***Reminder: Fem Dems Nov. Meeting is on Tuesday, Nov. 17th at 6pm.

Please note location change: 1830 N Street, Sacramento, CA 95811.

Please join us with special guest Janice Rocco, a longtime statewide and national NOW leader and Chief of Staff to our own State Assemblymember Dave Jones. Janice will be updating us on the national healthcare reform debate from a feminist's perspective: how have women's issues been left out, included, or totally politicized?

Snacks will be provided!

A little about Janice:

Janice Rocco began her NOW activism in college. After serving as President of her campus chapter in Santa Barbara, Janice became the youngest-ever President of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW at the age of 25. Since then, Janice has continued her leadership in NOW, while also working in California's state capitol as the Chief of Staff to the Chair of the Legislative Women's Caucus and then to the Chair of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. Janice has worked on a wide range of issues including violence against women, lesbian rights, reproductive rights and the image of women in media. She brings years of organizing and public policy experience to NOW.

Janice was involved in filing the gender equity lawsuit against the California State University system which resulted in a consent degree that brought a significant increase in athletic opportunities for women. Her work to educate the public about the harm done by misogynistic song lyrics led MTV to pull a popular video and caused retailers to refuse to sell the CD without a warning label. Janice has worked on local, state and federal races to recruit, train and elect women and people of color to office. She also worked to defeat three parental notification ballots measures in California, and worked against those to end affirmative action and repeal marriage equality. As President of Los Angeles NOW, Janice was interviewed by local and national television, radio and print media, and has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, the Fox News channel and Entertainment Tonight. Janice is currently serving her third term on NOW's National Board and is the Southwest Regional Director.

Getting appointed to boards and commissions

Last week, California Women Lead hosted a free workshop on how to get an appointment to a board or commission as a woman. Two Fem Dems were able to attend this event and it was everything promised: full of useful information and attended by many women mayors, council members and board members who could lend their experience and advice to the next generation of women leaders.

California Women Lead is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing leadership and campaign trainings, networking opportunities, and policy discussion forums for women interested in or who hold elected and appointed offices. CWL’s mission, as women in government, is to inform and educate its constituencies as well as encourage and support women to seek public office.

Similarly, the Fem Dems is committed to helping feminist democrats get elected or appointed to bring our voice into the policy debates that affect our everyday lives. The first and most basic thing we learned from the workshop is that getting an appointment to a board or commission is the first step in getting more women in elected office. So below please find the tips and pointers that we got on how to start navigate the appointments process:

1.       Why should women be engaged in the political process? The main answers to this question were that women need to be more forceful because we have different ideas and they are GOOD ideas. The 3 speakers, Kathy Lund, Cheyl Maki and Susan Rohan each touched on the themes of how women collaborate to problem solve, and bring the experiences that men don’t have to the table. Another issue that came up is that women often think they have to be experts at something before they are allowed to have opinions. Women need to speak up – even if our voices shake! – because people also need to HEAR what we have to say. We aren’t just speaking up at these public forums for ourselves, but because our good ideas serve the community!

2.        

What do you need to know to get appointed?

a.       There are state boards and commissions and local level boards and commissions. At the state level, check out Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s appointments page. According to the speakers, your partisan affiliation as a Democrat is no preclusion to getting appointed.

b.      Be open-minded about which appointment you want. You are allowed to select five that you would like to be appointed to. It’s OK if you don’t know the issue area, too. These appointments are learn-on-the-job positions, so you can learn all about the state mining trade or state security guards as you go.

c.       Be prepared to give up all your personal information in the application. You will be background checked and once appointed, your information is public. Some women in attendance expressed that it was this giving up of private info that caused them to withdraw their appointment applications.

d.      A few appointments actually require senate confirmation, so make sure that if the one you are interested in does, you are prepared to go before the Senate and answer questions on record.

e.      Know what the time demands are of the position you are seeking. Some are just two days a month but require a lot of travel, while others are more frequent and in Sacramento. You want to make sure you are prepared to integrate the demands of the appointment, which is very part-time, with the demands of your regular, full time life.

f.         For local level appointments, contact your city council member’s office and ask if they have any positions they need filled on a local commission on board. According to the CWL speakers, people who volunteer to fill these positions and be involved in their communities and warmly welcomed by local leaders, and later tapped to run for office.

Having women show and speak for our issues has always been an imperative of organizations like the Fem Dems and California Women Lead.  Attending this event reminded me that the Fem Dems, as a chapter of the California Young Democrats, should heed the call to get appointments within the umbrella of our own organization (both the state and national YDs), and continue our work influencing the CYD platform to make sure it reflects issues that feminist democrats care about, too.

Fem Dems Respond to the Loss of Civil Rights in Maine

On Thursday, Oct. 29, the Fem Dems phoned from Sacramento’s Equality California field office to hundreds of voters in Maine to keep the fundamental right to marry intact for same sex couples there.

In light of the slim majority that voted to repeal same-sex marriage, http://www.marriageequality.org/ issued the following statement:

Our hearts go out to same-sex couples in Maine who have had their fundamental right to marry stripped away by a slim majority, said Molly McKay, Marriage Equality USA. Its absolutely inhumane to put same-sex couples and their children through these grueling campaigns that only serve to promote hatred, ignorance and bigotry. LGBT Americans deserve the same security and respect that marriage provides to all other families and we will continue on our journey that has brought us this far and continue to share our truth and the impact of discrimination it is truly only a matter of time. We, of the generation that has been tasked with the obligation to end legal discrimination against LGBT Americans must learn that life isnt about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to! dance in the rainand dance and march and sing and pray is what we will doand as our most beloved Dr. Martin Luther King has said, we will do so, until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

