Page 12
December 19, 2018
O PINION
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Stop Using Female Lives as Bartering Tool
Reauthorize
Violence Against
Women Act
l aura f inley
That the U.S. is di-
vided on political is-
sues is old news. Both
the Left and the Right
are deeply entrenched,
resulting in distrust, animosi-
ty, and political gridlock. One
troubling example is with the
Violence Against Women Act
Reauthorization of 2018. Sadly,
it isn’t the first time that Repub-
licans have attempted to block
the law, literally using women’s
lives as a bartering tool.
The original Violence Against
Women Act was introduced by
Senator Joe Biden in 1990. It
took four years before it passed
Congress with bipartisan support
and was signed by President Bill
Clinton. This is in large part due
by
to a provision that allowed vic-
tims the private civil rights rem-
edy of suing their attackers.
Chief Justice William Rehn-
quist was a vocal op-
ponent, asserting that
the provision would
bring so many cas-
es before the courts
it would overwhelm
them, and the Supreme
Court declared that
portion of the law to be uncon-
stitutional in 2000. Interestingly,
the court said that congress did
not have the right to enforce the
civil remedy under the Com-
merce Clause because domestic
violence is not “economic” in
nature, despite evidence that it
costs taxpayers between $5-10
billion a year in healthcare and
law enforcement costs, lost pro-
ductivity, and more.
Yet the other provisions re-
mained, and the Violence Against
Women Act has helped hundreds
of thousands of victims. It pro-
vides funds for training law en-
forcement, court officials, victim
advocates and healthcare profes-
sionals. The law was reautho-
rized again in 2000 and 2005.
The 2000 version improved
provisions for immigrant vic-
tims, victims of sexual assault,
stalking, and dating violence.
The 2005 reauthorization ex-
tended benefits to underserved
populations and prohibited re-
quirements that sexual assault
victims take polygraph tests be-
fore an investigation into their
reports ensues.
The 2012 renewal was also
contentious, as conservatives
opposed extending the Violence
Against Women Act’s provisions
to same-sex couples. Great de-
bate also surrounded extend-
ing the protections of the law
to Native American women, as
this brought up the typical juris-
dictional battle that occurs with
crime-related topics on tribal
lands. Further, conservatives op-
posed extending the law’s pro-
visions to undocumented immi-
grant victims through the U Visa
program. After expiring with the
adjournment of the 112thCon-
gress, the law was again reautho-
rized with all of the contentious
provisions included in 2013.
The latest reauthorization was
originally scheduled to occur by
Sept. 30 but has been extended
twice. It is temporarily reautho-
rized, but as of now, it appears
Republicans intend to block the
reauthorization before the year’s
end, and out of 173 co-sponsors
of the bill proposed by Rep.
Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas,
none are Republicans.
In all likelihood, the influx of
women who were elected in the
2018 midterms in January 2019
would result in the Violence
Against Women Act being re-
considered, but it is horrifying to
see that once again there’s even
debate about supporting resourc-
es for victims. While no federal
legislation is perfect, and the law
can be legitimately critiqued for
focusing too much on criminal
justice and less on root causes of
abuse, the 2018 reauthorization
is still important. Jackson Lee’s
bill increases funding for sexual
assault centers and expands the
law related to removing guns
from convicted abusers.
We should all implore Con-
gress to act on the reauthori-
zation of the Violence Against
Women Act. As it becomes clear-
er that, according to a new study
by the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime, the least safe
place for women globally is in
the home, it is essential that our
politicians take seriously the is-
sues of domestic and sexual vi-
olence and not let political divi-
sion disrupt these much-needed
services.
Laura Finley, Ph.D., syndicat-
ed by PeaceVoice, teaches in the
Barry University Department of
Sociology & Criminology.
The Power of Personal Growth and Change
A happy warrior
ready to act
justly
by m arian
W right
e Delman
“Up until I
was 16 years
old and a se-
nior in high school, I did the same
thing my friends did. We drove
through the Black side of town
throwing pears at Black guys and
yelling racial epithets. We were
the White oppressors. I was the
White oppressor.”
(reg. copy, italics at end)
My dear friend Dr. John Magu-
ire readily admitted his childhood
in Montgomery, Ala. and Jack-
sonville, Fla. didn’t make him a
likely champion of racial equal-
ity. But when he passed away
recently at age 86, John—the
president emeritus of Claremont
Graduate University, former
president of the State University
of New York Old Westbury, and
recipient of many accolades and
honors—was widely respected as
an extraordinarily committed ad-
vocate for civil rights and social
justice. His story is a powerful
example of the power and pos-
sibility of personal growth and
change.
