Playing Devil's Advocate to NARAL : Conference call follow-up

This is a followup to requests for comments I posted at c u l t u r e k i t c h e n and Daily Kos; regarding a conference call with NARAL that I was part of and that I noted at, c u l t u r e k i t c h e n: Liveblogging NARAL

I still believe it was luck that had me participate in this conference call, and I really take it as an honor that I could have a very interesting discussion with :

Vicky Saporta, President of the National Abortion Federation
www.prochoice.org

Alice Cohan, Political Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation
www.feminist.org

Nancy Keenan, President of NARAL
www.naral.org

and about 10 other progressive women bloggers of the Blog Sheroes Network, including :

Alas, A Blog
BitchPhD
Feministing
Rox Populi
The Goddess

The request for a phone call took me by surprise. I have been grumbling around the internets about how the feminist movement is disconnected with the feminist bloggers and netroots who are basically campaigning on its own without much support from them (but for an ad or two); and much in the same way the Democratic party was treating national bloggers before the elections; and state and local bloggers as we speak.

With that in mind, I want to say that Nancy Keenan, Rachel Perrone and the people responsible for putting this call together have taken a bold step forward in dealing with this new world of media and activism called the liberal blogosphere.

Since I don’t wear hats, my bra’s off to them.

I really encourage them to continue to continue reaching out to the feminist netroots. There are over 400 feminist bloggers in The Goddess’ What She Said blogroll ALONE. Not only that, she includes conservative bloggers as well. I have well close to 200 women in the BlogSheroes community site. And there are other lists like the Feminist Blogs, Des Femmes and others.

Still, what I would like to see them do is to engage also the pro-choice men of the blogosphere. All of their harshest critics are pro-choice; but they need a little … what would I call it? … political BlogHer’ing, if you know what I mean. They really need to engage in an honest, straighforward and thorough discussion with the women’s issues chicks.

But I am getting ahead of myself…
PRELUDE
Once I got the go for the call I posted at culturekitchen and Daily Kos requests for comments and questions. The questions and comments could be boiled down to :

(1)Seeing the tree for the forest
(2)Their endorsement choices
(3)The accuracy of the ads

So with that in mind, I took a deed breath and waited minutes before the meeting to watch the ad. The whole point of the conference call was to talk about NARALs stand against John Roberts.

I waited about half and hour before the call to watch the ad, because I did not want to over-analyze it. I wanted my gut reaction to lead me through this call. Seeing the ad would determine how I was going to take the replies to my posts and present them to the NARAL leadership.

Oh, boy …

THE AD
I still haven’t seen the ad again because I want to keep the impressions raw. And well, they are very strong impressions :

I disliked the ad’s pandering to drama and emotion with the typical “interview” of “The Victim” and “Her Story”. Ugh.
I immediately got the impression that John Roberts was either lawyer or advocate for the anti-abortionist terrorists.
Nowhere did I get that this was an ad about a legal technicality. My impression was that he was helping to acquit the anti-abortion terrorist from a bombing and attempted murder trial.

I was confounded by it. I felt that “oh, shit, no they did not” feeling in my stomach. It just did not feel right. And so it was with this feeling and the replies I had gotten from my readers that I made a decision…

ENTER THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
Those of you who know my writing, know how abrasive I can be. It was very difficult for me to ask the tough questions and get into an antagonizing stand without getting literally disconnected.

I was there to enter into a dialogue and build not just channels but bridges of communication. It was doubly difficult because I did so knowing not only that I was going to piss-off some if not a lot of the women bloggers, but I was doing so without the support from the “pie-loving frat boys” that I was defending throughout this conversation.

I wasn’t a lone ranger by any means. Rox Populi was very pointed when she asked Is this the battle to invest in? I thought that was an awesome question and they were equally good at answering it. They all said Sandra Day O’Connor’s votes were the swing votes in the court. This appointment is about choice, they said. “This is what shifts the court to the right … We could lose Rowe with this vote. This one is important.

