Wednesday, June 28, 2006, 12:58 PM - Politics
I was having another one of those conversations with a conservative (this time it was with Claudia's friend Skittles - how can a conservative go by the name of candy, anyway?) where they're just falling all over themselves about how RATIONAL I am and how I'm so adept at real dialogue. Usually I take this to mean that they just want to get my pants off (Sean, Ken) but I don't think that was Skittles' goal. (It also makes me realize how much my intellectual proclivities were shaped by scrappy debate of the CC core.) Are there truly no other fearless liberal chicks out there to drink Sancerre and fight with? Is our side really that incapable of articulating our positions or allowing that there are plenty of well-reasoned conservative arguements? Perhaps I’m just not afraid to admit when I agree with them, which I’m sure is refreshing. I usually end up respecting the logic behind most fiscal/ libertarian conservatives’ positions, while finding their baseline assumptions to be fundamentally flawed (e.g. the core lack of altruism/responsibility for the community that percolates through what would otherwise be fairly appealing libertarianism).
Our chat last night reminded me of the last serious middle east discussion I was part of (more accurately as a 3rd wheel in a slugfest between Nick and Adam)- I wish I had time to think more coherently about middle east foreign policy/ long term implications, and I wish I understood the Saudi and Egyptian internal dynamics better. I won’t concede the pure ‘I will save the world with democracy’ motivations that were put forward last night – everything there is too mixed up with oil – but I can’t totally discount the impact of the ascendency of idealistic interventionist neocons. I’m fascinated with the Iranian trajectory (which our Iraq quagmire is influencing in unexpected ways)– did you hear they just appointed a new foreign policy committee? Makes me think they’re less likely to become North Korea, more hopeful that the moderating influence of gradually increasing economic interaction with Europe and their profoundly young population can move them towards a less repressive, more democratic incarnation of the revolution. (Is Ahmadinejad a trend or an anomaly?) I don’t have a lot of hope that Iraq will become a shining advertisement for the benefits of democracy any time soon…and for all its flaws, Iran (as Pez pointed out) does have a complex and multi-layered civil society, and (in addition) a strong history of education and women's political participation. Where’s Mana Kia when I need her?
Wednesday, June 28, 2006, 12:04 PM - Politics
;)
You should be going to your local Rally for an Oil-Free Congress
Here's the summary from the MoveOn site:
Gas prices are off the charts, the situation in the Middle East is unstable, scientists are warning that global warming is at a tipping point, and last month, MoveOn members decided that "clean, sustainable energy" should be one of our key goals. That's why it's time for an "Oil-Free Congress."
On Wednesday, June 28th — right before the 4th of July when gas prices will be front and center as folks plan for the long weekend — we're going to be holding gas station rallies across the country. We'll tell Congress it's time to say no to Big Oil's money and become Oil Free.
I'll be at the Shell Station at the corner of Fair Oaks and Walnut in Pasadena at 5:30. What does one wear to a gas station?
Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 12:53 AM - Politics
I was at a meeting last week to examine the state of GOTV research and plot out coordinated efforts to answer the most pressing pending questions. Some of the people there were very impressive, and some seemed frighteningly dense. One of the more interesting proposed goals was developing metrics/ research protocols that would allow for true comparisons and more reliability across different experiments and programs… but the group shied away from discussing the really important outcome measurement: evaluating the movement as a whole. The right knows what’s on its scorecard, and has checked off a few boxes recently (supreme court). I suppose without a coherent ‘progressive’ agenda it’s difficult to determine shared hard benchmarks – but one would think we could come up with some numerical goals for the federal budget / economic indicators that would require the implementation of our priorities – a relative increase, for example, in education spending relative to military spending, a decrease in the % of medical care costs incurred because of lack of access to care, % increase in energy efficiency, reduction in poverty/ income inequality, etc. Even without those agreements, you’d think that we could come up with shared process outcomes that would be indicators of the movement’s growth – % of people who report that they’re civically engaged, % increase in voter turnout in primary and general elections, % of the Democratic party’s funding that comes from small donors, % of women holding elected office… but none of that large-scale evaluation is on the table – which is why you end up with hugely expensive enterprises like ACT that fail utterly to create a sustainable progressive infrastructure, or conferences with seemingly superficial impact. Changing the balance in Congress would be a nice start, but it's very far from what I hope are our ultimate goals.
Wednesday, June 7, 2006, 08:31 PM - Politics
Despite our earnest MoveOn member phone banking, Francine Busby could not build on her strong first-round showing to take 50th district in a runoff yesterday - in fact she barely improved on the April election results. (That said, she improved tremendously on her '04 numbers, so perhaps there's hope in the big picture - especially given the piles of cash the Republicans had to pour into the race). The last 5% she needed to pick up were an extreme long shot, given the huge R tilt to the district (even without her last-minute gaffes). I hope this makes people realize that corruption is not the core issue to build our messaging around - if it didn't work to turn moderate Republicans and keep the R base home in SD (with a full-on bribery, limos and prostitute scandal) it's certainly won't work with the subtleties of campaign finance irregularities. My sense (maybe from living in Argentina) is that most people have a ridiculously high tolerance for corruption, and politicians in the U.S. at their worst are better than those in many other countries at their best. Most of the venality in our political system is right on the table; the lobbyist/ campaign contribution thing is astonishingly blatant, and barely raises eyebrows. MoveOn's gotten some lift with 'caught red-handed' ads targeting vulnerable republicans, but only when they're on a specific issue that matters to people (Rx drug coverage). The general 'culture of corruption' message just tells people what they already know, I fear. We need to do better this fall.Friday, May 26, 2006, 08:13 PM - Politics, Dancing
Some things are inevitable, although unhappy: Desmond Dekker died.
