http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2b2fda7241241ba88cab43b821c1e251
Pacific News Service
The Woman Behind Arnold's Defeat
Analysis/Commentary, Kathleen Sharp,
New America Media, Nov 09, 2005
Editor's Note: Forget sexist language or charges of groping -- California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's biggest "woman problem" is the head of the
state's nurses union, who led a successful movement to defeat his special
election initiatives.
SANTA BARBARA--Women have had a bruising time in the public eye lately,
ranging from Judith Miller's deceptive reports in the New York Times to
Harriet Miers' embarrassing qualifications for the Supreme Court. So when a
woman manages to outperform the most confident governor in America, it's
worth celebrating.
On Tuesday, Nov. 8, every one of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pet
initiatives failed, in large part because of Rose Ann DeMoro, the chief
executive of the California Nurses Association (CAN). She and her
65,000-member union spent most of this year building a broad-based populist
movement that the once-powerful governor tried to dismiss with glib
one-liners.
Certainly, one reason Schwarzenegger's initiatives failed was widespread
anger over his $70 million "special" election. Lengthening the probationary
period before teachers can qualify for tenure (Prop. 74), weakening the
unions (Prop. 75), bypassing elected lawmakers on fiscal matters (Prop. 76)
and privatizing the redistricting process (Prop. 77) were not going to solve
California's financial problems.
But voters may not have gotten this message if it weren't for DeMoro and her
indefatigable nurses. Early on they stressed that Schwarzenegger's election
was a corporate power grab at the expense of California workers. The nurses
hammered home this message almost daily, even when they risked being
ostracized. As Lou Paulson, head of the California Professional
Firefighters, said: "Rose Ann and the nurses showed us that the emperor had
no clothes."
Their activism started last November, after Schwarzenegger suspended key
portions of the state's nurse-to-patient ratio to help hospital chains.
"That really angered us," says DeMoro. But the nurses protested tentatively,
almost timidly, until one pivotal day last December.
While the governor addressed a state convention of 10,000 women, a few
nurses unfurled a protest banner that read "Hands Off Patient Ratios."
Schwarzenegger grinned for the TV cameras, then said: "Pay no attention...to
the special interests. I am always kicking their butts."
DeMoro was outraged. "For the Governor to denigrate nurses -- a historically
female profession -- while speaking to an audience of women is an affront to
women everywhere," she told CNN. Because Schwarzenegger had shut them
out of the health-care debate, the nurses decided to take their case to the
streets.
"We were told to not make waves, that the people of California would turn
against us to support their popular governor," DeMoro says. At the time,
Schwarzenegger had a 65-percent approval rating, along with fawning cover
stories in Fortune and Vanity Fair magazines.
Even so, the nurses continued marching while the state's firefighters,
teachers, and law enforcement unions watched from the sidelines.
DeMoro rented a plane to buzz wealthy guests at the governor's gated
Brentwood mansion during his Super Bowl Sunday party. The nurses flew it
over Wall Street while the governor held a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser there.
They dogged him in Chicago at a lavish fundraiser, flying a banner that read
"Don't Be Big Business' Bully."
When the governor reneged on his oft-repeated promise to restore $2 billion
to education cuts in February, students and teachers joined the nurses. They
gathered with pickets one rainy day at a Sacramento theater where the
governor was about to watch the premiere of "Get Shorty 2."
But when nurse Kelly Di Giacomo was whisked out of the movie line and into a
back room, protesters grew worried. The governor's security team grilled the
petite nurse for over an hour until she finally asked why they considered
her a threat. One of Schwarzenegger's bodyguards pointed to her scrubs and
explained. "You're wearing a nurse's uniform."
"Oh, sure," she said, drolly. "The international terrorist uniform."
That intimidating experience emboldened the nurses, whose protests began
attracting media attention. By spring, TV news cameras were moving their
soft-lens focus from Schwarzenegger to the growing crowds of angry workers,
most of them women.
In March, Schwarzenegger's popularity dropped to 55 percent, and a
California court ruled that the governor had indeed broken the law by
suspending the state's nurse-ratio regulation. By then, however, the
governor was trying to gut California firefighters' and police officers'
pensions, mimicking a Bush administration proposal.
That effort galvanized the conservative law enforcement community to join
DeMoro's ranks for the first time. That spring, firefighters joined a crowd
of 4,000 nurses, parents, teachers, and state employees to object to the
governor's rash of cuts to middle- and lower-class programs.
