Blogging the Yearly Kos Convention - Afterwards

Diversity at the Yearly Kos (Netroots) Convention

Guest blogger Shireen Mitchell looks long and hard at the demographics of the blogosphere.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--With the close of the 2007 Yearly Kos convention, a gathering of bloggers and Internet activists that took place last weekend in Chicago, a vigorous debate was sparked over the convention’s demographics, which, as reported in yesterday’s Washington Post, reveal a largely white, male population. Among the 1500 registered progressive participants in the conference, an estimated one percent was Latin American, about three percent was African American and Native Americans comprised about 0.2 percent.

In a more perfect world, the blogosphere would represent the diversity of the overall population in order to bring a variety of issues and voices to the attention of our country’s lawmakers. Unfortunately, due to various issues that include, but are not limited to, socio-economic class, education, culture, gender, sexual orientation and other issues that hang up communications in most societies, getting equal platforms to engage these other communities takes more work than many are willing to endure. As a result, you get a blogosphere that reflects the demographics -- predominantly white and male –- that characterize the political conversation in other media.

Although, when compared with traditional media, the Internet has allowed a more diverse range of voices to be heard, I am not at all surprised of the current demographics of the progressive blogger community. As early adopters of new technologies, it’s white men first and then everyone else. White women usually follow next, then African American men -- at which point more diverse groups emerge. Women of color are usually at the low end of the early adopters.

In the early years -- when home computers first made their mark -- the demographics of users matched exactly what is happening today in the blogosphere. If, as a woman, you logged on to BBS (bulletin) boards, you were automatically pounced on by all the men, since a woman posting on those boards was such a rare sight. When the Internet was first created, the wave of early adaptors was exactly the same. Today in the blogosphere, this dynamic continues through attacks on women who have something to say and dare to question the ideology of men taking part in the current political debate.

So I pose a question to those who think the dynamics that play out in our society today could turn to their opposite: If, in the beginning, bloggers were all women of color, would you question the demographics? Or, would you question whether blogging should be considered an important form of participation in democracy, and one in which you should be involved?

As a woman of color walking around the Yearly Kos convention, I was not surprised at the demographics; this is what I, as an African American woman and part of the past and current digital revolutions, experience in our society every day. Are we really addressing the diversity question? Is it fair to address diversity at one conference if we are not willing to hold up a mirror to our society at large?

--Shireen Mitchell

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Shireen Mitchell is the executive director of Digital Sisters, Inc.

Getting Blogged at the BlogHer Conference (Round-up)

Links to Posts from 2007 BlogHer Conference

Friday, July 27, 2007

What do you stand for?


Saturday, July 28, 2007

Candidates to women bloggers:
Wish we could be there; have a nice conference

Blogging the Yearly Kos Convention (Round-up)

Links to Real Women Posts From the 2007 Yearly Kos Convention


Friday, August 3, 2007
Feminist Bloggers Poised to Combine Resources and Strength

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Blogging While Female

Prez Candidates Too Busy for Women Blogger Convention Make it to Male-Populated Conference

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Diversity at the Yearly Kos (Netroots) Convention

Blogging the Yearly Kos Convention - Saturday

Prez Candidates Too Busy for Women Blogger Convention Make it to Where the Boy Bloggers Are

CHICAGO--Last weekend, as I wrote here, only two of all the presidential campaigns deigned to send representatives to the BlogHer conference, a non-partisan gathering of women bloggers whose organizers had invited all the presidential candidates to either appear before attendees, or send surrogates. The two campaigns whose leaders understood the significance of the gathering were those of Democrats John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, both of which sent surrogates. (Edwards sent his highest-powered representative: his wife, Elizabeth.)

What a difference less than a week makes. Or perhaps it's the gender of the participants. For here at the Yearly Kos conference -- a gathering of progressive bloggers whose white, male contingent appears to comprise the majority of attendees, all of the Democratic candidates appeared, together on a stage in a forum moderated by Matt Bai of the New York Times Magazine and Joan McCarter of Daily Kos.

For the record, when the candidates were asked, via e-mail, by blogger John Pontificator if, upon winning the election, they would appoint an official White House blogger, all except Mike Gravel* said they would. (Ravel said he would do his own blogging.) Clinton thought a few seconds before raising her hand, and said, "Why not?" Then Edwards announced: "I will have an official White House blogger, and her name is Elizabeth Edwards."

--Adele M. Stan

*Thanks to Cheyanne for fixing my spelling.

For more on how women bloggers get missed -- and dissed -- by candidates and media, check out Jennifer Pozner's piece at Women's Media Center.

Blogging the Yearly Kos Convention - Saturday

Blogging While Female


CHICAGO--This morning, Garance Franke-Ruta, who blogs at TAPPED and on her eponymous blog, The Garance, conducted a panel called "Blogging While Female," which featured Jessica Valente of Feministing, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Gina Cooper of The Daily Kos. Each of the women addressed the experience they've had with online "trolls" and stalkers, usually men who use the comments sections of blogs to attack women writers, usually in sexualized ways.

Following an appearance she made on the Web-based TV program, Blogging Heads, Franke-Ruta received, she said, some 57 comments on her blog concerning whether or not she should have worn a barrette in her hair.

On a far more ominous note, Valente talked about how her Flckr page (a free service that will host your personal photo gallery on the Web) was used by trolls who downloaded photos of her and used them to alter pornographic images, replacing the face of the porn model with Valente's own. She made the point that the difference between online abuse such as this harassment in physical space is that these images will live on, as will keyword phrases that link her name with sexually demeaning terms as they appeared in comments on her blog posts.

Marcotte, who had a brief and controversial stint as the blogger of the John Edwards presidential campaign, spoke of how one man, who took exception to her inclusion on Pandagon, an "A-list," multi-voice blog, published her home address on the Web, and called her boss to try to get her fired.

