Posted on 05/24/2007 9:13:14 AM PDT by qam1
In the 1970s, baby sitters were hired for League of Women Voters meetings.
It was a day out for stay-at-home moms who came of age in the caldron of the 1960s. We'd call it a "play date" or "Mommy's group" now - but with policy discussions and get-out-the-vote campaigns rather than gossip.
Baby sitters aren't necessary at League meetings anymore. Those young activists are now graying, their children grown. And their numbers are dwindling - through attrition.
The League is in trouble. And women are to blame.
An offshoot of the women's suffrage movement, the League was organized in 1920, after the U.S. Constitution was amended to allow American women the right to vote. The League kept them going to the ballot box.
But League membership peaked in the 1970s and has been falling ever since. In 1974, the League allowed men to join. It didn't help. Nationally, the League claimed 170,000 members. That number has dropped to just more than 100,000. In Utah, League rolls have been cut nearly in half, from 600 members 30 years ago to 350 now.
After 87 years, we've started to take that 72-year fight to vote for granted. With voter turnout in presidential elections hovering at just over 50 percent for the past 20 years, it's clear that women stay home on Election Day - just like men.
We've come a long way, baby. We've just forgotten how we got here.
Sandy Peck started going to the League's Salt Lake City meetings with her children. Now, the 73-year-old volunteer executive director spends day after day at the Utah Legislature, quietly taking notes. She speaks up only to advocate for radical notions like voter rights, public meetings and access to government records.
One of the last nonpartisan, grassroots, government-watchdog groups remaining on Capitol Hill, the League focuses its attention on voter education, producing "white papers" on hate crimes legislation, alternative energy and redevelopment law. They prepare a daily legislative update for public radio station KCPW. And each election year, League members draft a voter guide and moderate debates.
Most of the time, Peck and other League members are summarily dismissed with a platitude - "What nice old ladies."
Still, she goes back year after year. "It's hard for me to be detached," she says. Intellectual stimulation hasn't been enough to draw in new members.
Thirty-something Melissa Larsen figures she's the League's youngest member. She was recruited by her 71-year-old aunt. "I was pretty disillusioned. They're all much older than me," she says.
Meetings these days always include a moment of hand-wringing about recruiting new members. They understand more young mothers are working these days, trying to juggle soccer games and swimming lessons and dinner. Another meeting just won't fit in that after-work dash -even in a state that was one of the first to give women the right to vote and where League founder Carrie Chapman Catt spoke in the Mormon Tabernacle so many years ago.
No real people answered the League phones in Washington, D.C., Monday. The Utah League's Web site still features the obituary of a member who died in March.
"You can do nothing or everything," the 77-year-old Salt Lake League Co-President Joyce Barnes offers, as an incentive to join.
So, I printed out the League membership form ..... I'm going to scrape together the $50 membership dues. I might be one of the members who does nothing for awhile. But I'll be there.
Let me put it this way. Universal suffrage, in general, was not what the Founders intended. One can perhaps make an argument for a single Ammendment which would have allowed QUALIFIED people of all races, sexes, etc to vote. The key being the word QUALIFIED. Universal suffrage leads to mob rule. Are we there yet?
I have often thought that men should only be allowed to vote in state and national elections and women only vote in local and state elections. Definitely a hairbrained idea, but 90 percent of the national issues are spun so heavily towards women and most women really don’t care. While I think it might be a good idea overall, we would loose out on such fine leaders as Margaret Thatcher, Liddy Dole, Kay Bailey Hutchinson to name just a few.
If women really paid attention to national issues like our Freeper sisters here, then it wouldn’t be a problem.
My Mother In Law is a member and she is quite convinced that they are non-partsian.
Well—what can I say? Looks to me like your MIL has a problem—LOL!
I don't know about your situation, but my wife and I don't participate in PTSA (as they call it here) for 2 reasons:
1. They just rubber stamp what the teachers want.
2. Many in leadership are Napoleans.
The National PTA changed dramatically during my last years of involvement. And yes, it was a power grab in lockstep with the ideology of the teachers’ unions. At the end of my tenure, local PTA’s were warring with the Nat’l PTA and many switched to PTO’s to voice their protest. Most PTA’s are just your neighborhood moms and dads having little fundraisers for playground equipment, helping with RIF, counting soup labels and boxtops, editing the school newspaper, holding art contests, etc. I would suggest not writing yours off until you’ve actually tried volunteering.
I’m speaking from experience almost 20 years ago in a small city with 4 elementary schools, a middle school and high school. I’m sure the big city PTA/PTO is somewhat different, but the schools can use all the help they can get from parents. If you don’t like it, you can stop going. It’s that easy.
Here's the curious aspect of Conservatism.
I discovered that conservatives were advocates, in terms of policy, of my values, which are the oft-mocked compassionate conservatives. These are the natural values that God creates in women.
The Liberals talk a good game, as far as caring about people, but their policies actually pull people down, rather than lift them up. It is not a kindness to make victims of people, or to devalue people in any way. It is not a kindness to leave people unprotected from their enemies who want to kill them.
But you're right, you have to pay attention to what the outcomes are, not what the talk is.
I, for one, hope that this group of women does go by the wayside-just another bunch of liberal women trying to worm their way into our lives.
And maybe if they’d invited the dumb, ignorant, low class babysitters into the meeting, they’d have created a wider pool of members and their descendants...
We did. That is why I know I don't want to do it anymore. It is full of folks that couldn't be in charge of anything else, so they run the Spring Carnival like they are Gen. Patton. My oldest is 21 and my youngest is 7....I'm talking about experience in schools in 4 states over a 15 year span.
I'd suggest that you re-think your assumptions about folks who don't do volunteer work.
The obvious flaw here is the non-qualified live in thrall to the qualified. This is most easily indentified in that the non-qualified will definitely be taxed, represented or not.
You realize, of course, that as of 1800, there was not universal suffrage.
How does that make it good?
Ah, I see, are you one of those “living Constitution” types? Trying to change our republic into a mob ruled anarchic mess? Well, you’ve already mostly succeeded, got to hand it to you and your ilk. But I have to say, SCREW YOU!
Well, I won't try to match such lofty eloquence. Suffice it to say that your obvious lack of class and breeding serves as proof that your opinion is not one that anyone should lose sleep over.
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