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Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
Being forced to engage in any activity where you cannot leave is illegal. This includes: commercial sex, housework, farm work, construction, factory, retail, restaurant work, or any other activity
Editor's Note: “If you or someone you know is being forced to engage in any activity and cannot leave—whether it is commercial sex, housework, farm work, construction, factory, retail, or restaurant work, or any other activity—text 233-733 (Be Free) or call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or the California Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) at 1-888-KEY-2-FRE(EDOM) or 1-888-539-2373 to access help and services. Victims of slavery and human trafficking are protected under United States and California law. more »
Goosed: Those Years when Fate Takes a Hand
Julia Sneden wrote: The strangest Christmas of all was the Christmas of the Goose. John, my husband, was born in the wrong century. His vision of Christmas is informed by a heavy dose of Dickens and merrie olde England. It’s not enough to watch every version of A Christmas Carol that is shown on television, year after year. He hangs an Advent wreath over the center of the dining table. He sings along with the Advent hymns on a CD of the Canterbury Cathedral Choir. He sings The Boar’s Head in Latin as I carry in the roast. He reads Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud to the family every Christmas Eve. He puts Christmas crackers at each place at table. He has even been known to remind us about Boxing Day. more »
Worth Revisiting: Joan Cannon's Review of Islandia, a Novel of Remarkable Length Nowadays
Sections read like poetic romance, others like adventure, some like fantasy of the best and most convincing kind, some like philosophy. The pace varies much in the way one's daily experience might in a place where the only means of transport are one's own legs, horses, or boats without motors. The reader is fully immersed in a complete new life in a very few pages, and by the last of over a thousand, has been in some way imprinted. The outstanding characteristic of Islandia is that it will leave no reader unmoved, or even untouched. To make your way through this tour de force of imagination will change you, according to what aspect of it touches you most closely. more »
Jo Freeman's Book Review: Give Me Liberty: A History of America’s Exceptional Idea
Jo Freeman Reviews: The desire for liberty is at the core of the United States — which Brookhiser calls America — from long before there were any states. In 13 detailed case studies ranging from 1619 to 1987, the author identifies instances in which the pursuit of liberty has framed the future. There is an unintended subtheme. Culture change is slow. Even when lighted by the lamp of liberty, ending slavery and giving women the vote took a long time. If you like to re-live historical moments, you will enjoy this book. Brookhiser takes you inside, using words to help you feel and see what it was like to be there. more »
