I will be blogging, Facebooking, and tweeting. Follow us!

Ada Anderson in 2011. Photo credit: Westlake Picayune

Ada Anderson – community leader, civil rights activist, and advocate for the arts – has been making Austin a better, more just place to live for more than half a century.

Ms. Anderson was born near Austin in 1921. She attended segregated schools, graduating from L.C. Anderson High School, and went on to earn a degree in home economics from Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in 1941. Note that she was just 20 years old when she graduated.

After the historic Sweatt v. Painter decision desegregated Texas colleges in 1950, Anderson decided to pursue a graduate degree. Her options were limited; she wanted to study educational psychology and work with children, but UT told her the only programs she could enter were architecture, law, social work, or library science. (So much for equal access.) She chose library science and became the first Black person to enroll in the program. Though UT was the first major university in the south to desegregate, it didn’t happen all at once, and many barriers to educational achievement persisted. It’s no exaggeration to say that racism prevented Anderson from completing her degree. She was barred from field trips to the Texas State Library and could not find a local library at which to complete her required fieldwork, which forced her out of the program.

Anderson found other ways to live an amazing life. She was a married mother of two by this point, going to school part-time while helping her husband, Marcellus, establish a real estate business, which she co-owned. (Side note: he was the first African-American realtor in the US.)

That’s a lot for anyone. But Anderson was very also active in the community. She helped found and run the Austin chapter of Jack and Jill of America, a social and educational group that serves mostly youth of color, and went on to hold national and regional leadership positions in that organization. When she discovered that the local ice skating rink was whites-only, she organized a boycott that eventually drove it out of business. Using the skills and allies she developed during the boycott, Ms. Anderson pulled together a coalition of clergy, professors, and community leaders that grew into the Austin Human Relations Commission (now the Human Rights Commission), which was instrumental in desegregating schools, city facilities, and businesses to everyone, regardless of race.

Policies at UT eventually changed, and in 1965, Anderson received her master’s in educational psychology. She went to work for the Texas Employment Commission, where she developed and taught financial literacy classes focusing on women, and later went on to work as a psychometrist (testing psychologist) for the Austin public schools.

Bottom line, y’all: when Anderson thinks something needs doing, she gets organized and makes it happen. Here are some other things she did:

• Advocated for desegregation of the local Girl Scout camp and won a partial victory – Black scouts were allowed to attend the last week of the camping season
• Became the first African-American member of the Austin Community College Board
• Helped found the Austin Lyric Opera
• Served as a trustee for The Long Center
• Created the Leadership Enrichment Arts Program to offer low-income youth and youth of color the opportunity to experience the arts, make their own creative works, and visit college campuses

Her list of awards and honors is a mile long because she’s pretty much spent her whole life fighting for civil rights and better lives for women, Black folks, and children. Austin is lucky that Ada Anderson calls it home.

Sources/For further reading:

•  Ms. Anderson’s bio at TheHistoryMakers.com, an African-American history site
• A guide to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson’s papers, which are housed at UT’s Briscoe Center
• A 2011 profile of Ms. Anderson from the Westlake Picayune

…..wow.

The tweet has since been deleted, but you can’t ever really erase anything these days. It’s out there. And deleting it just comes off like a cover-up after a crime.

It’s not the first time that feminist-identified people have attacked Rihanna under the guise of concern. It keeps happening – in blog posts, on Twitter, on Facebook. It amounts to, as the internets say these days, concern trolling.

Many folks have said smart things about this. It’s important to talk about the racial aspects of what’s going on here. There has been an interesting and painful discussion happening among women of color on Tumblr about why Rihanna is so vilified and how connected it is to our stereotypes and expectations about Black women.  Rebecca Carroll at Jezebel wrote earlier this month about Lena Dunham’s criticism of Rihanna. Dunham said on WNYC:

“I used to be really into Rihanna, that pop star, and then it’s like — again, I don’t want to ever throw stones from my glass house — but I follow her on Instagram and I just think about how many little girls beyond what I could even comprehend are obsessed with Rihanna,” she said. “Like, you know, she left Barbados, she’s had this amazing career, she’s won a Grammy…She’s talented. And then she gets back together with Chris Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana together on a bed. And it cracks my heart in half in a way that makes me feel like I’m 95 years old.”

