This Week’s Takeaway? Every Little Girl Can Be POTUS

Issue 158 — January 25, 2021

Each week I write about what the week just past has taught us. I reflect on what happened and search for the larger meaning in its disparate events. I look through the lens of whether it’s been good for women or bad for women. I search for trends. And I look for moments of power shifts related to gender and race.

Well let me just say last week took the prize on all those fronts.

It was one to the most meaningful weeks of recent American history.

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Kamala Harris Represents…

This graphic circulated around the internet quickly upon breaking news that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would become the next President and Vice President of the United States. Harris is smashing one of our two highest and hardest glass ceilings. In doing so, she represents so much of our history and more importantly, our future.

Harris Represents Women — the obvious, overarching 51% of the population that has waited since 1776 to see one of its gender represented in the highest halls of power. Her white suit was a nod to the 100 year anniversary of the 19th amendment writing women’s right to vote into the U.S. Constitution — and the decades-long battles afterward to make sure all American women have the unfettered right to exercise that primary civic duty.

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Lead with your vote

Issue 147 — November 2, 2020

The leaves are starting to turn in New York’s Central Park. Daylight savings time has given us back the hour it stole last spring. The pandemic rages on.

And a momentous election is taking place. The world is watching. Americans have cast more early votes than any time in history. You can feel the anxiety in the air.

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In tribute to female mayors, taking the lead

Issue 136 — July 20, 2020

The passing of Civil Rights leader and legend Congressman John Lewis made me deeply sad. A wave of great lions and lionesses of the movement for racial equality is moving on just as the country is at the crossroads. Either we’ll make the systemic change that they visualized, that they risked their very lives for, or we’ll let the elements of xenophobia take us back to pre-Rosa Parks days. As tributes to Lewis fill the media, I became aware that his career in elective office started on the Atlanta City Council.

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Voting Power 2014

Go Vote Today

When Shirley Chisholm broke both racial and gender barriers to become the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968 and later the first Black woman to run for U. S. president, she leapfrogged over more barriers to power than any woman considering a run today can even imagine. Was she conflicted in her relationship…

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The Young Politica: Guns on Campus

If you, like me, have come to look forward to Maegan Vazquez’s “Young Politica” columns on Heartfeldt, you are going to miss her interesting take on the world through the students’ lens. During the past two semesters that she has interned for me, it has been my pleasure to see her grow and her writing develop.

Enjoy her last column here.  I told her I predict we’ll be reading her in the Washington Post in a few years.

Today, airsoft rifles closely resembling AK-47s were found in the dorm room of a New York University student, according to the New York Post. The psychology student, Bernard Goal, 20, allegedly assembled and sold them for up to $500 each. collegecrime

The story may not have been at the top of my radar (nor on the radar of the New York Post a few weeks ago, but in a post-Boston Marathon and post-MIT shootout world, I have become hyperaware of all things ammunition on campus—especially when that campus is my own.

As a member of the media, it would be naive of me to cite this as a reason for stricter gun laws on campus. Even I know that when in search for stories, a journalist often writes about what is most concerning to their audience at that moment in time. Right now, almost anything guns is a-go.

Up until recent events, campus gun laws were not an issue I was concerned with; mainly because my college doesn’t have a real campus. Rather, students take classes in buildings scattered across lower-Manhattan.

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Women’s Campaign Fund Won’t Settle for Less Than Half

Monday night I attended the bipartisan Women’s Campaign Fund’s annual “Parties of Your Choice“.

Changetheplayers600

As always, they begin with a raucous reception at Christie’s for several hundred guests, after which we all scatter around town for intimate dinners in beautiful homes. At each party, there are several WCF-endorsed candidates or elected officials who tell their tales and make their pitches.

Here are a few photos I took during the evening, which was peppered with chants of “Change the players. Change the game.”

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Women’s History Month: Why Sally Jewell as Secretary of the Interior Could be a Historic Win

Sally Jewell is a one-woman powerhouse. The REI CEO has just been approved by a bipartisan United States Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a vote of 19-3, according to the New York Times. Her next stop—a full review by the U.S. Senate.

“She is going to give each member of this committee her ear and her expertise that comes from having managed to pack a host of professional careers – petroleum engineer, C.E.O. and banker, to name just a few – into just one lifetime,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, told the committee.Jewell

Jewell’s diverse experience has made her a unique contender for the job. In comparison to her possible predecessor, former Senator Ken Salazar, Jewell has no government experience. However, just as Salazar made a historic impact by becoming one of the first Hispanics to earn a spot in the Senate, Jewell’s confirmation would make her the second woman to hold the Interior Secretary position.

An avid environmentalist these days, Jewell, 56, is not afraid to say that she started off as a petroleum engineer for Mobil Oil. Her range of experience provides her with a widened perspective. She has worked as a foreman for drill crews, an investment banker, and is now the CEO of a highly successful outdoor sports corporation. She’s a Jane of all trades—a banker, a boardroom member, and a mountain climber. She takes heed to both economic fronts and conservation efforts.

“She knows the link between conservation and good jobs,” President Obama said during Jewell’s nomination earlier this month. “She knows that there is no contradiction between being good stewards of the land and our economic progress.”

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