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.

Returning to Vietnam

by Mona Shaw

I’m old, and I remember things.

Today is August 30, 2018, the local news dovetails stories of the death of Senator John McCain and accolades given returning Vietnam veterans, part of a recent “Honor Flight” at the Moline, IL, airport.

I don’t react to this because I’m no longer in my living room. I’m dropped into the University of Iowa campus, Iowa City, IA, in May, 1972. I am 20.

I’m walking north on Madison Avenue. I’m almost at the Iowa Memorial Union. It’s a gorgeous May day. The thin clouds stretch like feathers against a bright blue sky. I’m not looking at the clouds. I’m looking at the National Guard solider standing on top of the IMU. His long gun follows me as I pass by.

I’m too befuddled to be frightened.

“How is it that armed soldiers are sprinkled over campus?”

____________________

I know the answer, of course, but that doesn’t dent my astonishment at this. I was there the night before. I was one of the more than ten thousand who’d taken over the campus Pentacrest and downtown Iowa City.

The smell of smoke was omnipresent; though I didn’t know its source. I watched a large rock fly into one of the large plate glass windows of Iowa Book and Supply on the corner of Clinton Street and Iowa Avenue. The over-priced monopoly would eventually get a clue and replace the windows with small one surrounded by pebble stucco.

We were being chased. I didn’t know anyone around me, but people helped each other up if someone stumbled. And, though I didn’t get the brunt of it, my eyes were stinging from tear gas. My throat felt raw. I ran hard. I made it to the Burlington Street footbridge. Billy clubs licked my ankles and connected here and there. A group of us took refuge in Hillcrest dormitory and blocked a door for safety. My ankle hurt, but it wasn’t broken. A few were bleeding. We checked them to see how badly they were hurt. No one in my group was seriously injured.

We knew we could be injured demonstrating. Kent State taught us we could be killed. That knowledge grew our numbers. I was glad I was there. I had to be there.

Memories have memories and that feeling I’d had hadn’t left me. I worked for the Campus radio station. It was my job one night to read the draft lottery numbers. There was no way I could deny to my soul and my God that I was announcing a death sentence for some. It was unbearable. Afterward, I threw up. Everything in my being ached to stop the thing that caused that.

Like most people, becoming an antiwar activist was a gradual thing. I was a hawk as a young teen. I come from a military family. I had loved ones in Vietnam. We were fighting communism. Damn anyone who didn’t support that.

The war was on television. Seeing body after body every night dragged lifeless across the screen began to take a toll. I began to wonder if we were right. I realized how much I’d just accepted the word of others. I began to check things out.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. came out against the war, I knew why I was against it too. When King was murdered, his moral authority eventually gave me the courage to begin to say so. When Nixon escalated the bombing in Cambodia in 1970, against anything and everything moral and decent, it ignited a burning passion to end it. I was playing cards in a mobile classroom with newly-returned vets at Burlington’s Junior College. When we heard the news on the radio, a vet in a wheelchair threw his cards at the wall and wept.

The War in Vietnam was immoral and illegal. No historian denies that anymore. It cost more than 60 thousand American lives, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. It wounded many, many more. It couldn’t be won, yet we kept fighting long after we knew that. It gave us Agent Orange, deadly accidents at ammunition plants, and countless orphans and families forever destroyed.

We ended that war. Even though our government did this in a shameful manner. It was ended. I wonder how many of those Vietnam vets being thanked today might not be alive, had we not done what we did. There is no question, we saved thousands of military lives. We ended the draft too.

You’re welcome. We’re not remembered lovingly these days. I don’t recall a time when we were. We’re discussed with pejorative and accused of things we didn’t do, like spitting on returning soldiers. But, I know that’s not about us. It’s about our national return to the glorification of war. People are afraid to be antiwar again. They tell anyone in a uniform “Thank you for your service." It's protection against public condemnation, while it guarantees public approval.

I know it’s not about the wars we’re fighting because you could throw a stink bomb at an NFL game and not hit three people who could name the nations where we’re fighting wars, let alone why exactly we’re fighting there. Few even know if the Taliban are our friends or enemies these days.
____________

I try to make eye contact with the soldier pointing his gun at me. He is about my age and handsome. I give him the peace sign. He points his gun down. Perhaps, I had a part in saving his life.

Ignorance for Tomorrow

by Mona Shaw

They don't know anything.

A few years ago I was sitting in a room of recent college graduates. I asked them what they thought about a column I'd given them. None of them had read it.