Dunham’s wishy-washy disclaimer – “I don’t want to ever throw stones from my glass house” – is an ineffective attempt to pre-emptively get herself off the hook. She might as well have said, “I’m not a racist, but…” Carroll calls her on it:

…it seemed odd and rather obtuse for Dunham to level criticism against Rihanna for not being a better feminist role model, when Dunham herself, also in a public position as role model to young women, excludes the very demographic — young black women — she implies Rihanna should better serve… Why is Rihanna more obligated to be a better role model than Dunham is to represent a racially inclusive world, at least a racially aware feminist?

Excellent questions. I wish Carroll had pointed out that Dunham’s listing “leaving Barbados” alongside “winning a Grammy” is also racist and colonialist – as though Rihanna moving away from her homeland, where 90% of inhabitants are Black, is a marker of success, like a global-scale equivalent of leaving a “bad” neighborhood for a “good” one. Carroll also failed to point out that the behaviors Dunham criticizes in Rihanna – drug use and controversial relationship choices – are prominently featured on Dunham’s own show. It is appallingly common that what’s fine for the white girl is grounds for hand-wringing judgment about the Black one. But Carroll’s point about who is or is not a role model and what they owe us is well taken.

This leads me to two things I think need addressing: first, the tangled threads of media, persona, and power at work here; and second, the ridiculously simplistic view of relationship violence implied in @MsMagazine’s tweet.

Media, persona, and power. There is a difference between the characters on Dunham’s show and Rihanna’s music and public persona. Hannah and her friends are fictional. But Rihanna is a real person. She is a young Black woman and an artist who has been through some rough stuff in her life; in her interview with Oprah, Rihanna spoke about witnessing her father abusing her mother and explicitly connected this with her own unhealthy relationships.

She is also a pop star for whom the line between public and private blurs, probably quite uncomfortably so. She is only 25 years old! How would any of us like all our 20-something mistakes and hard choices dissected by a global media culture? For pete’s sake, there was meta-news about Rihanna’s Oprah interview! The Huffington Post (to which I don’t like to link because of its labor practices) published a piece in which three public relations experts analyzed her performance! As Karnythia points out, Rihanna is clearly working out some issues through her music and media presence, she’s doing it on a world stage, and she deserves some space for that – the same space we seem fine with respecting when it comes to Taylor Swift or P!nk (read: young white women).

When asked, Rihanna herself flat-out said in the same Oprah interview that she doesn’t see herself as a role model:

“No, because of what society has made that title. It has become a title of perfection. That is something that nobody can achieve. I can’t say that I’ll get it right every time because I won’t. I wish. I’m a work in progress.”

She further said of her relationship with her fans:

“I want them to feel comfortable knowing that I have flaws as well. I want them to know those flaws because I’m afraid of the pedestal. I’m super duper afraid of the pedestal that comes with fame and with being a celebrity, so I keep myself as close to the ground as possible. I want to be a peer to my fans, I don’t ever want to be above them.”

This strikes me as a very smart, practical, and healthy 21st century attitude toward fame and influence. Rihanna does not want the burden of being anybody’s icon. She wants to carve out space for her own evolving identity. She wants space for her humanity.

Any feminism worth the name would want to help Rihanna with that project. So it is especially disappointing that this passive aggressive condemnation comes from Ms., a feminist media flagship. I’d think folks there would know better than to patronize and judge a relationship violence survivor. Ms. has long positioned itself as the voice of the feminist movement. Well, et tu, Ms.? Who thought this tweet constituted “using your powers for good?” What was the intention? Does Rihanna follow @MsMagazine? Was there some expectation of a response? What, exactly, was the goal here?

And whose intention or goal was it? The tweet didn’t come from an identifiable person; it came from @MsMagazine. I would like to know who exactly wrote the tweet. Author, whomever you are, if you don’t understand a hell of a lot more about relationship violence, which has been a core issue for feminist movements for as long as we’ve had them, than you demonstrated here, then you have no business writing about it for a major publication.

Moreover, I want to know who gave that person the job. Was this a case of fobbing off the social media stuff on an intern or junior staffer because the older, more senior staff think it doesn’t really matter, anyway?

