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.
30 States Have Adopted Sentencing and Corrections Reforms: Incarceration and Crime Rates Keep Falling
The US annual national violent crime rate increased in 2015 and 2016, but many cities are reporting reductions for 2017, and both violent and total crime rates remain near record lows. National, state, and local crime rates shift for complex and poorly understood reasons, and experts offer a wide range of possible explanations; overall, however, the rates of reported violent and property crime have declined by more than half since their 1991 peaks, falling to levels not seen since the late 1960s. more »
Ferida Wolff's Backyard: Geese and Growth
Ferida Wolff writes: Come the spring the geese will return to familiar surroundings with a new perspective. It sounds like a plan for me, too. The more I observe nature, the more I realize that everything has intelligence. Plants do. Insects do. Animals and birds are pretty darn smart. It may differ from how we think but it is functional for how to survive. If we diminish anything in nature we lessen our own understanding of life. more »
The Naturalization Application Fee has Increased From $35 (or $80.25 in 2017 dollars) in 1985 to $725 in 2017
Naturalization provides immigrants with virtually the same rights and benefits as native-born citizens, including the right to vote, access to federal jobs and protection from deportation. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences found that having more naturalized immigrants is good for the national income and increases political participation and integration of those immigrants within American society.
Surveys show that most US immigrants want to become citizens. But compared to other similar countries, like the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the United States has a lower naturalization rate, which has been decreasing over recent decades. more »
First Scientific Study to Test the Premise of Facial Exercise Improving Appearance
"Assuming the findings are confirmed in a larger study, individuals now have a low-cost, non-toxic way for looking younger or to augment other cosmetic or anti-aging treatments they may be seeking," said Dr. Murad Alam, vice chair and professor of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine dermatologist. Says a senior study author: "Muscle growth is increasing the facial volume and counteracting the effects of age-related fat thinning and skin loosening." more »