Today is election day.   Please remember to vote, please make time to vote.  Your boss can’t fire you if you’re late because you had to vote and there was a line, you cant legally be penalized if you had to take a long lunch to vote, those “I voted” stickers are sexy, and it really is true that every single vote counts.  As a resident of the District of Columbia, I’m personally counting on you to vote!

I’m not kidding.  The folks you elect get to make laws for my hometown…

DC’s government has a weird set-up.  Since DC isn’t a state, it is under the ultimate authority of Congress.  In fact, the District’s local government exists at the pleasure of Congress, and could theoretically be revoked at any time.  The city’s unique status creates a situation where citizens in the District do not have full control over their local government, nor do they have voting representation in the body that makes such decisions.  It’s only been since 1973 that DC residents could elect their own mayor and city council.  This is a city with a population slightly larger than Wyoming!  Until 2001, DC didn’t have control over its own budget and today still isn’t able to appoint or elect an attorney general to prosecute federal crimes (e.g. murder, burglary, etc).

Nikki McClure’s “Vote” poster.

Congress is required to review any and all laws that the District passes within 30 days.  As the DC City Paper explains, “the obscurely named Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee” has an incredible amount of power over the lives of the 600,000 people who live in DC.  Unfortunately for residents of DC, a Representative’s party politics often dictates which of DC’s laws get through Congress and which get held up.  Imagine if your school board had to go to House members from places 1000+ miles away from your city for approval!

This is all my way of saying, it really matters to me that you find the time to vote today.

The League of Women Voters has a “Find Your Polling Place” tool online and links to local election boards (for questions about hours, access for the disabled, and other issues).  If you’d like to learn more about DC voting rights, please visit DCVotes.org.

Trailer for The Other City.

Once again, I am participating in AIDS Walk Washington and, once again, I’m asking you to donate a few dollars to this cause.  This 5k run and walk benefits Whitman Walker Clinic, a non-profit organization that offers medical and dental care, addiction counseling, free HIV/AIDS tests, legal services, AIDS education, and other services to DC-residents living with HIV/AIDS.

I try to keep my politics reasonably removed from this blog but the AIDS epidemic in DC is something that is terrible at best and unconscionable at worst.  To put the District’s AIDS issues in perspective, consider that:

• DC has a higher rate of HIV infection than most sub-Saharan African nations.
• DC has the highest rate of new AIDS cases per 100,000 people in the United States — a rate that is 12 times the national average.
• In DC, the greatest increase in AIDS cases is occurring among people of color, women, injection drug users and through heterosexual contact.
• In DC, African-Americans account for eight out of every 10 cases of AIDS.
• More than 15,000 people in the Washington metropolitan area live with AIDS. Tens of thousands more people are estimated to be infected with HIV.

If you can spare a few dollars, please take a moment to sponsor me.  It’s a really, really good cause that is in very, very high demand in DC.  The clip above is for the documentary The Other City, not yet available on DVD, that just begins to touch on how complex and profoundly serious a situation the District is in.

Yesterday was Women’s Equality Day!  90 years ago women in the United States gained the right to vote and ever since have been a political force to be reckoned with– on both sides of the metaphorical isle.  So today, 90 years and 1 day after our grandmothers’ gained the right to vote, indulge me just a bit while I join in with the “This is what a feminist looks like” blog carnival hosted by Fair and Feminist.  I’m going to talk about why I am pro-choice, pro-woman, and pro-family.

Because I believe that women are capable of making rational, moral, and ethical choices about their own bodies;
Because I believe that medical care should be decided by a woman and her doctor;
Because I believe that women should not be lied to, misinformed, or under-informed;
Because I am tired of women’s lives being used as a political football;
Because I know that women deserve to be trusted to make choices about their life and the life of their families;
Because I know that comprehensive sex-ed prevents more abortions than shame, stigma, and abstinence only education;
Because I know that families come in all sorts of forms and at all different times;
I am pro-choice, pro-family, and pro-woman.

A few pro-choice, pro-woman organizations that I donate to and volunteer for (when I have time and money):

• Emily’s List is dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office.
• National Abortion Federation, the professional association of abortion providers in North America.
• The National Network of Abortion Funds, are a network of over 100 grassroots groups in more than 40 states that help women pay for abortion services.
• Girls on the Run DC, a group that offers programs that combine training for a 3.1 mile running event with self-esteem enhancing, uplifting workouts.
• Women Empowered Against Violence (WEAVE), works closely with adult and teen survivors of relationship violence and abuse, providing an innovative range of legal, counseling, economic and educational services that leads survivors to utilize their inner and community resources, achieve safety for themselves and their children, and live empowered lives.
• Holla Back DC, fighting street harassment in America’s capital by empowering Washingtonians to speak out against gender based public sexual harassment.

I’m also putting up this list of organizations I volunteer with or donate to in order to push back, just a teeny, tiny bit on the myth that young women aren’t feminist.  We are active, in new organizations, in organizations that are local and focus on the local.  Some of us have kids, but we are also college students, law students, young professionals, and living examples of why the wage-gap just plain doesn’t make sense.

Since last week I posted about the oil spill, something outside the usual scope of this blog, I thought “why not keep the trend going?”  I hope you’ll all take a few minutes to read about the UN Foundation’s GirlUp! campaign.  A few summers ago I (like everyone else in the US) read Three Cups of Tea and have closely followed the work of Nick Kristof in the New York Times and the book he co-wrote with his partner, Half the Sky.  The more I read, the more I follow the work of NGOs and development professionals, the more convinced I am that gender equity is a good in and of itself, but that it also helps ensure economic development and political/democratic change.