I think a key piece of this is the old media world, in which a celebrity’s public image is about carefully crafted spectacle, versus the new media world, in which a fan halfway around the world can interact directly with a Grammy-award winning celebrity in real time or near-real time via Twitter or Reddit. Certainly celebrity image is still spun and crafted. But nowadays, when tabloids show us Cameron Diaz in cutoffs on her way out of the gas station and a magazine sold in the same rack shows her buffed, glossed, and Photoshopped into poreless Barbie-dom, there are conflicting things happening. Those contrasting images may even pop up on the same celebrity gossip website. Which do we want more, the relatable person or the polished icon? Rihanna has to negotiate those treacherous waters, and I’m sure that’s very difficult – all the more so because she is a young immigrant woman of color.

In short (I know, too late), Rihanna doesn’t owe you a damn thing, Ms. She is not obligated to perform a certain kind of victimhood or Strong Black Woman ™ for y’all or anyone. She is a real human being who deserves room to figure stuff out.

The phrase “abusive relationship” has two words in it, and they’re both important. This stuff is complicated. I’m a survivor of multiple kinds of abuse myself, and it will mark me for the rest of my life. I’m now in a near-disgustingly happy, healthy, loving, supportive partnership, and it took me a long time, a lot of therapy, and much hard work to be ready for it. It takes a lot of hard work now. And it’s worth it. I love my partner and I’m so glad to be with him.

But I will tell an ugly secret: there is always a part of me that’s a little lonely because there are parts of me he will never understand. Sometimes I feel defective and like an alien around him, and that stings. Do not mistake me. I am, of course, glad that he has had a relatively “normal,” trauma-free life and that he doesn’t have these kinds of scars. Of course I am. I love him very deeply, so of course I am glad he was spared this kind of damage. More generally, I am glad because no one should have to go through what I went through. But I am always aware of the difference, the distance. Sometimes it’s quite small. But it is always there. So there are ways in which the people who knew me growing up, who have histories like mine, will get me better than he does.

It’s not about memories or private jokes. It isn’t because he wasn’t with us when the cops busted up that party at J’s house in 9th grade. It’s because my oldest besties understand at a gut level the complicated feelings I have around love, trust, and boundaries, and that’s something my partner can never quite do.

Chris Brown has said that, like Rihanna, he grew up in an abusive household. So maybe an important part of their relationship is that sense of shared scars, the relief of knowing that you don’t have to continually struggle to keep the closet door shut on all those smelly, ugly skeletons because your partner has his own unwieldy mess of secrets and shame.

So I get the idea of sticking with someone who is screwed up in the same way you are. Feeling understood matters. It matters deeply. I am in no way defending Chris Brown’s behavior. I’m just saying, I know the value of that sense of kinship, and I feel very lucky that, unlike Rihanna, I have never had to make this tough a decision about what cost I would pay to hang on to it.

One of the things I remember most vividly from my volunteer training at the National Domestic Violence Hotline is María, the trainer, saying that above all, we had to respect survivors. It’s not like abusers show up with “ABUSER” written on their foreheads. Survivors have reasons for getting involved with them. The first instance of abuse often comes as a terrible shock – how could someone who has shown you love and tenderness suddenly offer violence? María said they heard over and over on the hotline that survivors want the violence to stop, not the relationship. She taught us that leaving is not easy, it may not ultimately be the right thing for any given person, and no one gets to make that choice but her. And if we didn’t go in to every call respecting the survivor’s autonomy, we were just repeating the abuser’s pattern of undermining her.

So what I want to know is, why is the most famous feminist periodical in the US using its Twitter account to recapitulate that disrespect? And again, why is someone who clearly doesn’t know a damn thing about relationship violence given that big a megaphone to talk about it?

In part, I blame the medium. Twitter, with its lightning-fast pace and tiny character allotment, is not exactly conducive to nuance and complexity. It encourages glibness, quick reactions rather than thoughtful ones, the delivery of judgment rather than the deliberation that precedes it. To paraphrase Mary Gordon, it loves the tone of a clear pronouncement more than it loves the truth. The truth about relationship violence is messy. It doesn’t fit in 140 characters.

But ultimately, the person who wrote this and anyone who okayed it is responsible for what was said. To them I say: if your feminism isn’t big enough to encompass the messy, complicated lived experience of actual women, then, like Flavia Dzodan said, it’s bullshit.

You may know that Texas courts have decided that the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for workers who have experienced pay discrimination to pursue claims in court, doesn’t apply here barring action by the Legislature.