By April, even die-hard Republicans were growing wary of the governor's
company. When former Secretary of State George Shultz showed up for an
Arnold fundraiser in San Francisco, he was visibly shaking as 5,000 booing
protesters met him in front of the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
Hotel workers later reported that 80 percent of the $100,000 seats went
empty that day. "I'm convinced that the protesters scared them away," said
CNA organizer Shum Preston.
By summer, the folly of holding a special election seemed obvious, but
DeMoro didn't let up. In August, CNA nurses flew to Boston to protest
Schwarzenegger as he tried raising election funds by re-selling three dozen
Rolling Stones tickets in his sky-box for $100,000 each.
Picketing CNA nurse Stephen Ingersoll couldn't afford a ticket to the Fenway
Park concert, but he stood outside and calmly explained his, and CNA's
position to Boston reporters. A group of non-union nurses were so impressed
with his aplomb, they asked Ingersoll: "How do you guys do this?"
It's simple, he told them: "When there's an issue that needs to be debated,
we just go to the streets."
By September, DeMoro and the nurses were inviting workers of all stripes to
join them, which attracted some Hollywood guild members. Documentary film
maker Robert Greenwald ("Wal-Mart"), Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn and movie
actress Annette Bening attended the nurses' convention in September, where
Warren Beatty had asked to be the keynote speaker.
"We're fighting star power with star power," said DeMoro. By the time Beatty
lent his voice to CNA ads that ran up to election day, Schwarzenegger's
ratings had sunk to a low of 37 percent.
"Instead of attacking the real problems of our schools, Schwarzenegger
attacked school teachers," Beatty said. "Instead of attacking the cost of
healthcare, he attacked nurses. Instead of increasing our safety, he
attacked police and firefighters."
That tactical mistake cost Schwarzenegger his special election initiatives
and turned California's nurses into grass-roots heroes in other parts of the
country.
Nurses in Illinois, Massachusetts, Arizona, and Mississippi have asked
DeMoro for help in challenging the growing clout of corporate hospital
chains and other states' anti-worker initiatives. To be effective, the CNA
has created a subsidiary called the National Nurses Organizing Committee,
which allows it to organize nurses outside of the Golden State. This fall,
the NNOC welcomed 2,000 Chicago nurses into their fold, and it anticipates
more members by year's end.
As for Schwarzenegger, he's lost more than his special election. He's
managed to squander his once-bright political future and to jeopardize the
pro-business platforms of other Republican leaders in outlying blue states.
And all because of a woman.
Kathleen Sharp is a Santa Barbara-based writer who covers California
politics. She is the co-producer of the documentary "The Last Mogul," in
theaters now.
Post a Comment
----
To the Editor:
Kudos to Rose Ann DeMoro, head of the California Nurses Association
(CAN) and her 65,000-member union for leading the charge to defeat
Governor Schwarzenegger.
But let's not forget his sexist language or charges of groping, against
Schwarzenegger as the editor's note suggests.
Let's not allow the allegations of 16 brave women who went public with
charges to what amounted to criminal conduct against Schwarzenegger
while he was running for Governor to be marginalized and with terms like
groping, sexual misconduct, or even sexual harassment. (You don't go to
prison for sexually harass sing your employs or co-workers.)
Sexual Battery is the more accurate and criminal description of
Schwarzenegger actions as described in the Los Angeles Times and
elsewhere by those who were victimized by him.
>From Webster's Dictionary: Grope
Feel up: to touch or fondle (someone) for sexual pleasure to find (as one's
way) by groping
>From California Criminal Code:
Sexual Battery: Any unwanted touching of an intimate part of another person
for the purpose of sexual arousal. "Touching" means physical contact with
another person whether the individuals involved are clothed or unclothed.
"Intimate part" means the sexual organ, anus, groin or buttocks of any
person, and the breast of a female. (Penal Code Section 243.4.)
Sexual Battery is a Megan's Law Registrable Sex Offense in California.
Many survivors of sexual battery suffer the same long-term psychological
post-traumatic symptoms as those who have experienced rape or sexual
assault that includes penetration.
It's no accident that a misogynist like Schwarzenegger set his first attacks
on nurses and teachers, both fields dominated by women .
Let's also salute those 16 women who at great risk to themselves, their
families, and their careers tried to warn the voters of California.
If only we had listened....
Karen Pomer
Co-Founder Rainbow Sisters' Project
For Women Who Have Survived Sexual Assault
###
http://tinyurl.com/b5qkb
Robert Scheer: Who's the Girlie Man Now?
You have to love California. Yes, I'm buzzed by the stunning rejection of
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's referendum revolution aimed at turning this
blue state red. That the voters soundly defeated his proposals to punish the
public sector unions and legislators who dared to cross the Terminator is a
bellwether moment for the nation.
