OnLine With Zoe

This Frail Power, the Vote.

I never wanted the vote to be this powerful. Change happens in the soul, expressed through art, absorbed into culture. Law enforcement and legislature have no understanding that they are last to be moved.

I blame the pandemic for the escalating power of the vote in 2020. Without the pandemic people would not be so physically at risk. The pandemic attacked the right to assemble. The pandemic attacked the middle class and working poor. Protest would have been deeply, widely, strident, if not for the pandemic.

People of Color have put so much on the line in massively disrespecting the pandemic to rip the the opera gloves off of white america and teach us to "say their name." Bravery unparalleled. Massive human debts that can never be repaid because the heartless bankers don't believe they owe.

Women raped, discarded, beaten, diminished and handed a paper mask to care for the infected dying. Mothers forced to teach as a form of protecting their family. Technology imposing another layer of caste.

Now, the electeds must tell us the truth. No more hollow promises. It is all on the voters. Do not look to government for directions, health information, leadership, temporary assistance, stimulus, protection or basic humanity.

Beyond anything Suffragists could have imagined we are left with this tiny, frail, hash mark and finger ink. We are voting for democracy, for air, for water, for life herself. It is a terrible burden, probably dangerous, but it is ours.

Why is this Night Different than any Other?

I bet I am not the only person who is running internal inventory, trying to understand why things feel so bad.  Where to even begin? 

This last week has taken our nation deeper into hellfire than I thought possible.  However, I really want to measure why this, this, THIS is so suffocating. 

I turn to an idea that has worked for me over the years – the differential.  It is not one point vs another.  It is the distance between them and the time that transpired to discover the space traveled. 

Two years ago, no one expected anything like what we are now living with every day.  No one could ever have predicted that a deranged man would have a majority of boot-licking courtiers in Congress.  Today, explicit acts of hate are unleashed, celebrated and expected; heroic actually.

But even in this ghoulish nightmare of devil advocacy, something more is needling me.  I think that the anniversary, of how I felt two years ago is the gravest differential I have ever traveled.  Regardless of how anyone feels about Sec. Clinton, two years ago I was dreaming that a gigantic change was in the making.  On the second Tuesday of November, 2016, I believed Roe would be secure, Women in office would be “normalized,” the next four years would build to crescendo of celebrating the Centennial of the Vote.  Women would begin awakening to true potential.
 
Back to why this is feeling like death itself.  It is not that I am disappointed that my candidate lost.  It is not that I am a democrat and GOP is in control.  It is nothing happening specifically.  My pain lives in the distance between what I thought my 68 years were leading to and that, in fact, a nazi, narcissist with his enrolled thugs are moving at lightning speed disassembling human rights.  This river is wider than I thought was possible to cross. 

I am a sanctuary person, you are safe with me.

I have not talked about it much. It is not something I felt like amplifying. It would not help me or anyone. So from November 8 through last week, my light was flickering. I suppose I don’t like talking about things which have no whisper of a solution.

February 1st, I dragged myself to hear Rev. Dr. Barber. I have written about him, watched him, love him; never heard him in person.

Occasionally, the spirit just takes over, makes the healthy decision which is a clear demonstration that it is still in there. It is still oiled and ready to go. It may be asleep but not dead.  And so I got on the freeway and hoped.

Going in, I felt that there was nothing I could do about the changed direction of government, about the demolition of human rights, about the backlash.  I felt that at age 68, the equality, the equity, the balance I had invested everything in was vanishing.  It was an unmanageable loss.  It was so much larger than the loss of Sec. Clinton.  In fact it was a growing deadly virus that was unleashed and unpredictable.

You would think after all these years of meditation and study, that the fundamentals of Buddhist practice would have kept me afloat.  It is exactly that seeming failure that made recovery feel impossible.  I wanted to reassemble.  I wanted to get new lamps, fill them with new oil and begin anew as it seemed the old had disappeared, fallen to the trash heap, never to recover and serve again. 

And so it began.  He brought his axe and pick.  He dug in. 

As I told the Long Beach City Council, ~

Last week I had the immeasurable good fortune to hear Rev Dr. William Barber speak.
He was here from North Carolina to receive an honorary doctorate from Occidental College.
He is one of the founders of Moral Mondays, The Forward Together Movement and Repairers of the Breach.

He lives and breathes on the acute intersection of social justice and examined Christianity.
He told us many things that night.
He even got me to sing and clap.     He is irresistible. 

First he captured my mind with his deep understanding of how this moment in history predictably unfurled.
Then he nourished my soul with a call to care for the poor, disenfranchised and marginalized.