Sen. Wendy Davis rose to the challenge and recently filed SB 248 to change Texas law to provide uniformity between state and federal laws and to allow workers to file in state court, which is less expensive, and also easier to access, as federal courts are far fewer and far away from many folks. This is an important step toward pay equity in Texas, and we need everyone to show their support for this bill!

The bill is scheduled to be heard in this morning’s Senate Economic Development Committee hearing at 8:00AM TODAY in the Senate Chamber.  This got scheduled quite last-minute, which often indicates the opposition is hoping the late notice will compromise our ability to organize around it. Let’s prove them wrong!

If you’re in Austin and have some time this morning, go to the Capitol and make your voice heard! It might seem intimidating, but it’s not.  Here’s what you do.

• Make your way to the Capitol. The nice folks at the State Preservation Board have this handy map for you. If you’re driving, the visitor parking garage is probably your best option.
• Go to the Senate Chamber. If you have any trouble finding your way around, ask a State Trooper.
• Look at the back of the room for a table with forms on it. Fill one of them out and indicate that you support the bill.
• Give the form to the committee clerk. If you’re running short on time, this is all you need to do and you can leave if you like.
• If you have time, sign up to speak! You’ll have three minutes to let the committee know why you support the bill. Do write something down, so you don’t get lost if you’re nervous up there, and take a moment to practice.

If you’re not in Austin or you don’t have time to go to the Capitol, you can work the phones for equal pay! The Senators on the committee are the ones to work the hardest right now. If you’re a constituent of one of these folks, please give them a call! If you don’t know who represents you, go to http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/ to find out.

The committee members are:

• Sen. Bob Deuell – SD 2- Mesquite, Rockwall, Terrell, Greenville - (512) 463-0102
• Sen. Kelly Hancock – SD 9 – Keller, N Richland Hills, Haltom City, Euless, parts of Arlington, Irving, Grand Prairie - (512) 463-0109
• Sen. Brian Birdwell – SD 22 – Waco - (512) 463-0122
• Sen. Wendy Davis – SD 10 – Ft Worth - (512) 463-0110 **It’s her bill, so just say thanks and that you support the bill
• Sen. Kevin Eltife – SD 1 – Tyler, Longview, Texarkana - (512) 463-0101
• Sen. Troy Fraser – SD 24 – Abilene, Brownwood, Belton, Fredericksburg, Killeen, Kerrville, Temple  - (512) 463-0124
• Sen. Kirk Watson – SD14 – Austin, Bastrop - (512) 463-0114

Below the fold is a suggested script to follow when you call.

PLEASE pass along to your friends, family, and networks, especially anyone you know who lives in these areas, and let them know to call their Senators as soon as possible and urge them to support SB 248, an important step toward equal pay for Texas women.

What to do when you call 

1. Ask for the staffer who works on economic development
2. Tell them if you are a constituent
3. Keep it short and polite. Let them know that SB 248 is being considered in the Senate Economic Development Committee and you urge them to support it.
4. Pick one or two of the following facts to explain why you support this bill.

• The wage gap hits low-wage workers the hardest. A woman who did not finish high school who works full-time, year-round, makes on average only 71% what her male peers make. Women who do the hard work that keeps our society moving, like cleaning, providing care in our hospitals and nursing homes, and cooking and serving our food, deserve to be paid equally and fairly.
• The wage gap hits women of color disproportionately hard. Here in Texas, Black women make only 58.8% what a white male does, and Hispanic/Latina women make just 44.4%. Texas ranks 40th in pay equity for Black women and 46th for Hispanic/Latina women. We’re worse than Oklahoma on both! Surely we can’t allow that.
• Fair and equal pay can help women get out of poverty, which is good for them and for Texas’ bottom line. When employers pay people what they are worth, families do better, workers need less aid from the state, and Texas has a stronger workforce.

5.  Thank them for their time.

Thank YOU for fighting for economic justice NOW!

Ross was born in Temple, Texas, in 1953. Something of a child prodigy, she skipped two grades in elementary school. Sadly, she was sexually assaulted twice before she even finished high school – once by a stranger when she was just eleven and once by a distant relative when she was fifteen. She became pregnant. Because she kept her child, she lost her scholarship to Radcliffe College. She went to Howard University, a historically black university, in Washington, D.C., where she became involved in black nationalist and tenants’ rights organizing.

