Terrorizing an American City

My two children live in Boston. On the weekend that the city was shut down in the hunt for Dzhokhar Tsernaev, I was visiting them. Now that he has been caught, we can think about the national implications of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath.

The Tsernaev brothers planned to do a lot of damage to American people and structures. Remarkable work by the people of our public services limited that damage. The first responders to the bombing and the hospital staffs across Boston saved every wounded person who came to them, limiting the death toll to three. Intensive police and FBI investigative work identified the bombers within a few days. Then an extraordinary manhunt prevented them from leaving the Boston area, despite their plans to explode bombs in New York City. After the brothers killed an MIT policeman, one was killed and the other captured without any other deaths of civilians or police.

Technology played a significant role in those successes. Surveillance videos and infrared cameras on helicopters made the identification and location of the bombers possible. The police were able to track the car they hijacked because its owner had left his cellphone inside when he escaped.

On the other hand, some of the TV reporting during the manhunt was comically incompetent. When it was discovered that Dzhokhar Tsernaev was a student at a University of Massachusetts branch campus in Dartmouth, MA, the reporter on the station I was watching first said that the campus of Dartmouth University in New Hampshire was being evacuated, then changed that to the main UMass campus in Amherst. Later I heard an NPR “timeline” of what had happened that was riddled with errors.

But the lockdown worked well. Hundreds of police were able to isolate Tsernaev in one part of Boston and hunt him down. Bostonians cooperated completely. Still it is worth asking, was this an overreaction? Should a large metropolitan area of nearly a million people be shut down in order to search for a single criminal?

If he had killed a family of 5, as did a man in Manchester, IL, just a few miles from where I live, there would have been no lockdown. If Adam Lanza had managed to leave Sandy Hook Elementary School and drive towards New York, an hour away, would that city have been shut down? Under what circumstances should our government close down a city? If the perpetrators were not born in the US? If they hate America, not just their neighbors? If they have bombs?

Business Week estimated that a lost day might cost Boston over $300 million. Will the lockdown precedent encourage perpetrators to copy the Boston bombers?

The bombers appear to have been motivated by a crazy version of Islam which encouraged them to kill Americans. One response has been the proliferation of equally crazy ideas about the American government attacking its own citizens.

           

A brief journey (I couldn’t stand any more) through the thousands of blog entries about the Boston bombing reveals a wide variety of people who have leaped to the conclusion that the bombing was done by our own government. It is not surprising that the brothers’ parents, now in Dagestan in Russia, claim their boys are the innocent victims of a “false flag” “black ops” American conspiracy. But what about all the media talkers, like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and nutty politicians, like Republican New Hampshire state Rep. Stella Tremblay, who fuel these fantasies?

Last Friday Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert said on the radio that the Obama administration “has so many Muslim brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.” The day before, Republicans Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jason Chaffetz of Utah held a hearing “to examine the procurement of ammunition by the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General.” Benjamin Radford, in his Bad Science column, explains, “Conspiracy theorists prefer complex mysteries over simple truths, and so they find mystery where none exists.”

It’s no wonder that some people come to amazing conclusions, like the anonymous commenter on Alex Jones’ site, who is sure there is “a conspiracy of aliens and humans that has been conducting secret mind altering experiments on citizens. They have planted the images of a ‘bombing’ in our heads when in fact, no bombing actually occurred.” No moon landing occurred either, and no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.

           

The Boston Marathon bombing demonstrates that it is very difficult to get away with such a terrorist attack. But it may also show that it is not difficult to perpetrate such a murderous act in a crowded urban place, and thus to create enormous havoc. Some of that havoc is amplified by ambitious people with selfish motives.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 30, 2013

Voting in Jacksonville

Last Tuesday my side lost. The effort to change the at-large voting system for our School Board to a set of districts, or wards, only won 44% of the votes. The at-large system remains. So does the stark division of our city by wealth and power.

The voting results provide a clear picture of a divided city. East of Main Street lie Wards 1 and 2, the poorest sections of Jacksonville, several of whose neighborhood elementary schools have been closed. There the ward-based idea won by a 2 to 1 margin. In Ward 3 in the center of town, ward-based won more narrowly, with 54% of the votes. In Wards 4 and 5 on the west side, at-large won by a significant margin, 64% to 36%.