But most importantly, he lifted me from a spiritual dark despair by explaining that ~
This is not democrats vs GOP
This is not rich vs poor
This is not thugs vs righteous people

This is a crisis
This is a moral crisis
This is a moral crisis that has been born over centuries and lives in systemic racism, classism and sexism.

Today we are called to mind the light.
Today we are called to be the light.
This is the ultimate call to be a moral society, a moral people, beginning by being a moral person.

This is the moment when we demand morality from ourselves and let that morality pour forward as a beacon to light the way for others to find safety with us.  

Being a sanctuary city is the very least we can do.
To be a Sanctuary City does not just mean protection of those at risk.
To be a Sanctuary City is not just a public statement that we can proudly bear. 

To offer sanctuary to all who love freedom and liberty,
Opens our hearts,
Restores our souls,
It lifts our intentions and prayers above the law
And begins to repair our broken spirit. 

Let us be a sanctuary city.
Let us be a sanctuary to one another.
Let us be a sanctuary to ourselves.

To start, I am a sanctuary person, you are safe with me.

The Infinite Inventory of Losses

I am just beginning to identify what happened; what am I grieving for.  One by one the human rights that were going to be protected are now floating to my mind with cautions, dark deadly cautions. 

It was more than the loss of a woman at the helm.  It is a loss to the entire planet as one more woman in leadership advances the greater chance of Mother Earth's well-being.  It was the global demonstration that the United States has lost its moral compass; replaced with celebrity and gold. I wonder if the inventory of losses will ever end, not in my lifetime.  Each hour I think of yet another loss and begin the grief all over again. 

The fact that it was Hillary Clinton​, a woman I have loved since 1969 is a grief from a whole other range of sisterhood, persistence, resilience.  The fact that the winner is a vacant, immoral, narcissist is so incidental compared to daily cries of injustice with no redress that we will suffer together for the rest of my life, maybe yours.  Such tragedy, such misery, such loss of compassion is unbearable if seen at once so we shall see it revealed with each deportation, each bullet fired, each fall into homelessness, each incarceration. 

As St. Luke asks, what then must we do?

The Quieting of the American Conscience

Conscience by Vincent van Gogh

18 hours later and, with the rising sun, the fog on the windows of the mind is clearing.  I always knew Donald was like that.  It always showed.  Move along, there is nothing new here. 

Conscious women, can I say feminist women, saw it when he divorced Ivana or Marla or dismissed Melania or man-handled Ivanka.  We saw it on the Apprentice.  We saw it with his sons and the slaughter of big game in Africa.  We saw it with his disregard for Trump workers.  With his succession of bankruptcies.  With his opulence.  With his hair, tan and oddly long ties.  With behavior that would send a second grader to the principal’s office and a sophomore to detention.  We have always seen it. 

I think the pain of this explosive revelation that Farenthold facilitated and Access Hollywood with Billy Bush withheld, lies in the slow boil of it all.  How did everyone NOT see it from the start?  That is the immorality of it all.  What has happened to the quieting of the American Conscience? 

What has happened in the pulpit where cash is grabbed and, in some cases, little boys and girls.  What has happened in textbooks in the tacit removal of the mistreatment of the indigenous people, African people, Chinese people, women in total – too many to list.  And we celebrate these atrocities naming them Columbus day or Thanksgiving day.  And, of course, Women’s Equality day which is a titular lie. 

We have sent the Elders into substandard silos of dismissal.  We have used white-out on our Story-Tellers.  We have hidden the suffering and poor who remind us of the calling to generosity and lie in stark contrast under blue tarps with their only loved one, their dog.  We arrest indiscriminately and it appears that the overcrowding of prisons is being solved with outright assassinations on the street.  We medicate people into dysfunction.  We surround cemeteries with fences to promote the worst illusion of all, immortality.

And now we will simplify this boiling pot.  We will tar and feather.  We will drag through the street.  We will make ourselves righteous by vilifying in short and long term public shaming.  When after all it was you and me. 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste.

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

I shouted out,
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me

Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached Bombay

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name
But what's confusing you
Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste,

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name

It isn’t that I believe in the devil.
I believe in Art.
Thank you Keith and Mick

Fair Wages & The City Council

Good Evening Mr. Mayor, Ms ViceMayor, Councilmembers, City Administrators and Citizens,

Over the last year I have been to nine meetings about wages and did not speak.  I finally found my voice at the Temple Israel meeting because this is not an economic crisis, this is not a social crisis, this is a spiritual crisis.