When she was just 23, she was sterilized by the Dalkon Shield, the infamous defective IUD that injured or similarly sterilized hundreds of thousands of women. She was one of the first to win a case against its manufacturer.

And she had an abortion before Roe v. Wade.

All this, she has said, brought her to feminist and social justice work as one pissed-off woman.

In her nearly 40 years of human rights, anti-violence, and reproductive rights activism, Ross has revolutionized the feminist movement. Here are a few of her milestones:

• She served as director of the DC Rape Crisis Center, the first such center to focus on and be run by women of color
• She started the Women of Color Program at NOW
• She organized the first national conference on women of color and reproductive rights
• She led several delegations of women of color to international conferences
• At one of these conferences, 1994′s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt, she worked with other African American women to develop the term and concept, “reproductive justice.”
• She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education, a training and resource center for grassroots activists aimed at applying a human rights analysis to injustices in the U.S.
• She co-authored the landmark book, Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice
• She co-founded and served as national director of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

Ross has inspired generations of activists with her groundbreaking writing, speaking, and organizing. She recently stepped down from her position at SisterSong to focus on public speaking and teaching. It doesn’t seem to have slowed her down much. This past weekend she spoke at Take Root: Red State Perspectives on Reproductive Justice, and as usual, she rocked everyone’s world with her humor, thoughtfulness, and fierce commitment to telling hard truths. My Twitter feed was ablaze with all the incredibly wise and useful things she said.

Don’t take my word for it! Go watch some video of her! Listen, learn, laugh, be inspired. And go see her in person if you get the chance!

• Ross giving a Reproductive Justice 101 training in Miami – Part 1 and Part 2
• Ross talking about the origin of the term “women of color”
• Ross’s closing keynote at the 40th Anniversary of Our Bodies, Ourselves

For further reading:

• Bio of Ross at Smith College, where her papers are archived
• Ross’ new website, including videos and publications

Coleman’s commemorative stamp

Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman was a pioneering aviator in the early 20th century. Born in Atlanta, TX, in 1892 to sharecroppers George and Susan Coleman, she was raised in Waxahachie. She attended segregated schools, which she had to walk four miles to get to. After helping plant, work, and harvest the cotton in the family fields. And watching her three sisters. And helping around the house. As a child.

And then her father, fed up with racist barriers to … well, any kind of success at all, decided to leave for what he hoped were better opportunities in Oklahoma Indian territory. He tried to convince his wife and daughters to go with him, but they chose not to. So then Bessie’s mom, Sarah, went to work as a housekeeper, and Bessie did everything she did before plus effectively taking over the farm while her mom was at work.

So there’s your daily reminder that life was seriously, massively, horrifyingly hard for black folks back then, y’all. And extra hard for black women.

But Bessie showed her determination early. Despite these barriers to her education, she completed all eight grades available at her one-room schoolhouse and was an outstanding student. After graduation, she went to work washing clothes, saving money for her education. She went to Langston University for a year, then ran out of money.

At 23, she moved to Chicago, living with her brother and working as a manicurist. The community was full of WWI veterans who shared wild tales of their adventures. Inspired by their daring – and needled by her brother’s assertion that French women were better because they could fly – young Bessie set out to be a pilot.

And by damn, she did so. She learned French at a Berlitz school, found herself funding, went to France, and started training, always the only black and the only woman in her classes. And she became the first black female pilot on the planet.

Once she was licensed, she returned to the US and made her living as an exhibition pilot. She marketed herself very smartly, carefully creating her daredevil public image with a military-like uniform, high-energy public-speaking, and the tagline, “The World’s Greatest Woman Flier.” Her goal was to establish a school for black aviators.

And while she was working on her own success, she also did a lot for black folks. She spoke to packed houses at black theaters. She stuck strongly to her principles, refusing to bow to the racism of the times. She took a role in a movie, which would have been a great boost to her career, but walked off the set when she found out she’d have to appear in rags with a pack and walking stick, feeling that she was being asked to portray an ugly stereotype. She refused to perform for segregated audiences and demanded that everyone who entered her shows could use the same gates – in the 1920s, y’all. Thirty years before Brown v. Board of Education, at a time when this kind of “uppity” behavior could easily get a black person lynched. That was hugely risky and made a big statement. She encouraged other black folks to take up flying. She became a symbol of hope and an inspiration to thousands.

