Picket Lines

by Mona Shaw

I don’t cross picket lines.

This has irritated folks I was with more than once. Often someone is misinformed enough to say to me. “But you don’t know both sides.”

I always answer, “There’s a picket line for workers. That’s all I need to know.”

This is not simply a political or moral position. Although it is both. It’s also based on my personal witness of the struggle for workers’ rights.

My mother, Marlene Johns Shaw Gerst, was a labor organizer. She began this fight for justice in 1960. She was a line worker at Champion Spark Plug in Burlington, Iowa. She was only 26. After witnessing one too many atrocities toward workers at the plant, she came home one night, kicked her purse across the living room floor, and said. “That goddamned plant needs a union, and it going to get one!”

It did. She called on the UAW. She passed out cards. She talked to workers without ceasing. She went to their homes, stopped them at their cars and in supermarkets. She convinced men and women to join her at a time when this was not seen as a woman’s role, even by the union. She was threatened with violence and blackballing, but she was not deterred.

This eventually led to an election. The Union won the election, but it was not over. The Company refused to negotiate a contract. After no small amount of agonizing, the workers decided to strike. Calling a strike is a courageous and dangerous thing to do. The consequences can be more than Draconian. We knew this firsthand. My father was the first union person in our family. He was a baker at K & R Bakery in Burlington. Some called him the most talented cake decorator in town. He attempted to organize a union there. He was fired and blackballed. He never worked as a baker again. They took the risk.

My brother Mark and I have clear memories of walking the picket line. We took turns between walking the line and watching our pre-school sister in the strike kitchen. Our baby sister stayed with an aunt. The loose pebbles and cracked asphalt beneath our feet. The smell of chili being cooked in the strike kitchen. I was only 10, but I still remember the recipe for that chili. The stale donuts and jugs of water and coffee on a card table. Those who have never taken risks for justice don’t know how empowering it is to stand up to tyranny. It’s a feeling that you never forget. It was the first of a few defining moments I would have in my life.

On a day, that I stayed home to watch the girls and clean house, Mark ran into the living room crying, “The Union won! The Union won!” We all rejoiced.

The contract gave the workers more humane working conditions, higher wages, and completely paid family health insurance. Upon its signing hundreds of lives changed dramatically for the better.

UAW Local 1237 prevailed, and it still exists. My mother’s efforts were so highly regarded that she was elected vice-president. She told me later with pride, “They wanted to elect me president, but you can’t have a woman president.”

My mother’s gift for organizing did not go unnoticed by the national. UAW secured a proviso that my mother could be pulled from the line at any time to help with other organizing throughout the nation. Eventually, the UAW brought her on full-time. By the time she retired in 1994, she had improved the lives of literally thousands of workers. She was given the Walter P. Reuther Award. When she died last year, Champion Spark Plug hung up a tribute to her and flew their flag at half mast.

My mother wasn’t the only one who made monumental sacrifices. She was gone a lot. My younger siblings lost years with their mother. My brother and I lost our childhood as we were given adult assignments to keep our family going. Her absence combined with other tragedies would tear apart my parents’ marriage. They divorced in 1966. Then and now I feel no resentment for those sacrifices despite their profound damage. We had a higher calling. We were saving the lives of thousands of workers so they could have the benefits that we enjoyed. The biggest benefit may be that my parents never again had to worry about cost when we needed to see a doctor. They could just take us. In more than one instance it’s reasonable to believe this saved our lives.

I remain keenly aware that our sacrifice paled against the sacrifices of the likes of Mother Jones, Sacco and Vanzetti, Lucy Parsons, Cesar Chavez, Eugene V. Debs, and the Hay Market Square martyrs. The history of workers’ rights dates back to the beginning of the nation and includes a cast of millions.

So. When you cross a picket line, or criticize or disrespect striking workers, you not only dishonor my mother’s legacy, you dishonor my entire family. You also dishonor the memory of anyone who’s given their lives for this right. That’s just how it is.

Schooled

by Mona Shaw

I don’t see teachers as saints. As a child who lived on the wrong side of the tracks, teachers, for the most part, were among those I had to overcome.

I grew up in the poor section of the poorest neighborhood in Burlington, Iowa. It was named Flint Hills Manor, but locals called it “The Manor” with no small amount of derision toward its residents.

I started noticing I was treated differently in first grade, but I couldn’t figure out why.  By, second grade, the reason became clear.  When I would raise my hand, my teacher would tell me to put my hand down.

“You live in The Manor,” she said, “You don’t know the answer. You’re slow.”

There were teachers who were exceptions, but exceptions they were. Mrs. Chant, my fifth-grade was one. She called on me even though I no longer bothered to raise my hand.

