This is one of those election years where no one really knows what will happen. The "Brexit" vote in England went against all predictions. Politicians there borrowed from Donald Trump's playbook here: bash immigrants, "The Elite" and prey on the legitimate fears of working class Caucasians that they are being left out of this so-called "recovery." They have a point, except that immigrants, gays, and women having abortions are clearly not the problem.
I have never voted for a Republican, and I don't plan to start now. In my campaign for West Virginia Delegate, I aligned myself with the Bernie Sanders people. This was not political calculation on my part (although Sanders won in every county in West Virginia). I am thrilled that a candidate came up who was willing to talk about economic inequality, breaking up the big banks, and being inclusive of everyone in our country. Although Sanders is not traditionally religious, he embraces core Jewish values, whether he knows it or not.
I don't believe Hillary Clinton is a crook or even a bad person. She would have been a great candidate in 2000 or 2004. She lost to a brash outsider in 2008, and I believe she deserves to lose now. Only the system is rigged in her favor. Sanders pointed out in an interview in Rolling Stone that despite winning in every county in West Virginia, six of our eight superdelegates are pledged to Clinton.
Things are worse than that in West Virginia. Our Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, did not appear at the state's Democratic convention, except at a lunch he sponsored in honor of the Democratic Party's West Virginia chair, Belinda Biafore. There was an election for a new state chair, and Chris Regan, a hero to progressives in this state, was defeated for the position of state chair. Still, we passed a progressive platform from the floor of the convention. I'm sure the platform will be ignored. That's how things roll here.
There's hostility in this state from Democrats toward their anointed leaders. Jim Justice, a coal mogul, Republican until last year, and the wealthiest person in West Virginia, has not taken positions on most issues. Our Attorney General candidate, Doug Reynolds, has an anti-gay, anti-choice and pro-gun voting record. Ugh. And Hillary Clinton's record of being the Senator from Wall Street has not helped her with working people here.
I've been fending off people on Facebook who post horrible anti-Clinton stuff. Not Republicans, because I have "unfollowed" them, but Democrats. At this point, I'm hoping for a convention miracle that will give Bernie the nomination, or at least that the platform will accept his ideas, for what that's worth. Still, if Clinton gets the nomination, I will support her.
On the Republican side, there is shock and outrage every time Trump opens his mouth. Republican stalwarts are abandoning ship for fear they will be tarred with his legacy and shamed forever. To me, the Republican Party has pandered to racists and gay-haters for decades. Trump only says what they've been thinking all along, only with his Outer Borough lack of manners and WASP "tastefulness." They deserve him.
This year, we will have to eat shit (to put it delicately) and vote for the Democrats. For the future, I would hope progressives and unionists will form a new, more open party, pro-union, pro-choice, pro-gay, pro-diversity, and pro-environment. We can start by electing local leaders who can reach everyone , uniting anti-corporate, pro-worker, inclusive people of good will to overturn the status quo in West Virginia and in the United States. We have our work cut out for us.
Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bernie Sanders. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Unity, Part 1
Last Friday and Saturday I attended the West Virginia Democratic Convention in Charleston. I arrived Friday morning from Huntington, about fifty miles west of Charleston. The theme of the convention was "Unity." I imagine this meant we were all to come together to anoint Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2016. That didn't happen.
I hate to be a "Tuve,"Spanish for "I had." We used to speak, unsympathetically, in the Social Security office in Miami where I worked for many years, about people from Cuba who would start all their sentences with "Tuve" and tell us what they left behind in Cuba.
I attended the California State Convention in 2011 in Sacramento and 2012 in San Diego. There were scheduled lunches and dinners and guest speakers including Bernie Sanders in Sacramento, and Al Franken in San Diego, as well as the superstars of California politics, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer put in appearances; Feinstein spoke at a dinner, open to the conventioneers, for an extra charge. The San Diego convention was at the Hilton. Many of us chose to stay elsewhere to save money, but the facilities were immaculate.
"Tuve" a much better time in California. Our convention here was at the dingy Charleston Convention Center, where there is construction going on and the thermostat was set at 50. There was a snack bar open Friday with $3.00 pretzels, small bottles of water and antique pizza. I never saw our Governor, and our one Democratic senator had a private lunch for the State Executive Committee honoring the chairperson, who, not coincidentally, was running for reelection. More on that later. I stayed just out of town in a place called "Mink Shoals" at a motel from the chain where I get points. There was only a three dollar per day charge to park in the Convention Center garage.
Thankfully, there were less jaded young people there, including a large contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters from Morgantown. Bernie beat Hillary by fifteen points in West Virginia, and won in each of our state's fifty-five counties. In the Rolling Stone issue marked June 16, Bernie Sanders was interviewed just after the West Virginia primary. He wondered why six of the eight superdelegates from West Virginia were pledged to Hillary. Good question.
Everything ran late at the convention. The real convention was to start at five Friday, but registration started at three. I arrived at 10 from Huntington, and met Selena Vickers, the technical wonk for the Bernie campaign, sitting next to a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders. I spoke with her briefly about possibly adding an amendment to overturn the decision to allow concealed carry of weapons without a permit. I looked up a similar law in California, which made me realize that it probably wouldn't get passed, this being West Virginia.
I found where the Reform synagogue is in Charleston. I called and got no answer, so I went there. It's a brick-and-glass modern building in a neighborhood of grand houses facing the Kanawha River. Probably the best neighborhood in town sixty years ago. The back door by the parking was open, so I walked in and met the secretary. He was unhappy that I was able to walk in and said he was not authorized to give me a tour without an appointment. I was okay with all that. I just explained who I was and why I was in town.
Back at the convention, I ran into Jamie Blake, a youngish (out of college) guy, one of the Morgantown Bernie organizers, and we went out for lunch at the mall for wraps in the food court. At least Charleston has a mall downtown.
We hung around until three, when we could register for the convention. There were committee meetings until five, when the convention started.No lunches or dinners were planned for the conference. I drove to my motel, checked in, and slept for an hour.
The convention started well after five. The rules committee had met before, and rules had been changed to make it easier to amend the platform and allow more time for debate. There were speeches from Doug Reynolds, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, from Belinda Biafore, the state chair, and from Natalie Tennant, our secretary of state, whis running again. She lost two years ago for Senate, because she didn't take a stand on any issues. Reynolds is probably an improvement over Patrick Morissey, our paid-for-by-corporate-lobbyist Republican attorney general. Still, Reynolds voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (also known as the Freedom To Discriminate bill) and introduced a bill that would mandate that colleges allow guns on campus. I confronted some Reynolds kids who had a table for him. They sputtered something about "just doing what his constituents wanted." Not good enough. I may have to vote for him, but I will never campaign for him.
