American politics

Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas

tina — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Of the many things I accomplished in high school, “leading a political uprising” was suspiciously absent. Yet around the world, teenage girls are organizing their own social revolutions, a trend largely undocumented and unanalyzed before Jessica Taft’s Rebel Girls: Youth Activism and Social Change Across the Americas.

Taft’s interviews with teenage women engaged in progressive social justice work in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, the San Francisco Bay area, and Vancouver reveals scores of young women active in sophisticated community organizing and creative political protests. These are girls shutting down their school systems to combat harassment; hosting workshops on challenging white supremacy; and railing against toxic waste facilities poisoning their communities.

Rebel Girls isn’t a critique of the culture of girlhood—a blossoming field dedicated to analyzing the psychosocial experiences of teenage women as they develop. Instead, Taft investigates young women engaged in social activism (either through community organizations or through their own initiatives) – a group whose power and accomplishments have been relatively ignored by the broader social justice movement. Taft not only recognizes this, but seeks to rectify it by placing the voices of the girls front and center in her research, creating a book that is simultaneously captivating and insightful.

It would be easy to stereotype the girls’ work based on their identities as teenagers or as young women. Taft astutely resists the temptation. For example, an interview with two Buenos Aires women building a community center examines how gender influences the women’s political work, but does not stray into potentially counterproductive stereotypes about girls. Observations that many of the girls featured strove to make politics “fun” does not smack of derision; rather, Taft places the girls’ “pleasurable politics” in the context of social justice movements throughout history.

The fact that teenagers are largely excluded from the standard markers of political engagement—being able to vote and run for office—colors their engagement as well as their political philosophies. The girls Taft interviews have largely circumvented these political avenues in favor of more direct and in many instances, more transformative social work. While Taft notes that ignoring the macro-level influences at the root of injustice may hinder lasting social change, her reluctance to investigate this further is one of very few weak points in Rebel Girls.

Through her meticulous interviews interwoven with historical background, Taft presents a work that is both a rigorous academic analysis and a thoughtful portrait of the intimate details of these women’s work.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, February 24th 2011

No Excuses: Nine Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power

beth — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:00:00 +0000

By Gloria Feldt

Seal Press

When I heard Gloria Feldt being interviewed on NPR, I thought I might have some problems with No Excuses, so I asked to review it and follow up with a telephone interview of Feldt. When I read the book, my first impression was confirmed. After an hour interview with Feldt, who I had met previously in Arizona, she seemed such a nice, genuine person concerned for women that I was torn about what to do with the review. I reread the book and got upset all over again. Feminism, like quarks, comes in many colors. My working class background and grassroots perspective has colored my response.

Feldt’s main theme is that the women’s movement is stuck, and it’s our own fault because we resist using the power we have. She argues that all formal laws and barriers have fallen and only social norms and self-limitation hold us back. She insists that because of the economic collapse, now is the time, because women will be tapped to clean up the mess made by men. But rather than charging forward, we are stepping back yet again.

In the interview, Feldt supported her belief that the world wants women by pointing out that management studies from Ernst and Young have found that companies with a higher percentage of women in management function more efficiently and have a higher return in the market. The World Bank analyzed the results of parliaments that have 30% or more of women and found that they make better decisions. But in counterpoint, the number of people in slavery, many of them women and many in the U.S., is higher now than it was at the height of the Black slave trade. The U.S. now has the largest gap between the rich and the poor. Poor women are driven into prostitution, domestic work, or sweatshops to feed their children.

While Feldt is clear that she is only talking about the U.S., international trends also do not support her conclusions. The just released report, The Authoritarian Challenge to Democracy: Selected Data from Freedom House’s Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties, found that in 2010, twenty-five countries exhibited declines in freedom and only eleven showed gains. Both Mexico and Ukraine dropped from Free to Partly Free. The number of countries designated as Free dropped from eighty-nine to eighty-seven, the number of electoral democracies dropped from 116 to 115, the worst since 1995. In 2005, the number was 123. The Middle East and North Africa regions that have been the focus of democratic reform declined even further from an already low democratic baseline.

The author encourages women to make one last push for equality to get us over the finish line. But in discussion, she admitted that one final push will not solve every problem and cannot create complete equality. The 2010 election that was to be yet another “year of the woman” resulted in fewer and more conservative women in Congress. But she believes a final push will lead to greater equality and that will be a profound shift in human rights and justice.

She wrote the book because political changes and society transformations are complicated, and people do not make the connection between theory and action, laws and reality. Those dots have to be connected over and over again, so the “push” does not mean an end, but a beginning starting from a different place. The “push” does not include quotas that have been credited the world over with creating more gender balanced governing bodies. She believes that the politics are such in the U.S. that it would be an unlikely fight to win today. Since she believes that almost all of the legal barriers and many of the policy barriers have been eliminated, if women decided to seek parity, and took action, they could achieve it in ten to twenty years.

Certainly, Feldt is correct that women should redefine the use of power in a non-abusive way. Models of that approach are outlined in the book. The problems of co-optation and internal barriers are discussed. The essentials necessary to embrace her philosophy—money and control over our own bodies—are however, both in short supply. The “power tools” she sprinkles throughout the book read a bit “New Agey” until the end of the book where they are given more in-depth analysis. Many of her slogans are old wine in new bottles without attribution to earlier feminists whose shoulders she stands on. Practical methods are not mentioned such as union organizing or fighting for quotas in political parties. In the “tool section,” she encourages women to smile, but in fact, smiling is counter-indicated. In December 2010, Stanford business school professor Deborah Gruenfeld recommended that women stop all the smiling. “Women give away power all the time, by smiling or looking away when they are saying something authoritative.” In the finale, Feldt argues that to re-ignite the movement, we should be courageous sisters and support other women.

