Two important anti-government protests - outside of Iran - that changed the world this month

With all the media coverage of this month's courageous public protests against government corruption and election fraud in Iran, major clashes between protesters and governments in two other countries have unfortunately failed to garner the attention they also deserve:

In the city of Shishou in central China, after local government officials initially refused to allow the family of 24-year-old Tu Yuangao, who was found dead at a hotel under highly suspicious circumstances, to have an autopsy conducted on his body, a small group of local protesters surrounded the young man's body and refused to allow local police to take it.

As local police called provincial authorities for backup, the crowd of protesters grew, reportedly organizing via text messaging and Twitter. Rioting in the streets lasted for several days; reports of the final size of the protest vary wildly across different news sources; Reuters quotes one witness estimating the crowd at 10,000, but some estimates of the peak crowd have been as high as 70,000. Some protesters managed to circumvent Chinese government blocks on internet access to post video of the incident to YouTube:

Tu Yuangao's family and the protesters claim the young man was murdered by a business owner with ties to organized crime who is a relative of the town's mayor; his family reports his body showed signs of torture. and that the local government wanted to cover up the crime by cremating the body before an autopsy could be performed.

Cynthia Davis is right: hunger is a motivator

Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis, a Republican from O'Fallon, a St. Louis suburb with a median income 60% higher than the state average, recently criticized the state of Missouri's summer free lunch program for impoverished children in her monthly newsletter, saying that she thinks "hunger can be a positive motivator" for kids. Cynthia Davis argues that parents who have been laid off during the recession ought to be able to make do without government assistance:

Most parents put their children first, even ahead of themselves no matter what. If parents are laid off, that doesn’t mean they stop feeding their children, at least not any of the parents I know. Laid off parents could adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat.

And she maintains that, if Missouri shuts down the free lunch program, children who find themselves going hungry will just be that much more motivated to feed themselves at no cost to the state by getting jobs at fast food restaurants:

Anyone under 18 can be eligible? Can’t they get a job during the summer by the time they are 16?  Hunger can be a positive motivator. What is wrong with the idea of getting a job so you can get better meals?

Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.

No word from Ms. Davis yet on what those Missouri families who were already unable to afford regularly going out to eat before losing their income to recession ought to do to "adapt" to their new lack of funds to buy food. No word either on what teenagers are supposed to do if there are no jobs available at the local McDonald's because all positions there have been taken by recently laid-off adults. Or on how these kids are supposed to get to work if they cannot afford, say, a car, given that the local public transportation system recently cut bus services. No direction from Ms. Davis on what "motivated" younger children who cannot work at McDonald's are supposed to do to feed themselves.

Facing criticism by political bloggers and local and national press, Cynthia Davis continues to defend her position. I think Representative Davis is right about one thing: hunger is a motivator.

You never forget going hungry. Being hungry, well. That happens every day. As in, it's lunchtime. I'm hungry. Let's go out for a bite. I know a great little taco place down the street with fresh guacamole. That sort of feeling is commonplace. Forgettable. You don't always remember today what you ate for lunch three days ago, let alone the craving that drove you to eat in the first place.

SCOTUS Does Something Right!

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld Section V of the Voting Rights Act in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District #1 v. Holder. For more information on this case you can check out our earlier post on the importance of Section V, which protects racial minorities from voting discrimination in states that once had statutory or regulatory limits (read: Jim Crow laws).

Our favorite justice, Clarence Thomas </sarcasm> was the lone dissenter in the 8-1 opinion.

Go Read It: Fixing health care - ideas from Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz

Pennsylvania Representative Allyson Schwartz, previously interviewed here at MOMocrats about her visit to BlogHer 2008 on behalf of the Obama campaign, has made fighting for Americans' access to quality health care a top priority during most of her professional and political career. As an executive director at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the 1970s and 1980s, she fought to improve low-income women's access to contraception, cancer screenings, and reproductive health care. As a state legislator, she was one of the principal architects of the of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in Pennsylvania, and in the late 1990s went to Congress to testify in favor of creating a federal CHIP program. And as the Representative for Pennsylvania's 13th Congressional District to the U.S. Congress, she has worked to expand the original SCHIP program to extend health care benefits to millions more uninsured children.

