Editorial
Editorial:
Democracy Begins At Home
Here's
what's at the top of my New Year's wish list: that three wise lesbians
will run for the Vermont legislature in 2004.
Ed Flanagan has finally set his sights
on a goal he can attain: a seat in the Vermont Senate. That's good news,
and a groundbreaker for Vermont - if elected, he will be the first openly
gay state senator in our history. And he will expand the gay legislative
caucus to three members, building on the base established by Reps. Bill
Lippert and Robert Dostis. There's reportedly a gay man from Burlington
considering a run for the House, potentially raising the gay caucus count
to four.
I say "gay" caucus with purpose:
there are no out lesbians in the state legislature, no out trans or bi
folk, either. Not yet. The gay and lesbian political activists I've talked
to are perplexed about why it's so hard to get women - lesbians - to run
for the legislature.
Is it that we're still recuperating from
the backlash trauma of the campaigns of 2000 and 2002, when a lot of us
stuck our necks out politically?
One lesbian I know had planned to run in
2000, but said she has no plans to run, now - despite a decade of local
charitable and political participation. She and her partner were interviewed
in The New York Times and featured on the front page of the Barre-Montpelier
Times Argus during the civil unions debate. Afterward, even people who
knew her fairly well began to doubt her worth as a human being because
they now knew without doubt that she's a lesbian. "There's sort of
knowing and there's really knowing," the activist remembered her
postmistress saying to her.
"I won't run because I'm a practical
person and I don't want to get the shit kicked out of me for no particular
reason," she says. Perhaps, she muses, women take campaign criticism
more personally than men do.
Is it that we think our agenda is over with,
done, accomplished? That our allies will always vote in our interests?
That there aren't plenty of non-lgbt-specific issues that need our attention:
adequate funding for schools, a real and functioning safe schools program,
making sure the air we breathe isn't full of toxic fumes, funding healthcare
and prescriptions, and making medical marijuana legal for those who need
it?
Increasing numbers of us have kids who need
well-funded schools that are safe for them to learn in. All of us breathe
and need clean water to drink. Nearly all of us have - or soon will have
- health issues.
Is it that it's essentially a seasonal job
that doesn't pay much, and there are few lesbians who can afford to take
the time off from their regular jobs, or whose employers will allow it?
That might be a big chunk of the answer.
Women still make 73 cents for every dollar men earn.
Is it that lesbians with families make a
larger (more equitable) contribution to the care of children than most
(straight) men with families do, and serving in the legislature makes
a bigger hole in their lives?
Perhaps part of the answer to how we can
help may lie in a model from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A group of women
there formed an organization originally called "Enough." They
were disgusted by the actions of the city council, which had been exclusively
populated by men for some years, and decided to do something concrete
to change it. Renaming themselves "Women Helping Empower Neighborhoods"
or WHEN (as in "If not now..."), they promised to provide support
services for women candidates during the campaign: child care, carpooling,
kid transport, and casseroles, as well as more traditional campaign activities,
like literature drops, fundraising, and letter writing.
The three candidates endorsed and supported
by WHEN won their races in an election that ousted all five of the incumbents
facing opposition on the seven-seat city council. And WHEN has promised
to continue their support services while the winning candidates are serving
their terms.
We can do this, too - after all, lesbians
practically invented the support group. It's really a question of whether
we believe state legislators have an impact on our lives, and whether
we can have an impact on legislation by electing more of "us."
I believe we can have an impact - and that we can mobilize to support
lesbian candidates.
Euan Bear,
Editor
editor@mountainpridemedia.org