This morning hundreds of New York women gathered at the Women for Obama breakfast. The New York Hilton ballroom was packed, and the line to enter the fundraiser looped through the ballroom lobby, down a few corridors, and outside onto the street. I sat with Sonya Lockett, 2007 Emmy Award winner for her BET Rap it Up public service announcements, and Shawn Rhea of Modern Healthcare.com. I heard Senior Editor Dawn Davis was there, and I ran into literary agent Marie Brown, Ebony magazine Creative Director Harriette Cole, and author Farah Jasmine Griffin, in addition to several other friends I haven’t seen in quite a while.
Maya Soetoro-Ng spoke first. Obama’s Indonesian American sister, Maya is married to a Chinese Canadian professor and is herself a teacher with a PhD in education. A solid speaker, she warmed the crowd by praising Senator Clinton and the most important women in her brother’s life: their grandmother, mother, his wife, and both siblings’ daughters. She spoke proudly about their mother, who became an expert in microloans as a means of achieving international development, and their grandmother, who rose from the position of secretary to become the first woman vice president of a bank in the state of Hawaii.
Next, Senator Clinton appeared to rousing applause as she declared, “the democratic party is a family.” An obvious call for unity, this message continued as Clinton explicitly urged her supporters to back Obama. Speaking to more elite activists and voters, she linked this political need for unity to the everyday needs of silenced and dispossessed women. Senator Clinton said we must think of the women who rose early from their beds this morning to go to the hotel before anyone else – the women on the kitchen and wait staffs who made sure the food was there when we arrived. Clinton created a vivid image of them leaving for work, leaving children behind a locked door, leaving children at day care. She said that, for those women, “we’ve got to have a Democratic president.”
Clinton also asked that we all, in an effort to insure this happens, reach out to “Democrats, Independents, and repentant Republicans.” She talked about the Supreme Court, climate change, health care, the failure of No Child Left Behind, and women’s access to family planning here and abroad. She wondered if, a few months after the general election, “diplomacy will be our preferred tool for pursuing our interests” if McCain is elected, and she concluded “we have to get the two oil men out of the White House” to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan.
After Clinton, Obama spoke. He talked about his 10 year old daughter Malia, whom he said told him during the primaries that she understood how it important it is that the country might have the first woman or first Black president because of our nation’s past, but that “she took for granted that now it was going to be different” and the idea of an exceptional Black or anomalous woman was going to disappear as more marginalized peoples gain access to the center of American life. Obama’s expressed optimism about our daughters’ futures was grounded in his understanding of women’s history and his professed willingness to work to insure Malia’s vision of equal access is achieved.
He told the crowd that his grandmother was a Rosie the Riveter during WWII, but she didn’t have the opportunity to benefit from the GI Bill, and so she struggled to move up the corporate ladder with only a high school education. He praised his mother, who, while working as a specialist in international development, told him, “if you want to see a country develop, make sure the women are educated and have resources.” He called Michelle Obama “the foundation of the Obama family” and talked at length about her struggle to balance work and home life.
Obama said he understood gender bias affects more than girls and women – it impacts husbands, sons, fathers, all of us – and he said gender equity should be a national priority. He advocated tax credits, expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act, and equal pay for women, whom, he said, still earn only 77 cents on each male dollar, with Latinas and African American women earning even less.
He also railed against the recent Supreme Court Ledbetter Case and assailed McCain for wanting to appoint more conservative justices like Alito and Roberts.
Obama received the endorsement of Planned Parenthood yesterday, and he pledged to fix health care in his first term as president.
Obama certainly represents the future vision of our nation. McCain is the 20th century choice; Obama, the 21st. That’s why crotchety old men like Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson want to “cut his nuts off,” as Jackson was recorded whispering into his Fox News mic yesterday. Obama is unhindered by the old guard. He kissed no rings. He ascended, and he inspires.