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Changing the Conversation on Abortion


photos of pro-choice and pro-life abortion protestors
Photos by John Pisciotta (top) and UTSFL.

The first job I got out of college was at a health center that performs abortions in Atlanta. This was just after September 11, when abortion clinics across the country were receiving threatening notes in envelopes containing a white powder that the senders claimed (it turned out, falsely) was anthrax. The health center where I worked received one of these letters. For the first time, I had to grapple with the fact that the work I was doing put me in danger. I made the choice to put principle over fear and have been an outspoken advocate of abortion rights ever since.

For a long time, I toed the line on abortion. I had little patience for people who identified as pro-life, especially when they were members of my own family. Holiday dinners were ruined when I stormed self-righteously from the table after arguing with my sister. I cared more about getting my politics across than getting along with the people I loved.

As I learned to value community more than ideology, I became less certain that dogmatism creates a better world. Now, I no longer use abortion as a litmus test for determining whether someone’s perspective is “right” or “wrong.” To me, abortion is a health-care necessity, it is a human right, and sometimes, it is a heartbreaking tragedy.

Yet the national abortion debate continues, polarizing Americans more than perhaps any other political issue. Democratic state senator Wendy Davis was catapulted to instant celebrity last month as a result of her thirteen-hour filibuster of a proposed law to heavily restrict abortion access in Texas. In the end, the bill was voted on and passed, and the filibuster served little purpose beyond spectacle for reproductive health advocates, clinic workers, and the people they both serve.

It is lamentable that America — and, to some degree, the world — keeps having the same fruitlessly hyperbolic scrabbles over abortion that rarely effect meaningful change, much less bring about greater understanding across the issue’s battle lines. But there are some who seek to change the conversation.

In last month’s New York Times, medical student Joshua Lang wrote about what happens to women who are denied abortions. Lang provided a nuanced view of recent research on the outcomes these women, and their children, experience. He coupled this analysis with an affecting story that shows the complex reality of unexpected — and unwanted — motherhood.

Sarah Erdreich’s new book, Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement, takes a similarly balanced approach. (The essay currently featured on our site, Looking Back on an Abortion, is an excerpt from Erdreich’s book.) Drawing from her interviews with women who have had abortions, Erdreich highlights views often left out of the intensely partisan debate. She points out that many women and men want to move beyond the stale and divisive rhetoric about the sanctity of life or a woman’s right to choose.

These ideas are not new, but they are gaining traction. Perhaps this is evidence that someday we will finally be able to call a truce in this bitter culture war.

Read an excerpt from Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe.

Correction, July 15, 2013: Due to an editing error, Sarah Erdreich’s name was misspelled in one reference.

Mandy Van Deven was previously In The Fray’s managing editor. Site: mandyvandeven.com | Twitter: @mandyvandeven

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They Cut the Fire Straight Out of Me


photo of the cat in The Beast of Times
Photo by Marisa Becerra.

When my best friend’s partner said there was a play about “queer animals” featuring an undocumented cat that I simply had to see, I was wary. Frankly, I didn’t think the play would be any good. But I agreed to go anyway, reservations be damned, because sometimes revelations occur from doing the unexpected.

My friends and I made our way to The Beast of Times on its second to last showing in Los Angeles. Written and performed by award-winning performance artist Adelina Anthony, the play’s heavy-handed description — “a satirical and queer allegory [that] explores the contradictions and pains of coming to political consciousness as ‘Other’ in a world where environmental and ethnic diversity are quickly becoming passé” — obscures the fact that Anthony’s off-kilter sensibility is actually quite accessible and incredibly funny. Similar to David Sedaris’ Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, the characters in The Beast of Times reflect the idiosyncrasies of what it means to be a human being.

Once the audience became comfortable inhabiting Anthony’s bemusing world, the play took a serious turn when the aforementioned cat reveals the scar of her ovariohysterectomy — or what we humans call ‘spaying’. “You will not be having any sex or offspring,” a turtle tells the cat. “They cut the fire straight out of you.”

The cat begins hissing, twitching, and pacing. She hacks angrily and uncontrollably, as though coughing up a hairball. Before her meltdown is complete, the audience learns she is having a “soul memory,” and the cat begins to speak:

1928: I am a Native girl, a child who will barely reach puberty when they come for me. Canadian officials will sterilize entire tribes. 1944: In Puerto Rico I will have la operación. For decades, a third of our female population will endure forced sterilization by the US Empire. 1965: I will be poor again, so you can count me among the one million women who will be sterilized by the Brazilian government …

The monologue continues to trace nearly a hundred years of international reproductive atrocities committed against poor women of color by their governments. It’s hard to explain how a woman wearing cat ears and thrashing about on stage could move me to tears, but it did. It reminded me that I had forgotten to allow myself to feel pain, but the power of art is it can break through your defenses and force you to feel once again.

Like many people, I have become desensitized to certain kinds of violence and degradation, particularly the kinds that disproportionately affect women. The cat’s affecting monologue made me feel as though I were having my own soul memory. I was experiencing the pain of things that had never happened to me, but still managed to leave deep wounds. These tragic events flooded my mind:

Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. After they’d killed her family, including her six-year-old sister, five American Army soldiers raped and killed a fourteen-year-old girl in Iraq. We call this the Mahmudiyah killings.

Jyoti Singh Pandey. On the way home from the movies, a mob of men fatally raped a twenty-three-year-old medical student on a bus in India. We call this the Delhi gang-rape case.

