Articles
Jo Freeman: Fourth Dispatch from the RNC -- Largely on Things To Do At The Convention
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.
Jo Freeman Reviews Electing Madam Vice President by Nichola D. Gutgold
This book packs a lot of punch into 145 pages. The eleven 2019/20 Presidential debates allowed more women than ever before to stand up and be heard...Along the way the women were often attacked, though not so viciously as when they ran for President. Trump called Warren ‘Pocahontas’. The press said Klobuchar was a mean boss. Williamson was dismissed as an aging hippie. Some of the women handled these attacks better than others – but that’s true of men as well. Above all, they had to deal with the issue of “electability” – could a woman, any woman, beat Trump. All told stories from their lives to illustrate their themes. None were rags-to-riches stories. Nor did they go into politics the old-fashioned way, by inheriting an office from a male relative. They worked their way up the political ladder, though some had doors opened for them while others had to pound on those doors. In her final chapter Gutgold asks “Did Six Women Running for President 2020 Change the Rhetoric of Women and Presidential Politics?” To find out her answer, you’ll have to read the book.
more »
Don't Miss Pan American Unity, A Mural by Diego Rivera at S.F. Moma in San Francisco, On View For Free Until 2023 When It Returns to CCSF
"The fresco depicts in colorful detail a past, present, and future that the artist believed were shared across North America, calling for cultural solidarity and exchange during a time of global conflict. Completed with support from local artists and assistants, with scenes of the Bay Area as a backdrop, the mural celebrates the creative spirit through portraits of artists, artisans, architects, and inventors who use art and technology as tools to shape society." After the fair, Pan American Unity — measuring twenty-two by seventy-four feet and weighing over sixty thousand pounds — was moved to the campus of City College of San Francisco (CCSF). This was possible because Rivera painted this fresco not on a wall, but on ten steel-framed cement panels. More than half a century later, an international team of experts has spent years planning another move. In partnership with CCSF, SFMOMA presents Rivera’s Pan American Unity in the museum’s free-to-the-public Roberts Family Gallery on Floor 1. On view until 2023, the mural will then return to CCSF to be installed in a new performing arts center. more »
Department of Justice Begins Third Distribution of Forfeited Funds to Compensate Victims of Fraud Scheme Facilitated by Western Union
The Department of Justice announced today that the Western Union Remission Fund began its third distribution of approximately $66 million in funds forfeited to the United States from the Western Union Company (Western Union) to approximately 6,000 victims located in the United States and abroad... According to court documents, in the scheme, fraudsters targeted consumers, including seniors, through multiple scams. Three specific scams directed towards seniors included the so-called grandparent scam, where the fraudster would pose as the victim’s relative in purported need of immediate money to avoid personal harm; lottery or sweepstakes scams, where the fraudster would tell the victim that he or she had won a large cash prize but had to pay fees, such as taxes, to claim the prize; and romance scams, where the fraudster would pose as an online love interest and request funds for a visit or for another purpose. In each of these scams, the fraudsters convinced their victims to send money through Western Union. more »
Eunice Foote, Amateur Scientist From the Mid-1800s Whose Experiments Foreshadowed the Discovery of Earth's Greenhouse Effect
Science was one of those domains where women were struggling to be heard, and Eunice Foote is among the pioneers whose work paved the way toward acceptance. A column in the September 1856 issue of Scientific American, titled “Scientific Ladies — Experiments with Condensed Gases,” began, “Some have not only entertained, but expressed the mean idea, that women do not possess the strength of mind necessary for scientific investigation.” The writer went on to describe Foote’s experiments as evidence to the contrary, concluding: "The columns of the Scientific American have been oftentimes graced with articles on scientific subjects, by ladies, which would do honor to men of the highest scientific reputation; and the experiments of Mrs. Foot afford abundant evidence of the ability of woman to investigate any subject with originality and precision." more »