In the May 4, 2012 edition of the Huffington Post, Democracy Advocate Blair Bowie wrote:
“It’s said that there are two types of power: people and money. However, those two are not weighted equally. So despite being a coveted ‘voting bloc,’ as long as women earn less than men, we lack the political power to even control the conversation about our own ‘issues.'”
“We can’t rest our hat on making slow, incremental gains in Congress, laboriously closing the wage gap, and inching towards gender equality in political giving. We need women’s groups to get serious about reforming the campaign finance system.”
“The environmental community learned years ago that as long as the political system is so easily skewed by those with the cash, green groups will always face an uphill battle against multinational corporations. That’s why major environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and Rainforest Action Network actively engage with the campaign finance reform community and make getting big money out of politics a key plank in their platforms.”
“It’s time for women’s rights groups of all stripes and political inclinations, from EMILY’s List to Susan B. Anthony List, to do the same.”
In Lincoln’s America of nearly 150 years ago, the problem confronting the vast majority of the citizens of our nation was that most people owned no land (capital), including women. Today, the major problem for the vast majority of the people of our nation and of our world, for that matter, is that 99 percent of the people (and that includes women) own no capital (or a viable share) in a high-tech, capital-intensive economy.
We need leadership to awaken all American citizens to force the politicians to follow the people and lift all legal barriers to universal productive capital ownership access by every man, woman, and child as a fundamental right of citizenship and the basis of personal liberty and empowerment. The goal should be to enable every man, woman, and child to become an owner of ever-advancing labor-displacing technologies, new and sustainable energy systems, new rentable space, new enterprises, new infrastructure assets, and productive land and natural resources as a growing and independent source of their future incomes.
On the basic issue of economic empowerment of each individual, the essential goal needs to be economic democracy, which will finally make political democracy a meaningful reality.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blair-bowie/why-women-should-wage-war_b_1468901.html
