Letter from the Editor
We have less than one month until Election Day! Have you requested your ballot yet, and returned it? Depending on the state you’re in, if you haven’t done so, you still have time, so do it now at votefromabroad.org! Do you have questions about the best way to return your ballot? Get your questions answered at our live, one-to-one voter assistance.
If you’ve already voted, you’re probably eager and waiting for the election cycle to be over. It’s been a long time coming, and we are probably all experiencing a little election fatigue. But we’re also fiercely hoping that the Democrats can create a #BlueWave this year, not only hopefully capturing the presidency, but also the House and Senate. Now is the time for hope.
The Global Women’s Caucus keeps going, producing a lot of great content to keep everyone informed and up-to-date. In this issue, we provide info about upcoming events, have several articles that discuss the historic nomination of Senator Kamala Harris for Vice President, continue to provide info about Democratic women candidates, and provide several fascinating essays about our political world today.
We hope that you enjoy this edition!
Stacey Kruckel
WOMEN'S CAUCUS EVENTS
Wednesday, October 14, 2020 at 07:00pm CET: Tales of Humanity and Heroism from Trump’s Manufactured Border Crisis
Award-winning U.S. expatriate author, human rights witness, and migration scholar, Sarah Towle, joins us to illustrate how Trump & Co’s immigration agenda includes much more than family separations and a boondoggle border wall. From Chiquita Bananas to ”kids in cages” to $36K per person deportations, Sarah weaves together the many strands of their ongoing "War on Immigrants" to reveal the crimes against humanity now being committed in our names and with our tax dollars. RSVP here.
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Dec. 6, 2020, 2 p.m. CET: Books Abroad Reads Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste.”
The Global Women's Caucus feminist reading group is pleased to announce its next pick, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson.
At the end of a transformative year in the struggle for racial equality, this discussion will engage participants who are looking to expand their awareness of how racism shapes American systems and the world at large, including individual lives.
Isabel Wilkerson is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer of The Warmth of Other Suns.
In “Caste”, she uses "an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people to show how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings."
Thanks to all who joined our discussion of "Good and Mad." We hope this discussion can go even deeper! We look forward to seeing you there!
This is an online event. Please RSVP here
ABOUT KAMALA HARRIS: A HISTORIC VP NOMINEE
Senator Kamala Harris Delivers at VP Debate
By Samantha Borzi-Hedges
The Vice Presidential Debate came in the midst of a two-week news cycle that contained two years’ worth of news. President Trump had coronavirus, potentially contracted at Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination event, after downplaying the virus for months and leaving 210,000 Americans to die and denying a new round of economic stimulus. With these events swirling, Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence took the stage with a plexiglass barrier between them--a visual reminder that COVID-19 spreads across party, state, and economic lines.
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Kamala Harris Looks Like America
By Sabrina Jacobs
The last four years have seemed to tarnish the American dream, replacing hope with fear, repudiating our history of growing stronger and better through diversity. Kamala Harris’s life is a reminder that American dreams live, born of hope, focus and hard work.
Kamala is the biracial daughter of two migrants—a father who came to the San Francisco Bay Area from Jamaica to study economics, and a mother who arrived there from India, age 19, to follow her dream of curing cancer. As their daughter has noted, “they fell in love in that most American way—while marching together for justice in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.”
CANDIDATE ACTION TEAM AND POLITICAL NEWS
Candidate Information Team - Women to Win
By Kaitlynn Newcomb
This month the Candidate Information Team is proud to share the 2020 Women To Win Guide! Over the last six months the Candidate Information Team has interviewed 24 Democratic women running to flip Republican Congressional seats Blue or to keep their seat in a district they won in 2018. In this special guide, we are excited to remind the DA Global Women’s Caucus of each of the wonderful candidates the Candidate Information Team has worked with this election season. Read the full article to see your favorite ‘Women To Win’ once more so you can be sure to support and follow their campaigns by following links to the candidates’ WTW Profile and Candidate Forum, Candidate Site, Facebook, and Twitter. These women need our support and your vote could make the difference!
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In Support of Oct 17 Women’s March - Flood Social Media with the Women Running in 2020
By Carin Elam
The first Women's March was January 21, 2017. It was a protest against the election of President Donald Trump. As many as 5 million people marched in the U.S., and another 7 million marched in one of the 168 sister marches around the world.