“You’re bright. You’re very bright,” she said with authority, “Don’t you let anyone tell you that you’re not.”

She saved me. My entire world opened after that. I drank in learning like someone who’d been crawling in the desert. I won spelling bee after spelling bee and every essay contest. I wrote poems, and Mrs. Chant would read them to the class and tell others she had friends in college without the skill to write such a poem. I was happy and at the top of my game. I naively believed I’d proven the teachers who didn’t believe in me wrong--until that day.

That day I had won another contest. My reward was to hang student art work in the hall, and I was doing that.  Two teachers began to discuss my brother and I as if I weren’t there. Mark and I had scored extremely high on a Basic Skills test. They were bothered by this.

“Those minds in those children,” one said to the other, “What a waste!”

They went on to berate my father.

“They are so hopeless. We called the parents, and the father just said, ‘I know my kids are smart. I’m glad you all finally figured it out,’ and then he hung up on us!”

Something snapped in me that day, and it defined me for the rest of my life. I had come to accept by then that there were many things of which I was not worthy. I was not worthy of nice clothes or to live in a nice house and ride in a nice car or even to be friends of children who did not live in The Manor. I certainly wasn’t worthy to expect teachers to assume I wasn’t “slow.”  I had to prove myself in ways others didn’t.

“But,” I thought in defiance, “But, I am certainly worthy of my very own mind.”

I glared at them. They didn’t notice.

“I’ll show you,” I thought, “I’ll show you my mind is not wasted in me!”

Now, I can’t say that I’ve done that, but my life isn’t over yet.  Still, I’m grateful that ten-year-old little girl had that thought instead of the endless self-destructive thoughts she might have had.

I’m certain without Mrs. Chant I wouldn’t have had such a thought.  The soaking in self-worth she had given me had freed me more than likely either of us knew. Mrs. Chant gave me something else, something subversive and dangerous. She told me how to get a library card at the Burlington Public Library.

Teachers aren’t saints. Librarians are. No librarian ever told me I was “too slow” to check out or read any book there. They helped me find books on things I wanted to read about. They never questioned why I questioned.  Once one even let me climb onto to the glass floor in the stacks.

“I think you’ve earned that,” she said.

The library wasn’t just magical. It was the place where magic was made. I was passionately in love with everything about it. The smell, the feel of books in my hands. The difference in that feeling whether a book was old or new. The way newspapers hung on their poles. The busts of famous writers perched here and there. I was there as much as my parents would allow. I would do extra chores late into a Friday night to spend all day Saturday there.

I traveled the world in that library. I went to the Louvre in Paris and to the pyramids in Egypt. I boated down the Amazon and walked the paths in Jamestown. Before too long, I became obsessed with oppressors or people who hurt people.  I read everything I could find about Hitler and the Holocaust.  The more stories shook me, the more I read.  Even though many of the horrors I read were far worse than anything I had experienced, these stories gave me an odd sense of solidarity.  I clung to that like a life raft. 

I studied rich people and monarchies. I not only read of their historic atrocities to others like myself, I studied how they lived, their customs, their beliefs, their sense of entitlement. I read everything written by Emily Post twice.

I read about slavery. I read things slaves had said about being slaves, how they lived, how they felt when a child was sold, about the contrast between palatial mansions and dirt floors.  I read about how slavery began, where it began, and who began it. It was rich people wanting to get richer I learned. I began to see a constant connection between wealth and power and the nascence of human cruelty.

Maybe that’s why I believed Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t just standing up for race equality, but that he was standing up for poor people too.  I fell in love with him quickly when I began to read his words. For me, they easily translated to my own situation. He gave me hope we could overcome.  I had ongoing imaginary conversations with him when I walked the halls at school. We became close. By, ninth grade I was hanging his photo in my room and in my locker.  In 1966, this was strange to everyone, but me.

I had had also noticed something else.  As I grew older, the Mrs. Chants were fewer. There had been Mr. Rowell in Junior High and Miss Byers and Miss Bauercamper in high school, but that was about it.  Not all, the teachers mistreated me, most simply ignored me.  I was invisible. 

However, I began to consistently see that those teachers who did see me in a positive light were also the ones who did the same with African American students.  I wasn’t sure why, but I decided this probably wasn’t an accident.

This synchronicity became even clearer to me the day Miss Bauercamper told me to read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 before my 11^th grade English class.  Unbeknownst to Miss Bauercamper, I had been taken with this sonnet already to the extent that I’d memorized it. So, without using our text book, I just stood and recited.