Anonymous victim. In Ohio, an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl was dragged from one location to another and repeatedly raped for six hours by two high school football players, while fellow students uploaded images of the assault to social media sites. We call this Steubenville.

These stories are never-ending, and they became overwhelming while watching the cat’s scene in Anthony’s play. That week, a member of the paparazzi opted to snap photos instead of intervene when millionaire art collector Charles Saatchi repeatedly choked his wife, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, during a twenty-seven-minute altercation at an exclusive restaurant in London. The morning of the day I attended the play, a woman was chased down and stabbed to death by her estranged husband in an affluent Los Angeles suburb — the restraining order and her reports to the authorities failed to keep Michelle Kane safe. There comes a point when we simply have to shut ourselves off, but what then is the cost?

Something about Anthony’s play breathed life back into me. Her words stoked an internal fire I thought I’d lost that felt a little like rage and passion, but also like remembrance and gratitude. I don’t know if the world will ever be a safe place for women, but I do know that silence is a form of complicity, detachment, and resignation — and that is unacceptable.

When violence against women is everywhere we turn, we must choose action not apathy. According to the United Nations, up to seventy percent of women worldwide experience gender-based violence in their lifetimes — most often at the hands of her partner. Violence is the leading cause of death and disability to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four, more than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined. It is time for our stories of survival to counteract our fear. Anthony’s powerful storytelling was a catalyst for me. It broke through my catatonia and provided a vital antidote to being resigned to life in a beastly time.

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Celebrating Supreme Court Wins for Sexual Rights


photo of Profamila Puerto Rico marching in a Gay Pride ParadeThis month Americans are celebrating two historic victories for sexual rights handed down by the Supreme Court: the eradication of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the weakening of a law that required groups fighting AIDS to make an “antiprostitution pledge.”

Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court declared that DOMA is unconstitutional. The 1996 law had prevented the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage, which is currently legal in thirteen states.

“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, on behalf of the court’s majority. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

Although the court’s decision continues to allow individual states to not recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, it does put an end to same-sex unions being “treated as second-class marriage.” It also forces the federal government to provide the immigration benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, thus helping along congressional negotiations over immigration reform that had stumbled over Republican opposition to extending such benefits in the legislation.

Today is the forty-fourth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which launched the LGBT rights movement in the United States. The Supreme Court’s decision is another landmark for the movement, and yet it also highlights how much farther the country has to go on the path to full equality. Fifteen countries have passed laws permitting same-sex marriage. A dozen more have such legislation pending. And even in some countries where marriage equality continues to face strong opposition — such as Australia, Ireland, Israel, and Colombia — antidiscrimination laws have already been passed that grant LGBT people the right to civil unions and adoption. As for America? Thirteen states down, thirty-seven to go.

The Antiprostitution Pledge

As part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that Congress enacted in 2003, NGOs that received federal funds to fight AIDS internationally were required to sign a statement publicly opposing sex work. Last week, a 6-2 Supreme Court majority struck down the “antiprostitution pledge,” ruling that it violated the First Amendment.

However, the decision affects only US-based organizations. Foreign NGOs who receive US funding can still be required to make the antiprostitution pledge. “The implication for foreign NGOs remains murky,” Chi Mgbako, a professor at Fordham Law School, told the Nation. “Many current and potential recipients of US global AIDS funding are foreign NGOs.”

The antiprostitution pledge has forced organizations to make a difficult decision: denounce the communities they serve, or lose vital funding for lifesaving HIV/AIDS programs. Increasing condom use among sex workers requires demonstrations of correct use, training on negotiating with clients, and collective action among sex workers — all of which could be considered under the policy as “promoting prostitution.”

On the other hand, publicly opposing sex work makes it harder to establish the trust needed to provide services to hard-to-reach men and women. Sex workers are one of the groups most at risk of HIV infection, and yet stigma and discrimination drive them away from the kinds of health education and services that could lower that risk. “At first when we went to [Lima’s] red-light district, people wouldn’t talk to us,” said a health educator at INPPARES, a group that provides sexual and reproductive health services in Peru (disclosure: INPPARES is a member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, where I work). “They’d grab a bunch of condoms and run away.” 

Red-light districts also serve as a safe haven for LGBT individuals, where men and women — especially those from rural areas — can freely express their gender and sexual identities. “Many of the clients we work with live as men in the jungle during the week and as women in Lima on the weekends,” said Dr. Daniel Aspicuelta, the executive director of INPPARES.

By hindering NGOs in their fight against HIV/AIDS, the antiprostitution pledge has endangered the lives of sex workers, their clients, and their families. The Supreme Court’s decision has gutted one part of this misguided policy, but it needs to be fully repealed so that groups like INPPARES can do their job.

This post is based on posts on DOMA and the antiprostitution pledge that appeared in the blog of the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region, where I work.

Update, June 29, 2013: This post was revised for length and clarity, and to add disclosures.

Mandy Van Deven was previously In The Fray’s managing editor. Site: mandyvandeven.com | Twitter: @mandyvandeven

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A Proven Way to Prevent Cancer versus Ideology. Guess Who Wins?


Photo by Gage Skidmore, Via Flickr
Photo by Gage Skidmore, via Flickr

The evidence is in:

The prevalence of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and a principal cause of cervical cancer — has dropped by half among teenage girls in the last decade, a striking measure of success for a vaccine that was introduced only in 2006, federal health officials said on Wednesday.

