Gabrielle Giffords

by Pa Rock
Political Observer

At times I catch myself getting a little critical of Arizona, particularly Arizona politicians. It's easy to be critical in Maricopa County where we have a sheriff and a county attorney sharing a brain - and not a very good one, at that, where my congressman, Trent Franks and Beans, proves time and again that he is mostly beans, and where a Presidential visit is tantamount to a call to arms. Our U.S. Senators, Kyl and McCain, both have 3rd degree chapped lips from kissing the butts of every teabagger and know-nothing in the state, and the State Superintendent of Schools is openly contemptuous of education.

But there are some bright spots in this state. Five of the state's nine congresspeople are Democrats, and of those five, the brightest star is Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona's 8th Congressional District. I first became aware of this amazing young lady last spring when someone at one of her town hall meetings got so excited that he left his gun behind after the event. I instinctively knew that morons don't take guns to the events of other morons, which meant that Giffords must have something positive going for her.

And she does. The Tucson native is well educated. She received a B.A. in sociology and Latin American history from Scripps College in California, and completed a Master of Regional Planning at Cornell. She focused her studies on Mexico–United States relations while at Cornell. (Her congressional district is one of only ten in the United States that shares a border with Mexico.) Rep. Giffords was a Fulbright Scholar in Chihuahua, Mexico, and she has also been a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She has an education and a work history that served as an ideal preparation for service in Congress. (For years, my congressman in Missouri was a used car dealer who was openly suspicious of anyone with an education!)

Congresswoman Giffords fashions herself a "blue dog" Democrat, but that has to be political posturing because her record does not support that appellation. While in the Arizona legislature she worked tirelessly for improved health care, especially for women and children. She is also pro-choice and pro-gun control, garnering the endorsement of Emily's List and a grade of D+ from the National Rifle Association and a D- from the Gun Owners of America. Blue Dog, indeed!

Her primary strength, however, has to be in understanding what is going on in Mexico and in the logical support of comprehensive immigration reform that includes a guest worker program. She has her finger on the pulse of our neighbor to the south, noting recently that the maquilladora factory system - the one that came about when U.S. manufactures rushed across the Rio Grande for cheap labor after Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and screwed the unions - those same maquilladoras are now packing up and moving to Asia for even cheaper labor. It is illogical to think that unemployed Mexican factory workers are going to sit on the curb and starve when jobs are available in Los Estados Unidos. ("The United States" for you gringos who refuse to learn even an elemental smattering of Spanish.)

Congresswoman Giffords is married to astronaut Mark Kelly, making her the only current member of Congress to have a spouse who is a member of the Armed Forces, and the only member of Congress to ever have a spouse in space.

Gabrielle Giffords is one smart cookie, and the good citizens of Arizona's 8th are damned lucky to have her representing them in Washington! I may just have to move to Tucson!

The Feminist Cruise: Part Three Shipboard Classes

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Our cruise across the Caribbean included two full days at sea, one heading toward Central America and the other as we were returning to Florida. We had three sets of workshops during those days, each permitting cruisers to choose between two or three options. On most other days we would have one or two workshop sessions.

I attended a couple of workshops that dealt with the subject of immigration, of which the most memorable was hosted by a professor from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her topic was on the "feminicidios" (femicides) or "las muertas de Juárez" (the dead women of Juarez). The professor talked about how American companies were building factories in Mexican border cities, like Juarez, as a result of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) - where they could take advantage of low wages and no worker protections. Immigrants from across Mexico and Central America came north to work in these factories, and many of those workers were young women. Juarez was witnessing a large number of these women being raped (often by groups of men) and murdered, and the authorities weren't actively engaged in investigating the murders or even admitting that there was a problem. The lesson was that economic necessity can bring people into dangerous situations, and that neither the Mexican government nor the American employers could not be relied upon to guarantee safety to the poor.

I listened to Delores Huerta talk from the floor about immigrant struggles, and her experiences in helping to found the United Farm Workers Union with Cesar Chavez. Ms. Huerta is truly an American legend. She is older now (with eleven grown children) but still very active and very vocal. She also talked about the plight of female prisoners in America, many of whom are serving longer sentences than men convicted of the same crimes. I was able to have a private conversation with Delores about an elderly lady that I know who is confined to a wheelchair and living in a California prison. She is totally harmless, but prisons in America aren't about public safety, they are about vengeance.

Another memorable workshop involved the showing of a new film on the history of the women's suffrage movement in the United States. I don't remember the name of the film, but Alice Paul was the central focus, and it was very engrossing. One older lady at the showing had an expensive coffee table book on the suffrage movement, and she passed her book around asking each of us to sign it.

Eleanor Smeal, Kim Gandy (President of the National Organization of Women), and others had a panel discussion one evening on current political issues. Ms. Smeal spoke about the inherent power of controlling committees in Congress. At that time the Democrats had a one-vote majority in the U.S. Senate, only because independent Joe Lieberman was caucusing with the Democrats. I heard a guest on the Chris Matthews Show say that he predicted that Lieberman would join the Republican Party soon and thus relieve the Democrats of all of their Committee Chairmanships. It took awhile to get the floor, but when I finally was able to ask about that prediction, Ms. Smeal made her own prediction - that it wouldn't happen. And it hasn't!

