Author: caliberal

Here are some cold, hard facts about poverty in this country.  Did Katrina really change things, are we at a time in our history when we will change the way Americans look at the poor, will we do something about this fucking disgrace?

If we don’t do something now when we have seen images that speak of a third world country, when we have seen bodies of the poor floating in feces filled waters, when we have seen houses marked with a big X which signifies a dead person inside, when we have heard of how so many poor people died horrendous deaths as the water rose up until they had no air left, no place to go, no life left in their bodies, if that isn’t enough to make us pay attention and do something about the poor in this country then we will be a nation without a soul.  We will lose our pride, our honor, our dignity and our integrity.  We will be walking shells of people with nothing left but pure and simple greed in our hearts.  We will have lost our humanity.

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We haven’t identified or found all of the dead people in New Orleans.  We saw, day after day, the dead bodies sitting in wheelchairs or lying on the side of the road or on the roofs of their homes, decaying before our eyes and we had a government that didn’t see fit to treat them with respect or dignity.  We saw what our government has become from local to state to federal and it made us sick, it outraged us, it filled us with venomous rage.  We owned that rage, we had a right to feel that rage, we carry that rage with us still but I say we have a place to put that outrage and that is with the living poor, all 37,000,000 of them.

37,000,000 people live at or below the poverty level in this country.  37,000,000 people struggle each and every day to stay warm, to be housed, to be clothed, to be fed.  One in every nine people in this country live in abject poverty.  How long does it take you to walk down the street or through the aisles of a grocery store before you have looked into the eyes of nine people?  Count them as you pass and see how many people living at or below the poverty line you see every single day.  Go to a park and count the children, how many are there, how many poor children do they represent?

In Detroit one in three live below the poverty line.  Detroit now has an unemployment rate of 15%.  There are 10,000 people who are homeless every single night in Detroit.

In Hartford, Connecticut, a city where wealth and good living is the image that immediately comes to mind, 43% of the children, 43% of the CHILDREN, live below the poverty line.  The average income is $365. a week.  Joe Lieberman makes $1700. a day so far in the year 2006, $213 an hour.  That means that Joe Lieberman makes more in an hour than the average minimum wage worker at $5.15 an hour makes in a week.

In the Appalachians, 65% of the people live below the poverty line.

In Pembroke, Illinois, just 70 miles outside Chicago, 60% of the people don’t have running water.  There are no sewage lines in the town.  They say they are the forgotten people in this country.

A staggering 42% of single mothers live at or below the poverty line in this country.

What do fellow Americans have to say about the poor, those 37,000,000 fellow Americans that are invisible?  ‘They have the same opportunities as anyone else.’  ‘Why don’t they pull themselves up by their bookstraps and make a better life for themselves?’  ‘They’re all blacks and Hispanics, they’re lazy, they’re scum, they’re on drugs, they’re in gangs, they’re stupid.’  ‘I work hard, dammit, I shouldn’t have to pay them to sit on their asses.’  ‘I work hard so should they.’  There are a kazillion ‘theys’ but there are few ‘us’ in their raving against the poor.

But it’s not just those people who don’t ‘get it.’  There are also people who should know better, there are people who call themselves ‘progressives’ or ‘liberals’ or ‘good Democrats.’  There are people who lived in the LBJ presidency when poverty was cut by a sizeable number in this country.  There are those who have seen, with their own eyes, what determination, resolve, and good policies can do, it can lift people up and out of poverty.  It’s not just some ‘pipe dream,’ it’s part of our history that was written by President Lyndon Baines Johnson not so very long ago.

There isn’t one of the 3100+ counties in this country where a minimum wage worker can pay their rent with their paycheck.  Not one.  Yet, the members of Congress don’t see fit to raise the minimum wage at all.  If we had a just Congress, both parties of Congress, we wouldn’t see bills that propose a dollar raise, in a just Congress we would see a bill that proposed a raise that provides a living minimum wage for every single American.

42% of single mothers live at or below the poverty line.  That translates into hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children in this country and yet we have men who say they should be able to ‘opt’ out of paying child support.  They say they should not be held to account for fathering a child or children they didn’t want but yet they did just that, they fathered the very children they don’t want to pay child support for.

It isn’t just Republican men, it’s also ‘progressive,’ ‘liberal’ men, men who are Democrats who say DNA may now catch them in the net of responsibility so NOW these men think abortion rights are not just women’s rights any longer.  No, these men see in abortion a way out for them, it’s no longer a moral issue, it’s a right to not have to pay for the children they father.  No matter when conception begins, these men believe they should be free to spread their seeds and not be held accountable.  When it comes to their checkbook, fuck the fetus and fuck the woman, it has nothing to do with them.

42% of single mothers live at or below the poverty line and yet women are still paid just $.72 to every dollar a man makes.  Women in management positions are a fraction of men in management.  Women are often solely and largely responsible for providing daycare for their children, this is still the only industrialized nation in the world without subsidized daycare.  These single mothers too often are the only parent present for their children. Many, many men don’t show up, in any way, to support the children they father.

Why are many women single and living in poverty?  Every nine seconds a woman is the victim of domestic abuse in this country.  That’s 9600 women a day, every single day.  Our children are too often caught up in that net of violence.  They witness it and all too often these young boys turn into men who carry the next generation of violence against women. The young girls are given the message that women deserve nothing better. The cycle never, ever ends.  Is it a coincidence that so many women live on welfare if the violence goes on unabated?

We have a government that is willing to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the continuing violence that is perpetrated against women and thus their children.  Women are chastened if they stay and are chastened if they become one of the single mothers who can’t make it with a minimum wage job, those that fall into that 42% who live in poverty.  They get no breaks from the leadership in this country and they seldom get breaks from those who judge them.

We have to put the two together, women living in poverty and those who are the women who are beaten every nine seconds.  Women can’t fight this battle alone.  Men have got to step up to the plate here.  If Promise Keepers can fill huge stadiums with millions of men a year pontificating on how to control women then surely the men in this country can rally together and find ways of ending this violence against women.

If Promise Keepers can get national press coverage for their Christian values then surely men who want to stop this madness against women can get press coverage for their values in their fight against domestic abuse.

If women are beaten every nine seconds in this country surely many of you know a man who beats his wife or girlfriend.  Step up to the plate and call him on it.  Step in and help the woman that is the victim of his abuse.  Call law enforcement over and over until the woman feels she is safe enough to leave.  Help her get her children out of that abusive home.

Talk to men and tell them to show up for their children.  Tell them if they impregnate a girl or woman they are responsible.  Don’t become one of the men who believes Roe v. Wade for Men is righteous.  Don’t become one of the men who are ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ that believe they can play but not pay.  Your DNA makes you accountable, it shouldn’t be used as a threat to your wallet, it should be a threat to your manhood if you don’t show up for your child.

Some of the mothers living in poverty are mothers because they have no choice.  It doesn’t really make a difference to them that abortions are still legal.  They aren’t accessible physically for them and they aren’t accessible financially.  For many women in poverty it isn’t about what is happening in South Dakota, it isn’t the extremism of carrying a child to term as a result of rape or incest.  They are forced to carry their children to term because there is no other way for them so the web of poverty just keeps circling around them.

