Barack the Wilsonian?

interesting

i guess dan savage wasn't too far off the historical mark when he suggested daily protest arrests at the white house.

Lurleen on Twitter

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by: Lurleen @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 00:10:06 AM CDT

Savage wasn't far off at all.

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 06:37:03 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Great idea but

How many people came forward when someone put the idea into action?
I think Dan had a great idea, so I set up a website, invited others to join, and received 5 responses for website support. I'm grateful for that support, but that's not bodies at the White House.
I've emailed almost every LGBT organization in the country asking for a mention to their members. Have you seen any calls for standing at the gates? Those Dallas Principles claim to support grassroots efforts.
Our community needs to stand up. Boycott the DNC. Boycott the ineffective HRC. But we need to make our voices heard to the public so more people understand the urgency and fight along side us.
Will you take up the banner?

ProtestforHumanRiqhts.com

Time to Stand! ProtestForHumanRighs.com

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by: Enigmas @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 18:17:45 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

This piqued my interest

For one, I just love history, period but I honestly don't know all that much about women's struggle for full equality. I do know that much of that struggle (at least in the United States) is coeval with black civil rights movements. Often, both civil rights movement played off of one another and (as I learned from reading Angela Davis' books on the subject) competed against one another.

And I do know that women, like black people, have not achieved full equality to this day.

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 07:05:30 AM CDT

I'm also not up to speed

on the history of women getting the vote.  However, I do know that abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison insisted that the women working with him be given the same respect and ability to speak in public as the men working with him.  He was so pro-equality in this respect that he refused to speak at a British abolitionist society conference while in England because the British refused to allow the women abolitionists that came with him to speak.  And Garrison was one of the honored guests.  He lived his principles of equality.  Amazing man.  

Anyhow, this is a long way round to saying that I think you're right that women's struggles and Black struggles have been intertwined and sometimes potentiated each other.  On the other hand, they haven't always been in harmony.  For example, iirc, at one point many men thought their work was done once black men were given the vote.

Lurleen on Twitter

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by: Lurleen @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 10:03:22 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

If you haven't, see the movie

Iron-Jawed Angels, about these actions.  It's quite inspiring.

It's always easier for a person who already has his rights to ask others to be patient and wait a little bit longer.  Quite presumptuous for Wilson to tell women that they could afford more time as second-class citizens.

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by: JosephineTx @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 09:07:01 AM CDT

Ken Burns did a great film

I wrote a paper on the suffrage movement a few years ago and was amazed at what an enormous topic it is.  

Find this film at a library, Not for Ourselves Alone:

http://www.pbs.org/stantonanth...

It is a broad brush, even though a long film, but I was amazed at the stories of Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Especially ECS.  Those were some fierce women that really knew the score.  They started a movement in 1850 and neither of them lived long enough to see the extension of the vote to women in 1920.

We have much to learn from the tactics, set backs, and stamina of the suffragists.

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by: Patrick @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 11:41:23 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanks for this suggestion.

I wasn't aware of that film.  Fair or not, I have always associated Burns with making films about men only, with a couple of photos of women thrown into each one.

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by: Pollyanna @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 23:44:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

One other thing

I just remembered spending (way too much) time plowing through Congressional records on file at the library reading the transcripts of the debates over woman's suffrage.  When a vote / debate was allowed, the arguments were insane, ridiculous and really familiar sounding.

The vote was brought to the Congress scores of times.  Over and over and over again the activists - both the radical and the middle of the road - worked the system from both sides of the matter - both disapproving of each others tactics.  

Fascinating similarities...enormous hurdles...but also a very different time in the world.  

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by: Patrick @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 11:48:23 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

The correlations are very similar

Women's Suffrage and LGBT Civil Rights.  There are no Southern religious elements the way there is with Black Civil Rights.
Few if any suffragettes or LGBT's are following the Biblical  Moses, "Set my people free".  "Civil Disobedience" by Thoreau was the template for suffragettes.  They got very violent in England.  Chaining to the White House gate hasn't been tried yet, but do LGBT's have the courage to be arrested? Most are still paying full taxes like sheep to be treated as U.S. Constitutional outcasts.  Most Armchair bickering activists on blogs have no courage to disrupt their lives by serving jail time.  Thoreau went to prison for not paying taxes protesting the Spanish American war.  There were no income taxes for women to protest, otherwise they would have targeted the IRS.

Same-Sex Marriage is good for the economy.