If we rise above our chairs, we can see there are 3 types of speakers lining up before you; professionals, the poor and the not-poor.

The professionals give statistics, identify findings and educate.  They tell us about other cities and the effects of $15 on a worker’s life and an owner’s business.   

The poor ask for relief.  Not for Cost-of-Living which would be much higher, just a promise of relief in small increments.   

The not-poor ask to steady payroll so profits can remain, so business can grow, so customers won’t go to nearby cities where un-livable wages remain.

The one group that is never discussed is the half circle I see before me. 
The half circle of you; the gate way.  The elected voters. 
You are the ones who receive the pleas and weigh the stories
You are the ones who measure the possible outcomes

You think it is political and social.
But I would like to rise and point out, it is spiritual.
It is your ethical thread, your risk, your compass – collective and individual.

As a serious seeker, a social ethicist, an initiated Buddhist monk, let me offer you an insight;

You earned votes and sit in a half circle,
You are a gateway of deciders
   and the fact is -
you are called to this holy position, this sacred trust.
I believe you know what to do.
I trust you. 

Is Electing a Woman for President a Revolutionary Act?

No matter if you are for Bernie or Hillary, the fact remains, many of us want to break this glass ceiling once and for all. Any woman less powerful, less formidable than Hillary could never do it. Let’s face it, young voters, liberal voters, occupy people, anti-wall street people don't even assign electing a woman as a stroke of revolution.

I read articles about how it is going to get nasty and, of course, it is. Jackie and his wife got death threats, Branch was vilified. Breaking barriers is the job of razor sharp ice cutters who can bust convention with a smile on their face.

Men are working day and night to stop the this particular ceiling being broken. Many don’t even realize it. It is a fundamental thread in the woof and warp of their lives. Possibly the thought gets diffused before it is fully formed. The mind wanders looking for reasons to never let a woman lead the USA. Women just got the right to be Rangers. A woman boxer, football coach, pilot. It is a slo-jam, very slow. The holding down of rising women is in all of our DNA. ALL OF US.

All you need do is watch Gloria Borger (CNN) and Andrea Mitchell (MSNBC) to bring this into strong relief. They blatantly diminish Hillary. They do it with entitlement, as if it advances them. It is the patriarchal position to dissect and eviscerate a woman in all respects at all times, without apology; without any thought.  

For many years I have asked where are the women? Thich Nhat Hahn’s partner is a woman. Harvey Milk’s debate partner was a woman. When we looked at photos of Arab Spring, we looked for women. Katherine Luther, Lydia Emerson, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Frances Perkins, Coretta Scott, Grace Hopper. Look behind, look beyond the poster presentation and you will find a woman. It is the looking that is revolutionary.

Electing a woman who puts women first is the most revolutionary act for me. (Carly is an extension of the patriarchy.) It will unfold a whole new helix of thinking. Books, studies, articles have been written and published that identify what happens when there is a preponderance of woman in leadership. The entire mindset will change, FOREVER. That is a revolution.

My feminism has informed me for over 40 years. I have tested it, torn it apart and put it back together again.  I have broken convention with risk, with relentless application, with moderates shouting in my face.  I have been mystified about this great divide over the democratic candidates. At this moment it appears to me that these two camps want revolution, the disagreement is that most do not think voting for a woman is revolutionary.

Moral Bankruptcy

I have never cared for DJ Trump. I suppose there will be a rush to step away and try to authenticate one’s revulsion. People will find pride in when and why they spat him out. Long before any US mayors declared their city would not allow DJ in their limits, reasonable people, everyday people refused him safe passage into their homes via NBC. The tower, the golf course, the fully augmented gold encrusted life was enough for people who work for a living. Surely his vile talk about Rosie threw me off with no returns.

 

However when he began to run for political office, there was something nagging me, like a low battery light deep in my internal library. It needled me. There was something chirping which came into focus the day DJ Trump lied about his love for the bible and its second place winner, The Art of the Deal. BINGO. 

March, 1995, I found a book, What Really Matters by Tony Schwartz. It was pricey. It must have been reviewed in one of the dozen spiritual magazines I got back then. I was diving deep into Ken Wilbur and Andrew Harvey at that time and Tony Schwartz was swimming in that pool of conscious mindful seekers. He was on the physical journey that I was taking through books.

In 1988, Tony took a 4 year road trip to discover what really moved Americans. He crossed the country making inquiries with all of the named luminaries of the day.  From Esalen to the Enneagram, from Ram Dass to Betty Edwards, from Maslow to Kornfield; Tony was making his way on a starship, through a galaxy of the mind.