What one calls oneself online often has some bearing on the sort of comments or e-mails one receives. Cooper explained that she has two e-mail addresses through which she takes correspondence on the Kos Web site. One contains her first name -- a decidedly feminine moniker -- and the other does not. She receives far more vicious and sexually threatening messages through the one that features her first name (Gina).

During the Q&A session, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sisters, Inc., told us that most states have cyberstalking statutes, but they're either not enforced, or are too specific to address the full range of harassment and taunting that women bloggers often endure. Also, she said, a line about cyberstalking has been added to a new version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

--Adele M. Stan

Blogging the Yearly Kos Convention

Feminist Bloggers Poised to Combine Resources and Strength

CHICAGO--Here at the Yearly Kos conference, progressives of many stripes who normally convene in the blogosphere have gathered together in the physical space of the sprawling McCormick Place convention center to learn of the latest trends and create strategies for working together.

Yesterday, a gathering of feminist bloggers, in a discussion moderated by Tracy Van Slyke of Media Consortium and Jessica Clark of American University, took on the matter of how organizations that advocate for women in media are often unaware of each others' projects and wind up duplicating each others' efforts. Coming on the heels of last week's BlogHer conference, what I'm seeing is an ever-widening circle of women bloggers, reporters and media-reform advocates who gave begun to connect and inter-connect their efforts. When this happens, the ability to coordinate with each other as we strive together to crack the commentary continuum could truly leverage the impact of women in media, both mainstream and not.

Newsweek, YouTube and An Abortion Mini-Doc

Anna Quindlen’s column for Newsweek, How Much Jail Time?, spotlights a pretty cool little mini-documentary about abortion protestors in Libertyville, Illinois.

Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them."

You have to hand it to the questioner; he struggles manfully. "Usually when things are illegal there's a penalty attached," he explains patiently. But he can't get a single person to be decisive about the crux of a matter they have been approaching with absolute certainty.

Now Quindlen’s column is focused on abortion (and I urge people to read it), but I found it baffling that the online version of her column didn’t even include a link to the featured clip! In this day and age there’s no excuse for that bit of oversight. (Update: They have added the link).

Fortunately Real Women, Real Voices has tracked down the clip. I agree with Quindlen, it’s a pretty fascinating mini-documentary running six and half minutes.

You can find the clip on YouTube here.

But I wanted to know more about who made and it and why, so I e-mailed the creator, Lee Goodman. It turns out the clip has a pretty long history, it was posted online on July 11, 2005, and is part of a pre-YouTube group that provides videoblogging and commentary. Lee says his website has been in operation since 2005 and he’s now posting his videos on YouTube as well as his website. A nice feature of his At Center Network website is that he offers low-bandwidth downloads.

As I discussed earlier in regardless to the digital divide, people who only have access to dial-up and low-bandwidth—and there are plenty—are essentially locked out of the YouTube revolution.

Lee said the original clip, as featured on his website, had been discussed by blogs before. But, without his permission and without him knowing, someone posted it to YouTube, where Quindlen found it. He said on Sunday a friend of his recognized from Quindlen’s column the description of his clip, which alerted him to the fact it even was on YouTube! After that, Lee said he did get in touch with Quindlen who related that they didn’t link to the video because they couldn’t verify the author. (However Lee has now put up the video on YouTube yesterday under his own name and asked the other poster to take down theirs.)

The clip itself depicts abortion protestors in Libertyville, Illinois on July 9, 2005. Lee said he wanted to clear up one misconception, the group was not actually protesting an abortion clinic—they were just demonstrating on the side of a road, but not by a clinic.

I asked him how he came film the protestors and how he got the idea of asking them what they thought should happen to a woman if she had an illegal abortion? Lee said he lives in nearby Northbrook and has been recording many different types of events, which includes interviewing participants. He said he stumbled upon the question because it was the only one that seem to provoke real thought from his participants.

“I didn’t set out to ask that question,” he said. “I set out to see what was going on. But I found that that was one question I wasn’t getting back pat answers…it was the one people were struggling to answer.”

He said most of the other questions he posed to the protestors tended to get the same kind of flat rhetoric. This question, he said, “engendered on all sides a soulful, deep and thoughtful discussion.”

“Whenever I cover an event I always ask ‘why are you here and what are you hoping to accomplish?’ My practice in interviewing people is to draw answers out of them and not only hear what they think I want to hear about.”

The other nugget I found from talking to Lee is that from the original posting some of the protesters responded in the comments including the protest organizer Joe Scheidler, whom the final woman featured suggest Lee talk to. (In fact Lee said he’d already talked to Scheidler by that point, but didn’t ask him that particular question because, at that time, he hadn’t realized it was the question that got the most interesting response.)

The clip is an excellent example of either citizen-inspired activism or journalism; however one chooses to look at the product.

---Rachel Joy Larris

Ending the Housing Crisis for People With Disabilities

By Lisa LaBrecque

In 1971, the U.S. Congress created the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The noble goal of the program was to provide financial support for people who can’t work because of a significant, long-term disability.

Unfortunately, our country has failed to meet that goal. According to a report recently released by the Technical Assistance Collaborative called Priced Out in 2006, national average rents for both one-bedroom and efficiency apartments were more than the entire monthly income of an individual relying solely on SSI. About 3.5 million people in the U.S. rely on SSI as their sole source of income. Here in New Mexico, the average SSI payment is $603 a month. That means an individual in New Mexico who relies solely on SSI has to spend 77 percent of his income on an efficiency apartment or 88 percent of his income on a one bedroom apartment. That leaves only about $100 a month to pay for food, medical care, clothing, transportation and utilities. SSI is not easy to obtain. The federal government uses a rigorous application process to screen applicants, including medical verification of a disability. People who receive SSI truly are some of our most vulnerable citizens. We have a moral obligation as a society to ensure that people with disabilities can afford decent housing and other basic necessities. Yet, we have made a half-hearted attempt to meet this obligation.