It makes total and perfect sense to me, may I add. But then they went on to defend their attacks on Roberts and the need for the ad they were being excoriated for all over the media.

MATRIARCHY, UNPLUGGED
It’s funny how power works. Some of the women during the course of the conversation had harsh words for the pie-throwing frat boys and their leader, Markos. Yeah, so, what’s new I thought.

What I think that went under the radar was the tone of the women leaders sponsoring the call.

How can I say this without sounding too harsh? Well …. hmmmmmm … The leaders sounded maternalistic. The call came down to them defending the ad because not only do they know what they are doing; but because they’ve been doing it for so long, they should lead and we should follow: This is the deal : It is us and it is them.

We were supposed to take their words as gospel and go about banging away at our laptops. We were to blog rabidly, faithfully, obediently.

So it was with that tone set from the start of the conference that I asked Keenan if she was aware of the criticism coming from the progressive blogosphere. That the “reality-based” community believes accuracy is important in dealing with the extremists that have taken hold of the government. That we cannot give them any openings for rebuttal.

I read from the comments from both my site and DailyKos. And I stressed over and over again that they were not being attacked by our side for their mission. They were being attacked for the way they were presenting their message. I read from comments like the one left by Andy on my blog, but colored by comments like this one left by acbonin over at Daily Kos :: Comments I’m in a conference call with the president of NARAL

Did you release your current tv ad on Roberts knowing that many would see it as distorting and unfair, for the purpose of stirring up debating about its controversial claims?

I don’t remember reading acbonin’s words, but I did mention something about how the criticism about NARAL was focused on their fractioning an already fractured left and not working to build bridges.

The response was telling …

THIS IS NOT JUST ABOUT ROBERTS, THIS IS ABOUT BRINGING CHOICE BACK TO THE TABLE
They continued going back to “the extremists” and “the Republicans”. I kept telling them “no, no, I’m talking about progressive, liberal, some considering themselves left-of-left Democrats”. They kept bringing “the enemy” up and I want you to hold that thought for awhile because you will see later why this cognitive dissonance is important.

My comment about accuracy was met with a fierce defense about the ad and a lot of criticism thrown the way of FactCheck.org. “It is factual and it is tough”., they kept saying. And I sincerely, as I scanned the rebuttal they had written; I cold understand how all the fact were there — I just don’t remember seeing them on the ad. All I remember was a drama-laden “he helped the terrorists and that’s why he’s bad” ad.

Still, it wasn’t the data that really grabbed my attention. It was the voice of one of the leaders.

She had the voice of someone who had screamed, rave, ranted and chanted with a bullhorn for countless hours during countless demonstrations. It was a raspy voice that got tighter and raspier as her agitation grew. The Bray decision was like a carte blanche for the extremists to bomb, murder and intimidate reproductive rights workers, doctors and patients all over the country, they seemed to say in unison. But it was this protest amazon, who had fought countless fights for the rights of women to choose that said it all : There are consequences to the decision in Bray, that’s why they are attacking Robets. A rash of violence has come about after Bray. Roberts sided with the extremists by finding the law fawlty. “A rash of violence came after Bray”, she said. “Clinics were bombed … People were killed … His decision had violent consequences.”

The Protest Amazon was sincerely convinced that Roberts was indeed responsible for all the bombings, all the deaths, all the maiming. And she said it with a conviction that can only be described as that of a sidewalk preacher with a bullhorn. Her voice still reverberates in my ears.

INTERMEZZO
Other bloggers talked about the patriarchy and how women’s voices are marginalized from the political discourse. This talk took me back to my scholarly years, when working on a PhD in Latin American Literature, I focused part of my work on rabid feminists like Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst and the woman who defined feminismo for many Latinas like me (even before the word was coined) Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz.

The discussion also reminded me of a recent post I read at Chris Nolan’s Politics from Left to Right: Chris Nolan: You Know What Shakespeare Said…

Many of those who are the harshest in their denouncements of the media — many of the Big Boy Bloggers — have one thing in common.