Why did this NY Times reporter and Newsweek writer get bitten by the bug of spiritual inquiry? He explains it clearly in the forward. Tony Schwartz had been the ghost writer for The Art of the Deal.

A few disparate sentences:

• It was in the aftermath of The Art of the Deal that I became interested in meditation.
• I began to look more widely for wisdom. Only much later did it dawn on me that I was following a tradition that dates back thousands of years: the search for the Holy Grail, for meaning for the true self—the path that Joseph Campbell calls the hero’s journey.
• I was determined to identify a path and a set of practices that truly led to a more satisfying and meaningful life.

At the publication party, Tony was in a receiving line with DJ & Ivana. Gold everything, champagne everywhere. Leon Spinks, Michael Douglas, Cheryl Tiegs and Norman Mailer made their appearance. “I’d spent two years seeing the world through Trump’s eyes, and I’d grown accustomed to living at his dizzying pace, cramming my days full of action and activity." 

It is a BIG dream but I am capable of BIG dreams and I am dreaming that this whole country takes the escalator down, leaves the golden tower and the moral bankruptcy of DJ Trump and begins a meaningful pilgrimage for wisdom and, “pursues a richer, more authentic and more complete life.”

Oscars and Pie

Is it too soon to move from re-act to retro-spect?  I have to admit most of my insights occur in a rearview mirror but the optimal distance is usually more than a couple of weeks.  It can take years to collect succinct or defensible responses.  Nonetheless, I am going to risk it today, show my hand and hope for the best. 

If you are a feminist or interested in feminism, Oscar night 2015 was volatile, exciting, best water cooler talk in a long time. That said, it begs the question what did it mean to everyone else?

In the pie chart of American women, I live in the red slice.  Most of the people I know live in the red slice.  We are cool.  We are hot.  We are hip.  We have read Freire, Alinsky, hooks, Hill Collins, Crenshaw.  We tweet and post and follow Laurie Penny, Amanda Levitt, Roxane Gay, Ultraviolet, A is For, and hundreds of peeps or orgs who agree with us.  We retweet and use hashtags (though not as effectively as ISIS).  We work on checking our isms, our privilege, our ever-widening inclusion and our revulsion over inner circle royalty.  We are pro plus sizes, support public breast feeding and fight like hell to come out ~ as queer, having an abortion, in recovery.  We do all we can to protest inequality, demand justice and stand in solidarity.  It’s a lot but it’s who we are. 

Once a week or less I shop at a big neighborhood grocery store.  In twelve years, my favorite checker, Sue always asks me the same two questions.  “How’s Grace?”  She’s fine.  “What did you do this weekend?”  One weekend I told her about going to Dallas.  I hosted an ERA Café Conversation and Gloria Steinem was at the same table.  I asked her if she knew who Gloria Steinem was.  “No, who is she?”  I asked if she had heard of Ms. Magazine.  “No.”  I asked if she knew what the ERA is.  “No, What is it?”  But you can be sure my checker knew what fair wages means. 

Sue has no idea what is intersectionality or white privilege or why immigration is a family issue.  She does not know what the old Jim Crow is about, let alone the new Jim Crow.  She knows about a zillion morphing prices for as many products on hundreds of shelves on dozens of aisles.  She knows the mad hours she and her husband work to keep their children, grandchildren and dog, Emmie safe and well.  She knows her feet hurt and retirement is many years off. 

Sue is not in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know that there is a matrix of domination, an inseparable intersection of all oppressions, a few men own dam near everything, black water is coming out of California faucets and abortion rights are the lynchpin of female autonomy.  She doesn’t know that I live and love in the red section of the pie chart.  She doesn’t know about the chart, the pie or the red slice.

Sue didn’t see Boyhood.  She has no idea who the Arquette Family is but she did see the Oscars.  She saw a best actress winner say something about her own life; about equal wages.  She saw a woman over 40, in a nice, relatively kind of plain dress, wearing glasses, talk about her life.  She saw women in the audience leap to their feet in support.  I am certain Sue knows they are all rich beyond belief.  They have more money than they could ever need and she saw one of them spent her sliver of time to talk about equal wages.  And, now she knows that even among well paid Americans, men and women are paid unequally. 