An individual whose sole source of income is SSI lives on $7,584 a year—which is 25 percent below the federal poverty line. At the same time, funding for affordable housing programs has been slashed. In particular, two of the most important federal programs for people with disabilities—the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Section 811 Supportive Housing Program for Persons with Disabilities—have received inadequate funding over the last several years.

Under these conditions, we are practically forcing many people with disabilities into homelessness. Yet, we can do something about this grave problem. First, Congress can raise the SSI benefit level so that someone living solely on SSI is living above the poverty line. Secondly, Congress can fund an adequate supply of affordable housing for people with disabilities.

In their report, the Technical Assistance Collaborative urges the federal government to reinvest in the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Section 811 program and create 150,000 new units over the next 10 years for people with disabilities. There is now a federal proposal that would target affordable housing dollars to households with disabilities who are living far below the poverty level.

We can also take action at the state level by providing adequate, consistent funding for the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund. Despite the Governor’s promise to secure $15 million for the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund in the 2007 legislation session, the Fund only received $2 million. This falls far short of what we need to create an adequate stock of affordable housing in New Mexico. In addition, we need to make sure funds from the Trust Fund are used not just to develop homes for purchase, but also to develop high quality rental housing. A person who only receives $603 a month will probably never be able to buy a house. But he or she still deserves a safe, accessible, affordable and decent apartment.

Congress had the right idea when they created the SSI program in 1971. Now is the time to follow-up on that promise and ensure that people with disabilities have the same standard of living that everyone wants for themselves and their families.
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LaBrecque is the policy and advocacy director for the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness.

Getting Blogged at the BlogHer Conference

Candidates to women bloggers:
Wish we could be there; have a nice conference

CHICAGO--You would think that all of the presidential candidates, Republican and Democrat, would be interested in talking to a gathering of women bloggers from across the U.S. After all, it's said the women's votes will ultimately decide who the next president will be. Lisa Stone, BlogHer's CEO, said that all the candidates were invited to either appear or send surrogates. But as far as anyone could tell, only Hillary Clinton and John Edwards sent surrogates. Clinton sent Dana Singiser, her women's outreach coordinator, while Edwards sent campaign blogger Tracy Morris along with a real powerhouse of a surrogate, his wife, Elizabeth, who happens to be a longtime blogger.

Among the more interesting sessions I attended at BlogHer was the one titled: Patriots Act: How to Turn Your Blog into a GOtV (Get Out the Vote) Machine. There Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), was joined Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, Sarah Simmons of the John McCain campaign, and Zephyr Teachout, who had served in the 2004 election as Howard Dean's director of online organizing discussed ways of motivating your particular online community to turn out at the polls.

One way: add a "badge" or button to your blog that links directly to voter registration forms or info.

More politics coverage later.

--Adele M. Stan

Getting Blogged at the BlogHer Conference

What do you stand for?

CHICAGO--Here at the BlogHer conference, one of the operative words is "brand." While policy-based and mainstream political media have been notoriously slow to welcome women into their commentary continuum*, the masterminds of corporate brands see the dollar potential of the greater female blogosphere -- the part that includes the self-described "mommy bloggers," make-up bloggers, sex bloggers, as well as feminist bloggers, political bloggers and business bloggers. If it's specific to women, there's money in it, since women make more day-to-day purchasing decisions than men. Among the sponsors of the BlogHer conference are General Motors, AOL, Butterball turkeys, Dove cosmetics, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Windows Live (a sort of social networking software package).

But the brands aren't just corporate. In fact, brands are people, too. Women, to be specific -- women bloggers, that is. And they packed to overflow what appeared to be the most popular opening break-out session: The Business of You: Self-branding and Self-promotion. Moderated by Penelope Trunk of The Brazen Careerist, who was joined by panelists Nina Burokas, a digital branding expert, and Stephanie Cockerl, entrepreneur of a successful Web-design site, the session was jammed with women who blog on everything from knitting to radical feminism (sometimes in the same blog).

Penelope Trunk let on that, when she first started blogging, she tried to maintain separate identities -- one for the name she was given at birth, and one for the self-created character, Penelope Trunk. "Penelope Trunk was more the person I wanted to be," she explained. As time went on, she found she couldn't really keep the two identities separate, so, "I ditched my [given] name and became Penelope Trunk."

As for posting about knitting and politics in the blog, Nina Burokas contended that it's not really a good idea. Well, actually, she said, don't do it. "You can't blog about politics and knitting" and have a successful blog, she said. (We at the National Women's Editorial Forum politely ask, as you make your choice: "May we suggest politics?") Try telling that to the women in the category who describe themselves as "junk-drawer" bloggers.

Stephanie Cockerl perhaps put it most succinctly. She asked: "What do you stand for?"

--Adele M. Stan

The Digital Divide: Getting Access To The Debate

Now that some of the dust has cleared from the CNN/YouTube debate there have been some thoughtful reactions to CNN’s staging of the debate. Jennifer L. Pozner’s WIMN’s Voices has an extremely interesting reflection video by independent media producer Stephanie Mackley, better recognized as the woman who asked about energy consumption in her bathroom.



Some of her responses are both informative and insightful – she susses out more information regarding the ratio of women-submitted videos and realizes that the initial reaction to being on TV made her (temporarily) lose sight of the fact that Anderson Cooper completely misdirected her question from a policy discussion to one of personal responsibility.

But one important thing Mackely notes is that she’s hardly a veteran of video-blogging. As she states:

The thing I’d hope you’d take away from this is that you can have a huge impact on the media discussion with relatively little effort. I posted my very first video a month ago and have since seen it on CNN as a question posed to the Democratic presidential candidates. So it’s not as difficult as you would think to add your own voice to the public debate that we’re having about the presidential candidates right now or any political topic. And you might end up influencing the debate in ways you would never imagine.

