some thoughts on the day before the biggest election of our time

Three years ago tomorrow, I went to my midwives’ office for my 35 week maternity wellness appointment only to find that my blood pressure was 260 over 210, and that I had a serious case of preeclampsia.

I was put on this horrid drug – the Mag drip (really just IV Epsom Salts that turned me into a lump of bloated pregnant person – I couldn’t even lift my arms) so that I wouldn’t seize and, well, die. They told me I was not going to leave the hospital without my baby because childbirth is the only cure.

And, even still, as they were wheeling me into my hospital room from the ambulance. I said, “Wait! What’s the date?” Someone said, “Novemeber 4th.”

“I can’t have my baby on November 4th!” I exclaimed. “George Bush was elected on Novemeber 4th!” Seriously, that was my thought in the middle of my life or death situation.  The wounds from the 2004 election were still painful and oozing. And, luckily, she wasn’t born that day. I had Sophie two days later on November 6th.

But, now I’ve been thinking. There’s an outstanding chance that if I had delivered my baby girl on the 4th, I could have said from tomorrow onto forever, that, “Barack Obama was elected on November 4th!” And that would have been an incredible day for a birthday. Just incredible.

Some other random thoughts:

1. Once the election ends, will I still feel the need to ask (directly or indirectly) who people I connect with online and in person voted for? Up to this point, I have been because I want them to know up front what they’ll get in my communications and where I stand…and I don’t want any surprises from them. Or I want to be ready for the conversation.

Also, I saw that Starbucks’ ad – and we can’t only care now. Change will only happen if we stay this engaged – so won’t it be important for me to know who I’m talking to and engage them in further discussion or find ways to work together to make good things happen?

2. What are we going to talk about after the election? And the answer really brings me back to the point above. We need to keep talking about change, we need to stay engaged on the ground and in our communities. We need to ‘act like grownups’ and do our part to make this country and world better. This election will be won in huge part because of the phone calls, the blogs, the conversations, the door to door – the grassroots, community-based work that we have all done.

When this election is over, we will keep working, we’ll pay attention. We won’t just let government do whatever they want. We’ve tried that, going about our daily lives and figuring it was okay because we live in a democracy, and it didn’t work. Now, we’ll have a voice, we’ll use it and we’ll be heard.

Please VOTE!!! Every single vote counts. And, if you have neighbors that might need help going to the polls, please take them with you…we can only make this happen if we work together.

Filed under Politics | Tags: 2004 election, 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, John McCain, Politics | Comments (6)

communication on the internet: making it work

Yesterday, some of the neighborhood kids were playing at our house. One little girl’s family hails from the Caribbean, her name is Elie and she’s in the 1st grade. She was happily exploring our play kitchen, when my daughter (2) tossed her shoes off the couch without looking and one of them ricocheted off of Elie’s arm.

Sophie said she was sorry, and then my son, Jack (also 2), ambled over and started asking Elie if she was all right. But his two year-old language skills haven’t really mastered the evasive ‘R’ sound, so it sounded like this, “Are you all wite?’ To which Elie replied matter-of-factly, “No, I’m brown.”

I love that our children are not nearly as fazed by color as older generations – it is truly heartening and shows that we are, in fact, moving forward (that along with the first African-American presidential nominee!)

But the scenario, after I stopped laughing, made me think about the miscommunications that happen online via email, blogs or social media – when we aren’t necessarily missing the ‘R’ sound, but we are all so culturally different and may be missing social skills or losing the natural politeness inherent in face-to-face interactions because we’re shielded by the computer screen.

And in these political times, I can’t help but think of all of this and not relate it to Sarah Palin, John McCain and their campaign slinging hate towards Barack Obama; hiding not behind the internet, but rather behind the shady curtain of the Right flank that surrounds them.

For us interneters, here’s my list on how to avoid miscommunications online (and off):

1. If you are smiling, laughing, being sarcastic, etc. within your message, put a symbol or actually include your written intention. Don’t expect people to guess.
2. As the receiver, ASK if you are confused. Just the other day someone sent me a message that sounded rather mean, so I asked. She was glad I did and we had a great exchange. (She wasn’t mad at all)
3. Know your audience.
4. Always be nice. I would never ask you to compromise your passion, your beliefs and your right to sing them bravely out loud – but, you can never go wrong with kindness and respect (it will probably get you even farther).

Let’s end with this: Speak clearly and carry an open mind, a kind heart & endless ideas for progress.

Have a great weekend, people! I’ll be in Vermont in a house with…(cue scary music)…DIAL-UP (the horror, the horror).

Filed under Blogging, How To, Politics, Social Media | Tags: african-american, Barack Obama, email communication, John McCain, online communication, online etiquette, social media | Comments (8)

Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin

I met Gloria Steinem in a book when I was 17. I met her in person, and heard her speak, when I was 28. Both of these experiences were life-changing to me both as a woman and as a writer. She is my heroine, my role model. As the foremost leader of the U.S. women’s movement, her educated, experienced and brilliant voice is prized here on this blog. So, take it away, Gloria…(I’m sorry it took me so long to get you up here.)

Palin: Wrong Woman, Wrong Message

By Gloria Steinem, originally posted in the LA Times, September 4, 2008

Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.

But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town.

She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.

