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BUSHWHACKED!
Anyone who watches the polls is sure to note the ones that measured the choice of voters WHO ARE LIKELY TO VOTE next November. The results today showed that a majority would vote for "W." With McCain and Bradley out of the way, it seems that the country has gone back to its pre-primary stance instigated by the media which told us we were to bushed to vote for Gore. Their mantra: "Clinton fatigue -- it's back!"
In the 1800's, a woman named Myra Colby Bradwell spent around 30 years of her life trying to convince the establishment that a woman should become a member of the bar. The court refused her petition on the grounds that SHE WAS A WOMAN. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that decision. Bradwell's persistence finally paid off.
Born in Manchester, Vermont in 1831, she was one of America's first women lawyers. She practiced in Illinois. For Mary Todd Lincoln, this event couldn't have come too soon. Her son had tossed the widow of our much respected and honored President, Abe, into an insane asylum because he feared, "she might embarrass him."
Actually,
in those days it was a fairly common way to get rid of women. Little
was needed in the way of proof except the word of a male doctor. That
Mary Todd Lincoln was suffering from depression was of little import. Since
she wasn't "acting the way a woman should act" she was ipso
facto NUTS, so her fate was to be sent to live with the other fruit
loops of the time.
Attorney Bradwell fought for Lincoln's rights and got her removed from the asylum. Since that time, SNAKE PITS, as these places of incarceration were called, have improved somewhat and women can no longer be disposed of in this fashion without legal representation.
Mary Todd Lincoln and many other women in the past were bushwhacked simply because they were women and women had no rights.
In 1958, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:
"Where, after all do universal rights begin?
"In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of individual persons; the neighborhood (s)he lives in; the school or college (s)he attends; the factory, farm, or office where (s)he works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."
One of those small places is your local women's clinic and/or Planned Parenthood clinic. Don't let them be bushwhacked.
As the legislature of the State of Vermont struggles with the Civil
Union Bill that grants equal rights to couples of the same gender, many
other state legislatures are passing laws denying these equal rights.
Recently,
in Geneva, Switzerland, women filled the square in front of the U.N. European
headquarters to become part of the procession beginning the "World
March of Women 2000." One banner held by Lisa Dempsey, an Illinois
native living in Geneva, read "Men are afraid women will laugh at
them. Women are afraid men will kill them."
In
Kabul, Afghanistan, women were begging in the streets where they are banned
by the ruling Taliban militia from working and going to school beyond the
age of 8.
Amnesty
International reports that there have been "very few positive developments"
to advance women's rights since the world conference Beijing in 1995. "Every
year a vast number of women and young girls are mutilated, battered to
death, burned alive, raped, trafficked for domestic or sexual purposes,
primarily because they are female."
And the mea culpa we heard recently from the head of a large church made
absolutely no mention of the thousands of women who were intentionally
let die "to save the fetus they were carrying," in accordance
with that church's dogma. This is akin to the voices of the unchristian
coalition who support their candidate who is described as being "artfully
ambiguous on abortion" but declares that if he is elected he will
overturn Roe v Wade.
We don't have to be sitting around like sacrificial lambs waiting to be bushwhacked. The poll of voters who intend to vote in November can be easily turned around if each one of us gets just one or two others to register to vote.
For information on procedure and candidates, see GenderGappers link pages -- http://www.gappers/links.htm
And check out: http://burn.ucsd.edu/archives/atsl/1995.May/0049.htm
2000-012
Copyright 2000 Renee T. Louise and Ruth M. Sprague, Ph.D. These articles may be republished for noncommercial use only, provided that they are copied intact, and that this copyright notice is attached. Address all queries to: twanda@together.net.
G e n d e r G a p p e r s T M
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