Articles
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.
Congressional Hearings: Abusive Robocalls, Protecting Unaccompanied Alien Children; Mark-Ups: SNAP and WIC (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance)
A bill to require a study of federal agencies to determine which federal agencies have the greatest impact on women’s participation in the workforce; A bill to require that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for children be calculated with reference to the cost of the low-cost food plan, as determined by the Secretary of Agriculture; A hearing included testimony from a panel of experts who are working to prevent robocall scams throughout the United States. Also from last week: "The Improving Oversight of Women Veterans’ Care Act of 2017 requires VA to practice oversight not only on its VA facilities, but also on the community care providers it contracts with in order to provide gender-specific health care to women when its facilities do not have the equipment or specialist necessary to care for these veterans. We need to do a better job tracking the quality of care provided to women veterans and conduct effective oversight to ensure they are well served no matter where they get their care. I am also excited to lend my support for Congressman Coffman’s legislation to require VA to ensure that the veterans peer counseling program includes enough peer counselors for women veterans." more »
Outdoor Recreation Driving Population Boom in Rural Areas; Land is Cheaper and Recreation is Right Out the Back Door
The trend is part of what drove the overall slight growth of the rural population in the United States from 2016 to 2017, for the first time since 2010, according to a Stateline analysis of census data. (Rural counties are those defined by the US Office of Management and Budget as outside cities and their suburbs.) The population in rural counties grew by only about 33,000 during that time, to about 46 million. While counties with large mining and farming industries shrank, counties with large recreation industries grew the most, by about 42,000, to about 6.3 million. more »
Journey to a Profession: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Women
In high school, after reading novels by C. P. Snow describing academic life at Cambridge University in England, I decided that I wanted to be a professor (little did I know that this vision of academic life was nothing like reality, at least in the US). In sophomore year, my inner-city high school biology teacher taught us about the experiments of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) showing that a piece of soiled cloth mixed with wheat yielded mouse pups after a 21-day incubation. This sealed the deal — I wanted to be a biologist. more »
Liberal Arts and Empathy in Medicine Reprised
Joan L. Cannon wrote: "Most people are uncomfortable in the presence of what they see as authority. That’s the way most patients see their doctors. Subtleties like the relative position of the authority figure who sits on a stool a little below the level of the patient’s chair help to alleviate this artificial distance, but a common understanding of human behavior based on a lot more than one person can acquire through direct experience can be the biggest help of all. Once in practice, few doctors will have time for artistic or literary excursions, so it probably would be a good idea to give them as much of that experience as possible as early as possible." more »