Democrats Abroad France 2023 Annual General Meeting

Please RSVP by March 30, 2023 to be registered to vote at this meeting. 

Join us for the biennial election of the National Democrats Abroad France (DA France) Officers and Voting Representatives. The national elections and meeting will be held on April 1, 2023 online via zoom and in person beginning at 2 PM. We will hear candidate speeches and elect a new Leadership team for Democrats Abroad France, hear about how DA France will continue its important work on US elections and political engagement heading into the 2024 election. For those who wish to participate online, the zoom information will be provided upon rsvp. 

More information on the roles and responsibilities can be viewed here.

Candidate statements can be viewed here.

2023 NATIONAL OFFICER AND VOTING REPRESENTATIVE ELECTIONS

All members of Democrats Abroad France are welcome to attend and vote in the DA France National Officer and Voting Representative Elections on April 1. You will have an opportunity to hear from the candidates themselves prior to the close of voting and final tabulation of results. All members wanting to vote at the meeting are asked to register to vote by virtue of RSVP for this meeting, below, on or before March 30th -- this allows the DA France Election Board to prepare the voter rolls on the day of the meeting.

EARLY / ABSENTEE VOTING OPTION

All DA France members also have the option to vote early via an online absentee ballot made available to them via email, from 7 to 10 days prior to the election until 5PM on March 30th. This is to encourage member participation from all across France even if they cannot attend the meeting on Election Day. As a result, no nominations from the floor will be allowed. 

If you elect to vote via the Early Vote/Absentee Ballot, you will not be able to vote in the same election a second time even if you attend the Election Meeting. However, in the event of ties, the DA France Election Board may elect to conduct snap Run-off Elections to break ties, time and other conditions permitting, at their discretion. In such a case, all members of DA France who have RSVP'd for the meeting by March 30th and in attendance at the Election Meeting, will be allowed to vote in any Run-off Elections. Absentee voting will not be an option for snap Run-off Elections since they will be conducted at the Election Meeting. RSVP below to register to vote on Election Day, April 1.

To join Democrats Abroad, please go to www.democratsabroad.org/join. You must be a US citizen 18 years of age or older by Nov. 7, 2023 and reside in France.

Books Abroad, The Global Women’s Caucus feminist reading group, has an original, unexpected, funny, sad, tragic book to propose for its April 2^nd meeting: Lessons in Chemistry.

This runaway international publishing, reader, and critical success cleverly tells the story of Zott, a woman chemist, thwarted at every step of her life by sexism. The book is both thought-provoking and touching. (I cried at the end!)

Here is the story of a female scientist in 1961, prevented even from getting her Ph.D., prevented from using her intelligence for science, for the common good, by the system, constantly and willfully misunderstood.

“Zott is a catalyst,” says Bonnie Garmus, the author. “She’s actively breaking and creating new bonds. And that is chemistry at its most basic.”

There is a lot to talk about: feminism, history, science, religion, the author’s style, an attempt at magic realism, and many other ideas and points.

The book exists in paperback and can be ordered from Amazon or your preferred bookseller. A few used copies, in good condition, can perhaps be found on Momox.

Join us on Zoom on Sunday, April 2, 2023, at 10 am ET, 4 pm CET. RSVP to Receive the Zoom link. 

The serious side of ‘mansplaining’ has been lost. That’s where the harm begins.
Rebecca Solnit

The key context of the word inspired by my 2008 essay is that mansplaining is one part of a huge problem – of who gets listened to, and who gets believed.

I have a file on my desktop titled Mansplaining Olympic Tryouts, mostly screenshots of some of the most epic specimens I’ve come across on social media or that people have steered my way. They’re grimly hilarious: a man explaining vaginas to a noted female gynaecologist, a man telling Sinn Féin adviser Siobhán Fenton to read the Good Friday agreement (she replied with a picture of herself with the book she wrote on that agreement), and the famous incident with Dr Jessica McCarty, about which she tweeted: “At a Nasa Earth meeting 10 years ago, a white male postdoc interrupted me to tell me that I don’t understand human drivers of fire, that I def needed to read McCarty et al. I looked him in the eye, pulled my long hair back so he could read my name tag. ‘I’m McCarty et al.’”

