“I am involved and this is personally important to me because I would like nothing more than to see a brighter future for my 8-year-old daughter. It’s not about me,” Eric Enders of Des Moines told The Iowa Independent.

“I think this nation has taken a serious turn for the worse. It is owned and controlled by the upper 1 to 2 percent of the corporate elite and Wall Street, if you will, who control much of the power you see in corporations themselves and the power elite.”

Enders said that when he is using the term “elite,” an example of what he is referring to is the current political will in Congress for corporate welfare to be paid for on the backs of the poor and middle-class, who make up the rest of the 98 to 99 percent of America.

He is one of thousands of Iowans expected to “occupy” the state at various sites over the next week. Thus far, events have been slated in the communities of Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Dubuque, Mason City, Cedar Falls and Fairfield, and attempts are underway to organize additional locations. (As we learn of new events, they are added to our Factbook calendar, which is also featured on our Facebook page.) Because the demonstrations aren’t sponsored by any existing organization or group, there is no one official office or voice speaking for the movement.

Participants of the events, which are patterned loosely after the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations in New York City, are broadly disenchanted and frustrated about economic inequality and corporate political influence and greed. A general statement considered a motto by most individuals who are involved is:

“The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%”

But, beyond that statement, specific views of the participants span the political spectrum, with some advocating generally for workers, some insistent on protections of Social Security and Medicare and others advocating for the elimination of the Federal Reserve.

“I do not align myself with any political party, [and feel] both are at fault and to blame for most of the serious problems we face, including the disappointments of President Obama,” Enders said. “No single person in office today can fix what is wrong.”

It is also a movement that is drawing interest from communities of faith. Kim Bobo, executive director of Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice, explains, “People of faith may not all agree with or even understand everything the Wall Street protestors are saying. But those protests are a teachable moment. They are giving congregations an opportunity to talk together about how we can help families hurt by this economy.”

All faith traditions, she said, affirm the value of a just economy that services all, not just the top one percent. The IWJ has developed a discussion guide appropriate for use in Christian congregations in relation to the Occupy movement, and is planning to release additional guides for use in congregations of other faiths.

Hugh Espey, executive director of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said he hopes this is a movement that continues “to spread like wildfire across the country.”

“Let’s hope it does. Let’s hope it’s history in the making. A mass movement of everyday people standing up and speaking out against the corrosive influence of big money in politics is exactly what needs to happen,” he wrote in an email to Iowa CCI members.

Taylor, who is scheduled to provide the keynote address at the Polk County Democrats’ 11th annual Women’s Event Tuesday event, told The Iowa Independent by phone that “this is really a moment in America’s history where we have to determine whether or not we believe in her values and her democracy.”

Lena Taylor

First elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 2003, Taylor was one of the state’s “Fab 14″ lawmakers who left the state in hopes of preventing Gov. Scott Walker from passing a “Budget Repair Bill” that eliminated many collective bargaining rights of public employees.

She says her focus has always been fighting for the middle class and the working poor.

“Democracy in the workplace is called collective bargaining,” Taylor said.

Although federal law dating back to 1935 protects the right of private employees to engage in collective bargaining, there are no such protections for public sector employees who choose to unionize. Although Walker had argued that his bill would leave collective bargaining in Wisconsin “fully intact,” the statement was given PolitiFact’s strongest rebuke of “pants on fire.”

Although the Wisconsin bill carved out exceptions for firefighters, police and state troopers, all other public sector unions saw at least a partial reduction of their rights to collectively bargain. Rights for about 5,000 home health care workers and 2,800 employees of the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, including nurses, were completely repealed, and 30,000 University of Wisconsin System faculty and academic staff had their rights to organize and bargain completely rolled back from an earlier (Democratic) state decision that allowed it.

Due to mostly conservative, but a few liberal, shadowy influence groups chiming in on subsequent recall elections, no one really knows how many millions have been spent in Wisconsin in an effort to either preserve or repeal Walker’s bill. Currently, Democrats remain one vote shy in the Wisconsin Senate.

