Writing by Yvonne Watterson

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Writing by Yvonne Watterson

Category Archives: Oprah Winfrey

with all boldness

11 Monday Nov 2024

Posted by Editor in Anahorish, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Art, Awesome Women, Great Advice, Human Rights, Justice, Language matters, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Oprah Winfrey, Peace, Phoenix, Politics, Prop 300, Punishment, Seamus Heaney, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Theater

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Anna Deavere Smith, Gloria Steinem, Kamala Harris, Presidential Election 2024

On her afternoon talk show some years ago, Oprah Winfrey shared a list of eight powerful women she thought we should all know— as if we might encounter any of them at the grocery store or on the bus.  I remember one of them got my attention—Anna Deavere Smith, perhaps better known to some of you as Nancy McNally from the The West Wing, or as Gloria in Nurse Jackie. She told Oprah that woman should be bolder; that we should argue as much as our male counterparts, and that we shouldn’t try so hard to avoid conflict. We should speak up and out, she said. Boldly.

We should, and we do. At least two of us—the only two women ever nominated to be president by a major party—ran for President of the United States by doing so. They lost. Of course they lost. As post-election analyses continue to dissect the results with historians and pundits presenting their conclusions about why America overwhelmingly chose to elect Trump again, the fact remains that the United States is still bedeviled by misogyny.  If you don’t want to go that far, you’ll maybe look up and see that there’s only one crack in the ultimate glass ceiling.

Gender has always played a role in presidential politics, and the 2024 campaign was no exception. During the last one hundred odd days of it, we heard many of the same old story lines from the same old playbook that, according to Kristina Wilfore, co-founder #shepersisted  “undermine voter behavior toward women,”

Gendered disinformation is the spread of deceptive or inaccurate information and images against women political leaders, journalists, and female public figures. Following story lines that draw on misogyny, and gendered stereotypes, the goal of these attacks is to frame female politicians and government officials as inherently untrustworthy, unintelligent, unlikable, or uncontrollable – too emotional to hold office or participate in democratic politics. 

Vice President Harris chose to downplay her gender, her eyes fixed on a new era where it would be irrelevant in America. She rarely spoke about it or the historic nature of her candidacy as potentially the first Black woman to be elected president. Instead, she talked about the cost of groceries and prescription drugs and issues that should have galvanized the Democratic party—affordable housing,  protecting reproductive rights, bringing an end to gun violence, and strengthening the middle class. But it didn’t work, and too many Democrats chose to stay home on November 5th. Meanwhile, Trump and his allies chose to talk a whole lot about the Vice President’s  gender, to exploit it, with some of his allies branding her a “DEI candidate,”  “a childless cat lady,” “crazy,” “dumb as a rock.” One of them even likened her to a prostitute at a Madison Square Rally in the final stretch of the campaign.

She rose above it all. Was that a mistake? Maybe. Maybe she should have confronted him directly about his misogynistic remarks. Maybe during her one debate with him, she should have challenged him passionately on his overt sexism and his plans to put women back in their place, where he will protect us “whether we like it or not.” Maybe the more apathetic voters in those all-important swing states would have been more motivated to vote if they had seen Harris campaign harder on breaking the glass ceiling. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

Sure. Women turned out for Harris. She won a higher share of white women with college degrees, but her opponent won an even wider margin with women who did not go to college. And, in 2024 there were more of them who voted. Add his gains with men in every age group, there was just no way for Harris to make up that ground, no path to victory.  In a nutshell, Trump won the working and middle classes, and Kamala Harris won over college-educated people who are financially better-off. Why? Maybe the prospect of electing a woman to the Oval Office is too much for the United States. 

Maybe not. Maybe misogyny wasn’t the deciding factor in Trump’s victory, but for many women it certainly feels like the “same old tired playbook” helped him win.  It will take some time to retire that particular playbook. The fight will take time, as Kamala Harris reminded us in her concession speech, but “That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”

It will take outrageous acts—lots of them.