Now, we still aren’t getting enough girls and young women fully vaccinated. In the U.S., only about one-third of teenagers receive three doses, which represents a full course of the vaccine. By comparison, rates in many other countries — from wealthy nations like Britain and Denmark to poorer ones like Rwanda — are around 80 percent. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that 50,000 teenage girls alive today will die from cervical cancer that vaccination would have prevented if the U.S. had gotten to that 80 percent vaccination rate.

HPV vaccination in this country would be much more widespread if not for a determined opposition — one grounded in ideology rather than science. There is a broader antivaccine movement (championed by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy) that opposes the battery of childhood shots most of us grew up with, based on roundly discredited notions that vaccines cause autism. But in the case of the HPV vaccine, conservative politicians are leading the charge. They believe that giving teens the vaccine sends the message that sex at that age is okay, undermining their efforts to promote abstinence before marriage. And sadly, their campaign to win over the public seems to be working. According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, 44 percent of parents surveyed in 2010 stated they would not have their daughters vaccinated, up from 40 percent in 2008.

The hostility to science that animates some quarters of the anti-HPV movement became clear during the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. After being attacked by Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Texas governor Rick Perry backtracked from his previous support for making HPV vaccination mandatory. Bachmann claimed that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. When informed by Fox News’ Chris Wallace that studies show the vaccine to be safe, she hedged, saying she was only repeating a story told to her by a mother. But two months later, she continued to press her unsubstantiated claims, expressing sympathy for people who have to live with the “ravages of this vaccine.”

The evidence from the CDC is clear. This vaccine saves lives by the thousands — women and men. But ideology and unproven fears are preventing many more from getting immunized. My hope is that parents will take a hard look at the science and realize that any fears they have about teenage sex pale in comparison to the very real danger of their children dying from a disease that could have easily been prevented.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity. Twitter: @IanReifowitz

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A Cross-cultural Movement Emerges


Graffiti of American flag and people with the word 'Diversity'
Photo by Seth Anderson

Hazleton, Pennsylvania, is a small city (population: 25,000) that once boasted a thriving coal mining industry, but today has an unemployment rate double the national one. It’s best known now as the first American city to pass a law designed to get rid of undocumented immigrants by making their lives exceedingly difficult. Hazleton approved the measure — which prevents illegal immigrants from working or renting homes there — in 2006, four years before Arizona passed its similar “papers, please” law.

On the surface, it seems that little has changed in Hazleton since the law was enacted: the New York Times summed up the situation there last spring with its headline, “New Attitude on Immigration Skips an Old Coal Town.” But there are some folks working hard to make change happen. Their leader happens to be the manager of the Tampa Bay Rays, Joe Maddon.

Maddon grew up in Hazleton, in a time when most of its residents were white ethnics, predominantly Italian and Polish Americans. Since then, the city’s demographics have changed radically. According to census data, the percentage of Latino residents has surged, rising from 5 percent in 2000 to 37 percent in 2010.

In 2008, Maddon’s cousin, Elaine Maddon Curry, helped create Concerned Parents, an organization that provides services to immigrant families in Hazleton. But as the backlash against the city’s Latino population grew, Maddon found himself frustrated by all the anti-immigrant sentiment. He came to believe that Hazleton’s immigrants, and the city itself, needed more than services. It needed to build bridges between immigrants and the native-born, whites and Latinos. It needed a real and shared sense of community.

“We’re the same, just speak a different language,” Maddon says. “The Slovak, the Polish, the Irish, the Italians — we all started the same.”

In 2010, Maddon decided “to do something to repair what has been damaged here,” and since then has joined with his cousin and other like-minded residents of his hometown to establish the Hazleton Integration Project. As part of its first messaging campaign, the group plans to set up billboards throughout Hazleton with photos of city residents of many different ethnic backgrounds, all with the same tagline: “We are from Hazleton.”

The Hazleton ONE Community Center, set to open this summer, will serve as the project’s headquarters. Besides hosting the Concerned Parents group and providing homework help and athletic facilities, the center will offer Spanish-language classes, host cultural events, and sponsor other programs designed to bring together the city’s native-born whites and (mostly) immigrant Latinos. As Bob Curry, the president of the project’s board, describes it:

Yes, we will provide particular services. But the larger mission of integration will guide us everything we do. Services are one thing. Integration is quite another.… It’s a longer-range goal.

The group’s leadership includes both whites and Latinos. Eugenio Sosa, the executive director and himself an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, explains their approach:

This is following our dream…. We are starting with the children because, you know, children do not have prejudice. They are going to be spending time together, playing together, learning together, going to each others’ houses, learning about different cultures, how different people celebrate. It is just a great opportunity.

I learned about the Hazleton Integration Project through an organization called One Nation Indivisible (disclosure: I have donated to this group), whose purpose is to “support and celebrate” efforts at inclusion and integration, in particular those focused on immigrants to this country. Their definition of integration describes exactly what is going on in Hazleton.

Integration refers not merely to the absence of physical segregation. It is an aspiration best imagined by Martin Luther King. “Desegregation,” King wrote, could be accomplished by laws, but “integration,” acknowledges a web of mutuality — a shared fate. Integration is not synonymous with “desegregation” and “diversity.” Integration requires a full acceptance, a richer coming together, a willful expansion of community circles.  Our project tells many stories about what advocates call “immigrant integration.” Used in this context, “integration” does not necessarily refer to the absence of physical segregation, but to a wide variety of practices, policies, and programs that respect, welcome, and fully incorporate immigrants into the communities where they live.