“Equal rights for the sexes will be achieved when mediocre women occupy high positions,” said Francoise Giroud (1916-2003), as quoted in the 2006 SheSource article, “The Glass Ceiling in Media: Think the glass ceiling is gone—or just an outdated metaphor? Think again” by Tekla Szymanski. Women have to perform to be promoted; men only have to have potential and connections. The article outlines the dismal state of women in commercial media. Even in media that focus mainly on “women’s issues,” only 28% of the publishers and 50% of the executive and senior editors are female.

In that article, Feldt is quoted, “One reason the glass ceiling remains strong in broadcast and newspapers is media consolidation, which squeezes out positions at the top and in mid-management, where women might have been in the pipeline to advance...When resources are scarce, the old boys' network closes ranks and chooses leaders it feels most comfortable with—those most like themselves.” This statement is counter to her argument in the book that there is no glass ceiling, only a sticky floor.

Gail Evans, CNN’s first female executive vice president is quoted in the same article saying that women need to learn to play the game, and that we buy into the same stereotypes: “Women take care—and men take charge. Women have to start supporting each other. Their success is connected. Women think it’s all about “I can do it.” They think that, “if I try hard, it’ll change.” We have to go from “I can do it,” which gives isolated success to, “We can do it.””

I’m left confused. On the one hand, we are told (and Feldt says in the book) that women need to stop putting everyone else first. On the other hand, we are told that women tend to go it alone and should support their sisters. On one hand, we are told that women managers do better because we are more collaborative, but on the other hand, we are told that women think in terms of I not we. Which is it?

While I certainly agree with Feldt that women need to re-think their attitude toward power, no reason except the economic collapse explains why now is the time for women. The same people who caused the crash are still at the top in Obama’s government, at Harvard, and at Goldman Sachs. The CEO of GM that went bankrupt is now in charge of a job creation committee. The massive grassroots movement in support of Elizabeth Warren was not enough to have her appointed to the new consumer watchdog agency. Those in charge have no intention of turning over the reins. A woman warned us of the financial collapse. They didn’t listen. A woman warned us about 9/11. They didn’t listen. They may send in women to clean up their mess, but then they will send them back home again. The vicious attacks on Hillary Clinton during the primary should remind us of the fear of women that still lurks in the hearts of men.

As a lawyer, I cannot understand the claim that no laws or barriers exist. The book itself gives many examples of the laws and barriers, the facts and the acts, that still stand in our way. She acknowledges that the hardest barriers are the ones inside our head, describes her own struggles to escape the negative messages and admits that it took her well into her adult life to free herself, but yet she chastises young women as if she expects them to know so much more than we did at that age. She repeatedly disproves her own statements and doesn’t seem to notice.

As a long-time advocate for battered women, I was especially troubled by a description of the domineering, coercive, and controlling behavior by Claire Bloom’s husband Philip Roth that resulted in Bloom sending her daughter away. Feldt characterizes this as voluntary, which is a failure to understand the dynamics of domestic violence and coercive control. I asked about this in the interview and she answered that Claire Bloom was not a woman who needed to opt for the man over the child because she had means, talent, and networks. Coercive control happens to women who are rich and famous as much, or in some studies even more, than to women who are poor and unknown. The means, talents, or networks of women do not insulate them from male violence and control. In fact, it often means they have more to lose if they escape and keeps them locked in.

If the book is written for a specific group of women, “…for those of us who count ourselves among the lucky ones, the time for excuses is over…” I concur, because I too have little sympathy for women with money and power who turn their backs on other women. But if she meant it for all women, then I have a problem with the blaming and shaming that lies behind the words. The focus on the lucky ones should have been made clear from the beginning, otherwise the book reads a lot like blaming the victim.

Feldt both agreed and disagreed with my analysis. She agreed that the privileged women are the ones who have been able to be the leading edge in a formal way and have been able to get their message to the public. While that is commonly said, the new movie Made in Dagenham reminiscent of Norma Rae shows the tremendous impact made by working class women.

The author did have certain expectations that the book would resonate with our generation (we are about the same age) and the young feminists, but did not expect it to resonate as well as it has with the entrepreneurs who often don’t belong to any formal groups and wouldn’t call themselves feminists or with the young women who are the first in their family to graduate from high school or college. In the first six months since the release of the book, she believes it has resonated with the lower SES group and the acceptance of the message has been a great joy to her. One thing is clear, women need to be leaders. The leader, according to Feldt, is not necessarily the CEO but the person who gets things done.

The author had planned to write another book about women’s relationship with sex, but the unexpected success of this book has derailed that for a while. The book has taken on an unanticipated life. It’s being used in women’s studies, seminars, and she’s been asked to do a webinar. So for the short term, she’ll be working with the themes of the book perhaps putting her nine power tools into specific workshop formats to concretize them, which would be useful. On her bucket list, she has many more books to write and steps to take into women’s future of equality.

Written by: Dianne Post, February 22nd 2011

Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States

farhana — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Juliet F. Gainsborough

Georgetown University Press

Sixteen-month-old Amiya Brown died due to blunt force. Thirteen-month-old Christopher Thomas died and his two year-old sister. All under the auspices of child welfare. These and many other horrifying stories are the touchstones of Scandalous Politics: Child Welfare Policy in the States. A series of similar vignettes open the book with a jolt.

Meticulously structured, the book starts with a history of child welfare nationally before diving into the crux of the multi-pronged study featured. Though it clearly serves an academic purpose, it does so flawlessly. Scandalous Politics is incredibly well researched and could easily be mined for details for years to come. However, without my background in social science research it may have been a much more difficult read.