If there is any silver lining to Katrina it can be that we do something about the poverty in this country.  We have a blueprint, we have the legacy of Lyndon Johnson, we know it can be done.  It won’t come easily but it will come to pass if we are commited enough, if we demand enough be done, if we see our part in why it continues, if we all get our hands dirty and are willing to look at the hard truths to why the most powerful and wealthy country on earth allows it and allows the numbers to increase every year instead of doing something, anything to make those numbers decrease.

This is not a woman’s issue, this is not a children’s issue, this is not a man’s issue, this is a human issue, this is America’s issue.  It is a disgrace.  We have heard, we have seen the clarion call, now it’s up to us to step up to the plate.

My favorite quote from Virginia Woolf, “To look life in the face for what it is.  To know it for what it is.  To see it for what it is.  To love it for what it is.  And then to put it away.”  It’s time for us to look, see, and know this life of poverty so we can love the life we have created for every single American enough so we can put the life of poverty away, once and for all.

This is crossposted at My Left Wing and DailyKos

There is out there ridiculous and dangerous information on abortion that threatens who women are in this country.  It is said that women who have abortions sometimes suffer depression for the rest of their lives.  It is said that they carry with them, for life, what they have done to an innocent zygote or fetus.

It is also said that women make the decision to have abortions frivilously, that we believe in ‘abortion on demand.’  There is a dangerous notion that we decide late in our pregnancies that we just simply don’t want this ‘kid’ so we go shopping, we have lunch, and then we stop in at our local, friendly clinic and tell them to scrape and vaccum away, we’ve got a party to go to.

Depressed and traumatized on the one hand or party girls on the other.  Is it really that simple?  What happens to those who don’t have a choice?

What we don’t hear about is what forced motherhood does to too many women.  What we don’t hear is how long it takes, how much courage it takes, how heartbreaking it is to find our way back from the terror and horror.
What we don’t hear about is what forced motherhood does to too many women.  What we don’t hear is how long it takes, how much courage it takes, how heartbreaking it is to find our way back from the terror and horror of bearing a child we didn’t want.

After I posted my diary the other day, The scars that keep on giving and taking I received an email from the founder of a group that works to stop the violence against women and children in this country.

In the email I was asked if my diary could be posted on their website and forwarded in emails to its members.  Stories like mine are going to be sent to the governor’s office in South Dakota to illustrate other forms of violence, the violence behind women’s desperation when we don’t have the choice to abort or to give birth.

I’ve thought of little else these past few days.  I’m haunted by my scars.  I’m grief stricken because we are going down a dangerous path here, a path that will lead to more and more scars on the wrists of young girls and women.  I can’t get the images out of my head, the ones of blank faces that carry these scars for a lifetime.

There is in me a new madness that every single one of these white male heathens should be haunted as well.  They should have to read what it is like to come back from the brink of despair.  They should have to read every word I’m about to say not because my story is any different or better or more tragic or well written than others.  They should have to read these words precisely because they are no different than thousands and thousands of other women and young girls stories.

I wrote this in response to the woman who requested my permission to post my diary.  I post it here because I do think it makes a difference.  The scars last a lifetime because coming back from the abyss takes a lifetime.

Dear XXX … thank you for the opportunity to perhaps make a difference with my story.  I am humbled and honored to have you post it on your website.  The work you tirelessly do knows no bounds in it’s importance to women and to children.  Please feel free to email it to your members or share it with anyone you think needs to read it.

One of my biggest nightmares has been seeing Roe v. Wade overturned on our watch.  It’s the kind of having something come full circle that none of us from pre Roe want.  We must do whatever we can to stop this madness.

I, like far too many women, had a childhood with sexual assault being one of the scars we carry with us throughout our lifetimes.  It’s astounding to me that this country allows this violence to go unabated year after year without much more than a nod.  That’s another diary though, a subject I’ve written on more than once.

Because I am a survivor of both sexual assault and attempted suicide I don’t have a problem with any implications that may be drawn from my story.  All violence against women has to be addressed.  However, I am in agreement with your second email to me.  [there was talk about rape in her initial email to me.]

Part of the intention in telling my story was to illustrate that there are other forms of violence that women suffer.  It’s no less violent when we are pushed against an unwielding wall and thus forced to do something desperate and drastic like taking our own lives.  It isn’t just our hands that that violence lies in, it’s also the hands of those who deny us a choice.

I’ve had a hard time concentrating on anything else since the legislation was passed in South Dakota that doesn’t consider the woman in anyway close to the fetus.  It’s an abhorrent message to send to us all, women and to young girls.  It’s as if our lives mean absolutely nothing beyond bringing babies into this world.

It’s so often said that those of us who choose to have abortions do it frivilously, without much thought.  The meme ‘abortion on demand’ furthers this insane impression.  There is also the dialogue about women who are depressed for the rest of their lives after having an abortion, that they are never the same.

What needs to be said is how long it takes to pull ourselves out from under forced motherhood.  The year after my suicide attempt I wasn’t able to engage in conversations because I was like a wounded bird, I couldn’t think clearly enough or get out of the madness that was my mind enough to talk.  I felt safe curled up in the corner of the couch where the arm meets the back.  My parents had to move my bed against the wall so I could feel it while I slept.  I had to feel boundaries around me, I had to know I wouldn’t fall.

I couldn’t engage in conversations because my mind no longer had the ability to grasp anything but the constant fear and terror I felt from still being alive, from believing I was crazy,  from  the reality in my head that I wasn’t where I belonged.  If I had succeeded in my attempt I would have been where I truly belonged, dead and gone to wherever it is we go.  Since I didn’t succeed I was left incapacitated with a mind, soul and spirit that were no longer my own, they were unrecognizable, they were foreign to me.  There was no other way to see myself but that of a crazy person who didn’t belong in the warmth and comfort of my parent’s arms and home.  Where I belonged, where all crazy people belonged was in state run mental institutions.

The one constant in my head was the girl in “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.”  I lived in terror that I was going crazy, that I would be institutionalized in one of those hospitals.  It was a very slow process bringing me back into a world I felt safe in.  When a woman or young girl losses her sense of self, when a woman or young girl losses the sense that she owns her own body, when a woman or young girl losses the sense of freedom to do with her life what she chooses her whole world can fall apart.  When we lose our way of being we also lose our grip on reality because our reality is no longer ours to shape.

I couldn’t bear to be in the dark for many years.  The darkness was too much like the crazed darkness that was my life during those first few years.  It was a chilling darkness, an unrelenting darkness, a dangerous darkness, a darkness I couldn’t escape.  I couldn’t escape it because I had constant reminders, my scars and my son.  What kind of world is it that turns a young girl’s own child into a reminder of the loss of her sanity because she had no choice?  What kind of a world is it that is an enabler of madness, the stark, wild madness when all one has known is lost?

That was my world for far too long.  That was the world that was created because I didn’t have a choice.  I lost all my confidence to know I could plan my life, the confidence it takes to put one foot in front of another on the path we should be allowed to forge ourselves.

I’m not sure which form of violence is greater.  I’ve been the victim of both but what I truly believe is the violence of raping my future was as great as the violence against my little nine-year-old body.  It was an assault in both cases.  I sincerely don’t think one or the other was any more or less traumatic.  I was raped by a family friend and I was raped by a government who told me I wasn’t capable of making my own choices in life.

The scars are the same.  The scars that never go away, the scars that remind us every second of every minute of everyday, 365 days a year, that we were born to be told by men what is possible for us and what is not.

