Laura Flanders talks about the Stupak amendment with Frances Kissling, contributor to RH Reality Check and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Diane Archer, Special Counsel & Director, Health Care Policy, Institute for America’s Future, Eesha Pandit of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need, and yours truly. Check it out:
One point I want to clarify is the argument about bloggers vs. women’s groups, and who was there on Saturday when this amendment came to vote. I’m sure people from Planned Parenthood, NARAL and other pro-choice groups were in their offices or on the Hill or wherever they need to be, but I wasn’t hearing from them — and I’m on all their email lists. Instead, I was hearing from bloggers, feminist journalists and people on Twitter. That doesn’t mean that the women’s groups failed, but it does mean that bloggers and new media types are better equipped for the kind of rapid response that the Stupak amendment demanded. Yes, Stupak still passed, but at 10am on Saturday every report I was hearing said that it was going to pass by a large margin, and that defeating it was a lost cause. Yes, it was defeated, but Democrats did not vote for it in nearly as large of margins as predicted. I really do credit the blog and Twitter response with that. That isn’t to say that women’s groups didn’t do their part — they did — but let’s give grassroots credit where it’s due.
As an aside, can we just get Eesha her own show? Damn.
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I will note that I’m friends with (have known since 2nd grade, more accurately) the Action VP of NOW and she was active on Twitter all day, and seemed to be working her butt off. (@erintothemax if you want to follow).
Oh definitely. Again, didn’t mean to imply that the women’s orgs weren’t doing their jobs. Just that, from my vantage point, most of the info and the calls to action were from grassroots feminist activists.
I did get emails from Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Feminist Majority Foundation, and Catholics for Choice on Saturday asking me to make calls to my Congressman and spread the word about Stupak before the vote in the evening. But the place I was going throughout the day for updates and getting the most useful and up-to-date information was definitely Twitter – particularly Lisa Maatz of AAUW (@LisaMaatz) – and non-organizational blogs.
Yeah Lisa was awesome — I also saw her Tweets.
Cecile Richards from Planned parenthood was writing letters to all on FaceBook and urging calls and action on this. If you have a FB account, go connect to her for updates.
I’m with Kissling in being surprised that so many others were surprised. I’ve seen this before. sigh.
My biggest fear politically has always been that cultural conservatives would co-opt the Left’s economic agenda. The more control the government has over health care and other personal matters, the easier it will be for cultural conservatives to use such government interference for their own ends. By advocating for anti-market health care, one is implicitly advocating for a system where the government rations care by political means. The Stupak Amendment seems to be the natural result of advocating for the political (i.e. anti-market) distribution of economic goods such as health care.
Here’s the thing: the action alerts you were seeing all over twitter and facebook and from feminist activists were probably calls to action that organically grew from thoughts like “I just saw this on CSPAN and wtf, please do something!” but they were also at the urging and working WITH the folks at PPFA and NOW and NARAL and NWLC and etc etc etc.
As someone who works for one of these organizations AND identifies as a feminist blogger & netroots activists, i need to stress that these are not two categories that are – or should be – mutually exclusive.
i was on twitter and facebook and sending texts and making calls all day long as an (off the clock) employee of a women’s group and as just Jen. our groups also work closely with feminist bloggers and netroots activists, and there isn’t a line you can really draw between what these advocacy groups did on Saturday and what was going on in the blogosphere.
Jill, i appreciate the clarification, and i know the question that you were asked was pretty leading.
But my point here is that it’s not an either/or thing. It’s a together thing. As it needs to be.
Just saw this on FSTV, great stuff.
Sure, I didn’t mean to imply that it was either/or. Just wanted to point out that bloggers and grassroots folks did a lot of work, and often don’t get credit.
I was getting ALL the information from Planned Parenthood, etc., and not from bloggers–I got at least 3 emails from these groups on Saturday…so, really, you didn’t get those mass emails? I admit: I just do not believe you. You maybe didn’t read them, but they came out. (Admittedly, I’m not on Twitter and don’t want to be.)
But mostly I hate these cat-fight set ups. It DOES feel like a needless attack on these very hard working, underfunded women-centered organizations by other hardworking underfunded women. Let’s all go with both/and next time.