Women’s march not needed
Editor: I was a bit troubled by the stories of a planned women’s march in Kelowna set for today, circulating in local media for at least one reason.
While there is still some modest work left in terms of women’s issues that are too detailed to outline in a roughly 400-word newspaper letter, the major fights in terms of the right to vote and work in equivalent positions as men have long since (thankfully) been won, to the credit of earlier activists.
However, we simply have too many other issues demanding our more immediate attention and to which we should be shifting any activism, namely the opioid epidemic and overdose crisis in Canada and the U.S., and the slow-growth economic environment driven largely by demographics and the so-called Uber economy.
It’s also appropriate to take a look at why Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. He was the only candidate who heard the voices of the largely rural, sparsely populated, suburban and working class American communities that have suffered through more than a decade of economic malaise due, in no small part, to the above issues.
It’s important to note that Hillary Clinton did not lose because of her gender; she lost solely because of issues on which she advocated tended to focus on the bicoastal, largely Hollywood, Ivy League and well-heeled elite (if you’ll pardon the unintended pun) which would’ve meant more of the same. In short, she was simply the wrong candidate at the wrong time and, I believe, had the U.S. Democratic Party listened to their historical base and chosen Bernie Sanders, we’d have witnessed Sanders inauguration on Friday.
As a side note, we also need to realize and respect the reason for the Electoral College and that it did its job, to protect the interests of more than 80 per cent of U.S. counties’ population that voted for Trump from being overruled by a handful of densely populated metropolitan cities.
The pink knitted hats are, indeed, quite cute, but would be much better utilized if knitted in large quantities in a bevy of colours (which would also have even greater symbolism, I think) and handed out to the homeless as part of a better advocacy campaign for homelessness and anti-poverty issues. Doug Mehus, West Kelowna