Eleanor Smeal spoke in a unique manner. She would begin every statement speaking slowly and deliberately, but would then begin to ramp it up before she completed her thought - almost always with an edge of anger in her voice. One was left to suspect that intensity had been a necessary component of her highly successful life.

The evening meals on the ship were also designed to be educational experiences. Through a scheduling design that nothing short of amazing, we were all moved around each evening so that we were sitting with different cruisers. The celebrities were also shuffled so that each passenger got to be at a table with each celebrity during the course of the week. One night we had been provided with wine in order to do some toasting. I'm not much of a wine fan, so I just sipped at mine during the toast, and had almost a full glass left after the activity. Kim Gandy, the NOW President was sitting next to me that evening and noticed my leftover wine. "Are you going to drink that?" I told her that I was not, and she reached over, picked it up, and downed it! When you are elbow-to-elbow with someone, they can suddenly become very real!

Another evening as we were waiting on our meal, each person at the table introduced themselves to their fellow diners. The lady preceding me was about my age, and she was travelling with her daughter-in-law-to-be. She discussed her husband who had just retired as a CEO of a large company. She discussed her son, who had just graduated from an Ivy League College, and was going into the Army as an officer. She said that while she and her husband both supported the War in Iraq initially, now that her son would be serving there, her opinion had changed. She blamed her husband for pushing their son into serving a stint as an officer in the Army. When she finally finished her "poor me" diatribe, it was my turn to talk. After informing the group that I was a social worker with the United States Army, she sputtered out, "You're kidding!" I caught a bit of a grin from the bride-to-be!

Redirection

Every few decades America undergoes some basic realignments, usually under the direction of a President who understands, with uncommon clarity, the importance of leading with a vision. We have had three such leaders in my lifetime:

John Kennedy challenged us to make America and the world a better place by focusing on others instead of ourselves. We weren't about greed, we were about giving. Kennedy gave us the Peace Corps, which is still a force for good in the world nearly fifty years later. He also redirected our national focus toward the stars, or at least the moon, and began a serious effort to strengthen math and science education in our schools.

Lyndon Johnson was thrust into the Presidency early in what should have been the Kennedy period. LBJ used his unparalleled power with Congress to create a massive Civil Rights program and anti-poverty agenda. It was under Johnson that many of America's most disadvantaged first began to realize that they, too, could gain entry into the system. Some of the jewel's in LBJ's crown of accomplishments include the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA - a domestic Peace Corps), Medicare, Medicaid, and Headstart - programs that radically changed America for the better.

Society is a pendulum. When Americans feel that government has gone too far to the left or to the right, they begin looking for someone who can bring the pendulum back in the other direction. There were American's in the sixties who resented what they saw as government's appropriation of their tax money for use with the people that demagogues assured them were too lazy to work. It was time for a shift, someone with a new vision.

Ronald Reagan came to the White House in 1980 with the vision of refocusing America from the "us" of Kennedy and Johnson, to the "me". Insteading of concentrating on what we could do for our country, Reagan asked us to focus on what we could do to make our own lives better, and let our poor neighbors fend for themselves.

And America has been on this "me" track now for almost thirty years. Even an eight-year democratic respite under the Clintons saw little done to enhance the lives of the poor and needy. The North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA), in fact, proved to be a critical factor in increasing unemployment and poverty in the United States during the Clinton years and throughout the presidency of George Bush.

George Bush has taken the pendulum so far to the right that it appears to be stuck. Our treasury has been sacked by Bush and Cheney's cronies, otensibly to fight a war that has drug on for five years and that we have zero (ZERO!) hope of winning. Our national prestige is in the crapper thanks to our unwillingness to negotiate or even be civil with other nations. We let bin Laden escape so that the President could rush into Iraq and prove something to his father, and then have a moment of glory prancing around the deck of an aircraft carrier. George Bush has stood, like the proud little peacock that he is, snapping orders as America digs the biggest hole in the history of the world, and he won't let us stop digging!

It is time for a change. It is time to begin redirecting our national energies in a more positive, and world-friendly direction. It is time that we begin to care about every mother's son, or daughter, and not just what is good for the stockholders of Halliburton, Blackwell, and Raytheon. It's our America, and it's time to bring it home!

There are three candidates left in the race for the presidency of the United States. John McBush, who states that he does not understand economics and is willing to stay in Iraq one hundred more years. McBush is a cranky old man (with an eye for blondes) who wants to serve out George Bush's third term. Billary Clinton wants to take us back to the good old days of the 1990's when our factory jobs went to Mexico and the assets of the wealthy went to the Caymans. She clearly wants to serve Bill's third term. Barack Obama wants to focus on people, and to provide us with a hope of regaining our stature in the world through diplomacy and good deeds rather than with bombs and braggadocio. Of the three, Obama is the only one who offers any hope for change.

Obama '08! It is time for a change!