Politics
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August 20, 2024
At a DNC gathering of women leaders, a reminder: “You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood Federation, speaks at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
(Peter Zay / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Chicago—A political partnership between Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the reproductive health powerhouse, and gun-safety leaders Moms Demand Action/Everytown might not make intuitive sense at first glance. But when I walked into a briefing here on Tuesday about their new joint initiative, realized there is enormous overlap between their goals and their constituencies, and saw a hell of a lot of people I knew from years of covering feminist politics, it clicked: Yes, these are both feminist issues.
Both groups are overwhelmingly powered by women. Sometimes, they’re even powered by the same women. Moms Demand’s (relatively) new executive director, the dynamic Angela Ferrell-Zebala, was the national director of strategic partnerships for the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
That sense of shared purpose was everywhere during the event, which was held near the site of the Democratic National Convention. The activists in the room clearly knew one another from years, even decades, of working on these interlocking issues.
“I think that’s a big part of it,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who shared the stage with Ferrell-Zeballa and Alexis McGill Johnson of PPAF, told me after the event. She knew many women personally who’d moved back and forth between the issues. Plus, she said, the constituencies overlap: “It’s moms who are tired of worrying if their kids are gonna get shot at school. It’s moms who are worried about [choice]. I am animated by worry about my kids.”
It was not lost on this jubilant crowd that Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee, happens to be the administration’s point person on both issues. The clear ambassador of reproductive justice, Harris also runs the White House task force on gun violence prevention. That made the alliance make perfect sense.
Read Joan Walsh’s profile of Kamala Harris
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Kamala Harris Steps Up
“Women are behind this movement,” Ferrell-Zebala told the crowd. Also, it’s about bodily autonomy. We don’t want to be forced to have a child; we don’t want to be kept from having a child; we don’t want to be killed or have our child killed. The gun laws and abortion laws in our country make all of those things possible if not likely, against the wishes of the majority of Americans
Another overlapping theme: danger: As McGill-Johnson pointed out, 22 states have banned access to abortion, affecting 43 percent of women, and more than half of all Black women. “They have to travel. Abortion bans are making everything more dangerous. Patients get sent to parking lots to wait until sepsis sets in so they can justify an abortion procedure.”
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Our lack of gun-safety laws, of course, makes everything more dangerous. “As a mother of four, I’m pretty pissed that [gun violence] is the leading cause of death for kids, teenagers and young adults in this country,” Ferrell-Zebala chimed in. “Not car accidents, not cancer, but guns…. You have to negotiate every day about whether you will be safe.”
She added: “Gun violence prevention, gun safety and reproductive rights: It’s a triple threat [politically]. It brings out young people, people of color, women. It also brings out suburban women, especially college-educated women…. More and more people are rejecting extremism, and candidates who are not in line with their values when it comes to choice or gun safety.”
It was impossible for this group not to acknowledge the way the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris has changed, well, everything about the 2024 race. Ferrell-Zebala asked McGill Johnson, rhetorically, what happened.
“There was a seismic change,” McGill Johnson said. “The joy we are seeing on the ground, the energy, it’s clearly powerful. Black women for Kamala broke Zoom a month ago.
“Part of that had a lot to do with the fact that the organizing had been happening. You don’t have to get ready if you stay ready. And that’s what this movement work is about. I think we’re in a radical realignment around freedom. Rebuilding and reimagining a movement perspective. What happens when you put freedom at the center of the work?” The crowd began chanting, “Freedom!”
Ferrell-Zebala explained how “reproductive justice” included both gun safety and reproductive health: “You have the right to choose to start a family or not. And if you choose to, you should be able to do that in safety.” That means healthcare support for mother and child, but also safety from gun violence.
Ferrell-Zebala said her group did some message testing in 2022. “We saw when our gun-sense candidates made a clear connection between these issues, they saw a boost of support from five to seven points.”
Whitmer was asked how she’s broken through on these issues in Michigan, which is essentially a purple state that Democrats win when they do the work. Her answer resonated with me.
“Empowering and engaging people to tell their stories,” she said decisively. “I have been doing roundtables for people to share their stories and I’ve found it’s the greatest most persuasive thing. I mean, it’s a horrible thing that for a woman to be taken seriously, she has to talk about the most horrible thing that ever happened to her. I shared on the [state] Senate floor that I was raped in college. It was not something I expected to do. It was not easy to do…. We ask women to bare their souls. We ask gun violence survivors to bear their souls and relive their trauma every day. Not everybody can.”
When she convened these roundtables in Michigan, “I didn’t ask people their political affiliation,” she said. “If they wanted to share their story about what happened when somebody shouldn’t have had a gun, I wanted them to know we cared about them. The same with women who expect to make the fundamental decisions about their bodies and their futures. So in doing roundtables about these issues, I have found it’s been the most persuasive way to get other people to buy in. Their neighbors, friends, and relatives.”
