Kirsten Gillibrand, two words as to why you went nowhere

[Sloumeau]

41. I believe that you may not know the whole story.

First of all, I have not seen any evidence that Schumer pressured anyone into demanding Franken's resignation. It is true that he is powerful, and it is also true that he does have ways of putting pressure on people, but I haven't seen any evidence that he did that. You might want to keep in mind that there were about 50 Democrats in the Senate at the time, yet only about 30 Senators demanded Franken's resignation. Was Schumer only supposedly pressuring some people and not others, or is it possible that individual Senators, instead of feeling intense pressure, decided for themselves whether or not to pressure Franken? I think some valuable information can be found in the NYTimes story entitled, "On Sexual Misconduct, Gillibrand Keeps Herself at the Fore" from December 6, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/nyregion/gillibrand-franken-sexual-misconduct.html:

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"When the floodgates opened on Wednesday to cast Senator Al Franken aside, following a half-dozen accusations of sexual misconduct, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had positioned herself at the crest of the wave.

“Enough is enough,” she wrote on Facebook, becoming the first of Mr. Franken’s Democratic colleagues to call for his resignation on Wednesday morning. By lunchtime, more than a quarter of Democratic senators had concurred; by evening, a solid majority. Mr. Franken has now scheduled a public announcement about his future for Thursday."

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The article indicates that Gillibrand led the charge, not Schumer, and not anyone else, and that she was the first one to publicly call for his resignation. I seem to remember in another article I read that Gillibrand met with other Senators and that they had decided together that Gillibrand would be the first because of her history of working on women's issues. Again, I saw no indication in that article that anyone pressured Gillibrand or any of the others who called for Franken's resignation. Did Schumer at any point actually pressure anyone? I have never seen any of the Senators claim that they were pressured by Schumer, and I have also seen that Gillibrand has expressed no regrets over what happened.

I believe that Gillibrand allowed herself to go first because she believed that was she was doing was right, and that she still believed that she did the right thing, and I believe this because I have never seen her contradict it. However, the idea that she believes that she did the ring thing is, in a nutshell, the problem. Equality for everyone means everyone--both men and women--and it can only be achieved by fighting for justice for both men and women. That means that if a person believes that women are entitled to due process, then a person might want to believe that men are entitled to it also. In Gillibrand's Facebook post, she left no room for the possibility that Franken was completely innocent, or that Franken may have only been partially innocent. Instead she apparently just assumed that he was guilty. In addition, she apparently was basing this on the claims of people that were never either formally recorded by law enforcement or the Senate and were never formally investigated by anyone. Interviews, investigations, and hearings are how the truth is separated out.

When Brett Kavanaugh had his hearing, the problem that so many supporters of Professor Ford and I had with the investigation was that the investigation of Kavanaugh was so short and incomplete. Why were Senators trying to bypass the investigation and hearing process with Franken? Why were they in such a rush? Why were a hearing and investigation the right thing for Kavanaugh but not Franken? Perhaps it had something to do with the Roy Moore Senate election that was coming up soon. Perhaps some Senators thought that it would be inconvenient to have Al Franken around when they wanted to point out what a pervert Roy Moore allegedly was, so they threw Franken under the bus.

Women have been denied due process for thousands of years, as men decided everything and ignored the crimes done against women. Women have always been entitled to due process--they just have rarely received it. Isn't that awful, all of the time that women did not get the due process that they were entitled to? Due process is a right, not a privilege.

Obtaining justice and due process for women is what the #MeToo movement is supposed to be about. However, women will not get more of it by giving men less of it, because any time a case can be made to deny due process for men, that same case can be turned around and used against women. Women will only get the justice they need when both men and women demand it for both...men and women.