Shirley Sherrod for President

Exactly one year ago, I published a book entitled, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton. My publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, has decided to re-print in paperback and they’d like me to change the title to “…from Kennedy to Obama” and add a chapter about the President.

I’ve been blogging since April 2009 and haven’t written much about President Obama, a deliberate choice, because I am reflective in nature.

By chance, my publisher asked me to write about the Obama administration’s treatment of Black women the week of the Shirley Sherrod incident.

I don’t know how much I can add to this conversation now that New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert wrote a brilliant piece entitled, “Shirley Sherrod Thrown to the Wolves.” His opening paragraph is insightful,“The Shirley Sherrod story tells us so much about ourselves, and none of it is pretty. The most obvious and shameful fact is that the Obama administration, which runs from race issues the way thoroughbreds bolt from the starting gate, did not offer this woman anything resembling fair or respectful treatment before firing and publicly humiliating her.”

When I read Herbert’s comments I thought, “How is this any different from either Lani Guinier or Dr. Joycelyn Elders?”

Many Black women were hopeful about possibilities for their own expanded involvement in the political arena in January 1993 with the inauguration of President Clinton, his choice of Maya Angelou as inaugural poet, and his attempt to put Blacks in his Presidential cabinet. Shortly after his inauguration, Clinton nominated his friend and former classmate Lani Guinier to the prestigious and crucial post of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Guinier’s nomination sparked an immediate firestorm of criticism from the right, which labeled Professor Guinier “Quota Queen”, and assailed her for ideas expressed in her publications, most of which her opponents had not read, or which they had taken out of context and misunderstood. In the face of opposition — what one friend of Guinier’s called a “low-tech lynching” — Clinton backed down, not only withdrawing her nomination, but refusing to afford Guinier the opportunity to speak out in her own defense (and, of course, his). The result was a civil rights setback of monumental proportions.

Unfortunately, the Guinier embarrassment was followed by the scandal that engulfed Dr. Joycelyn Elders, nominated by Clinton in July of the same year, to be Surgeon General.

On December 9, 1994, Clinton asked her to resign after Elders answered a physician’s question at a professional meeting. She said teaching facts about masturbation might well be included in educating school children about their sexuality. Clinton’s response was, “Well, I’m sorry but we can’t just have any more of this and I want your resignation by 2:30 P.M.” An ousted official normally is permitted to maintain the illusion she has voluntarily stepped aside, and there is a polite exchange of letters. The White House took pains to make clear Clinton demanded Elders leave.

Not much has changed with the Obama Administration. Sixteen years later, Maureen Dowd noted, “The West Wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod before Glenn Beck could pounce not only didn’t bother to Google, they weren’t familiar enough with civil rights history to recognize the name Sherrod. And they didn’t return the calls and e-mail of prominent Blacks who tried to alert them that something was wrong. Charles Sherrod, Shirley’s husband, was a Freedom Rider who, along with the civil rights hero John Lewis, was a key member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the ‘60s.”

Dowd’s column is provocative, but I disagree with several points. She argues, “We may not have a nation of cowards on race, as Attorney General Eric Holder contended, but we may have a West Wing of cowards on race.” I think we have both.

Dowd also argues “…Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience, ones who understand “the slave thing,” as a top Black Democrat dryly puts it.” She posits that Bill Clinton never needed help fathoming Southern Black culture. The only aspect ringing true is Blacks in the South still have a “place,” and President Clinton tried to keep them there.



When it comes to race relations, what’s the difference between the first white President to be thought of as Black, and the first President who actually is? Not much. As I think about both administrations, I ask myself if our expectations were too high for the man from Hope and the man who offered us change we could believe in.

Dowd ends her column stating, “The President shouldn’t give Sherrod her old job back. He should give her a new job: Director of Black Outreach.”

Actually, if we want better race relations, Shirley Sherrod should be the President.

Sister Law Student Part II: Elena Kagan

(The author wishes to thank Kathleen Wells and Lori Stee)

No one is more delighted than I am that esteemed presidential historian, Annette Gordon-Reed will join the faculty at Harvard Law School. Despite the fact that she was recruited by then Dean Elena Kagan, I respectfully disagree with Charles Ogletree that Elena Kagan is a good choice for the Supreme Court.

