MOMocrats™

Go Beyond Just "Tribute" for Veterans

When I attended the inauguration earlier this year, I met some amazing people.  One of those was a man named Paul Schneeberger.  Paul had become involved in military and veterans issues after interviewing some Gold Star Mothers for a film project.  (A Gold Star Mother is a mother who has lost a child in battle.)  And so, without any personal connection to the military or its families, Paul took up our cause.

Paul and I spent a great deal of time talking about the disconnect between the American public and our military.  There is no longer a shared sense of service or responsibility when it comes to the defense of our country.  There really hasn't been since the memories of World War II began to fade.  Now, only one percent of our nation is at war.  The rest of us were told to go shopping.

The problem is that while we were shopping, military families were becoming stretched to their very limit by multiple deployments, injuries, and other unseen wounds like PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury).  While the current administration is doing its best to increase funding for the VA, personnel and military families, we're in a recession and a big one at that.

I don't think most of the American public truly understands what the long term costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be.  With each deployment, a soldier's chance of serious problems with PTSD greatly increase.  We're also seeing brain injuries that the current military and VA medical systems simply aren't equipped to handle.

Yes, many people slap yellow ribbons on their cars and wave flags and say they support the troops.  But they don't really know.

Mother's Day Every Day Post Roundup

Happy Mother's Day, MOMocrats readers!

Many thanks to everyone who participated in our Mother's Day event to promote the Mother's Day Every Day initiative on behalf of The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood. Here is a list of posts from bloggers (and politicians!) who participated to help raise awareness about maternal mortality, and save mothers' lives. If we've missed or forgotten you, please add your post in the comments below and we will add you to the list in this post.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner

Houston's First Lady Andrea White

Women with Big Dogs and Infertility by Julie Pippert

Once Upon a Time, When You Were a Little Baby by Cynematic

How I Became a Mother by Glennia

Mother's Day Every Day: My Story by Jaelithe

Birth: A Love Story by Catherine Connors

Birthing Babies by Robin

Birth Story by Joie

Peeper's Birth Story by Whozat

Geekery and Pregnancy by Nicole

And we would also like to thank Morra Aarons Mele of MomsRising for promoting our event in her BlogHer post, Three Great and Good Ways to Celebrate Mother’s Day Online.

Mother's Day Every Day: Share Your Stories

CARE and The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood, partners in the campaign to prevent maternal mortality by providing expectant mothers around the world with access to basic prenatal care and childbirth support from a properly trained doctor, midwife or attendant, launched a new public awareness campaign in February called Mother's Day Every Day.

Every minute, somewhere in the world, another woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth.

In addition to being daughters, sisters, friends and wives, many of these women are also already mothers of other children. Because children who lose their mothers are much more likely to suffer from poverty, malnutrition and illness, one woman's death in pregnancy or childbirth can have a negative effect on an entire community.

But many of these deaths could be prevented with the most basic pregnancy and childbirth care.

In fact, in most developing nations, it would cost less to provide women access to basic medical care during pregnancy and childbirth than those nations are currently losing from decreased productivity due to maternal deaths.

This year, in honor of Mother's Day, MOMocrats is partnering with the White Ribbon Alliance to ask for your help. 

We want to help the White Ribbon Alliance spread the word about the importance of supporting and protecting mothers. So we're asking you, our readers, to share your own stories about how your children came into the world (or into your family). To participate, this week, before Mother's Day, write or re-post a birth or adoption story that has personal meaning for you on your blog. Then ask your readers to visit the Mother's Day Every Day website, and provide a link to MothersDayEveryDay.org.

Include the MDED button (code below) in your post or your blog sidebar, link back to this post, and then email us or leave a comment letting us know that you've joined the MOMocrats Mother's Day Every Day: Share Your Stories event. We'll post a link to your entry here on MOMocrats.com on Mother's Day.   

Florida State Legislature Threatens to Cut Library Funding

The Florida State Legislature's House and Senate Transportation and Economic Development Appropriations Conference Committee has recommended that the state cut $21.2 million from its budget by eliminating all state funding for public libraries.

During a time when more and more people affected by the recession are using public libraries to provide books and free educational activities for their children, access the internet to search for jobs, and borrow books to research a new career or study for standardized tests as preparation for going back to school, the last thing citizens of any state need is for several of their local public libraries to cut hours or shut down.

But according to the Florida Library Association, that is precisely what will happen in Florida if the state legislature proceeds with this plan. That's why the FLA is asking Florida residents to take action to save Florida's public libraries by contacting their local representatives, Florida Governor Charlie Crist ([email protected]) and the media to let the Florida legislature know how losing public libraries would impact the people of Florida.

Hey, Florida: If you're looking for ways to save money, you might want to start with the salaries of the people who want to cut off kids' access to free books.

H/T Neil Gaiman. Yes, that one.

Unite for Hunger and Hope

Bloggers Unite and Heifer International have teamed up to raise awareness about world hunger today with the Unite for Hunger and Hope project. Bloggers Unite invites bloggers everywhere to join the effort and write a post about world hunger.