It’s good to remember that commentary isn’t divided into “experts” and “novices” – even in blogging. The technical aspects of providing commentary however probably can seem daunting, whether its putting up a blog or posting something to YouTube.

I meant to point people to this article in the Washington Post a few days ago. Binary America: Split in Two by A Digital Divide which discusses the fact that a few miles from where the debate was staged existed a place where residents could only access the internet, let alone high-speed access, with great difficulty.

There exists "two Americas," as John Edwards, South Carolina's own son, likes to say: an America for the rich and an America for the poor. But what Edwards and the rest of the presidential field have yet to adequately address are the two Americas online: one that's connected to high-speed Internet -- socializing, paying bills, uploading debate questions to presidential candidates on YouTube -- and one that's not. This is the digital divide, now more than a decade old, a rarely discussed schism in which the unconnected are second-class citizens. In some parts of this so-called Internet ghetto, the screech of a telephone modem dialing up to get online is not uncommon. And with dial-up, YouTube is impossible to use.

The digital divide is practically ignored as a political issue.

And though a study released last month by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that broadband use among African American adults increased from 14 percent in 2005 to 40 percent this year, blacks continue to lag behind whites and English-speaking Latinos. In fact, a great number of American households , especially in rural areas and poorer parts of cities such as Charleston, are without broadband.
...
"At one level, the YouTube debate shows that the Web has really become a centerpiece of American political culture," adds Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet. "At another level, it also shows that the debate is not for everybody. It's certainly not available to all Americans."

And since the internet is sometimes assumed to be the domain of the young, what will happen if young people grow up with much access? Will they then fall behind their more technologically advanced peers, the kind who have home computers and high-speed connection. That’s why the story about 14-year-old Tiara Reid struck me.

That is especially true at Cooper River Courts, where Tiara Reid, 14, in her jeans shorts and pink striped top, runs up and down the complex asking friends if anyone wants to go the library. Finally her mom, Jossie, who works at a deli, drives her and a neighbor's daughter. With school out and without Internet access at home, the library is the only place where she can go on the Web -- for a maximum of two hours a day. Says Tiara: "It's 10 minutes to get to the library if someone drives you. It's 15 minutes if you take the 30 bus. It's about 30 minutes if you walk."

Sure, she knows how to use e-mail and MySpace, but she’s clearly at a disadvantage because she is not acquiring the same comfort levels with the internet that other children are. And because the internet is such a resource, those who only get it in minimal levels really are deprived of information that is useful, everything from greater access to media to more information about their public schools.

--- Rachel Joy Larris

Not All Issues Are Colored In Pink

Ruth Marcus’ column in today’s Washington Post epitomizes the need for efforts such as those undertaken by the National Women’s Editorial Forum. Women as a whole really lose out when there aren’t female voices in the editorial pages…or on the campaign trail.

Marcus’ column is on Hilary Clinton, Pretty Formidable in Pink, but I think her take on even writing about candidate Clinton speaks to why sometimes a dearth of women’s editorial voices means that if there’s only one woman on an editorial board it can mean, by default, you get to write the “women issues” while men get to write about everything else.

But as a columnist who happens to be a woman -- you may have noticed, there aren't too many of us -- I understand what [Elizabeth] Edwards means. In fact, I initially resisted writing about her comments, reluctant to be pigeonholed as a "woman columnist" and not taken seriously by the Big Boys.

There was some anger directed at the Post over a fashion column last week by Robin Givhan which focused solely on Hilary Clinton’s cleavage. Ms. magazine even sent out an e-mail asking people to write to the Post:

Women politicians' clothes, hairdos, weight, and other physical characteristics have been the obsessive focus of journalists ever since women first began holding public office in this country. We've had it!

Let the Washington Post know that sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton or any women politician is unacceptable.

Without a concerted effort to call attention to their coverage major media organizations won’t even be aware how they treat women politicians and women voters’ concerns differently from men’s. When editorial boards should beging to show a more equitable balance between men and women (instead of a sometimes token one or two). Its not enough diversity to have one token female voice on an editorial board (or a news room or a campaign bus or a cable TV show) to provide a “woman’s perspective” on femaleness and politics. Such lack of diversity can end up limiting the sole female voice to a virtual ghetto, deigned only fit to comment on supposed female-centric topics. Women make up 50 percent of the planet and there’s no reason we can take up 50 percent of an editorial board either.

--- Rachel Joy Larris

YouTube Debate: Men Ask the Questions

Last night, the Democratic presidential candidates faced off in a forum that featured questions submitted by regular folks, in video format, via YouTube.

A few days ago we urged women to submit questions to YouTube for the debate because the numbers of women-submitted questions was pitifully low. (If you missed the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate last night it can be found here on YouTube.)

I don't know whether YouTube received a last-minute rush of submissions by women, nor do I have a count of the final tally of the submitted videos broken down by the ratio of men versus women.

But I do have the number of questions CNN picked that featured women: eleven. Out of the 42 viewer-submitted videos aired by CNN, 30 featured men speaking and only 12 featured women. (There were 39 questions but one question, #33 showed four clips, two women and two men.)

The questions women were shown asking: question #7 on race and class being a factor in the Katrina disaster, #9 on gay marriage, #13 a mother asking how many soldiers have to die in Iraq, #19 a young woman asking the candidates to name their favorite teacher, #22 a Planned Parenthood worker from Pennsylvania asking whether the candidates talk to their kids about sex, #25 about energy consumption by the U.S., #27 about whether they would work for minimum wage, #29 a quick one on paying Social Security to those earning over $97,500, #33 featuring two women and two men asking health care-related questions and, lastly, #34 a woman asking, she said, on behalf of "friends," about whether their health care plans would include undocumented workers.