Gainsborough’s study supplements three different state case studies (Florida, Colorado, and New Jersey) with a regression analysis of how scandal influences funding and legislation around child welfare reform. She emphasizes the importance of media in highlighting child welfare atrocities in policy formation. Her regression analysis found a significant relationship between scandals and legislation, but not scandals and funding for child welfare program. Many of the bills came out within two weeks of a compelling story hitting the papers. Gainsborough recognizes the need for continued coverage and pressure from the media in order to create the funding base necessary to create systematic change instead of band-aid reform on a case-by-base basis, which is generally short term and not appropriately funded overtime.

Separation of the research from the stories of children appears conscious. Unfortunately, the continuity of the stories is then lost in the research. It’s as if the stories run in parallel to the study, making the book a significantly less emotional read.

Child welfare issues are not easy, and Gainsborough gives much credence to that. But must we simply leave the fate of the most vulnerable children in this country to the whims of the news cycle?

Written by: Nicole Levitz, January 31st 2011

Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics

mandy — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Ari Berman

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Herding Donkeys is a tense 223-page documentation of the last eight years in American politics. In it, Ari Berman doesn’t argue that the Democratic Party needs to change its ways so much as tell how it’s been done. Finally.

For someone who rarely reads the news, Herding Donkeys was a daunting book to approach, but only a few pages in I began to recall the events Berman details. Back in 2003 I decided to do a little research on the 2004 presidential candidates. I wasn’t old enough to vote, but I was old enough to form an opinion and wanted to be ready for the upcoming election.

After sifting through the democratic candidates, I decided Howard Dean was the man for the job. Who could argue with his success in Vermont as Governor, or the education improvements he made in his home state? What I couldn’t understand was why everyone wasn’t behind this guy; why didn’t anyone know who he was? A week later the Howard Dean Scream played on repeat on news stations all over the country. What ordinary citizens like me didn’t know at the time was that the Dean Scream came after a series of unexpected wins for a guy that most people didn’t even know existed.

The first half of Herding Donkeys chronicles the unlikely victories for Howard Dean and their (sometimes) careful construction. Dean pioneered the Fifty State Strategy, taking his campaign into the reddest states, often ignored by traditional Democrat campaign trails, and implemented another unique strategy: listening to people. We all know that Dean was never elected president, that he pulled out of the race after seeing footage of his own scream on the news, but what Berman shows in the second half of his book is the way Dean paved the way for Obama’s success.

Ari Berman’s book sheds new light on how we got the political landscape we have now, and does so with surprising readability. He puts the recent Democratic success into context and makes it easy to see why so many democrats came out of the woodwork in the last presidential election: people finally felt that they were being heard and that their vote really mattered.

No matter what your political leaning may be, Herding Donkeys is an inspiring show of creativity and revolutionary approaches to traditional political campaigning. The ideas that are so well stated in this book effect more than who our next president is, it helps us work for change on all fronts and reminds us that our actions are significant.

Written by: Tatiana Ryckman, January 22nd 2011

Please Don’t Bomb The Suburbs: A Midterm Report on My Generation and the Future of Our Super Movement

payal — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By William Upski Wimsatt

Akashic

Depending on your age and your social/political circle, you may not know the name William Upski Wimsatt. In his youth, Wimsatt was the youngest Utne Reader “Visionary” award winner. In the last two decades, he’s written several books about the suburbs, the prison industrial complex, white urban subculture, hip-hop, and graffiti. These days, he’s mostly known for political organizing and working with and supporting groups like Generational Alliance and Resource Generation.

Following up his 1994 book Bomb the Suburbs, which garnered him a bit of a cultish progressive following, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs is Wimsatt’s older (if not much wiser) take on adulthood, organizing, and personal politics. The book’s basic premise is this: Get power, get corporate power, use it for good. If you don’t agree with that message from the jump—or you’re not already a fan of Wimsatt’s grandstanding and youth minister-esque appeal—you may not get a whole hell of a lot out of Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs.

From the jump, Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs is a bit confusing for folks new to the activist’s work. Written as one man’s account of what has been important in the last thirty years of American progressive organizing, it’s anything but comprehensive or objective. Mixing storytelling and action plans in a somewhat haphazard fashion and at times reading like a who’s who of modern progressive activism, Wimsatt shamelessly name-drops seemingly everyone he’s ever known or worked with, from Van Jones to Adrienne Marie Brown. While that’s not inherently bad, it’s terribly insular and not very interesting—especially to the outsider, non-activists Wimsatt claims to want to reach.

Wimsatt writes that his audience for the book is two groups: seasoned forty-two-year-old businesspeople and curious seventeen-year-olds just learning about progressive movements. That said, he also wants desperately to identify with people across this entire spectrum of age and experience. By Wimsatt’s definition, he and I share a generation—he claims both Gen X and Gen Y as “his”—even though he’s more than ten years older than me, and I’m one of the oldest in the Millennial club. This sort of confusing, broad, and aimless reaching to include people is the ultimate weakness of the book, when it was no doubt intended to be its strength.

Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs isn’t an analytical dissection of movements and organizing. If anything, it’s one man’s self-congratulatory journey through youthful transgressions to his late thirties, when he realized, as he writes in the book, “Adulthood hits you like whoa.” That same tone, carried throughout, makes the book feel more like a blog than an actual literary accomplishment. I’m sadly not post-print enough to think that turning blog-like ramblings into a bound publication is a good idea; nevermind whether I agree that adulthood “hits you like whoa.”

Wimsatt covers a lot of topics without nuance. He praises the work of non-profits without addressing the non-profit industrial complex. He warns of how overpopulation is pushing humanity to the brink of disaster, and on the same page, questions whether or not he’ll have children. Wimsatt blindly embraces new media, excited about the potential for change using online tools, without considering the drawbacks and legitimate reasons why Facebook is not part of a truly progressive revolution.

