Hasta La Gadget!

To many, Roe v. Wade represents the fundamental right of a woman to choose abortion. The 42 years since Roe, however, show how illusory that right is for some and the sharp contrast between the haves and the have-nots.

The 114th Congress, fresh off a series of promises to better the lives of all Americans, made its debut by readying votes on five bills to undermine women’s health. The new Republican majority’s actions come at a time of significant gains in health care for some, while others continue to experience sobering inequities. The Affordable Care Act has brought coverage to 10 million people, dropping uninsurance levels to near record lows in the past four decades. The 28 states expanding Medicaid have provided a lifeline to millions, offering them coverage they would otherwise never be able to afford.

As the insurer for millions of reproductive-aged women, Medicaid plays a key role in advancing low-income women’s health. Every person should be able to expect coverage of health care services that meet evidence-based standards of care. Medicaid does that by providing, among other services, coverage for birth control, well-women’s health visits, pregnancy care, prescription drugs and emergency care. Yet, there is one glaring omission from the services needed to meet the standard of care for women.

Medicaid does not cover an abortion in all cases when a woman needs it.

The prohibition, known as the Hyde Amendment, has played politics with women’s health since 1977. As Mr. Hyde put it, “I would certainly like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the… Medicaid bill.”

The amendment bars federal funding for abortion, including in Medicaid, except in the narrowest of circumstances: rape, incest or where a woman risks death if an abortion is not performed. Thanks to Mr. Hyde, poor women must balance their health needs and futures against the weight of their pocketbooks.

It is impossible to divorce dollars from the conversation. The average cost of a first-trimester abortion is $451. The median weekly earnings for women in 2013 was $706. A woman relying on Medicaid for her health care may earn far below poverty wages. Low-income women and women of color experience the highest rates of unintended pregnancy by far, as high as five times that of higher earners. This is why Medicaid is so crucial for caring for millions of women of reproductive age. And why the Hyde amendment so cruelly targets them.

Abortion is part of the full range of reproductive health care that must be available to all women, not just the ones that can afford it. A woman may decide to seek an abortion for a myriad of personal, socio-economic or health reasons. She may not be ready to start a family. She may already have the number of children she can best care and provide for. She may feel too young or too old to become a parent. Or pregnancy may compromise her health. Only a woman knows what is best for herself and her family–not politicians.

A woman who is struggling just to get by and unexpectedly becomes pregnant faces an arduous battle of coming up with the hundreds of dollars for an abortion. By the time she scrapes together the cash, she may have more trouble finding a provider or may run up against state gestational time limits crafted by abortion opponents. A later abortion is thus harder to come by and, while abortion is safer than childbirth, a later abortion can pose more risks to the mother.

Singling out abortion from other forms of health care forces one in four poor women to carry an unintended and unwanted pregnancy. Childbirth is fraught with risk that is particularly unequal for women of color. African American women, for example, are three times more likely than their white counterparts to die from pregnancy-related complications.

Playing politics with Medicaid coverage threatens women’s physical health and economic security. The landmark Turnaway Study found that women denied abortion are more likely to live in poverty and rely on the public safety net than women who receive an abortion. The Hyde amendment cements these inequities. As a result, the women most likely to experience an unplanned pregnancy have the least resources for managing in a way that makes sense for their own health and their families.

On yet another anniversary of Roe, women’s health opponents in Congress will mark the occasion by voting for a national ban on abortion at 20 weeks — another attempt to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. Even if the ban fails, the right under Roe will still not be realized for millions of women.

So long as we have the Hyde amendment, we will be a nation of haves and have-nots.

Recently the New York Times published the latest in its series of sub-par articles on the current racial justice movement. Like its predecessors, this installment, “Protesters Out to Reclaim King’s Legacy, but in Era That Defies Comparison,” by Tanzina Vega, dutifully reinforces conventional wisdom that does not stand up to challenge. It is important to inspect the badly inaccurate depictions and deep misunderstandings that infect the Times‘ coverage.

1. This Movement Lacks Leadership and Goals

Historian David J. Garrow tells Vega that the current movement bears little resemblance to the “clear goals” of the 1960s civil rights movement. “You could call it rebellious,” he suggests, “or you could call it irrational.” In this dismissal, he echoes Oprah Winfrey’s similarly condescending remarks calling for the movement to develop “leadership,” remarks Vega also saw fit to highlight.

These claims are obviously erroneous: a spate of new organizations boasts strong young leadership. Vega and Garrow ought to Google Charlene Carruthers of BYP100, Alicia Garza of #BlackLivesMatter, Dante Barry of Million Hoodies, Ferguson activist Ashley Yates, and Maurice Mitchell who dropped everything to help in New York, and when they’re done, come back for another such list. If these young activists are learning from the problems of overly centralized leadership of the past and seeking to distribute and share leadership more broadly, all the better, even if it earns them the scorn of the New York Times.

