Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Citizen Activism and Political Courage

It is an interesting coincidence that last weekend we saw two striking examples of successful citizen activism (Planned Parenthood vs. Komen Foundation), after Komen had first announced it would stop paying for brain cancer screenings for low-income women before reversing its decision, and political courage (Bloomberg & Menino), when the New York and Boston Mayors took advantage of their teams playing each other in the Super Bowl to stand up for gun control. Those are actually two of the solutions that I suggested in my piece about Reversing Widening Inequalities.

Those are encouraging signs pointing to the end hopefully of the long apathy that has struck the US in particular since the Reagan years. And rest assured - those “small wins” matter. Planned Parenthood for instance fights an everyday battle in the trenches all over the country against extremely determined pro-life people, folks in my book who want to deprive women of a fundamental human right.

La Lucha Continua…