Coronavirus; Helpless and Hopeful

I don’t know about you but I’m restless, I’m scared, I feel helpless and I can’t buy toilet paper if my life depended on it. I’m learning

more about technology like Zoom, Face Time, and webex to stay in touch with the people I care about; the people in my support system. It’s been a couple of weeks of this and its starting to feel normal. We will never forget this moment in history.

My generation has the assassination of President Kennedy. We all remember that day, where we were and what we were doing. My daughter’s generation has 911. We spent that day together and will never forget what we were doing. This new generation now has the Coronavirus Pandemic. How long will it take to recovery as a society from this kind of a disaster and what will our society look like when it does recover; no one can predict any of this.

Watching the news to get the facts. But with years of lie after lie, and conflicting views of reality are making me question everything. Trust is not something we Americans have these days. Republicans yelling fake news, Democrats calling Republicans liars. Proof we still suffer from a great divide driving us against each other in our time of need.

As the divide has grown over the decades, the United States has become a place where the education and health care systems have been starved of funds. Recently we have moved into a state of isolation from the rest of the world to the point the US has nowhere to turn. If the current pandemic kills millions of Americans it is these long-driven policy standards and the political divide that are to be blamed.

All of this gutting of any kind of caring in government reflects the promotion and short-falls of capitalism that has taken over America. We have a society that is competing against its self. leading to public health officials having to out price and out compete with each other to buy ventilators, protective gear starting a russian roulette game in the emergency rooms. Promoting a lack of standards by our government to roll back sound policies to promote healthy competition has been replaced by policies that promote competition at any cost. A competition that has turned citizens on themselves. Killing us from the inside out as the coronavirus is allowed to be unleashed.

In this kind of climate, an out of control pandemic can only get worst because we show no caring for marginalized people in our society. When it’s everyone for themselves and we don’t reach out to help, and money is put into improving only some of us. We lose sight of “Human Rights.” Rights for adequate housing, for health care, for equal justice, for a good standard of living. Today we don’t have this kind of society. Relief measures are short sighted.

The sound bite in the news, “Relief for workers and corporations.” No mention of people who are homeless, poor, mentally ill and other marginalized groups. These people don’t file taxes, don’t qualify for unemployment and struggle for basic needs every day. People like the people I worked with at Real Change, a street newspaper. People who are homeless or on brink of homelessness now aren’t able to sell the paper to supplement other means that never met basic needs anyways. Little information is known about prisoners and people at immigration detentions centers that are at high risk. And don’t forget women who are now called to shelter in place with their abusers. These are the people I’m worried about; the people I fret about. Worried yet hope they all get through this no matter what.

I’m not too worried about the people who make up to $150,000 and who will be receiving relief from the government when millions of people who really need relief will receive nothing. I’m in a dilemma of choosing to protect myself from getting the virus instead going out and helping high risk people. I feel helpless.

In this helplessness I can only cling to a thread of hope. Of hope that we learn from this how vulnerable we all are. That we learn we need to take care of each other better. That Americans need to have compassion for all the people that live here. We need to contribute to everyone having a livable quality of life now and moving forward. I just don’t know how to tell you to do this. All I know is how to resist capitalism, and to promote democracy while being an ally of all those who are struggling. May we all get through this and come out the other side with more compassion and caring then when we came into this.

International Women's Day 2020

International Women's Day every year brings both celebrations of global progress and new efforts against continuing discrimination against women and lack of investment in their health and economic well-being. Today I remember the women I worked with in

Koutiala Mali. We celebrated IWD day two years in a row. Coming together to dance on a day dedicated to talking about women’s issue. One of these is the only day in Mali I heard talk of family planning out in the open.

The United Nations theme this year “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights.”  The United Nations expects more than 730 events in 50 countries to mark the 99th anniversary of the drive for equality for half the planet’s population – at home, under law, at work and in government. Conceived at a women’s conference in Copenhagen in 1910 as a way to celebrate women’s contributions, the day gained momentum during the suffrage movement and became a worldwide celebration.

It wasn’t until 1994 in the US when Congresswoman Waters of California introduced and arranged passage of a bill in the US Legislature that gave a national and political mandate to recognition International Women’s Day.  This national recognition has not trickled down to communities across our nation.

Even today in the United States where we hardly celebrated it at all.  What evolved out of the same sentiment here in the United States has become March, Women’s History Month. During March civic buildings and libraries all over the United States display important woman in our history and how they helped to shape our world of today.

Worldwide IWD  is an official holiday in Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, China (for women only), Cuba, Georgia, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar (for women only), Moldova, Mongolia, Nepal, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zambia.

Many see that women and girls today enjoy better health, more rights and longer lives than their grandmothers did, but the average disguises serious disparities. Yet today in 2020 the global consensus is that despite this progress, real change has been agonizingly slow for the majority of women and girls in the world. Today, not a single country can claim to have achieved gender equality. Multiple obstacles remain unchanged in law and in culture. Women and girls continue to be undervalued; they work more and earn less and have fewer choices; and experience multiple forms of violence at home and in public spaces. Many of us believe there is a significant rollback of hard-won feminist gains.

We remember then First Lady Hillary Clinton when she spoke at the UN’s fourth world conference on Women in 1994 held in Beijing, where she gave her controversial speech declaring that Women’s rights are Human rights. The ridicule that followed echoed around the world and yet we women remember her for this insight. We also rtecall the ridicule she endured during her historical presidential run. Many of us see women’s rights moving backwards not only here in the United States but around the world.

AIDS has reversed gains in life expectancy in some areas: 17.5 million women are living with HIV, and three of every four of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet more than 200 million couples do not have access to contraceptive services that could both prevent HIV infection and help them space their children at healthier intervals.
Life for women continue to be hard. In Nigeria, for example, one in every 18 women has a lifetime risk of dying from complications of pregnancy and delivery, among the world’s highest rates. Only one in every 4,800 U.S. women will die of such causes. The global toll is more than 536,000 women every year – one per minute – nearly all in developing countries.
Around the world today women came out to the streets to voice their opinions. A number of Mexican women are  protesting against femicide in Mexico. A demonstration is taking place in the capital of Baghdad to call for gender equality.
The Prime Ministers of Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Sweden have released a joint statement reaffirming their commitments to gender equality. These countries took what some called extreme measures by passing strict anti-discrimination or affirmative action laws in the last couple of years. These laws succeeded in bringing gender equality closer to a reality. In California The statement also highlights their “grave concern over the current pushback against women’s and girls’ rights” and calls on other world leaders to reject this.
In the United States Fargo ND, Kansas City MO, Cook Co IL, Murray, UT and Oklahoma City, OK, just some of the unlikely places celebrating International Women’s day today just to name of same the place that surprised me.

Today I celebrate the Women on Boards (Senate Bill 826) law  signed into law to advance equitable gender representation on California corporate boards. California is now leading the way as the first state in the nation to require all publicly held domestic or foreign corporations whose principal executive offices are located in California to have at least one female director on their boards by December 31, 2019. The change was brought by a convergence of factors, including a law passed in California in 2018 and mounting pressure from financial firms. Moreover, the mandate has inspired proposals in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Hawaii, New York and Illinois. Even if those similar ideas don’t turn into binding laws, the California mandate was “a real wake-up call,

Today on IWD we can only hope for a better future.