The word mansplaining was coined by an anonymous person in response to my 2008 essay Men Explain Things to Me and has had a lively time of it ever since. It was a New York Times word of the year in 2010, and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018; versions of it exist in many other languages from French to Icelandic, and the essay itself has appeared in many languages including Korean and Swedish. People often recount the opening incident in that almost 15-year-old essay, in which a man explained a book to me, too busy holding forth to notice that I was its author, as my friend was trying to tell him.

But pretty briskly the essay moved from the amusing to the terrifying: I then recounted an incident in which a middle-aged man explained to a very young me, chuckling, that when his neighbour ran out of the house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her, he was confident that she was crazy and her husband was not murderous, simply because of his assumptions about gender.

Here’s what almost everyone seems to miss about mansplaining, including those doing the formal studies as well as the people telling the funny stories. It’s one corner of a colossal problem, in which biases, statuses and assumptions warp everyday life and allocate more credibility, audibility and consequence to some people than others. All this creates what I think of as inequality of voice. Whether you’re trying to convince doctors that your pain is real or neighbours that your husband is trying to kill you, it can be a life-or-death issue. It matters in offices, classrooms, conferences, boardrooms, in hospitals, on the street, in bedrooms and at dinner tables.

One high-profile recent incident of people who assumed they had the authority to control the narrative came with the police murder of Tyre Nichols, one of many incidents in recent years where video told a very different story to the one told by the police. Somehow they seem to assume that they have the impunity that comes with controlling the narrative, which in cases like this mean literally expecting to get away with murder. Inequality of voice is one of the most powerful elements of inequality of all kinds. Children and elderly people are routinely treated as incompetent witnesses to their own lives and needs. Poor people, immigrants and people with disabilities are likewise treated as subordinates and incompetents.

Non-white people are too often assumed to be less trustworthy, less qualified to speak and act in many kinds of situation, and – to state the obvious – too often regarded as criminal simply on the basis of colour.

There are a lot of stories about people of colour being assumed to have stolen the vehicles they drive or be the servants at posh gatherings; I’ve heard from some of the latter first-hand. There have been many studies about how often women and people of colour are ignored or disbelieved when they report pain, sickness and injury, and how that impacts health outcomes. Black women in the US have a disproportionate incidence of dangerous medical experiences related to pregnancy and birth because of unequal access to care – and to credibility. Even tennis star Serena Williams was at first dismissed when she reported a postpartum pulmonary embolism.

People have also tried to render the word gender-neutral, which would make it meaningless. We have lots of other words – arrogant wanker, patronising idiot, Dunning-Kruger prize winner, for example – for acts of misplaced condescension. But reducing the issue to incidents of being merely patronised in conversational exchanges misses what matters. A phrase I often use is “dosage is cumulative”. If you spend your life being assumed to be less competent, less qualified to speak and less worthy of being listened to, more likely to be mocked, ignored or insulted, it inhibits your willingness to speak up and participate. So it’s not just what happens in the moment that matters, but how it shapes how we perceive ourselves and others in the long run.

The credibility gap turns into a hugely harmful thing with sexual assault and gender violence, in which men have historically been believed over women. It often brings on victims’ despair about reporting such abuse, because if you will not be believed, and if you will be mocked, shamed, harassed or even criminalised for reporting abuse, why would you bother? Almost all sexual abuse involves a perpetrator with higher social status, and a big part of that status is the ability to control the story and suppress other versions. It’s what serial rapists like Harvey Weinstein and serial child molesters like gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar relied upon during decades-long criminal careers. Inequality of voice isn’t just what happens after such crimes; it’s too often what perpetrators count upon beforehand.

It’s great that the word mansplaining exists, along with spin-offs such as whitesplaining and westsplaining (the latter for North Americans and western Europeans explaining the invasion of Ukraine and eastern European politics with narratives centred on our political histories rather than theirs). But everything loses meaning when it loses context.