Filed under Politics | Tags: 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Gloria Steinem, Joe Biden, John McCain, Sarah Palin | Comments (4)

working mothers: in light of Sarah Palin

No, I have not lost my mind or closed my business to become a political pundit. But the political goings on are so infuriating at the moment…and being a working mom is part of who I am on this blog…and, I fall into this description of current events so perfectly:

“It’s the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition,” as Jodi Kantor and Rachel Swarns put it so memorably in today’s New York Times, “But this time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending her, while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.” Barclay Palmer

I’m a liberal Democrat, a card-carrying member of the feminist party…and a working mother that is worried Sarah Palin is taking on too much. Of course, I think that women should be able to work outside of the home (as I do), but I also think that mothers are critical to the development of their children – and she doesn’t just want to ‘work outside the home’ – no one can claim that the role of VP compares to a 9-5 or even an 8-6.

And, I hear myself and understand that it could sound sexist – that I expect this mom to stay home and raise her children, that I might not have the same expectation if it were Todd Palin. But, here’s the thing (or 4):

1. She is running as a MOM. George Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did not run as DADS. They didn’t talk about how they were ‘hockey dads’ and ‘PTA dads’ – these ‘jobs’ were not listed as crucial items on their resumes, pertinent to their readiness for the job. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is – in fact, it’s pretty much all that she has. Her mother of 5 status is flaunted like a badge of honor – it’s critical to who she is and maintained as critical to her identity and experience.

But, if she gets this job, she will be none of those things – she’ll be either absent as a mother, or absent as a VP, possibly as President. And from what she’s told us, she doesn’t even know what the job entails, so I’d hope she’d be around learning how to govern.

2. I believe that moms are special. Our bonds to our children are extraordinary – our closeness is essential. Father’s are special too – I’m not trying to put them down. But, there’s something that women possess, inherently, that is different. It’s one of the things that make women women, that makes me proud to be one. As you can see, it’s indescribable, but it’s there. I believe that men and women are different – that doesn’t make them unequal.

3. I know that being a hands on mom isn’t always possible – but this is a choice that Sarah Palin is making. She isn’t, for example, single and poor and needing to work 2 jobs to feed her family. Instead, she is looking at a job that doesn’t have set hours, that doesn’t have vacation time built in, where you can’t really bring your baby to work. She isn’t just wanting to be a working mom. She wants to be a working mom whose job is the Vice President of the United States! And, if old McCain kicks it, the whole story gets worse – either way, she’ll work until midnight and need to be in the office at 6am – sometimes she’ll be up all night. The world doesn’t click off at 5.

Also, I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that a woman and/or a mother can not be a world leader – I believe we can, wholeheartedly. But, I think that it makes sense for said woman to be at a specific place in her life – or rather to not be at a specific place in her life…like a mother of young children. Hilary’s daughter is grown, and even when the Clinton’s were in the White House, Chelsea was not a young child, much less an infant.

Not to mention this: it isn’t as easy as going to work and leaving your children somewhere – you need to find the right people, that you trust to raise your children.

4. My last point is harsh, but I’m going to say it anyway. She did this ‘incredible thing’ by birthing her Downs Syndrome child, a child with intense special needs. But isn’t part of that choice about taking responsibility for and being with the child? How will she have time to do this? I work full-time and my children do not have special needs, and I still don’t feel like I have enough time with them (and the guilt pounds on my heart every day…and I’m lucky that their other parent is with them when I’m not).

Before I had kids, I may have had a bit of a different attitude, or at least it wouldn’t have been quite as easy for me to be against her working as VP and having a family (maybe) – but now I have 2 kids and I work (a lot) and I know how it is…

Of course, this is all side-tracking us from the fact that this woman has no experience, that an administrator had to be hired to run the town (5,000 pop.) she was mayor of because she had no idea how to do the job, that she has fired or ruined anyone that has fought against her, that she is working for Alaska’s secession from the United States and that she has no experience that could prepare her to work with world leaders. (To read more, go here.)

I’m going to spend the next 9 weeks working very hard to get Barack Obama elected…and I’m starting by supporting Move On a fantastic organization working to energize and educate young voters. Read more about this citizens group and make a donation here. I just did because I will do everything I can to make a difference in this election.

Filed under News | Tags: Barack Obama, copywriting, Joe Biden, John McCain, Julie Roads, presidential election, Sarah Palin, working mothers, Writing Roads | Comments (14)

see what i mean? with web 2.0, anyone can spread a message

So, when I wrote that post yesterday about presidents (past and future) and Web 2.0, I typed and then deleted a line about the fact that even Paris Hilton and her mom, who denounced McCain’s ad comparing Obama to her daughter – that even they could have their voices heard by the masses because of Web 2.0. And, then Paris goes ahead and does this:

 Not only is it well-done and cheeky as hell, it has also been syndicated and spread across the internet and media world.  And, it didn’t have to be Paris. Anyone could have dressed up as Paris, produced the same video and it would have taken off.

Advice for the day: go video. Some people, I’m not mentioning any names, are..well…lackadaisical and would rather watch than read. If you can add humor, do it. Go for ‘man bites dog’…if you know what I mean.

Sidenote: I just read a wonderful article in the NY Times that supported many of the points I made yesterday…maybe I should turn this into a political blog? Naahhhhhh….

Tomorrow we’ll look at a real person, not Paris, who makes video work for their business…

Filed under Marketing, News | Tags: Barack Obama, blog, Blogging, copywriting, John McCain, Julie Roads, marketing writer, online video, Paris Hilton, presidential ad campaign, Social Media, Writing Roads | Comment (1)