Ogletree argues that from 2003 until the end of Kagan’s deanship in 2009, the number of African American students matriculating rose to an all time high. I am sure this is accurate, but how relevant is it?

Do these numbers speak to the quality and caliber of student life? Are Harvard graduates fully engaged and can they provide an effective and vigorous understanding with matters pertaining to race? Or, are they merely defenders and justifiers of the status quo?

I suggest that Professor Ogletree look at the April 30, 2010 blog post written by Diane Lucas. Ms. Lucas was a guest blogger for FEMINISTE and authored a piece entitled, “The Racist Breeding Grounds of Harvard Law School." Lucas wrote this article to discuss the racist behavior of Stephanie Grace, a graduating student, and to discuss her own experience as a Black student at HLS. Lucas critiqued Kagan’s leadership before she knew that Kagan was the U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

Lucas writes:

“When I was at HLS in 2006, there was a student-run but HLS-endorsed parody play featuring students and professors, in which individual students, mostly women of color, were roasted using highly offensive racial, gender and classist stereotypes–basically a modern day minstrel show. I was disgusted. When we protested and communicated how upset many of the black and Latino students were, we were criticized as being too sensitive, for not being able to take a joke and for trying to suppress free speech.”

She goes on to describe how then Dean Elena Kagan refused to take a stand, stating that she could not take responsibility for the parody — even though she actually had an on-stage role in its performance. Professor Charles Ogletree, Jr. and Professor Martha Minow (now Dean Minow) took the lead in organizing a well-attended town hall. The students specifically asked Dean Kagan to start diversity sessions to keep the conversation going, and nothing happened. Dean Kagan’s failure to take a stance is deeply concerning, and personally, I think Ms. Lucas has a point.

I consider myself to be one of the most privileged law students in America. In this economic downturn, not only will I return to a tenured professorship when I graduate, I will rejoin a faculty that was given a 2.5 % salary increase. My colleagues are looking forward to my return, yet supported my paid leave. Every day I drive to school in a decent car, return to a lovely home, and I am greeted by a family who supports me.

The curriculum has been challenging, but given my career security, the stakes have been low. Even with these advantages, law school is among the most hostile experiences of my adult life. The faculty of my law school has exactly one member from my racial group. At age 40, I can’t believe this actually matters, but here’s an anecdote to explain why it does.

In the fall I took a course in which the white male professor explained to the class that in 1999, during a budget discussion among three Washington, D.C., municipal officials, one of them, David Howard, said that he would have to be “niggardly with the fund because it’s not going to be a lot of money.” His Black colleague “stormed out” and got the new Black mayor, Anthony Williams to force Howard’s resignation. My professor argued that Howard’s reinstatement was just, because what had occurred was not a racist act.

How does this relate to the nomination of Elena Kagan? What happened in my classroom was to be expected. We are located in Minnesota, one of the most homogenous states in the country, and that makes it difficult to recruit students who have enough lived experience or academic training in Ethnic studies to challenge the faculty. We are also not an institution with a $1.7 Billion endowment that draws thousands of applications for one tenure track position.

And yet the hiring of professors of color is better at my school than Harvard’s. Yes, I did just say better. Therefore, it became apparent to me why Stephanie Grace could earn an illustrious JD from Harvard Law School, and yet send out a mass email seriously entertaining "the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent."

Clearly, Grace has not been exposed to the racial analysis and legal prowess exhibited by professors of color. Too bad she’s going to miss the opportunity to discuss her ideas with Annette Gordon-Reed.

Which points back to why Kagen is the wrong choice for the Supreme Court. Until last week, with all the resources at her disposal, of her 29 hires as the dean of Harvard Law School she could not find one Black professor worthy of an appointment.

For this fact alone, she should not be approved for the U.S. Supreme Court. We can’t reward cultural incompetence. Thurgood Marshall knew better, and Kagen should have done better. Failure to find a more culturally competent Justice of any background is just wrong.

Actually, it’s down right niggardly.

Race and the law in the age of Stevens & Sotomayer

For the members of William Mitchell’s Law Raza Journal Editorial Board, the appointment of Puerto Rican judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and ascension to the Supreme Court, along with the subsequent news that Justice Stevens is retiring and will be replaced forthwith, are key indicators that affirm the need for this journal.

