Madame Secretary, April 2009. Note the matching hot pink clipboard.
So our illustrious and prolific JJ aka Minkoff Minx is still not quite back in the pink yet–she needs to rest all she can and get well soon! I’ll be filling in for the Evening Reads tonight, and while I cannot for the blogger life of me do the kind of thorough job she does following all the day’s news leads day in and day out, here’s what’s on my radar today.
Hillary 2016
Is Texas Hillary Country? That’s what a “new poll” suggests, but it’s just one of many “new polls” that have been trending this way for
months
years.
Also via KTRH News Radio out of Houston: Hillary Clinton Pantsuit Becomes Museum Display. I have embeded the Newsy youtube below, so you don’t have to click over–if you wait past the blah blah fashion cakes in the first 45 seconds or so, the second half is commentary on Hillary’s future that you might find of interest. You won’t want to miss Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour’s comment at the reception in Little Rock at the Clinton library honoring Oscar de la Renta … I’ll transcribe it for you below the video.
Anna Wintour: I can only hope that all of you here in Little Rock will be celebrating her come November 2016 … All of us at Vogue look forward to putting on the cover the first female president of the United States.
Hillary 2016!
Texas
I stood with Wendy last night as the Stand With Texas Women bus tour made its stop in Houston. I saw her speak, oh yes I did. I went with my sister of course! Sisterhood of the Pink Sneaks 
1) Wendy is simply amazing, y’all. 2) I got the burnt orange T-Shirt to prove it!
As my sister and I were leaving Discovery park, a woman in maybe her 30s or 40s walking toward us just getting there asked, “Is she still speaking?” I had to let her down, but luckily she followed up by asking about the “Stand With Texas Women” t-shirts, and we were able to direct her where to go get her own! So those were the two big things of the night, Wendy and the shirts, though there were so many wonderful little things and moments.
I did take my own photos, some of which I’ll post in the comments. They aren’t the greatest, partly because my iPhone camera roll was annoyingly full, so I couldn’t snap very many, and the other part being there was quite a sizable turnout (see the Egberto Willies article I highlight below), especially on a muggy, muddy Tuesday night with only a day or so’s notice… Everybody in the crowd w
as swarming to get pics, and…rarely have I ever felt bad about being short except for times I can count on my one hand like last night, where tall guys and people’s posters kept covering the podium space! However, I did get this awesome photo (see right) of a little girl in the crowd whose father held her up over his shoulders and who Wendy referred to in her speech–and he held her up again. I was standing right behind him and got this photo. Wendy referenced his holding her up earlier as an symbol of our future that we are standing for as we take our stand for Texas women…she didn’t seem to expect him to lift the girl up again. It was just one of those moments you had to be there! He held her up as much as he could without being a bad dad about it. It was great.
As was seeing all the pro-feminist men (read: unicorn!) who showed up to stand with and alongside Texas women…speaking of which, here is Art Pronin (old blogger handle texan4hillary) with Cecile Richards at yesterday’s event!
Blogger Egberto Willies has video and describes the event thus: “Electrified Crowds Greet Wendy Davis & Company Tour In Houston”:
There were over 1000 souls in attendance even after a downpour followed by a very muggy humid heat. Attendees did not mind the heat, wet, or the mud. They gave the Senators and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood a fiery hot welcome. This rally exceeded expectation just as did last night’s rally in Austin and last week’s rally.
All of the attendees knew exactly why they were there. “I feel strongly about this issue,” said Linda Walker, a veteran that served the country. “I didn’t serve this country to be treated as a second class citizen.”
Here is Egberto’s youtube footage of the event, just shy of 10 minutes, with interviews of people there and parts of the speeches. I was pleased with the portion he chose from Wendy’s speech, because I had wanted to write that part down when I heard it:
Afterward at dinner, the head waiter and waitstaff kept commenting on my sister and my t-shirts (“So I’m going to say you… -dramatic pause- ….stand for Texas Women…,”). Most of them were unaware but curious to learn what it was all about. I tried my level best to keep relatively quiet and not go off on a feminist tear (you never know in Houston what mansplaining turd lurks ready to explain why we need to defund Planned Parenthood…). I just kept dropping Wendy’s name, the filibuster, told people to google it. At least our waitress had an inkling of what it was about…she brought up her friend working at the Capitol in Austin, who she described as a “big feminist” (which had me raising the roof a little visibly of course!)
