Dear Friend and Reader,

Kirsten Gillibrand may be a Democrat, but she’s fiscally conservative, is against gun control, marriage equality and is anti-choice, and voted for the 2008 Farm Bill, which actually hurts local farms. She may be blond, and she may be a woman, but that doesn’t make her anything like a proper replacement for Hilary Clinton.

Kirsten Gillibrand. Photo courtesy of US Congress.

Gov. Paterson will make the official announcement at 12 noon EST today, but the word is out: 42-year-old Sagittarius, Kirsten Gillibrand, will be filling Hilary Clinton’s empty senate seat. Earlier this week, Caroline Kennedy pulled out of the race, stating that she wants to spend time with her ailing uncle Ted.

Gillibrand is Congresswoman for the 20th district in New York, one that includes everything from the Saratoga racetrack to FDR’s residence to the Adirondacks, New York’s greatest wilderness area. According to The New York Times, she’s been endorsed by the National Rifle Association, making her an interesting pick, both to replace Clinton and as a Democrat.

Unlike other candidates for the seat, Gillibrand is born and bred in New York State. She has an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and her law degree from UCLA. Gillibrand has previously worked for the Clinton administration, as Special Counsel to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She’s been a big advocate for developing and investing in low-income areas.

I haven’t seen a complete list of her positions, but Gillibrand looks like a real upstate girl: she opposes gun control, is a member of the Blue Dogs: Democrats in favor of fiscal conservatism. She supported the contentious 2008 Farm Bill. The Bill, while it had some good provisions, predominantly “commits the federal government to subsidizing the destruction of family farming for another five years and invests little in the future of rural communities.” В And her position on immigration? She opposed Elliot Spitzer’s plan to give illegal immigrants licenses.

All in all, she’s pretty conservative for a Democrat and a confusing pick to replace Clinton: you can read a more complete list of Gillibrand’s positions on her official congressional website. Note the absence of reproductive rights and LGBT rights on the page. Is she undecided, or just unwilling to say?

The answer: unwilling to say. I just heard on NPR that she is anti-abortion and opposes marriage equality. The only hope we have is that she’ll have to survive a vote next year to keep her seat, so hopefully she won’t do too much damage before then.

Yours & truly,

Rachel Asher

Dear Friend and Reader,

WHAT A DAY. Aretha Franklin in that great hat singing the best version of “America” I’ve ever heard, Barack Obama’s speech to the nation, watching Bush take off in his helicopter, never to return (hopefully), followed by the frightening and sudden illnesses and recoveries of Senators Byrd and Kennedy at the luncheon.

And, yet, as the parade goes on with those funny-dressed girls from Mobile, Alabama and the Lesbian and Gay Band Association, I’m subdued.

Must be disenfranchised-itis, that feeling you get when someone’s taken your civil rights and traded it like a playing card to step-up to the greater good. It’s the feeling you get when you’re a woman who’s been sexually harassed by a coworker, but he’s such a damn good programmer that the company chooses to promote him, not fire him. It’s also the feeling you get when a fundamentalist Christian who thinks you don’t deserve basic human rights is allowed to perform the invocation at the Presidential inauguration, because there are some things that he and the presidentВ do agree on.

Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical leader that has spoken out, loudly, against marriage equality and a woman’s right to choose, gave the invocation at Obama’s inauguration this afternoon. And I want to know why.

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Editor’s Note: The following is a collaborative effort from past Planet Waves’ staff, where they each contributed to breaking the taboo on discussing sexuality with their parents. To read it in its original format, click here. –RA

Devotion

I imagine my father came like Ixion,
in a cloud of sensation.
self-important,
proudly seduced by tendrils of need.

My mother came too,
through the illusion of her body.
seeding her soul,
crying with lightening fire her will for life.

I am their sacred creation,
fallen from the sky at sunset.
their double-spiraled legacy whispers in my blood,
a secret rain of dark proteins and alleles.

I am their cosmic child,
an ephemeral daughter.
smoldering fire and lost waters,
a necessary madness.