The significance and the symbolism of the Sotomayor appointment are profound; the first African American president conferring the mantle of Supreme Court Justice on the first Latina to hold such a position represented a formal and critical acknowledgment that public life in the United States is no longer merely black and white. Yet we also recognize and emphasize emphatically that Justice Sotomayor’s appointment to this nation’s highest bench is not merely a token action, a nod to the increasing diversity of this nation.

Indeed, even the most casual observer of Justice Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings can confirm the fact that the very nomination of Sotomayor raised urgent questions about Latinos’ participation in public life, in decision-making, in shaping public policy. And her confirmation did not resolve these questions; it merely admitted her to a bench of influencers to engage these questions on an ongoing basis through the formal discourse of the Supreme Court.

Law Raza fills a gap in the existing canon of scholarly legal journals is because to date, few journals have incorporated the voices of Latino scholars and other academics of color. Furthermore, they have largely failed to reach out actively to quite literally cross borders. Journals published in the United States are generally preoccupied only with what is happening here, overlooking the ways in which legal issues in neighboring countries intersect with and influence our own and vice versa. To that end, you can expect to see Law Raza’s editorial board inviting participation from legal scholars both here in the United States and in the “other” America.

Law Raza is a welcome and critical addition to the range of legal journals currently published is because the United States, both it’s government and it’s citizens, are growing ever-more aware that we, the “neighbors to the North,” know disturbingly little about our neighbors to the South.

Law Raza, then, is an academic, intellectual taking up of arms. The articles you can expect to see in the pages of this virtual journal are inarguably scholarly, but they are also unapologetic in their insistence that the supposed objectivity with which legal issues tend to be treated in journals is just that: supposed, more aspirational fantasy than real-life possibility.

The editorial board demands that the critical issues that affect our communities be engaged critically. What this means, with respect to the content of Law Raza, is that a representative sample of articles we publish will be conveyed by a first-person narrator who is the author, working through legal issues and dilemmas in which first-hand experience and knowledge produce both nagging questions and the need to find answers by engaging an issue critically in a public forum where the audience—namely, you, the readers—can shape the narrative and its resolution.

The contributors to Law Raza are diverse, but they share the desire to take their own experiences, both personal and professional, and to hold them up to the light, turning them over and over, examining them to determine what, exactly, they are seeing, and how their observations can be useful and relevant to others. You, readers, are a vital part of the meaning-making process, and we invite you to engage critically in dialogue with us.

The Law Raza editorial board invites you, your identity and your voice to participate alongside ours. We look forward to engaging in discussion from across the legal spectrum—and from across geographical borders and other boundaries of identity, to contribute scholarly articles that advance our collective understanding of the historical and contemporary legal concerns that affect us all. Legal issues of special interest to Latinos are our focus, but the journal is not dedicated exclusively to these experiences. The editorial board recognizes that most issues of importance to any society are systemic and are far-reaching; the purview of the journal reflects such dynamics.

Incarcerated Motherhood: “Precious” in real life

(The information in this blog has been modified to protect my client and to comply with the Minnesota Rules of Professional Responsibility.)

When I launched my blog a year ago today I wrote, “My goal is to provide legal assistance to disenfranchised women and their families. This will benefit women who are leaving prison, and their children; it will also benefit me, the law student, who is learning how to advocate for them. Women who have been incarcerated need advocates and I know what it’s like to advocate for someone who doesn’t have a voice. My experience as a parent, an academic, and as a law student will help me to bring these women’s stories to a wider audience. The stories of these mothers have the potential to inspire law schools across the nation to open clinics similar to the one that I will participate in. Just as you have listened to my story, I can listen to their stories, and let you hear their voices. God gave Noah the Rainbow sign, my name is Duch, I’m ready this time.”

I thought I was ready, but I don’t know if anyone is ready for the work I’ve done this year. Films like “Precious” present the stories of the poor and there is almost always transformation, realization, redemption, accompanied by moving theme music. Lives are changed in the span of two hours, usually through the intervention of a teacher, a social worker, one person who believes they can make a difference. I wanted to be that person. But reality is a much grimmer affair. There’s no easy solution for the crushing blows that come with poverty – drug abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, ignorance and mental illness. Not even Oprah, with all her billions, can wave a magic wand and fix it.