Turnout tipped the scales in Jacksonville. On the west side, turnout was 29%, while on the east side only 12%.

Jacksonville provided slightly more than half of the votes from District 117. In South Jacksonville, the ward-based system won a very narrow victory, 419 to 405. But in the rural villages which surround Jacksonville and are part of this very large district, at-large won 601 to 338. The suburbs, with only 23% of the total votes, provided more than half of the winning difference.

Another way to look at the voting is that the western area of Jacksonville, bounded on the east by Park and Caldwell Streets, on the north by West Walnut, and on the south by West Morton (precincts 11-16), was so strongly opposed to the ward-based idea that it provided nearly enough votes for the winning margin.

Rather than an evenly distributed vote across District 117, the question of how to elect our School Board divided the District into two opposing pieces. Wards 4 and 5 in Jacksonville plus the suburbs voted 64% to 36% in favor of at-large. The rest of Jacksonville plus South Jacksonville voted 56% to 44% for ward-based.

The voting for individual Board members was not so different across the District. Noel Beard, Debra Maul, and Cheryl Ballard took the top three spots in both west and east Jacksonville, South Jacksonville, and the suburbs. The unhappiness with the current School Board was strongest in eastern Jacksonville, where the two defeated incumbents came in behind everyone else in 7th and 8th place.

The presence of 8 candidates for 3 spots, plus the ballot question about voting systems, nearly doubled the turnout of 2011, but even so less than a quarter of registered voters showed up. The eastern half of Jacksonville, which has been virtually unrepresented on the School Board for the past 20 years, voted for a ward-based system to insure their representation. The western areas of Jacksonville and the suburbs, which have been greatly overrepresented, voted to maintain the present system. The School Board, now with 3 new members, continues this geographically unbalanced pattern.

The lack of representation of the poorer sections of Jacksonville on the School Board prompted the drive for a ward-based system. That was defeated, but the problem remains. David Richards, in a letter to the Journal-Courier on April 4, noted that the candidates for School Board decided to ignore Jacksonville’s northeastern precincts when they put up their campaign signs.

The larger issue at stake in School Board elections is the health of all of Jacksonville. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to spruce up the downtown will not succeed if a few blocks away school buildings lie vacant and neighborhoods deteriorate. We won’t be able to replace all the jobs that have been lost in recent years if our schools are failing.

The task facing the new School Board and the new superintendent is to integrate all of Jacksonville’s neighborhoods into the remaining schools. If a new school is built, people in the currently unrepresented neighborhoods must be engaged in the process. Whether we consider the business climate or housing prices, Jacksonville’s schools must be improved if our city is to prosper.

Jacksonville was once an educational leader, the Athens of the West. That reputation came from a willingness to create innovative institutions, like the Jacksonville Female Academy and the Medical School at Illinois College. Educational leaders, like Jonathan Turner and Newton Bateman, made education in Jacksonville nationally prominent.

The raw materials for a first-class educational system in Jacksonville are still here. A School Board which ignores half the city won’t be able to take advantage of them.

Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 16, 2013

Creating Community, One Vote at a Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. My involvement in the elections today in Jacksonville has led to hundreds of conversations with people about our community – what the problems are, how to improve them, how the city should be run. But more important than the way we vote or even whom we vote for is the role the whole community plays in our local affairs.

Every once in a while, we all get to vote. Voting is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. Our ability to select our political managers, at the local, state, and national levels, and to vote them out of office the next time, puts ultimate power in the hands of the people.

Just having a vote, though, does not ensure democracy. The Soviet constitution of 1936 guaranteed its citizens the right to vote, but those votes were meaningless. Candidates were chosen by the Communist Party, one per district. Democracy only happens when the voting system is open and free, when everybody has an equal vote, when the balloting is secret, when the counting of votes is honest.

Voting is indispensable to real democratic control of our communities, but it is not enough. For whom should we cast our ballot? We also need unbiased information about the candidates. Providing that information is one of the roles of our media. Candidates can produce media advertisements for themselves, which can communicate useful information, but which are inherently biased and often misleading. The more money a candidate has, the more ads can be purchased, but that has no relation to the qualities of the candidate except their own wealth and their connections to wealth.