It’s incredibly difficult to write a book that appeals to a thirty-eight-year-old suburban homeowner with nephews and a sixteen-year-old urban blogger who’s just learning about environmentalism. It’s also difficult to explore nuance and history when you believe your own experiences and your own self-selected version of history takes precedent. As much as I’d like to believe in the collectivism of a movement necessary for the generation- and experience-breaking organizing that Wimsatt tries to hawk in Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs, this conversational plea to remain relevant didn’t sell me on anything.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, December 22nd 2010

Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women

beth — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Rebecca Traister

Simon & Schuster

As we entered our hotel after a day of sightseeing while on vacation in New York City in September 1984, my father lifted me onto his shoulders so I could see what the fuss was all about in the lobby. The lights were bright and there were lots of tall men in suits all around us. With my father’s direction, I could see the backs of the heads of the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates trying to navigate the crowd. I can still picture the back of Geraldine Ferraro’s head; all I remember from that moment was that her hair was blond and in a hairstyle similar to my mother’s.

Rebecca Traister, a writer for Salon, introduces her blow-by-blow account of the 2008 presidential election with her first political memory from 1984: in the voting booth with her mom turning the lever to make a selection for the first female candidate to appear on a Democratic ticket for president. Traister and I are both in our mid-thirties, and I would argue that her experience in the most recent political election is representative of our generation of feminists.

Her book, Big Girls Don’t Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women, provides a detailed and thrilling account of that epic race, including astute observations from a feminist perspective. She uniquely intertwines her personal interpretations with the nitty-gritty details of the historic campaigns, including critical reactions from feminists and women regarding the gendered nature of the media response and public debate surrounding Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, and other women involved in the election. She argues that the 2008 Presidential Race was a modern-day consciousness raising experience for a generation of women who grew up with easy access and little personal experience with—or at least little critical observation of—the patriarchal structures that surround them in the twenty-first century. She says that the story she tells is “about the country and its culture, how well we all reacted to the arrival of these surprising new figures on the presidential stage and what they showed us about how far we had come and how far we had yet to go.”

I found her internal struggle regarding which candidate to support during the primaries so similar to my own experience and resonant with the experience of many women in the United States during this election. She relies heavily on interviews with women—particularly feminists—from all corners of society. She interviews second wave feminists, pundits, journalists, bloggers, and newcomers to feminism as she exposes the gendered bias towards candidates that was not sufficiently or substantively addressed in the mainstream media during the election cycle. The overt sexism, the race/gender divide, and a nascent, conservative (and therefore questionable) feminist uprising are all analyzed ruthlessly and succinctly. Traister writes with command, intelligence, and a sense of humor.

Speaking of humor, she also discusses the role of comedians with a feminist twist, like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, as well as the role of women journalists, like Katie Couric and Rachel Maddow, all of whom were integral in the cultural interpretations of these political figures. Traister validates and applauds their roles in the process of influencing the electorate regarding gender interpretations of the election as well as long held biases against women in comedy and news.

The frequent refrain in Traister’s book is one in which she considers her mother. She tries to bring together the generations by using her personal connection to her mom’s politics along with the positions of second wave feminists and younger feminists like herself. She wonders how we can be dealing with these same issues that her mom dealt with so many years ago and she answers those questions both personally and politically. Though she highlights the differences in generations of feminists, she finds a way to unite their stories and experiences as they converge on this highly anticipated and much debated event in American history.

Written by: Ashley Josleyn French, November 19th 2010

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future

gwen — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Robert B. Reich

Alfred A. Knopf

Many people shy away from trying to understand economics. They assume that because they don’t know much about tax or trade policies, or because they don’t understand what a derivative on Wall Street is and does, that economics is too complicated, and they leave the fate of the economy in the hands of the “experts”. The trouble with this is that the experts often have a vested interest in keeping everyone else in the dark in order to make a profit.

Enter Robert Reich. In his newest book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, the former US Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and currently professor at the University of California, Berkeley, manages to make a complicated topic digestible. He presents a thorough, yet easily accessible analysis of patterns in America’s economy since the Great Depression.

His underlying premise is that the American economy swings back and forth like a pendulum between times of economic contraction (to varying degrees) and times of economic growth and prosperity. He argues that in this pattern lies another pattern that provides the key to understanding why things went so horribly wrong in 2008 and have not gotten much better since: the concentration of income at the top and a flat growth of income for everyone else. Reich steps beyond the now common analyses that see the root of the economic crash in 2008 in the mortgage crisis or in the scrupulous behavior on Wall Street. He points out that while it is true that Wall Street’s strategy of betting against the American economy and making profits off of people losing their homes contributed to an accelerated downward spiral into the Great Recession, the real issue that led to the economic collapse has been the ongoing erosion of income for the vast majority of Americans.

Reich notes that in the year leading up to the crash in 2008, the top one percent of the American population earned twenty-three percent of the nation’s income. The last time income was so concentrated at the top in the US was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. He explains that the time of economic prosperity that the US experienced after 1945 was a result of macroeconomic policies that ensured a fairer distribution if income and wealth. The Social Security system, Medicare and Medicaid, regulation of the housing and loan market, increased power of labor unions to negotiate higher wages, and programs designed to create jobs were legacies of the New Deal that between 1947 and 1975 created a time where ordinary Americans earned enough money to consume the products they were producing. However, the pendulum swung back starting in the late 1970s. Reich points out that when it became increasingly difficult for American workers to be able to afford to consume, they turned to, and ultimately exhausted, three key coping mechanisms: women entering the workforce, working longer hours, and when that failed to generate enough income, borrowing against your house.