Here are just a few of the daunting statistics about women in prison:

• 57% have a history of physical or sexual abuse.
• 63% are non-white or minorities
• 64% have not finished high school
• 74% used drugs regularly before their incarceration
• Most women in prison are incarcerated for non-violent crimes. Women frequently engage in criminal activities with their romantic partners.

In the fall I met “Star,” a 44-year-old Black woman incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee who could check all of the above. Her older sister’s husband molested “Star” when she was 13. She had a baby when she was 19, another child at 21, married that child’s father, and then had her third child at 28. Her husband used to beat her and she had a restraining order against him. He eventually crossed state lines and committed several bank robberies, and is incarcerated in a penitentiary in Virginia. She shared that this was a huge relief, because he was violent and HIV positive. Her incarceration was for aiding and abetting her husband.

She arrived at Shakopee in December 2006. At the time, her youngest child was 12. She sent her daughter to live with the same brother-in law that molested her. Her daughter was molested and eventually removed from their home. He was not prosecuted. Star was set to be released four days before Christmas, and at that point she’d regain custody of her 9th grade daughter who hadn’t seen her in three years. There would be much work to do, to break the cycle of violence and poverty.

But that’s where I came in. As a certified student attorney from William Mitchell College of Law, Star asked me to help her obtain a “dissolution of marriage” from her husband, who would not be eligible for parole until 2033. That was my legal assignment. When she was released, I was also responsible for helping her re-unite with her daughter, obtain housing, and employment. She had a history of drug abuse and claimed to have been clean for four years. But that didn’t add up, because she also admitted that she missed her mother’s 2006 funeral because she was strung out. I was to help Star with rehab as well.

She was the poor, drug addict and sexual abuse survivor. I was the privileged professor/law student who was there to make the difference, to, help her turn her life around. There was no theme music. There was no happy ending.

I worked on Star’s divorce from September to December. I went to visit her a week before her release and assured her that I do everything in my power to help her “re-enter” society. When I called after the holiday to tell her that the divorce papers were drafted, I discovered that she and her daughter had left the state to return to her sister’s home, to live with her and the brother in law that had molested Star, and Star’s daughter.

In real life, it isn’t precious.

Stepping Into Women’s History

If anyone asks me, “When did you feel like you had made it?” I know what I’ll say. March 4, 2010. A rainy, snowy, and otherwise dreary day in New York. But the day that I gave my first book reading.

For the past twenty years I’ve been a student of Women’s History, I’ve followed in the footsteps of the magnificent women who pioneered the field, women like Shirley Chisholm, Alice Walker, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Flo Kennedy, and Mary Frances Berry, just to name a few.

And on March 4, I found myself in the surreal position of being the distinguished speaker for The Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship at Barnard College. I was presenting my book, my research, and for the first time I was the respected author standing at the podium to a rapt audience.

It’s a kick, let me tell you.

As I rode in the taxicab down Broadway, I was choked up. “I’ve been invited,” I thought, “they asked me.” When the cab pulled up to Barnard there were students waiting for me, everywhere I looked there were signs posted, I was escorted to a room where they were having what a “basic background” gal like me would call a “Brie/San Pelligrino” reception. No spam for Duch.

What a difference a few years makes. In July of 2006, I was home schooling Austin, 7 months pregnant with my third child, and a short month later my Dad would be in coma. A book was the last thing on my mind.

Fast forward to 2010, and suddenly I’m shaking hands with the Provost of Barnard and the Head of the Women’s Research Center. My talk was received extremely well—I had more questions than ever, and I was asked to write a piece for their publication.

And it didn’t end there. After the event they took me to dinner at Le Monde restaurant and presented me with a gift and an honorarium. When the dinner was over, a girlfriend that I hadn’t seen since graduating college in 1991 came by to congratulate me for becoming a “famous author.”

None of it really seemed to be happening. When the night was over and my cab took me to the Lucerne Hotel on the Upper West side, I thought of all the “Days Inns” that I stayed at when I conducted my dissertation interviews.

