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Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Hillary's Action in Flint Michigan is Nothing New

As I suggested in my last post, what probably galls Bernie supporters like Ben Jealous is that Hillary does more than talk about her leadership skills and what she wants to do for folks: she shows it.



Here is another example from when she was Secretary of State.

"Read Meryl Streep’s introduction of Hillary Clinton during the recent 2012 Women in the World conference:"

"Two years ago when Tina Brown and Diane von Furstenberg first envisioned this conference, they asked me to do a play, a reading, called – the name of the play was called Seven. It was taken from transcripts, real testimony from real women activists around the world. I was the Irish one, and I had no idea that the real women would be sitting in the audience while we portrayed them. So I was doing a pretty ghastly Belfast accent. I was just – I was imitating my friend Liam Neeson, really, and I sounded like a fellow. (Laughter). It was really bad."

"So I was so mortified when Tina, at the end of the play, invited the real women to come up on stage and I found myself standing next to the great Inez McCormack. (Applause.) And I felt slight next to her, because I’m an actress and she is the real deal. She has put her life on the line. Six of those seven women were with us in the theater that night. The seventh, Mukhtaran Bibi, couldn’t come because she couldn’t get out of Pakistan. You probably remember who she is. She’s the young woman who went to court because she was gang-raped by men in her village as punishment for a perceived slight to their honor by her little brother. All but one of the 14 men accused were acquitted, but Mukhtaran won the small settlement. She won $8,200, which she then used to start schools in her village. More money poured in from international donations when the men were set free. And as a result of her trial, the then president of Pakistan, General Musharraf, went on TV and said, “If you want to be a millionaire, just get yourself raped.”

"But that night in the theater two years ago, the other six brave women came up on the stage. Anabella De Leon of Guatemala pointed to Hillary Clinton, who was sitting right in the front row, and said, “I met her and my life changed.” And all weekend long, women from all over the world said the same thing:"I’m alive because she came to my village, put her arm around me, and had a photograph taken together."

"I’m alive because she went on our local TV and talked about my work, and now they’re afraid to kill me."

"I’m alive because she came to my country and she talked to our leaders, because I heard her speak, because I read about her."

"I’m here today because of that, because of those stores. I didn’t know about this. I never knew any of it. And I think everybody should know. This hidden history Hillary has, the story of her parallel agenda, the shadow diplomacy unheralded, uncelebrated — careful, constant work on behalf of women and girls that she has always conducted alongside everything else a First Lady, a Senator, and now Secretary of State is obliged to do."

"And it deserves to be amplified. This willingness to take it, to lead a revolution – and revelation, beginning in Beijing in 1995, when she first raised her voice to say the words you’ve heard many times throughout this conference: “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/18/1248523/-You-won-t-see-Hillary-Clinton-in-the-same-light-ever-again

"All her opponents-whether Rick Snyder and his GOP friends, or Jealous or other Bernie supporters-can do is say she went to Flint for political reasons. It's the typical Stalinist ploy of focusing on the motives rather than the action. "
People facing a crisis situation need action not talk or promises that you can't keep. 
Really, if the people of Flint finally get their water problem solved they won't mind politicization. Good deeds done for political reasons are much better than them not being done at all. 
Yet, HRC's action in the case of the many women who spoke at Meryl Streep's conference shows that HRC has plenty of times gone to the mat for people and women in crisis without it being at all publicized. 



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