Among the 28 video questions posed by men were three that focused specifically on women. In question #8 a man asks Obama and Clinton to comment about being asked if they are black enough or female enough. In question #15 a man asked if the candidates felt a woman should have to register for the draft when she turns 18.

Question #16 shows a man serving in the military asking Senator Hillary Clinton whether she would be taken seriously by the leaders of Arab and Muslim nations. I transcribed the man's video in full. Here is the text of his question:

Hello, my name is John McAlperin. I'm a proud member of the United States military and I'm serving overseas. This question is to Senator Hillary Clinton: The Arab states and Muslim nations believe [in] women as being second-class citizens. If you're president of the United States, how do you feel that you would even be taken seriously by these states in any kind of talks negotiations or any other diplomatic relations?

I feel that's a legitimate question.

I wonder why CNN picked this question. It's not as if nations other than ours -- even Muslim nations -- have never had a female head of state. Pakistan had a woman prime minister as did the Muslim nation of Bangladesh. India, home to one of the world's largest Muslim populations, just elected its first woman president. (In the mid-20th century, Indian politics was dominated by the figure of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.)

UPDATE: Jennifer L. Pozner on WIMN’s Voices offers her take on the debate formatting, particularly the example of Stephanie Mackley, the woman who posed a question about energy policy to the candidates from her bathroom.

---Rachel Joy Larris

Minimum Wage Raise Is No Worry For Business
By Lya Sorano

In Georgia, one of the reddest of the "Red States," one might expect an almost universal denouncement of the raise in the minimum wage. In fact, the opposite is true.

Business owners and managers I've spoken with aren't concerned. They're glad the minimum wage is going up because workers deserve it, and they believe it will help our local economy.

The $5.15 minimum wage has been in effect for a decade -- the longest period without a raise since the minimum was established in 1938. Georgians covered by the federal minimum wage saw their hourly pay rise to $5.85, on July 24, 2007. It will increase to $6.55 on July 24, 2008 and $7.25 on July 24, 2009.

Those increases are lower than they seem. The minimum wage has lagged so far behind inflation that even at $7.25 the minimum wage will still be lower than it was in 1956 when it was $7.65 in today's dollars.

Tony McBride, general manager of Cracker Barrel on Highway 53 in Braselton, said his employees who are not servers are paid "well above the minimum wage." He added, "We start them at $8.00 an hour."

Theresa Meadows, general manager of Jeffrey's Sports Grille in Braselton, says their employees are paid minimum wage during training, "but that is only 20 hours" before they get a raise.

BB Webb, owner of Carl House in Auburn, believes a minimum wage increase is one of the changing economic conditions business owners need to build into their business plans. Absorbing a minimum wage increase, she said, is "just a part of being a good citizen." And a good businessperson. Webb says the raise will have a positive effect on the local economy, which would be especially beneficial for businesses serving lower-income markets "because their customers would have more money to spend."

States that have already raised their minimum wages above the $5.15 federal level have had better employment and small business trends than the other states, according to reports by the Fiscal Policy Institute and other research organizations.

According to Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, "Higher wages benefit business by increasing consumer purchasing power, reducing costly employee turnover, raising productivity, and improving product quality, customer satisfaction and company reputation.”

"A fair minimum wage is a sound investment in the future of our communities and our nation," concludes the statement, which I endorsed at Business For a Fair Minimum Wage along with hundreds of businesspeople nationwide, including the owners of many Georgia businesses including Morning Glory Farm in Clermont, North Georgia Woodworks in Toccoa, and Sugar Magnolia B&B, Flyer Candy Bars, Simply Web and Grand Central Pizza in Atlanta.

Georgia's poverty rate is higher than most other states. A minimum wage that keeps workers in poverty hurts our communities and our state.

Our elected officials should raise the state minimum wage above its meager $5.15 level so that all workers, whether covered by state or federal law, get a long overdue raise.
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Lya Sorano is the founder of Atlanta Women in Business and chief executive of the Oliver/Sorano Group, a marketing and public relations firm.

This article has also run in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Turning Down The Heat On Abortion Clinic Protests

By Gloria Feldt

(Click here to listen to a Public Service Announcement distributed by American Forum on how the locality of abortion clinics puts them at a higher risk to violence and harassment.)

It’s the sweltering heat of summer. We can count on seeing ads for escapes to the beach, reminders to wear sunscreen, and the extreme anti-reproductive rights, homophobic Operation Save America's annual attempt to turn up the political heat by mounting a media-circus demonstration at a high-profile women's health center that provides abortions. This summer from July 14 to 22, the target-of-choice is the New Woman, Every Woman Healthcare Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

If the location and clinic name ring a bell, there’s good reason. In 1998, Eric Robert Rudolf detonated a firebomb of dynamite and nails at the clinic’s front door, killing police officer Robert “Sandy” Sanderson on his beat and seriously wounding clinic nurse Emily Lyons. In addition to sustaining first, second, and third degree burns covering the front of her body, Lyons lost her left eye and her right was seriously damaged. A hole the size of a fist was blown in her abdomen and her left leg was shattered—just for starters.

There's something else we can count on too during these heated summer encounters. The doctors and women's health groups subject to these demonstrations, along with their allies in pro-choice organizations such as NOW and the Feminist Majority that flock to defend women from OSA's intimidating harassment, will be joined together with their adversaries in the Kabuki theater of irreconcilable opposites locked into predictable but intractable battles. The only way to stop the Kabuki dance that resolves nothing is for the community around all of these players to decide enough, stop, we're changing the story. Three groups bear a special responsibility to cool things down.