I don't remember anything much else about Friday night- except that I hadn't had dinner. I bought a stale $3.00 pretzel in the lobby and went to my car and brought in some bottles of water, so no one should have to pay $3.00. Many people still don't drink the water in Charleston, after the chemical poisoning more than two years ago. Things broke up at 9:30. The kids asked me if I wanted to go out drinking with them, forgetting that I am sixty-six, not twenty-six. I stopped at a convenience store and bought snacks, which I brought back to my hotel and ate while looking at Friday's Charleston newspaper. I was asleep by eleven.
I had breakfast at the hotel, and got back to the Convention Center by nine. There were plenty of plots a-hatching. Many people had petitions out, about banning guns, legalizing marijuana, requiring superdelegates to vote for the winning candidate from the primary. I signed all of them, except the two that were meant to embarrass Hillary Clinton. It was too late for that. I noted that the vast majority of delegates were white, Christian and straight. In California, most of the Democrats were Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American, Native, or Jewish. And a whole lot of them were gay. In talking to people, I found that there were more Jews than I originally thought, living in rural counties after escaping New York and their Jewish heritage. Someone pointed out that there were many more gay people than I imagined. Maybe so.
Jim Justice, the Democratic nominee for Governor, spoke once things got started. He was a Republican until last year, is a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in West Virginia. He owns the Greenbrier resort in southeastern West Virginia, and avoided debates and policy statements during his primary campaign against two other contenders. He is notorious for not paying bills on time. Progressives in the state find him appalling. Our Bernie people, led by Morgantown's Shane Assadzandi, a young dynamo, planned a walkout during Justice's speech. I stayed in for the first ten minutes, while Justice talked on in an almost unintelligible rural West Virginia drawl about his foot surgery, how much money the Greenbriar brings into the state, and how he bought a shovel and pail, which he had with him, from a woman by the side of the road, who was trying to raise money to buy food. I couldn't take any more and left. His speech seemed to go on quite a long time. He never mentioned any ideas for how to run the state, as far as I know.
John Perdue, the state treasurer spoke as well. My hearing is not great and the sound system wasn't clear either but it seems the Republican legislature was right to require English for state business. His drawl was so thick, I could understand almost nothing, and he went on for probably a half hour.
The superstar of the convention, our Kamala Harris, if you will, was Mary Ann Claytor, an African-American woman who came from nowhere to win the Democratic nomination for Auditor. I didn't vote for her, because another candidate had endorsements from people I liked, and because Claytor's website said she had a degree in religion from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That set off warning bells for me. She spoke with the cadences of Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching to us about her experience in the auditor's office, of her background, and how important it is to include everyone in the state. She was the first to mention the LGBT community, and how we needed to be included. She had the passion and fire that everyone else who had spoken lacked. People rose to their feet and cheered. And I understood every word she said.
When we finally got to amendments from the floor, it was noon, and there was no lunch break. Shane and his crew and a few others introduced bills to ban assault weapons, to ban fracking and mountaintop removal mining, to stop fighting the EPA on air and water quality regulations, have a gay rights bill. All of these passed on a voice vote. And why? Because the mostly older Hillary Clinton fans joined together with the mostly younger Bernie Sanders fans to make West Virginia a more progressive place. The anti-Clinton petitions were never presented, and this helped us find the "Unity" we were looking for.
Until now, the Democratic Party in West Virginia's only claim to liberalism has been its support of unions. The people in charge of the party not only don't like Bernie Sanders,they don't think much of Hillary Clinton either. This convention brought together the Hillary and Bernie people in a new way.
Meanwhile, a graduating WVU student named Franklin, whip-smart and handsome, asked me for a ride home. I wanted to be back and eat before Tree of Life's Shavuot service at 7:30. In West Virginia, Jewish holidays are never figured into anyone's schedule. Franklin and I left at two and went to the mall for lunch, as nothing had been provided. I was freezing in that barn of a room, and about to go off on someone for lack of food. We got back to the car at three, and were about to drive away, when Danielle, the brilliant and most glamorous of the Bernie people in Morgantown, called my phone and begged us to come back. Franklin and I discussed it briefly and went back. Someone called for a quorum, and there was none. The seventy people on the central committee were gone to Senator Manchin's luncheon before a vote on the next chair. People came back who had drifted off for food, and the central committee said we could count them even if they weren't there.We finally passed the whole platform with all the progressive amendments intact. At four, we headed back to Morgantown.
Chris Regan, the vice chair of the central committee, a Bernie supporter, a smart guy and a great writer, who is appalled by most of what goes on in this state, and writes a blog about it (homeyesterday.com) was later defeated for chair of the central committee by incumbent Belinda Biafore, who presided over the loss of the Legislature to the Republicans, because the Democrats refused to stand for anything. Don't get me started.
I hate to be a "Tuve,"Spanish for "I had." We used to speak, unsympathetically, in the Social Security office in Miami where I worked for many years, about people from Cuba who would start all their sentences with "Tuve" and tell us what they left behind in Cuba.
I attended the California State Convention in 2011 in Sacramento and 2012 in San Diego. There were scheduled lunches and dinners and guest speakers including Bernie Sanders in Sacramento, and Al Franken in San Diego, as well as the superstars of California politics, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer put in appearances; Feinstein spoke at a dinner, open to the conventioneers, for an extra charge. The San Diego convention was at the Hilton. Many of us chose to stay elsewhere to save money, but the facilities were immaculate.
"Tuve" a much better time in California. Our convention here was at the dingy Charleston Convention Center, where there is construction going on and the thermostat was set at 50. There was a snack bar open Friday with $3.00 pretzels, small bottles of water and antique pizza. I never saw our Governor, and our one Democratic senator had a private lunch for the State Executive Committee honoring the chairperson, who, not coincidentally, was running for reelection. More on that later. I stayed just out of town in a place called "Mink Shoals" at a motel from the chain where I get points. There was only a three dollar per day charge to park in the Convention Center garage.
Thankfully, there were less jaded young people there, including a large contingent of Bernie Sanders supporters from Morgantown. Bernie beat Hillary by fifteen points in West Virginia, and won in each of our state's fifty-five counties. In the Rolling Stone issue marked June 16, Bernie Sanders was interviewed just after the West Virginia primary. He wondered why six of the eight superdelegates from West Virginia were pledged to Hillary. Good question.
Everything ran late at the convention. The real convention was to start at five Friday, but registration started at three. I arrived at 10 from Huntington, and met Selena Vickers, the technical wonk for the Bernie campaign, sitting next to a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders. I spoke with her briefly about possibly adding an amendment to overturn the decision to allow concealed carry of weapons without a permit. I looked up a similar law in California, which made me realize that it probably wouldn't get passed, this being West Virginia.
I found where the Reform synagogue is in Charleston. I called and got no answer, so I went there. It's a brick-and-glass modern building in a neighborhood of grand houses facing the Kanawha River. Probably the best neighborhood in town sixty years ago. The back door by the parking was open, so I walked in and met the secretary. He was unhappy that I was able to walk in and said he was not authorized to give me a tour without an appointment. I was okay with all that. I just explained who I was and why I was in town.
