The Coming Police State

Years back, my daughters and I took a quick trip to New York to soak up urban life, shop, and visit a broadway show.  On the way north, we were pulled over by a Pennsylvania State Police officer.  It was just one of a series of interesting experiences I witnessed while traveling with two attractive, college co-eds.

It was an upsetting stop.  We were in traffic in the pouring rain on the two-lane, curvy Pennsylvania Turnpike.  The officer put on his lights while I was in the passing lane - doing the speed limit.  I'd seen the state car because it had been behind us for quite some time.  In fact, it had at first passed us and then dropped back and followed us.

To pull over, I had to negotiate crossing a lane and find a safe spot on a narrow shoulder up against a guardrail overlooking a precipitous drop in the Alleghenies.

It was kind of scary.

Next, the police officer comes to the window and explains that I did not use a turn signal when changing lanes and that this was a dangerous practice.  Really?  I asked.  More dangerous than pulling to the side of a narrow, teeming highway in the pouring rain?

He then changed the subject and began to chat-up my daughter (remarking, oddly, about a brightly colored bird on the shoulder) who was sitting in the passenger seat fuming.  It was clear the stop was intended as an opportunity to talk with the young women in the car.

I've thought about this incident all week in light of the recent Supreme Court decision to allow strip searches for even minor traffic violations.  I did talk back to the officer, politely I think, who was pleasant enough in spite of his lack of good sense.  There were no charges.  He wished us a good day.

I've thought of this all week because of the way the incident could have ended if this week's ruling had been the law of the land.  

I've thought of it all week because I have seen already how quickly a modern society can become a suppressive regime.  (Read the graphic novel Persepolis to find out what happened almost overnight to the women of Iran.)

The Supreme Court Justices' ruling was activist in the extreme since it is goes even further than standards set by the American Correctional Association, the U.S. Marshals, and ten states' existing laws against unnecessary strip-search.

I do not like what is happening in this country. 

A minority seems to be reigning in everyone's freedoms in the name of who-knows-what. And the rights of women and minorities seem to be at the top of the list.  Michigan has rescinded  majority-black municipalities' rights to democracy.  Arizona has banned books and courses of study.  Wisconsin has reduced women's health care rights.  And my own state of Virginia is forcing women to receive and pay for medically unnecessary ultrasounds when requesting their legally protected right to an abortion.

Sadly, there is more.  Too much to list here.  Probably the worst is the concerted effort of the Republican lead legislatures to disenfranchise as many voters as possible.   These recently passed laws do not reflect the wishes of the majority but have been churned by the well financed group ALEC.  I can only think that most of the citizenry--if they were aware--would be alarmed by the recent strip-search ruling.

This is scary.

Think about your daughters.

Mother's Day

That's mom on the right.  She taught third grade for seventeen years.  My grandmother, on the left, was a kindergarten teacher.  Ed Policy of the time meant Grammy had to stop work when she married.  Mom had to leave her first teaching job when she became pregnant with my older brother in 1950.  She only returned to the classroom after getting five children launched in school.
That was 1970 and lots had happened to women between mom's first teaching job and the next.
Some things about the world of work for women have changed a great deal since this photo was taken.  For one, most mothers work now.  Often out of necessity if not out of a desire to lead purposeful lives beyond the rearing of children.

But here are things that have not changed since I became a working mother in 1979:

• Women are still paid less than men for equal work.
• Women still find it extremely difficult to find reliable day care.
• Women and children still comprise the majority of those in poverty.
• A woman's ability to save and earn for retirement are often reduced because of time out of the workforce while rearing children.

However, women are the warp and woof of the fabric that holds our nation together, still largely responsible for raising and nurturing the generations to come.  Women comprise 90% of registered nurses and 80% of elementary and middle school teachers.  Women still bear the burden of raising the children and maintaining the household even if both partners in a marriage work.

Whether or not you feel women who work is a good idea, the fact remains that those who do not work risk facing a life of poverty in their old age.  Those who earn less in their productive years have less to rely on as they age.  And those who have given over their adult professional lives to working with children are facing the loss of pensions and earnings they anticipated as a safety net in the last years of their lives.

Love your mother. Encourage national policies that reflect your moral principles: Ensure a life of dignity and safety for women and children.

Warring on Women

I've read The Handmaid's Tale.

Maybe that's my problem--an English teacher who's thought too much about how language is manipulated in 1984 or how women were stripped of their power in the 1985 dystopian novel.  In one day of coordinated mass firings, coinciding with ATM cards that suddenly showed a zero balance, Margaret Atwood's women lost all of their freedoms.  (ATM cards did not even exist when Atwood wrote her novel.)

It can happen fast, apparently, when the leaders decide to disenfranchise a whole group.  The Iranian revolution of 1979 flipped a monarchy to a theocracy in just months.  Protests that began in August 1978 ended with the Ayatollah Khomeni in charge - and modern women forced into burkhas and out of work--by December of 1979.

The formula for disenfranchisement is simple: take away jobs and access to power through economic security, and hand all that power and access over to a ruling class.  Once the power is shifted and discrimination becomes law, as happened to the Iranian Constitution, returning to levels of equality is an uphill battle by a greatly weakened constituency.  The Ayatollah is long gone, but the laws remain.  In 1998, the parliament rejected a proposal for equal inheritance rights for women. A woman is only entitled to half that of a man.  No indication of changing back to more equal status for women.

So maybe I'm a little paranoid when I read about:

• Outlawing collective bargaining for unions serving mostly women - the teacher's unions.
• Zeroing out funding for Planned Parenthood that provides health care to women exclusively.
• Reducing funding to WIC by as much as 10% - a program that provides funding for healthy food options for women and infants.
• Cuts to literacy programs for children like RIF that have been proven to boost literacy for the poorest children.

Why are women and children being targeted for cuts?

Let's face it: poverty is primarily a woman's issue since women with children comprise the majority of the poor. National arguments are centering the blame on victims and removing the few supports that get children and their mothers through the first year's of life.  Simultaneously, the women who rear those children are facing cuts to their livelihood, placing more children at risk and ensuring a divided nation.

This is more than a woman's issue.  This is a "what kind of future can we look forward to?" if over half our population is stripped of the ability to improve their lives.

Who benefits?