When Taylor takes the microphone in Des Moines Tuesday night, attendees will no doubt hear much more about the ongoing Wisconsin labor battles, but the Democrat will also be speaking on something far more personal in nature. Although she is the 1,000th senator for Wisconsin, she is only the 20th woman and fifth African American to serve. In fact, she is only the second African American woman senator in state history.

Similar numbers are at work in Iowa, where women hold a slim majority of the state’s overall population but far less than half of state elected offices. When county and local elected offices are combined, it’s been estimated that women serve in less than 15 percent of all elected positions. At the national level, Iowa joins Mississippi as the only states to have never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate or House or as governor.

Taylor muses that her own state isn’t likely far ahead of Mississippi and Iowa when it comes to gender equality for elected offices, noting that the state has only had a few women who have served at the national or statewide level.

“Women play an important role in politics,” Taylor said.

Because most government positions traditionally dominated by males — firefighters and police, for example — were held exempt by Walker and Wisconsin Republicans, the caps and limits placed on collective bargaining in the state will strike more directly upon professions that are traditionally dominated by females, such as teachers and nurses. A recent report indicated that two-thirds of all Wisconsin families in poverty are led by women and, across-the-board in the Wisconsin, women are more likely than men to be poor. For those reasons, the limits on collective bargaining are expected to further negatively impact one of the state’s already vulnerable demographics.

Analysis of Walker’s executive budget, introduced on March 31, by the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health in partnership with students from the University of Wisconsin Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs found that of the proposed $4.2 billion in proposed cuts, $1.7 billion, or 40 percent, are direct cuts to programs that serve Wisconsin women and girls. When programs that predominantly serve women are included, more than 50 percent of the proposed cuts would negatively impact women’s services ranging from health care to legal services for victims of sexual assault, job training to child care and education services.

“We need to engage and we need to be active because we are the mothers of the young people who are coming behind us, and we weren’t always part of the ‘we the people’ in America,” she said.

The annual women’s event in Des Moines is being hosted by Roxanne Conlin, one of several Iowa women who have made unsuccessful bids for federal office.

CEDAR RAPIDS — Whether or not the death of a young Waterloo man is eventually ruled a hate crime mattered little to the hundreds of vigil attendees who gathered in downtown Cedar Rapids Thursday night.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr. (letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963)

Andrew Harrison, of Cedar Rapids, is someone who has typically been involved with local vigils and demonstrations as an advocate of the local LGBT community. But when the Club Basix bartender learned of the brutal beating death of Marcellus Andrews, 19, and that anti-gay slurs that were reportedly a part of the incident that took Andrews’ life, Harrison felt compelled to step forward.

“I put this event on Facebook because I saw no one else was doing anything, and I was just outraged,” Harrison told The Iowa Independent Thursday night at the vigil. “I knew I couldn’t go up to Waterloo and be a part of any vigil there, and I thought we should do something here in Cedar Rapids because our community has always turned out for observances, vigils and demonstrations.

“I knew that Cedar Rapids could show our state and the nation that we’re not going to put up with bullying and taunting.”

Harrison’s quickly made Facebook event resulted in roughly 300 people converging near the Tree of the Five Seasons monument for a vigil consisting of official statements from equality advocates, prayer, moments of silence and singing of the gospel hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

Participants at the candlelight vigil for Marcellus Andrews represented at least four counties in eastern Iowa. (Photo: Lynda Waddington/The Iowa Independent) 

Harrison added that regardless of if law enforcement investigating Andrews’ death rule the attack a hate crime, members of the LGBT community are aware of witness reports that the man was taunted with anti-gay slurs.

“No matter what one’s sexual orientation is, or what it is perceived to be, no one should be treated that way,” he said. “No one should have to hear such things — especially not at the end of his or her life. … Whether or not it was premeditated, whether or not this was a year-long dispute as the police have said it was, there should not have been comments like that made.”