So when Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz talks about how she thinks we ought to go about implementing meaningful health care reform in the United States, we listen. Go read Congresswoman Schwartz's op-ed, Fixing Health Care.

Health care crisis, lack of state and federal aid crushing American cities

A recent report highlights the economic threat the current health care system creates for American cities, which are typically ignored in the discussion about health care reform. The report, put out by Families USA---a nonprofit and nonpartisan national organization that advocates for high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans---found that, "...cities are profoundly affected by the rising number of uninsured Americans and the rising cost of providing coverage for their own employees. These problems have an impact on all city residents, regardless of their health insurance status, and they affect cities’ ability to fulfill other municipal functions as well."

"Our cities face the dual challenges of assisting a rising number of uninsured Americans and providing increasingly expensive health coverage for their own employees," Ron Pollack, Executive Director of Families USA, said.

Pollock's statement summarizes the key findings of the report, which concluded that cities have been overlooked and left to manage local health care crises on their own, which poses a risk to the budgets of other city services, such as police and fire protection, schools, parks, and the repair of city streets and other infrastructure.

"Today's report makes crystal clear what many of us in cities across America—who are faced with the spiraling costs of health care both for our employees and our citizens—understand all too well," said Philadelphia’s Mayor Michael A. Nutter. “It's threatening our economies, our families and our futures. It is time for Washington to stop the excuses and fix our broken health care system.”

The report is based on extensive surveys and research of thirteen cities nationwide, which all had consistent results. Immunizations are one of the largest burdens on cities.

Other key findings include...

Must-See TV for understanding U.S. role in recent Iranian history

On Monday June 22 at 9 p.m, Eastern, the National Geographic Channel will air a new documentary, Iran and the West. About the relationship between Iran and the United States since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the film features interviews with several key players from some of the most significant interactions between the U.S. and Iran over the past thirty years, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, U.S. officials from the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, U.N. diplomats, European negotiators, and even one of the Iranian students who once held American citizens hostage at the American Embassy in Iran.

MOMocrats Guest Post from Lezzymom: Obama’s Bread Crumbs to Gays – Benefits for Federal Employees

Kathy from Lezzymom.com is an LGBT rights activist in Arizona where she lives with her partner and two children. She is a Board of Governors member for the Human Rights Campaign and helped start the first Gay-Straight Alliance in Arizona. Her political commentary appeared on C-Span and C-Span.com.

Here are her thoughts on the Obama administration's recent treatment of gay and lesbian rights, including the recently released controversial Department of Justice Defense of Marriage brief, Obama's inaction on Don't Ask Don't Tell, and today's planned presidential memorandum extending certain benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Today President Obama is going to sign a memorandum extending some benefits to federal employees. In a statement from the White House, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management and the Secretary of State have identified a number of benefits that can be extended to same-sex partners of federal employees:

For civil service employees, domestic partners of federal employees can be added to the long-term care insurance program; supervisors can also be required to allow employees to use their sick leave to take care of domestic partners and non-biological, non-adopted children.  For foreign service employees, a number of benefits were identified, including the use of medical facilities at posts abroad, medical evacuation from posts abroad, and inclusion in family size for housing allocations.

The Presidential Memorandum to be signed today will request that the Director of OPM and the Secretary of State act to extend to same-sex partners of federal employees the benefits they have identified.  The Memorandum will also request the heads of all other executive branch departments and agencies to conduct internal reviews to determine whether other benefits they administer might be similarly extended, and to report the results of those reviews to the Director of OPM.