Denice Taylor

—-

I THINK IT’S imperative that we break the taboo of talking about sex with our parents. It is part of why we, as a culture, have such a fucked-up relationship with sex (pardon the pun). Prudish sexual behavior is a dis-function of the wealthy. Do you think there was any privacy in the hovels, huts, tents and other one-room living situations of yore? Hell no! Kids were conceived within hearing range of not just their kids, but the whole village! I would imagine as a parent of older kids (wouldn’t know right now, mine’s only five) that it would be very hard to have a relationship with someone when a whole piece of you (that is the Woman, as opposed to the Mother) is forced to be sanitized or omitted. My family (for all its pious Catholicism) is very open about its sexuality. Probably partially because we are very matriarchal and all the women in our family have a pretty strong sex drive. And as a woman, to think that your desire is hereditary instead of weird is a great gift.

maya

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Dear Friend and Reader,

On November 18, 1978, 913 people lost their lives in Jonestown, Guyana in a community set up by an evangelistic religious leader by the name of Jim Jones. It was originally reported as a mass suicide under Jones’ direction, but I have lost a few nights of sleep after watching MSNBC’s special “Witness: To Jonestown” and doing some research which has led me to the conclusion that it was not a mass suicide at all.

People’s Temple members in Guyana, standing with Jim Jones (seen here with sunglasses on). The Jim Jones massacre occurred 30 years ago today.

Today is the 30th anniversary of The Jonestown Massacre, an event that is barely conceivable to me and to most of us who see the painful images taken on that day of all those bodies spread out like a quilt in the jungles of Guyana. The name Jim Jones is an urban legend among my generation, and it evokes a feeling of darkness and death. For some reason, I’ve really never bothered to look into what happened. I think the pictures said enough for me.

Now, as I’ve filled my head with the facts and the conspiracy theories that surround the event, I still come back to my original question which was not so much what happened, but how and why something like this could happen. I am fascinated by what motivates groups of people to participate in one common goal. How can an entire group consciousness be directed in such an awesomely evil and violent way?

The Jonestown Massacre stands out in a few ways for me. One is that unlike Nazis or slave-traders, who were doing something really obviously evil, Jim Jones was a comrade to many. I sat down with my Grandmother last night and learned that she had corresponded with him many times as a result of her political activism in the Bay Area during the 60s and early 70s. He was very critical of America’s treatment of Black people, poor people and the disenfranchised. He disapproved of capitalism, racism and classicism.

The apparent intent of setting up shop in Guyana was to have a Socialist community where everyone participated equally and was provided for and given all of the things that many of them were unable to afford in America, i.e. medical care, shelter, a job. But what has really blown my mind is finding out that he was more than just a powerful personality and one of those people who can charm honey out of a bee: he was politically astute, socially aware, racially blind and a kind, generous man. There seems to be this common association with the term “cult” that pre-defines the members as somehow “weak” or “psychologically deficient” in some ways. This is just not the case with the members of the People’s Temple.

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Editor’s Note: This article is from Everywoman’s Magazine, November 1956,В  Vol. 6, No. 11, p. 12. This was found at a garage sale by Mary Jo Smith in Oregon, a friend of Carol van Strum (my environmental law mentor) and typed by Carol. — EFC

John F. Kennedy. Photo by Cecil Stoughton, White House.

The “Everywoman” editor writes:

“We asked Sen. Kennedy…to write this article because we felt he was ideally fitted to do it. Son of Joseph P. Kennedy, former Ambassador to Great Britain, he is young (39), a brilliant writer (his Profiles in Courage is a best seller) and has been in Congress for 10 years, four as a Senator from Massachusetts.”

The question of a woman becoming president is one we’re still concerned with today, 52 years later, and it feels increasingly tangible following the primary roles of Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. We now feel we are that much closer to seeing the day when a woman will take office, and JFK’s article is all the more inspiring as a result.

Many thanks to Mary Jo Smith for recovering the article from the November 1956 issue of Everywoman’s Magazine, and to Carol Van Strum, for faithfully transcribing it into digital format for us to share with you today. –Rachel Asher

Today’s Appointment Schedule for President Lucy R. Jones, as released by the White House Press Secretary, is as follows:

Cover from JFK's article for Everywoman's Magazine, Nov. 1956. This was found at a garage sale, otherwise it would have been forgotten.

10 a.m. — Review troops at Andrews Air Force Base as Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces.

12 Noon – Address U.S. Chamber of Commerce Convention on her Administration’s Tax, Fiscal and Tariff Policies.

2 p.m. — Press Conference

3 p.m. — Confer with British and French Prime Ministers on current threats to peace.

Ridiculous, some will say; why not? say others. It will never happen, some are saying. It should never happen, say still others. Parents react differently, too. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if my daughter grew up to be President?” some mothers are thinking. “I certainly wouldn’t want any daughter of mine in that job,” say others.

Before becoming too deeply involved in the merits of the question as to whether a woman should ever become President, we ought first to ask ourselves: What are the chances of a woman becoming President? Is the above hypothetical press release on an imaginary woman President of the future a complete fantasy, a fictional dream impossible of realization in the foreseeable future? The answer to this question may throw considerable light on the question of how desirable it would be to have a woman President.

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