Back at the convention, I ran into Jamie Blake, a youngish (out of college) guy, one of the Morgantown Bernie organizers, and we went out for lunch at the mall for wraps in the food court. At least Charleston has a mall downtown.
We hung around until three, when we could register for the convention. There were committee meetings until five, when the convention started.No lunches or dinners were planned for the conference. I drove to my motel, checked in, and slept for an hour.
The convention started well after five. The rules committee had met before, and rules had been changed to make it easier to amend the platform and allow more time for debate. There were speeches from Doug Reynolds, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, from Belinda Biafore, the state chair, and from Natalie Tennant, our secretary of state, whis running again. She lost two years ago for Senate, because she didn't take a stand on any issues. Reynolds is probably an improvement over Patrick Morissey, our paid-for-by-corporate-lobbyist Republican attorney general. Still, Reynolds voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (also known as the Freedom To Discriminate bill) and introduced a bill that would mandate that colleges allow guns on campus. I confronted some Reynolds kids who had a table for him. They sputtered something about "just doing what his constituents wanted." Not good enough. I may have to vote for him, but I will never campaign for him.
I don't remember anything much else about Friday night- except that I hadn't had dinner. I bought a stale $3.00 pretzel in the lobby and went to my car and brought in some bottles of water, so no one should have to pay $3.00. Many people still don't drink the water in Charleston, after the chemical poisoning more than two years ago. Things broke up at 9:30. The kids asked me if I wanted to go out drinking with them, forgetting that I am sixty-six, not twenty-six. I stopped at a convenience store and bought snacks, which I brought back to my hotel and ate while looking at Friday's Charleston newspaper. I was asleep by eleven.
I had breakfast at the hotel, and got back to the Convention Center by nine. There were plenty of plots a-hatching. Many people had petitions out, about banning guns, legalizing marijuana, requiring superdelegates to vote for the winning candidate from the primary. I signed all of them, except the two that were meant to embarrass Hillary Clinton. It was too late for that. I noted that the vast majority of delegates were white, Christian and straight. In California, most of the Democrats were Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American, Native, or Jewish. And a whole lot of them were gay. In talking to people, I found that there were more Jews than I originally thought, living in rural counties after escaping New York and their Jewish heritage. Someone pointed out that there were many more gay people than I imagined. Maybe so.
Jim Justice, the Democratic nominee for Governor, spoke once things got started. He was a Republican until last year, is a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in West Virginia. He owns the Greenbrier resort in southeastern West Virginia, and avoided debates and policy statements during his primary campaign against two other contenders. He is notorious for not paying bills on time. Progressives in the state find him appalling. Our Bernie people, led by Morgantown's Shane Assadzandi, a young dynamo, planned a walkout during Justice's speech. I stayed in for the first ten minutes, while Justice talked on in an almost unintelligible rural West Virginia drawl about his foot surgery, how much money the Greenbriar brings into the state, and how he bought a shovel and pail, which he had with him, from a woman by the side of the road, who was trying to raise money to buy food. I couldn't take any more and left. His speech seemed to go on quite a long time. He never mentioned any ideas for how to run the state, as far as I know.
John Perdue, the state treasurer spoke as well. My hearing is not great and the sound system wasn't clear either but it seems the Republican legislature was right to require English for state business. His drawl was so thick, I could understand almost nothing, and he went on for probably a half hour.
The superstar of the convention, our Kamala Harris, if you will, was Mary Ann Claytor, an African-American woman who came from nowhere to win the Democratic nomination for Auditor. I didn't vote for her, because another candidate had endorsements from people I liked, and because Claytor's website said she had a degree in religion from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. That set off warning bells for me. She spoke with the cadences of Martin Luther King, Jr., preaching to us about her experience in the auditor's office, of her background, and how important it is to include everyone in the state. She was the first to mention the LGBT community, and how we needed to be included. She had the passion and fire that everyone else who had spoken lacked. People rose to their feet and cheered. And I understood every word she said.
When we finally got to amendments from the floor, it was noon, and there was no lunch break. Shane and his crew and a few others introduced bills to ban assault weapons, to ban fracking and mountaintop removal mining, to stop fighting the EPA on air and water quality regulations, have a gay rights bill. All of these passed on a voice vote. And why? Because the mostly older Hillary Clinton fans joined together with the mostly younger Bernie Sanders fans to make West Virginia a more progressive place. The anti-Clinton petitions were never presented, and this helped us find the "Unity" we were looking for.
Until now, the Democratic Party in West Virginia's only claim to liberalism has been its support of unions. The people in charge of the party not only don't like Bernie Sanders,they don't think much of Hillary Clinton either. This convention brought together the Hillary and Bernie people in a new way.
Meanwhile, a graduating WVU student named Franklin, whip-smart and handsome, asked me for a ride home. I wanted to be back and eat before Tree of Life's Shavuot service at 7:30. In West Virginia, Jewish holidays are never figured into anyone's schedule. Franklin and I left at two and went to the mall for lunch, as nothing had been provided. I was freezing in that barn of a room, and about to go off on someone for lack of food. We got back to the car at three, and were about to drive away, when Danielle, the brilliant and most glamorous of the Bernie people in Morgantown, called my phone and begged us to come back. Franklin and I discussed it briefly and went back. Someone called for a quorum, and there was none. The seventy people on the central committee were gone to Senator Manchin's luncheon before a vote on the next chair. People came back who had drifted off for food, and the central committee said we could count them even if they weren't there.We finally passed the whole platform with all the progressive amendments intact. At four, we headed back to Morgantown.
Chris Regan, the vice chair of the central committee, a Bernie supporter, a smart guy and a great writer, who is appalled by most of what goes on in this state, and writes a blog about it (homeyesterday.com) was later defeated for chair of the central committee by incumbent Belinda Biafore, who presided over the loss of the Legislature to the Republicans, because the Democrats refused to stand for anything. Don't get me started.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Bernie, Hillary and Donald
During my unsuccessful campaign for Delegate to the West Virginia State Legislature, I met many young people who were working for or supporting Bernie Sanders. I admired their idealism, which reminded me of the Gene McCarthy people in 1968. I support Bernie Sanders for President, so we became friends.
I recently posted an article on Facebook from American Prospect by Harold Meyerson suggesting that the "Bernie Bros" step back and let Hillary Clinton work against Donald Trump. He is surprised that Sanders supporters say they won't vote for Clinton, thus handing the election to Trump. Meyerson says he is a Sanders supporter and believes in "Socialist Democracy," but that Sanders has no chance to win the nomination, and we must turn our attention to the general election.
I have friends, very close friends, in fact, who are Hillary Clinton fans, although I am not one of them. I respect their reasons for supporting Clinton. I know people who are Trump supporters. I have generally unfollowed them on Facebook, or avoid being around them. Still, the outpouring of support for Trump, particularly in West Virginia, is understandable. People like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney talking about how tax cuts for the very rich will help everyone, well, no one can fall for that anymore. And most people, even economic conservatives, are not as crazy or as personally unlikable as Ted Cruz. Trump is outgoing and has a message of hope. His comments about women, immigrants and Moslems has scared off support from just about anyone in the Jewish community. The cheers he got at AIPAC show how out of touch that organization is. Jewish clergy of every stripe have denounced Trump's stand on immigration.