Some are totally preventable: U.S. Marines may have massacred 24 Iraqi civilians.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006, 11:04 AM - Politics, Technology
MomsRising.org is going to the NetSquared conference next week in San Jose. Joan will be speaking at the plenary ("Grassroots, Netroots, and the Beginning and End of Politics") on Wednesday morning with Amy Goodman and Michael Turk on how her work with MoveOn and MomsRising has changed the way we think about and participate in politics. I'm on a panel Tuesday afternoon lead by Lisa Stone (from Blogher.org ) about gender and social networking - not that I'm an expert, but I'd love to get feedback from the conference attendees on how MomsRising can make the best use of social networking tools, as well as what enhancements we could develop that would benefit the open source online organizing community. Sunday, May 21, 2006, 07:58 PM - Sex, Politics
As some of you know, my former boss Barbara Moscicki is one of the leading HPV researchers in the world (her work with Connect to Protect was just her little side project). I'm thrilled that an HPV vaccine could be approved very soon, sparing future generations of women from much of the risk of cervical cancer. I'm worried, of course, that the FDA will ignore science in favor of right-wing fundamentalist politics and delay or deny the application, as they did when they overruled their own experts on the morning-after pill/ Plan B. It will be interesting to see if any states mandate the vaccination, as they have for several diseases that it's much harder and less likely that schoolchildren will catch than HPV. (Yes, parents can always ask for a vaccine waiver on religious or other grounds.) I do dream of a day when Americans realize that hormones and human nature prompt teens to have sex, not contraception and sex education, and certainly not a shot you'd get at 10 that could save your life at 50.Sunday, May 21, 2006, 07:44 PM - Politics
Julie Su was the keynote at the LAANE women's event described below. She's been a leader in the anti-sweatshop and immigrant rights movements, and about current struggles of immigrant garment workers. I think she set up a false dichotomy in her presentation, implying that we have to choose between style and justice - but it was interesting to think of the crowd of lovely luncheon ladies conducting silent inventories of their wardrobe choices. (There is loads of privilige inherent in the following statement, but I don't think that invalidates the principles behind it.) I buy organic food because I don't want pesticides in the soil (not so much because I'm worried they'll give me cancer); I buy locally designed and produced clothes to support independent businesswomen and fair labor practices. (I felt moderately righteous in my pretty Dema top, but must admit that I can't vouch for the pedigree of the Katyone Adeli pants. Lord knows that super cute D&G lavender jacket was probably swimming in sweat (I just checked, it's made in Italy, so probably not as bad as it could be?) Is it more socially acceptable if things are bought far below retail price? Just like bottled water, it seems environmentally unsustainable to fly a jacket halfway around the world, no matter how smart. I'm sure this is somewhat frivolous, but I want to stake a small claim for fashion and style as fun and something that can exist outside of a corporate, exploitative entity. Spending money with locally-owned, less-exploitative business recyles community resources and allows for great pleasures. (Of course there is a long debate about how localization now would reinforce the current eonomic north/south stratification, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that the Wal-Martization of the world is an unequivocally good thing).
I'm interested in what a friend of the Republican is doing on making visible the true nature of production costs - just a taste athttp://www.revealinfo.com/.
I'm going to try for style AND justice, whever possible.
Friday, May 19, 2006, 08:38 PM - Politics, Books
.;)
Today (at the lovely Amy Wakeland's invitation) I attended the Women for a New Los Angeles/ Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy luncheon. It was such a great surprise to open up the latest issue of their newsletter and find a full-page spread on MomsRising! Plus Barbara Ehrenreich gave a great powerful acceptance speech for her award, and she seems interested in the MomsRising project. Last night I went to see David Sirota in a sea of westside liberals and got stuck in a funny conversation between Wendy and Tom Hayden... the old guard LA progressives are an interesting bunch, to say the least. David is touring to support his new book, Hostile Takeover. I think the most useful point from his talk is that us lefties need to stop being afraid of sounding angry - there's definitely a lesson for MomsRising in there somewhere...maybe a way to get women to vent and share their frustrations and obstacles in balancing work and family... and generate ideas for non-legislative focused action.
Sunday, May 14, 2006, 10:32 PM - Politics
;)
I caught the last half of Mike Davis' talk at UCSD last week (was there interviewing sweet young things for GCI recruitment). He was talking about his new book Planet of Slums, which treats the astonishing urbanization of the poor and its potential social and economic impacts. As someone who's spent small amounts of time in the slums of Central and South America, many of his points ring true - especially about the dire consequences of long-term warehouseing/ complete disenfranchisement of the extremely poor on the periphery of urban settings. he paints a dickensian picture of the future of most cities - kind of like what's already happened in Sao Paolo - the rich fly around in helicopters to avoid the urban chaos. He was hopeful that the poor (as has happened recently in Bolivia) can transcend their marginalized existence through protest and shut down commerce (as they shut down the airport and traffic in La Paz) - but I'm not convinced that the economies of the midsized cities where most the fastest-growing slums are concentrated matter much in the greater economic sphere. Does the west care if Lagos shuts down for a week? Florianopolis? A small city in India? Coordination through low-cost technology (texting) has allowed for effective protest among some poorer communities (in the Phillipines) but even a cell phone is far out of reach for the kind of slum-dwellers he considers in this book. And I'm not convinced that the Paris riots (while garnering much attention) did much to change the opportunities for Arab French youth- I worry that they'll be even less able now to integrate into European culture. The last thing we need is more disaffected teenage boys with no prospects and too much time on their hands...
Anyway if you want more there's a very detailed review here.
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