The Road to Reparations

In the process of getting to know the Green Party, sooner or later you realize that we favor African Americans to the point of calling for reparations for over 200 years of discrimination. This is ultimately what it will take to heal race relations in our country, but rather than diving headfirst into what would quickly become a major bone of contention, we should practice the art of the possible by going for a series of small wins. Black women have it particularly hard, as detailed in a report put out this week by The National Domestic Workers Alliance. One of their priority recommendations is:

Policymakers and workforce development leaders should adopt

Photo by Jake Kitchener

strategies to promote gender and racial/ethnic equity in access to higher-paid career training opportunities. Workforce development programs that recruit and train Black women in specific skills can help them gain access to career ladders and upward mobility and can reduce their concentration in lower-paying jobs.

The Green Party prioritizes women's rights and racial equality in their platform section dealing with Civil Rights and Equal Rights. It also puts an emphasis on poor mothers of all races, though Black mothers are more than twice as likely to be under the poverty line than White mothers.

The Green Party supports real reforms to end poverty and return dignity and opportunity to all mothers. We call for implementing innovative programs that work with the particular and special needs of motherhood. 

and, under Livable Income, the platform calls for helping all impoverished citizens:

Workforce development programs must aim at moving people out of poverty.

It is very hard to accept one's own diminution while watching another group's ascension. Such acceptance disappoints both our expectancy and sense of equity. By taking small steps, such as reducing poverty among the most downtrodden by enabling them to become more employable, we can temper the resentment felt by both sides. At the same time, we must continue to press for many more measures such as the recommendations in the NDWA report and the 2014 Black Women in the United States report in order to make it over the high bar of granting reparations, thus upholding our values pertaining to social justice, gender equality, and diversity.

Days of Shame

Back when Bill Clinton was scrambling to fend off impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair, it bothered me that Hillary stood by him rather than walk out like many red-blooded American women would have. Her priority was her future political career, i.e. to be elected President.

Now we are bringing in a new President with a much more sordid history, whose third wife cannot but be painfully aware of her husband's waywardness, but appears to care more for her trophy wife status than for her spouse's devotion. Melania should stand up and prove what she's made of by taking her horny husband to divorce court. Aside from being free to stay with her spoiled, rich, brat of a son in New York, she would be doing us all a favor. TRump would be so enmeshed in divorce proceedings and fighting sexual harassment complaints that his staff and the VP could tend to governmental matters while tRump's job would be to sign edicts whenever required. Oh, and tweet, of course.

At least dealing with all of his dirty laundry will give the President something to do, since he will not be able to control Congress or restore his waning popularity among the people. Whenever the GOP leadership feels that the tyrannical tRump is trying to actually control anything of importance and is no longer toeing the line, they will cooperate in impeaching him in order to bring in one of their own kind - former Congressman Mike Pence. Congress will have plenty of high crimes and misdemeanors on which to base its case.

When my wife and I happened to be traveling home today from Washington, D.C. and were stopped in order to allow safe passage of the President-elect's MASSIVE motorcade speeding toward town on the far side of the widely divided Suitland Parkway, among the negative emotions that lingered from the experience was a sense of shame to be an American.  Knowing what a thug sat behind the blackened backseat windows of one of the many armored vehicles, making such an intimidating intrusion on mere passersby, and realizing that he was given that privilege by millions of fellow Americans, left me in despair and shame.

Individually, I am but a reed in the wind, but with hundreds of thousands of others on Inauguration Day making known their objections to this abomination of the Presidency, at least we can have the pleasure of shaming him in return. Though my major objection is to tRump's climate denial, the sexual misconduct allegations alone would have kept me from voting for him. TRump's misogyny is so objectionable to women, in particular, that the day after the inauguration, hundreds of thousands of Gloria Allred avatars are going to take him to task for it. I've offered to push my wife, Bonnie, in her wheelchair to join in, (though I will pass on the pussyhat, thank-you).

Norfolk photographer Deb Markham - Women's March demonstrator