They’re lawyers.

They may not practice law but take a look at the list. Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is a law professor. Markos Moulitsas went to law school. The PowerLine guys who brought down CBS are also lawyers. So is John Aravosis, the guy who outed Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, the part-time whore reporter who managed to get into the White House press room. Hugh Hewitt could hang out an attorney’s shingle. In fact, if you pull the tech sites out of Technorati’s top 100 blogs, you’re left with an good number of legal eagles holding forth (and I’m sure I’ve missed a few).

Why is this important?

Because lawyers and journalists see the world in very different ways. Lawyers like to think that depositions are the same as interviews because they ask questions. But they’re not. Interviewing some one can be a subtle process and the truth is very often stretched by both sides. Among other things, reporters don’t have subpoena power. Lawyers believe in the sanctity of the written word — they must swear the documents they file are true. But reporters know that your writing is only as good as your sources and you can’t rely on them, even on a good day after years of conversations to always tell you the truth. Oh, and yeah, while we’re on the subject there is no upside in calling someone on the carpet for lying to you if you’re a reporter. If you’re a lawyer however, it can be fun.

A lot of journalist think they’re lawyers. This is particularly true in Washington. And many, many lawyers want to be journalists; they revere the power of the press but they can’t understand why people who wield such power can’t be more accurate, better informed and more truthful. Reporters know that newspapers are often most carefully read by parakeets and puppies, not by thinking humans. Reporters may, in fact, write the truth. But not everyone is going to pay attention and often, those who are paying attention will try to have you fired for your efforts. Sometimes, they’ll succeed, too.

More frustrating for our friends in the legal profession: they have well-established and off-articulated codes of behavior and ethics. When you screw up, everyone knows it. Reporters, well, let’s just say go back to that part about how both sides stretch the truth in interviews and leave it at that. The ways in which we do our work are as varied as our personalities, outlooks, politics and points of view. And apart from “Get the story, get it first and get it right,” there are no clear rules. Not really. There are things you do — things you say — steps you take to be ethical and fair but, well, not everyone follows them all the time at every publication in the same way. That frustrates the lawyers.

This is extra important because a lot of today’s feminist discourse –at least the feminist discourse I studied– is founded in post-structuralist critical theory and practices that question the validity, innocence and objectivity of The Truth:

Where structuralism attempted to find a level of generalizable and self-sufficient metalanguage capable of describing configurations of elements variably anthropological, literary, linguistic, historical, or psychoanalytic and analyze their relations without being mired by the identity of these elements as such, post-structuralism is said to share a general concern for identifying and challenging hierarchies implicit in identification of binary oppositions which generally characterize not only structuralism but Western metaphysics, see deconstruction. [ … ]

More grandly, it is said that this reductionism is violent, and that post-structuralism identifies this with Western civilization and objectionable excesses of colonialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and the like. The element of “play” in the title of Derrida’s essay is often erroneously taken to be play in a linguistic sense based on a general tendency towards puns and humour, while social constructionism as it is said to be developed in the later work of Michel Foucault is said to create a sense of strategic agency by laying bare the levers of historical change. The importance of Foucault’s work is seen by many to be in its synthesis of this social historical account of the operations of power, see governmentality.

The Lawyers focus on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but The Truth. The Journalists’ concern is with constructing a story around The Truth. All hell breaks loose with The Feminists.

The Feminists’ job is to assume there is no Truth but suppressed truths. Our job is to pick apart the layers of meaning heaved down society’s throat as The Truth. Through this process, we are not only to reveal The Truth as the constructed fallacy it is but, once shattered, recompose it into the many truths and the many stories its ‘oneness’ suppresses.

