To the Good Old Girls: Working Class Women Matter on Super Tuesday

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/29/good-old-girls-working-class-women-matter-super-tuesday

It felt worse to me than any good old boys slap down ever has during my adult life. I went to the California Democratic Party's convention in San Jose this weekend, and I decided I would attend the Women's Caucus and try to say a few words on behalf of Bernie Sanders. I had no illusions about the situation, so grabbing a few moments to speak was my goal. But not only was I excluded from doing so, I also watched the women convening the caucus celebrate what it means to be a wealthy and privileged woman during this campaign season. And I was clearly in a class of working class women not invited to this table.

As a woman who strongly supports Bernie Sanders in this race, my position was dismissed. But it was more than that. I was dismissed. I felt at first annoyed, then sad, then more angry than I have felt in a long, long time. And that sort of anger may well be what makes some voters steer clear of political involvement all together if the Democratic powers that be aren't careful. No amount of superficial reassurance will overcome a genuine disdain for the working class that I experienced in what should have been a friendly crowd.

In an election cycle during which women might have an impact well beyond what I dreamed possible in the past, I witnessed women who ought to know better celebrate their status as the elite class in America. First I signed in to have 30 seconds to speak. I watched my name and my organization recorded first on the list to speak when we came to the the "free speech" section of the agenda. Then after waiting nearly two hours and listening to elitist after female elitist make veiled and not so veiled pitches to me urging me to vote for the elitist presidential candidate with ovaries, I was never called. I went to the woman who initially signed me in and asked if I would indeed have the chance to speak and was waved off. I was literally waved away like I was trash.

I have never, ever felt that as part of the huge and growing number of women who support Bernie's campaign for president. Another woman said to me that she is less interested in breaking the glass ceiling than she is in shattering the class ceiling. I agree, but it was so much more telling to me. I know some of the women I saw and listened to know better than to behave as they did, and that made it all the more painful. They knew better but saw no harm in excluding me. I was of so little consequence in those moments. I felt gut punched and as if we had stepped backwards in time not forward to 2016.

[Tortmaster]

1. Yes, women are having a ...

... major part in this year's Democratic Primary. Thank God.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Wonderful article by Donna Smith! Utterly disgusting what the rich Dem women did to her.

I know that crowd and I just want to puke at what they've become.

GOING FOR THE MONEY--that's what's happened to black leaders and women's leaders.

70 year old woman here. I've seen it all. Lifelong Democrat who's seen my party go from the "big tent" to the "little white tent" at the garden party where the rich gather to their own and the rest of us serve them and clean up the blood and puke after their wars and after their creation of homelessness in the USA.

Give me that wild white-haired, old New Dealer Bernie Sanders any day of the week over that coiffured, manicured, massaged, Latte'ed crowd of power-hungry women sidling up to the most corrupt Democratic candidate in this century or the last.

We have the seeds of revolution here. Let's do it!