Better information can be generated by the media, by investigative reporters digging into candidates’ claims and past behavior. National elections are usually much better covered than local elections, and that is true here in Jacksonville. Our local media do very little independent reporting about candidates, beyond asking a few questions and reporting what the candidates say in response.

Even better information comes from directly interacting with candidates. At every election the League of Women Voters hosts a forum at which local candidates present themselves, and voters can listen and question. Only a tiny minority of voters attend these events. In my opinion, the best way to judge candidates is to meet them in person, one-on-one. When a candidate comes to my door and is ready to answer my questions, to tell me face-to-face who they are and what they stand for, I am impressed.

That’s still not enough. We voters and community members must do more than listen and occasionally vote. If we want to use our democratic system to actually exercise popular control of our communities, we must get more involved.

That involvement could be as simple as reading to elementary school students or cleaning up trash along the roadside. It could include going to public meetings and speaking up about what we think is important. We can write letters to the newspaper or call elected officials on the phone to voice our concerns. We can get involved in political campaigns for causes or people we support. We can run for office.

Voluntary work in and for our towns and cities, beyond voting, beyond making monetary donations, is what creates community. There are lots of reasons not to do it. Such work takes time and is most often unpaid. It is often thankless. It involves us in conflicts and controversies, which means that people will get annoyed at what you do, occasionally yell at you, perhaps even threaten to make your life in a small town more difficult. Many times your candidate or cause comes up short at the ballot box, and all your effort seems wasted.

But it wasn’t wasted. Every time community members speak with each other about local issues, connections are forged, ideas are discussed, opinions are shifted. Public officials take note when we get involved: they are reminded that they represent all of us, not just their like-minded friends. Difficult issues are not solved in a day or at one election.

As I have knocked on unfamiliar doors these past few weeks, some people have told me that they agree with my position. Others have said they are not interested in the issue, or they take the opposite side. What has surprised me the most, though, is the number of people who have thanked me for taking the time to try to inform and persuade them.

I don’t know how they will vote, or whether they’ll vote. But their thanks have made these efforts worthwhile. I’ve done my best to become informed and think the issues through, but I’m not absolutely certain that my proposals will make Jacksonville a better place. I am sure that talking with my neighbors about our common concerns is good for me and for us.

Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 9, 2013

Political Tipping Points

            This is an extraordinary moment in American politics. The possibility that the Supreme Court will declare some or all of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional is already sufficient reason for that label. But that is just one piece of a larger shift, a movement in the tectonic plates of national politics.

            In 1996, 27% of Americans said they favored gay marriage. By 2006, that proportion had risen to 35%. In 2010 it was 41%. The latest poll last month showed 49%. This shift applies to every possible grouping, from the most opposed (white conservative evangelical Protestants over 65) to the most in favor (liberals under 30).

            Malcolm Gladwell might call this a tipping point. Yet the idea of a “tipping point” focuses our attention on one moment, and obscures the long history of any significant change. The issue of gay rights and discrimination against gays came into public attention in 1969 in New York City. Now, 44 years later, the gradual shift in the American public’s understanding of who is gay and what it means to be gay could be reflected in a momentous reform of American law.

            Such a repositioning of voter attitudes is not always reflected in the views of elected politicians. When Pat Brady, the chair of the Illinois Republican Party, urged Republican legislators in the state house in January to support gay marriage, he faced calls for his resignation. Although 100 prominent Republicans have recently signed a friend-of-the-court brief directed at the Supreme Court in favor of gay marriage, Republicans currently holding office remain nearly universally opposed.

            Another issue which might have reached a different kind of tipping point is interracial marriage. In 1987, only 48% of Americans believed that it was acceptable for blacks and whites to date. That proportion has steadily risen to 83% in 2009. Increasing approval goes hand-in-hand with increasing practice. The proportion of interracial marriages among newlyweds in the U.S. more than doubled between 1980 (6.7%) and 2010 (15%). As in other shifts in social attitudes, younger Americans lead the way: 61% between 18 and 29 said that more people of different races marrying each other was a change for the better; only 28% over 65 agreed with that.