She died tragically young, at just 34, as the result of an accident in an experimental plane. Her funeral was presided over by Ida B. Wells-Barnett and brought out 10,000 mourners.   Lt. William J. Powell, author of Black Wings and founder of the Bessie Coleman Aero Club for black aviators, wrote of her legacy, “Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”

Sources/For Further Reading:

• Doris Rich’s biography, Queen Bess: Daredevil Aviator
• Coleman’s Wikipedia page
• The official Bessie Coleman site
• PBS’ page on Coleman, as featured in their film, Fly Girls

The Honorable Barbara Jordan

The Honorable Barbara Jordan

1936-1996

Lawyer • Orator • Stateswoman • Teacher

“What the people want is simple. They want 

an America as good as its promise.”

About Barbara Jordan

Born and raised in Houston, Jordan was the daughter of a Baptist minister and a domestic worker. Segregation prevented her from attending UT, so she attended Texas Southern University, where she was a national champion debater. She graduated from Boston University Law School in 1959, one of only two women in her class.

She taught political science at the Tuskegee Institute for a year before returning to Houston to practice law. She ran twice for the Texas House before winning a seat in the Texas Senate in 1966, the first black person to do so since Reconstruction and the first black woman ever to do so. She served two terms, earning the respect of her colleagues, serving as president pro tem of the Senate and, for one day, as acting governor of Texas. She championed legislation protecting the environment and advocating for the rights of people of color and poor people.

Jordan was elected to the US House in 1974, the first woman to serve Texas in Congress in her own right. She served on the Judiciary Committee and vaulted to national prominence during the Watergate hearings. She fought for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act and for the inclusion of Mexican-Americans in that law, which forbids racial discrimination in electoral processes. She also pushed for the Community Reinvestment Act, which reduced discriminatory credit practices in low-income communities (“redlining”). In 1976, she gave a Democratic National Convention keynote widely regarded as one of the best speeches of the 20th century.

Sadly, Jordan was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1973, and by 1979 her health forced her to retire from politics. She moved to Austin and taught ethics at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, where a yearly forum honoring her legacy is still held. She was well enough to give another lauded and influential DNC keynote in 1992. But her health continued to deteriorate. Weakened by a near-drowning in 1988, she also suffered from leukemia. Jordan died in 1996 at age 59.

Among her many awards and honors are the Presidential Medal of Freedom, election to both the Texas and National Women’s Halls of Fame, and the US Military Academy’s Sylvanus Thayer Award. There is a statue of her on the UT campus and another at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where the main terminal is named for her.

Controversy

President Clinton asked Jordan to chair the US Commission on Immigration Reform. Jordan argued for legal penalties for employers of undocumented immigrants, strict border security, no amnesty or other paths to citizenship, and broad grounds for deportation. Jordan’s stature (and her status as a woman of color) gave Clinton political cover for supporting these controversial recommendations.

Jordan was also a closeted lesbian who was partnered with Nancy Earl, an educational psychologist and sometime speechwriter for Jordan, for over 30 years. Many say that Jordan chose not to disclose her orientation because she feared political repercussions from her core constituency of socially conservative black churchgoers.

Key Quotes

“My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminuation, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution…. It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.”

- Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, July 25, 1974

“A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny.”

“This country can ill afford to continue to function using less than half of its human resources, brain power, and kinetic energy.”

- Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, July 12, 1976

“The imperative is to define what is right and do it.”

- Remarks at “The Great Society: A Twenty Year Critique,” a symposium sponsored by the LBJ Library and the LBJ School of Public Affairs, April 1985

“If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.”

- Remarks at “The Johnson Years: LBJ: The Differences He Made,” a symposium sponsored by UT and the LBJ Library, May 3-5, 1990

“I have faith in young people because I know the strongest emotions which prevail are those of love and caring and belief and tolerance.”

- Article in On Campus, February 14, 1994

“How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance — the one value that is indispensable in creating community…One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.”

– From “All Together Now” in Sesame Street Parents, July/August, 1994

“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.”

- Agreeing with Robert Fulghum in an address at Middlebury College, 1987

Getting set up! You can see a bunch of groups there offering info and getting folks involved.

