What Are You Looking Forward to in 2009?
Isn’t that a great question to think about at the beginning of the Brave New Year? What’s your answer?
You can listen to mine on NPR’s “Your Call.”
The question was posed by Rose Aguilar, author of Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey into the Heartland and host of NPR station KALW talk show “Your Call”, to a diverse (except for shared relief that George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency is almost over) panel of guests, with global to local expertise ranging from bugs to books, health to wealth, the arts to politics, war, peace, and everything in between. I was privileged to be among the large lineup that included Marian Wright Edelman, Founder & President of the Children’s Defense Fund, Antonia Juhasz, Author of “The Tyranny of Oil” & “The Bush Agenda”, David Kipen, Director, National Reading Initiatives, National Endowment of the Art, and David Cay Johnston, former NY Times tax reporter and author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill).
You can listen to the program in full.
Then tell how you’d answer the question, “What Are You Looking Forward to in 2009?” by posting your comments here.
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Here’s what I’m looking forward to–admittedly a fantasy, but an eminently doable one: I want to be present when Barack Obama signs the Prevention First act into law. In one swoop, we would increase needed funding for preventive family planning services, make sure sex education is medically accurate and comprehensive as opposed to the current ineffective abstinence-only variety, make emergency contraception more accessible, and otherwise prevent unintended pregnancies and ensure healthy, wanted ones.
It’s the centerpiece of what RHREalityCheck’s Kay Steiger called “The True Common Ground” agenda for the 111th Congress. I confess to having a mother’s attachment to Prevention First, originally drafted and filed when I was president of Planned Parenthood (props to my brilliant staff). But despite broad bipartisan support including cosponsorship by Barack Obama, the Republican leadership wouldn’t let it come up for a vote when they were in control and the Democrats have been no more courageous about pushing it during the last two years than they have been about standing up to Bush on judicial nominees, the war in Iraq, scientific integrity, the bailouts, or just about anything else.
Stlll, this is a hopeful moment. Despite huge challenges like the economic meltdown, it feels like America has nowhere to go but up. Despite the fact that I know full well the Beltway is the Beltway and there will be disappointments, I sense that most if not all things are possible. And despite the pro-choice movement’s historic pattern of retrenching into defensive posture after a victory instead of using the moment to go full steam ahead with proactive measures, I’m looking forward to 2009 being different.
To being the year that a woman’s right to her own life becomes change we believe it, because it is clearly change we need. I can’t wait to see your answers to Rose’s excellent question.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.