Joe Maddon and his colleagues at the Hazleton Integration Project are working at a grassroots level to improve their city and overcome its ethnic divides. I can’t think of worthier goals.

Correction, June 18, 2013: This blog post originally misidentified the cofounder of Concerned Parents. It is Elaine Maddon Curry, not Joe Maddon. The text has been edited to reflect this.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity. Twitter: @IanReifowitz

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Photo by Russ Bowling.
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It’s Not Cheeky If You’re Famous

By Priyanka Nandy
photo of Jantar Mantar in India
Jantar Mantar in Jaipur, India.
Photo by Russ Bowling.

A friend posted a quote to Facebook this afternoon that shook loose a memory: “I lost some time once. It’s always in the last place you look for it.”

It’s apparently a quote from Neil Gaiman. Since Mr. Gaiman is famous already, everybody loves his moments of levity. However, the time I used this line, thinking it a piece of original wit, I was conspicuously without fame or, some would argue, much common sense. My subconscious still bears the scars of the aftermath.

The incident happened a very long time ago when I was a tortured high schooler. At the time, I hid my helplessness and anger behind cynical witticisms. If memory serves, my hawk-eyed English teacher caught me sharing my text with a classmate who had forgotten her own book at home. Ms. Teach was furious at this transgression, though only the slightest pretext was needed for her to go off like a firecracker.

The sterling performance Ms. Teach put in equated the act of our sharing a textbook with open contempt for an aged pedagogue. She upbraided my classmate for insincerity and irresponsibility, while I was chastised for the low cunning of concealing my pal’s grave misdemeanor. Toward the end of the tirade came an artful touch of a plot to divide-and-rule. Forgetting books at home, she informed the rest of the class, was part of our sinister plot to bring down the others’ test scores and shoot their academic performances in the knees.

“I can promise you that these two girls — these ‘friends’ of yours — have private tutors waiting for them at home,” she thundered. “They will make up for the time lost here, but you will not. Don’t be surprised if these troublemakers do far better than the rest of you. Instead of sitting there smiling like idiots, like this incident is a big joke, think of what has just been stolen from you by these two.”

The students stared at her in fearful fascination and pondered her vituperative warning. Something had been stolen from them? What magic was this? The girl in front of me absently patted her pocket.

“Time!” exploded Ms. Teach, making the whole class jump. “Those two have stolen your precious, valuable time! Let’s just hope your friends will tell you where they’ve hidden it, so you can put them to good use and pass your exams!”

With that final flourish, she snatched up her bag, her text, the attendance register, and marched briskly out of the classroom.

Several heads swivelled at me. Pairs of eyes shot dagger-sharp accusations.

“Oh, don’t listen to her,” I said with forced lightness, waving my hands dismissively. “Just look for your lost time in the last place you can think of. That’s where us thieves always stash the precious loot.”

I forced out a nervous laugh, for good measure. Heh-heh.

It worked. All around me, hostile looks began to melt into open grins. Everyone loves a winking rebel.

At this very moment of sweet relief, however, the hairs on the back of my neck started bristling. Turning slowly, I saw Ms. Teach, presumed absent, standing a little beyond the doorway. Her eyes cut at me with cold fury.

There is no insult more insulting, I suppose, than the mocking smile of one’s usual prey. The jackal, I imagine, takes the giggling of rabbits very personally.

I’d rather not go into what happened next. Suffice it to say that it will make a very colorful entry in my memoir. But to write a memoir I would have to be famous first, which brings us to the entire point of this story.

Fame makes cheek cool. Everyone else, shut up.

Priyanka Nandy works with structural inequities in public education and public health in India. She blogs at priyankanandy.com/blog and photo shares everywhere.”

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Time To Go Nuclear


Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Majority Leader
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), Majority Leader

Republicans in the U.S. Senate have routinely used the filibuster — and the threat of the filibuster — to deny President Obama and the Democrats their legislative agenda. In their defense, Republicans point out that the use of this parliamentary method of blocking votes is nothing new. Democrats filibustered some of George W. Bush’s appointees. Southern Dixiecrats used it in spectacular fashion to block civil rights legislation for decades.

But now there is evidence that the filibuster has flourished uniquely under the Republican Senate minority of recent years. Professor Sheldon Goldman, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, found that in the current Congress, Obama’s nominees have faced a level of obstruction that is “the highest that’s ever been recorded.… In this last Congress it approached total obstruction or delay.”

Goldman concludes that the level of obstruction since 2010 is significantly higher than in any of the years Bush was president and Democrats were a minority in the Senate — the parallel to the current situation. Furthermore, from the Alliance for Justice:

During President Obama’s first term, current vacancies [in the judicial branch] have risen by 51%.  This trend stands in stark contrast to President Clinton and President [George W.] Bush’s first four years, when vacancies declined by 65% and 34%, respectively.

Today’s partisan maneuvering is far more vicious than what happened under the previous Democratic minority. Back then, Democrats blocked a few individuals here and there, such as when they filibustered Miguel Estrada, Bush’s nominee to the federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (they did eventually allow a vote on the confirmation of Thomas B. Griffith to the same seat). Nowadays, the Senate minority is seeking to block as many nominees as possible in order to prevent Obama from moving the judiciary in a direction that fits with his thinking. Republican senators don’t even have the votes to defeat these nominees because voters elected a Democratic Senate majority as well as a Democratic president.