We must continue to heed the advice of Harvey Milk and come out to everyone we meet as supporters of marriage equality, as LGBT people, as sisters, brothers, parents and friends of gay people, said Pamela Brown, Marriage Equality USA Policy Director. Last night, we achieved victories in Washington State and Kalamazoo, seven openly gay candidates won in elections spanning the nation from St. Petersburg, Florida to Salt Lake City, Utah and two are in run-off elections in Houston, Texas and the 58th District in Georgia. And as people witness same-sex couples happily married in six states, living their lives, mowing their lawn, paying their taxes and as our families become woven into the seamless web of community and citizenship, the injustice of separa! te of unequal treatment will grow more and more apparent. To h! elp high light our common humanity, Marriage Equality USA is launching a stories project, particularly in states where marriage equality is a reality. We want to encourage same-sex couples, their families, straight allies, and other community members to share their experiences on the impact and importance of extending the freedom to marry to all loving, committed couples. The stories we collect will be presented through a digital stories project that we will release during Februarys Freedom to Marry month.

To have your story including in this project, please complete the on-line survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=kGFndFxQS4gCHuCU_2bKgBUg_3d_3d

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The Fem Dems’ hearts and spirits are with our friends in Maine and we will remain committed to the noble cause of marriage equality for all.

Gender equality for female veterans

It wasn’t long into the Iraq War that I started to realize that this country’s perception of women being incapable of combat roles could be permanently changed by the reality foisted upon our service men and women in Iraq. Despite the fact that women are not congressionally authorized to be in combat roles, and despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that Congress could discriminate against women when it comes to our role in the military, the Iraq War is a game changer that simply can’t be ignored.

A recent article in the New York Times details how war is the great equalizer:

When Mrs. Pacquette joined the army in the ’80s — inspired by her father, who served in World War II — men often told her she did not belong. “Women were seen as weak and whiny,” she said. “Men had to go on sick call all the time but when a woman went on sick call, it was a big deal.”

Even before she was deployed to Iraq in 2004, however, she sensed what thousands of women have since discovered: that war would be an equalizer. And it was.

In early October 2004, her convoy of about 30 vehicles set out from Kuwait for Mosul, one of Iraq’s most violent cities. On the way, she said, they were hit three times with roadside bombs. One exploded 200 feet from the unarmored Humvee in which Mrs. Pacquette spent day and night pointing her rifle out an open window….““There were guys on the ground that I was responsible for as an NCO,” she said, adding, “As a leader, I had to keep my fear inside.”

The consequence of allowing women into combat roles without officially recognizing their status as combat veterans is playing out as these women return home seeking the medical and emotional support for the unique and often isolating wounds of war. They return home, and find that their claims are denied or they are left alone without a group of similarly situated women to transition back to civilian life with.

Dr. Carri-Ann Gibson, Mrs. Pacquette’s therapist, who runs the Trauma Recovery Program at the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, Fla., said the hardest part for women is that they often feel ashamed and guilty because “they’re not supposed to punch a wall, they’re not supposed to get aggressive with their spouse.”

Dr. Gibson said that for men, rage, paranoia and aggression are more accepted, while women are typically expected to snap back into domestic routines without any trouble.

“Women apply that pressure to themselves as well,” she said. “They live with that inner feeling of anger, and that’s why we see more events happening at home than actually out in public.”

Dr. Resick of the National Center for P.T.S.D. said much was still unknown about how the minds of men and women handle war. But at this point, she said, men and women differ mainly in how they manage similar symptoms.

“The women — because they are not surrounded by other women, they may be surrounded by men — may withdraw more,” she continued. “The question is, Who are they with when they come home?”

The fact that women are in combat roles and are returning with serious emotional and physical scars such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can no longer be denied. But so long as it is, our female veterans are suffering alone and being denied to dignity and respect they deserve for sacrificing so much for our country.

Many women traumatized by combat stress described lives of quiet desperation, alone, in just a few rooms with drawn shades. Nancy Schiliro, 29, who lost her right eye as a result of a mortar attack in 2005, said that for more than two years after returning home, she rarely left a darkened garage in Hartsdale, N.Y., that her grandmother called “the bat cave.” Shalimar Bien, 30, described her life, four years after Iraq, as a nonstop effort to avoid confrontation.

This really comes as no surprise when you consider how dismissive and condescending people – even the men who served with women in Iraq and Afghanistan – are to women veterans. After saving lives and risking their own to serve this country, they must return to defend their contribution from insulting remarks like “How was the shopping?”

When Heather Paxton started working at the V.A. hospital in Columbia, Mo., two years ago, she discovered something she did not expect: no one saw her as a veteran. Despite her service in Iraq, patients assumed she knew nothing of war. A male colleague who chattered about weapons dismissed her like a silly little sister when she chimed in. “He’d give me the stink eye,” Ms. Paxton said. “He’d just walk away.”

For many female veterans today, war and their roles in it must be constantly explained. For those with post-traumatic stress, the constant demand for proof can be particularly maddening — confirming their belief that only the people who were “over there” can understand them here.

Renee Peloquin, 25, a member of the Idaho National Guard, had to design a bumper sticker that says “Female Iraqi War Veteran” because the basic “Iraq War Veteran” message on her car led strangers to thank her long-haired boyfriend for serving, even though he has never spent a day in uniform.

“I’m so sick of being stereotyped,” Ms. Peloquin said. “Or being ignored, that’s a better word.”

Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq veteran who lost two legs there and ran for congress in Illinois, answers the combat question squarely: “it’s not a question, Can women can do a combat job. They just are.”

As a society, we have an obligation to provide our veterans with the services they need upon return to civilian life. That includes proper medical care that acknowledges the very real mental injuries suffered by both men and women. Getting there requires a realistic assessment of what roles women now play in the military and honoring that with proper medical care and other transition services.