And Another Thing

Today's the Day to Donate to Tom Geoghegan

By Katha Pollitt

Have you been wondering about the best possible moment to donate to the campaign of progressive labor lawyer/ writer/ activist Tom Geoghegan? As you may know, he's running in the Democratic primary for Rahm Emanuel's seat in Congress. Well, it's today. Midnight tonight, February 11, is the FEC filing deadline for campaign contributions.

Why does this deadline matter? A strong showing encourages donations from those who've been waiting to see if the campaign has legs. It also attracts press. So far, none of the candidates have gotten much attention in the local media -- you could help change that.

Even a small donation, added to others, really helps. So don't be shy, visit

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February 11, 2009

From My Inbox: UPDATE on Dr. Susan Wicklund's Clinic

By Katha Pollitt

The Mountain Country Women's Clinic in Livingston MT has been open for one week. There were 51 picketers, and patients from hundreds of miles away. That tells you that for all the talk about how there are "too many abortions," right now in much of the country clinics are too few and too far between.

It's not too late to Pledge-a-Picketer, a peaceful, nonviolent, amusing way to show your support for Dr. Wicklund's commitment to help women regardless of their ability to pay. It's a scandal that she needs to spend precious funds on a security system, but that's the world we live in -- her previous clinic was targeted by an arsonist. Set your own rate -- a dollar? a quarter? Even a postcard of support would be nice.

(Want to read the post of which this is an update? If Nation blogs were designed like 99 percent of the blogs in the world, you'd just scroll down. But for some reason ours are designed so that you have to click on the blog title, in this case And Another Thing, which will bring you to the intro paragraphs of earlier posts, which you can then click on to get the whole story. Exhausting,I know.)

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February 8, 2009

From My Inbox: Pledge-a-Picket for New Clinic in Montana

By Katha Pollitt

Dr. Susan Wicklund, whose 2008 book This Common Secret, detailed her life as an abortion provider, has just opened a clinic in Livingston, Montana. Even before it opened on February 2nd, the clinic was being picketed by opponents of abortion rights. In the mail below, Wicklund's co-author, Montana writer Alan Kesselheim, explains how you can turn their protests peacefully against them. (I've pledged $1 per picketer. That puts me in a slightly weird position: Do I hope lots show up so the clinic gets plenty of cash, or few show up so that I can save mine?) If you want to pledge, e mail Martha_Kauffman@msn.com.

Dear Friends of Dr. Susan Wicklund:

As most of you know, Susan Wicklund has been hard at work trying to open a women's reproductive health clinic in the Bozeman/Livingston area. It has not been easy. It has taken several years. Deals have fallen through because word leaked out and landowners were intimidated by violent threats. Other potential arrangements have collapsed due to financial difficulties, political controversy, or simple logistics.

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February 4, 2009

Birth Control Belongs in the Stimulus Bill

By Katha Pollitt

To the outrage of many feminists and family planners, yesterday Democrats heeded President Obama and dropped from the stimulus bill a provision that would have made it easier for states to offer contraception through Medicaid to low-income women not covered by Medicaid now. This followed several days in which Republicans mocked the item as frivolous pork, like Las Vegas's proposed Mob Museum or the reseeding of the national mall. And how dare Nancy Pelosi suggest that women should be helped to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the midst of an economic crisis! It's eugenics and China's one-child policy rolled into one. You wonder how giving women more freedom to plan their kids equals forcing them not to have any? Ask Chris Matthews, that noted expert on women, who on last night's Hardball seemed to think the US had narrowly escaped becoming a reproductive gulag:" It turns out the idea of getting people to have fewer children didn't sell as national policy. Maybe people don't like Washington, which has done such a bang-up job regulating the sharpies on Wall Street, to decide it's now time to regulate the number of kids people might be in the mood for."

There are people who thought Obama practiced some clever political jiu-jitsu by bending over backwards to meet Republican objections. Supposedly, this bipartisan gesture would make it harder for Republicans to reject the bill. Whoops, guess not: House Republicans just voted against it unanimously. Backup theory: Well, now Obama looks reasonable and statesmanlike, while Republicans look rigid and insane. The stimulus will pass, and Republicans will get no credit. Low-income women get the shaft, but they should be used to it by now.

But then there are those who think birth control really doesn't belong in the bill.Matt Yglesias writes, "Unlike some, I'm not per se outraged by the idea of dropping a family planning provision from the stimulus bill in response to conservative objections. I'm all for the provision, but it's genuinely tangential to the point of the bill, so if this is really what's standing between us and a universe in which a substantial number of conservative get on the stimulus train so be it." Over at Slate's XX Factor, E.J. Graff, rather surprisingly, agrees.

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January 28, 2009

Wise Words on the 17th Amendment

By Katha Pollitt

(Daniel Pollitt, who is professor of law emeritus at the University of North Carolina and my uncle, sent me his reflections on The Blogojevich-Burris flap. I figured I should put them up before New York Governor Paterson selects his own personal Senator.)

