Beverly Guy-Sheftall, director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College; Johnnetta Cole, chair of the board of the JBC Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute; British-born radio journalist Laura Flanders; Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at Columbia and UCLA; Farah Griffin, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia; Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority; author Mab Segrest; Kenyan anthropologist Achola Pala Okeyo; management consultant and policy strategist Janet Dewart Bell; and Patricia Williams, Columbia law professor and columnist.
We were there to hash out a split that threatened our friendship and the various movements with which we are affiliated....
[W]e thought about how to redirect attention to those coalitions that form the bedrock of feminist concern: that wide range of civil rights groups dedicated to fighting discrimination, domestic violence, the disruptions of war, international sex and labor trafficking, child poverty and a tattered economy that threatens to increase the number of homeless families significantly.
We thought of all that has happened in just seven short but disastrous years of the Bush Administration, and we asked: how might we position ourselves so we're not fighting one another? .... We all know that there is simply too much at stake.
We agreed that everyone needs to refocus on the big picture.
How, therefore, to reclaim a common purpose, a truly democratic "we": we women of all races, we blacks of all genders, we Americans of all languages, we immigrants of all classes, we Latinas of all colors, we Southerners of all regions, we families of all ages, we parents working three jobs without healthcare, we poor who sleep on the streets, we single mothers whose homes are being repossessed, we displaced New Orleanians whose neo-Arcadian epic of displacement has yet to be resolved.
(emphasis added)
Real leaders get the big picture - that it requires all of us to be at the table, at the same time; that evil triumphs when good people are divided. Democracy's leaders recognize the inherent meaning of the term.
Sheila Parks, an election integrity activist who for years has demanded hand-counted paper ballots, has often called people to task for sexism "and so on and so forth." In her Netiquette piece, she writes:
Although our major goal (perhaps our only one) is open, fair, honest elections - we ignore racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ageism at our own peril. These isms weaken any of the work we do on elections and must always be considered even as we work toward our major goal.
These isms are about how the system is set up to disadvantage people - based on the color of our skin, our gender, our class, our sexual orientation, our age... We are all part of the system and we need to make a commitment to be aware of our own racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism/homophobia, ageism and to move against these isms in ourselves and others in everything we do.
Cynthia McKinney welcomes "a real discussion of race in this country" especially now with a black candidate for president - one that reaches into the life and death impact of racial disparity. Owning a car during Katrina meant the difference between life and death for thousands. How is poverty not a life-and-death struggle as important as ending war?
With all the good work that Brad Friedman has done – especially his work on election integrity, an issue near and dear to my heart – has he not connected what happened to McKinney as portrayed in American Blackout? Ain't she a woman, and a leader for gender and racial equality who resists war and speaks truth to power? McKinney gets it.
Instead of marginalizing the struggle for equality among the oppressed classes - the very heart and soul of every democratic movement, the "house" in Brad's analogy – those who marginalize race and gender equality marginalize themselves. They are befuddled by the same "isms" from which our Founders suffered, and must be relegated to supporting the work of those who lack that sinful affliction.