Sue doesn’t know what was said backstage, about the call for Gays and Blacks to back the fair wage movement.  The phrase, Equal means Equal is all new.  It was an outrage to those who live in the red slice.  It was a slap in the face for all those who work in the red slice.  It set the social justice movement back decades as tweeted and posted by the red slice residents.  But that night, someone at the Oscars said, women should be paid equally.  And that’s enough for Sue.  And I am grateful to Patricia because Sue’s feet hurt and she rings up my groceries and always asks, “How’s Grace?” 

I love writing, thinking and living in the red slice.  It is home to me.  And one of my concerns is full equality for all the pie people.  I want fair wages and don’t need everyone to convert to the red slice.  Forgive me if I don’t say it well.  I know better. 

 

Full Access for Women

I don’t even like kids.  They are not my path.  I knew that from the start and had two abortions if you doubt my resolve.  Mostly I agreed with Linda Hirshman, if you want women to advance, they need to take a whole generation child-free to break through all ceilings; glass, cement, marble, stained-glass or electronic.  I also have no idea why kids are so out of control, spoken like the 64 year old child-free women that I am.  But Dolores Huerta breastfeeding at the bargaining table while Chavez was out marching for United Farmworkers would offer a different point of view.  The working poor seem to roll the kids into their lives and I saw dozens with their mothers in Mexico City, sitting on a mat in the Mercado.

About two weeks ago I got a call asking if I would support Susie Shannon, a DNC Delegate.  She had been elected, made inquiry about bringing her daughter Gracie to the DNC and was told that it would be ok.  She bought two tickets and began making arrangements only to be told that this was in error and NO ONE would be allowed into the convention without a proper credential.  Not a guest credential, not a delegate’s child pass attached to hers, not a courtesy pass.  Yes, I said yes.  All women need access to the Party.

I began connected the dots ~ big dots.  For forty years I have been talking about women, fasting for equality, marching for reproductive autonomy, presenting multi-media lectures on women.  I have talked about museums, Augusta, Congress, Take Back the Night, Slutwalk, Women and Peace.  I have stood in front of a four foot screen and pointed out that the United States ranks 80 in Women in Leadership. 

Epiphany, those countries where women have greater access to leadership have consistently provided childcare to those women who want to pursue a career in politics. The USA has built systems, organized politics and, even, erected buildings for men.  Maybe we got the vote in 1920 but we did not get full access to the political process.  Bathrooms, money, statues, portraits, textbooks – it is all part of a narrowly paved road which only offers second-class citizenship.

Four Southern California (The Sisterhood) NOW Chapters joined in support with Delegate Susie Shannon to say that this must change.  The DNC needs to widen the road, create access through on-site childcare, provide lounge style lactation rooms (not a designated toilet).  Gloria Steinem contributed a supportive quote.  We wrote a press release and invited the media into the information loop. We made our request to Debbie Wasserman Schultz and several more of the leaders in the Democratic Party.  We created a petition, distributed through our email and social media outlets.  Printed copies will be distributed at the convention.  You may know that FOX News wrote about it, Limbaugh talked about it, lots of articles were published.  

We contacted all of the deciders and finally were given a conference call on Sunday morning with the two deciders with the convention, a representative from Women for Obama and Peter Gaspard, Executive Director of the DNC.  In regards to 2012, two things where made very clear; all extra credentials are reserved for VIPs – not for children and should a delegate with a child, be turned away at the door ~ it would not be a pr problem.  We were offered a single seat on an ad hoc committee which would discuss a rules change to be brought to the late January meeting for consideration. 

I have learned so much these last two weeks. Did you see all the kids at the RNC?  Romney stop and shake their hands on the way to the podium.   I am a lifelong Democrat but I still can see that women who are who are religious, who are male-defined, who are anti-birth control are welcome at the RNC. They cherish that. Ann Romney speaks to them, for them.  I can judge all of it, you can dismiss is as wrongly placed allegiance but I am offering that it is wiser to seek to understand. We Democrats need to make our party women centric; women-friendly is not enough. 

The second thing which has been such a surprise is the comments from women who are both mothers and Democrats.  Through facebook and twitter I have been reading remarks that the convention floor is no place for children – it would be chaos, too loud, just a circus.  That is not what we are lobbying for.  We are talking about infants to be held by their primary parent which is done all over the world.  We are talking about a woman who declines even running for election as a delegate because she cannot leave her child, cannot afford childcare or is the food source for her child.

So you can go to Ariana Huffington’s Oasis to get a massage or do yoga, you can get to a strip club, you can go to non-union hotel but if you are a working mother, don’t even dream of a life in politics until the kids are weaned and you make enough money to hire a care-provider.  I just want to tell you, WE NEED YOU.