Voters Smackdown Insanity

By Sikivu Hutchinson

In a sign that humanist rationality can prevail in the American mainstream, voters scored key moral victories for civil and human rights in Mississippi, Ohio and Arizona.  The defeat of Proposition 26, the so-called personhood initiative, is a major blow to the pro-death forces seeking to turn back the clock on women’s rights.  The most religious state in the country, Mississippi already has parental consent laws, mandatory waiting periods for women seeking abortions and severely limited reproductive health options.  But if the Christian fascists can’t succeed in bible thumping ole Miss where can they? Not to be deterred, the Colorado-based Personhood USA campaign is gathering signatures for ballot initiatives in nine other states.

The Christian fascists might also want to get it straight on whether all new “persons” would be eligible for collective bargaining rights.  In Ohio, voters’ opposition to an anti-union bill was a loud rebuke to the wave of anti-union sentiment from the Tea Party and its GOP amen corner.  If it had passed, the Ohio law would have “banned public employee strikes, scrapped binding arbitration, and denied public workers the ability to negotiate pensions and health care benefits.”  In
their rush to demonize big government, “fat cat” public employee unions and their swollen pension funds, the reactionary right conveniently ignores the
fact that historic safeguards like collective bargaining essentially built the modern white middle class.  But the white nationalist rhetoric that has spawned fascist personhood initiatives and anti-union hysteria is all of a piece.

That’s why yesterday’s successful recall of anti-illegal immigrant demagogue and Arizona Republican State Senator Russell Pearce was also a vindication of national social justice movements linking living wage jobs, equitable access to education and anti-racism. Pearce was the architect of SB 1070, the first salvo in anti-illegal immigrant public policy that criminalizes undocumented immigrants and their families.  A more draconian SB 1070 offshoot in Alabama has already caused undocumented parents to withdraw their children from school in fear that they will be targeted by school officials. Taken as a whole, these victories could foreshadow a shift from the reactionary conservative assault on civil rights that President Obama has aided and abetted through his inaction.  And if the Occupy Wall Street/99% groundswell is ever going to coalesce into a real movement, there must be a frontal attack on anti-human rights public policy masquerading as a “return to morality.”

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Voters Smackdown Insanity
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6 thoughts on “Voters Smackdown Insanity

  1. F
    2

    In their rush to demonize big government, “fat cat” public employee unions and their swollen pension funds, the reactionary right conveniently ignores the fact that historic safeguards like collective bargaining essentially built the modern white middle class.

    They also seem to forget that a lot of people in the private sector used to have decent pensions but the conservative types gutted the pension funds. So real disparities between gov employee pensions and whatever the private sector offers is their gig, and they are just on phase two of their faux-leaner/meaner scheme for upwards redistribution of wealth, claiming all the while that teh socializmz! iz happenin and is robbing the rich to pay the people who just don’t really feel like working.

    Excuse my small rant. I won’t even start on the erosion of rights and privacy. But your post really grabbed me.

    1. 2.1

      Absolutely. Defined benefit plans are now figments of a demonized New Deal past and most of the new generation of public sector employess like those in the state of CA are being shoe-horned into 401ks or plans with a drastically reduced employer contribution.

  2. 3

    “The Christian fascists might also want to get it straight on whether all new “persons” would be eligible for collective bargaining rights.”.

    Point and match.I love it!

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