Reich puts the current Great Recession in political and historical perspective. He points out that the path toward the crash really started in the 1980s, when the emphasis on free-market economics and the linking of Wall Street and key decision-making position in politics made the pendulum swing away from a basic bargain that meant that average Americans could afford to live a decent life. He points out that the only way to really get out of the Great Recession is to reverse that trend and ensure that income is distributed more fairly to allow Americans to consume, which would trigger production of goods through increased demand, which in turn would trigger job growth.

Reich ends his book with a series of suggestions for how to achieve this: a reverse income tax, where those earning less than $20,000-$30,000 annually receive wage subsidies rather than paying income tax, higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy, a carbon tax, school vouchers that are based on family income, college loans linked to subsequent income, Medicare for all, and a delinking of money/corporate interests and politics. While this plan sounds utopian, especially given the current trend toward electing politicians who run on an even more drastic deregulation and anti-government platform, Reich makes it very clear that unless we make the pendulum swing toward fair distribution of income again, which can only be done through government action, the Great Recession is here to stay and might, ultimately, undermine the social and political peace in America.

We can’t afford to not understand this. We can’t afford to not understand economics.

Written by: Annette Przygoda, November 12th 2010

Fair Game

mandy — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Doug Liman

River Road Entertainment

In a moment of frustration toward the beginning of Doug Liman’s Fair Game, Valerie Plame points out the flaws in an overzealous CIA analyst’s interpretation of data. “Somebody had to ask the question,” says a collected Plame as she reveals evidence that shatters to pieces one of the popular arguments for invading Iraq. This moment of clarity is a microcosm for the film’s overall message and for the whole country’s frustration at an administration that lead a nation astray by providing answers before taking time to ask the questions. Americans were mislead, lied to, and ruled by fear during the years under the Bush administration and no clearer evidence may exist than the mistreatment of CIA-agent Valerie Plame.

Fair Game is based on the true story of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) and her husband Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) who get caught up in a chaotic and uncertain post-9/11 government. Plame works undercover for the CIA investigating Middle Eastern intelligence and has been specially tasked with finding evidence of nuclear weapons manufacturing. Plame’s husband Joe Wilson is a former Ambassador to Gabon and has experience in Africa so the agency asks him to investigate whether an illegal trade of yellow cake Uranium has occurred from Niger to Iraq. When Wilson returns with no evidence and the opinion that such a trade never occurred, he is essentially ignored by the administration as the original piece of evidence is used by President Bush in his State of the Union as a reason to invade Iraq. This infuriates Wilson and inspires him to write an article for the New York Times entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Iraq.”

The article causes a stir in the Bush Administration and starts a search for a controversy to temporarily distract the country and discredit Wilson. This results in Scooter Libby revealing Valerie Plame’s identity to the press, which destroys all of her covert operations, causes her to lose her job and any government connections, and results in the disappearance of several Iraqi scientists that Plame was helping escape Saddam’s regime. It also causes a splinter in Plame and Wilson’s relationship as they struggle to maintain a sense of familial oneness in the midst of national turmoil.

The script combined with Naomi Watts' fiery persona shows Valerie Plame to be a very capable spy, which discounts many of the theories that Plame was an unimportant sideshow within the CIA. Liman takes no qualms in vilifying the Bush Administration by using stock footage of Bush and Cheney’s speeches edited to ominous music and shocked reaction shots. Liman makes a film for the current generation and fully expects his audience to have some background information about the events. The narrative is tightly scripted and fast moving which gives the simultaneous pleasure of a thrilling spectacle and an intellectually challenging political mystery.

Watts and Penn are fantastic in two very different leading turns. Penn’s Wilson exists at more varying emotional extremes as his enormous ego leads him to wear his emotions on his sleeve. Watts is more reserved and restrained in one of her better performances that acts as a perfect balance to Penn. There is also a fantastic supporting turn from the legendary Sam Shepard as Plame’s broken, advice giving father.

The one place the film does not succeed as efficiently is in the resolution of the conflicting relationship between Wilson and Plame. Liman seems to speed up their conclusion in order to get to the film’s final call to action. That call to action is an important one, however.

Read full review at Film Misery

Written by: Alex Carlson, November 10th 2010

Big Citizenship: How Pragmatic Idealism Can Bring Out the Best in America

jenna — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Alan Khazei

PublicAffairs Books

Alan Khazei is a heckuva guy. In 1988, he co-founded City Year, a privately funded domestic service organization that lead directly to the establishment of AmeriCorps. When AmeriCorps was threatened out of existence by budget cuts in 2003, Khazei spearheaded the drive to save it. Today he runs Be the Change, Inc., a group that “creates national public awareness campaigns to build momentum for citizen service as a practical solution to problems facing our communities and our country.” A better-intentioned guy would be hard to find.

Alan Khazei is also a politician. In 2009, he lost the Democratic primary for the Senate seat made vacant by the death of Khazei’s colleague and hero, Ted Kennedy. Everyone knows that the winner of that primary, Martha Coakley, lost in the general election to former Cosmo model Scott Brown. Had Coakley won by a clear margin, I doubt that Khazei’s Big Citizenship would exist. The book’s lines announce that Alan Khazei really loves his country; between them, the reader understands that Khazei plans to run for office again, with this sunny, confident book as part of his pitch.

Big Citizenship is ostensibly the tale of how Khazei cooked up the idea to send idealistic seventeen- to twenty-four-year-olds into urban communities for a year of full-time service and what transpired afterwards. The book tells this story well, but it does little more than that: we’re not shown, in the creative nonfiction sense, what motivated Khazei. Guilt? Ego? Existential despair? All we’re told of Khazei’s early life is how dearly he loved his immigrant relatives, all of whom loved America so much that Khazei had no choice but to love it, too. We’re led to believe that City Year emerged from this overwhelming love of country (and love for the older Kennedy brothers, John and Robert).