And the filibuster is not just being used with judicial nominees. Republicans are determined to  stop two major government agencies from being able to function: the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Board. The NLRB goes back to legislation passed in 1935, but Republicans have decided that they will filibuster the nomination of any new members, effectively incapacitating the board now that the terms of three of its five members have expired.

As for the CFPB, Republicans plan to filibuster the nomination of anyone to be its director, in hopes of denying the agency certain powers that can only be exercised by someone holding that title. Liberal blogger Kevin Drum, writing in The Nation, has argued that the GOP’s actions here are “explicitly aimed at shutting down these agencies,” and called them an attempt at “nullification.” In other words, if you don’t like a law, use the filibuster to neutralize it. If you don’t like the results of an election, use the filibuster to sabotage the other side’s agenda. It does not matter that Obama has been elected and reelected president. Republicans have made a decision that they will use the filibuster, the hold, and other tactics to ensure that he is simply unable to place people into the judiciary and various executive-branch positions.

Goldman’s analysis gives statistical backing to the claims of many Washington insiders, who acknowledge the ways that Democrats have contributed to political gridlock and yet are increasingly unwilling or unable to defend the scorched-earth tactics of Republicans. In a recent book, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein — well-respected voices in the Beltway crowd — argue that Congressional dysfunction has reached a dangerous level, thanks in large part to the extremism of Republicans, whom Mann and Ornstein characterize as “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At last, Obama has decided to push back. He recently nominated three people to the D.C. Circuit, the same federal court that Estrada was nominated for, considered the second-highest court in the land and a stepping-stone to the Supreme Court. It is worth noting that — despite Republican claims that there’s no need to fill the three openings on that court because it is “underworked” — there are now 188 pending cases per judge, up from 119 in 2005. Clearly, those openings need to be filled.

There is talk that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will consider doing away with the filibuster for all nominations to the judiciary or executive branch if this obstruction continues. Obama has told Reid he supports such a move. Reid can do so with the assent of a simple majority of senators, but such an action is so controversial that pundits have taken to calling it the “nuclear option.”

It’s time to go nuclear. The facts that Goldman’s study lays out make it clear that Senate Republicans don’t believe Democrats, even when they win an election, should be allowed to govern. After the last election, Reid agreed to modest measures of “filibuster reform” that Republicans promptly ignored. Now it’s time to call out their strategy of blanket obstruction for what it is: the subversion of democracy.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity. Twitter: @IanReifowitz

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The Culture of Make-Believe in Kidlit

By Sakena Patterson


As many Americans cling to the prospect of a post-racial society in the wake of its first African American president, children growing up in the United States may find they are unable to fully comprehend the significance of this political milestone. For young Americans today, an unburdened, limitless, and diverse reality is all they’ve ever known. But identities are complexly crafted from a variety of different sources, and many children’s understanding of their position in America will start with the books they read.

In Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature, Jodi Eichler-Levine, an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, warns us that “books for tots are anything but innocent.” She takes a fair and scholarly approach to the way Jewish and African American stories transmit core cultural beliefs to the children and adults who read them, and opens a dialogue about America’s complicated — and often brutal — history of racial, ethnic, and religious oppression.

But what is the cost of passing on tales of Jewish and African American sacrifice and suffering that are whitewashed or inaccurate?

A chronological look at Jewish and African American children’s literature shows that cultural assimilation became synonymous with patriotism. From the American Revolution to 9/11, minorities have had to align themselves with a largely white, Protestant American population in order to distance themselves from a perceived enemy. One way this was achieved was by writing children’s books about Jewish and African Americans that minimize their cultural differences to white, Protestant Americans. This cultural downplaying stripped away anything that might portray a black or Jewish child as “too ethnic” by watering down Judaism or reimaging black stereotypes as comical and, therefore, non-threatening.

Children’s books are often the way white Americans are introduced to Jewish and African American history and culture. This is problematic because, while a black or Jewish family may have family or oral histories to add dimensions to the readings, most white children must rely only on what a story conveys. Eichler-Levine makes it clear that all children are in danger of absorbing messages about minority groups that are manipulative and sometimes downright false.

For example, in Crispus Attucks: Boy of Valor (1965), Dharathula Millender attempts to make African Americans a part of the founding narrative of the United States by portraying Attucks as a patriot. While the goal is commendable, how it is achieved is troubling.

Many historians believe that Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave, was the first person killed during the Boston Massacre in 1770. This event is widely viewed to have prompted the American War of Independence five years later. However, as Eichler-Levine points out, little is known about the circumstances of Attucks’ life and death. His entire childhood is imagined by Millender in order to create a story that will appeal to and reinforce national pride in young readers. Creating a fictional childhood for an American hero isn’t new, but in this case it is done to portray Attucks as a martyr who is willing to die for his country’s freedom.

Millender’s biography isn’t the only book about Attucks to emphasize his supposed patriotic motives. In The Cost of Freedom: Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre (2004), Joanne Mattern invents dialog where Attucks says he fought for American liberty because he had been a slave: “I was a slave long ago, Matt. It is a bad life. Now it seems the colonists are slaves to the British. This can’t go on. People need to be free.”

