Sightings
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.
A Plea for Imagination: Once There Was a Time When It Was an Anomaly to See Gratuitous Brutality
Joan Cannon wrote: George Eliot said (in Middlemarch) "... we do not expect people to be moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence." more »
Issues Addressed in Congress: Sexual Harassment, Discrimination and the Opioid Crisis Hearings
Bills introduced: Rep. Jackie Speier: A bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the American women who joined the workforce during World War II, providing the vehicles, weaponry, and ammunition to win the war, that were referred to as "Rosie the Riveter," in recognition of their contributions to the National the inspiration they have provided to ensuing generation. Sen. Claire McCaskill — A bill to direct the director of the OMB to establish an interagency working group to study federal efforts to collect data on sexual violence and to make recommendations on the harmonization of such efforts, and for other purposes. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster introduced a similar bill in the House.
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Reading Recommendations from Radcliffe’s Fellows and SeniorWomen's Editor
The 2017–2018 cohort of Radcliffe fellows include scholars, scientists, artists, and writers. Below, a selection of Radcliffe fellows share books that inspired their research, activated their imaginations, and sparked their enjoyment. My own list of books to be read includes one on American Women Code Breakers, a Robert A. Caro third volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, The Fighting Temeraire, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent; Alan Riding's And the How Went On (Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris); Anthony's Powers 1st in the series A Dance to the Music of Time; but I am dedicated to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Workout, too ... more »
Beware the Fashion Flim-Flammers
Rose Madeline Mula writes: Don't you think it's strange that so many women are wearing jeans with gaping, ragged holes and frayed hems? Stranger still, they are buying them in that condition from high-end boutiques. Marketed as "distressed," these garments command much higher prices than their pristine, unstressed/well-adjusted cousins. Furthermore, women are being brainwashed into buying their jeans at least two sizes too small, requiring enough pulling and tugging to get into so as to distress them even more. more »