The sheer terror of that never leaves us.  Is that freedom?  Is that liberty?  Is that what living in the United States of America means?  Does the flag wave for us or does it just wave for those who are the ‘chosen ones’ who tell us what we are worth?

The tragedy is that I don’t have an answer.  Is that what being a woman in America means?  The answer to that question is sadly, yes.

This is crossposted at DailyKos and My Left Wing

[Promoted by Steven D, because ending the right to choose an abortion has consequences for real people. It’s not some abstraction, and this diary brings that home very well.]

I’m tired because I couldn’t sleep last night.  I  kept waking up and staring at my scars which were barely visible in the light of the lamp on the nightstand next to my bed.  I kept the light on because I couldn’t bear to be in the dark again.

As I watched the Olympics last night I couldn’t concentrate.  My eyes invariably went back, time and again, to the scars.  

I remember so clearly what the doctor said to me when I woke up in the hospital.  He told me the scars would never go away, that when I looked at them they would remind me how close I had come to the end of my life.

He was wrong, when I look at the scars it never crosses my mind how close I had come to death.  When I look at the scars I’m reminded of the end of my childhood dreams.  I’m reminded of how many things ended in those days and months.  I’m reminded of the terror I felt, the horror of not being in charge, the outrage felt by others shaping my future.
There were many deaths in those days and months that led up to the scarring of my body and spirit.  There was the death of childhood aspirations.  There was the death of adolescence.  There was the death of a higher education.  There was the death of marrying for love.  There was the death of a certain naivete, of innocence and of personal ownership, there was most especially the death of freedom.

When I look at the scars on my wrist I see the utter desperation and the loss of dreams suffered from being forced into something I never wanted nor had any knowledge of.  Motherhood hit me like a trainwreck that shattered my hopes and dreams.  Forced motherhood left me bereft.  Forced motherhood left me despondent and it left me wanting, wanting the life I would have had if I had had a choice.

I entered my senior year of high school with high expectations.  I was a young girl who was born an enthusiasts of life.  I was born with a sparkle and an exuberance that was clear to all who came near.  I was born with a lust for life, a pure unadulterated joy for each new day.  I applied to several universities and private colleges in my senior year.  I was accepted to most but when news of my acceptance came from Lewis and Clark I was ecstatic.  I would go to college and in the summer I would intern at the Shakespearean Festival in Ashland.  I was charmed by the life I was stepping into.  I would be truly free for the first time.  

I was two weeks late before I realized I hadn’t started my period that first month.  There was in me a dread as I marked off each new day without any of the usual signs of my period.  The second month came and went.  The dread turned into terror.  There was morning sickness but there was also a sick feeling inside because I knew what was on the horizon.  I knew there were no choices for me, I knew my life as I had known it was over.  I also knew I had no business or desire to be a mother.  I started on a downward spiral in those days that would take many years to climb out of.  I was the shadow that lived behind my shadow.  The effervescence was dead, gone, buried under the quicksand that became my new life.  

My son was still a toddler when I went into the kitchen  and used the knife to cut the arteries in my wrist that left the scars I’ve been staring at the past couple of days.  The scars that don’t remind me of how close I came, the scars that remind me every single day of the gut wrenching and terrifying reality when women and young girls don’t own our bodies.  The scars speak to me of those horrible days after I realized I was pregnant.  The scars scream to me of battles lost before they had even been waged.  The scars are the voice of a kind of violence against women and young girls.  The kind of violence that hides behind women not having a choice.

I was afraid to be in the dark last night because the scars reminded me of when I came home from the hospital after I slit my wrist.  The movie, “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden” kept appearing in my head.  I was that girl, my greatest fear was that I would end up in a state run mental hospital because I was so far down in that deep, black, dark hole.  I couldn’t imagine a day being lived without that ever present fear.  I didn’t belong where I was, I belonged in a mental institution and when I was found out I would spend the rest of my life there.  The doors would shut and they would be locked.  The windows would be barred just as the windows in my soul were.  

I had to sleep with my mother that first year because I was so afraid of the dark.  The same darkness I couldn’t stand to be in last night.  The same darkness my scars lived in, the darkness we live in when we are no longer free.

Those very same scars make me weep for all the women and young girls who will be made to give birth when they’re not ready to have a child.  Those very scars will be seen on the wrists of women who can see no other way.  Those are the visible scars, the scars on our hearts and souls are there for a lifetime also.  

This is the land of the free except if you’re a woman or a young girl.  This is a democracy except if you’re a woman or a young girl.  This is a country that prides itself on justice except what’s just for a woman or young girl.  There is a Declaration of Independence except if you are a woman or a young girl.  There is liberty except if you are a woman or a young girl.

For those who doubt if this is all true, rest assured, we have the scars to prove it.  

I weep today for all those young girls who will be in a land of darkness with no light at the end of the long, narrow tunnel until they find a new sense of freedom that can only come with time and a new found resolve to live life once again.  It takes courage to get beyond the abyss.  It also takes a tremendous amount of patience and love, above all else love, from others and love of self.  

I’ve been sitting with my feelings, I’ve been stewing about Alito sitting on the Supreme Court, I’ve been trying mightily to come to a less than fiery condemnation of the Senate and how women were so viciously and immorally let down by every single senator, Republicans and Democrats.

We’ve been concentrating on the cloture vote, so many on the blogs worked hard to convince 41 senators it was the right thing to do, to dig down deep within themselves, to tap into their consciences and vote no on cloture. There has been a lot of disagreement on who let us down and who didn’t. There have been clarion calls for unity, there have been pleas to not surrender, to not give up, to fight the good fight.  What there hasn’t been is a willingness to admit and give respect to those of us who feel we are not anti-American or traitors to this party or cowards or idiots if we believe it is just as worthy, just as noble, just as courageous to fight for our lives, the lives we have known and gotten attached to.  

 
Give us a chance, give us your ear, give us credit to see beyond what happened yesterday and the day before.  Call the senators names if you must, but stop beating up on those of us who believe it takes enormous courage, it takes the truest of convictions, it takes becoming the change we want to see, perhaps not in our lifetime, but in the lifetimes of those who will follow us.  It takes giving up the security, shattered as it may be, to question what lies ahead, it takes being willing to say, this is it, this is enough, we must find another way.

Even though Barack Obama’s timing was horrendous, what he had to say about the cloture vote was correct.  The time to launch the campaign against Alito was not our responsibility, it is not our job to inform the American people, it doesn’t lie on our shoulders to ask the right questions, to be prepared for the hearings, to pay as much attention to the upcoming fight as our senators did selecting Christmas presents.  

We deserved more, we deserve better, we were not only forgotten, a gift was taken from us, the gift of life, the gift that comes when we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that those who lead us will do everything in their power not to put our lives in danger.  That gift was taken back in the past 91 days because our leaders had other things to do, more important things than women’s lives.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that, the gift of life every woman should have was stripped from our grasp.  

That is why we are searching our souls today for what to do next.  It isn’t cut and dried for many of us.  We love our country as much as anyone else does on this site, we are proud to be Americans even though we don’t agree with many of you here, we are not surrendering to those that would do us harm, we are not quitting, we are not giving up, we are not going to stop fighting.  

Kate Michelman made the following statement today on what this all means to the women and girls in this country.  She says it far more forcefully and eloquently than I can.  