“SONNET 116

By William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

When I finished, Miss Bauercamper was strangely silent for the longest time. I quickly took my seat fearing I’d done something wrong. Maybe I should have read it from the book. She finally stood and faced the class.

“In 20 years,” she said, “Mona is the first of my students who understands this poem. You may want to consider this class, the next time you make fun of her.”

I was over the moon, of course. Boy, had she told them!  They won’t make fun of me now!  I was wrong, as I’d quickly learn right after class.

A group circled me in the hall and began to taunt me.

“You know,” they said, among other cruel things,” that any teacher who thinks white trash and ‘niggers’ know more than us doesn’t know what she’s talking about? She should be fired for saying that to us!”

No matter how much we may believe that cruel words are a lie, there is a tiny wicked voice inside that can still pipe up and whisper, “Maybe they’re right.”

This wicked little voice refused to shut up for the rest of the day. Maybe they were right. Maybe there was something intrinsic to poverty that simply made you inferior in thought and being.  Maybe I just wasn’t smart enough to get it.

The notion was breaking me when they circled me again late in the school day. They didn’t hurl any racial epithets then and were content to just make fun of everything about me. I did nothing but stand there while hot tears squeezed themselves out of my tightly closed eyes on to my cheeks. They made fun of my tears too.

Then something happened that had never happened before in many years of being taunted in school. Not once.  Two students come over and intervened. They had not been in Miss Bauercamper’s class or witnessed the scene after class.  Still, these two brave girls broke into the circle and said.

“Knock it off! Leave her alone! We don’t care what you think!  You’re idiots!”

By some miracle, my tormenters stopped and left. The courage of these girls blew defeat away. Just like that.  Just like that.  They were slight of frame and pretty and very smug with themselves. They were Black.

I fell into an easy sleep that night feeling more comforted than I have ever felt by someone my own age in the face of such things. My last thought was this.

“Does being picked on make you more compassionate?”

People were more honest about their racism then.  Many openly took pride in it.  And, teacher after teacher who claimed to not be prejudiced would tell us we had to respect the opinion of those who were.

“This is America. People are free to believe ever they choose, and we need to respect that.”

I never had a teacher tell me they had a problem with Jim Crow laws.

I wondered about this and said as much to Grandma Shaw.

She simply replied, “You can believe shit doesn’t stink too, but it does.”

The following spring, everything changed. In April, King was assassinated. I was inconsolable and essentially wallowed in my own private grief. “Who would help me overcome now?”

Most of the people I knew couldn’t stand Dr. King. Even the most generous, said he may mean well, but that he was going about it wrong. “He’d rather make trouble and get attention than do things that could make things better for his people. He makes them all look bad.”

But, now that King was dead, everyone loved him.  There were special assemblies and church services to sing his praises.  It was all very confusing to me, but I was still glad about the change.

The star students in school all suddenly wanted to be friends with the white trash and Black kids.  I was quite happy about this and accepted their friendships gratefully.  They invited me into their homes and to their parties.  Their parents gushed over me.

My working-class father wasn’t buying it.

“You’re a do-gooder project,” he said, “Can’t you see that?  They don’t care about you. They care about making themselves feel good.”

He was wrong, and I knew it, and I told him so.

“Okay,” he said, “Give a party in our home.  I bet no more than two or three will show up.”

“Okay,” I said, “I will. You’ll see!”

Only one student came. I had to listen to my proud father try to convince parents on the phone that their children wouldn’t be in danger in our home. 

“We just can’t risk exposing our children to that kind of environment,” they explained.

Tim McCormally, whose father was the editor and publisher of the Burlington Hawkeye played checkers with my father all evening.  I just stared at them and managed to choke back tears.

My father was not smug. He was sad.

“I’m sorry, Kid,” he said, “I really am. I don’t care if you still want to hang out with them but stop trusting those bastards.”

A teacher I confided in would tell me I was foolish and selfish to not be fine with this.

“People need to do what they believe is best for their families,” she said, “You need to respect that.”

Still, my heart cooled to them. I made excuses to not go to their parties unless they were at the McCormally house.  They didn’t mind I didn’t come.

It is now my inclination to not trust affluent people. A few have proven me wrong in this. Too few to allow me to let down my guard.

I chose to retire in Burlington nine years ago. I live ten blocks from where I was literally born. I expect to die here. Nothing has changed. Class bigotry is as blunt as it ever was. Racism has become more insidious.  The greater sin than being a bigot has become being called a bigot.  People aren’t terribly concerned that their beliefs are racist. They are unabashedly furious at being asked to consider they might be. Without a moment of reflection, they believe they can prove their innocence on a technicality.