Before you toss a used tea bag my way, let me assure you that I’m also fond of my homeland, including its ability to learn from its troubled history. Unfortunately, Khazei fails to unpack any of the root causes of persistent poverty and inequality, preferring instead to direct his considerable energy towards his many service organizations.

The birth of City Year smacks so much of Ivy League elitism (we, the Upper Class, shall help you, the Lower Class) that it’s easy to forget that Khazei, son of an Iranian immigrant, must have endured taunts of “Ayatollah Assa-holah” as a St. Paul’s prepster in 1979. But Khazei avoids introspection at every turn. His consistent emotional distance, perhaps born of his bruising Senate campaign, quells any desire in the reader to use Khazei’s methods to “bring out the best in America.”

Nitpicking the founder of a program that has done so much good for so many feels singularly shameful, but here it is: Big Citizenship is boring. Reading it is as much a chore as eating a plateful of steamed vegetables: good for you, yes, but in desperate need of salt. Were Khazei not planning a future campaign, I suspect he’d have shared a more complex portrait of City Year, including the inevitable ugliness and frustration, perhaps even acknowledging his own class privilege more deeply than expressing a vague desire to “give back.”

Written by: Shannon Drury, November 9th 2010

Who Should Be First?: Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign

mandy — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Johnnetta Betsch Cole

SUNY Press

Please read this book. If you were in any way inspired by the groundbreaking 2008 election of President Barack Obama, you will find an essay in Who Should be First? that speaks what's been on your mind, challenges your way of thinking, causes you to feel frustrated, or represents the many complex emotions you felt on that historic day.

Bravo to Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnnetta Betsch Cole for compiling this diverse and inspiring anthology. At first glance, I saw all the usual names (i.e., Valenti, Steinem, Walker) and warily assumed that this would be one more tribute to the same feminist pundits, as always. But you will find essays from many feminist points of view in this compilation, and a lot of them (thankfully!) point out that “women” and “people of color” are not mutually exclusive groups. The press often ignored women of color during this election, leaving us to think that everyone had the luxury to choose between race and gender allegiances.

I wish I had owned this book during the election, although of course that would have been impossible. The essays recall conflicted feelings I experienced when trying to decide between the two potential Democratic Presidential candidates. The authors explore the divisive, oft repeated claims of the time: that gender was a greater barrier to overcome than race, that young feminists were naive or stupid to vote for Obama, that Bill Clinton had been the first Black President and, therefore, Black voters should support Hillary, etc. The editors arranged the book book to highlight, rather than smooth over, these opposing views.

In one essay, the author explained that she was voting for Hillary because gender was the greatest barrier to overcome. In the following essay, a different author explained that she was voting for Barack because race was the greatest barrier to overcome. The authors of all the essays express various thoughtful points of view, but I have not been able to stop mulling over Jane Caputi’s “Crisis of Representation: Hate Messages in Campaign 2008 Commercial Paraphernalia.” Originally published in the Denver University Law Review last year, it is a comprehensive, although by no means exhaustive, study of visual representations of the rampant sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism expressed during the campaign not only against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also Michelle Obama, John McCain, and Sarah Palin. This essay actually made me feel nauseous. If you can stomach the hateful and disgusting images, it is a powerful reminder (in case you forgot) of the vivid hate speech both Democratic candidates had to battle.

“Sex Versus Race, Again,” by Tracy A. Thomas, is another well-researched piece that compares the 2008 election to the fight for women’s voting rights in the early twentieth century. Thomas shows that drawing a line in the sand didn’t work then and won’t work now. The either/or strategy leaves everyone at a loss.

Read Who Should be First? to remember the electric energy you felt two years ago. We all knew that the political world was changing, and after eight bleak years with a warmongering President, even the most cynical of us began to hope. With the November elections around the corner, and the threat of right-wing extremists garnering control of Congress, think back to a time where you were excited, enthralled, and inspired by politicians.

Cross-posted at Gender Across Borders

Written by: Colleen Hodgetts, October 24th 2010

8: The Mormon Proposition

brittany — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Directed by Reed Cowan

Red Flag Releasing

Following the passage of California’s Proposition 8, a bill that constitutionally outlaws gay couples from legally marrying, rage and frustration was concentrated towards the Mormon Church for their supposed role in passing the legislation. Many suspected that church leadership in Salt Lake City had played a large role in financing and coordinating the campaign, yet until 8: The Mormon Proposition, the exact involvement and intention of the Mormon Church in passing the bill has remained ambiguous at best.

8: The Mormon Proposition exposes the deep seeded anti-gay bias within the Mormon Church and provides answers to questions about the church’s actual political involvement, something that has raised suspicion for decades. The film reveals a well-oiled and infinitely wealthy political action force operating largely under anyone’s radar, until now.

What surprised me most about the Mormon involvement with the campaign was discovering that church officials actually required church members in California to attend a special satellite broadcast from Salt Lake City regarding the ballot initiative.

Aware of its negative public image, leaders instructed church members to maintain secrecy about the broadcast. M. Russell Ballard, a top church authority, told followers to consider the broadcast “to be as though we were sitting in my living room having a confidential talk about a serious concern.”

Despite this sentiment, full audio of the broadcast was leaked, and shows leaders commanding members to give as much time and money as possible to help pass the legislation.

8: The Mormon Proposition has many heroes: current and former Mormons who risked social banishment to take a stand against their religion’s involvement with Proposition 8 and the potent anti-gay attitude of the church.

Shining among such heroes is Linda Stay, an active Utah Mormon and mother to Tyler Barrick, a gay California man in a long-term relationship. Stay’s own “coming out,” as she refers to it, was publicly taking a stand against Proposition 8 in order to support her son’s happiness and right to marry.

