Hi. Without distracting from the wonderful lead story, I urge you to consider the possibilities of Walking to New Orleans. The idea is brilliant, the exact activity which will allow for ongoing education of regular folks throughout the country and can/must ignite the mass, multi-racial, multi-issue movement to rid us of these monsters. It could change politics dramatically around the November elections and play an important role in stopping a new war with Iran. On multi- issue, consider the example of Social Security and the budget, below the call. Thanks to Mike Schwartz for passing it along. -Ed
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/07/the_woman_warrior/ The Boston Globe February 7, 2006 The woman warrior By Ellen Goodman When the news came of Betty Friedan's death on her 85th birthday, I remembered Aug. 26, 1970, the Women's Strike for Equality. I remembered Betty Friedan parading down New York's Fifth Avenue, with tens of thousands of exhilarated women behind her. I also remembered the afternoon edition of my paper illustrating that march with two front-page photos. On the left was the pretty, blond, smiling figurehead of some unknown group of Happy Homemakers. On the right was Betty Friedan, mouth open in midshout, face contorted, as unattractive a photo of this woman as was ever chosen by any editor. Under both pictures ran a simple, loaded question: Which one do you choose? This came to mind not only because Betty won her place in the history books. It reminded me of what this passionate and irascible, strong-willed, and difficult woman was up against: a culture with prescribed roles for women and harsh ways of slapping down those who didn't conform. Betty Friedan, author and agitator, most assuredly did not conform. Not to Peoria, Ill., where she grew up. Not to suburbia, where she raised her children. Not even, always, to feminism. She was born the year after suffrage passed. Her book, the book, "The Feminine Mystique," was published in 1963, the year that Adlai Stevenson told my graduating class at Radcliffe how important our education would be in raising our children. It was released to paperback and fame in 1964, the year I worked in the sex- segregated research pool at Newsweek magazine -- and thought I was lucky to have the job. It's easy to forget now what it was like before Betty named "the problem that had no name" and, in futurist Alvin Toffler's words, "pulled the trigger on history." We know how far women have come, but for every woman who believes life has improved, there is another who believes that life has become more stressful. Some of us believe both things at the same time. The women's movement is sometimes treated as a vast propaganda machine that convinced women of their discontent and need for change. But Betty's book struck a chord with women who were already fine-tuned to listen. "It was a strange stirring," she wrote. "A sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night -- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question -- 'Is this all?' " The most powerful catalyst for change, sociologists will tell you, is when people learn what they already know. Betty didn't invent the discontented housewife. She described the discontent. She didn't create the second-class citizenship. She analyzed it. "Maybe it wasn't education that was the problem keeping American women from 'adjusting to their role as women,' but that narrow definition of 'the role of women,' " she said. For combating the mystique, she was shunned by neighbors. For her refusal to conform, her children were kicked out of the car pool. She was called "more of a threat to the United States than the Russians." But with one resounding click of recognition, with one page turned after another, women who thought they were "the only one" came out of isolation and into a women's movement in the widest sense of that word. Betty was dismissed as radical by the middle class and as middle class by the radicals. She helped found the National Organization for Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, and NARAL. But she didn't brook fools easily nor did she brook disagreements gracefully. She teetered on high heels and gave speeches that never ended. The battles with her feminist peers were legendary. For as long as she lived, women would come up to Betty gushing, "You changed my life." I saw her dismiss them summarily with a wave of her hand, "Oh, people tell me that all the time." Today, "Desperate Housewives" is a television show. Mothers at home still bristle at her description of their "dissatisfaction." Women in Fortune 500 companies can also ask "Is this all?" But no one can doubt her role in this unfinished revolution. Betty Friedan put her shoulder and her mind to the task of opening doors and widening that "narrow definition of 'the role of women.' " In gratitude for that fine discontent, for that refusal to conform, let me say it one last time: Betty, you changed our lives. Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] (c) Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company To subscribe: http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside *** A worthy cause: "WALKIN' TO NEW ORLEANS" Veterans' and Survivors' March for Peace and Justice Mobile to New Orleans http://vetgulfmarch.org March 14-19, 2006 Friends and allies: Antiwar veterans groups and Katrina survivors are planning a very politically significant action this coming March 14-19. They need your endorsement and support. Hurricane Katrina is in the news again, as thousands of hurricane survivors who were housed at hotels in New Orleans and other cities are now being summarily evicted. In New Orleans, evictees were not even allowed to collect their belongings. The National Guard, which was sent in at night almost as a surprise attack in conjunction with police, was tasked to collect people's meager possessions, as these serially-displaced residents were herded aboard buses to be shipped off to overcrowded shelters in other cities, or left to fend for themselves as homeless people. Concurrently, the lunatic-right that advises the Bush administration is not only stubbornly adhering to the disastrous course of militarily occupying Iraq, the same clique is now advocating military action against Iran (Perle), and publishing enemies lists (Horowitz) of antiwar activists even in the midst of a domestic spying scandal. The colonial treatment being meted out to poor people and people of color on the Gulf Coast is mirrored in the viscious neo-colonial war the Bush administration is continuing against Arabs and Muslims. It is hard to decide whether Iraqis are being treated like African Americans by the Bush administration, or African Americans are being treated like Iraqis. March 19, 2006 is the 3rd anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families for Peace, and hurricane survivors' organizations (SOS, PHRF, Common Ground, United Peace Relief, MS Immigrant Rights Alliance, and others) are organizing a five-day march along Gulf Coast Highway 90 to demand: (1) the immediate return of our troops from Iraq, and to call for U.S. tax dollars to be spent on human priorities and (2) rebuilding of the devastated Gulf Coast, under the democratic direction of the residents of the Gulf Coast, instead of the illegal occupation of Iraq. HERE ARE FIVE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP. 1. ENDORSE the march as an individual or organization. Click http://www.vetgulfmarch.org/article.php?list=type&type=9 and type in your information. If you have difficulty (the web site is not quite finished.), email your endorsement (name, occupation, location) to [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2. SUPPORT the march. Click http://www.vetgulfmarch.org/article.php?list=type&type=6 and find how to DONATE financial support (donate button on page) or in-kind support. We still have a substantial amount to raise, so this is very important. 3. PUBLICIZE the march, by sending this along to as many individuals and lists as you can. 4. HOST events (house parties to public venues) to raise support for the march. Contact Iraq Veterans Against the War http:/www.ivaw.net or Veterans For Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org to determine if there are vets available to speak at your event. Also contact The Empowerment Project to obtain a copy of "Soldiers Speak Out" http://www.empowermentproject.org (a 28-minute film featuring Iraq Veterans Against the War) to use in conjunction with your event. 5. IF YOU ARE A VETERAN, A MILITARY FAMILY MEMBER, OR A GULF COAST SURVIVOR, you are encouraged to JOIN part or all of THE MARCH. See details at <http://www.vetgulfmarch.org/article.php?list=type&type=5>. *** Bush's Social Security Sleight of Hand By Allan Sloan The Washington Post Wednesday 08 February 2006 If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts. Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday. His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years. If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone. Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union message last week. First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific legislation. Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions." But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget. "The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this. " Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare. Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn't see this coming - and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did. Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion. In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called "voluntary private accounts." The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016. It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work. Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation. Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would. This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit. Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit. Bush's 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report, which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere. What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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