CNN.com exclusive: Latinas Need Voice In Abortion Debate By Silvia Henriquez, NLIRH!

In this exclusive Op-Ed for CNN.com/Opinion, read by 40 million people every month, Ms. Henriquez highlights the growing political power of Latinas and demands reproductive justice for the millions of women across the United States in danger of losing abortion coverage as a result of anti-choice politics in health care reform.
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from Latinas and their families who were outraged by proposed amendments that could potentially roll back our ability to access safe abortion care. This amendment would make a legal medical procedure financially inaccessible for many women – even those who prior to health care reform had abortion coverage through their own insurance if that insurance is then offered in the public exchange.

“Latinas called their senators and wrote letters on behalf of daughters, sisters, aunts and mothers in their communities, urging policy makers to vote for health care reform that includes coverage for abortion, and provides health care access for immigrants.

“Opponents argue that more women will be covered under overall health care reform, as if that should satisfy us. The fact remains: if millions of low-and moderate income women covered under a new federally subsidized health system can’t access abortion care from an insurance plan bought even partly with federal support, policy makers are essentially telling them that they do not matter—that the reality of their lives must be ignored.  The legacy of health care reform should not be to send women back into the shadows for a procedure allowed under U.S. law. We have worked too hard to reform our health care system for women to be worse off than they were before.”

Check out the full piece at http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/11/henriquez.latina.abortion/index.html

CNN.com/Opinion features national voices including Congress members, journalists, and academics.

And last week’s New York Times published a Letter to the Editor from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH)!  In response to Cardinal Mahony’s earlier Op-Ed, Coverage without Borders, Silvia Henriquez wrote, “The lesson learned from the last three decades of misguided federal policy on abortion is that creating a two-tier system of access to health care is unfair, punitive and harmful.”

Here’s the full letter:

To the Editor:

Re “Coverage Without Borders,” by Roger Mahony (Op-Ed, Dec. 8):

Cardinal Mahony’s article in favor of health care access for immigrants is an important message to elected officials grappling with reform legislation. Sadly, I couldn’t help note the irony of advocating on behalf of immigrants, while in the same breath urging policy makers to deny reproductive health care for millions of women. Over half of all immigrants are women.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health knows very well the devastating impact of making abortion elusive for those who can’t pay with personal funds. Latinas are among the poorest in this country and tend to lack access to health insurance in higher numbers than other groups. In fact, one in four women living in poverty who wants to choose abortion can’t because politicians prevent federal tax dollars from covering the procedure.

The lesson learned from the last three decades of misguided federal policy on abortion is that creating a two-tier system of access to health care is unfair, punitive and harmful.

To quote Cardinal Mahony: “To allow people’s basic health needs to be trumped by divisive politics violates American standards of decency and compassion.” We couldn’t agree more.

Silvia Henriquez
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
New York, NY

Congratulations to NLIRH and its campaign for real health care reform for women and immigrants.

CPR connects California reproductive justice issues on HuffPo-LA

Camino client California Latinas for Reproductive Justice (CLRJ) debuts today on HuffPost-L.A. helping to launch the new site! CLRJ executive director takes a hard look at the local impact of  national health care reform debates on women and immigrants, particularly California Latinas, in Stupak: The Worst Case Scenarios for Latinas.  CLRJ and ACCESS/Women’s Health Coalition recently held a successful statewide call-in day of action to raise California voices to demand health care reform efforts include the needs of women and immigrant communities.

Last week, The Huffington Post launched HuffPost L.A., a new site designed to examine California and Los Angeles politics and culture. According to Arianna Huffington, “we intend to make HuffPost LA a must-click destination for engaged Angelenos looking to keep up with the latest on all things LA. And we’ll share the stories of the people whose lives are affected by the issues in the news: foreclosed homeowners, families battling wildfires in their neighborhoods or water main breaks in their front yards, parents searching for the best schools, and small business owners driving the city’s economic recovery.” Recent posts include those by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other political, entertainment, and non profit figures in Los Angeles and California.

Congratulations CLRJ!

Click here to read the full post.

Camino Client Debuts on Huffington Post

Camino client NLIRH debuts today on The Huffington Post, the most prominent liberal blog in the nation with an estimated  5.6 million visitors.  In 2008, The Huffington Post gained the most news readers of all news outlets.  Sylvia Henriquez made a forceful case in her op ed for changing the national dialogue on teen sexuality.  The article stems from their recently published White Paper on Latina Pregnancy, which makes the case for a reproductive justice framework.  Congratulations  National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health!   Click here for the full article.

The condom melee

Ah, the Pope and condoms.  I first publicly criticized the Pope’s views when I was a teenage columnist for a Gannett newspaper, but my editor censored the piece.  The Pope was on a U.S. tour and the paper was worried about reader backlash.  Not much has changed since, except now my daughter is the teenager.  The Pope has ratched up his attack on condoms (claiming they aren’t effective at preventing HIV), and lots of parents and the media are still treating condoms like a four-alarm scandal.

Last week about a dozen students at my daughter’s middle school were inadvertently given condoms during a celebration of “National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day”.   A 48-hour morality melee ensued.  Some parents of the condom kids were shaken and angry, multiple apologies from school and public health officials were rushed out over two days, news media descended on the school, and teachers gave their students impromptu lessons in how to say “no comment” to aggressive reporters.

Exactly one year ago the CDC released startling findings: one in four adolescent girls has a sexually transmitted infection.  Another study found that by 9th grade, 32% of teens were sexually active.  This year school officials teamed up with public health advocates to conduct an HIV awareness poster contest and a health fair to help prevent these middle school kids from becoming part of this statistical nightmare.

The school didn’t intend to distribute the condoms – some health fair bags from a high school event got mixed up with the middle school bags – but the incident raises the uncomfortable question about what messages and information ought to be shared with this age group.  Statistically, a third of these eighth graders will be sexually active within a year.  When and how should they get access to condoms?

On the afternoon that ABC camped out at the middle school for at least four hours, the principal asked those of us who worked or lived nearby to help shield the students from the cameras as they left school.   Many of the parents and security staff  were furious that ABC news was filming kids.  The sensationalist media had turned the  lesson about disease prevention into a real life display of the taboo nature of dealing with emerging sexuality.   Any middle schooler who thought  they could safely engage the subject of sex with adults at Thursday’s health fair learned by Friday that the subject was wildly explosive.

When the cameraman began filming the students exiting school, a number of adults were on hand to help the kids move down the sidewalk without being filmed. I began taking pictures of the ABC crew.  The ABC reporter screamed at me from across the street, punching his finger in the air, “this borders on harassment!”.  That’s when I got mad.  I couldn’t film him while he filmed my kid?

I calmed down and respectfully called the ABC producer in charge of the story, who apologized for the reporter’s behavior.   I explained that I had been positioned across the street with my palm sized digital camera and he said it wouldn’t have mattered if I were inches away, anyone has the right to film the activities of his crew.

Then the producer and I had a good discussion about the impact of sensationalizing condoms. What lesson, if you were thirteen, would you walk away with as you watched the media treat the mistaken condom handout as a major scandal?  Through the eyes of a middle schooler it’s not so different from the Pope’s rigid position: condoms are risqué and most definitely off limits.  His focus had been on whether ABC was adhering to journalistic standards; he hadn’t been focused on the impact of the coverage on area teens.

I didn’t expect the editor to kill the story – four hours of a stakeout by ABC, complete with dozens of interviews in half a dozen locations, was too much of an investment to throw away.  But the end result was a very, very brief story and modest footage.  I’m convinced that the editor paid attention to the community impact of ABC’s news decisions, as well as to the anger of the community that had been targeted.

Making your voice heard in the media can help soften the sensationalist treatment of adolescent sexual health.  But you don’t have to wait for a media moment to be influential.  If  you’ve got kids in your life and you’d like to be proactive in promoting sexual health, here are some resources you might offer them:
Sexetc.org (for teens)
Teenwire.org (for teens)
A reference book titled “It’s Perfectly Normal” (for kids and young teens)
A reference book titled “It’s So Amazing” (for kids and young teens)

In Defense of Fun

My daughter Mia was published in a magazine this month! She wrote an essay on beauty for New Moon Magazine, a quarterly national magazine for girls. Go Mia! Asked to write about what makes her beautiful, she cited her opposition to the war, her desire to succeed in school, and her ability to have fun. She says “after I have fun I am a lot friendlier to everyone, which makes other people happy…”

Which I can attest is true, and which might be good advice for adults.

I have just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin’s book on the Supreme Court (”The Nine”), where he discusses former Justice Sandra Day O’Conner’s penchant for parties and socializing. She required her female law clerks to join her in morning exercise, which at one point included a salsa class. She required her clerks to decorate pumpkins at Halloween. Her ability to zealously pursue life’s pleasures seems to have invigorated her legal mind and broadened her social views. She became, in her measured and careful style, the most powerful legal influence in this country and perhaps some may argue in the world during her time on the court.

Toobin’s book often draws you in like a reality TV show while making the nation’s legal machinations understandable to the common reader. Some of the quotes are sheer gossip but they are fun. Remember how Nina Totenberg “broke” the Anita Hill story during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings? Thomas later joked, “I have finally had the opportunity to have my surgeon remove her many stilettos from my back..” Justice Scalia, who often votes in synch with Thomas, was once asked to compare their judicial philosophies. Scalia replied, “I am an originalist, but I am not a nut”.

By the end of Toobin’s book I was left worried, again, about who might appoint the next justice.

Yesterday Mia was at the UN in her official capacity as middle school student council Vice President, strategizing with kids from dozens of countries on human rights issues. As she describes the meeting’s premise, kids from around the world became concerned that with weapons stockpiling the adults were going to blow up the planet. So they thought they better organize. Not a bad idea.

I Get Published

I got published this week - my opinion piece is in this week’s issue of PR Week. It’s pretty exciting to appear in this journal if you’re a communications professional. The article explores the newest intersection of social media and citizen journalism.

For many who aren’t communications professionals, those two phrases are like talking about the intersection of macro and Keynesian economics. Not only do most people not know what these terms mean, they have a hard time wanting to figure it out.

That wasn’t the case for the anti-abortion lobby. They not only read my article with great interest, they issued a press release condemning it. I can only surmise that it was a slow news day for them. After falsely accusing me of “applauding” and “complaining” about the issues, they conclude, “Ultimately, Toledo gives Planned Parenthood a playbook for the new media outlook that is important for pro-life advocates to keep in mind”.

The point of my article is that the influence of the everyday news consumer is about to grow exponentially. If you don’t think the news covers the right subjects - or if you think the news is missing the kind of diversity that reflects society - there’s a whole new landscape for your opinion to be heard. This isn’t just about new voices making it onto the pages of the New York Times - this is about influencing what the editors of the major news outlets deem newsworthy.

It may be hard to imagine that the executive editors at the New York Times, CNN, and Reuters are sitting around wondering what I think ought to make headline news this week. But that’s the exact scenario they just invested heavily in. The bet is that the networks that can spark citizen engagement are going to be the media outlets that ultimately deliver the most compelling content (and, of course, deliver the highest ratings).

Thanks, PR Week, for the publication!

Remembering Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez died today, 15 years ago.

Congressman Joe Baca and Senator Robert Menendez published an opinion piece today, urging the nation to elevate Cesar Chavez’s to hero status. They have been pushing a resolution that would “urge the creation of a national holiday celebrating his life, and encourage public schools to teach about his work”. Ten states have already declared statewide holidays.

For all of the hype about the rise of the Latino majority in the United States, we have remarkably few recognized heroes. I challenge you to quickly name five Latino/a U.S.-based heroes.

Chavez dedicated his life to improving labor conditions for poor workers, particularly migrants. Recently Latino restaurant workers who claim they are paid “slave wages” of $1.25 per hour as dishwashers and delivery staff have been protesting at various New York restaurants. Below is a picture of some workers protesting at a restaurant in my neighborhood.

It took 15 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King for a federal holiday to be established in his honor. It took another 17 years after the federal law was signed for all 50 states to officially observe the holiday. Many states resisted, including Virginia which had created a “Lee-Jackson-King Day” to simultaneously celebrate King’s legacy alongside a celebration of Confederate Army generals.

My home state of Arizona famously resisted the King holiday. In 1987 the Governor rescinded the MLK holiday in one of his first acts in office. In 1990 efforts to pass a ballot measure to restore the holiday were defeated. In 1992 the pro-King advocates tried again and this time won by a landslide. The campaign made very different choices in 1992, many which were at odds with local leaders. Peter Burr of Command Research described the campaign strategy in an article written by Erik Dodds Potholm.

Campaign obstacles included major voter fatigue, an impression among white voters that the holiday was really for African Americans, a misimpression that King had stimulated violence, and widespread annoyance that the state had been labeled “racist” by outsiders after the 1990 defeat.

The campaign message strategy was:

1. Emphasize King’s values, not his life
2. Work with groups outside of Arizona to minimize the appearance of outside influence
3. Minimize opportunities for opponents to be heard by avoiding media events where reporters would seek both sides of the story.
4. Use ads that minimized confrontation and focused on ordinary people of diverse backgrounds
5. Invest more in grassroots than in paid advertising

Thankfully, the strategy worked and the King Holiday initiative won by a landslide.

War Propaganda

The New York Times published a major expose yesterday of the propaganda efforts by the Pentagon to promote the Iraq war to the American public. After winning a lawsuit where the Times demanded secret documentation about publicity efforts, a front-page article documented an orchestrated campaign to use opinion leaders on leading news outlets to shape public opinion.

In summary, the Pentagon gave special access and privileges to a select group of military analysts who were used by CNN, Fox News, and other outlets to provide commentary on the war. The analysts got an intense inside glimpse of the government’s military operations, including government paid trips to Iraq and other sites, and were given talking points and media strategies to help bolster public opinion about war efforts. In return, many of them secured important contracts with media outlets and in many cases used their insider status to secure billion-dollar contracts as suppliers to the war effort. A senior aide working on the project, Brent Krueger, told the Times that the effort was designed so that military analysts would be “writing the op-ed” for the war.

At some point in the Pentagon war communications effort it is clear that public relations strategies drifted from advocacy to propaganda. Some of the “military analysts” admit that they had serious doubts about the war operation but did not express them publicly because their financial interests were too important. Others claim they stayed quiet about their doubts because they prioritized keeping the public enthusiastic over the need for full disclosure. One commentator was immediately cut off from the Pentagon when he criticized the administration. News outlets have been embarrassed by the ordeal; CNN admitted it did not perform due diligence in ensuring that its commentators did not have a personal interest in the subject matter. ABC issued a strained statement that avoided directly dealing with the expose, and Fox News refused to comment.

Media veteran Torie Clarke is at the center of the scandal; she headed communications strategies for Donald Rumsfeld and is credited with creating the strategy. Clarke is a long-time Republican operative, and has personally supported candidates like Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter. She used to work for John McCain.

Clarke wrote a book, “Lipstick on a Pig, Winning in the No Spin Era”. She appeared on the Jon Stewart Show in 2006 to promote her book. Stewart asked her about what “no spin” meant to her.

Stewart: “When you say the no spin era, in what world?”

Clarke: “Our world. Think about how fast information rockets around the world, think about the millions of people that watch your show, and its just all instantaneous. The bad stuff can’t hide, it just can’t hide anywhere.”

Stewart: “When you say bad stuff, you mean lying or massaging or…”

Clarke: “All of the above.”

Stewart: “You’re saying it can’t work. ”

Clarke: “Yeah, I’ve never really subscribed to it myself, never really tried it myself, and in this era it just doesn’t work.”

Stewart (incredulously): “You’ve worked for Donald Rumsfeld”.

The Washington Post covered the expose in its Style section today. Howard Kurtz, who also hosts the CNN program “Reliable Sources” , wrote in the Post that “What has been obscured is the extent to which [military pundits] are still part of the military’s web and entangled with companies trying to milk the Pentagon for profit.”

Woody Allen Returns

Woody Allen is filming in my patio along with about 50 set people. They have simulated a bright sunny day by installing huge lights on my staircase, which means that I am trapped in this basement office. There is a massive bee heaving itself between the light fixtures in my office. Jeff is bravely doing his research trying to ignore the bee, I have turned off the lights above my desk in a cowardly attempt to keep the bee on Jeff’s side of the office.

In my old job I would have called the guys in the facilities office to take care of the bee. It’s hard to be an entrepreneur. Once a four-year-old friend said, about swimming with your head under water, that you have to “be bwave”. I think about being “bwave” when the thousand details of business ownership seem overwhelming.

Mostly I love the experience of entrepreneurship. In many ways I feel connected to more people as a business owner than I did as an employee, a phenomenon I attribute to the blogosphere. Instead of me, Jeff and the bee today, it feels like me, Jeff, the bee, and several thousand of my closest online friends. I bet, if I took the time, I would find a listserve whose aficionados would recommend the best way to maintain a bee-free office.

New research circulated by PR Week today further unmasks the blogger. It turns out that Hispanics are much more likely than others to blog. According to BIGresearch, the average blogger is male, 37.6 years old, a libertarian, unmarried, lower income, and uses a cell phone. What’s most interesting about the research is that almost 25% of registered voters blog, marking a serious increase in political blogs.

Beyond blogging, new technologies help make small organizations appear more prominent. Camino PR has just begun using interactive press releases - which means that reporters can mouse over sections of the release and get pop up windows that include photos, related web sites, citations, video, and more. New distribution mechanisms spend as much time making sure a client’s information gets to the right bloggers and websites as it does putting the release in the hands of traditional reporters.

It’s not like computers can take care of life’s mundane tasks, like filing all my tax receipts in the right folder. But I am wildly more efficient as a small business owner than I was as an employee, given that these tools have become my expanded workforce.

Someone yelled, “That’s a wrap!” upstairs and now there is loud equipment dismantling on the staircase. The bee is resting on the light. I am wondering how long a very fat bee can live. It’s Friday; will it die over the weekend? Should I try to push it out the door or would it attack me right back? Should I kill the bee, and if so, how? Among our environmentally friendly products are there any that would choke a bee?

Punishable by Death

President Bush told the Pope that he gave an “awesome speech” at the White House yesterday. The Pope urged thousands of White House guests to live fully their religious values in their secular lives. Even as Bush told the cheering crowd and the Pope that “all life is sacred”, the Supreme Court was affirming the death penalty just down the street. The Pope has to be one of the world’s most influential critics of the death penalty. The five Catholic Supreme Court justices headed to a White House dinner with the Pope following their affirmation of the death penalty.

Justice Stevens declared his opposition to the death penalty while voting to uphold it yesterday, in deference to legal precedent. On the other end of the spectrum, Justice Roberts concluded that executing prisoners was not “cruel and unusual punishment”, and compared lethal injection to going to sleep. Justice Clarence Thomas preferred an even harsher standard than Roberts in evaluating death penalty practices but took pains to explain that extraordinary cruel methods of the death penalty would not be allowed, such as “burning prisoners alive”. Justice Scalia punted to the states, declaring that the issue ought to be decided by the legislatures not the courts.

Perhaps the massive gulf between Catholic teaching and public opinion on the death penalty in this country caused the justices - along with Christian leaders nationwide - to present a strained and disparate justification for their positions. Leading Christian conservatives Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson have all spoken in favor of the death penalty. Pat Buchanon challenged Pope John Paul II on his anti-death penalty position, declaring that “it is the Holy Father and the bishops who are outside the Catholic mainstream, and at odds with Scripture, tradition and natural law”. Most US-based Catholics, like most Americans overall, support the death penalty. Over the last ten years the support for the death penalty in the United States has decreased from 75% to 63%, which represents an encouraging trend and discouraging distance to travel for death penalty opponents.

One of the most impactful speakers in opposition to the death penalty in this country is Sister Helen Prejean. Prejean was absent from news coverage of the decision yesterday. The Tim Robbins movie based on Prejean’s book (”Dead Man Walking”) is worth renting again. Prejean often points to media bias about the death penalty in her remarks; she accuses the media of making it easy for the public to view killing prisoners in positive terms, such as justice being done or a crime avenged.

Newspapers today mostly treated the decision as a front-page story; in fact more prominent coverage was given to the death penalty decision than the Pope’s remarks. Most headlines used somewhat modest language, supporting Prejean’s theory. The LA Times wrote, “High court finds lethal injections are humane”, the Washington Post wrote “Justices Uphold Lethal Injection Procedure”, and the Chicago Tribune led with “Stevens now foe of death penalty”.

The Obama-Clinton debate was the most prominent newspaper headline today. All three Presidential candidates are death penalty supporters. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Hillary Clinton is a “longtime advocate” of the death penalty. She lobbied for Bill Clinton’s crime bill, which expanded the list of crimes punishable by death. John McCain is also a proponent of the death penalty, and has supported the expansion of the death penalty law. Barack Obama is tentative in his support, sounding very much like a politician caught between his convictions and his political reality. Obama supports punishment by death when “the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage”.

Ron Paul is the only contender that opposes the death penalty, and is on record praising former Pope John Paul II for his opposition to punishment by death. Yes, he is still running.

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