As an example of parents who uphold the church’s position the film introduces Marilyn and Fred Matis, authors of the book In Quiet Desperation: Understanding The Challenge Of Same-Gender Attraction. The description of the book states it is written for those who have loved ones suffering in “quiet desperation” with “same-gender attraction,” and how to “reach out with love” to such people.

The parents wrote the book shortly after the death of their son Stuart, who had spent his entire life trying to overcome homosexual feelings. Stuart’s “quiet desperation” led him to shoot himself in the head inside a Mormon Church house at age thirty-two.

In their book the parents write: “Each of us had an indescribable sense of peace after Stuart’s death.” When asked about their position on Proposition 8, the couple stated their only position was the position of the church.

The film does an excellent job portraying the many consequences that such widespread bigotry has on a community. Utah leads the nation in teen suicide, and studies show that a large proportion of victims are gay Mormons. Thousands of homeless teens occupy Utah streets, most fleeing intolerance by their families. The film even exposes the former use of frontal lobotomies in Utah to attempt to treat men “charged” with homosexuality

While the documentary paints a bleak picture of shocking faith-based bigotry, it ends with images of passionate masses, refusing to give up on the battle for equality.

Similar passion was exhibited in the civil rights struggles of the last century. Then, too, the Mormon Church lagged behind the rest of the country, not allowing members of color receive full privileges until 1978. The passionate masses will convince all viewers that the fight for gay rights will eventually be won, and that history will record the Mormon Church once again being on the wrong side of this civil rights battle.

Written by: Janice Formichella, August 28th 2010

The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty and Politics in Modern America

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Marisa Chappell

University of Pennsylvania Press

In The War on Welfare, Marisa Chappell compiles a comprehensive record of decades of antipoverty and anti-welfare movements and coalitions, the policies and programs they influenced, and the biases that both shaped and undermined their objectives. From the War on Poverty of the 1960s to the eradication of welfare in the 1990s, Chappell follows an ever-changing debate where the arguments first marshaled by one side were later embraced by another and the realities of poverty clashed with the ideals of those who sought to eliminate it.

Split into five sections, The War on Welfare moves from sections dealing with three major issues affecting the debate to comprehensive examinations of the Carter and Reagan administrations. The three major issues comprising the first three sections of the book include the racialization of the poverty and welfare debates, the role of the male-breadwinner family ideal in the feminization of poverty, and the majoritarian political strategies of the 1970s that led to both sides (or perhaps many sides) categorizing the poor as either deserving or undeserving. Through extensive sourcing, Chappell demonstrates how attitudes about race, gender and class contributed to the creation of welfare policies that were ineffective at best and disastrously counterproductive at worst, leading to an increase in poverty and precluding escape from poverty for many women and minorities.

Overall, Chappell does an extraordinary job of marshaling the evidence necessary to demonstrate the shared guilt of various “liberal” and “conservative” organizations and interests in preventing any serious attack on poverty in the United States. However, the presentation of that evidence leaves a bit to be desired.

First, in her valiant attempt to include each and every organization and coalition involved in the debate, Chappell often ends up creating an alphabet soup of acronyms that is difficult to follow. The same can be said for her introduction of so many main and supporting characters that the names tend to blend into one another after a while, leaving it difficult to remember who did what when.

Secondly, by using the vague labels of "liberal" and "conservative," presenting a bipolar politics rather than a political spectrum, and failing to address the ambiguities of political labels, Chappell tends to confuse some of the issues raised by the evidence she presents. For instance, she fails to clearly address how many “liberal” organizations in antipoverty coalitions were economically liberal, but socially conservative (and vice versa), and how many of those organizations are, in fact, more appropriately labeled as moderate or centrist. Finally, by using primarily “on the record” materials such as policy pronouncements and issue papers, Chappell fails to seriously address the backroom deals and covert exchanges that often have a far greater influence on policy than public debates indicate.

In the end, The War on Welfare is most useful as a research tool for policy wonks needing an extensive guide to the public positions taken by movements, organizations, political parties, and various important individuals. For the casual reader needing an introduction to the issues, it’s probably a bit too much and too little.

Written by: Melinda Barton, March 28th 2010

American Catfight: Political Wisdom for Women and Other Thoughts Towards Feminine Statecraft in the 21st Century

admin — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Maryann Breschard

52 Women

The biggest obstacle to women, according to Maryann Breschard, is other women. In American Catfight, Breschard posits that even the best-intentioned feminists have, along the way, exploited and undermined other women in their mad dash to power.

Breschard identifies several types of women who prevent other women from succeeding: haters (those who disempower and disenfranchise women they believe are “wrong” or “bad”), perfectionists (women who write off anyone who does not fit their narrowly-defined model of the “right” woman), and femamentalists (women who believe feminism is a “big tent” theory that should advocate for a wide range of issues, including LGBT rights, the environment, and more). Breschard primarily uses anecdotal evidence to support her definitions and observations, bouncing from a rant about Martha Stewart on one page to a critique of the Human Rights Campaign the next.

She then pivots to another modern-day catfight among women in her critique of the wedding-industrial complex. Commenting that, “many women today are similarly fraught about their identity and their dreams when entering marriage,” she suggests that women put away issues of identity and concern for feminist politics upon getting married. This change in priorities—which she dubs femipause—creates divisions and downright hostility between married women and single women. This is a point where in-depth research or quantitative data would have helped flesh out Breschard’s writing and lend a sense of credibility to her work. Instead, Breschard’s anecdotal stories of friends who have gotten married and become disengaged from her social circle do little to build out the concept of femipause or position herself as an authority in her writing.

