RE: Call for Response from Women Leaders:
Urgently Concerned About Women's Leadership
Women Leaders Need to Explicitly Expose ** Coup **
CALL for WALK OUT and Use Crisis to
Rally Attention to Illegitimacy of Proceedings
Which Are Grossly Gender-Unrepresentative/Imbalanced
Dear Sister Woman Citizens and Voters:
This is an open letter to the heads of major women's groups and to
women leaders in political life. It is meant as a friendly and
positive critism, but one which deserves consideration and,
hopefully, a major correction in the language with which women
leaders refer to the matters that have held our country hostage
all year. In essence, millions of women are watching, and a great
many are asking why their women leaders have not
been more forthright and explicit in calling the illegitimate official
activities by their rightful name - a coup - aimed at overthrowing
a President and ** electorate ** because his and ** their ** chosen
policies have supported women, and a coup attempt with the explicit
goal of disenfranchising already inadequately-represented women voters.
As a female, I was shocked and disappointed at the decision of any
liberal Democrats, but especially Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein,
Barbara Mikulski, and Mary Landreiu to simply sign on to the 100-0
"Deal" that gave legitimacy to the Unconstitutional coup attempt that
was called "Articles of Impeachment" in the House. These good women,
and the not so very many really liberal men of the Senate,
as well as self-compromised leaders of the Dempublican party (a
powerful male subsection of the Democrats) as well as the right wing
extreme Republicoup camp, knew full well that the vast majority of
women in this country have long wanted the "impeachment" game and
House vote treated with the full disrespect earned. Women wanted
this bogus process' legitimacy directly challenged and investigated
on Constitutional grounds, because it was not only foolish, but
mortally DANGEROUS to democracy, and they wanted the whole mess to
be STOPPED and not allowed to enter the Senate. Women who make deals
with coups may rapidly become seen as no more than hijacked tokens in the
games of Senate male party leaders.
The Dem Head of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, had
explicitly called the maneuverings and vote in the House a coup; so
had Maxine Waters, Nadler, and other Progressive Dems. Millions of women
felt that Democrats and non-partisan Republican women could have and
should have simply walked out, at minimum symbollically initially, and
that walking out would have signalled their representation of millions
of American's and especially women's, utter and profound objection to
the right wing coup attempt. Many women are now asking why, in reference
to the overwhelming public rejection of this process, more
members of the Democrats and moderate Republicans, and especially
women Senators, did not simply stage a symbolic walk out, and return
to the Senate floor only as needed: to object to the basic legitimacy of
the proceedings, to vote to dismiss, and vote against removal of
the President, (if such a vote was ever taken.) A clear non-participation
in the rest of these illegitimate proceedings, and a walk out would
have forced a Constitutional crisis, forced the drafting of legislation
that allows the people a final check on conspiracies that attempt to
remove any President on sought pretext, and called for the explicit
hearings investigating Starr and his office, that were needed to stop
this dangerous coup-train which now holds the country
hostage. An initial walk out would have been great PR for most Democrats
and put all politicians, including the waffling ones keeping this
travesty going, as well as the right wing, on the defensive with
the people and without the smooth "somber" process they needed to
pretend legitimacy for this coup. Instead, Dems made a deal; women
should be asking why?
Consider the grounds women's groups could and should have demanded
such a walk out, and why many women are demanding and expecting
one now:
1) The House vote was Unconstitutional because the impeachment section
of the Constitution intended a political impeachment House and Senate
trial BECAUSE, in the Framers time, Reps and Senators were themselves
subject to state recall, and therefore, had to run the risk of
during-their-term voters that could remove THEM if they tried a
political coup. But today Reps and Senators do not face such a check
on their authority, and thus, via a watering-down of democracy passed
over years by many party-politicized all white male state legislatures,
can ignore the faithfully representative process that the Constitution
clearly intended impeachment to be, ignore the spirit and explicit
purpose of making the charging and trying of a President Legislative
(subject to the will of the voters) and not Judicial. The House
impeachment, by ignoring the people, deliberately ignored the intent
and spirit of the Constitution. The majority of said people are
women . Women leaders could have pointed all this out clearly; why
didn't they yet? They must do so now.