An Outrageous Act

The week before Barack Obama won his second term, I met Gloria Steinem in Phoenix.  Following her remarks at a YWCA luncheon, she described a deal she has been making for years at the end of organizing events. To sustain momentum, she promised organizers that if, in the next 24 hours, they would do just one outrageous thing in the name of simple justice, that she would do the same. She told us it could be anything. Anything we wanted it to be. She also said that only we would know what it should be—pick it up yourself, run for office, suggest that everyone in the office say out loud how much they make thereby allowing everyone to know who is being discriminated against.

In return, Steinem guaranteed two outcomes. First, she guaranteed that after just one day, the world would be a better place, and secondly that we would have a good time. Never again would we wake up wondering if we would do an outrageous thing; rather, we would wake up and consider which outrageous thing we might do today, tomorrow, and the next day.

I’m not sure I did anything that even felt remotely bold or outrageous until I was in my forties. The principal of a small high school in Phoenix at the time, I was struggling to turn it around while dealing with the devastating impact of a new Arizona law, Proposition 300. It required me to inform 38 of my bright immigrant students that they would no longer be able to take state-funded college courses, because they were in the country without documentation. They had been brought to the US as infants by parents in pursuit of a better life for them, but without Social Security Numbers or visas, the American Dream would remain achingly elusive.

The irony wasn’t lost on me as an immigrant from Northern Ireland, being asked to segregate children at school—school which should be the sacred space in any country – placing those who could prove citizenship in college classes and denying those who could not prove residency and could certainly not afford to pay their own way. Over 90% of my students lived below the American poverty level. The law was unfair. It felt un-American and anti-immigrant. To be specific, it felt anti-Mexican immigrant. My white Northern European skin seemed much more acceptable. Who isn’t Irish on St. Patrick’s Day? Because nobody told me what to do or what not to do about my students, I decided to reach out to the local media and anyone who would listen. By my own standards, this was outrageous. Bold, I even asked for money. The kindness of strangers helped raised over $100,000 to pay for tuition. The world was a little better, the way Gloria Steinem would one day tell me it would be, and the story made it to the New York Times, “A Principal Sees Injustice and Picks a Fight with It.”

Of all people, Anna Deavere Smith read the New York Times on a morning in March 2008 during a trip to Phoenix. Later that day, during Spring parent-teacher conferences, Nancy from the West Wing arrived at my office. Initially star-struck, I wasn’t sure what to say to one of Oprah’s phenomenal women. But as she explained what she was doing in Phoenix, we fell into an easy conversation that covered a lot of ground—from Northern Ireland to Arizona. She was in town to interview, along with me, an array of politicians, community activists, lawyers, and incarcerated women, for her one-woman play, “The Arizona Project,” commissioned to honor the 2006 naming of Arizona State University’s law school for retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—the first U.S. law school to be named for a woman. We talked about our respective childhoods, and Anna recalled that when she was a girl, her grandfather had told her that

 . . . if you say a word enough, it becomes you.

Walking in Other People’s Words

Inspired, Anna Deavere Smith traveled around the United States, interviewing people touched by some of our most harrowing social and racial tensions, recording her conversations with them, and shaping them into collections of monologues which she presents, verbatim, on stage. Using the real words of real people, Anna Deavere Smith breathes in – and out – America. It was surreal, sitting in my office talking to an acclaimed actress. She had “people”  who set up the camera in my office and left us to chat about justice and education and my beloved Seamus Heaney.

A fan of Heaney, she admired the picture of him hanging on my office wall. I made a copy of it for her,  and now that he’s gone, I like knowing his picture hangs in our respective living rooms.

Worlds apart but connected all the same. 

When our conversation ended, and the camera and tape recorder packed away, Anna Deavere Smith told her assistant to be sure to get a picture of the shoes. My shoes. They weren’t my favorites. They were uncomfortable. Beige, high-heeled and professional, chosen that morning I suppose in an effort to look a bit bolder at work, to be perceived as strong— a part of my armor.