The book concludes by stating that women are “poised to govern” in the twenty-first century, and Breschard provides several recommendations for feminists looking to do so. Some—like her recommendation that feminists simplify and focus upon certain core elements of feminism—are littered throughout her book and should come as no surprise to the reader. Others—such as putting more women in governorships across the country—are legitimately insightful, but come out of left field.

Ultimately, American Catfight is marred by its inability to synthesize the various political theories, pop culture musings, and personal ramblings of the author into a piece of writing that informs and engages the reader.

Written by: Gwen Emmons, March 17th 2010

One Summer in New Paltz: A Cautionary Tale

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Directed by Nancy Nicol

Intervention Video

In the wake of a failing U.S. economy and two unwarranted wars, former president Bush set out to condemn the gay community as he called for a constitutional amendment to reduce gay rights. Facing reelection, the president’s call to enshrine a heterosexual definition of marriage into the Constitution effectively diverted attention away from his failures and used the gay community as a convenient scapegoat. But Bush’s move did more than spark nationwide debate. The anti-gay initiative spurred the country’s largest gay rights movement yet.

The film One Summer in New Paltz is set in this context. The documentary centers on the small town of New Paltz, New York in the summer of 2004 when Mayor Jason West courageously defied Bush’s prohibition of same sex marriage. In an effort to advocate equal rights and avert a chilling effect on the gay rights movement, the young mayor followed in the footsteps of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom by performing same-sex marriages on the steps of his town’s village hall.

As the news spread throughout the region, thousands of same-sex couples inundated the town with hopes to get married. Whether it was for love or for justice, citizens across the country began to rally for equal rights. Although Mayor West faced criminal charges and threats of removal from office, the town continued the struggle as they organized behind the gay rights cause. Ignited and empowered, interfaith leaders and same-sex marriage supporters began to perform same-sex marriages despite the risks.

The film goes on to chronicle subsequent gay rights rallies across the state and demonstrates how citizens took a proactive approach to gay rights in the Nyack Ten legal suit against the state of New York. The film also examines the patriarchal and racist dogmas underlying much of the anti-gay marriage discourse as it documents the first day of legal same-sex marriages in Boston, Massachusetts in May 2004.

Nancy Nicol’s forthright documentary is not only revealing; it is inspiring. The film delineates how local activism and civil disobedience same-sex marriages spurred a nationwide mobilization for equal rights. One Summer in New Paltz skillfully unearths how a national movement was cultivated from the seeds of grassroots activism and solidarity.

Nicol explores the relationship of same-sex marriage, gay/straight alliances, civic engagement, race and the family. The raw footage of protests and thought-provoking interviews offer spectators an intimate window into the ground level of the burgeoning gay rights movement. Additionally, the film conveys how the courage and determination of a few can give rise to the mobilization of many.

One Summer in New Paltz offers a vibrant portrait of a small town that served as a catalyst for a national gay rights movement for marriage equality. For those who desire a closer look at how it all began, this film is worth watching.

Written by: Sofia Marin, March 5th 2010

Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis

admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By Jennifer Brier

The University of North Carolina Press

From the early appearance of AIDS as deviant in conservative America in the early 1980s to a full blown global battle in the 2000s, Infectious Ideas charts the activism behind the disease and how it never once wasn’t a political problem. What readers will learn with this book is that knowledge of the disease evolved alongside activist work. The origin, treatment, and likely victims of AIDS were all unknown in the early ‘80s when gay men and Haitian immigrants began to contract HIV. As a result societal scapegoating occurred and the government all but ignored the problem. Despite this, Brier shows how gay men unified to change habits, start dialogues about safe sex, and change public health policy.

With little or no experience in the health field, many early activist groups looked to the gay liberation movement of the 1970s for inspiration. As a result, racial and class discrepancies appeared as activist researchers began to realize that the highest at-risk groups were poor men of color who didn’t necessarily identify with the gay and lesbian community. San Fransisco activists worked to overcome what Brier calls “imperialism of expertise” by changing their campaigns to appeal to Latino and Black communities. Altering their way of thinking of how AIDS affects people proved vital for the moment and future efforts of global activists.

While modifying their approaches, American activists were also fighting another battle. Until the late 1980s they were essentially doing what the federal government should have been doing: informing people, promoting healthy prevention habits and working towards a treatment. However, ideological differences with the Reagan administration kept them from gaining governmental support. Instead of listening to activists with four years experience fighting the disease, the government was persuaded by internal politicians who didn’t condone condoms but rather (shockingly) chastity, fidelity and sex within marriage.

Brier positively notes that the lack of governmental support allowed for other groups to grow in more innovative arenas. She credits the Ford Foundation with raising awareness that AIDS was not simply a disease affecting gay and immigrants populations, but one that affected impoverished women in developing countries. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Ford Foundation focused on efforts in Brazil, Haiti, Thailand and Africa. They maintained a clear mission to “make woman’s rights human rights”. Three of the four countries that received the most funding saw significant drops in the number of new cases of AIDS.

The foundation's work strengthened the relationship between the Northern, developed world and the Southern, impoverished one. It also showed that attention to women’s rights, fighting poverty, and facing health issues overall is the most effective approach to prevent the spread of AIDS. As research continued to find medication to treat the disease, activists in the United States began to fight large pharmaceutical companies for affordable access to treatment, most notably through the work of ACT UP. Eventually disbanding due to internal problems, the group had five short but potent years which completely changed the U.S. response to drug testing and availability of medication.

Brier provides a unique account of the initial social response to AIDS in the 1980s and how it often preceded any political answers—a trend that continued into the early 1990s and today. Her book shows how we have arrived to where we are today in the fight against AIDS and what we can learn from the battles of the past.

Written by: Sara Custer, February 9th 2010