The GirlUp campaign

Gives American girls the opportunity to channel their energy and compassion to raise awareness and funds for programs of the United Nations that help some of the world’s hardest-to-reach adolescent girls. Through Girl Up’s support, girls have the opportunity to become educated, healthy, safe, counted, and positioned to be the next generation of leaders.

I wanted to say “Hells yes” when I read their “Girlafesto.” Its thesis: “You see a girl.  We see the future.”

First is WEAVE (Women Empowered Against Violence), a group dedicated to helping women and teen girls get out of abusive relationships.  They offer a comprehensive program of services including economic empowerment, mental health assessments, safety, legal counsel, etc.  They also work with any woman, regardless of her income.  DC, like so many other places, has seen a surge in domestic violence along with the economic troubles.  20% of homicides in DC are dv-related.  WEAVE needs to raise $85,000 by the end of the month in order to stay open.  If they don’t reach their goal your donation is returned; lets hope you don’t get it back.

Second, I’m taking part in the DC AIDS walk next Saturday, October 3.  DC has the highest AIDS rate in the United States and one that is higher than many countries in Africa.  A Washington Post article estimated that about 1 in 20 DC residents lives with HIV or AIDS.  Many DC residents depend on the services of the Whitman-Walker Clinic.   Please sponsor me if you want to help this great organization help DC residents manage their treatment, receive addiction counseling, mental health services, group support, etc.

Obviously, I don’t expect you to donate to both of these causes but I hope you will consider a small donation to one.  DC has a lot of problems, to say the least, and the budget/financial stuff isn’t helping.  I really like DC and think that both these organizations are doing a lot to help some of its most vulnerable residents.

The news of Dr. George Tiller’s death shocked me.  After an incredible and peaceful Sunday with friends the news came up on my Twitter feed and my first thoughts were “no no no.”  There is little commentary for me to add to the many moving and touching tributes paid to Dr. Tiller in the past two days.  I will say only this–  in the summer I spent working for Planned Parenthood I never met anyone motivated by anything other than a deep compassion for women and their families.  So much hatred and invective gets spewed at brave men and women who have chosen to help women in desperate circumstances.

I am deeply upset that in 21st century America women need to be escorted into clincis for routine medical procedures (abortion only makes up about 2% of Planned Parenthood’s services), that compassion for women is now a political act, and that moral cowardice characterizes a group of people who claim to have God on their side.  How dare they kill a man in his own church!  How dare the anti-choicers claim that this is a justifiable act.

Anyone who thinks that doctors “talk women into” aborting a fetus has never spent time with the doctors, nurses, and abortion counselors who work in American clinics.  They listen to terrible stories of abuse, of cancer and fetal deformity, of families on the bring of bankruptcy and they hold these women’s hands, keep their stories, and support the choices of all women without judgement.

After the jump I’e posted some links to a variety of stories on Dr. Tiller, his death, and how the new generation of pro-choice activists need to confront this challenge.  Please consider donating to Medical Students for Choice and/or Physicians for Reproductive Choice. As they say, “without providers there is no choice.”  You can also ask President Obama to revive the National Task Force on Violence Against Health Care Providers.

Coverage of Dr. Tiller’s murder that is particularly interesting or useful (this is by no means exhaustive):

• Rachel Maddow dedicated about 40 minutes to coverage of Dr. Tiller’s death and the many attacks on doctors by anti-abortion extremists.
• Gloria Feldt’s piece at Salon.com, “George Tiller needs more than candlelight vigils“
• Frank Schaeffer, a former leader in the anti-choice movement, wrote in the Huffington Post
• Ann Friedman’s piece in The American Prospect emphasizes why clinic violence needs to be addressed as a national secrutiy/federal level issue.
• The New York Times blog “The Opinonator” did a round up of opinions on Dr. Tiller’s death as a ‘moral murder’
• Anderson Cooper interviewed a doctor based in Colorado, Dr. Hern, about his relationship with Dr. Tiller and the threats abortion providers face daily (also, unrelated, they show some footage from the DC vigil and you can see me! on CNN! toward the end of the clip– about 5:40).
• Check out the National Abortion Federation’s documentation of the history of violence against providers/clinics.
• Many, many members of the Feministing community wrote about Dr. Tiller’s death.
• Check out your local news about vigils in support of Dr. Tiller and/or your local abortion clinic.  Find organizations to get involved with!  There were nearly 200 people at the vigil here in DC.

Just a very quick note today– thesis is still keeping me busy.  I’ve nominated Michele Gregg, who worked as an underground abortion counselor in the 1960s, for the first ever Our Bodies Our Blog “Women’s Health Hero” award.  Please go vote for my video of Michele and then thank your mother’s generation for fighting a good fight.

I didn’t shoot this video, the ACLU-NCA’s intern did, but I did just finish editing it.  Rev. Ragsdale is such an incredible voice in the Pastors for choice movement, I’m sad that I wasn’t able to speak with her while she was at the Keep Our Care rally.

Editing these interviews together has become awfully easy– this one went together quickly.  I mean, it’s not great cinema, but it’ll do.

I’m so sorry that this blog has become something of a video dump lately.  Honestly though, the only creative thing I’ve really be able to do in the last couple of weeks has been videos for the ACLU or managing video work I did while I was out in SD this summer.  This video was fun to put together, though it took longer than I thought it would to make the visuals interesting enough to keep people informed.

Video is still this thing that I’m not really sure I like doing, but it has given me an incredible entry point into causes I care deeply about.  I keep meeting fascinating people who are more informed and articulate than me, I get to play with popsicle sticks and googly eyes and call it my job, and make a difference all at once– maybe it isn’t cutting up paper all day, but its not a bad way to earn some cash.

Just wanted to point your attention to another video I made while in SD.  I thought Brenda, who works as a rape crisis counselor, was incrediblybly passionate and compassionate at the same time– a really tough combination to find, but one that is sorely needed.