Previously on MOMocrats.com, we have featured several organizations that fight hunger and poverty both in developing countries and here in the United States:

Share our Strength fights childhood hunger in the U.S. by raising public awareness about hunger, organizing fundraisers, and awarding grants to hunger organizations and food pantries. MOMocrats partnered with Quaker Oats last year help to raise money for Save our Strength. 

Meds and Food for Kids is an organization that saves children from starvation in Haiti, one of the countries hit hardest by last year's spike in global food prices, by providing families with nutitional supplements created using locally grown ingredients; the group also teaches the local Hatian farmers who provide ingredients for their product new and better agricultural techniques and food safety methods. MOMocrats interviewed the founder of Meds and Food for Kids, Dr. Patricia Wolff, last December. 

Unicef also fights childhood hunger and poverty worldwide; in January, MOMocrats interviewed Dr. Brandao Co, UNICEF's chief of nutrition in Afghanistan, a country where agricultural production has been devastated by two decades of war, and current conflict makes it difficult for agencies to move food and medical supplies to the communities that need them. 

You can help fight world hunger by joining today's Bloggers Unite event, by donating to or writing about one of the organizations listed above, or by donating nonperisable items to your nearest food pantry.

Calls to Action on Justice Department Torture Memos

In a victory for government transparency, over the objections of Senate Republicans and several intelligence officials, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden, President Obama authorized the release yesterday of four Bush Administration era Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos that explicitly authorized the use of techniques internationally recognized as torture during interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody.

The memos had been the subject of an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit originally filed during the Bush Administation; Attorney General Eric Holder has been arguing for several weeks that the documents should be declassified. According to anonmous government sources quoted in The Daily Beast, several Senate Republicans threatened to "go nuclear" and block the pending confirmation of President Obama's nominee for Justice Deparment Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen.

Go Read It: Nicholas Kristof on International Family Planning

This past Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a glorious op-ed, Pregnant (Again) and Poor. In his column, Kristof highlighted women's unmet need for family planning services -- some 70 to 80 million unwanted pregnancies per year, according to the UN.

A few days later, he followed up with blog posts, including one that asked readers to share family planning organizations worthy of financial support. I've compiled the list below, with a few additions.

Also, if you want to see what happens when family planning isn't available and women resort to unsafe abortion, go watch Not Yet Rain, Lisa Russell's documentary -- made with help from Ipas (see below) -- on Ethiopia's 2006 decision to liberalize its abortion law.

Republicans: The Party of "No," the Party of Nobody

President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 yesterday, authorizing some $787 billion dollars' worth of government economic stimulus to be spent. (Click here for a slideshow of this process.) Not a single Republican in the House of Representatives voted for the bill; only three Republican senators worked on the bill reconciling the House and Senate versions in preparation for Obama's signature.

During campaign season, I argued that the Republican party, and conservative ideology in general, has become the party of zombies. (Signs of brainlessness: the GOP seem to be taking marching orders from those intellectual heavyweights Rush "I want Obama, and therefore YOU, to fail" Limbaugh and Michelle "generational theft except for the 6-year long Iraq war blank check part brought to you by the GOP" Malkin.) Not simply content to be undead, these bodies are aggressively and viciously seeking to feast off the living. Why Republican congressmen and women act as though foreclosure only affects Democrats is a mystery; why Republican senators seem to think hunger and joblessness are partisan and will only affect Democrats is completely befuddling to rational, caring, PATRIOTIC human beings.

Dear Vice President Biden: An Idea for Jobs in the Green Economy, Home Energy Auditors

President Obama and Vice President Biden have unveiled a new initiative to survey America for ideas on creating a green economy. At the official White House website, you can follow Vice President Biden's Middle Class Task Force tour, which will be holding a series of town hall meetings around the country starting February 27, 2009, in Philadelphia, PA.

On that same web page, there's also a space to submit ideas for jobs in a green economy.

Here's my idea: create Home Energy Auditors with expanded responsibilities tied to a larger policy agenda that "greens" the home buying and ownership process.

Find National Day of Service Events in Your Area

President-Elect Barack Obama has encouraged his supporters, and all Americans, to participate in a National Day of Service today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Day.

If you're like me, and you've been insanely busy this past week, and you weren't sure what your schedule would be like today, so you kinda sorta waited until the last possible minute to figure out what you were going to do for the National Day of Service, don't give up yet! You can still participate.

Visit USAService.org to find National Day of Service events in your area, hosted by organizations and people from your own community. Or text SERVICE to 56333 to get more information about what you can do to help during today's National Day of Service.

If you can't find a suitable event with volunteer openings in your area, you can still participate in this nationwide community service event by taking on a project of your own. Take an hour out of your day to make a donation to a local food pantry. (You can find a local foodbank here.) Help an elderly neighbor do some minor home repair. Clean up trash in a park near your house.

Even if you can only spare an hour or two today to help someone in your community, you can make a big difference.

The MOMocrats want to know: What are you doing to help your community for today's National Day of Service? Leave a comment on this post letting us know about your community service project. And if your project hasn't started yet, and you're still accepting volunteers, let our readers know!