Day 351- Celery

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Dear Mr. President,

Watching The Daily Show last night, I felt like cheering when Mike Huckabee suggested that Democrats were making health benefits for 9/11 first responders a political battle and Jon Stewart retorted "honestly, to their discredit, they haven't." Stewart goes on to compare the situation to the Democrats being handed a feast of a political win on a silver platter and refusing it in order to sit in a corner and eat celery. His entire show seemed to beg the question "hey, where's your outrage now?" of every 9/11-invoking Republican, FOX news pundit and mosque-protesting bigot. Because honoring those who died on (and continue to die from) 9/11 is about more than keeping Islamic community centers outside of a 10-block radius of ground zero. Mr. Stewart, after the rally to restore sanity, forcefully reminded Rachel Maddow that unlike pundits representing real news networks, he doesn't have any skin in the game, he doesn't play so much as shout drunkenly from the stands. I think yesterday's show demonstrated rather clearly why that isn't always true. It must be frustrating to watch a comedian out-articulate you with a message that Democrats ought to have been owning since the Republican filibuster began.

Another silver platter story arrived in the form of the Republican opposition to the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010. House Republicans voted against the bill (even some who co-sponsored it) citing fiscal concerns and bizarre fears that such legislation could increase abortions. I just want to tear my hair out at the horrifying logic being used to justify this. Where is the family-values outrage now?

(See that Cat? See the Cradle? )

I understand the desire to live in merry bipartisan bliss, especially now that every one is in the spirit of the holidays. But Jon Stewart is right. Enough celery! Democrats ought to be finding every TV camera they can and repeating some version of the same line about honoring 9/11's heroes and protecting vulnerable children from exploitation in the name of marriage. The race for 2012 starts any day now (if not yesterday) and voters across the country need to know that voting Republican is tantamount to saying it's OK to let 9/11 first responders suffer and struggle and die, that it's OK to quibble about the global gag rule while 12-year old girls are forced to marry men old enough to be their grandfathers.

Put down the celery Mr. President, it's time for a more satisfying entree.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 261- One in Seven

Dear Mr. President,

I have written you 260 letters this year. Of those 260, the top two subjects I've tagged are "Hope and change" and "values." These are more for my own reference than anything else. "Hope and change" refers to a letter that addresses something I feel you promised during the campaign. "Values" is usually to indicate a letter about our national or societal priorities. I chose "values" because it's a term often co-opted by the right (and, I'm sure, used by your own staff in the context conservatives use it.) So-called values voters, by the conservative Christian definition, oppose gay marriage, abortion and stem-cell research. The website for the Values Voters Summit lists the agenda as "Protect Marriage • Champion Life • Strengthen the Military • Limit Government • Control Spending • Defend Our Freedoms". I've always been irritated at the idea that voters sharing these particular values are the only ones conventionally identified as values voters- as though all of us are not voting based on our own personal values.

What does it say about what we value that preventing two people in love from marrying or putting the lives and well-being of women at risk is a demonstration of having "values"? Especially considering the 2010 census data, which shows a record number of Americans, 43.6 million or one in seven are living in poverty? When one in five children live in poverty, and one in four African Americans or Latinos? Where are the Christian values in letting twenty percent of American children grow up impoverished? While I do think the main source of this problem comes from corporate greed and corrupt politicians on both sides of the aisle, we as voters must also be held accountable for this. Voters who don't inform and educate themselves before voting. Voters who allow trivial issues of appearance, personality or campaign smears to sway their vote without an appreciation for issues. Especially voters who do not vote at all.