The F.B.I. was bugging Illinois Governor Blagojevich and recorded him commenting that the opportunity to name the Senate replacement for Barack Obama was "golden" (apparently there is no one offering a pot of gold for the appointment).

On this, Democratic Senate leaders announced that anyone appointed by Blagojevich would be "tainted" and would be denied a seat in the Senate. The Illinois Secretary of State piled on, saying he would not sign or affix the State Seal to any Blagojevich appointments.

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January 22, 2009

MLK-Inauguration Challenge

By Katha Pollitt

I love the idea of Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a day of community service rather than a day to shop for bargains on mattresses and sweaters. The USA Service website lists all sorts of opportunities, but by the time I logged on most of the actual organized events in New York City were full, and somehow, lugging a bag of old clothes to the Housingworks thrift store, apparently our town's backup proposal for latecomers, lacks that certain thrill.

So in the spirit of the day, I offer some classroom proposals from Donorschoose.org as a challenge to those of you out there who are in the same fix as me: you want to honor MLK Monday-- and Inauguration Tuesday-- but haven't quite found the way. As you may already know, Donorschoose.org is a website where teachers put up their classroom needs, and donors--that's you -- can give any amount they want to fund them.

I hope you'll check out my Giving Page here. I've focussed on high-poverty schools around the country.You'll find opportunities to fund supplies for the only debate team in the South Bronx, guitars to rebuild a once-famous music program in Baltimore, classroom essentials for Chicago kindergarteners and more.

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January 17, 2009

Bill Ayers Whitewashes History, Again

By Katha Pollitt

It couldn't have been easy for Bill Ayers to keep quiet while the McCain campaign tarred him as the Obama's best friend, the terrorist. Unfortunately, the silence was too good to last. On Saturday's New York Times op-ed page, he announced that "it's finally time to tell my true story." Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , "The Real Bill Ayers" is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.

"I never killed or injured anyone, "Ayers writes. "In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village." Right. Those people belonged to Weatherman, as did Ayers himself and Bernardine Dohrn, now his wife. Weatherman, Weather Underground, completely different! And never mind either that that "accidental explosion" was caused by the making of a nail bomb intended for a dance at Fort Dix.

Ayers writes that Weather Underground bombings were "symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam War." That no one was killed or injured was a monumental stroke of luck-- an unrelated bombing at the University of Wisconsin unintentionally killed a researcher and seriously injured four people. But if the point was to symbolize outrage, why not just spraypaint graffiti on government buildings or pour blood on military documents?

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December 8, 2008

Can you help "Nickie"?

By Katha Pollitt

In the endless debate over abortion, we can forget the concrete reality in which pregnant girls and women so often live. Feminists for Life and other anti-choice groups make it sound as if an unwanted pregnancy is just one of life's little challenges --some baby clothes, some food stamps, some campus housing for college-going moms and tots, and everything will be fine. It's usually not so simple. The appeal below popped up in my inbox this morning. It's from the DC Abortion fund, which raises money for low-income women's abortions.

"Nickie" needs a lot of things -- beginning with a family free from domestic violence -- but one thing she doesn't need, or want, is a baby. Her pregnancy places her at risk in all kinds of ways. Can you help her? Even five dollars, added to the donations of others, would make a difference.

You can donate here.

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December 2, 2008

Election Updates --Good News and Not

By Katha Pollitt

For the Election Day causes I've written about here and in my column,there's good news and, well, not so good news.

First the hurrahs. By a whopping 69%, Milwaukee voters passed a binding referendum requiring private employers to give workers nine paid sick days a year (employers of fewer than ten workers must give five days). Workers can use their days for themselves or for or a sick child or other relative. They can also use them to attend to medical and legal issues related to domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.

Congratulations to 9to5, which spearheaded a dynamic coalition of union and community groups, and waged a terrific grassroots campaign . Milwaukee now joins San Francisco and Washington DC in taking this bold step to create a healthier and more humane workplace for its citizens, and offer an important helping hand to women and to working parents.

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November 10, 2008

It's Crunch Time in South Dakota

By Katha Pollitt

Election Day is around the corner, so if you still have two dimes to rub together, you have just a few days to send them where they can still do good on November 4. I'm sending mine to Women Run! South Dakota. This is the umbrella organization for progressive pro-choice Native American women running for the state legislature: among them, Charon Asetoyer, Faith Spotted Eagle, Theresa Spry, Diane Long Fox Kastner, and incumbent Senator Theresa Two Bulls (the first, and so far only, Native American woman elected to the State Senate,now running for a third term). These are community organizers (take that, Sarah Palin!) with deep local roots, long-time activists on women's health, domestic violence, native american rights, and poverty issues. They would bring progressive grassroots leadership to a state where women currrently make up only 16% of the state legislature (and only four of those women are pro-choice), Native americans have long had trouble exercising their right to vote, and where not coincidentally, rightwing politics, including repeated attempts to make abortion a crime, have been the rule for far too long.

Here's WomenRun's Laura Ross on the situation on the ground:

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October 26, 2008