Relationships and Going Places
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.
Reprise, Bobby Kennedy, The Train: "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope"
On June 8, 1968, three days after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, his body was carried by a funeral train from New York City to Washington, DC, for burial at Arlington Cemetery. The exhibit looks at this historical event through three distinct works. The first is a group of color photographs by commissioned photographer Paul Fusco. Taken from the funeral train, the images capture mourners who lined the railway tracks to pay their final respects. The second work features photographs and home movies by the spectators themselves. The third is a 70mm film reenactment of the funeral train's journey, inspired by Fusco's original photographs. more »
Elaine Soloway's Rookie Transplant: Sleeping Around; YMCA: Then, Now; How to Fight
During our 30-year-marriage, the two of us constructed a wall. Tiff-by-tiff, the bricks grew taller and more impenetrable with each year, until it toppled in divorce. My second marriage was a pleasure cruise. We sailed along watching the same TV programs, walking our dog, taking occasional vacations — and on the rare instances we argued, it was always Tommy who said, "Let's not be mad at each other. Let's talk about it." A few words, maybe a tear from each of us, hugs, and then it was over. more »
Harvard Study: A Prolonged Increase in Death Rate in Puerto Rico Following Hurricane Maria and $90 Billion in Damages and Relocation of Residents
The study estimates a death rate of 14.3 deaths per thousand between September 20 (date of Hurricane Maria) and December 31, 2017, up from a rate of 8.8 deaths per thousand at the same time in 2016. About one-third of the reported deaths in the households surveyed in the study were attributed to delayed or prevented access to medical care. The mortality rate in Puerto Rico rose by 62% after Hurricane Maria, according to a new study led by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. more »
Lifelong Pursuits: Musing on the Triple Crown
Joan L. Cannnon wrote: It's been a while since I have had the unique pleasure of sitting above the common order of humanity, to become a part of the grace and strength of the horse under me. We communicated through my fingers on the reins, the nervous ears in front of my face, and the sensation of leashed energy of half a ton of controlled power on which I perched like a paper monarch on sufferance. Anyone on horseback becomes a new person somehow more important, who exists until her feet touch the ground again. more »