“I’m not racist. I don’t hate Black people. I just know they commit more crimes.” (Fact: they don’t.)

Somehow--though I’ve never met them myself--they know a lot of purple and polka-dotted people.

“I don’t care if you’re Black, white or polka-dotted, I think you’re a thug.”

This is only said when they think what they think about a person of color.

However, in my decades of travels I’ve yet to find a place better on these issues than Burlington. I didn’t find it in Iowa City or New York. Burlington is certainly better for oppressed people than the South or Indiana.  There are kind people here, who will give you the shirt off their back.  When someone stole my recycling bin and trashed my yard, folks came with a new bin and cleaned up the mess.

Sure, too many people here believe Black people are more apt to be arrested because they commit more crimes, but so does the sheriff of Johnson County, Iowa. Yet those self-described liberals keep voting for him. (No, the facts haven’t changed in four paragraphs. Black people are less likely to commit crimes than white people.)

Teachers are pretty much the same. From conversations with my grandchildren, I think there may be fewer bigots now, but the ignorant still wield too much influence. It’s still true that a teacher is as apt as not to be among those an oppressed child must overcome.

Working class, working poor, and people of color need to join forces. We could turn the ship of injustice around if we would. White oppressed people will never be free until we end racism, and people of color will never be free until we end classism. Against overwhelming evidence, I still believe that can happen.

There is no safe place on the entire planet against oppression of any kind.  None. I’ve learned that now. If the revolution can’t happen in Burlington, it can’t happen any other place either.

So, I’ll struggle from here. Who will join me?

We Won't Vote for Hillary in 2020 Either

by Mona Shaw

Democrats, if you think you can bully third-party voters into voting for another Hillary or Hillary Clone in 2020, get over that shit now.

We hate Trump more than you do.  We hated Trump when Hillary, Bill, et all were still enjoying photo ops with him. Why not try giving dying Americans a reason to vote for you other than we all hate Trump?

You’ve had two years to come up with a comprehensive message for making things better, but instead, you’ve chosen to inch further right. With only a couple of rare exceptions, your candidates are all further right.  Rather than getting on board with Single Payer (80% of your base wants it), you’ve chosen to water-down HR676, so that it saves fewer lives than it does now. You’ve done nothing about war for profit but support widening it.

You suck at holding your official’s feet to the fire, and you’ve not been in the streets about war or healthcare since 2008. You either lack vision or don’t care that this death march will serve to give us worse candidates next time and kill more innocent people.  Someone has to interrupt that trajectory.  That can only be done by creating a political liability for it. You’ll go further right if we keep voting for you. Maybe, if you lose a few elections, you’ll begin to get it.

But, whether or not you change, insulting us-- “we’re voting for Trump, or we’re extremists or purists”--isn’t going to win us over. You have two more years to get with it. Clean up your death machine. Dump your lackluster message and give dying people some hope they might live.  Or, look forward to four more years of Trump.

The Liberal Reich of Johnson County

by Mona Shaw

Former Johnson County employee Shanti Sellz is suing her former boss Josh Busard and members of the Board of Supervisors after she was fired following a complaint of assault.

Every “progressive” and “progressive entity” should be at her back, from every labor leader in the county to the Women’s Center to Iowa City Federation of Labor, to the Labor Center,  et al.  They won’t be. They will join the circle of wagons protecting the “progressive” members of the Board of Supervisors.  The Supervisors are carrying water for Busard. He’s one of their own. That’s what they do.

A few may give her support sub rosa while explaining some self-interested rationale for why they must stay neutral publicly. A few will question this with a member of the Board of Supervisors. Those few will nod and let it go when that Supervisor says, “Well, she had other problems, but I can’t talk about that.”

Co-workers friends who have been sympathetic and know she’s telling the truth will be terrified to be seen with her in public.  Some will deny their own abuse at Busard’s hand and be bullied into betraying her.

Shanti Sellz may not have known that worst place she could have taken her assault complaint was to Lora Shramek director of Johnson County Human Resources.  She guaranteed she would be fired that day. She was, no doubt, encouraged after her first meeting with Shramek.  That’s how it works.  She may not have seen Shramkek’s betrayal coming.  But it come, it did. A follow-up letter to Sellz from the county’s human resources department said that Busard and Sellz should “work through issues with the help of a counselor.”

This “solution” is essentially no different than expecting Brett Kavanaugh and Elizabeth Blasey Ford to work through their issues with a counselor. Anyone claiming to be a feminist should be horrified.

However, it’s not as if any Johnson County employee has a choice, including those protected by a union contract.  The County’s union contract doesn’t protect workplace abuse or assault.  A supervisor can treat a worker anyway they please, and the abuse cannot be grieved under the contract.

