Requiscat in pacem, Geraldine Ferraro

Awilda Marquez was a Hillary Clinton delegate from Colorado to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.  She is the former president of the Hispanic Bar Association of Colorado.  She writes concerning Geraldine Ferraro:  

I was a Foreign Service Officer serving in Bangladesh in 1984, dealing with an unorganized civilian opposition to a military dictatorship.  Back then, accessible computers were someone's dream, there was no CNN, international communication was an expensive phone call, and I had to follow American political events on my short-wave radio.  Of course, I was a women's libber, women's activist from the start of the movement in the early 1970s.  

I can never forget when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated to be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate.  It was after some hours after midnight in South Asia when the decision was broadcast on the shortwave radio.  I was so overwhelmed with joy that I started jumping up and down, up and down, up and down.  There was no one I could talk to.  No cell phones, of course.  My exhilaration was powerful.  I think my face almost broke from my huge smile and excitement.  I couldn't stop jumping up and down.  

Yesterday, we lost her.  She was a leader, tough, sometimes a bitch (I had dealings with her when I served in the State Department in the Clinton Administration).  But she was always on the right side.  Always in support of women's rights.  You could overlook her intense pushiness to get on the US delegation to the UN International Women's Conference in Geneva in 1994.  There, she got the Conference to declare that women's rights were human rights.  FIRST TIME EVER.  

Nowadays, women's rights are a given.  Remembering when it was a real battle is important.  And Geraldine was an important part of that transformation.  

Comments

[Hypatia]

Bearing in mind my mother's injunction not to say anything when you've nothing good to say, I have no comment about Ferraro. However, I would like to note respectfully that the term "bitch" is not generally used in polite company to refer to troublesome women, cf. the voter (female) who once asked John McCain, apropos of HRC, "How do we beat the bitch?" It is regrettable that women seemingly feel free to call other women such names. Marquez should know better -- and set an example by watching her own mouth.