I returned to the Twin Cities on March 5, and we had a parent/teacher conference for Austin on March 8th. He is finally ready for a ProxTalker. In just a few days I felt like home schooling was worth it, twelve years of writing my book was worth it, and with only 17 credits left; law school will be worth it.

I think, as women, it’s important to take a break from our “every day” lives, to celebrate together the progress we’ve all made, and to acknowledge the challenges still ahead. Come join me on March 17th for my second reading, hosted by the The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law, and if you RSVP to nicole@wfmn.org, they’ll even provide lunch. Just our way of saying thanks to the community for making all this happen.

See you Wednesday.

Details:
Noon - 1:00 p.m
YWCA Midtown
2121 E. Lake St., Minneapolis

Black History Month and Religion: Why Lord?

On February 24th Eddie Glaude, Jr., Ph.D. posted an article on The Huffington Post, “The Black Church is Dead.” Glaude, a Christian and Religious Studies Professor at Princeton, reminds us that,

Black America stands at the precipice. African American unemployment is at its highest in 25 years. Thirty-five percent of our children live in poor families. Inadequate healthcare, rampant incarceration, home foreclosures, and a general sense of helplessness overwhelm many of our fellows.

Claude laments the absence of press conferences and impassioned efforts around black children living in poverty, and organizing for jobs and healthcare reform, in lieu of anti-abortion and anti same sex-marriage protests.

For those of you who are not familiar with Humanism, they would prioritize prison reform, and value that as a "right to life." So I’d like to ask Black Christians, “Can you afford to dismiss the Humanists, the way some dismissed Malcolm X because he wasn’t a Christian?”

Two days after Glaude’s blog posting, representatives of the Obama administration met with about 60 people with the Secular Coalition for America although the President did not attend.

Leaders of the Coalition's 10 member groups billed their visit as an important meeting between a presidential administration and the nontheist community. They discussed three policy areas: child medical neglect, military proselytizing and faith-based initiatives.

Says coalition executive director Sean Faircloth:

Despite what we hear from Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, we're in a stage in history where millions upon millions of Americans share a secular perspective on American public policy. We think the real 'silent majority,' if you will, is the Americans who say, 'Enough of this religious and even theocratic nature to American policy.

The coalition doesn't embrace all of the Obama administration's stances, but members feel that they have more of a kindred spirit in this president than in his predecessor. Obama’s late mother was spiritual but agnostic. His inaugural address was the first by a U.S. president to include explicit recognition of nonbelievers as part of the fabric of the nation.

Bishop Council Nedd, Chairman of the Christian advocacy group In God We Trust, slammed the administration, saying,

It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation.

I think I’ll save my commentary on the appropriation of Civil Rights language by the historically racist conservative Right for another time.

Let’s just say I wasn’t surprised that the same evening the meeting occurred, Sean Hannity went even further, accusing the Obama administration of a pattern of hostility towards religion. On his Friday evening show, his guest, the former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, said that evangelicals were disappointed because many had supported Obama.



Evidently Obama is supposed to chose: Humanism or Hannity?

It’s a flawed choice, one I’ve been struggling with for ten years. When I was going through the tenure process at Macalester College, I learned that my chair was a Humanist. In 2000, I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. I spent a lot of time in his office and he would point out that, since the time of slavery, American Blacks have been critiquing the questionable, traditional Christian narrative that suffering is redemptive and should therefore be accepted and rather than resisted.

The Humanist alternative in African American spiritual life traces its roots at least as far back as the criticism of reactionary tendencies within religion by thinkers Frederick Douglas and W.E.B. Du Bois, the agnosticism of former Pentecostal child preacher James Baldwin, the socialist-influenced irreligious stances of Langston Hughes and Huey P. Newton, the full-fledged modern Humanism of Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker, recipient of the prestigious American Humanist of the Year award in 1997.

And if there was anyone who decried the redemptive value of suffering by Black people, it was Malcolm. Some of it though, may have been hard for African American Christians to hear:

Brothers and sisters, the white man has brainwashed us black people to fasten our gaze upon a blond haired, blue-eyed Jesus! We're worshiping a Jesus that doesn't even look like us! …..The white man has taught us to shout and sing and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter, when we're dead, while this white man his milk and honey in the streets paved with golden dollars here on this earth!

