Issues
Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
Whistleblowers Raise Grave Concerns with Trump Administration’s Efforts to Transfer Sensitive Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia; House Chairs Tell Barr They Expect Mueller Report to Be Made Public
This interim staff report was prepared for Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, after multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of highly sensitive US nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in potential violation of the Atomic Energy Act and without review by Congress as required by law — efforts that may be ongoing to this day. more »
Book Review By Melissa Ludtke, Random Families: The No-longer Secret Lives of Children Conceived With Donor Sperm
Melissa Ludtke writes: Whether the topic is networks or reunions, DNA or language of family, the two generations of voices I heard in Random Families resonated with me. I sense this will be the case with readers who come to this book without having the same personal connections I do with either donor sperm or adoption. Families like the ones Random Families portrays are rooted in our American landscape. Thankfully, the regrettable era of family secrecy about this form of conception has largely passed, prompted by single women, who in choosing this method for becoming pregnant then made sure their children knew how they’d been conceived. Their push for greater openness made it happen. more »
DNC Winter Meeting: Using Social Media and Databases to "Create the Electorate We Want"
Jo Freeman writes: Unlike the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is composed of constituencies. These have changed over time, but they have their own agendas. At the winter meeting, fourteen different Councils and Caucuses met separately for 90 minutes each. I went to five: Senior (which met jointly with Disability), Labor, LGBTQ, Women’s and Black. At each of these meetings, I heard how important each group’s 2018 vote had been to the Democratic wave — even when a little "interpretation" was required. For example, seniors continued to favor Republican candidates in 2018, but not as much as in previous years. more »
Jo Freeman Reviews Exiled Daughter: How My Civil Rights Baptism Under Fire Shaped My Life
Jo Freeman writes: Brenda’s first arrest came when she and two friends tried to buy a bus ticket at the white counter in the Greyhound bus station. For that she served 28 days in jail, missing the first month of her sophomore year in high school. When she returned, her classmates treated her as a hero; her principal expelled her from school. At a subsequent school assembly the other students talked about walking out in protest; over a hundred of them did so later that day. more »