A perfunctory debate    

As an American, I am sorely disappointed by the lack of commitment to women and fundamental rights by the United State Senate. It is particularly appalling that supposedly pro-choice Senators would stand aside in parliamentary silence and allow this right — and probably many others — to be whisked away with little more than perfunctory debate.

As a Pennsylvanian, I am particularly appalled that local and national Democrats would hand our Senate nomination to someone who openly supports giving Roe an Alito-induced death. Those whose political successes have depended on the ballots and contributions of pro-choice voters but now facilitate the career of someone who would repeal those rights deserve special enmity.

A generation ago, women who suffered the indignities and terror of illegal abortion came forward with a commitment to be “silent no more.” In light of today’s vote, those of us who walk in their footsteps should make a similar commitment. With Roe poised to fall, there is no reason to yield any more to arguments about “the lesser of evils.” Evil has been visited upon us, and we should resolve to do whatever it takes to redress the grievances we feel.

This is why it’s so difficult to just keep keeping on, to go along to get along, our senators stood aside in parliamentary silence as women’s lives hung in the balance.  

As an American, I am sorely disappointed by the lack of commitment to women and fundamental rights by the United State Senate.

As an American, I am sorely disappointed also.  I’m incensed by all the talking and postulating about being commited to women lives, to preserving our most fundamental right, the right to have dominion over our bodies when it turns out it was all just a bunch of hot air.  

I’m sick and tired of the rallying calls for women to do what women do best, fundraise, walk precincts, phonebank, and give those tidy little coffee chats in our living rooms while we are told, once again, that our rights will someday be important enough not just to protect but to even talk about on the local and/or national stage.  

With Roe poised to fall, there is no reason to yield any more to arguments about “the lesser of evils.” Evil has been visited upon us, and we should resolve to do whatever it takes to redress the grievances we feel.

Amen, Kate, amen.  

This is crossposted at dailykos and MLW

It’s been a long week for most of us.  The Alito confirmation hearings were exhausting and telling.  It says a lot that the spat between Specter and Kennedy, that the crying jag of Martha Alito, were what made the headlines, it speaks not just to our media but also to the job the Democratic senators did or rather did not do.  

When we hear on the Sunday talk shows that half of the senators didn’t know what `unitary executive power’ was it’s like a slap in the face.  When executive powers became as hot a button issues as abortion has been since Alito was nominated, I felt a rush of hope.  If the Democratic and Republican senators didn’t have what it takes to protect a woman’s right to choose surely they would care about the place Congress has in governing this great nation of ours.  

For those that think many of us are having a knee jerk reaction to the Alito hearings, for those of you who think we’ll get over ourselves, for those of you who think we haven’t thought this through, I’d like to offer evidence that that is simply not true.    
At least for me, even thinking of leaving this party has left me crestfallen for months.  It’s not something I take lightly.  It’s finally realizing that at some point it’s no longer about short term results, it’s about what we leave to our children and their children.  

There is no miracle fix, there is no magic bullet, there is a time when time is up, there’s a time when what comes next has to be looked at because none of it happens overnight.   A political party doesn’t dissolve overnight and the answer to a party that has left us behind isn’t built overnight.  When I look into the eyes of my grandsons I see the hope that is America.  When I look into their hearts I see a longing and I see dreams of what they aspire to.  When I hear what their souls say to me it is of an America they were born knowing, an America that speaks of justice, liberty and of freedom.  When I look into those eyes I know it is their future that matters most, that I am on the other side of looking out at the world, I am on the side that is looking in at their world that is to be.  I cannot entrust that world to the Democratic Party any longer.  

The following is a comment I made on a diary written by Eugene after Harriet Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court.  It was written on October 4th.  Since the lost election of 2004 I’ve thought a lot about my history with the Democratic Party.  What it has meant to me, what a touchstone it has been for me for four decades.  What a savior it became for me in 1966 when I was a pregnant teen in high school without a choice.  This party was my best hope, it was the best hope for women, it made me so proud to say, “I’m a Democrat” even though I would have to wait until 1972 to vote in a presidential election.  Not being of age didn’t stop me from joining Democratic clubs, didn’t stop me from becoming a feminist who protested the war and fought for Roe v. Wade and for the ERA.  I was a seasoned Democrat before I ever entered my first mark on a ballot.  

‘A tip of the hat and a so long to what once was’  

I wrote this comment, sorry for the length, in response to Eugene’s diary late last night.  All of this has been brewing inside my head and, most especially, in my heart.  It came into sharper focus after watching the non-leadership Democratic Party decide they needed to come out and show their mugs on camera saying Harriet Miers is a ‘nice lady.’  With leadership like that we really don’t need a Republican Party.

I’ve said it ad nauseum I know but after 40 years of being a Democrat it’s really hard and heartbreaking to even imagine quitting this party.  It’s hard to even type it through the tears.  Through all the ups and downs we, as Democrats, have been through during those decades we’ve always soldiered on because we had our principles to hold onto, we still had that deep down inner knowing that we stood for the truth of who we are as Americans.  That truth is only in sight for me when I’m on threads like this one in response to diaries like this where the true liberals congregate.  

For 35 years I truly believed I was fighting for equality for women, I was fighting for abortion rights, I was fighting against the death penalty, I was fighting for voters rights, I was fighting for better schools for the generation I was born into and the generation that were our children.  For the past 5 years I started to question if that was so.  I didn’t let go of the dream though, I still thought it was a possibility I would see myself as an equal.  I still had such high hopes I would see an amendment in my Constitution that told me women have equality at long last.  I still envisioned a day when I would stand up with such pride because we had finally won, we would have those chills that come when you have fought so hard for so long and finally prevailed.  I thought there would be dancing in the streets with trumpets blaring as we danced and sang knowing they could never take it away, the feeling when you know, inside your very soul, that you are equal to all men.  

What I know now, after November, 2004 is that it won’t be so.  I will die without knowing what it’s like to be an equal, not because I have an illness but because I don’t have a party that supports me.  I don’t have a party that protects me.  I don’t have a party that will stand up for me.  I don’t have a party that believes in the ERA enough to fight for the basic rights women should have had 250 years ago.  I don’t have a party that, even when they were the majority, saw fit to vote in the affirmative to send the ERA out to the states.  When asked, “should women be equal?” I have a party that said no, they cannot.

This is what I know now.  I know that the fight we fight today and tomorrow will be for the generation of Maryscotts, Eugenes, and Sassy Texans and for your children.  That what we choose to do today you will see in your lifetimes.  That your children and their children will know equality because you will keep fighting until they do.  I know that the party we create is not for my generation or even for yours but it is the party that your children and their children will prosper in.  

This all started for me when Reid became minority leader, when Pelosi said Tim Roemer should be chair of the DNC, when Schumer said Casey was ‘the candidate’, when Kos couldn’t let go of Langevin, when Hillary stood beside Democrats for Life.  It takes time to let go, it takes walking away with babysteps, it takes picking the pieces of your heart up as you go, it takes wiping a million tears away, it takes remembering the pride you felt just saying the word, Democrat and accepting that pride is a thing of the past, it takes believing there is something else, something better, something brighter, something healthier, something more vital and robust.  It takes knowing we are worth so much more, we are worth everything, we are the best there is, in our hearts and in our souls there lives majesty and goodness.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m very close to my swansong.  I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t take the heartache.  Forty years is enough, they’ve had my very best years so far and I’ve had the best of their years but it’s over.  I’ve loved being a Democrat more than I can say.  I wish all the Reids and the Schumers and the Leahys and the Clintons and the Pelosis and the Obamas knew how much this hurts.  I wish they could appreciate what it costs us to hang on, I wish they had an inkling how hard it is to leave.  

