How Qualified Are You to Run for President?

(This post originally appeared in OpEdNews on 7/6/15.)

There's still time to announce your bid for presidency of the United States! Not sure you'd make a good candidate? Take this quiz to see if you're ready to run. Write "true" next to each statement below that describes you:

1) You can do Marco Rubio's Deep-Thoughts-Gaze. (If yours needs work, not to worry: Watch the Friends episode where Joey teaches his acting class to portray a character in a profound moment by using a technique he calls "Smell-the-Fart." You can find this scene online.)

2) You own a U.S. flag pin.

3) You can use each of these words at least three times in a five-minute interview: "pray," "blessed," "family," "faith," "serve," "called" (as in "Great men called to serve"), "Good, Hard-Working Americans," "middle-class," and "fight for" (as in "I will fight for the Good, Hard- Working Americans who are this great country's middle-class!")

4) You have never forgotten your hardscrabble roots ... your father, permanently bent-over from all those 16-hour days in the mine ... your mother's hands gnarled from 40 years of doing piece work every evening after coming home from a day at the mill. Without their sacrifice and support, you would not be the man you are - the man called to go to Washington to eradicate Social Security and Medicare.

5) You have published a memoir, which can be found at local book stores (on the $2 shelves) and/or rummage sales (in the section with books on things like journaling your way through menopause and eliminating belly fat).

6) Your family looks like they just walked off of the set of The Lawrence Welk Show.

7) You have your own billionaire to sponsor your campaign.

Scoring Your Quiz:

If you are ready to run, you will have written "true" next to Question 7. Otherwise, you are not candidate material.

[For still-viable candidates] To determine how competitive a candidate you are, you will need to compare the size of your billionaire's gift to those of the other candidates.

Why bother with the first six questions? Because in the event that you and another candidate "raise" the same amount of money, how else will Good, Hard-Working Americans be able to decide whether you deserve their vote?

In public his roots are hardscrabble; In private he hates on the rabble ...

Light reading about the presidential candidates , Part I ...

Governor Romney  (Check back for Part II, about President Obama.) 

In public his roots are hardscrabble.
In private he hates on the rabble.

Though his donors are elite,

His campaign has been effete -

His talking points meaningless babble.

... and just in time for tonight's (presidential) debate:

Ever wonder how candidates for public office can (and sometimes do) frame their issues to appeal to voters? If so, you may enjoy George Lakoff's article in today's edition of Alternet.

Margaret Mead Was Right

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."     Margaret Mead   

1994: It started with three women: Fern, Janice, and Susan. Fern was determined that her granddaughter would never be exposed to the kind of abuse she had endured at the hands of her ex-husband. Janice first shared the gory details of her abuse during a live radio interview, leaving the interviewer and other guests speechless and causing dead air time. Susan had been involved in anti-domestic violence work for years, motivated by her own experiences with abuse.

Before it was all over, the campaign that these three women helped to launch accomplished these things:

• Successfully pressured the 8^th District Police to collect data about its response to 911 domestic violence (DV) calls and allow the public access to the data;
• Successfully pressured the 8^th District Police to agree to participate in roll call trainings on how to assist victims of domestic violence;        
• Ignited a citywide public dialogue about the Chicago Police Department’s handling of 911 DV calls; and 
• Created a coalition of social workers, police officers, attorneys, and others to coordinate the responses of local social service agencies, police departments, courts, hospitals, schools, and faith-based organizations to domestic violence.

There were other, unexpected, results:

• One of the three women was selected and sponsored by the Chicago Foundation for Women to represent local activists at the 4^th International Women’s Conference in Beiing, China. 
• One of the campaign participants observed that although she’d had individual counseling and gone to support groups, her involvement in the campaign brought her a new level of healing from her abuse;
• In Chicago, the most segregated city in America, a group of women in a white community joined forces with a group of African-American women also working for improved police response to DV, an Arab-American women’s organization, a social service organization serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community, and a group of 20-something activists – to address the issue of inadequate police response to domestic violence.

What kind of campaign did the women launch?

A grassroots, direct-action community organizing campaign.

Maybe you are wondering:

• “What do you mean, ‘grassroots’?”
• “What do you mean, ‘direct-action’?”
• “What exactly is community organizing anyway?”

For answers to these and other questions, check back here. Future posts will describe how a few determined women mounted a campaign that held local police accountable for their response to domestic violence calls.