Once, however, we have voted, once we have elected a party to control Congress and the White House, the responsibility falls to you to come through with all the Hope and Change promised to this country during the campaign. Mr. President, for all the right might howl and scream and lie through their teeth on FOX news, Democrats have cowered, backed down, abandoned the values that ought to define our party and set it apart from the greed, xenophobia and selfishness of our opponents. A livable minimum wage, a strong national education system, and access to affordable health care - these are values that Democrats ostensibly stand for, values I support, values I was promised would be defended when I cast my ballot in 2008. If these values were being fought for just as hard as the right is fighting to undermine them than 1 in 7 Americans would not be living in poverty. Your job isn't easy, and it isn't close to finished. This election is going to be ugly and difficult and the next one is probably going to be worse. I do not feel sorry for you. One in seven of us is living in poverty, Mr. President and while every single one of you elected to represent us is living in fear of election day, the situation is just getting worse. I think it is time that you asked every elected Democrat what they really value more- their office or their conscience.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 176-Choice as a human right

Dear Mr. President,

Today I read about the impending G8 discussion of global access to abortion services. While the Canadian PM has tacitly made his opposition to this clear, there is hope that the US will come out forcefully in support of safe and legal access to contraception and abortion as a global woman's right. I'm not so hopeful; I think that, for all of your administration's talk about the importance of education and equal rights for women and girls, the health care debate clearly demonstrated that reproductive rights are not enough of a priority to warrant any real political risks. This depressing thought reminded me of a news story I'd read several months back, about a nun in Arizona. Sister Margaret McBride, the administrator of St. Joseph's hospital in Phoenix, approved an abortion for a patient who would have died without terminating her pregnancy. Sister McBride was excommunicated for this, and condemned by many anti-choice organizations.

What struck me about this story is the obvious disdain the church has for the woman's life, and also the contrast in their reaction to this Nun's actions and those of the countless Priests accused of child molestation. This same hypocrisy is apparent in the Helms amendment, and, domestically, the demands that insurance plans covering abortion use no federal funds. Taxpayers fund death and torture and extrajudicial incarceration in Afghanistan every day, but the idea that an organization allowing Afghan women to make their own reproductive decisions would get a dime of American money is too controversial? Surely, if we can declare access to education essential, we can also fight for every woman's right to control her own body, as a woman's health is essential to her participation in society. The US should lead by example, repeal the Helms amendement and campaign strongly for the right to choose for every woman, no matter where she lives. I hope that the G8 will provide an opportunity to demonstrate courageous leadership on this issue, even in the face of controversy.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 120- National Prayer day

Dear Mr. President,

National displays of faith, or national calls for prayer make me uncomfortable. I'm not a religious person and I generally feel excluded, somehow, as though these days of prayer are meant to distinguish "real" Americans with Judeo-Christian values from those of us who don't have an easy religious definition. But our country is overwhelmingly religious, and while symbolic displays of faith by our supposedly secular government might make me feel uncomfortable and alienated, it doesn't do any one any real harm. If I can ask religious voters to set aside their discomfort about abortion and gay marriage, I can put up with a National Day of Prayer.

While I don't think this is harmful, and I understand the political benefit of making religious Americans feel as though they have a voice in our government, I wonder at the kind of religious belief that requires support in national policy. I think of spirituality as an intensely personal expression; I do not need my government to reflect, encourage or express my religious beliefs. (I'd prefer that it didn't try to, because there is simply no way for a government like ours to express all the myriad complexities and contradictions of the faiths of its people.) But I've heard the outrage from many Christians at the perception of our government, and especially your administration, as being against religious expression, and I just don't understand it. If people want to pray today, they should do so. If they want some one to lead them in prayer, they should go to a religious leader. Why is that a role for our government? Isn't faith, by definition, an act of personal will?

I think that believing in God should not require any action on the part of any one else. I don't believe the phrase "under God" has any place in our pledge of allegiance, which is meant to be a devotion to our nation, founded on the freedom to be any religion, or none at all. National Prayer Day does not do me any great injury, but I wonder if it does any one any real good, either. I think that any one who prays does so without prompting from their elected officials. In your declaration today you called upon "the citizens of our Nation to pray, or otherwise give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings." I am thankful for our many freedoms and blessings, and even for the goodwill that religious belief generates in people from all faiths. Maybe we look for too many reasons to complain. I'm certainly guilty of this, especially in the face of my relatively blessed existence, but I hope that you know how many of us are thankful to be spared government-imposed religious expression, as well.

