Nation anxiously awaits details from NOW conference, blogger fails to deliver
Carol Moseley Braun introduces newly-elected NOW officers: President-Elect Terry O’Neill, Executive Vice President Bonnie Grabenhofer, Action Vice President Erin Matson, and Membership Vice President Allendra Letsome. (Picture snagged from radiosrq)
I feel like a Soviet spy here, smuggling in a photograph snapped with a bow-tie camera. See all those grainy people up there whose faces you can’t make out? That’s Leonid Brezhnev Carol Moseley Braun introducing the new officers of NOW: Terry O’Neill (prez), Bonnie Grabenhofer, Erin Matson, and Allendra Letsome.
Moseley Braun was a big supporter of Terry O’Neill at the conference, as was the great Patricia Ireland. You know, Patricia Ireland, the president of NOW for 10 years before the Kimandellie show started? You know, Carol Moseley Braun, former presidential candidate and the only African-American woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate? You might just want to keep that in the back of your mind over the next few days. Or years, depending on how quickly the wounds heal.
I’m not at liberty to discuss anything that happened at the conference, since I wasn’t there myself. I’m the stay-at-home, sew-the-flag Betsy Ross type. Everybody was flying home today, but maybe once the dust settles some folks will tell their tales. Or not.
But I can tell you this: that Terry and her team are an absolute lifesaver for NOW. They will bring integrity back into the picture. Financial integrity, political integrity, feminist integrity.
16 Responses to “Nation anxiously awaits details from NOW conference, blogger fails to deliver”
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Egallantry says:
Snippets from the blog of Chicago NOW.
http://chicagonow.wordpress.co.....lenary-iv/
“Whoa. Major interruption. Two women have risen to accuse Kim Gandy of mishandling finances. Kim has responded by announcing that the protesters are intending to get revenge because they apparently have a website and / or radio show where they spoke out against NOW for not supporting Sara Palin.
Motion to move on with the speakers. SECOND.
End of drama….. for now….”
http://chicagonow.wordpress.co.....t-appears/
“The LA chapter allegedly had no president but she has now appeared! She is denying accusations of supporting Sara Palin… some other members who wanted to deny LA of a vote had reported that the LA chapter had supported Palin and had allegedly seen the (former / current) LA president take the stage with Palin twice!”
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:25 am EST -
sister of ye says:
Back when I was in college (when we chiseled term papers into rocks), the NOW people I met never seemed interested in recruiting me. I figured there was no reason to pay money to sign up as a member of a group where I’d be ignored.
Still, might be worth checking out now if I can work the dues into my budget.
Seeing Carol Moseley Braun in the pic reminds meof one thing has puzzled me since last year.
In 2004 the Democrats had a black candidate in the running. Odd how then there was no hue and cry for a historic candidacy. Odd how a mere four years ago it wasn’t yet the time to finally break the chain of all-white presidents.
Heck, Moseley Braun was even from Chicago.
Think it could have been, I don’t know, those scary lady parts?
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Violet says:
That reminds me, ye — may I call you ye? — of how Hillary-supporting feminists like Gloria Steinem were accused last year of not having supported Carol Moseley Braun. Except that Gloria Steinem was the chair of Moseley Braun’s campaign, NOW endorsed her, and Patricia Ireland was closely involved.
“Where were you when Carol Moseley Braun was running?” bleated the idiots. “What about Shirley Chisholm?” Nothing like the ignorance of Obamabots.
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Sameol says:
Kerry ran against both Moseley Braun and Sharpton without any pangs of conscience, yet he seemed to feel Clinton had a duty to step aside and not stand in the way of history.
It’s within the rules to have someone removed from a Democratic convention for publicly endorsing a Republican, but unless NOW has a policy against supporting female candidates I don’t see what the problem is there.
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No Blood for Hubris says:
I’ll vote for integrity. Any time.
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SYD says:
“but unless NOW has a policy against supporting female candidates I don’t see what the problem is there.”
Yes. Exactly what *is* the problem??
I’d like to hear a statement of acceptance, for those of us who support Palin. If I don’t hear it.. I won’t be joining any time soon.