The County does have a provision for complaints of “bullying” outside the contract.  In my initial meeting with Shramek in which she was completely sympathetic, she told me the provision was created with my abuser, County Auditor Tom Slockett in mind because his abuse was so notorious. She told me Slockett had even abused her (Shramek) when she was nine months pregnant. She would later claim I was lying when I repeated that in a hearing.

This provision has never had a finding. It’s never even gone to a hearing. County Attorney Janet Lyness is very skilled at kicking out these complaints on a technicality until you’re worn down.

Not that the contract gives you that much cover. After my complaint of abuse, the retaliation was inhumane and brutal. I was the first employee in County history who ever had a finding in my favor for unfair discipline.  The facts were too clear to deny. One was for typing out “Iowa” instead of using the initial “IA” in a memo.  They denied one of my grievances of discipline also for a petty clerical error, that I found and corrected before my boss knew it.  A County employee, who was privy to this, told me later, “They had to give him one. They have to live with him.”

Sellz may not know that until I was on the bargaining committee in 2005, that the County contract didn’t even protect against unfair termination. If any worker was fired, they were fired. Period. They had no recourse.  It wasn’t until I threatened to go public that this changed.

I detest writing about Johnson County leadership, and since 2012 I seldom do. It causes me to relive painful memories. It always brings back my most painful memory in my own ordeal.

A close friend invited me for dinner. I would soon learn that she had been tasked to bully me into dropping my complaint. She was running for office, and she was protecting her affinity with the Democratic Party.  I kept making my case until she interrupted me.

“Has Slockett ever abused you?”

“Yes,” I told her.

She laughed. A long mocking laugh that seemed to never end. That laugh broke me in that moment. I hadn’t touched a bite of my dinner.  She didn’t notice. I said nothing more except I wanted to go home. The moment ended a 30-year friendship.

That laugh is indelibly imprinted in my own hippocampus. It hurt more than the unfair disciplines, more than being put in front of my supervisor for constant scrutiny, more than being warned by that supervisor of being disciplined if I didn’t keep my hands in full view at all times. I couldn’t reach in my purse for a Kleenex. It hurt more than being told I couldn’t go the restroom without that supervisor’s permission, or when, after asking permission, that supervisor would go into Slockett’s office for twenty minutes or more until I was finally allowed to leave. It hurt more than the day I returned from lunch and found my file of evidence for my complaint had been erased from my computer. I filed a FOIA request to get the files back—they were public files.  I was told there would be a fee of $2500 to get them. An ITS worker told me it would take him 20 minutes top to retrieve them. It hurt more than when I was characterized as “unstable” because the abuse led to major clinical depression and two hospitalizations for suicidal ideation.

It took eight years, but I prevailed. Sort of. After nearly a decade of doggedly putting out my documentation and with the anonymous confirmation of others, the electorate of Johnson County chose to remove Slockett from office in the 2012 election. 

It cost me more than $600,000 in lost wages and benefits, rendered me permanently unemployable and placed me in poverty for life. Even so, I’d do it again.

I wasn’t fired by the way.  I resigned when Slockett began issuing formal discipline to those caught talking to me. After Travis Weipert won the election, I emailed the Board of Supervisors and asked for them to meet with me about getting my job back. I mentioned the damages I had incurred.  I heard nothing for a month. Finally, Janelle Rettig phoned me and told me no meeting would happen. She said some members were bitter about how I’d damaged the reputation of the party and didn’t want to see me in the building ever again.

When I said I would forgo the job and damages if the Board would work with me to institute protections so that no employee would ever have to go through this again, Janelle told me to take it up with the Iowa legislature.

I thought about suing, but not long.  You only get money from litigation at best.  You don’t get justice.  You also get an NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement).  I knew I wouldn’t be able to shut up for any amount of cash.  It remains satisfying to learn that my soul really isn’t for sale.

If there is any justice in Johnson County, Shanti Sellz will prevail.  If there’s any justice, feminists and labor leaders will stand publicly and proudly with her.  They all know, or they should know the Board of Supervisors didn’t have to fire her.  They have dozens of employees who remained in their jobs who didn’t file for FLMA until after they’d exhausted their sick leave. Even if she technically didn’t meet the requirements of the Family Leave Act, and that’s a big “if, the spirit of that provision was clearly violated. According to their own documentation, Shanti Sellz was a good employee.  That should have led them to help her. There was nothing that prevented them doing that.  They just didn’t.

One of the last things Janelle Rettig said to me was, “Look, I work with cowards, but I have to work with them.”

