Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!jarthur!ucivax!gateway
From: mingus@attunix.att.COM (Marcel-Franck Simon)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: The Feminist Majority
Message-ID: <1990Jul19.231851.23905@cbnewsl.att.com>
Date: 26 Jul 90 23:42:10 GMT
References: <78597@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Organization: The Poto Mitan in the Houmfor
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> travis@houston.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey) (in <78597@aerospace.AERO.ORG>):
> > From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan)
> > I sincerely hope that if the ERA is reintroduced, NOW a) doesn't sponser
> > it and b) doesn't comment on it.  If they had been able to keep their
> > mouths shut and not alienated the entire center and right of the electorate
> > last time around, we moderates who worked so hard for the ERA would not
> > have seen all our work going down the toilet.
>
> Perhaps you could offer more details on how one organization can be held so
> responsible for the loss of ERA?  You don't seem to writing from the
> perspective of the '86 book "Why We Lost the ERA".  How can you blame NOW,
> an active proponent of ERA, for its failure without mentioning anyone else?
> For beginners, you could blame its opponents, such as Phillis Schlafly, or
> the byzantine debates of the state legislatures where it was treated as if
> it might end the Union.

I don't know if this is what Kent Paul Dolan had in mind, but NOW as a
political institution is a spectacular failure. It has been
consistently unable to frame the terms of the political debate; it has
been unable to motivate the constituency it claims to represent to
express itself, at the polls or in any forums; it has never been able
to articulate a specific agenda for political action (I don't mean
general things like "equality", but specific things that one can
organiza a campaign around).

Can NOW make a realistic claim to have unseated a single candidate
that opposed abortion? Who took the lead in the US Senate on the
family care bill? Orrin Hatch, surely no friend of NOW, wound up
framing the terms of the bill that NOW had deemed its no. 1
legislative priority for 1989 (George Bush vetoed the bill -- so much
for kinder and gentler.) Where was NOW during all this? Organizing
protests at the Supreme Court, despite pointed remarks by judges that
this has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on court decisions.

At this stage in the political debate, I tend to think that anything
NOW throws its weight behind is something to stay away from, as it is
a sure loser.

For those who believe that criticizing the organization means
criticizing what it's supposed to stand for: you are wrong.
--
Marcel-Franck Simon             mingus@attunix.ATT.COM, attunix!mingus

	" Papa Loko, ou se' van, ou-a pouse'-n ale'
	  Nou se' papiyon, n'a pote' nouvel bay Agwe' "