Regarding goals, the organizers have articulated numerous, powerful, and insightful demands, both in Ferguson and around the country. Vega refers to these goals as “much broader” than those of the civil rights movement, as though ending Jim Crow required a simple policy tweak. In fact, the demands range from specific legislative efforts, congressional hearings, and indictments of police officers that have shot and killed unarmed black men, to ending mass incarceration, de-militarizing police, and securing full employment. It is by this process, by using the particular to begin to address the general, by following the stem of a problem to its roots, that social movements can transform society.

2. Movements Happen All at Once

We look back on the civil rights movement as a heroic success, but the path was not linear, nor the strategy clear from the start. Indeed, as Professor Garrow’s own work goes to show, civil rights leadership grew and changed over time, through the process of building relationships, training would-be activists, amending strategies, and achieving preliminary goals. The civil rights movement required decades of organizing before it achieved the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

And yet, today, mainstream media seem to assume that movements are birthed in an instant, like Athena out of Zeus’ head. They seem to willfully disregard the fact that the gains of the 1960s were won by many organizations with different, sometimes mutually hostile, leaders, strategies, and tactics. Movements are composed of “movement moments,” when they are highly visible, and long periods of building “movement infrastructure” — training, strategizing, organizing, until they can successfully pierce the public consciousness once again. As they seek to upend complex socio-political and economic systems, they experience not just waves of outward activity, but require quieter periods of inwards building.

Similarly, the movement moments we are witnessing today are part of a long-term process of social change. As the civil rights movement build upon infrastructure lain by earlier activists, so too the current movement for black lives derives a good deal of infrastructure — organizations, relationships, strategies — from a previous movement moment: the protests following the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. During that time, Dream Defenders, Million Hoodies, Black Lives Matter and others began to take root. And while the attention of the media is always flitting, that moment laid the groundwork for this period, which is, in turn, laying groundwork for the next.

3. Occupy Was a Failure and This Movement Will Be Too

Professor Garrow draws an oft-seen comparison between the current protests and Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy had staying power for what? Six months?” he muses. “Three years later, is there any remaining footprint from Occupy? Not that I’m aware of.” By making the comparison and depicting Occupy as a fleeting failure, the statement serves to predict that this movement will come to a similar end. Due diligence would have made Garrow aware of some facts that complicate this facile view.

When the Occupy encampments were evicted, the energy dissipated temporarily, but organizers continued to develop both their analysis and their friendships. Many of them worked together in Occupy Sandy, and more recently again in the organizing for the People’s Climate March that took place in New York in September. Some, including myself, initiated Flood Wall Street as an action that would connect awareness of climate change with the economic reasons for continued governmental inaction. Others have built training organizations such as the Wildfire Project, or are creating spaces for ongoing work together, like the MayDay Space.

Indeed, the “footprint” of Occupy Wall Street is visible in the movement for black lives. While Occupy should certainly not receive any more credit than it is due for the current protests, understanding the continuity that exists is critical to grasping how social movements work. Though most of the movement for black lives leadership came to their current political activities after the Occupy encampments were razed, the work and relationships that were created during Occupy continue to play a role in supporting this moment. Several organizers who had participated in Occupy helped found and cultivate the Dream Defenders, who soon took the tactic of occupation to their state capitol. The presence of former Occupiers is likewise to be found organizing Black Lives Matter die-ins and marches in New York and elsewhere. Most ironically, the photo the Sunday Times selected to accompany Vega’s article depicts white allies in Boston who stopped traffic to express their solidarity with the movement for racial justice — many of whom had once been Occupy participants!

Occupy, which itself grew out of movement infrastructure lain during the global justice movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, had many limitations, some of which this movement is now transcending: Occupy’s lack of attention to the particular ways in which economic inequality is tied to racism, it’s hesitation about demands and official leadership, its reliance on a single tactic, are not mistakes the movement for black lives is making. Instead, this moment builds on Occupy’s analysis and lessons, and draws out the argument that we need to confront a system that continually produces both racialized economic and political inequality and a concomitant ideology of white supremacy.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding its current hallowed reputation, at the time, many commentators portrayed the civil rights movement as “rebellious” and “irrational.” Apparently, we have learned little about movements in the decades since. We need to address the myth that movements last only as long as their media moments and develop a better grasp — and more respect — for the quiet, persistent periods of organizing that go into changing the flawed structures of our society. The road is long, and the path is winding, but our role — as the media and the public — should be to seek understanding rather than to proliferate inaccuracies.

