Katha v Yoshie

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Nov 6 13:34:51 PST 2000


[Well, Doug, what's this subject line!]

Hi Katha:


>> It is true that a health exception is not a trivial detail, for once
>> a health exception is allowed, it can be _very broadly_ interpreted,
>> so much so that the "ban" may come to naught.
>>
>> That said, elections are only a minuscule part of politics, and we
>> need to win in the court of public opinions & (more importantly)
>> mobilizations; otherwise, _access_ to abortion _will_ continue to
>> erode, regardless of whoever will be in the White House. I wish that
>> the NARAL, etc. had challenged Nader & the Green Party & extracted a
>> promise that they _will_ mobilize manpower on this issue, instead of
>> trying to scare potential Nader/Green supporters into voting for Gore.
>>
>> Yoshie
>
>HI Yoshie --I think you're being a little naive here. Promises like that
>are worth nothing in politics.

I submit that my argument ain't as naive as trusting the Dems with feminist issues!


>Sure the Greens would promise to get
>involved in fighting to keep abortion legal in a bush Admin, after all
>they are supposed to be pro-choice! but how much muscle would, or even
>could they give?. The Greens are very small and weak. Nader brought a
>lot more to them than vice versa (how much attention do you think they'd
>have gotten if Winona Laduke was the candidate, instead of someone
>already hugely famous?). I went to a Green Rally here in Manhattan
>Saturday -- maybe 100 people tops,mostly elderly hippies. You could
>"mobilize" them all in a single diner. NARAL plays single-issue politics
>in the actually existing electoral political world. To risk electing
>Bush, in return for the promise of Green help on abortion if bush makes
>it harder to get, is not a good bargain from their point of view (or
>mine either).

Ah, Katha, whatever has happened to the idea of _changing_ the actually existing world, which used to be _the_ feminist thing to do!

Anyhow, I've begun to think that NARAL may be more a problem than a solution _even_ when we confine our perspective to the single issue: abortion and abortion only. As of now, the New Democrats are saying that the ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions is just fine as long as a health exception is attached to it. If NARAL and other feminists say that on this compromised basis we should support the Democrats, to the exclusion of anyone to the left of them, what prevents the Dems from going _further_ to the right on abortion, the next time another aspect of the right to abortion gets attacked by right-wing propaganda? This strategy of choosing the lesser of two evils has & will further sacrifice poor women's, rural women's, & young women's right to abortion while barely protecting well-off, well-educated urban adult women's right to it. This approach, in my opinion, is not quite feminist, _if_ feminism means _more_ than the equality of men and women _of the same class, with comparable education, etc._ In my opinion, feminism needs to speak for all women, not just well-off, well-educated urban adult women.


>Well, soon it will all be over.

No, actually, the problem of lesser-of-two-evilism is not confined to election times, in that the same inability or unwillingness to take risks in order to change the world constrains everyday politics between elections as well. As many noted, one of the main reasons -- besides racism -- why AFDC got abolished was that there were less oppositions to the abolition from liberals and leftists -- feminists, trade unionists, etc. -- than one might have expected, _because_ it was a Democrat in the White House (and many in Congress as well) saying that we must end "welfare as we know it," "the era of the Big Government is over," etc.

I don't think of Nader & the Greens as the solution at all (and in fact, in some ways, they may pose even a _danger_, especially on the foreign policy front); but I think they might help some Americans -- perhaps many Americans -- initiate _divorce_ from the Democratic Party. Votes for Nader may be a Declaration of Independence of sorts (and if so, it's a much overdue declaration!).

Lastly, the Greens are indeed a small force now, but they _can_ become bigger. But if liberal & leftist folks kept saying that they wouldn't work with them because they were now small, well, then, they would _never_ become bigger! The same goes for any social movement -- at the beginning, any movement is minuscule. We shouldn't issue a self-fulfilling prophesy ("it's a tiny movement, so I won't join, and I _discourage_ everyone from joining" & later "see, it ain't growing, it's still tiny, I told you so!") that would doom any movement.

Yoshie



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