Tag Archives: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Symptoms of Discontent

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OCTOBERFEST – PAST CHEER & BONHOMIE

OCTOBERFEST – PAST CHEER & BONHOMIE

Lovettsville, the Town of Love and community, is suffering the stress of the pull and push of a political climate that challenges the most stoic to retain composure and respect and dignity.

It’s a feeling and challenge experienced more widely than this old German-Irish settlement in Western Loudoun.  But there are lessons to learn from recent events.

In the last few weeks, first, one individual altered a business sign to insist on a Trumpian view of a Town Plaza.

After that, a woman shouted and cursed in a local restaurant, Andy’s, that a Guatemalan family visiting a friend and family member should show their passports, leave the country, there were obscenities, get the #%@& outa here, telling the family including a 7 year old, they should not speak in any language but English in this country.  The cell phone video has since been widely reported on local nbc tv, Buzzfeed and found its way onto other national news and social media outlets.

There have been various defenses for those offending individuals, corrective steps have been taken, fixing the sign, banning the cursing finger-pointing woman from Andy’s Restaurant, but these remedies only go so far, and they do not alter the offending incidents themselves, no matter how promptly these incidents were corrected by other responsible citizens. Continue reading →

The glass ceiling shatters!

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Hillary Clinton – shattering the glass ceiling

Hillary Clinton – shattering the glass ceiling

Shirley Chisholm in 1972 was the first black person to announce for President, and the first woman as well.

Shirley said, “I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”

Shirley faced death threats and knew she might likely fail but ran anyhow to “change the face and future of American politics.”

In 2008, two separate candidates vied to “change the face” America presents to the world.

America fulfilled part of Shirley’s prophecy in 2008 with the election of then Senator Barack Obama.

This year we are trying to meet Shirley’s second hope – to inoculate the oval office against the sexual discrimination Shirley suffered.

I’ve worked for some great women over the years who pushed against the glass ceiling and some were certainly inspired by Shirley.

What sex discrimination has been and mostly remains today is that a woman must excel, be better than a man, to hope to be treated equally.

Over the years, I’ve worked with Bella Abzug, and Liz Holtzman and Mary Sue Terry and Emilie Miller and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Maxine Waters and Loretta Sanchez and Nancy Pelosi. I served as Special Counsel to Rep. Patsy Mink from Hawaii and Rep. Zoe Lofgren from California.

All these women were strong, striving to make a difference, to advance individual rights, with the stamina required of women to break through the slights they suffer, like when a woman makes a point among men and women, but is not heard until a man repeats the point she made.

It’s an encouraging shift toward equal rights this year that more men found they could hear what Hillary had to say.
Continue reading →