            Here the tipping point is not about legality, but about acceptance. I see interracial couples much more often on television, both in regular programming and in advertisements. I am reminded of the belated appearance of African Americans in leading roles on TV in the late 1960s. The cautious, and thus conservative, people who decide what issues might negatively affect viewers have finally decided that interracial couples are part of the new normal.

            News from Washington indicates that another tipping point may have been reached about immigration, after decades of acrimonious debate. Republican and Democratic politicians negotiating about how to deal with more than 10 million undocumented immigrants in America appear to be nearing a compromise, which might offer a path to citizenship. Here the political shift closely follows the public shift in attitudes. In 1994, 63% said that immigrants were a burden because they take jobs and health care, while only 31% said they strengthened the US. A survey last month showed the reverse: 49% said immigrants strengthen us, while only 41% said they were a burden.

            Unlike their stance on gay marriage, Republicans in Congress perceive clear electoral liabilities in their anti-immigrant rhetoric. President Obama won 71% of the Hispanic vote, which is 10% of the electorate and growing.

            I did not pick these three issues randomly: I was looking for places where American attitudes had been moving toward a new consensus. On other politically important issues, Americans have not changed their minds. The proportions who say abortion should be legal under any circumstances (about 25-30%), legal under some circumstances (about 50%), and illegal in all circumstances (15-20%) have not changed since the 1970s.

            The shifts away from conservative positions on gay and interracial marriage and immigration signal the decline in the attractiveness of major elements in traditional Republican ideology. In all three cases, young voters lead the way in opposing positions taken by Republican politicians. Barring some unlikely reversal of attitudes, such a conservative platform will turn away more and more voters in the future.

            The key to this moment is the increasing disconnect between the official line of the Republican Party and the center of American politics. That divergence has been developing for decades, too. On key issues, the American public has become more liberal, while Republicans at the national level have become more conservative. The polls I cited above also measure party affiliation. Over the past two decades, respondents who identified as Republicans fell from nearly 30% to under 25% in 2012, with corresponding gains among Independents. That small displacement is enough to lose elections.

            Since they lost in November, Republican politicians have begun to discuss the possibility that their platform is a losing proposition. That’s the bigger tipping point. The Republican Party is threatened with irrelevancy, because its ideology is shared by fewer and fewer Americans. Between now and the next election, we may see a historic shift in the Republican platform.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 2, 2013

Vote Yes on April 9

    I just read a few articles by researchers who have studied at-large vs. ward-based elections across the country, and who have published their findings in scholarly journals of political science. Those research results in favor of ward-based voting mean a lot to me. If the research showed that at-large voting systems produced better results than ward-based, I would not be advocating a change to ward-based.
    I don’t think many other voters here in Jacksonville will be influenced by those articles. That’s not enough for me, either. What matters even more is what has happened and is happening in District 117.
    Jacksonville has had a long history of neighborhood schools. Many of the school buildings were noteworthy for their architecture. Three of them have been abandoned by the School Board over the past few years. Because of at-large voting, there was nobody on the School Board from those parts of our community.
    Those buildings stand in sections of town that have suffered from historical neglect. The historical problems of neighborhoods near the center of Jacksonville are not the School Board’s fault. But now our city government and we taxpayers have spent millions of dollars to revive the downtown. Meanwhile
the School Board has offered no plans for these shells, which could soon become eyesores.
    Our schools are underfunded. The state is cutting educational funds and will keep cutting them. If we want good schools, we will need to spend more of our own money. The School Board failed to raise that money with a 1% sales tax last year, in a vote they lost nearly 2 to 1. Their public relations were unsuccessful, perhaps because their plans were vague and unconvincing. The people of Morgan County are not against education, but the School Board failed to convince voters that it could spend that money wisely.
    District 117 has a vacuum in leadership. We have had 4 different superintendents or interim superintendents in less than 2 years. The School Board has failed to find a strong leader for the most important position in District 117.
    One of the parts of our community not represented on the School Board is also not present in the schools: while 17% of our students are non-white, the teaching staff in District 117 is 99.2% white. There is one black member of the teaching staff out of 238. This information comes from the School District’s own Report Card on its website. But I have heard no plans to do anything about that.
    The School Board has not helped to get the population of Jacksonville engaged in education. That engagement is the responsibility of all adults in the community, not only parents of school children. The School Board has not found a way to deal with the problem of underengagement in our schools. Its discouragement of discussion at public meetings is an obstacle to community involvement.
    Gary Scott, who has spoken at two events I have attended, praised the enthusiasm that is suddenly apparent in Jacksonville; at the rally to oppose ward-based voting, he said, “It’s the first time we’ve talked about education in this town for years.” Former superintendent Bob Crowe said the bond of trust between community and School Board has been broken. And Scott and Crowe are supporters of keeping voting for the School Board just as it is.
    The message from the proponents of at-large voting, at all the forums I have attended, is that the School Board has failed, but let’s do nothing. Let’s not change the voting system. And let’s not talk about anything else. From the opponents of change all we hear is to maintain the status quo.
    But we can do better. To do that we need a better School Board, one which has a positive plan for our neighborhood schools, one which inspires parental and community involvement, one which figures out how to put a diverse group of teachers in front of our diverse students, one which offers good reasons to spend more of our money on education and good plans for how they will create better results for our students.
    How do we get a better School Board? Those articles I read all agreed that ward-based voting provides better representation of minority voters, which eventually leads to a more diverse teaching staff, which leads to better academic performance by students.
    The majority of the School Board has failed to engage with our local discussions about how to vote. Instead they have put obstacles in the way of public discussion: the Board refused to put this topic on its agenda.
    That’s not the way to help this community make an important decision. It’s the way to block change, to dampen enthusiasm, to stay in office, and to keep doing the same things which have brought us here.
    A vote to maintain the at-large system is a vote to accept these failures.
    Vote Yes in April, and then keep voting with your feet and bodies and checkbooks for a better education for Jacksonville’s kids.

Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, March 26, 2013

I Need Police Protection

I bother some people. A lot. I know this from reading the comments about me that appear everywhere these columns are read. It has been made clear to me more than once that some people with wealth and power in this town don’t like that I publish my opinions every week. There are people who would very much like me to dissociate my writings from Illinois College, where I work.

People with less personal connection with me have much harsher ideas in mind. They say I shouldn’t be a teacher, that I shouldn’t be allowed to write for a newspaper, that I am an evil person. They want to shut me up entirely.

What if they were in charge? What if our political system, at any level, were dominated by the people who want to get rid of me? That’s not such a far-fetched possibility.

When a police car drives by my house now, I have nothing more to fear than my neighbors do. That is a privilege enjoyed by few people on this earth. We Americans talk a lot about our rights. It is easy to forget that our ability to express our opinions without worry that the cops will show up at our door tomorrow is rare in the world, and has often been violated here at home. We must always be vigilant in protection of our sweet liberty.

That’s why I pay close attention to what political leaders do and say, especially those who most loudly disagree with me. Here is what I see.

Proponents of gun ownership in communities across the nation have proposed that every household in their towns be required to own a gun. Such an ordinance was passed unanimously by the city council in rural Nelson, GA: “every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore”. Kennesaw, GA, has had such a municipal ordinance since 1982. Towns in Idaho and Utah are also considering such laws. The city council in Byron, ME, passed a mandatory gun ownership law. That caused outrage among the town’s citizens, nearly half of whom packed a town meeting to nearly unanimously reject that idea.

Laws about “concealed carry” sometimes restrict the rights of private entities to control what happens on their property. Concealed carry laws have been proposed in Iowa and Ohio which would prevent private educational institutions from banning guns on their campuses. Some participants in the current discussion in Illinois about concealed carry wish to forbid private entities from banning guns on their property. What if those people were in charge?

What if the police showed up in my classroom, because I refused to teach while some students were carrying guns? What if they were required to enforce a law that mandated that my household possess a gun? Suppose they heard from reliable sources that I did not own a gun. Would they have the right to search my home?

The makers of these laws always say that they will allow exceptions. The Kennesaw GA law reads: “Exempt from the effect of this section are those heads of households who suffer a physical or mental disability which would prohibit them from using such a firearm. . . . who are paupers or who conscientiously oppose maintaining firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine, or persons convicted of a felony.”

What if I said publically that I refuse to own a gun? Would they test me for mental disability? If I wanted to plead poverty, would I have to show them my tax forms? Who would decide whether my beliefs are conscientious or what religion I have?