The women introduced a dramatic ad jointly produced by both groups, in which Trump bragged about ending the constitutional right to abortion—and doing “nothing” on guns.
“For 54 years they tried to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I’m proud to have done it,” the convicted felon droned on in the ad. “During my four years, nothing happened, and there was great pressure on me about guns, but we did nothing.”
Then, the voice-over: “But if you want a president who’ll protect abortion rights, and take real action to prevent gun violence, there’s only one choice: Kamala Harris.” It was a very good ad and a very great crowd-pleaser.
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Still, it’s not just Trump who brings these issues together. It’s the Trump-abetted shift in the Republican Party. The freedom agenda Harris is advancing, with help from feminists (and Beyoncé), feels like a powerful way to counter that shift. For so long, Republicans claimed the word “freedom” for themselves. But since an antidemocratic minority has used voter suppression, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and (thus) the Supreme Court to suppress majority rule, many recognize we are losing our freedom, and we can feel it. Especially women.
Americans overwhelmingly support gun-safety laws and abortion rights (and maternal healthcare) but we can’t get it because of the outsize control of the radical right at every level of government. Can that break through this election?
This coalition is determined that it will.
Can we count on you?
In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.
We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.
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The Editors of The Nation
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![“We have members who are on Section 8,” said one local union representative. “The majority of our members can’t afford to live here in Ithaca, close to their job.” A crowd of Cornell workers sing and chant as they march around the university’s campus on Friday, August 16, days before the union called a strike. Ithaca, NY—“When I woke up this morning, I thought I was the mayor of a union town,” said Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo at a rally on Friday, August 16. “And do we settle in a union town?” The question was received with cheers during a rally on Cornell’s campus in the upstate New York town, where union leaders, workers, residents, students, and faculty built energy, by the hundreds, for a strike that was just days away. In a vote concluding the day before the rally, UAW’s members in Cornell’s service and maintenance unit authorized a strike with an overwhelming majority of 94% in favor of a strike. By Sunday night at 10 pm, just before student move-in day, the union called a strike. Many members of of the union, which represents over 1,200 workers, including dining hall and custodial staff, are now on strike until they can reach an agreement with Cornell. In a public statement regarding the strike, university officials Christine Lovely, vice president and chief human resources officer, and interim provost John Siliciano said, “The University remains committed to bargaining in good faith. We expect that some service and maintenance workers will strike and not report for work, as is their legal right. We also expect that other members of the UAW will continue to work during the strike, as is also their right.” Since April, the university and the union had been at the bargaining table, attempting to work out the details of a new contract. The previous contract had expired on July 1, and in subsequent weeks, the union began holding rallies, drawing attention to what the union says is Cornell’s lack of seriousness during bargaining sessions. “The university is still not taking us seriously,” said UAW’s Daniel Vicente at a rally on August 2. Vicente is the director of UAW Region 9, which includes New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. “Frankly, the counterproposals that they are putting out to us are insulting,” said Vicente. “They believe that this is just going to be a regular round of negotiations.” The difference between university and union proposals dealt with safety concerns, training pay, parking costs, and a host of issues. But a significant disagreement came down to the fact that pay increases have not kept up with rising costs for many years. “We have members who are on Section 8. We have members who can’t pay for ADA updates,” said Lonnie Everett, international servicing representative with UAW Region 9. Everett explained that while the percentage increase the union was demanding may seem large, it would simply catch worker pay up to the current cost of living. “The majority of our members can’t afford to live here in Ithaca, close to their job.” UAW bargained its previous contract with Cornell without getting anywhere near a strike, but things have changed in the union since the democratic election of the new president, Shawn Fain, in March 2023. Union representatives made it clear that increased accountability to membership and increased transparency during bargaining were top priorities. “There used to be an extremely heavy emphasis on top-down mentality in the union,” explained Vicente, when asked about how the leadership change shifted UAW’s internal decision-making, which appears to be resulting in more strikes on a national level. “We have been given a completely different mandate from Shawn Fain. It is from the bottom up. If the locals…are making demands, and they are saying, ‘No, our membership demands this, we’re putting our foot down,’ our job is just to support them in that initiative.” “We’re taking the same approach that we took with the Stand Up Strike with the Big Three auto plants,” said Wence Valentin III, political director for UAW Region 9, referring to the huge gains the union secured for auto workers last fall. “We’re trying to take that to every location that we have in the UAW. So Cornell is not unique.” Mayor Cantelmo was not the only elected official to voice support for a strong union contract. New York State Assemblywoman Anna Kelles was also present at the August 16 rally, and