Then again, I became a post-structuralist, feminist scholar fascinated by Latin American neo-baroque aesthetics with no influence whatsoever from Andrea Dworkin ; and only knowing about her after developing a distaste for her partner in puritanical feminism, Catherine MacKinnon’s . I still just seethe at the thought of this brilliant woman codling up to extremist Christian groups during the 1980’s to legally define and ban pornography, and at the height of the Meese Commission. I still believe her involvement in giving the extreme right fodder for the attacks on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

And so it was with these thoughts of lawyers, journalists and scholars that I decided to press on. The more I thought about the assaults on the Constitution made in the name of God and Feminism, the madder I got.

SECONDO
I recently went to Washington for my first taste at lobbying. On the way back on the train I met an interesting guy. Let’s call the guy, The Guy. The Guy helloed me with the effusiveness of a golden retriever puppy when he saw me open my eyes after I woke myself up with a giant, drooling snore. I yawned a hi back at him and after much fussing in my seat we started to talk. In the middle of the conversation we declare out political allegiances –The Guy is a republican. Since he was so nice, I decided to ask him one of those questions I dare not ask from Republican friends because, well, I know we won’t be friends anymore : “So, what is it about your president?”

Child, you’d thought I’d offer to give him a million dollars. He could not wait to talk about how disgusted he was with the war, and the extremists. But what really irked him was the corruption. “Michael Moore is right”, he said. I asked him about the coming fight over Roberts and the likes of people like Dobson : “You don’t understand, they don’t care. These people don’t care. This is just entertainment to them. A way to keep the masses fighting with each other. They are out to make billions and billions of dollars, amass incredible wealth and power while we’re here, the have-nots of all sorts of incomes, down here duking it out. They don’t care about Roberts or homosexuals or dead babies. They only care about power. And that power is money and oil.” I sat there quietly, with my eyes wide open. The Guy had told me earlier that he worked in satellite broadcasting media. That means his contracts are in the tens of millions. And this guy looked at Bush as the enemy.

His words have been ringing in my ears for two weeks now, and it became louder during the course of the telephone conversation.

THE DEVIL TIGHTENS HER HORNS
I asked if I could read some more of the comments left at DailyKos, in particular the Chaffee complaints. They’re response? They are a non-partisan organization and it makes sense for them to find pro-choice candidates on both sides of the political spectrum.

Here’s were I kind of lost it –and I must have sounded like a perv because I did a lot of deep, heavy breathing.

Getting pro-choice candidates is one thing, getting candidates that will vote to weaken the judiciary through the selection of reconstructionist judges is another thing. I remember telling them asking them about Mario Cuomo : He was pro-choice politically but personally against abortion. Why not use Cuomo as a measure of the candidates you want? And then, I mentioned Michael Bloomberg.

In the course of the comments over at DailyKos, someone mentioned NARALs endorsement of Republican pro-choice candidates over pro-choice Democrats –and I had totally forgotten how angry I was the week before over their endorsement of Michael Bloomberg.

I asked them, given the current political climate, why give fodder to the extremists by endorsing Michael Bloomberg over all the pro-choice Democratic candidates and BEFORE the primaries? Why give the to the extremists any reason to use the ad as an opening for attacking NARAL and undermining their mission?

How could they be so focused on “putting choice back on the table” when the biggest concern should be The Right to Privacy : The right to make our own decisions on how to live, love, lust, and die in our pursuit of happiness.

Why not look at this pressing constitutional issue; look at all the extremist ammendmends to the Constitution being pushed right now? Why not take the likes of Santorum to task for going around the country saying the right to privacy is not written in the constitution; especially, when Roberts seems to have echoed this in his past work. Why not take all of these issues, bring them together into a cohesive vision and strategy and finally bridge the Left into one single cause that would go beyond the potential confirmation of this hand-picked judge. Why not focus on the bigger picture and think strategically –from local to national; and always to protect the Constitution and the right to privacy?