Schwarzenegger was defeated primarily by the hardworking public sector
workers of the state: the teachers, firefighters and other civil servants
who are sick and tired of being pitted by politicians against those they are
so dedicated to serving. "We're the mighty, mighty nurses" the joyous
healers chanted in a victory conga line the night they brought the bully
down.
Frankly, I feared that what was left of Schwarzenegger's blustery charisma
along with the endorsement of some of his proposals by all of the state's
big newspapers and the Republicans' attempt to drag their base to the polls
with an anti-abortion initiative would fool the voters. That it didn't,
along with the rejection of Bush backed candidates in New Jersey and
Virginia, trumpets a message of hope for the country.
Hope, because California is not some bohemian outpost divorced from
mainstream American reality, despite the incessant repetition of that
caricature. After all, this is the state that gave the nation Richard Nixon
and Ronald Reagan and fell once again for the Republican big business
populism of Schwarzenegger just two years ago.
The caricature is a joke. California represents the cutting edge of the
nation, certainly in media, science and economic innovation, but also very
much in its politics, which make the state's palpable energy possible.
That point was lost on all seven of the state's top daily newspapers, which
endorsed the governor's plan to take the power to draw election districts
away from the legislature, a move, like the previously successful term
limits initiative, that only would make the lobbyists and their campaign
contributions more important.
Because of "safe" or less contested races, legislators at least have the
potential to pay attention to their constituents rather than to those who
finance the hotly contested races. It is not true, as The Los Angeles Times
editorialized, that under the current system, "extremists reign," but rather
that responsible legislators can focus on constituent needs rather than
waging costly electoral battles financed by lobbyists. The Times went so far
as to bemoan in the body of its lead election news story the voters '
refusal to heed Schwarzenegger's effort at "reforming" California's
"notoriously dysfunctional politics."
Dysfunctional? Compared to what? The politics of Texas where the death
penalty is the most active social service program, or is it Kansas, which
has decided that the theory of evolution is no longer science? What The
Times and Schwarzenegger consider dysfunctional is actually functioning
representative government, where the little guy gets a chance at being
heard, the sort of government we no longer have in Washington.
The power of the corporate interests has been checked primarily by the
state's
huge public service workers unions. Their grassroots tested power is what
has allowed the state to remain economically vibrant by being responsive to
the needs of ordinary folk and not just the richest winners in the economic
lottery. This was an election in which voters thanked the civil servants,
from teachers to correction officers, who serve them year in and out.
That victory for the progressive base was echoed in the Democrats winning
the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia as well. In New Jersey,
Jon Corzine, one of the toughest liberals in the nation, beat back those who
sought to turn this millionaire businessman's social compassion into a
negative. So, too, in Virginia where Timothy Kaine, a Catholic, refused to
abandon his church's opposition to the death penalty despite the most
vicious right-wing attacks.
The lessons of Tuesday's election both in the bellwether state of California
and across the nation is that Lincoln was right : the American people will
not forever be fooled. The negative message of the Republican right, even
when fronted by a smirking action hero, has lost its power to terrorize
voters.
Bob Scheer is the editor of www.Truthdig.com
***
REMINDER:
Monday, November 14
Journalist Robert Fisk at UCLA
The War for the Middle East: History Unlearned
7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Grand Ballroom
Ackerman Student Union
UCLA
Robert Fisk is the Veteran Middle East Correspondent for The Independent
(London)
Author of: The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle
East(2005),
Pity The Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (2002)
Winner of: Amnesty International Award, 2000; David Watt Memorial Award,
2001;
and seven-time winner as the British International Journalist of the Year
UCLA parking: $8.00
Take Westwood Blvd. entrance to campus from Wilshire Blvd.
This event is Free and Open to the Public
Sponsored by the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History and
Academic Advancement Program
For more information call:
Center for Social Theory and Comparative History: (310) 206-5675
Or Jeff Cooper, AAP: (310) 206 2912
************
Tuesday, November 15:
Robert Fisk at USC
12 Noon - 2 PM
USC
Room 101
Mudd Hall of Philosophy
Fisk will be signing copies ofhis latest book, The Great War for
Civilization: The Conquest of the MiddleEast, which will be available for
purchase at Mudd Hall.
Sponsored by the Center for International Studies at USC.
For more information, call(213) 740-0800 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**********
Wednesday, November 16:
Robert Fisk at Cal Poly Pomona
12 Noon - 1 PM
Cal Poly Pomona
Bronco Student Center
Centaurus Room(1329)
3801 West Temple Avenue
Pomona 91768
###
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