Shanti Sellz didn’t put me up to writing this. She doesn’t know that I’m writing this.

I just know that it takes uncommon courage to go up against this Reich.  Shanti Sellz has shown that courage. Does anyone in the County have the courage to stand with her?

In the immortal words of Florence Reece, “Which side are you on?”

Kavanaugh and Clinton Should Be Sharing a Prison Cell

PREDATOR

by Mona Shaw
If you're still even slightly inclined to defend Bill Clinton, or you think he's better than Kavanaugh, read all of this, and get back to me.

I’m an advocate for the poor and working class. This means I’m just as passionately anti-racist. First, because underclass women of color are even more vulnerable to oppression and abuse. Second, because race, sex, and class oppression are inextricable clubs used by the ruling class to maintain control of the U.S. system.

Astute friends have reasonably asked me why I care about the Kavanaugh nomination. It can certainly be regarded as a in-fight within the privileged class. I’ve been following the Kavanaugh appointment closely for two primary reasons. One, I can’t resist the temptation to help take down a rich, white man with power. Second, because it provides such a perfect launching pad to address class.

It has given me a platform to warn women who don’t have privilege. If you are one of these women, you need to know that voting for Democrats won’t help you. It may help women of privilege, but that benefit won’t trickle down to you.

More than a few of those privileged women whom you march with today, will join the hands of others who will throw you under the bus if you ever need their help. If, they don’t actively gaslight and slander you, they will wring their hands whimpering, “I just don’t know,” and announcing they are “staying out of the controversy.”

I could give you an endless list of examples, but, for now, I’m only going to give you one.

William Jefferson Clinton

William Jefferson Clinton is a vicious predator. Yet he remains, a darling of the Democratic Party and liberals everywhere. He’s paid top dollar for speeches and is the most sought-after speaker for Democratic Party fundraisers.

Liberals rush to defend Clinton stating his indiscretions were “consensual.” They set aside the inherent harassment of someone having sex with a subordinate, how young and vulnerable she would be to such a powerful man. Indeed, many of them have spent the past three decades making that young woman the punchline of dirty jokes.

They don’t just dismiss Clinton’s lies about his long-time affair with Gennifer Flowers. They also dismiss Clinton’s efforts to defame and gaslight Ms. Flowers for telling the truth. He slandered her in a now-famous interview on national television with Hillary Rodham Clinton indignantly proclaiming, “I’m not some Tammy Wynette standing by her man.”

In turns out H.R. Clinton was doing just that, when the couple later conceded they knew at the time Flowers was telling the truth.

If those were W.J. Clinton’s only indiscretions or even if all his philandering was consensual, it would be disgusting, but they’re not.

W.J. Clinton has a long history of sexual assault allegations, and his wife knows it. Moreover, Moveon.org knew it when they formed to encourage us to “move on” after Clinton’s impeachment.

While it’s not exhaustive, here is a chronological list of some of W.J. Clinton’s alleged sexual assaults.

Eileen Wellstone, 19-year-old English woman who said Clinton sexually assaulted her after she met him at a pub near the Oxford where the future President was a student in 1969. A retired State Department employee, who asked not to be identified, confirmed that he spoke with the family of the girl and filed a report with his superiors. Clinton admitted having sex with the girl, but claimed it was consensual. The victim's family declined to pursue the case.

In an interview with Capitol Hill Blue, the retired State Department employee said he believed the story Miss Wellstone, the young English woman who said Clinton raped her in 1969.

''There was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional trauma,'' he said. ''But we were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes Scholar charged with rape. I filed a report with my superiors and that was the last I heard of it.”

Ms. Wellstone, then married, confirmed the incident when contacted by journalists in the 1990s, but refused to discuss the matter further. She said she would not go public with further details of the attack.

In his book, Unlimited Access, former FBI agent Gary Aldrich reported that Clinton left Oxford University for a "European Tour" in 1969 and was told by University officials that he was no longer welcome there. Aldrich said Clinton's academic record at Oxford was lackluster. Clinton later accepted a scholarship for Yale Law School and did not complete his studies at Oxford.

In 1972, a 22-year-old woman told campus police at Yale University that she was sexually assaulted by Clinton, a law student at the college. No charges were filed, but retired campus policemen contacted by journalists confirmed the incident. The woman, also tracked down by journalists, confirmed the incident, but declined to discuss it further and would not give permission to use her name. The State Department official who investigated the incident said Clinton's interests appeared to be drinking, drugs and sex, not studies.