Meyerson's article sparked a not-typical firestorm on my Facebook feed, between the Clinton lovers, those who will vote for her because they see Trump as the biggest threat to the country, and the Sanders people who said they will vote for the Green Party or sit out the presidential race. They claim to be revolutionaries who will not settle for the status quo.
The most influential factor in which side people were on was age. People my age were in the Hillary camp, or better-Hiilary-than Donald category. People under thirty were the revolutionaries, willing to go down in flames for Bernie Sanders' cause.
I probably would have voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, if the vote had been extended to nineteen year olds at that time. I started that year as a McCarthy supporter, but I became a Robert Kennedy supporter when he entered the race. Kennedy spoke at Johns Hopkins that spring, where I was a freshman. His assassination, never really fully investigated, and with an official story full of holes, left me with psychic scars that have not healed, and a deep distrust of our government. I also heard Spiro Agnew that year at Towson State. He was an ignorant bigoted clown. It was inconceivable to me that he could ever be vice-president.
When the Sanders people say that Clinton has engaged in dirty tricks, like flooding Sanders websites with porn so the sites would have to be taken down, or claim that she is beholden to big banks, or to Gulf State oligarchs and Saudi princes, I just shrug and say "So, what's new?" Back in 2008, I said (probably over breakfast with Joe) that we might get some sort of social justice from Obama, but we were never going to get economic justice. And in fact, Obama eventually came out in favor of gay rights, and has run an inclusive administration. He has tried to bring people together (a thankless and impossible task). Still, he appointed Timothy Geithner, of the International Monetary Fund, as Treasury Secretary, and allowed big banks to gain back, and even surpass the power they had before the 2008 crash.
I am with my peers. I will support Hillary Clinton for President, knowing all the negatives about her. At the Democratic Convention in Charleston next month, I will still support Bernie Sanders. My goal now will be to stop Trump. None of our choices for President are good.
Maybe one day we will get economic fairness, probably not this year. I'll settle for maintaining the social progress we have made in the last eight years, because I don't have a choice.
I recently posted an article on Facebook from American Prospect by Harold Meyerson suggesting that the "Bernie Bros" step back and let Hillary Clinton work against Donald Trump. He is surprised that Sanders supporters say they won't vote for Clinton, thus handing the election to Trump. Meyerson says he is a Sanders supporter and believes in "Socialist Democracy," but that Sanders has no chance to win the nomination, and we must turn our attention to the general election.
I have friends, very close friends, in fact, who are Hillary Clinton fans, although I am not one of them. I respect their reasons for supporting Clinton. I know people who are Trump supporters. I have generally unfollowed them on Facebook, or avoid being around them. Still, the outpouring of support for Trump, particularly in West Virginia, is understandable. People like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney talking about how tax cuts for the very rich will help everyone, well, no one can fall for that anymore. And most people, even economic conservatives, are not as crazy or as personally unlikable as Ted Cruz. Trump is outgoing and has a message of hope. His comments about women, immigrants and Moslems has scared off support from just about anyone in the Jewish community. The cheers he got at AIPAC show how out of touch that organization is. Jewish clergy of every stripe have denounced Trump's stand on immigration.
Meyerson's article sparked a not-typical firestorm on my Facebook feed, between the Clinton lovers, those who will vote for her because they see Trump as the biggest threat to the country, and the Sanders people who said they will vote for the Green Party or sit out the presidential race. They claim to be revolutionaries who will not settle for the status quo.
The most influential factor in which side people were on was age. People my age were in the Hillary camp, or better-Hiilary-than Donald category. People under thirty were the revolutionaries, willing to go down in flames for Bernie Sanders' cause.
I probably would have voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, if the vote had been extended to nineteen year olds at that time. I started that year as a McCarthy supporter, but I became a Robert Kennedy supporter when he entered the race. Kennedy spoke at Johns Hopkins that spring, where I was a freshman. His assassination, never really fully investigated, and with an official story full of holes, left me with psychic scars that have not healed, and a deep distrust of our government. I also heard Spiro Agnew that year at Towson State. He was an ignorant bigoted clown. It was inconceivable to me that he could ever be vice-president.
When the Sanders people say that Clinton has engaged in dirty tricks, like flooding Sanders websites with porn so the sites would have to be taken down, or claim that she is beholden to big banks, or to Gulf State oligarchs and Saudi princes, I just shrug and say "So, what's new?" Back in 2008, I said (probably over breakfast with Joe) that we might get some sort of social justice from Obama, but we were never going to get economic justice. And in fact, Obama eventually came out in favor of gay rights, and has run an inclusive administration. He has tried to bring people together (a thankless and impossible task). Still, he appointed Timothy Geithner, of the International Monetary Fund, as Treasury Secretary, and allowed big banks to gain back, and even surpass the power they had before the 2008 crash.
I am with my peers. I will support Hillary Clinton for President, knowing all the negatives about her. At the Democratic Convention in Charleston next month, I will still support Bernie Sanders. My goal now will be to stop Trump. None of our choices for President are good.
Maybe one day we will get economic fairness, probably not this year. I'll settle for maintaining the social progress we have made in the last eight years, because I don't have a choice.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
The Last of the Campaign
Bernie Sanders came to speak in Morgantown last week before the primary. At seventy-four, he had traveled several hundred miles to speak at three different events in West Virginia. This was the last, a campaign rally at Morgantown Event Center, a barn of a space at the south end of downtown. It was raining on and off, not raining when I left the house just after five. I walked to the PRT, the driverless cars that get West Virginia University students from one campus to another, and for those of us nearby, an opportunity to go downtown for fifty cents with no traffic or parking fees. I walked from our house less than a mile to Medical Center station, the last of five. In a few minutes, I was downtown and walked the last half mile or so to the Event Center. There was security with metal detectors at the entrance, and a line almost completely around the building. People of all ages were there, some with children, most dressed in the typically scruffy style of West Virginia, a few more dressed up. People were peaceful and in a good mood, even as the wait to get in extended well beyond the seven P.M. starting time, and rain showers poured down, on and off.
Bernie sounded tired at first, but once he was warmed up, he preached like the best of them. I can't quote him exactly, but his point was that there is plenty of money in the United States, enough to feed everyone, pay everyone a decent wage, provide a college education at public colleges to everyone, and make sure everyone has free healthcare. How to pay for it? Cut loopholes for corporations, tax overseas income, stop "inversions," tax higher income for Social Security. He said that six families have most of the country's wealth. He talked about African-Americans, residents from Latin America, equality for women and choice, climate change, and, yes, gay rights. He spoke for nearly an hour and a half. He had more energy than most of us, who were standing. I got a ride home with a friend in town.