Critics have been furious since the Academy Award nominations were released last week, rendering this year the whitest Oscars since 1998. Many blame the Academy for failing to recognize more actors of color, but “The Humbling” director Barry Levinson said the issue goes much deeper than Hollywood.

Levinson, an Academy member himself, explained to HuffPost Live’s Ricky Camilleri on Wednesday that the problem is far more complicated than a failure to nominate someone. He blamed budget cuts within the education system, specifically in arts, music and theatre programs, as a significant reason for Hollywood’s diversity problem.

“If you say at any given year, ‘Is there enough diversity in Hollywood?’ Absolutely not,” the director said, later adding. “We have to find ways to bring more people into the process. We need more diversification in Hollywood, but we’ve got to educate those people because you just can’t show up as a director or an actor. There’s training and all those things that have to go with it.”

Levinson said “too many voices that might be great voices” are getting lost because “we’re not paying attention and we’re not working, in terms of a society, to make us better.”

Watch the full segment with Barry Levinson here.

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“Mom. Mom. Mom. I don’t want to.”

“Ok. How about I bribe you?” My patience had already evaporated, so I went straight for the truth as I dragged a brush through his hair, a complete waste of time performed every school morning to make me feel like a good mom. When he arrives at school, his hair is a snarled mess, no matter what it looks like as we walk out of the bathroom.

“What does bribe mean?”

“You do something I want and I’ll do something you want.”

“Can I have a Lego Minifigure?”

“Are you kidding me? For walking into the school by yourself one time? No way. You can have a marshmallow after school. But! If you walk into the school by yourself for the rest of the week you can have a Minifigure after school on Friday.”

“Deal.”

Every morning, a police car hides out in a driveway across from T’s school. Every morning, it nabs one of the many cars that ignore the stop signs that flip open from the sides of the buses as the kids stream out of the doors. For some reason last Tuesday, the police car wasn’t in the driveway, but rather parked on the street. I pulled behind it, hopped out and unbuckled T. As I heaved him out, he looked at me.

“I can’t do this.”

“Yup. You can.”

His hand in mine, I looked both ways, hustled him across the street, gave him a quick kiss and told him to walk into school. The car was still running with C inside. I darted back across the street and turned to look for T.

He was like a statue, standing in the middle of the driveway where I left him. The temperature hadn’t yet climbed above zero. He must have been shivering, but he stood like his feet were nailed to the ground.

“T! Go! Go into school!” I hollered across the road.

“No!”

“T! Go! You can do this!”

“I can’t!”

“I am watching you! I will watch you the whole way! We will not leave until I see you get into the building! Go! You’ve got this!”

He had not moved an inch. He was so tiny.

“I’m shy! I can’t because I’m shy!”

We were yelling across the road at each other as kids and their parents streamed by towards the school. The parents were kind enough to avert their eyes. I stood by the door of my car. My car that was illegally parked behind the police car. And I yelled at my kid to walk to school.

“Mom. I can’t! I really can’t! I’m too shy!”

I totally lost it. “IF I HAVE TO TURN OFF THIS CAR, THERE IS NO LEGO MINIFIGURE ON FRIDAY! THERE IS NO MARSHMALLOW AFTER SCHOOL! YOU GOT THAT? NOW WALK TO SCHOOL! WALK! GO!”

My tiny son turned around and trudged slowly towards the building. I slid behind the wheel and my throat burned as I watched his snail-paced trip to the side door, his little body bent over as his gaze never left his shoes. I felt like a monster. When he slipped inside the school, I started to cry as the mess of a scene played over in my head. Him standing stock still in the bitter cold, me yelling, him yelling, the cop car, the parents and kids watching the whole ridiculous performance. Suddenly, I was laughing as well as crying.

He earned the marshmallow. And the Minifigure. He also lost two of his two bottom teeth. It’s been a week full of developmental leaps.

This morning, the cop car had already pulled over a stop sign runner by the time we arrived at school. I kissed T, grabbed his hand and started to run him across the street.

He shook me off halfway to the sidewalk. “Mom. I’ve got this.” He trotted towards the school without a backwards glance. My throat burned again as I watched him.

Could I have handled the drop off last Tuesday better? Um, yes. In fact, it would be hard to come up with a scenario in which I handled it worse. But T needs a push to try new things. A week and a day later and he isn’t just comfortable with the drop off, he is blasé about it. A week and a day later, and I’m the one struggling not to walk up to his teacher everyday at pickup to find out how he is doing and what I missed. A week and a day later, and I’m laughing at the person I was before parenthood. The one who would say, “I’ll never be a helicopter mom!”