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Here in Austin, we had a great rally on the Capitol steps! It was fantastic to see so many pro-women groups coming together, including NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, Lilith Fund, Jane’s Due Process, Whole Woman’s Health, the local Unitarian Universalist Association, National Council of Jewish Women Austin, National Women’s Political Caucus Texas, and the Austin and Houston chapters of NOW. Major kudos to Austin NOW member and National Women’s Political Caucus-Texas President Rebecca Birch for organizing this great event!

Look at that crowd! Tons of folks for 11:30am on a Tuesday!

It was especially wonderful  to see such a diverse crowd – women, men, kids, older folks, young folks, people of color, people with disabilities, people of faith, Capitol staff, folks in business suits and folks in jeans and t-shirts… It really brought home that reproductive justice is everyone’s issue.

Some highlights from the rally:

• Travis County pols represent! State Reps. Donna Howard and Elliott Naishtat spoke, as did County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt. Rep. Howard gave props to Texas’ own Sarah Weddington, who won Roe v. Wade when she was just 26. Commissioner Eckhardt talked about the need for continuing the conversation, talking to everyone we know. Rep. Naishtat, central Austin’s longtime representative, gave some great practical advice: go to the Capitol, spend a few minutes thanking the folks who fight with us, but spend a lot more time talking with and educating the folks who don’t. That’s how we win.
• Rev. Jim Rigby, local minister and progressive activist, noted that the men who yell about this and the women who stand in front of them never show up to yell for prenatal care or other supports for poor women and children.
• Heather Busby of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas talked about how many clinics have closed because of Gov. Perry and the legislature’s persistent cuts to family planning, and urged us to remember the woman working for minimum wage in far east or west Texas, counting her pennies for gas to make it to the nearest clinic, which now might be hundreds of miles away.
• Amanda Williams from Lilith Fund shared two stories of women who couldn’t afford abortions on their own but were able to with help from Lilith. Both those women wrote to Lilith with sincere thanks and news about them continuing their educations. She asked us to remember Gloria, remember Megan, and continue to fight for access to abortion.
• Amy Hagstrom Miller from Whole Woman’s Health speaking out as an abortion provider, urging us to end the stigma around it. Takeaway line: “Good people have abortions, and good people provide them.”
• Cindy Noland of Faith Action for Women in Need exhorted us to keep fighting, use our creativity, and be fierce, bold, and tireless!

Austin and Houston NOW members with our signs. Everybody loves the NOW rounds!

Good stuff, right? And it was so energizing to see how many amazing activists we have here in Austin! It can be easy to feel alone in your beliefs, but here in the ATX, you have plenty of great company.

And this being Austin, after we packed everything up, a whole bunch of us went to Scholz’s for a late lunch. Feminism, beer, and barbecue – that’s my town.

• Texas has a high rate of poverty, and it’s been rising in the last several years. One in five Texans, or about four million of us, live in poverty.
• Nearly a third of them are children.
• Almost a quarter of women are poor.
• Black and Hispanic folks are almost three times as likely to be poor as white folks here.

The Texas Tribune has a useful page that breaks down the demographics of poverty in Texas, county by county. Here in Travis County, about 150,000 people are below the federal poverty line – which is just $22,350 for a family of four. 54% of them are women. About a third are children.

None of this is acceptable.

One factor at work here is that women get stuck in lower-paying jobs and make less money. The National Partnership for Women and Families just put out a really well-done but very scary infographic on the pay gap for women of color. We’ve all heard that women make about $.77 for every dollar a man makes. But that’s deceptive. It’s true that, on average, white women make about that 3/4 mark. But African-American/black women make about $.64 for every dollar a white man makes, and Hispanic/Latina women make just $.55! So, white folks, get out of your head the welfare queen stereotypes you might harbor; women of color often get stuck in grueling, low-paying service sector jobs in which they work very hard for very little.

In the richest country in the world, where we talk all the time about equality, this is horrifying. We’ve got work to do, y’all.

For further reading:

• UT government Professor Henry Dietz’ short, well-written summary of facts on poverty in Texas
• The Texas Food Bank Network’s page on poverty in Texas and their take on legislative solutions

But! There is some good stuff happening. Not long before the WHP horror show, there was another Health and Human Services Commission hearing about whether Texas Medicaid should cover midwifery and birthing centers in a way that makes that choice tenable (that is to say, should reimburse providers adequately and not burden them with a lot of red tape). As a policy nerd, I say abso-frickin’-lutely. Poor women should have choices in their health care just like everyone else. Midwifery and birth centers are perfectly safe for most women and in fact are the standard in most other places in the world. Midwifery and birthing centers offer a warm, welcoming environment that many women prefer.

