On June 24, 2022 the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the case that made abortion legal in this country 50 years ago. While some of the radically conservative majority offered verbal assurances that their originalist logic would not apply to other basic human rights extended by the Court in recent decades, Justice Clarence Thomas identified, in his concurring opinion, other cases he viewed as next in line for “consideration”: landmark sexual privacy laws that previously criminalized contraception, sex between same-sex consenting adults (“sodomy”), and same sex marriage. He did not list interracial marriage, though others have said that too would fit into the conservative majority’s belief that no right to personal privacy exists in the Constitution. Their guiding legal theory of “originalism” means that despite the many changes in technology, economics, and human rights that have occurred in the 234 years since that small cadre of wealthy slaveholding landowners framed and hung their messy group painting up to dry, that the expansion of human rights by the courts over the past 50 years was a misguided experiment that must be demolished, and those rights removed, regardless of the outcome or cost in human lives. For the present, abortion rights are left to be decided state by state. In more than half of US states, abortion is now banned or under serious threat. In 8 states, services went dark overnight as “trigger laws” cued up their state legislatures took effect following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). Ironically, what’s good for the goose ain’t for the gander. Just 2 days earlier, SCOTUS turned its back on that sacred conservative cow of states rights (at least when it comes to blue states), overturning a New York law limiting the carrying of guns in public. The ruling, authored by Thomas, indicates that the protections of the 2nd Amendment are broad and trump state gun control laws. Six others states with similar laws, including those of Hawai’i, will now need to be substantially revised – and likely weakened – to withstand the same fate.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson says “The Dobbs decision marks the end of an era: the period in American history stretching from 1933 to 1981, the era in which the U.S. government worked to promote democracy. It tried to level the economic playing field between the rich and the poor by regulating business and working conditions. It provided a basic social safety net through programs like Social Security and Medicare and, later, through food and housing security programs. It promoted infrastructure like electricity and highways, and clean air and water, to try to maintain a basic standard of living for Americans. And it protected civil rights by using the Fourteenth Amendment, added to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, to stop states from denying their citizens the equal protection of the laws.” (1)
What we see now is really the culmination of a 40-year plot to undermine the role of government as a balancing force within the capitalist system, as a force for leveling the playing field by providing an economic safety net (Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Medicare & Medicaid, Food stamps (SNAP) and WIC, the ACA, etc.), and as a force for protecting and expanding basic human rights. A substantial majority of Americans support this role for government and these programs.
Those 40 years encompass most of my adult life. On the day the Roe v Wade decision was handed down, January 22, 1973, I was 19 years old, a college student in New York. Later that same year, I would move to Hawai’i, the first state in the nation to legalize abortion (in March 1970). As I try to understand how we got to this place in history and where we go from here, I feel the need to examine how the political and personal intertwined and the blind spots that may have created in my own decisions and worldview.
1981 is the year our historian says marks the end of the halcyon days of American democracy; the year the affable con man, Ronald Reagan became President. Reagan presided over the greatest transfer of wealth in US history – via tax cuts – from the pockets of the poor and middle class to wealthy corporations and individuals. His party’s strategy was to intentionally de-fund or underfund government services, so they worked ineffectively or not at all, and citizens stop supporting them. Reagan, “the Great Communicator” did his part to undermine faith in government in the public’s mind with lines like: “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.“, a joke that played upon American bootstrap mythology and the stereotype of inefficient and/or overbearing government. We knew Reagan was bad on so many levels (remember the Iran Contra scandal? (2), but at the time I sure did not realize how massive the theft of funds was, nor how this would pave the path for the next 40 years of redistribution of wealth.
In the ensuing years, I sort of blindly hoped that each time we elected a Democratic President or Dems took control of Congress, we were reversing this trend. But in fact the well-financed plot advanced at the local level in state capitols and counties around the country as hard times, economic disparities and racial divisions, exploited by Republican grievance politics, turned more traditionally working class and rural voters solidly red. Many traditional and corporate-allied Democrats, for their part, played defense on “social programs”, and in a misguided attempt to assuage their corporate donors and appeal to those elusive moderate/independent voters, cut or chronically underfunded New Deal and Great Society programs government programs (see “welfare reform” under Clinton; and public health, public schools, and anything “public”, under everyone); They settled for small incremental change that did not adequately address the rising economic disparities in the country. As Republicans gained control of legislatures they gerrymandered and changed voting rules to maintain control in spite of demographic shifts in their states and the will of a majority of their voters.
During these decades of democratic decline (post 1981) I was busy starting a career, getting married and raising children. I have always been interested in politics, but life seemed too busy to track the many developments in detail. I would have been surprised to learn the level of transformation that was in the works, or when I did see evidence of this kept hoping we could reverse it by electing Democrats, and escape it by living in blue states.
After the unexpected election of Trump as President (even he and his team were surprised and unprepared), I had an epiphany: the country had been changing for a long time and I had, at least in part, willfully ignored it. For many years, we heard how the globalization of commerce led to the growth of multinational corporations able to escape national allegiance, taxes, and regulation. In the US, this led to the shrinking of traditional US blue collar industry, the closure of many plants as once secure union jobs were sent overseas, and the “hollowing out” of large swaths of rural and “fly over” America. Those who could moved to where opportunities were. Others stayed and watched their fortunes and future crumble, fertile ground for the opioid epidemic, and angry demagogues to lay blame on easy targets. I can recall hearing these stories about people and parts of the country outside of my urban college educated experience, and thinking half-consciously, “Well, those parts of the country will just have to adapt” (my version of “Let them eat cake”), as I turned away. Not proud of that. And it was unwise to turn away, because sooner or later the fate of the “other” becomes intertwined with our own … as current events are demonstrating. The 2008 election of Barack Obama was a euphoric and historic victory and we took it as evidence of national maturation. Perhaps it was, but in part of America there was a visceral hatred towards Obama and all he represented. His Presidency sparked a backlash, releasing a slow burn of race and class resentment, a trend largely invisible and easy to ignore for me living in multicultural Hawai’i. During the Obama Presidency (Jan 2009 to Jan 2017), I was busy with a challenging new community health center job, the sleepless anxiety soaked nights of very peri-menopause, young adult children who went from wilding to settling down with careers and spouses, long awaited international travel adventures, and my mothers aging and long distance care.