Even Malcolm eventually saw the limitations that strict adherence to dogma can create, and took a more humanistic view. Towards the end of his life, he wrote a friend,

Here I am, back in Mecca. I am still traveling, trying to broaden my mind, for I've seen too much of the damage narrow-mindedness can make of things, and when I return home to America, I will devote what energies I have to repairing the damage.

My chair’s first book was called, “Why Lord?: Suffering and Evil in Black Theology.”

In the preface he states, “I could not accept the idea that the suffering of those I saw on a daily basis had any value at all. …I believe that human liberation is more important than the maintenance of any religious symbol, sign, cannon, or icon. It must be accomplished—both psychologically and physically –despite the damage done to cherished religious principles and traditions. Holding this belief, I will stand or fall.” (p. 11)

The events of the last week have made me wonder, will Black Christians unite with non-theists because human liberation is more important than divisiveness? Can we learn to put our theological differences aside for the good of humanity? Or will we turn our backs to the real suffering at hand, and ask, “Why Lord?”

In the Nov./Dec. issue of Utne Magazine, Alexes Pauline Gumbs was recognized as a “media activist” in an article entitled “50 People Who Are Changing Your World.” I initially discovered her work in a November 2009 op-ed piece, “The Revolution Will Be Blogged” for Wiretap Magazine, a re-envisioning of Gil Scott Heron’s famous 1970’s poem/song The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

I have to admit, forty definitely feels old when people are recognized for things that you haven’t even heard of (media activism?), but then I’m sure Gil Scott Heron can relate. Who could even have imagined the immediate and pervasive power of the internet back in the 70’s when the only mass medium was television, and the only roles for Black people were either based on or touched by minstrel stereotypes (remember Jimmy Walker’s Kid-a-Dy-no-mite?).

In her Wiretap piece, Gumbs writes:

“If capitalism slept, it would have nightmares about us. … But capitalism doesn't sleep. So neither do we. We stay up all night, or wake up early and refresh the screen. We live on each others' words and prove the lie of the hourly news story about our worthlessness. We speak for far-flung intimate audiences, and when we wind up wounded, we don't stop because slowly we learn that these words are salve. We stay up, stay connected, send love letters every way we know how. These words are salve. Halfway to salvation.”

What I’ve learned from Gumbs is that blogging is the 21st century version of “consciousness raising groups.” Consciousness raising groups were pioneered by Women’s Liberation groups in New York City, and quickly spread throughout the United States. In November 1967, groups began meeting in apartments. Meetings often involved women going around the room and “rapping" about issues in their own lives. Forty-two years later, Gumbs has gotten on the internet highway to embrace Queer Black women and their allies.

Why is this important? Heteronormativity dominates America in general and Black communities in particular, so much so, that one of the only ways CNN talks about Black women is in relationship to marriage, the box office thinks we are Precious, but not precious, and Disney has cast us more as frog than princess. In the midst of distortion and hysteria, Gumbs has created the School of Our Lorde, a series of courses that allow participants to deeply engage and build on the work of Audre Lorde.

Gumbs focuses on the poetics, teaching practices, political implications and publishing interventions of Audre Lorde’s work. For those who can attend sessions in Durham, NC, engaging, interactive poetic childcare is provided at every session. For those out of state, Gumbs is providing framework for a virtual classroom.

Alexis can be found at MobileHomeComing, Broken Beautiful Press, and the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind. She will be defending her dissertation, "We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves": The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996” next month at Duke University.

I can’t think of anything more important for Black women in 2010, than to focus on Lorde’s mantra: “We can learn to mother ourselves.” This, in and of itself, is a revolutionary idea, and we can create the supportive communities needed to actualize this vision online. We are not separated anymore, by class, by state, by distance or ideology. If you’re a Queer woman, you can create a space that embraces women loving women. If you’re a straight woman, maybe you need an emotional support network so that you don’t lament your single status, or obsess about your man if you do have a partner. The true power of the internet is that it gives us the chance to do something different – focus on ourselves for a change. That indeed, would be visionary.