Community leaders of good conscience, regardless of where they stand on the abortion issue, must see themselves as part of the story, whether they want to be or not. It is they who must set the standard for what constitutes freedom of speech versus what constitutes harassment, intimidation, possible incitement to violence, and definite interference with providing and receiving health care services. Do not accept these demonstrations as just normal free speech because they are most certainly not, neither in intent nor practice. Give groups like OSA their platforms for expression to be sure, but not at a location where women can be hurt—and especially not a place where their own allies have killed and maimed in the past.

Every city council should pass two resolutions: one to set a tone of civility and the other to establish alternate ways for dissenters (and they are dissenters—fully two-thirds of Americans want abortion to remain legal and safe) to express themselves away from the health care facility. And there must be zero tolerance for violence against the women, the doctors and other staff, or the facilities. That’s terrorism, plain and simple. Name it and confront it.

Clergy, regardless of where they stand on abortion, must join hands preemptively, before the demonstrations start, and declare their own open microphone day to decry violence and intimidation of women. Pro-choice clergy have an especially important role to publicly support the women who are making decisions they believe as fervently are moral and responsible ones as their detractors scream are otherwise. Pro-choice people of faith need to create a supportive welcome to the women and courageous staff and volunteers by their public words and deeds.

Clinics are vulnerable to violence and harassment precisely because they are isolated from the rest of medical practice. And how ironic it is that these very same clinics are so often women’s main source of medical care, in particular family planning services that prevent unintended pregnancy and abortion. So the medical community has a role to play too. Abortion should be defined and practiced as part of women's health care, and that would in itself diffuse much of the confrontation.

It’s the heat of summer. Time to go to the beach slathered in sunscreen. Time to take a new look at an old story and cool down the script so that our passion can be spent not on fighting intractable battles but on assuring that women have the health care, information, and social supports to make their own childbearing decisions without fear.

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Gloria Feldt is the author of The War on Choice: the Right-wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She frequently lectures on the history and future vision for reproductive rights, health, and justice.

Supreme Court Decision Jeopardizes Pay Equality

By Lisa Grafstein

You get your first paycheck at a new job and, not one to be shy, you ask the coworker in the next cubicle how much he makes. It turns out you are making fifty cents less per hour doing the same work. Do you literally make a federal case out of it? Under the Supreme Court’s decision this term in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, maybe you should. If you don’t, you may be forever barred from claiming pay discrimination, no matter how much you may have lost in wages over time.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Using Title VII, employees may challenge workplace discrimination, including pay discrimination. Since the Supreme Court’s 1986 unanimous decision in Bazemore v. Friday, it was understood that pay discrimination occurs each time an employee receives a paycheck that reflects a discriminatory pay structure. In Bazemore, employees brought race discrimination claims based on pay disparities that had begun before the enactment of Title VII, and continued after the enactment. The Court rejected the argument that the plaintiffs could not sue because the discrimination began before Title VII because “[e]ach week's paycheck that delivers less to a black than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under Title VII.” The “paycheck rule” recognized that pay discrimination is not a single, distinct act like a firing or refusal to hire; rather, it is often hidden and cumulative.

In the 5-4 Ledbetter decision, the Court rejected the ‘paycheck rule’ and determined that a case for pay discrimination under Title VII must be brought within 180 days of the discriminatory pay decision. In Ms. Ledbetter’s case, that meant that the pay discrimination she was unaware of during the first 18 years of her employment, and that resulted in her eventually making about 75 percent of what her male coworkers made, would not be remedied, even though it affected her pay every week.

After Ledbetter, Title VII no longer provides a real remedy for pay discrimination. Even when an employee discovers discrimination in time, small pay differentials would rarely be enough to cause her to take action. As Justice Ginsberg stated in her dissent, “[s]mall initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves.” Yet, even minor disparities will increase exponentially over time. By the time the difference is significant, the time for pursuing a remedy will have passed.

We all know the statistic that women make 70 cents for every $1 a man makes. What makes this statistic hard for many of us to understand is that we simply do not believe that an employer would start two employees out on the same job at such disparate wages. The reality is that the gender gap in pay—for individuals or women as a group—was not created overnight; it is the result of incremental, compounded differences over time.

The Court has imposed an unrealistic interpretation of Title VII. If the Supreme Court is unwilling to interpret Title VII in the context of the real workplace, Congress must take steps to correct the Court’s unworkable interpretation. Some members of Congress have vowed to repair the loophole the Supreme Court has created in Title VII, and undo the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the statute.

As Justice Ginsberg noted in her dissent: “Once again, the ball is in Congress’ court.”

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Grafstein is a private practice attorney in Raleigh.

Look Who's Watching Now

By: Kathleen Taylor

A couple went into an exercise equipment store to buy a treadmill. They found one they liked, and applied for financing. The bank representative told them—in front of other customers —that because the husband’s name is Hussein, they would have to wait 72 hours for an extra identity check “because of Saddam Hussein.”

A case of unlawful discrimination based on ethnic or national origin? Not these days! Not only was this incident legal; it was encouraged by the federal government.

This and other disturbing anecdotes were documented in a recent report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. The report focused on the unintended effects of the Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC) list maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The OFAC list includes more than 6,000 names of people and businesses that allegedly “have ties” to criminal or terrorist groups. Banks, lenders and other companies are forbidden from doing business with persons on the list, or face years in jail and millions of dollars in penalties.
Trouble is, many more than 6,000 people carry those names or names that are very similar. Businesses, eager to avoid legal trouble, are aggressively matching names to the Treasury Department list during credit checks, often declining to do business even if a person’s name is only partially the same. As a result, countless numbers of people with common names like Muhammad or Sanchez are being denied or delayed access to rental cars, mortgages, credit, insurance and other everyday services.