But, enough of my fangirly gushing on that. Here’s the big bad ugly headline out of Texas today…predictable but ugly…
Texas Tribune: House Approves Abortion Restrictions.
From the link:
The House voted 96-49 on Wednesday to give final approval to proposed abortion regulations in Texas. House Bill 2, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks and enact some of the strictest regulations in the country on abortion providers and facilities, now heads to the Senate.
“If we’re going to ask for more children to come into this world, we should provide for them,” said state Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio. She offered an amendment, which lawmakers tabled, that would have extended state benefits to children put into the foster care and adoption system by women who could not access abortion as a result of the legislation. She added, “We know there are going to be lots of cases where the mothers just cannot, even though they may want to, they cannot take care of them.”
Of course Laubenberg (the bill’s author) “countered” that the amendment wrongly assumed abortion wouldn’t be available, services wouldn’t be available for a child in need, yarda yarda. Really, then what’s the rightwing’s motivation with all this pro-DUMB legislation?
Crickets. (Oh, right. No Profit Left Behind)
Oh, and… of course… Five Texas women arrested in the Capitol today for protesting this pro-DUMB/No Profit Left Behind smoke and mirrors. Of course.
Fun stuffs:
Police arrested five women in the Texas House of Representatives Gallery today following the passage of House Bill 2.
According to a press release from abortion rights group Rise Up Texas, the five women arrested were Jessica Harmon, Yatzel Sabat, Joshua Pineda, Hallie Boas and Julia Pashall, all abortion rights activists.
According to witnesses at the scene, the women were screaming their opposition to the bill from the gallery as the House voted. Police are allowed to place anyone disrupting proceedings in the House and Senate in jail for up to 48 hours.
The press release reads that the women were “stating their opposition to the continued assault on women’s human rights and standing up for their moral beliefs.”
“We are the people of Texas and we are horrified by legislators’ blatant disregard for the law,” Harmon said in the press release. “You have executed voter fraud and corruption of the legislative process, as well as attempted to silence the voices of choice. Shame on you.”
I guess it could have been worse. I guess it could have been 63 Pro-choice activists arrested like in North Carolina on Monday night. (See also Janet Colm: Why I Got Arrested for Women’s Health)
Seriously, think twice America before ever letting Goodhair and his dodo-bird governance anywhere near the White House, let alone a heartbeat away… his presidential aspirations pose much more of an actual harm than Sarah Palin’s or Michele Bachmann’s five minutes of presidential fancy ever did. This is the kind of awesomely productive special/emergency legislative sessions to which you have to look forward if you really want Dubya’s cowboy clone or any of the other dodo governors in charge of our country (pictures of today’s arrest in Austin via the Houston Chron blog):
The more the ultra-rightwing Texas Taliban tries to infect the rest of the country, the more women across the nation–like women in Texas–are going to stand up, for themselves, their daughters, their families, and their communities, to say the have had enough and RAISE HELL… (WENDY DAVIS for Governor 2014! HILLARY 2016!)
Oh, and Handmaidens of the Patriarchy (yes I’m looking at you Kirsten “I Don’t Stand With Wendy Davis” Powers)? You might want to evaluate which side of history you have set up camp. The inner voice of resistance in women–oh yes, the F word, feminism!–is growing.
Kirsten et al. here’s THE POINT — Legislators should keep their hands off women’s bodies:
[...] issues of abortion should not be decided by the men of the Texas Legislature. They should be left up to the woman, her doctor and her conscience.
–The Eagle of Bryan-College Station
Here’s a blurry photo I took of my favorite poster from yesterday (also featured much more clearly in Egberto Willies’ youtube embedded above):
NO means NO. Get it out, get your hands off our bodies, our health rights, our right to self-governance and “small” government. NO means NO! We need actual governance of ours states–our country. The grownups are coming to your places of power and they got girly brains that rival your concerns with their lady parts! (WENDY 2014! HILLARY 2016!)
Wisconsin
Briefly!