This Saturday, October 17, 2020, Women's March Global is organizing another march. Again, the march will protest the Trump presidency, but this march is motivated by the Senate’s plan to begin confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court Justice to fill RBG's seat. Trump’s appointment of Amy Coney Barrett will shift the balance of the Court even further to the right, jeopardizing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Roe v. Wade, voting rights, marriage equality, and so much more.
So, on this one day, Saturday, October 17th, don’t get distracted by anything Trump says or does. Instead, we should spend the day supporting the women marching in the streets.
On Saturday, October 17th,
- Research a candidate in your state, congressional district or local election. Grab an image of that candidate and post it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and say something positive about the candidate’s campaign. Or,
- Visit the candidate’s webpage and forward that link to one of your social channels to spread the word and let your circle know who you support. Or,
- Find and share an article that explains the state of the race but focus on the issues or the women running for office.
We’ve formed a team for this virtual event. Click here to join.
Read more and look at examples of social media posts.
HONORING THE LEGACY OF RUTH BADER GINSBURG
RGB and Us
By Naomi Ages
RBG’s death was a national gut punch. It felt like a personal gut punch too - my family was finishing up our Rosh Hashanah dinner, celebrating the Jewish New Year as best we could, despite the strangeness of the broader year around us. Less than an hour before, we talked about our hopes for the coming year - and we all, from my 97-year-old grandfather to my 15-month-old nephew, agreed that getting rid of Trump, and taking back the Senate, was at the top of our lists. Then our phones buzzed with the news, and the room deflated.
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Replacing Ruth
By Salli Swartz
We all know that our hero, the feminist fighter RBG, is irreplaceable and we mourn her passing.
Her “replacement,” Amy Coney Barrett, will be confirmed unless the Democrats convince four Republican Senators to vote against her confirmation.
The numbers are not on our side. But let’s not give up hope. We can all write to our Senators to urge them to do the right thing and withhold confirmation until we have a new President. It’s the will of the people and should be the will of the Senate.
You can click here to see a template letter to be sent to Republican Senators and you can click here for the list of the U.S. Senators and their contact information.
Even if our letters don’t turn the tide, at least we will have the satisfaction of having tried and having made our views known.
We are after all the RE-SISTERED!!
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ERA Update: Do it for Ruth! Please Vote for Equality!
By Shari Temple
The Equal Rights Amendment is now in the courts and Senate. Although Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it in January, the US Archivist has still not added it to the U.S. Constitution. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has advised that the deadline set in the preamble of the amendment had a deadline for ratification, and that Virginia’s ratification of the amendment came too late.
Many legal scholars claim the deadline was not part of the amendment and is unconstitutional. There are two court cases – one at the Supreme Court and one in the DC courts. The U.S. House has passed a resolution to eliminate the deadline, but Mitch McConnell will not take it up in the Senate.
ESSAYS ABOUT OUR POLITICAL WORLD TODAY
Roe vs. Wade and Jobs
By Stayce Camparo
In the 1973 landmark decision, Roe v. Wade granted women more reproductive freedom, effectively shifting gender disparities towards a more equal footing while lending women more opportunities for education and career advancement. By allowing the termination of pregnancies under certain conditions by reason of a woman’s right to privacy, women acquired more sexual and reproductive autonomy, sparking a revolution in the ideology of a woman’s contribution to society.
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Keeping Up the Fight
By Chloe Grace Shin
We’re barely two weeks into October and have already heard enough to write a new verse of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. This year has had so much going on that it’s enough to fill more than the entire sad song. Every day it seems like we hear an overwhelming flood of more depressing news—Covid-19 cases rising, blatant white supremacy, Supreme Court fears and more. It’s hard to keep reacting to everything with the appropriate level of anger or outrage anymore—four years of listening to anything will numb you somewhat. But take a deep breath, and remember that all this isn’t normal. Luckily, we still live in a democracy, where the election of the people runs this government is your choice.
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The Dangers of Misinformation
By Stayce Camparo
Misinformation is ‘its own pandemic’ among parents, a recent New York Times article stated. In the final weeks leading up to the 2020 election, a sharp cultural divide can be seen between Trump and Biden supporters, predominantly in the area of whether these supporters adhere to scientifically backed information or not. Likening the spread of misinformation to pandemic-like proportions not only means that misinformation is rampant, but that it is also highly contagious.
Thank you for reading our GWC Newsletter, and as always, stay tuned to our Facebook page for the latest news.
In solidarity,
Global Women's Caucus