If this sounds a lot like the “No Fly” list, its because its basically the same idea, with all the same problems. It is notoriously easy to be placed on the No Fly list and nearly impossible to get off. Congress was supposed to have reformed the No Fly list so that people could get their names removed if they could “prove” their innocence. That didn’t quite happen though. The Transportation Security Agency does offer people the chance to send copies of identification to prove that they are not the people on the No Fly list. But that does not actually get one’s name off the list, it merely puts it on another list that airlines can use to cross-reference. The end result is still a delay at the airport, and the inability to self-check at the counter.

Besides the No Fly list, the government maintains an unknown number of other watch lists—databases of names or organizations—used by law enforcement and other agencies to find or monitor people or groups. The lists could include everything from details of confirmed fugitives to second-hand reports of people with tenuous connections to crime or terrorism.

The lists act as a government accusation of wrongdoing, without giving people due process or an opportunity to defend themselves. In effect, they become blacklists, stigmatizing people who may not have any connection whatsoever to crime or terrorism.

Nobody really knows how the government puts people or groups on its watch lists. Nobody knows who keeps them, and only rarely how to get a name removed. What we do know—through news accounts and public records requests—is that these watch lists are multiplying, accumulating more records on hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.

So what can we do? The first step is to shed light on what the government is doing. We have very little idea of what lists exist, what information they hold, and how that information is used. Congress should use its powers of oversight to review these programs, ensure that they are legal, and that they respect due process and privacy.

Part of that oversight must include creating a system to fix problems in the watch lists. People who have been wrongly included must have a way to remove their names. Lists need to have a specific, reasonable purpose; government and businesses need to be held accountable when they misuse watch lists for any other reason. The people who run or use these lists need to be properly trained and screened for the job.

It’s important to remember that watch lists don’t keep people safe. At heart, a watch list is an electronic tool, imperfect, without common sense, experience or good judgment, as the results have shown. Ultimately, Americans need to restore their confidence in a free society and forsake the illusions of false security.

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Taylor is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Washington

Contraception and Health Insurance:
The Bush Judiciary and Democracy

By Sylvia A. Law

Whatever happens in the 2008 elections, the federal judiciary will be a lasting legacy of George W. Bush. While the implications of his nominees to the federal bench are still being watched, Bush’s judiciary changes will not be limited to the Supreme Court or simply abortion. On March 15, a divided panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held that Title’s VII’s prohibition against gender discrimination does not protect women’s access to contraception.

Is it sex discrimination if a company provides coverage for the most common prescription drugs, but excludes prescriptions women need to prevent pregnancy? In the 1990s, coverage of birth control through insurance plans was spotty—some plans failed to cover any contraceptives under the guise of not paying for “preventive care.” Other insurers treated birth control as medically unnecessary “cosmetic,” like skin cream.

So women began to challenge the contraception exclusions with solid evidence. Without contraception the average women is likely to become pregnant 12 to 15 times over the course of her life. In any given year, 85 out of 100 sexually-active women of childbearing age will become pregnant if they don’t use contraception. Child birth, after all, typically costs insurers more than birth control pills. In response in 2000, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), interpreting federal anti-discrimination law, found the exclusion of prescription contraception from otherwise comprehensive coverage for prescription drugs to be an act of sex discrimination. Since 2001, several lower federal courts have reached the same conclusion. Thanks to these legal victories and passage of contraception coverage laws in the states, many employers now cover the costs of contraception, recognizing that the old practice of excluding it from health plans is both discriminatory and fiscally irrational.

Now the Eighth Circuit reverses this tremendous progress for women. Judge Raymond Gruender, a recent Bush appointee, used remarkably weak reasoning his decision, writing that: “Contraception is not related to pregnancy . . . and is gender-neutral.”

What this means is that employers can take away benefits for birth control, even if they cover all other preventive care and Rogaine and Viagra for men.

Women have historically been routinely marginalized based on stereotypes they would “just get pregnant and leave the workforce” and the like. It was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who 35 years ago was our leading women’s rights lawyer, who asked the Supreme Court to consider the claims of competent women, including an accomplished Air Force pilot, who were forced to leave their jobs because they were pregnant.

When the Court finally spoke to the issue of pregnancy and gender equality, it was in the context of health and disability benefits. In 1974 a divided Supreme Court held that denying medical and disability insurance for medical problems related to pregnancy was not a form sex discrimination prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause. Two years later, a divided Court similarly held an employer’s otherwise comprehensive insurance program that excluded pregnancy-related disabilities from coverage was not sex discrimination prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In upholding these exclusions, the Court said, “the program divides potential recipients into two groups—pregnant women and non-pregnant persons.”

Americans were not fooled by the Supreme Court’s thinly veiled assertion that pregnancy has nothing to do with gender. Thousands petitioned Congress to overturn the reasoning and result of these Court decisions. In response, Congress adopted the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which recognizes a woman’s capacity for pregnancy is a defining element of sex. Employers can no longer use pregnancy as a basis for discriminating against female workers.

The Eighth Circuit both ignores and repeats history. Then and now, the courts held that the health plans before them “treat men and women the same,” ignoring the biological reality that only women get pregnant. Then and now, dissenting judges urged their brethren to interpret the law to recognize the capacity for pregnancy as a defining element of gender. Then and now, the dissenters were outvoted by slim margins.

It has become apparent that the Bush judiciary will not be sympathetic to civil rights or women’s health. Fortunately, courts are not the final arbiters of social policy. An overwhelming majority of Americans understand contraception is essential to women’s health and believe health insurance should cover it. If we can no longer count on the courts to protect basic rights and liberties then we must call on Congress reverse the Eighth Circuit decision.

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Law is a professor at New York University Law School.

Immigration And Corn

By Sally Kohn

Thankfully, immigration reform is progressing in Congress. There are 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States who have made invaluable contributions to our culture and economy and deserve the basic rights and dignity that citizenship provides.