A Green Revolution of Another Kind: Iranian Protests on Social Media for a Fair and Free Election

Who else is sitting home late on a Friday night, twittering, but a mom of a small kid? I'd like to say I was out doing something tragically hip, or even out somewhere, but... this past weekend, I was at home and swapping quips on the nightly carnivalesque Burning Man For Shut-Ins called Twitter.

Half a world away, Iranians were turning out in record numbers to vote for their new president. Very rapidly, tweets among my lefty-liberalish friends began to highlight Iranian sources of news for the results of the election. (The #tcot people, or Top Conservatives on Twitter, seemed not as attuned to what was happening. Some speculations why here.)

Light chitchat turned to concern as many of the people I follow and I realized that many Iranians found serious anomalies in the way votes were counted. Very quickly, it seemed that the most helpful thing one could do as a westerner sympathetic to the goals of Iranians demanding a free and fair election, with a re-vote if necessary, was to retweet the as-it-happens tweets of Iranians, which could be viewed under the hashtag #iranelections.

Why Obama is right not to openly pick a side in the Iranian election conflict

Women protest Iranian election results - Photo by Farhad Rajabali. Creative Commons license. Source: Flickr.

When protests erupted across Iran over the weekend in response to disputed Presidential election results, the Obama administration issued some very delicate statements.

On Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people."

On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden said, "There's an awful lot of question about how this election was run. And we'll see. I mean, we're just waiting to see. We don't have, we don't have enough facts to note— to make a firm judgment."

And President Obama himself issued no official statement until today, when he said:

Obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran.  And I want to start off by being very clear that it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran's leaders will be; that we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football— or discussions with the United States.

Having said all that, I am deeply troubled by the violence that I've been seeing on television.  I think that the democratic process— free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent— all those are universal values and need to be respected.  And whenever I see violence perpetrated on people who are peacefully dissenting, and whenever the American people see that, I think they're, rightfully, troubled.

Iran's current president, conservative hardliner Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's claims to have won the election in a landslide— despite pre-election polls that showed him in a neck-and-neck race with his more moderate opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi; despite widespread reports of voting irregularities on election day, and despite anecdotal reports from several communities that their own records from election day do not match the officially released national results— beggars credibility.

And the current regime's iron-fisted reaction to the post-election protests— expelling international journalists from the country, blocking foreign television and radio broadcasts, blocking text messaging and access to certain websites across Iran to disrupt communications, and arresting and shooting at protesters— totally undermines whatever credibility the Iranian government had as a supposedly democratic state. 

Not to mention the fact that, given our country's recent history of turbulent and frustrating relations with Ahmedinejad, our own government leaders almost certainly expect U.S. interests would be better served if Mousavi were declared the true winner.

So why the careful wording? Why hasn't the administration denounced Ahmedinejad and come out in loud, open support of Mousavi's backers, who are currently battling fierce government opposition to demand their right to free and fair elections?

Because if Obama wants Mousavi's supporters to succeed, the last thing he should do is explicitly declare his support for them. 

Run, Mama, Run -- Cook County, Illinois Judicial Candidate Abbey Romanek

It might not seem like election season -- maybe some of you are just now recovering from 2008 election fatigue! -- but races for local offices are in full swing and worthy of our attention as much as the big races!

One Democratic mother who's decided to run for Cook County Judge in Illinois is the latest woman we'd like to feature in the MOMocrats' "Run, Mama, Run" segment -- Abbey Fishman Romanek! I met someone involved in Abbey's campaign at a conference earlier this year, and thought it would interesting to profile someone running for an office that we don't often think is an elective one (depending on where you live!)  Abbey took some time out from her campaign to talk a little bit about her decision to jump into the world of elective politics:

Q: How many children do you have and what are their ages? 

A: I have three very active and busy boys. Josh is 15, Mikey is 14 and Ricky is 12.  

Q: What prompted you to decide to run for office?  Why did you decide to run for a judgeship as opposed to another office?