Rachel Notley, Christine Blasey Ford worthy of respect
our public service, matter.”
Rachel Notley, NDP premier of Alberta, delivered a tough statement Sunday announcing she was temporarily reducing the crude oil production in her province to hopefully sell the glut of oil the province has and raise prices that are too low.
What impresses me is her public calm, and her attempt to fight for both progressive values and the economic wellbeing of her province in today’s crucible of climate change and anti-pipeline politics. This can often leave her lonely among out of province progressives who never want to hear the word pipeline again.
The images from this past year of Notley dancing joyfully at a Pride parade or singing a country and western song seem far removed from today’s extreme political tensions.
Whether her government survives the ferocious on- slaught of Jason Kenney, leader of the United Conservative Party in next spring’s provincial election, Notley will have shown she is an authentic leader, loyal to her province, who doesn’t back down from a fight.
Freeland and Notley of course know the risks and responsibilities that come from assuming public office. But what about women who for the first time spoke out about a personally painful issues and changed the debate?
Two startlingly different voices moved me. There was Emma Gonzalez, the Parkland, Florida high school student who, at 18, stepped to the mic last February at a rally three bleak short days after a mass shooting at her school killed 17 students and staff and gave the world the memorable words: “We call BS.”
With those words, Gonzalez eloquently condemned both the National Rifle Association and the politicians who accept large donations from the progun group and are in their pocket.
With her shaved head and natural charisma Gonzalez, remained a compelling figure as she helped co-found a new gun control advocacy group that has started to make inroads in both funding and political support.
She became one of the most visible symbols of the growing wave of disgust that many Americans feel that their leaders can’t find a way to enact gun laws and at least try to prevent the country’s staggering number of mass shootings.
Finally, Christine Blasey Ford. Many women who watched her testimony last September will just recall the visceral pain — hers and oursas she told a familiar story of sexual assault. But they should not forget the risks she took, the abuse she endured publicly — so many death threats she still has not been able to move back into her home. And the moral and emotional stamina the California professor of psychology had to summon as she came forward under enormous pressure to do what she called her “civic duty” and testify to a Senate judiciary committee hearing last fall that Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, had sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in the early 1980s.
Describing what she remembered of the incident, in which she said Kavanaugh and a friend detained her in a room and pinned her down on a bed, Blasey Ford also offered precise clinical language about the chemistry of the brain, the by-product of a well-regarded career: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” she said softly as she recounted the “uproarious laughter” of two entitled young men who were “having fun at my expense.”
We all know what happened next. Kavanaugh, in a bitter and angry tirade before the committee, held onto enough support to eventually survive the scandal — although there were other accusations of sexual misconduct and of lying.
He is now not only sitting on the Supreme Court and receiving standing ovations when he speaks, but also according to the Washington Post, back coaching his daughter’s basketball team, something he said through tears during the hearing he would probably, if the accusations were allowed to stand, never be allowed to do again.
Meanwhile Blasey Ford, still receiving death threats, has not been able to fully resume her normal life. I won’t forget her. I like to think she will remain indelible in my hippocampus.
Now, who inspired you this year?