2) It is the expectation that women leaders should focus on the
on the representative responsibility as critically important
to the whole process' legitimacy, because women understand that
the impeachment/removal process was meant to be a representative
process, and women often have a keener organizational grasp
and attentiveness to process, than men do. Now rank and file women,
the millions who are watching are exercising that woman's sense,
and many believe that the actions of many of their
women leaders have not yet been strong and sharp enough in decrying
an Unconstitutional coup attempt. Women cannot preserve the
Constitutional intent of representative democracy, that
protects us from the aggressive elite power politics that too many men,
(particularly southern and corporate patriarchs,) have learned to play,
unless they call a conspiratorial coup attempt just
that, "a conspiratorial coup attempt". Mrs. Clinton rightly
called the process a conspiracy, and Toni Morrison,
along with Jesse Jackson, among many others, have called what is
occuring in our government a coup; millions of women are now asking why
women's organizations and women leaders have not used the same
strong language to call halt to a powerfully dangerous plotted
process. Women's groups such as NOW and Feminist have certainly called
it "unfair", "a betrayal", and "a circus"; but these words
do not convey the central meaning of the word * coup *, which
is a complete undoing of legitimate government. Furthermore,
womens group's Web sites do not give the matter top priority,
and it is often found buried in press releases on other issues.
None of their websites anywhere alert their membership and the
millions of women surfing the Internet that what is occuring in the
Capitol is the final stages of an explicit "coup" attempt. This gives
the impression that women are just too fuzzy-minded to know the
difference between something they disapprove or find irritating,
versus something that directly threatens all their progress and
democracy itself at a structural level. The League
of Women's voters, in an ill-thought out attempt to be
"non-partisan" and thus, not criticize the events that amount to a
coup against the women electorate, ignored the many people from ALL
parties, yes, including many non-Democrat, Reform, Green and
even Republican women, who regard the proceedings as a direct threat
to the Constitution, along with hundreds of non-partisan historians,
many of whom are women. At least the League should itself
sponsor debates on the Constitutionality of the proceedings,
a matter so centrally a structural threat in the minds of so many,
and posted excerpts of such debate on their website. It seems to
many rank and file women that women "leaders" are still playing it
fuzzy and safe when it comes to open and straight talk; this perpetuates
a myth that women cannot protect themselves intellectually and
are unable to identify and respond effectively to true danger and
manipulation. Current women leaders cannot afford this perception if
they are to be taken seriously. What value does a League of Women
Voters retain to women if it stands by and allows the very meaning and
impact voting to be directly ignored and attacked by a male-dominated
conspiracy whose momentum and basic legitimacy remains unchallenged?
2). This impeachment was lame duck; it ignored recent elections, and
thus was not a representative legislative function. To their credit
- many women's groups do say this; but again, apparently not strongly
enough to have had impact on the women of the Senate (let alone the men).
3). The impeachment proceedings, vote and senate deal all
ignored massive polling data from consituents,ignored millions
of emails, calls and letters, and ignored the press conferences
of the women's groups! After the House vote, and when the Senate
agreed to take the case, then, why were not an immediate howls
of outrage posted on all women's groups Websites and
especially, why was nothing posted about rallying women to
vigils of resistance, the way that People for the American Way
(whose director, by the way, is a woman I believe) and
Rainbowpush did? Many women went to these vigils and rallys
anyway, I believe, but where were thei women's groups leaders
in asking and organizing them to go, or holding their own? As
far as I saw, nothing was posted on women's groups websites.
Is that strong enough leadership? Does it really safeguard the
rights of the women of this country?
4) The current impeachment and removal trail are based on a coup
conspiracy (the one Hillary Clinton and James Carville have
referred to, involving Ken Starr, Faircloth and Helms, several
in the Justice Department and Judicial Branch, the
tobacco companies, other large corporate and millionaire donors and
right-wing politicos). Janet Reno was clearly overwhelmed by
the institutionalized depth of the conspiracy, and it does
appear that in order to protect Gore on some issues, she
was willing to sacrifice blowing the whistle on the maneuverings
against Clinton, so it really remained for the people to reign in
the conspiracy as it gained legitimacy and momentum. Such
conspiratorial intent is not only unConstitutional; it is extremely
unethical to the point of betrayal of the voting human rights of
hundreds of millions of Americans; it is a human rights abuse.
Women have always been in the forefront of human rights. Why
haven't womens groups more explicity called for public hearings
and press work investigating the Starr-tobacco and his male southern
political-corporate conspiring? Why aren't they demanding this now?
Do women's groups think these plotters will just give up and go away,
and naively think we can just "Moveon" to other business without such
business also becoming a target to the same unexposed conspiratorial
illegitimacy? No wonder some of these patriarchs expect women to
"graciously submit". A continued failure to articulate and focus on
a danger from coup and conspiracy may suggest that women leaders
are either cowardly, ditzy, or prone to denial. Most other issues
and priorities are lost for women if the between-election power of
women as citizen-electorate can be ignored and attacked by coups and
unchecked conspiracies that gain pervasive momentum. Yes, this could
happen again, and it is certainly continuing right now.