I don’t think these things will happen where I live. But there are politicians I worry about. Hispanic citizens of East Haven, CT, have been subjected to police terror for years. In January 2012, the FBI arrested four police officers, including the president of the local police union, on charges that they “assaulted individuals while they were handcuffed, unlawfully searched Latino businesses, and harassed and intimidated individuals”.

In parts of the US, doctors and nurses cannot safely practice medicine, if that involves the legal procedure called abortion. The kind of social practices that used to be called riots when they were protesting discrimination or the Vietnam War are now commonplace around abortion clinics in some states. Dr. George Tiller’s clinic was the scene of many instances of violence before he was murdered in 2009. He had been described by Bill O’Reilly on national television as “Dr. Killer” and “Tiller the baby killer”, and he was pursued by a prosecutor in the Kansas Attorney General’s office.

What if those people were in charge?

Extreme conservatives talk a lot about liberty. But their definition of liberty doesn’t always include my liberty. I want my police force to protect me from all kinds of threat, including those of the far right.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

Published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, March 19, 2013

Clothes Can Demean the Woman

People used to say, “Clothes make the man.” That was true. Before the French Revolution, commoners were prohibited by law from dressing like nobles, so a person’s class was recognizable from their clothes. Clothing was a sign of status, wealth and power.

Today celebrities wear jeans, and commoners can buy designer knock-offs, so it’s hard to tell who’s who from the way they look. Only male politicians seem to wear status uniforms all the time – dark suits, solid ties, flag lapel pins, and boring shoes.

Even if they no longer identify class, our clothes still make an impression on others, and are designed to do just that. Wearers, designers, and manufacturers collaborate to create individual looks, which are always socially influenced and sometimes socially prescribed. In the American world I see in my small hometown and everywhere else, the look prescribed for women is sexy. And I think it’s a mistake for women to capitulate to that fashion in their everyday dress.

High heels stretch the calves, making them (apparently) more attractive. Very high heels, not even as high as the 5 or 6 inches of many well-promoted shoes, lead to increased incidence of bunions, heel spurs, plantar fasciitis, and knee and back pain. A recent study shows that regular high-heel-wearers alter their natural gait, even when barefoot. Dr. Judith Smith, an orthopedic surgeon in Springfield, MO, compares the social demand for high heels with Chinese foot-binding: “It is a fashion statement and a status symbol.”

Along with higher heels come short skirts, as tight as possible. It seems to me that skirts are shrinking and pants are getting tighter. It’s instructive to compare women’s and men’s jeans, or even women’s fashion jeans and the clothes of women who do physical work. Tight jeans are hard to put on, less comfortable all day, restrictive of free movement, and have no useful pockets. All form, no function, unless the function is just attracting attention to one’s body, defined by the curves of rear ends and long legs. In fact, for many women, pants have given way entirely to stretch tights.

I have to admit that I’m still surprised to see bare breasts on a daily basis. Women’s chests are more on display than any time I can remember. I can’t think of any reason to prefer tight, low cut tops for indoor wear other than for display.

In the 1970s I remember a powerful social trend among American women away from dressing for display to dressing for comfort, for convenience and for practicality. High heels shrank or disappeared in favor of ergonomic shoes, tight clothes loosened up, artificial restraints like girdles vanished, stockings were put back in the drawer. Because women were fighting to be taken seriously, as workers, as intellectuals, as minds, they rejected fashion conventions which stressed sex.

I believe that young women today have forgotten that lesson, and are returning to dressing for display. They risk being taken seriously only as sex objects.

I am not advocating that women cover up, the position taken by religious conservatives in many faiths. A woman should be able to walk around in the nude without having to worry about being assaulted, or even being touched, by strangers. But she cannot expect to be taken seriously for her intelligence, or even to have people look at her face.

Women can dress as they please. And then they take the consequences of their choices – to be regarded for their brains, their accomplishments, or their bodies.

The back of my box of Girl Scout cookies says “Oh, what a girl can do!” Whatever it is that girls, or women, might do, they won’t be able to do it as well in high heels and tight skirts, unless it is simply to attract everyone’s gaze away from their heads to their bodies.

Steve Hochstadt

Jacksonville IL

published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, March 12, 2013