Yet some nasty provisions stand out in the recent immigration reform proposal in Congress. The proposal would prioritize highly-skilled English speaking immigrants over the working-class immigrants and people of color whose families are already here. In addition those who would apply for the proposed “guestworker” vistas are actually denied the opportunity to gain citizenship. The plan would merely continue the two-tiered system of discrimination and exploitation that currently exists. Yet if we examined the root causes of migration, we might actually help—rather than punish—immigrants.

And here “root” cause is not just a metaphor. The seeds of the immigration dynamics we now face are planted on the U.S. side of the border, the kernel of which is corn. Corn is what causes migration and corn is the only way the injustices of immigration, on both sides of the border, will ever be solved.

As the birth nation of just over half of the undocumented immigrants in the United States, Mexico provides a good example. Although agriculture is less than 5 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product, more than a quarter of Mexicans still make their living as farmers. And most of the poorest of those farmers grow corn. Over 60 percent of Mexico’s cultivated land is planted with corn, most of which are small family plots. In all, 18 million Mexicans, including farmers and their families, rely on corn for their livelihood.

Enter NAFTA in 1994, which opened the U.S.-Mexico border to trade. It’s worth noting that before the wealthy nations in the European Union like France and German expanded trade with poorer nations like Portugal and Greece, the wealthier countries first transferred huge sums of money to the poorer nations to build their infrastructure and help get them to the equal footing necessary for trade to work. Not so with Mexico. The United States (1990 GDP: $23,130 — a.k.a. Goliath) became “equal trading partners” with Mexico (1990 GDP: $6,090 — a.k.a. David).

On top of that, corn production in the United States is heavily subsidized. Under the farm bill, which is up for reauthorization this year, we taxpayers give over $25 billion each year mainly to large, industrial corporate farms. And the more corn the factory farms produce, the more money they make. That means there are big corporations with mounds of corn on their hands that they can sell for cheap because they’ve already made plenty off the subsidies. Cheap corporate corn floods the Mexican market, drowning local producers.

So what’s the result? Imported corn now dominates the Mexican market. For instance, in Mexico—the birthplace of corn—one-out-of-three tortillas is now made with imported maize. An estimated two million family farmers who can’t compete with subsidized U.S. corn have been driven from their land. They now have to buy imported corn to feed their families but don’t have the income to afford it. Meanwhile, American politicians following the instructions of corporate farm lobbyists start pushing ethanol. Even though the “alternative” fuel actually wastes more energy than it produces, it’s made from corn so agribusiness loves it. The new demand for corn drives up prices. And so the price of a tortilla in Mexico has risen 279 percent since NAFTA. The overall effect impacts not only farmers but all Mexicans, especially the poor. Since NAFTA, poverty in Mexico has increased. As of 2001, over 80 percent of people in rural Mexico were living in poverty.

So is it any wonder that as more and more U.S. corn flows to Mexico, more and more Mexicans cross the border to the U.S.? And corn is just the beginning. Migration around the world is the direct result of U.S. policies and actions. As immigrant rights leaders in England often chant, “We’re here because you were there.” Exactly.

Improving immigration policy in the United States is an important start and hopefully the legislation that comes out of Congress will far better than the current draft. But immigration reform is only the first step. American farmers and factory workers who have also been devastated by U.S. economic policies must join with immigrant rights leaders to repeal NAFTA and other disastrous trade agreements and remove bloated corporate subsidies from the farm bill. And the United States must start spending far more money on foreign aid and assistance than on border enforcement and war. Maybe then we could start producing an abundance of fairness and justice on both sides of the border, instead of corn.
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Kohn is the director of the New York-based Movement Vision Project, working with grassroots organizations across the United States to advance shared values of family, community and humanity.

More Money Needed for Foster Care Services

By Vanessa Jones

There are more than 500,000 children living in foster care at any given time. For 12 years I was one of these children.

When I was 8 years old, I was removed from my biological family due to domestic violence and alcohol abuse. Although I was never adopted, I was placed with a foster mom in Austin who wholeheartedly embraced me. Her home became my permanent home and the place I go back to today. She still celebrates my birthday every year and is even helping me pay for my upcoming wedding. She truly is my family.

I was one of the lucky ones. Although foster care was intended to be a temporary place for children to stay when they experience abuse and neglect and can no longer safely live with their families, most children entering foster care linger in the system for months, if not years.

Separated from friends and family and bounced around foster homes and schools, these children live in a constant state of uncertainty. On average, children in foster care will spend at least two birthdays in the system. Sometimes these birthdays are not celebrated, or even acknowledged.

Because I was fortunate to live in a safe, loving, and secure home, I had the support and confidence to pursue scholarships for college and graduate school.

I decided to earn my master’s degree in social work because I want to give back to a system that has worked in my favor. Today I serve as a Program Manager for Youth Services at the Child Welfare League of America in Washington, D.C. I work to make the opportunities I had growing up a reality for more foster youth.

As a former foster youth, I am also active in coalitions of current and former foster youth. I am currently part of “Kids Are Waiting,” a Pew Charitable Trusts’ project urging Congress to change the way it funds foster care.

Currently, most federal dollars dedicated for child protection can only be used when children are removed from their homes and placed in the foster care system.

This means that right now, some children are entering foster care when preventive services (such as child care or mental health services) may have kept them safely at home with their families. Many other children are waiting too long to return home or to find permanent, loving families. Far too often, these children never find a family they can call home.

Congress needs to provide flexible funding so that states can have more resources to prevent abuse and create and support permanent families for children in care.

Unless Congress changes the federal financing system, others won’t be as lucky as me.

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Jones, a foster child who grew up in Austin is the program manager of youth services for the Child Welfare League of America. May is National Foster Care Month, a time to focus on the children who are in foster care waiting for permanent homes.