Count me in on what comes next.  The next new thing, whether it’s a party or the next best thing in the progressive movement.  Eugene has some excellent ideas.  Just give me a minute to wash my face, put on a dash of lipstick and a tip of my hat to the past.  

For me, it isn’t just the leadership in the Democratic Party, it’s also what the party itself has become.  I’m not sure what came first, the chicken or the egg, but the two elements in this instance are the leadership and the members of the party.  Whichever came first, the party started to shift to the right and I don’t think it’s going to go back to what was once known as the center.  Because it’s not just the leadership, it feels to me like I’ve stayed too long at the fair.  It’s no longer a fit, I’ve outgrown it or perhaps it has outgrown me but when I let the sadness rest I can see clearly that I no longer belong.

At first I did think that it might be my age but I really don’t think that is it.  For months on Kos there has been fighting that is vicious.  That is not to say we didn’t fight before in this party, of course we did but there were some things that were tried and true.  A healthy respect was one of those things.  Another one is that once women had rights those rights were respected.  It’s not that we didn’t have to prod the members to remember us, we did, but the foundation of the party made a place for us, be it smaller and quieter, there was still a place at the table.

Granted, it was a time of Feminism come to life once again and we weren’t shy about saying our piece.  Issues like sex discrimination, sexual harassment, equal pay were all issues that came out of the closet so to speak.  We fought mightily, we were called names, we were put in our place often but with steely determination we got our leadership to listen.  That isn’t happening any longer, it’s as if they gave us a voice for awhile and now they want that voice muted.  Women’s issues clearly scare them.  Abortion, reproductive rights, Title IX, equal pay, violence against women are all issues that threaten elections somehow.  It’s ridiculous and it’s true, this party is running scared away from the very word abortion, they don’t want to talk about a medical procedure that women deserve to have access to.  They don’t want to talk about our reproductive rights because then they might have to utter the word, abortion.  They don’t want to protect us period.   How often is Title IX or the Violence Against Women Act in the headlines?  Never because our leadership and many in this party don’t want to touch us with a 10 foot pole.

That attitude permeates the leadership and the members.  I’m only willing to expend energy fighting one or the other, not both.  We will be fighting the Republican Party for many, many years so clearly that’s where I think our best work should go.  Maybe others are better at fighting the center and the right of the Democratic Party, it’s clearly not my strong suit.  At the end of the day I’m not sure what has done me in more, the leadership, the center, or the right of either or both of the parties.  The telling thing is that I can’t differentiate, I don’t have an answer.  I think that’s a statement in itself.  

Before, during and after the pie fights on Kos and then after the election in 2004 all of this has been made very clear.  We’re a fractured party and I don’t think it will be different for a very long time.  To stay political, which is in my blood, I have to make a choice and that choice to me is to align myself with people who believe as I believe.  United we stand is absolutely true and I don’t believe the Democratic Party with us in it can accomplish that.  Just as Kos has suffered greatly from the exodus of strong women’s voices the Democrats will suffer when a proportionate number of us, liberal men and women, leave but they won’t know what the cost will be unless and until we do.  I truly believe that.  It’s not out of revenge or bitterness that I say that, it’s because we want more, we want different things, we have different values and principles.  It doesn’t make them wrong but it does make us right because then, and only then, can we stop doing what we scream and yell at them for doing, we will stop compromising.  

Now Alito stands before us as a threat to the country we have known and the country we have all loved.  There is no disagreement in what direction this country will likely take if he is confirmed.  There is disagreement on what actions should follow.  There is disagreement on who will stay and who will leave this party.  I’m sure all will agree, no matter where we are in this debate, we are all filled with fear.

I wrote the following letter in response to Senator Feingold’s request for our views on the prospect of Alito as a Justice on the Supreme Court.  I have since emailed it to all of our senators on the Judiciary Committee because what they decide affects not just their constituents, it affects every generation of Americans living now and those who will be born in the not too distant future.  

‘Alito is extraordinary, you must filibuster, our fate is in your hands.’

As a lifelong Democrat I’ve had ups and downs with this party.  Every time my party compromises any of my rights as a woman to have an abortion under Roe v. Wade, I am livid.  Every presidential election cycle that comes and goes without women’s issues being a top priority, I am incensed.  Every year that goes by without the passage of the ERA I say to myself, through clenched teeth, “maybe next year.”

I always brush myself off and pick up the mantle of the Democratic Party because I’ve been a member of this party for almost 40 years.  40 years of support, 40 years of phonebanking, walking precincts, hosting coffees in my home, fundraising, GOTV, the list goes on and on.  

I’m loyal to this party but I’m having an increasingly hard time believing this party is loyal and/or committed to me.  I am beyond angry or livid or incensed today though.  I’m frightened by where the Republican Congress and administration are taking us and I’m scared that the only thing that stands between Americans and the evil and corrupt government we have under the Republican leadership is the party I’ve believed in for almost four decades.

It isn’t always about losing in and of itself, it is often in the way we lost that counts.  Alito’s beliefs on where this country should go is a snapshot for every other Republican in roles of leadership.  It’s abortion rights, unitary executive status, the environment, worker’s rights, civil rights, the rights of the hungry and unsheltered, women’s reproductive rights, equal pay, Medicare and so much more.

I’ve drawn my line in the sand Senator.  That line is what you do as a congressional body to stop the confirmation of Alito.  We will most likely lose but what I know for sure is this; if the Democratic senators can’t make me feel safe in my home from my government essentially spying on me with wiretaps and surveillance, then you surely can’t make me feel safe from terrorists.  If the Democratic senators can’t address violence against women overall but also against Alito’s view that women should notify their husbands about terminating their pregnancies, then you cannot protect me from terrorists.  If you can’t protect our children from law enforcement that will shoot them in the back because they may have stolen $10., then you can’t shield us from the terror that lurks from fundamentalist extremists outside of the court that calls itself Supreme.  If the Democratic senators cannot stop the strip searches of our ten-year-old daughters without a court order, then you can’t even begin to tell us we’re safe from those who wish us harm.

Samuel Alito will set back the advances we have made in the lives of women for decades to come.  He will stifle our children’s rights to an education that will surely speak to the quality of their lives and their children’s lives.  Samuel Alito will have a say in the air they breathe, in the water they drink and in the availability of national parks we have come to take for granted.

Samuel Alito will be the defining moment for many of us, for the bloc of women voters this party has come to rely on, it will spell the future for us in many ways.  You have a say in what that future will be for us and for you as leaders of our party.  I will stay home for the first time since 1972 if you don’t stand up for me.  I have placed my vote for the D candidate for 34 years.  I have proudly done so, it will break my heart not to ever again, but stay home I will unless you give me reason not to.

That history for me will come to an end if my party refuses to protect my rights and the rights of my daughter and her daughter.  I will stay home before I vote for one more Democrat if you fail to listen this time.

