Womens Conference runs into rough seas of their own making

[Ken Burch]

239. I've posted several times Bernie should turn down the invitation. But it's not MY standards here.

It's about the expectations of those running this Conference. They were the ones who sent out the speaker invitations.

If they'd asked me, I'd have said they should re-think the invitation of Bernie. And I'll say AGAIN that he should turn it down. As should any other man who might have been asked.

It looks to me as though the intent of the Conference organizers was to shake things up, that THEY were trying to reconnect with the spirit of the 1977 conference.

Perhaps they felt that if they invited someone from the existing feminist leadership that they'd validating the whole process of switching from a transformation to an incremental strategy.

As I understand it, they DID invite Hillary, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren. And, of course, all the other speakers at the Conference are women.

I agree with you that inviting a man to be opening speaker, ANY MAN, was a bad choice.

They could have made the same point far better by choosing a young, nationally unknown feminist activist for the opener-someone with a connection to the Occupy sensibility and to the post-2008 revival of transformational organizing. Nikkita Oliver, who ran for mayor in Seattle this year and made a surprisingly strong third-place showing, who is a poet and singer in addition to being a lawyer and an LGBTQ activist, would be a good choice.