There was no Sunday school this week at Tree of Life because of Mother's Day (started in West Virginia, just south of here, near Grafton). I convinced Joe to ditch his schedule of nothing but work and go with me to Butler County, Pennsylvania, my county to visit in May. I have not yet made it to Butler County, Ohio, April's county. This is a heavily Republican county just north of Pittsburgh. The city of Butler is on Connoquenessing Creek. lined with abandoned factories and mills. The town is pretty, with a neighborhood of grand late 19th and early 20th century homes just north of downtown. Jeeps were built in Butler at the start of World War II, in an area being redeveloped for shopping, including a K-Mart. It looked to me like a town that time has passed, and I can see why people would be angry. I wish people there would vote for Bernie Sanders, but I imagine the county will go heavily for Donald Trump.
My cousin Georgeann came from New York Monday, flying in to Pittsburgh. She missed the bus from downtown Pittsburgh, so Joe and I drove to Pittsburgh to fetch her, and had a lovely dinner in the Cultural District in downtown Pittsburgh.
I spent Election Day showing Georgeann Morgantown. It was raining, so we headed to the mall, where I bought new shoes with her help. She kept asking if I was nervous. I guess I wasn't. The election was out of my control. We saw Evan Hansen, one of the candidates in my race, twice on street corners with other people, waving his signs around in the drizzly weather. We stopped by our local polling place, where a young man with a "Trump" sign was standing on the edge of the parking lot, which was full. We picked up Joe and had dinner at Ali Baba, a fine Middle Eastern restaurant at Morgantown airport. It was not crowded on a Tuesday night. We watched a plane come in, which doesn't happen often.
Polls closed at 7:30, and after 8 we drove to the county courthouse. No one was there. Votes were counted at Mountaineer Mall, the mostly-empty mall south of town, where OLLI has classes. I didn't know to go there, so we headed to the Bernie volunteer party at the Ramada Inn's bar, south of Morgantown. We all watched the results. Bernie Sanders took every county in West Virginia. I was happy with that. The results in my race were less good. I came in last of eight candidates, one hundred fifty votes below the next closest candidate. Still, I had over 3,900 votes, so it wasn't a total loss. We left about ten, and I was up until 12:30, looking at election commentary on Facebook and Twitter.
People are upset that Jim Justice, a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in the state, won the Democratic primary for Governor, Beth Walker, a right-winger in the Scalia mode, supported by the coal industry and with millions spent in her behalf by the Republican party in her "non-partisan" race, was elected to the state supreme court. Even some of the candidates who won in our district are considered party hacks, meaning there might not be any important change in West Virginia politics.
I'm glad I ran, happy to meet many new people of what passes for a leftist political bent in this country today. I got my message out about how it is not acceptable to demonize LGBT people; I stood up for teachers, WVU employees and unions generally. Although the paper says I got 3.2% of the vote, my sister Robin pointed out how that number is incorrect, because people could vote for five people in my race. I figure the correct number is 26%, nearly 4,000 of 15,000 voters.
Will I do this again? I'm living in the present for now. We'll see what the future brings.
Bernie sounded tired at first, but once he was warmed up, he preached like the best of them. I can't quote him exactly, but his point was that there is plenty of money in the United States, enough to feed everyone, pay everyone a decent wage, provide a college education at public colleges to everyone, and make sure everyone has free healthcare. How to pay for it? Cut loopholes for corporations, tax overseas income, stop "inversions," tax higher income for Social Security. He said that six families have most of the country's wealth. He talked about African-Americans, residents from Latin America, equality for women and choice, climate change, and, yes, gay rights. He spoke for nearly an hour and a half. He had more energy than most of us, who were standing. I got a ride home with a friend in town.
There was no Sunday school this week at Tree of Life because of Mother's Day (started in West Virginia, just south of here, near Grafton). I convinced Joe to ditch his schedule of nothing but work and go with me to Butler County, Pennsylvania, my county to visit in May. I have not yet made it to Butler County, Ohio, April's county. This is a heavily Republican county just north of Pittsburgh. The city of Butler is on Connoquenessing Creek. lined with abandoned factories and mills. The town is pretty, with a neighborhood of grand late 19th and early 20th century homes just north of downtown. Jeeps were built in Butler at the start of World War II, in an area being redeveloped for shopping, including a K-Mart. It looked to me like a town that time has passed, and I can see why people would be angry. I wish people there would vote for Bernie Sanders, but I imagine the county will go heavily for Donald Trump.
My cousin Georgeann came from New York Monday, flying in to Pittsburgh. She missed the bus from downtown Pittsburgh, so Joe and I drove to Pittsburgh to fetch her, and had a lovely dinner in the Cultural District in downtown Pittsburgh.
I spent Election Day showing Georgeann Morgantown. It was raining, so we headed to the mall, where I bought new shoes with her help. She kept asking if I was nervous. I guess I wasn't. The election was out of my control. We saw Evan Hansen, one of the candidates in my race, twice on street corners with other people, waving his signs around in the drizzly weather. We stopped by our local polling place, where a young man with a "Trump" sign was standing on the edge of the parking lot, which was full. We picked up Joe and had dinner at Ali Baba, a fine Middle Eastern restaurant at Morgantown airport. It was not crowded on a Tuesday night. We watched a plane come in, which doesn't happen often.
Polls closed at 7:30, and after 8 we drove to the county courthouse. No one was there. Votes were counted at Mountaineer Mall, the mostly-empty mall south of town, where OLLI has classes. I didn't know to go there, so we headed to the Bernie volunteer party at the Ramada Inn's bar, south of Morgantown. We all watched the results. Bernie Sanders took every county in West Virginia. I was happy with that. The results in my race were less good. I came in last of eight candidates, one hundred fifty votes below the next closest candidate. Still, I had over 3,900 votes, so it wasn't a total loss. We left about ten, and I was up until 12:30, looking at election commentary on Facebook and Twitter.
People are upset that Jim Justice, a coal mine owner and the wealthiest man in the state, won the Democratic primary for Governor, Beth Walker, a right-winger in the Scalia mode, supported by the coal industry and with millions spent in her behalf by the Republican party in her "non-partisan" race, was elected to the state supreme court. Even some of the candidates who won in our district are considered party hacks, meaning there might not be any important change in West Virginia politics.
I'm glad I ran, happy to meet many new people of what passes for a leftist political bent in this country today. I got my message out about how it is not acceptable to demonize LGBT people; I stood up for teachers, WVU employees and unions generally. Although the paper says I got 3.2% of the vote, my sister Robin pointed out how that number is incorrect, because people could vote for five people in my race. I figure the correct number is 26%, nearly 4,000 of 15,000 voters.
Will I do this again? I'm living in the present for now. We'll see what the future brings.