From the the capital of the state in which I was born, to the capital of the state I’ve lived in for almost 3 decades…Solidarity, forever, sisters! Via Overpass Light Brigade, a picture out of Madison, WI on Monday night:
Tahrir
Also, briefly! From the Nation earlier this week, part two in a series on the global sexual violence epidemic by Salamishah Tillet:
Women at Point Zero in Tahrir Square
Opponents of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi rally in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, July 5, 2013. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Last Wednesday, the world watched an increasingly familiar scene: Egyptian crowds gathering in Tahrir Square to demand social change. Once the army announced it had ousted President Mohamed Morsi, these same streets became host to victory celebrations for some, and violent conflict for others. For over ninety-one women who were sexually assaulted that night, Tahrir Square became what Egyptian women’s rights activist. Soraya Bahgat described as “a circle of hell.”
Tillet ends her piece with a very powerful indictment and call to action:
In an e-mail, Rebecca Chiao, the co-founder of HarrassMap Egypt, a group that rescues women being sexually assaulted by mobs in the recent protests, wrote, “Whoever is at fault for paying thugs, no political actors have made a serious effort to punish or prevent mob harassment/assault/rape.”
Régine Jean-Charles, author of Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary, told me in a phone interview that this insidious response is “not new” but consistent with “a global pattern of social movements not including ending gender-violence in their liberatory visions.”
Even in our own Occupy Wall Street movement, women were subject to sexual assaults and misogynist jokes.
Real social change must include eradicating rape culture. Until then, as women continue to be on the frontlines of protests—be it in New York City or Cairo—with our political brethren, our bodies, our rights and ultimately our lives remain on freedom’s sidelines.
Privacy vs. Security: Is it really a binary discussion?
I had intended to do another section here at the end devoted to the debate of just how much privacy we are willing to give up in the name of security, but honestly? It will have to wait for the weekend. Not that I don’t care–I care deeply about the issue. However, I just care even more about fighting for the things that I support (rather than focusing on things I oppose but don’t know what to replace it with… things like the behemoth spy state.)
And, y’all know there is nothing I care to fight for more than for women’s rights! WENDY WENDY WENDY! HILLARY HILLARY HILLARY!
(And no lectures on how I should talk about issues instead of shero worship, please. I’ve had enough of d00dz chanting Obama and Ron Paul as an anti-war cry to last me a liftetime. Wendy and Hillary and other serious women pols like them actually promote policies I care about, for example the fifty year fight for Equal pay for Equal work, not just pie-in-the-sky rhetoric against something. Yesterday, Wendy made a point to speak of Texas legislators working to reintroduce the Lilly Ledbetter act that Gov. Dodo vetoed in Texas.)
All that said and getting back to privacy (which as we know has been linked to reproductive rights and women’s autonomy in this country), if anyone has any really great links on solutions to the problem of how we keep the spy state in check, please post them in the comments or e-mail them to me so I can add them to my reading list before my next post on the topic.
I really don’t understand the libertarian-savant focus/elevation of privacy OVER all other issues–say we were able to completely dismantle the surveillance apparatus of this country? Then what? How do we operate in a world where security is still a real concern? Enough with the binary framing! It’s not either privacy or security. Both are valid, just one shouldn’t infringe upon the other.
Anyway, I think I’ve said enough for awhile.
I did want to end with this funny list from In the Pink Texas, one of my Texas blogger reads for years now:
BREAKING: TEXAS WILL NEVER EVER BE THE SAME
July 8, 2013 – 2:08 pm 4 Comments
Gov. Rick Perry made a very important announcement in San Antonio today that will shape his political future. As I am loathe to wait for press conferences such as these, I typically prepare my analysis beforehand, taking into consideration several possible—and likely—scenarios.
1. He will not run for reelection. Instead he will become the new face of Men’s Wearhouse. (You’re going to like the way he looks.)
2. He will run for reelection and institute martial law immediately following Inauguration.
3. He will run for president, as well he should, since he didn’t make Texans look sufficiently idiotic the first time around.
4. He is harboring Edward Snowden.
5. He is leaving politics to star in Magic Mike 2.
6. He will run against Andy Brown for Travis County judge.
7. He finally admits to blood doping with Lance Armstrong.
8. He is switching back to the Democratic party to #standwithwendy.
9. He’s entering rehab to treat his addiction to painkillers.
10. He is joining the Texas Tribune.
Check out the rest of the post, as well as the rest of In the Pink Texas, if you like. And, please share what you’re reading and thinking about this evening in the comments if you get a chance.
Well, maybe I have one more thing to say:
WENDY 2014. HILLARY 2016. From MADISON WISCONSIN to TAHRIR SQUARE. RISE, SISTERS, RISE!