It’s no less than women’s lives that are at stake here.  There has never been as compelling a reason in the 30+ years I’ve voted as there is now.  Don’t take lightly when I say it’s women’s lives.  I was a pregnant teen in high school in 1966 without a choice.  One Monday morning the news of Charlotte’s death rang through the halls of my high school, she bled to death after she tried to self abort.  A boy named Bobby brutally beat his girlfriend until he was sure she had lost the baby she was carrying.  There were abortion wards in those years, all the girls my age knew of them, those wards were our choice.  

If you send us back to that world we will not forget for a very long time. When our daughters, sisters, granddaughters and nieces ask us why we lost Roe v. Wade we will tell them we fought hard to protect our rights of choice but we had a party that didn’t think it was `extraordinary’ enough to do so.   I hope you do what’s right, what’s right for us and what’s right for you, so we never have to have that conversation.

Make no mistake, we are deadly serious.

Sincerely,

XXX

I was watching the figure skaters who will go to the Olympics this year and those who fell just short of their dreams.  The ice dancing team of Tanitha Belbin and Benjamin Agosto skated to Born in The USA, An American Woman and America the Beautiful.  They did so as she carried an American flag across the ice.  It was a breathtaking moment for those who know their story.   Tanitha is a Canadian who, with her partner, Benjamin, have won the silver medal at the World’s Championship.  This is their third straight U.S. Championship gold medal.  For a country who savors those who win and banishes those who don’t, their struggles to gain citizenship for Belbin has been like a metaphor for ice dancing.  It doesn’t stop there however.  The reigning U.S. silver medalists, Melissa Gregory and Russian native, Denis Petukhov will be going to the Olympics for the first time as representatives for the U.S.  He won his citizenship in February.  They placed second.  The couple who placed fourth, and out of contention, in this year’s U.S. Championship, Morgan Matthews and Maxim Zavozin, would have also been in the Olympics as he was sworn in as a U.S. citizen on December 30th.  

This reminds us all who and what we are.  We are a country of immigrants, a people who longed for and dreamed of a better life, a republic built on the principles of a democracy.  As Tanitha and Benjamin spun and glided their way into our hearts, they held our flag up as a symbol to us and to the world, we are America, sometimes we skate on the thinnest of blades but we persevere because we live in the land of the free.  We know it, our hope is our leaders will find their skating legs and glide with us into a future where we are free from the powers that be.  

Crossposted at DailyKos and MyLeftWing

I’ve spent considerable time the past few days wondering about the fight we face and how it is different from battles and wars of the past.  It still has that uncompromising agony to it, it still has death and destruction, it still has mighty dissent, it still has a resolve by many to quiet the voice of the weapons being used on the battlefield and on the soil of our homeland.  

There is in every turn, in every heart, in every soul, in every spirit, in every person we choose to gather with during these troubling times a sense that we will not give up for to do so is to give up on humankind, to give up on our life as we know it, but mostly it is to give up on our country, the America we have always known, the greatest nation in the history of the world, the beacon of hope and promise for those around the globe as they have said that is freedom, that is liberty, that is justice, that is democracy.  We have in years past smiled proudly as we say, “yes that is so.”

Or is it?

Below the fold, the rest of the story  
This role of a dissenter was not chosen but was born in me just as my laugh, my tears, my passion, my curiosity, my awe of life was.  The defining moment for me was when I took my first breath, looked at my mother and had my first real knowing of love.  The moment that shaped me more than any other was when my sister held me in her arms, looked at me with eyes already filled with conviction along with a desire to teach me what she was born knowing, that we are put here to speak our minds, to say what we mean and to mean what we say.  In her eyes I saw a determination to never believe the world as it is cannot become the world it can be.  It was then that my journey was revealed to me, a journey with these women of morals and values that spoke for every person on this earth.  A journey that lasted over half a century.  

It wasn’t an easy task for Sister to make me be the person she so desperately wanted me to be.  She had to throw away my go-go boots and sit on me to listen to Bob Dylan, Lenny Bruce, and Mario Salvo.  She read to me not of fairy tales or later Nancy Drew or Judy Bloom but articles about Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr.  She put us front and center in front of the TV with news reports of the bombings of the churches in the South, James Meredith, Rosa Parks and the bombing murders of four little black girls whose only crime it was to be born ‘coloreds’.

Sister watched with me as we saw the signs for white drinking fountains as opposed to ‘coloreds’.  We saw the courage of blacks sitting at the soda fountain in Woolworth’s and refusing to leave.  We saw the violence in the streets, the blasting of firehoses that threw blacks against the sides of buildings or levelled them onto the asphalt.  Sister would push my hair out of my eyes and tell me we were not special but we had been born the right color in a land where to be born otherwise was seen as a sin when the true sin was bigotry and prejudice.  She told me to never forget, not for a moment, the things we had seen.

In 1963, on a June day that was already so hot the electric waves were bouncing off the asphalt, Sister took me to our neighbors house to watch the latest assassination of a man whose only crime was to stand up for his beliefs and loudly proclaim the rights for ‘negroes’ were the same rights as for whites.  

Shirley and Chuck Hornbeck handed us our own plane tickets that would fly us to Mississippi so we could experience the grief felt by a people that were only asking for justice in an unjust world.  Sister kissed my cheek, took my hand and as we walked home told me to not say anything, she would tell Mom and Daddy, she would make sure we went to Medgar Evers funeral no matter what.  I still don’t know what lie she told them, it never mattered to me, the only thing that was important then as now, was that I was the lucky one to have been born my sister’s sister.  We were 14 and 13 years old the day we landed in Mississippi but Sister had been teaching me since I was born to pay attention, to not forget, to wrap my very soul around the things I saw and heard.  

The assassinations of so many further shaped who we are.  Malcolm X, George Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy.  We saw in Angela Davis a woman that stood fearlessly in front of a microphone and said to our government, you have committed murder in all of our names and you will be punished.  The Black Panthers stood up for who they were and thus became an example to us of how far the envelope must sometimes be pushed to be heard and to effect change, that no less than the right to stand tall was at stake, there was no glory in giving up, there was honor in violence but none in bowing down.  Huey held his head up and so we learned to also.  

There was in us an innate sense that peace could prevail so as Lyndon Johnson stood up and spoke of change, when we saw the Voters Rights Act become the law of the land, when we knew we had in our leader an advocate for poverty in this country, our attention turned to a war that was telling our teenaged friends they must fight. They couldn’t tell us why, they only told us they must. We were in high school, young and firm and ready to raise the rooftops.  We had seen strife, we had been raised in a time of dissent, it was second nature to us.  

I have recollections of feeling this kind of fear.  It was a time when nothing was taken seriously, yet everything was taken seriously.  It was a war in Vietnam’s time.  A fine time to be young, a terrible time to be at war.  I still think, in some ways, I was at my best in those years.  It was as if we couldn’t be silenced, we couldn’t be stopped, we had already seen too much to give up.  The reality is we were scared to death.  We thought it was sex, parties, fleeting attachments, rock and roll, but certainly not fear.  We didn’t know we were dismissing those that dared to go to war as we were demonstrating against those that sent our children to war.  Everything felt so free to us here; all we knew how to do was try to be wild.  We were too young to know how to grieve.  

The deeper we tried to get inside ourselves the more pain we seemed to feel.  We didn’t understand how we could be so hell-bent on having fun when half the world seemed to be dying.  It seemed the more we danced, the louder we got, the more boys died.  Why didn’t anything work to drown out the tears, the moans, the last breath of all of our friends and brothers?  Why was a land so far away responsible for so much sorrow?  We were supposed to be carefree, dammit, where was the immaturity, where was the youth, where was the aloofness, the casualness of being young?  All of it was lost in a draft that said, number 161, you go, no name, just a number, you go.