I know you are a religious man, Mr. President, and so I hope that you found today to be helpful, comforting or inspiring. So long as you continue to defend the separation of church and state, I will put aside my discomfort at these symbolic displays of a faith that does not belong to me.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 80- HCR, finally

In the end, what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the foundation of the American Dream. Tonight, we answered the call of history as so many generations of Americans have before us. When faced with crisis, we did not shrink from our challenge -- we overcame it. We did not avoid our responsibility -- we embraced it. We did not fear our future -- we shaped it.

President Barack Obama, 3/21/2010

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations. I know that this was a costly victory, and that the reforms just passed in the House may lose the Democrats our majority come November. Thank you, sir; thank you for persevering, for fighting through the ideological entrenchment, the false, often absurd claims of your opponents, and the weak, self-serving members of your own party. It was an ugly fight, a long fight, and I was glad to hear house members calling attention to those, like Sen. Kennedy, who though they did not live to see their hard work realized, ought to share in the glory of this accomplishment. This is a good step, a first step, a bill that I don't believe goes far enough, but that reflects caution and consideration for your political opponents, even as they would not participate in the work of crafting it.

I've just watched two hours of debate, I am elated and exhausted, and I know these pale in comparison to the emotions you must be feeling. I have serious qualms with your executive order, and with the democrats who voted with the motion to recommit. But we have won the day, and I will have many, future letters to complain about the continuing assault on a woman's right to make the decisions about her own body. Despite this, despite the ugliness of the fight, the cringe-inducing mangling of words by Speaker Pelosi; despite it all, I am so proud of my country today.

Well done, Mr. President. Thank you, on my own behalf, and for my friends and loved ones who will be comforted and relieved by this legislation. I believe this will, in time, prove to be one of the great accomplishments of the American government; that history will remember the magnitude of this achievement and the President who made it possible.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 23- 37 years

Today we recognize the 37th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which affirms every woman’s fundamental constitutional right to choose whether to have an abortion, as well as each American’s right to privacy from government intrusion. I have, and continue to, support these constitutional rights.

I also remain committed to working with people of good will to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and families, and strengthen the adoption system.

Today and every day, we must strive to ensure that all women have limitless opportunities to fulfill their dreams.

Dear Mr. President,

The night of the final debate between you and Senator McCain was the night I knew you were a different kind of politician. What struck me was the way you reminded every one, very calmly, that no matter how unapologetic you or any one might be in their support for Roe V. Wade, "no one is pro-abortion." The power of this moment was lost, of course, in Senator McCain's response, which involved air-quotes around "women's health" as though women across the nation were inventing life-threatening prenatal complications in order to score late-term abortions. My appreciation for your words was lost in my disgust at Senator McCain, but your words kept coming back to me, in the days following.

5 years ago, I made a choice. Knowing what I know now, knowing how that choice has haunted me, redefined me, in many ways, broken me, I don't think I would make the same choice, again. I was 18, and I was scared, and I was desperate. I know, for sure, that the law would not have stopped me. I could have gone to a safe, sterile clinic, or I could have gone somewhere else. I wasn't making this choice because I thought it was the right one, I wasn't making it because I thought, at all. I was making it because a person I thought mattered more than all else, told me it was the only way. I'm not blaming him, I'm blaming myself for valuing this man above my own health and safety and survival. For valuing him above all reason or logic.

In the end, of course, he left me. In the end I was alone, as I had always been. And while this decision may haunt me, the question of its morality settled so decidedly in my mind, its legality protected me from truly terrible consequences. The law cannot protect me from regret and self-reproach, but it can, and did, protect my health and safety. It is, once again, about Elizabeth Cady Stanton's solitude of self. The law that protects this decision protects a woman when she is the most alone. When she cannot count on any one, not her family, not her lover, and certainly not the men who govern her, to help.

I know both the desperation of being so young and so scared, and the ache of having surrendered your better judgment to another. So no matter what choice I would make now, I feel physically ill to think of that choice ever again being made for me or for any woman, by men like Senator McCain. This is why your manner in the debate was so inspiring. Not because you agree with me, but because you did not allow the debate to be taken from you and redefined. You did not allow Senator McCain to paint your beliefs as shameful or craven. You did not surrender the dignity of your position and of those that share it. So thank you for that.

37 years ago the courts defined the limits of their jurisdiction to be the boundaries of a person's body. It comforts me to know that you agree.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey