"What was it like to be an evacuee Grandma"?

RIP Grandma Edythe 💓

I was Peter Sutcliffe's therapist. The misogyny that killed so many women then still exists today

My article in todays Independent👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/i-was-peter-sutcliffes-therapist-his-case-file-made-me-sick-i-owed-it-to-his-victims-to-understand-what-he-did-to-them-39753437.html

The women of colour that got Biden over the line have earned their rightful seats at his top table

 My article in today's Irish Independent 👇

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/why-women-of-colour-need-to-take-a-bow-centre-stage-before-curtain-comes-down-on-joe-bidens-presidency-39741703.html

Donald Trump conceding defeat is like Hannibal Lecter agreeing to be sectioned. He will not go peacefully. It seems fitting that the final scene of the Trump horror show was set in a seedy parking lot where a press conference was held between a crematorium and a sex shop called “Fantasy Island” (I’m not kidding). It would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic.

 

Trump’s four year tyrannical reign inflicted wounds that will linger long after the stench of his rhetoric has dissipated into the choke damp ether. His list of ignominies is longer than an Al Capone charge sheet but the fact that 240,000 coronavirus deaths and the separation (and caging) of 666 migrant children from their families did not result in a landslide victory for Joe Biden, should ring alarm bells for the Democrats.

 

During the agonising count, I tuned into RTE’s Drivetime which appeared to have been temporarily hijacked by Fox News to promulgate far right, white supremacist conspiracy theories on an unsuspecting Irish audience. Platforming Steve Bannon was not RTE’s finest hour. This is a man charged with fraud and whose podcast was removed from YouTube and permanently banned by twitter after he appeared to call for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci. His sycophantic RTE interview is still available online but it really shouldn’t be.

 

Fast forward, a few more days of waiting and counting before Joe Biden emerges triumphant. Relief was my over-riding feeling. He won, but by the skin of his teeth and he couldn’t have done it without the army of women of colour that lent him their backing when progressive candidate, Bernie Sanders, exited the Democratic presidential race.

 

Kamala Harris, who made history as not just the first female, but the first black female, Vice-President elect, acknowledged these women in her victory speech. She praised the “black women who are too often overlooked but who have proved to be the backbone of our democracy”.  Women like Stacey Abrams, who was instrumental in making Biden the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Georgia in 28 years. Abrams mobilised a coalition of grassroots organisers in predominately minority communities, registering 800,000 new voters in Georgia alone. Fair Fight, the organisation Abrams created to combat voter suppression also helped Biden win in Wisconsin and other key swing states.

 

Black women like Cori Bush, a nurse and single mother whose own experience of homelessness spurred her to mobilise her community to feed and shelter those abandoned by the state. Her people-powered campaign resulted in Bush becoming Missouri’s first black congresswoman. 

 

And there’s the self-styled “Squad” of four congresswomen of colour: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Shunned by the Democratic Party machine, they all secured their second terms campaigning on Medicare for all, a Green New Deal and racial justice. They   were chosen by communities to represent their interests, not those of corporate sponsors. Their tireless advocacy was rewarded at the ballot box.

How did the President of the United States, Donald Trump, greet these inspirational young congresswomen of colour (two of whom are Muslim) to the house when first elected in 2018? By tweeting they should, “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”, despite all but one being born in the US. Omar, a Somalian refugee, has been a US citizen for two decades. 

 

Ocasio-Cortez, who has 10 million twitter followers, used her social media savvy to mobilise and energise the grassroots activism that produced large turnouts in Detroit, Philadelphia and Georgia for Biden’s win. She acknowledged the uphill battle to convince non-voters in disaffected communities to register and then vote having felt betrayed by previous Democratic administrations.

Many had not forgotten nor forgiven Barack Obama who, in return for gifting him their votes, bailed out banks that then repossessed their homes. At the end of his presidency, unemployment figures for Black Americans remained double that of their white counterparts (8 per cent) and it was during the Obama-era that the Black Lives Matter movement was born in protest against the killing of black people by police officers.

By 2016, Obama, with the help of Hilary Clinton, had crushed the most crucial weapon in the Democratic electoral armoury: Hope. Paving the way for Trump’s politics of hate to fill the void.

The US far right are not going anywhere. If Biden fails to harness the hope that an army of working class women of colour awoke to secure his victory, another, more malignant, polished incarnation of Trump will be waiting in the wings, ready to detonate a dirty bomb of bigotry. It will make the last four years seem like a sepia tinted Shirley Temple movie.