Mansplaining’s meaning requires the broader context of intersecting inequalities and assumptions that play out in everyday life, with consequences that are occasionally amusing but too often nightmarish. My goal always was to advocate for a democracy of voice, for equality in who gets to speak, who’s heard, and who’s believed and respected when they speak, across all categories.

• Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist

Reposted from URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/09/mansplaining-word-problem-rebecca-solnit?CMP=share_btn_link

I'm an academic, I live in France, and I vote in Massachusetts. Back in the 70s I read Simone de Beauvoir's groundbreaking book "The Second Sex" and it changed my life. I realized, as did many, that women were not given equal status, either in their personal lives or under the law. Later in life I had the grand experience of teaching the book and I came to understand the deeply philosophical reasons why no democracy can exist without equality between men and women. And unless women are equal to men under the law, there can be no true equality. So from there began my quest for an Equal Rights Amendment. True liberation for women can only exist when they are protected under the law, and men and women can live in true "brotherhood" (Beauvoir's word) only when the Constitution guarantees them equal rights. So let's go, let's get it done. Let's add that ERA to our guarantor of equal rights, the US Constitution.

Our theme was VIOLENCE, in all its forms, against women.  "Sexual violence is a global epidemic that is all around us, yet it is nowhere, precisely because it permeates every facet of our presence in the world, echoing throughout political and popular cultures, ricocheting off the cement walls that define our boundaries." - Michele Chen from  Roxane Gay's "Not That Bad." 

We need and Equal Rights Amendment to protect women against violence.  Laws alone do not solve the problem.

Salli Swartz leads the discussion about the ERA that followed the viewing of the documentary Equal Means Equal, answering the question: Why, in the year 2019 with so many opportunities for American women, do we need the Equal Rights Amendment?

Democrats Abroad went into action on Saturday evening Nov. 10 as Donald Trump arrived in France. Their candlelight vigils showed him what they think about his 'leadership.'   SUPPORTING the TRUE American values including humanitarian concern for others, the first amendment, respect for science, respect for journalists, freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation, equality for women and people of color, care for the environment and dedication to fair play and true democracy. HONORING American victims of right-wing hate crimes inspired by Trump's rhetoric. And RESPECTING our Constitution and the right to pursue investigations without hindrance.

The new Democratic National Committee  created an infrastructure to support candidates up and down the ballot and organize year-round -- leading to wins in some places that would've seemed unthinkable two years ago. Here are some of the ways Democrats gained ground across the country :

• 29 House seats flipped so far -- with a good shot at flipping at least half a dozen more once all the results come in;
• Seven governors' seats flipped;
• Six legislative chambers flipped -- bringing the total number we've flipped up to seven this cycle;
• Four Republican state legislature supermajorities broken;
• In total, Democrats flipped over 290 individual state legislative races last night -- bringing our total on the cycle up to over 330!
• Four states voted to expand voting rights, including a constitutional amendment in Florida that will restore voting rights to more than 1 million people with felony records;
• Three state Supreme Court seats flipped;
• Three red states voted to expand Medicaid;
• Two states voted to raise their minimum wages;
• One U.S. Senate seat flipped -- congrats to Jacky Rosen.

And here are some of the incredible candidates who won historic victories last night:

Democrats Abroad France organized rallies and candlelight vigils across the country with “Families Belong Together” events in Paris, Lyon, Grenoble, and Toulouse to protest Trump’s pointlessly cruel “Zero Tolerance” policy towards refugee and immigrant families, and a July 4th “Vive La Resistance” apero/picnic by the Seine in Paris with coalition partners to register voters and organize for the Fall.  On June 30th we marched in the LGBTQ Gay Parade.  With just four months ahead of us, we must continue to mobilize voters to speak out and defend our Democratic Party values.

