OnLine With Zoe

Sweet Vacation with Seeds of Peace

I Got Attached & I Blame Dave

I've gone and done something really irritating.  I have gone and gotten all attached to Hillary Clinton being the next President of the United States.  It could be because I spent $48.00 on an Ann Hand rhinestone pin, "Hillary2008," but I really want to blame it on Dave.  I was fairly settled on Edwards until I had dinner with friends and Dave said women will never have full equality in the U.S. until a woman is president.  I dismissed it at the moment and then it started sprouting.  In a few days, it was full grown and now I want nothing less. 

I like O'Bama, though I wish he had closed the deal with the ERA in Illinois while he was there.  He is inspiring and may very well win but then I play out a daydream of his appointing a woman as a running mate and I am mad all over again because it feels like dinner scraps, like left-overs when I could have had the main course. 

So now I am attached.  This activist heart of mine now dreams about possibility.  And what is popping up is so irresistible; women going to Texas, emails from women I admire, amazing sites like Hillary Speaks for Me and Feminists for Clinton and this fantastic video.   

It was easier when I didn't care so much but easy ain't all its cracked up to be.  I am not very good at easy.  As Tina says, "We don't always do things nice and easy."

Doing My Missionary Work

How could it be that I am still living in Orange County?  I am blue (not sad-blue) in the reddest part of California.  I live in the dreaded 46th.  Come on, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is right of Bush.  That is crazy.  When I rented my house, I asked the landlord if he rented to Democrats and he said, "only one at a time,"  controlling the migration pattern.  One friend of mine says I am here doing missionary work though I do not wear a white shirt and ride a bike through the neighborhood.

Election years I take great delight in driving around with my political bumper stickers; Kucinich, Kerry/Edwards, Clinton/Gore ~ now its Hillary.  I used to worry about someone messing with my car but that only happened a few years ago when I had a Lakers flag on the rear window and someone wrote something very nasty on my car.  One time a man sped up in his BMW and I thought for sure I was gonna get the finger for my Kucinich sticker.  Instead the driver gave me a thumbs up!  I was shocked.

Yesterday I was knee-deep in a pretty bad day.  I couldn't find a movie to see so I set out to the two closest shopping centers; Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza.  With my Hillary 2008 rhinestone pin on my Eileen Fisher vest, I took off for an adventure shopping.   Who knew what would happen if there was no car with a bumper sticker, just me and a campaign pin. 

I started at Bloomingdales; cosmetics, purses, plus sizes and without exception, each clerk ~ seriously EACH AND EVERY sales women told me, "I love your pin, she is going to win, you know!"    Wow, that was a surprise.  I took off for Nordy's to spend my Christmas gift cards.  The three sales women there all lined up at the counter and started taking about Hillary and how much they love her.  They voted for her.  They know she is going to win.  Last stop, Macys. 

The woman who helped me told me how much she loves Oprah.  She never missed a show (oh oh, is the Obama talk about to happen?)  As I was arranging my purchase, she called over the other two women working the department.  "Look how gorgeous the woman's pin is," she said and they proceeded to carry on and on about how much they love Hillary.  I just got overwhelmed and welled up.  The working women, its the working women who know, who want Hillary in the White House. 

It was a great day in the OC.  My missionary work may not be so solitary after all. 

Will WE March Together Again?

From my point of view, this last week has been an unraveling of feminist fabric in America.  The new F-Word is faction.  I have not felt this alone in the movement since June, 1982 when the ERA deadline passed and banded women disbanded to never coalesce in that form again. 
Much like my unusual high school experience of traveling within many cliques, I am in touch with many women in the movement who work in different avenues.  My Outlook inbox has been flooded this week with the most disturbing asks, messages, hoaxes, essays, photos, lists.  Late last Thursday, I wrote to several women and told them that I cannot deal with this presidential primary along color lines, to take my name off their distribution lists until the primary is over and realize that we are all blue (dems – which in each case was true)

Since I began studying the lives of Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Winnie Mandela and reading bell hooks, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou and watching Oprah, I felt fairly confident that we were making some progress about racism in the Women’s Movement.  And yet this week, I have never seen such racial lines drawn.  And what is this incredible sexism about Hillary Rodham being just more of the Clinton years?  Can a woman stand on her own education, qualifications and experience?  Or is this 1950 – when people are imposing a husband’s legacy on his wife – like the plumber’s wife, fireman’s wife or professor’s wife?  What do people want from her?  If she divorced her husband – if she kept her name – if she had no children…  I thought all that crap went out with June Cleaver. 

How have I been fooled to believe that sexism is something hidden, something that will be gutted through the courts and Congress, something so integrated in our lives that is barely shows, something practiced by antiquated employers who are being exposed in slow motion?  And have I been fooled into thinking that one crude man says, “nappy-headed hoes’” and righteous people stand to be counted?  And have I been fooled to believe that if a woman goes to college, works in hedge funds, manages a self-reliant life; she will be respected?  When, all the while, polite society bickers about the level of insult (if at all) occurs when a member of the media says that a 27 year old woman campaigning for her mother is a whore – “pimped by her mother.”  Senator Obama, you have two daughters ~ would you please speak up on this!!!  I am truly sickened by it.  I am losing my footing as the reasonable, ethical road narrows.   

Lets sum up here ~ feminists have been working to put a woman the White House and to remove racism from our lives.  No one could have foreseen that a woman would be running against an African American man in the Democratic Party.  But what I find unfathomable is that this historic combination is bringing out the worst of the very people who worked so hard to make it happen.  I only hope that when the Primary is over, we can get on with the holy work of social justice – and that we can do it together.