Dear NOW of New York,

Feminists have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women’s recent denouncement of brilliant candidate Barack Obama as “the new guy” has hit hard against a generation and a nation eager to imagine the possibility of a better future.  I have forgiven NOW, and stuck up for them, when they took weak positions on issues, and allowed candidates they supported and funded to get away with weak positions on Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. I have buried my anger at your silence — even while you seek my donations so that you can be my voice — while politicians you call “friends” support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills.  My hope has always been for your powerful advocacy on the issues we care about.  BUT, hope is always waiting in the wings.

…And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with this abandonment! After spending years telling young women that our lives matter and that our own paths need to matter, now you are trying to tell me that the most feminist role model you can imagine is that a woman should get to the top by marrying right?  Come on!  Senator Clinton is a brilliant woman, and I am glad she is in the Senate.  But to claim that electing her president would be a “feminist” victory, is insulting to feminism.

As for me — I am going to support whomever I believe to honestly be the best candidate.  And for this feminist, that is Barack Obama.

http://www.barackobama.com/ind…

Best wishes,

Rebecca Kaplan

(In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I spent hundreds of unpaid hours working as a student organizer for NOW).

http://www.rebkaplan.org