Their response was eye-opening : One of the leaders said, “The fact of these organizations have [ responded to ] our issues [ is why ] we have to keep [ abortion ] on the table. My job is to argue for women and their right to choose.” The organization’s mission, for all intents and purposes, was accomplished. But they were not done. Addressing my ire over the Bloomberg endorsement, Keenan responded :

The criticism is because we have affiliates over the states… You have to talk to the people on the ground and you have to take your criticism to them… We deal with candidates on the national level. Not an excuse just merely a reality…

Oh, what a way to depress a girl. Not only have they come to conflate media hype with political outreach, but they have left their affiliates craft their own endorsement strategies; with no local to national roadmap to guide them.

WAITING TO EXHALE
I have to give it to them. Keenan, Saporta and Cohan were not just gracious, they were listening. We did have a conversation. We were engaged. I received an email from the director of communications who said they were pleased because during “press calls” like these people normally do not speak. Well, hold that thought there, with the one about them conflating opponents with Republicans and I’ll come back to you on these two.

The phone conference with the leaders ended but some of us stayed on and had a quick chat. I thought that no one from NARAL was on the phone ( how stupid can I be ) so I just let it rip about them endorsing Bloomberg before the primaries (and only because he has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the organization) and not having a cohesive strategy at every level. I was furious and not the bit snarky.

Well, there were other NARAL people listening in. If I don’t get invited to another one of these, now you know why. I did say I have a hard time not fucking up when I am agitated.

It was great to have the call though because we had the opportunity to discuss the next step. Especially, working from the assumption that Roberts will be confirmed, I think it was Lindsay who asked, what do we want from the Dems? We all agreed we want :

(1) A campaign to push for state rights; to ensure choice is in the laws of each and every state.

(2) Demand iron-clad party discipline with a continuous blue sea of NOs against Roberts appointment.

(3) Keep reminding people 52% of Americans support Roe V. Wade

(4) Make the right to privacy the foundation for choice.

EXHALING
I had left the conference call hopeful. We spoke about strategy, we were starting to bang out something of a cohesive vision. Then they go ahead and pull the fucking ad.

Let me just say that even if I have a tinge of disappointment, I cannot help but understand that these people don’t get it because I really don’t think they can.

That week, coincidentally, I was at a conmemoration of the 40th year of the Voting Rights Act. In this event more than half of the people present were first wave activists, people who busted into the political scene locally (like my mother’s husband, Gilberto Gerena Valentin) or nationally, like Herman Badillo, who was the first Puerto Rican elected to the US Congress. These people went to jail so linguistic minorities like Latinos, Koreans, Creoles, Russians have the right to vote in the languages they understand as well as in English. And what is their mantra throughout the event? We need to bring back a movement around puertorricanness; we need to bring back ‘old school politics’ and make it about ‘ethnic minorities issues’ —preferably those of Puerto Ricans.

Sigh.

Which is why NARALs faux pas makes total sense : They are living in the past as far as activism is concerned. They’re focus is on extracting money and marches for their events; not gardening and tending to a network of activism and influence through the media and political landscape of the country. Theirs is the kind of survivalist activism that expects unconditional allegiance from the grassroots because it is “us against them”.

LEARNING TO BREATHE AGAIN
I will never ask NARAL to give up on its core mission but their tactics need to be addressed.

To go back to Chris Nolan’s description of bloggers, if the feminists are the philosophers of the blogosphere, then we see the issues from a systemic point of view. It’s why the body is as important as Iraq.

It’s not that we don’t think war is trivial. If you read any of the top feminist bloggers you can see a common thread : We believe we need to look at the social practices that got us to Iraq in the first place. If the personal is political, then we need to look at what we do on a very personal, very private day to day that helps create the social infrastructure for people like Bush to consolidate power.

You can take Bush down, but that does not solve all the issues. At culturekitchen, Jeff Langstraat, Lorraine Berry and I are very much against the war. But when we write about dominionism, the ex-gay movement or rape, we write about these within a context of how they pave the way to not just Iraq, but an endless war between the haves and have nots; between Individuals and Power.