While it may be clear to an adult that this dialog is make-believe, a child might understand it to be an authentic part of history. Without addressing the reality that many blacks fought for their own freedom rather than the freedom of the country, stories like Mattern’s not only gloss over the history of American slavery, but also of African American resistance.

Suffer the Little Children is an incredible resource for teachers, historians, and writers of children’s stories who want to correct the distortion of Jewish and African American histories in the stories for a new generation. The best way for a child to understand and welcome a mix of cultures and religions isn’t by promoting their erasure through assimilation, but by creating a society where diversity is embraced. In a society that favors acceptance, we have a better chance of moving toward a country that truly values liberty and justice for all.

Sakena Patterson is a freelance writer based in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She returned to Pittsburgh after a seven-year spree in Los Angeles, where she earned an MFA in fiction from Antioch University. Twitter: @misspatterson Tumblr: sakpatt.tumblr.com

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Photo by Alyssa L. Miller.
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The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Empathy Becomes Real)


Velveteen Rabbit photo
Photo by Alyssa L. Miller.

As I wandered around a local craft festival last November, my mind was on my seven-month-old niece. I wanted to give her a Christmas gift that was thoughtful, soft, and sweet. When I’d almost given up hope, I spotted a small stand outfitted with handmade stuffed animals that, upon further inspection, were all velveteen. This, I decided, was the softest, sweetest thing I could give my baby niece.

I picked out a gray rabbit with long, floppy ears. I envisioned the little girl snuggling up to her new sleeping companion, a subtle yet constant reminder of her loving aunt. Unfortunately, this idyllic picture would not come to pass. A few weeks after I bought the bunny, I got a phone call from my brother that irrevocably changed our relationship.

The days leading up to the call had been sleepless and emotional. My brother disappeared for three days, leaving his pregnant girlfriend in a state of panic. She and I were in constant communication, and feared something horrible had happened when my brother didn’t answer his phone and was nowhere to be found. He had left late at night, saying he had an errand to run, and no one had heard from him since. The thing is: this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Actually, it happens all the time because my brother is an addict.

When he re-emerged, my brother called me and acted as if nothing had happened. His girlfriend and I, he insisted, were simply overreacting. I couldn’t pander to his addiction-driven whims anymore, but I didn’t want to turn my back on my family. I didn’t want to give up hope that my brother could get clean.

I tried to set healthy boundaries by telling my brother I was worried about his well being. I tried to make a plea for the safety of my niece. Within moments, our conversation exploded. My brother yelled. I yelled back. He said I was unlovable. I called him a junkie.

Accusing an addict of being an addict is a surefire way to end a conversation. But I was so tired of feeling taken advantage of. I was through with my brother’s lies and enduring his verbal abuse. There is a particular exhaustion that comes from fear-based worry, a specific kind of anxiety that manifests during the hours of wondering when the phone will ring with the news of my brother’s self-imposed death. Desperate to make this misery end, I told my brother never to contact me until he was ready to seek treatment.

I drew a line in the sand, so my brother drew one of his own. He cut me out of his life completely and banned me from contacting his children. He warned that if I sent Christmas presents, he would burn them. And I knew I should believe him.

When my brother hung up on me, my heart broke open and filled with regret. Although I knew I needed to look after my own emotional health, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d made a grave mistake.

Instead of ridding myself of the unhappy relic, I kept the velveteen rabbit in a bag near my bed. The tender toy was a sad reminder of the ways my family was disappearing. Two years before, my mother died suddenly of a heart attack after spending her final years in a state of depression I knew intimately, but didn’t know how to address. In the midst of my grief, my older brother’s alcoholism proved too much for me to handle. One day, we stopped speaking and still haven’t reconnected. I found it excruciating for my intimate world to be shrinking so quickly, but then something happened that changed my perspective.

While writing a magazine article on addiction and rehabilitation, I discovered a program that had been operating discreetly in my hometown in California for almost thirty years. Located on a tree-lined street in Downey, a small Los Angeles suburb, Woman’s Council is an outpatient rehabilitation program for mothers for whom treatment of active addition is a court-ordered condition to regain custody of their children — and it was changing lives.

When I visited Woman’s Council, I had already spent three months observing Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, visiting recovery centers around the city, interviewing recovering addicts, and speaking to counselors and medical professionals about the process of getting clean. But my first encounter with this program blew me away.

Sitting around a circular table, women gathered four times a week to share their stories, vent their frustrations, investigate their personal psychological triggers, and purge themselves of their chemical demons. During each woman’s time to speak, she revealed every hardship and heartbreak, every triumph and tragedy she had endured that lead to current circumstance. The group was facilitated by trained counselors who had their own experiences with addiction, and they provided guidance on how they overcame their own challenges early on in recovery. Despite participation being mandated by the judicial system, the women I spoke with all reported that the program was crucial to their well being.

Week after week, I sat silently in that meeting room and took notes on a legal pad. Although I tried to maintain a professional distance, at times I had to excuse myself and run to the bathroom before my sobs broke through. As I gasped for breath in the stall, a series of emotions ran through me: devastation at the horrifying misfortunes these women had endured, anger at the trauma their addictions had brought upon their children, sorrow for my brothers, myself, and my family. But I always returned to the room with as blank a face as I could muster and forced myself to listen more.