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by: CharlesMerrill @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 09:47:36 AM CDT

so what's his point??

"For we know that progress depends not only on changing laws but also changing hearts.  And that real, transformative change never begins in Washington."

Support for repeal of DADT  70%
Support for ENDA.  over 70% ??
Support for Hate Crimes legislation, over 70% ??
Support for federal benefits for legally recognized same-sex couples.  over 60% ??

In fact there is majority support for EVERY LGBT issue except the word "marriage".

President Obama, we aren't asking for change to BEGIN in Washington.

We have already changed the hearts.

We are asking, rather DEMANDING, that the change that has already happened in the hearts and minds of the citizens, be recognized and ACTED UPON in Washington.

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by: timNC @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 09:53:52 AM CDT

Actually, that was also true in Wilson's time

Unlike the GLBT community, women had actually won the right to vote at the state level.

Colorado is the first state to adopt an amendment granting women the right to vote. Utah and Idaho follow suit in 1896, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, Alaska and Illinois in 1913, Montana and Nevada in 1914, New York in 1917; Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma in 1918.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot...

And I'd have to hunt it down, but I think that some of tose wins were attained through ballot initiatives.
 

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 10:06:46 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I meant

that I think that women had actually won ballot initiatives granting them the right to vote.

Given the Mormon opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, it was surprising to see that Utah was on that list.

although Utah women were disenfranchised by provisions of the federal Edmunds-Tucker Act enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1887. The push to grant Utah women's suffrage was at least partially fueled by the belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of polygamy. It was only after Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women.[19] By the end of the nineteenth century, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming had enfranchised women after effort by the suffrage associations at the state level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 10:13:08 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Moral of the story?

....Wilson was no more a Truman than Obama is.

Truman didn't give a flying fuck about moving the racist masses or hearts of his day, nor the racists in Congress or Pentagon or even his own friend who complained about Truman doing too much for the "niggers" or his beloved mother who refused to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.

"Hearts we open"? Please, Mary er Barry! Monumental ego and stubborness aside, and despite his false piety and devotion to cherry picking from the tree of religion, over and over again I keep sensing that Obama was running for Preacher not President.

But the run I care about is that which we seem to have them on re DADT since the lavender money spigot began to close.

Gates astonishing and astonishingly self-destructive [in terms of credibility and options] turnaround on publicly musing about making DADT more "humane" barely three months after declaring that they were too overwhelmed to even talk about it ["My chiffon is wet. My wig is wet. I am tired. I am exhausted from all this.] is painting them deeper and deeper into a corner from which a freeze is the only out.

Pull one card [how they learn you're gay] and it's only a matter of time before the whole house of nonsense crumbles.

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by: Michael Bedwell @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 10:55:36 AM CDT

Well, Truman did care about getting votes

and he got enough of the black vote (but who did Strom Thurmond pull votes from?) to pull that 1948 election off.

And for all the praise that Truman deserves, FDR actually set the tone a bit; there were scattered integrated Army units during WWII

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 13:08:57 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The central historic parallels between Wilson and Obama revolve around war, civil liberties and union busting.

Wilson promised to keep us out of WWI but later maneuvered to force Congress to declare war on the German and Austro-Hungarian empires to protect US war loans to England and France and to allow 'Merchants of Death' like Colt Firearms and DuPont to make enormous profits.

Obama promised to get us out of Iraq but instead is playing a Nixonian delaying game that will result in many more deaths until the US is defeated, although they won't call it a defeat. Obama's 'Merchants of Death' are Haliburton, oil companies and the latest version of Blackwater.

Wilson created the red squads and unleashed a major nativist anti-union drive trampling the constitution in the process. Many union leaders, socialists and opponents of the war were jailed and deported in the DOJ Palmer raids. J. E. Hoover first cut his teeth as a federal inquisitor and anti-union thug in Wilsons Administration.

Obama voted to extend the Patriot Act and to protect companies who illegally intercepted correspondence via e-mail, telephonic and regular mail. He's continuing the Clinton-Bush policies of kidnap, torture and murder under the innocuous name of rendition.

While meeting every demand of the looter class for trillions to cover their self-inflicted wounds Obama is demanding that working people and unions make huge concessions in wages and benefits.

Wilson, FDR, Truman, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and now Obama made minor concessions but not fundamental ones. We face the same problems today that we did then: economic chaos, war, attacks on civil rights and liberties and a glut of bigotry: homohatred, racism, immigrant bashing and misogyny. Fundamental change, not minor concessions are what we needed in 1918 and it's what we need today.

