Explaining my non-renewed NOW Membership

Hi, Sherry and Shirley -- I've been a member of the National Organization for Women for years and very active for ten of those. (Ashtabula [OH] NOW of which I was founding mother just celebrated its 30th anniversary in February and I served two terms as an Ohio NOW state officer.) That said, I have not yet renewed my membership, expiring in June. Instead I wrote on the form my concern about NOW endorsing DLC Democrat Hillary Clinton. Was this discussed? Were members polled? Or was it NOW PAC who endorsed her because she is a woman?

Besides being a corporatist DLC Democrat, giving little more than lip service to the shrinking middle class, she has been a disappointment as New York's junior US Senator in other ways by not responding appropriately to those of us in the Peace and Justice movement [i.e., the "Are you listening, Hillary?" campaign]. Furthermore, not only does she NOT apologize for her war vote, but she also continues to make the stupid inane comment that if she had known then what she knows now she would not have voted to authorize the illegal Iraq invasion. (Why didn't she know it then? I did.) Bill Clinton is a rightist Democrat (as Thom Hartmann has put it, "one of the best Republican presidents we've ever had") and Hillary, sadly, has Bill as part of her baggage along with her years of serving on the Wal-Mart board and her feeble attempt at Healthcare reform where she bent over backwards to try to pass something that would keep the insurance companies happy (and they still squelched it, spending oodles of money on PR to convince people to lemmingly ask Congress to vote down even modest health care reform). The one thing political on which I and my rightist brother agree, Hillary sucks.

I care about women's rights, and I do care about NOW, but I don't care about Hillary Clinton and I truly hope I will not be forced into voting for her because she gets the nomination and I have to vote for what I perceive to be "the lesser of two evils". While my political heart is with Dennis Kucinich, I also care about John Edwards and his beautiful wife Elizabeth and I think John IS electable so I'm going with him at this point. (I didn't the last time, stuck with Dennis to the end, and ended up with John Kerry who didn't even wait for the votes to be counted -- and he really DID actually win the last election, but he didn't care enough to fight for it. Arghh!!)

Does NOW care that I haven't renewed? I am not sure that my little rebellion has even been noted by whoever opened the envelope. That's why I am writing this to you, as officers of Brooklyn Queens NOW -- and I think I will blog it. I'd like some explanation. If you supply it, perhaps I will blog that too. But I truly believe that Hillary Clinton sucks and I am so disappointed in NOW. So I am acting by not renewing NOW -- until the spirit(s) (of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone and so many of our foremothers) move(s) me. Hillary Clinton does not deserve to be our first woman president -- she doesn't represent the multitude of American women. (Maggie Thatcher wasn't great for British womankind either.) NOW's endorsement is a big mistake. I feel betrayed. It saddens me, but I'm out of NOW for now.

Peace hugs,
Kate Anne
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http://peacehugs.com