And just from a raw numbers perspective, midwifery is a BIG win. Over 60% of the births in Texas are covered by Medicaid at about $13,000 each, including pre- and post-natal care; the same services provided by a midwife cost about $6,000. The budget nerd in me likes that math, y’all. High quality care at half the price? Awesome.

I learned a lot at this hearing. I got to meet some really amazing women – nurses, midwives, doctors, parents. Extra love to all the activists from Mamas of Color Rising, a fantastic local group that does advocacy on these issues. (Check out this great op-ed they got into the Statesman the day of the hearing. Nice job.) I got to hear the personal testimony of so many young mothers of color who said that doctors often made ugly assumptions about them and treated them with disrespect because they were young, poor, and women of color. That’s awful. Unsurprisingly, they felt disinclined to return. That means worse prenatal care for them, if they could find another provider at all, because it is really, really hard to find health care providers that accept Medicaid these days. Considering that the US has embarrassingly bad rates of maternal and infant mortality (we are 50th in the world in maternal survival, and the numbers are staggeringly bad for women of color – seriously, Amnesty International considers us a human rights violator over it),  we have got to do more to provide not only competent but respectful prenatal care for all women in the US.

No word yet on the rules changes, but I have to say, I felt so empowered and energized by all these folks who spoke so passionately about women’s health, about race and class and human rights, who were engaged and informed and just incredibly inspiring! Hooray!

I spoke in favor of the rule changes HHSC was considering to make it easier for midwives and birthing centers. My testimony is below the fold.

Hi, my name is Carrie Tilton-Jones,  coordinator of the Austin chapter of the National Organization for Women, and I am testifying in favor of genuine Medicaid coverage of midwifery and birth centers. Because I’m a graduate student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs with a specialty in women’s health, I am very familiar with the facts – that midwifery and birthing centers are a safe choice for most women, with outcomes similar to hospitals, that many women find them a more supportive, welcoming choice, and that this kind of care is cost effective. Here in Texas, with about 60% of our births are paid for by Medicaid, we always have a delicate balancing act between smart fiscal choices and offering the best possible care and respect to patients. With hospital births costing over $12,000 and the average birth center birth costing half that, offering Medicaid recipients the choice to labor at birth centers makes excellent fiscal sense.

But that’s not what got me out of bed this morning.

I came here today to share my experience watching my godchild be born under a midwife’s care at a birthing center.

I’m fortunate to have had a best friend for more than 25 years. We’ve known each other since we were 9. Because we both grew up in difficult circumstances, we were frequent roommates in our young life. We think of each other as sisters. She gave birth to all three of her children at the excellent birthing center attached to Baylor Hospital in Dallas. And she was so grateful for the warm, sensitive, capable care she received, she is now studying to be a nurse-midwife herself.

I was there for the birth of Veronica, my goddaughter. I was the fourth person in the world to hold her, after the midwife and her parents. I gave her her first bath, scared half to death and with slightly trembling hands, under the patient supervision of the midwife. I feel a deep bond with Veronica, too deep to articulate, one that I expect will last the rest of our lives. Had Veronica been born in a hospital, I might not have been able to be there. What is unique about midwifery and birthing centers is the family environment they provide – both in terms of the physical comfort of having real beds and couches and in terms of their allowing people not related by blood, and as many people as the mother wants,  to attend and support laboring mothers. For those of us who grew up a little on the margins, whose family trees have some broken branches and some grafts, and for people who grew up in foster care, for survivors of domestic violence, the most important people in our lives are probably not those related by blood. Birthing centers honor those connections.

And those chosen family members, that sense of extended family and community, has been vital to my sister’s children. Unfortunately, they lost their father in a car accident earlier this year. And while nothing can fill that hole in their lives, those of us who love them are doing our best to patch it over. And it means the world to me and to Veronica for me to be able to say to her, I was there when you were born, just like your mom and your dad, and I will be here for you until the day I die, just like them.

Thank you for the opportunity to offer my testimony. I encourage HHSC to approve these rule changes and offer choice in birthing options for women on Medicaid.