Tim and Lisa Hughes, a Cedar Rapids couple that will celebrate their 30th year of marriage next week, said they were shocked to learn of such a violent thing happening in nearby Waterloo and they were shocked to know police weren’t considering prosecuting the event as a hate crime.

“Based on what we’ve heard that was said and done, it was really shocking to know this wasn’t being looked at as a hate crime,” Lisa Hughes said. “Anytime you kill someone there is hate involved.”

The couple said they wanted to come and attend the vigil because “it is important to show tolerance and acceptance of all others regardless of their race, their color, their gender or their sexual orientation.”

“We are all people,” said Lisa, who added while motioning to those around her on the 1st Avenue Bride, “And these are all good people.”

The world we live in, said Tim, has enough war and hate. “We should celebrate love and life every chance we get.”

Several families brought their children to the observance. 

Maureen Hill, faculty adviser for the City High Gay-Straight Alliance in Iowa City brought a handful of students to the vigil after the organization’s co-president, Ruth Anne Riedl, called attention to Andrews’ death and the witness accounts. For some time the GSA has been working to raise awareness of gender-based bullying and to show young people how powerful it can be to stand up to such adversity. Before the national “It Gets Better” campaign was underway, the Iowa City students had developed T-shirts that called attention to suicide.

“I personally thought it was really powerful to come out tonight, given how much time the group has spent on the T-shirts and trying to raise awareness about how important it is to stand together and be safe,” she said. “That something like this happened in Iowa — we simply needed to come out and be here.”

Riedl, a student at City High, said she became furious when she read the reports about what happened to Andrews.

“We live in 2011,” she said. “There is no reason something like this should happen.

“It doesn’t really matter what a person’s sexual orientation is, or even if the bullying and taunting is related to sexual orientation — it’s not OK for people to make remarks against others like that. I just thought it was important to come out and stand together and send that message: It is not OK for things like this to happen. There is no reason this should have happened, and it should never happen again.”

Rev. Martha Rogers, rector for Christ Episcopal Church in Cedar Rapids, offered a prayer at the vigil and stood as a member of faith in the candlelight observance the followed on the bridge.

“As a member of the clergy, it is my honor and obligation to say that God creates us all, and we should all be treated with dignity and respect,” she said.

“A brutal death is not the way to change the world.”

While speakers made brief remarks, some closed their eyes and others wiped away tears. 

The Cedar Rapids vigil was one of several held throughout the state in memory of Andrews and as reminders for tolerance for others. Those who were unable to attend a vigil were asked to leave their porch light on Thursday night, and individuals from California to Texas and New York left notes on that event’s Facebook page that their light was glowing.

Participants in Cedar Rapids collected $300 in donations, which will be given to the Union Missionary Baptist Church Drill Squad, the Crusaders, that Andrews helped train as a captain.

Formal services for Andrews will be held this weekend.

Following public remarks, participants lined both sides of the 1st Ave Bridge. 

The memorial continued until late in the night. 

If ever there was a time for women to explore opportunities to run for public office, it’s now, says Dianne Bystrom, director of Iowa State University’s Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics.

Legislative redistricting typically opens up new opportunities for women to be elected to public office, and redistricting couldn’t have come at a better time for women, says Bystrom. The November 2010 election marked the first time in 31 years that the number of women elected to the U.S. Congress decreased. Iowa has yet to break its own political “glass ceiling,” being one of four states — along with Delaware, Mississippi and Vermont — to never elect a woman to the U.S. Congress.

That’s why the Catt Center is presenting “Ready to Run Iowa: Campaign Training for Women,” on June 10. The workshop is designed for anyone interested in running for all levels of office, getting appointed to public boards and commissions, working on a candidate or issue campaign, or learning more about the political system. It will take place from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at ISU’s Scheman Building, Iowa State Center.

“This is a big year [for women in politics] for many reasons,” said Bystrom. “When new districts are drawn — not only on the federal level but on the state level — redistricting causes changes and opens up opportunities for women.”

