CAN THE CAMERON COUNTY DEMOCRATIC WOMEN TAKE A LESSON FROM THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT?

Viola Liuzzo

Over 50 years ago Michigan housewife Viola Liuzzao, a white woman, drove many, many miles to walk in the famous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

She never made it back to Michigan, being one of the few white women killed in the fight for equal rights for Black Americans.

Joan Baez, Bob Dylan

Many whites, including two of my heroes at the time, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, both 22, one white, one Hispanic, joined those protests, making a difference.

On August 1963, Bob, Joan and other folk singers of that era sang songs of freedom and protest in front of a quarter of a million folks gathered at the Washington Monument.

Baez at Washington Monument 1963

My point is that whites were not shut out of the movement simply because they were white.  Hell, two months after the March on Washington, a corrupt southern Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson, addressed a joint session of congress calling for the passage of the Civil Rights Act that became law in 1964.

That is why I expressed myself about Cameron County Democratic Women banning men from attending their meetings and declaring they would only support female candidates for office.

It's short-sighted, growth-stifling and counterproductive.  The history of the Civil Rights Movement proves inclusiveness works.

In a fit of self-protective caterwauling, interim CCDW chair Teresa Saldivar called everything I wrote about the meeting "a lie."

"That's what I get for being nice to his new bride.  She brought a snake attached to her hip."

Local Democratic operative Yoli Speece comforted Saldivar:  

"Remember one thing.  All of those bloggers are male and show that to us every time they blog.  It is never designed to present women positively unless you are a psycho bitch like Jessica Puente Bradshaw who want to repeal the 19th amendment."

After spending some time with these hard-nosed, claws-extended infighters, I'm not certain they even respect women, but I do know they have much to learn about inclusiveness.