It is important for reluctant gate-keepers of the progressive movement like Markos at DailyKos and Steve Gilliard at NewsBlog to take responsibility for their actions and their posts because they have the effect of triviliazing and marginalizing feminist bloggers (btw: does it mean anything that most of the feminist bloggers are mad at a Latino man and an African-American man?).

On the same breath, I say it is time for more feminist bloggers to play devil’s advocates to the pro-choice establishment. The leaders of NARAL et al still look at themselves as ‘marginalized’ voices in politics; not as multi-million dollar organizations that can buy broadcasting time to air controversial ads that will bring them the attention of a nation. And if they do and act like they don’t then the feminist movement, and the US Constitution are fucked. Because the chipping away of Roe vs. Wade is the chipping away to our constitutional right to privacy. No matter how you put it Roe goes and all citizens in this country, not just women, will be affected.

citizen lehew, a diarist at Daily Kos wrote this 13 days ago :

So here’s a thought. The Democratic Party should push for a constitutional amendment clearly stating our “right to privacy”. Now there’s an idea worth touching the constitution for!

So here’s a thought. The Democratic Party should push for a constitutional amendment clearly stating our “right to privacy”. Now there’s an idea worth touching the constitution for!

Even if the push is unsuccessful, it will not only force Republicans to reap the political benefits of coming out on the WRONG side of personal privacy, especially considering that even the staunchest conservatives are pro-privacy on a range of issues, it will help define in the public’s mind exactly where Democrats stand.

The consequences of this legislation would be huge. We’re talking here about plugging the hole in the constitution that gave us The Patriot Act, digital restrictions management laws, a whole host of laws involving parenting and child-rearing, anti-gay laws.

Blogging has become the breath of fresh air in American politics and activism. Let’s use our platforms, pump up the volume and turn what we do into a cohesive, strategic blast. I suggested to NARAL to take bold steps and :

(1) Organize a conference of national pro-choice bloggers (men and women) for an open discussion about strategy and vision. Make sure you invite “we, the people” of the new grassroots; especially “we, the new media” of the blogosphere.

(2) Invest in the new media that blogs are creating. This is not only about supporting their own supporters through ads and what not. They really need to take a hard look at the new mass media of the internet. Case in point? Whenever I get a “GoogleNews Update” for the word ABORTION, almost invariably LifeNews appears with a link. LifeNews? Are these the people the pro-choice movement aiding and abbeting by allowing them to act like news channels? NARAL, NOW, Planned Parenthood NEVER appear in news updates about abortion. EVER. And we feminist bloggers have been repudiated by Google and Yahoo!News because we are not real broadcasters of news.

Meanwhile, there may well be a guy in pajamas in the middle of nowhere doing all those posts for LifeNews. But all feminists bloggers are bootstrappers. We don’t get paid for what we do, nor do we get the big advertising bucks other bloggers get. We don’t get a lifeline of millions of progressive and liberal monies or internet traffic that would allow us to do this as a legitimate news group.

An alternative, grassroots media should be one of the first items on pro-choice movement’s agenda. Actually, the whole left should be working furiously on supporting progressive bloggers as this new alternative broadcasting network.

That way, millions would not be wasted on ads like the one pulled by NARAL.

After thoughts from around the blogosphere
Uncivil Discourse: What NARAL Should Have Said, Or Why John Roberts Doesn’t Belong On The Supreme Court (One Of Several Reasons)
Hullabaloo | Pro Choice Veterans For Truth and Hullabaloo | Gearing Up
Pandagon: NARAL pulls the ad
The Mahablog | NARAL and Double Standards
feministing.com | Women’s rights a `single issue’?
Bitch Ph.D. | Update: NARAL ad
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES | NARAL’s ad, criticisms, FactCheck.org, and irate pro-choice women bloggers and ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES | So…..
The-Goddess | Pseudo-Adrienne has it exactly right …
Alas, a blog | NARAL pulls ad and there’s some other crap