--
On Sun, 24 Jan 1999 14:09:15 Bertina Miller wrote:
>Sorry dont agree with you that walking out will solve a damn thing, the
>only thing that will is the complete vote for the acquital of Clinton.
>That is the only way anything can be shown that the Republicans have been
>nothing but hypocritical crybabys. If women want to express their
>leadership, sticking to their guns and duking it out in the voting process
>is the only feasible means.
>
>My 2 cents
>
Dear Bertina -
Why should women consider this body legitimate in the
first place, with unreformed campaign finance
and ballot access laws having been the only way
the power politics of these mostly men can survive?
In many countries, women have already held the
strikes and marches needed so that their legislatures
do not have the extreme gender imbalance of our
Senate and House. The entire proceedings are a pseudo-
pretext to use women's issues (sexual harassment)
to defeat other women's issues (especially affirmative
action) and to perpetuate a boy's only glass ceiling
in government, that despite his many flaws, Clinton
tried hard to challenge. If you want to "duke" things
out for millions of women, then you had better be
sure that the odds are not so stacked against women
that appearing for the one round is the sure way to lose the whole fight. That IS the
case, here, and
women who can see the big picture do not give it any legitimacy whatsoever. I agree
that voting is
very important - assuming votes are heeded by the
legislators! Are they begin heeded here? National
referenda are occurring in many countries as an
important adjunct to representative branches. If we
had had a referenda where women's votes count in
their numbers, then none of this could have happened.
The women's movement should use this travesty as
the ultimate justification for initiating national
referenda. Democracy favors women; every time women
forget that, they do themselves and the whole human
race a great disservice. Do you think the blacks
of the South were crybabys when they refused to
pay the poll tax that wealthier whites could afford,
and declared that playing field too biased to
be Constitutional? Until we have sweeping campaign
finance reform and referenda, women should look
on all the legislature's decisions with a jaundiced
eye and withhold any legitimization of their
mostly male proceedings; and they should be alert
to regard this coup as a clear coup against women as voters.
Sewa
Join 18 million Eudora users by signing up for a free Eudora Web-Mail account at
http://www.eudoramail.com