He is such a big kid.

With the state of Iowa leading the nation in wind energy production, a packed crowd filled the Iowa City Public Library last night to discuss game-changing new power purchase agreements that could light up the famed “City of Literature” as a bright shining “City of Solar.”

“Iowa has been a national leader in wind energy for years, but Iowa also has the potential to be a leader in solar energy as well,” said Mike Carberry, a long-time clean energy advocate and a member of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors. “Sun power that grows all of our corn can also be used to grow electricity. We have the solar resource, now we just need the will to make it happen.”

Less than 15 miles from Iowa City, in fact, the extraordinary work of general manager Warren McKenna and the Farmers Electric Cooperative (FEC) has won international acclaim for its role as a national model for solar financing and development. Recognized last year by the Solar Electric Power Association as the “Utility CEO of the Year,” McKenna spoke about his pioneering solar work since 2008, including the establishment of one of the nation’s first feed-in tariff systems. FEC has installed solar systems at area schools, launched a groundbreaking solar community garden, and now oversees the largest solar farm in Iowa.

Farmers Electric Co-op manager Warren McKenna at Ecopolis Forum.
Photo: Jeff Biggers

Speaking on behalf of Ecopolis Iowa City, a community forum on regenerative city initiatives that hosted the event, Miriam Alarcón Avil cited the state’s high solar potential ranking in a recent Iowa Environmental Council study, which concluded that 20 percent of Iowa’s electricity could be provided by rooftop solar installations.

The Ecopolis Forum members touted the breakthrough Eagle Point decision in the Iowa Supreme Court last year, which allows for third party power agreements, and effectively opened the flood gates for cost-effective solar energy initiatives in the state, and called on the city of Iowa City and the Iowa City Community School District to commit to a goal of 20-25% on-site solar energy on city buildings and new development projects with city funding within the next two years, along with energy efficiency requirements:

Ecopolis Forum
Petition for Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency in Iowa City

We, the undersigned, ask the city of Iowa City to adopt a requirement for 25% of the projected building energy use be provided by on-site renewable energy (solar, geothermal or wind). This shall apply to new construction and major renovations of city buildings and projects seeking city funding which have a construction budget of greater than $500,000 and city support greater than $75,000.

We, the undersigned, ask the city to adopt a 2030 Challenge requirement for all municipal buildings – new construction and major renovation – and for all new construction and major renovation projects seeking city funding which have a construction budget of greater than $500,000 and city support greater than $75,000. The 2030 Challenge seeks to achieve Net Zero Carbon Emissions for all new construction and major renovation by the year 2030. All new buildings and existing building major renovation projects shall be designed and built to meet an energy consumption performance standard of 70% below the regional average EUI (Energy Use Intensity, defined as kBtu/SF/year) for that building type. This standard for all new buildings and major renovations will be increased to: 80% in 2020, 90% in 2025, and carbon-neutral in 2030 (using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate).

We, the undersigned, ask the Iowa City Community School District to adopt a requirement for 25% of the projected building energy use be provided by on-site renewable energy (solar, geothermal or wind). We also ask the Iowa City Community School District to adopt a 2030 Challenge requirement for all new construction and major renovation, with all projects designed and built to meet an energy consumption performance standard of 70% below the regional average EUI (Energy Use Intensity, defined as kBtu/SF/year) for that building type.

Kevin Hanick, winner of the Tesla Award for Renewable Energy Innovation.
Photo: Jeff Biggers

For his groundbreaking solar development in Iowa City, developer Kevin Hanick was awarded the “Tesla Award for Renewable Energy Innovation” by the Ecopolis Forum. Hanick, a past recipient of the Iowa City Area Association of Realtors Distinguished Service Award, plans to install over 700 solar panels on his private housing complex in the Riverfront Crossings District.

In fact, as several presenters noted, southeast Iowa has already established the groundwork for a solar energy boom. State Sen. Joe Bolkcom, who represents Iowa City, has been a leading sponsor of solar legislation. Last fall, Johnson County signed on to a new solar agreement for a road facility, according to Moxie Solar representatives, that will save $250,000 over the course of the 25-year agreement. The University of Iowa recently released a request for proposal for rooftop solar photovoltaic electric generating system under a power purchase agreement.

In the southeastern Iowa town of Wayland, the Waco School District recently announced plans to save $100,000 annually, thanks to a newly installed solar system.

“The potential for solar in Iowa is largely raw and and untapped,” said Troy Miller, who made a presentation with Jason Hall of locally-based Moxie Solar. “The winners will be forward thinking communities, such as Iowa City and Johnson County, who are aware that the federal tax credits may disappear after 2016.”