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| Waiting in the rain to see Bernie Sanders |
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| In the hall |
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| Bernie Sanders |
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| Saxonburg, PA at the home of John Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge. A replica is next to the house. |
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| Butler, PA. 1895 monument to Union soldiers in the Civil War. |
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| Photo by Benyamin Cohen with my sign in front of his house. |
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| Photo by Georgeann on Election Day. |
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| With Joe at the Bernie Sanders party after the election |
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| Watching Bernie win |
Thursday, May 5, 2016
The Radio Interview
I always wondered what I would do if asked to work for Fox, or asked to do an interview on Fox News. I thought I wouldn't do it. Then I got a call from Sunshine Wiles, one of the hosts of the morning talk show on our local Fox affiliate radio station, WAJR, owned by the same people who own our local newspaper, The Dominion-Post.
What people told me is "You have to do it . Everyone listens to them." So I agreed to do it, and we set up Monday, May 2 at 9:30 for a ten-minute interview, no phone calls. I could have called in the interview, but I really wanted to see the hosts, Sunshine Wiles and Kyle Wiggs, in person, in the studio. They interviewed two other candidates that morning before me: John Lucas and Barbara Evans Fleischauer, the only Democratic incumbent.
We were a bit late getting started. I was there early due to a leftover L.A. paranoia about being held up in traffic forever. That could happen here, too, even though Morgantown is tiny in comparison to Los Angeles.
I thought the interview went well. My voice sounded awful, as if I had asthma and acid reflux both destroying my vocal chords. Still, I felt confident about talking off the top of my head. The hosts asked good questions, and gave me time to answer. They were surprised that I would end up in West Virginia after living in so many other more interesting places. It said that I came here because Joe had a job here, and I said that I'm happy here. What I thought but didn't say, is that I was too old, poor and married to stay in L.A. We couldn't have bought a house there, we don't care about bars at this point in our lives, and the rapid gentrification of our old neighborhood in West Hollywood, including tearing down the Trader Joe's on our corner for million-dollar condos, was going to help make Los Angeles unliveable. We both miss our friendships of many years in San Francisco and L.A., I miss the film festivals and the good theaters. I've stopped going to movies at all, because when I read about a movie I like, it's not playing in Morgantown. I keep busy here, but we don't have the network of people and places we had. It was my choice to come here with Joe, and as I said in the interview, I insisted he apply for the job here. I don't regret moving.
I talked about diversity. There is a new Hindu temple in town, a mosque and a synagogue. It's not like the rest of West Virginia. I went so far as to say "People here should understand that everyone in Morgantown is not a straight, white Christian." That might have been over the top.
They interviewed three other Democratic candidates for legislature in our district Tuesday, and the last two Wednesday. I only listened to Barbara and John Lucas. I'm starting to appreciate Donald Trump, saying outrageous things to get attention and having his ratings go up. Last election, four of the five Democrats lost. I felt that people didn't vote for them because they were too cautious, afraid to stand up to the Obama-hating Republicans (which at that point included the United Mine Workers) and embrace liberal values like choice, LGBT rights and guns.
I'm clearly the odd man out, the one with the least experience and lacking any kind of organization. Stiill, I have my fans.
Last week, I told someone in my writing group about what happened in the senior center (see previous blog post). Someone else in the group overheard it, and, enraged, wrote me a note about how awful I was to say that. The gist of it was that he has been polite to me (against his real feelings, apparently) and knows enough people in town, being a descendant of one of the founders of the town in the 1700s and knowing everyone, to cause me real trouble.
I sent back a note apologizing for my rudeness and explaining that my ancestors were not in the United States before 1886, and that my European relatives were all murdered, which is why that guy's stupid comment got under my skin.
What I saw from the note writer is how white privilege works even against other (more-or-less) white people, and why my fellow candidates will talk about being an 11th generation West Virginian. Not important to me, but I guess it is to someone. I'm less important because my ancestry is not here, and if it were, and they were slaves, we would still be less important than the White people here.
I got a note also from a prominent person in town, Jewish, but never seen at temple, who read last week's post and said that he has heard similar anti-Semitic remarks, and is still considered an outsider after more than forty years in Morgantown. Baltimore was a little like that, but in Los Angeles, someone called me "an old-timer" after three years there.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but attendance at my OLLI class Tuesday ( The Top 40 Hits of 1961) was down from twenty-four to fifteen. Maybe they heard me on the radio.
I missed an event yeaterday for the State Auditor Democratic candidate who is the best of the three running. There was a shiva minyan for the mother of a congregant who died out of town, and I met Joe there and accompanied him to his class after. Being busy doesn't excuse one from observing mitzvot or supporting your spouse in his work.
Tonight, I'm going to see Bernie Sanders here in Morgantown. The city has done nothing about parking, transit or or traffic for this event. The site only holds three thousand people. I'm betting many more come, despite this being finals week at WVU, with many students already gone. It will probably rain all day. Should be fun.
To hear the podcast of my interview, go to wajr.com, go to podcasts all the way down, morning talk May 2. My interview starts at 27:40, or, for comparison, you could listen to the other two candidates.
It wasn't a bad experience for me. I thought Sunshine (her real name, "it was the seventies", she explained) and Kyle were nice to me. They had good questions, and although it looked like it was easy, I know there was a lot of work for them to prepare. Maybe I'll even start listening to their show.
What people told me is "You have to do it . Everyone listens to them." So I agreed to do it, and we set up Monday, May 2 at 9:30 for a ten-minute interview, no phone calls. I could have called in the interview, but I really wanted to see the hosts, Sunshine Wiles and Kyle Wiggs, in person, in the studio. They interviewed two other candidates that morning before me: John Lucas and Barbara Evans Fleischauer, the only Democratic incumbent.
We were a bit late getting started. I was there early due to a leftover L.A. paranoia about being held up in traffic forever. That could happen here, too, even though Morgantown is tiny in comparison to Los Angeles.
I thought the interview went well. My voice sounded awful, as if I had asthma and acid reflux both destroying my vocal chords. Still, I felt confident about talking off the top of my head. The hosts asked good questions, and gave me time to answer. They were surprised that I would end up in West Virginia after living in so many other more interesting places. It said that I came here because Joe had a job here, and I said that I'm happy here. What I thought but didn't say, is that I was too old, poor and married to stay in L.A. We couldn't have bought a house there, we don't care about bars at this point in our lives, and the rapid gentrification of our old neighborhood in West Hollywood, including tearing down the Trader Joe's on our corner for million-dollar condos, was going to help make Los Angeles unliveable. We both miss our friendships of many years in San Francisco and L.A., I miss the film festivals and the good theaters. I've stopped going to movies at all, because when I read about a movie I like, it's not playing in Morgantown. I keep busy here, but we don't have the network of people and places we had. It was my choice to come here with Joe, and as I said in the interview, I insisted he apply for the job here. I don't regret moving.
I talked about diversity. There is a new Hindu temple in town, a mosque and a synagogue. It's not like the rest of West Virginia. I went so far as to say "People here should understand that everyone in Morgantown is not a straight, white Christian." That might have been over the top.
