Tag: HuffPost

“There is certainly a through line from Michael Boxley to Sam Hoyt to Jeff Klein when it comes to tolerating and excusing sexual harassment and assault perpetrators,” Vladimer told City & State. “You have lobbying firms who care so little about this that they're hiring someone who has admitted to (sexual assault) and then, in the case of Klein, somebody still under investigation,” Crothers told City & State. No,” Simotas told City & State. Hearings, according to advocates, are another opportunity to bring some change to Albany’s culture. While the Democratic leadership in the state Senate may be supportive of the SHWG’s legislative agenda, most state legislators are unwilling to get behind its call for firms not to hire anyone accused of sexual harassment. But SHWG activists argue this kind of social sanction is where change really starts.“If a lobbying firm were to stand up and say, ‘We're not going to hire these (alleged) harassers, these alleged abusers,’ if an elected official would stand up and say ‘You know what, I'm not going to allow my staff to meet with these firms that hire these people,’ that's how the culture changes,” Vladimer said. “Do those who report sexual harassment or assault get job offers from lobbying firms?” Crothers asked. “It's not about if Jeff Klein should ever work again. “I'm not saying Klein should never get to work again,” she told City & State, “but, in the words, of almost every elected official when I first told my story – shouldn't we wait until the investigation is resolved? Victims have to figure out a new career path, they lose friends, and are retraumatized every time another story of harassment abuse or assault is made public – because men like Klein are just allowed to work again.” While Ramos said that her position as a state legislator meant that she had to keep her door open “to all stakeholders,” including Mercury clients, she did flatly say, “I will not meet with Jeff Klein.” While not addressing the question of boycotting Mercury clients, Assemblyman Dan Quar,t who wrote an op-ed with Vladimer calling for sexual harassment hearings, told City & State that “hiring Klein in the middle of an ongoing JCOPE investigation invalidates the stories of survivors and enables the pervasive culture of sexual harassment in Albany.

In a recent essay for HuffPost, author and self-described feminist iconoclast Lisa L. Kirchner narrates how she met her soon-to-be husband. Coming off a decade spent mostly single, Kirchner recounts how the day after Trump was elected she went online to change her dating profile. Right at the top, she added a note: “If you voted for Donald Trump, keep scrolling.” She admits that, living in deep-red St. Petersburg, Florida, she rarely used the account. But she didn’t make the change “to winnow potential partners so much as to announce how sickened [she] was by the president-elect.” Seeing as the headline for this essay is “I’m a Liberal Feminist and Next Month I’m Marrying a Trump Voter,” it’s pretty clear that her note had the opposite effect. Unfortunately—or fortunately depending on how you view the unfolding romance—Kirchner’s profile started attracting more and more Trump voters, even despite the fact that one of Kirchner’s photos included a life-size cutout of Hillary Clinton. She soon realized that these MAGA-ites were interpreting “keep scrolling” as “keep reading.” An understandable error, but one that prompted Kirchner to seriously consider deleting her profile, especially after discovering her Trump-related anxiety was causing heart attack–like symptoms prompted by “a swelling of the cartilage around [her] sternum.” However, this drastic step was forestalled by one magical message from her now-fiancé: “Nice use of the parenthetical.” What parenthetical this was we sadly never find out, but the rest was, as they say, history. In a month, Kirchner will get married among a variety of guests—“some rabid Republicans, others die-hard Democrats.” “No one,” she cheers, “will refuse to celebrate love over political differences [and] … by learning to put love above all else, the pains in my heart—physical and emotional—have finally disappeared.” It’s a touching love story. Rather than votes that directly contribute to policies that make people’s lives better or worse, differing political views are analogous to contradicting opinions on whether fitted sheets are scams: With enough patience and love, they can be easily solved. — Linda Holmes (@lindaholmes) March 29, 2018 That same idea, as my colleague Jamelle Bouie pointed out, is one implicit in Politico’s recent “safari into Clinton country,” which ignored communities of color who overwhelmingly voted for Clinton to interview upper-crust white people on their feelings about Trump. Only in a world where the daily exhausting machinations of policy and politics don’t directly affect your life can you really detach yourself from the madhouse that currently is Washington, D.C. Only in that world can someone’s willingness to put himself in “a submissive stance,” as Kirchner’s fiancé did, be enough for you to look beyond their vote for a noted xenophobic sexist.