It wasn’t until the night after President Obama was elected to his first term, when my students and I went to see Anna perform her one-woman show at the Herberger Theater that I understood the shoes.

Changing shoes between each of her monologues, Anna Deavere Smith walked for miles in our words, in our world. Boldly, she crisscrossed Arizona and America and showed us ourselves—how interconnected we are—prison system employees, incarcerated women, female lawyers, immigration activists and others including Justice O’Connor who was in the audience,  Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Mayor of Phoenix, and the principal I was at the time. We were looking in the mirror, and much of what we saw was bleak. At the same time, with a brand new President elected the night before, there was hope in the air.

205142_1052722039427_2592_n

It’s time to get back at it, to look in the mirror, to take a walk in the shoes of other people—people with whom we vehemently disagree, people who appear to want something very different from the same place all Americans call home.  This is not the time to retreat or to recriminate. It’s a time for boldness, and I can think of no better voice to remind us than that of Seamus Heaney:

… make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you.

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a walk in other people’s shoes, other people’s words

06 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by Editor in Anahorish, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Art, Awesome Women, Great Advice, Human Rights, Justice, Language matters, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Oprah Winfrey, Peace, Phoenix, Politics, Prop 300, Punishment, Seamus Heaney, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Theater

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Anna Deavere Smith, Arizona law, Gavin de Becker, justice, Northern Ireland, Nurse Jackie, Oprah Winfrey, Prop 300, Sandra Day O'Connor, The Arizona Project, The Gift of Fear, The West Wing

Every afternoon at 3 0’clock, for the first twenty-five years of my American life, I sat down on my couch and watched Oprah Winfrey’s talk show. It was Oprah who taught me Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear” and later, if ever I were kidnapped, that I should remember Sanford Strong’s Rule #1: to never let myself be taken to the second location.  My teenage daughter can recite this.

When Oprah started her own book club and single-handedly did more for the publishing industry than anyone before her, I was pleased when she chose titles I would have selected myself. Watching Oprah’s show was a small ritual that contributed to the order of my days in America, and I almost miss it.

As for Ms. Winfrey, still very much a force, she is still someone to pay attention to on the Forbes 2013 Most Powerful Celebrities List. I remember some years ago, Oprah Winfrey drew up a list herself, a list of eight powerful women she thought we should all know (as if we were likely to encounter any of them at the grocery store or on the bus). Using her afternoon talk show, she introduced us to them, and I remember being taken by one of them in particular – Anna Deavere Smith, whom you might best remember as Nancy McNally from the hit series The West Wing, or more recently as Gloria in Nurse Jackie.

While I don’t remember all Oprah’s reasons for including Anna Deavere Smith on her list, I distinctly recall what the actress said to her about women – that we should be bolder; that we should argue as much as our male counterparts, and that we shouldn’t try so hard to avoid conflict. We should speak up and out. Boldly.

Professionally – and personally –  I don’t think I did anything that even felt remotely bold until I was in my forties. At the time, I was the principal of a small high school in Phoenix, struggling to turn it around while dealing with the devastating impact of a new Arizona law, Proposition 300. It required me to inform thirty-eight of my bright immigrant students that they would no longer be able to take state-funded college courses, because they were in the country illegally. Now, It wasn’t their fault. They had been carried to America as infants by parents in pursuit of a better life for them. But without Social Security Numbers or visas, the American Dream would remain achingly elusive. The irony wasn’t lost on me as an immigrant from Northern Ireland, being asked to once again segregate children at school – school which should be the sacred space in any country – placing those who could prove citizenship in college classes and denying those who could not prove residency and could certainly not afford to pay their own way. Over 90% of my students lived below the American poverty level.

