7:59 am
Michelle you are a beautiful, beautiful woman. If you ever think you would be interested in moving to Mumbai, I would love to marry you.
Abdul-azeez
April 1st, 2012 at 8:01 am
In a police state such as we have now it should not be surprising the police do anything they want to do with impunity and if push comes to shove merely demand and get lawful immunity from politicians and courts.
Meanwhile, the ALCU has become a toothless tiger when it comes to fighting for our civil rights. They conceded centuries of human rights to the government on the day after 9-11. It’s pretty much a defunct organization now.
How sweet that a police department found one crime victim using cell phone tracking. That makes it all better and excuses everything, doesn’t it?
If you remove the cell phone battery, they can’t find you. The new age of surveillance is funny like that…
April 1st, 2012 at 8:15 am
I agree you are very beautiful Michelle. Add that to the way you command a subject and your are a companion’s dream. I often spend the last few minutes of quite time in bed dreaming of us together.
How happy I am that you are not longer tethered to another. I don’t want you to be unhappy, but this hardly seems the case, so I can enjoy the dream that your availability could mean we would meet and fall in love.
I will admit I am a 5’11″ blond. But I am a biochem specialist here in Stockholm. I get compliments and awards for my contributions. I am 29. I have won several international chess tournaments.
I have never met a male that interested me intellectually for more than a few minutes. But I have found a curious intellectual affiliation with your style of communication.
You are strong and unwavering in your commitments. You can not be mislead into changing your stance as other feminists on your blog occasionally are.
The World of Women (WOW) have the heroine and she is Michelle.
Ana
April 1st, 2012 at 8:14 pm
those are very beautiful pins!
April 24th, 2012 at 1:08 am
custom stickers…
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October 31st, 2013 at 8:18 am
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