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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.
Jo Freeman Writes: Sex and the Democratic Party – In Brooklyn
Jo Freeman Writes: Fifty years ago, when I first began looking for information on women in politics, the world was a different place. The only History of Democratic Women I could find was a 40-page pamphlet published by the Democratic Congressional Wives Forum in 1960. There were no updates. That year there were only eight women in Congress; a Democratic Women’s Caucus was inconceivable. Politics was a male domain. By the time I moved to Brooklyn in 1979, women were breaking barriers, but politics was still a male world. Shirley Chisholm had been joined in the House by Elizabeth Holtzman from Brooklyn (who would run for Senate and lose in 1980) and Geraldine Ferraro from Queens (who would run for Vice President in 1984 and lose). Jump ahead to 2021. There are 123 women in the House (9 from NY) and 24 in the Senate (1 from NY). more »
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York ... With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972 - 1985
Often described as the first contemporary art movement comprised of majority female artists, Pattern and Decoration — or P&D, as it is commonly known — defied the dominance of modernist art by embracing the much-maligned category of the decorative. P&D artists gleaned motifs, color schemes, and materials from the decorative arts, freely appropriating floral, arabesque, and patchwork patterns and arranging them in intricate, almost dizzying, and sometimes purposefully gaudy designs. Their work across mediums pointedly evokes a pluralistic array of sources from Islamic architectural ornamentation to American quilts, wallpaper design, Persian carpets, and Japanese Imari ware ceramics. more »
How to Talk With Someone About COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: "There's so much tension that people don't want to risk a relationship"
The team wanted to understand why some people are reluctant to adopt COVID-19 prevention measures — including wearing a mask, social distancing and being vaccinated — and wanted to learn how to facilitate better communication with vaccine-hesitant individuals. So far, they've discovered that traditional messages — such as the need to protect yourself and others or the enticement of getting kids back to school — don't move the needle when it comes to persuading hesitant people to get a vaccine. Having a personal, empathetic conversation with people works better than presenting statistics and facts at them. The team conducted an extensive literature review of vaccine hesitancy, using the information to create a list of 25 talking points they thought might sway those who are vaccine hesitant. more »
Jo Freeman Reviews: No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
Jo Freeman Writes: Those who suffer defeat, be they Presidents or populations, deal with downfall in different ways. Denial is one way. Simply flip defeat on its head and claim victory. You might not get the concrete benefits of an actual victory, but you can get the psychological ones. The white South admitted to only military defeat. To claim a moral victory, it invented the Lost Cause, which saw the War as an heroic attempt of a noble people to leave a union that only wanted to exploit its wealth. Believers insisted that the reason for the War was states’ rights, ignoring the fact that the Secession Ordinances declared it to be slavery. This is a timely book. What to do with statues of Confederate soldiers has been much in the news lately. As the author points out, however, this is just the latest twist in a story that began after the Civil War. more »
