November 4, 2000 MISPLACED ENERGIES Statement by Laura Nader http://www.votenader.com/issues/misplaced_energies.html
Why are the feminists sitting at the feet of Al Gore? What has he done for them? Why are these frightened feminists attacking Ralph Nader?
How has it come to be that a woman’s right to choose is equated with the women’s movement? How can intelligent women fall for an obvious and manipulating scare tactic? What should they be doing?
Eight years of Clinton/Gore brought us welfare reform that is bad for poor women, especially poor moms. It took them seven-and-a-half years to bring us RU486. In eight years, their justice department has not provided adequate protection and law enforcement for abortion clinics and has not provided federal aid adequate to the needs for women’s reproductive health.
In 1969, Nixon nominated two men to the Supreme Court (Hanesworth and Carswell). They were not confirmed because Nader and civil rights lawyers beat their nomination. The third nominee from Nixon was Justice Blackmun; he wrote Roe v. Wade. Nader also fought against the nominations of Bork, Scalia and later Thomas. What did the Democrats, including Gore, do? They voted for Scalia. Thomas was confirmed under a Democratically controlled Senate. Eleven Democrats voted for Thomas. The Democrats have no credibility on the Supreme Court. Nader has said time and time again that it is a woman’s right to choose, a statement that has moved Gore from prolife and prochoice and Bush to state that Roe v. Wade is not going to change unless a lot of Americans change their minds on abortion.
What is tragic is that a vision of the women’s movement as a social movement, so well articulated in the 19th Century women’s movement, has come down to one issue – a woman’s right to have an abortion. We need to recapture that broader vision, which would include pesticides in mother’s breast milk and larger environmental issues, nuclear war and the peace movement that was fueled by women’s energies, reproductive rights and health care more generally, real welfare reform, housing, schools not jails, and social security.
That some intelligent feminists have fallen for the Gore people’s scare tactics could happen to any of us if we get trapped in a diminished reality. For starters, Gloria Steinem and her colleagues might walk around the city at dusk and talk to homeless and desperate women. We can be comfortable without being complacent.
What women like Steinem might be doing if their energies were not so misplaced is helping progressive Democrats to recapture the Congress. There are several close races in Washington State, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Minnesota. If they knew how to add, they might also use their influence on young women. The young will vote for Nader, and if not Nader, more will go to Bush than Gore. What they are teaching younger women is not leadership, but fear and hysteria.
Laura Nader is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, a specialist in Controlling Processes.