In 1974, a female student at the University of Arkansas complained that then law school instructor Bill Clinton tried to prevent her from leaving his office during a conference. She said he groped her and forced his hand inside her blouse. She complained to her faculty advisor who confronted Clinton, but Clinton claimed the student ''came on'' to him. The student left the school shortly after the incident. Interviewed at her home in Texas, the former student confirmed the incident, but declined to go on the record with her account. Several former students at the University have confirmed the incident in confidential interviews and said there were other reports of Clinton attempting to force himself on female students.

Juanita Broaddrick, a volunteer in Clinton's gubernatorial campaign, said he raped her in 1978. Mrs. Broaddrick suffered a bruised and torn lip, which she said she suffered when Clinton bit her during the rape.

From 1978-1980, during Clinton's first term as governor of Arkansas, state troopers assigned to protect the governor were aware of at least seven complaints from women who said Clinton forced, or attempted to force, himself on them sexually. One retired state trooper said in an interview that the common joke among those assigned to protect Clinton was "who's next?". One former state trooper said other troopers would often escort women to the governor's hotel room after political events, often more than one an evening.

Carolyn Moffet, a legal secretary in Little Rock in 1979, said she met then-governor Clinton at a political fundraiser and shortly thereafter received an invitation to meet the governor in his hotel room. "I was escorted there by a state trooper. When I went in, he was sitting on a couch, wearing only an undershirt. He pointed at his penis and told me to suck it. I told him I didn't even do that for my boyfriend and he got mad, grabbed my head and shoved it into his lap. I pulled away from him and ran out of the room."

Elizabeth Ward, the Miss Arkansas who won the Miss America crown in 1982, told friends she was forced by Clinton to have sex with him shortly after she won her state crown. Last year, Ward, who is now married with the last name of Gracen (from her first marriage), told an interviewer she did have sex with Clinton but said it was consensual. Close friends of Ward, however, say she still maintains privately that Clinton forced himself on her.

Paula Jones Corbin, an Arkansas state worker, filed a sexual harassment case against Clinton after an encounter in a Little Rock hotel room where the then-governor exposed himself and demanded oral sex. Clinton settled the case with Jones recently with an $850,000 cash payment.

Sandra Allen James, a former Washington, DC, political fundraiser says Presidential candidate-to-be Clinton invited her to his hotel room during a political trip to the nation's capital in 1991, pinned her against the wall and stuck his hand up her dress. She says she screamed loud enough for the Arkansas State Trooper stationed outside the hotel suite to bang on the door and ask if everything was all right, at which point Clinton released her and she fled the room. When she reported the incident to her boss, he advised her to keep her mouth shut if she wanted to keep working. Miss James has since married and left Washington. Reached at her home by journalists during the 1990s, the former Miss James said she later learned that other women suffered the same fate at Clinton's hands when he was in Washington during his Presidential run.

Christy Zercher, a flight attendant on Clinton's leased campaign plane in 1992, says Presidential candidate Clinton exposed himself to her, grabbed her breasts and made explicit remarks about oral sex. A video shot on board the plane by ABC News shows an obviously inebriated Clinton with his hand between another young flight attendant's legs. Zercher said later in an interview that White House attorney Bruce Lindsey tried to pressure her into not going public about the assault.

Kathleen Willey, a White House volunteer, reported that Clinton grabbed her, fondled her breasts and pressed her hand against his genitals during an Oval Office meeting in November, 1993. Willey, who told her story in a 60 Minutes interview, became a target of a White House-directed smear campaign after she went public.

These women didn’t matter to the Democratic Party establishment, and neither do you if you don’t have privileged status. Oh, sure the Democrats will sacrifice a few to make themselves look good, but not with also satisfying their own self-interests, e.g. Al Franken and John Conyers, leftier members they’re always trying to purge. Do you really believe that two liberal Democrats are the only members of Congress who engage in sexual harassment?

However, if you go up against one of their own, they’ll sell you down the river faster than you can sign the complaint.

You also don’t matter to Moveon.org. Moveon is nothing more than a get-out-the vote arm of the Democratic Party. By, the way, when they were asked about the allegations listed above (many more than have accused Kavanaugh), they said, “Well, we don’t find these women believable, and it was a long time ago.” Sound familiar?

Vote how you want. Do what you want. But be careful, and don’t get your hopes up. You have been warned.

The Sound of Sexism

by Mona Shaw

I’m old, and I remember things.

Today is September 9, 2018, and the sexist treatment of Serena Williams is in the news.

With this comes quibbling about whether her treatment is truly sexist.  This triggers a memory.

For the 17 years I was a public relations manager in the University of Iowa School of Music, there were about 60 faculty searches.  During each and every search, at least three men would show up at my desk and say, “Of course, Affirmative Action is going to make us hire a Puerto Rican lesbian.”