When I asked for why, a young man said smugly, "I don't read anything longer than 200 words."

"Seriously," I asked, truly boggled.

"If you can't say it in 200 words, you have nothing to say," he said.

The rest in the room agreed with him.

A young woman added, "Maybe other people our age do, but college kids don't read things that are long. You didn't go to college, did you?"

She was serious. It wasn't just that I wondered how they'd earned their degrees, it was their pride in this position that floored me.

There weren't particularly patient at needing to teach their wisdom regarding effective communication to this old woman. How could I not know this?

They'd never read "The Color Purple," and didn't know who Alice Walker was. One thought she may have seen the movie.

"Wasn't Oprah in that?"

They'd never read anything by W.E.B du Bois, or Frederick Douglass or Tillie Oleson or Angela Davis, when she was still radical.

They were proud to know a few quotes of Martin Luther King, Jr., (and they knew who that was), but none had read any of his brilliant essays in their entirety, not even "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."

Of course, none of them had read Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." The point of the novel was lost on them anyway.

When I repeated Bradbury's famous quote, "You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them," they shrugged.

They'd all come from uncommonly privileged lives, families where they received new cars when they graduated. They were all white.

Those who put their time, their souls, their blood into writing about the panorama and diaspora of human suffering offered nothing they needed to learn.

They weren't curious about them either. They resented the notion they should be.

"I don't expect them to be curious about me." one said.

Even if they wanted to be activists, give them a few sexy sound bites, a few Cliff notes, and they were good to go.

They don't know anything, not even academically, let alone experientially.

We're in trouble, folks.

Top of Form

Liberal Manifest Destiny

An open letter to Gita Larson and other progressive liberals

by Mona Shaw

I write this on the chance that some of you care.  While I’m using Gita’s recent aggression as an example.  I witness similar assaults every hour of every day.

Gita, when you evicted Sharon Smith from your home, you committed an act of violence.

I know I don’t know you, so there is no need for you to tell me that, but I know you will anyway.  I do know you are a white woman, and a Quaker.

There is nothing you can tell me, however, that will mitigate the violence of your act.

Especially violent was your decision to effect that eviction by moving her few possessions from where she was residing into a storage locker, changing the locks, and notifying her of her homelessness with a text message. You did all of this while she was at work. Imagine the trauma, of trying to do your job while learning you no longer had a place to live.

The only benefit of the doubt I can muster for you is that the damage done and the cruelty of the method you chose is beyond your experience and ability to grasp such trauma.  If it’s not, your action is worse.

Every target of oppression struggles with PTSD. It’s part of our dance.

A blow like this, at first, shocks our entire system into an emotional shutdown, as if someone belted an enormous, discordant gong as hard they could.  The vibration lasts for days, if not weeks.  We dare not feel until it does. We must force ourselves to function within that tremor if we are to survive.  We must endure again the agony this triggers of previous abuse, which plays like a Power point presentation in our souls.

We must function and plan despite it. Gaslighting comes with the territory. If we’re lucky we’ll weep, if we’re luckier we’ll sob.  Tears can heal and reset our souls.  But we’ll fight weeping just the same until the crisis is past, until we can breathe, because we fear we might not stop crying; and we want to survive.

We will suffer unspeakable suffering that will become part of our patina for the rest of our lives.  Until the next time, and we know there will be a next time.

I am a white woman and a grandmother. Sharon is a Black, Native American grandmother.  I understand you're a grandmother too.  I think of Sharon's 20-year-old grandson in this.  How must he feel that this has befallen his grandmother?  Mine would be deeply hurt.  Yours likely does not face that risk.

I am not qualified to speak of the racist impact of your act, except to know the racism—the nadir of American evil--is inescapable.  I have, however, lived most of my life in poverty, so I am infinitely qualified to speak of the class aggression in this.  The class abuse I have witnessed and experienced has cost me everything I owned and nearly my life on more than one occasion.  It has taken the lives of many I have loved.  I know when it’s present, and I know how it works.

So, I know the harm is about to get worse.  As the privileged do, you will haul out standard and garish canards, affected rationalizations to avoid introspection. You may even see a therapist or ask clergy to help you work through any sense of guilt.  Clearly, rationalizing had already begun days earlier with help from likeminded friends.  You planned this deliberate act for some time.

While this is a not an exhaustive list, I am intimately familiar with them all.

“Perhaps, I could have handled this differently but….”

“I did all I could do.”

“I have to take care of myself right now.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“I can’t be all things to all people.”

“I have a right to govern my own space.”