5) Whether or it results in a removal of a President or not, the notion
that a Legislature can attack a President in contradiction of the
votes and views of the vast majority of the electorate is already
a dangerous coup against the American voter and citizen. The jog
of a legislature in a republican democracy is to represent;
if not it becomes just a large gang that writes laws. This
politicians coup against the citizens' will must be decried as
forcefully and explicitly as the coup against the citizen's President.
If we fail to do delegitimize the proceedings, we allow the coup
against the voter/citizen, and particularly the woman voter/citizen,
to succeed. Can women afford that and think their organizations
will have much meaning left?
Without doubt, all major women's organizations ought declare that a coup
occurred in the House; that it was unnecessarily and unethically accepted
for hearing in the Senate unConstitutionally, remains a denial of due
process, a deliberate and conspiratorial disenfranchisement of women
voters, and an attempt to reestablish the confederacy in the Federal
Government by deliberately weakening the President's and Legislative
Branch's connectedness to the electorate, allowing Confederate states
and corporations based within them to gain control of a weakened
Federal government. Women leaders ought declare the whole coup a denial of
political human rights. If they continue to fail to do this, many women
will feel that a change in women's leadership is needed.
Rev. Jesse Jackson's stated in a speech posted on his website:
the "coup must be resisted"; John Conyers, head of the
House Judiciary Committee, called it a coup; so has Rep Maxine
Waters, Constitutional lawyer Gerry Spence, Toni Morrison and others.
The heads of NOW, Feminist Majority, and all major women's groups
must now clearly adopt this strong and meaningful language,
so the women they lead, both as members of organizations and on
behalf of all the women they have the mission to serve, can properly
respond to the events that are, pompously, procedure by procedure,
day by day and deal by deal, waiving and throwing electoral democracy
to the winds of a handful of politicians in Washington and their
behind the scenes mostly male large campaign donors.
We must hear more women leaders explicitly call this mess "coup",
using the word seriously, with the moral weight the situation
deserves. If womens' groups leaders just weakly complain, and either
"ungraciously" or "graciously" submit by legitimizing an Unconstitutional
process that deliberately ignores the rights of women to meaningful vote;
are they acting effectively as our spokespeople? I think the major
women's groups need a far more forthright resistance and protest; they
must call the current process "a coup" and "unConstitutional" without
mincing words, and also should call upon women clergy to take their
rightful place like Jackson, as spiritual leaders, who understand that
democracy and the inclusive political empowerment of all people without
sexism and racism are matters of human ethical and spiritual rights and
cannot be "compromised" or "Dealed". They should welcome
the statement of visionary women like Toni Morrison calling this a coup,
and they should publish them on their websites. Women do not
only care about birth control, reproductive rights and domestic violence,
as important as all these issues are. Women need democracy and full respect
as political citizens, and democracy is their best moral refuge and
strongest spiritual asset, as nature has made women a majority in
this country as in most countries. Any lack of a democracy-insisting
moral voice creates a political moral and spiritual vacuum, and that's
another reason why the women Senators were willing to sign onto the
"Deal" that I am quite sure the all male, still uncampaign reformed
Republocrat leaders pressured them to sign onto, betrayed the explicit
pleas of millions of women, and like cogs in a mostly male wheel, helped
let a coup attempt enter our Senate.
In joint protection of nonsexist and nonracist democracy, we want to see
major women Clergy lead, with Rev Jackson and other minority clergy, along
with "secular" and legal groups like Feminist Majority/NOW. Lay
and clergy both, men and women together, they must issue many more
like and even joint statements about the coup, that are available on their
web sites for all to see, and urge other women leaders of legal
and government watchdog groups Claybrook of Public Citizen and McBride
of Common Cause to understand their leadership to clearly and explicitly
needed, expected and welcomed by women of all political affiliations, and
by all women. to decry a coup against voters. Women should encourage
he support partnership of Nader and Wertheimer of these organizations too,
as men and women of democracy must together decry this coup against the
voters. It is certainly possible for women clergy to do this while
upholding concern about marital lying infidelity and upholding a spirit
of pastoral healing and respect for privacy, intimacy and marriage; one
can be for honesty and fidelity but passionately against a coup; just
as can even dislike Clinton and continue to challenge some of his
policies, but nevertheless blow the whistle on a coup from the dangerous
political right! Women need to see ecumenical women clergy and feminist
theologians develop and operate with organizational support from secular
women's groups and leaders in the way that Rev. Jackson has received
support from Rainbowpush and others groups, in the way Mandela and
Tutu worked together. This coalition of women seculars and women clergy,
with support from the men of their organizations, will help Rev. Jackson
himself to keep from backsliding; big corporate Dems would love to flatter
and coopt him just enough to make him spiritually pacified, and one can
be sure that the pressures on him, as a male leader alone, will be
enormous to demote the importance of the nonsexist agenda that he has
championed as wisely and honorably as he has the nonracist. But if women
clergy and seculars work together as well, our brother Rev. Jackson is
likely to remain as staunch a nonsexist as he is a nonracist; this will best
serve all the agendas of justice, equity, environment and ultimately, peace,
which also remains a strong women's issue. Women's organizations should post
the statements of men like Nobel Peace Prizewinner Elie Wiesel and many
women's leaders together calling HALT to the trial. Women leaders must
make it clear to the women of this country that they are building this
kind of spiritual, moral and legal coalition to explicitly delegitimize
this coup and its underlying hold on government; or they must answer to
the women of this country. Although it has received some, this kind of
coalition-building deserves far more attention on women's groups websites,
and women must be seen as leading such coalition building, as well,
defining women's rights as CENTRAL to the fate of political and human
rights, in this country as elsewhere. Political human rights and coup
conspiracies are incompatible.