I knew something powerful was happening in that room because something powerful was also happening to me. In empathizing with the mothers in Women’s Council, I was learning how to empathize with my brothers as well. I was beginning to understand the stigma of addiction and how cycles of abuse get perpetuated. Having myself abused drugs and flirted with disaster in an abusive relationship, I saw that the biggest thing distinguishing me from these women was that I’d had a little more luck.

When my article was published last December, I gave the velveteen rabbit to a woman named Nicole who I’d met at Women’s Council and had an daughter named Sofia who was the same age as my niece. Despite it being an unceremonious act of giving, I felt extremely moved by the exchange and became the Women’s Council’s first regular volunteer. I jump in where ever I am needed, cooking food for the graduation ceremony or helping with administrative tasks. My hope is that I can make a difference in the lives of these women in a way I wasn’t able to in my own family.

Before I began volunteering, I had to sit with my family experiences as though they were secrets. I still haven’t reconciled with either of my brothers. But now, whenever I enter the Women’s Council building, their lives and mine make a little more sense and are less cruel in equal proportion.

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After London’s Terrorist Killing, Asking the Big ‘Why?’


Lee Rigby, murdered in Woolwich, UK. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Lee Rigby, murdered in the London district of Woolwich. UK Ministry of Defence, via Wikimedia

What is it that makes people capable of hacking another human being to death on a peaceful street? It is a question that demands asking after last week’s brutal murder of a British soldier. The suspects, captured on cellphone video, are two men who claimed they were avenging Muslims killed by British armed forces.

One easy answer is: Islam, or a bit more subtly, radical Islam. After the bombing of the Boston Marathon — whose perpetrators similarly cited U.S. military aggression against Muslims — conservative commentator Erik Rush called Islam “wholly incompatible with Western society.” Another alternative is to take the terrorists at their word and characterize these murderous acts as “blowback” resulting from Western imperialism. This is the position taken by people like Glenn Greenwald, who argues that although the U.S. isn’t totally to blame for the attacks by extremist Muslims on Western targets, it must accept the lion’s share of that blame.

Greenwald recently clashed with Bill Maher, another liberal commentator, on this matter. Greenwald certainly has a point, and is far more thoughtful than extremists like Erik Rush. Going back at least to the U.S.-backed coup in 1953 that ousted Iran’s democratically elected prime minister and made the Shah an absolute monarch, U.S. policy has indirectly fueled radicalism in Muslim countries. Britain and other European states have mucked around in the Middle East even longer. Nevertheless, Maher also makes the point that — in the twenty-first century at least — only Muslims react with such widespread violence to blasphemous writings or cartoons. This kind of fanaticism may be waning, however, and Western Christians are perfectly willing to murder innocents as well: recent examples include the Norwegian who massacred seventy-seven people to “protect” his country from Islam and multiculturalism, and the white supremacist who gunned down six of his fellow Americans in a Wisconsin Sikh temple. What motivates any of these terrorist murders?

The question is not easy to answer. What it comes down to, I suspect, is a combination of hate and fear, which feed upon each other. The violence begets more violence, a vicious cycle of bloodshed that becomes increasingly difficult to halt. What I can say with more certainty, though, is that we should be highly suspicious of anyone who claims to have a simple answer.

As many moderate Muslims know well, their communities need to be more vocal in standing up to fanaticism, and more willing to tolerate those who have different beliefs. Yes, there are religious extremists and terrorists among non-Muslims in the West as well. But the Muslim world has numerous theocratic states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.), along with radical Islamist movements and insurgencies in a number of countries. So let’s not make false equivalencies.

On the other hand, Western governments need to help the moderates fight extremism in their countries by shrinking its military footprint abroad. With the end of the U.S. presence in Iraq and, a year from now, a drastic reduction in the number of coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, that is already happening, but a greater drawdown there and elsewhere is needed.

At the same time, the U.S. cannot wall itself off from the world’s problems. It must protect its citizens (who include millions of Muslim Americans) from those violent extremists who would harm them — whatever the reason. And it has to figure out a way to do so that does not simply end up increasing the number of such people. Squaring that circle is the only way to end the cycle of violence and hate that has plagued relations between the Western and Muslim worlds for far too long.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity. Twitter: @IanReifowitz

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Is it Time to Put Morality on the Market?


What Money Can't Buy, book coverOver the last thirty years, Americans have seen an infusion of market thinking into areas that were previously governed by collective ethics and morality. Today, the drive to make a profit dictates the way we view things like health, education, national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, and even procreation. In What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, Harvard University professor Michael J. Sandel argues that markets have become detached from morals, and that it’s time we reconnect them. The book is an engaging exploration of where to draw the line between having a market economy and being a market society.

In the introduction, Sandel makes it clear that providing definitive answers to the questions he raises is not his intention. Instead, he views himself as the kickstarter of a much-needed, public debate on markets and morality, and offers a philosophical framework in which we might have the conversation. The inquisitive title of Sandel’s book reinforces this position. For now, his focus is on highlighting the questions we haven’t been asking over the last three decades, but probably should have been.

So, what does economics have to do with morality? Since he’s the expert, I’ll let Sandel explain:

“Some of the good things in life are corrupted or degraded if we turn them into market commodities,” Sandel argues.

If the role of markets were simply to allocate goods, Sandel would be hard-pressed to find an ethical objection to using an economic rationale to solve all our problems — but, he explains, the reach of markets goes beyond goods allocation to express and promote attitudes toward whatever is being exchanged. It is our job as members of a just society to interrogate what those attitudes are, and whether they reflect the values we want to promote in our culture. If we determine that the values are out of sync with the ethical standards of our culture, then we need to regulate the markets to avoid the unintentional promotion of morally questionable social norms.