They interviewed three other Democratic candidates for legislature in our district Tuesday, and the last two Wednesday. I only listened to Barbara and John Lucas. I'm starting to appreciate Donald Trump, saying outrageous things to get attention and having his ratings go up. Last election, four of the five Democrats lost. I felt that people didn't vote for them because they were too cautious, afraid to stand up to the Obama-hating Republicans (which at that point included the United Mine Workers) and embrace liberal values like choice, LGBT rights and guns.
I'm clearly the odd man out, the one with the least experience and lacking any kind of organization. Stiill, I have my fans.
Last week, I told someone in my writing group about what happened in the senior center (see previous blog post). Someone else in the group overheard it, and, enraged, wrote me a note about how awful I was to say that. The gist of it was that he has been polite to me (against his real feelings, apparently) and knows enough people in town, being a descendant of one of the founders of the town in the 1700s and knowing everyone, to cause me real trouble.
I sent back a note apologizing for my rudeness and explaining that my ancestors were not in the United States before 1886, and that my European relatives were all murdered, which is why that guy's stupid comment got under my skin.
What I saw from the note writer is how white privilege works even against other (more-or-less) white people, and why my fellow candidates will talk about being an 11th generation West Virginian. Not important to me, but I guess it is to someone. I'm less important because my ancestry is not here, and if it were, and they were slaves, we would still be less important than the White people here.
I got a note also from a prominent person in town, Jewish, but never seen at temple, who read last week's post and said that he has heard similar anti-Semitic remarks, and is still considered an outsider after more than forty years in Morgantown. Baltimore was a little like that, but in Los Angeles, someone called me "an old-timer" after three years there.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but attendance at my OLLI class Tuesday ( The Top 40 Hits of 1961) was down from twenty-four to fifteen. Maybe they heard me on the radio.
I missed an event yeaterday for the State Auditor Democratic candidate who is the best of the three running. There was a shiva minyan for the mother of a congregant who died out of town, and I met Joe there and accompanied him to his class after. Being busy doesn't excuse one from observing mitzvot or supporting your spouse in his work.
Tonight, I'm going to see Bernie Sanders here in Morgantown. The city has done nothing about parking, transit or or traffic for this event. The site only holds three thousand people. I'm betting many more come, despite this being finals week at WVU, with many students already gone. It will probably rain all day. Should be fun.
To hear the podcast of my interview, go to wajr.com, go to podcasts all the way down, morning talk May 2. My interview starts at 27:40, or, for comparison, you could listen to the other two candidates.
It wasn't a bad experience for me. I thought Sunshine (her real name, "it was the seventies", she explained) and Kyle were nice to me. They had good questions, and although it looked like it was easy, I know there was a lot of work for them to prepare. Maybe I'll even start listening to their show.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Depression
On my chart at Kaiser in L.A., it said I had chronic moderate depression. I don't really take it seriously. I think of it as part of life. Yesterday I saw my cardiologist for a second followup to my new stents from the end of September. The numbers looked good, but the doctor asked about doing a new echocardiogram. If the echo isn't better than the one before the stents went in, he may want to put in a defibrillator. Monday, I had a basal cell carcinoma removed on my face. Medical issues could be a lot worse. I don't like to be reminded that I am no longer young.
The doctor asked how I felt and I said "Lousy." Part of that was that my face was still swollen from Monday, but what I said was "I'm a sixty-six year old gay man. How could I not be depressed?" The doctor thought that things are better than they were, but at thirty-eight, and not gay (as far as I know) he hasn't been through what those of us who are older have dealt with.
And of course, in West Virginia, we have our elected officials, who just today (February 11) are scheduled to vote on "The Religious Freedom Restoration Act." This bill would allow people to object to the state for making them do something they object to because of their religion. Rupie Phillips, a delegate from a rural place in southern West Virginia, and a Democrat, admitted that this bill, which he supports, is a response to the Supreme Court making same-gender marriage legal in all states. The bill would allow denial of public accommodations to gays, particularly in couples, because of religious principle. It will probably pass, despite opposition from Chambers of Commerce in Charleston and Morgantown, West Virginia University Faculty and Student Senates, and many national hotel chains.
It was reported in the Charleston Gazette-Mail today that two women applied for a marriage license in Gilmer County yesterday and were screamed at by Deputy County Clerk Debbie Allen. "Abomination!" she said. I'm waiting to hear if this clerk is fired, but I doubt it. There's lots of hand-wringing about why young people leave this state in droves, but who wants to live in a place like this? Gilmer County has a state college and a population of less than 10,000 people. It is about eighty-five miles from Morgantown to Glenville, the town in Gilmer County.
Our four Republican delegates in our district pretty much think like this. We have one liberal Democrat, much beloved. Had she lost in the last election, I would have insisted to Joe that we move to Pennsylvania, only ten miles from downtown Morgantown. Her reelection, and all the people we have met from temple who hired Joe in the first place, and have been kind to us, give me some hope that there is an element of really good people here. That's who I wish to represent as delegate.
The election campaign is going slowly for me. I have not raised much money. I answered questionnaires from the teachers' union, the statewide AFL-CIO and the local carpenters' union , and also a state-wide anti-abortion group. I didn't agree with the anti-abortion group's agenda, but I sent them a note with their form suggesting that "pro-life" should mean restricting guns, making maternity and parental leave mandatory, increasing SNAP benefits, favoring comprehensive sex ed including birth control, and talking about th responsibility of men in causing a pregnancy. I've been to a number of Democratic Party events and Bernie Sanders events as well. Tonight, I'll be at the watch party for the Democratic debate sponsored by Morgantown for Bernie Sanders. There will be time for people to ask questions of the eight candidates running for five slots in the Democratic primary May 10.
We are headed to Israel at the end of the month for the CCAR (Reform rabbis) convention in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. When I was last in Israel, in 2007, I was with a congregational tour from our temple in L.A. I wished that I could have been with Joe on the tour, as he spent a year in Jerusalem as part of his rabbinic training. I worry some about terrorism, but more about my health, the logistics of getting there and back, and my role, since I won't be attending the conference.
I've been reading opinion pieces from Israeli Jews, stating that the West Bank occupation has turned into an annexation, and an apartheid state. There is not even a pretense that there might be an Arab state in the West Bank, or that Arabs in that area, who are not citizens, have any rights at all. Arabs in Israel proper have citizenship, but there is no official acknowledgement that they are part of Israeli society, not even an "Arab History Month." Yes, I understand that they could have had a state in 1948, 1990, and 2000, but wouldn't accept peace, that Gaza was given back, and Hamas has created a terrorist state. I understand Israel shares a border with Syria, where a Holocaust of sorts is going on. Still, it's hard for me to defend everything Israel does. Of course, I shouldn't have to. I've always loved the United States, even if the George W.Bush administration embarrassed me. I stii love Israel, just not the current government. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of being in Israel at this moment.
Meanwhile, we've had more snow most of this week, and temperatures in the teens the last few days. The sun came out today for the first time in a long time, even as the temperature dropped. I am a sun-lover, even as a ne skin cancer survivor.