I remember being old enough to have a baby, old enough to be working full-time.  I remember boys old enough to go to war, to die, and yet we were all babies.  We were so naive and idealistic.  At nineteen I was old enough to be running a college bookstore, to be active in an anti-war movement, and old enough to organize the transportation for a moratorium that would consist of 500,000 people.  Yet I felt so young, so immature, and so unready to know the answers.

I had a psychology professor at the time tell me that some people were too gentle to live among wolves.  That’s exactly how so many of us felt.  Watching the news at night became like a catharsis.  You could shed a whole skin watching one thirty-minute program and yet not be able to face the world.  The partying continues, never enough places to go, never enough people to block the cries and gunfire from another world.  Take another drink, another boy dies.  Take another hit of acid, another boy dies.  Take another hit off a joint, another boy dies.  Never enough to make the death go away, never enough to silence the guns, to hold back the bombs, the napalm, the destruction, the callous loss of innocent life in a country that didn’t want our presence or our killing machines.

By day I lived the life as a working mother, of an activist.  At night I couldn’t drink fast enough, do drugs fast enough, or have sex enough to make the chatter in my head stop.  I had been raised by parents that told me everyone else was perfect, the world outside the walls of my life was perfect.  I had no idea there were powers that be that would say no to me.  I didn’t know my friends would die 6,000 miles away, too far to reach, too far to touch, too far to hear their last words.  I had no idea there were such wolves.  My essence started to be shaped by hands other than my own.  I felt powerless to do anything until I saw the results of our outrage.  For the first time in my life I saw the results of my anger and involvement.  I would never forget.  

I’ve struggled trying to recognize myself in these times of war, torture and the taking away of women’s rights.  I try my hardest to understand and honor other’s opinions and resolve for winning when I see winning as equality that embraces women instead of saying our rights are not necessary for the evolution of democracy.  

I can’t seem to reconcile who it is that comes on Kos for hours a day and is so filled with anger and hate leaving behind the softer, more human, inspired, grateful and loving person who wraps herself into the arms of a man who hasn’t lived long enough to know this is Act II, that Act I for me was Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, Roe v. Wade and feminism taking sprout.   This is the woman who has fought all those battles and foolishly believed they were in the past, sighed such a sweet sigh of relief they were won, and had a vision of new battles not old ones made new again.

Death Be Not Proud keeps repeating itself in my mind over and over.  I have buried my sister, my one-day-old grandson, my mother, my 12-year-old niece, my marriage, my health made well again with chemo and have bounced back everytime because I am and always have been in awe of this thing we call life.  Optimism and hope has always won the day against fear and hatred.  Passion for issues that make the world the best it can be has always triumphed over the petty prejudice and bigotry of those that would have the few dictate the world for the many.  

So why can’t I see the good before I see the bad?  Why do the passions of hate and rage come so easily?  How have I allowed these monsters to enter my soul and my heart?  Why can’t I find the answers that have always been available to me?  Why don’t I understand how others can be so dismissive of the rights of some, of heroes of the past and dreams of valiant heroes in the future?  How can I so utterly fail, what words are the right ones, what stories will open the gates for all to finally get it that women are making a choice and to the consternation of many, that choice is life over politics?  What will ultimately fill the gap of the great divide?  What will it take to bring us all together?

Cross posted at DailyKos and MyLeftWing

The FDA made an announcement today that emergency contraception will not be made available without a prescription.  In it’s relentless obsession with all things to do with women’s reproductive health they said it isn’t safe for girl’s under 17 to buy the EC because they’re afraid they won’t understand the directions.  

Well lordy, lordy who doesn’t support that, afterall the directions are so complicated.  Take one of the two little white pills after you’ve had unprotected sex (within 5 days) and take the second little white pill within 12 hours of taking the first little white pill.  Now really, they’re saying someone who can’t understand and follow these instructions should give birth because they’re, what, so grown up and ready to have a baby?  

The rest of the story, after the fold

 
Ironically, this is Women’s Equality Day.  The rightwing has given us another present on a day that celebrates our equality.  They, once again, refuse to do the very thing that this day celebrates, equality.

Perhaps one of the sticking points for the newly confirmed FDA Commissioner was that there just wasn’t enough information, the EC just hadn’t been studied enough … let’s just take a gander to see if that is so …

despite years of study, despite strong support from the FDA’s professional staff, despite extensive public hearings and commentary, and despite the near-unanimous recommendations of not one but two FDA advisory panels, this newly appointed Commissioner has again delayed women’s access to emergency contraception (EC) — and with the lame excuse that they need more time for “public comment.”

Apparently every rightwing organization and conservative evangelical church hasn’t had the opportunity to weigh in yet.  

Once again, the FDA does nothing but love, love, love us women and goes out of its way to protect us, bless their little pee pickin’ hearts.

Finally, the FDA says it is not making EC available without prescription to women 17 and over because they can’t figure out how to prevent access to those under 17. C’mon — as if they haven’t seen drugstores deal with alcohol, cigarettes, and the nicotine patch for years.

Here’s the link in case you haven’t had enough.  

http://www.now.org/press/08-05/08-26b.html

In closing, for those of you who think that, perhaps, women are just menstruating or whining or a little over the top worried about our rights, it just ain’t so, boys, it just ain’t so.  

Cross posted at DailyKos and My Left Wing

I watched `Dead Man Walking’ last night.  Whenever I see a movie or read an article about someone being executed my mind goes back to a time when something happened, something that no one ever imagines could possibly be true for them, I go back to the year 1972.  I lived in a small university town in Northern California.  My friends were college students mostly, my friend Marcie and I were the only ones with small children, we were the only ones that worked instead of attending college full time.  At night we shrugged off our daytime guise, we weren’t students or mothers or employed, we were all just friends who spent every evening together. We were friends packed around a barbeque grilling our dinner, laughing, talking, drinking beer.  There were fifteen of us, young men and young women, obsessed with the war, feminism, the politics of the nation, speaking out against our government and holding the opinion that anyone older than 30 could not be trusted.  Who we did trust was each other.

There was a week at the end of the school year that was dedicated to a festival that celebrated the seniors.  There was live music, there was river rafting but most of all there was drinking, lots and lots of drinking.  It was a week that guaranteed 7 days later we would all wonder how on earth we were still alive or not in jail.  Until 1972 when we stopped wondering because the cold hand of reality slapped us in the face.

There’s more

One of our group of friends was an amazing man with a sad history.  He was brilliant, he was funny, he was a mixture of outgoing and introverted, he was the clown face of happy and sad, he never talked about his past, never shared stories of his childhood or of his family.  He was loved though by this rowdy bunch.      

Senior Days started out as usual that year.  It was hot, the stifling heat that sends waves up from the asphalt, the kind of heat you run for shade from.  The kind of heat that, when you’re young and firm, you wear as little as possible.   It was the fifth night of partying.  We had been to so many parties that week they all ran into each other.  If we weren’t drunk we were on our way to being, sober is what we weren’t.  We went from house to house, we went from fraternity to fraternity.  We danced to live music in the streets.  We stumbled and fell.  We all held each other up, we always had each others backs.  Then it all started to unravel, it all began to fall apart.