In addition, a new Iowa law extending general balance to local and county boards and commissions also creates opportunities for women’s public service.

“Another thing we push in our Ready to Run Campaign School is not just running for office; it’s serving on local and state boards and commissions,” Bystrom said. “Iowa has had a gender balance mandate on state boards and commissions since 1987. That was extended to local and county boards by the 2010 legislature and it goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2012. So 2012 presents numerous opportunities for Iowa women to step up and run for political office or serve on boards and commissions.”

The workshop addresses both of those opportunities by offering participants one of two tracks — one for women who might be considering a run for public office, and the other for women who may desire greater political leadership to have an impact on important issues. Several current and former female elected officials, authors and campaign strategists will be in attendance and leading a variety of educational sessions.

Registration is available online and will cost $75 on or before May 28 and $100 after that date. The fee includes all sessions and training materials; breakfast, lunch and afternoon refreshments; workshop notebook; and a campaign training manual. Scholarships are also available for travel and registration.

Ready to Run™ was established by the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. It has helped New Jersey climb from the bottom third of all states in the proportion of women in legislature to 12th.

A meet and greet will be held Friday morning at 11:45 a.m. at the Marion Public Library and, later that evening at 6 p.m., Pawlenty will serve as keynote speaker at the Johnson County Republican Party’s Reagan Dinner. The dinner is being held at Clear Creek Amana High School in Tiffin. The first event is free to the public and the evening event is a party fundraiser.

On Saturday, at 9:45 a.m., Pawlenty will meet with Iowans at Legends American Grill in Marshalltown. At 1:30 that afternoon, he will host an ice cream social and town hall meeting in Indianola at One Stop Sandwich. Both of these events are free to the public.

According to his Iowa staff, Pawlenty’s remarks during this visit will focus on the importance of cutting the federal deficit.

Wisconsin is not the only place where working families are under attack. Across this nation, the lives and livelihoods of working families are being attacked systematically by right wing fanatics bent on crippling or destroying the trade union movement in America.

Show your support for Wisconsin workers and all workers by standing with us at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines.

The “We Are One” rally is scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 22, at 1 p.m. on the west steps of the Iowa Capitol.

The Iowa rally will come after days of protests in Madison, Wisc. by public employees and their supporters. Gov. Scott Walker has proposed a bill that would eliminate most collective bargaining rights for union members.

The rally also follows a discredited statement by a spokesman for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad that falsely portrayed public workers as earning far more than their private sector counterparts. The statement was offered as justification of why Branstad plans to draw both his state salary and state pension while serving as governor.

One of Branstad’s first acts upon being sworn in as governor for a fifth term was to make good on a campaign promise to rescind former Gov. Chet Culver’s executive order that encouraged Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), which at least one taxpayer watchdog group says inevitably lead to lower project costs. Branstad’s strict position on PLAs — that no government entities should use them — has prompted a battle with Cedar Rapids officials (led by former Iowa House Speaker Ron Corbett), who had planned to use such an agreement in a $75 million convention complex project.

In addition, earlier this week, an Iowa House subcommittee passed a bill that would weaken the bargaining position of public employee unions in the Hawkeye State.

The Iowa Federation of Labor represents more than 50,000 members of 520 unions throughout Iowa.

From the PIC press release:

Musical performers scheduled for the event include Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Bono, Garth Brooks, Sheryl Crow, Renee Fleming, Josh Groban, Herbie Hancock, Heather Headley, John Legend, Jennifer Nettles, John Mellencamp, Usher Raymond IV, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, will.i.am, and Stevie Wonder. Among those reading historical passages will be Jamie Foxx, Martin Luther King III, Queen Latifah and Denzel Washington. The Rt. Reverend V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. Rob Mathes will be the music director and arranger for the backing band, which will support all of the artists. Additional performers will be announced as they are confirmed.

What, no Oprah? Pfffft. I’m staying home.