The Omer period is one of semi-mourning in Judaism. I have my own Omer period, February 6- to March 27. It commemorates that period in 2003, when I was living in Los Angeles. I flew to Baltimore February 6 for my mother's seventy-fifth birthday. I suffered a heart attack on the 9th and stayed with my mother after five days in the hospital, for a week. I came back to L.A. on the 22nd and went to work on the 24th. I came back to Baltimore March 16th. My mother was in hospice care. She died March 18th and the funeral was the 20th. I returned to L.A. after observing shiva, the week of mourning, on March 28.
It helped me to get this off my chest. I will feel better. I always do. I have to remember to look at how far I have come, continue to struggle with today, and be hopeful about the future.
I wrote this Thursday (it's Monday now). I do feel less depressed, although the weather has been worse. Other delegates have said even more bigoted things than Delegate Phillips, but it has only made me more determined to win this election. I've been inspired by the one Jewish delegate in our legislature, Mike Pushkin, from Charleston, who pointed out that baking a cake for someone you don't like is an inconvenience. I won't share the rest of his thought. And Steven Skinner, our only openly gay delegate, from Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle, having to tell the troglodyte legislators that he didn't choose to be gay.
I feel better about going to Israel, although both Joe and I are concerned about stamina and logistics. We will be active voices for change in Israel, as we are here.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
The Democratic Debate
I spoke to some people from "West Virginia for Bernie" a few weeks ago, and I added myself to their Facebook page. I got a message that they were having a watch party Sunday, January 17, at The Ramada Inn's bar, just south of Morgantown. They were planning to start early, and have some candidates for office speak for a few minutes. I wrote and asked if I could speak also. Ultimately there were six of us, and one proxy for the Democratic incumbent, speaking at this event. There are five seats at-large in our district for the state legislature. Mike Manypenny, running for US Congresss against our Republican incumbent, also spoke.
We each had five minutes to speak, including questions. I had rehearsed what I planned to say. I talked about being a West Virginian-by-choice, and my marriage to The Rabbi, who I pointed to in the crowd. My agenda is right for the Bernie crowd. I am against union-busting, so-called right-to-work, for prevailing wage, pro-union. I also brought up environmental issues, gun control, the importance of the election of judges in May, and abortion. I am for strong environmental protection, pro-choice, and against concealed carry with no permit, which the Republicans want to push this year. I felt I spoke as well as the other speakers.
I had time for three questions. Joe, who had heard me rehearse, asked about diversity. I talked about the signs saying "Building a Diverse Community" at the entrances to Morgantown, and how I would like to make that promise real. Someone else asked if, knowing that people in the legislature can be closed off and suspicious of people who haven't lived here for generations, or who they perceive to be "different." I said I would wow them with my "Hollywood sparkle" and my natural charm.
The debate started at nine. We stayed for the first hour. The event was organized by Bernie's followers, so they loved him. He stuck to his story about breaking up the big banks and revolutionizing the economy to reduce income inequality. He and Hillary traded barbs about their past records. For her part, Hillary was able to defend herself aggressively and attack. Martin O'Malley pointed out how he had balanced Maryland's budget and brought down crime in Baltimore. The others brought up the recent problems with police and unrest in Baltimore. He only said that happened after he left office.
O'Malley got in one dig,which I was unhappy about. When Sanders and Clinton talked about their memories of the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963, he said it was the year he was born. I was thirteen at the time of the great Civil Rights March, and I remember it clearly. My parents refused to let me go, not that I could have gotten there without them.
I would vote for any of the Democrats over any Republican. Bernie is a Jew from Brooklyn, and idealistic about what he can actually accomplish. Hillary is cold and calculating, which might serve her better than Bernie's idealism serves him. She has both help and baggage from her husband. Martin did well for Maryland, including pushing through same-gender marriage. I'm not sure many people know who he is.
I met some people and distributed my card. Someone approached me Monday at the Martin Luther King birthday bash. He had seen me at the debate watch party.
This week, I was to go to a union meeting Tuesday and a Young Democrats meeting Wednesday at WVU, but it was too cold for the former, and two snowy for the latter.
Once the weather is better, I hope to be out more. The deadline to register to run for office is January 30. Then we will all know how many of us are running for this office.
I can see where being Jewish and gay in West Virginia is not necessarily a winning combination. Not impossible, though. All of the candidates were strong and forthright in their speeches and were clearly coached in how to dress and speak. I have experience from acting and teaching in how to get my points across, and I hope to use that experience.
We each had five minutes to speak, including questions. I had rehearsed what I planned to say. I talked about being a West Virginian-by-choice, and my marriage to The Rabbi, who I pointed to in the crowd. My agenda is right for the Bernie crowd. I am against union-busting, so-called right-to-work, for prevailing wage, pro-union. I also brought up environmental issues, gun control, the importance of the election of judges in May, and abortion. I am for strong environmental protection, pro-choice, and against concealed carry with no permit, which the Republicans want to push this year. I felt I spoke as well as the other speakers.
I had time for three questions. Joe, who had heard me rehearse, asked about diversity. I talked about the signs saying "Building a Diverse Community" at the entrances to Morgantown, and how I would like to make that promise real. Someone else asked if, knowing that people in the legislature can be closed off and suspicious of people who haven't lived here for generations, or who they perceive to be "different." I said I would wow them with my "Hollywood sparkle" and my natural charm.
The debate started at nine. We stayed for the first hour. The event was organized by Bernie's followers, so they loved him. He stuck to his story about breaking up the big banks and revolutionizing the economy to reduce income inequality. He and Hillary traded barbs about their past records. For her part, Hillary was able to defend herself aggressively and attack. Martin O'Malley pointed out how he had balanced Maryland's budget and brought down crime in Baltimore. The others brought up the recent problems with police and unrest in Baltimore. He only said that happened after he left office.
O'Malley got in one dig,which I was unhappy about. When Sanders and Clinton talked about their memories of the Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963, he said it was the year he was born. I was thirteen at the time of the great Civil Rights March, and I remember it clearly. My parents refused to let me go, not that I could have gotten there without them.
I would vote for any of the Democrats over any Republican. Bernie is a Jew from Brooklyn, and idealistic about what he can actually accomplish. Hillary is cold and calculating, which might serve her better than Bernie's idealism serves him. She has both help and baggage from her husband. Martin did well for Maryland, including pushing through same-gender marriage. I'm not sure many people know who he is.
I met some people and distributed my card. Someone approached me Monday at the Martin Luther King birthday bash. He had seen me at the debate watch party.
This week, I was to go to a union meeting Tuesday and a Young Democrats meeting Wednesday at WVU, but it was too cold for the former, and two snowy for the latter.
Once the weather is better, I hope to be out more. The deadline to register to run for office is January 30. Then we will all know how many of us are running for this office.
I can see where being Jewish and gay in West Virginia is not necessarily a winning combination. Not impossible, though. All of the candidates were strong and forthright in their speeches and were clearly coached in how to dress and speak. I have experience from acting and teaching in how to get my points across, and I hope to use that experience.
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