said in an interview, “There are several, I think, fundamental issues that they’re talking about. One of them is the conversation about a cost of living adjustment.” Kelles was speaking about one of the main sticking points between the union and the university. In addition to general wage raises, UAW Local 2300 has been pushing to secure a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) clause in its contract with Cornell, just as it won with the Big Three auto plants. As reported by Bailey Schulz in USA Today, in the 1970s, COLA clauses were more common in contracts because the country was experiencing years of high inflation, similar to what is happening in today’s economy. When you’re at the bottom wage [for] regular workers at Cornell, a cost-of-living adjustment means a lot,” said UAW Local 2300 president Christine Johnson, When asked about if the university seemed willing to budge on that issue, Johnson said no, adding that “they are saying that they don’t know how they would budget for it, and all kinds of excuses.” However, by the final night of bargaining before the strike, the university did offer a COLA clause, but without other counteroffers that would compel the union not to strike. The effects of inflation and the need for a COLA clause came up often, when speaking with UAW Local 2300 members. “Over the years, you know, it seems as if our paycheck does not go as far,” said Louise Braron, a Cornell custodial worker at a previous rally. “We can tell just going grocery shopping that we don’t buy the foods we once used to buy because we can’t afford them any longer.” Although it is a relatively small city, Ithaca often finds itself as a forerunner in nationwide labor fights. In 2018, workers at Ithaca’s Gimme! Coffee unionized, forming the first barista’s union in the US, years before hundreds of Starbucks stores unionized. Yet, a few years later, Ithaca would become ground zero for union-busting activities by Starbucks. By the spring of 2023, after workers in all Ithaca Starbucks locations voted to unionize, the corporation shut down every one of its stores in the city, violating federal labor law in at least one case. In turn, Cornell students organized to hold the corporation accountable, and successfully pressured the university not to renew its contract with Starbucks. This was the beginning of the Starbucks Off Our Campus movement, which spread to a couple dozen campuses, a direct response to the company’s anti-labor practices. Ithaca’s oversize pace of labor fights for its small size could be partially attributed to the fact that Cornell is home to the renowned Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) school, which creates an international draw for students who want to learn about labor law. In recent years, students have demonstrated a desire to take their organizing knowledge from the classroom to the streets. So when Ithaca’s mayor contended that Ithaca was a union town that refused to settle in labor fights, he had a strong basis for doing so.This time around, when it was Cornell workers who entered into a hardball labor negotiation, students and locals—including elected officials—who had grown practiced in these fights readily joined in support. The presence of Cornell’s ILR school also makes it all the more notable that as an institution, Cornell has been attempting to strong-arm organized labor, sometimes running afoul of unions, as the strike at the start of this semester demonstrates. In November of last year, graduate students at Cornell voted to unionize with a large majority. Yet contract bargaining between the Cornell Grad Student Union (CGSU) which began in March of 2023, has hit similar roadblocks. In an e-mailed response, the CGSU bargaining committee characterized talks with Cornell with this statement: “Our sessions have been productive and we have reached several [tentative agreements] on important issues, but a major hurdle stems from Cornell’s desire to maintain unilateral power by inserting University policies and academic loopholes into our contract.” CGSU was the second recent attempt to organize graduate students; in 2017, Cornell graduate students unsuccessfully attempted to unionize. However, the following year, an arbitrator found that Cornell violated federal labor law with an e-mail sent the day before the graduate student unionization vote that implied that pro-union graduate workers would be voting against their self-interest, since a union could result in a reduction of university jobs for them, if it increased costs for the university. The CGSU bargaining committee voiced support for the UAW effort. “We are in full solidarity with our fellow workers holding Cornell accountable. This institution has its world class status because of its workers, and Cornell has no excuse for not giving their workers a fair contract.” “For years, we’ve been deprived of what’s a just compensation for our contribution in this community, in this university,” said Mitja Bontempo, who has worked at the Cornell Botanic Gardens for over a decade. “This institution has, at its core, this humanistic mission and vision. And it’s failing.” But when asked at the rally, a couple days before the strike how he felt about community support, Bontempo’s eyes lit up. “It’s emotional,” he said. “To see a couple of blocks on campus just full red, with people coming together, marching down the street to demonstrate unity and solidarity and demanding better living conditions, better wages… it’s just incredible.” The 2023–24 academic year ended with a pro-Palestinian encampment and divestment demand of the university from its students, and this new year will kick off with a very visible, and likely messy labor fight. So as they begin their fall semester at Cornell, students are headed onto a campus where the ivory tower keeps pushing up against the grass roots. As Everett and other union reps stated, and as the students will see, there are multiple ways to address an issue: “We can fix this at the table, or we can fix it in the streets.”](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/biden-speech-dnc-getty.jpg)
A sentimental send-off to a brave, accomplished president who knew when to step aside.
Joan Walsh