Since the statement was always the same, it was obvious to me that this was what men on the faculty were saying among themselves.  It was a curious fear, given that when I was hired, in 1975, there were 51 faculty members and only two women.  Those two women were heterosexual and white. Two more women were hired shortly after I was hired.  This cut the ratio in half.  Instead of the gender balance being 20-to-1.  It had become a threatening 10-to-1. 

Many were furious and blamed this “travesty” on their female director who had been appointed five years earlier.  They were equally furious at her appointment, assuming a less qualified heir apparent on their faculty would take the helm.  When the search had been pared down to this woman and their heir, it was said a university female vice-president interceded and saw to her appointment.

She was hated and mistreated throughout her ten years there. If she failed to wave at one of them at a traffic stop, this became evidence of her unfitness. It was ugly to witness. They finally drove her out.  She would retire a decade later as a revered and esteemed dean at Rutgers University. When she left Iowa, there were 8 women on the faculty, cutting the balance to 6-to-1.  The men were livid and often said, “Things are going downhill fast.”

Today, in 2018, the School of Music lists 60 faculty members, 19 are women.  This makes the ratio 3-to-1.  It’s a wonder they can still function with all that estrogen in their halls.  They have yet to appoint a Puerto Rican lesbian.

Women have been historically brutally abused in the academic and professional classical music world.  Perhaps no one tells that story better than Abbie Conant, who won the position of principal trombone for Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in a blind screen audition. After her sex was learned, they immediately tried to fire her. The viciousness of this 11-year attempt was documented by composer/musicologist/activist, William Osborne in an article entitled, “You Sound Like a Ladies Orchestra.” It was legendary that she ultimately won her case.  However, her treatment was far from atypical.

I have met literally hundreds of female musicians who, in private, lamented to me about the sexism they endured on a regular basis.  Not one of those women ever publicly complained about it.  It’s essentially always a career-killer to complain. The odds were far too long to take the chance. A woman explained this to me.

“I was on a search committee last year, and we were looking at a stellar c.v. of a woman who’d won a sex discrimination case at her previous job.  The search chair said, ‘Too controversial.’ and threw out her application.  No one, including me, objected.”

During this time, Jean Jew, a research scientist won her suit of sexual harassment against the University of Iowa.  More accurately, the University finally stopped appealing previous decisions, after a group of women distributed a 20-page finding to every faculty member on campus.  This changed campus opinion dramatically.  Dr. Jew was paid, and remedies were taken.  These remedies included voluntary sexual harassment workshops given for every department.  I attend the one given for the School of Music. Only one male faculty member from music was there.

I remember this all so clearly.  Witnessing this has led me, more than once, to measure this against my personal experience.  It was a clear match.  For every experience of sexism, I’ve had or witnessed, I’ve kept quiet at least a thousand times more than I’ve said anything.  At least.  I think it’s reasonable to assume that women suck it up at least 99.9% of the time.

Indeed, I’ve only publicly objected to sexism three times in my life.  I was gaslighted, blackballed, and slandered for this. I earned the reputation of being “just a trouble-maker” and “seeing sexism everywhere I look.”  As if it were outlandish that I might have witnessed sexism three times. It’s been rare, but even the women I’ve tried to help joined in.

‘You’re making us look like liars when we deny this. You’re ruining our reputations and careers!”

Frankly, they weren’t wrong.  I still feel tremendous guilt about that part of it.  I just don’t know how to change things by being quiet.  It’s a “damned if do; damned if you don’t” conundrum.

Working class and poor women have no hope at all. You need deep pockets to even consider objecting.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And a woman without status is far less likely to be believed or find support.

The truth is that women usually speak out when the poison in her belly finally boils out of her throat. It’s a “consequences be damned moment” that women are experts at avoiding. Women are intrinsically survivors. You don’t do this and survive in one way or another. The fear of speaking out still usually win.  I’m evidence of this still.

A few months ago, I learned about a horribly misogynistic act by someone I’ve criticized in the past.  Except for sending what I’ve learned confidentially to three trusted friends, I’ve decided to do nothing more about it.

I have absolutely no confidence it would initiate change.  And, honestly, I'm pushing 70, and I just don’t want to go through it all again.  Perhaps, I’ve been beaten.  Time will tell, because it haunts me all the time.

So, given my own reluctance and what's still happening to Serena Williams, I wonder if the “Me Too” movement has reduced that 99.9% a measurable amount, especially when you consider all actionable sexism and not just sexual assault.  Then again, Serena is speaking.

I hope I’m wrong.