Women and women's groups must now become a chorus:
Let's NOW help the women Senators correct their deal-mistake;
so that they do not become simply tokens in the Senate,
and their liberal brothers just the puppets of campaign donors.
Let them make this their clear and simple position: Let any and all
government officials and other leaders hold a Press Conference(s) to
personally censure the President for adultery and misleading do so, but
get the whole hypcritical nonsense **OUT** of our Legislative branch
immediately; and make it clear, with moral authority, that all women,
with the whole electorate of which we are the majority, have had more
than enough of this pompous but clever gradual coup against the voter!
Any Dems or Repubs who continue this coup against the voter in any official
form face a permanent loss of our future support or legitimatization of
their still male dominated party leadership, and women's massive exodus
to third parties with more gender egalitarian leadership, or choose
"none of the above" choices at the ballot box. Senators must begin
to WALK OUT; women Senators must publicly threaten this and demand that
their liberal and moderate brothers follow them or face becoming tokens
and puppets that no longer really serve the women of this country.
In the matter of this threat to our elections, Senators must
represent us; and to do so, they must DISMISS and STOP THE COUP NOW AND
COMPLETELY or WALK OUT of a daily Unconstitutional body calling itself the
Legislative Branch. If needed, women's organizations and women's labor
should be prepared to organize sit ins, marches and hunger strikes of the
types of Gandhi, King and Mandela, to protect women's most important
political right, the right to a meaningful vote, from male political
machinations and disenfranchising coups, and ** use the impeachment trial
games to highlight, via vigils and rallys, ** women's extreme lack of
representative numbers in the errant legislative branch; an imbalance
that would in itself be illegal in several European democracies,
and a growing list of other progressing nations around the world.
And, like Jackson, women at all levels but especially leaders must
articulate that they will never accept a resignation from Clinton; a
resignation borne of a coup is also against our form of government.
Women must make that clear to Al Gore, as well. Only legitimate and
democratic processes that represent and include the people can choose or
remove Presidents. Rank and file women will insist on that, and their
leaders had better understand that right now if they wish to have any
respect among the millions of living disciples of both Abigail Adams
and Martin Luther King of this country. Women are central to the
preservation and fulfillment of democracy; and women's rights and democracy
go hand in hand, or democracy will be lost for women and the
feminist majority first, but ultimately, for everyone. Millions of rank
and file women will not compromise this, and they will not silently tolerate
it when their "leaders" accept deals that compromise that precious
understanding of women's special responsibility and opportunity in the
present crisis.
We are sending copies of this to major women's organizations
and ask that they respond in this and a few other major listserv forums.
We are sending a copy this to others who have already identified the coup
and who have faith and trust that women leaders, no matter what their party,
will listen to their millions of rank and file women sisters, cut the fuzzy
talk and pseudo "non-partisan" excuse making, and openly refuse the
Constitutional legitimacy of proceedings born of and perpetuating
a conspiracy and coup. For women, these proceedings are as illegitimate
and insulting as a voting booth that bears the sign "Women, Keep out",
or a election tally that deliberately subtracts the votes of women.
This is a a coup against women as voters and citizens. Women's leaders
must make that clear, or their ability to lead and serve the
women of our country must be reevaluated. As other women and men
have done, we now call upon women' groups leaders to explicitly call
the proceedings **coup** and challenge its basic Constitutional and ethical
legitimacy, on behalf
of all women voters and citizens.
Signed,
On Behalf of Millions of Concerned Women
cc. NOW
Feminist Majority
League of Women Voters
WAND
People for the American Way
RainbowPush Coalition
other women's forums
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