“I’ve done a lot for these people.”

“I could have done much worse.”

I have come to wonder if liberal theology believes that absolution comes from proving others have committed worse sins than they.

The damage will be punctuated by blaming the her for your actions.

“I can’t deal with her while she’s angry.”

“She has a victim mentality.”

“This isn’t really about what I did.  It’s about her pathology.”

“She could have avoided this by dealing with it earlier, differently, better. etc.”

“She doesn’t know how to make herself happy, so she strikes out at anyone.”

“She needs to learn you can get more flies with honey.”

You will ultimately deliver the affluent coup de gras.

“I don’t have to do this.”

“Let’s face it.  She’s not a good poster child for the cause.”

“She is not one of us.”

“I could have done nothing to help.”

“If they don’t stop being so critical, they’ll lose our support altogether.”

These set us up for the most damaging part of all.  To some degree, we will believe you.  We will blame ourselves too.  We will feel like a failure to the point of feeling worthless.  We will think this might not be happening if we were smarter, had better timing, had done things differently, looked different, had a better demeanor, etc.

To paraphrase Dr. King, “It’s not the attacks of our enemies that hurt the most.  It’s the actions or non-actions of our friends.”  Sometimes, it’s your best friends, people you’d previously trusted with your life.

We will consider giving up, quitting activist work, crawling into an anonymous hole and never coming out.  Sometimes, when it’s particularly dark, we’ll consider quitting life. 

Pulling yourself through that contracting, throbbing knothole is the hardest think a justice truth-teller ever must do.  And you do most of the pulling alone.  Your trust in others is destroyed for the time.  You gasp and wriggle and reintroduce yourself to your own heart.  If you’re lucky, and not everyone is this lucky, you eventually collapse, exhausted, outside that knothole.  You rest, for however long you need and when you can.  You stand again.

The pain you inflict has a long reach. When you attack someone's credibility, it not only hurts that person, it threatens that person's ability to help others.

Some will say you don’t deserve this letter.  You and your pals will regurgitate Manifest Destiny again, and again.  And, again. 

Too often liberals expect our deference and servility.  We know you clutch to your class position like rare pearls. You are so terrified of losing that.  So, you must remain convinced our hope is derived from your largesse, largesse which you are free to extend or withhold on a whim.  You like us in our place, and you’re quick to put us back there if we stray.

And, just to survive, we often play along.  We comfort you when you’re offended by a hint of truth.  We applaud when you win a human rights awards for your low-risk, peer-approved support.

We smile approvingly when you raise your hand at diversity forums to show all you’ve learned in all those sensitivity trainings. You are “culturally competent.”  We let it go when you interrupt us because you believe you can tell our story better than we can.

We know we are your project.  We are your self-aggrandizement--your way to prove you are a good person.  When we fail to do that, our value evaporates, and you’re done with us.

You objectify us.  You don’t believe we’re human, at least not as human as you.  We’re not as bright; we’re not as clean, we’re not as savvy, or as knowledgeable about how the “real” world works. We’re not as shrewd; we’re loud; we’re crude and crass; we dress “inappropriately”; we’re messy, and we certainly lack the white, professional-class social graces you revere.

Liberals often throw us under the bus when we present a risk to their comfort or social lives. You are fine with leaving us alone on that limb.  You rationalize that too.

“There is more than one side to this story.”

“I have a mortgage to pay.”

“I have other people I need to think about.”

“I have to work with that man, woman, group, etc.”

“I have to protect my resume, career, etc.”

“I have to take care of myself right now.”

“I need to get away from this controversy and give myself some space and peace."

You don’t really see our bodies outside the hospitals and in the street, and you vote for those you know will kill us, because, they’re not killing you.

You threw out a Black, Native American grandmother as if she were an irksome inconvenience, like weeds in your yard.  You placed a blanket of racism on all of this, a blanket that those of your class and race has historically infected with some variety of small pox or another social infection you’ve never known.

In the end, you provided a service.  We need to learn we can’t count on you.  We must do this for ourselves.  We will plow through even you, if we must, to realize justice and liberty.

I’m not at all concerned that I will turn off allies with this.  In more ways than not, it may be better for us if you go.  As Lila Watson says, if you’re oppression isn’t bound up with ours, you can’t help us anyway. 

If your oppression is bound with ours, if you are one us, I can’t drive you away. You do have to do this.  Justice has never been won by those who must be sweet-talked into it.  It’s won by those who can’t be talked out of it.

I am simply asking you to think with a little introspection.