The law was unfair. It felt un-American and anti-immigrant. In particular, it felt anti-Mexican immigrant. My white Northern European skin seemed much more acceptable.Because nobody told me what to do or what not to do about my students, I reached out to the local media and anyone who would listen. I was bold. I even asked for money and, in small part because of  the kindness of strangers, soon raised over $100,000 to pay for tuition. Our story landed in the metro section of the New York Times, “A Principal Sees Injustice and Picks a Fight with It.” And, of all people, Anna Deavere Smith read it. It was March 2008, and during Spring parent-teacher conferences, she came to my office. Nancy from the West Wing was sitting across my desk.

Initially star-struck, I wasn’t sure what to say to one of Oprah’s phenomenal women. But as she explained what she was doing in Phoenix, we fell into a conversation that covered a lot of ground – from Northern Ireland to Arizona. She was in town to interview, along with me, an array of Phoenix politicians, community activists, lawyers, and incarcerated women, for her one-woman play, “The Arizona Project,” commissioned to honor the 2006 naming of Arizona State University’s law school for retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—the first U.S. law school to be named for a woman.

208626_1052728839597_9824_n

We talked about our respective childhoods, and Anna recalled that when she was a girl, her grandfather had told her that

 . . . if you say a word enough, it becomes you.

Inspired by that notion, she went off around these United States, interviewing people touched by some of our most harrowing social and racial tensions, recording her conversations with them, and shaping them into collections of monologues which she presents, verbatim, on stage. Using the real words of real people, Anna Deavere Smith breathes in – and out – America.

heaneyatarnahorishIt was surreal. I was a school principal in a Phoenix high school; she was an acclaimed actress. She even had “people.” They set up the camera in my office and left us to talk about justice and education and even my beloved Seamus Heaney. She loved him too and admired the black and white picture of him hanging on my office wall. I gave her a copy of it, and now that he is gone, I like knowing his picture hangs in our respective living rooms. Worlds apart.

As we talked about the nature of justice, I read his poem, “Punishment,” for her, explaining that it was from this that I had learned long ago the importance of speaking out, of being bold, and not “casting the stones of silence.”

Punishment

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.
It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adulteress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles’ webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.

Trying to explain to her my deeply troubled Northern Ireland, I read from his 1995 Nobel Acceptance speech:

One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, “Any Catholics among you, step out here”. As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions. It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don’t move, we’ll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was thrown backward and away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA . . . The birth of the future we desire is surely in the contraction which that terrified Catholic felt on the roadside when another hand gripped his hand, not in the gunfire that followed, so absolute and so desolate, if also so much a part of the music of what happens.

And I read it again. She wanted to “get this” and had to send her assistant for more tape.

When our conversation ended, and the camera and tape recorder packed away, Anna Deavere Smith told her assistant, Kimber, to be sure to get a picture of the shoes. My shoes. They weren’t my favorites. They were uncomfortable, beige, high-heeled and professional. I suppose I had chosen them in an effort to look a bit bolder at work, a part of my armor.

205142_1052722039427_2592_nWhen I watched her perform her show at the Herberger Theater, the night after President Obama was elected to his first term, I understood the shoes. Watching her morph into Sheriff Joe Arpaio or the Mayor of Phoenix or a Native American woman living on the reservation, we knew we were looking in the mirror.

Changing shoes between each monologue, Anna Deavere Smith walked for miles in our words that evening, crisscrossing Arizona and America and showing us our very souls.

 

 

 

image-2

© Art by Sheila Dee “Which shoes should I choose today?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From there to here . . .

Yvonne hails from Antrim, Northern Ireland, and has lived in the desert southwest of the United States for almost thirty years. Married, with a daughter who is navigating her path through the "teen tunnel," and a haughty cat, Atticus, she has spent the better part of the last three decades in the classroom as a student, teacher, and administrator. Her mid-life crisis came as a sneaky Stage II invasive breast cancer diagnosis which subsequently sent her to the blogosphere where she found a virtual home away from home . . .
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