Lee Dems: March Review

March:

2nd: I received an email from Kim Pollard informing me that I've been adding to the Veterans and Military Families Committee (VMFC). This is my first assignment since joining the Lee Dems, and it's an ideal one. Not only am I a veteran, but many members of my family have served in the armed forces. I'll get a better idea of what the committee does when I attend the VMFC meeting later this month.

19th: Precinct Operations Meeting

Ed Joseph went over what the Operations Committee is responsible for and what roles needed to be filled. Operations was short a few precinct captains, teams for early voter registration, and a team for back to school nights.

I volunteered to become Precinct Captain for Kingstowne. The group is already well established, but will still need strong leadership. I'm looking forward to it. What scares me is that I'll have to make cold calls to people who "may" want to become volunteers. The mere thought of it tickles my boundary issues. I'll just have to use it as an opportunity to conquer a flaw.

23rd: Lee Dems Monthly Meeting

Outside of normal business, Delegate Paul Krizek and Senator George Barker came to give us a rundown on what the state Democrats were attempting to do in the Virginia House and Senate.

28th: VMFC & FCDC

VMFC: The Veterans and Military Familes meeting was the highlight of the month for me. Due to my teaching schedule, I showed up a half an hour late. Everyone was very understanding.

The committee's vice-chair, Bruce, was giving keynote speech at Quantico National Cemetery the next day for Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day.

Kim will be speaking at the up coming 2017 Virginia Veterans Summit taking place in Chesapeake in June.

Mainly, we all shared our desire for making FCDC as friendly and open to veterans and their families as possible. The committee is new. So, we're still establishing what our outreach and programs will look like.

FCDC: This was a huge meeting with members for every district in the county sending representatives. Lee Dems were well represented.

Multiple candidates for state offices, or their spokespersons, introduced themselves. They ask for our support. None of us are allowed to support candidates in the primary phase. So we mostly just applauded everyone.

We passed our budget unanimously.

There was a bit of contention over a resolution requesting that Gov. McAuliffe to call a special session of the Legislature to vote to end gerrymandering. No one supports gerrymandering, of course. However, some of us thought that it was pointless to put pressure on the Governor when it wouldn't amount to anything since the Republicans in the legislature would just vote "Nay". The "Yeas" carried the day. So, the resolution will be sent, and we'll see what happens.

I was exhausted after working two jobs before coming to the meeting, and I left early.

After the meeting, I received an email from Alex mentioning that their was still an opening for the 8th District Resolution Committee. I responded that I was interested. So, we'll see what comes about from that.

Conclusion:

That's March. Hopefully, I've improved since last month.

I'll try to be quicker, and get April's review out earlier than the 21st of May.

Oddly, I'm enjoying all of this.

SdB panel

I went to a Simone de Beauvior panel discussion over the weekend. The event was at The National Museum of Women in the Arts. The panel consisted of Dr. Susan Suleiman of Harvard, Constance Borde, Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, and Dr. Debra Bergoffen of both American University and George Mason University.

I had been really looking forward to the panel, as I hadn't been to any lectures or the like in a while. Justin, a friend from grad school, had mentioned on Facebook that he would be going. I messaged him when I arrived, but sadly he couldn't make it. I then noticed Richard, another friend from grad school , with who I shared most of my classes at Mason. It was good to catch up with him. He had a couple of his students with him. We promised to try to grab a beer sometime soon.

Before the panel kicked off, the ladies gave brief lectures involving their expertise on de Beauvior.

Suleiman kicked things off. She mainly spoke about de Beauvoir's novel The Mandarins. I found the lecture to be fascinating, because I have only experienced de Beauvoir as a philosopher.  Suleiman did a fab job of mapping out the connections between the fictional characters of the novel and the real people in de Beauvoir's life that they were inspired by.  I think that I'll try to get my hands on a copy, and give it a go.

Borde and Malovany-Chevallier have recently, relatively speaking, released a new translation of de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. As an American who can barely stammer through English, I have nothing but respect for translators. So, it was enlightening to hear them discuss to challenges of their undertaking.

Bringing up the rear, Bergoffen explained a bit of de Beauvoir's philosophy. This was the section I was most familiar with. Richard had taken one of Begoffen's classes while she was still teaching at Mason. He loved it. I never got to take her.

After the lectures, all the ladies came back out on stage together for the panel. There was a good back and forth with the audience. The questions mostly involved the nature of the translation, how de Beauvoir's ideas matched or failed to match up with current feminism, and her personal and professional relationships. Everything was overwhelmingly positive. No one brought up anything negative about de Beauvoir including her history of statutory rape. I thought that it was worth bringing up since the topic of de Beauvoir's work to bring the sexual assault of women to the forefront. No one else did, and I didn't feel like breaking the vibe. So, I didn't bring it up to the panel.

When the panel had concluded, I approached Dr. Bergoffen. I was wearing my George Mason t-shirt, and I was glad to see that it made her happy. I ask her if de Beauvoir ever answered for her habit of sleeping with underage students? She said that de Beauvoir absolutely refused to even admit that what she did was wrong at all. Bergoffen added that in their letters to each other that de Beauvoir and Sartre could be awful in how they spoke of other people. I was glad the Dr. Bergoffen found this as disturbing as I did.

I hit the road after that. It was an excellent event.

Despite her moral failings, I do find de Beauvoir, and her philosophy, worthy of study.