We woke up the next morning hung over, the world was spinning, we couldn’t talk our mouths were so dry.  Everything was fuzzy, our heads pounded.  Warren then walked into the house, he was the sanest of us all, he was the straightest of us all, Warren was the one who kept us all together.  He was somber, his face was white, he was trembling, he told us all to listen.

He started talking so slowly and so softly we had to ask him to speak up.  His voice cracked, tears welled up in his eyes as he told us that Paul had been arrested early in the morning for rape and murder.  The young man without a history, without a family had confessed to the crimes, he told the police he was guilty.  It was a stunning moment, there was a collective gasp from us all, the agony and terror were palpable, the shock was tangible.  We fired question after question at Warren.  He didn’t know anymore than what he had told us.  We all hurriedly got dressed to go to the jail to see Paul, to let him know he did have a family, that we were there for him.  

The twins called their father, who was a successful criminal attorney in Chicago, to find out what we should do.  He told the girls he would find the best lawyer he could for Paul and he would pay for his defense.  He said it was important for Paul to know he was not alone.  He said he would try to rearrange his schedule so he could fly out to see Paul.  Then he said to get to the jail as quickly as possible to give our support to Paul.

In the days to come we all walked around in a daze.  We knew the girl Paul had raped and killed.  We knew Paul’s side of the story.  He had taken several hits of acid, he had had way too much to drink.  He took the girl into the park.  They had started kissing and then she changed her mind and said no, she wanted him off of her.  Paul didn’t stop, he said he couldn’t, he said it was like he was possessed, he said it was like someone else was inside his head screaming.  When he finished he looked down and her clothes were ripped off, her face was contorted into an horrific, frightened scream.  Her fingernails were bloody from scratching him trying to make him stop, trying to tell him he must stop because she couldn’t breathe, he was strangling the life out of her.  We learned later she was a virgin.  

Paul was arrested early the next morning.  He confessed without an attorney, he didn’t try to say he wasn’t guilty, he knew he had committed the greatest sin against another human being, he had raped and murdered a young girl who had every right to live a full life.  He was overcome with remorse.  When I saw him a few days later he wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t make eye contact, he looked at his hands the entire time I was there.  It was as if he couldn’t believe his hands had killed her, he looked at them like they belonged to someone else.   He was deep in despair, he was a rapist and murderer, that’s what he had turned into, everything he was before that night had been obliterated, now the only thing he was in his eyes was a rapist and murderer.  There would be no redemption for him, he wouldn’t make it past the guilt.  

The next morning the phone rang.  Warren answered but didn’t say another word besides hello.  He quietly and slowly put the receiver in the cradle and turned looking at the floor.  He said simply, “Paul hung himself sometime in the middle of the night.  He was pronounced dead a couple hours ago.”  He said our number and names were the only ones he had given.  He said he had no one else.

We were all so deep in grief, we were confused, we didn’t know what feelings were going to pop up from minute to minute.  We looked at each other with inquiring eyes as if there were some hidden secret trapped inside.  We didn’t know if what we were feeling was right or wrong.  Is it okay to love a rapist and murderer?  Was it a betrayal of the victim to support the rapist?  Should we feel shame for understanding and having compassion for the murderer?  

We walked through the next few days as if we were sleep walking.  Paul would be given a pauper’s funeral.  He would be put into a pine box and buried in a field with other unclaimed bodies.  He wouldn’t have a gravestone or a marker of any kind.  He would be under 6 feet of dirt as if he had never existed.   The person he was before that night would be gone, lost in our memories, with no way to return and remember who he was before that night.  

Paul was my son’s best friend.  He was handsome and sweet.  He was full of life and love.  He was the quintessential hippie who reveled in the summer of love.  He took Derek and I to our first concert as mother and son, Derek was just 5.  He spread our sleeping bags out on the grass, he waded through hundreds of bodies to get us soda and cookies.  He explained the music of the sixties and early seventies to Derek.  He painted his little face and turned him into a happy clown.  When Country Joe McDonald and the Fish came onstage Derek got sad.  Paul asked him what was wrong and Derek said he didn’t have a daddy to take him fishing.  Paul promised him he would, that they would go fishing very soon.  Derek said he wanted to go just with him, his mom didn’t get to go.  Paul laughed and said, `I’m with you Sport (his nickname for Derek), no girls allowed.’  They both smiled and winked at each other.  I pretended indignation at the very mention of the word, girl.  

Three days later there was a knock on the door.  It was Paul with two fishing poles and a can of worms.  He had been learning how to bait and fish, he was ready to go to the `Show’ with his buddy.  I can’t remember if they caught any fish, all I remember is that he never disappointed my son, he was loving and attentive and kind.  He was Derek’s father through those days and years.   He was the first man to show Derek what being a man truly is.  He was a perfect role model.  That’s who he was, that’s still who he is, that’s who I see when I think of him.  I hope and pray he has found peace and serenity because in the note he left he didn’t think he would.

The twins parents wired the money for the funeral we arranged for Paul.  It was difficult, we were called names, we felt so badly for the family of the girl, we were torn but ultimately we couldn’t stand to see him buried in a pine box without a marker.  He was more than who he was that night.  We knew the man that the media didn’t know, we knew who else he was, we knew he was far, far more.

So Dead Man Walking took me back to those days.  It also took me to a time when I knew I would never stop advocating against the death penalty.  I already was against it, what happened the day of the funeral sealed it for me.  We had the memorial at the gravesite, we felt it was the most honorable thing to do not to gather first at a place like a church or the park.  We wanted it to be at a single destination.  All fifteen of us attended, I let Derek come, again I was torn but he knew what had happened and he was as grief stricken as we are were.  He said he wanted to say goodbye to his friend.  

After several of us had spoken a woman none of us knew walked up to the casket.  She wasn’t crying, she didn’t say a word, she simply laid a yellow rose on top.  She left as quietly as she had come.  It wasn’t until a few days later that we learned who she was and why she had come.  We knew Warren’s mom had a friend who was an acquaintance of the girl’s mother.  Warren came to dinner one night and told us what he had learned.  The girl’s mother had come to the funeral because she hadn’t made it to the jail in time to speak with Paul.  She said she had tried but it was the policy not to let the victims families in to see the prisoners.  She said all she had wanted was to tell Paul she forgave him.  She wanted him to know that she was against the death penalty, that if it was ever on the table she would speak against it.  That when she thought about it it had become obvious to her what would save them both, that forgiveness was the only thing that would bring her closure.  She didn’t want to harbor anger and bitterness, that she wanted to be able to remember her daughter for the life she had, for who she was before her death.  If she saw Paul as a monster, if she stayed wrapped up in rage, she would never have the peace of mind needed to remember her daughter in a way that brought her joy.  She said she could only accomplish that with forgiveness.  She said there must be an end to violent deaths.

I learned so much about life in those few days.  I learned forgiveness is indeed the key to life.  I learned that we are capable of extreme acts of kindness not just for others but for ourselves as well.  I learned that nothing is too difficult, nothing is beyond our reach.  I learned that it’s possible to have a friend that commits the most gruesome, despicable crime against a woman and we can still love and cherish that friend.  I learned that every life is sacred, every life.  I learned that we judge not just one act of another but the entire life of that person.  I learned from my son, who told me the night of Paul’s funeral that he will miss him and love him because he took him fishing, that worms can be messy but we can love them just the same.