John described his parents
as “radical segregationists,” al-
though he also said they didn’t
see themselves as “bigots” and
believed there was a difference
between the two. But he was a
product of his place and time
until that senior year of high
school when everything began
to change. He was chosen to go
to an integrated YMCA baseball
camp in Ohio where players were
deliberately assigned roommates
of other races. He remembered
passing a soda around among his
new group of friends and sudden-
ly realizing it was the first time
his lips had touched something a
Black person’s lips had touched,
a simple moment that shattered
an imaginary taboo.
When he enrolled at Wash-
ington and Lee University the
following fall, professors there
slowly began to challenge his old
racial assumptions. He attended a
conference at Crozer Theological
Seminary during his sophomore
year where he was again assigned
a Black roommate: Martin Luther
King, Jr. Right away he found
Dr. King and his ideas brilliant
and compelling. It was the start
of a friendship that lasted until
Dr. King’s death and a relation-
ship that influenced my friend
John deeply as he was starting to
change his own world view.
Throughout a Fulbright year
in Edinburgh, divinity school and
doctorate at Yale, and postdoctor-
al research at Yale, Berkeley, and
in Germany and the Philippines,
my friend John’s perspective kept
broadening. Eventually, he didn’t
just come to understand and ac-
cept the Civil Rights Movement
in the South—he jumped in him-
self as a fervent ally and partic-
ipant. This was true to who he
was: a “happy warrior” ready to
act justly.
In 1961 Dr. King encouraged
him to join the Freedom Rides
with his divinity school class-
mate and friend Dr. William
Sloane Coffin Jr. I begged to
join them but they thought it too
dangerous for a woman! I was
furious having grown up in the
South and having been jailed for
sitting in at Atlanta City Hall’s
cafeteria in 1960 without shields
from Jim Crow. Life magazine
featured John Maguire’s experi-
ence seeing the South’s violent
racism from the other side and
being arrested in Montgom-
ery, his former hometown, for
trying to order coffee at a bus
station. He was eventually rep-
resented by the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund’s Thurgood Mar-
shall and Jack Greenberg and
Yale Law professor Lou Pollak
in a case that went all the way
to the U.S. Supreme Court. By
then John was a faculty mem-
ber at Wesleyan University in
Middletown, Conn. While many
of his colleagues cheered him
on and helped pay his fines and
legal costs, some colleagues
and alumni were deeply critical
of his involvement in the Civil
Rights Movement. But John was
not turning back.
A few years later he helped
Vincent Harding draft the historic
antiwar sermon “Beyond Viet-
nam” that Dr. King gave at Riv-
erside Church on April 4, 1967,
exactly a year before his assassi-
nation, warning America against
succumbing to the “giant triplets
of racism, extreme materialism,
and militarism” and telling us we
needed a revolution of values.
John told an interviewer he
knew he’d made a difference
during the Civil Rights Move-
ment when he realized he’d
opened his parents’ eyes. One
day his mother said to him, “We
see your friend Martin King on
TV all the time, and he looks so
tired. Tell him that if he wants a
place to rest…he can rest here.
We won’t bother him.” When
he heard her say that he wept.
After Dr. King was killed John
became director of the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Center for Social
Change, and throughout his life
he kept helping transform peo-
ple’s points of view—especially
the generations of students whose
lives he touched and who learned
from his example.
My friend John fought pas-
sionately for increasing diversity
in and access to higher education
throughout his life and remained
convinced that solving the prob-
lem of access to higher education
had to start long before students
entered the doors of a university
or graduate school. He also knew
that the problem was much wid-
er than education and spoke out
against disparities in health care,
the criminal justice system, eco-
nomic development and more.
John and his extraordinary
wife Billie were loving and faith-
ful friends and unceasing sup-
porters of the Children’s Defense
Fund and other organizations and
people who, like them, wanted to
help bend the arc of the universe
towards justice. At every step he
did it with a trademark sense of
joy and with his beloved Billie
and their daughters and grand-
children at his side.
At a dinner party many years
ago John was reportedly asked
what he would want his epitaph
to be, and answered: “He had a
passion for justice and excellence
and he was steadfast.” No words
better sum up his marvelous leg-
acy. And like him, we and our
nation must embrace his lessons,
example and bold willingness to
change to ensure a more just na-
tion and world fit for all God’s
children.
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.