For many Americans, regulation is a dirty word. But Sandel asks us to consider the idea of regulation in the context of the parameters we’ve already placed on things that currently cannot be bought and sold, such as human beings and civic duties. For example, it is illegal in the United States to sell one’s vote in an election or a child through adoption processes. These boundaries were not established by the rules of economics; they were established by our moral compass as citizens in a participatory democracy.

So, what values do our markets presently exude? And are we satisfied with that? Because Sandel isn’t. He believes we need more robust engagement in civic discourse around these issues.

“When we think of the morality of markets, we think first of Wall Street banks and their reckless misdeeds, of hedge funds and bail-outs and regulatory reform,” he writes. “But the moral and political challenge we face today is more pervasive and mundane — to rethink the role and reach of markets in our social practices, human relationships, and everyday lives.”

As funny as it is intellectually engaging, What Money Can’t Buy is an excellent point of entry for those concerned with addressing the challenges of markets and morality. It will augment your view of laissez-faire economics and what is a stake in our society if we don’t intervene.

Mandy Van Deven was previously In The Fray’s managing editor. Site: mandyvandeven.com | Twitter: @mandyvandeven

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The Pendulum of Curiosity: Why I Am a Writer


graphic of Tina VasquezI recently came to the realization that my life is full of extremes, and those extremes facilitate my work as a writer. This revelation struck while I was sitting in bed on a Saturday night, simultaneously editing an e-learning course on fair housing laws and watching the America’s Cutest Cat countdown on Animal Planet. This brief indulgence in the hilarious and heartwarming antics of curious cats provoked a moment of self-reflection. I was compelled to consider the ways my own curiosity drives me, personally and professionally. Writers are known to be troublemakers, after all — though perhaps this is an unfair casting unless viewed in the right sort of light.

As evidence of my unruly ways, I’d spent the previous weekend with a group of friends in San Francisco’s Castro District. I threw back doubles of Crown Royal in wonderfully seedy dives and chatted up the oddest strangers I could find. Essentially, I was looking for trouble. But in a way, I’m always looking for trouble, alcohol notwithstanding or required.

By all accounts, I am a responsible adult. During the day, I work, write, and volunteer for a women’s rehabilitation program. I go grocery shopping and cook for my aging father and great uncle. I walk the dog and feed the cat. When the sun sets, however, I get an all-too-familiar itch to seek out the untamed.

So, what does being a troublemaker mean anyway? For me, it means going places I’ve been told not to go, doing things I’ve been told not to do, talking to people I’ve been told not to talk to, and writing about it all with humility and compassion. This lifestyle is deemed unsuitable for a “good Latina” like me. Sometimes you have to toe the line, but other times you have to be willing to step over it and see where the other side leads.

My connection to outsiders started when I was young. I was always attracted to things that seemed out of place, pushed boundaries, or had clearly gone awry. When driving in downtown Los Angeles with my dad, he would lock the car doors and tell me to avert my eyes from the people who were struggling with homelessness, mental illness, addiction, and disease. But his warnings only widened my field of vision and amplified my interest in the troubled lives that were being vehemently ignored.

As a young adult, I spent hours driving around the same dodgy areas with a friend in the middle of the night. When that wasn’t getting me close enough to the action, I ditched the car to walk around on the streets. (This was about the same time Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote a series about Skid Row that would become one of my favorite pieces of journalism.)

I developed an unquenchable desire to understand how this hell on earth came to be. My questions eventually led to anger that my city had failed so many. My anger led to me discovering that I had a gift for deep inquiry and exploration through writing.

Today, my curiosity fuels what I do for a living. It pushes me to want to know the who, what, where, when, why, and how of everything — the more disputed the topic, the more engaging it is to me. My goal is to write about people’s lives respectfully, never dehumanizing or exploitative. I want to tell their stories as honestly as I can and shed a bit of light into some of society’s darker corners.

In many ways, I have been lucky that my curiosity hasn’t gotten me killed. It has placed me in more than a few unsafe situations. I’ve been in cars I shouldn’t have been in, with people I shouldn’t have been with. I’ve been cornered in dark alleys. I’ve been followed. I’ve had my life threatened. My flirtation with danger wasn’t a healthy courtship, and I am fortunate to have sidestepped a messy ending. Still, I go on to the next story.

Not all of my work is focused on situations of heartbreak and melancholy. In fact, much of what I write to pay the bills takes a lighter tone. Juggling this odd combination has landed me with innumerable moments of absurdity. Accidental offense is an on-the-job hazard.

While writing an article for my local newspaper, I went to an elementary school to observe a class of fourth graders. When fishing in my purse for a business card to give the classroom teacher, I accidentally pulled out one for a self-proclaimed “anal expert” I’d met in a bar a week earlier. The card pictured the man in a latex dog suit. Although I quickly pushed the card back into my bag — hoping the teacher hadn’t seen it — the look on her face indicated otherwise. I smiled self-consciously as I handed her the correct one.

I didn’t go to college to learn how to write. In fact, I didn’t finish college at all. Instead, I built my career on being curious and trusting my instincts. As a writer, the only thing about which you can be certain is that those two traits will guide you to where you need to be. And just like those comical kitties, I always seem to land on my feet.

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