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samanthasmom says:
There seems to a meme out there a la Viva La Feminista that Palin supporters won the election for Terry, but I think the Hillary supporters tipped the scales. I think that they were not fooled by the “NOW, but NOT NOW” slate. Personally, I would love Palin to join NOW. Maybe if invited, she will.
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david in iowa says:
Hello I am David and currently on the NOW national board. I was at the election and the conference. I have been in NOW for 27 years. It was a close election with both teams debating the issues and doing their best to keep the bull@@@@ at very low levels.
I openly supported the O’Neil team. Terry has a track record of success as the membership VP from 2001 through 2005. The Feminist-leadership team had only 5 weeks to put together a credible campaign and did just that. It was a well crafted message of taking NOW back into the streets and getting in peoples faces.
The fight for real equality won’t be won having lunch with one of our new friends at the Whitehouse. It will be a brutal street fight.
I was and am proud to stand with Terry and her entire team!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Egallantry says:
Dr. Socks
You’ve been quoted by Judy Berman of Salon:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broad.....index.html
“A blogger at Reclusive Leftist — who was overjoyed with Saturday’s results — agreed, denouncing Lyles as Gandy’s “hand-picked successor” and calling Gandy and Eleanor Smeal (past president of NOW and founder of the Feminist Majority Foundation) “dishonest Obama-enabling hacks.” (As if that weren’t dramatic enough, she also suggested that “if life were an Akira Kurosawa movie” Gandy and Smeal “would commit ritual seppuku in public to atone for the grave dishonor they did to the feminist movement.”)”
Chortle.
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Sameol says:
viva la feministe also tried to warn other NOW members pre-convention that PUMAs were going to the convention “to punish Gandy for endorsing Obama after Hillary lost” in order to push Lyles, so it isn’t surprising that it’s also being spun as “Palin supporters” rather than “women against sexism feminist backlash.”
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m Andrea says:
Carol Moseley Braun is the only black female in the Senate??? That is truly terrible. I want moar, mega moar.
Congrats to everyone on the NOW thing, btw. That is some great news.
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RKMK says:
Things are popping up on my Twitter about the so-called “racist white women” who knocked out Lyles, white privilege, rah. Doesn’t matter that there are women of colour on her team; doesn’t matter that many women were angry at NOW’s silence and complicity in the face of sexism during the election season.
No, once again, everyone with a legitimate gripe is a damn racist. Sure.
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sam says:
I love democracy and elections. Corporations are top-down conglomerates where a small group of very privileged men make all the rules and everyone else has to follow them or they are silenced. Democracy and elections are how social policymakers (like governments) need to be organized, and feminism is social policymaking.
When I went to Feministing yesterday to see what they had to say the first thing I saw was a post about orgasms. I went back today to see they dumped one sentence into a linkfarm, the blog equivalent of “No comment.”
I’ve watched as a feminist conference that drew hundreds of women got entirely ignored by Feministing because it was not approved of by their small clique of same-minded women. In November 2007, Equality Now successfully lobbied New Yorker Magazine to remove their prostitution ads and the NY-based feminists didn’t cover it. Equality Now also protested HBO’s offices over their glamorization of prostitution and they were ignored. Books by the most acclaimed feminist policymakers in the world have been studiously ignored while other books, mostly one’s with women’s naked bodies on the covers, have been hyperpromoted.
I love democracy and elections. Corporations are top-down conglomerates where a small group of very privileged men make all the rules and everyone else has to follow them or they are silenced.
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CAE says:
“Things are popping up on my Twitter about the so-called “racist white women” who knocked out Lyles, white privilege, rah. Doesn’t matter that there are women of colour on her team; doesn’t matter that many women were angry at NOW’s silence and complicity in the face of sexism during the election season. No, once again, everyone with a legitimate gripe is a damn racist. Sure.”
Shades of things to come in 2012…
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CAE says:
“Shades of things to come in 2012…”
Yikes! I meant “Shapes” not shades.
Must use preview function!!
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Violet says:
Really? ‘Cause I would have said “shades.”