Every year, Democrats Abroad France remembers the fallen soldiers who bravely died while serving in the US Armed Forces.  Decorating graves to remember the dead is an ancient tradition that continues to this day. In America the tradition began with those who died in the Civil War.  All are invited to attend.  Since 1918 is the 100th Anniversary of WWI, the ceremonies will be grandissime.    We will be laying wreaths in ceremonies throughout France on the graves of these heroes on the following dates:

Memorial Day Ceremonies Meuse-Argonne May 27th at 11am 

Memorial Day Ceremonies May 27th at St. Mihiel 4pm 

Memorial Day Ceremonies Lafayette Escadrille May 27th at 10am

Memorial Day Ceremonies Surennes May 27th at 2.30pm

Memorial Day Ceremonies May 27th Oise-Aisne at 3pm

Memorial Day Ceremonies Epinal May 27th at 10:30am 

For more information, contact: [email protected] or [email protected]

On April 5, we honored the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King on the 50th anniversary of his assassination. The event was held in the sanctuary of the American Church in Paris where Dr. King himself spoke in October of 1965, and the Church was full. The program was organized by co-Chair of the Diversity Caucus, Reed Kennedy, and included a welcome from church clergy, excerpts from Martin Luther King's writings. music, and speeches as well as a panel discussion on the life and legacy of the civil rights icon. A key moment featured author Jake Lamar reading the moving Letter From Birmingham City Jail from the same pulpit where Dr. King spoke.

For those of you who could not make it to the event, here are links for few pictures (photo credit: Richard Allen) as well as athe livestream video .

Donald Trump was elected on the promise to change the face of American politics and bring power back to the people. The nation is today divided and more polarized than ever before. While looking back on 2017, what can we predict for American politics in 2018?   Hall Gardner, Christopher Dickey, Anne Deysine and Joe Smallhoover examined these issues on  January 22 at the American University of Paris.  You can watch the informative discussion of this memorable evening HERE.

Hundreds of people turned up at Place du Trocadero in the rain that had little effect on the happy, spirited, diverse crowd. There were speakers, witty creative signs, a sea of pussy hats, lots of press and many groups: Indivisibles, Our Revolution, Women’s March-Paris, Page-Paris, and more. Folks gathered to support women, Dreamers, Democrats, immigrants, people of color, transgender people, abortion rights and real news – in addition to fighting Trump and his entire agenda.

It felt good to know that the movement didn’t end last year, and au contraire, seems to be picking up more steam.

If you missed the exciting rally, you can watch it here 

France Our famously high-rated and humane French health care system could serve as a model for a country like the USA. While it is not completely single payer, it is a universal system that gives government control over its parts, notably private insurance and drug costs that kick in in addition to government guarantees. The Obama system was a great beginning toward this goal, one that could be streamlined and simplified to hold down administrative costs and maintain high quality care. We have to fight to keep it.

A new generation of Democratic leaders is rising to the fore within Democrats Abroad France!  Many thanks go to Jonathon Holler and Amy Levy-Dutailly who led Young Democrats Abroad France into the formation of a bonafide Youth Caucus over the past two years.  On April 29th at Les Marquises Bar in Paris a new steering committee of young, committed activists was elected.  Congratulations All for stepping up to the plate under the leadership of Co-Chairs, Caitlin Waters and Alex Rehbinder. And best wishes to Jonathon (recently elected to the Democrats Abroad France Executive Committee as Vice-Chair - our youngest ever) and Amy who has gone on to lead the International DA Youth Caucus. Here are the names of the new team:

It’s been a big week for the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in Washington DC.

Rep Maloney introduces Same Country Exception Bill

On Tuesday April 24, 2017 Americans Abroad Caucus[i] Chair Rep Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced HR2136, the Overseas Americans Financial Access Act (OAFAA) in the House of Representatives.  The bill embodies our FACTA reform recommendation, the Same Country Safe Harbor Exemption from FATCA reporting for Americans abroad.   '

Congresswoman Maloney’s House speech introducing the bill is here.  

This reform has the support of our non-partisan colleague organisations representing Americans abroad, as well as the National Taxpayer Advocate. We plan on supporting the bill strongly in our Congressional Door Knock next month.  We will also publish an information pack for the Global Action Team to share with Country Committees and Local Chapters interested in gathering members to write letters or postcards to Representatives seeking their sponsorship of the bill.

