Big things come in small packages, right.

I don't know if this works as a corollary: small gestures, big statements?

Either way, last week the San Jose transit system named a bus after Rosa Parks. Just to honor her memory. One woman who came to embody the civil rights movement and who taught the world that a single gesture can empower an entire community.

Maybe naming a bus after a black woman who wouldn't give up her seat in 1955 is a silly gesture. But it's still incredibly cool.

Alito was confirmed this morning.

Now what???

It’s a big blustery day in Washington tomorrow. And it isn’t just about the clouds and rain forecast for tomorrow.

The Senate cut off debate this afternoon on the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. That means, there’s not just a new uber-conservative on the bench. But there’s an uber-conservative who hasn’t said he won’t cut off a woman’s right to choose, support for the environment and respect for the Bill of Rights. Notice the double negative there.

Gives you the chills, doesn’t it?

And then, of course, is the president’s State of the Union address.
Last year, he promised a strong economy, social security and immigration reform. And of course, winning the war on terror.

Did we say blustery??

Another day in Washington.

Grandstanding senators, and on the other side of the table, lots of big words with very little meaning.

Welcome to the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito. This arch-conservative is up for the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

So how much is at stake?

To break it down on one set of issues alone —women’s issues.

If Alito is appointed to the Supreme Court, family and medical leave, pay equity, access to contraceptives, abortion rights and equality in education are all on the table.

According to the National Organization of Women:

Judge Alito wrote the Third Circuit decision that Congress did not have the power to require state governments to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act. Three years later, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist (Hibbs v. Nevada), the Supreme Court took the opposite position, upholding the right of Congress to require state and local governments to follow FMLA, referring specifically to the impact on women. Chittister v Department of Community and Economic Development, Alito opinion.

As a justice department attorney, Alito wrote a memo laying out his proposal for the eventual overturning of Roe v. Wade, showing himself to be an advocate and potential architect of a Roe reversal. In 1991, going farther than any other judge on his circuit, Judge Alito argued that, under his interpretation of the Constitution, a state can require women to notify their husbands before they are allowed to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, Alito dissent.

Lawsuits were brought by NOW and NAACP in the 1970's to integrate the Pittsburgh police department by sex and race. A decade later, after a consent decree required the hiring of female officers, sexual harassment became a way of letting them know they weren't welcome. In Robinson v. City of Pittsburgh, a female officer's direct supervisor engaged in two years of harassment (including unhooking her bra, snapping her bra strap, making comments about the size of her breasts, dropping his keys down the back of her shirt and trying to retrieve them, etc.) yet Alito's opinion dismissed most of her claims, including every claim of retaliation, allowed the trial judge to instruct the jury to disregard some of the evidence, and affirmed the judge's refused to admit a City of Pittsburgh report regarding the same supervisor's treatment of another female officer during that time.

Alito has rejected constitutional and civil rights protections against sexual harassment in schools - an especially pernicious form of sex discrimination. In D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vocational Technical School, Judge Alito voted that student who were sexually harassed and abused by fellow students (including repeated forced sexual acts) do not have a civil rights claim (42 U.S.C 1983) because the state did not have any special duty to care for them. A dissenting judge argued, "we owe immature school children attending public school who are seriously injured as a result of a policy of deliberate indifference to their danger no less a remedy than we are willing to provide to incarcerated criminals." This is another example of Alito's inclination to interpret civil rights statutes very narrowly, depriving individuals of legal protections and of their day in court.


So what can be done?

Call your Senator and tell him what you think about Alito’s record. Call before senators vote to confirm—or reject!-Alito on January 24. Dial the Senate switchboard number (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senator.

Happy New Year!

Sometimes it’s not about anonymity, or about getting your hands dirty doing the dirty work. Sometimes, the bigger the name, the more potent the result.

Bono — along with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda— are Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year. Right up there with JFK, FDR and Martin Luther King Jr.

Since 1997, Bono’s work has centered around an organizations he named DATA, a group driven to address debt, aid, trade, Africa through democracy, accountability, transparency in Africa.

He’s not alone in his mission, but according to Time: Bono's great gift is to take what has made him famous--charm, clarity of voice, an ability to touch people in their secret heart--combine those traits with a keen grasp of the political game and obsessive attention to detail, and channel it all toward getting everyone, from world leaders to music lovers, to engage with something overwhelming in its complexity.

Sometimes celebrity is the most powerful tool for making a difference, but it's not the only way. Translated into the everyday, there’s a lesson in Bono’s style that doesn’t require mad guitar playing or a signature pair of sunglasses.

Know yourself. Find your strengths and push them into everything you do.
Know your cause, know the numbers, know what works and why, the metrics, and then how to recognize success.
Know your audience, what they believe in, what makes them listen, and what they respond to.
Then make them listen.

Thoughts?

empower.social.change.

empower (in-'pau(-&)r): 1. to give authority or legal power to 2. enable 3. to promote the self-actualization or influence of

social ('sO-sh&l): 1. of or relating to human society 2. the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society 3. tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others of one's kind 4. of, relating to, or based on rank or status in a particular society

change ('chAnj): 1. to make different in some particular way 2. to make radically different 3. to give a different position, course, or direction to 4. to replace with another 5. to make a shift from one to another 6. to undergo transformation, transition, or substitution

That's our starting point.
Thank you Merriam-Webster.

Stay tuned.