Dance and spoken word/poetry. The line that stands out to me is “You articulate the distance between fighting and loving.” Articulate as a verb means “express fluently and coherently.” Distance as a noun means “the amount of space between two things or people.” I definitely have spent a bulk of this lifetime learning and practicing articulating the distance between the two.
National Archives - 19th Amendment To The U.S. Constitution: Women's Right To vote (1920)
Citation: Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919.; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.
The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.
There were supporters that did not live to see the Supreme Court 7-2 decision in 1973 in favor of Jane Roe too, “holding that women in the United States had a fundamental right to choose whether to have abortions without excessive government restriction and striking down Texas’s abortion ban as unconstitutional.” What a travesty that we’ve regressed almost 50 years with the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Now, we have to galvanize and retrace the steps that so many women took to gain our freedoms. It is agonizing on so many levels to be forced to start again! Well, Just is, so we’ve got to deal with it and move forward with vision and determination. Time to finalize that ERA too!
Independence
Actually, today I celebrate my independence and all the travails in leaving systems of dominance and control, involving birth family and a marriage, and letting people go who do not support my well-being. I am independent, self-reliant, and engaged in exploring my fullest potential as a spiritual being having a human experience. I have to believe each step I have taken and will take for my freedom, to evolve and transcend limitations, beliefs or otherwise, helps mankind advance.
July 4th, 2022
I don’t feel like celebrating Independence Day this year. Overall, is the state of America still celebratory with remnants of an intended democratic system of government? I don’t think so. What a quandary with an attempted coup by the former president, a Congress and Supreme Court so extreme, out of whack, and at odds with the majority, social inequities, the termination of women’s liberties, the promotion and proliferation of guns, the pro-pollution adherence, etc. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and We The People of the United States, In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, are in deep doo-doo!
July 4, 2022 Word Of The Day
Egalitarian - Asserting, resulting from, or characterized by belief in the equality of all people, especially in political, economic, or social life. Dictionary.com
Catholicism
“The Faith, practice, and church order of the Roman Catholic Church; adherence to the forms of Christian doctrine and practice which are generally regarded as Catholic.” Candidly, I grew up with a tad of disdain for this church. For starters, my father, his siblings, and parents were Spanish Basque. When they immigrated to this country, even though they were Catholic, they did not attend weekly mass. When my father’s mother died, the local priest refused to conduct the burial rites and “bless” her because of this. After that, my father decried the church, insisting that religion gave people a false sense of security and a false sense of righteousness. To add to that, my next-door neighbors were a household where the father would yell at and hit his children 6 days a week except Sunday when he went to church and was a holy man. Ultimately, I am a freedom lover, I do not want to be told what to do or what to think by anyone, and I question authority.
Isn’t this church an enormous business and system of patriarchy and oppression with a grip on the Supreme Court? In my view, it seems to be based on accumulating as many followers as possible for power, wealth, dominance and control. Instilling in people deep-seated fear, advocating abdicating authority over one’s body using no birth control and/or abortion, insisting to commune and be in favor with God that going to church is mandatory, insisting priests can only be male, allowing rampant pedophilia and perpetration against innocent children and adolescents, etc., etc., etc., equal an unhealthy system of dominion. The God this “Christian” system professes to adhere is mean, punitive, and horrifying; completely diametric to the loving, inclusive, empowering Beloved, Divine, God I know and subscribe to.
Supreme Court
Anita Hill courageously warned us of Clarence Thomas and his sexual harassment. She was pummeled, and he prevailed.. Christine Blasey Ford courageously warned us of Brett Kavanaugh and his sexual harassment. She got death threats, and he prevailed. We knew Amy Barrett was anti-choice. Now, we are reaping the consequences of their grave dysfunction, assault on women, far-right militant and Catholic ideology, and abuse of power; in steadfast alliance with 2 others of similar ilk. What’s that true quote from wise Maya Angelou? “When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.” And, I quite believe RBG is rolling over in her grave and perhaps questioning her “own good judgment”. As much as I held her in such high esteem, I now think it would have been best for her to relinquish her seat soon after Obama had lunch with her and “hinted” at it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/rbg-retirement-obama.html
Dictionary.com
The words of the day starting on 6/25 so far have been Opprobrious, Choice, Dissent, Draconian, Autonomy, Liberation (the act or fact of gaining equal rights or full social or economic opportunities for a particular group.) It seems statements of defiance are being made.
America Is Not The Greatest Country In The World Anymore- The Newsroom 2012
He forgot to mention One Nation Under Guns! (Per Amanda Gorman)
Gloria Steinem On Roe v. Wade Repeal
I love this feminist! Featured on businessinsider.com, this is what she’s said:
“Controlling reproduction is the first step in any hierarchical or authoritarian government.”
“Without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy.”
“Banning abortions does not stop the need. It just bans their safety.”
“The ruling guarantees civil disobedience and disrespect for the court.”
“Don’t agonize. Organize.”
When I think about all the talk of how our democracy is in peril, actually, we have not had a semblance of a democratic system of government for quite some time. As long as I’ve been voting, the Supreme Court has been political, even making George W. Bush president in 2000 and giving us Citizens United in 2010, we have gerrymandering and the Electoral College taking precedent over the popular vote, the far-right hijacking the majority, no separation of church and state and, as is evident with this, accelerated social inequality and injustice.