The Obama administration is incurable - they're the enemy. Any concessions we get will be hard won and guarantted not to alter the status quo.  


The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  

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by: donal1944 @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 11:22:35 AM CDT

Wilson/Obama vis-a-vis war

I actually thought about that particular connection; I noticed that American women of the late 1910's did not accept the excuse of world war as a reason for delay in women's suffrage. Many of the protests happened during a period when the United States had entered World War I.

The "we're in two wars" excuse is just that, an excuse...

of course, media has changed a whole lot since Wilson's day though you couldn't tell by the paucity of coverage of gay civil rights in the MSM.

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 13:04:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Good points.

And I forgot to say that it was a good post.

Several women, including Emma Goldman, were arrested during the Palmer Raids which were based on the World War One versions of the Paytriot FISA Acts. They were the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act of 1918 and the Anarchist Exclusion Act.

Obama apologists and the DNC will use any number of excuses including wars and the Clinton-Bush recession now edging much closer to a depression.

None of them will convince us that second class status is what we deserve.  

The looter rich much prefer working with Democrats like Obama and the Clintons - they're greedier, they fool more people and they're able to get away with a lot more than Republicans.  

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by: donal1944 @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 14:14:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Here is a little cyber action for you.....@ tinyurl.com/myp22a

Send OBAMA a(nother) good petition too.

URGE President Obama to "Do the Right Thing."

It's the Hammer of JUSTICE,
It's the Bell of FREEDOM,
It's the Song about LOVE between,
my Brothers and my Sisters
...All over this Land.

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by: Orion45 @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 11:27:50 AM CDT

I am really surprised

how calmly this is being discussed on PHB... Queerty is currently overrun with trolls in the comments, calling us whiners, weaklings, you name it.

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by: TikiHead @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 14:48:02 PM CDT

Excellent post ...

Interesting parallels ...

jon

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by: jonpincus @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 20:57:09 PM CDT

see my diary "POTUS New Clothes"

Obama resembles another legendary figurehead.

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by: greatwhitebear @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 22:05:38 PM CDT

Oh fer fucks sake

"The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it."

Susan B. Anthony, 1872

Look, Wilson didn't finally, begrudgingly support the 19th amendment out of the goodness of his fucking heart.  He signed on because Alice Paul and the National Women's Party, a 3rd political party of the kind you sneering do-nothing pwogwessive demotards always deride, could deny Wilson the vote in several states, including New York.  

"I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box."
~Lydia Maria Child

Do you understand?  Do you finally get it?  Through many many hard years of organizing, the NWP built up CLOUT.  Real political clout.  Something of which the oh-so-mighty pwogwessive movement has exactly fuck-all.  Alice Paul said 'You will sign OR WE WILL NOT VOTE FOR YOU.'

But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of mind of those who in their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real springs of human action.

Doris Stevens, Jailed for Freedom, Introduction

That was it.  Understand?  No fucking dumbass useless primary challenges.  No moronic 'work within the party' bullshit.  Raw political power is the way women shed their second class citizenship status.  And it's the ONLY WAY YOU WILL SHED YOURS.

"Dr Gannon told me I must be fed. ...I was held down by five people...Gannon pushed the tube up left nostril...It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely...Operation leaves one very sick."

~Lucy Burns in a note smuggled out of jail, where she was leading a protest against jailed suffragists treatment in 1917.

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by: AlanSmithee @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 23:30:52 PM CDT

The women suffragists

forced Wilson to do it, in other words.

And what I've proposed all along is taking a good look at the electoral power that the GLBT community can wield against Obama.

That's the only thing that will force him to do it.

Good post. Thank you.

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by: kevinchi @ Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 23:54:27 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

More accurately

They literally created a political party that was separate and still disenfranchised.

Which is akin to what I (and many, many others far more suited to such a call than I) have been saying for a while.

its the 10 and 40 principle, when you can't vote.  10 senators, 40 reps, and you immediately control enough of congress to force a change like nothing else can possibly do.

And it take smore than a double handful of politically minded people to make that happen -- it takes an entire movement to do that, with hundreds and thousands of people willing to sacrifice a few years of their life in service to others.

And, I will once again point out, starting in the middle of 1969, its what our opponents did.

Exactly.

http://www.dyssonance.com  Breaking all the rules...

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by: dyssonance @ Sat Jul 04, 2009 at 00:14:56 AM CDT

[ Parent ]