After the election of Trump, perhaps it was the shock and fear of what lay ahead that removed blinders from my eyes. I saw that the change in the country that propelled him into office had been brewing for a very long time. I also realized it was time for me to return to some kind of active advocacy again. My Washington DC childhood and family life had been steeped in a stew of union organizing, social justice and political activism. My twenties in the 1970’s were filled with devoted feminist activism swirling around college and earning a paltry living. I got a Masters in Public Health in 1980, married in 1981, my father died suddenly in 1982, my children were born in 1984 and 1989. In the early 90’s, I entered therapy as I became aware that my carefully constructed family of origin narrative was full of holes.
My parents were good people, social justice heroes, and generously opened their home and hearts to many people. As children, we were taken to protests and walked picket lines for civil rights and labor union actions, including the 1963 March on Washington where we heard Martin Luther King deliver his now famous I Have a Dream speech. We met many amazing people from around the world who my parents (and we girls) hosted in our home.
They loved my sisters and I deeply, but they were also highly imperfect parents, unconscious carriers of substantial childhood trauma, scarred by the early loss of their own parents, poverty and immigration. Children come with antennae that pick up on the feelings of adults around them, and my sisters and I were often left to stew in a sea fears for which we had no names. Mom and Dad handled our fears and unhappiness in the ways they had learned to cope with their own: Ignore those feelings, put on rose colored glasses and change the narrative OR withdraw and escape into work, good works, and other less complicated relationships. This meant they were, at critical times, missing in action, unable to provide the adult guidance, safety, security and limits we needed.
So, as my young adult understanding of this grew, I was determined to not repeat this pattern, to not neglect my family’s security and emotional needs. And while I devoted plenty of time and energy to my public health career and the jobs at hand, I drew a red line between home life and work life. I decided my contributions to making the world a better place would be via my job. I would NOT “drag my children” to protests or walk picket lines. I think we may have gone to 2 or 3 marches over the 23 years one or both were minors. In later years, as I realized this was reaction against my own past, I came to regret this, recognizing what an eye opening and enriching experience political engagement can be.
Joel, Kelly, Peter and I in ‘Aiea circa 1991
So, back to 2016 and the election of Trump. As part of my epiphany, I saw that the country had been transformed into radically divergent worlds and worldviews and that it was now affecting us all, there was no escape. Our world had become much more dangerous. And I no longer had the excuse of children to raise up right. I determined to return to political advocacy but had to learn, or re-learn, how to do so.
I will always be grateful to Puni, a coworker at KKV, who listened to my pain, fear and disillusionment in the wake of Trump’s election, and said, in her gentle manner, something like “Now you know what it is like for us” (meaning Native Hawaiians, people of color, and minorities who have always lived with a tilted playing field). It was a “Welcome to my world, white women!” moment. When she heard I was searching for ways to advocate effectively, she loaned me her copy of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. I am also grateful to Amy, longtime friend and mentor, who has been doing effective political advocacy her whole adult life, in the Philippines and in Hawaii, and who once again took me under her wing and taught me, joining Save Medicaid Hawaii, a fledgling group I formed in early 2017 when the ACA looked sure to fall under the ax of Congress, sending any further action to the states. And grassroots advocacy groups across the nation did save the ACA!! (and Medicaid)…. for now.
So now what? New strategies and the same old ones, are called for. Yesterday, after a full day of grandson care, I drove the 2 + hours round trip to Kailua-Kona for an abortion protest. I felt I had to be there. In the next year, I will be working with local groups, coalitions and politicians to strengthen Hawaii’s abortion rights laws, and listen to how blue states can help women and advocacy groups in anti-women’s rights red America.
And I will be watching for “entitlement” changes like a hawk. When FDR signed the Social Security Act in 1935, retirement benefits began at age 65. In 1983, under Reagan, Congress passed a law that raised the full retirement age to 66 for most baby boomers and 67 for those born after 1960. I was 30 when they did this and, like most of baby boomers, was too busy making a living and having babies to pay attention, much less imagine that retiring a year later in life might ever matter to us. Republicans are readying an all-out assault on Social Security and other basic safety net programs. Polls report that 80% of millennials worry that Social Security will not be there when they retire. My Gen Z nephew believes that. I told him that he needs to resist that assumption because politicians will use that cynicism to undermine the system convincing young workers to go along with cuts because they will say (or imply) it is a tax on you young workers that benefits only the old. I told him I will fight for as long as I am around to be sure the system is not weakened and that Social Security will be there for him, all our children and grandchildren.
(2) Iran Contra: A secret deal in which the Reagan administration sold missiles to Iran for its war against Iraq in exchange for the freedom of some Americans held hostage by Iranian backed terrorists in Lebanon. In addition, the administration used some funds from this arms deal to support the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua, in order to get around an explicit ban by Congress. The deal was discovered, but Reagan survived, letting others such as Oliver North take the fall. The next President, George HW Bush, pardoned them all. https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/iran-contra-affairs.php
Moana Marie Crab 