House Holds Hearings on FATCA Consequences 

The OAFAA bill was introduced ahead of hearings held Wednesday April 25th by the Government Operations Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee “Reviewing the Unintended Consequences of the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act”.  Democrats Abroad, working through legislative aides on Rep Maloney’s staff, has been trying since the hearing was scheduled to get a witness on the list to testify.  As Republicans control the Committee (and all Congressional Committees) it was not surprising that we were not successful.  Nevertheless Democrats Abroad made a submissionto the Subcommittee and we expect it will be published with the rest of the hearing submissions in due course.

Of course a written statement is not as powerful as speaking directly to the Committee in the hearing.  Had we testified, Democrats Abroad would have reiterated our support for a switch to Residency-based Taxation.  Failing that, we support the Safe Harbor exemption from FATCA reporting for Americans abroad.

Our scepticism about this hearing has always run high.  Government Operations Subcommittee Chair Mark Meadows (R-NC) introduced a FATCA Repeal bill in the House of Representatives last month.  The same bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who testified at the hearing as a witness.  Senator Paul, as you may know, was a plaintiff, now an appellant, in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of FATCA.  The rest of the witnesses bar one were also strident FATCA opponents, including famed Citizens United lawyer Jim Bopp who represents Republicans Overseas. 

The one witness who spoke in support of FATCA is a retired legislative aide.  She worked for retired Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) and is deemed to be the architect of FATCA.  She spoke strongly of the law’s importance as a critical deterrent to tax evasion – and not in favour of the Safe Harbor. 

Fortunately Democratic members of the Subcommittee members Rep Maloney and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-District of Columbia) spoke strongly in support of the Safe Harbor as a mechanism for both relieving the FATCA burden and maintaining the law’s original intent to discourage and apprehend tax evaders.

By the end of the hearing Chairman Meadows indicated he is open to compromise in developing a FATCA remedy for Americans abroad.  That may stretch credulity given Meadows’ lead sponsorship on the House bill to repeal FATCA, but we will are taking his comments at face value.  He asked the witnesses to get back to the Subcommittee with three recommendations to modify FATCA.  Democrats Abroad will also make a submission providing recommendations.  And we will continue to monitor the Government Operations Subcommittee and Chairman Meadows, looking for opportunities to work with them and others in developing a remedy that both addresses the problems FATCA is causing for ordinary, hard-working Americans abroad and protects its ability to fight financial crimes that underwrite terrorism and facilitate trafficking in drugs, arms and humans, as well as fight tax evasion. 

Thanks to Katie Solon and Joe Smallhoover 

Many thanks to International Chair Katie Solon and DA France Chair Joe Smallhoover for attending the hearing on Democrats Abroad’s behalf.  They had valuable discussions on the edges and in the breaks of the hearing with FATCA reform allies and opponents, as our FATCA advocacy work clearly will go on.  Katie and Joe also met Wednesday with officials at Treasury who have carriage of FATCA.  

Our engagement with regulators and legislators about FATCA is in its 6^th year.  We are grateful to all those who have contributed to this important advocacy work over that time. 

Please contact us at any time with questions or comments.   

Respectfully submitted,

FBAR/FATCA Task Force

Carmelan Polce, Chair (Singapore)

DeeDee Gierow (Sweden)

Michael Ramos (Australia)

Joe Smallhoover (France)

Orlando Vidal, Ex Officio (UAE) 

Links herein to documents published by Democrats Abroad are posted on the Democrats Abroad wiki.  They should not require a log in but please contact Carmelan if you are having trouble accessing them.

To the ExPat community, FBAR and FATCA legislation matters.  Democrats Abroad has long been doing something about it.  We've been lobbying for the Safe Country (or Safe Harbor) Exemption for years--a change in the legislation's implementation that, while not perfect, could provide access to banking facilities to millions of overseas Americans who currently have little or no such access. The Republican National Committee (RNC) put FATCA repeal in its 2016 platform, but where does this stand today?  To learn more about the Democratic position,  Democrats Abroad FATCA/FBAR Task Force prepared an information paper and update on where the legislation stands.  Read about it HERE